il msnifesto 9 aprile 2010
Mercoledì scorso il corrispondente da New York di Radio 24 apriva la sua rubrica con la notizia del disastro minerario nella miniera della Massey Energy a Mountc oal, West Virginia, in cui sono morti almeno 25 minatori. La cosa è molto encomiabile: basta pensare che gli ha dato la precedenza anche rispetto alle novità di Obama sulla limitazione delle armi nucleari. Ma era più problematico il commento, basato sul paradosso fra queste tragedie apparentemente arcaiche e la moderna, tecnologica America - come se l’idea stessa della miniera di carbone rinviasse automaticamente a un passato premoderno di pala e piccone.
Questa è una modalità tipica dei media italiani, spectacularized that the United States as a country of extremes and contrasts, great wealth and great poverty, and extreme modernity surprising backwardness. In fact, mining is now a technologically advanced sector, and mine is an Mountcoal esmepio - with its continuous miner, the giant machine toothed rotary digging tunnels rip coal, chew and spit them out again on the belt transmission, and its intricate tracks, cables, wires, trucks moving. Several recent tragedies have their own specific outcomes of this modernity: the continuous miner generates an unusual amount of dust that is cemented in the lungs of miners who, in modern times tecnologica, crepano di pneumoconiosi più di prima, e per di più è altamente esplosiva (una delle violazioni della sicurezza rilevate a Mountcoal riguardava proprio il mancato controllo delle polveri).
Anche questo viene reso meno percepibile dalla spettacolarizzazione mediatica sull’eccezionalità di ciascuna singola tragedia (“la più grave dell’ultimo quarto di secolo”). Si tratta piuttosto di tragedie ordinarie, che si ripetono con modalità quasi invariate ogni anno. I “disastri” (definizione ufficiale: un incidente con almeno cinque vittime) fanno notizia, ma la stragrande maggioranza delle morti in miniera avviene al disotto di questo radar, per crolli (spesso provocati – like last year in Utah - greed to pull up to the last gram of carbon), shorts, mobile equipment investment, and so on. Apart from the hundreds who die at home, on average three a day, with the lungs of carbon blacks. Death in the mines is not exceptional, but systematic: a mass disaster like this one is no exception, but an 'acceleration of the rule.
today when a mine explodes or collapses, the government launches new safety standards, and after each disaster, we read that the company had been caught hundreds of times in violation. At this point, the responsibility extends to the institutions: what conclusions should be drawn supervisory bodies in front of a systematic violation of such laws? what 'is the cost of these fines (and agrees to pay to go forward, even as in many cases, including Mountcoal, not paying at all)?; or inspections serve only to bureaucrats to say "we told you so", and wash their hands? Pass laws and should not be applied or not is a form of complicity?
Some newspapers have reported the cynical master of Mountcoal Memorandum, Don Blankenship: "whenever you are asked to do different jobs dall'estrarre coal (ie, work to secure the mine) ignore them. Remember that the coal pays the bills. " Don Blankenship is not any greedy master is a real octopus in your pocket all the institutions and politicians of West Virginia, and no institution will jump to mind from interfering with his business. His company, Massey was able to get rid of the union, with any kind of practice - shooting at the miners during the strike of 1984-85, and resorting to blackmail, tips, bullying and pressure to induce its workers to give up Montocoal union protection. A newly published book - Coal River by Michael Shnayerson - has an entire chapter devoted to its anti-union practices at the mine Montcoal. It is not a local issue and marginal: the disappearance of the union has led to the transfer of West Virginia from the field to the democratic republican, which was decisive in the first election of George Bush - who thanked him by putting a coal industry lobbyist at the helm of the institution's oversight of mine safety.
However, even if there was not that the union would interfere too much: worried about the jobs of its members (the West Virginia has lost six hundred thousand jobs in the mines since 1960, a population of less than two million ) and shares that pay the union coffers, the UMW has always supported the interests and profits of the mining industry even at the expense of safety (when an explosion killed 79 miners in Fairmont, West Virginia, in 1969, the union president praised the company and said that yes, certain things is to be expected, working in the mine is dangerous).
The subordination of the union invests another aspect of energy and environmental policy: the mountaiontop removal, coal mining, but not digging tunnels by blasting the tops of the mountains until leaving to found the vein, spilling contaminated soil in the valleys and rivers. Questga In practice, Blankenship and Massey are in the forefront, so that its Blankenship argued topic in discussion with Robert Kennedy, Jr. at the University of West Virginia, saying the mountain top removal is essential Employment and the 'energy independence of the United States. The environmental groups and local people have highlighted the appalling damage of this practice: the damage climate change, environmental destruction (in 2000, another mine at Massey's Blankenship, exile poisonous sludge 1.16 billion, thirty times more from the Exxon Valdez oil disaster, which poisoned the land and rivers through the Southeast United States), the dangers to the surrounding population, the fact that the top mountai removal takes up much less traditional mining workforce. But the union - almsgiving dazzled a few jobs - supports the claims of Blankenship, including to pave the historic Blair Mountain, site of pitched battle in 1922 where during a pitched battle between miners and private armies of the companies the strikers even intervened to bomb the U.S. Air Force. The disaster
Mountcoal not improve the image of Massey - but it is not that call into question the power. Don Blankenship is perfectly capable of saying that the tragedy in the tunnel shows that the mountain top removal is less dangerous (for people who work there, certainly not for those who live around), and use it to speed up the concessions that must be asked throughout the state. Sign for certain powers, not all silver lining.
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