Canadian Fossil Fuel Industry Exploring NGO Partnerships

Earth First! Newswire

August 9, 2013

by Niko

 

It was spotted by Unist’ot’en folks: on August 11th, in Montreal, the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum will host a workshop for representatives of NGOs and mining companies, to “present perspectives, and identify potential partners on the ground.”

“This will be an opportunity to meet one another face-to-face in an informal setting,” the website says, “[and] will culminate in a “speed-dating” exercise that will allow for maximum exposure and impact.”

Workshops such as these allow incredibly toxic partnerships to come alive, capable of winning the hearts of America’s middle class while simultaneously coopting grassroots movements and stabbing communities in the back. With NGO’s playing the “good cop role,” exploitative industry becomes even more potent.

There are two days before this takes place. Please remember that, although the registration deadline has passed, anyone who decides to take autonomous action outside of the venue or covertly within the venue would have the potential to disrupt the goings-on, and potentially stop such toxic partnerships from springing up.

Just sayin’.

 

FLASHBACK | The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part II

WKOG editor: The first segment (Part I-below) of this investigative report was published on January 17, 2011. On December 13, 2011, it was quietly reported that:

 Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the 8th joint US-Russia cruise of the East Siberian Arctic seas, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said….

“In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said.

“We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some of the plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal,” he said.

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Since this the quiet release of this report, the (essentially non-existent) media coverage on the destabilizing methane hydrates should be considered that of a heavily censored topic by corporate and foundation funded media.

Part II of IV of an investigative report. [Part I: http://bit.ly/fV8slf]

The Art of Annihilation

January 17, 2011

By Cory Morningstar

Post Cancún: North America. The New Energy Kingdom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 13 December 2010 directly following the disastrous Cancún conference (“one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War” [10]), a revealing post is found on the “oilprice.com” website. The article is titled North America: The New Energy Kingdom. From the article: “Beyond shale oil and shale gas, there’s the awesome energy promise of methane hydrates, frozen crystals of water and gas that lie beneath the northern permafrost and beneath oceans floors around the world in quantities that boggle the imagination.”

“Assuming 1 per cent recovery,” the US Geological Survey says, “these deposits [in US territory] could meet the natural gas needs of the country (at current rates of consumption) for 100 years.” The obstructionist corporate-colluded states – the ones responsible for climate change in the first place – have no intention of going to zero carbon in the single decade as direly warned by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) in 2009 – what is necessary for the world to avoid reaching and exceeding a global catastrophic 2ºC. They have no intention of going to zero, ever, until the Earth is literally drilled to death – or we annihilate humanity. Whichever comes first.

NASA Has Known All Along

As we work like the busy little worker proles we are, amusing ourselves with irrelevant trivia and nonsense, the global power structures that form the plutocracy have long understood our future demise at the expense of an insatiable economy – and have kept silent. In a 2007 NASA report titled Methane Hydrates: More Than a Viable Aviation Fuel Feedstock Option, NASA unequivocally states that it is not a matter of if the methane from hydrates escapes, rather it is only a matter of when: “The unabated release of methane sequestered in these hydrates could impact the planet to the point of extinction of life as we understand it. Considering the predicted Earth thermal events, the stability of methane hydrates, and the impact of methane on the environment, the question is not will this methane be released, but when. It is suggested in this report that enhanced efforts be placed on a comprehensive program to locate, assess, and recover the sequestered methane at surface levels to meet the energy demand rather than permitting natural release into the environment.” The report later states, “Still, the world energy producers and consumers are encouraged to turn to the Sun and learn to capture, store, condition, and transmit that energy to meet energy needs and to maintain planetary stability.” Fat chance. Corporations would only be interested in the sun if they could drill it. →

“It’s a White Man’s World” – Your Exclusive Daily Dose of Reality. Raw. Unedited. Uncomfortable.

 

Above: Tom Russo (Vice President-GS Electronic Trading Goldman Sachs 1999-June 2013, Vice President-Global Execution Services at Merrill Lync June 2013 to present), Amy Brandt, Rex Tillerson (CEO of Exxon Mobil), Denise Benmosche, and Mark Angelson (Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, the Chicago Club and the Pilgrims (London and NYC). The Institute of International Education (IIE) held its 90th Anniversary Gala Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and honored ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Maestro Lorin Maazel and the Founders of the Iran Opportunities Fund. “IIE is involved in many different aspects of international educational exchange, from administering the flagship Fulbright program for the U.S. Department of State, to rescuing scholars in danger, to working with corporations and foundations to support global leadership by investing in human capital.” [Emphasis added.]Photo credit: Patrick McMullan, September 23, 2009 | Note: *The Iran “Opportunities” Fund operates under the auspices of the IIE.

by Forrest Palmer, WKOG Collective

July 22, 2013

For today’s proof that this is ‘a white man’s world’ before anything else and that it is to the detriment of all living creatures on Earth, I provide Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil. Exxon Mobil is the most profitable corporation on the planet with revenues of $44.9 billion in the 2012 fiscal year.  As a modern day version of Standard Oil, the company’s coffers begin to fill from the moment oil is drilled out of the ground to the end user filling up his or her gas tank every morning on the way to a job, the symbol of enslavement under the current capitalist system.  Although Rex Tillerson is reminiscent of John D. Rockefeller, the CEO of Standard Oil and at one time the richest man in the world, in sitting at the helm of such a profitable company, a more apt comparison may be of Captain Ahab on a perpetual quest for the white wale Moby Dick, which will lead to Ahab’s ultimate demise.  The white wale in this real life story is man’s conquering the physical Earth through the holy grail of infinite energy extraction that is only a dreamlike illusion and on the way to quickly turning into a nightmare for us all.  The same myopic search infused with madness of which Ahab was guilty is the life’s work of Tillerson and the men like him who are in the midst of leading us all down a path of inevitable destruction. →

WATCH: WWF SILENCE OF THE PANDAS | A Journey into the Heart of the Green Empire

Above: Three of many individuals creating mass-misery and ecological devastation via WWF. Clockwise: Dr Hector Laurence – WWF Argentina (also president of Agricultural Association AIMA and Director of two GMO companies (Morgan Seeds & Pioneer), Dörte Bieler – WWF spokesperson for Germany, Jason Clay – Senior Vice President, Market Transformation.

The WWF is the largest environmental protection organisation in the world. Trust in its “green projects” is almost limitless. Founded on September 11, 1961, it is the most influential lobby group for the environment in the world, thanks largely to its elitist contacts in both the political and industrial spheres and to its ability to walk a constant tightrope between commitment and venality.

This film will dispel the green image of the WWF however. Behind the organisation’s eco-façade, the documentary maker uncovered explosive stories from all around the world. This documentary reveals the secrets of the WWF. It is a journey into the heart of the green empire that will hopefully shatter public faith in such so-called conservation groups forever. [Synopsis below video.]

A film by Wilfried Huismann, Germany, 2011

Synopsis:

The WWF, the most famous and powerful environmental organization worldwide, is facing accusations of working too closely with industries that destroy the environment and of ‘greenwashing’ dubious companies. The Fund allegedly collaborates with companies that deforest jungles, displace farmers, destroy the habitat of animals and contaminate the environment, German journalist and documentary maker Wilfried Huismann reveals. →

The (Illusory) Green Economy – A Critical Analysis by Dr.Joanna Boehnert

The work of environmental scientists supporting the UN’s GEP will give scientific authority the project, but the important decisions will have already been made. The project is a deepening commitment to neoliberal free markets. On a macroeconomic level “the subordination of social and environmental considerations to macroeconomic policy imperatives” is the fundamental basis of neoliberalism (Nadal, 2012, p.15). Once “macroeconomic objectives are determined, every other policy target is chiseled in accordance” (Ibid., p. 15). The lessons of the recent economic crisis in regards to the fallibility of the financial sector are entirely ignored.

 

The architects of the project have failed to acknowledge the most expansive systemic dynamics of capitalism and ignored the political and historic context. Despite claims by the UNEP, the UN’s GEP is not policy neutral (Ibid., p. 23).

 

The UN’s GEP is supported by the financial and corporate sectors because they recognize the programme as a continuation of the neoliberal model, an expansion of the scope of market and also an exceptional opportunity to create entirely new financial instruments. Similarly to the financial deregulation that set up conditions for the dramatic plunder of public wealth during the current economic crisis, the UN’s GEP establishes new markets that will lead to new avenues for financial speculation. The speculative bubble during the 2008-2009 period has been estimated to cost governments globally at least $12 trillion (Conway quoting IMF, 2009) leaving several bankrupt national governments and severe economic austerity in its wake. This is the context in which the UN’s GEP is operating. The designers of the project have closely aligned themselves to the same financial institutions that played leading roles in the economic crisis.

 

Meanwhile, scientific institutions, environmental NGOs and government agencies are working to build institutional infrastructure to give scientific authority to the UN’s GEP. …The historical critique of capitalism presented by John Bellamy Foster (2002) and others describes that the appropriation of the commons is an integral aspect of capitalism. Capitalism is always looking for new means of producing profit from activities that were otherwise not managed through commodity relationships.

 

The Indigenous People’s Kari-Oca 2 Declaration describes the UN’s GEP as ‘a continuation of colonialism… a perverse attempt by corporations, extractive industries and governments to cash in on Creation by privatizing, commodifying and selling off the Sacred and all forms of life and the sky’ (2012, p.1-2). The programme of re-visioning of the commons as sets of commodities ripe for exploitation is diametrically contrary to the environmental rhetoric used to sell the project. →

Publication: Communications in Conflict

“As an introduction to the topic of netwar, Communications in Conflict is uniquely suited to serve as a touchstone for those who, like the Zapatista of Chiapas, Mexico, realize the connection between intelligent communications and networked power.”

 

A Project of Intercontinental Cry and Public Good Project under the Creative Direction of Wrong Kind of Green.

In Communications in Conflict, IC Editorial Advisor and Columnist Jay Taber describes the effective communications devices used in netwar, revealing a communications strategy that works. Through interviews, research and analysis over the course of two decades, he conveys lessons from which anyone committed to human rights and Indigenous rights struggles, can benefit.

Link for download: http://intercontinentalcry.org/publications/communications-in-conflict/

 

FLASHBACK | Communique from COP

This pockmarked daybreak
Dawn gripped by night,
This is not that much-awaited light
For which friends set out filled with hope
– Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Many arrived in Durban with high hopes. They hoped that the sheer urgency of climate change, especially in Africa, would persuade world leaders and their representatives to take the necessary action to avert global catastrophe. They hoped that dissent inside the meetings would pressure the big polluters to atone for their sins. And they hoped that civil society on the outside would mobilize to change the course of history. Such hopes will haunt us all in the years to come, as we come to grips with the collective atrocity that was COP17. →

Wasted Energy: Fossil Fuel Divestment

Intercontinental Cry

June 16, 2013

By Jay Taber

Essential Summer Reading | Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent

Democracy was once considered a dangerous new idea and a threat to ruling elites. It brought to mind fearful images of oppressed masses demanding social and political equality. Fast forward to today and democracy is a key method by which the inequality and injustices of capitalism are legitimated and popular consent engineered. Despite the fact that capitalism can tolerate neither equal access to decision-making or truly open dissent, and in fact prioritises profit-making above all social or environmental concerns, we are nonetheless persuaded to believe that capitalism is, or at least can be, democratic. Now a new book – published by Corporate Watch* – uncovers how this contradiction is sustained, and the anti-democratic rule of capitalism protected. →

Working for Warren: Corporate Greens

 

Intercontinental Cry

June 4, 2013

By Jay Taber