Thursday, May 15, 2014

EXCLUSIVE: How did planet destroyer David Koch get invited at Windsor Castle?



"Climate change sceptics are 'headless chickens', said Prince Charles on January 30 2014, accusing "powerful groups of deniers" of engaging in intimidation.

When it's about being “powerful deniers,” nobody is second to the Koch Brothers; and Prince Charles was talking to the Koch Brothers when he spoke at the Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize Event.

Hence the real mystery here is "why in the world was Mr. David Koch invited to attend a charity dinner for The Royal Marsden Hospital at Windsor Castle?"



There could be different answers indeed:  the dinner was sponsored by Ralph Lauren, so maybe he's the one who invited Mr. Polluter. Although, if I were Mr. Ralph Lauren's Marketing Consultant I would have warmly discouraged the invitation of such "an uncomfortable guest.”

Of course the invitations were managed by the Ralph Lauren staff and maybe those P.R. people down at Ralph Lauren HQ aren't aware of the Antarctic melting situation our planet is undergoing. Maybe on doomsday they would be sitting in the front row at their favorite fashion week's runway. Who knows? Remember the Titanic Orchestra?

The good thing is that the Duchess of Cambridge wasn't there and we don't believe in coincidences.

Because if she had attended the dinner, the Duchess would have had to sit next to Mr. Koch.

Here I think it would be appropriate to recall a quote from Shakespeare in Love: "The Queen of England does not attend exhibitions of public lewdness."

Another coincidence was that Mr. David Koch and his wife weren't portrayed in ANY of the official pictures released to the press. 

At the end of the day, those people at Ralph Lauren were quite lucky, to say the least, but also they did not consider the fact that you don't need a picture to write a story, because the Daily Mail reported the presence of Mr. Koch.

A second possible explanation of the Koch's invitation is that David Koch is suffering from prostate cancer and has donated millions to cancer research institutions and is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board. Nonetheless, the Koch Industries’ subsidiary Georgia-Pacific is actively working to downplay the dangers of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.

In the end we completely understand that the cancer research needs to be funded. The problem here is that the individual invited to be involved by Ralph Lauren can be compared to a mass murderer as I can't find another title for someone who invested more than $1 billion to enforce the Climate Change deniers while Antarctica is melting down at light speed. Here we are talking about our planet and the survival of our civilization. In practice David Koch is like those dark characters of the James Bond movies whose objective is destroying the world, with the exception that the one we are living is not a movie but a real nightmarish disaster.

Would you invite such a sociopath to your charity dinner?

As a matter of fact if we look at David Koch's resume, his presence at Windsor Castle must be considered at least "inappropriate" to speak euphemistically:
The Political Economy Research Institute ranks Koch Industries as the tenth worst air polluter in the U.S. in their Toxic Release Inventory.  

CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) reports that Koch releases about 200,000 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually.

Koch Industries has a long record [PDF] of environmental crimes and violations, including, but not limited to:

A $1.7 million fine by the EPA and $500 million commitment to correct pollution violations in seven                states
Millions of gallons of spilled oil from Koch pipelines throughout the past decade
A $25 million settlement with the U.S. government in 2001 after falsifying extraction records for oil                collected on Native American and federal land
A $20 million settlement in 2000 for falsifying documents relating to a major release of the carcinogen           benzene
A 1996 explosion that killed two teenagers due to a leaking Koch gas pipeline

Through Koch Industries and their family foundations, the Koch brothers are premier financiers to organizations that deny, question or belittle the significance of global warming.  

Compared to ExxonMobil, which spent $10.2 million on skeptic groups from 2005-2008, Koch Industries dwarfed their contribution with a $31.6 million effort. (Source: GreenPeace)

Koch Industries was the 2011 inductee for Corporate Accountability International's Corporate Hall of Shame for "spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial and influencing the Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited corporate dollars to flow into federal elections." Koch Industries is the sixth member of the Hall of Shame, after Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Blackwater and Halliburton.

Koch worked behind the scenes during the 2010 “Rally for Jobs” astroturf events, coordinated by the American Petroleum Institute in order to create political pressure against clean energy and climate legislation in the interest of the oil and gas industry.  Groups such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which are both heavily funded by the Koch brothers and founded by David Koch, were partner organizations in promoting the rallies.

Koch Industries spent $1 million to promote California Proposition 23, intended to undermine the states clean energy and climate law, through subsidiary company Flint Hills Resources.  Koch also pushed Prop 23 through one of their beneficiary front groups, the Pacific Research Institute, which published and promoted reports that made favorable economic arguments for Prop 23 using flawed methodologies.

The Koch brothers have been identified as the major supporters of a secretive conservative funding group, Donors Trust. In 2013, it was revealed that Donors Trust is the biggest financier of climate denier groups in the world. According to The Guardian newspaper, Donors Trust, thanks to anonymous donations from the Kochs and others, dispersed nearly $120 million funding to climate denial groups between 2002 and 2010.

Without mentioning the fact that the Koch brothers are the main sponsors of the Tea Party, an organization that aims at dismantling every single piece of legislation that supports the welfare system, including the minimum wage and free healthcare for veterans.  

How these people can be considered "guests of honor" at Windsor Castle remains a mystery.

E Pluribus Unum 












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