Yankee Come Home

Confirmation about something many suspected and which our blatantly anti-American big media has hardly commented on: the BBC undertook a worldwide sample of some 29,000 respondents showing Kenyans have the highest positive view of the USA of any country surveyed, a stunning 70% rating.

Compare this to the miserly 16% of Germans who believe the USA has a mainly positive role in the world. The Germans got magnanimity after World War II in the Marshall Plan, and an underwriting for the cost of their defence against communism, allowing them to concentrate on becoming rich and peaceful, thanks to America. Despite the unspeakable atrocities the Germans visited on the world with their war, less than 20 of it’s worst leaders were hung as war criminals. Forgive and rebuild was the watchword. As we say in Kiswahili, asante ya punda ni teke; the thanks of a donkey are kicks.

Here in Kenya, our local newspapers also own TV and radio outlets. The biggest is the Nation Group comprising daily papers, the business tabloid The East African and broadcast media. It’s owned by Muslims, albeit the moderate Aga Khan Foundation. The Standard Group undersells it considerably, and both exhibit unrelenting anti-Americanism from the editors downwards.

Kenyans are bombarded with stories written by Islamists, tranzis and anti-democrats. In the Standard last year, a column on the “only hope” for Iraq was, wait for it, to have the UN reinstate Saddam. Jihadi journalist Salim Lone informs readers in The Daily Nation that “hardly anyone” believes in Islamist plots to blow up airliners and that these are “inventions of Bush and Blair”. The recent collapse of the Somali Islamists (fervently wished for by Kenyans) was greeted with serious media alarm, followed by derision directed at the USA.

This is the normal journalistic meal served up to Kenyan readers, a country where Christians are the overwhelming majority and print is still king. The blogosphere has hardly any readers at all. All the more surprising then that Kenyans have weathered this propaganda effort and still favour the USA.