Monday Morning Quarterback

Flickr: Brooklyn Museum
Egypt. Abu Simbel. Colossus No. 4. 19 Dyn?, n.d., B.J. Brooklyn Museum Archives (S10|08 Abu Simbel, image 9488).

The U.S. government is buying Big Shitpile! The feds are going to give Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the huge finance companies, billions of dollars of federal money -- your taxes -- to avoid bankruptcy. Atrios asks, why don't we just take them over rather than giving away our money for free?

The military is throwing firecrackers into the fire: 1 in 10 military recruits require a moral waiver, for "serious criminal conduct", or alcohol or drug abuse. Just the sorts of people you want to drop into a powder keg. Way to go, Bushie. Oil, meet match.

Nine American soldiers died in Afghanistan yesterday when more than 100 "militants" (who are those, anyway? Taliban? Afghans? Pakistanis? We are never told. George W. Bush says we fight "The Enemy", and the specifics are rarely mentioned.) attacked a remote base in northern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.

Obama has an Op-Ed in the NYTimes today outlining his plan for Iraq.

McCain = Bush. So much so that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (rumored to be on McCain's VP short list) couldn't come up with one major economic policy difference between McCain and Bush. Watch the video here. (Because there are no major economic differences between McCain and Bush. McCain = Bush, like the librarian said.) So long, short list.

When I heard on the radio this morning that the International Criminal Court had for the first time brought charges against a sitting head of state, I cried "George W. Bush is called to the Hague!" Wrong, moose breath; it was Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charged with masterminding the genocide in Darfur.

BAGNewsNotes eviscerates that execrable New Yorker cover.

To Do List: Be An Activist

De-Authorize the War Now. Sign Bill Richardson's petition to Congress to de-authorize the war before the summer break.

Save the free and open internet. Use the button on the right to send your story to the FCC. The comment period ends June 15th, so don't delay.

Write to Al Gore, if you want him to run for President. Or if you don't. The address of his Nashville office is 2100 W End Ave, Nashville, TN 37203. Sign the petition to draft Al. Check out pictures of the solar panels on the roof of his house here (he had to petition to change the zoning laws to install them!)

Use the Sudan Divestment Task Force's Screening Tool to learn if any of your investments are in the Sudan.

Stop Big Media. Use the links on the right to contact the FCC to protect local media, promote diversity, and stop Rupert Murdoch from taking over the information delivery highway.

Fidelity Still Invested in Darfur

Despite the somewhat misleading headline in today's Boston Globe, Fidelity is still heavily invested in companies doing business in Darfur and paying royalties to the corrupt genocidal government.

Boston Globe: Fidelity says it did not divest for Darfur
Firm says decisions based on returns, not pressure by activists

Fidelity filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday that showed its ownership of PetroChina Co. shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange declining from about 4.5 million shares earlier this year to 420,916 as of the end of March, a decrease of more than 90 per cent.

PetroChina is part of a Chinese energy corporation accused by human-rights activists of paying royalties that fund violent campaigns in Sudan's Darfur region. Filings also show Fidelity sold many shares in another Chinese oil firm, Sinopec, that has drawn similar criticism.

Activists praised the sell-off in shares. David Rubenstein, director of a human-rights coalition in Washington, said the sales show Fidelity "appears to be making a genuine effort to financially separate from PetroChina."
Message Board Do you take human-rights issues into account when investing?

But he cautioned it is too soon to tell whether Fidelity fully divested its shares or instead shifted its ownership in ways that its public filings don't yet reflect. For example, Fidelity also owns shares in PetroChina that are traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. As of October, the last time it reported those holdings, Fidelity was the eighth-largest holder of PetroChina shares on the Hong Kong exchange, with 206,000. Rubinstein called on Fidelity to provide more details of its holdings.

Save Darfur: Divest

I saw this on BlueGal:

The reason Fidelity feels they can't divest from genocide is because that would mean divesting large holdings from China. China is an international scourge on so many levels. “They’re too big a market to be held accountable to international standards” is a sick testimony to Western greed. That and Wal Mart. Oh, wait. That’s cheap junk from China, isn’t it?

Look at her. Just look at her face.

h/t Quakerdave, who would like as many of you as possible to post this vid to your blogs.