Hi there y’all.
Strange to say but this blog’s hits have continued to prosper (’ish) even since ‘mothballing’ it. Curious indeed.
So it’s going to start up again as a focus for conservative views on international politics with a heart for suffering Christians throughout the world. So please start leaving comments again if you are so inclined, here we go………
Hi there. vimto is working with Nukes News and Views so click on the link for his latest toons and rants if you are so inclined. It would be good to hear from you. Thanks to all who have visited and contributed comments to this site in it’s short life. Maybe it will start up again when time allows….
RIGHT TRUTH! FOR A TOP CLASS BLOG ON THE SOMALI CONFLICT CLICK ON THIS!!
UPDATE: Reuters via FreeRepublic -
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - U.S. forces hunting al Qaeda suspects hit four sites in air strikes in southern Somalia on Wednesday, a Somali government source said, as international criticism mounted over Washington’s military intervention.
“As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force,” the source told Reuters.
UPDATE: 4 Nations involved in Samalia al’Queda Strike.
This is good news. though many sections of the press and the world will play this as America going it alone, this news shows that it is simply not the case. The countries (see below press report) on the Horn of Africa know that having Somalia in the grip of Islam would mean it would pose be a continual threat. Those who want peace must pray for a free and peaceful Somalia in which all peoples of whatever religious faith can hold their head high without fear of being persecuted. That means wishing these four nations God speed!
On Radio 5 there was an interview with a Somali. They didn’t say, it but from the duff she was spouting she was obviously a Muslim. Egged on by the presenter she said that she ‘didn’t buy’ the idea that al’Queda was in the south of the country. America had bombed innocent villages as far as she was concerned. America, America we dump our prejudices on thee. America seems always to be in the wrong and here was our beloved BBC floating that line again.
Indeed m ost of the press is negative. That’s why it was good to this article in the Telegraph.
When it comes to prosecuting the worldwide campaign against al-Qa’eda, whether it is in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan or the inhospitable desert terrain of Somalia, the most important virtue a commander can possess is patience.
Tracking an elusive enemy such as Osama bin Laden’s terror organisation is no easy task. While al-Qa’eda’s main priority is to carry out spectacular terror attacks such as the September 11 bombings or the 1998 deadly suicide bomb attacks against the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the organisation invests just as much effort in ensuring that its key operatives escape detection.
This would explain why, after five years of unstinting effort by the US-led military coalition across a truly global stage, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the main pillars of the al-Qa’eda leadership, remain at large, as do many of those responsible for many of the other atrocities that have been committed in the name of militant Islam, whether in Africa or London.
Update: Breaking News U.K. terrorists among the Islamists. 13.00 GMT.
It has to be said this can hardly be a surprise to anyone with half a brain. Never-the-less proof is newsworthy.
British terror suspects have been injured or captured in the recent military action against Islamic extremists in Somalia, it has been claimed.
The African country has seen fierce fighting in recent days between Islamist militants and soldiers from Ethiopia and Somalia’s transitional government.
The US is also carrying out air strikes in southern Somalia against Islamic fighters suspected of links with al Qaida. America claims that Somali Islamists sheltered al Qaida operatives linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.
A large number of people have been killed in the raids.
UPDATE: 11.10 GMT from FOX
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Two U.S. airstrikes in Somalia killed large numbers of Islamic extremists, government officials and witnesses said Tuesday. The targets were suspects in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The attacks, by an AC-130 gunship, came after the terror suspects were spotted hiding on a remote island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border, Somali officials said. The island and a site 250 kilometers (155 miles) north were hit.
It was the first overt military action by the U.S. in Somalia since the 1990s and the legacy of a botched intervention — known as “Black Hawk Down” — that left 18 U.S. servicemen dead.
MOGADISHU - A U.S. air attack on a Somali village occupied by Islamists believed to be sheltering an al Queda suspect has left “many dead bodies”, a Somali government source said on Tuesday.
Yesterday Zot Media News said that the future of the Somali conflict was too hard to predict - though there are plenty of column inches in the MSM devoted to such crystal ball gazing. Yet no-one yesterday could have predicted an American air strike within 24 hours. But it has happened.
Those who have said that Somalia would become an Al Queda stronghold were half right. A moments reflection should have told them that the bloody murderers were already there and advancing their cause with the Islamists.
Yet the world will go banshee (again) that America has had the nerve to strike at an Al Queda target within Somalia’s boarders. The death toll of women and children will be paraded as further proof of America’s destructive policies. Just wait for the U.N. resolutions. No-one ought to get satisfaction that women and children die, but war is war and it it must be pursued with purpose and decisiveness. Collateral damage - the liberals hatethe phrase - is part of war and although it can be reduced it connot be avoided.
But these Islamists are vicious barbarians and force is all that they know. The free world should get behind Ethiopia and the U.S. to crush them with ultimate force and liberate the good people of Somalia so that they can have freedom , an economy and hope for a decent future.
Will the free world do that? Well, I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime it brings us to our knees again in prayer for those who suffer because of the evil that men do.
UPDATE: 10.05 GMT
Last week zot Media quoted Rosemary Righter as offering positive comments on the Somalian conflict, today Martin Fletcher begs to differ
My colleague Rosemary Righter wrote last week that the defeat of Somalia’s Islamic courts by Ethiopian forces was the “first piece of potentially good news in two devastating decades”.
As one of the few journalists who has visited Mogadishu recently, I beg to differ. The good news came in June. That is when the courts routed the warlords who had turned Somalia into the world’s most anarchic state during a 15-year civil war that left a million dead.
Mmmm…Comments anyone?
MOGADISHU - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf entered Mogadishu on Monday, capping a remarkable turn-around in the capital Islamists ruled for six months until they were ousted before the New Year.
The Kenyan police combed camps on Monday on the northeastern border with Somalia in search for remnants of Somalia’s Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), who have fled to Kenya.
As Yusuf entered the city for the first time since taking office in 2004, protected by his soldiers and Ethiopian troops who helped rout the Islamists, he ruled out talks with his foes.
“With regard to holding talks with the courts, this will not happen,” Yusuf told Al Jazeera television in an interview before flying to Mogadishu. “We will crack down on the terrorists in any place around the nation.”
I regret that the origin of the next article was lost -if anyone can shed some light I will gladly attribute it. It certainly picks up on an interesting angle and gives some insight into Kenya’s refusal to allow Islamists to work from the confines of their boarders.
Kenyan authorities said they would expel five members of the Somali transitional parliament, who condemned Ethiopian military operations in Somalia at a recent news briefing.
Police sources said that they have arrested several Islamists, including Abukar Omar, a leader of the Islamic Courts, which were recently routed out of Somalia.
Abukar, a prominent Mogadishu businessman and Islamist ally, was arrested last week with his son while hiding at a friend’s residence in the border town of Liboi.
Kenyan government last week identified 26 members of Somalia’s parliament staying in Kenya who, according to the Kenyan government, are acting against Somalia’s best interests.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju would not specify what those actions were, but said the legislators must be sent back to Somalia immediately.
“We think it is inappropriate to have members of that government tearing it to pieces from another country,” said Tuju.
“We sincerely believe that, as members of parliament, they should go to their parliament, they should differ in their parliament, they should complain in their parliament,” he added.
How all this will pan out is hard to tell - though there are plenty of op-ed’s out there who think they’ve got handle on Soamolia’s future.
Meanwhile we can only wait and continue to remember eht innocent people caught up in the conflict who do not want Islamic rule nor a return to regional warlords. Many such people are Christians living in fear of their lives simply for professing Christ as their Saviour.
So we can pray. And we ought not to neglect that singular duty.
Gordon Brown vowed yesterday to take on President George W Bush and the Americans over foreign policy as he spelt out plans to break from Tony Blair’s approach to the “war on terror”.
The Chancellor, who is on course to succeed Mr Blair as Prime Minister this summer, made clear he wanted to place Britain’s national interest above the special relationship with Washington.
Brown is an old fashioned socialist and he is no clearly marking out his territory putting clear blue sky between himself and Blair. Those of us Brits who stand alongside America and see the War on Terror as being little less than a fight for western values and insitutions are dismayed but not surprised. His lack of vision, his international myopia is alarming, not least for Israel. He will cuddle up to the Euro-socailists in fraternal cosiness. This is not what is needed at this juncture in history.
Views please?
I publish this because depression is often a hidden illness. If liberals are a bit too quick to call ’sadness ‘depression, conservatives often see it as a flag of convenience for people who are really just weak and inadequate.
Well, this is an account of my time in depths of depression. Only 5 years later can I claim the black dog is no longer constantly bearing me down. I still have my days but it’s getting better all the time ” (to quote Lennon and McCartney).
If you suffer from depression know this - you can get better, even after a long time. If you live with a loved one who has depression, hold on to them and love them. They may seem ungrateful sometimes but deep down they love you more than you can ever know. To both of you, the experience of depression is unique to each person and so is the road to recovery. some of this may resonate with you some may not.
This record is also rather wordy and melodramatic. That, dear reader is the cost of being a Welshman; a cursory knowledge of Dylan Thomas should convince you of that truth!
“The evil of this world is not caused by ignorance of the good or failure to appreciate the holiness of human life. It is caused by the black hole that lies at the bottom of every human soul.” David Horowitz ‘The End of Time’.
It wasn’t called 9/11 when it happened. The American convention of putting the month before the day was unknown to me. As I watched the T.V. footage in the comfort of my home in a small Welsh valley town, I was conscious of watching global history unfold. The images were horrific but they were like a shower of cold water to me. They were like a call to come out of a deep and comfortable sleep. “Come”, the images said, “and see the world as it really is.” May God forgive me, it took the deaths of all those innocents to begin to wake me up.
Waking up to reality was long and hard, for at that very time the pernicious seeds of a deep and unlovely depression were sprouting and poisoning my heart and life. Growing within me was a malevolent life that was not wholly mine. It viciously and unrelentingly began to catch hold of my heart and with demonic claws drag it down into a spiral of never-ending descent.
Inside me I was rotting, dying, withering and decaying. It was tangible, it was somatic, I could feel my heart melt within me, my lungs dissolving as water hits coal dust to become slurry along the track. I mostly sat with my head in my hands. Sometimes I would throw my head back into the headrest of the chair as if to gasp for air. Imaginary sabres hacked at my head while knives and gun barrels were pressed against my temple. Frances Bacon’s paintings have been referred to as depicting ‘man stripped bare of his pretensions’. Bacon’s men, alone and discarded, lie on clinical tables with their skin flayed like slabs of butcher’s carcasses. Painted in triptych they resemble a religious sacrifice or an offensive Christian parody, perhaps both. But it was Bacon’s homage to Velasquez that makes visible the existential terror of Pope Pius II, that was haunting my mind. Sitting enthroned, the Pope is isolated against a inky black background, screaming amid a cage of urgently painted downward brushstrokes that both imprison and impale him. Make no mistake about this image, this pope is going down – down where hell is only an ante-room to the real torment.
My mind began to turn upon itself and speak directly to me in ways I had never imagined possible. “You are useless” it accused as it also pronounced the guilty verdict. And I knew instinctively that I was without excuse. Caught and betrayed by my very own self, as a fraud who had fooled others, I could do nothing other than own up the consequences of perusing a deceitful life. These were not the projected external voices of psychotic illness, but internally generated thoughts of a crippled mind. They encountered no resistance as they drained my flesh of all vitality and desire.
The overwhelming desire to sleep, if possible forever, placed it’s heavy hand on my shoulder. No matter how much I slept I woke up desperately fatigued. Some days I slept for 18-20 hours. The tiredness was pathological – it never left me. Every waking moment was a wearing withering experience, as wave after wave of overwhelming desire to return to the petit death, broke over and against my heart, my mind and my body. Weariness consumed me. It sucked all my energies and demanded every moment of my concentration.
The continual downward motion of my internal being sickened and distressed me. I was continually clawed and dragged from within to ever lower and deeper levels of hollowness. Forever falling into the abyss I suffered a debilitating impoverishment of spirit. Seemingly rolling and tumbling over and over again, I descended below congruence with the reality most people share. I had lost the energy to communicate meaningfully even with those I loved and I had lost the will to bother.
Sleep brought a relief from the unremitting tiredness but introduced disturbing dreams. Foul and sickening, the dreams seemed to inhabit me. Sometimes I would awake screaming. They were so intense and crisp and colourful in their clarity. The images inside them were bleak and debasing and degrading. The horrors that life can and does reserve for the unfortunate few were aggregated together for me to gaze upon in seemingly unrelated but disturbing sequences. It was as if I was looking into the recesses of my own black heart and inspecting it’s cadaver and viewing the possible causes of it’s death. As within Mervyn Peake’s Gorhmengast Castle I discovered metaphorical rooms and corridors within me that had been sealed up for years and subsequently forgotten. Entering each one I was witness to degrading occult scenes of pornographic macabre savagery. This nighttime litany of torture and death was preferable to being awake and knowingly alive.
Knowingly awake: a definition. Being awake and being alive and being willing and able to think and act. Being willing to take responsibility and being able to understand what that responsibility is.
I seemed to me, when I was able to make any worthwhile reflection that my present state was the natural development of a life lived in half truths. In a sense that could have been a perverted depressive thought, one designed to send me deeper into the pit. I had to be careful to identify it as authentic, a thought worth dwelling on and exploring. Discernment was required. It didn’t have the taste of a twisted thought or defensive reaction. No, this was a truth surfacing.
I looked out the window into the mid-distance. The arms of the chair were frayed where my hands rested on them and rubbing unconsciously against them. In the soles of my feet and under my chin the muscles continually cramped and needled me. Silent except for the occasional sigh, all but spent and defeated, my body inhabiting a small space, I began to be slow.
Being slow is strangely strange. The clinical term is ‘psychomotor retardation’. I have witnessed this phenomenon before in depressed and psychotic patients. As a nurse on psychiatric admission wards it was regarded as a significant clinical symptom to be dutifully recorded on the person’s case notes. Psychomotor retardation remains a mystery in the sense that there is still no adequate theory to account for its existence. From observation, as is clinical sign, it gives the impression of the air having congealed leaving the human body unable to move easily through it. It’s like witnessing the effects of viscous air, or a bone weary patient trying to move though unseen treacle. On the inside, (as a symptom), the movements are equally mysterious. For quite evidently there is no treacle to wade through and the air offers no resistance.
Locked into the depressive condition my concentration was acute but turned almost entirely inwards. In a sense the key to getting well was to be able to move concentration, back into external reality, to where it’s focus ought to be…..
For 3 good websites to help you or a loved one recover see the comments section number 1.
Somalis protested in Mogadishu on Saturday against Ethiopian troops backing the interim government, hurling stones, burning tyres and reviving memories of the chaos that largely stopped during six months of strict sharia rule by Islamists.
In the latest show of discontent with the forces that drove the Islamists out, some protesters brandished sticks and set fires that wreathedthe streets in smoke, witnesses said.
One resident said the protesters were also angry about a disarmament drive by the interim government, which wants to install itself in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
I’ve looked at many reports of this and IMHO (surprisingly) this Reuters account seems to be the most informative and balanced. The Islamists when pressed by the Ethiopian army fled Mogadishu with their tails between their legs. They will not want that to be the last word. Nor will the warlords hesitiate to try to regain power. All in all a very dangerous situation in which one can only pray that good Samali’s and oppressed minorities (including Christians) can get through these days in safety.
 | daniel kajura on Somali Christian Blog Aba… |
 | abdiraman on Somali Christian Blog Aba… |
 | faithwalk on Today’s Toon. |
 | vimto on Today’s Toon. |
| faithwalk on Today’s Toon. |
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