this is painful, but it points to the west’s *fundamental* faith-hope-charity shortfall, which is opening humanity to a less-free political system, to whatever extent freedom is not properly handling responsibility. Chinese authoritarianism accompanying Chinese investment and assisted hands-on projects across the African continent could almost be seen as a biological system order response to the western companies with the oil properties in Nigeria. i know that’s far too sweeping a statement and an unfair sentiment, but that’s the point –it moves product, and will so long as it can.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15592
[snip]
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. “We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,” said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: “Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.”
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
“If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention,” said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. “This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta.”
“The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different.”
“We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US,” said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. “But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people’s livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
“This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper,” he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
[close snip]
yeh –i kno this info is compromised by being from a lefty site –so is this thoughtful melancholic by Naomi Klein –but we conservatives have got to focus away from the pinko train behind the left’s new April 20 locomotive –there IS room to fix some things together, in the old way.
For another example, Iran’s oil minister has offered help in the BP spill –so far as i can tell, we are just laughing at the idea. heck, why not take ‘em up on it? What if that would start something –good? Like, no war with the mullahs? wow, talk about pack ‘em into the pews on Sundays, if the GOMspill is da Big Guy intervening to stop nookooler armageddon –and we kiss it off for a cheap laff at the idea of Iran helping solve the BP spill ? ha haha –cosmic !
