Mountain Top Removal, as practiced in Appalachia, is perhaps best described as a warfare on America, Americans, and the planet. A practice filled with devastating implications, about the only redeeming feature is its short term profit making for those who rate the dollars in their pocket above essentially everything else. Many of those who encounter it end up with disgust about the practice, such as these two guards hired to ‘deal with’ MTR protesters.
This video is interesting because it highlights practices used by Massey Energy to try to deal with protestors, from ‘psychological’ operations (offering them coffee, food; playing loud music and using noise makers to prevent protestors from sleeping) to entrapment actions to entice potentially prosecutable acts (such as encouraging protestors up in trees to throw down items, in ‘exchange’, that will be used as a pretext for claiming assault (‘throwing things at security guards’).
Now, from this tape, some items/words:
Perspective on the protests.
I served my country so that people like [these] could do what they’re doing. … I totally respect them.
Choices in trying to get Massey Energy’s attention and the risks of doing so.
There are usually only a few ways to go about something. … especially with Massey.
They own people, they do … people are scared to death of them.
Democracy in West Virginia
Coal companies should not own a state.
The importance of making things like Coal River Wind a reality.
I’d love to see an alternative to Mountain Top Removal.
Until there’s something to take the place of it, that’s all there’ll be to do.
It is time to provide those alternatives to MTR, to make them a reality, so that Appalachia’s citizens (West Virginia and elsewhere) can stop feeling that they need to rape their neighborhoods to put food on the table.
Hat tip to The Dergonalizer.