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Civilization and barbarism: It Takes a Life Cult to Beat a Death Cult
By John Grant
We have to address the political grievances terrorists exploit.
-- Barack Obama
Sued by Chesapeake Energy for Stealing Trade Secrets, Aubrey McClendon Hires PR Giant Edelman
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Chesapeake Energy has sued its former CEO, Aubrey McClendon, for allegedly stealing its trade secrets in the months between his resignation and the formation of his new company, American Energy Partners. To defend itself outside of the courtroom, American Energy Partners has hired Edelman, the 'world's largest' and often controversial public relations firm.
Photo Credit: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Filed on February 17 at the District Court of Oklahoma County, Chesapeake's legal complaint alleges McClendon covertly took map-based data owned by the company in the time between resigning from the company and then officially leaving the company in early 2013. Chesapeake also alleges that he then utilized that same confidential data for business and investment decisions at his new startup in deciding which land to purchase for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for oil and gas.
"AEP used confidential information and trade secrets stolen by McClendon from Chesapeake as a basis for their decision to acquire certain acreage in the Utica Shale Play," alleges the lawsuit. "Further, in acquiring this acreage...AEP interfered with Chesapeake's business plans and its negotiations for its own acquisition of acreage in the Utica Shale play."
Chesapeake Energy alleges that, before taking the data with him, McClendon asked a former company vice president of land, whose name is redacted in the complaint, to optimize and update the data.
Image Credit: District Court of Oklahoma County
No more AUMFs! No more ‘unitary executives’!: We’re Already Losing Our Democracy and All Our Freedoms to the 2001 AUMF
By Dave Lindorff
Critics of President Obama’s proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force AUMF) against ISIS have been focused upon its deliberately obfuscatory and ambiguous language, which they rightly note would make it essentially a carte blanche from Congress allowing the president to go to war almost anywhere some would-be terrorist or terrorist copycat could be found who claims affinity with ISIS.
Washington Post Erases History With Cuba
The Washington Post says:
"'We walked freely around the streets and talked with anyone we wanted,' Klobuchar said. 'I did not know what to expect. . . . The people were really positive about Americans — I didn’t expect them to be that positive and that excited.' (Well, most Cubans weren’t alive the last time we invaded.)"
Really? Havana is full of very visible celebrations of the return of the Cuban Five, who every Cuban knows were imprisoned in the United States for attempting to halt U.S. attacks on Cuba, which have never ceased. In the lifetime of many Cubans now alive, the U.S. or terrorists it harbors have blown up buildings and airplanes, introduced human and animal diseases into Cuba, and murdered people while hijacking boats.
Do not assume that Cubans do not know this history. It is in their museums, their news, and their studies.
Cubans of course also know Hollywood. They watch the people of the United States as idealized individuals in movies and TV shows all the time.
Cubans do something that the people of the United States have never truly mastered, and the Washington Post seems not to consider. They distinguish between a government and its people. They even distinguish between individual members of the U.S. government and its worse inclinations. They accept as a positive step an opening up by a government that wants to control and harm them. They believe they can control the process enough to make the result a good one.
But they remember things that happened long before the latest revolution, much less before they were born. And they are not ignorant of the U.S. attacks they have lived through.
Blocking executions was long overdue: Pennsylvania’s New Governor Wolf Issues Surprise Execution Moratorium
By Linn Washington, Jr.
Although Pennsylvania's new Governor Tom Wolf, who last November unseated Republican incumbent Tom Corbett, cited more than 315 million solid reasons to back his surprise order putting an immediate moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, law enforcement organizations in the state still castigated his action, calling it an outrageous assault on a criminal justice system that they contend works well.
Facing Felony Charges, Rick Perry Joins Board of Pipeline Company Proposing Pipeline Across Iowa
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Additional Reporting by David Goodner
Former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry has joined the board of directors at Energy Transfer Partners, a natural gas and propane company headquartered in Dallas, Texas that has proposed to build a controversial Bakken crude oil pipeline across Iowa.
Obama the war president -- War: Where 69¢ of Each Tax Dollar Goes
By Dave Lindorff
The Nobel Peace Laureate President Barack Obama, the guy who once campaigned claiming one US war -- the one against Iraq -- was a “bad” one, and the other -- against Afghanistan -- was a “good” one, turns out to be a man who, once anointed commander-in-chief, can’t seem to find a war he doesn’t consider to be a “good” idea.
After 49 years . . . A Letter To The Wall
By John Grant
Sen. John McCain is ‘low-life scum’: And NPR Is Not Reporting the News on Cuba Much Differently than the Corporate Media
By Dave Lindorff
Enbridge Gets Another Federal Tar Sands Crude Pipeline Permit As Senate Debates Keystone XL
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
On January 16, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave Enbridge a controversial Nationwide Permit 12 green-light for its proposed Line 78 pipeline, set to bring heavy tar sands diluted bitumen ("dilbit") from Pontiac, Illinois to its Griffith, Indiana holding terminal.
Where’s the US ‘Syriza’ party?: Greek Voters Have Tossed a Grenade into the Banker/Bureaucrat-Controlled European Establishment
By Dave Lindorff
There is certainly exciting news from Greece today, with confirmation that the leftist coalition party Syriza has won a decisive victory, and, with the help of just one small party, the Greek Independence Party, is assured of a parliamentary majority. That means Syriza’s dynamic marxist leader, the 40-year-old former student radical
Alexis Tsipras, will shortly become Greece’s prime minister, pledged to undo years of crippling austerity and to turn Greece back into a real democracy, instead of a scene of corporate pillage.
Phony baloney: Picking Apart Obama's "Progressive" State of the Union Speech
By Dave Lindorff
There were two times Republicans broke into fervent applause during this lame duck president's seventh State of the Union speech: the first was when he called for passage of "fast track" authority to negotiate and send to the Senate a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact -- basically a NAAFTA for the Pacific region; the second was when he noted that he "won't be running for president again."
Federal Court Order: Explosive DOT-111 "Bomb Train" Oil Tank Cars Can Continue to Roll
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Heather Zichal, Former Top Obama Energy Aide, Named Fellow at Industry-Funded Atlantic Council
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Heather Zichal, former top climate and energy aide to President Barack Obama his top aide in crafting his 2008 presidential campaign energy platform, has joined the industry-funded Atlantic Council as a fellow at its Global Energy Center.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Fake plots get busted, real ones get a pass: The FBI’s Dubious Record on Prosecuting Terror Plots
By Dave Lindorff
If you’re planning to commit an act of terror in the US and want to be left alone by the FBI, make sure your target is something, or someone, that the US government doesn’t like or care about.
Center for Public Integrity Reveals How PR Firms Manufacture Consent for Oil, Big Business
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The Center for Public Integrity has broken new ground by publishing a months-long investigation into the public relations and influence-peddling spending conducted by Big Business trade associations between 2008-2012.
Congressional Democrats have an ‘inaction plan’: Taking a Meaningless Progressive Stand in Congress
By Dave Lindorff
The Democrats are showing their true colors now that they have lost control of both houses of Congress.
Suddenly, with the assurance that they don’t have to worry about being taken seriously, the “party of the people” has come forward with a proposal to levy a 0.1% tax on short-term stock trades, particularly on high speed trading.
‘A bizarre excursion into the surreal’: Is the Islamic State Really Such a Psychological Enigma?
By John Grant
By all means let’s mourn together; but let’s not be stupid together.
-Susan Sontag
The costly debacle known as the Iraq War put the US government in a tough spot that's now exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic State in Anbar Province and western Syria.
Did My Piece on Coal Baron Murray v. Fracker McClendon Suit Lead To Sealing of Court Documents?
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Cops prove they aren't really needed: NY's Mayor Should Fire All Protesting Cops and Apply Payroll Savings to Better Things
By Dave Lindorff
A huge number of entitled, mostly white cops in New York City, who have apparently been engaging in a two-week job action to protest their boss's (that's Mayor Bill deBlasio's) support for protesters against the police killing of Eric Garner, a black man busted for selling "loosie" cigarettes on the street on Staten Island, may be unintentionally offering the public a demonstration of their own irrelevance.
The demise of mainstream journalism, Chapter II: Philadelphia Inquirer Pimps for Philly Cop Chief
By Dave Lindorff
When I was starting out as a reporter back in 1972, working for a little family-owned daily, the Middletown Press in central Connecticut, I had editors and a publisher who demanded the best from us. If I was covering a story -- whether it was a police blotter report, a town meeting, or a controversial decision by a local zoning board -- and I failed to ask an important question, I inevitably got a call from the editor telling me to get it answered and inserted into my article.
Hitting a journalistic nadir: Cold-War-Style Propaganda Posing as News at the New York Times
By Dave Lindorff
As shameful a propagandist for Washington’s war machine as the New York Times has been over the years, sometimes I still cannot believe the brazenness of its abandonment of even a pretext of dispassionate journalistic standards. One of those moments came today, when I read the left-column page-one article by Jim Yardley and Jo Becker headlined “How Putin Forged a Pipeline Deal that Derailed.”
Marketing Madness: Americans See Selves as Freedom’s Heroes as They Flock to Watch a Lousy Comedy
By Dave Lindorff
Is it just me or does anyone else think like me that this whole uproar over the supposed foreign “threat” to Americans’ freedom in the form of warnings against showing a low-brow Hollywood comedy, “The Interview” is a pathetic farce?
I couldn't tell you about it and couldn't tell you why: ‘Gagged’ by the Government: a Police State Story
By Alfredo Lopez
For the past three months, I and other leaders of the organization May First/People Link have been under a federal subpoena to provide information we don't have. During that time, we have also been forbidden by a federal court "gag order" to tell anyone about that subpoena, although we had already announced it and commented on it before the order was sent. Finally, we were forbidden from telling anyone about the gag order itself.
Rot In the Big Apple: Bashing Critics of Brutality Betrays Efforts to Reform Police
By Linn Washington, Jr.
Last fall an apparently unbalanced survivalist steeped in anti-government paranoia murdered a Pennsylvania State Trooper and seriously wounded another Trooper during a sniper attack. Recently an apparently unbalanced man with a criminal past murdered two New York City policemen as they sat in their patrol car hours after he allegedly shot a former girl friend.
The predictable start of vigilantism: Reverse Course on Police Militarization or Reap the Whirlwind
By Dave Lindorff
Let me make it clear from the outset of this article: I’m against violence and killing, and I’m certainly no advocate of killing police officers.
Obama’s Trojan Horse: US Recognition of Cuba after 54 Years of Hostility and War Does't Mean an End to US Subversion
Obama’s Trojan Horse:
US Recognition of Cuba after 54 Years of Hostility and War Does't Mean an End to US Subversion
By Dave Lindorff
Not Just Public Lands: Defense Bill Also Incentivizes Fracked Gas Vehicles
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
DeSmogBlog recently revealed how Big Oil's lobbyists snuck expedited permitting for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") on public lands into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2015, which passed in the U.S. House and Senate and now awaits President Barack Obama's signature.
A follow-up probe reveals that the public lands giveaway was not the only sweetheart deal the industry got out of the pork barrel bill. The NDAA also included a provision that opened the floodgates for natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in the U.S.—cars that would largely be fueled by gas obtained via fracking.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The section of the bill titled, "Alternative Fuel Automobiles" (on page 104) lays it out:
Image Credit: U.S. Government Publishing Office
A Hollywood Hack Holiday: Ending Torture One Dick At a Time
By John Grant
CAUTION! To paraphrase Bill O’Reilly, you are now entering a no-censor zone that discusses obscene activity.
The Christmas movie from Sony Pictures I want to see is Seth Rogan and James Franco rectally feeding Dick Cheney at the climax of a movie sequel called The Enhanced Interview: Saving the Homeland One Dick At a Time.
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