But then you start to see that, while they are in fact just taking the dirt, their doing so is ruining your home. "Oh, yeah," they say. "Wow. Sorry about that. Looks like your house sorta... fell down! We didn't do it, of course- never touched your house." And of course, they didn't: they just undermined it until it collapsed. You have no recourse to these people; your interests are not represented among their decision-makers, your voice can't be heard above the roar of Progress, and your weapons are no match for theirs. Your property has become part of someone else's colony, and you have no say in the matter.
Nigeria -most of Africa, really- has been brutally raped by the pink West for hundreds of years, but most especially since oil was discovered off the Atlantic coast. Their homes have been destroyed to make way for roads -which they didn't need- and pipelines -for which they have no use, and from which they reap no benefit. Their environment has been destroyed by "accidents" in which millions of barrels of oil and its by-products have been spilled; oil rigs have destroyed fisheries, the soil itself has been ruined by exposure to too much petroleum waste. They'd petition their government for grievances, but that government only has ears for money, and the money comes from the oil companies, i.e., indirectly from us. They'd petition the oil companies, but corporations only deal with other organizations, not individuals, and the Nigerians on the ground are too poor to afford the tools to organize broadly (like phones, mail service, or computers). Where else can they turn?
Where else, but to the local leaders and power-structure they've known all along. And to the tactics they've practiced for centuries, tactics practiced by every hopelessly-outnumbered and out-gunned fighting force ever: guerrilla- and gang warfare. You can call this "anarchy" if you want, but what it really is, is governance by organizations that we just don't recognize as governments. Organized crime is only "crime" because the organizers aren't in control of the judiciary. So, you might as well wipe your ass with that political map of Africa: it's about to be outdated.
Oh, and by the way, that's the future of the Arctic, too. Five countries currently share that region: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the U.S. Every one of these countries has border disputes with the others over the region, an enormous part of which is yet unclaimed. Polar ice is in retreat, so the Northwest Passage will soon be a viable year-round opportunity for travel and transport. Like Africa, the region's indigenous people are governed by foreigners with no cultural or physical ties to the land, which means they get economically and politically marginalized (let's just say they're not all "Eskimos"). And like Nigeria, there are sizeable oil deposits off shore.
Shift back into neutral for a sec here, folks, you'll need it.
Have you heard about the family in Ohio who kept their foster children in cages? This is one supremely messed-up situation. I'll let the story do the talking, but something there caught my eye:
Sharen Gravelle said she met her husband in 1986 at a dinner for a child sex abuse support group. She said she was attending because a relative had been molested. Michael Gravelle was there because he was accused of inappropriate touching, a charge he denies. The couple married two months later.As if the story isn't strange enough, this little tidbit is almost more than I can wrap my head around. First, support groups. Support groups are great if they're your thing- a great way to find similar experiences among your peers, so you don't feel so excluded/freaked out. Sharen, the future foster-mother, was attending because she presumably, apparently, felt victimized by her relative's molestation. Michael's presence at this function, as an accused molester himself, is so completely inappropriate as to be beyond belief, like holding an AA meeting at a bar. Someone in this picture is a predator, and it seems exceedingly likely that both are lying.
There is FAR more here than meets the eye, and what lies beneath is very, very disturbing.
I only wish this was an isolated case....
