| >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. |