Talk:Mau Mau rebellion/Archive 1

message: This article is getting rather unwieldy. To help sort this out can I suggest that a dependent article on the Detention Camps is created, as per the guidelines Wikipedia:Summary style, and the article reverts to the one someone has recommended below - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mau_Mau_Uprising&oldid=106465905 which, like most Wikipedia articles, could be improved.  For those interested in the Mau Mau Uprisings the anthropologist Louis Leakey (LSB Leakey) is a primary source.  He wrote two books on the Mau Mau: Mau Mau and the Kikuyu, (Methuen, 1952) and Defeating Mau Mau (Methuen, 1954).  Leakey was a native Kikuyu speaker, a member of the Mukanda Kikuyu age group and an intitiated first-grade elder (Muthuri wa mburi imwe). ixo (talk) 11:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  2011: Suggest Dependent Article created on Detention Camps 

message: I am working on a major revamp of this article to bring it up to Wikipedia standards. If you can help please feel free to do so. Thanks!  ScottPAnderson (talk) 12:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You say "Kenya Emergency (1952)" is the official name of the conflict - according to whom? The search term "Mau Mau Uprising" gives 721,000 Google hits, while "Kenya Emergency" gives 25,000 mostly unrelated hits. So it would seem the original title might be more appropriate. . . Galloping Moses (talk) 08:18, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Galloping Moses, the name is fully attributed (Two sources. I could get more if necessary). The page move & title is based on the official name for the conflict - not the name as it appears on search engine (of which many hits are simply regurgitation of previous Wikipedia content). "Mau Mau uprising" pushes a pro colonial viewpoint. "Kenya Emergency" is neutral.ScottPAnderson (talk) 09:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Scott, if you feel this article should be renamed, please make a requested move. That said,  I strongly doubt your proposal will get any support (and you probably feel the same) Julius Sahara (talk) 08:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: @Julius Sahara, I disagree because you have not given substantive reasons for insisting on the term "Mau Mau Uprising". The informal name is taken care of via a redirect. I could add a note saying "The conflict is referred to by some as an Uprising, Rebellion or revolt. Would that help? ScottPAnderson (talk) 09:31, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

text: PS: I dont see your point in stating "and you probably feel the same". Let's keep it civil Julius. It's not a contest. ScottPAnderson (talk) 09:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  2010: Cleanup and Revamp

message: If this article was on the Jewish Holocaust, its author would be the Nazis.
Just goes to show how relying on Wikipedia for history on developing countries will yield some laughable results. If you start by calling people fighting against an invading force that steals their land and herds them in a concentration camp as "rebels" then you have to be part of the government.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Popq (talk • contribs) 17:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure; thanks for noting the one-sidedness of the coverage, and feel free to add material to balance it, if you have the time; we should seek a neutral point of view, of course.  Articles rarely start off perfectly balanced -- it doesn't (necessarily) mean the authors-so-far have deliberately and nefariously been trying to paint a one-sided picture; we should assume good faith. — Matt 17:44, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: No, I'm afraid it shouldn't. I don't know a great deal about the Mau Mau, but I have heard at least two POVs, both the "dead-goat-humping savages" line and the "noble, righteous, freedom-fighters" epithet. (Both may be true as far as I know!) However, Wikipedia -- as I'm sure you're aware -- is NPOV. This means that we must document all the different major points of view on the Mau Mau, even if we disagree with them or find them repugnant. You've noted that this article fails to document one POV, and I agree; let's try and fix it. However, it would be a mistake to blank it and start again, as you suggest; there's a lot of useful factual information here, for a start, and even biased material is useful in the sense that it documents a point of view. We just need to reword it for neutrality. — Matt 00:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: I have removed the npov marker and requested that this page be moved to Mau Mau Uprising. BanyanTree 20:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on early drafts 

message: (from WP:RM)
===Mau Mau → Mau Mau Uprising===
* The article, even from its initial stub, stated "The Mau Mau Rebellion", and has been revised and edited as an article about the revolt rather than a participant in the revolt.    For over a year the article has begun "The Mau Mau Uprising was" without anyone removing the boldface from "Uprising".    The article is clearly on the wrong page.  (Mau Mau Uprising is currently a redirect to the Mau Mau page, which describes the Uprising.)  Cheers, BanyanTree 23:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Page move

message: * The article, even from its initial stub, stated "The Mau Mau Rebellion", and has been revised and edited as an article about the revolt rather than a participant in the revolt.    For over a year the article has begun "The Mau Mau Uprising was" without anyone removing the boldface from "Uprising".    The article is clearly on the wrong page.  (Mau Mau Uprising is currently a redirect to the Mau Mau page, which describes the Uprising.)  Cheers, BanyanTree 23:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Mau Mau]] &#8594; [[Mau Mau Uprising]]

message: The Economist highlights these two books that discuss this conflict: 
* Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire By David Anderson ISBN: 0393059863
* Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of the End of Empire in Kenya By Caroline Elkins ISBN: 0805076530
--Confuzion 21:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added them into an References section in the article. BanyanTree 01:13, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  This article appeared on the Internet the other day.  gathima 19:00, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: This is a wiki.  If you have information that should be added, then you should be the one to add it.  I look forward to your contributions. - BanyanTree 01:56, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible good references

message: I know I thanked you on your talk page a long time ago, but I recently crossed this article again, Banyan, and impressed by how far it's come -- head and shoulders above the previous, racist crap.  Thanks again.  Well done. :-D deeceevoice 11:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're totally right.  Maybe someday the British empire will collapse and Kenya will become independent.  Hey, wait a minute... - BanyanTree 00:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Thanks again

message: I highly recommend the book "Something of Value" by Robert Ruark (1955). It is a fabulously written novel which paints the Mau Mau Uprising exactly as it was; a response of a variety of different interest groups to colonisation. It is neither here nor there; the book demonstrates clear understanding of the situation from someone who, clearly, experienced the events themselves. It is a novel, but is so rich that it feels perfectly true. 203.173.151.51 09:36, 13 December 2005
An article in the Guardian by George Monbiot (The Turks haven't learned the British way of denying past atrocities) compares the way the Turkish government deals with its past with the way the British deal with their past genocides. Quote:
: Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise—some of them violently—against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder—more than a million—were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.” British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.” The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black.” Elkins’s evidence suggests that more than 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.
But the average British subject has no idea that such atrocities ever happened, while in Turkey everybody knows what has happened to the Armenians. —Babelfisch 08:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. This article needs to be expanded dramatically. Every American knows about the My Lai Massacre. How many in the UK know about the Hola Massacre? And that's just one example of British atrocity in Kenya. --Cultural Freedom talk 09:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional Reading 

message: " Mau Mau " is an adverbial phrase in the Kikuyu language meaning "to eat ravenously, 
like a hyena". It was the name of a gang of Kikuyu thugs who terrorised the Kiambu
area in about 1890.
:Do you have a good reference for this?  Many people have added alternate etymologies, but nobody seems to be able to add a citation so nothing can be confirmed. - BT 19:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I googled two dictionaries that might fit this description.  I don't suppose that you still have access to the dictionary and can provide the ISBN?  I'm quite willing to start putting refs or demanding refs for each of the bulleted etymologies. - BT 13:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Credibility of source material is important. Early british publications on colonial matters contained a lot of misinformation and were unabashedly racist. The publications are no longer considered by scholars as "sources" worth citing. Let us focus on neutral source material that reflects progress made in society to date.  DrJenkinsPhd (talk) 16:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of Phrase 

message: Obviously this issue creates great passion, but a more obviously NPOV needs to be regained. The use of Elkins and Anderson is commendable, so long as it is understood that their research is not from a NPOV. The use of words such as "concentration camp" as a description of a detention camp is not neutral. Dismissing the atavistic elements of mau mau practice as preposterous is not neutral either. This whole article needs to be be re-worked and a lot more firm historical referencing done.Pabailie 15:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. The camps in which the Kikuyu were interned perfectly fit the definition of "concentration camp". There is no point in avoiding the phrase simply because it has negative connotations GreatGodOm 09:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Maintaining NPOV does not mean resorting to euphemisms. 'Concentration camp' is a historically apt description.24.184.136.137 02:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Precisely. There is an attempt to sanitise this and describe anybody who does not accept the myths of the British maintaining "law and order" as not being neutral. The irony of British people trying to rule a place in another continent and then wondering why people cannot have a NPOV about the racist assumptions and superiority complex that underpins that rule over indigenous people (What would the British do if they were forced to live under a racist occupying régime?). That's before we get to the British torture chambers and the self-declared British "gestapo" who beat, persecuted and abused in every imaginable sense the unfortunately coloured people they had arrested - and we wont mention the euphemistically named British "emergency villages" where tens of thousands of non-whites, definitely non-whites, were concentrated and detained contrary to all international law at that time. The British rightwing have got away with this "white man's burden" ahistorical nonsense for far too long. Elkins and Anderson have done admirable jobs in exposing the lies. Dunlavin Green (talk) 02:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tendentious tone 

message: The figure of 60 government casualty figures is so obviously wrong that I have removed it. The figures are well known and available from a host of sources. 
The oathing practices of the Mau Mau are widely attested from many sources as well, although those sources tend to be pro-government. Nevertheless, the section on oathing is very weak and needs revising.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pabailie (talk • contribs) 13:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If they are so well known, why don't you add them with a source? It's a wiki, after all. - BanyanTree 15:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Hello Pabailie, I think I'm the culprit for the removal. If you have reliable sources of the losses, by all means, don't be afraid to put them, but please mention the source (or the sources, if you have more than one), also putting the number of the page if it's a book. As for Elkins' figures, if you've got sources criticizing the numbers, lke a book review, you can also add it in the proper section that discusses the casualties, but always remember to source, per WP:V.--Aldux 20:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Speaking of casualties, does anyone else find it amusing that the number of rebel dead is sourced to a report from the "Government of Kenya, 1960", pre-independence, which is obviously the colonial administration? - BanyanTree 09:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I corrected the misrepresentation of the criticism of Elkins work. The reference for what some wikipedia editor called "considerable criticism" was two letters written by the same person to the letters page of literary journals. I left "considerable" in but pointed out that it was a single letter writer who made the referenced "considerable criticism". 86.42.119.12 (talk) 01:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualty figures 

message: John Blacker reckons that the excess death toll is approx. 50, 000. I've added a reference to that effect. The figure from the Corfield report is inadequate even on its own terms; it does not include deaths in detention camps, nor the 1,090 executions during the Emergency.
The use of fortifed villages in the article is weasel wording. Elkins and others rightly distingush the punitive camps which were, quite simply, large prisons, from the emergency villages into which the Kikuyu civilian population was herded. The emergency villages were often new settlements, purpose-built for detention and supervision. The confinement of the Kikuyu civilian population in these villages restricted their access to farmland and clean water, which led to massive malnutrition. Elkins points this out, and Blacker's figures suggest that most of the victims were children. If, as the wikipedia article on concentration camps says, a concentration camp is a 'large detention center created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic [my emphasis] or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war', the Emergency villages were concentration camps.
      You do realize that Elkins is a biased partisan, and cannot be treated as a neutral source?
      
      ::Really? Where is the proof that Elkins is biased? Thanks. ScottPAnderson (talk) 15:56, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties and Camps. 

message: The article just mentioned British atrocities. I felt this was betraying a NPOV so I also added some stuff about Mau Mau atrocities. Led125
Someone has added some stuff on the retaliation for the Lari Massacre. Please add that elesewhere. It has nothing to do with MAU MAU atrocities. (Add it in BRITISH atrocities).
It is important to note that the British atrocities were unsanctioned acts by individual solders or settlers, who may have had a personal grudge against the mau mau (e.g. a buddy being killed) and commited their acts completely of their own accord. In fact, the brass had issued stern warnings to the soldiers about this, and the U.K. cannot be held responsible for these people's actions.
Hi,
I take it you undid my edit of the Lari massacre. 
I reverted your edit for the following reasons: the second Lari massacre is directly relevant to the first, since it was a direct response to it; since the second massacre was an immediate reaction to the first, the events are best explained and understood by considering them together (most books handle them together, see Anderson 2005, for example); finally, because the paragraph as, it read , implied that the total number of casualties of the massacre was 120 (the official figure -released by the colonial administration- was 74; admittedly this could be wrong). Readers of wikipedia will presumably realise that the second Lari massacre was not a Mau Mau atrocity, since it is explicitly stated to be the work of colonial forces. 
I note that you did not transfer the material on the second Lari massacre to 'British Atrocities', so it is easy to wonder if you meant it to disappear altogether.
Hythlodayeus 00:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Atrocities

message: I altered some stuff on the article, and a person essentially undid it, completely ignoring why I had made the changes. The virtual undo was made on the basis of a one line explanation of POV - yet none of the changes I made are substantial with that respect. I merely cite scholarly sources like historians Mark Curtis, Caroline Elkins and David Anderson. The person has also completely ignored my reasons for making one particular change, an important one, namely the removal of the Pumwani 'shallow graves' in the section on Mau Mau atrocities. The reason for my removing that, as I thought was perfectly clear from my comment when I made the edit, was becuase on the cited page of Anderson's book, p.185, THERE IS NO MENTION OF SHALLOW GRAVES WHATSOEVER. I didn't simply correct the page number because when I went to the index to look up all mentions of Pumwani, ON NONE OF THE PAGES REFERENCED WITH RESPECT TO PUMWANI WAS ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER. According to the index of Anderson's book, Pumwani gets a mention on pages 39, 220 and 352; ON NONE OF THESE PAGES IS THERE ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER OF SHALLOW GRAVES. Maybe it is somewhere else in the book, perhaps someone can find the correct page. For the moment, as far as I am concerned, the quote has just been made up. The person has also changed back some things only to introduce grammatical errors. I just can't see what's going on here: I've made no controversial changes, merely made the text less disjointed to read, and added some new citations from Mark Curtis, Caroline Elkins and David Anderson - all respected historians. I'm going to undo the undo, please can someone explain what I am supposed to have done wrong.
Regards, User: 217.43.43.145 11:15, 10 October 2007
I removed the picture for the movie The Oath, since it was the wrong one, of a 2005 movie about the war in Chechnya by Khassan Baiev. Couldnt find any accurate picture. Scratchy  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.253.62.253 (talk) 19:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent changes and rewrite

message: This was at the top of the article page but makes more sense here. Lisiate (talk) 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Personal recollection

message: The image :Image:IanHenderson 1964.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check
:* That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
:* That this article is linked to from the image description page.
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --22:54, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Image copyright problem with Image:IanHenderson 1964.jpg

message: Didn't the Luo also take part? They're not mentioned at all at present. Badagnani (talk) 06:10, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania |Luo]] 

message: The London Telephraph  is reporting that President Barack Obama is returning the bust of Winston Churchill, in part because his grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, was alledgely tortured during the Mau Mau uprising.  Is that worthy to be incorporated or noteable enough?StreamingRadioGuide (talk) 06:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You might want to go back and re-read that article, because you have completely misunderstood it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Southernbelle08 (talk • contribs) 00:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hussein Onyango Obama was tortured? 

message: I'm going to move the long etymology section to the end of the article. People who come hear to read about the uprising want to know what happened first - the origins of the word are secondary.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ackees (talk • contribs) 13:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology must move 

message: When I read about wales and other European nations they talk about the Welch people, the Welch Nation, etc. When it comes to Africa you hear about tribes. The Youruba Tribe, not you have 100 Million poeple in this group so why are they tribes? The people in Kenya are ethnic groups. not tribes.--196.207.35.246 (talk) 12:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Stop using tribe

message: I don’t know if this has already been discussed, but the use of the word "insurgency" for Kenya revolutionaries gives the content of this article a rather dogmatic appeal. Considering the historical context of European colonialism, I don't believe whether a revolt of the colonized against European civil authority was legitimate or not is matter of fact, and using such a word for description does not aide in the article's factual objectivity.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdmjames (talk • contribs) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connotation and Denotation 

message: User:ScottPAnderson has changed the numbers of involved persons very substantially, without changing the citation. He has also changed the tone (with terms like 'freedom fighter' and 'heroic', which aren't NPOV). The large scale nature of the changes to the article make it hard to discuss. I am going to revert again, please introduce new changes slowly, one at a time, after providing sources. Saying 'Kenya Natl Archives' in an edit summary is not good enough, other editors need to be able to check them. Thanks. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 13:02, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Noted Squiddy. I will look into this. Most of the complaints appear to be for the earlier edit. Give me a few days to verify the details. DrJenkinsPhd (talk) 15:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Dr J, if you are going to be working on this article, you might as well start from the last version before Scott came and put in lots of uncited, POV stuff. I've reverted. Oh, and what I said to him is good general advice - change it a bit at a time, citing sources as you go. Making a large number of edits through the article in one go (or in a short space of time) doesn't allow other editors to collaborate. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 22:19, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Squiddy, Please call me Dr. Jenkins thank you. Kindly be tolerant of other views and stop vandalising the page. Just because you say something doesn't make it the absolute truth. We can do this by consensus - not force.DrJenkinsPhd (talk) 22:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I still have issue with the huge changes in figures based on a single source.  While casualty estimates may vary, troop numbers should be on record, and should not waver between either 10000 or 50000. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 14:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  revert war 

message: I have move protected the article for a week due to the move war that has occurred today. Per WP:PROTECT, this does not constitute an endorsement of the current title. Black Kite (t) (c) 16:38, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Move protected

message: The whole History of Kenya reads like colonial propaganda. Example, the Mau Mau section: "A key watershed came from 1952 to 1956, during the "Mau Mau Uprising", a terrorist movement directed principally against the colonial government and the European settlers."  
:I just want to highlight this because there is more here than meets the eye. Some of those calling for "academic rigor" have been editors of the said article page and have done NOTHING to date to fix this clear violation. 
:I see this as strong evidence of pro-colonial sympathies heightening the possibility that the content deletions and unconstructive edits on this topic have a purpose - to advance a pro-colonial POV.
:Rather than offer inline rebuttals or constructive improvements, the editors quickly delete/undo valid material that they dont agree with and replace it with their preference. There is no chance of a balanced and well argued article to develop largely because the apparent "consensus" will be skewed by design! 
:In this case the Numbers are working against Wikipedia (pro-colonial POV will always be majority) and all culture balancing efforts within the scope of wikipedia:wikiAfrica/wikipdia:wikiKenya will fail due to blanket application of the very same assumptions, policies and rules that perpetuate the wikipedia:systemic bias problem.
:I dont know yet what can be done - but something needs to be done urgently. I feel like am wasting time here and Wikipedia's intention to balance the cultural outlook appears to be only half-hearted. Existing in rhetoric but lacking the implementation will. Thank you.
ScottPAnderson (talk) 21:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Some of those calling for "academic rigor" have been editors of the said article page and have done NOTHING to date to fix this clear violation.' Care to say who explicitly, Scott? Surely not me - anyone can quickly check my contribution history (I've not made that many edits) to verify I've NEVER edited the article in question, let alone added the term 'terrorist' to it (indeed, I've never even LOOKED at the article before!!!). Pretty desperate stuff now, Scott. Sh33pl0re (talk) 22:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

text: I really think that it's important to focus on one article at a time. Am planning to get over here as soon as possible to have a look at the edit history, the article, and the sources to determine what's what, but simply can't get to that task immediately. Remember, Wikipedia doesn't have a deadline. The talk page is to discuss issues. This too will get sorted out. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't worry, Scott. I'm young and healthy, so I'll be ready to expose your transparent agenda and naked falsifications whenever you show up again. This article will remain permanently on my watchlist. You're the first person I've ever met on Wikipedia who actually tells outright lies—viz.that encyclopaedia entry—so you've achieved something today.Sh33pl0re (talk) 22:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evidence of Systemic bias. e.g. unchallenged "Terrorist" POV violation in "[[History of Kenya]]" 

message: Please add the ISBNs to the book references, and if possible add convenience links. Please post here, if there are questions how to do so. Once done, I'll check the sources. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 12:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source verification 

message: Currently, this article doesn't describe what occurred during the "uprising" or the "war".  It has a Leading up to the Uprising section, and a "Reaction to the Uprising" section.   There is almost no mention of warfare, just reference to British reactions to it, and to atrocities.  Where in the country was the guerilla campaign kicked off, where was it strongest, what strategy did each side use as violence intensified?   Where the insurgents organized by a central command or locally?  How many loyalists fought against the Mau Mau? Where there other organized or impromptue militan Kenyan groups? Compared to the Algerian War, this article comes up way short. 
"At no other time or place in the British empire was capital punishment meted out so liberally—the total is more than double the number executed by the French in Algeria"
This claim is not true, unless it refers solely to officially recorded executions in the 20th century.   Ireland 1798 and India 1857 are two obvious examples.  I see this is one of the few facts sourced, but that doesn't mean it wasn't stated accurately. 
Just a few observations. The first half of the article is superb, minus the lack of citations.  Just from 1952-1960 it seemed to be sorely lacking, IMO.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Phi O'Byrne (talk • contribs) 21:44, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the British destroyed all factual evidence of their Nazi Holocaust-like activities before they left Kenya. The efforts to distort the truth and paint Mau Mau as the "bad guys" are humongous. Sources cited are 100% pro colonial. Independent sources like Elkins are quickly trashed by overzealous british neo-colonialists.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.212.14.26 (talk) 16:44, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uprising 

message: During the 1954-60 Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, camps were established to hold suspected rebels. It is unclear how many were held but estimates range up to 1.5 million - or practically the entire Kikuyu population. Between 130,000 and 300,000 are thought to have died as a result.[citation needed] Maltreatment is said to have included torture and summary executions. In addition as many as a million members of the Kikuyu tribe were subjected to ethnic cleansing. (Sources: . R. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990 page 180; C. Elkins,"Detention, Rehabilitation & the Destruction of Kikuyu Society" in Mau Mau and Nationhood, Editors Odhiambo and Lonsdale, Oxford 2003 pages 205-7; C. Elkins, "Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End Of Empire In Kenya", 2005).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.215.58.231 (talk) 17:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concentration camps during the British "Mau Mau" fake terrorism / false flag operations 

message: This article is a long rant against the British throwing accusation after damnation, all the while praising the mau mau as saints/freedom fighters/heroes. The mau mau mutilated, raped, murdered, tortured and maimed untold thousands. 
The article is massively reliant on a handful of hugely controversial books, the worst of which I see is Caroline Elkins, a much maligned and heavily criticised author of muck slinging anti-British sentiment.
Compare the article as it stands with that of 2 years ago. 
HERE: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mau_Mau_Uprising&oldid=106465905
It used to be a reasonably clear and balanced attempt at explaining the conflict.
It is clear that the article was long since subjected to sustained sabotage and has become the disastrous, and near incomprehensible mess that it now is. This is a disgrace. 
As it is so far gone, any attempt to clean it up will be met with auto revisions. I suggest massive help is needed to save this article ASAP.
87.112.23.249 (talk) 00:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Appalling mau mau promoting Nonsense

message: This article is in dire need of a full rewrite. It reads like the mau mau were freedom fighting democrats. But not only this, the article is near unreadable.
This is unacceptable. 
The Elkins book is cited by this article some 17 times and used as a holy spring of 'facts', despite the vast disagreement from historians to the majority of the claims in the book.
Many of the Elkins 'facts' were utterly demolished in 2007 by the demographer John Blacker, in the Journal of African Affairs. Which you can see here (to get the full text download the PDF file at the bottom):
http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/106/423/205.abstract
A damningly critical account of the apparent agenda of the Elkins book, which is cited by this article some 17 times, is by the Kenyan historian Bethwell Ogot (himself very critical of the British) in  Journal of African History 46, 2005, page 502. 
He says that the Mau Mau fighters:
Contrary to African customs and values, assaulted old people, women and children. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man’s inhumanity to man there is no race distinction. The Africans were practising it on themselves. There was no reason and no restraint on both sides, although Elkins sees no atrocities on the part of Mau Mau.
Where is the balance in this article? It is an atrocity.
Gaius Octavius Princeps (talk) 20:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Woefully poor standard and Caroline Elkins

message: Can we agree that the Elkins study, an expansion around her PhD thesis, is good for the detention camps? Blacker's criticism pertains only to her assertion that up to 300,000 people died—a criticism which is agreed to be correct by all relevant experts—and others have criticised her use of survivor testimony. HOWEVER, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water: whole chapters of the book are built around the historical record of our detention camps. I've not seen any decent criticisms of her account of the Pipeline or the 'dilution' method, for example, both of which are solidly built on archival documents and interviews with the people responsible for them. Anyway, unless I hear otherwise, I'm happy to use the sections of her book dealing with the camps and screening and which rely on the historical record. Iloveandrea (talk) 16:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: CAROLINE ELKINS' BOOK

message: Not that I can prove this, but here is some correspondence with Prof. Anderson:<BLOCKQUOTE>Chiefs were given quotas for Carrier Corp recruitment, and powers to enforce recruitment by coercion.  Those holding a labour ticket as farm employees were exempt from such forced recruitment.<P>The second statement is more obscure, I will concede, as I think I've implicitly assumed a few things as being established.  Carrier Corp mortality was very high,. and over the longer run it is generally agreed that it had a negative impact upon African labour recruitment for other knids of wage employment through until at least 1923.<P>Farm labour at this time included some who were engaged only a waged labourers, but these weere a very small number, and they were generally only employed seasonally. The vast majority of those holding a farm labour ticket were in fact 'squatters', who were resident on the farm permanently and who took their reward in kind (use of land and (pasture, housing, etc) and not as a wage.<P>The impact of Carrier Corp death rates thus put a brake on recruitment of wage laboutr into govt employment, but it did not have a negative impact on squatter contracts.</BLOCKQUOTE>He was replying to my question regarding something I'd read in Masters, Servants and Magistrates:<BLOCKQUOTE>Dear Professor Anderson,
Just a very quick e-mail.
Was reading something of yours in Masters, Servants and Magistrates and was confused about something therein.
On page 505 I read, "Only those employed by Europeans were exempt from [forced] recruitment [e.g. for the detested Carrier Corps]... As a direct consequence, recruitment of farm workers increased markedly during the war"; however, on page 514 you write, "the high mortality of labor recruited for service in the Carrier Corps during the 1914-18 war... did little to encourage Africans into waged employment."
Where does my misunderstanding lay?</BLOCKQUOTE>Anyway, you will see from the article in due course that I have incorporated his explanation and clarification into the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iloveandrea (talk • contribs) 20:03, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conscription and waged labour 

message: In the same section there is a clear case of bias:
:"At Lari, on the night of March 25–26, 1953, Mau Mau forces herded 120 Kikuyu into huts and set fire to them, killing any who attempted to escape"
then the next sentence says
:"Kikuyu were also tortured, mutilated and murdered by Mau Mau in large numbers"
So those at Lari were not murdered but killed? Also "After the discovery of the Lari massacre (between 10 pm and dawn that night), colonial security services retaliated on Kikyu suspected of being Mau Mau. These were shot, and later denied burial. ... Thirty-two British civilians were murdered by Mau Mau militants." It is inevitable that most of the primary sources of that time will talk about the killing of Mau Mau and their supporters and the murder of British civilians and their supporters. But there is a bias in this article that is reflecting those primary sources. I would suggest that all references to murder are replaced with killed. We could go the other way and replace all killings with murder, but clearly some killings will have been lawful and so not murder under the law, and so it will be easier to use killed in place of murder to remove the systemic but unintentional racist bias in the article. -- PBS (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Systemic racist bias 

message: The link to Enough Is Enough points to a disambiguation page. Said page does not have an entry for the film mentioned in the link.
95.149.91.98 (talk) 08:49, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with Enough Is Enough film link 

message: Hi - I moved this from the article its all uncited. IMO its trivia and such a lot of it demeans the focus of the article. I wouldn't replace it but if anyone thinks its valuable then feel free to cite it and replace it. Off2riorob (talk) 17:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  uncited trivia 

message: Is quoted here as if she were the only person to have any say on the matter. She is quoted here some twenty-five times despite being called "highly sensationalist", having a "pro-mau mau bias" and "not letting the facts in the way of a rant" by her peers. Not a universally acknowledged authority in any way, quite the opposite, how about some balance and less elkins reliance?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.169.29 (talk) 05:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see my previous observations above, 35.1 CAROLINE ELKINS' BOOK. Iloveandrea (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Elkins

message: Sort of surprised there is no mention of the use of "mau mau" as a verb, meaning to terrorize or menace. Is this a result of the Mau Mau Uprising or the later American Gang?  I definitely feel this is part of legacy of the group and is a part of the definition in Wikitionary. Stardude82 (talk) 19:51, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Mau Mau" in vernacular American English 

message: As a serviceman I was told by a couple of hard bitten vetrens who'd fought in the Mau Mau campaign that the leaders of the Mau Mau were officially known as "Leopard Men" who specialised in atrocities.
There was also an official award of 15 pounds sterling awarded to any British trooper bringing in the head of a known Mau Mau Man.AT Kunene (talk) 09:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leopard Men and rewards 

message: The return of the bust of Winston Churchill may well have a simpler explanation. Roosevelt frequently referred to Churchill as "that drunken bum" with his delusions of Britain as a major partner in WW2.
Churchill must have been an acute embarassment to Roosevelt and to others in post war years. Some forty years after Churchills death, now is the time to be rid of an embarassing reminder.AT Kunene (talk) 09:59, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Winston Churchill 

message: Uploading documents to scribd and linking to them is almost never acceptable. First off, scribd is not a reliable source: we have no assurance that the uploader did not modify the document prior to uploading. Second, most valid reference material on scribd is uploaded in violation of copyright. In particular, two reports linked are clearly marked Crown Copyright, 1925 and 1934 respectively. If you read the article on Crown Copyright, you will find that while they may be protected for as few as 50 years, depending on circumstance they could be protected for as long as 70 years after the death of the last contributor. The burden of showing that these particular documents are in the public domain falls on the editor wanting to link to them, and the link needs to be to a reliable site, not scribd. Yworo (talk) 16:25, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linking to scridb.com 

message: Include a section on Mau Mau dress. And photos. There are no photos. In the Southern United States, Mau Mau Halloween costumes are on sale.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.58.161.37 (talk) 13:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dress