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Donegal Greens object to gold mining....

category donegal | environment | press release author Thursday September 04, 2003 16:12author by Donegal - Donegal Greens Report this post to the editors

Canadian multinational threatens health

Following prospecting licences being offered to the Tournigan Gold Corporation by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to prospect for Base Metals (which includes Uranium), Silver and Gold the Donegal Greens call on the Minister to revoke such licences to preserve the beauty and natural environment of the areas planned to be exploited by a known open cast mining company.

The areas affected as published in the local media will be an area from Lettermore to Clonleigh North (West to East) and from Magheraboy to Gleneely (North to South) and also in the Redcastle and Whitecastle areas of Inishowen. The Redcastle-Whitecastle area harbours a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and the more significant area in the Lagan and Finn Valley can be regarded as the ‘Golden Vale’ of Donegal harbouring the largest density of population in the county and drained by three major rivers: the Deele, the Finn and the Swilly. Open cast mining therefore obviously presents significant hazards to all environments: human, marine, aquatic and agricultural.


Tournigan Gold Corporation is already operating in County Tyrone and has been licensed to cover 346km2 North West of Omagh Town. This entails the extraction of some 468,097 tonnes of earth, which is then washed by Chemical mixture, which includes Cyanide and millions of gallons of water to find a few grammes of Base Metals. In their own survey of the region they claim “there are many stream and soil geochemical and trench defined targets throughout the area that require further work”. This simply means leaving a trail of environmental destruction behind them. The pollution, which this “Gold” Corporation will bring to the County, will be left for our future generations to live with. In the U.S.A. all along the whole west cost there are many lakes that are forbidden for people to swim in due to the contamination of heavy metals through mining carried out by such companies.


The Donegal Greens have drawn up a petition and call upon the Citizens of Donegal to reject this outrageous desecration of the beauty of our County, which we all hold so dear.


PRO Frank Gallagher


Donegal North East Constituency Group
Contact: Frank Gallagher, Flat 2, Rahan, Letterkenny
Tel: 074 25168 Mob: 086 3772913
E- Mail dlgreen@eircom.net

Press Release: Donegal Greens ….13th August 2003

Related Link: http://www.donegalforum.com
author by very attentive reader.publication date Thu Sep 04, 2003 19:45author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Now let's hope all the other parties on both sides of the river get together and help on this one. This issue affects you all. The last time gold was speculated upon in Ireland in Tyrone, in the middle 1980s the Irish stock exchange went through a short boom. It was for the financial types during the days of Cecil Beaton's directorship. He broke with tradition such as it is in the sleepy Irish stock market by closing trading early. The price of "Irish" gold related shares is normally steady at about 35-45 IRpence, I've know idea what that is in Eurocent.
If there is a rush on Irish gold speculation shares again, you will see immediate effect on many other areas of the Irish stock market.

watch it for yourself:
http://www.gold-stocks.com/

also check the company:
http://www.tournigan.com/
they have been effected by law suits in the very recent past.http://www.sedar.com/issuers/company_issuers_t_en.htm

Related Link: http://www.gold-stocks.com/
author by jumping on the bandwagonpublication date Fri Sep 05, 2003 00:00author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Many first time stock buyers in Ireland were tempted by the loosening of the market regulations, the minimum buy went down to 500IR for one purchase. The shares in Tyrone related gold interests stood at about 35p and jumped through the speculation to over 16pounds! That made a profit of well, %%%. Loads of people let us say lost their communion money, when the stock dropped in a period of less than a month never to regain _bouyancy_. I'm sure many a fledgling anarchist/anti-capitalist first learnt about the "market" that way. Gold is plentiful in Ireland, but has never been considered "profitable" to extract. Silver on the other hand was extracted by a Canadian mining corporation in shallow open pit mining which scarred extensive areas of the West. employment which was offered naturally was withdrawn when the silver left on planes to : Canada.
Charles Stuart Parnell (he of the ne-plus-ultra), was considered to be a bit of "crank" in his day for spending long weekends panning for gold in the Wicklow hills. However he had the last laugh because he did find a nugget or two! So go to roundwood and pan for gold!
Seriously, any speculation be it capitalistic or media on gold in Ireland, will have repercussions for jobs here, taxation, international relations, and more importantly the law suits being faced by the mining corporations.
If you find it hard for some reason to oppose gold mining for "ecological reasons" you ought oppose it on social reasons. Gold is as dirty as diamonds. No matter what any politician may say in Ireland (either state) today or tomorrow no exploitation of gold will be in the interests of the Irish people, generally or of Donegal.

Spending just a little time on the net researching the companies invovled and those who have encouraged their interest will open a can of worms, remember all gold is fool's gold.

author by Terrypublication date Fri Sep 05, 2003 13:00author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Firstly, the recent increased interest in gold, probably relates to the fact that it's value
has been rising lately, mainly because of the underlying weakness of the dollar. In 1972 the
dollar broke from gold, but informally it is sort of still linked. Because US was the largest
economy back then and is now the only military superpower, it has used this authority (plus a
fair amount of hidden manipulation of the gold market) to keep the price relatively stable, but
there is now recognition that the real value of the dollar is actually and should be much
lower, which would then put a massive pile of money and investments at risk, although these
are at risk anyhow, since they represent huge debt, for which there is no means of paying off
in the near future. (For example mortage debt in the USA is a few trillion, but falling wages,
jobs etc, and the fact that many people with these high debts are in their 40s+ and should have
instead paid over most of their debt and be looking forward to nice pensions. However their pensions
will be worthless, as they have been raided and estimates show that the USA will need several
trillion to meet these pension obligations. Of course they will never be met. There's a similar
story to a lesser extent in Europe too. By the way there is even far bigger and more vulnerable
debt in financial derivates and other stuff.)

And since gold is always a safe haven, people are starting to trade their dollars for gold. The gold issue
is very much linked to the huge debts of the USA and the massive global financial derivatives
bubble (which is bigger than the real economy by a factor of 10 or maybe even 50), much of which is in dollars.
And just to add further woes, for years the gold futures-market has in fact sold gold that has yet to be found.
This means that all projected gold yet to be mined in the next few years has already been sold.

The long and the short of all this, is if there is a massive global financial blowout, the price of gold
could easily rise by close to a factor of 10, as this in fact would more or less put in back on track to the
price of gold to dollars in 1972, to adjusted inflated value of dollars today in 2003. i.e. growth of
money supply has grown 10 times faster than the quantity of gold and in the pre 1972 days, a certain amount
of gold equaled a certain amount of money. As I say the link was broken formally, but it remained of course
in peoples heads and you can be sure if you have $10 million in the bank that could be worthless overnight,
when people suddenly realize the USA is never going to be able to pay it's debts, confidence could collapse
and nobody would want your dollars. The smart people are buying gold now in exchange for their dollars,
because one way or another it's going to remain valuable whether we like it or not, even if you can't eat it.

Anyway you people up in Donegal are going to be facing very serious opposition if the above pans
out, so here are some resources that those objecting to the gold mining, might be interested.


http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/index.html
Drillbits & Tailings -an electronic monthly on the mining & oil industries

http://www.moles.org/index.html
Project Underground

The three URLs below contain an account of the massive spill of cyanide from a holding
lake that occured in Romania back in 2000 and which caused a huge ecological disaster.
A similar future probably awaits Donegal.

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/5_02/3.html
MASSIVE CYANIDE SPILL CONTAMINATES HUNGARIAN AND ROMANIAN RIVERS

http://www.glifwc.org/pub/spring01/cyanide_dangers.htm
Cyanide proves to be poison pill for mining

http://www.towardfreedom.com/jun03/goldrush.htm
Romania's Gold Rush -A new mining scheme risks cyanide-laced disaster

author by Gaiapublication date Mon Sep 08, 2003 14:23author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Wonder if Ciaran Cuffe has any shares in Goldmining Corporations?

author by Badmanpublication date Mon Sep 08, 2003 14:29author address author phone Report this post to the editors

It's hard to find a corporation nowadays to ethically invest your millions in. I mean he's tried big oil, arms companies, now he's going for porn, at least he's trying.

author by valuing the cultures of Humanity without undue descent - to either barbarity or general all round unpleasantness.publication date Fri May 14, 2004 17:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

as part of the
Great XXI Century Tranquility Buzz
on ethical corporation doings.
it's all part of the Moot.

Confucius say :-
The traditional way to announce a nugget of truth from the megadude BC 551-479, Chinese Ethical Teacher, Philosopher, spam artist and blogger.

you can nae eat Gold.

& Hsi Tang say :-
although gold dust is precious,
when it gets in your eye,
it obstructs your vision.

author by ~publication date Fri May 14, 2004 17:31author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The Federal Reserve makes the $
The Chinese buy the Gold.
We use either €uro or Sterlng or Kröner or Franc.
There are others yet more beside
who choose the ruuble to bubble
and the yen to pen.
we no worship bulls
but we have long valued
stags.

Confusing says:-

the day shall come my son
when all of this is
a handful of rice.

Related Link: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/05/291337.html
author by wu mingpublication date Fri May 14, 2004 18:12author address author phone Report this post to the editors

a co-operative project between the universities of taiwan, PRC, and Washington.
= C? it isn't so terrible is it?
http://www.lib.washington.edu/Databases/sung/
great dynasty the Sung / T'sung
if you're into your dynasties.

author by foo man chupublication date Fri May 14, 2004 18:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

http://dannyreviews.com/h/Judge_Dee.html
the map of the internet
of precious room 101
is so imconunicable elucdable
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/MYPOEMS.RXML

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