Mooge;877600 wrote: keep insulting the legends even after they depart. it speaks volumes. So when are you going to stop insulting those who are not from your sub-clan?

Mooge;877755 wrote: Lool. Qoftani wa labaxiniyood . She been plotting all these years. Jugjugoo meeshada joogna ka daran shekadu.

Xaaji Xunjuf;877741 wrote: Duke maanta markan arkay waxan xasuustay heesti ti yarayd eeh dhubnayd qaaday maxay ahaayd magaceedi christina , i am beautiful no matter what they say .

Puntland has already won...

Ok, maybe the President wants a "Yes man" for the PM role, now lets see what vision the President has for the country, cos now he will have to take the slack for an incompetent PM. He may end up doing two roles now. I just hope we get a competent cabinet now.

Mooge needs a strong black woman to calm him down tonite. Is there a chance of him finding one these tonite?

RedSea;877612 wrote: You have an elected President and Prime Minister now. The Transitional period is over. The problem with Somalia has not been with Puntland, it has been in recent decades in south and south central regions. If these two can succeed in bringing calm and governance to these region, then somalia has a great future. You seem to have listened to the President's inaugural address in which he said his job is to pacify the south in the next 4 years given that Somaliland [ I know you're a secessionist who thinks your entity is an independent republic Lol] and Puntland have functioning entities for now.

Mooge;877525 wrote: ask those who know the man in nairobi. he is known as caasha's babysitter. You seem the type that is frightened by strong women.

^^ That's why Mooge is scared of the woman.

Mooge;877518 wrote: zack, i don't know about abwaan, but xaaji got his wish. he wanted an incompetent PM to be named so that country can get worse. he also likes to annoy puntland which is fair game. loool. How is he incompetent PM, when he just been announced?:rolleyes:

Mooge;877507 wrote: loool. it was never about clan ninyoow...........l

Good luck to the new PM, I don't know how competent or qualified he is, we will find out soon, but for now it's not fair to write him off!

Xaaji Xunjuf;877488 wrote: Mooge maybe the sheikh dalxiis u so opposed in the elections would've been better for Puntland since he had a Puntlander as prime minister.

Apophis;877279 wrote: Pps: Mario B: what is it with the Christian gifs; are you considering changing ships? :D Hallelujah means God be praised/Praise the Lord!!..... and No!! I'm staying put, I already have Jesus ibn Maryam in my life . سبحان الله

Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar;877250 wrote: Who is 'minority' in gobollada Jubbooyinka? Kan qoriga aakaha uu wadan jiray oo wali ismoodo in uu awood badanyahay ayaa 'majority' ah miyaa? Wax Kiikuuyo soo dhoob dhoobtay iyo wax meesha awalba xoog ku yimid in '99 ayaa dadka kale 'minority' ku sheegaayo, waa dadkii beeraha lahaa iyo deegaanka magacyadooda awoowyaashooda u baxsadeen. Dadkii awoowgooda tobonaad deganaa ayaa 'minority' lagu sheegaa. Dadkii Kismaayo u bixiye degmada ayaa 'minority' lagu sheegay. Xishood maba jiraba. Madaxweynaha xaq ayuu u leeyahay in uu u magacaabo maamulka Kismaayo. Madaxweynihii horeba gobolka Hiiraan asagaa u magacaabay, kaas oo waliba kumeelgaar ahaa. Kumeelgaar laga baxay, awood ayuuna u leeyahay in uu u magacaabo. Not Kiikuuyo iyo waxee dabada ka wataan. Maamul goboleedkaan iyo qashin qashinkaan hala iska iloowo . Degmo walba goonideeda ha isku maamusho, korna gobolka ha laga maamulo. Jubbada Hoose waa Jubbada Hoose oo guddoomiyaheeda u gaar ah. Jubbada Dhexe sidaasoo kale guddoomiyaheeda u gaar ah. Saas ayee waligeed ahaan jirtay. Wixii taas dhaafsan isqabsigaan ma dhamaanaayo, Barbaartana wey soo noqoneysaa. No wonder the only time since 1990 Kismaayo qabqabsiga ka yaraaday waa kaliya markee Barbaarta xukumaan. No qabyaalad iyo qashinkeeda laga maqlay meeshaas. No wonder the residents are alraedy praying Barbaarta inay u soo noqdaan.

Bashi, I have already posted this. http://www.somaliaonline.com/community/showthread.php/67908-Private-Army-Formed-to-Fight-Somali-Pirates-Leaves-Troubled-Legacy!

Suave, is this an apology thread or seduction thread? I say it's a bit of both.

DoctorKenney;877060 wrote: There doesn't exist anything close to a manufacturing base in Africa. The main reason why countries like Botswana and Angola have grown so quickly is because of the high price of diamonds and oil. That's it. We've got a long way to go The problem with the Africans is that they lead a subsistence life whether in urban areas or rural ones.

Chimera;877091 wrote: Or some are simply not myopic. A flourishing civilization driven by a strong national identity? I would never confuse the two. Which is why Somalia is not a flourishing civilization driven by a strong national identity, and instead is a basket-case. Who the F would like the current situation outside of clan-cheerleaders and their chieftains? Not without tangible proof. Kismayo has been the most hotly contested city in Somalia, only Mogadishu could come close to the almost non-stop power-struggles that happened there. Logic dictates that for there to be long-term stability in that city and surrounding regions, some areas of the country need to be treated with more care than others. That is your right, people seem to confuse my respect for the office with thinking President Hassan as a person is untouchable. Not at all, if he messes up in the next four years, people will be harsh on him, and fair enough to that. However this is a matter of sovereignty, and this is a city under his jurisdiction, Mogadishu is the seat of the government, not Nairobi, and Kismayo is not Garissa. Kenya will be gone before their potential powderkeg general election arrives, and the Federal army is going to grow in strength, My advise is to consult with the Federal government on this issue, and have the conference inside Somalia. This is a solution put forward by analysts covering the situation for a long time. We cannot tolerate two to three years down the line people taking up arms again because one group strong-armed all others only because they had a neighbour supporting them. That is unacceptable. Preach brother preach!!

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT Published: October 4, 2012 WASHINGTON — It seemed like a simple idea: In the chaos that is Somalia, create a sophisticated, highly trained fighting force that could finally defeat the pirates terrorizing the shipping lanes off the Somali coast. But the creation of the Puntland Maritime Police Force was anything but simple. It involved dozens of South African mercenaries and the shadowy security firm that employed them, millions of dollars in secret payments by the United Arab Emirates, a former clandestine officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and Erik Prince, the billionaire former head of Blackwater Worldwide who was residing at the time in the emirates. And its fate makes the story of the pirate hunters for hire a case study in the inherent dangers in the outsourced wars in Somalia, where the United States and other countries have relied on proxy forces and armed private contractors to battle pirates and, increasingly, Islamic militants. That strategy has had some success, including a recent offensive by Kenyan and African Union troops to push the militant group Al Shabab from its stronghold in the port city of Kismayu. But with the antipiracy army now abandoned by its sponsors, the hundreds of half-trained and well-armed members of the Puntland Maritime Police Force have been left to fend for themselves at a desert camp carved out of the sand, perhaps to join up with the pirates or Qaeda-linked militants or to sell themselves to the highest bidder in Somalia’s clan wars — yet another dangerous element in the Somali mix. A United Nations investigative group described the effort by a company based in Dubai called Sterling Corporate Services to create the force as a “brazen, large-scale and protracted violation” of the arms embargo in place on Somalia, and has tried to document a number of grisly cases in which Somali trainees were beaten and even killed. In one case in October 2010, according to the United Nations group, a trainee was hogtied with his arms and feet bound behind his back and beaten. The group said the trainee had died from his injuries, an accusation disputed by the company. Sterling has portrayed its operation as a bold private-sector attempt to battle the scourge of piracy where governments were failing. Lafras Luitingh, a senior manager for the project, described the October 2010 occurrence as a case of “Somali-on-Somali violence” that was not indicative of the overall training program. He said that the trainee had recovered from his injuries, and that “the allegations reflect not the professional training that occurred but the fact that professional training was needed,” he said. A lawyer for the company, Stephen Heifetz, wrote an official response to the United Nations report, calling it “a collection of unsubstantiated and often false innuendo assembled by a group with extreme views regarding participants in Somali politics.” Sterling officials have pointed out that in March, a United Nations counterpiracy organization — a separate entity from the investigative group that criticized Sterling — praised the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland for creating the program. Moreover, the company argues, Somalia already is a playground for clandestine operations, with the C.I.A. now in the midst of an extensive effort to arm and equip Somali spies. Why, they ask, is Sterling Corporate Services singled out for criticism? Concerned about the impact of piracy on commercial shipping in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates has sought to take the lead in battling Somali pirates, both overtly and in secret by bankrolling operations like Sterling’s. American officials have said publicly that they never endorsed the creation of the private army, but it is unclear if Sterling had tacit support from parts of the United States government. For instance, the investigative group reported in July that the counterpiracy force shared some of the same facilities as the Puntland Intelligence Service, a spy organization answering to Puntland’s president, Abdirahman Farole, that has been trained by C.I.A. officers and contractors for more than a decade. With the South African trainers gone, the African Union has turned to a different security contractor, Bancroft Global Development, based in Washington, to assess whether the pirate hunters in Puntland can be assimilated into the stew of other security forces in Somalia sanctioned both by the United States and the African Union. Among those groups are a 10,000-man Somali national army and troops of Somalia’s National Security Agency, based in Mogadishu, which is closely allied with the C.I.A. Michael Stock, Bancroft’s president, said a team of his that recently visited the camp where the Puntland force is based witnessed something out of the Wild West: nearly 500 soldiers who had gone weeks without pay wandering the main compound and two other small camps, an armory of weapons amassed over two years at their disposal. Although the force is far from the 1,000-man elite unit with helicopters and airplanes described in the United Nations report, Mr. Stock and independent analysts said the Puntland soldiers still posed a potential threat to the region if left unchecked. “Sterling is leaving behind an unpaid but well-armed security force in Puntland,” said Andre Le Sage, a senior research fellow who specializes in Africa at the National Defense University in Washington. “It’s important to find a way to make them part of a regular force or to disarm them and take control of them. If that’s not done, it could make things worse.” Mr. Stock, whose company trains soldiers from Uganda and Burundi for counterinsurgency missions in Somalia under the African Union banner, said Bancroft would not take over Sterling’s counterpiracy mission. The Sterling operation was shrouded in a degree of secrecy from the time Mr. Luitingh and a small group of South Africans traveling in a private plane first touched down in Bosasso, Puntland’s capital, in 2010. The men worked for Saracen International, a South African private military firm hired by the emirates and composed of several former members of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, the feared paramilitary squad during the apartheid era. The following year, after The New York Times wrote about the operation, Saracen hired a prominent Washington law firm to advocate for the mission at the State Department and the Pentagon, and a rebranding campaign began. A new company, Sterling Corporate Services, was created in Dubai to oversee the training in Puntland. It was an attempt to put distance between the Somalia operations and Saracen’s apartheid-era past, but some of the officers of the two companies were the same. Two well-connected Americans were also involved in the project. Michael Shanklin, a former C.I.A. station chief in Mogadishu, was hired to tap a network of contacts both in Washington and East Africa to build support for the counterpiracy force. More significant was the role of Mr. Prince, who had become an informal adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Former company employees said Mr. Prince made several trips to the Puntland camp to oversee the counterpiracy training. At the time, Mr. Prince was also involved in a project to train Colombian mercenaries at a desert camp in the emirates to carry out missions at the behest of the Emirati government. But the emirates’ refusal to publicly acknowledge their role in the operation, or to make a formal case to the United Nations Security Council to receive permission to build the army under the terms of the Somalia arms embargo, drew the ire of United Nations arms monitors, who repeatedly pressed the emirates to shut down the mission. Lawyers for Sterling gave extensive briefings on the program to the State Department, the Pentagon and various United Nations agencies dealing with piracy. Yousef Al Otaiba, the emirates’ ambassador to Washington, declined to comment for this article. American officials said they had urged Sterling’s lawyers, from the firm of Steptoe & Johnson, to have the operation approved by the Security Council. Mr. Heifetz, the company’s lawyer, said Puntland and other Somali authorities did receive permission to build the police force. A spokeswoman for the State Department said the United States government never approved Sterling’s activities. “We share the monitoring group’s concerns about the lack of transparency regarding the Saracen and Sterling Corporate Services’ train-and-equip program for the Puntland Maritime Police Force, as well as the abuses alleged to have occurred during the training,” said Hilary Renner, a State Department spokeswoman, referring to the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, the investigative arm. For Sterling, the beginning of the end came in April, when one of the South Africa trainers, Lodewyk Pieterson, was shot dead by one of the Somali men he had been training to chase pirates. Sterling said in a statement that the death was an isolated occurrence and that the trainee accused in the killing had been arrested. “The murder was an aberrational incident involving a particular trainee who was not well suited” to the police force, the statement said. After the death, it said, Sterling tightened its screening of applicants for the Puntland force. But there would be no need for that. By the end of June, Sterling whisked the rest of its trainers and their equipment out of the country, and the Puntland force was left on its own. A version of this article appeared in print on October 5, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Murky Legacy Of Army Hired To Fight Piracy.

Mooge still hating!!

Once again, the man who once captured the imaginations of millions delivered an emotionless appeal. It was the most tweeted about political event of the year, and for once the insider tweets matched the television insta-polls: Mitt Romney was the decisive victor in the first presidential debate of this most contested and close of elections. It was not so much that Romney was great, though he was smooth and personable, but that Obama was not. The president appeared snippy, his eyes flashing angrily during those infrequent moments when he looked at his opponent, his lips pursed and upturned when he looked down -- which was often -- as if he were trying to smile despite sucking on a particularly unpleasant hard candy. Republicans on Thursday morning were calling it a smirk, but it was more than that. There was, in the expression, a mixture of annoyance, impatience, and dislike. Either Obama couldn't stand looking at Romney, or he decided it was a better debating tactic to not even deign to consider him and to address hapless moderator Jim Lehrer and the audience instead of his challenger. The dynamic was set early on: Romney looked at Obama, and Obama looked down or at the moderator. His words appeared equally downbeat. All of which made me wonder anew about Obama's convention performance, and to what an extent it was not anomalous but intentional and characteristic. I wrote then: Barack Obama will never be that man again. Whoever he was in 2008, and 2004, Barack Obama will never have his easy swagger and rambunctiously playful enthusiasm .... That is the truth at the core of his oddly flat convention speech, and at the center of his technically skilled but strangely bloodless reelection campaign. Whoever Obama was when he was elected president has been seared away by two active wars, the more free-ranging fight against al-Qaeda, the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, and the endless grinding fights with Washington Republicans -- and even, I am sure, activists in his own party. It seemed even truer last night. Would Obama have gotten so significant a convention bounce if it were just about his own speech? His demeanor in Denver made me wonder if his was not in some important sense a borrowed bounce, bequeathed to him by Bill Clinton. Many are writing this morning that Obama seemed unprepared, but that's hardly credible. He did not stumble over answers or forget his talking points. Rather, he appeared badly prepared by his handlers to pursue a strategy of non-engagement with Romney while aiming to deliver a passable, above-the-fray presentation. It was a classic frontrunner strategy -- first, do no harm -- but it flopped because Romney was so eager to engage, and chose the occasion of the first debate to showcase a classic Romney policy pivot. If you reread the pre-debate expectations-setting coverage, it appears Obama did exactly what he was gunning to do: Obama is not particularly fluid in sound bites, so his team is aiming for a workmanlike performance like his speech at the Democratic convention. That New York Times piece mentioned something else important to consider: As the candidates prepare, the first trick for Mr. Obama is finding time. His rehearsals have started late and ended early because of events like the tumult in the Middle East. He showed up at one practice just after speaking at a ceremony for the four Americans killed in Libya, and aides found that his mind was elsewhere. I said it after the convention speech and I'll say it again: If there's something that seems shut down in our once ebulliently optimistic president, it most likely has to do with the wars. Obama is a naturally empathic individual, whose diverse, mobile, international background made him unusually able when it came to assessing new social situations and reading more than people say. Some observers have speculated that Obama needs a crowd, energy he can draw from. But he had that aplenty in Charlotte, and it barely helped. I suspect a more prosaic explanation: A person of his temperament cannot maintain the same open demeanor when he's dealing with war and death all the time. As, we must recall, Obama has been for years now. If Obama seems shut down, perhaps it is because he has to be to be who he is and do the job he needs to do day in and day out. If his heart didn't seem in it last night, I wonder if it's not in part because the last thing he needs to consider in his work on a day-to-day basis is his heart. It's a long way from being a community organizer, civil-rights lawyer and anti-war state senator to running a drone war that kills innocent civilians, ordering the death of militants, overseeing a policy that's led to an increase in American casualties in Afghanistan, and delivering funereal remarks at a ceremony honoring the returning remains of a slain American diplomat. It's the only explanation I can come up with for why there is so much self-abnegation in Obama's campaigning. Does it do anything for any sort of voter to hear this, from Obama's closing remarks last night? You know, four years ago I said that I'm not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president. And that's probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I've kept. But I also promised that I'd fight every single day on behalf of the American people and the middle class and all those who are striving to get in the middle class. I've kept that promise and if you'll vote for me, then I promise I'll fight just as hard in a second term. The emphasis on imperfection, the almost apologetic tone -- it's something that's come and gone in Obama's messaging since before the Republican take-over in 2010. Romney has had the luxury of being able to campaign undistracted by a day job. More importantly, he's been able to campaign undistracted by dealing with anything substantive or difficult in recent years. Campaigns are physically taxing. But the toll of being president is something different again. His supporters keep wanting Obama to be who he was in 2008. But that's not who he is anymore. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/snippy-obama-whose-hearts-not-in-it/263229/

Apophis;876994 wrote: TL;DR: The field of economics isn't so different to astrology. So what part of this article are you disputing?:rolleyes:

Vietnam exports more light manufacturing goods than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. :eek: