More Neat Stuff

Gordon Brown, recently announced plans to provide British military resources to help "shore up security" in the Niger Delta.

Contrast the BBC reporting on the "offer" and that published by the Socialist Worker or even Britain's Financial Times and you will get an idea of the nature of the controversy. And those are just the superficial mass media reports.

While checking up on the details of the story, I ran into the most amazing opportunity. Michael Watts' monograph on the Niger Delta, Curse of the Black Gold, has been made available in a free pdf version at Power House Books. I am posting both a direct and a visible link for this one:


http://www.powerhousebooks.com/blackgold.pdf

You will notice, immediately the stunning photographs courtesy of Ed Kashi of National Geographic.

There are some useful support materials, including articles written by Watts at the books website here:

http://www.curseoftheblackgoldbook.com/

NPR's story on the book, including at interview with Ed Kashi, is here
and National Geographic coverage is here

Michael Watts, of course, published that fine work Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria in 1983.