Puppet politicians sidestep Supreme Court ruling to favour mining giant, BHP-Billiton
by Chi Tranter via greer 2010-04-21 23:13:40

The right of NSW farmers to challenge mining giant BHP Billiton over exploratory digging on their properties is under threat from proposed legislation, the Greens say.

In March this year, Liverpool Plains farmers in the state's north won a NSW Supreme Court battle giving them more power to refuse miners access to their properties if access agreements are breached.

A new bill introduced in state parliament on Tuesday could reverse this decision, the NSW Greens say.

"The government is again doing the bidding of the coal industry by validating the current questionable access arrangements for mining companies," Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said in a statement on Tuesday.

"BHP Billiton, hand in hand with the Minerals Council, must have burnt a path to the government's door after Justice Schmidt of the Supreme Court ruled against them."

Caroona Coal Action Group spokesman Timothy Duddy says the implications of the Mining and Petroleum Legislation Amendment Bill are vast.

"This is a very ill-thought Act by the NSW government to try and facilitate mining at all costs," he told AAP.

"(It shows) that they don't respect any other landholder, any other user of any land, other than the miner."

If the decision is reversed, miners won't have to notify all those with a financial interest in the property of exploratory mining plans, he says.

"If, for instance, you have an inter-generational transfer of a property where a mortgage is owed to your father, your father wouldn't have to be consulted on that property," Mr Duddy said.

He says another part of the Supreme Court ruling, to force miners to describe their intended methods of exploratory works, is also under threat.

"(The Supreme Court decision) also meant that the access arrangements had to be descriptive, so the miners had to lay out their methods of exploration, and that's why we fought it in the first instance," he said.

The action group is lobbying against the bill.

"Our community would do whatever it has to do to ensure that the environment is properly protected," Mr Duddy said.

Comment is being sought from NSW Mineral and Forest Resources Minister Ian Macdonald.

© 2010 AAP

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Bill Clinton's warning on extremist mood in US
by Ewen MacAskill via fleet 2010-04-22 20:11:16

Bill Clinton today warned politicians and commentators to tone down their rhetoric for fear of inflaming hate groups and provoking violence, as a poll suggested that public trust in the US government is at its lowest point for half a century.

Amid growing concern in the White House about the anti-government mood and a marked rise in radical fringe groups, Clinton said the internet made it easier to spread ideas to reach "the unhinged". The worry is not so much over populist movements such as the Tea Party but the revival of extreme groups that have been encouraged by general anti-government sentiment.

On the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, the worst terrorist attack in the US before 9/11, Clinton wrote in the New York Times: "We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time … As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."

Clinton said it should not be forgotten what drove the Oklahoma bombers. "They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government and that public servants do not protect our freedoms but abuse them."

At a ceremony in Oklahoma yesterday, survivors and victims' relatives commemorated the 168 people who were killed.

The extent of the anti-government mood in the country was revealed today in a Pew Research Centre poll that found public confidence in the federal government was at its lowest for half a century. Almost eight out of 10 Americans surveyed said they did not trust it; only 22% said they trusted the federal government almost always or most of the time.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Centre, said: "Trust in government rarely gets this low. Some of it is backlash against Obama. But there are a lot of other things going on."

The poll identified several reasons for the rise in anti-government feelings: opposition to Obama; the recession, in particular the role of Wall Street; and anger with both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

The Southern Poverty Legal Centre, which tracks hate groups, said yesterday there has been a surge in the number of militia and other extremists. Mark Potok, its head, said the mood was so volatile that it needed only a spark to set it off.

Last month nine people linked to the Hutaree, a Christian militia group in Michigan, were arrested over an alleged plot to kill police in the hope of starting an uprising against the government. In February, a lone anti-tax protester flew a plane into the tax office in Austin, Texas.

Members of Congress who last month supported the health reform bill have been targets of vandalism and death threats. Yesterday several hundred pro-gun activists gathered at the Washington Monument to demand the end of restrictions on carrying guns in public.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said groups such as his were set on ousting moderate Republicans in primaries before the November Congressional mid-term elections.

"We are in a war," Pratt, a former Republican member of the Virginia state legislature, told a rally. He said the Obama administration was out to take their freedom, their money and their children because it was socialist.

A newly-formed group, the Oath Keepers, made up of former members of the armed services and police forces, had been due to take part in a rally in Virginia at which they would openly carry firearms but pulled out, expressing fears of confrontation with the police.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/19/bill-clinton-political-commentators-rhetoric