Power Shift Away From Green Illusions

“The modern environmental movement has rolled over to become an outlet for loggers, energy firms and car companies to plug into. It is now primarily a social media platform for consumerism, growth and energy production – an institutionalized philanderer of green illusions. If you need evidence, just go to any climate rally and you’ll see a strip mall of stands for green products, green jobs and green energy. These will do nothing to solve the crisis we face, which is not an energy crisis but rather a crisis of consumption.”

Truthout

April 8, 2013

Interview by Steve Horn

Every day, the news about climate change and the harms that are sure to accompany it gets worse and worse. To many environmentalists, the answer is simple: power shift. That is, shift from fossil fuels to clean, green, renewable, alternative energy. Well-meaning concerned citizens and activists have jumped on the bandwagon. →

North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus Credibility Issue

WKOG editor: As a side note, Amazon Watch, like many NGOs are created as incubator projects by foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller in order to shape, manage and control movements, as well as dissent. According to Wikipedia: “Founded in 1996, Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. It works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.” What Wikipedia does not tell you is the fact that Ford “gave a grant, beginning January 12, 1987, to the Brazilian Foundation for the Conservation of Nature (BFCN), the oldest, most establishment-connected conservation group in Brazil which had also gotten funds from WWF U.S. since 1983. The Ford Foundation said BFCN hired Mallas “as a member of the project staff.” She was listed as the co-ordinator of a meeting that was to plan an organization called “Amazon Watch”. The grant ($22,850) was later reduced to $16,000, which covered the actual expenditures: it came from Ford’s Rural Poverty and Resources Division, the section later run by Peter May who went on to work with Clay, Groeneveld, the Body Shop, et al. The BFCN was headed in 1987 by Admiral Ibsen De Gusmao Camara, who acted as the liaison with Ford Foundation on the Amazon Watch project. The admiral’s term as president of BFCN  ended in the fall of 1987. The new president fired everyone the admiral had hired.” [Source: Cloak of Green: The Links between Key Environmental Groups, Government and Big Business by Elaine Dewar (Jan 1 1995)] – Another example of a popular incubator project that operates under the guise of “grassroots” is Rockefellers’ 1Sky/350.org. 

Intercontinental Cry

May 3, 2013

By Jay Taber

On the NAIPC listserv this week, Robert Free Galvan asks some important questions of the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus and the elite indigenous lobbyists who manipulate it to conform to the UN colonial model. He interestingly asks about the funding of such lobbying from notorious foundations as Ford. →

Boreal Forest Agreement With Industry: Not One Hectare Of Forest Has Been Protected In Three Years

The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement” (CBFA) was reached on 18 May 2010. Photograph: Richard Brooks/Greenpeace/EPA.

“Efforts to control corporations’ destructive impacts must have a critique of corporate power at their heart and a will to dismantle corporate power as their goal, otherwise they reinforce rather than challenge power structures, and undermine popular struggles for autonomy, democracy, human rights and environmental sustainability” – Corporate Watch [Britain] →

Getting It Right: Hugo Chávez and the “Arab Spring”

Zero Anthropology

Some opening vignettes might set the right tone for properly appreciating the question of “who was right” about the so-called Arab Spring. (The notion of there having been an “Arab Spring,” a term first coined by U.S. neoconservatives such as Charles Krauthammer back in 2005, is one that has been subject to radically diverse interpretations, from marking in generic terms some sort of struggle for “freedom” and “democracy” [as if there is only one kind of democracy], to views of a covertly directed process of U.S. political intervention, and direct military intervention. Nonetheless, this article is aimed at those who, even now, are still enchanted with the positive aura of the Arab Spring idea.) As usual, my focus will be on Libya. →

USAID’s Dubious Allies in Paraguay

Graffiti in Asunción (Natalia Viana)

Agência Pública | AGÊNCIA DE REPORTAGEM E JORNALISMO INVESTIGATIVO

07.04.13 | Por Natalia Viana: Para justificar assistência militar à ditadura, EUA diziam que tortura era exceção

by Natalia Viana

April 10, 2013  | The Nation

In the usually tranquil streets of Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, there is a growing sense of unease. The death of retired general and presidential candidate Lino Oviedo in February, in a suspicious helicopter crash, has heightened the tension marking an already fraught transition following the impeachment of the left-leaning President Fernando Lugo last June. On city walls, graffiti demands an answer to the question “Que pasó en Curuguaty?”—the rallying cry at a protest of 5,000 people last December, which refers to the rural border region where a clash between police forces and landless peasants culminated in the death of seventeen people (eleven civilians and six policemen) last year. The tragedy, which took place just one week before Lugo’s impeachment, was seized upon by his opponents, who pushed for his ouster on the grounds that the president had fomented “the fight between rich and poor” by holding talks with peasant leaders. As Paraguay prepares to elect a new president on April 21, a growing number of citizens believe that answering the question of what happened in Curuguaty is the key to the truth behind Lugo’s impeachment. →

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse | Part I

Counterpunch

April 12, 2013

Part one of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

Keystone XL Investigative Report Series [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV

Tar Sands Action & the Paralysis of a Movement – Investigative Report Series [Further Reading, September, 2011]: Part I • Part II  [Obedience – A New Requirement for the “Revolution”] • Part III [ Unravelling the Deception of a False Movement]

Gloat Like Rockefeller When Watching Trains

 

“Buffett Says Gloat Like Rockefeller When Watching Train”  – March 5, 2013

 

On Nov 3, 2009, Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of Warren Buffett, announced its plan to purchase the 77.4 percent of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) that it did not already own for $26 billion in cash and stock – the largest deal in Berkshire history. The deal, which included Berkshire’s prior investment and the assumption of $10 billion in Burlington Northern debt, brought the total value to $44 billion. Buffett remarked it was a big bet on the United States.

It was TO be a bet that both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, would ensure he DID not lose.

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett →

On Defenders of the Land, Patriarchy and Pacifism

April 1, 2013

 Enaemaehkiw Ó Conchobhair Keshena

Firstly, sorry for the long gap between updates. i have been out of the country for almost a week now and before that was busy moving, so i have not had much time or ability to put up new articles. In this time though i have been thinking on many things, and discussing them with comrads. One particular topic that has stuck out has been the recent joint call for a “Sovereignty Summer” by the petty bourgeois, reformist, academic/professional “official leadership” of IdleNoMore and the ostensibly grassroots onkwehón:we organization Defenders of the Land. →

Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests in DC

The Post-Modern Protest Blues

Counterpunch

The Right Direction

Elder Indigenous woman takes part in march for world peace in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico. The Indigenous Peoples’ march was led by Bishop Felipe Arizmendi on March 14, 2003, days before the U.S. began its “official” bombing of Iraq. Chiapas, Mexico 2003 photo: Langelle/GJEP

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Apr 11, 2013

The Deeply Distorted ‘Syria Deeply’

“Sites like Syria Deeply & Storyful need to be exposed for what they are –minions of an imperial mindset that act as the propaganda arm for the military industrial complex and profit on war & suffering. Any aid group that aligns with this is either deeply delusional or capitalising on obscene atrocities.”

April 11, 2013,

Lisa Inti, Wrong Kind of Green Critical Thinking Collective

Syria Deeply launched on March 12, 2012. It describes itself as “an independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists, exploring a new model of storytelling around a global crisis.” The word ‘independent’ appears to be a loose and vague term these days. Various members of the Syria Deeply team have been involved in ABC News, Bloomberg Television, the International Herald Tribune, the Business Insider, Monocle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, ABC and PBS. Deborah Amos, the senior editorial advisor is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. →