^lol@ rudy. They kinda interrupting my leisure time for Lakers' game tonight.

Africa, how can delusions of grandeur of the hoity-toity crowd in the Triangle be considered reality? Ilka-jir lived overseas when your soi disant defense minister was defeated in Sanaag, then sacked and humiliated by Riyaale. We all remember calls for revenge and the haunting cries of past mistreatments that ensued from your secessionist online portals. Che's remarks only reinforces what the advocators of secessionism have been saying all along that Mr. Riyale has enriched himself, effectively used the divide and rule tactics of his former boss, and thrashed the SNM dreams. A repeat of the same outcome is a sure reality on the ground considering a bit of analysis of the past events.

The fact is that Gen. Ilka-jir has political and social capital more than any other current leader in Somalia and that works to the advantage of his leadership, and he is there to use that leverage to give direction and meanings to the destiny of his community and the state, within the existing timeframe given to him. Also, let's not be under the delusion that the two communities of Farole and Ilka-Jir are of seperate groups or hold a diametrically opposed political views and interests. They may have competition as to the allocation of electoral seats and resources but at the end of the day they work behind the scene for a common destiny and that is an invisible work of inconceivable energies mediating them to restoring our Great Republic.

Religious freedom is very essential to our lives. And education is key to overcoming all of these barriers and misunderstandings..

I think the reason why tolerance is very scarce in our parts of the world is our limited understanding of the laws of appearance. For instance, Scientists work under the assumption that the natural world follows an orderly, cause & effect patterns. So their primary goal is to study, find out and understand these laws, signs and patterns & then make them more useful to humanity and surroundings. The question then is who created these natural laws and patterns? Atheists would reason they came out of 'accidents' but accidents do not have patterns, signs or direction. However, morality is relative in every society and it is within us, a domain seperate from the laws of appearance (i.e. technology, math and science). A crucial role by any government would be to give its individuals an ultimate freedom to question, explore and observe or freedom not to be circumscribed by one group's rigid interpretation and application of religion, for Allah says there is no compulsion in Islam and that there are, in fact, signs in this world for those who understand--exactly the work that scientists do to search, learn and come up with theories, models and laws.

Xudeedi, it's amazing that all of the recent problems surfaced while he is outside the country to attend an international conference against Piracy. I'm sure his come back would help restore law and order, as it were before. Btw, thanks for sharing it with us.

The speech of the House Speeker comes after Awad Ahmed Ashareh, head of Somalia's Parliamentary Committee for Information, gave special interview to the Arabic international newspaper Asharq Alawsat and made an urgent appeal for the resignation of the transitional president and his Finance Minister Mr. Sharif Ahmed. Soomaaliya: Madaxa Guddiga Baarlamaanka oo ugu baaqay inay si degdeg ah isu casilaan Sheikh Shariif iyo Cumar C/rashiid May 12, 2010 SomaliTalk Waxa uu yiri: “Waxaan ka dalbanayaa madaxweynaha in uu iska casilo xilka, sababtoo ah waxa uu ku guul daraystay qorshahiisii, waxaana isaga u wanaagsan in uu is casilo, sidaas waxaa la mid ah Ra’iisul wasaaraha. Maba lihin Ra’iisul Wasaare. Wasiirka Maaliyadda (Sheikh Sharif Xasan Aadan) ayaa ah hoggaamiyaha dhabta ah ee dawladda, waa marka la eego waaqaca jira. Waxana uu hadalkiisii raaciyey “ma jirto wax miisaaniyad la dejiyey, ma jiro nidaam waadax ah (ama xisaabtan muuqda), waxay isku dayeen in badda ka iibiyaan Kenya, wax lacag ah ma soo hor dhigin miisaaniyadda dalka.”

Originally posted by General Duke: ^^^Nassir I agree with you here. Faroole great skill has been to surround himself with talent. Gen Abdullahi, Dr Farah, Dr Ali Warsame and others. And yes Puntlanders do give great credit to the Minister of interior for his hard work. We need educated leaders in whole of Africa and PL has the qualified roster filling its ranks. All other shortcomings that were inherited from the previous admin are on the right track to getting corrected; with the exception of a string of targets on high-level officials, PL's model is proving to be the right one for Somalia, but, I hope, the dubious IC shouldn't hamper or impede such efforts. Duke, keep us updated.

Hunguri, thanks for the lesson.

Many Somalis already view the TFG, which was installed in 2004 with the help of the United Nations and the United States, as merely one more armed faction among the many. Abdi, the teenager who staggered into the Dadaab refugee camps, doesn't know whether the mortar attacks that killed his family and his three friends were the work of al-Shabab or the TFG, but he fears both equally. There is no quick fix for Somalia. But two senior U.N. officials made a good start today by urging an immediate halt to the recruitment and use of child soldiers by all parties in Somalia, not just al-Shabab. Other major outside players should take their own first steps by promoting measures that would protect civilians, ending unqualified support for TFG and AMISOM troops that break the laws of war, and pressing for a U.N. commission of inquiry to investigate abuses by all sides in Somalia. And they should stop sending mortars and mortar rounds to TFG and AMISOM troops until these forces stop using the weapons indiscriminately. Somalia's Saviors Are Making Everything Worse By Letta Tayler May 11, 2010

"Most of the soldiers have concluded their training and are equipped with guns. What we are waiting for is the go-ahead from top officials," Dhagol said as dozens of soldiers, most earning about $100 a month, milled around. "It could be any time, maybe this afternoon." The government of President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed controls only a swath of the capital. The pending offensive is supported by the U.S. and European governments to try to end a nearly 20-year-old civil war and to uproot Islamic extremism at a strategic crossroads of Africa and the Middle East.... Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled the city in recent months. They have joined other families in makeshift camps on the outskirts; the United Nations estimates that 3.2 million Somalis, 40% of the population, need emergency humanitarian assistance. Many civilians feel targeted by both the government and the militants, Source

^Saado Ali has already proved her nationalist credentials and she doesn't need to be careful to speak out against the secessionist entity and its occupation of Sool's capital. It's moral duty for her. But why does speaking out of the displacements, the killings, division, not to mention the humiliation that this clan-entity brings to the elders of the region pushes one into a public disrepute or tarnished reputation? Isn't this calling for a silence and submission against the perpetuation of injustice and division?

On the street 'talk of the town" gossip, Puntlanders credit more of Ilka-jir than Faroole. Well-written piece!

A friend posted on my fb page. I couldn't stop laughing!! Ba'ayeey Illeen Wax Iqabay Jareer Buu haa?! By Suldaan Neyruus Markii ay Soomaali gashay Waddamada Reer Galbeedka, Waxaa soo baxay Gabdho badan oo Soomaaliyeed oo isla markiiba bilaabay Guurka nimanka Shisheeye. Wax la guursado kala fiicane, waxay aad uga helaan Guurka nimanka Madaw. Mase aqaan Sababta! Gabar Soomaaliyeed oo ka soo jeedda beelaha Isla waa-weyn ayaa waxay Isku barteen Mareykanka Wiil Soomaaliyeed oo ka soo jeeda Beesha Jareer Weyne. Wuxuu isugu sheegey in uu yahay Madawga Mareykanka ku nool, wuxuuna kula hadlaa Afka Ingiriiska, gaar ahaan kan Madawga Mareykanku ku hadlaan Waa gabar Madawga Mareykanka ka heshee isla markiiba ha soo dhaweyso Jeceyl waalanna ha la jisho. Jeceyl-jilid dheer ka dib, waxaa la go’aansaday in la is guursado. Aabbeheed iyo Hooyadeed ayey la hadashay, waxayna ku tiri “Aabbe iyo hooyo waa la I guursanayaa”. “Yaa ku soo doonay gadhayadaay” ayey waydiiyeen. “Aabba iyo Hooyo waa nin Mareykan ah oo Muslim ah”. Hal mar ayey waxay la soo boodeen “Masha Allah Gabadhayadaay, nasiib badanidaa, haddii uu yahay nin Mareykan ah haddana Muslin yahay Waan kuu fasaxnay, si deg-deg ah ku guurso, lacagna badanna nooga soo qaad, dad badanna ha noo dhoofiyo, adiguna raalliyo u noqo”. Sidii ayey gabadhii ku guursatey Wiilkii Soomaaliyeed ee Mareykanka isaga dhigay. Muddo dheer ayaa la is qabay, waxaana la isku dhalay dhawr carruur ah, luqadda lagu sheekeystana waa luqadda Ingiriiska Maalin maalmaha ka mid ah ayuu wiilkii u soo galay gabadhii oo la hadlaysa eheladeeda. Kolkaasuu inta Af-Soomaali ku hadlay yiri “Yaakhee muxuu yahay taleefoonkaan aad kala joojin la’dahay?”. Inta naxday oo taleefoonkii isa saartey ayey tiri “maxaad tiri?”, waa Soomaaliye, Luuqaddiisii Af-Soomaaliga ayuu la kala baxay, say tahay ugala hadlay. Gabadhii ayaa isla markiiba la soo boodday “goormaad Soomaaliga baratey”. Suu ye “Waligeybaan Soomaali ahaa”. Inta Afkii furatey Gacmahana Madaxa saaratey bay ku balaan-bashay “Alla Ba’ayeey wax I qabay illeen Jareer buu ahaa… Alla Ba’ayeey wax I qabay illeen Jareer buu ahaa”. Dadkeedii inta isugu yeertey ayey tiri “ninkaan iga fura”, is-qabqabsi dheer ka dib halkaas ayaa gabadhii lagu furey!

Originally posted by Hales: In a report to the Security Council circulated Wednesday, Ban said the overall security situation in Somalia "remains highly volatile and unpredictable." Are the so called liberators (alshabaab) doing anything about this catastrophe? where is the regional government they should establish to counter this. What are they doing for those suffering and imploding in the overcrowded refugee camps. In another article it says that the UN estimates 350,000 more Somalis will flee. This is truely a population and economic drain a disaster for those who want peace for the region to say the least. [/QB] Mr. Hales, Society in general becomes choas if it's split into many authority-weilding groups. If the unipolar power and its allies are therefore willing to restore Somalia, no doubt they can in a few years time but they must first appeal to the rest of the world that this nation can't be left to its own device, not now, not when the threats of the peripheral spoilers (like the Arab League, Ethiopia & Kenya) are ever present. Federalism can revese the threats that Somalia poses to the international community but SL's territorial aggrandizement and destabilization policies will create big vacuum in the north and similar consequences as that of the larger South. You are not promoting democracy in a region that advances clan interest at the expense of another? . I urge the UN to stop the hypocricy and the double standard.

LINK

Well said Mr. Hales. PL is getting much better with the current leadership despite the huge social problems, and political and external (foreign) obstacles they are now dealing with.

More Info on this important meeting For those in UK, please attend and contribute.. Charity begins @ Home!!

Miskiin, ma odaygii Madoobe ahaa buu Caamir leeyahey waa laysku heystaa. . (Brown was the Head of Government for Britain & Madoobe is the President of the National Assembly for Somalia) Weyba fiicnaan leheed hadey madoobe iyo masuuliyadiisa ka hadli lahaayeen ileen waa matters of national interest.

All I can say with perceptive aforethought is that the current leadership of Puntland has done a great job in countering the hostility and colonial designs of the West and its allies. They have shown that they are very resilient, well-prepared, politically savvy, and Somali unionists to the core. It's almost an unsurmountable obstacle to deal with the anarchist South and their al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab and the secessionist North when direct funds are daily coming from external forces opposed to Somalia's full restoration. God-willing, we will.. Keep your faith strong.

Originally posted by Dabshid: Inamadan secessionists xagee lagu gumaysan jiray? What are all these insecurities? and fear? there is no place for seccesionits in Maakhir. It still continues up to this day...Terrible

Ka hadal shaqo aan loo dirsan. The Assembly of emasculated warlords.

Ceerigaabo-News

Lawless rogues or an organized branch of maritime trading? By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney May 09, 2010 By what perverse karma has a group of plundering, murdering, lawless desperadoes become the stuff of children's books and Hollywood blockbusters? Since their heyday, pirates have been transformed from bogeymen, such as the 18th-century sea bandit Blackbeard, into genial rascals, such as Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow in the Disney franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. Surely no other class of criminals has been detoxified so thoroughly? Piracy has a long history. The word was first used by an ancient Greek writer in around 140BC and pirates have since menaced every corner of the globe. Their place in western folklore owes much to the 17th and early 18th centuries, the so-called golden age of piracy, when pamphlets and books relayed tales of derring-do and nefarious deeds at sea to an avid readership. One such pamphlet, Newes from Sea, Of Two Notorious Pirates, was commissioned in 1609 by Shakespeare's publisher. It sold more copies than King Lear. While old-fashioned pirates have been sanitised into family-friendly entertainment, real pirates of a distinctly un-family friendly variety are staging a resurgence in the modern world. Growth in world trade and the collapse of the rule of law in states such as Somalia have seen a dramatic rise in attacks on shipping since 2000: earlier this week a Russian oil tanker was hijacked off the Horn of Africa. Somali pirates with their AK-47s and flip-flops are generating books that feed much the same appetites as Newes from Sea. In the ghostwritten A Captain's Duty, US merchant captain Richard Phillips relives his experience of being taken hostage by Somali pirates in the gung-ho style of an action movie trailer: "Either I'm getting out of here alive or they are. But not both." Pirates of the 21st Century is less melodramatic – Nigel Cawthorne restrains himself to just the one mention of "shark-infested waters" – but its overview of modern global piracy is as hasty as you'd expect from a "true crime" cut-and-paste job written by an author whose previous books include The World's Ten Most Evil Men. Links between modern and historical piracy emerge in Adrian Tinniswood's Pirates of Barbary, a history of the north African corsairs who wreaked havoc in the Mediterranean until the 19th century. And the economist Peter T Leeson examines the economic motives of piracy in The Invisible Hook. Were 17th- and 18th-century "golden age" pirates proto-socialists or Adam Smith-anticipating free-marketeers? Modern piracy is a serious problem, costing shipping an estimated $150m in 2008, according to Pirates of the 21st Century. Yet the threat is minor compared to the past. In Somalia, in 2008, there were an estimated 300 sailors being held hostage. In contrast, Algiers, hub of Mediterranean brigandage, held tens of thousands of captive Europeans in the 17th century. North African pirates were known as corsairs, the Arab equivalent of the privateers that European nations hired to attack enemy shipping, as with Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions to the Americas. Corsairs operated under the protection of coastal cities stretching from Morocco to Libya, an area known to Europeans as the Barbary Coast. To the English, its inhabitants were called "Turks", "Moors" or the catch-all insult "Barbarians". Pirates of Barbary skilfully evokes the dread that corsairs aroused. The Barbary Coast ports that sponsored them were outposts of the Ottoman empire. Corsairs were the "sea front" in the centuries-long stand-off between the worlds of Christianity and Islam. An Algerian writer in the 1620s called piracy the "sea jihad", holy war at sea. At the same time, Islam was being demonised as "the present terror of the world" by European writers. The threat of corsair raiding parties was felt as far away as Iceland – plundered in 1627 by an Algiers-based pirate whose men were said to have "killed people, cursed and beat them, and did all that is evil". Four hundred Icelanders were captured, to be ransomed or sold as slaves. "The Icelandic liturgy", Tinniswood writes, "still includes a prayer beseeching God for protection against 'the terror of the Turk' ." But corsairs weren't always Turkish or Arab. Many were European pirates who based themselves in north Africa for security. Their alliance with Barbary cities such as Algiers was, as Tinniswood wryly puts it, "an early and efficient example of public-private partnership". The corsair who attacked Iceland was, in fact, a Dutchman called Jan Janszoon who converted to Islam and changed his name to Murad. The notorious 17th-century Englishman John Ward, "the most famous pirate of the world" according to London street balladeers, ran a fleet from Tunis. He also converted, causing outrage in his homeland. In person, Ward was less demonic than his reputation suggested. An observer recalled he was "very short, with little hair, and that quite white; swarthy face and beard. Speaks little, and almost always swearing. Drunk from morn till night." Mediterranean piracy fizzled out in the early years of the 19th century. "Well-armed professional navies grew more effective at enforcing the rule of law on the high seas and the immensely powerful British navy pursued a vigorous anti-slavery policy," Tinniswood explains. Corsairs weren't religious fanatics waging war against Christian Europe. Their purpose was primarily mercenary, supplying the slave societies of the Barbary coast with captives and booty. When their economic effectiveness ended, so did they. The economics of piracy is the subject of Peter T Leeson's The Invisible Hook. Focusing on the pirates who flourished in the Americas and the Caribbean in the 17th and early 18th century, it is the latest salvo in an ongoing debate about Atlantic piracy.One side of the debate holds that the golden age of piracy was merely an outbreak of criminality of no lasting significance. An opposing view, advanced by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker in 2000's The Many-Headed Hydra, recasts pirates as political radicals, their numbers swelled by the driving out of revolutionaries from England after the failure of Cromwell's Commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. There is evidence to support the bizarre-seeming idea of pirates as political progressives. Life on board pirate ships was less hierarchical, less cruel and more lucrative than life in the English navy or merchant ships. Pirate crews administered their ships with proto-democratic voting systems and followed codes of conduct called "Pirate Articles". They punished captains of captured boats for being vicious to their crews, shared booty equally and were tolerant of different cultures and races. Atlantic buccaneers had black and white sailors working alongside each other. In the Mediterranean, Barbary corsairs carried a mix of European and Arab sailors and Turkish janissaries. "Lingua franca" was a pirate language that spread through the Mediterranean so cosmopolitan pirate crews could communicate. "Pirate republics" in places such as Madagascar, Morocco, Haiti and the Bahamas were run along quasi-utopian principles, with outlaws of different backgrounds freely mingling. Leeson, a professor at George Mason University in the US, turns this viewpoint on its head. He envisages pirates as free market radicals who illustrated Adam Smith's maxim about people supposedly acting out of self-interest, the "invisible hand" of history. "Serving others' interests gets them to cooperate with us, serving our own," Leeson explains. Jauntily characterising the typical pirate ship as akin to "a Fortune 500 company", he reorients pirates as precursors of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics. On-board democracy was not some "quasi-socialist pirate ideology" but instead was designed to foster a feeling of solidarity, which enhanced each individual pirate's self-interest in getting as much loot as possible. The Jolly Roger "played a central role in maximising their profit maximising purpose" via a process known to economists as "signalling": a way of communicating our intentions to someone so they do what is in our interest, ie give up a ship to pirates without a fight. "I'm convinced economics brings us much closer to the 'correct answers' than the history does alone," Leeson insists. But the result is complacent and ahistorical. An example is his claim that pirates' reputation for blood-curdling acts of torture was designed to create "a threatening brand name" in order to cow victims into passive acquiescence. This is offered without a shred of evidence to show torture rates declining over time, as the logic of his argument insists it must. The true economics of piracy is more nuanced. There has often been a Robin Hood element to it. "Our fish were all eradicated, so we can't fish now, so we're going to fish whatever passes through our sea because we need to eat," a Somali pirate is quoted as saying in Pirates of the 21st Century. Somalia's coastline fell prey to overfishing and illegal toxic dumping by foreign corporations following the state's collapse in the civil wars of the 1990s. "Piracy will not stop unless we get a government," another pirate says.[ ] Pirates of the 21st Century lacks first-hand reportage or serious analysis. Nonetheless, a sense emerges of the organised nature of modern piracy. In Somalia, for example, gunmen are often former militia men. The men piloting the fast dirigibles used to board cargo ships tend to be fishermen. One 350-strong gang of Somali pirates nicknamed the "Coast Guard" allegedly has a kind of IT department handling the global positioning (GPS) and communications systems. In 2009 the average ransom of a Somali-hijacked vessel was $2m. When four pirates seize control of Phillips' cargo ship off the Horn of Africa, as recounted in A Captain's Duty, they whoop with delight about having sprung a US-flagged ship. Jackpot! Several of the piracy victims in Pirates of the 21st Century deride their attackers as "paranoid druggies" and "unsophisticated hoodlums". Others, such as Capt Phillips, are struck by their orderliness. Treatment of hostages varies too. The crew of a French luxury yacht discovered their captors had a good conduct manual on how to seize a foreign vessel and spoke of being made to feel "relaxed and cheerful". The pirates even invited them to a barbecue. Yet violence is common, too, particularly in the Malacca Straits, where pirates are apparently much more ruthless than the Somalis. Phillips initially gets on pretty well with his pirates but they fly into a fury when he tries to escape by swimming to a nearby US navy frigate. "They were shocked that I'd tried to escape. I wasn't playing by the rules and I'm sure they felt I was endangering them by trying to save myself." The codes of piracy are a recurrent theme in all the above books. In the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates described themselves going "on the account" when they set sail. "We aren't pirates, we're professionals," says an Indonesian pirate in Pirates of the 21st Century. "Relax, Captain, relax," shouts the first pirate to board Captain Phillips' ship. "Business, just business." Although anti-pirate rhetoric has traditionally painted them as lawless rogues, piracy comes across as an outlaw but organised branch of maritime trading life with its own traditions and customs. The golden age of piracy took place when the globalised world was taking shape with the rise of European empires and trans-national corporations such as the East India Company. Pirates sailing on the high seas were linked, however parasitically, to this new capitalist way of life. Hostile to traditional hierarchies, stateless, highly mobile, ruthlessly acquisitive, they signalled the emergence of a certain type of modern consciousness. No wonder they fascinate us: in them we see a glimmer of ourselves. Source: FT

If you westernize the word Mehram, it so often happens in the belief that having a "bf" provides a physical protection or deterrance from an unlikely encounter of trouble or rude conduct, if not our animal instinct kicks in to group together in accordance with own degrees of class, gender, race or ethnic similarities. However she did it in where one hardly encounters human temptations or life. Duke said it in a rather sarcastic way. From "She is pretty" to the industries that relentlessly exploit it to the mantra of an "independent and capable" lol. Contradiction in terms! And what can we learn from such varrying but similar stories? Dismal economic conditions and social and political pressure attract both positive and adverse reactions either that we try to escape or change perceptions of reality. Ps. Isn't the term "Cushitic" biblical in nature? Kush, the cursed son of Noah. East Africa is populated by diverse peoples with cultural, linguistic and ancestral ties to the Arab World.