NIGERIA; SHELL TO FACE TRIAL IN THE U.S OVER SARO WIWA

Oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, will go on trial in the United States on February 9, 2009 for alleged complicity in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, THISDAY has learnt.

The case entitled Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Shell and Wiwa v Anderson concerns the November 10, 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement of the Emancipation of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) known as "Ogoni Nine" and the shooting of a woman protesting the bulldozing of her farm by Shell in preparation for a pipeline project.

After several years of litigation, Judge Kimba Wood ruled that the trial would he held next year.

According to documents made available by EarthRights International, one of thecounsel, Shell was engaged in "acts of oppression" against peaceful opposition to the company's environmental damage and human rights abuses in the Ogoni area.

THISDAY gathered that the plaintiff's action was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and alleges violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO).

The defendants dismissed the complaints on grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction over Royal Dutch/Shell and lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

According to the defendants, ACTA did not apply to a corporation and the claim was precluded by the political questions and act of state doctrines as well as Nigerian law on corporate liability. They also argued that the case should be heard in the Netherlands or England.

But on September 25, 1998, Judge Wood ruled that personal jurisdiction was appropriate in New York but also ruled that England was a more convenient forum and therefore that the defendant's motion to dismiss should be granted for forum non conveniens (Latin for "inconvenient forum" or "inappropriate forum").

Plaintiffs appealed to the US Court of Appeals for Second Circuit, arguing that a forum non conveniens dismissal would vitiate Congressional intent to allow plaintiffs claims to be heard in US courts.

Defendants cross-appealed the ruling personal jurisdiction. And the Court of Appeal on September 15, 2000 reversed the district court's forum non conveniens dismal, thereby concluding that the US was the proper forum.

The court further upheld the district court's ruling that jurisdiction over the defendants was proper.

EarthRights International is a co-counsel for the plaintiffs together with Judith Brown Chomsky, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Paul Hoffman and Julie Shapiro.

The "Ogoni Nine" were hanged by the government of late military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha after they were found guilty of murder by the military tribunal headed by Justice Ibrahim Auta.

Those hanged were Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine

There was a global outcry on what was described as "judicial murder" and outrage heightened against Shell which was accused of collaborating with the military regime to silence environmental activists in the oil-producing region.
Last August, another oil giant, Chevron Nigeria Limited, had also lost its bid to halt its trial in United States after exhausting all appeals to stop the company from being tried for the alleged murder of villagers in the Niger Delta region in two separate incidents between 1998 and 1999.

The US District Court Judge in San Francisco, California, Susan Illston, had ruled last year in the Bowoto v. Chevron Corp., No 99-2506, that Chevron was directly involved in the alleged attacks by acting in consonance with Nigerian government security forces and therefore would stand trail.

Chevron appealed the California Superior Court's ruling unsuccessfully.

In her ruling, Judge Illston found "evidence that CNL [Chevron Nigeria Limited] personnel were directly involved in the attacks; CNL transported the GSF [Nigerian government security forces], CNL paid the GSF; and CNL knew that GSF were prone to use excessive force".

The plaintiffs are also taking action on the legality of the Nigerian government's conduct at Parabe and Opia/Ikenyan, asking the state court to issue an injunction regulating the manner in which the Nigerian government may provide law enforcement services in Nigeria, and asking the court to limit CNL's ability to obtain armed protection in Nigeria.Chevron argued this will hinder its operations in the country.

In addition to Environmental Rights Action and Traber &Voorhees, the plaintiffs are represented by the private law firms of Hadsell & Stormer and Siegel & Yee, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Paul Hoffman, Michael Sorgen, Robert Newman, Anthony DiCaprio, Elizabeth Gu-arnieri, and Richard Wiebe.

afrol News - Africa to pay for Europe's "green policies"

In efforts to make quick and symbolic gains in Europe's otherwise failed policies to curb climate gas emissions, environmental and anti-globalisation politicians are aiming at Africa's few economic success stories. Campaigns to buy locally produced food and travel to local destinations particularly hit out against African products.

Consumers in Europe are again growing more environmentally conscious and are willing to use their purchasing power to assist in what is widely seen as our era's most pressing problems - the overspending of energy and global warming. Meanwhile, European politicians have been those pressuring strongest to gain support for the Kyoto Protocol while having totally failed to lower emissions of climate gases in their own countries. In every country, emissions have steadily increased.

Populist solutions that are to satisfy costumers, politicians and the European industry alike are therefore surfacing all over Africa's neighbour continent and the main market of its products. And the solutions seem neat and nice - easy to understand and with the potential of creating more work locally. Even the industry starts propagating these solutions.

The victim mainly is Africa, because the message is that, as longer as a product or person is transported, the more energy is wasted unnecessarily. Worst of all is airborne transport, having the highest emissions of climate gases such as CO2. Unluckily, Africa is far away from European markets and poor transcontinental infrastructure puts most products and travellers on an airplane.

All over Europe, therefore, home-grown campaigns are being promoted, attacking Africa's newest and most successful export products. Anti-globalisation activists, "green" politicians, local industry and even occasional experts and scientists head these "buy local" campaigns.

One of the latest campaigns is being launched in Germany, Europe's most populous state and biggest single market. The campaign goes "Sylt instead of Seychelles", referring to a fragile German North Sea island with an overstretched and environmentally damaging tourism industry. Tourism and climate expert Dr Manfred Stock developed the slogan and told the daily newspaper 'Berliner Zeitung' that consumers worrying about global warming should avoid intercontinental flights and rather take the train to a German or European destination.

The much-quoted researcher is in line with policies promoted by Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA). UBA President Dr Andreas Troge has made the climate change issue his agency's foremost focus, and one of the ways consumers could "do something on your own" is by changing their travel behaviour, UBA says. A single traveller flying to an intercontinental destination produces more than five tonnes of CO2, he told the German press, while someone travelling by train within Germany only had the emission of ten of kilograms of CO2 to account for.

Some even go further and have started penalising air travellers. In Norway, flyers have started paying for their CO2 emissions. So far, only domestic flights are penalised to make sure Norwegian airliners are not losing out in competition with other companies on international flights. But Norway is among many countries working for a CO2 tax on world-wide flights, which of course in particular would make long distance flights much more expensive.

This comes as most African states are investing massively in their nascent tourism industry and as Africa is surfacing as a modern and exciting travel destination in most Western markets. Some sub-Saharan states, in particular Seychelles, Mauritius, Cape Verde and The Gambia, already see tourism as their greatest foreign exchange earners. In Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, the travel industry by now is a vibrant success, while newcomers as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Gabon and Burkina Faso pin great investments and development hopes to the industry.
Read on;

afrol News - Africa to pay for Europe's "green policies"

Kenya: Why are Western media better at African feel-good stories? (opinion)

The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.
Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.
This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.
The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.
Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.
This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.

Collapse at WTO gravely undermines Africa: minister

GENEVA (AFP) - The breakdown of talks on a world trade pact has "gravely undermined" efforts by African countries to fight poverty, Kenya's trade minister warned on Wednesday.
"Africa's opportunity to achieve fair trade has... been gravely undermined by the lack of progress in these negotiations," the minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, told a news conference, speaking on behalf of a grouping of African countries at the World Trade Organization talks here.

"Africa critically needs to realise development and get itself out of poverty through the establishment of fair trade rather than aid," he said.

"Most of the key issues of interest to the African continent were not even discussed, especially the issue of cotton."

WTO Director-General announced on Tuesday that the latest negotiations for a much-delayed trade liberalisation deal under the so-called Doha Round had broken down after nine days due to unresolved differences.

Delegates said the deaddlock centred on a row between the United States and India over special tariff measures to protect poor farmers from surging imports or price falls.

Obama – The 30 Minutes Berlin Speech

After watching this video over and over again, I decided to make it a post. It takes 30minutes to go through, but its worth the time.
In front of a 200,000 man crowd (according to German Police), Obama delivered what many considered his most powerful speech- I remember the Race-Address was then considered the most powerful. Maybe it is time we get used to such inspiring addresses from the man Obama.

Many have made statements pro and contro on this speech, have you really gone through it, its time you do so, for yourself only.

In one way or the other were and are still people of Berlin.

Help Africa Friends – New Look with Ndomche Summary Theme

Hi friends, I've been out and around the world for a while now, and I almost forgot I had a blog and friends at MyblogLog. My last post was on February 25 – a way back.
For my come back I decided to get a face-lift for this blog, I asked my friend Martin from Kabatology to give me a hand. The result is right there in front of you. This is a Blogger version of the Ndomche Summary Theme – II Columns.

This template will soon be available for all Blogger bloggers at Kabatology ~ Open Source, Linux.
In the mean time permit me to say – I'm happy to be back.