Analyze

Piecemeal approach to self-regulation forecloses more sweeping structural change as well as an actual check on power thru independent control over corporations

No real audit and no punishment for violating something like the UN Global Compact.

Since the CSR initiatives align with some of the infrastructure/development and personal goals of the village elites, it forecloses resistance to the mine and in fact has spawned violent defense of the mine by local people. 

Mistrust of the NGOs, who come in and out, and who the corporations have carefully targeted with smear campaigns, forecloses certain kinds of alliances that could have put a check on corporate power, but perhaps not improved the lives of the villagers in the way they wanted.

They see their environmental training as enlightening the backward locals who eat turtle eggs or fish in the reefs - so here they are helping the charismatic environment and helping the unknowing locals to preserve natural beauty. They wanted to provide waste management - they believe it’s helpful to the locals and it also would help with their distaste for trash at the beaches. The other CSR initiatives are portrayed as being forcefully demanded by the village elites and given as concessions to improve security, so the narrative of “help” to the locals is less prominent.

Their scientists have neutralized the environmental damage their practices do - defining tailings as nontoxic 

Enviro-rituals - (Gusterson) - -Flamboyantly lick, eat, bathe in the tailings - for media, on road shows… Rituals demonstrate but also produce their belief in the harmlessness - cites Geertz 1973 and Althusser 1971. This is also a kind of diversion - because maybe the tailings are not toxic to a human’s licking them, but they destroy the marine life the way they are dumped into the ocean, and they may react with other things in such a way that the end result is extremely toxic to humans, not to mention that it is certainly extinguishing a staggering amount of marine life by nature of crushing, before anything else 

Charismatic species - they hand-release sea turtles near a resort, very publically, a very feel-good moment that “Feels like social action”, and produce narratives of unenlightened locals being the ones bad for the environment because they eat turtles and turtle eggs - criminalize subsistence - attribute to poverty and ignorance, so they spend corporate $ on environmental education, and tell the kids that what their families do is bad. (The subsistence activities are often social - so people do them even if they can afford to buy food differently)

In-house corporate anthropologist - debunking the idea of the “ecological noble savage” as something first world activists made up - of course there are different ways to be ecologically-minded… 

Things that compete with mining corporations for resources or charismatic cases that are easily blamed on the mine are the environmental issues they talk about and they work to address - missing is greenhouse gas, for example. 

Claim they focus on Western corporations to get Western funding - claim they’re not transparent whereas corps have annual reports to shareholders. Various defaming of the NGOs - saying they are in the hands of “international anti-development” NGOs, that they infiltrate and only create illusion of local resistance, say their clear goal is “to bring international mining companies to their knees” - [which is almost funny]

Clandestine strategies: instead of suing, put the NGO on a watch list of bad/ non transparent NGOs, use the NGO as a workshop case study of bad NGO, held by a different cooperative and influential NGO that allies with the corporation secretly; op-eds “placed” into newspapers calling for regulation of NGOs

Basically turning transparency and accountability against the NGOs

Control of information flow - circulating the inaccurate NGO bulletin to rile up anger at the NGO - 

They define themselves as “environmentally friendly,” “good”, “moral”, “responsible” mining corporation, and their moral narrative is defined against these other groups in different ways: they have healthy competition with the backward mines (also “dinosaur”, will go extinct, they do blatant pollution and human rights violation), patronizing superiority for the poor Indonesians, and they straight up vilify the activist NGOs

Mine managers are proud of the mine and the environmental/ social/development projects, which they raise as evidence 

A lot of local groups want to take credit for attacking the activists - attacking the activists and defending the mine becomes morally sensible to many of these actors

Interestingly the narrative here is that village elites have used tactics, including violence, blocking roads, etc., to force the mining corporation to act as the state and provide patronage, goods, development in the material/infrastructural sense. The corporations use the CSR to quell their protesting. 

State gets demoted to one player of “multi-stakeholder” process in these voluntary self-monitoring/ self-regulating situations. Corps are rhetorically also just one player, but come to these events in force and drive the rhetoric, and in fact it’s all up to them what they actually do

In remote areas, the state doesn’t provide infrastructure and services so the mining companies become de-facto state in the provision of these things.

Three features described for CSR - 1) voluntary self-regulation, 2) articulating the value to the profit of doing CSR, and 3) strong ties to development industry 

Differing beliefs about what is development - the Infrastructure -centered development is out of style - now it’s about self-help, participatory, bottom-up - the former is associated with slow state and new is associated with certain types of CSR - tho not the wins that the village elites got in this case 

US foreign policy logic - applied to corporations - get security by giving aid/CSR boons to people - Security guards perform human rights training intensely - laminated cards around necks. → new and different forms of violence

Taking the offensive with PR firms that are doing CSR consulting plus clandestine research and “strategies for destroying NGOs” - with naked instrumentalism in their reports, not using words like “vulnerable, marginalized, underrepresented” - get personal dirt on people in NGOs - use words like “vocal, emotional, aggressive, passive, proactive, and cooperative but unclean” - p158 - also offers contract of clost to $1M for a big secret smear/boost campaign. Advise against suing because of “david and golaith” image. 

“The Project Green Shield report recommended turning public opinion against LOH (NGO that accused Newmont) by using Indonesian movements for NGO transparency and an NGO Code of Ethics.” 

Giving loans to their critics - it may not silence them fully but it discredits and makes them seem complicit/ hypocritical

            This past spring break (2016), on a Monday night while at home, I responded to a motor vehicle accident as a Good Samaritan. The accident happened at approximately 19:00 hours on my street in Blackstone, Massachusetts. My father was on our front porch when he heard a car barreling down our back country road which has a long straight away before taking a sharp turn. Before the impact he knew that the driver would not anticipate the curve fast enough at the speed he was traveling. Sure enough, there was a loud bang and the sound of a car rolling over, which I could hear from inside the house (approximately ¼ mile from crash).

I grabbed both of my personal first aid kits and a flashlight while my father called emergency services. I walked to scene with my father and younger brother. I sped walked and arrived at the crash site first.

The vehicle was a ‘90s sedan that went straight into a telephone pole, which broke like a toothpick, and rebounded backwards and flipped 90 degrees on its left side. Parts of the car, tools, and glass were on ground, airbags deployed. There was a car seat in back, and for a moment I thought a child but it was just clothing. Front right tire was up inside front passenger compartment. Hazards flashing. Driver window was rolled down. No people in the car.

My brother and father directed traffic on either end of the crash site. They almost certainly prevented at another crash by a car who didn’t see the accident but saw my brother flag them down with his light.

I saw man standing 20’ from crash site, talking to people in a gold SUV. When I arrived I start asking medical questions and the people in the SUV leave – they were by standards who pulled up but left after I started taking over. The man in question appeared to be a lower/middle class white/Hispanic, male in his 30s. He was driving an older car with lots of tools in the back which were now all over the road. Our neighborhood is a small country community and I know he was not from our neighborhood. I assumed he was some kind of mechanic, bases on tools in car. He was wearing dirty jeans and stained hoodie. He was definitely a blue-collar worker. He may have been from downtown Blackstone which is largely lower middle class and blue collar, or he may have been from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, which is known as “the Detroit of Rhode Island”.

As I tried to obtain basic medical information from the patient, it was apparent he had an altered mental status, and did not appear to understand fully what was going on. I am not certain if it was alcohol and/or drugs as for safety reasons I did not get close enough to the patient/suspect to tell. He was ambulatory and verbal. The interesting part of our conversation was to the best of my ability as follows:

“Are you sure you’re okay? Umm yeah. Are you hurt anywhere? I’m fine. [I did visual inspection of patient using flashlight which revealed no major injuries other than minor cuts from airbag]. [He starts to edge away from scene]. You should wait for ems to check you out. Wait, you’re right! I might die?! You appear to be okay externally but things like internal bleeding, and a full assessment could reveal other problems. Naaaa [turns and starts to walk away down street]”

I attempted to convince the patient to wait on scene but he was going through several mode swings during my interactions with him from fear, anxiety, agitation, and anger. While I was talking to the patient, the first officer from the neighboring town arrived on a motor cycle. I informed the officer at the scene of the situation about the patient/suspect fleeing the scene. The officer took note of it and continued to work to secure the crash site. Another officer arrive from my town from the west. I informed the same and he stated that he would need me to make a witness statement and proceeded to the crash site. A third and fourth officer arrived together the same time as two ambulances (indicated because of rollover) from the east. One of them told me again that they would need a witness statement.

I met back up with my dad and brother who were no longer needed to control traffic with law enforcement on scene. Neighbors had started coming out to see the commotion. We were all talking near the scene while waiting for officers. Finally one of the officers asked another officer if he should go look for the suspect. He left approximately 20 minutes after my last contact. I never spoke with the arriving EMS as they came from the east and I was on the west of the accident but officers told them that the patient was missing. Eventually multiple officers and cars were out looking for patient/suspect but was not found as far as I am aware. I finally was given the chance to give my testimony which, to the best of my knowledge, mirrors this report. After reading out loud in front of the officer and my father and brother to confirm accuracy, the officer asked me something very strange. First, he asked me to add what the suspect was wearing (which I had forget to include), but then he also asked me to state that I saw the suspect drive into the telephone pole and that I smelled alcohol on the patients breath. Neither of these things were what I told any of the officers and ran counter to my testimony as written. I include the suspect’s clothing description but I did not add the second mention and stated that I had not witnessed those things. After my report I left the scene with my brother and father.

Some of the policies and procedures relevant to this case were: scene safety, dealing with aggressive/combative patients, and HIPPA did not apply to me as a bystander so I gave full testimony including medical status to the officers.

After reflecting on the education I received and didn't receive, there are a few things that would have allowed me to be better prepared for this incident. How do I convince patients to stay on scene? When do you give up? I wish my EMT class was a little better scene on safety training. Being distracted by the emergency at hand, I did not truly take into account the fact that the power lines were live and drooping with half of the telephone poll pulling on them. Only supported by the next and previous poll but not drooping more than 3’ from normal, more than 15’ from ground, and 10’ above vehicle. Reflecting on it, I did not really consider the threat as I should have, and neither did the officers on scene. I don’t understand why it took so long for police to search for the suspect who could have had major medical issues. Should I have followed suspect/patient alone? When is a citizen arrest allowed/appropriate? Should I have asked for the badge number of the officer who asked me to misrepresent the truth on an eye witness testimony? What is the process to do that anyway? If I had the answers to these questions I feel I may have been able to provide better assistance, but then again perhaps not.

this graph is a perfect representation of the affects any thing can have on communities.  this graph can be correlated with things like natural disasters and their would be an increase in numbers.

The sources of resilience come when the economy improves.  This graph shows that the poverty rate had increased from 2008-2009 because of the recession the country went through.

Food stamp (SNAP) rolls increased over the years, and the article addresses that this is a sign of poverty.  The USDA is an agency that administers food stamps.