Last week Globolog reported on controversial plans for a gold mine at Rosia Montana in Romania. This would transform the valley of Rosia Montana, the oldest documented settlement in Romania, into four open-pit mines and convert the neighbouring valley of Corna into an unlined sludge storage pond held back by a 180-metre high dam. More than 2000 people would have to be relocated, many of them subsistence farmers who do not wish to leave their lands.
As Globolog went online we learnt that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had decided not to fund the project. Now a fuller account of what went on has emerged. Enter the head of the World Bank, Mr James Man of Sorrow, Man of Wrath Wolfensohn.
Reliable sources say that Wolfensohn was affected by the childrens drawings [see www.rosiamontana.org] and the summary by the Romanian activists after a public forum held on the mine in Washington DC on 27 September. Fabien LeFrancois of the Bretton Woods Project told Globolog. [On 9 October] World Bank staff gave Wolfensohn a briefing note on the project. He got upset as he read the social and environmental analysis, and his eyes really bugged out when he read a bit about the companys CEO having drug convictions. He hollered at his secretary to get [Peter] Woicke [the head of the IFC, the World Banks private lending arm] on the phone, where he laid it out in no uncertain terms that this project should not go forward. Supposedly less than a one-minute call.
The non-governmental organisation (NGO) coalition opposed to the project welcomed the IFCs statement. Eugen David, president of Alburnus Maior, the local community group, said: For well over two years we have been confronted on a daily basis with a psychological war to make way for the project. Today marks an important victory in our struggle to keep our land for our children. We are overjoyed and congratulate the IFC for its decision. We hope that other financial institutions and banks will follow suit and pull out or refrain from investing in this speculative, unprofitable and unsustainable project that will only increase pollution, poverty and corruption.
Globolog played a small role in this affair. Early last week, we asked the IFC to respond to the campaigners allegations. Their first formal response was a statement on 9 October announcing the IFCs withdrawal. Globolog passed this on to news organisations and was the first to relay it to campaigners in central and eastern Europe who have worked for months and years against the project.
Its a wonderful life, Mr Wolfensohn! Every time a bell rings a central banker gets his wings.
Dinosaurs and Hacktivists
To technically ignorant people like me, steganography sounds like pictures of armour-plated dinosaurs doing the wild thing.
What it actually means is hiding one piece of information within another. Theres been some concern over the last year that terrorists could use steganography to communicate on the Internet by embedding text messages in graphics. But until recently most analysts have apparently agreed that steganography is better in theory than in practice because it is hard to use.
In July, this changed when a group known as Hacktivismo released a program called Camera/Shy that makes steganography more accessible to ordinary users. The good news, it seems, is that Hacktivismo, and others like them, want to be constructive.
Steganography is part of a growing toolkit of programs developed by ethical hackers or hacktivists to help people get unrestricted access to the Internet in countries where government wants the reverse a notable recent example being the Chinese governments blocking of certain terms on the search engine Google. Hacktivists say they want to help send repressive regimes religious, military and communist tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and China the way of the dinosaurs.
Hacktivismo, a two-year-old group of about 40 programmers and computer security professionals scattered across five continents, is one of several voluntary and commercial organisations in the field. Others include Peekabooty and SafeWeb.
Oscar Wilde said that the truth is never pure and rarely simple. Add that although the truth may set you free, it seldom comes without a price tag. So who pays the piper? In this case, it looks like being the US government. Representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican, has introduced legislation that would create a sister agency to the Voice of America called the Office of Global Internet Freedom to further the aims of the hacktivists. It would receive $50 million a year over the next two years.
Terrorism, poverty and how to make things worse
Nothing can justify the atrocities committed in Bali on 12 October. But it is irresponsible to refuse to recognise that poverty and dire conditions breed anger and often foster terrorism.
In Saudi Arabia, home of most of the terrorists of 11 September 2001, income per head has fallen by two-thirds or more over the last twenty years (population doubled while income fell from US$16,650 in dear-oil 1981 to $6,526 in cheap-oil 1998).
The Indonesian economy has made very shaky progress, at best, since the financial crisis and revolution of 1997/8. At least 40 million people are unemployed (out of a total population of around 220m). But the statistic gives little idea of the scale of desperation in parts of the archipelago. I can say this with certainty, having seen it.
Only a tiny fraction of the countrys roughly 200m Muslims will condone acts of terrorism. Poverty is therefore only part of the equation. Those responsible for the attacks probably hate the supremely beautiful, low-impact Hindu culture of Bali almost as much they loathe what, to their eyes, is the Sodom and Gomorrah of western-style nightclubs.
Tourism is vital to the Indonesian economy. In 2001 it accounted for around $7bn in hard currency, or 5 per cent of gross domestic product. The flow can easily be interrupted: after the '97/8 crisis, which featured torchings and lootings, it fell by almost a third. But parts of the economy benefited from the fall in the rupiah (the Indonesian currency). As the economist Paul Krugman explains, that included tourist destinations perceived to be safe. Mainly Hindu Bali became even cheaper for foreigners, and flourished.
In their own sweet way, those behind the Kuta attack will add to immiseration in the region, as well as give a hefty shake to a pillar of the global economy.
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