There is in place over
the skies of Mayflower, Arkansas, a no-fly zone. Planes, helicopters, even zepplins are restricted from flying over the town that just experienced a
large oil spill from Exxon Mobile. The flight restriction is in place “until further
notice.” The no-fly zone is being administered not by the FAA, but by Exxon
Mobile.
Over
at Fox News, the restrictions are depicted as being in place for safety reasons,
but if past oil spills are any example, the no-fly zone is there to restrict
press coverage. And this is all with FAA approval.
It
is understandable that Exxon doesn’t want the press to broadcast images of its
oil spreading all over Mayflower, Arkansas. And I guess that anymore I should
not be surprised that a department of the federal government would help them do
it. It happens elsewhere. Statehouses are helping meatpackers and
slaughterhouses to keep their operations under wraps with “Ag Gag” laws that
would that make it a crime to expose animal cruelty or unsanitary conditions in
slaughterhouses or other agricultural productions. In Michael Shnayerson’s book
on mountaintop mining in West Virginia Coal River he writes that anyone who wanted to review a
copy of a mountaintop mining permit issued by the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection—like a license or property title, a public
document—needed to file a Freedom of Information Request.
Exxon,
BP, Massey Energy, they all want to keep their secrets. Our tax dollars should
not be helping them to do so.
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