Covert Action Magazine:
"Instead of promoting what it claims to—peace, stability, 'nation-building'—the U.S. government, Ingiriis [a Somali historian] elaborates, keeps Somalia 'war torn,' and a 'failed state.' The Somali people pay the cost—the ultimate cost, in thousands upon thousands of cases—as a result. But not everyone loses.
Petroleum industry analysts call Somalia 'promising ... one of the last truly unexplored oil frontiers.' And major firms are keen to profit there. Shell and ExxonMobil, for example, paid Mogadishu $1.7 million in 2019 for 30-year rights to offshore blocks, and Somalia launched 'its first offshore oil and gas exploration licensing round' last year to attract other companies.
But there were two main threats to these oil interests. One came from within Africa: Niger Delta militias, for example, were stealing $1 billion in oil each year, thereby posing 'a direct threat to U.S. strategic interests in sub-Saharan Africa.' ... The second threat was China. Because it requires enormous resource inputs to sustain its economic growth—it became a net oil importer in 1993—its interest in African oil increased roughly in time with Washington’s interests, alarming U.S. officials.
-->To the the NYT and the major US media, Somalia is a terrorist haven that the CIA is monitoring in an effort to keep the peace. The NYT finds "no public evidence that the agency has carried out anything but surveillance missions so far." How different this view is from the brutal resource war that the CIA is really fighting in Somalia.
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Common Dreams:
"Affirming that healthcare is a basic human right and that people must come before profits, Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2021 on Wednesday, exactly one year after the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Dingell (D-Mich.) unveiled the landmark legislation at a virtual town hall Wednesday afternoon, where they highlighted the devastating effects of a virus that has killed more than 537,000 people in the United States while leaving millions more uninsured due to pandemic-related job loss and underemployment.
The bill (pdf)—backed by a record 112 House co-sponsors—guarantees healthcare to every U.S. resident as a human right. It provides comprehensive benefits including primary care, vision, dental, prescription drugs, mental health, long-term services and supports, reproductive healthcare, and other services. It eliminates copays and private insurance premiums.
-->The NYT is so disinterested in Medicare for All that our newspaper of record didn't bother reporting this story at all. Corporate interests always come first when reporting on healthcare.
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The Daily Beast;
"A Cherokee County, Georgia, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson [Capt. Jay Baker] came under fire Wednesday afternoon for pinning the deadly Tuesday shooting rampage that left eight dead—including six Asian women—on a 21-year-old white man’s 'really bad day.'
But it seems the same spokesperson shared racist content online, including pointing the finger at China for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—the same vitriol advocates say has fueled a horrific surge in violence against Asian Americans. In a Facebook page associated with Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office, several photos show the law enforcer was promoting T-shirts with the slogan 'COVID-19 imported virus from CHY-NA.'
'Place your order while they last,' Baker wrote with a smiley face on a March 30 photo that included the racist T-shirts. 'Love my shirt,' Baker wrote in another post in April 2020. 'Get yours while they last.' ”
-->Can we trust a racist sheriff's office to determine what happened in the recent mass murder of six Asian women? But the NYT hasn't printed Capt. Jay Baker's history of anti-Asian Facebook postings. Why not? Perhaps the NYT, is protecting the "good image" of the empire, especially when our State Department is ramping up the Cold War with China.
