Fracking for natural gas documentary

 "Enlightened and fully informed citizen voters from around the nation voting each week on Fracking projects in Podunk, West Virginia.

I see. You like that stuff?"

Were did you get enlightened and fully informed idea from? I do like the idea that all individuals have an input on every specific process in legislation at a federal, state and local level. You don't? What your concern? 

"So, the "people" with about $30 million tied into a vested interest can lobby? Well, that certainly solves the problem!"

That is what freedom allows, but to give corporations the writes "as if" its an individual to lobby is not.

"The problem we have right now Brian is that your vision of the Commons is not shared by about 89% of the people. They see huge vistas of land with no humanoids in sight and think ... OK, we can tap a little gas out here."

Your being weird here, anyway, if the land is protected in law not just by oversight, where if you break it the officers go to jail, not just get fined, do you think they would do it? What you are describing now is what is happening now, with oversight failing and exceptions being made on environment laws without the input of the people. The example of you give of the system working in NY misses the whole point that this has happened after TWO DECADES of fracking and untold amounts of damage. And no one will go to jail, thus why they do it, they can get away with it. 

"These people are not going to protect your Gaia. What they might do is decide that your failure to pick up the trash in your alley is violation of the Commons."

I have the same concerns.

"We have an ideological vision of purity that most people don't share. They don't want contaminated water, but they also recognize that ... every life is a life of pollution of Gaia. They are not ready to create a purity police state."

Not sure why you are interpreting what I am saying like this.

"Are people going to outlaw corporations? "

Again were am I saying to outlaw corporations, another miss interpretation.

"Some day, we will all agree to sit motionlessly under trees and obtain our sustenance from the dew that collects on palm fronds. We will make no mess, we will never defecate or urinate, and we will breath only reluctantly. I'll let you know when we get close to that."

I guess to satisfy you demand for an explanation of the system I propose, cause your have not bothered to look at the links I gave you and are fixiating on charters, as if that is the only thing I am proposing, and I am stating results from the whole system I am proposing ( which you have not looked at) and your projecting and idealizing your projection on a very very very small part of it, I am going to post a new blog on the whole thing and would like you to see the issues with it( There are many), which would help me clarify it. This would be appreciated.

If you want quantitative data, I will need $10,000 to set up an experiment and hire testers.

Fine, just don't be surprised when someone challenges your apparently blanket objective statements - such as "intelligence is rising" - only to find they are observations of what you happen to see around your immediate environment. Also, in my opinion this reduces the integrity of your usual insistence on objective factoids from others who make similar statements.

And the beautiful thing is ... you and I can now share information exposing these conspiracies. Before, we had to wait for Orwell to write a book.

Yes, good point.

"SOPA was a hamhanded attempt to do something perceived as "correct." The problem is - the tools it provides the government can easily lead to a sliding culture of harassment, censorship, and fear.  We have not yet come to grips with the power of the Internet. We have to allow an organic agreement to emerge on how to protect intellectual property. We are not there yet."

As well as those in administrations to whom it was an attempt to do something "correct",  I also try to keep my eye out for those who perhaps knew/ know exactly that it could lead to this very "sliding culture of fear "and were more than happy to have that happen? I can't decide if I'm being paranoid / playing the angry victim mode, or being naive to think that such people don't operate in "the corridors of power".  You ran for Congress didn't you - did you get a chance to see it from the inside? what do you think?

"Yes, we will need people like you to actively protest to counter lies. And we will need you to establish what they are saying and how it is a lie. And we will need people like you to do it even though it doesn't confer an immediate benefit to you or your clan."

Are you lecturing me?

"Whoa! A Prime Minister shuts down an entire industry that is profitable .. just to spite people ..."

I never said the entire industry was profitable. It wasn't. Aspects of it were. Certain pits were. Thatcher and her colleagues weren't interested in this and didn't give a shit about the human cost of the closures.  In fact they contrived ways to make it as difficult as possible for remaining pits to be seen to be making a profit - see below.

"which profitable coal mine in Wales did Maggy shut down?"

Here's one that was shut down a while after her policies had been put in place - Betws:

"When Betws colliery was closed in 1993 the excuse given was that it was unprofitable. Yet British Coal operated at that time what can only be described as a 'scam' to make mines appear unprofitable on the accountant's balance sheets. Instead of Betws selling its coal directly to their customers at the current market price, they had to sell instead to a marketing company set up by British Coal. Betws sold its coal to this marketing company at less than market prices, while the marketing company then sold directly to the customers at the going rate. Thus Betws colliery – and many others that were closed during this period – were guaranteed to make a loss. The architect of this amazing dodge was Swansea born Michael Hesletine, the Trade and Industry Secretary of John Major's Tory government which privatised the industry in 1993, though not after massive opposition from the entire mining and trades union movement. Needless to say, the Betws Colliery management that bought and ran the mine after it was privatised did not employ such suicidal sales techniques, preferring instead to live in the real world.

It is worth while pausing to think about this, and perhaps we may be forgiven for dwelling on it somewhat. The Tory cabinet at the time, much like the current Labour cabinet, had a pretty thick sprinkling of multi-millionaire business men amongst its members. It is inconceivable that these people would unknowingly run a coal business on the basis of selling at a price that was guaranteed to make a loss. Experience may have given many of us a low opinion of politicians generally but this level of stupidity is surely impossible even for them. The only conclusion that can be drawn, clearly, is that this loss making policy was deliberate, and designed to give the flimsiest of pretexts to sell off the mining industry on the grounds that it was loss making.

At the time of privatisation it was pointed out that if the deep mining industry had been subsidised at the same level as the nuclear industry, then the coal produced by Britain's deep mines could be given away free! In the 'dash for gas' that followed, Britain was in the ludicrous position of closing down its deep coal mines but then buying French gas for our power stations via a trans-channel pipeline, and subsiding the French company who supplied it (Electricité de France) by £140 million in 1993 alone. As if this wasn't enough, this was in accordance with a deal signed between Britain and France as far back as 1981."

Betws mine profitability is also included in this report:

I can probably find some more....