Piece that appeared in Investors Business Daily by Roy Innis - the civil rights leader.
If Only Greens Saw The Forest For The Trees
By ROY INNIS | Posted Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:30 PM PT
"People here have no jobs," Mark Fenn admitted, after taking documentary producers on a tour of his $35,000 catamaran and the site of his new coastal home. "But if you could count how many times they smile in a day, if you could measure stress" and compare that with "well-off people" in London or New York, "then tell me, who is rich and who is poor?"
Fenn is coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund's campaign against a proposed mining project near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. The locals strongly support the project and want the jobs, development, improved living standards and environmental quality the state-of-the-art operation will bring.
People there live in abject poverty, along dirt roads, in dirt-floor shacks, and are hardly able to afford food on their $1,000-a-year average incomes. There is little power, no indoor plumbing. The local rain forest has been destroyed for firewood and slash-and-burn farming. People barely eke out a living.
But Fenn claims the mine will change the "quaint" village and harm the environment. He says he feels "like a resident," his children "were born and raised" there, and the locals "don't consider education to be important" and would just spend their money on parties, jeans and stereos.
Actually, Fenn lives 300 miles away and sends his children to school in South Africa. And the locals hardly conform to his insulting stereotypes. "If I had money, I would open a grocery store," said one. "Send my children to school," start a business, become a midwife, build a new house, said others.
You have to see the film, "Mine Your Own Business," to fully grasp the callous disdain these radicals have for the world's poor. Don Imus' intemperate remarks were insensitive. But Fenn's demeaning, even racist, statements perpetuate misery.
These enemies of the poor say they are "stakeholders" wishing to "preserve" indigenous people and villages. They never consider what's wanted by the real stakeholders — those who live in these communities and must endure the consequences of harmful campaigns waged all over the world.
The WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and other multinational activist groups battle mines in Romania, Peru, Chile, Ghana and Indonesia; electricity projects in Uganda, India and Nepal; biotechnology that could improve farm incomes and reduce malnutrition in Kenya, India, Brazil and the Philippines; and DDT that could slash malaria rates in Africa, where the disease kills 3,000 children a day.
They harp on technology's speculative hazards and ignore real, life-or-death dangers that modern mining, development and technology would reduce or prevent. They never mention the jobs, clinics, schools, roads, improved housing and small business opportunities — or the electricity, refrigeration, safe water, better nutrition, reduced disease and fewer dead children.
They pervert "sustainable development" to mean no development, and ignore how mines will lay the foundation that will sustain prosperity and better living standards for generations.
Agitators use global warming and "corporate social responsibility" to force companies to acquiesce to their agendas — and ignore human rights to energy and technology, and people's desperate cries for a chance to take their rightful places among the Earth's healthy and prosperous people.
They extol the virtues of microcredit, to support minimal family enterprises, and demand debt forgiveness and more foreign aid for corrupt dictators — but oppose economic development that would eliminate the need for international welfare. They blame Newmont Mining for accidents that killed five people over a two-year period in Ghana, but refuse to admit that their pressure campaigns cause millions of deaths every year.
One could justifiably call it eco-manslaughter — or a racist experiment on powerless, impoverished Third World families.
Yes, there are environmental impacts from mines, dams and other development. There are health and other risks. But the Industrial Revolution also brought those changes. Are we worse off for it? Do we want to return to the jobs, lifestyles and living standards of pre-industrial, pre-electric America, when 95% of Americans were farmers, cholera and malaria were ever-present, and the average life expectancy was 45?
Would any of the greens, politicians and celebrities who clamor to keep the world's poor "indigenous" (and thus impoverished, energy-deprived and diseased) care to live that lifestyle for even one month? Would they exchange their 10,000-square-foot mansions for a hovel, give up electricity and stop globe-trotting in private jets?
Why hasn't the United Nations criticized the institutional racism being perpetrated in the name of "saving the planet"? Where are U.S. civil rights groups, media, churches and these poor countries' leaders? This intolerable situation cannot continue. People of conscience must no longer remain silent.
Innis is national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights group that promotes economic development rights for the poor worldwide.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Mine Your Own Business featured on foxnews.com
Fox News has featured Mine Your Own Business in a column detailing how debate about the environmental movement is not being allowed to take place.
Junk Science: Earth-Friendly Greens Camouflaging the Poor's Plight
Thursday , May 31, 2007
By Steven Milloy
Many people are aware that the world’s poor desperately need economic development. Few realize, however, that a major obstacle to overcoming global poverty is the anti-development and anti-human environmental movement that camouflages itself under ubiquitous “Earth-friendly” shades of green.
This lack of awareness is no accident. It's come about through a “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” syndrome, where “evil” refers to the many ills of the modern environmental movement.
The syndrome is borne out by recent events related to the eye-opening documentary, "Mine Your Own Business: The Dark Side of Environmentalism," a film about environmentalist efforts to stop economic development in poverty-stricken regions around the world.
The syndrome’s “see no evil” aspect is exemplified by the efforts of Greenpeace and 80 other environmental organizations to block the movie from being shown in Romania (where much of the film was shot) and Washington, D.C.
A Greenpeace official was invited to be a special guest at the film's Washington, D.C., premiere at the National Geographic Society headquarters.
Instead of accepting the invitation, which included the opportunity to participate in a post-screening discussion panel, Greenpeace sent a letter to the Society expressing outrage at the decision to permit the film’s screening.
A Greenpeace-friendly newsletter demonstrated absurdly warped logic by asking a National Geographic spokesman whether the organization would rent out its facilities for the showing of a pro-Nazi propaganda film or a pornographic movie.
“I’m appalled by their demand to shut down the film,” said Frayda Levy, president of the screening’s co-sponsor, the Moving Picture Institute.
“We invited [Greenpeace], but instead of joining us for a discussion, they display breathtaking narrow-mindedness. Regardless of whether you love or hate 'Mine Your Own Business,' it deserves to be seen. What makes them so afraid of this film?” Levy wondered in a media release.
The “hear no evil” aspect of the syndrome is demonstrated by the recent experiences of "MYOB" filmmakers at the International Finance Corp., the private finance arm of the World Bank.
Though filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney declined comment, the IFC apparently had contacted them about hosting a screening of "MYOB" in the bank. The IFC finances a lot of large infrastructure projects and has had to wrestle with anti-development environmental groups that try to block those development efforts.
Not only did the IFC invite the filmmakers to screen the documentary, it also offered as a form of payment to do what it did with Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” that is, purchase 200 DVDs and distribute them to local schools. McAleer and McElhinney jumped at the offer.
But a rather sheepish IFC official subsequently contacted the filmmakers and said that the bank had rethought its offer. The bank could only find the funds to buy 10 copies of "MYOB" and it had decided it would not distribute them to local schools.
Instead, the bank would lend them internally to bank employees. A final condition was that the filmmakers were not allowed to tell anyone or announce to anyone that the IFC showed the film.
After the screening, World Bank employees, on a one-by-one basis, reportedly commented to McAleer and McElhinney about how true "MYOB" was, but that they were not allowed to say so within the bank.
The syndrome’s “speak no evil” aspect is exemplified by my recent personal experience with consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, which touts its support for “sustainable development” on its Web site.
Concerned that the company was promoting a concept that has become an Orwellian eco-activist term for blocking all development opportunities no matter what the humanitarian costs, a shareholder group with which I am affiliated filed a related shareholder proposal with the company.
In negotiations concerning the proposal, we asked Procter & Gamble to consider distributing copies of "MYOB" to its employees as a way of providing them an alternative viewpoint on “sustainable development” and to make a public statement to the effect that the company thought it was important to hear alternative viewpoints on environmental topics.
But while the company agreed to distribute copies of "MYOB" to its employees, it refused to make the public statement. Procter & Gamble’s position was that it didn’t want to be seen as endorsing a particular organization’s point-of-view — an ostensibly reasonable position except that the company has previously publicly endorsed the viewpoints and mission of the Rainforest Alliance, an anti-development environmental group.
Without the public acknowledgment, we doubted that the company was serious about the need for balanced views on sustainable development. Since negotiations collapsed, we’ll be raising the issue with Procter & Gamble’s CEO, Alan G. Lafley, at its annual shareholder meeting this fall.
The combination of intimidating environmentalists and intimidated organizations has resulted in a tragic absence of debate about the environmental monkey on the backs of the world’s poor.
Until we can at least talk about what environmental policies may be doing to developing nations — let alone debate these policies — we will have little hope of changing the lamentable state of affairs that has blocked life-saving economic development.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Junk Science: Earth-Friendly Greens Camouflaging the Poor's Plight
Thursday , May 31, 2007
By Steven Milloy
Many people are aware that the world’s poor desperately need economic development. Few realize, however, that a major obstacle to overcoming global poverty is the anti-development and anti-human environmental movement that camouflages itself under ubiquitous “Earth-friendly” shades of green.
This lack of awareness is no accident. It's come about through a “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” syndrome, where “evil” refers to the many ills of the modern environmental movement.
The syndrome is borne out by recent events related to the eye-opening documentary, "Mine Your Own Business: The Dark Side of Environmentalism," a film about environmentalist efforts to stop economic development in poverty-stricken regions around the world.
The syndrome’s “see no evil” aspect is exemplified by the efforts of Greenpeace and 80 other environmental organizations to block the movie from being shown in Romania (where much of the film was shot) and Washington, D.C.
A Greenpeace official was invited to be a special guest at the film's Washington, D.C., premiere at the National Geographic Society headquarters.
Instead of accepting the invitation, which included the opportunity to participate in a post-screening discussion panel, Greenpeace sent a letter to the Society expressing outrage at the decision to permit the film’s screening.
A Greenpeace-friendly newsletter demonstrated absurdly warped logic by asking a National Geographic spokesman whether the organization would rent out its facilities for the showing of a pro-Nazi propaganda film or a pornographic movie.
“I’m appalled by their demand to shut down the film,” said Frayda Levy, president of the screening’s co-sponsor, the Moving Picture Institute.
“We invited [Greenpeace], but instead of joining us for a discussion, they display breathtaking narrow-mindedness. Regardless of whether you love or hate 'Mine Your Own Business,' it deserves to be seen. What makes them so afraid of this film?” Levy wondered in a media release.
The “hear no evil” aspect of the syndrome is demonstrated by the recent experiences of "MYOB" filmmakers at the International Finance Corp., the private finance arm of the World Bank.
Though filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney declined comment, the IFC apparently had contacted them about hosting a screening of "MYOB" in the bank. The IFC finances a lot of large infrastructure projects and has had to wrestle with anti-development environmental groups that try to block those development efforts.
Not only did the IFC invite the filmmakers to screen the documentary, it also offered as a form of payment to do what it did with Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” that is, purchase 200 DVDs and distribute them to local schools. McAleer and McElhinney jumped at the offer.
But a rather sheepish IFC official subsequently contacted the filmmakers and said that the bank had rethought its offer. The bank could only find the funds to buy 10 copies of "MYOB" and it had decided it would not distribute them to local schools.
Instead, the bank would lend them internally to bank employees. A final condition was that the filmmakers were not allowed to tell anyone or announce to anyone that the IFC showed the film.
After the screening, World Bank employees, on a one-by-one basis, reportedly commented to McAleer and McElhinney about how true "MYOB" was, but that they were not allowed to say so within the bank.
The syndrome’s “speak no evil” aspect is exemplified by my recent personal experience with consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, which touts its support for “sustainable development” on its Web site.
Concerned that the company was promoting a concept that has become an Orwellian eco-activist term for blocking all development opportunities no matter what the humanitarian costs, a shareholder group with which I am affiliated filed a related shareholder proposal with the company.
In negotiations concerning the proposal, we asked Procter & Gamble to consider distributing copies of "MYOB" to its employees as a way of providing them an alternative viewpoint on “sustainable development” and to make a public statement to the effect that the company thought it was important to hear alternative viewpoints on environmental topics.
But while the company agreed to distribute copies of "MYOB" to its employees, it refused to make the public statement. Procter & Gamble’s position was that it didn’t want to be seen as endorsing a particular organization’s point-of-view — an ostensibly reasonable position except that the company has previously publicly endorsed the viewpoints and mission of the Rainforest Alliance, an anti-development environmental group.
Without the public acknowledgment, we doubted that the company was serious about the need for balanced views on sustainable development. Since negotiations collapsed, we’ll be raising the issue with Procter & Gamble’s CEO, Alan G. Lafley, at its annual shareholder meeting this fall.
The combination of intimidating environmentalists and intimidated organizations has resulted in a tragic absence of debate about the environmental monkey on the backs of the world’s poor.
Until we can at least talk about what environmental policies may be doing to developing nations — let alone debate these policies — we will have little hope of changing the lamentable state of affairs that has blocked life-saving economic development.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Proctor & Gamble decline to welcome debate
Filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney were delighted to hear that Proctor & Gamble were considering showing Mine Your Own Business to its employees.
However it seems that their optimism was short-lived. The greatest victory of the environmentalist movement has been to cast its actions and opinions as a moral, non-political stance. Given this who could dare question morality.
Of course this also means there should be no debate about the issues because no one is allowed debate against a moral stance.
However filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney reject this analysis.
"The suggestion that the environment is degrading is a political point of view not based on science and certainly has no moral basis. The suggestion that we need to cut back or reduce or consumption is a similarly flawed political ideology. Right now the rivers and air of the developed world are cleaner than ever and in the developing world development is cleaning up centuries of degradation caused by poverty. Poverty not development destroys the environment," the filmmakers stated.
"This is a debate worth having and we are disappointed that such an influential company as Proctor & Gamble will not acknowledge the need for discussion before we embrace anti-development politics dressed up as apolitical environmentalism," the filmmakers added.
WASHINGTON, May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Action Fund Management, LLC
(AFM), the investment advisor to the Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker:
FEAOX), announced today that negotiations over the FEAOX's shareholder
proposal filed with Procter & Gamble (Ticker: PG) have broken down over PG's
refusal to acknowledge that company employees should be exposed to both sides
of the debate over sustainable development.
"We wanted Procter & Gamble to show its managers and employees the new
documentary "Mine Your Own Business: The Dark Side of Environmentalism"
(http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org) and to publicly acknowledge the need to
hear from both sides of the sustainable development debate," said Steve Milloy
of AFM. "While Procter & Gamble said it was willing to distribute 100 copies
of the film to its employees, the company refused to publicly acknowledge the
value of debate," added Milloy.
"Without the requested public acknowledgment, we doubt that Procter &
Gamble is really sincere about showing its employees 'Mine Your Own Business,'
or educating its employees about what many view as the dark side of
environmentalism," said AFM's Tom Borelli. "Procter & Gamble's stakeholder
engagement on sustainability apparently is limited only to the voice of
environmental activists. 'Mine Your Own Business' spotlights the human cost of
blind adherence to sustainability -- a message company management needs to
hear," added Borelli.
Negotiations between AFM and PG began after AFM filed a shareholder
proposal with PG requesting a report to shareholders on the actions the
company is taking to promote the general business environment.
"Procter & Gamble touts its sustainable development activities on its web
site, but says little if anything about what it's doing to promote business,
capitalism and free enterprise," said Milloy. "The company offered to meet
with us about our concerns, but our position was that employee-viewing of
"Mine Your Own Business" would be a more productive use of everyone's time.
"We're obviously disappointed, but not surprised," said Borelli.
"Companies like Procter & Gamble have been so intimidated by anti-business
environmental and social activists that they're afraid to be seen as
considering alternative points of view," Borelli said.
"I suppose we'll have to look forward to discussing this issue with
Procter & Gamble CEO Alan G. Lafley at the annual shareholder meeting this
fall," Milloy concluded.
The FEAOX aims to increase shareholder value by advancing free-market
principles in the companies it owns. FEAOX is available exclusively through
BISYS Fund Services Limited Partnership (applications may be obtained at
http://www.FEAOX.com/how.html), and through E*Trade
Financial, Scottrade and
HSBC.
SOURCE Free Enterprise Action Fund
However it seems that their optimism was short-lived. The greatest victory of the environmentalist movement has been to cast its actions and opinions as a moral, non-political stance. Given this who could dare question morality.
Of course this also means there should be no debate about the issues because no one is allowed debate against a moral stance.
However filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney reject this analysis.
"The suggestion that the environment is degrading is a political point of view not based on science and certainly has no moral basis. The suggestion that we need to cut back or reduce or consumption is a similarly flawed political ideology. Right now the rivers and air of the developed world are cleaner than ever and in the developing world development is cleaning up centuries of degradation caused by poverty. Poverty not development destroys the environment," the filmmakers stated.
"This is a debate worth having and we are disappointed that such an influential company as Proctor & Gamble will not acknowledge the need for discussion before we embrace anti-development politics dressed up as apolitical environmentalism," the filmmakers added.
WASHINGTON, May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Action Fund Management, LLC
(AFM), the investment advisor to the Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker:
FEAOX), announced today that negotiations over the FEAOX's shareholder
proposal filed with Procter & Gamble (Ticker: PG) have broken down over PG's
refusal to acknowledge that company employees should be exposed to both sides
of the debate over sustainable development.
"We wanted Procter & Gamble to show its managers and employees the new
documentary "Mine Your Own Business: The Dark Side of Environmentalism"
(http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org) and to publicly acknowledge the need to
hear from both sides of the sustainable development debate," said Steve Milloy
of AFM. "While Procter & Gamble said it was willing to distribute 100 copies
of the film to its employees, the company refused to publicly acknowledge the
value of debate," added Milloy.
"Without the requested public acknowledgment, we doubt that Procter &
Gamble is really sincere about showing its employees 'Mine Your Own Business,'
or educating its employees about what many view as the dark side of
environmentalism," said AFM's Tom Borelli. "Procter & Gamble's stakeholder
engagement on sustainability apparently is limited only to the voice of
environmental activists. 'Mine Your Own Business' spotlights the human cost of
blind adherence to sustainability -- a message company management needs to
hear," added Borelli.
Negotiations between AFM and PG began after AFM filed a shareholder
proposal with PG requesting a report to shareholders on the actions the
company is taking to promote the general business environment.
"Procter & Gamble touts its sustainable development activities on its web
site, but says little if anything about what it's doing to promote business,
capitalism and free enterprise," said Milloy. "The company offered to meet
with us about our concerns, but our position was that employee-viewing of
"Mine Your Own Business" would be a more productive use of everyone's time.
"We're obviously disappointed, but not surprised," said Borelli.
"Companies like Procter & Gamble have been so intimidated by anti-business
environmental and social activists that they're afraid to be seen as
considering alternative points of view," Borelli said.
"I suppose we'll have to look forward to discussing this issue with
Procter & Gamble CEO Alan G. Lafley at the annual shareholder meeting this
fall," Milloy concluded.
The FEAOX aims to increase shareholder value by advancing free-market
principles in the companies it owns. FEAOX is available exclusively through
BISYS Fund Services Limited Partnership (applications may be obtained at
http://www.FEAOX.com/how.html), and through E*Trade
Financial, Scottrade and
HSBC.
SOURCE Free Enterprise Action Fund
Sunday, May 27, 2007
First Canadian Public Screening of Mine Your Own Business
Filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are delighted to announce that the first public screening of Mine Your Own Business in Canada will take place on May 29.
Date: May 29, 2007, 7 PM
Place: Ottawa Public Library, (Metcalfe at Laurier)
Admission: $6.00
Press passes available upon request
On May 29, 2007, Ottawa will have opportunity to see the powerful new film, "Mine Your Own Business", a film about the dark side of environmentalism.
The film screening, at the Ottawa Public Library, is sponsored by the Free-Thinking Film Society, (formerly the Conservative Film Society), a new organization that plans to regularly bring in films of a Libertarian/Conservative bent.
"Mine Your Own Business" exposes the dark side of environmentalism. The documentary hacks away at the cozy image of environmentalists' as well meaning, harmless activists. *Mine Your Own Business* is the first documentary which asks the hard questions of foreigners who lead campaigns to "save" remote areas from development. Their answers are often disturbing, with racist overtones, but we, in the west, blindly support such campaigns that want to keep people in poverty. Now for the first time "Mine Your Own Business" asks local people about their lives and what they want for the future.
Their answers are very often different from what the foreign environmentalists say and what is reported in the mainstream international media.
"Mine Your Own Business" is a journey through the dark side of environmentalism. It demolishes the cozy consensus that environmentalists are well meaning agenda free activists and shows them to be anti-development ideologues who think the poor are happy being poor and don't want the development that we, in the west, take for granted.
"Mine Your Own Business" goes beyond the voice of the foreign environmentalists that we so often hear in the media and meets those who will be most affected by these projects and the well-run campaigns against them.
"Mine Your Own Business" follows George, a 23-year-old unemployed miner from northern Romania whose life has been put on hold after an anti-mining campaign orchestrated by foreign environmentalists. George explains his hopes and dreams for the future - which are different from those prescribed for him by foreign environmentalists. He then travels to other impoverished communities in Madagascar and Chile who are also desperately waiting for large mining projects. George finds people similar to himself with similar hopes and dreams of a decent job and house and a decent education and better life for their children.
For more information, please visit www.mineyourownbusiness.org, or email us at fred.litwin@gmail.com
Contact: Fred Litwin / 613-261-9060 / fred.litwin@gmail.com
Date: May 29, 2007, 7 PM
Place: Ottawa Public Library, (Metcalfe at Laurier)
Admission: $6.00
Press passes available upon request
On May 29, 2007, Ottawa will have opportunity to see the powerful new film, "Mine Your Own Business", a film about the dark side of environmentalism.
The film screening, at the Ottawa Public Library, is sponsored by the Free-Thinking Film Society, (formerly the Conservative Film Society), a new organization that plans to regularly bring in films of a Libertarian/Conservative bent.
"Mine Your Own Business" exposes the dark side of environmentalism. The documentary hacks away at the cozy image of environmentalists' as well meaning, harmless activists. *Mine Your Own Business* is the first documentary which asks the hard questions of foreigners who lead campaigns to "save" remote areas from development. Their answers are often disturbing, with racist overtones, but we, in the west, blindly support such campaigns that want to keep people in poverty. Now for the first time "Mine Your Own Business" asks local people about their lives and what they want for the future.
Their answers are very often different from what the foreign environmentalists say and what is reported in the mainstream international media.
"Mine Your Own Business" is a journey through the dark side of environmentalism. It demolishes the cozy consensus that environmentalists are well meaning agenda free activists and shows them to be anti-development ideologues who think the poor are happy being poor and don't want the development that we, in the west, take for granted.
"Mine Your Own Business" goes beyond the voice of the foreign environmentalists that we so often hear in the media and meets those who will be most affected by these projects and the well-run campaigns against them.
"Mine Your Own Business" follows George, a 23-year-old unemployed miner from northern Romania whose life has been put on hold after an anti-mining campaign orchestrated by foreign environmentalists. George explains his hopes and dreams for the future - which are different from those prescribed for him by foreign environmentalists. He then travels to other impoverished communities in Madagascar and Chile who are also desperately waiting for large mining projects. George finds people similar to himself with similar hopes and dreams of a decent job and house and a decent education and better life for their children.
For more information, please visit www.mineyourownbusiness.org, or email us at fred.litwin@gmail.com
Contact: Fred Litwin / 613-261-9060 / fred.litwin@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Meagre protest at the Bucharest Film Festival Screening of 'Mine Your own Business'
Alburnus Maior protested the Romanian premiere of Mine Your Own Business in Bucharest. However as usual with their protests it is obvious they do not have the popular support they constantly claim to have. Only three protesters stood together with their banner. When we questioned them they repeatedly attacked George Lucian for wearing a new suit. George was not wearing a new suit he had borrowed a jacket from a friend in Rosia Montana. George is an unemployed miner who lost his job when environmentalists took legal action to stop the drilling at the proposed mine at Rosia Montana
They objected to producer/director Ann McElhinney wearing a gold necklace.
They said the people of Rosia Montana could get by through agriculture and tourism, when George and his sister Ella said this was not true the protesters asked who bought George's new suit.
The hundreds of people who came to see the film engaged in an excellent Q&A with filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney after the screening which ran over time and eventually had to move to the bar because the cinema was needed for another film in the festival.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Mine Your Own Business selected for Bucharest Film Festival
MYOB has been selected for screening in the prestigious Bucherest Film Festival,
The film will be screened on Sunday 15th April at 4.00 pm at Cinema Eforie, Eforie St, Bucharest
A very large crowd is expected so get there early.
Monday, March 12, 2007
"A HOT DOC" says Canada's National Post
A hot doc
National Post
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Toronto-based Gabriel Resources has one of the hottest gold prospects on Earth, at Rosia Montana in Romania, but has been having a lot of trouble getting the project moving. It's not that the vast majority of the locals aren't keen to exploit the opportunities (including ripping off Gabriel if they get half a chance). It's that a bunch of international environmentalists have descended on Rosia Montana and made it an anti-development cause celebre.
Gabriel's painful experience is the subject of a brilliant and controversial film, Mine Your Own Business, which was made by the Irish husband-and-wife team of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. The two were in Toronto this week to show their work at the Prospectors and Developers Association Conference, where I met them on Monday.
Their movie is a gripping expose of "the dark side of environmentalism." It reveals big international environmental organizations as far more concerned with posturing on behalf of lemurs and "spiritual" mountains than lifting poor people out of poverty.
The campaign against Gabriel was led by a by a Swiss journalist-turned-environmentalist named Stephanie Roth. Ms. Roth dubbed Gabriel and other mining companies "modern-day vampires" (Rosia Montana is in Transylvania). However, the view that she and her colleagues peddle of Rosia Montana as an
idyllic community that would be ruined by Gabriel's development is a pure fantasy, as the film makes clear.
Mr. McAleer decided to make a film after covering the Gabriel story for the Financial Times of London. The fact that he was partly financed by Gabriel (who nevertheless had no editorial control) has inevitably been used against him, but he notes that nobody has ever successfully refuted the facts presented in the film.
Rosia Montana is desolate and polluted, the site of former Communist state-owned mines and a mining history that goes back to Roman times. Its soil is barren. Its streams are polluted. Its inhabitants are 70% unemployed. As Gabriel chief executive Alan Hill points out, "This is a mine to clean up a mess."
Mine Your Own Business goes beyond Romania to examine activist opposition to other proposed mines in Chile and Madagascar, where the story is depressingly similar. The film's undisputed villain is the appallingly smug figure of Mark Fenn, a representative of the World Wide Fund for Nature, who is charged with holding up a mine in Madagascar. He announces that the locals put no value on better housing, nutrition or education and that if they had more money they would just spend it!
One inspired move by the filmmakers was to take along a young miner named George from Rosia Montana to Madagascar. Mr. McAleer says that the main challenge during the sequence in which Mr. Fenn was explaining the joys of poverty was to stop George from pummelling the environmental blowhard!
Mine Your Own Business has drawn wide praise, and been described as "devastating" to "the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental left." The Wall Street Journal declared: "Move over, Michael Moore. You have competition in the art of political film-making ? [but] instead of advancing the cause of smug liberal hypocrisy, [McAleer] is debunking it."
In fact, comparing Mine's film-makers with Michael Moore is an insult. They don't manufacture facts and edit for hyperbole; they let the people of Rosia Montana speak for themselves.
The feisty filmmakers have been doing a good deal of globe-trotting to promote their work, but are having trouble getting it into film festivals, most of whose organizers tend to be sympathetic to radical environmentalism. When they showed their movie at the National Geographic Society in Washington, Greenpeace tried to have them banned.
Mr. McAleer and Ms. McElhinney point out that their film has even cost them friends. They told me of one New York couple who watched their film and immediately started attacking them on global warming, a topic not even mentioned in the film! When they asked the couple what specifically was wrong with the film's message, they were accused of "badgering."
It will be interesting to see if they make the cut at this year's Toronto-based Hot Docs festival, perhaps the leading documentary festival in the world. Their inclusion would seem obviously justified not merely from the quality of their film, but because one of this year's festival themes is "Spotlight on Central & Eastern Europe."
The inclusion of one film about Transylvania has already been announced. It is called Village of Socks, and portrays "The alluring charm of a community practicing a centuries-old tradition while on the edge of the EU behemoth."
While Village of Socks may be a fine and important film, Mine Your Own Business touches on much more critical issues of global development.
Gabriel, meanwhile, struggles on to provide the good jobs and working conditions that the villagers of Rosia Montana so desperately need. The company has devoted millions to preserving local heritage, and has guaranteed the preservation of all the local historical buildings and churches. They are still working on the most rigorous possible environmental assessment. Nevertheless, Gabriel recently had to call a halt to its generous house-purchase program when the locals were discovered to be -- illegally -- building new structures on land where the mine site would be. "They want more mone y," CEO Hill said in a conference call this week, adding: "And who wouldn't?"
Gabriel's mine is the best thing that could possibly happen to Rosia Montana. As Mine Your Own Business demonstrates, the worst thing would be if the radical activists' anti-development jihad were to triumph.
© National Post 2007
National Post
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Toronto-based Gabriel Resources has one of the hottest gold prospects on Earth, at Rosia Montana in Romania, but has been having a lot of trouble getting the project moving. It's not that the vast majority of the locals aren't keen to exploit the opportunities (including ripping off Gabriel if they get half a chance). It's that a bunch of international environmentalists have descended on Rosia Montana and made it an anti-development cause celebre.
Gabriel's painful experience is the subject of a brilliant and controversial film, Mine Your Own Business, which was made by the Irish husband-and-wife team of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. The two were in Toronto this week to show their work at the Prospectors and Developers Association Conference, where I met them on Monday.
Their movie is a gripping expose of "the dark side of environmentalism." It reveals big international environmental organizations as far more concerned with posturing on behalf of lemurs and "spiritual" mountains than lifting poor people out of poverty.
The campaign against Gabriel was led by a by a Swiss journalist-turned-environmentalist named Stephanie Roth. Ms. Roth dubbed Gabriel and other mining companies "modern-day vampires" (Rosia Montana is in Transylvania). However, the view that she and her colleagues peddle of Rosia Montana as an
idyllic community that would be ruined by Gabriel's development is a pure fantasy, as the film makes clear.
Mr. McAleer decided to make a film after covering the Gabriel story for the Financial Times of London. The fact that he was partly financed by Gabriel (who nevertheless had no editorial control) has inevitably been used against him, but he notes that nobody has ever successfully refuted the facts presented in the film.
Rosia Montana is desolate and polluted, the site of former Communist state-owned mines and a mining history that goes back to Roman times. Its soil is barren. Its streams are polluted. Its inhabitants are 70% unemployed. As Gabriel chief executive Alan Hill points out, "This is a mine to clean up a mess."
Mine Your Own Business goes beyond Romania to examine activist opposition to other proposed mines in Chile and Madagascar, where the story is depressingly similar. The film's undisputed villain is the appallingly smug figure of Mark Fenn, a representative of the World Wide Fund for Nature, who is charged with holding up a mine in Madagascar. He announces that the locals put no value on better housing, nutrition or education and that if they had more money they would just spend it!
One inspired move by the filmmakers was to take along a young miner named George from Rosia Montana to Madagascar. Mr. McAleer says that the main challenge during the sequence in which Mr. Fenn was explaining the joys of poverty was to stop George from pummelling the environmental blowhard!
Mine Your Own Business has drawn wide praise, and been described as "devastating" to "the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental left." The Wall Street Journal declared: "Move over, Michael Moore. You have competition in the art of political film-making ? [but] instead of advancing the cause of smug liberal hypocrisy, [McAleer] is debunking it."
In fact, comparing Mine's film-makers with Michael Moore is an insult. They don't manufacture facts and edit for hyperbole; they let the people of Rosia Montana speak for themselves.
The feisty filmmakers have been doing a good deal of globe-trotting to promote their work, but are having trouble getting it into film festivals, most of whose organizers tend to be sympathetic to radical environmentalism. When they showed their movie at the National Geographic Society in Washington, Greenpeace tried to have them banned.
Mr. McAleer and Ms. McElhinney point out that their film has even cost them friends. They told me of one New York couple who watched their film and immediately started attacking them on global warming, a topic not even mentioned in the film! When they asked the couple what specifically was wrong with the film's message, they were accused of "badgering."
It will be interesting to see if they make the cut at this year's Toronto-based Hot Docs festival, perhaps the leading documentary festival in the world. Their inclusion would seem obviously justified not merely from the quality of their film, but because one of this year's festival themes is "Spotlight on Central & Eastern Europe."
The inclusion of one film about Transylvania has already been announced. It is called Village of Socks, and portrays "The alluring charm of a community practicing a centuries-old tradition while on the edge of the EU behemoth."
While Village of Socks may be a fine and important film, Mine Your Own Business touches on much more critical issues of global development.
Gabriel, meanwhile, struggles on to provide the good jobs and working conditions that the villagers of Rosia Montana so desperately need. The company has devoted millions to preserving local heritage, and has guaranteed the preservation of all the local historical buildings and churches. They are still working on the most rigorous possible environmental assessment. Nevertheless, Gabriel recently had to call a halt to its generous house-purchase program when the locals were discovered to be -- illegally -- building new structures on land where the mine site would be. "They want more mone y," CEO Hill said in a conference call this week, adding: "And who wouldn't?"
Gabriel's mine is the best thing that could possibly happen to Rosia Montana. As Mine Your Own Business demonstrates, the worst thing would be if the radical activists' anti-development jihad were to triumph.
© National Post 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
MYOB wows PDAC
Environmental fascism – Mining facing misinformation and downright lies from anti-mining NGOs
Lawrence Williams
'07-MAR-07 08:00'
TORONTO (Mineweb.com) --In an interesting initiative at this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) meeting, the organisers invited film makers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney to show their film – Mine Your Own Business. Following the showing the flimmakers fielded questions about the film itself, as a part of a debate as to how the mining industry should face up to the problems it faces from NGOs who mislead the public with anything from deliberate misinformation to downright lies about the benefits or otherwise that the industry brings to local populations.
The two Irish documentary makers were invited initially by Gabriel Resources, currently trying to develop Romania’s Rosia Montana gold project against strong environmental opposition. McAleer and McElhinney agreed to do this provided they had totally independent editorial control of the film they would produce. Indeed Alan Hill of Gabriel felt initially that he would have preferred a different type of film altogether.
McAleer, takes on the role in the documentary of devil’s advocate looking at the claims and counter claims of the miners and the NGO opponents. In person it is apparent that he now feels extremely strongly from a personal front about what the NGOs seem to be trying to do in stopping mining where it promises, not only to provide jobs and income to poverty-stricken locals, but in Rosia Montana’s case actually help clean up a horrendous environmental legacy of poorly-controlled state mining operations at the site.
He claims to have absolutely no interest in mining per se – his background is journalism with London’s respected Financial Times newspaper – but does have a strong interest in what a developing industry can do for jobless locals living in horrendously primitive surroundings. Thus he and his colleague have ended up producing a Michael Moore-type documentary highlighting the hypocrisy and damage being done by some anti-mining NGOs in their fight to kill new mining operations in various parts of the world.
He admits that the NGOs may believe deeply that what they are doing is justified, as may the people who fund them, but that they are perhaps more than just misguided and that their actions actually harm the people they are supposedly setting out to protect.
At Rosia Montana, for example, the NGOs paint a picture of an idyllic mountain village where villagers live on good income generated from agricultural and sheep raising income, and that the locals almost unanimously oppose the big mining project. In fact it seems to be the reverse that is true. The locals are almost unanimous in their support for the new mine, while the local ground is too poor to support an agricultural alternative. Living conditions in the village are extremely primitive and the mine offers not only jobs, but new modern housing.
The filmmakers did not just rest their case with Rosia Montana – they also looked at two more projects being set up in extremely poor areas of the world – Rio Tinto’s titanium sands mining project in Madagascar – the world’s third poorest country – and Barrick’s Pascua Lama gold mining project high in the Chilean Andes. They found that NGO’s operating largely from a western viewpoint that the locals would obviously prefer living a poverty stricken existence and maintaining their indigenous cultures, when in fact the opposite is true.
In Madagascar the prospective mine life is 60 years, and the project would involve building a decent port there – which would be the seventh largest in Africa and provide long term benefits to the local community that they could currently only dream of. In Chile, the NGOs are supported by local landowners who do oppose the project, but primarily because if the mine is built they will have to compete with the mines for local labour which is currently paid below subsistence level wages.
Here too one of the leading lights in the anti-mining campaign turned out to be an environmental activist living in one of London’s wealthier suburbs who had never been to the Pascua Lama site, yet felt qualified to speak supposedly for the locals who he had never met!
It was apparent from the question and answer session that the two filmmakers both felt that the NGOs seemed, in all three studies examined, in a ‘conspiracy’ to keep the poor in continuing poverty, with all the problems that brings in terms of poor health, poor life expectancy, high infant mortality and the ‘pleasure’ of continuing to live in horrendous conditions.
What is also interesting is what this writer terms environmental fascism. There have been attempts to suppress this film and prevent it being shown. The filmmakers have even received death threats because of it. Documentary TV channels and film festivals won’t screen it, although will happily carry works which try to paint the opposite picture.
What can one do about this. In the subsequent discussion at the PDAC one has to say that not much came to the fore in realistic ways of attacking the problem faced by miners. There wasn’t any real opposition to the findings – but then the film was shown to a highly supportive audience. There perhaps was a consensus that the industry should perhaps be more proactive in putting its case and that the film should be made available to educational establishments – although whether they would actually show it is perhaps another matter.
Phelim McAleer himself, who has inherited a very jaundiced viewpoint about the activities of the NGOs during the making of the film, even feels that mining should not even try and work any of the NGOs at all, although one speaker from the floor did urge caution and pointed to some significant cooperative work between Rio Tinto and some environmental groups.
Combating NGO misinformation is something the industry will continue to have to deal with. Whenever a prospective mine springs up nowadays, special interest groups will almost automatically oppose it. While often local people and politicians will ultimately ensure that the projects do go ahead for the benefits they bring to the local communities, getting to this stage can be a long and costly process for the mining company. Perhaps the McAleer approach of trying to bring the NGOs to account has a lot of merit, but whatever is done, the industry itself has to remain squeaky clean in its dealings and operations so as not to give opponents further sticks to beat it with.
The NGOs, like terrorists, do not seem to abide by the rules of the game. They do need to be brought to account in some way or other, because misinformation and lies once promulgated in the media tend to be considered as fact by the general public – even though they may be withdrawn at some stage in the future. The question is haow can the industry achieve this. The debate continues.
Monday, March 5, 2007
LARGEST SELLING IRISH NEWSPAPER PRAISES DOCUMENTARY
LEADING COLUMNIST ON IRISH INDEPENDENT - IRELAND'S BEST SELLING NEWSPAPER - PRAISES MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS
"Michael Moore but with actual research and journalistic skill"
Ian O'Doherty, the Irish Independent's leading columnist, has praised Mine Your Own Business describing it as "revelatory" and "excellent".
Read O'Doherty's comments in full.....
Make it your business
Irish film maker Phelim McAleer's excellent documentary 'Mine Your Own Business' gleefully exposes the stupidity of many of today's professional environmentalists. Their casual disregard for the needs of the people they purport to help really sticks in the craw.
The most unintentionally amusing moment of the film comes when, explaining his opposition to a mining project in Madagascar which would enormously improve the shattered local economy, environmentalist Mark Fenn of the Worldwide Fund for Nature says that giving locals jobs would ruin their culture.
"In three or four days it's (local culture) gone. They'll buy cases of beer and invite their friends. They'll just buy a stereo. In Madagascar the indicators of quality of life are not housing, not nutrition, and specifically not health in a lot of cases. It's not education. A lot of children in Fort Dauphin do not go to school because the parents do not consider that to be important."
Needless to say the unemployed locals held a rather different attitude.
To find out more about this revelatory documentary - think Michael Moore, but with actual research and journalistic skill - check out mineyourownbusiness.org.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
IRISH NEWSPAPER HAILS DEVASTATING DOCUMENTARY
Film makers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney write opinion piece for Mine Your Own Business in the Irish Daily Mail
For full article click here
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