Rahima, it said random thoughts, not nice ones.

Every empire goes through a period of invincibility but this one may prove to be the shortest in history. And when empires do eventually collapse (often for internal/financial reasons) you wonder how they ever got to be so invincible.

There's a remarkable body of evidence publicly available today showing how this recent Ethiopian/US invasion of Somalia was planned for some time. What's even more remarkable is the belief some have that the 'political genius' of a Somali leader has orchestrated the whole thing to get rid of his opposition. Orchestration-ow xaal qaado. Is it any wonder then the 'flat earth' theory persists until today millennia after it was flatly discredited?

Originally posted by sheherazade: I need a freelance bailiff. I'm not a bailiff but can I comb you hair?

Originally posted by Naxar Nugaaleed: why would the world's 911 be a rogue state? That's what the piece is arguing. Did you not read it?

Love the part when an Ethiopian soldier is left behind and his tank drives off without him and he's being shot at. That Xabasha ran like a mouse being chased by a cat.

Violence returns to Mogadishu Published: 17 Jan 2007 By: Nima Elbagir Channel 4 Video He had called for a peace deal with members of the rival Islamic courts. But today the speaker of the Somali parliament was sacked as the country's president and prime minister continued their attempts to consolidate power. Their interim government, backed by Ethiopian troops, now controls Mogadishu. But violence is never far away. Nightly gun battles, banditry and warlords have returned to the Somali capital. Meanwhile up to 4,000 former Islamic Union fighters remain, vowing to overthrow the regime. Nima Elbagir, from More 4 News, has just returned from Mogadishu where she witnessed the violence first hand and spoke exclusively to a leader of the Union of Islamic Courts hiding in the city.

^ lol. So Paragon did quit, eh? Well, I'm sure he's reading this and when the liberation troops storm Villa Somalia and capture the leader of the puppet regime, he shall return to celebrate with us.

Brother Sheikh Shariif captured! (We got him)! On one hand you call him "brother" for the last remaining traces of diin and Somalinimo in you and on the other, you say "we got him" like the US did of Saddam. Ma adaa waalan mise cadan baa laga heeseyaa? Shariif will be fine. The day he joins this puppet regime is the day I resent him.

War ninka Shariifku waa nin gob ehe.

Somalia parliament not independent: ex-Speaker Sharif ROME, Italy Jan 17 (Garowe Online) - Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who was removed from the post of interim parliament Speaker by a Wednesday vote, has said that Somalia’s parliament is “not independent” and is under Ethiopian control. The ex-Speaker responded to Wednesday's vote by saying that “anyone who talks freely about Ethiopian troops in the country [somalia] must be removed.” Sharif Hassan said the interim Somali parliament elected him in 2004 to the post of Speaker while it was an independent institution and can only remove him from the post as an independent institution. He said the Somali parliament cannot function and fulfill its duties while the country is under Ethiopian military occupation, adding that the government can function when the Ethiopians withdraw and African peacekeepers are deployed. Sharif Hassan said he is part of the government and is not operating against it. The former Speaker also criticized President Abdullahi Yusuf, whom he accused of dictatorial tendencies: “2007 and dictatorship don’t go together.” “I will not accept to work under Ethiopian troops and become a hostage,” ex-Speaker Sharif said, who continued to maintain that he is still the legitimate Speaker of the interim Somali parliament. Somali legislators voted 183-to-9 in favor of removing Sharif Hassan from the post of Speaker after a long list of charges, including alleged support for the ousted Islamic Courts movement. Sharif Hassan had made previous overtures to engage in direct talks with the Islamists while they still controlled Mogadishu, but government leaders had distanced themselves from Sharif's efforts at dialogue. Garowe Online

Sharif Hassan is the last remaining ounce of credibility in this puppet regime. With his dismissal (which may be illegal), they've put the finishing touches on their own coffin.

^ How can you say the "speaker of parliament is supposed to be bi-partisan"? Is Nanci Pelosi bi-partisan? Last time I checked she was solidly in the democratic party. Though I think Pelosi is a stain on the party. I guess you don't understand what the speaker of parliament does or should be.

^ For Sky it would. Abu Paragon would love it.

How do you figure? What's the difference between the two? The one who took arms against Yeey is in and his own Speaker of parliament has fallen "out of grace"?

^ The Sharif will be back in one form or the other. In fact, the other Sharif will be back as well. It's actually in Yeey's best interest that they do. But you don't see that now. It's ok. We can't all be visionaries.

This orgy of good news has been there for days now. How you figured it suddenly turned to good news is beyond me. Originally posted by Sky: NN I wasn't even aware of that. Apparently, neither was Yeey. LOOL. Che, notice how all the news headlines in western media is emphasizing "linked to Islamist" or "with ties to Islamist"?

Michael E. Ranneberger, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, told reporters in the Kenyan capital Wednesday before the vote that Aden was "the kind of person who could pull people together." LOL. Either the Ambassador will retract these words, or the the TFG will find a way to "embrace" the Speaker. Disarmament, no disarmament. Negotiations, no negotiations. Media ban, no media ban. No speaker of the parliament, .....

Originally posted by NGONGE: Surely that piece of clothing is the easiest thing in the world to make. All you have to do is sew it all together making sure that you have one big opening for the neck and two for the arms. Voila! What you describe there is no dirac, Ngongeow. Unless you know people who habitually were a 'jawaan' to weddings.

^ Being a founding member of the "secessionist mafia", how could we possibly take your arguments, however convincing, to be of any value?

The Sharif is on his way out of the door. Is the other shoe about to drop for the TFG?

Another gem.

Rogue State America by John B. Judis What exactly are we doing in the Horn of Africa, where we have encouraged the Christian government of Ethiopia to invade Somalia and replace its Islamic government? As far as I can tell, we have violated international law, committed war crimes, helped Al Qaeda recruit new members, and involved ourselves in a guerrilla war that could last decades. It's Iraq writ small. And it can't be blamed on Donald Rumsfeld. There's an old principle of international law, going back to the seventeenth century, against one nation violating the sovereignty of another. It was often breached, but, after two world wars, it was enshrined in the United Nations charter. We criticized the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and justified the first Gulf war on these grounds. The purpose of this principle has been to prevent wars that could arise if more powerful countries simply took it into their hands to dominate smaller, less powerful ones. Of course, when one nation attacks another, the other can respond. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the overthrow of the Taliban regime, was justified on those grounds. The Taliban weren't simply sheltering Al Qaeda; they were in league with them and had become dependent upon them. To justify its invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration invented an imminent threat from Saddam Hussein's regime. It was pure artifice--remember the drones bearing nuclear weapons headed for our shores--but the very fact that the Bush administration felt it had to resort to deception meant that it understood that a certain principle of international relations was at stake. But, last month, the Bush administration actively supported Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia. It provided money, advisers, and, finally, U.S. warplanes. And there was no justification for Ethiopia's invasion. It was a clear violation of the U.N. charter. The neighboring people have been feuding for centuries, but Ethiopia's Christian government could not cite a significant provocation for its attack on the Muslim country and its Islamic government. If anything, Ethiopia's invasion closely resembled Iraq's invasion in August 1990 of Kuwait. But, instead of criticizing the Ethiopians, the United States applauded and aided them. The administration claimed that, in supporting Ethiopia, it was fighting the ubiquitous "war on terrorism." According to The New York Times, administration officials even held out the Ethiopia invasion as a model of how it would prosecute the war on terrorism by proxy. By this account, Somalia was Afghanistan, and its Islamic Courts Union government was the Taliban. But the analogy does not hold up. The United States claimed that the Islamic Courts government, which took power last summer, was harboring three Al Qaeda fugitives. But the Al Qaeda members had been in Somalia well before the Islamic Courts took power. They were not part of the government. And Al Qaeda itself did not have training camps in Somalia. Somalia was less like Afghanistan than Pakistan, which, according to outgoing National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, is also home to Al Qaeda members. In the wake of the Ethiopian invasion, the administration made a stronger claim. On December 14, Jendayi Frazer, the State Department official for Africa, said, "The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by Al Qaeda cell individuals--East Africa Al Qaeda cell individuals." But Frazer didn't name any individuals. And intelligence analysts have questioned her claim, which, according to The Washington Post, was " ased in part on intelligence out of Ethiopia." As Matthew Yglesias put it, "In other words, we're backing Ethiopia's war against Somalia because intelligence provided by the Ethiopian government suggests we should back Ethiopia." The Bush administration often claims that it is encouraging democracy, but the invasion itself probably represents a net loss of freedom--and that's a hard calculation to make among these governments. The U.S.-backed Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has been widely accused of human rights violations. After the Ethiopian opposition protested that the 2005 election was rigged, the Meles government killed 193 demonstrators and arrested about 80,000 others to quell the protests. Teshale Aberra, the president of the Supreme Court in Ethiopia's largest province who defected to Great Britain last fall, said, "There is massive killing all over. There is a systematic massacre." Meanwhile, in Somalia, the Islamic Courts replaced a weak transitional regime that was unable to control the warlords, who, since 1991, have turned the countryside into a Hobbesian jungle. The new government had brought a harsh Islamic justice and order to Somalia, which, for all its own injustice, was preferable to the chaos that had prevailed. With the ouster of the Islamic Courts, the warlords are likely to return to power. Somalia will probably be plunged into another guerrilla war, as the Islamists try to retake power. And the United States will once again ally with these warlords and with a weak, corrupt regime. (According to Jonathan S. Landay and Shashank Bengali, the United States was actually paying off the aide to the militia leader responsible for killing 18 Americans in 1993 in the famous Black Hawk Down incident.) And who will benefit from American intervention? Al Qaeda, which will be able to draw up another recruiting poster from the American-sponsored invasion of a Muslim country. Al Qaeda will be able to point, in particular, to U.S. airstrikes that claimed to target Al Qaeda but instead killed scores of innocent civilians. That's what happened on January 7 and 8 in Somali border towns; the United States claimed its bombs were intended to kill an Al Qaeda operative supposedly connected to the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But he was not among the victims; nor were other Al Qaeda members. Then reports began trickling in of civilian deaths from the AC-130 gunships that the United States supposedly sent to hunt down the single terrorist. According to Oxfam, the dead included 70 nomads who were searching for water sources. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated that 100 were wounded in an attack on Ras Kamboni, a fishing village near the Kenyan border. The Economist, which is not an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, wrote, "The Americans used the AC-130, a behemoth designed to shred large areas instantly, in the knowledge that the killing fields would be cleared before journalists and aid workers could reach them." It's a war crime to kill civilians indiscriminately. In the 1990s, foreign policy experts, eager to identify a new enemy, hit upon the concept of a "rogue state." A rogue state operated outside the bounds of international norms and had to be restrained. The obvious candidates at the time were Libya, Iraq, and North Korea. But the Bush administration has turned the United States itself into a rogue state. Tough-minded conservatives, flexing their "muscular" inclinations from comfortable sinecures in Washington, may dismiss concerns about international law and war crimes as inventions of silly panty-waist liberals. But these inventions, which, in the modern era, were championed by Theodore Roosevelt, were meant to protect Americans as well as other peoples from the wars and the inhumanity that prevailed for thousands of years. We ignore them at their peril, whether in Haditha or Ras Kamboni. John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The New Republic

And thankfully, Addis Ababa has the wisdom to admit what everyone knows: that the Ethiopians have about 3.3 nanoseconds to get their troops out of xenophobic Somalia before they will be even more hated than the thugs they ousted. This so called editor from the LA Times has in the first paragraph of his 'analysis' labeled Somalis as xenophobic, called the ICU hated thugs and associated wisdom with the brutal regime of Meles Zenawi. And you posted this because you agree with it yaa Taako Man?

Originally posted by somalipride: I guess, just like how many of the clan court fighters shaved off their beards and returned to being criminals after their defeat; some in the cyber world feel the trend is no longer "in". You'd think that a sincere person would be in the struggle for a lifetime, but it's amusing to see less then 1 month after their defeat, people jumping ship. Wow, truly, imposters. They're only quiting this political forum, atheer. They didn't renounce their beliefs.