KERRY

SEE SOS

bak 120

see pvt jet eco-hypocrite BS anti-globalist elites

===

Biden 'doubling down' in the face of 'absurdity' with latest climate push, expert says

Fox Business

Climate Depot executive editor Marc Morano reacts to comments from a Senate hearing on climate concerns and sounds off on the Biden ...

december 19, 2024

05:29

mclean va

foghorn

Biden ‘doubling down’ in the face of ‘absurdity’ with latest climate push, expert says

Climate Depot executive editor Marc Morano reacts to comments from a Senate hearing on climate concerns and sounds off on the Biden administration's latest climate push on 'The Bottom Line.'

nyt ben keys}:

ditch home; extremiest arent you? cli hypoc on blast hdline; cli obsession ethos; expose absurdity; wharton prof; un says exteme wether not increasing; own hse in flood zone; nyt long hist gone aftr home racism, cli emergency, houses more dang to cli than cars; doing all the things they tell us not to do giant homes oprah

kerry pvt jet and ---?]

lame duck joe pedal to metal on his cli agenda; new emission targets; cuts GG 60 percent by 2035; gum up sys w new regs; very easy to undo; climate agenda hates us hates am way, 2x down in face of ... magical thinking paperwork climate agenda get us out of paris treaty by going to congress; woman: fear based agenda, requires their intervation; misnamed IRA is really the grn new deal; get rid of epa endangerment finding; day 1 reverse agancy pentagon abolish every climate agy and goal do fast and rapid, do in 2 wks

dr_benjamin_jkeystestimonysenatebudgetcommittee

Testimony of Benjamin J. Keys, Ph.D. Rowan Family Foundation Professor, Professor of Real Estate and Finance,

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Hearing

on “Next to the Fall: The Climate-Driven Insurance Crisis is Here – And Getting Worse”

---

The 2015 Paris Agreement is much more explicit, seeking to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of the century and limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. [but no enforceable targets?] some countries actually hit goals b/c of covid?]

Brulle says dark $ climbed steadily but peaked in 2012?

wsj and forbes harp on kerry and binding targets?

https://time.com/4142465/john-kerry-cop-21-climate-talks/

no lnx vid

The U.S. Doubles Down on Climate Financing and Ambition at Paris

BY JUSTIN WORLAND / PARIS

DECEMBER 9, 2015

The United States will commit more than $800 million a year to financing climate adaptation efforts in developing countries, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Wednesday. Kerry, speaking at the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, also said the U.S. will join a coalition pushing for the most ambitious agreement.

Wednesday’s announcement represents a doubling of last year’s U.S. commitment to fund adaptation efforts and comes as negotiators in Paris continue to wrangle over how an agreement should deal with finance. Developed countries pledged in 2009 to send $100 billion annually to developing countries to support their climate change initiatives, but the details about how such a large figure would be achieved have remained unclear. The U.S. move was intended to provide some assurance for developing countries that such a figure would be reached.

“The U.S. not only recognizes our role in creating this problem but doing something about it,” said Kerry, reiterating a statement made by President Obama last week. “The situation demands and this moment demands that we do not leave Paris without an ambitious…and durable agreement.”

Read More: What to Know About the Paris Climate Change Conference

The U.S. had previously committed $3 billion to a United Nations fund to finance climate efforts in the developing world (a down payment of sorts showing commitment to future funding), though Republicans in Congress have vowed to block the money. The new commitment specifically funds efforts by developing countries to adapt their infrastructure, agriculture and health services to a warming climate—areas that countries often find more difficult to finance than programs that support renewable energy efforts. (Supporting adaptation tends to be costly—think higher sea walls and tougher bridges—while investing in renewable energy can be profitable).

Finance has been key sticking point as developing countries demand assurances that they will receive support from their developed counterparts when it comes to addressing climate change. Research from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that climate financing increased by $10 billion in 2014 to $62 billion. That’s a significant jump but far short of the $100 billion promise. Negotiators from developing countries want to know that money will actually flow their way, and in a manner they can easily access, before signing off a deal.

Kerry also formally announced that the U.S. would join a “high ambition” coalition at the negotiations that includes the European Union and other countries. That group will push for an ambitious, lower ceiling for temperature rise, a strong mechanism of ensuring transparency in what countries pledge to do about climate change and a system by which countries improve upon their commitments every five years. Notably absent from the group are India and China, who fear that an overly ambitious deal might stymie their economic growth. “We didn’t come to Paris to build a ceiling,” Kerry said in his announcement. “We came to build a floor.”

The speech, which comes as the Paris climate talks enter their final and most critical days, drew immediate praise from observers who say the address will provide momentum on key issues, particularly finance. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is overseeing proceedings, cited the issue as one of three remaining areas of contention in remarks on Wednesday shortly after Kerry’s speech.

Read More: How the U.S. Became an Unlikely Hero at the Paris Climate Summit

Kerry said in his speech that he remained optimistic that this conference, formally known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) would put the world on a pathway to dealing with climate change.

“We are seeing momentum for an agreement that has never existed,” he said. “This COP may be the best course we have to correct the course of our planet.”

===

an 9 22 ah

Republican attorney Geoffrey S. Berman was once an ally of Donald Trump. The former federal prosecutor volunteered on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he was a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

But in his forthcoming book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent U.S. Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department,” Berman reveals that he was fired from his position with the Southern District of New York in 2020 after refusing to prosecute some Democrats who Trump had it in for.

The New York Times has obtained a copy of Berman’s book, which has a September 13 release date on Amazon. In the book, according to Times reporter Benjamin Weiser, Berman describes himself as a Rockefeller Republican — in other words, a moderate Republican. And that would explain why Berman eventually proved incompatible with Trump and the far-right MAGA movement.

Berman, now 62, was a Southern District of New York prosecutor from 1990-1994, and he returned to the Southern District in January 2018 — an announcement made by Jeff Sessions, who was U.S. attorney general for the Trump Administration at the time.

Weiser reports, “Mr. Berman’s book says that during Mr. Trump’s presidency, (Justice) Department officials made ‘overtly political’ demands, choosing targets that would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage. Mr. Berman wrote that the pressure was clearly inspired by the president’s openly professed wants.”

The Democrats Trump and his allies wanted to prosecute, according to Berman, included formerSecretary of State John Kerry and attorney Gregory Craig (who Trump’s allies accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act). But Berman, according to his book, didn’t believe that a prosecution of either Kerry or Craig was warranted.

During his four years in the White House, Trump could turn against fellow Republicans in a hurry. Trump fired Sessions in 2018 for recusing himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and Bill Barr became U.S. attorney general in early 2019. Later, both Barr and Trump turned against Berman, according to “Holding the Line.”

In the book, according to The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly, guk Berman writes, “The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted.”

Berman also writes, “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired…. I walked this tightrope for two and a half years. Eventually, the rope snapped.”

===

kos ref

for the longest time, the FoxNews website seemed pretty normal on climate change, all things considered. While Fox TV centered hatemongers like Tucker Carlson and the website reflects that with ample coverage of what was on TV, the original content produced for the website was generally indistinguishable from any other lazy political "news" that quotes who said what. The site was clearly biased in every conceivable way (choice of stories to cover, who to quote, how to frame stories, etc) but wasn’t necessarily going out of the way to spread climate disinformation.

That appears to be changing.

fox News dot com has, in the last month or so, hired two conservative propagandists in journalist disguises, Thomas Catenacci, formerly an energy reporter at the Koch-sponsored Daily Caller, and Haris Alic, formerly of the cult-founded and $1bilion+ sponsored Washington Times where he turned fossil fool press releases into "news”. Before that, he was at white supremacy-laundering Breitbart, and before that, the billionaire-backed Free Beacon.

Back on June 21st, Thomas Catenacci published his first Fox pieceattacking Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for calling on Biden to pause the federal gas tax, "just months after declining to pause her own state's gas tax." (Maybe something changed in the months between?)

Since then, he's published one Dem hit piece after another, real hard-hitting stuff like "Kamala Harris' office posts video of VP sinking basketball shot, leaves out her first 5 misses."

He also covered the climate activists slashing SUV tires in NYC (twice), and somehow suckered a Sierra Club spokesperson into feeding him quotes for a piece about how environmentalists are "pushing extreme measures amid global energy crisis," like investing in clean energy sources not controlled by Russia, which is apparently extreme.

This week, Catenacci helped propagate the lie that protests in the Netherlands and the uprising in Sri Lanka are driven by anti-climate policy sentiments, and yesterday he brought the Daily Caller's trick of "reporting" on a climate advocate's airline emissions toFox with a piece about John Kerry's family's private jet emissions (quoting, of course, a professional denier).

Meanwhile, on July 8th Haris Alic published his first Fox story, advancing the Koch network's organized anti-ESG disinformation with "news" that Sen. Steve Daines(R., Mont.) introduced a go-no-where bill to "block Biden from adding 'woke' requirements to US retirement plans." Then he did a puff piece about Republican Gov. Youngkin's "speculation of 2024 presidential run," followed by a piece about how Nancy Pelosi went on "lavish Italian vacation as inflation back home hits 40-year high."

You know, Fair And Balanced.

This week, Alic is gassing up former ALEC chair Joe Manchin with an entirely credulous story headlined "Manchin denies he opposes Democratic spending bill, says he'll wait until August to decide." No surprise, when it comes to the fossil fuel loving Democrat, Fox News has no problem taking him at his word and including zero skeptical quotes pushing back on his claims!

How do you follow "reporting" that is shamelessly tongue-on-boot? With a story about conservative ads, of course, turning your compatriot's paid media spend into some free earned media about how (industry front) groups have paid for a "deluge of conservative ads [to] urge Manchin to stand up to Democrats."

Not exactly breaking news that Fox is backing fossil fuels over a livable climate, but the fact that its website just hired not one but two up-and-coming climate disinfo spreaders suggests Fox is only ramping up the lies as the midterm election season heats up.

MURDOCH? INTERESTING IT'S A FOSSIL FOOL DOING POLITICAL/MILITARY ATTACK?

https://nypost.com/2022/02/25/john-kerry-just-reminded-us-of-how-unserious-a-statesman-he-really-is/

OPINION

John Kerry just reminded us of how unserious a statesman he really is

By Daniel Turner

February 25, 2022 8:58pm Updated

John Kerry, US special envoy for climate, speaks at the 58th Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany.

John Kerry's main concern about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is, you guessed it, the climate.

[MORE ON:

JOHN KERRY

John Kerry’s deadly Ukraine hot air

Nancy Pelosi spent almost $500K on private jets despite climate preaching

The comic cries of climate apocalypse — 50 years of spurious scaremongering

‘Not my lane’: John Kerry sidesteps China’s human rights violations]

To state the obvious, John Kerry is an unserious person. That’s not a reference to his wind-surfing or flip-flops or other classic campaign faux pas from days gone by.

With Ukraine suffering death and destruction at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s military, Kerry shared his true concern about the conflict: climate.

“A war is the last thing you need with respect to a united effort to try to deal with the climate challenge,” Kerry told a Reuters reporter. He then decried the “emissions” consequences of Russia’s invasion, adding, “You’re going to lose people’s focus . . . certainly big country attention, because they will be diverted” from the climate agenda.

Kerry’s remarks are aloof, callous, clueless — but, most of all, unserious.

In fact, hisclimate agenda is partly to blame for the current geopolitical mess. The Biden administration, from its first day in office, unleashed an attack on our once-robust energy industry. In pursuit of the Green New Deal, the socialist utopia that would ban the combustion engine, regulate diets and employ solar panels and wind turbines alone to power the nation, President Joe Biden & Co. sought to get rid of fossil fuels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to chair a Security Council meeting in Moscow, Russia.]

Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool/AP]

But by throttling the industry, they cut the global supply and prices rose accordingly. That hurt Americans, while making Vladimir Putin rich.

And a Vladimir Putin with surplus cash is a dangerous thing.

America’s shortsighted climate-change efforts are destabilizing world peace. This was not Biden or Kerry’s intention, but it is the consequence — and the more dangerous the world becomes, the more unserious “climate change” hysteria is.

[Get the latest updates in the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the Post’s live coverage.

Telling Putin not to invade Ukraine because of emissions is akin to lecturing those fleeing Kyiv to mask up and social distance. It’s a luxury they don’t have.

That is the climate agenda: the luxury of privileged elites. Families who can’t afford their heating bill or grocery bill thanks to energy-price-caused inflation don’t have the luxury of fretting about climate change. The 7,000 US soldiers headed to Germany right now don’t have the luxury of handwringing about their climate footprint.

John Kerry does, and he loves luxury, too.

Asked about the green contradiction of traveling on his private jet to win an environmental award in 2019, the unserious statesman claimed it was “the only choice for someone like me.” Reporters have tracked numerous such Air Kerry flights. Emissions? What emissions?

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry speaks during a press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, at the foreign ministry headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

With Ukraine suffering death and descrution at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s military, Kerry shared his true concern about the conflict: climate.

Kerry made his latest cringeworthy comments in Egypt as preparations begin for COP27, the international climate-change conference coming this fall to the Red Sea resort town of Sharm-el-Sheikh. If you’re going to fuss about the climate, you might as well do it in comfort. Last year’s conference in Glasgow, Scotland, boasted 40,000 people in attendance, along with 670 private jets: Kerry isn’t the only green hypocrite.

We didn’t elect John Kerry, so as climate czarin the White House, he’s unaccountable to Congress and therefore the American people who pay his salary. No one gets to look at his budgets. No one has oversight over his meetings, but there he goes on his private jet committing the United States to emissions reductions and punitive measures on fossil fuels.

[SEE ALSO

Biden slams Ukraine invasion as he reveals new sanctions that leave Putin untouched]

Meanwhile, the real threats are Russia, China, Iran and North Korea continuing to build weapons, steal technology, launch cyberattacks, engage in terrorism and now start a full-scale war, the likes of which Europe hasn’t seen in 75 years.

Take the threat of climate change seriously when John Kerry forgoes the private jets and luxury mega-conferences. Worry about rising sea levels when John Kerry sells his oceanfront mansion.

Until then, we need to stop the attack on America’s energy industry, attacks that have strengthened our enemies and weakened our own nation. Until we reverse Biden’s reckless and dangerous energy policies, we don’t have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow when we can’t afford life today.

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit that advocates for American energy jobs.

Twitter: @DanielTurnerPTF

agreement on methane, coal (not US?)

cop 26 glasgow

global elite eco-hyp gore tenn house fail? gop rep/sen does too pseudo-populist

Ted Cruz embarrassed after claiming Republicans don’t have private jets

Travis Gettys Raw Story

November 04, 2021

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) put his foot in his mouth on Wednesday while attempting to attack the Biden administration.

"John Kerry has a private jet that has flown dozens ...

http://epadvocates.org/Colorado/DC-Kerry-Recusal-Request_2.pdf

August 3, 2021

Freedom of Information Act Request

U. S. Department of State

Office of Information Programs and Services

2201 C Street N.W., Suite B266

Washington, D.C. 20520-0000

By Facsimile (202) 485-1669

Re: Recusal memos and communications related to John Kerry

Dear Ms. Hardy:

On behalf of Energy Policy Advocates (“EPA”), recognized by the Internal Revenue Service

as a non- profit public policy institute under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,

pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552 et seq., please provide

copies of the records as described herein

Records Requested

EPA requests the following records from theOffice of Management and Budget (“OMB”).

The requested information is of great public interest for its relevance to the Biden

Administration’s ethics policies and procedures and compliance therewith:

All memoranda or documents produced by or received by employees within

the Office pertaining or relating to creation of and/or compliance with

recusal statements of and any ethics waivers and/or recusals for John Kerry.

This request includes, but is not limited to, any draft or final memoranda or

letter(s) outlining recusal obligations, potential conflicts of interest, and any

particular matters that have been identified for recusal, as well as any

waivers issued by ethics officials for those named officials.

This request also includes but again is not limited to any and all

communications, including written analysis in any form, regarding actual or

possible meeting requests with non-governmental entities which meeting(s)

or request(s) involve Mr. Kerry. If any requested records were produced

between December 2, 2020, and the official start date of Mr. Kerry, those

should also be included.

3.This request also includes, but is not limited to, all other communications

between Mr. Kerry, and employees within the Executive Office of the

President pertaining or relating to the drafting and revision of any ethics or

recusal letter, any memoranda or other documents pertaining or relating to

Mr. Kerry’s actual or possible recusal obligations. That is, this request ...

wtf?

most dangerous, energy

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jp-morgan/

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the world's most influential energy forecaster. Providing in-depth policy advice to dozens of national governments, the IEA has long been a friend of fossil fuel executives, regularly encouraging evermore fossil fuel development, even in the face of evermore dire climate warnings. But all that started to change last week.

The IEA released a special report that represents the agency's first attempt at modeling an energy pathway that is compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement.

Perhaps the single most important sentence in the 224-page report is this one: "There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway." In other words, if we want to curtail global warming to 1.5°C―and thus slow the rate of species extinction and prevent millions of early deaths―we cannot invest a single dollar more in expanding the fossil fuel industry.

Compare this with JPMorgan Chase. In October of last year, Chase, the world's largest funder of fossil fuels, announced that it was going to align its business model with the Paris Agreement. The pledge came only after years of campaigning by activists and was widely welcomed. The most exciting part of the announcement was Chase's promise to release 2030 climate targets.

Well, Chase just released those targets―and they are worse than even the most pessimistic among us feared.

Rather than actually reducing the overall greenhouse gas emissions associated with its lending, Chase has created a convoluted accounting trick known as "carbon intensity", pledging that by 2030, it will achieve a 15% reduction in the "carbon intensity" of the oil and gas firms it finances.

The most important thing to know here is that reductions in "carbon intensity" and reductions in "actual greenhouse gas emissions" are two very different things.

Imagine you are the CEO of an oil firm. Your company owns 1,000 oil wells; it doesn't own any windmills. Now Chase gives you a $10 billion loan. You use that loan to buy 400 new oil wells and 200 windmills. You now own 400 additional oil wells. This means you are digging up and burning more oil than ever before; your overall contributions to climate change have gone up significantly. But because you are now also profiting from wind power, the "carbon intensity" of your company has gone down―an accounting trick that enables your oil company to both expand oil production and meet Chase's callow climate targets.

What it boils down to is this: While the IEA states that there can be no new investment in the expansion of fossil fuels, Chase doesn't plan to reduce its investments in new fossil fuel supply at all within the next decade.

This is concerning (not to mention deeply immoral) for a number of reasons: Chase is the first major US bank to commit to 2030 climate targets; by setting the bar so devastatingly low they have made it easier for other Wall Street banks to engage in similar acts of greenwashing. Just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71% of all history's climate pollution; if Wall Street is willing to give them a pass, it is basically passing on climate action of any sort.

The fact that the media has largely fallen for Chase's big climate lie is also of concern. "JPMorgan Chase Pledges to Cut Carbon Emissions in Lending Portfolios," read one uncritical Bloomberg headline. Even the normally rigorous Guardian recently fawned about how Wall Street is acting on the climate crisis.After years of the media's failure to accurately report on the climate crisis, it is upsetting to see major media outlets fail like this.

:{All of this would, of course, be less alarming if the White House understood that companies like JPMorgan are a major part of the problem―and that regulating them is a major part of the solution. But that is far from the case."No government is going to solve this problem," said US Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry in arecent interview. "The solutions are going to come from the private sector."

Kerry's words are especially alarming. Whether it's sustainable investing funds that are riddled with fossil fuels, insurance companies building coal mines, or banks making empty climate pledges, it's clear that Wall Street cannot be counted on to solve the climate crisis for us.}:

We need a government that is willing to step in, stop the money pipeline to climate chaos, and force Wall Street to treat global warming like the crisis it is. As the IEA has made abundantly clear that starts with ensuring that not a single dollar more goes toward expanding the fossil fuel industry.

Alec Connon is the coordinator of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, a coalition of over 160 organizations working to stop the flow of money from Wall Street to the fossil fuel industry. He is also a writer. His first novel, The Activist, was published in 2016. Follow him on Twitter: @alecconnon

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Yale University

In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams; in addition, he took flying lessons.^[22]

In his sophomore year, Kerry became the Chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as President of the Union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former President of the Political Union.^[23] His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and Kennedy's New Frontier program. He was also a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society. He also traveled to Switzerland^[24] through AIESEC Yale.^[25][26]

Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation.^[27] In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating."^[28]

Kerry, viewed as a capable speaker, was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, in which he would soon participate.

[edit] Military service (1966–1970)

Main article: John Kerry's military service

[edit] Duty on the USS Gridley

On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve.^[29] He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing sixteen weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.^[30][31]

Kerry's first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS *Gridley* in 1968. The executive officer of the Gridley described the deployment as: "We deployed from San Diego to the Vietnam theatre in early 1968 after only a six-month turnaround, and spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators."

During his tour on the Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat."^[32] These 50-foot (15 m) boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war", Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."^[33] However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or "PBR", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.^[32]

On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.

[edit] Swift boat duty

On November 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 in Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. In his role as an officer in charge of Swift boats, Kerry led five-man crews on a number of patrols into enemy-controlled areas. His first command was Swift boat PCF-44, from December 6, 1968 to January 21, 1969, when the crew was disbanded. They were based at Coastal Division 13 at Cat Lo from December 13, 1968 to January 6, 1969. Otherwise, they were stationed at Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi. On January 30, 1969, Kerry took charge of PCF-94 and its crew, which he led until he departed An Thoi on March 26, 1969, and subsequently the crew was disbanded.^[34]

On January 22, 1969, Kerry and several other officers had a meeting in Saigon with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in Vietnam, and U.S. Army General Creighton Abrams, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Kerry and the other officers reported that the "free-fire zone" policy was alienating the Vietnamese and that the Swift boats' actions were not accomplishing their ostensible goal of interdicting Viet Cong supply lines. According to his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, Kerry and the other visiting officers felt their concerns were dismissed with what amounted to a pep talk (Tour of Duty, pp. 254–261).

[edit] Military honors

During the night of December 2, 1968 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.^[35]

Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. They returned to their base to refuel and were unable to return to the mission for several hours.

As the Swift boats reached the Cua Lon River, Kerry's boat was hit by a RPG round, and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, they had no more trouble, and reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.^[36] Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but like several others wounded earlier that day, he did not lose any time off from duty.^[37][38]

Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Their mission on the Duong Keo river included bringing a demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story The Death Of PCF 43.^[39] Running into an ambush, Kerry "directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire and coordinated the deployment of the South Vietnamese troops, according to the original medal citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt). Going a short distance farther, Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round; as the boat beached at the site, a VC with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the VC and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher.^[40][41][41]

Kerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, joked to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he didn't know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original medal citation signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.^[42]

On March 13, 1969, five Swift boats were returning to base together on the Bay Hap river from their missions that day, after a firefight earlier in the day (during which time Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker), and debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village. They approached a fishing weir (a series of poles across the river for hanging nets), so that one group of boats went around left, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's 94 boat went around right along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 completely into the air.^[43]

James Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.^[44]

After the crew of PCF-3 had been rescued, and the most seriously wounded sailors evacuated by two of the PCFs, PCF 94 and another boat remained behind and helped salvage the stricken boat together with a damage-control party that had been immediately dispatched to the scene.

[edit] Controversy

Main article: John Kerry military service controversy

As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 200 Vietnam veterans formed the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), subsequently renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards.

[edit] Return from Vietnam

After Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to re-assignment away from combat duties. Navy records show that Kerry's preferred choice for re-assignment was as an aide in Boston, New York or Washington, D.C.^[45]

On March 26, 1969, after a final patrol the night before, Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await his orders. He was there for five or six days and left Vietnam in early April. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970 Kerry was temporarily promoted to full Lieutenant.^[46] Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty,^[47][48] but in January, 1970, he requested early discharge in order to run for Congress the following fall. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, 1970.

John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978. Kerry lost at least five friends in the war including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, 1968.

[edit] Anti-war activism (1970–1971)

After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000,^[49] VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement.^[50]

On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He was still a member of the United States Navy Reserve, holding the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearing, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J.W. Fulbright. Kerry began with a prepared speech, in which he presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, and then went on to address larger policy issues.

The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: "I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all."^[51] The documentary film Sir! No Sir! includes archival footage of Kerry at the demonstration: he is one of several young men seen throwing things over the fence.

[edit] Media appearances

Because Kerry was a decorated veteran who took a stand against the government's official position, he was frequently interviewed by broadcast and print media. He was able to use these occasions to bring the themes of his Senate testimony to a wider audience.

For example, Kerry appeared more than once on The Dick Cavett Show on ABC television. On one Cavett program (June 30, 1971), in debating John O'Neill, Kerry argued that some of the policies instituted by the U.S. military leaders in Vietnam, such as free-fire zones and burning noncombatants' houses, were contrary to the laws of war. In the Washington Star newspaper (June 6, 1971), he recounted how he and other Swift boat officers had become disillusioned by the contrast between what the leaders told them and what they saw: "That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."

On NBC's Meet The Press in 1971, Kerry was asked whether he had personally committed atrocities in Vietnam. He responded:

“

There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

”

[edit] Operation POW

Kerry's prominence also made him a frequent leader and spokesman at antiwar events around the country in 1971. One of particular note was Operation POW, organized by the VVAW in Massachusetts. The protest got its name from the group's concern that Americans were prisoners of the Vietnam War, as well as to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam.

The event sought to tie antiwar activism to patriotic themes. Over the Memorial Day weekend, veterans and other participants marched from Concord to a rally on Boston Common. The plan was to invoke the spirit of the American Revolution and Paul Revere by spending successive nights at the sites of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, culminating in a Memorial Day rally with a public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

The second night of the march, May 29, 1971, was the occasion for Kerry's only arrest, when the participants tried to camp on the village green in Lexington. At 2:30 a.m. on May 30, 1971, local and state police awoke and arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.^[52][53][54]

Despite his role in Operation POW and other VVAW events, Kerry eventually quit the organization over leadership differences. Kerry has been criticized regarding VVAW—see John Kerry VVAW controversy for more details.

[edit] Early political career (1972–1985)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/11/101011fa_fact_lizza

...

W?hen the Obama era began, John Kerry was looking for a new political identity. Like Lieberman, he had a strained relationship with the new President. Kerry had been scheduled to endorse Obama the day after Obama’s presumed victory in the New Hampshire primary. But Obama lost, and that night he nervously called Kerry and asked, “Are you still on board?” Kerry said he was. “Ninety-nine per cent of politicians would have walked away at that moment, because our odds of winning the primaries were quite low,” Dan Pfeiffer, now Obama’s communications director, told me in a 2008 interview. “It was a huge moment.” Kerry and his aides believed that, if Obama was the President, Kerry’s endorsement would give him the inside track in the competition for the job as Secretary of State. But Obama passed him over.

Kerry, as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, could help steer the Administration’s foreign policy, but he wanted to play a big role in shaping Obama’s domestic agenda. In 2007, he had written a book about environmental activism, “This Moment on Earth,” and the issue was a rare one in which the junior senator from Massachusetts had a deeper interest than the senior senator, Ted Kennedy. For most of their quarter century together in the Senate, Kennedy was the legislator (the Americans with Disabilities Act, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, No Child Left Behind), and Kerry was the investigator (P.O.W.s in Vietnam, B.C.C.I., Iran-Contra). Now that could change. “This was Kerry’s opportunity to prove that he could be in a major, really historic piece of legislation,” Lieberman said.

At first, Kerry joined forces with Barbara Boxer, and spent months trying to find a Republican co-sponsor for her bill, which was almost a carbon copy of Waxman-Markey. In August, Rosengarten was eating lunch with Kerry’s climate-policy aide, Kathleen Frangione, at Sonoma, a Capitol Hill wine bar. Rosengarten said she had spent hours working on the nuclear legislation with Graham’s policy aide, Matthew Rimkunas, and she was shocked by something he had recently told her: Graham would have backed a climate-change bill that Lieberman had co-sponsored in 2007 if it had included the language supportive of nuclear power that they had just worked out. Kerry and Graham had to talk. Perhaps Kerry could split off from Boxer and try to work with Graham on a bipartisan bill.

Within days, Kerry and Graham were meeting in Kerry’s office to negotiate the language of a Times Op-Ed piece announcing their partnership. As they talked, Kerry suddenly found himself having to reassess his convictions on oil drilling, nuclear energy, and environmental regulations with someone he barely knew and whom he had reason not to like. In 2004, Graham had gratuitously told the Times that Kerry “has no charisma” and “doesn’t relate well to average people.” But the two men agreed that their eventual bill would have to help the nuclear industry and expand oil drilling. As they wrote the article, Graham introduced a third issue: revoking the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Kerry was furious, but he eventually relented. The Op-Ed would include language signalling to insiders that E.P.A. authority would be curtailed: “Industry needs the certainty that comes with congressional action.”

The article ran on October 11th. The next day, Graham was holding a town-hall meeting in the gym of a high school in Greenville, South Carolina. His constituents were not happy. One man accused him of “making a pact with the Devil.” Another shouted, “No principled compromise!” One audience member asked, “Why do you think it’s necessary to get in bed with people like John Kerry?” Graham, dressed in a blue blazer and khakis, paced the floor, explaining that there were only forty Republicans in the Senate, which meant that he had to work with the sixty Democrats. A man in the bleachers shouted, “You’re a traitor, Mr. Graham! You’ve betrayed this nation and you’ve betrayed this state!”

Soon afterward, Graham called Lieberman. He was concerned that Kerry might drag him too far to the left, and he knew that Lieberman, a close friend with whom he had travelled during McCain’s Presidential campaign, could serve as a moderating force. Graham may not have remembered that Kerry and Lieberman had, according to a Senate aide, “a tense personal relationship.” (Lieberman and Kerry ran against each other for President in 2004. In 2006, Kerry endorsed and campaigned for Lieberman’s Democratic opponent in his Senate race.) “I’m happy to try and negotiate a bill with Kerry,” Graham told Lieberman. “But I really want you in the room.”...

Three weeks later, Kerry and some aides were in his office discussing the progress of their bill. Someone mentioned T. Boone Pickens, the author of the so-called Pickens Plan, an energy-independence proposal centered on enormous government subsidies for natural gas, which is abundant, cleaner-burning than other fossil fuels, and sold by a Pickens-controlled corporation at some two hundred natural-gas fuelling stations across North America. Back in 2004, Pickens had helped to fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran a sleazy—and inaccurate—ad campaign proclaiming, among other things, that Kerry had lied about the circumstances that led to his Bronze Star and Purple Hearts.

Kerry had an inspiration. “I’m going to call T. Boone,” he said. Frangione was surprised. “You really want to call that guy?” she asked. Kerry told an aide to get Pickens on the phone. Minutes later, Kerry was inviting Pickens to Washington to talk. Rosengarten, who watched Kerry make the call, thought it was “a show of extraordinary leadership.” The following week, Pickens and Kerry sat in two upholstered chairs in the Senator’s office. Between them loomed a giant model of Kerry’s Vietnam swift boat. Kerry walked Pickens through the components of the bill that he and his colleagues were writing, but Pickens seemed uninterested. He had just one request: include in the climate legislation parts of a bill that Pickens had written, called the Natural Gas Act, a series of tax incentives to encourage the use of natural-gas vehicles and the installation of natural-gas fuelling stations. In exchange, Pickens would publicly endorse the bill. At the end of the meeting, the Senator shook hands with the man who had probably cost him the Presidency. Afterward, staffers in one of the K.G.L. offices started telling a joke: “What do you call a climate bill that gives Pickens everything he ever dreamed of?” “A Boonedoggle!”

...

By the end of April, about sixty thousand barrels of oil a day were flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. To many environmentalists, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was a potential turning point, a disaster that might resurrect the climate legislation. But in Washington the oil spill had the opposite effect. Kerry and Lieberman were left sponsoring a bill with a sweeping expansion of offshore drilling at a moment when the newspapers were filled with photographs of birds soaking in oil. Even worse, the lone Republican, who had written the oil-drilling section to appeal to his Republican colleagues, was gone. The White House’s “grand bargain” of oil drilling in exchange for a cap on carbon had backfired spectacularly.

For three months, a period of record-high temperatures in Washington, what was now called the Kerry-Lieberman bill was debated and discussed as if it were a viable piece of legislation, but no Republican stepped forward to support it. During one speech in early June, Obama said that he knew “the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.” He never found them, and he didn’t appear to be looking very hard.

Kerry and Lieberman abandoned their attempt to cap the emissions of the oil industry and heavy manufacturers and pared the bill back so that it would cover only the utility industry. The E.E.I. wanted even more if utilities were to be the only guinea pigs for cap-and-trade. This time, the electric companies demanded regulatory relief from non-greenhouse-gas emissions, like mercury and other poisons, as well as more free allowances. Kerry refused to discuss those pollutants, but, in what was probably the nadir of the twenty-month effort, he responded, “Well, what if we gave you more time to comply and decreased the rigor of the reduction targets?” The cap was supposed to be sacrosanct, but Kerry had put it on the table. As a participant said afterward, “The poster child of this bill is its seventeen-per-cent-reduction target. It’s the President’s position in Copenhagen. It’s equal to the House bill.” Now Kerry was saying they could go lower.

As hopes for any kind of bill faded, Kerry and Lieberman kept fighting. They met with Olympia Snowe, who, like Tantalus’ fruit tree, always seemed to be almost within their grasp. She had started talking to them about the utility-only bill, and the two senators begged her to allow them to mention her name publicly to reporters. “Can we please just say that you’re willing to have a conversation about options?” Kerry asked. “No, do not say that,” Snowe responded. Still, Kerry could not resist telling reporters that day, “Even this morning, Senator Lieberman and I had a meeting with one Republican who has indicated a willingness to begin working towards something.”

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 11/1/10 1:50 PM EDT Updated: 11/1/10 2:43 PM EDT

The late nights and lost weekends have finally caught up with Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer, who will join a downtown lobbying shop next week after spending much of the past three years writing global warming legislation on Capitol Hill.

Kathleen Frangione was Kerry’s lead aide during negotiations on the Senate cap-and-trade proposal, a job that put her in the middle of closed-door talks with Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and dozens of other offices.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44494.html#ixzz17p728lzI

Opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats ultimately killed the bill despite support from President Barack Obama and the passage of a similar measure in the House.

Starting Nov. 8, Fragione will be an executive vice president at McBee Strategic, a Washington D.C.-based lobbying and communications shop, a company official said Monday.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44494.html#ixzz17p6upszj