Women in Somaliland are treated well with respect -- I don’t think is necessary to blame a whole region for their treatment of women, or to call the region a womanizing region. I think it would be safe to assume that abuse occurs everywhere in Somalia, and also in developed nations as well. Its not only in Somaliland, its everywhere!

Congrads Qac'Qac - I wish you all the best.

K. Kid There are several filmmakers, and many graphic designers on this website - they might be offended by being called fags - and although as you mention art fags might have a different semiotic connotation. I am a toronto based video artist, performance artists. BTW, where can your work be seen, and what sort of performance do you do?

Literally the city should be auctioned off --- btw, no one is generalizing anything. It’s about human decency --- question was the father stabbed with a knife. There could be some sort of an administrative dictation an eye for an eye, a weapon for a weapon – more like pain felt must be equivalent to the pain inflected.

J.Lee I like baby elephants, not the real old ones --- and yes Egg McMuffin's are disgusting.

^^^ I agree with you that we live in places where we have peace and security. Stabbing someone in Somalia in a public execution, at least 40% of the watching spectators must have had guns, couldn’t someone have tossed an AK in the mix, instead of a rusted knife. The execution should have been swift, and the media also neglected to report how the man in question was found guilty --- they just went after the execution as the focal point of coverage, and the Somali populace does not ask questions. I say lets commission a private army to assassinate all of these warlords, and evildoers regardless of their façade, whether they are becoming responsible leaders or faith based men.

What makes me sick? Indian Food --- London England --- Unlawful Murder --- Weak Fights ----November and August ---- Weak Internet Connections ---- People who don’t think global warming is serious---- Giant Elephants.

I seen this letter couple month back --- is it generalizing blacks, yes I can agree with that. However, it is the well off African Americans that help corporate America exploit the black community through the media by encouraging the degrading of women in rap music, and allowing other corporate interests push their agenda --- ever wonder why you see be all you can be ads every five minutes on BET and not on MTV or on MUCH. This reminds me of the slave trade, when other Africans helped the slave trade by capturing other Africans and selling them. We are experience that today, mental enslavement propagated by the black elite in the media. Keep quite --- we're all buying into the hype.

religist <<< what? I was just trying to say that people on SOL who constantly jump to conclusion, who relentlessly question the devotion of other members through subliminal or suggestive sayings should stop this pattern.

I was disappointed to see Washington lose in overtime – I ‘m confident that Detroit will destroy Cleveland. Also sad to see Kobe lose, he’s the whole team, literally --- no one stepped up from the Lakers, they were all depending on Kobe.

Bloggers are the new everything, we’ve actually made humans into entertainers. Bloggers give us the perception that we are famous and someone actually cares about our cat that has just got TB, and how we hate certain TV show and what we think of the world. Yet, I want to encourage people to blog and voice their outcry’s onto the world. Keep on Blogging!

I watched Loose Change months back, I thought I would be on of those boring 9/11 docs that tie anti-war politics into the whatever conspiracy they were pushing. But Loose Change was off the hook, it did explain everything, and kind of scared me a bit. There’s a part two, it’s not as good as the first one thou. If you like watching docs, check out FRONTLINE on PBS.ORG.

:confused: What the?

Love is something that must be created through time and experience. Immediate love is purely physical, emotional love takes time and connecting more intimately. Love is an experience, love is an experienced tragedy, love is a controlled experiment, someone always holds most of the cards, and the other is a lab rat, love is violence, love is a lot of things, one thing I know is that it does exist – it is an happy accident that can handicap you. However, for us Somalis, our love is something we purely imagine, as what it should be, because we don’t have an archetype of real love, we grew up in an anti-love society, where women were treated as second-class citizens. Our only concept of love is a fragmented image manufactured through the various medias we engage in daily. My conclusion, love is an accident it can kill you or it can give you a second chance in life again.

A while back several my friends and I were contemplating what Somalia would be like in 30 years. I suggested that the country would change dramatically, and we would no longer have clan politics dividing us --- rather the politics and language of our adoptive nations. We would have the French area, Italian, Dutch and English blocks --- our only commonality would be our colour, and we would no longer share a unified historical experience. As of this moment, I can no longer communicate with some my relatives because they speak an entirely different language, and they don’t speak Somali.

I was in Edmonton this past X-mas to visit my family – the city is actually nice, I didn’t see that many Somalis, but there are many jobs, I mean they advertise jobs on their buses, billboards and every other place. The streets can be confusing, they’re all numbers, and make sure you don’t get lost for example there is 82 street, and there’s also 82 avenue, on two opposite ends of the city. Also, there are many Sudanese people there, and may I say they have adopted the BET Lifestyle and lingo very fast.

Do we have heroes? I would say we don’t have any. The ones we have are too scared to act up and speak against the inhumanity that exists in many regions in Somalia. I find it fascinating to see people defending the religion who only do it to look good, when they know nothing about what they’re arguing – and are quick to point the finger and raise profound irrational and unfounded accusations when they’re participation is limited to Friday prayers. I would suggest we consider everything that is involved, Somalis love to safeguard the deen, which is a good thing, however, we must learn all facets of the religion, and what is permitted and what is not – even those who know much are too snobbish to actually engage people rationally. Before accusing each other, we should actually layout the facts and concrete evidence and collectively reach a decision. I think the redundancy accusing people of being atheist is getting a bit annoying. Religion is a hot topic, but we must understand that we’re all Muslim, and we are brothers and sisters. That being said, for the past fifteen years we have accepted the random killings of innocent people based on their clan or political associations. Even now we are seeing our lesser of evils operating inadequately – I’m talking about the institutionalized killings of minorities by using feeble procedural methods in determining their crimes, and whether they’re legitimate claims or not based on the Shari’a. The so-called transitional government is not making progress, and tribalism continues to spread rampantly faster than AIDS in Sub Sahara Africa, tribalism also invaded us in the Diaspora, tell why are young people using tribal politics? Our only heroes are clan heroes, a person who has eliminated a certain number of the opposing clan. How can we have heroes when we have hate for one another, we beginning to be divided more than ever, by clan, by religion (fanatics, secularists, and many other sub groups) Ask me if we have a nation, before you ask me whether we have heroes or not.

The pictures were not that horrific, what’s horrendous is how many people showed up to watch a human being suffer the agony of death – the spectacle of death is what’s worrying. Someone also mentioned that this person might be from a minority tribe, making him a political scapegoat or recruitment sacrifice for fanatics does not correspond with his punishment. One mentioned that this will teach other killers not to kill – that is BS beyond return, the warlords militiamen cannot be executed in public-Islamic courts, period. Should the killer be killed, yes I have no problem with that, but making it a political issue out of it is. Get a real warlord, and execute him, perhaps that will have more political clout.

Animal Farm ---- from George Orwell's novel. Used to use the pig as an avatar --- but it kinda disgusted ppl.

We used to put up pdf versions before, there still some, hopefully we might upload pdf's again, they chewed bandwidth, people would always download them again and again ---- but we are working on bring them back. Secondly, the issue was on Somaliland, although we may have neglected certain areas and focused heavily on urban centers.

Farah Blue you are right, politics can be boring, but we figured we wanted to connect people to those back home, we changed routes in the past couple of issues to expand peoples perception and knowledge in those areas. We are going back to our roots, and we have received many comments, the thing is, Somalis aren’t happy at any given moment about anything, but I understand where you’re coming from ---- and you opinion is well received and much appreciated for your honesty. Northerner I’m glad you liked the issue, we worked damn hard on it, we tried to stay objective, while giving people their say – many of our contributors were neutral, they weren’t blinded by overt nationalism, instead they reported what they saw, and took pictures of it as well.

To those of you who have read the new issue of People Are Connected Everywhere Magazine - do you think it overtly positive or negative on Somaliland. We have recieved commentary pertaining to this issue thus far, people claiming both end of the accusations, what do u think?

London is cool - but here's the thing, its closed to so many other destinations, so explore surrounding areas --- and make sure you have enough pocket money, london aint cheap, and they'll tell you that at the airport.

MTV/BET and commercially pimped artists are to blame - at least Jay-Z brough some respectable dress code for youngsters - need i mention the button ups, blazers, and not baggy jeans with some s.carters -- people follow trends, the pants hangin is long gone, along with the last century - now the only people who do it are gangsters-r'us kids who won't grow up. Lastly, i don't think most people on this site hang their pants, they're grown ups, even the young ones on here are clever enough to know the difference - they're goal oriented people, not 'gangster' oreinted.

Indeed they are talented – they’re music should be heard everywhere, and they do have commercial appeal as supposed to k’naan. Castro their music is not on itunes yet, but hopefully it’ll be available there, I can forward you some tracks from Kilo Tonne I have most of them, he will be releasing a mixtape soon– he’ll have a website too, where tracks can be downloaded as well. Lastly, about them not looking Somali – it’s their pose, but in person they do look Somali – I doubt that matters thou.