A mine owner in Oregon was having a dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over his paperwork. His solution? Summon the ready nationwide movement of heavily armed "patriots" that so deftly protected Cliven Bundy from having to follow the same laws as everybody else.
What could go wrong?
Among those who have come to the mine is Arizona militiaman Blaine Cooper, who made a video widely seen on YouTube urging Patriots to make their way to Oregon.
They’re calling it a “security operation” largely because owner Rick Barclay insists that the BLM is notorious for burning down miners’ cabins in the backwoods, and he believes they’d have destroyed his mine if he had not called for help. Cooper was last seen leading a group of anti-Obama protesters outside the White House, including several who demanded the president be hung.
While the militia forces have been very thorough in their "protection", blocking off a public road leading to the mine and forming camp nearby, our hero of the insufficient paperwork appears to have had second thoughts as to why he did this thing. Perhaps.
In an interview with the Medford Mail-Tribune, he denounced the scene near his mine: “What you’re seeing is mostly a spectacle caused by social media and ‘keyboard commandos’ whooping it up.” He seemed eager to draw a curtain on the drama.
“As soon as I get my court arrangements made, the Oath Keepers are leaving,” he said. “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK.”
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—How will American companies respond to fatal Bangladesh factory collapse?:
The death toll has passed 300 in the industrial building collapse in Bangladesh; workers had been ordered to go to work or lose wages even though there were visible cracks in the walls and floors of the building. There's plenty of blame to go around in Bangladesh, including the owner of the unsafe building, the owners of factories located in the building who ordered work to continue, and authorities at every level. The American and European companies whose brands are being found in the wreckage of the building also deserve a look:
Activists combing through the rubble in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka, have already discovered labels and documents linking the factories to major European and American brands, like the Children’s Place, Benetton, Cato Fashions and Mango. |
Just as Walmart initially denied having contracted with the Tazreen factory in which a fire killed more than 100 workers in November, Benetton is denying any association with the collapsed Rana Plaza. That's the thing about networks of subcontractors: they give you plausible deniability. There's also a question of how companies that had subcontractors in Rana Plaza will respond: After the Tazreen fire, some companies paid compensation for the victims and their families. But not Walmart or Sears. Walmart also continues to refuse to join a plan to fund fire safety and other upgrades in the Bangladeshi factories that manufacture its goods.
Bangladeshi workers have been protesting dangerous conditions, but rather than making real safety improvements, their government has put down the protests.
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