SWAT team, state police were positioned near W. Va. church

News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
04 January 2006
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

SWAT team, state police were positioned near W. Va. church 04 Jan 2006 In a stunning and heartbreaking reversal, family members were told early Wednesday that 12 of 13 trapped coal miners were dead - three hours after they began celebrating news that they were alive... International Coal Group Chief Executive Officer Ben Hatfield blamed the wrong information on a "miscommunication.'' ..."There was no apology. There was no nothing. It was immediately out the door,'' said Nick Helms, son of miner Terry Helms. Chaos broke out in the church and a fight started. About a dozen state troopers and a SWAT team were positioned along the road near the church because police were concerned about violence. Witnesses said one man had to be wrestled to the ground when he lunged for mining officials. (The 'violence' is the violence that is perpetrated on workers in the U.S. (and all over the world) every day, due to the Bush regime's expansion of predatory capitalism.)

Lori Price

Note: This post was in LBN and a Mod moved it to Editorials & Other Articles. A poster requested that I post it here, as well.

Under Bush, we are moving workers rights back decades. Yet the cops are moved in to protect "corporate"?

It was reported in the BBC and it really struck me. Your relatives are dead. Leave quietly, or else.

I wouldnt even call it capitalism since Gov and big business are in cahoots, working against the people.. Thats more Fascism than capitalism

Always flock around our door.
What's the crime that we've committed?
Nothing. Only that we're poor ...

Dreadful Memories
Sarah Ogan Gunning
http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/dreadful.html

History matters. Mining corps have been using spies, thugs, mercenaries, armed forces for years.

Spies for Hire: Advertising by the Pinkerton Agency

By the early 1890s, the 2,000 active agents and 30,000 reserves of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency were larger than the standing army of the United States. In the 1880s, the Pinkertons provided services for management in 70 different labor disputes. The agency’s success depended on both armed guards and the clandestine efforts of secret operatives like James McParlan, who had infiltrated Irish anthracite miners’ organizations in the mid 1870s. McParlan’s testimony (which historians have largely dismissed as fabricated) at the sensational “Molly Maguire” trial of 1876 helped send ten men to the gallows and broke the miners’ union for a generation. This advertisement from the 1890s touted the prowess of the Pinkerton detective agency in maintaining law and order and played on corporate fears of “dissatisfaction among the laboring classes” to build business.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5313/

Y'all know about Steven Griles? Steven Griles head of Department of Interior, ex-mining lobbyist who actually WROTE the bills that would affect TNC mining Cos. passed them on to the Congress critter of choice all why being a lobbyist.

One of the most vulgar humanoids in the Admin. and that is saying alot.

overwhelming company AND government pressure. Some of those families were threatening to come back with guns. These people have long memories and the co and supervisors probably were needing to change their underwear when they heard the threats. I only wish our current unions had half the balls that the miners had.

are talking about the 270 +- violations at the mine. The press is also very critical. Yet, the press reports that the current owners bought and took over the mine about a month ago.

Whether a Republican or Democratic corporation and whether or not they handled the grief and communication part of the disaster correctly, wouldn't it be fair that the press keep mentioning the fact that the current owners are new to this as far as the violations are concerned. It would be impossible to run up 270 violations in one month. Shouldn't someone talk about what they said they would do and on what timetable. Shouldn't someone talk about what they plan to do to compensate the families for the loss of the family provider? No one knows much of anything yet unless the new owners are carrying a full load of violations from any former mines they have owned?

What happened to 'wait and see' fairness?

I berate corporations every day - I can't believe I'm asking this, but it seems it is American fairness over my disdain for corporations (especially the corporate partnerships with the Republican Party and the corporations avoidance of tax, offshore banking, offshore registrations, outsourcing, busting unions, employee servitude, etc.).

and don't you feel that when they took over this mine they should be liable for any violations or disasters that happen? Remember, this corp went to court and got a bankruptcy judge to releave them of those costly union contracts and retiree benefits.

Fuck those operators. They deserve to be strung up.

"Last summer, his group acquired Horizon Resources, the #7 US coal company, which had gone bankrupt for the second time in five years. And he has announced that he is on the lookout for other coal companies. The company is being combined with other, smaller WL Ross Group coal holdings Anker Coal and CoalQueest. The new entity will be called International Coal Group."

http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2004/11/20.html

"ICG acquired the Sago mine only last year when it bought bankrupt Anker Coal Group Inc."

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/news/newsmakers/ross_mine.reut/

Anker Coal Group owned by Wilbur Ross. ICG owned by Wilbur Ross. There was no new company, it was a new paper corporation buying another one, with the same Wilbur Ross at the head of both.

History Matters: Matewan

Nowhere was union activity greater that spring than in Matewan. There, the police chief, Sid Hatfield, a former miner, and Mayor C. Testerman openly cooperated with the drive and protected the miners as they held organizing meetings in the town.

Despite efforts by Hatfield to keep the Baldwin-Felts detectives away from Matewan, they came anyway. On May 19, 1920, thirteen detectives, including Baldwin-Felts president Thomas Felts, younger brothers Albert and Lee, arrived in Matewan to evict miners and their families from their homes in the Stone Mountain Mine camp.

Nothing angered miners more than "thugs" forcing women and little children from their homes at gunpoint. Word of the evictions spread like wildfire. Angry miners from Matewan and the surrounding area grabbed guns and rushed to the town as the detectives evicted six more families in dismal rainy weather. Hatfield led a group of miners to the Stone Mountain camp and tried to stop the evictions, but the Felts brothers refused his plea. When the detectives returned to Matewan that afternoon, having finished their jobs, Hatfield, surrounded by armed miners, tried to arrest Al Felts for conducting the evictions without proper Matewan authority. As he and Mayor Testerman glared at Al Felts and the other detectives outside the railroad depot, someone fired a shot, and the battle was on.

http://www.matewan.com/History/battle.htm

"You want to be treated like men? You want to be treated fair? Well, you ain't men to the coal company, you're equipment. They'll use you till you wear out or you break down or you're buried alive under a slate fall and then they'll get a new one, and they don't care what color it is or where it comes from."

It is 1920 and the mining towns of West Virginia are owned and operated by the coal companies. The men are paid by the tonnage of coal they can load, and the companies keep the rate down by importing scab labor, blacks from the South and immigrants fresh off the boat. One such town is Matewan. And when the miners of Matewan go on strike, they have no idea that their action is going to put the town on the map.

The miners of Matewan are at the end of their ropes. The Stone Mountain Coal Company has brought in Italian immigrants, and now proposes to cut the men's wages. Led by Sephus Purcell (Ken Jenkins), the local miners walk out. The company is not slow to respond. To a hostile reception from the local men, a group of black miners arrive in town, among them a giant of a man whose ragged appearance has earned him the name "Few Clothes" Johnson (James Earl Jones.) On the train with them is another newcomer, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), former "wobblie" and now a union organizer.


http://johnsaylesretro.com/body-matewan-synopsis.html

I was raised by WVA coal miners. I have seen these operators all my life. I have never met one that was not a bag of shit.

"You only need three things to survive as a coal miner: Pinto beans, corn meal and a good Union." - From some miner I knew when I was a child.

In the old days, a person whose horse was killed in the mines would get, say, $25 compensation from the mining company. The families of men who died in the mine typically would receive half of that. After all, to replace the men, all the company would have to do is post a few signs in an Italian village offering to bring over men willing to work (for a price, of course, that was always accumulating interest and would never be paid off).

tragedy, with force. They did the same after Katrina. They moved in to "secure" areas hit by the hurricane. There was never any word about bringing relief to the victims. They are afraid and seem to only have a military solution to everything.

:scared:

Email CLG received (no link) From: Mark Crispin Miller Date: January 4, 2006 Subject: From A Coal Miner's Daughter "Dear Liz: I am a coal miner's daughter. Our family farm was located 45 miles from the Sago Mine. This morning I called some friends of mine near Morgantown, W. VA... they say... there were repeated violations against this mine... they say there were over 260 violations... and the safety men (who had been cut back by the owners)... they are in the pocket and hired by the mine operator... The owner of the mine has a very sordid past...a real money over human life kinda guy. The miners who were outside, couldn't believe they didn't pump air down into the holes...that is what is always done...they didn't......why? They say they kept drilling holes but never put the air shafts down...when the families heard they were alive, they started celebrating...they waited for 3 hours to hear where their loved ones had been taken...and then 3 hours later were told they were all dead...MOST WENT HOME TO GET THEIR GUNS...THEY HAD ENOUGH...DON'T KNOW IF CENSORED TV WILL SHOW THIS OR TELL THAT STORY... BUT THEY INSIST ITS TRUE...AND KNOWING THESE FOLKS AS I DO...I ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE IT. I personally think the owner wanted to have 'some protection of his own before he told the truth'... he knew what would happen when they found out...This is a crime, this is an industrialized crime...and again, LAYS SQUARELY AT THE FEET OF THE BUSH REGIME...WHO HAVE LOWERED THE SAFETY STANDARDS DOWN TO NOTHING." (Note: Letter was edited for length, spelling - content not altered.)

Letter posted here:
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

Good Lord.

The email was forwarded by Mark Crispin Miller, but was written by Liz Allen.

Lori Price

Liz Allen's letter was printed on Danny Schechter's News Dissector this morning. Does anyone have any other sources for these claims, either that the mining bosses delayed the death announcement until they could get armed forces near the church, or that the miners went home for guns (although that good old religion seems to have quelled their fire again anyway)?

Theres always an endless supply of money for protecting rich people in America isnt there?
--
But if I work all day on the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
And if I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious
As a hole in the ground

just didn't make any sense. but that email pieces it together pretty well. bastards.:grr:

is now in a coma, ?!?

I saw that one marching down Broadway, a mile away...

Lori Price

god i hate these people. i just don't know what else to say anymore. i just hate them beyond words.:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

if the police and swat teams were there all along, or if they were positioned between the first news and the real news. it would help explain the length of time it took to correct the miscommunication if they felt a need to prepare for possible violence.

People were starting to make the connection between the Bush regime's greed, corpora-terrorism, and the Sago Mine tragedy. The Reichwing can't have people questioning predatory capitalism...

Lori Price

reposting here.