GJ you misunderstand the fundamental principal of democracy, choice, not participation.

So its agreed that we are all in disagreement about what type of government is suitable! Does that mean we have the de facto Kritarchy "state" (in big quotes). SamW - dont be so demeaning to others, please, and I'll share the sentiment wrt the ideal theocratic state, well up until we find a messiah, however describing the current pseudo- administration as "wholly not egregious!" is grossly misleading. The problem is that the power brokers in this group have disgustingly bloodstained hands and the greed to match- any civilised society would of kept them in isolated cells far out in sea so that their stench doesn't violate the nostrils of their victims. Gavin: wrt to Xeer, lets call it what it is, its just customary law, every culture has one - and most share the basics i.e. don't kill you neighbours (though we somali's seem to have forgotten the basis of ours) - The problem with customary law is that its local and heterogeneous even within an indigenous society, let alone a global one. This is very different to the 'natural law' in the strict and universal sense that a Kritarchy defines -- therefore how do propose to reconcile the two. If your thoughts are along the lines of some form market evolution process whereby different ideals compete with each other and the *best* - in some yet undefined measure of fitness wins out, then sadly I think this is idealism, if nothing else, the will of the strong always gets enforced, the basic principal of a market. Further stable and flexible and democratic governments already perform this task of continually re-evaluating the value their laws, via the poll stations - without the risk and uncertainty of a market process. Theoretically there are a number issues with notions of AnCap, first there is a question of what are the natural laws its based around? second, are they mutable or do they remain fixed? third, how is their value objectively measured? how is the power they afford distributed? I think the market analogies are appealing because they side step most of the important questions by saying that processes will compete for their value while implicitly defining it from their outcomes. But this is cheap. If nothing else, take a technical viewpoint . There is nothing to say that a market based process of continual judgement and re-evaluation will not provide the quality of people desire, in fact given the right conditions they will probably work, but their lack of appearance and staying power - when they have appeared, say something about the risks they entail. On the whole they are a lot riskier. For example, lets take the fitness of any individual with a society and ask what it depends on. Its difficult and wrong to say that its independent from the services their receive from their society. Now if we make the accurate assumption that the service that individual receives from a society is related to their status - then an AnCap society induces either (i) syndication and group from around common interest, especially if individuals cannot compete alone- in much the same way as political parties form and compete for power - hence at the very best your back to the old state problem, or like somalia, they kill each other (ii) or you have a free-rider problem were individuals find it more rewarding to take advantage of the generosity of a few that may be willing to contribute to the welfare of all and such systems fall apart very very quickly. In short a Kritarchy i a very interesting system to study, it says something about the interaction between our notions values and cooperation and market theory is elegant. But this is not something to practice on peoples lives. Our flirtation with what approached AnCap suggested that it leads to producing syndicated genocidal maniacs which devour people and could give cockroaches a run for their money in their staying power. So we're hoping for some form of centralised governance. btw - iraq and iran are not democracies, they are the spoils of war - in both countries the institutions in power are unpopular and have grabbed/been given power after unrest, hence do not represent the choices of people with free will - and we dont want that Anyhow why do you support the AnCap -- Ubaahne, walaal, hore u soco oo ninka yuu-san kaa fakan, laakiinse, aniga in aan diin iyo siyaasad in aan isku qaso ma jecli

^ dude please use smaller pic's 70% of screen is taken up by you images, i can no longer see what i'm trying to read while i write - you've made me resort to blocking all images from farm1.static.flickr i.e. not good!

^ what a ishtupid question what difference does it make, does every muslim agree with you? or are they not a muslim if they dont MMA - i agree with u in the majority, SAmW and Gavin will post my response after work

Indeed I dont think that there is any word other than a thrashing for what Roma received last night, here are the highlights for those who missed the game: 1st half and 2nd half

^ u knw i was thinking just that -- but man what's happening to us?!?! I remember as a child, when cousins visited from the baadiye, the boys would show off their crusty feet to signify how hard they were and we'd spend hours testing each other (with me always loosing) by walking over the most shard ridden ground or object we could find

Gavin: Its difficult to define what a 'western style' government is, 'western style' governments vary as much as the cultures they are from. Most of us want a fair system that empowers its people and takes responsibility for its actions - but in reality, (i think) that the correlation between the extent to which a government provides that and its political philosophy is murky, and depends much more on the social norms and the power balance within the culture. So most of us support and want ideals like democracy, but we want it our way, to support our ideals and values, not wholesale imported. wrt to anarcho-capitalism isnt it another fancy word for market optimisation? and doesnt that implicitly contradict the basic function of society - i.e. looking out for the parts that make up the sum? ansaar17: So who will rule this islamic nation of yours?

Gavin, first, welcome to the forum - we (well i) head your american warning and probably wont respect it. Don't take this personally but we cant really stand each other much anyway, so we'll attempt to take a bite out of anyone in the vicinity too. In return don't feel shy about voicing your opinions and telling others that they are being door-kknobs when they say something ishtupid and you'll be at home. wrt. somalis - please don't buy into this post modern interpretation of savagery dressed up in big words to satisfy the curiosity of intellectuals. Somalia as it stands is a hell hole for the vast majority of its inhabitants - if that was not the case then somali lives would mean more than numbers on wall charts and we wouldn't be washing up dead or barely alive on the beaches of the rest of the world. The independence traits you mention were typically associated with nomadic pastoralist cultures - but they say nothing more than a crude generalisation. If you are interested in what factors of Somali culture lead to their mind set read the english translations of Somali poetry - a lot of the guys here would be in a better position to advice you. If you'd like a western opinion on somali people Gerald Hanley's 'Warriors and Strangers' is a remarkably good book.

Eaten alive Can the best way to treat dead or diseased skin really be to immerse yourself in a pool of ravenous creatures? Lucy Atkins on the rise of 'doctor fish' Lucy Atkins Tuesday April 10, 2007 Feeding frenzy ... but doctor fish are more likely to tickle than to bite. Exfoliation is a key part of any skin beautifying treatment. But forget salt scrubs, rubs and foot files. Why not try something far more efficient: the toothless mouths of hundreds of tiny, voraciously feeding fish? "Doctor fish" - so named for their ability to produce healthy, glowing results from even the most crusty or diseased epidermis - are the key ingredient in a spa and skin treatment becoming increasingly popular across Japan, China, Turkey and Europe. The idea is that you immerse your feet, hands or, if you are brave enough, your entire body in a warm pool that swarms with hundreds of hungry minnow-sized feeders. The fish zoom in on your most crusty, flaky or scabby skin and chomp away at it to reveal the fresh layer beneath. According to the spas and their enthusiasts, you emerge refreshed, healthy, buffed and glowing. Doctor fish are a species called garra rufa and originate in pools near two small Turkish towns, Kangal and Sivas. They have long been known for their ability to treat the symptoms of skin conditions such as psoriasis. The Kangal spa, the biggest of the two, has been a healing destination for more than 100 years and since 1988 has been a treatment centre for psoriasis sufferers from all over the world. Affecting around 2% of people in the UK, psoriasis is a recurrent skin condition which causes sufferers to develop raised red patches of skin covered with silvery scales - "psoriatic plaques" - that can be very sore or itchy; the playwright Dennis Potter famously struggled with a severe form of the condition. In Kangal, the water's high temperature makes it difficult for any nutrients to survive; the doctor fish are therefore ravenous. Handily, they also have a penchant for dead, diseased or scabby skin. With their gummy mouths they strike and lick the psoriatic plaques, eating away the scaly skin that has been softened by the warm spa pool. Their nibbles can cause minor bleeding, which the selenium-rich water and high-altitude Turkish sunlight then heals. "We have about 3,000 visitors every year suffering from skin conditions such as psoriasis," says Koray Altan, manager of psoriasisfishcure.com, the company that organises bookings. "The combination of the doctor fish, the chemical composition of the water and the heat of the water really works. Every sufferer will go away with clear skin if they follow the treatment exactly [they must spend eight hours a day for 21 days in the water]." However, this is not a permanent cure. "The results will always be temporary," Altan says. "We encourage visitors to see this as the starting point in the battle against the condition." But doesn't immersing yourself in a pool laced with fish that have been gorging on people's scabs offer some chance of infection? The bleeding issue, alone, would surely be a big concern? "The HIV virus, for example, cannot survive outside the human body and fish cannot transmit the virus from one person to another," says Altan. For hygiene reasons, the centre advises patients to keep a distance from others in the pool and everyone has to bring their own slippers and towels. Dr Tim Clayton, a consultant dermatologist at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, agrees that the treatment is safe. "I've known of a few patients trying the treatment," he says. "The overall idea that the fish feed on the thickened dead skin cells found on the surface of skin is sound. It is certainly a novel and interesting way of alleviating thickened psoriasis. It's unlikely to be a cure, but may help improve the skin surface. A good holiday and the sunshine also probably helps, since psoriasis can be exacerbated by stress and ultraviolet light can improve the condition - but people should take care to avoid excessive sun exposure due to the risks of skin cancer.". Therese Dillon, who suffered from severe psoriasis for years and had tried everything to treat it, came across the Sivas spa while on holiday in Turkey. "The first time I got in was very scary - hundreds of the fish came towards me. My legs and back were very bad, and they were all over them. I got straight out. Eventually, I realised the fish were lovely - not at all aggressive." After just four days, "the effects were fantastic - my skin was clean". The results lasted four months. Dillon was so convinced by the fish that she spent the next six years, with her Turkish husband, setting up a clinic - Skin Therapy Ireland - to treat psoriasis, dermatitis and eczema. It opened at the end of last year and is the sixth doctor fish skin clinic in Europe (the others are in Germany, Austria and Croatia). The Kangal spa maintains that the chemical and mineral components in the water (visitors drink it - from a clean source - as well as bathe in it) are as important as the fish. Dillon, however, believes that the saliva of doctor fish is the key to the treatment's success. In the absence of a clinical trial, the science is perhaps muddy. But this, along with the "ick" factor of being eaten by fish, does not seem to deter people. Dillon has been overwhelmed by inquiries and is already looking for an investor to expand her business. The exfoliating efficiency - and novelty value - of doctor fish makes them hot property in the leisure market too. In Japan enterprising spa owners have realised that as an exfoliation gimmick for healthy skin, this one has legs (or fins). They have begun to import buckets of doctor fish from entrepreneurial breeders and are promoting them as nature's best pedicure. Canadian journalist Thomasina Larkin, who lives in Tokyo, tried both the foot and hand fish exfoliating treatments at Ooedo Onsen, a trendy Japanese spa. "I was totally freaked out. I stayed in the pool for about 15 minutes, as long as I could bear, and the fish - about 500 minnow-sized feeders - continued to flock to my feet. It felt like a cross between tweezers and suction cups pecking at me and tickled to the point where I had to pull them out several times." So, how does it compare with a standard foot file? "It wasn't quite as relaxing as a usual exfoliation because it tickled too much for me to be able to just sit back and enjoy," says Larkin. Certainly, doctor fish seem happy to devour any old epidermis - in fact, the older and thicker the better (if you put a child in the water next to an old person, the fish will apparently go for the old person). However, despite spa claims that the fish offer a relaxing "micro-massage", sticking your feet in a bucket of minnows is hardly swimming with dolphin source

ummm

I've been meaning to post this article for the last few days, but yes it seems we indeed have a lot to learn

Talib, walaal it seems that you wern't in the queue when a sense of humour was being handed out.

soooo funky .. yet so scientific socialism nuune, it's arligiina waa arligeyga arligeyga waa arligiina yes cashar and arli have the same meaning, but just being pedantic on ya

what to say... web development is a funny world and it likes its hype

Somalia A failed state that threatens the region Apr 4th 2007 | NAIROBI From The Economist print edition No one, it seems, can stop Somalia's capital from imploding again THE surgeons in the Medina hospital in Mogadishu are used to dressing gunshot wounds, but they had seen nothing as intense as last week's fighting. Islamist insurgents exchanged small-arms and artillery fire with Ethiopian and government troops, killing up to 400 people, most of them civilians. Casualties piled up in the hospital's corridors and corpses rotted in the sandy streets beyond, unclaimed until a lull in the fighting allowed for shallow graves to be dug where people fell. Somalia's capital, it seems, is in danger of slipping back into a state of bloody anarchy. About 47,000 people have fled the city during the fighting and more have been queuing up to leave, by minibus, donkey or on foot. And all this comes only three months after the Ethiopian-backed government had supposedly claimed back control of the city from the Islamist militias that they said they had defeated in a swift campaign last December. Now the picture looks very different. Remnants of the Islamist fighters have regrouped. Together with disaffected fighters from the powerful ****** clan, which is used to controlling much of the capital, they threaten a proper insurgency. Furthermore, as many had predicted, the continuing presence of Ethiopian soldiers in the capital is exacerbating the conflict. Indeed, far from leaving, as they had started to do, the Ethiopians have called for reinforcements. Not that this is entirely their fault. The African Union (AU) had promised to fly in 8,000 peacekeeping troops to replace the Ethiopians to enforce a fragile ceasefire, but only 1,200 or so Ugandans have actually arrived in Mogadishu, where they have been restricted to protecting the airport and other installations. Nigeria and others have promised troops but not yet sent them. That has left the Ethiopians to do most of the fighting on behalf of the government, with covert assistance from America. Ethiopian soldiers had done a mostly impressive job of policing Mogadishu with little incident for three months. But they are seen as invaders by most Somalis and will remain unpopular, and thus targets, whatever they do. The same goes for the Americans. They have backed the government and the Ethiopians as a way of rooting out suspected al-Qaeda men who had operated on the fringes of the Union of Islamic Courts, the Somali Islamists whose brief reign had brought a modicum of order until they were pushed out. A further complication is the Eritrean backing of the ousted Islamist militias. Eritrea has supplied arms to them and might be doing so again. Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president, visited Eritrea this week to ask it not to get involved, but was rebuffed. Eritrea sees the mayhem in Somalia as a chance to make life as hard as possible for its Ethiopian neighbour and mortal enemy. Eritrea says it opposes “any foreign involvement” in Somalia—except, of course, its own. The international contact group on Somalia, a body set up to try to resolve the Somali crisis, including representatives from America and the European Union, held talks in Egypt this week but produced little new. Somalia's government was urged again to reach out to moderate Islamists, but nobody knows what to do about the remaining Islamist fighters, who seem intent on jihad. Some diplomats in the region think it inevitable that, despairing of any solution, the outside world will just cast Somalia adrift. Many in Mogadishu think that their city already has been. What more could be done? A properly enforced arms embargo may have a calming effect. But the immediate challenge is to prevent Mogadishu sliding back into a war economy, where men with guns profit from instability. The signs are not good. Food prices are up by 50%. Extortion at gunpoint is back. More importantly, deals will have to be done with the ****** clan elders to try to detach them from the Islamist fighters, thus reducing the opposition to the government. The Union of Islamic Courts made themselves popular with people in Mogadishu last year by imposing enough order to allow people to get on with their normal business again. Now, for instance, the ****** traders complain of a threefold increase in duty applied to staple goods arriving at Mogadishu's port. Settling issues like this could make the ****** leaders, and the gunmen they control, readier to negotiate. If that were to happen, there may be a small chance of an accommodation between the ****** and the government. The alternative is dire. It took 15 years and 14 attempts to deliver Somalia the relative peace that the country enjoyed in the first three months of this year. If the country fails again, it could stay failed for a very long time.

talib, that's the best cop-out i have yet seen, my congrats

dude. sadly, whats new?

dude. sadly, whats new?

ubaahne walaal, u really have to star holding shukaansi lessons for us. Compared with these moves, the rest of us are the village ******

shehehehehehe i now have an image of you marinating your self for a couple of weeks..! [edit] Mysteriously and involuntarily I have come back to this thought and disgracefully cant decide whether its good or bad cara, the words 'cage ' and 'prison' are your shackles don't think of it like that. How do you expect to subdue ubaahne with a wiff and sans the 'do..?

^ Its called ubuntu seriously people. You can get out of all the spyware, adware, blahware, authenticated licensed loop by just ditching microsoft. If you consider your self to be technically literate in the any way just install an easy to use version of linux like ubuntu, and never worry about your pc dying slowly again. If you really insist on windows, then never use internet explorer download firefox and a battery of anti-everything ware ( here is a free antivirus, .. zone alarm used to be a free firewall, i dont know if it is anymore, but search around, and adaware is meant to be a fairly good spyware detector) and run all their battery of diagnostics weekly .. good luck

People, stop harassing the girl...otherwise we'll have you open up your accounts Norf, create a shell proxy as described here or move to a country that doesn't try to control every thing you can or cant see

True, though i wouldn't call it little - just better documented than the countless others, hence the investigation .... anyhow, who cares about dead skinies, you dont need to kill them, thei'll do it themselves for you

For those that may be interested (probably David Lateman only ) this is an investigation of the mass murder of Kenyan Kikuyus by Somali colonial askaris under the control of a mad british officer in 1953. -- A file: War Office 32/16103 makes very disturbing reading. It reveals how on the 17th and 18 th of June 1953, soldier's of the British Army's, King's African rifles slaughtered twenty two Kenyan civilians. They were rounded up, on two separate groups, taken into a forest near the town of Chuka in the central Kenyan highlands and then shot or bayoneted. The incidents happened during the height of the Mau Mau insurgency. Yet these men, far from being Mau Mau members, were actually members of the British Colonial Home Guard. One of the dead, who were simply left to lie where they fell, was just 12 years-old. A Company of the The 5 th Battalion of the King's African Rifles were commanded by the now notorious British officer, Major Gerry Griffiths. Griffiths, who was also a Kenyan settler, bore a deep grudge towards the local Kikuyu tribe after blaming one of them for killing his horse. He even went as far as offering rewards for shooting them. He told his men that should they happen to kill a Kikuyu who was employed by the government or a civilian firm, they could always stick a panga knife in his dead hand to make it look like he was a Mau Mau fighter. Griffiths was as aquitted of murder at his first court-martial, but found guilty on 2 counts of GBH and 3 counts of "disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind" at his second court-martial (see PRO file: WO 71/1221), but neither he, nor any other British soldier has ever been tried or convicted for the slaughter in the woods. Records held in the Kenyan National Archive in Nairobi show that the British government did compensate the families of the 22 victims in what they described as " blood money ". That was supposed to mark the end of the matter Until now the file that details this story has been kept tightly closed. Half a century later, 11 pages remain secret despite repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act and continuing protests from the Kenyan government. Document's Mike Thomson investigates why. broadcast show source

ibti, I'm afraid your probably too poor to make it worth attacking your accounts