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last several decades violence has been building off and on in the Niger River Delta

lucrative industry, which is living right next to very, very poor people and there is been a lot of conflict over time, a lot of mistrust built up between residents and the companies.

People feel that they have been cheated; people feel that their rights have been violated; they end up protesting against the companies or in some cases attacking the companies. The companies end up -- have to be protected by the military.

RAY SUAREZ: Not gaining but also feeling themselves burdened -- don't they -- by environmental concerns, fouling of the groundwater, that kind of thing?

t money paid to Nigeria's government in taxes - and the Nigerian Government will admit this -- a lot of the money over the years has been stolen.

Nigeria has a tremendous corruption problem, and the money that's disappeared is probably in the billions -- not the millions -- over the years -- perhaps the tens of billions

don't really have much of a functioning government

There aren't any roads in many areas; there aren't good schools in many areas; many places don't even have electricity; many places don't have telephone lines, although cell phones are now spreading through independent companies.

oil companies will say first off that they don't employ that many people

various ethnic groups in the Delta and tribal groups and different villages and individuals, many, many different groups, and it is often felt that the oil companies have taken sides, that they have gone about a divide and rule practice as some people will call it.

the face of the government to many people is a police officer or a soldier or sailor who is there fundamentally to guard an oil installation and not to help the people, or protect the people.

a feeling that the government has taken sides in this triangle and it's with the companies and not with the people who live there?

Shell acknowledged more than 200 oil spills last year alone. Thousands of barrels of oil were spilled in the water and there have been many oil spills over the years. And that has contributed, by many people's accounts, to environmental degradation there.

So each company is trying to do something but the question is: Are they doing something that's just public relations or that's too small to make a regional difference in a region of millions of people, or are they really going to do something that could change the situation?

We get 1.2 million barrels a day from Nigeria; it's the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States

Every day there is some more than 100,000 barrels, 140,000 from one company, as a matter of fact, that doesn't get out of Nigeria because of violence over the last couple of years and some days that's a much higher number.

in some cases you simply have people who live next to an oil facility, who feel they have been cheated, who feel that they're actually worse off for the facility being there because of pollution and other problems - who feel they're not benefiting and they go and they protest.

terminal in 2002 and again in 2005 was invaded by residents from nearby villages who simply felt that they were not gaining anything from Chevron.

They invade the terminal; they shut it down; Chevron makes promises; people feel the promises aren't kept; they come back again. That's one way that there's violence.

ethnic conflicts; there was a major one in 2003 revolving around elections

one group that felt that another group was having the election rigged in their favor and so they struck out. And they battled with Nigeria's military to some degree and they also attacked oil facilities because that was a way that they could strike back at the government.

disputed who owned a bit of oil land. The question who was got paid a little bit of money for the oil that was discovered on that land. They ended up fighting over it; a number of people were murdered.

military came in and essentially, by some people's account, settled matters by burning one of the villages. The military denies that the burning was intentional but, in any event, we went and visited -- a great number of buildings were destroyed, a number of people were killed.

no evidence of the government in many of these places. Does the oil company become -- in effect -- the government, and how do they respond to these challenges? What did they tell you about what they're trying to do in that part of Nigeria?

oil companies will have showcase instances in which they provided some community development.

instances in which oil companies have to acknowledge they have made promises that haven't been kept.

They will promise, for example -- in a village near the Chevron Terminal there is erosion of the land, which is blamed on the way that Chevron has managed its land. Whether that's fair or not, Chevron has promised to fix it by building some new housing on some new land. It hasn't been done yet, and Chevron has its own reasons why that hasn't been done -- they'll say because the situation is too unstable and there's been too much violence.

when they get frustrated, when there is an ethnic militia or an ethnic group that is going to engage in violence, they'll often turn it against oil companies, which they will see as perfectly justified, even though the oil companies will find it an outrageous disruption;

thieves have cost Nigeria an average of around 100,000 ba

rrels of crude oil per day.

Financial analysts, meanwhile, said that Nigeria is benefiting from the rising price of crude oil.

Oil prices are at two-year highs in part because of the civil war raging in Libya, Africa's top oil producer.

Officials at the Nigerian Financial Derivatives Co. told Nigerian newspaper Next that tensions in the Middle East were a "blessing" for Nigeria.

oni people

Ogoni, Ijaw and other people in the Niger Delta, those who have been worse affected for decades have been trying to stand up for themselves, their environment and their basic human and economic rights.

divide communities by paying off some members to disrupt non-violent protests.

threaten the livelihood of neighboring local communities. Due to the many forms of oil-generated environmental pollution evident throughout the region, farming and fishing have become impossible or extremely difficult in oil-affected areas, and even drinking water has become scarce. Malnourishment and disease appear common.

loss of property, price inflation, prostitution, and irresponsible fathering by expatriate oil workers.

Organized protest and activism by affected communities regularly meet with military repression, sometimes ending in the loss of life.

While the story told to consumers of Nigerian crude in the United States and the European Union—via ad campaigns and other public relations efforts—is that oil companies are a positive force in Nigeria, providing much needed economic development resources, the reality that confronted our delegation was quite the opposite

oil company operating in the Niger Delta employing inadequate environmental standards, public health standards, human rights standards, and relations with affected communities.

Far from being a positive force, these oil companies act as a destabilizing force, pitting one community against another, and acting as a catalyst—together with the military with whom they work closely—to some of the violence racking the region today.

Oil For Nothing: Multinational Corporations, Environmental Destruction, Death and Impunity in the Niger Delta, Essential Action and Global Exchange, January 25, 2000

in the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa to Chevron-marked helicopters carrying Nigerian military that opened fire upon protestors,

The military have been accused of thousands of killings, house/village burnings, intimidating people, torture and so on.

oil companies have neglected the surrounding environment and health of the local communities

oil spills that are not cleaned up, blatant dumping of industrial waste and promises of development projects which are not followed through, have all added to the increasing environmental and health problems.

corruption and religious tensions between Muslims and Christians

into 2004

Shell companies have worsened fighting in the Niger Delta through payments for land use, environmental damage, corruption of company employees and reliance on Nigerian security forces.

Shell companies and their staff creates, feeds into, or exacerbates conflict.

Voilence in the Niger Delta kills some 1000 people each year,

With over 50 years of presence in Nigeria, it is reasonable to say that the Shell companies in Nigeria have become an integral part of the Niger Delta conflict

Human Rights Watch’s 2010 report. They note although free speech and independent media remain robust and there have been some anti-corruption efforts. However, this is overshadowed by religious and inter-communal violence that has seen Muslims and Christians killing each other and by Nigeria’s political leaders’ “near-total impunity for massive corruption and sponsoring political violence”.

latest escalation of violence began in early 2006, hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between rival armed groups vying for illicit patronage doled out by corrupt politicians, or between militants and government security forces. Armed gangs have carried out numerous attacks on oil facilities and kidnapped more than 500 oil workers and ordinary Nigerians for ransom during this period

June 2009, followed a major military offensive in May against militants in the creeks of Delta State, which left scores dead and thousands of residents displaced.

— Nigeria, World Report 2010, Human Rights Watch

Libya holds around 44 billion barrels of oil reserves, the largest in Africa.”

The sudden change in Libya, a fallout of the democratic fervour blowing across North Africa and the Middle East, now meant that Libya oil supplies are in jeopardy, pushing the supply pressure on Nigeria and Angola.

Comments :   Now Nigerians,Africans & all the world can see the reason why IMF wants SANUSI TO DEVALUE NIGERIAN NAIRA so that the WESTERN WORLD will gain.SANUSI MAY THE GOD ALMITHY continue to strenghten u $ MR PRESIDENT never to listen to those animal impersonators.They thought u wiil be like IBB & others. Posted by: wyclef kojak , on Sunday, February 27, 2011 Report this comment This is a great opportunity for our country to make profits and use them for infrastructural development. I hope our government has the right sense to invest and appropriate this. Instead of diverting them for selfish and political purposes. Posted by: OgaFatai , on Saturday, February 26, 2011 Report this comment

That accounts for about 10 percent of Nigeria's current daily output of about 2 million barrels per day - already significantly down from the amount produced before years of militant attacks on oil infrastructure.

The militant leader said the militants were considering using the kidnapped American as a bargaining chip in their effort to free a militant leader who is in prison on charges of arms dealing and terrorism.

Attacks against offshore facilities are exceedingly rare.

Militant attacks on oil infrastructure have reduced by about a quarter the total oil production in Nigeria, which is Africa's biggest producer and a member of OPEC.

Despite being the home of almost all of Nigeria's petroleum reserves, the country's south is as desperately poor as the rest of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with 140 million people.

The diplomatic cable quotes Uranta as blaming "no more than 15 percent" of oil thefts on militants operating in the delta, a tropical maze of creeks and waterways about the size of South Carolina. Instead, politicians, retired admirals and generals and others in the country's elite profit from the thefts. Typically, thieves solder or cut into oil pipelines running through the mangrove swamps of the delta. Some refine the crude into kerosene or diesel in crude refineries, while other oil sails out to foreign ports for sale.

The large-scale theft, compounded by anger over unceasing poverty and pollution in the delta despite 50 years of oil production, led to an uprising of militants in the region beginning in 2006. Military-grade weapons funneled into the region, turning gunrunners into militant leaders who espoused political ideas — but kept their eyes on the profits from stolen oil.

Parliamentarians' salaries are not made public in Nigeria, but diplomats say the country's politicians are among the best paid in the world.

"You can't provide education, health or security without resources generated from a robust economy," he said.

The president's proposal for this year's national budget, which is currently before parliament, shows that nearly 75% of the $27.6bn (£17bn) would be spent on running government and its agencies.

Only $6.5bn is proposed for spending on capital projects, such as investment in vital infrastructure.

. More than 20 million people depend on the freshwater lake for their survival.

But it's been shrinking over the past 50 years and satellite images show it is now just a twentieth of its former size.

Huge expanses of water are now nothing more than a series of ponds and islands, and the once-fertile land that surrounds the lake is now dusty and barren.

"The lake is in the process of disappearing and the lake feeds many people, not just here but in other countries like Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger," he continued. "They are all people who live on Lake Chad."

Locals report that they are catching less fish and the ones that they do catch are smaller than they used to be.

A declining stock could have devastating consequences far beyond the water's edge, says Yakowra Mallom, from UNICEF.

There are no more fish. There's no more milk, no maize, no vegetables or cereal."

Local communities say the changing weather is the biggest reason for the shrinking of the lakes shores. The necessary irrigation of farming land has also been a factor.

A small local group is trying to save the surrounding land by planting trees in the villages that have been worst affected by desertification. If they cannot bring back the lake, they hope there will at least be workable land.

As a result, 90% of the United States' cocaine supply now arrives across the long, intractable U.S.-Mexican border, handled by homegrown Mexican trafficker groups.

the main entry point for Colombian cocaine was Dade County, in south Florida, where some 80% of cocaine passed into the U.S. market.

By the mid-1980s, cocaine had some 22 million users in the United States.

SINCE THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY, borderland towns like Tijuana, Nogales, and Juarez saw smuggling activities--first, banned patent drugs (including cocaine concoctions) and prohibited alcohol before World War II, then homegrown opiates and marijuana from the 1940s to the 1960s

By the 1970s, in this murky prehistory of Mexican drug organizations, the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, emerged as the storied capital of Mexican drug trades, steeped in a vibrant regional outlaw and smuggling culture.

According to State Department estimates, a third of cocaine for the U.S. market entered through Mexico in 1989; by 1992, that figure reached one half, and by the late 1990s, 75% to 85%. (6) In the mid-1990s, the income generated by drug exporting in Mexico, led by this cocaine surge, ranged from $10 billion (according to U.S. officials) to $30 billion (Mexican figures)--either way exceeding Mexico's revenues from its largest legal commodity export, oil ($7.4 billion).

According to a 1994 study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, overall trafficker bribes rose from between $1.5 million and $3.2 million in 1983 to $460 million in 1993, larger than the Mexican attorney general's entire budget. (8) Thousands of federal agents became active in facilitating drug trades during this time.

The apogee of this state exposure, in 1997, was the highly embarrassing discovery that the military chief of Mexico's equivalent of the DEA, General Gutierrez Rebollo, was in cahoots with the Juarez cartel, an incident sampled in the Hollywood drama Traffic. The U.S. war on cocaine had come home to roost. (9)

Russia has been in membership talks with the 153-nation WTO for 17 years and remains the only major economy still outside it.

However, Georgia says it will not allow Russia to join the global free trade club unless it cedes control of customs in the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday that Washington supported Russia`s WTO bid and had tried to talk Georgia out of blocking Russia`s accession,

Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia in August 2008 when Moscow recognized the independence of the two former Georgian republics following a five-day war, which started when Georgia attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to bring it back under central control.

Currently, seven powerful drug-trafficking organizations occupy different regions of Mexico -- La Familia Michoacán, the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, the Beltrán-Leyva Organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, and the Juárez Cartel.

For example, the Mexican government is working to improve the effectiveness of its federal police force, planning to hire 8,000 additional police investigators during 2010, while at the same time trying to purge the force of corruption.

In August 2010, nearly 10% of the federal police were fired for failing lie detector, drug, or other tests that form the "trust control exams" designed to identify officers with ties to organized crime.

In addition, Plataforma México, a recent reform related to information management, aims to create real-time interconnectivity within Mexico's police force by developing a national crime database to facilitate tracking drug criminals.

More importantly, the government is taking the punishment of convicted drug criminals seriously and has increased extraditions to the U.S.

An estimated 7,000 people died in Mexico in 2009 as a result of the drug war -- significantly more than the 1,300 people who are believed to have died in 2005 before the war began. There were also an estimated 1,200 kidnappings in 2009.

Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company, has been a repeated target of the cartels. In 2010, the company experienced multiple kidnappings and theft by the cartels and corrupt employees. Reuters estimates that Pemex loses "US$750 million of fuel and oil from its pipelines each year" along with "valuable spare parts and equipment."

In August 2010, the far-reaching impact of Mexico's drug-related violence prompted Calderón to open debate on legalizing drugs.

For the past two years, American Chamber Mexico (AmCham) has conducted a survey of its members -- foreign and national managers -- to gauge their sentiment regarding corporate and personal security: 75% say their businesses have been affected by the country's insecurity.

Nearly 60% of the respondents felt less secure on a personal level in 2009 than in 2008; but the same respondents were equally divided as to whether their respective companies were more, less, or equally secure across the same period.

Of the third of the respondents who viewed their companies as being less secure than the year before, the most commonly noted contributing factors were the strengthening of organized crime activity, impunity in the judicial process, and activities associated with drug trafficking. Among those who felt their companies were more secure, 25% credited the work of the Mexican authorities, while 75% attributed the improvement to the results of efforts within their own companies.

As previously noted, vehicle armoring is a principal offering of the security industry, and it is not surprising that the growth of the market is most visible in this subsector. In Latin America, the armoring market has increased by 850% in the last eight years, and Mexico is now the second largest market after Brazil. Since 2008, the number of armored cars has increased by 25% in Mexico City and by 60% in the rest of the country. This market is expected to grow by 20% in 2011. Businesses have responded to this need: There are now 70 registered providers of armoring, compared to only three 15 years ago.

Kroll estimates the direct cost of insecurity to the government, businesses, and citizens to be US$65 billion, or 8% of GDP.

focuses

     Such gray-market microenterprises exemplify a spirit of dynamism and creativity straining to be fully unleashed, say some observers of Cuba. The question of the day: Is Raul Castro about to release it?

     The island nation's economy has struggled mightily since losing the support of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

     Raul's reputation as a pragmatist is unfurling expectations here that the era of asceticism and austerity is coming to a close. Major agricultural reforms have been unveiled. And in a speech earlier this month, he seemed to be preparing the populace for an economic shift.

And a recent flurry of headline-grabbing changes--such as allowing Cubans to patronize tourist hotels and to own cellphones, DVD players, and computers--is fueling speculation about how fast Raul will pursue the "China model" of a managed creep toward free markets.

The government created about 150 categories of licenses for Cubans to start their own businesses, and the ranks of self-employed swelled to 200,000.

Raul granted private farmers the right to till plots of up to 99 acres of unused government land. This follows a previous announcement to shift control of farms from the central government in Havana to local councils, raise prices for certain products to boost production, and give farmers the right to use whatever farm equipment they can afford to buy.

     Cuba now relies heavily on Venezuela, whose leftist President Hugo Chavez sends nearly 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island in exchange for social services, such as Cuban doctors and teachers.

     Currently more than half of arable land lies fallow or is under used, according to Cuban government figures cited by The Associated Press. Cuba spent $1.5 billion importing food last year. This year it is expected to spend $1 billion more, say officials.

     But while some Cubans blame their economic woes on strict controls and prohibitive taxes, many still view the US and its 1962 trade embargo as the bigger culprit. No matter how much Raul seeks to open the economy, the embargo will stand in the way of much-needed foreign investment, analysts say.

On May 27, a group of trade representatives from Texas wrapped up the first official state visit to the island since the US established the embargo.

Cuba is an important market for Texan cattle, rice, poultry, cotton, and processed food products that enter under provisions in the US embargo that allow small amounts of trade in agricultural products.

     Such goodwill may not be the status quo in either nation right now, but the sense that change is coming certainly is. "The social values we espouse mean nothing if there is no economic basis," says Renel, a young lawyer in Havana. "Whether it is socialism, communism, capitalism, even feudalism, things are going to change."

Citation: You can copy and paste this information into your own documents. Llana, Sara Miller, and Matthew Clark. "Cuba Under Raul: Creeping Towards Capitalism?." Christian Science Monitor. 23 Jul 2008: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 08 Mar 2011.