Starving babies; "flashy self-made millionaires"

Here's the lead story on Salon.com (subscription only) today:

Starving season

World hunger is by far the worst crisis humanity faces, and it's getting worse --especially in Africa. Until the West overcomes its apathy and works toward long-term solutions, millions of people -- many of them children -- will continue to die unnecessarily.

By Samuel Loewenberg

June 13, 2006 In a dust-blown clinic on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, scores of women crowd into a bunkerlike structure, clutching children with emaciated limbs and listless eyes. They have come to have their babies weighed. It is a tradition known to every parent. Here, the tradition has become a nightmare.

The medical staff take an infant named Bintow from the arms of his mother and place him in a black harness attached to a hand-held scale. He shrieks at the sudden discomfort, thrashing his arms and legs. His stomach bulges, all of his ribs are visible. The child is 10 months old. He weighs 9 pounds.

Bintow is lucky, as far as it goes. He is so badly underweight that he will receive an emergency ration: two weeks' worth of enriched cornmeal and oil. Only a third of the estimated 200 children at the center that day will receive care. There is simply not enough to go around.

And here's a couple of recent stories from the Boston Globe (I can't provide links because of the signup firewall) which cannot stop kissing the asses of the obscenely wealthy:

XXL

It happens all the time. A couple buys an estate-size home with multiple rooms and lavish amenities. Two-story fireplaces. Palatial entryways with formal staircases. Soaring coffered ceilings. Arched floor-to-ceiling windows.. First they're thrilled, says Sheri Edsall, a Needham interior designer. Then "they're panic-stricken. They can't deal with that much house." But many Boston-area residents are learning to deal with it.

The New Rich

Bye-bye Brahmins. Flashy self-made millionaires are taking over Boston.

Imagine if we had some journalists at the Globe, instead of a bunch of Republican National Committee functionaries who only think rich people matter?