The Corporation

This is really informative and explains who, what, where and how corporations got so big and how they received the status of personhood. 



Here's all 23 chapters of The Corporation which I have uploaded at the best possible quality for your viewing pleasure. Independent filmmakers need your support if they are to continue making films independently. If you support the film, please support the filmmakers too. You can make a contribution, large or small, at www.thecorporation.com, or better still, enjoy over 8 hours of excellent extras on the 2-DVD Special Edition which you can also get at www.thecorporation.com. Buying from us supports our continuing grassroots outreach efforts. Thanks!
The Corporation is today's dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. This 26 award-winning documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and future of the modern business corporation and the increasing role it plays in society and our everyday lives. 

1. 1 7:15 Watched THE CORPORATION [1/23] What is a Corporation? by machbar 887,310 views
2. 2 4:55 Watched THE CORPORATION [2/23] Birth by machbar 380,790 views
3. 3 5:47 THE CORPORATION [3/23] A Legal "Person" by machbar 317,948 views
4. 4 2:12 THE CORPORATION [4/23] Externalities by machbar 262,269 views
5. 5 22:54 THE CORPORATION [5/23] Case Histories by machbar 332,426 views
6. 6 0:46 THE CORPORATION [6/23] The Pathology of Commerce by machbar 192,462 views
7. 7 6:14 THE CORPORATION [7/23] Monstrous Obligations by machbar 194,653 views
8. 8 8:05 THE CORPORATION [8/23] Mindset by machbar 204,291 views
9. 9 2:10 THE CORPORATION [9/23] Trading on 9/11 by machbar 167,140 views
10. 10 7:21 THE CORPORATION [10/23] Boundary Issues by machbar 169,606 views
11. 11 9:56 THE CORPORATION [11/23] Basic Training by machbar 209,648 views
12. 12 3:00 THE CORPORATION [12/23] Perception Managment by machbar 146,318 views
13. 13 3:35 THE CORPORATION [13/23] Like a Good Neighbour by machbar 125,803 views
14. 14 4:24 THE CORPORATION [14/23] A Private Celebration by machbar 139,626 views
15. 15 3:09 THE CORPORATION [15/23] Triumph of the Shill by machbar 123,044 views
16. 16 5:48 THE CORPORATION [16/23] Advancing the Front by machbar 124,233 views
17. 17 11:28 THE CORPORATION [17/23] Unsettling Accounts by machbar 238,784 views
18. 18 4:46 THE CORPORATION [18/23] Expansion Plan by machbar 148,409 views
19. 19 6:57 THE CORPORATION [19/23] Taking The Right Side by machbar 248,456 views
20. 20 3:24 THE CORPORATION [20/23] Hostile Takeover by machbar 119,348 views
21. 21 8:57 THE CORPORATION [21/23] Democracy Ltd. by machbar 131,124 views
22. 22 17:17 Watched THE CORPORATION [22/23] Psycho Therapies by machbar 151,773 views
23. 23 5:06 THE CORPORATION [23/23] Prognosis by machbar 109,551 views

Fracked-off: Gas extraction 'causes quakes'

View No fracking around: Protests against unconventional gas extraction in a larger map

No fracking around: Protests against unconventional gas extraction

The US alone possesses 2,074 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to numbers cited by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry lobby group. 

And the International Energy Agency believes the world could be "entering a Golden Age of Gas". But unconventional extraction techniques have been linked to health and environmental problems, inspiring protests around the world.

Public · 9,513 views

Created on Jan 24 · By chrisa · Updated 3 days ago

Rate this map · Write a comment · KML · 

	11 earthquakes in Ohio After a 4.0 magnitude quake in Ohio on New Year’s Eve, some 200 people mobilised at the Ohio statehouse in mid-January 2012 to protest extraction. “We do not need to turn our state into a chemical d...
	Demonstrators invade Lancashire drilling test site A group of nine people ran on to a site operated by Cuadrilla Resource before dawn in November 2011, and used climbing equipment to clamber up the metal structure. "The move towards 'extreme energy'...
	Quakes and arrests in Blackpool In August 2011, two men dressed as construction workers were arrested after unfurling banners in Blackpool to protest fracking. The process has been linked to earthquakes in the region.
	Anti-frackers erect giant teepee on legislature lawn Opponents of shale gas extraction in the province of New Brunswick constructed a giant teepee and camped on the lawn of the legislature in November 2011. Indigenous people were at the forefront of d...
	Bulgaria bans fracking after protests On January 18, 2012, Bulgaria's government became the second European country after France to ban fracking. The move by politicians followed large street protests by environmentalists.
	Poland to push ahead Despite protests, and a ban in neighboring Bulgaria, Poland plans to push ahead with unconventional gas exploration, the foreign ministry said on January 19, 2011.
	New Jersey announces one year fracking ban Amid public opposition, and studies linking fracking to water contamination, New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie issued a one year ban on the unconventional extraction technique in January...
	Gas masks to take on Shell In August 2011, demonstrators wearing gas masks took to the streets of Cape Town to protest hydraulic fracking plans from Shell.
	Sabouters target gas installations Northern British Columbia province is in the midst of an unconventional gas boom. But some residents are unhappy with the environmental impact. Six targeted explosions rocked the region in 2008-2009 a...
	Quebec bans fracking Quebec's natural resources minister confirmed in March 2011, that the province would no longer authorise fracking in the search for oil and gas. Earthquakes in Ohio and the UK are linked to hydraulic fracturing for unconventional gas, worrying residents. Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 26 Jan 2012 15:32

States such as Ohio face high unemployment, so residents often welcome gas extraction [GALLO/GETTY			]

A new technique to extract lucrative hard-to-reach natural gas is causing earthquakes across Middle America, literally.

Hydraulic fracking - pounding streams of high pressure water and chemicals into rock formations to loosen gas deposits - has been hailed as a solution to the US's dependence on foreign petroleum. But residents of Ohio and other states worry the technology is moving the earth beneath them.

Susie Beiersdorfer was sitting in a deli in Youngstown, Ohio, on New Year's Eve, when she felt the 4.0 magnitude quake which made headlines across the US. "It felt like a truck hitting the side of a building," Beiersdorfer, a geologist who used to work in the energy industry, told Al Jazeera.

While this quake was one of the biggest to be linked to fracking and disposal of waste water from the process, it would not be the last. "They [state authorities] just released information on another quake that happened on January 13," she said.

In early January, the state government - which is responsible for regulating the industry - ordered the shutdown of five wells near Youngstown, after quakes rocked the area.

At least 11 earthquakes have been recorded around Ohio since March, causing controversy for the 177 deep well injection sites in the state which are being pumped full of nearly 37,000 barrels of toxic waste water daily.

Warning signs

"In the case of Youngstown, if we had reacted at the time of the first earthquakes, this well could have been stopped nine months earlier," John Armbruster, a professor of geology at Columbia University who has studied fracking, told Al Jazeera. "The earthquakes were there to provide a warning: Stop injecting." 

Fears that fracking caused Ohio earthquakes

By altering underground rock formations, fracking can expedite and accentuate earthquakes which - under normal circumstances would happen in the next 100 or thousand years, he said. "There should be a long-term concern about earthquakes that can result in a situation like this."

A spokesman for D&L energy, the company which allegedly caused the problem by sending waste-water deep underground, told reporters there is no proof his company caused the quake.

"It is in the best interest of the community to allow the research process to play out," Vince Bevacqua, a company spokesman, told a press conference in mid-January. "The well that people are concerned about - rightly or wrongly - is offline and will stay offline until we have answers."

Kate Sinding, an attorney with Natural Resources Defence Council, said environmentalists are "concerned these seismic events could be exacerbating cracks and fissures which can serve as pathways for toxic waste water - really nasty stuff - which could migrate over time to impact drinking water."

Water problems

A study from The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published in May 2011, found that water samples taken closes to gas wells had on average 17 times more contaminants than normal. 

In some cases, particularly in Western Canada, residents living close to gas installations have been able to light their tap water on fire because of contamination.

A draft study of drinking water in Wyoming, released by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in August, found clear links between fracking and water pollution.

"The way these earthquakes are trending is towards the northwest, where our source of drinking water is located," said Beiersdorfer, who has lived in Ohio for the past 18-years. "They [companies] are using two to eight millions gallons (seven to thirty million liters) for each well. There are documented fish-kills in our streams."

Larry Douglas Brown, a geologist at Cornell University, believes earthquakes linked to waste water are "a fairly rare occurrence" and that "risks have been magnified by a politicised environment".

Some water contaminates linked to extraction including "radioactive elements" and other "noxious stuff" have, however, "raised special concern", Brown told Al Jazeera.

Similar seismic events have hit the UK, where government regulators have been accused of "appalling complacency" by opposition politicians after earthquakes linked to fracking shook the city of Blackpool.

In the US, public opinion is mixed in the battle between job creation through energy exploitation and environmental protection.

Seventy-two per cent of Ohio voters want to see fracking stopped until more studies are done on its environmental and geological impacts, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on January 19. However, 64 per cent of voters think drilling should continue despite possible harms.

Health problems

"We really don't know what this technology means for the environment over the long-term," Sinding, the lawyer, told Al Jazeera. “Our primary concern is that the rush to develop these unconventional supplies is resulting in real health and environmental impacts because of a lack of appropriate safeguards at the state and federal level.”

People living near unconventional gas facilities have complained of skin rashes, headaches, neurological damage and other ailments, but data does not exist to conclusively link this anecdotal evidence to gas extraction. 

A thorough study of the problem could cost upwards of $100m, officials from the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry told Abrahm Lustgarten, a reporter with the investigative site ProPublica who has covered the issue extensively.  

While thorough data on the long-term effects on fracking does not exist, policymakers and energy companies are moving full steam ahead to increase extraction.

Natural gas, much of it unconventional and requiring hydraulic fracking "has the potential, at least, to cause a paradigm shift in fuelling North America's energy future", Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy, noted in a 2010 report.

Booming industry

Are we entering a Golden Age of Gas? wonders a special report from the International Energy Agency from 2011. The US alone possesses 2,074 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to numbers cited by America's Natural Gas Alliance, an industry lobby group.

"The combination of two technologies - horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing - made it possible to produce shale gas economically, and from 2006 to 2010 US shale gas production grew by an average of 48 per cent per year," the US Energy Information Administration noted in its 2011 Annual Energy Outlook.

South Africa faces concerns over fracking

Opposition to the process has, however, intensified along with extraction, even in economically troubled regions such as Ohio, which has seen its manufacturing base hammered by outsourcing and foreign competition in recent years.

"This shale [gas] boom does not have a safety net, for the workers or local infrastructure," Beiersdorfer said. "It's another example of industry coming here, extracting the resources, taking the profits out and leaving the devastation behind."

Like other environmentalists, she is happy that President Barack Obama recently issued a temporary block on the Keystone XL pipeline, which proposed to move massive amounts of unconventional oil from Canada's tar-sands through the US heartland. 

Concerns about water contamination have led several jurisdictions, including the state of New York, France, the Canadian province of Quebec and Bulgaria to suspend or ban hydraulic fracking. Images of blue flames gushing from rural faucets, along with pipelines and drilling stations cutting through rolling fields entered the popular imagination with the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary film Gas Land.

"We are seeing a lot of litigation, where individuals are claiming their drinking water is being contaminated or they are otherwise facing health risks from gas development," Sinding said.

While earthquakes have garnered significant media attention, problems like water quality - which often are presented as a clash of numbers between various scientists - are harder for the press to explain. Contamination happens over time, rather than in sudden shifts of tectonic plates, so it can be harder for people to notice.

"With the attention this [earthquakes and problems linked to fracking] is getting now, I hope we don't just go back to business as usual," professor Armbruster said.

Fact checking the CNN debate in Jacksonville

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 02:15 AM ET, 01/27/2012

 

(Paul Sancya/AP)
We can hardly believe that there won’t be another GOP presidential debate for about a month—assuming there are enough candidates left. Here’s our round-up of bloopers and dubious statements at the CNN debate in Jacksonville, Fla., in the the order in which they were made.
As always, we may delve deeper into other statements in the coming days — and please remember that we do not award Pinocchios for instant fact checks, only full columns.

“What I said was: We want everybody to learn English because we don’t want — I didn’t use the word ‘Spanish.’”

— Newt Gingrich
Gingrich complained about a radio ad aired by the Romney campaign that claimed that Gingrich had said that Spanish was “the language of the ghetto.” (Romney at first suggested he was not familiar with the ad, but it ends with his voice saying he approved of it.)
Gingrich is technically correct that he did not specifically single out “Spanish” during a speech in 2007, but he was speaking about bilingual education and virtually everyone assumed he was referring to Spanish. In fact, the uproar was so strong in the Latino community that Gingrich taped what was in effect an apology — in Spanish.
You can watch a clip of his speech and mea culpa below.

“Honduras which stood up for the rule of law, which threw out a would-be dictator who was using the Chavez playbook from Venezuela in order to try to run for reelection in Honduras. And the United States government, instead of standing behind the pro-democracy — the people in the parliament, the people in the supreme court, who tried to enforce the constitution of Honduras — instead of siding with them, the Democrats — President Obama sided with two other people in Central America and South America. Chavez and Castro and Obama sided against the people of Honduras.”

— Rick Santorum
Santorum’s statement reflects a commonly held viewpoint among conservatives, but it glosses over the fact that there was a coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.
The Obama administration, working with the Organization of American States, refused to recognize the parliamentary leader who had been named president and instead tried to broker a compromise that would have allowed Zelaya to serve out his term. But that effort failed. Eventually a new election was held and another man was elected president.

“We discovered, to our shock, Governor Romney owns shares of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Governor Romney made a million dollars off of selling some of that. Governor Romney owns — and has an investment in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians.”

— Gingrich

“My investments are not made by me. My investments for the last 10 years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee.”

— Mitt Romney
Romney’s defense of his blind trust prompted Democrats to circulate a quote from his 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy in which he seemed to mock the idea, saying, “The blind trust is an age-old ruse.”
Indeed, questions have been raised about how “blind” Romney’s arrangements have been, especially since the trustee managing the funds also has represented Romney’s legal interests. For instance, the trustee invested $1 million in a fund managed by one of Romney’s sons, which on the surface appears a bit cozy.
In any case, Gingrich overstated the case when he asserted that Romney owned “shares” of housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who some blame for a role in the 2008 economic crisis.
As Romney noted, his investment portfolio contained mutual funds that invested in the bonds of those institutions. Bond do not represent ownership in a company, but loans to it. Gingrich has such holdings too, as do millions of Americans who own mutual funds. As an investor in a fund, you have no say over which investments are made by the portfolio manager; you can only pick a fund with a investment strategy that you favor.
The Boston Globe has reported that at least some of Romney’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac investments were made through a non-blind charitable trust but the Romney campaign has disputed the report.

“Newt’s mentioned this quite a few times about balancing the budget for four times. I went back and looked at the record. The national debt during those four years actually went up about a trillion dollars. What he’s talking about is he doesn’t count the money he takes out of Social Security.”

— Ron Paul
Finally, after the gadzillion times we have called Gingrich out on this claim, someone on stage actually says it isn’t true.
As we have noted, Gingrich was speaker for only two years of those “balanced budgets.” We have also noted that the “gross debt” — including bonds to Social Security and Medicare that eventually must be paid back— kept rising during this period. Gingrich’s response during the debate — that those were the budget rules of Washington — was so lame that it actually earned him a few boos.
But Paul overstates the amount of additional debt. According to the White House historical tables, the gross debt rose $400 billion in that four-year period, not $1 trillion.

“I don’t like the Obama plan. His plan cuts Medicare by $500 billion. We didn’t of course touch anything like that. He raises taxes by $500 billion. We didn’t do that. He wasn’t interested in the eight percent of the people that were uninsured. He was concerned about a hundred percent of the people of the country.”

— Mitt Romney
This litany of supposed differences between the Obama health care law and “Romneycare” is a bit specious. We have previously shown how the Medicare reference is misleading. But the last line is truly puzzling.
Both Obama and Romney were trying to deal with the problem of the uninsured, and both try to deal with it through an individual mandate. In Massachusetts, the percentage of uninsured was much lower than nationwide, since currently 17 percent of the non-elderly population in the United States is uninsured. Obama, like Romney, wanted to get 100 percent of the population covered but according to the Congressional Budget Office he fell short. Obama’s plan will eventually cover 95 percent, the CBO estimates.

“I’ve never voted for a Democrat when there was a Republican on the ballot. And in my state of Massachusetts, you could register as an independent and go vote in which either primary happens to be very interesting. And any chance I got to vote against Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, I took. I have always voted for a Republican any time there was a Republican on the ballot.”

— Romney
Romney has given different statements over the years concerning his vote for Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic primary, when he was a registered independent. Over time, his comments have ranged from liking Tsongas’s ideas over Bill Clinton’s (1994) to making a tactical vote to get the weakest candidate in the Democratic field (2007).
But he certainly had a choice that year to cast a Republican ballot — then-President George H.W. Bush was in a hard-fought race against Pat Buchanan.

“This president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip. This president, I think he threw Israel under the bus with regards to defining the ‘67 borders as the starting point of negotiations.”

— Romney
The first part of this statement is simply incorrect. Obama, in both his 2009 and 2011 speeches before the U.N. General Assembly, made reference to the rocket attacks into Israel. The tone about Israel also shifted over the years, with the president making no mention of settlements in last year’s speech.
Here’s what Obama said in 2009:

“We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. ...We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It’s not paid by politicians. It’s paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It’s paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own.”

Here’s what Obama said in 2011:

“Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.”

As for Obama’s statement on the 1967 lines, he made it clear that “land swaps” would be part of the negotiations. Obama’s statement was certainly a significant diplomatic shift, but it is debateable that it was the equivalent of throwing Israel “under the bus.” Obama quickly clarified his statement and was thanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech before Congress.

Palestinian “was technically an invention of the late 1970s. And it was clearly so. Prior to that they were Arabs. Many of them were either Syrian, Lebanese or Egyptian or Jordanian.”

— Gingrich
Gingrich, attempting the double down on his claim that the Palestinians are an “invented people,” gets his facts wrong here.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization, for instance, was founded at an Arab League conference held in Cairo in 1964. The Palestinian National Charter, issued in 1964, refers repeatedly to the “Palestinian Arab people.” The PLO was granted observer status at the United Nations in 1974.
We are not sure what is significant about “the late 1970s” in Gingrich’s mind.