The key word of this RockLicker message is the first word, as in “New Cliffs CEO... .” It’s all too easy for him to cleanse himself of all responsibility for the company’s $500 million Ring of Fire misadventure. It’s all too easy for him to pronounce his insights are all you need to be dead-certain of what the layout of the world will be fifty years from now.

His confident public-pronouncement about the future Canadian goings-on, fifty years from now, is too marvelous for words. Of course all the science and all the engineering studies and all the economic studies and all the political initiatives and all the competence and knowledge and geological capabilities of everybody else in the world is worthless.

There’s a new CEO in town. His dead-certain knowledge of every event that will transpire over the next fifty years will, no doubt, turn things around—180 degrees—at Cliffs.

His coronation heralds a new era. After he ascends to the throne—after he tidies up and sets the new order—all the wrongdoings and all the invalid empty-headedness and all the worthless scheming of his predecessor’s reign will be washed away.