Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If low taxes were the way that people like me created wealth, then we'd be starting our companies in the Congo or Somalia or Afghanistan, but we're not. We come to places where there are lots and lots of customers.
If Texas and Kansas were countries they wouldn't be admitted to the World Trade Organization. Their policies are congruent with North Korea, Somalia, Turkestan, several other countries I can't pronounce and Micronesia.
In the current situation, it is very difficult for foreign NGOs to work in Somalia because it is so unstable and dangerous. I really hope that my country will one day rise out of this mess and reach the potential it has.
Barack Obama commits war crimes - Somalia, Yemen. He commits war crimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to keep a spotlight on war crimes, to keep track of the innocents killed... There is a major clash.
I started to work on a feature-length script about pirates in Somalia, but I knew that there was something I was missing, which was that I didn't know what day-to-day life looked like and felt like in East Africa. So I decided I had to go.
When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.
People feel repressed by their own governments; they feel unfairly treated by the outside world; they wake up in the morning, and who do they see - they see people being shot and killed: all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.
I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life - and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I'd lost my freedom.
Finally, I also come in recognition of the great work that has been undertaken by the NGOs and UN agencies that have been active for many years here, especially through the local staff and international staff here in Somaliland and in Somalia at large.
Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judea, and Somalia. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and oust them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been any better in Arab states.
When an international news organization covers a story in Somalia, Yemen, Sudan or wherever, they will fly a crew to go there, spend a few days, interact with some officials and analysts, most of the time English-speaking elite, and file the story and go home.
The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio, TV, magazines, and books, so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us, like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions in Afghanistan.
Stateless people are hidden. During the 2011 refugee crises, it was obvious that people were fleeing Somalia and Libya - there was a lot of international attention. Statelessness goes undetected because stateless people are in legal limbo and are afraid to show up.
The house I was born in in Somalia was right next to a big market. A lot of beggars or panhandlers would be in front of our house constantly, and my grandfather and grandmother would always invite them in to have food with us and have them take whatever was left over.
I couldn't be happier teaming up to make the feature with a company as innovative as VICE. There is so much the world doesn't know about piracy in Somalia and the people involved, and I'm excited to be telling a story of piracy in Somalia from a different perspective.
What we have seen with Islamist extremism, whether it is in Mali or Somalia or Afghanistan, is that the disease is not necessarily the individual country. The disease is the Islamist extremism, and that's what we have to fight; that's the narrative that we have to beat.
The U.S. has taken an active role in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction missions, even put boots on the ground in countries where it pledged it would not.
I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.
Armed drones have become Barack Obama's way to engage in terrorist-infested hellholes without putting 'boots on the ground.' For years, the CIA has been running a secrecy-shrouded program of targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and more recently in Somalia, Syria and Iraq.
European leaders cannot afford to be afraid. The refugee crisis is not one from which they can opt out. No magic wand will empower leaders to transport more than a million people back across the Aegean and the Bosphorus to Mosul and Aleppo, or across the Mediterranean to Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.
The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the number of violent extremist groups has grown across multiple continents. From Syria to Somalia to Pakistan, the United States is combating many of these groups - usually with bombs and missiles. Large numbers of innocent people are invariably caught in the middle.
Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
I think probably the scaredest I've ever been was in Somalia. I arrived there when the episode that became known as 'Black Hawk Down' was still taking place. The Americans were still pinned down under fire. And everybody else was basically going the other way, and I was the only one putting my hand up for a flight in.
Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.
The most memorable interviews for me are folks whose names I don't know: young civil rights leaders in the South, showing great courage as they walked into a town in the dark of night. A doctor working for 'Doctors Without Borders' in Somalia, operating by kerosene light in a tent. Those are the kinds of people that linger in your memory.
