Colombia discovers major gold deposit

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia discovers major gold deposit
Email Print Normal font Large font December 22, 2007 - 7:10AM


AdvertisementColombia has discovered a major gold deposit that could double the country's output after 2011, the government says.

The find will require an investment of more than $US2 billion ($A2.34 billion) to exploit.

The Mining and Energy Ministry said details of the find in the central province of Tolima would be announced in February.

Gold production in the Andean country was 15.6 million grams last year, according to ministry figures.

President Alvaro Uribe mentioned the find in a speech on Thursday.

http://news.smh.com.au/colombia-discovers-major-gold-deposit/20071222-1ikx.html

Tolima, Colombia




Report on Tolima from "Doctors Without Borders:"

MSF is also providing medical and psychological assistance to victims of conflict in Tolima and northern Huila departments, an area of fighting, massacres and displacement.

In 2005, MSF visited more than 20 different sites and conducted over 14,000 medical and over 4,400 psychological consultations in this area.

When an evaluation carried out in Ibagué, the capital of Tolima department, revealed that displaced persons had to wait on average three months before obtaining assistance or medical coverage from government agencies, MSF opened a health centre in January 2006 to provide medical and psychological assistance to new arrivals.

More than 1,000 consultations were conducted in the first four months, nearly 30 percent of them psychological consultations.
(snip)

http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=95DD42F5-5056-AA77-6C9F213D41605C77&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Huge gold discovery made in Colombia

Huge gold discovery made in Colombia

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 11:45pm (Mla time) 12/21/2007

BOGOTA -- A mining company has found a huge gold deposit in central-west Colombia which could be one of the world's biggest discoveries, Colombia's mines and energy minister Hernan Martinez announced Friday.

Martinez said a foreign mining group, which he declined to identify, had made the potentially lucrative discovery during exploration work in the department of Tolima.

"The discovery is extremely big, that's what the president of the company said," the minister said.

He said the company, which is listed in New York and London, would likely issue a public statement in February about the find.

Company officials believe the gold deposit could rank as one of world's ten largest finds. Martinez said it is located close to a road and relatively accessible.

More:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=108272

[dipsydoodle]

2. And doubless, at a later date,

whover the current inhabitants of that particular region are will be declared a terrorist group or at best simply displaced.

It's what happens when the yellow stuff is at stake. See here for example : http://westpapuaaction.buz.org/resistance.htm
and here : http://www.converge.org.nz/wpapua/action.html

Odd how Kissmyaresenger's name pops up with boring monotony. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0712-06.htm

[Judi Lynn]

3. So glad you posted the information about this company, Rio Tinto

Yes, if you were going to guess what names would show up connected to anything like this, Kissmyaresenger would definitely be crowding in there right at the top. My GOD. What a bunch of filthy scums these P.O.S.'s are.

First, thanks for the information on Papua. I'm going to save it and read more about this. I'm really deficient in my information up 'til now, and this will get me a good start in the right direction!

Freeport - Rio Tinto Exposed!

Jakarta -- A coalition of West Papuan and Indonesian groups, including WALHI-Friends of the Earth Indonesia, held a series of events to expose the destruction caused by the US-based Freeport and UK/Australia-based Rio Tinto, two giant companies who are owners of the notorious Grasberg mine in West Papua.
(snip)

http://www.eng.walhi.or.id/kampanye/tambang/031031_freeport_rtinto_expose/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a mind-boggling report on their impact on the earth itself around this filthily managed and operated mine:
http://www.eng.walhi.or.id/kampanye/tambang/frpt-report-may-06/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rio Tinto: founded on blood
6 September 2000
BY SUE BOLAND

Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, has more than 60 operations in 40 countries. Antarctica is the only continent that has escaped its ravages.

In every continent where Rio Tinto operates the story is the same: land taken from indigenous people without compensation; workers prevented from freely organising in trade unions; destruction of the environment; and cosy relations with politicians, government officials and dictators.
(snip)

The company was founded on blood. English capitalists formed the company in 1873 to mine the Rio Tinto copper deposit in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, when Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini were in an alliance with Spain's General Franco, Rio Tinto's chief Sir Auckland Geddes told the company's 1937 annual general meeting in London: “Since the mining region was occupied by General Franco's forces, there have been no further labour problems ... Miners found guilty of troublemaking are court-martialled and shot.”

This became the model for Rio Tinto's later cosy relationships with South Africa's racist apartheid regime, Chile's dictator General Pinochet and Indonesia's murderous dictator Suharto.
(snip)

Rio Tinto has an appalling record in its relations with indigenous peoples. Some examples are:

• Rio Tinto led the mining industry campaign against native title in Australia in 1997-8;
  
  
• to build the Weipa bauxite mine in north Queensland, Comalco (then a subsidiary of CRA), forcibly removed two Aboriginal communities, at Weipa and Mapoon;
  
  
• Aboriginal sacred sites were almost completely destroyed during construction of the Argyle diamond mines in Western Australia;
  
  
• Indonesia's armed forces (TNI) have killed and tortured indigenous land owners protesting against the Grasberg mine in West Papua. The mine is primarily owned by US-based Freeport-McMoRan, but Rio Tinto has a 12% share in the company and a 40% interest in the mine expansion. Freeport-McMoran provides Indonesian soldiers with transport, food and accommodation; and
  
  
• the establishment of Rio Tinto mines in Bougainville, Indonesia and the Philippines has resulted in large numbers of indigenous people being thrown off their land with little or no compensation and appalling environmental consequences.
  (snip)

Rio Tinto's destructive practices around the world have led to opposition from workers, indigenous land owners, local communities and environmentalists. Rio Tinto has developed a strategy for dealing with community opposition.

Rio Tinto's subsidiaries usually have names that are quite different to that of the parent company, allowing it to hide its role in destructive mining developments.

In dealing with indigenous peoples' opposition, Rio Tinto usually begins negotiations with several indigenous groups. Once it establishes which group can be bought off, it ceases negotiations with all the others and claims that it has indigenous support for its project.

When faced with community opposition, Rio Tinto sometimes sets up its own “community” groups that support its mining projects.
(snip)

Rio Tinto typically gets substantial assistance from governments around the world. For example, in Bougainville it won a five-year tax holiday. At Weipa, it paid a token A$4 per square mile in rent for the land. Its Tiwai Point smelter in New Zealand was sold electricity at rates 13 times cheaper than household consumers pay.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2000/419/22857

Photos:



Article:
Inside the Grasberg Mine
http://www.safecom.org.au/freeport.htm

~snip~
The Times's investigation also found that, according to one current and two former company officials who helped set up a covert program, Freeport intercepted e-mail messages to spy on its environmental opponents. Freeport declined to comment.

More than 30 current and former Freeport employees and consultants were interviewed over the past several months for this article. Very few would speak for attribution, saying they feared the company's retribution.

Freeport's support of the military is one measure of its extraordinary working environment. In the 1960's, when Freeport entered Papua, its explorers were among the very first outsiders ever encountered by local tribesmen swathed only in penis gourds and armed with bows and arrows.

Since then, Freeport has built what amounts to an entirely new society and economy, all of its own making. Where nary a road existed, Freeport, with the help of the San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel, built virtually every stitch of infrastructure over impossible terrain in engineering feats that it boasts are unparalleled on the planet.

That history, Papua's extreme remoteness and the company's long ties to the Indonesian government have given Freeport exceptional sway over a 21st-century version of the old company town, built on a scale unique even by the standards of modern mega-mining.

"If any operation like this was put forward now, it wouldn't be allowed," said Witoro Soelarno, a senior investigator at the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources, who has visited the mine many times. "But now the operation exists, and many people depend on it."

For years, to secure Freeport's domain, James R. Moffett, a Louisiana-born geologist who is the company chairman, assiduously courted Indonesia's longtime dictator, President Suharto, and his cronies, having Freeport pay for their vacations and some of their children's college education, and cutting them in on deals that made them rich, current and former employees said.
(snip)



(You knew _{George W. Bush's} father, _{George H. W. Bush} is completely involved with Bechtel, didn't you? That company is also the one which got Bolivia to let them privatize their water, then claimed ownership of rivers, ponds, streams, and even attempted to charge the desperate citizens who tried to capture rainwater in barrels because they could not pay the fantastic price increases Bechtel was demanding.

Riots finally drove Bechtel out of the country, after the people suffered so grievously they finally were driven out of their homes, knowing their lives were at risk, to protest in the streets, regardless. BECHTEL.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The closer you look at these monsters, the far worse they look.

As you can see, terrorizing native people is easy work for these filths. It's what they do, and it's what right-winger scum defend as if it's God's will for the clowns with power to run roughshod over the poor. I absolutely pray I live long enough to see fate start dealing back to these monsters what they have handed to their fellow human beings.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Horrid! Just looked at your 2nd and 3rd links. Yes, Kissmyarensenger's name looms in there so

clearly. He's a real Renaissance pig, isn't he? He's gotten into everything unholy, exploitive, vicious, and underhanded. What a way to spend a man's life: bringing suffering to so many, MANY people.

From your second link:

Other than a smattering of U.S. coverage, accounts of Freeport's problems in Indonesia have been limited to local news stories in New Orleans and Austin, Texas, where the company is developing a 4,000-acre real estate project.

Because the mine - which contains gold, silver, and copper valued at $50 billion - is located in one of the most remote areas on the globe, Freeport has managed to restrict media access. When journalists air unflattering information about Freeport, the company threatens legal action, or, in some cases, hires them as company flacks, Freeport also spends millions to polish its public image by purchasing print and TV ads, and by making high-profile charitable donations. Behind the scenes, the company wields political muscle with heavyweights such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Military abuse

In April 1995, the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, a nongovernmental consortium concerned with development and human rights issues, released a report on Freeport that suggests the company turned a blind eye while the Indonesian military killed and tortured dozens of native people in and around Freeport's 5.75-million-acre concession between dune 1994 and February 1995.

After the ACFOA report, investigations by the Catholic Church of Jayapura and the National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia reported at least 16 cases of murder and other incidents of torture by the Indonesian military near the mine. " were beaten with rattan, sticks, and rifle butts, and kicked with boots," one tribal leader told Catholic Church officials. " were tortured till they died." Neither investigation addresses whether Freeport played a role in the killings, although the church report notes that one murder took place on a company bus and three villagers died under torture at a Freeport workshop. (Freeport denies the workshop exists.)

Freeport adamantly claims it was not responsible for the killings, and it has condemned the military's actions. The company also points out that ACFOA backtracked on its original claim that Freeport was involved in the killings. But critics note Freeport maintains close relations with Suharto's regime. Military troops guard the area around the mine, and Freeport provides them with food, shelter, and transportation. The Indonesian government, which has a 9 percent share in the mine, will receive $480 million this year in royalties, taxes, and benefits from the mine, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
(snip)

Hey, it's good for BUSINESS! Once it meets that qualification, the greedy right-wing clowns will rejoice and lick their chops, and ready the death squads to bump off everyone who wanders out and gets in the way, after some sadistic fun torturing them, first.

Some of those greed-at-all-cost-to-the-poor attempt to put their round puffy noses into message boards to fight with the human beings over the corporations' rights to abuse and destroy entire realms of human beings for profit and for the heady sense of stolen power. You'd think they'd be too ashamed to show their filthy snouts even in cyber anonymity.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Bit off topic really but there's more here

Inside the Grasberg Mine

"Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November."

http://www.safecom.org.au/freeport.htm

and here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine regarding its discovery and history. Keep an eye out for an interesting documentary on Discovery, National Geographic, whatever on the subject of the Grasberg "mine" itself - its the whole of the top of a mountain !

It's full exploitation seems to have come about by virtue <sic> of a tacit agreement between the USA and Indonesia when the latter went in to East Samoa.

My overall point was that history has a habit of repeating itself : next up Columbia ?