When I first came to Canada, I was told by proud Canadians that the country is unique: “Everybody is polite; no protests; and no class action law suites.  Not like across the border.” 

Yet this week I have been contacted by Canadian lawyers seeking a technical specialist to help them start a class action law case against some miners who shut their mine.  The student protests in Quebec continue unabated–over tuition of all things.  And here in Vancouver, one of my colleagues was caught up in a shit-throwing protest over a proposed coal mine.  Here is the report on what happened: 

Protesters of a mining conference in downtown Vancouver were throwing more than just rocks.  The Four Seasons hotel on West Georgia was evacuated Thursday afternoon and Vancouver Police’s hazmat unit was called in after six protesters pulled the fire alarm and threw a bag containing what was later determined to be feces mixed with liquid into the meeting room.  Protesters immediately left and VPD said they have no suspects in custody.   The luncheon affected was hosted by the Canadian Institute of Mining, which was discussing the Raven Underground Coal Project in Port Alberni and the Comox Valley. It was headlined by John Tapics, the president and CEO of Compliance Coal Cooperation, which is leading the project.   VPD spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness said the smelly stunt posed no risk to public safety and there have been no arrests. The investigation continues.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Liquid+feces+tossed+protesters+evacuates+Vancouver+Four+Seasons+hotel/6674469/story.html#ixzz1vuoY5OFM

Have times changed that much in Canada? 

Now I support reasoned debate about mining.  I am guilty of as much.  But to disrupt meetings in this way, is, well simply disgusting.  No protestor makes a point thus. As no student gets sympathy not studying and demanding not to pay for it.  As for the lawyers, I suppose they represent shareholders who have lost money investing in mining, and now they want their money back.  Just as I would love to have the money back I have lost on the stock exchange.  Maybe we share-losers should go throwing things in protest.

Maybe kids are so spoilt these days that they do not want to study, they do not want to learn, and certainly they do not want to engage in intelligent debate.  What do you think?

Last week two of the serious magazines that I read more for information than crass pleasure had articles on drones.  Those are the unmanned aircraft currently used to kill targets in the Middle East who have, or may want to play terrorist.   One of the articles told of the use of drones to catch some nasty people in Idaho who barricaded themselves on their independent-state farm.

Now today I receive an email that tells me the following: 

Aerial survey company Bluesky has launched a fast response aerial survey service using state of the art unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones. The technology, originally developed by the military, includes Artificial Intelligence (AI) guided autopilot, high resolution integrated camera and environmentally friendly rechargeable propulsion system. Autonomous take-off and landing ensures the system is easy to use and with a wingspan of less than a metre it can be easily transported without the need for complex assembly.

“Using UAV’s we can respond quickly to demands to collect site specific images and data in a very cost effective way,” commented James Eddy, Technical Director at Leicestershire based Bluesky. “The integrated camera captures high resolution photogrammetric images that can be used to create map accurate aerial survey data including height models. The system is compact and lightweight making it easy to store and transport and can be launched by hand from virtually any location. Flight planning software and an Artificial Intelligence guided autopilot make it easy to control and the system will gently and safely return to the ground with a single touch of a button.”

Potential applications of Bluesky’s UAV solution include open cast mines or quarries or even landfill sites where large volumes of material are extracted or moved on a regular basis. The geographically accurate imagery would provide a record of activity at a given point in time and the highly detailed height models could be used to measure stockpiles, cut and fill volumes and for facilities management and safety monitoring.

I can hardly wait to get my first project involving the use of a drone to monitor the performance of a mine tailings facility.  These days some are so big that it is impossible to see them all in one glance.  The biggest I am involved with is nine kilometers from one end to the other.  Even in a helicopter, it is difficult to get an overall impression of what is and what is not.  Imagine having a drone on patrol sending back high class images of beach formation, wet areas, channel flow, the change of pool geometry and the rest. 

Amazing it would be if this military invention and development came to be a common-criminal-catching and a common mine-management tool.

On Saturday I posted a piece on the Pebble Mine.  Here is one of the comments on what I wrote—the commenter takes me to task for consulting to the EKATI Diamond mine, while questioning the need for and the practicality of opening the Pebble Mine.  First the comment and then my reply, which is an extended essay on the morality & ethics of diamond mining.

You question whether a gold mine is needed everywhere.  So let’s ask whether a diamond mine is needed everywhere simply to put glitter on a woman’s finger.  Probably not one could argue, but I see you do consulting work for Ekati so I guess a diamond mine in the pristene north is really OK.   So maybe the argument can be simplified down to whether a person can get some personal economic benefit from the venture (diamonds -yes, Pebble – no).  Stand by your morals and refuse to support the glitterati, stop consulting to the diamonds industry.  There is no proof their tailings will still be stable 1000 years from now.

The simplest answer to the contradiction of working for mines and questioning the need for the Pebble Mine is this:  if good men do not act, bad men will.

A complete and more complex answer is contained in the book by Edward O. Wilson called The Social Conquest of Earth.  Very briefly, Wilson’s thesis is that we are the product of two evolutionary forces.  The first is individual selection that is the basis of all acts of self-benefit, including greed, accumulation of wealth, kids first, and probably sin in general.  The second is group selection.   Thus group selection is the basis of altruism, honesty, cooperation, and of course tribalism.

One could say that individual selection is the basis of the work I do, and group selection is the basis of this blog and my negative comments about the Pebble Mine.

I have often written that my three grandfathers (one a step-grandfather, but the nicest of them) were all miners.  My father was a miner.  I grew up on a mine and was educated on a mining-house (now BHP) scholarship.  I believe in mining; I have benefitted from mining; my kids have been and still are been educated on mining-derived income.  I know others can and should get the same opportunities as I have received from mining.

And because of this deep personal involvement in mining, I know mines can and do impact the environment.  I know mines done well can benefit people.  I know mines done badly or done in the wrong place can devastate places & people.

I designed and oversaw construction of the Cannon Mine tailings impoundment just above Wenatchee.  I know you can build high and large tailings facilities close to towns to no detriment.  Go look at the Cannon Mine website or go visit the mine if you doubt me.

I managed the engineering of the UMTRA Program for five years.  We closed twenty-four inactive uranium mill tailings piles in ten states in accordance with Federal regulations that set a design life of 1,000 years.  I know how to close tailings impoundment to minimal societal and environmental impact.

The first tailings impoundment I designed was for the De Beers Kimberly mine.  I went on to diamond mines in Botswana.  I was probably the first engineer of the Jwaneng mine tailings.  And now I am proud to consult to BHP on the EKATI diamond mine tailings.  What we have done and are doing is no secret.  We published a paper on our work in the Tailings and Mine Waste 2011 conference last year.

Hence I know the EKATI tailings facility, on closure, will be but another terraform in the environment and respond as any other, many other, geomorphic expressions in the landscape.  Go visit, or read my paper, if you doubt me.

My ex-wife was the granddaughter of a diamond buyer.  She inherited many big stones.  I could not, on a mining salary, afford to insure them.    In the good days, she gave me a magnificent men’s ring  with a large yellow Australian diamond in the middle.  I sometimes wear it when I go courting;  although it tends to scare the average Vancouver widow and divorcee.  Too big, I am afraid.

Thus I know just how vain and useless is a big diamond—-although they are incredible beautiful.  What can I say, but that a big diamond is part of individual evolutionary selection.   It has nothing to do with group selection and altruism.

Of course we do not need diamonds.  Sea-shells would suffice if sufficiently rare, beautiful, and expensive.  But try convince a woman of that.

We do not need gold, except for my computer and false teeth.  But convince a Republican of that.

Finally there is a single fact that distinguishes my consulting on tailings for mines and  blogging about Pebble Mine.  Nobody pays me to blog.  Nobody pays me to opine about the Pebble Mine.  The mine is still but a dream in Anglo’s flight from South Africa.  Bristol Bay is a valuable resource.  The issue is under consideration and the topic of intense debate.  I know that I know as much about tailings as anybody talking, writing, or experting about Pebble’s tailings.

And thus in the late evening, after a hard day consulting on the best way to dispose of tailings, I believe that I am entitled to say what I think about things that affect the well-being of the tribe—group selection at its best.

The draft report by the EPA on potential mining impacts on Bristol Bay by the Pebble Mine or any of the other seven potential mines in that part of Alaska is published.  Here is a link to one report thereon—there are hundreds of news items, so maybe look for others as well if the topic interests you.

We can expect much comment and vacuous writing on the EPA  report–why this is one to begin with.  In essence, the EPA finds that there is a real probability of failure of the tailings impoundment and a real possibility of contamination of fish habitat by a mine above Bristol Bay.  “Could wipe things out for decades,” they say.

This finding is so obvious that you blush to think that it took a big government agency months to come to so simple and obvious a conclusion.

The highly politicised nature of the Pebble Mine and mining development in general in the area makes any statement dangerous.  In saying anything, you risk swift attack by the powers that stand to benefit from the mine.  Even my past postings on this blog on the Pebble Mine have brought me stern lectures from friends and bosses—Anglo is a client, they say.  Maybe we should offer to help them, not comment on their mine?

I retreat into dumb silence and the shield of blogging.  Anglo knows what I write; they know who I work for; they probably even know me.  It is their choice.  But recall that Anglo in the old days in South Africa stood for freedom–at least opposition to the Apartheid regime of the day.  I take that to mean that Anglo still supports freedom of opinion.  And freedom to choose whom to hear.

Those who oppose Pebble Mine will laud the EPA report and back up their beliefs with the authority of the EPA.  Those who support the mine, will attack the EPA as a bunch of hopeless innocents beholden to Obama.  One potential peer reviewer of the EPA report has already told me he will attack the report for generalization:  they did not evaluate the Pebble Mine; they simply looked at averages and statistics.  That is not science, he will say.  That is opinion based on prejudice, he will say.

He who shouts loudest may win.  She who coins the best sound bite, will win.  Those who can write the most eloquent letter, may win.  And those with power behind the curtain will prevail.  Oh where is Hamlet to pierce the curtain to Polonius when we need him?

The real issues in my mind are these: Do we need yet another gold mine?  Do we need a gold mine in every state and county?  Surely there are some places we just should not mine?    Surely at least once, we should put food ahead of gold?

I oppose the mine for the very simple reason that I know we cannot build waste rock dumps and tailings impoundments to last forever and never be subject to the inevitable forces of geomorphology.  Or if we can, as we did on the UMTRA Project, the cost is more than a commercial miner will pay.

I repeat what I have written before: (a) prove there is no need for perpetual water treatment; (b) prove that you can walk away at the end of mining and not do long-term surveillance & maintenance; (c) show how the waste facilities will perform in the next 1,000 and 10,000 years; (d) prove that there is zero probability of failure and zero probability of fish impact.

Unless you can satisfy me, you should not be allowed to mine.

Now I know I shall be excoriated for such arrogance & pride.  I shall get nasty comments.  I shall receive supportive private emails.  My bosses and consulting colleagues will sit me down and politely admonish me.  It will all be a small and  private replay of the bigger fight.  For billions and big egos are at stake.

Join in the fray.  It is a worthy fight.  At least as worthy as the fight that Anglo fought against Apartheid.

Students in Chile are protesting; they are demanding free and better education.  The more communist-inclined are demanding nationalization of the country’s copper mines—which produce some sixty-percent of the country’s income.  Politicians dither and special-interest groups lobby.  It takes six years to get a degree when at most it should take four years.

There are clearly class differences in Chile.  You do not need statistics to underpin the observation that as you go further north-east in the city, the apartments get smarter, the people better dressed, even taller and better looking.   Ride up along the coast and the sheer mass of high-rise apartment blocks looking down over a rocky shore, attests to the money some have to enjoy the good life, even in the absence of sandy beaches. 

The mining folk that I chatted with are comfortable.  The middle-aged talk of second homes, foreign trips, expensive wines, and smart restaurants. The young talk of cars, trips home to the south, and foreign education and even foreign work assignments.  They are all in demand and well-paid.  Mining clearly is one way to go to put that eduction to profitable use. 

I have no statistics on scholarships to mining and other mine-related engineering students.  It would be interesting to know how many Chilean students are getting through the six years of education on direct mining money.  Or on indirect mining money, which we may define as income earned by parents in the mining industry.  Are any of the many foreign-owned mining consulting companies serving the Chilean mining industry sponsoring students?  If they are not, they should be.

How many Chilean-trained engineers are working out of the country on mining projects?   How many foreign mining folk are working on mines in the country? 

These and many more questions swirl around the ultimate question: why does it take six years of education to get a mining degree in Chile?   If it is the fault of the system, then I can begin to see why students want it free.  No undergraduate degree needs six years of study.  Not even mining engineering.  In most places you can have a Masters Degree after six years of study. 

No education is free—somebody works so that others can study.  And this is particularly so for university students.  No all who aspire to go to university can get there and too many who do get there simply do not have the brains or aptitude to study.  So inevitably there is a drop-out rate.  That is why engineering students are in demand and paid accordingly.  They have proven they have brains, aptitude, ability, concentration, or all the above, and hence can get a degree.   Thus they can be taken into industry and commerce–of any shade or variety. 

Certainly the young Chilean engineers that I met who are working in the Chilean mining industry are smart, intelligent, committed, and hard-working.  I am almost tempted to say they are more-so-thus than elsewhere but that would be an unfair comparison.  I did not dare ask any of them if they are so good because of six years of study, a good educational system, or just because they are innately clever. 

So while I can sympathize with parents and students struggling to pay for university eduction (I am still paying for one of my daughters and know the cost), I cannot concur with the idea of free university eduction for all who wish to go.  Things get competitive at university.  It is a winnowing experience.  Only some will succeed.  Many will fall by the way.  It is a shame, but not all humans are alike, even though they all deserve equal opportunity.   There is no such thing as equal outcome, equal success, or equal life-styles.  Not even in mining.

Always on the lookout for mining scams, I came across the news report repeated below.  This Californian scammed an elderly couple of $5 million promising to extract gold from abandoned mines.  I can never quite understand how somebody who is smart enough to accrue so much money, can be so stupid as to part with it on the flimsiest of evidence–or no evidence at all. 

Is it the all too human greed when confronted with the prospect of gold?  Is it senility that becomes a factor at 80?  Is it maybe the guy was charming and believable?  He cannot have been that nice if he fired his lawyer and sought to read more than 600 pages of rant at his sentencing.  He probably deserves fourteen years in prison. 

Any rate here is the story and a warning:  do not invest money in promises to get gold from abandoned mines.  Maybe there is gold in those old tailings dumps, but that is all. 

A federal judge Monday sentenced Walthall to nearly fourteen years in prison on several counts of wire fraud and failure to appear in court.

Walthall, 56, told a couple in their 80s that he had experience in gold extraction and that he would use their $5.5 million investment to extract gold from abandoned mines.

But instead, Walthall spent the money to pay off part of a $250,000 loan he received from a former fiance, as well as his son’s $10,000 film school tuition and even buying a hyperbaric oxygen chamber estimated to be worth $60,000, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

He jumped bail last year, but was arrested by the FBI in Nevada while carrying a gun and a book titled “How To Be Invisible”.

In a bizarre sentencing hearing, Walthall tried to fire his attorney, lashed out at the victims, and was turned down when he asked to read a 607-page statement that he said he’d been working on for six months.

Languages come and go.  New ones develop as old ones die out.  Latin is now Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, and other dialects of Spanish and French.  English may retain its Anglo-Saxon roots, but none of us can now read or understand early English which is effectively a foreign tongue.  English at basics is a pigdin formed of old English and French as imposed by the 1066 Norman overlords. 

Growing up in South Africa I learnt a smattering of Fanagalo.  My mother spoke what was called kitchen Fanagalo to the maids who helped her run the house and who in effect did the cooking.  My father spoke mine Fanagalo to the Blacks on the mine and the fellow who came up to the house to do the gardening.  I was formally taught Fanagalo when I joined Union Corporation and went to work on the construction of the Hendrik Verwoerd dam.  We chatted away to the workers placing concrete to form the massive gravity and arch dam, now called the GariepDam.

Like all languages, Fanagalo had a cadence, a rhythm, a certain poetry to it.  It was certainly unique in that you did not have to worry about declensions or conjugations, or even tenses.  You had no need of the subjunctive.  Yet I recall that one could express many a subtlety and emotion with an additional wave of the hand, a voice tone, or a look.  Talking about the French inspectors who came to check on concrete placement quality, was done in such a way that we all, from the newest laborer to myself, the civil engineer, could understand and appreciate the attitudes the team had to this strange creature from a foreign land and spoke an unitelligible language.

In a report at this link, I read that Fanagalo might be fading away in South Africa and on the mines as a common communication means.  The report tells us:

Prof. Mbulungeni Madiba, a linguist at the University of Cape Town, said surveys done a few years ago showed that 36 percent of the workers used Fanagalo when they were off work and away from the mine.   Seven percent described it as their “home language” but he said they were most likely migrant workers from places such as Mozambique who wanted to say they spoke something South African.

But companies like Gold Fields, the world’s fourth largest gold miner, are looking to replace it with English or African languages such as Xhosa for cultural and safety reasons.  Other South African miners are doing the same. Harmony Gold has a policy to ensure all employees are English literate by 2015, which spokeswoman Marian van der Walt said “implies phasing out Fanagalo.”

Unions also want to see Fanagalo pushed aside.   “We are strongly of the view that the languages used should reflect the location of a mine,” said Lesiba Seshoka, spokesman for the National Union of Mineworkers.

Language politics and the urge to change the language everybody speaks is hardly new in South Africa.  I was brought up speaking English.  My paternal grandmother spoke only Afrikaans to me.  My maternal grandmother lapsed often into her native German while claiming to speak the Queen’s English.

The government of the time was trying to get us all, of every hue and origin, to speak Afrikaans.   And there were the Afrikaans academics who would not admit that Afrikaans itself is a pidgin language, like Fanagalo.  These academics sought to purify Afrikaans by taking it back to its Dutch roots, and so they were forever introducing new germanic words to replace the French words that had crept in from the Huguenots and the English.   Recall that the French Huguenots who fled France landed up in South Africa and were forced to speak Dutch–a feat they never truly accomplished.

Left to linguistic-nature, Fanagalo would probably develop over time into a new fully-fledged language that facilitates communication amongst the many varied language-speaking groups of South Africa.  (I think there are some thirteen official languages now.)  But the language mavens, it appears, are now intent on once again forcibly seeking to change that and to impose a selected language on others.  Now it is to be English or Xhosa.   The old Afrikaners must be spluttering at the fact that it is English, not Afrikaans that is coming out tops.

Of course the ascendancy of English is inevitable, not because it is a better or easier language, but simply because it is one of those international languages that no longer carries racial or ethnic overtones.  (Except if you support Ebonics in the slums of LA.)  That is an accident of history and of the need for a common way of communicating.  I cannot conceive of Xhosa becoming the primary common language in South Africa, in spite of the fact that it is Mandela’s first language and of many in the ANC.   Zuma is Zulu afterall.

There may be a certain nobility in asking that the language of the mine be the language of the area of the mine.  It may even contribute to safer working conditions on the mine.  But keep in mind that to identify the language of the Witwatersrand where most of the mines are located is nigh on impossible.  Many would claim that the original language of that area is Afrikaans.

So the fight and struggle over language continues.  Academics will opine; managers will pontificate; unions will appeal to worker instincts; and the common man will speak however it suits him and best promotes his advance.  We cannot grieve over the death of a language.  That is inevitable; has happened often before; is happening now; and will continue as long as people move around and talk.  We can simply sit back and watch with interest what happens.

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A radical thesis:  If I had a million dollars to invest in a single mine, I would go meet the mine’s Health & Safety Officer.  If they impressed me, I would invest.  If they did not, I would get on the next plane and fly to the next mine on the list. 

Some background to this idea:  I have worked on mines and on big civil engineering construction sites where accidents and death were almost common and routine.  Luckily those days are past.  I learnt while working on the OII project over three years, that you can indeed undertake $100 M of work with no accidents or fatalities.  I ascribe this success to one person, namely Jill Saminango, a short Hispanic lady who brooked no opposition when it came to working safely.  Her motto was: “If you cannot do it safely, find another way.”  

She kicked people off site, never to return, if they violated health & safety procedures.   She even got a project manager removed when he fought her on a point of safety.  The next project manager made of point of this oft-repeated phrase: “You are all personally empowered by me to stop work if you see it being done unsafely.”  Twice this happened, and both times the work-stopper was commended.   

I believe that a mine at which the Health & Safety officer is empowered and competent can, and will mine safely and with no work stoppages.  Thus my point that if you are contemplating investment in a mine, take a look at its H&S officer, its H&S pogram, its accident record, and its profitability.  I cannot prove it, bu I suspect that there is a correlation between a good H&S record and profitability.

Just consider the mines that have shut down, are shut down, and that have failed because of H&S violations and the death of workers.  At this link is a story that almost proves what I assert here.  I quote in part:  

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 1, 2012, in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho. It alleges that Hecla and its directors misled shareholders by issuing false statements in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.  Hecla mines precious minerals, including gold, silver, lead and zinc. The minerals are sold to smelters, consumers and other precious metal traders.

The complaint claims that Hecla experienced operational problems at its Lucky Friday unit, including safety concerns, but failed to disclose these issues to its shareholders. The problems ultimately proved so serious that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) fined Hecla and ordered the company to close the mine, the lawsuit alleges.

Specifically, MSHA claimed that safety concerns contributed to the death of one miner in an April, 2011 accident. MSHA conducted a full inspection of the mine and on Jan. 5, 2012, ordered that it be closed so that unsafe material could be removed.

On Jan. 11, 2012, Hecla announced that it would close the Lucky Friday mine for up to one year to address safety issues. As a result of the closure, Hecla estimated that its silver production in 2012 would be reduced from 9 million ounces to 7 million ounces.

The lawsuit alleges that Hecla was obligated to disclose to the public and investors that the Lucky Friday mine was unsafe and the extent of any safety violations.

Following the company’s announcement regarding 2012 silver production, Hecla’s stock fell $1.23 per share, closing at $4.61 per share on Jan. 11, 2012, a decline of more than 20 percent, and continues to trade below class period highs.

There are countless other similar stories.  I leave you to seek them out and decide how they affect your investment strategy.

The gentleman in question is one Thomas Mulcair.  He is waffling on the oil sands which he refers to as tarsands.  He wants to shut them down, or at best tax them into non-profitabilty.  He sounds like thoroughly nasty fellow.  Witness his words which could equally well apply to me: 

Mulcair also once compared temporary foreign oilsands workers to Chinese “coolies” hired to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, and has as one of his closest advisors UBC professor Michael Byers, who declared while running for election in 2008, “We need to shut the tar sands down.”

This guy sound worse than Santorum, something I never expected in Canadian politics.  Mr. Mulcair, like all politicians, is adept at backtracking.  See this link where he says: 

“I’m not saying shut them down. I’m not saying we shouldn’t develop. I’m saying we should do it sustainably.  We have to change our attitude and start adding the value to our own products now. We know that it is impossible to maintain the current manner of tarsands development without seriously affecting the health of human beings — and without destroying important ecosystems forever. He (Harper) is currently placing the largest ecological and economic debt imaginable in the backpacks of our children and grandchildren. If Canada could simply apply the basic principles of sustainable development, such as the internalization of costs and polluters pay, it would have long-term beneficial effects both environmental and economic (sic). “

True, all too true.  But I suspect that in the next one hundred years, houses will still be expensive in Fort McMurray and there will still be a thriving economy in Alberta.  Of course, northern Alberta will be as different then as Johannesburg is today by comparison with the first time my grandmother saw it in the early 1900s.  Change comes when resources are mined.  Politicians will say anything to win; so let us ignore them; or better vote against them for waffling and wailing and calling us all coolies. 

On the basis of personal experience, I know the guys in the oil sands are working hard, trying harder, and succeeding as no other generation of miners ever has.  They deserve support and encouragement, not NDP sarcasm.

I get angry and sick when I read the following:

Afghanistan’s mineral reserves could eventually be worth as much as $1-trillion, according to estimates by the Pentagon and U.S. geologists, though the amount remains far from proven. A crucial test for Afghanistan is Friday’s deadline for companies to express their interest in bidding for licences to explore and develop four key gold and copper mining properties.  Canadian companies are taking on leading roles advising Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines on the process: Vancouver-based Canaccord Financial Inc. on financing, SRK Consulting of Vancouver for geological matters and Toronto’s Heenan Blaikie LLP for legal issues. Afghanistan is also emulating Canadian standards for reporting mineral reserves.

It may well be that Afghanistan has more than a trillion dollars of mineral reserves.  It may be as well that they deserve a better life.  But the fact remains that Americans are dying in defence of decency.  The fact remains that the clerics are bigoted and want women out of public life.  The fact remains that the government is corrupt and incompetent and will fall to the Taliban when the Americans pull out.  The fact remains that Canada gave up any role in policing the place in disgust.

I recognize the Chinese are all over the place and as far as I understand it already mining.   The Indians are already there too:

Kilo was part of an Indian-led consortium that won last year’s tender for the Hajigak iron-ore deposit west of Kabul. It was one of 21 initial expressions of interest. Shahrani estimates Hajigak could be the largest iron-ore reserve in Asia.  The minister expects spending on Hajigak to exceed US$14 billion, and investment at the Aynak copper mine southeast of Kabul to reach $4.4 billion, in a country whose GDP was less than $18 billion last year. The rights to develop Aynak were awarded to a Chinese group in 2007, and he expects copper production to begin in 2014.

I may be prepared to change my mind if somebody can persuade me that massive Chinese, Indian, and Canadian mining in Afghanistan not done under the protective umbrella of dead Americans can change a basically feudal society into a modern one.  But I know nobody even prepared to try. 

I am with Ron Paul that America should, like Canada, pull out and let the cards fall where they will.  How many dead Americans for women’s rights and Canadian consultants? Net alone Chinese and Indian mining companies. 

I have never been able to understand how some Canadian go and gush with enthusiasm at life in Cuba.  But now maybe I understand:  if you can mine under the protection of a dictator, or American guns, why not.  It is all about profit dressed up as helping a society to better itself.

I call publicly to my friends in SRK here in Vancouver to desist, to withdraw, to make a public announcement that they will not grovel with corruption in dirty places.  Doing so is not the way the founders thought or would have acted.  In fact I call on Oskar Steffen, Andy Robertson, and Hendrik Kirsten to issue their own statements on this deviation from decency that seems to have taken over the firm.  Or if they can, persuade me why I am wrong and it is OK to mine over the dead bodies of American soldiers. 

The full report that got me going is at this link.