Someone needs to tell Faroole that the days of warlords wielded power is well and truly over. He needs to adjust to the new reality on the ground otherwise risk being left behind. A stable and prosperous Mogadishu has always been one thing the Pirate boys didn't want to see as that means their relevance to Southern Somalia's politics greatly diminishes.

Faroole is digging a hole for himself and his fella Pirates.

Ouch! Ninwayn tag lama yidhaa ee wuxu ku tago ayaa la tusaa. I reckon Prof Ali Khaliif should follow Prof Samatar's foot steps and resign from the house. Waxa meesha uu ku sii fadhiyi karo ayaanba jirin mar hadaan meel marsan karin wuxu doonaayo.

Hadhwanaag is reporting, in an interview with Ina Samantar, the Professor has announced to have stepped down from Somali Parliament. He is on his way to Hargeisa. The interview is currently not yet published but they promised to do so shortly.

Interesting. There is something about President Hassan that tells me he is up to great things for the Somali people. Could President Hassan's overtures win over Somalilanders that is is question. One thing is for sure though, he is not winning enemies from that corner.

It will be a big night for the nation on Tuesday. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' population clock, just after 10.15pm someone will step off a plane or a baby will be born to become the 23rd million Australian. Ask a random roomful of Australians what they think of our population might be to the nearest hundred thousand and you'll find many of us are still getting used to the idea of being one of 22 million, let alone realising that the clock is about to tick over to 23 million - another milestone along the road to a bigger (but not actually big) Australia. Baby 23,000,000, you will have won the equivalent of the global lottery just by being born here. Using quarterly demographic updates to build on the 2011 census, the ABS reckons an Australian is born every one minute and 44 seconds, one dies every three minutes and 32 seconds and the balance of long-term arrivals minus long-term departures adds a net international migrant every two minutes and 19 seconds – all adding up to Australia gaining an extra person every one minute and 23 seconds. Odds are that a baby born in Australia will have better housing, better health and much longer life expectancy than most of its global peers. Photo: Supplied Net overseas migration's share of population growth is running faster than our “natural” increase ( a ratio of 3 to 2), but the 23rd million moment occurring in the evening makes it much more likely that the first of the new million is a new born – most international flights arrive during the day. So, with the politicians yet to chime in on the photo opportunity, I suppose the honour of welcoming and congratulating the first one-in-23-million Australian falls to this mere journalist. Congratulations are indeed deserved because, Baby 23,000,000, you will have won the equivalent of the global lottery just by being born here. If your mother is an unmarried teenager reliant on our social welfare system, you're still much better off than most babies born on April 23. Odds are that you will have better housing, better health and much longer life expectancy than your mewing peers. You have a universal free health care system serving your immediate needs when the world's richest nation still can't organise such a thing and most of the babies born tomorrow will do so in quite basic circumstances. You'll have doctors and nurses concerned for your welfare and the start of an immunisation program that gives you a world-leading chance of making it to primary school – unless you're unfortunate enough to score one of those dipsy organic Mosman mums. And talking of school, you have the promise of 13 years of free education, if you want it and have the ability and common sense to grab the opportunity when much of the world is lucky to finish primary. Thereafter, we have a HECS system that offers you the chance of tertiary education without your parents being rich and/or apprenticeships in very valuable trades. You have struck it particularly lucky in being born in a country that enjoys the rule of law – more-so if you're rich and white, but it's still there. You'll get to decide which bunch of politicians is less-worse than the other on a regular basis and make your way in a society that is one of the least corrupt on the planet. (Everything is relative.) Yours is a society that, while not as financially egalitarian as it was a little while back, remains one with a bridgeable gap between its rich and poor. There is luck involved, but it remains possible here for you to do anything that your talent, drive and dedication is capable of. (Right now you can even write for a great newspaper company, the one without a publisher's political line, and end a sentence with a preposition.) If you're a girl, you'll be able to wear as little or as much clothing as you wish, in appropriate circumstances, and you'll have the same rights as a boy to the education and career of your choice. At our present rate of evolution, that right will be taken for granted by the time you get to exercise it and you'll be legally able to marry the person of your choice, regardless of race, religion, social strata or sex. Religion? It's your call to believe or not believe in whatever god or gods you like, as long as you peaceably extend that right to everyone else because faith is, well, a matter of faith. You might not guess it with all the whingeing and whining you'll hear, but you've been born in the World Champion Economy – a country so rich and privileged that it complains about having a strong currency and an unemployment rate starting with 5. Your fellow citizens are convinced they are highly taxed, although they're in the bottom third of rich nations on that score, and, ironically, that the government doesn't do enough for them, although they're in the top third when it comes to social safety nets. If you're really, really lucky, you'll be born a Queenslander and therefore inherent ownership of the nation's greatest rugby union and league teams, but have the freedom – if you can afford it - to live in Sydney, the world's most beautiful city despite what its citizens try to do and not do to it. But you don't have to. You'll have freedom of movement to enjoy the whole Dorothy Mackellar panorama - sweeping plains, rugged mountain ranges, jungles, deserts, drought and flooding rains. You can go troppo in the Build Up and cuddle around a Tasmanian fireplace, worship vast, empty surf beaches and embrace the blizzard-tortured sculpture of snow gums. You can open your heart to the endless openness of the outback, absorb that red dust and strength of character into your soul, or thrive in a tiny inner-city apartment with the sound of sirens and aroma of coffee, spilt wine and stale beer as constant companions. You can even follow something called AFL, if you really want to. We have cities and country towns and bush, Baby 23,000,000, where you can find your life's meaning, or lose it if you're careless. It's up to you – and that is the most wonderful privilege of all. And you get all that just by being born here. Beyond such extraordinary fortune, it's a matter of wishing you well, hoping that you are born into a family that loves and strengthens you, that gives you what you need rather than what you want, that encourages you to adopt the best of the national character – believing in a fair go, supporting the underdog, being prepared to stand up for a principle against the odds. John Menadue wrote an Australia Day reflection on what is different about being Australian. For him, it came down to redemption, to giving people a second chance. He quoted his friend Ian McAuley as saying that while the British sent the puritans to America, they sent convicts to Australia and that we got the better of the deal. The underprivileged and the outcasts in Australia got a second chance. For you, Baby 23,000,000, it's a first chance. Please enjoy your incredible good fortune and privilege instead of taking it for granted, whingeing and demanding to be given more while offering less. Maybe, just maybe, you'll be better than the current crop. I hope so. Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/australias-23-millionstrong-milestone-20130422-2i96s.html#ixzz2RBceH4vf

^ The Pirate Boys have learned it the hard way camo. They ain't gonna coming back. With regards to your Referendum idea, it is just laughable. Any future referendum will be solely limited to within the former British Somaliland borders. When that happens, there will be border guards checking whether you can say "Tidhi" or "Tiri"... Xiinow make sure you practice "Tidhi/Yidhi" in your day to day Somali - that is if you want to vote NO.

As of late, the President is coming across as being edgy, irritable and uncomfortable about being asked questions about his government and its short comings. If I were you Nuune, I would have told the President that he needs to take it easy show more understanding if you like, or even better to teach not just the young journo who seems to be lacking the etiquette required for a presidential entourage, but also anyone who he thinks is not following what is required of them. There is no reason to get irritated when you are the President. You need to be like a father figure to the nation. Nuune, again if I was there, I would have joked with the President about how he is coming across (read classic "Muuse waa kaa" reaction-ism) waiting for your second part...

Turkish FM meets holds talks with Somalia, Somaliland presidents - CİHAN http://en.cihan.com.tr/video/Turkish-FM-meets-holds-talks-with-Somalia-Somaliland-presidents-CHMTAwNzAyOS8wLzIvNA==

If you like what is happening with North Korea at the moment, you will love what happens when Iran goes nuclear. In case anyone is in any doubt, it is always worth remembering that North Korea is a basket-case of a country – probably in the most abysmal situation of any country on earth (not forgetting the Middle East). Its people intermittently starve by the millions, and all of them lack even the most basic of amenities. As Shin Dong-hyuk and a few other unbelievably fortunate escapees have attested, concentration camps (for once the term is not inaccurate) are maintained across the country. And even those fortunate enough not to be in them are cut off from the outside world by a regime which has the unique selling point of being the world's only Stalinist monarchy. The authorities have no ability to provide the most basic services to the majority of its population; and after years of sanctions, can do almost nothing either internally or externally to alter the situation it finds itself in. Yet here it is, dictating the news agendas of the world. And why? For two straightforward reasons. First, because it has a new leader of whom everyone is ignorant. No one – no other government, intelligence agency or foreign office – is entirely sure of his intentions. We do know that he spent some time at a school in Switzerland and has a fondness for basketball. But apart from that and a few other tiny details, there is almost nothing known about him. It was the same with his father and indeed his grandfather. We knew what type of sushi the current Kim's father liked, and we knew he was a fan of Hollywood movies, but aside from such ephemera we had almost no idea of the type of man he was or the type of things he thought. Now his son – the third generation of the family to reign – is even more of a mystery. So there, undoubtedly, is the first problem. But the second reason is even far more straightforward: North Korea is now in the Nuclear Club. No one is quite sure how rudimentary are the devices that they have set off (including the third such test just this February). But nevertheless they have managed it. Assisted by any number of rogue states, networks and cartels, the most isolated regime on earth has finally got into the only club that matters. And why? Why would a regime allow its people to suffer the most biting sanctions, the most appalling privations and itself to suffer the most complete international isolation – just for the possession of this one type of weaponry? It is because the regime in Pyongyang knows something that everybody now knows but which those countries already in the Nuclear Club are increasingly unwilling to admit: the very clear lesson of the fate of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi, you will remember, committed what is a clear, cardinal, school-boy error for dictators. In 2003, concerned by the US/UK and allied invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein for his WMD program, Gaddafi suddenly volunteered up – to the US and UK premiers it should be remembered, not the UN – his somewhat more-advanced-than-anybody-had-realized WMD program. Having seen Saddam Hussein fall for less, Gaddafi decided it was more trouble than it was worth in those days to continue going down that route. But what a difference a decade makes. For apart from anything else, Gaddafi himself is now history. Having given up his WMD program, he then made the terrible error, once a rebellion against his rule began, of beginning to massacre his own people . And so – for humanitarian reasons – NATO intervened and toppled Gaddafi. And the last anyone saw of Gaddafi, he was being assaulted by a mob, beaten, having a knife put in every conceivable part of his body and then shot. If you were a Kim or a Mullah, what lesson would you take from that? Personally, putting my dictator hat on I would take one lesson: "nuke up fast." And certainly, on no account should you disarm. Disarmed despots are soon-to-be-dead despots. It is a lesson the North Koreans have taken on board with understandable eagerness and with – to date – considerable success. After all, for all the latest round of bellicose rhetoric against South Korea, there is no US or NATO or any other kind of talk of, for instance, regime-change in North Korea. The system there may be – against stiff competition – the worst human rights violator in the world. Yet nobody is talking about toppling Kim. They are elementary nuclear, after all. And this is the lesson you will be imbibing also if you are a Supreme Leader, President or even just some common Mullah in Tehran. Come sanctions, international pressure or anything else, the precedents of Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Un will be fresh in your mind. And most fresh will be the thought that one of them is dead and the other alive. Of course if Iran gets the nukes the results will not be exactly the same. No two dictatorships are ever exactly alike. But there will be striking similarities in the way it plays out. For instance, just as with North Korea, nobody will be able to guess what any particular new leader – in what will then be an eternal regime – actually thinks or what his personal or political ambitions truthfully are. We won't end up being able to read them much better than we currently read the Kims. But in any event, it won't matter. Because then we will know what the Mullahs know now – that nukes are the way to perpetual survival for them, and perpetual nightmare for everyone else. Source

This book is for the non-Somali eye. Somali people know each other and they very well are aware of the recent history. They don't need a foreigner to recite it to them. For every event documented in this book, there are tens if not hundreds of counter events from the opposite narrative.

Xiin et al, My gist is not about the reasons for this overly bloated cabinet. I understand it is got to do appeasing clans etc etc. However, what I am trying to get to is about the usefulness of naming a namesake minister for the sake of appeasing clans and not for the sake of the country. And also the apparent lack of thought that went into setting up such a cabinet. I would be more content to have a Ministry for Social Issues (Qat and Cigarettes), Ministry for Cleaning Up Somaliland, Ministry for Unemployment and Job creation. However, what would a minister for Postage or for that matter Minister for Nuclear Energy going to do if there is no such services in the country? This goes for many small African countries who put the cart before the donkey and do not put enough taught into what they are actually governing.

Absolutely. Somaliland can not support anything more than 10 ministries. Let alone having a whole ministry, some of these ministers can not even qualify as a department such are ministry of Post, minister of argriculture, minister of commucations, minister of tourism, minister of health, minister of planning and development... all these should be just an office that comes under some department as they can not sustain themselves to warrant the establishment of a department let alone a ministry.

What is the difference between Minister for Fish and Minister for Livestock? They should both go under resources. Again why separate Commerce from Industry? Why two ministries for Aviation and Transport? Ain't both the same thing? The most ridiculous of all is What does Minister of Post do? Is there even such thing as Somaliland Post? Besides, there are so many ministries that overlap each other's sphere of work so much that you can't distinguish one from the other. I wonder if Siilaanyo even thought about his cabinet while running for the job of presidency.

This is the list of ministries in Siilaanyo's administration. The source SomalilandGov Government Department Government Department 1. Ministry of Presidential Affairs 2. Ministry Foreign Affairs & International Co-operation 3. Ministry of Interior 4. Ministry of Finance 5. Ministry of Planning and Development 6. Ministry of Education 7. Ministry of Health 8. Ministry of Defence 9. Ministry of Commerce 10. Ministry of Livestock 11. Ministry of Post & Telecommunications 12. Ministry of Justice 13. Ministry of Public Work, Housing & Transportation 14. Ministry of Mining, Energy & Water Resources 15. Ministry of Religion 16. Ministry of Labour & Social Affairs 17. Ministry of Fishery 18. Ministry of Youth, Sports & Tourism 19. Ministry of Agriculture 20. Ministry of Civil Aviation 21. Ministry of Information & Culture 22. Ministry of Enviromment & Rural Development 23. Ministry of Rehabilitation 24. Ministry of Industry

Faarax-Brawn;838334 wrote: Gabar : Female child from birth to puberty. Aaran Aaran = cadet Aaran Bilays = Police Cadet My question is who can tell what is called ilo-xidh in English. hint: Hadaan ilo-xidh seexdana hurdada aad u ladi maayo

Shell was allocated M-10 and M-9 blocks which fall on the coastline of Sanaag and Bari regions. If they want to come back to Sanaag, they will have to renegotiate with the new boss in town. Otherwise they can build their castle up in the clouds.

Xaaji Xunjuf;928132 wrote: Xiinfaniin Hadhwanaagnews lost credibility since the 28 November elections 2012 Lost credibility, according to who? Those who don't see things from your perspective have no credibility miyaa? Believe it or not, there are growing number of people from all walks of society that are dissatisfied with Kulmiye and their Laayli-barad ministers. There are ministers who have never held an office in a government or have earned enough private-enterprise management experience to supplement that rule of thumb requirement who have been made senior ministers such as the lame duck foreign minister aka Dr. Faalso.

Odeygu sidii dumarka sowkan iska suurooday.

They say take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. In that spirit, think taking baby steps in making sure the foundations are solid i.e. promote peace, provide food, give education and deliver health services to women and children... with that done. Everything else will fall into place.

Gheelle.T;920689 wrote: They are blacks, but how do we know they are Somalis. I can't tell from the video, at least. Either way this is sicking and inhuman to treat any person this way, be black or not. It is wrong whether they are Somali or other Africans. The last place slavery still is practiced is in the Arab states.

A ludicrous exercise by a government that has lose its way.

I have never seen a run way built with asphalt not even regional airports that I have been to. This runway will not last long if they are going to let Jet liners to land. At least what they could have done is to get the first 30m and last 30m of the runway into reinforced concrete while the rest of the runway remains asphalt.

Xaaji Xunjuf;915168 wrote: Burco Is this pollution hovering over Hargeisa?

Feeling rich is a game that you play at different levels. Once you enter a new level, you start from the bottom until you reach the next level of lifestyle. The lifestyle you wished you had at any level of the game, changes and your income will always look small to the standards at play.