From Peru To Romania: Gold Miners Destroying Communities And Ecosystems

I don’t know how many people remember the Romanian gold mine disaster back in 2000 but I certainly do.   It has since been noted as the worst environmental disaster in Europe behind only Chernobyl.  The firm responsible was Australian.  Today we are witnessing another horrendous environmental disaster in the making at the hands of a Canadian company. 

But, the people of Romania are fighting back against their own crooked government and the dirty deals it has made with foreign corporations and investors.   That includes the Romanian Academy, the nation’s institution of science, culture and the arts that is active in this fight for Romania’s sovereignty and self-determination.  The people of Romania weren’t even going to get more than 3% of the profits from this mining deal.  A clear case of corporate extortion and political corruption.  It appears the worm is finally turning and after more than a decade, that the Romanian people now have an upper hand in saving their environment and their own sovereignty and determinism.

Gold mining is one of the most egregious polluters in the world today.  As noted in a prior article link, in the U.S. metal mining is far and away the largest polluter according to the EPA.   The toxic heavy metals, chemicals and destroyed ecosystems of gold mining makes the BP Gulf spill look like Shangri La.   The amount of waste and poison to mine just an ounce of  gold is staggering.   And given the majority of gold goes into the hands of a very few, this is certainly an example of looting, violence, exploitation and predation of the plutocracy.

This really speaks to the larger issue of deregulated corporate capitalism and the neoliberal deregulation of the borders of private, for-profit capital courtesy of Al Gore and Bill Clinton and now even more so with Obama’s wildly more corrupt TPP agreement.   Through actions rather than rhetoric the Democratic Party is the most dangerous wing of the corporate fascist party in our nation.  This neoliberal deregulation of borders, aka globalization, has led to a global grab for resources like the world has never seen.   Democracy has been crushed in the wake of this grab as resources around the world are literally stolen out from under countries with pliant politicians eager to cash in on their power.   Which, by the way, is why BP has created an ecological disaster with no end in the Gulf; the gift that keeps on giving.  Local communities and entire countries are denied their democratic and human rights to capital and investment while private corporations and the political stooges who serve them loot the world. 

By the way, global mining and mineral rights is something former Bill Clinton knows a lot about.  He used his Rolodex to grease crony deals for private investors and corporations around the world after leaving office.   I remember the stories surrounding Kazakhstan, mineral rights and Clinton.  We still don’t know what exactly happened but it reeks of dirty money. 

“Bill Clinton is the ex-president who has pushed the pursuit of money into the stratosphere, and will probably set a new bar for future ex-presidents,” says Bill Hogan, director of investigative projects at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit ethics watchdog in Washington, and head of its Buying of the President 2008 program.

By the way, speaking of mineral rights and Clinton, he sold off much of the U.S. Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserve that contains more oil than in all of Saudi Arabia.   These lands were originally put into a public trust a century ago.  Although you certainly never read about any of this in the news.   How much will the American people be compensated for whatever is mined from these lands?  Especially now that corporations are now exporting our energy production so that they can once again drive up prices in the U.S. to extort greater profits.