The House of Saud This house built on quick sand needs to go, then a new era of great change will come to the Middle East.

lol@poor Che. One would think you understood the gravity of the change around us. Anyhow thanks for your addition. I saw some secessionists comparing Siilanyu to Al Bashir, and now you compare Faroole to Mubarak. Faroole is irrelevent and so is any other Somali leader in the great scheme of things.. What next Shangoole to Osama? lol

Jordan Syrian Alwite leadership is strong

Next ?

Out

Its over, the tyrans f the world beware...

The joy cries filled the air – across Egypt the joy cries filled the air. For two weeks we'd chanted: "Come on Egypt, One more push/Freedom will be born tonight." And tonight this has come true. We don't yet know how the next stage will pan out. But we know that we will continue to do everything to protect our revolution and the spirit of our revolution. If it had not been so dangerous it would have been comic: the spectacle of a handful of old men popping up one after the other to – to do what? To demonstrate their complete irrelevance to the people and the events they still hoped to control. We looked at each other in amazement after every one of their performances. Were they living in an alternative reality? A kind of Truman Show? On Thursday eveningHosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman and Ehud Barak were sharing a song-sheet: Egypt isn't ready, don't move too quickly, the Islamists will destabilise the region. How they wished all this were true; rather than the Woodstock-type scenes we've been witnessing in Egypt's public spaces for two weeks. The key to understanding the regime's discourse was this: these people were not addressing Egypt at all: they were still addressing what they think of as America. The first and necessary demand of this miraculous, human, humane, revolution was clearly expressed from day one: the removal of the regime. The regime being all the people, the power bases, the regulations and traditions that have facilitated the exploiting, the degrading of the country's institutions to serve the interests of a small clique against the interests of the nation as a whole. And to be able to do this they have maligned and misrepresented the Egyptian people to each other and to the world. They have engaged in nothing less than the destruction of the humanity of this country. The people demanded the fall of this regime. In Tahrir Square and on the streets of Egypt the people have reclaimed their humanity. Now they will reclaim their state. By means of free and fair elections under judicial supervision. To hold these elections we need to reform the constitution the regime has so deformed. So we will need a council of senior judiciary to form a cabinet of non-political technocrats to run the country while a committee of respected public figures and constitutional experts redraw the bits of the constitution necessary to regulate elections. Six months should see this all done. And the army has declared it will safeguard the country for this to happen. On Thursday night when the regime announced its intention to stay, the people's response was immediate: they marched. On the Nile Corniche they formed a human chain around the radio and television building: the source of all the poison propaganda against the revolution. On the airport road, they started a sit-in at Mubarak's residence – he, of course, was not there. On Friday, millions were on the move: exasperated and fed-up, but insisting "silmiyyah / silmiyyah" — peaceable, good-humoured, still cracking jokes.

The secessionist have already lost.. So much for their army, and so much for claims over this region.

Never understood these clowns who write such nonsense and those who post them. How is silly Siilanyu and his little clan compared to Sudan's Al Bashir? Come on..

I just met one of the Garad's of these regions by accident in Toronto this afternoon. He spoke confidently that the people will defend themselves and they have enough support from their kinsmen, which is a fact. War is not good, but the land belongs to a specific clan.

^^^Amin...

Tragic, AUN all the dead..

Oxfam: Somali Drought Could Be as Serious as 1992 Michael Onyiego | Nairobi January 25, 2011 Below average rainfall in Somalia has pushed nearly 500,000 people to the brink of starvation. International aid-group Oxfam is warning that more will be affected unless immediate action is taken. Somalia is in desperate need of aid, says British-based Oxfam International. Reports indicate decreased rainfall in the arid region, and the situation is critical in areas such as Gedo and Juba. The aid group reports that 25 percent of people in the Gedo region and nearly 30 percent in the Juba region are malnourished due to crop failure and the death of livestock. The group also worries the death of livestock will promote raiding and violence as the crisis deepens. According to Oxfam Humanitarian Programs representative Peter Kamalingin, the international community does not realize how serious the situation is becoming. "The crisis is big, it is probably something that is similar to or worse than what we saw in 1992," added Kamalingin. "The rains for October to December period were low and there is the likelihood that the next rains, if they come, will be towards the end of March or April. So you have, actually, a period of six months low rain, and for Somalia that is serious." Oxfam reports that some areas in central and southern Somalia have received less than 15 percent of their typical rainfall in recent months. An estimated two million people are living off food aid in Somalia and as the drought continues that number is likely to rise. Speaking at the United Nations earlier this month, Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed warned that 2.5 million people were on the verge of starvation unless given immediate support There have been relatively few reported deaths as a result of the situation. But Oxfam's Kamalingin says the crisis is far from over. "The worst of it is yet to come, and that is where the fear is," added Kamalingin. "We know that so far there have been deaths of livestock. We know that in some parts there have already been reports of limited deaths, not yet as bad. But if you consider that this is still January and the next rains are only expected in March, I think the next two months are going to be serious." For those in the south, their only reprieve maybe the war-torn capital, Mogadishu. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees recently estimated as many as 12,000 people had recently arrived on the outskirts of the Somali capital in search of food and water.

Yesterday, NevineZaki posted this picture on Twitter, saying it shows Christians protecting those praying in Tahrir Square amid violence between protesters and Mubarak supporters. She wrote "Bear in mind that this pic was taken a month after z Alexandria bombing where many Christians died in vain. Yet we all stood by each other"

It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independenceThe nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains Noam Chomsky guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 February 2011 16.30 GMT Article history'The Arab world is on fire," al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies "are quickly losing their influence". The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator's brutal police. Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed. One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt's vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself. A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism. A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding). "The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control," says Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. "With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground." Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control. The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against "a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems", ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks. Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks "documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren't asleep at the switch" – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.) "America should give Assange a medal," says a headline in the Financial Times, where Gideon Rachman writes: "America's foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the US on any given issue is usually the private position as well." In this view, WikiLeaks undermines "conspiracy theorists" who question the noble motives Washington proclaims. Godec's cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do,, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec's information in hand, Washington provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere. Heilbrunn's exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture. Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%). Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington's policies that a majority (57%) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control" (as Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted. Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington's nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of "legal and constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya." The embassy concluded that "there is no doubt that the military, supreme court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch". Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities. Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig. The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also "risks destabilising the Pakistani state" and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists. Again, the revelations "should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch" (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster. © 2011 Noam Chomsky