what escapes

Last week’s episode of Fault Lines, in which we follow the money to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions during the most costly presidential election campaign in US history. Featuring Matt Taibbi, Bill Fletcher Jr., Thomas Frank, Robert Gibbs, and David Koch. 

Part Two of our Fault Lines series “Iraq: After the Americans.”  In which we travel from Fallujah to the Kurdish North via Mosul, and examine the toxic legacy of the US-led occupation.

A new season of Fault Lines has begun, and the first of our special two-part series from Iraq is online. The documentary was shot over 3 weeks in March/April of this year. Hopefully it will provide some context for understanding the violence that now seems likely to re-escalate there over the coming weeks and months.

In keeping with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign promise, the US has withdrawn its troops from Iraq and by the end of 2012 US spending in Iraq will be just five per cent of what it was at its peak in 2008.

In a special two-part series, Fault Lines travels across Iraq to take the pulse of a country and its people after nine years of foreign occupation and nation-building.

Now that US troops have left, how are Iraqis overcoming the legacy of violence and toxic remains of the US-led occupation, and the sectarian war it ignited? Is the country on the brink of irreparable fragmentation?

Correspondent Sebastian Walker first went to Baghdad in June 2003 and spent the next several years reporting un-embedded from Iraq. In the first part of this Fault Lines series, he returns and travels from Basra to Baghdad to find out what kind of future Iraqis are forging for themselves.

Should have posted this last week!

Below, part two of our “Crisis in the Horn of Africa” series. This episode is called “Drought Zone,” and was reported by Seb Walker and shot by Singeli Agnew (in Kenya) and Thierry Humeau and Bob Cherouny in DC and NYC.

ajfaultlines:

This episode of Al Jazeera Fault Lines, “Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone” aired last night at 2230 GMT/ 5:30p EST. 

The worst drought in sixty years has thrown more than 13 million people across the Horn of Africa into crisis.

In Kenya, those already living in the greatest precarity have been pushed even closer to the edge.

In the arid lands, deadly inter-tribal conflict is escalating as pastoralists compete over increasingly scarce resources, as climate change accelerates drought cycles.

As weather patterns become increasingly unpredictable, small scale farmers are struggling to grow enough food.

And in Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods, residents are reduced to eating one meal a day, as the price of food spirals out of reach.

As world leaders discuss climate policy in Durban, Fault Lines travels through Kenya’s drought zone. In the second part of a two-part series, we ask how US policies intersect with drought and hunger, and how the United States is responding to the emergency in the Horn of Africa.

All episodes of Al Jazeera Fault Lines are on YouTube here. 

ajfaultlines:

This new episode premiered last night on Al Jazeera English at 2230 GMT.

In part one of a two-part series, Fault Lines goes to Mogadishu to see the impact of Somalia’s famine, and asks if US policies have contributed to the disaster.

The worst drought in 60 years has thrown some 13 million people across the Horn of Africa into crisis.

In Somalia, ravaged by two decades of conflict, the consequences have been disastrous. For over six months, aid agencies on the ground sounded the alarm that a major drought and famine was on the horizon.

Then in July and August, the world watched and international aid agencies scrambled as tens of thousands of Somalis fled famine and fighting in the devastated Southern part of the country, controlled by the armed group al-Shabab. And they continued to flee - to the Somali capital of Mogadishu, and refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia - in the following months, when the world seemed to lose interest.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have died and the UN has warned that three quarters of a million more are at risk of dying before the end of the year.

Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government, the Obama administration, and the United Nations have all blamed the anti-government group al-Shabab for restricting international aid operations in the areas they control. But is al-Shabab the only reason a drought and food crisis has turned into a deadly famine?

In the first of a two-part series examining the US response to drought and hunger in the Horn of Africa, Fault Lines travels to Mogadishu to meet refugees who have fled to the most war-ravaged city in the world to escape a worse fate, and the aid and medical workers struggling to help them. We examine the legacy of US engagement in Somalia and its efforts to address the current crisis.

Has aid in this region of the world become politicised? And has Washington’s pre-occupation with terrorism in the Horn of Africa contributed to the deadly consequences of this disaster?

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/

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