Well, it’s been bugging me for a month now, but as the host
of the world’s longest-running viral show, I didn’t have the strength to do it.
But then Sunshine came through with the papaya leaves, and it turns
out—dammit—that Montalvo was right. I am still have swelling and stiffness, but
the energy is returning and the depression dissipating. So it’s time to look up
north in Wisconsin to the Bad River, or the Penokees, which feeds into Lake
Superior. For generations, the Ojibwa have fished for walleye there, as well as
harvested wild rice.
The area, however, is blessed or cursed with more than that.
There’s iron up there in Iron County—who would have thought?—and the area was
settled later by, among others, the Cornish. So they were digging mines while
the Ojibwa were hunting and fishing, and everybody—presumably—was happy. (Ooops,
from watching the video below, I later discovered I was wrong….)
Eventually, all the iron that could be extracted by
underground mining had been exhausted, and the industry collapsed decades ago.
But there’s still iron there—in fact, two billions tons of it—if you’re willing to
do an…
…open pit mine.
In the Wisconsin I knew, the citizenry would have been
involved, the issue discussed, the “pro” of job creation balanced against the
“con” of risk to the environment. And we all—most of us—would have trusted that
the whole affair was being regulated and then monitored by whatever state
agency was responsible. But consider this quote, from The New York Times
article titled—tellingly—How
to Buy a Mine in Wisconsin:
Newly released documents
show that the (proposed) mine operator, Gogebic Taconite, secretly gave
$700,000 to a political group that was helping the governor win a 2012 recall
election.
So
Walker survived the recall—though there were allegations of voter
fraud on the part of the Republican Party—and then in 2013, the whole
question of whether to allow open pit mining in Iron County began anew. And in
case you’ve forgotten, we’re not talking about any little mine, but what could
be the world’s biggest mine: up to 21 miles long and 1000 feet deep. Here’s
what I said about that in my previous post:
21 miles? The average
adult walks about three to four miles per hour. So leave your home tomorrow,
Dear Reader of Unknown Location, at 8 AM. Walk in as much of a straight line as
you can until 4 PM (I’m giving you an hour for lunch). That’s what 21 miles is.
Oh, and
1,000 feet deep? OK, get a night’s sleep, and then run out and find a high-rise
apartment building. Step into the elevator and punch the 100th
floor. That—inversely—is how deep this pit will be.
We’re talking, in short, about a
monster of a mine; nonetheless in 2013 the Wisconsin State Legislature approved
it. Back to The
Times, again, about that legislation:
The mine legislation was bad enough from an
environmental point of view: It allows the operator to fill streams with mine
waste, eliminates public hearings and reduces the taxes the operator would have
to pay.
And
the reason for why the Legislature approved a bill so substantially in favor of
the mining industry? Well, as you can see in the video below, the Senate
Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald, being greatly pestered by a guy with a
camera, got frustrated and admitted the truth. And that is?
The
mining company wrote the legislation.
This
video has had less than 500 views—how can that be? And since when did a
legislator become nothing more than a rubber stamp for whatever corporation is able
to write him or her the biggest check?
Does
the story get any prettier?
Well,
who’s Bill Williams, the president of Gogebic? What’s his history?
Ready
for some Spanish?
La
cúpula directiva de Cobre Las Cruces irá a juicio por contaminar en 2008, con arsénico
el acuífero reservado para consumo humano.
La Audiencia Provincial de Sevilla confirma la imputación
de François Fleury, Bill Williams y Paz Cosmen, a solicitud de la Fiscalía y de
Ecologistas en Acción.
(“The
board of directors of Las Cruces Copper Mine will be tried for pollution in
2008 with arsenic in the reservoir reserved for human consumption.
The Audencia Provincial of Seville confirmed
the charges against François Fleury, Bill Williams and Paz Cosmen, at the
request of the District Attorney and Ecologistas
en Acción.”)
Was
that all? No, because according to the article, the same company was charged
with construcción ilegal de balsas con
aguas contaminadas, detracción ilegal de aguas subterráneas. Balsas, by the way, are holding ponds.
And
in case you’re in any doubt? The article concludes with:
El
norteamericano Bill Williams dejó la dirección de la mina en enero de 2011 y
actualmente es presidente de Gogebic Taconite, proyecto minero en Wisconsin
(EE.UU), que amenaza gravemente el Lago Superior, los abastecimientos de agua y
los cultivos tradicionales de arroz de la reserva de indios Chippewa.
Dejo
/ left
Actualmente
/ currently
Amenaza
/ threatens
Lago
/ lake
Abasticimientos
/ waste
Arroz
/ rice
Well,
Williams and Gogebic Taconite certainly learned something in Spain: let’s head
back to The
Times again, referring to the Wisconsin legislation:
It allows the operator to fill streams with mine waste…
In
short, they weren’t making that mistake, again, so what did they do?
Bought off the legislature, and wrote legislation that allowed them to pollute.
Well,
all roads lead to YouTube, where I discovered that Al Jazeera English had
commissioned a Milwaukee company, 371
Productions, to make a documentary for Faultlines. But when I was writing
my first post, all that was available was a trailer.
‘How
could that be, I thought,’ and went to 371 Productions website.
There, I discovered that the film was being shown to groups for public /
community discussion. Oddly, at that time, Madison—the state capital and home
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison—was not on the list of towns where the
film was going to be shown.
As a
former Madisonian, I found that weird. The city—the second largest in the
state—has a long tradition of liberalism and activism: nobody in Madison was
hosting the film?
Good
news—someone now is. Here’s the screen shot from the website:
Perhaps
it was a good thing, then, that the virus descended, because in my search for
papaya leaves, and in the general misery caused by their lack, I put Wisconsin
and the Bad River mine on the back burner. And today, strength having returned, I found
that Al Jazeera has put the whole film on YouTube, and here, Dear
Reader, I have to confess: I despair of ever seeing the whole thing. Why?
…because
for the last ten minutes, I have been stuck at 17.47 out of 24.27, while that
stupid little wheel rolls and rolls. Know what I think? The café where I write
just got crowded, and everybody is using up my Internet!
A
month ago, when I first came on the issue, it occurred to me: we’re dealing
with a new beast. Crooked politicians? We’ve always had them, and we’ve dealt
with them, to varying degrees of success. But the crooked politician was
motivated by greed, nothing more. What do we have now?
The
crooked ideologue.
Yes,
women and men who loathe big government, mistrust regulation, have a hatred for
the poor, and merrily accept the big bucks that corporations—oooops, those are
people now—are willing to contribute to their reelection funds. Secretly.
Crooked
politicians were bad, but the crooked ideologue?
Way
worse!
