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I agree with you that everyone that bought into cmkx was a greedy gullible bufoon like hnd2hnd and his lovely wife.
I don't agree with you that Paris Hilton deserves more than a couple of days in a jail cell just like everyone else for what she did.
I hope she makes millions more with her story, book and new line of jail house thongs.
I don't recall Paris running over any kids at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. I don't think many kids are out running around at that time.
Urban ran over people financially at all hours of the night and day both drunk and sober with full knowledge it was a swindle.
If Urban is walking around free Paris should be flying around with Angel wings on.
Of course she should be behind bars and OJ should be walking around free, yeah right...
What does Martha Stewart have to do with Global Warming?
Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
(Excerpted from State of Fear)
Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.
This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.
I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.
Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.
These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.
All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.
Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.
The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.
The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race.
The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.
As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."
Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.
There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America.
Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)
Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.
Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables.
After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form.
But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts of universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. "Feeble-mindedness" could mean anything from poverty to illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of "degenerate" or "unfit."
Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one's neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.
Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, "Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state." Deichman speaks of the "active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented." German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared.
A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops.
Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures.
Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet.
By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.
Now we are engaged in a great new theory that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with.
Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis.
I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.
One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms.
In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.
The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.
But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."
That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.
It's just you...
Urban Casavant, see the CMKX thread for more details.
Do you perhaps mean?
"A Fool And His Money Are Easily Parted"
http://www.goenglish.com/AFoolAndHisMoneyAreEasilyParted.asp
Speaking of Usvan I went to the Orleans Casino in Vegas where they have Usvan's mug shot posted.
It was a surprisingly nice little casino and the hotel was competely booked for the dentist convention.
It was like pulling teeth to get a room.
BTW I just bought some of Usvan's new promotion as a joke on Friday, no more invested than I won state side.
I rather doubt it... Drop me a line when you get out of jail.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=16149153
Do you have something against drywallers TSX.
I understand the George Lake orebody is worth $6 Billion U.S.
This company just might make one million millionaires.
Does anybody know where the jade collection is?
Do you know where I can find a sun spot activity chart?
Can we all chip in and get TSX a membership in IH so he can PM?
You forgot Bubbles...
She is very good, no wonder Caeser's fired Celine.
Bette Midler just replaced Celine in Vegas.
Best cover in the history of cover songs by a Canadian...
I've seen the stones that were supposedly diamond and Mayor Laliberte, i.e. the Chief is trying to peddle the story to a new group of suckers.
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&resnum=0&q=specularite&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um....
The overburden in the Green Lake area is thicker by possibly double the FalC area - i.e. 200 metres or 600 feet.
The rock which was not kimberlite came from several hundred miles to the NE.
Of course Laliberte is convinced the diamonds are coming up through cracks in the 1200 foot deep Green Lake and floating to surface.
The reason Moen and Mark were interested in the area is the Green Lake council had some money put aside they could use for drilling.
What I heard was somebody took the money and ran and the driller was stiffed $120,000 and the geologist about $15,000 while Al and Mark were in Las Vegas pretending to be great diamond explorers pool side at the Palms.
Mug shot of Urban at police station.
http://www.orleanscasino.com/gaming/images/winners/usvan-casavant.jpg
I would like to comment about Green Lake. I know about the work done there exploring for diamonds by a company from Edmonton(Al Moen), and his geologist (Mark). I also know they found other minerals such as: gold,oil,and some kind of mineral for making batteries. This company bought up all claims surrounding the original claim through a third company from the states. Orben Laliberte had the original claim, but now I hear that exploring has stopped,for they are arguing over claim jumping. Lawsuits are the talk now,so who is actually the crooks. While Orben and his former partners are fighting over claims now the people of Green Lake have to wait and see what happens with the diamonds under the lake!
Posted by Metisboy @ 2007-02-18 15:29
http://www.stockwatch.com/swnet/newsit/newsit_newsit.aspx?bid=B-528657-C:SGF&symbol=SGF&news...
You won't believe this but it appears that Al Moen is the auditor of Golden Arch Resources.
http://www.goldenarchresources.com/corporate.htm
Consider it MARKED ! ! !
rumor is UC was picked up last night near Mossbank on a DUI and thrown in the slammer - even though there is an outstanding warrant for him he was released out of custody to family...
Jungle Fever
The Bre-X saga is the greatest gold scam ever. But to understand the enormity of the fraud, you had to be there. Our man in Borneo tells his story.
Richard Behar
When I stepped off the plane in Jakarta, I was, like the rest of the world's lemmings, swept up in the Bre-X Minerals euphoria. The Canadian company had found the largest gold deposit of the century, buried deep underground in a dense Indonesian jungle on the island of Borneo. As Bre-X vice chairman John Felderhof later explained to me, a volcano had essentially "collapsed back onto itself" three million years ago, causing a massive buildup of heat and pressure, which created the miraculous treasure. He drew a diagram. It made sense. After all, he was on his eighth beer of the evening; I was on my fourth. What's more, everyone believed him--fellow geologists, engineers, financial analysts, business journalists, the world's largest mining companies, government officials, even a former U.S. President. "Geologically, it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen in my life," Felderhof sputtered. "It's so big, it's scary. It's f--ing scary!"
Horrifying is a better word. Bre-X was a gold-mining hoax--the largest of any century--until it collapsed onto itself last month. Allegedly thousands of rock samples were "salted" with flakes of gold before they were tested. Today Felderhof is rich and sends his regrets from the Cayman Islands, where he professes his innocence and is applying for permanent residency. His deputy geologist, Mike de Guzman, is not so fortunate, having apparently jumped 800 feet into the jungle from a helicopter once the jig was up. Bre-X CEO David Walsh is holed up at the company's Calgary headquarters, scuffling with camera crews. Class-action lawsuits are flying, while criminal investigators are poring over the company's books.
The numbers are heart-stopping. The market value of Bre-X had topped $4 billion--a growth rate of 100,000% in three years. In early May the company melted into bankruptcy. But not before Walsh, his wife, and Felderhof had mined roughly $50 million from stock sales. And the gold? In the weeks before the fraud was exposed, some 71 million ounces of the yellow metal, worth $25 billion at today's prices, had supposedly been "proven" by Bre-X. Then Felderhof said he was "comfortable" with 200 million ounces--far more than the California gold rush. One Bre-X official told me "400 million."
The numbers tell only part of the story. To grasp the enormity of the scam, you had to be there. You had to see the cosmos that Bre-X had created, like an elaborate Hollywood set with hundreds of actors who could be loaded onto trucks and barges once the tickets had been sold. "You have to understand, this thing is like a 20-foot man," gushed Research Capital mining analyst Chad Williams after returning from an early pilgrimage. "For someone in our business, it's like taking the biggest Elvis fan to Graceland."
I spent two weeks in Indonesia in February to chronicle an epic tale of how a bunch of average Joes stumbled onto the holy grail, only to find powerful and greedy forces conspiring to take it away from them. Felderhof told me only one other publication (the Northern Miner) had ever been permitted inside Busang, the exploration camp on the island of Borneo. I felt lucky. I proved even luckier when I returned to New York with an illness that delayed my story for several weeks. ("Saved by a parasite," FORTUNE managing editor John Huey now says.) We held our fire again after Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Bre-X's new partner, said it was conducting its own drilling tests--the first time in nearly four years anyone independent had checked beneath the surface. Looking back, I don't have the answers. But the trip provided a fascinating look at several characters who may be the century's greatest scam artists.
By the time I got to Indonesia, both Walsh and Felderhof were trapped in a Javanese version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the timeless movie farce in which Mickey Rooney, Milton Berle, and a slew of other characters try to outsleaze one another in a manic race to recover buried treasure. The Bre-X version came complete with payola, private eyes, and break-ins. It led from the leech-infested swamps of Borneo to the presidential palace in polluted Jakarta. It featured a dictator's greedy kids and some of the world's biggest mining firms, stabbing one another in the dark.
The story is familiar now. For nearly a year, until Freeport was awarded the contract, the Indonesian government had delayed giving Bre-X control over Busang. Big mining companies jockeyed for position. As the gold estimates grew, Indonesian officials were determined to select an established firm as the operator. Mining giants were lobbying for the post, none harder than Peter Munk, CEO of Toronto's Barrick Gold, the world's second-largest gold producer. Munk hired Kroll Associates, the world's biggest detective agency, to dig up dirt on Bre-X in anticipation of a hostile takeover bid. He enlisted former U.S. President George Bush to lobby Suharto, the Indonesian ruler. He retained the services of a daughter of Suharto to get an edge. (Bre-X offered $40 million to a son.)
When I arrived in early February, Jakarta had become a corporate war zone centered on five-star fortresses. Bre-X was at the Shangri-La (the "Bre-X Shangri-La"). From his window Walsh could see the enemy--the "Barrick Hyatt." Just up the road, at the Regent Hotel, a Houston lawyer was assembling spies to help him figure out whom to sue on behalf of Bre-X shareholders. It was impossible to figure out what was going on. The man holding the cards: Suharto's golfing buddy, a secretive timber tycoon named Mohamad "Bob" Hasan. The dictator had asked him to clean up the Bre-X mess. At one point it wasn't clear whom Suharto's government was favoring as Bre-X's partner. "This place is like Casablanca," complained Doug MacIntosh, Bre-X's investment banker at J.P. Morgan. "The story changes every day."
In Jakarta, I talked with Walsh, Felderhof, and other Bre-X officials dozens of times. We met separately. We met together at lunches and dinners. Not once did a yellow flag go up during those talks. Were they all just playing their parts in an elaborate scheme? If so, they were playing those parts quite well.
Even now, I have trouble believing that Walsh participated in the scam. He was a miserable soul when we were introduced in his Jakarta suite, just hours after he'd had it swept for electronic bugs. He was chain-smoking Dunhills and hacking his brains out. He hadn't exercised in years, he said, which was apparent from a huge deposit hanging over his belt. He was depressed and distracted, and often stared out his window at the litter and sewage that flowed continuously down a muddy canal--a metaphor, we joked, for the corruption that thrived in Indonesia. "We all find it hard to believe that we're responsible for the largest gold discovery probably in the history of the world," he said without much feeling. Indeed, Walsh looked more like some poor schlemiel who had just won the lottery and couldn't locate the ticket.
Walsh told me his story: A former stockbroker, he launched Bre-X in 1989. He hunted for gold in Quebec and joined a diamond rush in the Northwest Territories. His luck was so abysmal that he opened his 1991 annual report with the line "Yes, we are still in business." After filing for personal bankruptcy, he decided he needed "a proven gold finder." Enter Felderhof, whose claim to fame was the co-discovery of one of the world's biggest silver and gold mines in Papua New Guinea in 1968. It took Walsh two weeks to track down Felderhof, whom he hadn't seen in ten years. Using his last $10,000, Walsh flew to Indonesia, where Felderhof talked him into buying the rights to part of the Busang property in 1993.
Looking back, maybe I should have been suspicious when I met the Dutch-born Felderhof. He had a shifty mug, a gruff manner, and a hideous laugh trapped in the back of his throat ("Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!...Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!"). Still, his talent for storytelling made him more enjoyable than Walsh. Here was a pirate without the eye patch--a hard-drinking, swashbuckling explorer who had prowled the world's jungles, dodging flash floods and poisonous snakes. He wore his 14 bouts with malaria like medals on his chest. He said he was so poor that in 1992 he had to steal a Christmas tree for his family. Never again. He pulled out a photo of Ingrid, his second wife. "She just bought me a Lamborghini for Christmas," he said. "It's two seats strapped to a f--ing engine. I think she's trying to kill me. Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!"
Shortly after we met, Felderhof took me to dinner with de Guzman, his longtime pal whom he'd invited to join the Bre-X team. The Filipino geologist beamed like a jewel when Felderhof explained that he couldn't have discovered the gold without his deputy's "pioneering theories." De Guzman boasted that his IQ ranged from 150 to 170, which came in handy when he hiked 32 kilometers through dense jungle "with the camp on my back, eating noodles every meal for a week," and hunting for signs of mineralization. The first two drill holes were failures. "We almost closed the property," recalled de Guzman. "In December 1993 John said, 'Close the property,' and then we made the hit." Never mind that more than a dozen mining companies had dismissed the property as worthless. The previous operator had even drilled 19 holes, but "they were all in the wrong places," snickered Felderhof during the meal. Or they were "too shallow." Or the workers used a wet-drilling method that, ironically, washed away whatever gold they did strike. "Geology wasn't on their minds," added Felderhof. "They were spending all their time in town chasing girls and naming creeks after them." De Guzman, who, as it turns out, had at least four wives simultaneously, laughed as he recalled the various creeks--"Karen, Jenny, Martha, Ann." After consulting with a local tribe of Christian Dayaks, he gave the creeks back their traditional names.
As I continued my work, things got tense. Walsh complained about a break-in at his Calgary office; two weeks earlier his wife had found a spy rifling through the garbage at their Bahamas estate. He claims he sent a memo advising employees to "shred sensitive materials." (If true, that will make it harder for investigators to solve the mystery.) The company's top financial officer, Rolando Francisco, was also caught up in the hysteria. He would talk in his hotel room only after cranking up the volume on the TV. Over at the Hyatt, Barrick spokesman Luc Lavoie was waxing philosophical: "If this was the biggest oil discovery, so what? More oil. But gold is different...It brings up more emotions. It clouds the minds of people." It clearly fogged the mind of his client. I later learned that Barrick, last November, couldn't find gold in many Bre-X samples. "This can't be a scam!" Munk screamed at his deputies. "Do some more tests! Figure it out! I know it's there, okay? You confirm it's there."
I looked forward to seeing the gold. After four days in Jakarta, Felderhof joined me on the flight to Balikpapan, the only place in Borneo with a runway big enough to handle the plane. During the trip he explained that Bre-X had spent more than $1 million on a social-development program for the tribe of Christian Dayaks that comprised the bulk of the 400 workers. "I've always been interested in developing people," he said. From Balikpapan, it was an exhilarating two-hour jaunt in a helicopter to Busang. The dense, swampy jungle stretched as far as the eye could see. Felderhof leaned over and said that a chopper once made an emergency landing in the area. "When the pilot was found, four days later, his body was covered with leeches," yelled Felderhof, over the roar of the engine. "Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!" Little did I know that, six weeks later, Felderhof's sidekick, de Guzman, would apparently throw himself out of the same chopper we were sitting in. It would also take four days to find the body, which had been partly devoured by wild pigs and other creatures.
Once on the ground, you would never know that this wasn't the real deal. What a production! If Busang was a Hollywood set, the 2,000 Dayaks were the extras. Bre-X had electrified their village, built a new church, opened a kindergarten, and organized sewing classes for the local women. A swath of jungle had been cleared for an airport. Bre-X planned to open a fishery and a poultry-farming venture to enable the tribe to sell products to the mine.
I shared a cigar with a young villager who had just received a scholarship from Bre-X to study engineering. I met Pebit, the barefoot Dayak leader, as he was helping construct new homes for the workers--a tribal Levittown, courtesy of Bre-X. Through a translator, Pebit boasted that it was his decision to sacrifice a pig to God that "allowed the gold to be pulled from the ground." Then there was the army of young geologists working the site. At the exploration camp, I drank Bintang (a local beer) deep into the night with ten of these workers, many of whom were fresh out of geology school in Canada, Indonesia, or the Philippines. As we listened to wild monkeys screech like sirens in the darkness, the young men talked about the rigors of life in the bush. They complained about the grueling work schedule (eight weeks on, two weeks off) and the lack of sex. But they believed they were making history. They were the geological equivalent of batboys for the World Champion Yankees. They didn't know that they were pawns in a crooked game that was fixed from the get-go.
After two days, my tour was over. I saw no gold. But then again, I didn't know what real gold was supposed to look like buried in those long, tubular core samples. My return trip included a seven-hour speedboat ride down the narrow Mahakam River with Cesar Puspos, de Guzman's 36-year-old deputy. We spent the day waving to the locals, who lived in shabby huts and washed in the muddy water they used for defecation. Puspos, by contrast, had struck it rich. He drove a BMW. He described how de Guzman, "my mentor," awakened him in the middle of the night in a frenzy to announce that he had solved Busang's geological puzzle. When we arrived at Bre-X's office in the city of Samarinda, I noticed huge piles of core sample bags and persuaded Puspos to climb atop for a picture. Investigators say Bre-X's samples were "probably" salted in Samarinda before being delivered to testing labs in Balikpapan. (Walsh had once said that the bags were transported directly from Busang to the labs.)
After a few more days in Jakarta, I returned to the States on February 17. Bre-X soon unraveled. Even then, many believers chose to stay blind. In March, after de Guzman's death, Barrick's Peter Munk told FORTUNE, "I don't believe that those guys salted the mine...you couldn't have fooled that many analysts for that long." When Freeport said its drilling showed "insignificant" gold, Bre-X's flacks at Hill & Knowlton suggested that Freeport was behind a scheme to lower the stock price (see following box). The last time I heard from Walsh, March 20, he left me a phone message confirming some arcane historical facts in my story--a day after de Guzman's death and a week after Freeport called Walsh with the news that they were coming up dry at Busang. This is a crook? Or the Mr. Magoo of mining?
Looking back, some things seemed suspicious. Like the "accidental" fire at Busang that destroyed a building containing de Guzman's papers and visible gold samples. I was also disappointed to see no gold at the century's biggest gold deposit. A geologist, Steve Hughes, took me through the bush to a creek. We panned. We found nothing. "That's strange," said Hughes. "You'd think we'd find something." The next day I needled Felderhof, telling him I had bad news for Bre-X. "No gold, huh?" he snapped back. "Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!" There was another peculiar moment. In one of my last meetings in Jakarta with Felder-hof, de Guzman walked in. I rose and slapped him on the back, congratulating him on Freeport's emerging as Bre-X's new partner. He should have been thrilled. Instead, he was stone cold. Grim. Icy. He didn't even look at me. It was clear he wanted to talk to Felderhof alone.
No matter who pulled off the crime, Bre-X has left a mother lode of victims--from individual investors to the poor tribal people counting on the mine to earn a meager living. But even the pros got burned in this tale of greed. Recently I caught up with MacIntosh of J.P. Morgan, the Bre-X banker. We'd shared several meals in Jakarta, where he jabbered for hours about how the gold mine would be the most lucrative in the world. Doug is a mining engineer with 30 years of experience. I was curious how it felt to be suckered. "I have been surprised at every turn of this thing," he said, noting how fortunate I was that we had held the presses. "I hope that we're as lucky as you have been." Not a chance, mate.
http://www.sgrm.com/art45.htm
lol, and they're probably all retarded.
Andy Casavant
2nd Ave E Arborfield, SK S0E0A0 (306) 769-8649
Arthur Casavant
Farm Blaine Lake, SK S0J0J0 (306) 497-2840
B Casavant
104-419 Tait Crt Saskatoon, SK S7H5L3 (306) 652-1779
Brett Casavant
Farm Tisdale, SK S0E1T0 (306) 873-5468
C Casavant
326 6th St E Prince Albert, SK S6V0N1 (306) 763-3092
D Casavant
Prince Albert, SK (306) 922-8415
Dean Casavant
12 Elmwood Ave Prince Albert, SK S6V7Z1 (306) 764-6294
Denise Casavant
625 Casey Rd Prince Albert, SK S6V8C9 (306) 922-1596
E Casavant
Star City, SK S0E1P0 (306) 863-2973
Ed Casavant
Farm Tisdale, SK S0E1T0 (306) 873-2180
F R Casavant
4-20 18th St W Prince Albert, SK S6V3Z7 (306) 763-0054
Felix Casavant
1451 Sibbald Cres Prince Albert, SK S6V6E1 (306) 764-7123
G Casavant
Farm Meath Park, SK S0J1T0 (306) 929-4962
G Casavant
305-1452 102nd St North Battleford, SK S9A1G7 (306) 446-0947
Gerald Casavant
Farm Meath Park, SK S0J1T0 (306) 929-2390
Herve Casavant
1318 97th St Tisdale, SK S0E1T0 (306) 873-5549
J Casavant
Regina, SK (306) 546-3746
J & P Casavant
326 Churchill Dr Melfort, SK S0E1A0 (306) 752-5992
Jeanne Casavant
329-3102 Louise Pl Saskatoon, SK S7J4X4 (306) 374-9012
Kelly Casavant
Garnet St Wolseley, SK S0G5H0 (306) 698-2791
Leonard Casavant
546 Pezer Cres Saskatoon, SK S7S1J7 (306) 664-3854
Lionel Casavant
Farm Blaine Lake, SK S0J0J0 (306) 497-2265
Louis H Casavant
RR 3 Saskatoon, SK S7K3J6 (306) 382-8650
M & J Casavant
417 St Laurent Cres Saskatoon, SK S7L4X3 (306) 955-8819
M D Dr Casavant
Swift Current, SK (306) 773-3295
Marcel Casavant
518 Neusch Cres Saskatoon, SK S7K7V7 (306) 242-9677
Maurice Casavant
1705 Madden Saskatoon, SK S7H3M7 (306) 373-5319
Morris Casavant
719 Hochelaga E Moose Jaw, SK S6H0P9 (306) 693-6803
N & A Casavant
2122 98th St Tisdale, SK S0E1T0 (306) 873-3054
N & A Casavant
Marean Lake, SK S0E1H0 (306) 278-3054
R Casavant
Hwy 5 E Saskatoon, SK (306) 374-7643
Ray Casavant
202 Perehudoff Crt Saskatoon, SK S7N4H1 (306) 374-3366
Rick J Casavant
211 Chotem Bay Saskatoon, SK S7N4M3 (306) 249-3216
Ron Casavant
Henribourg, SK (306) 764-0698
Vince & Janice Casavant
202-289 Fietz St Yorkton, SK S3N3P6 (306) 782-1939
Albert Dwyer
3424 College Regina, SK S4T1W4 (306) 522-9871
Arnold Dwyer
325 Ave V N Saskatoon, SK S7L3E7 (306) 382-8192
G J Dwyer
3627 Hanna Bay Regina, SK S4S7C8 (306) 586-5493
George Dwyer
8-1729 Winnipeg St Regina, SK S4P1G1 (306) 569-0610
James Dwyer
164 Edmund Park Saskatoon, SK S7H0Z4 (306) 384-3436
Jim Dwyer
714 Ave M Perdue, SK S0K3C0 (306) 237-4327
Johnny Dwyer
234 Hunt Rd Saskatoon, SK S7L7A3 (306) 683-0928
M Dwyer
3511 Victoria Ave Regina, SK S4T1M2 (306) 347-0142
P Dwyer
1959 Montague St Regina, SK S4T3J6 (306) 352-8474
Phil Dwyer
1309 Spadina Cres E Saskatoon, SK S7K3J2 (306) 244-8969
Ronald Dwyer
2506 53rd Ave Lloydminster, AB T9V2L6 (780) 875-2150
S Dwyer
42 Petersmeyer St Regina, SK S4R7P7 (306) 949-0479
Shannon Dwyer
1482 101st St North Battleford, SK S9A1A2 (306) 445-0648
T & G Dwyer
3914 65th Ave Lloydminster, AB (780) 871-2382
V Dwyer
1932 Cameron St Regina, SK S4T2V1 (306) 359-1404
There are no Dwyer's in the Saskatoon area.
http://www.mysask.com
Ralph was not too sheepish to collect a pay cheque for his name and work.
"News Release: First Two Holes Drilled on Smeaton Property hit Kimberlite
United Carina Resources Corp. and Consolidated Pine Channel Gold Corp. are pleased to announce that the first two holes drilled on their Smeaton, Saskatchewan area property have encountered significant intersections of Kimberlite.
Hole number one entered Kimberlite at a depth of 410 feet and continued in Kimberlite to a depth of 903 feet for a total intersection of 483 feet. This intersection is one of the thickest to be encountered in the Fort la Corne area to date. Hole number two entered Kimberlite at a depth of 394 feet and stayed in Kimberlite to 640 feet for a total thickness of 246 feet.
Preliminary logging of the two holes was conducted in a secure warehouse and then split. The samples from the two holes were then transported to the Saskatchewan Research Council's diamond laboratory in Saskatoon for analysis.
After a short break to allow ground conditions to thaw and dry out, drilling is about to resume on this target, with two or three more holes to be drilled. The purpose of these holes is to further define the geometry of the Kimberlite pipe and to provide further samples to assay for any diamond content.
The Smeaton property is currently jointly owned by United Carina and Pine Channel, with CMKM Diamonds Inc. (CMKX - Pink Sheets) and U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc. (UCAD - OTC Bulletin Board) each earning a 25% interest. The 25% interests will be earned by CMKM Diamond Inc. and U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc. each providing US$50,000 and each funding Cdn$200,000 worth of exploration on the 27 claim property. Following the drilling of the current target, further work will be conducted on the other areas of the property. Mr. Urban Casavant, President of CMKM Diamonds Inc., the Operator, has informed the Companies that the project is ahead of schedule and under budget.
The Qualified Person on this project is Mr. Ralph Newson of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
CONTACT: TEL: (306) 664-3828 Consolidated Pine Channel Gold Corp.
FAX: (306) 244-0042 Rick Walker, President, UCA and KPG"
"No matter what you believe, Urban Casavant is a Godly man and God is using him to re-distribute the wealth on this earth. If you are one that try to mess with this plan, may God have mercy on your soul."
I wonder what defines a "Godly man".
Perhaps how much you can booze away, smoke, snort and steal.
If that be the case UC is on par with Jesus and all the saints in heaven.
What a never ending fiasco...
Do you mean Baron Black of Crossharbour?
He is after all a peer in the British House of Lords and should be addressed properly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black
I wonder who his "dream team" of lawyers will be if he ever lands up in court.
Generally speaking you're right but Urban has never been caught before and has run scams like this one a dozen times successfully albeit on a smaller scale.
I would bet money that while he may get investigated they won't get two cents out of him.
No doubt the IRS does but Urban is only a U.S. visitor that owns a house in Vegas.
He is a Canadian citizen first and subject to the Canada Revenue Agency.
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/menu-e.html
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/agency/investigations/vdp-e.html
Teflon Urban did a lot of trading out of Aruba in the early days and probably protected himself with CMKX.
I would be really surprised if anything cathces up with him.
Notice how he gave his wrong name to the Orleans even though lottery winnings are not taxable.
http://www.orleanscasino.com/gaming/winners.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_taxes_in_Canada#Income_not_taxed
Maybe spelling is a good way of seeing what stocks the illiterati pick and subsequently plummet. This would be a good to shorting or at the very least mocking.
You two remind of these two, TSX as Sam of course.
Do you happen to know the whereabouts of Al?
I know someone that is trying to deliver some paperwork to him.
A blast from the past -
Jungle Fever
The Bre-X saga is the greatest gold scam ever. But to understand the enormity of the fraud, you had to be there. Our man in Borneo tells his story.
Richard Behar
When I stepped off the plane in Jakarta, I was, like the rest of the world's lemmings, swept up in the Bre-X Minerals euphoria. The Canadian company had found the largest gold deposit of the century, buried deep underground in a dense Indonesian jungle on the island of Borneo. As Bre-X vice chairman John Felderhof later explained to me, a volcano had essentially "collapsed back onto itself" three million years ago, causing a massive buildup of heat and pressure, which created the miraculous treasure. He drew a diagram. It made sense. After all, he was on his eighth beer of the evening; I was on my fourth. What's more, everyone believed him--fellow geologists, engineers, financial analysts, business journalists, the world's largest mining companies, government officials, even a former U.S. President. "Geologically, it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen in my life," Felderhof sputtered. "It's so big, it's scary. It's f--ing scary!"
Horrifying is a better word. Bre-X was a gold-mining hoax--the largest of any century--until it collapsed onto itself last month. Allegedly thousands of rock samples were "salted" with flakes of gold before they were tested. Today Felderhof is rich and sends his regrets from the Cayman Islands, where he professes his innocence and is applying for permanent residency. His deputy geologist, Mike de Guzman, is not so fortunate, having apparently jumped 800 feet into the jungle from a helicopter once the jig was up. Bre-X CEO David Walsh is holed up at the company's Calgary headquarters, scuffling with camera crews. Class-action lawsuits are flying, while criminal investigators are poring over the company's books.
The numbers are heart-stopping. The market value of Bre-X had topped $4 billion--a growth rate of 100,000% in three years. In early May the company melted into bankruptcy. But not before Walsh, his wife, and Felderhof had mined roughly $50 million from stock sales. And the gold? In the weeks before the fraud was exposed, some 71 million ounces of the yellow metal, worth $25 billion at today's prices, had supposedly been "proven" by Bre-X. Then Felderhof said he was "comfortable" with 200 million ounces--far more than the California gold rush. One Bre-X official told me "400 million."
The numbers tell only part of the story. To grasp the enormity of the scam, you had to be there. You had to see the cosmos that Bre-X had created, like an elaborate Hollywood set with hundreds of actors who could be loaded onto trucks and barges once the tickets had been sold. "You have to understand, this thing is like a 20-foot man," gushed Research Capital mining analyst Chad Williams after returning from an early pilgrimage. "For someone in our business, it's like taking the biggest Elvis fan to Graceland."
I spent two weeks in Indonesia in February to chronicle an epic tale of how a bunch of average Joes stumbled onto the holy grail, only to find powerful and greedy forces conspiring to take it away from them. Felderhof told me only one other publication (the Northern Miner) had ever been permitted inside Busang, the exploration camp on the island of Borneo. I felt lucky. I proved even luckier when I returned to New York with an illness that delayed my story for several weeks. ("Saved by a parasite," FORTUNE managing editor John Huey now says.) We held our fire again after Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Bre-X's new partner, said it was conducting its own drilling tests--the first time in nearly four years anyone independent had checked beneath the surface. Looking back, I don't have the answers. But the trip provided a fascinating look at several characters who may be the century's greatest scam artists.
By the time I got to Indonesia, both Walsh and Felderhof were trapped in a Javanese version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the timeless movie farce in which Mickey Rooney, Milton Berle, and a slew of other characters try to outsleaze one another in a manic race to recover buried treasure. The Bre-X version came complete with payola, private eyes, and break-ins. It led from the leech-infested swamps of Borneo to the presidential palace in polluted Jakarta. It featured a dictator's greedy kids and some of the world's biggest mining firms, stabbing one another in the dark.
The story is familiar now. For nearly a year, until Freeport was awarded the contract, the Indonesian government had delayed giving Bre-X control over Busang. Big mining companies jockeyed for position. As the gold estimates grew, Indonesian officials were determined to select an established firm as the operator. Mining giants were lobbying for the post, none harder than Peter Munk, CEO of Toronto's Barrick Gold, the world's second-largest gold producer. Munk hired Kroll Associates, the world's biggest detective agency, to dig up dirt on Bre-X in anticipation of a hostile takeover bid. He enlisted former U.S. President George Bush to lobby Suharto, the Indonesian ruler. He retained the services of a daughter of Suharto to get an edge. (Bre-X offered $40 million to a son.)
When I arrived in early February, Jakarta had become a corporate war zone centered on five-star fortresses. Bre-X was at the Shangri-La (the "Bre-X Shangri-La"). From his window Walsh could see the enemy--the "Barrick Hyatt." Just up the road, at the Regent Hotel, a Houston lawyer was assembling spies to help him figure out whom to sue on behalf of Bre-X shareholders. It was impossible to figure out what was going on. The man holding the cards: Suharto's golfing buddy, a secretive timber tycoon named Mohamad "Bob" Hasan. The dictator had asked him to clean up the Bre-X mess. At one point it wasn't clear whom Suharto's government was favoring as Bre-X's partner. "This place is like Casablanca," complained Doug MacIntosh, Bre-X's investment banker at J.P. Morgan. "The story changes every day."
In Jakarta, I talked with Walsh, Felderhof, and other Bre-X officials dozens of times. We met separately. We met together at lunches and dinners. Not once did a yellow flag go up during those talks. Were they all just playing their parts in an elaborate scheme? If so, they were playing those parts quite well.
Even now, I have trouble believing that Walsh participated in the scam. He was a miserable soul when we were introduced in his Jakarta suite, just hours after he'd had it swept for electronic bugs. He was chain-smoking Dunhills and hacking his brains out. He hadn't exercised in years, he said, which was apparent from a huge deposit hanging over his belt. He was depressed and distracted, and often stared out his window at the litter and sewage that flowed continuously down a muddy canal--a metaphor, we joked, for the corruption that thrived in Indonesia. "We all find it hard to believe that we're responsible for the largest gold discovery probably in the history of the world," he said without much feeling. Indeed, Walsh looked more like some poor schlemiel who had just won the lottery and couldn't locate the ticket.
Walsh told me his story: A former stockbroker, he launched Bre-X in 1989. He hunted for gold in Quebec and joined a diamond rush in the Northwest Territories. His luck was so abysmal that he opened his 1991 annual report with the line "Yes, we are still in business." After filing for personal bankruptcy, he decided he needed "a proven gold finder." Enter Felderhof, whose claim to fame was the co-discovery of one of the world's biggest silver and gold mines in Papua New Guinea in 1968. It took Walsh two weeks to track down Felderhof, whom he hadn't seen in ten years. Using his last $10,000, Walsh flew to Indonesia, where Felderhof talked him into buying the rights to part of the Busang property in 1993.
Looking back, maybe I should have been suspicious when I met the Dutch-born Felderhof. He had a shifty mug, a gruff manner, and a hideous laugh trapped in the back of his throat ("Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!...Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!"). Still, his talent for storytelling made him more enjoyable than Walsh. Here was a pirate without the eye patch--a hard-drinking, swashbuckling explorer who had prowled the world's jungles, dodging flash floods and poisonous snakes. He wore his 14 bouts with malaria like medals on his chest. He said he was so poor that in 1992 he had to steal a Christmas tree for his family. Never again. He pulled out a photo of Ingrid, his second wife. "She just bought me a Lamborghini for Christmas," he said. "It's two seats strapped to a f--ing engine. I think she's trying to kill me. Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!"
Shortly after we met, Felderhof took me to dinner with de Guzman, his longtime pal whom he'd invited to join the Bre-X team. The Filipino geologist beamed like a jewel when Felderhof explained that he couldn't have discovered the gold without his deputy's "pioneering theories." De Guzman boasted that his IQ ranged from 150 to 170, which came in handy when he hiked 32 kilometers through dense jungle "with the camp on my back, eating noodles every meal for a week," and hunting for signs of mineralization. The first two drill holes were failures. "We almost closed the property," recalled de Guzman. "In December 1993 John said, 'Close the property,' and then we made the hit." Never mind that more than a dozen mining companies had dismissed the property as worthless. The previous operator had even drilled 19 holes, but "they were all in the wrong places," snickered Felderhof during the meal. Or they were "too shallow." Or the workers used a wet-drilling method that, ironically, washed away whatever gold they did strike. "Geology wasn't on their minds," added Felderhof. "They were spending all their time in town chasing girls and naming creeks after them." De Guzman, who, as it turns out, had at least four wives simultaneously, laughed as he recalled the various creeks--"Karen, Jenny, Martha, Ann." After consulting with a local tribe of Christian Dayaks, he gave the creeks back their traditional names.
As I continued my work, things got tense. Walsh complained about a break-in at his Calgary office; two weeks earlier his wife had found a spy rifling through the garbage at their Bahamas estate. He claims he sent a memo advising employees to "shred sensitive materials." (If true, that will make it harder for investigators to solve the mystery.) The company's top financial officer, Rolando Francisco, was also caught up in the hysteria. He would talk in his hotel room only after cranking up the volume on the TV. Over at the Hyatt, Barrick spokesman Luc Lavoie was waxing philosophical: "If this was the biggest oil discovery, so what? More oil. But gold is different...It brings up more emotions. It clouds the minds of people." It clearly fogged the mind of his client. I later learned that Barrick, last November, couldn't find gold in many Bre-X samples. "This can't be a scam!" Munk screamed at his deputies. "Do some more tests! Figure it out! I know it's there, okay? You confirm it's there."
I looked forward to seeing the gold. After four days in Jakarta, Felderhof joined me on the flight to Balikpapan, the only place in Borneo with a runway big enough to handle the plane. During the trip he explained that Bre-X had spent more than $1 million on a social-development program for the tribe of Christian Dayaks that comprised the bulk of the 400 workers. "I've always been interested in developing people," he said. From Balikpapan, it was an exhilarating two-hour jaunt in a helicopter to Busang. The dense, swampy jungle stretched as far as the eye could see. Felderhof leaned over and said that a chopper once made an emergency landing in the area. "When the pilot was found, four days later, his body was covered with leeches," yelled Felderhof, over the roar of the engine. "Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!" Little did I know that, six weeks later, Felderhof's sidekick, de Guzman, would apparently throw himself out of the same chopper we were sitting in. It would also take four days to find the body, which had been partly devoured by wild pigs and other creatures.
Once on the ground, you would never know that this wasn't the real deal. What a production! If Busang was a Hollywood set, the 2,000 Dayaks were the extras. Bre-X had electrified their village, built a new church, opened a kindergarten, and organized sewing classes for the local women. A swath of jungle had been cleared for an airport. Bre-X planned to open a fishery and a poultry-farming venture to enable the tribe to sell products to the mine.
I shared a cigar with a young villager who had just received a scholarship from Bre-X to study engineering. I met Pebit, the barefoot Dayak leader, as he was helping construct new homes for the workers--a tribal Levittown, courtesy of Bre-X. Through a translator, Pebit boasted that it was his decision to sacrifice a pig to God that "allowed the gold to be pulled from the ground." Then there was the army of young geologists working the site. At the exploration camp, I drank Bintang (a local beer) deep into the night with ten of these workers, many of whom were fresh out of geology school in Canada, Indonesia, or the Philippines. As we listened to wild monkeys screech like sirens in the darkness, the young men talked about the rigors of life in the bush. They complained about the grueling work schedule (eight weeks on, two weeks off) and the lack of sex. But they believed they were making history. They were the geological equivalent of batboys for the World Champion Yankees. They didn't know that they were pawns in a crooked game that was fixed from the get-go.
After two days, my tour was over. I saw no gold. But then again, I didn't know what real gold was supposed to look like buried in those long, tubular core samples. My return trip included a seven-hour speedboat ride down the narrow Mahakam River with Cesar Puspos, de Guzman's 36-year-old deputy. We spent the day waving to the locals, who lived in shabby huts and washed in the muddy water they used for defecation. Puspos, by contrast, had struck it rich. He drove a BMW. He described how de Guzman, "my mentor," awakened him in the middle of the night in a frenzy to announce that he had solved Busang's geological puzzle. When we arrived at Bre-X's office in the city of Samarinda, I noticed huge piles of core sample bags and persuaded Puspos to climb atop for a picture. Investigators say Bre-X's samples were "probably" salted in Samarinda before being delivered to testing labs in Balikpapan. (Walsh had once said that the bags were transported directly from Busang to the labs.)
After a few more days in Jakarta, I returned to the States on February 17. Bre-X soon unraveled. Even then, many believers chose to stay blind. In March, after de Guzman's death, Barrick's Peter Munk told FORTUNE, "I don't believe that those guys salted the mine...you couldn't have fooled that many analysts for that long." When Freeport said its drilling showed "insignificant" gold, Bre-X's flacks at Hill & Knowlton suggested that Freeport was behind a scheme to lower the stock price (see following box). The last time I heard from Walsh, March 20, he left me a phone message confirming some arcane historical facts in my story--a day after de Guzman's death and a week after Freeport called Walsh with the news that they were coming up dry at Busang. This is a crook? Or the Mr. Magoo of mining?
Looking back, some things seemed suspicious. Like the "accidental" fire at Busang that destroyed a building containing de Guzman's papers and visible gold samples. I was also disappointed to see no gold at the century's biggest gold deposit. A geologist, Steve Hughes, took me through the bush to a creek. We panned. We found nothing. "That's strange," said Hughes. "You'd think we'd find something." The next day I needled Felderhof, telling him I had bad news for Bre-X. "No gold, huh?" he snapped back. "Kkh! Kkh! Kkh!" There was another peculiar moment. In one of my last meetings in Jakarta with Felder-hof, de Guzman walked in. I rose and slapped him on the back, congratulating him on Freeport's emerging as Bre-X's new partner. He should have been thrilled. Instead, he was stone cold. Grim. Icy. He didn't even look at me. It was clear he wanted to talk to Felderhof alone.
No matter who pulled off the crime, Bre-X has left a mother lode of victims--from individual investors to the poor tribal people counting on the mine to earn a meager living. But even the pros got burned in this tale of greed. Recently I caught up with MacIntosh of J.P. Morgan, the Bre-X banker. We'd shared several meals in Jakarta, where he jabbered for hours about how the gold mine would be the most lucrative in the world. Doug is a mining engineer with 30 years of experience. I was curious how it felt to be suckered. "I have been surprised at every turn of this thing," he said, noting how fortunate I was that we had held the presses. "I hope that we're as lucky as you have been." Not a chance, mate.
http://www.sgrm.com/art45.htm
What is going on?