The explosive new documentary short Cyanide Beach has been released on Youtube. The 25-minute film, which premiered in Tucson, was made by longtime investigative journalist John Dougherty. Frances Causey, Co-Director of Heist: Who Stole the American Dream was a consulting producer on the project.
Cyanide Beach connects Vancouver, BC mining executives who want to build the controversial Rosemont open pit copper mine on the outskirts of Tucson, to a defunct Italian gold mining operation in Sardinia, Italy. Many of the same executives who want to build the Rosemont mine, directly contributed to an unfolding environmental and financial disaster in Sardinia.
“Cyanide Beach” provides insight on what could happen in Southern Arizona if the proposed Rosemont Copper mine is allowed to go forward.
Rosemont Copper Company intends to dump billions of tons of mine waste laced with mercury, lead, arsenic and other poisons on more than 3,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest. American taxpayers would receive no royalties for the five billion pounds of copper that would be mined over two decades. Rosemont intends to export all of the copper to overseas markets, where it will be refined and re-imported into the U.S.
Extensive supporting documentation for the film, including a timeline of the business history of the top officers in Augusta Resource, supported by thousands of pages of corporate disclosures, is posted at Dougherty’s InvestigativeMedia.com.
Every year power plants generate 140 million tons of coal ash, enough to fill a train stretching from the North Pole to the South Pole.
It contains chemicals like arsenic, mercury and lead. It can cause cancer and developmental problems. It poisons fish and wildlife in rivers and lakes.
In some places the ash is dumped into uncovered pits. In others it sits behind leaky dams. It poisons the air. It destroys the water. And the corporate polluters responsible, they claim that cleaning up this toxic mess would hurt their profits
But in 2008, when that dam broke, something changed.
Nearly half a million people asked the EPA for stronger protections. Thousands of citizens attended public meetings. Local and national environmental and public health groups got involved. We brought the coal industry face to face with the people they were hurting. Those people are America, and America spoke with one voice.
"Clean Up Coal Ash!"
But that was then and this is now. Four years later there are still no federal protections. Right now some senators want to pass a bill that will prevent the EPA from ever regulating coal ash. They want to ignore the disaster in Tennessee and avoid deadlines to clean up this toxic waste all across America. But we can't let polluter profits triumph over public health. We have to do something to clean up this mess.
So call your senators. Send this email. And share this video with your friends right now. Together we can clean up this toxic mess. But we have to take action now.
Occupy Peeps Street
The Occupy Wall Street movement can't be stopped - not even in Peepville!
Protesters Re-Occupy Minneapolis: At least a dozen Occupy Minnesota protesters were arrested as their return to Minneapolis became heated overnight.
Much more here, including a lot of video footage and photographs.
This just in: A newly uploaded video from Occupy Minneapolis last night. This one shows Minneapolis police police attacking journalists and flipping a commercial news videographer and his camera at about 1:22 and another independent journalist arrested:
And then this video shows that videographer being actually flipped over by a police officer in slow motion:
Occupy Salt Lake activists who maintained a round-the-clock presence in Salt Lake City’s Gallivan Center this past winter on Friday packed up their tents and moved a few blocks south to Library Square, a grass-and-gravel area east of the Salt Lake City Library at 210 E. 400 South.
Since Oct. 6, the Salt Lake contingency has stood in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, a grass-roots movement decrying corporate greed and its influence on society and the political process.
'Wall Street' merger: DC's 2 Occupy groups to merge at McPherson Square: Washington's two ongoing Occupy protests plan to merge with one group moving out of Freedom Plaza and joining protesters at McPherson Square. On Friday evening, the Freedom Plaza protesters voted unanimously to approve the move.
Afghan youth in U.S. protest war: Some 150 people from Fremont and Occupy Oakland demonstrated outside a U.S. military recruiting center in Fremont on March 30 at a protest organized by Afghan youth. They were also joined by a number of San Francisco Bay Area Iraq Veterans Against the War activists. Fremont has the highest concentration of Afghans in the U.S.
And via Treehugger, the coal industry mocks Occupy Wall Street. The message?
It's time to put aside silly things like idealism, or discontentment with pollution, and get back to reality. Hard, dirty, coal-stained reality. So listen up, Americans:
The coal lobby thinks “reality” is a world dependent on their dangerous product. Coal-fired power plants kill at least 13,000 people a year by spewing over 386,000 tons of pollutants, including mercury, into the air. Coal is also the most significant driver of carbon emissions, making the industry responsible for global warming that will cause more extreme weather, droughts, famine, crop failures, mass extinction of various species, as well as flooding. Coal is hardly even a source of middle class jobs given efforts by major coal companies to bust their respective unions.
Last but not least, from Open Secrets: Let there be no doubt where Wall Street's political loyalties lie: Of all the money the securities and investment industry has poured into the 2012 presidential contest so far -- to the candidates and the super PACs behind them -- an unambiguous 92 percent has gone to the GOP, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis.
