Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Interview with Anti-Mountaintop Removal Movement Leader Bo Webb on Next Steps
Bo Webb, photo courtesy of Appalachia Rising“Next Steps for the Anti-Mountaintop Removal Movement” will be a series of interviews with affected residents and activists in the central Appalachian coalfields region, including West Virginia leader Bo Webb, Kentuckian Teri Blanton, Kathy Selvage in Virginia, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson in Tennessee, and Appalachian Voices legislative aide JW Randolph in Washington, D.C. While the EPA scrambles to enforce the Clean Water Act and a Republican-controlled Congress attempts to defund strip-mining regulatory measures, and various state agencies continue to be embroiled in Big Coal machinations, millions of pounds of devastating explosives are detonated daily across mountain communities in central Appalachia. As a national movement, what should anti-mountaintop removal activists do next?
Living underneath a mountaintop removal mining operation in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia, Bo Webb has emerged as one of the most important frontline voices in the coalfield justice movement. Winner of the Purpose Prize last year, this coal miner’s son has met with and lobbied EPA and OSMRE officials and members of Congress, made personal appeals to President Obama, co-founded the Mountain Justice movement with Judy Bonds and many others, worked with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization, and organized and led numerous protests, marches and health care campaigns in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.
JB: Thanks to years of advocacy and actions by a growing movement, the EPA issued strict guidance rules on mountaintop removal operations last year, which EPA administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged would end most valley fill operations. Do you think the EPA gone as far as it possibly (and politically) can in “regulating” mountaintop removal or should the EPA still be the focused of lobbying pressure?
BW: Absolutely not. The EPA can simply enforce the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop removal (MTR) now. They have not addressed, tested, or studied the air quality issue of people beneath these MTR sites being forced to breathe toxic blasting fallout of diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, silica from blasted sandstone rock nor fungal bacteria that may be uncovered with blasting. In the interest of public health the EPA should immediately place a moratorium on all MTR operations until they can conduct a health study of the long-term effects of MTR on the people in communities beneath these sacrifice zones.
JB: Do you think mountaintop removal mining needs to be framed as only an environmental issue — and thus, attracting more support from mainstream environmental organizations in D.C. and beyond — or as a human rights and health care issue?
BW: It has all too often been framed as an environmental issue and in a sense it is, but far greater than it being an environmental issue it is a human rights issue. I spent my day yesterday in the once town of Lindytown and Twilight, WV. Any reasonable thinking person that should visit this place would conclude that they have witnessed the resulting act of ethnic cleansing...
JB: Thanks to years of advocacy and actions by a growing movement, the EPA issued strict guidance rules on mountaintop removal operations last year, which EPA administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged would end most valley fill operations. Do you think the EPA gone as far as it possibly (and politically) can in “regulating” mountaintop removal or should the EPA still be the focused of lobbying pressure?
BW: Absolutely not. The EPA can simply enforce the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop removal (MTR) now. They have not addressed, tested, or studied the air quality issue of people beneath these MTR sites being forced to breathe toxic blasting fallout of diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, silica from blasted sandstone rock nor fungal bacteria that may be uncovered with blasting. In the interest of public health the EPA should immediately place a moratorium on all MTR operations until they can conduct a health study of the long-term effects of MTR on the people in communities beneath these sacrifice zones.
JB: Do you think mountaintop removal mining needs to be framed as only an environmental issue — and thus, attracting more support from mainstream environmental organizations in D.C. and beyond — or as a human rights and health care issue?
BW: It has all too often been framed as an environmental issue and in a sense it is, but far greater than it being an environmental issue it is a human rights issue. I spent my day yesterday in the once town of Lindytown and Twilight, WV. Any reasonable thinking person that should visit this place would conclude that they have witnessed the resulting act of ethnic cleansing...
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Jeff Biggers @'AlterNet'
Australia is 'at war' with hackers
Responding to the cyber attack on Prime Minister Julia Gillard's email system, information technology dean of research Dr Jill Slay said the nation had lost one battle with the hacking of these systems but must prepare for a longer conflict with hackers.
In May last year The Advertiser revealed Dr Slay had warned the Federal Government that politicians' use of social networking was compromising the security of government computer systems.
Dr Slay said Australian governments must understand that they are vulnerable to the world's most effective hackers.
"Think of what they have done to Google, the White House and governments in South-East Asia. A determined hacker, if they are determined to get in, they will get in there," she said.
"It is a war and we will win some and not win some, and it looks like in the current case we have lost that battle.
"All politicians need to be extremely careful, especially with social networking."
Hackers trawl social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook seeking people who have revealed too much personal information, with politicians a favourite target because their systems are also linked to Departmental systems with valuable public service information.
Dr Slay said UniSA was leading a bid with Edith Cowan University and the Queensland Institute of Technology for a Commonwealth Research Centre to better coordinate research against hacking.
Of most concern to hacker-fighters such as Dr Slay and UniSA senior lecturer in information technology, Dr Raymond Choo, is the explosion of new technology and its vulnerability, which has created what Dr Choo calls "low hanging fruit" for even inexperienced criminals.
Apple's i-devices were last year the subject of hacking via a security hole in software that allowed hackers to gain access to data by putting a file with hidden code on to a website to attract visitors. At least one South Australian Cabinet minister has converted his entire paperwork associated with the cabinet process to his iPad...
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Miles Kemp @'Adelaide Now'
Maine governor removes pro-union mural
The controversy over the 36-foot-long, 11-panel mural erupted last week when a LePage administration official announced that the artwork would be removed and that conference rooms dedicated to American labor movement icons would be renamed.
Administration officials said the change was needed to reflect a new image for the department, one not tilted toward organized labor. They said visitors to the lobby had complained that the mural is anti-business.
Maine AFL-CIO president Don Berry called it "a spiteful, mean-spirited move by the governor that does nothing to create jobs or improve the Maine economy."
Last week, acting Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Boyett announced a contest to replace the names affixed to the conference rooms. The names to be replaced include Cesar Chavez and Frances Perkins.
Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association. Perkins, the first woman to hold a Cabinet-level position in the United States, served as labor secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Bennett has said the Maine Arts Commission is helping find a new site for the mural.
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