Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteAs I said, there are no slow news days in Somalia.
Two days ago, I mentioned the landing of two speedboats conveying 35 suspected al Qaeda fighters into the country's northern coast near Baar-Gahl, Puntland.
This morning's lead by Abdiquana Hassan: "A U.S. warship attacked a suspected al Qaeda target in northern Somalia on Friday, CNN reported, and residents said missiles pounded hills where foreign jihadists fled after clashing with local forces." [1]
"Meanwhile several government officials have been slain in the past days by what the interim government called the remnants of the Islamic Courts," writes Aweys Osman Yusef, reporter for Shabelle Media Network in Somalia. [2] Among the dead: the district commissioner of Halwadag, and, some 500 miles south of Mogadishu, the "head of security forces in the port town of Kismayu."
I am ready for a look at a really good map . . . .
There's this on a University of Texas server: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/somalia_nat_res_2002.jpg
It's introduced on a page by Aineshe.net ("One Nation, One Somalia, One Future!"), which, among other elementary language, notes simply, "Our people should not be starving; we have so many different kinds of precious minerals including Uranium!" [3]
One imagines Somalians must have a terrific sense of humor, the fighting being so serious, the experience of it so grim, and the trauma so extensive.
Voicing my opinion as an American on the wry cynacism conveyed by the sentence noted and its punchline, "including Uranium!"--I think we would just as soon welcome Somalia being stable, at peace, self governed, and productive in its own way and in its own right.
There's plenty on which to comment as regards feudal and tribal modes of social organization, but I may say that as the image of place--it's appearance in media--becomes more resolved, I am more inclined to frame contemporary history making by examining the attitudes, beliefs, inclinations, and motives of powerful personalities.
The thinking behind that: the medieval mind could not have known it was medieval; a mind with AK-47's, privately remanufactured "technicals" for getting around (by comparison, I consider the Mustang America's "garage hobby car"), and RPG's enjoys a much broader palette of political lifestyle choices.
And now I want a better map or at least some great landscape photography. Let's see if the CIA's country web has anything for us . . . .
1030H
May I say that it does (here on this update, September 26, 2007), but the one picture accounts for so much traffic to this blog that I'm going to insert the URL in place of importing it (and then hope that those searching for a map of Somalia will go directly to the primary source):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/maps/so-map.gif
Source: The CIA's World Factbook (online). [4]
sigh.
I'm not looking for something I can use--where's the mission?--but rather something I might enjoy: overhead photography, road and trail systems, topography told in three dimensions, perhaps something bright and coded and coated with the fingerpainting colors of modern remote sensing.
1130H
I may heartily recommend MDA EarthSat NaturalVue for your Somalia viewing pleasure. [5] The viewer provides a great example of "data" sans "information". There may be one bit of information implied, however, and that, as you drill down to pixelation, is the lack of evident development along the Somalian coast.
And, yes, there's "Google Earth", which I've just installed and am enjoying quite--too bad it's not presenting its data in real time, which consumer technology release hints at the military's continuous observation capability.
1300H
Google Earth . . . I got a little distracted with that one.
I said to Anne, "This (browsing) is like living forever in the high school library. Are you sure there's a real world out there?"
We're sure. From Google Earth, we picked up National Geographic's free PDF map of Somalia:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature3/images/mp_download.3.pdf
We need to get out and mix with our own brand of religious fundamentalists: there's an Amish Market down the street, and it's terrific. We're ready to stock the freezer.
And to anyone in Somalia picking up on this page: there's only so much plain old peaceful noncombatant civilians can do, but we're aware of your suffering and wish we had the answers today to alleviate it at once.
It's especially hard getting into power both great and responsible leaders. We elect them here on competitive stance and political and other track records, and still a good portion lose their jobs to scandal or what might be called "moral aptitude" issues in the following cycle.
The good news is we can "flip" our politicians; the bad news, if it's that, is in who runs for office and why. It is not a question dissimilar to who competes for power in other locations through other means, and one may be left with the hope of finding the quality of goodness--universal, traditional virtue--in those personalities, would that they could see themselves as well as we experience them.
Again, I'm starting to place an emphasis on personalities rather than ideologies or other external frameworks when it comes to looking at or into who does what, where, and why.
# # #
1. swissinfo, (Reuters distribution), "U.S. Navy strike reported on Qaeda suspect in Somalia": http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/U_S_Navy_strike_reported_on_Qaeda_suspect_in_Somalia.html?siteSect=143&sid=7885649&cKey=1180773444000
2. Shabelle.Net, "US Navy strikes Al-Qaeda hideouts in north Somalia as two officials slain": http://www.shabelle.net/news/ne3025.htm.
3. Ainashe.net, "Somalia Geophysical Survey": http://ainashe.net/2005/10/20/somalia-geophysical-survey-minerals/.
4. United States Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/so.html
5. MDA EarthSat NaturalVue: http://www.earthsat.com/ArcIMS/naturalvue/viewer.htm.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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