Books on the American intervention in Iraq


Anderson, Jon Lee. The fall of Baghdad New York (State): Penguin Press, c2004.

Bremer, L. Paul and Malcolm McConnell. My year in Iraq : New York (State): Simon & Schuster, c2006.

Etherington, Mark. Revolt on the Tigris : New York (State): Cornell University Press, c2005.

Packer, George. The assassins' gate : England: Faber and Faber, c2006.

Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco : New York (State): Penguin Press, c2006.

Riverbend. Baghdad burning II : New York (State): Feminist Press, 2006.

Riverbend. Baghdad burning : New York (State): Feminist Press at the City University of New York, c2005.

Rosen, Nir. In the belly of the green bird : New York (State): Free Press, c2006.

Wright, Lawrence. The looming tower : New York (State): Knopf, 2005, c2006.

For Dog Lovers, a Bigger Kennel

As Contrarians Have Lost Big,
Some Investors Learn New Tricks
In Harnessing Distressed Stocks

By E.S. BROWNING
December 26, 2006; Page C1

In this joyous holiday season, with so many stocks looking like winners, we examine this year's rarity: the lumps of coal.

By almost any measure, true losers have been hard to find. Just four of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are down this year, compared to 16 last year.

As for the broader market, of 10 big industry groups tracked by Dow Jones Indexes, all 10 are comfortably up. Last year, three were down. The weakest industry groups this year are health care, up 5.4%, and technology, up 8.6%.

For one group of investors, this good cheer is unwelcome. Contrarian investors buy beaten-down stocks in hopes of a rebound. They use a host of systems and theories, some with folkloric names such as the Dogs of the Dow. With stocks so robust, what's a contrarian to do?

Some favor buying each year's weakest stocks, but that simple method has been disappointing -- especially if you are choosing from Dow stocks that are hardly down at all.

Even the 50 weakest stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index perform inconsistently. The 50 weakest from 2002, a year when stocks were hammered, rebounded 81% in 2003, according to research and money-management firm Birinyi Associates in Westport, Conn. But the 2003 losers trailed the index the next year, and the 2004 losers fell in 2005. The 2005 bunch are more or less matching the index.

What contrarians seek is a truly abandoned stock, one that is poised for a real rebound.

For that, they need one that investors have been fleeing for several years, in which the selling has run its course, says finance professor Werner De Bondt at Chicago's DePaul University, who has studied the phenomenon for the past 20 years. He recommends the 50 stocks that have fallen the hardest over the previous three to five years, and suggests using a broader universe than the S&P 500 in order to find real losers.

"But very few people have the emotional capability to implement such a strategy," Prof. De Bondt adds.

One reason: Some of the truly beaten-down companies will go bankrupt. And many investors have trouble holding on to their portfolios for the three to five years that Prof. De Bondt's studies call for. Some hedge funds -- sophisticated, loosely regulated investment pools -- do use a variation on his strategy, he says.

One way to avoid stocks that are headed for bankruptcy, Prof. De Bondt suggests, is to buy only after a stock shows signs of rebounding. You lose some of the initial pop, but you are less likely to buy a stock that is headed for the graveyard.

A similar approach is to buy stocks that have been removed from the S&P 500. Those that suffered that indignity this year are up 27% on average since removal, while those that were added to the index are up only 1% since joining, notes Paul Hickey of Birinyi Associates. (Of course, there is the risk that a stock removed from the S&P 500 will fall into bankruptcy, although that hasn't happened to this year's crop, Mr. Hickey says.)

Similar trends can be seen among stocks that are added to and removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The idea is that, by the time a stock is removed, it probably has been heavily sold, while those that are added generally are at the peak of popularity and overdue for a pullback. (In the short run, those that are removed normally fall farther as index funds sell them, while those that are added do the opposite. But that process ends after a few days.)

An even simpler system is to look among stocks that have fallen to very low dollar prices, says Richard Evans, of Richard L. Evans Investments in Flossmoor, Ill. He believes the system works especially well in December, because of tax-loss selling. Investors often sell losers at year's end in order to generate capital losses, to balance capital gains for tax purposes. That selling can depress prices artificially.

"These are valid turnaround opportunities," Mr. Evans says. He looks for such stocks that have been down for a while, and for which he can find a logical reason to expect a turnaround. At the moment, he likes some down-and-out computer-chip stocks and makers of optical fiber.

One of the oldest year-end techniques involves buying small stocks in December in hopes of a January rebound. Despite widespread publicity, this "January effect" still occurs, probably due to tax-loss selling, says business professor Mark Hirschey of the University of Kansas.

His research shows that, even though small stocks' January effect gained notice in 1976, it has continued to occur. His research shows that small stocks still rise 6% on average in that one month, compared with a 1% large-stock gain.

Prof. Hirschey worries that small stocks in general might not benefit as much this January, because they have risen heavily in 2006. The small stocks that benefit most from the January effect are those that were sold in December, which is a relatively limited group this year, and which is the group he suspects will do best next month.

Prof. Hirschey has examined another once-popular system, called the Dogs of the Dow, and found it no better than buying the overall average.

The system calls for buying the five or 10 highest-yielding Dow stocks each year. The idea is that the high yield (dividend divided by price) often indicates a low price. Even if the doghouse stocks don't soar, the thinking goes, they at least pay good dividends.

The problem, Prof. Hirschey says, is that Dow stocks rarely fall deeply into disfavor, leaving them less room to rebound. Investment firms including Payden & Rygel, which once used versions of the Dogs of the Dow strategy, have stopped. And the system has proved inconsistent.

After a disappointing performance over the previous five years, the Dogs this year have risen more than 20%, well ahead of the overall average, which is up less than 16%. But Dow Dog General Motors, up 50% this year, still yields enough that it will be a Dog again next year. Some investors wonder whether it can deliver such brilliant gains for a second year in a row.

Neil Hennessy, whose Hennessy Funds in Novato, Calif., offers two funds based on the Dogs of the Dow, says fading interest in the system may mean that it won't be overused and might work better in the future. Anyhow, he says, buying high-yielding Dow stocks helps investors limit risk.

"Our philosophy is that it isn't what you make on the upside, it is what you don't lose on the downside," he says.

Write to E.S. Browning at jim.browning@wsj.com¹

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Kenya: No end to the corruption

Kenya No end to the problem
Nov 16th 2006 NAIROBI From The Economist print edition
Ever more reasons to worry about endemic corruption
THERE are few people left, even in Kenya, who dispute the fact that the country is one of the most corrupt in the world. Guesses about how much senior officials pinch from the public coffers range from $1 billion a year and up. But if that aspect of the country's corruption problem is well known, it is now doing other kinds of damage. For a rotten Kenya has also become an international security concern.
That was the message of Kim Howells, a Foreign Office minister from Britain, the former colonial master, on a visit to the country last week. In unusually frank terms, Mr Howells argued that because everyone, from Mombasa dockers to senior government officials, can be bought off, Kenya is “wide open” for drug cartels and terrorists. The cartels move large quantities of cocaine and heroin through Kenya and the drug money washing through Kenya's political bloodstream is making it even harder for honest ministers and civil servants to do their job.
Terrorism is another concern. Intelligence sources suggest that a few jihadists among the Somali Islamists in Mogadishu may be readying suicide attacks against targets in Kenya. Corruption certainly makes it easier for them to move between the two countries. Small bribes at remote border posts and larger bribes at Kenya's domestic airports are enough to make Somalis invisible to Kenya's security services. Corruption at the highest levels provides cover for stealing down the line. Some of the proceeds go on country club memberships and luxury cars. But far more is spent on political campaigns: rallies, paying off tribal elders, gangs to intimidate opposition supporters, and sometimes the voters themselves.
The present government was elected on an anti-corruption platform, but has done little to fulfil its promises. From the start, it borrowed money from many of the same individuals as the previous regime, and set about paying off debts with similar dodgy schemes. A few of these were laid bare by John Githongo, a government-appointed investigator who had to flee the country when his findings got too close to the top. His revelations did prompt two ministers to resign, but this week they were both reinstated. Some of the $300m or so involved in the scams has been returned to the treasury.
Donor countries are confining their aid to ever more strictly audited projects. Sir Edward Clay, an outspoken former British high commissioner to Kenya, says donors should be using their own laws more effectively against corrupt African officials. “Corruption is too far down the development agenda,” says Sir Edward. Kenya has made some progress. Mr Githongo and other brave whistle-blowers, after all, are Kenyans speaking for Kenya. But too many of them have had to flee abroad. Nor is there a single conviction in sight.

Mearsheimer and Walt on the Israel lobby

There is some debate in academic circles of American support for Israel.
This is in contrast to the US political scene where support of Israel is sacrosanct and Hamas and Hezbollah are invariably labeled as terrorist without any acknowledgement of the fact that both organizations are democratically elected and have been the targets of massive Israeli terror.
This is an excerpt from a front page story that ran in the New York Time on November 13 about Israel and America.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/world/middleeast/13israel.html
But Mr. Zelikow's close ties to Ms. Rice are well known, and the furor over his comments was amplified because they appeared to some to echo criticisms published in March in The London Review of Books by two American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_chicago/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
They suggested that from the White House to Capitol Hill, Israel's interests have been confused with America's, that Israel is more of a security burden than an asset and that the "Israel lobby" in America, including Jewish policy makers, have an undue influence over American foreign policy. In late August, appearing in front of an Islamic group in Washington, Mr.
Mearsheimer extended the argument to say that American support of the war in Lebanon had been another example of Israeli interests trumping American ones.
The essay argued that without the Israel lobby the United States would not have gone to war in Iraq and implied that the same forces could drag the United States into another military confrontation on Israel's behalf, with Iran. It urged more American pressure to solve the Palestinian question as the best cure for regional instability.
Some Israelis worried that the implicit charge of dual loyalty would be underlined by the trial of two former officials of the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on charges of receiving classified information about Iran and other issues from a Defense Department official and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. The trial is scheduled to begin early next year.
Mr. Walt, in an interview, argued that the first President Bush had worked to restrain Israel, and that Mr. Clinton worked to attain diplomatic concessions to achieve a peace. But when this Bush administration took office, "they first had no use for the Mideast, then took a more balanced position, calling for a two-state solution, and then were completely won over by Israel's argument that it is simply fighting terrorism."

Chased by Gang Violence, Residents flee Mathare

Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum

November 10, 2006
Nairobi Journal
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 9 — In the past five days, more than 10 people have been killed and 600 homes burned to the ground in an unusual burst of violence between Nairobi gangs.
The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.
The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live. Mathare is a landscape of rust — thousands of shacks squeezed together with rusted metal roofs and rusted metal sides, and the occasional rusted metal bridge between. Even the mud here, where not a blade of grass grows, is rust red.
The area is notorious as a pocket of anarchy in a relatively orderly city, a place where street gangs levy taxes and teenage boys with machetes and dreadlocks shake down people at checkpoints. Most days, the police are nowhere to be found. Residents say it has been like this for years.
“You pay security, you pay electricity, you pay for toilets and what do you get?” said Morris Odek, a father of three. “Nothing.”
On Sunday, violence erupted between the gangs fighting for control of this impoverished turf. One gang is the Mungiki, a secretive, quasi-religious sect whose members cut out their enemies’ navels and worship a leader who says he came from a ball of shining stars. The other is a band of vigilantes who call themselves the Taliban, even though they are Christian and have nothing to do with the original Taliban group that imposed a harsh brand of Islam in Afghanistan.
“They just wanted a name that sounded tough,” said George Wambugu, a youth counselor for a soccer league in Mathare. The Mungiki and the Taliban have clashed before, but not like this. According to residents, the Mungiki tried to impose a higher tax on brewers of chang’aa, an outlawed homemade liquor with a kick stronger than that of vodka.
The brewers resisted and enlisted the help of the Taliban to fight back. That led to a cycle of street rumbles, shanty burnings and reprisal killings. Most victims were hacked to death with machetes, though some apparently were shot.
Like so many of Africa’s conflicts, this one has an ethnic dimension, with most Mungiki from the Kikuyu tribe, one of Kenya’s biggest, while the Taliban are primarily Luo, another prominent tribe.
“That’s why this won’t end,” said Daniel Opiyo, a shoe seller whose home was burned down. “It’s tribal, and it will go on and on.”
The police flooded into Mathare on Tuesday, but the killing continued. On Wednesday, the Kenyan government sent in soldiers with machine guns and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
On Thursday, the soldiers prowled the muddy streets, seemingly grabbing at random the few young men left.
“See this guy,” one soldier said, laying a thick hand on a boy with a string of beads around his neck. “Mungiki.”
After the boy explained that he was Borana, a tribe from northern Kenya, he was let go. Other boys, though, were marched through the streets with their hands tied behind their backs and tears in their eyes.
Thousands of people have been streaming out of Mathare, creating a refugeelike crisis in the middle of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
On Thursday, as shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove by, along with packed minibuses heading downtown, a crowd of Mathare residents huddled outside a nearby air force base. Beds, tables and rolls of soggy clothing were piled around them. Because it is the rainy season, many people have been sleeping on wet ground. Residents said several babies had died of exposure.
“But nobody really cares,” said Angelina Okumba, a 52-year-old mother of 11 children.
Kenyan officials have tried to reassure residents that the fighting is finished.
“It’s time to go home,” said J. K. Ndegwa, a police commander. “There’s no problem here.”
On a smoldering hillside, children played among shattered teacups while their parents packed the last of their things. The smell of char stung the nose, and though it had been pouring all week, the fires still burned.

Books about the American invasion of Iraq

Books about this subject were few and far between a couple of years ago, but with the three and a half year anniversary of the invasion, there are some notably good books:

The Assassins Gate, George Packer
Cobra II
Fiasco
Imperial Rule in the Emerald City

Fw: Low interest rates to drive strong growth in Kenya

 

Despite a budget deficit, a marked increase in domestic debt, the Central Bank of Kenya is predicting a rosy future, based on a projected growth rate of 5.5 per cent this year and low interest rates.  However, overall inflation dropped to 14.9 per cent in April compared with 19.1 per cent in March. In its monthly economic review for April released on Tuesday, Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) says the onset of the long rains should see inflation begin to level off and drop, after a prolonged drought pushed up food prices, and created a budget deficit of Sh30.9 billion. Domestic debt increased from Sh315.6 billion at end of June 2005 to Sh338.6 billion in February this year, as the Government borrowed heavily through the bond market to finance drought relief activities. External debt declined from Sh434 billion to Sh407.1 billion during the same period. The deficit was 2.2 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) – a measurement of locally-based economic activity – in the first eight months of the Government's current financial year, which ends on June 30. Notable among the events in the period under review was the improved performance of the Nairobi Stock Exchange equity market in March this year, largely due to the KenGen share offer of 659 million shares that was oversubscribed to the tune of Sh26 billion.  The NSE 20 Share Index increased to 4,101.64 points from 4,056.6 in February, while turnover grew by 8.8 per cent to Sh3.69 billion from Sh3.4 billion in the same period. The number of shares traded rose 12 per cent to 69.2 million from 62 million shares, while market capitalisation increased by Sh14.5 billion to Sh484.2 billion from Sh469.7 billion in February 2006.  TPS East Africa also listed 89 million shares during the month, following the integration of the Tanzanian hotels with the existing operations of the TPS Ltd Kenya. The Bond market turnover took a battering in March from falling interest rates, dropping to Sh2.8 billion from Sh4.7 billion in February.  The most traded bond was the eight-year Treasury Bond with a coupon rate of 13.25 per cent per annum. From March to May 2006, Treasury bonds totalling Sh19.2 billion, and Treasury bills worth Sh58.6 billion will mature.  At the end of February the Government owed non-bank investors 61.3 per cent of total domestic debt, with National Social Security Fund (NSSF) held the remaining 38.7 per cent. CBK says the economic outlook for its next financial year which begins on July 1, remains good, thanks largely to the onset of the long rains and stable domestic interest rates which have remained that way for over two years. Short-term interest rates declined in March, with the 91-day Treasury bill rate falling to 7.60 per cent, from 8.02 per cent in February, reflecting increased liquidity in the market. Another factor that serve to boost the current stability in domestic interest rates is the low expectations for inflation following the onset of March/April rains and due to consistently low underlying inflation.

Rasul Shariff

Rasul Shariff

Market DeclineHow a Glitzy Mall Developer Built Its Way Into Big Trouble
Mills Corp. Courted ShoppersWith Mini Golf, Massages;Now Banks Crack Down
'Larry, He Is a Salesman'
By RYAN CHITTUM and JENNIFER S. FORSYTHApril 14, 2006; Page A1
As recently as last summer, Mills Corp. was soaring.
Its giant retail and entertainment complex near Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., drew more visitors than Disney World, the mall company told analysts. Its development pipeline popped out a blockbuster project nearly every year. Its stock performance was the envy of the industry.
Larry Siegel, its 52-year-old chief executive, was credited with injecting new life into the nation's tired mall industry. His "shoppertainment" retailing formula offered customers more than just stores. There was glow-in-the-dark miniature golf, simulated Nascar driving and dining in faux rain forests. His staid competitors took notice.
But now Mills, a real-estate investment trust based in Arlington, Va., is drawing attention for different reasons. Its recent developments have largely been flops. One in five employees has left or been laid off, including its development director, raising doubts about whether it can finish the projects it hasn't already abandoned. Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into its accounting practices. Its stock has plummeted 55% over the past eight months. On Wednesday, its lenders forced it to slash dividend payouts and to submit biweekly financial reports while it readies itself for a likely sale.
Mr. Siegel stumbled during one of the hottest real-estate markets in years by pushing into markets that were either too small or too competitive to support the company's mammoth malls. Mills compounded its problems, say investors and analysts, by focusing more on development than on managing its existing properties. Its current struggles raise questions about whether its unique and expensive approach to retailing can survive.
"I think their projects are the most creative of any developer out there," says Warren Weiner, executive vice president of Philadelphia-based Deb Shops Inc., which has 340 teen fashion stores nationwide and six in Mills properties. "The question is: Is it possible to be that creative and be financially successful?"
Mills, which has 42 malls in the U.S. and abroad, has said it is exploring "strategic alternatives," but declines to elaborate on disclosures it has already made about its current financial troubles. Mr. Siegel declined to be interviewed for this article.
In recent years, mall companies have performed well as consumers continued to spend despite recession, terrorism and the war in Iraq. The nation's major mall developers -- now big public companies mostly run by the scions of the original mall magnates -- expanded primarily by buying other mall companies.
Mr. Siegel decided to expand by building new properties. A balding, gregarious Philadelphia native, he got his start in retailing as a leasing agent for a predecessor company of Mills, and ascended to the chief executive position shortly after Mills went public in 1994.
Mr. Siegel saw most malls as ho-hum rectangles with four large anchor stores. The outlet malls that came in the 1980s and '90s, which carried name brands at discount prices, often offered no place to eat or sit down. Mr. Siegel decided to marry two concepts: to build full-service malls with food courts and even massage zones and skateboard parks, then fill them with outlet retailers.
He wasn't the only mall developer to explore ways to combine retailing and entertainment. The Simon family of Indianapolis and Sheldon Gordon of Greenwich, Conn., were also moving in that direction. But Mr. Siegel became one of its most enthusiastic proponents.
He pursued retailers not typically found in malls, such as Bass Pro Shops, which offers a 60,000-gallon aquarium and an archery range along with its outdoor supplies. Mills was one of the first mall companies to offer prominent space to IMAX theaters instead of sticking movie theatres in an unused corner of the parking lot, says Paco Underhill, who runs a New York-based retail consulting firm, Envirosell Inc., and has written about the mall industry.
Shoppers flocked to Mills's early projects, such as Potomac Mills near Washington, D.C., and Sawgrass Mills outside Fort Lauderdale. So Mr. Siegel picked up the development pace. After building just four large malls between 1985 and 1995, over the next decade Mills built 13 malls and converted two more to its shoppertainment formula.
Mr. Siegel planned on an especially large scale. Mills's properties typically sprawl over about 1.5 million square feet, compared with about 1 million square feet for other major regional malls. At its enormous Xanadu project now under construction in the New Jersey Meadowlands, the company spent some $120 million or more before it even won the right to develop the site, analysts estimate. Mills promised an indoor ski slope, a roller coaster and a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel.
More Vulnerable
While a typical large mall draws customers from a 10- to 20-mile radius, many Mills malls are so big they need to draw from a larger area to attract enough customers. As a result, Mills became more vulnerable to new competitors, including outlet centers, discount stores and the hot new model -- open-air "lifestyle centers," which adhere to a "Main Street" approach, with stores opening onto a street, says Steven H. Gartner, president of Metro Commercial Real Estate Inc., a Conshohocken, Penn., retail consultant. And high gas prices made shoppers less willing to drive long distances for a deal on a pair of blue jeans.
To stand out from the crowd and draw traffic, Mills began adding more entertainment components. But the entertainment offerings took away valuable retail space, pushing down average sales per square foot at the properties.
All along, Mills had been attempting to lure more shoppers by allotting more space than a typical mall does to anchor tenants, which usually pay lower rent than smaller specialty stores and post lower sales per square foot. As a result, Mills's properties brought in an average of about $370 of annual sales per square foot in 2004, below the average for regional mall REITs.
Its aggressive development mentality rendered the management of its existing properties a second priority, analysts say. "They focused more on the next great development and less on continuing to run the properties they had and [getting] the full values out of those properties," says Rich Moore, an analyst with New York-based RBC Capital Markets.
Mills took on projects in Singapore, Madrid and Scotland in an effort to become a global REIT. In the U.S., it was becoming difficult to find large new markets where the Mills concept would still be novel. Mills pushed into the outskirts of the Pittsburgh and St. Louis markets, which already had quality malls and didn't have enough demand to support newcomers. Last year, in Pittsburgh, Mills resorted to its first-ever "soft opening," starting operations without a big marketing campaign due to a low number of retail tenants.
Mills's growth plans began to outpace its ability to finance new projects, forcing the company to borrow more and enter into joint ventures that gave its partners preferred returns. Mills had little margin for error in its developments. The company's ratio of debt to market capitalization reached 72%, compared with 53% for the average regional mall REIT, according to Harris Nesbitt, the U.S. research and investment-banking subsidiary of Toronto-based BMO Financial Group.
Newer projects struggled. In Lakewood, Colo., Mills had projected Colorado Mills to have annual sales of about $300 million. The mall, which opened in late 2002, so far has generated average annual sales of $215 million, says city spokeswoman Stacie Oulton. The expected $4.5 million in annual sales taxes from the mall has averaged only $3.2 million, she says. Malls in St. Louis and Cincinnati also fell short of company projections.
Over the past decade or so, malls built by Mills have earned the company about 20% less than it projected, estimates Greg Andrews of Green Street Advisors, a Newport Beach, Calif., real-estate research firm.
Some investors and analysts became skeptical of Mr. Siegel's promises. "Larry, he is a salesman," says Dionisio Meneses, an investment manager with Global Real Analytics LLC in San Francisco, which holds an undisclosed number of Mills shares. "You have to discount some percentage of what he says."
The SEC investigation begun in March has added to the uneasiness of investors. Company filings indicate about a dozen areas of accounting are under review, including revenue recognition, lease accounting and cost capitalization. Mills capitalized its pre-development costs to spread them over several years, for instance, rather than expensing them all at once like most real estate companies do. Mills says it may have to restate six years of financial results.
Investors and analysts have also expressed frustration over company disclosure about joint-venture deals with partners, saying a lack of details makes it difficult to accurately value the company's assets.
As its problems mounted, Mills faced increasing competition from other companies pursuing similar strategies for merging retail and entertainment. Rajendra Sisodia, a professor of marketing at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., notes that there are now IMAX theaters in a chain of furniture stores in the Boston area.
New Formulas
Moreover, new retail formulas are gaining popularity. Mr. Gartner, president of Metro Commercial, a Philadelphia-based retail consultant, contends that "the behemoth mall is clearly giving way to more manageable, accessible and open-air centers."
"It isn't that the huge center doesn't have a future. It's just that it's no longer a slam-dunk proposition that it used to be," says Mr. Underhill, the retail consultant. "The shopping malls that are being built in the U.S. now are being built basically to steal other people's markets."
The pact Mills struck with its lenders earlier this week makes it likely that the company will be sold, analysts and investors say. Some assets are expected to be coveted by competitors. The bank deal included a refinancing of Sawgrass Mills that valued that property alone at $780 million. "Sawgrass is 10% of the value of this company," says David Fick, an analyst with St. Louis-based Stifel Nicolaus who was once Mills's chief financial officer. "It's worth more than all their bad stuff combined, times three."
Many of its competitors, including Simon Property Group Inc. of Indianapolis and Vornado Realty Trust of New York, are taking a look at the company, which owns 51 million square feet of property in the U.S. and abroad.
"The issue that somebody's going to have to decide is: Does the model work or not?" says David Lichtenstein, owner of Lightstone Group, Lakewood, N.J., one of the largest private owners of real estate in the U.S., who says he intends to bid. "I think the buyer is going to have to be convinced that Larry Siegel's dream can become reality and not a nightmare. He's an absolute visionary. But very often the first visionary isn't successful."
Write to Ryan Chittum at ryan.chittum@wsj.com1

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Rasul Shariff

Rasul Shariff

Waiting for the results of the KenGen IPO.
In the meantime, Ugandan equities look cheap.

The 'war on terror' is out of control

 

Clumsy Leadership
The furor over Dubai's planned takeover of some U.S. ports is a sign of how out of control the ‘war on terror’ has become.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

Updated: 12:53 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2006

Feb. 22, 2006 - Revolutionaries need several ingredients to succeed: charisma, for one; organization, for another. But what they need most of all is an incompetent regime, one that makes their ideas look good by comparison. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," William Wordsworth famously wrote after the French Revolution, romanticizing the "enfants de la patrie" who marched on the Bastille. But no one ever quotes the next line in his poem about the "meager, stale, forbidding " old regime that collapsed so easily there.  The early Bolsheviks were nobodies in Russia before the 1917 Revolution, but thanks to the combined ineptitude of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexander Kerensky—the first one representing bumbling monarchy, the latter the most indecisive sort of democracy—Lenin and Co. established their "dictatorship of the proletariat" with a swiftness that surprised even them.

Listening this week to the latest excerpts from Osama bin Laden's and Ayman al Zawahiri's taped messages, it is hard not to marvel at how lucky these would-be revolutionaries have been in their enemy. Who would have thought that, four and a half years on, facing down the mightiest power in history, this sociopathic pair would still be out there talking trash, their continued existence a daily desecration of the memory of the 9/11 dead? Or that bin Laden and Zawahiri would have been able to whip what had been a bare ember of “global jihad”—one barely smoldering on 9/10/01—into a global conflagration? Was that a smirk I detected on Zawahiri's face as he advised George W. Bush that it was not too late for him to convert to Islam? You could not miss the contempt in bin Laden’s voice when, in a tape said to be several months old, he mocked Bush's aircraft carrier-staged declaration in April 2003 that major conflict in Iraq had ended.

What a contrast to four years ago, when the rapid collapse of the Taliban caught bin Laden by surprise as he sought to escape the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora. It was probably the last time, we must now conclude, that the terror impresario was surprised at all. As Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the operation, records in his new book "Jawbreaker," (Crown, 2005) bin Laden told his followers, "Forgive me," and apologized for getting them pinned down by the Americans (Berntsen's men were listening on radio). Bin Laden then asked them to pray. And, lo, a miracle occurred. As Berntsen stewed in frustration over the Pentagon’s refusal to rush in more troops to encircle the trapped “sheikh,’ bin Laden was allowed to flee. And not only did Bush stop talking about the man he wanted “dead or alive,” the president began to shift U.S. Special Forces (in particular the Arabic-speaking 5th Group, which had built close relations with its Afghan allies) and Predator drones to the Iraq theater. 

It is time to have an accounting of just how badly run, and conceived, this "war on terror" has been. You won't hear it from the Democrats, who have been running a severe testosterone shortage since Vietnam. And there's certainly no need to take my word for it.

Instead, just listen to what the president's own party is saying. Let's start with Donald Rumsfeld, the man we thought was in charge of the GWOT, the global war on terror. Speaking last week at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld lamented how much better bin Laden and Zawahiri were at understanding the nature of the war. He quoted Zawahiri as saying (way back in July 2005), "We are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of Muslims," and then proceeded to complain that "the U.S. government”—some entity the Defense Secretary is not on familiar terms with, presumably—“still functions as a five and dime store in an eBay world." Al Qaeda, Rumsfeld said, as if he were still head of some blue-ribbon commission questioning the competence of the Clinton administration, has made better use of the technologies we invented than we have. "Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government has not adapted," he said.

Uhhh, that failure to adapt, wouldn’t that be your failure, Mr. Rumsfeld? Or the president's? But Rummy was his usual unflappable self, just as full of brio and self-confidence as he appears in Eugene Jarecki's new movie, "Why We Fight," when he raps the podium in prewar 2003 and says, "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.”

Again, lest I'm accused of being partisan (I'm really just a reporter, and a very disappointed hawk), I would just refer you to the rebellion within Bush's own party. The way the war was supposed to have been fought—a way that would really have distressed bin Laden and Zawahiri—was that Al Qaeda was supposed to be so isolated by now that we had most of the Arab world on our side. Deals like Dubai Ports World 's takeover of the London company that administers some U.S. ports were supposed to be pretty much routine. After all, as one commentator said to me during an appearance on al Jazeera the other day, isn't this the way globalization is intended to work: you co-opt everyone, even your rivals, into the international system?  Instead, so mistrusted is the Bush administration—and so out of control has the war on terror become—that even leading Republican politicians this week sought to cancel the Dubai contract (Bush, to his credit, did manage a presidential response, vowing to veto).

We did not have a clash of civilizations four years ago, but we're getting closer to one now. As violent anti-Western protests sweep the Islamic world, and what remains of the moderate Muslim community is cowed into silence, how unbearably sad it is to cast one 's mind back to the eve of 9/11. As Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison wrote in a too-little-noted article in The Atlantic in September 2004, Al Qaeda was then a small fractious group that could not even agree among itself about what its goal was. Members had been hounded from the Arab world, from Sudan, into the hands of a lunatic fringe regime in Afghanistan. Qaeda had one A-team, and one big roll of the dice to make, with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his ace psychopath, Mohammed Atta. Cullison, quoting a remarkable series of letters he found on Zawahiri’s old computer in Afghanistan, wrote that jihadis who were members of Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad—the biggest component of Al Qaeda—still wanted to make Egypt the main enemy. One of them even compared the grandiose war against America to tilting at "windmills." Cullison is worth quoting at length on this:

"Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from Al Qaeda’s strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group's penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad. Al-Qaeda’s leaders worried about a military response from the United States, but in such a response they spied opportunity: they had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and they fondly remembered that war as a galvanizing experience, an event that roused the indifferent of the Arab world to fight and win against a technologically superior Western infidel. The jihadis expected the United States, like the Soviet Union, to be a clumsy opponent."

Not in their fondest dreams did they realize how clumsy.

It is just as sad to remember the support that once existed for the United States, then at the pinnacle of its power and prestige. On 9/10/01 America had adversaries, but mainly on the fringes. The invasion of Afghanistan brought barely a peep from the Arab street. No one had much use for Al Qaeda, even in the Islamic world. Global polls like those taken by Pew and the German Marshall Fund showed a remarkable degree of global consensus in favor of a one-superpower (in other words, American-dominated) world. The silver lining of 9/11 was a chance to reaffirm the legitimacy of America's role as trusted overseer of the international system. That is why Bush had so much support when he ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan, who were clearly harboring bin Laden, and so little backing when he shifted attention to Saddam, whose connection to bin Laden was plainly manufactured. The post-9/11 period was a fantastic opportunity for alliance- and institution-building. All that was required was American leadership.

How then did we arrive at this day, with anti-American Islamist governments rising in the Mideast, bin Laden sneering at us, Qaeda lieutenants escaping from prison, Iran brazenly enriching uranium, and America as hated and mistrusted as it ever has been? The answer, in a word, is incompetence. We now have testimony from enough Republicans and Bush loyalists—from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to former CIA senior director Paul Pillar — that the administration knew all along how flimsy its WMD case against Iraq was. We also now know, from Berntsen and others, that the administration knew then how solid the intel on bin Laden's and Zawahiri's whereabouts was. So catastrophic was Bush's decision to shift his attention and resources to Iraq, when bin Laden was panting at Tora Bora, that one is tempted to rank it with Adolf Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, at a time when Great Britain was prostrate and America was still out of the war (a decision that almost certainly cost Hitler the war then and there). Yes, Iraq may some day become a legitimate democracy. But for now it is mainly a jihadi factory, cranking out new generations of hardened bomb-ready Islamists, as we have seen with the cross-pollination that has brought Iraqi-style suicide bombs back to Afghanistan.

Bush of course has been lucky in his adversaries as well—not bin Laden, but the Democrats (not to mention many a media pundit). To this day they seem afraid to make the case that the great war presidency has been a disastrous war presidency, in large part because of the fraudulent Iraq invasion. Has any presidential candidate ever had a better talking point than this, as John Kerry did in 2004? But Kerry, a true combat hero, turned out to be a political coward, declining to attack while the Bush-Rove machine slowly emasculated him. Today the only Democratic candidate with the necessary money and renown to run for president, Hillary Clinton, is also one who must prove her presidential timber by out-hawking the hawk-in-chief. So forget about her calling it as she sees it. No wonder Karl Rove is telling the GOP that the war on terror is still the president’s ace issue in 2006, as it was in 2002.

So, yes, bin Laden and Zawahiri have been fortunate in their enemies. Had the Bush administration been more competent, these two would have long since been bloody pulp, perhaps largely forgotten. Luckily for the rest of us, the Al Qaeda revolutionary program is so abhorrent that most of the world still has no choice but to stick with us, through thick and thin—and dumb and dumber. How long we can test the world’s patience is another matter. Alan Cullison’s 2004 article based on Zawahiri’s private thoughts is again instructive here. "Al Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers,” he wrote. “Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. ... One wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer." What I wonder is, how many more years will we have to wait for Rumsfeld to figure that one out?

Media raid piles pressure on Kenya's Kibaki

Media raid piles pressure on Kenya's Kibaki

By C. Bryson Hull 1 hour, 54 minutes ago

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Fallout from a police raid on a major media group put Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's weakened government further on the defensive on Friday, with newspapers denouncing the action as "state thuggery."

Thursday's heavy-handed raid sparked a storm of domestic and foreign condemnation and split Kibaki's cabinet, heaping more pressure on his administration.

The operation was particularly harmful to Kibaki's image because he was elected in 2002 on a promise to usher in reform after the autocratic rule of President Daniel arap Moi.

Kibaki was already in deep trouble over graft scandals that have forced three of his ministers to resign and angered Western donors. He is also still smarting from a humiliating defeat last November in a constitutional referendum.

In the most aggressive assault on mainstream media since independence in 1963, at least 30 elite police and paramilitary commandos stormed the offices of the Kenya Television Network (KTN) and the presses of its sister newspaper the Standard.

Thousands of newspapers were burned during the raids. The paper reopened on Thursday and produced a special edition. KTN was also back on the air on Thursday.

About half of Kibaki's cabinet protested against the raid, while other ministers defended it.

"This is completely a betrayal of the people who elected this government," said Ludeki Chweya, a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

"The action was so drastic that nothing in the Moi era is comparable. So it takes the country so far back."

Kibaki on Friday ordered a new session of parliament on March 21 after he closed down the assembly following the referendum. He also appointed a committee to work on a new constitution -- a demand of many Kenyans.

"LAUGHABLE FICTION"

Kenyan media united against him.

"There are few dictators, even in past years, who were capable of the actions carried out by the Kibaki administration in the past 24 hours," Kenya's biggest newspaper, the Nation, said in an editorial.

Moi's government enacted tough press laws and routinely arrested and beat journalists who wrote critical articles.

The Standard in an editorial called the police justification -- that they had evidence of a plot to bribe reporters to write articles fomenting ethnic hatred -- "a piece of laughable fiction that even they know is complete nonsense."

"State Thuggery" proclaimed the front page of the Kenya Times newspaper.

The Standard wrote to the police on Friday demanding an inventory of items taken from its office, and identity of those who entered. "We are concerned there could be attempts to manipulate the contents in our CPUs (computers) as no attempt was made to jointly verify the same," its letter added.

The Kenyan media have angered the government not only with hard-hitting exposes of corruption but with stories about political intrigue and about Kibaki's wife.

First lady Lucy Kibaki last year harangued reporters in the Nation newsroom for hours and slapped a television cameraman over a story. And last week police held staff from the Weekly Citizen newspaper over a story alleging a feud between Lucy Kibaki and another woman many call the president's second wife.

Several reporters, mostly from sex and scandal tabloids, have been arrested and charged with press crimes.

The government had said it would crack down on journalists who make up stories or engage in extortion by threatening to publish damaging material. But the assault on a respected mainstream media group shocked many Kenyans.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne)

We paid six lawyers Sh72 million, says Govt

 We paid six lawyers Sh72 million, says Govt

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By Joseph Murimi

The Government has admitted paying Sh72 million to six lawyers who represented it in a case that sought to block last year’s referendum.

Solicitor-General Wanjuki Muchemi defended the payment, saying the amount was reasonable. He scoffed at reports alleging impropriety on the part of the State Law Office, saying it had acted "diligently, conscientiously and transparency".

He said there was nothing improper with the attorney-general hiring external lawyers and consultants as he was mandated to do so by law.

"We wish to confirm that (the) Sh72 million was a global figure to cover all such legal services as the team had been engaged to provide and included all expenses, disbursements and Value Added Tax of Sh9,931,034.45, which was deducted upfront and remitted to the relevant authorities,’’ Muchemi said.

He said the fee was reasonable given the national importance of the constitutional review process, the urgency with which the case had been lodged and the complex issues that had to be argued out.

MP Joe Khamis and 21 others had filed the referendum case with others against the AG, Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister, the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission and the Electoral Commission of Kenya.

The advocates appointed by the AG to tackle the case were Dr Gibson Kamau Kuria, Mr Waweru Gatonye, Mr Fred Ngatia, Mr Kioko Kilukumi and Mr Njoroge Regeru.

Revelations of the amount paid to the six lawyers has raised eyebrows and opened a floodgate of condemnations. They represented the Government in the review case, which lasted only five days.

Elsewhere, the Kenya Section of the International Commission of Jurists said Wako should be sacked if there was to be any progress in prosecution of corruption cases.

ICJ council member Albert Kamunde said Wako had failed to demonstrate willingness to prosecute corruption related offences. He said according to a report by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, several files referred to the AG have not been acted upon.

Saitoti grilled by police and has catered lunch brought in

 Saitoti grilled over Goldenberg

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By Evelyn Kwamboka

Former Vice President, Prof George Saitoti, was on Wednesday questioned over his role in the Goldenberg scandal.

It took him more than five hours to explain to the detectives at CID headquarters, why he granted 15 per cent ex-gratia payments for gold and diamonds to Goldenberg International Limited in 1990.

"I had a candid discussion with the officers and explained my role in the 15 per cent ex-gratia genesis and how it was handled," he said.

This was over and above the 20 per cent export compensation that was stipulated under the Export Compensation Act.

Saitoti said he had nothing to do with the Sh5.8 billion and Sh13.5 billion paid between April and August 1993.

"It is not me who triggered the payments in Goldenberg. I was not there in 1993 or at the Central Bank of Kenya," he said.

The payments were made during former VP Musalia Mudavadi’s tenure. Mudavadi was the first to be questioned over the scandal by the detectives on Tuesday.

Saitoti, who declined to comment on Tuesday on the Goldenberg matter, saying it was in court, arrived in the company of his lawyer, Fred Ngatia, at the CID headquarters.

The Kajiado North MP had lunch, brought in by a catering firm, with the officers as they continued to gather information from him.

"I did come here in order to assist with the investigations. I had nothing to do with the Sh5.8 billion," he said.

Saitoti told journalists that it "would not be prudent" for him to discuss details of the matter since he had already moved to court.

The court barred police from arresting and charging him last week on the offences based on the Bosire report on the Goldenberg scandal.

Justice John Nyamu granted Prof Saitoti temporary leave to challenge the findings of the report handed over to the President on February 3

Kenya Police assault newpaper and TV station - stories from Standard and Nation

 

Police shut down Standard, KTN Story by ERIC SHIMOLI and DOMINIC WABALA Publication Date: 3/2/2006

Armed and hooded police this morning raided the headquarters and printing plant of the Standard Group.  BLAZE: Copies of today's Standard go up in flames after being set on fire by police in the compound of the company's printing plant at Likoni Road, Nairobi early today. Photo by Joseph Mathenge They burnt copies of the newspaper and shut down the media group's 24-hours television station KTN. An estimated 30 policemen armed with AK-47 assault rifles first stormed the Standard's headquarters at the  I&M building, in Nairobi city centre, at 12.30am, before another squad swooped on the company’s printing plant in Likoni Road, in the industrial area, and burnt the day’s newspapers which were just rolling off the presses.  The raids were carried out by a rapid response unit code-named the Kanga Squad, detectives from Nairobi provincial CID headquarters and officers from the General Service Unit.  They were under the command of Mr James Njiru, the officer in charge of operations at  the provincial CID headquarters. The elite Kanga Squad was formed by the Director of Criminal Investigations, Mr Joseph Kamau, specifically to fight hardcore criminals like carjackers, bank robbers and murder hit squads.  The raids follow a running dispute between the media house and the Government over a story in the Saturday Standard alleging President Kibaki had held a secret meeting with one of his fiercest critics, former Cabinet minister Kalonzo Musyoka. Both State House and Mr Musyoka denied the story and demanded apologies from the newspaper.  Three of the company’s journalists were seized and held in police custody over the story for the past two days. The  board of directors of the Standard, Kenya's second largest newspaper, which is partly owned by the family of retired President Moi, had on Wednesday condemned the arrests as illegal and demanded the journalists' immediate release.  Early today guards at the I&M building said moments before police pounced they had closed off the entire area around Muindi Mbingu Street and the parking bays with unmarked cars, surrounding the building and blocking off any escape routes or access.  The squad included armed and masked officers who herded the guards into a corner in the reception lobby. Those who resisted were beaten up before another squad frisked them and took away their mobile phones.  Police then moved to the second floor control room which houses the closed circuit TV surveillance and security systems for the entire building, breaking down the door and to smash their way in.  Officers seized computer keyboards and electronic units controlling the security systems and slashed through electricity cables supplying power to the system. The officers appeared to know their way around the building and had planned their mission well, according to onlookers.  The squads then split up into small teams with different groups targeting different floors housing KTN and Standard Newspapers. They disconnected power lines from the KTN studio, taking the station off the air.  Police appeared particularly interested in veteran news anchorman Njoroge Mwaura who had read the late night news which replayed a statement appealing for the release of the journalists. Mr Mwaura had already left the station but the police  repeatedly demanded to know his whereabouts.  Two technical staff working in the TV transmissions room that beams the station's programmes out to the world first noticed that raid was taking place on when two armed men burst into the control room.  One of them, Mr Peter Njuguna, was taken away by the police who also seized  mobile phones belonging to the staff who had earlier been forced to lie down.  Desktop computers containing  hard disks which store all the information in the  KTN newsroom on the 14th floor were also seized, as was  a Newsdesk fax machine.  The Standard's printing press staff examine the damaged printing machine after the raid. Photo by Joseph Mathenge "This is repression. It is an outrageous assault on media freedom," said Standard managing editor Pamela Sittoni, speaking from the sealed off offices. Across the city in Industrial Area around 20 hooded policemen brandishing weapons raided the Standard printing press in Likoni Road.  They arrived at the plant at 1am in seven vehicles, parking one across the street while the rest parked just outside the gate. The policemen — all wearing luminous orange jackets with the words QRU for Quick Rescue Unit —fired three times at the gate to burst open the padlock before pushing their way inside the printing press compound.  "Laleni chini, sisi ni polisi!" (Lie down! We are the police)  one of the men shouted before he and the others ran in, shouting orders at the guards, the drivers and packers.  The policemen grabbed cellphones from all those present before herding the workers into a large hall next to the printing press where newspapers are packed.  Anyone who resisted was pistol-whipped  before being forced to the floor. While the press workers were being beaten into submission, another group of policemen broke into offices where they disconnected computers, telephones and faxes.  Yet another group of officers was systematically walking through the printing press where they dismantled several parts, disabling the equipment. An assistant police commissioner in charge of operations at the provincial police headquarters, Mr James Njiru, apparently led the raid.  He was the one issuing orders to the others to collect all the newspapers stacked ready for loading into the vans for delivery to different parts of the country.  "I can smoke you! I can waste you," shouted one hooded man all dressed in black who shouted swear words as he walked up and down in front of the group of terrified workers.  Police then herded the workers outside the building and ordered them to stay across the street as they continued to burn bundles of papers at the parking lot.  Each time a new pile of freshly printed papers was added, a policeman poured paraffin onto the blazing heap.  The newspaper had as its main headline "Champions speak", accompanied by pictures of the best students in the KCSE examinations whose resultswere released on Tuesday.  The back-page headlines announced, "Magari knew of Anglo  Leasing," and "Saitoti grilled over Goldenberg." Daily Nation reporters who rushed to the scene were manhandled and threatened with shooting when they insisted on taking pictures and asking questions.  One Standard photojournalist, Mr Jacob Otieno, was beaten up when he insisted on doing his job and said he had a right to be present because he was a Standard employee.  A member of staff with copies of the newspaper. Photo by Joseph Mathenge Nation photojournalist Joseph Mathenge escaped a beating only by hiding his camera and pretending to be a despatch driver. Contacted early today, Nairobi area police boss Mwangi King'ori said he knew nothing of the raids. "You have just woken me up. I was asleep. I am not aware of what is going on. I have nothing to do with that matter," he said.  The raids came just three days after Information minister Mutahi Kagwe - himself a former commercial manager of the Standard Group and son-in-law of the current National Security minister John Michuki - warned the media of stern Government action if they persisted in what he called misreporting and misrepresentation.  He said the Government would not be dissuaded from action even though it knew the media would gang up to defend one of their own. A Standard Board statement issued after three of the paper's journalists were arrested over the Kalonzo Musyoka report, read in part: "The Board wishes to reassure the readers and public that the Standard Group has codified in its editorial policy the supremacy of impartiality, accuracy and ethical reporting. It also recognizes that newspapers will make mistakes occasionally.  When this has happened, and confirmed to have happened, corrections and clarifications have been issued. But we also recognize and respect the rights of offended individuals to seek redress through established channels like the Media Council or the courts," the board said in a statement.  Board members said they were deeply alarmed by the sequence of events which followed publication of the story, culminating in the arrest and "illegal detention in police custody of our editors and journalist for the past two days."  "The vitriolic letter from Government spokesman, Dr Alfred Mutua, on Monday over the same issue adopted the same threatening vein and in our view exhibited a clear agenda to punish this media house without recognising the need for internal investigations to establish the facts. Media houses do have clear verification systems in place and these must be allowed to run their course and an appropriate decision taken. This is what was and still is going on," said the statement.  Last month, the police raided the Citizen Weekly offices and arrested editors, reporters and workers, while last year, two Kenya Times reporters were also arrested and later charged in court.

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It's an attack on press freedom, says Standard directors


Publication Date: 3/2/2006

The following is a statement from the Standard Group Board of Directors  In the early morning hours of Thursday, around 1am, two groups of hooded, armed people staged simultaneous raids on the editorial offices of the KTN Television and the Group’s printing press on Likoni Rd in the Industrial Area of Nairobi.  At both premises, they roughed up security officers on duty and managed to get access into the building.  In the I&M building on Kenyatta Avenue, one of the men in the group identified themselves as police officers and demanded access, which was granted. The team herded our security men into a corner and demanded access into the editorial floors and the transmission room. In the transmission room, they took away a computer, some power units and affected the cables. That action effectively disabled our transmission and we have been off air since that time. They did go into the KTN floor, where they took away several central processing units for computers used by the station’s journalists. They also took away CPUs from the commercial floors and did extensive damage to the surveillance camera units. In the printing press plant, they vandalised the press, broke glasses and disabled the unit that at that point was printing. They took away computers from the circulation offices and burnt tens of thousands of copies of newspapers that were ready for dispatch. We are therefore unable to serve some of these markets this morning.  We take a very dim view of these raids, which, on the basis of existing information, were carried out by police. We believe that this is a direct and blatant attempt to undermine the freedom of the press in this country as guaranteed by the Constitution. It is also intended to paralyze our business. We believe that the extra-judicial settling of scores has no place in any country, which believes in the rule of Law. It is our believe that our Country is still respecting its constitution and that immediate and necessary action will be to take those responsible to account for their actions. We have taken our civic duty as responsible citizens of Kenya to report these acts to the Police with the hope that it is not too late to redeem our image as a country. In spite of great difficulties we are facing, are determined to marshal all our resources to ensure that our readers and viewers are kept informed. We recognize, of course that these attacks come at a time when our journalists are being detained over alleged publication of alleged untrue story. Considering the astonishingly hostile response of the Government to what would amount to a civil misdemeanour, if it indeed is confirmed to be such, we take judicial note of the unlikely coincidence. Finally, we reassure our readers and viewers that everything is being done to bring back your favourite newspaper and television station, as soon as possible.

We thought they were thugs, say printing plant staff Story by DOMINIC WABALA Publication Date: 3/2/2006

Charles Cherono, The Standard night pre-press supervisor told how the security agents stormed into the Likoni road offices and roughly herded all employees into one hall, frisked them, beat up others and took away all their  mobile phones. "We thought they were thugs. They arrived in many vehicles and ordered us to lie down as they frisked us and took away our mobile phones. They demanded the keys to the printing press from the guards and when they couldn't get them they fired some shots and gained entry," a shaken Mr Cherono said. Another supervisor, Mr James Muiruri, said the hooded security men from the 'Kanga squad' were heard communicating to their seniors who instructed them to destroy the printing press. Mr Muiruri said  the officers stormed in like gangsters and beat everyone while demanding mobile phones.  "They demanded to be shown where the printing press was. We didn't know their intentions. They talked in a coded  language and all I could hear were instructions by someone to dismantle the printing press. A light-skinned man who was very abusive demanded that we show him a chain in the printing press," Muiruri said. A First Force security guard said that the officers arrived in seven cars and blocked the Likoni road at 12.38 am. "One armed officer jumped out of the vehicle and ran towards us. He identified himself as a policeman and ordered us to lie down as his colleagues rushed towards us and ordered us to surrender our guns. The staff members who were sleeping were hit on the heads with gun butts and hearded to one side of the production hall," the guard said. A driver whose newspaper circulation van was being loaded said his mobile phone was snatched. BREAKING NEWS State owns up to raid Standard Team   Internal Security Minister John Michuki has admitted that the Government organised the simultaneous raids at the Standard Media Group’s editorial offices and printing plant.   “When you rattle a snake you must be ready to be bitten,” he emphatically stated after attending a State function presided over by President Mwai Kibaki at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.    “The on goings (at the Standard) since last week involved state security,” he said.   The minister’s remarks left no doubt that the attack was planned and executed with his full knowledge. He was responding to questions from journalists who turned to him after desperate efforts to get President Kibaki to comment on the matter were thwarted by security officers.   Michuki, who was bombarded with questions by local and international journalists, quickly sought assistance from his bodyguards and was quickly escorted to his car.   President Kibaki, who presided over the official launch of the National Anti-Corruption Steering Committee, skirted the matter despite prodding by the committee’s chairman Mutava Musyimi.   In his speech, Musyimi said while press freedom must be exercised with responsibility and restraint, the Government must equally strive to protect the freedom.   He it was better that the Government be seen to be on the side of restraint that be seen as the aggressors.   “It should review its position over the journalists still being held in police custody,” he said.   Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua declined to comment on the attack and said Information Minister, Mutahi Kagwe, would issue a statement over the matter. Meanwhile, KTN television is now back on air, 13 hours after security officers raided the station's premises and disabled equipment. The station started its normal transmission at 2.00pm, with live streaming of the assault on the Standard Group.

"If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it," said Kenyan Internal Security Minister John Michuki

 

Kenya admits armed raids on paper

Thousands of copies of the Standard were burnt

Kenya's government has confirmed it ordered masked gunmen to storm a media group, disabling printing presses and briefly shutting its TV station.

Internal Security Minister John Michuki said the raids on the Standard group in Nairobi were to protect state security.

"If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it," he said, amid protests by opposition MPs.

Three Standard journalists are still being held without charge following a story about President Mwai Kibaki.

Both the president and senior opposition figure Kalonzo Musyoka deny a report in the Standard last week that they had been holding secret meetings.

Energy and resources being used to crack down on the media need to be channelled toward the fight against corruption Eddie Mandhry, New York Send us your comments In pictures: Press raid Detained at gunpoint

Initially, the information minister denied any knowledge of the raids while opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta called the action a "dark day".

The BBC's Karen Allen in Nairobi says the raids are being seen as an indicator of growing political tension in an administration facing charges of corruption.

Three ministers have resigned this year after details of a corruption investigation were leaked to several newspapers.

The US embassy in Nairobi has condemned the raids as "acts of thuggery [that] have no place in an open democratic society".

In a statement, it said: "We note that these attacks were preceded by threats directed against the Standard from representatives of the Kenyan government."

It urged the government to stop its "campaign of vilification and harassment of selected media".

Police accused

Police Commissioner Jasper Ombati said he had evidence that journalists were being paid to incite ethnic hatred.

He said that police officers routinely wore masks to hide their identities in sensitive cases.

Three Standard journalists are still being held

Hooded men carrying AK-47 assault rifles raided the headquarters of the Standard group just after midnight.

Staff were kicked and beaten and forced to lie on the floors as offices were searched and equipment taken away, the Standard newspaper said on its website.

"They kicked us as we went down, they frisked our pockets and took our belongings," one member of staff said.

A similar raid was carried out about an hour later at the group's newspaper presses in the capital's industrial area.

Thousands of copies of Thursday's edition of the newspaper were dragged out into the yard and set on fire.

Meanwhile, another group of masked men went to the offices of the independent Kenya Television Network (KTN), a sister to the Standard.

The station was off air until 1100GMT, and men carried away computers and transmission equipment, and detained four staff members.

Investigation

Opposition MPs joined by more than 100 demonstrators marched from parliament to outside the Standard's offices in protest at the raids, which Standard group Chief Executive Tom Mshindi had condemned earlier.

"If it is confirmed the action was sanctioned by the government, it would reflect badly on our country's claims to democracy and freedom of the media," he said.

President Kibaki's government has been rocked by graft allegations

Information Minister Mutahi Kagwe, a former Standard editor, initially denied any knowledge of the raid, saying he first learnt about it on television news reports.

Kalonzo Musyoka, the former environment minister who was sacked after opposing a proposed new constitution and is named in the now controversial newspaper report, condemned the raids.

"This is a very very dark morning for this beautiful country," he said.

The newspaper has been critical of President Kibaki's handling of recent corruption scandals.

The three Standard journalists, Chaacha Mwita, Dennis Onyango and Ayub Savula were arrested on Tuesday following the publication of the most recent article.

The government has repeatedly accused the Standard of fabricating stories.