This article by Sara Jerving and Mary Bottari is re-posted from PR Watch.
In a new lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), big energy extractors are pushing for carte blanche in their interactions with foreign governments, making it harder to track whether their deals are padding the coffers of dictators, warlords, or crony capitalists. The United States Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the National Foreign Trade Council filed a lawsuit on October 10, 2012 against a new SEC rule, which requires U.S. oil, mining and gas companies to formally disclose payments made to foreign governments as part of their annual SEC reporting. 
This lawsuit is not the only effort underway to make it easier for American corporations working overseas to bribe corrupt government officials. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also pushing for a radical rollback of a 35 year old anti-bribery statute that has been tripping up U.S. companies abroad.
New SEC Rule Forces Disclosure of Financial Transactions With Foreign Governments
The challenged SEC provision, which aims to bring transparency to U.S. corporate payments to foreign governments abroad in an effort to combat bribery and corruption, was required by Congress in a last minute addition to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. Some parts of Dodd-Frank have gone into effect while others are still under assault by industry in the lengthy rule-making processes. Senators Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) authored the provision, which simply requires U.S. corporations to report in their annual SEC filing any payments made to foreign governments. This legislation is a crucial step in increasing transparency and accountability in countries with a history of government corruption. In many countries, there are often huge discrepancies between what companies might say that they paid the government and what the government said it received. Formal disclosure can serve as a critical tool for activists and citizens fighting corruption and poverty, which is why the measure was backed by groups like Oxfam International and Bono’s ONE campaign. “The Cardin-Lugar Amendment puts transparency — the key to citizens’ ability to hold their government to account — ahead of corruption. To do otherwise is a losing proposition for the United States and company shareholders,” Lugar said in a statement this week. The SEC worked on the rule for two years with abundant business input.
Lawsuit Alleges Rule too Costly, Violates Corporate Rights
The groups which filed the lawsuit allege that the SEC failed to take into account the rule’s costs and benefits and that it “grossly misinterpreted its statutory mandate” in crafting the rule and has violated corporate “First Amendment” rights.
For supporters, it is difficult to see what is so costly about inserting a few paragraphs into an annual SEC filing. “We are greatly disappointed that the oil industry is trying to use the courts to bully the SEC and push for secrecy in their payments to governments,” said Ian Gary of Oxfam. “We call on companies, such as BP, Exxon, Chevron and Shell, who are hiding behind industry associations to do their dirty work while espousing transparency rhetoric, to disassociate themselves from the lawsuit.”
The attorney heading the challenge to the Dodd-Frank anti-bribery rule is Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Of the six challenges that SEC regulations have faced and lost in federal court of appeals in Washington, DC since the mid 2000s, Eugene Scalia was behind four. He won a case on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year on the Dodd-Frank “proxy access rule,” which would have allowed shareholders to play a role in nominating company directors. Scalia also helped win a case in September against the SEC on a rule which would have imposed trading limits on speculators.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tries to Gut Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Efforts to keep bribery under a veil of secrecy go beyond attacks against the SEC transparency rule. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also been waging a war against the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was adopted after a rash of bribery scandals of foreign officials was revealed, involving more than 400 U.S. corporations. The law, introduced by Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin), bans companies from bribing foreign officials in order to secure land and retain business deals, and requires public companies to file financial statements and maintain internal controls. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and SEC are responsible for its enforcement and have been stepping up the pace in recent years, dedicating new staff and resources to a crackdown.
Now, the Chamber is actively pushing five amendments to the 1977 law, which would significantly weaken its enforcement mechanisms.
The value of the law was recently highlighted when The New York Times broke the story this spring that Walmex (Wal-Mart in Mexico), executives allegedly covered up millions of dollars in bribes to Mexican officials in an effort to fuel the company’s expansion in the country. Wal-Mart says it spent some $51 million on an internal investigation looking into whether the subsidiary violated the anti-bribery law and the U.S. Justice Department is also investigating.
According to the Chamber’s tax filings, 14 of the group’s 55 board members between 2007 and 2010 “were affiliated with companies that were reportedly under investigation for violations or had settled allegations that they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” Chamber member Pfizer recently paid $60 million to the SEC and DOJ to settle claims that its subsidiaries bribed foreign doctors and pubic officials to gain market access for its products in Eastern Europe.
Major American firms frequently embrace transparency as an alternative to mandatory binding regulation. Now transparency is also taking a beating as U.S. firms fight for the right to bribe foreign governments and hide their activities from American shareholders and the citizens of the nations where they do business.
Experts at Kent County forum claim fracking is safe in Michigan, but audience wasn’t buying it
Last night about 60 people showed up to a forum at the Cannon Township offices to talk about the issue of hydraulic fracturing in Michigan.
The forum, hosted by 73rd District State Representative Peter MacGregor, was biased from the get go. The three “experts” were all state workers, one from the DNR and two from the DEQ.
When people entered the meeting space Rep. MacGregor handed them an information sheet, which was just an FAQ document put out by the DEQ that had no sources to support the claims made, even though it refuted many of the major concerns about hydraulic fracturing. There were also glossy documents on a table put out by the Michigan Oil & Gas Producers Education Foundation, which were brought by oil & gas industry people who did not identify themselves until they were questioned by this writer at the end of the night.
At the beginning of the forum, when Rep. MacGregor spoke, one of the Oil & Gas representatives leaned over and said to another industry person, “We gotta give him (MacGregor) some money,” and then winked.
The representative from the DNR spoke first and talked a little about the history of oil and gas drilling in the state. He said that Michigan produces 22% of its own natural gas use, which means an additional 78% needs to be imported. However, he framed these comments to suggest that “our” natural gas consumption levels required the additional importation, but he never clarified how natural gas is consumed in the state. The audience didn’t hear how much was consumed by industry, commercial or residential needs, instead spoke as if “our” natural gas needs were collective.
The DNR representative then spoke about how the State gets royalties when giving out oil & gas leases. The state makes money from the sale of the lease, like the rights to extract oil & gas that are being auctioned off next Wednesday in Lansing. He also stated that if oil and gas is extracted, the state can get up to one-sixth of the value of a producing well.
Revenue from leases in 2012 alone equaled nearly $36 million. He stated that the money gained from these sales go to state parks and the Game & Fish Protection Trust Fund. He also stated that the Oil & Gas industry currently leases 1,511,265 acres in Michigan.
One revealing statement given by the DNR representative was in response to a question asked about why the state doesn’t discontinue any additional leasing for oil & gas extraction on public land. The DNR guy said, “It doesn’t do us any good if the land is just sitting there.”
Another resident asked the person from the DNR what recourse people have if they don’t want fracking to take place near them or anywhere else in the state? He responded by saying that people have been writing letters to the Governor, “but we make a lot of money off the leasing and the necessary protections are in place.”
A representative from the DEQ spoke next, with specific information about the hydraulic fracturing process and how “safe it is.” He stated that Michigan has different standards than most other states in the country, so all of the public concerns are not necessary.
At one point the DEQ person was talking about projected energy use increases in the state and how natural gas is likely to be one of the major energy sources that will fulfill the state’s energy needs through 2035. However, he spoke about this as if it was a given, meaning the growth of renewable energy sources would not replace fossil fuels, nor was there an assumption that the energy consumption levels would drop to avoid further climate catastrophe.
The DEQ spokesperson pretty much echoed the positions in the FAQ document put out by the DEQ, but when he was questioned on some of these issues he engaged in word play in order to sidestep what seemed obvious to this writer. For instance, when asked about the cancer causing realities of some of the chemicals used in fracking he said that one would have to be exposed to them and then they might get cancer. However, he said earlier in the presentation that these were cancer causing chemicals, not chemicals that might given you cancer.
When someone questioned him about the use of fracking brine on roads, which was done in Kalkaska County in May, he said that that was a mistake and his office put order to stop this from happening. However, he qualified that statement by say that this practice os only on hold for a year, until more studies can be done, which contradicted an earlier statement that the public would never be exposed to the chemicals used in fracking.
At one point the guy from the DEQ also stated that if people had questions about what chemicals were being used, since the DEQ does not require full disclosure (they said they can determine through testing which chemicals are used) that people should check out the site Frac Focus. They claimed that this was a site where companies could voluntarily post what chemicals they were using.
However, what they didn’t tell those in attendance is that Frac Focus is run by two entities, the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission. Both groups are a partnership between the state and oil & gas industry with no independent representation. The Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission host bi-annual conferences with the next one in Texas at the end of this month, a conference being sponsored by the likes of BP, Marathon Oil, Shell, Chesapeake Energy, Halliburton and Enbridge. One would be hard pressed to think that such an entity would actually operate with the public interest in mind.
All throughout the night Rep. MacGregor and the men from the DEQ and DNR kept trying to convince those in attendance that there was nothing to worry about in regards to the issue of hydraulic fracturing, but people were not buying it.
One woman made the point about the protection of the rural way of life and when drilling begins, truck traffic increases, noise increases, chemical use increases, etc. “We’ll have to live with a terminal being built in our communities.”
Another person pointed out that the DEQ representative stated, “We do the best we can with the existing laws, but the existing laws protect and benefit BP and other oil & gas companies, particularly since the Halliburton loophole was put in place.” The person from the DEQ then said they were more mistrusting of the industry than those in attendance.
Someone else asked questions about the chemical contaminated fracking brine that was being store under ground and if there were studies being done to demonstrate that it would never leak and if so, who was conducting these studies? The DEQ guy said, “We are really smart. We don’t know the recipe, but we can test for what kinds are being used.” He said that this brine could not come through the rock, but he never addressed the issue of earthquakes creating cracks for the brine to leak into the ground water or the fact that fracking itself could cause fissures in these rock formations.
It was clear that after two hours, despite the attempts from MacGregor and the state workers that people were still skeptical of what the oil & gas industry is doing through the practice of fracking.
At the end of the night, this writer asked if there were oil & gas representatives in the audience and 4 of them raised their hands. None of them asked questions all night and it is safe to assume that they were gauging public opinion in order to come up with clear talking points in order to minimize any scrutiny. I also asked Rep. MacGregor if he was the recipient of any oil & gas industry money and he responded by saying, “I am 99.9% sure I have not,” which isn’t a definite no.
People in Kent County should be concerned about this issue, especially since the DNR will be auctioning off hundreds of acres in Kent County next Wednesday in Lansing, which means that there could be oil & gas fracking taking place on public land in the areas highlighted in the map shown here, with the darkest parts being public land up for auction. You can see that the areas to the north in Kent County are between Sparta and Cedar Springs, some land near Lowell and a corridor along the Grand River and 131 near Rockford. You can also search this DEQ document to see exactly which parcels of land are being auctioned off in the state on October 24.
American Family Association Ponders How to ‘Reach Out with Biblical Compassion’ to Gay Youth
This article by Brian Tashman is re-posted from Right Wing Watch. Editors Note: The American Family Association is very active in West Michigan and is the recipient of significant amounts of funding from several prominent West Michigan families.
The American Family Association without fail hurls some of the most derogatory and incendiary rhetoric at the gay community,. For example, the group’s spokesman Bryan Fischer claims that gays are like drug addicts, domestic terrorists and Nazis and are responsible for the Holocaust, and the organization’s general manager blamed gays for Hurricane Isaac and linked the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to an increase in suicides in the military.
But now the anti-gay group hopes to teach people how to “reach out with biblical compassion” to gay youth, which they routinely call “Big Gay.”
The AFA’s Rightly Concerned blog reposted an article from Kerby Anderson Probe Ministries about the “gay agenda in schools,” fitting with the AFA’s new campaign to stop “Mix it Up at Lunch Day” out of the fear young people will eat the gay “poisoned candy.”
The blog post warns that homosexuality in and of itself leads to health and psychiatric problems and suggests anti-bullying efforts are simply attempts to “increase homosexual behavior among students.” Ironically, Anderson cites a study which concludes “educational efforts, prevention programs, and health services must be designed to address the unique needs of GLB youth” to argue that schools should not assist their gay, lesbian and bisexual students in anyway…unless it is with ex-gay therapy.
“We should reach out to those caught in the sin of homosexuality and offer them hope and point them to Jesus Christ so that they will find freedom from the sexual sin that binds their lives,” Anderson writes, claiming that “many in the homosexual lifestyle are there because of some emotional brokenness in their families” and are “trying to meet their emotional needs in ungodly ways.”
The strategy has obviously been successful because no one would want to be against making the schools a safer environment. It almost doesn’t matter whether the allegations are true. Once you raise the concern of safety, most administrators, teachers, and parents quickly fall in line.
There is an irony in all of this. Many of the behaviors that are taught and affirmed in these school programs and clubs are unsafe in term of public health. For example, Pediatrics (Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics) reported on a Harvard study that found more than thirty risks positively associated with self-reported gay-lesbian-bisexual (GLB) orientation. So it is indeed ironic that the idea of “safety” is often used as means to introduce teaching and discussion of behaviors that have been proven to be quite “unsafe.”
Permitting and promoting homosexual activity through on-campus programs and clubs will certainly increase homosexual behavior among students. Administrators, teachers, and parents should reconsider the impact these programs, and the subsequent behavior, will have on the student body.
When we talk about the issue of homosexuality, it is important to keep two biblical principles in tension. On the one hand we must stay true to our biblical convictions, and on the other hand we should reach out with biblical compassion. Essentially this is the balance between truth and love.
On the one hand, it is crucial for us to understand how the homosexual agenda threatens to normalize and even promote homosexuality within the schools. Moreover, gay activists are pushing an agenda in the courts, the legislature, the schools, and the court of public opinion that will ultimately threaten biblical authority and many of our personal and religious freedoms. Christians, therefore, must stand for truth.
I have provided a brief overview of the groups and programs that are promoting the gay agenda in the public schools. I encourage you to find out what is happening in your community. We have also documented the potential legal liability associated with many of the behaviors that are encouraged by these programs. Often administrators and teachers are unaware of the potential dangers associated with homosexual education in the schools. Take time to share this information with them.
On the other hand, it is also important for us to reach out to those caught in the midst of homosexuality and offer God’s grace and redemption. We cannot let the hardened rhetoric of gay activists keep us from having Christ’s heart toward homosexuals. As individuals and as the church, we should reach out to those caught in the sin of homosexuality and offer them hope and point them to Jesus Christ so that they will find freedom from the sexual sin that binds their lives.
It is important to remember that many in the homosexual lifestyle are there because of some emotional brokenness in their families. They may be trying to meet their emotional needs in ungodly ways. Youth in the public schools may be experimenting sexually and find themselves caught up in the homosexual lifestyle.
Kellogg claims to fight hunger in PR stunt for World Food Day
The online pro-business blog Michigan Loves Manufacturing posted a Media Release from the Battle Creek-based food giant Kellogg yesterday, where the company claims to be fighting global hunger.
The Kellogg Press Release is a typical PR stunt for corporations that want to present themselves as caring in the public eye. Kellogg touts their hunger relief efforts by making donations to food banks across the country, primarily working with Feeding America.
The company also lists the follow activities they are involved in for World Food Day:
- Donating $125,000 in cash and product donations through Kellogg’s Corporate Citizenship Fund to six organizations, mainly food banks, in Latin America. Also, Kellogg employees will volunteer at food bank locations in Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia to provide Kellogg breakfasts.
- Kicking-off the “Help Give a Child a Breakfast” campaign in the U.K. to raise $480,000 to donate to schools most in need to help provide breakfast for children who are going to school hungry.
- Volunteering at community food banks and food distribution sites across the U.S. in the month of October as part of United Way Days of Caring.
Again, more charity work and how convenient that Kellogg workers will be serving their own products around the world to poor children. Nothing like introducing products to new markets in the hopes of gaining new customers.
The Kellogg Media Release also says they are setting up Breakfast Clubs around the world, where the company provides breakfast meals to children in countries that don’t have government assisted programs. Another example of marketing their own products and then writing off the donations for their tax records, which is equivalent to selling the breakfast foods in the first place.
Lastly, Kellogg states that it partners with Walmart in the Fighting Hunger Together campaign, which is another PR stunt designed to manipulate the public into thinking these companies give a shit about fighting hunger by getting communities to compete for money they give away. We have written about this in the past and will say again that these efforts are just well designed PR stunts that do not address the root causes of poverty and hunger.
Companies like Kellogg cannot really address or fight hunger since their very existence is designed to make a profit. Until we change the economic system, hunger and poverty will persist. If we are really serious about making sure everyone has enough healthy food to eat on a daily basis then we will promote Food Justice, not hunger relief. Giving away sugar-laden cereals to poor kids around the global might make for a great photo op, but it does nothing to fight hunger.
This article by Peter Rugh is re-posted from Ecowatch.
A hard rain was falling on Monday night as Occupy the Pipeline activists spread out along New York’s Hudson River Park, in front of the site where workers in orange day-glow vests have been laboring around the clock on the New Jersey-New York Expansion Project. Known colloquially by the name of its builder, Spectra Energy, the Spectra Pipeline will pump fuel hydraulically-fracked from Pennsylvania’s gas fields into New York City.
The very real risk of explosion along the densely populated regions through which the pipeline passes have made local residents want nothing to do with the project, as evidenced by letters submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the pipeline’s approval process. Only 22 of the 5,000 letters were in favor of the project.
The Spectra Pipeline is just one of a new breed of high pressure pipelines being built around the country to expand the gas market to meet the increasing output of U.S. shale production. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 18, 2011, Spectra Energy entered into a $1.5 billion revolving credit agreement with the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Through what’s known as a syndicated loan, Wall Street infused Spectra with capital and spread the financial risk around, while leaving the risk of possible explosion for local residents to bear.
On Oct. 15, Occupy the Pipeline activists wrapped themselves in yellow caution tape as they stood in front of the pipeline construction site. They had black-and-white skeleton makeup on their faces—representing, they said, the danger of fossil fuels turning humans into fossils—which was bleeding down their chins because of the rain. The tape woven around the bodies of those on the line served as a symbol of interconnectivity.
“We are all connected through a web of toxic pipelines,” Occupy the Pipeline organizer Monica Hunken cried out through the people’s microphone, “but we are also connected by a vision for safe and sustainable world.”
Seeing their local fight against Spectra as a microcosm of a broader battle, Occupy the Pipeline put out a call several weeks earlier for those opposing America’s fossil fuel beef-up to join them in a day of action. In Texas, activists who have been carrying out direct actions against the Keystone XL didn’t need much prodding. On #O15, as the date has been called, 50 people stood in the way of the pipeline that NASA climate scientist James Hansen has told the New York Times means “game over” in the fight against climate change.
The Keystone XL is designed to bring heavy crude oil from a deforested region in Alberta, Canada, to export markets along America’s Gulf Coast. After more than 1,000 people were arrested sitting-in at the White House against the pipeline in the summer of 2011, and thousands formed a ring around the White House last November, President Barack Obama announced in January he was nixing approval of the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Quietly, however, his administration gave the go-ahead for construction of the XL’s southern portion.
During a stump speech in Cushing, Oklahoma—a town known as the “Pipeline Capital of the World”—Obama disputed claims that he was a softhearted environmentalist. “We’ve built enough pipeline to encircle the earth and then some,” he told the Cushing crowd. Writing at Grist, shortly after Obama’s Department of the Interior issued four coal mining leases for the Powder River Basin in 2011, Glenn Hurowitz summed up the president’s “all of the above” energy policy as “effectively using modest wind and solar investments as cover for a broader embrace of dirty fuels.” It’s a trick straight out of BP or Chevron’s playbook, writes Hurowitz, to “tout modest environmental investments in multi-million dollar PR campaigns, while putting the real money into fossil fuel development.” But these days Obama does not appear to be playing down his enthusiasm for coal, gas and oil.
While the U.S. under Obama’s leadership is deepening its reliance on fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions have led the climate and the human race along with it into what Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), calls “uncharted territory.” Data collected by Serreze and fellow researchers in September shows that 1.32 million square miles of arctic ice cover withered away over the summer, more than in any year previously on record. The team had anticipated a record melt, but the scope of this year’s de-icing far exceeded its expectations. “While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up,” reported Serreze, “few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur.”
Fortunately for those concerned about the impact of fossil fuels on the biosphere, opposition to the escalating rate of ecological devastation has entered “uncharted territory” as well. In what has been termed a “Summer of Solidarity,” actions against ecological devastation took place in numerous regions across the U.S.
As thousands marched in the first national rally against fracking in Washington, D.C., 50 people walked onto the country’s largest mountaintop removal site in West Virginia and shut it down. Union workers locked out of the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, picketed beside environmentalists. In New York, Occupy the Pipeline challenged Spectra through sit-ins and lockdowns, while Puerto Rican activists battled (and halted) a natural gas pipeline through a campaign in which both islanders and the mainland diaspora took part.
Actions in the U.S. were inspired by bold and brazen acts of ecological defiance globally including the occupation of the massive Bela Monte Dam in Brazil’s rainforest by indigenous tribes amidst the Rio+20 climate conference and a weeklong blockade of the Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia. All the while in Texas, lockdowns and tree-sits against Keystone XL took off one after another.
In Massachusetts, where Spectra Energy is attempting to soup up the Algonquin Gas Transmission line, activists with 350.org and the Better Futures Project met the #O15 call with a tree-sit near Boston. They held banners reading, “TransCanada, You Shall Not Win” and “In Unity With @KXLBlockade & @occupy_pipeline.”
“We leave the ‘Summer of Solidarity’ with friends still sitting in tree tops, with the direct actions of thousands still reverberating, and we enter the ‘Autumn of Unity,’” Monica Hunken told the soggy crowd back in New York. As the effects of climate change become more acute Hunken expressed hope that those resisting it will forge stronger ties with one another.
During Occupy Wall Street’s anniversary weekend in New York, I spoke to Sam Rubin, an anti-fracking activist from Ohio who was in town to storm the Stock Exchange. Then, last Sunday, Rubin and comrades blockaded a fracking site in eastern Ohio, ahead of the #O15 day of action. While in New York last month, Rubin told me that he hails from an area outside of Cleveland hit hard by the recession, where U.S. Steel recently reopened a plant for the first time in two years.
“For these guys to be coming back to work is a huge deal for them,” Rubin said. “They are making steal for pipelines to build-up the fracking infrastructure.” Rubin is part of an emerging breed of environmental activists who see their ecological activism as part of a broader movement for social change. As he and other activists draw on the solidarity fermented over the summer, Rubin said it is import to see their ecological struggles within the pervasive framework of global capitalism, “a system based on growth and extraction for profit fundamentally dependent on human exploitation.”
“Otherwise” added Rubin, “I’m just some guy in a bubble who only cares about my little issue.”
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, by Deepa Kumar – On of the more insidious consequences of the US War on Terror has been the demonizing of Islam. For many in the US, Islam is equated with terrorism and that has serious consequences. Deepa Kumar has done us all a great service in her new book Islamophobia. Kumar not only provides readers with a solid analysis of what Islamophobia looks like in the US since 9/11, she provides thorough background into the centuries of anti-Islamic ideology that has permeated much of the west and academia. The analysis presented in this book is not just an intellectual argument, it demonstrates that those who practice Islam have been the targets of harassment, intimidation and violence from both the general public and the state. Islamophobia is an unsettling read, but it is also an important tool in the fight against the so-called war on terror.
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, by Lois Ahrens – The Real Cost of Prisons has been a project for more than a decade, where prison abolitionists have looked at the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex. This book is a result of their work and their vision about how to communicate the complexities of incarceration in America through comics. There are three separate comic books with The Real Cost of Prisons Comix. The first deals with how prisons are built and who really pays for them. The second commix is a look at how the War on Drugs has become the largest contributing policy to cause the US prison population to explode. The last commix deals with how prisons impact women and children, both women in the prison industrial complex and those who have loved ones within the system. There are also a few short essays included in the book, but these comics are a fabulous tool that could be used for anyone in high school and older and wants to understand the US prison system.
Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Wilson, by S. Brian Wilson – I first met Brian Wilson in 1986 in Washington, DC at a conference for those involved in the Central American Sanctuary Movement. Wilson and other US veterans were fasting against US military aid to the Contras and they addressed the audience in DC. I met Wilson again in 1988 in Guatemala, while working for Peace Brigades International. Wilson was traveling to Nicaragua with a delegation against the US-back war. There was one notable difference the second time seeing Wilson. He had lost his legs. In 1987, Wilson and others were part of a campaign to shut down a munitions rail line on the west coast, munitions that were being sent to Central America. Part of the campaign involved people lying on the tracks and then notifying the company that they would be taking this action to either delay or stop the weapons from being shipped. On one fateful day in the summer of 1987, the train operator wouldn’t stop and Wilson had both of his legs severed. Blood on the Tracks is a powerful autobiography of an amazing person who went from Vietnam Veteran to one of the most committed anti-war activists in this country. A compelling read, highly recommended.
Pink Ribbons Inc (DVD) – Pink Ribbons Inc is an investigation into the insidious cooptation of the breast awareness movement, where corporations use the pink ribbon to not only make money, but to hide their own role in creating a toxic world that leads to breast cancer. Those critical of this reality call the pink ribbons on products – pinkwashing. A powerful film that demonstrates once again how capitalism will co-opt any and all causes, given the chance.
Michigan DEQ spokesperson claims fracking is safe and that they “don’t judge energy sources”
On Thursday, October 18, Representative Pete MacGregor from the 73rd District will host a forum on fracking for people at 6 p.m. at Cannon Township Hall, 6878 Belding Road.
Joining MacGregor will be representatives from the Michigan DNR and DEQ to answer questions about concerns people might have about the method of natural gas extraction, known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking.
In an article last week in the Rockford Squire, DEQ spokesperson Brad Wurfel was the only source cited on the issue, where Wurfel defended the practice of fracking:
Wurful said scare tactics such as the movie Gasland are misleading. A much-promoted graphic of homeowners who are able to light their drinking water on fire has nothing to do with mining or fracking. “I just found a public service flier where the lead graphic was someone lighting their tap water on fire.” He said it happens less often now that more people are hooked to municipal water systems, but homeowners who have well water do have the possibility to have naturally-occurring methane gas contaminate their wells, allowing the alarming possibility of tap water that can burn.
The reporter with the Rockford Squire apparently thinks there is no reason to question a government spokesperson on this critical issue that involves public health, environmental protection and climate change.
There is plenty of recent evidence that there are human health and environmental risks involved with fracking. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) came out with a recent report confirming the fact the fracking poses serious environmental and human health risks. There are also two new studies done by the US Geological Survey on the contamination of groundwater when fracking occurs.
The fact that Rep. MacGregor did not invite other experts with opinions and facts that differ from the Michigan DEQ means that those who attend are less likely to be aware of the critical perspective on fracking in the US.
Anyone who can attend to share such a perspective would at least provide a more balanced view on this critical issue.
Other up Coming Anti-Fracking Actions and Campaigns
We posted a few weeks back about the big protest coming up on Wednesday, October 24 in Lansing, where the DNR is going to auction off more mineral leasing rights to oil & gas companies on public land.
The DNR auction begins at 9am on the 24th at the Lansing Center, located at 333 East Michigan Ave in Lansing, just east of the Capital building and the river. The protest begins at 8:00AM. For more details there is a facebook event page.
Two days before the protest there is an effort to pressure the Michigan DNR by calling the Executive Director Keith Creagh and telling him to stop the auctioning off of mineral rights on public land to oil & gas companies. People are being encouraged to flood that office with phone calls on Monday, October 22. Call 517-373-2329 for DNR Director Keith Creagh and 517-335-3251 for the Natural Resources Deputy Mary Uptigrove. There is a facebook page for this action with more details and a script if you are looking for ideas of what to say.
Yesterday, we posted a notice about upcoming screenings of the anti-fracking film Gasland that will be shown in West Michigan over the next few weeks.
Obama’s War Record
This article by Jack A. Smith is re-posted from CounterPunch.
When Sen. Barack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008 many wishful-thinking Democratic voters viewed him as a peace candidate because he opposed the Iraq war (but voted yes on the war budgets while in the Senate). Some others assumed his foreign/military policy would be along the lines of Presidents George H. W. Bush (whom Obama admires) or Bill Clinton. Some who identified as progressives actually thought his foreign/military policy might tilt to the left.
Instead, center rightist that he is, Obama’s foreign/military policy amounted to a virtual continuation of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terrorism under a different name. He extended Bush’s wars to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere while greatly expanding the war in Afghanistan, hiking the military budget, encouraging the growth of militarism in U.S. society by repeatedly heaping excessive praise on the armed forces, and tightening the military encirclement of China.
Summing up some of his military accomplishments a few months ago, Obama declared: “We’ve succeeded in defending our nation, taking the fight to our enemies, reducing the number of Americans in harm’s way, and we’ve restored America’s global leadership. That makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that’s an achievement that every American — especially those Americans who are proud to wear the uniform of the United States Armed Forces — should take great pride in.”
Obama actually has little to show for his war policy after nearly four years. Most importantly, Afghanistan — the war he supported with enthusiasm — is predictably blowing up in his face. A symbol of the Bush-Obama 11-year Afghan folly is the recent 2,000th death of an American soldier, not at the hands of the Taliban but a U.S.-trained Afghan police officer, our supposed ally. The truth is that public opinion in Afghanistan has always overwhelmingly opposed the invasion, and rightly so.
Obama hopes to avoid the embarrassment of a takeover by the Taliban or another violent Afghan civil war (as happened in the 1990s) after the bulk of U.S. troops pull out at the end of 2014. He’s made a deal with the Kabul government that allows Washington to keep thousands of American troops — Army, CIA agents with their drones, elite Special Operations forces and pilots — until 2024. There are two reasons for this. One is to keep a U.S.-controlled government in Kabul as long as possible. The other is to station American combatants near Afghanistan’s borders with Iran to the west and China to the east for another 10 years, a verdict hardly appreciated in Tehran and Beijing.
The Middle East is in turmoil. Israel’s still threatening to attack Iran, an act that would transform turmoil into catastrophe. The Syrian regime refuses to fall, much to Washington’s chagrin. Egypt’s new government has just declared partial independence from Washington’s longstanding domination. The plight of the Palestinians has worsened during Obama’s presidency. Relations with China and Russia have declined.
Very few of Obama’s 2008 foreign/military election promises have come to fruition. He said he would initiate a “new beginning” in relations with the international Muslim community which had reached a low point under Bush. America’s popularity jumped after the president’s promising Cairo speech in 2009. But now, after repeatedly attacking Muslim countries with drone assassins, the rating is only 15% positive, lower than when Bush was in command.
Obama had promised to improve relations with Latin America, get diplomatically closer to Iran and Cuba, settle the Israel-Palestine dispute and close Guantanámo prison, among a number of unrealized intentions.
All the foreign developments the Democrats could really brag about at their convention were ending the war in Iraq “with heads held high” as our legions departed an eight-year stalemated conflict that cost Uncle Sam $4 trillion, and assassinating al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden (which drew the most enthusiastic of those jingoist “USA! USA! USA!” chants from Democratic delegates).
Actually, Bush ended the Iraq war by signing an agreement with the Baghdad regime — before the new president took office — to pull out all U.S. troops at the end of 2011. Obama supported the treaty but tried unsuccessfully until the last minute to coerce the Iraqis to keep many thousands of American troops in the country indefinitely. (Antiwar.com reported Oct. 2 that up to 300 U.S. soldiers and security personnel have been training elite Iraqi security forces for months.)
Obama as warrior president discombobulated the Republicans who in past elections always benefited from portraying the Democrats as “weak on defense.” Efforts to do so this year have fallen flat after the president in effect melted down his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize to make more bullets. Obama also obtained a second dividend. He wasn’t besieged by antiwar protests as was his predecessor, because most anti-Bush “peace” Democrats would not publicly oppose Obama’s militarist policies. (This essentially destroyed the mass U.S. antiwar movement, which has been kept going on a much smaller scale by the left and the pacifists.)
Throughout Obama’s election declarations he occasionally speaks of, and exaggerates, increasing threats and hazards confronting the American people that only he can manage. He told the convention that the “new threats and challenges” are facing the country. Romney does the same thing, in spades. Overstating the threats confronting the U.S. is a perennial practice for Democratic and Republican presidents and candidates. George W. Bush brought this dishonest practice to an apogee, at times sounding as though he was reciting a Halloween ghost story to gullible children — but this year’s candidates are no slackers.
Historian and academic Andrew J. Bacevich, an Army colonel in the Vietnam War and now strongly opposed to America’s wars, mentioned fear-mongering in an article published in the January-February issue of The Atlantic magazine. He writes: “This national-security state derived its raison d’être from — and vigorously promoted a belief in — the existence of looming national peril…. What worked during the Cold War [fear of the ‘Communist menace’ and nuclear war] still works today: to get Americans on board with your military policy, scare the hell out of them.”
The main purpose of this practice today is to frighten the public into uncomplainingly investing its tax money into the largest military/national security budget in the world — about $1.4 trillion this year (up to $700 billion for the Pentagon and an equal amount for national security).
This accomplishes two objectives for that elite ruling class that actually determines the course of empire: First, it sustains the most powerful military apparatus in history, without which the U.S. could hardly function as world leader (yes it has the biggest economy, but look at the shape it’s in). Second, it constitutes a huge annual infusion of government cash — a stimulus? — into the economy via the military-industrial complex without the “stigma” of being considered a welfare-like plan to create jobs or benefit the people. (This is wrongly called Military Keynesianism, a notion that was repudiated by the great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes, who helped pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression with his plan to increase government spending to end the crisis.)
The White House and Congress talk about reductions in military spending, and there may be some cuts by eliminating obsolete defense systems — but over the decade the budget will continue to expand. Obama said to the convention, and Romney will pledge the same if elected — “As long as I am Commander-in-Chief we will sustain the strongest military in the world.”
This has been a sine qua non for election to the presidency for decades. It is so familiar and so justified by official scare stories that most Americans don’t think twice about paying an annual national fortune to maintain the most powerful military machine in the world to deal with a few thousand opponents with relatively primitive weapons many thousands of miles away. The U.S. military, of course, has an entirely different purpose: at a time of gradual U.S. decline and the rise several other countries such as Brazil, India and China, among others — Washington’s military power is intended to keep the United States in charge of the world.
GVSU to host screening of Pink Ribbons Inc – October 23rd
Next Tuesday, the Women’s Center at GVSU will host a screening of the recently released documentary film about how breast cancer awareness has become another mechanism for making a profit.
Pink Ribbons Inc is an investigation into the insidious cooptation of the breast awareness movement, where corporations use the pink ribbon to not only make money, but to hide their own role in creating a toxic world that leads to breast cancer. Those critical of this reality call the pink ribbons on products – pinkwashing.
The ubiquitous pink ribbons of breast cancer philanthropy – and the hand-in-hand marketing of brands and products associated with that philanthropy — permeates our culture, providing assurance that we are engaged in a successful battle against this insidious disease. But the campaign obscures the reality and facts of breast cancer – more and more women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and face the same treatment options they did 40 years ago. Yet women are also the most influential market group, buying 80 percent of consumer products and making most major household purchasing decisions. So then who really benefits from the pink ribbon campaigns — the cause or the company? And what if the very companies and products that profit from their association have actually contributed to the problem?
In showing the real story of breast cancer and the lives of those who fight it, Pink Ribbons, Inc. reveals the co-opting of what marketing experts have labeled a “dream cause.”
Pink Ribbons Inc
Tuesday, October 23
6:00PM
GVSU Allendale Campus, Kirkhof Center – Grand River Room
A discussion will follow the film. This movie is free and open to all.
Don’t Frack West Michigan events planned
The following information is based on a Media Release from Food & Water Watch.
Over the next month, groups across the region are engaging communities on several occasions to learn about the controversial natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” There are three scheduled screenings of the documentary Gasland. Filmed by Josh Fox, Gasland chronicles Fox’s cross-country odyssey to understand the concerns posed by the practice and undercover the truth. 
These screenings come directly before the mineral rights auction being held on October 24th in Lansing, where the Michigan Department of Natural Resources will lease over 175,000 acres of publicly owned mineral rights to oil and natural gas companies. Publicly owned mineral rights in Allegan, Ottawa, Kent and Barry are all being auctioned. See the map here: http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/1,1607,7-153-10371_14793-30912–,00.html
The free public screenings will be held:
Sunday, October 21, 6 pm at Allegan Regent Theater, 211 Trowbridge, Allegan
Monday, October 22, 6 pm at Hopkins Library, 118 East Main St., Hopkins
Tuesday, October 23, 6 pm at Herrick District Library, 300 S. River Ave. Holland
In November, community members will have the opportunity to learn more about the dangers of fracking and what they can do to stop the flood of the fracking industry in to our communities. Michigan Land, Air Water Defense with support from FLOW and Food & Water Watch present an evening with Wenonah Hauter, long time water activist and Executive Director of the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch and Jim Olsen, esteemed environmental lawyer on Monday, November 12 at Griswold Auditorium, 401 Hubbard St., Allegan, 6-8:30 p.m.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 