Cargo Vessel Captured Near Seychelles is Comandeered to Somalia

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 20 seized foreign vessels (22 sea-related hostage cases since yacht SY LYNN RIVAL was abandoned and taken by the British Navy) with a total of not less than319 crew members (incl. the British sailing couple) plus at least 9 crew of the lorries held for an exchange with imprisoned pirates, are accounted for. The cases are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed too. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) had been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases for Somalia and the mistaken sinking of one sea-jacked fishing vessel and killing of her crew by the Indian naval force. For 2009 the account closed with 228 incidences (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 68 vessels seized for different reasons on the Somali/Yemeni captor side as well as at least TWELVE wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces. 
For 2010 the recorded account around the Horn of Africa stands at 69 attacks resulting in 30 sea-jackings as well as the sinking of one merchant vessel (MV AL ABI) by machine-gun fire from the Seychelles’s coastguard boat TOPAZ and the wrongful attack by the Indian navy on a Yemeni fishing vessel.
The naval alliances had since August 2008 and until March 2010 apprehended 826 suspected pirates, detained and kept or transferred for prosecution 419,  killed at least 53 and wounded over 22 Somalis. (Actual independent update see: http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com/pages/_Bilan_antipiraterie_Atalanta_CTF_Otan_Russie_Exclusif-1169128.html). 
Not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (although not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail – like the S/Y Serenity, MV Indian Ocean Explorer.Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: RED / IO: RED  (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon. Starting from mid February until early April every year an increase in piracy cases can be expected. 
If you have any additional information concerning the cases, please send to office[at]ecoterra-international.org – if required we guarantee 100% confidentiality.
For further details and regional information see the Somali Marine and Coastal Monitor at www.australia.to and the map of the PIRACY COASTS OF SOMALIA.


—————- directly piracy, abduction, mariner or naval upsurge related reports ——————–

The president of the Spanish Association of Escorts (ASES), Vicente de la Cruz, warned that gangs of pirates operating in the Indian Ocean are reacting to the protection on board fishing vessels. Recently they have acquired heavy machine guns from the former Soviet Union that would allow them to attack a boat two miles away.
Speaking to Europa Press, Vicente de la Cruz, said that there is information about the acquisition of such weapons, namely, the KPV 14.5, easily accessible on the black market in Somalia itself or the Islamic republics that were, in the past, under the domination of the USSR. In this way, pirates could attack a ship at a great distance without having to risk approaching fishing boats that now operate with private security on board. Such services are equipped only with light weapons, said de la Cruz.
This new strategy shows the unwillingness of pirate gangs to stop their activity in spite of the defence mechanisms used by the various Western ships on their fleets. “Without a doubt they will continue with the business,” said De la Cruz, who called for European states to take action. 
In this sense, he explained that in recent weeks they have stepped up negotiations with the authorities of the Seychelles to allow vessels fishing in the area to be equipped with similar weapons acquired by the Pirates beyond light weapons used so far. In particular, as an example, the 1270 Browning machine guns used in Spain.

The incidents are the latest in a string of hijackings of at least 16 ships and an estimated 240 crew members since the end of the monsoon season in recent weeks. 
Suspected pirates hijacked the South Korean supertanker Samho Dream Sunday with 24 sailors on board and warned a South Korean warship chasing the supertanker to stay away or risk endangering the crew’s safety, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Thursday. 
Suspected Somali pirates hijacked the Turkish vessel MV Yasin C with a crew of 25 off the Kenyan coast Wednesday, said the European Union Naval Force, charged with helping to prevent piracy off Somalia’s coast. 
The Wednesday hijacking followed the commandeering by suspected Somali pirates of an Indian cargo dhow, a traditional Arab sailing vessel, and the drowning of a hostage Tuesday after the dhow was used to attack another vessel and navies, including from the United States, intervened. 
The suspected pirates aboard the commandeered dhow Faize Osamani tried to attack the MV Rising Sun, which evaded the attack and sent a distress signal, the U.S. Fifth Fleet said. 
An Omani warship arrived first and the nine hostages jumped overboard to swim away from the pirates. One hostage drowned and the eight others were rescued, the Fifth Fleet said. 
The U.S. destroyer USS McFaul arrived later. Its crew helped persuade the 10 suspected pirates to surrender and then took them into custody, the Fifth Fleet said. 
“It’s something we have to be prepared for now,” McFaul Executive Officer Lt. Cmdr. Matt Pederson told The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot from the McFaul. “It’s a scourge.” 
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, when the former government was toppled by clan militias that later turned on each other.


——— ecology , ecosystems, marine environment, IUU fishing and dumping, UNCLOS, humanities ———— 

Pirates target food, pushing up prices (IRIN)
Pirates operating off Somalia’s coast have started targeting vessels operated by Somali businessmen and carrying food – something which is leading to higher food prices in Mogadishu, according to traders. 
“Up until a few weeks ago, they [pirates] avoided hijacking ships carrying cargo for Somali businesses but now it is different,” Abdinasir Aw Kombe, a businessman whose boat was hijacked, told IRIN on 12 April. 
He said pirates had hijacked nine vessels mostly carrying food in the last few weeks. He suspected the pirates would use the vessels to hijack other ships. [N.B.: Well, these vessels certainly also brought food commodities to Somalia, thereby breaking the TFG induced harbour-blockade of rebel-held Kismaayo port, but even more importantly they were exporting illegally charcoal and other contraband when they were captured. The Indian government therefore has rightly imposed a ban for all the Indian-flagged motorized dhows to the Western Indian Ocean near Somalia West and South of a boundary-line between Salalah in Oman and Malé in the Maldives and thereby protects their innocent poor sailors from unscrupulous boat-owners, greedy captains and crooked businessmen as well as cruel pirates.]
Owners of vessels used to ferry food to Somalia “are refusing to carry our goods”, Kombe said. “This has created shortages of basic goods, such as rice, flour and sugar.” 
According to the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, [http://www.fsausomali.org] a food security watchdog, more than 50 percent of the food consumed in the country is commercially imported. 
The Unit said in its 2009/2010 post-`Deyr’ (short rains from October to December) report that 542,000 tons of cereals were imported in 2009, of which 119,000 was food aid, while 423,000 was commercial. 
Somalia faces a serious humanitarian crisis, with 42 percent of the population – an estimated 3.2 million people – in need of emergency humanitarian assistance and/or livelihood support until June 2010, according to UN agencies. 
Kombe said tons of commodities meant for Mogadishu were sitting in Dubai warehouses for lack of transport. “We are paying warehouse charges and this ultimately adds to the cost,” he said. 
Prices up 
Abdi Moalim, a food importer, said the prices of most food items had gone up. 
“In March [2010], before the [food-targeted] hijackings, a 50kg bag of sugar cost US$30, today it is $34; wheat flour was selling at $18 [per 50kg bag] and now is selling at $22. The cost of a 50kg bag of rice is $28, compared to $25 in early March,” he said. 
Mogadishu has been the focus of fighting between government troops and insurgents opposed to the Transitional Federal Government. 
Civil society activist Asha Sha’ur said the shortages and the consequent price increases are affecting the very poor. 
“Everything is going up – rice, sugar, flour, cooking oil,” she said, adding that many of the poor could barely afford to buy the basics. “Now they are being told to pay even more. The hijackings and the price increases are only adding to the woes of the very poor.” 
Sha’ur said lack of food aid, coupled with the current price increases, was making life even harder for Mogadishu residents. 
“It seems that everything is conspiring against them. Even a small increase in prices erodes their capacity to buy the food they need. I don’t know how many more knocks we can take.” 
Daily hot meals 
As Mogadishu residents grapple with the price increases, aid agencies continue to offer some support to the most vulnerable. 
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was “providing daily hot meals to 80,000 mainly women and children at 16 locations across the city.” 
WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said: “In addition, other mainly nutritional activities reach nearly 20,000 vulnerable people on a regular basis with food rations.” 
Ali Mohamed Siyad, chairman of Mogadishu’s Bakara market traders, told IRIN pirate attacks were severing their sole lifeline. “If they continue attacking our ships they will completely cut our lifeline,” he said. 
Siyad said the worlds’ navies were “a stone’s throw away” from the Somali coast but were doing nothing to stop the criminals. “Sometimes I wonder if they [international forces] care whether our food is hijacked or not.”

The intolerability of tolerance  by Christopher Monckton (*) (sppiblog.org) 
The UN’s international climate conference here in Bonn has decided that the wealthier nations among the 192 States Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change should make plenty of taxpayers’ money available to hold two additional weeks of pre-negotiation negotiations between now and December, when the legally-binding World Government Climate Treaty is to be signed in Cancun, Mexico. 
Dr. Yvo de Boer, who will shortly retire as secretary to the Conference of the States Parties to the Convention, told observers here in Bonn yesterday that the extra time was essential so that details which could otherwise wreck the negotiations could be sorted out before Cancun. 
There will also be a meeting of Heads of Governments at the Peterberg Hotel, near Bonn, in June. The purpose of that meeting is to allow the UN to identify potentially recalcitrant heads of government and mount a charm offensive in their direction between June and December. 
Dr. de Boer said he was not sure that a legally-binding Treaty would be agreed upon at Cancun: he thought a further year might be necessary. He said he hoped the negotiators would take the approach that had worked during the discussions that led to the Kyoto Protocol: they should keep the Treaty short and to the point, establishing general principles and allowing the details to be worked out once the Treaty was in force. 
The world-government faction at the UN faces a dilemma. If the bureaucrats push the process too fast, as they did in the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting last December, the train will come off the tracks. However, if they slow things down to allow the caboose to catch up with the locomotive, the passengers may start to notice that the climate is not in fact changing anything like as rapidly as the UN’s climate reports have been predicting. 
There is a possibility that the UN may try to surprise everyone by persuading the Heads of Government to reach full agreement on a binding Treaty as early as the Peterberg meeting in June. The priceless advantage of this, from the world-government wannabes’ point of view, is that the Treaty could then be put before the US Senate while President Obama still has a strong majority there. 
Everyone here is keenly aware that the Obama experiment has not been seen as successful in the eyes of voters in the US, and that an increase in the Republican presence in both Houses of Congress will, in practice, make acceptance of any climate Treaty – especially one that reactivates the now-ditched world-government proposals of last year’s draft – unlikely. 
The US Senate has the power to ratify Treaties, and no Treaty can pass unless it receives 67 of the 100 available votes. This two-thirds majority will be difficult to achieve as things now stand: most serious observers reckon it will be impossible after the US mid-term elections this December, at the same moment as the Cancun climate conference. 
For the world-government group among the UN’s bureaucrats and fellow-travelers, therefore, Cancun is too late. And, if Mr. de Boer is right that an agreement will not even be reached there, another year’s delay will make it still more obvious to voters in those countries lucky enough to have universal suffrage that the climate is not behaving as ordered. 
In short, the climate train is about to tip into the gulch, and almost everyone here knows it. There are still some true-believers who have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid. One of these came up to the CFACT stand at the conference and conversed with me quite pleasantly until I mentioned that the science behind the IPCC’s documents is collapsing. He instantly changed his demeanor. His smile vanished, and he stumped off in a huff. 
There is an interesting difference between the First and Third Worlds in the behavior of the delegates. The delegates from Western countries tend to be far less willing to question the science and economics underpinning the UN’s case for its own glorification, expansion and enrichment, and they tend to be considerably less polite than their counterparts in the Third World. 
The African delegates, in particular, exhibit a charming, old-world courtliness that used to be universal in the West and is now loutishly absent. One of them, the Permanent Secretary of the Environment Department in his country, was fascinated to hear that a tiny fraction of the money wasted on the non-problem of “global warming”, if spent on addressing real problems, could help to rid Africa of starvation and disease. He had not previously thought about the opportunity cost of not spending the money thrown away on the climate in a manner that would be more likely to do real good. 
CFACT’s policy of diverting some – or preferably all – of the cash now spent on the climate towards spending on real societal and environmental problems, such as deforestation or overfishing, won a number of supporters. Very few of those we have spoken to were wholly against it, and most of those gave indications that they were on the extreme Left politically. For the Left, belief in the wickedness of CO2 and of the filthy capitalists who emit it is at the very center of their credo, and anyone who disagrees with them is treated with contempt. 
There have been some comic moments, though. At Dr. de Boer’s meeting with observers at the Bonn conference, two messily-dressed ladies of uncertain age, with untidy hairdos and a hectoring, bossy manner, asked why it was that “those climate skeptics” had been given the best display booth in the conference center, right next door to the entrance to the conference hall. 
Mr. de Boer, far more urbane at this conference than he had been at Bali, Poznan, or Copenhagen, purred that any recognized non-government organization, whatever its views, was welcome to attend UN conferences, and neither he nor his staff had given any thought at all to the question which NGO should occupy which display stand. The two ladies quivered with displeasure at this answer. To them, tolerance was intolerable.
(*) The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley reports directly from Bonn 

Bonn or bust 
– The UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government by Christopher Monckton (*)
Climategate bust: UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government depends on Bonn 
There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today. 
The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever. 
However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes. 
This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too. 
There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up? 
The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters. 
The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t). 
I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place. 
For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume. However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv. 
Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”. 
That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it. 
I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold.
(*) The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley reports directly from Bonn 

————————— anti-piracy measures ——————————–

Russian destroyer escorts 12 civilian ships in Gulf of Aden (RIA Novosti)
The Russian Pacific Fleet’s Udaloy-class missile destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov began on Monday escorting 12 civilian vessels off the coast of Somalia, a Russian Navy spokesman said. 
The Marshal Shaposhnikov large anti-submarine ship has two naval helicopters and a unit of naval infantry on board. 
A Russian Pacific Fleet task force comprising the Marshal Shaposhnikov, the MB-37 salvage tug and the Pechenga tanker arrived in the Gulf of Aden on March 29 to join the anti-piracy mission there. 
The task force is the fourth group of warships from the Russian Pacific Fleet engaged in the anti-piracy mission off Somalia, with the previous three task forces led by the Admiral Vinogradov, Admiral Panteleyev and the Admiral Tributs destroyers. The Northern and Baltic fleets have also sent task forces to the region. 
Somali pirates carried out a record number of attacks and hijackings in 2009. According to the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau, a total of 217 vessels were attacked last year, resulting in 47 hijackings.

Officers of Seychelles People’s Defense Forces honored for hostage rescue by eTN Staff Writer  
President James Michel, the Commander-in-Chief, has decorated 17 officers of the Topaz with the medal of the Order of Honor of the Seychelles People’s Defense Forces for the heroic action they undertook to rescue the 6 Seychellois fishermen and 21 Iranians from the hands of 9 Somali pirates on March 29, 2010. President Michel also presented Certificates of Merit to the officers of the Tazar unit and the Seychelles Coast Guard Command Centre for their support effort during the operation. 
“We owe the crew of the Topaz a debt of gratitude. Their heroic action at sea saved the lives of our compatriots. Our six Seychellois brothers are today with their families and in their country, Seychelles. We cannot compare ourselves with the great maritime powers, but the professionalism, tenacity, and bravery of our sailors are comparable to theirs. Our sailors aboard the Topaz have made us proud, following their successful operation against pirates,” said President Michel during the military decoration ceremony at the State House. 
President James Michel said the officers have shown on one more occasion the raison d’être of the Seychelles Defense Forces whose existence has been questioned from time to time. 
“Once again, the world learned that small Seychelles has accomplished a giant task. Your bravery, professionalism, courage, your sense of commitment towards your homeland, were exemplary. You saved the lives of our brothers, as well as those of foreign hostages. And you have administered the penalty on the Somali pirates! We will never allow incidents that put the lives of our citizens in danger. Our message is clear – we will not allow the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity. This operation is a warning to all bandits in the region – from wherever they may come – that Seychelles will not tolerate them and we are going to take serious actions against them.” 
President Michel also thanked the crew of the EUNAVFOR plane, which helped locate the pirate vessel, as well as the government of India, which had donated the patrol ship Topaz to the Seychelles. 
“We have won a battle, we still have to win the war! We still have a long way to go before the decisive victory. The final victory will remain elusive for as long as the piracy scourge in the Indian Ocean is not eradicated completely. There is the necessity, as the international community has recognized, to tackle the root of the problem. We cannot do much about this on our own. We do not have the means, the resources, to bring stability to Somalia. But where it is possible, we will give our support to and show our solidarity with the international community. What we have now is a clear message – we will defend our sovereignty and our citizens at all cost.” 
President Michel noted that Seychelles would need further assistance from the international community in the fight against piracy, and he urged other nations to intensify their assistance to Seychelles. 
“I will be frank with you. We are not satisfied with the level of assistance we are presently getting in the fight against piracy. Proportionally, we are putting in a lot more effort and resources in combating this scourge in relation to our means. Messages of congratulation and encouragement are well appreciated, but not enough! Moral support alone will not make us win the fight against piracy. We need more assistance, more training, more resources, and increased logistics. This is my appeal today to the international community, especially the maritime powers. They need to show greater solidarity. We are in this fight together. Let us strengthen the partnership. I ask them to put more resources and means at our disposal.”
[N.B.: No word was mentioned on the fate of the second Somali boat group the TOPAZ engaged with that day after the incident in which the sea-jacked vessel MV AL-ALBI was sunk by thousands of heavy machine-gun rounds from the Seychelles coastguard. The second group was just shot up and left in the ocean with a destroyed skiff, while the coastguard was heading home.]

————– no real peace in sight yet ————–

Violence in Somali capital kills 19: rescuers by Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled (Reuters)
At least 13 civilians were killed in fighting between Somali government forces and hardline Islamist militants in the capital Mogadishu Monday and bomb blasts killed six people, rescue services and the police said. The insurgents fired mortars at the city’s airport from their stronghold in the crowded Bakara market, triggering return shellfire from African Union (AU) peacekeepers based at and near the airport. “We have so far carried out 13 dead civilians and over 30 who were injured. The death toll is higher and we are busy collecting casualties,” ambulance service coordinator Ali Muse told Reuters. The death toll is likely to rise, he said. Police and residents of Somalia’s war-weary capital said two remotely controlled roadside bombs aimed at an AU convoy killed four civilians and two police officers.”The first bomb nearly hit the AU’s last car. Some policemen and residents ran to the scene, and then the next bomb exploded killing these people,” police officer Nur Salad told Reuters. Somalia’s fragile government controls just a few blocks in the capital and al Shabaab rebels, who want to impose a harsh version of sharia law on the anarchic nation, control large swathes of southern and central Somalia. The government has said for several months it will launch a major offensive against al Shabaab rebels, who have professed loyalty to al Qaeda, and Hizbul Islam militants. Shells also landed around a strategic road junction known as K4 that links the airport to the residence of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

Heavy Shelling Kills 10, Wounds 23 in Somalia by Hussein Moulid (AHN)

Reports indicated that the insurgent group Al-Shabbab started on firing Villa Somalia, the presidential palace where the transitional government was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Somali army.. Top government officials including the Somali president attended the ceremony.
The shelling rocked the northern district of Hawal-wadag where at least seven civilians were killed. Three more were killed in Mogadishu’s Bakara market., according to Ali Muse, the head of Mogadishu’s paramedics.
Local media said that many mortars landed in sections of the Hodan districts in Mogadishu, but the number of casualties are still unknown.
The fragile U.N.-backed transition government is preparing to launch a full-scale offensive to drive the rebels out of the capital and many other territories in the war-torn country.

Military commander says troops are ready for offensive (Mareeg)
Somalia’s commander of military forces said Monday the troops are ready to launch an offensive against the Islamist rebels and take over the country from them. 
Addressing at Villa Somalia, the presidential palace, the Somali military forces,  who were celebrating their 50th anniversary, General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye said the military was complete and ready the perform their duties. 
“We promise that we are ready to clear the country from those who are working for the aliens and the military is ready today to defend the country,” said General Kahiye. 
A well decorated ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Somali military forces was held in the presidential palace while the Islamist rebels fired several mortars. 
The mortars have not caused any casualties in Villa Somalia but several civilians were killed near Bakaro market in Mogadishu. 

TFG Says Mediating Committee Achieved Ending Conflicts in Mudug Region (shabelle)
The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said that the mediating committee sent to Mudug region achieved to negotiate between both rival Somali clan militias fighting in parts of the region, officials said on Monday. 
Abdirashid Haji Derow, the reconciliation minister of the transitional government said in an interview with Shabelle radio that the conflicts between the Somali clan militias at Ba’adweyn and Amara villages in Mudug region was concluded as the committees of 8 men sent by the TFG achieved the peace process.

“The committees had firstly put a ceasefire agreement between the two sides and they accepted instantly. So we also call on them to conclude their disagreements as soon as possible,” said Mr. Abdirashid. 
The ministers said that the government welcomes the agreement and any one taking part in the mediating efforts ending the conflicts in the region, thanking the administrations in central Somalia, calling for the two sides to overcome all obstacles and reach a real agreement between them.

Somali govt accuses aid agencies of not doing enough for needy people (APA)
The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia on Sunday accused the international relief organizations, excluding the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of doing little to help the needy people in the war-ravaged Horn of African country. 
The deputy mayor of the Somali capital Abdi Salam Dahir Abdulle, who talked to reporters in Mogadishu on Sunday, said that international aid agencies have only established beautiful offices in the country but do not do enough for the needy people in the country. 
“They only appear here as pronouns, so I call on the aid agencies to show tangible relief activities,” the deputy mayor told reporters Sunday, adding that any agency which does something for the Somali people cannot be denied. 
“We are praising the International Committee of the Red Cross which provides medicines and other medical equipment with hospitals in the capital, with each of them daily receiving dozens of wounded civilians. We are very grateful to the ICRC,” the deputy mayor added. 
“We are calling on the aid agencies which confined their activities only to establishing well-equipped offices to do something tangible for the people or they must leave,” he stated. 
Although the Somali government is calling on the aid agencies to widen their activities to many areas, most of those agencies cannot have access to millions of needy Somalis because of the ban by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab militants who prohibited most of them from operating in the country.

Al-Shabaab once again attack Kenyan forces (garoweonline)
Al-Shabaab insurgent fighters have once again reportedly attacked Kenyan forces in a remote town near the Kenya-Somalia border. 
A group of heavily armed Al-Shabaab fighters opened fire and threw grenades on the officers at the Liboi post after crossing the border, leading to exchange of fire.  
The soldiers battled out with the attackers before pursuing them inside Somalia, According to James Ole-Serian, the Northeastern Provincial Commissioner. 
“Al-Shabaab was behind the attack, we have credible information that the attackers crossed the border. This left the resident with tense moments,” he was quoted as saying. 
The militia has in the past threatened to attack Kenya, which is a stern supporter of fragile transition government in Mogadishu. In recent weeks, the extremist fighters have carried out cross-border raids in bordering towns. 
Kenya has deployed thousands of its troops along the common porous border with the war-torn country.

————  reports, news and views from the global village with an impact on Somalia ——————- 

“Sisi ni Waria [Swahili for 'we are Somalis']; we don’t like attracting attention to ourselves by complaining about poor services,” Abdul said on 7 April as she fried samosas for sale outside her house in Eastleigh. 
She had just paid Ksh1,500 (US$20), required of every tenant on her street, to pay some young men to deliver two lorry loads of stones to cover the dilapidated road outside their homes. 
“If we don’t pay these young men to bring the stones, then the muddy water flows into our homes, especially when there is heavy rain,” Abdul said. “With the stones in place, then we can cross the road and go about our business while the children can get to school.” 
Abdul fled the Somali capital, Mogadishu, two years ago to escape fighting between government troops and Islamist insurgents who are opposed to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. 
Since her arrival in Eastleigh, she has not registered with either the Kenyan government or the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. Her husband abandoned her and the children and she started making samosas and bhajias to survive. 
“Many residents of Eastleigh prefer to just pay for these things – water, road repair – to avoid the hassle, instead of complaining to the city council,” Abdul said. 
Abdul is one of the estimated 46,000-plus unregistered refugees living in Nairobi, who, due to their unclear legal status, continue to suffer police harassment, lack of protection, violation of their human rights and discrimination.
“Overlooked” 
Choice Ufuoma Okoro, advocacy and outreach officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Kenya), told IRIN the issue of urban refugees was under-addressed within the “overlooked” issue of urban vulnerability. 
“Urban refugees live largely without material assistance or legal protection, leaving them vulnerable to police arrest at any time, and face high levels of xenophobia from the local population,” Okoro said. “The challenges faced by urban refugees in Kenya falls within the broader issue of the ‘hidden’ urban humanitarian challenges. 
“Confusion over the processing of legal status for urban refugees and fear of deportation is exposing more than 40,000 urban refugees to serious humanitarian challenges with significant protection issues,” she said. “Responding to protection issues for urban refugees is a challenge without a clearer and better plan for implementing legal status for urban refugees.” 
Health risks 
Ahmed Hirsi, a medical specialist in Eastleigh’s Second Avenue, said poor roads in the suburb had undermined public health, with many people – young and old alike – complaining of constant coughs, especially during the dry season. 
“The health problems caused by the dusty conditions are many; some have eye problems because of the dust… we noticed these [conditions] mostly from dust and poor sanitation,” Hirsi said. “As most of the people here are refugees, many cannot afford to seek specialized treatment for some of these conditions.” 
Halima Yasin, a greengrocer on First Avenue, said: “We live like animals; when it is dry, the dust is just too much, it is all over the fruits and vegetables. When it is rainy, some customers even shy away because of the smelly mud…” 
Jamilo Abdi, a milk vendor on Seventh Street, said: “You can’t imagine how we survive; poor roads are our main concern because customers at times don’t want to buy from us, they say we are selling a virus. Somalis can be boastful yet we depend on milk-vending to get our daily bread. Since the government collects tax from us, it should help us.” 
Both Somali refugees and Kenyan Somalis are involved in milk-vending on Seventh Avenue. 
Omar Shamun and his wife, Khadija Mohammed, who ran a clothing and shoe shop in Eastleigh, said the poor infrastructure had not only affected their business but also limited access to schools and health centres. 
“It is pure agony whenever you go into Pumwani Road nearby, the road is almost impassable; we have to hire taxies to take our children to school because of the mud,” Mohamed said. 
During the dry season, she said, dust coats everything. “If a customer drops an item they are buying, they can easily reject it because it becomes really dirty, but it is worse now that it is rainy most of the time, you dare not drop anything.” 
Shamun, who has acquired American papers, said he came into the country recently to arrange to take all his family to the US. 
“Already four of our children are in the US; I am here to make arrangements for my wife and six other children to travel with me to the US. Life here is unbearable, look at all the filth, there are no good roads and going to school is a challenge for our children,” Shamun said. 
Refugee rights 
In a recent joint report, the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK), said the right of refugees to move freely within the country and reside in urban areas was currently unclear. 
During the launch of the report in Nairobi on 25 March, Sara Pavanello, a researcher with HPG at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said: “Urban refugees are often very mobile and are reluctant to come forward, making them a largely hidden population. As the world urbanizes, refugees are increasingly moving to cities in the hope of finding a sense of community, safety and economic independence. Yet what many actually find are precarious living conditions and harassment, discrimination and poverty.” 
In 2006, the Kenyan government passed a Refugee Act setting out the legal and institutional framework for managing refugee affairs. 
However, Pavanello said, “while the act was largely welcomed by civil society and represents a step in the right direction, it has been undermined by a lack of institutional capacity and the absence of a clear national policy outlining the necessary steps for its implementation”. 
(*) Not her real name
[N.B.: Interesting is that in this report by IRIN - a UN sponsored media outlet - the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not elaborated, who jealously keeps the slot to be "in charge for refugees" occupied, but in reality is a self-serving, unnecessary entity the way it performs its work. Since the passing of the Refugee Act UNHCR has in Kenya a new excuse for not doing anything by saying "the Kenya government is responsible". Due to the appalling conditions in the mega-refugee-camps Kakuma and Dadaab, which therefore also are an easy recruitment ground for fundamentalist-radical groups, UNHCR is now even reluctant to issue permits for journalists to visit these camps. Whole communities of refugees from minority peoples have completely given up on UNHCR, because they are more endangered by getting in contact with that office. Though UNHCR sports a "protection unit", headed Canadian Louise Aubin, who also doubles as the Deputy UNHCR Resident Representative for Kenya, the refugees and NGOs have given up to even call her or her staff in case of an emergency like an attack, an extortion scheme by police or other clear protection-issues, because not even persecuted high-profile refugee- journalists, assisted and watched by PEN, CPJ or other international organizations find any help from that unit, which usually either says they can do nothing or are "off office-hours" and not even reachable in typical UN-diplomatic style. The backlog of unregistered cases with appointments often given only in 3-4 months time regularly frustrates honest refugees, who want to be registered and protected by the international law for which UNHCR serves as - unfortunately often corrupt - gatekeeper.  Also UN oversight seems to not have learned even from the criminal prosecutions of UNHCR staff in Kenya in recent years, which succeeded though the UNHCR office in Kenya tried to cover up. Since UNHCR in Kenya has deteriorated to a mere profiling office, for which "procurement" and a liaison with WFP to deliver food to the expanding camps is more important than "protection", as well as with a huge back-log due to strike-like go-slow work-ethics, its office in Kenya should better be dissolved and its mega-budget for the unfulfilled work handed over to pro-active, caring NGOs.]

Upon arrival, he told Saba that the visit aims at reinforcing relations and cooperation between the two countries in the media area and to benefit from the Yemeni experience in this aspect. 
Jily pointed out that he will acquaint officials at the Information Ministry with achievements of the Somali government in the field of media, topped by the launch of some media institutions such as radio and electronic press.

Yemen and Somalia held talks on Monday in Sana’a over mutual media cooperation between the two nations 
The talks were co-chaired by information ministers Hassan al-Lawzi of Yemen and Tahir Mahmud Gelle of Somalia.
Al-Lawzi voiced readiness of the Yemeni official media corporation to present all support for media corporations in Somalia in field of training and media programs.
The Somali official highlighted progress achieved by the Yemeni media corporation, pointing out to the bilateral relations between the two countries under political leaderships of both nations.
He expressed wish of his country to receive support of Yemen for the national strategy of the country to develop and protect the Islamic and Arabic culture.
The talks were attended by senior officials of the Yemeni and Somalia media corporations.

Ethiopia, Rebels Trade Charges Over British Geologist’s Killing by Peter Heinlein
Ethiopia’s government and a separatist group are trading accusations over the killing of a British geologist and two armed escorts in the country’s troubled Ogaden region.  
Thirty-nine-year old Jason Reid and two Ethiopian military guards died when their car was attacked by gunmen last Monday in a remote part of Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region, known as the Ogaden.  Reid was a geologist involved in exploring for oil in the area near the border with Somalia.
Authorities say a gun battle ensued when the victims tried to fight back.  Their car, reportedly was riddled with bullets.
Government spokesman Shimelis Kemal describes the killers as ‘highwaymen’ intent on robbery.  He says some of the attackers were captured. “Mr. Jason and his escorts were going to their camps after completing their day’s work.  The bandits ambushed and attacked them, and the law enforcement officials made a hot pursuit and were able to apprehend three of the suspected attackers,” he said.
Ethiopian troops have been battling a long-running insurgency in the mostly ethnic-Somali region.  The counterinsurgency effort was intensified in 2007, after rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, or ONLF, attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration camp, killing more than 70 people. 
In a statement emailed to VOA, the ONLF denies involvement in the latest attack.  The statement condemned the killing as the work of local militias organized by the government to fight the insurgents.
Government spokesman Shimeles calls the ONLF accusation “an absolute lie.” “They were simply outlaws, people engaged in robbery and illicit activities,” he said.
Gavin Cook, spokesman for the British embassy in Addis Ababa, says Reid had been doing seismic surveys for a subcontractor for the giant Malaysian energy firm Petronas.  Cook says it is too early to tell who might have been behind the attack or whether it was related to the insurgency. “We don’t want to speculate at the moment.  There are a number of groups that operate in the region, but no one has claimed responsibility.  There’s nothing to suggest as yet whether one or any of them was responsible or whether it was a random attack.  But we are working with the government to try and establish more details,” he said.
The news of Reid’s death came the same day as Ethiopia announced the surrender of another rebel group in the region.  A government spokesman said the little-known United Western Somalia Liberation Front, or UWSLF, had agreed to lay down arms and join the political process.
The UWSLF was a powerful force in the 1960s and ’70s, and had threatened violence against foreigners exploring for oil in the region.  But it has rarely been heard from in recent years. 
Their last known activity was the brief kidnapping of two Red Cross workers in 2007.  The captives were released after a few days with an apology and an admission that the incident was a case of mistaken identity.

UN staff caught in the line of fire by James Reinl (TheNational/UN)
Reports of three UN staff being killed in clashes between the Congolese army and a militia this month have added to the toll in what has already been the deadliest year for the agency’s aid workers.
The UN Mission in Congo said that a South African pilot and a UN peacekeeper from Ghana were killed during the two days of clashes in northern Democratic Republic of Congo. One of its subcontractors also died on April 4 of a heart attack during the fighting, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Following the Haitian earthquake, which left 150 UN workers dead, this year ranks as the worst for UN casualties in the world body’s six-decade history.
This is hardly a new trend and, with 2009 marking yet another annus horribilis for the organisation, continued attacks on employees are deepening a fractious debate over staff security.
At the core of the argument is whether the United Nations can provide security for employees in hostile arenas and whether to risk the safety of aid workers who provide food, medicine and other life-saving supplies to beleaguered populations.
Humanitarians around the world were aghast when masked attackers shot dead Ibrahim Hussein Duale, a UN aid worker in his native Somalia, while he made sure that schoolchildren in the southern village of Yubsan received regular food parcels. Duale, 44, a World Food Programme (WFP) officer, was among at least 28 UN civilian staff members killed worldwide last year. 
After the slaying of Duale in the Gedo region in January 2009, the WFP boss Josette Sheeran paid tribute to a “good, honest man” who left behind a wife and five children while playing his role in a UN mission to feed more than 1.5 million people in a lawless land.
His killer, a member of an armed group, was ordered to compensate Duale’s family with 100 female camels after a five-day trial in March 2009 – the ruling of a Sharia court in Bardhubo, a town under the control of the hard-line Islamist group Shabab and its allies.
With about one third of Somalia’s 10 million people desperately needing food and other supplies, UN bosses were loath to withdraw aid workers from the country, only suspending WFP deliveries to southern Somalia in January. Agency chiefs said attacks on staff were “making it virtually impossible to reach up to up to one million” recipients.
Edoardo Bellando, from the UN Staff Union Committee on the Security and Independence of the International Civil Service, described the dilemma over sacrificing aid-dependent civilians to ensure the security of humanitarian workers as a “problem from hell”.
“There is always this impossible balance that the UN is trying to strike, between being there and assisting people, and showing the flag and keeping a presence and keeping the impression of normalcy and order, and preserving the lives of its own staff,” he said.
While the United Nations was perceived as neutral during the Cold War, the world body has become viewed as an extension of western interests since the 1990s, increasingly being targeted by hard-line Islamists and other extremists in high-profile attacks, including a suicide bomb attack in October 2009 on the fortified WFP office in Islamabad that killed four Pakistani staff. 
Finbarr Curran, a Dubai-based WFP official, said UN staffers were seldom deterred by gunmen and bomb attacks – even the locally hired lorry drivers who feature more often among the death tallies than their international colleagues.
“I was talking to these people, the people who suffered and who will carry the scars for the rest of their lives,” he said of the victims of the WFP blast in Islamabad. “Their resolve was steely, and they didn’t see it because they were UN, but because they were living in communities of people affected by hunger.
“One of the victims talked about how lucky he was to be in a position to help the rest of his people. He was a locally recruited Pakistani. He thought that God had given him a second chance to continue the work.”
Insiders describe a desire to remain in hot spots, with aid workers often pitted against their guardians from the UN’s Department of Safety and Security.
“Most of these people are there because they believe in what they are doing, helping people in need,” Mr Bellando said. “They manage to overcome the shock, the loss, the grief. There is camaraderie in these places: an esprit de corps. Very few ask to be evacuated.”

SIPRI: Britain’s BAE World’s Largest Death Merchant 
SIPRI Rankings Say BAE World’s Biggest Weapons Firm (AFP)
-In 2008, the 100 biggest defense groups had arms sales of $385 billion, up 11 percent from the previous year, according to SIPRI.
“This is more than three times the size of the total development aid of OECD countries in 2008,” SIPRI said, noting that such aid reached $120 billion.
Putting the data in perspective, SIPRI said that arms sales of Lockheed Martin alone topped U.S. development aid by $4 billion, and that BAE Systems’ sales were greater than the gross domestic product of 105 countries.
Britain’s BAE Systems topped an international ranking of the world’s biggest arms groups, becoming the first non-American company to hold the spot, a leading defense think tank said April 12.
The British group knocked defense giant Boeing out of the top position in 2008, according to the ranking of biggest defense groups worldwide tallied by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
“The main reason that BAE became the largest arms-producing company in the world in 2008 is the increase in its U.S. sales, which outpaced decreases elsewhere, including in the U.K.,” the think tank said in the study.
With arms sales in 2008 of $29.2 billion (21.6 billion euros), Boeing fell from first place in 2007 to third, following BAE Systems ($32.4 billion) and Lockheed Martin ($29.4 billion).
It was followed by three U.S. firms – Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon. Others in the top 10 included EADS (7th place), Italian firm Finmeccanica (8th), L-3 Communications (9th) and France’s Thales (10th).
The biggest Russian group on the list, air defense systems maker Almaz-Antei, was 18th on the list.
In 2008, the 100 biggest defense groups had arms sales of $385 billion, up 11 percent from the previous year, according to SIPRI.
“This is more than three times the size of the total development aid of OECD countries in 2008,” SIPRI said, noting that such aid reached $120 billion.
Putting the data in perspective, SIPRI said that arms sales of Lockheed Martin alone topped U.S. development aid by $4 billion, and that BAE Systems’ sales were greater than the gross domestic product of 105 countries.
SIPRI’s rankings focus on companies’ arms sales, which make up only 48 percent of Boeing’s turnover and 70 percent of Lockheed Martin’s revenues. In BAE’s case, arms sales make up a far larger share of its sales, with 95 percent of the total.
Born out of the merger of Marconi and British Aerospace in 1999, BAE Systems counts among its products the Eurofighter combat aircraft, the Bradley tank and the Astute submarine.
With 59 percent of BAE Systems’ sales coming from the U.S. arms market, the group has major production operations in the country as well as in Britain, Sweden, South Africa and Sweden.
“BAE really shows the increasing internationalization of the arms industry and the attractiveness of the U.S. market,” SIPRI arms industry expert Susan Jackson said.
The group has benefited from sales of mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles to the U.S. government for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Norwegian Foreign Policy In The Middle East by Theodore Karasik and Mr. Matthew Hedges (INEGMA)
Norway’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a vastly understudied topic. Since the end of World War II, Oslo has specialized in peacekeeping, peacemaking, humanitarian missions, and post-conflict action. Norway is present among peacekeeping operations throughout the region. This effort sprung from Norway becoming a mediator in peace talks with the 1993 Oslo Accords standing out as their biggest achievement to date. Norway has worked towards its goals of attempting to achieve peace resolution in the Middle East through its extensive links of NGO’s who promote trade, humanitarian missions and cultural ties. Norway is also, like the rest of the world, seriously interested in the region due to economic reasons. Oslo is linked with the region because of its extensive use of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) which some of the GCC states have made so famous in recent times.
Peacekeeping and Peacemaking
The aspect of Norway’s peacekeeping focus is greatly translated into their humanitarian efforts. For example, Oslo is present in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon) contingent in leadership and personnel. UNIFIL’s mandate is to act as a disengagement force between Israel and Lebanon and oversee the cease-fire under the terms of UN Resolution 1701 that ended the summer 2006 Israeli war and help Lebanese regular forces establish control over the border area along Israeli-Lebanese borders. Norway is also part of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Here the MFO is in place to oversee the peace treaty that is in force between Egypt and Israel. The Norwegian Contingent (NORCON) consists of five staff officers. They hold the following key positions: Chief of Operations (Colonel), Force Commander’s Military Executive Assistant (Lieutenant Colonel) Force Commander’s driver (2nd Lieutenant) and two Force Field Liaison Officers (Majors). Although small in numbers, NORCON has served since the MFO’s inception. Finally, Norway has been engaged in reconciliation efforts in the Middle East, and has taken part in the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) since 1956. The Government attaches considerable importance to Norway’s participation in UN-led operations. Today, UNTSO is made up of 151 military observers from 23 countries, who are posted in South Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel. UNTSO was established in 1948, and is one of the UN’s oldest peacekeeping organizations.
Oslo appears to be a good neutral mediator with business interests in the region and potential good business partner who is active politically and in humanitarian efforts. Both UNIFIL and MFO are in place to keep what peace there is and to prevent conflict from escalating at a modest level. Norway’s neutrality was the perfect base for the negotiations which happened in parallel to the Madrid Conference in 1991. The Oslo Accords were orchestrated by then-Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Johan Jorgen Holst, and Norwegian specialist on Palestinian issues Terje Rod-Larsen. Larsen went on to be the Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories for the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Larsen, seen as an expert in the Middle East Peace Process negotiations, was also involved in the aftermath of the Israeli-Lebanon war in 2006. Larsen was also the UN Special Representative for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559. Significantly, these interventions in conflicts have helped to place Norway centrally as a neutral mediator in two massive peace processes in the Middle East.
Humanitarian Efforts
Norway also assists in other post-conflict situations. The main NGO involved is the Norwegian Refugee Council (NCR). The NRC provides temporary housing and providing essential supplies including food and medicine. The NRC operates in all post-conflict surroundings in the Middle East, from Somalia to Afghanistan to Lebanon. The NRC’s operations are well documented and perform humanitarian missions in areas with difficult political circumstances.
However, Norway’s NGO’s have come under some scrutiny in the past from Western sources due to their involvement in two conflict situations. Firstly in Sudan in 2000, the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) was seen to lengthen the conflict in Sudan due to their direct support of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The NPA was seen to have breached neutrality and taken sides within the internal Sudanese conflict. They had reportedly supplied transport, material and arms for the SPLA which is against their mission statement. The second apparent breach of neutrality was their involvement in Saddam’s Iraq. Norwegian NGO’s were operating in Iraq under the oil for food program and were able to transport goods around the country by plane, something which the Iraqi government couldn’t do at the time for the protection of minority groups. While conducting these operations, there were rumors of nefarious activity although no hard proof was made available. What was occurring, all far too often with humanitarian NGOs, was that Norwegian NGO’s were becoming intertwined with the forces that drive these conflicts.
Recently Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) entered into an agreement with The Norwegian Shipowners Association to support humanitarian efforts in Somalia and work to strengthen various institutions on land with the aim to secure a future for the Somali people so they do not have to continue the piracy activity. Because a solution to the piracy issue in the Gulf of Aden is directly linked to securing peaceful coexistence and stable institutions in Somalia.
Economic Affairs
>From an economic point of view, something which is beginning to take more and more emphasis in modern day foreign policy, Norway is widely represented and growing in the Middle East. Firstly Hydro, the fourth largest aluminum company worldwide, is developing Qatalum in Qatar. This is the largest aluminum project ever constructed. Hydro, who main stakeholder is the Norwegian government, is looking to invest further in the GCC infrastructure.
Natural resources are as vital, due to Norway’s own reserves. From these past experiences, something which is long running, there are many Norwegian oil companies present in the GCC as well as in Iraq and Libya. In the UAE, a major tender deadline for UAE drilling is in 2014, and it is expected that there will be further investment from Norwegian oil companies. The discovery of a new oil field in Dubai is seen as a boost for the tender In Iraq, Statoil and Lukoil recently won the West Qurna Phase 2 oil field, which is larger in reserves than the entire Norwegian oil resources accumulated. This is a major win for Norway´s largest oil company and is part of Statoi´s international plans to expand and grow its business internationally. Much like the GCC states, the profits from the oil reserves, both abroad and in Norway, are put aside and placed into Oslo’s SWF. The Norwegian National Oil Fund (The Pension Fund – Global) is now worth NOK 2,522 billion, and has become the world’s largest sovereign wealth after the funds of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. As of August 2009, Norway’s SWF held one percent of all global stocks.
Conclusion
For GCC states, the implications of Norway’s stance and role within the Middle East can be an example to follow. When compared to other historical allies of Middle Eastern states, such as Britain, France or even the United States, Norway isn’t seen as having a diminished colonial history or an aggressive modern foreign policy. But Norway is not the United States, Britain or France when it comes to regional influence and persuasion.
Norway’s role in Iraq and Afghanistan are limited. In Iraq, only 150 personnel were stationed there and were mostly engineers and mine clearers. It was clearly stated by the Bondevik II Government that the Norwegian forces were not part of the invasion force and they were not an aggressor but on the ground for post-conflict assistance. In Afghanistan, Norway sent 500 troops. Unlike in the past, these Norwegian forces were offensive units, from Special Forces units, to F-16 Jets. There are also passive ground units with the Norwegian’s taking the lead role in the provincial reconstruction team in the Faryab province. The Afghan mission is emerging as a slight twist on Norway’s historical approach to conflict. In the Sea of Aden, Norway´s Special Forces Branch has also been assisting with the frigate KNM Fridtjof Nansen, to join the NATO-led anti-piracy operation there.
The emphasis Norway has on its humanitarian role within the Middle East is a beacon of good will which helps translate into their diplomatic sphere of influence. Oslo’s mantle as a neutral power within the Middle East peace process benefits from their other roles within the Middle East. On a diplomatic level, Norway seems to have adopted a progressive active approach. The neutral and passive diplomatic view held by Norway helps to forge lasting relationships. These relationships have also been cemented by the economic security by which Norway rests upon and invests from. Norway’s SWF resources have helped to diversify Norway’s assets and to strengthen the country’s resources around the world and in the Middle East in particular.
For the GCC the relationship may not be as fruitful as a defensive relationship with the United States, Britain, or France but has other benefits. It is for exactly this reason that the GCC states can look to build upon a relationship with Norway in all three of the above-mentioned fields. Norway’s expertise in conflict mediation and resolution and its involvement in peacekeeping, peacemaking, humanitarian missions, and post-conflict action should be seen by GCC countries as a positive attribute that helps cement cross-regional relations. Norway is a potentially safe and stable long term partner which the GCC states can look to for inputs on security and investment. 
(*) Dr. Theodore Karasik is Director, R&D, INEGMA, and Mr. Matthew Hedges is Research Assistant, INEGMA. This article was produced by INEGMA, the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis based in Dubai.
[N.B.: It is, however, interesting to note that wherever NPA or NCA are active, there are oil or other mineral resources underground. Norway also played a dubious role in the elaboration of a Memorandum of Understanding between Somali and Kenyan politicians concerning the maritime boundary between the two countries in connection with the delineation of the 350nm Continental Shelf Zone and the International Seabed Agreement. The MoU was later  rejected by the Somali Parliament and cancelled by the UN, but it seems that the oil-interests of Norway had been a driving force. Worse even and though Norway is not an EU member, the Norwegian Navy sailed under the disguise of EU NAVFOR's Operation Atalanta along the Somali coast inside the territorial waters without any permission or authority, when in an unwarranted midnight raid their commando troops in speedboats killed in November 2009 two innocent fishermen inside a natural harbour - one of Yemeni and one Somali nationality, while injuring others. The case is still pending.]

What is the Point of Government? by Jo Owen
General elections spawn a surfeit of pontificating politicians, which in turn generates a tidal wave of cynicism from the public, along the lines of “they are all the same and they are all in it for themselves”. It raises the obvious question: “what is the point of government?” 
How you answer will determine whether you vote, and for whom. 
To see what government is all about, it helps to see what happens when you don’t have a government. I’ve spent time with some with refugees from Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for 15 years. The number one thing they want from any government is the rule of law: if you cannot walk down the street safely, you become very grateful to any warlord, thug or religious militia to guarantee your safety (at a price). And without the rule of law, business is impossible: you cannot enforce contracts without goodwill or a Kalashnikov. 
Beyond the rule of law they want water, health and education. In that order. Try living without water for a week — see how long the rule of law lasts.  Water counts. Health and education are relative luxuries. 
In the rural, tribal areas I’ve ask the same question: what do you want from government? Again, the rule of law is the number one request. Beyond that, they reverse the urban priorities. The top priority is investing in the next generation: education. Health and water are relative luxuries because they can access their own local remedies and local sources of water. 
All of this would delight 18th century Enlightenment thinkers who saw the prime role of government as being the rule of law. In 1776 Thomas Paine made the revolutionary point:  ”in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king” 
Note what is absent from the wish list: pensions, social security, regulations about the size of bananas, subsidies for the Olympics, businesses and other worthy causes. These are, relatively speaking, bourgeois luxuries which we enjoy. 
Business wants what the Somali refugees, Thomas Paine and the tribal elders all want: the rule of law and stability. 
Pretty much everything else is either wasted subsidy, pointless interference or damaging regulation. So how much does the UK government spend on its primary obligation to its citizens? Just 2.5 percent of its total budget. So where does the other 97.5 percent go to: duck houses?

Who gets to decide what countries are ‘safe?’ by Guidy Mamann (migrationlaw.com)
Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is well-intentioned. However, I don’t think he has carefully thought through one of the key proposals in his refugee reform bill.
Kenney wants to discourage people who are citizens of safe and democratic countries from reaching our shores and making bogus refugee claims, which will allow them to stay and work here, and possibly even take advantage of our health and social services.
I am sure we are all on board with him on that.
He wants to see these people gone as quickly as possible. And so, he proposes to create two lines for refugees; a regular line where people from “un-safe” countries (perhaps Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.) will have up to two chances to appeal a refusal of their asylum claim and an express line for people from “safe and democratic” countries (perhaps, the U.S., Mexico, France, etc.) who would only have one chance to appeal a refusal. It is proposed that the Immigration and Refugee Board will continue to hear all of these claims but that it will do so in two months instead of the nineteen months it is currently taking.
Who will be deciding which countries are “safe and democratic” and which are not?
Kenney wants this job.
I think this idea is nothing short of crazy, not for any reasons whatsoever relating to the rights of refugees but, because it will unleash a torrent of foreign policy and international trade issues for Canada that I don’t believe have been properly considered by anyone. I am strengthened in my view by the fact that the government has not even acknowledged this potential problem, let alone offered any solutions for it.
If this proposal is adopted, no doubt the U.S. will be the first country designated as “safe,” since the IRB almost always rejects American claims and because the U.S. is our biggest trading partner, a member of NAFTA, and our closest ally. However, in 2009 the IRB accepted the claims of seven American “refugees.”
What will Kenney do when Mexico, a constitutional democracy and also a NAFTA partner, comes knocking for Kenney’s designation that it is a “safe and democratic” country? While that may sound like a natural to most, the IRB accepted 516 out of about 6,000 Mexican refugee claims processed in 2009. What will Kenney, say “safe” or “unsafe”?
How about China? Officially, “Canada is seeking to broaden its relationship with that country at all levels.” In 2008, Canada exported $10.5 billion of goods to China, one of the world’s largest economies. What will Kenney do if China asks him to designate it a “safe” country? In 2009, the IRB accepted 990 of the 1,700 (i.e. 57 per cent) refugee claims it received from China. Clearly, China can’t be considered safe…but who is going to tell that to the Chinese?
Israel is a vibrant democracy, one of Canada’s closest allies, and enjoys excellent relations with the Tory government. In 2008, fourteen refugee claims were accepted from this country. So… safe or not safe?
If Kenney wants bogus claimants out of Canada fast, all he has to do is pick up the phone and call the chairman of the IRB and ask him what resources are needed to pick up the pace on frivolous claims. I am certain that all we need is some heavy lifting and not a new classification system that will force us to classify every country on the planet including our close and our not-so-close trading partners and political allies.
Presently, if the IRB grants asylum to a person from a safe country, our immigration minister can distance himself from the decision since it was made by an independent tribunal. Under the current system he can express his disapproval by appealing the decision to the Federal Court and even point to Canada’s independent judiciary for any embarrassing decisions. Under this new proposal, such decisions will draw heavy and persistent political pressure to designate or undesignated a country.
I have no doubt that Kenney is fashioning for himself and his predecessors a job that they will soon regret holding because of the enormous implications a misclassification can have on Canada’s foreign policy and on its international trade. 
(*) Guidy Mamann practices law in Toronto at Mamann, Sandaluk and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as an immigration specialist.

Bloody Harvest:- The Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs by David Kilgour
The main conclusion of the book “is that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners. We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and ‘people’s courts’, since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.”
>From the 52 kinds of evidence we examined, our finding did not come from any single piece, but from their cumulative effect. Each is verifiable in itself and most are incontestable.
In combination, they constitute a damning overall picture of guilt.
Have the efforts of many in China and around the world, including our independent report, to stop this new crime against humanity made a difference? The book points at various developments within and beyond China, including these:
# Chinese patients are since June. 26, 2007 given priority access to organ transplants, taking precedence over foreigners;
# Web sites in China which used to advertise prices of organ transplants and short waiting times for transplants have disappeared;
# We have archived the sites, but the sites are no longer visible from their sources;
# The government of China now accepts that this sourcing of organs from prisoners is improper. Deputy Health Minister Huang Jeifu, at the time of the announcement of an organ donor pilot project in August 2009, stated that executed prisoners “are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants”. Since we began our work, there have been significant initiatives outside China.
# Taiwan banned the visit of Chinese doctors brokering organ transplants.
# The major transplant hospitals in Queensland, Australia have banned training Chinese surgeons.
# Israel passed a law banning the sale and brokerage of organs. It also ended its funding through the health insurance system of transplants for their nationals in China.
# A Belgian senator Patrik Vankrunkelsven and a Canadian Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj have each introduced into the Parliament of his country extraterritorial legislation banning transplant tourism. The proposed legislation would, when enacted, penalise any transplant patient who receives an organ without consent of the donor where the patient knew or ought to have known of the absence of consent.
# The World Medical Association entered into an agreement with the Chinese Medical Association that organs of prisoners and other individuals in custody must not be used for transplantation except for members of their immediate family.
# The Transplantation Society opposed the transplantation of organs from prisoners and the presentations of studies involving patient data or samples from recipients of organs or tissues from prisoners.
These changes are not sufficient to resolve the abuse on which we have reported. On the contrary, for Falun Gong practitioners, matters have got worse, not better. Since we began our work, the number of prisoners sentenced to death and then executed has decreased quite dramatically, but the number of transplants, at first fell only a little, and then went back to earlier levels. Since the only other substantial source of organs for transplants in China besides Falun Gong practitioners is prisoners sentenced to death, a decrease of sourcing from prisoners sentenced to death means an increase of sourcing from Falun Gong practitioners. Though the violations against Falun Gong practitioners have become more acute since our work began, the substantial movement in policy and practice both inside and outside China encourages us. The willingness to change is there. We all need to continue to press for changes until the abuse ends.
Forced Labour Exports 
The last issue I’ll deal with for time reasons is forced labour by Falun Gong and others across China and the implications for manufacturing jobs in Quebec, the rest of Canada and elsewhere. The network of labour camps today in China has existed since the 1950s, when Mao modelled them closely on the ones created in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Third Reich. In China even today, it requires only a police signature to commit
someone to a labour camp for up to four years. No hearings and no appeals in the best totalitarian tradition. 
In researching our report on allegations that Falun Gong practitioners were being killed for their organs in China, David Matas and I visited about a dozen countries to interview practitioners who had been sent to forced labour camps, but who had later managed to leave the camps and the country itself.
They told us of working in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay, little food, cramped sleeping conditions together on the floor, and torture. Their labour involved making export products, ranging from clothing to chopsticks to Christmas decorations, no doubt as unnamed subcontractors to exporters.
One estimate of the number of these so-called “re-education through labour” camps across China as of 2005 was 340, with a capacity of about 300,000 workers. Other estimates of the numbers of inmates are much higher. In 2007, a US government report estimated that at least half of the inmates in the camps were Falun Gong.
It is of course the combination of totalitarian governance and “anything is permitted” economics which allows such inhuman export production to continue.
I might mention that a Montreal friend told me some time ago that he estimates that there are up to fifty manufacturers in this province alone, who have been assisted by federal government agencies to move production from Quebec to China. My phone call in Ottawa to the Export Development Corporation did not produce confirmation; nor did it evoke a denial.
One well-known example of this pattern is Goodyear Tire, which terminated more than 800 Quebec jobs a few years ago in order to avail itself of the advantages of a plant in China.
Not long after its Montreal area plant closed and soon thereafter the US government declared that tires made in China were a safety hazard. No taxpayer money should be used to send Canadian jobs to China or anywhere outside our country.
I now turn the floor over to my friend and colleague, David Matas, who was yesterday admitted to the Order of Canada by the Governor General at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
(*) David Kilgour is the former Canadian Secretary of State for Africa

No US President Hanged Under Nuremberg Principles Obama Bellicose Bombs On Tempts Fate by Jay Janson (OpEdNews) 
This week Obama has openly threatened to use nuclear weapons in first strike on Iran and North Korea. Last week he increased the bombing in Pakistan and recently permitted the taking of even greater amounts of Afghani lives restating claims of self-defense for the 9/11 attack (by Saudis in American aircraft). Obama gives the same 9/11 explanation for U.S. bombing in Somalia and Yemen. 
Obama seems to be dictating to the world what is right and what is wrong and punishable by us bombing with incredibly blunt wording, “We will not attack nations” [referring to nuclear attack], the president stated, that “play by the rules.”
Most of the world and certainly America’s Financial Military Industrial Complex expects U.S. presidents to act without much regard for international law or respect for lives of non-Americans. “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every postwar American president would have been hanged.” Noam Chomsky spoke in 1990 and went on to cite their crimes against humanity. http://www.chomsky.info/talks/1990—-.htm
This is still the age of U.S. world domination and Obama doesn’t look worried about a change and possible curtailment of his apparent immunity from prosecution for war crimes in his lifetime.
To be sure, Obama is not a president of some nation the size of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Milosevic’ Serbia, Pinochet’s Chile, Sharon’s Israel or even Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan, whose leaders were tried, arrested or accused in court of Crimes Against Humanity. Furthermore, the UN has agreed that U.S. citizens shall not be charged of war crimes in the new International Criminal Court, and decisions of the International Court of Justice at the Hague are not binding and only voluntarily accepted and adhered to.

However, in the world of financial clout that often underlies political, and ultimately military, prerogatives, things are changing ever more rapidly. Though the U.S. even before reaching preeminent superpower status has been able to act with impunity, a near future scenario of it losing its homicidal bully privileges is calculatedly imaginable. And Obama is young enough to be still be alive during such a change.
Former high American officials have been sued in courts around the world. Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and a few others, generals included, at last look, still had cases pending for lives taken on their orders according to the plaintiffs. 
The accused, and others with guilty consciences, make foreign travel plans wary of exposing themselves to the reach of courts in nations whose judicial tribunals have in the past claimed jurisdiction regarding crimes committed against their citizens abroad. 
Even former president George Bush the second, recalling at least one attempted citizens arrest upon him in Canada, will be advised caution on entering at least some foreign lands.
In October 2009, the Brussell Tribunal, representing hundreds of prominent public figures from all over the world, working with and on behalf of Iraqi plaintiffs, filed a case before the Audiencia Nacional of Spain against four U.S. presidents and four UK prime ministers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq. The case presented spanned 19 years, including not only the wholesale destruction of Iraq witnessed from 2003, but also the sanctions period during which 1.5 million excess Iraqi deaths were recorded. This lawsuit in a Spanish Court was directed against George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown.
When America is no longer dictating from a position of ownership of nearly half the world’s resources, such cases might well not be automatically dismissed from investigation by courts wherever. A less ominously capable U.S. might find itself the object of in serious lawsuits brought by governments of nations previously cowed by America’s ability to punish economically any trouble-makers.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at a meeting with American Veterans yesterday in Hanoi, urges the United States government “to take responsibility for solving the aftermath of its war with Vietnam”emphasizing that more than two million Vietnamese were killed, millions more were injured, and more than 300,000 are still missing, three million were exposed to toxic chemicals like Agent Orange sprayed by the U.S. military during the war. He further urged the U.S. government to “listen to its conscience.” Some future Vietnamese PM might be emboldened by a weakened U.S. to seek prosecution rather than to merely urge.
When U.S. power wanes as a half century of living beyond its means takes its toll, will the world not revolt against this American immunity from prosecution only begrudgingly respected by other large nations today? When no longer forced to accept American hegemony for being so inextricably interlocked in the U.S. dominated global capitalism system, will nations put up with such arrogance? When no longer feeling compromised by their reluctant acquiescence or collaboration in U.S. crimes against humanity? 
When the U.S. is forced to renege on its debt to international creditors, is unable to do otherwise but sell off enough to survive bankruptcy, will it not lose the economic pre-eminence that backs up its claim to exceptional treatment before international laws?
2010, the U.S. still enjoys the support of foreign stooges and compliant servants of its financial-political-military empire and willing co-conspiritors like Russia and China, but what if the Secretary of the UN were to become a representative of the aspirations of majority mankind? Not a Ban Ki-Moon, but an forthright dynamic leader appointed by a UN General Assembly aware of its primacy within the original intended structure of the United Nations.
(The UN‘s founders’ saw the General Assembly as the basis of the UN. The chapter on the UN General Assembly appears in the Charter before the chapters on the Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice and Secretariat.)
Whoa! Could be a different ball game regarding U.S. preferential treatment and immunity for its presidents. 
U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974, which declares: ‘Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State’, and listed seven specific examples,” including:
“The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; and
Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State.”
The UN resolution also stated that: “No consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression.”
During these decades of U.S. control of the UN, U.S. Commanders in Chief have been able to ignore its non-binding resolutions, but in the coming international political rearrangement the big powers might effect a restraining surveillance and empowerment to bring all war crimes committing heads of state to justice – conceivably without a statute of time limitation.
From time to time conscience stricken prominent Americans have made waves for U.S. presidents committing war crimes. A Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Gen. Telford Taylor was so bold as the say he would have been proud to have prosecuted the U.S. airmen shot down and captured while bombing the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. We can derive from this impassioned statement what Tayor’s judgment was of the presidents that sent down the orders for pilots like John McCain to partake in crimes against humanity.

Indeed already during the time of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi and Japanese generals, U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes. LeMay commanded the massive incendiary attacks on 64 Japanese cities. Clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm killed more than 500,000 Japanese civilians and left 5 million homeless. Some 40% of the built-up areas of 66 cities were destroyed, according to U.S. Army estimates. Aircrews at the tail end of the bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target. [Wikipedia] Various American generals have expressed the opinion that they could have been tired for war crimes under the same Nuremberg definitions. 
“The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street.”Telford Taylor
Another Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, “If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” 
Thereafter, how many wars have American presidents either lost or failed to win? The mass atrocities against the Vietnamese and their neighbors in Laos and Cambodia seem compounded by their utter futility – at least in hindsight. 
So the Government of United States of America, a co- founder of the Nuremberg Principles, subsequently adopted as international law has General Assembly, ironically has allowed its presidents, like Obama today , to have been in horrendous violations of the very laws it helped create define crimes against humanity and their punishments. Can this contradiction go on being overlooked or forgiven?
Obama has indicated his response to the Nuremberg War Tribunal law regarding wars of aggression, 
“This war [in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen] was thrust upon us. We were brutally attacked on 9/11″ (referring to Arabs from none of the above countries).
And we can suppose that Obama, a good politician and debater, would find words to weave around the rest of the Nuremberg Principles as described below. It would be a jury, judge or panel of judges that would decide whether to convict or find him innocent. 
Principle Six (below) might prove challenging even for the cleverness of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was able to praise Martin Luther King, but he would bury his teaching in an acceptance speech defending war as necessary and unavoidable.
The Nuremberg Principles - part of the UN body jurisprudence.
Principle I states, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.”
Principle II “The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.”
Principle III ”The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”
Principle IV ”The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”. 
Principle V ”Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.”
Principle VI states:
“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). (b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. (c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
Principle VII ”Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”

Obama seems destined to play out his front man role in the world political economy of America’s wild capitalist imperialism. That we, with all the wonderful ordinary Americans around us, follow a fool is most lamentable. In a way, those who accept his leadership and encourage his homicidal foolishness are even more pathetic than Obama. If he ever stands trial for our crimes against humanity, in the eyes of the world, we will be in the dock alongside him. 

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DO ALL THE PEOPLE AND CITIZENS OF THE UNITED/DIVIDED? STATES OF NORTH-AMERICA REALLY WANT THAT THE “REST OF THE WORLD” PERCEIVES THEM BY THESE DEEDS OF WAR-DOGS UNLEASHED BY THEIR MILITARY-CORPORATE-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX ON FOREIGN SOIL, BECAUSE THEY DO NOTHING TO RESTRAIN THEM ?????  Watch: www.collateralmurder.com/ (graphic content!) 
Where is the difference to those who say they fight for humankind? - see THIS or other VIDEOS (graphic content!)
Where are the people to stop this total madness ?  ALL MUST STAND UP AND SAY NO MORE!
ECOTERRA members in North America will demonstrate for troop withdrawal and a decade of peace from 19. April 2010 onwards together with hundredthousand other U.S. Americans, who have withdrawn their support for that war-machinery and standing united say loud and clear: THAT IS NOT US ! and YES, WE CAN KEEP PEACE !

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We do not send pictures with these reports, because of the volume, but picture this emetic scene with your inner eye:
A dying Somali child in the macerated arms of her mother besides their bombed shelter with Islamic graffiti looks at a fat trader, who discusses with a local militia chief and a UN representative at a harbour while USAID provided GM food from subsidised production is off-loaded by WFP into the hands of local “distributors” and dealers – and in the background a western warship and a foreign fishing trawler ply the waters of a once sovereign, prosper and proud nation, which was a role model for honesty and development in the Horn of Africa. (If you feel that this is overdrawn – talk to people who lived in Somalia in the 70s and 80s and come with us into Somalia and see the even more cruel reality today for yourself!) 
- and if you need lively stills or video material on Somalia, please do contact us.   

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