Injustice pisses me off, but what am I to do?

Saw two very good programmes last night, both Channel 4's unreported world series. The first I had taped a while ago, the other last night.

The first was on Zambia(always close to my heart) and the DRC, and how the Chinese are the new colonialists. The exploit the copper and cobalt mines, raw materials that they need to fuel their booming economy. And with the price of copper at an all time high, they are rolling in it. On the one hand, this is partly good, local workers get jobs that were lost when the government shut the mines down, and it boosts the economy. Except that they treat the workers like crap, pay them a pittance, and have little regard for their health and safety. We saw children climbing down tiny holes to dig out copper ore for 50c a day. And this all boosts the Chinese economy more than the African ones. So we have a new colonialism, even as countries are still destabilised from the effects of the last one. Such a pity, and so hard to do anything about. Who cares about the poorest of the poor? No one.

The second programme was on Zimbabwe, another tragedy. The journalist reporting was fairly afraid for his life for most of it, and all his filming had to be secret. Mugabe is running a dictatorship and no one is stopping him. The reporter met a group of women who had been protesting peacefully about the lack of schools. They were arrested and beaten. They were kept for 3 days in an outdoor pen, no food. And their children were kept separate from them. And these were not even politicians! Anyone suspected of being from an opposing party disappears. Inflation is up 3000%, and the cost of maize has rizen 600%. People are starving. But Mugabe doesn't care about them, as we saw when he demolished many townships. Why is the international community doing nothing? One whisper of oil and nuclear weapons and America hot shots into Iraq. But starving people? Immense human suffering? Not interested.


Its all just so infuriating. Who decided that these peoples lives were worth less than those us in the west?

Check out this, its a group of people from inside Zimbabwe writing about what is going on.