Six die in Nigeria oil delta

[dArKeR]

Lagos - Soldiers and police in speedboats with mounted machine guns raided a village in Nigeria's oil delta, killing at least five men who resisted the operation to seize illegal weapons, officers said on Saturday.

Local gunmen shot and killed one soldier during Friday's raid in Ogodobiri village, said Brigadier GeneralElias Zamani, commander of a joint army-police task force in the troubled southern Niger Delta.

Zamani visited the village - near Shell's Forcados export terminal -hours after the raid, when he saw the bodies of five suspected "river pirates" killed by security force troops.

"Many others" were likely killed and whisked away by villagers, he added.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,6119,2-11-1447_1541841,00.html

[lil-petunia]

1. recently

I had an Nigerian student, a lawyer, who was brilliant. Unfortunately, he had to return after his studies were done. He described Shell as one of the biggest cons in existence. They assasinate leaders who get too much popular support, they have been known to poison the water in troubled areas, and they have forceably removed entire villages in order to prevent them from receiving oil revenue.

There is a civil war brewing there, one that Cheney and his cohorts won't be able to stop.

[AP]

2. What Shell has done in Nigeria is awful.

It's worse than awful.

Nigeria needs some democracy badly and it needs to let the wealth of that nation benefit its own citizens. But it's just too rich. Oil companies will not let it be a functioning, egalitarian, wealth-creating and wealth-spreading, and wealth-deconcentrating democracy.