Almost a fifth of the oil imported by the U.S. comes from Africa, and in the decade to come this percentage will rise. The eastern part of Nigeria, from which Big Oil has pumped more than a trillion dollars worth of black gold since the 1960s, remains the poorest part of the country, and one of the most ravaged and polluted on earth. Thousands of gas flares have burned for decades, generating acid rains that have poisoned fisheries and crops. The land is crisscrossed by thousands of miles of leaking pipes and dotted with oil slicks. The air is unbreathable, cancers are endemic, there are no schools or hospitals and life expectancies are among the lowest on the African continent. Shell Oil is on trial in a New York courtroom, accused of hiring the Nigerian government to murder its own citizens for protesting the pollution of their environment and demanding a share of oil revenues be spent where the oil is extracted.
Need to know more? Check out http://shellguilty.com .
Orion Meadows is a non-violence trainer with Institute for Nonviolence Chicago.
Michael Li is Senior Counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
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Barack Obama devastated millions of people all over the world and speaks of his actions as if they were committed by someone else. It is a masterful performance by a man committed to deception.
Where are multinational corporations in discussions of reparations? The late Jamaican political economist Norman Girvan provides an answer.
