tell me I’m not going crazy
Like the internet can do so well, I’ve been journeying tonight. Generally I avoid TV but tonight among The Antique’s Roadshow and Mastermind I watched ‘Unreported World’ on C4. Here goes the route that I took online once I turned off the TV:
1. unreported world website
2. 2009 programme on burning coalfields in Bihar (India). Tells us how coal fields 360 km sq burn uncontrollably and that two years ago this area was forest and farmland. Now villagers live among the mines, children and adults work in the mines, and the government run coal mining organisation is planning a removal of 500,000 people from the area so they can get on with the businness of enriching India’s economy.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-worl…
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-worl…
3. comments on related blog ask for ways to help/ charities that may operate in this area
4. searching for this brings me to ‘Guernica’ online politics and art magazine.
http://www.guernicamag.com/art/1035/wasteland/
and a film made by Bombay Flying Club ‘Their recently-launched Wasteland project is a series of web documentaries about industrial pollution, and the story from Jharia is the first chapter of this ongoing project.’
5. another search brings me to “Snowdon Group” a consultancy to mining and exploration services, and their 2010 photography competition including photographs of the ill/poverty stricken miners of the burning coalfields in Bihar (Jharia region).
Am I really reading that this competition is “Celebrating the Mining Industry”? How exactly can the poor working practices that abuse the most basic of human rights depicted here be part of a celebration of mining??
They really need to think about their wording.
http://www.snowdengroup.com/SnowdenContent.asp?CID…
Tonight I’ve also been consumed by the truely celebratory stories in Chile.
mining… freedom from containment – the fascination for us public is how the 33 men kept their sanity (freedom of mind) through their imprisonment
mining… fire and ashes – free burning coal fields
mining… containment in poverty – villagers unable to move away from collasping land and scavenging for coal pieces
