be just

Somalis yearn for Islamic rulers to return and tame the warlords - Independent Online Edition > Africa The ruins of the old sugar factory in Marere, in the southern interior of Somalia, tower over the wooden shacks and brick huts which shelter the 2,000 or so people still living here. This used to be the second-largest sugar factory in the world, employing more than 20,000 people. Now, its rusting steel frame, chimneys and pipes sunk deep into the tall grass provide a painful echo of the wreck which Somalia has become. Everything worth anything has gone, the scrap metal systematically torn off and shipped to India or old equipment taken by scavengers to be sold off at the market in nearby Jilib. "Maybe one day someone will rebuild it," said Abdirizak Hassan Moalim, squinting into the sun. The 21-year-old has been living in a village near the sugar factory for two months after fleeing the violence in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. "It needs to be safe here first thou...

Scooter's Fate: I Say Torture Him- by Justin Raimondo : "As he informed Scooter Libby's lawyers that their client would not squirm out of his jail term of two and a half years, Judge Reggie B. Walton revealed that he had been threatened, via letters and phone calls, by some of Libby's more rabid supporters – not really a very surprising development. After all, it makes perfect sense that Libby's fans would be just as indifferent to the rule of law as their 'hero' – who outed a covert CIA agent [.pdf] and placed the national security of this country – and the life of CIA agent Valerie Plame – in dire jeopardy. These people are thugs, and their methods reflect their mentality."

EurasiaNet Civil Society - Abkhazia: Bracing for More Trouble : "Abkhazia won a de facto independence thanks to its victory in that war, and my first stop after arriving in Sukhumi is the de facto Foreign Ministry. I ask for directions from people on the street, expecting the ministry to have its own building. It turns out to be just a part of a smallish government building, sharing a floor with the de facto Finance Ministry. Inside, I find several ministry officials, all of whom are guys in their 20s, chatting about music. One is says he’s a rap music producer in his spare time; another is making plans to go to Moscow this summer to catch his favorite band, Metallica, in concert. 'Do you want to talk to the deputy foreign minister? He’s not very busy,' one of them says. "