This subsistence way of life that is thousands of years old is threatened by the plans of a British and Canadian mining partnership to dig a huge mine in the heart of our productive, healthy watershed.
Also in the works: a mining partnership with South African billionaire Partrice Motsepe (see "The 50 Cent Machine").
Although the foreign mining partnership -- comprised of Anglo American plc and Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (including Mitsubishi and Rio Tinto) -- claims that it will "respect all of Alaska's natural resources," the stakes are too great to roll the dice.
Earlier this month, when the Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") issued the results of an independent investigation undertaken at the urging of The Pebble Partnership ("Pebble") -- the beleaguered mining partnership behind the massive Pebble Mine proposed in southwest Alaska -- the company responded angrily.
Most of Mines' partnerships entail white-label lending products offered on mobile phones, including non-smart USSD devices.
Within hours, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee's questionable defense of the N.S.A. phone-monitoring program was blown out of the water by the even more alarming news of Prism, an N.S.A. data-mining partnership with at least nine huge U.S. Internet companies, among them Google, Skype, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple.
"If the choice has to be between fish and mining," Pebble Partnership CEO John Shively told PBS Frontline recently, "we choose the fish.
The company would operate the mine in partnership with an Eritrean government-controlled corporation.
Cllr Julian German, the chairman of the Cornish mining world heritage partnership, said: "Our Cornish mining ancestors were international entrepreneurs, who propelled mining into a new industrial era on a worldwide scale.
The Man Engine, which was commissioned by the Cornish mining world heritage partnership, was shown to the public in Tavistock on Monday and greeted by choirs, visitors and local people performing the Cornish mining chant Haka Balweyth.
