The Colombia Peso/US Dollar forex

On Monday afternoon IKN noted the problem with the Colombian export mix and made mention of the problems the drop in oil would bring to the trade balance and the country's forex rate versus the dollar. It was therefore eyecatching to see today that since Midnight Monday the Colombian Peso (COP) has dropped 4.1% against the US Dollar (USD).

Just sayin'.

Metals versus Miners versus Oil, last week

An interesting comparative chart which shows the five trading days of the week and how they affected the proxies of ETFs and one index for gold (GLD) silver (SLV), the precious metals miners (GDX), junior miners (GDXJ), copper miners (COPX) and oil & gas (XOI):

Only raise 10% of the cash you needed in your placement? Honey Badger don't care!

Honey Badger (TUF.v) has been looking to raise $3m in a placement financing that's been running since June 25th. After adjusting the terms on a couple of occasions it finally closed this evening, with the announcement at the close of a Friday (oh quel surprise). After paying commish, TUF.v managed to raise a tad under $300k, or 10% of its target.

But Honey Badger don't care, he don't give a shit.

The Friday OT: J.S. Bach-Piano Concerto #7 (BWV1058), Glenn Gould

Canada's finest.

I got a mail a few weeks ago about the Bach that pops up here on occasion and, condensed message, does IKN have any ideas and recos for some "accessible Bach". 

I get the message and know that hour-plus swathes of classical can put people off, as can the "scraping instruments" (quote unquote, though never thought of strings that way personally). So try this one, it's beautiful, the maestro is a true maestro, piano always sounds pleasant and at 13 and bits minutes it's good for fitting into your busy capitalist money money no time for love working day. 

A popular Pope

The Pew Research survey on the worldwide approval ratings for Pope Francis, dated yesterday December 11th, shows just how popular the dude is. Detailed, lots of regional and country breakdown, well worth a look. Click here and read.

"...announces a non-brokered financing..."

Gold pops over $1.2k, not a massive move by any measuring stick but yes, a darned sight better than when it ticked $1,140/oz less than ten trading days ago. And the reaction from the junior exploreco people is the most obvious of them all, get those placement offers into the market. As day follows night.

People, let us be clear: The vast majority of companies with no money have no money for a very, but very good reason. They've peddled moose/llama/yak pasture at you for years and yeah for a while back there the party was fun, but punchbowl is now dry and the half bottle of Thunderbird lurking at the back of the kitchen cupboard isn't going to change things. The people scrambling to get the private placements out there this week don't want to make you rich, they want to get a few more monthly salary cheques instead of shares-for-debt deals 12 months from now. 

Do

Not

Feed

The

Animals

Let nature do its thing, evolution, law of the jungle, Darwinian exercises, whatever. These companies must die in order for the Canadian junior exploreco sector to survive and have a real long-term future. Let them go gracefully, stop giving them your money.

Dalradian (DNA.to): Rousseau dumps 2.5m

According to the filings today, it was Rousseau Asset Management Ltd who dropped that 2.5m chunk of Dalradian (DNA.to) onto the market Wednesday. That's interesting mainly because Rousseau still has 13.78m shares of DNA.to left on its books. 

NGEx Resource (NGQ.to): Quicker than I thought

Back in IKN285 dated October 26th the prediction was that NGQ.to would go under $1 in 2015 (and back then it was a $1.50 stock). On that call I was wrong because it didn't even need to wait that long. NGQ.to went under a loonie yesterday.

Here's the text on NGQ.to from that day in IKN285

NGEx Resources (NGQ.to): This was the main news bringer of the week from our select band of companies, thanks to Monday’s announcement of a PEA on its Los Helados project in the upper reaches of Chile (11). I said all I wanted to say about the report on the blog that sameday as $4.3Bn, for a 9.4% IRR using $3.25/lb copper isn’t going to impress anyone. It was then amusing to watch how the NGEx debate morphed, because post-PEA the excuses (you might call them reasons, or logical extrapolations, or strategic consequences) offered up by the self-interested anal ysts covering NGEx were a wonder to behold. Suddenly, with a bunch of crappy PEA numbers to explain, we’re told that we should ignore Los Helados as a stand-alone because its future as a mine isn’t that, it’s as a feeder pit for Caserones down the hill. Or it’s not Los Helados standalone, it’s an altogether bigger and more wonderful triple pit massive mine that will contain Los Helados in Chile and the nearby Josemaria and Filos del Sol deposits on the Argentina side of the border that will be a wonderful massive bi-national supermine (and we all know how well the bi-national Pascua Lama mine’s worked out).

The point is that with the PEA in hand, we the willing investors are told that we should ignore the PEA because it’s a baseline-only document and isn’t part of the future reality of the mining zone. Which of course begs the question as to why the PEA was commissioned and paid for and completed and published but we don’t want to confuse people’s brains too much. Just buy the stock people (or at least don’t sell the ones you own), ok?

The bullshit spewed out by sycophantic lackeys who kowtow to the established mining names has to be seen in perspective. How anyone can trust the word of these so-called independent analysts covering and recommending NGEx as a hot junior after the circus show we saw from these idiots is beyond my understanding. Its future, if any, will be as feed for Caserones but as that mine has all the rock it needs for many, many years there’s no need for Pan Pacific to buy its partner out for anything approaching current prices. It can pick its own time, its own price and let NGEx wither on the vine until then. As noted, this is why Lundin (LUN.to) is buying working operations in Chile in the shape of Candelaria, rather the buying its own cousin company NGEx for what it owns.

I will be most surprised if NGEx doesn’t see trading under $1 during 2015, it’s going nowhere by burning its cash on expensive projects in the wrong part of the world.

Ten, ten, ten, ten

A chart:

OK, it's not exact spacing on those 10% rungs. And I'm not totally sure what it might mean. But it does show that the broad markets have outdone the PMs complex once again this year even with this (welcome) December rally. That alone is worth remembering when the "my chart was right!!!!!" goldbug mouthbreather brigade start their crowing.

Chart of the day is...

...zinc, six months, from Kitco

Is Zn losing the One Buck level? Kinda looking that way. If it does it'll be the end of yet another year end speculative chatterclass pump of the metal, the one that happens every December like clockwork.

To be honest I give Zn more chance in 2015 than in previous years and I'm even mulling over an investment in a Zn exposed vehicle (subbers know which one), but one of the pre-requisites is to buy when the hype has worn off. May be happening now. 

In what's now quickly turning into a tradition at Fortuna Silver (FSM) (FVI.to)...

...the pattern of...

1) FVI pops over $5.20

2) The Ganozas exercise some of their $4.03 options

3) ...and immediately sell them all.

...happens again. This time CEO Jorge dumped a relatively modest 19,300 for a net of $24k or so, while CFO Luis disposed of 79,000 and made himself something around $100k. And a Merry Christmas to one and all. Hey, I wonder if there are any interesting surprises waiting for us in the YE financials? Data here.

Dale Campeon

CIM 43-101: The natural evolution of graft and corruption (from IKN291)

The following was part of the intro to IKN291 last Sunday. It includes a mail from a friend that's the best thing I've ever read on the 43-101 system. If you don't read my blather that's understandable, but I hope you read the mail received. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

CIM 43-101: The natural evolution of graft and corruption

Aurcana (AUN.v) last week announced a new 43-101 resource for its La Negra mine and (of course) I couldn’t resist pointing out the glaringly bizarre nature of what was being put forward as a logical and understandable development by AUN.v in a blog post (2). Here’s the table from that post...

...which should be enough for this intro today. That post resulted in a lot of very interesting feedback from several separate sources, including a three-cornered discussion between myself and two regular mailpals, both sector professionals (and for what it’s worth a couple of the best brains in the business for my money...but then again I’m going to say that because they’re both going to read these words J) which morphed into the whole concept of the 43-101 reports and whether they were worth anything these days. What happened, in rough terms was that

1) I put forward the case that these days the 43-101 report system was a waste of time, it needed to be scrapped and that one of these fine days the Candian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) who oversee it are going to find themselves in legal trouble from some lawsuit or other, which will be the end of it for sure.

2) One of my two mailpals disagreed with this position. He took the stance that the CIM 43-101 system isn’t there to “protect the investor”, it’s there to lay out information required by the regulations and to make sure a set of protocols (normally geological) are adhered to. His point was that it’s never been designed for investment decisions or the retail (or even insto) community, it’s a hard-nosed geol thing and as geology is not an exact science, conclusions are and will always be open to interpretations. His position is that people put too much confidence in 43-101 and that’s not CIMs fault; in fact CIM makes sure the caveats to the 43-101 system are there and written in every report.

3) This is of course well-worn territory and it wasn’t really the point I was trying to make. My point is that 43-101 only came to exist because of Bre-X and was created out of the mess and rubble left by that debacle because the world had lost its faith in the mining and exploration business. No trust = no money so the mining sector, led by the Canadian geology people (along with Australia and its JORC rules that came roughly in parallel) had the task of re-gaining the trust of the world. The answer was 43-101 and it was invented as a form of protection. And hey it worked, because with these official documents in hand (technical reports, resource reports, PEAs, Pre-Feas, Feas) the mining industry could once again attract capital to its business. But it only worked for a while, because we’re now in a situation where the system has been co-opted by the scumbags of the mining world, the Lenic Rodriguez’s of Aurcana, who take a rulebook that was created to protect and use it as a weapon in order to scam people out of their money.This is why I specifically used the word "worthless" in my post to describe 43-101; we can play the pass-the-parcel blame and point to the problems of the system and blame the other set of people until the cows come home. It's been done several times before but it doesn't change the basic problem, that of the CIM system as stands being worthless. 

4) This two-sided debate continued for a while longer and it didn’t reveal anything particularly new, but it was noticeable that the third member of the triangle wasn’t joining in. Then all at once the following mail arrived from the third corner and blew us both away. I’ve asked for and been given permission to reproduce it here (as long as a couple of very small edits happen in order to protect IDs). This is the best thing I’ve ever read on the subject of 43-101, I hope you get a kick out of it too.

So much fun… but I beg you both to go back to the beginning. There was a time that miners and mining were a conservative lot; mining executives were generally grey haired types who understood the risks and made cautious, long-term investments and paid reliable dividends to shareholders. Back then, companies prepared what are now considered non-compliant resource and reserve estimates using paper, pencils and perhaps more importantly people’s brains and experience valued.

Then along came a revolution in computers, spreadsheets, speed, capital markets, bankers and a new game was invented. The barrier to entry was so low and potential rewards so high that our casino called mining attracted all matter of humanity, replete with many motivated entirely by greed alone. A modern day Klondike if you will. It wasn’t until the now infamous Bre-X crime was perpetrated that 43-101 legislation was drafted and approved. The process was originally only meant to provide more documented evidence of the integrity of data, sampling and assaying (which few people read and even fewer understand) along with the assumptions that are used in estimating resources and reserves. 

Now, some dozen years out, the odds on the game remain stacked heavily in favor of the issuer and against the lowly common shareholder. Consider the process where the issuer hires and pays the consultant to provide a product to his liking and will subsequently reward that contractor with yet more work. Where, within this system, is there any inherent need to ensure integrity. The 43-101 legislation conferred that responsibility on a new class of professional – the P.Geo, complete with a full disciplinary and punitive process which requires that professionals call one another to account. But no, it has never occurred. Even where the most blatant examples of misuse we find scant evidence of any sort of fine, punishment or consequence for the production of an inferior product.

Yours truly duly sat the exams, earned the P.Geo designation was awarded a qualified persons official stamp and soon afterward realized the folly of the club, its members and the entire process. In time I abandoned the club altogether as it served no useful purpose. Over the ensuing period I’ve been witness to more sophisticated forms of 43-101 trickery, which in your author’s experience, is the natural evolution of graft and corruption the world over. To wit, our modern western world is as corrupt a place as you can find but it is now veiled in such a manner as to appear legitimate and of no consequence to the commoner (retail investor).

Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand, documents of all types must be looked on with skepticism and disbelief. Financial statements still provide the best measure of the health of a business, but footnotes need to be read with care. Reserves and resources, whether 43-101 or not, need to be examined wherever  we can, however it is my view that it comes down to our awareness of the quality of those people managing and governing the business that best differentiates the best from the worst.

It’s a privilege to see that kind of thing turn up in one’s mailbox, quite brilliant.

In the last dozen years, the rules of 43-101 have been turned on their head and offer no sort of protection to anyone, because they can be used for good by good people and for bad by bad people. Any system that allows Aurcana to state that it has 115m ounces of silver in a specific bunch of rocks, then just two years afterwards say that there’s just 10% of that number in the same rocks under the same classification, then suffer no sort of penalty or sanction afterwards, is the epitome of dysfunctional. It is, in a single word, worthless.

What isn’t worthless is good people doing good honest work, that hasn’t changed, but the label at the top of reports that says “43- 101” no longer means anything. We’re back to the pre-Bre-X days when diligent work by peer-respected individuals counted for everything and when slipshod work could be thrown into the same piles and promoted as legitimate by scamsters, hucksters and purveyors of dreams. The main problem with 43-101 today is that it still has a sense of gravitas, it’s still considered a solid and reliable benchmark not just by us retail grunts at the bottom of the food chain, but by fund managers, brokerages, geologists, engineers, CEOs, merchant bankers and even the third party compilers who make their money from supplying the work that goes into the reports.

The CIM 43-101 system is broken, the Aurcana case proves that without a shadow of a doubt. And as with all broken items, they’re either fixed, replaced or totally ignored.

Joao Contreras, the electric footballer

The good news is that Joao Contreras, footballer for the Peru team Sport Águila from the city of Huancayo, is now out of danger. The mondo bizarro news is that he was struck by lightning during yesterday's Peru Cup match between his team and Fuerza Minera, along with a linesman who was slightly affected.

This somewhat fuzzy photo has been making the rounds, and purports to show the scene a second or two after the bolt hit. You can see the guy on the ground, the smoke rising and the thousands of spectators (which makes you wonder about the random nature of things, too)

Contreras took a direct lightning bolt hit according to all present (and hey, on this one there were literally thousands of witnesses) and was feared dead at the time, to the point where his death was announced on Peru new TV shows. But this morning in hospital his status is described as "out of danger", which is far better thanks very much. This shot from the report in Peru's El Comercio shows what the strike did to his shirt (black/red) and the undershirt (white) that he was wearing.

There's a decent Englilsh language write-up of the event here in The Guardian. A speedy recovery is wished for both player and line official. 

Chart of the day is...

...the gold/silver ratio:

Much talk on the airwaves on whether silver has bottomed, with our friends the silverbugs now climbing out of the bomb shelters after the latest shellacking to proclaim that y'see, they were right all along and we normal people need to WAKE UP AMERICA! and fight the fascism in society by spending a lot of money on metal bars. Yes, it makes that much sense. 

Anyway yeah, my amateurish read on the Squiggly Lines Of Absolute Truth suggest that the GSR has a reasonable shot at reverting to the 200dma here. But as that's set at ~68X I think we can safely file that kind of result under 'a small victory' at best. Even if it happens.

Bottom line: I'm good with gold, thanks.

The 2014 Behre Dolbear ranking of where you digging people should go play at mining

They've been doing this list for the last 15 years, the 2014 version was unveiled yesterday in a presentation and bunfest in Santiago de Chile, go here to get the full PDF, here's your headline table:

Not much of a shock up there at the top. In fact my only real gripe with the top ten is that they haven't pulled Brazil down far enough and it's still above the much better Peru (as long as you avoid the difficult places, that is). By the way, Venezuela and Zimbabwe don't make it on the list because...well...because BD has a reputation to maintain. But read the whole report for the details.

First Majestic (FR.to) (AG): It's capitalism, baby

Spare a thought for the dude who dumped 800k of FR.to onto the TSX and caused that circuit breaker halt yesterday morning.

Okay okay, nearly a million. Poetic licence, innit guv

And then laugh your ass off. Seller's regret, go big or go home.

Dianne Feinstein

Wow.

Put your day on hold.

Thoughts on the SNL Metals & Mining study

I'm glad that Kitco picked up on the SNL Metals & Mining study out yesterday that points to the growing influence of majors in overall exploration budget, because a nice man sent me the PDF yesterday and it's an interesting read. Go read the Kitco riff on the report here (Letourneau does a good job), but I'm going with a slightly extended quote from the report, here:

"Conventional wisdom holds that the major companies leave grassroots exploration to the juniors. It may therefore be surprising that the larger players are contributing 40% of all greenfields allocations in 2014. A persistent financing drought has squeezed juniors’ budgeting to the point that the majors have become the biggest drivers of early-stage exploration. Similarly, the larger players traditionally dominate minesite spending; in 2014, however, they account for only 51% of the near mine work as their investors demand improved returns over growth. It is also interesting to note that the larger players are responsible for just 32% of late-stage exploration and feasibility work."

The whole subject, plus the use of that phrase "conventional wisdom", got me thinking and I wrote this back to the nice man who kindly forwarded me the report:

Supposition: I'm a major with a penchant for exploration. 

1) I look around, see all those conventional wisdom juniors in a sector that resembles The Somme 1916.

2) I pick out a couple that look prettiest/best value/suitably beaten to kingdom come.

3) Do i buy em out? No, don't think so...adding weight to the fixed assets in detriment to current assets isn't something my CFO wants to do.

4) Do i throw money at 'em and then let the junior burn it on salaries (Zijin and Pretium)? Not that one either, i'd want control.

5) So what if I went to my target junior and offered to take a 19.9% stake as long as they gave me two seats on the board and agreed (in principle should be enough) on a cost-cutting exercise that made it lean-mean-rock-banging machine? Yeah, that's what i'd do.

Long story short what I'm pointing to is nothing more nor less than the revaluation of mineral assets. Now we're at near-zero, up has more chances than down, right? Well, I don't know if I'm right, but a big fat clue would be if some major or even Tier 2 goldie started running with that plan (AEM, perhaps?). If so, it'd be the time to position again into what you believed to be great rocks at low prices before the real money gets there. Faites vos jeux, mesdames et messieurs.

The latest from the gold technical analysts and chartists

"...for several months, and you see today that I was right! My utter conviction of the value in gold has been vindicated by the move above the key $1,221/oz level this morning, so I'm humbled and happy that my followers are benefitting from my insight. And of course, when I screamed at the world that gold breaking down through the key $1,180/oz level a few weeks ago would cause it to drop immediately to $1,050/oz and then under $1,000/oz, that was only a hypothetical situation, because the way in which..."

Catching up with that Aberdeen (AAB.to) versus Meson Capital fight

You say you wanna revolution?

Well y'know, we all wanna change the world. But I kinda get the feeling Stan "Oh How I Love Looking After Shareholders" Bharti isn't particularly worried about the imminent collapse of his nefarious empire. And yes, this is the story IKN covered on November 20th and so far at least, the house call is working out well enough. Wow, surprised.

You can check out the details of each of those stages in the NRs to date over at this Yahoo page, but to give the general flavour here are the headlines and dates from each one:

• Meson Capital Commits to Improving Governance at Aberdeen International - Intends to Eliminate "Heads: Insiders Win, Tails: Shareholders Lose" Pattern of BehaviourCNW Group(Mon, Nov 24)

• Aberdeen Corrects Inaccurate Shareholder LetterMarketwired(Thu, Nov 20)

• Major Shareholder Demands Aberdeen Cease Pending Dilutive Private Placement to InsidersCNW Group(Tue, Nov 18)

• Aberdeen Announces Portfolio InvestmentMarketwired(Fri, Nov 14)

Mo' Allied Nevada (ANV)

Following on from last night's news, this morning comes the pricing of the offer:

"...investors will receive one share of our common stock and one half warrant to purchase our common stock for a price of $1.00. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of our common stock at an exercise price of $1.10 for a period of five years from the closing date of the Offering...." whole thing here

A dollar, you say? For a stock that closed at U$1.39 last night? Plus a juicy half warrant? I was trying not to use the word desperation here but obvious I've failed, it came back to mind too many times to ignore.

Sounds like the Duke Brothers' bet in Trading Places.

Colombia's trade balance...

...is not going to enjoy the drop in the oil price.

And that's putting it mildly. So much talk about Venezuela being screwed by the dump in crude, but nary a word as yet about Colombia even though its coffee exports these days are tiny in comparison to the amount of hydrocarbons it sells to the rest of the world. That'll change as soon as the forex jocks catch onto the idea that the Colombian Peso's drop hasn't even started yet.

Bye-bye region-leading GDP growth. Bye-bye resistant currency. Hello reality.

Data from the Colombia Central Bank commercial balance page, here.

Allied Nevada (ANV): Rock, Scissors, Paper

The rock that ANV sold (aka the metal it got from the rock it processed) didn't work. the company keeps losing cash on operations per quarter (over $62m last time around)

The scissors that ANV sold (aka the machinery owned that ANV says was excess to requirements, which makes you wonder why they bought it in the first place) just wasn't enough: In short, $8.9m from a glorified garage sale isn't going to plug the hole long.

The paper that ANV is now trying to sell, well it was kinda inevitable. Tonight's NR, right here.

The cozy relationship between Argonaut Gold (AR.to) and the brokerages...

...works well, right up to the moment that it doesn't. Iwnattos explains and doesn't swear even once while doing it, right here.

UPDATE: I thought I'd check on his data and...

...yeah, he's right.

First Majestic (AG) (FR.to) halted

Lemme guess: "Dear world, we're bored with the way you keep selling our stock. Stoppit".

Nah, it's probably news that they've got some cash out of Davila. We'll see.

UPDATE: Ah wait, it's a circuit breaker halt. So i was right the first time

Your tour of a 500 year old mercury mine

Tom Bartel and Kris Henning of the Travel Past 50 website do the Idrija mercury mine in Slovenia, with great narration and photos. Here's an extract.

"Nevertheless, some of the gallery walls are preserved, some behind glass. Behind the glass, you can see the colorful red and blue-green strata that contained the mercury. In some cases, you can see “native mercury” that’s not locked into the ore in compound format. Little globules of the silver poison just sitting there for the taking."

And yup, we even get a snap of the native Hg. Fascinating stuff, top to bottom, with plenty on the nasty, brutish and very short lives of the people who used to work the mine. Go see it here.

Shorter Pretium (PVG) news

1) Dilutes further
2) Suckers in a bunch of Chinese.
3) That's all.

Peru: The COP20 conference and Madre de Dios: How much is destroyed by illegal mining

As expected the COP20 climate conference in Lima has so far been host to serious discussions on environmental matters, climate change issues and suchlike. Also as expected it's also layered over with the normal amount of inertia-inducing politics which stopped anything of note from being decided. Also as expected we have plenty of fringe meetings at which mining companies are shown as the devil incarnate, the usual fare from the extreme end of the green, the ones who give the normally sane and far-too-quiet environmental mainstream a bad name.

Here’s an example: Plenty of reports popped up on my radar about a report prepared by Peru/Ecuador indigenous jungle support group Aidesep and the Forest People’s Program (FPP, a gringo NGO). Here’s the link to one of them (Spanish language) which tells in the headline how between 125,000 and 250,000 hectares a year of the Peruvian Amazon are lost to development and industrial growth. But then you read that 75% of that is due to clearing for agricultural use. Only then comes number two culprit the illegal Amazon basin mining industry (3^rd is palm oil plantations, for what it’s worth) and in the infamous Madre de Dios region we’re told (translated):

According to the report, illegal gold mining destroyed more than 40,000 hectares of jungle in the Madre de Dios region between 1999 and 2012, but the authors of the report warn that this rate has increased to 6,000 hectares a year since 2008

Now that sounds like a lot of land, and in a way I suppose it is. But it also got me thinking about scale so on checking the maps and such, it turns out that the Madre de Dios department of Peru (which in itself is only a small part of its Amazon jungle regions) has a surface area of 853 million hectares. In other words, the illegal mining that’s “devastating” MDD accounts for around 0.007% of its surface area per year. Or if you prefer, if it keeps up the same rate of land use (which it won’t, if only for pure logistical reasons) for the next 150 years it’ll be done with 1% of the MDD department.

And yes, this message is coming to you from IKN, the blog back in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 that went on and on and on about the illegal and polluting gold mining world of Madre de Dios when the rest of the world simply ignored it. These days it's On The Agenda. These days it's Fashionable Cause. These days you get star journalists from world level news organizations parachuted in to tell us just how awful it is, when the real problem here isn't the "devastation" of land, it's the plug dumb stupidity of the government of Peru that decides to blanket ban something that cannot be banned in practical terms, decides to take away the means of production from people when they should replace it, when they should formalize and immediately improve the pollution of mercury and other heavy metals, rather than try to blame it all on "illegals" or Bolivia or Chinese businessmen or whatever other bullshit excuse they come out with today. I know the gold industry in MDD isn't pretty, a true case of where's there's muck there's brass if ever there was one. But it's not going to eat up all the jungle because for one simple thing, it costs money to pump the water to the spots they want to mine and if you go too far from a river, the economics of running a high powered pump and hose system fall apart. It's not going to kill the Amazon*, get it? Formalize this industry, stop them from using mercury, get them to use other safer methods of extraction and the world will forget all about MDD and will just have to find another example to faux-care about.


*in fact the Amazon will kill them, given enough time.

Juan Luque Mamaní the easy winner of the Puno regional run-off election in Peru

Because I know a few of you are looking for this information, with 42.6% of votes counted Juan Luque Mamaní has 61.6% of valid votes, his opponent in the run-off Walter Aduviri is on 38.4%. This one is over.

Spanish PM Rajoy in Mexico: "We are in a golden age of commerce and bilateral relations"

That's what the man said as he stood in front of the microphone in Veracruz Mexico as the 10th Iberoamerican Business Summit kicked off today. Which translates as "We really need your money to save Spain's economy". 

And while we're talking about gold, ages, Spain and Mexico, can we have the gold you stole returned to its rightful places of origin please, Mister Spanish leader person? Sevilla Cathedral doesn't need untold riches anyway. The Pope said so. Thank you kindly in advance.

The IKN Weekly, out now

IKN291 has just been sent to subscribers. The best bit is about 43-101, because I didn't write it. Buzzz buzzzz

A detox rebuttal

After yesterday's OT post, A. Reader (who prefers anonymity) writes in with a good, strong and well-reasoned rebuttal. I asked for and received permission to reproduce it here and so here you are below. 

I'm with you most of the time, but this is just not based in fact. What Ernst says is biased and untrue. It's in the best interest of modern medicine to keep people sick... that's obvious. 

There are certainly quacks peddling snake oil, but making a general statement that detox is a sham is irresponsible. 

The reader that left the comment is equally naive. "the remainder is potentially harmful, having circumvented most or all of the safety tests that "conventional medicines" must pass." 

Do a simple Google search on how many deaths occur annually due to properly prescribed, "conventional medicines." The FDA is the scam, in it with the pharmas that pay their bills. Put that up against 99% of vitamins/herbs/natural therapies, then write me back with your findings.

BTW, my degree is in public health and biology. I've spent 30 years experimenting with my own health/wellness and eat mainly organic and taking natural supplements. I've detoxed plenty, and every time I feel better, perform better and increase my energy levels. 

What angers me is the continuous efforts of seemingly well-intentioned people, like your reader, who make irresponsible statements like, "I wish these places would be closed down." Why? So that we are finally restricted to buying only the "pharma approved" true poisons?  

Lastly... I've watched 6 family members and friends die from cancer whilst on modern chemo/radiation treatments. The "recommended" course of action by the mainstream. I've also watched several completely heal themselves with natural, herbal and meditative therapies. 6 are dead, 3 are alive...

Like I said in my opening statement, this is not based on fact, and continuing to trumpet that horn misinforms and harms. 

A message for Bob Stirling and for all of you

This is a post that's primarily a message for Robert Stirling of 12 Mossberry Lane, Whitehorse, Yukon, but it's also for the general public.

You are not anonymous on the web. You can get into a lot of trouble if you write the things you write in mails to other people (though I hasten to add that I, personally, do not give a rat's ass about what goes on in your tiny brain or what opinions you have on anything). You are a very stupid person if you think that hatemail is untrackable. And if you consider that a dumbass pissant blogger such as myself can find out a whole bunch about you in around three minutes (though admittedly with above average search skills) because that's how long it took me, just imagine what the NSA, the CIA and all their happy jolly pals know about you.

That's what's called due warning, people.

Pope Francis interviewed by Argentina's La Nacion newspaper in English

La Nacion has scored something of a scoop, being the first  LatAm news organization to get an extended interview with Pope Francis. It's the top story in these parts and as an added bonus, La Nacion offers the Q&A in English via this link, right here. It starts like like:

Pope Francis: "God has bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness" 

In his first interview with an argentine newspaper, he spoke of the challenges of the Catholic Church: family, reform of the Curia, gay marriage and divorce 

Rome- "God is good to me, he has bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness. I just do what I have to do. From the start I said to myself, 'Jorge, don´t change, just keep on being yourself, because to change at your age would be to make a fool of yourself'".

These are some of the things Pope Francis said, as spontaneous as ever, during the exclusive interview with the argentine newspaper LA NACION almost 21 months after he was elected Pope.

full report here

I haven't read it in English (did it in Spanish before noticing the alternative), but being LN I'd expect the translation to be of good quality.