Ecoterra Press Release 216 – The Somalia Chronicle June – December 2009, no 28

Following the Somalia Spring 2009 Chronicles, I herewith republish the Ecoterra press releases issued in the second half of 2009. I reproduce the integral version of all Ecoterra press releases in a recapitulative effort to provide the global readership with the most comprehensive collection of texts published worldwide about the most abominable Western postcolonial involvement in Africa, namely the systematic effort of extermination of the Somali Nation. The vast documentation provided serves as basic point of reference to students, researchers, analysts and intellectuals.

ECOTERRA Intl.

SMCM

Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor

ECOTERRA INTERNATIONAL - UPDATES & STATEMENTS, REVIEW & CLEARING-HOUSE

2009-07-24 FRI 22h55:43 UTC

Issue No. 216

A Voice from the Truth- & Justice-Seekers, who sit between all chairs, because they are not part of organized white-collar or no-collar-crime in Somalia or elsewhere, and who neither benefit from global naval militarization, from the illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters or the piracy of merchant vessels, nor from the booming insurance business or the exorbitant ransom-, risk-management- or security industry, while neither the protection of the sea, the development of fishing communities or the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell

EA ILLEGAL FISHING AND DUMPING HOTLINE: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia[at]ecoterra.net

EA Seafarers Assistance Programme EMERGENCY HELPLINE : SMS to +254-738-497979 or sms/call +254-733-633-733

"The pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream !"

Cpt. Florent Lemaçon - F/Y Tanit - killed by French commandos - 10. April 2009 / Ras Hafun

NON A LA GUERRE - YES FOR PEACE

(Inscription on the sail of F/Y TANIT - shot down on day one of the French assault)

"... obligation to fight oppression and cruelty wherever it appears, and that any group of people who are degrading another group of people have to be fought against with whatever tools we have available to us. "

B. H. Obama - US-American President, who said also: The world has changed ! YES, WE CAN !

Clearing-house: Cut out the clutter - focus on facts !

Breaking:

Turkish navy frigate and commandos admit they captured 5 Somali "pirates"

The navy commandos, aided by a helicopter, raided a skiff as the pirates on board were about to launch an attack on a ship, the military said in a statement. Commandos raided the skiff Friday morning allegedly upon a request to block it before it could attack a ship.

But no details of a distress call or the name of the allegedly attacked vessel has been provided.

In a weekly press conference yesterday, Metin Gürak, chief of the communications department of the General Staff, stated that the Gediz rendered the band of Somali pirates ineffective as a result of the operation. "Five pirates were captured after our frigate was informed about their preparations to seize another ship off the Somali coast. Our frigate was assisted by a helicopter from the TCG Gaziantep," stated Gürak.

Revenge?

A Turkish ship was seized last week by Somali pirates with 23 crew members aboard. Pirates are still in negotiations with the ship owners over ransom. Aysun Akbay, a female captain, was also among crew members.

Akbay, 24, has been working for the company that owns the Horizon I for two months and had been assigned as the fourth officer on the hijacked ship.

The TCG Gediz last month set sail from Turkey to Somalia as part of a UN-led force to prevent pirates from hijacking foreign ships off the Somali coast and was the second Turkish ship sent to the region. The Gediz is in the region for a one-year mission and has been part of the Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, a multinational counter-piracy task force established in January with a specific mandate to counter piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Another Turkish frigate, the Giresun, was sent to the region in February on a four-month mission. As of May, Turkey has taken over the command of CTF-151, which is one of four international naval forces operating in the region.

The Turkish Navy also did neither report to the UN, the Somali Government or its Anti Piracy Envoy.

News from sea-jackings, abductions, newly attacked ships and vessels in distress

Local elders have signalled readinesss to assist in thee medical evacuation of one crew member from MV ARIANA.

Negotiations concerning the release of MV HANSA STAVANGER, MV IRENE E.M., MV ARAINA, T/B BUCCANEER and FV WINFAR161 have so far not been successful.

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 14 foreign vessels (14 if M/S IO EXPLORER is truly "gone") with a total of not less than 203 crew members are accounted for (of which 44 are confirmed to be Filipinos) and are held in Somali waters. They 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. MV JAIKUR 1 remains in Mogadishu harbor, but is an insurance and not a piracy case - all foreign crew was evacuated. 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, incl. presently held ones) and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by a naval force. For 2009 the account stands at 149 attacks (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 47 sea-jackings on the Somali/Yemeni pirate side as well as at least three wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces. More than 116 Somalis are held in foreign prisons under charges of piracy. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also 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. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures. Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season in winter and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon season starting from mid February and early April every year.

Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: YELLOW IO: YELLOW (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Allegedly still/again two groups from Puntland alone are out hunting on the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean, where also groups from Harardheere have set out again, despite the heavy seas and the rough weather.

Directly piracy related reports

Somalia Focus: Q&A On Pirates, Politics, and Poverty

Piracy has been drawing huge attention to Somalia's shores in the past few years, but this is just one part of the country's complex profile. Somalia has been without an effective government since the collapse of its socialist system in 1991. Since then, the country has been embroiled in conflict as disparate groups vie for territory and power. The U.S. government believes one of these groups, Al Shabab, has links to al-Qaeda. The transitional Somali government formed in January 2009 continues to push for stability across the country. Within a population of almost 10 million, an estimated 3 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and 1.2 million have been displaced by the continuing violence. The threat of kidnapping has caused foreign aid groups to pull their international staff out of Somalia, while piracy has drawn much attention to the country's security issues.

Steve Hansch, Knowledge Management Director from the Open Society Institute, has recently returned from a research trip to Somalia. He talked to the Huffington Post about Somali pirates, politics, conflict, and kidnapping.

Piracy began threatening international vessels in one of the main international shipping routes lying off the Somali coast after the collapse of the government there in 1991. Who are the pirates?

They are often unemployed young men, primarily from Puntland in Somalia, who have seen their fishing decline because of overfishing of their waters by international fishing. They've found that if they occasionally intercept people, the insurance companies reward them for it.

Has piracy been affecting the distribution of aid relief to the local civilian population?

No, the pirates have on occasion boarded food shipments, but overall an enormous amount of aid has been delivered. There's a completely different phenomenon going on in Somalia which I don't want to refer to as 'piracy'. In the central part of Somalia where the main aid needs are, aid workers and doctors have been taken hostage. It's obviously similar to the piracy, but it's not the same as boarding a ship. Now there are no longer ex-pat aid staff working in Somalia. The level of ex-pat aid staff working in the area is the lowest area per aid dollar spent in any country.

Have been saying for some time now that Somalia is a highly dangerous place to work in given the continued political instability, violence, and kidnappings. After the recent assaults on UN offices in Somalia, a UN official said yesterday that the UN would not 'back out' of the country, but is it feasible to continue humanitarian efforts in this environment?

A gang takes people hostage and hopes it will make them millionaires because the government of those hostages will step in and pay the ransom. Governments have created a market by being willing to pay millions of dollars. Most aid professionals are working for NGOs and the ransoms that have been paid have not been negotiated at the initiative of those organizations, which could use their position to work through mediators. Governments have leapfrogged the NGOs.

Are aid agency ex-pat staff likely to return in the coming months?

I don't know when they'll go back in. Crime is a funny thing. In the long term history, some things don't seem to change.

What is the situation regarding aid distribution now?

Aid is not just about taking stuff and distributing it. The largest share of U.S. government aid is in food aid, and it's being distributed through local Somali NGOs. But the more professional people from other countries are the people who would do the project supervising and monitoring, and they are not able to get through. One of the things humanitarian people do is make sure that key things are done; it's not just about spending dollars. That's been dramatically reduced, and that phenomenon is really being seen this year. Effectively in 2009, there are no ex-pats working in Somalia.

What are the prospects for humanitarian relief in Somalia?

By every measure I can think of, Somalia has gotten worse. In terms of access by aid professionals, Somalia is worse than any other country in the world. I'm concerned that the people who have most clout - western governments - are not exhibiting any sensitivity to the issue. They are all of one mind on terrorism and are pushing the government to militaristic solutions.

The longer term issue is how to we get the Somali people to not be dependent on our massive amounts of food aid. And so, in lack of a good answer, we keep doing things in Somalia for food aid which in the short term will help people from dying, even though we know we're creating the same dependency for next year. We are simultaneously doing a good thing from the point of view of saving lives, while addicting an economy to food aid.

The thing that the aid community does not do well is address the core problems of places like Darfur and Somalia regarding the lack of economic opportunities. No one has figured out how to engage these people in diverse industries. We should be putting all of our billions of dollars of aid into helping introduce industries and find ways for people to trade with one another and diversify.

So what should governments who are sending aid to Somalia be focusing on?

We shouldn't be pushing anything with regard to funding. Our governmental aid that tries to meddle in their government has the effect of reducing our ability to do humanitarian aid because it annoys Somalis. So, a lot of groups in Somali have kicked out NGOs. CARE has been largely pushed out in the last few months. The Somalis know the U.S. government is pushing money with democracy and governmental intentions behind it, and they resent that. They see the transitional government as a group that is relatively in bed with the international and western community.

How is the conflict continuing to affect Somalia?

The fundamental issue is not a conflict. It seems the Somali people as a community have not come together in a central way to support a central government. They value their independence a lot. The questions we are asking and the type of aid we are giving presume that Somalia wants to move towards our notion of government, with decisions being made from the top down. For me, the fundamental problem is that the economy - meaning what the majority of people live on and produce every day - is about as primary or undiversified as it was about a thousand years ago.

So while almost every other country in the world keeps creating new jobs, Somalis have been left behind. Relative to all of their neighbors, they keep getting poorer. And this is why we predict ongoing vulnerabilities.

The Kenyan government recently emphasized their intentions to close down the borders and stop weapon sales and militia recruitment from taking place in their country.

Ethiopia's military has been involved for years in supporting the transitional government.

Is the violence in Somalia likely to spread to neighbouring countries?

The simple answer is no. The more sublime answer is that the Ethiopian government is worried about it spreading, not so much as a conflict, but as an influence because they're a bit wary of the sizeable Muslim presence in their country.

The reason behind Piracy in Somalia

By Massip Farid Ikken for New African

The reasons behind piracy: piracy off the Somali coast has been headline news, but the media have neglected to say why the pirates do what they do. According to Somali accounts, the pirates have been hitting back at an international community that has allowed illegal fishing by international vessels in Somali waters, which has resulted in the near death of the local fishing industry. Massip Farid Ikken reports.

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE European Union-led Operation Atalanta off the Somali coast against pirates is to protect international vessels using those sea lanes against attacks by Somali pirates. There are 10 countries involved. The corvettes are allowed to respond with fire in case of an attack.

On the other side, the Somali prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, has been begging for help to control the illegal fishing by international crews in Somali waters, an action which, according to the prime minister, is the original reason for the piracy off the country's coast.

"I hope that the military vessels [involved in Operation Atalanta] will also combat the international vessels that are fishing illegally in our waters," Prime Minister Sharmarke said in May. "Illegal fishing has dramatically affected the lives of local fishermen as it has reduced their capacity to earn a living by fishing. As a result, they now try to survive by illegal means such as piracy, and attack the ships they consider as the reason for their poverty. At least 220 international boats have been fishing illegally in Somali waters," the prime minister revealed.

Sharmarke is not the only one who blames the heightened incidents of piracy off the Somali coast on illegal fishing by international crews. The well-known Somali author, Nuruddin Farah

Nuruddin Farah (born 1945) is a Somali novelist particularly concerned with women's liberation in postcolonial Somalia. Born in Baidoa, Italian Somaliland (temporarily under British control), Farah is the son of a merchant father and poet mother. , has been saying as much in recent months. When he addressed a meeting in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, this January, he strongly denounced the little attention given to the Somali pirates' side of the story. He bemoaned how the Western media has, as usual, told only one side of the story to suit Western interests while neglecting the very important concerns of the Somalis about illegal fishing in their territorial waters - an action that has blighted lives in fishing communities in the country, and which has led to increased piracy off the Somali coast in recent months.

"The media coverage has been onesided and superficial," Farah said. "The pirates are said to have earned colossal sums of money from their piracy. But where has all the money gone?" the writer wondered. When such a huge sum of money enters a poor country like Somalia, it should be noticed. The pirates would have spent their money on buying luxury cars and clothes and so on. And their families or neighbours would have been talking about it."

Farah continued: "An alternative would have been the pirates sending the money out of the country, to Europe or USA. Well, that is also a mystery since we know how difficult it is for average Africans to transfer money to Europe. I tried to send 3,000 pounds sterling from England to South Africa, it took nine weeks." Farah is widely considered one of Africa's greatest novelists. He won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He told the Stockholm meeting: "People should focus on more important things when considering the case of the Somali pirates. They should ask themselves why is there piracy off the Somali coast?

Who are these pirates?

"Most of them are former fishermen who have revolted against the international vessels stealing their fish. The huge fishing boats with their modern systems grab all the fish, leaving the local fishermen to go back home empty-handed to their starving families."

To worsen matters, the international vessels also dump chemical wastes off the Somali coast. According to Fatah, the result has been dramatic. It has not just destroyed the marine resources, the chemicals are also a health hazard for the local population.

Clive Schofield, an Australian scholar, has done a study on how Africa's largest fishing area (the Somalia coast) has been targeted by international vessels. In his book, Plundered Waters:

Somalia's Maritime Resource Insecurity., he writes about how for decades the marine resources off the Somali coast have been stolen by crews of international vessels, mostly without permits from the United Nations.

Another Australian, the journalist Connie Levett from the Sydney Morning Herald, has also been critical of the behaviour of international fishing boats along the African coasts. In November 2008, in an article headlined "Fishing vessels are pirates too", Levett referred to Schofieid's study and went further by naming and shaming ships from France, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (officially Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon, ancient Taprobane, officially Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, island republic), Yemen, Belize and Honduras for illegally exploiting Somalia's marine resources without any control. Similar voices have been raised in Germany. In a press release in May this year, the Africa consultant of the Society for Threatened Peoples (in German: Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (GfbV)) is a human rights organisation based in Göttingen, Germany. (GfbV), Ulrich Delius, declared:

"Instead of combating the causes [that provoke the Somali piracy], German politicians are acting nonsensically--just for the sake of acting. But gunboat diplomacy gunboat diplomacy will merely increase the violence instead of effectively stopping the piracy in the long term."

According to Delius, the only effective way of stopping the piracy is to take away the basis for it, ie, by stabilising Somalia as a country. Since 1991, Somalia has not had a central government controlling affairs in the country. Delius wants the international community to take measures to make preparations; to provide means to fight the poverty and misery in the country as part of the fight against piracy in Somali waters.

In September last year, Jawad Rhalib, the Belgian-Moroccan documentary maker, drew attention to himself by making a sensational documentary called The Damned of the Sea, which focused on vessels from England and Scotland that illegally fish in Moroccan waters. The huge modern boats have advanced computer systems that track the movement off fish.According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO, more than 2.6 million Somalis (35% of the population) are in urgent need of food aid, while 700 international vessels have been reported fishing illegally in the country's waters.

Marine ecosystem, IUU fishing and dumping, ecology

The Pirates — From a Different Angle

By Shlomo Bachrach

You´d never know it from the media, but the ´Somali pirates´ started out as the good guys.

When Siad Barre´s regime collapsed in 1991, official policing in Somalia disappeared on and offshore. On land, the result has been 18 years of anarchy — gang rule, civil war, no public services, chaos, etc.

Offshore, the scenario was different. Until 1991, Somalia´s coastal waters supported a small fishing industry that fed families, sent a little food to the cities and earned some export income from canning. The government sold fishing licenses and prevented the worst overfishing.

Without a government, it became global open season on Somalia´s fish. The local fishing industry was completely disrupted. Canning for export stopped. Local fish catches shrank as stocks were depleted by foreign fleets.

The first pirates were not Somali and weren´t called pirates. The victims, however, were Somalis and the world paid no attention:

Somalia´s enormous, resource-rich maritime domain is…threatened by rampant illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing on the part of foreign fishing vessels keen to exploit the absence of offshore surveillance and enforcement efforts. (data drawn from Plundered Waters: Somalia´s Maritime Resource Insecurity, a forthcoming paper by Clive Schofield, Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security).

Hundreds of foreign boats have fished in Somali waters in recent years, from Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Belize, Honduras, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Belize is a stand-in for France and Spain, both of whom have registered boats there to evade EU rules. Even when there was a government, Somalia´s small coast guard had its hands full patrolling the longest coastline in Africa — over 2000 miles long.

Most foreign pirates steal "tunas, largely yellowfin, longtail, bonito and skipjack, as well as big mackerels, such as Spanish mackerel". Some take anchovies, shark and several kinds of lobsters.

Estimates as to the value of [illegal]catches from Somalia´s maritime jurisdiction vary from in excess of US$90m to US$300m per year…(quoting UN figures). Several UN agencies — Food and Agriculture (FAO) and the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) have long known about the plundering of Somali resources, and that the criminal fishing fleets use fine mesh nets, illegal drag nets and even dynamite (reported in a recent Der Spiegel article).

Somalis don´t walk away from fights, but the foreign boats that muscled in on their territory were bigger and overpowered the locals, sometimes ramming their boats or dousing them with boiling water.

The Somalis wised up. The weapons bazaar in Mogadishu leveled the playing field, providing cheap AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades. Around 2006 the tide turned as the fisherman started taking more boats hostage. With their clever use of teams of small, fast boats operating from a mother ship they went further from shore and attacked bigger targets. They found it surprisingly easy, and the ransoms came rolling in.

The fishermen, victims of economic terrorism trying to feed their families, had turned the tables. The terrorists — the criminal fishermen — were protected by their governments, whose complaints today about the harm to shipping by today´s pirates reek of hypocrisy.

The new harvest from the sea soon caught the attention of the criminal gangs that dominate Somalia, who understood that there was richer prey than the odd fishing boat. Ten percent of the world´s commercial sea traffic passes through the Suez Canal and has to run the gauntlet of the Gulf of Aden off the Horn of Africa.

With a little seed money, maybe from ´investors´ in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, the coastal ´neighborhood watch´ was taken over by outsiders — big time gangsters with no connection to the fishermen. Around the time that the world began calling them pirates, criminal gangs were setting up a lucrative racket that had nothing to do with the poor fisherman.

Young Somalis risked their lives, taking on the world´s navies and merchant marine in their small boats. Poor and naive, often mere teenagers, they were dazzled by payoffs that brought them luscious brides and lavish weddings, SUVs and hero worship. The real profits, of course, went to the moneybags, who never left their air conditioned villas. Lawyers in London handled negotiations. Insurance companies paid the ransoms and cried crocodile tears as they raised their premiums and increased their profits. (Thousands of shipowners paid many more millions in inflated premiums than the ransoms the insurers paid out.) They will cry real tears when this is over.

The conditions that led to the problems in Somalia have not changed. Without a government, the gangsters/pirates are able to bring their victims close to shore and wait. They don´t harm the crews, don´t steal cargoes and don´t damage the ships. Why kill the goose?

Despite their success today, there is no future in big time piracy. The rich payoffs have attracted too many pirates, who captured too many ships. This forced governments to send their navies. More pirates are being caught and fewer ships taken.

The poor fishermen will end up where they started, at best. The world now thinks of them as criminals. Foreign fleets still fish in Somali waters. There is still no government to protect their fishing grounds.

When the gangsters and the foreign navies are gone, the fishermen might have to go back to what worked before: a ´neighborhood watch´ that catches intruding fisherman and collects enough ransom money to feed their families. If nothing else has changed, I will be on their side.

Fishing fleets are pirates, too

By Connie Levett

While their warships patrol the Gulf of Aden to protect merchant shipping from Somali pirates, a number of those nations are directly linked to foreign fishing fleets that are plundering Somalia's fish stocks, says a new paper on reasons behind the growth of piracy off the Horn of Africa.

There are warships from India, Malaysia, Britain, the US, France, Russia, Spain and South Korea in the region shepherding merchant shipping and pursuing pirates but largely ignoring the illegal foreign fishers.

Somalia's 3300-kilometre coast is the longest on the African continent. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates there are "700 foreign-owned vessels fully engaged in unlicensed fishing in Somali waters".

The collapse of the local fishing industry and subsequent poverty of coastal communities has been cited as one reason piracy has flourished in Somalia's lawless semi-autonomous province of Puntland.

Vessels from France, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Belize and Honduras exploit Somalia's fish stocks with virtual impunity, says Dr Clive Schofield's paper, Plundered Waters: Somalia's Maritime Resource Insecurity.

"It is particularly ironic that many of the nations that are presently contributing warships to the anti-piracy flotillas patrolling, or set to patrol, the waters off the Horn of Africa, are themselves directly linked to the foreign fishing vessels that are busily plundering Somalia's offshore resources," Dr Schofield, a researcher with the University of Wollongong's Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.

Without condoning acts of violence at sea, he said: "The desperate Somalis who hijack shipping off their coast are in fact not the only 'pirates' operating in these waters."

It was estimated that foreign fishing vessels were taking considerably more protein out of Somalia's waters than they were supplying to Somalia in the form of humanitarian food aid, he said.

With almost a third of Somalia's 10 million people in acute need of aid, the systematic theft from its fisheries seriously affects the strife-torn country's ability to feed itself.

We are in emergency,' admiral says

By David Slade

Addressing the threat of climate change will require the urgency with which heart attack victims are treated and the determination that helped the United States land a man on the moon, retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn said at a public forum in Charleston.

"We are in an emergency," McGinn said. "This is the golden hour for the United States."

McGinn is on a multistate speaking tour with former U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., aimed at explaining how climate change poses a threat to national security, as first outlined by a panel of retired four-star and three-star admirals and generals in a 2007 report.

"This has a lot more to do with national security than with the future of polar bears," McGinn said Thursday afternoon at a town hall meeting at The Citadel.

Climate change, driven by man-made fossil fuel emissions, could cause global instability marked by competition for basic resources, such as water and arable land, and mass migrations of people, McGinn said. And those conditions could spawn military conflict, he said.

"Conditions that deny people the essentials of life ... are a breeding ground for fanaticism and terrorism," said McGinn, citing Darfur and Somalia.

McGinn commanded the U.S. Third Fleet in the 1990s and was deputy chief of Naval Operations, Warfare Requirements and Programs.

Warner, who left the Senate in January, was secretary of the Navy in the 1970s and chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"This piece of (climate change) legislation that is working its way through Congress is the key to it," Warner told about 70 people at the forum. "All eyes will be on our country."

David Stoney, of McClellanville, attended the forum and said he found it "well-balanced and appropriate to the seriousness of the situation."

McGinn and Warner said the nation needs to focus on developing clean energy, which would both reduce dependence on foreign oil and reduce climate-changing emissions. The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate organized their speaking tour.

By focusing on energy independence issues and security threats, environmental groups have hoped to sway voters and lawmakers to tackle climate change out of concern about rising sea levels, the threat to wildlife and general harm to the planet.

A bipartisan poll of South Carolina voters in 2007 found that a majority of Republicans polled did not think, as most scientist do, that human activities such as burning oil and coal are the primary cause of global warming.

The same poll, however, found broad support for cleaner energy.

El Nino makes a comeback

By Judith Akolo

The El Nino weather phenomenon is back after 10 years.

According to the Director of the IGAD Climate Predictions and Applications Center - ICPAC Prof Laban Ogallo, the severity of this climatic pattern is yet to be determined as meteorologists are still running models on the unfolding scenarios in the Pacific Ocean.

"The Pacific is warming up and the Indian Ocean is responding but rather slowly, however for us to get a classic El Nino weather phenomenon, the area around Madagascar and Angola need to be cool, for us to have the high pressure that will then pump the moisture into the Horn of Africa region," said Prof Ogallo in an interview at the ICPAC offices in Nairobi.

Prof Ogallo said the El Nino phenomenon currently unfolding in the Pacific Ocean, which is the largest of the other two, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, points towards what the Japanese are calling a Modoki El Nino event.

In the past, the Modoki type of El Nino have occurred in historical years of 1979-1980, 1986-1987, 1990-1991, 1992-1993, 1994-1995 and 2002-2003.

All these events much as they yielded rainfall in most parts of the IGAD region did not cause the torrential rains that were experienced in 1997 which the Meteorologists term a classical El Nino weather phenomenon.

In the Horn of Africa region, classical El Ninos associated with torrential rains were observed in 1982, 1987 and 1997.

They explain that then, the warming in the Pacific Ocean assumed a shoe like shape and the other two Oceans the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans responded as well bringing about heavy rains that caused a lot of suffering and apprehension to many people and governments.

Prof Ogallo said in the current El Nino though established, the other two oceans have not responded in a way that could cause torrential rains as happened in the 1997 to 1998 El Nino events.

"What we know is that the rains will be heavy during the short rains season that begins in October through December especially in the Western region of Kenya and in Eastern Uganda as a result of the wet moisture from the Atlantic Ocean," he said.

Prof Ogallo is urging governments in the IGAD region which brings together Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to take advantage of the ensuing El Nino related rainfall to recharge their reservoirs as the impacts could be positive on nearly all the sectors of their economies.

Prof Ogallo urged the public in the region to come up with adaptation measures as climatic conditions have both the down side and the positives which should be good for development.

Anti-piracy measures

Iran 'abolishes' piracy off Somalia, says Iran PressTV

The Commander of Iran's Navy Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says Iran has managed to halt the activity of pirates in the Indian Ocean.

The presence of the Iranian warships in the northern Indian Ocean has nearly abolished the phenomena of piracy in the region," Fars news agency quoted Sayyari as saying.

Earlier this month, the Iranian Navy successfully finished its first patrol mission in the pirate-infested waters off Somali and the Gulf of Aden.

Iran deployed two warships in the troubled region in May to secure the safety of its cargo ships and oil tankers in the region.

Sayyari had earlier declared that during the two-month mission, the stationed warships kept a vigilant eye on 366 merchant ships, 36 of which were owned or leased by Iran.

Russia rejects anti-piracy efforts under NATO, EU command - envoy

Russian military ships will not be involved in anti-piracy operations under the command of NATO or the European Union, Russia's permanent envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday, according to RIANovosti.

Russia is a member of the coalition of 16 countries, which are currently involved in anti-piracy efforts off the coast of Somalia.

"As far as [the fight against] piracy is concerned, why should our ships be under foreign military command? We will not operate under the command of the European Union, we will not take part in NATO operations," Dmitry Rogozin told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

A total of 126 vessels have been attacked with 44 of them captured since the start of the year in the region. Somalian pirates are currently holding around 270 hostages on at least 16 vessels.

Russia-NATO relations were marred by a five-day war between Russia and Georgia, after which Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

During a meeting of the Russia-NATO council in Brussels, Russia said that its anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden should be coordinated with NATO and the EU, but at a "working level," between vessel captains.

Rogozin added that Russia and NATO were also not yet ready to hold joint military exercises.

"We don't think that NATO is ready for this," he said, adding that the alliance did not regard Russia as its partner.

"A year ago we held an extremely successful computer military exercise on anti-ballistic missile defense in Europe," he said. "The exercise went smoothly and demonstrated the compatibility of our missile defense systems. But if NATO continues to lean towards the U.S. missile defense system... we will be forced to stop even this type of cooperation."

Relations between Russia and NATO have also been frayed in recent years over the military alliance's eastern expansion. Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, have applied to join, but their U.S.-backed bids were turned down due to pressure from Germany and France at a 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest.

Barbed wire to stop pirates

By Julian Isherwood

Danish shipowners are introducing barbed wire on vessels passing through pirate-infested waters off Somalia.

Danish shipowners whose vessels pass through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden are introducing barbed wire on their vessels to prevent piracy or at least to delay boarding pirates until naval help can arrive.

According to Politiken, Denmark´s global Clipper Group tested the method on its CEC Accord vessel last week.

"It is very effective," says Clipper Group CEO Per Gullestrup, who adds that results of the tests have caused the Group to introduce barbed wire on all of its vessels passing the Gulf.

"It´s so cheap that there´s just no excuse not to do it," Gullestrup says.

The Clipper Group is one of the first lines to introduce the method. One of the world´s largest container lines A.P. Møller-Mærsk of Denmark says that it is also studying various security methods to stop piracy, including barbed wire. According to Politiken´s information, barbed wire has already been installed on some of the company´s vessels.

Delay

The Danish Shipowners Association supports the initiative.

"It is important to take initiatives. This is something that has been discussed over the past six months and Clipper is among the first to introduce it," says Association spokesman René Piil Pedersen.

The introduction of barbed wire is designed to delay pirates from boarding so that naval vessels patrolling the area have time to reach ships under attack.

"As soon as a helicopter arrives, the pirates withdraw. But if they manage to board a vessel, the battle has been lost," Gullestrup says.

US Coast Guard, British Royal Navy seize cocaine worth 55-mn dollars

The US Coast Guard and British Royal Navy in a joint operation seized 55 million dollars worth of cocaine from a speedboat off the coast of South America.

A Coast Guard law enforcement boarding team from Miami, aboard the Royal Navy Frigate HMS Iron Duke, found the drugs on a go-fast vessel off the coast of Venezuela.

In a nighttime operation, HMS Iron Duke, working with the US Coastguard, boarded the drug traffickers´ vessel and seized the cocaine-weighing three-quarters of a tonne.

The seizure was made while the Portsmouth-based Type 23 frigate was carrying out patrols in the Caribbean as part of a multinational task force to counter drug smuggling in the region.

Iron Duke first spotted the speedboat, known as a "go-fast" which is a vessel specially built by the traffickers, and scrambled its Lynx helicopter to investigate, The Telegraph reports.

The frigate then launched its sea boats after the helicopter crew observed cocaine bales being thrown overboard from the speedboat.

Along with US Coastguard personnel, the Iron Duke crewmembers carried out an armed boarding of the vessel and detained the drug traffickers.

As well as seizing the drugs, the speedboat was destroyed as it presented a hazard to local shipping.

Iron Duke´s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Alasdair Peppe said: "This is a good start to HMS Iron Duke´s North Atlantic deployment. After only a week on patrol the ship has made a significant seizure of cocaine." (ANI)

EU Anti-Piracy Force to Move Some Planes South (AP)

The European Union's anti-piracy force will move some surveillance aircraft further south from the Gulf of Aden to help counter the spread of Somali pirates into Indian Ocean waters, the force's operation commander said.

The monsoon period ends in four to six weeks and pirate attacks are expected to increase sharply. Earlier this year, pirates expanded their range hundreds of miles south of Somalia, partly in reaction to the increased naval presence in the Gulf of Aden.

What we really need are eyes in the south,'' Rear Admiral Peter Hudson told The Associated Press. ''The Kenyan armed forces have been hugely supportive to us, in giving access to their airfields, in giving support to navy ships that visit.''

He plans to rotate some of the surveillance aircraft -- currently in Djibouti at the western end of the Gulf of Aden -- into Kenya's Mombasa port, following a series of high-level meetings over piracy with Kenyan officials. The move will increase the aircraft's range by hundreds of miles.

France, Germany and Spain have aircraft based in Djibouti, as do Japan and the United States. The U.S. also used unmanned drones to monitor maritime traffic and potential pirate activity. The aircraft support around 30 warships in the Gulf of Aden that escort food shipments to Somalia and patrol a designated corridor for commercial shipping.

Kenyan military spokesman Bogita Ongeri said he could not give details of the discussions, but that Kenya was eager to help stop piracy.

Many of our East African neighbors depend on Mombasa port for their goods,'' he said. ''We will work with anyone to secure our trade and stop the pirates.''

War-ravaged Somalia is a deeply impoverished nation and enough pirates have received multimillion dollar ransoms to encourage hundreds of other poor, heavily armed gunmen to try their luck. But although attacks have increased, their success rate has declined, partly due to naval intervention in the gulf and partly due to better awareness and preparation on the part of merchant seamen.

Hundreds of attacks have been carried out this year already -- including one on a Yemeni oil tanker pursued by 14 boats on Tuesday -- and around a dozen ships are still held in Somalia. Hudson said it appeared negotiations were taking longer than previously as insurance companies hardened their stance, and there was a risk the pirates might take out their frustration on their captives.

When the Dutch Antilles-flagged Marathon was released recently, the ship had been internally gutted. One Ukrainian crew member was killed in the attack and another was injured, although the circumstances of the injury were unclear.

Japan to send SDF on antipiracy mission off Somalia (Xinhua)

Japan will send Self-Defense Forces on the anti-piracy mission off Somalia under a new law that entered into force on Friday.

At a cabinet meeting Friday, the government decided that the legal basis for Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) operations willbe switched from the maritime police action provision of the Self-Defense Force (SDF) Law to the new anti-piracy law, which was enacted on June 19.

The government endorsed anti-piracy operations for the one-year period through July 23, 2010.

Following the cabinet meeting, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada ordered the SDF to counter piracy under the new law.

Under the new law, Japan's MSDF destroyers will be allowed to open fire on pirate boats in case of they ignore repeated warnings and deemed as dangerous.

The law stipulates the SDF will be ordered to counter piracy only when coast guard officials cannot fend off pirates, and expands the SDF's protection mission to any commercial ship from pirates, regardless of a Japanese connection.

On March 14, Japan dispatched two MSDF destroyers on an anti-piracy mission off Somalia, marking Japan's first overseas policing action under the SDF law.

On July 6, the MSDF destroyers of the 4,550-ton Harusame and the 3,500-ton Amagiri left their bases in Japan and headed for the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden to take over escort duties from the two currently in operation.

The MSDF destroyers have escorted a total of 121 vessels over 41 occasions since the start of their operations on March 30.

SDF antipiracy mission now covers all ships (Kyodo News)

The Self-Defense Forces' antipiracy operations off Somalia from around Wednesday will fall under a new law that took effect Friday to authorize them to escort commercial ships of any nation.

With the law coming into force, the legal basis for Maritime Self-Defense Force operations will be switched from the maritime police-action provision of the SDF Law to the new antipiracy law, which was enacted June 19. Under the new law, MSDF destroyers will be allowed to fire on pirate boats that, despite warning shots, close in on commercial ships. Still, they cannot harm pirates except in limited circumstances, including in self-defense.

The new law also expands the scope of ships that can be protected by the MSDF to foreign-flagged commercial ships unrelated to Japan.

So far, only those connected to Japan, including Japanese-flagged ships and foreign-registered ships operated by Japanese firms, have been entitled to escorts.

As of Wednesday, two MSDF destroyers had escorted a total of 121 vessels in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden since the start of their operations on March 30.

Two MSDF P-3C surveillance airplanes have also been providing patrol flights over the gulf and conveying information on suspicious vessels to commercial ships and foreign navies since June 11.

The MSDF has also helped foreign vessels with no connection to Japan repel suspicious ships six times as a "humanitarian act" based on the seamen's law.

The 4,550-ton Harusame and 3,500-ton Amagiri left their MSDF bases in Japan on July 6 and will take over the escort duties from the two other destroyers currently on station.

The two warships have a total crew compliment of about 420 personnel, including eight Japan Coast Guard officers and members of the Special Boarding Unit, the MSDF's commando force.

The new law stipulates the SDF will be ordered to counter piracy only when coast guardsmen cannot fend off pirates.

Piracy is rampant in the gulf and off eastern Somalia, where sea bandits, often heavily armed, hijack commercial ships and demand huge ransoms for the release of the vessels and their crews.

The United States, European Union nations, Russia and China have warships in the region to patrol against pirates.

The Democratic Party of Japan had called for a provision in the law to require Diet approval before dispatching the SDF on antipiracy missions, but the demand was rejected by the ruling bloc.

Sending the SDF abroad is a sensitive issue given the limits on the use of force under the Constitution.

North cargo bill

The bill to allow the inspection of suspicious vessels traveling to and from North Korea must clear the Diet regardless of the outcome of the Aug. 30 election, newly appointed Japan Coast Guard Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki said Friday.

"The coast guard has already started preparations for such missions," Suzuki told reporters during his inaugural news conference, assuring that the bill's effective scrapping due to Tuesday's dissolution of the Lower House has not affected JCG morale.

Once the Diet passes the ship inspection bill, either the coast guard or the Maritime Self-Defense Force will be able to undertake inspections of North Korea-linked ships at sea, as specified by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874.

"Japan played a key role in preparing the UNSC resolution," Suzuki said.

No real peace in sight yet

The human obligation is to help children who are suffering - the rest is luxury!'

said Audrey Hepburn - and she followed it through herself. Her errands of mercy to such stricken countries as Somalia continued even after she became terminally ill with cancer. The world famous film star, who has died in Switzerland aged 63, won admiration without either giving or receiving menace.

46 killed, 63 wounded in Somalia clashes

At least 46 people, many of whom were civilians, have been killed and scores of others have been wounded in clashes in central Somalia.

Fierce fighting erupted in Mogadishu late on Wednesday and continued through Thursday morning. At least 25 people were killed in the Somali capital, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Eyewitnesses said that the clashes started after al-Shabaab fighters launched a heavy offensive on a base in the capital's south, where government troops and African Union peacekeeping forces are stationed.

Somali Army Spokesman Farhan Asanyo alleged that government forces successfully repulsed the attackers, killing dozens of al-Shabaab fighters while losing three soldiers.

Meanwhile, clashes near Wabho village left 18 people killed while another 13 died in clashes on Wednesday in Mahas. The total number of the wounded stands at 63, witnesses said.

A two-year insurgency against Somalia's western-backed government has killed some 18,000 people and displaced a million more in a nation that has been without a strong central government since 1991.

The Somali government on Thursday said it would introduce a comprehensive plan to reform its security forces, promising to carry out a new drive to pacify the restive Somali capital Mogadishu and spread its authority throughout the war-torn Horn of Africa country.

Speaking at a news conference in Mogadishu, Somali government spokesman Abdelkadir Mohamed Walayo announced the plan which he said was adopted at the weekly cabinet meeting.

"The Somali government will reinvigorate National Plan for Security and Pacification of the country and that is part of the overall plan to reform Somali security forces and all the law enforcement agencies," Walayo told reporters.

The Somali government announced the creation of a new Commission for Security and Reform of the Armed Forces to ensure that the security plan by the Somali government, which has been fighting counter-insurgency since its creation, was followed through.

The spokesman also announced a replacement for the assassinated Somali National Security Minister. The new Minister for National Security, Abdulahi Mohamed Alim, was presented at the weekly cabinet meeting.

The Somali government promised to do all it can to make sure that the two abducted French security experts are released. The French nationals were taken from their hotel rooms in the south of Mogadishu by unknown gunmen who handed them over to the insurgent groups.

The Somali government, which is struggling with a deadly insurgency by Islamist rebel groups who now control much of the south and center of Somalia, condemned the recent announcement by the hardline Islamist Al-Shabaab group to ban three UN aid agencies from operating in the country.

The radical group accused the UN agencies, the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), the UN Development Program (UNDP), the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), of being "enemy of Islam and Muslims".

The Somali government since its creation in 2004 has been beset by armed opposition groups who want to topple it and establish an Islamic state in Somalia, implementing a stricter form of Islamic Sharia law. (Xinhua)

Rebel leader says he is uniting Insurgents

Somalia´s rebel leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys said on Friday plans to unite Hizbul Islam-his group and al Shabaab were going on.

Addressing hundreds of people in Aba Hureyra Mosque in Bakaraha market in Mogadishu after Friday´s prayers Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys said people should be patient the casualties from the fighting and wait what he called "victory over enemies".

The two Islamist groups al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam have been fighting together against the fragile government led by president Sharif Sheik Ahmed and the African troops known as AMISOM in Mogadishu since Sheik Aweys returned from a two year exile in Eritrea in April 2009.

About 300 civilians have been killed and thousands have been displaced since the allied Islamist rebels-Hizbul Islam and al Shabaab started their major offensive on 7 May 2009.

Sheik Aweys Says ' Efforts to Unite Harakat Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen And Hisbul Islam Continue'

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of Hisbul Islam organization who is in the Somali capital Mogadishu has said on Friday that there are efforts to unite the Islamic organiszations of Hisbul Islam and Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen.

Sheik Aweys had attended at a friday prayer in Abu Hurera mosque in Mogadishu and talked more about the situation of the country saying that both Islamic organizations are required to be united adding that it is an important step for the two sides and would welcome it.

asked about the casualties of the civilians when fighting both rival sides, he replied that there are some problems in the country pointing out that the people are required to telorate the difficulties and compare the victories and the problems.

More people had died and many others desplaced from the Somali capital Mogadishu as fighting between the Islamist forces and government soldiers bacing by AMISOM troops.

Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a Claims Victory, Explains Fighting in Central Somalia

Sheik Abdirisak Al-Ashari, the spkosman of the Islamic organization of Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a has held a press conference on Friday and explained more about the latest fighting continued in Galgudud and Hiran regions in central Somalia.

Sheik Ashari claimed victory over the fighting and said that they killed more famous men from the other side of the fighting and captured more battle wagons during the clashesin over the past days in Hiran region pointing out that those deceased were what he described problem in thr region.

the spokesman of Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a lastly said that they also acheived to take over the warring zones around Goobo where heavy fighting continued over the recent days in central Somalia.

Militia fighting kills 17 in Somalia (AFP)

At least 17 people have been killed in clashes between a pro-government militia and the radical Islamic Shebab in central Somalia, witnesses said Friday, adding that the death toll could rise.

The fighting erupted Wednesday between the pro-government Ahlu Suna Waljama militia and the Shebab over control of the central town of Guriel. Most of those killed were combatants, but the casualties included civilians, the witnesses said.

"We have collected around 17 dead bodies... I think the toll could be higher than what we have seen because there are dead bodies still strewn in the jungle areas," said Abdisamed Mohamed, a local elder.

Another elder Farah Moalim said: "Most of them are fighters and the civilian casualty was very minimal."

The Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab, which controls large swathes of territory in south and central Somalia, claimed victory.

"We thank Allah for giving us victory," Shebab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said, without elaborating. He dismissed the pro-government group as "contracted to fight by the West and Ethiopia," Somalia's ally.

In Mogadishu, Prime Minister Omar Abdulrashid Sharmarke named a new security minister to replace Omar Hashi Aden, who was killed in a suicide car bombing last month.

"I hope that with my nomination, the security situation in the country will improve particularly around the areas the government controls", Abdulahi Mohamed Ali said.

Somali militia orders Islamic rules for foreign agencies - Daily Nation

Somali militant group Harakat Al Shabaab Al-Mujahideen has issued a decree which calls for all foreign agencies and humanitarian organisations to be registered based on an Islamic criteria.

The Militant group Department of Political affairs and regional administrations said on the decree send to diplomats, NGOs and foreign agencies will be informed of the conditions and restrictions on their work and how their work may continue.

"Any NGO or foreign agency found to be working an agenda against the Somali Muslim people or against the establishment of Islamic state will be immediately closed" the statement reads.

The group also accuses western nations, who donate for Somalia's peace and relief efforts.

The group said the fund is to oppress and massacre Somali Muslim people.

Recently, a Somali Islamic militia group closed down three United Nations offices in Somalia.

The militia group controls most of Somalia and has declared Islamic states in some of the regions.

"We are considering alternative ways of providing food aid, such as transferring the feeding programmes to peaceful areas; but still we are monitoring the situation," Guled said.

Massive shelling

Meanwhile, massive exchange of shelling continued as pro-government forces and the AU peacekeepers, Amisom, in Mogadishu responded to attacks and fire from Islamist groups.

The shelling mostly affected parts of Hodon District in South Mogadishu and Wardhigley District in downtown Mogadishu.

At least 15 people died and over 50 wounded have been taken to Madina, Daynile and Isaleey hospital, according to ambulance services in the city. Neither the Transitional Federal Government nor the Islamists have commented on the deadly battles and shelling.

Elsewhere in parts of Hiran and Galgadud regions in Central Somalia, huge confrontations between Al-Shabaab fighters and followers of Ahlu Sunna wal-Jamea, a moderate Islamist group, caused deaths and injuries. Gobo village and surrounding areas in Hiran region was the scene of battles on Wednesday that later spread to other areas like Bila´ale in Hiran region and Wabho village in Galgadud.

Hand grenade attack wounds 15 civilians in Puntland

At least fifteen civilians have been wounded in the port town of Bosasso in Puntland regions in north eastern Somalia by a hand grenade overnight, witnesses said on Thursday.

The commander of Puntland police in Bosasso and other government soldiers were passing the area when the bomb exploded in a busy restaurant in the area.

Residents said the police were patrolling in the area at the time of the explosion and opened fire immediately after the blast.

Fifteen civilians in the restaurant among of them guests and bystanders were injured in the bomb blast. No group has claimed the responsibility of the attack yet, but witnesses said a teenager who had a pistol threw the hand grenade and escaped on foot.

Puntland police officers said they were investigating the incident and the situation of the city has returned to normalcy.

The Puntland administration was formed in 1998 and since then the semi-autonumous region in the North-East of Somalia had governed more peaceful than the south.

Feeding centres closed amid heavy fighting

Ongoing conflict in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, has led to the closure of many feeding centres across the city, putting pressure on already crowed camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) as more and more people flee their homes, say local officials.

"We are receiving more IDPs in the camps [along the road linking Mogadishu to Afgoye] that are already crowded; those arriving are not getting any help, only the older IDPs receive relief aid," Jowhar Ilmi, an IDP spokesperson, told IRIN on 23 July.

Ilmi said most of the camps lacked water and adequate sanitation facilities.

Moalim Mohamud Saney Warsame, deputy mayor of Mogadishu's Wadajir district, which most of the newly displaced have fled in the past month, said most feeding centres had closed due to continued fighting between government troops and Islamist insurgents.

"Those who have been displaced recently are facing a severe humanitarian crisis because aid agencies have difficulties reaching them," Warsame said. "Our capacity to help these people is limited; I call upon the international community to intervene in this situation."

Mohamed Abdi Hashi, an official of one of the feeding centres, the Darman group, said at least 5,500 people - mostly women and children - were benefiting from the centre in Wadajir before it closed in early July.

"We closed the feeding centre due to violence," he said. "We didn't receive prepared food from aid agencies. We get people turning up at the centre daily, carrying plates, but we have nothing."

Asha Sha'ur, a civil society representative in Mogadishu, said almost 90 percent of Mogadishu residents were displaced. "We can't tell what is going on here, heavy shelling goes on every night."

She added that local relief workers were trying to help the displaced "but our ability is small".

Aid alternatives

Fartun Mohiyadin Ahmed, who is taking care of 20 family members, told IRIN they had all depended on the feeding centre in Wadajir.

"I don't know what the future holds for us now that the centre is closed; I am especially worried because my children are sickly; they are coughing and have measles. I am losing hope," Ahmed said.

An official of the UN World Food Programme (WFP-Somalia), which provides food aid to hundreds of thousands of Somalis, said most of the 16 feeding centres it had been supplying had closed down due to insecurity.

Mohamed Hassan Guled, WFP's information officer, said the agency was aware of the closures and was assessing the situation.

"We are considering alternative ways of providing food aid, such as transferring the feeding programmes to peaceful areas; but still we are monitoring the situation," Guled said.

Soldiers involved in French kidnappings: Somali intel

By IranPressTV

Somalia's intelligence chief says members of the Somali military, 'not the government', were involved in last week's kidnapping of two French aid workers. In an interview with France 24 television, General Mohamed Sheikh Hassan denied any government involvement in the kidnapping of two French advisors but acknowledged that some Somali "soldiers helped the kidnappers in one way or another." "According to our investigation, it seems that the car used to help the kidnappers was provided by the Darawish group, who work for the military," he said.

On the whereabouts of the two kidnapped French men, Sheikh Hassan said "one of the two hostages is still in the capital Mogadishu and the other in a southern province, although we're unsure where."

He added that the intelligence agency had contradictory information on the location of those kidnapped as the abductors "constantly change houses and villages."

Earlier on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the two French agents were thought to have been split up and held by two separate groups.

The two had travelled to the Somali capital Mogadishu to train forces within the Somali intelligence services before they were captured by the anti-government al-Shabaab militia group on Tuesday.

Another report by a local website claimed on Thursday that the two French nationals were killed by Al-Shabaab who had previously accused them of "espionage and conspiracy."

Kidnappings are commonplace in the Horn of Africa nation with pirates attacking foreign ships off the Somali coast and taking their crews hostage.

Most kidnapped foreigners in Somalia are released unharmed in return for a ransom.

Family of kidnapped journalist breaks silence - Calgary Herald

The family of a photographer taken hostage along with Alberta journalist Amanda Lindhout in Somalia is stepping up the pressure on the Australian government to negotiate the man's release.

The family of Nigel Brennan has broken its silence on the case, criticizing the negotiation process as lacking in transparency and taking "a ridiculous amount of time."

"We are just desperate to get some answers from our government," family spokeswoman Rebecca Hutchins told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "What do they think is a reasonable time for an Australian citizen to be held captive?"

Brennan's mother also confronted Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd during a public visit earlier this week, according to media reports.

Brennan and Lindhout were kidnapped on Aug. 23, 2008 along with local journalist Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, who was released in January.

In another interview with ABC, an Australian official said Friday the family's public comments Thursday will not help speed up negotiations for Brennan's release.

"I understand very much their frustration and the agony of the mother who hasn't seen her son for almost a year," said foreign ministerr Stephen Smith. "Our advice has always been not to go public, not to go to the media."

Rudd said in a separate interview that the country is doing everything it can.

"This is an exceptionally complex matter, and I think if you were fully apprised, confidentially, of the details of the case... you'd be fully seized of how difficult and complex a matter this is, given the part of the world in which he is located," the Australian prime minister said.

Negotiations between Canadian officials and Somali hostage takers ceased in January, and Lindhout issued a plea in May to AFP via a five-minute phone conversation, saying she and Brennan are not doing well.

"The situation here is very dire and very serious. I've been a hostage for nine months, the conditions are very bad, I don't drink clean water, I am fed at most once a day," Lindhout said during the plea. "I'm being kept . . . in a dark windowless room, completely alone."

Brennan also spoke during the plea, noting his health was "extremely poor and deteriorating rapidly."

The pair's kidnapping has been one of the longest recent abductions in Somalia, although all previous kidnappings of journalists have ended with the release of the hostages amid claims that ransoms were paid.

Negotiations for their release have reportedly collapsed several times.

Australian journalist still detained in Somalia after almost a year

One of the Australian media's best kept secrets has been revealed, after almost a year.

For 11 months, news organisations have kept quiet about the fate of a Queensland photo-journalist who is being held hostage in Somalia.

Nigel Brennan's work as a photo journalist saw him leave Australia in August last year, happy and healthy. But just a month later he became a crumpled captive of Somali warlords.

He'd been kidnapped at gunpoint and held with a Canadian journalist for a US$1 million ransom.

Despite his terrifying ordeal, Brennan's story hasn't been covered in Australia. In a rare show of co-operation, news organisations agreed to an Australian Government request not to report on his plight - to avoid jeopardising the efforts to free him.

But after nearly a year of no progress, relatives have broken their silence urging the Prime Minister to do more.

Mr Brennan´s friend Rebecca Hutchins said "I just don't feel that those strategies are being effective and therefore we need to look at other options."

Brennan's mother demanded a meeting with the Prime Minister. She got it last night.

The meeting, behind closed doors, went for 20 minutes.

Ms Hutchins said "That's quite amazing there's been no contact from the Prime Minister at all and yet the family have received a letter from the Somalia president."

The Foreign Minister Stephen Smith doesn't think the media attention will help.

"They're making judgements and decisions in the pain and the agony of a son or brother who's been missing, kidnapped for 11 months."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd argues he's been heavily involved, behind the scenes.

"If I was to look at the consular cases upon which I have spent the most time since I've been Prime Minister, this is the one."

While the government is hopeful Brennan will be released, the organisation ´Reporters Without Borders´ rates Somalia as Africa's deadliest country for journalists and aid workers.

Force crims to free Nigel / Editorial GoldCoast

One has to feel for Bundaberg mum, Heather Brennan.

Her son Nigel is missing, kidnapped in Somalia nine months ago.

He has been able to contact his family, once, and begged his government to bring him home.

"I implore that my government help me as a citizen of Australia," he pleaded.

One would think that any act against an Australian citizen would spark national outrage -- that as the public voice, the media would campaign for his safe return.

But the silence has been deafening.

This is not the fault of the media. In August, all media outlets were urged by the Minister for Foreign Affairs Stephen Smith to refrain from reporting any details of the case in the interests of securing his release.

That's right, the Government asked journalists not to report on the Brennan case, citing concerns over his safety should we, other newspapers, TV, radio or news websites report on this international incident.

As one, the media complied.

It didn't have to -- we are a free society and the media could 'publish and be damned' without fear or favour, but, to its credit, it did not. The media, normally the cynics in the room, trusted Mr Smith's department to do the right thing by Mr Brennan and his family.

After nine months and no closer to her son's release, Mrs Brennan could wait no longer.

Defying similar advice to remain silent, Mrs Brennan publicly confronted the Prime Minister and placed her son Nigel right into the public eye.

It seems clear the Government's approach to the kidnapping has been flawed.

One of the key outcomes of this type of kidnapping is publicity -- a few stories in the Western media to highlight a cause before a swift release.

In nine months of silence, the Government's approach has failed.

Perhaps because, as Foreign Affairs Minister Mr Smith explained, he was hopeful government officials negotiating the release of Australian photographer Nigel Brennan will be able to 'wear his kidnappers down'.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that while our leaders strut the word stage and pose for photographs with international leaders, from a practical foreign affairs viewpoint, Australia is powerless.

We have an appalling track record of helping distressed Australians overseas.

There has been a lack of urgency to help an increasingly frail Schapelle Corby, the AFP entrapment of the Bali Nine -- they could have arrested them in Australia but chose to let Australians face the death penalty.

And there is Stern Hu, who was in charge of Rio Tinto's iron ore operations in China, was arrested in early July on suspicion of spying and stealing state secrets. The Shanghai-based executive is yet to be charged, 19 days after he was first detained.

Mr Smith has finally met his Chinese counterpart, only to be dismissed with an assurance that China has the evidence it needs.

It is clear Australia holds no sway on the international stage.

The Federal Government has to realise Nigel Brennan is being held by criminals.

Somalia is a rogue state. It has no government to upset or offend. It has been gripped by an 18-year civil war that has seen United Nations troops, an occupying Ethiopian force and even African Union military units come and go with little effect. Going softly with these outlaws was never going to get the Brennan family a result.

It is a mistake to attempt to rely solely on diplomacy to achieve Nigel Brennan's release.

A strong show of force is what is needed when one of our own is kidnapped by a bunch of criminals. And it would have been nice to see that show of force supported by many of Australia's supposed foreign allies.

Somali gunmen free reporter working for British TV station (AFP)

Canadian and Australian among scores of hostages still being held

A Somali journalist kidnapped by gunmen a week ago was freed on the weekend, global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said Monday.

Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, director of London-based private channel Universal TV, was kidnapped 13 kilometres west of Mogadishu on June 2.

He was released Sunday, according to the Paris-based Reporters With-out Borders.

Somali gunmen have kidnapped scores of foreign journalists and aid workers in recent months and most of the Somali journalists abducted had been fixers or translators for foreign reporters.

Director of Somalia's Shabelle radio network Mokhtar Mohamed Hirabe was gunned down in Mogadishu on Sunday, making him the fifth journalist killed this year in the lawless Horn of African nation.

Somalia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists. Media houses have been routinely shut down by the authorities and many reporters, Somali and foreign, have been kidnapped by armed groups.

Two freelance journalists, Albertan Amanda Lindhout and an Australian, were kidnapped near the capital some nine months ago and are still being held.

Somalia has lacked an effective central government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the country into vicious violence.

Three Burundi soldiers in Somalia die of mysterious illness (AFP)

Three Burundi soldiers serving with African Union peacekeepers in Somalia have died of a mysterious illness in a Kenyan hospital where more than 10 others are being treated, the army said Friday.

Army chief General Godefroy Niyombare said the soldiers showed different symptoms, but seemd to have kidney problems.

"Three of them have died. More than 10 are hospitalised," Niyombare told AFP. "We are worried."

"They are in varying conditions. They do not exhibit the same symptoms, they mostly have kidney problems," he explained.

Niyombare said doctors will be sent to Mogadishu to carry out tests.

The AU force comprises some 4,300 Burundian and Ugandan troops and have come under relentless attacks by Islamist insurgents who want them out of the war-ravaged Horn of African country.

Impacting reports from the global village

PLEA TO HELP SOMALIA

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all countries yesterday to provide urgent military support to Somalia's embattled transitional government, warning that its survival is at stake.

Two allied Islamist insurgent groups -- al-Shabab and the Islamic Party -- launched an offensive after the return of an exiled insurgent leader in April that has killed hundreds of Somalis and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. Ban said the violence has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country, with at least 3.2 million people -- 43% of Somalia's population -- requiring food and other aid.

The fragile UN-backed government and an undermanned, poorly resourced African Union peacekeeping force have struggled to defend government buildings, the port and airport in the capital, Mogadishu. The government holds only a few blocks in the city.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all countries Thursday to provide urgent military support to Somalia's embattled transitional government, warning that its survival is at stake, also AP reported.

Two allied Islamist insurgent groups — al-Shabab and the Islamic Party — launched an offensive after the return of an exiled insurgent leader in April that has killed hundreds of Somalis and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. Ban said the violence has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country, with at least 3.2 million people — 43 percent of Somalia's population — requiring food and other aid.

The fragile U.N.-backed government and an undermanned, poorly resourced African Union peacekeeping force have struggled to defend government buildings, the port and airport in the capital, Mogadishu. The government holds only a few blocks in the city.

In a quarterly report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban appealed to the international community "not to waver in the face of the recent upsurge in fighting" and to continue supporting the government and working with U.N. envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah to encourage the insurgents and other opposition elements toward peace.

"The coming days and weeks will be critical," the secretary-general said. "The government clearly needs urgent military support in areas of personnel, arms and logistics to sustain its success in warding off insurgent attacks and defending key installations."

"I, therefore, appeal to the entire international community to render urgent support to the government of Somalia, without which it may not be able to establish itself," Ban said.

The transitional government led by President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed has called for military and other assistance, but the response has been slow, though the U.S. government sent 40 tons of weapons last month.

As of June 30, the AU force in Mogadishu had 4,300 troops from Uganda and Burundi, just 54 percent of its authorized strength of 8,000. Ban said steps are under way to deploy a third battalion from Burundi. Sierra Leone and Malawi each pledged a battalion in June, but he said they need logistical support before they can deploy.

The secretary-general said it is important that donors who pledged over US$213 million in April to support the AU force and Somalia's security institutions honor their commitments — and he called for additional support to strengthen the peacekeeping force.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since the ouster of a longtime dictator in 1991 and is riven by fighting among clan warlords and an Islamist insurgency that gained momentum in 2006 and has killed thousands of civilians and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives.

Ban said he was "deeply concerned by attempts to use force and violence to topple the transitional federal government," stressing that they "must not be allowed to succeed."

"Insurgent groups, such as al-Shabab, are alleged to be extorting money from private companies and recruiting young people to join the fight against the government in Mogadishu, including child soldiers," he said.

The U.S. State Department says al-Shabab has links with al-Qaida, which the group has denied. But experts say hundreds of foreign jihadi fighters are helping the Islamist militias.

Ban said in the report that "al-Shabab has confirmed the presence of foreign fighters within its ranks and has stated openly that it is working with al-Qaida in Mogadishu to remove the government of Somalia."

"The foreign fighters, many of whom reportedly originate from Pakistan and Afghanistan, appear to be well trained and battle tested," the U.N. chief said, noting that they have been observed wearing hoods and directing offensive operations against the government in Mogadishu and neighboring regions.

As a result of the recent fighting, Ban said, there has also been a marked deterioration in the human rights situation with reports that insurgents have used civilians as human shields, which may constitute a war crime.

In parts of south-central Somalia, extreme interpretations of Islamic Sharia law have led to reported cases of beheadings, floggings, amputations, restrictions on freedom of movement and violations of women's rights, he said.

Ban said he was encouraged by ongoing international efforts to combat piracy, which still remains rampant.

Letter to the members of the Somali Jaaliyadda (no 16)

Source: United Nations Political Office for Somalia - Nairobi, 24 July 2009

Salaam Aleikum

My warm greetings to you all as always.

This is an update on the latest developments as the situation on the ground is often changing. Sadly for the Somali civilians, particularly those in Mogadishu which continues to be attacked by extremist elements including foreigners, the suffering continues. Tens of thousands of your innocent compatriots have been forced to flee their homes, some to other parts of the city, others to live in basic shelters in Afgoye. What is heartbreaking is that many had returned home after January 2009, expecting peace as promised from those who had opposed the presence of the Ethiopians. Instead whole families, including women and children, are again running for their lives without a roof over their heads. I have not seen this anywhere else in Africa. It is difficult for me to find any justification for this repeated misery inflicted on ordinary Somalis by their own countrymen. Let them adore the Lord of this House who provides them with food against hunger and security against fear. (Qurayshi:106 Verses: 3 and 4)

The suffering of the people has not stopped the fighters. Those who have been trying to overthrow the Government since 7 May are continuing their assaults but have not succeeded. They have brought death and destruction again to Mogadishu and brought the international image of Somalia even lower. However I must reassure you that those who want to destroy the country further will not succeed.

It is clear there are some who do not want to see any Government in Somalia and who will continue to fight for their own objectives. However I call on all parties to look at the long term and the country's future. The mandate of this Government will last until August 2011, two more years. The Government remains open for talks with those who accept the Peace Process and want stability. That does not mean they have to join the Government – they may, but there is room for opposition parties too. The Djibouti Process remains the way forward accepted by Somalis and the international community. The key is for those who are interested in politics to support the current system and prepare for elections in two years' time. Recent history in Somalia has proved that brutal force has repeatedly failed to lead to any lasting success or stability. Equally, trying to use environmental or economic issues as a front for holding political conferences will not fly.

At the same time the Government must continue to seriously extend its hand to all Somali leaders and individuals interested in stability. The Government's agreement with Ahl Sunna Wal Jama'a is good and should be fully and completely implemented. The same for those from Hizbul Islam who joined the Government recently and who should be accommodated. The Government and Parliamentarians need to remain in the country and step up their work, to show some benefits to the people.

On 20 July I attended a consultative meeting of the African Union, troop contributing countries and international partners in Addis. The meeting underscored the call, made by IGAD in its communiqué of 20 May, for the UN Security Council to take immediate measures including; the imposition of sanctions on all spoilers; a no fly zone; a blockade of sea ports and the monitoring of land borders to prevent the entry of foreign elements into Somalia and arms shipments. These decisions were endorsed by the AU. The IGAD Council of Ministers meeting in Addis on 10 July categorically affirmed the Djibouti Agreement as the only valid process for peace and reconciliation in Somalia.

I also attended the meeting of the European Union Peace and Security Committee on Somalia in Brussels on 10 July. The EU Ambassadors offered their full backing to the peace process and have pledged greater EU involvement. This was also emphasized by Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security policy and Stefano Manservisi, the EU's Director General for Development. As always there is full support from the League of Arab States, Organization of Islamic Conference and a wide range of countries including the US. The UN Security Council will be discussing Somalia next week and I plan to attend the meeting.

Following my visit to Mogadishu, the deputy Special Representative has also visited and held useful meetings with the President, Prime Minister, his Cabinet and others. Other colleagues have also been travelling to Somaliland and Puntland. My office is planning several important meetings in the upcoming months. These include a meeting of former military officers in Washington and a conference on Justice and Reconciliation next month.

I am always saddened by the actions of those who prolong the suffering of the people and was disturbed by the abduction for ransom of three individuals who were working to help the poor people living in north eastern Kenya. I can not understand how this action helps Somalis or the image of Somalia in any way. I call for the immediate release of these three aid workers and other foreigners and Somalis being illegally held. Likewise I condemn the looting of the UN offices in Jowhar, Wajid and Baidoa which seem calculated to make it as difficult as possible to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Somali as well as the targeted killing of journalists.

I look forward to meeting some of you shortly. I hope all of you will continue to support peace, stability and dignity in Somalia and not to give up. These are testing times, but there is the hope of a brighter future and we must all work together more than ever to make it a reality.

Yours Faithfully

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah

R2P

At UN, R to P Confusion on Somalia - exerted and compiled from texts by Matthew Russell Lee

The Responsibility to Protect, a concept seemingly endorsed by the UN in 2005 but since largely ignored, for example during the slaughter of civilians in Sri Lanka earlier this year, is the subject of a showdown in the UN General Assembly starting July 23.

The responsibility to protect, a doctrine that if a government cannot or does not serve its people others may step in to do so, was called by the President of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday a "new cosmetic improvement" on the "right to intervene." Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, formerly Nicaragua's foreign minister, said that R2P reminds him of the United States' interventions in Latin America "to protect its interests."

As Ambassadors drifted toward the UN's debate on Responsibility to Protect on Thursday morning, the handful of reporters assembled were asking, what is this about and why should I or my readers care?

The debate on Responsibility to Protect at the UN gave rise to a surreal press conference, in which Noam Chomsky mocked the concept.

Chomsky, who previously told Inner City Press that focus on the Congo was misplaced, now cited Congo again and again, saying Western powers do nothing because they get coltan from there.

He blamed the conflict in Somalia on Western powers' over-fishing of the waters off Somalia, their dumping of toxic waste.

He also recalled the Bush administration's blocking of remittance company Al Barakat which cut off money to Somalia, and the press' failure to cover Barakat's later exoneration. Chomsky mocked Obama's "let's forget history," saying that only guaranteed not knowing the roots of the world's conflicts.

Chomsky went on, regarding the UK, to say that former prime minister Tony Blair may have been involved in Israel's deal with British Gas for natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip. It's reminiscent of Sri Lanka's move to redeliniate its sea claims, and the little reported finding of oil and gas off the coast of North Sri Lanka. Does that as some say explain the military assault? Time will tell.

He recalled the Bush administration's blocking of remittance company Al Barakat which cut off money to Somalia, and the press' failure to cover Barakat's later exoneration. Chomsky mocked Obama's "let's forget history," saying that only guaranteed not knowing the roots of the world's conflicts.

A Fifth Committee expert tells Inner City Press that the committee is unlikely to fund or permit the R to P office even in its next session unless the General Assembly affirmatively passes a resolution accepting the recommendations in Ban Ki-moon's report. Therefore, no outcome is a loss for R to P.

Even some who'd heretofore been supporters of R to P now question it. What good is a concept, which is claimed to be universally accepted, if nothing is done when thousands of civilians living outdoors are shelled from the air as happened in Sri Lanka this year?

As with so many things at the UN, grandiose words are unacted upon, leading to endless cycles of cynicism.

Wasn't it Ban Ki-moon who said, when he started as Secretary General, that the UN should promise less and deliver more? R to P is nothing but promise. Sending Kofi Annan to Kenya could have been done with or without R to P. They said he went for the UN, but Annan has neither reported to the Security Council nor has Ban's Office confirmed that Annan asked before filing names with the International Criminal Court. Kofi Annan has not return to brief the Security Council about Kenya.

Is the Non-Aligned Movement Alive or Dead?

By Patrick Seale

Hosting the 15th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) at Sharm el-Sheikh earlier his month, Egypt´s President Husni Mubarak declared that the Movement was ´alive and well.´ But is it? No doubt the 118 heads of government who were present enjoyed an agreeable holiday on Egypt´s Red Sea coast. But was anything of substance achieved?

One should not, I suppose, be too critical. Among the achievements of the Summit were the following: Palestine and the Dominican Republic established diplomatic relations; Algeria cancelled a $90m debt owed to it by Yemen; and Egypt agreed to set up a NAM institute for women´s empowerment.

Resounding declarations were made calling for international disarmament, for the reform of the United Nations; for the reshaping of the international economic system, for the need to devise a comprehensive energy agenda; for the lifting of America´s 50-year embargo on Cuba, and other such worthy causes. But how influential are such appeals? Who listens to the Non-Aligned Movement?

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan held a bilateral meeting but, had they really wanted to, they could no doubt have done so without travelling to Egypt. The Indian press was unhappy that, in his speech, the Pakistani premier dared mention the problem of Kashmir.

The conclusion one cannot fail to reach is that the developing world is in something of a mess. It lacks corporate muscle, inspired leadership and political will. It is crippled by conflicts, which it seems incapable of resolving.

The war in Somalia is spreading its poison to the whole Horn of Africa and beyond; the killings in Darfur continue unchecked; relations between Sudan and Chad are execrable; Israel shows no sign of ending its occupation of the West Bank or its cruel siege of Gaza, while feuding Palestinian factions recklessly squander the unique chance of statehood offered them by the providential figure of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Although it has already received billions in compensation for Iraq´s 1990 invasion, Kuwait refuses to waive further payments, but demands its full pound of flesh (no doubt laying the ground for future conflicts); North African unity is compromised by the long-running dispute between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara; the Kurds in northern Iraq seem ready to go to war with Baghdad over Kirkuk, etc., etc. There seems to be no end to the squabbles in the so-called Third World.

Formally launched at Bandung in 1955, the aim of the Non-Aligned Movement was to protect its members from the U.S-Soviet Cold War, then at its dangerous height. The Movement´s towering figures were India´s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (who coined the term ´non-aligned´), Egypt´s Nasser; Yugoslavia´s Tito; Ghana´s Nkrumah; and Indonesia´s Sukarno, who hosted the Bandung meeting.

The goals of the Movement (as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979) were to ensure ´the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries´ in their ´struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, dominion, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.´

Few of these noble goals have been achieved. The Palestine cause received verbal support at Sharm el-Sheikh, as it has at previous NAM summits, but nothing was said or done which might persuade Israel to end its racist, neo-colonial occupation of Palestinian territories.

As far as I can gather, Iraq and Afghanistan hardly got a mention at Sharm el-Sheikh, although the former is attempting painfully to pick itself up after the devastation of an imperial war – in effect the destruction of a major Arab country by the United States (and its British ally) -- while the latter is the theatre of a savage conflict, the violent collision of a Western and a tribal world, with no end in sight. Indeed, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan has spread to Pakistan, with terrible consequences for the population of the North West Frontier Province.

It would seem that although the Cold War is long since over, the Non-Aligned Movement has yet to develop the cohesion which might make it a force in international affairs. It represents nearly two-thirds of the UN members and comprises 55 per cent of the world´s population, but it has not yet reinvented its purpose. It is a talking shop, not an effective actor on the world stage.

To be fair, the two super-powers who once dominated the world are themselves in serious trouble. Embroiled in an unwinnable war, suffering record unemployment and a shattered banking system, the United States is wrestling with the catastrophic legacy of the Bush years. Although Barack Obama is struggling to put things right, he cannot at a stroke restore America´s economic health or its moral authority.

He has made overtures to the Arab world, to Iran, to Russia. He is clearly a man of peace, in welcome contrast to his bellicose predecessor. But in seeking to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, his hesitation to put real pressure on Israel demonstrates the real constraints on his freedom of action. The United States remains the foremost great power, but it no longer is as unchallenged as it used to be.

Russia, in turn, is no more than a shadow of the former Soviet Union. Although it is anxious to regain influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia, it no longer has the means to do so convincingly. According to a report in the authoritative French daily Le Monde, Russia´s population is shrinking fast: it has fallen from 148.9 million in 1993 to 141.9 million today. In the Russian Far East, the population is so sparse that large numbers of Chinese are moving in to cultivate the land.

Russia is suffering half a million deaths a year from poor food and, especially, from the excessive consumption of tobacco and alcohol. In 2007, the number of children per woman was no more than1.4. Life expectancy for men has fallen to 61.4 years, lower than in a poor country like Bangladesh. One man in three dies between the ages of 20 and 60.

If the Great Powers themselves are floundering, is it reasonable to expect the ´Third World´ to do better? Perhaps it is the whole planet which needs to come to its senses.

HIV/AIDS: Nigerian Army Protests US Statement

By Juliana Taiwo

Nigerian Army has officially protested to the Ministry of Defence to use diplomatic means to get the United State Government to retract the statement that Nigerian peacekeepers in operation zones have high rate of HIV/AIDS or be sued, THISDAY investigations has revealed.

Nigerian Army, THISDAY gathered, is not taking the comment lightly as it viewed the statement as a subtle blackmail to force Nigeria to send troops to Somalia despite the fact that there is no peace to keep in that country.

However, Director, Nigeria Army Public Relations, Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade, though did not confirm the threat of a legal action, described the allegation as nothing but a mischief targeted at Nigeria's international acclaim in peacekeeping.

A source close to the military told THISDAY that the US had been uncomfortable with Nigeria occupying the Com-mand position of the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), currently headed by Gen. Martin Luther Agwai. While Nigeria was seeking retention of the position, the US was backing Rwanda to take over.

Also, for the UN Security seat, while the regional body Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) are in favour of Nigeria taking the seat, the US was more in favour of South Africa being in the saddle.

Nigeria currently has 17,000 peacekeepers in various peacekeeping missions with 5,000 in Darfur alone making it a burden on Nigeria's budget.

The United State Govern-ment, on June 11th through its Under Secretary on Public Diplomacy and Security in the State Department, Judith A. McHale, was quoted by Empowered Newswire to have expressed worries that high rate of HIV/AIDS among Nigerian soldiers was impeding the country's participation in international peace-keeping missions.

McHale, while speaking on the national security implications of US engagement with other countries in the world at a public lecture on Public Diplomacy: A National Security Imperative at the Centre for New American Security, was quoted to have said the US had discovered through interaction with the Nigerian military that many of the country's soldiers were carriers of the dreaded HIV virus.

She had said the rise in US resources and personnel for public diplomacy had resulted in gains to America's public diplomacy, noting that this has been evidenced in the America's help to deal with the problem of HIV/AIDS among Nigerian soldiers.

"In Nigeria, for example, where high rates of HIV and AIDS among its soldiers hampered the Nigerian military's ability to participate in peacekeeping missions, the State Department organised a partnership with Department of Defence and the Nigerian Ministry of Defence to create a programme of testing, training, and education aimed at Nigerian military families.

"As at last month (May), more than 77,000 Nigerians had received HIV counseling and testing," she was quoted as saying.

Russia outwitted U.S. strategic defenses with missile test

The United States was unable to detect the presence of Russian strategic submarines in the Arctic before they test-launched two ballistic missiles, a Russian intelligence source said on Wednesday, according to RIA Novosti.

Russia carried out test launches of two Sineva intercontinental ballistic missiles from two Delta IV class nuclear-powered submarines, located near the North Pole, on July 13-14.

"The American radars certainly detected the missile launches but their location took them by surprise," the source said.

The first missile, flying a ballistic path, hit its designated target at the Kura testing grounds on the Kamchatka Peninsula, while the second, fired with a flat trajectory, destroyed a target at the Chizha testing site on the White Sea.

The source said that the launch area, covered by ice floe, was heavily patrolled by Russian attack submarines and the Americans were unable to detect the arrival of two strategic submarines before the launch.

"At the same time, U.S. reconnaissance satellites are unable to detect submarines under thick ice floe in the Arctic," he said.

The region around the North Pole is a perfect place for launches of ballistic missiles because it allows the submarines to arrive in a designated area undetected and to shorten the missile flight time to the target.

The RSM-54 Sineva (NATO designation SS-N-23 Skiff) is a third-generation liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile that entered service with the Russian Navy in July 2007. It can carry four or 10 nuclear warheads, depending on the modification.

Russia plans to equip its Delta IV class submarines with at least 100 Sineva missiles.

Interview with Webster Tarpley : "The War on terror is a myth" - Source: ReOpen911

Webster G. Tarpley - historian, journalist and critic of US foreign and domestic policy - replies to the questions of two French associations, ReOpen911 and Geopolintel, and delivers his impressions of the geopolitical endgames in the shifting sands of the post-9/11 world and the new Obama era.

Webster G. Tarpley participated in the 2005 Axis for Peace conference, chaired by Thierry Meyssan, President of Voltaire Network. He is an eminent authority in modern methods of interference, in particular the manipulation of the terrorist threat and false flag operations. He addressed the Axis of Peace Conference on these issues, stating that "It is impossible to understand the current US policy if the scope of the September 11 events is underestimated. The attempts occurred that day constituted a coup. The war on terror is based on a myth and it has become a compulsory religion of state since the events took place. The only way of fighting neocons is by destroying that myth. The creation of a truth commission, similar to that of Russell after the Viet Nam war, could help to destroy the myth."

Foreword

Before broaching the actual interview, Webster Tarpley offered his analytical perception of the present geopolitical juncture, complementing the analysis he had made prior to Barack Obama´s election [1] :

"The main US-UK project at the moment is to break up Pakistan, so it cannot become an energy corridor for China with Iran and the rest of the Middle East, as we see in the port of Gwadar. The lunatic escalation in Afghanistan which has been Obama´s trademark issue only makes sense when you see that the goal is to destroy the central government of Pakistan, and bust that country into five parts in an extension of the Bernard Lewis plan. Pakistan is a more important target than Iran.

There is also a US-UK plan to destroy the pro-Chinese string of pearls countries across the Indian Ocean. But Sri Lanka has wiped out the US-UK terror army known as the Tamil Tigers, terrorists with headquarters in London. How grotesque it was to see Kouchner and Milliband desperately trying to save the Tamil Tigers so these butchers could fight another day! Places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh and various islands groups are now a battlefield between the US-UK and China, with China pushing for peaceful trade and development and the US-UK trying to sabotage those and maintain the discredited Washington Consensus against the emerging Beijing consensus, which rejects imperialist bullying of the IMF-World Bank-WTO type."

Interview

Q: Could Obama´s letter to Medvedev, asking the Russians to negotiate Iran´s abandonment of its legitimate right to a nuclear program, be seen as a diplomatic ploy to ignite a new war in the Middle-East?

Webster G. Tarpley: As I wrote in Obama The Postmodern Coup – The Making of a Manchurian Candidate, the general policy of the Obama administration is to foment conflict between Iran and Russia. They call this buck passing — playing one enemy state against another and hoping that both can be damaged or destroyed in the process. The Obama regime would like to maneuver Russia into a posture of hostility to Iran, playing on Russian fear of what Iran might finally do with nuclear weapons if they got them. With people like Putin and Lavrov, the Russians are not likely to fall for such a crude trick. The recent experiment in rioting and mob rule in Iran clearly represents a CIA people power coup, color revolution, or velvet Revolution which does not appear to be succeeding too well.

If an Anglo-American puppet were to take power in Iran, one of the first things he would do would probably be to cut off oil deliveries to China, since this is the main interest of the US and the British in the Middle East these days. Obama´s Cairo speech was nothing more than an attempt to play the Arab and Islamic world in the Middle East against Russia and China. India is also a leading candidate to become the US-UK Eurasian land dagger, but again the Indians may prove too smart to fall for this. Everyone knows that the US Congress has passed repeated laws calling for regime change in Iran, funded with $400 million [2], and Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker of the past five years or more about US espionage and provocation teams who have been active in Iran, attempting to foment the rebellions of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Pashtuns, and others, with the goal of finally partitioning and Balkanize in Iran in the same way that Yugoslavia and Iraq have been partitioned, and Sudan may be soon.

The color revolution in Iran [3] is largely the handiwork of the "soft power" group inspired by the writings of Joseph Nye, and including Brzezinski´s [4] circles at the Rand Corporation, plus the International Crisis Group and other operatives who use left cover, humanitarian slogans, and human rights for what they are doing. If I have understood Jacques Sapir clearly, he seems to be saying that the slogans of human rights have been so abused by Western imperialists in the service of their own predatory goals that these slogans have become completely discredited because of the hypocrisy and double standards involved. If that is Sapir´s point, it is well taken. I would say that it is time to stress the economic rights of the developing countries, starting with industrialization, full employment, and an end to poverty, disease, illiteracy, and a situation where we have one billion people living in hunger on the verge of starvation according to the latest United Nations reports, and probably 2 billion people who are eking at a miserable existence at less than a dollar a day. That is the real issue facing humanity today.

Q: The Gates-Brzezinski plan envisages a new approach towards Iran. If this plan falls through, what are the chances of the United States carrying out an atomic strike against Iran as was advocated by William Schneider, Jr.?

Webster G. Tarpley: The entire basis of the Obama regime is a growing awareness in US imperialist circles that the United States is far too weak, far too isolated, far too hated, and far too bankrupt to undertake any further adventures in the Middle East directly. Therefore, they are falling back on buck passing and waging war through proxies or kamikaze puppets, much in the way that Ethiopia was played against Somalia a couple of years ago.

Q: If the United States and Russia don´t succeed in stopping Iran from pursuing its nuclear program, do you think Israel could strike Iran like it did Iraq during Saddam Hussein?

Webster G. Tarpley: The Israelis have been ordered repeatedly by Gates, by Panetta, by Biden, and by Obama himself to drop and abandon any idea of a solo breakaway ally-style strike against Iran. I write about this in Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. I think the British are on the same line. Senator Kerry and Obama have also said that Iran has a right to a program of peaceful nuclear energy. All of this reinforces the idea that the US is desperately attempting to mobilize Iran as a kamikaze puppet against Russia and/or China. Those who continue to ignore this tendency are living in the world as it was before December 2007, when the official US intelligence estimate announced that there was no Iranian nuclear weapons program. I doubt the Israelis would start such an attack. If they do, it would of course be the beginning of a true world catastrophe. Our friends at the Quai d´Orsay should do what they can to dissuade Netanyahu & co.

Q: Since the U.S. intelligence services have acknowledged that Iran suspended its military nuclear program back in 2003, shouldn´t we accept Iran´s entitlement to a civilian nuclear energy capacity?

Webster G. Tarpley: Of course, despite the demagogy of Sarkozy and Kouchner on this point, where they have tried to be out in front. Every country has an inherent and inalienable right to science, technology, industry, and modern energy production, and in today´s world this can only mean the full exploitation of peaceful nuclear energy. This used to be the basis of US foreign policy during much of the Cold War in the form of the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace approach.

Every country in the world which wishes to assert its sovereignty and its right to development is now either pursuing or seriously considering a significant application of nuclear energy, starting with China, India, Russia, Jordan, and many others. They are following the very successful French example, which is far more eloquent than Sarkozy´s speeches. After the massive violations of the non-proliferation regime which are built into the current US-India nuclear accord, the US does not have a leg to stand on when it comes to bullying and hectoring others on this issue.

Q: The ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) system and NATO expansion constitute the backbone of U.S. foreign policy in Europe. How do you view this provocation against Russia and the potential risk of a clash among European allies?

Webster G. Tarpley: NATO expansion [5] is useless at best and highly dangerous in most of the likely scenarios. Who in his right mind would want to be committed to fighting and dying for a demented madman like Saakashvili, after he has documented his total mental instability with his kamikaze attack against Russia in August 2008? Who in his right mind would want to be committed to following the latest adventures of that gang of IMF kleptocrats in Kiev? When East Germany was incorporated into West Germany, the US gave specific commitments to Russia that NATO forces would not even enter the former DDR. Now they have gone much further. It is time to reverse this trend.

I had urged that France urgently reconsider the idea of reentering the NATO command structure. Given the US commitment to these unstable and aggressive regimes on the Russian doorstep, France might risk being dragged into a catastrophic war as a tail on the Anglo-American kite. That is no future for a great nation like France.

We can also see a possible second echelon of provocateur states composed of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, and some others that can be thrown into action against Russia in questions like cutting off natural gas deliveries to Western Europe just about every winter. The Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has been one of the best Western European leaders on constructive relations with Russia and on questions like the Southstream pipeline, and it is therefore no surprise that the Anglo-American scandal machine is singling him out for special slanders and attacks.

Q: In connection with the ABM Treaty, what do you think about the deployment of anti-ballistic missile shields in East European countries like the Czech Republic without the agreement of the European Parliament?

Webster G. Tarpley: I have repeatedly challenged Obama in public to take some specific steps if he wants to prove that he is really the peace angel that he claims to be. The first is to announce that there will be no deployment of alleged ABM systems in Poland, since these can easily be inserted into a first strike preventive nuclear war strategy against Russia, thereby putting the world back on the old Cold War hair trigger. Obama could simply announce "no Polish missile crisis will occur." The other step Obama could take is to withdraw all US support for further NATO expansion. That is what any sane European would be demanding that he do. Instead, we had 200,000 German lemmings at the Brandenburg gate last summer who had been duped by Obama.

Q: In the current context how do you see France´s reintegration in NATO, and its participation in the war against terrorism?

Webster G. Tarpley: I had recommended that France not submit to the authority of the NATO command [6]. President de Gaulle was absolutely right in ousting the NATO headquarters from Versailles, and in withdrawing France from the NATO command structure. This did nothing to undermine the traditional Franco-American friendship, but did prevent lawless elements within the NATO structure from causing serious problems inside France. I am thinking in particular of General Lyman Lemnitzer, who came up with the idea for Operation Northwoods [7] when he was in the Pentagon, and then went on to become the NATO commander who did so much to set up Gladio [8] in Italy and most of the other NATO countries. De Gaulle, in short, was right, and in Western world needs France to maintain its intellectual independence and its ability to develop a responsible and realistic critique of the excesses of the Anglo-American. This is what de Gaulle did, and this is what we will need French leaders to do in the future.

Q: With regard to September 11, 2001, do you think that an independent investigation will ever materialize? If so, will it be triggered by a U.S. judicial decision, or by international initiaves like that of "Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth"?

Webster G. Tarpley: The significant movement for 9/11 truth which had emerged in the US society through the end of 2006 and into 2007 has largely fragmented into impotence. As the US primary election campaigns for president began to gather momentum during 2007, many former 9/11 truth activists made the serious mistake of sacrificing their own activity to professional politicians who were promising to do something to investigate 9/11.

The Democratic left liberal candidate Dennis Kucinich delivered formal public promises that he would investigate 9/11 and also the rogue B-52 affair of August September 2007, which emerged just after a group of activists of which I was a part had issued the Kennebunkport Warning, pointing out that Cheney was in the process of making a final bid to start a war with Iran. This was at the same time that the Israelis made their air raid into Syria. But Kucinich failed to deliver on his promises.

An even larger segment of the former 9/11 truth movement was siphoned off by the Republican libertarian candidate, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Ron Paul did not make such public promises as Kucinich had done, but he privately assured 9/11 truth activists that he shared their views and would say so in public at the proper time. Based on these assurances, many 9/11 truth activists gave their time, their money, and their support to Ron Paul´s presidential efforts. But, when Ron Paul was asked about 9/11 in one of the nationally televised cable television debates which were witnessed by the entire national press corps, he stated vehemently that he considered the ideas of the 9/11 truth movement to be "preposterous" and an embarrassment to him, adding that the truth activists should stop their efforts. He also said that his skepticism in regard to the 9/11 commission report was the same as his skepticism towards any government document, no more and no less.

Finally, when it became clear that Obama had a real chance to be president, the remaining left liberals gave up all of their issues to join the messianic and utopian quest offered by Obama. As a result of Obama, the peace movement, the impeachment movement, and the 9/11 truth movement were all virtually swept away. This illustrates the important role of Obama in suppressing dissent and shielding the Wall Street establishment from mass popular agitation. Right now it would take the decisive commitment of one or more world leaders outside of the United States to bring about the necessary independent international truth commission concerning 9/11.

Q: Many citizens have discovered geopolitics and the behind-the-scenes reality of conflicts while researching the 9/11 cover-up; what would you like to say to those people who find out, much to their dismay, that many wars/attacks are actually orchestrated by States and/or interest groups against the interests of their own people.

Webster G. Tarpley: The problem of US foreign policy in this regard is not located mainly inside the US federal government, but is a result of the fact that US foreign policy is largely manufactured by powerful Wall Street banking interests who operate through such organizations as the [9], the Trilateral commission, the Bilderberger group [10], and the very insidious Mont Pelerin Society, which deals with economics.

Obama, Biden, Holbrook, and many others are the valets of these Wall Street bankers. These forces do not pursue an American national policy, which would for example dictate good relations between the US and Russia in the way that they were maintained during the American Revolution, during the American Civil War, and during the F.D. Roosevelt administration. Instead of an American national policy what we have is a policy agreeable to financiers and imperialists. This is also the mentality of the city of London, and also of parts of the European Commission and the European Central Bank. We live in an age of oligarchical preponderance across the globe. The only way that this can be remedied is by increased politicization and activism of parts of modern society which currently tend to be reduced to a stupor of passivity, apathy, and alienation by popular culture.

Q: Internet plays a very important role in providing ready access to information and in what could be called the "education of the masses". As far as you know, is there a concerted plan looming to clamp down on the Internet?

Webster G. Tarpley : One of the positive aspects of the US system has been a strong protection of free speech embodied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. You can contrast this to the terrible situation in a country like Great Britain. The totalitarian liberals of the Obama regime are clearly very hostile to a continuation of the tradition of free speech. They would like to narrow the realm of free speech using the pretext of hate crime legislation designed to criminalize not so much criminal acts, but rather the opinions entertained by those who commit such criminal acts – criminalizing opinions is a very strange idea in jurisprudence.

The Democratic Party also seems to want to attempt to silence or intimidate the right wing or reactionary radio commentators who are very prominent in this country and to represent one of the main forces criticizing the Obama regime. This is being attempted under the pretext of forcing broadcasters who use the public airwaves to offer a broad variety of political opinions, or to reflect local community groups. A better idea would be to prohibit one corporation from owning all the mass media in a given city, and then letting free speech take its course.

Q: You have often taken a pessimistic view of the future (cf. your latest book expounding on the little faith that you have in Obama); are you more optimistic when it comes to the prospects of achieving a more peaceful world?

Webster G. Tarpley : Not believing in the demagogy of a Wall Street puppet like Obama does not make me a pessimist, but merely a realist. Obama has passed his peak and is now on a downward slide, although the danger of a new false flag operation targeting Russia, China, Sudan, Pakistan, or other news targets is now surely increasing. As a student of Plato, Leibniz, and Machiavelli, I am of course committed to optimism in so far as prospects for action in the world are concerned. I´d go with Leibniz against Voltaire on these points. I would also endorse what Dante says in the central point of his Divine comedy in the Marco Lombardo canto where it is stressed that the state of the world is not the responsibility of God, predestination, or fate, but is rather a task which is delegated to human beings who have to exercise free will. People need to understand that world historical action is at the present moment more feasible than at any other time in history, and it is time to take advantage of these possibilities before the window of opportunity closes, which it might do at virtually any time.

Q: To conclude, for someone like you who is familiar with the Machiavellian power wheels of our times, what can our readers and ordinary citizens do to help this become a better and more peaceful world?

Webster G. Tarpley : There is no reason for a world economic depression, nor for the next world war that may follow it in the same sequence of events that we had in the 1930s. Above all, the laws of economics are not mysterious at all. I lay them out in my newest book, Surviving the Cataclysm.

In order to get out of a depression we first need to do things to reduce the burden of fictitious capital and speculative incomes on the world economy. This means doing things like banning the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble, or taxing derivatives out of existence, banning adjustable rate mortgages, outlawing hedge funds, stopping foreclosures on homes farms and businesses, putting a 1% Tobin tax on speculators, re-regulating the oil markets, and seizing and shutting down the bankrupt zombie banks which dominate Wall Street and the city of London. We need to seize the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the other privately controlled central banks and nationalize them.

They should start making 0% interest loans to productive activity, by which I mean the creation of tangible physical wealth in the form of manufacturing, agriculture, construction, transportation, infrastructure building, mining, scientific research, health care facilities, and the other prerequisites of human existence. This is especially acute here in the United States for the overall economy is approaching the point of a physical or thermodynamic collapse. We need to do things in this country like build a thousand hospitals, build a hundred ultramodern fourth-generation pebble bed high temperature nuclear reactors, build 100,000 miles of maglev rail, rebuild the interstate highway systems, and rebuild all water and sewage facilities.

We need a crash program in high-energy physics to solve the remaining problems for thermonuclear fusion power. We need a crash program in biomedical research to find cures of the dread diseases which afflict mankind. These are efforts would by definition be international. Of course, we need to fully fund and restore the social safety net which will be important for the victims of the depression over the next couple of years. To crown all of this, we will need a new world monetary conference to create a viable world monetary system to restart world trade and promote the full economic and technological development of Africa, South Asia, much of Latin America, eastern Europe, and other areas which have been denied economic development.

We need to address the great projects of world infrastructure like the Dakar to Djibouti maglev, the Cape to Cairo maglev, bridges and tunnels across the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and between Sicily and Tunisia, a Eurasian maglev system, a Bering Strait Bridge Tunnel, a new Kra canal, a Tennessee Valley Authority for the Ganges Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Amazon, and the other main river systems of the world, and the development of water transport in Africa with a system of locks and canals between the upper Nile and the upper Congo.

We should do this with the full awareness that if we do not realize such necessary progressive steps in our own time, world civilization may collapse into a period of chaos the horrors of which are difficult for us to imagine at this time, but which ought to be clear enough. My favorite litany remains one that was taught to me by a Spanish coal miner from the Asturias region of northern Spain, who told me that his personal motto was: "your choice in the modern world is clear. You can either get active, or you will surely get radioactive. So choose." This alternative has not changed so much as people might think. My hope is that more and more people will choose to get active.

Mr. Tarpley, thank you very much.

1] "The Men Behind Obama", Voltaire Network, 30 April 2009

2] CIA has Distributed 400 Million Dollars Inside Iran to Evoke a Revolution, Voltaire Network; 22 June 2009.

3] The grassroots takeover technique « Color revolution » fails in Iran, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network; 27 June 2009.

4] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Voltaire Network

5] EU, NATO, US: 21st Century Alliance For Global Domination by Rick Rozoff, Voltaire Network; 2 April 2009.

6] President Sarkozy has accepted the dominance of the United States, interview by Sandro Cruz, Voltaire Network; 2 April 2009

7] The Terrorist Attacks Planned by the American Joint Chief of Staff against its Population, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 5 November 2001.

8] NATO´s Hidden Terrorism, interview by Silvia Cattori, Voltaire Network; 22 January 2007.

9] Council on Foreign Relations Address by Hillary Clinton at the Council on Foreign Relations, by Hillary Clinton, Voltaire Network; 15 July2009.

10] The Bilderberg Plan for 2009: Remaking the Global Political Economy, by Andrew G. Marshall, Voltaire Network; 7 June 2009

There is no limit to what a person can do or how far one can go to help - if one doesn't mind who gets the credit !

ECOTERRA Intl. maintains a register for persons missing or abducted in the Somali seas (Foreign seafarers as well as Somalis). Inquiries by family member can be sent by e-mail to office[at]ecoterra-international.org

For families of presently captive seafarers - in order to advise and console their worries - ECOTERRA Intl. can establish contacts with professional seafarers, who had been abducted in Somalia, and their wives as well as of a Captain of a sea-jacked and released ship, who agreed to be addressed "with questions, and we will answer truthfully".

ECOTERRA - ALERTS and pending issues:

PIRATE ATTACK GULF OF ADEN: Advice on Who to Contact and What to Do http://www.noonsite.com/Members/sue/R2008-09-08-2

NATURAL RESOURCES & ARMED FISH POACHERS: Foreign navies entering the 200nm EEZ of Somalia and foreign helicopters and troops must respect the fact that especially all wildlife is protected by Somali national as well as by international laws and that the protection of the marine resources of Somalia from illegally fishing foreign vessels should be an integral part of the anti-piracy operations. Likewise the navies must adhere to international standards and not pollute the coastal waters with oil, ballast water or waste from their own ships but help Somalia to fight against any dumping of any waste (incl. diluted, toxic or nuclear waste). So far and though the AU as well as the UN has called since long on other nations to respect the 200 nm EEZ, only now the two countries (Spain and France) to which the most notorious vessels and fleets are linked have come up with a declaration that they will respect the 200 nm EEZ of Somalia but so far not any of the navies operating in the area pledged to stand against illegal fishing. So far not a single illegal fishing vessel has been detained by the naval forces, though they had been even informed about several actual cases, where an intervention would have been possible. Illegally operating Tuna fishing vessels (many from South Korea, some from Greece and China) carry now armed personnel and force their way into the Somali fishing grounds - uncontrolled or even protected by the naval forces mandated to guard the Somali waters against any criminal activity, which included arms carried by foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters.

LLWs / NLWs: According to recently leaked information the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden are also used as a cover-up for the live testing of recently developed arsenals of so called non-lethal as well as sub-lethal weapons systems. (Pls request details) Neither the Navies nor the UN has come up with any code of conduct in this respect, while the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) is sponsoring several service-led acquisition programs, including the VLAD, Joint Integration Program, and Improved Flash Bang Grenade. Alredy in use in Somalia are so called Non-lethal optical distractors, which are visible laser devices that have reversible optical effects. These types of non-blinding laser devices use highly directional optical energy. Somalia is also a testing ground for the further developments of the Active Denial System (ADS) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). If new developments using millimeter wave sources that will help minimize the size, weight, and system cost of an effective Active Denial System which provides "ADS-ACTD-like" repel effects, are used has not yet been revealed. Obviously not only the US is developing and using these kind of weapons as the case of MV MARATHON showed, where a Spanish naval vessel was using optical lasers - the stand-off was then broken by the killing of one of the hostage seafarers. Local observers also claim that HEMI devices, producing Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation (HEMI) Bioeffects, have been used in the Gulf of Aden against Somalis. Exposure to HEMI devices, which can be understood as a stun-gun shot at an individual over a larger distance, causes muscle contractions that temporarily disable an individual. Research efforts are underway to develop a longer-duration of this effect than is currently available. The live tests are apparently done without that science understands yet the effects of HEMI electrical waveforms on a human body.

ECOTERRA Intl., whose work does focus on nature- and human-rights-protection and - as the last international environmental organization still working in Somalia - had alerted ship-owners since 1992, many of whom were fishing illegally in the 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone, to stay away from Somali waters. The non-governmental organization had requested the international community many times for help to protect the coastal waters of the war-torn state, but now lawlessness has seriously increased and gone out of hand.

ECOTERRA members with marine and maritime expertise, joined by it's ECOP-marine group, are closely and continuously monitoring and advising on the Somali situation. (for previous information concerning the topics please google keywords ECOTERRA (and) SOMALIA)

The network of the SEAFARERS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME helped significantly in most sea-jack cases. ECOTERRA Intl. is working in Somalia since 1986 on human-rights and nature protection, while ECOP-marine concentrates on illegal fishing and the protection of the marine ecosystems. Your support counts too.

Please consider to contribute to the work of SAP, ECOP-marine and ECOTERRA Intl. Please donate to the defence fund.

Contact us for details concerning project-sponsorship or donations via e-mail: ecotrust[at]ecoterra.net

Kindly note that all the information above is distributed under and is subject to a license under the Creative Commons Attribution.

To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/

Send your genuine articles or networked information please to: mailhub[at]ecoterra.net

Pls cite ECOTERRA Intl. - www.ecoterra-international.org as source for onward publications, where no other source is quoted.

Press Contacts:

ECOP-marine

East-Africa

254-714-747090

marine[at]ecop.info

www.ecop.info

ECOTERRA Intl.

Nairobi Node

africanode[at]ecoterra.net

254-733-633-733

EA Seafarers Assistance Programme

SAP Media Officers

254-722-613858

254-733-385868

sap[at]ecoterra.net

N.B.: If you are missing certain editions of our updates, this can have two reasons: Either you have not white-listed our sender address office[at}ecoterra-international.org for your inbox and your server provides for censorship (beware of yahoo and barracudacentral as filter) or you do not belong [yet] to our trusted friends and supporters, who receive all updates including those with classified content. Join the network or become a funding supporter to get them all. Look up earlier updates on the internet - e.g. at: http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=136&Itemid=229

To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this listserve - just send a mail with reference SMCM to office[at]ecoterra-international.org

We welcome the submission of articles for publication through the SMCM.

Note: ECOTERRA is not responsible for the spam that sometimes appears to come from this domain. This is spoofed mail, is part of a systematic, ongoing harassment of independent groups and websites, and is under FBI investigation.

For more information see this article in The Nation or this article in Wired News.

One tree makes approx. 16.67 reams of copy/printing paper or 8,333.3 A4 sheets. Kindly print this email only if strictly necessary