Where Vultures Feast

On February 22, 1895, a naval force laid siege to Brass, the chief city of the Ijo people of Nembe in Nigeria's Niger Delta. After severe fighting, the city was razed. More than two thousand people perished in the attack. A hundred years later, the world was shocked by the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa-writer, political activist, and leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Again the people of Nembe were locked in a grim life-and-death struggle to safeguard their livelihood from two forces: a series of corrupt and repressive Nigerian governments and the giant multinational Royal Dutch Shell. Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas present a devastating case against the world's largest oil company, demonstrating how (in contrast to Shell's public profile) irresponsible practices have degraded agricultural land and left a people destitute. The plunder of the Niger Delta has turned full circle as crude oil has taken the place of palm oil, but the dramatis personae remain the same: a powerful multinational company bent on extracting the last drop of blood from the richly endowed Niger Delta, and a courageous people determined to resist.

Crude is the unexpurgated story of oil, from the circumstances of its birth millions of years ago to the spectacle of its rise as the indispensable ingredient of modern life. In addition to fueling our SUVs and illuminating our cities, crude oil and its byproducts fertilize our produce, pave our roads, and make plastic possible. "Newborn babies," observes author Sonia Shah, "slide from their mothers into petro-plastic-gloved hands, are swaddled in petro-polyester blankets, and are hurried off to be warmed by oil-burning heaters." The modern world is drenched in oil; Crude tells how it came to be. A great human drama emerges, of discovery and innovation, risk, the promise of riches, and the power of greed. Shah infuses recent twists in the story with equal drama, through chronicles of colorful modern-day characters — from the hundreds of Nigerian women who stormed a Chevron plant to a monomaniacal scientist for whom life is the pursuit of this earthblood and its elusive secret. Shah moves masterfully between scientific, economic, political, and social analysis, capturing the many sides of the indispensable mineral that we someday may have to find a way to live without.

The people of the Niger delta in southern Nigeria are locked in a life-and-death struggle with Royal Dutch Shell to safeguard the source of their livelihood -- their environment. This extraordinary book reveals the rape and plunder of this unique, environmentally-sensitive region once rich in natural resources. Written by close collaborators of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa -- and providing the background to his execution by the Nigerian government in 1996 -- this volume demonstrates how the ecosystem of the Niger delta, and the lives of its people, have been systematically destroyed by Shell. The result of many years' investigative work by Saro-Wiwa, and the authors, on the covert collaboration between oil multinationals and the Nigerian government, this book examines the catastrophic effects of gas flaring, indiscriminate oil spillage and waste dumping. The authors provide evidence of how Shell, with the backing of successive Nigerian governments, has extracted billions of dollars worth of oil and gas from the inhabitants of the Niger delta since 1956, and yet have given nothing of substance in return.

Media persons, once referred to as the torch bearers of the fourth pillar of the democracy, are being trolled and tagged as ‘presstitutes’ these days. “Do journalists really need serious introspection?” So, what happens when Alisha- a commercial sex worker tells a reporter Shailesh, “You are a bigger dhandhebaaj than us.” When a reporter decides to expose his universe, the result comes out as a compilation of stories. They bring out the murkiness not only of the media world but also of the universe around it. This book is a compilation of stories of the storytellers. The stories of the reporters who dig, hunt, innovate, create and spin stories for you.

Understanding ExtrACTIVISM surveys how contemporary resource extractive industry works and considers the responses it inspires in local citizens and activists. Chapters cover a range of extractive industries operating around the world, including logging, hydroelectric dams, mining, and oil and natural gas extraction. Taking an activist anthropological stance, Anna Willow examines how culture and power inform recent and ongoing disputes between projects’ proponents and opponents, beneficiaries and victims. Through a series of engaging case studies, she argues that diverse contemporary natural resource conflicts are underlain by a culturally constituted ‘extractivist’ mind-set and embedded in global patterns of political inequity. Offering a synthesizing framework for making sense of complex interconnections among environmental, social, and political dimensions of natural resource disputes, Willow reflects on why extractivism exists, why it matters, and what we might be able to do about it. The book is valuable reading for students and researchers in the environmental social sciences as well as for activists and practitioners.