Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
The Hidden Cost of Gold: Birth Defects and Brain Damage
CIDAHU, Indonesia — Thousands of children with crippling birth defects. Half a million people poisoned. A toxic chemical found in the food supply. Accusations of a government cover-up and police officers on the take.
This is the legacy of Indonesia's mercury trade, a business intertwined with the lucrative and illegal production of gold.
More than a hundred nations have joined a global campaign to reduce the international trade in mercury, an element so toxic there is "no known safe level of exposure," according to health experts.
But that effort has backfired in Indonesia, where illicit backyard manufacturers have sprung up to supply wildcat miners and replace mercury that was previously imported from abroad. Now, Indonesia produces so much black-market mercury that it has become a major global supplier, surreptitiously shipping thousands of tons to other parts of the world.
Much of the mercury is destined for use in gold mining in Africa and Asia, passing through hubs such as Dubai and Singapore, according to court records — and the trade has deadly consequences.
"It is a public health crisis," said Yuyun Ismawati, a co-founder of an Indonesian environmental group, Nexus3 Foundation, and a recipient of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. She has called for a worldwide ban on using mercury in gold mining.
Mercury can be highly dangerous as it accumulates up the food chain, causing a wide range of disorders, including birth defects, neurological problems and even death.
Today, despite the risks, small-scale miners using mercury operate in about 80 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. They produce up to 25 percent of all gold sold.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @05:17AM (29 children)
North American gold miners have been using mercury for a century without any problems. Safe use of mercury in mining [artisanalgold.org] means pre-processing the ore so that the minimum amount of ore needs to be exposed to mercury to recover the gold, and containment and recovery of the mercury that is released during the process (which involves capital expense, but also allows the mercury to be reused). There is absolutely no need for any mercury to be released into the environment when using modern, environmentally sound mining techniques.
The problem is that environmentalists don't want to make mining safe, they want to make it impossible, and enlist governments to help them. So it moves to other countries, where corruption cripples what few environmental protections there are, and where illegal miners operate with no oversight whatsoever (even the legitimate owners of the mining claims have a hard time keeping them out). The problem is not mercury, it's corruption, bad regulation and inadequate property rights.
Half a million people being poisoned would be a massive humanitarian crisis. Looking a little deeper, it turns out that actually 700 people were poisoned, which suddenly inflates to 500,000 because... well, environmentalists love to make up numbers when the real ones don't suit them. Even those 700 are only "suspected" cases. A separate study, which actually tested for mercury, found 558 cases. That is not good, but it's far from what's claimed.
While nobody wants mercury in the food supply, even 'an element so toxic there is "no known safe level of exposure,"' is inflammatory and misleading. There is no known safe level of exposure because it would be unethical to conduct the experiments necessary to determine a safe level. Billions of people consume small amounts of mercury in their food, and hobbyists happily stick their hands into it [youtube.com]. Mercury is dangerous, but no more dangerous than any one of hundreds of other chemicals that are routinely and safely used, under proper conditions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @05:31AM (11 children)
Translation: what's the release of a small amount of mercury when it saved so much in operating expenses and increase the profit? Why do you hate capitalism?
What you propose is red tape and there's only one good word going with it: "cut"
(I would grin, but I'm abstaining when I see how serious you are)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @05:43AM (4 children)
I'm not sure I understand your point.
North American medium and large scale miners have largely phased out mercury in favor of cyanide leaching (which doesn't sound much better, but it really is). New technology promises to eventually eliminate the need even for that. Small scale miners still use it, but they release little or no mercury to the environment in the process. But because it is increasingly difficult to actually operate mines in North America, mining operations move to countries where there is no concern for the environment at all, resulting in more pollution than if the environmentalists had just stayed out of the way.
The inflammatory language and misleading numbers used by the article are a completely different problem. It is possible to write an article about a real problem, but still use bad-faith tactics to mislead readers in an attempt to stoke outrage (see also Stallman, Richard and Taubman, Brandon).
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @06:08AM (2 children)
Citation needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @06:51AM (1 child)
https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/igf-asm-global-trends.pdf [iisd.org] (page 15, 16, and 17).
The best environmental practices are found in the Americas, including Latin America. Brazil and Colombia actually come in ranked a little better than Mexico (which came as a surprise to me, I'll admit), but all are ranked far better than Indonesia and Africa. As is typical in environmental problems, most of the pollution in the Americas is produced by a few extreme outlaw emitters; legitimate producers generally use the environmentally sound best practices.
Mercury-based mining is not used in Canada or the United States at all, and there is not enough gold mining happening in the Caribbean to be worth considering.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @08:00AM
And this is because...? 'cause I really looked after a ban on using mercury for mining gold in US, and it doesn't seem to be such a thing.
So, either the practice was abandoned because it was less efficient or because it was too dangerous. Which of the two?
Ummmm... Looks like 'best environmental practices' does not manage to obtain zero emissions as you claimed in your opening comment. Page 14 in your linked
Well, yeah, use a gas mask and a fume hood and you ain't gonna poison yourself immediately. Only your neighbors and the environment. Like, you know, the groundwater or the soil.
FYI, mercury is far from being inert - it is actively transformed in methylmercury [wikipedia.org], which eliminates quite slowly and crosses the blood-brain barrier. As a result, the top predators at the food chain (humans, right?) experience the highest bio-accumulation rate.
And the results aren't [wikipedia.org] pretty [wikipedia.org] on medium to long term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @08:46AM
That's a fucking stupid point, and I'm using as nice of a language as I can here. Really.
Do you actually think that the only people that want to mine gold exist in North America? Do you believe that some these poor areas of the world, where the economy is not exactly well developed, would pass a chance at mining gold just because someone can mine gold in fucking "North America"?
1. fuck-all to do with North America (translation, self-centered Trumpland)
2. small-scale mining exists because people want to make lives for their families better
3. pollution exists because government *oversight* in those countries is piss poor
4. lack of education is driving pollution higher - many miners know that mercury is poisonous but they don't know it causes birth defects and brain damage in others, down the river. Many causes are that these are the very families of the miners that get exposed. As a plain example of people doing stupid things - how many people still start to smoke today with no regard for those consequences?
5. like everywhere, there are people in those ares that don't give a fuck about poisoning others.
The bottom line, you are fucking lucky that environmentalists don't stay out of the way and that the government *and* industry work together to create regulations that protects the environment and us living in it. What we need is minimal environmental policies and enforcement agreements to be part of trade agreements.
Finally, mines are only going to exist in places where the deposits of these ores exist. No one is going to be mining gold at 0.5g/ton where they have 12g/ton available in another jurisdiction. Environmental regulations are not the main costs of gold mining - energy inputs is the main cost. That is why gold price tracks a multiple of oil price.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 11 2019, @11:18AM (1 child)
I believe that some red tape is necessary. https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-history [epa.gov] Those superfund sites are what happens with zero regulation, and no oversight. The shit was hitting the fan the year I graduated from high school, and it was pretty ugly. Corporations had dumped poisons into the water supplies, on the land, and into the air for generations, literally. That was bad enough, so long as the land was kept for industrial use. Love Canal was a true horror story for any parent, or anyone who hopes to be a parent. The land was contaminated with some pretty nasty stuff, then sold for residential use. Kids started getting sick, and it took awhile for people to trace the cause, then to trace the origin of the poisons.
Even if 80% of companies are responsible enough to keep their backyards clean, the remainder is not. What's a few gallons of oil going to hurt? Or, a few more gallons of PCB's? Or, in the case of mining, what's a hundred gallons of mercury in the course of a year's work?
Maybe the article exaggerates the claims, as GP says. I can accept that, lots of people exaggerate their claims to get more attention. And, maybe there is no exaggeration, either.
What I do know with some certainty, is that rules and regulations were effective in cleaning up the US. When it got too expensive for corporate tastes, they moved operations overseas, where there were no rules. Take a shithole nation, or worse, a genuine hellhole with warlords, rebels, corrupt government, and incursions from outside the nation, and allow any corporation to set up operations. You tell me how much the corporation is going to care about the people who live there, alright?
As much as I hate the idea of a world government, I'm almost willing to concede that we need some kind of authority to chase this kind of crap down. Almost. But, I hate the idea of the UN ruling the world a little bit more than I hate the corporates who exploit everyone and everything they touch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:26AM
Try to keep your facts straight (I live ~20 miles from Love Canal),
> Love Canal was a true horror story for any parent, or anyone who hopes to be a parent. The land was contaminated with some pretty nasty stuff, then sold for residential use.
The story is more complex. Hooker sold it to the Niagara Falls School District, partially under threat of eminent domain that was used to force the sale of nearby property. This was at a time when school enrollment was increasing quickly and there was a need to build more schools. Anyone interested can start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal#Hooker_Chemical_Company [wikipedia.org] and read the next section as well.
No question the dump contained nasty stuff but it was fairly well buried for the time. Then the school district disturbed the clay cap and other containment when building the school...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday November 11 2019, @11:45AM (1 child)
Over here they used cyanide to extract gold in huge vats a bit over a century ago. Once they were done with it, they flushed it into a nearby river. Turned the river a lovely blue colour.
May have killed a few things too.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:15AM
I lived in a place around '81 were this company showed up and wanted to go through some old mine tailings with cyanide. Swore up and down they'd clean up and put up a million dollar bond. At the end they closed shop and vanished with the few million they made and left a $10 million clean up for the tax payers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 11 2019, @06:51PM (1 child)
Tertium datur, it is entirely feasible to consider TFA alarmist and the mercury contraband unacceptable.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @11:09PM
Feasible (possible)? May be.
Plausible or probable? That's something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Monday November 11 2019, @06:28AM (5 children)
I have seen a documentary showing these gold prospectors at work. They stand in a stream, and they rub mercury over the gold flecks lying on a piece of cloth, using the running water to flush the impurities out. They do this with their bare hands.
These are people simply trying to make ends meet - and if you took away their mercury they wouldn't be able to complete, especially with the other small-scale miners with access to mercury.
So humanity has a problem: if small-scale miners are allowed access to mercury they will poison everyone else.
In short, I don't believe this is environmentalists trying to spoil everyone's fun - it is a simple case of starving people trying to eek out a living and poisoning everyone in the process. You may well be right about the corruption angle - and then there is the political and sociological issue of telling people they face starvation because they are not allowed access to mercury which; from their perspective; is a welcomed profit multiplier rather than creeping, spreading death.
It's a complicated problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @07:15AM (4 children)
"They do this with their bare hands."
And it poses virtually no risk to them, unless they have open wounds or get it trapped under their fingernails before lunch time.
With proper precautions the stuff is easy to work with. Normally that means gloves, but outside the lab no one bothers, what they worry about is vapours and environmental contamination. In this case the two are the same because they're not recovering the mercury, and that's where the majority of the damage is being done. The fellow producing mercury isn't conjuring it from thin air, it's already in the environment. But because that (air) is where the mercury is being returned, suddenly it's a *huge* problem. Ok, he's getting it out of rocks, not streams, so that's a problem too, but not nearly as bad as the vapour issue.
Mercury is probably easier for the amateur to use safely (assuming they bother to try), since other methods are more hazard prone (in my estimation anyway.) An isolated mercury accident would be more damaging, but they should be far less frequent. Personally I think the best solution here is to educate the prospectors, after all they're probably spending more on wasted mercury than what the safe process would cost. It might be hard convincing them to stop doing mercury tests in the field, but I'd consider anything shy of boiling it off into the atmosphere a huge win — even eating it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @08:13AM (2 children)
False. They are going eat that mercury with the fishes in that stream and from the vegetables watered from that stream or the groundwater replenished from that stream. If not them, then some other unsuspecting people downstream from them.
And they're going to have that mercury under the form of methylmercury, thanks to the bacterial activity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:43PM (1 child)
I was talking about the handling of it, and you knew that. But you skipped the rest of the comment to hit reply so you could go straight to the "nuh-uh mercury bad" spiel because you're trying to win on the internet. Have fun being you for the rest of your life.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @02:29PM
And I was talking about the long term damage to the environment. But, if you knew that, you just chose to ignore it and present handling as the only major risk.
Now, maybe you knew that, maybe I didn't, I tried to show there are other things that matter when it comes to mercury (and, more general, the "externalize the cost to maximize the profit" approach of the capitalism).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:19AM
Don't they usually cook the mercury/gold mix to recover the gold by vaporizing the mercury? These are poor people without ready access to the equipment to recover the mercury 100% and mercury vapour is not nice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @07:14AM
Yeah. And it's just brown people anyway, so who cares?
I know you wanted to say that but were afraid to do so. You're welcome.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @01:15PM (9 children)
False. There's no safe level because it eliminates so slow it bio-accumulates. And it does in all heterotrophic organisms, so much so that one can speak of a biomagnification along the trophic chain [canada.ca].
As for how much is known as lethal dose, have a reading about Karen Wetterhahn's death [wikipedia.org], you'll get to know that when showing in > 50μg/L in urine is already fatal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @01:35PM (7 children)
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @02:36PM (4 children)
Awww, you forgot to end the phrase in "Dixit!" while thumping your foot on the floor! Come on, try again, maybe you can get it right this time. (large grin)
(should I remind you that vaccines preservatives actually use a mercury compound, so that "there you have it! Either vaccines are unsafe or here you have a lever of mercury that is actually safe"? Nah, where'd be the fun of khallow using arguments based on reality and not the "Let's keep in mind..." ones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @07:41PM
Never gonna get through to khallow by suggesting Latin! He ain't got the higher education for it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:05PM (2 children)
It's a mercury compound that doesn't appear much in nature and doesn't convert to a biologically active form in the human body (hence why it's usable in medicines). So it still doesn't make sense to use it as a rebuttal. And my observation is quite accurate. Dose makes the poison!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @11:02PM (1 child)
I'd ask for a citation if this would have been outside the grin-ning scope.
Not disagreeing, just pointing out there are poisons for which the dynamics of metabolizing plays a prime role, and the response to dosing is so varied that an average safe-for-all is hard to find or meaningless in the practical sense.
Nothing unscientific in admitting "I can't determine a useful practical** limit that is useful for your regulatory needs, the error bars are too large. Sure, a couple thousands of mercury atoms won't wreck a human weighting 80kg, but the equipment available for testing such concentrations isn't available".
** Practical limits - something you, a govt agency, could use in your everyday work to measure safe limits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:19AM
There are no error bars at zero mercury exposure. If the harm doesn't go to zero as your levels of mercury exposure do, then you need a new model.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)
Not so much.
There are no safe levels of bullets to the brain. Let's shoot you in the head just once to demonstrate.
It's all in the name of science, and since you're a worthless piece of shit, test subject would be a good use for you.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:09PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:59AM
There are safe levels of mercury: https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/advice-about-eating-fish [fda.gov]
Go figure.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Monday November 11 2019, @05:44AM (27 children)
There will always be those who will gladly exploit people and destroy their lives for a profit. The US economic system has been based on that fact long before we were a country. Our Constitution was mainly designed to preserve and enhance slavery and oligarchy, and a surprising amount of the actual text of that document is directly the result of that simple fact.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @05:52AM (16 children)
This is hardly limited to the USA, my friend.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @06:17AM (15 children)
Be as it may, but USA really perfected the art of greed.
See? They even call it democracy now - just look in their political life and tell me with a straight face it ain't so. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Monday November 11 2019, @06:27AM (14 children)
"Developed country" - a term to describe the profitability and state of organization for exploitation of others and the environment.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Captival on Monday November 11 2019, @06:52AM (13 children)
Oh and also widespread literacy, technical innovation, live-extending advances, and freedom of speech. For some reason you Commies hate all those things. Just look at the backwards hellholes you guys champion. Only in righteous Venezuela can an oil-rich nation turn into a starving wasteland.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @02:16PM (11 children)
Oh, yes. I reckon you'd simply hate to live in the social-democratic hellhole that is Norway. Just think about it: 42% GDP is collected in taxes, extremely unfriendly corporate taxation - 23% of profit but going into 51%-78% in some industries [wikipedia.org], social security contributions at 53% of the total labor costs [wikipedia.org]. On the bring of collapse it must be.
No tuition fees for public education, even tertiary [wikipedia.org] and the population is really abusing it, with 32% of the population holding a tertiary degree [www.ssb.no] or better (US at 25% [voanews.com] with college or better)
Public health cost covering almost all expenses a patient would have [wikipedia.org] (what? only USD $6,647 per head per year? How can that be? The bastion of freedom, had $10,224/head in 2017) and paying nurses and midwifes to about 1.7% of population - what a waste!
Labor force participation rate of 74% [tradingeconomics.com] (US economy is "booming" at a 63% [investopedia.com]) - they must be using forced labor, right?
I mean, let's look at the incarceration rate... say, what? 3933 from a population of 5.3 mil [wikipedia.org] (< 0.07%) in 54 prisons? What the heck! The idiots must be running holiday villages, not prisons, that's surely an incentive to reoffend (the recidivism rate is actually 1 in 5 - so less than 1000 reoffenders).
Surely the bankruptcy is near, right? The government-ran pension fund has, for every of its citizens alive, about $195000 [wikipedia.org], with over $1T in assets and controls 1.4% of the entire world stocks and shares.
Fecking hellhole, I tell yea!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 11 2019, @08:23PM (8 children)
Captival seems to be spouting the US right-wing talking point that there are only two possibilities here:
Unfettered capitalism, with minimal government oversight and minimal corporate taxation. (preferably none at all). This will bring about maximum freedom.
Venezuela. Ignoring for the moment the sanctions that have crippled their economy, and the reasons for those. Also ignoring Cuba, Iran, Chile and any other country that has dared to reject all that freedom the US has tried to give them over the years.
I am pretty sure he is another American that has never traveled outside the US, but somehow is an expert on how other people should live their lives.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:22PM (7 children)
Doesn't seem that way to me. Have you checked to see if your straw man is plugged in?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @09:28PM (1 child)
Eye of beholder. Nobody as blind as the one who doesn't want to see.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:41PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 11 2019, @10:20PM (1 child)
Absolutely presenting an either/or situation.
I don't think strawman means what you think it means.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:14AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @11:14PM (2 children)
Enlighten us, oh, khallow. How exactly does it seem to you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:14AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:56PM
Oh, so you think we didn't understand captival was being sarcastic? You really do think you're the smartest cookie in the mayonnaise jar huh?
(Score: 2) by Captival on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:17AM (1 child)
And guess what Norway DOESN'T have? You get three tries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:32AM
A president.
Poor them they don't know what they miss; like, no trillions and two years wasted in the electoral circus and ending with an orange monkey [pinimg.com] at the helm. Or a chimpanzee [wp.com].
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:24AM
Venezuela is an example of extreme corruption.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @01:32PM (9 children)
If that were true, then why bother with the exercise? You don't need things like balance of power, freedom of speech, or due process.
And I think you great underestimate the virtue of systems that are aware of and come up with rules for dealing with people who "will gladly exploit people and destroy their lives for profit" rather than pretend they don't exist.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @02:22PM (5 children)
And I think you grossly overestimate the value of that awareness and the existence of those rules so full of loopholes that they don't actually stop whoever is powerful enough to use lawyers.
How can it be otherwise when the US political class is producing the finest politicians money can buy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:08PM (4 children)
Depends on the metric - workplace injuries and deaths have gone down for decades despite the alleged loopholes. So has pollution per capita. Loopholes don't seem to be working for the "powerful enough" there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @09:26PM (3 children)
In vase you didn't notice, so did the manufacturing and chem ind.
I'll let you guess where and evaluate the pollution level there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:35PM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday November 11 2019, @10:39PM (1 child)
I just pointed your argument is inconclusive due to the disputable causal relationship (even if one accepts the metrics - which I didn't. Nor did I reject them, mind you)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:16AM
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Monday November 11 2019, @08:14PM (2 children)
None of those things exist in real life. They are fugazi. There is no balance of power if you have a lawless executive and his captive party operating completely without good faith and honor. Freedom of speech? It's funny that you think such a thing exists. Due process? Ask the hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia who had their voting rights revoked because they live in black districts and were not notified.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 11 2019, @09:19PM (1 child)
Sounds rather like your argument doesn't exist in real life.
Not even wrong. There is no such thing as a lawless executive because their very existence is predicated on a whole lot of laws. Nor is "good faith and honor" relevant to a balance of power. If you're even thinking of relying on those things to provide a balance of power, then you're doing it wrong.
Right to vote is not relevant to due process which is about what is done to people who are accused of breaking laws.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:55AM
It is if the right to vote is revoked without due process.
And where did you get the idea that due process only applies in cases of law breaking? That's the least of it. Due process is required by the Constitution whenever someone is deprived of their rights.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 11 2019, @08:48AM (1 child)
When I was a kid in the 70s, our physics teacher had a big bowl full of mercury, and had us plunge our hands in it to feel its density. And she did a bunch of experiments with it on the lab bench with us kids gathered around and staring closely at the strange stuff. All she told us was to avoid getting any in our mouthes, and avoid breaking mercury-filled thermometers, because it "wasn't terribly healthy".
Now you break a CFL bulb in your house and you need FEMA to change your carpeting.
It's probably right to treat mercury as the dangerous stuff that it is. It's just amazing how our perception of it went from casual to full nuclear-style hysteria.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday November 11 2019, @06:40PM
On a related note, Sir Isaac Newton drunk quicksilver and managed to a respectable 84 - about twice the life expectation. He did went crazy at old age or so some say.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @10:00AM (3 children)
All the "rogue" gold mining in Arkansaws, and resulting pollution of toxic metals which caused a 34.3% drop in intelligence among school children there, and explains how they voted both for Clinton and Trump.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @11:25AM
You poor fool. Wherever you live, there are retarded children playing in a lot nearby. But, you know that, because you play with them whenever Mommy chases your stinky ass out of the house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @06:37PM (1 child)
And cell phone sales are through the roof there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @11:18PM
Must be they have quite low roofs there.