find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports. here in moscow all the top stories this hour rebels claim they have made advances in eastern libya meanwhile a barrier for gas strikes continues but claims hundreds of thousands are fleeing the conflict stricken country. and russia stop general says the coalition's al strikes will leave it have brought no results it's likely that ground troops will soon be on their way that russia's envoy to nation meanwhile believes that lions could find itself involved in another major war such as those seen in afghanistan

and iraq. and a quarter of a million have marched in london against the british government huge ativan and pounds public spending cuts that was serious violence from a breakaway group to the peaceful demonstration the launch just in the country since a massive rally against the iraq invasion eight years ago. now next we'll tell you one of the greatest environmental and human rights catastrophes in american history stay with award winning documentary mountaintop removal right next to our team. leg bar leg leg

lifts places kidney. sled slowly i am led to a leg. or long. leg long leg. length leg

. most of the carbon that we buy from across the the earth is millions of years old coal particularly interesting because per unit of energy generated coal actually it may be the cheapest fuel but it also releases the most carbon to be with her as carbon dioxide beginning in earnest with the development of the steam engine in the late seventeen early eighteen hundreds he wins begin to and extract fossil carbon from the earth's crust coal oil gas even in the absence of humans over some time period it would be uplifted and subject to erosion and removal would return to the it was fear but those rates are tiny compared to the ability of humans to go out with large machines to deliver a large quantities of this material to the surface of the earth where it is burned

to be useful generation a better g we have larger quitman that was introduced on surface mines about twenty five years ago here in washington which accounted for the the ability to recover coal seams that heretofore been unmanageable. dragline skylab the mining scene step work and economic demand and even physically impossible. without the use of that. many people twenty five years ago when the first company said to them buying a bright land they were laughed at and they said there's no way in the world you get a piece would put men like in on the narrow ridges of southern appalachia and and they were determined through engineering abilities and persistence to make certain that it worked and and it hands.

the man was pleasant. things to. listen. to the will be. released. soon. the easy way. to sleep easy. and. sleep lose. weight think these little children i'm sorry little children will be protected this

night from treatment guardian and family can grant great. event to do and the people are going to come down on the river have. their name and i guess be able to find it for me to come and from either free or in cars from the campaign to there are a number of years to forsake their dad and our children to destroy your reaction lord yes it's such. a sick mind. we're going to take your partner any. sleep. cause. sleep. it's. never played out my family's i guess. you need to keep her back for jamie's community math if dismantling the community.

once these lessons are gone there is no more of a life. there is no more west virginia it don't grow back it's not going come back i mean you know we had a politician get up on tavi not long ago he said well the reason that jan saying it's the unix thing because the deer are in. order bought this thousand acre. site that's not the garage sale process mountaintop removal coal mine is an awesome display of coal extraction engineering it is also quite simple once the site is a den of clear cutting begins next explosives are used to blast away the earth material polson. then machinery completing massive shovels called dragon lines remove the overburden which is then deposited in adjacent valleys called bally fills mountaintop removal coal mining can bring down the elevation of

a peak hundreds of feet sites are often thousands of acres in size but i would say these are related actually rather than blacksburg and really. in the spring of two thousand and five a group of activists college students and local citizen conservation groups joined together to oppose the widespread increase in mountaintop removal mines throughout southern appalachian training the group called their campaign mountain justice summer there was going to be kind of this renewal of coal mining in tennessee and some of those mines were going to be you know mountaintop removal mines. you know we were like hey this is you know now we're dealing with this issue too it's not just an issue in kentucky and west virginia like hey let's put something together and kind of up the level of opposition to this issue and let's help make this issue a national issue that everybody has to dealing with. the same what they're doing

one. since some why is there a divide in our community. i've got nothing against free speech but when you come in here demanding people's jobs and clothes or schools they own and i and all that you're lucky you don't get hurt. if somebody is in california or north carolina or new york city they're connected to mountaintop removal because they're turning on the lights. their opening strategy was to draw attention to a school situated close to a mountaintop removal site in marsh fork west virginia. the mine is owned by massey energy america's fourth largest coal producer marsh fork elementary is a very very scary situation they have two point eight billion gallons of co slurry which is why it's toxic it's toxic material it has arsenic. chromium

there's a lot of really really bad chemicals in this sludge there is a lake of two point eight billion gallons of coast laurie sitting behind this elementary school four hundred yards up on top of a mile. there's two hundred twenty eight kids in the school. the sophistication of engineering that goes into the construction and is i suspect not duplicated in any other physical structure anywhere in in the world in one thousand nine hundred two buffalo creek there was this disaster where one of these impoundments basically blew out millions of gallons of this nasty sludge and water went barreling down a small holler and killed one hundred twenty five people destroyed like four thousand houses a thousand cars you know hundreds of people were injured. besides the danger of flooding while you know the residents are concerned about the health

effects posed to school children from the cold processing facility located directly behind marsh fork elementary so it sits three hundred feet away three hundred fifty feet away to the neighbor sits directly caused the river and you've got serious problems over you got the magnetite you got the walk you got the ammonia they use the bad. they use diesel fuel in there they mix all this stuff together we've got. all the time. you've got. problems occurring more and more down or i mean there's. clamor for you a lot of kids. in a lot of people like look all the time just drain and all the time the kids are coming home with blisters and their mild little tiny blisters the size of opinionated all when they're mild. but not everyone shares their concerns in the small community where many residents work for the coal industry that surrounds them

if i wasn't careful enough i was scared i would not let her go there and she will be in first grade she was in kindergarten last year played on the playground three times a day and more like college close and like i say never came home. or you know any sickness and i've manacle records to prove that she has not had anything other than a common cold up like any other child. we've. been . frustrated local school board and government officials you know action on improving safety at marsh work elementary while granddaughter kayla attends marsport elementary launches the pennies a promise campaign to raise six million dollars to build a new school and so with us here. it is that. it's inside they're going to take your money. no money to build. what you

want to build against. because i don't like. to start the pennies or promise campaign wiley and his granddaughter kayla presented governor with over four hundred dollars in pennies he couldn't order snow collector. we'd like to see the governor we have some money to persuade him. to. step down kids everywhere regular doing good to see if we have a young lady here from marsh fork elementary in. the south and. let's. say i go to school even though you start. at the schools some of them are you going to the senate. and. it's.

ok to have a little get what you have for you but this is our campaign ok. now we're let me just you know so far as i know we worked on this some we talked about at the forefront but the school yes or the school were we out with the local board of education let's just start all over sure it's back up a whole lot we're not going get them you took us for north to protect the waveland what's we're going to use it women has to go and tell you to ok and what we're not going to do what we've been doing you put a price on our children see it. in our state you put a price this is not an environmental issue this is a little human vein i have tried for two years to work with you on this and i've been ignored and i don't mean to put you in a soft spot here but enough is enough enough it's enough we need to get this took care of your business what these coal companies it is your business your politics

this is not about politics we're asking people for money all of this country today is our official announcement of it so it's just it's just in the stages we're going to raise five to ten million dollars it's going to happen we want you to be a part of this we want you to support our efforts we want to help you do a better job and i appreciate i don't mean to be upset and progressive but if this was your child would you not be well you know that enough for you know and she's beautiful and so what we should we care about our child. down there in there sure is probably just a lot of issues and i know you're aware there's intimidation going on there a lot of intimidation a teacher the spoke out last year now he's been told he better start with you want to you going to do everything in my heart that i want to do that that means that i do everything in my god god's will that we got to. turn this jeff goodell's book big coal the dirty secret behind america's energy future explores the history and use of coal in america and throughout the world like many americans i didn't even

realize that we still burn coal you know i thought coal was something that went out with top hats and corsets i thought that electricity was just something that flowed down from a golden bowl in the sky i never gave any thought to where it came from the idea that coal produces fifty percent of electricity in america it never occurred to me so i went down to west virginia and i didn't know what to expect their memory i first knew i was driving outside of charleston and i saw the boom on one of the big drag lines swinging above the hills and i pulled off the road and i hiked up through the woods to the top of this hill and i got this view down into this strip mine and it was just like hell had opened up before me. the money and the coal mining has always gone to the top and been siphoned out by the the owners essentially whether their corporations are called barons like don blankenship it's a commodity business every penny they have to spend for safety for wages for health

care or anything like that is money that they see coming directly out of their pocket and you know the history of coal mining it's very clear on this there's no it's not a subtle thing you know this is an industry that views workers as disposable and views the landscape as disposable and it's all about getting the coal out of the ground as quickly these are. all the tools there is not in love just go with you bottom yourself. and if you start now to madness you had to have those two they didn't let you get a loan created it company still. for about three presses put it this way lloyd your coke head company stores they hard g you lived near kochi if you work for them they

did more kitchen some i also store. and one of the others all matters bad they still owed to company store you could pitch it won't pay a mo. he made company money scrip and overpriced it wasn't good it was a company store i got an updated script it's worth more today than it was made. all right. usually healthy though you could make more two dolls day right here sell the kit trick or two so use middle today going to. give you a hand polies stamp you number of what you got your car loaded with coal somewhere on this car you would i want to check. and be a mule driver lead times i'd be a go on board back to stay in school he would pull a empty car and here drop it off unhook piecemeal from it come to the phone. right now it real easy loud rock him if you cold who show your life you got

a water tank in a slog. of a little water drip in your career bad writer. and the spirit is good but it works pretty good. problem on all sides. oh you know look at the history of our youth basically they with big communities now today with scant rings big companies still worth everything to pay for this company housed all down that river. or. our schools are good because there is no learning all the stores were or close and nothing's coming back these are people with this coal company in their tie you can take an entire week and never put it it's all going to go early west virginia broke the big go on the road with.

five years. top removal site moved into the head waters of the stream that runs by my home in the past five years i've been flooded seven times there's been about five acres my property it's washed away into the stream down below where i live. my property has been completely devastated devalued there's no way i could say one relocate my property it's worth at the mine company had the option of getting in touch with me and letting me know what was coming at me and they did it and they trapped me in my kid's mouth of a flooding hollow and basically trashed our lives now when someone does that to you you don't go along with it you have no choice but to go against i go home to it

i live in the middle of this why. because it's ok it's ok that may be only from southern west virginia who is in middle of this tale so am i ask my son. roan. i don't know nobody knows than i don't these million jobs i don't own jobs and if i thank god i don't know their day and wrong across appalachians coal fields mining jobs or by the local economies my husband us forthwith must say for just eight or nine years they all just we really appreciate massive that's where we get our money that you know our way of living but traditional deep mining requires more workers than mountaintop removal since nine hundred fifty the total number of mining jobs has steadily decreased from approximately one hundred twenty thousand to less than

twenty thousand today over the same period coal production has steadily increased many coalfield residents are also concerned about another byproduct of coal production slurry pons. the slurry impalements the way that we dispose of the refuse that comes from the cleaning of coal which is literally nothing but dirt and rock i mean that's what you're separating from the coal so that's what you're disposing of it's not toxic it's not you know as people many people would like you to believe that there's something only it's the indigenous dirt and rock that is caught up in the coal seam and that natural material includes mercury lead arsenic and a whole suite of heavy metals which as long as they're in that rock you can drink the water because they'll be underground they will be they will not be exposed to oxygen that if you don't disturb them they will not be brought into solution and

you can literally some of the best water we have in west virginia comes out of a coal seam but when you disturb that rock and start grinding it up in a fine particles adding a whole bunch of chemical additives to it to get it to separate the coal from the other inorganic materials then you come up with this which is brew material that you would want any exposure to it all we know almost nothing about it i've got a database now has fourteen samples worldwide of coal slurry that are in the public domain six of these are from the post martin county you know the the the biggest environmental disaster in the southeastern united states six samples representing what that material that entered our rivers and streams really is which i find rather prosperous three hundred nine million gallons of taking over fifty miles of a major river system a spill bigger than the exxon valdez we took six samples the occurrence that happened in kentucky. was simply one where you had one built over old.

underground ones and they gave way in the bottom and that's what happened the structure itself to. go county west virginia within sight of massey energy c.e.o. don blankenship home carmelita brown has been battling for clean want to see. twenty some years ago. and water turned black and black straight and asked are the harness green men enough has been got up and asked and asked me what was wrong take a man and he said when he looked at it he said my god he said that's close laurie. we went and looked at fifteen wells. said the samples off to the laboratory got the testing results back and did some analysis on those results and it was pretty compelling that we needed to do more research down there i've never seen water quality that poor. are pretty good compared to what it was this morning these

documents from the west virginia department of natural resources researched by mountain just to summer volunteers are permits for coal slurry injections that took place in the early one nine hundred eighty s. at the slurry impoundment located approximately two miles above carmelita brown's home this permit shows that over two hundred eight million gallons of slurry was injected in one thousand nine hundred eighty four and nine hundred eighty five disbursement describes three injections in one thousand nine hundred four into an abandoned underground mind at the rate of six hundred gallons per minute the basis for. injecting. coal slurry and other things other wastes underground as an e.p.a. one thousand nine hundred eighty sed study called underground injection control all that's the oxymoron of the century underground injection control and what control do we have when we inject something underground i have no idea where it goes these

forward if i if i actually aired it was to pull out tomorrow for some reason went bankrupt or whatever all the story pods you know who is responsible for the county we got the paperwork we know the calories are responsible for the clean up of the story. nobody wanted to help us nobody want nobody was concerned and it wasn't only made it was oh my mayors that down this road well the patients i see for all have significant medical problems other people don't have. a greater number of people with all timers disease than old timers disease memory loss i've seen a great number of people who have numbness and tingling of their arms and legs which indicates a heavy metal. accumulation of seemed a fair amount of just ill health mannix they were members on a kidney dialysis another neighbor a man as is has lost

a kidney had it had to have a kidney transplant i have problems with my kidneys the timea water exposes them to many types of metals cadmium among others because canadian which now several people are not necessary has lost babies they carried him six months and have maybe stillborn.

line. would be soo much brighter if you knew about sums from funds to impressions so. please for instance on t.v. dot com. wealthy british style sun. spot on this. card. is.