RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RiskWeeble, similar story here. Have been investing for over 30 years, work in the mining industry, and have done a few years in the developing world. When asked if mining is a force for good or a force for evil, I think that the only realistic response is that it is a force. Good or evil depends mostly upon the government and the social structure, within which companies work.
It's all very easy from the Western perspective to say get the companies out, so that the peasants can walk around barefoot and toothless like something off National Geographic for the comfort of our liberals and ecotourists, but people in third world countries have their own aspirations to have education, jobs, prosperity, food, cell phones, medicine, mobility, and all of the other stuff that we take for granted. They sure as heck are not going to wake up tomorrow and start making heir money in semiconductors and software creation, so the resource industries (mining, forestry, agriculture, petrochem) ARE the development path.
There's a lot of us here who have a few whiskers and some depth and whose whole lives revolve around this industry. I resent the way that we are portrayed by journalists who would not know the difference between sublevel caving and open pit, and whose only third world experience is drinking shyte out of a pineapple on the porch of some hacienda 30 minutes from the airport. When I came back from my offshore adventures I was not rich - largely because when I was there I got personally involved in the lives of people around me. I am not unique in this respect. A lot of people in mining companies doing their day to day stuff are forces of good in the world around them, and sometimes when we go off in forums like this we are not trying to defend our investments... it's more a case of trying to defend our own characters, life accomplishments, and the reputation of our industry.
You can be guaranteed that peace between Tahoe and the local people would be welcomed by both, and could be arrived at fairly easily were it not for outside forces - governments who specialize in exploiting their own citizens, and people in the Western world who profit from making sure that mining companies can NEVER be at peace with the communities around them. That is the sorry context in which we work and live.