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Record number of environmental activists murdered

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#121

Post by coldtea »

IMTDb wrote: post #28
cenophor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is murder, not people falling off the cliff because of some accidents. There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably right that there is a correlation. But... seriously?

Yes, seriously. The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ... Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and di…

>The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday".

Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis?

More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant.

What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests.

>Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?

It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed.

The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it.

(Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#122

Post by rendall »

yunohn wrote: post #110
rendall wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is. I could go throug…

Effectively you’re saying that a status quo of stable-percentage murders is okay. I (and others on this post) are saying that any non-zero percentage is bad. So I guess we fundamentally disagree then.

The article premise was not "Environmental Activists continue to be murdered at a rate higher than the general populace".

It instead implies that it is an increasing problem, without giving us the tools to evaluate the claim or understand the scope of the problem.

If you want to accept such claims as true, go ahead. That practice won't arm you to understand your world better, but will instead make you excitable and easily swayed.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#123

Post by Veen »

yunohn wrote: post #85
strken wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

You're missing the point. People are murdered all the time for all sorts of reasons, including people who happen to be activists. The question is: are activists being murdered for their activism or for some other reason? Until you can demonstrate that, you simply don't have grounds to suspect megacorps or their agents are doing the murdering.

For example, the number of people who listen to Ed Sheeran music has risen enormously in the last decade. So has the number of Ed Sheeran listeners who were murdered. It doesn't follow that they were murdered because they have dubious taste in music—just that as the population of Sheeran fans grows so does the number of people in it being murdered. That might happen even if the overall murder rate was going down.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#124

Post by coldtea »

andriesm wrote: post #50
yunohn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite this weird sub-thread, the article isn’t talking about “dangerosity”. They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps, who are also murdering opposing activists.

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.

>I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy

The "backend" 80% of the world doesn't work with PR strategies.

Nobody cares if an activist is murdered in Nigeria or Mexico etc., same way few care about journalists in those area. There will be some reports (if that), most will never even reach your preferred news outlets, and that's it.

And in more subtle areas (outside the developing world) they can always make it look like a "mysterious" homicide case, despite e.g. known threats, beatings, etc, that had been reported prior to the murder.

There are interests of billions to be made, from mega-corps, local lackeys, corrupt politicians and cops on their pockets, and so on.

Same way nobody cares for 10-100 million dollar bribes all too common in big construction, supply, procurement, finance, and so on, tenders. One in 100 might get some scrutiny (usually after the party doing it is out of power with no way to be re-elected, so those affected don't have any clout anymore).

>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.

Lol. No exec "orders a hit" (except if it's some local representative or director and knows the ropes in that area).

Foreign execs convey a message that "this thing is an inpediment", "something must be done" and so on, in the vaguest (but clear) possible ways, and people with a lot to gain locally, paid for those deals, know how to take care of things, with several layers of indirection.

Same way sweatshops and child labour (all the way to small kids working on cobalt mines) have "plausible deniability" from industry execs, and several layers of contractors between them.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#125

Post by yunohn »

Veen wrote: post #123
yunohn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Who else do you think is going around conveniently getting rid of activists that oppose profit and greed? You're missing the point. People are murdered all the time for all sorts of reasons, including people who happen to be activists. The question is: are activists being murdered for their activism or for some other reason? Until you can demonstrate that, you simply don't have grounds to suspect megacorps or their…

I love the Ed Sheeran comparison and misdirect. I’ll stop feeding the troll now.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#126

Post by playpause »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
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.

I didn't say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders. I said, in my paragraph, that sensationalized articles in general (and note that I didn't say this one definitely is in this category) often don't report the base rate, because it would reveal they're reporting a non-story. And I said that to counter cenophor's objection to ArchieMaclean's question, by pointing out it's pretty much the first question one sh…

I was wrong, you were making a very important point that just went over my head (it was early in the morning for me). Sorry.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#127

Post by 867-5309 »

Cats_In_Love wrote: post #112
markenqualitaet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The female heroin is hot.

let the spoon cool before injecting

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#128

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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).

It's Ok. Personally I feel the first season or so is pretty weak but then it manages to be solidly interesting for the rest of it.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#129

Post by redleader55 »

vivferrari wrote: post #109

Every electronic good you buy contributes to these murders. The raw material sourced in these places are used for manufacture of these products and environmental activism threatens their ability to continue to exploit nature and profit from it.

... and still here we are, from the comfort of your our laptop/mobile commenting on something happening half-way across the world. I am personally not willing to give up this comfort and chances are most people aren't either.

One could even argue that the "West" benefited for centuries from the blood and resources of others, and the only reason why they afford today to talk about climate change and fair trade is their plundering past. At the same time, the poorer countries just do whatever they need to survive and develop. One could even call this type of activism callous and think the only reason the "West" has for pushing this agenda is to ensure there are still poor people from whom to steal in the future.

When someone doesn't have food to put on the table they tend to care less about green living, clean energy, etc.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#130

Post by shapefrog »

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

Yeah, becuase it is working out so well limiting the pool of politicians it to just grifters and conmen who were too shit to sell used cars for a living.
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