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Comment by culi | Hacker News Reader

The part people especially don't like to talk about is that Indonesia is acting as a proxy for the US, Britain, and France here. Readers of The Jakarta Method won't find this surprising but the scale here is astounding. The largest gold and copper mine in the world is here and it is owned by the US.

The US currently has 8,133.5 metric tons of gold which is more than the next 4 combined (Germany, Italy, France, and China). About 1,700 metric tonnes (out of an estimated total 4,720) has been extracted from West Papua by the US

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Yeah, it's a complicated mess. I'm just going to link some of the New Guinea wiki articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea (the Eastern half; an independent state, technically a realm of King Charles III)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_New_Guinea (Indonesian since 1962)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Papua_(province) (The province in Western New Guinea where that giant mine is)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine (see parent comment; tons of ore)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict (still going on; horrific)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_West_Papua (proposal for independent state in place of Western New Guinea; likely a lot of politics and money involved in stopping it)

Probably still lots of people being killed to keep Indonesia (and commercial interests) in control of Western New Guinea. I don't even pretend to understand it all.

It also has a link to Austin, TX. The American company involved in the Grasberg mine is Freeport-McMoRan. In the 1980s-90s it also attempted to develop housing along the Barton Creek watershed. This lead to the ordinance and political group called "Save Our Springs." At the time many people tied the environmental degradation of Papua New Guinea with what the company planned for Austin.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/the-battle-for-barton-s...

Is there a well-known, respected source? I see people talking about it, but someone's book and a Wikipedia article don't distinguish it from lots of fringe ideas, unfortunately. (I do know about Suharto, etc.)

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