#Anti Coral propaganda

[helsingvania]

I know a bunch of followers of mine know of my love of Moray. Maybe irrationally but she's a hunk of clay and I'm making my own shit up with her. Between the glow up design from the graphic novels to the ambiguity of her character whether or not she's faking her love for Coral endears me.

Like!!! Is this a response to trauma to what happened with Orca? When her daughter had died by her claws she rose the tides with her tears and mourned her for years, but couldn't care less about whatever happened to her sons let alone her niece. Hell if she did challenge Coral she wouldn't gain the same reverence as her cousin, she would die a miserable death and be forgotten about it worse have her grave be spat upon by everyone she knew. Always the next subject on the chopping block because Coral wanted daughters, not a niece. trying to be useful so she wouldn't lose her head. She - coral - could care less what happens to the rest of her family, nothing is stopping coral from outright killing her and no one would even blink or shed a tear

This whole facade, this whole image, this whole idea of Moray was developed in response to remain alive. She worships the sand for which the frog fish walks to ensure it will never stab her. She makes poems and sings praises as a desperate cry for help to the whales who listen. She isn't her cousin. She isn't orca.

She isn't daughter to the queen. She is expendable. She is a spare. She isn't important. She isn't even remembered by the community or world. She never comes back up in a different book. But what if she's doing all she can to remain alive and memorable in a society who punishes her for being anything but obedient.

[denimbex1986]

'Before I saw the Barbie movie, I was resolutely against ever seeing the Barbie movie. Despite the fact that as a child I loved Barbie, who I interviewed regularly for important radio segments in her coral peach ball gown, I decided that the last thing I needed was 90 neon-coloured-Margot-Robbie-filled minutes of a film which would obviously have nothing new to offer me; a grown-up feminist woman who stopped idealising the problematic Barbie aesthetic decades ago.

But then the reviews from angry men started rolling in. You only had to be vaguely near the internet after Barbie’s release to hear the resounding roars of the mostly middle-aged; outraged that such an abomination against “all men” could even be allowed to exist. The reviews began to read like dreamy promotional soundbites: “An alienating, dangerous and perverse film”, “They won’t be happy until we are all gay”.

These men were really, really wound up about this film. They loathed it. They were spitting fury at Greta Gerwig for creating a piece of such obvious, glaring, “anti-men, feminist propaganda”.

And so, when I was asked by one of my teenage children if I would be up for a day of “Barbenheimer”, I said “yes”: newly salivating at the potential of a project that could cause this much delicious backlash.

I decided I would swallow my aversion towards sustained exposure to powder pink, get Barbie watched, then chase it all away with a good dose of brooding grey, historically accurate cinema. Despite the promise of those furious reviews, I still expected to enter and exit the cinema despising Barbie and in awe of Oppenheimer.

During the five hours of media and popcorn consumption that followed, a chain reaction set in motion that left me changed. It made the vitriolic reviews of Barbie, calling Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece “anti-men”, even more comical. The irony was bright and clear to me: Oppenheimer is anti-women.

And the thing is that Oppenheimer is not different to most films. Because most films are anti-women.

We just don’t take to the internet to rage about it because we’re used to it; desensitised by the decades of cinematic women who exist only to paint their lips red, bare their breasts and give the important male protagonists something to play with.

Is Barbie anti-men? Oh, I hope so (it isn’t, it’s anti-patriarchy), but also, frankly, I don’t care. Because if it is – after decades of movies made by male directors like Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan, it has good reason to be.

And it does what it so brilliantly does within the sparkly, imaginary bubble of an entirely fictional world where the male characters it side-lines are literally plastic dolls, all called Ken (except Alan); fake toys who simply can’t even breathe. Anti-women films like Oppenheimer on the other hand, sideline or completely erase very real, flesh-and-blood women who lived whole lives and made significant contributions to our world.

So, if you’re a man who has watched Barbie and felt angry or irritated or just plain strange while watching the depiction and treatment of the Kens – then welcome to cinema. That is what it feels like to be a woman watching Hollywood movies most of the time.

But here’s the thing – that poor Ken doll you’re lamenting over, is not Leona Woods; who at 23 was one of the youngest female scientists the Manhattan project employed. Ken, unlike Leona, was not present at the first nuclear chain reaction and Ken did not have to do what Leona did – which was to conceal her pregnancy until two days before her baby was born. Ken is also not Elizabeth Graves; a scientist entirely essential to the project’s success who was completing an experiment when she went into labour and did not stop the experiment until it was finished, timing her contractions with a stopwatch. Let’s see Christopher Nolan make a three-hour-long film about that.

Neither Woods nor Graves feature in Oppenheimer, which, like so many anti-women films, manages to assume such an air of authority that it can leave us assuming that its astounding lack of female representation must be down to its admirable commitment to historical accuracy. I’ve heard the cries – “It is called Oppenheimer after all. How much do you expect it to worry about its women?” And perhaps it’s true – you can’t very well expect a film about the very intelligent physicists who tackled the science behind creating the atomic bomb to change facts just for representation can you?

No. But you can and should expect such a film to accurately and fairly represent the female scientists who were, in fact, right there – alongside Oppenheimer and his men, ensuring the Manhattan Project’s success. Perhaps it might have been appropriate if viewers left the three-hour epic clear in the knowledge that Kitty Oppenheimer didn’t only drink herself to distraction while taking care of screaming children and dropping a hip flask out of her handbag at every possible moment; she was also a trained botanist who was employed at Los Alamos to take blood and test the levels of radiation exposure of her colleagues.

More than 600 women worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos alone, yet the only female scientist given any recognition in Nolan’s world is Lilli Hornig, who speaks only briefly, mostly in opposition to the bomb’s use. And what about Charlotte Serber? Who Nolan depicts as Oppenheimer’s secretary, completely erasing her vital work as scientific librarian for the project’s “secret library” and who, with no formal training, became the only female group leader, overseeing a staff of 12 people while also risking her safety in counter-espionage efforts.

Oppenheimer doesn’t only fail the Bechdel test, it fails to represent the real women who contributed so significantly to that morally fraught turning point in history. Those women were physicists, engineers, chemists, mathematicians. They existed. And, as is so often the case, many of their achievements have been forgotten and remain unrecognised, by both history and cinema.

As I continue to emerge from my Barbenheimer experience, researching the lost women of the Manhattan project and occasionally still basking in the disgust of all those angry men who need to hate the work of art that is Barbie, it becomes ever clearer: anti-women is the benchmark of mainstream filmmaking and some people are simply unable to deal with the plastic Manolo Blahnik being on the other foot.'

[kivaember]

I wonder what Rubicon natives like Flatwell and Rusty think of the people surviving in the wastelands of earth? Is there a sense of empathy and or kinship due to the roughly similar living conditions and oppression at the hands of the UEG or are the wasteland survivors lumped in with all the other denizens of earth in their minds?

Haaaa... to be honest, Flatwell and Rusty have little if any empathy for solar colony humans, including the workers and the people who survive out in the wastelands.

Flatwell's far too bitter about the immediate aftermath of the Fires, where the UEG rushed to the planet to steal whatever tech/Coral they could before the ashes had even coolled, and basically ignored the survivors (and created the PCA as well). Tensions were also really high with Earth in general pre-Fires, and Rubicon had been running a lot of anti-Earth propaganda at the time. Flatwell internalised a lot of this, so he has a very, very, very dim view of Earth and its denizens, no matter their class - a view that wasn't really helped after spending his time as a spy in Schneider.

He does have some minor sympathy for the working class though, but that's about it. He otherwise doesn't think much of them, since he's more focused on Rubicon.

Rusty on the other hand... he hates them, to be totally frank. Absolutely despises Earth and everyone on it, and if the planet suddenly exploded one day he'd actually celebrate. In his mind Earth is the reason the PCA existed, Earth is where the corporations have come from - some mudball halfway across the galaxy is the direct cause of his and Rubicon's misery, and he just fucking hates them with everything he has because of it.

While rationally he's aware that it's an elite few that's the direct cause of PCA/Corpo fuckery on Rubicon, he can't help but blame the average Earth civilian for prioritising their own comfort over the lives of extrasolar colonists. Even the working class on Earth... in Rusty's eyes, they're just passively enduring their fate instead of using their far superior numbers to overthrow the UEG and improve their lot. So, when it comes to those who survive out in the wastes, his opinion is a lot better, but they're still Earthlings, which is cardinal sin in his eyes lmao

So tl;dr Flatwell dislikes Earth and everything it stands for, but does sympathise a little with the working class or those living in the wastes, because he knows they're suffering as well. Rusty just fucking hates everyone from Earth and thinks that their suffering is mostly self-inflicted and thus feels no pity for them.

They're far warmer towards extrasolar colonists, tbh. If you're from pirate central that is Tau Ceti, their opinion is faaaaaaaaar higher than if you're from Earth.

[thecommongale]

My craziest take is that coral is overrated. super cool animal but why is it supposely more important than algae. Algae is huge. Algae is the future. Algae blooms may kill coral reefs but they are incredibly diverse themselves. Its called disaster ecology. And it's important. It's like controlled burns or whatever.

#say no to coral propaganda #anti reef #i dont actually hate coral #reefblr

[onebluebookworm]

Books That Are Being Challenged Right Now - Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Where: Florida

Why: Anti-police “propaganda”

This one is a bit older (it happened in May), but it’s definitely worth talking about, because of who the complaints came from.

This book was pulled from a fifth grade classroom in Coral Springs, Florida, because the Fraternal Order of Police director wrote to the school district, claiming the book was anti-police propaganda.

Ghost Boys was inspired by the shooting of Tamir Rice, and draws on the horrifically large number of black men and children killed by police every day in the story itself. And the fact that there are so. Damn. Many. Cases for this book to draw on should be anti-police propaganda in itself. Not to mention that the book itself is pretty even-handed when it comes to blaming the police. A huge chunk of the conflict is Jerome and the daughter of the cop who killed him arguing over whether or not he’s truly a bad person for what he did, and the book does a pretty good job at discussing how the system itself is what is broken.

But that’s not why these cops were mad about this book. They don’t care about its nuances, or the important, poetic story it has to tell. They only care that someone is calling them out on their bullshit, and giving a face to the people they’ve killed. Systemic racism has served law enforcement well, and - like with All-American Boys, like with Dear Martin, like with The Hate U Give - they’re very, very scared whenever a book comes out that so clearly has their number.

[thisdaynews]

How South Florida became headquarters of the Trump-Industrial Complex

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/how-south-florida-became-headquarters-of-the-trump-industrial-complex/

How South Florida became headquarters of the Trump-Industrial Complex

President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The nerve center of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is a suburban office building in Arlington, Virginia,a few minutes’ drive from the White House. But its beating heart is located roughly 1,000 miles away, in sun-splashed South Florida.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale is a newresident of Fort Lauderdale, where the campaign’s chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and on-again, off-again Trump adviser Roger Stone also reside. Two of Trump’s lawyers representing him amid his impeachment saga, Jane and Martin Raskin, hail from the tony Miami suburb of Coral Gables.

Trump’s winter home and resort, Mar-a-Lago, is located in the exclusive enclave of Palm Beach. That’s not far from the Boca Raton offices of the National Enquirer — which went so far as to spearhead a “catch and kill” propaganda scheme in 2016 to hush women who allegedly had affairs with Trump — and the influential conservative publication Newsmax, whose CEO, Christopher Ruddy, has known Trump for years as a Mar-a-Lago member.

It’s an exotic ecosystem that has almost nothing in common with buttoned-down Washington — and it could play a role in determining the president’s fate in the giant swing state that’s essential to his 2020 fortunes.

“The Trump campaign is wherever Donald Trump plants his feet. That was true in 2016 and in 2020,” Ruddy said. “Florida is as close as you can come to his adopted state. He knows the state. He got to know all the players through Mar-a-Lago.”

The attraction of South Florida goes beyond Mar-a-Lago and the weather. The Palm Beach area is home to a concentration of conservative wealth, which is in part a reflection of the state’s low-tax — there is no income tax — environment. And for all its famously close elections, Florida has seen a generation of conservative governance.

Yet there’s a central irony to the Trump-South Florida nexus: It is a blue bastion that Trump lost by 28 points in 2016. Still, the three large southeastern counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach contain the highest number of Republicans in the state.

In 2016, Trump carried the state overall by just 1.2 points.

One reason is that he got a lot of help in 2016 from his friends in conservative media, many of whom are also South Florida neighbors.

Radio’s best-known conservative, Rush Limbaugh lives in and broadcastsfrom Palm Beach, a residence also of conservative commentator Anne Coulter, although she has soured on Trump as of late, along with Drudge Report founder and namesake Matt Drudge, who lives south of Miami.

And the former publisher of the recently sold National Enquirer, David Pecker — who cut a plea deal in the campaign-finance scheme revolving around Trump’s porn star payoffs and often boasted of lounging with Trump in Mar-a-Lago — lived in Boca Raton.

Like all the others who relocated to Florida, Stone, Ruddy and others say the low taxes and great weather were irresistible lures. Also, Ruddy said, every major political and media figure ends up in South Florida in the winter — not just Trump — and he wanted a publication “outside of the Manhattan and Beltway bubbles,” something that the Trump campaign boasts of as well.

Stone said South Florida was uniquely suited to the Trump campaign — in part because of its physical and cultural distance from Washington. Palm Beach is also a de facto sixth borough of New York, home to the wealthiest of snowbirds.

“Living here, you get a feel for the place. It’s Trump’s second home, where he really likes to spend his time. So it’s definitely personal,” Stone said. “The campaign isn’t in the Washington bubble. That’s an advantage. And nobody understands the geography and arithmetic of Florida like Tony Fabrizio.”

There’s one aspect of Trump’s campaign in Florida that the president and his allies don’t highlight: the unusual Russian connection. Florida is mentioned 30 times — more than any other state — in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report concerning Russian interference in 2016 and Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice of the investigation into it.

Russian operatives hacked the voter rolls of two Florida counties — although officials say it didn’t affect the vote — and agents with that country’s Internet Research Agency used phony social media accounts to spread disinformation about Florida voting, organized events and even paid an unwitting West Palm Beach man $1,000 to build a cage to hold a person dressed as Hillary Clinton for a rally.

The Mueller Report details one Miami-based event with Russian fingerprints that got the campaign’s attention.

“THANK YOU for your support Miami!” Trump’s campaign said on Facebook in August 2016. “My team just shared photos from your TRUMP SIGN WAVING DAY, yesterday! I love you – and there is no question – TOGETHER, WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

In the Russian enclave of Sunny Isles, near Miami, Stone and a friend of his, then-Trump campaign operative Michael Caputo, were approached by a Russian in 2016 who promised dirt on Clinton. But Stone and Caputo said they believed the man was a federal agent. Stone was indicted on unrelated obstruction and perjury charges by Mueller. Stone has pleaded not guilty.

The illegal Russian help in 2016 was part of Trump’s success, Democratic critics say.

“While most campaigns trying to win Florida focus on the I-4 corridor, which includes St. Petersburg, Florida, Donald Trump and his allies put most of their energy into winning Florida though the original St. Petersburg, Russia — the Kremlin Corridor— and have been getting away with it,” said Kevin Cate, a Florida-based Democratic consultant who counts presidential candidate Tom Steyer as a client.

This month, two SouthFlorida-based associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani were indicted in a campaign-finance scheme connected to Ukraine that may have involved an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, live in Boca Raton and Sunny Isles, respectively, andcontributed$50,000 of suspect money to Gov. Ron DeSantis and $20,400 to Sen. Rick Scott’s election efforts, Trump’s endorsed candidates in 2018.

“There’s a book to be written called ‘Red Florida’ and I’m not talking Republican red, I’m talking about Russian influence in this state,” said Rick Wilson, a former GOP consultant and anti-Trump commentator based in Florida.

Wilson notes that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, had close ties to Russian-backed politicians in Ukraine. Manafort, who was convicted on corruption charges unrelated to the campaign, made sure to transfer his primary residence to his wife before he was sentenced —a home located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

But for all the Russian social media help boosting Trump, it wouldn’t have had much of an effect were it not for the fact that he has a legion of extremely loyal Floridafollowers.

Consider the case of Club 45, a group of pro-Trump activists who hold events that sometimes draw as many 2,500 people. Stone has spoken there, along with Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and a favorite commentator of Trump’s, former National Rifle Association spokesman Dan Bongino, a recent Florida transplant who lives in Martin County, which lies just north of Palm Beach County.

A co-founder of the club, Joe Budd, said he has an “email list of Trump supporters just in Palm Beach County that’s 12,000 strong,” even though the club hasn’t been officially approved or funded by the local GOP or the Trump campaign. Trump’s residency fuelsthe enthusiasm of club members, he said.

“It definitely has a positive effect. Mar-a-Lago is just down the road,” he said.

Trump’s support of DeSantis and Scott, who won squeaker victories in 2018, made the state resemble “Trump Country“ even to Democrats, and ensured that Florida for the first time since Reconstruction has two Republican U.S. senators and a Republican governor, whose appointee is in charge of the state’s elections division.

Trump is so obsessed with the state that he made sure to hold his first official reelection rally in Florida. His campaign goes so far as to classify it as its own region.

Still, Trump’s enemies list has grown in Florida, and Democrats point out they have a bigger staff on the ground than the president’s campaign. They’re also registering more voters than Republicans, and the voter rolls have added more minorities, who are more inclined to vote against the GOP, relative to this point in the election cycle when compared to the 2016 election.

Newsmax TV personality John Cardillo, however, said Trump’s presence makes an observable difference that shows he has “an emotional connection with voters, and more importantly, with grassroots activists.”

“Look at Palm Beach County. It’s a blue county. But it’s Donald Trump’s second home. You’ve got affluent retirees, who really don’t have to do anything but go on vacation or play golf, who will stand out in the hot sun and wave signs as Donald Trump’s motorcade go by,” he said. “These people donate. They’re super-voters. And more importantly, they engage in activism like nothing I’ve ever seen. They hold events. They get people out to vote. They register voters. They go door-knocking.”

Matt Gaetz, who lives in the northwest corner of the state, a world from Mar-a-Lago’s shores in Palm Beach, is Trump’s most vociferous defender in Congress. He said Trump’s Fort Lauderdale-based pollster, Fabrizio is “an added windfall in Florida — that someone who’s part of the national strategy has such a keen understanding of our state.”

The president’s ties to the state pay off in policy — from extra hurricane disaster aid to help with Everglades restoration — Gaetz said, which could make a big difference in 2020.

“We’re going to fight hard for Florida because Florida is the most important swing state in the nation. It’s always very close,” Gaetz said. “But with the president being a part-time Floridian, with the president’s protégé Ron DeSantis as our governor, with a substantial portion of the campaign apparatus from my district in Pensacola to Brad Parscale’s work in Fort Lauderdale, we better win Florida. If not, shame on us.”

Read More

[shaledirectory]

The NRDC China Connection: It’s Hiding Right in Front of You, Congress

Tom Shepstone Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

  Congress is investigating the NRDC gang’s China advocacy, but the NRDC China connection is hiding in plain sight for those who know the Rockefeller family.

The Hill tells us House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) have written a letter to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asking why it is advocating for Chinese interests over US interests. The letter itself may be found here and it’s quite well done, better than I hoped, raising several great questions about why the devil the NRDC is so deeply committed to China’s welfare, compared to ours. Curiously, though, the letter doesn’t address what should be well known about the NRDC China connection.

Bishop and Westerman wrote a great letter as far as it goes. They start out by noting “the potential manipulation of tax-exempt 50l(c) organizations by foreign entities to influence U.S. environmental and natural resources policy to the detriment of our national interests.” They also properly raise several key issues such as these (emphasis added):

The Committee is concerned about the NRDC’s role in aiding China’s perception management efforts with respect to pollution control and its international standing on environmental issues in ways that may be detrimental to the United States. The NRDC’s relationship with China has many of the criteria identified by U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement as putting an entity at risk of being influenced or coerced by foreign interests.

The NRDC’ s involvement in China spans two decades and represents a significant investment of time and resources. The NRDC’ s ability to work in China is dependent on the goodwill of the Chinese government. The NRDC leadership regularly meets with senior Chinese and Communist Party officials. NRDC press releases, blog posts, and reports consistently praise the Chinese government’s environmental initiatives and promote the image of China as a global environmental leader.

When engaging on environmental issues concerning China, the NRDC appears to practice self-censorship , issue selection bias, and generally refrains from criticizing Chinese officials. For instance, a widely reported 2016 study by Greenpeace concluded that China’s government subsidized commercial fishing fleet threatens the viability of fisheries around the world. Just months after the Greenpeace study was released, the NRDC praised China’s “bold new reforms” on domestic fisheries emphasizing that “China has been the world’s largest producer of wild fish for over two decades.” Similarly, the NRDC has never condemned, or even mentioned, China’s illegal and environmentally destructive island reclamation campaign that has covered over 3,200 acres of coral reefs with runways, ports, and other military facilities. Of note, the NRDC collaborates with Chinese government entities that are deeply involved in Chinese efforts to assert sovereignty over the South China Sea in contravention of intemational law.

Coral reef destruction by China

By contrast, the NRDC takes an adversarial approach to its advocacy practices in the United States. In fundraising materials, the NRDC claims to have “sued the  about once every ten days” since President Trump was inaugurated. Over the last two decades, your organization has also sued the U.S. Navy multiple times to stop or drastically limit naval training exercises in the Pacific arguing that naval sonar and anti-submarine warfare drills harm marine life. We are unaware of the NRDC having made similar efforts to curtail naval exercises by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy. Following the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the NRDC sought to shape public opinion, in part, by attempting to discredit those skeptical of China’s commitment to pollution reduction targets or to honestly reporting environmental data. The disconnect between the NRDC’s role as “thought leader and trusted adviser to our partners in China” and its approach to environmental advocacy in the United States is disconcerting.

The Committee is concerned that the NRDC’s need to maintain access to Chinese officials has influenced its political activities in the United States and may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). “The purpose of FARA is to ensure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.” In relevant part, FARA requires any person or entity, including non-profits, to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they act “at the… request… of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal ….”

These are serious matters. The Congressman have heavily footnoted their letter to back up each and every claim. Yet, they haven’t (perhaps for strategic reasons) touched upon the obvious foundation of the NRDC China connection. It’s the special interests of the Rockefeller family, which include not only making a wilderness of Upstate New York and environs but also pursuing interests in foreign investments.

The NRDC is, essentially, a Rockefeller enterprise. It was founded by John Adams, a bat boy for the family team, who continues to be affiliated with the organization as well as its Open Space Institute and Catskill Mountainkeeper spinoffs, the latter being a plaything for his son Ramsay and the former being headed by Rockefeller descendant Kim Elliman. Larry Rockefeller, Jr. is also involved, of course, and the family as a whole funds numerous other fractivist enterprises who collaborate with the NRDC gang. The NRDC does absolutely nothing that is not wholly aligned with the Rockefeller family agenda. They’re family, after all (see also this NY Post summary).

This is a chart I assembled five years ago to accommodate the EID article linked above. It show the Rockefeller family connections to NRDC at the time. Edward Ames was Trustee for the estate of Mary Flagler Cary, granddaughter of Standard Oil partner Henry Flagler.

That agenda, as I noted here, includes major investments in China, which I wrote about here, explaining the following:

This brings us to Steven Clark Rockefeller, Jr., the elder Steven’s son and well connected fifth-generation member of the famous family. As I noted in my earlier article, Junior (pictured to the right with his wife Kimberly, both idolized by the New York Social Diary as “good examples”) is, like his father, is a big Asian fan. He is Rose Rock Capital (part of the Rose Rock Groupheadquartered at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan). This outfit is, through such vehicles as the Rose Rock Partners Fund, investing billions in China:

Steven C. Rockefeller, Jr., is Chairman and CEO of Rose Rock Capital, a family-owned holding company dedicated to fund management and real estate development in China. Family leadership is shared by his son, Steven III, and his nephews, Collin Eckles and Landon Eckles. The company’s current primary focus is on development, in partnership with Tianjin Innovative Finance Investment Company Ltd., of the Yujiapu Financial District in Tianjin’s special economic zone. Prior to founding Rose Rock, Mr. Rockefeller worked with numerous start-up companies across a range of industries, often serving on the Board of Directors. Industries represented by his focus included green energy and technology, educational television, specialty pharmaceuticals and robotics.

Junior, too, is heavily involved with Scenic Hudson (of Storm King infamy) and is busy bringing Chinese investment into favored areas of the Hudson Valley where development meets with family approval. Such relationships are behind his ability to ingratiate himself in Asian markets and make these sorts of arrangements (emphasis added):

Rockefeller has set up a venture with Tianjin Finance Investment Co to launch the funds, which aim to raise 5 billion yuan initially, including 2 billion yuan by the end of this year, the newspaper said.

Rose Rock, which controls 90 percent of the fund management venture, will be responsible for daily management and operation of the funds, while its Chinese partner will focus on government relationships, the article said.

Money raised will be used to build a landmark commercial property project in Tianjin’s financial district, while future investment will expand into other areas including infrastructure, culture and education, the newspaper said.

That infrastructure, I pointed out, was a new petrochemical import terminal in Tianjin,  “the first time in history” a Western company had a stake in a Chinese petrochemical port. “Rose Rock Infrastructure, Ltd. Is a subsidiary of Rose Rock Partners, LLC and is dedicated to development, ownership and management of infrastructure assets in China.” It has joint venture offices in Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong.

But, that isn’t all. Check out this story from March of this year and this, in particular:

New York-based Rockefeller Capital Management, formed through the acquisition of family office Rockefeller & Co. by its management team as well as an investment fund from Viking Global Investors and a Rockefeller family trust, officially launched last week, with $18.5 billion in assets under advisement in its existing asset management and wealth management businesses….

Viking owns a majority stake in the firm, while the trust representing the family owns about 10 percent. The firm’s board also includes Rockefeller family members David Rockefeller Jr., son of the family patriarch who died in 2017, and Peter M. O’Neill, a Rockefeller heir who has long overseen the family’s investments.

And, where is Rockefeller Capital Management focused? Well, perhaps this title block for an article on its website by Chief Investment Strategist Jimmy C. Chang provides a clue:

The article, to be fair, is much more fair and balanced than the subtitle, but the point remains; Rockefeller Capital Management is focused on China. And, the NRDC being as Rockefeller project, this is the real NRDC China connection. It’s also the one Congress ought to be investigating as it properly digs into the way 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations are being misused to advance private special interests. It’s the same with everything the supposedly “charitable” thing the Rockefeller family does. The time for busting up this cartel is long overdue.

The post The NRDC China Connection: It’s Hiding Right in Front of You, Congress appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/the-nrdc-china-connection-its-hiding-right-in-front-of-you-congress/

[techscopic]

Blogger gets seven years in jail after writing about toxic spill in Vietnam

A court in Vietnam has sentenced a blogger to seven years in jail for reports he wrote about a toxic spill in the country.

On Monday Nguyen Van Hoa was found guilty of spreading “anti-state propaganda” about a chemical spill that occured in Vietnam in 2016.

SEE ALSO: Trump slurps shark fin soup as U.S. works to remove itself from the shark fin trade

The spill, which occured in April, has been dubbed the country’s worst environmental disaster. It happened when Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, a Taiwanese-owned steel factory released chemicals which included cyanide, into the sea. 

The discharge killed marine life, causing at least 70 tonnes of dead fish to be washed ashore and destroyed some 200 hectares of coral reef. Hundreds of people were believed to have fallen ill after eating the poisoned fish. Read more…

More about Vietnam, Blogger, Mother Mushroom, Toxic Chemical Spill, and Formosa Vietnam Spill

Blogger gets seven years in jail after writing about toxic spill in Vietnam syndicated from http://ift.tt/2wBRU5Z

[cmst138]

Russia reportedly organized pro-Trump rallies on Facebook

More and more details have been coming out about how Russia used Facebook to spread pro-Trump propaganda during the 2016 US election, and today The Daily Beast has published evidence that appears to show a Putin-linked Facebook group organizing rallies that Trump supporters in the US actually attended.

The Daily Beast identified a Facebook group called “Being Patriotic” that was shut down around the same time that other Russian-linked Facebook accounts were purged. The page also posted memes watermarked and framed in a similar style as those other pages, according to the report, which suggests the page came from the same source. It’s not a perfect link, but it strongly implies Being Patriotic was among the Russian propaganda pages; Facebook told The Daily Beast that it could not confirm the details.

Along with posting memes, the Being Patriotic page also tried to organize four rallies, according to the report. One of those was supposed to be a “patriotic state-wide flash mob” occurring simultaneously in 17 cities across Florida in support of Trump. The Daily Beast says it found evidence that at least two of those rallies materialized — Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs — and were documented on Facebook by the local campaign chair for Trump.

The account appears to come from “professional trolls”

The Being Patriotic account reportedly had over 200,000 followers at the time it was shut down, and had tried to organize other pro-Trump or anti-Hillary events in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. A related Twitter account also posted at least one comment promoting violence against Black Lives Matters supporters.

The Daily Beast suggests the Being Patriotic account came from the Internet Research Agency, a Russian group that US intelligence has identified as “professional trolls” funded by a “close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.”

While this isn’t the first Facebook account that’s been publicly tied to Russian propagandists, this appears to be the first time we’re seeing Russian efforts to organize Trump supporters for physical demonstrations. That it ultimately worked, to at least some extent, shows that the propaganda campaign had real and tangible effects beyond the spread of memes.

Facebook said earlier this month that it had found evidence of Russians buying political ads during the campaign, spending $100,000 under fake accounts. That’s not a huge amount of money for Facebook, but it’s clear their work led to some results.

The Trump campaign is certainly aware of how effective targeted Facebook posts can be. BuzzFeed reported today that the president’s and vice president’s Facebook pages are paying for ads that are only visible to groups of users — likely their own supporters — that they choose to target. The ads are asking for donations.

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[peripatetico]

The smoothest of smooth jazz: ideologia e vida no subúrbio

Review de Shakatak - On the Corner

Não é difícil perceber que o Coral do Exército Vermelho interpretando Katyuscha, ou as criancinhas chinesas dançando com o livro vermelho na mão, ou o Putin tocando vários clássicos soviéticos no piano na sala de espera do Xi Jinping (aconteceu ontem) são todas flores finas da ideologia, produto ideológico em estado bruto. É fácil de identificar não porque estamos numa posição exterior a qualquer ideologia, mas porque estamos simplesmente informados por uma configuração ideológica diferente.

É muito mais difícil perceber, por exemplo, como a música popular ocidental é, em suma, propaganda do capitalismo de mercado, porque é a música que nós conhecemos – a música com que acordamos às 6h da manhã tocando no despertador antes de pegarmos o ônibus para o trabalho, a música que ouvimos enquanto tomamos banho para que não soframos com mais de 5 minutos semi-ociosos, a música que embala o shopping center para que a experiência toda seja muito mais azeitada.

Bella Ciao até hoje arranca arrepios de qualquer um que se sensibilize com a resistência anti-fascista na Itália. It's a Long Way to Tipperary ainda evoca o mesmo tipo de entusiasmo que embalou os soldados britânicos que marchavam em direção à Primeira Guerra Mundial. A boa arte – aquela que transcende gerações, que serve de suporte perfeito para a manifestação de um conteúdo, que cristaliza um momento único da história mundial – se faz perceber por si só.  E em termos de modos de vida do capitalismo tardio anglo-saxão, pouco se conseguiu, em qualquer dos lados do Atlântico, que não tenha sido feito de forma igual ou melhor pelo Shakatak, grupo de smooth jazz dos anos 80, pioneiro do easy listening e encarnação do capitalismo em obra.

A faixa 'On the Corner', que também dá título ao álbum em que primeiro apareceu, apresenta de modo único (e, eu diria, ideal), a vida do cidadão americano que mora no subúrbio de uma média ou grande cidade. A vida numa vizinhança em que todas as casas são iguais, o cachorro da família, a longa jornada de casa até o trabalho na metrópole, a minivan para carregar os filhos. Tudo está lá.

"The day was long/ But time has passed/ I count the minutes/ Till we meet at last!". O eu-lírico de On the Corner faz saber: "O dia foi intenso. Trabalhei MUITO. Finalmente estou em casa. Que BOM estar em casa. É sexta-feira, amanhã é sábado. A semana acabou e eu estou LIVRE. A vida, meu bem, é linda, linda! Marcamos, Tom e eu, de sair para um barzinho com a Pam e o Josh, que não vamos faz meses! Não tem NADA que vai me segurar, hoje a noite vai ser nossa!”

"The moon is high, the night is young/ The time is right for meeting everyone/ Just hanging out with friends of mine/ No other way to spend a better time!" A letra da música, em texto e subtexto, desenha-se de tal forma a soar como uma EXPLOSÃO de sabor na boca de quem a consome. Porém uma explosão agradável, que não machuca, mas que só serve para dar mais alegria. As vocalistas cantam com uma voz muito suave, quase cochichada. A voz é uma massagem no ouvido do espectador, que deu o seu melhor durante a semana inteira e agora merece seus louros. O sintetizador também trabalha para que a atmosfera não dê espaço para qualquer questionamento existencial, ou pragmático, ou teológico... Enfim, nenhum questionamento :~) Acabou a hora de ter problemas, agora é hora de aproveitarmos a vida!

“I can't pretend, I can't wait to see you again!”. Se a pintura do "Par de Sapatos", de Van Gogh, como diz Heidegger, é capaz de mais verdade do que o próprio par de sapatos original, que Van Gogh teria comprado num mercado de pulgas e retratado no chão de seu studio, On the Corner, na sua apresentação da vida suburbana americana, é capaz de revelar mais do que quaisquer uma de suas vozes poderia conceder. 

"When we meet on the corner/ Life is sweet when you are here/ As we meet on the corner/ Then my life's complete/ When you are here!". A inclusão dos pontos de exclamação foi uma liberalidade minha, mas que não podia ser evitada. A música inteira é sorrida, mais que cantada. Um sorriso, porém, que esconde e revela ao mesmo tempo. Um sorriso que se afasta de um casamento que está em ruínas, e que ainda só não culminou num divórcio porque ninguém sabe o que fazer com os três filhos (dois adolescentes e uma criança de 9 anos). Um sorriso que exala Xanax quando pressionado, que aponta para o tarja-preta que o marido usa para conseguir dormir e para o Adderall que as crianças tomam junto com suco de laranja no café da manhã :} "Pam e Josh, eu adoro vocês!!!" :+))

Para o sujeito de On the Corner, "a vida está completa quando nos encontramos na esquina". Uma tradução mais liberal também admitiria um "quando nos encontramos num canto". Dadas as condições, o declínio de qualquer confiança em qualquer coisa, a incapacidade de conectar qualquer pecinha desse quebra-cabeça infinito que é a vida em qualquer outra, a melhor coisa que pode acontecer no universo de alguém é encontrar alguém num canto. Nada mais. Não há perspectivas. O auto-engano e a ilusão mútua são os únicos caminhos possíveis.

A capa do álbum é inclusive assim ilustrada: um canto ou esquina, como sugere o título, porém com umas bolas vermelhas por cima, carentes de qualquer possibilidade de explicação. E a música, afinal, não acaba. Baixa-se o volume. Fade-out infinito. O canto é varrido para baixo do tapete, as questões existenciais são, no dia seguinte, novamente mantidas em cárcere, desta vez não pela bebida mas pelo remédio. Até que ressurja, talvez, tudo que foi represado, reprimido, em algum momento futuro. Não há como saber. A última frase cantada não acaba propriamente, apenas some na escuridão do silêncio. Seria possível em algum momento ouvir de volta seu eco? 

[nofomoartworld]

Here's How Photography Will Change the World

Sheila Pree Bright #1960Now: Art + Intersection [still], 2015 Video © Sheila Pree Bright

If anything is certain in the early days of 2017, it is that this year will provide photographers and visual artists with the material of a lifetime: women up in arms, viral memes, entire cities protesting in the streets. It has always been the case that uncertain times produce timeless art, which is why the International Center of Photography (ICP) is designating 2017 as “The Year of Social Change,” which translates to a 12-month schedule of shows detailing photography’s impact on society, culture, and politics.

The lead curator of the year's inaugural exhibition, Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change, is Coral Squiers, who tells The Creators Project, “the stakes for pictures have never been higher.” With this in mind, the ambitious show takes on six issues of contemporary history: Black Lives Matter, gender fluidity, climate change, terrorist propaganda, the refugee crisis, and the alt-right. Each of these sections dissects how each was fundamentally shaped by unique, visual cultures and how newly dominant modes of picture making and distribution (i.e. phones) are shaping these visual cultures in turn.

Sheila Pree Bright #1960Now: Art + Intersection [still], 2015 Video © Sheila Pree Bright

The Black Lives (Have Always) Mattered section, curated by Kalia Brooks, gives a multitude of faces to the, at first faceless, online movement of #BlackLivesMatter. The walls here are filled with hashtagged homages to black men and women killed in recent years by police and black-and-white film shots consciously reminiscent of images from the Civil Rights Movement. Further on, Climate Changes instills fear and hope, through Cynthia Young’s curation of chilling evidence of both rising temperatures and melting icecaps, as well as heartening scenes from environmental protests.

James Balog Chasing Ice, 2012 Video © 2016 Chasing Inc, LLC

Rachel Schragis Confronting the Climate: A Flowchart of the People’s Climate March (detail), 2014–16 Mixed media collage, 3 x 12 feet © Rachel Schragis

Squiers herself has organized two parts of the show. The first is the Fluidity of Gender section, co-curated with Quito Ziegler, which highlights how the queer and trans community represents themselves, and is represented, through photography and film. The images chosen by Squiers and Ziegler also illustrate a narrative of how these communities have found belonging and safety online. “The Internet has been a conduit of information and community-building for many people who would have previously been completely isolated in their sense of difference,”  Squiers says, “and it has been used in that way for a number of years.”

Kristen Parker Lovell Kristen Parker Lovell (left) and Kenyatta Kahn (right), from Trans in Media 2 (still), 2015 Video © Kristen Parker Lovell

Squiers also takes on Propaganda and the Islamic State, with the help of Akshay Bhoan, through an investigation of the complex media program ISIS has operated over the past several years. Squiers says that this section presented the greatest challenge for her, personally. With each new propaganda video she and Bhoan discovered in the archived annals of the dark web, they were obligated to witness horrific scenes and contemplate unwieldy ideology. “[You] might discover [the video] was terribly violent,” she says, “or that it had a historical narrative that seemed interesting, until you happened upon scenes of stunning violence that were edited in very fast.”

“There were also certain anxieties about being associated with this material,” Squiers continues. “And then explaining to people why anyone would want to look at ISIS propaganda, which wasn't so much a case of wanting to look at it but of feeling it was necessary to grapple with it.” For this last hurdle, the curators have attempted to bring viewers into a more empathetic state by displaying these ISIS-produced films and photographs on smart phones, iPads, and monitors across the gallery. In other words, alluding to the objective behind this visual material—of mass recruitment—by showing it on the types of screens it was meant to reach.

ISIS distributes school supplies to girls in Mosul, Iraq, 2015 Video

Abu Muslim from Canada [Andre Poulin], an ISIS recruitment film, 2014 Video

New challenges faced curator Joanna Lehan, who questions the media’s representation of the European refugee crisis in The Flood: Refugees and Representation. “How do you cover something as massive as the refugee crisis in Europe,” asks Squiers, “at a time when news organizations are slashing their budgets and hiring fewer photographers?” The photographs presented, from photojournalists, artists, and refugees, attempt to find the answer to this question, by exposing the opinions and perspectives embedded in these images.

Sergey Ponomarev [Refugees arrive by a Turkish boat near the village of Skala, on the Greek Island of Lesbos], November 16, 2015 Digital image, 9 monitors Original photograph © Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Finally, curators Susan Carlson and Claartje van Dijk look at the visual vocabulary of the alt-right. This section, The Right-Wing Fringe and the 2016 Election, exhibits the images that this anti-establishment, conservative movement used as a sprawling, online media campaign over the course of the 2016 election—and which they continue to use under their new president.

They told me I could be anything I wanted so I became the savior of western civilization, ca. 2016 Screenshot

The six issues addressed by ICP’s first show of the year are ones we are all familiar with: they are things many of us experience every day, whether through the media or in our everyday lives. The impact of Perpetual Revolution, however, is in seeing them all condensed into one space. This invites the viewer to make connections, jump from Syria to social media, and absorb the history that we are witness to.

[Pepe with swastikas in his eyes], ca. 2016 Screenshot

Read more about the International Center of Photography’s ambitious new show, which runs from January 27 till May 17 of this year, on their website.

Related:

This Is What It's Like to Photograph Refugees in Europe

The World’s Best Photojournalism Arrives in London

Photojournalists Capture the Violence and Emotion of Venezuelan Protests

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[techscopic]

Blogger gets seven years in jail after writing about toxic spill in Vietnam

A court in Vietnam has sentenced a blogger to seven years in jail for reports he wrote about a toxic spill in the country.

On Monday Nguyen Van Hoa was found guilty of spreading “anti-state propaganda” about a chemical spill that occured in Vietnam in 2016.

SEE ALSO: Trump slurps shark fin soup as U.S. works to remove itself from the shark fin trade

The spill, which occured in April, has been dubbed the country’s worst environmental disaster. It happened when Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, a Taiwanese-owned steel factory released chemicals which included cyanide, into the sea. 

The discharge killed marine life, causing at least 70 tonnes of dead fish to be washed ashore and destroyed some 200 hectares of coral reef. Hundreds of people were believed to have fallen ill after eating the poisoned fish. Read more…

More about Vietnam, Blogger, Mother Mushroom, Toxic Chemical Spill, and Formosa Vietnam Spill

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