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GB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

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Original article by Sam Bright and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

One of the owners of GB News runs a hedge fund that has a major financial stake in more than 100 oil and gas firms, DeSmog can reveal. 

This news comes after former prime minister Boris Johnson was announced as a new presenter on the television broadcaster on Friday.

An investigation by DeSmog in May found that one in three GB News presenters had spread climate science denial on air in 2022, while more than half had attacked climate action. GB News presenters have used their platforms to urge the UK to “drill, baby, drill” for more coal, oil and gas.

Paul Marshall is the chairman and chief investment officer of Marshall Wace, a London-based hedge fund that he co-founded in 1997.

Marshall Wace is now one of the world’s largest hedge funds – an investment vehicle that bets on rising and falling share prices – with around $63 billion (£51.9 billion) in assets under management.

According to DeSmog’s analysis of Marshall Wace’s filings with the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), his fund owns shares worth $2.2 billion (£1.8 billion) in fossil fuel firms. This includes companies that specialise in extracting, refining, transporting and distributing fossil fuels.

In its latest SEC filing, for the quarter ending 30 June 2023, Marshall Wace reports a $213 million (£175.6 million) shareholding in the oil and gas supermajor Chevron, as well as stakes in Shell, Equinor, and 109 other fossil fuel companies. 

The value of Marshall Wace’s stake in Chevron, the world’s eighth largest fossil fuel company, has more than doubled from $105 million (£86.6 million) to $213 million (£175.6 million) in two years, even though its total number of shares and equity options has increased over that period by just 35 percent. 

The hedge fund’s stake in Chevron appears to be one of its top 50 most valuable investments, among the thousands of companies in which it currently holds shares.

This reflects the soaring value of fossil fuel companies following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up the price of fossil fuels and therefore the profits of suppliers. At the end of June 2021, Chevron’s share price stood at $107.30 (£88.27), rising to $157.35 (£129.45) by June 2023.

Marshall Wace held shares in 112 fossil fuel companies as of June 2023. Two years earlier, in June 2021, the hedge fund held shares in 50 of these firms. The value of the stakes in these 50 firms almost trebled over the period, from $565.4 million (£466.1 million) to $1.4 billion (£1.15 billion). 

“I’ve always wondered why anyone would invest in comically inept, loss-making GB News,” said John Nicolson MP, a member of Parliament’s influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee. “Step forward one major investor who makes bundles of cash from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, a disturbing number of GB News presenters question climate science. I’m beginning to see a connection.”

Marshall Wace has 22 partners and its latest company accounts, for the period ending February 2022, show that they shared bumper profits of more than £720 million as the firm’s annual turnover jumped 62 percent to more than £1.5 billion. The average salary at Marshall Wace is £561,000 a year.

Paul Marshall, who is one of these partners, is also a lead investor in the startup broadcaster GB News, holding a 45 percent stake. Marshall, estimated to be worth £800 million, reportedly invested £10 million in GB News when it first launched two years ago. In August 2022, he joined the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group in a £60 million capital injection and buyout of GB News’s other major investor, Discovery. 

On the announcement of the buyout, Marshall said: “This is more than a financial investment. As investors we’re proud of what GB News [sic] doing for media plurality in the UK, bringing fresh perspectives to the national conversation on issues that matter to real Britain.”

Marshall also owns UnHerd, a publication founded in 2017 that claims to give a platform to marginalised views. UnHerd has published multiple articles and videos critical of climate action, including an interview in July with Bjorn Lomborg about “how global warming will save lives”.

Marshall is involved in other projects that are linked to key opponents of climate action. He is one of the directors of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new group established by the backers of GB News. The ARC advisory board features a host of individuals who have denied climate science, downplayed the extent of the climate crisis, and attacked net zero policies. A number of these advisers are speaking at a conference hosted by ARC in London this week, alongside Cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Kemi Badenoch.

It has been reported that Marshall is preparing to expand his media investments and is “readying a bid” for the right-wing Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine, with both expected to be put up for sale in the coming weeks.

The Conservative Party has also received funds from Marshall, who donated £500,000 in 2019. 

GB News lost more than £30 million during its first year on air and has been hit by multiple scandals over its use of Conservative MPs as presenters, its alleged lack of impartiality, and its habit of platforming of conspiracy theories. 

The broadcast regulator Ofcom ruled in March that Mark Steyn had broken its rules on harmful content by claiming on GB News that the third Covid vaccine was causing higher infection, hospitalisation and deaths. Steyn’s claims were “potentially harmful and materially misleading,” Ofcom ruled. Steyn, who has also questioned the existence of climate change, resigned from the channel in February after GB News reportedly demanded he personally pay the fines issued if found in breach of the broadcasting code.

Ofcom currently has 12 open investigations into GB News. Its TV output reached 2.87 million viewers in December, while its website had a UK audience of 5.7 million in April. 

Paul Marshall’s investments in GB News and UnHerd have been made in a personal capacity and there is no evidence that Marshall Wace’s investments have influenced the editorial output of either outlet. 

Marshall Wace claims on its website that “sustainable investing is an organisational focus” and that the firm is “committed to achieving positive social and environmental impact”.

GB News and UnHerd did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. Marshall Wace declined to comment.

‘State Control Over Your Life’

Since it launched in June 2021, GB News has been a prominent mouthpiece for individuals who support more fossil fuel extraction and oppose the UK’s target to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.

The UK’s 2050 net zero target is legally binding and is backed by the world’s top climate scientists. They agree that rapidly cutting carbon emissions is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including drought, famine, and ill health.

On 5 November last year, GB News host Neil Oliver used his show to attack “net zero [and] the green agenda”, which he claimed was part of “a hellish potpourri of policies guaranteed to condemn hundreds of millions to death by poverty, death by starvation”. 

Host Nigel Farage – who has a long record of opposing climate action – used his GB News platform to launch a campaign for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero. 

GB News host and Conservative MP Philip Davies was one of five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act in 2008. Fellow presenters and Tory MPs Jacob Rees Mogg, Lee Anderson and Esther McVey are all supporters of the anti-climate action Net Zero Scrutiny Group of backbench Conservative MPs. 

This opposition to net zero is often tied to a denial of established climate science, which has been expressed repeatedly by GB News presenters. 

During last summer’s record UK heatwave, on 16 July 2022, then GB News host Calvin Robinson accused the Met Office of “alarmism”, adding: “Man-made climate change, I don’t buy it, because how much of an impact do we really make if we’re talking about carbon levels?”

Five days later, presenter Beverley Turner called summer heat warnings “fear mongering” in order to “facilitate state control over your life”.

The IPCC has warned that false and misleading information “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of cutting emissions.

Several GB News hosts have also been vocal about their support for policies that would maintain and even extend the UK’s reliance on oil and gas. 

Flagship presenter Dan Wootton argued on 10 March 2022 that the war in Ukraine meant “for now the rush to net zero must die”. He urged the government to “frack, frack, frack” for shale gas. Wootton has recently been suspended by the channel.

In a 9 December show, host Mark Dolan praised plans to open a new coal mine in Cumbria. He said the UK should “drill, baby, drill” for coal, oil and gas,  adding: “I think the push for net zero here is another element of liberal progressivism which is infecting the West.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that any new fossil fuel projects would be incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C.

‘Genuinely Independent Thinking’

Marshall has defended GB News’s output on the basis that “in a world of too much groupthink”, the broadcaster provides a “space for genuinely independent thinking”. 

However, Marshall appears to share the opposition to net zero, and support for more fossil fuel extraction, expressed by a number of GB News presenters.

In July, Marshall shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Reform UK Leader Richard Tice, on the subject of Norway’s approval of new oil and gas projects worth $18 million. Tice’s post claimed that these fossil fuel resources are “essential to Europe’s energy security” and that the UK “could have these jobs and prosperity. But selfish wallies in Westminster want to make us poorer and colder with net zero”.

Tice has recently been hired by GB News.

A month later, Marshall claimed in a post that “The public are still being shamefully ill informed by the BBC about differing views on climate change policy”. This post linked to an article by Charles Moore, which argued that “Voters can see the disparity between the highly speculative and distant achievement of global net zero and the concrete and imminent prospect of becoming colder and poorer”. 

In fact, the UK government’s failure to implement green reforms has added an estimated £2.5 billion to domestic energy bills due to the rising costs of fossil fuels and poor energy efficiency in homes. A reliance on gas has also cost the UK an additional £50-60 billion since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, equivalent to around £1,000 for every adult.

Original article by Sam Bright and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingGB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

Rishi Sunak to ‘double down’ on anti-green policies in king’s speech

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One of the many occasions climate change denier and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.
One of the many occasions climate change denier and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/28/rishi-sunak-to-double-down-on-anti-green-policies-in-kings-speech

PM will announce a new system for awarding oil and gas exploration licences, and new pro-car legislation, sources say

Rishi Sunak’s government will use next week’s king’s speech to advance expansion of North Sea oil and gas exploration, as well as pro-car policies, in the hope of opening up a clear divide over the green agenda with Labour, the Observer understands.

Energy industry sources and senior figures in Whitehall say they expect ministers to announce legislation to usher in a new annual system for awarding oil and gas licences, despite the UK’s commitments to move away from fossil fuels and reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The king’s speech, the final legislative programme before the next general election, is also expected to include measures that will explicitly favour motorists, including making it more difficult for local authorities to introduce 20mph speed limits or supposedly unpopular schemes such as the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), recently expanded in London.

…

Environmental campaigners point out that more oil and gas exploration licences are not only irresponsible, given the climate crisis, but that new laws are not needed to award more licences. This has been shown by the fact that the results of a new round of licences, launched just over a year ago during Liz Truss’s brief stint as PM, are due to be announced imminently.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/28/rishi-sunak-to-double-down-on-anti-green-policies-in-kings-speech

Continue ReadingRishi Sunak to ‘double down’ on anti-green policies in king’s speech

Biden Will Not Escape History’s Judgement for Failure to Stop Gaza Assault

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Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs U.S. President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on October 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Original article by RALPH NADER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Biden is skilled at shedding tears at memorials of grief in this country. But he runs dry when the recurring catastrophes befalling Palestinians beg for his presidential compassion and actual deeds.

If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.

Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!

Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October 7th Hamas homicide/suicide attack on Israelis? No!

To the contrary, earlier in the week he cruelly ordered his UN Ambassador to veto a widely supported resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Still not calling a ceasefire, Biden is disregarding his own military’s private advice against an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza as raising the risk of a larger war in the Middle East…

Did he forcefully double down on his earlier counsel to the Israeli government to obey the laws of war, then and now, being openly violated? No! He continued his silence after the Israeli Defense Minister ordered his soldiers with the genocidal command, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water…” That death sentence includes patients in hospitals who must endure the carpet bombing of this long-time blockaded tiny strip of desert land holding 2.3 million people. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

Did Biden press for the exchange of Hamas’ hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners, including young Palestinians, who have been in Israeli jails for years without due process or charges? No! Worse, Biden failed to object to the Israeli military stating that the release of over 200 Israeli hostages is a “secondary priority” to smashing Hamas and Gaza “into the Stone Age.” This policy flouts the moral codes of many venerable Judaic sages described in an October 19, 2023, New York Times column by Mikahel Manekin titled “The Safety of the Hostages Must Come First.” Israel conducted two prisoners for hostages’ exchanges, one in 2004 and one in 2011.

Did Biden, in strong terms, tell the Israeli politicians that they have already exacted revenge many times over on the stateless people of Gaza – in civilian lives lost, injuries, related spread of disease, destitution and destruction? Did he say it is inhumane and counterproductive to bomb hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, churches, apartment buildings, water mains, electric networks and ambulances, all of which is in violation of civilized norms and rules of war? Of course not. He greenlighted Israel’s genocidal warfare from the beginning of the Israeli assault and sent U.S. weaponry. He is enabling other actions of “co-belligerency” against the defenseless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Did he even get the 20 trucks of humanitarian aid waiting at the Rafah crossing – also bombed by the Israelis – from Egypt into Gaza before he left? No! (Those trucks, paltry though the supplies they carried, were allowed into Gaza on Saturday.)

Biden did come back with a bill for the American taxpayers – who for decades have been forced to pay for these Israeli wars. Now Biden wants Congress to approve $14 billion for Israel to address the colossal failure of Netanyahu’s extremist coalition to protect its own citizens on the border. (Adding only $100 million for Palestinian relief).

That sum of money, to be authorized without any Congressional hearings or Congressional oversight, is greater than the combined annual budgets of the FDA, OSHA, NHTSA and the section of HHS, whose missions are to reduce the loss of hundreds of thousands of preventable American fatalities in the workplace, on the highways, and in the marketplace and the hospitals. (See, the 2016 peer-reviewed study from the John Hopkins University of Medicine).

Lastly, still not calling a ceasefire, Biden is disregarding his own military’s private advice against an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza as raising the risk of a larger war in the Middle East that would clearly be against the national interests of the American people and U.S. security.

He could have done what President Eisenhower did in 1956, when he demanded that the Israeli, British and French attack on Egypt stop immediately.

And stop, they did!

After all, the U.S. has some influence over Israel, to put it mildly. The U.S. endorses all Israeli aggressions (including Israel’s admission to bombing hundreds of sites in Syria, mired in its civil war and no threat, in addition to striking Damascus International Airport). All with U.S. advanced weapons, and billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel, a prosperous military, technological and economic superpower. In fact, Israel’s social safety net is better than that of the U.S.!

Biden provides total diplomatic cover in the U.S. with Washington’s automatic UN vetoes, and pressures allies to follow the party line.

Moreover, Biden seems unwilling to recognize the historical origins of this conflict that now has mighty Israel occupying, colonizing, brutalizing and stealing land and water from the twenty-two percent of the original Palestine left for millions of Palestinians under Israeli daily control.

Biden should take a moment in the Oval Office to read page 121 of the book “The Jewish Paradox” by Nahum Goldman (January 1, 1978), the head of the World Zionist Organization. He quotes the leading Founder of the Israeli state, David Ben-Gurion as candidly saying to him: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Today’s Israeli leaders refuse to demonstrate this degree of empathy. Instead, they provoke and deny the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioned by the Oslo Accords they signed in 1993, hurl the most racist epithets (“animals,” “vermin,” “snakes,”), and make sure the politicians in the U.S. Congress never utter the words “Palestinians also have a right to defend themselves” as violently subjugated victims of Israel the superpower.

Many members of Congress who demand giving Israel whatever money and weaponry it wants for whatever it does, violating human rights under international law in its illegal occupations and blockade, turn around and vote against the child tax credit, worker health and safety, universal healthcare, paid family leave and daycare for Americans. Their viciousness – as with the homicidal outburst of Gen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) against all Palestinians, and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) a Harvard Law graduate, saying “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza…” set new levels of depravity.

A few Senators see it differently, especially Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) who noted “…it is no secret that Gaza has been an open-air prison” with “horrendous living conditions,” and that “children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished for the acts of Hamas.”

Little known is that Israel and the U.S. fostered and funded the rise of Hamas as a religious counterpoint to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). It was established in 1987 following the first intifada uprising. A 2009 TheWall Street Journal article titled: “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas” noted:

“Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction…”

To Biden and the Congressional “howlers” for the death of civilian innocents, historical facts matter little. Hamas’ lethal attack on October 7th was preceded by far greater numbers of Israeli violent attacks over the past decades taking four hundred times the number of innocent Palestinian lives, injuries and other casualties than inflicted on innocent Israelis.

Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza will take twenty times or more lives of innocent Palestinians than those killed by Hamas on October 7th with the casualty toll of direct fatalities and the loss of life from the devastation of life-sustaining water, food, medicine, shelter and other hospital/clinic emergency infrastructure.

Also conveniently forgotten is the detailed peace offer to Israel in 2002, by 22 member states of the Arab League to establish diplomatic and trade relations with a recognized Israel in return for its retreating to the 1967 borders and creation of a Palestinian two-state solution. The Israel extremists in Congress and President G.W. Bush declined even to respond to this proposal. (See, the March 29, 2002 New York Times article: Mideast Turmoil; Text of the Peace Proposals Backed by the Arab League).

It is incumbent on the supreme military superpower in the region to take the initiative for peace over the powerless victims under its thralldom. That country is, of course, high-tech Israel, bristling with the latest weapons and nuclear atomic bombs.

Both the brave Israeli human rights groups and those courageous human rights Israelis standing shoulder to shoulder over the years striving to conduct non-violent civil disobedience at the besieged Palestinian village level, only to be dispersed by Israeli soldiers, know the real obstacle to peace. It is the plan by the right-wing Israeli parties to annex the entire Palestinian West Bank (nearly attempted under Donald Trump) and forcefully drive Palestinians into Jordan and Egypt.

Joe Biden is skilled at shedding tears at memorials of grief in this country. But he runs dry when the recurring catastrophes befalling Palestinians beg for his presidential compassion and actual deeds.

He will not escape history’s judgment.

Original article by RALPH NADER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Trickle of Aid Amid Unyielding Gaza Onslaught Nothing But a PR Trick

‘Dying, Dying, Dying’: Israel Told Gazans to Flee South—Where It Continues to Bomb

Continue ReadingBiden Will Not Escape History’s Judgement for Failure to Stop Gaza Assault

Reports Expose US Billionaires and Corporate Profiteers Enabling Israel’s War on Gaza

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

“As the Biden administration attempts to deny the death toll of Israel’s campaign of mass murder in Gaza and sell genocide as a stimulus for the U.S. economy, these are the death merchants profiting from the war machine.”

With more than 7,300 Palestinians killed so far in Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza, a series of reports this week have exposed how U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors are enabling what legal scholars say could amount to genocide.

After Israel declared war in response to Hamas killing over 1,400 Israelis and taking around 200 hostages, the stocks of major American and European war profiteers soared. A Thursday report from Eyes on the Ties—the news site of LittleSis and Public Accountability Initiative—targets five U.S. firms with a record of providing weaponry to Israel.

The outlet stressed that while announcing a supplemental funding request that includes $14.3 billion for Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden last week “invoked ‘patriotic American workers’ who are ‘building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom,’ but it’s the defense company CEOs who rake in tens of millions a year, and Wall Street shareholders, who are the real beneficiaries of warmongering.”

The five targeted industry giants collectively recorded $196.5 billion in military-related revenue last year, Eyes on the Ties reported. They are Boeing ($30.8 billion), General Dynamics ($30.4 billion), Lockheed Martin ($63.3 billion), Northrop Grumman ($32.4 billion), and RTX, formerly Raytheon ($39.6 billion).

“The top shareholders in these five defense companies largely consist of big asset managers, or big banks with asset management wings, that include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America,” the news outlet noted.

Eyes on the Ties also highlighted how chief executives are handsomely compensated—and the CEOs’ ties to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, and foreign policy think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies.

According to the report:

  • Boeing CEO David Calhoun took in over $64 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 193,247 shares;
  • General Dynamics CEO Phebe N. Novakovic took in over $64 million in total compensation from 202-22 and as of March held 1,616,279 shares;
  • Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet took in over $66 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 56,054 shares;
  • Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy J. Warden took in over $61 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of March held 161,231 shares; and
  • RTX CEO Gregory J. Hayes took in over $63 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 801,339 shares.

Other reporting this week has taken aim at those CEOs for their suggestions that Israel’s assault on Gaza is good for business.

During Lockheed Martin’s latest earnings call, Taiclet correctly predicted Biden’s request last week, saying that “there continues to be the option… for supplemental requests related to support Ukraine, Israel, and potentially Taiwan.”

In addition to the request for Israel—which already gets nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid—Biden asked for $4 billion to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and $61.4 billion more for Ukraine, which is battling a Russian invasion.

“We are all witnessing significant geopolitical tensions across the globe, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and the horrific attacks in Israel,” Warden said during Northrop Grumman’s Thursday earnings call, according toVICE. “As we saw last week, the [Biden] administration continues to make supplemental requests for urgent needs, including those in Ukraine and Israel, to include investments in weapons systems and defense industrial base readiness.”

As The Lever reported:

“The Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that’s just evolving as we speak,” said Jason Aiken, chief financial officer and executive vice president at General Dynamics, on Wednesday. “But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

He continued: “Obviously that’s been a big pressure point up to now with Ukraine, one that we’ve been doing everything we can to support our Army customer. We’ve gone from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 very quickly. We’re working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity up to 85,000, even as high as 100,000 rounds per month, and I think the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand.”

Last week, roughly 100 activists gathered outside of General Dynamics’ weapons plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to protest the Israeli war, holding signs with slogans like, “Genocide: Brought To You By General Dynamics.”

Both The Lever and VICE also pointed out that during RTX’s Tuesday call, Hayes started by “acknowledging the tragic situation playing out in Israel” before turning to “an update on our end markets.”

If Congress approves Biden’s request for Israel, VICE explained, “some of the money would be used to restock Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system, which RTX manufactured.” Hayes said: “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in [U.S. Department of Defense] top line.”

It’s not just defense executives enabling Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. As Eyes on the Ties reported, “Lobbying groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Democratic Majority for Israel have been active in Washington, calling on lawmakers to send money and weapons to Israel.”

The report names some billionaire donors to the lobbying groups, including New England Patriots and the Kraft Group CEO Robert Kraft, private equity investor Marc Rowan, venture capitalist Gary Lauder, hedge fund managers Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer, and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who is also the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Wednesday that Americans “know that funneling billions more dollars into arms dealers’ pockets won’t keep our children safe from weapons of war at home or across the world. It won’t keep our loved ones safe from toxins in our air and drinking water. They know that lining the pockets of weapons manufacturers won’t help families struggling to afford housing, medicine, or grocery costs. They know defense contractors won’t safeguard Medicare and Social Security or shield our communities against the climate crisis.”

Unlike the CEOs of firms like Lockheed Martin and RTX, “moms who can’t afford childcare, young folks who can’t pay off their debt, veterans who can’t keep up with housing costs, and children who go to school hungry don’t have million-dollar lobbying budgets,” added Lee, one of the few members of Congress pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza. “So it’s up to us to stand up for their needs.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingReports Expose US Billionaires and Corporate Profiteers Enabling Israel’s War on Gaza

‘Climate villain’: scientists say Rupert Murdoch wielded his media empire to sow confusion and doubt

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Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/23/rupert-murdoch-climate-change-denial

The tycoon, who is stepping down from News Corp and Fox, has used his outlets to promote denial and delay action, experts say

Scientists have described the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch as a “climate villain” who has used his television and newspaper empire to promote climate science denial and delay action.

…

Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said Murdoch had been “one of the most destructive forces in modern history when it comes to climate action”.

“He has wielded his global media empire as a cudgel to sow confusion and doubt about the science and the solutions. He will go down in history as one of the greatest climate villains,” said Mann.

Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said: “There’s no doubt that the Murdoch empire has played an important role in letting the public believe that there was any scientific doubt that the burning of fossil fuel causes the climate to warm and that it is detrimental for society and ecosystems. It is a terrible legacy he leaves, that many people paid for, and are paying for, with their lives and livelihoods.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/23/rupert-murdoch-climate-change-denial

Image: Boris Johnson confirms his thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Boris Johnson confirms his thumbs up to be UK prime minister from Rupert Murdoch
Continue Reading‘Climate villain’: scientists say Rupert Murdoch wielded his media empire to sow confusion and doubt