Thank you Toronto.

God bless Salim Lone and Amy Goodman. Here's the transcript: The UN estimates 100,000 people have left Mogadishu in the last two weeks to escape fighting between U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops and Somali fighters. Former UN spokesperson and journalist Salim Lone says the international community is ignoring a major humanitarian crisis for which it bears considerable responsibility. [includes rush transcript] While the situation in Pakistan is front-page news in the US and across the world, the media has focused little attention on a much more dire humanitarian crisis. In Somalia, at least 80 people have died in the capital of Mogadishu in heavy fighting between U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops and Somali fighters. Most of the dead are believed to be civilians. Ethiopian tanks and artillery battered parts of Mogadishu after an Ethiopian soldier was dragged through the streets. Residents of Mogadishu accused Ethiopian troops of attacking civilians. The UN estimates 100,000 people have left Mogadishu in the last two weeks to escape the fighting. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said 1.5 million Somalis are now in need of humanitarian assistance. Human Rights Watch says the failure of the international community to end the violence in Somalia reflects a contempt for the value of African life. Meanwhile, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Eric Larouche issued a grave warning about the humanitarian situation. * UN Humanitarian Coordinator Eric Larouche. The US-backed Somali government has also launched an attack on the media. On Monday, authorities closed Shabelle Radio and briefly detained two of its senior staff. On Tuesday, heavily armed troops raided Radio Banadir. Eight local reporters have been killed in the line of duty in Somalia this year. Salim Lone is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He has been closely following the situation in Somalia, and he joins me now on the line from Nairobi. * Salim Lone. Columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more... AMY GOODMAN: While the situation in Pakistan is front-page news in the US, across the world, as well, the media has focused little attention on a much more dire humanitarian crisis. In Somalia, at least eighty people have died in the capital of Mogadishu in heavy fighting between US-backed Ethiopian troops and Somali fighters. Most of the dead are believed to be civilians. Ethiopian tanks and artillery battered parts of Mogadishu after an Ethiopian soldier was dragged through the streets. Residents of Mogadishu accused Ethiopian troops of attacking civilians. ASHA GULED: [translated] We are witnesses to the problems the Ethiopian troops brought for us. They killed every person they saw in the area, and we have now decided to flee the capital, Mogadishu. AMY GOODMAN: The UN estimates 100,000 people have left Mogadishu in the last two weeks to escape the fighting. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said one-and-a-half million Somalis are now in need of humanitarian assistance. Human Rights Watch says the failure of the international community to end the violence in Somalia reflects a contempt for the value of African life. Meanwhile, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Eric Larouche issued a grave warning about the humanitarian situation. ERIC LAROUCHE: The humanitarian crisis is very bad. It’s the worst in humanitarian crises that you have had in the last fifteen years. It reminds us of the beginning of the ’90s, so it’s not a very good news. We had, a few months ago, only -- I mean, we had already 400,000 people that were displaced because of the conflict and because of the natural disaster. Today, we have 850,000 people, so we have more than double the number of people that are displaced in Somalia. AMY GOODMAN: The US-backed Somali government has also launched an attack on the media. On Monday, authorities closed Shabelle Radio and briefly detained two of its senior staff. On Tuesday, heavily armed troops raided Radio Banadir. Eight local reporters have been killed in the line of duty in Somalia this year. Salim Lone is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He has been closely following the situation in Somalia, joining us on the line from Nairobi. Salim, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you describe the latest that’s happening in Mogadishu now? SALIM LONE: Well, let's begin, Amy, first, talk about the [inaudible] of Somalia, because the world just does not seem to be interested. You just read out a horrendous list of terrible events and massacres and, you know, violations of human rights, war against -- I mean, crimes against humanity. And yet, this is not news either for the newspapers or the TV or even for Western leaders, who are completely silent. They’re unable to see that the situation has spiraled completely out of control. And this government, that had been put in there with Western support, it’s comprehensively been defeated. It is only surviving by intimidating and killing scores and scores of people. 400,000 refugees, displaced people, in the last fifteen years, the worst years everybody thought, and then 450,000 more refugees in the last few months, and this as a result of a war waged by the United States and Ethiopia. And increasingly -- on a smaller scale, obviously, but increasingly -- the situation is beginning to resemble Iraq. You mentioned the soldier dragged through the streets, desecrated, and the resulting massacre of so many innocent people, including an entire family of ten people, although one child is gravely injured but not dead. The same thing happened in Fallujah, that one terrible desecration by a few militants led to the killing of hundreds. We have, as in Iraq, in Somalia now IEDs. We have mortar rounds being launched on government and other forces. And we have mass civilian casualties. It’s only these mass suicide bombings that are to come. And the world is completely silent. The government has tried everything, from the bombing of civilians in hospitals, killing journalists -- I think it should be clear: this government has killed journalists, not that ten journalists have died. Some of them, or even many of them, have actually been killed by the government. And yesterday, it closed the largest independent media house in Somalia, Shabelle Networks. So this situation has to be arrested somehow, and it can only be arrested by the international community. AMY GOODMAN: Doing what, Salim Lone? SALIM LONE: Sorry? AMY GOODMAN: Doing what? The international community doing what? SALIM LONE: Well, first of all, the international community has a major responsibility for Somalia, unlike the situation in Pakistan, for example, because the international community supported the invasion by Ethiopia and the installation of this very unpopular government. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, wrote reports to the Security Council at the end of last year painting such a grim picture, that he said if European and other troops are there in order to help bring democracy, it was a joke. He also proposed a peacekeeping force, a UN peacekeeping force for Somalia. But now, he rightly is saying that isn’t viable. Ethiopia itself has repeatedly said, “Oh, we are only in there for a brief period, but we will be leaving shortly.” Now, the prime minister of Ethiopia’s adviser said clearly, “We are not leaving Somalia until things are stable.” President Abdullah Yusuf was in Nairobi yesterday, and he gave a press conference here in which he poo-pooed all these developments, and he said, “You know, when the elephants fight, the grass suffers,” meaning if civilians are being killed, what can we do? They are being killed because there is fighting between forces. And he said the situation in Somalia is actually much better than it has ever been since the start of the civil war fifteen, sixteen years ago. AMY GOODMAN: What is the US’s interest in supporting the Ethiopian troops in Somalia? SALIM LONE: I didn’t hear that, so, sorry? AMY GOODMAN: What is the United States’s interest in supporting the Ethiopian troops in Somalia? SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, the US, having brought to power a client proxy regime, does not know how to extricate itself from the situation. They are afraid now that the Somalis who were in power, the Islamic Courts Union, which had brought stability to nearly all of Somalia, and with their ouster, they have seen the situation subsequently radicalize many, many more Somalis who previously were not radicals. I mean, Somalia -- actually, Somalis are a very moderate group of people. So somebody has to act. The facts are all known. It is -- there are no secrets here. Everybody knows. The Europeans know, the Americans know, the African Union knows. But no one dares to take a step, unless the US does something. And the US seems wedded to keeping in place an unpopular dictatorial, tyrannical regime, which can only exist through the blatant use of force, as exercised primarily by the Ethiopians. So it’s a situation that really is the responsibility of the international community, because that community created it. AMY GOODMAN: The UN has called this the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa. How much attention is this getting in Africa? It gets very little here in the United States. SALIM LONE: Well, certainly in Kenya and the neighboring countries, it is getting a little more attention than it is there. But unfortunately, again, you know, Somalia is a dangerous place. There are very few international journalists there to begin with. And we -- you know, our papers here and our media here is not strong enough to sort of send journalists to cover this instability, so it is not getting the kind of coverage it deserves, especially in Kenya, which is a neighboring country and which unfortunately was involved in its own program of kidnappings and renditions to Guantanamo, to secret prisons in Ethiopia. You know, this is one of the gravest crises in the world at the moment. But because it is Somalia, because, as Human Rights Watch said, this is African blood being spilled, there is no action being taken. And no one is even advocating any action, leave alone the people advocating it and some who are resisting. There is no plan on the horizon, that I can see, which might help at least bring this crisis -- not to an end, at least mediate it a little bit. No effort whatsoever. The reconciliation conference that the government put on was a fiasco, because it refused to share power. This government, even though it is severely under stress and under attack and incapable of governing, will not share power with anyone. And they're being allowed to do so by their Western backers. AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, we only have a minute. You were the UN spokesperson in Iraq, survived the attack on the UN compound that many others did not survive, now back in Kenya. You knew Asma Jahangir, the woman we just spoke to under house arrest, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. SALIM LONE: A good friend, yes. AMY GOODMAN: She answered that last question about US military aid to Pakistan carefully. SALIM LONE: Yeah, she -- I’m sorry, I believe she wants to be very careful about not -- she’s under house arrest. The US must stop military aid to Pakistan, to begin with, because Musharraf is using it against his own people. And I don’t agree with Asma that military aid should be given if it is used against criminals. Military aid is not to fight criminals; military aid is to fight wars against enemies from outside the country, number one. And then the other issue is, there can be no peace in Pakistan unless the situation in Afghanistan is sort of mediated. The notion, the Western notion, that it is the border areas in Pakistan which are the root cause of the conflict in Afghanistan is a complete joke. The Taliban are getting stronger and stronger within Afghanistan. And there’s only one solution to it. The Americans and NATO cannot defeat Taliban, it is clear. There must be, either publicly or through some back channels, there must be an agreement made with the Taliban so that this conflict comes to an end. Pakistan’s deterioration into extremism and the guns and the violence began because of Afghanistan, to begin with, with the Western aid in billions of dollars in weapons coming into Pakistan. And it intensified after 9/11, with this latest, you know, occupation of Afghanistan. It is that occupation that must end for the sake of Pakistan, as well as for the sake of Afghanistan and for the Western world, including the United States. AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist with the Daily Nation in Kenya, former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq.

^^^^ For someone who can't stand this nonsense thread, you're having a hard time staying away. Resist the temptation to muddy yourself atheer.

Originally posted by Peace Action: It is clear that you have no solution for Somalia. In the comfort of your home in peace and in comfort, it is easy to call for more bloodshed. The ICU is gone and they squandered the chance to be part of this government and work within the system for better Somalia. Be realist and let the people of Mog and all other stake holders in Somalia negotiate for peace. They have a right to peace and comfort as much as you do as the citizens of the civilized world. The people of Muqdisho (and most of Somalia) are the ones who rejected your uncle and his TFG. They would rather suffer greatly than support a crooked lifetime puppet and the occupiers that prop him. That's what's eating at you. And I hope it eats at you even more. Peace will come but it won't come through Ethiopian tanks. Get that through your Yey infested skull.

^^^^ Undoubtedly the warlords and looters are suffering severe withdrawal symptoms but you must admit these same warlords and looters have been chased away by the Islamic Courts without having to kill or displace half the population of Muqdisho. And you must also admit that Yey's arrival in Muqdisho has brought many of these blood suckers back. Not to mention the chaos, death, starvation, internal displacement, and the calamity we witness today. Compared to the warlords, the looters, even the CIA agents, Yey is a couple of orders of magnitude higher in being the problem. The whole Somali nation can not move forward without peace in Mogadishu. Calling for more war is not the answer. I reject puppet Yey and his fraudulent TFG. I also strongly condemn the illegal invasion and occupation of Ethiopia. An occupation that has caused unimaginable suffering to the people of Muqdisho. Finally, I support those who conscientiously resist this occupier and the stooge government it is propping.

Originally posted by Kool_Kat: YES, we are the most patriotic, period... Would you still consider yourself "the most" patriotic if Yey wasn't the head of the TFG? What if Sheikh Sharif was? Or some (crazy ) Northerner? How about if the TFG was headed by Somali Bantu? All Puntlanders want a peaceful Somalia. Many (most?) Puntlanders support the TFG for Abdillahi Yuusuf. The problem is they confuse the two concepts together. Yey is not the solution. He's the problem.

^^^^^ Imagine then what it is like to experience such misery. I will forever be haunted by these images.

In a phenomenon that strikes many strife-torn societies, Somalis increasingly retreat into mental illness By Paul Salopek Tribune foreign correspondent 8:54 AM CST, November 15, 2007 MOGADISHU, Somalia — Abdulrahman Habeb was a man with problems, the most pressing of which involved a barrel of tranquilizer pills. The barrel — containing 50,000 capsules of fluphenazine hydrochloride, a potent anti-psychotic drug ordered from America—was boosting his patients' appetites. This was not good. Patients at Habeb Public Mental Hospital were scaling the facility's mud walls to scavenge for food outside, in the war-pocked streets of Mogadishu. One had been shot. "They don't stop when sentries say 'Halt!' " said Habeb, the director of the only mental health clinic in Somalia's capital. "How could they? They are mentally ill." Hence, the next problem: Habeb chained some of his 47 patients to their cots. This harsh practice was regrettable, he conceded. But many of his charges weren't just famished, they were aggressive. "They act out the violence of Somalia!" cried Habeb, an excitable man who called himself "doctor," but who really was a nurse—a nurse at the end of his tether. "I cure people's minds, and the war hurts them all over again. You cannot heal here!" He took off his glasses. He doubled over and began to sob. A colleague in one of the cavelike wards rushed over to pat Habeb's shuddering back. And herein lay perhaps the biggest problem of all: While Habeb and most of his patients could walk away from their wartime asylum, there was no avoiding the larger nightmare that is Somalia. Doctors and aid workers see troubling signs that untold numbers of Somalis, brutalized by 16 years of chaos and tormented by the suicide bombings and assassinations of a growing Islamist insurgency, are fending off the jolts of violence the only way they can, by retreating inward, into the fog of mental illness. "Ninety-five percent of the triggering factors here are related to the war," a distraught Habeb said. "The fear and worry. Year after year. It is like a bomb." Mention the term post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and what pops into most people's minds are vacant-eyed GIs grappling with the lingering psychic wounds of combat: anxiety attacks, phantom pains, depression, hyperaggression, sleeplessness and flashbacks. Yet in an age when international terrorism gnaws at the minds of millions of ordinary people, and where millions more are battered by chronic violence in failed states, many doctors have begun to worry not just about the mental health of individual soldiers but of entire societies. Interest in the globalization of war's invisible wounds, and PTSD in particular, has spawned a relatively new branch of medical science—traumatology. Popularized in the wake of atrocities such as the Rwanda genocide and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, its core focus involves treating war-haunted populations with mass counseling. Indeed, it even aspires to help end wars through therapy. How? High levels of paranoia, emotional withdrawal, irrational fear and other symptoms of PTSD tend to stifle reconciliation, conflict experts say. Traumatized populations are less apt to forgive. Moreover, a study to be published soon in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy suggests that war-traumatized families in hot spots such as Afghanistan internalize their pain, and plant the seeds of violence in the next generation through child abuse. In effect, whether it involves armies or civilians, mental illness perpetuates states of war. "The humanitarian response to conflicts has always focused on caring for the body," said Sandro Galea, a post-traumatic stress researcher at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. "But what we're learning is that treating stress-related mental problems can actually help break the cycle of war." Not all medical experts buy into that analysis. In Kosovo—the first modern killing field where mental health was made a priority in the aid effort—psychiatrists treated thousands of dazed refugees and war-crimes survivors. The results proved ambiguous. Patient surveys showed that counselors concentrated so narrowly on post-traumatic stress that they overlooked deeper woes such as despair over poverty, the anxieties of displacement, surging drug addiction and the agonies of spousal abuse. Some experts also question whether a Western concept such as PTSD can be applied across cultures. Human grief is handled differently across the globe, they say. And some skeptics go so far as to label mental health crusades in war zones a form of medical colonialism—force-feeding psychoanalysis and narrative therapy to minority cultures. Still, few serious physicians deny that the basic symptoms of PTSD can be found everywhere. And in countries where the killing is ever-present, aimed at civilians and savagely personal—which is to say, in most current wars—its prevalence skyrockets. A 2001 UN report on the state of the world's mental health estimates that 20 percent of all people exposed to low-intensity civil conflicts are scarred by serious behavioral disorders. In some wars, the toll can be far higher. In Sri Lanka, home to one of the planet's oldest and most brutal insurgencies, 64 percent of the populace exhibits some type of mental trauma, a government survey shows. And in the reliably bloody Gaza Strip, a study conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program revealed that only 2.5 percent of Palestinian children were free of PTSD symptoms. Eighty-three percent of local kids, the doctors found, had witnessed shootings. More than 70 years ago, Ernest Hemingway wrote of the insanity of the Italian front during World War I, titling one of his bitterest short stories "A Way You'll Never Be." Today's psychiatrists argue that whole cities and unstable regions are verging on a "way you'll never be"—whether it's in Baghdad, the bone fields of Darfur, the mountains of Afghanistan or one of the most anarchic capitals in the world, Mogadishu. Vast, mostly lawless and plagued by clan feuds, Somalia hasn't seen an effective national government since 1991. At present, the Ethiopian army and the treasury of the United States are propping up a weak transitional federal government that holds sway over the decayed capital, Mogadishu. The TFG, as it is called, ousted a radical Islamist movement late last year. But the fighting grinds on. And it's getting bloodier. Wary citizens edge through Mogadishu on foot or in dented old buses, flinching whenever gunfire erupts nearby. They brave car bombs, insurgent ambushes, corrupt police and thundering Ethiopian artillery to reach their dusty food markets. Children flatten against classroom floors if the shooting gets too close. More than 170,000 people have fled intensifying street battles in Mogadishu over the past two weeks, the UN says. Today the city, once home to 1 million to 2 million people, sprawls half-empty—a grim incubator of wartime trauma. "Nobody knows the scope of the problems because it's too dangerous to work there," said Karin Fischer Liddle, a Somalia specialist with Doctors Without Borders, one of the few Western aid agencies still functioning in the metropolis. Doctors Without Borders had hoped to carry out the city's first mental health survey this year but shelved the plan because of surging violence. "We just assume the needs are enormous," Fischer Liddle said. As it is, Mogadishu's residents have only one option for mental health care: Habeb Public Mental Hospital. Established in 2005, it sees new stress cases every day. Its 50 or so beds technically serve all of central and southern Somalia—a land of war-displaced nomads and farmers with a total population of perhaps 8 million to 12 million. One recent afternoon, its patients sprawled on dingy mattresses in the dim, stifling wards, apparently heavily sedated. Some stared up, glazed-eyed and smiling. Seven were chained by their wrists and ankles to iron bedsteads. A half-naked man stood outside, giggling in purest ecstasy, shackled to a tree. Another's back was crisscrossed with bruises from village beatings. "Somalis treat mentally ill people very cruelly," said Habeb, the shaggy-haired nurse who founded the clinic. "Look." Habeb fired up his office computer. He clicked through photos of hyenas to illustrate the "hyena cure"—a village therapy that involves dropping a mentally impaired person into a pit with the wild predator. The animals are supposed to scare off djinns, or evil spirits, inhabiting the patient, Habeb explained. With a snicker, he ticked off other rustic coping mechanisms for mental illness—beatings, forced starvation, smoking donkey feces. "We are modern here at the hospital," he said. "Mania, schizophrenia, epilepsy. We diagnose them all. We treat them all—scientifically." Habeb's office was littered with jars and bottles of pharmaceuticals. Most of it was paid for by the $50-a-month fee he charges inpatients' families, who often begged the money from relatives in the Somali diaspora.The barrel of American tranquilizers occupied pride of place, the center of the floor. "We don't get many ordinary depressives," he said. "Why? Withdrawal. Sadness. Lack of interest. Low psychomotor activity. In Somalia, all this is natural. These kinds of people just stay in their houses for two or three years." Habeb described his mental health training: a 90-day course sponsored by the World Health Organization. A few weeks before, aid workers had stopped by to see if they might help with funding. They left in a hurry. In their report, they noted that a toddler suffering from malaria had been misdiagnosed with "organic psychosis." Experience literally reshapes the human brain. Memory rewires neurons. That fact has been known by psychologists for some time. Thus, it comes as no surprise that war leaves its own distinctive, scorching thumbprint on the brain. Research indicates that the left frontal region, a nexus of verbal communication, malfunctions—becomes disconnected—when people are exposed to continual, violent stress. A new brain-wave study of torture victims, carried out by scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany, has borne that out. There's even a name for this wounded state of mind: speechless terror. "Language-related centers become impaired in these cases," said Michael Odenwald, one of the study's authors. "There is a pattern of social withdrawal. This helps explain why reconciliation in traumatized populations becomes more difficult." The war-injured mind exacts other strange costs. Unexplained back pains, stomach cramps, chronic headaches—all are widely recognized as signs of mental trauma, even in Mogadishu's basic first-aid stations. Meanwhile, the links between serious physical diseases and PTSD have been long recognized by the medical community. A landmark study by The New York Academy of Medicine showed that Vietnam War veterans with PTSD were six times more likely to suffer heart disease than those without it. Habeb knew this. "I am a patient too," he confided, making the rounds in his clinic wards. "I am taking medication for heart problems and diabetes. It is the stress." Habeb said he spent too much time at the clinic. His wife was divorcing him. The things that alarmed his patients were starting to trouble him as well. The knocks on doors that sounded like explosions. The steady buzzing in the sky above Mogadishu—purportedly CIA drones on spying missions—keeping him awake at night. A few miles away, over the city's sandy streets, another Somali health worker commiserated. Laila Mohammed Abdi was a shy intake clerk for a maternal health clinic. Two years ago, clan militiamen shot her husband because they wanted his cell phone. He bled to death in her arms. More recently, Mogadishu's police held a gun against her neck and stripped her naked in a market. They stole everything, including her dress. She couldn't take proper care of her children. She couldn't do her job. "I have got some problem in the brain," she said. "It's getting worse, not better." Abruptly, she began to cry. One of her colleagues, who was translating, turned his head away and started weeping as well. It seemed the most normal reaction in the world, in Mogadishu. psalopek@tribune.com Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

^^^^ Why don't you two meet for a coffee at a Tim Horton's somewhere instead of chatting on SOL. I recommend the one on the 2500 block of Danforth Ave.

The puppet president, the victims and the unsung heroes all in one clip.

^^^^^ Eventually there will be a viable government in Xamar. It may not happen in our lifetimes but it will. Oodweyne is caught between a rock and a hard place. He probably doesn't care much for Ethiopia but he knows without it, Somaliland is coming back in the fold. That's why I advise my brothers in the north to abandon this secession nonsense. People can be fooled some of the time but they can't all be fooled for eternity.

Originally posted by -: Xuseen Caydiid oo la sheegay in lagu xiray Magaalada Asmara kadib markii looga shakiyay basaasnimo. LOL. Good riddance.

^^^^ Just so you know, I'm not a dowlad-diid (anarchist) in general, I specifically diid (reject) the TFG.

^^^^^ I was trying to be nice. This alley after dark is no place for a (seemingly) nice lady like you. Did you not catch my drift with the closet reference? SHOULD I HAVE WRITTEN IT IN BIG LETTERS?