The Comment Factory

Reporter at the Financial Times.

matthewkennard@thecommentfactory.com
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The international community has joined with the anti-mining movement in El Salvador in calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into all of the assassinations, the attempted kidnappings and the death threats to find out who is really behind this violence

Bolivia has bucked conventional developmental economics–which outsources development and production to foreign companies expert in the field and with reserves of capital–and has endeavored to develop its deposits with state-owned companies, rebuffing the overtures of countless Western companies. Evo Morales needs to raise $800 million to construct the mines and processing plants needed for this approach

A Financial Times survey of five leading UK-listed mining groups – Rio Tinto, Vedanta, Anglo American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton – has found the number of fatalities has stayed the same since 2004. Anglo American is the only miner surveyed that has reduced fatality figures consistently, though its volume of deaths is the highest

A confidential briefing by the Foreign Office cautioned that there “would be a strong possibility of retaliation, e.g. over oil supplies” should the shah be given sanctuary in the UK. It continued: “We are convinced that, if the shah came to Britain, there would be physical retaliation against British subjects in Iran.”

The issue dominated a large part of her first trip to the US as prime minister in December 1979. The minutes of her initial meeting with the president reveal that she “handled both the gun which the RUC at present used and that which was on order. There was no doubt that the American Ruger was much better.”

“It is not often we are permitted a glimpse into the personal lives of Iraq’s leaders,” said the letter to the Foreign Office, “so by way of introduction, I enclose a touching account of a day in the life of President Saddam Hussein.”