Miners dismiss Marc Faber 
as director after racist comments

Sprott Inc. (TSX: SII), Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; US-OTC: IVPAF) and Nova-Gold Resources (TSX: NG; NYSE-AM: NG) have ejected Marc Faber from their boards after the Asia-based investment pundit penned racist comments in the October issue of his newsletter, The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

The Swiss economist and investor was weighing in on controversy in the U.S. about whether monuments commemorating Confederate military leaders in the U.S. Civil War should be torn down.

“I don’t want to enter into a serious discussion about the tearing down of monuments of historical personalities, but I cannot omit mentioning how the liberal hypocrites condemned the Taliban when they blew up the world’s two largest standing Buddhas (one of them 165 feet high), situated at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan, in 2001,” Faber wrote. “But the very same people are now disturbed by statues of honourable people, whose only crime was to defend what all societies had done for more than 5,000 years: keep a part of the population enslaved.”

“And thank God white people populated America, not the blacks,” he continued. “Otherwise, the U.S. would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority. I am not a racist, but the reality — no matter how politically incorrect — needs to be spelled out.”

Reaction to Faber’s comments was swift.

In a news release, Sprott Inc.’s CEO, Peter Grosskopf, said Faber’s remarks “are deeply disappointing and are completely contradictory with the views of Sprott and its employees.

“We pride ourselves on being a diverse organization and comments of this sort will not be tolerated. We are committed to providing an inclusive workplace for all of our employees and we extend the same respect to our clients and advisors.”

Ivanhoe Mines, whose principal projects are in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said in a statement that “there is zero tolerance for racism.”

“Ivanhoe Mines disagrees with, and deplores, the personally held views about race that Marc Faber has published in his current investment letter,” the company stated.

NovaGold announced Faber’s resignation as a director in a one-sentence press release with no comment.