"Somalia's semi-autonomous state of Puntland has embarked on its first ever program aimed at reducing its security force personnel, a UN statement said Tuesday.

"'After handing over their weapons to their commanders, the participants will be provided with on-the-job training and placement, formal education, rural resettlement or support to start their own micro-enterprises,' it said."

So, the hardly-existingest state on the planet is cutting its miniscule, hardly-budgeted army and telling them to open businesses instead. Who will defend the borders? Who will round up al-Qaeda men for Uncle Sam? As ever in Somalia, people will defend themselves and whomever else they have agreed to defend. Pass the list of multiple electricity providers, please.

Somalia's newest would-be government is at it again, proving that the state is the greatest source of violence on earth.

Francois Lonseny Fall, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative, flew to Jowhar to meet President Abdullahi Yusuf, the second time the diplomat has visited the town 90 km (55 miles) north of Mogadishu in three months...

Fall said his main task was to learn "how to solve some differences among some members of the (government)"...

The tension between the Yusuf-led faction, based in Jowhar, and dissident warlords in his cabinet who are allied with a group based in Mogadishu, has led to an increased flow of weapons into the Horn of Africa country of 10 million people.

Despite an arms embargo, weapons shipments into the country in the past eight months have grown nearly 400 percent over the previous year, according to a report delivered to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month.

Both factions are gearing up for a military showdown, and 10 ministers in the government and Yusuf were involved in the latest transactions, the report said. Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea were the main suppliers, it said...

Security sources in Jowhar said that about 150 trainers from the Ethiopian military were working in and around Jowhar, teaching militiamen recruited by Yusuf in the past few months.

Ethiopia has consistently denied providing military support to Yusuf, a long-time ally of Addis Ababa.

Dissident warlords from the Mogadishu group have said the recruitment sends a message that military options will replace dialogue, and have responded in kind by boosting their own militias' strength.

These wannabe power whores haven't even seized power and they are already crippled by infighting and gearing up to perform the state's top duty: making war. Meanwhile, Somalia's stately neighbors are doing everything they can to ensure and increase the violence. Gee, and I thought that anarchy was the problem.

But come on, who really ever believed that these men would bring order, civility and peace to Somalia?

Every time some poor Somali so much as stubs their toe, every statist on earth jumps at the chance to place the blame on anarchy. The standard operating procedure for journalists reporting on Somalia is to imply that any amount of disorder, any act of violence, any unfortunate event is a direct consequence of the absence of a state.

The double standard couldn't be more glaring. Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Congo, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau (to name just a few and I know I've left some out) all have experienced and are experiencing major crises either directly caused or unprevented by their respective governments. War, crime, famine, genocide and starvation all regularly occur in the aforementioned countries while the worst of the violence and chaos in Somalia is caused by would-be governments with the help of the nosy states next door.

Seriously, when it comes to violence and chaos in the world, it's not anarchy that's to blame; it's the state, stupid.

Aw, the First Lady of Nigeria died after complications from spending gobs of tax money paid by dirt-eating Nigerians just barely surviving to get the gobs of fat sucked out of her disgusting gluttonous belly. You filthy state largess-sucking dirtbag pig, I hope you rot in Hell, and I hope your equally-fatass husband's heart is so broken that his welfare whore African Queen croaked on the lypo table that he also drops dead.

Once upon a time, Ray Daugherty implied (and I!)that violence in Somalia would eventually be snuffed out as the security market atomized. I find it interesting in this Year 14 AB (after Barre) that when a warlord's militia tried take over a Mogadushu neighborhood to collect a levy "which is unpopular with locals," his forces were attacked by what Reuters claims/assumes is another militia. But reading on, we're presented with this quote:

"They failed to take the area because everybody here has a gun," resident Hussein Ali told Reuters in Nairobi by telephone.

No mention of a rival militia, only of many armed, pissed off regular people. Hmm.