TBR News October 10, 2011
December 25, 272 AD
First official public celebration of Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, a pagan Roman holiday that was later co-opted by Christians to celebrate the birth of their favorite Jew. Turning the holiday into “Christmas” (in 336 AD) was part of a pattern of the church stealing various pagan festivals and feast days
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., October 10, 2011: “It is always very frustrating to try to enlighten people to potential danger. Most of the time, no one pays the slightest attention to warnings. They want to built a house in a landslide area. They want to buy a car that is on a recall list for faulty wiring. They want to buy shrimp in the local market that had been raised in filthy contaminated Chinese fish farms. They want to buy Morgan silver dollars that are, again, Chinese counterfeits. Tell people about these and they just smile. Right now, there is ample warning about very serious sociological problems growing in this country. Chronic and rising unemployment, the mortgage scandals, the growing bankruptcy of States and, unfortunately, the Federal government all are squeezing the middle class badly. Any student of society will tell you that no sane politician should attack the middle class. When this huge group becomes angry, revolutions are born and change is demanded. It’s a bit like going into a cave with a hibernating bear and kicking it in the testicles. People get eaten doing that. Now we see a powerful, and potentially very dangerous, situation developing in the United States in the so-called ‘Occupy’ movements. These are outraged middle class citizens who now hate the banks that control all the money and most of the real estate in this country. They do not see the American banking system as friendly to the citizens and in their beliefs, they are correct. The banks have become huge and no government agency, including the weak White House, dares to interfere with them. The enormous Bank of America bought out the crooked Countrywide mortgage company and has been ripping off hundreds of thousands of people with rigged mortgages. The government agencies are well aware of this but as BoA told Washington, ‘Fuck with us, dude, and we’ll all go down the tubes!’ And with Presidential elections looming next year, Obama wants no problem to erupt that he either can’t or won’t deal with. Once the elections are over, he doesn’t care and once he leaves office, the problem belongs to someone else. That is why the ‘Occupy’ people are such a potential threat. All it would take would be some totally stupid local police chief to order his men to fire live ammunition into peaceful protestors and the resulting public uproar, and upheaval, would be terrible to behold.”.
Occupy America: protests against Wall Street and inequality hit 70 cities
The generation that opposed Vietnam has joined Facebook anarchists amid anger at tax breaks for the rich while ordinary folk tighten their belts
October 8, 2011
by Joanna Walters in Seattle
Guardian/UK
The Wall Street protests against economic inequality and corporate greed that targeted the nerve centre of American capitalism are no longer merely a New York phenomenon. This weekend, from Seattle and Los Angeles on the west coast to Providence, Rhode Island, and Tampa, Florida, on the east, as many as 70 major cities and more than 600 communities have joined the swelling wave of civil dissent. The slogan “Occupy Wall Street” has been suitably abbreviated to a single word: “Occupy”
“This could be the tipping point,” said Dick Steinkamp, 63, a retired Silicon Valley executive at the Occupy Seattle protest being held in the heart of the city’s shopping and restaurant district . He and his wife had driven two hours from their home in Bellingham, north of Seattle, specifically to join the rally and give it support from more conventional professionals.
“I marched against the Vietnam war before I was drafted into the army and this movement is now getting towards that critical mass,” he said.
One of the favourite messages of the protesters is that almost 40% of US wealth is held in the hands of 1% of the population, who are taxed more lightly than the majority of Americans. Steinkamp was holding a sign saying “I am the 99%”. And there is widespread anger that ordinary people have born the brunt of the financial crisis with dire job losses and house repossessions.
“I came here because I wanted to show it wasn’t just young anarchists,” said Deb Steinkamp, also 63 and a retired marriage counsellor, wearing a green cagoule and sensible shoes against the damp, chilly Seattle weather.
Protests broke out last week in Chicago, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Austin, Louisville, Atlanta and dozens of other cities. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary are set to add themselves to the ranks next weekend.
Motorists honked their support as they passed the Seattle demonstration, which was around 500 strong on Friday and likely to swell as the weekend progressed. Earlier in the week the police forced protestors to clear away tents that had been multiplying across the square. Seattle’s liberal mayor Mike McGinn supports the protesters – but drew the line once they started camping in the middle of downtown.
In New York more than 700 people have been arrested while marching on the stock exchange and over the Brooklyn Bridge in the name of Occupy Wall Street and 20,000 marched in lower Manhattan last Wednesday.
The sheer proliferation of the rallies across 45 states has drawn attention. “It expresses the frustrations the American people feel about the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression,” President Obama said. “There has been huge collateral damage all across ‘Main Street’ [from the financial crisis] and some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly are now trying to fight a crackdown on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” he added.
In Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handed out rain ponchos to demonstrators when there was a downpour. A thousand people gathered outside the city government offices for Occupy Austin, as well as similar crowds in Dallas and Houston.
After joining Occupy Wall Street, alongside a group of university professors, Obama’s former head of blog campaigns Sam Graham-Felsen pointed out that the movement was maturing. He said that although it would not have started without radical idealists taking to the streets it has gone to the next level with the inclusion of “seasoned organisers and pragmatists”.
Asher McCord, 31, a shopworker in Seattle, was at the protests before starting his shift at a department store, and was wearing a neat woollen blazer and designer jeans. “There is that saying, ‘Dissent is patriotic,’ and I agree with that. I was unemployed for a while. I just started my new job and I think lower income people are taking all the pain and the anxiety in this recession,” he said.
Protesters are complaining about tax breaks for oil companies, excessive lobbying in Washington, astronomical pay and bonuses for financiers, and the bailout of the banking sector.
The movement was sparked in part by Vancouver-based Adbusters Media Foundation, an anti-consumerism organ with a magazine, which urged people to occupy Wall Street to protest inherent inequalities in the economic system. There is no central organisation or formal co-ordination between cities but instigators use web tools such as Twitter and Facebook to pass information and now hope that the demonstrations will build towards the G20 economic summit in Cannes next month.
Detractors have mocked protesters for using social media, when those brands are increasingly corporatised. But hospital nurse Angela Silling, 41, who was staffing the first aid post in Seattle’s Westlake Park, said: “The Arab Spring demonstrators used social media very successfully and no one has criticised those rebels.”
House of Representative majority leader Eric Cantor dismissed the protesters as “mobs” who were prompting “Americans to fight Americans”. That prompted a storm of criticism, because he has praised the Tea Party as a legitimate expression of conservative grassroots anger.
Seattle demonstrator Ted Lang, 26, who has just qualified as an English teacher and is considering moving abroad, said the Occupy demonstrators had much in common with the libertarians who first started the Tea Party movement. “But it got hijacked by right-wing religious conservatives,” he said.
Who would he not want to see the Occupy movement hijacked by?
“The Democrat party,” he said.
NYT Editorial: Protesters Against Wall Street
October 9, 2011
New York Times
As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.
At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.
The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings — the very definition of downward mobility.
The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.
The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.
Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.
When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.
That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.
Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.
Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.
No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.
It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.
11 Facts You Need To Know About The Nation’s Biggest Banks
October 7, 2011
by Pat Garofalo
ThinkProgress
The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests — as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said — makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession.
While the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did a lot to ensure that a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis won’t occur — through regulation of derivatives, a new consumer protection agency, and new powers for the government to dismantle failing banks — the biggest banks still have a firm grip on the financial system, even more so than before the 2008 financial crisis. Here are eleven facts that you need to know about the nation’s biggest banks:
– Bank profits are highest since before the recession…: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.
– …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.
– Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually down from before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.
– Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.
– The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.
– The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: In the 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets. Today, they control 60 percent.
– The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent of the country’s GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assets equal to about 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Now their assets equal 63 percent of GDP.
– The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives: Nearly the entire market in derivatives — the credit instruments that helped blow up some of the nation’s biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG — is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.
– Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth: Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the Great Recession, and total family wealth is still down “$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 — its last peak.”
– Big banks don’t lend to small businesses: The New Rules Project notes that the country’s 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.”
– Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in 2008: According to the New York Attorney General’s office, “nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008.”
In the last few decades, regulations on the biggest banks have been systematically eliminated, while those banks engineered more and more ways to both rip off customers and turn ever-more complex trading instruments into ever-higher profits. It makes perfect sense, then, that a movement calling for an economy that works for everyone would center its efforts on an industry that exemplifies the opposite.
After high-profile killings, secret U.S. assassination squad emerges from the shadows
Under President Obama, JSOC’s missions have not only increased in number but have also diversified.
October 8, 2011
Source Link
Based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is America’s secret army. Members of this clandestine team have recently made news for assassinating alleged al Qaeda operatives Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; reportedly, they were also responsible for the killings of hundreds of civilians in the 2002 “wedding party” incident in Afghanistan.
In 2009 the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh spoke publicly about this elite military agency. Hersh stated:
“After 9/11 … the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it … the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. … They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially … Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries … and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. …
“It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. … In many cases, they were the best and the brightest … Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people. I’ve had people say to me — five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder?'”
Although the organization has only existed for a few decades, the Washington Post recently reported that, since the 2001 terrorist attacks, JSOC has killed more people and interrogated 10 times more detainees than the CIA. JSOC controls its own prisons in the Middle East; it also has its own drones, satellites, and intelligence division, and engages in psychological operations (PSYOP). With roughly 25,000 operatives, it’s larger than the CIA, and takes its orders from a higher authority. Not only does the U.S. President provide JSOC with a “kill list,” but he even allows JSOC to select its own targets for assassination. According to published reports, JSOC has received approval to conduct missions in more than a dozen countries.
JSOC prides itself on its secrecy. Its officers often do not wear uniforms, and in combat do not carry identifying information. As one operative boasted: “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.” Some aver that the Bush and Obama administrations have deliberately kept JSOC’s missions secret from Congress and the public by using the Constitution’s grant of presidential military authority in order to overlap military and intelligence operations. Admiral William “Fox” Fallon headed U.S. Central Command until several years ago, when he resigned under pressure. Said his colleague retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out … Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing.”
Since then, recent killings of high-profile targets have brought the secretive agency into the public eye. After tracking events at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Afghanistan for five years, in May JSOC officers assassinated bin Laden at his Abottabad camp. This week JSOC again made news, this time for killing Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, two United States citizens in Yemen who had allegedly “inspired” attacks against the U.S. JSOC forces tracked the Americans for weeks, and on Friday launched airstrikes with armed drones, killing at least four people. In 2010 President Obama had approved the assassination of Awlaki, who reportedly is not the only U.S. citizen to appear on Obama’s kill list.
This week’s assassinations, however, sparked protest from some civil libertarians and legal scholars, in part because the U.S. had neither declared war on Yemen nor charged Awlaki with any crime. A U.S. citizen, the Yemeni-American cleric distributed English-language sermons via YouTube that called for jihad against the country of his birth. Though they have not publicly presented any supporting evidence in court, U.S. intelligence officials allege that Awlaki recruited for al Qaeda and inspired the individuals who carried out the Times Square bombing, the 2009 attempted Christmas Day bombing, and the shootings at Fort Hood. Some, however, say that the cleric’s actual influence has been overstated.
Others note that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits political assassination as a deprivation of life without due legal process. According to Jameel Jaffer at the American Civil Liberties Union, JSOC’s “targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law … this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts … It is a mistake to invest the President … with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.” Constitutional blogger Glenn Greenwald criticized the President for acting as “judge, jury, and executioner.” Last summer, Awlaki’s father filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent the Obama administration from killing his son without criminal charges or a court trial. While expressing some qualms about its decision, in December the government dismissed the suit, partly on the grounds that the court lacked authority to review the President’s military decisions.
JSOC operatives have earned a reputation for being “the most dangerous people on planet earth.” Its officers sometimes conducted 300 raids monthly in the Iraq war, and made as many as 1,000 kills in a year. During a 2001 fight, JSOC killed so many opposition forces that “truckloads” of bodies of enemy fighters were carted away afterward. In July 2002, reports surfaced that several hundred civilians, including members of a wedding party, were killed during a JSOC attack on the Taliban. It was reported that some members of JSOC were physically assaulting prisoners, starving and torturing them, and hiding them in secret facilities, as well as detaining female family members in their houses when male targets were not at home. Military commanders nonetheless expressed satisfaction with JSOC’s 50% success rate in targeting the correct individuals and locations. However, in 2009 JSOC’s commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered a temporary halt to JSOC missions in Afghanistan, apparently due to increasing concern that the mounting civilian casualties jeopardized U.S. interests.
Nevertheless, under President Obama, JSOC’s missions have not only increased in number, but have also diversified: reportedly, JSOC is currently collaborating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other domestic agencies.
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy advisers
October 6, 2011
by Steve Sailer
Mitt Romney announced his shadow national security council to advise him on foreign policy. How many of these people were against the Iraq Attaq? Any of them? How many were with the Project for a New American Century? Don’t these people have a college football team they could root for instead of starting wars?
By the way, remember how Mormons like Brent Scowcroft used to have a bit of a leg up in national security and FBI circles because Mormons were seen as unlikely to have close family ties to foreign countries? Well, it’s good to see that the Mormon Bias in foreign policy has largely been eradicated and now we finally have a foreign policy establishment that Looks Like America.
SPECIAL ADVISERS
Cofer Black
Christopher Burnham
Michael Chertoff
Eliot Cohen
Norm Coleman
John Danilovich
Paula Dobriansky
Eric Edelman
Michael Hayden
Kerry Healey
Kim Holmes
Robert Joseph
Robert Kagan
John Lehman
Walid Phares
WORKING GROUPS
Afghanistan & Pakistan
James Shinn, Co-Chair
Ashley Tellis, Co-Chair
Africa
Tibor Nagy, Chair
Asia-Pacific
Evan Feigenbaum, Co-Chair
Aaron Friedberg, Co-Chair
Kent Lucken, Co-Chair
Counter-Proliferation
Eric Edelman, Co-Chair
Robert Joseph, Co-Chair
Stephen Rademaker, Co-Chair
Counterterrorism/Intelligence
Michael Chertoff, Co-Chair
Michael Hayden, Co-Chair
Defense
John Lehman, Co-Chair
Roger Zakheim, Co-Chair
Europe
Nile Gardiner, Co-Chair
Kristen Silverberg, Co-Chair
Human Rights
Pierre Prosper, Chair
International Assistance
Grant Aldonas, Co-Chair
Daniel Runde, Co-Chair
International Organizations
Christopher Burnham, Co-Chair
Paula Dobriansky, Co-Chair
Robert O’Brien, Co-Chair
Issa: ‘Fast and furious’ subpoenas issued soon
October 10 2011
AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House oversight committee said he could send subpoenas to the Obama administration as soon as this week over weapons lost amid the Mexican drug war.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa suggested on “Fox News Sunday” that Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun trafficking operation known as “Fast and Furious” earlier than he has acknowledged.
“Why are they denying knowing about something that they were briefed on?” Issa said. “Exactly when, the American people want to know, how did it happen?”
In the 2009 operation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed intermediaries for drug cartels to buy thousands of weapons from Arizona gun shops and lost track of about 1,400 of the 2,000 of those guns. Some of those weapons have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico.
Operation Fast and Furious came to light after two assault rifles purchased by a now-indicted small-time buyer under scrutiny in the operation turned up at a shootout in Arizona where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.
Earlier this year, Holder testified to Congress that he hadn’t heard about the operation until early 2011. On Sunday, Issa said, “That’s just disingenuous on its face.”
In a letter sent Friday to key lawmakers who oversee Justice Department issues, Holder said his testimony was truthful and accurate and said Republicans are engaging in political posturing when they say otherwise.
“Such irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms,” Holder said.
On Fox, Issa said President Barack Obama “still seems to have full confidence in Eric Holder — something I don’t share.”
Issa declined to join other Republicans who have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Holder. “Congress is well along the way of investigating this operation to find out what went wrong, who knew it and what we have to do in the future to make sure it can’t happen again,” Issa said.
Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales
October 3, 2011
by Asjylyn Loder and David Evans
Bloomberg News
“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”
She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.
By September of that year, the researchers had found evidence of improper payments to secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002, authorized by the business director of the company’s Koch-Glitsch affiliate in France
. “Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.
Egorova-Farines wasn’t rewarded for bringing the illicit payments to the company’s attention. Her superiors removed her from the inquiry in August 2008 and fired her in June 2009, calling her incompetent, even after Koch’s investigators substantiated her findings. She sued Koch-Glitsch in France for wrongful termination.
Obsessed with Secrecy
Koch-Glitsch is part of a global empire run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have taken a small oil company
Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue — $100 billion a year — and says nothing about its profits.
The most visible part of Koch Industries is its consumer brands, including Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacific LLC, which Koch owns, makes Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bath tissue.
Charles, 75, and David, 71, each worth about $20 billion, are prominent financial backers of groups that believe that excessive regulation is sapping the competitiveness of American business. They inherited their anti-government leanings from their father.
Abolishing Social Security
Fred was an early adviser to the founder of the anti- communist John Birch Society, which fought against the civil rights movement and the United Nations
These are long-standing tenets for the Kochs. In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies — including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
What many people don’t know is how the Kochs’ anti- regulation political ideology has influenced the way they conduct business.
A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.
The ‘Koch Method’
Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.
From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.
Phil Dubose, a Koch employee who testified against the company said he and his colleagues were shown by their managers how to steal and cheat — using techniques they called the Koch Method.
Refused to Falsify
Former Koch employees in the U.S. and Europe have testified or told investigators that they’ve witnessed wrongdoing by the company or have been asked by Koch managers to take what they saw as improper actions.
Sally Barnes-Soliz, who’s now an investigator for the State Department of Labor and Industries in Washington, says that when she worked for Koch, her bosses and a company lawyer at the Koch refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, asked her to falsify data for a report to the state on uncontrolled emissions of benzene, a known cause of cancer. Barnes-Soliz, who testified to a federal grand jury, says she refused to alter the numbers.
“They didn’t know what to do with me,” she says. “They were really kind of baffled that I had ethics.”
Koch’s refinery unit pleaded guilty in 2001 to a federal felony charge of lying to regulators and paid $20 million in fines and penalties.
Corporate Cultures
“How much lawless behavior are we going to tolerate from any one company?” asks David Uhlmann, who oversaw the prosecution of the Koch refinery division when he was chief of the environmental crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Corporate cultures reflect the priorities of the corporation and its senior officials.”
Koch Industries declined to make either Charles Koch, who lives near corporate headquarters in Wichita, or David Koch, who lives in New York, available for interviews.
Melissa Cohlmia, Koch’s director of corporate communications, said in an e-mailed statement that the company has developed a good relationship with environmental regulators and now complies with all rules. Cohlmia says the company has learned lessons from past mistakes, including the improper payment scheme that Koch outlined in its letter filed in French court.
‘Steps to Correct’
“We are proud to be a major American employer and manufacturing company with about 50,000 U.S. employees,” she wrote. “Given the regulatory complexity of our business, we will, like any business, have issues that arise. When we fall short of our goals, we take steps to correct and address the issues in order to ensure compliance.”
Cohlmia says Koch fired the employees and sales agents involved in the illicit payments and strengthened internal controls.
Regarding sales to Iran, she wrote, “During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions.”
Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran, she says.
Lobbying Washington
The Koch brothers have vaulted into the American political spotlight in recent years. Koch Industries has spent more than $50 million to lobby in Washington since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political donations. The company opposed derivatives regulation and greenhouse gas limits.
The brothers have backed a foundation that has trained thousands of Tea Party activists. The Tea Party, a popular movement whose name stands for Taxed Enough Already, has grown into a potent force in national politics. Sixty representatives of Congress, out of a total of 435, identify themselves as Tea Party members. Virtually every Republican candidate for president — including Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann — has solicited the group’s support.
Integrity and Compliance
Koch Industries’ political action committee, KochPAC, donated $50,000 to Texans for Rick Perry last year for his gubernatorial campaign, according to the Texas Ethics Commission. It has also donated to support Bachmann’s congressional campaigns, Federal Election Commission records show.
The company tells all of its employees around the world that its top two values, which it calls Guiding Principles, are integrity and compliance. Koch Industries and its subsidiaries have won 436 awards for safety, environmental excellence, community and customer service and innovation since January 2009, Cohlmia says.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has recognized several of the company’s units for their commitment to the workplace, the company says. Koch Industries has also supported charitable causes in Wichita and beyond, including the Kansas Special Olympics and Big Brothers Big Sisters. The company has also helped enlistees in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Koch Industries has donated millions of dollars to the Nature Conservancy, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan
Reputation is Critical
David Koch has contributed more than $135 million to cultural institutions, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Koch Industries zealously guards its public image.
“A company’s reputation is critical to how it will be treated by others and to its long-term success,” Charles Koch wrote in “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company” (Wiley, 2007). “We must build a positive reputation based on reality, or others will create one for us based on speculation or animus and we won’t like what they create.”
The illicit payments uncovered by Ludmila Egorova-Farines raised the specter of a new blow to the company’s effort to improve its reputation following criminal convictions and civil penalties.
Avoiding Scandal
The company wanted to avoid a bribery scandal similar to that of Siemens AG (SIE), says Ged Horner, a managing director at Koch-Glitsch in the U.K. from 2002 until he retired in 2010.
“The only thing that would seriously impact the profitability and continuity of Koch Industries was a compliance issue,” Horner says.
In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice and German prosecutors opened an investigation into bribery by Munich-based Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company. Siemens and three of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty in December 2008 to charges of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from 1998 to 2007.
Siemens paid $1.6 billion in penalties, admitting it had paid bribes to companies in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela.
“Koch decided that if it could happen to Siemens, it could happen to them,” Horner says.
Koch Chemical Technology Group, a Koch Industries subsidiary run by David Koch, hired Egorova-Farines in April 2008 for the newly created position of compliance and ethics manager for Europe and Asia
French Investigation
The division, which makes distillation, pollution control and water filtration equipment, recruited her from accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where she was a consultant for four years on integrating corporate cultures after mergers. As soon as she joined Koch, the company flew her to Wichita to attend an internal compliance conference, she says.
The company then asked her to investigate Koch-Glitsch in France because it had heard that managers were awarding salary increases inappropriately, Egorova-Farines says. The company never mentioned anything about improper payments for contracts when it gave her that assignment, she says. She declines to discuss the details of her findings, saying it would be unprofessional.
The specifics of illicit payments for contracts by Koch- Glitsch can be found in two French labor court cases. The complaints were brought separately by Egorova-Farines and Leon Mausen, business director of Koch-Glitsch France from 1998 to 2008.
Illicit Payments
Koch-Glitsch fired Mausen on Dec. 8, 2008, sending him a termination letter that described illicit payments from 2002 to 2008 in Algeria, Egypt, India, Morocco, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. In the Middle East, Koch-Glitsch paid what the termination letter describes as an exceptionally high commission of 23 percent to one of its sales agents.
“A portion of that money was intended to pay a customer’s employee in order to secure the contract,” Koch wrote.
The customer was an unnamed Egyptian company that was partially owned by the state. Koch-Glitsch made similar payments to win other contracts with public and private companies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Koch wrote in its letter to Mausen.
Koch-Glitsch gave envelopes stuffed with cash to a Moroccan company, Koch wrote in its letter. Koch-Glitsch also made an improper payment to secure a contract with a Moroccan government organization, Koch wrote. The company made similar payments to an unnamed Nigerian government agency to win contracts, Koch wrote.
Koch Blamed Employee
A Koch-Glitsch agent increased the commission paid to an Algerian agent in 2007 and 2008 to cover what Koch described as an unlawful payment to secure a deal with an unnamed French company.
Koch’s spokeswoman Cohlmia says Koch Industries acted firmly and decisively in response to what it had learned.
In its Dec. 8, 2008, termination letter to Mausen, Koch blamed him for the illegal payments. In July 2009, Mausen sued Koch for severance and performance pay in the Arles Labor Court in southern France.
On Sept. 27, 2010, the court said Mausen hadn’t acted on his own.
“It was not Mr. Mausen alone who was giving authorizations,” the court wrote.
Company policy required approval from other Koch-Glitsch managers, including Christoph Ender, the president of Koch- Glitsch for Europe and Asia, the court said.
‘Without Doing Due Diligence’
“Ender, manager of Koch-Glitsch France, as well as the controllers and auditors who were assisting him, allowed such business practices developed with Mr. Mausen to continue without doing due diligence in their reviews concerning the payment of commissions and the final beneficiaries of said commissions,” the labor court wrote.
An appeals court in Aix-en-Provence issued a second ruling on June 14, 2011, saying the company couldn’t justify terminating Mausen for the payment scheme because his managers had been aware of the practices for more than 60 days before he was fired. The court ordered Koch-Glitsch to pay Mausen 150,808 euros ($206,170).
Mausen declined to comment, beyond saying he disputed Koch’s arguments in court. Ender, who is now a Koch-Glitsch executive in Wichita, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Koch’s Cohlmia says Ender “had no knowledge of Mr. Mausen’s misconduct at the time it occurred, as Mr. Mausen concealed it from him.”
Initially On Track
As for Egorova-Farines, her career was initially on track after she exposed bribery. Koch Chemical promoted her to a permanent position after her trial period expired in mid-2008, court records show. She was dispatched to offices in Germany, Russia and Switzerland, she says.
“I worked hard to drive cultural change to make these units compliant,” she says.
Egorova-Farines was hospitalized for seven weeks starting in February 2009, according to the decision in her lawsuit against Koch-Glitsch for wrongful termination.
The company fired her on June 16, 2009, saying later in court that she didn’t have the skills she’d listed on her resume and that she had failed to share documents with others at the company, according to the court record. She contested Koch’s arguments.
Court Ruling
Neither Egorova-Farines nor the labor court knew at the time that Koch had cited the company’s six-year pattern of improper payments in its termination letter to Mausen, she says. The court ruled against her on Feb. 11. She filed an appeal two months later in Paris.
She said in court that Koch had harassed her and retaliated against her for uncovering the payment scheme. She asked to be reinstated in her Koch job and paid for the time she was out of work. Egorova-Farines, who was born in London, now runs a business practices consulting firm in Paris.
Koch’s Cohlmia says the labor court found that the company treated Egorova-Farines fairly and provided her with chances to perform adequately.
The payments to win contracts documented by Koch investigators may violate U.S. law, says Sara Sun Beale, a professor at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina. She says Koch’s termination letter to Mausen gives clear guidance to federal prosecutors.
‘Smoking Gun’
“It sounds like a smoking gun,” says Beale, who co- authored “Federal Criminal Law and Its Enforcement” (Thompson West, 2010). “It really should get the Justice Department’s attention. When you have a smoking gun, you launch an investigation.”
Such a probe would fall under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that makes it illegal for companies and their subsidiaries to pay bribes to government officials and employees of state-owned companies.
Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney says the agency won’t confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.
While Koch-Glitsch was conducting its internal probe of illicit payments for contracts, the U.S. government was investigating Koch’s European unit on another front: sales to Iran.
On Aug. 14, 2008, investigators from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security met with George Bentu, who had worked as a sales engineer from 2001 to 2007 for Koch-Glitsch in Germany, Bentu says. In a four-hour interview at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, the officials asked about documents showing details of the company’s trades with Iran, he says.
Legal Sidestep
Homeland Security spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez declined to comment.
Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.
The company’s products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.
Engineer Challenged Sales
“Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” Bentu, 46, says.
Bentu, a German engineer who earned his master’s degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University in Bozeman in 1990, joined Koch-Glitsch in 2001. His duties included drawing up bids for potential buyers of the company’s distillation equipment, which is used in making fuels, fertilizers, detergents and other products.
Bentu says he had been working at Koch-Glitsch in Viernheim, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Frankfurt, for two months when he first saw an order destined for Iran. Concerned that the transaction might run afoul of U.S. law, Bentu asked his manager about it, he says. Bentu says his boss told him not to worry, that the company’s U.S. lawyers made sure the deals with Iran were legal.
U.S. companies have been banned from trading with Iran since 1995, when President Bill Clinton declared it a threat to national security. Iran supports Iraqi militants and Taliban fighters as well as terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, according to the U.S. State Department.
Getting Around Ban
Koch Industries took elaborate steps to ensure that its U.S.-based employees weren’t involved in the sales to Iran, internal documents show.
Koch Industries may not have violated the law if no U.S. people or company divisions facilitated trades with Iran, says Avi Jorisch, a Treasury Department policy adviser from 2005 to 2008. That’s impossible to determine without a complete investigation, Jorisch says.
Internal Koch-Glitsch correspondence shows that the company coordinated with Koch Industries lawyers in the U.S. to make sure that American employees didn’t work on sales to Iran. Elena Rigon, now Koch-Glitsch compliance manager for Europe, based in Italy, in December 2000 addressed a memo outlining compliance guidelines to company managers in her region.
‘Axis of Evil’
In another e-mail, Rigon said all offices had to go through a checklist for each estimate quoted for materials headed to Iran.
“Your staff shall send this form to me since I have to send it to the lawyers in the USA as part of the compliance program,” Rigon wrote in the e-mail. “If somebody happens to find out that any U.S. persons are involved in this project or U.S. material is delivered to Iran you CANNOT quote.”
Rigon declined to comment.
“Koch-Glitsch had protocols in place that were consistent with applicable U.S. laws allowing such sales at the foreign subsidiary level,” Koch’s Cohlmia says.
In his annual State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, President George W. Bush said that Iran was part of what he called the “Axis of Evil.”
A year later, in his Jan. 28, 2003, address to Congress, Bush said, “In Iran, we continue to see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction and supports terror.”
Soliciting Iranian Orders
The following day, Koch-Glitsch was sent a purchase order to supply petrochemical equipment for the Zagros plant, which was being designed and built by two engineering firms, Pidec in Iran and Lurgi in Germany, according to company documents.
On May 31, 2004, Koch-Glitsch secured another contract for 1.2 million Euros, to help expand the Zagros facility. The plant helped Iran turn its vast natural gas reserves into methanol, which is used for making plastics, paints and chemicals.
The Italian office of Koch-Glitsch sought work on other projects in Iran — the expansion of the Abadan refinery, the country’s largest, and the development of South Pars, part of the world’s largest natural gas field, the documents show.
Koch-Glitsch told employees in 2006 that the company was winding down business in Iran, Bentu says. At that point, he says, his bosses still asked him to work on Iran bids. He says he told them he was no longer willing to sign off on such work, leading to arguments between Bentu and his managers.
‘Totally Betrayed’
Bentu says he felt dismayed because Koch Industries clearly tells all of its employees around the world that integrity is the company’s No. 1 value.
“You feel totally betrayed,” Bentu says. “Everything Koch stood for was a lie.”
Bentu, who was earning about 49,000 euros a year, says the company forced him out in April 2007 and paid him 25,000 euros severance.
In 2009, Bentu was interviewed as part of a probe by the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust agency. It was looking into whether Koch-Glitsch had collaborated with a rival, Montz GmbH, a smaller petrochemical equipment maker in nearby Hilden, to rig bids they made to supply products to companies.
In November 2010, Koch-Glitsch and Montz each paid 250,000 euros as part of a settlement with the regulator for sharing information from December 2002 to August 2008. The German regulator said the violations were a minor infraction. Koch- Glitsch closed its office in Viernheim in 2009, Bentu says. Several former employees went to work for Montz.
Guenther Frey, general manager for Montz, declined to comment.
Cohlmia says of the agency’s ruling, “The decision did not find that Koch-Glitsch GmbH engaged in price fixing or any illegal behavior.”
Felony Conviction
This wasn’t Koch Industries’ first brush with complaints of improper competition. In October 2000, the FBI secretly recorded the telephone calls of Troy Stanley Sr., director of textile staples at KoSa, then a Luxembourg company with its main office in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Koch Industries and a Mexican company established KoSa as a joint venture in 1998 to buy the Hoechst AG unit that produced polyester staples, which are used in making textiles. KoSa pleaded guilty in October 2002 to a felony charge of conspiracy to restrain trade and paid a $28.5 million fine.
Stanley pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to restrain trade in December 2004 and was sentenced to one year of probation and a $5,000 fine.
‘Anti-trust Conspiracy’
“Officers, directors, managers or employees participated in the conspiracy” between September 1999 and January 2001, KoSa admitted in the plea agreement.
The conspiracy began before KoSa bought the business and continued during its ownership, Stanley testified. Koch bought out its partner in 2001. The criminal activity occurred while Koch was a 50 percent owner.
During the next eight years, Koch Industries paid $76 million to settle antitrust claims brought by KoSa’s customers, and $59 million in legal fees, according to court records. KoSa is now part of Koch’s Invista unit.
A prosecution of KoSa by Canada’s attorney general for price fixing followed in August 2003. KoSa pleaded guilty and paid a C$1.5 million fine.
Cohlmia says a KoSa subsidiary “unknowingly bought into an ongoing antitrust conspiracy.” Once the company found out about the wrongdoing, it stopped the conspiracy and cooperated with the U.S. Justice Department, she says.
Benzene Emissions
The price-fixing convictions came after years of investigations, environmental lawsuits and fines that had plagued Koch’s oil pipeline and refining divisions.
In April 1996, Koch environmental technician Sally Barnes- Soliz walked into the offices of Texas regulators in Corpus Christi and told them the company had lied about spewing benzene into the air.
Koch Refining Co. had recruited Barnes-Soliz in 1991 to work in the safety department at the company’s Corpus Christi refinery. Barnes-Soliz, then 30, had earned a bachelor’s degree in science and environmental health and a Master of Science in industrial hygiene at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
“I loved that job,” she says, describing how she helped protect plant workers and neighborhood residents from the many hazards at the refinery. “It’s important to me that people are safe and their job is not the reason they die.”
Federal rules in 1995 required the plant, one of two refineries Koch owns in Corpus Christi, to reduce benzene emissions to less than 6 metric tons a year. Benzene, a chemical compound refined from crude oil, was found to cause leukemia in 1928 by two Italian doctors who detected the cancer in a worker exposed to benzene for five years.
False Report
Four federal agencies — the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — say that benzene is a cause of cancer.
On Jan. 6, 1995, Koch’s refining unit informed the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, or TNRCC, that it had installed a new anti-pollution device called a Thermatrix that used flameless heat to burn off the benzene. The machine lacked sufficient capacity for the job, Barnes-Soliz says, and refinery workers disconnected it within days.
“The refinery was just hemorrhaging benzene into the atmosphere,” she says.
Three months after disconnecting the machine, Koch filed a quarterly report with Texas regulators, while concealing that it had violated the emission rules.
Pressured to Change
On Aug. 17, 1995, Koch Industries attorney Vincent Mietlicki wrote a memo to another company lawyer, Thomas Meek, saying the refinery had given the state incorrect information about its uncontrolled benzene emissions.
“I think it goes without saying that there is a need to correct our first quarterly report which is misleading and inaccurate,” he wrote.
That December, a refinery manager asked Barnes-Soliz to tally the plant’s annual benzene emissions for a report to state regulators, Barnes-Soliz says. She found 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene emissions, more than 15 times higher than what the rules allowed.
“I redid the calculation a lot of times,” Barnes-Soliz says.
Those levels of emissions could increase the cancer risk to refinery employees and the public, she says. Barnes-Soliz reported the results in a document dated Jan. 4, 1996, to Mietlicki, the same lawyer who had written the memo calling out the inaccuracies in the quarterly report Koch filed with the state. She says Mietlicki and other Koch executives pressured her to lower the figures in her report.
Falsified Document
“There were a lot of meetings to try and get me to change the number,” she says. “It was hard, but I held firm to my convictions.”
Barnes-Soliz’s bosses went around her. On April 8, 1996, Koch reported to Texas regulators that its Corpus Christi plant had uncontrolled emissions of 0.61 metric tons for 1995, or 1/149th the quantity she had found.
“When I saw they had actually falsified that document, I had no recourse but to notify the authorities,” Barnes-Soliz says.
On April 18, 1996, on her lunch break, she drove to the state’s TNRCC office and reported that Koch had lied about its benzene emissions. By the time Barnes-Soliz walked in, environmental regulators were already investigating Koch in Corpus Christi.
Oil Slick
The EPA had sued Koch Industries a year earlier for a series of pipeline leaks in several states, including one that left a 12-mile-long oil slick on Nueces and Corpus Christi bays in October 1994. Her statement triggered another probe by state regulators and the FBI.
During the next three years, investigators compiled evidence that included hundreds of internal memos about benzene emissions. In 1999, Koch’s lawyers tried to stop prosecutors from using the documents in court.
Koch argued that records of the company’s internal investigation regarding benzene rules were protected by attorney-client privilege. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in Corpus Christi rejected that claim, ruling that the privilege doesn’t apply when used to help commit a crime or fraud. She singled out Mietlicki.
‘Front Man’
“The government has submitted evidence which indicates that Koch was intentionally using Mietlicki and his investigation and expertise in reference not to prior wrongdoing, but to future wrongdoing,” the judge wrote. “The February memo strongly suggests that Koch was using Mietlicki (and his investigation and expertise) as a ‘front man’ to impede the TNRCC from ascertaining the extent of its noncompliance.”
The February memo was sealed by the court.
A federal grand jury issued a 97-count indictment against Koch Petroleum Group, Mietlicki and three refinery managers on Sept. 28, 2000. Koch Petroleum Group pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the government about its benzene emissions in April 2001.
Judge Jack fined Koch Petroleum $10 million and ordered that it pay another $10 million to fund environmental projects in south Texas. Koch earned $176 million in profit from the Corpus Christi plant in 1995, prosecutors told the court. The company said in a hearing that it would have cost $7 million to comply with the benzene emission regulation.
Koch Petroleum changed its name to Flint Hills Resources in 2002.
In the agreement to plead guilty, prosecutors dropped the charges against the four individuals.
‘Ultimately Collapsed’
Koch spokeswoman Cohlmia says the company reported its compliance issues to the state before a whistle-blower did so. She says the federal case was flawed, citing testimony by a prosecution expert witness.
“The government’s case ultimately collapsed after the company finally had an opportunity to challenge the government’s key expert witness,” she says.
Uhlmann, the federal prosecutor who led the probe, says Koch’s after-the-fact response is a public relations whitewash.
“The Koch case was a classic case of environmental crime, significant violations of law occurring alongside widespread efforts to conceal those violations, which Koch has admitted,” Uhlmann says. He now teaches at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.
Empty Office
Mietlicki, who is now assistant principal at John Paul II High School in Corpus Christi, says he can’t comment on details of the case.
“I know all of my actions as a lawyer, throughout all my years of practice, were nothing but honest and truthful,” he says.
After the company found out that Barnes-Soliz had tipped off state regulators, Koch stripped her of her responsibilities and moved her to an empty office with no tasks and no e-mail access, she says.
“They were pressuring me to quit,” she says.
She left the company in July 1996. Barnes-Soliz sued Koch in January 1997, saying the company harassed and mistreated her after she became a whistle-blower. Koch settled the lawsuit in July 1999 for an undisclosed amount.
The Corpus Christi case was one of a series of challenges Koch Industries faced in the 1990s over environmental issues. In 1997, a company now owned by ConocoPhillips sued Koch for toxic waste dumping at a refinery in Duncan, Oklahoma
‘Replete With Evidence’
In March 1998, U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles- LaGrange in Oklahoma City ordered Koch to pay for 15 percent of the cleanup costs for dumping at the site between 1946 and 1953. That decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in May 2000.
“The record is replete with evidence Koch used unlined ditches, pits and ponds to dispose of hazardous waste at the site,” the appeals court ruled, finding that Koch had tainted groundwater. “The pollution of any Oklahoma waters, including groundwater, has been prohibited by state statute since the early 1900s — well before Koch’s waste disposal activity at the refinery.”
By March 2007, Koch Industries had paid just $440,899 and still owed $2.97 million for its share of the cleanup, Conoco told the court.
“Koch simply refuses to pay its share as ordered by this court,” Conoco said.
Companies Settled
The two companies settled in February 2009. Terms weren’t disclosed.
Cohlmia says, “We understand that appropriate remediation is occurring and Koch has met all of its obligations with respect to this matter.”
A Koch unit in Rosemount, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in 1999 to two federal misdemeanors of violating the Clean Water Act and paid $8 million in fines and penalties. The company used fire hydrants to pump more than a million gallons of wastewater contaminated with ammonia onto the ground.
Koch also increased its dumping of wastewater on weekends when it didn’t monitor discharges, circumventing the reporting requirement of its permit, the EPA said. Koch also admitted that it negligently released between 200,000 gallons (757 kiloliters) and 600,000 gallons of aviation fuel into a nearby wetland.
Cohlmia says the company cooperated with state and federal regulators to resolve the Rosemount issues and has met all of its obligations.
“In March, 1999, Koch Petroleum Group took full responsibility for past underlying discharges,” she says.
Koch Industries also spent much of the 1990s defending itself against what a U.S. Senate subcommittee called a widespread scheme to steal oil on Indian land.
Twin Brother
The Senate held hearings in May 1989 after Bill Koch, David Koch’s twin brother, told a U.S. Senate special committee on investigations that Koch Industries was stealing oil on American Indian reservations, cheating the federal government of royalties.
Bill Koch had a long-standing feud with his brothers after his failed attempt to take over the company in the early 1980s. He sold his shares in June 1983 and later lost a lawsuit claiming he’d been shortchanged.
The Senate committee sent investigators to Oklahoma to secretly observe oil companies, including Koch, buying crude on Indian land. The federal agents hid in ditches, crouched behind scrub cedars and ducked behind cows to avoid detection by Koch Oil’s purchasers, FBI agent Richard Elroy testified to the committee in May 1989.
‘Theft is Widespread’
The investigators caught Koch Oil’s employees falsifying records so that the company would get more crude than it paid for, shortchanging Indian families, Elroy said. Koch’s records showed that the company took 1.95 million barrels of oil it didn’t pay for from 1986 to 1988, according to data compiled by the Senate.
“The theft is widespread and pervasive, and these people are being horribly victimized,” Elroy testified.
Elroy told the committee that Charles Koch gave a deposition that said that no one could make exact measurements.
“There was a lot of uncertainty and tremendous variations,” Elroy quoted Koch as saying. The full deposition is sealed, which is committee policy.
The committee concluded in a November 1989 report that Koch Oil had engaged in a widespread, sophisticated scheme to steal millions of barrels of oil. The Senate referred the case to the Justice Department, which convened a grand jury that never indicted the company.
“We believe that our practices were consistent with industry practice,” Cohlmia says.
The Civil Trial
Bill Koch brought a lawsuit on behalf of U.S. taxpayers, claiming that Koch Industries’ scheme defrauded the government of royalties. The case came to trial in 1999. Former company employees testified that Koch Industries trained them to steal.
Phil Dubose, who worked for Koch Industries from 1968 to 1994, told the jury how the scheme worked.
“The Koch Method is to cheat the producer out of crude oil,” he said.
He testified that he was able to steal 2,000 barrels a month from one customer.
“You used every available tool to mismeasure the crude oil in Koch’s favor,” says Dubose, who is now retired.
Charles Koch testified in the trial, saying the company had the highest standards.
“By 1988, I thought we had developed the best measurement approach, controls and so on of any crude oil purchaser in the industry,” Koch said. “And that’s why we became the No. 1 crude oil purchaser in the United States.”
24,587 False Claims
Two days before Christmas 1999, the jury delivered the verdict: Koch Industries had made 24,587 false claims in buying oil, underpaying the U.S. government for royalties on Native American land from 1985 to 1989. Koch paid the U.S. $25 million to settle the case in 2001.
The Koch brothers, meanwhile, reached an agreement, with undisclosed terms, dropping all litigation against each other.
While the Koch brothers battled over oil, Koch Industries clashed with regulators over its failure to properly maintain its pipelines. In 1995, the EPA sued the company, saying poor maintenance resulted in corrosion that contributed to hundreds of spills.
The following year, before the EPA case was resolved, a leak in a Koch butane pipeline led to an explosion that killed two teenagers.
Burned Alive
They never made it.
The truck stalled after the couple drove into a fog-like cloud, says Danielle’s father, Danny Smalley, who watched them drive away. It was butane vapor, leaking from a corroded steel pipeline. Seconds later, as Danielle restarted the truck, the gas ignited into a fireball, burning Danielle and Jason to death.
Smalley’s father sued Koch Industries in 1997 in the Kaufman County, Texas, district court for the wrongful death of his daughter.
‘Definitely Responsible’
“I will tell you Koch Industries is definitely responsible for the death of Danielle Smalley,” Bill Caffey, an executive vice president of the company, testified in a 1999 deposition during Smalley’s lawsuit.
Caffey oversaw pipeline safety at the company. He testified that he thought the pipeline was safe before the explosion. Koch Pipeline Co., the unit that managed the Texas pipeline, knew the line had corroded and didn’t fix it, an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in November 1998.
The 570-mile-long pipeline carrying liquid butane from Medford, Oklahoma, to Mont Belvieu, Texas had corroded so badly that one expert, Edward Ziegler, likened it to Swiss cheese. The company didn’t give 40 of the 45 families near the explosion site — including the Smalley and Stone families — any information about what to do in case of an emergency, the NTSB wrote.
Danny Smalley hired Ziegler, a third-generation oilman and certified safety professional, as an expert witness. Ziegler had previously been retained by Koch Industries as an expert witness in an unrelated case. Ziegler told the jury that he’d never seen a company disregard safety to this extent in his more than 25- year career.
‘A Total Failure’
“This is an example of a total failure of a company to follow the regulations, keep their pipeline safe and operate it as the regulations require,” Ziegler, who now operates his own pipelines, testified.
A memo forwarded by Caffey to another Koch executive vice president justified putting a 70-mile section of the pipeline back into operation after being closed for three years because it could earn more than $7 million in operating income a year.
“We were to work on reducing wasteful spending,” Caffey said in his deposition.
Koch Industries didn’t penalize Caffey, the executive in charge of pipeline safety. The company doubled his annual bonus to $900,000 for 1996, the year the fatal blast occurred, according to court records. In his deposition, lawyers asked Caffey whether the disaster came up during his annual review.
‘I Don’t Believe’
“I don’t believe we discussed that specifically in my review,” he said.
Caffey, who stayed with Koch for a decade after the explosion and now runs the BB River Ranch in Comanche, Texas, says the explosion was a one-of-a-kind tragedy.
“I have never known any company executive more focused on compliance than Charles Koch,” he says.
The state jury awarded Danny Smalley $296 million in its Oct. 21, 1999, verdict. The jury found that Koch Industries acted with malice because it had been aware of the extreme risks of using the faulty pipeline.
Smalley later settled for an undisclosed amount. Stone’s family also settled. Danny Smalley used settlement money to start the Danielle Dawn Smalley Foundation for pipeline safety education. Large pipeline operators such as ExxonMobil Corp., BP Plc and Kinder Morgan Inc. — and not Koch — accept free services from the foundation, Smalley says.
‘Never Forget’
“You see two children burned to death in front of you, you never forget that,” he says. “I want to stop other parents from ever having to see that.”
Cohlmia says Koch Industries used the lessons learned from the explosion to help avoid similar accidents. The company immediately accepted responsibility for the explosion, which was the only one of its kind, she says.
Three months after the Smalley verdict, Koch settled the five-year-old EPA case for pipeline leaks, along with a second EPA case brought in 1997. The company paid $35 million to resolve those cases, which covered more than 300 oil spills in six states.
‘Overall Concept’
“My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy and maximize personal freedoms,” David Koch told the National Journal in May 1992.
In his 2007 book, Charles Koch says his company had difficulty keeping up with changing government regulations and that it did eventually build an effective compliance program for 20 areas ranging from environmental to antitrust to safety regulations.
“We were caught unprepared by the rapid increase in regulation,” he wrote. “While business was becoming increasingly regulated, we kept thinking and acting as if we lived in a pure market economy.”
Computer virus infects drone plane command centre in US
‘Keylogger’ virus disrupts computers at Creech air force base in Nevada where planes are piloted remotely in Afghanistan
October 9, 2011
AP
A computer virus that captures the strokes on a keyboard has infected networks used by pilots who control US air force drones flown on the warfront, according to a published report.
Wired magazine reported that the spyware has resisted efforts to remove it from computers in the cockpits at Creech air force base in Nevada, where pilots remotely fly Predator and Reaper drones in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The story said there were no confirmed reports that classified data had been stolen and that the virus did not stop pilots from flying any of their missions. Network security specialists were uncertain whether the virus was part of a directed attack or accidentally infected the networks, the story said.
The air force said in a statement that it did not discuss threats to its computer networks because it could help hackers refine their tactics.
“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” Wired quoted a source as saying. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”
America uses drones heavily in Afghanistan and controversially across the border in Pakistan – where they have killed Taliban and al-Qaida suspects without the Pakistani government’s official approval. On 30 September a US drone killed al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula figure Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.
“Keylogger” viruses are mostly used to capture users’ passwords, credit card details and bank account numbers as people type them in. The data is then sent over the internet to fraudsters.
The US military has previously found out that insurgents were easily able to capture and record the footage that was being sent to troops and back to base by cameras on drone planes.
The Enemy Within: An understanding of Islam
by Major Craig Gottlieb, USMC (ret)
Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad‘s teachings.
Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable and that the purpose of life is to worship God They regard their religion as the completed and universal version of a primordial, monotheistic faith revealed at many times and places before, including, notably, to the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Islamic tradition holds that previous messages and revelations have been changed and distorted over time. Religious practices include the Five Pillars of Islam, which are five obligatory acts of worship. Islamic law touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, encompassing everything from banking and warfare to welfare and the environment.
The majority of Muslims belong to one of two denominations, the Sunni and the Shi’a. About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country.31% in the Indian Subcontinent, 20% in the Middle Eastand 15% in Sub-saharan Africa. Sizable communities are also found in China and Russia, and parts of the Caribbean. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world. With about 1.57 billion Muslims comprising about 23% of the world’s population (see Islam by country), Islam is the second-largest religion in the world and arguably the fastest-growing religion in the world.
Islam’s fundamental theological concept is the belief that there is only one god. The Arabic term for God is Allah. Other non-Arabic nations might use different names, for instance in Turkey, the Turkish word for God, “Tanrı” is used as much as Allah. The first of the Five Pillars of Islam, declares that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is God’s messenger. In traditional Islamic theology, God is beyond all comprehension; Muslims are not expected to visualize God but to worship and adore Him as the Protector. Muslims believe the purpose of life is to worship God. Although Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet, they reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islamic theology, Jesus was just a man and not the son of God;
Muhammad (c. 570 – June 8, 632) was a trader and camel-breeder and who later became a religious, political, and military leader. Muslims now view him, not as the creator of a new religion, but as the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others. In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues. For the last 22 years of his life, in 610, beginning at age 40, Muhammad started receiving what he claimed were “revelations from God.” It now also appears that Muhammed suffered from some form of Alzheimer’s Disease and that his final days were given to long and senseless utterances that his supporters claimed were ‘revelations.’ The content of these revelations, known as the Qur’an, was memorized and recorded by his companions.
During this time, Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism. Although some converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted by the leading Meccan authorities. After 12 years of preaching, Muhammad and the Muslims performed the Hijra (“emigration”) to the city of Medina in 622. There, with the Medinan converts and the Meccan migrants Muhammad established his political and religious authority. Within years, two battles had been fought against Meccan forces: the Battle of Badr in 624, which was a Muslim victory, and the Battle of Uhud in 625, which ended inconclusively. Conflict with Medinan Jewish clans who opposed the Muslims led to their exile, enslavement or death, and the Jewish enclave of Khaybar was subdued. At the same time, Meccan trade routes were cut off as Muhammad brought surrounding desert tribes under his control. By 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless Conquest of Mecca, and by the time of his death in 632 (at the age of 62) he and his followers ruled over the Arabian peninsula.
In 630 A.D. Mecca was re-taken followed by the battle of Hunain wherein the army under command of the Prophet, the non-Muslim tribes were defeated , and a large number of the enemy were killed but, under the Prophet’s order, no child was harmed. Often, after such a murderous battle, Muhammad had young children, both boys and girls, brought before him, had them stripped naked and then chose ones he wished “to lie with.”
One day after battle, Muhammad came back home and said to his daughter Fatima, “Wash the blood from this sword and I swear in the name of Allah this sword was obeying me all the time.” .
The number of military campaigns Muhammad led in person during the last ten years of his life is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting. The number of expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is thirty-eight
Muhammad’s last speech to his followers on Mt Arafat:
…..”I descended by Allah with the sword in my hand, and my wealth will come from the shadow of my sword. And the one who will disagree with me will be humiliated and persecuted.”
Muhammad told Abu Sufyan: “Woe to you! Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the apostle of God before your neck is cut off by the sword.” Thus he professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim. This man, Abu Sufyan, was not a believer at first, but he quickly “believed” after he was threatened by death.’
So, even before Muhammad pagans were worshipping this black stone in the Kaba. Are we surprised that although Muhammad proclaimed only one God, he continued to participate in idol worship at this pagan shrine (Kaba); and Muslims still do idol worship there today. The black stone of Ka’aba is nothing but a holdover within Islam, from pre-Islamic paganism.
There is evidence that black stones were commonly worshipped in the Arab world. In 190 A.D. Clement of Alexandria mentioned that “the Arabs worship stone”. He was alluding to the black stone of Dusares at Petra. In the 2nd century, Maximus Tyrius wrote; “The Arabians pay homage to I know not what god, which they represent by a quadrangular stone”. Maximus was speaking of the Kaaba (Ka’ba) that contains the Black Stone.
Muhammad led 27 military campaigns against innocent villages and caravans and planned 38 others
“I am the prophet that laughs when killing my enemies.”
Muhammad posed as an apostle of God, yet his life was filled with lustfulness (12 marriages and sex with many children, teenaged and pre-teen, both male and female, slaves and concubines), rapes, warfare, conquests, and unmerciful butcheries. The infinitely good, just and all holy God preached by Muhammad simply cannot tolerate anything in the least unjust or sinful. What Muhammad produced in the Qur’an is simply a book of gibberish consisting of later evil verses superseding earlier peaceful verses. These verses in Arabic poetically “tickle” the ears of Arab listeners.
Modern Islam is a caustic blend of paganism and twisted Bible stories. Muhammad, its lone “prophet”, who made no prophecies, conceived his religion to satiate his lust for power, sex, and money. He was a terrorist. And if you think these conclusions are shocking, additional research will easily uncover the evidence mostly from Islamic historians 70% of what is here is from Muslim and ex-Muslim historians – back to the 8th century.
Accordingly, after a degenerative disease of which the main symptom was headache, loss of memory, increasing skin eruptions and incontinence, he died in the arms of his favorite wife, Aysha, on Radiulawwal 11 A.H.—633 A.D.
After an objective and lengthy study of the life of Muhammed, the only rational conclusion is that Islam’s lone prophet was a ruthless terrorist, a mass-murderer, a thief, slave trader, rapist and aggressive pedophile.
In his personal life, Muhammad had two great weaknesses. The first was greed. By looting caravans and Jewish settlements, he had amassed fabulous wealth for himself, his family, and his tribe
When we turn and look at the life of Muhammad we find that he clearly killed and robbed people in the name of Allah according to the Quran. He taught his disciples by example, command, and precept that they could and should kill and rob in Allah’s name and force people to submit to Islam.
His next greatest weakness were women and young boys. Although in the Quran he would limit his followers to having four wives, he himself took more than four wives, numerous concubines and young boys and, occasionally, girls, into his bed.
The question of the number of women with whom Muhammad was sexually involved either as wives, concubines or devotees was made a point of contention by the Jews in Muhammad’s day.
“All the commentaries agree that verse 57 of Sura 4 (on-Nesa) was sent down after the Jews criticized Mohammad’s appetite for women, alleging that he had nothing to do except to take wives”
Since polygamy was practiced in the Old Testament by such patriarchs as Abraham, the mere fact that Muhammad had more than one wife is not sufficient in and of itself to discount his claim to prophethood. But this does negate the fact that the issue has historical in terms of trying to understand Muhammad as a man.
It also poses a logical problem for Muslims. Because the Quran in Sura 4:3 forbids the taking of more than four wives, to have taken any more would have been sinful for Muhammad. He not only exceeded this fiat many times but also added young boys and girls to his harem in direct contravention of his own pronouncements.
While in Islamic countries an eight or nine-year old girl can be given in marriage to an adult male, in the West, most people would shudder to think of an eight or nine-year old girl being given in marriage to anyone
This aspect of Muhammad’s personal life is something that many scholars pass over because they do not want to hurt the feelings of Muslims, or, more pragmatically, they do not want to experience a knife in the dark. Yet, history cannot be rewritten to avoid confronting the facts that Muhammad had unnatural desires for little girls and, even more reprehensible, little boys.
The documentation for all the women in Muhammad’s harem is so vast and has been presented so many times by able scholars that only those who use circular reasoning can object to it.
Though a forbidden subject, pedophilia and homosexual practices were an active part of Muhammad’s life. Today, homosexuality and pedophilia is a very strong part of Muslim life. Adherents of Islam believe that these activities are fully approved, not only by the writings in the Quran but also by the examples set during his lifetime by the Prophet Muhammad himself. His harem did indeed have many women but many of them were as young as nine and there were also a significant number of pre-pubescent boys among them
In brief summation, the Prophet of the Muslim faith does not come off as a spiritual leader. He lied; he cheated; he lusted; he failed to keep his word, He was neither perfect nor sinless. By Western standards of the present time, Muhammad was a fraud, a common murderer, a letcher and a pedophile.
Homosexuality and Islam
For centuries, Muslim men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Muslim Afghanistani Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern Afghanistan towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.
The Pashtun are Afghanistan’s most important tribe. For centuries, the nation’s leaders have been Pashtun.
As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior “was rampant” among “soldiers and personnel on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time.”
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called “dancing boys” a “widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”
A recent (July 2010) Department of State analysis, heavily classified,not only discusses rampant homosexual pedophilia among Muslims, not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, Iran and, especially, in Saudi Arabia. The thesis that American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud, aggressive pedophiles, is a subject that has been forbidden of discussion by orders from the White House itself. Fear of “energizine’ the Muslim world and creating more active terrorists is the maini motive for this concern.
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from interpretation of Islamic law. Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Muslim expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” Fundamentalist Muslim imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are “unclean” and therefore distasteful. That helps explain why women are hidden away – and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. ‘It’s not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren’t in love with their boys’.They only sodomize them because they view women as unclean and the Prophet approved of pedophelia .
Islamic revival and Islamist movements
The 20th century saw the Islamic world increasingly exposed to outside cultural influences, bringing potential changes to Muslim societies. In response, new Islamic “revivalist” movements were initiated as a counter movement to non-Islamic ideas. Groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt advocate a totalistic and theocratic alternative to secular political ideologies. Sometimes called Islamist, they see Western cultural values as a threat, and promote Islam as a comprehensive solution to every public and private question of importance.
In countries like Iran, revolutionary movements replaced secular regime with an Islamic state, while transnational groups like Osama bin Laden‘s al-Qaeda engage in terrorism to further their goals.
Modern criticism of Islam includes accusations that Islam is intolerant of criticism and that Islamic law is too hard on apostates from Islam. Critics like Ibn Warraq question the morality of the Qu’ran, saying that its contents justify the mistreatment of women, homosexuality and encourage antisemitic remarks by Muslim theologians.
Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer focus more on criticizing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, a danger they feel has been ignored
Jihad
Jihad means “to strive or struggle” (in the way of God) and is considered the “Sixth Pillar of Islam” by a minority of Sunni Muslim authorities. Jihad, in its broadest sense, is classically defined as “exerting one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation.
Within Islamic jurisprudence, jihad is usually taken to mean military exertion against non-Muslim combatants in the defense or expansion of the Ummah. The ultimate purpose of military jihad is the goal of global conquest. Jihad is the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law and may be declared against apostates, rebels, highway robbers, violent groups, and non-Muslim leaders or states who oppress Muslims or hamper its aggressive proselytizing efforts.
Under most circumstances and for most Muslims, jihad is a collective duty
Sub-Cults of Islam
Sunni
Sunni Muslims are the largest group in Islam, comprising the vast bulk of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, The Qur’an and the Sunnah (the example of Muhammad’s life) as recorded in hadith are the primary foundations of Sunni doctrine. Sunnis believe that the first four caliphs were the rightful successors to Muhammad; since God did not specify any particular leaders to succeed him, those leaders had to be elected. Sunnis believe that a caliph should be chosen by the whole community.
Shi’a
The Shi’a constitute 10–13% of Islam and are its second-largest branch. They believe in the political and religious leadership of Imams from the progeny of Ali ibn Abi Talib, who according to most Shi’a are in a state of ismah, meaning infallibility. They believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, as the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was his rightful successor, and they call him the first Imam (leader), rejecting the legitimacy of the previous Muslim caliphs. To most Shi’a, an Imam rules by right of divine appointment and holds “absolute spiritual authority” among Muslims, having final say in matters of doctrine and revelation. Shias regard Ali as the prophet’s true successor and believe that a caliph is appointed by divine will. Shi’a Islam has several branches, the largest of which is the Twelvers which the label Shi’a generally refers to.
Sufism
Sufism is a mystical-ascetic approach to Islam that seeks to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. By focusing on the more spiritual aspects of religion, Sufis strive to obtain direct experience of God by making use of “intuitive and emotional faculties” that one must be trained to use. Sufism and Islamic law are usually considered to be complementary, although Sufism has been criticized by salafi for what they see as an unjustified religious innovation. Many Sufi orders, or tariqas, can be classified as either Sunni or Shi’a, but others classify themselves simply as ‘Sufi’. Some Sufi groups can be described as non-Islamic when their teachings are very distinct from Islam
Muslims in the United States
The earliest documented case of a Muslim to come to the United States is Dutchman Anthony Janszoon van Salee, who came to New Amsterdam around 1630 and was referred to as ‘Turk’. The oldest Muslim community to establish in the country was the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, in 1921however, like the Nation of Islam, this sect is considered heretical by the mainstream Muslim community.
Once very small, the Muslim population of the US increased greatly in the twentieth century, with much of the growth driven by rising immigration and conversion. In 2005, more people from Islamic countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.
Recent immigrant Muslims make up the majority of the total Muslim population. South Asians Muslims from India and Pakistan and Arabs make up the biggest group of Muslims in America at 60-65% of the population. Native-born American Muslims are mainly African Americans who make up a quarter of the total Muslim population. Many of these have converted to Islam during the last seventy years. Conversion to Islam in prison, and in large urban areas has also contributed to its growth over the years. American Muslims come from various backgrounds, and are one of the most racially diverse religious group in the United States according to a 2009 Gallup poll.
A Pew report released in 2009 noted that nearly six-in-ten American adults see Muslims as being subject to discrimination, more than Mormons, Atheists, or Jews. Modern immigration
There is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, as the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious identification. There is an ongoing debate as to the true size of the Muslim population in the US. Various institutions and organizations have given widely varying estimates about how many Muslims live in the U.S. These estimates have been controversial, with a number of researchers being explicitly critical of the survey methodologies that have led to the higher estimates.
Others claim that no scientific count of Muslims in the U.S. has been done, but that the larger figures should be considered accurate. Some journalists have also alleged that the higher numbers have been inflated for political purposes. On the other hand, some Muslim groups blame Islamophobia and the fact that many Muslims identify themselves as Muslims, but do not attend mosques for the lower estimates.
According to a 2007 religious survey, 72% of Muslims believe religion is very important, which is higher in comparison to the overall population of the United States at 59%. The frequency of receiving answers to prayers among Muslims was, 31% at least once a week and 12% once or twice a month. Nearly a quarter of the Muslims are converts to Islam (23%), mainly native-born. Of the total who have converted, 59% are African American and 34% white. Previous religions of those converted was Protestantism (67%), Roman Catholicism (10%) and 15% no religion.
Mosques are usually explicitly Sunni or Shia. There are 1,209 mosques in the United States and the nation’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of America, is in Dearborn, Michigan. It caters mainly to the Shi’a Muslim congregation; however, all Muslims may attend this mosque. It was rebuilt in 2005 to accommodate over 3,000 people for the increasing Muslim population in the region.
In many areas, a mosque may be dominated by whatever group of immigrants is the largest. Sometimes the Friday sermons, or khutbas, are given in languages like Urdu or Arabic along with English. Areas with large Muslim populations may support a number of mosques serving different immigrant groups or varieties of belief within Sunni or Shi’a traditions. At present, many mosques are served by imams who immigrate from overseas, as only these imams have certificates from Muslim seminaries. The influence of the Wahhabi movement in the US has caused concern.
Muslim Americans are racially diverse communities in the United States, two-thirds are foreign-born. The majority, about three-fifths of Muslim Americans are of South Asian and Arab origin, a quarter of the population are recent converts of whites and indigenous African Americans, while the remaining are other ethnic groups which includes Turks, Iranians, Bosnians, Malays, Indonesians, West Africans, Somalis, Kenyans, with also small but growing numbers of white and Hispanic converts.
A survey of ethnic comprehension by the Pew Forum survey in 2007 showed that 37% respondents viewed themselves white(mainly of Arab and South Asian origin), 24% were Africans and White converts in the ratio 2:1, 20% Asian (mainly South Asian origin), 15% other race (includes mixed Arabs or Asians) and 4% were of Hispanic descent. Since the arrival of South Asian and Arab communities during the 1990s there has been divisions with the African Americans due to the racial and cultural differences, however since post 9/11, the two groups joined together when the immigrant communities looked towards the African Americans for advice on civil rights.
Remembering the fact that Arabs are generally counted among Whites and majority of Arabs in U.S. are Christians; the more accurate figure would be 65-70% South Asians and Arabs in the ratio 1:1 to 2:1 (includes mixed Arabs and Asians which comprise a significant 25% of the total Asian population) 20-25% Blacks belonging to traditional and Nations Of Islam sect and 4% were of Hispanic descent. Only about a quarter of the Arab American population is Muslim. The 2000 census reported about 1.25 million Americans of Arab ancestry. Contrary to popular perceptions the condition of Muslims in U.S. is very good. Among South Asians in this country, the large Indian American community stands out as particularly well educated and prosperous, with education and income levels that exceed those of U.S.-born whites. Many are professionals, especially doctors, scientists, engineers, and financial analysts, and there are also a large number of entrepreneurs. The five urban areas with the largest Indian populations include the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area as well as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
The 10 states with the largest Muslim populations are California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland. 45 percent of immigrant Muslims report annual household income levels of $50,000 or higher. This compares to the national average of 44 percent. Immigrant Muslims are well represented among higher-income earners, with 19 percent claiming annual household incomes of $100,000 or higher (compared to 16 percent for the Muslim population as a whole and 17 percent for the U.S. average). This is likely due to the strong concentration of Muslims in professional, managerial, and technical fields, especially in information technology, education, medicine, law, and the corporate world.
Approximately half (50%) of the religious affiliations of Muslims is Sunni, 16% Shia, 22% non-affiliated and 16% other/non-response. Muslims of Arab descent are mostly Sunni (56%) with minorities who are Shia (19%). Pakistanis (62%) and Indians (82%) are mainly Sunni, while Iranians are mainly Shia (91%).Of African American Muslims, 48% are Sunni, 34% are unaffiliated, 2% Shia, the remaining are others.
In 2005, according to the New York Times, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades. In addition to immigration, the state, federal and local prisons of the United States may be a contributor to the growth of Islam in the country. J. Michael Waller claims that Muslim inmates comprise 17-20% of the prison population, or roughly 350,000 inmates in 2003. He also claims that 80% of the prisoners who “find faith” while in prison convert to Islam. These converted inmates are mostly African American, with a small but growing Hispanic minority. Waller also asserts that many converts are radicalized by outside Islamist groups linked to terrorism, but other experts suggest that when radicalization does occur it has little to no connection with these outside interests.
U.S. Muslim population estimates
5 million+ U.S. News and World Report
7 million Council on American-Islam Relations
There is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, as the U.S. Historically, Muslim Americans tended to support the Republican Party.
Some Muslim Americans have been criticized for letting their religious beliefs affect their ability to act within mainstream American value systems. Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis, Minnesota have been criticized for allegedly refusing passengers for carrying alcoholic beverages or dogs. The Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport authority has threatened to revoke the operating authority of any driver caught discriminating in this manner. There are reported incidents in which Muslim cashiers have refused to sell pork products to their clientèle.
Public institutions in the U.S. have also been criticized for accommodating Islam at the expense of taxpayers. The University of Michigan–Dearborn and a public college in Minnesota have been criticized for accommodating Islamic prayer rituals by constructing footbaths for Muslim students using tax-payers’ money. Critics claim this special accommodation, which is made only to satisfy Muslims’ needs, is a violation of Constitutional provisions separating church and stateAlong the same constitutional lines, a San Diego public elementary school is being criticized for making special accommodations specifically for American Muslims by adding Arabic to its curriculum and giving breaks for Muslim prayers. Since these exceptions have not been made for any religious group in the past, some critics see this as an endorsement of Islam.
The first American Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, created controversy when he compared President George W. Bush’s actions after the September 11, 2001 attacks to Adolf Hitler‘s actions after the Nazi-sparked Reichstag fire, saying that Bush was exploiting the aftermath of 9/11 for political gain, as Hitler had exploited the Reichstag fire to suspend constitutional liberties. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Anti-Defamation League condemned Ellison’s remarks. The congressman later retracted the statement, saying that it was “inappropriate” for him to have made the comparison.
At Columbus Manor School, a suburban Chicago elementary school with a student body nearly half Arab-American, school board officials have considered eliminating holiday celebrations after Muslim parents complained that their culture’s holidays were not included. Local parent Elizabeth Zahdan said broader inclusion, not elimination, was the group’s goal. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” the Chicago Sun-Times quoted her as saying. “Now the kids are not being educated about other people.” However, the district’s superintendent, Tom Smyth, said too much school time was being taken to celebrate holidays already, and he sent a directive to his principals requesting that they “tone down” activities unrelated to the curriculum, such as holiday parties.
The 2007 Pew poll reported that 15% of American Muslims under the age of 30 supported suicide bombings against civilian targets in at least some circumstances, while a further 11 percent said it could be “rarely justified.” Among those over the age of 30, just 6% expressed their support for the same. (9% of Muslims over 30 and 5% under 30 chose not to answer). Only 5% of American Muslims had a favorable view of al-Qaeda
Some Muslims in the U.S. have adopted the strong anti-American opinions common in many Muslim-majority countries. In some cases, these are recent immigrants who have carried their anti-American sentiments with them. The Egyptian cleric, Omar Abdel-Rahman is now serving a jail sentence for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a long history of involvement with Islamist and jihadi groups before arriving in the US.
There is an openly anti-American Muslim group in the U.S. The Islamic Thinkers Society found only in New York City, engages in leafleting and picketing to spread their viewpoint.
Young, immigrant Muslims feel more frustrated and exposed to prejudice than their parents are. Because most U.S. Muslims are raised conservatively, and won’t consider rebelling through sex or drugs, many experiment with their faith shows a poll, dated June 7, 2007.
At least one non-immigrant American, John Walker Lindh, has also been imprisoned or convicted on charges of serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons against U.S. soldiers. He had converted to Islam in the U.S., moved to Yemen to study Arabic, and thence went to Pakistan where he was recruited by the Taliban.
Other notable cases include:
The Buffalo Six: Shafal Mosed, Yahya Goba, Sahim Alwan, Mukhtar Al-Bakri, Yasein Taher, Elbaneh Jaber. Six Muslims from the Lackawanna, N.Y. area were charged and convicted for providing material support to al Qaeda.
Iyman Faris In October 2003 Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support and resources to al Qaeda and conspiracy for providing the terrorist organization with information about possible U.S. targets for attack.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali In November 2005 he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for providing material support and resources to al Qaeda, conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, conspiracy to commit air piracy and conspiracy to destroy aircraft
Ali al-Tamimi was convicted and sentenced in April 2005 to life in prison for recruiting Muslims in the US to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson and Robert Spencer have suggested that a segment of the U.S. Muslim population exhibit hate and a wish for violence towards the United States.
Muslim convert journalist Stephen Schwartz, American Jewish Committee terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky, and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer have all separately testified to a growing radical Islamist Wahhabi influence in U.S. mosques, financed by extremist groups. According to Barsky, 80% of U.S. mosques are so radicalized. In an effort to address this extremist influence, ISNA has implemented assorted programs and guidelines in order to help mosques identify and counter any such individuals.
The Solution
The international communities with large Muslim populations have been secretly meeting to agree upon corrective steps to deal with this problem. The commission is called ‘Energy Control Commission’ and its members are: The United States, India, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. This commission has been meeting on a monthly basis in Copenhagen since July of 2006. Its sole purpose is to address the flood of potentially dangerous Muslims into Western countries. A good deal of intelligence material has surfaced in which telephone and internet communications between various Muslim activist groups point very clearly to deliberate infiltration of non-Muslim countries with the double goal of overwhelming the native populations with numbers and threats of physical violence, Muslim groups are strongly anti-Christian and are most especially vindictive towards any country that has engaged in military action against any Muslim country. The United States is considered a prime target for infiltration and domestic terrorism while Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden and France are also high on activist terrorist lists. The general agreement between all parties is that Muslims cannot remain in basically Christian countries because of their often-stated desire to not only take over these countries by population increase but also by the on-going threat of terrorism. At this time, the Commission is awaiting what is felt to be the imminent death of Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi, When this event occurs, either naturally of from outside implementation, Libya will then be opened up as a designated ‘Country of Welcome’ and when this happens, mass deportations of Europe, and America’s, Muslims will begin. This Islamic Diaspora will be implemented by a joint team of multi-national military personnel using aircraft and shipping that has already been allotted.
Craig Gottlieb: email address: craig@craiggottlieb.com
Home Address: 2955 Manchester Ave., Cardiff By The Sea, California 92014
Work: (760) 672-9530
Home: (213) 252-9779
Conversations with the Crow
When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.
Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.
Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:
http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm
Here is the ninety-sixth chapter
Conversation No. 96
Date: Monday, August 4 1997
Commenced: 8:45 AM CST
Concluded: 9:02 AM CST
GD: Ah, good morning, Robert.
RTC: You said something on the answering machine about the Swiss?
GD: Yes, I was talking with their press secretary several days ago and learned that they had been working on their transmitter because they have been having on-going problems with it. Seems that a number of employees have been complaining of headaches and the suffering of a general malaise. Given what was said to me, it could only be your oscillator. I guess you keep it on.
RTC: Oh I do indeed. In fact, I left it on once for a whole week. Actually, I forgot about it. It does work, then?
GD: I have used this many times and, yes, it does work. A friend of mine and I wanted to buy a house for investment so we put an oscillator in a van and parked it across the street. First, the dog went mad and ran off and soon the cat vanished. One of the kids kept crapping on the floor and everyone inside felt terrible. We just showed up at their door and said my aunt had lived there years before and one thing and another. We made an offer and the wife screamed ‘take it! take it!’ to her husband and so we got the place cheap. A little paint, some landscaping and we turned around and sold it two months later and made a huge profit. Of course you can’t do the same thing with the Swiss.
RTC: We should do it to the Russians.
GD: Why not leave the poor Russians alone? My God, you people down there have done terrible things to them and to their economy.
RTC: Well, the idea is to smash them so badly they can never be a rival again.
GD: I don’t mean to be critical, Robert, but your people never think down the road. Nature abhors a vacuum so why not get together with the Russians? Well, you got the Poles to revolt and break away but what can we do with them? Nothing. Germany and Russian ought to get together, buy off the Polish government and then Germany takes their side and the Russians take theirs.
RTC: What about the Poles?
GD: Perhaps we can ship them all to Chicago. Then the Poles can have Chicago and the Jews can have Miami and the rest of us can get on about out business. No, actually, I am serious about Russia. I know you set up Yeltsin and I know your people have been looting the country and systematically destroying her industry but it can’t last. A new administration and a new change of policy and then a rebuilding Russia could be an enemy again. After all, we turned her into a bogey man in the ‘40’s and just look how much money your friends made with the Cold War. Don’t forget, I knew Gehlen and he told me, and showed me the papers, that our Army, for whom he then worked, wanted him to draw up a report showing Russia was going to attack Europe. Yes, and say hello to the Easter Bunny. Stalin would never have launched a military attack against anyone but sea turtles in 1948. The war virtually destroyed the Russian infrastructure and a huge military attack would have been impossible for anyone. Well, it paid off so now that Communism is gone and Russia is starting to act normal again, why not support her? Who needs enemies?
RTC: Gregory, I’m sorry to say you simply do not realize that Communism is not dead and we want it stop it from ever coming back.
GD: Well, Nazism is dead in Germany and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is dead in Japan so why not bury the Cold War, start trading with Cuba and get on with our business? I guess everyone is stuck in the past.
RTC: And where do you see yourself in this?
GD: Being positive, Robert. Russia is a huge potential market and Russia has a great collection of natural resources. Instead of getting tin horn rip off artists to screw them, why not help them develop? A stable and advancing country is not about to engage in a struggle for world domination. We did that and believe me, it will take all we have just to keep the status quo. We can only expand so far and using Russia as an excuse for grabbing control over every puissant country in Africa can only go so far.
RTC” Gregory, Gregory, I am concerned for your soul. Who ever put this bee into your bonnet?
GD: Tom Kimmel.
RTC: Oh, bullshit. Tom has a little book of rules and he wouldn’t do anything not in the book and what you have been talking about is not in his book.
GD: Well, so much for the little books. That sounds like Mary Baker Eddy. By the way, did you know she was buried with a hooked –up telephone in her casket? I’d like to get the number and see how she’s doing down there but I’ll bet she forgot the pay the bills for the last fifty years and they disconnected it. Jesus, suppose she answered? There goes yesterday’s dinner.
RTC: Gregory, so soon after breakfast
(Concluded 9:02 AM CST)
Dramatis personae:
James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy
James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.
William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.
John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.
James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.
Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.
Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.
Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organization eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.
Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired, lives in Florida, and works for the CIA as an “advisor.”
Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.
Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.
Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.
Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarians and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.
Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers specializing in creative writing. Although he prefers to be called ‘Dr,’ in reality he has no PhD.