No, this isn’t about the Floyd-album, but about real walls. Wasn’t it only last year that we commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall? Every person that’s a little older than 18 years will forever remember the pictures of that concrete structure with all the graffiti on it, either from seeing it in real life or from pictures and TV. It was generally assumed that walls like that are history now, belonging to other times where we tried to separate people by artificial structures like the Berlin Wall. But have a look at this picture:

This isn’t an historical picture, people are still building this wall in Israel. This is the wall that is being built all around the Westbank to ‘protect’ Israel from terrorist attacks. Israel has been condemned for building this wall by the International Court of Justice. But this doesn’t have ANY effect on the attitude of Israel towards the surrounding countries: they want ANOTHER WALL now, across the border with Egypt. Reason: they want to stop the influx of immigrants, mainly christian immigrants.

So after keeping out the Palestinians, they’ll concentrate on christians now. Kinda strange, no? After all, Israel does only exist because of all the jewish immigrants who arrived illegally over there and started to settle in Palestine. To not mention the boundaries of their territorry they established illegally in 1968. Curious how the US will react this time, they are kinda christian.

Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al-Megrahi is the man who was condemned for the bomb attack on an American plane above Lockerbie in 1988. He was released a couple of weeks ago by Great-Britain and subsequently welcomed celebratory in Libia. Now that’s strange, but much stranger is the fact that the British government reacted much less disapproving to this happening than the United States for example.

Now it seems that this has to be perceived in a geopolitical way: interests on economical level influenced a decision on political (and ethical, think about the surviving relatives) level. Earlier on, the British minister of Justice, Jack Straw, wanted to exclude Al-Megrahi from an agreement between London and Tripoli about the exchange of British and Libian prisoners. But in the end, Straw gave in on this point because Libia refused otherwise to conclude a billion dollar deal with British Petroleum (BP). Shortly after Straw’s deicision, negotiations were restarted on this issue.

So it’s clear this deal was economically important to the UK, but indirectly, it also was on political level (again). Because by importing oil and gas from Libia, the UK would be less dependent from Russia, which creates a better negotiation position with this country on other issues and so on…

If you think spies only act in Ian Fleming’s novels or are tapping telephones from innocent civilians in (former) communist countries, you’re wrong (again). A trial was started recently against the French energy company EDF, which is being charged for spying on Greenpeace.

EDF (Electricité de France) is one of the biggest exploiters of nuclear power plants in the world, as it is also the owner of British Energy. During the hearings of some witnesses in the case, it already became clear that EDF, which is a government undertaking, paid private detectives to infiltrate in environment movements all over Europe. An IT expert from the detective agency has admitted hacking computer systems of Greenpeace. The head of the firm nevertheless, who has also been charged and happens to be a former agent of the French secret service, denies he commanded the entire hacking operation and declares that the computer expert was acting on his own initiative. As such, EDF declares to be victim of the detective agency and registers a civil plaintiff.

As the director of Greenpeace France already stated, the fact that his organisation is being treated like terrorists because they dare to question nuclear energy shows just how frightened the nuclear industry is of transparency and a democratic debate. To be continued.

It’s generally presumed that the colonial era is history nowadays. Yes, the formerly great colonial powers like Great-Britain and France don’t have any governments installed anymore in third world countries in Africa and South-America. But there is no reason to worry: we can still rob them from their valuable commodities, but let’s not call it colonialism anymore. We have neat gold mining companys now and they have their own social responsibilities and stuff.

There’s for example the well-known gold mining multinational, of which I can’t remember the exact name right now, which acquired the power over a huge plant site in Peru in a complete nonviolent way. Because violence is very colonialistic, they just bribed some Peruvian judges and in the end the entire Peruvian government. Subsequently, they polluted the entire region. But hey, the presence of the gold mine means a boost for the local economy!Too bad that the greater part of the employees is coming from outside the region and the fast urbanization brought along prostitution, criminality and outrage. And the inflow of foreign capital from well-paid expatriates caused a growth in land prices. However, the situation improved a little after a great portion of media attention.

Maybe that’s because they shifted their focus from South-America to Africa. Ghana for example. A friend of mine is conducting some research there at the moment and the similarities with Peru are countless. For example the  communities of Teberebie and Iduapriem, which are seriously struck by the gold mining activities. People are literally forced to cede their land by soldiers (how do you mean colonialism?). Of course they are promised to receive other land but of course that isn’t the case. And concerning the pollution:

The picture on the left shows the polluted river which the local population needs for their daily activities, the picture on the right shows its health consequences.

In another community, that of Adisakrom, people live along the Soubry river. This river is partly closed the river by a dam, with the one side serving as a dump for the chemical waste of The Big Mining Company and the other side is for the sustenance of the local people. However, the water level has grown enormously thanks to the dam, which is why crocodiles and, I must quote, ‘other crazy reptiles’, can’t catch any fish anymore. Consequence: they enter land.

And what did The Company have to say at this? The old story: the local people take advantage of the mining, they have no reason to complain. With the consequence of big strikes which took place recently, because Ghanaian emplyees earn about 700$ a month for a job as senior officer, while the average expatriate earns about  $20,000 for doing a comparable job. And don’t think that it are only private companies who are involved: organisations who are connected to insitutions like the World Bank are also investing in such huge mining projects. One can wonder if it isn’t more suitable for such organisations to invest in an improved democracy at large scale and concerning the mining territory in specific, instead of projects in the private area. Colonialism isn’t dead, they are just trying to legalise it.

 “All my life I kept trying to go up in society. Where everything higher up was legal. But the higher I go, the crookeder it becomes. Where the hell does it end?”

(M.C.)

Elections are held in Afghanistan tomorrow and it looks like it won’t be a classic example of democracy like the United States always like to disseminate. However, there are certain similarities with the elections in the US. Florida 2000-wise.

The incumbent president Karzai, generally supported by the US, has basically only highlighted one issue during his ‘campaign’: peace with the Taliban. However, it looks like that won’t suffice to get 50 percent of the votes. But he has some tricks left.

For example, journalists are forbidden to write negatively about the government or its policy. There are also rumours about fraud at large extent: a staff member of the American commanding officer McChrystal was able to buy an amount of thousand registration cards for the elections on the market square of Kabul. Messages arrive from the uncontrolled rural areas that the Afghan men suddenly have a lot of women over there, deducted from the number of registrations  which clearly deviates from the real  amounts of women living in those areas.

So it isn’t a huge surprise that even the Representative for the UN in Afghanistan, the Norwegian Kai Eide, already takes the irregularities for granted and hopes that “it will be limited and in that way not damage the elections”. I think in the end it will be George W. Bush who wins! Surprise!