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Record number of environmental activists murdered

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#81

Post by bserge »

markenqualitaet wrote: post #72
TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely about environment issues, but there's a TV show with something similar as a premise - Continuum . A crime solving drama/sci-fi, where the protagonist is a time traveler coming to our times from year 2070-ish, time when the world is ruled by a Corporate Congress, consisting of thinly veiled allusions to well-known corporations of today. In between all the action and emotional drama, it also delivers some…

Do you recommend it? It's one of the few scifi shows I haven't seen but stumble upon from time to time. It seems a bit low-budget and oldschool TV (pre-breaking bad quality of TV).

Nah, goes downhill story quality wise fast after S1

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#82

Post by kleiba »

carschno wrote: post #13
kleiba wrote: post #4

I know we're not drawing from a random distribution here, but presumably, the number of environmentalists has also risen dramatically in recent years.

Not a rhetorical question, but genuinely interested: what is your context, given that you are aware that this is not a random distribution? Of course the number of climate activists has risen, as we see the disastrous effacts of climate change more and more clearly and frequently on a global scale. We also see a global political movement that has quite effectively prevented measures against climate change, using disi…

Why would becoming the victim of a murder be a random process?

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#83

Post by zdkl »

oefrha wrote: post #74

I skimmed the report.[1] Very few corporation names can be found, unless I missed them. I found some attributions in highlight stories, e.g. Tate & Lyle Sugars in a Thailand case of sugar plantation taking land by force; but those are few and isolated. IMO a list of names of people murdered means almost nothing to any reader beyond the symbolic value. Now, if you also attach the names of responsible/beneficiary corpo…

> if you instead attach the names of responsible/beneficiary corporations

Then you'll get annihilated by slander cases before any other inquiries even start. :(

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#84

Post by inglor_cz »

hazza_n_dazza wrote: post #65

reading all the threads here, about murder ratios is a really good reason not to have engineers as politicians

I am split on this.

If we consider human lives to be equal in value, concentration on a small, though outrageous death cause, may kill many more other people out of neglect / insufficient attention to another phenomenon.

On the other hand, 1000 more murders for 10 000 less cancer deaths does not sound like a good tradeoff either.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#85

Post by yunohn »

strken wrote: post #76
yunohn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what kind of number you’re looking for. There’s no global registry tracking the population of environmental activists - just that when people are murdered by anti-green corporations, we can figure out that the person’s activism is what caused it.

Quoting from the methodology section of the report: > To meet our criteria, a case must be supported by the following available information: > Credible, published and current online sources of information. > Details about the type of act and method of violence, including the date and location. > Name and biographical information about the victim. > Clear, proximate and documented connections to an environmental or la…

I wasn’t aware that we’ve devolved to questioning the murders and defending the megacorps with the most to gain.

Who else do you think is going around conveniently getting rid of activists that oppose profit and greed?

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#86

Post by rendall »

yunohn wrote: post #58
andriesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication do we have that environmentalally unfriendly companies are murdering activists? I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.

Wow. Not sure I want to even try replying to this uninformed mess of a comment. I’ve never been more sure of the sad HN bubble.

> They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps

Is there an increase, though?

The BBC has sadly become known to be rather loose with facts. The answer to the upstream question here would let us know if there is an increase and what kind. Absolute? Relative? How big of a problem is this, really, or is it more of the BBC fomenting noise and anxiety for clicks.

We're trying to get information to understand the world better. People who run around insisting that x piece of information is irrelevant and how dare you ask either don't understand the question or have something to hide

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#87

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there. there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.

> there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.

if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same?

what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists.

In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#88

Post by kleiba »

_Microft wrote: post #9
kleiba wrote: post #4

I know we're not drawing from a random distribution here, but presumably, the number of environmentalists has also risen dramatically in recent years.

How would that lead to more killings? It is not like activists come with an innate probability to be killed because of their work.

Of course it wouldn't. But imagine this: you have an urn with N red and N black balls, and you draw a certain amount of balls randomly.

Then you repeat the experiment, but you have replaced a certain number of black balls with an equal amount of red balls.

Wouldn't you expect to see more red balls the second time around?

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#89

Post by yunohn »

pastage wrote: post #75
yunohn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the corporations named, none of them are owned by locals. They’re all global mega corps, owned and operated through Western parents. They exploit the local chaotic governance to their advantage - and evade prosecution in their home countries by virtue of it being conducted on “foreign soil”.

The US seems to be very trigger happy wrt foreign companies giving bribes on forgein soil, if they have a presence in the US. I think FCAP has been modified to be more efficient in this respect.

I’d like to believe that laws solve things, but clearly this article proves otherwise.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#90

Post by playpause »

cornel_io wrote: post #77
playpause wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are murders of people. The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. To say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders, just because you were personally interested in a number you couldn't find in the article, is crass.

No. These are murders of "people who do XYZ". If we looked at murders of people who play Fortnite from 5 years ago until now, we'd see a clear trend, for no reason other than the fact that the number of people who play Fortnite has ebbed and flowed. I don't know anything about this particular situation, but your callous dismissal of this indisputably correct warning is wrong.

You are right, I missed that point.
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