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By Margaret Kimberley
October 06, 2013 - blackagendareport.com
“Our government bears responsibility for the loss of life at the Kenyan mall.”
“Does al Shabab Pose a Threat on American Soil?” So read a headline in the New York Times’ blog, Room for Debate. Despite its name, Room for Debate rarely shows any true differences of opinion on whatever issue of the day is considered significant to the Times’ editors. None of the supposed debaters on this topic actually addressed the central issue of al-Shabaab’s existence and what it says about the United States behavior around the world. A better question would be why the United States turned Somalia into a ruin and why does it keep killing people there.
Sometimes we get the opportunity to see violence up close as in the recent al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. But in the absence of good reporting, scenes of carnage tell us nothing. Thanks to liar presidents and their partners in the corporate media, Americans know nothing about Kenya or its role as American partner in keeping Somalia in a constant state of war.
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African Diaspora: WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. Twisted Ethiopia's Arm to Invade Somalia
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By Rob Prince
December 21, 2010
robertjprince.wordpress.com
“The cable exposes a secret deal cut between the United States and Ethiopia to invade Somalia.”
By mid 2007, the 50,000 Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in late 2006 found themselves increasingly bogged down, facing much fiercer resistance than they had bargained for as Somalis of all stripes temporarily put aside their differences to stand together against the outside invader.
As the military incursion turned increasingly sour, then US Under Secretary of State for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, who taught at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies in the 1990s, insisted that, prior to the invasion, the United States had counseled caution and that Washington had warned Ethiopia not to use military force against Somalia. Frazer was a close collaborator with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom there also is a strong University of Denver connection. Frazer certainly tried to distance the United States from responsibility for the Ethiopian invasion in a number of interviews she gave to the media at the time.
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Analysis: Somalia Piracy Began in Response to Illegal Fishing and Toxic Dumping by Western Ships off Somali Coast
April 14, 2009
democracynow.org
Rush Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama vowed an international crackdown to halt piracy off the coast of Somalia Monday soon after the freeing of US cargo ship captain Richard Phillips, who had been held hostage by Somali pirates since last Wednesday. Three Somali pirates were killed in the US operation.
While some military analysts are considering attacks on pirate bases inside Somalia in addition to expanding US Navy gunships along the Somali coastline, others are strongly opposed to a land invasion. US Congress member Donald Payne of New Jersey made a brief visit to the Somali capital of Mogadishu Monday and said piracy was, quote, a "symptom of the decades of instability." His plane was targeted by mortar fire as he was leaving Somalia, soon after a pirate vowed revenge against the United States for killing his men.
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By Mike Whitney
December 02, 2008
Information Clearinghouse
Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that's all changed and there's talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdrawal all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?
The United States has lost the ground war in Somalia, but that doesn't mean its geopolitical objectives have changed one iota. The US intends to stay in the region for years to come and use its naval power to control the critical shipping lanes from the Gulf of Aden. The growing strength of the Somali national resistance is a set-back, but it doesn't change the basic game-plan. The pirates are actually a blessing in disguise. They provide an excuse for the administration to beef up it's military presence and put down roots. Every crisis is an opportunity.
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by Margaret Kimberley
May 26, 2008
blackagendareport.com
"The Muslim religion is used as a convenient scapegoat to further the aims of war."
What does the word "Islamist" mean? The millions of people around the globe who practice Islam are called Muslims, but this new term has crept into the language without question or investigation. It seems to apply to Muslims who fight against the occupation of Iraq, or Somalians who don't take kindly to the U.S.-backed Ethiopian government invading their country and killing their countrymen and women. In short, an Islamist seems to be any Muslim who has the nerve to act in opposition to the American government. Like anyone else deemed an enemy, a new word has to be invented in order to dehumanize. If Somalian resistance fighters were called just that, then Americans might question their government's decision to keep killing them.
America's intervention gave Ethiopia license to invade Somalia and begin a horrific cycle of violence. According to Amnesty International, more than 600,000 Somalis have fled from their homes, at least 6,000 are dead and 90,000 children in refugee camps are in danger of death from starvation and lack of hygiene and medical care.
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by Chris Floyd, chris-floyd.com
June 13 2007
Evidently it is now a capital crime, worthy of instant death by special ops or air raid or drone-fired missile, for any Muslim of any nationality to visit or take part in an Islamic regime which the U.S. government dislikes.
How many people did American forces actually kill when they attacked refugees fleeing from the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia last January? We know from reports by Oxfam, the Guardian, the Associated Press and Reuters that dozens of innocent civilians were slaughtered near the Kenyan border, including villagers and nomadic tribesmen hit by American gunships seeking to kill alleged al Qaeda operatives who may or may not have been among the refugees. But a new story in Esquire magazine -- detailing the creation of America's most recent military satrapy, the Africa Command -- provides disturbing indications that the post-invasion killing by American operatives in Somalia was far more extensive -- and deliberate -- than previously known. [Extensive background on the war in Somalia can be found here.]
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African Diaspora: See No Evil: Somalia Sinks Into the Pit as the World Looks Away
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by Chris Floyd, chris-floyd.com
May 15, 2007
How bad is the situation in Somalia, the third target of George W. Bush's "Terror War" take-downs? It's "worse than Darfur," says the UN's humanitarian chief, John Holmes.
Holmes, a former top British diplomat, told the Telegraph that "In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year."
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By Chris Floyd, chris-floyd.com
March 24, 2007
Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders – despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)
Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal – the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent – is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)
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By Ken Olende and Charlie Kimber
January 17, 2007; socialistworker.co.uk
Last week's US attack on Somalia is the latest stage of imperialist intervention in the Horn of Africa, write Ken Olende and Charlie Kimber
To understand the current crisis in the Horn of Africa you have to look at the role of the US and its "war on terror" - or the "long war" as US rulers are coming to call it.
This war is no more about terrorism than previous "humanitarian" interventions were about helping local populations.
There are three important things about Africa for the US. Firstly there are natural resources, notably oil.
Secondly there are wider strategic interests and thirdly the global development of an imperial strategy.
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By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
January 13, 2007
As usual, it takes a few days for the truth to emerge, not that the corporate media here in America notices.
Instead of killing Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, supposedly "al-Qaeda" operatives responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Pentagon killed "herdsmen ... gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes" in Somalia, according to the Independent.
"Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets," described as "backfir[ing] spectacularly" by the British newspaper.
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A new stage in Washington's illegal "terror" war
By Chris Marsden, wsws.org
January 10, 2007
US air strikes against targets in the south of Somalia have claimed a substantial number of civilian lives. The bombing campaign, begun Sunday night and continued on Monday, mark a major escalation in the Bush administration's lawless use of violence to achieve Washington's strategic aims under the auspices of its "global war on terrorism."
The attacks mark the first direct US military intervention in Somalia since 1994, when President Clinton ordered US troops withdrawn following the "Blackhawk Down" episode that led to the deaths of 18 Army commandos during street fighting in Mogadishu. The recent attacks, part of an intensified attempt to establish American hegemony over the entire Horn of Africa, have heightened the threat that the conflict in Somalia will ignite a regional war with unforeseeable consequences.
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By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
January 09, 2007
It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus "al-Qaeda" has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.
Earlier today, we learned a "U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia," CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. "The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa," apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. "The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia... where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States."
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by Charlie Kimber, socialistworker.co.uk
January 04, 2007
The recent Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a direct product of the US-British "war on terror". It threatens to further destabilise a region which has repeatedly been torn apart by war and famine.
Ethiopia's rulers ordered the war on behalf of George Bush in order to prosecute their own regional interests, to deflect Western criticism of their own repressive regime, and to collect the pay off from being a top US ally in a strategically crucial area. Somalia is just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
But the rejoicing in Ethiopia and the US at the defeat of the Islamic militias in Somalia may prove short-lived.
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Return of the Warlords
By Amina Mire, counterpunch.org
January 03, 2007
Somaliyaay toosoo
Toosoo isku tiirsada ee
Hadba kiina taag daranee
Taageera waligiinee.
(Somalia wake up,
wake up and join hands together
and we must help the weakest of our people
all of the time.)
--Somali national anthem. For the average western person, the current Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is just another military operation taking place in a distance land in the war against Islam terror. For Somalis, this invasion is nothing short of humiliating catastrophe. Somalis are deeply nationalistic; yet their nationalistic passion to towards their country did not prevent them from committing self-inflected genocidal civil wars which weakened their cultural fabric, political institutions and central authority so that after 16 years without functioning state, Somalia is today under the occupation of their most hated historical enemy, Ethiopia.
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