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Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups
A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records-donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos-from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.
In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records, BBI engaged in "intelligence collection" for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; it handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance," and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.
BBI, which was headquartered in Easton, Maryland, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, worked extensively, according to billing records, for public-relations companies, including Ketchum, Nichols-Dezenhall Communications, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. At the time, these PR outfits were servicing corporate clients fighting environmental organizations opposed to their products or actions. Ketchum, for example, was working for Dow Chemical and Kraft Foods; Nichols-Dezenhall, according to BBI records, was working with Condea Vista, a chemical manufacturing firm that in 1994 leaked up to 47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana.
Like other firms specializing in snooping, Beckett Brown turned to garbage swiping as a key tactic. BBI officials and contractors routinely conducted what the firm referred to as "D-line" operations, in which its operatives would seek access to the trash of a target, with the hope of finding useful documents. One midnight raid targeted Greenpeace. One BBI document lists the addresses of several other environmental groups as "possible sites" for operations: the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Media Services, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York's Love Canal. For its rubbish-rifling operations, BBI employed a police officer in the District of Columbia and a former member of the Maryland state police.
Beckett Brown's efforts to penetrate environmental groups and other targets came to an end when the business essentially dissolved in 2001 amid infighting between the principals. But the firm's officials went on to work in other security firms that remain active today.
Beckett Brown International began when John C. Dodd III met Richard Beckett at a bar in Easton in 1994. Dodd had recently become a millionaire after his father had sold an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship on Maryland's eastern shore. Beckett ran a local executive recruiting and consulting business. Soon after they met, according to Dodd, Beckett introduced him to Paul Rakowski, a recently retired Secret Service agent, who had put in two decades protecting presidents and foreign heads of state and had become regional manager of the agency's financial crimes division. Rakowski told Dodd he had an idea for a new security business.
Dodd subsequently received a fax of a business plan for the new company. The sender's address at the top of the fax, according to Dodd, read: "11/02/94 USSS Financial Crimes Division/Forgery"-which suggested it had come from a Secret Service office. But Dodd was reluctant to put in the start-up money for the enterprise, because he didn't know who all the partners were. To impress him, Dodd says, Rakowski and his former Secret Service colleagues began taking him and his friends on special tours of the White House. "This wasn't a White House tour conducted by tour guides," he says. "They would take us...to areas that said 'Do not pass this line.'"
At one point, Dodd says, a senior Secret Service agent named Joseph Masonis arranged for him to tour a Secret Service facility. "To encourage me to invest in this company," Dodd notes, "they all said 'why not go up to technical security headquarters [of the Secret Service] and you will get an exclusive tour.'...They showed me everything....They were worried about someone flying way up high in a plane, miles from the White House, jumping out of a plane, skydiving, popping the chute and getting on the White House grounds without anybody knowing it. They were working on the technology to pick that up." Dodd says he was blown away by what he saw. (Masonis says, "I have never taken Mr. Dodd to any facility in D.C.") And at a waterfront party, Dodd says, he was introduced to and deeply impressed by George Ferris, another Secret Service officer and an expert in demolitions.
Eventually, Dodd says, he agreed to be the sole investor of the new firm, and he put up $170,000, the first of what would be several loans at 15 percent interest. (His investment in the firm, Dodd estimates, would grow to a total of $700,000.) The company was officially launched in August 1995, named after Beckett and Sam Brown, a lawyer who helped get it started. Rakowski, Masonis, and Ferris were officials in the firm.
Business was good. In early 1997, Beckett Brown provided security services for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, landing a contract worth nearly $300,000. Early clients also included Phillip Morris, Mary Kay, Browning-Ferris Industries, and Nichols-Dezenhall, a Washington-based firm founded in 1987 by Nick Nichols and Eric Dezenhall that specialized in crisis communications, particularly for corporations involved in biotechnology, product safety, and environmental controversies. BBI provided protection for retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Dodd says, and there was talk it might also get a job to guard the Rolling Stones.
"Alley is locked by iron gates. 7 dumpsters in alley-take your pick."
By 1998, BBI had 22 employees working in five different divisions, along with subcontractors that it hired as operatives. The company also looked abroad for new opportunities and recruited more law enforcement and intelligence veterans. David Bresett, a former chief of the Secret Service's foreign intelligence branch, joined the firm as a vice president. (A company biography noted that Bresett, while detailed to the CIA, had directed the investigation that identified the terrorists who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.) The firm retained Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and earlier one of the government officials responsible for overseeing U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras, as a consultant at $75,000 a year. "I did due diligence on a couple of customers," Cannistraro recalls. On the advice of Cannistraro and Bresett, BBI turned down a $1 million job with the Church of Scientology, according to Dodd. (Bresett did not respond to a message asking for comment.) At one point, an employee named Tim Ward, who had been a sergeant in the Maryland state police, traveled to Saudi Arabia for the company, according to Dodd.
Phil Giraldi, a former CIA officer, was also on the payroll. According to Giraldi, there was not a lot of work for him and Cannistraro. "We would go to a company like Enron and see if they had any issues if they were looking to acquire a company," he recalled. "See if the [company to be acquired] is connected to the Russia mob. That's what we were selling. We were not very successful." Giraldi left the firm in 1999. By then, he had become aware of the firm's more unconventional activities: "Scooping garbage, trying to get penetrations of companies and environmental groups. I didn't know a lot of the details." But, he says, he knew BBI was "working on Greenpeace."
In 2000, the firm-which had changed its name to S2i after Richard Beckett left the company-was targeting a group of activist organizations opposed to genetically engineered food that had formed a coalition called GE Food Alert. In the fall of 2000, with these groups poised to assail Taco Bell, S2i operatives got on the case.
Their thoughts soon turned to garbage.
On September 26, Jay Bly, a former Secret Service agent working for S2i, sent an email to Tim Ward, the former Maryland state trooper on the payroll:
Received a call from Ketchum yesterday afternoon re three sites in DC. It seems Taco Bell turned out some product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used on the corn have not been approved for human consumption. Hence Taco Bell produced potential glow-in-the-dark tacos. Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. The Ketchum Office, New York, has the ball. They suspect the initiative is being generated from one of three places:
1.Center for Food Safety, 7th & Penn SE
2.Friends of the Earth, 1025 Vermont Ave (Between K & L Streets)
3.GE Food Alert, 1200 18th St NW (18th & M)
#1 is located on 3rd floor. Main entrance is key card. Alley is locked by iron gates. 7 dempsters [sic] in alley-take your pick.
#2 is in the same building as Chile Embassy. Armed guard in lobby & cameras everywhere. There is a dumpster in the alley behind the building. Don't know if it is tied to bldg. or a neighborhood property. Cameras everywhere.
#3 is doable but behind locked iron gates at rear of bldg.
In this email, Bly explained the urgency and the goal: "Apparently there is an article or press release due out next week and [Ketchum] would like some pre release information." He then turned practical: "I want to send Sarah [another BBI employee] to site #1 for a job inquiry. She can see how big the offices are and get the lay of the land. Maybe this will narrow the field. If they have a job opening could she work there for two or three days to find out what's going on?" The Friends of the Earth site, he noted, would be tougher to penetrate. As for the garbage of GE Food Alert, Bly had a plan: "if we can get some help from our friends who ride the truck. The alley is tight. I think the truck can drive down the alley but the container probably is rolled out and dumped. Looks like one dumpster for the building. I'm sitting on the building at 4:00 am tomorrow morning (if Ketchum gives us a budget)." And Bly noted that there were other possible opportunities: "we have found some other affiliates with the above groups. We are looking for their locations in [Washington, D.C.] and hopefully a more S2i friendly site."
The following day, Bly emailed Ward about his early morning surveillance:
Re: Dumpster Dive.
I got hold of Jim Daron [a Washington police officer working for BBI] yesterday. He was supposed to do Vermont Ave and Penn Ave SE last night. I have not heard from him today-what's new. I did 18th St. Weard [sic] set up-the dumpster is behind locked gates. The truck drives down the alley and rings for the night guard to open the gate. The guard comes out, unlocks and goes back into the building (probably pissed off because they woke him up), the guys walk the bags out to the truck one at a time. When they finish they locked the gate behind them. There was so much trash they had to compact the truck two times while they were there. I did not find anything from the 5th floor, but the good news is it's doable.
On September 28,Ward responded:
Good news! Think that once Jim [Daron] calls you back we will know where we stand. If he can't get in with the shield, it will be difficult at sight #1. I think #2 we can do regardless. The issue is a hot one in general. I've been following it from here. Don't forget our GP [Greenpeace] boy in Baltimore has been handling the work for GP. It may be worth a check in the city. Maybe one of our BPD [Baltimore Police Department] guys can hit that one. When you talk with the client push the fact that their client (the cheese people)...should put together a trend tracking program for the future. The anti's now have found an exposed corporate target and they will be back for more blood.
This email appears to suggests that the Beckett Brown operatives were considering using a Washington police officer's badge to gain access to the garbage of the Center for Food Safety. And Ward was apparently hoping that Beckett Brown could persuade Ketchum to hire the company to monitor the ongoing activity of the activists opposed to genetically-engineered food.
These emails do not indicate whether Beckett Brown succeeded in scooping valuable intelligence from the garbage at these three sites. But Beckett Brown had already managed to penetrate the anti-GE food network. In a 1999 report to Ketchum-entitled "Intelligence Analysis for Dow Global Trends Tracking Team" -BBI described in detail a strategy session held by 35 representatives of various environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, US PIRG, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The report noted the targets the coalition was considering (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, the Grocery Manufacturers of America) and listed various tactics the group had discussed. Such strategy meetings of this coalition were confidential, according to Dale Wiehoff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Neither Bly nor Ward would discuss this series of emails or any of the work they did for Beckett Brown or S2i. "Legally, I can't tell you anything about what the company did," Ward says. He accuses Dodd of trying to "besmirch the names of the people involved" in the company. Rakowski, Daron, and Beckett did not reply to requests for comments. Nor did Ketchum. A spokesman for Kraft says, "After a review of our historical procurement files, we have no record of work on or about Sept. 26, 2000, with either Ketchum, Beckett Brown International or S2i. In the late '90s, Ketchum provided some PR services to Kraft for one of our coffee brands. However, Ketchum does not currently provide PR services to Kraft and has not done so for many years."
Time and again, according to Beckett Brown records, the firm looked to trash for intelligence. These trash runs at one point did raise concern within the company. In 1998, David Queen, a senior vice president, sent Rakowski a memo about "dumpster diving." Queen, a former deputy assistant secretary of the treasury and once a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, noted that in certain instances searching trash could raise "some troublesome issues," including possible violation of state trespass laws and "possible violation of trade secrets laws." He concluded, "If BBI expects to use this method of information gathering, it would be prudent to get the opinion of outside counsel which could be relied upon by BBI should there be future litigation directed against BBI."
Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records, BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."
Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company...would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report, "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.
"It was Mission Impossible-like."
Greenpeace was the target of one of BBI's more elaborate-and cinematic-intelligence-gathering efforts, according to company documents and an interview with an eyewitness. Jennifer Trapnell, who was dating Ward in the late 1990s, recalls an evening when she accompanied Ward on a job in Washington D.C. "He said they were trying to get some stuff on Greenpeace," she says. Ward wore black clothes and had told her to dress all in black, too: "It was Mission Impossible-like." In Washington, Ward parked his truck in an alley, she remembers, and told her to stay in the truck and keep a lookout. In the alley, he met a couple of other men, whose faces Trapnell did not see clearly. Ward was talking on a walkie-talkie with others, and they all walked off. About an hour later, the men came back and placed two trash bags in Ward's car. Trapnell says she didn't know what they did with the bags-and Ward never explained. In addition to Ward's work, on several occasions in 2000, Jim Daron, the Washington cop who also worked for BBI, submitted reports to BBI for surveillance of Greenpeace's offices.
BBI gathered numerous internal Greenpeace documents, including financial reports. It also obtained the instructions for using the security system at Greenpeace's offices. And the Greenpeace files at BBI included a handwritten document that appears to record attempts to crack the security codes on entry doors with notations such as "codes do not match" and "open."
BBI prepared reports on Greenpeace-based on "confidential sources"-for Ketchum. In at least one case, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace (who reviewed these reports at Mother Jones' request), a BBI report written for Ketchum contained information tightly held within the group about planned upcoming events. And a December 2, 1999 BBI report (which does not mention Ketchum) noted that Greenpeace had chosen Kellogg's, Kraft, and Quaker as "their main targets in the GE campaign," that it was developing a campaign tactic called "Food-Aid Expose" (which would highlight the export of genetically-modified foods to other countries), and that it was helping a Wall Street Journal reporter track food companies involved in the debate over genetically-engineered foods.
Over the years, Greenpeace has repeatedly been the target of public relations firms working for industry, and the group has experienced burglaries and caught would-be spies posing as students seeking employment. But Greenpeace officials say they did not know that their organization was under surveillance during that period of time.
In the late 1990s, Greenpeace was working with environmental groups in the stretch of Louisiana dubbed "Cancer Alley," organizing against various forms of industry pollution. Its work there and that of its Louisiana partners became another target for BBI. In 1998, according to BBI emails, correspondence, and records, BBI retained Mary Lou Sapone, a self-described "research consultant," who recruited a paid operative in Louisiana to infiltrate an environmental group called CLEAN. Sapone had something of a talent for infiltrating activist groups. In the late 1980s, working for a security firm called Perceptions International, which was, in turn, working for the U.S. Surgical Corporation, she penetrated a Connecticut-based animal-rights group, gathering evidence on an activist who would later serve jail time for planting a pipe bomb near the parking space of the company's CEO. The activist would eventually accused Sapone of coaxing her into the plot.
Sapone's operative in Louisiana relayed to her information on what the local enviros were planning, provided gossip on the internal rivalries, and identified the scientists aiding the groups. She passed the intelligence to BBI. In an August 20, 1998 "client briefing," BBI boasted that "our operative is being nominated to the citizen action panels for local industries" and it asked which local industry Condea Vista, the chemical manufacturing firm, would prefer the operative to focus on. (The previous year, Condea Vista had lost a lawsuit brought by the residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, against the company for the 1994 ethylene dichloride leak and had been slapped with a $7 million judgment.) Another BBI document noted, "The operative has been trained to be inquiring, but not participatory. Operatives are not allowed to offer suggestions or `help' targets in any way. They are trained to seek documents, ID friends and foe legislators and regulators, follow money trails, ID informants, discover future targets."
BBI produced detailed confidential reports for Ketchum on the environmental activism underway in Louisiana. And BBI records indicate that the firm worked for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Condea Vista Project." Citing "strict confidentiality agreements," Dezenhall will not say whether his firm worked with Condea Vista (or any other company), but he notes in an email, "It would be extremely damaging and wrong...to interpret or portray the term 'operative,' a generic term often used by investigators and former law enforcement types to mean an individual, as implying someone necessarily engaged in illicit actions such as corporate espionage." (Sapone did not respond to a message requesting comment.)
Penetrating a citizens group was not a new endeavor for BBI. In 1996 and 1997 in northern California, where Browning-Ferris Industries was engaged in a battle over the future of a garbage dump, BBI conducted what its records labeled "covert monitoring" and "intelligence gathering" on the North Valley Coalition, a citizens group opposed to the Browning-Ferris project. In September 1997, BBI received a payment of $198,881.05 from BFI.
The Firm's Obama connection
BBI fell apart in 2001 amid arguments over the company's finances. "It was not a happy company," says Phil Giraldi, the ex-CIA man who had worked there, adding, "I have worked for a number of security companies. Some are ethical, some are not. Beckett Brown was not especially so." When the company was collapsing, Dodd says, he heard that document shredding was underway in its offices, and one weekend he went to the offices and carted off scores of cartons stuffed with records.
BBI's demise led to a lawsuit. Dodd sued Rakowski, Ward, Bly and two others, claiming they had engaged in fraud. In a pretrial statement, Dodd accused them of having "dipped into the Company's coffers for generous salaries, commissions, bonuses, loans, benefits and unsupported expense reimbursements, all the while presenting false and misleading financial information" to Dodd. In 2005, after a month-long trial in Maryland's Talbot County Circuit Court, Dodd lost. He now was out the $700,000 he had invested in the company. By his own estimate, he had spent over a million dollars in legal fees. And he was mad. He claims that he only learned of the firm's sleazier actions after the company imploded and that his lawyers encouraged him not to raise that issue as part of his lawsuit. But after the trial was done, Dodd began contacting some of BBI's targets and shared its records with them. "I wanted the facts to come out," he says. "I feel terrible that my money was used to screw these people over."
Today, boxes and boxes of BBI records sit in warehouse space Dodd rents. Dodd has not gone through all of the material. (The records include internal and confidential financial reports of a local bank that had been the subject of a takeover.) Much of what BBI did remains a mystery to Dodd. A law firm representing the Mars candy corporation pored over all the records, according to Dodd and his lawyer, apparently in search of evidence that Mars had been the target of corporate espionage. (The files contain records indicating that BBI obtained information on the phone calls made by a PR man working with Mars.) Then Dodd heard nothing further from this law firm. Dodd says he would be delighted to testify before Congress about BBI-but no one has invited him to do so.
As for BBI's principals, they are still operating. Tim Ward now runs a security firm called Chesapeake Strategies, which bills itself as "a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience." Jay Bly works there. Its website boasts that it maintains affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait and that "many team members continue to hold Secret and Top Secret government security clearances." The firm has been active in protecting research facilities from animal-rights activists. In 2002, it won a contract from the General Services Administration "for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products." It was listed on a 2005 line-up of Defense Department contractors. "I don't have any comment about what I am currently doing or what I plan to do," Ward says.
Joseph Masonis works for the Annapolis Group, a security firm. Its website notes that the company's managing directors "have over forty-five years of combined experience with the United States Secret Service." Paul Rakowski married Amy DiGeso, who was CEO of Mary Kay when BBI worked for the cosmetics firm. (Currently, she is a top executive at Estee Lauder.) Rakowski's current occupation-if he has one-is not publicly known.
Richard Beckett is now CEO of Maryland-based Global Security Services, which, according to its website, offers clients a "suite of business solutions" that includes "intelligence services," "disaster management," "information systems security," and "paramilitary operations." Last year, his firm provided bodyguards to Senator Barack Obama.
James Ridgeway is Mother Jones' Senior Washington Correspondent.
© 2008 Mother Jones
69 Comments so far
Show AllThe bottom line is "Last year, his firm provided bodyguards to Senator Barack Obama."
I guess this article would be boring without implying that Obama is a bad Man?
Gotcha!
ANOTHER FEAR STORY.
Not a surprise, when it comes to business the gloves are off 100%. Profits at all cost is the USA way of life. Stop any person or org that gets in the way. Like I said in another posting the world not just the US is going in the wrong direction. These fear stories crack me up as it makes people afraid to join and help and I feel it is working more every day.
As I have been saying for months now, do you feel if OB gets in there will be a huge change ? The housing problem gome, debt gone, jobs for everyone? The war stops in the first 6 or even 12 months? Who even gets in will quickly become the new puppet for big business and countries to control.
The only way the U.S. could get a President of the people; for the people;and by the people; and not a corporate soldier, is to pretend to be a corporate soldier and then after being elected decide to leave the corporate army,but of course, it will not last long only until you are assassinated!
People who feel they have an ideological license to subvert the law need to face harsh justice.
Masters, Overseers, Vassals. Life on the Plantation. Anyone who works for the Vassals in ANY WAY is an Enemy of the State. Nothing new here. Dew the names, Haymarket, Eugene Debbs, Emma Goldman, or Pinkertons mean anything to you? The term is never past tense, "ran", the term is always, "running" Black Ops (the forces of Democracy must be crushed wherever they appear). COINTELPRO: Ritual defamation, false imprisonment, execution - that's when the government does it (still doing it).
What is lovely here is the way such efforts in the private sector, when they come to light, are so banal. A fella takes a woman told to dress 'in black' on a sexy stake out filled with suspense. No doubt a round of horizontal bop to fill out the evening. I get the sense that these guys are not just liars themselves, they are thick as bricks. If these are the hotsy bad guys, what a joke. They're public, they're braggarts, and they spend their lives fucking each other, their customers, and anybody they can get their hands on. Then they dissolve, reform with a new name, and dew it again.
This is not Greenpeace's first rodeo. They have their issues and the organization has changed over time but they have been the objects of every kind of subversion out there, including having their people killed by French Intelligence Agents (if I got the story straight).
We are not yet back to the time of public Summary Execution by cops & FBI, but we will be. After Martial Law. Greenpeace and Earth First will be at the top of the List. It would be better for them NOT to be in the US when that happens.
Regrettably my nightmare America loves the spectacle of bloody rooms hosed down with automatic weapons fire. Ask Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
Peace.
It would appear as if a logical symptom of the Great Lurch Backwards to the Robber Baron under the aegis of Dubya, Cheney, & Co. has manifested itself: S2i is working hard to become a 21st century equivalent of the Pinkerton Agency. The only surprise is that it took this long for the progressive press to get a hold of this story. If this development does not convince progressives that we are in a bare-knuckle no rules but for victory brawl, then nothing will.
What a laugh. Greenpeace are "the avon ladies of the environmental movement" according to Paul Watson.
The Sierra Club was founded by hunters and recently started a partnership with Clorox.
Hardly the master minds of radical change.
What these corporate mercs are doing is 'grey ops' at best.
'Black ops' are wet work. Assassinations. Bombings. Kidnappings. Knee-capping.
You know... stuff that comes AFTER the 'October Surprise'.....
'Eco-terrorism' "...remains what we would probably consider the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat, because they have successfully continued to conduct different types of attacks in and around the country," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko...
...even though not a single death or injury has resulted from an "eco-terrorism" attack since the mid-80s, when a mill worker was injured by a tree spike - which marked the LAST time a tree was spiked, Agent Kolko forgot to add.
According to the FBI, "The Animal Liberation Front is considered a terrorist group, whose purpose is to bring about social and political change through the use of force and violence."
Based on that FBI definition, however, The United States of America is a "terrorist group," seeing as how "we" illegally invaded TWO countries in an effort to bring about social and political change (democracy and regime change) through the use of force and violence.
All of Saudi Arabia would also be classified as a "terrorist group," as well for example, after threatening England with terror attacks if they didn't cease investigating the Prince's multiple extortion-for-weapons schemes.
Here's the best part - since the early 80s, aside from a couple of SUV firebugs and a pair of sprawl burners, the FBI has made a single arrest in more than 700 reported "terror attacks."
Here's the worst part: the entire Green effort has failed. Air and water has never been more deadly, deforestation continues unabated, mutant transgenic organisms (aka genetically engineered foods) are being created and deployed at ever increasing rates, mountain tops are being blown up faster than ever, and federal regulations have been all but eliminated across the board.
Note to the Feds: y'all won, okay? Now how about y'all stop wasting resources spyin' on the green folk and start focusing on the important stuff, like arresting and prosecuting domestic enemies of our Constitution, like the Torture Decider and his cultists...?
An interesting question that this article doesn't ask or answer is this: Was this security firm part of InfraGard, the federal program in which the FBI shares intelligence with private companies in order to protect critical infrastructure. (And the idea that the program will stick to that mission and creep won't have them after legal dissent is as credible as the thought that the Corps of Engineers will build New Orleans' levees RIGHT this time.)
We've been here before. In the 1960s and 1970s the FBI COINTELPRO criminalized all sorts of legal dissent....
I AM GOING TO SHOUT THIS FOR A REASON...LISTEN UP:
THIS IS WHY YOU MUST..ABSOLUTELY MUST BURN ALL YOUR PAPER GARBAGE..YEAH, I AM SORRY..IT IS BAD..BUT, WHAT CAN YOU DO? "TRASH PULLS" ARE BEING DONE BY LOCAL PIGS, FBI, AND THESE IDIOTS..THE TRASH PULL IS AN ILLEGAL SEARCH..AND YET THEY DO THEIR LITTLE LEGAL HAIR SPLITTING AND..VOILA'...SO..BURN ALL YOUR PAPER..I DO THIS..I DO IT AS REGULARLY AS I RECYCLE..I TAKE ALL LABELS OFF OF PLASTIC BOTTLES THAT MAY IN ANY WAY BE USED AS "INTELLIGENCE" I BURN ALL JUNK MAIL, BILL STUBS..ALL THE EXTRA CRAP THAT COMES WITH YOUR BILLS, ALL PAPER GOES INTO A BAG NEXT TO OUR RECYCLING BAG...AND I BURN IT IN A BURN BARREL WITH BBQ FLUID...DONE..
SEE, ANOTHER THING YOU HAVE TO ASSUME..EVEN THOUGH ASSUMPTION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCK-UPS...BUT YOU MUST ASSUME THAT IF YOU ARE ACTIVE IN YOUR COMMUNITY IN "PROGRESSIVE" POLITICS, ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS OR ACTIONS, OR AS I AM "PROGRESSIVE CONSTITUTIONAL" POLITICS..YOU MUST ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT AT ALL TOO SMALL A TARGET...AND THE MORE OUTSPOKEN YOU ARE...IF YOU ALWAY'S HAVE A "COMMENT" AT MEETINGS ETC...YOU MUST..MUST ASSUME YOU ARE A POTENTIAL TARGET..EVEN IF IT IS ONLY FOR INTEL ITEMS LIKE MAILING LISTS, MEETING SCHEDULES ETC..MAYBE EVERYBODY ELSE BURNS THEIRS AND YOU ARE THEIR LAST OPTION..DO YOU THINK THEY DON'T HAVE YOUR NAME..??
I KEEP ALL MY EMAIL ON A "STICK" AND I AM PREPARED TO DESTROY MY COMPUTER IN, I KID YOU NOT, LESS THAN A MINUTE..NO HARD DRIVE..BINGO.
SOUND PARANOID..WELL..WITH "FUSION CENTERS"...WHICH FOR SOME REASON ARE NOT BEING SEEN AS PART OF THE FISA END RUN GAME BEING PLAYED, EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY IS AN ATTMEPT, THAT IS WORKING, TO MAKE LOCAL POLICE AGENCIES INTO INTEL GATHERERS FOR THE FEDS..AND THEY ARE POLITICAL..PERIOD..THIS IS NOT ABOUT "CRIME" IT IS ABOUT BELIEFS..IT IS THE END OF THE REPUBLIC FOLKS..AND YOU, IF YOU ARE AT ALL ACTIVE, ARE A "PERSON OF INTEREST"..AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY..
SO, BURN YOUR PAPER. REMOVE YOUR LABELS. DO NOT STORE INFO ON YOUR COMPUTER THAT IS RELATED TO YOUR ACTIVISM.
KEEP PAPERS IN A SAFE, AND IF YOU CAN..BUY A BOOK ON REALLY HIDING THINGS WELL..THERE IS A TECHNIQUE I USE THAT I WILL NOT GO INTO HERE..BUT IT IS ESSENTIALLY PIG PROOF..AND WAS/IS USED BY THE ACTUAL SAME INTLE PERSONNEL WHEN IN COUNTRY..IT IS A LITTLE DIFFICULT, BUT WORKS..HINT: THEY WOULD HAVE TO TEAR DOWN YOUR WALLS DURING THE SNEAK AND PEAK TO FIND THE MATERIAL, THUS SORT OF..RENDERING THE WHOLE EXERCISE FUTILE..
SNEAK AND PEAK, FUSION CENTERS, ILLEGAL SPYING BY ORPORATE FASCIST MERCENARIES..IT IS TIME TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY FOLKS..A LITTLE PARANOIA MAY SAVE YOU FROM BEING HELD AS A "BELLIGERENT" WHICH IN THE M.C.A. IS THE CODE WORD FOR..AMERICAN CITIZEN ENEMY COMBATANT.
AND THEN THERE IS INFRAGARD..GO TO THE SAN FRANCISCO CHAPTER ON THE NET, WHILE YOU STILL CAN. LOOK FOR THE LINK TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CHAPTER. AND NOTICE THAT, HMMM...THE HEAD OF THAT CHAPTER HAS HIS JOB DESCRIPTION AS "CONSULTANT" I MUST CONFESS I DID NOT REALIZE THAT "CONSULTING" WAS A VITAL PIECE OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE, AND NOTICE TOO THAT THE LAST LITTLE GET-TO-GETHER WAS TO DISCUSS....INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS...HMMM..AGAIN I MUST CONFESS I DID NOT REALIZE THAT AL QAEDA WAS GOING TO DO A MILLION PIRATE COPIES OF THE "THE LION KING" AND THAT THIS WOULD BE A REALLY HORRIBLE ACT OF TERRORISM..
MY POINT? EVERYTHING IS NOW "ON THE TABLE" FOR THE SPIES..EVERY ASPECT OF MODERN LIFE THEY WANT TO CONTROL..AND SO ALMOST NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE INVOLVED IN..IF YOU ARE OUTSPOKEN..YOU SHOULD ASSUME THAT YOU COULD BE A TARGET..AGAIN, EVEN IF IT'S JUST FOR INFO THEY THINK YOU "MIGHT HAVE"..SO...PROTECT YOURSELF.
AND FINALLY..THE OBLIGATORY "YOU ARE PAYING FOR THIS ACTIVITY" YOU ARE PAYING THE WAGES OF THESE SCUMBAGS, THE "CONTRACTS" THEY GET FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ARE BEING PAID FOR BY...YOU! NOT ME BY THE WAY..BUT YOU!
SO USE THE ONE POWER YOU REALLY HAVE LEFT. THE POWER OF THE PURSE AND JOIN US IN A GENERAL TAX STRIKE, WE WANT TO BE "REPRESENTED" AGAIN...NOT IGNORED..AND UNTIL THEY RETURN OUR VOICES TO THE DEBATE AND STOP USING "FRIENDLY FASCISM" TERROR TACTICS..(AKA EVERYTHING BUT THE EXECUTIONS) I WILL NOT FOOT THE BILL FOR THEIR ACTIONS. YOU WILL..BUT I WONT..IT'S TIME TO STOP RATIONALIZING YOUR FEAR OF NOT PAYING...EITHER DO NOT PAY..OR BE A COMPLICIT "PARTNER" IN THEIR CRIMES. PERIOD!
DEATH TO TYRANTS
jcrumb:
You may have said something very important and something that may even save my life, but I'll never know because
I can't read through the ALL CAPS!
Please, in future posts, turn 'em off. A word or two here and there is acceptable and makes your point.
JCRUMB -- Thanks bro, that was inspired (and paranoia is not accurate, when they REALLY are out to get one), as all "interested parties need to wise up to the near police state with top-to-bottom asshole integration.
Take care, and remember the miracle of fast plaster set, and color matching (unless one does wall art, hmmmm, or hidden embedded circuits & video acq system).
This might be just up your alley, I discover the "onion network" and S/W, but don't use it for the ultimate in internet security -- it works to use a system of people's computers to make ~ anonymous TCP/IP traffic, and is more secure the larger the number of users (as the spooks can do an end-run encircling everyone otherwise, and deduce the traffic eventually). A very clever system, that once on, I found the dude that must be the most paranoid that I've ever even read about -- talking about all the ways that THEY have invaded his privacy, and what he's done about it. Maybe you might already know of this, but CD people wouldn't … … …
Cool ideas that can certainly make a difference.
Namaste
I would like to be an activist, but I am afraid I am not as active as I would like to be. I try to do a little transformational politics, but I am afraid few notice. I lived in Vermont for 30 years and it seemed people were much more active there and there were more chances to demonstrate, etc.
They can spy on me. If they don't want to spy, they could at least ask me a few questions.
"Paranoia is having all the facts."
--William S. Burroughs
Nothing is too secure, least of all, are electronic communications. Paper trails can be used but only when you are already under observation and if you are an activist of any kind, please assume you are under observation and get rid of your trails.
But, I do not understand the Obama connection? Is the author implying that the security company is out to get Obama or is Obama using them to perform black ops on the Hillary camp? Either way, sounds like a stretch without any evidence...
I think this type of stuff is normal operating procedure for many of our secret government institutions. The main differece is they don't run out of money. It is an outrage that they use our own tax money to subvert citizen and cultural movement's within our country. I wish we could bring back JFK, and protect him long enough to clean up the mess that he hinted at in some of his speaches. They got to him first, and we have to live with the result. Fascist police state with black Op's running rampant.
Just a question:
How do you think Bushco is going to fill all those Halliburton built 'detention facilities'?
Corporations evil? You must be joking! The corporations are great! Look at all the wonderful things they do. Toxic waste, degraded environment, oppression and virtual slave labour, hazardous products, tax evasion... you name it. What wonderful 'persons' these corporations are.
Just a question:
How do you think Bushco is going to fill all those Halliburton built 'detention facilities'?
Blackwater has that contract. Also, under the terms of the SPP, Canadian and Mexican troops will be used to suppress domestic unrest in the US, while US troops will be used in Canada and Mexico.
If you are not a criminal, what are you worried about?
Snooping is obviously not cool, but what damage does that do by itself? Information is harmless in the platonic realm -- unless acted upon. If they inserted saboteurs into organizations to incite wedges, or bought off or co-opted the leadership (like the mob's successes in organized labor), that's another matter entirely. If the organizations aren't doing anything illegal, there's no legal worry.
So the chief (real) concern we're left with is that the soul/vision/efficacy of the organization is sabotaged. Probably all human social units of moderate size need mechanisms to prevent implosion of purpose.
Well this explains the two guys in suits watching my fall weatherproofing project. I just thought they were admiring the way I swung my caulk gun.
Who the hell thinks this is a good expenditure of tax dollars?
Knowledge is power. If a corporation knows a green group's plans in advance it can be ready. If there is some dirt to be had on an outspoken environmentalist, put it to use!
Obama had to hire somebody. I'll bet they had great references. That is a stretch, unless they boosted him into Hillary's dumpster. Maybe after a few too many beers! Rev. Wright could have provided a distraction. Does Obama "drink"?
Do not feed the Troll.
J crumb: I can't do it! Its long and capped. I just can't do it.
Good Luck: The whole world, not just ther US is going in the wrong direction.
Allow me to challenge that. Let's start with the biggest, China. It has 10% annual GDP growth. Chinese are buying all kinds of stuff they couldn't have before including oil for their cars. They lend money and don't owe any. They have the whole world as a market for their exports. They spend one tenth what the US spends on military while being 4 times larger in population. They produce a very small amount of the pollution on the planet, compared with the US for example.
India: I won't enslave you here. India is going in the wrong direction?
There are a lot of great stories out there. I like the Venezuelan story and the Cuban story and even, guardedly, the Putin story. Unless you start talking about overconsumption, and pollution, and stuff that the rich are getting tired of, those not rich have had some growth. Poverty is decreasing in the world.
If a country can unburden itself of the American yoke, it has a fair chance to build a fair society in today's world, while the giant is wounded.
Lizard- Two countries did unburden themselves from the imperialist Yankee yoke.
Iraq.
And Iran.
And both were promptly delivered into the hands of brutal, sadistic, blood-thirsty tyrants with a penchant for secret police, goofy uniforms and US arms deals.
How did that work out by the way?
Oh. Right.
Bush.
1. The tyrant's friends spy.
2. They're always kind of blatant about it. When you're a tyrant's friend you need a kick out of your job. What better way than taking on the age-old role of juvenile bully?
The low-levels generally don't care if you know you're being spied upon. These people aren't stupid, but, ok, they're stupid.
Once there were about ten of us with a little picket line and one of us had a rubber mask, and as the secretary of defense drove by he looked at the sign of the guy wearing the death mask, I've forgotten the secretary of defense's name, "XXX works for me / death is my craft" and he turned white as he drove by. 10 minutes later this strange guy, only about 4 foot 9 inches tall, and wearing a (fake) head of hair down to his waist and funky clothes, had gotten to the guard station from inside the military base and was talking with the guard. His orders were obviously to infiltrate us with his height and his hair, but the 10 of us all knew each other so he didn't try. Really interesting experience.
Another time we were in a vigil and the local spy truck (Look, these things are obvious. Look for a business truck not known to do any local business at all, with a tiny silly sign designed to drive away any real business with a stick, like on old Mission Impossible reruns) got stuck in traffic right in front of 200 people, and we were all looking at him, and he was all nervous and looking away. Truly embarassing moment!
PaulK- last year there was a protest in Quebec. Some guys dressed as 'protesters' tried to provoke a riot.
But the Quebec Provincial Police boots they were wearing gave them away. They were Canadian government agent provocatuers.
The REAL protesters spotted them, called them out for who they were, and pointed the agents out to the rest of the crowd. The undercover cops ran like hell and hid behind the line of shield bearing riot police who were just ITCHING for an excuse to use their batons and tear gas.
Instead of a riot the police were ridiculed nationwide in Canada.
The Corporate State doesn't want us to care about the Earth. That's bad for profits. We know what the real name of the Corporate State is....
Be open and honest about what you do. Generally stay legal with what you do. That way, you don't care if people spy on you. Be aware of people who pretend to be friends, but who really just create problems and divisions. Those are the provacatuers who are trying to disrupt you.
Look in the eyes. Trust your heart. Know your friends by their actions, and the same with your enemies. Pay no attention to words, as there are always liars about. But you can see the light in people, and know them as your friends and allies by it.
I just went outside.. out into my back yard.. and listened to the wind... looked up at the stars... and the moon and just listened...
amazingly.. in the middle of the city it was fairly quiet. No dogs, no cars, no sirens...
I turned as many lights off as I could.
We are an insane species.. we are growing insane because we have lost touch with the earth..
people are scared of the earth.
I just listened.
I needed the peace.
Caelidh,
You are quite correct. I spend about 3 weeks/year (about 10 months too short, so far as I'm concerned) reconnecting. Our species is losing available space to nurture wisdom. Wisdom often works at the interface of social systems and the natural, non-human, world. So many of us increasingly live in worlds utterly sheltered from the natural, so there's no place at all for wisdom. Just human-imposed rules, right-angles, artificial light, office politics, gridlock. We've put wisdom on a forced retreat. There is no reason to explain our greater purpose in the cubicle -- because there is none, and we know it.
Capitalism is a compulsive disorder, a mental illness---"it believes" that you can derive profit (from the word "advantage") from others in an exchange and ignore the consequences of inevitably producing "dis-advantaged" others, including The Earth...."It believes" that you can take out value that was not put into something (profit) and that this value is some kind of "magic reward" that comes from nowhere (i.e., who cares). Nothing from nothing---Capitalism is designed by the greedily insane, by people who can NEVER have enough to fill the spiritual HOLE inside them---and its track record, called "progress," is a blood-soaked nightmare that destroyed everything it ever touched, from The Earth to democracy. "Progress" toward WHAT? It is simply insane to say "we're making progress" without ever having been able to say what the goal is in plain language....And of course, capitalism cannot state its goal, because it is obscene. Well, there still are OTHER WORLDS in the world.... http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com
Capitalism recognizes that people want to be able to get ahead when they work hard and add value to a society. It rewards hard and smart work and the system has led to the improved lifestyle and longer lives in those countries where it has been used. The good-old-days sound great to those who never lived through them. It is a fantacy. One can get ahead by adding value to society rather than taking it from others. There are all kinds of fancy ways to calculate productivity, but simply look around now compared to even 50 years ago and even an idiot can see productivity and quality of life improvements. I live better than my parents, who in turn live better than their parents. This is not always the case, but unless you are a lump, it is. We have more leasure time, safer food, and better medical care. We can even sit on our fat butts and blog away. Yes, we need lots of further improvements, but the poor today live better than most lived 100 years ago. If things are so bad here, why do we keep trying to secure our borders to immigration? Why aren't we building walls to keep people in this rat hole?
Mr. Obvious,
Could you please explain what you mean by "a lump"? To someone who does not share your dialect it is not obvious.
(Does a "lump" have any rightful claim to what you refer to as "quality of life improvements"?)
anatta - A lump is someone who is not willing to work and delay gratification. They want to achieve their lifestyle goals now through the work of others. They think everyone should be brought down to their level and resent those that get achieve through effort rather than whining. In my opinion, lumps get a quality of life equal to their own willingness to work for it. Lumps are not incapable, just unwilling/lazy.
From the Webster's Dictionary - Lump: an indefinitely shaped mass of something
Mr Obvious: your view on capitalism:
IMO: A very narrow minded view limited to the boundaries of the US, you are not considering the externalities involved in this "progression" - ie other countries which HAVE suffered as a result. Look at how many countries are ungoing riots due to a shortage of staple foods WHY IS THAT????
pizzdorf - The current food crisis is a direct result of "clever" schemes to thwart WTO rules on farm subsidies. The US ethanol subsidy and the EU politician bans on GM crops that have already been approved by EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) are two obvious examples. These subsidies do not allow free-market forces to operate. We must also realize that many starving people do not live in representative-democratic capitalistic countries. When massive government corruption rules (like in Mexico), the people suffer. We have our own share of corruption, but it does not compare to some other countries. The US is the major funder of the World Food Bank, and I believe that most Americans are proud of this. When we stop pansying around with those that violate international trade agreements, maybe these situations can be avoided.
Mr 0
what country you talking about? I see jobs in the US going out the window. The highest trade deficit in history with other countries, so the US is importing more than exporting. Record unemplyment but they are not counted as unemployed in the US after 6 weeks of benefits run out so the numbers are much higher than shown on TV. Detroit was as high as 50% at one point. Some stories I have read thousands of job applications for 25 or 50 min wage jobs at Wally Mart. Before where one person working in the house was enough now it takes two or more. Housing market of people trying their best to live the americano dream are gone. Right now the US is at a record level in self debt with credit cards over draft.
I watched a program last night about India, they showed American company after american company employing thousands of people who guess what, live in India. 50 years ago there were jobs in america today J Bush has never reached the min amount he would have to create each month since he took office just to stay even, and those jobs are not high end jobs but WM etc.
Is my life better than my parents, well abvancement in medicine yes. As for material things I am better off but a house is a house and a car is is a car. I do travel more but 50 years ago it was get in the car with a tent and the kids and have a great weekend. That is if you measure life on possessions. My grand parents didn't get electricity till the 1960's and guess what lived into their 80's So was their life better or worse than mine. From making an foot print on planet earth they win over us hands down. Also a LUMP can be a large engine in a car
Liz, the US and world economy is heading to the toilet real fast. Human rights is another area the world is heading in the wrong direction. As this article is about spying.
JC RUMB
So if you want to destroy your HD when a black SUV pulls up the drive go ahead. They would just replace it with what ever they wanted you to be chanrged with from spying to kiddy pic.
You see they have installed this fear into every american so you are lock step, do as your told and they will do what ever they want. As I said before and all it took was 2 buildings falling over.
In ALL ( every story on CD) on this web site only one person has said they took part in a protest.
good luck - I guess I am confused by all the jobs that are available and all the help-wanted signs? Plenty of low-paying jobs for those with no training and plenty of high-paying jobs for hard-working trained individuals. This seems right to me. It takes effort to live poor while getting trained. As far as the number of people per household working, this is simply the lifestyle to which we have become accustom. We want want want! We borrow more than we can afford and then complain. If you cannot delay gratification then you get what you deserve. Its not that hard. If you borrow money, then you are expected to pay it back. My wife and I finally got a credit card after being married for a few years and have never carried a balance (for over 20 years). If we cannot afford it, we do not buy it. If you are not willing to put in the effort to get training, then you will get paid what you are worth. Everyone here seems to be doing well enough to have a computer and internet connection.
Galen
So you are saying the USA will have an incident in Oct. This I suppose would stop the Nov elections?
Mr 0
I still feel the country is going to crash then everyone with or without training will be hurt. Myself, I will collect my pension cheque every month and keep posting
Hi all,
Somewhat pertinent to the subject of poisoning the planet, and the power of the greedy corporations to influence outcome with fear tactics, please take the time to hear Al Gore's current speech given at the TED conference.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/243
PAX
mas1946 - Is this free or is Al Gore charging $250,000 a pop like he does for presentations on global warming (where questions are not permisable)? This guy has this figured out better than Green Peace.
Uhhh, Mr Obvious...I realize not everyone likes Al Gore, for whatever reasons, as others in politics or celebrities with high profiles using same to make money are also maligned. I am responding to what appears as sarcasm from you...am I wrong? Are you so "on top of it?"
It's the message that is important, and I'm hoping that his speech and those of others on this subject do much in rallying the efforts of all peoples and governments to save our beautiful blue-green dot in the Milky Way.
Anyway, wishing you some peace of mind, or hope or whatever...