Bloomberg Investigation Uncovers Koch Industries Sales to Iran

Bloomberg Markets has written a bombshell expose of Koch Industries that is bound to resound through the Brothers' vast conglomerate as much for the platform -- a normally staid financial publication -- as for the information contained therein.

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.

In their piece, "Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales," Bloomberg Markets details how the Koch Brothers hired and then fired their ethics officer charged with uncovering fraud after she'd uncovered more than fraud.

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.

Certain sales to Iran are against the law unless one finds a way around them. In Koch's own internal investigation, according to the Bloomberg Markets report, they identified the actions of their subsidiary as: '"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.'

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The U.S. Military's 1947 Warning on Intolerance

by Janet Ritz

A film produced by the U.S. Military in 1947 was meant to present the case for the desegregation of the armed forces. Though not initially intended for broadcast to the general public, it speaks to the divisions present in society today.

The production is dated by current standards. The message is prescient given the current strife and division: the ostracization of the "other," whether through protests of mosques, by Glenn Beck's scheduled through-the-looking-glass rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, or by the funding of climate science denial and extreme tea party activism against the current administration by the Koch Brothers, two of the biggest polluters on the planet.

The film was shot to convince members of the military that desegregation was the right idea. The subsequent integration of African-Americans into the armed forces has since become an integral part of the command structure with our strategy in war. (See: Powell Doctrine).

It now serves as a warning to the future as produced by a military that had fought years of heartbreaking war where millions had lost their lives due to prejudice and intolerance. Continued...

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New Yorker: Koch Brothers Waging War Against Obama

by Janet Ritz

Jane Mayer, reporting on The New Yorker Magazine, has written a comprehensive article entitled: Covert Operations, The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.  In it, Mayer gives an exhaustive report on the Koch brothers'  funding of extreme right-win opposition to the current administration.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

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Koch Industries' Unsolicited Emails: More questions than answers

by Janet Ritz

Earlier this month, I post an article (link) that included information about Koch Industries' involvement with Americans for Prosperity.

On April 6, 2010, I received a request for a correction from Koch Industries regarding their involvement with Dick Armey; a request that began with the representative's claim of Koch Industries' "environmental stewardship."

I updated my post regarding Dick Armey (from current to prior involvement with Koch affiliated groups) and requested answers in return to four questions about Koch Industries' environmental stewardship and involvement with Americans for Prosperity:

1. Is AFP, as seemingly implied in Lee Fang's [Think Progress] article, planning to challenge any town hall meetings, representatives or legislators over upcoming climate legislation in the manner as was observed during last summer's town hall meetings on the health care debate?

2. Is Koch Industries, as stated in Fang's article, "the largest funder of climate science denying organizations in the world" and, whether that is true or not, what is Koch Industries' position on climate change?

3. Does Koch Industries have a position on the threats of violence that have become a risk with an incited population?

4. Is Koch Industries either working with and/or interested in working with the current administration to find the best way for both business and the environment to succeed? If so, what initiatives have been proposed and/or undertaken? If not, what would you like to see happen?

The representative replied that that Koch would get back to me. I await further communication.

This exchange became all the more interesting after Rachel Maddow's April 15th report that Talking Points Memo had received an unsolicited email from Koch Industries (a different representative from the one who had contacted me) claiming no affiliation with Tea Parties (from the TPM report) (a claim that Koch has since withdrawn).  Continued...

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That Acrid Smell in the Air

by Sherman Yellen

Oh how I hate an ism. Born in the first half of the twentieth century I've lived through them all. That century was cursed with fascism, communism, and McCarthyism. In the twenty first we have Islamic terrorism. 

I must apologize if I am adding to the already overcrowded list of isms -- but with the threats from Republican Congressmen, the bulls-eye targeting of Sarah Palin of the Democrats she disagrees with, and the racist and homophobic curses from the Tea Party ringing in our ears after the passage of the health care bill, I suggest that we take a look backwards at the sad story of Timothy James McVeigh and see the McVeighism that is festering. 

Here was a man so filled with rage and resentment against the government for its Waco and Ruby Ridge raids, and a generalized hatred for American foreign policy, that he used explosives to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in April of 1995 killing 168 people, injuring 450 others, nineteen of them small children in a day care center. Continued...

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