North Korean defector pushes for diplomacy in US testimony

An-ex North Korean diplomat has told US lawmakers to send information to the reclusive country instead of bombs. Thae Yong-ho warned that any military strike would be met with immediate retaliation.

Tribe Fought for Coal Ash Safeguards, Then Pruitt Came Along

Tribe Fought for Coal Ash Safeguards, Then Pruitt Came Along

By Keith Rushing | Tuesday, October 31, 2017



Reid Gardner coal plant

The Reid Gardner coal plant stood about 300 yards from the Moapa River Indian Reservation in Nevada.

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

For the Paiute Indians who call the Moapa River Reservation home, living next to a coal-fired power plant meant dealing with toxic coal ash. The dust covered their homes, seeped into their bodies and, they believed, made them sick.

The tribe fought the plant and its pollution, and worked to bring clean energy jobs instead to their land near Las Vegas. In the process, they helped secure from the Environmental Protection Agency the first-ever federal regulations on coal ash. Just two years later, however, the new coal ash rule, referred to by the EPA as the coal combustion residuals rule, faces a serious threat.

The byproduct of burning coal to generate power, coal ash contains some of the deadliest industrial toxics known to man—mercury, arsenic, lead and chromium, which are associated with cancer, heart disease, strokes and brain damage in children. Seventy percent of this waste is dumped in low-income communities. Coal ash has been responsible for at least 200 cases of contaminated water.

The coal ash rule marked a victory for the Paiute, for Earthjustice and for Americans living near some 1,400 coal ash dumps across the country. That is, until EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decided in September to “reconsider” the rule at the behest of the coal industry.

The tribe’s fight against coal ash began in 2000. William Anderson, the tribe’s chairman at the time, recalls how members began to discuss what the coal ash in their community might be doing to their health.

Former Moapa Paiute Chairman William Anderson

Former Moapa Paiute Chairman William Anderson
Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

“We started asking ourselves: Who do we know who has breathing problems, thyroid problems and heart problems?” says Anderson. “All of us know someone at the reservation who had these issues.”

When Anderson was growing up, he says, asthma wasn’t an issue on the reservation. But when they began focusing on the possible link to coal ash, he realized that a majority of children seemed to have asthma or a breathing illness.

“We started a campaign with our [tribal] council and went to our people to fight for our own right to breathe clean air,” he says.

The tribe’s members started questioning state and federal agencies as well as NV Energy, which owned the nearby Reid Gardner coal plant, about the actual level of emissions. “Every time we started bringing awareness, no one would listen to what we were saying,” Anderson explains.

The minimal monitoring equipment that the company maintained didn’t reflect the true level of toxics that the tribe was able to document, Anderson says.

Part of the tribe’s campaign included working closely with the Sierra Club and Earthjustice and involved filing a lawsuit against NV Energy that charged the company with violating federal environmental laws requiring proper removal of toxic soil, sludge, coal dust and contaminated groundwater. NV Energy settled the lawsuit in 2015 for $4.3 million. The company closed the Reid Gardner plant earlier this year but still maintains coal ash waste there.

The film “An Ill Wind” tells the Paiute Indians’ story.
Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

The tribe also began soliciting proposals from companies to build a solar farm. And in 2012, the Paiute completed a deal to establish the largest solar farm on an Indian reservation, which resulted in nearly 1 million solar panels being built to provide power to Los Angeles.

The farm created 600 jobs, and now the tribe is working on a deal to expand it.

“I was so happy during that time,” he says, reflecting back. “With everything that was going on with our people, we could see light at the end of the tunnel.”

Anderson says tribal leaders tried to talk to NV Energy about producing renewable energy, but company officials weren’t interested.

“We showed them [NV Energy] that there’s an effective way to have a solution instead of destroying the environment, plants and animals and spoiling the water. And that’s renewable energy,” Anderson says.

As for the coal ash left behind, NV Energy is now required to place a cap on the dump near the Moapa River Reservation that would prevent the ash from becoming airborne. The company also must maintain a fugitive dust control plan for at least 30 years to keep toxics from seeping into groundwater, according to Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans, who was the lead attorney on the case.

In addition to helping the Paiute, the coal ash rule established disposal safeguards affecting the other dumps around the U.S. The 2015 rule includes safeguards to prevent fugitive dust, ensure the stability of coal ash dams, protect drinking water from toxic ash, and ensure detection and cleanup of toxic leaks from coal ash dumps.

Hundreds of contaminated sites and spills have been documented among the 1,400+ coal ash waste dumps across the country.

Hundreds of contaminated sites and spills have been documented among the 1,400+ coal ash waste dumps across the country. See map.

Evans says the coal ash rule, which Earthjustice had been trying to strengthen, remains in place as of now. But if Pruitt tries to delay compliance deadlines or weaken the rule, Earthjustice will consider legal action.

When the EPA announced its decision to reconsider the coal ash rule, Evans called it a “galling giveaway” to industrial polluters.

“The EPA is sending a crystal-clear message to families across the country: Our job is to protect wealthy polluters, not you and your children,” she said. “Americans will not stand idly by as the EPA puts their health and safety at risk—and neither will Earthjustice or our partners.”

Anderson says the move by Pruitt is one of a number of ups and downs the tribe has faced, and it will not deter their fight.

“Our native people have been here for thousands upon thousands of years,” he says. “There’s struggle but we still continue on. When this place was first colonized, we faced genocide. They thought they could wipe out Native people but we are still here. We still move forward every time.”

Learn more facts about coal ash here.

These are the Russian Facebook ads that aimed to influence the US election – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The US House Intelligence Committee releases some of the roughly 3,000 Facebook ads bought by Russian operatives to interfere in the US presidential election.

Source: These are the Russian Facebook ads that aimed to influence the US election – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Donald Trump’s reaction to terror? To make America terrified again | Simon Jenkins | Opinion | The Guardian – Instead let’s be strong…

Terrorism is a means to an end: that of coercive publicity. It will happen. It will happen especially where we polarise confrontations of race and religion round the world. It will happen when weak people cannot resort to armies or bombs or drones, to gain leverage in enforcing their ideas of how society should be run. There is no such thing as a terrorist state. There are just people who use terror as a means to an end.The only power that can be deployed against this curse is the power of perspective. It is to treat terror as a criminal means of making a point. This has not changed since Joseph Conrad described the terrorist as “terrible in the simplicity of calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world … like a pest in the street full of men”. What cannot be prevented is best accommodated. It is the psychological price we pay to live in an open and liberal society.These dangers pale against those our grandparents and their forebears had to manage. We are incomparably safer than humanity has ever been before. A community that can devote so much attention to suppressing contentious gatherings, offensive remarks and “invalidations of my identity” is not a society under existential threat. As for how best to help the traumatised people of New York, the answer is to do the opposite of what Americans did to European cities hit by such killings, which was to boycott them. The answer is to book a New York holiday, now.

Source: Donald Trump’s reaction to terror? To make America terrified again | Simon Jenkins | Opinion | The Guardian

Wednesday Open Thread | Jeff Sessions is so very, very screwed

PalmerReport: On Monday it became clear that the only option left for Jeff Sessions would be to play the obliviousness defense. On Tuesday it became clear that even that defense won’t have any chance of working. Sessions now finds himself in cascading levels of trouble, thanks to the guilty plea and confession of his campaign subordinate George Papadopoulos, and the relationship Sessions had with Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos claimed in his confession that before he conspired with the Russian government to try to obtain emails stolen from Hillary Clinton, he got the explicit approval of Paul Manafort and Sam Clovis. Papadopoulos also claimed that Jeff Sessions was in the meeting and was fully aware of the discussion. Others were also in the room, so Sessions won’t be able to argue that he wasn’t there. His only defense would be to claim that he wasn’t following the discussion because he didn’t know who Papadopoulos was, or didn’t consider him important enough to be worth listening to. But that just went out the window.

When Jeff Sessions held a dinner for a number of Trump campaign advisers, he had George Papadopoulos sit right next to him, according to a Washington Post report (link). This makes clear that Sessions not only knew Papadopoulos, but considered him to be one of the most important Trump campaign advisers. It means Sessions would have been fully engaged during the meeting where Papadopoulos sought clearance for his Russian conspiracy meeting.

So there’s no question that Jeff Sessions knew full well that his campaign subordinate was seeking approval to conspire with the Russian government to procure stolen emails – and at the least, he tacitly let it happen by not objecting. This makes him guilty of conspiracy to receive stolen property, or some other similar variation of the law. That’s in addition to the perjury he committed by claiming under oath not to be aware of any Trump advisers meeting with Russia. Robert Mueller can – and will – indict Sessions on a smorgasbord of charges unless he flips on Trump first.

Second Look Behind the Headlines – News you can use…

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