Having read the topic "Why Colour", response No: 15 from Jahwalkwidme,
"Did you just say the damage they were causing?" I felt prompted to start a new topic on current damage.
Let I start in Somalia. As I write and for some time now, ships passing by Somalia have been dealing with the threat of Piracy. Various nations with the capabilities have provided military assistance as a form of protection. There has even been talk of taking captured Pirates to the International Criminal Court in the former colonial nation of Holland.
Interestingly enough, no similar such calls have been made of the powers that be, in the former colonial nation of Italy. I say interesting, as the violence in Somalia for all intents and purposes actually started in Italian harbours.
Starting in the present, there is a governmental power vacuum in Somalia, which is filled by various self-contained groups with money, weaponry and territorial claims. For the most part it seems said cash injections are the result of successfull missions of extortion in the form of ransom fees paid on vessels, crew and passengers held by former fishermen-turned-pirates. The weapons have two major sources: captured ships with cargoloads of military equipment and earlier Italian arms deals.
The fishermen turned to fishing for money on the high seas as fishing for fish became increasingly problematic following Italian activities just off the coast. The same activities have caused unprecedented numbers of birth defects and horrific illnesses in Somalia. The same activities provided early arms and financing to certain individuals. The activities I refer to started in Italian ports in the form of large containers being loaded onto ships headed for the Somali coast. The containers were filled with lethal industrial and nuclear wastes, the disposal of which had not been authorized on Italian soils.
Ergo, given individuals with waste disposal buisnesses in Italy embarked upon a waste-dumping-for-weapons-and-money scheme just off the Somali coastline. Shady characters and dodgy Government officials. What a surprise. Even if this wasn't an official governmental tranaction, the Italian authorities failed and continue to fail to do anything whatsoever to remedy the problem.
So lying on Somali beaches and under Somali waves are rusting and leaking containers of a size comparable to say, a small bus. As their contents enter the waters, soils and air, it really is an example of opening Pandora's box. It is why so many people are dying from unknown illnesses and cancers of all kinds. It is why there are no longer many fish left to catch, and those which are caught are essentially poisonous. It provided the impetus for piracy; a desperate response to a desperate situation.
As the situation escalates, and the piracy becomes ever more profitable, the pirates themselves ever better equipped, long distance boats, radar, rockets et al, the powerful nations are bombarding the area with ever more military might, whilst failing to take any kind of action whatsoever to remedy to situation.
At the same time there are also those [Practising Muslims] who fundamentally reject piracy. They have in part of the country even set up an independant, stable and safe state. The same nations whose waste lies in the waters and whose apathy and military presence provide fertile grounds for more violence, steadfastly refuse to recognise the independence of the new state.
How about Ghana? Europeans send shipping containers full of old electronic equipment there....
Just behind the doors of the containers, are old computers and suchlike with life left in them, positioned ready to provide proof for the claim that the entire container is filled with second-hand goods destined to assist in economic growth.
However, a bit futher back in the container, there is nothing left which still works. In direct contradiction of E.U. laws, electronic goods packed with toxins are sent to Africa for disposal. There is little of value left in them, in the context of the local recycling industry, with the exception of copper and other semi-precious metals contained within the wires.
Local youths, trying to make a living, do so by smashing up the equipment, tearing the wires out and setting them alight to burn off all the toxic elecrical insulation materials. Where once there were plants trees and aquatic life, there is now pollution of all kinds and young men slowing dying painful deaths from exposure to the pollutants.
An African warzone with European, specifically Finnish roots: The DR Congo.
Nokia, the largest manufacturer of mobile phones needs a mineral essential to their manufacture. I forget the precise name, but it is found in Uganda and D.R. Congo. The mineral is mined using basic and dangerous methods, by people attracted to the mines by the prospect of prosperity. In the surrounding areas, the forest has been destroyed to make way for the camps housing the miners. The little mineral ore they extract brings with it the hope of an income, but this hope dims as said income is stolen from them by protection racketeers. These people are linked to those who have made territorial claims to the Lands where the mineral is found.
The claims are backed up by force. War. The weapons are financed by mineral sales, the war exists to gain control of areas where the mineral is to be found, round and round, mobiles are powered by Congolese blood, sweat and tears.
Nokia has the power to change the situation, but it doesn't. Finnland doesn't force Nokia to do anything. Europe doesn't force Finnland to take any action.
www.bloodinthemobile.orgThe damage they are causing.
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