Matt Taibbi does a good job explaining the games greedy people play: “The People vs. Goldman Sachs.”
An excerpt…
Goldman was like a car dealership that realized it had a whole lot full of cars with faulty brakes. Instead of announcing a recall, it surged ahead with a two-fold plan to make a fortune: first, by dumping the dangerous products on other people, and second, by taking out life insurance against the fools who bought the deadly cars.
Excellent Chris Hedges interview with Brother Cornel West: “The Obama Deception.”
Also, a good meditation on irrationality from David Michael Green: “The Shame of Regressivism.”
Excellent essay by Juan Cole: “The New Sputnik.”
Some documentaries pack a punch. After watching Gasland (2010) I felt like the wind had been knocked out.
Briefly, for those who haven’t seen it, the movie pursues the story of natural gas extraction, which involves a process called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), which is accomplished by pumping vast amounts of toxic chemicals deep into the earth. The movie focuses on where all that poison goes, after injection.
That sounds bad enough, but the beauty part is what has become known as the “Halliburton Loophole.” Cooked up in the corporate meth lab of Cheney/Bush, this 2005 bill exempts gas companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act, allows them to keep secret the contents of their toxic brew, and completely removes the Environmental Protection Agency from the picture. A greedy devil’s dream come true.
People who live near these wells enjoy showing the filmmaker how they can now light their tap water on fire. No one seems interested in drinking the stuff. How did we come to this? Are we so addicted to energy that we’re willing to sacrifice our ability to live?
After Fukushima, I was amazed to hear people scoff at the dangers of nuclear radiation. They want their electricity, and aren’t willing to consider any notion of possible limits in exchange for safety or sanity. We hear the same attitudes about oil consumption, essentially choosing power over life. Native Americans call this way of thinking the Death Path. Well named.
James Howard Kunstler nails it on the head: “Lying Is the New Normal.”