The Scarlet Pimpernel
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Riches trump risk for Honduran gold miners
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 10:28AM EL CORPUS, Honduras, July 16 (Reuters) - In the mountains of southern Honduras, hundreds of small-scale miners are scraping out tiny quantities of increasingly precious gold but their fervour could be threatening their lives and the environment.
Artisanal miners wielding pickaxes use diesel generators to illuminate narrow mine-shafts in one of Central America’s poorest nations. Many then use dangerous amounts of toxic mercury to extract the metal from the rocks they chip out.
Government officials say the number of freelance miners looking for gold in Honduras has increased from around 200 several years ago to more than 1,000 now.
More and more people have taken up prospecting as the price of gold has nearly tripled over five years.
“I started mining eight months ago because I saw that the price was going up,” said Geovani Zepeda, 26, in the tiny town of El Corpus.
Zepeda, who was introduced to the trade by his father, said the price paid for the tiny bits of gold he recovers has nearly doubled since he started.
“At first they paid me 170 lempiras ($9) a gram, now they pay me 320 lempiras ($17),” he said.
The small-scale miners are only paid around half the going market rate for their gold by the buyers they hawk to, but nonetheless their earnings are substantial in a region where the only other employment is poorly paid agricultural work.
Some families in El Corpus have spent generations extracting gold from dozens of small holes carved into the isolated mountain range.
Many scavenge in long-abandoned mines that were first exploited in the 1500s during the Spanish conquest, when indigenous people were used as slaves.
A small U.S. company, Mayan Gold, has an operational mine near the town, but most small-scale miners avoid that area since a standoff between El Corpus residents and the firm three years ago.
Now, the new gold rush is luring fresh faces.
“I see a ton of new people that have come to the mountains to work in the mines, but we have no way of knowing exactly how many there are because there are no official controls,” said Enrique Bellino, the mayor of El Corpus.
Unlike Chile, Peru and Bolivia, Honduras is a hugely underdeveloped mining country and is best known for exporting coffee and bananas, despite talk of mountains said to be full of rich gold veins.
DEADLY MERCURY
Civil wars in the 1980s and early 1990s in neighbouring Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador kept investors away, and now there are only two active gold mines in Honduras.
Apart from the El Corpus mine owned by Mayan Gold, mid-tier Toronto miner Yamana Gold operates another mine. A third mine, owned by Canada’s second largest gold miner Goldcorp, is in the process of shutting down, in part because of environmentalists’ complaints about its open pit operations.
In 2007, mainstream gold mining accounted for $75.4 million worth of exports, compared to $79.9 million in 2006.
A lack of monitoring means the government has no estimate of how much the gold that artisanal miners scrape out is worth.
Working in a fledgling industry with no government oversight, means conditions for small-scale miners are often dangerous.
Makeshift mines can collapse and crush workers, and the most common way to extract the gold from rock is to use mercury — the third most toxic substance in the world, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — in an ancient and polluting technique with serious health risks.
Marcello Veiga, a United Nations expert on mercury poisoning in artisanal mining, said most small miners create a gold-mercury amalgam that has to be decomposed to recover the gold particles.
“Most people just burn off the mercury and they usually don’t know it’s dangerous. Sometimes they just do this inside their houses — because it’s gold and they want to be protected — but then they contaminate the entire family,” said Veiga.
Small-scale miners use three-parts mercury to recover every one-part gold, he said.
The mercury excess goes into the environment, mixes with organic matter, and is transformed into another toxic substance, methylmercury.
“That doesn’t stay in the water, it goes straight to the fish,” said Veiga.
LITTLE DETERRENT
Recent testing of river sediments around El Corpus have not yet shown abnormally high levels of mercury, said Danelia Sabillon, director of a centre that studies contaminants, at Honduras’ environment ministry.
But concerns are rising about health risks to children and pregnant women who are exposed to the artisanal mining process since mercury poisoning can lead to lung and kidney damage, harm foetuses and cause severe brain damage in high doses, she said.
In other parts of the world, small-scale miners have clashed with multinational firms as both seek to exploit the same gold seams. This has been less of a problem in Honduras.
Three years ago, hundreds of people from El Corpus invaded part of the mining concession owned by Mayan Gold to search for tiny bits of gold residue left in the company’s tailings pile.
The squatters stayed for months despite legal action and official complaints to the government until they had recovered every last bit of gold that they could. Since then conflict with mining companies has been rare.
The government has launched educational programmes in the communities around El Corpus to warn people about the dangers of mining with mercury.
But the risks, even when known, are not enough to slow the influx of new miners to the mountains.
“The price of gold is good,” said Emerys Espino, who started looking for gold several months ago, working with his brother and two friends.
“I have seen more and more people coming to this mountain. Farmers come from little, far-away towns to ask for work or to open new mines,” he said, standing at the mouth of his tiny mine shaft.
(Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile)
Malaria drug may be fueling antibiotic resistance
Monday, July 21, 2008 at 02:58PM Bolivia seizes funds moved by Telecom Italia
Monday, July 21, 2008 at 05:05AM Mon Jul 14, 2008
Simulating Urban Warfare
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 07:57PM In Planet of Slums, socialist historian Mike Davis mapped the brutal urban realities shared by more than one billion of the earth’s inhabitants, unmoored by neoliberal globalization from the “formal” world economy. From Baghdad to Karachi and from Lagos to Los Angeles and beyond, as ever-broader segments of the world’s population are transformed into “a surplus humanity,” the master class presents “no scenario” for ameliorating the immiseration it has itself designed through the “normal” functioning of a grotesque system of exploitation and injustice.
M-13 terrorists kill their own
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 07:22PM The Venezuelan opposition is so rabid and so bloodthirsty, they’ll stop at nothing to get Hugo Chavez out of office. They’ll stage violence as a way of “protesting” it. They’ll even kill their own. We saw that already on April 11, 2002, when they staged a coup in which rooftop snipers and undercover sharpshooters, in concert with Metropolitan Caracas police officers (controlled by an anti-Chavez mayor, Alfredo Peña) fired on Chavista and anti-Chavista demonstrators alike. In the final death toll, there were more Chavistas than anti-Chavistas killed, but the point of my mentioning it is this: They will even kill their own if it “helps” them politically. They have absolutely no compunctions about it.
Latino/Hispanic Issues, Conservative Misrepresentations, Upper Class Oppreession, Neo-cons, Neo-fascist=Neo-con, Terrorist Atrocities, Neo-con Journalists, Conservative Lies, Conservatism=Fascism, Terrorism, Conservative Racists, Neo-Con Rant, Latin America, Conservative Dissembling, Elitist, Latin American Culture, Neo-liberal Capitalism, US Harbored Thugs/Mass Murderers/Terrorists/Thieves Hunger strike in Cochabamba
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 07:12PM July 17, 2008
In Cochabama, Bolivia, factory workers and union leaders began a hunger strike in July to protest management abuses and deteriorating conditions at the Manaco shoe factory, a subsidiary of the Canadian-based global conglomerate Bata. Among the hunger strikers is the well-known Bolivian unionist and global justice leader Oscar Olivera.
Mercosur Confronts Global Crises
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 07:02PM Latino/Hispanic Issues, Economics, International Relations, International Trade, Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Free Trade vs. Fair Trade, Environmental Issues, Humanitarian Food Assistance, Latino/Hispanic Milestones, Treaty Obligations, International Politics, Environmental Protection, Latin America, Farms and Farming, Latin American Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, Energy Shortages Semiautomatic for the People
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 01:39PM 
News: In which a MoJo reporter goes to a gun show in search of some serious firepower.
In a warehouse on the outskirts of the rural Shenandoah Valley town of Fishersville, Virginia, it didn’t take long to spot what I was looking for. There were plenty of guns lined up neatly on display tables, everything from Civil War-style muskets to handguns to hunting rifles, but I was in the market for something with a bit more firepower. At a table near the entrance, I found it: a Chinese-made mak-90 semiautomatic rifle, a variation of the Russian AK-47 designed to circumvent federal regulations on the import of assault weapons. “It’s the same gun,” the dealer told me. “They just eliminated the pistol grip, replaced it with a threaded thumb grip, and took off the flash suppressor.” This particular model came with a five-round detachable clip, but the dealer assured me it would accept larger magazines, including a 75-round “ammunition drum.” He was uncomfortable trading in handguns, he said, explaining that “there’s too much controversy about them,” but was willing to sell the mak-90 to anyone with a valid ID and $450.
How bad will it get?
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 01:19PM The institutions that were supposed to help provide a bailout for the housing crisis now have to be rescued themselves. explains how two giant mortgage companies sponsored by the U.S. government got to the brink of bankruptcy.
July 16, 2008
THE EMERGENCY government intervention to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored agencies that own or guarantee nearly half of U.S. mortgages, is the latest sign of the deepening world financial crisis.
So alarming was the threat of a collapse by Fannie and Freddie that the biggest bank failure in 20 years, at mortgage lender IndyMac, took second place in the business press.
At least, that is, until the stock markets opened on July 14, when investors dumped stocks of other banks rumored to be in trouble. Wall Street analysts predict that as many as 150 more banks could fail in the coming months, virtually all as a result of mortgage-related losses.
Economics, Capitalism's Failures, Economic Recession, Financial Losses, Capitalist Lies, Capitalism, Economic Depression, Bush's Irresponsible Policies, Government Regulatory Failures, W, Concentration Of Wealth, Capitalist Greed, Banking Regulations, Economic Disasters, Supply-Side Economics, VooDoo Economics, Government Deregulation, Class Warfare, Class-based Analysis, Banking, Banking Crisis, Mortgage Loan Meltdown, Run On The Banks Venezuelan Newspaper: Most Candidate Disqualifications Are Not of Opposition Supporters
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 01:07PM 
Salvador says drug gangs killed Guatemala lawyer
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 12:58PM Loading the Question, Spinning the Answer: The Post/ABC Iraq Poll
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 12:37PM GAO blasts Radio, TV Marti over contract award
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 12:26PM By Alfonso Chardy | Miami Herald
The investigating branch of the U.S. Congress has accused the federal agency that oversees radio and television broadcasts to Cuba of awarding more than $1 million in contracts to two Miami broadcast outlets without following normal contract-bidding procedures.
Torture for the Torturers
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 12:17PM I don’t believe in torture, but right now, I’d like to see a few people subjected to some of the torture techniques that they approved for use against U.S. captives in the so-called War on Terror.
Military Issues, Military Incompetence, Torture, Spy Agency Abuses, War Crimes, Pattern of Misrepresentations and Lies, Child Abuse and Neglect, Bush's War, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Canada, 'Dirty' War, Military Kangaroo Court, Geneva Convention, UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, George W. Bush, Destruction of the Constitution Wall Street Journal a “Front” for State Terrorists
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 12:08PM The title of this article might startle many readers, but it is no more shocking than the contents of a recent Wall Street Journal column written by Mary Anastasia O’Grady that brazenly supports Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s accusations that human rights organizations in Colombia are “fronts” for terrorists. O’Grady goes so far as to claim that the tactics used by the Colombian military in its recent rescue of 15 hostages prove President Uribe’s accusations. Clearly, the title of this article spoofs O’Grady’s absurd claims by suggesting that her public endorsement of Uribe’s accusations make the Wall Street Journal a front for state terrorism, particularly in light of the fact that the Colombian military is responsible for the majority of the country’s human rights violations. In all seriousness though, O’Grady’s claims are not only irresponsible because they endanger the lives of human rights workers in Colombia, they also illustrate just how ignorant the author is of how the FARC operates in that country’s rural conflict zones.
Media Criticism, Latino/Hispanic Issues, Conservative Misrepresentations, Military Issues, Military Incompetence, Neo-cons, State Department Ineptitude, Neo-fascist=Neo-con, State Department, State Sponsored Terrorism, Media Ownership Concentration, Neo-con Journalists, Conservative Lies, Conservatism=Fascism, Military Murders, Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, Media Wingnuts, Media Stupidity, <