Blow up

A few months ago, I had the privilege of attending a screening of Catherine Pancake's documentary, Black Diamonds, about mountain top mining in West Virginia (and elsewhere). Hotpotatomash has produced a new video mashup that quickly conveys the horrors of this disastrous mining practice as contrasted with the happy smiley faces mining companies try to slap on it. As one might expect, this incredibly destructive methodology has only been enabled and encouraged by the Bush administration. I won't delve into the utter devastation this mining "process" causes. That is easy enough to see in the video.



The screening I attended was hosted by Pancake and Julia Bonds, the woman who appears in mash's video and who is the main character in Black Diamonds. Bonds went from convenience store clerk to winning the Goldman Prize for environmental activism. At the end of the screening, Bonds stood up and said to the audience, "I want you to think about something, something that should inform your everyday behaviour: every time you turn on a light, a mountain in West Virginia gets blown up."

And Massey Energy is there to profit from the destruction.

Nice job on the mashup, mash!