A visa ban on US officials? CNN would kill us

They would reduce to a laughing stock any Third World envoy who formed the habit of fulminating every day against the government to which he is accredited.

He would be the subject of ribald, often racist comment and a figure of ridicule.

Where Mr Ranneberger is the darling of our own so-called civil society movements, Kenya’s envoy in Washington would face a total boycott by civil society organisations if he turned himself to daily “diplomatic activism.”

That is why President Kibaki is not in the same situation as President Obama.

Our leader would raise at least one embarrassing question — and face at least one insuperable problem — if tomorrow he decided to slap visa bans on certain officials of President Obama’s government.

The question is this: Given our diplomatic laziness, who would supply him with the vital information on the individuals in Obama’s government who are engaged both in corruption and in trying to block the US president’s attempts to drastically reform, for instance, the health care system?

The problem is: The Western transnational media not only share with Western industry and government an identical corporate interest but also are world-encompassing. Consider the lopsidedness of the propaganda war that would ensue if Kibaki started banning officials of a major Western state.

It would be the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation ranged against Voice of America, CNN, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, the BBC, The Economist, and so on.

It would be the KBC’s crude and laughable propaganda methods versus the brilliance of the Western transnational media in weaving deep self-interests into a “news” item so that the “news” looks completely objective.

It is obvious who would win such a propaganda battle in the court of world opinion.

In short, as usual in our world, power, not righteousness, would win.

That is why, even if we leave social morality out of it — even if we say nothing about the interests of the Kenyan masses — the Kibaki-Odinga government must take drastic reform measures.