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A particularly critical segment of our current shit-storm’s origins. This aging, modest & fairly unassuming documentary is actually an irreversibly humongous lesson in major corruption & the willful closure of protective progress through political sabotage, falsification, market suppression & deeply dishonest & dirty chicanery. Mega corruption aside, it also provides a crystal-clear & detailed demonstration of gigantic corporate conspiracy between industry & government, working together illicitly to effectively ‘cancel out’ unwanted evolutions that obstruct their immediate interests in the extreme short-term.
Billed as “the auto industry’s biggest conspiracy… revealed” – this vital documentation from director Chris Paine traces the derivation of the EV-1 Electric Vehicle that was manufactured by General Motors & rolled out in California & Arizona in the early 00’s. It was immensely popular. A sleek, fast, expertly designed & entirely fossil-fuel-free modern vehicle that performed exceptionally well. EV-1 owners, from us civvies, to senators, actors (Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Danny Devito, that broad from the Naked Gun series) & motor-techs & enthusiasts all recount how fantastic & reliable this super contraption was & the enjoyment & proficiency that it delivered. Other competitors in the sector (Honda, Toyota, Ford etcetera) started to follow suit with their own models. A new legislative bill was also ratified in California, that demanded substantial reductions in the production & sale of petroleum reliant motor vehicles (with the further provision that the number of ‘zero emissions’ cars would increase) now that the new clean technology was available. The immediate future looked extremely positive in weening the dirty scourge of fossil fuel dependent cars off of our roads, with superior alternatives produced directly by the motor industry themselves making their welcomed replacement
& then it all started to rot on the vine.
I won’t bother writing an exact account of what this shocking & excellently assembled documentary so irrefutably presents to the viewer (watch it for yourselves), but they basically went to extraordinary lengths which deliberately derailed, downed & destroyed this evolution (the oil & motor industry plus government) despite its resounding & incandescent success. The reason was simply to keep selling the filthy fluid that is oil. All the pollution, all the resource wars, genocide, instability, military invasion & intervention & all the death – locked in & protracted by willful wickedness & the conscientious destruction of the perfectly popular, mass-approved, viable & fully developed utility.
Sliding in alongside some of the greatest ever crimes of the 20th century, such as the 2003 Iraq war & the 2008 bank bailout, this heinous covert-vetoing through totally disingenuous, corrupt & irregular means & intentions, is a catastrophe of spectacular corporate malfeasance & atrocious misrule underscoring just how vulnerable ‘political decisions’ & even ‘free market activity’ is to the ulterior forces & their malefic suicidal-short-term interests. They personally produced a successful, commercially-viable solution, they would of reaped monumental, ongoing profits from this new technology! It was theoretically (clean cars) – overwhelmingly popular, coveted & lauded from every imaginable angle & demographic – & yet, they artificially terminated it in all but entirety via huge deviance & buried it beneath a monument of lies, misinformation & motivational deceit.
How much pollution could have been spared over the ensuing decades? How much military incursion/intimidation conflict & bloodshed would have been avoided?
What does this insipient, dogged, fanatical commitment to the worse malpractice with the most grievous, extreme & dangerous of collateral circumstances & implications tell us about these fucking maniacs? Is nothing too evil for them? Is no sum of riches & secured future fortunes too large for them ever to stop mutilating the will of the people & the most basic of vital, essential, prudent, protective limitations on suicidal policy, reckless endangerment for a few more zeroes on already bagged super dividends for these obscene, venal, insane bastards & utterly disturbed extinction-advocates? Where the fuck is the law??????????? This is an opencast crime of staggering barely estimable implications. Why aren’t these felons in jail? How can this happen?
& here we are again. This is a giant, ongoing, unprosecuted crime – the people & planets safety trashed & flushed by a grand shadow-op by the motor industry, the oil companies & the Bush administration (& quite probably their Saudi cohorts). Identifying every single culprit that played a role in this mega felony & jailing them appropriately, repossessing the company’s entire profits & reallocating them to mitigating efforts, sequestering the companies & either dissolving them or commandeering them under completely new stewardship with a whole new green directive & rolling out new regulations & regulating bodies that can keep us safe from this kind of death-business villainy & repulsive, duplicitous, short-sighted supra-venality.
This is actually one of the most important documentaries regarding just how bad our modern corruption is, how it works, & how it gets away with unsurpassed harmfulness & stupendous wrongdoing on an unquantifiable scale. It is broken down so well in this film, piece by piece & with phenomenal clarity & attention to detail. For the current climate/pollution emergency, this film is of herculean contemporary relevance despite its age.
These shits have to pay! They have to! We cannot afford to let these super crimes go unpunished & unedified.
A sequel to this movie, Revenge of the Electric Car, was also made in 2011 by the same director on Dogwoof. It’s definitely worth seeing but it is absolutely nothing in comparison to the original film which remains one of the most important documentaries of our era.
2006 – Chris Paine – Sony Pictures