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They are rolling "right through the night!" Big business does not mess around when it comes to figuring out how to make the most money in the most efficacious manner (unless it actually has to emit payoffs . . . ). Mother Jones in "Betting on Change" enlightens us about what Big Business actually believes about its financial "Climate Exposure" in the Global Warming/Climate Change area (emphasis marks added - Ed.).
Companies, of course, exist to make money. That's often what makes them seem so rapacious. But their primal greed also plants them inevitably in the "reality-based community." If a firm's bottom line is going to be affected by a changing climate — say, when its supply chains dry up because of drought, or its real estate gets swamped by sea-level rise — then it doesn't particularly matter whether or not the executives want to believe in climate change. Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won't stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming. The same applies in reverse, as the folks at Beluga Shipping adroitly realized: If there are serious bucks to be made from the changing climate, then the free market is almost certainly going to jump at it.
This makes capitalism a curiously bracing mechanism for cutting through ideological haze and manufactured doubt. Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who's facing "climate exposure" — as it's now called by money managers — cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion. Spend a couple of hours wandering through the websites of various industrial associations — aluminum manufacturers, real-estate agents, wineries, agribusinesses, take your pick — and you'll find straightforward statements about the grim reality of climate change that wouldn't seem out of place coming from Greenpeace. Last year Wall Street analysts issued 214 reports assessing the potential risks and opportunities that will come out of a warming world. One by McKinsey & Co. argued that climate change will shake up industries with the same force that mobile phones reshaped communications.
Read the rest here.
One of the best comments I've seen on the GoldMan Sex Mess is from my gf, Nunya. You go, girl!
BFD.
Government charges Goldman Sachs with FRAUD!!!!
Derisive snort.
Big fucking deal. This morning I opened some ridiculous legalese bullshit notice and all I got out of it was that some big corporation was having to pay court fees and lawyer fees of almost 3 million and the plaintiff would get 20 grand. Our legal system is seriously retarded. Goldman Sachs will get away with ruining millions of people's lives because important people schmooze it up on the fucking golf course and the taxpayers end up paying for it all.
DistributorCapNY has the most comprehensive essay on volcanoes ("Thar She Blows") that I've seen yet. I invite you to take a look.
And, yes, Alicublog, this NEVER GETS OLD. Just more and more a threatening fact of life it seems. The comments are also timeless. Welcome to Somalia!As a parting shot (at our country), we now understand why Porter Go(a)ss was appointed Director of the CIA* (and his prior history of being recruited like all the other Bush/Reagan insiders by the CIA as a "Bonesman" during his junior year at Yale) in 2004 by the Cheney/Bush junta, and why he exited so quickly (before the public had any idea of what he had done while there). Don't forget that these were the same people who impeached and prosecuted Bill Clinton for something that was not a crime. (And don't come around here with any "good character" arguments to me as these are specious on their face when compared to the outsized criminality of this crew. Yeah. I said it. Oh, and this was given their specialty non-reporting treatment and follow up by the NYT in 2007. Remember?) (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)
C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes
The New York Times
April 15, 2010
WASHINGTON — Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.
Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he “agreed” with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to “take the heat” for destroying the tapes.
“PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat,” according to one document, an internal C.I.A. e-mail message.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Mr. Goss did not approve the destruction before it happened, and was displeased that Mr. Rodriguez did not consult him or the C.I.A.’s top lawyer before giving the order for the tapes to be destroyed.
It was previously known that Mr. Goss had been told by his aides in November 2005 that the tapes had been destroyed. But a number of documents released Thursday provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the deliberations inside the C.I.A. surrounding the destroyed tapes, and of the concern among officials at the spy agency that the decision might put the C.I.A. in legal jeopardy.
The documents detailing those deliberations, including two e-mail messages from a C.I.A. official whose name has been excised, were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The e-mail messages also reveal that top White House officials were angry that the C.I.A. had not notified them before the tapes were destroyed. The e-mail messages mention a conversation between Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, in which Ms. Miers was “livid” about being told after the fact.
“Rizzo is clearly upset, because he was on the hook to notify Harriet Miers of the status of the tapes because it was she who had asked to be advised before any action was taken,” according to one of the e-mail messages.
In 2002, C.I.A. operatives in Thailand videotaped the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects whom the C.I.A. was holding in secret in that country. More than a hundred tapes were made, and many were kept in a safe in the C.I.A. station in Bangkok. According to former C.I.A. officials, Mr. Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed in November 2005 because he feared that if the tapes were to become public it would put undercover C.I.A. officers in legal and physical jeopardy.
According to one of the e-mail messages released Thursday, Mr. Rodriguez told Mr. Goss that the tapes, taken out of context, would make the C.I.A. “look terrible; it would be devastating to us.”
The destruction of the tapes is the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation that has stretched on for more than two years. The investigation is led by John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut.
Mr. Goss and other former C.I.A. officers have testified before a grand jury hearing evidence as part of the investigation, former intelligence officials said.
A spokesman for Mr. Goss declined to comment on Thursday evening.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said: “For more than two years, a Department of Justice prosecutor has been looking into the matter. The agency has cooperated fully with that inquiry and will, of course, continue to do so. We hope that this issue is resolved soon.”
In a telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Rizzo said he was not at the meeting recounted in the e-mail messages, but said “Porter never once indicated to me that he agreed with the decision.”
“I thought he was as upset as I was for not being told,” he said.
Mr. Rizzo said that White House officials agreed with him that destroying the tapes was a bad idea, and that they expected to be informed before the C.I.A. made any decisions about their fate.
“They said don’t do anything without telling them in advance,” he said.
One American official familiar with the matter cautioned that the e-mail messages were merely the account of one unnamed C.I.A. official, not the results of a formal investigation.
“It’s a little risky to draw cosmic conclusions from something like that,” he said.
The destruction of the interrogation tapes was first revealed by The New York Times in December 2007.
Yeah. It was a "bad idea." And yet, one of the flunkies below the manager seemingly did it with alacrity and without compunction. I can't remember ever doing anything with those kinds of far-reaching consequences without my boss' explicit orders. Do you? In any position you ever had anywhere? I believe I would have feared for my job (not that I got to keep it anyway even though I followed orders precisely). And how about the use they finally found for Harriet Miers (who only signed off on tons of Dumbya signing statements and other small tasks like suborning treason for this most able administration until she was named as a Supreme Count nominee, who later had to be withdrawn due to her inadequacy of preparation, objected to even by the right wingers)?
How long do you think it took them to come up with that story? Oh, maybe 20 minutes? Convince me otherwise (but first see the information at the asterisk below to understand exactly who this Porter J. Goss is (and was)). Suzan
* (From Wikipedia: In August 2001 Goss, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), and Senator Jon Kyl (R - AZ) visited Islamabad, Pakistan. Meetings were held with President Pervez Musharraf and with Pakistan's military and intelligence officials including the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mahmud Ahmed, as well as with the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.
On the morning (of) 11 September 2001, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with General Ahmad.[12] [13] Ahmad's network had ties to Osama bin Laden and directly funded, supported, and trained the Taliban [14]. They met with Musharraf and Zaeef on the 27th. As reported by Agence France Presse on August 28, 2001, Zaeef assured the US delegation that the Taliban would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US or any other country. Goss fully defended the CIA and the Bush administration. With the White House and Sen. Graham, his counterpart in the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss rebuffed calls for an inquiry in the weeks immediately following September 11.
After growing pressure, Congress established the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, a joint inquiry of the two intelligence committees, led by Graham and Goss. Goss and Graham made it clear that their goal was not to identify specific wrongdoing: Graham said the inquiry would not play "the blame game about what went wrong from an intelligence perspective," and Goss said, "This is not a who-shall-we-hang type of investigation. It is about where are the gaps in America's defense and what do we do about it type of investigation." [15]
The Washington Post reported statements made by Goss on May 17, 2002. Goss said he was looking for "solutions, not scapegoats." He called the uproar over the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US, "a lot of nonsense." He also said, "None of this is news, but it's all part of the finger-pointing. It's foolishness." The Post also reported that Goss refused to blame an "intelligence failure" for September 11, preferring to praise the agency's "fine work." (Washington Post, May 18, 2002, "A Cloak But No Dagger; An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11")
The inquiry's final report was released in December 2002 and focused entirely on the CIA and FBI's activities, including no information on the White House's activities. Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA turned Democratic political activist and a frequent commentator on intelligence issues, believed the report showed that Goss gave "clear priority to providing political protection for the president" when conducting the inquiry.
Goss publicly declared his opposition to the creation of an independent 9-11 Commission. A year later, he declined to open committee hearings into the Plame affair, saying: "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."[16]
Goss chiefly blames President Bill Clinton for the recent CIA failures.
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3 comments:
Thanks for the link, sweetheart, :) Have you ever read The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy? (c 1972) It was the first book I read that opened my mind to just how awful some of the things the CIA does are.
well, i dont really know if global warming is real or not, but the atmosphere sure is getting weird...
No. But I will put it on my short list, sweetie.
I do remember the first time I read Ramparts Magazine though - screwed my head around several times and I never got over it.
I read about (and heard about from knowledgeable sources), believe it or not, the CIA pushers on the college scene.
Those facts and further ones about the real reason for the Vietnam mayhem never left my mind. Thanks for the recommendation!
RJ, I know you have a hard time believing in the Social Security scam (that it's not really a fiducuiary obligation (already funded by those alive who paid into it for all their working lives), that the right wingers want you to believe that it can't continue (unless we start paying them for it), and that the kiddies will never get theirs (yep, if they don't want to pay taxes for it like we did, they won't)), but you shouldn't doubt the global warming data (and, yes, G-S and MSC and all the rest of the Wall Street thieves have lots of plans to use its reality to enrich themselves) because even though the earth may revive (in a million or so years) after the coming catastrophe, it's still not nice to screw your children.
And if we don't put a stop to these financial gangster's plans now, it won't matter how warm it gets because only the richies will be able to afford air conditioning.
The rest of us will be finishing the denuding job on what's left of the mountains by then as we'll be providing that "clean coal" they'll need to continue to dominate us from their gilt palaces.
Thanks for commenting, friend.
S
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