What should be done about Swiss companies dumping nuclear waste on the Somali coast?

[JackRiddler]

Should their executives and employees be hunted down by special forces? Should they be captured if unarmed, or should they just have their throats slit while they sleep? Is any of this worth the risk to our soldiers?

Should Predator drones be dispatched to Zurich and Geneva to bomb their houses?

Should the cities of Zurich and Geneva be declared pirate/terrorist havens, rendering questions of collateral casualties moot? The Swiss should have taken care of this problem themselves, right? Their pirate behavior is due to their extremist capitalist ideology, which most of them accept, so it's their decision to suffer the consequences.

How about anyone they support with their income (or who takes their money willingly)? Family, friends, contractors, service personnel? Should they be considered equally expendable?

Given the importance of maintaining international order and of providing a deterrent to prevent deadly waste-dumping piracy in the future, how many civilian casualties are acceptable? 10,000? Half a million?

[rucky]

1. "Form a band of pirates" is my new solution to everything. n/t

[dem629]

7. And "tax cuts!!!!111" ;)

[cboy4]

2. Give it up

[mod mom]

3. Why isn't a group like Greenpeace monitoring and documenting these dumps? Have

you read anything about groups drawing attention to this matter?

[flvegan]

8. Greenpeace Italy (I think) was on this issue in the 90's.

I don't think it garnered much attention.

[mainegreen]

4. You know, Somaliland accuses Puntland of agreeing to the dumping for cash.

To aid in funding its military to capture Sool and Maakhir.

:shrug:

[cali]

5. not practical and the false equivalency is absurd.

Of course what the Swiss companies are allegedly doing is worse, in my book, than the piracy, but your post is rather silly. And just for the record, I absolutely oppose any bombing or invasion of Somalia.

[JackRiddler]

21. Good thing you're here to explain that!

Phew!

[dem629]

6. Shouldn't you be mourning the loss of your beloved Somali pirates?

Sorry for your loss. (Not really; it just sounds nice.)

[JackRiddler]

20. Thanks for providing an illustration...

both a nice picture, and of impeccable logic!

[WeDidIt]

9. Treat 'em like a pirate apologist thread

<click>

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Send the Navy to blockade their coasts.

[Lilith Velkor]

15. !

:spray:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Not their entire coastline. Just the harbors of Zurich and Geneva.

:hi:

[TahitiNut]

25. Don't overlook the strategic maritime importance of Interlaken.

:dunce:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

36. Don't forget Luzerne while you're at it!

Years ago I ran into some suspicious gulls there that might be pirates incognito.

[flvegan]

11. Load it all up in a giant wooden badger...

[Hoopla Phil]

12. Let the U.N. clean it up and charge the Swiss for it.

[JPZenger]

14. Maybe Greenpeace is afraid of becoming hostages

Yes, this is the type of issue Greenpeace should be emphasizing. Maybe they are not doing much because they (understandably) are afraid of being held hostage.

[Romulox]

13. Send the US Navy to protect private profits no matter the cost to US taxpayers! nt

[dem629]

16. Nah, just forget the Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations; To provide and maintain a Navy;

[Romulox]

18. Um, that's a grant of power, not a command.

Perhaps when you enter lawschool, you can ask one of your professors to explain the difference to you. :hi:

[NutmegYankee]

34. Almost as silly as providing police protection to private businesses!

Navies exist to protect private commerce.

[Taitertots]

19. Pay to form new pirate organization

That steals the ships of people who dump and sells them. Then use the profits to dispatch blackwater to find the execs and put them in a shipping crate and mail them to Somalia. "Convince" them to transfer the bulk of their money to Somalia and hold them hostage for more money.


It would be like if Greenpeace had a pair.

[rug]

22. Shoot them in the head.

[Sebastian Doyle]

23. Send the Navy Seals to UBS in Switzerland

Right after they finish their assault on Goldman Sachs and AIG.

[JackRiddler]

28. Now there's an itinerary!

[ThomCat]

30. I would back that plan.

:applause:

Time to really go after the pirates at their source!

[Pavulon]

24. This is a Nikon D3 OR a (cannon 1 dog mark 3 if you must), It takes pictures

provide some proof if this line of bull and then lets talk.

[JackRiddler]

27. Okay, but is it that hard to search for stories about this yourself?

Have you photographed the Somali pirates yourself? I'm guessing not. And yet you know they exist!

Now this is a satire post -- exposing the bloodthirst and illogic of those who treat yesterday's rescue like a national sports team victory, and who now want to launch attacks on Somalia because pirates are there. (I find what happened with the three pirates who were holding Capt. Philips to be unfortunate but just, by the way.)

But if your request is for some documentation of Western toxic waste dumping in Somalia: fair enough.

The early 1990s case involving Swiss and Italian firms has been well-documented.
http://www1.american.edu/TED/somalia.htm

UNEP holds the dumping continued throughout the almost two decades since. Physical evidence for this appeared when the 2004 tsunami broke open containers along the shore:

http://somalimonitor.com/blog/archives/199

But evidence of such practices literally appeared on the beaches of northern Somalia when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reported the tsunami had washed up rusting containers of toxic waste on the shores of Puntland.

Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that when the barrels were smashed open by the force of the waves, the containers exposed a “frightening activity” that has been going on for more than decade.

“Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” he said.

“European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne.

“And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.”

Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments.

“We had planned to do a proper, in-depth scientific assessment on the magnitude of the problem. But because of the high levels of insecurity onshore and off the Somali coast, we are unable to carry out an accurate assessment of the extent of the problem,” he said.

(Yes, I see the irony in that last part. I'm even pointing it out myself.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article418665.ece

March 4, 2005
Somalia's secret dumps of toxic waste washed ashore by tsunami

From Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

(...)

“Initial reports indicate that the tsunami waves broke open containers full of toxic waste and scattered the contents. We are talking about everything from medical waste to chemical waste products,” Nick Nuttal, the Unep spokesman, told The Times. “We know this material is on the land and is now being blown around and possibly carried to villages. What we do not know is the full extent of the problem.”

Mr Nuttall said that a UN assessment mission that recently returned from the lawless African country, which has had no government since 1991, reported that several Somalis in the northern areas were ill with diseases consistent with radiation sickness. “We need more information. We need to find out what has been going on there, but there is real cause for concern,” he added. “We now need to urgently send in a multi-agency expert mission, led by Unep, for a full investigation.”

An initial UN report says that many people in the areas around the northeastern towns of Hobbio and Benadir, on the Indian Ocean coast, are suffering from far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal haemorrhages and unusual skin infections.

Follow links for more.

No claim stands without documentation, so you're right to demand it. (Though you could go search for this material yourself, you know.) But this particular set of claims are, to me, not the least bit extraordinary. It makes perfect, unfortunate sense. If toxic waste can be dumped along a coast without consequence because no one is there to police and prevent the practice, then that is exactly what will happen. Perhaps you remember Larry Summers' "joke" memorandum (in the 1990s when he was an economist at the World Bank) about the impeccable economic logic of dumping waste in Africa? Many third world countries willingly take the toxic waste of richer countries in legal business, that's no secret.

[Pavulon]

29. Nary a picture in the lot.

you people are climbing through you asses to make this case. No picture no proof.

[JackRiddler]

31. In the time it took you to respond...

I doubt sincerely you read the linked articles, or did your own research.

In fact, I doubt you even read my own post - just replied with your prefab comeback, as it "lacked pictures."

Quite juvenile of you. The issue is serious and you could stand to examine it (and your smart-aleck assumptions) for a quarter hour, no?

There are pictures at the link:

http://www.somalitalk.com/sun/sun1.html

An image search will reveal many more for you.

I'm sure you'll say, if there's no photo of an actual ship dumping the stuff (and proof of its longitude and latitude, and proof of what the stuff actually is), then it doesn't count.

What's your interest in blanket denial without examination? Does the issue bother you? Don't like to read about Somalis with mouth ulcers possibly caused by some waste generated in the manufacture of one of your toys? I expect you are not an Italian company dumping waste, so... ?

Now go take up your complaints with the Italian papers, UNEP, Somali scholars, the people cited in the other links I provided above...

In 1997 and 1998, the Italian newspaper Famiglia Cristiana, which jointly investigated the allegations with the Italian branch of Greenpeace, published a series of articles detailing the extent of illegal dumping by a Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso.

The European Green Party followed up the revelations by presenting to the press and the European Parliament in Strasbourg copies of contracts signed by the two companies and representatives of the then “President” — Ali Mahdi Mohamed — to accept 10 million tonnes of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million (then about £60 million).

Abdullahi Elmi Mohamed, a Somali academic studying in Sweden, told The Times that this worked out at “approximately $8 per tonne, while in Europe the cost for disposal and treatment of toxic waste material could go up to $1,000 per tonne”.

Mr Ali Mahdi, who then controlled north Mogadishu and who worked closely with the UN during its disastrous 1992-95 humanitarian mission to the country, has always refused to discuss the issue even though an Italian parliamentary report subsequently confirmed many of the allegations.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18690-1509979,00.html

[Pavulon]

35. Ok, one step...

now for the Geiger counter reads, mass spec information. We now have a metal thing on a beach.

Keep working.

[killbotfactory]

32. See no evil

http://somalimonitor.com/blog/archives/767

[Pavulon]

38. So they took money for the dumping?

and now we have pirates as that dumping killed every fish in the gulf of aden...

See no weepy 10 year old bullshit people are flinging around like monkeys with a pile of their own shit.

At least we have a few pictures not. That is a basic minimum.

The European Green Party followed up the revelations by presenting to the press and the European Parliament in Strasbourg copies of contracts signed by the two companies and representatives of the then “President” — Ali Mahdi Mohamed — to accept 10 million tonnes of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million (then about £60 million).

[Dreamer Tatum]

26. It should be proven so that its adherents don't look stupid nt

[baldguy]

33. Corporate polluters are every bit the terrorists as the pirates are.

Its about time the West comes to terms with that fact - their actions probably will kill more people.

[Occam Bandage]

37. Whatever the solution, I expect exactly as many civilian casualties as the hostage rescue caused. nt

[tnlefty]

39. I didn't vote in the poll. Return to sender seems like a good

option to me, along with a clean up bill, but that will never happen.

I wonder how many Swiss citizens actually know that this is going on? It's not like governments or corporations don't behave like shits and the governed or citizens always know - secrets ya know.

Ideally pressure would be brought upon the Swiss govt. and the international community to end this practice and for those responsible to clean up the damage...I can dream. Somalia is a poor country and there is oil there so I'll be watching for even worse to come in the future.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

40. Have the tooth fairy wisk them away.

Imaginary solution for an imaginary problem.

[JackRiddler]

41. How easily you say that!

UNEP, Greenpeace, European politicians, Italian newspapers, academics, Somali observers, even a contract (illegal) with one of the warlords calling himself "president" - fuck'em. Fantasists. Obviously.

I'm sure if you buckle down and finish high school you'll find a career in a corporate PR department.

[Toucano]

42. Just to be clear

You disagree with the employment of special forces to end the hostage situation?

[JackRiddler]

48. No. See post 47.

Curious as to your response to that.

[depakid]

43. Perhaps when we see some credible evidence, it might be appriate to discuss the issue

[JackRiddler]

45. (Appropriate.) So I see reflexive denialism is the new talking point here...

for those who prefer their world simple.

[NuttyFluffers]

44. ooh, i like 1 & 2. how to decide...

Monty, can't i just choose both doors?

[JVS]

46. NUKE SWITZERLAND

[JackRiddler]

47. PLEASE READ: This thread needs some explanation.

I thought people would get it, but some didn't. The poll options are a joke, but some seem to miss that. (Is this revealing? I don't know.)

The point of the OP is that since piracy entered the mainstream media radar, there has been a lot of tough talk about hitting Somalia, destroying the "havens" (actually: towns and cities), killing the pirates' "lair mates" (actually: the surrounding civilian population, men, women and children).

Piracy of high-seas merchant shipments in the Indian Ocean is suddenly the worst conceivable crime, the one that will make all civilization collapse if it is not confronted with muscular and murderous measures, making due process (or even knowing who the target of "our" missiles is) an unaffordable luxury. This recalls the terror/war preparation rhetoric of the Bush admin, rather obviously.

(And it contrasts revealingly to the reaction to other crimes. Let's say a gang of children massacre other children in a school: the next day's reaction would not involve bloodthirsty calls to wipe out the perpetrators' neighborhood for having harbored them. What's the difference? One example involves "our" children, the other example is about dark-skinned foreigners stealing from corporations.)

And it's rather laughable in the face of the millennial robbery being committed daily by the banking class against everyone else, with perpetrators who are pirates in every sense of the word, other than that they operate via trades and data streams instead of ships and swords. Insofar as sea piracy -- a real but incomparably smaller problem that can be solved by the shippers themselves -- is used as a distraction to eat all the media's national "discourse" time (in the same way Britney or OJ or Octomom or whatever other bullshit is used every week), I have a problem with it. It is related.

So far this propaganda isn't actually coming from the military, and my OP is not directed against the military (although I'm no fan). They killed Capt. Phillips's captors and far as I can tell it was a) a justified action and b) a contingency the captors themselves knowingly decided to risk. The OP addresses those who want to take this problem of piracy and turn it into the new world crisis that requires massive, costly and grandly theatrical measures akin to the "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs" - a tendency that's undeniably reared its head on this site in recent days.

The pirates are criminal, but those who dehumanize them altogether are disgusting. One point here for me is that there are worse crimes, crimes in fact that have been committed by the West against Somalia. And those who deny or downplay the crimes should stop praising themselves for holding the Africans to account for African problems.

Finally, many have appeared in the latter part of the thread with blanket denials of Western pollution dumping in Somalia, as though the very idea is crazy until documented in every way (although it's a covert activity and although Somalia is a dangerous place for documenting for the very same reason that it's an attractive place for dumping). I hope no one's thinking that UNEP, Italian journalists, Greenpeace, British reporters and Somali observers are conspiring to make up a problem out of thin air. I hope all can agree it's an issue that demands well-funded international investigation and prosecutorial action, if confirmed. Also, that the allegations deserve a lot more media air than they've gotten, and describe crimes much worse than sea piracy. It's certainly nothing to airily dismiss as a myth, given that this type of crime is common (and often, unfortunately, legal).

[anonymous171]

49. If the Swiss attack US vessels, then we should destroy them.

If the pirates attack Swiss vessels, we should ignore it.

[JackRiddler]

51. Important question of principle:

In the case of the Swiss attacking US ships, do you call to destroy the direct attackers, or also hit the Swiss in their havens?

[anonymous171]

52. I would adopt a 3 strikes approach.

If they attack us once, we should simply destroy the attackers and leave it at that. Twice, same thing. However, the 3rd time they attack us, we should hit their havens hard and fast so they can't get away.

[JackRiddler]

54. Hmmm...

The problems in the real world of the Somali example, however:

1) Unlike Switzerland, Somalia isn't a state: No authority whom you could hold responsible for maintaining order or restraining the pirates, or to whom you issue demands.

2) (A problem with any war) You're going to kill a lot of people who weren't pirates. (I feel that it's not justified, even if they LIKE the pirates. That will tend to be true in any country, after all: that the natives like their compatriots over foreigners. To take an American fictional example: If you're going after Tony Soprano, is it okay to kill Artie Bucco?)

3) Unlike Switzerland, the West in general and the US in particular have a long history of really fucking up Somalia, in part leading to the present situation:
- Supported a bad dictatorship (Barre) for many years
- engaged in ill-conceived incursions (humanitarian justifications, imperial backgrounds)
- backed Ethiopian invasion of 2006
- toppled the Islamic Courts, who had defeated the warlords (and who were not as bad as the Taliban!)
- pollution dumping almost certainly, though some here want to close their eyes even to the possibility
- fished their resources

It doesn't matter if that's not the entire reason for Somalia's problems; the point is, the West hasn't helped, it's exacerbated.

So now the pirates are criminals and there's no justifying hostage taking. But if curbing them is going to mean further punishment for Somalia as a whole, how is that just, given the historical record?

[anonymous171]

55. Yes, we shouldn't invade them for sure.

However, if they continue attacking US shipping, I don't see any other alternative than to eliminate their havens. It would not be a punitive act so much as it would be a defensive one. Your 1st point is what makes non-violent solutions so difficult in this situation. Without a centralized government to pressure the pirates, they have no incentives to end their criminal activities. The only problem with attacking their havens would be that, as you mentioned, we would probably cause lots of collateral damage, which would only breed more pirates and anti-US sentiment.

Also that dumping shit needs to stop. Obama should issue a statement on that or something

[bridgit]

50. Why Dumping in Somalia: Several European companies are engaged in the business of dumping...

'industrial and chemical wastes in Somalia. The relevant question is why is it that waste-dealers and importers ignore the long-term effect and obvious dangers associated with illegal dumping of toxic wastes in poor countries. But the more relevant question is why dumping in Somalia? Reasons that made Somalia world's most attractive waste dumping site are many and below are the most likely ones:

Country's political situation: Since 1991 Somalia is lacking a central government that can safeguard its long coastlines and large territories. This seems to be the most likely reason that attracted the waste-dealers to use Somalia as a dumping site for the waste generated elsewhere.

The need to find dumping site: Generally, there is a big problem of finding suitable dumping sites within the countries generating these wastes, as there are few areas left there. By finding a cheap site, the high costs of recycling, incinerating and disposing in original country could be avoided. According to a study by American University of Washington (1996), the cost of disposing one ton of hazardous waste in their source of generation was estimated to US$ 3000 and as low as US$ 5 in a developing country <30>.

Geographical Location: Located in a very geographically central location, It is easy to reach Somalia. This reduces the cost and the time of waste transport.

Low public awareness about the dumping: During these years local people are in civil war associated social problems, which made them busy in their life affairs. Local media was not so effective. There were also fears of talking about the issue in the media.

Local self-interest individuals: It was easy to establish local contacts (politicians and businessmen) who are ready to allow the dumping of these toxic waste in their home country despite the long-term effects of the dumping on the local people, in only exchange for a relatively enormous amount of money in foreign currency, in a short period of time. This facilitates the disposal process.'

http://www.banadir.com/a.htm

The Swiss aren't just sailing over there and dumping stuff on the beach, they're cutting deals with Somalis willing to allow such behavior for money.

[JackRiddler]

56. Thanks for this article!

[-..__...]

53. Why should they stop?

Glow in the dark Somalis are easier to acquire in your sights and shoot in the head during night time operations.