It never ceases to amaze me how
aggressively dumb you are.
You're not throwing me a bone; that's an example of a labor dispute, where the mine is simply refusing to pay it's workers wages. It's not a situation where environmental protesters are getting attacked, which is what I was expressly talking about.
You think
literally all my post is wrong? I'll discuss each point further below, with each of my original points in red.
1) come crashing in by buying local politicians
You think this hasn't happened since the early 1900s? You think it's not still common for miners, developers, etc. to come in and pay off local politicians to get permits to do whatever they want?
Are you fucking serious? You need me to provide examples of that? Do you also need me to prove there is air all around you and you're breathing it right now?
2) claim they're serious business people and no one else is accounting for costs and thinking about the bottom line here, OH, and they're creating jobs. their opposition is creating nothing.
Again... these claims are so commonly made, I can't believe you're really going to argue no one has made "job creation" an excuse to overcome environmental opposition since the early 1900's... dumbfuck.
2a) if the local population tries to physically resist, holds sit ins, ties themselves to trees, etc., hire armed thugs, often off duty law enforcement, to simply beat the shit out of them.
Here's
one link, from the National Geographic, and I'll quote the most recent example from America first:
Last February 2017 at the Standing Rock Indian reservation in North Dakota protestors were attacked and injured?one woman lost her arm ?
by militarized police and the National Guard over construction of an oil pipeline under Lake Oahe, considered a sacred site. Some 800 people now face prosecution for protesting. (
See photos of the protestors.)
more:
At the same time North Dakota politicians came close to passing a law allowing drivers to run over and kill environmental protesters without facing jail. North Carolina is about to pass a similar law. The report documents 18 states currently working on new anti-protest laws since the election of President Trump.
this country is fucking insane.
But at least environmental protestors haven't been openly murdered by mining conglomerates here in the U.S. (yet):
At least 200 people were murdered last year for protecting the land, water, and wildlife in their communities, including five park rangers in
Africa?s Virunga National Park, which is home to some of the world?s last remaining mountain gorillas.
...
Around the world, corporate and political leaders often demonize protestors, sometimes even calling them terrorists, said Jamie Kneen, communications and outreach coordinator at
MiningWatch Canada, an organization supporting local people impacted by mining projects around the world. These are tactics to keep the public from getting involved, Kneen said in an interview.
?The media portrays protestors as violent even when it?s the police or security forces that attack peaceful marches,? Kneen said.
Some countries have even declared martial law to end protests, such as the
Philippines and
Thailand, Kneen noted. (
See pictures of Philippine death rituals under martial law.)
:
the
2019 Global Witness report highlighted the insidious ways large corporations and governments ? including our own ? are complicit in the rampant violence and harassment.
Three Dead Every Week
The report found that 164 environmental activists around the world were murdered in 2018, and ?countless more were silenced through violent attacks, arrests, death threats or lawsuits.? The number ? which averages out to three deaths per week ? was a drop
from the previous year?s count of 207, but Global Witness senior campaigner Alice Harrison doesn?t take much comfort in that.
Harrison told HuffPost, ?Deaths were down last year, but violence and widespread criminalization of people defending their land and our environment were still rife around the world.?
3) strip all the profit from the land, dump all the toxic waste nearby
I don't know what is controversial in your mind about this. You think they leave anything of value left? Would a gold mine leave half the gold? Give it away to charity?
Read about tailings... there are pictures in this wikipedia article of the toxic ponds left from a variety of different mining practices, including tar sands oil production, not just mountaintop removal.
USA Today, August 11, 2015 Toxic mines taint the West's waterways
A short google search about any of this reveals hundreds of stories of areas completely devoid of life because of the toxic remnants of mining activities in the soil, or retention ponds.
4) pay themselves huge dividends, leave the LLCs or corporations they formed with all the losses
This was a whole chapter in a book I read, about how various human cultures around the world have died out due to environmental destruction of their habitat:
Collapse, by Jared Diamond (2005) (He also wrote the more famous
Guns, Germs, and Steel) I even went to find the exact quote. From chapter 15, page 455:
"Hardrock mining companies facing cleanup costs frequently avoid those costs by declaring bankruptcy and transferring their assets to other corporations controlled by the same individuals. One such example is Montana's Zortman-Landusky gold mine..."
I checked online; that mine was operated on and off throughout the 20th century, up until
1996 when it's operator declared bankruptcy and left the Montana public with cleanup bill.
5) have those LLCs or corporations declare bankruptcy, leaving the local residents with the cost of environmental clean up, polluted water, soil, air pollution, stripped forests, barren land, etc.
5a) The cost to repair the environmental damage may very well exceed the profit extracted, but miners, loggers, "developers," etc. aren't in business to provide any benefits to society whatsoever.
Don't believe me? Again... simple google search (mining companies + bankruptcy + clean up), hundreds of links, right up until the present...
NPR, Feb 2016,
When Coal Companies Fail, Who Pays for the Cleanup?Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company with mines in Appalachia and Wyoming,
declared bankruptcy in August. Operations still continue at the company's Wyoming mines, and regulators estimate it would cost over $400 million to clean up those sites once mining is complete. But Alpha was approved to ensure its cleanup costs with self-bonds.
"A self-bond isn't much more than a wink and a promise," says Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance at Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that focuses on sustainability. "A promise that ... when the time comes, you'll be good for it."
But some of these companies may no longer be good for it. Federal regulations require that a company pass a test of financial strength to qualify for self-bonding, although some companies have been approved despite their questionable financial status.
Here's a fun recent one about Trump's EPA trashing rules the EPA had formulated to require mining companies to set aside more of a reserve to pay for the costs of clean up, rather than just sticking taxpayers (
link):
The Trump administration said Friday it will not issue a regulation to ensure that hard-rock mining companies can pay for the costs to clean up their mines when they?re finished.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the decision late Friday,
reversing from a proposal that the Obama administration had issued a year ago.
The hard-rock mining financial responsibility proposal was opposed by the mining industry, Republicans and some red states, but supported by Democrats and environmentalists.
Is this from the early 1900's? NO it's 2017, just two years ago,
ASSWIPE.
6) REPEAT steps 1-5 somewhere else.
Okay, I don't have evidence for this one off hand. I can't just google it to find examples of the same shithead mining execs doing this same thing over and over again, and leaving the locals holding the bag.
I'm too tired.
You got me there.
