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بينالي الدرعية للفن المعاصر 2026 ما زال يتشكل معكم. ندعوكم للمشاركة في برامجنا الثقافية، وحواراتنا الشيقة، وتذوق ما نقدمه من نكهات جديدة ومتنوعة؛ تمتعوا بتجربة ثقافية تتشكل ملامحها معكم لحظة بلحظة. انضموا لنا في بينالي الدرعية للفن المعاصر قبل انتهاء دورته الثالثة. مستمر حتى 2 مايو 2026 حي جاكس،... show more
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![🎥 #Trumps_Art_of_the_Deal: #Swallowing_Venezuela, #Greenland and #Iran by #America; #Swallowing_the_Middle_East by #Israel👇👇 👈 #Akbar_Ganji, 22 September 2026 ✅ Iranians should keep a very close eye on Trump—the oil thief and land thief—so that he does not, with the bribe of power and wealth, buy the sellouts who are Iranian in name only and take Iran’s oil, or part of Iran’s territory (as with Venezuela and Greenland), for himself. ✅ He gave an $800,000 house to the husband of Greenland’s foreign minister and seized the place. ✅ Trump has said, again and again and in so many words, that he has taken Venezuela’s oil for America and that he wants to do the same to Iran. On 16 December 2025 he wrote on Truth Social that the pressure would continue “Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” On 17 December 2025 he told reporters they had taken America’s energy rights and oil “not so long ago,” that Washington wanted it back, and that it had been taken illegally. On 3 January 2026, after the military operation and the arrest of Maduro, he said the United States would “run” Venezuela and “we’re going to be taking out a lot of wealth out of the ground.” On 24 January 2026 he told the New York Post: “Let me put it this way, they don’t have any oil. We’re taking the oil.” The oil was being sent to Houston refineries. In June 2026 he wrote on Truth Social that he would soon take Kharg Island and other Iranian oil sites and take complete control of their oil and gas market “just like Venezuela.” On 13 September 2026 in Ireland he said America would eventually get out of Iran, “unless we decide to stay and keep the oil, like Venezuela.” On 9 January 2026, on Greenland, he said: “I’m going to do something in Greenland, whether they like it or not… I’d like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.” ✅ In Iran, Trump is after a repeat of the Iraq and Venezuela model: control of foreign-exchange revenues and a client state. He has said repeatedly that he wants to apply the Venezuela model to Iran. Since 2003, Iraq’s oil revenues have sat in an account of the Central Bank of Iraq at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and every U.S. president has renewed Executive Order 13303; Trump renewed it on 4 May 2026. Reuters reported on 23 January 2026 that Washington threatened even to target Iraq’s oil income if forces close to Iran entered the new government. The New York Times wrote that the Trump administration temporarily blocked the transfer of Iraq’s own dollars from U.S. banks to Baghdad. After Iraq’s November 2025 election, the Shiite majority nominated Nouri al-Maliki for prime minister. On 27 January 2026 Trump wrote on Truth Social that if Maliki were chosen, “the United States of America will no longer help Iraq,” and that without U.S. help Iraq would have “ZERO chance.” Maliki rejected the interference, but his candidacy was withdrawn and, under Washington’s pressure, Ali al-Zaidi became prime minister. In May 2026 Trump said “we support [him] very strongly” and received him at the White House in July. In Venezuela, oil income is likewise under American arrangements. On 18 September 2026 Reuters and the Financial Times reported that the interim government and a faction of the opposition were close to moving some 31 tons of Venezuelan gold—nearly $4 billion—from the Bank of England to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with the United States controlling access. The twin earthquakes of 24 June 2026 left more than 1,700 officially dead; some reports put the toll higher. They want the gold released in the name of post-earthquake reconstruction, but spending it is subject to U.S. oversight and a Treasury account. Without Washington’s permission—and in practice without Marco Rubio—Caracas cannot touch its own reserves. ✅ Many Republican leaders have repeated Trump’s words on Venezuela, Greenland, and Iran almost verbatim. ✅ Most recently, Carla Sands, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, told Fox News: “We have Venezuela, we’ll have Iran, and now if we have Greenland, we can supply the world with energy for hundreds of years to come—and I mean hundreds of years—with the energy that’s been discovered.” ✅ Watch Rachel Maddow’s (Rachel Maddow) five-minute exposé. She is a leading American liberal political analyst. It calls to mind the worst age of colonialism and imperialism—with this difference: this naked imperialism can no longer be dismissed as “conspiracy theory.” Many American politicians have said the same, among them Michael McFaul (Michael McFaul), U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. On 29 August 2026 he wrote that Trump had taken America back to the nineteenth century and was behaving like a typical imperial empire of that century, and that the Venezuela oil deal was naked imperialism: taking another country’s assets in the south by military force. On 3 September 2026, answering the White House, he wrote: “That’s called imperialism. We are profiting from the use of force in another country.” (McFaul has also written, of the same policy: “Straight up colonialism. We invaded not to restore democracy, but to take their oil.” And: “That this outrageous statement celebrating imperialism was not page one news today underscores how numb we have become to Trump.”) ✅ Most important is Bill Kristol’s (Bill Kristol) conversation three days ago with Robert Kagan. Kagan is a leading neoconservative theorist of the Middle East wars, a co-author of the Project for the New American Century statements, and an advocate of military intervention after the Cold War. His wife, Victoria Jane Nuland, is among the “Israel-first” Zionists and is fiercely hawkish. The four-person debate of 20 May 2026 (30 Ordibehesht 1405) at Meridian Hall in Toronto—John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt versus Victoria Jane Nuland and Mike Pompeo, the Munk Debate titled “Be it resolved, don’t go hunting monsters”—is historic and unforgettable: In his interview with Bill Kristol, Kagan treats the Trump administration as predatory and imperialist, having taken Venezuela’s oil and Greenland for America by open, naked force. He says this colonial appetite is insatiable: whatever it takes, it is never full, and it has an extraordinary hunger for other people’s property. (I have posted the Kagan–Kristol interview separately.) Kristol himself is a neoconservative and a serious opponent of Trump. He has not become an anti-interventionist, but he treats Trump’s intervention as the seizure of oil and land, not as leadership of a world order, and he calls the Greenland threat and the Venezuela oil deal imperial bullying. ✅ I could go on, with film, tweets, and debates, to show that what has happened—and is happening—to Iran follows the same imperial program. 🔺 Mike Pompeo (Mike Pompeo), an “Israel-first” neocon, wrote on X on 2 January 2026: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.” The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel carried it the same day. A few days earlier, a Persian-language channel attributed to Mossad had written: “Let us go out into the streets together… not only from afar; we are with you in the field as well.” 🔺 John Bolton and Mike Pence have held the same line. All three have sat with the Mujahedin-e Khalq. In July 2018, at an MEK rally in Paris, Bolton said they would celebrate in Tehran before 2019. 🔺 Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have said repeatedly that without regime change in Iran their work is incomplete. In Israeli elections there is no real contest among rivals over “regime change in Iran.” Israel has also had a close relationship with the MEK, but publicly it defends Reza Pahlavi and the restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy. Shahriar Ahy—then Reza Pahlavi’s most serious adviser—said in New York in 2006 that Israel first offered the leak of Iran’s secret nuclear documents to them; when they refused, Israel gave the documents to the MEK to publish. 🔺 On 5 April 2026 Trump told Fox News that America had sent “guns, a lot of guns” for Iranian protesters, through the Kurds, and that he thought the Kurds had kept the weapons. On 4 March the New York Times wrote that the CIA had given light arms to Iranian Kurdish forces before the war. Iranian Kurdish parties denied receiving the weapons. 🔺 On 12 February 2026 the Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, wrote that after the January crackdown the Trump administration had smuggled some 6,000 Starlink terminals into Iran; the State Department had bought nearly 7,000, and Trump knew of the deliveries. 🔺 On 24–25 February 2026 the CIA posted in Persian on X, Instagram, and YouTube: “The Central Intelligence Agency hears you and wants to help,” and gave instructions for a secure call by informants. AP and Reuters reported it the same day. Yasmine, Noor, and Iman Pahlavi—according to their Instagram records—storyed the CIA notice at the same time. ✅ The defining fact of this moment is that the governments of the United States and Israel no longer hide their aims; they state them in public every day, so that no one can be silenced with the label “conspiracy theory.” The imperial neoliberal government of Trump and Netanyahu has forced even leading neoconservative theorists to distance themselves. Democratic leaders—Obama, Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Biden’s secretary of state, the national-security advisers of Obama and Biden, and Democratic candidates in the 3 November midterms—mainly say the JCPOA worked and that under it Iran would never have obtained a nuclear weapon (and on that claim they are entirely right), and that the causeless, illegal, economically costly, and failed military attack on Iran at Netanyahu’s request was unnecessary. But if Trump also swallows Iran as he has Venezuela and Greenland, and if the next president is a Democrat, they will welcome it—just as the Obama and Biden administrations never restored Iraq’s economic independence. The executive order keeping Iraq’s oil account at the New York Fed was renewed under both. ✅ In Part I of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx offered a brilliant, deep analysis of modernity’s victories in the modern age. But Marx saw that age as the age of revolution against capitalism and of human emancipation, to which both the inner contradictions of capitalism would lead of necessity and which the working class would will into being. That did not happen. Even serious defenders of liberal democracy—including John Rawls, the most important political philosopher of the theory of justice, and Paul Starr in Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism—were compelled to criticize, in earnest, the coups and foreign aggressions of “liberal imperialism.” Rawls, who in The Law of Peoples was a theorist of humanitarian intervention and just war, criticized and rejected CIA coups in other countries in that same book, including the CIA coup against Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. In §5.4 Rawls wrote that the United States overthrew the democracies of Allende in Chile, Árbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, and, on some accounts, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Whatever the merits of those regimes, the covert operations against them were carried out by a government motivated by monopolistic and oligarchic interests without the knowledge or criticism of the public. This was made easier by a skillful appeal to national security in the context of superpower rivalry, which allowed such weak democracies to be seen, however implausibly, as a threat. Although democratic peoples are not expansionist, they do defend their security interest, and a democratic government can easily appeal to that interest to support covert interventions even when the actual motive is hidden economic interests. Rawls also wrote, in §14.1, that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aimed primarily at civilian populations, were very great wrongs. He went on (§4.4 and the footnotes to that section) to say that Japan was already close to surrender and that there was no need for the atomic bombings. But Truman was a racist and called the Japanese savages and barbarians and said they should be treated as such; yet how foolish it now seems to regard the Germans and the Japanese as wholly barbarian and savage. Look at the names Donald Trump has given Iranians in his second term. On 1 April 2026, in a televised address, he said: “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.” That same night: “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that’s the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding.” In early April: “No bridges, no power plants… Stone Ages.” April reports of Trump on Iranians: “animals,” and once “horrible genes, not like our own.” In July 2026 he called Iran’s leaders “scum” and “sick people.” In September 2026 he told Axios: “Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not? It’s a big decision.” In another interview he set out the options as obliterating Iran, letting it rot economically, or making a deal. You see exactly the racist gaze that Edward Said mapped so well in Orientalism. (One of the charges Republicans leveled at Barack Obama was that he had met Edward Said.) That racist attitude cannot and must not be ignored in the bombing of Iran’s infrastructure—including the 28 February 2026 attack on Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, which the UN fact-finding mission on 17 September 2026 found, on “reasonable grounds,” to have been the work of the United States and a war crime: about 157 dead, including more than 120 children. Major American media carried the same report. Trump said it was a wartime mistake. The military attack on Iran had, and has, nothing to do with freedom, human rights, or democracy (whenever Trump feels Iran’s leaders are coming around to him, he lavishes astonishing praise on them). This attack is for oil, domination, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and the interests of Israel, and nothing else. Only that.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2102403679840084316/amplify_video_thumb/2102401955947544576/img/PXrApHdtZ2iZqhoU.jpg)
!["Anyone who leaked a [UFO] report...could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act...life in prison, or death." "Maybe we can reverse engineer this so we will have this incredible edge over the rest of the world." 🔥 Dr. Phil Had Me at The Bolender Memo 🔥 (Dr. Phil continued to kill it yesterday and this was better than the last one! Link to full video (21:52) is in the replies.) "Our government has been lying to us for more than 80 years. Ask yourself why? Why do they not want you to know this is going on?" (He starts out by showing that Google searches for "UFO" have allegedly nearly tripled since last Friday night, along with searches for UAP being up 400%. And "Dr. Phil UFO" is one of the fastest rising searches in the country. If all of that is true, it's a very good thing. Especially since he's been putting out some really good videos. He mentions the latest release (#4) of UFO/UAP files from the Pentagon last Friday.) "My team and I were granted early access, exclusive access to those documents before they went public." "Our government has been lying to us, by omission AND by intentional misdirection, for 79 years." "Look at these documents. You go back as far as 1947 where they have had clear information that there are objects not of this Earth, both technologically, metallurgically, performance-wise. But yet, that has been hidden from us. They've denied that, they've actually threatened people from talking about this. Threatened with careers, imprisonment, and some, with death, because they would consider it treason." (He backs it up with documents. See below.) Dr. Phil: "For 80 years, every time there was a legitimate UAP sighting and the U.S. government had a chance to get in there, they essentially told us, 'Nothing to see here. Move along.' To be clear, a UAP sighting is not proof of little green men or alien life. It means something happened, something was observed, something occurred for which we have no explanation. That's it. "Now, let's talk about that for a second. Things happen, and we don't have any explanation for it. We don't have technology that explains that. There's something that is observed in the sky, going at a speed, stopping, making a sharp turn, reversing direction, accelerating, changing altitudes, and we don't have anything on this Earth that can do that. That's what's called unexplained. "Now, do we know where it's from? How it does that? Well, if we did, it would be explained. But we don't. We go look at all of our secret weapons. We go look at what we know through intelligence, other countries have. And let me tell you, a lot of these (laughs) - they're not close calls. They are not close calls. And some of the things that have been observed, we damn sure didn't have anything like that in the 40s or the 50s or the 60s, and we still don't, now in 2020s. "But at the very same time, our government was telling us, 'Nothing to see here: weather balloon, reflection off of an airplane, just a weather anomaly.' And, the government was simultaneously threatening its own people with criminal penalties if they ever disclosed UAP information. "If somebody that was credible, that had seen this, spoke about it, they were threatened with all kinds of penalties. We were gaslighted. 'No big deal here. Probably weather balloons, misidentified aircraft.' And a jumpy public that watched, 'Close Encounters' one too many times, thinking, 'Look, what's really going on here?' "Behind the curtain, the government was spending generations of time and resources protecting this information. Was it happening? Yes, it was happening! Do we have proof of it happening? Yes, we have proof of it happening. And what I mean by that is we have this on radar. We have credible, military pilots reporting it. "We have aircraft that have guns, and when you open a gun and go live on a fighter, there's a camera that activates, so you have video of what the gun is shooting at. You have gun cameras. If they see one of these things in front of them, they open their weapons, in case they need them, and so it shoots video of what they're seeing. "Now let's talk about some of the proof. JANAP 146 - Joint Army, Navy, Air Force publication 146 - made it a criminal offense for military personnel and commercial airline pilots to discuss UFO sightings outside official channels. The penalty, 'up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.' "So, you might see some guy down on a lake, drinking beer, that talks about something he saw over the lake. Yeah, they don't mind that guy talking. But credible people? Trained observers with instrumentation? No. They say something, they're going to prison. "Well, that took effect upon receipt. No hearings, no debate. The regulation says, 'All persons aware of the contents or existence...are governed by...espionage laws.' So not just the pilot who filed a report under JANAP 146, anyone who leaked a report. Radio operators, airline staff, anyone in the chain could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. "You can see this yourself. Declassified copies are online today, including on the NSA's website. Now what is the Espionage Act? That's the same law used to prosecute spies. Section 793: Up to 10 years in federal prison for every violation. Section 794: If the information reaches a foreign power, life in prison, or death. "Imagine you're a TWA captain in 1955. You see something over the Pacific you just simply can't explain. You file your report like the regulation requires. And from that moment, talk to a newspaper, tell your own wife, puts you in the same legal category as a spy. "Ask yourself why. Why are they so interested in muzzling all this conversation? Why do they not want you to know this is going on? Why are you not entitled to know what's happening in the air around you? "Now, let's fast forward 20 years, 1971. Oliver Harry Turner was an Australian nuclear scientist and intelligence officer, head of the nuclear branch of Australia's Joint Intelligence Organization. He was asked to assess the American response to the growing UAP issue. "If you're thinking, what does an Australian know about U.S. military secrets? Well, the possibility of life beyond this planet is bigger than any one country. Australia and the rest of the world has a legitimate interest in what the U.S. knows. And Australia is one of our closest intelligence allies. What we now call Five Eyes. "The Five Eyes countries are the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These countries have shared their most sensitive intelligence with each other since World War II. When a senior, Five Eyes nuclear intelligence officer writes a report about what the United States knows, well, that's serious. "He was outside the American classification system. He had no career to lose. He pieced this together from official CIA, Air Force, Congressional, and Project Blue Book records. Now this report was written May 27, 1971. Original classification: Secret. Title: Scientific and Intelligence Aspects of the UFO Problem. Report declassified by the National Archives of Australia in 2023. "On June 9th of 2026, whistleblower David Crusch (Yes, he said Crusch) stood on Capitol Hill and told the public to read pages seven through sixteen." ~ David Grusch: "There is a declassified 1971 Australian, formally-classified, Secret assessment that a couple years ago was put in the Australian National Archives. I encourage people to read page seven through sixteen, and that was the nuclear branch chief of the Australian government discussing the U.S. cover-up and the involvement of the CIA back in the 70s. And that's actually a little-known document that is publicly available." ~ Dr. Phil: "Now here's the kicker: foreign intelligence describing an American cover-up is now referenced in the files that our government is just now releasing. And here are six key findings in the Turner report. "Number one, what Turner called the facade of ridicule. Turner documents that early Air Force intelligence concluded, 'Some of these objects, 'had flight characteristics' that could best be explained as having 'extraterrestrial origin.' (The actual language says: "The early analysis of UFO reports by USAF intelligence indicated that real phenomena were being reported which had flight characteristics so far in advance of U.S. aircraft that only as extra-terrestrial origin could be envisaged." ) Dr. Phil: "Instead of telling the public, the CIA and Air Force adopted a deliberate debunking policy. "Now let that sit with you for a minute. Instead of telling the public, the CIA and Air Force adopted a deliberate debunking policy. We've got to get these people believing this isn't real. We've got to debunk this. "January 1953, Turner's own words: 'By erecting a facade of ridicule, the U.S. hoped to allay public alarm, reduce the possibility of the Soviet taking advantage of UFO mass sightings...and act as a cover-up so the U.S. can develop vehicles that emulate UFO performances.' "What's the point? Well, the point is, they were thinking, 'All right, let's keep this secret,' like we're the only ones seeing this, 'and maybe we can reverse engineer this so we will have this incredible edge over the rest of the world.' "That's a great goal, I guess, if you can go from flying-prop planes or early jets to this incredible speed. If these are extraterrestrial, and the nearest galaxy is Andromeda, which it takes two and a half million years to get to, flying at the speed of light, we're pretty far from being able to do that. "Today, in 2026, can we move at the speed of light? No. If we could, it would take two and a half million years to get to the next galaxy. We can't move at the speed of light, even now in 2026. But that was the goal. They'll find one of these and reverse engineer it." (I don't know whether or not any black program has tech that can move at the speed of light and I doubt Dr. Phil knows, either. Someone should show him what Lacatski said about being able to reverse engineer some of this acquired (alleged non-human) tech but "not to its full extent.") Dr. Phil: "Finding number two. He then talks about Project Sign. This was the U.S. Air Force's first official UFO investigation set up in late 1947. Its analysts reportedly concluded that extraterrestrial origin was the best explanation. Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg rejected that conclusion, and copies of the report were ordered destroyed. Destroyed! "And per Turner, in February 1949, members of Project Sign, 'either volunteered to leave or were compelled to leave,' and they were replaced by people, 'willing to ridicule the concept of UFOs.' "Think about this! We have sightings by legitimate observers with scientific instrumentation, and the people who are doing the observing are voluntarily leaving or compelled to leave, and replaced by people willing to ridicule the concept of UFOs. "Finding number three, what I spoke about earlier: JANAP 146. Up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for discussing sightings outside official channels. And per the regulation's own text, Chapter One, Section 102, it covered not just military personnel, but U.S. and Canadian civilian and commercial pilots. "That's legal force over airline pilots, arguably the most credible witnesses in the sky! What jurisdiction they had over Canadian pilots, I have no idea, but they listed 'em. "Turner documents a meeting between military intelligence and airline pilots at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. At that meeting, pilots were, 'coerced' to keep their sightings out of public view and inside official channels. Am I overstating it to say that there's been a cover-up, that we're being lied to? "Finding number four. But they missed the retirees. JANAP 146 only covered active service. Once you retired, you could talk. And three very senior men did so between 1953 and 1960. Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, Captain Edward Ruppelt, the man the Air Force put in charge of investigating UFOs, Major Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon's project officer on UFOs. Per Turner, all three publicly stated the U.S. government knew UFOs were extraterrestrial and was withholding the fact from the public! So when those three retired, they told the truth! "Finding five. The government then silenced retirees. Per Turner, the revised regulation JANAP 146e made UAP disclosure by retirees an offense under the Espionage Act. Then finding number six. 1969, 17 years, the Air Force ran a public-facing UFO investigation called Project Blue Book. If you wrote your congressman about a sighting, it went into the Blue Book. And in 1969, the Air Force shut down the Blue Book and told the country, 'We looked at more than 12,000 sightings. No problems. No national security threat. No need for the Blue Book.' "But a memo from General Carroll Bolender, the Air Force general, said the reason Blue Book showed no national security threats was because any national security threats were gag ordered under JANAP 146 and were quote, 'not part of the Blue Book system.' The serious reports never stopped; they just moved out of public view. "Now, I know that was a lot of information. You may need to listen back to that, but those are facts. Those are in the government's documents that have now been declassified! "If the government has known for decades that unidentified objects are flying through our skies, and therefore, we may not be alone in the Universe, then the greatest revelation in American history has also been the target of a huge cover-up. "One of the challenges of social media and TV news is taking something this complex and reducing it to sound bites. And you're getting bits and pieces from the media. That's why I invest so much time and energy giving you the real story. I don't want to tell you what you believe or don't believe, but I want to give you the information so you can make up your own mind. "This information is in the files, we just haven't had access to the files. And then when we get the files, we're given the files without any context. You see a radar screen and you see a blip, and then it moves. Well, what do you have to compare it to? Is it moving fast? Too fast? Unexplainably fast? Without any context, how are we supposed to interpret that? "Well, I'm digging in, I'm talking to experts, I'm finding out what the scale is. And what we're learning, is we don't have anything that'll move that fast. We don't have anything that'll turn that sharp. We don't have anything that will withstand those kind of G-forces."](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2077448964731965459/amplify_video_thumb/2077445400177541120/img/vqZyFFYVRdk6G7tt.jpg)
![My fellow Kenyans, Many of you have seen my recent posts about the deadly cancer that is corruption in our country. In my last post, I tried to paint a picture of the disconnect between our potential as a country and the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, and the connection between corruption and the incalculable pain and suffering and cruelty that is meted out every single day to the most vulnerable among us by thieves operating out of public office. And after covering the goings-on in Mandera County, I told you that in my honest opinion, our governments exist to cater for the filthy-rich lifestyles of the vilest and most corrupt among us, at the expense of everyone else. I received tremendous support from all of you, for speaking on behalf of so many struggling Kenyans who don’t have a voice, or the audience necessary to spark the much-needed discussion about where we are heading as a country. But even with all that support, I have received messages asking me to be careful. One compatriot told me: “prepare to be relentlessly pursued, threatened, enticed, guilt-tripped, and gas-lit”. This is from a someone who knows how our government operates, and how it uses violence and its monopoly on power to silence those who question why politicians are stealing so much. I am not naive about the dangers of speaking up and calling out thieves who control state machinery, and who possess the ability to shut me up in a few seconds. But I will tell you why we CAN NOT and MUST NOT keep quiet. In November of 2023, I stumbled upon the story of a young man from Turkana, Calvin Esekon Esewit , who, despite scoring an A-, and getting an acceptance into medical school, spent two years not knowing whether his dreams of becoming a doctor would ever come true. I was moved by that story in a way that I can never adequately explain. I could not understand how it is possible that, in our country, a young man who appears to be every parent’s dream child can spend two years in limbo while we as a country possess the ability to invest in our best and brightest. And so, I spent weeks trying to chase down Calvin to see how I could help him attend college. After a lot of searching, I finally found Calvin, and by this time he had managed to get some help and is now in college. While this story has a great ending, it did not to be this way. And we know that the number of cases that end like this, with some success, are a small fraction of those ones which end tragically, with broken dreams. This is what happens when corruption consumes anything and everything in a country. It destroys lives. See attached video to learn about Calvin's story. I tell you all this story because it provides context to today's topic. For one story like this one that you see on the news, there are millions that never make the news. But they are real situations, nonetheless. There are millions of your compatriots who are devastated by this killer cancer of corruption that is perpetuated by people that you and I have put into public office ostensibly to improve our lives. They go into these offices and abuse the trust you bestowed upon them and deny you and everyone else a decent opportunity in life. You see, Calvin and millions of other victims of this shameless level of corruption and plunder have no voice, and no real ability to look the thieves that are destroying lives and generations of Kenyans in eye and tell them to stop this unbearable pain and the cruelty. This is the reason I embarked on this journey to attempt to expose this shameful situation. Watch the attached video of Calvin’s situation, and I am sure that you will agree that the millions of Calvins in our country need a voice, NO MATTER THE RISK. The thieves that are destroying the futures of millions of children just so they can have beachside homes in Miami, Dubai and other places count on the idea that most people will fear for their lives, and therefore not speak up. They count on the growing apathy in the Kenyan psyche. But we cannot give in to that. We cannot cower to thieves. We must look them straight in the eye and tell them that they MUST STOP. If we don't, our children and their children are guaranteed the same level of cruelty. And so with that, today I want to talk about the utterly insane crime scene that is Turkana County. I don’t know any other way to describe it, other than, it is a “shit-show”. Just follow along, and let me know if you disagree. As I did in my previous commentary, I will ask you to indulge me a little bit, and allow me to use a couple of pictures, because pictures speak louder than a thousand words. The first picture shows the state-of-the art County Government offices, that the County Government of Turkana decided to invest an ungodly amount of money on. Close to a billion shillings. The second picture is a classroom in session. In Turkana County. These two realities are occurring in parallel in the same county, at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just tell you that I do not go out of my way to find bad news. I want stories that would help re-affirm our belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. When I find good news as I review these Counties’ decisions and how they behave with our resources, I will be the first one to report it to you. But I don’t have any good news today. I have bad news. If you read my commentary yesterday and were offended by what you saw, I am afraid you might not make it to the end of this article, because what you will hear will be quite shocking. The cancer of corruption, particularly at the County Government level, is worse than your wildest imagination. And so, as I like to do, I like to start off by putting some numbers on the table for us to use as reference points. Bear in my that all the information I put in this article is publicly available. Nothing came to me through a whistle blower. The first number is KSH 100 Billion. With a B. In the last decade or so, you and I, through the National Government, has sent over KSH 100 billion to Turkana County. To support recurrent expenditure, and development. For example, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, we sent KSH 12.6 billion. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we sent KSH 11.4 billion. And on and on and on. The second number is 1 million. This is the population of Turkana County. The third number is KSH 18.4 billion. This was Turkana County’s budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The fourth number is KSH 190 million. This was the amount of money that Turkana County was able to generate on its own accord within the county, from all its investments and other activities in the period in question. This number is an important proxy, in my view, for the value of the county’s economic prospects for the foreseeable future, and to people that are not driven by greed and corruption, would be an important consideration when they are thinking about how and where to deploy your money as taxpayers. If you are doing the math, Turkana County, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, was only able to raise 1% of the funds needed to keep the lights on. 99% came from you and I, and a tiny amount from grants. The next number is KSH 129, 040. This is the average ANNUAL [emphasis added] income of a resident of Turkana County ( Keep that number in mind when we are discussing the massive theft of public funds by Turkana County leaders. The next number is 80%. 80% of the residents of Turkana County live below the poverty line. They have a really difficult time putting food on the table. ( The next number is KSH 12 Million. This is the basic salary of the Governor of Turkana County before other benefits that, as I explained yesterday, can often double the salary. Remember the “housing allowance”, the “hardship allowance”, the “commuter allowance”, the “risk allowance”, the “extraneous allowance”, etc.? Remember that? I still cannot figure out, for the life of me, what “extraneous” means in the context of County business, but we don’t time to dwell on this. The next number is 93. The Governor of Turkana County makes 93 times the average Turkana County resident’s annual income. 93 times! The next number is 82%. This was the percentage of people that were illiterate in Turkana County in 2013 ( Could not read or write. A point to note about the above literacy figure. Ten years later, and despite over KSH 100 billion is spent in Turkana County, including many billions for education, that literacy rate HAS NOT CHANGED ONE BIT. Only 20% of the population can read or write today. ( KSH 829 million. This is how much it cost to build the County Government offices. Yes, the ones shown in the first picture. KSH 120 million. The County Government decided that it was prudent to pay a contractor KSH 120 million to construct the Governor’s personal residence. Get this, even after this payment, no construction took place. The money was stolen. All of it. KSH 90 Million. This is the amount that the County Government paid to another contractor, to build the Governor a mansion, having previously lost KSH 120 million. So, the tally for the Governor’s residence now stands at KSH 210 million. Never mind that the limit allowed by law is KSH 45 million. KSH 5 billion. In the last days of his term in office, an outgoing Governor of Turkana, Koli Nanok, EGH. , sought to inflate pending bills by adding KSH 5 billion so that it can be paid to his criminal cartel. KSH 5 billion. We have our key numbers, ladies and gentlemen, so let us discuss. So, we have a county that is dead last in literacy, and in the top 2 of the poorest counties in the republic. Only 20% of the population can read. The Governor earns 92 times the average citizen. The Governor lives in a house that cost over KSH 200 million. When he leaves his house in the morning, he goes to his office that cost KSH 829 million. And this is all happening when 80% of the County residents struggle to put food on the table. Those are the facts, and they are not in dispute. During the same time, the County Government geniuses decide to build the Speaker of the County Assembly a house. And a home office, and a garage. The house was initially estimated to cost KSH 75 million. But due to circumstances that not a soul in the government could explain to auditors, the contract expired before the house was completed, and the County Government found a new contractor to complete the job for an additional KSH 29 million. But this palace in the jungle worth apparently worth over KSH 100 million in Turkana County was not enough. The County proceeded to build the Speaker a guest house for another KSH 19 million, and a few other amenities, and so the whole cost went to KSH 276 million! The legal limit for a Speaker’s house is KSH 35 million, and they spent close to KSH 130 million just for one residence. By this time, I am sure you are getting tired of these obscene numbers. You and I work, and pay taxes. Nobody pays you 92 times the income your average neighbor is making. And for sure nobody will drop KSH 100 million to build you a house. These are the perks of working in government in a poor country. Go figure. And so, as a country, we need to answer for ourselves the question I posed yesterday, which is, what is the point of government? What is its role in our lives. If this level of criminality and pillaging can occur in our country in the midst of so much poverty, questioning the need for government is a totally valid question. I said in my last post that, when the average citizen looks at the thug on the street and the government, and is unable to discern any meaningful difference between them, that society from that point on is on its journey to becoming a failed state. A journey to anarchy. Over the last two months or so, Kenyans have been shouting at the top of their lungs, begging for their government to listen. To hear them out. Kenyans have asked that their government stop this unbelievable level of plunder. Dozens of Kenyans have died, thousands injured, and many more are missing today. To this day, the people that govern us continue to use the power of the gun to subdue Kenyans, until they can take everything in their sight. And so, as a society, we all have to ask whether today there is any difference between the thug on the street and our governments. Every Kenyan will have to answer this question for themselves. And before answering this question, everyone needs to remember the many Calvins in our society. Smart, upright children whose only crime is to be born in an unforgiving, lawless, and corrupt purgatory that is Kenya today. For myself, I have concluded that there is no difference between the thug on the street and our governments, county and national alike. If you can see any meaningful difference, let me know. I am willing to listen. So despite over KSH 100 billion in money sent to Turkana County, there is almost no measurable improvement in people’s life today. None. And it makes sense, when you look at how that money is spent. I want you to forget for a second the obscene obsession by the County Government with spending ungodly amounts of money on themselves. The houses, etc. If you step back and look at how the government is actually spending the hard-earned money on other things, you will be depressed. I am telling you that I wept three times in the middle of the night trying to make sense of this crazy situation in Turkana County. Three times. I have never imagined that human beings can be so greedy and cold-blooded. Think about this: In the couple of years I reviewed, the County spent around KSH 400 million annually in “tourism” initiatives, including marketing, and apparently upgrading certain facilities. KSH 400 million for tourism. In Turkana County. In 1 year. KSH 400 million per year in marketing and other money pits. The government’s own website says that the county gets around 3000 visitors per month. Around 36,000 per year. That’s them saying that, on their website. Are you curious to know the return on that KSH 400 million investment? I have an answer for you. Remember that I told you that the County has never raised more than KSH 200 million in a year within the county, despite its KSH 18.4 billion budget? Let me walk you through the breakdown of the absolutely embarrassing shit-show that is the County Government’s “own source revenue” operations. In 2022-2023, the County Government collected KSH 190 million locally against their KSH 18.4 billion budget. 1% of the budget. Remember, there is absolutely no requirement on the County to cut costs, or achieve certain local revenue targets today. So they raised KSH 45 million in single business permits, KSH 72 million in CESS, KSH 8 million in market fee, KSH 9 million in “slaughter fees”. And then finally, there is the return on the tourism investment that you were looking for. A whopping KSH 209, 000 in “park fees”. KSH 209,000 in fees, after investing KSH 400 million. And so, take this as an example and extrapolate it across the entire budget, and you can see how one can spend KSH 100 billion and get NOTHING in return. You don’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of this situation. Let me explain using an example that should illustrate the utter dimwittedness of this situation. Remember the KSH 100 billion sent to Turkana by you and me? Part of this amount is supposed to be for “service delivery”, or “recurrent expenditure”. Usually about 70% of the budget. The balance, 30%, is designed to go to development projects. With that in mind, from KSH 100 billion, the County apparently has made KSH 30 billion worth of investments, right? 30% of the KSH 100 billion. Now, if you employed someone to run a business for you, and they asked you to invest KSH 30 billion, which is no small fortune, at some point you would have to start seeing returns, right? That’s common sense, isn’t it? So, when we look at the revenues streams that make up this paltry sum of KSH 190 million, and see things like “slaughter fees’ and “market fees”, what does it tell you? It tells me there is no real “development” happening in that county. Trust me, if you had real development totaling KSH 30 billion, you would have corporate taxes in the hundreds of millions or billions, a booming real estate market, rising wages and standards of living, etc., low unemployment, etc. You would not have 80% of the people living hand-to mouth, and a County Government that can not afford to support itself for 5 days out of the year that has 365 days! We do not have enough time, trust me, to deal with the shit-show that is Turkana County. Dealing with that mess would require a forensic team. I will just highlight a few of other “in your-face” type of theft of public funds, and then conclude my submission. A government that has a budget of KSH 18.4 billion annually, and which has never raised more than 1% of its budget had the wisdom to do the following with your money: · Spend KSH 222 million on a project building something that NOBODY uses. You got that right. They spent KSH 222 million on a facility that NOBODY uses. KSH 222 million gone to waste, in a county that is dead last in pretty much all measures of human progress. · Remember the County Government offices that cost KSH 829 million? The County spent KSH 82 million on “air-conditioning” for that building. · Despite the County Spending hundreds of millions for the top three officers of the County, the Governor and his Deputy, in the 2022-2023 year, illegally charged the county (you and I) KSH 2.2 million in housing allowance! · Built two facilities for KSH 16 million, that were completed, but NOBODY uses them. · Entered into a contract for the construction of a plastic use facility for KSH 13 million in 2021. The contractor gets paid KSH 4.9 million, and has never been seen since. · Paid out KSH 62 million in salaries that were not supportable in just one year. They could not point to anybody and say, that is who we paid. · Paid out KSH 27 million in legal fees that nobody could say what they related to. And the County’s Legal Advisor, who, in 2022-2023, had a budget of KSH 123 million, apparently did not know anything about it! · Had an outstanding bill at Kenya Revenue Authority in the amount of KSH 486 million, that did not show up on the County Government’s financial statements. Think about that. KSH 486 million owned to the Kenya Revenue Authority, and that liability is not on the financial statements! This only means that someone took those funds for themselves, which is why the liability would be missing from the county’s books. · Could not account for KSH 367 million in expenditures for 2022-2023. KSH 367 million, in unexplained expenses. · Awarded a contract worth over KSH 200 million to a bidder with no bank statement, against the law. This contract was entered into and approved before the statutory time after the bidding process lapsed. Someone was in a hurry to get paid. KSH 200 million, illegally awarded to a bidder who did not have a 6-month bank statement. · Apparently purchased KSH 1.5 billion in assets in 2022-2023, but kept no records of the said assets. For this reason, NOBODY can verify where these assets are located. KSH 1.5 billion. Let me just say this. In my last article, the most common critique was that it was too long. Too many words. I did not intend to make another long article. Trust me when I tell you this, we do not have the time to detail half of the problems in Turkana County. For just 1 year! We do not. Now, you recall my point about how societies descend to madness and anarchy. In our country today, our leaders are accusing those of us who are agitating for honest and transparent governance of being traitors to the country. They call us anarchists, criminals, and merchants of chaos. They are questioning our patriotism. You have all seen the government and its horde of propagandists threatening the Ford Foundation and others because they may have helped civil society keep the lights on, and investigative journalists to have the capacity to continue to do the Lord’s work of investigating criminality in government. As though citizens are so dumb and ignorant, that they cannot see what is going on. The reason why millions of Calvins in this country will never graduate from college and earn a decent living is not because of the Ford Foundation. No. It is because of the thieves we have in office today, like the ones in Turkana County. In this post, I copy our leaders, the President and his deputy. I copy them because I want them to help Kenyans understand the following conundrum, about crime and criminals. There is nothing so special or peculiar about criminals or where they pop up. There are criminals in the US, Canada, France, and other places. Just like we have criminals in Kenya. The difference between banana republics and failed states, and civilized societies, is WHAT we do to and about criminals. In civilized societies, criminals are prosecuted and punished heavily. They are shunned. In some places, those charged with serious crimes such as corruption are executed. These are societies that are committed to sending the message that corruption, which robs citizens of their rights, is not acceptable. And they demonstrate this commitment by heavily punishing those who steal from the most vulnerable in society. In Kenya, we see the opposite. Criminals are exalted. They are promoted and embraced in government. It was just last week that the president unveiled his nominees for his Cabinet. Among them, are the likes of Hassan Ali Joho, EGH. , @GovWOparanya , and Davis Chirchir, ALL people who have been accused or charged with massive corruption against Kenyans. And am sure you remember that I mentioned Koli Nanok, EGH. , the man who tried to steal KSH 5 billion in his last days in office. Would you believe it if I told you that he works in government, at State House? He plunded billions of your money, got no measurable improvement in the lives of his subjects, and now has a government job in State House. Let that sink in. And so, the question is, how is it that in a country of 55 million people, with thousands of highly qualified people who have never ever stolen from Kenyans, he ends up with the criminals and thieves in the government, despite the fact that their crimes are in the public domain? How is this possible? Is it possible that these thieves possess a certain unique ability to run government, save Kenyans billions, and solve problems in a way that the president performs a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefits outweigh the costs of their theft? If not, what message does it send to Kenyans, when their own president puts into office known thieves? I think that is a fair question, don’t you? Dr. Ekuru Aukot Rigathi Gachagua William Samoei Ruto, PhD Okiya Omtatah Okoiti Citizen TV Kenya Nation Breaking News TI-Kenya CNN County Government of Turkana](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1818840969066037558/ext_tw_video_thumb/1818834432502951936/pu/img/ab9du2ECDO-A_5N7.jpg)
