I’m sure after watching something like that you are both disturbed and filled with questions. What can we do about these atrocities that our consumerism obviously help finance!? The clearest, and what I believe is the most immediate and self-disciplined answer, is curb our individual consumption. All to often in ‘developed’ countries that are distant from the toil, production, and environmental impact of our goods, we think it is okay to purchase recklessly because it ‘boosts the economy.’ This insatiable habit for consumption is not only likely to get us into serious trouble in the future as resources diminish, but is having deadly effects now, today, in countries across the globe. Take a look at this report on the effects of factories in Lesotho. Levi-Gap Factories Pollute Rivers and Damage Health in Lesotho.

We are not taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We want to open up markets and turn everyone into ‘effective consumers,’ yet we can not even mitigate the effects of our own actions. We blame the corporations and call for corporate social responsibility (CSR), when it is in fact our demand that fueled that irresponsibility in the first place. This is not to say that CSR is not crucial, it is, but the answer is two-fold and addressing and controlling our spending is also a necessary part. We can also pressure our officials, our corporations, our NGO’s, whoever will listen, to create a better system of product line accountability. Indeed efforts like this have already been put into motion, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, http://eiti.org. But then we must use it! If the demand is there then supply will follow, we know this all too well. And if laws don’t come first let’s create a normative movement, entreating people to join PTEP: People for the Ethical Treatment of People!

Paul Farmer is famously quoted in Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains for saying “I love WL’s (white liberals), love ‘em to death. They’re on our side. But WL’s think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We (PIH) don’t believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches” (Kidder, 40). I recognize this is a very touchy subject, and it often makes people uncomfortable. My response to this… good! Maybe that discomfort will entice some sort of action, rather than compliance; and besides, this discomfort hardly begins to grasp the inhumanity our brothers and sisters in Lesotho and the DRC face.

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, ‘What has happened?’… ‘A kidnapping,’ I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Read the rest at Global Voices Online.

In other news, last week, a five-week legal battle between oil trader Trafigura and the UK’s Guardian newspaper came to a close when Trafigura ended a secret injunction with the news organization. How did this all start?

In 2006, a scientific study eventually called the Minton Report began to collect evidence that Trafigura was dumping toxic waste in the waters of the Cote d’Ivoire. The report was commissioned when hundreds of people in the Cote d’Ivoire claimed to have been poisoned and flooded the hospitals. In more detail:

The Minton report – though it was preliminary in nature – made dismaying reading for Claude Dauphin, the Trafigura director in charge of oil preparations. It said the process had been so amateurish that it had probably left a high quantity of noxious sulphur compounds in the vast quantity of stinking black waste.

Minton went on to list half a dozen potentially unstable chemical compounds which could burn or poison people who came into contact with them. Some of them could also generate the killer gas hydrogen sulphide in certain conditions.

Minton said such waste could never have been dumped legally on a landfill in Europe and ought to have received specialist and expensive chemical treatment called “wet air oxidation” to make it safe. None of this had happened.

Among the effects of the sludge, Minton listed: severe burns to the skin and to the lungs; permanent ulceration; corneal damage; vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of consciousness and death. One of the chemicals was branded “very toxic to humans and dangerous to the environment”.

About a month ago, The Guardian got word of this report. Trafigura, claiming the report’s evidence was preliminary and inaccurate, went to lengths to file an injunction on The Guardian effectively prohibiting them from publishing the content and findings of the Minton Report. And not only that, but they also filed what has become known as a “super injunction” – a gag order banning The Guardian from even disclosing that they were under an injunction. News of the Minton Report still got out in cyberspace, particularly in Wikileaks, and was circulated madly on Twitter. (For a full story of how the news leaked all over the Internet, refer to the Online Journalism Blog).

But finally, largely under pressure by social media networks and blogging communities, Trafigura released The Guardian from the injunction, and the super injunction. They even admitted that the waste could have caused a “range of short term low level flu like symptoms and anxiety.”

The obvious takeaway – in a social media world, important news is becoming even tougher to suppress. But this is still food for thought about the current state of press freedom – even in the UK – and of course, about the role of companies like Trafigura and their environmental responsibility.

Related Links:

The Minton Report, in full

The Guardian’s clause-by-clause analysis of the super injunction

Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists had an interesting comment about Rohde on CPJ’s blog:

Rohde…felt the need, both in his article and in a Q and A with readers hosted on the New York Times Web site, to defend his decision to undertake a risky interview with a Taliban commander as the final piece of his research into a book on Afghanistan.

Such decisions are, of course, subject to scrutiny and debate. At the same time, there is simply no way for a reporter to cover critical issues in dangerous places without occasionally running into serious trouble. The question is not only what journalists can do to reduce the risk, but how media organizations expect the public to respond when things go wrong.

This reminds me a bit of the public outcry over journalist Stephen Farrell’s kidnapping earlier this year, which resulted in the death of his translator and an unknown British soldier. He was not only berated  for putting the lives of those two individuals at risk, but was also characterized as a selfish glory-seeker out for personal fame. I don’t know Farrell personally, so I can’t speak for the characterization (though it seems a bit unfair) but the intense criticism by the public over a kidnapped foreign journalist seems to follow the lines of a “blame the victim” mentality. Yes, journalists should exercise caution when reporting in sensitive areas and on sensitive subjects, but there’s really no solid justification for kidnapping one, either, is there?

Iran, still reeling from protests and extensive media repression by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is reported to have “reached the gates of the infernal trio at the very bottom – Turkmenistan (173rd), North Korea (174th) and Eritrea (175th) – where the media are so suppressed they are non-existent.”

The U.S. moved from being #36 in the rankings in 2008 to a new spot at #20 – largely due to Obama’s presidency and his “less hawkish” approach to foreign policy and the media. Still, the report warns, the U.S.’s actions towards journalists in Iran and Afghanistan is still a matter to be concerned about – the U.S. military has injured or arrested several journalists in those countries.

Here’s the data.

Here’s the Q&A about the Forgotten Crisis Assessment