You really have drunk the OGC Kool-Aid haven't you. The problems...

You really have drunk the OGC Kool-Aid haven't you. The problems with Dipidio have been churning away for well over a decade. There is plenty of evidence that OGC has ridden more than a little roughshod of the local communities affected by their mine. Just Google Dipidio and you will see some of which I am referring to dating back years and years. All of these problems were avoidable or should have been for such a 'award winning' company. I want the FTAA renewed and the mine re-opened too, but digesting the fable that OGC is heroic will do nothing for the perspective required to understand this problem.

I don't think the Philippine government is worried about the lost revenues at all. Stripping a foreign company of a major mining asset is a consequential political decision; if OGC was American this simply would not have happened. More is in play here than money methinks. Neither do I think Duterte is a Devil - 2 months ago in central Luzon I could hardly find anyone who did not think him wonderful. He remains enormously popular. Let me repeat that, enormously popular. Foreign capital is anything but in the Philippines.

If anything shocked me, it was the Chinese capital funding Duterte's Bulid, Build, Build program and the cancellation of the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States. This, historically, is an earthquake.

If Duterte is prepared to forsake the Americans, screwing an Australian Gold Miner is something he won't blink at.