Fellow Investors,

With regards to the latest Reuters news article where Equador talks about having to work your concessions or they will be taken away, this is only logical. It is also the same here in Canada, if a claimant does not do a minimum amount of assessment work and investment per year as required by the mining act then there claims can be forfeited. It hardly makes sense for Ecuador to try to start up a mining industry but unable to because early claimants who are not doing any active exploration work and do not intend to are holding the land hostage. This will solve that problem and shows that Ecuador is adopting rules set down by other leading mining countries. This is good news because no leading mining countries have a windfall tax on metal production. The reason for this is because it it totally unworkable.

It would also seem to me that ARU management is well inform about potential changes to Equadorian mining regulations and are taking the appropriate counter measures just in case. This would explain there excellerated exploration programs onto other area's of there huge land package. Especially as has been stated by ARU management along strike of FDN and the mineralized trend. This is no doubt so that they can claim that they have done required work on all of there concessions. A precautionary measure in order to nip in the bud any major's who may be sniffing around and thinking of disputing some of ARU's claims so that they can be taken over by them. Once again this shows how on the ball ARU management is and that they are not taking anything for granted.

Once again Rueters included that totally unsubstantiated garbage about a windfall tax in there latest article. I find it very humourous about how much news coverage Equador is getting from them now that mining riches have been discovered there. For years, while I owned this stock, before ARU made the big discovery Rueters never reported anything out of Equador that I can recall, now we are getting all this news from them, most of it is either false or very misleading. Hmmmmmmmm hahahahahahahaha.

I do not like discussing this Windfall Tax garbage for the same reason I have no longer posted on S.H.. This is because to do so lends credibility to each, the site and the story and I think non of them have any credibility anymore. Discussion of this story is what the manipulators want because the more it is discussed the greater credibility as a possibility it gains and the larger a seed of doubt is planted. However after observing the tone of this board I feel that once again I must wade into it and perhaps give a possible explanation for the reported comments.

These comments that are reported to have been made and the quotes of the Equadorian officials during this Q&A session when looking at them only make sense if they were given in reply to a specific question. Therefore they were not a statement of fact but rather a reply to a question. Without the full minutes of the meeting and the questions asked along with the full reply's given this latest news article on a Windfall Tax are just gabage in my opinion. I predict that they will end up being as non factual as the other misleading stories written by this particular reporter. It is very easy to ask a question and then drop parts of the reply out from the beginning or the end of the answer in order to make someone appear to have said something they did not.

Add this in with the hyper bashing on the other sites, increased trading manipulation during the day as reported by Ankerhoo and noticed by myself also and I begin to smell a rat.

Then there is the real reason that I believe that Correa will not institute a Windfall Tax on mining. It is because he is a trained economist. Being an economist he must realize that to institute a windfall tax on mining would be very harmfull to the longterm health of the industry. There are much easier ways to generate revenue for the government from mining operations. These include a royalty and corporate tax on profits that also make much for sense and can be accounted for in the feasibility study. Setting a price on gold and saying that anything over that constitutes a windfall to the company while not taking into account inflation in mining costs is shear stupidity. What gold price constitutes a windfall today does not mean it will be a windfall tommorrow. Any such tax would have to be able to predict the mining inflation rates, exhange rates, cost to produce etc. Puting all these variables together and getting a magic windfall number for various different operations would be impossible and that is why no country except for one that I know of ( they are in the process of changing it ) has instituted a windfall tax on mining. It would be much easier just to put a corporate tax on the companies, the more profitable the mining operation the more revenue the Ecuadorian governement receives. Very simple and predictable while not discouraging a mining company from investing in a project that may be marginal at a set windfall price target.

Correa as an economist would realize or soon be made to understand all this and that is why I can not imagine that Ecuador would institute a windfall tax on mining. Mining and its capital requirements and outlays is totally different from the oil industry thus the tax system applied to one cannot be applied to the other.

Regards,

F.F.