How much longer is the government going to keep funding and supporting Ethiopia and the pro-western administration in Somalia when they do things like this?

Joint government and Ethiopian
soldiers shot dead more than 40 civilians after they dismounted them from
civilian vehicles in southwestern Mogadishu witnesses and elders
said.
 
It was the latest in a series in which The Ethiopian and
Somali troops have killed civilians who have come too close to troops wary of
attacks by rebels.
 
The troops have pulled up civilian
vehicles at Arbiska area near Afgoi district ordering the passengers to drop
down from the vehicles where some of the handcuffed travelers were shot dead
while other were shot dead in the vehicles they were
traveling.
 
"When the vehicle was stopped the soldiers, fearing an
attack, arbitrarily fired on it," it said. The man died later of his
wounds.
 
Dozens others were wounded in that attack those were rushed to Mogadishu
hospitals.
 
No comments could be reached from the
government/Ethiopian officials on this incident.

From Wikipedia's article on Aidan Hartley

Aidan Hartley (born 1965), formerly was a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, assigned to Africa.

Hartley was born in Nairobi in 1965. Hartley covered the tumultuous Africa of the 1990s - wars in Somalia, famine in Ethopia, genocide in Rwanda. He is the author of The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He is currently a columnist for The Spectator, and a correspondent for Unreported World.

In this piece in his "Hearts and Minds and Holy War" series filmed near the end of 2006, Aidan traveled to Mogadishu to meet with the leaders of the Islamic Courts Union at the height of their power, and interviewed the leaders of the Islamic Courts as well as dozens of ordinary people throughout Mogadishu.

Shortly after he left Mogadishu, the Ethiopian army rolled into Mogadishu and ended the Islamic Courts Union's rule.

He returned last month to investigate reports of horrific atrocities committed both by the Ethiopian backed Transitional Federal Government and the Ethiopian military in his latest piece, Warlords Next Door. (skip past Hiraan.com's promotional bits before the videos begin)

I have been closely following the events surrounding the rise of the Islamic Courts and the Ethiopian army's invasion, and Aidan definitely provides his lifetime of experience in African and specifically Somali affairs and delivers a truly insightful and though provoking piece.  He really caught my attention in how he nailed the state of things in his 2006 piece, and this piece on Warlord Next Door brought things full circle.

For those of you who do not know about the war in Somalia, this is a critical piece of journalism that you cannot ignore.  This forgotten conflict must get out there and be known and understood.

Overturning Roe vs. Wade
Removing more civil liberties
No health care reform
No help for those hardest hit by economic troubles
Continuation of war with Iraq
New war with Iran
Further crumbling of our infrastructure
More jobs moving to China
Government controlled by lobbyists
Further support for thieving despots around the globe
Further strengthening of Iran
Further alienation of our allies in Europe
Further attacks on the constitution

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

- From 1984 by George Orwell

There have been many examples of doublethink in regards to criticisms of Obama, especially in this primary season. 

- Obama is an extremist liberal or even a communist who praised Reagan and voted for Cheney's energy bill
- Obama is an extreme atheist anti-religion, an extreme Muslim terrorist AND a Christian demagogue (TRIPLEthink!)
- Obama doesn't have the experience with the political establishment of Washington politics and he's got too much experience with the political establishment of Chicago politics.
- Obama is a partisan black nationalist who hasn't done anything specifically for the black community and doesn't deserve their support.

There are so many I could go on forever.  Doublethink is the weapon of choice against Obama by Republicans and the more partisan of Clinton supporters and will be in the future.

They are voting against Obama.  Proof positive of that was the 8% who couldn't bear to vote for either of them in North Carolina, even if it meant Obama getting a better margin.

Let's take a trip down memory lane to just 2 months ago.  Remember when these same "working class white folks" were swarming to Obama's banner of hope and change, and it was the elites and "minorities" (Latinos) who were winning states for Clinton?  Remember those inverted electoral maps in Wyoming and Idaho, where the cities went for Clinton and the countryside to Obama?

How did things change so dramatically?

They never did.  They listened to Clinton and Obama, and made a decision based on the candidates and what they proposed.

While many of the folks who voted for Clinton in the south gave Obama a chance to speak his message and simply considered Clinton the better candidate, I believe the majority never gave him a chance, and made up their minds about him without once listening to him.

There's still time to raise a couple million and hold a caucus on June 3rd for Michigan, and then put the caucus results before the credentials committee.

So to win the nomination, Obama needs to get roughly 78 more superdelegates and add-on delegates in addition to the roughly 107 delegates he can be expected to get from the remaining 6 contests.

The climactic showdown, with the fate of the nation in the balance!

Will the MSM notice? Will it even be stated?
How big of a deal will the MSM, and blogs like TPM, make of it?
Will Obama's capture of the majority of pledged delegates be lost amongst "big stories" such as Hillary's dramatic 4 point victory in Indiana, which obviously "spells doom for Obama's campaign"?

I say it will be ignored. It doesn't fit the bullshit narrative.

Yesterday I blogged about how killing Moalim Aden Hashi Ayrow, one of the commanders of Somalia's al-Shabab rebel movement by US cruise missle attack, would have several bad consequences.  One I didn't even touch on however, as it had little chance of success to begin with, is the peace talks scheduled with the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, a moderate, Islamist-aligned group of ex-SICC officials and ex-TFG parliamentarians opposed to the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia.

Well, as I touched on before, the manner in which Moalim Aden Hashi Ayrow has been killed has transformed him into a national and islamist hero, the Somali Che Guevera.  The reaction amongst even moderate Somalis has been one of anger, and it's killing the peace process.  The leader of the ARS, the most moderate and pro-negotiations islamist in Somalia, Sharif Sheikh Ahmad, is being pressured to cancel peace talks in Djibouti.

http://www.pr-inside.com/pro-islamist-somali-alliance-may-withdraw-r569636.htm

And just like that, after four days in charge of the media narrative, they've lost it again.  The last gasp of the Wright issue has gasped, the funeral held, the eulogy spoken, and the coffin lowered.  Just in time for Clinton to make a massively elitist comment, and a staffer of hers to be attacked by rampaging skeletons from her husband's campaign closet!

Clinton didn't get this memo however, sadly, and has made North Carolina into a "big deal" by moving the goalposts.  As had to happen eventually though, she picked exactly the wrong moment to do so.  Oops!

I suppose it's not too late to do a quick 180 and redeclare that NC doesn't count.

I have been following Somali politics quite closely ever since the Supreme Islamic Courts Council took control of the south in 2006, and I know a lot about Moalim Aden Hashi Ayrow. To be honest he and his faction was the most radical, violent and cruel of all the SICC factions, and his wing of the SICC's youth movement, al-Shabab, committed virtually all of the abuses that later made their way into the western press.

It was in fact the excesses of Ayrow that led to many Somalis distrusting the SICC. However, this has all changed.

With four missles, he has been transformed from somewhat brutal militia leader to martyr, shaheed and Somali hero. His past misdeeds wiped clean, and along with him much of the fading credible criticism one can level against the SICC's administration. The Pentagon just created the Somali Che Guevera. I know of at least two people who are going to name their sons Ayrow.

Not only did the Pentagon remove a liability from the insurgency, they gave them a hero.

Hillary will win in Pennsylvania by 10 points, 71/87
Guam 2/2
Obama will win Indiana by 20 points, 40/32
Obama will win North Carolina by 20 points 69/46
Hillary will win West Virginia by 30 points 10/18
Hillary will win Kentucky by 10 points, 23/28
Obama will win Oregon by 25 points, 32/20

Obama will pick up 40 add-on superdelegates by this time, and two months of his average take of 20 unpledged supers.
State conventions will allow Obama to pick up another 10 delegates.
With Oregon, Obama will have secured the majority of pledged delegates and popular vote, and 50 supers will push him over the top to 2025.

By May 20th, Obama will have picked up another 40 superdelegates, since he's been averaging 20 a month

He will have garnered

From the Pew poll's crosstabs:

In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are
much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say
that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also
are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more
concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values.
In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a
negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.

Less educated and older white Democrats, who have not backed Obama
in most primary elections, hold these values more commonly than do
other Democrats.


These
patterns suggest the potential for future reverberations from the
Wright controversy if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. More
conservative beliefs about equal rights and race are not only related
to negative opinions of Obama among Democrats, suggesting the potential
for defections among Democratic voters, but also are associated with
negative views of him in the electorate at large.

An analysis of the survey finds that holding conservative positions
on political and social values is associated with a greater likelihood
of supporting McCain over Obama among Republicans, Democrats and
independents, and all demographic groups. In contrast, however, this
pattern is much less apparent in the Clinton-McCain matchup, excepting
views about women in leadership roles.


One of the few negative trends for Obama following the Wright affair is that a larger number of conservative Republicans hold a very
unfavorable opinion of him in the new poll than did so in February. The
survey also finds that Obama no longer enjoys the favorable image
rating advantage over McCain among independents that was apparent in
previous polls.

Faced with the cruelties of mathematical probability, more and more True Believers in the Hillary camp have chosen instead to live in an escapist fantasy land where Obama is a racist, Hillary secretly has all the superdelegates in her pocket (the ones who endorsed Obama or are uncommitted are just for dramatic effect) and everyone in Pennsylvania is going to vote for her.

Yup, she's going to win 90% of the vote!  You just wait!  Also, those 2 million donors?  All members of al-Qaeda! 

Ferraro is a courageous hero!  It's the black voters, and those damn "guilty" white voters who are voting for a bigot!

I also have evidence that red is blue, up is down, and being behind by 180 actually means you're ahead.