Well, thanks to readers much
more tech-savvy than I am, I think I may be able to get Google to start
picking up my posts again, and, by tightening up the code of my
blogroll, also make the page load faster for those patient readers with
dial-up access. So far I have moved the blogroll to the right hand
column, so Google will not get bogged down in the blogroll code and
give up before it gets to the actual posts. In the process I messed up
the masthead, so I've adopted a simple one-piece masthead temporarily.
If this post works properly, I'll then make an additional change to my
blogroll, stripping out the table HTML and replacing it with a simple
list separated by line breaks. Next post will report on the results of
that. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Médecins Sans Frontières
(Doctors Without Borders) recently released its list of the ten most
under-reported humanitarian events of 2003. The map above shows which
countries these events occurred in. Although the MSF site is temporarily down, you can read the complete details of these stories here. The top 10 stories are:
Tens of thousands seek refuge in Chad from wars in Sudan and Central African Republic
Ongoing oppression of civilians, war and dislocation in Chechnya
Tenth year of civil war in Burundi lowers life expectancy to 40, causes massive dislocation
Three million displaced in Columbia, infrastructure destroyed, violence & disease rampant, 'drug war' ruins economy
Daily terror and disease in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo pushes 20-year death toll past three million
Annual death toll from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa reaches two million because $1 treatment is too expensive
Twelve years of violence, displacement, flooding and drought make Somalia the world's most destitute country
Millions of refugees fleeing starvation and terror in North Korea struggle in fear and deprivation in hostile China
'Free' trade agreements deprive millions of AIDS victims in Southern Africa and elsewhere of affordable treatment
War, displacement and lack of medical care produces massive malnutrition in Ivory Coast and Liberia
Why aren't the media covering these stories? None of them is physically
close to the West. None of them involves countries with resources of
strategic importance to the West. Almost all of them are ongoing, so
there is nothing 'new' to report each day. None of the people in these
countries has resorted to terrorist attacks against the West to bring
attention to our indifference to their plight. And all of them are
intractible problems, and therefore issues that those of us in the West
would rather not know about.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
