Some links from the show on Feb 25

Matt Taibbi on the last of the republican debates and the state of the republican party
Chickens coming home to roost!

--------------

Good pieces on Portugal and Greece and the lessons to not be learned about austerity.

Democracy Now! segment with Paul Mason discussing the true state of Greece and some alarming predictions for Europe and America

--------------

Oil: In Perpetuity No More

Oil touches nearly every single aspect of the lives of those in the industrialised world. Most of our food, clothing, electronics, hygiene products and transportation simply would not exist without this resource.

Occupy defends the Volcker Rule

Radical protesters are reborn as policy analysts; they tell the SEC to curb Wall Street speculators

'Perpetual Growth Myth' Leading World to Meltdown: Experts

‎"The current system is broken," says Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prestigious Blue Planet prize in 2010. "It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on."

-----------------

Life in the Constitution Free Zone

----------------

Civilisation faces 'perfect storm of ecological and social problems'

Some reading recommendations

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg

Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James C. Hansen

The Mosquito Coast

Here is a short bit from the beginning of Peter Weir's 1986 film The Mosquito Coast, based on the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux published in 1981.



A really interesting, if much under-appreciated film, and novel, about a resourceful man's growing dissatisfaction with the declining USA and his monomaniacal attempt to create a utopia in the jungles of Honduras.

UPCOMING: The Future of Media — And What You Can Do About It

Craig Aaron of the nonpartisan Free Press is coming to the University of Illinois next Tuesday, Feb. 8, to talk about the future of media — and what you can do about it.

We're at a critical moment. The decisions we make in the next few years will determine whether we still have quality journalism, whether the Internet remains free and open … and whether our democracy continues to flourish.

Instead of leaving those monumental decisions to Rupert Murdoch or AT&T executives, we can demand that the public has a voice. On Feb. 8 from 4–6 p.m., He will talk about what Free Press is doing to protect that voice and will discuss the latest happenings in Washington that are reshaping media and technology.

What: The Future of Media — And What You Can Do About It
When: Wednesday, Feb. 8, 4–6 p.m.
Where: 213 Gregory Hall, University of Illinois

Thoughts on undue corporate influence on government and media

This is a reality check. We live in a post-Citizens United
era. We live in an America where, as you know, we're at the mercy of for-profit corporations.

They exert huge control over our government through
lobbying, and now they have made their lobbying dollars even more
valuable. Now the Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people
and corporate lobbying dollars are as good as political speech. So now our
election process is even more corrupted by money than it was before.

Before citizens united, corporations got about $250, in the form of subsidies, tax
breaks, etc, for every single lobbying dollar they sent to Washington, D.C.
$250 for one $ by exerting control over what the legislators were writing into law.
Now they get to throw down even more money to get a bigger say in who is
voting on that law. This can't be the way for our country to continue.
It will destroys what remains of the rule of law in this country.

For-profit corporations have no concern for the public interest, yet they have
majority say in our government? Corporations are willing to deceive and
harm the public, yet they have control over the content and presentation of
the vast majority of the media? This must be changed.

An Interview with Patch Adams

Why we intervened in Libya, from January 28th

Snippets from our January 28th broadcast/stream:

We didn't intervene in Libya to stop a massacre. We don't stop massacres all the time, like in Syria. And we cause massacres of our own. We intervened [in Libya] because of our perceived material interests in Libya and the region. The evidence for this is overwhelming, including from our own Ambassador to Libya's mouth in a New York Times article from September of last year.

Here is the quote:

"We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things”
after the country had begun opening up to the West six years ago, he said.
“If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”
[Ambassador Cretch's] remarks were a rare nod to the tacit economic stakes in the Libyan conflict for the United States and other Western countries, not only because of Libya’s oil resources but also because of the goods and services those resources enable it to purchase."

-US embassy reopens in Tripoli, ambassador eager to get American businesses into the country to exploit new opportunities there
article
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/world/africa/us-reopens-its-embassy-in-libya.html?_r=1

So what we have is a pretty ugly picture, one where US empire is reaching out to consolidate its grasp on the world's dwindling oil reserves and unexploited markets; where US empire announces its role as protector of human rights, while ignoring more pressing problems of human rights around the world; where US-built bombs, guided by US trained forces, were dropped on innocent civilians; and where the new regime, empowered by our violence and killing, is now committing the same human rights violations that we claimed as justification to intervene militarily in the first place.

If this process seems familiar, you're catching a whiff of the core of US foreign policy, the stuff that Wikileaks showed was the real focus of state department internal memos...on the surface we say we're about democracy, development, and protecting human rights, but in insider emails we see that's just the window dressing. Our foreign policy is really about securing oil reserves and projecting power in oil rich regions, expanding US business interests abroad, and destroying any resistance regardless of the human misery caused. For more recent examples, see Iraq and Afghanistan.