[Biofuel] GMO crops not in Hawaii anymore
GMO free zone keeps rising ;-) Mayor of Hawaii's Big Island signs anti-GMO bill into law : http://buzz.naturalnews.com/001088-Hawaii-anti-GMO_bill-biotech_industry.html ~~ ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Worst-Case Scenario for Oil Sands Industry Has Come to Life, Leaked Document Shows | InsideClimate News
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20131205/worst-case-scenario-oil-sands-industry-has-come-life-leaked-document-shows [multiple links and images in on-line article] Worst-Case Scenario for Oil Sands Industry Has Come to Life, Leaked Document Shows Industry consultants said anti-tar sands push could become 'the most significant environmental campaign of the decade' if activists were left unopposed. By Katherine Bagley, InsideClimate News Dec 5, 2013 As environmentalists began ratcheting up pressure against Canada's tar sands three years ago, one of the world's biggest strategic consulting firms was tapped to help the North American oil industry figure out how to handle the mounting activism. The resulting document, published online by WikiLeaks, offers another window into how oil and gas companies have been scrambling to deal with unrelenting opposition to their growth plans. The document identifies nearly two-dozen environmental organizations leading the anti-oil sands movement and puts them into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists—with how-to's for managing each. It also reveals that the worst-case scenario presented to industry about the movement's growing influence seems to have come to life. The December 2010 presentation by Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Texas, mostly advised oil sands companies to ignore or limit reaction to the then-burgeoning tar sands opposition movement because activists lack influence in politics. But there was a buried warning for industry under one scenario: Letting the movement grow unopposed may bring about the most significant environmental campaign of the decade. This worst-case scenario is exactly what has happened, partly because opposition to tar sands development has expanded beyond nonprofit groups to include individual activists concerned about climate change, said Mark Floegel, a senior investigator for Greenpeace. The more people in America see Superstorm Sandys or tornadoes in Chicago, the more they are waking up and joining the fight. Since the presentation was prepared, civil disobedience and protests against the tar sands have sprung up from coast to coast. The movement has helped delay President Obama's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline—designed to funnel Canada's landlocked oil sands crude to refineries on the Gulf Coast—and has held up another contentious pipeline in Canada, the Northern Gateway to the Pacific Coast. The Power Point document, titled Oil Sands Market Campaigns, was recently made public by WikiLeaks, part of a larger release of hacked files from Stratfor, whose clients include the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry lobby. It appears to have been created for Calgary-based petroleum giant Suncor Energy, Canada's largest oil sands producer. The company told InsideClimate News that it did not hire Stratfor and never saw such a presentation. Suncor is mentioned 11 times in the document's 35 pages and all of Stratfor's advice seems to be directed at the energy company. For example, one slide says, Campaign ends quickly with a resolution along the lines Suncor had wanted. In several emails released by WikiLeaks, Stratfor employees discuss a $14,890 payment Suncor owes the company for two completed projects, though no details were provided. The presentation is the latest in a series of revelations that suggest energy companies—which for most of their history seemed unfazed by activists—have been looking for ways to dilute environmentalists' growing influence. Earlier this year, TransCanada, the Canadian energy company behind the Keystone XL, briefed Nebraska law enforcement authorities on how to prosecute demonstrators protesting the 1,200-mile project. In 2011, Range Resources, an oil and gas company, allegedly hired combat veterans with experience in psychological warfare to squash opposition of natural gas drilling. The Stratfor presentation isn't a complete surprise, said Scott Parkin, a senior campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network and volunteer organizer for Rising Tide North America, both grassroots environmental groups. As opposition has grown, coal, oil and gas companies are all starting to put more money into responding—from surveillance to protection to public relations. Who Is Targeted For each of Stratfor's categories of environmental activist—radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists—the presentation explains how their campaigns are structured and how the fossil fuel industry could deal with them. Three grassroots organizations—Rising Tide North America, Oil Change International and the Indigenous Environmental Network—were labeled radicals. Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network were classified as a cross between radicals and idealists. Sierra Club, the nation's
[Biofuel] SIGTARP proves that some bankers aren’t too big to jail - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sigtarp-the-watchdog-thats-putting-bankers-behind-bars/2013/12/06/9dd2068e-4b25-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html SIGTARP proves that some bankers aren’t too big to jail By Danielle Douglas, Published: December 6 A bank executive in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison. Another from Orlando received eight years. In Stockbridge, Ga., a top bank officer is serving 12 years. At a time when the government is being criticized for not holding senior bank executives liable for crisis-era crimes, a little-known federal agency is compiling a growing list of criminal convictions. Since 2008, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has pursued criminal charges against 107 senior bank officers, most of whom have been sentenced to prison. Created to supervise the government bailout of the auto and financial industries, the agency has found dozens of cases of bank executives who misused bailout funds. SIGTARP has a staff of 170, a budget of $41 million and an enforcement track record that rivals agencies twice its size. The agency’s work has resulted in $4.7 billion in restitution paid to the government and victims. Lawmakers are holding SIGTARP up as a model and questioning why other agencies are not producing similar results. In October, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) lauded the work of the inspector general in a letter asking financial regulators to disclose the extent of their efforts to pursue cases against individuals. Although Warren credited the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission for achieving “landmark settlements” with banks for crisis-era misdeeds, she said that “a great deal of work remains to be done” at the agencies. SIGTARP has a strong record, but the office has mainly taken down community bankers, not Wall Street titans, for brazen acts of fraud, some observers say. “The amount of direct evidence of banker wrongdoing in these smaller bank cases is easier to show,” said Mark Williams, a former bank examiner who teaches finance at Boston University. Still, he said, “these SIGTARP cases set an important precedence that bad banker behavior will not be tolerated and [will be ] aggressively prosecuted.” SIGTARP’s success is in part due to the criminal authority it received from Congress. Unlike regulators, the inspector general can issue search warrants, seize property and make arrests, much like the FBI. It is ultimately up to the Justice Department to determine whether to pursue criminal charges, but the inspector general can move a case along faster, said Michael J. Rivera, a former chief counsel with the inspector general and now an attorney at Venable law firm. The agency is largely charged with ensuring that the 763 financial institutions that received funds from the $700 billion TARP program use the money properly. Tricks and false statements Cases pursued by SIGTARP tend to fall into several categories, including bankers using accounting tricks to hide losses on loans, enriching themselves at the expense of the institution and making false statements about the condition of the bank, said Christy L. Romero, who heads the agency. “Essentially, we’re looking for lies and greed,” she said. “Usually, people have gone to such great lengths to try to hide the schemes that we find that they end up violating several laws, which leads to long sentences.” That was the case for Mark A. Conner, the president of FirstCity Bank in Georgia, who received a 12-year sentence last year after pleading guilty to approving loans to borrowers who, without the bank’s knowledge, used the money to purchase property he owned. Catherine Kissick of Orlando, a former senior vice president at Alabama-based Colonial Bank, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for misleading the Treasury Department about $300 million in funding the bank had to raise to obtain a $553 million bailout. Kissick conspired with Lee Farkas, majority owner of the Florida-based wholesale mortgage lender Taylor, Bean Whitaker, to conceal that the money had been diverted from one of TBW’s subsidiaries, rather than sourced from private investors. SIGTARP said it found several violations at the Bank of the Commonwealth in Hampton Roads, where top brass used doctored records to apply for a $28 million bailout in 2008, according to court records. The $985 million bank was in such poor health that its regulator, the Federal Reserve, told bank officials to withdraw its application. It had lost $250 million on bad loans by the time the bank collapsed in 2011, becoming Virginia’s largest bank failure of the crisis, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Investigators accused the bank’s chief executive, Edward J. Woodard, of masking the
[Biofuel] Report: One in Four 'Activists' May be Corporate Spies
http://www.popularresistance.org/report-one-in-four-activists-may-be-corporate-spies/ Report: One in Four 'Activists' May be Corporate Spies By Nafeez Ahmed, www.theguardian.com December 2nd, 2013 How corporations and spy agencies use security to defend profiteering and crush activism A stunning new report compiles extensive evidence showing how some of the world's largest corporations have partnered with private intelligence firms and government intelligence agencies to spy on activist and nonprofit groups. Environmental activism is a prominent though not exclusive focus of these activities. The report by the Center for Corporate Policy (CCP) in Washington DC titled Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage against Nonprofit Organizations draws on a wide range of public record evidence, including lawsuits and journalistic investigations. It paints a disturbing picture of a global corporate espionage programme that is out of control, with possibly as much as one in four activists being private spies. The report argues that a key precondition for corporate espionage is that the nonprofit in question: impairs or at least threatens a company's assets or image sufficiently. One of the groups that has been targeted the most, and by a range of different corporations, is Greenpeace. In the 1990s, Greenpeace was tracked by private security firm Beckett Brown International (BBI) on behalf of the world's largest chlorine producer, Dow Chemical, due to the environmental organisation's campaigning against the use of chlorine to manufacture paper and plastics. The spying included: pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. Other Greenpeace offices in France and Europe were hacked and spied on by French private intelligence firms at the behest of Électricité de France, the world's largest operator of nuclear power plants, 85% owned by the French government. Oil companies Shell and BP had also reportedly hired Hackluyt, a private investigative firm with close links to MI6, to infiltrate Greenpeace by planting an agent who posed as a left -wing sympathiser and film maker. His mission was to betray plans of Greenpeace's activities against oil giants, including gathering information about the movements of the motor vessel Greenpeace in the north Atlantic. The CCP report notes that: A diverse array of nonprofits have been targeted by espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups. Many of the world's largest corporations and their trade associations - including the US Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald's, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown Williamson and E.ON - have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers. Exploring other examples of this activity, the report notes that in Ecuador, after a lawsuit against Texaco triggering a $9.5 billion fine for spilling 350 million gallons of oil around Lago Agrio, the private investigations firm Kroll tried to hire journalist Mary Cuddehe as a corporate spy for Chevron, to undermine studies of the environmental health effects of the spill. Referring to the work of US investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, the report points out that the notorious defence contractor Blackwater, later renamed XE Services and now Academi, had sought to become the intel arm of Monsanto, the agricultural and biotechnology corporation associated with genetically modified foods. Blackwater was paid to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm. In another case, the UK's Camp for Climate Action, which supports the decommissioning of coal-fired plants, was infiltrated by private security firm Vericola on behalf of three energy companies, E.ON, Scottish Power, and Scottish Resources Group. Reviewing emails released by Wikileaks from the Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor, the report shows how the firm reportedly conducted espionage against human rights, animal rights and environmental groups, on behalf of companies such as Coca-Cola. In one case, the emails suggest that Stratfor investigated People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) at Coca-Cola's request, and had access to a classified FBI investigation on PETA. The report uncovers compelling evidence that much corporate espionage is facilitated by government agencies, particularly the FBI. The CCP report examines a September 2010 document from the Office of the Inspector General in the US Justice Department, which reviewed FBI investigations between 2001 and 2006.
[Biofuel] John Pilger: Apartheid Did Not Die
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37035.htm John Pilger: Apartheid Did Not Die Video Apartheid Did Not Die is a 1998 Carlton Television documentary, written and presented by John Pilger, which was directed and produced by Alan Lowery, which provides analysis of South Africa's then new, democratic government. Posted December 07, 2013 A Dissenting Opinion on Nelson By Jonathan Cook December 07, 2013 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37033.htm Mandela Will Never, Ever be Your Minstrel By Musa Okwonga December 07, 2013 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37034.htm The real Mandela: Don't let his legacy be abused By John Wight December 07, 2013 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37037.htm US government considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008 By Robert Windrem, Investigative Producer, NBC News http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/07/21794290-us-government-considered-nelson-mandela-a-terrorist-until-2008?lite Nelson Mandela funeral: George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton to attend Mandela memorial By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 12/6/13 http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/12/nelson-mandela-funeral-george-w-bush-will-attend-mandela-179061.html ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
