I'd like to commend everyone on the dialogue in the last two days regarding political risk. Let's keep it wide open, and as has been done in large part today, let's disect it to death! As was posted earlier today by Primed, these are issues we can't ignore and need to monitor.

The protests are interesting, but did you all catch the last post (by Sculpin) that:

"Protesters, meanwhile, pulled back from an initial call for a ban on all mining activity in the region and instead insisted only that they be consulted beforehand about that type of activity."

In other words, they want to feel like they're included in the process. That's it! As you're all aware, SLI has been mitigating the risk of local hostility by hiring locals, etc. Very smart.

I am in agreement that the risk of environmental protest related to the Tesoro is a low risk for SLI, mainly because:

a) SLI is an exploration company, not a mining company, and

b) the Tesoro is on a desert plateau with no plant or animal life and no civilization around for miles.

Hopefully SLI will continue to stay under the radar during the sale of the property.

Just to clarify what I posted yesterday, regarding what I call the risk of government intervention should we be sitting on the largest gold discovery in history: I want to clarify that I do not consider this risk a new risk because of the Humala government; rather, my opinion is that this risk is always present and is in fact higher in a third world Latin American country, regardless of which party is in power. Always keep an eye on this, you cannot trust politicians, especially in this region of the world. That being said, I would rather be mining in Peru than just about any other South American country. And again, we should consider ourselves extremely fortunate that we are not in the jungle, right next to a river, or close to population centers. It really is another amazing postive fact that compliments all the other amazing positive facts undercovered by the DD!