Oil in Somalia?

This is not really a blog. I don't really have the time or patience for that. NomadNet has -- since it went online in 1994 -- been a repository of information about Somalia, foreign aid, and Western misadventures in Africa. I often posted articles that I didn't agree with because I thought they were interesting or should be read. One of the first pieces I posted in those early days was one called The Oil Factor in Somalia. It sat in the archive for years, getting hit on occasionally, but largely forgotten. Suddenly, however, there are thousands of hits on the piece. It's been cited in blogs and web sites across the internet as if it's some leaked piece of damning confidential intelligence. (See The Final Call, among others.) It's not. The fact is that oil company interest in Somalia remains minimal and perfunctory. Oil companies, like the CIA, keep their greasy fingers in as many foreign pies as possible. Turn over any rock in an African desert and you'll find an oil man.

This isn't to say that nefarious forces are not at work in Somalia, Darfur, and other places. And, as the Final Call article asks, where is the outrage over the recent bombing in Somalia? Are Americans willing to tolerate any atrocity so long as our government does it in the name of fighting terror?

These are the important questions and they should not be obscured by flimsy oil-industry conspiracy theories that ultimately serve only to undermine those very arguments. You've got to do better than a 14-year-old article from the LA Times.