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As an 18-year-old undergraduate student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Barack Obama was among a coterie of students who spoke regularly with Lawrence Goldyn. Goldyn, an openly gay political science professor who served as a mentor and friend to many of the school’s minority students, said Obama joined him and other students in discussions about social and political issues at a time when Obama was beginning to develop an interest in politics and civil rights causes. “He was one of those usual, straight young men who was secure enough in his sexuality that he was not fearful of being...

In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the country to take a job that he didn't fully understand. But, while he knew little about his new vocation--community organizer--it still had a romantic ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. With his old classmates from Columbia, he had talked frequently about political change. Now, he was moving to Chicago to put that talk into action. His 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts his idealistic effusions: "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks....

He Graduated Without Honors. Senator Obama's life story, from his humble roots, to his rise to Harvard Law School, to his passion as a community organizer in Chicago, has been at the center of his presidential campaign. But one chapter of the tale remains a blank — his education at Columbia College, a place he rarely speaks about and where few people seem to remember him. Contributing to the mystery is the fact that nobody knows just how well Mr. Obama... performed as a student. The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript... The Obama campaign declined to...

LONG BEACH - A bill by Assemblywoman Betty Karnette, D-Long Beach, could lead to the discovery and extraction of additional oil from the Wilmington Oil Field beneath the harbor and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into city, port and state coffers, officials said Wednesday. Assembly Bill 2165 would allow the State Lands Commission to negotiate a contract with the city and Occidental Petroleum Corp. to search for reserves and open new wells in the western end of the nation's third-largest oil field. The agreement could mean an estimated $130 million to the city, $150 million to the port and...

Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive took in more than $400 million in compensation last year, the company said in a filing, one of the biggest single-year payouts in US corporate history. The largest part of Ray Irani's 2006 payout was $270.2 million from the exercise of options awarded from 1997 to 2006, representing more than 7.1 million shares, according to the company's annual proxy statement, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March. Irani also received $93.3 million in stock and dividends from a deferred stock program when the company closed the plan in October...

Jason Antebi can be offensive. There's no way around it. When Antebi attended Occidental College, from 2000 to 2004, he ticked off many of his fellow students. Antebi was a conservative member of the Occidental Student Government and a Howard Stern-type disk jockey on the Occidental student station. His political opponents, in a failed effort to recall him from his student government position, called him a "racist" and "anti-Semite" (Antebi is Jewish); his door was defaced with the words "You're a f---ing racist"; he was accused of "sexually harassing women." Antebi registered complaints with the Occidental administration; the administration did...

HOUSTON (MarketWatch) -- Asserting that state oil firm Petroecuador (PCD.YY) lacks the competence to successfully maintain oil output, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) on Thursday asked an international arbitration court to reinstate the U.S. company on the Ecuadorean field and award it $1 billion. Any attempt by Petroecuador to operate the field "would certainly diminish the productivity of the block and damage the block's wells irreparably," Occidental said in a claim to the World Bank's International Center for Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C. The claim was posted Thursday afternoon on Occidental's Web site. Also, if Ecuador's government grants the concession to...

Ecuador yesterday joined the wave of Latin American governments targeting foreign-owned industries when it fulfilled its threat against an American oil company and took "full technical control" of its operations.The offices and installations of Occidental Petroleum were occupied by soldiers earlier this week, provoking a furious response by Washington. But yesterday, a Petroecuador official announced: "We are in control of Occidental's technical operations." State oil officials are expected to replace Occidental executives running oil fields in the Amazon region. While the government of President Alfredo Palacio denied the seizure was part of a wider move to nationalise oil deposits in...

NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is seeking damages totaling more than $1 billion as part of an arbitration claim against the Ecuadorean government for seizing its assets, a company spokesman said on Thursday. The U.S. oil producer has also terminated all local employees in Ecuador and is relocating its expatriate staff, the spokesman said.

Venezuela and Mexico are among the potential strategic partners for joint operations in the fields that used to be developed by oil corporation Oxy. The corporate agreement to drill oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon was made null and void, the Ecuadorian Government disclosed Tuesday. "There is the possibility of forming a strategic alliance with a state company, as set forth in the regulations," Ecuadorian Minister of Energy Iván Rodríguez said. Additionally, there is the possibility of "contracting directly a state company of a foreign country to reinforce technically Petroproducción. The subsidiary of state oil company Petroecuador will be responsible for...

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuadorean President Alfredo Palacio sent troops to guard oil facilities seized from Occidental Petroleum Corp. as they are transferred to state control, officials said Tuesday. But officials said the cancellation of Occidental's operating contracts and the seizure of its assets did not mean the Andean nation is nationalizing its oil industry. snip The Bush administration responded to the measure by breaking off negotiations on a free trade agreement with Ecuador.

Ecuadorean President Alfredo Palacio sent troops to guard oil facilities seized from Occidental Petroleum Corp. as they are transferred to state control, officials said Tuesday. But officials said the cancellation of Occidental's operating contracts and the seizure of its assets did not mean the Andean nation is nationalizing its oil industry. Defence Minister Oswaldo Jarrin told reporters late Tuesday that Mr. Palacio issued a decree directing the soldiers, who started arriving to the oil fields earlier in the day, “to provide protection and safekeeping” for up to 60 days “of all hydrocarbon complexes” formerly held by the U.S.-based oil company....

Excerpt - QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuador's Energy Minister said on Monday the government would revoke a contract held by Occidental Petroleum and strip the U.S. company of its assets in South America's fifth biggest oil producer. "We accept the demand and petition of Petroecuador (the state oil company) and the country's attorney general and declare the annulment of the contract," Minister Ivan Rodriguez told reporters. The long-running legal row with Occidental has sparked repeated protests by indigenous groups and poor Amazon regions demanding the government expel the company and introduce reforms giving the poor more benefits from oil revenues....

Swastikas for Campus ConservativesBy Jason AntebiFrontPageMagazine.com | December 9, 2005 Occidental College in Los Angeles may epitomize what’s wrong in higher education. Professors cancel class to encourage their students to attend a protest against the “Bush Regime,” campus leaders are forced into mandatory “diversity/sensitivity training,” and some far-Left students seem to believe that a liberal arts education consists of little more than painting a portrait of Bill Clinton. Tuition money – in excess of $40,000 per pupil – is wasted on courses such as "The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie" and “Stupidity,” a mandatory course for some freshmen, which compares incidents...

Occidental stock has gone from $50 to $80 in a year. Gore owned $500,000 worth in 2000. Anybody know what it would be worth today. I saw an article that says that Occidental just re-entered Libya for exploration and production purposes.

Occidental Petroleum Corp says it has become the first US oil company to resume production in Libya since the US imposed economic sanctions nearly two decades ago over the country's alleged support to terrorism. The Los Angeles-based company has won Libyan permission, effective 1 July, to take over operations from wells that have been producing 12,000 to 15,000 barrels of oil a day, the company said on Friday. Occidental was forced to leave Libya in 1986 when US sanctions were imposed, and management of the wells was turned over to a subsidiary of Libya's National Oil Corp. Occidental received no...

John Kerry's Fellow TravellersA 5--part series exposing John Kerry's Communist connections.Part 5: John Kerry vs. the War on Terror: Candidate Kerry's Subversive CampaignBy Fedora *NOTE: The term “fellow traveller" as used in this article series refers to someone who is not a member of the Communist Party (CP) but regularly engages in actions which advance the Party's program. Some apparent fellow travellers may actually be “concealed party members": members of the CP who conceal their membership. Which of these classifications is applicable to the Kerrys is a question this series leaves unresolved. This series does not argue for any direct...

The new commander of the Colombian army has already made a formidable New Year's resolution: capture or kill at least one of the top seven commanders of Colombia's main rebel group within a year, or resign. Gen. Martin Orlando Carreno said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press that if U.S. troops managed to find Saddam Hussein in a hostile, foreign land, Colombian troops should be able to track down rebel commanders in their own homeland something they have not done in four decades. "They found Saddam in a hole, like a rat," the battle-hardened Carreno said Thursday as...

The Department of Energy and Occidental Petroleum Corporation today concluded the largest divestiture of federal property in the history of the U.S. government. In a Washington, D.C., ceremony, Secretary of Energy Federico Peña and Occidental Oil & Gas Chief Executive David Hentschel signed final papers for the sale of the United States' interest in the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve to Occidental. Early today, Occidental executed a wire transfer of $3.65 billion to the U.S. Treasury. In return, the U.S. Government recorded a deed in the Kern County (CA) Courthouse, transferring title to the property which had been in government...

It seems that the SEC is probing everyone these days, why did we hear so little about SEC probes under Clinton? Is there data available suggesting that the Bush administration has been more agressive with the SEC than Clinton?