disaster

The oil companies' conduct in the Gulf of Mexico are the "equivalent of getting drunk on a fifth of liquor, driving 80 miles an hour through a school zone, and killing a child," says Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire radio host and attorney representing Gulf residents in their lawsuit against BP. But despite such conduct, BP wants to keep drilling, claiming it'll cost jobs if they don't keep pumping out oil.Papantonio joins us via Skype to give us the latest on the lawsuit, the spill, and the oil--which doesn't just go away, no matter what the companies would have us believe. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster woke many people up to the real dangers behind deep water oil drilling. Yet companies around the world are still drilling in deep water, putting us all at risk. In this video, Sim McKenna - climber and Greenpeace activist - discusses his preparations with a Greenpeace team to occupy the Stena Don oil rig in the deep water in the Arctic Ocean. Patrick Hennessey joined the British army in 2004 and served in Iraq and Afghanistan; along the way, he wrote an acclaimed book, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, detailing his experiences.

The favorite bogeyman of the Right, Social Security insolvency, is rearing its ugly head once again. Obama's deficit commission has been told that no solution is off the table, and Dean Baker notes it wouldn't be the first time that a Democratic administration went forward with plans that a Republican couldn't sell to the American people. Baker joins us via Skype to remind us once again that Social Security is solvent for many years, and that there are simple fixes for it if there are problems. He also notes that austerity is a lousy prescription for an economy suffering from a lack of spending. Yesterday we spoke about the problems with charitable giving by billionaires at the expense of paying their taxes. For many charitable givers in the United States, a bigger problem looms; laws about providing "material support" for terrorism have placed a stranglehold on where donors can send their money. Ghassan Elashi, co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, faces a 65 year sentence for providing material support through his foundation, which was the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. before it was shut down by the Bush administration in 2001. Elashi's daughter Noor, a writer and activist, joins us in studio along with Medea Benjamin of Code Pink to discuss what these cases mean for other organizations trying to help civilians in war-torn areas like Gaza. The United Nations has declared the flooding in Pakistan one of the worst disasters in the organization's history, calling for its largest disaster response effort, but it's gone largely unreported here. 14 million people have been affected, and at least 1600 killed. Funds have been slower to come in than in many recent disasters, and agencies are calling for donations to help the victims--you can find links below to donate. Finally, Laura has some thoughts on Verizon and Google's plan to disrupt Net Neutrality--and what it means for shows like GRITtv.

"Anything BP does and doesn't do is to preserve their profits and their future ability to operate in the United States, no more, no less." That's according to "Martha," a hazardous waste worker in the Gulf, who joins us via Skype anonymously to report on the conditions workers are facing cleaning up BP's mess. "Martha" has been reporting on conditions to the blog The Political Carnival, where more of her stories of workers being fired, prisoner labor used in cleanup, improper training and safety conditions, and of course, following the money around the trail of contracts and confusion that is the Gulf Coast post-Deepwater Horizon. War has become normal, and the wars we engage in have become open-ended enterprises, notes historian and best-selling author Andrew Bacevich. More importantly, our ongoing state of war is one that has been created by politicians from both parties, and our entire way of life in the U.S. is implicated in its creation. In part one of a two-part interview, Bacevich joins Laura in studio to talk about his new book, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the moment when he, as an army officer, realized that the story he'd been told about why we fight wasn't the full tale.

We've heard plenty about the recession in the U.S., but what about the rest of the world? ; Countries across Europe have faced budget crunches and conservative governments are using the crisis as an excuse to roll back the social safety net that most have enjoyed for decades.Many of the problems--and the solutions--sound sadly familiar. Lowered taxes on the rich and corporations, falling wages, and deregulation led to the crisis, which is being shifted onto the backs of the working class--as Michael Hudson notes, putting the class war back in business. Hudson joins us in studio, along with Richard Wolff, to discuss the economic crisis in Europe, what we can learn about the response to it and apply back at home. Here's a hint: it involves organized labor.Last weekend, while at Netroots Nation, Laura had the opportunity to chat with Representative Donna Edwards.