What Just Happened #59
Government thuggery rising
Welcome to Common Sense and Whiskey. Today, government by thuggery is everywhere. We look at the rough patch East Africa is going through. Plus a few shorter notes from Brazil, the Russian Republic of Karelia, Pakistan and Poland, all suitable for the shorter attention spans of summer. Let me know what you think in the comments section or directly, at BillMurrayWriter (at) gmail.com.
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Okay, right to it:
THUGGERY INTERNATIONALE: There’s a quote attributed to Stalin, something like ”Probe with a bayonet. If you find mush, proceed; if you find steel, withdraw."
If it looks like certain governments we hold dear are fast being seized by the thuggery of the bayonet, maybe we should look at how it’s done by real experts at the game.
The Substack newsletter The Continent claims that state security is terrorising citizens at record levels across East Africa, contending that “more people are being disappeared, abused and killed for standing up for their communities. And countries are working across borders to ensure that nobody is safe.”
“State Abductions” didn’t even used to be a thing. The story of Kenya is worth telling:
William Ruto took office with a head of steam. He rode in on a wave of hope for change, running as an outsider against the entrenched elite, and enough people invested in that hope to elect him.
Ruto fashioned himself a self-made “Hustler”, the son of a poor man who sold chickens, as he campaigned against Raila Odinga, who was seen as representing the political “dynasties.” His message resonated among young people from Nairobi north toward Mount Kenya, in the heavily populated Rift Valley, and in the cities.
It didn’t last long. Last spring, with his government only about a year and a half old, Ruto introduced tax increases. The cost of living had already surged, jobs were scarce and Ruto was seen to have surrounded himself with powerful business elites. It looked like the same old story, and the street, especially young people, felt betrayed. The street erupted, and Ruto responded by calling the demonstrators traitors and calling in the military.
It wasn’t the first time Kenya’s government wielded its power as a cudgel. Kenya’s independence leader Jomo Kenyatta served from 1963, first as prime minister, then president. By 1969 he had made the country effectively a one party state, and opposition had been criminalized.
After just six years the Kenya People's Union, an early opposition movement, was banned, and opposition figures were jailed or chased abroad. The leader of the movement was Oginga Odinga, who had been Kenyatta’s first vice-president. (It was Odinga’s son Raila, defeated by Ruto in 2022, who was perceived as representing entrenched political ‘dynasties’ in Kenya.)
In 1982, after just short of four years as leader, President Daniel arap Moi implemented Section 2A of the Constitution, making Kenya a de jure one party state under his Kenya African National Union, or KANU.
Throughout the 1980s political activity outside KANU was banned; dissent was criminalized and Moi’s secret police used detentions without trial, torture chambers and press censorship to keep order. By the late 80s the Kenyan economy was stagnant, corruption was rampant and Moi found himself under pressure from all sides—from international organizations like the IMF and dissidents both inside Kenya and some who had been chased outside the country.
History was catching up with the KANU. In the spring of 1989, China’s communist leaders put down student-led demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, killing perhaps thousands. By November the Berlin Wall had fallen and a wave of democratization swept the world. In Kenya, an underground opposition movement gained strength, with lawyers and academics quietly organizing and publishing dissenting views.
(On my first visit to Nairobi that year, I knew enough to ask at a newsstand for an English-language magazine that was sold under the counter—I cannot remember the name of it, but I knew at the time that you had to ask for it. The newsstand operator didn't seem very worried about selling it to me. I was a young, nervous white kid; presumably I wasn't a government thug.
Probably it was a copy of the Nairobi Law Review, edited by a prominent human rights lawyer named Gitobu Imanyara. I have since read that his magazine was widely respected and while critical, not overtly revolutionary, although Imanyara was arrested more than once, held without trial and generally harassed for his views. After the reign of Daniel arap-Moi, Imanyara served in the Kenyan parliament.)
The watershed moment arrived in the summer of 1990, when Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, former cabinet members, broke ranks with the Moi government and called for a public rally demanding multiparty democracy. They were arrested in early July, leading to mass protests on 7/7/1990, the spark that ignited Kenya’s drive toward multiparty democracy.
Commemorations each year, like the protests in Kenya this week, are known as the Saba Saba protests because “saba saba” means “seven seven” in Kiswahili, and Monday was the 35th anniversary of the original protest.
In the last several years youth-led groups, civic activists, and human rights organizations have conflated the spirit of Saba Saba with calls for redress of familiar problems like grievances about police accountability, affordable housing and the like.
Last year’s protests against that finance bill that young people (especially) saw as running counter to William Ruto’s campaign promises culminated in storming of the Parliament on June 25th, police violence, and at least nineteen protestors’ deaths. Those protests continued until last July 7th, or Saba Saba, and this year, protestors again headed into the streets. This round of protests began with the death in custody of a teacher and blogger who had published accusations of corruption against the deputy inspector general of police.
The authorities have responded with road blockades, tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition. Thirty-one people were killed on Monday alone, according to a state-run body. Yesterday Ruto ordered police to shoot protesters in the legs.
"Anyone caught burning another person's business or property should be shot in the leg, hospitalised, and later taken to court. Don't kill them, but ensure their legs are broken," the president said.
And as of early July 2025, official government estimates note “over 70 abductions by security forces” since last year’s finance bill, the Washington Post reports, with 26 individuals still listed as missing according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
It’s a mess.
There are other examples of state-sponsored disappearances across the African continent. For now, just a quick look at two of Kenya’s neighbors. In Tanzania, when Samia Suluhu Hassan took over from her predecessor John “the Bulldozer" Magufuli in 2001, she lifted bans on rallies, reopened newspapers and freed political prisoners, earning her the fond nickname “Mama Samia.”
Now, with elections due in October, Mama Samia’s critics fear for their safety. The Wall Street Journal says there are more than 70 documented abductions and disappearances since Samia took office—many carried out by individuals claiming to be police, and about half of the victims remain missing.
President Yoweri Museveni has used extrajudicial forces to quiet opposition in Uganda before, and the next election looms, in January 2026, when Museveni will presumably be standing for a seventh term. Museveni will be 81 years old next month, and has ruled Uganda since 1986.
In April a bodyguard to opposition leader Bobi Wine named Eddie Mutwe was abducted by armed men near the capital, Kampala. Uganda’s military chief Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba posted a photo of a shirtless Mutwe, claiming he was in his basement and warning “You are next!” That was widely understood to mean Bobi Wine would be next in line to be detained. Kainerugaba is Museveni’s son.
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BRAZIL: On Wednesday President Trump sent this letter to President Lula of Brazil:
President Trump's rationale in assessing tariffs, according to his own White House Fact Sheet, is “that foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency” and that “Large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits have led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base.” He argues that other countries gain at the U.S.’s expense through unfair trade practices like subsidies and currency manipulation.
The administration contends that tariffs will rectify that situation by punishing foreign offenders, protecting various US industries, narrowing the US’s trade deficit with the offending countries and prompting them into making a ‘better deal.’ But in the case of Brazil, last year the U.S. recorded a trade surplus of $7.4 billion, with exports totaling about $49.7 billion and imports approximately $42.3 billion.
In this case, the US president is threatening to impose a tariff on another country not for economic reasons, but to protect and promote a political crony at the expense of a political rival. That’s it.
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CHANGING OF THE GUARD AT NATO: General Christopher G. Cavoli concluded his tour as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe on July 4th in a ceremony in Mons, Belgium. In his tour, Mick Ryan says, General Cavoli “presided over a reinvigoration of NATO war plans and the coordination of military aid to Ukraine.”
In April Gen. Cavoli testified before the US Senate Armed Services Committee. His valedictory remarks included this warning about the challenges of facing Russia in the future, describing Russia’s continuing reconstitution of its military forces:
Despite extensive battlefield losses in Ukraine, the Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated. In fact, the Russian army, which has borne the brunt of combat, is today larger than it was at the beginning of the war—despite suffering an estimated 790,000 casualties. . . . Within its air and maritime capabilities, Russia has sustained only minor losses in Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal reports meanwhile that:
Some 100 miles east of its border with Finland, in the Russian city of Petrozavodsk, military engineers are expanding army bases where the Kremlin plans to create a new army headquarters to oversee tens of thousands of troops over the next several years.
Soon I’ll be on a summer trip to eastern Finland, a hundred miles or so west of the long Finnish/Russian border. I return often to the subject of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Russian aggression under the Putin regime, in part because my wife and her family are Finns, Finland is a beautiful place, and I’ve become friends with many Finnish people.
The WSJ goes on:
Those (Russian) soldiers, many now serving on the front lines in Ukraine, are intended to be the backbone of a Russian military preparing to face off with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to Western military and intelligence officials. The Kremlin is expanding military recruitment, bolstering weapons production and upgrading railroad lines in border areas.
Russia’s military expansion on the other side of the border is mirrored by a defensive buildup on the western, NATO, Finnish side. It’s all so sad. As recently as 2019 we sailed along the Saimaa Canal from near our little Finnish town for a couple of days in Vyborg (Viipuri in Finnish, Выборг in Russian) on a small, good humored ship full of passengers from several nations, no visas required.
Russia seized Viipuri from Finland in the Winter War, in March 1940. It’s the capital of the Russian Republic of Karelia, in the Nordic land of lakes and pine and birch forests. Here it is:
Everyone in Finland would like nothing more than for this problem to go away, to be able to return to their saunas, sausage grilling and enjoying the long nights of the fleeting summer season on Finland’s beautiful lakes.
But the Finns, and NATO, can’t make the problem go away on their own. And until this most pressing problem is solved, it’s important for people far back from the front lines, western Europeans, Canadians and Americans (most of the people reading this column) to stand in solidarity with people who, just like us, don’t want the rule of thuggery anywhere near their borders.
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SURINAME has its first female president. Lawmakers in the former Dutch colony of just 600,000 elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, on Sunday, after her party won the most seats in legislative elections in May. She was the only candidate, as her rivals decided not to nominate anyone.
Her rivals are the centrist VHP party, led by outgoing president Chan Santokhi. His party probably decided not to contest the election because it has seen more than its share of corruption allegations.
Five years ago US$100 million disappeared from the Central Bank of Suriname on Santokhi’s watch. Three years ago “it was revealed that through falsified payment orders, several individuals had managed to obtain SRD$40.9 million from a bank account of the Ministry of Finance and Planning.” That’s USD $1,636,000 at today’s rate.
Last year the Santokhi was implicated in an alleged SRD 7.5 million payment to a local real estate company based on suspected falsified documents. And so on.
It’s not as if that kind of thing is unheard of in South American politics any more or less than anywhere else, but the thing is, Santokhi came to power on an anti-corruption and governance reform platform, defeating a former dictator.
Barring corruption, prospects for Ms. Geerlings-Simons, the new Prime Minister, are good: exploration since 2020 has discovered some 2.4 billion barrels oil offshore, with production scheduled to start by early 2028.
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PAKISTAN CONDEMNS:
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POLAND (and everywhere else in the world): The other day I visited the Polish government’s website, gov.pl, where I was greeted with this teensy little innocuous advisory:
“In order to ensure the highest quality of our services, we use small files called cookies. When using our website, the cookie files are downloaded onto your device. You can change the settings of your browser at any time. In addition, your use of our website is tantamount to your consent to the processing of your personal data provided by electronic means.”
It strikes me that the phrase “In order to ensure the highest quality of our services” is true in the same way that “your call is very important to us” are true.
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Cheers,
Bill
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