'Aki'lles

The picture of food riots in Mogadishu, Somalia made it to the headlines in leading dailies a couple of days ago. The context was the worsening global food crisis and the picture on the front page was I presume to drive home the seriousness of the situation.

Of course, without a shadow of doubt we are in the midst of a serious food crisis, but I wonder how the Somalian story fits into the scheme of things. At the risk of sounding blunt (or perhaps ignorant), I don't think Somalia had a regular and equitable distribution of food anytime in the last two decades, even when the rest of the world was doing perfectly fine. The media does want to draw the readers attention, but using photos such as these does not help, it in fact dilutes the seriousness of the problem. At best, a reader (not so aware of this problem) in the western world would look at it and say, "Ah..what a pity, our government must do something to help these countries out".

The irony is that the policies adopted by governments in the west, especially with regard to bio-fuels has in part added fuel to the fire in this crisis (uhmm..quite a few 'fuels' were burnt up in this sentence, must decrease my carbon footprint ;-)). Coupled with this rather daft policy is a genuine bankruptcy of ideas to get to the root of the problem. Condoleezza Rice even went on to attribute the skyrocketing prices of grain to the 'increased prosperity and apparent improvement in the diets of people in China and India'. Great, so these countries with 'just' a couple of billion people, should stop eating to save the rest of the world. That would surely solve the problem, at least in the eyes of the U.S administration.

Anyway, if the crisis continues to spiral out of hand, Condoleezza 'Rice' would be better off if she changes her surname, lest a hungry person eat her up :-)