But I will wade into this fray with a bit of my own "guesswork"...

Noront has more than the 34% of Freewest locked up (mostly with institutions, I'm thinking) and they are not as close to the 67% that they were trying to get as they thought they might get. So, Noront now chooses to quiet down and let things fall back to the levels that we are all accustomed to, like WAY below real value of what is in the ground (talking 10% insitu here). Why would Noront go out and make any headlines now when they can let things simmer down and start accumulating shares as the price is "dropping" as opposed to "rising" with "barnburner news" and counter offers from Cliffs.

It was a shot in the dark, hoping that they could show that Cliffs would take any "upside potential" out of Freewest shareholders and that they would choose Noront instead of Cliffs. A slight miscalculation - most Freewest retail holders still remember what our current BOD did to Mr. Nemis and the lack of news forthcoming after. Hmmmmmmm.

Strike out with the 67% aquisition, but enough shares to make sure Cliffs doesn't get THEIR meathooks into Freewest on the cheap. Face it, if anyone should get Freewest cheap, then the Noront BOD thinks that "Noront" should be the ones to pick them off "cheap".

Is it going to happen? We'll have to wait and see. Most Freewest forum members who are speaking up would rather "die a horrible, disfiguring, most painful death by fire and dismemberment" than side with Noront :-}

I'm OK with that... So, I am OK with selling Noront without Freewest for $10 + instead of amalgamating with Freewest and getting closer to $20... I don't like it, but I'm OK with it.

So, it's time to relax, smoke em' if you got em and wait for January to roll around. Maybe the Noront management will throw us a bone for Christmas, maybe not. It IS tax time, after all. Will we see tax selling this year??? Who knows. I think that there is enough capital losses out there but you just never know now...

God Bless all Noront Shareholders.

Herb :-}