Well worth the read. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35695648

@Tallaabo said: There were far no camels in the Somali peninsula decades ago and yet the land was lush and very productive. So it is not the livestock which is responsible but the devastating deforestation which has been going on since the civil conflict began a quarter of a century ago. Basically the entire population of the former republic which is growing rapidly in size is dependent on charcoal for their fuel. The fallen trees are also not replaced to maintain supply. It is this unsustainable consumption of a very limited resource which is the chief cause of the problem. As soon as livestock appeared on the landscape, the ecosystem was doomed and it was just matter of time before complete desertification. What are witnessing now is the end stages of a long process that started with appearances of livestock on the scene. decades ago and yet the land was lush ...and before that it was even more lush, the lushness was decreasing gradually till now you have an almost Arabian like landscape. Which is no surprise because the Rub-al-khali was formed exactly by the same process.

@Maakhiri1 said: The camels in SOMALIA destroy far more, than the charcoal trade, which can be controlled, and most Somalis see the charcoal as negative, but love camels and unaware their devastation on the environment. I have been reading extensive reports/research, it is unbelievable. The camels with the big feet and big belly,and how little most Somalis know how destructive they are, it will be decades before most Somalis realize how bad they are, and by then there will be no camels, no humans, as land will be destroyed and the only way is massive culling. So true, Maakhiri. Your an intellectual poster. Post more.

@Tallaabo said: There is no excuse for homophobia here. I have not said its bad or good. Just describing his attitude.

@gooni said: why they throw me? kaalay geella caano kaaga lisee diin la'aan wax ka liita ma jirtee Hade, stop calling other males abaayo, or you know the ciqaab.

yeah

@gooni said: xabad Gaaladu inta badan dadka diimahooda ma fara geliyaan mid aan waxba aqoon baa wax kusoo baray leave the other people's beliefs. Ilaahay u noqo abaayo ( ان الله الغفور الرحيم ) Geeljire lagaroone ah, wal ileen tan yaa arkay :D Waryaa, do you want ISIS to throw you off a tall building.

Dhagax, your a cool guy. My post was not addressed to you. We don't want friendly fire over here.

@Dhagax-Tuur said: Xabad maxaa nacas iskaga dhigeysa? You well aware how people are sensitive about their deen and it being ridiculed, which is what you have just done by calling Islam Mohamedanism, and that coming from a fellow Somali however you have strayed from the path is little too heavy to bear. So, you're not Gaal cad so thread carefully when discussing about Islam , that is cause you're Somali. This goes to the heart of Somali maryooley cognitive dissonance vis a vis this Arab religion i.e if your not white you can't criticize it, because you run risk of being self hating. very foolish. I hate both of them if that makes it easier for you to understand. How did you cope with algebra math ? You can't tie our Somali identity to an imported Arab ideology however much you get offended and get your nigis in a bunch, the two are mutually exclusive and any big foreheaded nilote that argues otherwise is misguided 5th world wax ma tare.

@Miyir said: Searching one's truth, if it lead one's to abandon a belief, So be it. The unfounded fear people will be easily led astray questioning the norm, I will never understand. Absolutely !

Absolutely amazing. What fantastic work that generation has done we have squandered it.

Can you recommend any good brands.

^ You have an authoritarian streak, Galbeedi. This is a free forum. Mohammedanism is an Arab ideology, i don't know why a black man should get in his feelings when i criticize it. Madow-na isqorkaan ku nacay niyow.

@Dhagax-Tuur said: The Quran is the thinking man's source of wisdom and guidance Preposterous.

@Tallaabo said: This is an excellent article and carries so much truth about the Arab world's sick culture . Indeed.

@Miyir said: i have most of his writing, a great philosopher and humanitarian no wonder beardos hate him. Xabad He was vegetarian and never married too lol your hero. Is there anything wrong with that ?

Che Good find. I already knew of Ma'ari. Read an article on him by BBC News two days a go. Al Nusra beheaded his statue. Poems are best read in their original language. The English translation doesn't do it service, just conveys a general translation without the beauty and meter.

@Alpha Blondy said: are you a post monitor? are there prizes for making certain types of comments. How is ATL treating you, Alpha ?

@Dhagax-Tuur said: Btw, is this the poet that Saudi released from prison recently? Wallaahi, Islam is a deen that demands reasoning despite its practitioners, mostly. :D So patently false, one can just chuckle wallaahi.

@Dhagax-Tuur said: Yeah, Che ka dheerow Xabad, otherwise you know, you'll be singing from same hymn sheet: run for your life (sorry Xabad walal just joking) Seriously, I don't want us to stray from our beautiful and full of reason Islam, but we seem to have lost the critical mind in our masses, and that partially is to blame for the malaise in the nation today. We have sort of become people that don't question, and anyone that questions is frowned on! Maskiin, he is an adult, why shush him away from debate. I guess you all like one side of the story. Let us all use our critical reasoning faculties and make the best decisions on the merits and demerits of a case instead of censoring and willful blindness. That is all i am asking, Dhagaxyahow. The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~~ Winston Churchill

My own opinion is it has 0 % chance of success.

Why this poem, Che !

Nadir Sharif Maqbul loves to play soccer and has dreams of one day joining the Chelsea Football Club in London. But his reality is less bright in Somalia, where the majority of the country’s youth are unemployed. Maqbul is one of them. The 20-year-old, who has failed to find a full-time job for the past several years, needs a steady income to support his widowed mother and marry his girlfriend. “No job opportunities exist in this country,” said Maqbul, who lives and attends secondary school in the capital, Mogadishu. That could all change with Fursad Fund, which launched last weekend and aims to establish “Somalia’s first independent trust fund” through donations from citizens and the Somali diaspora, rather than foreign aid. The money raised is meant to help create jobs and other opportunities for impoverished and disadvantaged communities across the East African country, where youth are often otherwise lured by piracy or armed groups. But while residents and the government hailed the homegrown campaign’s intentions, Somalia analysts were concerned about Fursad Fund's board of directors and its links to the government. They also warned that success will ultimately be determined by the organization's ability to deliver on its lofty promises and remain transparent in a country that has been dubbed the world’s most corrupt. http://www.ibtimes.com/somalias-first-independent-trust-fund-offers-hope-unemployed-youth-raises-concerns-2328283? What do you'all think ? Will it succeed or not ?

@Alpha Blondy said: imagine if it were 200 reer Xamari people. i don't think anyone would complain, maha? Trying too hard as usual.

ORAN, Algeria — AFTER Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity. The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants. Sex is a complex taboo, arising, in places like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, out of the ambient conservatism’s patriarchal culture, the Islamists’ new, rigorist codes and the discreet puritanism of the region’s various socialisms. That makes a good combination for obstructing desire or guilt-tripping and marginalizing those who feel any. And it’s a far cry from the delicious licentiousness of the writings of the Muslim golden age, like Sheikh Nafzawi’s “The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight,” which tackled eroticism and the Kama Sutra without any hang-ups. Today sex is a great paradox in many countries of the Arab world: One acts as though it doesn’t exist, and yet it determines everything that’s unspoken. Denied, it weighs on the mind by its very concealment. Although women are veiled, they are at the center of our connections, exchanges and concerns. Women are a recurrent theme in daily discourse, because the stakes they personify — for manliness, honor, family values — are great. In some countries, they are allowed access to the public sphere only if they renounce their bodies: To let them go uncovered would be to uncover the desire that the Islamist, the conservative and the idle youth feel and want to deny. Women are seen as a source of destabilization — short skirts trigger earthquakes, some say — and are respected only when defined by a property relationship, as the wife of X or the daughter of Y. These contradictions create unbearable tensions. Desire has no outlet, no outcome; the couple is no longer a space of intimacy, but a concern of the whole group. The sexual misery that results can descend into absurdity and hysteria. Here, too, one hopes to experience love, but the mechanisms of love — encounters, seduction, flirting — are prevented: Women are watched, we obsess over their virginity, the morality police patrols. Some even pay surgeons to repair broken hymens. In some of Allah’s lands, the war on women and on couples has the air of an inquisition. During the summer in Algeria, brigades of Salafists and local youths worked up by the speeches of radical imams and Islamist TV preachers go out to monitor female bodies, especially those of women bathers at the beach. The police hound couples, even married ones, in public spaces. Gardens are off-limits to strolling lovers. Benches are sawed in half to prevent people from sitting close together. One result is that people fantasize about the trappings of another world: either the West, with its display of immodesty and lust, or the Muslim paradise and its virgins. It’s a choice perfectly illustrated by the offerings of the Arab media. Theologians are all the rage on television and so are the Lebanese singers and dancers of “Silicone Valley,” who peddle the promise of their unattainable bodies and impossible sex. Clothing is also given to extremes: At one end is the burqa, the orthodox full-body covering; at the other is the hijab moutabaraj (“the veil that reveals”), which combines a head scarf with slim-fit jeans or tight pants. On the beach, the burqini confronts the bikini. Sex therapists are few in the Muslim world, and their advice is rarely heeded. So Islamists have a de facto monopoly on talk about the body, sex and love. With the Internet and religious TV shows, some of their speeches have taken monstrous forms, devolving into a kind of porno-Islamism. Religious authorities have issued grotesque fatwas: Making love naked is prohibited; women may not touch bananas; a man can be alone with a female colleague only if she is his milk-mother, and she has nursed him. Sex is everywhere. Especially after death. Orgasms are acceptable only after marriage — and subject to religious diktats that extinguish desire — or after death. Paradise and its virgins are a pet topic of preachers, who present these otherworldly delights as rewards to those who dwell in the lands of sexual misery. Dreaming about such prospects, suicide bombers surrender to a terrifying, surrealistic logic: The path to orgasm runs through death, not love. The West has long found comfort in exoticism, which exonerates differences. Orientalism has a way of normalizing cultural variations and of excusing any abuses: Scheherazade, the harem and belly dancing exempted some Westerners from considering the plight of Muslim women. But today, with the latest influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship that some Arab countries have with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe. What long seemed like the foreign spectacles of faraway places now feels like a clash of cultures playing out on the West’s very soil. Differences once defused by distance and a sense of superiority have become an imminent threat. People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands. Kamel Daoud, a columnist for Quotidien d’Oran, is the author of the novel “The Meursault Investigation” and a contributing opinion writer. This essay was translated by John Cullen from the French. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/the-sexual-misery-of-the-arab-world.html