Wallace, Idaho – A protest against him staged by environmental pressure groups outside of a Washington, D.C. theatre (where National Geographic magazine proposed to show his film), a comparison by Greenpeace of him to Nazi propagandists, and two death threats beneath his belt, Irish-born Phelim McAleer tells us his movie, “Mine Your Own Business” might have struck a chord.

The film, shot for a mere (EU) $250,000, features the plight of a 23-year-old unemployed George Lucian, who is living in what amounts to a Superfund site in the Transylvania town of Rosia Montana, Romania in a one-bedroom apartment with his five brothers and sisters. Lucian, whose job as a diamond driller at a proposed gold mine ended there when green groups sued to halt the exploration project, believes the ticket out of his poverty would be restoration of his job at a new gold mining venture being proposed by Toronto miner Gabriel Resources. According to Gabriel, part of the project would be to clean up an environmental mess left behind by a state-run company from the old Soviet era that contaminated the local water supply and, since its abandonment, has reduced the local population to busting up pieces of reinforced concrete in order to salvage the iron within, which they trade for food for themselves and their horses.

Blocking George Lucian's hopes for his lift from poverty are environmentalists who oppose the mine. Safely ensconced in Bucharest is NGO spokeswoman and mine opponent Francoise Heidebroek, a sheep-grower who tells the filmmaker, on camera, that the residents of Rosia Montana would rather ride horses than work, which evokes a huge guffaw from Lucian and fellow residents of Rosia Montana, even as she brags about the 100% return her sheep flock brings her.

McAleer finds a similar sentiment in Madagascar, where across the island from where Rio Tinto is proposing to mine sands for alumina at Fort Dauphin, environmentalist Mark Fenn of the Worldwide Fund for nature poses in front of his 50-foot catamaran yacht and architects' plans for his new beach-front home. Fenn opposes the Rio Tinto mine because, according to him, jobs would destroy the local culture.

“In three or four days it's 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,” Fenn tells the camera.

After this interview with the environmentalist, McAleer turns his camera to Fort Dauphin, and asks locals what would happen to them if a big mining project came to their port town. “I would pay the education fees and send my children to school and I would buy something at a low price and sell it for a higher price for a profit,” answers one.  Answers another: “We do not have enough money and we have not been able to so afford to send some of the children to school. I would like them to become midwives, or doctors or engineers.”

Fort Dauphin's mayor extols on camera the virtues of a deepened harbour the Rio Tinto mining venture would bring. Subsistence living, he says, has denuded the Fort Dauphin's hillsides and fishery as the locals scramble for firewood and something to eat.

On a lark McAleer, a career journalist for the Financial Times, tells Platts, he whisked the once and future miner, George Lucian, from his home in Romania to Madagascar to visit with the would-be miners there. “Tell George these people don't want development. He'll call you a liar. He knows what it's like. He knows that poverty is what has polluted that area.” George decided to stay behind in Madagascar, to converse with the local populace and play on the beaches, McAleer says.

McAleer's film, which will be showcased at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada's annual bash in Toronto next week, is being compared favourably in the press to leftist producer Michael Moore's “Roger & Me.” McAleer thinks the comparison is inapt: “Michael Moore is a political entertainer. I'm a journalist. When environmentalists say one thing, and mining companies say another, I'd like to see who's telling the truth. When I got there I was surprised at who was lying.”

Anti-mining NGOs need to be taken to task, McAleer told Platts. “Once you start asking the NGOs any difficult question, they act like they're being insulted. They are the new religion. I would like to ask my fellow journalists to treat the environmentalists the same way they treat Big Business, or the Big Church. Ask them, 'What is your independent evidence?' Just ask the usual hard questions everyone else gets.”

As for George Lucian, he is back in Romania after his Madagascar sweep, McAleer says:  “George is still living in a one-bedroom apartment with his five brothers and sisters, wondering if his life could be better. He's rather pissed off.”

-- Posted Tuesday, 27 February 2007 | Digg This Article