"They were seen as one of Australia's most significant archaeological research sites, but they also had more than eight million tonnes of high-grade iron ore, with an estimated value of £75m (A$132m; $96m)."

Rio Tinto's official page on this is also worth a read.

https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/inquiry-into-juukan-gorge

Fascinating where they choose to use passive vs active voice.

- "Our relationship with the PKKP people extends over more than 17 years"

- "We are engaging with the PKKP people"

- "In partnership with the PKKP people, we are focusing on understanding"

- "We can re-establish a sense of place"

Contrast with:

- "The decision to destroy the rock shelters was taken nearly eight years ago"

- "the site was reclassified as ‘cleared’ for mining"

- "knowledge and awareness of the location and significance of the site was progressively lost"

- "the Juukan 2 rock shelter is likely to be irreparably damaged"

The Hero, Villain, Victim triangle plays out beautifully there.

In the Active, you have the company positioning itself as the Hero helping the Victim.

In the Passive, you find them pointing to some unidentified character from the company’s past (8 years ago) who stands as the Villain responsible for this.

They’ve positioned it as if the company is merely the Hero currently trying to help the Victims.

Anthropomorphism has taken an evolutionary leapfrog past people.

All this suffering and destruction to meekly underperform the stock market. Why do these executives have jobs?

Maybe because they're paying out profits in dividends?

(In other words, your earlier comment about bloodsucking profiteers misses the mark a little bit.)

No, it's only good for short term value. Long-term the regulatory and social environment evolves to punish these kind of companies.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/can-i-offer-you-a-nice-egg-in...

I suggest you do the same for acronyms that you don’t know.

https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/06/25/busy-beaver-is-t...

it looks like they're just scraping by.

It happens. eg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...

allegedly due to an "outdated map". They eventually settled for several million dollars.

Things made by humans are temporary. If not miners, then flood, earthquake, or other human pursuit would eventually wipe the slate clean.

From a more local perspective, imagine moving away from an area for whatever reason and then a thousand years later someone finds your dirty dishes and Twisted Sister poster and wants to preserve it for posterity.

Source: https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/...

Yet another case where the fine needs to be a percentage of revenue.

You can't hide revenue, but you can hide assets. You might get your $100M judgement, but it's pointless when you can't collect it because the company you fined is a pass-through entity with no assets.

So if a plant has a chemical leak, the company can’t sell every other plant, pay a huge dividend, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid paying damages. The plant would have to be insured for up to the total dividend payout. The insurance company would charge a huge fee based on what they think the plant will end up costing after a court battle, etc.

You would probably kill a few janitors, and the executives would come out unscathed, again.

If you're going to go as far as engaging in violence, it's much better to go after the executives directly, as they're the ones who deserve it, not the guys making minimum wage to clean out the trash cans.

46,000 years from the company's last use, right? I mean, just to make the comparison complete.

46,000 years ago was the first habitation, not the last.