Naomi Klein on Shell and Oil/Gas Industry

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Friday July 29, 2005 15:02

by M. Ní Sheighin

Below is a link to a story from The Nation by Naomi Klein on how, among other issues, the resources of a country should be used to benefit the people of the country from which oil/gas is extracted, and how this has not been the case in Nigeria, Bolivia and elsewhere.

It provides an interesting parallel with Ireland, except that Third World countries still reap more benefits financially from gas/oil exploration in their territories than is the case in Ireland, where our natural resources are given away for a song.

"'Oil wealth urged to save Africa,' reads the headline in London's Observer.

Here is a better idea: Instead of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth being used to "save Africa," how about if Africa's oil wealth was used to save Africa--along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?

With all this noblesse oblige focused on saving Africa from its misery, it seems like a good time to remember someone else who tried to make poverty history: Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed ten years ago this November by the Nigerian government, along with eight other Ogoni activists, sentenced to death by hanging. Their crime was daring to insist that Nigeria was not poor at all but rich, and that it was political decisions made in the interests of Western multinational corporations that kept its people in desperate poverty. Saro-Wiwa gave his life to the idea that the vast oil wealth of the Niger Delta must leave behind more than polluted rivers, charred farmland, rancid air and crumbling schools. He asked not for charity, pity or "relief" but for justice..."

"..The idea for which Saro-Wiwa died fighting--that the resources of the land should be used to benefit the people of that land--lies at the heart of every anticolonial struggle in history, from the Boston Tea Party to Iran's turfing of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan. This idea has been declared dead by the European Union's Constitution, by the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (which describes "free trade" not only as an economic policy but a "moral principle") and by countless trade agreements. And yet it simply refuses to die. "

Read full article at this link: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050627&s=klein

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Comments (6 of 6)

Second Gas War in Bolivia

by m

Fri Jul 29, 2005 17:17

glue40@hotmail.com

I was on theBrazilian Bolivian border about 7 weeks ago.It was possible to get into Bolivia but it was impossible to travel around the counntry and very difficult to get out .
All major roads and airports were blocked which meant trade was also closed down.The committment and unity of the protest was really inspirational.It completely demonstrates how effective direct action can be- they made the president resign.

Spoke to Ideas People at Nation

by alittlebirdie

Fri Jul 29, 2005 18:17

Naomi K's Editor at the nation will have info on rossport 5 imminently and she'll hear about it. Told them all you had posted this article here.

Calling Toronto Globe and mail next.

Anyoune have her ph no? ;-)

The British press takes notice

by Claire Guerin

Fri Jul 29, 2005 19:46

The view from ... Dublin
Shell meets its match in the Rossport Five

William Hederman
Friday July 29, 2005
The Guardian

The residents of the tiny village of Rossport, in the north-west corner of County Mayo on Ireland's Atlantic coast, have been up in arms for almost five years now. They have spent that time campaigning against a proposal by the petroleum giant Shell to lay a pipeline through their community to carry untreated gas from beneath the sea to a refinery 5.5 miles inland. Their cause secured little or no coverage in the national press until, at the end of June, five of them were jailed for refusing Shell access to their land to begin work on the pipeline.

Suddenly, the issue became one of the biggest news stories of the year and, as the Irish Examiner called it, "a major public relations disaster for the Shell corporation". The "Rossport Five" were jailed at the specific request of the company, which had obtained compulsory purchase orders for the land in question - the first time in Irish history that such an order was granted to a private company. The five will remain in jail until they undertake not to obstruct the company.

"Shell officials misjudged the situation if they thought to intimidate others by making an example of these men," the Irish Times said. Indeed, July has seen huge rallies in support of the men in Co Mayo and in Dublin, the picketing of Shell garages nationwide, and round-the-clock blockades of the refinery construction site.

"Their imprisonment," declared Fintan O'Toole in his Irish Times column, "exposes the hypocrisy of the law, which holds that property rights are sacred except when vast public resources are being given away to powerful corporations, and unimportant people object to having explosive materials pumped through their lands." He then turned his attention to the government: "It can recognise, however belatedly, that the pipeline is unnecessary and unworkable ... It can pretend that a sovereign, supposedly republican, state has half the backbone of a few Mayo families."

The success of blockades in preventing further work on the pipeline or refinery since the men were jailed has been celebrated in some quarters as exemplary direct action. According to Workers Solidarity, a monthly anarchist newsletter, events had "made crystal clear that the only thing that can oppose the strength of the state and the corporations is people power ... It won't be easy, especially as Shell have the forces of the state on their side, but people power has won before. It can do it again."

The tradition of civil disobedience was also championed by Eoin O Murchu in his column in the weekly current affairs magazine Village: "Peaceful agitation for change frequently involves breaking unjust laws ... It's what makes real democracy function ... And isn't it because [Irish people] took the law into their own hands historically that we have an independent state?"

P.S.

by CG

Fri Jul 29, 2005 19:51

Good idea, alittlebirdie.

Irelands 25% Corporation Tax on Oil/Gas exploration

by Gyro

Thu Aug 04, 2005 16:14

"Equatorial Guinea, which has a major oil deal with ExxonMobil, "got to keep a mere 12 percent of the oil revenues in the first year of its contract," according to a 60 Minutes report--a share so low it would have been scandalous even at the height of colonial oil pillage." Quote taken from athe above link to The Nation..

Now, note that the percentage in this quote appears to be on Gross Revenues. This equates to near 50% of Net Revenue. Ireland is to get half of this amount, but not until huge amounts of built up costs are brought forward and written off against profits. Some commentators say that Ireland might have to wait for twenty years before Corporation Tax "take" kicks in.

Equatorial Guinea "take" is considered scandalous; what words could describe the Irish "take"

words to describe the Irish take

by The irish take

Thu Aug 04, 2005 19:19

Take 1 - a 4th world country's take

Take 2 - colonialism in 2005 - under the guise of official and legally approved activities

Take 3 - an obvious example of globalisation where a multinational takes what it wants from citizens while the government does everything it can to help the multinational while jailing citizens who are trying to point out the truth

Take 4 - the Irish are a bunch of idiots who vote in totally corrupt gombeen men to act on their behalf who are ready at any moment to be bribed, in fact waving brown enveloppes infront of them is the only way to get public officials to do anything

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Naomi Klein on Shell and Oil/Gas Industry

Comments (6 of 6)