Birds, though beautiful creatures - have a need to shit. But sometimes their Cloaca is the medium through which the wheels of history are set in motion, unheard-of dramas are written and boring musicals are filmed. And so (to use a long-heard expression) the shit-birds have been defecating for millions of years over an inconspicuous piece of land in distant Micronesia... and that piece of land at one point belonged to the House of Hohenzollern.
There is something Corto Maltesian, quasi-magical, inexplicably charming about the existence of the former imperial German colonial possessions. Usually places that no one wanted as colonial trophies like German (Papua) New Guinea, a place that no one wants to this day, Togo(land), Deutsche Cameroon, Tsing Tao (the unlucky rival of Hong Kong), Tanganyika, Rwanda, Samoa...and probably the crown of the Kaiser's Empire - the incredible island of Nauru in the already mentioned Micronesia, in the southwest Pacific. But the German `race` is known to be hardworking and smart, just like German shepherds, and so the escaped colonists on that desolate island where the rocks were under kilometers of deposits of petrified bird droppings (Guano) - noticed that the droppings of Gulls, Albatrosses, Cormorants and other sea creatures contain phosphates with nitrogen and potassium admixtures that were sought after like dry gold on the world fertilizer market.
Agriculture has always been hungry for quality fertilizers, in this case natural ones - and so tiny Nauru was on its way to becoming Germany's most valuable colonial possession. Although it is about a million times smaller than Tanganyika, let's say. But size has never been everything. Except for the size of the malaria mosquitoes that were the strongest asset of that African territory occupied by tanned Bavarians.
Nauru before...
The island once...And why is Nauru important?
Because it is the only country that has experienced a complete ecological collapse and is today literally physically destroyed and almost unsuitable for human habitation. And because as a small territory with a small population and a relatively straight forward history, it is the perfect terrain for determining the ultimate consequences of the operation of a certain dominant economic model in modern times. Guano exploitation continued during the British, Japanese and Australian colonial rule. The indigenous population was not at all interested in bird droppings, but rather engaged in traditional forms of economic life. But, in the fateful year of 1968, Nauru gained independence and, becoming the smallest internationally recognized state after the Vatican, with its two to thirteen thousand inhabitants (half the population of the metropolis of Kičevo, for example) and still significant deposits of dung - the freedom-loving and state-building people of this republic - indulged in digging Guano as if there was no tomorrow. And by the eighties of the 20th century, Nauru, thanks to its modest population and the immodest exploitation of dung - became a country with the second largest GDP per capita - in the world!
But natural resources have a fatal habit of being limited. And on an island the size of a matchbox, despite millions of years of bird defecation - the Guano had to be exhausted one day. And so it was - the phosphate deposits were literally dug up to the bare rocks, changing the very relief of the island!
Disaster never comes alone, so the altered biosphere that had been built on this small, dirty piece of land for eons - caused climatic devastation because there was nothing to protect the poor Nauruans (or whatever they are called) from the winds and the strong sun. It's a pity that no one told them that trees don't grow on stone and that hills can't be bought with dollars.
and today...
However, the biggest downfall was the created habits of the population. Living on a high pedestal, immersed in consumerist madness, unaccustomed to the sudden change in standards created over one or two generations - the people began to suffer from First World diseases, en masse, entire villages became diabetic, earning the not-so-flattering title of ``Diabetes Capital,'' alcoholism took on dramatic proportions, depression was rampant, and the average obesity rate of the population almost doubled from the time before independence, and you guessed it - these are the fattest people on the planet today...
If the Nauruans learned anything from their capitalist colonial masters - it was the entrepreneurial spirit! Micronesian pseudo-Yuppies and tycoons, in conjunction with local politicians, set about finding a way out of the crisis. And where else could it be found - investing...and so the private-state fund that had most of the foreign exchange at its disposal embarked on a series of investments that were supposed to bring salvation. The investment in air transport turned out to be unsuccessful. The entrepreneurs purchased nine (!?) Boeing 737s but forgot to check the range of this type of aircraft. Papua was at the extreme limit of the range and Australia, the main target - completely beyond it!
After that investment failed, it turned into a legal war in international courts due to Australian shit-digging before independence. Here the Nauruans proved a little more dexterous and collected several million in damages in the early nineties. Bear afraid, Nauru fearless - emboldened by this success, the capitalists of this island embarked on a new adventure. Recognition of Taiwan in exchange for money!
Sound familiar? I know...I know...
Charting a cruise ship and opening a cruise line on this already visually miserable island - with its noticeable absence of pearly sand and bright blue lagoons - was a venture tantamount to economic suicide. Tourists want scenes like in commercials. Dystopian tourism is, after all, a thing of the future.
This was followed by the financing of some misunderstood London artist who had an idea for a Musical that would surpass Andrew Lloyd Webber himself and return the investment a hundredfold. ``Leonardo, a Love Story'' by some Greg and Tommy Miller who found unexpected patrons, was a musical-stage work that was supposed to describe the love between Da Vinci and... well, Mona Lisa. The millions of dollars invested in this work ended up with the biggest flop in the history of the West End stage. At the premiere, people literally fell asleep and even those with free tickets left in the middle of the performance! Next stop - the creation of an offshore destination for dubious capital. This ingenious idea really attracted interest, primarily from the transitional Russian and Ukrainian mafiosi via the Russian Central Bank (!) but it is not known what percentage of those funds ended up with the Naurians...
The indomitable spirit of diabetics had another ace up its sleeve. Namely, due to the extremely discriminatory policy of the Australian authorities towards illegal migrants - fearing even to open detention camps on 'its' territory, the huge, continentally massive and sparsely populated Australia, through its politicians - rents the microscopic Nauru as a place where it will build temporary camps and prisons for migrants. For an appropriate compensation, of course, enough for each of the 10,000 remaining residents to buy at least one chocolate bar a week...Finally, after a bunch of failed investments, most of which bordered on madness, and many of which crossed that invisible border by a wide margin, the entrepreneurial spirit of paradise subsided, the UN was called upon to give a few dollars to avoid the outbreak of hunger and epidemics...
And who dies last if not the desire to get rich?
Nauruan politicians in 2015 contacted the Japanese space agency in order to be leased as a place from which Japanese satellites would be launched into space due to the supposedly better location for such a purpose in Nauru compared to any of the Japanese islands...Here I would put an end to this unimportant story from one of the most unimportant countries in the world. A total economic, social, demographic, environmental and health cataclysm with only one way forward - and that is the relocation of all inhabitants from the bare island. Nauru will have the honor of being the first piece of land to be literally destroyed by statism in history. The USSR was lucky enough to be bigger than Russian stupidity itself, so the Aral Sea, Pripyat and Semipalatinsk were just episodes. Paraguay during the Triple Alliance war and of course Cambodia with Pol Pot are other dramatic examples.
Patience, says the popular `wisdom`. And today's Europe has a similar example of devastation.
There is only one country on the planet that has a more greedy, illiterate and delusional paradise.
Yes, that is Hunzistan.
Only Hunzistan has no bird shit.
And it has no sea...
(Roger Mortis, 142)
and today...
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