350.org and Richmond Enviromentalist 8/3 Organizers Prevent Sheehan From Speaking Because

What do you expect from an organization that based its logo on the Obama logo? Whose idea of civil disobedience is to negotiate it and script it with the police? Who wouldn't allow Ralph Nader to speak outside the White House because he might criticize Obama? Who block an entrance to Chevron that almost no workers use to enter the plant? Who march around the State Department office in SF on a Sunday when no one is there and use force to keep protesters from marching in the street rather than on the sidewalk?

Keep fighting, Cindy.

I marched in the Saturday demonstration. Now I just read the above. Is it true? If so, I’d like to hear an explanation.

YOU WANT AN EXPLANATION? HERE IT IS:

The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats
by JOHN STAUBER
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/

Notice how certain elements bash the Democrats at every chance and they usually post something out of Counterpunch.

Why would the Democrats place Cindy Sheehan on the podium when she is running for CA governor for the Peace and Freedom party?..... and elements of the P&F party (and fake "leftists" out of Counterpunch) are bashing the Democrats at every chance?

A progressive candidate running for office in a huge state like CA will not have the resources to get enough people to win. Unfortunately, the Democrats must win because the alternative are the Republicans winning. The Republicans nowadays are filled with radical Ayn Rand followers and will to overturn the Constitution and drive this country to an openly fascist state all in service to big corporations.

Also, the term "reform", defined loosely and widely, is used to falsely label, marginalize and separate groups which separates the "radicals" from the mainstream. The best way to "divide and conquer" is to have the propaganda come from the left.

Also, Cindy Sheehan has allied herself with the wrong elements. She started off legit and was getting traction with the mainstream. To get her away from the mainstream, they would get her to speak at events put on by the "radicals" which insured her isolation from the Democrats; thereby, mainstream support.

It's all possible because of a network of fake leftists established decades ago in the left. Fake leftists like World Can't Wait (RCP) would have people like Cindy speak at their events and "radicalize" the message. Then, Cindy's anti-war message would be viewed as "radical" by the mainstream and somehow not relevant to everyday folks. Then, you have these fake or fully infiltrated controlled groups try to get Cindy to speak at a Democrat sponsored event and when the organizers of 350 exclude Cindy, somehow, it's evidence of Democrat wrongdoing when it was the right-wingers working undercover as leftists manipulating Cindy all along.

Fake radicals like the RCP would rope in as many people they can. People with formerly wide appeal would be pulled so far to the left (in the eyes of the mainstream) there would be no bridge between their current political position and their former mainstream appeal. Any run for office trying to get mainstream support is lost as one is viewed as relatively "radical".

Zoom out to the larger political landscape and you have the set up for a 3rd candidate used to split the vote of the Democrats. The weak 3rd party like the P&F only appeals to people who would otherwise vote Democrat. This lowers the numbers voting for Democrats and gives it up to the currently radicalized free-market Republicans. Fake leftists are the fascists best friend.

First, the event at Richmond was not a Democratic (sic) party event. The Green Party mayor of Richmond played a big role at the event.

Your political analysis is weak. I usually vote for P&F candidates in general elections. If they weren't on the ballot, I would rather leave my ballot blank than vote for a Democrat (sic). In fact, that is what I do.

Apparently Candy thinks that by getting Democrats into office we can stop the rightwing in this country. She should remember when the Democrats controlled the House, Senate and Executive. What did you get but Republican policies. We don't have to go to Washington to see the role of Democrats which in California have control of the legislature and the governor in California. They refuse to support single payer and even refuse to pass a depletion oil tax to pay for the schools when they have control. Some people have not woken up that the Democrats and Republicans represent the same people and corporations who run the world.
It was the Democrats and Republicans that support imperialist wars. It is the Democrats and Republicans that support private control of energy, the utilities and every other thing in this world. This is their ideology and agenda yet Candy thinks these people will bring change?
The failed and bankrupt ideology of those pushing the Democrats to make changes has decades and decades of dead end politics and many like Candy are unable to go after Obama because he is a Democrat yet they would squeal and howl when a Republican did the very same crimes against people. This hypocrisy and duplicitous behavior by those who think that they are progressive helps these Democrats continue to get away with war crimes and cover-ups by the owners of Chevron and the oil companies. Instead of prosecuting them Candy would wait for the good Democrats to get in office. It will never happen but some people never learn.
Candy blames Cindy for being with the "wrong people" but she is with the same people who are killing the environment and running these criminal wars. Maybe someday she will wake up but if she has not learned from the past she obviously has problems learning from the present.

Obama inherited the policies of the former Bush administration. The idea that Republicans and Democrats are somehow one in the same is a lie. The lie is designed to ultimately split the vote and allow the right-wingers control.

Look what happened in Egypt. The right-wing fascist Muslim Brotherhood took control after the so-called "revolution". The MB won because they have been organizing for decades positioning themselves as moderates to cover their fascist ideology. And what does the left in the U.S. do? They supported this "revolution". Now, the Egyptians are back where they started.

What would've worked is Cindy Sheehan running as a Democrat when she still had that mainstream appeal as a mother of a slain soldier. She was much loved by a broad cross section of people, especially in the Midwest where many of soldiers are from. Those are the kinds of people whom we need support. Sheehan had that support until the fake left got hold of her.

So if you were part of the military/industrial complex, what would you do? You would have those fake groups that you yourself has established firmly within the left (RCP/world can't wait) work to get Cindy Sheehan on their "radical" speaking engagements. That drags her to a position that most Americans, rightly or wrongly, finds offensive. This alienates Sheehan away from the mainstream. Her anti-war message is suppressed. Any actions like running for office where she can used her notoriety is muted. That's how "they" silence someone politically.

You know she's being silenced when, as a (formerly) high profile figure, she has a bike ride event and there's little to no coverage by the left press. You would think Democracy Now (fake) would give lots of airtime to that, but nothing for Tour de Peace. The only ones covering that are the marginalized radicals and the now defunct Occupy elements.

The P&F party is been thoroughly infiltrated and is being used by pro-war right-wingers against the Democrats and to a lesser extent, the Green Party. If you're part of the left, you would notice the occasional attacks against the Green Party. It usually comes from those who call themselves "Trotskyists" who form a major component of this fake element used to isolate people with wide appeal and then discredit them. Note how she is backed by a well known Trot and his crew.

There are some anti-war Libertarians who spread propaganda about Obama and the Democratic party, but most of the Indybay readership is made up of real leftists who cant stand Obama.

He's done so many bad things in office it is downright scary.

You represent a status quo viewpoint, Candy.

If the Democrats are left to control the government, nothing will ever really change in our lifetime.

The fake left will not report on Obama shutting down dirty coal fired plants.

Here's an article by right-wingers bashing Obama for closing down coal fired plants claiming it will hurt economy (as if they really care).
Obama EPA War on Coal to Shut 200+ Coal-Fired Plants, Devastate Economy
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/16250-obama-epa-war-on-coal-to-shut-200-coal-fired-plants-devastate-economy

Note how the right-wing is claiming Obama's taking sides with "extreme environmental radicals".

An organization, even loosely connected with the Democrats would do well to distance themselves from the likes of the people behind Cindy Sheehan. Go to Cindy's link above and you will see who the organizers are with Cindy. Note how they advocate a position that the right-wing can attack as "extreme", notably the call for the "Nationalization of Chevron" by the shady UPWA.

Obama would not get far politically if he went off on "Nationalization of Chevron" and the right-wing would have a field day successfully bashing him and then taking power.

Also, this is an opportunity for these right-wingers (under leftist cover) to pit Cindy Sheehan (Peace and Freedom Party) against the mayor of Richmond, Gayle McLaughlin Green Party.

Imagine McLaughlin trying to push for "Nationalization of Chevron" like the people behind Cindy is trying to do. How far would she get?

If you were Chevron, wouldn't you want to control the opposition and have them take on the most extreme (in eyes of the mainstream) position possible?

Here's how it works:
You have the UPWA organizers telling Cindy a bunch of BS about how these "Democrats" are trying to silence her and they left her off the podium on purpose. They let her stew on that enough for her to get riled up and angry inside. Then, Cindy goes on the blog to vent her feelings about why she thinks she got dissed. Then, the UPWA crew places her article from her blog here and responds accordingly to her blog (Steve Zeltzer). That's a bit of oversimplification but thats how it works in real life.

You people really need to dig around and examine the people you're working with in context with the larger political landscape.

Often progressive change needs both "liberals" and "radicals" in order to succeed. Malcolm X and other black nationalists made Martin Luther King look "reasonable", and thereby helped spur a number of the reforms that King advocated. The work and strength of radical socialists and communists in the 1930's helped spur FDR to enact liberal reforms. And even further back in U.S. history, the anti-slavery Liberty and Free Soil parties paved the way for the collapse of the Whig Party (which like the Democrats, had refused to oppose slavery) and the creation of the first major party to clearly oppose slavery, the Republicans. The more people that join and support radical actions, groups, and political parties, the more likely it is that liberals within the political system will need to enact progressive reforms.

If you like Democrats, you'll love this one:

The Mayor Quan Connection at Occupy Oakland

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/16/18725840.php

It is interesting that the anonymous Candy Cane must now do damage control for Obama and defend his good work. This is the line of the Democratic party and the leadership of the "progressive" environmentalists. Obama wants to do the right thing and is held back by the Republicans. This completely contradicts the reality however. He is supported by the very union busters and capitalists that run the US. His appointments to chair the Department of Commerce Penny Pritzker, US trade representatives and all other government bodies are representatives of the union busters and privatizers that are destroying the environment and working people. He allowed his Secretary of State to prepare a rigged environmental report that the pipeline would not be a safety hazard.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/keystone-xl-contractor-ties-transcanada-state-department
Obama made a joke recently that he is not really a socialist since he wants to give more money to the banks by shutting down Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNMA). He has attacked more government whistleblowers than even Bush. Apparently Candy Cane has not got the word yet?
Maybe troll Candy Cane can also explain why when Obama was in Texas for a memorial for the workers and people killed in the ammonia plant explosion he could not mention one word about OSHA although Federal OSHA is in charge of protecting workers and the people of Texas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion_b_3384739.html
Troll Candy Cane instead of exposing the real criminal role of Obama in going after health and safety whistleblowers and those who are fighting to protect the environment attacks those who are critical of corporate controlled government and the role of the Democrats in these crimes.
She supports the exclusion of Cindy Sheehan from speaking since she knows that she would have attacked these same capitalist politicians that Candy Cane supports.
In California, as Obama troll Candy Cane should know, the Democrats are in control of the legislature and run the executive and they have allowed the Chevron plant to re-open without proper oversight. These same Democratic politicians that troll Candy Cane supports are refusing to call for criminal prosecution for the criminal malfeasance of Chevron. In California this is the Democrats responsibility since they run the state government but Candy Cane wants to blame the bad Republicans and not hold the Democrats accountable.
Here are some presentations about the failure of the Democratic controlled California agencies to defend health and safety and environment.
Dr. Larry Rose On Cal-Osha, The Chevron Richmond Refinery, Health And Safety For Workers & Community
http://youtu.be/QnJfC44Ew3w
Dr. Larry Rose, the former medical director of Cal-Osha spoke at the
San Francisco Workers Memorial Day meeting on April 28, 2013
about the failure of Cal-Osha to properly protect workers and the
communities at the Chevron Richmond refinery. Dr. Rose pointed
out that Cal-Osha Chief Ellen Widess could have instituted a criminal
investigation and prosecution of Ca-OSHA for serious and willful
health and safety violations but had refused to take move toward
criminal penalties of Chevron executives and bosses.
The meeting was sponsored by California Coalition For Workers
Memorial Day http://www.workersmemorialday.org and the Injured
Workers National Network http://www.iwnn.org

Cal Osha Chief Widess Refuses To Press For Criminal Charges Against Richmond Chevron Refinery Bosses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joOsQ5P0ZM8&feature=
At a hearing of the US Chemical Safety Board, Cal Osha Chief appointed
by Governor Jerry Brown refused to call for any prosecution of Richmond
Chevron refinery bosses who were criminally negligent in preventing a
massive fire and explosion at the refinery. Cal-Osha has a unit for criminal
prosecution in such cases but Widess apparently does not want to challenge
the criminal activity of Chevron even though it put the workers and community
in deadly danger. Widess and her Cal Osha department also gave a permit for
Chevron to reopen the unit that exploded despite the fact that there are only 7
chemical industry process safety inspectors for all California refineries and
chemical plants. Widess could have withheld the permit to reopen the unit until
more health and safety inspectors were hired. There are only 160 health and
safety inspectors for California's 18 million workers and there are more Fish
and Game Inspectors that Cal-Osha inspectors.
She also said instead of inspections by Cal Osha of the refineries she wanted
them to provide information to the department to understand what is happening
in the refineries. This is despite the fact of clear evidence and a long record that
Chevron and other refinery bosses lie and ignore providing critical information to
Cal Osha and other state and Federal agencies.
For more video go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoovEsa3f5A&feature=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplpolLXV6Y&feature=
For information on Cal Osha
http://www.workersmemorialday.org/documents/Rose.htm
http://www.workersmemorialday.org/documents/indictmentCa-Osha.htm
Production of Labor Video Project http://www.laborvideo.org

The Cover-up: Chevron Richmond Refinery Explosion-Fire, Health And Safety And Cal-Osha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplpolLXV6Y&feature=
Dr. Larry Rose, the former director of Cal-Osha Medical Unit gave a
presentation on 11/10/12 on the causes of the explosion and fire at the Chevron
refinery and the failure of Ca-Osha to properly supervise the
dangerous oil refinery and also the failure to properly investigate
the causes of the environmental disaster. Cal-Osha according to Dr.
Rose knew the pipes were bad because USW Cheveron refinery
workers had reported this to Cal-Osha but no action was taken. He
reports that Chevron was criminally negligent but that Ca-Osha also
refused to enforce the laws against Chevron's Richmond's refinery
to protect the workers and the community. Dr. Rose pointed out
that it was fortunate that no workers were killed at the refinery
but there are no reports about what happened to these workers
and the protection of their health and safety.
He also reports that serious contamination of the workers and community
took place and continues because of the failure of these agencies to
properly enforce the law and regulations.
This presentation was made in Richmond, California at a forum of
United Public Workers
For more information go to
Cal-Osha Down The Tubes
http://www.workersmemorialday.org/documents/Rose.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Criminal-investigation-at-Chevron-refinery-3886927.
California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day
http://www.workersmemorialday.org
Injured Workers National Network
http://www.iwnn.org
Produced by United Public Workers For Action
http://www.upwa.info

USEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Katie the Goat

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/12/gina-mccarthy-and-katie-the-goat/

Turning a Blind Eye to Radioactive Milk
Gina McCarthy and Katie the Goat

by NANCY BURTON
This is the story of Gina McCarthy, newly installed EPA administrator, and her four-legged nemesis, Katie the Goat.
It was a year ago today that Katie the Goat succumbed to an aggressive cancer that invaded the organs in her chest.
Katie’s dread disease attracted notice because for years she had served as the nuclear industry’s poster goat for radiation poisoning. Her goat milk tested super-high for strontium-90, a carcinogen that mimics calcium and invades bones and disrupts the immune system, causing a variety of cancers and leukemia.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Katie grazed in a meadow nestled five miles northeast of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, Connecticut, a neighborhood riddled with cancer.
Millstone’s owner, Dominion, carried out an environmental sampling program that included Katie. Dominion’s technicians regularly collected Katie’s milk and tested it for traces of radioactivity. Millstone, in common with all nuclear power plants, routinely releases radioactivity to the air and water. The airborne radiation is carried by the wind and precipitates out in the rain, landing on field vegetation and seeping into the groundwater, i.e., Katie’s food and water supply.
In 2001, Dominion’s lab reported it found a concentration of 55 picoCuries per liter of strontium-90 in Katie’s milk. Around the same time, another sample of Katie’s milk tested at 29 picoCuries per liter of strontium-90. Elevated levels of strontium-90, strontium-89, cesium-137 and Iodine-131 were always found in Katie’s milk samples. All are created during nuclear fission and no other way.
The readings were staggeringly high. In fact, 55 picoCuries/liter of strontium-90 was twice the highest level found in cow’s milk sold commercially in Connecticut during the peak of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s; since then, strontium-90 levels have diminished to very low levels, less than 5 picoCuries/liter nationwide.
Neither Dominion nor the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection made any effort to publicize the frightening news about Katie’s milk. (On August 6, 2013, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed that in April Dominion withheld from the NRC the fact that Millstone’s main radiation stack had become inoperable, a violation of federal regulations. The NRC called the breakdown “a major loss of emergency assessment capabilities.”) Activists challenging Dominion’s effort to obtain a 20-year license extension for Millstone discovered the buried data in a search of company records.
Katie, with her two suckling kids in tow, headed to Hartford to meet with the Governor to share her numbers. Katie’s visit to the manicured grounds of the Capitol attracted a huge news media outpouring but the Governor, though a breast cancer survivor, would not meet with her.
Enter Gina McCarthy, then head of Connecticut’s DEP. Pressed by the news media, the Governor reluctantly directed McCarthy to investigate and prepare a report explaining why Katie’s milk had high levels of radioactivity.
In short order, McCarthy released a glitzy report full of expensive graphics – very unlike most reports issued by staid, cash-bound state agencies – and a press release.
McCarthy acknowledged that finding high levels of radioactivity in a goat’s milk in Connecticut was a serious issue. (After all, people drink goat’s milk, too, and cows graze on pastures just like Katie’s. Not to mention that people breathe the air just like Katie and eat vegetables from garden patches and that human children are the biggest milk drinkers of all.)
Facing many uncertainties, McCarthy could render only one conclusion with certainty: Millstone was not the cause of the high levels of radioactivity found in Katie’s milk.
“It is clear from our study that Millstone was not the source of the radioactive materials in the two goat milk samples being questioned,” McCarthy’s press release assured.
Well if it wasn’t Millstone, what was it? McCarthy didn’t venture to say.
Activists trounced on the report; two separate radiation experts dismissed it as junk science and repeatedly asked to meet with the authors of the report to set them straight. McCarthy refused access. DEP has purged the report from its website.
McCarthy’s gift to the nuclear industry – absolving Millstone of any role in contaminating Katie’s milk with radioactivity – paid off. The ambitious bureaucrat, taking care to donate $1,000 to the Obama 2008 election campaign, found herself nominated to head the U.S. EPA’s Air and Radiation Bureau by the new President. At her confirmation hearing, the only time the word “radiation” came up was when the title of her new job was mentioned.
When the Fukushima nuclear reactors began exploding, McCarthy found herself in charge of the EPA’s national network of radiation monitors. Panicked, she sought emailed assurance from an EPA staffer the morning of March 12, 2011:
“I spoke with Lee and she has it together. She indictaed [sic] that at this point there doesn’t seem to be a significant release and she reminded me that the US did not have to take any protective action with Chernoble [sic] – even though that was a much more extreme situation,” McCarthy emailed, misspelling Chernobyl.
A year later, EPA’s internal investigator, the Inspector General, issued a scathing report taking McCarthy down for the abysmal state of her Fukushima air monitoring network: one-fifth of its volunteer-run monitors were broken during the early days of the crisis. As head of EPA’s Air and Radiation Bureau, it was McCarthy’s decision to shut down the air-monitoring system just a few weeks into the crisis, even after it detected Fukushima fallout in the rainwater in Hartford, Connecticut and cow’s milk in Vermont. (Meantime, troubling uncontrolled radiation releases continue today to spew from the Fukushima
Nancy Burton lives in Connecticut.

Here's How The Corporations Defeat Political Movements
http://www.popularresistance.org/heres-how-the-corporations-defeat-political-movements

STRATEGIZE!
By Steve Horn, http://www.mintpressnews.com
July 29th, 2013

Above: AP/Cassandra Vinograd

The Corporate Strategy to Win The War Against Grassroots Activists: Stratfor’s Strategies

Divide activists into four groups: Radicals, Idealists, Realists and Opportunists. The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.

Part 1 of this exclusive Mint Press News investigation examined the strategies employed by Stratfor precursor Pagan International. So named for its founder Rafael Pagan, corporate clients hired the company with the aim of defusing grassroots movements mobilized against them around the world.

Part 2 takes a closer look at how Pagan International’s successor, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD), revised and refined these strategies — and how what began as a corporate public-relations firm evolved into the private intelligence agency Stratfor, which wages information warfare against today’s activists and organizers.

Rafael Pagan — who died in 1993 — was not invited to be a part of his former associate’s new firm, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. His tactic of conquering and dividing activist movements and isolating the “fanatic activist leaders” lived on, though, through his former business partner, Jack Mongoven.

Mongoven teamed up with Alvin Biscoe and Ronald Duchin to create MBD in 1988. While “Biscoe appears to have been a largely silent partner at MBD,” according to the Center for Media and Democracy, Mongoven and Duchin played public-facing starring roles for the firm.

Duchin, like Pagan, had a military background. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College and “one of the original members of [Army] DELTA” — part of the broader Joint Special Operations Command that killed Osama Bin Laden — Duchin had jobs as a special assistant to the secretary of defense and as spokesman for Veterans for Foreign Wars prior to coming to Pagan.

Duchin served as head of the Pentagon’s news division during “Operation Eagle Claw,” President Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 mission to use special forces to capture the hostages held in Iran.

Referred to by The Atlantic as the “Desert One Debacle” in a story Duchin served as a key confidential source for — as revealed in an email in the “Global Intelligence Files” announcing Duchin’s 2010 death — “Eagle Claw” ended with eight U.S. troops dying, four wounded, one helicopter destroyed, and President Carter’s reputation in the tank. The failed and lethal mission served as the impetus for the creation of the U.S. Special Operations.

Largely avoiding the limelight while working as Pagan’s vice president for Issue management and strategy — the brains of the operation — Duchin became a notorious figure among dedicated critical observers of the public relations industry while co-heading MBD. During MBD’s 15 years of existence, its clients included Big Tobacco, the chemical industry, Big Agriculture and probably many other industries never identified due to MBD’s secretive nature.

MBD worked on behalf of Big Tobacco to fend off any and all regulatory efforts aimed in its direction. Philip Morris paid Jack Mongoven $85,000 for his intelligence-gathering prowess in 1993.

“Get Government Off Our Back,” an RJ Reynolds front group created in 1994 by MBD for the price of $14,000 per month, serves as a case in point of the type of work MBD was hired to do by Big Tobacco.

“The firm has developed initiatives for RJ Reynolds that advocate pro-tobacco goals through outside organizations; among other projects, the firm organized veterans organizations to oppose the workplace smoking regulation proposed by OSHA,” explains a 2007 study appearing in the American Journal of Public Health. “[It] was created to combat increasing numbers of proposed federal and state regulations on the use and sale of tobacco products.”

Paralleling the Koch Family Foundations-funded Americans for Prosperity groups of today, “Get Government Off Our Back” held rallies nationwide in March 1995 as part of “Regulatory Revolt Month.”

“Get Government Off Our Back” dovetailed perfectly with the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America” that froze new federal regulations. The text of the “Contract” matched “Get Government Off Our Back” “nearly verbatim,” according to the American Journal of Public Health study.

‘Radicals, Idealists, Realists, Opportunists’

While its client work was noteworthy, the formula Duchin created to divide and conquer activist movements — a regurgitation of what he learned while working under the mentorship of Rafael Pagan — has stood the test of time. It is still employed to this day by Stratfor.

Duchin replaced Pagan’s “fanatic activist leaders” with “radicals” and created a three-step formula to divide and conquer activists by breaking them up into four subtypes, as described in a 1991 speech delivered to the National Cattleman’s Association titled, “Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?”

The subtypes: “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists.”

Radical activists “want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives’ and see multinational corporations as ‘inherently evil,’” explained Duchin. “These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment.”

The “idealist” is easier to deal with, according to Duchin’s analysis.

“Idealists…want a perfect world…Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, … [they] have a vulnerable point,” he told the audience. “If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position.”

The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the “realists” and the “opportunists.” By definition, an “opportunist” takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for “visibility, power [and] followers.”

The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin.

“[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue.”

Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.

“If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.

Bringing the ‘Duchin Formula’ to Stratfor

Alvin Biscoe passed away in 1998 and Jack Mongoven passed away in 2000. Just a few years later, MBD — now only Ronald Duchin and Jack’s son, Bartholomew or “Bart” — merged with Stratfor in 2003.

A book by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton — “Trust Us, We’re Experts!” — explains that MBD promotional literature boasted that the firm kept “extensive files [on] forces for change [which] can often include activist and public interest groups, churches, unions and/or academia.”

“A typical dossier includes an organization’s historical background, biographical information on key personnel, funding sources, organizational structure and affiliations, and a ‘characterization’ of the organization aimed at identifying potential ways to co-opt or marginalize the organization’s impact on public policy debates,” the authors proceeded to explain.

MBD’s “extensive files” on “forces for change” soon would morph into Stratfor’s “Global Intelligence Files” after the merger.

What’s clear in sifting through the “Global Intelligence Files” documents, which were obtained by WikiLeaks as a result of Jeremy Hammond’s December 2011 hack of Stratfor, is that it was a marriage made in heaven for MBD and Stratfor.

The “Duchin formula” has become a Stratfor mainstay, carried on by Bart Mongoven. Duchin passed away in 2010.

In a December 2010 PowerPoint presentation to the oil company Suncor on how best to “deal with” anti-Alberta tar sands activists, Bart Mongoven explains how to do so explicitly utilizing the “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists” framework. In that presentation, he places the various environmental groups fighting against the tar sands in each category and concludes the presentation by explaining how Suncor can win the war against them.

Bart Mongoven described the American Petroleum Institute as his “biggest client” in a January 2010 email exchange, lending explanation to his interest in environmental and energy issues.

Mongoven also appears to have realized something was off about Chesapeake Energy’s financial support for the Sierra Club, judging by November 2009 email exchanges. It took “idealists” in the environmental movement a full 2 ½ years to realize the same thing, after Time magazine wrote a major investigation revealing the fiduciary relationship between one of the biggest shale gas “fracking” companies in the U.S. and one of the country’s biggest environmental groups.

“The clearest evidence of a financial relationship is the note in the Sierra Club 2008 annual report that American Clean Skies Foundation was a financial supporter that year,” wrote Mongoven in an email to the National Manufacturing Association’s vice president of communications, Luke Popovich. “According to McClendon, American Clean Skies Foundation was created by Chesapeake and others in 2007.”

Bart Mongoven also used the “realist/idealist” paradigm to discuss climate change legislation’s chances for passage in a 2007 article on Stratfor’s website.

“Realists who support a strong federal regime are drawn to the idea that with most in industry calling for action on climate change, there is no time like the present,” Mongoven wrote. “Idealists, on the other hand, argue that with momentum on their side, there is little that industry could do in the face of a Democratic president and Congress, and therefore time is on the environmentalists’ side. The idealists argue that they have not gone this far only to pass a half-measure, particularly one that does not contain a hard carbon cap.”

And how best to deal with “radicals” like Julian Assange, founder and executive director of WikiLeaks, and whistleblower Bradley Manning, who gave WikiLeaks the U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the “Collateral Murder” video? Bart Mongoven has a simple solution to “isolate” them, as suggested by Duchin’s formula.

“I’m in favor of using whatever trumped up charge is available to get [Assange] and his servers off the streets. And I’d feed that shit head soldier [Bradley Manning] to the first pack of wild dogs I could find,” Mongoven wrote in one email exchange revealed by the “Global Intelligence Files.” “Or perhaps just do to him whatever the Iranians are doing to our sources there.”

Indeed, the use of “trumped up charges” is often a way the U.S. government deals with radical activists, as demonstrated clearly during the days of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program during the 1960s, as well as in modern-day Occupy movement-related cases in Cleveland and Chicago.

‘Information economy’s equivalent of guns’

Just days after the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, The Austin Chronicle published an article on Stratfor that posed the rhetorical question as its title, “Is Knowledge Power?”

The answer, simply put: yes.

“What Stratfor produces is the information economy’s equivalent of guns: knowledge about the world that can change the world, quickly and irrevocably,” wrote Michael Erard for The Chronicle. “So if Stratfor succeeds, it’s because more individuals and corporations want access to information that helps them dissect an unstable world — and are willing to pay steady bucks for it.”

When it comes down to it, Stauber concurs with the “guns” metaphor and Duchin’s “war” metaphors.

“Corporations wage war upon activists to ensure that corporate activities, power, profits and control are not diminished or significantly reformed,” said Stauber. “The burden is on the activists to make fundamental social change in a political environment where the corporate interests dominate both politically and through the corporate media.”

Stauber also believes activists have a steep learning curve and are currently being left in the dust by Pagan, MBD, Stratfor and others.

“The Pagan/MBD/Stratfor operatives are much more sophisticated about social change than the activists they oppose, they have limitless resources at their disposal, and their goal is relatively simple: make sure that ultimately the activists fail to win fundamental reforms,” he said. “Duchin and Mongoven were ruthless, and I think they were often amused by the naivete, egotism, antics and failures of activists they routinely fooled and defeated. Ultimately, this is war, and the best warriors will win.”

One thing’s for certain: Duchin’s legacy lives on through his “formula.”

“The 4-step formula is brilliant and has certainly proven itself effective in preventing the democratic reforms we need,” Stauber remarked, bringing us back to where we started in 1982 with Rafael Pagan’s remarks about isolating the “fanatic activist leaders.”

This article is the second part of a two-part series on Stratfor. Check out the first part, “Divide And Conquer: Unpacking Stratfor’s Rise To Power.”