World News

https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/lawrence-summers-leading-democratic

https://theduran.com/lawrence-summers-leading-democratic-party-economist-helped-

Lawrence Summers, leading Democratic Party Economist, helped to mastermind toxic-waste dumping in Africa, and the expansion of NATO.

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

Do you remember the infamous “Summers Memo” from 12 December 1991? Larry Summers, Chief Economist for the World Bank, wrote that, “a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a wad of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.”

On 12 August 2024, Russia’s RT News headlined "Heavy smoke: How can the iPhone poison Africa? The continent is becoming a dumping ground for e-waste, bearing the brunt of the world’s rapid technological advancement”. They reported:

E-waste covers a large spectrum of valuable electrical and electronic products incorporating non-precious metals such as iron, copper, and aluminum; precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum; and plastics and hazardous substances such lead, glass, mercury, batteries, flame retardants, and cadmium, among others. In 2019, about 53.6 million tons (Mt) of e-waste was generated in the world, with Asia ranking highest at 24.9 Mt, followed by America with 13.1 Mt and Europe with 12 Mt. In Africa, an average of 2.5 kg of e-waste per capita and a total of 2.9 Mt of e-waste were generated in 2019, while an estimated 3 Mt of e-waste was generated on the continent in 2021. …

It is estimated that 16 to 38% of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) collected in the EU and 80% in the US is sent “legally and/or illegally” to developing countries in the form of reused or discarded devices. The e-waste crisis in Africa is a stark manifestation of waste colonialism. …

According to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, out of 5.1 million tons of electronic waste shipped across borders in 2022, 3.3 million tons was shipped from developed countries to developing countries.

Western nations export used electronic items under the guise of donations or “second-hand goods.” However, much of these items are not functional, and this leads to massive e-waste dump in African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. These countries receive filled containers of electronic devices such as phones, kitchen appliances, and even automobiles.

Lagos, Nigeria, and several townships in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana have become increasingly attractive locations for developed countries to dump their old electronics. According to the United Nations’ Environment Program (UNEP), untraced waste ends up in Africa, and according to a report published in Environmental Health Perspectives, 100,000 used personal computers arrive each month at the Nigerian port of Lagos alone.

Ghana also confronts issues in controlling imported e-waste. E-waste is mainly disposed of at landfills, the largest of which is located in Agbogbloshie, a commercial district near Accra’s center. …

Summers’s advice has actually been — and is being — followed. It wasn’t merely his recommendation.

Subsequently, after the World Bank, Summers became U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, then President of Harvard University, then Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, then part-time managing director of the New York-based hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. for which he received $5 million in salary, then member of the Bilderberg group who virtually create the strategies for further NATO expansion.

Also, Summers, while he was second in command at the U.S. Treasury Department, was the “architect of U.S. efforts to help Russia” to quit communism and adopt capitalism; and this plan, his plan, was for the privatization of Russian Government assets, such as steel, and natural resources, into the hands of cooperating Russian billionaires with skimming by American ones, and which “shock therapy” plan crashed Russia’s economy during the 1990s, created soaring poverty there, and forced Yeltsin out of power. Putin then came into power and clawed back into Russia’s Treasury billions of dollars in fines for tax and other law-violations, and drove some of Russia’s worst billionaires out of Russia. Since Putin became Russia’s leader in 2000, Russia’s economy has been one of the world’s best-performing. But U.S.-and-allied billionaires hate him and want him to be overthrown and replaced by someone they approve of.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.