Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth Audiobook (Free)

#1 NY Situations BESTSELLER • Big Coal and oil Versus Democracy-Winner Take All

In 2010 2010, what “earthquake swarm” joined the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia-including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove-was marketed at auction for over $1 million to a man who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister from the small country of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and discovered a about Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue Condition Russia, as well as the Richest, Many Destructive Industry on the planet zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating cafe modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread hooking up these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.

With her trademark black humor, Maddow will take us on the switchback journey around the globe, exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas on the way, and drawing a surprising summary about why the Russian authorities hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude possess, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to keep up his power by distributing Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbours, the West’s most significant alliances, and america. Chevron, BP, and a bunch of other sector players obtain star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The coal and oil industry offers weakened democracies in created and developing countries, fouled oceans and streams, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, regarding to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion will take down and eats a gazelle. You can’t actually blame the lion. It’s in her character.”

Blowout is normally a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, also to check the influence from the world’s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins that one or disappears.”