In my column last month, I wrote about
a multinational corporation, Glencore Xstrata, which has compiled a
remarkable history of environmental pollution, labor and human rights
abuses and corruption of elected officials. As it happens, Glencore
is the major investor in Canadian-based PolyMet Mining Corp., which
is seeking government approval for its NorthMet
copper-nickel-precious metals mine near Babbit, in northeastern
Minnesota.
As I have noted in columns over the
past several years, the proposed mine and mill are within the 1854
Treaty Ceded Territory. The Ojibwe bands in the region – Fond du
Lac, Bois Forte and Grand Portage – are participating in the
environmental review process. The bands are concerned that toxic mine
wastes could migrate into lakes, rivers and groundwater and destroy
wild rice beds, etc.
This is not wild speculation: hard
rock mining across the West has been a catalog of environmental
disasters. The National Wildlife Federation says: “The mining
industry is the single largest source of toxic waste and one of the
most environmentally destructive industries in the country. Today’s
massive mining operations involve blasting, excavating, and crushing
many thousands of acres of land and treating the ore with huge
quantities of toxic chemicals such as cyanide and sulfuric acid. The
mines that produce our gold, silver, copper, and uranium are
notorious for polluting adjacent streams, lakes, and groundwater with
toxic by-products.”
Perhaps readers of The Circle are
tiring of my columns about the dangers of sulfide mining; but I think
that, apart from global climate change, this is the most serious
environmental threat facing Minnesota. So, if the editor approves,
I’ll keep riding this horse for a while.
And, with the involvement of Glencore
Xstrata in the mining play Up North, it gets worse.
Near the end of my June column, I noted
that “news reports have tied Glencore to providing alumina to
Iran’s nuclear program, after the U.S., European Union and the
United Nations imposed trade sanctions on Tehran.”
The repressive clerical regime in Iran
has been linked to global terrorism. And following the disputed 2009
elections, the Iranian government unleashed a wave of police and goon
brutality against its own citizens. Amnesty International reported
that “in June 2009, thousands of people were arbitrarily arrested,
dozens were killed on the streets or died in detention, and many said
they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated.”
And the fundamentalist religious
leaders of Iran are proceeding with a uranium enrichment program
cloaked in secrecy, which could eventually lead to the development of
nuclear weapons. Nukes are a bad idea all around; Iran with the bomb
would be a horrific state of affairs and likely lead to a nuclear
arms race in the Middle East.
Although the nations of the world have
instituted sanctions on Iran, in an attempt to stop its nuclear
program, in2013, both Glencore Xstrata and Trafigura, another
Switzerland-based firm, were mentioned as violators of sanctions
against Iran, by a confidential United Nations Panel of Experts
report.
In March 2013, Reuters reported that
Glencore “had supplied thousands of tons of alumina to an Iranian
firm that has provided aluminum to Iran’s nuclear program,
anallegation Glencore confirmed as accurate.”
In May 2013, Reuters noted that “U.N.
experts, who monitor compliance with the Iran sanctions regime,
raised the possibility that the swap deals were a means of flouting
restrictions on trade with Iran … ‘If confirmed, such
transactions may reflect an avenue for procurement of a raw material
in a manner that circumvents sanctions,’ the 49-page [U.N.] report
said in reference to the media reports on the swap deals. ‘The
companies involved have stated that they have halted those
transactions.’”
In response to these press reports,
Glencore said that it “complies with applicable laws and
regulations, including applicable sanctions.”
In a recent development, the New York
State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has issued subpoenas to
four U.S. insurance companies (Chubb Corp., CNA, Liberty Mutual Group
and Navigators Group, Inc.) that reportedly “had issued
marine-cargo policies for commodities firm Glencore Xstrata PLC
allegedly tied to the Iran metals trade,” according to an April
report in the Wall Street Journal.
I wrote about the Glencore-Iran
connection in the June 20 edition of the American Jewish World, which
I edit and publish. I sent a copy of the editorial to Gov. Mark
Dayton and other Minnesota officials dealing with permit approvals
for the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine. Minnesota DNR
Commissioner Tom Landwehr responded that my editorial will be
included in the record “for possible use as we proceed” with the
NorthMet environmental impact statement.
