even the Israeli Pirates are in for the kill since 1969 as shadow care takers of Somalia - just saying in case you didn't know!

Annelise Anderson Abstract The mafia is a major feature of Russia's experience in making the transition to a market economy. This article inquires into the nature and origin of this phenomenon. The evidence suggests that the Russian mafia phenomenon is a direct outgrowth of the informal economy and related corruption that was a significant part of the economy of the Soviet Union. Economists have usually concluded that the informal economy improved efficiency and consumer satisfaction in the Soviet economy. As aspects of this informal economy have developed into mafia activity, it has become less benign and is a possible threat to the success of the market economy in Russia because it threatens to defeat competition and thus the major benefit of a market economy. In Lazear, Edward P., ed.Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia: Realities of Reform. Stanford, Calif: The Hoover Institution Press, 1995. Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Introduction This chapter inquires into the mafia phenomenon in Russia to evaluate its potential for threatening the success of economic reform. The first section considers the term mafia in popular parlance and in the economic literature. The second section looks at the conditions historically associated with the development of mafias. The third section addresses the underground economy in the latter years of the Soviet Union as the framework from which the current Russian mafia, the subject of the fourth section, developed. The claim that Russia's problems with crime are merely an early stage of capitalism is addressed in the fifth section. A final section considers public policy approaches. Mafias and Organized Crime Economists are uncomfortable with the term mafia, preferring to talk and theorize about organized crime and the criminal firm. The resulting speculations or models are sometimes intended to characterize the entities known to the public and the press as mafia organizations. At other times they are more general, intending to cover all organizations engaged in criminal activity, with the assumption that mafia organizations fall in this more general category. The term mafia arose in Italy around 1865 to characterize some powerful Sicilians or Sicilian families engaged in violent and criminal activity who also achieved considerable control of local economic activity. (The term encompasses similar activity by Neapolitan and Calabrian organizations.) In the United States the term was adopted to describe organized criminal groups engaged initially in gambling and loan-sharking and later, during Prohibition, in illegal liquor traffic. As early as the 1970s in the Soviet Union mafia described the combination of underground economic enterprises and the officials involved with those underground enterprises as protectors and beneficiaries. Today it is used to describe a wide range of criminal activity in Russia. In Italy and the United States mafia has a more specific meaning than is implied by organized crime, even though the two are often considered to be synonymous. Many crimes are undertaken by gangs or groups with some division of labor, a hierarchical structure, and a distribution of the spoils. (Even small criminal groups, such as a gang that robs banks, have some organizational structure: someone drives the getaway car and someone else rides shotgun; positions in the structure may be vacant and need to be filled.) A gang that robs banks, however, is not a mafia, nor is a terrorist group, despite its use of violence. Neither organization nor violence associated with criminal activity is sufficient to define a mafia. The term mafia is more often associated with illegal market enterprises providing drugs, illegal liquor, or gambling. These are usually ongoing enterprises in which arrangements and agreements that are not legal contracts are made among participants. To go beyond personal relationships in which deals are completed at face-to-face meetings, participants may need a larger organizational structure to enforce agreements among members of the group and outsiders and to punish or redress violations thereof. Indeed, the successful groups in such enterprises may be those who succeed in establishing such organizational structures. Such structures may greatly increase the size of the deals they can undertake, expand the scope of their market (the distance over which they can do business and the number with whom they can deal), and entail the use of violence or the threat of violence. An organization able to enforce agreements and punish violators is also likely to decide which agreements it will enforce. It may come to control entry into various lines of criminal activity and the behavior (at least to some extent) of those who come under its protection. Thus a characteristic of a mafia is that it performs governmental functionsÄlaw enforcement and criminal justice -- in spheres where the legal judicial system refuses to exercise power or is unable to do so. Another characteristic of mafias is their influence in the legal law enforcement and criminal justice systems. Leaders of the mafia may succeed in bribing individuals anywhere in the criminal justice system - police, courts, corrections. Cases may be dismissed, juries bribed, sentences reduced, parole lifted. The mafia may agree in some cases to use its powers on behalf of others who are not generally under its protection. Thus a characteristic of a mafia is that it performs governmental functions -- law enforcement and criminal justice -- in spheres where the legal judicial system refuses to exercise power or is unable to do so. T.C. Schelling of Harvard University, perhaps the first economist to address the mafia phenomenon analytically, defines organized crime as "large-scale continuing firms with the internal organization of a large enterprise, and with a conscious effort to control the market" (1967, 115). Schelling considers the suppression of rivals, possibly in collusion with the police, one of the basic skills of organized criminal groups and argues that their basic business is extortion from the criminal enterprises that actually supply illegal goods and services to the public (Schelling 1971). Economist William Jennings agrees that organized crime is carried out for profit by groups but rejects monopoly as its defining characteristic. Instead, he says that "organized crime is distinguished from other group-based crime by the degree to which organized crime employs resources to insure that its members do not aid the police" by requiring oaths of loyalty and silence (Jennings 1984, 317). Jennings developed a model that incorporates profitability and the costs of administering and enforcing oaths of noncooperation with the police, given probabilities of apprehension and conviction, to predict what kinds of crime will be undertaken by organized criminal groups. From the model he predicts that mafias will avoid offenses such as shoplifting, where direct observation is the basis of apprehension, and specialize in activities where oaths are of greater relative advantage. Becker and Stigler (1974,4) suggest another reason mafias are found in ongoing illegal markets: "It is difficult to bribe or even intimidate the enforcers who would be involved in a nonrepetitive violation." In Jennings's model the cost of enforcing the oath of noncooperation with the police is a function of the probability of arrest and of time in jail, but the cost is also a function of the authorities' efforts to develop informants among the criminal group and the vulnerability of members to such efforts. One cost of enforcing noncooperation is punishing violators of the oath; in the American and Sicilian mafias the punishment is death. There are also the costs of preventing cooperation by offering, in return for taking the oath, the benefits of membership in the organization: the opportunity to participate in profitable businesses and financial aid and the influence the group leaders wield over the criminal justice system for those arrested. The groups that fulfill Jennings's definition of organized crime, including specifically the American and Italian mafias, have one other characteristic: they devote resources not only to ensuring that members do not cooperate with the police but also to corrupting the legal and regulatory authorities. It is this last characteristic --the corruption of legitimate government authority -- that warrants the term mafia in popular parlance around the world, and it is in this sense that the term was first used in the Soviet Union. A mafia, then, is a group that is characterized by profit-oriented criminal activity, that uses violence or the threat of violence, that expends resources to discourage cooperation of its members with the police, and that corrupts legitimate governmental authority. When legitimate governmental authority becomes corrupted, the government may lose, if it ever had, the power to protect citizens and legitimate businesses from criminal activity. For example, theft and fencing become more attractive than other crimes when those who fence stolen goods are not prosecuted. But worse, the subversion of the criminal justice system allows the mafia to run protection rackets, that is, to extract payments from, control entry into, and mandate conditions of operation of legitimate business enterprises. Under these circumstances the mafia uses its influence in the criminal justice system to perform activities comparable to the taxing and regulating powers of legitimate government. The corruption of the government may extend beyond the criminal justice system to other regulatory agencies or agencies that award contracts or grants.

Duriyada ****** is so desperate they will grab even xuunbo (foam)...The butcher Siilaanyo will follow his delusions of grandeur. Sxb Khaatumo State of The Federal Republic of Somalia way duushay ee ka naxoow nafta waa.

Somaliland's dream of int'l recognition is gone! Khaatumo State shot it down. You can see by the immature and desperate attempts by the butcher - Siilanyo to stifle free press following the Taleh Conference. Khaatumo was the name of the conference held in Lasanod in 19960 that paved the way for Somali Republic's Independence. We are in turbulent times but Somali patriots will win in the end.

A lot of bull shit.

by JamalH Many Westerners are still living in fool’s paradise, buying the apologist’s soft-sold idea that Wahhabism is a minority view of the Islamic world. The reality indicates that the situation is just the other way around. The proliferation of Wahhabistic philosophy is so widespread all across the globe that it can hardly be considered an aberration. From Pakistan to Qatar, from Bangladesh to Afghanistan, the common belief system among Muslim masses is very close to Wahhabite ideology. Ironically, this was not quite so in the yester years. Thirty-five years ago, before the oil boom made the Arabian Peninsula into an economic giant, Arab countries did not have any political leverage on Muslims dwelling in the countries of South Asia–countries whose populations constitute the majority of the people of the Islamic world. Islam was the religion of Mughal emperors, who ruled India for two hundred years. The Mughals were not keen on imposing Sha’ria law in the kingdom. If Islam in its pure form is intolerant and anti-pluralistic, the Islam practiced under Mughal raj was far from this characteristic. The same was true in Indonesia, Malaysia, and even in Afghanistan only a few decades ago. In this regard, I can give an analogy. It is as if a poisonous snake went into hibernation during all these years. The Seventh Century’s Islam did not have tentacles long enough to control and purify all the localized and “impure” versions of the religion prevalent among non-Arab Muslims spread all around the world. There was Sufism in the Indian subcontinent–a brand of Islam which was perceived as nothing but heresy by the Wahhabists. Then, there was “Europeanized” Islam in the Balkans and former Soviet Union–a version of Islam which evolved into a highly liberalized brand, deviating from the puritanical form of Islam. After liquid gold was discovered in Saudi Arabia and after the Westerners made the Arabs rich overnight, the imperialistic ambition of Arab Islamists evolved in a very short time. During the course of this development, the Westerners kept a blind eye to Arab imperialism because, to many Western strategists, export of Arab Islamic imperialism was an antidote to the spread of Communism. Thus, the sleeping snake woke up and the world changed forever. I would like to emphasize that the philosophical war is a crucial factor in present-day global political discourse. Winning the war is not merely a PR exigency; the need to convince the constituencies is no less important. A political-regime change, even if a peaceful transformation, could turn out to be hostile to freedom and constitutional democracy. Islamic apologists of our time would say, to be true to the spirit of democracy (popular elections and majority rule), every one should adhere to the people’s wishes expressed at the polls, even if the voters choose the Islamists to govern the country. Their argument would be, if people give a mandate to rule to victors with a theocratic agenda, we should all support pursuit of that agenda. That is the reason why many are critical of U.S.A.’s role in Iraq, where they are apprehensive about Uncle Sam’s intentions, as regards possibility of an election victory for the theocrats. Today, if anyone wants to analyze the political philosophy of Islamist parties in any Third World Muslim majority country, what will he or she encounter? Almost one hundred percent Islamist parties follow almost one hundred percent the dictums of Wahhabism. The present situation in Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province in Pakistan should be an eye opener. Through peaceful means at the polls, the Pakistani people expressed their wishes. They vowed to turn these regions into a Wahhabite utopia. Step-by-step, these provinces are veering to the direction of Afghan- istan under the Taliban. In Bangladesh, there is hardly any Islamic political group which is propagating anything other than the need to establish and maintain a Sha’ria-based society. Moreover, their organizational bases are being strengthened as the days go by. Although many Muslim countries are not fully theocratic, the family law being practiced in most of these nations is either Islamic law or Sha’ria-based law. In essence, Sha’ria already has a foothold in most of the Muslim societies of the world. Even in a country like Malaysia, a divorcing Muslim woman has to face all the hurdles of Islamic jurisprudence. It is only a matter of time when the process of Islamization (read Wahhabization) in all the Muslim countries will be completed. The philosophy of Wahhabism is nothing but the theology and ideology of Islam in its original form–the form of Islam which continued until the rein of the Four Caliphs. The present trend on the global Islamic scene is like reverting to the roots of Islam. In addition to transforming Islamic politics through the electoral process, Wahhabism has started to dominate most of the Muslim insurgencies. Once upon a time, secular nationalists led the Kashmiri independence movement. Today, this is more or less a Wahhabite movement. We notice a parallel situation in Chechnya as well. It goes without saying that the anti-Soviet armed struggle in the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan was conducted by different factions of Wahhabite groups under the guise of freedom fighters, or Mujahedins. Adding to the list would be all the jihadist Palestinian militant organizations determined to wipe Israel off the face of our earth, following the dictum of Holy Scripture from which the Wahhabites draw inspiration. Many American academicians dealing with the subject of Wahhabism do not have any clue as to what is going on in the Islamic world these days. They are probably living in a fool’s paradise. In America, all the socalled mainstream Islamic organizations are soft on Wahhabism. In America, almost all the mosques are run by Wahhabite Imams, who receive constant infusions of petrodollars from abroad, and, along with this money, they receive instructions as to what to say during khutba on Sabbath day prayer. It goes without saying that, in America, the backers of Wahhabism enhanced many prestigious academic institutions’ funds. That helped to form a low-key Wahhabite lobby in U.S. academia. It is crystal clear that present-day Islam in most parts of the world, including the U.S.A. reflects pure Wahhabism. In short, there is only one face of Islam, which is visible everywhere and which resembles the old-face of Islam, or Wahhabism. The sooner we understand this plain truth, the better it will be it for mankind.

To hell with wahhabism! It spoils islam and destroys humanity. But by the force of their petro-dollars and in the shadow of the US foreign policy they can spread this fascist ideology all over the world. The western media have been ringing the alarm about the wahhabization of Somalia since 1993, it is become self fulfilling prophecy. The wahhabis create enemies for the US army to fight, sadly in all the backward countries like Somalia. Countries like Turkey do not tolerate Wahhabism even killed some of the founders of Wahhabism. It is member of Nato! While Somalis wallow in hunger and stone age mentality like Wahhabism.

Pornography in Somaliland. Now thats sad. I mean the flag and everything. He should have looked for Somalis in overseas like Minneapolis.

SNM and ONFL are both scum bags. They killed and maimed their own. Now SNM is trying to force Awdal/ Maakhir/ SSC to leave rest of Somalia through bribery and blackmail.

One clan is trying to force Awdal/Maakhir/SSC to leave rest of Somalia. These are indeed very selfish clanists. What if these regions opt to stay with rest of Somalia? How long can bribe / blackmail succeed? No afti, no charter, I mean nothing!

He is visiting his boys in Somalia. Somalia is overtaken by foreigners. The shabab leadership and ideas are foreign to Somalia, so are the AU mercenaries. Somalis could have solved their differences if not for the endless foreign meddling and inventions. All roads lead to Somalia: piracy & terrorism. Billions are spent on these security concerns. Somalia will be occupied by Al shabab and foreign AU mercenaries for a long time to justify fight against piracy & terrorism. Somalis will remain refugees and disgruntled 2nd class citizens in foreign lands. Some will fall prey to police who might target them because of the piracy & terrorism issues.

^^^ Asha ,in her interview, spoke for her voiceless constituency. She blamed the man in charge and not his subordinates. I hope parliamentarian Asha is safe and unharmed in these exchanges .. ((

The BBC also interviewed Atom. Horseed Media were doing its job of informing the public. Somali radio stations will not able to compete with VOA or BBC for fair reporting on the ground if intimidation continues.

Dr Faroole is turning out to be a petty and quarrelsome leader. Instead of focusing on macro things and big picture he is stuck in mediocrity. He wants to turn Puntland into police state and capitalize on security issues while Silanyo laughes at him having just won a "democratic" vote by the people. Puntland has bigger issues to tackle. He does not need to prove too hard to his donors, although Puntland can be self-sufficient given the right leadership. He needs to prioritize things and restore credibility by resolving the piracy off Puntland's coast and Sool.

UK blocks sanctions against suspected Somali pirates By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website Legal problems are still hindering the effort to deal with Somali pirates. SPS Victoria and pirate skiff The SPS Victoria fired warning shots to prevent the pirates fleeing It's emerged that the British government is blocking a move at the UN to take action against two suspected pirate organisers. This is despite tough British language condemning pirates and the paying of ransom, and its contribution of warships to the anti-pirate operation run by the EU, known as EU Navfor. The EU operation has itself been reduced to near farce in the last week, with a Spanish ship having to send pirates back to Somalia, after catching them red-handed, because the problems of prosecuting them are too great. A look first at the British position. The Foreign Office in London confirmed a story in the Financial Times that the UK is blocking an American proposal to add the names of two alleged pirate leaders to a UN sanctions list. Continue reading the main story Sanctioning Pirates * A UN sanctions committee can add names to its list under Security Council resolution 1844 * The assets of people on the list are frozen and they are subjected to a travel ban * No actual alleged pirates have been listed so far The British action, known as a technical hold, was taken back in April and has not been lifted. The reason, I am told, is that the paying of ransom is not a criminal offence in the UK. This has made it possible for ransom to be paid for dozens of ships and their crews, and many of the negotiations go through London. But, the argument is, if the suspected pirate leaders, named by the Foreign Office as Abshir Abdillahi and Mohamed Abdi Garaad (with numerous variants) are put on the UN sanctions list, then ransom in effect becomes an offence in the UK and might put an end to many ransom deals. Doing business According to British officials Abdillahi and Garaad are "high-profile pirate leaders involved in hijacks in the Gulf of Aden". Indeed, they are alleged to be so influential that almost all ransoms are said to involve them in some way. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote In the 19th Century the problem would have been dealt with in somewhat shorter order†End Quote Britain has applied the technical hold because it is under pressure from ship-owners and seafarers who prefer the present system. This system is basically one of doing business, not waging war. The ship is taken, negotiations take place, the money is paid and the ship and its crew are released. For example, on 29 July the Maltese-flagged merchant vessel MV Frigia was freed with its crew of 21. It had been hijacked on 23 March. It is presumed that money changed hands. Gavin Simmons of the London Chamber of Shipping told the FT: "To discontinue payments or make them illegal would jeopardise the safety of seafarers held captive." This is something of an embarrassment to the British government. Foreign Office officials told me it was being discussed "at the highest level" and something might develop "in the next few months". Warning shots But even the at-sea operations against the pirates are still bedevilled by inhibitions caused by the law. Pirates surrendering to crew of SPS Victoria The pirates were arrested, and weapons were found on the skiff Early on the morning of 3 August, the Spanish ship SPS Victoria responded to a distress call from the MV Bow Saga, a Norwegian chemical tanker, that she was under attack in the Gulf of Aden. The Bow Saga reported that a pirate skiff with seven people on board had shot at the bridge, damaging the windows. The ship carried out evasive manoeuvring and deployed fire hoses. The Victoria already had a helicopter airborne and was able to respond within 10 minutes. The pirates broke off and tried to flee but the Victoria fired warning shots, first from the helicopter and then from the warship and the pirates stopped. Weapons were found on the skiff. However, EU Navfor has now reported: "The seven individuals apprehended have been returned to Somalia." It stated that "due to the legal framework and timeliness encompassing piracy and criminal activity at sea, the prosecution of the seven individuals in this specific case could not be initiated with confidence." That encapsulates the problem. Pirates caught in the act cannot easily be prosecuted and in this case were simply sent back home. Kenya has taken about 100 pirate suspects and has imprisoned about 20 of them. But Kenya is now threatening to withdraw its co-operation, saying that it is not being given enough support. Both examples show how far the international community is from solving a problem that in the 19th Century would have been dealt with in somewhat shorter order.