Barbaro

“the only thing we care about is that he is not in pain.”

“…is being treated aggressively for his discomfort”

Such were the lines concerning medical treatment given to Barbaro, written on my Yahoo! homepage.
Who is Barbaro?
Not a child. Nor a man. A horse. A race horse.

It’s good that the world (or horse race addicts, at least) have enough compassion to spend huge amounts treating race horses. Such is everyone’s concern until even a setback in Barbaro’s recovery makes it to the Yahoo headlines. But surprisingly, there was no mention of the 52 Somalian civilians killed in the latest US Air Raids on Somalia.

I’m not against giving medical treatment to animals – animals have a right to live too.
But are human beings less important than race horses? No one has mentioned the supply of medical aid to injured Somalian civilians. Or compensation for their deaths. Instead, the BBC news headline read ‘War on Terror extends to Somalia’. The article went on to details of the operation, mentioning that the 1998 terror suspect who bombed US embassies in Africa is believed dead. So the air-strikes were useful after all, the article implies.
Only in the end does BBC mention the death of 52 civilians. At least, BBC does so. In the Yahoo! article I read yesterday, no mention of civilian deaths was made.

After all, they are not American deaths, so who cares?

~ by Samira on January 10, 2007.