Extractive Companies Privatize Repression and Counterinsurgency in the Americas
Hundreds of police officers attend an operation in illegal gold mining area of La Pampa, in Madre de Dios, southern Peru, on July 13, 2015.
Sebastian Castaneda / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
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As activists increasingly confront extractive industries, militarized repression of those protests has become a growing and lucrative business. This phenomenon is salient across much of the world, including the U.S., where fossil fuel companies are funneling money to police departments that repress anti-racist and environmental justice movements. However, private security is a particularly growing business in Latin America, which is also the world’s deadliest region for water and land protectors.
Priyanka Vittal and Jesse Firempong: Big Oil’s climate cop-out How Canada s fossil fuel giants are buying influence with police departments to do their dirty work in pipeline fights on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border posted on April 22nd, 2021 at 6:00 PM 1 of 1 2 of 1
By Priyanka Vittal and Jesse Firempong
For sci-fi writers, worldbuilding often means dreaming up the vivid and terrifying settings where dystopian stories unfold. In 2021 amid a global pandemic, however, dystopia is a matter of perspective.
As the coronavirus drives this year’s Earth Day events indoors, the chilling effects of climate change have never been clearer.
Australia Scraps Belt and Road Agreement as NZ Voices Caution Over Five Eyes Intel Alliance
Posted by John Chan | Apr 22, 2021
The Australian federal government has used its expanded powers to terminate a Belt and Road infrastructure agreement between China and the state of Victoria. The move, announced on Wednesday, came amid the latest war of words between Australian and Chinese officials. Beijing has again blamed Canberra for the months-long deterioration of relations between the two countries. At the same time, it offered praise for New Zealand this week, after the country’s foreign minister voiced opposition to the expansion of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance.
Earth Day Issue: Big Oil’s climate cop-out
How Canada s fossil fuel giants are buying influence with police departments to do their dirty work in pipeline fights on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border By Priyanka Vittal and Jesse Firempong
Apr 22, 2021
Getty Images
For sci-fi writers, worldbuilding often means dreaming up the vivid and terrifying settings where dystopian stories unfold. In 2021 amid a global pandemic, however, dystopia is a matter of perspective.
As the coronavirus drives this year’s Earth Day events indoors, the chilling effects of climate change have never been clearer.
Black, brown and Indigenous peoples among us were already confronting nightmarish realities before COVID-19: acts of environmental racism and violence to protect a dying oil and gas industry’s profits.
Illustration by Michael Byers, Published 14:00, Apr. 20, 2021
On March 7, 2018, Vincent Ramos was sitting alone at the Over Easy restaurant in Bellingham, Washington, just across the border from his home, in Richmond, British Columbia. He didn’t protest when a phalanx of cops marched in and arrested him. Speaking to the
Bellingham Herald, the restaurant owner said Ramos “seemed like a mellow guy.”
It’s not mentioned in the account of his arrest, but the first thing officers likely did after they cuffed Ramos was reach into his pocket and grab his BlackBerry. That device, and the network it connected to, was at the heart of a sprawling FBI indictment that accused Ramos of racketeering activity involving gambling, money laundering, and drug trafficking. But that doesn’t quite cover the scale of his operation.