SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Foreign Policy In Focus reports A Huge Mining Conglomerate Wanted to Poison This Country's Water. After a Long Fight, They've Finally Lost.
The people of El Salvador and their international allies against irresponsible mining are celebrating a historic victory. After a long battle against global mining companies that were determined to plunder the country's natural resources for short-term profits, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly has voted to ban all metal mining projects.
The new law is aimed at protecting the Central American nation's environment and natural resources. Approved on March 29 with the support of 69 lawmakers [(out of a total of 84) from multiple parties], the law blocks all exploration, extraction, and processing of metals, whether in open pits or underground. It also prohibits the use of toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury.
[...] Despite the fact that there is a national consensus among communities, civil society organizations, government institutions, and political parties for a mining prohibition, the Australian-Canadian company OceanaGold and its subsidiaries in El Salvador have consistently attempted to slow the bill's progress and sought to gain support for their so-called "Responsible Mining" campaign.
The company launched the campaign at a fancy hotel in San Salvador after losing a $250 million lawsuit against El Salvador in October 2016. The company had filed a claim with the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), demanding compensation when the government declined to grant the firm a permit for a gold extraction project that threatened the nation's water supply. In the face of tremendous opposition from a wide range of groups inside and outside El Salvador, the ICSID tribunal ruled against the company.
[...] By voting in favor of the mining ban, these lawmakers in El Salvador have chosen water over gold, and people and the environment over corporate profits. And they showed that even a very poor country can stand up to powerful global mining firms.
(Score: 5, Informative) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @01:22AM (1 child)
> CIA messing around in Central American countries was always for political reasons, not the "big evil corporation" interests.
According to the CIA (emphasis mine),
Guatemala is a perfect example. Following its 1944 revolution, which brought democratically elected leftist governments to power, this Central American government faced an increasingly hostile neighbor to the north, the United States. Guatemala's treatment of US-based corporations, especially the United Fruit Company, in expropriating land and other assets, did nothing to improve relations. Elites in Guatemala helped persuade US journalists and members of Congress, not to mention the executive branch, that their government was veering further and further leftward toward Communism in the early 1950s.
-- https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no5/html/v44i5a03p.htm [cia.gov]
From an academic source:
When Jacabo Arbenz implemented land reform under Decree 900, over 400,000 acres of UFCO land was expropriated. All the land was uncultivated, so the expropriations had no effect on UFCO’s production. However, UFCO had been in the habit of grossly underestimating the value of its lands to avoid taxes. As a result, the Arbenz government granted UFCO 1.2 million as compensation for lands UFCO valued at over 16 million. This discrepancy caused UFCO to appeal to the U.S. government for intervention and launch an all out propaganda war against the Arbenz regime. UFCO hired Edward Bernays, a prominent public relations man with numerous ties to American politics and media, to produce this propaganda. This included paying for reporters to travel to Guatemala on “fact finding missions” and then exposing them to staged events showing the onslaught of communism in the country. The UFCO also produced a great amount of unfounded literature detailing the supposed communist infiltration of the Arbenz regime. This literature was then circulated to influential politicians and opinion leaders.
-- http://revolutions.truman.edu/guatemala/united%20fruit,%20the%20cia,%20and%20counter%20revolution.htm [truman.edu]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @04:19AM
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, Ret. in his book "War is a Racket" confirmed [wikiquote.org] that USA.mil exists for the purpose of Mercantilism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]