Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

So begins an article in the Financial Post the other day written by Lawrence Solomon titled Avertible Catastrophe The construct of the article is so completely damning to our country, our government and our culture

Stunning incompetence

Lack of will.

shows an incomprehensible scarcity of intellectual imagination.  

This high-resolution image shows Petit Bois Island (top right) and the eastern end of Horn Island (top left) on June 26. In general, oil-covered waters are silvery and cleaner waters are blue-gray.

NASA Earth Observatory

On the occasion of the BP oil spill disaster, President Obama’s delivered an Oval Office speech last night-a masterpiece of milquetoast faux-outrage. The speech was all about “clean energy” and “ending our dependence on fossil fuels”. Faced with the BP oil spill-likely the most severe environmental disaster ever-this was President Obama’s response: Polite outrage, and vague plans to “get tough”, “set aside just compensation” and “do something”.

President Obama missed what the BP oil spill disaster is really about. Though unquestionably an environmental disaster, the BP oil spill is much much more.

The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy.

Corporate Anarchy

I am filled with a sense of sickness in the pit of my stomach, in my soul.

Greece to Sell State Assets to Raise 3 Billion Euros (Update1)

By Christos Ziotis and Natalie Weeks

June 2 (Bloomberg) — Greece plans to sell stakes in railway and water companies and the postal service to raise 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) and help reduce a budget deficit that sparked the debt crisis across southern Europe.

“We decided to accelerate the privatizations process,” Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told reporters in Athens today. The government aims to raise 1 billion euros a year for the next three year from the sales.

Bloomberg – Greece

You should understand that this is “The Plan”

The plan was that by cutting the funding for government, government would have to cut back on what it does: regulating business, protecting regular people against powerful interests, building infrastructure, educating kids, taking care of the poor and elderly. With government (We, the People) out of the way businesses could be unleashed and really start to make money. And for those who could afford to pay, private companies would take over those other functions. That was called “privatization.”

Neo-Liberalism: The Plan

The black plague spreads.

The leadership lies.

The CEO’s spin.

We are not ignorant of the horrific nightmare you have unleashed.

Chris Hedges has a piece on TruthDig today about our corporate leaders and how these ‘Little Eichmanns’ are doing exactly what many thought would happen when you commoditize every living breathing thing on the planet.

You die.

Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march. It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global.

Those who carry out this global genocide-men like BP’s Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who assures us that “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume”-are, to steal a line from Ward Churchill, “little Eichmanns.” They serve Thanatos, the forces of death, the dark instinct Sigmund Freud identified within human beings that propels us to annihilate all living things, including ourselves. These deformed individuals lack the capacity for empathy. They are at once banal and dangerous. They possess the peculiar ability to organize vast, destructive bureaucracies and yet remain blind to the ramifications. The death they dispense, whether in the pollutants and carcinogens that have made cancer an epidemic, the dead zone rapidly being created in the Gulf of Mexico, the melting polar ice caps or the deaths last year of 45,000 Americans who could not afford proper medical care, is part of the cold and rational exchange of life for money.

Hedges

With as much horrific news that emanates from the Gulf of Mexico and with so many warning signs regarding the climate it was welcome news to see this today.

In 2009, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States saw their largest absolute and percentage decline (405 million metric tons or 7.0 percent) since the start of EIA’s comprehensive record of annual energy data that begins in 1949, more than 60 years ago.  While emissions have declined in three out of the last four years, 2009 was exceptional.  As discussed below, emissions developments in 2009 reflect a combination of factors, including some particular to the economic downturn, other special circumstances during the year, and other factors that may reflect persistent trends in our economy and our energy use.

EIA.gov

The Full Moon vaults into the heavens tonight.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colours from our sight

Red is grey and yellow, white

But we decide which is right

And which is an illusion

Moody Blues – Late Lament

She reflects the light of the sun down onto the mantle of earth below.