GATA sympathizers invited to gather in Dublin for drinks and a movie

10:05p ET Monday, February 5, 2007

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GATA's old friend and world traveler George Roche (he has attended GATA events in Vancouver, New Orleans, New York, and Geneva) reports that the film "Mine Your Own Business," which criticizes the so-called environmental movement and defends the extractive industries, will be shown at noon Sunday, February 18, at the International Dublin Film Festival. Roche will be in Ireland that week, plans to attend the festival and see the movie, and would like to get together then for coffee or a pint or two with any GATA sympathizers in the neighborhood. If you're interested, please e-mail Roche at GRoche8095@aol.com and he'll arrange something.

No one denies that the extractive industries can damage the environment. But the solution is not to shut them down -- soon no one would have a roof over his head or clothes on his back -- but to ensure remediation of the damage by building the price of remediation into the price of the product, perhaps by requiring the extractive industries to post remediation bonds.

To do this the extractive industries have to be given a better chance of making a decent profit, something that will be so much harder as long as central banks are inciting and subsidizing investment houses in shorting all sorts of commodities. That is, if you're sore that, for example, an open pit gold mine wasn't closed up or that a mine's heap leach pad failed from negligence, you might blame the gold price suppression scheme as much as the mine operators, for it is the price suppression scheme that can put unbearable pressure on the industry to cut corners.

Look around: Only prosperous societies can afford environmental protection. Compare, say, Oregon and Haiti -- logging being a sustainable industry in the former even as it was allowed to denude the latter. For subsistence societies don't care how much they damage the environment; all they care about is surviving one more day, the planet be damned. As the extractive industries move to the developing world with its subsistence societies, better prices for commodities become a matter of international social justice. Indeed, the gold price suppression scheme has killed tens of thousands and condemned millions more to poverty throughout the developing world. Blind environmentalism there is just another form of colonial oppression.

You can learn more about "Mine Your Own Business" here:

http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/about/about.htm

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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