Ann McElhinney to speak at prestigious event in DC

Ann McElhinney director and producer of Mine Your Own Business has been invited to speak at Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s 1,000-Strong “Defending the American Dream Summit” other speakers include US Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain ,Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. McElhinney will be speaking on Friday, October 5th 4:00 - 5:30 pm in the the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC (East Room)

New York Sun praises Mine Your Own Business

On August 31 Alicia Colon of the New York Sun states:

"...Mine Your Own Business captures how radical environmentalists were suppressing progress in some of the world's poorest areas. An Irish journalist, Phelim McAleer, filmed the piece with honesty and integrity, allowing viewers to form their own opinion.

Find out for yourself. Order a copy of Mine Your Own Business through the website mineyourownbusiness.org

Noted academic praises Mine Your Own Business

The Independent Institute
Commentary
Mine Your Own Business
September 5, 2007
Alvaro Vargas Llosa


WASHINGTON—One would think only a crazy couple would declare war on environmentalists by presenting them on film as snobs, hypocrites and enemies of the poor. Luckily for those of us who think one-sided debates are boring, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are just crazy enough to question the environmentalists' opposition to mining projects in poor countries in a documentary—“Mine Your Own Business”—that is gaining attention.

McAleer, an Irish journalist who covered Romania for the Financial Times, and McElhinney, his wife and co-producer, look at three mining investments: a gold project by Gabriel Resources in Rosia Montana, in Romania's Transylvania region; Rio Tinto's ilmenite project in Fort Dauphin, in Madagascar; and a vast Andean operation undertaken by Barrick Gold in Chile's Huasco Valley.

In the movie, many of the critics who claim to live in the affected areas are less than honest. One, a Swiss environmentalist who leads the opposition to mining in Romania, actually lives in the sort of town to which many of the impoverished peasants of Rosia Montana want to move.

The activists are adamant that the locals should preserve their “pristine” environment. A Belgian environmentalist says the people of Rosia Montana would rather use carts and horses than pollute the air with cars. “She says this to get noticed,” counters a Romanian peasant who looks totally bewildered.

Half a world away, when confronted with the argument that denying the people of Fort Dauphin a chance to obtain jobs would keep them poor, the leading critic of the ilmenite project and the owner of a luxurious catamaran pontificates to Gheorghe Lucian, an unemployed Romanian traveling with the film's crew: “I could put you with a family here and you can count how many times people smile ... and I can put you with a family that is well-off in New York and London and you can count how many times they smile, and then you can tell me who is rich and who is poor.”

You can imagine what this esoteric interpretation of wealth sounds like to Lucian, the Romanian who graduated from Rosia Montana's Technical College and is desperate to find a job. Two-thirds of his fellow villagers lack running water and use outside bathrooms even in freezing winter. For him, as for the other 700 prospective employees of the mining project back home, the choice is literally “between having a job and leaving.”

The film crew also traveled to the Chilean Andes to find out who was leading the fight against Barrick Gold. It turns out—as one local villager explains—that those who oppose the investment are mainly rich landowners who don't want the peasants working on their lands for a pittance to flock to the mines for twice their current wages.

McAleer tells us that the claim the mining project will displace three glaciers that provide irrigation for local agriculture is false. The glaciers will not be affected and the company will build a reservoir to guarantee that local farmers have a decent supply of water.

Will this industrial progress in Romania, Madagascar or Chile pollute the environment? Well, the alternative is much worse. Communist-era gold mining, which was technologically backward, bureaucratic and unaccountable, turned Rosia Montana's river into disgusting filth. In Madagascar's Fort Dauphin, slash-and-burn agriculture—the sort the rural poor resort to in order to survive—has destroyed the rain forest.

It would be naive to think these mining companies are in it for altruistic motives—they obviously want to make a profit. But the truth—one that Lucian, the unemployed Romanian, discovers as he ventures beyond his country for the first time in his life—is that progress involves hard choices. The wealthy nations of today were themselves “pristine” environments in which people gradually gave up traditional ways of life to improve their living conditions. Who are we to deny the poor of today the chance to do well for themselves when an opportunity arises if they decide to take it?

Yes, moving from the traditional to the modern way of life involves costs. But as one British professor at Kent University says: “People need to be trusted to work these things out for themselves.... Environmentalists feel they have the moral authority to tell them what to do.”

Not all nongovernmental organizations are as elitist and unfair to poor people as the many this film exposes. Not every mining project is as respectful of local choices as the ones depicted in this film. But this documentary speaks volumes about the Manichean vision that many bleeding-heart Americans and Europeans have of the dilemma between tradition and modernity in the developing world.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of “Liberty for Latin America,” is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute. His e-mail address is AVLlosa(at)independent.org.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa
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Alvaro Vargas Llosa is Senior Fellow and Director of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. He is widely published and has lectured on world economic and political issues including at the Mont Pelerin Society, Naumann Foundation (Germany), FAES Foundation (Spain), Brazilian Institute of Business Studies, Fundación Libertad (Argentina), CEDICE Foundation (Venezuela), Florida International University, and the Ecuadorian Chamber of Commerce. He is the author of the Independent Institute books The Che Guevara Myth and Liberty for Latin America.

More Support for Mine Your Own Business and telling the truth about Rosia Montana

September 5, 2007
Why Does Soros Want to Keep Some Folks Poor?
Yeah, sometimes instead of writing about Tennessee politics, media or the war I go off and write about a mining project in Romania that has caught my interest. This is my a blog, so you get what I'm interested in, and this story is one of those. It's about a the village of Rosia Montana, Romania, a poverty-stricken place that is seeing its best-ever chance at economic progress and a better life for its people blocked by environmentalists and by one very rich billionaire who doesn't lack for things like indoor plumbing and electricity the way many of the people do in Rosia.

I have come into possession of a copy of a letter that famed billionaire and funder of leftist causes George Soros wrote in mid-April to the CEO of Denver-based Newmont Mining, urging the company to not support a proposed gold mine in the impoverished Romanian village of Rosia Montana - a mine proposed by Gabriel Resources of Toronto, Canada.

Now, why would Soros, write such a letter - and address it to the CEO of Newmont rather than Gabriel Resources?

Newmont owns 19 percent of Gabriel Resources. And Soros owns a significant stake in Newmont. That answers the first question. But you'd think Soros, as a stockholder in Newmont, would want Newmont to profit from Gabriel's Rosia Montana mine project. On the other hand, if Soros only made what for him, dollar-wise, is a rather small investment in Newmont stock in order to have the standing to pressure Newmont to work against Gabriel's project, the question is much more serious:

Why does Soros, famous funder of a variety of leftwing causes both in America and around the world, believe that it is vital the people of Rosia Montana be denied a chance at major economic development

And that brings me to the deeper question of why Soros - who has significant investments in gold-mining and other mining operations - has made opposition to the Rosia Montana project a personal crusade, a question that remains unanswered, in part because the world media has not asked it.

Soros' Open Society Institute, which claims to be working to better the lives of people in places like Rosia Montana, recently opened an outpost in the impoverished village, under the name Soros Foundation Romania, ostensibly to help the locals fight off the mine.

The grand opening was booed by the locals, who desperately want the good jobs and wages that the Gabriel mine would bring to the town, which currently has a 70 percent unemployment rate and historically has made its living from mining.

Did the negative reception for Soros's organization in Rosia Montana make it into any of the world media that have covered the Rosia Story?

No.

Recently, however, Gabriel Resources has begun to fight back against the campaign of lies and deceptions that the Soros Foundation Romania has been using to fight the mine. In late August, Allen Hill, CEO of both Gabriel Resources and the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation subsidiary, released an open letter to Renate Weber, the chairman of the board of the Soros Foundation Romania, exposing a slew of lies and deceptions on the foundation's website about the Rosia mining project.

The lies and distortions pushed by Soros regarding the project have become standard fare in major-media coverage of the Rosia project, which almost always portrays the battle as a David-versus-Goliath story, with the village as the David and Gabriel Resources as Goliath.

The truth that is beginning to emerge is that, yes, this is a David-and-Goliath story, but it is Gabriel Resources that is the David, fighting a multi-headed giant comprised of a series of Soros-funded "environmental groups" and NGOs.

Hill's letter is a shining example of, pardon the pun, the gold standard in pushing back against biased and inaccurate media coverage by attacking the lies and distortions at their source. Here is the letter in its entirety:

Dear Ms Weber,
I write to call to your attention the factual falsehoods on your website concerning the Rosia Montana Project – errors that must in fact be known to your organization, as they differ from the project’s EIA report, which (as is evident from citations on various pages of your website) you claim to have studied and analyzed.

As the false statements are too numerous to list in this letter, suffice it to say by way of example that the “case study” appearing on your website contains 10 errors in just 5 paragraphs.

In Soros Foundation shorthand, the Rosia Montana project is defined by “dynamiting four mountains,” “destroying 958 households” and “demolishing the town.”

None are true.

Dynamiting four mountains…
Fact: if the reference is to the four proposed mining pits comprising our project, your web-visitors should know that not one of the sites is pristine – indeed, all four sites bear the ravages of past mining, and one is in fact an abandoned crater, heavily polluted by poor mining practice, which our modern mining practices will clean up. Modern “mining for closure” practices – documented in our EIA – will ensure that when the mine is closed, lands will be reclaimed, revegetated and returned to use by man and wildlife. And in the case of Rosia Montana, our mine will in fact leave the area cleaner than we found it.

Destroying 958 households…
Fact: according to World Bank standards, homes are being purchased on a “willing buyer/willing seller” model, at generous prices unavailable in the natural “real estate market” in impoverished rural Romania – which is why 98% of all local residents have had their properties surveyed by the company. 12 of the 16 sub-commune of Rosia Montana are not affected by the project – and for those families who seek to live nearby, a new village Piatra Alba is being built at company expense, the collaboration of a Romanian and Colorado/USA design team that has developed U.S. resort communities.

Demolishing the town…
Fact: Far from demolishing Rosia Montana, all 41 currently-designated historic structures in the village are preserved under our mining plan, whether they are located in the Protected Zone or outside of it. Two churches must be moved under the mine plan; depending on the congregations’ wishes, the churches will either be moved or rebuilt to the congregation’s specifications. Perhaps this is why the Special Rapporteur from the Council of Europe termed our patrimony programme at Rosia Montana “an exemplary model of responsible development.”

…Although that’s a fact not fit for the posting on the Soros Foundation site.

All of these facts are present in our EIA, whose contents are legally binding on us.

Perhaps you have just copied your case against us from the statements of partner organizations who are opposed to our project, reporting their falsehoods as your own. Indeed, many of the “facts” on your site look to come, cut-and-paste style, directly from statements made by Alburnus Maior and the Hungarian Government.

But we should give credit where credit is due -- and acknowledge falsehoods that appear to be your own organization’s invention.

For instance, your site claims that the Rosia Montana “project violates also the Berlin Convention (10 October 2001), which stipulates the interdiction of the cyanide use in the mining exploitations on the territory of the European Union.”

Of course the Berlin Convention, as you are doubtlessly aware, has no force of law in the EU. Indeed, cyanide use in gold extraction is legal within the EU (and is currently used in a majority of operating EU gold mines), and is subject to even stronger standards as a result of the EU’s 2006 Mining Waste Directive – with which our project complies from Day One. In fact, at the most recent G-8 gathering in Germany, the G-8 nations made a joint statement explicitly endorsing the International Cyanide Management Code (ICMC) -- promulgated under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Programme, outlines strict Standards of Practice governing cyanide use in mining.

Is the G-8 wrong about cyanide?

Are the heads of the world’s foremost democracies violators of the law?

Is the UN a co-conspirator in the lawless use of cyanide?

Or is it the case that the Soros website simply chooses to mislead its visitors, in hopes that they will remain ignorant of the facts?

The Soros Foundation cannot in good conscience post such false statements on its site if it is sincere in its wish to have an honest and open discussion on projects such as ours.

The volume of such statements on your website suggests not random error but rather a concerted campaign -- a suppression of any and all fact-based evidence recognizing that the Rosia Montana Project conforms to the highest international standards. Beyond your web-based campaign, we also call on you to clarify your role in the leaking of the IGIE Report (the so-called “ad hoc report”) in March 2007, whereby fed negative news stories in Romania on what was in fact a positive report. Finally, given community support for our project and your claimed commitment to accountability, we urge you to explain how your anti-mining stance squares with your mission statement “to promote patterns for the advancement of a society based on freedom, accountability and respect for diversity.”

Perhaps we are destined to differ. Still, it is the case that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

As a publicly-traded company, Gabriel Resources is required by law as well as the regulatory rules that govern security exchanges to conduct itself in an open and transparent manner. The same cannot be said about your “open society” organization. We urge you to remove the false statements from your website immediately, and desist from misleading the interested public about our project.

Sincerely
Alan Hill
President & CEO
Gabriel Resources & Rosia Montana Gold Corporation

Hill's letter is filled with facts, while Soros' letter to the Newmont Mining CEO is filled with unsubstantiated assertions and misleading spin. Just one example: Soros cites "a recent poll organized by a special committee of the Romanian parliament (that) found 90% of respondents rejecting the project," but fails to inform the Newmont CEO that the "poll" was an unscientific Internet poll that collected many votes from people who didn't live in Rosia but, instead, were associated with organizations opposed to the new mine.
One more: Soros charges that the Rosia project will result in "involuntarily resettling hundreds of people," when the truth is the village only has a few hundred people and most favor the mine - and are selling their property to Gabriel for generous prices that are allowing them to resettle in nice new homes in a new village a few miles away.

No one has been involuntarily moved.

Why is Soros attacking - directly and through surrogate groups he funds - the Rosia gold mine project? Only Soros knows for sure, but there is much speculation. Rosia Montana is located in the region known as Transylvania, which once belonged to Hungary. Soros is Hungarian. Could nationalism - and a desire to keep Rosia down as long as it is part of Romania - play a role?

What about Soros' business interests? Soros is not opposed to mining, as his investments show. He's not even opposed to gold-mining using cyanide leeching, as TownHall.com contributor Paul Driessen explains in a piece I'll excerpt below.

Perhaps Soros aims to block the Rosia project, then ride in as the town's savior, buying up the existing abandoned mines and proposing his own gold mine that would, no doubt, be promised to be even more environmentally friendly than Soros and his allies allege, falsely, that the Gabriel project isn't. The Soros-funded NGOs likely wouldn't bite the hand that feeds them.

Just a thought.

But perhaps not totally off the mark.

Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, speculated on Soros' possible financial motives for organizationg opposition to the Rosia mine, in an excellent column at TownHall.com last week:

Driessen:

The radical NGOs simply hate mining, don’t live in the village, have no compassion for these families, and are under no legal obligation to be honest, transparent or accountable for the consequences of their actions. As one foreign activist said in an email:
"Why should any NGO come forward with alternative projects? That is not the job of civil society. We are not a humanitarian organization, but a militant environmental NGO. If the whole community is in favor of the project, we simply put it on the list of our enemies."

They will spend millions to stop development, but not one cent on poor people or the environment. They destroy thousands of jobs, but create no new ones. When someone asked the Alburnus Maior president where his money comes from, he said "It’s not your business!"

George Soros and his Soros Foundation Romania appear to be the principal money behind this campaign. Not only is this support anti-poor, anti-environment and anti-Romania. It's also hypocritical, because Soros has made millions from mining operations that use cyanide – and a silver mine that relocated an entire village. But stopping Gabriel and other Western corporations could certainly benefit his political agenda and provide opportunities to profit from fluctuations in metals prices caused by restrictions on mining in the face of surging demand to meet the needs of new technologies and developing economies.

It also promotes Hungary's desire to assert influence over lands that once were part of its empire, or at least prevent those regions from becoming economic competitors. That desire may explain why its government issued a press release condemning the project, almost immediately after it had submitted 122 questions about the project, but before it had received a single answer.

Twenty-one Romanian NGOs visited Rosia Montana and met with the people and company. Eighteen of them changed their minds and now support the project. The radical activists refuse to have any dialogue.

Read Driessen's whole column.
Meanwhile, I'll take this as one more chance to urge you to see the documentary Mine Your Own Business, which reveals just how disconnected from reality - and from the needs of the people of Rosia Montana - are the various environmentalist organizations and NGOs fighting the Rosia project.

Charleston screens MYOB

Manic Miners

Sick of Sicko? Fuming at Fahrenheit 9/11? For those who like their political filmmaking a little more right of center, help is at hand.

The Bastiat Society is a local organization aiming to "promote that the free market is the most productive, most humane, and most moral form of large-scale social organization." It's hosting the S.C. premiere of Mine Your Own Business, a 2006 documentary that claims to be the first to explore the dark side of the green scene.

Filmmaker Phelim McAleer is worried about environmentalists' "pernicious effects... on the poorest people in some of the poorest countries in the world." The former Financial Times correspondent looks at the impact eco-friendliness can have on miners, who stand to lose their livelihoods thanks to anti-mining campaigns coordinated by foreign environmentalists.

The Bastiat Society is named after 19th century French economist Frédéric Bastiat who once said, "The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended."

The one-off screening of McAleer's skillful attack on tree-huggers takes place at the American Theater, 446 King St. on Wed. Sept. 5 at 5 p.m. Tickets won't cost a red cent. —Nick Smith

Mine Your Own Business featured on prestigious Wall Street Journal editorial page

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Make Up Your Own Mine
An impoverished town strikes gold. George Soros and foreign environmentalists say, leave it in the ground.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:01 a.m.

The recent tragedy in Utah has brightened the spotlight on mining, already under assault by environmental and anti-globalization activists world-wide. These activists have produced several documentaries, and the anti-mining campaign has attracted the attention of billionaire George Soros and actress Vanessa Redgrave--and enough charges of greed or hypocrisy to fill a mine shaft.
Tonight, PBS will air "Gold Futures," a film by Hungary's Tibor Kocsis. The film focuses on residents in Romania's Rosia Montana, a rural Transylvanian town, who are divided over the benefits of a proposed gold mine. It also features Gabriel Resources, the Canadian mining company trying to convince them to relocate so it can dig for a huge gold deposit estimated at 14.6 million ounces, worth almost $10 billion. PBS describes the film as a "David-and-Goliath story."

While the film gives time to supporters and opponents of the mine, it leaves unsaid that half of the villagers voicing opposition have now either sold their homes or will not have to move, because they live in a protected area where the village's historic structures and churches will be preserved. Viewers who see pristine shots of the Rosia valley won't realize the hills hide a huge, abandoned communist-era mine, leaking toxic heavy metals into local streams--or that while the modern mining project will level four hills to create an open pit, it will also clean up the old mess at no cost to the Romanian treasury.




The other side to the controversy is told in a new film that will never be shown on PBS, but is nonetheless rattling the environmental community. "Mine Your Own Business" is a documentary by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. They conclude that the biggest threat to the people of Rosia Montana "comes from upper-class Western environmentalism that seeks to keep them poor and unable to clean up the horrific pollution caused by Ceausescu's mining."
Mr. McAleer, a former Financial Times journalist who has followed the mine battle for seven years, says he "found that everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false." He produced his film on a shoestring $230,000 budget largely provided by Gabriel Resources, but says he was given complete editorial control.

The Gabriel funding caused environmental groups to label the film "propaganda" and demand the National Geographic Society cancel plans to rent its Washington, D.C., theater to the free-market Moving Picture Institute for a screening. The Institute notes opponents rarely challenge the film's facts. As for Mr. Kocsis's documentary, his Flora Film corporate Web site lists as its partners Greenpeace, the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and the George Soros-backed Energy Club of Hungary, all of which oppose the Romanian project on either environmental or nationalistic grounds (Transylvania used to be part of Hungary).

High-profile mine opponents such as Ms. Redgrave (who hasn't visited Rosia Montana), have declared undying opposition to the project: "Our planet is dying and we have no right to destroy an ecosystem." In April, Mr. Soros, the chairman of the Open Society Institute and a large funder of groups opposing Rosia Montana, wrote to Wayne Murdy, then CEO of Newmont Mining, the Denver company that owns 19% of Gabriel Resources. He urged him not to invest in "a dubious project such as Rosia Montana," citing "the social costs involved in involuntarily resettling hundreds of people" and "the potential for disastrous environmental impact." Mr. Soros did not respond to an interview request.

Opponents of the mine claim that Rosia Montana residents agree with their stance. "Local opposition to the mine is strong and organized" says a statement signed by 80 environmental groups in January. In his letter, Mr. Soros cites a recent poll organized by some members of Romania's parliament that "found 90% of respondents rejecting the project." But the poll turns out to be an unscientific Internet survey, and one of the environmental groups Mr. Soros funds urged people outside Romania to participate in it. What is clear: Two-thirds of Rosia Montana's people have accepted Gabriel's voluntary offer to buy their homes at above market rates. Most will move four miles away to a less polluted area.

On the other side, Rosia Montana Mayor Virgil Narita supports the mine because it will create 700 permanent local jobs. He was re-elected with 80% of the vote this year. And in late 2004, the Council of Europe sent Eddie O'Hara, a British Labour Party member of the European Parliament, to Rosia Montana to file an official report. Opposition to the mine, he said, was "substantial," but it was "very much fueled by outside bodies, presumably well-meaning but possibly counterproductively. It seems in part at least exaggerated." Mr. O'Hara concluded the opposition "do not take account of modern mining techniques and in fact the Rosia Montana project will help to clear up existing pollution." He also warned that not allowing the mine "would remove any chance of local development for some time."

And there's the rub. Rosia Montana needs a cleanup and development. Three-quarters of its 600 families lack indoor toilets, unemployment tops 70% and the only truly viable crop is potatoes. In "Mine Your Own Business," Andrei Jurca, the local dentist, tells Mr. McAleer "we don't need foreign advocates. We are smart enough to take our own fate in our own hands." Other villagers note that concerns about Gabriel's use of cyanide in gold mining are misplaced. Seven out of nine existing gold mines in European Union countries use cyanide and the allowable limits in Rosia Montana will be lower than all of them.




Perhaps local unemployed miner Gheorghe Lucian says it best: "People have no food to eat. . . . I know what I need--a job." Mr. Soros's Romanian Open Society Foundation is touting "alternative economic activities such as organic agriculture and eco-tourism," unrealistic at best. Stefania Simon, legal counsel for the anti-mine group Alburnus Maior, has no answer for Mr. Lucian. "Unemployment is a problem, but it will not be solved by mining," she told Britain's Guardian newspaper. Noting that Gabriel has only a 17-year lease to mine, she says, "This is a solution for the short term." But right now, even non-permanent jobs and any cleanup of the existing pollution looks like a good deal to people like Mr. Lucian.
"Mine Your Own Business" also contains interviews with leading environmentalists opposing other mining projects who display smug indifference to bettering the lives of poor people. In Madagascar, Mr. McAleer finds Mark Fenn, country director for the World Wide Fund for Nature, who argues that the poor are just as happy as the rich because they smile more and that if Madagascar locals (who now earn $100 a month) get more money "they'll buy cases of beer, invite their friends, they'll throw a party . . . three, four days the money's gone." He then shows off his new $35,000 catamaran.

Mr. McAleer tells me such encounters should wake up people "who, like myself, unquestionably believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world." He still considers himself a liberal but, "it's sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development."

South Carolina premiere of Mine Your Own Business

South Carolina to learn the truth about Rosia Montana and other environmental campaigns


SOUTH CAROLINA PREMIERE of MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS, a DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE DARK SIDE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM to be SHOWN at the AMERICAN THEATRE, DOWNTOWN CHARLESTON

Charleston, South Carolina- - The Bastiat Society is bringing Mine Your Own Business, by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, to the public, free of charge, to all those interested in exploring the negative consequences of environmental groups working around the world. The film will be shown at the American Theatre, 446 King Street in Charleston on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 5pm.

“Move over Michael Moore. You have competition in the art of political film making…but instead of advancing the cause of smug liberal hypocrisy, he’s [McAleer] debunking it.” – Wall Street Journal Online

To arrange a screening in your area contact Barton Sidles on bsidles@gmail.com

MYOB returns to Seattle

WPC's Center for Environmental Policy Hosts 5th Annual Luncheon on Thursday, July 19th

Join WPC's Center for Environmental Policy for its 5th Annual Environmental Policy Luncheon on Thursday, July 19th from 12:00 - 1:30pm in Seattle. This year the luncheon will welcome Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, both Fellows of the Moving Picture Institute, a not for profit dedicated to advancing liberty through the medium of film. The two speakers are the directors and producers of the film "Mine Your Own Business," (2006) which examines how wealthy western environmentalists are working against the interests of impoverished communities and, ironically, environmental improvement.

Thursday, July 19th
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
The Seattle Red Lion, 1415, 5th Ave.
Price: $35.00 Individual Ticket
Sponsorship Levels Listed Below

Last year's event with Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore sold out and was attended by over 200 business and environmental leaders, policymakers, and interested individuals. Don't miss this year's lunch, which has become the event to attend for networking and learning more about the growing free-market environmentalist movement.

Attendees at the lunch will have the opportunity to ask questions of McAleer and McElhinney about their controversial environmental film.

For more information on sponsorship levels or to register click here or call 206-937-9691 or email acarroll@washingtonpolicy.org.

Little Miss Attila praises Mine Your Own Business

Review: Mine Your Own Business
What an amazing film.

This begins as an intensely personal story: Mine Your Own Business starts with a mini-autobiography on the part of former Financial Times reporter Phelim McAleer, who discusses why he originally went into journalism. Growing up Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland, he saw enough of man's inhumanity to man that he wanted to write, to serve as a witness, to speak for human rights. (He doesn't put it quite that way, of course, but that's how I interpreted his statements.)

While he was working for the FT in Romania, McAleer was approached by a beleaguered Canadian company that wanted to bring modern, environmentally responsible mining techniques to the Transylvanian town of Rosia Montana—which has been in the mining business for approximately 2000 years (yes, since Roman times). The company,Gabriel Resources, wanted him to do a promotional piece on their planned mine in Rosia Montana. McAleer had a better idea: Why don't you help me make a documentary? he asked. He had one proviso: The company would have zero editorial control. Zero.

Either they felt lucky, or they were very secure in their thinking that someone who looked at the actual environmental impact of the project—and spoke with the townspeople in Rosia Montana—would come to the conclusion that the mining project was a good idea, or at least the least-bad idea for saving Rosia Montana. Perhaps, however, the company just likes writing checks to no particular end, which is unusual among big businesses. In any event, they agreed: No editorial control. And they forked over the cash.

They backed McAleer through some very unorthodox filmmaking methods: not only does McAleer speak with a lot of the actual residents of Rosia Montana about the mine, but he develops a bond with one of the locals, an unemployed young miner named George Lucian, who speaks some English (his linguistic skills gets better as the film progresses) and takes on an unexpectedly huge role in the documentary.

Lucian takes McAleer on a tour of the less picturesque parts of Rosia Montana, such as the rusty-looking hyper-polluted river that now runs on the outskirts of town, and the rather, um, geometrical piles of dirt that adorn the surrounding landscape as a result of old-fashioned mining techniques (in fact, it looks like strip mining). Eventually, the two begin researching other controversial mining projects that have also been in environmentalist extremists' cross-hairs.

Then McAleer talks George Lucian—who has never even travelled to Bucharest, much less boarded a plane—into visiting towns on other continents where mining projects are desired by the citizenry, but opposed by environmentalists.

They look at a project in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, and together get to know one of the "local" opponents, who lives quite far away from the town, and is in the process of building a seaside villa on the far coast of the island. The most hilarious part of the whole movie takes place on the grounds of his estate-in-progress, where he shows his visitors his $35,000 yacht, and then explains that the villagers in Fort Dauphin are rich in things other than trifles such as material possession and "nutrition" (I kid you not: he really said that—and with the camera rolling!). In any event, he assures his guests, if any of the locals in Madagascar ever came into money, they'd squander it on beer; they certainly won't use it to educate their children. (Ever-thorough, McAleer asks Fr. Daupin resident what they would do with any money they might make by working in the mine. With few exceptions, they express a desire to send their kids to school.)

During the hilarious-but-scary discussion with the high-roller watermelon, the camera pans to the horrified look on George's face as he listens to the rich guy who opposes development and claims that he doesn't think money is really that important. We have already been told that many of the villagers in Rosia Montana don't have indoor plumbing, and we've seen pictures of the outhouses its denizens must use in sub-zero weather. For the first-time viewer of Mine Your Own Business, poverty has lost any allure it might once have had—and for good.

I found myself wondering why the unemployed Transylvanian miner didn't go after the rich, self-satisfied environmentalist with a knife, but young George is better-bred than I am, and it shows.

Next, Phelim McAleer heads to London, to discuss the history of ecosystems with a few of the academics there. One points out that Kew Gardens wouldn't exist if the forest that preceeded it had been "saved" by the forbears of those who now want to save poor Africans and Eastern Europeans from the horrors of human progress; another asks who, exactly, we are to tell them that development will create long-range problems for them, and we consider them incapable of solving such problems? After all, the industrialized world has managed to mitigate a lot of the side-effects of development, while enjoying its benefits. (Back to that indoor toilet issue. I feel that an outhouse would be inconvenient here, in Southern California—much less in an environment that plunges 20 degrees below zero every winter.)

Finally, George and Phelim head off to Chile, where a mining project is being planned high in the Andes, on the border with Argentina. The locals desperately want this project, and the money it will bring into the community, but this one, also, is opposed by environmentalists and some NGOs (non-governmental organizations). The enviros and the NGOs are also allied with local agribusiness, which has grown accustomed to using the locals as sources of cheap labor who are willing to work under unsafe conditions because the big landowners are, right now, the only game in town. With a mine nearby, the landowners would have to improve working conditions—and possibly raise pay—to attract labor. It seems they prefer having serfs—and, really, who wouldn't?

The altitude in Chile kicks McAleer's ass; he ends up in a clinic breathing oxygen out of a mask. It is left to his young Romanian friend—the guy who knows high-altitude mining—to visit the site of the proposed mine, and interview the developer about what this might do for the community, and what is being done to preserve the glaciers in the area.

Then we get to listen to the enviros again, and it's the same old story: those who are financially comfortable would like the world's poor to remain that way, as if they were exhibits in a sort of global zoo. All humans are equal, sure. But some are more equal than others. And glaciers, of course, are more equal than people. But you knew that too, right?

If there were a real hierarchy among politically independent filmmakers, I'd be afraid that Phelim McAleer would topple the mighty Even Coyne Maloney right off his throne. (Though it may get interesting this fall at the Liberty Film Festival's main extravaganza in West Hollywood, with Indoctrinate U having to compete with Mine Your Own Business. I'm just glad I'm not on the voting panel; it would be hard to choose between those two.)

Oh, and by the way—there's been some opposition to MYOB by environmental groups and NGOs. What a sir-prize! But I didn't see a rebuttal; just mushy indignation. The images of environmental damage from the existing mining operation in Rosia Montana were awfully hard for me to ignore—as were the pictures from a neighboring town, where mining has been abandoned entirely, and those who remain are reduced to picking through the rubble, looking for scrap metal they can sell in order to survive.

Poverty is not picturesque. It is time for us to get out of the way, and let developing countries . . . you know: develop.


UPDATE: And here's a bonus! A discussion of the film by environmental extremists who clearly haven't seen it, and think the filmmaker is "British," and the Romanian woman quoted therein must be "Russian."

Can we at least pool our resources and get some of these far-left greenies an atlas? Just a thought.

MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS TOURS GHANA