tv [untitled] May 25, 2011 1:30pm-2:00pm EDT
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years ago arduous country. disintegrates it. was hard. to teach began the journey. where did it take. off from the russian capital this is r t top stories now this hour past the hour president obama meets his british counterpart to reaffirm their common foreign policy goals including their commitment to libya's colonel gadhafi concerns grow the two nations of the only ones benefiting from their joint military ventures. process finance minister the e.u. and the u.s. census the race to become the next international monetary fund head parts of the so-called brics countries which include russia call for the selection process for the world's top bank job to be based on merit nationality. just as in georgia
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a push harder for president saakashvili is resignation with thousands taking to the streets of the capital for a fifth day demand an end to the rule of a government that they called democratic and corrupt. got with more news for more than its innocent heart enough and in the meantime to travel to somalia which has become the world's cheapest rubbish dump in recent years winning journalist paul reopens inquiry into who is benefiting from poisoning somali waters. this is one of the most dangerous places on earth fought over by armed as the most groups pirates and bandits somalia is a country with no law and order a no man's land where an armed escort is essential at all times. and.
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this film will record a seven hundred kilometer journey across the somali desert in search of a rumor that will die. mysterious containers filled with toxic liquids that suddenly began appearing on somalia's coast the tsunami in december two thousand and four destroyed everything here. it also washed ashore a strange objects. there's poison inside. both sides of the food if it's left like that eventually it will break open and spread the lies no one seeder she got through that. window but there are no coast guards in somalia to keep an eye on such things anybody can come and just dump whatever they want.
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on both sides of the barrel is a sturdy hook apparently used when being lifted by a crane and so more easily thrown overboard. we have negotiated a meeting with the council of village chiefs. fish were killed by the barrels that were leaking that's what killed them. even the color of the water changed when anyone went into the sea here they see develop skin problems. rangy. has a license so what do you do when your fish disappears from the sea what are your options were of course on the have to get over the lot a lot actually. sure about three quarters of the people here lived off of fishing boats nowadays it's barely one in twenty that some of turned to piracy others have
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nothing. we asked the village elders whether we could talk with one of the pirates like many of the others he is a former fisherman now forced into piracy. i became a pirate because of all the foreign ships that have been destroying our fish and livelihoods that's what really made us become pirates. good financial backing from some people and then we go looking for ships to capture a. couple of. toxic waste played a role in this this is not. the full of course for three hundred miles around here there's toxic waste still smoking all but. somehow the one who gets too close will lose consciousness. eight hundred kilometers away mogadishu is our next destination. we head for the hospital.
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for several years the somali doctors have been struggling to deal with numerous genetic defamations of the genitals the bladder and they are in a canal they are the typical result of exposure to dangerous chemicals. in means. because you have. something. to do you have any ideas just sit here and say three fourths. responding. to you. in this hospital this is just by march one thousand nine hundred four the militias have become old powerful. taliban and u.s. forces were getting ready to leave. a young italian journalist albi was covering their withdrawal. drive and persistence led a larry i'll peek to uncover a completely different story one of blood fishing boats. to promote the fishing
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trade in somalia the italian government give trawlers to a company called shift go however shift those boats did not seem to do a lot of fishing they made trips back and forth to europe in somalia they were under the control of an armed group ilario suspected that the boats were transporting something other than fish you know chris lawrence for getting more. show on her last trip to mogadishu all alone met with a somali national who mentioned the traffic in toxic waste our future from go fish is a big goal. she decided to check the story in the town of bull sauce sold out here both south of. here and it was there about a journalist met with one of the leaders of an armed militia group and this was to be her last interview. where is the boat's going to see it tell it it well you want to see it over till you aspire something just use the information that's all
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pulling for the sound of us if i don't see a second trip. you won't believe it until you see it uses satellite then. shortly after the interview to larry i'll be unter cameraman were murdered in mogadishu. the car in which they were traveling was attacked by an armed gang that immediately fled. the death of a larry i'll be sparked dozens of inquiries in italy. the legal authorities sifted through all the businesses operating in somalia and in doing so uncovered the fraudulent toxic way. market. modern industry produces an increasing amount of potentially fatal waste from
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chemicals to heavy metals and even radioactive products the more dangerous the material the more expensive it is to destroy. as a result certain individuals all for a cheaper alternative dumped the waste in the third world a solution which is completely illegal. the italian authorities have exposed one of these networks it is not the only one of its kind and it is certainly not the most significant. for people who are involved in this toxic ring the former owner a somali console. an expert in toxic waste got early. freight businessmen and a key contact for the italian army in mogadishu jon karl. and the fourth man in the network is none other than the then president of somalia.
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in one thousand nine hundred five former president marty appoints. a honorary consul scotti only makes full use of his diplomatic status to set up the toxic waste scam ignores the fact that in one thousand nine hundred three international treaty for bids the export of dangerous waste materials from europe to the third world. only turd northern italian industrial complexes it went from door to door like a common salesman to any industry that needed to rid itself of toxic waste. its destruction is expensive and he offered to do the job on the cheap. among the industrialists guy but only called on is this man a scrap metal merchant from the turin region who only agreed to be interviews on
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the condition of anonymity. said they were looking for people who had ways to get rid of its. value yes the problem was they had to look for quite a few in order to fill their ship. chairman i never compared to one theory and how many tons could be loaded on to the ship from . this ship must have been at least one thousand tons. at one hundred dollars a ton a full load could earn a substantial paul first of one million dollars but skyblue only raise so much just in his rounds of industry that he began to draw the attention of the authorities a judge in the northern italian town of asti led the inquiry he also rise to phone tapping over several months of suspected members of the network.
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the rule was to collect the waste that's what he himself told the industrialists he met. he also said what he was doing was entirely legal if you needed that call however the point was that at the time somalia was a country that couldn't legally import such sort of with. whatever documentation he provided you believe. these days scally only is no longer a somali honorary consul is so shared with masonic and templar organizations and is the self-proclaimed head of the phantom state of nevada a tiny island off the coast of haiti. it effectively exists only on the internet degree to be interviewed only in his capacity of the prince of never. seen. so if your country is recognised and you become head of state.
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then you would have diplomatic immunity to prevent each. i like it as with any head of state yes you have held diplomatic post haven't you. but there was a long time ago you were somali honorary consul wants to see for four years yes. there are some people who believe you use this diplomatic role to bring toxic waste into somalia is that true show me show me i have no idea what you're talking about . you don't want to talk about it or you don't know what i'm talking about i'm sticking to what i said at the store and won't budge from that so you don't want to talk about it. as i said i can talk to you about nova but that is all . for free for i don't want to drive faster to release only or present.
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of course. the prince of nevada revealed nothing further. his business partner of the time was john carlo match you know a shipping agent. who controlled the port in the north of mogadishu march you know had been living in somalia for more than ten years he knew the warlords was an informer for the italian army and won several construction contracts and peddled favors and influence. it was martino who provided the access to ali mahdi the somali president. he claimed to get presidential authorization to import toxic waste. so was there a network put in place to export toxic waste to somalia the issue cooks think also that no matter. here they can only eat and there was no network talk yes
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i'll do this to send that a lot of that you will let me tell you it was just to make money it was a frog measures will take the money up front and then say sorry i couldn't do anything and he has the material couldn't be shipped or some such exceeds through free it's a sort of scam would be the way it works is i offer to do something for you you pay me to advance to do it but in the end it doesn't work out in the meantime i've made twenty or thirty thousand feet to fit you in. the judicial inquiry established that then somali president ali monti was also to receive his share from the toxic waste trait roughly thirty five percent of the profits. today ali money is no longer president he lives and. the cultural capital of kenya and refuses to speak to journalists. he does however insist that the evidence implicating him is false. and yet it was official also rise ation issued from the presidential office
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in one thousand nine hundred six that finally permitted the import of harmful toxic waste. was put in charge of the operation which seem to have been set in stone. is an adventure a half serb half italian with an a ray of passports and identities his name appears on several documents involving the shipment of toxic waste to africa is also spent about a dozen years in prison. he was another who enjoyed the confidence of the somali president and witnessed the network's activities. go off and did you visit somalia in the bolton times did you have any dealings with elie modi. a. quite a few affair for five or six anyway was he the one who all surprised the toxic waste
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to be sent to somalia should have secret also maybe. no no i don't think it was him the authorizations were. still. and yes in his dealings with the taliban businessmen schedule only claim to have the full backing of the somali president including for radioactive waste the most dangerous of all. pakistan yeah. because it would. yeah. there it is that and. back in the.
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face to the damning evidence of the recordings the honorary consul decides to spill the beans and for trey his former associates. he says merit you know plan to hide the radioactive waste in huge container such as this one. these containers were to be buried in the jetty of a port he was building in north mogadishu. italian authorities used amateur photos showing such metal containers being buried in the concrete as evidence. with a full of radioactive material a schedule only claims. today the port is out of bounds it is in the hands of al qaeda is islamist militias. who hear me it's yet to console lies he had some serious problems i'm not sure maybe someone told him if you can first do this we can help you like it too much and
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after all shipped it arrives fully laden with waste up the coast of somalia if it wasn't going to do enter a port in offload the barrels the barrels would just be dumped at sea and that's it was the problem will be general ugly very very early. on a day that the journalist hilarious lp was killed with a camera man in the streets of mogadishu a white italian man was the first on the scene. he seems to know more about it than the others is none other than john carlos marciano. and i was. sad because i arrived right afterwards and there was a lot of confusion i was upset. i thought it was a planned ambush because the core had been machine gun and nine bullets i said to myself they should never have been in this place and then what they said and how they got to be here well my conscience is clear me when working with awful no one
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go below progressivity our questions about the lp murder brought the interview to an end. that's enough why are you asking these questions you know no one has ever been charged with the murder of the lottery i'll be on my you never know for trafficking ways. that you're going to feel the. italian authorities did eventually find a somali citizen guilty for the killing of the journalist is always perfectly aimed his innocence and many believe the case is still unresolved. any evidence from the phone tapping of skag looneys network has been thrown out as invalid. none of the three men will be troubled as the taliban magistrates have never sent a team out into the fields to check the facts. in
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a village not far from milan live someone who has changed his mind about the toxic waste trade. someone who exposed a team that was preparing such an operation in africa. severing has since retired from all activity and lives on the street where nobody asks questions. but for many years separates jobs in full dumping poison into the poorest countries. as krishnamurti trusting goodish aid was the traffic and waste benefit from a war situation. the beyond me i do leave yes it makes things easier. it's a cynical thing to say but it's true. to score for words. our people already feel powerful italy imagine and will come out of the world with little flags italy's full naples is. missing. and
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we're about an africa left wherever there are serious problems or poverty so haiti in somalia places where political problems are particularly bad it's just business human life has no relevance whatsoever. one day in haiti where here some particularly dangerous waste several witnessed a scene that would change him forever. i was in charge of the ship but i was stuck in the port and it was costing the two million. a lot of money at the border the faster i can offload the boat the better. cream and honey i unloaded the containers usually cream yesterday one on top of the other aqua controlling them out one after another there powering up everywhere but i don't care i was going to leave two weeks later i saw the results destroyed it was awful it was radioactive waste you see what. in the end to separate decided to inform the powers
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that be what he was involved in. this or that a lot of after in the area lp was killed i decided i had to tell the authorities from all the process where you got to. separate himself with the anti mafia division in milan and allow the police to infiltrate his network. and network was connected to several celebrities of the international crime scene. the police discovered the present within the organization was a certain months are al custer. months or al cazar is a flamboyant syrian who works for all sides is sold weapons to extreme right wing latin american groups on behalf of the americans. as armed iraq and the palestinians.
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according to a un security council inquiry made public in two thousand and three. has also sold weapons to the various armed militia in somalia. the weapons were shipped in boats belonging to the infamous shift go company in which allow reality had expressed such an interest just before being killed. ten years later u.n. officials confirm the young journalist suspicions. the boats were just used for fishing but for arms trafficking and probably toxic waste as well. the way they paid off these militias who were very poor was to offer them weapons in exchange for dumping the toxic waste it was a win win situation for them because they were young as well if you will it's only . after three years of investigation the anti mafia division of milan decided to
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terminate the infiltration operation as it was considered too dangerous to proceed on terror the more main door at a certain point the judicial authorities had to put an end to. the dangers the nature of members of the network we decided it was better to prioritize the safety of our men on the inside and. they look at authority the police. in two thousand and nine the u.s. arrested arms dealer al costs are being set up and thought he was selling arms to colombian guerrillas who turned out to be federal agents and he was sentenced to thirty years in prison. before venturing into piracy the somali gangs have proclaimed themselves the nation's coast guards. their stated aim was to protect their season shoreline from
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toxic waste and illegal fishing. but today they are just pirates. and yet the fisherman who live alongside them every day defend their actions they have a different notion of what represents piracy. anyone can understand that. if we poor poison where you live and there's no government to protect you do a lot. the foreigners attack you live even you defend yourself eat it all so aware of it. along the somali coast a fleet of western war vessels hunt down the pirates several dozen of them of already being arrested to this day no action has been taken against any of the industries suspected of disposing toxic waste off the coast of east africa.
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the. more than a month. in one of the most extreme environments on the planet this is and charged up and people have to be aware that they are far away from civilization sean thomas discovers what makes sense arctic is so special and attractive for many life in antarctica is close and fragile. expedition to the bottom of the earth are to. twenty years ago when the largest country in the disintegrated.
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