Today's Stories

July 17-19, 2009

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

Weekend Edition
July 17-19, 2009

"We Want the World to Know What's Happening to Us"

The Niger Delta Crisis

By KIA MISTILIS

Behind fighter-planes and gunboats, Nigerian forces launched a full-scale offensive in the Niger Delta on May 13, displacing 30,000 people and sparking a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of civilians fleeing destroyed villages are now trapped between armed resistance groups and the Nigerian military. These civilians are hiding in the bush without food, water, or medical supplies, let alone Internet access to alert the world of their plight, as Iranians are doing via Twitter.

Against the backdrop of a world energy crisis, the media are reporting the region's growing instability, mostly in terms of its effect on global oil supply and prices. For the 12 million people living in the Niger Delta, however, the struggle is about their survival.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, with 150 million people. It's the world's seventh-largest oil-producing nation. Nearly all of Nigeria's oil comes from the Delta.

Since 1970,  $350 billion in oil revenue has flowed to Nigeria, yet 75% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. Niger Delta communities continue to live in abject poverty, without schools, hospitals,  or basic infrastructure, as oil profits fill the bank accounts of  multinational oil companies and the Nigerian elite. Nigerian governments have negotiated joint ventures with multinational companies for unregulated oil production since 1958. Over 50 years of exploitation in the Niger Delta has resulted in systematic human rights abuses and environmental devastation.

According to an independent 2006 report by environmental experts from the U.K, U.S and Nigeria, and convened  by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, the Niger Delta is "one of the world's most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems and one of the top five most polluted places on the face of the Earth." More than 1.5 million tons of oil, equivalent to one Exxon-Valdez disaster every year for 50 years, have spilled into the delta, poisoning delicate mangrove and rain forest ecosystems and destroying fishing and farming livelihoods. Constant gas flaring releases toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, causing cancer, birth defects, respiratory diseases, and acid rain so toxic it corrodes metal roofs.

Evidence given in recent U.S lawsuits reveals Dutch Royal Shell and U.S.-owned Chevron's complicity with successive Nigerian governments in committing human rights abuses against civilians. From the early 1990s, these companies have provided financing, weapons, and transport to the military to violently suppress community opposition to their oil operations.

Both Shell and Chevron requested the direct intervention of the Nigerian security forces at their sites. The first recorded incident occurred in Umechem in 1990, after Shell sent a letter to the police commissioner, stating: "[W]e request that you urgently provide us with security protection (preferably mobile police force) at this location." The request was met, and security forces shot dead 80 people and destroyed 495 homes. Col. Paul Okuntimo, head of the Joint Military and Police Taskforce in the 1990s, part of the Nigerian security forces widely known for their corruption and abysmal human rights record, stated that he was paid or directed by Shell.

Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of Environmental Rights Action, cited plaintiff depositions in his testimony before a U.S. subcommittee hearing on human rights and the law last year. "Chevron regularly houses and feeds the security forces, including Army, Navy, and police, and pays them above their government salaries," he said. "Chevron personnel have reported 'leading' or 'supervising' Nigerian security forces in the course of their duties. Chevron provides transportation to the military and police in Chevron-leased helicopters and boats."

According to Nigerian activists, this is a story of people at risk of genocide at the hands of government and corporate sponsored terror. In 2007, Niger Delta Professionals for Development Director Joel Bisina said that "from 1999 to date, more than 20 communities have been wiped out completely and more than 50 000 persons killed by military bullets and no one is saying anything about it."

As a student leader, Suanu Kingston Bere protested the expansion of Shell's pipeline from Ogoniland to Northern Nigeria, when Shell was paying the Nigerian military to suppress protests in Ogoniland. He fled Nigeria in 1995, after two arrests and three months of detention and torture, spending five years in a Benin refugee camp before securing political asylum in the United States in September 2000.

Active in the National Union of Ogoni Students, Bere was directly inspired by non-violent activist leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) he founded in 1990. After first hearing Saro-Wiwa speak at a rally in 1993, Bere joined MOSOP and began campaigning in towns and remote villages

He was present for key events in the Delta's history, witnessing the collusion between the Nigerian military and Shell to violently suppress peaceful resistance to their practices in Ogoniland. He currently lives in Oakland, California, and agreed to go public for the first time with what he witnessed and experienced in Nigeria.

Bere attended a protest with 10,000 Ogoni in Biara village on April 30, 1994 — the day U.S. pipeline contractor Willbros came to lay Shell's new pipeline. They were escorted by military personnel, who shouted to the villagers: "This is not your land, it belongs to the government and we are sent by the government and Shell to guard their workers to perform their work. If anyone interferes with the pipeline they will be arrested, shot, and killed." Bere says the protestors were standing in lines, chanting and protesting peacefully. Then the military started shooting into the crowd and throwing dynamite. After that day, Col. Okuntimo sent soldiers to Ogoniland with a "kill and go policy."

Bere was first arrested on May 22, 1994, and says the Nigerian military tortured him in detention for two months. "They used batons to flog my back and confess that I would not join MOSOP again," he said. "They used their gun butts to beat me all over my body until I passed out. They took a piece of iron, burnt it in the fire, and branded my back with it." According to Bassey, "former President Olesegun Obasanjo admitted in 2005 that Nigerian police and security regularly tortured and killed prisoners in their custody, acknowledging earlier reports by Human Rights Watch and others of systematic abuses by security forces."

Bere hid in the bush after another rally in November 1996 and says he had to run for his life. "I saw people burned alive, shot dead, others had their limbs cut off. They were brutal killings." He and 500 other people were arrested and taken to Bori prison camp. "I was tortured again, they used the same methods. I saw hundreds of people tortured, without food or water for days. Hundreds dying from beatings and gun wounds. I witnessed all those things. I was there."

Peaceful resistance of minority ethnic groups across the Niger Delta has been met with brutal military repression and the broken promises of oil companies, with no opportunity for dialogue or genuine negotiation in 50 years. In this environment, the armed resistance group, the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta Peoples (MEND) emerged in 2006. The group targeted oil installations and caused a 40% drop in supply, from 2.4 million to 1.3 million barrels per day, according to University of California-Berkeley geography professor Michael Watts. MEND claims it has the capacity to shut down oil production in four days.

Watts says the situation in the Niger Delta has now reached a tipping point. There is strong internal political pressure from powerful north and southwest constituencies to clamp down on armed groups and restore stability, so the oil companies don't flee and the oil wealth continues. The continuing military offensive confirms to militants that the government is intent on controlling oil at any cost.

The crisis in the Niger Delta comes at a point in history when issues of peak oil and world energy crisis are looming. Oil supply is a big issue for all stakeholders, and the tragic cost of protecting that supply in Nigeria is the current humanitarian crisis and war.

U.S. policy is closely aligned with guaranteeing oil supply from the Gulf of Guinea and the current situation has direct implications for U.S. interests in the region. Nigeria's high-quality oil is used in U.S. auto and gasoline markets and is therefore an important component of overall supply. With Nigerian oil expected to rise from 14% to 25% of U.S. petroleum imports by 2015, Washington should play a key role in brokering a peace agreement.

MEND has indicated it is open to dialogue and willing to negotiate. It has sought both from the Nigerian government in the last few years, but to no avail. Left unchecked, the region's descent into war threatens to become a humanitarian disaster.

A combined international effort is needed to demilitarize the Niger Delta and use diplomacy to broker a peace agreement. The United States should join with the EU to set the process in motion with a fact-finding mission that would give way to negotiations, along the same lines as the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland.

"We want the world to know what is happening to us," says Suanu Kingston Bere. "We want our rights and the freedom to express what belongs to us. These are our ancestral lands — we want an environmental clean up, and the Nigerian government and oil companies to pay royalties for what they have taken from us. We want to benefit from what God has given us. We do not want to die for it."

Kia Mistilis is a journalist and photographer based in San Francisco. She has documented places as diverse as New York City and the villages of East Timor.

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