Hargeisa, 8 February 2009 (Somalilandpress) - Three Somaliland ministers from the Rayale cabinet were recognised and awarded on Saturday night by Somaliland Award Community organisation. Civil Aviation Minister Mr Ali Mohamed (“Waran Adde”), Education Minister Mr Hassan Haji Mohamoud and Finance Minister Mr Hussein Ali Duale were recognised for their exceptional achievements for last year. Somaliland Award Community which was set up by Somaliland diasporas based in the United Kingdom aims to promote good governance, acknowledge exceptional leaders in the country from all works of life including business and from the mainstream society as well as politicians. This Award presents an opportunity for public recognition of politicians accomplishments and leadership and serves to create capacity building awareness as well as promoting good public financial management (PFM) and accountability. The function was held Saturday night at Ambassador hotel in Hargeisa was attended by various Ministers, Parliamentarians, civil servants, students, community leaders, Somaliland diaspora community, and other honorable guests. Somaliland Finance Minister - Awil The award was presented by the Chairman of of Somaliland Award Community, Mr Mohammad Abdullahi. Mr Abdullahi said his organisation was focused on promoting good leadership and to acknowledge those that show commitment and dedication. Mr Abdullahi added that he was confident that they made the right decision and that it was not a decision made on the spot but took them long time to recognise the three ministers for their achievements. The Somaliland Finance Minister - Mr Duale thanked the chairman of Somaliland Award Community for their acklowgement and said that this was not an individual triumphant but a national victory. Mr Duale vowed to continue to serve the public with dignity, honesty and with dedication. Finally Mr Abdullahi - the chairman of Somaliland Award Community, thanked the three ministers for their work, the guests and pledged to continue their work.

Where Bradbury's Becoming Somaliland concentrates on the former British colony, now an independent though unrecognised state, Lewis, who has been researching Somali history and culture for five decades, looks at the bigger picture of the failure of the state of Somalia and the pathetic international strategy to try and put things right - a cycle of offering formal international recognition to a series of pseudo-governments with little actual authority and no legitimacy which goes as far back as 1990. Lewis' book was published late last year, just before the latest round in this expensive project of wishful thinking, but there is no reason to suppose that things will be much different this time. Meanwhile the most democratic regime in the region continues to function moderately well, if without international recognition. Lewis also pays some attention to the wider regional context, particularly (of course) the ****** conflict in Ethiopia - the ****** are a Somali clan, and advocates of a Greater Somalia still hope to annex them along with northern Kenya and Djibouti (and I wish Lewis had also written a bit more about those two). And there is the question of geopolitics as well: the British administration of all the Somali areas bar Djibouti during and after the second world war; the Soviet support of the "scientific socialism" of Siad Barre's regime, which ended after the Ethiopian revolution brought Addis into the Communist camp; the American bombardment of the country in support of Ethiopia's invasion two years ago in the cause of fighting Islamism (and of course the US and EU are now celebrating the election as president of the same guy they chased out of Mogadishu then). Lewis doen't mention the curious fact that Berbera, Somaliland's main port, has the longest airport runway in Africa at over 4 km - originally built by the Soviets as part of the scientific socialism project, then improved by the Americans as a potential emergency landing strip for the Space Shuttle. Just thought you ought to know. HERE

Looks like it is coming back again ,, but not to the same person this time ,,,

Waar kuwan hadii Malaa'ig loo soo dirana way weerarayaan ,,,,,,,,, are they really humans horta ??

I think it is Carab and nonsense ........

Anaga weli nama soo gaadhin ,,,,

Coz they are here ........

Ehem ,,, sabti wanaagsan

Addis Ababa - A US Embassy spokesperson says an American diplomat has been found dead in his home in the Ethiopian capital. Michael McClellan says the diplomat's body was found over the weekend. McClellan says the death is being investigated by the Ethiopian federal police. Police spokesperson Demsash Hailu says the diplomat's death could be homicide but that an investigation has not been concluded yet. George Washington University's student newspaper has identified the diplomat as Brian Adkins, 26. The paper says he's an alumnus of the university's Elliot School of International Affairs. - AP

Rockford has a major drug problem, but police arrest a man for something most of us have never heard On Monday, Ahmed Hussen Hassan of Chicago, 32, was arrested after he took possession of a package mailed from overseas to a hilton hotel in the area of East State Street and Interstate 90. Police claim the package contained more than 15 pounds of khat, a shrub that grows in the Horn of Africa. "The package was intercepted in Philadelphia," says John Biffany, commander of the State Line Area Narcotics Team. "It had originated in China, went to Switzerland, Germany and then to Philadelphia." Biffany says khat is hard to find in Rockford. "We have had cases in the past, but it is not as prevalent as it is in communities with large Somali or Yemeni or Ethiopian cultures," he says. "It's popular in Chicago, where there's that community, it's popular in Minneapolis, where I believe there are 60,000 Somalis. Scott Nelson, a drug expert at Rosecrance Treatment Center, says khat can be extremely addictive. "It produces euphoria," he says. "And the effects are also somewhat similar to let's say crack cocaine or methamphetamine, but not as strong." Nelson says when it's fresh, khat looks like basil. "Sometimes it's brewed as a tea, sometimes it's chewed like tobacco. It can be smoked, and it can also for instance be sprinkled on food," Nelson says. On Tuesday afternoon Hassan was in the Winnebago County jail, with bail set at $500,000.

obama restuarant will be serving soul fooood. Black eyed peas, southern fried chicken,collar greens,homemade dumplings, and hargeisa fav camel burger, pasta, rice and many other goodies. come and taste the obama grab

I will explain to him markuu yimaado Insha Allah ,, I'm sure he will join the party ,,, lol

Authorities in Somaliland said 81 Yemenis were fined and deported to their home country for fishing illegally in the southern port town of Berbera, officials said Friday. The fishermen, captured by the local coastal guards last week with six fishing boats, were found guilty of illegal fishing by a regional court in the eastern Saahil Province, Abdalla Mohamed Ali, Mayor of Berbera, the provincial capital of Saahil, told Xinhua by phone from the coastal town. Ali said the court fined the men but he did not elaborate the amount, adding that the fishermen were deported to their home country of Yemen in accordance with the court's ruling. The mayor said Somaliland coastal guards apprehend the six illegal fishing boats and their crews of 81 fishermen who were "involved in illegal fishing within the territorial waters of Somaliland, around Berbera town". Colonel Osman Jabril Hagar, Commander of the Somaliland Coastal Guards, said his forces doubled their efforts to combat illegal fishing in Somaliland waters and to fight piracy that has plagued the Gulf of Aden to the north of Somalia. A number of other foreign illegal fishing boats, mostly from Yemen, were previously apprehend by Somaliland coastal guards and were deported after being found guilty. Somaliland, which unilaterally declared its independence from rest of Somalia after the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, has not received international recognition. However, the region enjoys relative stability, has its own government, flag, police and military forces and currency.

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The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette. The other day a friend of mine confided that in the weeks leading up to the election, the Obamas’ apparent joy as a couple had made her just miserable. Their marriage looked so much happier than hers. Their life seemed so perfect. “I was at a place where I was tempted daily to throttle my husband,” she said. “This coincided with Michelle saying the most beautiful things about Barack. Each time I heard her speak about him I got tears in my eyes — because I felt so far away from that kind of bliss in my own life and perhaps even more, because I was so moved by her expressions of devotion to him. And unlike previous presidential couples, they are our age, have children the same age and (just imagine the stress of daily life on the campaign) by all accounts should have been fighting even more than we were.” As we all know, in journalism, two anecdotes are just one short of a national trend. I figured that my friend and I couldn’t possibly be the only ones dreaming, brooding or otherwise obsessing about the Obamas. Were other people, I wondered, being possessed by our new first family? I launched an e-mail inquiry. And learned that they were. Often, in strikingly similar ways. Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me. There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.” Most dreams, however, were, like mine, more prosaic. There was a dream, sent from Minneapolis, about buying Barack the perfect sandwich, and a dream from Westport, Conn., about inviting Michelle and the girls over for lunch and a play date: “I told her I’d make tuna fish sandwiches and cupcakes, and told her that she didn’t need to worry about the kids, no need to hire a sitter or extra secret service, that I had a nice basement/playroom for them. I explained how hard it was to move to a new home, and to take her time if she needed to unpack or run to Costco or something. She asked me about other supermarkets, and I told her that Stop & Shop had a sale on tuna fish and paper towels.” And one woman in Wisconsin had frequent daydreams about having the Obamas over for a glass of wine. One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night, she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed. It helped me relax.” I understood perfectly where these cozy dreams of easy familiarity came from. It was that sense so many people share of having a very immediate connection to Barack Obama, whether they’re black or biracial, or children of single parents or self-made strivers; or they’re lawyers or community organizers or Ivy League graduates or smokers or basketball players or Blackberry users or parents or married or Democrats. A lot of people share the fantasy that having the Obamas over for “dinner and a game of Scrabble,” as one daydreamer put it to me, is something that really could just about happen. “This is the first president I’ve known who looks, talks and acts like a peer,” is how one Washington man explained it to me. “Notwithstanding his somewhat exotic life story, I feel like I understand what he’s like and where he’s coming from. And despite his incredible achievements, he still seems like a lot of people I know. If you stopped the clock in 2004, in fact, or maybe a couple of years earlier, he’d feel roughly like a peer in terms of accomplishments, too. Of course I know nobody with his political gifts, speaking skills and confidence, and he’s also a gifted writer and thinker. But I feel like one or two different turns for Obama or me and he could have been someone my friends and I wouldn’t think it extraordinary to have in our circle.” Sometimes this sense of close identification turns a bit dark. There’s a subcategory of people who feel that they really should have true intimacy with the Obamas. Because they went to school with them. Because they used to dream like them. Because, with one or two “different turns,” they maybe could have been them. These are not the people made most happy by thinking about the Obamas. “They do seem to have it all together — a great marriage, beautiful children, a modern day Norman Rockwell family,” said a divorced Harvard grad with children in a top D.C. private school. “Why them, not me?” These are people for whom the Obamas are not just a beacon of hope, inspiration and “demigodlikeness,” as a New York lawyer put it, but also a kind of mirror. And the refracted image of self they see is not one they much admire. “I keep thinking about how I squandered my education and youth,” the New York lawyer wrote to me. “I went off to college from high school being completely community-minded, doing a lot of volunteer work for the homeless and for hunger and tutoring poor kids. Then I got to college and forgot my ideals. Barack was my year at Columbia. Why wasn’t I hanging out with him and being serious and following my ideals instead of hanging out in clubs? Same with law school. I partied my way through instead of taking advantage of all that I could have. Both Obamas were there when I was. I feel like if I’d been a better person I would have gotten to know them.” A Washington lawyer expressed similar sentiments: “I feel like I know Barack, that I have worked grassroots and have created change in the way that he has. I [also] have feelings of a mom who had possibility but ended up running school auctions and mediating family business matters rather than having the opportunity to be out there on a national level creating change. So when I watch Barack I feel like: I can do that … and what am I doing with my life? Even though he is way smarter and more articulate than me.” Another Washington woman, a global health care consultant, expressed her sense of Obama-inadequacy in a dream: “I dreamed I was an Obama girl. I had a chance to be in the same room with him for the first time. There were dark velvet chairs and he was standing there with all this dark and mist around him. His lips so purple and sensuous as if to be otherworldly,” she wrote to me. “I moved gently toward him and then I said the wrong thing. Obama tamped it down like some vapor that didn’t register. He wasn’t even flattered.” (“Like a lot of folks, I have anxiety about being outside of the Obama administration universe right now,” she then explained to me. “Even though I was at the ‘it’ ball of inauguration balls, I still felt like other balls were greener, or more purple, or with credentials completely out of my control — more young. I really feel like I’m scrambling internally … to deserve Obama cred and all I’ve got is this over-my-head wonder for the man that amounts to being an Obama girl.”) For some, not knowing the Obamas has almost turned into a feeling of being snubbed or excluded. Like in middle school. It’s funny. Almost. “Why won’t my kids be sleeping over at the White House? And as my daughter noted, why couldn’t she get to sit front and center and see the Jonas Brothers and Miley perform at the kids’ inaugural concert? If she went to Sidwell, then she might have these chances, she said …” wrote a mother whose kids are not at Sidwell Friends school with Sasha and Malia. “Will Michelle stay down to earth? She could prove it by joining our book club,” wrote a Sidwell mom. This is, perhaps, the price of faux-familiarity. If I were Barack Obama (or Michelle, for that matter), I’d be a little scared. After all, when people are wearing their egos on their sleeves, it’s so easy to bruise their feelings. What will happen if fantasy turns to contempt?

Ma sidaasaad u baqataa ,,,

Af kala hays badan baa soo baxday ,,

Wax badan baa jiree ,, meelo ka romantic san baa jira hadda ,,,

GJ, Shaki baad leedahay laakiin bal iska kaalay, xal lama waayayee ,,

How about you and me ?

Wacan oo wanaagsan ,, although it is already habeen here ...

SOURCE

The highest-ranking U.N. official for Somalia has angrily denounced reports of a civilian massacre by African Union peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu, saying the story is designed to distract attention from positive developments in the country. U.N. Special Representative Ahmedou Ould Abdallh is calling for a moratorium on reports written outside Somalia based on information supplied by local Somali journalists. U.N. Special Representative Ahmedou Ould Abdallh says he does not know the exact details of Monday's incident in Mogadishu. He is in Addis Ababa, where he is accompanying Somalia's new president Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed on his triumphal debut at the African Union summit. But in a VOA interview, he suggested the report of a massacre by AU peacekeepers was contrived. He called it part of a media war to discredit peace efforts in Somalia, and compared it to the radio station Mille Collines, which incited the Rwandan genocide a generation ago. "What happened is to divert attention from what is going on here, and as usual to use the media to repeat Radio Mille Colline, to repeat the genocide in Rwanda," said Abdallh. "We had a good election. The president had a good welcome. He is trying to work closely with the region." AU officials in Addis Ababa declined to comment on news reports that AU AMISOM peacekeepers had fired on civilians in Mogadishu, killing many. They asked for more time to investigate. But AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping issued a statement strongly suggesting the reports were false. The statement made no mention of shooting, but condemned in the strongest terms what was called an explosion that claimed the lives of several persons', describing it as a 'barbaric and cowardly act by extremist elements opposed to peace and reconciliation'. U.N. envoy Ould Abdallah noted that few international news agencies actually have reporters in Somalia, but base their stories on information supplied by Somali journalists there. He charged most of the journalists have been compromised through threats and intimidation, and called for a moratorium on second-hand reporting about events in Somalia. "There is a need to have a truce, one month truce in reporting on Somalia," he said. "There is a need to double check the sources with your correspondent. Because they live under tremendous pressure. I am sure they are professionals. They would like to help their country. But the time has come for one month truce on reporting till there is double, triple checking, because Somalia is exceptional. We have to have exceptional checking of the news." Meanwhile, Somali President Sheikh Sharif continued his summit activities with a speech to fellow heads of state. Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, he pledged to counter the lawlessness and piracy that has characterized Somalia's position as a failed state. "We would like to assure our full cooperation with the international community to do away with piracy, which has really damaged the Somalis more than anyone else," he said. "Yet we believe the solution is on the territory and not on the sea. And the Somali forces will carry out this job." Mr. Sharif has also held bilateral meetings with several other African heads of state, and met with regional and international leaders to discuss a concerted effort to rebuild Somalia, which has been without an effective government since dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.

Ninkaas ma gabbado ..........

Tii i ag martaba ani ma dhihin yaah ... aniga lee iska cabsahaayay ... That was since last night ,, not before though.