July 3, 2011 – Republic of Mining

Even the dying and the doctor support chrysotile mining in Asbestos – by Julian Sher and Bill Curry (Globe and Mail – July 2, 2011)

July 3, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Digging in: The politics of asbestos mining

ASBESTOS, QUE. AND OTTAWA – Donald Nicholls remembers when the white fibres from the open pit mine that still dominates this town blanketed its streets like snow.

“You could leave tracks from the dust that fell overnight,” said Mr. Nicholls who started working in the mine fresh out of high school back in 1950. “It was much, much worse back then.”

He’s slowly dying of asbestosis, a respiratory disease brought on by inhaling those white particles. But like almost everyone else in town, the 79-year-old supports the reopening of the mine, allowing Canada to ramp up its export of chrysotile asbestos – a variant of the very mineral that is killing him.

In the face of widespread international hostility, Canada too has become an unabashed proponent of exporting a product linked to lung disease and cancer. The Conservative government’s decision last week to block an international agreement to restrict the sale of chrysotile incited condemnation around the world and across the country.

The Canadian Cancer Society called it an “unethical decision” that left it “shocked and embarrassed.”

Coltan a minefield in the Congo – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 3, 2011)

July 3, 2011

Jennifer Wells is a feature writer with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. No stranger to the mining industry, Ms. Wells won the 1999 National Business Book Award for Fever: The Dark Mystery of the Bre-X Gold Rush as well as covering many other major mining stories.

“Don’t just shock us. Make us understand.” — Jason Stearns, Congo watcher

So you want to see the minerals!” Edouard Mwangachuchu, senator, Democratic Republic of the Congo, quickly advances toward a cargo trailer situated high on a verdant emerald hilltop in Masisi Territory. It is a glorious day.

Masisi, in the Congolese province of North Kivu, is lush and agriculturally rich, rising in terraced steps more visually fitting the postcard pastures of today’s Rwanda, or possibly the rice plateaus of Vietnam, than the Congo, which often — too often — seems a desiccated and wretched place.

In Masisi the sweet peas are white, the lupines are purple, and the senator, in his straw hat and pink golf shirt, looks the part of the weekend farmer, which he is, crowing that he produces the finest Gouda cheese in all the Congo. The senator is also a mine operator of a modestly mechanized operation, and on this day he is in an expansive mood.

The lock on the cargo trailer is surprisingly slight, given the riches stored inside.

The Congo’s tin soldiers (Blood Minerals) – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 26, 2011)

July 3, 2011

“You’ll say I walked across Africa with my wrists unshackled, and now I am one more soul walking free in a white skin, wearing some thread of the stolen goods, cotton or diamonds, freedom at the very least, prosperity.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

BISIE, CONGO—The figure stirs suddenly, rising on one elbow, eyes blinking out from the dark, hand-dug mine shaft. Rough-hewn post-and-beam construction frames the entrance to the pit, partly obscuring the small cot upon which the creuseur has claimed a moment’s rest, a break from the brain-dulling monotony of hacking at the rock face with mallet and chisel and then, by brute strength, hauling broken ore to the surface, toward the sunlight.

At midday the heat is searing, baking an endless vista of rubble painted in colours of titian and yellow ochre. The treeless moonscape is a 45-minute roller-coaster climb beyond the tiny town of Bisie, itself a nine-hour walk — for the fleet of foot — from the nearest road in the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Bisie “mine” isn’t really a mine at all, but a cassiterite deposit that has enticed creuseurs like diggers to the Klondike. From pits that run to 100 metres deep and more, miners excavate the ore that ultimately will be smelted to tin by big players in the smelting game, players that reside outside of the Congo. The tin is used not just for cans and containers, but in considerable measure by electronics manufacturers for lead-free solders, forging the link between a mountain in the Congo and shopping malls thousands of kilometres away displaying the latest in smart phones and laptops.

Mining the Congo: From the Earth to the moon – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 25, 2011)

July 3, 2011

In the first part of the series Mining the Congo, Jennifer Wells recounts a trek through the Congo toward a remote, cratered mountainside where miners toil.

The heat of the day was coming on. Suspended above a smoky fire a meaty gnarl of antelope, the size of a small ham, twisted lazily. A group of women sat nearby, having lowered their heavy panniers, seeking a moment’s respite.

Mari stood in the umbra of the woodland, her sloe eyes, her round face, a funny little knit cap on her head, tatty pants under a blue and yellow floral piece of cloth that she had tied about her waist. Her pannier of cassava leaves lay at her feet.

Those eyes. They seemed to scan in slow motion before Mari swiftly and dismissively swept the back side of one hand across the palm of the other. “You will not make it to Bisie before nightfall,” she said firmly in Swahili, steadying her gaze not upon photographer Lucas Oleniuk, but upon my determinedly un-weary person. “You will have to sleep in the forest.”