the carving up of the congo [great as a detalied case-study of the seediness of carving up]:Most people who became aware of the 2nd Congo War (1998-2003) did so because of the violence unleased in the (then) Ituri District, which was created in June of 1999 by General James Kazini of the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF). After the Lusaka Accords were signed and the UPDF officially pulled out of the country, the neighboring countries of Uganda and Rwanda aggravated and exploited ethnic differences to create numerous militias that went to war over the vast gold tracts in Ituri. The illegal sale of this gold in neighboring countries served to fund the war by purchasing arms, military uniforms, and other supplies. Incomprehensable acts of violence and rape occurred, and child soldiers were the norm. Today, with the aid of U.N. forces, Ituri has found a relative peace.
(...) Ituri is unique compared to the Kivu provinces to the south because throughout the 1st Congo War (1996-1997) to the present day, war over minerals has always been about gold and timber. The rest of Northeastern Congo went through several distict phases where one particular commodity was more sought after than another. When the 2nd Congo War broke out, diamonds were the most coveted mineral until mid-2000. In 2000, the coltan (columbium-tantalite) boom occurred due to increased military-industrial spending, and the arrival of popular electronics equipment (the cell phone boom, Sony Playstation, etc.), which drastically increased market demand for coltan. What started off in 1999 as a $20 (U.S.) per pound commodity rose to $380 (U.S.) per pound by December of 2000. With 80% of the world’s coltan reserves, fierce fighting for the mining sites claimed countless victims [1]. The world market reserves quickly became so saturated with smuggled coltan that the price plummeted back down by the end of 2001. The smugglers in the Kivus then focused on the highest grade ores that were found primarily in Walikale Territory.
(...) Throughout the wars and for years before that, multinational corporations sought to exploit the same gold mining areas in Ituri that the militias did.
(...)

i wonder how this sounds to CEO's (maybe they'll cry 'private property'?):
"On May 1 we are going to take control of the oil fields," Chavez said. "I'm sure no transnational company is going to draw a shotgun, but we will go with the armed forces and the people."

on labor and global warming:
"Professionals working for the Environmental Protection Agency are protesting being ordered to sit on the sidelines while we face the greatest environmental challenge of our generation," he stated, noting that the petition began among agency staff. "Under a new Congress, perhaps the scientists at EPA can begin to directly communicate with their true employers - the American public."
(...) Early in 2007, the AFL-CIO weblog published an article headed "Exxon Mobil Secretly Funds Efforts to Deny Global Warming," by Managing Editor Tula Connell. It quotes a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists revealing that Exxon "gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming."
(...) A new poll by Yale University Center for Environmental Law and Policy shows that 83 percent of Americans see global warming as a serious problem and some 70 percent think the government is not doing enough.
(...) [BUT] The union opposition to Kyoto reflects the tendency of the American labor movement to represent narrow sectoral interests, rather than the interests of workers as a whole. It was spearheaded by a coalition of unions called United for Jobs and the Environment. The UJAE describes itself as a "partnership" of unions. It lobbied, and continues to lobby, against the Kyoto agreement and against environmental legislation in the US that it considers unfavorable to labor. While its concern with the possible negative impact that measures to reduce greenhouse gasses might have on the employment of miners and other workers is entirely legitimate, it has made little effort to explore ways that a "just transition" might protect them.