every rich man is a thief

But whenever I have said this, I have been told no, that the market bla bla and all. Now in the midst of this pandemic, an American company has been given exclusive rights to make an antiviral drug that would be used in managing covid19. With this exclusivity, they will profit from it for 7 years, during which time even if generic drugs were developed, Americans would not be able to buy. I don’t know what to call it. But i have been informed it is not greed, so I leave it to the rest of you to come up with a descriptor.

Why I say it is theft. Listen to this

Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir was developed with at least $79 million in U.S. government funding, according to a paper published last week by KEI. The origins of the drug came after the 2014 Ebola outbreak in western Africa, which spurred research into potential antiviral medications to control future potential pandemics.

You can read more here

Hooray to the free market where we are told the government should keep off the markets while at the same time it is busy subsiding big companies, carrying out deregulation and all.

It must be hard being a creationist

And why are so many of them found in the US of A?

And what do you do with evidence you don’t like? Hide it.

Capital punishment in Kenya

This author has on more than one occasion argued against the death penalty, arguing as others more eloquent and read than I have, that the death of one innocent person outweighs all the benefits to society achieved through the death penalty. There are many places in the world where the death penalty is still in the statute books. There are occasions I have been almost persuaded that having the death penalty is good so there is a way to deal with politicians and the corporate types who collapse banks with people’s savings and the like. I believe, however, that an active volcano would do just fine for this group of miscreants.

But I digress. Capital punishment was introduced in Kenya by the Brits (remember they came to civilize the Africans: sarc) in 1893. While it’s use was not so prevalent in the early days of the colonial state, it got to a crescendo during the emergency years and from what I have read, many Africans were hanged on very flimsy grounds, rules of evidence were swept aside and the conduct of the cases were such that the accused in many cases were not represented. In short, there was miscarriage of justice in the interests of the crown.

It appears also that its application was racially motivated or biased, if the comments of the District Commissioner for Nyeri is to be believed. In 1921, the DC is reported as having said

sometimes i wonder whether in this country, capital punishment is not inflicted on natives more often than is necessary to attain the ends of justice. (Hynd, 2012).

In my conclusion, my other argument for abolishing capital punishment in Kenya is because it is a colonial relic instituted not so much for the interests of justice but law and order.

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Hynd S (2012) Toward a History of Violence in Colonial Kenya. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 45 1 pp 88-101

Religious attitudes

Yours truly is trying to conduct a study on religious attitudes and need your help. Kindly fill and share the form widely as possible. I am working on a paper which I will share once it is complete.

Was the devil black?

That is if for a moment, we pretended that it or they existed?

Aging as a disease

First, we wanted to be immortal.

Now we want to be forever young!

what do we really know?

So I went to google and this is what I found, 

Then there is this.

At this point, I am still not any better than when I started

So tell me, what am I missing?