[IMTDb]

Yes, seriously.

The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ...

Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?

[coldtea]

>The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday".

Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis?

More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant.

What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests.

>Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?

It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed.

The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it.

(Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).

[yunohn]

Despite this weird sub-thread, the article isn’t talking about “dangerosity”. They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps, who are also murdering opposing activists.

[GongOfFour]

The article isn't original reporting at all, it is basically a press release for a report generated by an NGO. It's fine to question the source material here.

[andriesm]

What indication do we have that environmentalally unfriendly companies are murdering activists?

I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.

[cmav]

There are well documented murders of union workers, for example https://www.ituc-csi.org/guatemala-pre-meditated-murder-of?l...

The situation is probably the same for environment activists, you can be sure that it's not PR that will prevent them from getting killed...

[coldtea]

>I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy

The "backend" 80% of the world doesn't work with PR strategies.

Nobody cares if an activist is murdered in Nigeria or Mexico etc., same way few care about journalists in those area. There will be some reports (if that), most will never even reach your preferred news outlets, and that's it.

And in more subtle areas (outside the developing world) they can always make it look like a "mysterious" homicide case, despite e.g. known threats, beatings, etc, that had been reported prior to the murder.

There are interests of billions to be made, from mega-corps, local lackeys, corrupt politicians and cops on their pockets, and so on.

Same way nobody cares for 10-100 million dollar bribes all too common in big construction, supply, procurement, finance, and so on, tenders. One in 100 might get some scrutiny (usually after the party doing it is out of power with no way to be re-elected, so those affected don't have any clout anymore).

>not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist.

Lol. No exec "orders a hit" (except if it's some local representative or director and knows the ropes in that area).

Foreign execs convey a message that "this thing is an inpediment", "something must be done" and so on, in the vaguest (but clear) possible ways, and people with a lot to gain locally, paid for those deals, know how to take care of things, with several layers of indirection.

Same way sweatshops and child labour (all the way to small kids working on cobalt mines) have "plausible deniability" from industry execs, and several layers of contractors between them.

[inglor_cz]

Not everywhere is the First World. In many places of the world, you can buy protection from scrutiny and investigation of the local authorities, and remote authorities in London or New York won't likely give a damn about what happened somewhere in eastern Indonesia, for lack of jurisdiction.

Plus, given how dangerous some places are even for locals, you can always plausibly deny your involvement: oh, it was the bandits, they are awful to everyone.

[spacemanmatt]

FTFY: PR is a product they buy from media agencies, not something they produce internally through the merits of their actions.

[PeterisP]

Arguably, if journalists and activists get a credible understanding that investigating this activity is likely to just get you hurt or killed without achieving anything, that "a good deed won't go unpunished", then this reputation would decrease scrutiny and investigation.

[yunohn]

Wow. Not sure I want to even try replying to this uninformed mess of a comment.

I’ve never been more sure of the sad HN bubble.

[rendall]

> They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps

Is there an increase, though?

The BBC has sadly become known to be rather loose with facts. The answer to the upstream question here would let us know if there is an increase and what kind. Absolute? Relative? How big of a problem is this, really, or is it more of the BBC fomenting noise and anxiety for clicks.

We're trying to get information to understand the world better. People who run around insisting that x piece of information is irrelevant and how dare you ask either don't understand the question or have something to hide

[yunohn]

You know what? Sure, let’s assume the BBC is “FUDing for clicks”. We’ll ignore the source report, and general common sense.

Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? And that your statistical skills somehow matter to the real world activists dying?

[rendall]

> Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on?

Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is.

I could go through and answer your questions as if we were talking for real, but your response is kind of a poison pill, designed to put me on the defensive ("Oh, of course I didn't mean...")

No. The adults in the room do need to know if activists are being murdered at an ever increasing rate, or if we can devote our limited time and attention to other very important matters. We don't like to be guided to the "proper" opinion by people who will shout But it's murder, you cold-hearted nerd! if we go off track and ask for accurate information

[djbebs]

There is a diference between reporting and propaganda

[watwut]

> The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday".

Why would that be a real question? The activism itself should not be life threatening activity. If the amount of killed activists is proportionally the same every year ... then there is still have real issue.

[goto11]

So if bands of luddites stated murdering software developers, this would not be a problem if the overall growth of the industry was larger than the rate of murders?