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Democracy Links
Member's Off-site Blogs
of camel and guns...
Guns given to Somali quiz winnersThe winners of a quiz organised by Somali Islamists have been given weapons and ammunition as prizes.
Prizes included AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and an anti-tank mine.
The quiz ran during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in the port city of Kismayo, and included questions about the Koran and Somali geography.
A representative for the al-Shabab militant group said the quiz aimed to stop young men from wasting their time and focus on defending their territory.
"The reason the young men were rewarded with weapons is to encourage them to participate in the ongoing holy war against the enemies of Allah in Somalia," AFP news agency quoted al-Shabab's Sheikh Abdullahi Alhaq as saying at Friday's prize-giving ceremony.
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Court claim over camel 'beauty'A $250,000 compensation claim has been made against Saudi Arabia's oil giant Saudi Aramco for causing the death of a prized camel, local press reports say.
The case, to be heard on Monday, involves a three-year-old black camel which fell into a large hole dug in the desert to store crude oil.
The camel's owner is quoted saying the beast had been entered in one of the region's popular camel beauty pageants.
The compensation claim is based on the value experts put on the camel.
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Ghan derails after hitting camelA Ghan train travelling between Alice Springs and Adelaide has derailed after hitting a camel near Kulgera in the Northern Territory.
A spokeswoman for Great Southern Rail says the locomotive derailed around 9pm last night.
She says no-one was injured and the passengers stayed on board overnight.
The train resumed its journey this morning after the locomotive was swapped with another
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Gus: winners and losers...
- By Gus Leonisky at 19 Oct 2009 - 4:47pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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camel trading schemes...
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash.
Estimates of the Taliban’s annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.
Despite efforts by the United States and its allies in the last year to cripple the Taliban’s financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.
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Obviously the Taliban must have traded-in its US bonds before the embargo, then ran some camel trading scheme on wheels of fortune using opium grease to make it spin better... see toon at top.
winners and losers...
Abu Dhabi is trying to rip up its disastrous $7.5bn (£4.6bn) agreement to invest in Citigroup, saying the banking giant misled the country's sovereign wealth fund about the state of its finances when the deal was signed in 2007.
The dispute came to light as Citigroup was attempting to stoke investor demand for a massive share issue yesterday and contributed to underwhelming investor demand. Faced with crystallising a loss on its bailout investments, the US Treasury abandoned plans to sell part of its Citigroup stake at the same time.
The oil-rich emirate is committed to buying Citigroup shares over the next two years at what is now 10 times the prevailing share price, and it has launched an arbitration claim for compensation to the tune of $4bn.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) said Citigroup made "fraudulent misrepresentations" in connection with the agreement, but declined to provide specifics. "It is the policy of Adia to pursue its legal rights fully," a fund spokesman said. "Adia declines to comment further due to binding confidentiality obligations, which Adia intends to respect."
Citigroup promised to vigorously defend the arbitration claim.