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The underpopulated countries of Africa are in general underpolluted. The quality of the air is unnecessarily good compared with Los Angeles or Mexico. Polluting industries should be encouraged to move to the less-developed countries. A certain amount of pollution exist in countries where salaries are low. I think that the economic logic whereby tons of toxic waste can be dumped in places wehre salaries are low is irrefutable ... Any concern [about toxic products] will anyway be much greater in a country where people live long enough to develop cancer than in a country where the infant mortality rate is 200 in 1,000 by the age of five. — Lawrence Summers*, internal memo of the World Bank, December 13, 1991.  Quoted in Toussaint and Millet, 2010, pp. 255-6 *Summers was at the time chief economist and vice-president of the World Bank. He later became Secretary of the Treasury in Bill Clinton's government, before becoming the president of Havard University, until June 2006. The ext...

Paradises of the Earth (3) – a Documentary

Part 3 follows an international solidarity caravan to the third stop of the trip:  Oum Laarayes,  another   polluted and marginalised town  in Tunisia's phosphate mining basin.  Several issues were discussed in this episode – from the neocolonial nature of mining to the urgency of the requests sought by social movements including jobs, better infrastructure and access to water:  Paradises of the Earth - Part 3

Paradises of the Earth (2) – a Documentary

Part 2 follows an international solidarity caravan to the second stop of the trip:  the polluted and marginalised town of Redeyef  in Tunisia's phosphate mining basin.  Back in 2008, it was the site of the longest popular uprising in Tunisia's modern history, violently repressed by Ben Ali's regime. Watch Episode 2 of Web Documentary Series "Paradises of the Earth" - Tunisia