June 11, 2007

Blogging from Romania

Gheorghe Luchian, the Romanian villager who stars in the documentary Mine Your Own Business, which exposes how environmentalist groups fight against economic progress for poor people in impoverished communites from Romania to Chile to Madagascar, now has a blog, Report from Rosia.

Also, Roy Innis, chairman of the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality, wrote an excellent op-ed for Investor's Business Daily recently regarding MYOB. Here's an excerpt:

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.