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Live your life as simple as you are
Written By: otuonick
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes | Key words: Warren Buffet, Richest man in the world, life, inspiration, advice, wisdom, money, getting rich, bill gates
Date: 2008-02-25 21:38:09 | Views: 576

Hey 2.0ers thinking about getting rich. Look at how these guys do it, here are some very interesting aspects of Warren Buffet's life, the second richest man in the world who has donated $31 billion to charity.

1. He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!

2. He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.

3. He still lives in the same small 3-bedroom house in mid-town Omaha , that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.

4. He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.

5. He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largest private jet company.

6. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis. He has given his CEO's only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your share holder's money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.

7. He does not socialize with the high society crowd.. His past time after he gets home is to make himself some pop corn and wat ch Television.

8. Bill Gates, the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.

9. Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

His advice to young people : "Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself and
Remember:

A. Money doesn't create man but it is the man who created money.
B. Live your life as simple as you are.
C. Don't do what others say, just listen to them, but do what makes you feel good.
D. Don't go on brand name; just wear those things in which you feel comfortable.
E. Don't wast e your money on unnecessary things; just spend on things that you really need.
F. After all it's your life, then why give others the chance to rule your life."

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What Truly Ails Kenya
Written By: owinojesse
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes | Key words:
Date: 2008-02-25 00:37:20 | Views: 572

Are we experiencing post colonial blues or are we suffering from something more sinister: learned helplessness? I've been following with some interest the ongoing discussions by the National Dialogue Team and juxtaposing those with the general mood in the country.

What strikes you almost immediately is the collective sentiment among the public that if the Annan team fails to strike a deal and then all is lost. Kenya as we used to know it ceases to exist.

In my musings I've been trying to understand when we fell into this abyss that we are finding rather difficult to climb out of, where it's become a do or die with the negotiation teams and failure has been declared a non-option (and perhaps rightly so).

What strikes me though is that we seem incapable of formulating our own ideas. For many years, the previous regime perpetually reminded us that it was both father and mother and we, quite shockingly, believed it. Our thought processes are so dominated by a spectacular sense of fear, we have prematurely resigned ourselves to the notion that unless bwana or memsahib tells us what to do and how to behave then we are finished, that if bwana and memsahib do not make up, then we cannot be friends, we cannot move on.

I think we lost ourselves in the last election. Our illustrious politicians capitalized on our fears of domination, of others, of not having enough, and not being enough, to the extent that picking the "right" person became a matter of survival. And now we find ourselves at an impasse as to what we can or cannot do with the choices we have made thus far.

But our power to choose was and is not limited to the events of December 27^th. We are not as oppressed as we are led to believe. As individuals who make up communities, we can change our perceptions about our circumstances; we can unlearn helplessness and realize that we can determine our own destinies. That is a universal truism.

Our "friends" in the west only remain so in as far as their primary interests in our country are not interfered with. Have you noticed the kind of veiled pleasure these prophets of doom seem to by declaring our demise?

When the US made the unilateral decision to wage war against Iraq, I scarcely remember them seeking counsel from Kenya, let alone any other country. Why is it then that we are so eager to dispense with our own sovereignty? Why are we so willing to have them issue directives and ultimatums concerning our governance? Why can't I decide, as a Kenyan, if there's any utility in having a prime minister

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Waiting for the 20:08 to Peace
Written By: owinojesse
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes | Key words:
Date: 2008-02-21 04:36:05 | Views: 518

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has had a long background in diplomacy, and no doubt his pledge to stay in Kenya for as long as it took, or until the negotiations reached an irreversible point, will be comforting the many Kenyans around the country who are impatient for an end to the crisis and a return to normalcy. gatharacartoon

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Participate in crafting the budget 2008-2009
Written By: owinojesse
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes | Key words:
Date: 2008-02-18 05:21:20 | Views: 633

The Treasury is inviting all Kenyans and stakeholders in the Kenyan economy to participate in putting together ideas and proposals for consideration as it crafts the next budget, 2008-2009.

In the circular published on the internt, the Treasury Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua asks that such proposals take into consideration the aspirations of Vision 2030 and in particular such measures as would enable the government to achieve its objectives of rapid economic growth, wealth and employment creation and other such measures as would lead to greater economic development and a reduction in poverty.

We hope that we can use this space below to discuss possible initiatives, and following the Treasury's proposal, that we can categorise them as follows,

a) Measures to encourage private sector growth and investment

b) Measures to address matters of regional integration

c) Limitations of the current economic and financial policy framework and suggestions for improvement.

d)Other issues aimed at improving the functioning of the economy.

Find the full circular here . (PDF)

Final proposals ought to be sent to the Treasury before the 7th of March at

budget2008@treasury.go.ke.

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Economics and Ethnohatred: Kenya on Fire
Written By: owinojesse
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes | Key words:
Date: 2008-02-18 05:15:42 | Views: 466

Many commentators on the post-election violence in Kenya have sought to label it as a battle of the haves and the have-nots, a struggle against perceived historical injustices and the effect of pressure on resources following decades of massive population growth.

There have been numerous attempts at branding the violence, but one sticker stands out, not just in the post-election violence, but also in the populist pre-election narrative of the opposition party and its leaders: 41-1. It is according to the ODM's craft, a struggle pitting the rest of Kenya against the Kikuyu that has best defined Kenyan politics these last three years. The international media and even Koffi Annan have failed to restrain the ODM in this most shameful quest.

Even this last weekend, ODM Secretary General Anyang' Nyong'o was quoted saying, ‘We cannot allow one tribe to dominate us economically, in business and in politics.' At the funeral of slain Embakasi MP Mugabe Were, Raila Odinga also weighed in, saying that skewed job allocations in the country would not be tolerated, claiming that there was a plot to allocate jobs to certain ethnic groups at the expense of others, citing the police force as one of the targets.

A few weeks ago in Kisumu, the ODM leader said to a crowd baying for guns to fight against the government, that they must not touch the Kisii. It was obvious what he meant then, and the people of Kisumu seem to have taken the implicit order seriously. The town has now been cleansed of Kikuyu life.

But why were the Kikuyu chosen for demonisation? Is it the little accident of the fact that President Kibaki is Kikuyu? Is it, as Maina Kiai, Muthoni Wanyeki and the ever increasing troupe around them keep insisting, that the violence is not ethnic, but political with ethnic overtones- whatever that means? Is there something deeper?

The case has been made that this strategy of isolating and attacking the Kikuyu was informed by the perception that blessings are showered on them by the neo-patrimonialism of the Kenyan heads of state, which patronage allows the Kikuyu districts wealth and comfort denied to other Kenyans. So the ODM's struggle is then one of retribution against the Kikuyu for their privilege, one which it seems has won it a lot of support from certain communities.

Would Kenyans really have felt this way had they not be guided and goaded by the ODM party? It is clear that the setting apart of these communities was deliberate, and is consistent with global trends when a developing country is in transition toward greater democracy. According to Amy Chua's thesis as promulgated in World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, this switch provides the opportunity for a politician or political party to seize on the people's envy and resentment of a market-dominant ethnic minority, and lead the electorate in a revolt against established capital and those perceived as controlling it.

A market-dominant minority, not quite self-evidently, is a (usually ethnic) minority that, achieves an economically dominant position in what is largely a free market economy. Such a minority as in the case of our GEMA peoples need not be a national minority (these ethnicities make up at least 30% of Kenyans). It is sufficient that in areas such as the vast swathes of the West of the country or the Coast, these groups stand out for their economic dominance, as for that matter do the Kisii, Somali and Asian groups which we will leave out of our account, but which have, by all accounts, suffered similar aggression in the post election period.

In addition, the group need not be in actual domination, all that is needed for its qualification for envy and demonisation, is the perception that it does dominate; that it has controlled the political system to the detriment of the majority. The feeling against this domination and marginalisation is so real that it takes a visitor to Kenyan no more than a few days to have it pointed out to him that the Kikuyu and Kenyan Asians are greedy, corrupt and exploitative.

Published above is a video of an interview of Professor Chua on Markets, Democracy and Hatred, or what another publication termed Vengeful Majorities. In the book, Chua whose family is ethnic Chinese from the Phillipines, makes such a clear and persuasive argument that it seems immediately explicatory of the Kenyan crisis. Her argument is that rapid conversion to majoritarian rule and free-market democracy make even clearer the glaring advantage that certain ethnicities hold over others and that this often leads to vicious inter-ethnic strife, and specifically as we saw in Kenya, attacks on the accursed ethnicity. She directly mentions the Kikuyu and Kenyan Asians in her book, and the interview, not just for their tremendous success, but also for the tension between them and the rest of the country, fingering it as typical and reminiscent of her experience of the Phillipines where she lost her grandmother to similar ehnically motivated violence.

In a recent interview with the BBC's Newsnight , former anti-corruption John Githongo dismissed the suggestion that African countries were not prepared for the full processes of democracy. Robert Kaplan however, has long argued that the West's obsession with transplanting democracy to countries that have not cultivated the institutions to support it is naive and often dangerous, fostering demagogues (who can point at rising or existing inequalities) and use these to stir up communal hatreds.

In "Was Democracy Just a Moment? " Kaplan heaps scorn on the United States' fondness for exporting democracy around the globe. Democracy often brings instability and becomes a vehicle for amplifying ethnic and minority tensions, he says, rather than providing the foundations for a middle class, growing prosperity and stability. What people really want, Kaplan writes, is a better life, which benign authoritarianism and hybrid democratic-autocratic regimes may be better able to deliver. "My point, hard as it may be for Americans to accept," Kaplan writes, "is that Russia may be failing in part because it is a democracy, and China may be succeeding in part because it is not."

Uganda's President Museveni is not a fan of democracy for developing countries. He has written,

"In fact, I am totally opposed to it as far as Africa today is concerned.... If one forms a multi-party system in Uganda, a party cannot win elections unless it finds a way of dividing the ninety-four percent of the electorate [that consists of peasants], and this is where the main problem comes up: tribalism, religion, or regionalism becomes the basis for intense partisanship."

Chua extends this argument, showing how expanding markets exacerbate the problem by enriching already-dominant minority groups even as democracy empowers jealous and angry majorities. So for example, the entrepreneurial bent of the Kenyan Asian led to their lending to the state through purchase of government securities at very high interesst rates in the 1990s, a venture that won them the hatred and envy of many other Kenyans.

It is this inequality that has exercised the opposition these last three years. They argue, while vigorously waving the Society for International Development's report, 'Pulling Apart', (PDF) that inequality in Kenya is rising, and that all the gains touted by the Kibaki government are not felt by the poor, especially not the teeming masses in Nairobi's slums. They point out that Central Province has improved immensely on many scores while other provinces have not shown nearly as healthy growth rates. They point at the presence of facilities in Central Province and use these to whip up the passions on the ground, the Kikuyu are wealthy because they are favoured by the state, they say.

Their case is not always false (it is often based on pre-2000 data), but what it does constistnently is to confuse the correlation showed in the report with causality. As a reading of the SID book, Chapter 2 reveals, there has not been an intentional, state driven effort to favour one region or ethnic group over others. Given that the Kibaki government's strategy is entirely in line with previous successes elsewhere, where high growth rates were achieved through increased agricultural output and growth in farm productivity, driven by strategic government investments in extension services, rural infrastructure and a systematic elimination of anti-export bias, it cannot be said that the government set out in any way to increase inequality. On the contrary, all the evidence points at a deliberate focus of government investments in rural areas in infrastructure, electricity, water, and sanitation, both directly and through the CDF. These investments were complemented by investments in human capital (both in quality and quantity, as indicated by increases in real expenditure per pupil at primary and secondary level). Following a similar strategy, many countries achieved both high rates of growth and declining levels of inequality.

We have, it is clear not met such success, but there were obviously extenuating and unexpected shocks in our experience. The massive hike in global oil or the drought in the early years of the Kibaki government all brough great difficulty in reaching government targets. These reduced the effect of much of the economic transformation, especially in urban areas where inflation put many ordinary products out of the reach of the poorest Kenyans. This effect was not selective either, but hit poor Kikuyus, just as hard as it did poor people from other ethnicities. And that is where World on Fire is useful.

It is obviously extremely sensitive, to speak about the economic aspect of communal violence, since rhetoric like the ODM's, about one ethnic group exploiting another is so often a precursor to atrocity. But this book makes clear that minority market domination is a reality in much of the world, and one which inspires such jealousies, fears and hatreds that they at the slightest excuse and with the guidance of a skilled demagogue explode in ethnic animosity and the most vicious violence.

Still, a study of such minorities will perhaps provoke in all of us a sensitivity to our potential for manipulation, and for government, a sense of the urgency with which the task of balancing development must be approached. Even as standard development theory postulates that in the early stages of development, inequality among regions intensifies, up to a point where incomes begin to converge; we cannot it seems afford that wait, we must find a balance between ensuring rapid economic growth and ensuring such redistribution as would not give excuse for another bout of chaos as this one.

We cannot argue that democracy is not for Kenya, but it behoves our political leaders to guard their rhetoric, and not seek to incite, no matter how tacitly, Kenyan citizens against each other. Leaders across ethnicities must now seek to emulate such communities as are blazing the trail in commerce and industry. The less left behind a community feels, the less likely it is to erupt in violence against the market dominant minority.

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