Biixi walaal You write: "Amy GoodMan and company always find ways to link everything that goes wrong on this planet on the US" Can you find any current international crisis in which the US is not involved directly or indirectly? You write: "If I didn't know any better I would've believed that they are responsible for a genocide that never happenned,Iyo wixii la mid ah. " If the recent merciless bombardment of Ethiopian Tanks on civilians flooding Hospitals in Mogadishu was not a genocide, then what is? knowing all too well that the footages were televised live to the point that the Norwegian UN official said that a crime against humanity may have been committed by the US and Ethiopia in Somalia, and an inquiry should be made, where do you get your news to refute that? Nur

Chaos by Design An "Islamic Civil War" By M. SHAHID ALAM The war that Western powers--primarily US, Israel and Britain--began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001, is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for 'changing the map of the Middle East' have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed 'the war against terror,' the imperialist war against the Middle East was fueled primarily by US and Israeli ambitions. Britain's participation is mostly a sideshow. US and Israel have convergent aims in the region. The US seeks to deepen its control over the region's oil. Israel wants to create regional conditions that will allow it to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As a first step, both objectives would be served by removing four regimes--in Iran, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan--that still resisted US and Israeli ambitions in the region. Once these regimes had been removed, the US and Israel would carry the war into Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to dismember them into smaller, weaker client states. Iraq and Afghanistan were chosen as the first targets--the easy points of entry into the war. They had been ravaged by years of war, weakened by internal divisions, and, in the case of Iraq, hollowed out by sanctions. It was believed that occupation would be easy. With friendly regimes in power, the US could start working on regime change in Iran and Syria. Occupation was indeed a cake walk. But little else has been easy. The Sunni-led insurgency that began within weeks of the fall of Baghdad has succeeded in derailing US efforts to stabilize Iraq. Indeed, as Iraq has moved closer to a civil war over the past few months, pressures within the US are mounting for an American pull out. In Afghanistan too, after a period of initial stability, a Taliban resurgence--operating from liberated areas in neighboring Pakistan--now threatens NATO forces through much of eastern and southern Afghanistan. In the meanwhile, the US-led war against the region has changed the map of the Middle East, but in unsettling ways. Not only has Iran gained deep influence over Iraq and Afghanistan, it can leverage this influence to raise steeply the cost of the US occupation in both countries. In the meanwhile, with help from Russia and China, Iran has built a military capability that can threaten US clients on the Arabian peninsula, shut off the Hormuz Straits to shipping, and launch missiles that can reach Israel. In addition, last summer, Hizbullah demonstrated a new form of guerilla war--with low-tech rockets, anti-tank weapons, and sophisticated intelligence gathering--that neutralized a determined Israeli offensive. The Iraq Study Group has described the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating," and recommended a quick drawdown of US forces. It is unlikely that the President will take that advice. Instead, the US, Israel and Britain have for some time been working on an alternative plan when it appeared that their initial plans were being derailed. The US, Israel and Britain are now working to incite a civil war between Sunnis and Shias across the Middle East. As Jonathan Cook puts it, taking a leaf from Israeli experience in the West Bank and Gaza, they expect to create "controlled chaos" in the entire Islamic world. The battle lines in this civil war have been drawn. The principal American-Israeli surrogates in this 'Islamic civil war' showed their colors last July when Israel launched devastating air attacks against Lebanese civilian targets in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Almost instantly, Cairo, Riyadh and Amman condemned the Hizbullah action. On the opposite side there is the crescent of resurgent Shia power stretching from Lebanon, through Syria and Iraq, into Iran. During his recent meetings with Israeli leaders and Sunni Arab potentates, according to a headline in NY Times, British prime minister Tony Blair was working to lay the groundwork for an "alliance against extremism." His plan is to erect an 'arc of moderation' against the Shia Crescent, with Iran as the principal "strategic threat" to Western imperial ambitions. Iraq is already the theater of this 'Islamic civil war.' Last July, one of the aims of the Israeli destruction of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure was to spread this sectarian war to Lebanon. That gambit failed miserably. Now Saudi Arabia is threatening to expand its support for Sunni insurgents in Iraq and destabililize Iran by raising its oil production. More ominously, some of its Wahhabi clerical allies are trying to rouse both Arab fears of Persian domination and Sunni concerns about the ascendancy of the 'heretical' Shias. The determining factor in this war will be the Sunni populations under the thumbs of the Arab potentates. It is doubtful if the anti-Persian and anti-Shia rhetoric of the Arab potentates will succeed in swinging them around to support governments they have long hated, especially now as their alliance with Israel becomes overt. There is also the risk that in fuelling the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Saudis will strengthen al-Qaida and their allies who are sworn to bring down the US-friendly Arab potentates. Moreover, if there is a real war in the region, the pseudo Arab states in the Gulf have no fighting ability they can bring to this conflict. In that event, does the US have the forces to occupy Iraq and also defend its Arab clients in the Gulf? Paraphrasing prime minister Tony Blair, the NY Times writes, " the fate of the Middle East, ''for good or ill,'' would be felt around the world." It is unlikely that adding an 'Islamic civil war' to the dynamics of the region will work for the 'good' of the US, Israel or Britain.

Somali: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism By NICOLA NASSER The U.S. foreign policy blundering has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the U.S. vital regional interests. The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28 is closely interlinked in motivation, methods, goals and results to the U.S. bogged down regional blunders in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan as well as in Iran and Afghanistan, but mainly in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Mogadishu is the third Arab metropolitan after Jerusalem and Baghdad to fall to the U.S. imperial drive, either directly or indirectly through Israeli, Ethiopian or other proxies, and the fourth if the temporary Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982 is remembered; the U.S. endeavor to redraw the map of the Middle East is reminiscent of the British-French Sykes-Pico colonial dismembering of the region and is similarly certain to give rise to grassroots Pan-Arab rejection and awaking with the Pan-Islamic unifying force as a major component. The U.S. blunder in Somalia could not be more humiliating to Somalis: Washington has delegated to its Ethiopian ally, Mogadishu's historical national enemy, the mission of restoring the rule of law and order to the same country Addis Ababa has incessantly sought to dismember and disintegrate and singled Ethiopia out as the only neighboring country to contribute the backbone of the U.S.-suggested and U.N.-adopted multinational foreign force for Somalia after the Ethiopian invasion, thus setting the stage for a wide-spread insurgency and creating a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism. The U.S. manipulation is there for all to see; a new U.S.-led anti-Arab and anti-Muslim regional alliance is already in the working and not only in the making; the U.S.-allied Ethiopian invaders have already taken over Somalia after the withdrawal of the forces of the United Islamic Courts (UIC), who rejected an offer of amnesty in return for surrendering their arms and refused unconditional dialogue with the invaders; the withdrawal of the UIC forces from urban centers reminds one of the disappearance of the Iraqi army and the Taliban government in Afghanistan and warns of a similar aftermath in Somalia in a similar shift of military strategy into guerilla tactics. The UIC leaders who went underground are promising guerilla and urban warfare; "terrorist" tactics are their expected major weapon and American targets are linked to the Ethiopian invasion. It doesn't need much speculation to conclude that the Bush Administration's policy in the Horn of Africa is threatening American lives as well as the regional stability. According to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "Because the United States has accused Somalia of harboring al-Qaeda suspects, the Ethiopian-Eritrean proxy conflict increases the opportunities for terrorist infiltration of the Horn and East Africa and for ignition of a larger regional conflict," in which the United States would be deeply embroiled. Eritrea accused the United States on Monday of being behind the war in Somalia. "This war is between the Americans and the Somali people," Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters. The U.S administration found no harm in keeping the divided country an easy prey for the warlords and tribal bloody disputes since 1991, probably finding in that status quo another guarantee-by-default for U.S. regional interests. It could have lived forever with the political chaos and humanitarian tragedy in one of the world's poorest countries were it not for the emergence of the indigenous grassroots UIC, who provided some social security and order under a semblance of a central government that made some progress towards unifying the country. Pre-empting intensive Arab, Muslim and European mediation efforts between the UIC and the transitional government, Washington moved quickly to clinch the UN Security Council resolution 1725 on Dec. 6, recognizing the Baidoa government organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies and dominated by the warlords as the legitimate authority in Somalia after sending Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to Addis Ababa in November for talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on bailing out the besieged transitional government by coordinating an Ethiopian military intervention. Resolution 1725 also urged that all member states, "in particular those in the region," to refrain from interference in Somalia, but hardly the ink of the resolution dried than Washington was violating it by providing training, intelligence and consultation to at least 8,000 Ethiopian troops who rushed into Baidoa and its vicinity before the major Ethiopian invasion, a fact that was repeatedly denied by both Washington and Addis Ababa but confirmed by independent sources. To contain the repercussions, Washington is in vain trying to distance itself from the Ethiopian invasion; U.S. officials have repeatedly denied using Ethiopia as a proxy in Somalia. Moreover it is trying to play down the invasion itself: "The State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements," read a copy of the guidelines obtained by The New York Times. Mission Accomplished? "Mission Accomplished," Addis Ababa's Daily Monitor announced when the Ethiopian forces blitzed into Mogadishu, heralding a new U.S. regional alliance at the southern approaches to the oil-rich Arab heartland in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; in 2003, the same phrase adorned a banner behind President Gearge W. Bush as he declared an end to major combat operations in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. All facts on the ground indicate that the U.S. mission in Somalia won't be less a failure than that in Iraq, or less misleading. The U.S. foreign policy has sown the seeds of a new national and regional violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, the heart of what western strategists call the Middle East, by succeeding in Somalia in what it failed to achieve in Lebanon a few months ago: Washington was able to prevent the United Nations (UN) from imposing a ceasefire until the Ethiopian invasion seized Mogadishu; the Lebanese resistance and national unity prevented the Israeli invaders from availing themselves of the same U.S. green light to achieve their goals in Beirut. In both cases, Washington involved the UN as a fig leaf to cover the Israeli and Ethiopian invasions, repeating the Iraq scenario, and in both cases initiated military intervention to abort mediation efforts and national dialogue to solve internal conflicts peacefully. In Somalia as in Iraq, Washington is also trying to delegate the mission of installing a pro-U.S. regime whose leaders were carried in on the invading tanks to a multinational force in which the neighboring countries are not represented, only to be called upon later not to interfere in Somalia's internal affairs, as it is the case with Iran, Syria in particular vis-à-vis the U.S.-occupied Iraq. The Bush administration has expressed understanding for the security concerns that prompted Ethiopia to intervene in Somalia. So once again U.S. pretexts of Washington's declared world war on terror were used to justify the Ethiopian invasion as a preventive war in self-defense, only to create exactly the counterproductive environment that would certainly exacerbate violence and expand a national dispute into a wider regional conflict. Real Security Concerns of Ethiopia Regionally, the U.S. pretexts used by Addis Ababa to justify its invasion could thinly veil the land locked Ethiopia's historical and strategic aspiration for an outlet on the Red Sea by using the Somali land as the only available approach to its goal after the independence of Eritrea deprived it of the sea port of Assab. Agreed upon peaceful arrangements with Somalia and Eritrea is the only other option that would grant Ethiopia access to sea - whether to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Bab el Mandeb or the Arabian Sea, and through these sea lanes to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This option is pre-empted by the empirical dreams of Greater Ethiopia that tempted the successive regimes of Emperor Hailie Selassie, the military Marxist rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the incumbent U.S.-backed oppressive regime of Meles Zinawi, which were deluded by the military means of the only country with a semblance of a nation state and a military might in a regional neighborhood disintegrated into the poorest communities of the world by tribal strife left over by the British, French and Italian western colonialist powers; hence the Ethiopian wars with Eritrea and Somalia. The Eritrean fear of an Ethiopian invasion of Assab via Somalia is realistic and legitimate, given the facts that Ethiopia's borders are, like Israel's, still not demarcated, its yearning for an access to sea as a strategic goal is still valid and its military option to achieve this goal is still not dropped because of the virtual state of war that still governs its relations with both Somalia and Eritrea. Hence the reports about the Eritrean intervention in Somalia, denied by Asmara, and the regional and international warnings against the possible development of the Ethiopian invasion into a wider regional conflict that could also involve Djibouti and Kenya. Internally in Ethiopia, the successive regimes since Hailie Selassie were dealing with the demographic structure of the country as a top state secret and incessantly floating the misleading image of Ethiopia as the Christian nation it has been for hundreds of years, but hardly veiling the independent confirmation that at least half of the population are now Muslims, a fact that is not represented in the structure of the ruling elite but also a fact that explains the oppressive policies of the incumbent U.S.-backed regime. Here lies the realistic fears of the Ethiopian ruling elites from the emergence of a unified Somalia and the impetus it would give to the ****** National Liberation Front, which represents the 1.5 million Muslim tribesmen of Somali origin who inhabit the 200,000-square-kilometer desert region occupied by Addis Ababa and led to the 1977-88 war between the two countries and remains a festering hotbed of bilateral friction. A united independent Somalia and a liberated or revolting ****** would inevitably deprive Ethiopia of its desert corridor to the coast and have at least adverse effects on/or imbalance altogether the internal status quo in Addis Ababa. True the potential of infiltration by al-Qaeda is highly probable with such a development but it is only too inflated a pretext for Addis Ababa to justify its unconvincing trumpeting of the "Islamic threat" emanating from the ascendancy of the UIC in Somalia. Ethiopia's justification of its invasion by Washington's pretexts of the U.S. war on terror is misleading and encouraging Addis Ababa to justify its invasion by the "Islamic threat," leading some UIC leaders to declare "Jihad" against the "Christian invasion" of their country and in doing so contributing to turning an Ethiopian internal and regional miscalculations into seemingly "Muslim-Christian" war, which have more provocateurs in Addis Ababa than in Mogadishu. The sectarian war among Muslims fomented by the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq within the context of "divide and rule" policy could now be coupled with a "religious war" in the Horn of Africa to protect the U.S. military presence that is "defending" the Arab oil wealth in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq against a threat to its mobility from the south, a war that could drive a new wedge between Arabs and their neighbors, in a replay of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and in tandem with a 60-year old Israeli strategy of sowing divide between them and their Ethiopian, Iranian and Turkish geopolitical strategic depth. However this U.S.-Israeli strategy is certain to backfire. Somalis could not but be united against foreign invasion in a country where Islamism is the essence of nationalism and where Pan-Arabism could not but be a source of support as the country is too weak and poor to be adversely affected by Arab League divides; they are in their overwhelming majority Muslims with no divisive sectarian loyalties and no neighboring sectarian polarization center as it is the case with Iran in Iraq; the "Christian face" of the invasion would be a more uniting factor and would serve as a war cry against the new American imperialistic plans because it is reminiscent of earlier "Christian" European colonial adventures.

Dabshid bro. You write: "But I believe ALL somalis are not ready for Sharia today, They have to be given and presented slowly, cant be injected all at once." Walaal, After the six months of the Union Of Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, teh only major complaint was the prohihbition of QAT ( Which effected the Ethiopian and Kenyan Farmers cashflow) and banning of Blue Movies in make shift home theaters, other than that, Histor was made, and Somalis welcomed the Sharia Law with enthusiasm, it took a foreign force to overthrow the UIC, armed with the ninth fleet US Navy and the Ethipian Army assisted by the US reconnaisance planes and supply of extensive intelligence services. I wrote a piece back in 2003 Titled : Are we ready For Sharia Law? The answer to that question is an answer to our loyalies, belief in Allah and final transript befire we depart to a Justice Land, Dar Us-Salaam, follow this link. http://www.somaliaonline.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002258#000000 Nur

Jazaallahu Kheiran Geel Jire bro, for the useful link. Nur

Latif and Dabshid Eritrea like all other countries are after their national interest, in addiion, Eritrea is recognizeing aid that was given its struggle to gain independence from Ethiopia, so in a way they are returning a favor. Dabshid, you ask: Nur, Were you with ICU team? No, I am an internet creature. But I am with the law of Allah known as Sharia, which gurantees peace and brotherhood for all Somalis and able to heal our national dilemma, it helps create peace and harmony, but thesed days Islam has a new enemy worldwide, its called the Neocos who will do all evil until votedout of office, we pray Allah stop them so the weak an survive. Are you on with the Sharia too? Nur

Background On The U.S. Sponsored War In Somalia "The Most Lawless War of Our Generation" - Fmr. UN Spokesperson on Somalia The fighting began in December when US-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia. Four months ago today, Islamic fighters abandoned the capital, marking the official fall of the Islamic Courts Union, which had controlled Mogadishu for six months last year. A humanitarian catastrophe now looms over Somalia. The United Nations says more people have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. Some 350,000 have fled fighting in Mogadishu since February, more than one-third of its population. That makes the rate of displacement in Somalia over the past three months worse than Iraq. Many of the those displaced are camped on the outskirts of Mogadishu and lack food, medicine and clean water. There is also concern for those trapped inside the capital where more than 600 people have died from acute diarrhea and cholera. John Holmes, United Nations emergency relief coordinator: "There are stocks available in the area. If we can sort out the access problems, if we can step up our presence, in particular if we could achieve a ceasefire in Mogadishu and the surrounding area, then I think we will be able to cope with the problem, with some difficulty. But if the fighting continues at its present intensity, if there is no halt in that, if there is no political progress made, then we could indeed be facing a very serious situation indeed. I think already this is one of the biggest movement of population, displacement of population we've seen this year, in terms of numbers, particularly in terms of comparative numbers, compared to the populations of Mogadishu or indeed of Somalia as a whole, greater in that sense than Darfur or eastern Chad, and the problems there are serious enough." Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi said on Thursday his forces were now in control of Mogadishu and the BBC reports for the first time in nine days, gunfire has stopped. Ethiopians and government troops are patrolling the city conducting house-to-house searches as residents collect rotting bodies that had been abandoned in the streets. The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the U.S. media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story. Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: In Somalia, fierce fighting has killed over 320 people over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least a thousand lives. Agence France-Presse described Thursday’s clashes in Mogadishu as some of the heaviest fighting in the city’s history. The fighting began in December when US-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia. Four months ago today, Islamic fighters abandoned the capital, marking the official fall of the Council of Islamic Courts, which had controlled Mogadishu for six months last year. A humanitarian catastrophe now looms over Somalia. The United Nations says more people have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. Some 350,000 people have fled fighting in Mogadishu since February, more than a third of its population. That makes the rate of displacement in Somalia over the past three months worse than Iraq. Many of the those displaced are camped on the outskirts of Mogadishu and lack food, medicine and clean water. There is also concern for those trapped inside the capital where more than 600 people have died from acute diarrhea and cholera. This is UN relief coordinator John Holmes. JOHN HOLMES: There are stocks available in the area. If we can sort out the access problems, if we can step up our presence, in particular if we could achieve a ceasefire in Mogadishu and the surrounding area, then I think we will be able to cope with the problem, with some difficulty. But if the fighting continues at its present intensity, if there is no halt in that, if there is no political progress made, then we could indeed be facing a very serious situation indeed. I think already this is one of the -- the biggest movement of population, displacement of population we've seen this year, in terms of numbers, particularly in terms of comparative numbers, compared to the populations of Mogadishu or indeed of Somalia as a whole, greater in that sense than Darfur or eastern Chad, and the problems there are serious enough. AMY GOODMAN: Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi said Thursday his forces were now in control of Mogadishu. The BBC reports, for the first time in nine days, gunfire has stopped. Ethiopians and government troops are patrolling the city conducting house-to-house searches, as residents collect rotting bodies that have been abandoned in the streets. The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the US media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now! examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once on a Sunday night news broadcast. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story. Salim Lone is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He joins us today from London. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Salim. SALIM LONE: Thank you for covering Somalia, Amy. As you said, the coverage is absolutely shameless. AMY GOODMAN: Well, first, Salim, can you describe who the fighting forces are and who's behind them? SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, the key country there is Ethiopia. Their occupation forces have been there, in fact, long before the actual war began. They came in around September, October. But at the moment, those fighting the Ethiopians and the nominal transitional central government, which is really an absolutely puppet -- it’s quite hapless. In fact, the Ethiopians don't even deal with Somalis that their fighting through the transitional government. They go directly to the elders of the clans to try to negotiate ceasefires. But those fighting them are obviously the ****** Clan fighters who dominate Mogadishu. I mean, historically, they're the largest clan in there. But there are also many others, not just Islamists, which is a codeword for terrorists, but there are many Somalis. In fact, most Somalis will not abide this occupation. I mean, this is what is most distressing about this fighting. All fighting is terrible, but you hope in the end something good comes out of it. But in this particular case, it is clear Somalis will not abide the Ethiopian occupation or the government they put in place there. So it is not going to be a successful war for the Somali government, for Ethiopia and, of course, for the US, which is the orchestrator of the whole adventure this time. AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, you're now in London. The British think tank Chatham House criticized the US role in the war. The authors of the report write, “In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, general multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actors, especially Ethiopia and the United States.” SALIM LONE: Well, you know, this is par for the course these days. What they also should have mentioned -- but it’s an excellent report, by the way. I really enjoyed reading it, and I’m so glad they were so candid. But one of the big issues here is not merely the unilateralism of the United States, but the inability of the international community and particularly the United Nations Security Council to try to play, if not an independent role, at least a moderating role. It is quite astonishing that for now three months, there has been terrible violence in Somalia, and yet we have not heard anything from the security council about how this carnage must stop. There is no interest whatsoever. You know the death toll. I mean, you've given all the details. I don't want to go into it. But let me add that women are being raped, that hospitals are being bombed. This is clearly a huge effort to intimidate and terrorize all those who come from clans who are fighting the government. They want to intimidate the civilians, because most of the death toll is of civilians. So this has been going on, and there has been no call whatsoever for this to stop. You had Sir John Holmes there. He's a Brit, who -- I don't know him personally, so I cannot speak for him. But clearly, he has been appointed, in fact, by the British to his crucial position as chief of humanitarian affairs. So we are seeing the Security Council completely silent while these atrocities are going on. We are seeing Western governments completely silent. Nothing has come out of Washington. Nothing has come out of London. We now see, for the first time on Wednesday, the ambassador of Germany -- and Germany holds the EU presidency now -- the ambassador released a letter, which he had sent to Abdullah Yusuf, the president of the transitional government. It is a very candid and a very strong letter, and that's wonderful. However, where was Germany? Where was the EU for all this period? Their silence has really given the green light for the Ethiopians to do the terrible things they've been doing. The death toll now in Somalia is greater than it was in Lebanon. And you will recall, of course, that even then, the big powers -- the US, UK, even initially the UN -- did not demand a ceasefire. But the world media was full of that story, and there were condemnations around the world for what the Israelis were doing. But, of course, Somalis and Africans don't count as nearly much, because there has just been no international outcry at all. It’s not just the media. So we really have a problem there. AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, we're going to break and come back to this discussion. We'll also play a comment or interaction in the State Department on what is happening right now in Somalia. Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, joining us from Britain. Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Salim Lone. He is the former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He’s a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and is joining us right now from London. Salim, I wanted to talk to you about the US role in all of this. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the Ethiopian foreign minister on April 23. At a news conference the next day, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the two had discussed the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. McCormack said the troops had “no desire to stay there any longer than they are needed,” but that they didn't want to withdraw to, quote, open up a -- “vacuum open up in Somalia.” A reporter questioned him about his comments. This is an excerpt. REPORTER: Does it concern you at all that your little -- your opening readout, your opening statements, with the exception of some of the proper names, could have applied exactly to the situation in Iraq right now? Does that bother -- does that concern you at all? SEAN McCORMACK: I'm not sure I see your point, Matt. REPORTER: That the Ethiopians say that they don't want to stay there any longer than they're needed, but they don't want to leave a vacuum. It just sounds -- SEAN McCORMACK: Right. REPORTER: -- an awful lot like they're taking a page from the administration's thoughts on what to do in Iraq. SEAN McCORMACK: No. I mean, they're -- REPORTER: But I guess -- so my question is, are you concerned that they might be seeing the beginning or the -- in fact, the middle of an Iraq-style insurgency going on, obviously not directed at US soldiers -- SEAN McCORMACK: Right. Right, right, right. REPORTER: -- but the same kind of thing. Are you concerned about that? SEAN McCORMACK: The situations are completely separate. They are -- you know, each are sui generis, but you are in each case concerned about leaving the field to a group of violent extremists who do not have an interest in building up the institutions of a democratic state, so in that sense, in that sense, there are similarities. I think certainly the specifics of each situation are quite different, and the histories are quite different. And I think the level of intensity of fighting in Iraq is quite different than you're seeing in Somalia, and the scale of it is a lot smaller. AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. The reporter went on to ask him whether the United States is calling for a ceasefire. REPORTER: Are you calling for a ceasefire in Somalia, or are you urging the Ethiopians to go for these insurgents with as much intensity as they could? SEAN McCORMACK: You don't want to see any more violence in Somalia. Everybody would like that to be the case, but there are clearly people there, individuals who are intent upon using violence in order to further a so-called political cause. And we have seen that in other areas around the world. And what can't be allowed to happen is for those forces to gain a foothold to develop a safe haven, from which they could possibly launch attacks against other states in the region and further. REPORTER: So you're not calling for a ceasefire? SEAN McCORMACK: We want to see an end to the violence. But the real way to get an end to the violence is (a) stabilize the security situation, and (b) find a political situation that is workable for the major political factions in Somali life that have an interest in actually building a different kind of Somalia, as opposed to the one we've seen for the past few decades. AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, your response? SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, I’m very interested in the Iraq analogy, and it is really multiple, apart from what was already said there. The contrasts are striking, as well. But let me add to the analogy, actually, that May 1 is approaching. That was the day when on the -- right after the war, President Bush said that his mission had been accomplished. We have the same statement coming out of the prime minister of Somalia yesterday, that the mission has been accomplished and the insurgents have been wiped out. But let's look at the other contrasts, which are very fascinating. In Iraq, the world body, the Security Council, for the first time in many years since the Soviet Union collapsed, stood up to the United States and refused, despite enormous pressure, to authorize a UN war in Iraq. In Somalia's case, it is precisely the opposite. To begin with, the lawlessness of this particular war is astounding. I mean, this is the most lawless war of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are illegal. But in this particular one, there have been violations of the Charter and gross violations of international human rights, but these are commonplace. But, in addition, there have been very concrete violations by the United States, to begin with, of two Security Council resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo imposed on Somalia, which the United States has been routinely flaunting for many years now. But then the US decided that that resolution was no longer useful, and they pushed through an appalling resolution in December, which basically gave the green light to Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution which said that the situation in Somalia was a threat to international peace and security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and Chatham House’s report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that Somalia had not enjoyed in sixteen years. So here was the UN Security Council going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly falsified UN resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation. It contravened the UN Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution. Legislators pass laws, but they have to be in conformity with the Constitution. In this particular case, the Charter is the UN’s constitution, and the Security Council cannot -- it's not allowed to really pass laws or rules that violate the Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them? So this -- AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, on April 8, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration recently allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea, in violation of international sanctions. The US allowed the arms delivery to go through in January, shortly after Ethiopia invaded Somalia, from North Korea. Salim? SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, this just, you know, shows the lawlessness, the complete lack of pretense, even, to try to honor these resolutions. The big powers decide what resolutions are passed. But now what we see is the big powers then decide, are we actually going to honor the resolution that we just passed? I mean, I want to give you an incredible example of how the Security Council has become a plaything almost. There was a time when Security Council resolutions had gravitas. For example, everybody knew Resolution 242, asking Israel to vacate the Occupied Territories in exchange for peace. But now, it’s a plaything. And I want to give the example of the bombings in Spain in the year 2004. Just before the Spanish election, there was this terrible atrocity, as you know. About 200 people, Spaniards, were killed in the terrorist attacks on the trains. Because it was on the eve of the election, the Aznar government, afraid that if it was known that this attack was by terrorists, might lose the election, got the US to support a Security Council resolution which condemned the Basque separatists for the attack. And the Security Council went along with that. I mean, a day later, it became clear that it was a total lie. So the Security Council resolutions really have no meaning now, because they can be passed and violated at will, especially by the United States. AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, the Dow Jones newswire has recently reported that the US-backed Somali prime minister wants to pass a new oil law to encourage foreign oil companies to return to Somalia. Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corporation once had exploration contracts in Somalia, but the companies left the country in 1991. How significant is this in the US involvement in Somalia today? SALIM LONE: Well, you know, as you’ve discussed before, Somalia itself and the region, the Horn of Africa, is newly oil-rich. Kenya has some oil. Oil is the key to domination for the United States -- global domination, I mean. But it is going about, you know, the wrong way to get that oil. The US is also worried that its welcome in the Middle East is diminishing, and they need to make sure -- both they want to encircle the Middle East with the oil field, and they want to make sure they have Somalia and other countries handy for the oil. But this -- you know, the prime minister’s attempt to lure Western oil companies is on a par with his crying wolf about al-Qaeda at every turn. Every time you interview a Somalia official, the first thing you hear is al-Qaeda and terrorists. They’re using that. No one believes it. No one believes it at all, because all independent reports say the contrary. But they are using that to try to develop support. And, you know, this is why it is so important. Europe has now been coming into the forefront with its concern. It had this report about major human rights violations had occurred a month ago in Mogadishu. And the Europeans are afraid that they might be complicit in those, because they were supporting the warring -- the groups that were committing those atrocities. Germany, as I said, released that letter on Wednesday. Even the American ambassador has written to Abdullah Yusuf, the president. I mean, they are really writing letters to the Somali president. They will not raise this issue in the Security Council. They will not raise this issue in Washington or London. They want to keep this as a small African issue. And it is so important for all of us to put pressure on the governments in Europe, in particular, and on Africa, too. I mean, Africa is weak. It cannot really take strong stands. In my own country, Kenya, we have played a terrible role in these extraordinary renditions and Guantanamo Bay that are going on. But, of course, one leading opposition, the candidate in Kenya, said that the US has promised to support the government in the elections at the end of this year in exchange for the terrible things it has been doing. So Africa is weak -- AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, I want to ask you quickly, as you talk about Guantanamo, this secret prison in Ethiopia -- not clear how many people are being held there, if this is one of the black sites, one of the prisons that are not very well known about in the world that the US is involved with. But we do know that Amir Mohamed Meshal is there. He is a New Jersey young man from Tinton Falls. Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy Newspapers reported April 24th, Ethiopia has changed its mind and decided for the time being not to free the American Muslim who was captured trying to flee war-torn Somalia and was held without charge in Kenya and Ethiopia for more than four months. Can you talk about this secret prison? SALIM LONE: Well, you know, there are -- did you say “secret prison”? AMY GOODMAN: Yes. SALIM LONE: Yes, yes, yes. You know, I mean, this whole enterprise -- the kidnappings on Kenyan streets, the grabbing refugees coming across the border -- has a “Made in America” stamp on it, because you’ve seen it all happen before. And these secret prisons, the US denies any responsibility in this whole operation. And yet, we know that CIA and FBI officials are in those prisons interviewing the inmates. We also know, by the way, that many of the people who have disappeared are not in those secret prisons. Where are those people? Have they be killed? Are they being tortured somewhere else? This is, you know, utter lawlessness. And we must try to get the Europeans, in particular -- I keep appealing to the Europeans, because I know -- I speak to many European ambassadors in Kenya -- I know that they're privately very concerned about what is going on. And we must get them to do more. It is fine to indicate there are war crimes to be committed. It's fine to say this must stop, and hospitals shouldn’t be bombed, and you can’t keep relief away from suffering people. But they must go beyond that. They must take an initiative, or talk privately to the United States and say, “Look, this is a lost cause. We are only creating suffering, and we're creating problems for ourselves, because there will be blowback on this. There will be animosities and angers, which will affect Europe, America, Africa, everywhere.” So they must [inaudible]. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General’s call for a coalition of the willing to go into Somalia? You’re a former UN official. SALIM LONE: You know, it is so disgraceful. For him to try to get the Security Council -- that's what he proposes, the Security Council, in case there is no peace in Somalia in the meeting in June, in mid-June, to discuss it in the Security Council -- for him to propose that the UN should now go in to do what the US and Ethiopia have been unable to do, which is basically to impose a client regime on Somalia, it's just absolutely disgraceful. I mean, I read that report to the Security Council, and it is hard to believe that Mr. Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is so blatantly and comprehensively one-sided. There is not a word about the fact that the Ethiopians are there without any international legitimacy. They're occupiers. They violated the UN Charter. They were not in any danger of being attacked, and they invaded. So this notion must also -- this notion that a coalition of the willing must be formed -- as you know, that was how the first Gulf War was fought. And if this coalition comes into place, which I hope will not, it will merely internationalize the crisis and make things even worse. But I hope the Europeans, in particular, and the Africans who are on the Security Council will not allow that to happen. AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for joining us, Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq when it was bombed there, attacked there, several years ago, now living in Kenya, speaking to us, though, from London. The Rise And Fall Of The Islamic Courts Of Somalia Nur

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all By Naomi Wolf 04/24/07 "The Guardian" -- -- Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration. Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have. It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise. Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US. 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end." Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth. It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms. 2. Create a gulag Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place. At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well. This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising. With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street. Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately. But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too. By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions. 3. Develop a thug caste When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution. The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities. Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order". 4. Set up an internal surveillance system In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched. In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent. 5. Harass citizens' groups The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone. Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition. 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list. In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens. Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list". "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee. "I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution." "That'll do it," the man said. Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life. James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest. Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list. It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off. 7. Target key individuals Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors. Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933. Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them. Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job. Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow. 8. Control the press Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already. The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration. Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career. Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers. Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers. You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. 9. Dissent equals treason Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution. Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade. In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors". And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly. Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.) We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR. Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now. 10. Suspend the rule of law The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens. Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'." Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction. Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that. Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion. It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster." As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone. That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs". What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise. What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite. Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world. We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now. "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry

Holocaust Redux By Manuel Valenzuela “The only thing for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”-- Edmund Burke 04/25/07 "ICH" -- -- The State of That Which Is Such is the state of human affairs, whether in the present age or in those that came before, that not a decade passes without humanity resurrecting, in some corner of the globe, in some forsaken nation, the devastation unleashed by human wickedness. Whether mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, endemic rape, pillage, scorched earth and yes, even Holocaust, human wickedness prevails upon the human condition, leaving us impotent beasts in its wake, unable to control or suppress its malevolent tentacles, seemingly powerless to alter or halt its predictable and disastrous momentum. The barbarity to which we are predisposed, to which we are unable to exorcise from our nature, is as common to so-called primitive peoples, those humanity likes to call “third worlders,” as it is to those societies considering themselves modern and developed. There is no difference between suicide bombers and guided missiles raining down from the sky. Technology does not behold humanity to label the terrorism falling from the sky as nobler, or as more moral, than that of terrorism bred through poverty. Possessing vast wealth and resources does not diminish murder and criminality, nor the birth of, and continuation in, a new Holocaust. The crimes against humanity that are thrust upon the world with a consistency that betrays our anemic ability to control our mammalian nature do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity or religion. We are free to unleash wickedness, whether our powers derive from the machete or the smart-bomb, the suicide bomber or the guided missile, the knife or the machine gun, from tribal conflagrations or nation to nation war. The consistency by which human wickedness is thrust upon our conscious cannot be denied, nor can it be ignored. Such is the state of human affairs, and so little progress have we made in dominating our primitive mammalian behaviors, that even in the supposed modern world of today, even in the supposed enlightened nations of the West, the harbingers of mass destruction and suffering are spawned, planned and executed. For those bastions of morality and exceptionalism we call the First World have realized that war is as old as humankind itself, and as profitable as well, for the violence that creates war is ingrained into our instincts, embedded into the most violent species the planet has ever evolved. War and its multitude of deviations, along with its many devastating aftereffects, has never been controlled or sequestered; its extinction has never been a possibility granted the predisposition to our impotency of willpower. This reality the lords of war understand well. As long as internal strife exists inside a nation, as long as racial, ethnic and religious hatreds are fomented and maintained, and as long as tribes or peoples or sects or beliefs are allowed to mature into full blown animosity and anger there will be war. As long as there exists individuals addicted to power and wealth, as long as governments and special interests vie for control of territory and land, as long as natural resources have immense value and as long as money is valued higher than people there will be war. As long as there is uneducation, intolerance, oppression, poverty, injustice, inequality and exploitation there will be war. As long as there is profit to be derived, money and power to be made, division to be birthed, resources to be stolen, there will be war. As long as there is war, that is to say death, destruction, suffering and misery, there will also always be crimes against humanity, for war is the virus that unearths human wickedness and unleashes crimes against humanity upon each other. Indeed, if our history books and our anthropological and archeological studies teach us anything, if they convey any warnings that we must heed, it is that humankind has possessed a propensity to destroy one another from the time our first ancestors hung on trees. This propensity, this inclination towards violence against members different than our own group or tribe, is apparent by observing our closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, with whom we happen to share 98 percent of our genetic code with, as they wage violent war-like battles between groups. It is apparent with every war modern man gives birth to and nurtures through our indifference and silent acquiescence. It is apparent with every act of genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, mass murder, rape and extermination, in all corners of the globe, regardless of time and space. From primate cousins to modern man, violence is a reality, and a curse. For if this malevolence that possesses us were not ingrained in our core, in our behaviors and psychologies, if it were not part of our human condition, would it keep surfacing over and over again, irrespective of time, distance, space and peoples? If our propensity to unleash carnage and violence upon each other were not part of who and what we really are, would such a thing as human wickedness and destruction and violence even exist? Would war and violence and devastation upon our fellow human beings? In fact, they exist because they possess us like a miscreant demon, living within our nature, controlling our destiny and our lives, unwilling to escape or be exorcised from our condition, creating the most violent species to ever roam Earth. War and genocide and Holocaust exist for the simple fact that we exist, because war without humans is no war at all, because violence of man against man cannot exist if there is no man, because humans are impotent to rid ourselves of that demon called human wickedness. Indeed, our species has been defined through war and its inevitable crimes against humanity. Lingering in our midst for hundreds of thousands of years, endemic to all civilizations, tribes and peoples, the human wickedness we seemingly resuscitate with every new generation is a symptom of our disease, the very sickness maintaining us from advancing forward as a species. Just when we believe ourselves enlightened or reborn, just as we think we have exorcised the demons within, just as we think a new generation of humans has defeated that which enslaves us to our passions, released again and reborn forever is the violence and the destruction and the suffering and the mass murder and the catastrophe that is war. Repeating the pattern that has held us hostage from time immemorial, we believe ourselves enlightened enough to think that violence and war and crimes against humanity will settle our differences, instead of increasing our animosity and hatreds. We have evolved war, yet war has not evolved us. There is but one common denominator in the perpetual stream of violence, war and crimes against humanity we have seen repeated over and over throughout history – whether it be written or long forgotten – and that is us, human beings, Homo sapiens. For we remain prisoners of our own delusions, slaves of our self-proclaimed exceptionalism, blinded to the true nature of our existence by the comfortable glow of our most primitive myths. As long as we maintain our delusions, our purposeful ignorance, our disastrous belief in fictions and fables, the reality of man killing man will endure, long into perpetuity, possessing our nature and our condition, concocting war after war, molding violence and destruction through the deadly mixture of our instincts, behaviors and mammalian predispositions. Until we finally decide to purge the grip of our self-deception, of thinking ourselves beyond the realm of our reality and truth, of who and what we really are, and not what we pretend to be, humankind will linger on in the limbo of self-destruction, living a fantasy that does not comport with our reality, granting ourselves small windows of temporary sanity, inevitably blown to bits by the destructive qualities we chose to ignore and not confront. The predictable unleashing of our worst inner demons invariably destroys all that is achieved during the small frames of sanity we exhibit. For every step we take forward in our evolution, the demons called human wickedness takes us ten steps back. This demon has prevented us from progressing to the full capabilities of human thought and understanding. In the near future, given our level of technology and modernity, it might very well be the catalyst that sends us back to the Stone Age or indeed, buries us permanently under the rubble of our once-great civilization. If the pattern continues, so will the trend, and in time, so will our self destruction, for as John F. Kennedy once said, “If we do not put an end to war, war will put an end to us.” Only time and our willingness to alter inevitability stand in the way of where we are headed. Only humankind can put a stop to human wickedness. Only we can destroy that which is slowly, but surely, destroying us all. Abandonment of Brotherhood How does one even begin to examine the devastation that Iraq has become? How does one begin to contemplate what is now, thanks to America’s illegal and immoral invasion and occupation, an utter collapse of incomprehensible proportions? What was once the nation, and the people, of Iraq has been transformed into an amalgam of carnage, blood, misery and decimation the likes of which the world has not seen since World War II, or Vietnam. Iraq has become a human catastrophe, a defeat for humanity itself, birthed not through tempests or tsunamis or earthquakes, but through the criminality, corruption and human wickedness of one nation. It has been humankind that has routed itself in self-debasement, our failure to act one more silver chalice in our trophy case of human wickedness. It boggles the mind to even begin to fathom the suffering and misery of the Iraqi people, a collection of what was once 25 million human beings, the vast majority living in peace and apparent happiness, maintaining sectarian harmony, content with stability and security, living normal lives and cherished memories. The collapse of their society into chaos and anarchy has been one of the most spectacular crimes against humanity ever witnessed. Indeed, hell on Earth has been imported into Mesopotamia, creating, since the early 1990’s, a Holocaust that defies logic, reason and common sense, an evil so malevolent, so egregious, that its devastation will not cease until decades after Empire’s last throes have returned normalcy to the people of the planet. What is now seen as a debacle, as a failure, is nothing more than a malevolent crime of mass murder, rape and pillage, a crime against humanity itself. The seeds of Holocaust were planted in the fertile soils of Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates flow, where humankind was nurtured, feeding off the bosom of rich land and life-giving water, at the beginning and after the end of the first Gulf War. It was at this time that the Iraqi people, and not the government, were chosen to feel the collective punishment of the rising Empire, a nation so consumed by hubris and arrogance that, using its vast powers of persuasion and control, instituted a regime of devastating sanctions, most targeting the infrastructure, food and medicine necessary for the general welfare of the populace. The decision was made in the upper echelons of governance during the Clinton administration to enact and enforce sanctions that were always known to harm only average, ordinary citizens, those that depended on the state for health, food, shelter and education. This conscious decision was made even knowing that the Saddam Hussein regime would not suffer as a result of the sanctions. Indeed, the regime of sanctions was aimed specifically at the Iraqi people, 25 million innocent human beings whose only crime was being Iraqi, their homes located above the enormous fields of the devil’s excrement. The Iraqi people were about to feel the wrath of the American Empire, enabler and disseminator of a new Holocaust. Compounded with the complete destruction by aerial bombing of Iraq’s electricity, sanitation, sewage, food production, medical industry and civil infrastructure during the war, all using radiation-saturated depleted uranium filled missiles, artillery and shells, a nation once among the healthiest on the planet began to feel the aftereffects of disease, cancers, stillbirths and deformities. With little food supplies trickling into the nation, hundreds of thousands of children and adults began to suffer malnutrition, hunger and starvation. Soon disease and malnutrition, easily remedied by adequate supplies of food and medicine, began to take their terrible and debilitating toll. This medieval and barbaric blockade, sponsored, enacted, enforced, defended and maintained by the Empire, began to rob 25 million Iraqis of nutrition, healthcare, education and of the standard of living that was the envy of the Middle East. Iraq soon went from having some of the most nourished children and adults in the world to having one of the most malnourished populations on the planet. One of the best standards of living in the Middle East was transformed into a cesspool of backwardness, a rotting and eroding society robbed of strength and vitality. Without adequate medicines, supplies and machines, their importation into Iraq being prevented by America, children began to die by the thousands every month. Children became weak and anemic, their bodies and bellies turning to symbols of malnutrition. Immune systems were weakened, collapsing the body’s ability to fight disease, toxins and viruses. Those once healthy and strong now succumbed to easily preventable diseases and viruses, losing once vibrant energy, losing the will to live. Those once bright and intelligent had their development halted, for food and the energy needed to sustain growth dwindled. Children began to die in an epidemic of economic genocide, enacted and enforced by the American Empire, as always tightening the noose on the sanctions regime, as always caring nothing for the plight of millions of Iraqis. An entire generation of Iraqi children had perished, vanished from the Earth, never more able to play and dream and grow up, never able to experience the life we all strive to have. After a decade of sanctions, up to one million Iraqi children had died, with 500,000 adults buried in graves as well, the products of easily preventable disease, the products of a nation not being allowed to have medicine, supplies and the necessary machines that can save lives. Close to 5,000 children were dying every month, to say nothing of those whose brain and body development became stagnant due to malnutrition. By the beginning of the 21st century, the American Empire had caused the death of 1.5 million Iraqis, spirits like you and I, never to take a breath of air or a gulp of water, never having the opportunity to grow old and enjoy the wonders of life, perishing in a war upon the Iraqi people they were impotent to wage war against. The seeds of Empire had been planted, cast upon soils of genocide, watered with the blood of dead Iraqi children, winds of devastating silence spreading disease and viruses and cancer and mutations to all corners of Mesopotamia, affecting rich and poor, Shiite and Sunni, its invisible wickedness scattering itself into young and old, indiscriminately securing new victims through the inhalation of oxygen. By the time new Pearl Harbors had been concocted by the Empire, by the time towers were demolished and the American people became the obedient warmongers of those cheerleaders pretending to be leaders, by the time Iraq had been chosen for destruction, invasion and occupation, up to two million Iraqis had died at the hand of the Evil Empire, victims of sanctions, a genocide in itself, a Holocaust by any definition, though only a precursor to what was yet to come. The devastation of the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has brought unfathomable levels of misery and suffering to the Iraqi people. The utter debacle that is Iraq, many would say the greatest strategic disaster in American foreign policy, has become a monument to human wickedness, yet at the same time it represents one of the most egregious criminal enterprises in the history of humankind. For what transpires today, and what has transpired for the last four years, cannot be labeled as a mistake, or a lie, or a quagmire. What it is, indeed, what it has always been, is a crime against humanity, war crimes of the highest order, a conspiracy that has led to the collapse of Iraq as a state and to a creation of a Holocaust that will in the end, years from today – when combined with the economic genocide of the 1990’s, endemic disease and the radiation poisoning that will kill for decades to come – have cost the lives of anywhere from four to six million human beings, to say nothing of the refugee crisis, the mass displacement of people, ethnic cleansing, the loss of property, collapse of society, of lives altered, nation shattered and child development damaged. The Iraq War represents humanity at its worst, with the elite of the Empire destroying a nation as an excuse to rebuild it, caring nothing for dark skinned Arabs, yet claiming contracts in the billions of dollars, as always designed to pillage the American treasury and rob the people. Meanwhile, the American masses have and continue to sit silently in lazy obedience and acquiescence while war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed in our name. Like the Good Germans of World War II, millions of Americans will one day claim they had no idea what was being done in Iraq, all the while knowing that comfort and gluttony helped maintain silence and willful ignorance to one of the worst cases of human wickedness ever to rise from the violent nature of humankind. To millions of Americans, the latest gossip from tele-trash and infotainment has more value than a Holocaust presently being waged by our government. Where humanity once rose and was nurtured today only Holocaust, torture, mass detentions, mass rapes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, radiation poisoning, stunted development, miscarriages, hatred and dehumanization can be seen, as clear as sunlight, penetrating deep into the dark recesses of our conscious, wanting to stop blood from flowing and body parts from exploding, yet impotent and unwilling to put a halt to a nightmare Iraqis live on a daily basis and Americans only read about. To be living in Iraq today is to live in constant and perpetual fear, unable to walk once tranquil streets, unable to shop in comfort, as always grazing bullets and bombs, unsure where explosions will go off next, afraid to be caught between warring factions. It is to experience an insecurity and a fear no American has ever felt inside our shores, of chaos, anarchy, of civil war where to be one religious sect and not another could cost you your life, and that of your family. To live in Iraq is to be subjected to daily car bombs and suicide bombers exploding in markets and streets, of having bullets whizzing by your head, of shrapnel attacking your every pore. It is to breathe the smell of death in every street corner, of feeling the concussions of bombs reverberating inside your home, and head. To live in Iraq is to be unsure whether you will make it through the end of the day, if you will see another sunrise, another sunset. It is to see 70 percent of your children exhibiting symptoms of acute stress and traumatic disorders, not being able to sleep at night because the nightmare of what they have seen, smelled and heard cannot be exorcised from their minds. It is to see your child become a constant bed wetter due to the fear and insecurity that roams her mind. It is to see your son unable to comprehend the endemic death and bodies he sees trying to get to school. It is to witness as your child can no longer learn what she is taught, nor understand her schooling, as the fear and stress of living in civil war has become too much to bear. To live in Iraq is to realize that there are now 900,000 children who are orphans, their parents dead from a war that makes no sense, their tiny minds forced to confront the reality of being alone. It is to experience death firsthand, in large numbers, as no family left in Iraq has gone unharmed, without a murder of a relative. To be Iraqi today is to see the most horrible deformities in young children, many mutated unlike anything seen before, a product of the invisible ghost of death afflicting expectant mothers, its radiation penetrating a body’s pores and bloodstream, traveling into placentas and embryos. To be Iraqi is to see cancer become an endemic reality, over the last fifteen years growing exponentially and methodically, inevitably claiming its victims with the tumors and infections caused by depleted uranium, becoming a silent killer that will last centuries, quite possibly altering the genetic code of your fellow citizens. To be an Iraqi today is to realize that the professional class has left the country, becoming refugees in Syria or Jordan, a number two million strong, while one million more have become displaced within their own nation, ethnically cleansed by religious sects, forced to leave their homes, possessions and neighborhoods, forced to abandon both hope and lives once worth living. To remain living inside Iraq is to witness criminals control the streets and militias transforming entire neighborhoods and districts. To remain in Iraq is to live without doctors or medical providers, knowing that it has become too dangerous for them to stay. It is to see professors assassinated on a daily basis, many now having fled along with architects, teachers, engineers and state officials. To remain in Iraq is to see the shortage of professionals, to see that only the poor and those that do not have the money to flee remain, trapped in hell on Earth, in a land a devastation, of Holocaust. The state of Iraq has now lost 1,000,000 citizens since the beginning of America’s war of arrogant ignorance began. In four years, one million human beings have died, an average of 250,000 every year, nearly 70 people every day. Combined with the two million people who have died as a result of sanctions, it can be stated that 3 million Iraqis have died since the early 1990’s. The carnage has only intensified, with bombings routinely killing 200 Iraqis one day and 150 more another day. Assassinations of military age men has become routine, found in the morning haze, bullet holes in the back of their heads, victims of America’s counter-insurgency, El Salvador-style tactics. Over 20,000 men, most of them innocent civilians, now saturate America’s vast gulag system in Iraq, held captive without due process, existing in limbo and uncertainty, in essence kidnapped from their homes or from the street, victims of American dehumanization and ignorance of culture. How many of these men have been or are tortured in places such as Abu Ghraib? How many have died while in custody, made to disappear, forever lost in some remote mass grave? To be in Iraq is to be living in hell on Earth, a place so devastating, so horrific, that it has become the rule, not the exception, to see feral dogs eating from dead corpses. It is to see football fields become mass graveyards, mosques become mortuaries, and how missiles and artillery destroy homes and businesses, turning lives into rubble. It is to experience the rape of your daughter, the mental retardation of your son, the humiliation of your family, the invasion into your home by American forces, the dehumanization of American boots stomping your face, placing a dark hood over your head, taking your clothes off, calling you humiliating words, treating you like an animal. Living in Iraq is to survive day to day, roaming city streets ducking bombs and bullets, possessing little money for food, lost in a sea of fear and uncertainty, unable to find employment, having two to four hours of electricity, an unworkable sewage and garbage collection system, having to spend up to three days waiting in line in order to fill your vehicle with gasoline. It is to have the smell of death permeate your every pore every single day, the smell of bombs and smoke and bullets becoming constant reminders of your closeness with death. It is to wonder if luck and fate will decide a car bomb will blow you to bits when you walk to the market, or whether a sniper will cause your head to explode like a watermelon. It is to fear an American contractor or soldier will decide your vehicle should be machine-gunned for fun and games, because it is cool to destroy the lives of enemies that are not considered human, and whether your son and father have had enough of the occupation and humiliation and will inevitably join the resistance. To be Iraqi is to wonder if the world has forgotten your plight, if it even cares about the fate of millions of your fellow citizens. To live in Iraq is to see the worst in the human condition, to see human wickedness stamped with the seal of the United States. It is to believe life has abandoned you, wondering what you and your people have done to deserve America’s wrath and punishment. It is to wish for the nightmare to end, to wake up to normalcy, to security and peace, just how it was before, when Iraq was a model for the Middle East and the Arab world. You want to open your eyes and hope the last two decades have been but an illusion, a hallucination that does not really exist. Perhaps you feel hope has been lost, that wickedness has triumphed, that Iraq will never be the same, that she is no more, that the land of fertile soils and running water has ceased to be a viable society. You think the occupation will never end, that America will be your master until the last drop of oil is exhausted, that the nightmare you have lived will only dissipate when the Empire is defeated by the resistance, or by its own over-extension and ignorance. You see a one-hundred acre fortress being built, larger even than the Vatican, the largest embassy the world has ever seen quickly rising from Iraqi ground, and you know the Empire will never leave. You see permanent military bases sprouting up alongside petroleum pipelines and you notice the pillage of your land’s oil through laws enacted by the Empire’s puppets and you weep for a nation destroyed from within, damned by the devil’s excrement, cursed by Western powers who for a century have only cared for the black gold lying below your feet. Most importantly, perhaps, you wonder where the voice of the world has gone, in her uncomfortable silence, in her complete stillness, why she does not heed your calls for help, why she fails to stop the carnage and the destruction, why she has turned a blind eye to you and your people. You look to the heavens and ask why even in Iraq’s despair and suffering the world’s people have abandoned millions of her children to the greed and hubris of the rapacious Pax Americana. You ask fate why the American people have done nothing to stop this new Holocaust from continuing, why they casually ignore the plight of Iraqis, why they continue their blissful ignorance of reality. You ask why the death of millions of Iraqis is hardly mourned, why the maiming and psychological devastation of her children is ignored, why her implosion as a state and as a people is hidden from the beautiful minds of Americans. In the end, you ask yourself how a nation that mourns the tragic loss of thirty-two college students, with wall to wall media coverage, with flags flying at half staff nationwide, with services held from coast to coast, rarely, if ever, cares to even blink at the death and horrible misery of millions of Iraqis, or offer the same mourning, memorials and media coverage to the death, and memory, of nearly 3,500 of its sons and daughters. You ask how it is not understood by the people of the world that Iraq loses in one month what America lost in one day, on September 11, 2001, when 3,000 innocent victims of state terrorism and psychological war were murdered. Holocaust Redux It is reality, not hyperbole, to describe what is presently happening in Iraq as a new Holocaust, a new paradigm of devastation and destruction, of mass murder and horrific suffering. An entire nation has been made to implode, an entire society has been disemboweled, its vital organs gutted and spilled into hell on Earth. The blood of one million Iraqis covers her streets, the severed body parts of the maimed pile up on her corners, and the severed psychology of her youth lies in tatters. Iraq’s entire society is in disarray, her upper and middle classes having fled her bosom, living the life of refugees, her poor and working classes trapped in an inferno from which escape is but a wishful dream. Disease and radiation poisoning, those silent assassins that kill and murder in clandestine pleasure, those unleashed poisons imported by the Empire, have and will continue to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraq’s poorest and weakest individuals. For like the gas chambers of yesteryear, radiation poisoning from depleted uranium, along with the Empire’s destruction of sanitation, sewer and civil infrastructure, will, in the end, kill countless and as yet untold numbers of Iraqis, most forced to suffer sickness and cancer, deformity and miscarriage, misery and death. For a Holocaust does not need toxic chambers to count its dead, nor crematoriums to hide its victims. It does not depend on concentration camps to starve its prisoners, nor barbed wire to hide the truth. Deadly poison can be released into the air, penetrating soil, crops, water and food, slowly penetrating human bodies, killing from within. It can be created by the destruction of the infrastructure needed to contain and fight off infection, disease and outbreaks. Holocaust exists in sanctions that refuse to let in vital medicines and food, it exists in making the Iraqi nation itself into an enormous concentration camp. Holocaust can be flamed by the dropping of bombs, missiles or artillery into homes and neighborhoods. Holocaust can be created, molded and furthered by causing civil war among religious sects, using counter-insurgency machinations to divide and conquer, caring nothing for the plight of millions caught in the crosshairs of a societal collapse engineered by the Empire’s war architects. In the end, the result is the same, whether a Holocaust is molded by Nazis or nurtured by the Empire itself. The only reality that changes is the method to the madness and the cast of characters for whom the flame of humanity has long since ceased to exist. What the world is seeing today, for those few who care to see and disturb their beautiful minds, is a carnage and a devastation that fits the pattern of Holocaust throughout humankind’s brief reign on the planet. The Iraq Holocaust, while still not apparent to all, while still hidden from the conscious of the world, while still taking place even today, is but another manifestation of a pattern that is all too familiar to the human condition. For no ethnic minority or religious group can claim a monopoly on Holocaust, no matter how convenient it has become, no matter how beneficial its incantation and remembrance may be. Holocaust is an all-inclusive devastation, a human wickedness that preys upon all peoples, throughout all time and space, whether they be from 20th century Armenia, Korea, Manchuria, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Mao’s China, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Yugoslavia or World War II’s wickedness, which killed tens of millions in Russia and more than a dozen in Germany and Eastern Europe. The term Holocaust is not exclusive to any one particular group, nor can its use be defined by Empire's propagandists or by history’s victors. Of course the Empire will never call what is happening in Iraq a Holocaust, for to do so would criminalize the very enterprise of destroying a nation and its people for the purpose of controlling its vast oil fields. To call the Iraq Holocaust by its rightful name would be to make war criminals of its architects, its boosters, its propagandists, its stenographers and its military leaders. It would be to place the Empire on par with some of the worst atrocities of the vanquished Nazi regime, creating comparisons between warmongers and leaders of different eras. To call what is happening in Iraq by its proper term would be to make tens of millions of American citizens the equivalent of yesterday’s good Germans. To allow the use of the term Holocaust to describe present day Iraq, America would risk the shame and scorn of the people of the world, becoming a pariah nation, a rogue state, and a failed people. The Empire will never allow the term Holocaust to be used alongside the reality, and devastation, of Iraq. The truth of what has been done and continues to be unleashed upon Iraqis will, as always, be whitewashed and made to be hidden in a dark, dank recess of history’s uncomfortable dirty little secrets. In time, even though the magnitude of what transpired in Iraq will become known to some, its truth will be suppressed, its reality contorted, its victims soon forgotten. Just as three to four million dead Vietnamese were erased from uncomfortable memories, just as that Holocaust was a reality that never took place, so too will the Iraq Holocaust dissipate from our conscious, to be replaced by the dumbed-down heroin of tele-trash, the addiction of infotainment, usurped by the only Holocaust that ever took place, the only one that matters, the only mass murder that must remain ingrained in our memories, never allowed to be replaced, never allowed to be forgotten. Yet to the Iraqi people, to those that will invariably survive the catastrophe that has been imported to their land, the Iraqi Holocaust will remain an all too real calamity, a truth that exists in rubble, in mass graves, in the memory of lost souls and never forgotten memories. To these human beings, the millions that have already died, along with the millions that have yet to perish, will never be forgotten, becoming a reality ignored by the world, yet remaining entrenched like a small flame inside the hearts of survivors. Every deformity or mutation of Iraqi babies will remind survivors of the poisons unleashed by the Empire. Every death caused by malignant cancer and disease will bring back memories of dropped bombs and devastating guided missiles. Every scar, burn and amputated limb will forever become a horrific and eternal memory and reminder that cannot be erased from one’s brain, their grotesque appearance becoming a time machine of suffering and misery. Seared in their minds for decades and centuries to come, the Iraq Holocaust and its creator will never be forgotten, to be passed down to each new child born, to each new generation. In time the present collapse and corruption of humanity, the present entanglement of human wickedness, this thing called Holocaust, which we as a species always vow to never again repeat, will predictably be replaced by another such tragedy. In time that new horror will itself be replaced by yet another. The cycle of violence will continue, just as it has always been, just as it will always be, for its viciousness has never been stopped, its demons have never been controlled. We are slaves to its demands, mere weaklings to its call to arms. Impotent we have been from the very beginning, from the genesis of humankind, passing enlightenments, reformations, renaissance and modernity, and still today it cannot be defeated, still we have failed to free ourselves from its omnipotent grip. Every century that passes we fall prey to its temptations and its cruelty, its brief rewards and long-term curse. Today, in every corner of the globe, in every continent where man exists the genesis of the next Holocaust is being birthed. Somewhere, someplace, the next Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or Bush is being nurtured by hate or anger, feeding off the breast of intolerance and ideology, living among corruption of morality, breeding in the self a taste for psychotic narcissism. For it is a given that wherever man settles in, death, destruction, extermination and devastation soon follows. It is written in our history books, in stone tablets, in our cultures and ruined cities. Its warnings and lessons are everywhere, if only we wished to look. It is wired into our human condition. It remains a virus afflicting our conscious, never exorcised, always resurrected. Somewhere, someplace, a leader is being molded among men, as always infected in delusion, infested with selfishness, though possessing the qualities of attraction, of leadership, of hypnotizing thousands through stare and voice. It is this human being, like so many that have come before, that will recruit a group of like minded individuals, each, like him, with an insatiable thirst for power, immoral in character, criminal in personality, in time concocting power grabs and debasement of the human condition. It is from these so-called leaders of men, these alpha males, from where human wickedness derives, flowing from its oasis of hate, through rivers of unending blood and carnage. For mostly, throughout time, it is the warmongers, the war-like leaders that create the devastation and destruction called Holocaust. It is from war-like leaders that war-like people are created. It is from them where human wickedness derives, passing from person to person like a virus, making monsters of us all. Such is the state of human affairs that one Holocaust will give rise to another, and another after that, filling a century of civilization with systematic death and murder. Its consistency is overwhelming, clear as day to see, for those willing to confront uncomfortable realities. For every step forward we take, our self-destructive ways push us back ten, committing us to the primitiveness that has yet to be surpassed and the mammalian behaviors we have yet to understand. The human wickedness will continue until we reach an enlightenment of who and what we truly are, escaping the machinations and institutions that spawn hatred, injustice, inequality, anger, division, bigotry, animosity, oppression, ignorance and poverty. From where will the next Holocaust be born, ruining land and people, corrupting humankind ever more? When will humanity say enough is enough, never again, and actually mean it? Will it be when we put an end to war and human wickedness, or when war and human wickedness put an end to us? In the meantime, the seeds of the next act of human devastation are today being planted. Where, we wonder, will this wicked weed grow next? For where can be anywhere, and anywhere can be gone tomorrow. In Iraq we find the answer, for its shows where we have been, where we at present are and where we will again, and inevitably, soon be.

D&D sis Jazakellahu kheiran for the great reminder, we have the time now, we should heed the advice before its too late. Nur

Thank You Eritrea On Behalf of the Somali people all over the world, I thank the Heroic Eritrean People and Leadership for standing with the Somali people in a time when no nation seems to be on its side. President Afwerki truly lives up to his name, AFWERKI means Golden Mouth, and history will record his bold words and truthful attitude when everyone else was hypocritical. His remarks angers polititians who serve other than their people, because, President Afwerki serves his people, and as a true and genuine Christian, holds Muslims with the highest respect, which worries war pimps and civil war instigators. His country, small in footprint, yet big in terms of its message for all aspiring oppressed nations in the region, Eritreans never gave up fighting for their country, and after 30 years, they defeated a nation that was being supported by all Emperial forces in the world. A living example for the Somali resistance against the genocidal Ethiopian invaders. Afwerki's Eritrea is an example for all emerging little nations, I found Eritrea during my visit to be an (A) Country, because it does not have a ( B), ( C), or ( D) Bribery, Corruption or Drugs. At the Airport in Asmara, while working on my laptop, a security officer was tipped off of a possible mole, as he approached me thinking that I was an Ethiopian spy, he nervously asked me of my nationality, to his relief, he sighed after finding out of my Somali origins, he immediatetely welcomed me as a friend. Eritrea's people are the mosts hospitable people I have ever met, as a visitor, I toured Mussawa, Asmara, and Karan where I ate a familiar Mogadishu area fruit ( Murcood, known there as MUL3O). Eveywhere I went, I was treated like a King, just because I was their Somali brother, I was so moved by their hospitality that, I am at loss for words, all I can say, Thank you Eritrea for Standing with Somalis at this difficult time. Somalis all over the world will never forget a true friend in time of dire need. My diving trip to torquise waters of Dahlak Islands was the most satisfying experience I ever had, there, as I landed, I met some local people who reminded me of our origins, the Afar speaking people, were indeed very kind, and generous, so were all other Eritreans everywhere, The Asaawirta, the Jabarti and others. In a restaurant in Asamra, after eating my meal, I was surprised to find that an Eritrean who was dining next to me recognized me as a Somali, and paid my bill without telling me, when I asked him why, he joyfully reminded me that Eritrea is my second home and I am very much welcommed. I found Asmara to be one of the cleanest cities in Africa, and its people, the most dignified people around, they were poor, yet highly dignified, they set an example that one does not have to sell his/her country to Emperialists to eat, they are very proud of their nation and country and have managed to fight for over 30 years to gain their independence from Emperial Ethiopia and contiue to defend it from blood thristy Ethiopian Invaders with every drop of their blood. Thank You President Afwerki for being a friend Thank You Eritrea! Nur

S.O.S. bro Waa runtaa, hadalkaaguna wuxuu waafaqsan yahay aayaddan: Allah wuxuu Quraan ku leeyahay: " Allah ma aheyn mid ku dhaafa muminiinta xaalkey ku sugan yihiin (oo la is ku qasan yahay) ilaa ay kala soocmaan khabeethka (kan xun) iyo Tayibka (kan fiican)." Aal Cimraan Nur

Walaalayaal Waxaan Allah uga baryayaa walaalaheen, rag iyo dumar leh oo u dhintay Allah dartii ayagoo u dhiidhinaya diintooda iskana caabinaya cadowga sida naxariis la'aanta u xasuuqaya, inuu ka aqbalo dhiiggooda daahirka ah ee u dhiig baxay si kalimadda Allah ay u sare marto, waxaan shaki ku jirin in qofkii ku dhinta halganka xaqa ah in uu maanta mudan yahay Jannoyinkii Firdows, ay annaga naga nolol fiican yihiin, Allaha annagana na gaadhsiiyo darajadooda, annagoo ka baryeyna Rabbigeenna ( Cayshu Sucadaa, wa mowtul Shuhadaa), ama nolol barwaaqeysan, ama geeri Shahiidnimo Allah dartii. Amin. Nur

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Bush By Robert Parry 04/22/07 "ICH" -- -- George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites. But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.” In other words, if Bush hates the perpetrators, they are locked up indefinitely without charge and, at his discretion, can be subjected to “alternative interrogation techniques,” what most of the world considers torture. The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in. Even the ancient fair trial right of habeas corpus is discarded. However, when the killers of civilians are on Bush’s side, they get the full panoply of legal protections – and every benefit of the doubt. Under this Bush double standard, therefore, right-wing Cuban terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, though implicated in a string of murderous attacks on civilians, get the see-no-evil treatment. On April 19, the 79-year-old Posada was released on bail from federal custody for an immigration violation and allowed to fly to Miami where he will live at home while his case winds its way through the U.S. courts. Bosch, too, has been allowed to live out his golden years in south Florida with the help and protection of the Bush family. But the evidence in U.S. government files is overwhelming that Posada and Bosch were the architects of the 1976 mid-air bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner, killing 73 people, including young members of the Cuban national fencing team. Since the conspiracy was hatched in Caracas, Venezuela, where Posada worked as a Venezuelan intelligence officer, the Venezuelan government has sought Posada’s extradition. However, when a Posada friend testified at Posada’s immigration hearing that Venezuela practices torture, Bush administration lawyers let the unverified claim go unchallenged, leading the judge to forbid Posada’s deportation there. So, the Bush administration, which has subjected its own terrorism suspects to such practices as painful stress positions and simulated drowning by “water-boarding,” wasn’t willing to take the chance that Posada might be abused in Venezuela, even though there was no real evidence that he would be. Justifying Terrorism The Bush administration also took no note a year ago when Bosch publicly justified the 1976 mid-air bombing. The stunning TV interview of Bosch by reporter Juan Manuel Cao on Miami’s Channel 41 was cited in articles on the Internet by José Pertierra, a lawyer for the Venezuelan government. But Bosch’s comments caused him no further difficulty. [For Pertierra’s story, see Counterpunch, April 11, 2006] “Did you down that plane in 1976?” Cao asked Bosch. “If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself,” Bosch answered, “and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.” But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, “In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.” “But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked. “Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.] Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…” “And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?” Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. “We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.” [The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.] “If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked. “No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered. In an article about Bosch’s remarks, lawyer Pertierra said the answers “give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami; terrorists that for the last 47 years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.” CIA Files Beyond Bosch’s incriminating statements, the evidence of his and Posada’s guilt is overwhelming. Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana Airlines plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the bombing. But in fall 1976, Bush’s boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.] Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP. The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia “to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.” On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor during which Bosch requested cash from the Venezuelan government in exchange for assurances that Cuban exiles wouldn’t demonstrate during Andres Perez’s planned trip to the United Nations. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said. “Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.” The CIA report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as well as to the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies, according to markings on the cable. In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack. A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents. Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the men denied the accusations. The case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez. Lost Interest After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism. In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help of Cuban exiles. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for providing the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison. Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and who was overseeing secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet project of President Ronald Reagan. After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and was assigned the job of paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation. When one of the contra-supply planes was shot down inside Nicaragua in October 1986, Posada was responsible for alerting U.S. officials to the crisis and then shutting down the operation’s safe houses in El Salvador. Even after the exposure of Posada’s role in the contra-supply operation, the U.S. government made no effort to bring the accused terrorist to justice. By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela’s jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn’t credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch. But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States. In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush’s vice presidential office in the secret contra operation. According to a 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush’s national security adviser, Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez. “Posada … recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg,” the FBI summary said. “Posada knows this because he’s the one who paid Rodriguez’ phone bill.” After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom. [For details, see Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.] More Attacks Posada soon returned to his anti-Castro plotting. In 1994, Posada set out to kill Castro during a trip to Cartagena, Colombia. Posada and five cohorts reached Cartagena, but the plan flopped when security cordons prevented the would-be assassins from getting a clean shot at Castro, according to a Miami Herald account. [Miami Herald, June 7, 1998] The Herald also described Posada’s role in a lethal 1997 bombing campaign against popular hotels and restaurants inside Cuba that killed an Italian tourist. The story cited documentary evidence that Posada arranged payments to conspirators from accounts in the United States. “This afternoon you will receive via Western Union four transfers of $800 each … from New Jersey,” said one fax signed by SOLO, a Posada alias. Posada landed back in jail in 2000 after Cuban intelligence uncovered a plot to assassinate Castro by planting a bomb at a meeting the Cuban leader planned with university students in Panama. Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and other alleged co-conspirators in November 2000. In April 2004, they were sentenced to eight or nine years in prison for endangering public safety. Four months after the sentencing, however, lame-duck Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso – who lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, and has close ties to the Cuban-American community and to George W. Bush’s administration – pardoned the convicts. Despite press reports saying Moscoso had been in contact with U.S. officials about the pardons, the State Department denied that it pressured Moscoso to release the Cuban exiles. After the pardons and just two months before Election 2004, three of Posada’s co-conspirators – Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon and Gaspar Jimenez – arrived in Miami to a hero’s welcome, flashing victory signs at their supporters. While the terrorists celebrated, U.S. authorities watched the men – also implicated in bombings in New York, New Jersey and Florida – alight on U.S. soil. As Washington Post writer Marcela Sanchez noted in a September 2004 article about the Panamanian pardons, “there is something terribly wrong when the United States, after Sept. 11 (2001), fails to condemn the pardoning of terrorists and instead allows them to walk free on U.S. streets.” [Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2004] Posada Arrives Posada reportedly sneaked into the United States in early 2005 and his presence was an open secret in Miami for weeks before U.S. authorities did anything. The New York Times summed up Bush’s dilemma if Posada decided to seek U.S. asylum. “A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists,” the Times wrote. “But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for President Bush and his brother, Jeb.” [NYT, May 9, 2005] Only after Posada called a news conference to announce his presence was the Bush administration shamed into arresting him. But even then, the administration balked at sending Posada back to Venezuela where the government of Hugo Chavez – unlike some of its predecessors – was eager to prosecute. At a U.S. immigration hearing in 2005, Posada’s defense attorney called as a witness a Posada friend who alleged that Venezuela’s government practices torture. Bush administration lawyers didn’t challenge the claim, leading the immigration judge to bar Posada’s deportation to Venezuela. Venezuela’s Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accused the Bush administration of applying “a cynical double standard” in the “war on terror.” “The United States presents itself as a leader against terrorism, invades countries, restricts the civil rights of Americans in order to fight terrorism, but when it is about its own terrorists, it denies that they be tried,” Alvarez said. As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said, “There isn’t a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela.” Alvarez added that the claim was particularly ironic given widespread press accounts that the Bush administration has abused prisoners at the U.S. military base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba. The Posada-Bosch cases point to one unavoidable and unpleasant conclusion: that the Bush family regards terrorism – defined as killing civilians for a political reason – as justified or at least tolerable in cases when their interests match those of the terrorists. Terrorism is only a moral evil to the Bushes when the violence against civilians clashes with the Bush family’s interests. This blatant hypocrisy often has been aided and abetted by the U.S. news media, which intuitively understands the double standard and acts accordingly. The U.S. press corps downplays or ignores cases in which terrorism has connections to U.S. government officials – and especially to the Bush family. Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at www.secrecyandprivilege.com.

Wisdom Seeker The Taliban were chased away for reasons much more complex than hitting women, the media made them villains and dehumanized them to justify their attack, later American planes obliterated them to rubbles as a chastisement for being bad boys, what made them bad boys: -They hit women! funny indeed -They do not allow education to women! funny again, France does the same thing if a woman wears Hijab, but not a cross. -They harbor Fugitive Binladen! Well America worked with him for a decade on joint ventures, they should sort out their problems without endangering the entire world. In my opinion, hitting a woman is adviced in the following cases: 1. Hitting her with passion 2. Breaking her down with intimacy 3. Captivating her with endearment Nur

An Open Letter to the Pope. Dear Pope As the father of the Christian nations of the world, I solute you a befitting salute of the people of the book, our brethern in common revelation of Allah. Christianity has been identified with mercy and kindness even with enemies, and turning the other cheek for the sake of peace. As a German Pope, I would like to remind you the attrocities that were committed by the Nazi Germany against the Jews and other "inferior" people in Germany half a century ago. No one imagined that any human can actually burn , millions of innocent people, women and children in the Holocaust, but that happened in full view of all Europeans and Amercicans and the entire world. Now decendants of some survivors of that Holocaust are steering the world to the brink of a major catastrophe, from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, chasing a non existent demon they call "terrorism" and in his name, they have changed every fair and just principle that made Europe the example of a modern nation, complete with transparecy and fairness. Once more, Genocide is being committed in Somalia by American NEOCONS ( as the overwhelming Majority of Americans have no idea crimes being committed in their name), and her Proxy Ethiopia, killing hundreds of people and maiming many, burning their dwellings, clearing the country of its people, their only sin: being on the way of geopolitical designs of an energy thirsty Superpower, and greedy Christian Ethiopia, who are collectively and mercilessly pounding Mogadishu civilians, as of this writing, with heavy artillary superguns designed for major wars agianst advancing armies. The weopons and training were provided by America, and the foot soldiers are from Ethiopia, (since they are expendible and cheaper), two Christian nations, committing crimes against Humanity in full view of the entire world. History will record these attrocities, and it will never be forgotten, NEVER, which will guarantee continueous suffering for generations to come on both sides, unless you speak boldly and clearly for Justice according to humane values taught by Jesus Christ, our common Prophet. Jesus taught 1. Do NOT Kill ( Bush's killing machine killed 650,000 in Iraq alone, and now in Somalia, his agencies are using proxies to wipe Somalis out of the map, Ahmednajadi of Iran only talks about wiping Zionism out as an Ideaolgy, this guy, delivers it on real people) 2. Do not Steal ( They want to steal resources of poor nations) 3. Do Not Lie ( They are lying about it, left and right, I raq does not have weopons of mass destruction, the pretext for attacking it, causing close to a million to perish, and now America is attacking Somalia with the meager pretext that there are three non-Somali Al Qaeda guys drinking tea in Mogadishu Coffee shops) I know that as a Catholic, you have a beef with Protestants too, but still, you have more leverage against them than I do, I can only post my feelings here on Somalia-On-Line, the podium of the voiceless, as major media is owned by the affiliates of the NEOCONS, and because its nausiating to see people being disseminated mercilessly by NEOCONS who hypocritically hold you in high honor ( They believe Jesus is illigitimate, we believe he was born of holy Virgin Mary), so for once speak the truth, otherwise, you wll be part of this genocide crime which is happening before your eyes, and please do not delegate it to the UN, they are the most corrupt organization on eath, they steal public wealth, and from there, injustice trickles down, AFRICAN UNION, EU, etc, in the form of deception and lies ( all forbidden by Jesus) until it causes gruesome genocide on the streets of Mogadishu. It will be good to remember Germans to be a merciful people for once, so as a German Pope, why not speak in favor of Somalia against illegally invading Ethiopians and American sponsors of their mayhem and menace against helpless people whose only sin is to be sitting on top of energy deposits and who refuse to bow down for other than Allah ( Our Common ) Peace On Earth Nur

Mystic Wife beating (or husband beating, I saw a funny video of a big African woman beating her tiny husband ) is a common domestic violence with no borders and religion. Most wife beating happens when intoxicants are present, which Islam forbids, and job stress, whih Islam introduces Dhiker to absorb the stress. Therefore I strongly believe that wife beating belongs to non Muslim societies more than Muslim societies. No one has so far done a survey of wife beating, if objectively done, it will surprise many that households who practice genuine Islam, Christianity and Judaism have the least violence, as all three religions in their social teachings teach kindness and tolerance. You will likely find domestic violence in households in which alcohol is consumed, or mighty dollar worshipped. Nur

Mystic Abdullah son of Muttalib, the Prophets (SAWS) father was from the Quresih tribe of Arabia. The Quresih tribe of Arabia were the decendents of Ishmael, son of Prophet Abraham, and as we all know, Abraham was known as Khalil u Allah, or Allah's Friend for his unyielding loyalty and allegiance to his Lord, Allah. Abraham, like prophets before him preached Tawheed ( Monotheism), his legacy was that of a rebel who defied his people's worship of false gods besides Allah to the point he was thrown in a blazing fire for the publics view. But the fire did not kill him, he lived on to deliver mankind from darkness to light through Issac , Ishmael and jacob, from jacob decended most prophets of Judeo Christianity, and from Ishmael, Mohammed SAWS decended. In the beginning, Ishmaelites who decended from Prophet Abraham who resided in Makkah valley intermarried from Arab Jurhum tribe, from there, monotheism was introduced to Arabs, Abraham and Ishmael erected the Kaaba in Makkah for the sole worship of true God Allah SWT. Abraham asked Allah to make this edifice a magnet for mankind for the remembrance of Allah alone and his worship. in The years that followed, Makkah attracted many pilgrims and the decendents of Abraham, the Quresih tribe became the ( Sadana) custodians of the holy Kaaba. Slowly, innovations were introduced in faith, which introduced the acceptance of other dieties in the form of saints to be worshiped with Allah, and at the time of Prophet Muhammad's declaration of Islam, there were 360 Gods (statues) in the holy Kaaba to be worshipe along with Allah. The Quresih knew that Allah was the right god, and the rest, like Laata, Uzza and Manaat ( Daughters of Allah as they claimed, just like how Christians attribute Jesus as son of God) were worshipped as intermediaries who had authority for forgiveness, so polythiesm was born and continues to change colors every age so that man ends up worshipping other than Allah, the trues God. The Qureish used to name their children to dedicate them to their dieties, names such as Abdal Uzza, Servant of Uzza, but Prophet Muhammad father was named Abdallah by his father Abdul Muttalib who was the custdian of the holy Kaaba, as a servant of Allah, to recognize the supremacy of the true God, Allah. Quresih, the tribe of Prophet Muhammad, worshipped Allah, but not exclusively, which is the essence of Islam, hence the name Abdullahi. Nur

eNuri Digest The war in Somalia is part of a global war for Energy,( Oil & Uranium) by the American Oil Companies who have a concession contract of oil exploration in all of Somalia. Islam (aka Terrorism) is the sacrificial lamb to throw for the naive, but over all, "War on Terror", is a camouflage for "War For Oil" Oil Barons don't care about any faith, but will do anything to remove any faith that is on their way to get oil, the following article written five years ago, predicted the American Proxy Invasion of Somalia for Oil, you need to read every letter, to get the full picture of the puzzle that puts poor Somalia on the list of " War on Terror" The Author's Projections at the end of this long document reads: "It is very likely that Somalia will be targeted soon" The Good News is that there is substantial Oil Reserves & Uranium Deposits in Somalia. The Bad News, is that resurgent Islam is on the way, thus, a merciless Proxy war will claim many lives to satisfy the Oil Dracula's appetite, when we see blood, they see Oil, just a matter of different perspectives, the new pricing index for oil will be, Pints of Blood Per Gallon of crude ( Pint/Gal) Which leads to the conclusion that: All the Anarchy that took place in Somalia and the destruction of the Nation State rendering it a failed nation was improvised very well as predicted by Cag Bakeyle and company, that the current TFG Government on the Political Platform were "handled" by the Oil interest group with stake on oil in Somalia, hence footing the bill for the Proxy war and the 16 years of destruction as satirically described by eNuri Anarchist Magazine. The Oil Moguls want to empty Somalia from its people, so that Oil rigs can begin the Oil business, and if necessary creating Brunei type tribal enclaves with puppet Sultan's or warlords who will sign the national wealth off to the oil companies. The article: What Will Be the Next Target of the Oil Coup? by Dale Allen Pfeiffer FTW, January 29, 2002 -- If it is true that an oil coup has taken control in this country and is seeking to consolidate its power throughout the world, based on the fact that world oil and natural gas production are set to go into decline, then what does this hold for the future? Using this as our hypothesis, we should be able to predict future military actions by comparing production profiles for various oil producing countries with the political climate within these same countries. For this purpose, we are using production profiles developed by Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist through the use of their World Oil Forecasting Program in 1998.1 The data has changed very little since that time, except for a slight upgrade in projected Caspian Sea oil reserves and a slightly higher than projected oil demand. In addition to oil production there are also other factors which need to be taken into account, such as other resource deposits, demand, and population. Not all of these factors are as well documented as oil production, and so we will use this as our focal point, adding in other information where available. Finally, we have to wonder not only about the motives of this supposed oil coup, but we also need to speculate on whether the perpetrators fully understand the implications of energy depletion. In other words, will they be able to hold on to their power in the face of the breakdown of civilization? And what might they do if they thought they were losing control? First let us look at the situation in North America, as reported by Duncan and Youngquist. North American Oil Production The United States was the first country to peak in its oil production, back in 1970. The United States exploited its oil to provide the standard of living enjoyed today. However, after 1970 the continuation of this standard of living has depended upon increasing imports of oil. Notice the slight raising and leveling off of the production curve in the early 1980s as oil from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska was brought on line. The Prudhoe Bay fields peaked in 1985 and have been in decline since. At one time, the USA had abundant, easily exploited oil reserves -- production peaked at over 4 billion barrels per year -- but those days are behind us now. Even the Alaska National Wildlife Arctic Reserves (ANWAR) will make little difference to this picture. Not long after the United States peak, resources in Mexico and Canada came on line, providing some salvation in the regional picture. However, the resources of both countries taken at their peaks do not equal the peak production of the United States. Mexico peaked a year ago, while Canada is not expected to peak for another 10 years. In the overall regional picture, you can see the United States peak in 1970, followed by a short decline and then a recovery. As a region, North America peaked in 1985. After a slight secondary peak taking place right now, North American oil production is expected to plummet. The only untapped reserves left in this region are in ANWAR, and their affect would be negligible on this graph. Tar sands and shale deposits in Canada may contain the equivalent of more than 150 billion barrels of oil which could theoretically become economical to produce once conventional deposits are in decline. However, it is unlikely that production can be brought on line quickly enough to offset the shock of conventional oil depletion.2 Beyond this, there are grave environmental problems associated with the exploitation of these deposits. Namely, the tar sands and oil shales can only be harvested through massive strip mining. And, once the oil has been extracted, there will be literally thousands of tons of sand and shale slag to be dealt with, not to mention other more harmful wastes. Where are We to Turn? Contrary to what you might think, the United States does not receive the bulk of its oil imports from the Middle East. Thus far, our oil imports have come from South and Central America, chiefly Venezuela and Colombia. Venezuela alone accounts for more than 53% of the oil in this region.3 However, Venezuelan oil production already appears to be peaking a little sooner than Duncan and Youngquist's program predicted. Venezuela also holds what is perhaps the world's greatest deposit of unconventional oil: the Orinoco oil belt, which contains an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of the sludge known as heavy oil. This is a great resource; however, it is known as heavy sludge because it is highly contaminated by sulfur and heavy metals. The removal and disposal of these elements would have to be attained without destroying the economic viability of the deposits. And, as with the Canadian oil sands, such a project is unlikely to be brought on line in time to offset the shock of declining oil production. Colombia's oil deposits are predicted to peak around 2010. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to produce more than one third of a billion barrels per day at peak. There is currently a lot of speculation about a major oil strike in the southeastern foothills of Colombia's Andes. Geologists in the area have made some interesting discoveries, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet. It has long been suspected that a major field must exist somewhere between the Venezuelan oil fields and the oil shales of the Peruvian Andes. Yet, with all our modern probing, this field has failed to turn up. This author suspects that exploration in Colombia will turn up no new, major oil fields -- though it may turn up minor deposits. This author suspects that the mother lode of South American hydrocarbon deposits has already been found, in the form of the Orinoco heavy oil sludge. In any case, it is quite plain the United States needs the oil of this region. And production of these oil resources is threatened by political instabilities. Colombia is a divided country rocked by over 50 years of civil war. And Venezuela has also become increasingly unstable in just the past year. President Hugo Chavez has been bucking US imperialism and oil interests for some time now. A new Hydrocarbons Law, which took effect at the beginning of 2002, will require that state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA hold a minimum 51% stake in future joint ventures involving exploration and exploitation. And the law will impose the world's highest royalty rates on companies operating in Venezuela's oil fields. President Chavez insists that such a move is necessary to rescue the Venezuelan economy and to help ease poverty in the country. Similar moves toward nationalization in the past led to US backed coups in Guatemala and Iran, to site just two examples.4 Early in November 2001, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and the US State Department held a two-day meeting on US policy toward Venezuela. This meeting was supposedly held in response to a Chavez statement that the US was fighting "terrorism with terrorism." It is quite likely that among the options discussed at this meeting was a coup against Chavez.5 Elsewhere in South America, Ecuador almost fell a year ago to a grassroots coalition of peasants and Indians. Farther south, Bolivia has been destabilized by a peasants' revolt sparked by privatization of their water supply. Even farther south, in Argentina, the economy has crashed and the government has dissolved. People are rioting and looting grocery stores. Brazil has been economically shaken by the fall of Argentina and by the growing strength of the MST -- the landless peasant movement. In fact, it would be difficult to find a truly stable government anywhere in South America at this time. Under Clinton and Bush II, the United States has poured billions worth of military aid into Colombia, ostensibly to fight the drug war, though our support has gone to military and paramilitary units rife with drug trafficking. The US is currently sponsoring a massive defoliation program in Colombia, and we are increasing the number of US military advisors in the country. FARC, the rebel force which controls half of the country, has pledged to target US personnel. And there is word from the state department, since September 11th, that we will consider rebel forces in Colombia to be international terrorists. This author looks for a terrorist/drug war in Colombia which will probably spill over into Venezuela and Ecuador, maybe even Peru. A war in this region will be long and bloody, and may make Vietnam look like a Sunday picnic. The Former Soviet Union All lumped together under the title Former Soviet Union, we have not only Russia proper, but also Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea region. This graph is probably the least accurate of Duncan and Youngquist's predictions, due to lack of data at the time they modeled this graph and also due to exigencies of politics and economics. Duncan and Youngquist did under-assess the Caspian Sea resources, though the correct figures make little difference in their overall world predictions. Most importantly, they did not figure on Russia opening up oil production and exportation to the extent that it has at present, purely due to economic factors. The oil coup has already moved in this region -- the attack on Afghanistan only being the most visible evidence of this. Perhaps more importantly for their interests, the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have opened their countries to the presence of NATO forces. Bases have already been established in all of these countries. It is certain that deals have also been hammered out with these countries for the exploitation of their oil and natural gas resources. It is also very likely that the oil coup has its eyes on Russia itself. In this case, Russia's nuclear might precludes an overt attack. Through the 1990s, western financiers looted the Russian economy until there was hardly anything left. At present, Putin has no choice but to open up oil exports just to keep his government solvent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has placed himself as a vassal to the oil coup; however, he is not entirely happy with the actions of the western states. Bush's rush for a missile defense system would negate Russia's last claim to superpower. We can only hope that the oil coup is not foolish enough to provoke a nuclear war with Russia. The Middle East It is in the Middle East that the real grab for world power will be played out. According to Duncan and Youngquist's model, by 2007 the Middle East will dominate the world in oil production. This will be the last region where oil production will peak, according to Duncan and Youngquist's model, sometime around 2011. And the oil of the Middle East lies largely in the provinces of five countries: Iran, Iraq, The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. All but two of these countries are closely tied to the United States and are likely to be players in the oil coup. The exceptions are Iraq and Iran. Iraq's ability to export oil has been severely restricted since the first Gulf War. Likewise, Iran faced stiff embargoes following the fall of the Shah in the 1970's. However, in neither of these countries does the oil coup have clear control over oil resources. Likewise, both countries are targeted as terrorist states. Right now, Israel and powers in the United States are lobbying strongly to make Iraq the next target in the "War Against Terrorism." Rumor has it that this war is slated to begin early in 2002. This author would suggest that, after finishing off Saddam Hussein, the oil coup will then set its sites on Iran. We can say with certainty that the oil coup will want to have both these countries firmly in control before the OPEC crossover event. But how stable are the governments of the other three major Arab states? The Saudi royals sit very uneasily on their throne. The hundreds of princes which make up the house of Fahd are extremely unpopular due to their own corruption„both economic and moral. National Security Agency electronic intercepts demonstrate that the Saudi princes routinely pay protection money to Islamic extremists, including Hamas and Al Qa'ida. NSA and CIA analysts have noted that it would not take much for an Islamic fundamentalist coup to overthrow the royals. Likewise, a secret CIA study put together in the mid-1980s concludes that terrorists with only a handful of explosives could take the Saudi oil fields off line for two years. ‡The oil producing Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have all seen large population increases since they began pumping oil. In a couple of generations, they have gone from being simple nomadic peoples to sophisticated urbanites. All of these countries have highly developed welfare states financed by oil money. Unfortunately for them, the rate of population growth has exceeded their ability to financially support the population. It is for this reason that the Arab countries were exceeding their oil quotas throughout the late-1990s, in an effort to cover the expenses of their welfare systems. And let us not forget that these are all desert nations. By the year 2020, all of these countries will have passed peak oil production and be in decline. By that time, none of them will be able to support their populations.6 The result will be starvation, economic disaster and civil unrest. How will the oil coup hope to hold this ship together? Projections Based on the analysis presented above, we believe that the most likely targets in the "War on Terrorism" will be Iraq, Iran, Colombia, Venezuela, and possibly (though hopefully not) Russia. That there will be actions in other theaters is certain. It is very likely that Somalia will be targeted soon. And, as they hold the world's richest deposit of uranium, Somalia is not without valuable resources. Other Middle Eastern or Central Asian nations not mentioned here could also be targeted for a number of reasons, energy resources among them. Likewise Indonesia, if that country became too unstable. Then there are actions which could be strictly political, or which could be viewed as vendettas. North Korea, the Philippines, and Cuba could fall into this category. Yet, it is FTW's belief that the main targets for military action in the years to come will be those stated in the first sentence of this paragraph. Will the oil coup be successful? That is to be doubted. Just as the Middle Eastern countries can expect problems because their population will surpass their ability to care for them, so will the rest of the world. The entire civilization is apt to break down chaotically, in ways that no one can foresee. Possibly the greatest single problem resulting from all this will be the failure of modern agriculture. Without petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, experts predict that world agriculture will only be able to comfortably support a population of two billion.7 The current world population is over six billion. What will the members of the oil coup do when they realize they are losing control? If faced with starving, angry masses throughout the world„in the first world as well as the third world -- what would be the response of the oil coup? Would they roll over and die, or would they strike back with everything available? It is truly to be hoped that they do not foresee this contingency, or they may decide to unleash biological warfare on the population of the entire world.

The Latest Misadventure Somalia: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism By NICOLA NASSER The U.S. foreign policy blundering has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the U.S. vital regional interests. The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28 is closely interlinked in motivation, methods, goals and results to the U.S. bogged down regional blunders in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan as well as in Iran and Afghanistan, but mainly in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Mogadishu is the third Arab metropolitan after Jerusalem and Baghdad to fall to the U.S. imperial drive, either directly or indirectly through Israeli, Ethiopian or other proxies, and the fourth if the temporary Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982 is remembered; the U.S. endeavor to redraw the map of the Middle East is reminiscent of the British-French Sykes-Pico colonial dismembering of the region and is similarly certain to give rise to grassroots Pan-Arab rejection and awaking with the Pan-Islamic unifying force as a major component. The U.S. blunder in Somalia could not be more humiliating to Somalis: Washington has delegated to its Ethiopian ally, Mogadishu's historical national enemy, the mission of restoring the rule of law and order to the same country Addis Ababa has incessantly sought to dismember and disintegrate and singled Ethiopia out as the only neighboring country to contribute the backbone of the U.S.-suggested and U.N.-adopted multinational foreign force for Somalia after the Ethiopian invasion, thus setting the stage for a wide-spread insurgency and creating a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism. The U.S. manipulation is there for all to see; a new U.S.-led anti-Arab and anti-Muslim regional alliance is already in the working and not only in the making; the U.S.-allied Ethiopian invaders have already taken over Somalia after the withdrawal of the forces of the United Islamic Courts (UIC), who rejected an offer of amnesty in return for surrendering their arms and refused unconditional dialogue with the invaders; the withdrawal of the UIC forces from urban centers reminds one of the disappearance of the Iraqi army and the Taliban government in Afghanistan and warns of a similar aftermath in Somalia in a similar shift of military strategy into guerilla tactics. The UIC leaders who went underground are promising guerilla and urban warfare; "terrorist" tactics are their expected major weapon and American targets are linked to the Ethiopian invasion. It doesn't need much speculation to conclude that the Bush Administration's policy in the Horn of Africa is threatening American lives as well as the regional stability. According to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "Because the United States has accused Somalia of harboring al-Qaeda suspects, the Ethiopian-Eritrean proxy conflict increases the opportunities for terrorist infiltration of the Horn and East Africa and for ignition of a larger regional conflict," in which the United States would be deeply embroiled. Eritrea accused the United States on Monday of being behind the war in Somalia. "This war is between the Americans and the Somali people," Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters. The U.S administration found no harm in keeping the divided country an easy prey for the warlords and tribal bloody disputes since 1991, probably finding in that status quo another guarantee-by-default for U.S. regional interests. It could have lived forever with the political chaos and humanitarian tragedy in one of the world's poorest countries were it not for the emergence of the indigenous grassroots UIC, who provided some social security and order under a semblance of a central government that made some progress towards unifying the country. Pre-empting intensive Arab, Muslim and European mediation efforts between the UIC and the transitional government, Washington moved quickly to clinch the UN Security Council resolution 1725 on Dec. 6, recognizing the Baidoa government organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies and dominated by the warlords as the legitimate authority in Somalia after sending Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to Addis Ababa in November for talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on bailing out the besieged transitional government by coordinating an Ethiopian military intervention. Resolution 1725 also urged that all member states, "in particular those in the region," to refrain from interference in Somalia, but hardly the ink of the resolution dried than Washington was violating it by providing training, intelligence and consultation to at least 8,000 Ethiopian troops who rushed into Baidoa and its vicinity before the major Ethiopian invasion, a fact that was repeatedly denied by both Washington and Addis Ababa but confirmed by independent sources. To contain the repercussions, Washington is in vain trying to distance itself from the Ethiopian invasion; U.S. officials have repeatedly denied using Ethiopia as a proxy in Somalia. Moreover it is trying to play down the invasion itself: "The State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements," read a copy of the guidelines obtained by The New York Times. Mission Accomplished? "Mission Accomplished," Addis Ababa's Daily Monitor announced when the Ethiopian forces blitzed into Mogadishu, heralding a new U.S. regional alliance at the southern approaches to the oil-rich Arab heartland in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; in 2003, the same phrase adorned a banner behind President Gearge W. Bush as he declared an end to major combat operations in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. All facts on the ground indicate that the U.S. mission in Somalia won't be less a failure than that in Iraq, or less misleading. The U.S. foreign policy has sown the seeds of a new national and regional violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, the heart of what western strategists call the Middle East, by succeeding in Somalia in what it failed to achieve in Lebanon a few months ago: Washington was able to prevent the United Nations (UN) from imposing a ceasefire until the Ethiopian invasion seized Mogadishu; the Lebanese resistance and national unity prevented the Israeli invaders from availing themselves of the same U.S. green light to achieve their goals in Beirut. In both cases, Washington involved the UN as a fig leaf to cover the Israeli and Ethiopian invasions, repeating the Iraq scenario, and in both cases initiated military intervention to abort mediation efforts and national dialogue to solve internal conflicts peacefully. In Somalia as in Iraq, Washington is also trying to delegate the mission of installing a pro-U.S. regime whose leaders were carried in on the invading tanks to a multinational force in which the neighboring countries are not represented, only to be called upon later not to interfere in Somalia's internal affairs, as it is the case with Iran, Syria in particular vis-à-vis the U.S.-occupied Iraq. The Bush administration has expressed understanding for the security concerns that prompted Ethiopia to intervene in Somalia. So once again U.S. pretexts of Washington's declared world war on terror were used to justify the Ethiopian invasion as a preventive war in self-defense, only to create exactly the counterproductive environment that would certainly exacerbate violence and expand a national dispute into a wider regional conflict. Real Security Concerns of Ethiopia Regionally, the U.S. pretexts used by Addis Ababa to justify its invasion could thinly veil the land locked Ethiopia's historical and strategic aspiration for an outlet on the Red Sea by using the Somali land as the only available approach to its goal after the independence of Eritrea deprived it of the sea port of Assab. Agreed upon peaceful arrangements with Somalia and Eritrea is the only other option that would grant Ethiopia access to sea - whether to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Bab el Mandeb or the Arabian Sea, and through these sea lanes to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This option is pre-empted by the empirical dreams of Greater Ethiopia that tempted the successive regimes of Emperor Hailie Selassie, the military Marxist rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the incumbent U.S.-backed oppressive regime of Meles Zinawi, which were deluded by the military means of the only country with a semblance of a nation state and a military might in a regional neighborhood disintegrated into the poorest communities of the world by tribal strife left over by the British, French and Italian western colonialist powers; hence the Ethiopian wars with Eritrea and Somalia. The Eritrean fear of an Ethiopian invasion of Assab via Somalia is realistic and legitimate, given the facts that Ethiopia's borders are, like Israel's, still not demarcated, its yearning for an access to sea as a strategic goal is still valid and its military option to achieve this goal is still not dropped because of the virtual state of war that still governs its relations with both Somalia and Eritrea. Hence the reports about the Eritrean intervention in Somalia, denied by Asmara, and the regional and international warnings against the possible development of the Ethiopian invasion into a wider regional conflict that could also involve Djibouti and Kenya. Internally in Ethiopia, the successive regimes since Hailie Selassie were dealing with the demographic structure of the country as a top state secret and incessantly floating the misleading image of Ethiopia as the Christian nation it has been for hundreds of years, but hardly veiling the independent confirmation that at least half of the population are now Muslims, a fact that is not represented in the structure of the ruling elite but also a fact that explains the oppressive policies of the incumbent U.S.-backed regime. Here lies the realistic fears of the Ethiopian ruling elites from the emergence of a unified Somalia and the impetus it would give to the ****** National Liberation Front, which represents the 1.5 million Muslim tribesmen of Somali origin who inhabit the 200,000-square-kilometer desert region occupied by Addis Ababa and led to the 1977-88 war between the two countries and remains a festering hotbed of bilateral friction. A united independent Somalia and a liberated or revolting ****** would inevitably deprive Ethiopia of its desert corridor to the coast and have at least adverse effects on/or imbalance altogether the internal status quo in Addis Ababa. True the potential of infiltration by al-Qaeda is highly probable with such a development but it is only too inflated a pretext for Addis Ababa to justify its unconvincing trumpeting of the "Islamic threat" emanating from the ascendancy of the UIC in Somalia. Ethiopia's justification of its invasion by Washington's pretexts of the U.S. war on terror is misleading and encouraging Addis Ababa to justify its invasion by the "Islamic threat," leading some UIC leaders to declare "Jihad" against the "Christian invasion" of their country and in doing so contributing to turning an Ethiopian internal and regional miscalculations into seemingly "Muslim-Christian" war, which have more provocateurs in Addis Ababa than in Mogadishu. The sectarian war among Muslims fomented by the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq within the context of "divide and rule" policy could now be coupled with a "religious war" in the Horn of Africa to protect the U.S. military presence that is "defending" the Arab oil wealth in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq against a threat to its mobility from the south, a war that could drive a new wedge between Arabs and their neighbors, in a replay of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and in tandem with a 60-year old Israeli strategy of sowing divide between them and their Ethiopian, Iranian and Turkish geopolitical strategic depth. However this U.S.-Israeli strategy is certain to backfire. Somalis could not but be united against foreign invasion in a country where Islamism is the essence of nationalism and where Pan-Arabism could not but be a source of support as the country is too weak and poor to be adversely affected by Arab League divides; they are in their overwhelming majority Muslims with no divisive sectarian loyalties and no neighboring sectarian polarization center as it is the case with Iran in Iraq; the "Christian face" of the invasion would be a more uniting factor and would serve as a war cry against the new American imperialistic plans because it is reminiscent of earlier "Christian" European colonial adventures.

That is correct, our personal accomplishment if sincere can fuel a strong community cohesion that can triumph in the face of present day challenges, we are like a chain, we only break up at our weakest link. Nur

When? Never inshAllah, Somali women of today are far more educated and responisble than many Somali men, in my opinion many men deserve to be beaten for being irresponsible head of family, a woman who obeys and loves her husband should never be humiliated or beatn, and that happens often in our community. There is no single incident in which Prophet Muhammad SAWS hit a wife, never, and that qualifies our understanding of the verse of Quraan that permits with heavy qualifications, as Allah is addressing responsible man dealing with an irresponisble woman who may be momentarily out of her mind, still, only to get her attention so she can take her responsible husbands advice. Nur

Xiin walaal Jazakallah kheiran for the welcome! A Somali poet known as Caaqiboon, once said: " Kuman baa dhashiyo, kuman baa dhintay ku dhamaan sideynu u dhowriyee " From time immomorial, the cycle continues, with the same patern, each generation rises to their opportunity, earn their due share of good and evil and make room for next, what really counts at the end of this journey, is our personal accomplishment in light of the present challenges, our Qiyaama, is only two days away from our death. Nur

Nomads Present Romans are at it again, fighting present day Jesus in the form of the faithful of Islam, accusing them falsely with the same accusations like Jesus. Once more, the Romans are tipped off by the NeoCons war pimps, to kill (Jesus = Islamists) but not before labeling Islam as Terrorism, so that its dehumanized, therefore acceptable to kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Iraq, Afghanistan to Somalia. The world is watching, hypnotised by the monopolised media. But, an able viewer is watching, so that evil doers exhaust all opportunities to seize their evil before a painful permanent torment is adminitred to them in the day of judgement. Hence our march to meet our maker continues, Paradise being our goal, inshAllah, as I write, good and evil are in conflict in Somalia, many souls have already fallen, from both sides, each soul shall meet its maker and answer for the purpose it lived and finally died, the Judge is the all knowing all seeing and all hearing Allah, the day of judgement begins about a day or two after death, because death kills time too, so those who lived thousands of years ago and those who die today are equally feel that they were resurrected quicly, a day or two after their death: " They said we spent a day or two as (dead people)" Nur

Letter to My Children’s Children’s Children On the End of Republican Government By Marvin Chachere 04/18/07 "Berkeley Daily Planet" -- - In thinking about what I ought to tell you regarding these dark days various clichés come to mind: I see no light at the end of the tunnel. The American dream is a nightmare. The American experiment failed. Pride precedeth the fall. To witness the death of our representative form of government is to feel some of the stages of grief identified by Dr. Kubler-Ross in her landmark study: disbelief, anger, despair… acceptance. I found it unbelievable that our republic would spill out into the entire globe and, repeating the life-cycle of empires like Rome and Great Britain, our unmatched strength, confidence and conceit would lead to a sense of invincibility from which we stumbled, matured, grew old and collapsed. Halfway through my eighth decade a surge of books came out that I encourage you to access on your PCs for they contain the reasons for my incredulity. Collectively they describe a nation in deep trouble; the ship of state constructed around the time of the first steam engine could not hold course in capricious modern winds driven by personal enrichment, societal neglect and king-of-the-hill foreign policies. For example, in a category on ominous forebodings of our global entanglements you can download Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy, Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis and in a different class you can scan Noam Chomsky’s densely crafted Hegemony or Survival in which sharp facts strip naked the current administration’s born-again royal clothing, or click onto Jeremy Scahill’s revelations that a large mercenary army assisted in the catastrophic occupation of Iraq, unregulated and unconstrained. In general, the nation failed so often and so shamelessly to live up to the promises of its birth that it adjusted those lofty promises bit by bit to fit the nefarious goals it pursued on the back of an almighty “military-industrial complex.” Abandon republican ideals and you abandon republican government. And if you go further into our past you will notice that our new way of governing—three separate and independent branches held together by checks and balances—though interesting and admirable was not effective or practical. The government prescribed by the Constitution failed its first critical test; it could not solve the problem of slavery peacefully, and thus we slipped into a civil war that nearly destroyed us. The residue of that bloodiest of all our wars still exists, and the Katrina disaster’s racial one-sidedness and the government’s ineptitude intensified my anger. You might also notice that the impracticality of our new form of governing explains why most new nations formed after World War II did not copy us but formed governments of a parliamentary nature. That the United States called itself America, contrary to geographical fact, foretells its overarching self-regard. We replaced the Monroe Doctrine with a program to convert the world to our ideals and eventually to dominate and rule it. Republicanism and imperialism are incompatible. There were subtle warning signs. At the same time that terrorists replaced communists in the fear-mongering, “barbarians at the gates” instrument for tightening regulations and controls, the government’s infatuation with security caused unprecedented and pervasive secrecy, and secrecy is toxic because governance that is not open is not republican. There were more explicit signs. Less than half of eligible voters bothered to do so, their customary indifference being validated when, despite having received half a million fewer votes than his opponent, the 43rd president attained office by virtue of one vote by a Supreme Court judge. Despair arrived the day Bush II was elected to a second term—“How could 59 million voters be so ******?” headlined the UK Daily Mirror—and depression set in when international rules against torture were deemed “quaint” and outdated. Other harbingers of danger included the expanding economic chasm—the poor grew poorer, the well-off grew richer and the rich got super rich. (CE0s of top companies were compensated 475 times more than their employees, on average.) Faith, more than deeds, became the hallmark of morality. Reason was subdued by religion, and science was subverted by it. Everything of value had monetary value. Lobbyists with deep pockets outnumbered legislators two to one. Every problem prompted a legislative solution and every solution was ultimately sanctioned, or not, by the courts. Any person with superior marketing apparatus and enough money could be elected to any office at any level (and thereby improve his/her lot, financially). Every day my depression was deepened by the repeated and unqualified use of the term “war”—“war on terror,” “War Powers Act,” “war crimes,” “war zone,” etc. Sure, we have a well equipped military force occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. Our troops are killing and being killed. But how could there be a war when the enemy had no uniform, no flag, no unified command and whose most devastating weapons were improvised human and home-made non-human explosive devises? Finally, life and liberty, once believed to be unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, were destroyed by two laws enacted by the 109th Congress: the renewal of the perversely named Patriot Act and the barbaric Military Commissions Act; the former silenced domestic dissenters and the latter dealt with foreign dissenters as “enemy combatants” denying them both legal and human rights. The early weeks of the 110th Congress, for a variety of political reasons, sounded the death knell of the republic. Let the following stand for the multifaceted disintegration I have just summarized; it is the source of my depression and the reason for this letter. In early spring 2007, both houses of Congress passed resolutions, just barely, that urged but did not require the president to prepare to withdraw our troops from the catastrophe he’d created in Iraq. Democratic party leaders boasted that they were taking back powers ceded to Mr. Bush when his party held a majority of seats. The media feigned alarm—a constitutional crisis! legislative branch versus executive branch!—and delighted in speculations regarding the high political price of confrontation—who will win, what are the loses? Meanwhile, Bush, on the defensive, bullied his opponents, called them irresponsible and accused them of interfering; they dishonored our soldiers, he declared, and emboldened our enemies. Often appearances hide the truth and just as often a small victory hides a large defeat. Properly understood, both the nay and yea votes on resolutions setting a time-table for withdrawal from Iraq implicitly concede that the nation’s honor (if there was any) was worth deaths and dismemberments in the tens of thousands, casualties bound to accumulate while Congress and the White House squabbled. Nothing in my time signaled the demise of the republic as surely as this, as if more blood would restore our honor. Reviewing what I have written, I confess that I have not achieved acceptance, the final stage of grief, and, truth be told, I don’t ever expect to.