“Oxfam hailed today’s passing of a law banning metallic mining by the Salvadoran government. The law comes after years of violence and social tensions around mining in the country and strong opposition to mining from local communities, civil society organizations, the Catholic Church and more than 77% of the country’s population, according to a recent poll.”
Wait, what?
Did El Salvador just tell transnational mining corporations to take a hike?
“This is an historic day for El Salvador and our right to decide our future,” said Oxfam’s El Salvador Country Director Ivan Morales. “The voice of the people has been heard. Mining is not an appropriate way to reduce poverty and inequality in this country. It would only exacerbate the social conflict and level of water contamination we already have.”
Wow, they just did, and in spades, placing the welfare of the people and the environment ahead of profit and corporate interests.
“El Salvador is Central America’s smallest and most densely populated country. Ninety percent of its surface water is polluted, according to the country’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. For these reasons local activists called on the government to ban mining as it can further intensify water and land pollution.
In October 2016, the government won a favorable ruling after seven years of litigation over a claim against it by Australian mining company OceanaGold, which sought over $300 million for the government’s refusal to approve the company’s mining permit because it failed to meet all requirements. That ruling validated the government’s decision to withhold a mining permit and paved the way for today’s action by the Salvadoran congress, so that El Salvador never again has to face such lawsuits for exercising its right to protect its population from adverse impacts of mining.
Tensions around the development of mining in the country have resulted in threats, violence and even murder, with three anti-mining activists killed in recent years.”
We here in the West rarely see the sharp pointy side of global capitalism. Despite the threats, violence, and murder El Salvador has set a brave precedent for the world to follow.
Hurrah El Salvador! May other nations be so courageous and be brave enough to challenge corporate hegemony.
Powerful writing on the ills of prostitution, please go view the entire post.
Good Sunday morning to ye all. Have you ever wondered why the religiously addled are the way they are? Or how someone who has demonstrated intelligence can believe the mouldering sack of monkey-muffins that is religious belief? DarkMatter2525 opines on what makes the religious mind tick.
I appreciate all the fine work my atheist friends do, attempting to quell the various (religious) Ridiculous Claims that are out there. I admire their tenacity and willingness to dialogue with those so very deeply lost to reason and rationality.
Kudos, and cheers to you for the willingness to continue to fight for and engage in struggle against one of the many regressive forces facing our societies. :)
Well it is most comforting to watch someone take a stand against the doublespeak that seems to permeate most of transactivst rhetoric.
“Perhaps the best reflection of these emotional extremes is the Second Movement, which he titled “Funeral March,” a powerful musical evocation of the massive state funerals then taking place in Paris.
The music suggests the thunder of drums and the roar of the crowd. In this movement, Beethoven explores grief, its public face and its intimate expression.
The oboe solo at the beginning is a personalized and interior expression of grief within a public ceremony. It’s a modern solo in that it has tremendous psychological dimension.
The music is evocative—we can almost see the funeral procession pass before us and ask, What really has died here? Perhaps it is part of Beethoven that is being mourned.
In the years before he wrote Eroica, Beethoven realized he was going deaf, and his initial reaction was terror and shame. He tried to keep it a secret. He couldn’t bear for anyone to know that he—a musician—was not able to hear.
But he came to realize that, as a musician, he could function perfectly well. What really scared him was being cut off from other people, losing the possibility of hearing intimate conversation.
What kind of strange, isolated, lonely, crazy individual was he in danger of becoming? That was the real terror.
As Beethoven’s personal crisis deepened in 1802, he took refuge in the village of Heiligenstadt. He hoped that the quiet of the countryside would bring relief to the distortions in his hearing. And he needed time to get himself together—to face the decision, literally, of whether to live or to die.
In Heiligenstadt, he wrote the most important document we have that reflects the turmoil in his life. The so-called Heiligenstadt Testament is a kind of last will, or possibly a suicide note.
It wasn’t meant to be read during his lifetime. But it reveals Beethoven’s state of mind just before he wrote Eroica. Somehow he found the strength to go on. In the works that follow the Heiligenstadt Testament, he inserted his humanity into the very fabric of the music.”
The second theme always gets me at 30:00. Such struggle, fighting with inevitable fate, such majesty… yeah. There I go again. :>
“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.” ― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Driving into work today I listened to a story about how many large countries of the world had recently banned imports of Brazilian beef and chicken into their countries. Reports from a whistle-blower about cardboard being ground up with raw chicken, mixing of fresh and rotten meat and of course, chemical baths for tainted meat to hide the smell of decay.
I thought to myself, what a lovely metaphor for Capitalism in general. Brazil’s meat packers export some 10.2 billion (US) dollars worth of beef and chicken to the world. Our capitalist friends and the notion that they hold would like us to think that because these meat exports are crucial to the Brazilian economy every care would be take to insure that the product being delivered to tables across the world would be of the highest quality.
“The investigators allege that JBS and BRF disguised inedible beef, pork and chicken, bound for both domestic consumption and export, by injecting the meat with chemicals and acids to improve its appearance and smell; by mixing expired meat with healthy meat; and by fleshing out meat that was considered weak with water and low-cost starch, such as manioc flour.”
Well.
This would seem to point to a different narrative about meat packers goals and aspirations it goes something like this. The global supply chain for beef and chicken is quite complicated, thus actually tracing product directly back to us (Brazilian producers) will be difficult at best. Every pound of product is more profit for us, and there are quick and easy methods – acid baths to remove the tainted smell, cardboard/cellulose stock to stretch the grinds – that will significant improve our bottom line. A few people far away might get sick and/or die, but that won’t come back to bite us because of the nebulous supply chain, and thus the acquisition of profit must be prioritized.
The government food inspectors must also be bribed into complicity because if they were actually doing their jobs, this second narrative could not happen. Sadly, this seems to also be the case in the Brazilian situation.
“Investigators say Operation Weak Meat uncovered evidence of bribes paid to Brazilian officials, including some at the federal Ministry of Agriculture, to look the other way. Police issued 38 arrest warrants and closed 21 meat-packing facilities for further inspection.
Brazil’s federal Justice Minister, Osmar Serraglio, was allegedly caught on tape calling one of the inspectors under investigation “big boss” in a phone conversation with one of the leaders of the bribery scheme in Parana state.
Serraglio, who oversees the investigating police force, said the police raids prove he is not interfering in the inquiry. Police in Brazil said there was insufficient evidence to launch a separate investigation into the minister’s involvement.”
This is the true face of capitalism, the face that we don’t learn about in school and the news. The capitalism that always places profit over people, the capitalism based on the exploitation of others, the capitalism that makes our way of life possible. We are insulated from the sharp pointy bits of capitalism, perhaps shedding a maudlin tear now and then for the exploited poor, wherever they happen to be in the world, and then moving to the next goal of material acquisition.
“However, Elliott anticipates the scandal will have worldwide consequences, provoking a rise in commodity prices globally. He also believes that similar arrangements — bribing officials to grade unsuitable meat as edible for consumption — will be uncovered in other countries that export large amounts of meat, as importers begin tighter inspections after Brazil’s revelation.”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.
The Brazilian tainted meat situation exemplifies what is wrong with the current system and what was wrong with the state of things in 1906 when Upton Sinclair’s the Jungle was published.
Ain’t progress grand?
“It appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.” ― Upton Sinclair, Oil!
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