http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/02/eveningnews/main20087214.shtml?tag=re1.latest
The cover of the New York Times has the same image of the starving Somali child. It’s disgusting that our media will shamelessly exploit Somali suffering in order to beat the (“humanitarian”) war drums. Take a look at the famine map at the bottom… what a joke! They have these detailed lines demarcating areas that are normal, stressed and famine - but note how the thatch-marks that mean “limited humanitarian access due to violence” covers over highly detailed demarcations between stressed, emergency, famine and normal areas! This is a miraculous map! I hope the miraculous technology with which this information was compiled (ESP?) will be shared with the rest of the world so - for one thing - Somali children don’t have to starve any longer. Also note how the regions surrounding Nairobi, Addis and Djibouti (all proper capitols with “functioning governments”) are shaded “normal”, the least distressed. But the region worst-affected happens to be precisely around the capitol of Somalia - what a coincidence! The famine could have happened 100 miles north or south but, remarkably, it happened right around Mogadishu. Yet the miracle-map clearly demarcates the areas that are merely experiencing emergency conditions against those that are experiencing famine despite limited humanitarian access due to violence. One last miraculous detail: the “emergency” area almost exactly corresponds to the territory occupied by ethnic Somalis. People don’t realize that the colonial borders were drawn by white men with a map and straight-edge… backed up by cannons and muskets. So, the political boundary between Somalia and Ethiopia or Somalia and Kenya is almost meaningless. Also note how Somalia is drawn as a monolithic entity even though Mogadishu hasn’t exercised the slightest influenced over Somaliland and Puntland (northern Somalia, not marked on the map) for two decades since the end of the Barre regime.
Get ready to start hearing lots of political news out of Somalia. al-Shabab = al-Qaeda is already being drummed through the media. Now, US rules + al-Shabab = preventing aid from reaching famished Somalis. So, the US has to permit aid to go to Somalia and this aid will be used by the Somali Transitional Federal Government as a PR bludgeon against al-Shabab… any Shabab that shoots at any TFG soldier is now “holding up humanitarian aid to starving Somalis.”
Clayton -