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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: 1, Offtopic) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @05:08AM (2 children)
> Read back up thread and try to keep up. The bitching is about the one sided nature of it here and in anywhere that isn't explicitly right-wing, the bias that the Proggie viewpoint isn't just the correct one, but that it is the only viewpoint.
I did read it, and didn't see anyone commenting that his view-point is the only one that exists. I wonder where you saw that. You seem to be saying that many people have that belief. I'd be interested in seeing an example.
> "Fair and Balanced" is railed against as horrible when FNC uses it as a tagline for exactly that reason, it implies there is more than one position that it is legit to hold.
I've not heard Fox News criticised for being fair or balanced. I have heard it criticised for being biased. It's been suggested that the tag line is meant ironically.
http://www.skeptical-science.com/politics/fox-news-fair-balanced/ [skeptical-science.com]
> You should visit the Alt-Right and NRx worlds sometime.
I had to look up NRx:
The alt-right can be seen as a political movement; neoreaction, which adherents refer to as NRx, is a philosophy. At the core of that philosophy is a rejection of democracy and an embrace of autocratic rule.
-- https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/ [theatlantic.com]
If that's accurate, I don't think NRx is for me, but thanks for the tip.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday April 07 2017, @05:47AM (1 child)
I wonder where you saw that.
Articles cut/pasted form explicitly socialist organizations get posted without a raised eyebrow. A submission of a story from Breitbart would most likely simply be ignored and would attract flamage from a lot more users than a fringe like me. Please don't insult everyone's intelligence by disputing this.
If that's accurate, I don't think NRx is for me, but thanks for the tip.
The Atlantic. That is where you go to find out about it. Lemme guess, you would take Alex Jones as gospel on Progressivism, or Glenn Beck as the authority on Woodrow (I hate that guy) Wilson[1]. Riight. Kinda making my point aren't we that there is only one legitimate side to a Proggie?
Anyway, NRx can be summed up with a few observations that aren't really debatable and the rest is debate about the logical consequences that fall from them:
1. Democracy is a horrible thing, and all students of political philosophy agree on this point. It brings destruction to any society adopting it.
2. The American Founding Fathers believed their idea for a Constitutional Republic would prevent Democracy from being possible, and thus it was deemed safe.
3. It failed, as did every other variation that has been attempted since.
NRx is taking those facts and going further, asking whether the whole Enlightement was a bad idea (the Dark Enlightenment fork) or at minimum needs a rethink from first principles (NRx in general). From there the joke goes that our problem is being in a state of Kinglessness. Most understand the maxim that a good king is about the best government possible but the problem is picking good kings with better odds than blind chance. From there the debate goes in various directions. A LOT of directions.
Then there are the proposed solutions, and again they are legion. Moldbug's Neocameralism, for example, is in my humble opinion a hot load of crap. At least it is better than just waiting for the Singularity to solve all our problems. But they are at least willing to ask the right questions, which is why it is interesting. So I'd like to challenge you to read a bit of it and decide for yourself whether there is more intellectual activity there vs the latest vile swill about Intersectionality your side currently finds to be the most pressing issue facing the world.
[1] You probably don't get the joke there. Beck can't speak President Wilson's name without the "I hate that guy" in the name or right after. Which is of course a perfectly reasonable thing to say if you know anything of Wilson's evil.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @07:28AM
> Articles cut/pasted form explicitly socialist organizations get posted without a raised eyebrow. A submission of a story from Breitbart would most likely simply be ignored and would attract flamage from a lot more users than a fringe like me. Please don't insult everyone's intelligence by disputing this.
I searched for "world socialist web site":
/search.pl?tid=&query=world+socialist+web+site&author=&sort=1&op=stories [soylentnews.org]
...and at the first result there's someone complaining about the source.
And a minor bitch: Can we stop with the shoutouts to the World Socialist? Get the same damned story off AP.com and raise the level of class around here, makes it look like a skeevy kostard site full of loons.
-- /comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=11713&cid=291252#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
I searched for "breitbart":
/search.pl?tid=&query=breitbart&author=&sort=1&op=stories [soylentnews.org]
At the first result that's sourced only from Breitbart News, someone's complaining about the source:
Hovers over link. Sees Breit Bart. *facepalms*
That's as laughable as linking to The Daily Mail.
-- /comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=9402&cid=233858#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
> The Atlantic. That is where you go to find out about it. Lemme guess, you would take Alex Jones as gospel on Progressivism [...]
I went to a search engine, and that was the first pertinent result. You're implying that The Atlantic cannot be trusted on the topic.
https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=NRx [duckduckgo.com]
Had I taken it as gospel, I wouldn't have written "if that's accurate."
> [According to neoreactionaries] Democracy is a horrible thing [...] a good king is about the best government possible [...]
I see a congruence, at least at a simplistic level, between what you wrote and what was written in The Atlantic. Thanks for trying to teach me about this.
> Kinda making my point aren't we that there is only one legitimate side to a Proggie?
I invited you to give me an example of where you'd seen that; you've chosen to use me as your example. You're telling me I'm closed-minded. Of course, you're entitled to your opinion, and of course I don't prefer to think of myself in that way. I should think that if the closed-minded people you speak of were commonplace, you might have offered a less awkward example.
> [...] if you know anything of Wilson's evil.
I had heard he had a stroke while he was president, after which his wife performed many of the tasks of the office. But I just looked it up, and found something saying that he had a series of strokes, the first in 1896. I would hesitate to describe as "evil" someone who had so much damage to his brain. Such a judgment about Ms. Wilson's actions might be more suitable.
http://ahsl.arizona.edu/about/exhibits/presidents/wilson [arizona.edu]