Michael Nest

In 1967, James Brady and Absolom Halkett were flown into Middle Foster Lake in Northern Saskatchewan to prospect for Uranium deposits. When their boss checked on them a week later, they were missing and never seen again. The RCMP quickly appeared to assume because they were indigenous they became lost and starved to death or had a fatal accident. The fact that they were experienced woodsmen and prospectors and would know how to survive if lost never seemed to occur to the authorities. They also never consulted other natives who were very familiar with the search area and the two men.

The local indigenous always felt the two men were murdered and even claimed they knew who. The three authors of this book spent several years researching the missing men's history, the original investigation and search and interviewed friends & relatives of the men. From all the information, they determined the two missing men had been murdered, where the murder took place and where the murderer dropped the bodies into the lake. A determined search of the lake bottom seemed to yield results enough to satisfied the searchers that they had found the resting place of Jim & Abbie.

One lesson for authorities to take from this case is to never dismiss the knowledge of Indigenous People.… (plus d'informations)

A decade ago no one except geologists had heard of tantalum or 'coltan' - an obscure mineral that is an essential ingredient in mobile phones and laptops. Then, in 2000, reports began to leak out of Congo: of mines deep in the jungle where coltan was extracted in brutal conditions watched over by warlords. The United Nations sent a team to investigate, and its exposé of the relationship between violence and the exploitation of coltan and other natural resources contributed to a re-examination of scholarship on the motivations and strategies of armed groups.
The politics of coltan encompass rebel militias, transnational corporations, determined activists, Hollywood celebrities, the rise of China, and the latest iGadget. Drawing on Congolese and activist voices, Nest analyses the two issues that define coltan politics: the relationship between coltan and violence in the Congo, and contestation between activists and corporations to reshape the global tantalum supply chain. The way production and trade of coltan is organised creates opportunities for armed groups, but the Congo wars are not solely, or even primarily, about coltan or minerals generally. Nest argues the political significance of coltan lies not in its causal link to violence, but in activists' skillful use of mobile phones as a symbol of how ordinary people and transnational corporations far from Africa are implicated in Congo's coltan industry and therefore its conflict. Nest examines the challenges coltan initiatives face in an activist 'marketplace' crowded with competing justice issues, and identifies lessons from coltan initiatives for the geopolitics of global resources more generally. (Google books)… (plus d'informations)