WITHOUT BLOG FOR MID-TERM WEEKEND.
Post by Sunday at midnight, by November 1.
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Issues of China and India in the world global recession show it is hardly all the world; AND SOMETHING about bottom billion North Korea potentially opening its minerals for a 'development strategy' (hmm....)
3. Korea barely escaped two quarters of removal of economic expansion with a slight (.1%) expansion for the second one after a huge fall in the first one. Thus 'officially' by Korean standards it avoided a recession. I have read that Korea is the one country in the OECD that has a huge portion of its GNP involved in international trade. I think it was around 25%. In boldface, note the scales of China and India below for their trade dynamics. I thought it was worth posting because these countries house a huge portion of the populations that statistically are on the bottom billion still, even though their countries are rapidly growing economically (at least in some areas--we'll talk about their regional disparities later in the course).
As for N. Korea's strategy, well, what would Terry Lynn Karl have to say about that? Or Collier?
No Recession in Chindia
Ryan Cole, Contributing Editor, Taipan Publishing Group
Monday, October 05, 2009
E-mail Print
As earnings season approaches, the debate on Wall Street is reaching a crescendo. Was the drama of last year a mere blip in a larger bull market, or is the run-up from March through September a sucker’s rally within a new, secular bear?
While the answer to this question is important for all business worldwide, there is one corner of the globe that isn’t as concerned with the conclusion. In both China and India – along with other developing markets – the recession hasn’t hurt GDP growth, despite falling exports. China’s GDP is expanding at a 7.9% clip, according to the latest numbers, and India’s GDP is right behind, at 6.1%.
“We have reached a tipping point in global economic affairs,” Stephen King, the chief economist at HSBC, told London’s The Guardian. “While there are some encouraging signs of recovery in the developed world, the real economic action is taking place elsewhere.”
According to a recent study released by the World Bank, the economic crisis of 2008 has only hastened the shift of power from west to east. No longer will America be the sole engine of growth and spending – and no longer will the dollar be the world’s de facto reserve currency.
John Hawksworth, head of macro-economics at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, spoke to The Guardian on this subject: “The dollar, the euro and the renminbi will form a basket of currencies. The world will be different. The recession has accelerated that process.”
When speaking to the paper, Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, said, “There will certainly be a larger role for emerging powers, there will be multipolar sources of growth, there will be more south-south trade among developing countries.”
Indeed, according to the World Bank, regardless of how soon developed countries exit the recession, the majority of economic growth for the foreseeable future will come from the developing world – and not just the famous BRIC nations. South America, Africa, and smaller Asian nations are expected to contribute nearly as much to growth.
Perhaps the greatest representation of this shift is the recent demotion of the G-7 as the world’s economic governing body, in favor of the G-20 – a body that includes emerging markets like the BRIC nations. An economic forum without China and India no longer seemed reasonable.
In a surprise move, at the summit in Pittsburgh two weeks ago, the G-20 moved close to passing new rules, expanding the voting powers of emerging markets at the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest topics of debate in Asia isn’t when the “worldwide” recession will end, but rather which economy will emerge strongest, China or India. The argument goes, while China has outpaced India for years, the Middle Kingdom is more dependent upon exports and imports – about 80% of China’s GDP is tied up in world trade. India, by contrast, has around half of GDP coming from intranational trade, and thus is less affected by the economies of the west.
As soon as 2010, India’s growth rate may pass China.
Even with their extraordinary growth, neither India’s nor China’s economy will approach the size of America for many years to come. Both countries, however, will continue to play increasingly large roles in economic policy, and the economic health of the world.
Whether the recession ends tomorrow, in two years, or ended already – the macro-economic view shows India and China taking over as the economic engines of the world.
---
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/news-1005092.html
2.
China eyes N Korea’s mineral wealth
By Christian Oliver in Seoul
Published: October 6 2009 17:33 | Last updated: October 6 2009 17:33
Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, can hail his visit to North Korea as a bit of a diplomatic coup. Now the question is whether there is an economic dividend too.
After bear hugs with Kim Jong-il and co-operation deals, Mr Wen engineered the geopolitical compromise he wanted, with the North Korean leader on Tuesday announcing he might return to international talks on dismantling his nuclear weapons programme if he gets the kudos of direct talks with the US first.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
In depth: North Korea - Jun-04
In depth: China - Jul-28
N Korea ready to resume talks - Oct-06
N Korea’s Kim meets China’s premier - Oct-05
Mr Kim’s announcement did not guarantee fresh six-party talks between Beijing, Seoul, Moscow, Tokyo, Pyongyang and Washington but restored political goodwill.
Yet if resource-hungry China hopes revived camaraderie will also grant it a large bite of North Korea’s massive untapped mineral wealth, analysts and diplomats warn, Beijing could be sorely disappointed.
North Korea’s mineral wealth is receiving close scrutiny, with South Korea’s government this week valuing reserves at $6,000bn (€4,070bn, £3,670bn). Encouraged by data on metals, Goldman Sachs last month predicted the economy of a unified Korea could rival Japan’s by 2050.
Until the 1970s North Korea was the wealthier half of the peninsula. Under communism it has supplied gold to the international bullion market. But poor technology and limited funds have in effect trapped most mineral reserves, potential investors say.
Trade with China is growing, reaching $2.8bn last year from about $2bn in 2007. But military authorities in North Korea are perceived as hostile to the changes in society and infrastructure that foreign investment could bring.
“If the North opens its mineral resources to foreign countries, that is tantamount to taking a military, social and political gamble, jeopardising their security,” said Lim Eul-chul, of Seoul’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies.
A South Korean diplomat closely involved with nuclear talks doubted Pyongyang would allow China to make big investments inside its border. “They cannot permit that kind of influence,” he said.
Although they were long communist allies, North Korea and China have a mutual mistrust, partly tied to territorial claims.
Still, limited foreign investment in the sector is not impossible. Colin McAskill, executive chairman of Koryo Asia, says he has signed a letter of intent and memorandum of understanding to invest in North Korean metals and argues his model would not interfere with sovereignty issues that concern Pyongyang.
Switzerland’s Quintermina has posted reports on its website saying it is looking to extract magnesite in North Korea.
Chinese investors are believed to have some metals interests and are also involved in coal mining.
“The Chinese companies that have tried to do business in North Korea complain a lot that the regulations change frequently and that the power supply is erratic,” said a Chinese academic in Beijing.
Additional reporting by Kang Buseong in Seoul and Geoff Dyer in Beijing
---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d3f6ee4-b294-11de-b7d2-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=9511df10-6d6b-11da-a4df-0000779e2340.html
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Week 7: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week
Post by Sunday at midnight
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Opinion piece by Paul Collier in New York Times a year ago: Concentrate on the Bottom Billion More than One Year
3. I was unaware that Collier has received a lot of media attention in the past year. He even appeared at the TED conferences in January 2009 and was one of five people to address a special "TED@State" (U.S. State Department presentation of policy oriented TED presenters like himself). You can find these small films of him all over the web. This was the first time I attempted to look for Collier video on the web, because I had assumed that his message would be little heeded. However, it seems I was wrong thankfully. At least people are widely aware of these causality debates he is starting from his comparative statistical modeling. However, the message published below sounds more like Milton Friedman's Shock Doctrine of military invasion to force neoliberalism and heedless anti-environmentalism as well--a powerful combination already in place. Perhaps Collier without being clearly aware is being aired more publicly to give a different ideological coating to the discredited neoliberalist-by-force model where powers that be require a fresh ideological coat of paint from Collier to continue to be legitimated. Here's an editorial of Collier from a year ago.
I think you can see echoes of the books we discussed this week by Williams, by Karl, and by Bunker/Ciccantell.
-------------------
September 22, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
A Measure of Hope
By PAUL COLLIER
Lusaka, Zambia
THANKS to the copper boom, Zambia’s economy at last is growing. Last year, per capita gross domestic product rose by around 4 percent. The capital is busy with new construction, and traffic between here and the copper belt is so heavy, travel time has doubled to eight hours.
Still, Zambia is diverging from the rest of mankind. Its tax system has until last month been so lenient that most of the new copper profits have gone to the foreign companies that now own the mines. [A "Karlist" argument about the political frameworks that become implaneted with dependency on raw material extraction, yielding little state autonomy.] And the political and economic collapse of neighboring Zimbabwe has meant a loss of trade.
Zambians remain in the “bottom billion” of the earth’s poorest people — those whom Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, declared would be the focus of development efforts for 2008. If the U.N., whose General Assembly convenes today, really rises to this challenge, how can it help the countries in the bottom billion? Presumably by more vigorous pursuit of its Millennium Development Goals, whose shaky progress toward ending poverty by 2015 is now subject to mid-term review.
The Millennium Development Goals have been a major improvement on the unfocused agenda for poverty that preceded them, but the world has changed radically since they were announced in 2000. And the assumptions on which they are based need to be rethought.
The World Bank has just raised the bean count of global poverty to 1.4 billion people, from just under a billion. It had previously overestimated the level of Chinese and Indian per capita incomes [which I had already decided to include in class], so the count now shows that the number of poor Chinese and Indians far exceeds the number of poor Africans. But this is misleading because Chinese and Indian incomes are rising far faster and more surely than African incomes.
The big difference between a poor Asian household and an equally poor African one is hope, not necessarily for the present generation of adults but for their children.
Hope makes a difference in people’s ability to tolerate poverty; parents are willing to sacrifice as long as their children have a future. Our top priority should be to provide credible hope where it has been lacking. The African countries in the bottom billion have missed out on the prolonged period of global growth that the rest of the world has experienced. The United Nations’ goal should not be to help the poor in fast-growing and middle-income countries; it should do its utmost to help the bottom billion to catch up. Anti-poverty efforts should be focused on the 60 or so countries — most of them in Africa — that are both poor and persistently slow-growing.
A further weakness with the Millennium Development Goals is that they are devoid of strategy; their only remedy is more aid. I am not hostile to aid. I think we should increase it, though given the looming recession in Europe and North America, I doubt we will. But other policies on governance, agriculture, security and trade could be used to potent effect.
What do I mean?
Well, take, for instance, the American biofuel scam (the ethanol subsidies that have diverted 30 percent of American corn away from the food supply) and the European ban on genetically modified seeds [which anyone knowledgeable supports because corruption and ignoring profound health difficulties found by many top scientists was seen! it was authorized only without or against test data in the U.S. government under Bush Senior/Reagan and under Blair in U.K.! read: Seeds of Destruction by Jeffrey Smith], imitated by Africa, have both contributed to Africa’s worsening food shortage. [Alas, I find Collier blissfully unaware of the bad long term ramifications of GMOs for private property markets in food, farmer income and development, or the ecological and human health implications.] Where is the United Nations pressure for an end to these follies? [Or the education about this to end his?]
Why, also, did the United Nations not intervene militarily when the democratic government of Mauritania, another country in the bottom billion, was overthrown by a coup last month? [Perhaps because it served some player on the Security Council itself?
Where is an alternative initiative to open international trade to poor countries now that the Doha round talks have collapsed? [Begging the question: is opening the bottom billion to the world economy the only course that leads to development for them? Even Collier argues it fails to work because of the "Asian effect" for the long interim, though here is is arguing in print for it! Second, he's being hypocritical: if he's so prodemocratic, why does he imply it is time to throw out the democratic outcome of the failed Doha round--as people democratically challenge his developmental modernistic paradigm for the poor countries? So, will he soon call for invasion to enforce global neoliberalism as well, similar to the "Shock Doctrine" imperialism of Milton Friedman? (read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism--a huge international best seller that the "economic press" is censoring and hope will go away. It's currently in the top there books in Amazon.com categories, and this is several YEARS AFTER it has been published! )]
Above all, with a five-year-old commodities boom transferring wealth to some of the countries of the bottom billion, where are the international guidelines on taxation and investment that might help these countries convert earnings from exports of depleting minerals into productive assets like roads and schools?
I applaud Ban Ki-moon. Like Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, Mr. Ban is offering more thoughtful leadership on development strategy than has been provided for decades. But he has been stymied by the powerful countries’ failure to rally to his call to focus on the poorest countries. No nation, not even the United States, is now sufficiently dominant for its actions to be decisive. International coordination is needed more than ever. For all its manifest limitations, the United Nations must work.
International coordination has been, indeed, the great achievement of the Millennium Development Goals [though they are symbolic coordination and will fail because of lack of implementation, even lack of funds promised according to Jeffrey Sachs whom we will read later]; all the major donor countries have bought into them. But they should now be revised so as to focus on the challenge of helping the bottom billion to converge with the rest of mankind — and on a more realistic timescale. We need not just a “Year of the Bottom Billion,” but several decades. This session of the United Nations is an appropriate moment to get started.
Paul Collier, a professor at Oxford, is the author of “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.”
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22collier.html?
ex=1379822400&en=0bfe6d772b14ae1b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&
exprod=permalink
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Opinion piece by Paul Collier in New York Times a year ago: Concentrate on the Bottom Billion More than One Year
3. I was unaware that Collier has received a lot of media attention in the past year. He even appeared at the TED conferences in January 2009 and was one of five people to address a special "TED@State" (U.S. State Department presentation of policy oriented TED presenters like himself). You can find these small films of him all over the web. This was the first time I attempted to look for Collier video on the web, because I had assumed that his message would be little heeded. However, it seems I was wrong thankfully. At least people are widely aware of these causality debates he is starting from his comparative statistical modeling. However, the message published below sounds more like Milton Friedman's Shock Doctrine of military invasion to force neoliberalism and heedless anti-environmentalism as well--a powerful combination already in place. Perhaps Collier without being clearly aware is being aired more publicly to give a different ideological coating to the discredited neoliberalist-by-force model where powers that be require a fresh ideological coat of paint from Collier to continue to be legitimated. Here's an editorial of Collier from a year ago.
I think you can see echoes of the books we discussed this week by Williams, by Karl, and by Bunker/Ciccantell.
-------------------
September 22, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
A Measure of Hope
By PAUL COLLIER
Lusaka, Zambia
THANKS to the copper boom, Zambia’s economy at last is growing. Last year, per capita gross domestic product rose by around 4 percent. The capital is busy with new construction, and traffic between here and the copper belt is so heavy, travel time has doubled to eight hours.
Still, Zambia is diverging from the rest of mankind. Its tax system has until last month been so lenient that most of the new copper profits have gone to the foreign companies that now own the mines. [A "Karlist" argument about the political frameworks that become implaneted with dependency on raw material extraction, yielding little state autonomy.] And the political and economic collapse of neighboring Zimbabwe has meant a loss of trade.
Zambians remain in the “bottom billion” of the earth’s poorest people — those whom Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, declared would be the focus of development efforts for 2008. If the U.N., whose General Assembly convenes today, really rises to this challenge, how can it help the countries in the bottom billion? Presumably by more vigorous pursuit of its Millennium Development Goals, whose shaky progress toward ending poverty by 2015 is now subject to mid-term review.
The Millennium Development Goals have been a major improvement on the unfocused agenda for poverty that preceded them, but the world has changed radically since they were announced in 2000. And the assumptions on which they are based need to be rethought.
The World Bank has just raised the bean count of global poverty to 1.4 billion people, from just under a billion. It had previously overestimated the level of Chinese and Indian per capita incomes [which I had already decided to include in class], so the count now shows that the number of poor Chinese and Indians far exceeds the number of poor Africans. But this is misleading because Chinese and Indian incomes are rising far faster and more surely than African incomes.
The big difference between a poor Asian household and an equally poor African one is hope, not necessarily for the present generation of adults but for their children.
Hope makes a difference in people’s ability to tolerate poverty; parents are willing to sacrifice as long as their children have a future. Our top priority should be to provide credible hope where it has been lacking. The African countries in the bottom billion have missed out on the prolonged period of global growth that the rest of the world has experienced. The United Nations’ goal should not be to help the poor in fast-growing and middle-income countries; it should do its utmost to help the bottom billion to catch up. Anti-poverty efforts should be focused on the 60 or so countries — most of them in Africa — that are both poor and persistently slow-growing.
A further weakness with the Millennium Development Goals is that they are devoid of strategy; their only remedy is more aid. I am not hostile to aid. I think we should increase it, though given the looming recession in Europe and North America, I doubt we will. But other policies on governance, agriculture, security and trade could be used to potent effect.
What do I mean?
Well, take, for instance, the American biofuel scam (the ethanol subsidies that have diverted 30 percent of American corn away from the food supply) and the European ban on genetically modified seeds [which anyone knowledgeable supports because corruption and ignoring profound health difficulties found by many top scientists was seen! it was authorized only without or against test data in the U.S. government under Bush Senior/Reagan and under Blair in U.K.! read: Seeds of Destruction by Jeffrey Smith], imitated by Africa, have both contributed to Africa’s worsening food shortage. [Alas, I find Collier blissfully unaware of the bad long term ramifications of GMOs for private property markets in food, farmer income and development, or the ecological and human health implications.] Where is the United Nations pressure for an end to these follies? [Or the education about this to end his?]
Why, also, did the United Nations not intervene militarily when the democratic government of Mauritania, another country in the bottom billion, was overthrown by a coup last month? [Perhaps because it served some player on the Security Council itself?
INSET: "In Mauritania about 20% of the population live on less than US $1.25 per day [much less than North Korea]...The first fully democratic Presidential election since 1960 occurred on 11 March 2007 [even though it was the outcome of a military coup toppling a previously democratic leader. The election effected the final transfer from military to civilian rule following the [previous] military coup in 2005. This was the first time that the president had been selected in a multi-candidate election in the country's post-independence history. The election was won in a second round of voting by Abdallahi, with Daddah a close second. The head of the Presidential Guards (who had recently been fired by the incoming President) took over the president's palace and units of the army surrounded a key state building in the capital Nouakchott on 6 August 2008, a day after 48 lawmakers from the ruling party resigned. The army surrounded the state television building after the president sacked (fired) two senior officers, including the head of the presidential guards. The president, the prime minister and the minister of internal affairs were arrested. The coup was organized by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, former chief of staff of the Mauritanian army and head of the Presidential Guard, whom the president had just dismissed."[Here goes the third coup in four years....etc., etc.] The civilian government of Mauritania was overthrown on 6 August 2008, in a military coup d'état led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. On April 16, 2009, General Aziz resigned from the military to run for president in the July 19 elections; which he won. [this is a complete repeat of the earlier coup: resign from the military after a coup to run for election I think done by someone else three years ago.... Will it happen once more after him as well?]
["Mauritania has extensive deposits of iron ore, which account for nearly 40% of total exports. The nation's coastal waters are among the richest fishing areas in the world, but overexploitation by foreigners threatens this key source of revenue. The country's first deepwater port opened near Nouakchott in 1986. Before 2000, drought and economic mismanagement resulted in a buildup of foreign debt. In February 2000, Mauritania qualified for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and nearly all of its foreign debt has since been forgiven. In December 2007 donors pledged $2.1 billion at a triennial Consultative Group review. A new investment code approved in December 2001 improved the opportunities for direct foreign investment. Mauritania and the IMF agreed to a three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement [i.e., what? free zone underdevelopment extraction, like was a failure in Jamaica though great for top billion investors?]in 2006 and Mauritania made satisfactory progress, but IMF and World Bank suspended their programs in Mauritania following the August 2008 coup; following the July 2009 Presidential elections, the IMF and World Bank agreed to meet with the Goverment to discuss a resumption. Oil prospects, while initially promising, have largely failed to materialize."]
Where is an alternative initiative to open international trade to poor countries now that the Doha round talks have collapsed? [Begging the question: is opening the bottom billion to the world economy the only course that leads to development for them? Even Collier argues it fails to work because of the "Asian effect" for the long interim, though here is is arguing in print for it! Second, he's being hypocritical: if he's so prodemocratic, why does he imply it is time to throw out the democratic outcome of the failed Doha round--as people democratically challenge his developmental modernistic paradigm for the poor countries? So, will he soon call for invasion to enforce global neoliberalism as well, similar to the "Shock Doctrine" imperialism of Milton Friedman? (read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism--a huge international best seller that the "economic press" is censoring and hope will go away. It's currently in the top there books in Amazon.com categories, and this is several YEARS AFTER it has been published! )]
Above all, with a five-year-old commodities boom transferring wealth to some of the countries of the bottom billion, where are the international guidelines on taxation and investment that might help these countries convert earnings from exports of depleting minerals into productive assets like roads and schools?
I applaud Ban Ki-moon. Like Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, Mr. Ban is offering more thoughtful leadership on development strategy than has been provided for decades. But he has been stymied by the powerful countries’ failure to rally to his call to focus on the poorest countries. No nation, not even the United States, is now sufficiently dominant for its actions to be decisive. International coordination is needed more than ever. For all its manifest limitations, the United Nations must work.
International coordination has been, indeed, the great achievement of the Millennium Development Goals [though they are symbolic coordination and will fail because of lack of implementation, even lack of funds promised according to Jeffrey Sachs whom we will read later]; all the major donor countries have bought into them. But they should now be revised so as to focus on the challenge of helping the bottom billion to converge with the rest of mankind — and on a more realistic timescale. We need not just a “Year of the Bottom Billion,” but several decades. This session of the United Nations is an appropriate moment to get started.
Paul Collier, a professor at Oxford, is the author of “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.”
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22collier.html?
ex=1379822400&en=0bfe6d772b14ae1b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&
exprod=permalink
Monday, October 5, 2009
Week 6: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week
Post by Sunday at midnight
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Revolt in the Peruvian Amazon against Unrepresentative Oil Development
3. I think one flaw in Collier is his lack of data on the environmental implications of economic expansion. He doesn't really have comparative data about environmental issues and conditions correlated to his traps concept.
Some economic expansion is better than others, and I expect that if economic expansion (that Collier in the abstract argues removes the conflict trap) comes with widened pollution, can even some economic expansion lead to the conflict trap as well? So perhaps Collier should disaggregate 'economic development' into a scale of more degradative economic development versus less/zero degradative development. And then run his correlations once more with social stability and socioeconomic data in these two pairs.
The trick of course is getting the empirical data to prove or qualify this idea, as well as separate out all the different historical case variations that I am sure matter as well. Collier's traps are useful concepts though remember they are conceptual tools based on average correlations (so it depends on what you correlate or investigate) instead of requirements. I would like to see some more data to test the idea that environmental pollution in the bottom billion may create a potential conflict trap despite economic development. He only mentions environment in one state, Nigeria, (i.e., without comparative data).
The Peruvian government wants to get around indigenous communities rights by conducting a free trade agreement with the U.S. oil companies. Little matter that oil rarely if ever leads to development, and only crony corrupt cash for the governmental elites (there are exceptions to this rule: Botswana has done well with its raw material wealth, and its wealth came after it reached a political settlement; though countries that build their political settlements on raw material extraction are more inured in such corruptions, according to Collier's book. We watched a bit about Chavez attempting to prove the exception to the rule, though even after two terms of presidency so far, Venezuela has had little diversity to its development, and still is highly linked to the oil model. It's unfair to accuse a government of doing something it said it would not do, since Chavez's aim has always been to socialize the oil profits for Venezuelans in general instead of provide for ways out of the Dutch Disease system. It seems Peru is well on the way to yet another civil war.
By the way, last year I think, Costa Rica's announcement about oil and development is very different: so different that even though it discovered oil, it passed laws saying that its oil would not be utilized in perpetuity because of environmental concerns and because the state is developing in other ways. However, for states of the bottom billion without other immediate options the international market in raw materials (particularly when it comes as a ready-made plan from international investors) can seem like a dream come true in the short term, though has almost always been mismanaged in the long term and has worked against the country involved to claim it was 'developing' in this way. News from Peru: even though extraction rarely leads to development, states still gain much legitimacy (and perhaps crony bribery) for playing along and making themselves dependently underdeveloped.
----------
October 9, 2009
Peru Indian tribes join forces to fight off Amazon sale to oil companies
Achuar elders in Washintsa, Peru. The Government plans to auction off 75 per cent of the [Peruvian] Amazon to companies
Ramita Navai [reporting] in Washintsa, Peru
* 2 Comments
Recommend? (2)
They emerged from the thick, green jungle clenching their spears: a long file of barefoot chiefs and elders, their faces painted with their tribal markings and crowns of red, blue and yellow parrot feathers.
They had been summoned by the chief of Washintsa village for a meeting to discuss an oil company’s efforts to buy the rights to their land. Most had travelled for hours, padding silently through the dark undergrowth.
They came from Achuar Indian communities scattered along the Pastaza River, one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Ecuador.
These men are part of a growing resistance movement crystallising deep in the jungles of Peru. For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the Government’s plans to auction off 75 per cent of the Amazon — which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country’s territory — to oil, gas and mining companies.
They oppose 11 decrees issued by President García, under special [non]legislative powers granted to him by the Peruvian Congress [i.e., outside their elected representatives to enter into this crony extraction], to enact a free trade agreement with the US. These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams.
Indigenous leaders say that the laws will affect more than 50 Amazonian nations representing hundreds of thousands of Indians.
One by one the men step forward and deliver angry, defiant messages. “If an oil company tries to come here, we will block its path and block the rivers. We will not let them in and we will take strong action,” Jempe Wasum Kukush, a local leader, said. Another, Tayajin Shuwi Peas, warns: “We are not scared and we will fight to the death over this.”
Some groups have already begun the battle. Protests have turned deadly, with scores of clashes and rallies erupting across the country this year.
Oil operations and airports were besieged and shut down, culminating in a mass demonstration of more than 3,000 Indians, mainly from the Awajun tribe, blockading a road in the sweltering jungle town of Bagua in June. More than 30 people were killed, including 20 policemen, after special forces, airlifted to the scene, opened fire on the protesters.
Fearing more violence and faced with public outrage, the Government was forced to revoke two of the most contentious decrees. The Prime Minster resigned and President García also admitted to a series of errors in the handling of the incident.
The Government has also called the protesters extremists and terrorists [how can the president say that when it is they who are defending their developmental rights that were non-legislatively abrogated], and has charged an indigenous leader, who has since fled to Nicaragua, with sedition and rebellion. More than 100 men face criminal charges and many of them live in hiding.
Francisco Shikiu Ukuncham was shot through the back and saw three of his friends killed. He says that the fighting has served to strengthen ties between tribes. “All we want is for our home, the jungle, to be respected. We were demonstrating peacefully and they shot at us like we were dogs,” he said. “But the Government doesn’t listen to us. And if it doesn’t listen, the situation is going to get worse.”
Some of the tribes communicate with each other via a web of radios. The network has enabled disparate indigenous groups — often located hundreds of miles apart — to form alliances, co-ordinate protests and exchange information.
According to Ambrosio Uwak, the president of an indigenous rights organisation and one of the leaders of the movement, his group can mobilise more than 15,000 people through the radio system. “We want every single one of these decrees revoked. But if not, we won’t hesitate to call on our people to rise up again,” he said.
Unreported World, Peru: Blood and Oil. Friday, October 9. 7.30pm. Channel 4
---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6867053.ece
On Peru:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pe.html
"Peru's economy reflects its varied geography - an arid coastal region, the Andes further inland, and tropical lands bordering Colombia and Brazil. Abundant mineral resources are found in the mountainous areas, and Peru's coastal waters provide excellent fishing grounds. The Peruvian economy grew by more than 4% per year during the period 2002-06, with a stable exchange rate and low inflation. Growth jumped to 9% per year in 2007 and 2008, driven by higher world prices for minerals and metals and the government's aggressive trade liberalization strategies. Peru's rapid expansion has helped to reduce the national poverty rate by about 15% since 2002, though underemployment and inflation remain high. Despite Peru's strong macroeconomic performance, overdependence on minerals and metals subjects the economy to fluctuations in world prices, and poor infrastructure precludes the spread of growth to Peru's non-coastal areas. Not all Peruvians therefore have shared in the benefits of growth. President GARCIA's pursuit of sound trade [sic] and macroeconomic policies has cost him political support since his election. Nevertheless, he remains committed to Peru's free-trade [sic?] path. The United States and Peru completed negotiations on the implementation of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA), and the agreement entered into force February 1, 2009, opening the way to greater trade and investment between the two economies."
GDP - real growth rate:
9.8% (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 13
8.9% (2007 est.)
7.7% (2006 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 0.7%
industry: 23.8%
services: 75.5% (2005)
Population below poverty line:
44.5% (2006)
Budget:
revenues: $38.01 billion
expenditures: $35.29 billion (2008 est.)
Exports:
$31.53 billion (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 62
$27.88 billion (2007 est.)
Exports - commodities:
copper, gold, zinc, crude petroleum and petroleum products, coffee, potatoes, asparagus, textiles, fishmeal
Exports - partners:
US 18.9%, China 14.9%, Canada 7.8%, Japan 6.6%, Chile 5.5% (2008)
Imports:
$28.44 billion (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 65
$19.6 billion (2007 est.)
Imports - commodities:
petroleum and petroleum products, plastics, machinery, vehicles, iron and steel, wheat, paper
Imports - partners:
US 24.5%, China 10.6%, Brazil 7.8%, Chile 5.3%, Ecuador 5.2%, Argentina 4.7%, Colombia 4.1% (2008)
Disputes - international:
Chile and Ecuador [both to Peru's south] rejected Peru's November 2005 unilateral legislation to shift the axis of their joint treaty-defined maritime boundaries along the parallels of latitude to equidistance lines which favor Peru; organized illegal narcotics operations in Colombia have penetrated Peru's shared border [conflict trap spilling over]; Peru rejects [landlocked] Bolivia's claim to restore maritime access through a sovereign corridor through Chile along the Peruvian border
Refugees and internally displaced persons:
IDPs: 60,000-150,000 (civil war from 1980-2000; most IDPs are indigenous peasants in Andean and Amazonian regions) (2007)
Infant mortality rate:
total: 28.62 deaths/1,000 live births
country comparison to the world: 78
male: 31.07 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 26.06 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)
Ethnic groups:
Amerindian 45%, mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 37%, white 15%, black, Japanese, Chinese, and other 3%
Religions:
Roman Catholic 81.3%, Evangelical 12.5%, other 3.3%, unspecified or none 2.9% (2007 Census)
Languages:
Spanish (official), Quechua (official), Aymara, and a large number of minor Amazonian languages
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 92.9%
male: 96.4%
female: 89.4% (2007 Census)
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Revolt in the Peruvian Amazon against Unrepresentative Oil Development
3. I think one flaw in Collier is his lack of data on the environmental implications of economic expansion. He doesn't really have comparative data about environmental issues and conditions correlated to his traps concept.
Some economic expansion is better than others, and I expect that if economic expansion (that Collier in the abstract argues removes the conflict trap) comes with widened pollution, can even some economic expansion lead to the conflict trap as well? So perhaps Collier should disaggregate 'economic development' into a scale of more degradative economic development versus less/zero degradative development. And then run his correlations once more with social stability and socioeconomic data in these two pairs.
The trick of course is getting the empirical data to prove or qualify this idea, as well as separate out all the different historical case variations that I am sure matter as well. Collier's traps are useful concepts though remember they are conceptual tools based on average correlations (so it depends on what you correlate or investigate) instead of requirements. I would like to see some more data to test the idea that environmental pollution in the bottom billion may create a potential conflict trap despite economic development. He only mentions environment in one state, Nigeria, (i.e., without comparative data).
The Peruvian government wants to get around indigenous communities rights by conducting a free trade agreement with the U.S. oil companies. Little matter that oil rarely if ever leads to development, and only crony corrupt cash for the governmental elites (there are exceptions to this rule: Botswana has done well with its raw material wealth, and its wealth came after it reached a political settlement; though countries that build their political settlements on raw material extraction are more inured in such corruptions, according to Collier's book. We watched a bit about Chavez attempting to prove the exception to the rule, though even after two terms of presidency so far, Venezuela has had little diversity to its development, and still is highly linked to the oil model. It's unfair to accuse a government of doing something it said it would not do, since Chavez's aim has always been to socialize the oil profits for Venezuelans in general instead of provide for ways out of the Dutch Disease system. It seems Peru is well on the way to yet another civil war.
By the way, last year I think, Costa Rica's announcement about oil and development is very different: so different that even though it discovered oil, it passed laws saying that its oil would not be utilized in perpetuity because of environmental concerns and because the state is developing in other ways. However, for states of the bottom billion without other immediate options the international market in raw materials (particularly when it comes as a ready-made plan from international investors) can seem like a dream come true in the short term, though has almost always been mismanaged in the long term and has worked against the country involved to claim it was 'developing' in this way. News from Peru: even though extraction rarely leads to development, states still gain much legitimacy (and perhaps crony bribery) for playing along and making themselves dependently underdeveloped.
----------
October 9, 2009
Peru Indian tribes join forces to fight off Amazon sale to oil companies
Achuar elders in Washintsa, Peru. The Government plans to auction off 75 per cent of the [Peruvian] Amazon to companies
Ramita Navai [reporting] in Washintsa, Peru
* 2 Comments
Recommend? (2)
They emerged from the thick, green jungle clenching their spears: a long file of barefoot chiefs and elders, their faces painted with their tribal markings and crowns of red, blue and yellow parrot feathers.
They had been summoned by the chief of Washintsa village for a meeting to discuss an oil company’s efforts to buy the rights to their land. Most had travelled for hours, padding silently through the dark undergrowth.
They came from Achuar Indian communities scattered along the Pastaza River, one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Ecuador.
These men are part of a growing resistance movement crystallising deep in the jungles of Peru. For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the Government’s plans to auction off 75 per cent of the Amazon — which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country’s territory — to oil, gas and mining companies.
They oppose 11 decrees issued by President García, under special [non]legislative powers granted to him by the Peruvian Congress [i.e., outside their elected representatives to enter into this crony extraction], to enact a free trade agreement with the US. These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams.
Indigenous leaders say that the laws will affect more than 50 Amazonian nations representing hundreds of thousands of Indians.
One by one the men step forward and deliver angry, defiant messages. “If an oil company tries to come here, we will block its path and block the rivers. We will not let them in and we will take strong action,” Jempe Wasum Kukush, a local leader, said. Another, Tayajin Shuwi Peas, warns: “We are not scared and we will fight to the death over this.”
Some groups have already begun the battle. Protests have turned deadly, with scores of clashes and rallies erupting across the country this year.
Oil operations and airports were besieged and shut down, culminating in a mass demonstration of more than 3,000 Indians, mainly from the Awajun tribe, blockading a road in the sweltering jungle town of Bagua in June. More than 30 people were killed, including 20 policemen, after special forces, airlifted to the scene, opened fire on the protesters.
Fearing more violence and faced with public outrage, the Government was forced to revoke two of the most contentious decrees. The Prime Minster resigned and President García also admitted to a series of errors in the handling of the incident.
The Government has also called the protesters extremists and terrorists [how can the president say that when it is they who are defending their developmental rights that were non-legislatively abrogated], and has charged an indigenous leader, who has since fled to Nicaragua, with sedition and rebellion. More than 100 men face criminal charges and many of them live in hiding.
Francisco Shikiu Ukuncham was shot through the back and saw three of his friends killed. He says that the fighting has served to strengthen ties between tribes. “All we want is for our home, the jungle, to be respected. We were demonstrating peacefully and they shot at us like we were dogs,” he said. “But the Government doesn’t listen to us. And if it doesn’t listen, the situation is going to get worse.”
Some of the tribes communicate with each other via a web of radios. The network has enabled disparate indigenous groups — often located hundreds of miles apart — to form alliances, co-ordinate protests and exchange information.
According to Ambrosio Uwak, the president of an indigenous rights organisation and one of the leaders of the movement, his group can mobilise more than 15,000 people through the radio system. “We want every single one of these decrees revoked. But if not, we won’t hesitate to call on our people to rise up again,” he said.
Unreported World, Peru: Blood and Oil. Friday, October 9. 7.30pm. Channel 4
---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6867053.ece
On Peru:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pe.html
"Peru's economy reflects its varied geography - an arid coastal region, the Andes further inland, and tropical lands bordering Colombia and Brazil. Abundant mineral resources are found in the mountainous areas, and Peru's coastal waters provide excellent fishing grounds. The Peruvian economy grew by more than 4% per year during the period 2002-06, with a stable exchange rate and low inflation. Growth jumped to 9% per year in 2007 and 2008, driven by higher world prices for minerals and metals and the government's aggressive trade liberalization strategies. Peru's rapid expansion has helped to reduce the national poverty rate by about 15% since 2002, though underemployment and inflation remain high. Despite Peru's strong macroeconomic performance, overdependence on minerals and metals subjects the economy to fluctuations in world prices, and poor infrastructure precludes the spread of growth to Peru's non-coastal areas. Not all Peruvians therefore have shared in the benefits of growth. President GARCIA's pursuit of sound trade [sic] and macroeconomic policies has cost him political support since his election. Nevertheless, he remains committed to Peru's free-trade [sic?] path. The United States and Peru completed negotiations on the implementation of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA), and the agreement entered into force February 1, 2009, opening the way to greater trade and investment between the two economies."
GDP - real growth rate:
9.8% (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 13
8.9% (2007 est.)
7.7% (2006 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 0.7%
industry: 23.8%
services: 75.5% (2005)
Population below poverty line:
44.5% (2006)
Budget:
revenues: $38.01 billion
expenditures: $35.29 billion (2008 est.)
Exports:
$31.53 billion (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 62
$27.88 billion (2007 est.)
Exports - commodities:
copper, gold, zinc, crude petroleum and petroleum products, coffee, potatoes, asparagus, textiles, fishmeal
Exports - partners:
US 18.9%, China 14.9%, Canada 7.8%, Japan 6.6%, Chile 5.5% (2008)
Imports:
$28.44 billion (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 65
$19.6 billion (2007 est.)
Imports - commodities:
petroleum and petroleum products, plastics, machinery, vehicles, iron and steel, wheat, paper
Imports - partners:
US 24.5%, China 10.6%, Brazil 7.8%, Chile 5.3%, Ecuador 5.2%, Argentina 4.7%, Colombia 4.1% (2008)
Disputes - international:
Chile and Ecuador [both to Peru's south] rejected Peru's November 2005 unilateral legislation to shift the axis of their joint treaty-defined maritime boundaries along the parallels of latitude to equidistance lines which favor Peru; organized illegal narcotics operations in Colombia have penetrated Peru's shared border [conflict trap spilling over]; Peru rejects [landlocked] Bolivia's claim to restore maritime access through a sovereign corridor through Chile along the Peruvian border
Refugees and internally displaced persons:
IDPs: 60,000-150,000 (civil war from 1980-2000; most IDPs are indigenous peasants in Andean and Amazonian regions) (2007)
Infant mortality rate:
total: 28.62 deaths/1,000 live births
country comparison to the world: 78
male: 31.07 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 26.06 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)
Ethnic groups:
Amerindian 45%, mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 37%, white 15%, black, Japanese, Chinese, and other 3%
Religions:
Roman Catholic 81.3%, Evangelical 12.5%, other 3.3%, unspecified or none 2.9% (2007 Census)
Languages:
Spanish (official), Quechua (official), Aymara, and a large number of minor Amazonian languages
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 92.9%
male: 96.4%
female: 89.4% (2007 Census)
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Week 5: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week
Post by Sunday at midnight
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Developed World Were the Pirates off Somalia: Somali 'pirates' started as an unofficial coast guard to keep off developed world toxic waste dumping
3. The Background that the Major Media Failed to Reveal: Somalia's 'conflict trap' went so far as to completely remove its government. And that lack of government meant lack of a coast guard. And that lack of a coast guard meant predatory shippers dumping toxic waste on Africans and predatory fishermen stealing Somali fish protein from starving Africans. And that meant Somalians attempting to defend themselves on the high seas, and then through this learning how to seize ships. The story makes me far more sympathetic to Somali pirates when you understand this is what is happening.
And the U.N. is a failure because it is protecting the powerful countries--organizing developed world depredation as well further on Somalis and covering up the crimes of the developed world that make the Somalis a double victim.
"If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause—our crimes —before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals."
"At the ICGS Anti-Piracy meeting in Cairo on May 30 2009, Egypt and Italy were two of the loudest countries calling for severe punishment of the Somali fishermen pirates. As the ICGS are meeting in Rome today (June 10, 2009), two Egyptian trawlers full of fish illegally caught in Somali waters and an Italian barge that had been towing two huge tanks suspected of containing toxic or nuclear waste are being held in the Somali coastal town of Las Khorey by the local community, who invited the international experts to come and investigate these cases. So far, the international community has not responded to the Las Khorey community’s invitation.
It should be pointed out that both the IUUs and waste dumping are happening in other African countries. Ivory Coast is a victim of major international toxic dumping.
It is said that acts of piracy are actually acts of desperation, and, as in the case of Somalia, what is one man’s pirate is another man’s Coast Guard."
-----------------------
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
Bookmark and Share
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010
Sources:
Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008
Title: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy”
Author: Najad Abdullahi
Huffington Post, January 4, 2009
Title: “You are being lied to about pirates”
Author: Johann Hari
WardheerNews, January 8, 2009
Title: “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other”
Author: Mohamed Abshir Waldo
Student Researcher: Christine Wilson
Faculty Evaluator: Andre Bailey, EOP Advisor
Sonoma State University
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago.
In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste.
According to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), there were over 800 IUU fishing vessels in Somali waters at one time in 2005, taking advantage of Somalia’s inability to police and control its own waters and fishing grounds.
The IUUs poach an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually.
In so doing, they steal an invaluable protein source from some of the world’s poorest people and ruin the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen.
Allegations of the dumping of toxic waste, as well as illegal fishing, have circulated since the early 1990s, but hard evidence emerged when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reported that the tsunami washed rusting containers of toxic waste onto the shores of Puntland, northern Somalia.
Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that when the barrels were smashed open by the force of the waves, the containers exposed a “frightening activity” that had been going on for more than a decade. “Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” he said. “The waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes—you name it.”
Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments. “What is most alarming here is that nuclear waste is being dumped. Radioactive uranium waste that is potentially killing Somalis and completely destroying the ocean,” he said.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy for Somalia, says the practice helps fuel the eighteen-year-old civil war in Somalia, as companies pay Somali government ministers and/or militia leaders to dump their waste.
“There is no government control . . . and there are few people with high moral ground . . . yes, people in high positions are being paid off, but because of the fragility of the Transitional Federal Government, some of these companies now no longer ask the authorities—they simply dump their waste and leave.”
In 1992 the countries of the European Union and 168 other countries signed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. The convention prohibits waste trade between countries that have signed, as well as countries that have not signed the accord, unless a bilateral agreement had been negotiated. It also prohibits the shipping of hazardous waste to a war zone.
Surprisingly, the UN has disregarded its own findings, and has ignored Somali and international appeals to act on the continued ravaging of the Somali marine resources and dumping of toxic wastes. Violations have also been largely ignored by the region’s maritime authorities.
This is the context from which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged.
Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somali fishermen who, at first, took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia.
One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, explains that their motive is “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters. . . . We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish, and dump waste, and carry weapons in our seas.”
Author Johann Hari notes that, while none of this makes hostage-taking justifiable, the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalia news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have on what ordinary Somalis are thinking. It found that 70 percent “strongly support the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
Instead of taking action to protect the people and waters of Somalia from international transgressions, the UN has responded to the situation by passing aggressive resolutions that entitle and encourage transgressors to wage war on the Somali pirates.
A chorus of calls for tougher international action has resulted in multi-national and unilateral Naval stampede to invade and take control of the Somali waters.
The UN Security Council (a number of whose members may have ulterior motives to indirectly protect their illegal fishing fleets in the Somali Seas) passed Resolutions 1816 in June 2008, and 1838 in October 2008, which “call upon States interested in the security of maritime activities to take part actively in the fight against piracy on the high seas off the coast of Somalia, in particular by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft . . .”
Both NATO and the EU have issued orders to the same effect.
Russia, Japan, India, Malaysia, Egypt, and Yemen, along with an increasing number of countries have joined the fray.
For years, attempts made to address piracy in the world’s seas through UN resolutions have failed to pass, largely because member nations felt such resolutions would infringe on their sovereignty and security. Countries are unwilling to give up control and patrol of their own waters. UN Resolutions 1816 and 1838, to which a number of West African, Caribbean and South American nations objected, were accordingly tailored to apply to Somalia only. Somalia has no representation at the United Nations strong enough to demand amendments to protect its sovereignty, and Somali civil society objections to the Draft Resolutions—which makes no mention of illegal fishing or hazard waste dumping—were ignored.
Hari asks, “Do we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes—but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause—our crimes —before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals.”
Update by Mohamed Abshir Waldo
The crises of the multiple piracies in Somalia have not diminished since my previous article, “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the Word Ignores the Other,” was written in December 2008. All the illegal fishing piracy, the waste dumping piracy and the shipping piracy continue with new zeal. Somali fishermen, turned pirates in reaction to armed foreign marine poachers, have intensified their war against all kinds of ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
On international response, foreign governments, international organizations and mainstream media have been united in demonizing Somalia and described its fishermen as evil men pillaging ships and terrorizing sailors (even though no sailors were harmed). This presentation is lopsided.
The media said relatively little on the other piracies of illegal fishing and waste dumping.
The allied navies of the world—fleets of over forty warships from over ten Asian, Arab, and African countries as well as from many NATO and EU member countries—stepped up their hunt for the Somali fishermen pirates, regardless of whether they are actually engaged in piracy or in normal fishing in the Somali waters. Various meetings of the International Contact Group for Somalia (ICGS) in New York, London, Cairo, and Rome continue to underline the demonization of the Somali fishermen and urge further punitive actions without a single mention of the violation of illegal fishing and toxic dumping by vessels from the countries of those sitting in the ICGS and UN forums in judgment of the piracy issue.
At the ICGS Anti-Piracy meeting in Cairo on May 30 2009, Egypt and Italy were two of the loudest countries calling for severe punishment of the Somali fishermen pirates. As the ICGS are meeting in Rome today (June 10, 2009), two Egyptian trawlers full of fish illegally caught in Somali waters and an Italian barge that had been towing two huge tanks suspected of containing toxic or nuclear waste are being held in the Somali coastal town of Las Khorey by the local community, who invited the international experts to come and investigate these cases. So far, the international community has not responded to the Las Khorey community’s invitation.
It should be pointed out that both the IUUs and waste dumping are happening in other African countries. Ivory Coast is a victim of major international toxic dumping.
It is said that acts of piracy are actually acts of desperation, and, as in the case of Somalia, what is one man’s pirate is another man’s Coast Guard.
---
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/
3-toxic-waste-behind-somali-pirates/
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Developed World Were the Pirates off Somalia: Somali 'pirates' started as an unofficial coast guard to keep off developed world toxic waste dumping
3. The Background that the Major Media Failed to Reveal: Somalia's 'conflict trap' went so far as to completely remove its government. And that lack of government meant lack of a coast guard. And that lack of a coast guard meant predatory shippers dumping toxic waste on Africans and predatory fishermen stealing Somali fish protein from starving Africans. And that meant Somalians attempting to defend themselves on the high seas, and then through this learning how to seize ships. The story makes me far more sympathetic to Somali pirates when you understand this is what is happening.
And the U.N. is a failure because it is protecting the powerful countries--organizing developed world depredation as well further on Somalis and covering up the crimes of the developed world that make the Somalis a double victim.
"If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause—our crimes —before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals."
"At the ICGS Anti-Piracy meeting in Cairo on May 30 2009, Egypt and Italy were two of the loudest countries calling for severe punishment of the Somali fishermen pirates. As the ICGS are meeting in Rome today (June 10, 2009), two Egyptian trawlers full of fish illegally caught in Somali waters and an Italian barge that had been towing two huge tanks suspected of containing toxic or nuclear waste are being held in the Somali coastal town of Las Khorey by the local community, who invited the international experts to come and investigate these cases. So far, the international community has not responded to the Las Khorey community’s invitation.
It should be pointed out that both the IUUs and waste dumping are happening in other African countries. Ivory Coast is a victim of major international toxic dumping.
It is said that acts of piracy are actually acts of desperation, and, as in the case of Somalia, what is one man’s pirate is another man’s Coast Guard."
-----------------------
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
Bookmark and Share
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010
Sources:
Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008
Title: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy”
Author: Najad Abdullahi
Huffington Post, January 4, 2009
Title: “You are being lied to about pirates”
Author: Johann Hari
WardheerNews, January 8, 2009
Title: “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other”
Author: Mohamed Abshir Waldo
Student Researcher: Christine Wilson
Faculty Evaluator: Andre Bailey, EOP Advisor
Sonoma State University
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago.
In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste.
According to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), there were over 800 IUU fishing vessels in Somali waters at one time in 2005, taking advantage of Somalia’s inability to police and control its own waters and fishing grounds.
The IUUs poach an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually.
In so doing, they steal an invaluable protein source from some of the world’s poorest people and ruin the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen.
Allegations of the dumping of toxic waste, as well as illegal fishing, have circulated since the early 1990s, but hard evidence emerged when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reported that the tsunami washed rusting containers of toxic waste onto the shores of Puntland, northern Somalia.
Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that when the barrels were smashed open by the force of the waves, the containers exposed a “frightening activity” that had been going on for more than a decade. “Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” he said. “The waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes—you name it.”
Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments. “What is most alarming here is that nuclear waste is being dumped. Radioactive uranium waste that is potentially killing Somalis and completely destroying the ocean,” he said.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy for Somalia, says the practice helps fuel the eighteen-year-old civil war in Somalia, as companies pay Somali government ministers and/or militia leaders to dump their waste.
“There is no government control . . . and there are few people with high moral ground . . . yes, people in high positions are being paid off, but because of the fragility of the Transitional Federal Government, some of these companies now no longer ask the authorities—they simply dump their waste and leave.”
In 1992 the countries of the European Union and 168 other countries signed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. The convention prohibits waste trade between countries that have signed, as well as countries that have not signed the accord, unless a bilateral agreement had been negotiated. It also prohibits the shipping of hazardous waste to a war zone.
Surprisingly, the UN has disregarded its own findings, and has ignored Somali and international appeals to act on the continued ravaging of the Somali marine resources and dumping of toxic wastes. Violations have also been largely ignored by the region’s maritime authorities.
This is the context from which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged.
Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somali fishermen who, at first, took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia.
One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, explains that their motive is “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters. . . . We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish, and dump waste, and carry weapons in our seas.”
Author Johann Hari notes that, while none of this makes hostage-taking justifiable, the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalia news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have on what ordinary Somalis are thinking. It found that 70 percent “strongly support the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
Instead of taking action to protect the people and waters of Somalia from international transgressions, the UN has responded to the situation by passing aggressive resolutions that entitle and encourage transgressors to wage war on the Somali pirates.
A chorus of calls for tougher international action has resulted in multi-national and unilateral Naval stampede to invade and take control of the Somali waters.
The UN Security Council (a number of whose members may have ulterior motives to indirectly protect their illegal fishing fleets in the Somali Seas) passed Resolutions 1816 in June 2008, and 1838 in October 2008, which “call upon States interested in the security of maritime activities to take part actively in the fight against piracy on the high seas off the coast of Somalia, in particular by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft . . .”
Both NATO and the EU have issued orders to the same effect.
Russia, Japan, India, Malaysia, Egypt, and Yemen, along with an increasing number of countries have joined the fray.
For years, attempts made to address piracy in the world’s seas through UN resolutions have failed to pass, largely because member nations felt such resolutions would infringe on their sovereignty and security. Countries are unwilling to give up control and patrol of their own waters. UN Resolutions 1816 and 1838, to which a number of West African, Caribbean and South American nations objected, were accordingly tailored to apply to Somalia only. Somalia has no representation at the United Nations strong enough to demand amendments to protect its sovereignty, and Somali civil society objections to the Draft Resolutions—which makes no mention of illegal fishing or hazard waste dumping—were ignored.
Hari asks, “Do we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes—but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause—our crimes —before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals.”
Update by Mohamed Abshir Waldo
The crises of the multiple piracies in Somalia have not diminished since my previous article, “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the Word Ignores the Other,” was written in December 2008. All the illegal fishing piracy, the waste dumping piracy and the shipping piracy continue with new zeal. Somali fishermen, turned pirates in reaction to armed foreign marine poachers, have intensified their war against all kinds of ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
On international response, foreign governments, international organizations and mainstream media have been united in demonizing Somalia and described its fishermen as evil men pillaging ships and terrorizing sailors (even though no sailors were harmed). This presentation is lopsided.
The media said relatively little on the other piracies of illegal fishing and waste dumping.
The allied navies of the world—fleets of over forty warships from over ten Asian, Arab, and African countries as well as from many NATO and EU member countries—stepped up their hunt for the Somali fishermen pirates, regardless of whether they are actually engaged in piracy or in normal fishing in the Somali waters. Various meetings of the International Contact Group for Somalia (ICGS) in New York, London, Cairo, and Rome continue to underline the demonization of the Somali fishermen and urge further punitive actions without a single mention of the violation of illegal fishing and toxic dumping by vessels from the countries of those sitting in the ICGS and UN forums in judgment of the piracy issue.
At the ICGS Anti-Piracy meeting in Cairo on May 30 2009, Egypt and Italy were two of the loudest countries calling for severe punishment of the Somali fishermen pirates. As the ICGS are meeting in Rome today (June 10, 2009), two Egyptian trawlers full of fish illegally caught in Somali waters and an Italian barge that had been towing two huge tanks suspected of containing toxic or nuclear waste are being held in the Somali coastal town of Las Khorey by the local community, who invited the international experts to come and investigate these cases. So far, the international community has not responded to the Las Khorey community’s invitation.
It should be pointed out that both the IUUs and waste dumping are happening in other African countries. Ivory Coast is a victim of major international toxic dumping.
It is said that acts of piracy are actually acts of desperation, and, as in the case of Somalia, what is one man’s pirate is another man’s Coast Guard.
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http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/
3-toxic-waste-behind-somali-pirates/
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