Persistence of Vision

NRO's Deroy Murdock has written eloquently about the shortcomings of single-payer health care, the problems with Michael Moore's cinematic promotion of same, and the sharp antidote provided by Stuart Browning's short films on health care. Today, he's taking his insights on the road, making Browning's films the centerpiece of a talk at the Young America's Foundation's annual National Conservative Student Conference in D.C.

Meanwhile, writing in the Boston Globe, presidential candidate and former NYC mayor Rudolf Giuliani calls for a "free market cure" for America's health care system. "The healthcare system is being dragged down by decades of government-imposed mandates, wasteful bureaucracy, and massive distortions in the US tax code that punish self-employed and low-income workers," he writes; "Healthcare reform must be based on increased choice, affordability, portability, and individual empowerment."

No one can speak more directly to the credibility and power of Evan Coyne Maloney's Indoctrinate U than college students. They live in the world Maloney documents, and their educations are shaped--or, one might argue, distorted--by the lop-sided doctrinaire attitudes and policies that are so commonly a feature of our campuses.

Take just one recent case: Last spring, at Tufts University, a conservative student newspaper was persecuted for engaging in entirely protected speech -- simply because the speech, which criticized affirmative action and some of the most radical aspects of Islamic fundamentalism, offended certain special interest groups on campus. Though Tufts claims to embrace the ideal of free inquiry and open, robust debate, the paper was investigated, tried, and found guilty of harassment by a university committee. No free speech exists at Tufts, despite the university's claims to the contrary.

The editor of that paper, Matthew Schuster, knows whereof he speaks. And he likes what he sees in Indoctrinate U. "Indoctrinate U is a powerful, thought-provoking call to arms for those who refuse to be silenced," he writes; "The documentary takes aim at the entrenched academic establishment, confronting a powerful elite that is trampling freedom of speech."

Word of libel tourism, the shady practice by which alleged terror financiers use the English courts to silence those who are working to expose them, is spreading, and none too soon. Here's the inimitable Mark Steyn on the subject:

Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of "Alms for Jihad" and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons:

"Throughout the book there are serious and defamatory allegations about yourself and your family, alleging support for terrorism through your businesses, family and charities, and directly.

"As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that all of those allegations about you and your family, businesses and charities are entirely and manifestly false."

Who is Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz? Well, he's a very wealthy and influential Saudi. Big deal, you say. Is there any other kind? Yes, but even by the standards of very wealthy and influential Saudis, this guy is plugged in: He was the personal banker to the Saudi royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government. He has a swanky pad in London and an Irish passport and multiple U.S. business connections, including to Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

[...]

Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other big-shot Saudis, Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors – in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment. He may be a wronged man, but his use of what the British call "libel chill" is designed not to vindicate his good name but to shut down the discussion, which is why Cambridge University Press made no serious attempt to mount a defense. He's one of the richest men on the planet, and they're an academic publisher with very small profit margins. But, even if you've got a bestseller, your pockets are unlikely to be deep enough: "House Of Saud, House Of Bush" did boffo biz with the anti-Bush crowd in America, but there's no British edition – because Sheikh Mahfouz had indicated he was prepared to spend what it takes to challenge it in court, and Random House decided it wasn't worth it.

As Steyn and others are realizing, if we want to be able to inform ourselves about terrorism, we need to protect the avenues of information -- and if we are to do that, we need to understand what libel tourism is and how English law sustains it. One important contribution to that understanding is an upcoming film by MPI fellow Jared Lapidus. Watch for The Libel Tourist--coming soon to a viral video venue near you.

Damian Thompson of the London Telegraph has picked up on Indoctrinate U--and says that the film "confirms something I’ve suspected for a long time – that the closest thing in the Western world to a police state is an American university campus." Thompson covered Indoctrinate U years ago, when it was still in its early stages--and now that he's seen the finished film, he gives it an unqualified endorsement: "This is the movie Hillary Clinton doesn’t want you to see. So watch it."

Comments are open at the Telegraph, and the discussion is intriguing--not least for the number of American students who register their agreement with Maloney's contention that free speech on campus is most definitely not alive and well. One American reader laments the fact that it's necessary to learn about the film in an English paper. And anecdotes about Columbia University's schools of law and journalism abound, including one about a very famous, very ideological law professor who reputedly imposes her views on students with impunity.

Meanwhile, a Columbia student takes issue with Maloney's footage of the campus -- and Maloney sets her straight.

Lance Weiler is a pioneer when it comes to using digital technology to make and distribute independent films. His thoughts on the freedom low budget digital equipment offers filmmakers, as well as on the manner in which methods of distribution must be tailored to the technology and oriented toward niche audiences, are of central import to the budding genre MPI is working to support: films that operate from a truly positive, intelligent outlook on freedom.

Weiler spoke with Knowledge @Wharton recently. The whole interview is worth reading, but here are some of the more interesting excerpts:

Knowledge@Wharton: What's the outlook for digital downloads?

Weiler: The prospect of digital downloads -- whether it's Amazon's UnBox or MovieLink or iTunes -- increases your profit margin by [eliminating] the physical media.

But I think we are in this awkward period where until that final leg of the living room is worked out, and it's easy -- I mean like really simple and idiot-proof -- then you're not going to see much [other than] early adopters purchasing online. It's a lot different than music.

But when you look at web 2.0 and social networks, it's like this playground of things that you can use to build your audience and promote your work. And it's free for the picking. It's stuff that you can use. The cost is relatively inexpensive.

I think the future is the direct-to-your-audience [model]. As the filmmakers start to build audiences, if they can figure out ways to cross-pollinate those audiences, then they start to build volume. At that point, they don't need as many of the middlemen that have typically been in line to take the money before they see any return, if ever.

Knowledge@Wharton: So, at least right now, the web is more helpful in marketing a film that may be distributed through other venues than it is for distributing film itself?

Weiler: Yes. At this point in time, that's correct. The architecture isn't fully there yet. The deal terms haven't been fully fleshed out -- which is encouraging. Because there are times when a window opens up, and if you're smart about how you leverage it, there are tremendous opportunities.

There are opportunities for revenue that fall between the traditional cracks -- places that you didn't even think you would find revenue. I think that's what's exciting.

Knowledge@Wharton: So, producing a movie has become much easier -- the equipment is cheaper and the PC tools are much better. But on the distribution side there are all these constraints. The web isn't there yet because it isn't linked to your large-screen TV. You have the shelf space problem with DVDs. You have the difficulty of competing with the big studios' distribution houses for a theatrical run. What's an independent filmmaker to do?

Weiler: [It's about] the one-to-one relationship with the audience I was discussing. When I did the theatrical release across the country, I didn't spend any money on P&A. I used social networking. I used an "embed and spread" campaign, where I took assets of the movie -- digital swag -- and gave that to people to put on their [web] pages, and they amplified my message. So then more people were coming back to the movie.

To me the future of it -- or at least one component for independent film -- is the ability to harness that audience and build it over time.

It's not that dissimilar to what musicians have been doing by going out on the road to support their work.

Television is difficult to get into, and it's next to impossible for independent film. And even if you get a deal, [the revenue] will be so low that by the time you get E&O -- which is errors and omissions insurance -- that's going to eat up the majority of what you're going to make.

For independent film, a way to circumvent that is to just go directly to the people. It's the power of the niche. That is where I think independent film is headed. Publishing is headed there. Music is there. Film has started to get sub-genres, and you see how those sub-genres have risen up -- whether it's African-American cinema, Latino cinema or gay and lesbian cinema. You've seen them start to fill a market that wasn't being served.

As Forest Gump might say, freedom is as freedom does.

More good words for Mine Your Own Business from Sinclair's Musings:

I've just finished watching the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business". It is made by the former Financial Times correspondent to Romania and Bulgaria and examines environmentalist campaigns against mining projects.

It restates a common complaint against environmentalists: that those who claim to be defending local interests have a deep arrogance in telling those locals what their interests are. However, it also illustrates how innacurate the picture presented to the world by the green campaigners often is.

[...]

He shows how the inhabitants of a Romanian village that is going to have a mining project built do not prefer horse and cart to cars and were not forced from their homes but gratefully sold; how the village is not a pristine environment risking destruction at the hands of greedy foreigners but an already damaged environment that needs investment to avoid becoming a wasteland and that claims that the villagers can do equally well out of tourism or farming are deeply spurious. It shows how the best friends of environmentalists fighting a mining project in Latin America are landowners worried that the new project will offer their workers an escape from poverty wages. In short, it shows that the claims of foreign environmentalists are often entirely disconnected from reality.

It is highly credible to me thanks to my own experience of this kind of thing in a different setting. When I was a fair bit younger, 17 I think, I went to Lake Baikal in Siberia on a programme with an organisation called Earthwatch. Essentially, it attached me as a helper to an expedition monitoring pollutants in the lake, one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world.

While we were out there they showed us a Greenpeace film. It upset the woman who hosted us. It showed the lake dying, poisoned. However, the man leading our expedition, an amazing sixty year old who had smoked for decades but still outpaced a group of us many of whom were half his age, gave a different account. He had spent decades studying the lake and told us in a matter of fact tone that what was presented on the film was entirely untrue. While Lake Baikal is a lake one would expect to become polluted as most of Mongolia's industry discharges into a river that feeds it things have not turned out that way; it is incredibly clean. It is much purer than even bottled water in the West and I quickly got used to filling my water bottle straight from the lake. Some kind of natural filter operates to keep the lake so clean.

Our scientist was attempting to work out how that filter operated, and whether it would continue to function. Greenpeace were ignoring reality and communicating a fiction to the outside world. That other environmental activists will do the same in other situations seems entirely credible to me. Mine Your Own Business shows the consequences: communities needlessly denied the chance of a more comfortable and hopeful life.

Director Jeffrey Blitz is best known for his documentary Spellbound, all about the USA's peculiar but dear spelling bee tradition. The film is striking for how it uses the framework of the spelling bee to trace the prepubescent lives of kids from a range of backgrounds; what it shows us is how, through the common pursuit of the arcane art of spelling, all kinds of kids can express sides of themselves that they might not otherwise have known they had. Competition is the watchword for all of them, whether they come from poor, immigrant backgrounds or wealthy suburban ones, and we spend a lot of time watching the spellers drilling and memorizing, disciplining themselves to learn reams of roots while sacrificing lazy downtime with their friends.

Blitz has stayed on the subject of adolescence, but has moved from documentary to comedy, and from spelling to speech. In Rocket Science, he tells the story of a new kid who is also a stutterer finding his way through the unlikely avenue of the debate team. The new film is a coming of age story told in the mode of Harold and Maude and Being There--sharp and smart and funny, but still serious, moving, a little bit dark and at times touchingly sweet. Rocket Science won the director prize at this year's Sundance Festival.

Why adolescence? Blitz says it's because we all have easy access to those years, because they are so formative for us:

"I took a sewing class in junior high school," says writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, who made a splash a few years ago with his documentary Spellbound, but has since shifted gears to make his first narrative feature, the teen comedy Rocket Science. "I was so upset that I had to take sewing that, for my big project, I wanted to make a pair of gigantic underpants.”

“My teacher was like, 'No, we're not going to let you make a pair of gigantic underpants. That's completely inappropriate,'” he continues. “So I made a vest for myself instead and then I stuffed it so it would be a cold weather vest, and all the stuffing just immediately sank down to the bottom. I'm sure my parents still have that. It's really bad."

"I think I have easy access to those junior high school, high school years still. I think most people do. I think there's a lot of formative stuff that goes on there that most people hang onto."

We watch these shows and see these films--sometimes over and over, so often that we have parts of them memorized--because we are entranced by their treatment of freedom. They are more complex than they know--and they remind us of the moment when we first began to understand what a complicated, beautiful, and consequential thing liberty is.

People who live in Philadelphia are used to coming across movie sets on their daily rounds. This blogger recalls scenes from Oprah Winfrey's Beloved being filmed at 18th and Delancey, two blocks from her Center City apartment. And for a brief time in the fall of 1999, I shared my evening yoga classes with Toni Collette, who was in town filming The Sixth Sense. Collette's more recent In Her Shoes is like a vast delightful in-joke for Center City dwellers, so grounded is its plot in the streets, shops, parks, and food of the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood; the same goes for the recent Rocky Balboa, much of which is filmed in south Philly's marvelous Victor Cafe. Other films set in Philadelphia include Tom Hanks' Philadelphia, Harrison Ford's Witness, Eddie Murphy's Trading Places, and, of course, the immortal Rocky.

But, as MPI founder and former Philly dweller Thor Halvorssen observes, the cinematic potential of Philadelphia has yet to be fully mined. In an interview with the Bulletin's Frank Diamond, Halvorssen applauded the decision of Pacifica Ventures to open a $75 million production facility in the area, but also noted that the real potential of the city is as a subject and setting for films about freedom:

"The entire American founding has yet to find itself in an epic picture," he told Diamond. "'National Treasure' was a wonderful, inspiring narrative that was a lot of fun. But there is so much cloth to cut in terms of the stories about the birth of the United States."

And the most magnificent export of this magnificent country, he says, are films. It's ironic that movies seldom explain - and very often contradict - the notion of America's unique position in, and beneficent influence on, history.

MPI fellow Evan Coyne Maloney has made a startling and thought-provoking film about America's higher ed system -- and thousands of people have indicated their wish to see it.

Now, at last, Indoctrinate U is coming to a city near you. On September 28, the film will premiere at the American Film Renaissance Film Festival, where it will be the marquee event at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Auditorium. And later this fall, the film will travel to select cities across the United States. Already New York, Washington, Minneapolis, L.A., Denver, Chicago, and San Jose have had more than 500 people sign up to see the film -- and as MPI has promised, the film will screen in every U.S. city where 500 people or more pledge to go.

Get your tickets for the Washington screening now--and watch for the film to come to other major cities in the coming months.

So much public debate these days takes place in film -- and that makes movie distributors and television networks major players in public policy. They have the power to decide which ideas make it to mass audiences, and which ideas won't. And they use it.

Tonight this will be demonstrated by PBS, which is slated to air a documentary entitled Gold Futures. The film takes a strong anti-mining stance, and focuses on Rosia Montana, Romania, where controversy over a proposed gold mine has drawn world wide attention. What PBS won't air is the other point of view--even though that, too, is amply documented in film. As followers of MPI's work know well, Mine Your Own Business takes the radical environmentalist movement to task, showing how, in opposing mines in impoverished areas, Western activists are working hard to keep the world's poorest people poor.

John Fund takes issue with PBS, and with Gold Futures, in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

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).

Documentary box office returns are down this year compared to last -- but niche documentaries are nonetheless coming into their own. It's no longer essential to procure the backing of major studios to make and promote a film, and documentary filmmakers are capitalizing on that with a vengeance. Digital technology makes it fairly cheap to make movies now, and companies such as Netflix are making it possible for niche documentaries to find their ideal audiences. Netflix carries 7,800 documentaries -- and rented about 82% of them last year.

And so the docs keep coming, and the capacity of documentary to take part in current political debate keeps growing. This year's Sundance Festival featured six political documentaries. The Toronto festival will have nine. And philanthropists are beginning to recognize the power of film to forward their goals: "Since 'Inconvenient Truth,' more people are starting to look at media as a strategy to achieve their philanthropic goals," Melissa Berman, chief executive officer of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, told the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal notes that MPI adds a crucial dimension to the genre of political documentary with its commitment to ensuring that alternative perspectives on major public policy issues can find their place in film: "Moving Picture Institute funds and produces films on themes such as free-market economics and individual rights, including the documentary 'Indoctrinate U,' about what MPI founder Thor Halvorssen calls 'the denial of First Amendment rights to those who do not subscribe to the university orthodoxy.'"

Indoctrinate U will premiere on September 28 at the American Film Renaissance Film Festival, with the support of MPI and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

As the financial threshold for filmmaking lowers, the variety of films being made increases. Indie filmmakers are having a blast, experimenting with style and content in ways that enable them to make signature moves and even invent new genres. One such genre is "mumblecore," which amounts to a millennial version of the slacker film. "Specimens of the genre share a low-key naturalism, low-fi production values and a stream of low-volume chatter often perceived as ineloquence," the New York Times notes;

More a loose collective or even a state of mind than an actual aesthetic movement, mumblecore concerns itself with the mundane vacillations of postcollegiate existence. It can seem like these movies, which star nonprofessional actors and feature quasi-improvised dialogue, seldom deal with matters more pressing than whether to return a phone call. ...

But what these films understand all too well is that the tentative drift of the in-between years masks quietly seismic shifts that are apparent only in hindsight. Mumblecore narratives hinge less on plot points than on the tipping points in interpersonal relationships. A favorite setting is the party that goes subtly but disastrously astray. Events are often set in motion by an impulsive, ill-judged act of intimacy.

Artists who mine life’s minutiae are by no means new, but mumblecore bespeaks a true 21st-century sensibility, reflective of MySpace-like social networks and the voyeurism and intimacy of YouTube. It also signals a paradigm shift in how movies are made and how they find an audience. “This is the first time, mostly because of technology, that someone like me can go out and make a film with no money and no connections,” said Aaron Katz, whose movies “Dance Party USA” and “Quiet City” will be shown as part of a 10-film mumblecore series at the IFC Center that begins Wednesday and continues through Sept. 4.

"I have a lot of fun being a heretic," MPI founder Thor Halvorssen told New York Times writer John Strausbaugh in a feature article devoted to him. Many of us like to say--with cliched pride--that we "wear many hats" in our work and lives. But Halvorssen wears more than many of us put together. "If you ask him whether he’s a human-rights activist, a free-speech advocate, an anti-Communist, an anti-fascist or a movie producer, he could plausibly answer 'all of the above,'" Strasbaugh writes. “He’s uncategorizable,” Nat Hentoff agrees. “Thor’s the embodiment of the nonpolitically correct person.”

What pulls it all together is film:

Since 2005, having already founded two nonprofit organizations focused on free speech and human-rights issues, Mr. Halvorssen has made the movie business part of his portfolio of controversy-stirring efforts. Established with a small amount of his money, his nonprofit Moving Picture Institute has raised about $1.5 million in donations to date to pay for, promote and seek distribution for documentary films.

At a time when the most successful documentaries on political or social issues all seem to be anti-corporate, anti-Bush, pro-environmentalist and left-leaning, the Moving Picture Institute has backed pro-business, anti-Communist and even anti-environmentalist ones. The latest, “Indoctrinate U,” follows the first-time filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney as he turns Michael Moore’s guerrilla interview tactics on their head to address what he sees as political correctness on campus. In one scene, Mr. Maloney strolls into the women’s studies centers on several campuses and, playing innocent, asks directions to the men’s studies center. He is met with genuine bafflement, derisive laughs or icy hostility.

To Mr. Halvorssen his new role as a fledgling movie mogul dovetails perfectly with his other activities. “Pop culture has the power to be transformational culture,” he said. “A film can reach a lot more people than a white paper. You could think of the film as a trailer for the white paper.”

He paused, then said, “Put it this way: What ‘Sideways’ did for pinot noir, I want to do for freedom.”

The Directors Guild of America has announced a new policy that acknowledges the importance of a new trend. Whereas it is customary for studios to send copies of films to the DGA's 13,400 members, this practice puts independent films at a disadvantage. The DGA is responding by banning the practice -- and so levelling the playing field for films that do not have major financial backing. That's a solid recognition of the changing face of film -- and of the important work groups such as MPI are doing to make quality niche films that bring new voices to the genre.

But there remains the difficulty of getting indie films before audiences in the first place. Though it is now a little less possible for studios to stack the deck even further in favor of those with substantial funding, screeners still can't vote for films they have never seen.

Ideally, we will move toward a digital means of distribution that allows all potential award judges to see films that are contenders for awards. By removing the cost of making and mailing DVDs, the financial barriers to evaluation and recognition would be removed.

It's always wonderful to see a little film--one that was someone's brainchild, that was a labor of love, that was made on a shoestring and produced on a prayer--succeed.

September Dawn is one such film:

Today marks the national release of "September Dawn," a film adapted from her second book, of the same name, and for which she wrote the screenplay. It was [Carole] Schutter's first effort at a screenplay, and she says the process of turning the script into a major film - "September Dawn" stars Academy Award-winner Jon Voight, and also features Lolita Davidovich, Dean Cain and Terence Stamp - was a remarkably easy process. Even raising money was a relative breeze. In an industry where screenwriters measure their piles of rejected, reworked scripts in yards and financing is routinely excruciating, Schutter's experience does border on divine intervention.

Schutter recites the statistic that just over 1 percent of screenwriters ever get a movie made. People she has come to know in the industry, she says, "have told me my story is a miracle - that somebody who has no idea how to write a screenplay gets a movie made."

The jury is out on the quality of the film -- but the best way to decide about that is to see it. September Dawn opened in theaters across the nation on Friday.

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation -- and he doesn't like what he sees when he looks at how western environmentalists are trying to prevent impoverished parts of the world from developing. The author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, Driessen has taken a long, hard look at how a once-virtuous movement has become so ideologically blinkered that it can calmly disregard the role it plays in preserving, rather than alleviating, mass human suffering and deprivation.

Not surprisingly, then, Driessen has lots of good things to say about MPI's Mine Your Own Business, which meticulously and humanely documents and confirms many of the points he has long been making:

Romania remains one of the EU’s poorest nations, and valleys that once echoed with the shouts of workers and roar of heavy equipment are now silent. Over 300,000 miners are jobless. Their villages have descended into squalor, misery and despondency that have no historic parallel.

Rosia Montana is one such place. This Transylvanian town hosts a massive open-pit mine, enormous waste dumps and, beneath them, hundreds of tunnels. The legacy of 2000 years of mining – the most damaging of which occurred under Ceaucescu – they leach toxic chemicals into local streams that now are red-orange from cadmium and contain 110 times the EU’s legal limit of zinc, 64 times its iron limit, and three times the limit for arsenic, the most dangerous chemical on the US government’s toxic substances list.

Homes and buildings are crumbling, two-thirds of them lack indoor toilets and running water, and 70% of the workers are unemployed. Families survive on wild berries, subsistence farming in rocky, acidic soil, welfare, and often less than US$2 a day. Few own a car. Frigid winters are warmed only by wood stoves. Malnutrition and ill health are constant problems. The dentist serves as the area’s only doctor.

Unlike most former mining towns, however, Rosia has one last chance. Gabriel Resources wants to reopen the mine, to tease out nearly 2,000 tons of gold and silver that the antiquated methods of bygone eras could not extract.

In the process, the Canadian company would spend millions to erase the horrific environmental legacy, restore the land to forests, pastures and grasslands, and leave the alpine waters sparkling. All at no cost to the Romanian government, which cannot afford to clean up the mess itself.

Gabriel would also create high-paying jobs, revitalize the community, protect and restore Rosia’s most valuable churches and buildings in a special historic zone, build a modern village with homes in traditional Romanian styles, save Roman and other archeological treasures in a museum – and provide precious metals for jewelry, computers and other marvels. (The company has already spent over US$200 million; its US$10-million expenditure thus far on archeology is 40 times the Romanian Culture Ministry’s annual budget between 1990 and 2003.)

Over a 29-year period, the project would create 1,200 construction jobs, more than 600 mining jobs, and 6,000 indirect jobs in service sectors. It would inject US$2.5 billion into the local and Romanian economy, and leave Rosia Montana with a modern infrastructure: roads, electricity, internet, safe running water, a new school and clinic, and dozens of new businesses that will sustain a strong economy long after the mine is gone. Of course, other ore bodies might be discovered, prolonging the area’s mining economy for decades.

The museum, clean environment, and new hotels and restaurants will attract tourists who have never before had a reason to visit this cold, polluted, inhospitable region.

No wonder the mayor strongly supports the new mine and was re-elected with over 80% of the vote. If the project moves forward, miracles will happen. If it dies, the land and water will remain polluted, because Romania cannot afford to clean it up. More young people will leave, the elderly will be abandoned, and investors will think twice about coming to Romania.

But none of this matters to the international anti-mining movement. Almost the moment the plan was announced, foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) launched a local opposition group (Alburnus Maior) and well-financed campaign to stop the project – using techniques they had refined in countless actions across North and South America, Asia and Africa.

The region is idyllic, they say – perfect for farming and tourism. The people love their quaint homes and prefer horse-drawn carts over automobiles. Gabriel would uproot families, destroy Rosia’s churches and landmarks, and pollute the pristine environment. The people don’t want these temporary jobs. They’d rather pick mushrooms and carve wood figurines.

These and other absurd lies are chronicled in the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business." Residents can hardly imagine anyone would believe them. But websites, awards from celebrities and like-minded pressure groups, and a constant flow of spurious allegations have generated opposition all over Europe. A recent PBS television pseudo-documentary (funded by Greenpeace) is carrying their anti-mining battle to US audiences.

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!"