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Don Blankenship (cc photo: Brianhayden1980)
This week on CounterSpin: When Massey Energy, the biggest coal company in Appalachia, polluted the groundwater of the community Massey CEO Don Blankenship lived in, he had employees run a private water line direct to his mansion, while fighting off the lawsuit from his poisoned neighbors. That’s just the kind of guy he is, and it’s decades of that behavior, as much as the 2010 explosion that killed 29 people at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine, that led to Blankenship’s sentencing this week to a year in prison on a charge of conspiracy to violate mine safety standards.
Media celebrated the sentencing as the first time such a high-level executive received jail time for a workplace safety violation. But shouldn’t we question why that is? And why was such a serious charge, after all, just a misdemeanor? We’ll talk about the Blankenship case and corporate crime in general with attorney Bruce Stanley, who has been representing people fighting coal and chemical companies, and fighting Don Blankenship in particular, for many years.
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Transcript: ‘Why Is It That the Safety of Those Coal Miners’ Lives Does Not Matter Enough?’
First, as usual, we take a quick look back at recent press, including the Panama Papers, Donald Trump’s unoriginal ideas and Bernie Sanders vs. the Daily News.
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Bruce Stanley’s fight for justice against Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has been heroic. Legal and culture change happened for all workers across America with the sentencing of Mr Blankenship this week.
The rich nobility of High Society, they have owned/funded all of mainstream media in America since 1776, that is why the rise and fall of Empire USA is so slow in reaching it’s ultimate conclusion. Comes now Bernie Sanders and if he cannot get the job done, then Revolution here we come.
“The Russian military have given access to journalists from 11 countries to the liberated Syrian city of Palmyra. Moscow, noted is the absence of American journalists in the group.
“The group of 27 media professionals from Germany, Italy, Belgium, China, Serbia and other nations were transported from the Russian military base in Khmeimim to Palmyra on Thursday.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov noted. He said that four US-based media outlets cancelled their accreditation requests on the eve of the trip, “as if they were following an order.”
https://www.rt.com/news/338971-us-journalists-ignore-palmyra/