My guess is that pretty soon al-Shabab will overrun the transitional government enclave, forcing the flight of the fickle government forces and obliging the AU to leave. I fervently hope the Americans at the base in neighboring Djibouti do not intervene to help the government hold on against the al-Shabab forces. But I don't rule that out. Gaaladii ka jaajuuseysey wadankeena iyo dalkeena ayaa qiraya, in in lala Jihaado ayaga iyo waxay wataanba ay banaan tahay shaki maleh. It is funny how Human caqli can be stolen under their very own nose. As an individual, for example, if anybody (whoever they maybe) was to stop you from determining the direction of your own life, you would have done anything to have that right. In our case (ka Soomaali ahaan), that very right have been refused us by the power that be of today's world. It's only natural that we resist, and that is exactly what is happening, isn't it? Hung up on the horn of Africa by former Mareykaan Ambassador to the region

"Is qarxiska lagu baabi'inaayo dadkeena raaxo jaceylka kama helaan." Ujeedkii jumladii aan iri, seyntaa ka qabsata. Is qarxisku waa part of modern warfare, fad ama ha fadin. Inta tirada yar ee muslimiinta ah ee doonaysa inay dadkooda iyo dalkooda ku maamulaan shareecada xaqa ah ayaa waxaa hor taagan caalamkan aynu ku nool nahay quwadihii ugu waaweynaa. Markaa iyagu haday isticmaalayaan drones iyo precision guided missiles, iyana way u banaan tahay inay naftooda huraan. Sida ay Taliban yiraahdeen, "THEY have watches, and we got the time". Is dajise, waxba ha qeylin. Meeshani waa madal dood wadaag, qof walbaana fikirkiisuu qabaa.

"The victory's found in truth, Like innocence found in youth Self defeat is your own dispute And man you put yourself in a ya own shoeses Either you're winning or losing Don't you get it confused Cause you starring in a ya own movie Playing of a role you choose so Stand up and fight if you know say you're right and no you won't ever fail" "No man live forever But never say never Every goodie want better, Just be a go getter And always be clever In every endeavour Coz drastic time call for drastic measure The land and the treasure Work for whatever God say don't be a beggar, The alpha omega Will bless every soul no matter Which name you prefer The immortal stepper Believe in every skin No matter which colour they are Will never let you down no matter Which kind of weather You're destined to rise like the son of Rahima don't stop for a second Every man reckon It sure would be good to be there Whether Mogadishu or Mekka When the gates are finally closed And the saints go marching in" Really deep and touching. Since the current crop of so called Somali leaders can't take the lead, it's definitely a high time for the youth to lead the country and people from the darkness to the light. There are though some good ones in the rotten pile of apples (the current thuggish leaders), but the reality is they're dictated to and cannot one damn good thing for the country and people, thus drastic times need drastic measures.

Waryaarahee ma anigaa waalan buu yidhi ninkii mise Caynabaa laga heesayaa? Waar hadii nimanku nimanka faraha ka qaadeen for whatever reason, meeshaasna dhiig Soomaaliyeed oo ku daadan lahaa ku badbaaday haday isku dhici lahaayeen, soo idin maabato inaad Eebbe ku xamdidaan in Alle kala magan geliyey intaad car-carta ku jirtaan? Waar Soomaalidu waa dad meel fog ka habaaran, iga waloo.

Waa duni Akhyaartii lahayd iib ku doon tahaye Waa duni Hablihii loo ogaa aqalki diideene Ar xaa ereyada (tixda) ku culeys ah! Saaxow kusoo dar xoogow. Dadkan intiisa badani waa run diid iyo raaxo jaceyl'e. Waa dadka haddii la yiraa tuug gacan baa la goynayaa, tusaale ahaan, yiraahda, waxaasi waa 'barbaric'! Waalow aan kuu duceynee, soo daadadi xigmadaa, fadlan. Waana maraqsan tahay.

The answer is NO! But the current leadership are incredibly smart and are trying to bring about democracy - in its truest sense. Their party is taking the power away from the military junta and putting into the hands of the elected parliament. How did the referendum go?

Salaama allaikum all & Eid mubaarak. The not so great also serve a purpose; I mean you can't appreciate a good man unless there are bad ones out there. Isn't that wonderfully, the balance of Allah's creation. The good, the bad and the not so good. Wixii dhib qaba dhibka Allah'a ka qaado. These problems are mainly down to people abandoning their good ways of life (deen) and the good old culture of Somalis, where men were men, men enough to bear their responsibilities and carry them out successfully. Insha Allah kheyr. Don't despair, rahma of Allah is nearer.

I was so hoping it was going to be tomorrow (Thursday), but alxamdulillaah another day of fasting won't be a problem. It's just I expected. Never being like this before. Usually, people inform me about Eid via txts and so on. This one, I just looked forward to it. Ninkii muxuu yiri, 'Ramadaan aa ba'ay, illeen 29 beri baa ka hartaye', hada Ramadaan baa tagey oo kheyr badan saa hal maalin ah baa ka dhiman'e, eh? Eid mubaarak to you all. Allow dalkeenii nabad ka yeel, dadkeenana quluubtooda maslaxo isku geli. Aamiin.

Wallee, waa la ba'ay. Now mushrik cadaw ah lama habaari karo miyaa? Western media have definitely educated some muslims!

Have you guys ever thought of those who DO NOT have any food at all whilst we talk about here our choice of food? SubxaanAllaah. We suppose to eat just enough to get rid off the hunger, not fill up our bellies with variety of foods. The idea is to feel the hunger and start contemplating and pondering about your raison d'etre. This was suppose connect you with your Lord. However, it is important to look after one's health. Wa salaam.

"well I guess that makes the board or consortium of journalistic folks giving him this award, by your definition not a hero, obsolete then. Wow, lets see... your opinion or theirs." Well, I am an individual, ain't I? Therefore my opinion counts as much as anyone else's.

Abuse of the word 'hero' here, isn't it? The man does his job, and it happens to be in a very dangereous place at that. Nothing more. This does not make him, in this case, a hero. A hero, as the word was use to be used, was someone whose actions were of benefit to others or beneficial to one's or people's safety. But, I can not see how he can be called a 'hero'. Before, anyone jumps the gun, it is not a case on my part being envious of the fellow been honoured as such. Maraq you all.

Asalaama allaikum all. Ramadan kareem to you all.

Ebyan (dhameystiran) is one hell of a name for a girl.

Very insightful. 23 segments. Check out part 18 - the water privatisation of Bolivia by corporations, even rain drop water was privatised for goodness sake - and the following story. UN finally coming round to the fact that water is a basic human right, without which life is no more and who goes against the resolution, and without a shred of a doubt backed by big corps, the US, UK and Canada. UNITED NATIONS, July 30 (UPI) -- Access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a basic human right, the U.N. General Assembly said in a symbolic resolution. The U.N. General Assembly passed a measure with no opposition that puts clean drinking water and sanitation on the same footing as the right to live without racial discrimination. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that more than 800 million people live without access to clean water. Another 2.5 billion lack access to clean sanitation facilities and more than 2 million people die each year because of illness linked to unsafe water. "The lack of access to drinking water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined," said Bolivian envoy to the United Nations Pablo Solon. Of the 163 members of the United Nations, 122 voted in favor of the measure. German broke ranks with its industrialized partners by voting in favor of the resolution, the German news agency Deutsche Well reports. "We consider access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, recognized in Article 11 of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," said German representative to the United Nations Peter Wittig. The news service said that the United States, Great Britain and Canada lobbied against the measure going to a vote.

Pardon me, but all of your 'advice' was no advice. What does 'beware of who you....' mean? I would rather leave all of it, in this case.

^^You're talking about stuff of the following kind: Beware of Hamza Yusuf It really doesn't bother me at all. Like as said, listen, take the best and leave the rest.

Are we gonna be judgemental now, huh? You've few comments made about him being sufi, and all of a sudden you making him to be a kufaar, huh? Beware ku lahaa? how about this, 'listen to the lecture delivered, take the best of it, and leave the rest'.

This is Hamza Yusuf warning the Khalij arabs about their wicked ways they (mostly) treat people today may come back to haunt them when the oil runs out. I like the example of Indians working hard at their feet today might become their bosses tomorrow (tilkal ayaamu nudaawiluhaa bayna naas, Allahu akbar). And the way things are going today, that doesn't seem that far fetched. If the clip is too long for you, just watch between 07:00 - 08:30. Boy, oh boy! Have they been warned.

Waar ninka ha tooganinee, is there a grain of truth in what he has written? If there is, it is a criticism that should make the admin to correct their ways, in the interest of the long term betterment of the said admin. Period. I'm looking forward to Part 2.

Everyone abuses the system, maxaa Soomaalida ku qaas ah. Waar waxa ay tabloid ka iyo waxa la midka ahu ay qoraan dhag ha u dhigin. Wixii sharcigu qabto, dee sharcigaa qabtay, wixii kalena ma qabane system ciyaareen. Everyone abuses the system to their advantage if they can get away with it. Beryahan danbe ayey iskaga noqota sheeko ay qoraane, waxani waligood waa jireen, waana jiraan.

Here

Vehicles for Somali VIPs

Eye witness account posted on the LES site. This article is spot-on. I work at Laduree and reading this was like reading my own thoughts written on paper. I will be posting this up on the wall inside work when I go back - F, London, 14/07/2010 21:53

Knightsbridge is London's pop-up oasis Simon Mills 14.07.10 It is 7.15pm outside Ladurée, the chichi designer macaroon café attached to the normally quieter back end of Harrods at the corner of Hans Road and Basil Street. It's a coolish July evening but the narrow, doglegging streets around the famous Knightsbridge brownstone are rapidly hotting up. Forget Geneva and the fuddy-duddy old Festival of Speed at Goodwood. If it's sheer automotive flash and bestial muscle you like in your motor show, check out this central London location on any given evening from July through early August and you won't believe your eyes. Here comes a low-riding Lamborghini Murciélago with a matt black, Batmobile-spec paint job and a garish yellow leather interior. Two boys, no older than 20, both wearing gold sunglasses, sit inside pumping the stereo and the gas pedal. The engine makes a noise like a scalded rottweiler as it is jockeyed up to its parking position, two wheels on, two wheels off the pavement. I can't help noticing that it has no number plate on the front. As if to upstage the Italian super-car, an even more super one rocks up — a £1 million Bugatti Veyron. Every inch of its bodywork has been gold-plated. Three vehicles behind is another Veyron. This one is white with chromium wings. The driver gets out — he is about 25 and dressed like an off-duty Lewis Hamilton. I compliment him on his car and ask him how he got it over to London. “In my plane!” he says with a huge grin and hands the keys to a flunkey. The live action game of Top Gear Top Trumps continues with a pearl-white, four-door Porsche Panamera. The Porsche parks in a “pay and display” bay, but its driver does neither. With a pip of his locking zapper he disappears into a Harrods side door. Around the corner is a Rolls-Royce Phantom customised with a stainless steel bonnet. The number plate on this car is “1”. Later on, I will Google-search this vehicle and discover something quite extraordinary; a couple of years back the Dubai resident owner of this car paid out the sum of, wait for it, $14 million for the registration number alone ... just to be top dog, number one in Dubai. Now an arrogantly long Maybach limousine painted in distinct orange and matt black arrives. The letters “RRR” are picked out on the vehicle's boot in a diamond-studded font. A handsome young man and his friend (or PA? or bodyguard?) apparently dressed for a night out at Movida — faded jeans, Hermès belt, Ralph Lauren polo shirt, pastel suede Hermès driving shoes and bronze tint aviators — roll out and head off into the dark green and brass of Harrods for some late-night shopping. This is Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, flamboyant petrolhead son of the multibillionaire HRH Sheikh Rashid Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi of Ajman. Ajman, in case you didn't know (I certainly didn't), is the smallest emirate in the United Arab Emirates but has grand plans to become a mini Dubai. RRR is the banner for the Crown Prince's vast portfolio of orange and black super-cars — it stands for Rich in Real Estate Resources. I talk to a parking warden in Basil Street who takes off his hat to reveal a sweaty forehead. How do you go about writing tickets to these guys? I ask. “It's impossible,” he says, showing me the computerised ticket machine he wears around his neck. “This thing only has numbers and letters on it. Their number plates just …” He tails off, struggling for the right word. “Look like squiggles?” I suggest. “Yeah. There are no keys on my machine for those.” Meanwhile, a man and his young wife walk up to the café's reception. Laden with shopping bags he is dressed, as all these rich young Arab men seem to be, like an aspirant R&B superstar in acid wash jeans, gold-rimmed shades and one of those rococo rock 'n' roll T-shirts by Ed Hardy. She has a mobile phone clamped to her face and huge Dior sunglasses picked out with diamante around the rims. I notice that there is a small Gucci logo on the arm of her floor-length burka — Prada and Chanel burkas are also available. They join the polite café society scene underneath the eau-de-nil awnings outside and order diet Cokes, £15 club sandwiches and plates of pink macaroons. Every single table here at Ladurée, at the Café Rouge opposite and the Patisserie Valerie around the corner, is taken by people from the Gulf states and the Middle East — Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Dubai. The groups are either well-behaved families with Mum still in her abaya headscarf and big shades, groups of giggly young girls or groups of posturing young boys all in Arab-preppy finery, two or three mobile phones each, keys to Ferraris and Lamborghinis chucked down next to their napkins. The young women from the more liberated countries of Bahrain and Dubai are dolled up like J-Lo (they must watch an awful lot of MTV back home).The girls who choose to keep wearing their burkas — mostly Saudi Arabians, I am told — are extravagantly made up with kohl-lined eyes and red lipstick. A subtle courtship ritual may be at play here but if it is, it is too subtle for me to detect. Indeed, there seems to be little or no interaction between the sexes. Everyone pays with cash produced in wads from croc wallets. No wonder locals call the area “Little Kuwait” during August. For the mega-wealthy oil billionaire families of the Gulf states, summertime means central London. When temperatures at home hit 50 degrees, they flock to the capital for the cool weather, the thriving social scene and the shopping — especially at Harrods which is, rather neatly, now owned by the Qatari royal family's investment arm. Some keep summer houses in London — there are said to be more than 100 billionaire Saudi families with second homes in the Knightsbridge area alone — while others prefer out-of-town locations such as Bishops Avenue, Coombe Hill in Kingston and St George's Hill in Weybridge. They'll go to the Derby, Royal Ascot and the Berkshire Festival of Falconry, which is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Falconers' Club and attended by His Highness Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan. Otherwise, whole floors of hotels around Hyde Park — the Jumeirah Carlton Tower now owned by the famous Dubai group and the Four Seasons Hotel, owned by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al-Saud (who also owns the Savoy Hotel) — are block-booked. During the days, the women have their drivers drop them in Hyde Park where they promenade around the Serpentine, stopping to soak up the coolness and cloudy skies on the benches or laying out on the grass in large circles with their friends. And then there's shopping. The men rise later, do some shopping (lots of gift-giving to do on these holidays), maybe head to the cafés of Edgware Road for quail eggs and brioche or smoke a bit of sheesha, then get into their cars for a cruise. This influx of super-rich holidaymakers and others attracted by such wealth has not pleased everyone. Last year, the Evening Standard reported how complaints from people living in the area adjacent to Ladurée had led to summertime tension. Beggars, drug deals and road rage-generated fist-fights were mentioned. This year police have reacted by issuing an anti-social order around the busy café that lasts from April 1 to September 30; all summer long, basically. Now anyone creating a nuisance in a zone that extends from West Yeoman's Row, Lennox Gardens, Ovington Square, Brompton Road, Lowndes Square and Pont Street, can be removed, and rowdy, revving groups can be quickly dispersed. But the first anti-social behaviour order in Knightsbridge history doesn't seem to have put anyone off. London, especially during these straitened times, does go to great lengths to court Arab business. When the people at Harvey Nics discovered that the year-on-year Arabic spend figures in the Knightsbridge area were showing a 66 per cent increase, the department store extended its hours to 9pm all week and the Fifth Floor food hall got a sheesha smoking terrace. An advertising campaign with a playful Arabic creative theme showed a picture of a single Lanvin shoe. The strapline below, written in Arabic, read “The English are known for having bad teeth, that is why they need beautiful shoes.” But what's the big deal about shabby old London anyway? Yes, we have nice shoes, but can't you get those anywhere? Doesn't our capital seem a bit old and worn compared with bandbox-new Saudi? “Many of the visitors from the Gulf states will tell you that they come to London because, unlike in the US or France, they are made to feel welcome here,” says Hussam Baramo, a Syrian-born, London-based features editor at Al Quds newspaper. “Many of the younger, more fashion-conscious visitors from Qatar, Dubai and Bahrain even prefer to speak English (rather than Arabic) to each other, throwing in bits of youth slang they have learned off the TV. “They think this is more modern. You hear reports of women getting changed out of their burkas on the aeroplane so that they can feel free as soon as they land. They like London because they think it is safe and friendly.” However, London is just a holiday, and once the temperature drops, westernised behaviour is put aside for another year. All the shopping and beautiful cars are loaded onto private planes and everyone heads home for the start, on August 11 this year, of the holy month of Ramadan. Living it up, oil-rich style. You just feel embrassed to have anything to do with this folk. Source: London's evening standard