CORPORATE CRIMINALITY

In this episode, Chris Hedges focuses on the harsh criticism Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans has received in many quarters, including some with solid ecological qualifications in knowledge and activism. Guest is the film’s director, Jeff Gibbs.  The film is an indictment of a corporate-friendly environmentalist bureaucracy apparently incapable or unwilling of understanding the nature of corporate power. . 

ANDRE VLTCHEK—Huge funds are now being allocated for the mortal propaganda onslaught, originating predominantly in both London and Washington. Millions of pounds and dollars have been allocated and spent, officially and openly, in order to ‘counter’ the voices of Russian, Chinese, Arab, Iranian and Latin American people; voices that are finally reaching ‘the Others’ – the desolate inhabitants of the ‘global south’, the dwellers of the colonies and neo-colonies; the modern-day slaves living in the ‘client’ states.

MoA—There are way more measures needed than Pelosi’s bill allows for. The government must cover all costs for virus testing and Covid-19 care. It must pay sick leave to everyone who has to stay home independent of their job status. Not providing such will prolong the crisis as infected people who need to work because they lack money will otherwise continue to spread the virus. The U.S. and other economies will also need a fiscal injection on the demand side. Send a $5.000 check to every household which makes less than $100,000 per year and include the homeless in it. The money can be taken from the defense budget. A 355 ship navy will never stop a pandemic.

DAVID WALSH—As we noted in our original review, South Korea is one of the most socially unequal societies on the planet. Bong’s film spells out, in a thoughtful and logical manner, the inevitable results of such a division: the impoverished will do almost anything to emerge from their nightmarish conditions, subsisting literally in the underworld. The pampered rich, living in a cocoon, are utterly unprepared for the envy, anger and violence their dominance and arrogance provokes.

Tilford cites a litany of sobering statistics showing just how profligate Americans have been in using and abusing natural resources. For example, between 1900 and 1989 U.S. population tripled while its use of raw materials grew by a factor of 17.  “With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S. uses one-third of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper,” he reports. “Our per capita use of energy, metals, minerals, forest products, fish, grains, meat, and even fresh water dwarfs that of people living in the developing world.”
He adds that the U.S. ranks highest in most consumer categories by a considerable margin, even among industrial nations.