Monthly Archives: May 2014

All Thaid Up

Prayuth Chan-ocha. By Government of Thailand ([1]) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday (May 20), Thailand’s army declared martial law. In the announcement broadcast on state-run TV, Prayuth Chan-ocha, leader of Thailand’s military, cited a 1914 law giving authority to intervene during crises. He said that the military was there to prevent violence between the opposing sides, and that it would “bring back peace and order to the beloved country of every Thai as soon as possible.” He also left the current interim government in power, and said that the action wasn’t a military coup. How did Thailand get to this point? And, more importantly, what happens next?

In January, MNgranny wrote about the citywide protest in Bangkok. At that time, the protests were supposed to last for 15 days, or until then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra resigned. Yingluk, while having broad support in the poorer, rural north, was thought as being a puppet of her brother Thaksin, who was overthrown in a military coup in 2006, by the middle-class and urban voters. They further claimed that the ruling party had been buying votes with irresponsible pledges.

Over the next few months, anti-government protesters occupied government buildings and disrupted the February elections. This came to a head a couple weeks ago, when Shinawatra was removed from power and indicted on corruption charges. MNgranny wrote about the removal of Yingluk Shinawatra and the corruption scandal in a post from May 9.

Yingluck Shinawatra. By Gerd Seidel (Rob Irgendwer) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

After Yingluk Shinawatra and an additional nine Cabinet members were removed from office, an interim government was set up. However, the ruling party was still in charge, and little was done to resolve the conflict, leading to yesterday’s martial law declaration.

The anti-Shinawatra faction wants an unelected interim government to implement reforms and remove the Shinawatra family permanently from Thai politics. The Shinawatra supporters are OK with martial law for the time being, but won’t tolerate a coup, and call the other faction’s proposal unconstitutional.

In a press conference yesterday, Prayuth Chan-ocha was less than transparent about the military’s next steps. When asked if a coup was being planned, he answered: “That’s a question that no one is going to answer.” And, when asked whether the army was in contact with the government, he replied: “Where is the government right now? Where are they now? I don’t know.”

The Thai military is no stranger into taking things into their own hands. Since the absolute monarchy fell in 1932, the military has attempted a coup 18 times, with eleven of the attempts being successful. If yesterday’s declaring of martial law becomes a full fledged coup attempt, it will make a total of 19 in the last 80+ years; more than any other country in the world.

So what happens next? The military’s widely thought to support the anti-government faction, but the anti-government faction’s saying that elections won’t fix anything at the present time. Meanwhile, the Thai stock market and it’s currency have been dropping since the announcement. Whatever happens, it’s going to be messy.

Our Share Of The Blame

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Lisa Monaco. By United States Department of Justice [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

On May 16, Lisa Monaco, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (the President’s chief counterterrorism advisor), sent a letter to the deans of 12 public health schools. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, says: “I wanted to inform you that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directed in August 2013 that the agency make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers. Similarly, the Agency will not seek to obtain or exploit DNA or other genetic material acquired through such programs. This CIA policy applies worldwide and to U.S. and non-U.S. persons alike.” The letter was written in response to concerns about the use of public-heath programs in covert operations. But, why the concerns?

In July of 2011, The Guardian reported that the CIA had organized a fake vaccination campaign in order to collect DNA samples from residents in Abbottabad, Pakistan to determine whether members of Osama bin Laden’s family were living there. The CIA had come up with the idea after American intelligence officers had tracked an Al Queda courier, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to the bin Laden compound the summer before. They even recruited a Pakistani health official, Shakil Afridi, to act as an organizer for the fake vaccination campaign.

Afridi went to Abbottabad in March of 2011, saying he had funding to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. He went around the normal bureaucracy and directly hired local health workers, who had no idea about the CIA search for bin Laden. He started in a poor neighborhood, and the next month instead of giving the second dose of the vaccine (hepatitis B vaccine is usually administered in three doses), he went on to the neighborhood where bin Laden lived. One of the nurses managed to gain access to the bin Laden compound. We don’t know what information, if any, was gained by the nurse.

Pakistani intelligence found out about the fake vaccination campaign while they were investigating the raid by the U.S. on the compound. Afridi was arrested. This also led to the Taliban targeting immunization workers, reportedly killing 56 people between December 2012 and May 2014. This number includes police officers sent to guard the workers. The Taliban normally portrays vaccination drives as a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children or as a cover for spies, so the CIA action played straight into the population’s fears. Vaccination rates, not that good to begin with, sank even lower, with the Taliban banning outright vaccinations in parts of Pakistan.

Then, polio started making a resurgence. Of the 77 new cases of polio reported so far this year, 61 of them were from Pakistan, mostly from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region, a Taliban stronghold. I myself know of the horrors of polio first hand; my dad had polio when he was a teenager. Though he came through it much better than some did, he was still partially crippled by it. My dad was a big man; 6’1′ and 210 pounds in his prime, yet his right leg was skinnier than my arm, and I’m not a big man. The possibility of this spreading should be of concern to all of us.

Pakistan’s set up emergency mandatory polio immunization at its international airports and various health organizations have made sure health care clinics outside the FATA area are well stocked with polio vaccines, and they’re making an effort to vaccinate children crossing the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. However, they’d have a much easier time if the CIA hadn’t done what they had in Abbottabad.

We’re seeing the blowback in our own country as well. The fear of vaccination as a government control mechanism has been commonplace on the fringes of the conservative movement since the birth of the John Birch Society. And, with the conservative movement’s shift to the right over the last thirty years, such views are becoming more mainstream, and they cite the Pakistan incident as a reason for their beliefs. Hence, we’ve seen an increasing number of cases of diseases such as measles, which were thought to have been eradicated in this country.

OWW calls on all governments to never play games with their citizens’ (or citizens in other countries’) health for political gain or otherwise. Eradicating such scourges as polio takes a worldwide effort, and only by our governments cooperating with each other will we be able to do so.

Bought The T-Shirt

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North Tower Fountain National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Photo by Kai Brinker via Wikimedia Commons

The opening ceremony for the long delayed National September 11 Memorial Museum took place on May 15. In attendance were many current and past politicians including President Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, Bill de Blasio, Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo. Noticeably absent were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – but that’s a different story.

The Museum opens on May 21, and there’s a couple things that are rather disturbing about it. First of all, there’s an underground “remains repository”, with some 8000 unidentified body parts from the more than 1000 people who were still buried in the rubble- they were moved to the repository. And, even more disturbing to me, there’s a gift shop.

What would a 9/11 memorial gift shop sell? Among other things:

A black and white “Darkness Hoodie” printed with an image of the Twin Towers. The pullover, like other “Darkness” items, bears the words “In Darkness We Shine Brightest.” Price: $39.
Silk scarves printed with 1986 photos by Paula Barr, including a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. Another depicts “lunchtime on the WTC Plaza.” They go for $95 each.
“Survivor Tree” earrings, named after a pear tree that stood in the World Trade Center plaza and survived 9/11. Made of bronze and freshwater pearls, a pair costs $64. A leaf ornament molded from the swamp white oaks at the memorial is said to change from amber to dark brown “and sometimes pink around the time of the 9/11 anniversary.
”Heart-shaped rocks inscribed with slogans such as “United in Hope” and “Honor.” One rock bears a quote by Virgil that is emblazoned on a massive blue-tiled wall in the museum: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” It costs $39.

Diana Horning lost her son on 9/11; her son’s body’s never been recovered. She told the New York Post; “To me, it’s the crassest, most insensitive thing to have a commercial enterprise at the place where my son died.” She further went on to say “Here is essentially our tomb of the unknown. To sell baubles I find quite shocking and repugnant. I think it’s a money-making venture to support inflated salaries, and they’re willing to do it over my son’s dead body.” She also objects to the cafe in the museum (yes, there is a cafe, because nothing stimulates the appetite like being in a place where thousands died, I guess).

National September 11 Memorial South Pool. Photo by NormanB via Wikimedia Commons

The museum is self-funded, so all proceeds from the gift shop, cafe and admissions are supposed to go towards operating expenses. Joe Daniels, the museum’s president and CEO, says “What’s most important is whether the stories it tells… helps fulfill our promise to never forget... We have to pay for it, we have to make sure this museum is available forever for everyone.” What he doesn’t mention is his $378,000 salary. And, while there’s a plaque saying that the gift shop was “made possible through the generosity of Paul Napoli and Marc Bern,” what it doesn’t mention is that they’re partners in a law firm that made $200 million in taxpayer-funded fees and expenses suing the city on behalf of 10,000 Ground Zero workers.

Imagine if gift shops like this were the status quo; you could buy stuff at the Oklahoma City National Memorial- oh, wait – you can. Or at the Holocaust Memorial – oh, wait – you can there, too.

I really have to wonder whether there’s any hope for us at all when we allow gift shops in the places we build to remember those who lost their lives so horribly…

It’s Not Only About The Oil

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The Chinese government announced today that they evacuated more than 3000 Chinese nationals from Vietnam after a wave of rioting left two Chinese dead and more than 100 injured. The trigger’s said to be the Chinese deploying an oil rig in disputed territorial waters on May 1, but is this the only reason?

First, the oil rig. The Haiyang Shiyou 981 is a billion dollar oil rig that the Chinese deployed near the Paracel Islands. The problem? Where they’re drilling is inside Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

An EEZ is the maritime area within 200 nautical miles from a country’s baseline; the baseline is determined by connecting points of the coastline of the country in question. EEZs are part of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international agreement that defines territorial seas and the areas where countries could exploit marine resources. The UNCLOS concluded in 1982, and became a binding treaty in 1994. China signed on to the UNCLOS in 1996.

While the Chinese were deploying the rig, a flotilla of Vietnamese boats attempted to stop the deployment. The Chinese responded by using water cannons and ramming the boats with naval vessels on the scene. This, as well as overflying of Vietnam by Chinese aircraft, is what is being reported as the main instigator of the riots; the feeling that China’s trying to take forcibly what’s believed to be Vietnamese resources instead of stating their case through diplomatic channels.

The timing of the deployment by the Chinese raises some interesting questions, as it took place shortly after President Obama’s trip to southeast Asia. The trip was meant to reassure the other nations in the area that the U. S. would stand with them against Chinese encroachment. But, the United States is not a signatory to UNCLOS, due to a bizarre notion of some Republicans that doing so will mean submitting the U.S. to a world tax, global redistribution of wealth, and a supranational government. Meanwhile, the Chinese vow to keep drilling.

But, is this the only cause? Most of the factories burned down aren’t Chinese owned, and the Vietnamese aren’t strangers to rioting over working conditions. Furthermore, there’s been a large influx of Chinese workers in the last few years, leading to more unemployment as some of the foreign owned businesses have employed the Chinese immigrants instead of Vietnamese workers. And, some people are claiming that an American-based organisation of anti-Communist Vietnamese exiles, Viet Tan, may be the true instigators.

I can easily see how the Vietnamese government would be careful to spin this in the international press as nationalistic fervor against the Chinese, but there’s just too many factors in play here to be certain that this is the only, or even main, cause of the unrest.

We probably will never know the full story behind the riots. What we do know is that all over the world, workers are standing up against empires and against exploitative employers. However, violence is not the way to win the struggle.

Occupy World Writes is horrified by the violence that has taken place in Vietnam. We reject the use of violence, and call for the Chinese to come to the table in regards to the drilling. We also call for business owners to come to the table and negotiate with the workers over working conditions and hiring conditions. And finally, we call upon all governments to become more transparent. Only then can we move towards a better world for all.

A Big Day In History

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On this day sixty years ago, the modern civil rights movement was born. In a unaminous decision, the United States Supreme Court stated that “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . .”

The case, Brown v Board of Education, was actually five cases: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.), Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel. While separate cases, they all dealt with the same issue; the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools. After a three judge panel of the U. S. District Court that had heard the individual cases had ruled in favor of the respective school boards citing Plessy v Ferguson as precedent, the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, who combined the cases.

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Plessy v Ferguson was an 1896 case dealing with Homer Plessy, a Louisiana man who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, who was arrested for sitting in a “whites only” railway car instead of sitting in the “coloreds only” car. Plessy took the railroad to court for violating the 13th and 14th Amendments in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana. However, Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroads within the state boundaries. Plessy appealed the ruling first to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and then the U.S. Supreme Court. The court upheld Ferguson’s ruling, stating that, considering the accommodations in the two cars were equivalent; “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”

Brown v Board of Education reversed the Plessy decision, at least in regards to education. This set the stage for other challenges to Jim Crow laws throughout the South. The modern civil rights era had begun.

Unfortunately, we seem to be moving backwards since the Brown decision. I wrote a piece a couple weeks ago on how segregated schools are becoming the norm again in some areas. It’s a very disturbing trend that can only lead to more educational inequality unless we stop it soon.

I’m Loving It!

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Fast food workers on strike in New York City on May 15. Photo courtesy US Uncut via Facebook

Over the last eighteen months here in the United States, we’ve seen numerous one day strikes by workers in the fast food and retail businesses. Starting with the original strikes at various Wal-Marts and the New York City fast food workers walkout of November 2012, the movement for a living wage has steadily grown. We’ve seen the rise of the FF15 (Fight For $15) campaign spread from city to city across the nation, along with demands to be able to unionize.

Yesterday, fast food workers in 150 cities in the United States and 80 other cities around the world went on a one day strike with support from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) here and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) abroad. The demands were simple- a raise to a $15 per hour minimum wage and the right to organize.

Graphic by Raise the Minimum Wage via Facebook

While some industry observers are saying that an immediate jump to $15 an hour is highly unlikely and claim that it would be too big of a jolt to business or that it would lead to higher unemployment, and spokespeople for the restaurant trade groups call the protests “made-for-TV media moments,” there isn’t much doubt that we’re seeing the rebirth of the labor movement in this country- and it’s about time.

If the Occupy movement has accomplished nothing else, it’s made the issue of income inequality a much discussed topic both here and abroad. In the last three years, we’ve seen the topic go from being discussed by economists and activists and being ignored by everybody else to being the subject of the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

Occupy World Writes stands in solidarity with all who went on strike yesterday, and with all who believe that everybody who works full time should earn a living wage for their labor. And, as more and more people around the world join in the fight against income inequality, I can’t help but think of the McDonalds jingle…

I’m loving it!

Under The Radar (Slight Return)

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Monument erected at Jackson State to murdered students James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs. Photo by Mike (www.may41970.com)

The month of May, 1970 marked a turbulent time in American history, and nowhere was this more evident than on the college campuses. The Kent State massacre was the main incident that got national attention, but there were others that slipped under the radar. On May 8, I discussed the UNM protests where eight people were bayoneted by the National Guard. Today marks another event, which while better known than the UNM incident, still was basically not covered by the national media at the time, and still is unknown to many people.

In the days after Kent State, there were demonstrations and protests at colleges and universities across the nation. Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) – a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi – was no exception. And, with this being the deep South of that time, racial tension was always present.

On the night of May 14, 1970, about 100 students gathered along a street running through the campus. There had been protests earlier that week about the war in Cambodia and over white motorists driving through the campus taunting black students, but there wasn’t any formal protest that evening. What happened next isn’t clear. Some motorists report having rocks thrown at them as they drove down the streets, and some people overturned cars and set fires. however, it’s unclear if these people were students or not.

Firefighters were called to put out the fires, and promptly called in state and local police. As the firefighters put out the fires, the students moved over towards Alexander Hall, a women’s dormitory.

Alexander Hall on the Jackson State campus where police fired on unarmed students in front of the dorm and inside the dorm. Photo by Mike (www.may41970.com)

Shortly after midnight (May 15), a bottle was thrown at the police, who responded by opening fire. Over 140 shots (some reports say as many as 400) were fired at the dorm in 30 seconds by at least 40 state patrolmen. Two people were killed (one a high school student who was walking through campus), and a dozen more were injured. Every window in the dorm facing the street was shattered by gunfire.

No charges were ever brought against the police. Some officers claimed that a sniper had fired first; the FBI in a later investigation found no evidence to support their claim. A local grand jury placed the blame on the students saying that “when people engage in civil disorder and riots, they must expect to be injured or killed when law enforcement officers are required to establish order.”

The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (also known as the Scranton Committee) concluded that “that the 28-second fusillade from police officers was an unreasonable, unjustified overreaction…A broad barrage of gunfire in response to reported and unconfirmed sniper fire is never warranted.”

Why didn’t this get the coverage that Kent State did? Unfortunately, it’s safe to say it’s more than likely because they were black youth in the South, and not youth from middle class homes in white America. Would the same difference in coverage happen if both shootings were to happen in 2014? Unfortunately, yes again.

Racism is far from being dead in America. The election of the first black President was supposed to be the sign that we’ve grown past racism in our society; instead, it’s brought all the bigots and racists out of the woodwork.

We must become better than this…

The Evidence Grows – But What’s the Rush?

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Image by Mikenorton (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On May 12, a new subcommittee met for the first time in the Texas House of Representatives. Named the Seismic Activity Subcommittee, the first day was spent listening to testimony from local leaders, scientists and the Texas Railroad Commission about recent seismic activity and the possible links between that activity and the oil and gas industry.

We’ve covered this boom in seismic activity on numerous occasions. MNgranny’s articles When Science and Politics Collide, Corporations Win and The Town in Search of Truth tell the story of Azle, Texas. Since November 2013, at least 28 earthquakes with magnitudes between 2.1 and 3.7 have struck the area between Azle and Reno; an area that very rarely, if ever had earthquakes before last year.

Azle Mayor Alan Brundrette was one of the people to testify at the hearing. ““Our school district now conducts earthquake drills,” he said. He also told of cracking foundations and breaking water pipes in the town.

Arkansas and Ohio have both placed moratoriums on new injection wells in areas that have had recent unusual seismic activity. And in Oklahoma, the USGS recently released an earthquake warning for the state; the first ever for a state east of the Rockies. Oklahoma had 183 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater between October 2013 and April 14, 2014. Before then, the state would average two quakes of that size per year. And, since the fracking boom in Oklahoma started in 2009, the state’s had 20 quakes of 4.0 to 4.8 magnitude, as well as a 5.6 quake in the town of Prague on November 5, 2011. MNgranny discussed the Prague quake in Fracking Creates Quakes, NOT Cheaper Pump Prices! And, as a sign of how seriously Oklahoma residents are taking the recent upswing in seismic activity, 12 to 18 percent of residents now carry earthquake insurance, up from 2 to 4 percent in 2011.

So, how is Texas responding? Not so well. Researchers at Southern Methodist University are trying to gather information about injection well activity and the correlation to the increased seismic activity. However, the 12 new seismometers placed in the Azle region can’t create a full picture of what is going on underground without knowing the volumes and pressures of wastewater injections at each well. That information’s considered proprietary. As Mayor Brundrette put it; “We have a state agency that has the authority to regulate those operators, yet we can’t get everyone together to share the information we need to address the problem.”

The Texas Railroad Commission is the agency which oversees all gas and oil operations in the state, and their testimony implies that the state is in no hurry to act. Milton Rister, executive director of the Texas Railroad Commission, said “A knee-jerk reaction could have a negative impact on our economy because of the large role the oil and gas industry plays here… I think the three commissioners are aware we need to make some adjustment … but don’t want to do something we all end up regretting a year from now.”

Occupy World Writes on the other hand agrees with Lynda Stokes, the mayor of Reno, who said at the hearing; “The industry’s right to profit does not surpass our right as citizens to the quality of life we’ve come to know,”

Academi Studies

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A Blackwater Security Company MD-530F helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq, 2004. Photo by Master Sgt. Michael E. Best (Public Domain)

On Sunday, May 11, there were a series of referendums held in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions over secession from the rest of Ukraine. The pro-Russian separatists claimed overwhelming public support for secession. The United States said today that it doesn’t recognize the results, and called them “a transparent attempt to create disorder.”

Also on May 11, the German daily Die Welt reported that according to information leaked by sources in the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the German foreign intelligence agency), there are over 100 American mercenaries operating in east Ukraine, and maybe as many as 400. Supposedly brought in by the current Ukrainian regime, these mercenaries are employees of the company named Academi. While you might not know the company under that name, you might recognize one of its previous names; Blackwater or Xe. Why should we be concerned about this?

Academi was founded under the name of Blackwater USA by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL. Its stated purpose was to provide training and support to military and law enforcement organizations. In a Congressional hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2007, Prince stated “We are trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service.” After working with various SEAL and SWAT teams, Blackstone received their first government contract in October of 2000.

In 2002, Blackwater Security Company (BSC) was formed. BSC was a private “security” firm whose first contract was to provide 20 men with top security clearances to protect CIA headquarters and a base involved with the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

There’s always been deep ties between the CIA and BSC; the founding Director of BSC (and Vice President of Blackwater USA at the time), Jamie Smith, was a former CIA agent, and the Vice Chairman from 2006 to 2008, Cofer Black, was the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The vice chairman of intelligence for BSC until 2007 was Robert Richer, the former head of the CIA’s Near East Division. When Richer quit, he and Black started Total Intelligence Solutions, another Erik Prince company with deep links to BSC dealing with risk management and threat evaluation.

BSC received over $1 billion in government contracts that we know about (unclassified), dealing with providing “security” in places as widespread as Iraq, Afghanistan and, here at home, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Where you’ve probably heard of them was from their actions in Iraq. In 2007, BSC’s name was changed to Blackwater International,

On September 17, 2007, the Iraqi government revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in the country after 17 Iraqi citizens were killed by Blackwater operatives, which prompted the Congressional hearing I referred to earlier. Four former Blackwater guards go on trial for first degree murder in June. Blackwater was also under investigation for arms smuggling, among other things. However, during this time, Blackwater was hired by the Department of Defense Counter-Narcotics Technology Program Office to provide support for counter-narcotics activities at a cost of up to $15 billion over five years. And, on August 19, 2009, Mark Manzetti reported in the New York Times that Blackwater had been hired by the CIA “as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda.” In January 2009, the State Department told Blackwater Worldwide that it would not renew its contract in Iraq, yet the CIA gave them a $100 million contract the next year.

In 2009, Blackwater changed their name yet again; to Xe Services LLC. In 2010, Erik Prince stepped down from the day to day management and moved to Abu Dhabi. Later that year, a group of private investors bought Blackwater/Xe’s training grounds and formed a new company named Academi. While supposedly having oversight and having new compliance rules, the board of directors lead us to believe it’s more of the same. Among the members are John Ashcroft, the Attorney General during George W. Bush’s first term and Bobby Ray Inman, who was the head of the NSA during the Carter administration and Deputy Director of the CIA for the first year of Ronald Reagan’s first term.

Academi has denied that they have contractors on the ground in Ukraine. But, going by past history, it’d be almost surprising if they didn’t, due to the deniability factor. The real question if they are there has to be who hired them. We the world’s people have the right to know.

Who Do You Believe?

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Marco Rubio. By C-SPAN (C-SPAN HD) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In April, McGill University professor Dr. Shaun Lovejoy published a study that has been making waves through the scientific world. According to Dr. Lovejoy, “This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers,.. Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.” He further claims that the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out “with confidence levels great than 99%, and most likely greater than 99.9%.”

The week following Dr. Lovejoy’s publishing of his study, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) released a report saying that governments could still avert the worst case consequences by acting “quickly and aggressively” to cut the accelerating pace of greenhouse-gas emissions. The IPCC states that in order to keep temperatures from rising over 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, greenhouse-gas emissions will have to be cut by 40% to 70% compared with 2010 by midcentury, and to near zero by the end of this century.

Last week saw the release of the National Climate Assessment, a 1300 page report compiled by 300 leading scientists and experts on climate. Part of the Global Climate Research Act of 1990, this report is supposed to be done every four years, but somehow no report was produced during the George W. Bush presidency – funny how that happened, huh? Their findings? “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.” They said that certain types of extreme weather events with links to climate change have become more frequent and/or intense, and also pointed out the rising sea levels, glacial melt and the like as being evidence that climate change isn’t in the future; it’s here right now.

Yesterday (May 11), Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) appeared on ABC’s This Week. During the interview, Rubio told Jonathan Karl; “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” He further went on to say “I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.” Oh yeah- and then he went on to say that he’s ready to run for President. He’s what?

So, who are we supposed to believe? Are we supposed to believe a huge majority of scientists and researchers from all over the world who believe climate change is real, it’s here and we can do something to lessen the impact, or do we believe the tools, elected and otherwise, who have a voice in the national media and who pander to the fossil fuel industry, spreading the gospel of anti-science and anti-intellectualism in the hopes of preserving their profits and to hell with our planet?

This isn’t so much about now; it’s about our children’s future and our children’s children’s future. The November elections are coming; choose wisely, America