Iran Brokers Ceasefire in Iraq

Finally-- somebody with actual influence in Iraq works to stop the bloodshed.

Iranians help reach Iraq cease-fire

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Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr By Alla Al-Marjani, AP Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki By Ceerwan Aziz, Pool/AP

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By Charles Levinson, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — Iranian officials helped broker a cease-fire agreement Sunday between Iraq's government and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

The deal could help defuse a wave of violence that had threatened recent security progress in Iraq. It also may signal the growing regional influence of Iran, a country the Bush administration accuses of providing support to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.

Al-Sadr ordered his forces off the streets of Iraq on Sunday. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed al-Sadr's action as "a step in the right direction." It was unclear whether the deal would completely end six days of clashes between U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and Shiite militias, including al-Sadr's.

Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni lawmaker who oversaw mediation in Baghdad, said representatives from al-Maliki's Dawa Party and another Shiite party traveled to Iran to finalize talks with al-Sadr.

Iran has close ties with both al-Sadr's movement and al-Maliki, who spent several years in exile there. Al-Nujaifi said the agreement was brokered by the commander of Iran's al-Quds Brigade, which is considered a terrorist organization by Washington.

Haidar al-Abadi, a Dawa legislator who is close to al-Maliki, confirmed that Iranians played a role in the negotiations. Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to al-Maliki, said he could not confirm or deny Iranian involvement in the deal.

"The government proved once again that Iran is a central player in Iraq," said Iraqi political analyst and former intelligence officer Ibrahim Sumydai.

The nine-point deal was released by al-Sadr's office and read aloud from the minarets of Shiite mosques across southern Iraq. Al-Sadr called for the government to stop arresting his followers and release prisoners who have not been charged with a crime.

Hours later, rockets continued to shake Baghdad. According to the U.S. military, elements of al-Sadr's militia no longer answer to him.

Al-Rikabi vowed Iraqi forces will continue a broad offensive against "criminal elements" in the southern city of Basra and elsewhere.

Vali Nasr, an Iraq expert at the Council of Foreign Relations, said al-Sadr had emerged stronger from the battle, which killed more than 300 people. "He let the Americans and the Iraqis know that taking him down is going to be difficult."

Al-Sadr's militia stood strong, forcing the government to extend a deadline for them to disarm.

"Everything we heard indicates the Sadrists had control of more ground in Basra at the end of the fighting than they did at the beginning," said al-Nujaifi, the Sunni mediator. "The government realized things were not going in the right direction."

Iran Says Islamis Supreme Council/US Offensive Not Going Well in Iraq

Just the thing to get the FBI to knock on my door: Iran's PRESS TV isn't showing proper shock and awe at the might of the offensive by government-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq forces against the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq and in Baghdad. (see Video in English)

Iraqi Parliament Fails to Make Quorum Due to Poor Location

BAGHDAD (AFP) Iraq's embattled parliament held an emergency session on Friday to discuss the crisis in the southern city of Basra where Shiite fighters are locked in battle with Iraqi forces, an AFP correspondent said.

Only 54 of the 275 lawmakers attended the session.

The two main parliamentary blocs -- Shiite United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish Alliance --- were not present for the session which was attended by lawmakers from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, the small Shiite Fadhila Party, the secular Iraqi National List and the Sunni National Dialogue Council.

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Next time you want people to attend the Parliament, try not holding it in the Green Zone while it is being shelled.

Sadrists Capture Provincial Capital in Southern Iraq

Is this the next Fallujah? Juan Cole reports:

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Mahdi Army has taken over the southern city of Kut (Google Earth: 32.52 N 45.82 E) and has surrounded the governor's mansion, trapping the remaining government police in it.

Kut was the scene of a major military disaster for the British in World War I, where Ottoman forces surrounded a large body of mostly Indian British forces and forced them to surrender after a long siege.

Kut is the capital of Wasit province, an area about the size of New Jersey (17 153 km²). Wasit province has a 1997 Census population of 780 000. There are no reliable figures for the population of the city, but an examination of the excellent Google Earth image shows an area for the city of about 17 square kilometers, which suggests a population of perhaps 150 000.

Green Zone Shelling Shows Green Zone is like New Orleans

"Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times," it says. "Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons."

"Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration," the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment "is mandatory for all outside movements."

"We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers," it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy's temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.

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The US has been occupying Baghdad for five years and the people in the Green Zone are sleeping in trailers? In a malaria and sporadic shelling zone? And what to they mean by a "limited" supply of cots? It sounds like they actually don't have room for everyone to sleep in hardened areas. If true, that is really, really bad. It can lead to fights between personnel for hardened space in an environment where there are guns all over the place.

And like New Orleans, there are ugly class and race conflicts in the Green Zone. I would bet that hard space isn't going to the contract laborers they bring in from India. By the way, a lot of those guys have military experience. But don't worry, there's no way they could ever find a gun- they're in the middle of Baghdad!

Note to the planners of the next war. When you are planning the headquarters of the occupation authority, don't try to referbish those nifty palaces and things downtown. You don't want to be within mortar range of several million people you might not always control. Think big office park near the airport next time.

Tall Tale Unmasked by Unrealistic Price

We know it must be true, because both corporate and Iranian state media say the same thing. This man is an alleged Iraqi spy who funded a sinister "junket" by three members of Congress. From Iran's Press TV:

'Saddam paid for Congressmen trip'
Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:48:47

Saddam was hanged for crimes against Iraqi people on Dec. 30, 2006

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency had secretly financed a trip to Iraq by US lawmakers before the US invasion, federal prosecutors say.

An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime.

Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange for coordinating the trip, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott, David Bonior and Mike Thompson.

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.

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Did you see the ridiculous pricing error? The expense in setting this up was "2 million barrels of oil", or about $50-$80 million at the low oil prices which existed before the US invasion of Iraq. This is such a preposterous amount of money to spend on a lobbyist that it is clear that this "evidence" is being made up by somebody who doesn't even know how much a gallon of gas costs. Could this mean that Bush himself writes the propaganda? And does this mean he doesn't even know how much three members of Congress cost?

Do the Lawyer Dance!

Clinton Campaign Collapsing Into More and More Nastiness

Just the thing for Easter- Hillary adviser James Carville compares the Bill Richardson endorsement of Obama to Judas's betrayal of Jesus!

"An act of betrayal," said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton. "Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic," Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

Meanwhile, Bill is repeating Republican talking points that Obama is not patriotic enough, which to many voters means not white enough, to be President, and Howard Wolfson claims that isn't really what Bill said because of what the meaning of the word "is" is...

MSNBC is reporting that on the campaign trail today in Charlotte, North Carolina, the former president said a general election matchup between his wife, Sen. Clinton, and Sen. John McCain would be between "two people who love this country" without "all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

It's difficult to determine exactly what Clinton meant by this. Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said the former president was not implying that Obama didn't love America. As for "this other stuff," that Clinton referred to? He was talking about "the politics of personal destruction," said Wolfson. "He was lamenting that these kind of distractions 'always seems to intrude' on our politics."

Not everyone had the same interpretation. MSNBC, for example, was quick to suggest that the former president was implying there were doubts about Obama's patriotism, and that those doubts would play a role in the general election. Which seems, on its face, hardly a stretch.

It appears that the Hillary campaign, facing delegate numbers which would require a higher average margin of victory in remaining states than Hillary got in any state but Arkansas, are going to destroy the reputation of the whole DLC wing of the party to tear down the likely nominee.

Khalilzad for President of Afghanistan?!?

The February 4, 2008, issue of Newsweek had a weird article in it claiming that Zalmay Khalilzad is seriously considering a 2009 run for the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The piece is dripping with irony:

U.S. and British officials have grown increasingly disenchanted with Karzai, who is now viewed as isolated in Kabul and surrounded by corrupt or incompetent ministers. Things are not much better next door in Pakistan, where militant Islamist groups have grown bolder and the embattled Musharraf is under pressure to step down. Like Karzai, Musharraf has begun lashing out publicly against what he sees as Western interference.

Khalilzad had a successful stint as U.S. ambassador to Kabul after the Taliban fell, helping to form the Karzai government and working with then Maj. Gen. David Barno, commander of U.S. forces, to pacify the country. He also served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq and was one of the principal drafters of a 1992 "grand strategy" for U.S. global dominance that became known as the "Pentagon paper." Even so, in a 2005 interview with NEWSWEEK, Khalilzad said that one thing he had learned during his term in Afghanistan was that its people "don't want to be ruled by a foreigner."

Worst Figure of Speech Ever

From an article about the $1 million missing from Republican Congressional campaign funds:

"The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they'd take it off the shelf," said retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), who chaired the NRCC for four years earlier this decade.

I am stunned that an actual Republican member of Congress has actually compared his own party to the 2007 contaminated pet food disaster, which was estimated to have led to the deaths of approximately 40,000 cats and dogs in the United States and Canada.

Head of US Central Command Out After a Year

The New York Times reports that Admiral William Fallon, the US military commander in charge of US Central Command, an area including much of the Middle East, Central Asia, and eastern Africa, has resigned after only a year on the job. The great part is that the piece in the NYT suggests that it is because of comments made by Fallon to al-Jazeera which only became a problem months later when they appeared in Esquire. Apparently the Bush Administration doesn't monitor what its appointees say to al-Jazeera:

Officials said the last straw, however, came in an article in Esquire magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a respected military analyst, that profiled Admiral Fallon under the headline, “The Man Between War and Peace.” The article highlighted comments Admiral Fallon made to the Arab television station al-Jazeera last fall, in which he said that a “constant drumbeat of conflict” from Washington that was directed at Iran and Iraq was “not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

$3400 an Hour For a Hooker Won't Buy You Security

Amazingly, there are people out there who when running a $3400 an hour escort service are so nonchalant about security that they posted photos of the actual women on their freaking website.

"Maya", a "seven diamond" ho, the Emperors' Club's highest rating, actually used the same blurb on another escort service's website as "Maya Kate" which has the full photo above unike the Emperor's Club, which disturbingly crops all its photos about halfway up the face. I don't think she's that hot. There's a pattern to all these pictures- they're all kind of skinny, they're trying to look like they're in their early to mid twenties, and they all are slightly mean-looking- Marilyn Monroe couldn't work for a high-end escort service, apparently- she was THIRTY-FIVE at the time of the "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" incident. The blurb:

Beauty, sex appeal, style and grace...Maya

Maya has won multiple international beauty contest as the
prestigious Miss Hawaiian Tropic, Miss Top Model, Miss Photogenic
and more...She has traveled the world on media tour as a top
feature entertainer. In two short years, Maya has ascended from
Professional Modal, to Hawaiian Tropic Model, to international fame.
She has conquered the fashion and entertainment industry while
achieving stardom status around the World.

A THIRD site actually places her in Las Vegas.

5'8" Tall
115 Pounds
34C-24-34
Eye color - Blue
Hair color - Blonde
Age - 23
Phone Number - 702-374-5053

Maya Has graced the covers and pages in most major men's magazines and mainstream publications, including Playboy, Hustler, Swank, Taboo, Gallery, Club, Club International and many others. At this moment a star was born. Maya has also been special guest featured on numerous televisions, films and radio show including the E! Channel, Playboy TV, Playboy radio, Howard Stern show and many Award Show. Maya's available in Hollywood, CA.

A fourth site claims she's just $1500 an hour- hardly a "seven diamond" rate. Better shop around.

Countrywide Financial Stock- Dropping to Zero?

Massive mortgage bank Countrywide Financial is in a criminal investigation regarding whether it has concealed the extent of its losses. In such a situation, it is quite possible that the company's stock price will drop to effectively zero when the markets open on Monday, as happened to Enron on November 28, 2001. In 2006, Countrywide financed approximately 17% of the mortgages in the United States.

They are also being sued by the Illinois Attorney General's Office, which claims the company charged blank and Latino borrowers higher interest rates.

http://www.247wallst.com/2008/03/fbi-goes-after.html

FBI Goes After Management Thugs At Countrywide (CFC), Bank Of America Deal May Be Troubled

The FBI is looking into whether Countrywide (NYSE: CFC) committed securities fraud by making false statements about the mortgage bank's financial position.

The Wall Street Journal writes that a "potential issue facing the company is whether it has been candid in its accounting for losses. People familiar with the matter said that Countrywide's losses may be several times greater than it has disclosed."

Aside from the potential civil and criminal issues at stake, the investigation could scuttle the planned buy-out of Countrywide by Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) It is not clear whether the mortgage company can survive as an independent entity if the big money center bank walks away. Clearly if auditors and the government determine that CFC losses are much greater than represented, it might drive the firm into insolvency.

The Bank of America deal is probably the only avenue for Countrywide shareholders to get any money for their shares. The company's stock has dropped from a 52-week high of $42.24 to just above $5 which is not much above its 52-week low.

The disclosure of the FBI probe is likely to push shares lower. If new, significant losses have to be reported, the price may well go to zero.

Physicist Elected to Congress

Physicist Bill Foster was elected in a special election to Congress in the 14th District of Illinois. In a bizarre form of torture which only our political system could have devised, his term ends at the end of the year and the district will have to vote again for Congress in November. Both party nominees are running again.

In the Chicago suburbs at the eastern end of the district, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is (until later this year) the world's largest proton-antiproton collider. The machine, which is over a mile in diameter and shown in an image from Mr. Foster's website below, is on spectacular grounds including a prairie restoration project and a buffalo research station. It is headquartered in Wilson Hall, shown above. Mr. Foster was involved in the building of giant particle detectors shown below.

The picture below of CDF ot Fermilab doesn't do a good job of showing how impressively huge it is. The detector is about six stories high- when you walk out on the catwalk over it and look down inside, there is miles and miles of wiring and thousands of boxes of electronics in cabinets.

The proton decay experiment is shown with a diver, which gives an idea of the size of the tank. This experiment was built in a salt mine near Cleveland where thousands of feet of rock could shield the experiment from nearly all exterior sources of radiation. A flash from a proton decay in the tank would be picked up by the array of photomultiplier tubes in the background and the experiment electronics would pinpoint the location of the decay and find information about the energy and decay products. They didn't see any proton decays, but the detector also detects neutrinos, particles which have almost no interaction with normal matter and so can pass through the entire Earth. Out of trillions of neutrinos passing through it from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, in 1987, the detector recorded 13 events in the only detection of an astronomical neutrino source other than the Sun.

You've got to wonder- after working in this environment, which looks like a facility a James Bond villain would have, isn't Congress kind of a step down?

From campaign website:

Over the last 25 years Bill has played a leading role in several groundbreaking experiments in elementary particle physics. He also managed several multimillion dollar accelerator construction and research projects, and led teams of engineers and physicists to help build the latest round of Fermilab's giant particle accelerators. Along the way he has designed and built equipment using a number of advanced technologies, including high speed electronics, superconducting magnets, analog and digital integrated circuit design, and high power electronics. Bill has received several awards for these technical developments.

Science at Fermilab The bottom of the picture is a computer-generated display of the Top Quark using software that Bill Foster wrote in about 1990.

The IMB Proton Decay Detector

In 1979, Bill joined the IMB (Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven) collaboration as one of the key members who designed, built and conducted research. The IMB detector was a 60-foot cube of ultra-pure water constructed in a salt mine underneath Lake Erie. The water was surrounded by 2000 light-sensitive phototubes, designed to detect proton decay. The experiment became famous for the observation of the neutrino burst emitted by a nearby Supernova (exploding star).

A diver takes a swim in the IMB detector.

CDF - The Collider Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron

In 1984, Bill moved to Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois and join one of the largest and most exciting experiments in the world. The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) is the first and largest detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, the world's highest energy particle accelerator. The goal of the experiment was to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles. Bill designed and built significant parts of the original equipment, and Bill and his equipment participated in the discovery of the Top Quark, the heaviest known form of matter.

The Collider Detector at Fermilab, being rolled out of the collision hall after the discovery of the Top Quark. Bill was responsible for a good part of the electronics and cables in this picture

Bill's Integrated Circuit Designs

In the early 1990's Bill led the team that designed a new type of integrated circuit (computer chip) that allowed particle physics collisions to be measured with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Bill's design is still being used at high energy physics experiments being built today.

Photograph of one of Bill's integrated circuits. The silicon "chip" is about 2mm (3/32nd of an inch) in size and contains many thousands of transistors. A typical particle physics experiment will use thousands of these specialized chips.

Bill and Fermilab's Particle Accelerators

In 1994 Bill began working on Fermilab's giant particle accelerators. During this time he managed several multi-million dollar accelerator construction and research projects. Bill was the co-inventor of Fermilab's Recycler Ring, the newest of Fermilab's giant machines. Each time Femilab's machines operate, the particle beams go through over 500 magnets that Bill designed and led the teams that built them.

Bill's Antiproton Recycler Ring is located in one of Fermilab's long circular tunnels. The Fermilab High-rise is at left.		The inside of the 2-mile long tunnel. Bill's Recycler magnets are the green objects at top.

Read More:

What is Fermilab? http://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/whatis/index.html

What is Particle Physics? http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/matter/index.html

Physics at Fermilab: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/physics/index.html

Fermilab's Chain of Accelerators: http://www-bd.fnal.gov/public/index.html

The CDF experiment: http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/physics.html

The Particle Adventure: an interactive tour of quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators and particle detectors:
http://particleadventure.org/index.html

FARC "Dirty Bomb" Claim Is Worst Bullshit Ever

The Colombian government is claiming they fired at a FARC camp inside Ecuador from inside Colombia, that none of their people entered Ecuador, and that they recovered a laptop from the destroyed camp. Apparently they used a two-kilometer long thingy to pick it up.

They claim FARC was trying to build a "dirty bomb" out of uranium. Uranium is barely radioactive. People handle heavy bricks of it (painted to prevent direct contact) with their bare hands. In fact, typical soils contain a few parts per million of uranium, which means there are a few grams of it in a ton of bricks. We haven't had to evacuate all areas around brick walls because of it.

The supposed "documents" also claim FARC was buying uranium at 2.5 million dollars a kilo. A quick Internet search shows that the price on commodities markets for uranium oxide ("yellowcake") is $76 per kilo. The writers couldn't even get that right.

However, the mainstream media doesn't seem to be running headlines saying "Colombian Government Is Totally Full of Shit." Apparently making such a basic judgment wouldn't be "fair". Why bother having a media at all if they can't point out such obvious lies?

Somali Tribal Elders Demand Cows From Hillary

It appears that the flap over the silly picture of Obama in a Somali outfit has spread to Kenya, with Somali tribal elders demanding that Hillary apologize for the affront to the Somali nation and make a compensation payment in cows. Didn't anyone think that insulting a Muslim ethnic group could potentially weaken the image of the United States in the Muslim world? Or is this just a case of some staffer thinking that was less important than the awesome task of insuring that the wrong person does not become the Great Leader:

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL29354901.html

Clinton faces Kenya cattle fine over Obama photo

Fri 29 Feb 2008, 16:24 GMT

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(Recasts, adds details, quotes)

By Daniel Wallis

NAIROBI, Feb 29 (Reuters) - Kenyan elders may impose a fine on U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, payable in livestock, after a photo of her rival Barack Obama in robes dragged their people into the race for the White House.

The picture, which appeared on a U.S. Web site, showed the Illinois senator in a white headdress and traditional Somali attire during a 2006 visit to Wajir in Kenya's remote northeast.

Obama has battled a whispering campaign by fringe elements who wrongly say he is Muslim and his aides accused Clinton's campaign of "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering" after the photograph was published.

Wajir elders resolved to file an official complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, dropping earlier plans to hold a protest after Friday prayers.

They said they would also convene a traditional Somali court to investigate the matter. It can impose fines that are payable in cattle, goats or camels.

"We will go ahead with this case whether Senator Clinton or Democratic party leaders turn up or not," said Mohamed Ibrahim, a member of the clan that hosted Obama during his trip. "But this whole thing can be avoided if only an apology is made."

The late father of the Democratic frontrunner was from western Kenya.

Many in the east African country support Obama the way the Irish idolised U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s -- as one of their own who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

"The clan he was with have every right to be offended," said Hussein Ali, a 32-year-old unemployed man outside the main Jamia Mosque in the capital Nairobi.

"Obama's enemies are trying to portray him as a terrorist, saying all Muslims, and especially Somalis, are dangerous men."

MOLLIFIED LOCALS

Clinton's campaign denies authorising the release of the controversial photo but says that, with 700 staffers, it could not be certain someone had not sent it out unofficially.

That has not mollified locals in Wajir, a small desert town near the Somali border, who demanded Clinton "clear her name".

Other Kenyans questioned the timing of the picture's publication, days before make-or-break votes in Ohio and Texas next week.

For many Americans, Somalia conjures up disturbing images of dead U.S. troops being dragged through Mogadishu's dusty streets during the "Black Hawk Down" battle of 1993.

The U.S. military launched air strikes on the Horn of Africa country last year in its hunt for al Qaeda, including suspects wanted over the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1988.

"We suspect the intent behind releasing this picture now, just before Tuesday's very critical vote," said Omar Jamal, head of the St Paul, Minnesota-based Somali Justice Advocacy Centre.

His lobby group, which works with Somali immigrants in the United States, has also demanded an apology from Clinton's camp.

"They are trying to make a link between a man who could be the next U.S. president and a country with al Qaeda terrorist activities. They're trying to tell citizens, look who you might be voting for," he told Reuters by telephone.

"Everyone is very upset. It's outrageous and undermining." (Additional reporting by Noor Ali in Isiolo; Editing by Robert Woodward)