Deutsche Welle: The role of ethnicity in Kenyan politic

Tribalism in Kenya dates back to the colonial era. From 1920 to 1963, Kenya was under the rule of the British who used the divide and rule method of governing. For years they played one side off against another, in particular the Kikuyus and Luos whom they considered a threat owing to their big numbers. [...]

President Jomo Kenyatta (father of incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta) was accused of sidelining the Luos, in particular Jaramongi Odinga( father of current opposition leader Raila Odinga) in favor of Moi who who succeeded him in 1978 as the second president of Kenya. During his period in office until 2002, Moi was accused of perpetuating the politics of divide and rule. His presidency was also marked by tribal animosities. The major outbreak was in 1992 with the Molo clashes in the Rift valley region which left 5,000 people dead and another 75,000 displaced.The conflict was primarily between Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities with land ownership cited as one of the key reasons for the conflict. [...]

Major parties were already divided along tribal lines. For example, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD-Kenya) was associated with the Luhya tribe, the Democratic Party with the Kikuyu, the Labour Democratic  party with the Luo, while the Kalenjin tribe supported KANU. Today, voting in Kenya whether parliamentary, civic or presidential, is done almost entirely along tribal lines.

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The New York Times: Preparing Young Americans for a Complex World

Last year, the Council on Foreign Relations and National Geographic commissioned a survey to assess the global literacy of American college students. Over 1,200 people participated; less than 30 percent earned a passing grade. Below are six questions they included, each of which a majority of respondents answered incorrectly. See how you, or your students or children, do. (Answers below.) [...]

Nevertheless, many American schools have remained poorly prepared to deliver education in “global competence” (defined by American education leaders as “the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance.”) The focus on traditional achievement and test scores has narrowed the delivery of instruction at a time when students need to learn to think more broadly. In the wake of “Brexit” and the election of Donald Trump (both far more popular among older voters than among the young) — and amid the global rise of nationalist movements — schools need to help students navigate the forces shaping the world they will inherit. [...]

What’s needed is not just scoring well on standardized tests. “It’s an openness to new opportunities and ideas,” she added. “It’s a desire to engage. It’s self-awareness about culture and respect for different perspectives. It’s comfort with ambiguity. It’s the skill to investigate the world through questions. Empathy and humility are big pieces of all of it.”

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The Guardian: I ran Clinton's campaign, and I fear Russia is meddling with more than elections

The Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign is being treated too much like a novelty and not enough as a serious and persistent security threat. The problem becomes more urgent as we see it spread to other countries.

WikiLeaks, which disseminated stolen DNC documents, announced last week that it would turn its attention to France, and has released material relating to presidential candidates François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron, opponents of Marine Le Pen.

US intelligence agencies found clear links between Wikileaks and the Russian state; we have to assume Russia will use these to undermine Vladimir Putin’s arch-nemesis, Angela Merkel, when she faces the far-right Alternative für Deutschland at the polls in September. [...]

With his success in the US last year, Putin has put opponents on notice that there will be a price to pay for crossing him. Indeed, the complex infrastructure that Russia built to infect public discourse with false or stolen information isn’t going anywhere. It can be unleashed at any time, on any issue, domestic or international.

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The New York Times: Pope Francis’ Race Against Time to Reshape the Church (NOV. 18, 2016)

Francis is trying to build a Roman Catholic Church that emphasizesinclusion and mercy, and focuses on serving poor and marginalizedpeople. Can the 79-year-old pontiff appoint enough like-mindedcardinals to ensure that his vision of the church will endure after he dies?

The College of Cardinals is responsible for electing a new pope. Pope Francis’ third set of cardinals will receive their “red hats” at a ceremony on Saturday.

With the new additions, 44 of the 121 cardinals eligible to vote will have been named by Francis. But nearly two-thirds of the current cardinals were appointed by Francis’ predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II, who were more theologically conservative and whose priorities were different from Francis’. The cardinals, however, do not all share the views of the pope who appointed them.

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The New York Times: Steve Bannon Carries Battles to Another Influential Hub: The Vatican

While Mr. Trump, a twice-divorced president who has boasted of groping women, may seem an unlikely ally of traditionalists in the Vatican, many of them regard his election and the ascendance of Mr. Bannon as potentially game-changing breakthroughs.

Just as Mr. Bannon has connected with far-right parties threatening to topple governments throughout Western Europe, he has also made common cause with elements in the Roman Catholic Church who oppose the direction Francis is taking them. Many share Mr. Bannon’s suspicion of Pope Francis as a dangerously misguided, and probably socialist, pontiff.

Until now, Francis has marginalized or demoted the traditionalists, notably Cardinal Burke, carrying out an inclusive agenda on migration, climate change and poverty that has made the pope a figure of unmatched global popularity, especially among liberals. Yet in a newly turbulent world, Francis is suddenly a lonelier figure. Where once Francis had a powerful ally in the White House in Barack Obama, now there is Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon, this new president’s ideological guru. [...]

Days after the election of Mr. Trump, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican officially elevated new cardinals selected by Pope Francis who reflected the pope’s emphasis on an inclusive church — far from the worldview of Mr. Bannon and Mr. Burke.

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Salon: Most Americans don’t want “religious freedom” laws that allow anti-LGBT discrimination

A majority of Americans oppose denying services to LGBT individuals in the name of religion, according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute. Sixty-one percent of respondents were against giving faith-based groups or private individuals the religious exemption to, say, refuse to cater a lesbian wedding, or to refuse to sign the marriage certificates of same-sex couples, as Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, Ky., made national headlines for doing in 2015.

Just one religious group believes that people like Davis should have faith-based exemptions to protect their right of conscience: evangelical Christians. Fifty percent of evangelicals believed that it should be legal to discriminate in the name of faith, as opposed to the 42 percent who were against that idea — a surprisingly slim majority for this influential slice of the GOP electorate. [...]

It’s worth noting that the ERLC is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the few denominations to support legislation like FADA. Even Mormons, a population that’s heavily conservative, are against discrimination in the name of faith, with 52 percent opposing the legal right to deny services to same-sex couples. In 2015, the Church of Latter-day Saints helped pass a nondiscrimination law in Utah preventing workers from being fired on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, the first such legislation passed by a red state.

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Al Jazeera: Israeli torture of Palestinian children 'institutional'

Methods include slapping the head "to hurt sensitive organs like the nose, ears, brow and lips", forcing a handcuffed individual to squat against a wall for long periods of time, and placing the suspect bent backwards over a chair with his arms and legs cuffed.

The interrogators' accounts echo what Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups have long documented. Prisoners' rights NGO Addameer said that such practices "are known to be routinely and systematically used against Palestinian detainees". Other torture methods used against Palestinians include sleep deprivation and threats against family members, an Addameer spokesperson told Al Jazeera. [...]

In its annual report last year, Amnesty International found that Israeli forces and Shin Bet personnel had "tortured and otherwise ill-treated Palestinian detainees, including children, particularly during arrest and interrogation", with methods including "beating with batons, slapping, throttling, prolonged shackling, stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats".

A representative of Defence for Children International - Palestine told Al Jazeera that the group's research had shown that almost two-thirds of Palestinian children detained in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces had endured physical violence after their arrest. [...]

In the military court system, which has a 99 percent conviction rate, Palestinians can be held for 60 days without access to a lawyer - compared with the United States, where the average length of interrogations producing false confessions is 16 hours.

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Atlas Obscura: Why England Was A Year Behind Belgium, Spain and Italy for 170 Years

In 1584 a violent, angry crowd ransacked the city of Augsburg, Germany. Citizens broke through thick windows and shot their guns into the street. They were marching to City Hall to make it clear that they would not take the authorities’ new plans sitting down. They were in the midst of the Kalenderstriet, or “calendar conflict.” It was a response to the proposed change from the Julian calendar, which had been used for over a thousand years, to the Gregorian calendar, which would fully skip 10 days. [...]

The importance of holidays, fasts and feast days explained the Church’s interest in keeping the calendar “correct,” but the rift between religious groups in Europe meant that the change was haphazard around the continent, sometimes even centuries apart. Catholic-majority nations like France adopted the changes right away, but Orthodox Christian and Protestant-majority countries held off. [...]

The year’s length changed in many places during the transition, too. While the Julian calendar initially started off with January as the first month in the year, religious holidays took precedence as year-openers after the Roman Empire fell. For centuries, England had celebrated New Year’s on Lady Day (or Feast of the Annunciation), on March 25, but 1752 jarringly began anew in January, making 1751 the shortest year England ever recorded, with only 282 days.

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CityLab: What Riyadh's New Metro Will Mean for Women

When Uber and similar services began operating in the Kingdom a few years ago, they offered Saudi women another way of getting around. Uber reports that 80 percent of its users in the country are women. But to some, the arrangement feels exploitative, since women are a captive market. As Hatoon al-Fassi, a Saudi academic who teaches at Qatar University, says, “[Uber] shows the ugly practice of using women’s suffering to make money.” [...]

Soon, a less controversial means of transport will be available to women in cities across the country, beginning in the capital, Riyadh. The High Commission for the Development of Riyadh is implementing a six-line metro system and accompanying bus network. The project is about half complete and will be operational by 2019. Business Insider calls the undertaking “the biggest urban mass-transit system that’s ever been created from scratch.” Metro and bus lines are also on the docket for such cities as Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina. [...]

Yet the main benefit of the metro will likely go to women. The trains will have cars for exclusive use by single women and families, helping to maintain the segregation of the sexes and providing a reliable, socially acceptable way to travel. (A promotional video created by the High Commission for the Development of Riyadh, above, shows women matter-of-factly taking the envisioned trains and buses.) And because hiring drivers or constantly using Uber is expensive, the metro and bus system will provide a more feasible option for women of fewer means.

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