Another one-day wonder and then .... pfffffftttt.... gone from the pages again.
"Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa
DAGAARI, Somalia — The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut.
She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.
At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.
The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch.
Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.
This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos....
I'll bet the U.S.-inspired and directed coup using the Ethiopian proxies hasn't helped, either!
There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors.
Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.
A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”
Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.
This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.
That's what the intended effect of all this is: to STARVE PEOPLE and REDUCE the POPULATION!
There is PLENTY of FOOD in this world if it was CORRECTLY DISTRIBUTED and GROWN!!
This is HEART-BREAKING, readers, because it is TOTALLY PREVENTABLE!!!
She had little to say about the drought. “I just wish my children had died in my lap,” she said....
Many people already consider Somalia a catastrophe.... The United Nations says 2.6 million Somalis need assistance and the number could soon swell to 3.5 million....
Aid is also a serious problem in the contested Ogaden region of Ethiopia, across the border from here. A recent report written by a contractor working for the United States Agency for International Development said the drought there was “clearly worsening” and that the response by the Ethiopian government, one of America’s closest allies in Africa, was “absolutely abysmal.”
This may be no accident. The Ethiopian government is struggling with an insurgency in the Ogaden, and the report said that “food is clearly being used as a weapon,” with the government starving out rebel areas, while a mysterious warehouse of American-donated food was discovered across the road from an Ethiopian Army base....
SCANDALOUS!!!
Yup, FEEDING the Ethiopian Army so they can OCCUPY SOMALIA for us!!!
And don't we have hunger here in America?
And yet somehow, America's MSM keeps this story quiet because it's the first I've heard of it!
The report was not made public, though a copy was provided to The New York Times. When asked about it, a senior American aid official characterized the report as “just a snapshot and one person’s observations and impressions.” But the senior aid official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said: “We’re not saying there’s not a crisis in the Ogaden. We’re not saying the Ethiopian response has been satisfactory. But some progress has been made. And we need more.”
Ethiopian officials declined comment and have denied human rights abuses in the Ogaden.
And that's that.
On to Islamic terrorists and whatever other agenda the "news" media needs to promote -- and I'm tired of it!!!!
All across this region, one of the poorest of the poor, people are left to the mercies of the desert. In central Somalia, for instance, fewer than five inches of rain have fallen in the past year and a half, aid officials say. The winds are harsh, throats are dry. This area, like much of the Horn of Africa, is too arid for farming. The people here, in lonely outposts like Dagaari, survive by grazing goats, sheep, cattle and camels, selling the animals for money they use to buy food.
“But nobody wants a skinny goat,” explained Abdul Kadir Nur, a herder in Dagaari.
That was about all he had left after the drought killed 400 of his 450 animals.
Not far from the pile of goat bones is a circle of stones. It is the grave of his toddler son.
Aaaaaaahhh!
Mr. Abdul Kadir said the boy had died of hunger and that he had been placed in his grave at an angle, “so he can sleep.”
He walked a few more steps, his flip-flops digging into the crunchy earth. He arrived at Ms. Safia’s hut, where several people were peering in the doorway, watching her sweat on the dirt floor. The nearest hospital was only a half hour away, but nobody had any money to pay for a ride.
“She will most likely die,” an elder said and walked away.
Ms. Safia’s son seemed to sense that. He curled up next to his mother while he still could, his face pressed against the damp cloth that covered her. Her ribs moved up and down, up and down, in quick shallow breaths."
Does that one leave you in tears or what?
And yet, with all the power at their fingertips, the NYT will ignore this tomorrow.
I'm tired of the SELECTIVITY when we have MAJOR SUFFERING going on!!!!
