You should watch a documentary called Why We Fight which talks about the arms race in which the Americans are encouraging. Why We fight was also a series produced back in the day by the American government to encourage people to fight against communism and nazis. Clearly, the conservative camp has been able to mobilize the media to rally for war and the neoconservative agenda. The liberals have nothing else but cynical tv shows and commentaries that are just plain jokes, they never suggest serious talk for the purpose of shifting political attitudes and policy.

^^ Its not being responsible ten years later, they must be held accountable today, the prison scandal, the lies told to go to war, and many other things, they must be held accountable by the american people -- the democrats are the most disapointing political party at the moment, wouldn't you agree?

^^^ LOL, for the newbie you never ask those questions round heree!, welcome to SOL.

Torture of innocent people and the slaughter of innocent people is taking place in Iraq at the moment, just last night there was a witness on tv from iraq arguing that the US army slaughtered many innocent people.

i'm hoping they'll get through this disaster - we send our prayers out to them.

I thought AIDS was man made by some doctor who was conducting an experiment that went wrong --- if it is man made, it's a disease that benefits primarly those in the west - in other words, the depopulation of Africa - problem is that Africa has the highest orphan rates due to AIDS, and general misunderstanding and cultural taboos of the disease kills many and not to mention those people in Africa are unable to attain the pills because they cost a lot.

C I haven't forgotten about it, just occupied at the moment - i haven't done graphics for a minute now - i'm hoping to get back in it one of these days.

^^ Lost can be annoying, i think most of the audience have no idea what's happening thus far - i think the writers make up the story as they go along - i was expecting a compelling season finale, but it was weak, very.

LOST – what did you think about the season finale? ALIAS – are you mad that alias won’t be back?. 24 – why won’t the Chinese kill jack? Prison Break – why the hell are they running in the open field? Which show is your favourite

Oil and gas lawyer extends reach beyond borders Macleod Dixon's Jay Park has put together deals in Mexico, Vietnam and Africa, writes JACQUIE McNISH JACQUIE McNISH Wednesday, May 10, 2006 Far away from the Somali government's shaky temporary base, Baidoa, a place so devastated by war and famine it is called "city of death," a dozen advisers met in a Jakarta penthouse two weeks ago to draft a legal rescue mission for the African country's vast and unexplored oil and gas basin. Advisers to Somalia's President Abdullahi Usuf Ahmed convened the meeting in the distant Indonesian city because government offices in Baidoa are still being converted out of a former food warehouse. The African country had to go even farther to find legal experts for the session. Flown in from Calgary to lead the extraordinary gathering was Jay Park, a partner with Macleod Dixon LLP, who is ranked among the world's top oil and gas lawyers. Mr. Park and his partner Thomas Valentine have been hired by Somalia's fledgling government to design a credible petroleum regime that can attract investors to the war-torn, but oil-rich region. If all goes according to plan, the new laws will be in place next summer. "This is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it may be sitting on some of the greatest oil and gas treasures. We need to ensure that Somalia can take advantage of its resources without succumbing to the resource curse of corruption, conflict and violence," Mr. Park said last week in his Calgary office. If anyone can navigate the politically tricky challenge of drafting laws to attract international investors without sparking political controversy in a country that has seen 13 governments fail in 15 years, it is Mr. Park. A partner with Canada's most internationally minded law firm, Mr. Park has worked with aid agencies, governments and financial advisers in about 30 countries to help them build a legal framework to claim a bigger share of the profits from orbiting oil prices. "The changing price of oil is making a lot of governments question whether they are getting enough of the pie. The challenge is to help them find a balance between what they should get and what investors need to justify spending money on the projects," Mr. Park said. It is not an easy balancing act. In Venezuela, political opposition to foreign oil and gas companies was so intense that President Hugo Chavez recently rewrote the country's laws and forced offshore companies, which had invested billions of dollars in local projects, to yield control stakes in their operations to the government. Other countries aren't pursuing such harsh measures, but they are certainly demanding more from the world's big oil companies. In the old days, developing nations were so starved for cash that they were content to accept fixed payments or royalties in exchange for handing oil and gas rights to foreigners. But after watching foreigners pocket most of the profits from soaring petroleum prices, many states are abandoning these so-called "concession systems" and replacing them with "production sharing," "joint venture" or "service contract" systems that give more control and profits to local governments. Countries such as Somalia, Pakistan and Vietnam have hired Mr. Park to help them build modern petroleum laws, investment contracts and regulatory systems from scratch. In these far-flung frontiers, Mr. Park has landed in some strange corners. Once he and a group of advisers touring Pakistan stumbled over an illegal weapons operation along its northern border. In Vietnam, he ran up against local political forces that resisted a number of the changes he proposed for an open and equitable tendering system for oil and gas projects. In each country Mr. Park's biggest challenge is to craft laws that reassure foreign investors without triggering a political backlash. It can be a difficult assignment. For example, when Mr. Park was hired by Mexico in 2002 to help draft contracts with a handful of foreign oil companies willing to develop the country's northern gas reserves, controversy over the project generated front-page stories for months. To placate opponents, Mr. Park drafted complex contracts that put in place a sliding scale of about 200 payments that are paid to investors when certain conditions, such as drilling wells or laying pipe, are fulfilled. The contracts were challenged in eight different lawsuits from local labour and political groups, but each was defeated. The most curious thing about Mr. Park's international oil and gas practice is that he is doing it at all. Most top Calgary oil and gas lawyers are so busy crafting takeovers, contracts and asset sales during the heady oil boom that they barely have time to take a vacation, let alone develop international clients. Ten years ago, Mr. Park began looking for new clients outside the country as part of a broader strategy adopted by Macleod Dixon to expand its core oil practice and keep up with the international ambitions of its corporate clients. Today, about 70 of the firm's 253 lawyers are working in Moscow, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Brazil. Competitors grumble that profits have been volatile at the legal outposts, but Paul Drager, a former Canadian diplomat and architect of the firm's expansion, retorts "they don't get it." Macleod Dixon's future, Mr. Drager said, hinges on pushing the firm's reach outside of Alberta. "We deal in an industry that is international. You can't just stay within your borders." jmcnish@globeandmail.com

General Duke are you in Xamar, I recall you saying once that you were in Xamar --- is that correct?

And many of my friends argue that the middle east is the ideal place to live. :eek: Where are the human rights watch groups when you need them. :confused:

You’ve got a great artistic eye, your biggie piece is intense, making it my desktop wallpaper. Keep up the good work.

Baashi, you ask a loaded question – I think the media, warlords, corrupt corporations and diasporic issues such as identity and memory are the cause of Somalia’s failure to function. Media>> Ever since the radio was invented politicians have been using this medium to advance their political ideologies, and along came the web. Warlords use it to promote their agendas, and their relatives or tribal affiliates promote their ideology through these mediums. The people who appropriate these forms of medias use extreme, settle, and somewhat polite sensationalism to deliver the news, and that is why the affects of biased journalism must be critically examined. Who benefits?>> The question of who benefits is one that is complex, because there are many hidden entities that benefit directly and indirectly. The obvious answer is warlords and corrupt corporation who exploit our natural resources. Many corporations dump toxic substances in our waters and other states also steal our fish. Many people often argue that the young generation will save Somalia – however, the young generation is facing an identity crisis – that is why I’m less optimistic about such predictions. Identity>> We need to study the experience of Somalis in various countries, meaning we need to examine the re-appropriation of our culture, our adopted identities through cultural performances in the public sphere (how we do behave in public, do we inject our culture into our habitat). We also need to examine other influencing factors such as time, space, memory, nationhood and assimilative methods. We now see those in Somalia as the other. Have you noticed everyone who goes back home takes a camera and documents life there. The fact that we take a camera shows us that we see them as the other. Susan Sontag an acclaimed essayist and contemporary theorist of photography once said that the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own. The young generation views Somalia as a vacation spot, although it is the unlikeliest of all places. I’m also at fault for promoting images that promote other peoples realities as fantasies for privileged consumers. We ran photodocumentary pieces in pace magazine, however, as Martha Rosler once suggested documentary photography is a little like horror movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into fantasy, and into imagery. The images are without narratives, because we cannot actually comprehend the details in the images, we see them as the other. What I mean to say is that the images reinforce those social realities depicted in the images, depoliticizing them and forever establishing the predicament of the other as the imagined status-qou. Even more, the young generation is unmotivated because the older generation neglects to inform the young through education and positive propaganda that would eventually entice post-conflict reconstruction initiatives among the young. At the same time, the young generation is now part of the global soul, privileged immigrants, and in essence postcolonial nomads. The irony of all this is that we have returned to our primitive culture subconsciously – we have become border crossing nomads – as one Russian writer once wrote – ‘the Somali does not see the world as states and borders, rather he sees it where there is life and where there is death.’ Do they see themselves as having a permanent home – because we have been away for a longtime and we are used to life on this site of the world, and we have too many expectation and we are a generation that is unapologetic and unforgiving of the past. At the same time the old generation is unwilling to accept the horrors of the past, they neglect the relevance of history when it comes to postconflict reconciliation – they remember, but they’re not willing to discuss, they are practicing a mass amnesia. They also practice long distance nationalism or rather regionalism in their daily lives. The sad side of all this is that when the young generation returns, the nation will not be what we imagine it to be, the way it used to be. And many of them will see Somalia as a vacation stop, a museum of horror to visit – a sick sort of fetish to indulge in almost. But if they return, Somalia will be a multilingual country with divided blocks, where every block is characteristically different and separated from the other, the English area, French, Dutch, Italian and so forth. Not to mention the UN says that the Somali language is in danger of disappearing from practice. The only positive thing to say is that we might in fact be ahead of our time, we are assimilating into the global culture, however as time passes we are creating new historical experiences that are forever embedded into us, which has nothing to do with Somalia in terms of culture, identity and memory.

CANADA

Good quiz, however, many of us don’t really pay attention to those details when we read, I have a poor memory of the books I’ve read in high school, which included Wuthering Heights and A Dolls House, we read many more but I can’t seem to remember. Put up a quiz about political literature, then I would have no problem.

There are a lot of things in which scholars have debated, and I think condom was one of them – I think condoms are not allowed in a marriage, I could be wrong – outside of a marriage they’re a necessity without a doubt – because you’re committing a sin and u don’t want *******s.

Sounds like a good investment that requires no monetary start up. Nur your story reminds of a joke I was told once, a man built a Mosque, but no one came to pray, then one day he decided to tell people that he will pay them to pray in the mosque, a $100/week for anyone who would come five times a day. Then pay week came, many people approached him for the money, and he told them, they should ask Allah, because they were working for the hereafter – then a guy screamed out in the audience saying that he didn’t make proper wodu during the week.

ScarFace that is an intense picture and I don’t think you should remove it, was it taken recently in Somalia? The guy in the pic is he part of the current war in Xamar? Back to the topic, I think most Somali girls in the west are very modern, they respond to the usual romancing mechanisms used in the west, I think in Somalia it would be much more difficult to have an open relationship, first the wedding, then the relationship – in fact many people argue that arranged marriages often last longer than those that emerge after long term dating. First year your doing the minimal relationship work, by the time you get around to hating each other, you’ve got kids, then you stay together for the kids, and not to mention, familial ties with her parents and your parents, and qabil politics – divorce seems impossible. So I’d say don’t chat’em up a lot, get it arranged, I know in the west that’ll seem strange and people might think you’re deranged.

^^^ Poetry get too complex because some people don't make sense, and they call it poetry, and they blame you for not getting their work -- old school somali poetry is good, and it actually rhymes.

^^ I would agree with you that she is a newsmaker – she gets interviewed in many publications including the new york times Sunday magazine. We have to ask ourselves, why she is getting all this attention? clearly there are many other politicians who have similar political views. She becomes a newsmaker because we continue to threatened her, the new york times story focused on her new found fear of being murdered, and how she doesn’t sleep in the same place twice--- these threats legitimize her cause, and thus she ends up in newspapers.

the jokes are funny i would agree, but some might be offended, and some might even try to use these lines at a gathering, i'm just wondering, who wrote these jokes? if by a muslim, which i'm assuming, i was under the impression that comedy was forbidden.

Ilegal Some-Alien are you a student at Concordia or McGill.

I knew this kid, when we were younger, and he used to talk about robbing Somali women at weddings, because they had so much gold on them. Turns out he actually pulled it off one night, many of the women were horrified, and some of them began being escorted to and from weddings. The craziest stick up kid I’ve ever met.

Ayan Hersi advocated anti-Islamic policies intended to hurt her brothers and sisters. She is not ****** - she knew the outcome of her actions. The problem is we speak of reprogramming her, however, no Somali is rational enough to actually carry a dialogue with her – we are all too angry to actually engage her in a civil manner. Somalis are reactionary people, they shoot then they ask questions. Honestly, what would you say if you met her?