“The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.”
Drinking tea, watching for tornadoes, hoping for power to watch TV. Hey, priorities.
Shocking as this is, here’s a little perspective from 40,000 feet up. I’m just reading Vultures’ Picnic by Greg Palast, where he compares the oil industry’s destruction of the Louisiana wetlands to BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.
“Bottom line, Professor?
“‘Well, the total land loss in Louisiana averages twenty-five thousand acres a year.’
“If like me, you don’t own a farm, 25,000 acres translates into 40 square miles of Louisiana disappearing each year. And the BP spill? ‘We ended up with oil on about five hundred acres of marsh.’
“Cold calc: If you measure disaster by the death of Delta wetland, there’s a Deepwater Horizon every week. But it’s not on TV. It’s just not photogenic.
“Compared to this wetland kill rate, the bit of oil that floated in from BP’s deepwater eruption is a cold sore on a cancer…”
