Nauru is granted independence from Australia and now their fate is in their own hands. But what will they do with the Phosphate mines? What is their plan for the ecological devastation their island has endured? Well this episode we find out those answers.
We also learn how about the time their government decided to back a Broadway play, how the island handled the refugee crisis of the early 2000s as well as how well their response to COVID worked out.
All this and more, on this episode of Oft Off Topic
Feel free to check out our website for links to our YouTube channel and more!
https://oftofftopic.com/
Our host Nathan also does art in addition to this podcast, including having is own sticker store. Please check it out and purchase anything that strikes your fancy.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/stickersbytownsend
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Even if you didn't like the show, please do it, we appreciate it. You can also email us at OftOffTopic@gmail.com and let us know what you like or don't like, maybe we will even read your email on our show!
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more Oft Off Topic!
Nauru is granted independence from Australia and now their fate is in their own hands. But what will they do with the Phosphate mines? What is their plan for the ecological devastation their island has endured? Well this episode we find out those answers.
We also learn how about the time their government decided to back a Broadway play, how the island handled the refugee crisis of the early 2000s as well as how well their response to COVID worked out.
All this and more, on this episode of Oft Off Topic
Feel free to check out our website for links to our YouTube channel and more!
https://oftofftopic.com/
Our host Nathan also does art in addition to this podcast, including having is own sticker store. Please check it out and purchase anything that strikes your fancy.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/stickersbytownsend
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Even if you didn't like the show, please do it, we appreciate it. You can also email us at OftOffTopic@gmail.com and let us know what you like or don't like, maybe we will even read your email on our show!
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more Oft Off Topic!
Our final episode on the island nation of Nauru. In our first episode we followed Nauru from tropical paradise to the land of phosphate strip mining and through World War II, where Nauru did not have a good time. Now we pick up in the 1960s, when Australia decides to give the Nauru people their independence at long last. 1966. Nauru officially becomes self-governing and after two years of hammering out a constitution, they officially become their own nation in 1968 under founding president Hammer de Robert, which hammer de Robert translates to hammer the Robert, I guess. Yeah, that's right.
Nate:You know what I respect the effort, I totally respect.
Shaun:Hey, you miss 100% the swings you don't take. Yes, I do.
Nate:The great Antonio touch anything, Yep exactly.
Shaun:By the time Nauru tuned into our great Antonio episode for more on that. By the time Nauru gained independence in 1968, more than 35 million metric tons of phosphate had left its shores Enough phosphate to fill up dump trucks parked end to end from New York to LA and back again Also. By this point one third of Nauru had been stripped, mined, and by this point nobody lived in that central plateau anymore. Everybody just kind of lived in this tiny little ring around the coast where the one main road went around. But now Nauru was once again in the hand of its people, the rightful owners of the land. They looked upon their scarred island, shed a tear and then said now is the time we rebuild and heal our homeland. Now we restore Nauru to its beautiful former glory.
Shaun:Just kidding, they decided to buy up the mines and equipment and start up the publicate owned Nauru phosphate corporation and crank up the mining to 11. Actually it wasn't corporation, it was a publicly owned thingy Owned by the Nauru people. And since this mining company was owned by the Nauru people, now they would all get a cut of profits and this would for a time make Nauru one of the richest countries in the world, in fact like the second richest country in the world, and many, many people in Nauru profited from this greatly. Nauru actually wound up having one of the highest incomes per capita at the time, if anywhere in the world.
Nate:Because of this, oh yeah, I've mentioned that. Let's see about that. Yeah, like, yeah, all rich Look at these richie, richie.
Shaun:And what actually kind of happened is like, right after gaining independence in 1968, as soon as the Nauru government took over the mining operations, phosphate prices actually jumped from $10 per ton to over $65 a ton in the 1970s. That meant that during that time, nauru's per capita gross domestic product topped $50,000 sex, and only to Saudi Arabia. For comparison, the USA gross domestic product was only $7,800. Oh yeah, so, yeah right, nauru was making over five times the money America was per capita. And I tried looking up what a gross domestic product is really and basically it's just an amalgamation of everything on how your economy is doing. It sounds like Higher numbers are better, but it's kind of hard to get them to actually break it down into like easy, simple terms.
Shaun:But yeah fair so if I say yeah, yeah, it's kind of like well, it's a combination of their imports with their exports, minus their tariff taxes, and when you add this and that and it's like, oh well, whatever. And also this whole thing was basically comparable to the Kuwait oil boom that happened back in the day. You know where a country gets stupid rich and so do its people. And unfortunately, when you get stupid rich, you get kind of stupid too, because there's a lot of stories about how the Nauru and kind of wind up with more money than they knew what to do with. People pulled an MC Hammer and just assumed that the gravy train with biscuits wheels would never stop rolling.
Shaun:There's stories people like to share about, not necessarily with pride anymore either, but you know, people buying a dollar worth of candy or a pack of cigarettes, paying with a fifty dollar bill and just being like, nah, keep the change. You know Opening your wallet and a twenty dollar bill falls out and you don't even bother to bend over or pick it up because that's only a twenty. Why would I do that?
Nate:Right right.
Shaun:Yeah, in fact there's even one famous story on the island of a police chief who ordered himself a Ferrari. When the sports car got there, he found that he was too fat to fit behind the steering wheel. He was so much more abandoned in the car on the spot. He was like screw it, I'll just get a truck or something. In fact, sports cars kind of became sports cars and luxury cars became the norm on the island.
Shaun:Everybody wanted one, even though you can pretty much drive all the way around to the island in about forty five minutes or so, apparently if you all ask, maybe about twenty yeah, yeah, I know, and, as you saw in that video too, as those cars kind of broke down and they couldn't find parts for them, they just sort of parked them on the side of the road and just left them there.
Nate:I mean, nothing lasts forever, but apparently you know they didn't think about that, or didn't care.
Shaun:We're hoping the money would outlast their lives. I'm guessing is what it was.
Nate:Uh huh.
Shaun:Yeah Well, I'll be dead before this all blows up in my face. Absolutely yeah, so well. The Nerun people were foolish with their money. The government was aware of the time that the phosphate was fleeting and they were going to run out eventually and with that in mind, they actually started investing all their new found wealth. First and smartly, they actually invested in their own people. They gave them free healthcare, good social security, free schooling was given. If you want to go to school in Australia, they'd pay your entire way there. Hey, here's a plane ticket, here's your tuition, so go do it, have fun. Uh, the government also subsidized utilities and rent to such an extent that, uh, usually the rent and power and electricity for everybody was only about $5 a month. Even the food was subsidized by the government, to the point where, uh, meat and produce was cheaper on Nauru than it was in Australia where it came from, because the government was just paying up so much of it.
Shaun:Huh, that's kind of yeah, and also because the Nauru government had all the money. They basically were like hey, you're a Nauruan citizen, come get a job with the government. No skills, we don't care, we will find something for you to do and we will pay you very well and give you like two, three hour lunch breaks, work for six hours a day, kind of stuff. So basically everybody was just like hey, I'll just go get a super cushy job pushing pencil at the government and uh, also, by the same token, didn't really want to work. Well, you didn't really have to, because I guess unemployment was super easy to get, also paid pretty well. So either you could have a desk job to keep yourself busy or you could literally just kind of just sit around and just be like this is good. Yeah, barely, barely.
Shaun:There is a common Nauru phrase that kind of encapsulates this time period, where it's tomorrow will take care of itself In a way. No, well, actually, in a way it does take care of itself. It just might not be in the way you want it to Right, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just like oh the ball of humanity dies.
Nate:You know, now, there it's gonna be just fine. You know, like we all, we may all be dead in the dirt and hell. There might even be like a vast desert of covers, but the planet itself will be like well, I guess.
Shaun:I'll go through this for a while and you know, yeah, exactly, coyotes will be ruling everything for a little while. And uh, yeah, yeah, there was actually George Collin had a bit about that. He was just like don't worry about the planet, the planet's going to be fine Long run you got to worry about what's on it.
Shaun:Yeah, when it comes down to it, the planet is just kind of a big rock with stuff on it. Did you know that if you shrunk down the earth to the size of a pool ball, it would be just as smooth feeling as a pool ball?
Nate:I didn't know that, yeah apparently.
Shaun:And yeah, that's just how tiny our mountains are and stuff compared to the size of our thing. Yeah, Anyways, it would also feel just as dry too, because I guess the water on our surface is just so minuscule. I thought that was kind of one of those neat things. Better neat, Yep, Very neat. Learning is fun. So for outside investments, the narrow government invested in other phosphate mines and you know other countries Stick with what you know. I guess they decided that airstrip the Japanese built right away for the World War II. They decided to build that back up and use it for a Nauruun airline. They actually wound up with seven planes in the Nauruun airline. We'll get back to that in just a moment how well that went over for them, because you know, a little tiny island with a seven plane fleet, Hmm, Seems kind of weird.
Nate:That's weird.
Shaun:They also started Nauruun cruise lines and got themselves a cruise ship, which I don't know. I feel like I never hear about cruise ships making money. It seems like if I ever hear cruise ships in the news, it's always bad stuff. Well, I mean they are awful.
Nate:To be fair, they there's like multiple looters. They're one of the worst things.
Shaun:Oh, absolutely yeah.
Nate:Yeah, humanity is doing pretty bad things in the ocean in general, but like they're really doing it.
Shaun:Yeah, if you ever look up how much fuel it takes to move one of those things like 100 feet, it's just so stupid. Like 100 gallons of fuel just to move a few feet, kind of thing or something like that, whatever. They also invested in apartment and commercial real estate and they bought up some real estate all over the world, including some hotels and some commercial buildings, Like the Grand Pacific Hotel in Fiji and the Pacific House here in Washington, which is a hotel, I think and I've actually heard of the Pacific House I don't know what. I've heard about it, but I've heard about it. They also invest in skyscrapers in Australia and London and such which I don't know. That seems like decent investments. Real estate tends to go up. However, one downside about having all this money is it attracted all sorts of grifters who saw Nauru as the proverbial mule with a spinning wheel, and they're about to sell Nauru as many monorails as they could or whatever scam they had in mind. That's a sentence reference.
Nate:Yeah, yeah.
Shaun:A small town with a lot of money is a lot like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one can figure out where he got it and darned if he knows what to do with it. Monorail.
Nate:That's the actual one, from the 60s too. Yeah, it's so dumb, but it's also perfect.
Shaun:Yeah, it happens a lot too. Kind of happened with Nauru too. Actually, one deal that Nauru got roped into was when their government was convinced to invest 2.5 million American dollars, or about 5 million in today's money, into a musical titled Leonardo the Musical A Portrait of Love. This was a Broadway musical about Leonardo da Vinci being commissioned to paint the Mona Lisa who. He basically falls in love with, mona Lisa, but she's betrothed to a mobile man and a nobleman.
Nate:A mobile man yeah.
Shaun:I said that came out wrong.
Nate:A nobleman Wait far be it from me to mock anybody for saying it's not a big estuary, but it's still something we have like a mobile man.
Shaun:Yeah, it's like a drifter, but high class.
Nate:Yeah, oh, a high class drifter, I've got a ride railroad to the top at.
Shaun:Ha, I'm a mobile man.
Nate:When I fight, I throw phones at people because I'm a mobile man.
Shaun:Kind of like the Shuba with the phone through flap.
Nate:I also walk around with that thing and you blow on it and it spins, because I'm a mobile man. My hat has. Okay, I'm done. Oh yeah, three hours later I have a mobile. Oh my God, I'm going to kill you over how to kill you, resurrect you, just like it took a life out of you.
Shaun:Ha, it's the only punishment that's fitting for this kind of crap. Anyways, apparently that part of the play sucked and it's run ended in five weeks, losing all the Ne Rune investment in the process. The play was four hours long and I guess by the end of the first performance they ever did most of the credit left. Not a good sign. I guess there is one scene where Leonardo da Vinci smacks Mona Lisa's butt and gets her wings like, asks her to help him with his research. Wow, yeah, I know right. I found one review on it. It was more run of the mill than reeking a passable gawky love story with some catchy tunes. The article with that review is called fertilizer island, since musical success first night, Leonardo. So yeah, they just flat out called it fertilizer island, Nauru. And then they use scents like smelling scents. So they just saw fertilizer and assumed it stunk. I don't know. Boo, lazy writing, let's kill them. Boo, Make a time machine back to 1993.
Shaun:They may where we've all been gone, but let's get them Also in 1993, nauru settled a landmark international legal case in which Australia agreed to pay $107 million in reparations for those colonial era mining mismanagements. This provided substantial funds for the environmental restoration project called the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation, or the NRC. So, uh that narrow airlines from 1975 to 1987, uh there, the airline lost so much money that their losses totaled one third of the nation's phosphate income, so basically one third of all their yeah, right, uh, basically, for the reasons you would think too, you know they had a little small area is based. Out of now, most of their flights wound up just like puttering off empty or with, you know, the flight crew actually outnumbering the passengers on the plane.
Nate:Oh, I hate that. Yeah, Now it's just like it reminds me when I go to a store. If I go to a store, there are more employees than there are anybody else in there I use. I like that one me anymore. That's why I go, especially for the stores where, like, they get commissioned for helping you.
Shaun:There's like oh, and they start following you around like a Best Buy or something like that, and you just got a trail of people like following around like little baby ducks, and you're like, yeah, I would.
Nate:You did not be anywhere close to me, I don't need you, I'm not, I need you right there. When I do Like I know that's stupid, I know and come up from like a retail person, like I understand the frustration on the other end of that other end of that, especially since I used to sell furniture and say that which is full commission, Like I don't. I didn't get salary or base pay. I got it was full commission, so my pay depended on me like selling to these people. So I made sure I like was far backing up, but I can still quack them and you know you're shot away.
Shaun:So if you heard the mud or something like I like that one, you'd be like aha, yeah.
Nate:I'm like, yeah, it's time for sales man to show up.
Nate:Man, I hated selling. I was decent at it, I hated it. But the one thing I always, I always say is like man, it's just. I remember trying to sell a mattress once and I was. I was just straight up wrong. Like I sold this mattress and hopefully none of them none of them here, but whatever. I sold a mattress that.
Nate:I sold this mattress as a. It's a coil mattress. An individual pocket of coil mattress has the memory foam on top. It's 800 pocket of coils for a queen, which is actually not bad. Like that. 800 pocket of coils is the very bare minimum you want on a queen mattress. Any more than that is a plus. After a certain amount you're getting ridiculous. But you know then, 800 is good mattress. I sold this mattress for a year this way, maybe even more. And just before we sold the mattress off the floor I looked at it again and actually paid attention. It was a memory foam mattress period. There were no coils in it whatsoever and I had sold a lot of these and, like whoops, it was the full memory foam mattress that I had been selling at the coil mattress and I got it all wrong. It was still decent mattress, I wasn't selling any shit mattress. It was still like. Quality wise it was on par with 800 core mattress. So when, like I cheated them, I would just say wrong was in it.
Shaun:It's probably interesting Yelp reviews from around that time on that Macy's.
Nate:Well, to be fair, though they laid on it, they liked it. So I was just I was as honest as I thought it was. They got a decent mattress. I was just totally wrong.
Shaun:They were happy with the deal. You were happy with the deal. Everything's fine Scrooge McDuck economics.
Nate:That was just thinking that they got their quarter. They walked away happy.
Shaun:Yep, capitalism hit worse. You just fight things, hey. So now you have a taste of the Scrooge McDuck mentality. Damn straight. Oh yeah, what. Also problem, too, with the narrow airlines. Well, not a problem with the narrow people got free flights on it, but you know that costs money because that eats up extra fuel and stuff. But also there's time that the president would decide he wanted to take a flight somewhere for a joy ride, when he wouldn't just hop on there for a joy ride. He would literally like cancel everybody's flight, so he'd have the plane do himself. So people that wanted to fly would just like your flight was canceled because the president wanted to go jerk off somewhere.
Nate:And yeah, that'd be very irritating.
Shaun:Yeah, that's not great customer service there, so boo on you, president of Nowru at the time.
Nate:I mean but again, like a such small nation, where do you get it?
Shaun:Yeah, exactly, well, yeah, well, just like shake your fist and complain.
Nate:Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much all you do. I'm sure he has the stugs. I imagine him like the rich guy from Roadhouse.
Shaun:That's how a roadhouse. So Well, whatever.
Nate:Yeah, so your point is stereotypical 80s action movie bad guy Got, you Did he wear a pinky ring.
Shaun:Almost all 80s bad guys wore a pink.
Nate:Oh yeah, oh, I'm sure he absolutely.
Shaun:That's how you know they're bad guys. Members only jacket, pinky ring or go T one of those three.
Nate:Well, he was older guy and, like the way introduced, it was like this how he just ruled the town. He was in his fancy car and he was driving down like a two lane road, like a back road, and he was swerving between lanes carelessly, just knowingly taking up all the road and Patrick Swayze our heroes coming the other direction, and he gets forced off the road because he is one nail, this guy, and the guy doesn't even turn to look at him. He's like, yeah, I mean Southern guy who runs the town with an iron fist.
Shaun:So he's like Doug Demidome. Isn't that that guy from?
Nate:Well, he wasn't a Southern guy. It was almost like he came in from somewhere else, like he was one of those.
Shaun:That makes him even more even from New.
Nate:York.
Shaun:City.
Nate:And you know, Patrick Swayze came in. He was like the lead bouncer of this bar. It was a worst bar in America.
Shaun:Yeah, yeah, I know I've seen like tiny little clips. I've probably seen enough clips that I know. Yeah, yeah.
Nate:But my two favorite parts is one where he works against the two at the end of it Like the bad guys had, I don't know, like the worst bad guy. He was the fat guy. He was kind of w. You know he was the bad guys but he was a coward. At the very end of the movie, you know they come through and wipe out all the bad guy gang except for the fat guy. Now, up to this point the fat guy was still a bad guy. And then the cops came in and they're like, oh yeah, we just came in, we found her like this this way. Right, bob, if Bob's standing there, he just like everyone, he like all his friends are dead and he just goes yep, they're all dead. When we got here Winning a Bob, you know, you know how it's, how you got this far.
Nate:You picked up the wind and you went that way. That's how you live this long Bravo.
Shaun:Bravo. I do kind of remember that movie. Patrick Swayze rips out the dude's throat and the guy's dying. He's like nobody puts baby in the corner. Then he goes off and dances with that chick while covered in blood. I do know this. You know what? Why not? That is how a roadhouse ends in my mind now. Remember the Grand Pacific Hotel in Fiji that was bought. Well, they had great plans for it. They shut it down for renovation to make it the nicest hotel in the world, sat forever, never got renovated and finally they just had to sell it at a loss. And the government workers? They were also embezzling a lot of money left and right too. Apparently, corruption was just rampant in their government. All sorts of politicians are like, hey, I've got good ideas for money and it just wind up in their accounts or they just disappear with millions of dollars.
Nate:Yeah yeah, roadhouse, yeah, roadhouse.
Shaun:So, yeah, not really great times there. And basically, as they started losing more and more money too, they started having to sell off more and more assets. They started selling off planes, cruise ships, hotels, eventually losing most of their investments. And as their phosphate went down, they were like we gotta come up with new ways to make money. So in the 90s, they decided that they have one good idea on making money Loose banking regulations.
Shaun:Well, yeah, turns out, for just $25,000 you could start your own bank in Nauru, and you didn't even have to be a citizen or even show up in person to do it. You could all do it by mail. And then, once you own your own bank, there's all sorts of fun little loopholes and stuff you can do, you know, if you know how to do them. The Russian mafia laundered $70 billion through that country during this time, and so did Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups too. Nauru also decided to offer super easy and cheap diplomatic passports to whoever wanted them for just a few thousand dollars. Not just any passports, though, diplomatic passports, which, according to one of the lethal weapon movies, means you can literally do anything you want with no repercussions.
Nate:Yeah, but what is there to do there? You know like oh, he broke the law, oh, okay.
Shaun:I'm pretty sure you can also do. I think they're selling them for any country you wanted, though kind of thing. Oh, okay, yeah, you're a diplomat from Nauru and you're going to this country, or whatever.
Nate:I see it now yeah.
Shaun:You're not very clever in doing illegal things, Nate. No, I'm still like well the way you live your life is the law.
Nate:You fool.
Shaun:Oh, this malarkey started to irritate some of the world leaders and in 2002, using the powers of the Patriot Act, the USA showed up to Nauru and essentially said yeah, we get it. We get what you're doing here. Illegal stuff is fun, it's profitable, we do it all the time, but your stuff is starting to profit our enemies, so knock it off or you're going to have a really tough time as a country. Coming up and yeah, basically America said that if you don't knock this out, we're going to make it illegal for any American company to do business with you ever. Nauru was bummed, but agreed.
Nate:They were pumped. Yeah, oh man, you guys suck.
Shaun:Yeah, I'm going to follow. This was essentially their whole banking system crumbling and dying and credit cards aren't accepted on the island. Because of this. There's ATM machines that so everything's cash only got hit up the ATM machine and apparently the ATMs run out of money a lot because they're only restocked every so often. So if you go to Nauru, bring a lot of cash. So Nauru's economy has taken a huge hit and they have sold off all their foreign investments. The bank is closed and their economy is failing hard. Their gross domestic product is down 90% and the per capita income is about $2,800 now.
Shaun:The government didn't have the money to pay its employees, so government checks ran a couple of months behind and since the majority of the people had government jobs, this was not good. At this point. 90% of the people were either unemployed or working for the government and, like I said, so basically you're either getting no money or your check was way behind if you're an employable guy Also should be noted. Now, 80% of the island is now destroyed and uninhabitable due to phosphate mining. One thing the government has been able to do to make some money in the meantime, however, is they get pretty good money licensing their waters to international fishermen for skip jack tuna fishing. In fact, the area around Nauru catches an annual of 50,000 tons of tuna. I assume that's a lot of tuna.
Nate:Oh, it has to be surely.
Shaun:In 2004, income from the phosphate export was only $640,000. Income from the tuna licensing was $3 million. So that shows you how far phosphate has fallen. 2001, financial salvation in the form of refugees show up for Nauru. So off the coast of Australia appears a cargo ship full of refugees from Afghanistan and Iran. The ship captain picked them up off a derelict vessel and maritime law stated very clearly that ship captain's duty was to take them to the nearest port and drop them off. This was Australia, just flat out said uh-oh, we ain't taking any of those people in. Captain the cargo ship would not budge because he was just following his maritime law duty. They stand off ships sitting there in port Australia saying, no, we ain't taking them. Him saying we're going to take these. International incident.
Shaun:Then, all of a sudden, australian government had an idea let's build detention camps on some islands and send them there. Hey, any islands out there want some money in exchange for housing refugee camps. And Nauru chopped up their hands and said oh, hell, yeah, we could use some money. Send them out over here. Madness Island and Papa New Guinea also got into the action on this too, but they're not the ones we're talking about. This whole setup would be known as the Pacific solution, which doesn't exactly sound wholesome, does it? It does not.
Nate:Yeah, you're going to use the Pacific solution. Something solution, yeah.
Shaun:Yeah, unless the earlier terms are like clear eye wash solution or something like that.
Nate:Right. Yeah you never want, when it comes to people there, to be a solution.
Shaun:By the way, then Nauru people weren't exactly thrilled with their government's decision at this point, so there were some protests being like this isn't cool, we don't want a detention center on our island. But things went ahead anyways. So Australia dumps $20 million into a detention camp on Nauru that's going to house 800 refugees, and they plan on putting another 10 million into the island and expanded to 1200 refugees as needed. So apparently they're expecting quite a few refugees. However, by 2005, they only had 32 detainees there. By 2007, another hundred or so showed up and then, amongst protests and claims of human rights violation, the camp was finally shut down in 2008.
Shaun:2012, a detention camp is opened right back up by the Australian government and it's busier than ever. By August of 2014, there are 1,233 detainees at the camp. So apparently originally this camp was supposed to be full of nice little climate controlled cabins with air conditioning and little kitchenettes and this and that Pretty nice little setup. But what by and large happened is most of the people wound up just getting plastic tints and little like tin huts, little tin pop-up huts that were really not good for that hot human tropic climate of Nauru. Real soon cries of human right violations came out and more protests. Refugees would go on hunger strikes, and some were little kids going on hunger strikes like ten years old. 2013 saw a riot that caused $60 million of damages in that camp To try to cover up some of their personal shame going out at the time, like the detention camps in the mines.
Shaun:In January 2014, the narrow government announced it was raising the cost of a media visa to the island from $200 to $8,000 and it's non refundable if the visa is not granted. Al Jazeera, abc and the Guardian have all stated that they've tried to get media visas and absolutely no success. We go up to 2016 and 23 year old Iranian man known as Omid, or OMID OMID. He had been the Nauru detention center for 3 years. Now he's not enjoying his time and he gets news that he's going to be there for at least another 2 years.
Shaun:He decides to make a statement about how much he does not like this by dousing himself in flammable liquids and inflammable-ing himself. The only Nauru hospital was underfunded and was uncapable of handling his burns, so he was sent to Australia where he died. This led to all this basically shining huge old spotlight on these Nauru detention camps and put it in the headlines of many, many countries and protests all over the world actually started happening because of this Good. It's also reported that 30% of the people detained at these camps had attempted suicide. Yeah, that's not a good look, yeah, yeah, that's definitely not a good look.
Nate:Because of this and more reasons, usa basically said hey well, sorry, this and more reasons.
Shaun:The USA just said, hey, we'll take a bunch of these refugees if you just shut down these camps and knock it off. So a majority of those people in the camp just got sent off to America and the camp was shut down again in 2016. 2021 in Australia reopens the camp and signs a new deal to pay Nauru to hold refugees. Because of July 21 or July 31 on 2021, there are 107 refugees on Nauru. So the company that actually so Nauru wasn't really in charge of this detention center, it was Australia was in charge of it and they put a company called Canstruct International in charge of the camps, because that always works out well. Yeah, so turns out, canstruct International made a profit of at least $500,000 per detainee in the financial year Indian mid 2021. They figured it out and by 2022, the Australian government had paid more than $4 million per year for those refugees to be housed in Nauru. All in all, it's believed that Nauru made around $3.3 billion off of Australia Australia housing these camps or camp. That's not bad income there.
Nate:No, not at all. I mean, that's actually pretty.
Shaun:Yeah, I was kind of surprised 3.3 billion. I figured it'd been like a hundred million or something.
Nate:But yeah, that's not bad.
Shaun:It's horrible, but also not bad yeah eventually they did kind of lighten up on the camp a little bit and I guess the people in detention camp are now allowed to actually kind of like wander around the island. They're not stuck in this tiny little fortified area, so that's nice.
Shaun:I guess, it's baby steps towards improvement. Nate, all right. Another thing Nauru has been selling since the early 2000s is diplomatic recognition in the UN. Yep, they managed to monetize their UN membership. So you got yourself a new country for me and need some recognition in the UN, nauru can help. Wanting a recognition that you're independent or part of another nation? Nauru can help. So here's some examples Over in Asia.
Shaun:You know they got that whole thing that's going on like does China run Taiwan or is Taiwan its own thing, and they've been going back and forth on that since Lord only knows how long. Great. Well, basically, literally just to stroke their own ego. Taiwan was giving developmental aid to any poor country willing to get on the world stage and announce Taiwan is its own independent country. Long live Taiwan. We love Taiwan. Go to hell, china. Uh. So yeah, this is literally just to stoke Taiwan's own ego and be like hey look, these countries believe that we're independent. Look, and you know it gives them quote unquote, credence in their own mind. Also, you know, on paperwork too, it actually literally is just like well, it's not a 100 to zero, it's a 99 to one thing. It's not a way it kind of helps, I guess.
Shaun:Well, china also like to do the same, but they like to pay countries that say Taiwan was part of China and China is the best, and Nauru is happy to say both of these things. And they kind of just flop back and forth between the two countries, being like hey, taiwan, you're your own independent thing, thank you for that check. Hey, china, you want to send us a check? Once that clears, we'll change our opinion. And they flopped back and forth and I guess China eventually, all in all, has paid them $135 million in aid for doing this, for saying China is great.
Shaun:And WikiLeaks showed that Taiwan was paying the Nauru government ministers a monthly stipend of or no, sorry, a weekly stipend of $5,000 to get them to say that, and that was on top of Taiwan also sending the country humanitarian development aid. Oh, wow, yeah. So basically all Nauru has to do is just go in front of the union and be like hey, we got something to say, and then just either say whatever preprepared message they got and you know China would send them a check, or Taiwan would send them a check. Another example of this is Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Ever hear of those countries, nate? Never, yeah, because they're not really countries, but they're trying to become countries and Nauru recognizes them in countries. So over there, we got the Republic of Georgia over by Russia, right?
Shaun:So, in the Republic of Georgia. They got two countries trying to break away from them, abkhazia and South Ossetia, and a big, long civil war going on. They're big messy not going into it too much. Well, basically, russia really hates Georgia and one way they can kind of screw over Georgia is by, like you know, stoking the fires of this revolution between these three countries. So basically, russia sends Nauru a big check to basically be like hey, guess what? Georgia is no more. Now it's these two countries, abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yay, russia, yay these countries, screw Georgia, they're in the wrong. And again, this is literally just you know puffing your chest and you know stroking your own ego. But uh, yep, in exchange for just basically acknowledging those two countries, nauru has gotten $50 million in development grants from Putin and Russia over this.
Nate:I mean, why not? It's almost like I was comical. They're up there on the days you know, god walks up, hands up an envelope, and Taiwan is the country. And so it's walked up to the side and hands an envelope. Like never did I shine as a country.
Shaun:Yep and uh, not really in the old country does it plays like Nicaragua, venezuela, all these little countries do that. They need money and uh, oh yeah, I'm also.
Nate:I'm sure that's true, but just like, this one seems to be the most comical, being how small it is. Yeah, that's basically the joke of it all. Yeah, it's like the nation nobody's ever heard of. Yeah, like the other country you mentioned, they're. You know, I've heard of them and they they actually have some kind of meaning on the world stage. I know this country used to have me in the world stage but that they strick mind the meaning right out of them.
Shaun:Yep and and uh, for, like, abkhazia not only recognizes them but they have like tight, quote unquote diplomatic relations between the two, because it helps out both countries in the sense that, you know, now we can report to their people. It's like hey look, we're on the world stage, we're going to foreign countries and hanging out doing diplomatic things, and same with Abkhazia, it's just posturing. So they can be like we're official, we're having diplomats here, we mean something. Yeah, exactly, oh yeah. And along these lines too, nauru also helped out Russia by refusing to acknowledge Kosovo when they were trying to get things going as an independent nation. Everybody's else like yeah, we approve you Kosovo. Now we're like no bad Kosovo, you go back to Russia.
Shaun:So yeah, and actually, uh, after the uh, somebody actually interviewed the uh dude, one of the uh diplomats from Abkhazia, and they basically had like all the information that I gave you. So level with us. Is this really a thing? Do people just send money and just buy you in, you know recognition or you invoke? She's like and then the diplomat was like well, duh, dude, that happens everywhere. Everybody does this. People are always giving each other money just to say stupid stuff on the world stage. So basically, as you can see, there's no such thing as free money to countries. No one's giving away humanitarian aid. It's always a pretty quid pro quo or they're getting something out of the deal.
Nate:Yeah. And then they're like hey, america just sent a billion dollars of aid to a country.
Shaun:Well, that ain't free. We're going to be thrown up a military base there soon enough, I'm sure.
Nate:Right.
Shaun:Yeah, or again them to vote our way in this or that. We're up to 2020 now COVID hits, and because they acted fast and shut everything down, they didn't get their first case of COVID until 2022, when they got their first two cases of it. However, to show you how fast that spreads by January 2023, there are 4,621 cases, 11 active cases and one death. So yeah, it went from being zero to a lot in a hurry, like most of the island looks like, or a portion of it anyways.
Nate:Well, they have a portion, that significant portion.
Shaun:Yeah. So now we're kind of towards the end. We're going to look at Nauru and its present state. Right now. They say the island's actual biggest problem is going to be climate change and rising sea levels, because everybody lives on the coast there and you know the coast is at sea level. The more it raises up, the more trouble there's there's going to be, and since they can't go into the elevator part of it because it's all just completely destroyed for mining, who knows what they're going to have to do there.
Nate:It's such a fucking pain, or not pain, so sad. Yeah, there's a lack of foresight and pain caring. I mean, there was foresight for the people coming in strip mining the terms of like what's the four, the four invaders, if you will left? They should have been like okay, let's try the best we can To maybe reverse this somehow or, if not, like find a nice balance between the two or something, or yeah, yeah we're not going to fix this tomorrow.
Nate:We pretty. You know this country is pretty fucked right now, but let's try to work together and get this somewhere, nevermind they're like no, that's what you'd hope.
Shaun:But yeah, they did. I will say at least it seems like the government tried to do a little bit. I mean they failed, but at least they were trying you know they had some good ideas? Well, they gave like free healthcare, free schooling. Those are good things.
Nate:Yes, I am 100 percent behind that. I really do, yeah, but then again it's like a broken clock, you know right twice a day Just because they were doing all this free stuff does. What about the rest of it? I mean obviously it was bad for investments.
Shaun:That wasn't too bad oh for investments.
Nate:Yeah, even like the banking thing, like, yeah, it was illegal and bad, sure, but at least they could grow their own fucking food. Yeah, If they they're like yeah, because that's financial stuff that you know, ultimately is all he really heard the rich people. So I don't know.
Shaun:But again it happened.
Nate:I mean, what were we going to do Time?
Shaun:machine If I could turn back time.