Democracy Now! Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Today's Headlines

• Iran Accuses Detained Americans of Espionage
• CBS: Obama to Send Up to 40,000 Troops to Afghanistan
• 40 Democrats Threaten to Reject Healthcare Bill over Abortion Restrictions
• Fort Hood Shooter to Be Tried in Military Court
• Survey Highlights Global Concerns over Free Market Capitalism
• Palestinians Knock Down Part of West Bank Wall Again
• EPA Attempts to Silence Agency Critics of Cap and Trade
• Maldives President Urges Developing Nations to Become Carbon Neutral
• Whistleblower: Peak Oil Closer than IEA Forecasts Show
• China Executes Nine over Xinjiang Riots

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  Watchdog: New York State Regulation of Natural Gas Wells Has Been "Woefully Insufficient for Decades."

  The New York-based Toxics Targeting went through the Department of Environmental Conservation’s own database of hazardous substances spills over the past thirty years. They found 270 cases documenting fires, explosions, wastewater spills, well contamination and ecological damage related to gas drilling. Many of the cases remain unresolved. The findings are contrary to repeated government assurances that existing natural gas well regulations are sufficient to safeguard the environment and public health. The state is considering allowing for gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers.

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  Filmmaker Philippe Diaz on "The End of Poverty?"

  Earlier this year, the IMF and the World Bank warned that the financial crisis posed a serious challenge to reducing poverty. The World Bank predicted that the economic crisis could push another 53 million people in the global South into poverty. Well, according to the latest numbers from the United Nations, we’re now up to 2.7 billion people around the world who survive on less than two dollars a day, one billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day. Given the dire statistics and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, how can we see the eradication of poverty? That’s the central question of a new documentary called The End of Poverty?

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  Hoodwinked: Former Economic Hit Man John Perkins Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded -- and How to Remake Them

  John Perkins calls himself a former economic hit man. He has seen the signs of today’s financial meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiasco, the collapse of the banking industry, the rising unemployment rate—these are all familiar to him. Perkins was on the front lines of monitoring and helping create these very events that were once just confined to the Third World. From 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Confessions of An Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire.