The Daily Beast reports that the Alaska Republicans are fighting it out . will it be fish or salmon?
Remember Sarah Palin? “I am a commercial fisherman; my daughter’s name is Bristol“I could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world’s richest spawning grounds, over another resource.”
So .. what to do? A lot of gold is at stake. A Canadian gold mining firm, aptly called “Northern Dynasty ,” wants to make an open pit mine in the middle of the spawning grounds of the Bristol Bay watershed in Alaska. This goes beyond fish, these are commercial fish, so the greens and the tribes are warning of a “three mile wide hole and 9 billion tons of waste…right in the heart of Bristol Bay” .
According to the Daily Beast article a majority of Alaskans are against it. But this is a matter of religion, or what passes f0r orthodoxy in today’s Republican party. The Republicans are lining up on both sides according to Redneck Republicans in local Alaskan politics. Ted Stevens (former Senator, Palin and two other former Republican governors, as well as current Senator Lisa Murkowski are siding with the Canadians against the salmon. Interestingly, Tiffany, Zales, and Boucheron Jewelers have said they will refuse to sell jewelry made with this tainted gold. Redneck Republican, state Senator Rick Halford, put it in an interview with The Guardian, “If God were testing us, he couldn’t have found a more challenging place.”
Building a huge mine in the headlands of the world’s most important salmon fishery is sheer madness.