Freeport, free speech.I really didn't want to mention Freeport today but as everyone else is I don't really have a choice.
1. Two people were killed and another person is missing after a landslide buried an employee cafeteria early Thursday morning at the Grasberg mine of PT Freeport Indonesia in Mimika regency, Papua.Again?
2. The government says PT Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg mine has violated the law on the environment and has threatened to sue the giant mining company unless it improves its environmental record during the next few years.
State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar announced
the results of a two-week environmental audit of the Papua mine in February, conducted by a government-sanctioned team of experts.
The team found the joint operation between U.S. Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. and London-based Rio Tinto Plc. at Grasberg mountain did not meet government standards on the management of acid drainage and tailings disposal.
"A single violation is an act of pollution," Rachmat said.
The report also says Freeport has no permit to dump its tailings in a local river and that a huge amount of the tailings at its modified tailing deposition area had illegally entered the Arafuru estuary.
Rachmat also said
that the audit was the first ever thorough study organized at the firm's operations since Freeport started extracting ore from the site in 1973.
"Only the previous governments know why such studies have not take place before," he said.
And the rest of us think we know and are happy to conjecture about fingers in the pie.
3. "
We have a volcano that's been decapitated by nature, and we're mining the esophagus, if you will."
"
I can assure you that we receive better treatment in some foreign countries than we do here" - on U.S. citizens' attempts to hold Freeport accountable to the law.
"
We find President Suharto to be a compassionate man."
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I graduated with the highest grades of any footballer at the University of Texas"
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You've got to be able to just goddam know your instincts are right" - explaining how CEOs function.
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This is not a job for us, it's a religion" - describing Grasberg as the world's greatest mine.
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I guarantee you this sombitch is glad we found a copper and gold mine" - showing a slide of a smiling Irianese youth in a bellhop uniform - " ( ... before Freeport arrived )
the young man was raising vegetables or doing whatever on the mountain with his parents."
"
We're going to mine all the way to New Orleans."
Quotes by Jim Bob Moffett, CEO of Freeport McMoRan
An article in today's Jakarta Post and syndicated from Bloomberg - neither of which I can find online - states that the CEO of Freeport received US$47 million in salary, bonus and stock options last year.
Eight years ago a paltry one percent of future profits was set aside for local community development. As Freeport's net income last year is reported at $995.1 million, how much more than the local community was Mr Moffett 'rewarded'?
Nice work if you can get it.
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