Scandals

It seems that every year, if not every month or week, brings a new mineral or trade or market related scandal to our attention. These activities are worth some of our attention, as they illustrate some of the processes associated with mineral and fuel extraction in the world arena. Three examples may be found at the following links:

The sons of H L Hunt's first marriage came to prominence as silver traders in the between 1978 and 1980:

http://web.pdx.edu/~jjackson/HuntSilver.html

Canada minerals exploration companies have been instrumental in a number of major discoveries. Early reports that a small company, Bre-X had made such a discovery in Indonesia:

http://web.pdx.edu/~jjackson/Bre-X.html

"Conflict Diamonds" or "Blood Diamonds" funded local political conflicts in West Africa, and now are thought to be funding another conflict in Zimbabwe:

http://web.pdx.edu/~jjackson/BloodDiamonds.html

Other scandals abound. You might Google "Teapot Dome" for an interesting piece of American history.

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