Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful.
It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom.
He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically,
but almost with pleasure.

Aldous Huxley


Friday, May 22, 2009

The Enigmatic Worthlessness of Justice?



I just found out about a new case of justice's worthlessness... This is a documentary from Al Jazeera on the case of Trafigura, the world's third largest oil trading company. According to Wikipedia - I'm not [yet] an academic - Trafigura last year had a turnover of US$73bn, or more than the double of Côte d'Ivoire's GDP last year (US$34bn), which gives an indication on what we are talking about.

The documentary is about the trial case between the people in Abidjan and Trafigura in which the oil trading company dumped toxic wastes next to villages all around Abidjan, resulting in sicknesses and deaths.

Apparently Martyn Day, the British lawyer defending the Côte d'Ivoire people, is fairly confident on the outcome of the trail that's gonna take place in October 2009. Yet I liked very much what he pointed out:
"But what I think has not worked quite well is the strong desire within Abidjan to see trafiquers itself in the dock in which it would have to defend the charges about what it did."
Yet I hope people in Abidjan win and finally get some proper compensations to deal with their legacy of sicknesses from Trafigura... And thant you Al Jazeera and Juliana Ruhfus for this documentary.