nigeria

much has been talked about lately- and not much more- of darfur, sudan and other places in africa. in fact, for excellent coverage and resources dedicated to helping the folks of darfur- visit quaker dave's daily darfur.

nigeria is an oil rich nation on the west coast of africa- and you will be interested to know it has the lowest quality of life out of any of the oil producing areas. i read an article in the latest edition of national geographic and it made me so angry. you can argue against giving handouts to folks but i really don't feel that there is any argument whatsoever for wantonly destroying people's lives for greed. the oil gatherers- european and american oil companies predominantly- go in and drill for their oil and don't bother with pesky regulations or impact analyses. oil spills or gas fires- oh well. too bad. oh- did i mention that very very little of the oil money trickles down to the actual people of nigeria- who live in horrible squalor? is the nigerian government the blame? you bet. but so are the oil companies who don't care about those folks one way or another. in fact, because there were so many kidnappings for ransom of their workers- instead of trying to improve things with the locals- they decided to offshore drill.

read the whole article at national geographic when you have a spare moment. it is eye opening. we have a responsibility to not destroy the lives of people in our quest for maintaining our lifestyle here. bottom line.