I have heard some unbelievable stuff. Apparently the OG run off in the morning and the SSC secured the north of the city while the Pirates have secured the center of the city. Is this true? If so what does that mean for Jubaland internal structure? I would be grateful if someone can enlighten me on this issue.

Xaaji The SFG has made a fundamental mistake by taking sides. How can they support a warlord for Kismaayo yet complain that Ahmed Madoowe is a warlord? Win or lose in Kismaayo, how can they be so clearly clannish? How are they any different to the last real government who were clannish? How will the international community support a government that is this clearly clannish? The civil war era hasn't finished and this government has the same legitimacy as the qasim government. The government has degraded itself to the position of Ahmed Madoowe and Hiraale. Any hope of them becoming a real government is truly gone now.

Xaaji You are missing the bigger picture. The SFG has lost all its legitimacy with non-HAG tribes as it got itself involved in a clan conflict. Now AMISOM and Kenya can completely ignore the SFG saying it is just another Somali faction and other factions don't have to come under it. The pirates and Jubaland can claim rightly that SFG is a biased HAG entity that doesn't represent them . Did the parliament vote to pick sides? NO. What will the Imam say about this? Just you wait.

What will Mogadishu do if they lose the fight in Kismaayo? Given how biased Mogadishu is will Jubuland simply ignore the SFG from now on?

Xaaji this is another source. DEG DEG:Dagaalkii Kismaayo oo soo gabagaboobay http://www.hadaf24.com/?p=7302

GAROODI You are missing the point. Without the Kenyans and AMISOM then only Al-Shabab will rule Kismaayo and Mogadishu. Neither Ahmed Madoowe nor Hiraale will rule Kismaayo. It is still unclear if the kenyans were envolved in today fighting. Hope somebody clears that up.

If the government and Al-Shabab being on the same side is true, I will be vindicated in believing that Somali politics is a joke and a sport. Only the general public are ****** enough to believe in it.

Kooxda Axmed Madoobe oo shaacisay in dagaalka Kismaayo ay ka qeyb qadanayaan dowlada iyo Shabaab oo isku dhinac ka soo jeeda. Iyadoo saaka maalintii labaad uu dagaal ka socdo magalada Kismaayo ee gobolka Jubada hoose ayaa waxaa arintaas markii ugu horeysay ka hadlay C/naasir Seeraar oo ah afhayeenka maamulka Jubaland garabka Axmed Madoobe oo qeyb ka ah dhinacyada dagaalamaya. C/naasir Seeraar ayaa sheegay in dagaalka ka socdo magaalada kismaayo uu dhexmarayo ciidamada maamulka Jubaland oo dhinac ah iyo ciidamo iskaashaday oo ka kooban dowlada Somaaliya iyo Al-Shabaab sida uu warka u dhigay. “Waxaa dagaalka Kismaayo ka socda soo qaaday kooxo ishabeystay oo qaarkood ay soo dirtay dowlada Xamar iyo Al-shabaab oo iskaasanaya kuwaasoo shalay kulan ay yeesheen ku iclaamiyey dagaal ay kala soo horjeedaan maamulka Jubaland kuna carqaladeynayaan nabada Kismaayo” ayuu intaa ku daray Seeraar. Afhayeenka ayaa sheegay in uu iskaashiga Shabaabka iyo ciidamada dowlada Soomaaliya uu ku xaqiijinayo iney hayaan meydad iyo dhaawacyada rag la ogyahay iney Al-shabaab ka tirsan yihiin oo dagaalka ku jiray. “Siyaasadu waxay leedahay dan joogto ah ee saaxiib joogto ah ma leh nimanka Xamar laga soo diray si ay u carqaldeeyaan maamulka Jubba-land ayey Al-shabaab u kaashanayaan, taasna cadeynteeda waan heynaa oo rag Al-shabaab ka mid ah ayaan ku qabanay dagaalka iyagoo meyd iyo dhaawac leh” ayuu intaa ku daray afhayeenka. C/Naasir Seeraar ayaa sheegay in dagaalka ka socda Kismaayo kismaayo uusan joogsan doonin illaa magaalada ay ka saaraan dhinaca ka soo horjeeda isagoo xusay in haatanba ay ka gaareen guulo hordhac ah, inta dhimana ay israacin doonaan, si maamulkoodaa ay ugu suuragasho iney amaanka Kismaayo sugaan.

I have heard that the Gedo boys are united and that Mogadishu has sent 1000 men with their weapons. The pirates have joined the fight against Hiraale. This is just another episode of Pirates versus Gedoans. The kenyans are merely observing the finale. Who will win this new episode?

"Youth unemployment in several EU countries is now more than 50%, and averages 27% across the EU27 bloc, but parents are incited to have another baby and young couples to have a first baby. The natalist quest is blind faith." What has always bothered me is Somalis blind faith in the "natalist quest". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people having as much children as they want. It is their problem. But what is annoying is how they try to make having a lot of children as the best thing in the world, regardless of the circumstances or your personnel views on the matter. Some Somalis have accepted the "cultural phenomenon of thinking that too many children is inconvenient, unproductive and desperately expensive." When will the majority of Somalis begrudgingly tolerate the new mindset?

Falling World Population And The New Economic Prosperity TWO PARADIGMS The years (1948-1975) of fast economic growth, low annual budget deficits, almost zero unemployment, cheap oil, small or zero national trade deficits, innovation and liberty in the Western countries - was also a period of population growth. Ever since, political thinking confused this result - population growth - with its causes which included fast economic growth. Still today, nearly all western countries have "natalist" policies trying to grow the national population, despite the reality of slow or no economic growth, sky high unemployment, and all the diseconomies of high population. Talking about population decline is "defeatist". Government aids and incitation, even under austerity conditions, are still channelled to an attempt at stopping population decline by forcing or cajoling the national society to have more babies - even if they don't have a job or any prospect of it. National politicians who claim that "the market will decide" when it concerns finding a job for their citizens use non-market means to incite those same citizens to have more babies. Youth unemployment in several EU countries is now more than 50%, and averages 27% across the EU27 bloc, but parents are incited to have another baby and young couples to have a first baby. The natalist quest is blind faith. With no signs of any rebound coming, the result of this mega-trend is simple. National populations are ageing, have fewer children and outright decline of population is already in place in a rising number of countries. NATALISM AND THE BABY BOOMERS Natalists pretend that Collapse of Civilization and fewer babies are tantamount to the same thing - but their only real interest is finding future working age persons to pay the national pension payment fixes needed to keep still-able-to-vote Baby Boomers from the last population bulge, onside and consuming, voting and thinking the right way. Generational envy and strife, between have-not younger persons, and the "entitled" Boomers is rising. THE LAGGARDS The step down in annual increments of world population has been constant since the 1980s, and coming decrements will be as large as current, or larger, due to so few countries still exhibiting the former paradigm of low income-fast population growth. These last hope countries for the natalists include small but still fast growing Somalia, Zambia, Congo DR, Uganda and Rwanda. These are all societies of extreme poverty, high illiteracy, unemancipated female populations and short life expectancy. They do not represent the future, but the past. But after what we can call the New Dark Ages of runaway population growth in the 20th century, civilization is ready again to rear its head - with a declining population. Smaller populations are a tribute to human good sense, a reduction in arrogance, less hubris, more humility - a better use of natural resources, more respect for the environment and other living things. The sustainability movement and the use of renewable energy can be seen as advance signals that the constant race to produce more babies has been abandoned by Humanity. The natalists have lost. AN UNEXPECTED CHANGE We now know a lot better that the blind instinct which brings too many babies does not create the conditions for sustained economic growth, but does bring us the problem of excessive consumption and unnecessarily rapid resource depletion, stress on the biosphere and natural living systems, the growth of regimented conformism, and the rejection of innovation. We now have the cultural phenomenon of thinking that too many children is inconvenient, unproductive and desperately expensive. This is culture change. At least at first this change was neither wanted or programmed by governments and elites in Europe, the US and East Asia, with a few but large exceptions of national anti-natalist policy, as in China and Singapore. Improved medical services that previously enabled populations to explode now allows us the confidence of having small families of wanted children. Drivers of lower birth rates such as improved education and income-equality for women have run alongside advances in birth control methods. Today, especially in Africa south of the Sahara we have the paradigm of failed states, poverty, civil war, endemic malnutrition and life expectancy of under 50 years - and rapid population growth. Economic growth is not delivered by uncontrolled population growth, in fact the exact opposite. In the rest of the world, outside the remaining regions of runaway population growth and its linked poverty and civil wars, there is substantial and still growing affluence, forming a single market for resources and global trade. Also linked with the globalized economy, globalized decline in population growth has run alongside the economic convergence caused by globalization. As recently as year 2000, forecasts by UN agencies for world population in year 2050 were typically in the range 10 to 12 billion. By 2100, the same forecasts projected world population at 15 billion or more. Today, even the more "natalist" UN projections and forecasts say that world population will be peaking at around 8 billion in 2050, then declining to about 6 billion by 2100, the population of 1998. Today's population is about 7.1 billion. To be sure, these forecasts may be too "anti-natalist" but they show the intensity of global demographic change. Added to the well known and sometimes flagrant over-reporting of national populations, especially for aid receiving countries whose aid inflows are tied to their population number, the New Demographic Revolution is a major hope for the future, completely marginalising the previous and menacing "15 billion by 2100" forecasts.

"Did the 500 thousand Somalis that died after the collapse of the Somali state deserve to die?" That had nothing to do with the death of the old republic. the breakup of the soviet union was peaceful so no excuses. "how the hell are they going to progress into the future?" They simply will be were they are now, maybe a little worse. your optimism is lovely but is unrealistic. "Not a single Somali in Somalia would agree with you" This is the only real difference between us. I believe you have got this wrong. It takes two to tango. And you can't blame brainwashing because there isn't any. They may say they want peace but their actions prove where their real loyalty lies. Just like Sport is a religion to westerners, Clan is a religion for Somalis. You are trying to find rationality where there is only irrationally. Clannism is an emotional attachment and people defend the indefensible when their emotions are involved, like American patriotism. That is why a Somali mufti may turn clannish when his clan is involved regardless of all the knowledge he has. Even though I hate to say it, Clan is everything to Somalis as most Somalis have an emotional attachment to it. "Its madness.........no...this is..........Somalia!" You intuitively know what I was saying above. "The reason why a Somali national identity never solidified despite all the ingredients being there is solely the result of defeat." I agree with you 100%. Now tell how that will ever be reversed on the required scale without a ruthless and progressive dictator like Stalin, forgetting his faults. It will take miraculous political management to get Somalis over the traumatized national psyche.

"Why they did disintergrate themselves, which in turn degraded their 'clans' level of development and brought severe humiliation to their doorstep?" "Indeed 19th century Germany had to bring together hundreds of German states into a union, which in comparison to Somalia is like comparing a Nintendo Wii with an 8-bit Nintendo in terms of sheer complexity." "Tell that to the derelict Japanese clans, or the vanguished Scottish clans. The time of the Somali clan system will come, one way or another. How long can people tolerate being at the bottom of the barrel?" Chimera you are forgetting the most important fact. That the rise of clannism is because of the failure of the post 1969 government. Government in tribal societies like Somalia, Libya and Saudi Arabia use clannism when the going gets tough. after the 1977 debacle the government used divide and rule tactics on different clans. If the Somalia government acted with no discrimination and was an equal opportunities employer between 1960 and now, clannism would be dead. But if the government is supporting certain clans, then I as a unbiased person will be forced to rely on my clan for support to remedy my injustice due solely to the government injustice. As a matter of fact show me a Somali government that can act justly and fairly for 30 years and I will guarantee the dead of clannish ideology. What you don't realize about past Scottish, German and Japanese states is that they never discriminated against people based on blood and they had a concept of citizenship, meaning that anyone that lived in their state was an equal citizen and they discriminated between individuals on how much they have done for the state. The old Somali state reminds me of the Spanish Umayyid caliphate in its dying decades. even though the most loyal subjects to the caliphate was the Spanish converts who were 80% of the caliphate population, the caliph relied on Arab and Berber tribes for political and military support and discriminated against the majority of his subjects. Make me think they deserved what happened to them. Make me think that the old Somali republic deserved to die. You are whitewashing their bad example and not realizing Somalis have incredible long memories about any injustice done to them. The issue isn't ideological, it is practical and you have no answer how injustice will be remedied. Somali will only trust a strong central state if it is unbiased for decades and it has the strength to deliver equal justice for all clans and doesn't commit injustice on certain clans. That doesn't mean the government doesn't commit injustice, it just means it does it in an unbiased manner. "How long can people tolerate being at the bottom of the barrel?" indefinitely, perhaps forever. People will not tolerate injustice, especially Somalis, they would rather have a failed state than have a certain clan enjoying the benefits of the state at their expense. We are not Ethiopians. If you don't believe this then you don't know Somalis, me included.

oba hiloowlow "Look at this fool I do see them as Somalis, Somali by nationality but the are not ethnic Somalis and that doesn't mean they dont have the same rights" Are you an ethnic somali? It was rumoured that Block came to Somalia 500 years ago, so it is up to you to prove when you came and if that makes you an ethnic somali? As a puntlander my ancestor came 1000 years ago, does that make me an ethnic somali? I remember the joke in the 90's that Block used to say, That Block aren't real Somalis and we should drive them back to Arabia. This is not an attack on anyone. My guestion is if I came 1000 thousand years ago I am enthnic Somali but if I came say 200 years ago I am not ethnic somali? Then what number of years must my ancestars came to Somalia to make me an ethnic Somalia? 200 or 300 or 500 or 1000 or 5000 years. This clearly shows the absurdity of your position and you have the balls to call someone a "fool". I can call you everyname in the book but I can't afford the sin. As for my position on Minoraties, Jacpher said it best Jacpher "Now I m no longer considered ethnic Somali? WTH man. This small minority group you are trying to demonize have built the country, held their head high, served their community and have not taken part of the ugly civil war. Don't demonize my good hard working people. I have not seen more patriotic Somalis."

"How about a referendum on independence village by village for every district in Somaliland." I have no problem with Somaliland independence even though I am from puntland. But the issue is will Somaliland give up all claims to ssc lands including the current supporters of somaliland. I await your answer Xaaji. Because if ssc lands is split then borders tensions between Somalia and Somaliland will exist indefinitely as somalis are very tribal and your current supporters could defect to Somalia and this is not how national borders are treated internationally, like a political game.

Overpopulation is a Myth.This is for those who argue we have a population problem. This refutes your pointless ideology. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=OiVrYLQXsUk I am all for family planning and can't see myself having more than two kids if any. But people have a right to reproduce and none of the problems will be fixed by having less people. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. There is no difference if i have 5 starving kids or 2 starving kids. 5 is actually better as more will survive. Less children isn't going to stop the drought from happening, fix bad governance or increase the resilience of the community to natural disasters. It is natural to think that maybe that starving children shouldn't be born because his life will be ****ed due to no fault of his own but God and reasonable people will blame those who truly are at fault and that dead child will be on their hands. Even the parent maybe to blame for lack of planning for regular disasters if they have the means.

I always hated positive thinking for its own sake and how it has overtaken the West. Everyone is not going to be alright and people need to embrace realism which these days can be seen as doom and gloom in the mainstream media.

This is for those who argue we have a population problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OiVrYLQXsUk This refutes your pointless ideology.

Corrupt Indian Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion in Food from Starving Poor In a telling story highlighting the true face of political corruption, corrupt Indian politicians have successfully stolen more than $14.5 billion worth of food from starving poverty-stricken citizens. Looting over 57,000 tons of food intended for the starving poor, the unpunished corrupt lawmakers and politicians are warehousing the mass amount of food supplies in a government-owned storage facility that spans more than five football fields in length. The blatant corruption has been confirmed in a recent report by mainstream media outlet Bloomberg, which reports that many of the starving 350 million families whose food has been stripped away by the government are currently ‘surviving’ on less than 50 cents per day. The nefarious government hooligans robbed away the region’s five-decade-old public food distribution system which served as virtually the only way in which the struggling families could survive. Law still requires that the 57,000 tons of staple foods are to be distributed among the families, yet nothing has been done by fearful politicians and police. Due to rampant corruption and a serious lack of action, countless members of the nation’s government bodies are quiet on this matter and many others. Some, however, have decided to speak out. Naresh Saxena is one such Supreme Court commissioner who has decided that she will not live in fear of corruption. Speaking out against the recent ransacking, she stated: This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society… What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it. With the state police force groveling to corrupt lawmakers who care only for financial gain and corporate interest and a painfully-stunted court system that has made zero convictions over seven years of ongoing political turmoil, the starving families are helpless. Around 900 million Indians currently eat less than the bare recommended minimum as issued by the government, and half of all the nation’s children are completely malnourished. It is easy to see how these statistics will be changing for the worst in the very near future, with a grand total of over $14.5 billion worth of food intended for the public now sitting idle in a government warehouse. This is the face of political corruption. Allowing ‘officials’ to absolutely pillage citizens with an utter lack of regard for even the welfare of children is the utmost form of slavery. What’s even more interesting is that these starving Indian families have not yet raided the government stockpile warehouse, where the over-abundant amount of food sits to rot as they starve and die in the streets. Truly, such a degree of forcible government control is highly destructive and the very thing that activists continue to resist on a daily basis.

"Kismaayo is still fully under shabaab. " who exactly is in control of kismaayo?

Garnaqsi "My position is many Muslims do routinely reinterpret the Koran to fit the scientific miracles bill, but that doesn't mean every verse used in such vain has been. How you think a counterexample is sufficient to counter this is beyond me. As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong here, the definition of a scientific miracle is something that was not known at the time and was revealed in the Koran only to later be confirmed by science. This particular explanation existed and that renders the claim of it being a scientific miracle moot. I have no burden to explain how he might have known about it -- nor does the validity of anything that I've asserted depend on the providence of such an explanation -- and your implication that he couldn't have is a circumstantial excuse." "the definition of a scientific miracle is something that was not known at the time and was revealed in the Koran only to later be confirmed by science." Many verses of the Quran are said to be scientific facts and my question is which one are recent discoveries? That couldn't have been known at that time period? And which one could possible have been know at that time? This is for intelligent debate and not pointless Pickering!

Garnaqsi. You seem to think that Ibn Kathir interpertation is the holy word. He is just a scholar who lived in a time when the real meaning of those verses escaped him. it is like expecting a child to understand calculus. It doesn't make the calculus invalid because the child comprehension is limited. translation/commentary are limited by that person intellect and that is why we have a difference of opinion among scholars. The Fact is that those verses match scientific facts and the amazing thing is that they were recorded before those discoveries. Now the real question is how an illiterate Arab make all those statements that were beyond his knowledge and all knowledge at that time but are discovered recently? you seem to think that they being discovered recently is a weakness but it is a proof for those living now and a proof that scholars interpretations can be wrong at times.

This is an important sign for you western Somalis including me. The world is revisiting the 1930s in financial, economic, social and political terms. The far right is on the rise in Europe and Europe isn't your country. Tomorrow the non-natives of Europe will get deported or worse when the situation gets really bad in the West. These refugees are only the start and tomorrow it could be you. So keep in mind that you may get sent back to Somalia that hellhole that is your homeland.

By 2002, five years after the World Food Summit, the FAO reported that it was not possible to meet the objective of halving the numbers of the world hungry and eliminate its more extreme manifestations in starvations and famines by 2015. In 2002, basic food prices had fallen to two-thirds the level at which they were five years earlier. That was a time when food was cheap. In 2002, declining basic food production per capita and a higher frequency of production shortfalls in poorer food-importing countries represented the hollow reasons as to why the human-right to food was not going to be met. Accompanying the quantitative trend, rising basic food imports per capita added to an already asphyxiating Least Developing Countries debt burden. Responding to this, the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO contemplated setting up a financial institution that would lend to poorer countries at concessional interest rates so that they could offset hunger or, its extreme manifestation in famine, with adequate food imports. Whilst the subsidised agriculture of the more developed economies was being protected from the intrusion of cheaper food from the South by a so-called WTO peace clause (see note below), the alleged ‘magic’ of the market in the poorer economies, whose peasantry was being dislocated by a combination of cheap subsidised food from the North, neoliberal policies and unsightly forms of primitive accumulation, was supposed to optimally deploy the newly freed labour from the farms into more productive activities springing from freer trade and capital accounts. Neither did the concessional lending bank materialise nor the ‘magic’ of the market deliver the goods. Donors were willing to pitch only four billion dollars into the concessional fund, when a minimum of sixteen billion was required, and the assumptions of textbook economics used to embellish the ‘magic’ of the market stood the test of formal reasoning but not that of historical facts. Today, food remains abundant but the price of basic foods, which were driven up by speculation, is more than twice what it used to be in 2002. The hunger problem is, at least, two times bigger as well. Notwithstanding that the imperfections are the real and the market is a concocted ideal, the explanations for the persistence of hunger remain centred around the misallocation of food resources by imperfect markets. But the very concept of ‘misallocation’ sheds a semblance of haphazardness and innocence on the matter. The persistence of policy emitting hunger and famine, however, is anything but that. It is a purposeful and recurring activity, which, in an increasingly interdependent and integrated world, drags down the political standing of labour everywhere, strips peoples of their will and of their resources, and contributes to engaging coercively non-monetised or forcibly cheapened assets in the formation of value necessary for maintaining profit rates. In the organic like totality, which is capital, these are not simply the pitifully small agro-business profit rates, but the global profit rates. This is the social process by which the booty of empire interlocks with the wealth of the modern Western formations to uphold the riches of global elites. When stripped bare from falsehood, prices and the sums of profits they amount to, are brokered by a structure of power from which the poorest peoples of the world have been discarded. A hungry, dispossessed and disempowered working population cannot negotiate the condition of its survival. Food security for working people in the poorest countries has to be denied so that their national security and sovereignty are later laid open for imperial plunder. The terms of power, which underlay the terms of trade and the grabbing of resources for maintaining the rate of global accumulation are reproduced by all forms of belligerence and aggression, including, wars and the policies of starvation. Notwithstanding the enforced public-to-private transfers under neo-liberalism, wars inflicted upon the poorer countries act as the ultimate instrument of encroachment by which resources and labour are forcibly engaged in the formation of value under capitalist accumulation. Global food allocation policy, which deliberately generates hunger and famine, acts as an additional instrument of imperial control. Seen from a perspective that makes the social category an antecedent to the formation of economic phenomenon, by making the poorer countries more food and nationally insecure, immensely more profits are accrued by the amalgam of capital than the pittance spent on subsidies to northern farmers or the small share of profits that goes to agribusiness. That is exactly why despite the fact that the share of agricultural trade is so small relative to global trade, the issue of agriculture always represented the biggest hurdle to WTO negotiations. By tearing apart old ways of maintaining a living, inflating the ranks of the unemployed and driving people into abjection, the global trading system bolsters, partly by the demonstration effect and, equally, by the images of starving children in the third world, the ideology of racist-laced nationalisms, which remain to date necessary corollaries of capitalist dynamics. Famines and hunger are necessary ideological tools for capital and an advertisement for imperialism. There are also additional security-related reasons as to why the hunger and famine policy gets repeatedly actualised. When all the diplomatic, political and financial means of suppression fail, an embargo on a developing nation can prove as lethal as a nuclear weapon playing out in slow motion. Iraq was a case in point. The sanctions regime amounted to a weapon that has hewn an immense number of lives over a decade and prepared the ground for all out re-colonisation of the oil rich country. The counterrevolutionary forces in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world invoked the possibility of food shortages to deter people from participating in the demonstrations. The kernel of the hunger and famine debacle lies not in the quantitative scenarios, but in the way third world resources, which are engaged in the formation of value, are cheapened to maintain the profit rate. Famines reduce the foremost commodity that lies behind the formation of value and profits, which is labour power or, the ability to labour, to something dispensable, and with it of course, human life. Thus, whilst some on the left argue that the differences in wages across the globe are related to degrees of productivity or relative surplus value, they forget that there is a criminally wasted human life in what is being produced. The formation of value is an integrated historical process, in which, all moments participate in the realisation of the commodity, and not a statistical exercise accounting for distorted power-brokered prices. The politics of hunger, famines, and imperialist aggression come to mediate the growing rift between private gain and the redistribution of value to a complex global production structure, which, in the age of financialisation, draws its signal from a fetish incarnate in the price system. The more acute the contradictions, the more developing nations would have to be stripped of their food and national securities before they get deprived of their will and national resources. Commissioning the Bank, the Fund and their subordinate international organisations, which are governed principally by the US and its cohort, with eliminating hunger and famine is an inapposite measure. Hunger and famines are situated on the encroachment side of the accumulation process, as distinct from expansion by commodity realisation in the market and, therefore, improving conditions through a reform process is not at all a possibility. In an increasingly interdependent globe, hunger, famine and the shows of misery associated therewith raise profits and drag down the power of labour everywhere. The scene of famine is so poignant as an ideological tool, that it contributes to lowering the starting point for negotiation between capital and labour across the globe. However, in as much as the scenes of the hungry invoke empathy, in the absence of an alternative internationalist cum humanist ideological hold on working peoples’ consciousness, they also provoke insecurity and many revert to narrower versions of nationalisms, further differentiating themselves from others. In a state of humanist defeatism or the estrangement of people from their own humanity and the scaremongering associated with alleged food scarcity, the initial state of solidarity with the skeletally starved transmutes into its opposite, deepening the divisions between working people along national and other lines and depressing the global wage by one degree or another. It is this subtle ideological aspect of the hunger and famine issue which reinforces the ideology of capital, and which paves the ground for the continuation of what only appears on the surface to be an irrational food allocation policy but which is, at a more profound level, a calculus of mass crime. Like the reproduction of social conditions under capital to which hunger contributes, hungers and famines also buttress the ideology of capital, which has to be continuously reproduced and is never separate from the way expropriation occurs on a global scale. That is all the more reason why, despite the abundance of food, under no circumstances shall the relief of famine amount to more than a charity fanfare by the rich classes for the rich classes. The TV look of self-righteousness, ‘politically-correct’ compassion and aid lullabies serve capital more than they relieve the poor. The degree to which immiserisation will proceed and be manifest will be commensurate to the real and ideological crisis of capital and, by conjunction, to how close we are to the next famine or imperialist war.

Peacenow has got a point. Arab culture now in not islamic and that in truth malaysia and indonesia are more islamic when everthing is taken into account. Arab as well as Somalis need to throw away their culture, tribalism and racism and remember the prophet farewell speech. They need to make the changes that happened in arab society then. Arabs are regressing to jahiliyya and so are we. I wouldn't be suprised if a lot of Arabs and Somalis became pagans.