http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/nick-crews-email-disappointed-dad_n_2198135.html

Dear All Three With last evening's crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch. It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth. We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own children and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don't ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children. Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents. So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven — none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice. In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn't for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents. I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children's underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don't want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes - it's not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace - far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won't do it by simply whingeing and saying you don't like it. You'll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn't possible, or you simply can't be bothered, then I rest my case. I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed. Dad

Ten more arrested over KDF murder Wednesday, November 28, 2012 By Cyrus Ombati Ten more suspects have been arrested in connection with the killing of three Kenya Defense Forces soldiers in Garissa in a police operation. The ten have also been linked to the killing of six other police officers who have been killed in ambushes in Garissa Town in the past three months. They were arrested in the on-going police hunt for terror suspects in the region. Police have been combing the town in search for suspects who have been linked to a series of attacks in Garissa and its environs. Officials holding the suspects say some have confessed they are part of a larger network that had been sent from Somalia by the Al-Shabaab militants to “deal” with security agents over the military operations in their country. “They are part of a larger gang of foreigners who have been behind these attacks,” said an officer aware of the case. Another official said the suspects were named by an accomplice arrested on Saturday over the killing of the three soldiers on November 19. Ibrahim Jelle Belle was charged in court however not required to plead to the murder charges as the prosecution pleaded for more time to conclude investigations. Belle was arraigned before Principal Magistrate John Onyiego who remanded him at the Garissa police station. The prosecution said they were likely to also charge him with the murder of the three police officers killed prior to the murder of the murder of the soldiers. While applying for more time, the prosecution told the court that two soldiers who survived the shootings had positively identified the suspect as part of the gunmen who attacked them. The suspect who is a Somali national was arrested on Saturday in Hulugho area near the Somalia-Kenya border as he tried to flee, police said. But Belle said he was Kenyan from Ijara District and had never committed any crime against any government officer. He told the Magistrate that he read politics and demanded that two chiefs and a police sergeant in Hulugho where he was arrested be available during his prosecution. The case will be mentioned on December 9th at the Garissa High court. Other sources said the suspect is among many Somalis who illegally obtained Kenyan documents and that a major investigation into the incident and others has been launched. The killing of the soldiers prompted a police operation and sparked protests and riots in the town leaving property being destroyed. A parliamentary group is investigating the incident and reaction to the same. KDF has denied claims they harassed residents of Garissa and burnt property while hunting down assailants who had killed the soldiers.

Chimera..I think we are talking about their different things. A person should pursue his aspirations including marriage to whoever but to say community loyalty is meaningless is a bit over of the top.

^Charcoal traders like traders in Somalia will cut a deal with who ever is controlling the area. The more durable assets in Kismayo are the ports and that's ultimate goal of the warlords like Madoobe and Hiiraale, but it's fair the charcoal trade has an impact on the way the conflict unfolds. Zack iyo rag kale xamaasad qabiil baa qaade. They use to condemn the likes of Duke for the very thing they are doing today.

^You could love whoever, just your bit about community seems dramatic.

^Avoid using the words like never!

^ A bit dramatic ain't?

Apophis;893957 wrote: LOL@ "hunted", yeah good luck but J-landers are tired of people from other regions exploiting them under the banner of Islam. Let Godane pacify his lands and leave others to theirs. To quote to someone on this thread, Godane is Somali as you.Dhulka ma higdhid sxb. Apo, you are no different than those who yesterday were laughing at us for saying Ethiopia will be defeated. Some people learned the hard way. The sad thing here is 'Somali-Kenyans' who you so dearly care about will pay the price for every Kenyan soldier killed in Juba .

Apophis;893951 wrote: They have the blessing of the Jubbaland peoples and they shall stay there as long as they are needed and they're not "my" forces. I'm as Somali as you.Dhulka ma igaa higdhid sxb. They are not there with anyone's blessings except for door-kn0bs that are with them. In any case, they can stay as long they want but they will be hunted.

Apo...It;s really very simple-get your forces out of Somalia or they will get the same treatment Tigray boys did.

^We need to establish one fact-it's Kenyan that's on Somali soil. Any attacks on them they had it coming much like Ethios did.

Apophis;893925 wrote: If tutu was to relocate today to the land of eternal peace aka Somalia he's guaranteed one thing; to be ostracised and treated as a second class citizen. It's thanks to him millions of Somalis were saved from certain death at the hands of their kin so easy with the BS Haatu and Che. Let the man live in peace/turmoil in his own house and concentrate on your own Do you realize we have no control over anything...loool And Haatu is smart man:-) It will be interesting to see how things unfolds as attacks are picking in Kismayo.

It's easier to cut trees.

Haatu....To be realistic, your best option is Kenya now but otherwise, you are no Kenyan.

Haatu.......The inescapable fact is the sad reality that manifests itself in times of tensions or conflict when Somalis in the NFD are automatically relegated to third class citizens and their loyalties questioned. It is not only the Kenyan Government sees them as foreigners but also the entire Kenyan society

Naxar and Jacpher....It is charcoal business and economic aspect that many who were wailing against the President wanted to ignore. At the end of the day, many of so called leaders are only interested in gaining access to resources and monopolizing it. These leaders usually mobilize their tribes to achieve their goals. So one wonders, if the Juba project is genuine aspirations of the locals or a plot for few men to rob the region blind while turning locals against each other and against the central government.

There's this beautiful young Somali mother married to Moroccan. She's the only Somali I see that speaks to her kids in Somali, funny seeing Indian looking toddlers calling out Hooyo. On different note, have ever seen a ugly Somali person dating non-Somali, and you think to yourself, eh we don;t mind losing him/her, horrible thing to say,I know. Let keep the beautiful ones...lool p.s. Since Somalis have so many nationalities now, you could technically be married to foreigner since many countries require you denouncing your nationality. pss. I understand nationality and ethnicity is not the same:-) lool@Juxa, be kind to Faraxs haye.

Naxar Nugaaleed;893638 wrote: So is Puntland a state or a coalition if city states It depends on the day of the week and the weather.

Is there actual benefit to being part of these regions?

Time

By Tristan McConnell / KismayoNov. 27, 2012 STUART PRICE / AFP / GETTY IMAGES Somali youths pull donkey-drawn water carts past sacks of charcoal by the roadside as a convoy of the African Union Mission in Somalia soldiers of the Kenyan Contingent makes its way through the city of Kismayo, Oct. 2, 2012. On a Monday afternoon in October, in a warehouse in the southern Somali port of Kismayo, I attended a meeting on the future of Somalia. On one side: 20 Somali traders sitting on grass mats and wearing sandals, sarong-like wraps, short-sleeved shirts and embroidered scarves. On the other, in plastic chairs: officers from the Kenyan and Somali armies and the allied Ras Kamboni militia who, fighting under the banner of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), ousted the al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabab from southern Somalia’s biggest city a few weeks earlier. AMISOM’s offensive against al-Shabab, kicking them out of the capital Mogadishu in August last year, then capturing Kismayo, were a body-blow to the Islamists and represent the best chance for peace in Somalia since the collapse of the last central government in 1991. But in Kismayo, as I discovered, as the only Western journalist to enter the city, the joy of victory had quickly soured. At stake at the October meeting, I was told, was nothing less than peace in southern Somalia, and possibly the whole country. And the key? A giant pile of burnt, dead wood. Great progress has been made in Somalia over the last 15 months. Al-Shabab has suffered a series of military setbacks, a new president has been chosen, a slim-line government has been formed, famine has abated and Mogadishu is enjoying a newfound optimism after decades of destruction. The turnaround seems dramatic and it is, given 21 years of war and famine. But the truth is that while those tragedies gave the world an impression of a failed state without hope, the enduring reality of daily life during the fighting for many Somalis – and at the heart of many of Somalia’s conflicts – was always business. Camel trading, mango growing, mobile telecoms and, of course, arms dealing all thrived in the war years. And few businesses were as big or profitable, or as tough, as charcoal. The charcoal business grew exponentially under al-Shabab. While the group did not itself invest directly in charcoal, it levied taxes at every stage of the process, from production to export. U.N. investigators reckoned the group earned $25 million from the trade last year. So in February the U.N. banned charcoal exports in a bid to cut off funding for al-Shabab. Since then, charcoal has been piling up. There are now more than four million sacks of the stuff at Kismayo’s southern entrance, stacked in immense house-sized blocks of dirty burlap bags lining the soot-covered road. Its value is estimated at up to $40 million. A boon to a post-conflict economy, perhaps? Anywhere but Somalia. Matt Bryden, director of the Nairobi-based think tank Sahan and a former head of the U.N. Monitoring Group, which analyzed the charcoal trade, said a handful of traders controlled the trade and all of them had links – commercial, if not necessarily ideological – to al-Shabab. “There’s no question that this is an al-Shabab linked industry and those relationships don’t evaporate overnight,” he said. One Western diplomat with close knowledge of the situation told me that any sale of charcoal, even the relatively small amounts already known to be leaving Kismayo, means “the financial circuit has not been interrupted. The major financing for al-Shabab continues.” All of which might make a resumption of the trade sound like a bad idea. But the businessmen, and some of al-Shabab’s enemies – all of them well-armed – disagree. The city was captured partly with the aid of Ras Kamboni, an ethnic ******i clan militia run by Sheikh Ahmed Madobe. Madobe is a tall, bearded warlord who has himself undergone a remarkable rebirth. Five years ago he was an Islamist commander targeted by American missiles. Today he is a crucial ally in the war on al-Qaeda in Somalia. He wants the charcoal trade re-started. “The economy of this city is 90% charcoal,” Madobe told me. “Businessmen have invested a lot of their money and the U.N. embargo is blocking it. The stockpile cannot be returned to the trees. It should be sold.” The dispute could have ramifications for attempts to install Somalia’s first central government in generation. Negotiations to determine the make-up of a post-Shabab southern administration, underway for a year without resolution, are now on hold, pending resolution of the charcoal dispute. As for attempts by the national government to establish its rule, earlier this month Madobe refused to meet a presidential delegation sent to Kismayo, issuing a scarcely veiled threat that he could not guarantee their safety if they entered the city. Says Bryden: “[This is] about power and resource sharing in the Jubas [the collective name for Somalia’s three southern regions]. People are looking at that big stack of charcoal and they want the profit.” Some discern a nefarious international hand at work as well. Control of Kismayo means control of southern Somalia’s economy – and well-established, lucrative smuggling routes into Kenya, taking charcoal out and sugar in. With elections due in Kenya early next year, some suspect Kenyan politicians and military leaders of re-opening the trafficking routes to feed their political slush funds. During my time in Kismayo, a trip to the port revealed Kenyan and Ras Kamboni soldiers overseeing the unloading of cement from a cargo ship and, from the fat bellies of two wooden dhows, timber, pasta, cooking oil and sugar. The dispute over Kismayo’s mountain of charcoal may endure for a while yet. But in the end, as it [did through two decades of war, there seems little doubt that one way or another Somali business will triumph

" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

More importantly, can we trust the admin or the process be transparent. His neutrality is in question.

Could one buy or sell votes lool