Somalia // Current

Somalia, defezione di un ufficiale

8 febbraio 2010 Mogadiscio, Somalia Un ufficiale dell’Esercito abbandona le... more

Senza_Censura
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Global throwdown: Somali pirates vs. North Korea

An awesome confluence of rogue actors:
The MV Rim was seized in the Gulf of Aden, outside the internationally recommended transit corridor patrolled by the anti-piracy naval coalition, said Cmdr. Anders Kallin of the EU Naval Force. The MV Rim has not had any communication with maritime authorities, but Kallin said an American warship, the USS Porter, and a helicopter from American warship USS Farragut confirmed the seizure of the ship to the EU. The 4,800-ton ship is owned by White Sea Shipping of Libya. It is carrying unknown cargo and the number and nationalities of the crew are not known. The seized ship was heading toward the Somali coast and warships were monitoring the situation, the EU Naval Force said.

It really kind of can't get any better than that, can it? The old Axis of Evil vs. the new Axis of Instability. Even Libya is involved! I mean maybe we could add "They announced it on Twitter and submitted a YouTube question to Obama from the open ocean." But no seriously, the only way this story could get any better was to throw a little Al Qaeda in it. Oh, what's that? A link between Somali pirates and Al Qaeda? Do tell, Foreign Policy magazine:
Somalia has two big scourges these days: Islamist milititas that run most of the country (and are linked to al Qaeda) and piracy off the coast....But what if the two scourges are linked?...Last December, a Canadian intelligence report indicated that Shabaab was in fact training pirates for their "duties." Further reporting from Jane's (summarized here) notes how taxes are levied on the pirates' booties. Yes, the pirates and the Islamists are definitely in cahoots.

All kidding aside, these sorts of links are worrisome. As global connectivity becomes more accessible, it's not hard to imagine a world in which there truly is an "Axis of Instability" aligning terrorists, religious militants, pirates, drug gangs, etc. It's a concern the DEA has put forward in their (alebit dubious) theories about Al Qaeda and the FARC. Let's just hope that the hostage negotiations between North Korea and the Somali pirates don't turn into partnership talks. An awesome confluence of rogue actors: The MV Rim was seized in the Gulf of... more

afitzgerald
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26 comments

K'Naan is actually cool.

shama346
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Presidential Assassinations of U.S. Citizens

The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That's just the essence of war. That's why it's permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they're captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we're talking about here. The people on this "hit list" are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities.

More at the link:The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams... more

WeAreChangeKy
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CIA Contractor Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti

A controversial CIA contractor has found new work in Haiti, flying drones on disaster... more

rodstradamus
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20 days ago
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3 comments

Blackwater/XE Mercenaries Arrive in Somalia

"At least 18 people have been killed in clashes between rival factions in... more

rodstradamus
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27 days ago
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1 Million Somali IDPs are in risk of life threatening Diseases following WFP Food halt

Press release. Ref: yord/nbi/01/10... more

sojra
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Heroes in a Land of Pirates

LAST Monday, Somali pirates seized two more prizes in rapid succession: a British-flagged chemical tanker and a Greek bulk carrier, bringing the current number of captive ships to 12 and the number of hostage mariners to at least 278. Despite the presence in the region of three multinational naval task forces comprising about 30 warships, there were 68 successful pirate hijackings in 2009, compared with 49 one year earlier.

If the New Year’s Day capture of an Indonesian tanker is any indication, 2010 will not herald an end to the attacks. As one Somali pirate told me last year: “Sometimes, we capture ships when [warships] are right around us. We don’t care about them. They’re not going to stop us.” Indeed, the pirates’ range has expanded to more than 1,000 miles off the Somali coast — as far as the Seychelles — and the futility of an exclusively naval strategy is increasingly apparent.

The situation is not without hope. There might be another way to make greater strides against pirates. However, it would involve allying ourselves with a place that doesn’t exist: the autonomous region of Puntland, Somalia.

To the ancient Egyptians, the land of Punt was a source of munificent treasures and bountiful wealth. Modern Puntland, a self-governing region in northeastern Somalia, may or may not be the successor to the Punt of legend. As I discovered when I first visited, last year, it contained none of the gold and ebony that dazzled the Egyptians, save perhaps for the color of the sand and the skin of the nomadic goat and camel herders who have inhabited it for centuries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04bahadur.html?pagewanted=all

More on Piracy at Sea

There have been seagoing pirates throughout history -- from plundering Vikings to 17th-century raiders who pillaged Spanish galleons. In recent years, a spate of attacks off the Horn of Africa has shown that piracy can still be highly profitable as well as dangerous.

In Somalia, a country of grinding poverty and internal chaos, the pirate economy is booming. The piracy is an extension of the corrupt, violent free-for-all that has raged on land since the central government imploded in 1991. It has turned the waters into the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.

Somali pirates carried out a record number of attacks and hijackings in 2009, despite the deployment of international warships to thwart them and a United Nations Security Council resolution to bring the fight against them to shore.

The pirates have spread themselves across thousands of square miles of water, from the Gulf of Aden, at the narrow doorway to the Red Sea, to the Kenyan border along the Indian Ocean. Another center of piracy, southeast Asia has seen a decrease in attacks in recent years.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/piracy_at_sea/index.htmlLAST Monday, Somali pirates seized two more prizes in rapid succession: a... more

remanns
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Somali man 'tried to take bomb onto plane'

A Somali man is in custody in Mogadishu, suspected of trying to take explosives onto a... more

ras_menelik
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1 month ago
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Respect Diversity with an Axe?

This crazy terrorist bastard tried to chop up a political cartoonist. Should we worry... more

Progresshiv
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1 month ago
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11 comments

Get to know Yemen: The new hot front in the war on terror

As the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front... more

afitzgerald
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1 month ago
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18 comments

IPCC’s Head Dr. Pachauri warns at least 12 countries may become failed States due to climate change

“How many Somalias, how many Sudans, how many Afghanistans can the world... more

greenmedia
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Science and the Scriptures

While scores of theological scholars have been studying the literal meaning of... more

jkw077
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1 month ago
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Wretched, jobless, invisible: are Britain’s Somalis the enemy within?

Tears filled Abdul Kadir Ali’s eyes as he sat in a rundown community centre in... more

ironicbliss
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YouTube - The Forbidden Truth about Pirates

A little something about the Somalia pirates you won't hear on CNN or Fox.

Monkey_Films
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2 months ago
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3 comments

Suicide bomber kills 19 at a Somalian graduation

A male suicide bomber dressed in women's clothing killed three members of... more

LowShred
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2 months ago
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Inside the worlds most hostile city

Mogadishu,Somalia. Matteo Fagotto reports from a place bloated with arms and young... more

ironicbliss
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2 months ago
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Somali Pirates Hijack $20m Supertanker

Somali pirates have seized an oil-laden supertanker en route from Saudi Arabia to the... more

ironicbliss
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2 months ago
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Do Not Eat Onions: Plants of life, plants of death - Google Books

Do not eat onions. Take a look through the link

jkw077
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5 months ago
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HOLY WAR AT HOME!

"Fighting A Domestic Islamic Threat" (Be Afraid!)

Jenime
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TAGS

tagged w/ Somalia

Somalia, defezione di un ufficiale

Global throwdown: Somali pirates vs. North Korea

K'Naan is actually cool.

Presidential Assassinations of U.S. Citizens

CIA Contractor Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti

Blackwater/XE Mercenaries Arrive in Somalia

1 Million Somali IDPs are in risk of life threatening Diseases following WFP Food halt

Heroes in a Land of Pirates

Somali man 'tried to take bomb onto plane'

Respect Diversity with an Axe?

Get to know Yemen: The new hot front in the war on terror

IPCC’s Head Dr. Pachauri warns at least 12 countries may become failed States due to climate change

Science and the Scriptures

Wretched, jobless, invisible: are Britain’s Somalis the enemy within?

YouTube - The Forbidden Truth about Pirates

Suicide bomber kills 19 at a Somalian graduation

Inside the worlds most hostile city

Somali Pirates Hijack $20m Supertanker

Do Not Eat Onions: Plants of life, plants of death - Google Books

HOLY WAR AT HOME!

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