Orangutans Pay the Price: Guardian Cries for Apes, Silent on Human Ecocide Perpetrators
📰 THE STORY: The Guardian reports that floods in Indonesia, devastating the Batang Toru ecosystem and killing up to 11% of the rare Tapanuli orangutan population, have prompted Indonesian authorities to take action against mining firms for their role in the disaster. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: This 'ecological catastrophe' didn't happen in a vacuum. Indonesia's
resource-rich lands have been subjected to rapacious extraction for centuries, intensified by colonial powers and later by Western-backed corporations. The military dictator Suharto, installed via a CIA-backed coup in 1965 (resulting in untold numbers of deaths, estimates vary wildly from 500,000 to 3 million), rapidly opened up vast swathes of Indonesian rainforests to foreign logging and mining
companies, setting the stage for precisely this kind of ‘development’ at the cost of the environment and indigenous populations. Double Standard: While conservationists rightly lament the loss of orangutans, where is the comparable outrage from Western media when similar environmental destruction occurs on a far larger scale due to actions of Western-based corporations or their subsidiaries? The
devastation of the Amazon by agribusiness, often fueled by Western consumer demand, receives far less pointed condemnation of 'extractive companies' in a way that risks upsetting powerful Western financial interests. It's 'local firms' for Indonesia, 'market forces' for home. Follow the Money: The mining and palm oil industries in Indonesia, directly implicated in deforestation and ecological