Climate change and the Canadian City destroyed by wildfires

Watching the shocking images and footages of the terrible destruction and human suffering caused by the wildfires that have destroyed the City of Fort McMurray in Alberta Canada, I am reminded of Wendell Berry's poem The World Bought and Sold.

I dream by night the horror
That I oppose by day.
The nation in its error
And by its work and play

Destroys its land, pollutes
Its streams, and desecrates
Air and light. From the roots
It dies upwards, our rights

Divinely given, plundered
And sold by purchased power
That dies from the head downward
Marketed hour by hour

That market is a grave

Where goods lie dead that ought

To live and grow and thrive,

The dear world sold and bought

To be destroyed by fire,
Forest and soil and stone.
The conscience put to hire
Rules over flesh and bone

To take the coal to burn
They overturn the world
And all the world has worn
Of grace, of heath. The gnarled

Clenched and forever shut
First of their greed makes small
The great life. Hollowed out,
The soul like the green hill

Yields to the force of dearth. 

The crack in the despot's skull
Descends into the earth,
And what was bright turns dull
Wendell Berry (from Leavings)

Fort McMurray is at the heart of one of the world's largest climate destroying industries- the Alberta Tar Sands industry. It is a city and region reliant on fossil fuel extraction. The region has the world's third-largest reserves of oil. As much as a quarter of the country's oil production has been halted by the fire, raising concerns about the effect on the Canadian economy.

The New York times reports:

"....the blaze has consumed whole swaths of Fort McMurray, ranking it as one of the most devastating fires in Canada’s history. The fast-moving flames turned many of the city’s homes — and the baby photos and wedding albums and other treasures that could not be packed in time — into little more than charcoal."

20,000 homes have been destroyed and the entire population of 88,000 people was forced to evacuate through a post apocalyptic landscape, in what is the largest wildfire evacuation in the history of Alberta.

The fire is still spreading and threatens to break out into neighboring provinces of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories.

The shocking irony for the suffering people of Fort McMurray, whose city has been destroyed by wildfires and quasi apocalyptic conditions, is that the fires are the result of unseasonably hot weather conditions resulting from rising temperatures caused by climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

Writing in Climate Central, Brian Kahn provides a sober context for the Fort McMurray wildfires:

"What’s happening in Fort McMurray is a perfect encapsulation of the wicked ways that climate change is impacting wildfire season. A drier than normal winter left a paltry spring snowpack, which was quickly eaten away by warm temperatures. That left plenty of fuel on the ground for wildfires to consume."

Scientific America reports that the Fort McMurray wildfire is indicative of a warming planet and is the latest in a lengthening lineage of wildfires in the northern reaches of the globe. 

It quotes Mike Flanagan, a wildlife researcher at the University of Alberta:

"This fire is consistent with what we expect from human caused climate change affecting our fire regime".

Writing in New Yorker magazine, Elizaberth Colbert writes that raising environmental concerns in the midst of human tragedy is to risk the charge of insensitivity. However, she argues that failing to acknowledge the connection is to risk another kind of offense. She writes:

Though it’s tough to pin any particular disaster on climate change, in the case of Fort McMurray the link is pretty compelling. In Canada, and also in the United States and much of the rest of the world, higher temperatures have been extending the wildfire season. Last year, wildfires consumed ten million acres in the U.S., which was the largest area of any year on record. All of the top five years occurred in the past decade.

In Slate magazine, Eric Holthaus links the fires directly to climate change and analyses why people are so hostile and unwilling to accept science that links wildfires to climate change. He writes:

"The sensitivity here, I think, lies in Canada’s unique blend of politics as both an oil producer and a nation on the front lines of climate change. Over the past decade or so, Canada has become a major oil producing state (thanks mostly to Alberta) and the recent rise and fall of oil prices has created a kind of petrostate politics. Indeed, as oil prices have fallen, Alberta’s government has become increasingly cash-strapped, even to the point of cutting funding for wildfire prevention, as Reuters revealed on Thursday. The juxtaposition of that political environment with this specific disaster in the heart of Canadian oil country led to a clamp down on discussion. Right now, Trudeau is trying to have it both ways. Eventually, he’ll have to choose. Albertans know this and are justifiably worried about how future climate policies will affect their lives. 

Beyond all of the political reasons why climate change has become such a charged topic, the social science hints at why truly accepting the threat of climate change is so difficult for so many people: Doing so means accepting that our current way of life, our means of survival, even, are potentially untenable. Accepting climate science can mean accepting that our means of supporting ourselves are impossible. In other words, accepting climate science can threaten our very identities. It is understandable that people would react with fear, anger, and, yes, even vitriol. That does not mean, however, that climate change is not happening, and we should not take it seriously. It simply means the path forward will often require intense personal sacrifice. That is no small thing."

Drew Brown writes about what he calls the 'black irony' of the Fort McMurray wildfires:

"Hardcore environmentalists will no doubt spend a lot of time stressing the black irony of having the Mecca of the Canadian oil industry go up in flames to a climate change-induced wildfire. But those concerns will fall on deaf ears until the immediate human tragedy at play here in northern Alberta has subsided."

The other 'black' irony is that the burning of Fort McMurray coincides with a political offensive by those who support fossil fuel extraction and burning to expand the tar sands pipelines across Alberta. The governments of Alberta and neighboring British Columbia are also planning major expansions in fossil fuel production.

Corporate executive found guilty faces a jail sentence

"Don Blankenship's conviction doesn't feel like victory but in the grand scope of more than a century of the coal industry's abuse of the people of Appalachia, it may mark a starting place....My heart aches for all those who suffered and died under Blankenship's avaricious lash. The jury showed him more mercy than he has ever shown anyone in his entire existence on this planet. Even if he serves his one year slap-on-the-wrist, we know already that justice will not be done His legacy of poisoning Appalachia will persist long after his name has been forgotten."
Bob Kincaid, president of the Coal River Mountain Watch

Recently, I wrote a blog piece Holding corporate executives criminally responsible for the deaths and harms they cause crimes about the trial of Don Blankenship, the coal baron and CEO of  Massey Energy who was on trial for criminal charges over a coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners at the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine in 2010. 

The Upper Big Branch explosion was the worst US mining disaster in nearly fifty years. Blankenship was on trial for violating numerous safety regulations and conspiring to hide violations which ultimately led to the underground mine explosion and the disaster.

Blankenship was a poster boy for 'crony malevolent capitalism' and ran Massey Energy as a lawless enterprise protected by the politicians, public official and lawyers he paid off.

Well, Blankenship has been found guilty by a jury of conspiracy to violate US safety laws. He was cleared of the lesser charges of lying to the Federal Government.

Sadly, he only faces only 1 year in jail, but activists and law enforcement officials praised the decision. U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin called the verdict "a landmark day for the safety of coal workers."
 

Journalist and historian Jeff Biggers wrote that Blankenship's conviction was a "historic first step in holding mining outlaws accountable for their reckless operations." Biggers continued;

 

"For the first time in memory for those of us with friends, family, miners and loved ones living amid the toxic fallout of the coal industry, this conviction may only serve as a tiny reckoning of our nation's complacency with a continual state of violations, but it could begin a new era of justice and reconciliation in the devastated coal mining communities in Appalachia and around the nation."

The Corporate Crime Reporter quotes University of Maryland Law Professor Rena Steinzor, the author of Why Not Jail?: Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction, who has argued for more aggressive prosecution of corporate executives:

“This conspiracy was the primary cause of an enormous explosion that killed 29 men in the worst mine disaster in 40 years. Although the jury was not presented with the question whether Blankenship was directly responsible for the explosion, it did decide that he played Russian roulette with his miners’ lives.  By underfunding efforts to comply, harassing employees to ignore safety rules so they could “dig coal” faster, and threatening managers with dismissal if they worked to solve ventilation and other problems at the mine, Blankenship made an already hazardous workplace into a horror show that made men fear for their lives every time they journeyed thousands of feet underground.”
 

The Corporate Crime Reporter quotes Rob Weissman from Public Citizen:

“Today’s guilty verdict should send the message to coal company executives that society will no longer tolerate this trade of miners’ lives for coal and profit. Indeed, it should send a message to CEOs across the country: No more recklessly endangering workers’ lives, and you will be held criminally liable if your actions – and inaction – cost lives.”

Articles about the decision are here and here.

Holding mining executives criminally responsible for the deaths and harms they cause

The BHP Billion mining disaster in Brazil raises fundamental questions about the criminal responsibility and liability of mining corporations for the deaths and harms they cause. 

This issue is at the heart of a historic trial currently taking place in a Federal Courthouse in Charleston Virginia in the USA.

Donald Blankenship, the former Chairman and CEO of Massey Energy is the first mining baron ever to face criminal charges in the United States over a coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners. 

Blankenship is currently on trial for violating numerous safety regulations and conspiring to hide violations which ultimately led to an underground mine explosion that killed 29 miners at the Massey Energy run Upper Branch coal mine in West Virginia in 2010. (A  blog piece I wrote about the Upper Branch disaster is here). 

The Upper Branch explosion was the worst US mining disaster in nearly fifty years.

If convicted, Blankenship faces up to 31 years in jail on three counts, including conspiracy to violate mine safety standards and hide hazards from Federal Inspectors, lying to securities regulators and misleading investors about safety practices in an effort to maintain Massey's stick and his fortune.

Four Massey Energy employees have already been convicted in connection with the explosion. One, a former Massey senior executive, currently serving a 42 month prison term, testified to the court that he approved safety shortcuts under pressure to produce more coal.

That Blankenship is facing trail is a surprise. He was one of the most powerful figures in West Virginia where his family owned company Massey Energy ran more than 150 mines with a revenue of $2.6 billion. Blankenship was considered untouchable having bought off politicians and judges and using his wealth and power to exercise influence and expand his coal empire. He pumped millions into West Virginia's political system to promote an anti-regulatory pro-business conservative agenda and buy favors from state lawmakers, politicians and officials.

Massey Energy had a long "criminal" record of safety and environmental violations at the mine the explosions occurred, as well at its other mining operations. In March 2010 the Upper Big Branch mine was cited for 53 safety violations, and in 2009 the number of citations against the mine doubled and penalties imposed tripled (to $897,325). The mine was the site of other fatalities. Corp Watch cites comments from subcontractors at the mine who said that the mine had been unsafe for years. The company pushed the mine for more coal production- and more profit- at any cost 

In 2008 a Massey subsidiary paid the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry after pleading guilty to safety violations that contributed to the deaths of 2 miners. The company was continually fined for violations of safety and environmental laws. 

The case of Massey Energy (and many other corporations) and the record of BHP Billiton, highlights the need to introduce what Richard Grossman and others call the corporate death penalty- the ability to revoke the charter to operate of corporations that continually and knowingly break the law. In essence this means losing the state's permission to exist as a corporation, thereby putting the corporation out of existence. 

If corporations want to claim the rights of ordinary citizens, to free speech for example, then it is time they and the executives who run those corporations also face criminal penalties for crimes committed against people and the environment.

A long article in Mother Jones about Blankenship and Massey Energy's downfall and the power he exercised in West Virginia is here. Reports on the trial by the New York Times are here and here.

The Marikana effect and struggles for economic, racial and social justice in South Africa

 

"Will millions of disgruntled South Africans one day generate a political force capable of breaking what are now disastrous sweetheart relations between state, ruling party, labour aristocrats, parasitical local and multinational corporate mining houses?"

Patrick Bond

 

Widespread student protests across South Africa campuses and public spaces have forced the Zuma led ANC Government into a back down on plans to raise university tuition fees by 11%.

For months students have protested against the Government's plans (as well as other issues).

 

While the immediate trigger was the fees hike, the causes of the protest go much deeper and reflect growing politicisation of students and campuses in response to widespread frustration and anger over the circumstances facing young people in South Africa, including high unemployment, a weakening economy, poverty, racial inequality, the failure of the post-apartheid ANC Government to improve the economic circumstances of many black young people and political corruption.

The protests bought together students from across the racial and economic divide, uniting black and white students from townships, rural areas, poorer urban areas, comfortable middle class suburbs and wealthy areas.

The student protests are not isolated incidents, but part of an ongoing wave of protest activity across South Africa since 2004, which has intensified since the 2012 Marikana massacre.
 

 The 2012 Marikana Massacre was the worst act of post-apartheid state-police violence since the advent of democracy in South Africa.

On August 16 2012, members of the South African Police Force opened fire on a crowd of striking mine workers outside the Marikana Platinum mine in Rustenberg South Africa. The police attack left 34 miners dead, 78 wounded and more than 259 people arrested.

The mine was run by Lommin, a London based miner, who is the world’s third largest platinum miner (80% of the world’s platinum is in South Africa).

As Nick Davies writes in the Guardian:

 

For South Africa, it was a special kind of nightmare, since it revived images of massacres by the state in the old apartheid era, with one brutal difference – this time it was predominantly black policemen, with black senior officers working for black politicians, who were doing the shooting. 

Patrick Bond  contends that the Marikana massacre was a premeditated massacre:

When a ruling party in any African country sinks to the depths of allowing its police force to serve white-dominated multinational capital by killing dozens of black workers so as to end a brief strike, it represents a profound turn. Beyond just the obvious human-rights and labor-relations travesties, Marikana revealed the extreme depths of ruling-class desperation represented by the fusion of Ramaphosa’s black capitalism, the London mining house Lonmin’s collaboration (via Ramaphosa) with the mining and police ministers, the alleged “sweetheart unionism” of the increasingly unpopular NUM, the brutality of state prosecutors who charged 270 massacre survivors with the crime of murder.

Nick Davies's detailed outline of events leading up to the massacre, which highlights the role of union leader Mgcineni Noki, who died in the massacre while  trying to broker a peaceful solution, is here.

Unrest at the Marikana mine began on 10 August 2012 when mineworkers went on strike for improved wages and conditions after Lommin refused to pay workers a living wage and address unbearable employment and living conditions.

The build-up to the massacre was marked by rising tensions between rival unions. Miners, two police officers and two security guards were among 10 people killed as violence escalated.

The day before the massacre, one of the corporation’s main shareholders and a Board member of the corporation, who is  the Deputy President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, emailed the Police Minister to demand that Police take action

In his email to the Police Minister Ramaphosa wrote:

“The terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labor dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterized as such. There needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.” 

The UK Guardian described the role played by Ramaphosa thus:

Ramaphosa, a board member of Lonmin platinum mine where thousands were protesting in August 2012 – made phone calls that allegedly escalated the confrontation; sent emails reportedly calling for action to be taken against “these criminals”, whose crime was to seek a wage increase; and held secret meetings to get the government and police to “act in a more pointed way” to quell the unrest.

 

Police were ready and willing to act after clashes with the miners over previous days had resulted in the deaths of 10 people, including miners, mine security and Police.

 

The next day, police opened fire with automatic weapons into the crowd a few metres away. 

The Commission of Inquiry into the massacre set up by the South African Government released its official findings in March 2015 and whilst implicating Police in the massacre, it failed to hold anyone responsible, and the ANC Government action has taken no against Police and others responsible.

 

Police authorities acknowledged at the Inquiry that they were at fault, with police action disproportionate to the dangers they faced.

 

Patrick Bond,  Director of the Centre for Civil Society at University of KwaZulu-Natal writes:

 

Led by former senior judge Ian Farlam, the Commission learned that members of the South African Police Service planted evidence (putting weapons on the bodies of corpses to pretend the killing was in self-defense), hid crucial video records, laughed heartily at the scene, and indeed had earlier planned much of the massacre

Families of those killed and victims are outraged that not one person has been held to account and continue to call for accountability. 275 miners have recently launched a civil claim against the ANC Government and families of the slain mine workers have filed a claim against the Police Minister.

Patrick Bond suggests that the massacre and the subsequent inquiry acted as catalyst for a wave of citizen-driven protest activity and dissent across South Africa, opening up a large crack in the façade of the ruling ANC- corporate- state hegemony.

 

Bond notes that protests and organised acts of resistance have continued to grow since the Marikana massacre, with over 2000 protests taking place in the last year. 

The Center for Civil Society at KwalaZulu Natal University, of which Patrick Bond is the Director, maintains a Social Protest Observatory to document the extent and type of protest activity occurring across South Africa.

 

These protests reflect new alliances formed in the wake of the Marikana massacre and include groups and communities rendered more precarious by the neoliberal restructuring of South Africa.
 

This protest activity involves impoverished rural township and urban communities, the unemployed and precariously employed, schools students and organised labour and is directed at many issues including the injustice of poverty (bread and food  riots); persistent inequality; unbearable wage, employment and  living conditions; privatisation; crime; mismanagement of mineral wealth; prevailing power relations and the corruption of politicians, institutions, corporations and municipalities.

 

Despite the wave of protest activity across South Africa, Patrick Bond argues that the many protest and oppositional groups in civil society have not yet cohered into a powerful movement or voice for economic, racial and social justice.

Bond suggests  that the progressive and radical left has not yet capitalised on post-Marikana cracks in the ruling political corporate state hegemony, even as disaffection  and protest continues unabated.

 

One question about the recent student protests is whether the student movement, which won an important victory in relation to university fees, can develop beyond its current moment and coalesce with the other protest movements across South Africa to form a powerful social movement for economic and racial justice.

Another question is what the political, institutional and police responses will be to this wave of protest activity. This time the Government has backed down. But reactions have so far been uneven, even ambiguous- sometimes relying on police violence and brutality against protestors, others times relying on compromise and co-option.

Who are the teachers and educators who inspired us?

This photo from 1953 shows four-year-old Ross Munro and his neighbour Phillip Noble playing in an asbestos sandpit in a residential backyard in Wittenoom in WA's northwest. Residents purchased the deadly tailings which were commonly used as sandpits in backyards for the purposes of children's play and also to reduce dust around houses.

When I read Chris Hedges latest piece about inspiring teachers and educators I thought of Ross Munro.

Chris Hedges, the American journalist, writer, war correspondent and political activist and campaigner has written a moving eulogy to one of his educational mentors and inspirations- the Reverend Coleman Brown who taught Hedges at Colgate University. Hedges writes that Coleman:

had the most profound impact of all my teachers on my education. I took seven courses as an undergraduate in religion. He taught six of them. But his teaching extended far beyond the classroom. The classroom was where he lit the spark.

Hedges describes how Coleman Brown used poetry to highlight the powerful sacred forces that writers and poets struggle to express:

"Coleman would read poems and cherished prose passages out loud as I met with him in his office. It was about the musicality of language. His sonorous voice rose and dipped with intonations and emphasis. To this day I still hear his recitation in pieces of writing and poems......... Poetry, he taught me, is alive. It must be felt. It has a hypnotic power that, as Shakespeare understood, is a kind of witchcraft. And poetry, along with all other writing, is just a spent, dead force if you do not surrender to its spell."

In thinking about the influence of his educational mentor, Hedges has written a beautiful summation of the significance and value of education:

"Education is not only about knowledge. It is about inspiration. It is about passion. It is about the belief that what we do in life matters. It is about moral choice. It is about taking nothing for granted. It is about challenging assumptions and suppositions. It is about truth and justice. It is about learning how to think. It is about, as James Baldwin wrote, the ability to drive “to the heart of every matter and expose the question the answer hides.” And, as Baldwin further noted, it is about making the world “a more human dwelling place.”

Many of us have had or known teachers and educators who paved the way for such inspiration and passion, either in ourselves or in others.

At both secondary school and university I had teachers- sadly too few- who managed to create and light a spark like that which Hedges describes. One was  John Croft, a secondary school teacher of history who bought to life the study of history and triggered my lifelong passion for the power and relevance of historical understanding and analysis as the basis for social thinking and action.

As  a young secondary school teacher I worked with an English teacher named Ross Munro, who brought alive the power of the written and spoken (and sung)  word to his students. Each day outside his classroom would be a quote, extract or lyrics from a text- a book, a play, a song, a poem- which was designed to engage, to provoke, to encourage thinking. 

Ross was  a man much loved by his students. Even now, some of those students still speak about his influence and legacy.  

Ross died young, aged just 38, a victim of the horrors and indiscriminate cruelty of asbestos and the neglect of mining corporations and government agencies. Ross was a victim of perhaps the greatest industrial and corporate crime in Australian history.

Ross was one of the 'Wittenoom kids' who spent their childhoods exposed to asbestos in the town of Wittenoom  in north-west of Western Australia who have gone on to develop a range of cancers and are dying at a rate well above the average population of mesothelioma.

Ross became the first non-mine worker to win a mesothelioma claim against CSR in January 1989, just before his death. His appalling treatment is documented in Ben Hills book Blue Murder.

More on Ross and events and the human cost of asbestos are  here and here

(1) Mining of the deadly blue asbestos at Wittenoom, 1106km north of Perth, commenced in the 1940's and ceased in 1966 and the town was later closed after airborne fibres in dust from mining operations were found to cause malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis and other serious diseases

Esperance WA: Sacrifice zone for the profits of the uranium industry?

A mining industry media outlet has reported that the uranium industry in WA is keen to establish Esperance on WA's southern coast, as a port export hub for radioactive uranium material mined in Western Australia.

 

The Canadian uranium miner Cameco, whose Yeeleerie uranium project is billed as the largest in WA, is located near Wiluna in WA's Northern Goldfields,  however, Wiluna is considerable distance from Port Adelaide and Darwin, the only two ports in Australia approved for shipping uranium. Esperance is the port closest to Wiluna.

 

The other uranium miner active in WA is Toro Energy who plan to ship product from its Wiluna mine through Port Adelaide, a 2700km journey by truck.

 

The Managing Director of Cameco Brian Reilly was quoted as saying:

 

“This is a region that needs the next wave of projects and the uranium sector can deliver four, five, six projects down the track and make a significant difference to WA. The product we ship is a high-value, low-volume product and as it sits today most uranium goes to the port of Adelaide. Why wouldn't we contemplate a WA port when we get a business case and a number of other projects up and running?"

 

A weekend article in the Kalgoorlie Miner describes the community's response to the disclosure and notes that the Esperance community is exceedingly vigilant about the environmental risks from products coming through Esperance, largely as a result of the Magellan Lead Scandal of 2005-2008.

 

This vigilance and likely public opposition from the people of Esperance is a consequence of  serious harm suffered by the people and environment of Esperance as a result of that earlier lead contamination scandal at the Port of Esperance.

 

Over 2 years (2005- 2007) Magellan Metals and the Esperance Port Authority allowed lethal lead dust to escape from storage facilities at the port and contaminate the town of Esperance and surrounds. Over 9500 birds died of lead poisoning and hundreds of children suffered lead poisoning from elevated lead levels.

A Western Australian Parliamentary Inquiry found that the Esperance Port Authority and Magellan Metals (and 2 other government agencies) were guilty of "critical failings" in their handling of toxic material in allowing lead carbonate particles to escape during Port operation.

 

The Inquiry concluded that the deaths of 9500 native birds in December 2006 and March 2007 resulted from lead poisoning from Magellan Metals lead carbonate concentrate which had been handled by the Esperance Port Authority from April 2005 until March 2007. A quarter of the children under 5 years of age who were tested showed a blood lead level over 5 µg/dL.

 

The Committee concluded that the exposure of the Esperance community to lead was a result of:

• the ongoing transport to, and inloading practices at, the Esperance Port which occurred almost every second day over some 23 months;
• the escape of lead dust during the usual out loading practices at the Esperance Port, which occurred on 22 occasions; and
• a number of key dust incidents occurring during ship-loading of the Magellan lead concentrate at the Esperance Port, which released significant lead pollution into the environment, and in the absence of any containment or clean up, caused on-going exposures to lead.”

The Report found that the Esperance community had been let down by the actions of the Esperance Port Authority, Magellan Metals and the WA Department of Environment (DEC).

The Esperance Port Authority was fined over half a million dollars after admitting responsibility for the lead poisoning. Magellan Metals escaped without any serious penalty after agreeing to a $9 million settlement to clean up the town. As part of the agreement the State Government agreed not to pursue any criminal or legal charges against the company.

 

A State Government report released  in 2010 claimed that three years after the crises the poisonous lead dust still present in the town  remained a major threat to bird life and animal life but claimed no "serious threat to human health". Locals were not convinced

 

Research in 2010 by the Conservation Council of WA showed that local insect eating birds have lead levels in their feathers about 8 times background lead levels. The birds are at threshold level for lead pollution in birds.
 

So why should the people of Esperance have any faith they will be protected this time around by those with responsibility to regulate mining companies and protect the community, when they failed so badly last time?

 

During the Esperance lead crises, Government agencies continually downplayed the seriousness of the problem and denied any serious risk to human health.

 

The inability of WA Government agencies to effectively regulate and monitor the operations and performance of multinational corporations whose rationale is profit maximization was confirmed in a recent WA Auditor General’s Report.

 

The Auditor General found that corporations were failing to meet their environmental and social obligations and Government agencies were unable to effectively regulate and enforce the social and environmental activities of private corporations.

A recent Corruption and Crime Commission Report identified that large government agencies  who oversee large contracts with corporations do not have the necessary skills controls and governance systems in place to manage these contractors and identified the risk of corruption.

It is patently clear that regulation and monitoring of corporations is largely ineffective and government agencies and statutory authorities responsible for monitoring them have not proved themselves up to the job

Like many other places in WA, Esperance has become  what US author Steve Lerner calls a "Sacrifice Zone"- communities forced to live with the harmful social and environmental impacts of poorly regulated mining and industrial activity.
 

Martin Bruckner's remarkable book Under Corporate Skies tells the shocking story of another Western Australian "Sacrifice Zone"- this time the struggle between the community of Wagerup and the multinational mining corporation Alcoa and its ally over three decades- the WA Government.

 

 Brueckner tells a story consigned to the dustbin of Western Australian history. His book describes the the same pattern of denial, protection of mining and industrial interests, collusion by State Government agencies and  dismissal and trivialization of community concerns that was evident in the Esperance scandal.
 

These "sacrifice zones" exist all over WA, in towns and communities where mining and industrial activity are dominant.  These are places and people sacrificed on the alter of corporate profit and economic growth. 

 

The harms caused by poorly regulated mining and industrial activity- ill health and death, scarred land, polluted, air and water, despoiled environment and human landscape and a fraying social fabric- are trivialized, and denied, and when proven, they are simply dismissed as a cost of economic prosperity or considered not serious enough to warrant attention. 

Arundhati Roy on a democractically elected totalitarian Indian Government

Interview here with Arundhati Roy on the result of the recent Indian elections, which resulted in the election of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi. 

Arundhati Roy argues that India has an elected totalitarian Government:

“Now, we have a democratically elected totalitarian government. Technically and legally, there is no party with enough seats to constitute an opposition. But many of us have maintained for several years that there never was a real opposition. The two main parties agreed on most policies, and each had the skeleton of a mass pogrom against a minority community in its cupboard. So now, it’s all out in the open. The system lies exposed.”

As Barbara Crosette writes in The Nation, Modi's political origins are in the radical fringes of a Hindu nationalist party unashamedly influenced by 1930s European fascism, complete with theories of a master race. Crosette  argues that Modi's election presents India with its greatest political challenge since the nation was formed in 1947.

Arundhati Roy sees that the Modi Government is beholden to the mining and resource companies who bankrolled his campaign. She believes he will hand over land to the mining and infrastructure corporations and attempt to crush those resisting the forcible takeover of their land:

“The contracts are all signed and the companies have been waiting for years. He has been chosen as the man who does not blink in the face of bloodshed, not just Muslim bloodshed but any bloodshed.”

In her view India's chosen economic development model has a genocidal core

“How have the other ‘developed’ countries progressed? Through wars and by colonising and usurping the resources of other countries and societies. India has no option but to colonise itself............ Bloodshed is inherent to this model of development. There are already thousands of people in jails. But that is not enough any longer. The resistance has to be crushed and eradicated. Big money now needs the man who can walk the last mile. That is why big industry poured millions into Modi’s election campaign.”

An interview with Arundhati Roy about the dark forces underlying the Indian election is here.

Photographing the destruction of communities and ecosystems by the coal industry

"Social documentary has to go beyond propaganda. It has to speak to people's lives and struggles"
Builder Levy

In his book Appalachia USA, the photographer Builder Levy has done what Australian photographers have not yet done. 

Levy has documented the destruction caused by the mining industries, particularly the coal industry, in the Appalachian region of the USA. 

Levy has spent 45 years photographing the effects of mining on communities, families, livelihoods, ways of life and ecosystems and environments in the Appalachain region and his new book Appalachia USA contains over 600 photos taken since 1968. 

Despite its massive mineral wealth, Appalachia is one of the poorest regions in the US. The extractive industries, particularly the coal industry, have made massive profits, whilst polluting the land,water and air and capturing democracy to serve their corporate interests and plundering from the public purse. In excess of 100,000 coal workers have been killed in mining accidents.

Levy's photography springs from his deep commitment to progressive ideals and to social, economic and racial justice. But his work is neither didactic nor polemical

"I always wanted to show people's struggles. And I wanted to show people with humanity, dignity, culture and heritage that others might not know about. you want to go beyond the superficial and stereotype.... What I needed from my art was to be able to talk about what was going on in the world, out there in the streets. I could do that with photography.”

As well as Appalachia, Levy has photographed  inner-city New York City where he was a NYC teacher of at-risk adolescents for 35 years;  civil rights and peace demonstrations (in the 1960s & new millennium), Mongolia and other developing nations including Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.