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A Rio Tinto mine in Australia. A Glencore-Rio Tinto union would rival BHP Billiton in size.Credit Andrew Quilty for The New York Times
It’s good to be Ivan Glasenberg’s neighbor.
When the Glencore chief executive took his giant mining company public in 2011, he earned so much money that he was taxed more than $300 million by Rüschlikon, the Swiss village where he lives. Thanks to Mr. Glasenberg’s largess, residents of the picturesque town on the shores of Lake Zurich promptly voted to cut their tax rate by 7 percent.
Mr. Glasenberg, a South African who rose from humble origins to become one of the most influential men in the global commodities business, exerts an outsize influence wherever he goes. Beyond single-handedly altering the economics of his hometown, he has recently revealed his ambition to create the world’s biggest mining conglomerate.
In July, Mr. Glasenberg approached the world’s second-largest mining company, , about a merger with Glencore, both companies acknowledged this week.
Uniting Glencore and the London-based Rio Tinto, with a combined market value of $160 billion, would create an equal to , the world’s largest natural resources company.
A combination has a “credible strategic rationale,” analysts said in a note on Tuesday.
But now that the companies have acknowledged their fleeting talks, any tie-up between Glencore and Rio Tinto will have to wait for at least a half year, a technicality of the British takeover law. Nonetheless, Mr. Glasenberg’s opening salvo serves as confirmation that his ambitions remain unfulfilled.
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Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of Glencore.Credit Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
“He really aspires to make Glencore one of the top mining and commodities companies out there,” said the journalist Kate Kelly, author of “The Secret Club That Runs the World,” a book about the commodities business.
Born to a Lithuanian father and a South African mother, Mr. Glasenberg grew up in the suburbs of Johannesburg. A fitness buff, he became a competitive speed walker. After studying accounting at a South African university, he earned a master’s in business from the in 1983.
He went to work as a coal trader in South Africa for a company then called & Co. and now known as Glencore.
Mr. Glasenberg worked under Mr. Rich, the company’s controversial American founder. Mr. Rich was a wunderkind commodities trader, but was charged with tax evasion and illegally selling oil to Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81. Mr. Rich fled to Switzerland, maintained his innocence and was ultimately pardoned by President .
Mr. Glasenberg rose through the ranks, and ultimately participated in a buyout of the company from Mr. Rich. The company was renamed Glencore, and Mr. Glasenberg became chief executive in 2002. Since then, he has expanded Glencore through a series of acquisitions.
The biggest was the takeover of Xstrata, a deal he worked on for years. Xstrata’s chief executive, Mick Davis, was an old friend of Mr. Glasenberg’s. But Mr. Davis did not want to sell. Mr. Glasenberg persisted, though, enlisting Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, to help mediate talks. Glencore acquired Xstrata for $41 billion in 2012.
Mr. Glasenberg declined to comment on Tuesday. But in previous interviews, he has revealed glimpses of his intense character.
He is dismissive of concepts like work-life balance. “You don’t come here to take life easy,” he told The Wall Street Journal last year. “And we all got rich from it, so, you know, there’s a benefit from it.”
Mr. Glasenberg owns 8 percent of Glencore, and is worth an estimated $6 billion, according to Forbes.
There are several reasons Mr. Glasenberg believes now is a good time for Glencore to make its move. Glencore has fully incorporated Xstrata, leaving it flush with cash and stable after years of transition.
Rio Tinto is the world’s second-largest supplier of iron ore, an area where Glencore does virtually no business. And iron ore prices have hit five-year lows, sending Rio Tinto’s share price down over the last six months, making the company somewhat more affordable.
Finally, Mr. Glasenberg may be looking for a bigger role for himself. Rio Tinto’s chief executive, Samuel Walsh, is expected to retire at the end of next year, potentially opening the door for Mr. Glasenberg to run a combined company.
Still, Mr. Glasenberg faces numerous obstacles.
Investors reacted coolly to news of the talks. Rio Tinto shares were down 4 percent in New York on Tuesday, and Glencore shares were down 2.5 percent. Antitrust officials around the globe will scrutinize the combined company’s influence, possibly requiring costly divestitures. And, Mr. Glasenberg will have to win over , the Chinese aluminum producer that is Rio Tinto’s biggest shareholder. And he will also have to pay a rich premium.
Moreover, there is Rio Tinto’s apparent lack of interest in a deal. “The Rio Tinto board, after consultation with its financial and legal advisers, concluded unanimously that a combination was not in the best interests of Rio Tinto’s shareholders,” the company said in a statement.
The JPMorgan analysts suggested that a deal might take time to come together and was not beyond Mr. Glasenberg’s reach. “We regard an imminent merger as unlikely, but in our view a tie-up in time would carry strategic appeal for Glencore’s management,” they said.
By REUTERS
March 17, 2016
SYDNEY, Australia — The British-Australian mining giant said on Thursday that its chief executive, Sam Walsh, would retire on July 1 and that Jean-Sébastien Jacques, chief executive of its copper and coal division, would take the reins of the company, which faces the worst downturn in the sector in nearly two decades.
Rio Tinto, the world’s second-biggest mining company, after BHP Billiton, bowed to pressure from investors and credit ratings agencies this year and scrapped its payout policy, under which it had promised never to cut its dividend from year to year, to better reflect commodity cycles.
“The board has decided that J.-S. is the right person to lead Rio Tinto in an increasingly complex world filled with both challenges and opportunities for our industry,” Jan du Plessis, Rio Tinto’s chairman, , referring to Mr. Jacques.
Mr. Walsh, 66, joined Rio Tinto in 1991 after two decades in the auto industry, and was appointed chief executive in 2013 after the London-based company dismissed Tom Albanese over acquisitions that soured and prompted large write-downs. Mr. Walsh had been expected to leave this year, but it was unclear whether he would be replaced by Christopher Lynch, the chief financial officer, or by a younger division leader.
Mr. Jacques, 44, has spent more than three years on Rio Tinto’s executive committee. He was tasked with bringing greater focus to the copper and coal businesses and has been credited with improving safety while significantly reducing costs as the global mining sector faltered.
Most recently, the French-born executive took the lead role in negotiations over a $4.4 billion financing agreement necessary for an expansion of the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia.
Mr. Jacques will join the board and becomes deputy chief executive effective immediately, the company said in a statement.
Business Briefing
By REUTERS
March 17, 2016
has named its copper and coal division head, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, as its chief executive, replacing the veteran Sam Walsh and signaling a shift in strategy for the Anglo-Australian mining company. Mr. Walsh, 66, was placed at the helm three years ago after the abrupt ousting of Tom Albanese. But the company has run into further trouble with the downturn in commodities prices. Mr. Jacques, 44, praised by analysts for running tough assignments like Rio’s Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia, will be the first executive in decades with a copper background to run a group that depends on iron ore.
Business Briefing
By REUTERS
January 18, 2016
, the No. 2 iron ore producer, says it plans to increase production and shipments, defying a collapse in prices as it takes advantage of its position as the world’s lowest-cost producer. It reported an 11 percent rise in annual iron ore shipments, roughly in line with its guidance of 340 million tons, and said it expected to produce and ship 350 million tons in 2016, including its mine co-owners’ volumes. Its strong output, low costs and sharp cuts in capital spending are expected to help it maintain or raise its dividend at least for the next 12 months, even with commodity prices at multiyear lows.
SYDNEY, Australia — The mining giant said Wednesday that it had agreed to sell its 40 percent stake in an Australian coal mine for $606 million as it seeks to reduce debt by selling assets as commodity prices are mired in a global slump.
The New Hope Corporation, an Australian coal producer, bought Rio Tinto’s minority stake in Bengalia, the smallest of Rio Tinto’s three mines in the coal-rich Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.
“This sale will deliver value for our shareholders as we remain focused on continuing to develop the strongest core portfolio of assets in the mining industry,” Jean-Sebastien Jacques, chief executive of Rio Tinto’s Copper and Coal group, said in a statement.
Rio Tinto has sold $4.5 billion worth of assets since January 2013, when Sam Walsh became chief executive. Mr. Walsh has sought to sell the company’s assets to repair its balance sheet since he succeeded Tom Albanese as chief executive.
At the time of Mr. Albanese’s resignation, Rio Tinto took a $14 billion write-down on the aluminum and coal assets that it bought at the height of the commodity boom from 2000 to 2009.
Rio Tinto’s net debt as of June 30 was $13.68 billion, an increase of 10 percent from Dec. 31 last year. The company’s net cash generated from operating activities dropped 19 percent over the same period to $4.43 billion.
Mr. Walsh said last month that the company was operating in a “tough” environment. Rio Tinto’s earnings are dependent on the price it receives for its iron ore, which accounted for 72 percent of the company’s underlying earnings in the first six months of 2015.
The iron ore price has slumped more than 20 percent this year. Demand for Australian iron ore by Chinese steel producers has slumped. Miners have increased production, causing oversupply, just as China’s economy has slowed.
There is also oversupply in the coal market. The price for Australia’s Newcastle coal, an Asian benchmark, has fallen to less than $60 a metric ton from about $136 in 2011.
GLENCORE IS SAID TO PLAN DEBT INVESTOR MEETING | Glencore will meet debt investors on Wednesday, , citing people with knowledge of the matter. They said Barclays would host the meeting in London and that management was also planning one-on-one meetings and conference calls with bond investors.
Glencore, a Swiss miner and trader, has had to reassure investors over its borrowings, even after announcing a $10 billion debt-reduction plan this month. It said on Tuesday that its solvency was not at risk.
Its shares have come under pressure as analysts and investors worry about the company’s heavy debt and the weakness in commodity prices. After a huge plunge in its share price on Monday, its stock rallied on Tuesday after Citigroup analysts suggested that the company should be taken private if the stock market continued not to value it “fairly,”
Citigroup said that the sell-off in Glencore was “overdone” and that it was unlikely that the company’s debt would be downgraded to junk status.
Citigroup is Glencore’s corporate broker and was one of the banks leading its share placement this month.
Glencore had about $29.6 billion in debt as of June 30 and announced this month that it planned to reduce that by about a third by the end of 2016. It has also eliminated its dividend and sold $2.5 billion in shares. It is also considering $2 billion in asset sales in an effort to pare its debt.
UBS FINED OVER PUERTO RICO FUNDS | A Senate panel told Puerto Rican officials arguing for changes in federal laws that the numbers they were using to make their case were too unreliable,
The officials identified federal laws and programs that they said were discriminatory and ought to be changed, but lawmakers were not convinced that help was warranted or that the money would be well spent.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he sympathized with the island’s plight, but needed to know more about the causes and structure of its debt.
“I want to help you,” Mr. Hatch told them. “I don’t think Puerto Rico is treated fairly. But we have to get really good information in order to help you.”
While this hearing was underway, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, took action for a group of Puerto Rican investors who had lost money in the purchase of mutual funds contained in risky Puerto Rican bonds. They levied fines and restitution of $34 million against UBS Puerto Rico and two of its officers for their handling of the funds and failing to disclose the risks.
UBS was also the underwriter of the bonds.
It had been hired to bring them to market in 2008, but after struggling to sell them on open markets, it packaged them in its mutual funds, which it marketed as a source of retirement income.
This would have been prohibited on the United States mainland, but the federal law governing mutual funds has an exception for mutual funds in Puerto Rico.
UBS did not admit any wrongdoing.
As part of the settlement, UBS will pay $15 million into a fund for harmed investors. Finra required UBS to pay a $7.5 million fine and $11 million in restitution to investors.
At the Senate hearing, the Puerto Ricans told of other federal laws they considered inequitable, particularly those that govern health care for the elderly and the poor. Puerto Rico’s population is older and poorer than the rest of the United States.
THE WAR OVER CORPORATE GOVERNANCE | A war has erupted over what constitutes good governance and it was the mutual funds that emerged victorious in the latest skirmish,
They defeated a move by pension funds to force Bank of America to split the roles of chairman and chief executive. The vote shows the extent of disagreement that there is on corporate governance.
Advocates for separating the jobs say it will lead to better corporate oversight. According to that argument, the chances of the chief executive’s leading the company blindly to ruin are reduced with a chairman to keep them in check. But research has not yet shown that it increases the value of the company.
There is also no evidence of any link between the number of independent directors on a board and a company’s worth.
In the case of Bank of America, pension funds argued that it needed a greater degree of oversight after its reckless maneuvers before the financial crisis led to the destruction of tens of billions of dollars of shareholder value.
They also pointed to the lagging stock price and the fact that Bank of America had defied its shareholders by adopting the joint title.
Mutual funds were more skeptical and eventually swayed the vote.
Although there is no clear party line in corporate governance, there is a corporate governance industry, in which proposals are brought by many investors, which doesn’t necessarily help shareholders, Mr. Solomon says.
“Some investors appear simply to be caught up in the rush of exercising power,” Mr. Solomon writes. “Shareholders are gleefully telling companies that ignored them for decades that they are now in charge.”
ON THE AGENDA | Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, and James Bullard, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, will speak at the start of the Community Banking Research and Policy conference at 3 p.m. ADP Research Institute releases its latest national employment report at 9 a.m.
THE DRONE COMPANY READY FOR SPIN-OFF | Robert Wolf, the financier who is a confidant of President Obama, is raising his bet on the drone industry. His advisory firm plans to announce on Wednesday that it is spinning off its drone-services arm into a separate company,
The industry has already attracted Amazon, GoPro and top venture capital firms. Now this business, Measure, is betting that its ability to use the devices to take pictures of farmland and oil rigs will draw interest from a potentially huge number of customers.
Mr. Wolf’s 32 Advisors set up Measure two years ago to provide “drones as a service” — flying them for customers, rather than making them.
“We think that over the next 24 to 36 months, we’ll be able to fulfill something that doesn’t exist around the world,” Mr. Wolf said.
Measure has worked with the American Red Cross to study how the aircraft can bolster rescue and recovery efforts in disaster zones. It has also teamed up with the American Farm Bureau Federation on a tool to calculate how much farmers can save by using drones to scout crops.
Brandon Torres Declet, Measure’s chief executive, and Mr. Wolf have lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration to expand its drone guidelines. They succeeded, gaining permission to fly 324 different aircraft for business uses.
Drone start-ups raised $107 million last year. By June this year, such companies had already surpassed that with $172 million raised, according to data from CB Insights. And analysts estimate the industry could swell to scores of billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Some applications are obvious, says Mike Abbott, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has put $40 million into a company creating a software platform for drones. Drones can be used to survey land for farms or disaster areas for insurance companies at a fraction of the cost of helicopters. They can replace human inspections for structures like cellphone towers, reducing the risk to workers.
Mr. Abbott says he thinks that drones could later be used as companions for police departments or emergency aircraft on cruise ships.
Investors point out that there are still regulatory hurdles to be cleared — for example, letting operators fly drones out of their field of vision and letting them become the airborne helpers of science fiction.
Axel Springer to Acquire Controlling Stake in Business Insider | The deal will extend the German media company’s reach into digital and English-language media.
Breakingviews: Axel Springer Pays Generous Price for Business Insider | Axel Springer is buying the business and tech news website at a $442 million valuation. The price implies a long run of fast growth, Jeffrey Goldfarb writes.
ComScore and Rentrak Strike Merger Deal | The two media measurement companies hope to challenge Nielsen in the ratings business.
Rio Tinto Sells Australian Coal Asset | The deal, worth $606 million, would give the stake in the Bengalla mine in eastern Australia to New Hope, one of the country’s biggest specialist coal miners.
Activist Opposes Media General’s Planned Acquisition of Meredith | Media General, the American television station owner, is facing pressure from Starboard Value to call off its proposed $3.1 billion deal to buy Meredith and instead sell itself to Nexstar Broadcasting Group.
Japan Tobacco Shares Sink After Deal for U.S. Cigarette Brand | The company’s stock plunged in Tokyo on concern it had overpaid in the $5 billion deal to acquire sales rights outside America for Natural American Spirit.
McKinsey Cautions Banks on Their Future | The digital revolution sweeping through the banking sector is set to wipe out almost two-thirds of earnings on some financial products as new technology companies drive down prices and erode lenders’ profit margins, the consultancy said.
Bank of America Confronts Austerity | Bank of America laid off about 200 employees — all in the trading and investment-banking units — as part of the chief executive’s pledge that he would further reduce costs if results didn’t improve.
Senator Urges Curbing Sales of Soured Loans to Private Equity | Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to restrict Wall Street firms from buying thousands of distressed home loans, the most prominent lawmaker to put pressure on the government to curtail the practice.
Twenty-First Century Fox Nominates ValueAct Chief to Board | Twenty-First Century Fox said it agreed to nominate ValueAct Capital’s chief executive, Jeffrey Ubben, for election to its board as long as the hedge fund maintains a stake of at least 5 percent in the company.
EMC Executive Says Breaking Up Is the Wrong Move | The data storage company should not be broken up because there are real revenue synergies that would be put at risk, said David Goulden, chief executive of EMC Information Infrastructure. The hedge fund Elliott Management has been pressuring EMC to sell its stake in the virtualization software maker VMware.
Online Lender Avant Raises $325 Million | Avant, the start-up lender for borrowers with less-than-stellar credit, raised $325 million of equity in a funding round led by the private equity firm General Atlantic that also included JPMorgan Chase.
Rio’s Mayor Decides to Sign Bill Banning Ride-Hailing Services | The mayor of Rio de Janeiro signs a bill intended to ban ride-hailing services like Uber.
I.M.F. Cautions on Concentrated Positions in U.S. Mutual Funds | Underpinning the fund’s worries has been the tremendous increase in bonds issued by large emerging market corporations.
Trump Tax Plan a Triumph of Showmanship Over Common Sense | The plan would greatly reduce the taxes of most business owners, bankers, lawyers and other high income professionals.
Despite Volkswagen Scandal, Europe’s Diesel Habit Could Be Hard to Kick | Drawn by better fuel economy and lower prices, European consumers have long leaned toward diesel, even with the ecological drawbacks.
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Photo
Naelyn Pike, a 16-year-old member of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, demonstrated in Times Square on Friday against a land swap between the federal government and a copper company that could affect land the protestors hold sacred.Credit Standing Fox
Updated | Here’s a from , the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, who has been traveling with a group of protestors from the tribe in . The protestors, from a group called , oppose between the federal government and a subsidiary of the giant Rio Tinto mining company that they say threatens Oak Flat, a part of that they consider sacred.
[Update, July 28, 11:58 p.m. | A former tribal historian disputes this below.]
A recent Op-Ed article by Lydia Millet*, “,” conveys their argument, which centers on dicey politics:
The swap — which will trade 5,300 acres of private parcels owned by the company to the Forest Service and give 2,400 acres including Oak Flat to Resolution so that it can mine the land without oversight — had been attempted multiple times by Arizona members of Congress on behalf of the company…. This time, the giveaway language was slipped onto the defense bill by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona at the 11th hour. The tactic was successful only because, like most last-minute riders, it bypassed public scrutiny.
(, the Rio Tinto subsidiary.) [Resolution Copper sent an expanded response, ]
Heres Suckling’s missive, filed from Times Square on Friday:
Times Square. I’m in organized by , a group of San Carlos Apaches trying to save Oak Flat, a sacred religious site in Arizona stolen from them by a disgraceful John McCain rider on the Department of Defense budget bill last year. Between “repent now!” signs, nearly nude showgirls and nonchalant cops, 50 Apaches are drumming, singing, dancing, and working the crowd. Even in Times Square this is a thing.
I’ve been on and off the road with them for a couple of weeks, mostly with a small group on tour with Neil Young, opening up his [].
The larger group is traveling from reservation to reservation drumming up anger and support to stop the desecration of Oak Flat. Wendsler Nosie, Sr., an elder and former tribal chairman, flies in and out, meeting with Baptist leaders and congressmen. Next Tuesday a traditional spiritual run will cut through Rock Creek to Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, there’ll be a big rally on the West Lawn. Having fired up Indian Country, the Apache Stronghold should turn out 500 Native Americans from more than 100 tribes and at least that many non-white supporters. Today it’s on to the United Nations.
The chaotic, seat-of-the-pants, insanely energizing caravan is a snapshot of the hyper-integrated, relentlessly hybrid, never-quite-modern NOW we all live in one way or another.
Native Americans from one the poorest reservations in the country are using cell phones, Twitter and Facebook to throw a flash mob in Times Square to save a sacred site in Arizona stolen by a multi-national mining company in Australia. It’s their land, but it’s public land, and John McCain is bent on privatizing it.
Cell phones abound, but there’s no credit card and money is very, very tight. The large group is out of range much of the time, performing ceremonies and sharing stories with other tribes. But you can follow their progress on .
The convoy is a run from tribe to tribe. They have been given hand-carved, carefully painted wooden arrows by the tribes they met to bring to Washington, D.C. Except one that is purple and metal because that’s all that a man could offer from the life and history America dealt to his tribe. It, too, is placed in the quiver.
The defenders of Oak Flat are traditionalists. Some leave the reservation rarely, but Standing Fox is a hip-hop artist and Rudy just traveled to London to shame Rio Tinto, which is partly British-owned. Last night in Camden, N.J., Neil Young asked 50 Apache drummers, singers and dancers to open his show.
I, who can barely muster the white man shuffle and don’t know what the sacred songs mean, find myself choreographing the performance in the parking lot an hour before show time because I’m the only one who knows what the stage looks like. It’s fraught with cables, amps, mikes, speakers and buttony things we’re told to never, ever step on.
Neil Young must be crazy. What international rock star risks his reputation to help desperate people he’s never met, and who, save Standing Fox, have no professional music experience? The man is heart and soul. As medicine man Anthony Logan, the eldest of the elders, sings a hunched over prayer with drums pounding, one of the teen Apache dancers takes selfies from the stage. This is how we live. This is how we fight. This is how we win.
*Suckling and Millet were formerly married.
Correction: July 18, 2015
Kieran Suckling directs the Center for Biological Diversity. The post initially had Center for Conservation Biology (the perils of filing at night after a long day).
Tucson
ABOUT an hour east of Phoenix, near a mining town called Superior, men, women and children of the San Carlos Apache tribe have been camped out at a place called Oak Flat for more than three months, protesting the latest assault on their culture.
Three hundred people, mostly Apache, marched 44 miles from tribal headquarters to begin this occupation on Feb. 9. The campground lies at the core of an ancient Apache holy place, where coming-of-age ceremonies, especially for girls, have been performed for many generations, along with traditional acorn gathering. It belongs to the public, under the multiple-use mandate of the Forest Service, and has had special protections since 1955, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower decreed the area closed to mining — which, like cattle grazing, is otherwise common in national forests — because of its cultural and natural value. President Richard M. Nixon’s Interior Department in 1971 renewed this ban.
Despite these protections, in December 2014, Congress promised to hand the title for Oak Flat over to a private, Australian-British mining concern. A fine-print rider trading away the Indian holy land was added at the last minute to the must-pass military spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. By doing this, Congress has handed over a sacred Native American site to a foreign-owned company for what may be the first time in our nation’s history.
The Apache are occupying Oak Flat to protest this action — to them, a sacrilegious and craven sell-off of a place “where Apaches go to pray,” in the words of the San Carlos Apache tribal chairman, Terry Rambler. The site will doubtless be destroyed for any purpose other than mining; Resolution Copper Mining will hollow out a vast chamber that, when it caves in, will leave a two-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep pit. The company itself has likened the result of its planned mining at Oak Flat to that of a nearby meteor crater.
The land grab was sneakily anti-democratic even by congressional standards. For more than a decade, the parcel containing Oak Flat has been coveted by , Resolution’s parent company — which already mines on its own private land in the surrounding area — for the high-value ores beneath it.
The swap — which will trade 5,300 acres of private parcels owned by the company to the Forest Service and give 2,400 acres including Oak Flat to Resolution so that it can mine the land without oversight — had been attempted multiple times by Arizona members of Congress on behalf of the company. (Among those involved was Rick Renzi, a former Republican representative who was sent to federal prison in February for three years for corruption related to earlier versions of the land-transfer deal.) It always failed in Congress because of lack of support. But this time was different. This time, the giveaway language was slipped onto the defense bill by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona at the 11th hour. The tactic was successful only because, like most last-minute riders, it bypassed public scrutiny.
It’s worth noting that Rio Tinto affiliates have been McCain campaign contributors, and that Mr. Flake, before he made it to Congress, was a paid lobbyist for Rio Tinto Rössing Uranium (a huge uranium mine in Namibia). Mr. McCain and others assert that the mining project will be a boost to the local economy, though it’s unclear how many of the 1,400 promised jobs would be local; a Superior-area miners’ group, in fact, opposes the swap on the basis that it won’t help the local people or economy. Rio Tinto, incidentally, has been called out in the past for environmental devastation.
“Why is this place sacred?” said Wendsler Nosie Sr., a former chairman of the San Carlos Apache, in a recent interview with . “No difference to Mount Sinai. How the holy spirit came to be.” If you don’t want to take his word for it, the archaeological record at Oak Flat contains abundant evidence that the Apache have been here “since well before recorded history,” according to congressional testimony by the Society for American Archaeology.
If Oak Flat were a Christian holy site, or for that matter Jewish or Muslim, no senator who wished to remain in office would dare to sneak a backdoor deal for its destruction into a spending bill — no matter what mining-company profits or jobs might result. But this is Indian religion. Clearly the Arizona congressional delegation isn’t afraid of a couple of million conquered natives.
The truth is that for Mr. McCain, Mr. Flake and others who would allow this precious public land to be destroyed, it’s not only the Indians who are invisible. The rest of us are also ghosts, remnants of a quaint idea of democracy.
Oak Flat may still be saved, albeit with difficulty, since the bill’s language stipulates quite simply that 60 days after the federal “environmental impact statement” is complete, the land will belong to Resolution — in other words, that the swap will occur no matter what the environmental study says. But, like all laws and pieces of laws, it can be reversed by new legislative language.
The deal is an impressive new low in congressional corruption, unworthy of our country’s ideals no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. It’s exactly the kind of cynical maneuvering that has taught the electorate to disrespect politicians — a disdain for government that hurts everyone. If ever there was a time for Congress to prove its moral mettle to the public, this is that time. The rider should be repealed. ☐
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