“Every year the United States, the United Kingdom, and a host of other industrialized nations ship (often illegally) cargo containers filled with unwanted electronic waste off to less developed countries for disposal. One of the places this e-waste ends up is Agbogbloshie— nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah—a low-income suburb of Accra, the capital of Ghana. There, workers (often teenage boys) comb through the detritus of Western society looking for anything that might be of value”— Stanford Social Innovation Review
Agbogbloshie is a former wetland, which is now home to one of the world’s largest electronic waste dumps. Here, young men and boys smash and burn electronic devices to salvage the metals inside them.
with dominion over all, except-- its scriptures were written in hell by the Devil himself. It is the Mafia don applying for sainthood on his mother's grave, while nearby tombstones speak the truth. It is the singed Icarus Flying low, Flying slow, Drowning In the acrid smoke of its hubris It is the stuttering jabber Of walking cadavers, In the dark of halls of flailing power Where no lie is left untold. It is the blind rage of ravenous greed, And corruptions infinite-- Infantile politicos hawk their lunacy Paychecks grow fat, Luscious graft swabs endless misdeeds. It is the smell of betrayal, The horror of war, warm blood Turned cold, while the parasites Count their cash In Hell's half-way house. It is the obscenity of proxy wars Where others generations are slaughtered, The empire's imbeciles gloat Over cost effective wars And the terrorism of blown up pipelines. Senile senators have lost their minds While dissidents proclaim the ultimate truth-- Once and for all, the Anti-Americans Are the enemy within, The whore Houses of empty rhetoric. Their sordid souls, sold and bloodied All for one, one for all. The ghostly spirits of empires extinct, Rise in a chorus of rebuke, "We told you so, but you weren't listening, You never do! Never have, never will" These are the cowards wars, Push button wars, For push button profits, Executed by zombies in their Lunatic ideological despair. The empire is racing to become nothing. In God it may trust, but for God there is none As the empire turns to dust, This is the last dance among the ruins, Before the dawning a of new age; A new cycle with new players, New hope for the same old story. History makes no exception For those who claim, To be the exceptional; Suffering the whore's flush, And the hangman's dirty underwear. Empires are born to die, A crazed and corrupted death From the very seeds sown By the harlequins of human folly. Now shamelessly Holding the world hostage , to yet another empire's deranged predestination.
Robert Billiard is an artist and blogger with a special interest in history, politics and geopolitics and the pursuit of a more just world order for all.
