Member Info for desertjoe

Hi 4k - I had mixed feelings about the JV. when it was first mooted but I guess I was swayed by the prospect of a divvi as well as the then value of our sp (I'd doubled my original investment by then).. What I did not expect was that the divvi would be stretched out via 3 tranches over a longer period. I feel that we were led to believe that Tavshan would soon be producing and that Salinbas would fairly soon makes wealthy. I reckon that the time factor was not realistic and even now think it could be perhaps 10 years before Salinbas reaches the " winning post" .

Meanwhile KS has, imho, gone overboard by poking about in Kosovo and Asia in general and I must concede, in hindsight that johnpwh's viewpoint about the JV effect was sounder than my own. Right now I would like to see the whole shebang bought out by one of the bigger guys in mining whereby we would get at least double our current share price.

As for Cyprus - I totally agree with your thinking and willowman on this chat board ( I'm guessing about a year ago) cast similar doubts about "HA" in that mix. Cheers, DJ

Sorry Paul but I don't " buy" Venus. It's not the time delay that's " suspect" - it's the Company structure imho. Anyway, as you suggested previously...it's a time to sit on yer hands for the present. On my side of the pond some SPs are slowly creeping upwards again.

Agreed, john. Add to that most of Central America , China and a lot of places along the " Silk Road" .

Good prelude (NOT) to the forthcoming presentation. SP is slightly up today and over a million shares were " unloaded"
Wasn't you, john, by any chance?.

Your right, levi. It's not on AIM.. Sorry but I got carried away by its similar traits. (lol)

IMHO, JP2000 just nailed it. However if you have some doubts take a peek at the Charts for the share price from start-up until to date and also today's sells compared to buys. How encoraging is. those? Remember this is AIM and more tumble by the wayside than find a rainbow! Caveat emptor, I reckon.

Agreed,Paul. I'm also not convinced that Kosovo is the wisest place to have sited an office or base. Albanians and Serbs don't mix well and right now there is a resurgence of ill-feeling there - albeit over car number plates. Nevertheless there has been a few incidents and some growls by NATO enforcers lately.

Ride the Roller Coaster, folks. Yes I know I said it was going to happen for a while but, as levi suggests, we have BS more and more from mgmt. Today we see our SP down again, more shares sold than bought and, incidentally ,Panther Metals is 10% down too. Maybe the BS virus has spread. As a further reminder willowman did tell us what he thought about Venus from the very start and I have to concur with his views. Maybe we should be exploring Crete too ...KS might even re-discover the minotaur (or could that be a miner tour, johnpwh?)

A bit like snake, John, and slightly more fibrous than ribsteak but Terry Wogan was about right, to be shure (lol). It's on the menu for tourists around Destin (NW Florida) and you could go and view the Naval Aircraft Museum in Pensacola at the same time!

Not sure about your 4p get out, John. Methinks there are some " games" going on which we are not a party to these days. I'm willing to hang on a while ' cos I think the SP might climb a little - perhaps even a short term spike to enable the muckamucks to jump ship but I don't relish waiting another 5 years of roller coasting to Salinbas either. I think maybe Ariana might be Canadian before then anyway. Keep it coming, levi & LoB. Regards DJ.

Wow, Paul. I certainly didn't expect your last post and clearly it's quite popular here. I'd love to mass-eat something but am on a "no red meat" thing with my GP. He even qualifies fish as " meat" . No chance there - we got halibut, grouper, red snapper and fresh salmon galore. I've even got ' gator tail in the freezer. Seriously though, have you considered parking a sailboat somewhere you might like - Weymouth perhaps but be wary of those tide races off Portland?

Yes john and so am I for basically the same reasons.I In a relatively short time my shareholding which thanks to KS original diligence and Zach's efficient work " in the field" had doubled my investment has now fallen by around 50 grand. I pray every day that someone like Franco-Nevada or even Sandstone will make a fair offer for the whole shebang and put me back at least in some overall profit. I remember seeing the folk recorded once at that Meeting in London (you were all in the same video) and everyone looked then to a bright future while Kerim beamed down and answered all comments.

I'm curious what might (or might not be said) at our next AGM and maybe a few heads (incuding our PR people etc) need to roll.

I was chatting to my 92 year old neighbor yesterday. She is still very "Worldly" ....all there with her lemon drops (in your Brit parlance! )...well travelled, well educated (she's got several " masters degrees) and it seems we have both lost a similar amount of investment values in the last 6 months due to the world problems. However we are both seeing some serious re-thinking over here and a slight share improvement starting to happen. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case with Ariana and imho there have been too many bad decisions since KS took his eye of our ball and got too carried away in diversifying.

It seems, PaulD, that I was somewhat premature in forecasting Mordaunt for your PM in September. Ms Truss will do fine though, especially since she ain't exactly Poohtin's (or Lavrov's) preferred comrade. Over my side of the pond it rather looks like your "Emperor" is indeed losing his clothes and may yet become bare.

(bankrupty). Agreed it's not small change....but it's a helluva leverage for yourself(ves) in a takeover especially when many of those same shares came with their jobs.
Anyway just look at the share charts and compare AAU with PALM. Do you see a roaring success coming your way? (I got out of Panther rather quickly before the tumble down and re-invested some in AAU instead... (now there"s a laugh!). We can all make mistakes (as the hedgehog said to the lavatory brush).

(Willowman ) - I'm very unsure about Venus, given the Anglo-Greek behind the scenes. Caveat Emptor may apply here.

I think the answers are staring us in the face. KS via the Red Rabbit project has personally finished up after several years of studying, risk and " nose to the grindstone" with a comfortable financial position. With any luck the " network connections and professional status he has rightfully acquired en route will see him on the Boards of far bigger fish than Ariana. He is now based and probably happily settled in Oz.. We PIs are history....together with our hopes for wealth from investing in Ariana. Clearly that is why we don't see corporates, Sprotts or Mellons holding shares. Goldfinger.007's dust may not even settle in 5-7 years. It could be blown away. Like I've said...I will await the next pay out in October and hang in here to the New Year to see how the world is going. By comparison an investment in a Lithium mining minnow for a couple of weeks performed better than 10 years of Ariana! Which I guess is good reason to be somewhat peeved.

" you could have got out at 5p very recently.". Yes, Paul, but I didn't and I do admit that I'm carping because I hit my target
some time ago and stayed in because I felt Kerim was going in the right direction with his Red Rabbit and Tavshan as a follow up. I could even see a potential bright future in Salinbas even - so I hung on. (I am invested for that reason in Sandstorm too). I'll even go with your thoughts about funding expansion rather than paying out a divvi - but now I think everything has changed for the worse, we have all got a quarter part of the " original action" and what the hell are we ****ing about in places like Cyprus, Kosovo and Kazakhstan? Where is Kerim going next....La Mancha?

All my built up profit from the early days of investing here are virtually down the pan and the only saving grace might have been if the divvi had been paid as a one-off lump sum instead of being stretched out over a couple of years. I don't think that was hinted at when the BoD were hoping for support in creating this new JV.

I guess that both belar and levistubbs have pretty well " nailed it" with their latest comments " re: Is it time?" . I've wasted my time in hanging on too long in Ariana but the present world scene is not encouraging me to invest anywhere else at present and most certainly to convert my UK pounds back to US$ at the current exchange rates. So I'll just grab the coming final payout, October, and maybe hope some bigger fish will buy us out soon rather than hang around listening for another 5 years of this " same old" patter from Dr.K "Pro-Active" interviews.. Other than that, I tried to suggest a way for you to mitigate life across the pond. Suffolk ain't that far from any action in London but by now that A 12 road must be really diabolitical and your rail fares now (at commuter peaks) are truly crazy. Amtrak over here is relatively cheap but one passenger train per day is not too useful, squeezed in among mile long container freight trains hauling Chinese goods! As for Jacinda Ardern- of course she's not your type.....wrong side of your political spectrum, Old Boy. For my part I hope Mordaunt makes PM (I enjoyed my time in Pompey).

" England is over populated, it is impossible to live here." Well there's Suffolk, the Scillies, IoM and Isle of Wight or NZ (if you can either meet their age & skill requirements or have bags of money to buy your way in. (you were right - we should have got out of AAU when the SP was around 6p).

Paul - I need to clarify that Regional Assemblies bit - my apologies. My understanding was that Tony Blair's advisers were concerned about inter-racial friction- for example the tensions that were starting up in some metropolitan area housing developments where people were grouping up and seeking to create " no-go zones." . St George's flag became a symbol ( similar in some ways to the use of Confederate emblems over here by the so-called "Wasps" ). and you saw the rise of the BNP. Both the Scots and the Welsh were promoting nationalism - albeit Plaid Cymru & SNP were not advocating violence.

However there were tensions in England and it was felt in some quarters that " ethnic" Englsih Nationalism might get out of han based on some incidents at football matches etc. So for a time it was thought that one solution might be to divide England up into several regions with more autonomy - somewhat larger than the original local government Metropolitan which often took control from former County Areas. The clear opposition to this was in the worse case there could be friction between regional and central government thinking and/or control and wasteful and unnecessary duplication of costs in administrating the whole scheme. So it was (fortunately) dropped. Ultimately everything focussed on Brexit which took center stage instead but clearly " nationalism" is not extinguished . The gains by Sinn Fein in the Northern Irish Assembly and Eire's granting of passports to all people " born in the Island of Ireland" in my opinion is a precursor to unification. The Welsh " parliament" by ACT is now unanimously referred to as the "Senedd Cymru" . So where does that leave you, Paul? Is fk the Jocks, Paddies and Taffs the next step after Brexit?

Over here we've just got some Texans rattling on about "secession" and a bunch of misguided country bumpkins worried that their guns will be taken away by a Democratic Central Government .( As for immigration - it's been happening since 1492 when the "Indigenous" Americans couldn't prevent it even then.). To-day even Brits are subject to fairly restricted immigration (my ancestors were from Manchester and Leeds).. Cheers!
immigration allowance. immigration

Just maybe, this side of the pond, we do understand about it being demeaning to take orders from another source...in our case we once had no real representation at that time. So in 1773 we chucked a load of your East India Company's imported tea into Boston Harbor .What subsequently followed on from this act I am sure you know. The rest I am sure uou know. . At least, pre-Brexit, you had the opportunity to tell those in Brussels where they (in your opinion) were failing badly but your Government appeared to be more interested in securing cosy nice-paying easy jobs for their " nice old boys (and gals) " who hadn't really made an impression at home in Westminster and so they quietrly slid them into the EU chambers of power. You even voted known Anti-EU individual to occupy seats in Brussels as your official representatives. How crazy was that? Not exactly the best way for a " bulldog breed" to try to influence a hotchpotch of some 27 other nations. Let's face it...The sun has long set on your Empire and just maybe you might have earned a real leadership role again across The Channel if your representatives had (to quote the late HRH Prince Philip) got their finger out.

Clearly, Paul, you are strongly nationalistic and I have no problem with that. However at one stage I spent some time in Essex when the first EU starred flags began to appear in British Council Chambers and " We'll fight them on the Beaches etc" started to be muttered. Remember that De Gaulle never wanted you in the first place (personally I would have much preferred that General Le Clerc hadn't sadly perished in a plane crash)

One way or another you have had your differences with your near neighbors in Ireland, Scotland and Wales (and still do - as many of your jokes imply). Seemingly Blair was so scared of English Nationalism that it was considered for a time to create Regional Assemblies to manage ya'all within your United Country. So, yes I'm disappointed that you chose Brexit but that was a majority decision.

Even now many "English" think of us as kinda " cousins" that are just somewhat different and very few seem to be aware that our population. In fact the largest ethnic group are Germans, closely followed by the Irish.. There are also a lot of Italians and Poles so don't count on being a "favored nation" when you relate to competition with the EU. American Corporate are primarily interested first in making money so they won't hesitate to rip ya off or force chemically modified products on you as part of a deal. At least you would have more clout within the EU.

However not many Brits are aware that Winston's famous " Beaches" speech was never broadcasted in 1940. It was written ( 1940 after Dunkirk) in the hope of reassuring others outside the Axis that you would continue to fight hard and thus, hopefully you would get appropriate support (especially from the US and USSR) but was recorded 9 years later at his home ,Chartwell House

the 2003 price for a gallon of regular (87) gasolline in South Carolina was $0.99 (ninety nine cent) . Today is $3.79.
(An Imperial gallon has a 0.76 liters greater volume than a US gallon)

" My point" refers to what I was forecasting (and arguing with other people on this blog around 3 years ago (i.e pre-Brexit) Current circumstances indicate that I got it right at that time. You may remember there were some folk who seemed to delight in the idea of my country's currency being greatly devalued as Russia and China were buying large quantities of gold which was expected to climb very quickly to new heights. Well neither has happened and again ( as I forecasted) Keith Starmer replaced Corbyn..

What the mere mention of a possible Brexit caused me personally was an immediate loss of over 25% of my regular annuity income from a UK source directly as a result of an immediate sterling devaluation against the dollar.. After Brexit it got worse. ( it may yet be that Scotland and possibly Wales are making noises to go back into Europe . David Cameron was clearly a plonker to have offered it in the first place and ultimately he ceased to be premier and caused UK a lot of " grief" .