Here’s what we know:
Freeport MacMoRan is the world’s lowest-cost copper producer and the largest gold producer in the world. Producer is a funny term, they pull it from the earth. I suppose the production label comes from everything they do to the stuff they take from the earth.. the processing.
The company is almost 100 years old with its headquarters in Arizona, but of course its operations are located all over the world. Freeport operates the largest copper mine in the world, the Grasberg Mining Complex in West Papua, a province of Indonesia.
West Papua has long been the stage for conflict, where the Indonesian government uses whatever means at its disposal to keep the independence movement down. For many Papuan people the mine is a major part of that conflict, due to the massive environmental damage it causes on their territory, the lack of financial benefit or return to the region, and the use of notorious elements of the Indonesian Military to handle security. Since 2002 there have been several incidents involving the shooting deaths of workers at the plant.
For the past two months workers at the mine have been on strike, demanding better wages. According to Reuters, their current payrate is $1.5 to $3 an hour. They are now demanding that it be raised to $12.50 to $37 an hour. Recent demonstrations by the workers have attracted crowds numbering around 8,000. According to the Jakarta Post, during one of those demonstrations police fired into the crowd and killed 2 workers. The paper also reports that Freeport had been trying to fire all the workers and have them replaced, a tactic an Indonesian Minister said would be a violation of their labor laws.
Freeport is number 136 on the Forbes Fortune 500 list, with over $4 billion in profit for 2010. They have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations and corruption watchdogs for their payments to the Indonesian Government and the Military in an effort to maintain the status quo and quell labor disputes at their mine. The millions of dollars in lost revenue are often mentioned in the media for every day their mine is shut. What does their copper go into? The list is massive and touches on many aspects of our everyday lives in the western world.
John Howard Wolf doesn’t know how to fix the global economy, but he can teach us a thing or two about education. Its been his business and passion for most of his adult life. Having immigrated from the US to Portugal in the late 1970’s, even back then he was a swimming against the current, setting up a primary school in a country still getting over its post-fascist hangover. As a Americano-Luso (American-Portuguese) he has a unique perspective based on the kind of experiences most of us only wish we could have. John Howard Wolf knows literature and he knows history, but what he knows that the world would be lucky to hear about, is another way to approach life and human relations on this planet. For one great hour on the last days of summer in Lisbon, we sat together watching the world go by during a financial crisis, and talking about how this all happened and what is to come.
In the US education system, both primary and higher education, the Opium Wars are hardly mentioned. Children are taught that it was a British problem, a disagreement with the Chinese, and has nothing to do with the United States or these modern times we live in. But in fact, the opposite is true. 
Things are extra busy inside Frubaça, it feels like the high season for apples as they roll passed me on the conveyer belt. At one stage they go under a large machine that shines a light on them, “Infrared Scanning,” Jorge Periquito, president of Frubaça, explains as we walk passed extremely long assembly lines. I can barely hear him over the sound of so many devices and machines as he explains the details of this state-of-the-art infrared scanner that detects any damage or defects to the apples. We go on to see several other fruits being sorted and packaged for sending out to supermarkets and other places throughout the country. Some of the labels are even printed in Spanish and I learn later that beyond Spain the company sends their products to France as well. Hard to believe this modest facility is serving up fruit even beyond the borders of Portugal, but the more I learned about Frubaça, the more I understood, this is no ordinary operation.
Jorge and I walk up the stairs to the giant metal tube where small bottles of mango juice are being loaded in. This new room we’re in has a fantastic scent of fruit that hits you like the freshest mountain breeze imaginable. As the process begins as we watch the digital display of the pressure meter rise. Nearby another version of the same machine is being loaded up with little packs of apple sauce. Again, all around us, conveyer belts carry bottles of juice to their next destination. Near the juicing machines I’m asked not to take any pictures as the machine manufacturers are very protective of their technology, I leave the camera off and focus my eyes on the apple foam flowing into a nearby drain. I’m temped to cup my two hands together and drink some delicious looking foam.