MAKE MINE A TREBLE

CONFLICTING FIGURES ABOUT MINING DISASTERS around the world allow me to believe the ones that meet my purposes most snugly at the moment, and these are that over 3,000 miners have died in China over the last ten years, a number unknown in Russia and its satellite friends and a similar unknown number in South America. Only today, another 30 were entombed in China, with 17 of them being pronounced dead, 4 more “lost” in another mine in Chile and there was a collapse in a gold mine this evening in Ecuador. The figures for South Africa are equally not available, but if I had to hazard a guess I would imagine there had been the occasional subsiding now and again.

ALL OF WHICH MAKES THE “CELEBRATION” over Chile doing its duty by keeping its citizens alive while they toil underground and haul up 50% of its national wealth seem rather ignorant and hypocritical.

YET NONE OF THIS MUST MAKE MUCH SENSE to United States- and Europe-educated multi-millionaire and media magnate Chilean President Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique, Ph.D., one of the richest men in the southern hemisphere, who is now wending his way around Europe – today in Portugal and London – drumming up support for his country after himself and two of his cabinet ministers have shown that Chile is a “first world” country because they used Canadian manpower and United States money to save some people from a mining disaster. He seemed little concerned on the BBC this evening when informed that there had been another mine collapse in his country.

HYPOCRISY WITHOUT END IS SEEN in his visit to Davy Cameron in Downing Street. Yesterday’s lavish party in the same house, to celebrate the 1,000th birthday of Lady Margaret Thatcher, had to be held without her, as she is somewhat under the weather. An ironic coincidence is that Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron’s darling, managed to close down almost all the mines in Britain and put thousands upon thousands of mine workers into unemployment, forcing so many families into poverty. But, perhaps, at least they were safe.