New giant cricket discovery in New Zealand cave

After earlier news about New Zealand giant crickets, or weta, now this from Wildlife Extra:

New weta species discovered on threatened plateau in New Zealand

.

New weta species found on Denniston Plateau

November 2012. A new species of cave weta has been discovered on the West Coast’s Denniston Plateau, which, if an Australian mining company has its way, will also be the site of a 190ha open-cast coal mine. The weta has been informally named the “Denniston white-faced weta” for its distinctive white markings behind its head. It was discovered on the plateau by Massey University evolutionist Steve Trewick, who was immediately struck by the weta’s unusual appearance.

Trewick said “It just stood out. We haven’t seen anything with that appearance and colouration. Males and females are almost black with an unusual, prominent white marking behind their head.”

Members of Massey University’s ‘Phoenix’ evolution, ecology and genetics group, led by associate professors Steve Trewick and Mary Morgan-Richards have been researching and classifying the weta.

Distinctive DNA sequence, the combination of spines on the legs and the shape of the females’ subgenital plate all indicate this is a species new to science. But Steve Trewick says more work needs to be done to determine the genus and whether it is endemic to the Denniston Plateau.

“This weta might occur elsewhere as well as Denniston, but what it highlights is that destroying distinctive habitat is likely to destroy biodiversity even before we know it is there. If we’re destroying biodiversity before we’ve even identified it, we’re clearly following the wrong strategy,” he says.

Unique geological composition

The plateau’s unique geological composition in combination with atypical weather conditions, including an annual rainfall of 6m, has created ecosystems that support wildlife found nowhere else in the world.

Forest & Bird‘s Top of the South Field Officer Debs Martin says the discovery illustrates the rich ecological tapestry of the plateau and underscores why the plateau must not be mined.

“This new weta highlights the fact that the plateau is an incredibly diverse place that we don’t know a lot about. Laying waste to such a unique area of New Zealand that’s protected as conservation land would be a travesty,” she says.

New moth

A new species of day-flying moth, the Avatar Moth, was also discovered on the plateau earlier this year.

Related articles

• New species of cave weta discovered on West Coast (nzherald.co.nz)
• Mine a potential threat to new cave weta – lobbyist (radionz.co.nz)
• Conservation group doubts ecosystem will be saved (radionz.co.nz)
• The Weta (bellaphotographynz.wordpress.com)
• God of Ugly Things (thehindu.com)
• Anti-Coal Protests Continue in New Zealand (earthfirstnews.wordpress.com)

New Zealand miners killed by bosses’ greed

This video is called Pike River Coal Mine Disaster New Zealand – Tribute – RIP.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Inspector cuts paved way for killer gas blast

Monday 05 November 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Health and safety cuts and bosses’ greed were to blame for a 2010 New Zealand mine disaster that killed 29 workers, an official investigation revealed today.

Conservative Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson resigned following the release of the Royal Commission report on a string of underground explosions that entombed the miners a mile from its entrance.

Investigators issued a damning assessment of now-defunct owner Pike River Coal Ltd’s conduct in the run-up to the deaths.

Bosses had ignored dozens of warnings from workers about methane gas build-up at the pit, they said.

Miners reported explosive levels on 21 separate occasions and dangerous levels on 27 more.

Health and safety breaches were the norm at the pit, with workers rigging their equipment to bypass gas sensors designed to trip when levels were unsafe.

Investigators added that mine bosses had made a “major error” by siting a ventilation fan underground, and that using water jets to cut the coal face increased the risk of methane release.

Government cuts to health and safety budgets had left only two inspectors, allowing the mine’s owners to get an operating certificate without ever being checked.

Mining union EPMU assistant national secretary Ged O’Connell branded the report “a damning indictment of New Zealand’s deregulated health and safety regime.”

“Pike River Coal Ltd should never have been allowed to operate in the way it did, and in other countries it wouldn’t have been allowed to,” he said.

“We hope the failings exposed in this report spell the end of the deregulated health and safety regime of the last 20 years.”

Mr O’Connell urged the government to act swiftly on the commission’s recommendations, which included the establishment of a new agency to focus on workplace health and safety.

“If the 29 men who lie in the mine are not to have died in vain then these recommendations must be implemented without delay and without reservation,” he said.

Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges of nine labour violations.

However former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges.

New Zealand mine disaster inquiry whitewashes government: here.

Related articles

• New Zealand mine disaster: methane warnings ignored (guardian.co.uk)
• Methane Warnings Ignored Before NZ Mine Disaster (npr.org)
• Pike River miners exposed to ‘unacceptable risk’ (stuff.co.nz)
• New Zealand coal mining company ignored warnings over explosion (telegraph.co.uk)
• Pike River: Safety overhaul ‘urgently needed’ (stuff.co.nz)
• Drive for coal put above Pike workers’ safety – report (radionz.co.nz)

South African strikers win 22% pay rise

This video is called Strikers march on at South Africa’s platinum mine.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

South African miners agree 22% pay rise to end strike

Wednesday 19 September 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Striking South African platinum miners have won a wage rise of over 20 per cent, ending a five-week strike at the Lonmin Marikana mine.

Representatives of three unions, strikers not represented by any union and the company signed the deal late on Tuesday night.

Lonmin agreed to pay 11,078 rand (£830) a month to rock drill operators and to make a one-off payment of 2,000 rand (£150) to all miners.

The company said the agreement included a previously agreed upon 9-10 per cent raise for certain employees in October and addressed the issue of promotions for some workers.

Lonmin executive manager for human capital Abey Kgotle said the workers had agreed to return to work on Thursday and production would resume in a matter of weeks.

“Mission accomplished” was the message inscribed in black ink on the hand of one striker in a crowd of thousands addressed by mediator Bishop Seoka on Tuesday.

“You have won as workers!” he told them as they cheered, sang and danced.

The strike had spread to gold and chrome mines and cost the country at least £300 million according to President Jacob Zuma.

Media coverage of miners living in tin shacks without electricity or running water has highlighted government failure to force the mining companies to live up to the provisions of laws which link mining licences to social conditions.

The country’s 2002 Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act laid out duties for mining companies operating in the country regarding the rights and living conditions of their workers which they have uniformly failed to meet.

On Monday, trade union federation Cosatu president Sidumo Dlamini warned that government failures could bring down the ruling party.

He said that 30 million of South Africa’s 48 million people still survived on less than 10 rand (75p) a day.

“Workers are simply saying that ‘we produce the wealth and we want our reasonable share’ and they expect to be given a fair share,” he said.

South African police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters near a mine run by the world’s biggest platinum producer Anglo American Platinum, as unrest spreads after strikers at rival Lonmin won big pay rises: here.

South African President Jacob Zuma ordered soldiers today to help police to disperse a growing number of marches by miners demanding higher wages: here.

Related articles

• South Africa’s New Apartheid by Sabine Cessou (zcommunications.org)
• Blood money? Revelations, media censorship and half truths on South African mine violence (sophielmcadam.wordpress.com)
• Lonmin miners launch new strike (iol.co.za)
• Lonmin workers strike again (iol.co.za)
• South Africa’s Nelson Mandela spends night in hospital (foxnews.com)
• S.African police tracked, shot miners: video (dailystar.com.lb)
• South African police: A record of ‘brutality’ (itv.com)
• South African Police Suspended After Brutal Dragging Death (on.aol.com)
• Shooting at Amplats injures South African miners. (greatriversofhope.wordpress.com)

White hamerkop in Zambia, Africa

This bird, in the article below here, is consistently called hammerkop. I myself would have used hamerkop, like in the Afrikaans original and often in English as well.

From Wildlife Extra:

Leucistic Hammerkop in Zambia

Leucistic/white hammerkop

Safari guide Tyrone Mckeith sent us this image of a leucistic hammerkop from the Busanga Plains in Zambia.

Busanga Plains

The huge (750 km2) Busanga Plains are regarded as the Jewel of the Kafue, depending on the time of year you visit (The flood season is from March through to May) you may need to travel by Mokoro (traditional dug-out canoes) to access the plains. This area is synonymous with the large herds of Red lechwe and buffalo which bring with them interest from the Kafue’s impressive carnivore diversity. Being submerged for most of the year, the seasonal flood waters attract great flocks of Open Billed storks, which spiral in the thermals over the plains. Crowned and the rare Wattled cranes are seen searching through the grass for insects and beetles.

Leucism (or Leukism)

Leucism is a very unusual condition whereby the pigmentation cells in an animal or bird fail to develop properly. This can result in unusual white patches appearing on the animal, or, more rarely, completely white creatures.

Click here to see our gallery of albino and leucistic animals and birds.

Zambia arms wildlife police; declares ‘war’ on poaching & clamps down on hunting: here.

The Zambian Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) has turned down a mining proposal at one of Zambia’s key important bird Areas, Lower Zambezi. The proposal to mine eight million tonnes of copper ore per year was put forward by Mwembesi Resources Ltd, an Australian affiliated company. The project would involve development of the main pit at Kangaluwi and satellite pits at three other areas: here.

South African miners massacred for corporate profits

This video from South Africa says about itself:

SHOCKING: Reportedly, Video of South African Police Shooting and Killing Some Striking Lonmin Miners

South Africa’s president has announced an official inquiry into the shooting dead of 34 mine workers by police officers.

Having cut short an official trip to Mozambique to visit the scene of the killings at the Marikana mine, President Jacob Zuma told a news conference he was “saddened and dismayed” by what happened on Thursday.

He said the whole country was mourning and promised a full investigation into the incident, for which the mine workers and police have blamed each other.

Mr Zuma said: “We have to uncover the truth about what happened here. In this regard, I’ve decided to institute a commission of inquiry.

“The inquiry will enable us to get to the real cause of the incident and to derive the necessary lessons too. This is a shocking thing.”

Brazen Lonmin bosses at the tragedy-hit Marikana platinum mine ordered employees to return to work or face dismissal today: here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Hard questions for SA police

Sunday 19 August 2012

There can never be justification for a massacre of striking workers and it is essential that the committee of inquiry set up by Jacob Zuma to examine the tragic events at Marikana makes this a central conclusion.

Nor should the committee concern itself solely with the most recent events – the murder early in the week of police, security guards and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) members and the subsequent massacre of strikers by police.

The South African Police Service must explain why its officers were armed with automatic weapons when an order was issued last year banning the use even of rubber bullets during public protests.

Inadequate police training to deal with potentially violent situations, combined with officers’ anger at the butchery of two of their colleagues, was always likely to provide a combustible mix.

But the committee must also examine the wider picture of the platinum industry, the conduct of mining employers, the living conditions of miners and their families and the role of trade unionism.

Platinum mines have delivered tens of millions of pounds of dividends for shareholders, but, despite promises made in company annual reports, workers and their families still live in corrugated iron shacks without running water or electricity.

The most recent investigation of the industry by the faith-based Bench Marks Foundation is scathing in its description of routine death toll of miners underground – usually through rock falls.

It lays bare the penny-pinching attitude of the mining corporations, using poorly paid and inadequately trained subcontracted labour, which compromises the health and safety of workers.

The Bench Marks Foundation was emphatic that the introduction of labour subcontracting, to which the trade union movement has demanded an immediate end, was designed specifically to “break the power of NUM” and weaken the bargaining rights won over decades of struggle.

It is therefore unsurprising that British-based transnational corporation Lonmin, which owns the mine, has cast oil on the flames by ordering strikers back to work on pain of the sack.

Grieving families have not yet buried their menfolk. Some have not even traced which hospital their wounded relatives are in. It is unacceptable that Lonmin bosses should risk an escalation of tension by telling 3,000 workers to get back or ship out.

The divide-and-rule tactics within the industry dominated by an oligopoly of powerful houses are well documented.

The NUM, South Africa’s largest union and a prime target for corporate hostility, has seen the oligopoly use every underhand trick in the book to undermine collective bargaining agreements and to divide the workforce. It accuses one company, BHP Billiton, of initially funding the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, led by Vuzimusi Joseph Mathunjwa, whose recruitment efforts across the platinum industry have common features.

These include systematic violence, extravagant demands – such as a near trebling of pay at Marikana – and collaboration from the mining companies.

One of the NUM members killed early last week was a shop steward and the union insists that its key personnel were on a hit list drawn up by the AMCU leadership.

None of this excuses police commanders of their responsibility for arming their officers to the hilt and ordering them to open fire with automatic rifles.

But it should give some people pause for thought before they repeat erroneous allegations that NUM is a sellout union or that President Zuma ordered the slaughter.

SOUTH African platinum miners were yesterday continuing their strike, and their wives are occupying the entrance to the British-owned Lonmin Marikana mine: here.

Bosses forced to push back deadline for striking miners: here.

No striking miners will be fired in the week that South Africa officially mourns the killings of 44 men at the Marikana platinum mine, including 34 strikers shot by police, a South African government spokesman said yesterday: here. And here.

Unrest spread across South Africa’s platinum-mining industry today, with previously unaffected mines reporting walkouts and pay demands: here. And here.

Grieving South African families attended memorial services today for 34 striking miners killed by police: here.

South Africa’s day of mourning fails to stem anger over Marikana massacre: here.

More join South African strike as autopsies show miners were shot in the back; here.

Fewer than 7 per cent of Lonmin’s 28,000-strong South African workforce reported for duty at the strife-torn Marikana mine today as the company held talks with trade unions: here.

PLATINUM miners arrested at South Africa’s Marikana mine were yesterday charged with the murder of 34 colleagues shot by police: here.

In an act of naked class justice, South Africa is using an apartheid-era law to lay bogus murder charges against striking miners targeted by police in the Marikana massacre: here.

US mine boss charged over miners’ deaths

This video is called Shocking Report On Mining Company – Massey Energy.

A government prosecutor charged a former Massey Energy mine manager today with conspiring to obstruct federal regulators before a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners: here. See also here.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that if the federal mine regulatory agency had enforced basic safety standards, the 2010 disaster at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine could have been prevented: here.

US folksinger Hazel Dickens dies

This music video is called Black Lung (Hazel Dickens).

By Hiram Lee in the USA:

Folksinger Hazel Dickens dies at 75

9 May 2011

Folksinger Hazel Dickens died April 22 in Washington, D.C. of complications from pneumonia. She was 75. Dickens, whose career began in the midst of the 1960s’ folk revival, was a significant figure in old-time, folk and bluegrass music and was highly regarded for her passionate songs about life in the Appalachian coalfields.

Dickens was born June 1, 1935 in the town of Montcalm in Mercer County, West Virginia. She was the eighth of eleven children in a family whose livelihood depended on the coal industry. Dickens’ father worked hauling roofing timber to the mines and also preached in a local Primitive Baptist church. Her brothers were all coal miners and a sister found work cleaning the house of a mine supervisor. While most of the family was employed, they lived in poverty and at one point occupied a three-room shack in which the entire family slept in one room.

Dickens developed a love for music and began singing herself at a very early age, admiring the old-time a cappella singing featured in her father’s church (in which no musical instruments were allowed). But while the church did not permit instruments, Dickens’ father remained a lover of secular country music all his life and Dickens grew up in a home in which the early stars of the Grand Ole Opry could be heard on the radio. Through her father’s influence she gained an appreciation of early singers such as Uncle Dave Macon and the Carter Family, but she would also develop a love for more modern country music, including the honky-tonk sounds of Ernest Tubb and George Jones.

When the coal industry underwent a severe depression in the 1950s, mining jobs disappeared and, like so many from the Appalachian coalfields and the Deep South, Dickens moved to the industrial north. In 1954, she settled in Baltimore, Maryland where other family members had already gone looking for work. She was able to find jobs in factories, although she still did not make a great deal of money. As she recalled in a 1982 interview with Come For To Sing, a Chicago area magazine dedicated to folk music, “[T]hey didn’t pay very much, and by the time you paid your board for the week and bought your lunch for the week, you were lucky if you had enough left over to afford a movie.”

The experiences in Montcalm and Baltimore had a profound effect on the future singer-songwriter. As she would tell the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002, “I’ve never lost my sympathy for working people. I’ve always said that if I have a religion, it’s the working-class experience and what I feel for working-class people.”

In Baltimore, Dickens met and performed with a number of young people involved with the folk revival movement, including Mike Seeger, the half-brother of Pete Seeger and a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers. Seeger had also come to Baltimore in 1954, having been sent there to perform community service at a tuberculosis sanatorium for having been a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He and Dickens began playing together locally in a five-piece bluegrass band.

However, it wasn’t until Dickens began performing in a duo with another area folksinger, Alice Gerrard (who would go on to marry Seeger), that her career in music truly began. Hazel and Alice, as they would often be billed, released their first album Who’s That Knocking? on Folkways records in 1965 and would continue to record and perform together through the 1970s.

The duo’s early work was rooted primarily in the bluegrass genre with its distinct harmonies and instrumental virtuosity (a young David Grisman performs on many of the early songs). Returning to these recordings today, one finds strong renditions of bluegrass standards including “Long Black Veil,” “Lee Highway Blues” and “John Henry,” as well as lesser known compositions by Bill Monroe and the Carters that were carefully chosen by the singers and are well worth hearing again today.

Over the years, the duo would increasingly move away from up-tempo bluegrass music in favor of performing songs in a more traditional, “old-time” style. Perhaps the best song on any Hazel and Alice album is the stunning “Pretty Bird” from Hazel and Alice (1973), sung a cappella in a solo performance by Dickens. Dickens’ voice was never more beautiful or expressive than in this performance. “Fly away little pretty bird,” she sings, “and pretty you’ll always stay.” The final verse is especially moving.

Fly far beyond the dark mountains

To where you’ll be free evermore

Fly away little pretty bird

Where the cold winter winds don’t blow

The real beauty of the song lies in the fact that it is sung from the point of view of someone who is staying behind in those “dark mountains.” In Dickens’ voice one hears both hope for those escaping the conditions there, as well as sorrow for those who will continue to suffer. It’s a deeply affecting performance. Another of Dickens’ more memorable songs, “Mama’s Hand,” would later return to this theme.

As a solo artist, Dickens began to focus more and more on the conditions facing working people in the Appalachian coalfields. She wrote “Black Lung” following the death of her brother Thurman, a miner who had suffered from the debilitating disease brought on by the inhalation of coal dust in the mines. In another haunting a cappella performance she sang:

Down in the poor house on starvation’s plan,

Where pride is a stranger and doomed is a man,

His soul full of coal dust till his body’s decayed,

And everyone but black lung’s done turned him away

In “Aragon Mill,” a Si Kahn composition featured on Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People (1981), she sang movingly of a town devastated by factory shutdowns. In “The Mannington Mine Disaster” she sang of the 1968 explosion at a Consolidation Coal Company mine in West Virginia that left 78 miners dead. In “Lost Patterns” she sang about the strains of financial hardships on a relationship.

Because many of her songs, including “Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There” and “Coal Mining Woman,” dealt with the hardships of working class women in particular, some commentators have dubbed Dickens a feminist.

See also here.

A May 3 explosion in a coalmine in northern Mexico exposes brutal conditions for miners as well as the corruption and indifference of the government. The mine was one of many precarious and unregulated mines in Mexico: here.

1937 Chicago steelworkers massacre: here.

Mining corporations in Africa

This video about Ghana is called Glitter or Gloom? Mining West Africa’s ‘Gold Coast’.

Mining companies are not interested in Africa‘s development. Despite the rhetoric, they have violated human rights and left communities dispossessed, say Ray Bush and Yao Graham: here.

Canadian mining companies — global land grabs, displacement and grassroot resistance: here.

Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service: “Wikileaks cables have revealed a disturbing development in the African uranium mining industry: abysmal safety and security standards in the mines, nuclear research centres, and border customs are enabling international companies to exploit the mines and smuggle dangerous radioactive material across continents. The Wikileaks cables reveal that US diplomats posted in a number of African countries – the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Niger, and Burundi, among others – have had direct knowledge of the poor safety and security standards in these countries’ uranium and nuclear facilities”: here.

Afghan miners’ bad work conditions

This video, recorded in the USA, says about itself:

For weeks Washington has been debating whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. However, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are calling on lawmakers to rethink policy and their approach to the wars.

From the BBC today:

Inside a crumbling Afghan coal mine

Page last updated at 12:02 GMT, Friday, 25 June 2010 13:02 UK

By Quentin Sommerville
BBC News, Pul-e Khumri, northern Afghanistan

The coal wagon rattles along, descending sharply under the hills of Pul-e Khumri, deep into the mine.

At about 100m (328ft) down, the tunnel narrows and it is striking how primitive it all looks.

The roof is held up by bent and twisted wooden stakes which look like they were put in many hundreds of years ago rather than 60 years ago, when the mine was first dug.

It was the Soviets who first discovered Afghanistan’s huge mineral wealth: coal, gold, silver, iron and copper ore, and more besides.

Little safety

More recent surveys say it could be worth trillions of dollars.

But decades of war mean that these vast natural resources have hardly been touched.

And in the Pul-e Khumri coal mine, nothing much has changed since the Soviets left.

Down inside the mine, at 300m below the hills, the miners scrape the coal from the rock, and fill the wagons.

Except for a ventilation fan there is no mechanical or electrical equipment. And there’s little safety gear either – everybody is absolutely filthy.

The air is cool, until the shaft takes a turn, then the heat becomes intense.

It is very hard, physical, work but there is no shortage of coal. It glistens in the wall, at times it pours from the rock face.

‘Dig by hand’

But Afghanistan has neither the means nor the money to get it out of the ground.

Standing in the gloom, the air is thick with coal dust, one miner, breathing heavily, said: “I’ve been working here for the last 12 years. I work by hand. We push the carts by hand and you can see that we even dig by hand.”

The half dozen workers here have it tough. They are bare-footed and stripped to the waist as they hack at the seams with pick axes.

The coal is a fine powder, and the dust covers them, blackening their teeth and covering their bodies.

“Things were better during the 1980s,” explained another man.

“We had wood. We had equipment. Now we don’t have anything, and what we do have, doesn’t work. We have nothing,” he said.

Nothing that is, except huge mineral wealth, which Afghanistan’s neighbours, and the rest the world, want to get their hands on.

It is upon exiting the mine, stepping into the bright sunshine, that the problems confronting those wishing to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral wealth become blindingly obvious.

The mine is in the middle of a desert. For miles and miles around there are barren hills and barely any roads. Certainly no paved roads reach the mine.

Backbreaking work

And, on the other side of the hills, are the Taliban. Potential investors in the mine have been to scared to visit.

And there are other worries too. Afghanistan’s deep and widespread corruption means its people may not benefit from its natural riches.

“There’s evidence of corruption already,” says political analyst and parliamentary candidate Haroun Mir.

“The [contract for] the biggest copper mine in the region was awarded without transparency.

“There are other small mines too that were awarded to people linked to political power in Afghanistan.

“Business and politics in Afghanistan, are interlinked, you cannot become a successful businessman if you are not involved in political power,” he said.

At the mine, the men bring more coal to the surface, straining as they push the heavy iron wagons full of coal.

At the end of the narrow gauge rail line, the wagon is tipped, and the coal falls to a huge black pile in the sand.

It has been back-breaking work for the miners to get it this far – but given the challenges facing Afghanistan, this may have been the easy part.

In the span of barely a week, a second Kentucky coal miner was killed Thursday in an underground mining operation, bringing to 39 the number of coal miners killed in the US so far this year: here.

Mother of Canadian soldier to Harper: ‘Withdraw from Afghanistan now’: here.

USA: Public Souring on Afghanistan War: here.

Nine Years On, Only 41 Percent of Americans Believe US Can Win in Afghanistan: here.

Tom Engelhardt on “The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s”: here.

Alliance With Warlords Makes War Strategy Hopeless: here.

A top Polish military official warned on Thursday that the US-led war effort in Afghanistan faced “strategic collapse”: here.

An anti-war campaigner has won a key High Court victory over the government in her bid to end British involvement in the torture cells of Afghanistan: here.

MPs SHOW GROWING UNEASE OVER AFGHAN WAR: here.

Related articles

• Afghanistan mineral deposits estimated at $1 trillion (mining.com)
• UK Invests 10 Million Pounds in Afghan Mining (theepochtimes.com)
• Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial (annbeaumont.wordpress.com)
• The Afghanistan War: Afghanistan’s Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas (nsnbc.me)
• Accident injures Quecreek coal miner (times-news.com)
• LATimes- Excavating a future in Afghanistan (latimes.com)
• UBB foreman reaches deal with state (wvgazette.com)

British mining capital and torture in Peru

This video from the USA says about itself:

Jul 6, 2012

DemocracyNow.org – The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in the mountain region of Cajamarca where thousands have gathered in recent days to protest the expansion of a gold mine owned by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining that has already the largest in South America. Using live ammunition against the protesters, police have killed five people this week alone. In a dramatic video broadcast nationally on Peruvian television, police severely beat Marco Arana, a former Roman Catholic priest, who had rallied protesters despite emergency measures restricting freedom of assembly. We speak to journalist Bill Weinberg, who was recently in Cajamarca. “Every time the company Yanacocha proposes an expansion of the mine, the local people there get organized and they block the roads and they shut down the businesses,” Weinberg says.

In Peru, there is the Majaz [old name of Rio Blanco Copper S.A.] case, of a large-scale copper mining project vs. local development.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Torture, murder and metal profit

Monday 19 October 2009

Paddy McGuffin, Home Affairs Reporter

A British mining firm is facing a multimillion-pound damages claim after protesters at an open cast copper plant in Peru were detained and allegedly tortured four years ago.

The case against Monterrico Metals Plc has been brought by 31 indigenous Peruvians who claim they were beaten, tear-gassed and tortured by police at the Rio Blanco mine in northern Peru.

Several protesters were also shot and wounded during the demonstration in August 2005, one of them fatally. It is claimed that employees of Monterrico assisted police in the abuse, which lasted for three days.

A lawyer for the claimants said it was “inconceivable” that the company was not aware of the abuse.

Following a fully contested hearing in July 2009, the High Court has ordered a freezing injunction for £5 million against the London-registered firm.

The claimants, including two women, allege they were detained for three days, during which they were handcuffed, hooded, beaten and humiliated at the mine site. They claim that they have long-term psychological injuries.

One protester, Melanio Garcia, a local farmer whose widow is a claimant in the case, was shot by police and then left without medical attention to bleed to death, the protesters allege.

The claimants and other witnesses allege that managers at the mine were integrally involved with the police in directing, co-ordinating and assisting in the actions at the mine site against the protesters. Monterrico denies this.

In March 2009, Peruvian prosecutors accused the police of torture but cleared the mining company and Forza of wrongdoing. Peruvian human rights groups denounced the findings as incomplete.

Legal proceedings, seeking compensation from Monterrico and its Peruvian subsidiary Rio Blanco Copper SA, were brought on June 2 2009.

This week Mrs Justice Gloster ruled that the claimants had a “good arguable case” against Monterrico and that company assets of £5m should remain frozen.

Richard Meeran of Leigh Day & Co, which represents the claimants, said: “From the evidence we have seen I believe that it is inconceivable that the company did not know of the protesters’ harsh treatment during their three day ordeal at the Rio Blanco mine.

“There is no evidence that I have seen of the company taking any steps to prevent these actions.

On the contrary, it would appear to be the case that the company was working in cahoots with the police.

“The principle that multinationals are held legally accountable for human rights violations occurring at their overseas operations is vital. Without this freezing injunction, access to justice would effectively have been denied.”

Monterrico has a chequered history in Peru. A 2007 report by anti-poverty group War on Want into Monterrico’s activities cited numerous examples of threats and intimidation against environmentalists.

War on Want campaigns director Ruth Tanner said: “British mining companies are fuelling conflict and human rights abuse across the world.

“This latest disturbing case shows we cannot rely on UK firms’ voluntary action to ensure responsible operations in developing countries.

“Gordon Brown must introduce regulation to halt this abuse.”

Peru Will Hold Torturers Accountable: Why Can’t the U.S. Do the Same? Here.

Increasingly authoritarian Peru government to close down Amazon network: here.

PERU: Victims of Military Rapists Wait for Justice 25 Years On: here.

Related articles

• Peruvian protesters face increased police brutality (newint.org)
• At least 4 wounded in Peru anti-mining clash (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• Armed clash at Canadian-owned copper mine in Peru injures at least 4 (vancouversun.com)
• Country Profile: Peru (newint.org)
• Violence erupts in Peru anti-mining clash (nzherald.co.nz)