Massey Energy - the American Taliban

Pat Lamarche, the Green Party candidate for VP in the 2004 presidential election, remembers the world outrage when the Taliban exploded priceless centuries-old Bamiyan Buddhas that had been carved into the side of a mountain in Afghanistan. Now Massey Energy plans to blow up one of the most historically and spiritually significant places in the United States, where 10,000 Americans stood together and were bombed by an earlier incarnation of corporate greed. They joined in a uniquely American solidarity, willing to give their lives on Blair Mountain. Now that very spot becomes ground zero for the Massey corporation "bottom line at any cost" short-sighted profiteering.

But now Massey’s planning on destroying more than just the environment on the world’s oldest mountain range using explosives much like the ones used by the Taliban.

As I type, Blair Mountain in West Virginia is crawling with Massey’s people protected by Massey’s armed guards preparing the mountain and everything on it for obliteration. That’s significant not just because they’re going to explode a mountain — the next in line of more than 500 destroyed so far — but because this isn’t the first time Blair Mountain has been crawling with guns for hire.

That’s right, in 1921 more than 10,000 coal miners assembled to protest disastrous working conditions, to free imprisoned miners and to push back against industry executives who they believed had a local miner-sympathizing police chief assassinated. What resulted was the bloodiest battle on American soil since the Civil War. And that makes Blair Mountain hallowed ground.

This battle is significant for other reasons. First, the mining companies fought the workers with hired soldiers — the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency — and they hired private planes to drop bombs on the workers. That’s right, 20th century corporate interests bombed U.S. citizens and that’s reason enough to make Blair Mountain a national shrine and not a strip mine.

Ironic to this month’s tale of the Afghan’s search for any remaining culture, in 2006 the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed America’s 11 most endangered historic places. Blair Mountain is No. 2. The Trust plainly describes Blair Mountain: “The 1,600-acre Spruce Fork Ridge is the site of a 1921 armed insurrection of unionized coal miners fighting for better working conditions and an end to the oppressive control of the coal industry in southern West Virginia.”

If Massey — I call them the Appalachian Taliban — blows up Blair Mountain, that battle will officially be lost.

Pat LaMarche lives in Yarmouth, Maine and is the author of "Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States." She was the Green Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, with David Cobb as its presidential candidate. Pat may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com

read the rest of Pat's article here:In Afghanistan or W. Virginia, Outrageous Is Outrageous | CommonDreams.org