The Curse of Oil
Wow, I just finished up a fascinating piece written by John Ghazvinian. I've had his piece sitting in Newsgator waiting to be read and I finally got around to it since I'm bumming around tonight. Writing for the Virginia Quarterly Review, he sets out for Nigeria to do a piece on the ups and downs (mostly downs) of oil in this destitute nation. While the capitol and senior government officials profit from multinational oil contracts, villagers and millions of ethnic minorities fight for survival each day. "Bunkered oil," is siphoned off the main pipelines or at junction points throughout the distribution network and has served both as a means for daily living, but also to fuel an armed resistance to the unity government and the multinationals. So while the oil can bring the comforts of industrialized life to some, most are too remote and too poor to have any participation in its benefits.
