Accomplishments of Eleven Years of the “Process of Change” in Evo Morales’ Bolivia

January 4, 2018

by Stansfield Smith

Evo Morales will soon have been the president of Bolivia for 12 years, heralding the ascent of the indigenous social movements to governmental power. This ended the apartheid system against the indigenous that existed for 500 years in Bolivia. Evo won in 2005 with 53.7% of the vote, followed by re-elections in 2009 with 64.2% and 2014 with 61.3%.

The country has made great strides in economic development, national sovereignty, women’s and Original Peoples’ rights, respect for Mother Earth, raising the people’s standard of living, level of education, and health care.

His presidency, which has brought an era of relative social peace and economic growth, has been the longest in Bolivia’s history. Since 1825 Bolivia has had 83 presidents with 37, almost half, by means of coup d’etats. Previous presidents typically lacked social legitimacy, representing a political system that excluded participation of the indigenous peoples, plagued by social and economic inequality, subjugated to foreign interests, and complicit with the looting of natural resources. By 2002, after years of neoliberal regimes serving foreign, mostly US corporations, the proportion of the rural population living in extreme poverty had risen to 75%.

The election of Evo, a campesino movement leader and head of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), began what his government describes as the “Process of Change” that shifted power away from Bolivia’s traditional elite, the mostly white owners of industry and agriculture, and towards the majority, the mostly indigenous workers and campesinos.

Reflecting on the historic significance of the changes underway in Bolivia, Morales declared: “We are the indigenous blood of Mother Earth. Until now Bolivia has been ruled by a few families that have all the political and economic power. They despise, humiliate, marginalize and hate the majority of the indigenous population.” “After 525 years of colonization, we indigenous peoples are part of the construction of a new Plurinational State and we have full particpation in international political organizations and forums.”

Why Has Economic Development Been so Successful During the Process of Change

The MAS government undertook an anti-neoliberal program, which has enabled the economy to grow an average 5% per year since 2006, compared to 2.8% during the years 1951-2005. As a result, the Gross Domestic Product has grown four-fold from $9 billion in 2005 to $36 billion today. Bolivia has become the fastest growing economy in Latin America.

Economic strategy focused on regaining national sovereignty over the country’s natural resources and using this wealth not to enrich foreign multinationals but to raise the standard of living of the neglected people of Bolivia. In 2006 Evo Morales asserted public ownership over the country’s gas and oil resources, making foreign companies turn over extractive industry resources to the state. The state now fully controls sales, transport and distribution as well as key decisions regarding the extraction and refining of raw materials. The nationalization decree also forced foreign oil companies to renegotiate contracts with the new administration. Today, foreign corporations still extract most of Bolivia’s natural gas, but do so as contractors hired by the state, on the state’s terms.

Prior to the nationalizations (not only of gas and oil, but telecommunications, water, electricity, and a number of mines), foreign corporations pocketed about 85% of the profits generated by natural gas production. Morales increased the country’s profit share from gas from about 15% before his presidency to between 80-90%.[i] In 2005, before nationalization, government gas revenues totaled $0.6 billion; in 2015 it was over four times as much, $2.6 billion – in fact down from $4.5 billion in 2014.

In 2015 all gas and oil revenues yielded $4 billion, making up nearly half of Bolivia’s export earnings.

Over ten years, Evo’s Bolivia has gained $31.5 billion from the nationalizations, compared to a mere $2.5 billion earned during the previous ten years of neoliberal policies. This vastly increased revenue, largely used to benefit the people, starkly exemplifies the extent the people have been robbed to serve foreign corporate interests.

By the end of 2013 the state-owned portion of the economy reached 35%, double that of previous neoliberal governments. The state has become the main generator of wealth, and public investment amounted to over $5 billion in 2016, compared to a mere $629 million in 2006. Much of this new revenue funds the country’s impressive development, infrastructure, community projects, such as schools, gyms, clinics, roads, and subsidies for agricultural production. It is spent on the people’s health and education, on price controls for staple foods, on wage increases, and social security benefits.

This humane redistribution of national wealth away from corporate interests to serving the poor majority has allowed one in five Bolivians, two million people, to escape a life of poverty. Even the World Bank has recognized the country as world champion in income growth for the poorest 40% of its population.

In the US, the government is taking the opposite course, turning its back on the poor. Here the poverty has grown over the same period, from 12.3% to 12.7%.[ii] Vacant homes number 18,600,000 – enough for each homeless person to have 6. The government cut food stamps by $8.7 billion in 2014, cut 500,000 poor from the program in 2016, with plans to slash $19.3 billion per year for ten years. Yet Washington increases the military budget this year by $80 billion, an amount that could make public college free.

For Bolivia to industrialize and diversify the economy, to move away from dependence on natural resource exports, is a difficult long-term task. The country did create 485,000 jobs in the productive sector between 2006-2010, and developed industries to process natural resources.[iii] It advanced significantly its agricultural production, now providing 95% of the country’s food. Yet raw materials still account for 90% of Bolivia’s exports.

Big investments are underway in infrastructure construction, hydrocarbon exploration, industrialization of natural gas (for fertilizers and plastics), more lithium production, and electric power for export. “Here we have the presence of China, with cooperation without pre-conditions, with credit without conditions,” Evo Morales said, contrasting Chinese aid to Western aid.

New Social Programs to Eliminate Poverty

In Bolivia under Evo, poverty has declined from 60.6% of the population in 2005 to 38.6% in 2016. Extreme poverty (those living on less than $1.25 per day) fell from 38% to 16.8%. The real minimum wage has risen from 440 bolivars a month to 2,000 a month, (from $57 to $287) Unemployment stands at under 4%, the lowest in Latin America, down from 8.5% in 2005.

Here are some of the measures to combat poverty:

Electricity has been brought to 66% of rural homes by 2015, up from 25% in 2001.
Over 127,000 homes have been created for low income Bolivians who lack housing. Another 23,000 homes will be built in 2018.
The Juancito Pinto program aims to increase school attendance and reduce child labor. It presently reaches 2 million children, who each receive $28 annually upon finishing their school year.
The Juana Azurduy program combats maternal and infant mortality, as well as malnutrition in children under two years old. Mothers can receive up to $266 from the program. UNICEF has pointed out the effectiveness of these social programs. Chronic undernourishment in children under wo has sharply fallen from 27%, when the program started in 2009 to 16% now, and infant mortality has been cut in half just since 2008.
The Renta de la Dignidad is a payment to the 900,000 Bolivians over 60 years old, who would otherwise receive no pension. Incapacitated and disabled people now receive 250 bolivianos ($36) monthly and guaranteed job placement in public and private institutions.

More than 4.8 million Bolivians – in a country of just over 10 million – today benefit from these programs, progams which not just combat poverty, but improve public health and education.

Meanwhile in the US the bottom 90% of households are poorer today than they were in 1987.

Bolivia has cut income inequality by two-thirds, with the share of income of the top 10% vis-à-vis the poorest 10% has dropped from 128 to 1 in 2005 to 37 to 1 in 2016.

In the US, after years of neoliberal programs, we have the shocking fact that the three richest US citizens have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population.

Gains for Rights of Original Peoples

The country, after a national discussion initiated by Bolivia’s five main indigenous campesino organizations, adopted a new constitution. The new document recognized Bolivia as a Plurinational State, with equal status and autonomy for Original Peoples, and also reclaimed control over natural resources. The new government has even established a Ministry of Decolonization (with a Depatriarchalization Unit) to further the uprooting of the previous apartheid system. By 2011, 90 of the 166 elected representatives of the national assembly came directly from the ranks of the progressive social movements. [iv]

Gains in Education and Health Care

Bolivia had an illiteracy rate of 13% when Evo Morales became president. After a mass literacy campaign that used Cuba’s YES I CAN program, 850,000 were educated and by 2008 Bolivia was declared free of illiteracy. The country is second to Cuba in Latin America in terms of funding education. There are now 16,000 educational establishments in the country, 4,500 of them were built since 2006 with the funds from the nationalized gas industry.

Life expectancy of Bolivians during Evo’s presidency has increased from 64 years to 71 years. This is partly the result of the almost 700 members of the Cuban medical brigade working in the country. Cuba’s Operation Miracle has also enabled 676,000 Bolivians to have had their vision restored. Moreover, around 5,000 Bolivians have obtained their medical degrees in Cuba, going back to their country to provide their services. The country now has 47 new hospitals and over 3,000 health centers being built.

Land Distribution and Food Self-Sufficiency

Before Evo became president, 5% of property owners owned 70% of the arable land.[v] From 2006-2010 over 35 million hectares of land (1/3^rd of Bolivia), was handed over to Original Peoples’ peasant communities to be run communally. This included government lands, large estates, and forest. Another 21 million hectares previously occupied illegally by large landowners were declared public lands, mostly protected forests.[vi] The land reform law expropriated underutilized lands, and permitted seizure of property from landowners employing forced labor or debt peonage. In all, approximately 800,000 low-income peasants have benefited. Of those who received titles to their land, 46% have been women. For the first time since the European conquest, smallholders control 55% of all land. The government ensures that these small producers receive preferential access to equipment, supplies, loans, and state subsidized markets, key factors in enabling the country to become self-sufficient in food.

US Interference and Regime Change Attempts

As John Perkins points out in Confessions of an Economic Hitman, any government pursuing anti-neoliberal economic policies or its own foreign policy independent of the US, as the case with Rafael Correa’s Ecuador and Evo’s Bolivia, becomes a US target for overthrow.

Evo Morales has become one of Washington’s most disfavored leaders in the Americas. Washington continues to be concerned about Evo revolutionizing the indigenous movements in the region, and tries to tarnish his reputation as an indigenous movement leader.

Wikileaks documents show that the US tried to undermine the presidencies of Evo Morales and Rafael Correa even before they were elected. Right after Evo’s inauguration, the US ambassador made it clear to him that funding by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and IMF depended on his “good behavior,” [vii] that is: back off nationalizing Bolivia’s petroleum resources. When Morales rejected these “orders,” including naming government ministers and military leaders without seeking prior US embassy consent, Washington began financing Bolivian opposition groups seeking to overthrow the indigenous government.

Washington used USAID, NED [National Endowment for Democracy], IDB, World Bank, and IMF, to take punitive measures such as vetoing multilateral loans, postponing talks on alleviating Bolivia’s foreign debts, and discouraging international loans and grants. US Ambassador Greenlee wrote in a cable, in January 2006, just months after Morales’ election, “U.S. assistance, the largest of any bilateral donor by a factor of three, is often hidden by our use of third parties to dispense aid with U.S. funds.” He noted “many USAID-administered economic programs run counter to the direction the GOB [Government of Bolivia] wishes to move the country.”

US embassy cables showed Washington sought to create divisions in the social and indigenous movements that make up the support base of the country’s first indigenous-led government. Despite recognizing these were “traditionally confrontational organizations” vis-a-vis the US, Greenlee believed that “working more closely with these social sector representatives” who expressed dissent towards Morales “seems to be most beneficial to [US government] interests”.

USAID poured at least $85 million into Bolivia. Initially, the US hoped to destabilize the government by training the separatists in the richer Santa Cruz area in the eastern lowlands. USAID money flowed to groups in these opposition-based areas, as part of “USAID’s larger effort to strengthen regional governments as a counter-balance to the central government.” [viii]

Soon these eastern regions, the Media Luna, were in open rebellion, demanding a referendum on autonomy. Resulting protests led to the killing of at least 20 MAS supporters who had mobilized to crush the rebellion. The separatists’ goal was to divide Bolivia into two separate republics: a poor one governed by an indigenous majority and a much wealthier one run by European descendants in the areas home to the gas transnationals and large agribusiness.

The US never denounced opposition violence, not even after the massacre of the MAS supporters. Moreover, the US Embassy knew in advance of the opposition plans to blow up gas lines, but did not report it, nor even attempt to dissuade the opposition from doing so.[ix]

Evo was soon to expel US Ambassador Goldberg for his interference. Nevertheless, USAID “still channeled at least $200 million into the country since 2009.” USAID was eventually expelled in 2013.

Once the Media Luna separatist plan collapsed,[x] USAID switched to courting indigenous communities by using environmental NGOs. The Aymaras – Evo is one — and Quechuas, Bolivia’s two largest indigenous peoples, live mostly in the highlands and central regions. The east is home to the remaining 34 indigenous peoples. In 2011 new anti-government protests in the east again arose, this time around a planned TIPNIS highway.

Protests against the Government around the TIPNIS (Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory)

The Bolivian government planned to build a highway — actually to widen, pave and connect two roads with a 20-40 mile new connector — going through the TIPNIS. Western funded NGOs along with some local indigenous groups organized an international campaign against the MAS government, claiming Evo was repressing the indigenous and destroying untouched nature. This campaign was partly funded by USAID and received sympathetic reporting in NACLA, UpsideDownWorld, Amazon Watch, and other liberal-left alternative media, which either omitted or discounted the US role. Avaaz [xi] and allied NGOs in solidarity with the protest groups organized international petition of protest. This foreign interference served to exacerbate a resolvable internal Bolivian dispute.

Fred Fuentes and Cory Morningstar wrote several exposés of this Western campaign against Evo, the covering up of the facts surrounding the TIPNIS road and the protests, including the USAID funding.[xii] Evo Morales even revealed transcripts of phone calls between the anti-highway march organizers and U.S. embassy officials, including calls right before the march set out.

That the TIPNIS protest leaders supported the REDD (Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which would give Western NGOs and these indigenous groups funds for monitoring TIPNIS forests, was also not mentioned by liberal-left alternative media. REDD uses poor nations for carbon offsets so corporations in rich countries can continue polluting.

Many Western solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many of their articles about the issue downplayed and made no mention of connections between the protest leaders and Washington and the Santa Cruz right wing.

Eventually the issue was resolved through a consultation process, and 55 of the 69 TIPNIS indigenous communities agreed to the road.[xiii]

US Manipulation Helped Cause Evo’s Loss in the 2016 Constitutional Referendum

The US again intervened to influence the February 21, 2016 referendum to change the constitution to allow Evo Morales to run again for the presidency. A smear campaign against him took place, including false stories of his corruption, nepotism, and fathering a child with a lover, which led to him losing the vote. The day is now recognized as the “Day of the Lie.” On the 2017 anniversary, mobilizations around the country backed the Process of Change and rejected the previous year’s vote. Washington is already at work to block his renomination in 2019.

USAID and NED Funding of Oppositional Forces

According to Bolivia’s Cabinet Chief Juan Ramon Quintana, from 2006-2015 NED funded around 40 institutions in Bolivia including economic and social centers, foundations and non-governmental organizations, for a total of over $10 million. For 2013, the combined NED and USAID allocations for Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia totaled over $60 million, with the bulk of these funds destined to Cuba and Ecuador.

The Issue of “Extractivism” in Bolivia

Linda Farthing notes that in world colonial and neocolonial history, “the exploitation of [Bolivia’s] considerable natural resources has also been nearly unparalleled.” It included Spain’s richest gold and silver mine, one the richest tin mines, two of today’s largest silver and iron ore mines, half of the world’s lithium, and South America’s second largest gas reserves. She adds, “It comes as no surprise that Bolivia’s history and environment have been dominated by relentless extraction.”

A central challenge facing Latin American governments is overcoming this dependency on raw material exports to a world market controlled by Western powers. This issue, who some present as “extractivism,” has become one of the main points of liberal-left and environmental NGO criticism of the positive changes in both Evo’s Bolivia and Correa’s Ecuador.

“Extractivism” is a deliberately politically neutral and ahistorical term that conceals the brutal history that created the present First World-Third World system. “Extractivism” glosses over what has been 500 years of mass murder of Original Peoples, their slavery and semi-slavery for the purpose of plundering their gold, silver and other natural resources.

The Third World remains dependent on raw material exports, with their economies fragmented into specialized extractive industries geared towards a world market controlled by the First World, alongside backward, low-tech domestic industries and a bloated informal sector.

Bolivia cannot compete in industrial production with countries with more modern institutions, citizens with a higher educational level, developed infrastructure, and with access to the sea. To break free from being a low-cost provider of raw materials, whether mineral or agricultural, will be a long process.

As Fred Fuentes notes, the question of “extractivism” centers on how a Third World country like Bolivia can overcome centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism to provide its people with basic services while trying to respect the environment. The main culprits are not Bolivian, but the Western governments and their corporations. Defenders of the indigenous and Bolivia must demand the West pay its ecological debt and transfer the necessary technology for sustainable development to countries such as Bolivia. “Until this occurs, activists in rich nations have no right to tell Bolivians what they can and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people. Otherwise, telling Bolivian people that they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs (as some NGOs demanded), means telling Bolivians they have no right to develop their economy or fight poverty.”

Environmental Achievements

Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Linera points out that Bolivia contributes 0.1% of the world’s greenhouse gases, but its trees clean 2% of the world’s carbon dioxide, resupplying that as oxygen. He attacks the Western “colonial, elitist environmental NGOs” for imposing their environmental demands on the Third World, saying they are blind to the Third World’s right to development.

Fuentes called out Western so-called defenders of Bolivia’s environment who attack Evo Morales over extractivism, for not devoting a single article on how the government has drastically cut deforestation 64% between 2010-2013. He asked, “why have media outlets, seemingly so concerned about Bolivia’s environment, failed to investigate what might be the steepest reduction in greenhouse gas emission per capita of any country in the world?”

They also do not mention that in South America, Bolivia has the greatest number of trees per inhabitant. Peru has 1,500, Brazil 1,400, Argentina 1,200, Colombia 1000, Ecuador, 600, Paraguay 2, 500. Bolivia has 5,400. And this year they will plant another 5 million.

Misrepresenting the Morales government’s environmental record often aims to delegitimize Morales’ position not only as a leading spokesperson for the indigenous but in the global fight against climate change. Evo has rejected the carbon offset REDD schemes many Western environmental NGOs supported and clearly blames global warming on the First World’s capitalist operations. “I’m convinced that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity and the environment, enemy of the entire planet.” He has demanded the Western rich countries repay their climate debt by transfer of technology and funds to the Third World.

Bolivia as a center of anti-imperialist social movements

The Bolivian government has sought to build political alliances with other governments and social movements in order to help strengthen the global forces for fundamental change. Liberal-left critics of Evo Morales, who attack him around TIPNIS, “extractivism,” even for being a neoliberal, so often willing to offer a checklist of measures for how Bolivian socialism should be built, so often willing to portray Evo Morales as backtracking after he took office, tend to go mum on his anti-imperialist measures, conferences, and statements.

Evo Morales has become an outspoken world leader against US hegemony and has pushed hard to make Bolivia a center of anti-imperialist social movements. Bolivia organized a number of international conferences: People’s Summit on Climate Change (2010), Anti-imperialist and Anticolonial Summit of the Peoples of Latin America and the World (2013), Anti-Imperialist International Trade Union Conference (2014), the G77 Summit of 133 Third World nations (2014), the key promotor of the United Nations’ World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (2014), World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Defense of Life (2015), World Conference of the Peoples For a World Without Borders towards Universal Citizenship (2017).

He has called for rich countries to pay climate reparation to those poorer ones suffering the effects of climate change. Warning of a coming “climate holocaust” that will destroy parts of Africa and many island nations, he called for an international climate court of justice to prosecute countries for climate crimes.

In 2016 he inaugurated a military “Anti-Imperialist Commando School,” saying “We want to build anti-colonial and anti-capitalist thinking with this school that binds the armed forces to social movements and counteracts the influence of the School of the Americas that always saw the indigenous as internal enemies.”

Besides expelling the US ambassador and USAID for their roles in coup plotting, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was expelled in 2009 for its actions against social organizations and for interfering with the actual struggle against narcotrafficking.

Evo Morales’ anti-cocaine program has resulted in land used for coca production being reduced by one-fifth since 2005. [xiv] The OAS considers Bolivia’s program “a best practice…[worthy of] replication”; it is also praised by the UN Office of Drug Control. The DEA’s military base was transformed into the Cochabamba airport and renamed Soberania [Sovereignty].

“I am pleased to have expelled the U.S. ambassador, the Drug Enforcement Administration and to have closed the U.S. military base in Bolivia. Now, without a U.S. ambassador, there is less conspiracy, and more political stability and social stability.” And in reference to the IMF and World Bank, which had served to force Bolivia to divert funds away from social welfare programs, he added “Without the International Monetary Fund, we are better off economically.”

Speaking of the US’ $700 billion military budget, Evo said “”If that money was used for cooperation or to fight poverty, we could solve so many [of the world’s social and environmental] problems.” Instead, “The US creates and perpetuates international conflicts for profit….The capitalist system that [it] represents is not a policy that embodies the people of the United States but a policy of the transnational corporations, especially those that commercialize weapons and push for an arms race…they use any pretext against the anti-imperialist countries to subdue and dominate them politically and rob them economically. They’re after our natural resources.”

Challenges Facing The Process of Change

Evo has said that “the retreat of the left in Latin America is due to the incapacity of progressive governments to face a media war and the lack of political training of the youth”. Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera also pointed out that progressive governments have failed to promote a kind of cultural revolution alongside the political revolution; social programs have successfully lifted many out of poverty, creating a new middle class with new consumerist attitudes, without promoting a corresponding new value system; progressive governments must do more to tackle the entrenched corruption of the neoliberal years; the question of the continuity of leadership remains a challenge; and Latin American economic integration remains a weakness despite considerable advances in political regional integration.

Three factors may cause Bolivia’s Process of Change to stagnate and be partially reversed. It has not moved beyond anti-neoliberalism policies, that have brought great benefits to the people, in a more anti-capitalist direction. While the MAS government has democratized the traditional Bolivian state, it has modified this bourgeois state but not replaced it with a new one that would be a superior tool for the indigenous campesino and working people to advance their struggle. It has not built an organization of activists committed to leading this struggle with the people.

Now coming on 12 years of the Process of Change, Bolivia is a new country under the leadership of Evo Morales and Garcia Linera. Each passing year is one more of social, political and economic transformation, of opening up national decision-making to the indigenous communities, peasant and worker social movements. Not only have the faces of those who govern radically changed, but the country itself. From one of the poorest countries in Latin America, it has become the leader in sustained economic growth. From a country founded on social exclusion to the point of apartheid, it has become a country of inclusion for all, where more than half the Congress consists of women, where illiteracy is eliminated, where the people have free health care and education, and have gained much greater control over the wealth of their natural resources.

[Stansfield Smith maintains ChicagoALBASolidarity.wordpress.com, produces the AFGJ Venezuela and ALBA Weekly, and is active in the movement against US interference in Latin America. He co-founded the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5 in 2002 and was active in that campaign through their freedom in 2014. He administers the Facebook groups ‘Friends of Evo’s Bolivia/ Amigos de la Bolivia de Evo,” “Stand with Venezuela,””Friends of Ecuador- North America,” among others. His Masters thesis at the University of Chicago was ‘The Development of the Labor Theory of Value in Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx.”]

[i] Linda Farthing gives different figures: “the total government take shot up to about 70 percent of production, making gas its primary income source with annual revenues jumping from $332 million before nationalization to more than $2 billion today.”

[ii] These figures understate the actual figure as they exclude the 12 million undocumented, who are disproportionately poor.

[iii] Federico Fuentes, “Bad Left Government” vs “Good Social Movements”? in Steve Ellner (ed.) Latin America’s Radical Left, Maryland:Rowman & Littlefield (2014) p. 110

[iv] Federico Fuentes « Bolivia’s Communitarian Socialism », Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions, Halifax, Winnepeg:Fernwood Publishing; London, NewYork: Zed Books (2013) p. 86

[v] Dangl, Ben, “The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia,” California: AK Press (2007) p.95

[vi] Federico Fuentes, Federico Fuentes « Bolivia’s Communitarian Socialism », Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions, Halifax, Winnepeg:Fernwood Publishing; London, NewYork: Zed Books (2013) p. 85

[vii] The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire, London, New York: Verso (2015) p. 504

[viii] Ibid., p. 507; quote is from a US government cable. See also https://sputniknews.com/latam/201602191035028066-bolivia-wikileaks-us-funding-separatists/

and El informe de 2007 de la USAID

[ix] The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire, (2015: 508). “The US had full knowledge of opposition groups’ terrorist plans, and yet did not denounce them,” Eirik Vold [author of Ecuador In the Sights: The WikiLeaks Revelations and the Conspiracy Against the Government of Rafael Correa] told Prensa Latina, adding that the US had prior knowledge of a planned attack on a natural gas pipeline, which resulted in a ten percent decrease in Bolivia’s in gas exports to Brazil.”

[x] The Media Luna attempted coup broke under the pressure of several Latin American anti-neoliberal governments (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ecuador y Nicaragua) issued a declaration in support of Bolivia’s constitutional government. Nevertheless the US continued to maintain constant communication with the leaders of the separatist movement.

[xi] It included 61 signers, only two from Bolivia. US signers included Amazon Watch, Biofuelwatch, Democracy Center, Food and Water Watch, Global Exchange, NACLA, Rainforest Action Network.

[xii] Fred Fuentes, “Bad Left Government” versus “Good Left Social Movements”? in Latin America’s Radical Left (2014) pp. 120-121

[xiii] Linda C. Farthing, Benjamin H. Kohl Evo’s Bolivia: Continuity and Change, Austin, University of Texas Press (2014) pp. 52-54

[xiv] Drug seizures have almost tripled under Evo, Informe Presidencial, 22 de enero 2017 http://www.embolivia.org.br/UserFiles/File/PDFs/emb_inf2017.pdf p. 12

Jan 06

2018

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Conservation International, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Conservation International European Commission International Monetary Fund Mark Tercek National Wildlife Federation Natural Resources Defense Council Peter Kareiva Sierra Club The Nature Conservancy United Nations World Bank WWF

Environmentalism and Democracy in the Age of Nationalism & Corporate Capitalism

December 14, 2017

by Clive Spash

Recently my masters’ students and I watched the film Carbon Rush. This reveals how numerous carbon offset projects – under the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions trading related Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – are devastating the lives of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, and simultaneously destroying the environment on which they depend for their survival. CDM projects (such as dams, waste incinerators, wind farms, commercial forestry and oil palm plantations) suffer from dubious or no additionality and may as easily increase as reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the international climate community commonly regards offsetting as central to climate change policy. Such schemes have proliferated due to the desire for making money out of environmental crises and a total disregard for exploitation of the poor and weak, the very groups that ‘development’ (clean or dirty) was supposed to help. In the neoliberal era the rule of the banking and finance sector and multi-national corporations means prioritising making profits by shifting costs onto others; something that has long been recognised as the modus operandi of the business enterprise (Kapp, 1978).

Environmental commodification, trading and offsetting are business as usual approaches to environmental policy. Whether converting wetlands into bankable assets as in the USA or greenhouse gases into tradable permits as in Europe, the justification is that the preservation of the capital accumulating growth economy requires mechanisms that institutionalise the ‘right’ to undertake environmental degradation. There is also consensus across political divides about the need for economic growth. In the UK, neither Corbyn (Labour) nor May (Conservative) had any meaningful environmental agenda, and both their parties remain totally committed to a growth economy. Diverse nation states are similarly united in promotion of environmental crises as growth opportunities. For example, the European Union and China are pushing the rhetoric of ‘Green Growth’. This combines increasing domestic greenhouse gas emissions through the extension of market based mechanisms and offsets with the promise of new future technologies as the ultimate ‘solution’ to address those same emissions. Faith in markets and technology remains core to international climate policy and unaffected by whether the USA is in or out of the Paris Agreement. Similarly, faith in markets and technology as environmental saviour would have remained the same regardless of having Trump or Clinton in the White House.

In actual fact, the USA has never been a leader in greenhouse gas emissions reduction or climate policy, and both Democrat and Republican administrations have contributed to weakening international treaties. The Paris Agreement was watered down at the behest of the Obama administration compared to a more rigorous treaty, with common base year and targets, recommended by the European Commission (Spash, 2016a). Obama made clear his commitment to protect American jobs over the environment and specifically over any need to address human induced climate change. In this logic, environmental policy is justified if it creates jobs and growth, which always come first despite the inevitable contradictions. Obama’s administration massively expanded domestic oil and gas exploration to make the USA the worlds largest oil exporter (Spash, 2016a: 70). Non-conventional oil has been part of this strategy, despite the world already having over 6 times the reserves it could possibly burn and still have a ‘likely chance’ of the 2°C target (Spash, 2016b). Obama boasted that under his administration enough oil and gas pipelines had been built to ‘encircle the Earth and then some’ (see full quotation in Spash, 2016a). He ignored the associated ecological and social harm, not least that to indigenous communities. In 2016, Native American protestors at Standing Rock opposing construction work on the Dakota Pipeline that, now operational, transports fracked oil, were brutally suppressed by the combined efforts of the construction corporation’s security forces, riot police and the national guard. All that was before the election of a climate denialist with personal investments in fossil fuels.

The USA is one amongst many nations putting their own interests before the common good, and with a record of saying one thing and doing another. Modern development is allied to a military-industrial complex that ensures nation states work to secure, maintain and expand their fossil fuel resource supplies at all costs. Current fossil fuel and infrastructure polices totally contradict the supposed commitment of nations to the Paris Agreement, and its already exceeded, scientifically unhinged, target for a potentially catastrophic 2°C average global temperature increase (Spash, 2016a). Meanwhile, the
United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and similar international bodies have continuously pushed market approaches that fail to address biophysical reality, permitting exploration for and exploitation of fossil fuels leading to emissions that should never have been allowed. Thus, there is no surprise that recent moves by the airline industry to justify its plans for 700% expansion by 2050 rely on carbon offsetting, while numerous governments (e.g. Austrian, British, French, Turkish) support airport expansion as an economic necessity to create domestic jobs and growth.

Sadly, over the last two decades, in the midst of our ongoing ecological and associated geo-political crises, a range of environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs), rather than opposing such schemes, have formed alliances with some of the worst corporate polluters and resource extractors in the world and now actually promote them (Spash, 2015a). Greenwashing has become a major occupation for ENGOs. Many have become apologists for corporate self-regulation, market mechanisms, carbon pricing/trading and biodiversity offsetting/banking, while themselves commercialising species ‘protection’ as eco-tourism. Foremost amongst the neoliberal ENGOs is The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Its President and CEO is Mark Tercek, previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs. Its Vice President until recently was Peter Kareiva, a key player in the Stanford University flagship ‘natural capital’ project with its mission to convert ecosystems into environmental services that can be traded off. Together Tercek and Kareiva have promoted capitalism as natural and berated conservation biologists for not allying with corporations. In a revival of social Darwinism, Kareiva has even claimed that corporations are a keystone species!

ENGOs have been deliberately targeted by corporate strategists and in several cases they have been captured at management level. For example, Holmes (2011) reports on some of the boards of American ENGOs that include large numbers of current or former directors of major transnational corporations:

TNC 15 out of 26; Conservation International 26 out of 36; WWF-USA 13 out of 21. In addition, ‘these NGOs each have a business council, made exclusively from corporate directors, to advise the board of directors’ (Holmes, 2011: 9). Besides TNC, Conservation International and WWF, Hari (2010) cites the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council as all suffering from corporate capture and conformity to the basic tenets of neoliberalism. This is the spread of what I have referred to as new environmental pragmatism (Spash, 2009). The inroads into conservation by corporate interests are deep. Recently, Adams (2017) has analysed the pragmatic reasons behind this alliance, terming it ‘sleeping with the enemy’ and a ‘Faustian bargain’, that is sold as promoting the mythical Green and growing economy. There is, then, much to concern environmentalists about the role of environmentalism today and whether it can help or will hinder the achievement of a more just, ethical and equitable future.

In this issue of Environmental Values the state and direction of the environmental movement are at the fore. The extent to which conformity to current institutions and their values is regarded as pragmatic is the topic addressed by D’Amato et al. They contrast such pragmatism with the need for revolutionary change and consider which will achieve social ecological transformation. That ‘business as usual’ might no longer be an option leaves open what that implies for the existing political economy (from high-tech competitive corporate growth to low-tech cooperative community degrowth). However, as mentioned above, the hegemonic approach is techno-market optimism with the promise of preserving and protecting the current capital accumulating economic system.

Productivist rhetoric is dominant in government circles and provides an imaginary that can fit with liberal, neoliberal, social democratic welfarist, socialist and centrally planned political systems. While some things must change the utopian vision of a ‘sustainable growth economy’ will not be surrendered.

The sustainable development agenda, from Norwegian premier Gro Bruntland onwards, has seen no conflict between achieving social and ecological goals and maintaining the growth economy. The United Nations has spent decades pushing various brands of ‘sustainable development’ as economic growth, with the Green Economy its latest incarnation (Spash, 2012). The basic aim is to make capital accumulation resilient, whether in the West or East, under democracy or despotism, whether state or corporate owned and run. How then should the environmentally concerned address this hegemony?

D’Amato et al. provide a new classification of the debate based upon qualitative interviews and a focus group with twenty young researchers working in the area of social ecological transformation. They contrast perceptions of the role of research as extending from promoting a simple form of pragmatism through to radical change based on strong value commitments. The mode of social change regarded as necessary is described as extending from a gradual evolution to a radical revolution. The concept of the Green Economy was classified by respondents as falling within the pragmatic and evolutionary. The majority (60%) of respondents themselves held the pragmatic revolutionary position, followed by those classified as radical revolutionary (25%) and pragmatic evolutionary (15%). Thus, while 85% of these young researchers felt revolutionary social change was necessary, 75% believed research should be pragmatic. While qualified by this being a small convenience sample, the findings do indicate the potential prevalence of new environmental pragmatism and supports previous work indicating that this is a wider phenomenon amongst researchers (Spash and Ryan, 2012). More generally, D’Amato et al.’s work raises some serious questions over the general direction of environmental research and how far researchers are prepared to make their work conform to hegemonic values, norms and practices, including those they in principle oppose.

Yet, those who stick to their principles are often described as fundamentalists or uncompromising radicals who deny democratic process. Amongst environmentalists, animal activists have typically been painted as such extremists with their claims based on contentious rights based arguments. In some (supposed) democracies they are even regarded and treated as terrorists. Parry raises the issue of how animal activists should operate within an idealised deliberative democracy and what they could then legitimately justify doing to further their cause. The arguments for and against the use of different campaigning tactics are raised with specific attention given to the example of using video footage showing animal suffering. Such tactics are described in terms of creating a moral shock. Can this be legitimate in a democracy?

Parry makes the case that deliberative democracy offers a justification for representing animals in decision making, but that this does not require appeals to claims about moral worth. Instead existing democratic political principles and institutions are invoked. Three principles are then given, namely that deliberative democracy should be inclusive, authentic and consequential. Parry’s article evaluates animal activism on these grounds.

Inclusion refers to the right of representation in a decision on the basis of having interests that are subject to being affected by that decision. Political theorists have criticised animal rights activists for using undemocractic/deliberative approaches, which they claim are unjustified because these activists are just another group of humans seeking to promote their own interests. Such theorists believe animal activism should be undertaken through ‘normal’ democratic processes. However, as Parry points out, this is a conversion of human to non-human relations into a human to human relationship. Central to the politics of non-human Nature is the representation of silent voices (O’Neill, 2001). How the non-human get a voice in the human world is the central question here.

One aspect of the problem is the tension between attribution of value on the basis of possessing human-like qualities and possessing value despite clearly being non-human like (see for example Coyne, 2017; Vetlesen, 2015). The value basis of interests is then a core concern. Contra Parry, the application of deliberative democratic principles does not then seem to avoid the need for adopting a value basis, nor the need for moral reasoning. Notions of value are employed both in arguments for moral standing and rights of political representation.

A common approach in determining such attributions is to appeal to sentience and the ability for non- humans to suffer pain like humans. One reason is the search for generalisable and common interests, which are regarded as constituting authentic deliberation. Here there is an implicit appeal to Kantian moral criteria for establishing a valid moral argument, so once again contention over moral positions appear unavoidable.

Parry’s second concept, authentic deliberation, aims to encapsulate the desired qualities of democratic deliberation, namely: truthfulness, mutual respect, non-coercive persuasion, constructively seeking acceptable outcomes, reflexivity and prioritisation of generalisable interests. Parry then explores how far different tactics of animal activists match such qualities, and the same is undertaken for the third concept, that requires deliberative democratic criteria be consequential. The latter entails identification of discernible impacts of tactics on decisions, where the consequences are evaluated at a systemic level (i.e. taking into account various aspects of repercussions). Put more crudely this is an assessment of ends justifying means.

The question Parry debates is the extent to which the tactics of animal activists are non-democratic and yet still might be justified. Two tactics classified as non-democratic are imposing costs on others and the rhetorical exaggeration of moral disagreement. The former covers the making of an action (unwanted by activists) financially more costly for the actor, but is also extended by Parry to include imposing psychological costs on such actors. The latter concerns highlighting moral differences to emphasise what is deemed unethical. Such tactics are problematic for deliberative democrats – being termed exaggeration’ and ‘rhetoric’ – because of their commitment to political process as a consensus-seeking compromise. As Parry notes, in passing, there are those arguing that the worth of democracy lies in allowing for contestation over values, and that would involve the recognition of differences held as moral principles rather than seeking compromise and reasons to justify why everyone make trade-offs. A possibly related issue (not addressed) is the apparent contradiction involved in evaluating a social movement that emphasises deontology, community responsibility and duties on the basis of consequences and individual action.

Parry concludes that some of the non-democratic tactics of animal activists may have a role, but should be employed with reflection and moderation. In reaching this conclusion some aspects are only briefly mentioned, but seem central to any justification for radical action within the social reality in which we live today. Perhaps most important are the inequity in power relationships in society and the undemocratic state of the institutions empowered by the idea of a neoliberal economy. Such things as corporate power, greed and the capital accumulating economy lie behind the prevalence of threats to the nonhuman world. The associated institutions perpetuate and legitimise a range of practices against the interests of both non-human and human animals. In the struggles of indigenous communities, who are on the frontline of the extractivist economy and its accumulation by dispossession and land grabbing, there are few signs of legitimate democracy let alone the deliberative democratic ideal. How to live up to the ideals of deliberative democracy, in seeking to right some wrongs, seems of lesser relevance than asking how and by what means can the transformation of such an undemocratic system be achieved? Related to this is the question: what are the legitimate grounds for the institutionally powerless to fight institutionalised power?

Quist and Rinne are concerned with the challenges that disenfranchised groups face in building shared agendas and expressing themselves in their struggles to protect the environment and their ways of life. Their particular context is the conflict between different forms of resource exploitation and specifically fisheries versus oil extraction. They present a case study from Mexico that investigates media (two regional newspapers) representation of the conflict over access to the sea after Pemex, the eleventh largest oil corporation in the world, was empowered by the Mexican State to create marine exclusion zones. They reveal how the media operates with implicit rules of newsworthiness that play to the dominant moral discourses promoted by political and economic elites. In addition, they expose how this has played up divisions within the fisher community (e.g., between licence holders and other fishers working for them or independently).

The central concept in their case study is ‘patrimony’, or regarding natural resources as an intergenerational heritage that creates a community understanding and sense of common purpose. Under patrimony the community is typically the nation state, with patrimony operating as national heritage, but the study identifies how the concept is also applied at the fisher community level by its leaders. However, rather than being empowered, the fishers appear to be captured by the discourse of patrimony, while their own discourse, expressing ecological values that include their way of life, is excluded. Fisher leaders are shown to adopt the patrimony discourse against the interests of the wider fisher community, even to the extent that the prospect of fishers becoming oil workers is considered. Oil is judged superior in patrimonial value and for the national collective compared to the value of fishing for the local community. In this discourse, there is no questioning of the oil industries right to exploit the resource. There is a clear underlying productivist logic that excludes environmental concerns and narrowly frames the social as national.

How natural resource extraction issues are framed by the media is also the concern of Davies et al. Their particular case study is Greenland, where the population of 57,000 live in the twelfth largest country by land area. That 90 per cent of the people claim Inuit ethnicity adds to the distinct character of the society, as does having 80 per cent of the country under ice. In this last respect, climate change has been presented by some as an opportunity for opening-up territory for resource extraction. Indeed, this forms one of the major discourses revealed by Davies et al. in their analysis of 1000 English language media articles about Greenland. The potential for extracting oil, gas and rare Earth metals to supply the fossil fuel economy and its high-tech industries means climate change is not denied but accepted as an actual phenomenon by corporate fossil fuel and resource extracting interests. Rather than being a problem, climate change is seen as an opportunity. The media being reported here seems clearly focused on serving the speculations of corporations, bankers and financiers over where to make money. Such media coverage regards risk purely in financial terms of returns on investment (not strong uncertainty over climate change), and on the same basis the potential for oil spills due to new extraction is addressed as a risk to corporate investors’ returns, not the environment.

Other aspects of the media coverage over extracting Greenland’s resources relate to the geo-politics of a small Inuit led country facing the likes of China and the European Union, and multi-national corporations. The vulnerability of Inuit culture is also raised, including the potential impact on the relatively small existing national population being swamped by incoming labour. Yet, somewhat paralleling the case of Mexico, coverage also regards investment in resource extraction as a necessity for ‘development’ that promises jobs and the eradication of social problems through material wealth.

The idea of wilderness, so antithetical to advocates of the anthropocene (Baskin, 2015), appears in the media in both its positive form as pristine and untouched, as well as its negative form of waste land. The absence of human use is bemoaned by the latter as resources going to waste, while for the former this is where the environmental value lies. However, what is interesting in the reported media coverage presented by Davies et al. is how human–nature interactions are so easily turned into, and exclusively discussed as, human to human value relationships (e.g. human induced climate change having consequences for humans). Nature then has no voice in this media coverage.

Therein lies the failure of the environmental movement in its pragmatic neoliberalism. That the mainstream media is obsessed by framing its reportage in terms of financial and economic consequences is hardly a secret (see Chalmers, 2012). What is less readily admitted is the extent to which ENGOs have done likewise and so lost their connection to the non-human world that environmentalism aimed to represent in the first place. In the appeasement of presumed state and corporate economic interests, the language of environmental values is commonly reformulated to actually deny the existence of value in nature, non-human to non-human value and even the importance of human to non-human relationships. There is only the human-to-human relationship and associated values, and clearly some humans are more equal than others.

Issues of power, inclusion and representation in the environmental movement also concern the paper by Fenney, but from a different perspective. The argument is made that the disabled are subject to both oppression (disablism) and also the assumption of a non-disabled norm as valid and desirable (ableism). Evidence from interviews with disabled people in the UK is presented to illustrate the issues. In particular, Fenney highlights discourses on cycling and self-sufficiency as problematic. The former is criticised as specifically focussed on the able bodied, while the latter is seen as promoting a form of independence that is unavailable to many disabled people. Both are then loosely associated by Fenney with a neoliberal agenda in environmentalism.

The broader concern raised by Fenney is where in the environmental movement’s vision of the future will the disabled find themselves, how will their voice achieve inclusion and their concerns over social justice be met? Implicitly, alternative systems and their conceptualisations of freedom underlie this discussion. The modern (neo)liberal model of ‘freedom’ might be characterised as the individual holding others at a distance with dependency on high technology, machines, biotech and chemicals. The environmental movement has traditionally rejected this in preference for a low technology world based on community and explicitly recognising interdependence, where labour substitutes for capital. There are clearly many questions left unanswered by the environmental movement concerning diverging visions of the future, including the absence of implications for the disabled. However, environmentalism, especially eco-feminism, has strongly advocated a caring society in which issues of dependency and interdependency are made explicit, rather than hidden by production chains, technology and patriarchy.

In addition, the case made by Fenny does not establish any necessary link between environmentalism and abelism/disablism. For example, why does cycling need to be regarded as so exclusionary? Whether two, three, four or more wheeled there are many forms of locomotion that can be powered by humans singly or in numbers and be inclusive of different (dis)abilities as well as passengers. Perhaps the UK remains unfamiliar with the variety of machines available, but the idea that recommending cycling need necessarily be problematic and discriminatory appears to be in part based upon a limited conception of the options. The structural limits in the current infrastructure that favour cars also affects the imagination of what is possible and creates dependencies. That cars are part of our environmental problems is indisputable.

I take Fenny’s point as being that too little thought is given to the implications of getting rid of cars in terms of the implications for disabled people who have lives currently dependent upon cars. Their concerns need to be voiced and addressed when cars are targeted or bikes promoted, but such polices should alsonot simply be equated with discrimination per se.

Fenny notes that there is a growing (physically and mentally) disabled population and states that it is already approximately one-fifth of the UK population. Clearly the able do become the disabled as population ages, and there is an element of denial of this basic fact in Western society with its emphasis on health and beauty as youth. While Fenny presents the case for why transformation to environmental futures is inadequately addressing the issue, there is also a more general problem for the environmental movement here.

Social ecological transformation is discussed as requiring major systemic change, and for many that means changing away from modernist utopias (Spash, 2015b). The scale of change required in removing fossil fuels from the economy is far-reaching and involves major distributive impacts. All those with dependencies on the structures of modernity, its technologies, energy and material intensive devices are vulnerable. The environmental movement needs to seriously consider and address the implications rather than pretending everything can be substituted and energy transition will be straightforward. Environmental policy is no more a win-win than any other policy; different polices change winners and losers. For the environmental movement, some specific groups, practices and ways of life are deliberately the target of change because they are deemed exploitative, unjust and unethical. Societal change is an inherently value laden and political issue.

Currently major societal change occurs through undemocratic imposition of technology and infrastructure at the behest of minority interests, while the majority are just along for the ride, whether they like it or not. The rise of nationalism accompanied by militarisation and securitisation justifies exploitation of others who must be outcompeted in the fight for resources to maintain national and corporate economic growth. The depoliticising pragmatism of the environmental movement means loss of both direction and voice. The central issue, which was the reason for an environmental movement in the first place, is: how can different people live together and find meaning in their lives without engaging in the environmental degradation and mistreatment of others, both human and non-human, that is central to the currently dominant economic system?

Download the paper:

2017 Spash Env_Nationalism_Corporate_Capitalism EV_24_4

References

Adams, B. 2017. ‘Sleeping with the enemy? Biodiversity conservation, corporations
and the green economy. Journal of Political Ecology 24: 243–257.

Baskin, J. 2015. ‘Paradigm dressed as epoch: The ideology of the anthropocene’.
Environmental Values 24(1): 9–29. Crossref

Chalmers, P. 2012. Fraudcast News: How Bad Journalism Supports Our Bogus
Democracies. Milton Keynes: Lightning Source Ltd.

Coyne, L. 2017. ‘Phenomenology and teleology: Hans Jonas’s philosophy of life’.
Environmental Values 26(3): 297–315. Crossref

D’Amato, D., N. Droste, S. Chan and A. Hofer. 2017. ‘The green economy: Pragmatism
or revolution? Perceptions of young researchers on social ecological transformation’.

Environmental Values 24(4): 413–435.

Davies, W., S. Wright and J. Van Alstine. 2017. ‘Framing a “climate
change frontier”: International news media coverage surrounding
natural resource development in Greenland’. Environmental Values 24(4): 481–502.

Fenney, D. 2017. ‘Ableism and disablism in the UK environmental movement’.
Environmental Values 24(4): 503–522.

Hari, J. 2010. ‘The wrong kind of Green’. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/
article/wrong-kind-green-2/.

Holmes, G. 2011. ‘Conservation’s friends in high places: Neoliberalism, networks, and
the transnational conservation elite’. Global Environmental Politics 11(4): 1–21.

Crossref
Kapp, K.W. 1978. ‘The Social Costs of Business Enterprise. Nottingham: Spokesman.
O’Neill, J.F. 2001. ‘Representing people, representing nature, representing the world’.
Environment & Planning C: Government & Policy 9(4): 483–500. Crossref
Parry, L.J. 2017. ‘Don’t put all your speech-acts in one basket: Situating animal activism
in the deliberative system’. Environmental Values 24(4): 437–455.
Quist, L.-M. and P. Rinne. 2017. ‘The politics of justification: Newspaper representations
of environmental conflict between fishers and the oil industry in Mexico’.
Environmental Values 24(4): 457–479.
Spash, C.L. 2009. ‘The new environmental pragmatists, pluralism and sustainability’.
Environmental Values 18(3): 253–256. Crossref
Spash, C.L. 2012. ‘Green economy, red herring’. Environmental Values 21(2): 95–99.
Crossref
Spash, C.L. 2015a. ‘The dying planet index: Life, death and man’s domination of
Nature’. Environmental Values 24(1): 1–7. Crossref
Spash, C.L. 2015b. ‘Tackling climate change, breaking the frame of modernity’.
Environmental Values 24(4): 437–444. Crossref
Spash, C.L. 2016a. ‘The political economy of the Paris Agreement on human induced
climate change: A brief guide’. Real World Economics Review 75(June): 67–75.
Spash, C.L. 2016b. ‘This changes nothing: The Paris Agreement to ignore reality’.
Globalizations 13(6): 928–933. Crossref
Spash, C.L. and Ryan, A. 2012. ‘Economic schools of thought on the environment:
Investigating unity and division’. Cambridge Journal of Economics 36(5): 1091–
1121. Crossref
Vetlesen, A.J. 2015. The Denial of Nature: Environmental Philosophy in the Era of
Capitalism. Abindgdon and New York: Routledge.

Dec 13

2017

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Burning Man Kathleen Bennett Standing Rock

LISTEN: A Mexican Crossing Lines – Fake Progressive Agendas – Part 4

KPPP-LP FM

Recorded live September 8, 2017

Part 4 of a 6 Part Series

[The 6-part series can be found here: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 | Read the addendum here.]

A Mexican Crossing Lines discusses the Fake progressives that are linked to the Kathleen Bennett case, as well as the connections to Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits.

Also discussed on A Mexican Crossing Lines:

:: Burning Man Update

:: Fake Progressive Agendas Part 4

Listen To an Audio Podcast of the Show Here: (Note, Audio Podcasts are edited recordings of FB Live videos and are not necessarily what is broadcasted on the air on the radio station):

http://kpppfm.com/news/a-mexican-crossing-lines-fake-progressive-agenda-part-4/

Download Audio Link [1]

Download Audio Link [2]

Link to Standing Rock article discussed in this podcast:

https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2016/12/11/standing-rock-profusion-collusion-big-money-profits-part-4/

FaceBook Live Video of this Show Before Broadcasting (Note, FB Live videos are pre-recorded and then edited properly for radio Broadcasts on the air):

[Cindy Gomez-Schempp is station manager of KPPP-LP FM radio, Board President of The Peoples Press Project and editor-in-chief at Mexi-Can]

Dec 09

2017

newWKOGadnim

Nature Conservancy, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism, Wilderness Society, Wildlife Conservation Society

Capitalism Carbon Markets Conservation Conservation Industry neoliberalism REDD Speciesism Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Reclaim Conservation: Activists & Communities Vs. Mainstream Conservation Myths

Reclaim Conservation

December 9, 2017

There are myriad definitions of the term “environmental conservation” and hundreds of ideologies and methods being utilised worldwide in an attempt to conserve habitats and biodiversity. At present, what is clear is that conservation efforts as a whole are failing. While there is increasing, large-scale financial investment in conservation efforts worldwide, positive results from this investment remains to be seen. Indeed, the species extinction crisis, destruction of habitat and climate change continue unabated and pose increasingly severe threats to the natural world.

Mainstream conservation institutions are increasingly modelling themselves on, and indeed directly reliant upon, commercial businesses. Being part of the dominant economic establishment positions these NGOs as conflicted in their ability (and desire) to take effective action against the root cause of environmental degradation which unarguably stems from uncontrolled capitalist exploitation, accompanied by corruption, broken nation states and a burgeoning world leadership crisis. These large NGOs cannot challenge these overarching systems of oppression because they have become part of them. By ignoring the “bigger picture” and the real cause of the problems that they claim to be concerned with tackling and offering superficial, insincere solutions, the big NGOs cause severe damage to our world in that they control the vast majority of resources and funding to ostensibly support conservation efforts, but fail to use it where it is most needed and thus fail to create any meaningful change or positive results.

In order to justify their failure, they have developed discourses blaming local people for being either greedy destroyers of nature or ignorant savages who lack the intelligence or motivation to work to preserve their own environment. Nature is being ascribed economic value and local people are being offered financial “compensation” in order to ensure they do not interfere with the work of the powerful NGOs. Grassroots activism and new, radical approaches to conservation are demonised and accused of “getting in the way” of the “real conservationists” (the large NGOs) in order to distract people from seeing activists’ real potential as capable of creating a new reality. Funds are being blocked from reaching either community conservationists or activists, ensuring that the powerful retain control and those uniquely positioned to dismantle the ineffective and damaging status quo are prevented from accessing the resources and opportunities that are required to make real change.

This situation must change, Reclaim Conservation, through activist work with communities, whistle-blowers and law enforcement, through academia, mass and social medias, will prove and inform the public that:

Conservation is activism

Conservation is against corruption

Conservation is against all kinds of discriminations

Conservation is against right wing, capitalist exploitation

Conservation is compassion

If not, conservation will just not work!

www.reclaimconservation.org

Dec 09

2017

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Uncategorized

Africa Angelina Jolie Bono Celebrity Fetish Iraq ONE United Nations

Celebrity ‘Charity’: A Gift for a Vicious System

Al Jazeera

December 3, 2017

By Belen Fernandez

Irish rock star Bono talks to pupils at a school near Lesotho’s capital Maseru on May 17, 2006 [Mike Hutching/Reuters]

When movie star George Clooney married human rights lawyer and fashion icon Amal Alamuddin in Venice back in 2014, the Entertainment Tonight website declared that “it was charity that came out as the real winner” of the multimillion-dollar nuptial festivities.

The reason for the alleged win was that proceeds from certain wedding photos were said to be destined for – you guessed it – “charity”, that favourite celebrity pastime that so often translates into massive PR points and saviour-hero credit, not to mention tax breaks.

We non-celebrities have been so conditioned to perceive charity as something unconditionally positive – rather than a commodification and exploitation of faux altruism – that we don’t seem to notice reality’s conspicuous absence from the feel-good world of celeb-philanthropy.

Case in point: reports that rock star Bono’s anti-poverty foundation ONE managed in 2008 to channel a mere 1.2 percent of the funds it raised to the people it purported to be assisting have done nothing to interfere with the man’s portrayal as some sort of messiah for Africa.

In the case of the Clooneys, who now preside over their very own Clooney Foundation for Justice, celebrity worship and Amal-mania have also precluded sound judgement. Objectively speaking, it would seem that “justice” is not really an option in a world in which human rights lawyer-philanthropists by the name of Amal Clooney wear outfits costing $7,803.

The obscenity of inequality

Currently targeted for charitable assistance by the Clooneys’ organisation is the Syrian refugee population of Lebanon, where, the foundation’s website stresses, “refugee children are sent out to work for as little as 2 dollars per day”. Roughly calculating, it would thus take a Syrian refugee child approximately eleven years to accumulate enough funds for the aforementioned outfit (less if accessories are left out).

Fantastically expensive galas, celebrity photo ops with black and brown children in international charity hotspots, and other mainstays of the celebro-philanthropist repertoire do little, in the end, to alleviate poverty, hunger, oppression, and the rest of the global ills that are repeatedly invoked to tug at heartstrings and thereby provoke admiration and/or financial contributions to the cause being peddled.

This is not to suggest, of course, that one must always calculate and justify one’s expenses in terms of Syrian refugee income, but rather to point out that any sort of actual justice in the world would require dismantling the prevailing neoliberal panorama of obscene economic inequality.

In a forthcoming book titled Against Charity, authors Julie Wark and Daniel Raventos offer a meticulous and scathing indictment of the institution of charity as a key component of the neoliberal order – and of the role of celebrity philanthropists in keeping the have-nots in place and the powerful in power.

Celebrities, write Wark and Raventos, “draw attention to social distress but immediately cover it up by giving the impression that something is being done” by the wealthy of the world, who have the money to do things.

But fantastically expensive galas, celebrity photo ops with black and brown children in international charity hotspots, and other mainstays of the celebro-philanthropist repertoire do little, in the end, to alleviate poverty, hunger, oppression, and the rest of the global ills that are repeatedly invoked to tug at heartstrings and thereby provoke admiration and/or financial contributions to the cause being peddled.

Again, were global oppression to somehow magically cease, the “philanthropic” rich and famous would be up a creek – since no arrangement governed by literal justice would allow the obsequiously-celebrated “poverty fighter” Bill Gates to own a house with 24 bathrooms or for the ever-so-charitable David and Victoria Beckham to trademark their children’s names.

Disappearing context

Regarding the function of celebrities within “a system that sees famous people as brands and thus consumer products”, Wark and Raventos note that celebrity “excess” helps sustain the consumerist model by providing glorified examples of over-the-top materialism – while celebrity “beneficence” helps whitewash the brutality of institutionalised socioeconomic disparity.

Meanwhile, the “awareness” that celebrities purport to raise for their respective causes is frequently devoid of the political context necessary to comprehend contemporary causes of human suffering.

Take, for example, actress and philanthropic superstar Angelina Jolie, whose work as Special Envoy for the United Nations refugee agency elicits continuous media prostration before her charitable “radiance“.

Descending upon war-torn nations and refugee camps in characteristic superhuman perfection, Jolie decries earthly injustice – while regularly excising crucial pieces of the puzzle from her lament.

This was the case in a March 2017 speech in Geneva, when Jolie referenced “the conflict in Iraq – the source of so much Iraqi suffering to this day”, and yet proceeded to self-identify as “a proud American” and a believer in the notion that “a strong nation, like a strong person, helps others to rise up and be independent”.

Never mind that the US – a strong nation indeed – happens to have effectively destroyed Iraq, inflicting unquantifiable death and misery upon the Iraqi people.

In Iraq and beyond, in fact, the military and economic policies of the country of which our heroine is so “proud” have contributed to a range of humanitarian crises now abstractly seized upon by Jolie & Co – not least the Saudi-led starvation of Yemen, aided and abetted by none other than the US.

It’s showtime

A recent Vanity Fair cover story on Jolie touches on numerous aspects of the actress’ life, from her new Los Angeles mansion – “listed for around $25 million” – to her cofounding, with British former foreign secretary William Hague, of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in 2012. According to its website, the initiative “aims to raise awareness of the extent of sexual violence … in situations of armed conflict and rally global action to end it”.

This is the same Hague who, in addition to fervently championing the war on Iraq, argued in 2015 that just because Iraq had turned out poorly didn’t mean the west shouldn’t intervene in Syria.

In other words, so much for the prevention of violence.

Wark and Raventos observe that “the demigods of celebrity culture are a symptom of a general moral and ethical malaise in which, as capitalism is foundering in its own morass, mythmaking is essential for keeping the show going”.

If only the curtain would fall – not only on the sideshow of celebrity philanthropy, but on the myth itself.

[Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.]

Dec 04

2017

newWKOGadnim

Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Afghanistan Doctors Without Borders Imperialism Médecins Sans Frontières Misery Industry Social Documentary Unicef

AFGHANISTAN: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS RECOGNIZED AS THE TOP BRAND IN THE MISERY INDUSTRY

Photographer: keith harmon snow

Exhibit Title: His Name was Dilawar

Location: Afghanistan

Exhibit Abstract

“‘Great Harm Has Been Done to US,’ declared George Bush in a speech thunderously applauded by the U.S. Congress on 20 September 2001. With this disingenuous slogan the United States directed its unaccountable permanent warfare machine at the people of Afghanistan, a place that few U.S. citizens know much about. Our ‘allies’ jumped aboard, unleashing high-tech weaponry and shock-and-awe destruction on a simple people that have been subject to the nasty prerogatives of Empire since ~ 1838.

Civilians bear the brunt of this ugly war: over the past 4 years far more than 33,000 Afghan civilians were injured or killed. The cowardice of our war includes drone strikes, targeted assassinations, ‘dirty tricks’ black operations, snatch-and-snuff kidnappings, torture—all as policy. The War of Terror has caused millions of direct / indirect deaths since 2001, and millions more displaced persons, and the U.S. has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Dilawar of Yakubi was a young taxi driver tortured/killed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

+++

“Decades of war means destruction of homes and villages, destruction of crops, croplands mined, failed crops, and rising displacement. Starvation and malnutrition were named in a major New York Times ‘news’ article that appears to be more a plug for the UNICEF brand and the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières brand than any serious reportage on the hunger crisis. The disingenuous title of the January 2014 article was: ‘Afghanistan’s Worsening, and Baffling, Hunger Crisis.’ What is baffling? This is a way to diminish responsibility and deflect attention from the obvious causes of starvation, crop failures, starvation, malnutrition, high infant mortality, and other obvious effects of the illegal U.S. war in Afghanistan. Further, the article notes that ‘despite years of Western involvement and billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, children’s health is not only still a problem, but also worsening’ but nowhere does the New York Times probe the massive corruption and outright (advertising & branding) lies of the for-profit humanitarian sector that, obviously, benefits from our permanent warfare economy.”

“Hunger in Afghanistan is a very real problem. These children play at sunset amidst piles of grain being processed—separating the wheat from the chaff using straw brooms on a dirt ground—by their fathers and uncles. To grasp the gross inequity between the level of suffering for children in Afghanistan (the target population that the AID industry preys upon), consider that combined salaries of the top seven Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières executives total $1,169,715 (* 2016 IRS form 990) and they receive $256479 in ‘other’ compensation. Of course, information about Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres corporate sponsors is not easily discoverable from either their web site or their published reports available therein.”

“This father and his son suffer alike after the child was wounded and rests in critical condition in a hospital bed in Kabul.”

“The landscapes in Afghanistan are vast, and the real reasons for the war are for access to the land and its natural resources. In the calculated equations of predatory western capitalism and the profit motives of unconscious demagogues and warmongers the people of Afghanistan are considered in the way: they are expendable, and the depopulation of Afghanistan is underway.”

“Afghan herders often trip unexploded ordnance and land mines while herding domestic donkeys, sheep and goats. Landmines and other battlefield unexploded ordnance (UXOs) contaminate at least 724 million square meters of land in Afghanistan, more than any other country in the world. Only two of Afghanistan’s twenty-nine provinces are believed to be free of landmines. The Northern Alliance and United Front forces have laid mines, while many Russian-era mines remain. According to Human Rights Watch in 2001, the Taliban had stopped using landmines in 1998, declaring it un-Islamic and punishable by death; after 1998 the Taliban were often falsely blamed for using them. Mine clearance teams in Afghanistan still find UXOs from the former Soviet Union but also from Belgium, Italy, the United States and Britain. The United States dropped about 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets between October 2001 and March 2002 alone; these weapons destroyed the homes and lives of countless civilians.”

“Afghan men discuss war and politics outside a mosque in northern Afghanistan. The people are angry at the U.S. occupation, the corruption of their leaders working with the occupation, and they admit that every U.S. attack redoubles the popular resistance to the U.S. and its goals.”

“Afghan farmers see the profit and value in planting their fields in poppies. The Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. military have their fingers in the Afghan opium/heroin trade: heroin processed in Afghanistan by ‘Taliban’ and ‘Isis’ and other factions backed by the U.S. does not leave Afghanistan on the backs of donkeys. Warlords run the heroin business. The heroin is allegedly shipped by air to Bondsteel Air Base in Kosovo, where it is then allegedly distributed to Western Europe by the Albanian mafia.”

“As Dr. Alfred McCoy pointed out: On 16 November 2017 the United Nations released its opium report for 2017: total crop area up from 200,000 hectares in 2016 to 328,000 hectares in 2017; the opium harvest nearly doubled since 2016 from 4,600 to 9,000 tons, well above the 2007 peak of 8,200 tons.”

“A boy of ten years old—another obvious civilian casualty in the U.S.-led war “to win hearts and minds”—rests awake and immobile and terrified, his wounds still fresh and bloody, in the intensive care section of a hospital in Kabul.”

“The LOVE THY ENEMY sign I posted on my family’s farmland in Williamsburg Massachusetts on September 13, 2001, defaced over night by local people directly connected to the war machine. The people responsible for the war in suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Central Africa are the people of the western nations whose soldiers are fighting and killing there, the populations whose complacency and acceptance make these wars in ‘far off places’ possible. There is little discussion of these wars in popular quarters in the United States, Canada or Europe, as they are hidden and downplayed and obfuscated by the western media propaganda system. The U.S. population is deeply divided between those who favor war and killing and ‘putting America first’ at all costs, and those who see the pointlessness of war, and the profits being made to sustain it, at the expense of all people everywhere, and at the expense of nature, and all of planet earth.”

Photographer’s Statement

View Keith Harmon Snow’s stunning exhibition, in it’s entirety:

http://socialdocumentary.net/exhibit/keith_harmon_snow

[Keith Harmon Snow has worked as a journalist, war correspondent, genocide investigator and/or photographer in 46 countries — often traveling by simple means (mountain bike, raft, horse, foot) to enable a deeper engagement with the land and people. He is the 2009 Regent’s Lecturer in Law & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recognized for over a decade of work documenting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. He is also a certified Holotropic Breathwork facilitator, and author of the non-fiction book: The Worst Interests of the Child: The Trafficking of Children & Families Through U.S. Family Courts. In July 2016 his SDN exhibit Inside the Company, Down on the Farm (plantations in the DR Congo) won an Honorable Mention in the SDN Call for Entries on The Fine Art of Documentary. He is available for assignment. You can also visit his website All Things Pass.]

Dec 04

2017

newWKOGadnim

Avaaz, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz], Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Al-Qiada Avaaz Jabhat an-Nusra Purpose White Helmets

PRESS CONFERENCE: “They Don’t Care About us”: White Helmets True Agenda

Geneva Press Club

November 28, 2017

The “White Helmets” organization acting in Syria is hailed as heroes in some countries, and the West provides millions of dollars to these so-called saviors. However, residents of Aleppo (Syria) claim that “White Helmets” care only about money and saving rebels, but not civilians. People from Fua and Kafraya confirm allegiance of “White Helmets” to world recognized terrorist organizations like Jabhat an-Nusra or Al-Qiada and testimony “White Helmets” participation in public executions. The videos that this organization produces are astounding Internet-users all over the world.

The briefing, according to the speakers, is designed to give “a clear view on what is the real agenda of these Hollywood so called “first responders” who received an Oscar for their performance”.

Press conference (both French and English speakers):

(Note: The English text of third talk by De Noli can be found here: http://theindicter.com/should-un-consider-white-helmets-a-politically-neutral-organization-and-its-allegations-as-credible-sources-by-un-investigative-panels-on-syria/)

Watch the full video showed during the press conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq4LEIO740A

Oct 19

2017

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Natural Resources Defense Council, United Nations, World Resources Institute

'Rights to Pollute' CASSE Gund Institute Gus Speth Herman Daly Natural Capital Natural Capital League New Economy Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) Privatization of Nature Tellus Institute The Financialization of Nature The Next System United Nations

The Most Valuable Players of the Natural Capital League: Part 2

Wrong Kind of Green

October 19, 2017

The Natural Capital League (NCL) has gained it’s power and influence steadily over time and through it’s extensive networks.

After 35 years of the development of ecological economics two senior foundational figures have emerged who are utterly worthy of the title MVP.

One of these senior figures is a revered economist and the other is a lawyer, networker, manager, author, and academic.

Herman Daly

Herman Daly is not only a most valuable player, he has defined the game itself while developing the other talented players who’ve pushed the league forward. His great conceptual achievement is the idea of the ‘steady state’ (1977). He has been a very active proponent of the ‘polluter pays principle’. In 1991, while he was at the World Bank to work on sustainable development policy, he argued for the idea of ‘rights to pollute’. In 1992 he co-wrote a paper containing one of the earliest usages of the term ‘natural capital’ titled ‘Natural Capital and Sustainable Development’. In this paper a definition of the term ‘natural capital’ was provided based on a ‘functional definition’ of capital – “a stock that yields a flow of valuable goods and services into the future”.

Herman Daly was the 1996 winner of the Right Livelihood Award, the 2008 Adbusters ‘Man of the Year’ and the 2014 Blue Planet Prize winner. He co-founded the journal Ecological Economics, was closely involved in the founding of the International Society of Ecological Economics and is currently on staff at the Centre for the Advancement of Steady State Economics (CASSE). In 2012 he was a featured interviewee in the documentary ‘Four Horsemen’ directed by Ross Ashcroft who is also known as the Renegade Economist.

“Instead of maximizing returns to and investing in man-made capital (as was appropriate in an empty world), we must now maximize returns to and invest in natural capital (as is appropriate in a full world).”

Herman E. Daly (1994) in: AnnMari Jansson. Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach To Sustainability. 1994. p. 24

***
‘Rights to Pollute’

Allocation, distribution, and scale: towards an economics that is efficient, just, and sustainable. Ecological Economics

http://www.uvm.edu/~jfarley/EEseminar/readings/sus%20jus%20eff.pdf

***

CASSE – Meet our staff

http://www.steadystate.org/meet/our-staff/

***

Natural Capital and Sustainable Development

http://www.life.illinois.edu/ib/451/Costanza%20(1992).pdf

“The SSE will also require a “demographic transition” in populations of products towards longer-lived, more durable goods, maintained by lower rates of throughput.”

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/data/files/publications/Herman_Daly_thinkpiece.pdf

***

Gus Speth

James Gustave Speth is all about networking and was once dubbed the “ultimate insider”. He’s an MVP because his whole contribution is much greater than the some of the parts he has played, and he has played so very many parts. His list of fellowships and board appointments stretches to every corner of the sustainable development project. He is the highest ever American office holder at the united nations. He was the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, and he went on to become the Special Coordinator for Economic and Social Affairs under UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and chair of the United Nations Development Group. He cofounded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and founded the World Resources Institute (WRI). Crucially he knows how to reposition his career to the advantage of sustainable development.

Gus Speth got arrested with climate justice movement leader Bill McKibben in an anti-KXL pipeline protest for the first time in 2011 shortly after moving on from the NRDC and WRI. He responded to the threat of climate change by joining the US advisory board of climate justice organization 350.org and followed up on his vision for the future laid out in his book ‘America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy’ through his various networks and positions held in the new economy movement. He is a senior fellow of the Democracy Collaborative, associate fellow at the Tellus Institute, co-chair of the NextSystem Project, board member of New Economy Coalition, former dean Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Professor at Vermont Law School and was chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (Carter Administration). He has a string of other fellowships and advisory roles all relating to sustainable development and new economy issues.

It’s Gus Speth’s role as consultant to the Capital Institute that ties all his networks to the Natural Capital League. The Capital Institute could be called the home of ‘regenerative capitalism’ which connects natural capital flows to the restoration of nature to improve the value of ‘ecosystem services’. Several natural capital economists from organisations such as the Gund Institute with which he shares a close relationship are involved in the Next System Project which he chairs. The Next System Project is focussed very much on social enterprise, support for communities and democratic process. We can expect that Gus Speth will continue to refine his networks and position himself to see sustainable development and the Natural Capital League flourish.

“CHILDREN CENTERED, NOT GROWTH CENTERED. Overall economic growth will not be seen as a priority, and GDP will be seen as a misleading measure of well-being and progress. Instead, indicators of community wealth creation — including measures of social and natural capital — will be closely watched, and special attention will be given to children and young people — their education and their right to loving care, shelter, good nutrition, health care, a toxic-free environment, and freedom from violence.”

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part II

https://orionmagazine.org/article/america-the-possible-a-manifesto-part-ii/

***
Measuring What Matters: GDP, Ecosystems and the Environment

http://www.wri.org/blog/2010/04/measuring-what-matters-gdp-ecosystems-and-environment

***

Review of America the Possible by John Fullerton

https://capitalinstitute.org/blog/crb_book_review/gus-speths-america-possible/

***

Gus Speth Returns to WRI, Inspires

http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/gus-speth-returns-wri-inspires

Further reading:

The Most Valuable Players of the Natural Capital League: Part 1

Sep 23

2017

newWKOGadnim

Avaaz, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz], Social Engineering, The Soros Network | OSI, Uncategorized, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Avaaz BSR Business & Sustainable Development Commission Capital Institute Capitalism Rebranded CDP Ceres Corporate Leaders Group GADCO Global Goals International Crisis Group International Rescue Committee Mark Malloch Brown Natural Capital Project New Economy Paul Polman Purpose Refugees International Species Banking The B Team The Climate Group UN UN Global Compact Unilever White Helmets World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

Avaaz: And a Billionaire Shall Lead Them [2017 Avaaz Series: Part 3]

September 23, 2017

By Cory Morningstar

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2012 [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2017 [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II

Avaaz co-founder Ricken Patel Joins Unilever’s Business & Sustainable Development Commission

Mr Ricken Patel, Executive Director, AVAAZ.org, Thematic Session “New Media: Towards new forms of social engagement and participation”, United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Rio Forum

“Our research shows achieving the Global Goals in just four economic systems could open 60 market ‘hot spots’ worth an estimated US$12 trillion by 2030 in business savings and revenue. The total economic prize from implementing the Global Goals could be 2-3 times bigger, assuming that the benefits are captured across the whole economy and accompanied by much higher labour and resource productivity. That’s a fair assumption. Consider that achieving the single goal of gender equality could contribute up to US$28 trillion to global GDP by 2025, according to one estimate. The overall prize is enormous.” — Better Business, Better World, The report of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, January 2017

In June of 2016, the Business and Sustainable Development Commission announced its newest members which included Ricken Patel, President and Executive Director of Avaaz. Patel was joined by eleven^[1] others of elite status and influence which included the following people:

Jack Ma, Founder and Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group (BABA,Tech30): Richest person in Asia and 14th richest in the world. Net worth is US$41.8 billion (June 2017). [Source] Ranked 2nd in Fortune’s 2017 “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” list.[Source] board member of Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy and co-founder of Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Ho Ching, CEO of Temasek Holdings Private Ltd: Married to the Prime Minister of Singapore. Listed as the 30th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, CEO, Women’s World Banking: Worked for 17 years at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank and the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Iskenderian is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [Source]
Begümhan Dogan Faralyal, Chairwoman, Dogan Holding: Dogan Holding is one of the largest conglomerates in It’s industry sectors include energy, media, industry, trade, insurance and tourism. It is founded by Aydin Dogan (who remains a major shareholder), Begümhan Dogan Faralyal’s father.
Mark Wilson, CEO of Aviva: Named in the 2016 Debrett’s list of Britain’s 500 most influential people for his role in the £5.6bn acquisition of Friends Life. This was the largest takeover in the insurance industry in nearly 15 years turning Aviva into one of UK’s largest investment firms (£300bn-plus in assets). Wilson enjoys an annual salary of GBP £4.4 million.

The commission was officially launched at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January 2016. The new members bring the Commission membership to 31.

eColonization for Sustainable Development

Malloch Brown and George Soros, March 19, 2002: “Mark Malloch Brown (L), administrator of the United Nations Delvelopment Program (UNDP) and George Soros chat during a press conference at the International Bussiness Center in Monterrey City, north of Mexico, in the context of the International Conference on Financing for Development, where more than 50 heads of State will participate.” AFP PHOTO/Jorge UZON

The co-founders of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission are Mark Malloch Brown and Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever. Polman is chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and serves on the Board of the UN Global Compact, “the world’s largest corporate social responsibility initiative”. He also served as part of “the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The panel helped draft Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 17, which aims to ‘to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.'” [Source]

Above: Paul Polman. Unilever website: “The launch of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission: Our CEO Paul Polman co-founded the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, which works to make a powerful business case for driving a sustainable, inclusive economy.” [Source]

Polman is a “B Team Leader”. The corporation he heads, Unilever, is a member of We Mean Business (WMB). “WMB is a coalition of business groups including WBCSD, BSR, CERES, B-Team, Corporate Leaders Group, CDP, The Climate Group and supported by other networks.” The Corporate Leaders Group is The Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group – a partner of the GCCA/TckTckTck – founded by Avaaz, 350, Greenpeace, Oxfam, etc. (When publicly criticized for this partnership The Prince of Wale’s Corporate Leaders Group name was removed from the TckTckTck website which has now been re-branded and will be discussed at length later in this series).

Mallock Brown (“Baron” Malloch Brown, “Lord” Mallock Brown) serves as co-chair for the WBCSD. His prestigious background is most extensive. It is paramount to look at his background, however dense, to understand what form the world will take under the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals).

Mallock Brown is a “former number two” in the United Nations having served as Deputy Secretary-General and Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan (appointed in 2006), as well as having served in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office. He was UK’s Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia (2007-2009), as well as a member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet. Prior to that, Mallock Brown had an extensive history with the United Nation Development Program serving as Administrator from 1999-2005. He began his career as a political correspondent at The Economist (1977-1979 and 1983-1986). Other previous positions include Vice-President for External Affairs at the World Bank (joining the World Bank as Director of External Affairs in 1994), Vice-President for United Nations Affairs (1996 to 1999) and Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. In 2007, Mallock Brown was sworn in to “Her Majesty’s” most honourable Privy Council and appointed as a Knight Commander (KCMG), an elitist title bestowed upon only the most senior of civil servants by the Queen of England.

Global briefing 2014. Mark Malloch Brown (left) and George Soros. Credit: International Crisis Group flickr

Malloch Brown has long-term personal ties to Soros. He served as vice-chairman of both George Soros’s Investment Funds and the Soros Open Society Institute. While working for Refugees International (bankrolled in large part by Soros), he was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia in 1993–94, formed by George Soros. Spouse Trish Malloch-Brown, referred to as “Lady” Mallock Brown (Chair of Biodiversity International UK Board of Trustees, Member of Bioversity International Inc. US Board of Trustees, and Independent Humanitarian Affairs Consultant) [Source]. She is also identified as directors emeriti on the Refugees International website where she served as Vice Chair for 12 years having been an active supporter since 1986. She served as a program officer at the Open Society Institute from 1989-1992.

Trish Malloch Brown served as the Director of International Rescue Committee-UK from 2010-2013. In 2008, foreign correspondent and investigative journalist Keith Harmon Snow reported that “[t]he International Rescue Committee has been described in the past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, and it is.” [2] Prior to her appointment, it is of much interest to note that the crux of the 2007 International Rescue Committee’s annual lecture given by Mark Malloch Brown was centered upon the “politics of humamitarianism after Iraq” and the social acceptance necessary for the global implementation of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine:

“I and the Secretary General and many others, many of you in the room here tonight, have pressed in recent years for this right to intervene when a government attacks its own population – the so-called Responsibility to Protect, which requires us indeed to intervene when a government commits the equivalent of war crimes or mass abuse of human rights against its own citizens. And we have seen an emergence of groups like the International Crisis Group, as well as the IRC and many others, who have become a lobby for effective intervention in these situations, of which Darfur is just one. But we have to find a way of winning universal, global understanding and support for this concept. We have to work amongst the nations of Africa, for example, to build acceptance of this.’ [Source]

Above: Lionel Rosenblatt, then head of Refugees International, Mort Abramowitz and Mark Malloch Brown, at Sarajevo airport moments before coming up with the concept of Crisis Group, January 1993. CRISIS GROUP

“Mark Malloch Brown (L) and Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan (R) attend the Pakistan: Hopes Submerged, Resilience Remains event at Bohemian Benevolent & Literary Association on November 15, 2010 in New York City.”

For the past 30 years Refugees International has held a lavish annual event for the McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award. Participants include the crème de le crème of the world’s most influential and power. In 2007, this award was bestowed upon both Mark Malloch Brown and Lady Trish Malloch Brown. This same award was presented to the terrorist group the White Helmets this year. Last year the award was given to The B Teams Richard Branson. ^{[Full list of benefactors]}.

RI Staff and Board Member Queen Noor-Al Hussein with the White Helmets and staff of the Syria Campaign. — Refugees International Website | White Helmets volunteer Jehad Mahameed (back row third from right), “Her Majesty Queen” Noor Al-Hussein (back row second from left), White Helmets volunteers Manal Abazeed (center) and Mounir Mustafa (front row, 2^nd from left)

Video published March 16, 2017: RI Board Member Queen Noor Al-Hussein presents Refugees International’s highest humanitarian award to the White Helmets (Syria Civil Defense) at RI’s Anniversary Dinner in Washington, DC on April 25, 2017. Accepting the McCall-Pierpaoli Award on behalf of the White Helmets are Mounir Mustafa, Manal Abazeed, and Jehad Mahameed. ^[Source]

[International Crisis Group and Refugees International will be discussed later in this report.]

Mallock Brown is a former chairman of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at FTI Consulting, a political consulting firm.

Mallock Brown has also played a role in the humanitarian industrial complex. “From 1979 to 1983, he worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). From 1979 to 1981, he was stationed in Thailand, where he was in charge of field operations for Cambodian refugees. He was appointed Deputy Chief of UNHCR’s Emergency Unit in Geneva, undertaking extensive missions in the Horn of Africa and Central America.” ^[^Source^]

Malloch Brown was an adviser to the former President of Bolivia Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a U.S. lapdog who carried out the neoliberal Washington consensus in Bolivia from 1993 to 2003. After a brutal conflict in 2003, known as the “Bolivian Gas War” in which at least 64 people killed and further 400 injured, Lozada resigned and fled to Miami. Lozada and 15 of his ministers were charged by the Bolivian Supreme Court with the crime of genocide in 2005. The Bolivian Government led by Evo Morales (the first Indigenous president of Bolivia) has been seeking Lozada’s extradition from the US to no avail. On December 18, 2007, a year after Evo Morales was swept into power by the majority of Bolivians, “Lord” Malloch stated in the UK parliament:

“The Constitutional Assembly was an important effort to try to get both sides to arrive at a comprehensive solution to the country’s political problems, which are very real and which revolve, as the noble Baroness knows, around marginalised Indian populations who have felt excluded for a long time. However, including them in a country that had a strong pre-existing democracy but which also had strong vested economic interests has proved extremely difficult.”

Here it is important to note that Indigenous peoples in Bolivia constitute appox. 62% of the population. The fact that Malloch Brown states that prior to the new Morales government, that the country had “a strong pre-existing democracy” demonstrates clearly and unequivocally Mollach Brown’s loyalties to colonization, imperialism, and empire.

From 1986 to 1994 Malloch Brown was the lead international partner at the US-based Sawyer-Miller Group communications consultancy. He ultimately co-owned the firm with three other partners. [Source] The firm was one of the first communication consultants “to use US-style election campaign methods for foreign governments, companies, and public policy debates.” [Source] Note that Trish Malloch Brown began her foray into international political consulting at the Sawyer Miller Group in 1986. [Source]

Notable is his work in Peru assisting Mario Vargas Llosa with his 1990 presidential campaign. In 1987, Llosa helped establish and then lead the Movimiento Libertad party in Peru. The following year his party formed a coalition with the parties of Peru’s two principal conservative politicians: ex-president Fernando Belaúnde Terry (Popular Action party) and Luis Bedoya Reyes (Partido Popular Cristiano). They would form the center-right coalition Frente Democrático (FREDEMO). During his 1990 presidential campaign, he proposed a sweeping economic austerity program that frightened the country’s poor emphasizing “the need for a market economy, privatization, free trade, and above all, the dissemination of private property.” ^[^Source^]

His firm also consulted Venezuela where they worked against and then for Carlos Andrés Pérez, another US lapdog who presided over Venezuela from 1974-1979 and from 1989-1993. He became the first Venezuelan president to be forced from office by the Supreme Court for the embezzlement of 250 million bolívars belonging to a presidential discretionary fund. In 1992, his party survived two coup attempts. The first attempt took place February 4, 1992, and was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chávez, who would later become the revolutionary leader of Venezuela until his untimely death. They also consulted in Colombia where they advised the government on how to shed “its image as the political wing of the Medellin cartel”:

“Sawyer Miller has also played a key role in skewing the ‘war on terror’ in Colombia. As a result of PR activities conducted by the group, FARC is considered the ‘most dangerous international terrorist group based in the Western Hemisphere’. However, this is mainly due to the work of Sawyer Miller and the Colombian military who, according to the US ambassador to Colombia in 1996, ‘considered it a way to obtain U.S. assistance in the counterinsurgency’. And this assistance has continued to this very day. Colombia continues to be on of the largest recipients of American military aid in the world.”^[Source]

The following is the synopsis for the book 2009 book titled Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin Into a Global Business by James Harding, in which Mollock Brown plays a prominent role:

“Alpha Dogs” is the story of the men behind an enormously influential campaign business called the Sawyer Miller Group, men who served as backroom strategists on every presidential contest from Richard M. Nixon’s to Barack Obama’s… Long after their firm, Sawyer Miller, had broken up and sold out, its alumni had moved into the White House, to dozens of foreign countries, and into the offices of America’s blue-chip chief executives. The men of Sawyer Miller were the Manhattan Project of spin politics: a small but extraordinary group who invented American-style political campaigning and exported it around the world. In this lively and engaging narrative, James Harding tells the story of a few men whose marketing savvy, entrepreneurial drive, and sheer greed would alter the landscape of global politics….”

In the Philippines, Mallock Brown worked with Corazon (Cory) Aquino in the campaign against Marcos: “The book [Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin Into a Global Business] described Malloch Brown’s propaganda strategy that Cory adopted, the demonization of Marcos, a tactic her son, Benigno 3rd, continues to use three decades later: ‘Malloch Brown was living on the fringes of the press corps, picking up the scuttlebutt. He came to see the campaign in binary terms, knocking Marcos down and building Cory up… Twenty years later, Malloch Brown sat in his office on the thirty-eighth floor of the United Nations building and said that Cory had to be pushed to go negative, but that the decision to get more aggressive, dirtier, had been quite deliberate: ‘We set out to make it about Marcos. It was very negative campaign.'” ^[^Source^]

Malloch Brown has also “worked extensively on privatisation and other economic reform issues with leaders in Eastern Europe and Russia.” ^[Source]

Mallock Brown currently serves as the co-chair of the International Crisis Group’s Board of Trustees, (alongside Larry Summers (Goldman Sachs), Alexander Soros, George Soros and The B Teams, Mo Ibrahim). The international Crisis Group was conceptualized in 1993 by Mallock Brown with Mort Abramowitz, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ^[3^] He also serves on the board of Kerogen Capital (“Kerogen provides expansion and development capital to established junior oil and gas companies.”) He chairs and/or serves on the board of a numerous NGOs including the Open Society Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Centre for Global Development.

Above: Mark Malloch Brown – Leaders Dinner: A Night of Pioneers – 23 June, 2016

Mallock Brown is Chairman of SGO (Society of Gynecologic Oncology) and its elections division Smartmatic, “the world’s leading voting technology provider”, which can’t be surprising given Brown’s extensive immersion into international politics and influential manipulation of foreign elections. He serves on the Boards of Investec and Seplat Petroleum Development Company plc (Nigerian oil and gas) which are listed on the London, Johannesburg and Lagos stock markets; Kerogen, an oil and gas private equity fund. He is chairman of GADCO Cooperatief U.A. (An agribusiness privately owned and funded by financial and impact investors and registered in Amsterdam, GADCO is the largest commercial rice farm in West Africa). In 2005, Time Magazine placed Malloch Brown on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

International Crisis Group Gala: Above: Alex Soros an ICG trustee who recently gave 500,000 to the NGO, honourary Richard Branson (The B Team), and Frank Giustra, executive member with the International Crisis Group, Photo: Don Pollard for International Crisis Group, flickr

In the following YouTube video published on Oct 24, 2015: “Sir Richard Branson will receive the Chairman’s Award for inspiring leadership to advance the cause of peace. The founder of Virgin Group and co-founder of The Elders is recognised for his visionary reshaping of private sector initiatives to promote peace, human rights and sustainable development.”

To be clear The B Team has played a pivotal role in the formation of the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development:

“The B Team is also supporting the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development, created by B Team member and Unilever CEO P aul Polm a n, which aims to quantify and articulate the economic case for businesses to engage in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Branson and Benioff are among the 27 investors in the B reakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of investors committed to supporting the commercialization of clean energy ideas.” — The B Team Launches ‘Born B’ to Support Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurs, Sustainable Brands, April 4, 2016

Under the subsection The Global Goals (p. 31) of The B Team Progress Report June 2013 – June 2016, a quote is referenced by Paul Polman, co-founder of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission:

“Business and civil society, including some of my fellow B Team Leaders, have formed the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, tasked with quantifying the economic case for businesses to engage in achieving the SDGs.”

Above: The B Team Press Release with the Purpose address. Note the language in the release; “2C threshold, aspiration to achieve, net-zero (rather than virtual zero).

Transforming Markets: The Greatest Economic Opportunity of a Lifetime

The managing partners of the Business and Sustainable Development commission are SYSTEMIQ (which shares the same address as the commission) and the United Nations Foundation.

The purpose of SYSTEMIQ is to unleash “viable growth” and transform markets. “ SYSTEMIQ is a new kind of enterprise – that combines advisory, business building and investment expertise to deploy human talent and long term capital in order to originate projects, de-risk investments and accelerate growth and system-level impact.”

The stated goal of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission is to “inspire business leaders to seize upon sustainable development as the greatest economic opportunity of a lifetime. Our flagship report, Better Business, Better World, maps the economic prize for companies that align with the Global Goals, and shows how to achieve them.”

“The Business and Sustainable Development Commission, launched in Davos in January 2016, aims to map the economic prize that could be available to business if the UN Sustainable Development Goals—17 objectives to end poverty and hunger, achieve gender equality, and tackle climate change by 2030—are achieved.” — Business and Sustainable Development Commission Better Business, Better World report

The Commission’s Better Business, Better World report was led by its commissioners, and supported by: the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Green Growth Forum (3GF), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). ^[^Source^]

“The UN Foundation, the WBCSD, the Overseas Development Institute and The B Team are supporting the Commission, which is also receiving funding support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the governments of Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.” — New Global Commission Aimed at Quantifying Business Case for Helping to Achieve SDGs, Sustainable Brands, January 21, 2016

The Business Commission’s Steering committee is comprised of individuals representing the following institutions: World Business Council on Sustainable Development, UN Foundation, International Chambers of Commerce, Rockefeller Foundation, UN Global Compact, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change, World Economic Forum, Unilever, World Resources Institute, The B Team, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Overseas Development Institute. ^[5]

The Business Commission’s Research Advisory Group is comprised of individuals representing the following institutions: : UBS and Society, UN Foundation, World Bank Group, Volans, McKinsey Social Initiative, World Resources Institute Europe, PWC, Brookings Institute, FSG, Practice of Public Policy, School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Accenture, Z/Yen, Channel 4 News, UN Foundation, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Minister of the Environment, Nigeria, Center for Development Policy Solutions, Equity Group Holdings Limited, OECD, UN Sustainable Development Network and Winston Eco-Strategies. [6]

The Business Commission’s Research Advisory Group Supporting Orgs includes: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Overseas Development Institute (ODI), United Nations Foundation, Unilever, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), The Global Green Growth Forum (3GF), Australian department department of foreign affairs and trade, Sida (a government agency that works on behalf of the Swedish Parliament and Government) and UKAID.

The Business Commission’s agenda is evident. From the Global Green Growth website:

“A Global Green Growth Agenda – A rapid, large-scale industrial transition is needed if global economic growth is to continue while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting societies to climate change and promoting a sustainable use of resources. This industrial transition has the potential to unlock new growth engines and spur global economic growth.” ^[Source]

In the aforementioned report, the following passage regarding the underlying need for perpetual growth can be found on page 22 under the heading New Metrics:

“There is overwhelming evidence that the transition to a thriving, clean economy is inevitable, irreversible — and irresistible… The global market for low-carbon goods and services, for example, is worth more than US$5.5 trillion and is growing at 3% per year… Sustainability is no longer just the right thing to do — it fuels growth. At the same time, we see huge yields from social investment. For every one dollar invested, the global economic return on sanitation spending is US$5.50, and an investment in nutrition gives a US$17 return. Surely no one can argue with that.” — Paul Polman, CEO Unilever, The B Team Progress Report June 2013 – June 2016, p. 11 [Source][Emphasis added]

To be clear, it is impossible to undergo a rapid, large-scale industrial transition (to ensure continued global economic growth) while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even a slow, small-scale industrial transition cannot and could not be coupled with a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. An industrial transition will require massive amounts of fossil fuels – resulting in a requisite increase in greenhouse gas emissions. All so-called “clean” energy is dependent upon fossil fuels from cradle to grave. Further, planned obsolescence is an integral component in “clean energy” technology in order to sustain perpetual growth.

Further, in the censored paper by atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett titled Are there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?, his conclusions are as follows; contrary to popular belief, improving energy efficiency actually leads to accelerated growth of CO2 emissions; absent collapsing the economy, emissions can only be stabilized by building the equivalent of one nuclear plant per day, and, emissions growth has inertia.[Source]

“Over the next 15 years, driving system change in line with the Global Goals with sector peers will be an essential, differentiating skill for a world-class business leader. It means shaping new opportunities, pre-empting the risks of disruption and renewing businesses’ licence to operate.” — Better Business, Better World, The report of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, January 2017

Today, unbeknownst to the entire global population, policies implementing the financialization of nature into government legislation, a scheme that is global in scale, continue to accelerate forward unabated – with essentially zero public scrutiny. The 21^st century privatization of the commons is not spoken of by the NGOs that comprise the non-profit industrial complex, who are most complicit in the scheme. Consider that the Amazon rainforest is already listed on the world’s first green stock exchange ^[^Source] and the world’s first “species banking” ecosystems marketplace has been established:

“Until now, there has been no centralized information resource to serve buyers, sellers, and other market participants. Basic information such as number of banks, species covered, location, availability of credits, and contact details have not been readily available…. The ultimate goal of speciesbanking.com is to facilitate species credit trading as an effective tool for the conservation of threatened and endangered species and their habitat.

Speciesbanking.com is a project of the Ecosystem Marketplace, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services (services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity). The Ecosystem Marketplace believes that by providing reliable information on costs, regulation, science, and other market-relevant factors, markets for ecosystem services will one day become a fundamental part of our economic system, helping give value to environmental services that, for too long, have been taken for granted. In providing this information, the Ecosystem Marketplace hopes not only to facilitate transactions, but also to catalyze new thinking, spur the development of new markets, and achieve effective and equitable nature conservation.

We believe that, if implemented correctly, species credit banking for compensatory mitigation – and it’s variations in other countries and in its various forms, such as biodiversity offsets – can help create value for biodiversity, transforming endangered species from a liability into an asset, and thereby furthering endangered species recovery. ” [Source]

On the surface, the Avaaz climate campaign (rolled out in tandem with other prominent NGOs) is a seemingly admirable call for a “global” transition to “clean energy”. However, this campaign, marketed to a privileged (and majority Anglo) demographic, conveniently (and deliberately) makes no mention of the fact that an estimated 1-2 billion global citizens have no access to electricity at all. The most critical and ironic information not spoken of (which is again deliberate in nature) is the fact that this same targeted demographic being appealed to by Avaaz, et al in its demand for “100% renewable energy”, is the very demographic that creates 50% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. [50% of global greenhouse gas emissions are created by 1% of the global population.][Source] Yet, this same 1% does not want to live with less. This same 1% (comprised of anyone who can get on a plane) that has created and continues to accelerate our ecological crisis wants MORE. Faster, shinier, better, new, modern. This 1% now demands “clean energy” on top of their insatiable appetite for dirty energy. Luxury Teslas. Turbines. Solar. Biofuels. All part of a grotesque consumer culture that drives (lifestyle) wars and imperialism, as billions go without, which is ultimately perpetuated and encouraged by NGOs. This glaring inequality beset by arrogance/selfishness is more apparent when one acknowledges that only 5% of the world’s population has ever flown in an airplane. ^[Source]

To emphasize this point, consider that in 2011, “the average American consumed 13,240 kilowatt hours (kWh) per person per year, while the average Ethiopian consumed only 56 kWh. Further, across all of Sub-Saharan Africa, annual per capita kWh use is one-sixth the load requirements of a relatively efficient American refrigerator. Globally, the poorest three-quarters of the world’s population comprise less than ten percent of total energy consumption.” [Source] Of course, the lowest levels of rural electricity access are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa – the single richest continent on the planet that continues to provide aid to the West. As an example, Burundi (a a recent target of empire for destabilization) can only supply electricity to about 1.2% of its population due to insufficient power production. In Sudan, only 3.5% of its people have access to electricity despite its oil, minerals and timber. ^[Source] (But yes, give more to the Global North with the excess concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of Anglos. We demand it. We deserve it. We want our consumption and we would like it green. At least let us pretend it to be so.)

The reality is this: behind closed doors, not only do those at the helm of these NGOs understand full well that the “new economy” is a fantasy, the real task at hand is insulating and expanding the fledgling global economic capitalist system. Consider this consensus from McKinsey (Business Commission’s Research Advisory Group, and incidentally, affiliated with many of the Avaaz co-founders):

“Despite huge investments in clean energy, in 2020 the ratio of fossil fuel consumption to renewable and nuclear power will remain largely as it is today—roughly 80 percent. No realistic scenario will move the needle: the embedded resource infrastructure is so large that any transition away from fossil fuels will take decades.” — Pricing the Planet, June, 2010

And perhaps even more graphic, from the Business & Sustainable Development Commission website:

“Trade’s share of GDP is declining for the first time in 30 years. Global unemployment reached 197 million last year, while 600 million new jobs are needed just to keep up with population growth… The environmental costs of the old growth model are growing, too. Environmental externalities like carbon emissions, natural resource degradation and loss of ecosystem services cost the world over $4.5 trillion a year. Resource prices are becoming more volatile as 3 billion more consumers join the global economy, and the supply of resources like water and land remains finite. The global carbon budget for keeping average warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is set to be used up in just five years.”

Here it is critical to reflect upon the biophysical limits of the Earth. Scientists have been warning for decades that by 2030 we will require the equivalent of two planets’ productive capacity to meet our annual demands (which is really the needs of the 1% responsible for our multiple ecological crises). This is less than 13 years away, yet the elite establishment would have us believe we can transform the entire global infrastructure while simultaneously using less fossil fuels. [Further reading: Environmentalism is Dead – Welcome to the Age of Anthropocentrism]

“No person with a shred of decency would disagree that the vast majority of reserves should not be burned. But you can’t have it both ways. If it cannot be burned for the industrialized “fossil fuel” economy, it cannot be burned for an industrialized, and more importantly, illusory “clean energy” economy either. Illusory as the fantastical infrastructure is fossil fuel based, fossil fuel dependent. Possible only by exhausting Earth’s natural resources that scientists warn will be depleted in their entirety by 2030, even without incorporating a third industrial revolution.” — Divestment as the Vehicle to Interlocking Globalized Capital, April 23, 2016

Here it is critical to recall that The B Team, founded by Richard Branson (Virgin Group)^[4^] is led/managed by Purpose. That Purpose is Avaaz. The Avaaz and Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans speaks for We Mean Business, is a B Team Leader, and that Unilever (Ben & Jerry’s brainchild) is a key client of Purpose. The Unilever CEO being that of Paul Polman, co-founder of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission and chair of WBCSD.

In addition, Avaaz co-founder Patel is now a member of Polman’s and Mallock Brown’s newest venture, the aforementioned Business and Sustainable Development Commission. Furthermore, a founding NGO of We Mean Business is Ceres –a partner in the divestment campaign of 350.org. Another founding NGO of We Mean Business is The Climate Group. This NGO was incubated by the Rockefeller Foundation – as was 1Sky which merged with 350.org in 2011. The B Team was incubated by Virgin Unite, the charitable arm of the Virgin Group. The Climate Group is a partner of Avaaz (no longer public on the Climate Group website).

The “global goals” in reality, must be understood as the true objective for corporate capture and complete privatization of the commons. This objective is drenched in deceiving holistic linguistics – hidden in plain sight. Hence at the top of the hierarchy, the elite structured power institutions are deploying the legislation and unifying the corporate interests/power they are immersed under one key goal (the financialization of nature). While beneath it, the NGOs that target/appeal to the Anglo-centric middle class (Avaaz, Purpose, 350, Greenpeace, etc.) will be tasked with slowly but methodically bringing society up to speed with this brave new world, which they will be socially engineered to not only accept, but to believe it is in their own best interests.

“The B Team is grateful for the support it receives from Ford Foundation, Kering Group, Guilherme Leal, Strive Masiyiwa, Joann McPike, The Tiffany and Co. Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Unilever and Virgin Unite and for the contributions of past supporters Derek Handley [Founding CEO of The B Team] and One Young World.” — The B Team website

“In tackling climate change The B Team shares a common message: We Mean Business. The B Team joined forces with seven of the world’s largest business platforms to launch the We Mean Business coalition. In the months ahead, the coalition will use its collective voice and energy to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and help achieve climate justice.” — We Mean Business – The B Team, Sustainable Brands, September 24, 2014

From left to right: “Jamie Henn, Communications Director, 350, organizers of the world’s largest climate action on October 24; Ricken Patel, Executive Director, Avaaz, the world’s largest digital campaigning org, with 3.5M supporters; Ben Margolis, Campaigns Director, TckTckTck, an open campaign involving 220+ global NGO partners. At Fresh Air Center facilitated by tcktcktck for bloggers, downtown Copenhagen. 14 December 2009.” flickr, Tcklive

Earth Economics is co-founded by Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard. Earth Economics, created to accelerate and exploit the financialization of nature scheme, now well underway, is a member of Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), which is in turn a partner of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). CERES funders are associated with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. ^[^Source^]

Recently, WBCSD, chaired by Business and Sustainable Development Commission co-founders Polman and Mallock Brown, launched another initiative to privatize ecosystems — Natural Infrastructure for Business: “It is the first step towards achieving our vision that by 2020, investing in ecosystems-or natural infrastructure-will no longer be just a good idea; it will be common practice across industry sectors worldwide.” ^[Source]“The Natural Infrastructure for Business platform developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), CH2M (with support from The Nature Conservancy), and other member companies is designed to introduce business leaders and practitioners to natural infrastructure… It is the first output of the WBCSD’s Natural Infrastructure work program, chaired by Shell and Dow and involving a group of over 30 WBCSD members. ^[^Source]

One of the key achievements of The B Team as identified by Branson’s Virgin:

“What has The B Team achieved so far? Joined forces with the Natural Capital Coalition, WBCSD, IUCN and others to develop the first ever Natural Capital Protocol for business.”

“Working as part of the Natural Capital Coalition The B Team supported the development of the first global, standard Natural Capital Protocol – a set of tools for companies to measure their impacts and dependencies on nature. The protocol was launched July 2016, following pilots by more than 40 companies, including Kering and Dow Chemical.” ^[^Source^]

Above: The B Team “Experts”. From left to right: Avaaz/Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, Founder and President of Capital Institute John Fullerton, co-founder and President of Ceres (350.org divestment advisor/partner) Mindy Lubber [Source: The B Team]

May, 2013: “CalSTRS CEO Jack Ehnes, Generation Investment Management Co-Founder David Blood (Goldman Sachs) and 350.org’s Bill McKibben. Ehnes also serves on the Ceres board of directors.

The following video is Avaaz/Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans (The B Team) speaking for We Mean Business at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:

“We’ve been talking in a broader way about the future of consumer activism, of organizing people not as citizens but as consumers.” — Jeremy Heimans, Purpose, 2011

Screenshot from the Devex Website. The address for The B Team Headquarters is the address of Purpose. As demonstrated in part 1 of this series , The B Team appears to be, for all intent and purposes, the Purpose public relations firm.

Citizens as the Puppets of Oligarchs

The Peoples Climate March of 2014 led by GCCA/TckTckTck (co-founded by 350.org, Avaaz, Greenpeace, along with 17 other international NGOs) and 2017 , the divestment campaign (Ceres), the Women’s March on Washington, the scores of NGO petitions designed to placate the masses…. these are not financed by the world’s most powerful elites and institutions – to the tune of trillions – for nothing. The funds are not “grants” – the funds are investments. For the highest return. This is not philanthropy – this is security. For the world’s most powerful corporations and elites, foundations have become essential, tax-evading investments with returns that outweigh gold. The liberal faux activists are anthropocentrists craving status and access. Those leading the “movements” move in the same elite circles as those that finance the movements. Behind closed doors the fait accompli is the expansion of nuclear energy. The financialization of nature is the final coup de grace.

“And hundreds of thousands of people marched in New York City and all across the world. The momentum became contagious.” — We Mean Business

“Building on our experience supporting sister marches inspired by the Women’s March, the Purpose team helped the People’s Climate Movement leverage its vast volunteer base through compelling digital content and distributed organizing.” — People’s Climate March: The March and the Movement, Phil Aroneanu (Founder of 350.org) et al, Senior Campaigns Director, Purpose

“In the months and weeks leading up to January 21, Purpose had the honor of working with a collective of organizers called The Sister March Network to launch a digital and organizing program designed to support distributed events around the country.” — How the Women’s March Went Viral, Phil Aroneanu (co-founder of 350.org) , Senior Campaigns Director, Purpose

And while hundreds of thousands marched like fools (albeit well-intentioned and naive) with those that have united to further destroy what little remains of our natural world …. who protect and expand the existing power structures that enslave us, who in united fashion strategize to manipulate, to lie, to further utilize behavioural change science via behavioural insight teams (governments) and social engineering (NGO & ivory tower think tanks), the crème de le crème of the world’s most powerful psychopaths are privatizing the planet. 350’s “radical” Naomi Klein may have called your attention to the fact Branson never failed to deliver on his 3bn dollar climate pledge, but she certainly didn’t call your attention to her financiers plans to privatize the planet via the financialization of nature. And she knew. As they all did. The above phrase from Malcolm fits most appropriately in this regard: “Oh, and I say it again, you’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray. Run amok!”

“The NCP [Natural Capital Project] was developed by a coalition of 38 organisations, including, WBCSD, IUCN and The B Team, with hundreds of others consulted. The protocol has been piloted and feed into by more than 80 companies, representing 15 industry sectors and seven geographical regions. The protocol for generating, trusted, credible and actionable information around natural capital impacts and dependencies associated with a business operations is now freely available to all business leaders.” — New Natural Capital Protocol Will Help Business Value Nature, July 13, 2016

The Global Goals for Sustainable 21^st Century Colonization

“A customer of GADCO, a new Acumen investment in West Africa” Credit: The Acumen website

“As part of an effort to build sustainable businesses in Africa and fight poverty, the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) today announced a US$5 million investment in GADCO, a Ghanaian agriculture company. ” — Soros Economic Development Fund Invests in Ghana to Bolster Food Security, March 21, 2014

At the end of this second segment of this series, we must take a moment to reflect upon the aforementioned agribusiness venture GADCO, that Molloch Brown chairs, for it represents a microcosm of what we can expect from the UN’s “Global Goals” which have now been incorporated globally into the education curriculum of children as ” The World’s Largest Lesson”. The “Global Goals” being steadily accelerated by the world’s most powerful institutions and NGOs with Purpose (Avaaz)/The B Team, We Mean Business (350.org divestment partner Ceres, etc.) and the Business and Sustainable Development Commission (inclusive of Avaaz co-founder Ricken Patel), all working intricately together at the helm.

GADCO is financed in part (see below) and managed by Acumen Fund. Its partner community includes Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Unilever, UK Department of International Development, USAID, Goldman Sachs, Ford Foundation, General Electric, IKEA Foundation, Omidyar Network The Rockefeller Foundation, American Express, The Dow Chemical Company, Skoll Foundation, Citi, Barklays, Google, and a plethora of other foundations. ^[^{Full list}^]

“In setting up the outgrower scheme, GADCO deliberately sought partners from the development world – such as the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the World Bank – as well as private investors.”— When companies meet communities: Is this what friendly commercial farming looks like, January 15, 2014

GADCO began its venture with a 30-year lease of 1,000ha (to start) of the land belonging to the Fievie community (in Ghana) for a 2.5 percent share of the venture’s profits and the grant of 48ha of developed irrigated plots back to the community. It is reported that the Fievie community members that were displaced were compensated by GADCO. GADCO sees Africa as a “growth market with compelling fundamentals driven by urbanization, population growth, and rising incomes.” GADCO is backed by Summit Capital, Acumen Fund (which hosts the website for GADCO) and loan capital by Deutsche Bank (JV fund with KfW) and Root Capital. ^{[Source: World Bank]} Acumen‘s egregious business model is based on replacing seed saved from the prior year by the rural farmers of Africa (where most farms use farm-saved seed) with seed from the West. ^[^Source^]

The farm labourers for GADCO (21^st century colonizers) are paid 9 cedis a day (USD$4) “with some farmers stating this was lower than what they had earned doing the same job elsewhere.” As if it were not enough to colonize the community (the further modern-day colonization of Africa will expand in lockstep with GADCO’s growth) the patronizing patriarchs would also establish where and how this pittance of profit sharing would be spent. The 2.5% paid to the community “would be deposited into a special account to be used exclusively on local development projects.” As of January 2014, the Fievie’s 2.5% revenue share has gone towards 1) upgrading street lighting, 2) building a school block, 3) providing furniture for a kindergarten, and 4) buying a set of drums for a local youth group. Labourers who complained about shoddy boots and equipment had their needs fall on deaf ears. Labourers also expressed dissatisfaction that the transportation (part of the perks/negotiations promised by GADCO) to return them home at the end of the working day was inadequate. Another perk promised by GADCO was the luxury of being able to buy some of company’s rice at a subsidised price – but there was no rice available. The community approached GADCO in hopes of assistance to build a water pipeline. While the community, now adorned with updated street-lighting and kindergarten furniture, further negotiated for GADCO to supply a pipe for water in 2013, over $15 million was spent on the first phase of the project. The next phase of the project would be launched within the next two years with a $100-million investment to develop rice paddies in five Sub-Saharan countries, including Mozambique, Zambia and Nigeria.

“Nevertheless, the complaints of GADCO’s labourers – the one group the company can most easily replace and so arguably doesn’t need to try as hard to please – doesn’t reflect well, and some might be concerned that although other parties seem happy for now, the more the firm grows, the more it will be able to leverage its power to squeeze greater profits from those other groups too. There is a fundamental power imbalance between GADCO and its small-scale farmers, for example, which will only increase as the company develops a stronger monopoly on inputs and markets.”— When companies meet communities: Is this what friendly commercial farming looks like, January 15, 2014

“Meanwhile, AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) has supported the expansion of agrodealers into rural areas; the development of private seed companies; and reforms to intellectual property rights in Ghana. This has resulted in the increasing movement of seeds produced by multinational companies into the Ghanaian market, threatening to displace nationally produced certified seeds, and the enactments of new laws to facilitate market penetration and research by transnational agribusiness. A Biosafety Protection Law was enacted in 2010, facilitating the movement of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and related research into Ghana… [GADCO] has entered into an arrangement with the communities to lease 1,000ha of land for a 2.5 percent share of the profits and the grant of 48ha of developed irrigated plots back to the community… GADCO is exploring other avenues of gaining access to seeds produced by transnational seed companies and from Ghanaian seed research institutes, although there are problems with the quality of certified seeds produced in Ghana and difficulties in getting regulatory clearance from imported seeds. For the present, it has entered into an alliance with Wienco, which has contractual rights to distribute Syngenta seeds in Ghana.” ^[Source]

“The Syngenta Foundation is linked to the much-maligned agrochemical giant Syngenta while AGRA – which is in fact chaired by Annan himself – has been accused of being a shill for biotech corporations and of undermining the sovereignty of local farmers.”— When companies meet communities: Is this what friendly commercial farming looks like, January 15, 2014

The philanthropic gestures played out by the corporate state and hyped by the mass media they own and fund (hence control) are for propaganda purposes only – wholly utilized to give the semblance of concern. Be assured that the only true concern is both the protection and expansion of the current power structure via policies that will expand capital markets with investments, legislative policies and privatization that will not only further enslave the Global South, but further destroy all life on Earth. This series will continue to demonstrate that without doubt, there is no entity on Earth that sustains the status quo than the NPIC, the mercenaries and protectorate of global hegemony.

End Notes:

[1] The remaining 6 individuals to join the commission were:

Mats Granryd, Director General, GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association): [Full bio]
Helen Hai, CEO, Made in Africa Initiative: Goodwill Ambassador, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) “By leveraging the expertise of leading industry experts and influential persons with experience working in China and Africa, the Made In Africa Initiative will ensure that Africa’s economic transition integrate knowledge and advice drawn from three decades of rapid economic development in China… Members of the board fully support industrialization in Africa.” [Source] [Full bio]
Mads Nipper, Group President, CEO, Grundfos: Served as Chief Marketing Officer, Executive Vice President of Markets and Member of Management Board at LEGO A/S (known as Lego Group) from 1991-2014. [Source]
Cherie Nursalim, Vice Chairman, GITI Group: Former research associate at the Harvard Business School and director of East-West Bank in California. Named Young Global Leader by the World Economic forum.[Full bio]
Dinara Seijaparova, CFO, National Management Holding Baiterek: CFO of National Oil&Gas company; work on Kashagan financing; World Bank Group in Washington DC, analyst.[Source]
Hans Vestberg, Executive Vice President and President of Network and Technology, Verizon: formerCEO of telecommunications company Ericsson. [Source]

[2] “The International Rescue Committee has been described in the past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, and it is. This is exactly what is going on with the IRC today, and more, when the IRC—heavily subsidized by the very same profiteers—sends its body counters into Congo. But the IRC is not only the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, it is also the ideal instrument of intelligence gathering. The IRC capitalizes on their access to refugee populations, conflict areas and individual refugee encounters and interviews to gather intelligence on armed groups, leadership, resources, weapons and geographical conflicts, information that is selectively used to serve the greater interests of the IRC and its partners.” Source: The War that did not make the Headlines: Over Five Million Dead in Congo? Behind the Numbers Redux: How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told, January 31, 2008

[3] “In January 1993, Mort Abramowitz, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Mark Malloch Brown, then World Bank Vice President for External Affairs and later Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, are seated next to each other on a flight out of war-torn Sarajevo. The two men debate why it had been so difficult for the international system to effectively respond to Bosnia and other conflicts. An idea is hatched: to create an independent organisation that could serve as the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in countries in conflict while pressing for immediate action. The concept of the International Crisis Group is born.” [Source] [4] “In 2013, following a series of workshops and meetings hosted by Virgin Unite, a group of business leaders came together with a shared belief that business could no longer be motivated by profit alone. From these extensive discussions The B Team was formed and incubated by Virgin Unite with the support of many wonderful partners.” [Source” Virgin Website] [5] The Business Commission’s Steering committee is comprised of the following individuals: Peter Bakker, President, World Business Council on Sustainable Development; Kathy Calvin, President & CEO, UN Foundation; John Danilovich, Secretary General, International Chambers of Commerce; Zia Khan, Vice President, Initiatives and Strategy, Rockefeller Foundation; Lise Kingo, Executive Director, UN Global Compact; David Nabarro, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change; Richard Samans, Managing Director, World Economic Forum; Jeff Seabright, Chief Sustainability Officer, Unilever; Andrew Steer, President & CEO, World Resources Institute; Keith Tuffley, Managing Partner & CEO, The B Team; Miguel Veiga-Pestana, Chief Communications Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Kevin Watkins, Executive Director, Overseas Development Institute.

[6] The Business Commission’s Research Advisory Group is comprised of the following individuals:Caroline Anstey, Group Managing Director and Global Head, UBS and Society, UBS; Kaysie Brown, Special Advisor for Policy and Strategic Initiatives, UN Foundation; Paula Caballero, Global Practice Director for Environment and Natural Resources, World Bank Group; John Elkington, Chairman and Chief Pollinator, Volans; Helene Gayle, CEO, McKinsey Social Initiative; Kitty van der Heijden, Director, World Resources Institute Europe; Celine Herweijer, Partner in PwC’s Sustainability and Climate Change, PWC; Homi Kharas, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director for the Global Economy and Development program, Brookings Institute; Mark Kramer, Co-founder and Managing Director, FSG; Kishore Mahbubani Lee, Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore; Jessica Long, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy and Sustainability, Accenture; Professor Michael Mainelli, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Z/Yen; Paul Mason, Economics Editor, Channel 4 News; John W. McArthur, Senior Fellow, UN Foundation; Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Co-founder and Chief Executive, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development; Amina J. Mohammed, Minister of the Environment, Nigeria, and CEO/Founder, Center for Development Policy Solutions; James Mwangi, CEO and Managing Director, Equity Group Holdings Limited; Roel Nieuwenkamp, Chair, OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct; Guido Schmidt-Traub, Executive Director, UN Sustainable Development Network and Andrew Winston, Founder, Winston Eco-Strategies, LLC.

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

Sep 22

2017

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Pacifism as Pathology, Purpose Inc., Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

350.org Avaaz Beautiful Trouble Ben & Jerry’s Foundation BICEP First Nations Greenpeace Other98 Social Engineering Standing Rock The Backbone Campaign Unilever Upworthy

LISTEN: A Mexican Crossing Lines – Fake Progressive Agendas – Part 3

KPPP-LP FM

Recorded live August 30, 2017

Part 3 of a 6 Part Series

[The 6-part series can be found here: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 | Read the addendum here.]

A Mexican Crossing Lines discusses the Fake progressives that are linked to the Kathleen Bennett case, as well as the connections to Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits.

Also discussed:

:: Houston Hurricane
:: Update on Liars and Exploiters at camps and elsewhere
:: Fake Progressive Agendas Part 3

Listen To an Audio Podcast of the Show Here:

A Mexican Crossing Lines – Fake Progressive Agendas – Part 3

Download Audio Link

Link to Standing Rock article discussed in this podcast:

https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2016/12/09/standing-rock-profusion-collusion-big-money-profits-part-3/

FaceBook Live Video of this Show Before Broadcasting (Note, FB Live videos are pre-recorded and then edited properly for radio Broadcasts on the air):

[Cindy Gomez-Schempp is station manager of KPPP-LP FM radio, Board President of The Peoples Press Project and editor-in-chief at Mexi-Can]

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