Diaries

Open Thread Wednesday 05-13-15

Submitted by JtC on Wed, 05/13/2015 - 7:50am

Good morning 99ers!
Gulfgal is still traveling so you'll have to put up with me for another day.

Morning News Dump and Johnny Rivers.

McKibben Blasts Obama Over Arctic Drilling as Activists Ready for Fight
Founder of 350.org says that now, "as with Keystone, it will be up to the environmental movement to block Shell's plan."

Faced with the imminent arrival of the Shell drilling fleet and newly announced White House backing for Arctic oil exploration, activists and environmentalists are readying for a fight.

In a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben blasted the Obama administration's decision on Monday to grant the oil giant conditional approval to begin drilling operations in the Beaufort and Chuchki Seas this summer.

McKibben said that, despite his rhetoric, President Barack Obama has repeatedly exhibited "climate denial of the status quo sort," where people "accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children," but then ultimately "deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground."

"Even in this most extreme circumstance, no one seems able to stand up to the power of the fossil fuel industry. No one ever says no," McKibben writes. He notes that now, "as with Keystone, it will be up to the environmental movement to block the plan."

Open Thread Tuesday 05-12-15

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 8:00am

Good morning 99percenters!

Spin, Spin, Spin. The War for your Mind wages on. The only one who can slog through the bullshit is you yourself. Here I present different perspectives for your judgement. Make sure to read the first article, thanks Big Al.

Seymour Hersh’s “Zero Truth Thirty” Article Fixes the Narrative of the BS “bin Laden Raid” Story

H/T Big Al
Seymour Hersh was once one of the good guys. Today, he’s joined the ranks of the has-beens and the sell-outs.

Anyone can get something wrong. That’s not what Seymour Hersh did here. The last “clarifying statement” to fix the narrative

“Within days, some of the early exaggerations and distortions had become obvious and the Pentagon issued a series of clarifying statements.” Seymour Hersh

He penned a propaganda article about how ‘Obama lied” about the early morning hour Seal Team 6 raid in Pakistan that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. That’s click-bait. Seymour claims Obama’s lies are nothing more than his refusal to admit how intimately involved the Pakistani intelligence services (ISI) were in the “raid” and of course the official story they came out with in the days right after the raid.

That’s bullshit.

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Also see this.

Monsters Inc. - Starring Hillary T. Inevitable

Submitted by joe shikspack on Sun, 05/10/2015 - 4:47pm

Every now and then one of our "representative" leaders lets the mask slip and Americans get a peek at the monster behind the mask. The monsters that represent us are well-known elsewhere in the world by the people who are variously invaded, bombed, incinerated by flying death robots, disappeared, held in gulags, tortured, sanctioned, starved, treated to heaping helpings of depleted uranium, attacked with banned weapons like white phosphorus, brutalized by authoritarian dictators and puppets that our monsters support with weapons Made in America(tm). I could go on, but you get the picture.

Open Thread Sunday 05-10-15

Submitted by JtC on Sun, 05/10/2015 - 7:56am

Happy Mothers Day 99percenters!

Military Contractors Behind New Pressure Group Targeting Presidential Candidates

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has formed a new pressure group, now active in Iowa and New Hampshire, to serve as the “premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate” and to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”

Roger’s group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, is hosting candidate events and intends to host a candidate forum later this year. The organization does not disclose its donors. But a look at the business executives helping APPS steer presidential candidates towards more hawkish positions reveals that many are defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism:

  • Advisory Board Member John Coburn is chairman and CEO of VT Systems, a company that delivers communications technology for the Defense Department.
  • Advisory Board Member Stephen Hadley is a principal at the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates and serves as a board member to defense contractor Raytheon, a position that pays him $228,007 in annual compensation.
  • New Hampshire Board Member Rich Ashooh lists his employment as Director, Strategy at BAE Systems.
  • New Hampshire Board Member James Bell is the chief executive of EPE Corporation, a manufacturing company that says it is a “premier supplier to the defense community.”
  • Advisory Board Member John Engler, the president of the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for major corporations, including defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Northrop Grumman.
  • New Hampshire Board Member Ken Solinksy is founder of Insight Technologies, a night vision and electro-optical systems firm acquired by L-3 Communications.
  • New Hampshire Chairman and Advisory Board Member Walt Havenstein is the former chief executive of BAE Systems and SAIC, two of the largest defense contractors in America. Havenstein, who left SAIC in 2012, was paid partially in company stock options.

    • And blogger Joshua Huminski worked in 2013 as a spokesperson for Aegis Defense Services, a contractor that provided security services to U.S. facilities in Afghanistan. Aegis did not respond to a request asking if Huminski is still employed there.

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