It's not like you state your case, show the damage, the injustice... and then they say they're sorry and mend their ways.

Let's face it: some opponents are ruthless. They just don't seem to care. Public opinion doesn't sway their behaviour.

Take gold mining corporations that have wrought horrible, unspeakable environmental destruction. Some use cyanide — cyanide! — to extract from open pit wounds the 2% to 3% of precious gold content, leaving the remaining poisonous 97% to leach and seep, for generations.

Water. Public health. Farming and the right to eat. The environment. Global sanity. What can you do? Whole communities are at stake.

A number of mining companies don't care much about communities. They will, and they have, killed for the money. And once the money is gone, they're gone.

How do you influence a company that doesn't seem to care about anything? Faced with an opponent that is impervious to logic, human sensitivity and public pressure, where do you turn?

Figure 1. — Communities are too weak against mining interests (click for larger version)

On October 16, 2001, a tailings dam burst at the Tarkwa gold mine. Thousands of cubic meters of mine waste, full of cyanide and heavy metals, washed into the Asuman River, in the Wassa West District of Ghana. "People in the villages of Abekoase and Huni have lost their clean drinking water and their livelihood as they can no longer sell or eat produce from their farms through which the river runs", said Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, executive director of the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM).

The spill at Tarkwa was one of five cyanide spills in Ghana over a period of seven years. In the Wassa West District alone, one of the most intensely mined area of Africa, eight large open-pit mining companies are operating within an area smaller than the US State of Rhode Island. One of those mines is the Iduapriem mine.

The Iduapriem mine was targeted for many years by the local community and by FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) for various human rights abuses around land use, water and ground pollution, and various forms of harassment and repression. "Our people have suffered beatings, imprisonment and murder for standing up for our community rights against multinational mining companies," says Daniel Owusu-Koranteng.

Clearly, with the community being ignored and repressed, where could it and FIAN find leverage to pressure the mining interests? The answer: Target the main pillar of the mine, the financial community.

No power on earth can survive without the support of third parties. When Power appears absolute and insurmountable, essential pillars are missing from the picture. The basis of strategy therefore involves identifying, and affecting your opponent's key third parties.

Figure 2. — Targeting investors brings change (click for larger version)

The New Tactics notebook by Ulrich Mueller is a strategy treasure trove. It provides a wealth of strategic analysis and all manners of tactical detail on how to pressure investors — the main support pillars of the mining industry, and much more sensitive to public campaigning.

The pressure tactics you'll learn in the notebook can be extended to many, many other abusive situations created by corporations that depend on global capital, banks and other types of investors.

Read it and be empowered. And then the power of bad corporations won't seem so absolute and insurmountable anymore.

Philippe Duhamel, interTactica.org

Graphics by P. Duhamel, based on a design by Ulrich Mueller.