Burundi: L’ingérence de Washington et de l’UE ne sont pas inévitables

Journal de l’Afrique n° 14, Investig’Action

Octobre 9, 2015

 

Afin de permettre à ses lecteurs de comprendre la situation tendue au Burundi en particulier et dans la région de l’Afrique centrale en général, nous avons interviewé le Belge Tony Busselen(*), qui suit de près les évènements dans la région des Grands Lacs. Etant donné que la situation évolue et que les évènements se succèdent, nous tenons à préciser que cette interview a été réalisée le 15 septembre. Entretien mené par Olivier Atemsing Ndenkop.

 

U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power meets with Burundi soldiers transported to the Central African Republic by Pentagon air cargo carriers.

 

Les manifestations anti troisième mandat au Burundi ne cachent-elles pas une question plus profonde qui serait une meilleure répartition du fruit de la croissance et donc l’amélioration des conditions de vie des citoyens en Afrique ?

La répartition du fruit de la croissance est en effet une question-clé pour toute l’Afrique. Mais il y a deux problèmes qui y sont liés : d’abord ce fruit devra, dans une première phase, être investi dans les infrastructures pour jeter les bases d’un progrès plus durable et aller de pair avec la création d’emplois. Et de deux : ce sont surtout les grandes multinationales qui vont partir avec la majeure partie de ce fruit.

L’Africa Progress Report rédigé en 2013 sous la direction de l’ ancien secrétaire général de l’ONU Kofi Annan notait : « On estime que 60 % des échanges internationaux sont aujourd’hui réalisés entre des filiales d’une même entreprise, et plusieurs sociétés d’extraction actives dans les pays riches en ressources naturelles importent des biens et des services d’une filiale ou d’une entité affiliée, obtiennent des financements d’une autre, et vendent en amont à d’autres entreprises du groupe actives dans la transformation. (…)

Pour les autorités africaines, faire appliquer les codes des impôts est souvent mission impossible. » Le Rapport estimait le vol par fraude fiscale de la part des multinationales à 38,4 milliards de $ qui quittent chaque année l’Afrique. Et on ne parle même pas des avantages fiscaux que ces grandes sociétés reçoivent sous l’impulsion du Fonds Monétaire International (FMI) qui pousse les gouvernements africains à « séduire » les investisseurs pour investir dans leur pays avec toutes sortes d’exemptions d’impôts, etc.

Donc, un mouvement qui voudrait obtenir une meilleure répartition du fruit de la croissance devrait d’abord revendiquer des investissements sérieux dans des infrastructures et pour la création d’emplois et, de deux, il devrait surtout orienter la colère populaire vers ces grandes multinationales qui, avec le soutien des pays industrialisés et des institutions financières, pillent le continent africain au milieu des guerres et de la misère. Ce genre de mouvement en viendrait presque logiquement à exiger de leurs gouvernements qu’ils s’en prennent à ces pratiques de pillage. Or, on ne constate rien de cela dans ce qui se passe au Burundi. Ni du côté du camp présidentiel, dirigé par Président Nkurunziza qui assure qu’il a reçu le pouvoir de Dieu lui-même et qui n’hésite pas à employer des méthodes extrêmement brutales contre ses opposants causant une centaine de morts, des blessés plus nombreux encore et un flot de 180.000 réfugiés vers les pays voisins. Pas non plus du côté du mouvement anti-Nkurunziza. Car, quand on analyse les événements, il est sûr que certains manifestants sont plus en colère à cause de leurs conditions de vie qui ne s’améliorent pas que sur la question du troisième mandat. Or, c’est pourtant bien cette dernière revendication qui est le dénominateur commun du front anti-Nkurunziza.

La colère s’explique aussi et surtout par la répression brutale. Mais c’est aussi un fait que les manifestations se limitent à quelques quartiers à Bujumbura. Différents observateurs qui connaissent bien le pays confirment que dans la campagne, où habite la majeure partie des Burundais et qui est surtout la partie la plus pauvre, il n’y a pas de manifestations, sauf à un certain moment dans la Bujumbura rurale, une des 18 provinces du pays. On ne peut pas parler de colère populaire massive généralisée, comme c’était le cas par exemple au Burkina Faso où c’est une partie bien plus importante de la population qui s’est mobilisée. Et enfin, il faut noter que les coups que Nkurunziza a reçus depuis avril de cette année sont surtout à mettre à l’actif des milieux de la classe politique qui comptent sur la pression des gouvernements occidentaux pour pouvoir retourner à Bujumbura comme membres d’un nouveau gouvernement et pour qui le mouvement de masse n’est pas l’instrument principal. Il y a eu les défections au plus haut niveau du parti de Nkurunziza lui-même, il y a eu la tentative de coup d’État échouée en mai dirigé par des hauts gradés militaires. Tout ça ressemble très peu à une révolte populaire massive.

La stratégie des opposants ressemble plutôt à attirer l’attention de la soi-disant « Communauté Internationale » et de provoquer une intervention extérieure. Et, en effet, il y a la menace de retirer l’aide budgétaire au gouvernement à Bujumbura qui dépend pour 50 % de l’extérieur. Or, Nkurunziza et les siens disent qu’ils préfèrent une crise budgétaire que lâcher le pouvoir. Dans ce cas, si les opposants persistent dans leurs stratégie, ils devront demander – voire provoquer – une intervention plus musclée de ce qu’on appelle la Communauté Internationale, mais qui est en fait l’Occident.

Y a-t-il un point commun entre les événements au Burundi, au Sénégal, au Burkina Faso et les « Printemps arabes » qui ont secoué la Tunisie, l’Egypte et la Libye, avec pour mot d’ordre « abat le pouvoir perpétuel » ?

Le point commun dans tous ces pays, auxquels vous comparez les événements actuels au Burundi, c’est une stratégie de changement de régime sous les auspices des Etats-Unis appuyés par l’Union Européenne. Ces dernières années en Afrique, il y a eu le mot d’ordre « alternance pour la démocratie » lancé dans les médias occidentaux. J’ai déjà dit dans une interview précédente que les mots d’ordre de l’« alternance » et « non au troisième mandat » lancé en 2009 par le président états-unien Obama, sont des mots d’ordre démagogiques qui évitent la question essentielle qui est : « l’alternance pour quoi faire ? » Alternance pour défendre la souveraineté ou pour continuer à suivre les consignes données par Washington, Paris, Londres ou Bruxelles ? Alternance pour quitter la voie stipulée par le FMI depuis trois décennies qui ne mène nulle part sauf à une exploitation toujours plus sauvage par les multinationales des ressources naturelles africaines et un affaiblissement permanent des États africains ? Ou alternance pour mettre en place un gouvernement encore plus docile au FMI ? Ces mots d’ordre d’alternance et de limite du nombre de mandats au nom de la démocratie dans la bouche des Occidentaux sont simplement ridicules. Au Togo, cela ne pose aucun problème pour les médias occidentaux que le fils de l’ancien dictateur Eyadema (37 années de dictature) se fait réélire cette année pour un quatrième mandat. Ce qui implique que père et fils ont le pouvoir depuis 1967, ça fait une dictature de 48 ans ! Avec la bénédiction de Paris !

Et au Bénin, Paris vient d’envoyer Lionel Zinsou, un ancien membre de cabinet de plusieurs ministres socialistes français et proche collaborateur de Laurent Fabius pour y être nommé… Premier ministre. Ce Monsieur a aussi une longue expérience dans les conseils d’administrations des grandes multinationales comme Danone, Hewlett Packard et la Banque Rothschild. Depuis 2008, ce monsieur était président du Comité exécutif de la société d’investissement PAI Partners, gérant un capital de 7,5 milliards d’euros ! Sans aucune élection ni lien avec un parti béninois, ce monsieur est parachuté au mois de juin 2016 dans le fauteuil de Premier ministre du Bénin !

Où est le souci pour la démocratie, la légitimité et la représentativité populaire dans les médias occidentaux ? Sur l’Ethiopie, un pays qui ne connaît tout simplement pas de partis d’opposition dans le parlement, où les élections sont gagnées à 100 % par l’alliance gouvernementale, Susan Rice, ancienne ambassadrice états-unienne à l’Onu et actuellement présidente du conseil de sécurité nationale états-unien, déclare, sans rire, que les élections s’y « sont déroulées d’une façon complètement démocratique » !

Qui peut prendre au sérieux ces grands discours sur la « nécessité de l’alternance au nom de la démocratie » de tous ces grands dignitaires et médias du monde capitaliste occidental ? Qui peut rester aveugle sur l’agenda géostratégique des Etats-Unis et de l’Union européenne en Afrique ? Prenez l’exemple de Djibouti. Le 21 juillet 2015, the Daily Telegraph publie un article en concluant que des diplomates états-uniens contestent la volonté du président de Djibouti, Mr Guelleh, de participer aux élections de l’année prochaine. Selon ces diplomates, une telle participation serait « inconstitutionnelle ». Il n’y a pas un seul membre de l’opposition de ce pays qui est même cité, ce sont les diplomates états-uniens qui s’octroient la compétence de la cour constitutionnelle de ce pays. Mais le comble est que le journal écrit noir sur blanc que « Washington espère qu’un dirigeant plus raisonnable sera élu, quelqu’un qui sera plus aligné sur les intérêts du Pentagone », le ministère de la Défense états-unien donc ! Quel est le crime de ce M. Guelleh ? Le fait d’avoir conclu un accord avec la Chine pour l’exploitation du port de Djibouti pour la somme de 185 millions de $.

Or, dans ce pays se trouve depuis 2001 un camp militaire états-unien où sont logés 4500 soldats. Ce camp Lemonnier subit pour le moment des travaux de rénovation et d’expansion pour la somme de 1,4 milliard de $. Ce camp serait, selon des officiers états-uniens, important pour la lutte contre le terrorisme et pour le rassemblement d’informations sur les différents groupes terroristes au Moyen Orient et en Afrique. Or, horreur, la présence de Chinois dans le port civil, pourrait mettre en danger ces opérations d’intelligence ! Et donc les diplomates états-uniens sont à la recherche d’un président plus « raisonnable »… au nom de la constitution et de la limitation du nombre des mandats. Et, enfin, on ne dit encore rien sur le fait que cette alternance est prêchée par des prêtres de la démocratie qui sont eux-mêmes les derniers à l’appliquer. On a vu, quand le peuple grec a voté pour une alternance, de quelle façon dictatoriale se sont comportés la Commission Européenne et l’Eurogroupe, une instance qui n’est même pas élue.

Au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, on n’arrive pas à formuler une résolution concernant le Burundi. Que se passe-t-il en réalité ?

D’abord il faut se poser la question : comment comprendre que, parmi les analyses et commentaires de nombreux spécialistes occidentaux, très peu donnent de l’importance au fait que cette communauté internationale est fondamentalement divisée ? Pour moi, c’est la preuve qu’un grand nombre de ces gens qui militent pour que la fameuse « communauté internationale » applique davantage encore une politique d’ingérence et d’intervention au nom de la « démocratie » et des « droits de l’Homme », sont vraiment endoctrinés et parlent la langue de bois. Ils font comme si les positions occidentales étaient représentatives de toute la communauté internationale.

Il y a en effet deux camps dans cette communauté internationale : le camp qui dit que Nkurunziza n’avait pas le droit de se présenter comme candidat et qu’il est « disqualifié », car « la décision de Nkurunziza de participer aux élections présidentielles est « totalement contraire aux accords d’Arusha » comme l’a martelé Louis Michel au parlement européen ; et, de l’autre côté, il y a un nombre assez important de pays et de gouvernements qui disent qu’ils constatent une divergence sur l’interprétation de la constitution. Et que cette divergence doit être résolue entre Burundais. Ce serait trop facile de réduire cette division au sein de la communauté internationale à une division entre pro et anti-Nkurunziza, ou supporters de la dictature versus démocrates. Dans le deuxième camp se trouve par exemple le président sud-africain, Jacob Zuma, qui a dit à plusieurs reprises en public qu’il avait conseillé à Nkurunziza de ne pas se représenter.

Quand on voit la composition des deux camps, ce serait d’ailleurs aussi ridicule de penser que la personne de Nkurunziza est la vraie raison de la division. La raison plus profonde est que des pays comme la Russie, la Chine, l’Angola, l’Afrique du Sud, le Tchad, la RDC, la Tanzanie, et bien d’autres pays Africains, n’acceptent plus les violations par le camp occidental de la souveraineté des pays africains sous prétexte de vouloir protéger les droits démocratiques des peuples. Le ministre des Affaires Etrangères russe Lavrov vient de publier le 24 août 2015 une opinion dans les journaux Rossiyskaya Gazeta en Russie et Renmin Ribao en Chine. L’article est écrit à l’occasion du 70ème anniversaire de la fin de la défaite de la deuxième guerre mondiale. Il note que la Russie et la Chine sont les deux pays qui ont le plus souffert dans cette guerre. Il y décrit et loue l’alliance Russo-Chinoise. Et il oppose cette alliance à l’Occident qui essaie de « falsifier l’histoire et de mettre les bourreaux nazis et les victimes soviétiques sur le même pied ». « Ainsi on sape les bases de l’ordre mondial moderne qui a été formulé dans la Charte de l’ONU ».

Cette Charte a comme principe le respect de la souveraineté et le refus de l’agression d’une nation par une autre. Lavrov dit : « Le futur du monde ne peut être déterminé par un État ou un petit nombre d’États ». Il parle clairement des Etats-Unis et de leurs alliés Européens. « Le bombardement de la Yougoslavie, l’occupation de l’Irak, le chaos en Libye et la guerre fratricide en Ukraine sont des preuves qu’une déviation de cette sagesse ainsi que le désir de dominer le monde, d’imposer sa volonté, ses visions et ses valeurs à d’autres États mènent à des conséquences tragiques. » Ce type de messages est simplement négligé en Occident ou ridiculisé. Et ce n’est donc pas un hasard que, sur le Burundi aussi, certains nient l’évidence qu’il y a une opposition grandissante contre « le petit nombre d’États » qui continuent à parler comme s’ils représentaient la communauté internationale et l’humanité entière et qui déclarent urbi et orbi qui est disqualifié à être président dans un pays et qui ne l’est pas.

Enfin, on doit noter une hypocrisie immense chez ces hommes politiques occidentaux qui aujourd’hui se disent « alarmés » et avertissent même d’un danger de génocide. Car, primo, tant la police que l’armée burundaise a reçu ces 5 dernières années un entrainement intensif et massif de la part des Etats-Unis (en ce qui concerne l’armée) et de la part de certains États européens (en ce qui concerne la police). Selon le « Security Assistance Monitor » qui se base sur les chiffres officiels de l’armée états-unienne, le Pentagone a entraîné entre 2011 en 2014 pas moins de 20 000 soldats burundais, c’est-à-dire presque la totalité des troupes burundaises.

La police a été formée par des programmes exécutés par la Belgique et les Pays Bas à partir de 2011. Secundo, en 2010, l’opposition anti-Nkurunziza avait déjà en long et en large avertit de la tendance qu’elle disait dictatoriales de Nkurunziza. Elle avait même boycotté les élections en dénonçant les conditions qui ne lui permettaient pas de mener des campagnes électorales surtout dans les provinces. Or, ses membres ont été qualifiés de « traitres à la démocratie » par les Occidentaux. Leonard Nyangoma, qui est aujourd’hui à la tête de l’alliance anti-Nkurunziza, a déclaré avoir été traité d’une façon arrogante par les ambassadeurs belge, français et allemand.

Quand il a dû se réfugier en Tanzanie à cause de la répression qui le visait, il a demandé un visa pour la France dans le cadre du regroupement familial. Les autorités françaises le lui ont refusé en première instance avec l’argument qu’il avait « boycotté les élections », ce qui aurait pu entraîner « un nouveau cycle politique marqué par la violence et l’instabilité sécuritaire ». Il a dû aller en justice pour obtenir son visa. En 2013, il s’est vu aussi interdire l’entrée aux Etats-Unis. Or aujourd’hui, ce même Nyangoma, se trouve donc à la tête de l’alliance anti-Nkurunziza qui est appuyé par … les Etats-Unis et ses alliés Européens. C’est un exemple de ce que Lavrov décrit comme « le désir de dominer le monde, d’imposer sa volonté, ses visions et ses valeurs à d’autres États ». La technique consiste à appliquer une politique incohérente où l’on appuie aujourd’hui les gens que l’on a rejetés hier et où l’on combat aujourd’hui les gens que l’on a appuyés hier, avec le seul critère « est-il pour le moment utile pour notre leadership ? ». Une telle politique ne peut mener que vers le chaos et l’instabilité, on l’a vu en Irak, en Afghanistan, en Libye et ailleurs et on le voit aujourd’hui au Burundi.

Qui se cache derrière l’assassinat des hommes politiques burundais depuis l’élection de Nkuruzinza et dans quel but ces crimes sont-ils commis ?

D’abord, on ne peut que constater que ces assassinats sont commis par des professionnels. Des gens qui s’y connaissent dans le métier militaire. Cela ne ressemble pas du tout à une révolte populaire mais plutôt à un règlement de compte entre maffias. Il s’agit d’attaques bien ciblées exécutées contre des personnes haut placées du camp Nkurunziza et, en représailles, contre des personnes de l’opposition. Particulièrement inquiétant est l’assassinat du général Adolphe Nshimirimana, deuxième homme du régime Nkurunziza, suivi par l’assassinat du colonel Bikommagu. Bikommagu était l’ancien chef des Forces Armées Burundaises (FAB), l’ancienne armée dominée par les Tutsi dans les années 1990, qui est aussi liée au coup d’État en 1993 contre Ndadayé, le premier président progressiste élu démocratiquement qui voulait en finir avec l’ethnicisme et la haine entre Tutsi et Hutu et qui voulait se battre pour l’unité nationale. Ainsi on risque de glisser vers une guerre entre deux composantes de l’armée burundaise qui, après l’accord d’Arusha, ont été intégrées dans une armée : les anciennes FAB contre les anciens rebelles de Nkurunziza. Ces deux camps se sont fait la guerre pendant plusieurs années dans les années 1990.

Le 24 juillet 2014, la chaine de télévision arabe Al Jazeera a montré un reportage dans le camp de réfugiés burundais Mahama, à l’Est du Rwanda. Dans ce reportage, plusieurs réfugiés témoignent de réunions qui ont été organisées dans ce camp afin de recruter des gens pour aller suivre des entrainements militaires et rejoindre un mouvement de rébellion inconnu. Dans un État où les services de renseignements sont partout, il est exclu que de telles activités de recrutement se fassent sans l’accord du gouvernement rwandais. Le Rwanda a d’ailleurs aussi hébergé le général Nyombare, auteur du putsch manqué à Bujumbura en mai dernier. Et, dès le début du mois de mai, le ministre rwandais des Affaires Etrangères a déclaré que les FDLR, rebelles rwandais se trouvant en RDC, ont été signalés au Burundi.

Les médias rwandais ont suggéré que ces FDLR seraient là pour appuyer Nkurunziza. Assez menaçant de la part du Rwanda puisque ces FDLR sont présentés par Kigali comme leurs ennemis les plus importants. En plus, tout le monde sait que les relations entre Kagamé et Nkurunziza sont tendues depuis que Nkurunziza a accordé des facilités de transit aux avions venus de Tanzanie, du Malawi et d’Afrique du Sud qui ont transporté des troupes pour la Brigade d’intervention africaine qui a participé à l’opération conjointe avec l’armée congolaise contre les rebelles du M23. Sachant comment le Rwanda a employé les FDLR comme prétexte pour intervenir militairement depuis 1998 à l’Est du Congo ou pour y mettre sur pied des rébellions comme le CNDP de Nkunda ou les M23, certains observateurs suggèrent que le Rwanda pourrait bien essayer de mettre sur pied ou de susciter une rébellion dont le noyau serait formé par les anciens FAB, composés d’éléments tutsi. Cela serait extrêmement dangereux puisque cela peut introduire l’aspect d’une confrontation Hutus-Tutsis dans le conflit, avec tout ce que cela a impliqué dans la région dans les années 1990. Il faut dire aussi que beaucoup d’observateurs accusent le gouvernement de Nkurunziza d’essayer d’ethniciser le conflit en présentant les protestataires comme des Tutsis qui veulent reprendre le pouvoir.

Tout en contestant les résultats des élections législatives du 29 juin 2015, l’honorable Agathon Rwasa a néanmoins décidé de siéger à l’Assemblée nationale. Comment comprendre une telle contradiction ?

Agathon Rwasa a dirigé le mouvement d’opposition hutu le plus ancien, fondé dans les années 1980. Après avoir signé un accord de paix et avoir transformé son mouvement armé en parti politique en 2009, il devra entrer en clandestinité à cause de la répression par le gouvernement Nkurunziza entre 2011 et 2013. Certains essaient de ridiculiser le fait qu’il a accepté d’intégrer des institutions résultant d’élections qu’il a lui-même contestées, mais son passé devrait faire réfléchir et inciter à la prudence. Un homme pareil n’accepte pas l’humiliation d’entrer dans un gouvernement par la petite porte, sans agenda et sans ambition pour le futur. Il a en effet joué un jeu ambigu ces derniers mois : d’un côté il s’est opposé à la candidature de Nkurunziza.

Mais en même temps, il n’a jamais participé aux manifestations dans la rue. Il a déposé sa candidature pour les élections présidentielles tout en disant que le climat sécuritaire ne permettait pas d’organiser un scrutin crédible et qu’il continuait à exiger le retrait de la candidature de Nkurunziza. Il a même appelé à continuer le boycott du scrutin pour lequel il était lui-même candidat. Enfin, après les élections, il a refusé les résultats des élections en les qualifiant de « fantaisistes ». Ensuite, il a accepté la fonction de vice-président d’une Assemblée nationale issue de ces mêmes scrutins. Et il a accepté d’envoyer cinq de ses membres dans le gouvernement d’union nationale composé par le CNDD-FDD. Tout cela donne l’impression que Rwasa a été très tactique et qu’il a attendu l’évolution des choses avant de prendre sa décision. Si la pression de l’extérieur avait empêché les élections, il aurait été en bonne position pour participer à un gouvernement de transition qui allait préparer des élections.

Et maintenant que les élections ont eu lieu, et que Nkunrunziza a prêté serment et a prouvé qu’il ne cèderait pas devant la pression des Occidentaux, il a accepté un rôle secondaire au sein des institutions. La question est de savoir quelles sont ses ambitions pour le futur ? Je pense que la présence du FLN dans les institutions est importante et il faudra bien suivre l’évolution. Dans les années 1980, le FLN était le bras armé du Palipehutu, parti basant son idéologie sur la haine contre tous les Tutsis. Des Présidents comme Bagaza et Buyoya exerçaient dans cette période une dictature et s’identifiaient comme Tutsis. Or depuis 2003, Rwasa s’est vu confronter à un gouvernement dirigé par un Hutu, d’abord sous Ndayzeye et ensuite depuis 2005 sous Nkurunziza.

C’est en 2009 qu’il transforme son mouvement armé en parti politique et qu’il jure de suivre la voie de la non-violence et de la lutte politique. Quand on regarde le programme politique du FLN aujourd’hui (que l’on peut retrouver sur leur site web), on n’y trouve plus aucune trace de cette ancienne idéologie réactionnaire ethniciste du Palipehutu. C’est un programme assez moderne, orienté vers le développement économique et social du Burundi qui est présenté. On peut espérer que Rwasa et son parti ont évolué vers un souci d’unité nationale en donnant la priorité au développement économique et social du Burundi. Vu l’impact de cette idéologie ethniciste, il n’est pas du tout exclu qu’en cas de guerre civile, cette ancienne idéologie remonte à la surface et que le FLN contribuera à la division et le déchirement de la nation burundaise. Mais il n’y a pas de fatalité. Ce sont les faits qui démontreront si Rwasa est réellement décidé à faire tout pour une solution pacifique et un renforcement de l’unité nationale par le dialogue ou s’il est resté un fanatique qui voit le monde en fonction de « contradictions » ethniques et qui attend son moment.

Selon plusieurs spécialistes de la région des Grands Lacs, le nikel de Musongati et le pétrole découvert au large du lac Tanganyika constituent l’enjeu majeur de la crise qui déchire le Burundi. Etes-vous de cet avis ?

L’enjeu majeur, je ne le dirais pas. Mais il y a certainement des intérêts économiques sous-estimés en jeu au Burundi. En juin de l’année passée, Bloomberg a annoncé que l’État burundais avait augmenté jusqu’à 15 % ses parts dans le projet de construction d’une mine de nickel et de fer à Musongati. La construction de la mine a été lancée en octobre 2014. Selon Bloomberg, la mine en question pourrait produire 5 millions de tonnes de nickel, cobalt et de fer en dix ans, moyennant un investissement de 3 milliards de $. La société russe Kermas est un groupe qui est actif en Allemagne, en Russie, en Turquie, en Afrique du Sud et au Zimbabwe, et qui détient les 85 autres pourcents dans la mine, ce qui ne doit pas plaire aux monopoles états-uniens et européens.

Ensuite, il y a des mégaprojets, comme la construction du plus grand port de la côte de l’est à Bagamoyo en Tanzanie, un investissement chinois de 11 milliards de $, combiné avec un projet de relier le Burundi avec ce port par chemin de fer, ce qui fera du Burundi un pays important dans les décennies à venir pour le commerce en Afrique de l’Est.

Et finalement, il y a des réserves pétrolières dans le lac Tanganyika qui se trouvent dans le sol du Burundi, Tanzanie, Congo, Zambie et Malawi. Et ce serait logique que ces pays aient un intérêt commun de gérer ces réserves d’une façon plus avantageuse.

Voilà autant de raisons qui contribuent à une certaine inquiétude et une certaine mobilisation dans les capitales occidentales. Mais, comme je dis, ce serait trop court de réduire l’enjeu majeur à ces intérêts économiques. Ce n’est qu’un aspect d’un conflit géopolitique régional plus vaste.

Après le Burundi, les élections présidentielles sont attendues au Rwanda, au Congo Brazzaville et en RD-Congo. Les présidents en fonction dans ces trois pays ont- directement ou non- indiqué qu’ils se représenteront. Comment comprendre que la Communauté internationale dirigée par les USA s’acharne sur les autres pays et pas sur le Rwanda ?

Il est vrai que les Etats-Unis et la Grande Bretagne ont également fait des déclarations sur le Rwanda, mais il est aussi vrai qu’il y a un acharnement plus poussé envers les autres pays. Les réactions sur une telle déclaration états-unienne sont différentes dans les autres pays qu’au Rwanda. En RDC, par exemple, les déclarations de la part des dirigeants occidentaux sont utilisées et présentées par l’opposition comme des décisions irrévocables de la part des maîtres du monde. Au Rwanda, l’opposition n’a simplement pas la possibilité de s’exprimer et donc de telles déclarations n’y ont pratiquement aucun effet. Les Etats-Unis savent cela aussi naturellement et ces déclarations servent en fait à préserver un minimum de crédibilité à leurs déclarations sur les autres pays.

Kagame se prépare ouvertement à une modification de la constitution. Le mardi 11 août, le parlement rwandais a annoncé officiellement qu’il allait effectivement réformer la constitution, permettant ainsi à Kagame de briguer un troisième mandat en 2017. La réaction de Washington ou de l’Occident en général est timide. Washington a attendu trois semaines pour avertir Kagame que le gouvernement états-unien n’accepterait pas un changement de la constitution. Mais Jason Stearns, spécialiste de la région proche et de l’establishment états-unien, réagissait immédiatement avec un tweet cynique : “would donors cut aid to Rwanda over constitutional revision, as w/M23 ? Probably not. ” Cela implique que les Etats-Unis ne seraient cette fois-ci même pas prêts à débloquer la très modeste somme de 200 000$ comme ils l’ont fait en 2012 quand le Rwanda continuait à appuyer et armer les rebelles du M23 au Congo, malgré les consignes officielles de Washington.

Mais c’est bien le Ministre britannique de la coopération au développement et de l’Afrique, Grant Sharps, qui vient de décrocher la timbale. Le 10 septembre, deux jours après l’installation officielle de la commission qui rédigera le projet de réforme de la constitution, il visite Kigali. Il déclare : « Le Royaume Uni n’est pas en faveur d’une réforme de la Constitution pouvant permettre à Paul Kagame de briguer un troisième mandat ». Mais ensuite il explique pourquoi : « La difficulté avec les amendements de constitutions est qu’une fois qu’un pays le fait, tout le monde pense pouvoir le faire aussi. Beaucoup de pays voisins n’ont pas les mêmes standards que ceux d’ici. »

Donc en fait, le problème pour Londres n’est pas un troisième mandat pour Kagame, car « il gère bien son pays » (sic). Mais le vrai problème selon Sharps est plutôt le fait que les pays voisins, la RDC et le Burundi, pourraient suivre l’exemple. Donc ici on voit bien que la question du troisième mandat cache une autre question qui est de savoir si le Président concerné respecte oui ou non les « bons standards » selon Londres. En plus, malgré l’interdiction des émissions de la BBC en Kinyarwandas, qui dans d’autres contrées serait un casus belli, Sharps déclare que les relations entre la Grande Bretagne et le Rwanda sont au beau fixe et il signe un contrat d’appui à l’enseignement pour la somme de 41,5 millions d’euros.

Par contre, en RDC, par exemple, la situation est pourtant beaucoup moins pressante qu’au Rwanda. Là, on discute sur la façon d’empêcher le glissement des élections qui impliquerait que Kabila pourrait éventuellement encore rester président quelques mois ou années après 2016 ! Et là, le verdict de Washington est sans hésitations : « il n’en est pas question ! » Herman Cohen, ancien sous-secrétaire d’État responsable pour l’Afrique entre 1989 et 1993 et commentateur bien écouté sur la région de l’Afrique centrale, écrivait le 26 août : « Le gouvernement américain est catégorique sur l’obligation constitutionnelle de tenir cette élection en novembre 2016. Washington ne va pas attendre le mois de juillet ou d’août 2016 pour faire pression sur le régime de Kabila. Si aucun préparatif n’est visible d’ici fin 2015, le gouvernement américain entamera sans doute des discussions avec ses partenaires européens pour imposer des sanctions sur la famille de Kabila et son cercle immédiat de proches conseillers. »

Votre question maintenant est pourquoi cette différence avec le Rwanda ? La réponse est simple : Kagame est un allié important des Etats-Unis dans la région et en Afrique. Il dirige une armée qu’il met à la disposition des Etats-Unis au Mali, en Centrafrique, au Darfour. Il est un proche ami des hommes les plus importants de l’establishment états-unien, comme Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, etc.

Left: U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. Right:  Paul Kagame

La question clé, c’est que, si les Etats-Unis parlent beaucoup de démocratie et de droits de l’homme, ce qui compte réellement pour eux est leur leadership dans le monde. C’est l’idée clé qui revient depuis deux décennies dans tous leurs documents appelés « National Security Strategy » qui sont publiés tous les quatre ans environ et qui décrivent leur stratégie au niveau de leur politique étrangère. Le dernier de ces documents qui a été publié au début de cette année commence avec cette thèse :

« Any successful strategy to ensure the safety of the American people and advance our national security interests must begin with an undeniable truth—America must lead. Strong and sustained American leadership is essential to a rules-based international order that promotes global security and prosperity as well as the dignity and human rights of all peoples. The question is never whether America should lead, but how we lead. »

Cela veut dire que, pour les Etats-Unis, le critère crucial qu’ils emploient pour définir leur attitude vis-à-vis d’un gouvernement d’un autre pays est le degré de docilité et de loyauté de ce gouvernement envers « le leader » et/ou l’utilité de ce dirigeant dans leur stratégie de « leader » du monde entier. Et il n’y a pas d’alliances permanentes, c’est-à-dire que n’importe quel dirigeant qui a bien servi et collaboré pendant des années avec Washington, peut tomber en disgrâce et devenir la cible des attaques, dès que l’on juge qu’il n’est plus nécessaire ou qu’il devient un obstacle pour le « leadership » états-unien. J’ai donné tout à l’heure l’exemple assez explicite de Djibouti. Dès qu’un dirigeant d’un pays devient trop « souverainiste », qu’il signe des contrats avec des pays comme la Chine et autres BRICS ou qu’il n’est pas prêt à accepter des conditions avantageuses pour certaines multinationales états-uniennes, il court le risque de devenir la cible d’une stratégie de changement de régime.

Faut-il craindre le retour de la guerre dans les Grands Lacs ?

Il est clair que la stratégie de pression via les canaux diplomatiques, via les médias et les menaces de retirer l’aide extérieure a échoué jusqu’à présent. Aussi l’opposition à Nkurunziza a échoué à augmenter systématiquement la mobilisation et à empêcher l’élection de Nkurunziza. Depuis les élections, Nkurunziza continue son agenda sans faire de grandes concessions.

De l’autre côté, il y a eu le 1er août l’annonce de la création d’une alliance anti-Nkurunziza, le Conseil National pour le Respect de l’Accord d’Arusha et de l’État de Droit au Burundi, CNARED. Il est clair que le MSD, parti d’Alexis Shinduje, a été le moteur de cette alliance. Shinduje est un ami de longue date de Samantha Power, actuellement l’ambassadrice états-unienne au Conseil de Sécurité. En effet, en 2001 il a mis sur pied, avec Samantha Power qui en a été la co-fondatrice, la Radio Publique Africaine. La RPA a obtenu très vite un accord de partenariat avec la Voix de l’Amérique, la radio officielle internationale de Washington. Entièrement financée par des sources étrangères, la RPA devient en 2006 la radio la plus écoutée au Burundi, plus que la radio nationale. Elle fera d’Alexis Shinduje une célébrité, qui 8 ans plus tard, en 2009, met sur pied son parti le MSD.

Le CNARED est un rassemblement très hétérogène qui n’est unit qu’autour d’un but, le départ de Nkurunziza. Le CNARED publie ces derniers mois un communiqué guerrier après l’autre. Ce qui donne au moins l’impression que cette alliance joue un peu le rôle de porte-parole politique d’un mouvement militaire naissant. Surtout quand on voit le nombre d’assassinats, il est hors de doute que des professionnels bien organisés sont à l’œuvre, dont le but est de mettre sur pied une spirale de violence qui pourrait aboutir à une guerre ouverte.

Il y a maintenant deux voies possibles : la voie des négociations et du dialogue ou bien la voie de la guerre et de l’ingérence. Il est remarquable de voir comment la majorité des commentaires et analystes occidentaux excluent la première voie et annoncent la guerre comme imminente et inévitable. Thierry Vircoulon, spécialiste important lié à l’establishment français, écrit le 24 août que le Burundi « est passé d’une crise électorale à une pré-guérilla ». Il annonce « une explosion » et prédit : « Qu’elle prenne ou non la tournure d’un affrontement entre les Hutus et les Tutsis comme durant la guerre civile, elle sera brutale et sans pitié. »

Le journal Jeune Afrique prévoit trois scénarios. Or, la description de ces trois scenarios implique la nécessité d’une guerre car les deux scénarios sans guerre seraient ou bien « le pourrissement » qui aboutirait à « une grande lassitude de la communauté internationale, qui, au bout du compte, pourrait laisser Nkurunziza modifier la Constitution afin de se représenter ad vitam aeternam », entendu « ce qui serait donc inacceptable ».

Ou bien ce serait une capitulation soudaine de Nkurunziza, qui semble très improbable. Foreign Policy, une publication proche des démocrates états-uniens titrait le 28 août « How the West lost Burundi ». Les auteurs, deux spécialistes états-uniens sur le Burundi, sonnent l’alarme pour les Occidentaux : « The regime is betting that it can withstand isolation by moving closer to Russia and China, making this the unlikely scene of a significant challenge to Western influence in Africa. If this pays off, it could set a precedent with geopolitical echos well beyond this country’s borders ».

Ils constatent aussi que « Burundi teeters on the brink of a return to violence. » Il est clair que dans le contexte international d’aujourd’hui, une guerre au Burundi qui entrainerait ses pays voisins, risque de faire basculer la région dans une énième crise, qui tôt ou tard serait le prétexte pour une ingérence accrue, ou même une intervention militaire dirigée par Washington et l’Union Européenne. On connaît le scenario après l’avoir vu en Afghanistan, en Iraq, en Libye, au Mali, en Centrafrique, en Syrie etc.

Or il est clair que le peuple burundais ne veut pas la guerre et la violence. Entre la ligne dure du noyau autour de Nkurunziza et celui autour du CNARED, il y a une grande majorité du peuple burundais qui refuse la guerre. Des sympathisants du CNARED vivant à Bujumbura me disent qu’ils sont sûrs qu’il n’y aura pas de guerre et qu’un gouvernement d’union nationale sera formé. Louis-Marie Nindorer, un intellectuel vivant aussi à Bujumbura reproche sur son blog au CNARED d’avoir trop peu d’égards envers deux groupes de Burundais : premièrement « les supporters de Pierre Nkurunziza, eux-mêmes partagés entre, (a) d’un côté, les écorchés vifs des longues dominations et répressions tutsi (1972, 1988, 1993-1996), constamment dans leurs tranchées à guetter et à voir tout en mal, d’où qu’il surgisse, les agressions fatales d’une “minorité nostalgique et revancharde” (tutsi), et (b) de l’autre, des citoyens modérés ou passifs et retournables. » Deuxièmement, il cite « les Burundais hostiles à la reconduite de Pierre Nkurunziza mais soucieux de ne pas être instrumentalisés par une opposition opportuniste et peut-être elle-même en partie sectaire, qui n’a absolument rien démontré de la valeur ajoutée potentielle qu’elle représente pour un Burundi post-Nkurunziza meilleur, avec ou sans le CNARED, avec ou sans le CNDD-FDD ».

Et, enfin, au sein de la communauté internationale il y a une majorité de pays africains qui tiennent au dialogue et à la souveraineté du peuple burundais. Donc, non, il n’y a pas de fatalité : la guerre et une ingérence accrue ou intervention internationale patronnée par Washington et l’Union Européenne dans la région ne sont pas inévitables. Tout dépend dans quelle mesure les forces qui veulent éviter le conflit armé et qui respectent la souveraineté et l’unité des Burundais peuvent bloquer les forces qui cherchent à pousser vers le conflit armé et une intervention extérieure sous la direction directe ou indirecte de Washington et de l’Union Européenne.

Il est clair que ni Nkurunziza, ni le CNARED ne sont des forces de gauche, ce qui se reflète d’ailleurs dans la réalité politique de beaucoup de pays en Afrique. Mais quelle solidarité la gauche en Europe pourrait alors développer avec le peuple burundais et dans d’autres crises avec les peuples d’Afrique ?

La première chose pour nous ici en Europe est de combattre le consensus anti-solidarité qui existe chez nous en Europe. Un consensus autour de l’idéologie libérale qui prône l’individualisme, le chacun pour soi et l’initiative privée comme la seule façon de penser qui serait « réaliste ». Le fameux sempiternel « il n’y a pas d’alternative », cet abominable principe TINA — « There Is No Alternative » fait que, depuis plusieurs décennies, on est devenu habitué à la politique de destruction de la solidarité et du système de sécurité sociale que mènent nos gouvernants en Europe. Au niveau mondial, il y a l’idée de la globalisation, c’est-à-dire l’idée que les grandes sociétés privées, les multinationales, auraient le droit et le devoir d’exiger que les frontières du Sud s’ouvrent, pour qu’ils puissent y faire des superprofits au milieu de la misère en ne changeant rien à cette misère, au contraire.

Le livre de Raf Custers Chasseurs de matières premières est un des rares livres qui remet en question ce consensus et qui décrit comment les multinationales fonctionnent réellement et comment elles travaillent en rangs serrés avec leurs gouvernements et leurs diplomates avec le seul but d’augmenter leurs profits. Au niveau de la politique, il y a l’idée que nos gouvernements auraient le droit sacré de s’ingérer et d’intervenir dans les pays du Sud pour y défendre « les droits de l’homme et la démocratie des peuples ».

Ce consensus devient dangereux au moment où nos dirigeants décident d’aller bombarder ou envoyer des troupes en Afghanistan, en Libye, en Irak ou bientôt peut-être en Syrie. Et on a pu constater l’immense hypocrisie de ce consensus quand, après des décennies de cette politique de globalisation libérale, d’ingérence et d’intervention militaire, un flot de réfugiés qui fuyaient les guerres et la misère sont arrivés chez nous en août de cette année. En Belgique, tous les partis traditionnels paniquent à cause de ce qu’ils appellent « la crise des réfugiés ».

Ils ne pensent qu’à « défendre » les frontières de l’Europe. A obliger les réfugiés à rester chez eux, au milieu de la guerre et de la misère. Pendant deux décennies, on s’est habitué à voir des images télévisées montrant des millions de réfugiés obligés de fuir leur maison et d’aller vivre ailleurs dans des pays extrêmement pauvres. Mais, quand un nombre relativement restreint de ces réfugiés arrivent chez nous, on sème la panique et on n’est même pas capable d’installer des douches et des camps de réfugiés un peu convenables pour les centaines de réfugiés qui ont dû camper pendant des semaines au milieu de Bruxelles. Et il n’y a que la gauche conséquente et un mouvement de paix trop faible qui font remarquer que ces réfugiés sont le résultat des bombardements des armées occidentales, sous la direction des Etats-Unis, en Libye, en Irak, en Afghanistan et en Syrie. Quand on a voté la décision d’aller bombarder la Libye en 2011, aucun parlementaire belge n’a voté non ! Qui pose la question de l’alliance de nos gouvernements avec des pays comme l’Arabie Saoudite et les Etats du Golfe, Israël, mais aussi le Rwanda, des pays qui allument la guerre dans leurs régions respectives ? Qui met en question les livraisons d’armes des Occidentaux à ces fauteurs de guerre ?

Chez nous en Europe, le mouvement de solidarité avec les peuples opprimés est l’otage de ce consensus libéral. On a oublié qui opprime vraiment ces peuples. On a oublié le rôle des multinationales et des gouvernements qui défendent les intérêts de ces multinationales. Au lieu de cela, on est devenu des supporteurs fanatiques des gouvernements occidentaux pour qu’ils s’ingèrent encore plus – au nom de la démocratie et des droits de l’homme – dans les affaires d’autres États. On reste aveugle sur les intérêts réels que défendent ces gouvernements, sur leur réel agenda géostratégique qui s’exprime dans les deux poids deux mesures.

De deux, on a une vue dualiste entre d’un côté les gouvernants des pays du Sud, qui représenteraient d’office la dictature, la corruption, la mauvaise gouvernance, et de l’autre côté l’opposition et la société civile, qui eux représenteraient d’office la démocratie et les droits de l’homme. Il n’y a pas de position nuancée possible : si vous osez refuser de vous joindre aux campagnes qui plaident pour plus d’ingérence contre les gouvernants du Sud, vous êtes traité de défenseur de la dictature. De trois, et c’est lié au point deux : on a vidé la politique de son contenu et on l’a réduit à une série de règles, de débats juridiques qui tournent surtout autour des élections. Or, il n’y a pas de moment plus facile pour ceux qui se comportent comme maîtres du monde pour semer la zizanie et diviser pour régner qu’au moment des élections.

Dans ce raisonnement antipolitique, ce qui compte est l’alternance et la question « pour quoi faire ? » est devenue complètement superflue. Et enfin, quatre, on a accepté que les droits pour lesquels les peuples colonisés se sont battus et qui forment la base de leur lutte pour la démocratie, c’est-à-dire leur indépendance, leur souveraineté et le droit de chercher leur propre voie vers une société juste, a été complètement rendu secondaire, voir nié ou même dénoncé comme du « souverainisme ». On voit revenir les même anciens schémas de la pensée coloniale : certains peuples ne seraient pas capables d’être souverains et ils devraient accepter que l’Occident parle en leur nom et intervienne constamment d’une manière ouverte dans la vie politique de leur pays, soi-disant pour défendre les peuples opprimés.

Sans une réelle rupture avec ce consensus et cette façon de penser, la gauche européenne restera otage des fauteurs de guerre, de ceux qui refusent l’indépendance et l’unité des peuples, l’unité panafricaine.

Et comment voyez-vous le rôle de la gauche en Afrique ?

Là, je ne peux donner qu’une impression de l’extérieur et en termes généraux. C’est à la gauche Africaine elle-même de faire son bilan et de chercher une stratégie concrète. Je crois que, comme partout dans le monde, la gauche est dans une situation plus difficile depuis la chute de l’Union Soviétique et le triomphe du grand capital. Il me semble qu’en Afrique il n’y a que quelques pays où des partis et mouvements de gauche jouent un certain rôle dans la vie politique et dans l’opinion publique. Je pense à l’Afrique du Sud et à la Tunisie, par exemple.

La très grande majorité des acteurs politiques en Afrique qui jouent un rôle important embrassent le marché libre et le monde capitaliste. Il est important de dire que, chez ces dirigeants des grands partis au pouvoir comme dans l’opposition, il y a une gradation entre deux pôles. D’un côté, vous avez le pôle de la bourgeoisie compradore, à 100 % dépendante et au service de l’impérialisme. Et l’autre pôle est celui des bourgeoisies nationales qui défendent la souveraineté, la modernité, l’émergence économique de leur pays et qui parfois ont de vagues sympathies pour la gauche, que ce soit Cuba ou la tradition marxiste dans le mouvement de libération du colonialisme du passé. On peut à ce sujet faire trois constatations : d’abord que l’influence grandissante de la Chine et des pays émergents en Afrique les dernières années est un stimulant important pour le pôle de la bourgeoisie nationale. Même s’il est vrai que cette influence reste un facteur externe, ce qui compte ce sont les décisions et les actes des dirigeants africains pour garantir que cette collaboration avec les BRICS puisse effectivement bénéficier aux masses africaines.

Deuxièmement, on peut constater aussi bien au sein du pouvoir qu’au sein de l’opposition des gradations entre les deux pôles et que des forces politiques peuvent aussi évoluer d’un pôle vers l’autre. J’ai déjà dit que, si l’on veut rompre avec le consensus impérialiste, on devra quitter le dualisme noir-blanc entre pouvoir-opposition. Il faut juger les positions concrètes des acteurs politiques. Il est clair, par exemple, que dans les gouvernements des pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, par exemple, le premier pôle pèse plus que celui de la bourgeoisie nationale. Tandis que dans les pays du SADC, par exemple, le deuxième pôle est plus présent. Au niveau de l’opposition on pourrait dire que c’est le contraire : que la gauche est plus présente dans l’opposition en Afrique de l’Ouest que dans le SADC.

Mais, trois, c’est aussi un fait que cette bourgeoisie nationale émergente ne met pas fondamentalement en cause le rôle des grandes multinationales ou ne conçoit pas l’État comme défenseur des intérêts du peuple entier contre la voracité de ces multinationales et l’arrogance et l’agressivité des gouvernements impérialistes. Or, tant qu’on ne rompt pas avec la domination des multinationales et de leurs gouvernements, on ne pourrait progresser que d’une façon limitée et une vraie amélioration du sort des peuples restera faible et toujours hypothétique. Il n’y a que la gauche conséquente qui pourra tôt ou tard assurer un saut qualitatif important à ce niveau.

Si cette gauche veut remplir sa mission historique, elle devra devenir une force indépendante qui s’appuie sur les masses organisées et se prenant en charge. Une force qui sait convaincre et faire des alliances avec les couches les plus nationalistes et patriotiques de la bourgeoisie et de la petite bourgeoisie de leur pays. Une force qui sait aussi appliquer l’art de la tactique puisqu’elle doit survivre dans un environnement où les espaces de libertés peuvent soudainement être effacées par des dictatures et des guerres.

Et, enfin, une force qui sait s’unir au-dessus des frontières dans un mouvement panafricain anti-impérialiste. C’est un défi énorme qui demandera sans doute un long combat. Mais, encore une fois, c’est à la gauche africaine elle-même de chercher sa voie. Ce que nous pouvons faire ici en Europe, c’est de nous battre contre le consensus autour de la globalisation libérale et la politique d’ingérence et d’intervention ici chez nous. Entre-temps, naturellement, il est important de garder le contact, de l’intensifier, et d’apprendre les uns des autres.

* Tony Busselen de nationalité belge est aussi collaborateur du magazine Solidaire, mensuel et site web du Parti de Travail de Belgique. Son livre Une histoire populaire du Congo a été édité chez Aden en 2010.

Source : Journal de l’Afrique n° 14, Investig’Action

 

 

Are the US and the EU Sponsoring Terrorism in Burundi?

Libya 360

May 16, 2015

By Gearoid O Colmain

 

“The US-funded media disinformation campaign is part of the prelude to the mobilization of street protests against the government that can be presented to the world as a ‘popular uprising’against a ‘dictator’ who is ‘killing his own people’ It is a techinique that has been perfected by US ‘democracy’and ‘civil society’ NGOS.”

Since protests broke out in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura in April 25th  2015 against the decision of the  ruling party to nominate the country’s leader Pierre Nkurunziza for a third term as president, the international press has published reports suggesting that the country is on the verge of civil war, as president Nkurunziza, portrayed as a dictator attempting to hold on to power, is confronted with  an ever increasing movement of ‘peaceful protesters’, ‘human rights’ and ‘civil society’ activists who have an almost absolute monopoly on reportage concerning Burundi’s electoral controversy.

While the mainstream media continue to report on the activities of the ‘peaceful protesters’ who have lynched and murdered suspected members of the  imbonerakure, the youth wing of the National Council for the Defense of Democracy, the country’s ruling party,  the massive and entirely peaceful demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of government supporters have been completely ignored.  [1]

It seems a consensus has rapidly been reached concerning who the good and bad guys are in this conflict. But all is not what is seems. In fact, the East African nation is currently experiencing the culmination of a US/EU backed regime change programme which has been conducted as a low-intensity media and covert operations war since 2005. The objective of this war is to redraw the map of the resource-rich Great Lake’s region of Central Africa in accordance with Western corporate and geostrategic interests.

Who is Pierre Nkurunziza?

The current incumbent Pierre Nkurunziza joined the National Council for the Defense of Democracy, Forces for the Defense for Democracy (CNDD-FDD) after the brutal murder of left-wing president Melchior Ndadaye in 1993, the country’s first democratically elected leader who stemmed from the Hutu, ethnic majority in the former German and Belgian colony. Burundi was traditionally ruled by the Tutsi minority ethnic group, whose elites ruled the country in the interests of European colonialism.

Nkurunziza lost many members of his own family during the genocide of the Hutus by the Tutsi military regime which plunged the country into a decade long civil war causing the death of over 300,000 people.

Nkurunziza’s rebel movement signed an agreement with the Tutsi-dominated government of Burundi in Arusha, Tanzania in  August 2000, according to which a transition government of power-sharing between Hutus, Tutsis and Twa would be put in place.

Although in power since 2005, sensu strictu, the country only became a democracy during the election of 2010, where Nkurunziza’s CNDD  won a landslide victory.  It is on this basis that Burundi’s constitutional council, the supreme legal authority in the country, judged correctly that the incumbent has the right to be nominated for another electoral term.

Western backed opposition activists have admitted that the government has not violated the constitution, but insist instead that the constitutional council is corrupt as its members were nominated by the president. No one would claim, for example, that the French constitutional council is corrupt because its members are nominated by the President of the French Republic. But in the case of Africa, constitutional councils are regularly scoffed at by Western powers when their decisions do not conform to neo-colonial interests and neo-colonial interests, not disputes over interpretations of the country’s constitution, are the key issue in the current Burundian crisis.

Since coming to power in 2005, Pierre Nkurunziza has done a remarkable job in re-uniting and re-building a country ruined by internecine war. A fanatical supporter of football, the former physical sports teacher has been rewarded by many peace organizations throughout the world for his use of football as a means of bringing Hutu and Tutsi communities together.

Education has also been a key focus of the Nkurunziza administration.

Burundi has built more schools since 2007 than any previous government since independence almost 50 years ago. Nkurunziza wants to transform Burundi’s economy into a major exporter of fruit and has implemented an ambitious fruit tree plantation programme to this effect.

The Burundian president spends much of his time doing manual work with the peasants of Burundi. After coming to power, the Burundian government passed a law according to which citizens are required to preform community labour on Saturdays in order to expedite the construction of vital public infrastructure. A key role in this endeavour is played by the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of the ruling CNDD party.

The Burundian government has made modest progress in reducing poverty, and has promised to increase economic growth from 4.5 percent to 8.5 percent from 2015 from investments made in nickel mining, fruit production and tourism.

Since 2005 gross domestic product levels have increased significantly. In 2012 Nkurunziza won the Pan-African prize for the fight against Malaria. [2]

Burundi’s success in the fight against malaria has been due to the construction of health centres throughout the country, the provision of free health care for children under five years old and pregnant mothers.

Deeply patriotic and highly popular, having fought a long battle for his country’s liberation, Nkurunziza has succeeded in creating a modest form of national voluntarism, nascent self-reliance and a sense of optimism about the country’s future.

He has increased ties with China, India and Brazil, while adroitly taking advantage of inter-imperialist rivalry for access to African markets by signing several important trade deals with Japan.

Indeed, due to the implacable hostility of the neocolonial powers and their press agencies, Burundi will now most likely have no choice but to increase its links with the BRICS powers.

Nkurunziza’s decision in 2010 to sign an agreement with Beijing that provides for closer Sino-Burundian military cooperation is of tremendous significance. Closer relations with China will enable Burundi to strengthen its defense forces from what Burundian patriots refer to as the BHBFC, the Burundi-Hima-Belgian-French Connection, that is to say, the incessant hostility of the neo-colonial powers and their local collaborators.

Who are the Burundian opposition?

The opposition party Movement for Solidary and Democracy (MSD), part of the umbrella organization, the Alliance for Democratic Change Ikibiri (ADC Ikibiri) is led by Alexis Sinduhije. He is a protégé of US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. In the general election of 2010 the The MSD withdrew from the electoral process after gaining a mer 4 percent of the popular vote.  They claimed the elections were unfair, in spite of the fact that international observers did not report any irregularities.

According to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada’s 2013 report, Sinduhije does not fear violence from the Burundian government but, on the contrary, the Burundian government does fear violence from Sinduhije and his armed bandits. [3]

Sinduhije has been accused of terrorism by the Burundi government after it was revealed that he was forcibly recruiting youths in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Eastern Kivu region for the formation of a rebel group with a view to seizing power in Bujumbura.

The MSD leader was arrested in Tanzania in January 2012 where he was accused of forming a terrorist group for the invasion of Burundi. He was subsequently released by the Tanzanian authorities and escaped to Europe,where human rights groups closely linked to the US State Department and Western intelligence agencies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have hailed him as a champion of ‘human rights.’

Sinduhije has little popular support inside Burundi but he does have the support of the European Union and the United States, who never wanted the Hutu majority to rule Burundi, as imperial divide and rule policy dictates that post-colonial countries should remain internally divided on ethnic lines with a militarized minority constituting a neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie eternally dependent on their foreign masters.

Francois Nyamoya is the secretary general of the Movement for Solidary and Democracy. He is also the son of Albin Nyamoya, one of the generals involved in the 1972 genocide of the Hutus under the Micombero regime.

A 2011 UN report on the situation in Eastern Congo identifies many of the so-called Burundian oppositionists as involved in smuggling of gold and terrorizing the inhabitants of Southern Kivu.

Notwithstanding the official criminal evidence against the Burundian ‘opposition’, however, the ‘international community’ chooses to present them as heroes attempting to free their country from ‘corruption’. [4]

None of these fake opposition parties should be confused with the 17 democratically elected deputies of the opposition party Uprona. As in the case of Syria, one must distinguish between the legally constituted opposition and the US and European sponsored gangster networks posing as oppositionists.

Ethnic Conflict in the Service of Neo-Colonialism

During the 1980s the Pentagon trained Rwandan Major General Paul Kagame at the US Army Command and Staff College (CGSC) Fortleavenworth, Kansas.

Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Forces invaded Rwanda from Uganda between 1990 and 1994, assassinating two Hutu leaders, President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi and President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda.

An impressive US  led propaganda campaign has  presented Paul Kagame as the man who put an end to the genocide in Rwanda, whereas in fact it was Kagame’ forces with full US and Israeli backing who perpetrated most of the mass killings Hutus, Tutsi and Twa blaming all of their crimes on the majority Hutu government.

In October 1996 Kagame’s forces invaded the Congo on the pretext of fighting Hutu rebels. The real objective, however, was to gain control over the mineral rich province of Eastern Congo in close collaboration with Western corporate mining interests. [5]

Kagame’s regime is one of the proxy-forces being used by the United States and the European Union to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected government of Burundi.  Many researchers in Burundi suspect that the CIA may have been behind the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye in 1993, given the fact that they directed Kagame who ordered the murder of Ndadaye’s successor Cyprien Ntaramira a year later.

The US government is acutely aware that if the people of Burundi are to know the truth about the US-backed genocide of the Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi, it could jeopardize their foreign policy objectives in the region. Managing people’s perspectives and memory of their own suffering due to US imperialism is a key component of the Pentagon’s strategy in parts of the world it controls. That is why a suitable criminal to replace president Nkurunziza must be found and the CIA database of military intelligence assets is filling up with warlords and war criminals from the Congolese Armageddon, where several million people have been murdered since the US proxy invasion of 1996.

Imperialist geo-strategy: Terrorism and Colour Revolutions

Burundian democracy is currently threatened by two main instruments of Western imperial policy: terrorism and colour revolutions. One of the world’s poorest countries, Burundi could not possibly hope to compete with the barrage of media disinformation waged against it since the Nkurunziza’s election victory in 2010.

Almost every report about the country has been based on the statements of oppositionists and so-called ‘civil society’ activists. These activists are been generously funded by the US State Department think tank, the National Endowment For Democracy,(NED) which on the admission of its founder, functions as a front organization for the CIA. [6]

And as William Blum  has shown in his book ‘ Killing Hope: US military and CIA interventions since 1945’ the Boys from Langley’s job is not promote democracy but,  rather as he puts it ‘make the world safe for democracy by getting rid of democracy.’

Many activists and pseudo-journalists funded by the NED have been arrested by the Burundian authorities on charges of fomenting ethnic tension and promoting terrorist groups in collaboration with the enemies of the country, a crime prohibited by all internationally recognized nation-states.

Terrorist groups who have attacked Burundi in recent years have received extensive and positive coverage from the Francophone media.

For example, in a report entitled ‘Retour de la Rebellion’ French journalist Pauline Simonet reported on a ‘rebel’ group in Eastern Congo, who are hoping to invade and seize power in Burundi. The terrorist group was presented in a positive light, while the point of view of the Burundian government was dismissed. The message was clear: the ‘rebels’ have a just cause and are worthy of our sympathy.

The report also mentioned the massacre of Gatumba of the 18 and 19th of September 2013 where several civilians were murdered outside the Burundian capital. The Burundian National Intelligence Service (SNR) blamed the attack on the Forces for National Liberation (FLN), a terrorist group based in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and headed by warlord Agathon Rwasa, whom UN investigators have accused of gold smuggling. The France 24 team seems to be unaware of official UN investigations.

Instead the French TV station suggested that the Gatumba Massacre might have been a false flag operation carried out by the Burundian Government to discredit the ‘opposition’, in spite of having no evidence to support this conspiracy theory. [7]

Rwasa is a former opposition candidate from the ACD-Ikibiri coalition and a full time criminal who ran against Nkununziza in 2010, lost miserably, declared the election to be false, fled to the Congo and returned to his specialization: terrorism.

Lucien Rukevya, a journalist with Radio France Internationale’s Swahili section was arrested on June 16th 2013 while embedded with a Burundian terrorist group. He was charged with complicity in the promotion of terrorism against the Burundian state.  The French media and associated ‘human rights’ groups, did their best to justify this young man’s flagrant and criminal violation of journalistic professionalism, in order to accuse the Burundian government of cracking down on ‘free speech’.

In September 9th 2013 ‘journalist’ Hassan Rovakuki was also arrested for complicity in terrorism. The charge of the Burundian government against these journalists is that they are spreading propaganda in favour of criminals who are attempting to declare war on the people of Burundi. This is in the context of a poor country whose existence is being constantly threatened by militia on its borders in the service of neo-colonial powers, who have not disguised their wish to implement ‘regime change’ in Bujumbura.

Any serious researcher who reads these press dispatches on the so-called Burundian ‘rebels’ operating from the DRC would have to agree that the reports are incontrovertibly biased against the government of Burundi.

All of the reports emphasize the arguments of the rebels while attempting to dismiss those of the government. This is in violation of the most basic rule in journalism: objectivity. Furthermore, such biased, mendacious and aggressive reporting by the agencies of the most powerful countries in the world against a defenseless developing nation constitutes nothing less than acts of psychological terrorism.

On March 8th 2014 an armed insurrection was organized by the opposition in Bujumbura. Police were attacked and kidnapped in what was a clear attempt to seize power. The contrast between citizens throughout the country engaged in community labour in an attempt to rebuild a broken country and a group of fascist thugs attempting to plunge the country into chaos could not have been more poignant. Needless to say, the United States expressed ‘concern’ about the ‘brutal’ crackdown on their putschists.

On December 30th 2014, Burundi’s Northern Province of Cibitoke, on the border with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo was invaded by a terrorist gang. It took the Burundian National Defense Forces four days to defeat the invasion. Many of the terrorists were captured and a spokesman for the army in a press conference after the incident assured reporters that they would be treated according to international humanitarian law.

Meanwhile the NED funded media outlets in the country were zealously spreading pro-rebel propaganda, even publishing photos of dead Shebaab rebels in Kenya, claiming they were  Burundian prisoners of war ‘massacred’ by the Burundian  military.

The European Union and the United States have shamelessly expressed ‘human rights’ concerns about the Burundian government’s defeat of the foreign-backed invasion, while showing no concern for their victims.

The international Francophone press was also vociferous in it condemnation of the arrest in January 2015 of Rob Rugurika, the director of Radio Publique Afrique, a privately-funded ‘opposition’ radio station, after he accused the government of ordering the massacre of three Italian nuns in Kamenge in 2014.

Rugurika, who has links with terrorist groups outside the country, has been accused by the Burundian judiciary of being part of a conspiracy to commit crimes and blame them on the government in a destabilization campaign backed by foreign powers.

In September 2014, 40 bodies were found floating on Lake Rweru between Rwanda and Burundi. Villagers upriver in Rwanda fled from French journalists when they attempted to investigate the crime. They told RFI that they had been warned by the Rwandan authorities not to speak to journalists about what they had seen. In spite of the fact that Burundian authorities could not have been behind the crime, US-funded opposition media inside Burundi continue to peddle all sorts of lies suggesting that the corpses might have been oppositionists murdered by the Burundian government.

The US-funded media disinformation campaign is part of the prelude to the mobilization of street protests against the government that can be presented to the world as a ‘popular uprising’against a ‘dictator’ who is ‘killing his own people’ It is a techinique that has been perfected by US ‘democracy’and ‘civil society’ NGOS.

The director of France’s Lazard Bank and proprietor of the French daily Le Monde, Mathieu Pigasse is on record expressing his adoration for the Arab Spring. He has also pointed out that Western policy makers are now focusing on spreading the techniques of the Arab Spring throughout Africa. The millionaire ‘revolutionist’ has made it clear that Western investors prefer to deal with ‘civil society’ organizations in Africa rather than governments. [8]

This phenomenon is what Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci referred to as the ‘takeover of politics by civil society’, that is to say, the destruction of the political sphere and the agora of human agency and social progress by the absolutism of corporate exploitation.

Since the US-backed people-power coups in North Africa in 2011, the US ‘youth industry’, this anti-politics of destruction, has spread its tentacles throughout the African continent, where, paradoxically, ‘anti-corruption’ and ‘down-with-the-dictator’ activism further entrenches imperialism by contriving a discourse on social discontent that obfuscates its material basis, thereby dis-empowering and corrupting the youth. We could call this phenomenon the stultification of dissent.

The aim of terrorism and people-power coups or colour revolutions is to render nations of the Global South powerless in the face of globalization.

It is a deeply cynical but nevertheless ingenious US foreign policy programme, which, due to the fact that so many critics of US foreign policy continue to believe that the Arab Spring was a genuinely ‘spontaneous uprising’ of the masses against US-backed dictators, attests to the sophistication and prescience of the US foreign-policy establishment.

A Neo-Colonial War on a free African nation

The United States and the European Union are at war against the people of Burundi. Situated at the heart of the mineral rich Great Lakes region of Africa, the democratic government of Burundi is an obstacle to the depopulation programme currently being carried out  by US client dictator Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his partner Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who are attempting to carve up Eastern Congo in order to create an independent  Republic of Kivu, bringing that region’s vast wealth into the possession of European and American corporate interests.

In October 2014 the Burundian military were forced to withdraw by the United Nations ‘peace-keeping’ force MONUSCO from Kiliba in Eastern Congo where they had been cracking down on terrorist groups.  Shortyly thereafter, the Burundian authorities arrested several NED funded activists ,who were busy spreading absurd lies about the Burundian military training pro-government Burundian youth( the imbonerakure) in the Congo for the purposes of terrorizing the Burundian population at home.

These lies were meant to incite fear and ethnic hatred among the population, in order to weaken the credibility of the government.

This withdrawal from the DRC will make it more difficult for the Burundian government to protect its borders from terrorism. Meanwhile, ‘peaceful protesters’ are attacking police and lynching pro-government civilians with the full backing of the international military-industrial-media-intelligence complex.

The protesters  in the streets are chanting ‘’down with the dictator’’ and an ‘’end to corruption’’ but in reality, Nkurunziza is being targeted for not serving the interests of the infinitely corrupt scoundrels currently running the United Nations, the potentates of the soi-disant ‘international community’.

The African Union has called on the Burundian government to postpone the elections. This is the same African Union which stood by and watched French forces bomb and invade the Ivory Coast in 2010, Libya in 2011, Mali in 2012, and the Central African Republic in 2013.

If the African Union is to gain a modicum of respect, it must stand up for the sovereignty of African nations and threaten to lead a coalition of military forces to defend any country attacked by US/European imperialism.

In the case of Burundi, the African Union should have denounced the diabolical terrorist and media disinformation campaign against a young democratic country which has just emerged from a civil war. The fact that they did not shows that they have sided with the enemies of Africa. It is hardly surprising that truly independent, post-colonial countries such as Eritrea will have nothing to do with the sham called the African Union.

If the Burundian authorities do not succeed in crushing the violent insurgency, the country could be facing more years of civil war and permanent foreign occupation by UN ‘peace-keepers’ after a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to ‘stop the massacres’. The script has been tried and tested in Haiti, the  Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic.

So, the key question  now is this: Can Burundi defy the Empire and protect its people from carpet bombing called ‘humanitarian intervention’, a terrorist invasion called ‘liberation’, a military coup called ‘transitional government’ and  a possible genocide where once again the victims will be blamed?

Notes:

 

[Gearóid Ó Colmáin is an independent political analyst from Cork, Ireland based in Paris.]

 

Pennies From Heaven

The word philanthropy first appears in Western thought in the fifth century BC to denote an act of rebellion and name the crime of treason.

Lapham’s Quartly

Lapham’s Quarterly Summer 2015: Philanthropy

by Lewis H. Lapham

Prometheus Bringing Fire to Mankind, by Friedrich Heinrich Füger, 1817. Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany.

McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street [Part XIII of an Investigative Report] [The Increasing Vogue for Capitalist-Friendly Climate Discourse]

The Art of Annihilation

September 24, 2015

Part thirteen of an investigative series by Cory Morningstar

Divestment Investigative Report Series [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Part VIII • Part IX • Part X • Part XI • Part XII • Part XIII

 

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” — Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks

 

Prologue: A Coup d’état of Nature – Led by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

It is somewhat ironic that anti-REDD climate activists, faux green organizations (in contrast to legitimate grassroots organizations that do exist, although few and far between) and self-proclaimed environmentalists who consider themselves progressive will speak out against the commodification of nature’s natural resources while simultaneously promoting the divestment campaign promoted by the mainstream groups allegedly on the left. It’s ironic because the divestment campaign will result (succeed) in a colossal injection of money shifting over to the very portfolios heavily invested in, thus dependent upon, the intense commodification and privatization of Earth’s last remaining forests (via REDD, environmental “markets” and the like). This tour de force will be executed with cunning precision under the guise of environmental stewardship and “internalising negative externalities through appropriate pricing.” Thus, ironically (if in appearances only), the greatest surge in the ultimate corporate capture of Earth’s final remaining resources is being led, and will be accomplished, by the very environmentalists and environmental groups that claim to oppose such corporate domination and capture.

Beyond shelling out billions of tax-exempt dollars (i.e., investments) to those institutions most accommodating in the non-profit industrial complex (otherwise known as foundations), the corporations need not lift a finger to sell this pseudo green agenda to the people in the environmental movement; the feat is being carried out by a tag team comprised of the legitimate and the faux environmentalists. The public – wholly ignorant and gullible – has no comprehension of the following:

1. the magnitude of our ecological crisis
2. the root causes of the planetary crisis, or
3. the non-profit industrial complex as an instrument of hegemony.

The commodification of the commons will represent the greatest, and most cunning, coup d’état in the history of corporate dominance – an extraordinary fait accompli of unparalleled scale, with unimaginable repercussions for humanity and all life.

Further, it matters little whether or not the money is moved from direct investments in fossil fuel corporations to so-called “socially responsible investments.” All corporations on the planet (and therefore by extension, all investments on the planet) are dependent upon and will continue to require massive amounts of fossil fuels to continue to grow and expand ad infinitum – as required by the industrialized capitalist economic system.

The windmills and solar panels serve as beautiful (marketing) imagery as a panacea for our energy issues, yet they are illusory – the fake veneer for the commodification of the commons, which is the fundamental objective of Wall Street, the very advisers of the divestment campaign.

Thus we find ourselves unwilling to acknowledge the necessity to dismantle the industrialized capitalist economic system, choosing instead to embrace an illusion designed by corporate power.

+++

 

The Increasing Vogue for Capitalist-Friendly Climate Discourse

“…there comes with celebritus politicus a kind of ‘plausible deniability’ – similar to … ‘conspicuous redemption’ – in the context of climate change celebrities – that gets turned into a kind of caring deniability designed to set loose the philanthropic sensibilities and materialities of celebritus politicus that very often work to hide the systematic and subjective violences upon which neoliberal capitalism are based.” — Age of Icons, Exploring Philanthrocapitalism in the Contemporary World, 2013

 

“We can expect more with her new book, which focuses on climate politics and is due for release in September 2014, well timed to intervene in the debates surrounding the big UN talks in New York. Klein offers an alternative amongst the increasing vogue for capitalist-friendly climate discourse, though her 2011 article Capitalism vs the Climate may be showing its age.” — Road to Paris Website, 20 Women Making Waves in the Climate Change Debate, ICSU website. [1]

“It is a bitter irony of source journalism … that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile.” — Lee and Solomon, 1990

Note the above reference to Klein’s book “This Changes Everything” and its September 2014 release date as “well timed to intervene in the debates surrounding the big UN talks in New York.” Indeed, This Changes Everything was the springboard for the “new economy” sought by Wall Street and empire. Note the framing of a new ideology around the word capitalism: “the increasing vogue for capitalist-friendly climate discourse” as well as “capitalist-friendly discourse”.

“Basically your ministers are not people who go in for decisions on the part of people, I don’t know whether you realize it or not…they had been looked upon as saviors.” – Ella Baker [Beyond MLK]

The simple reality that we kill capitalism – or capitalism kills us – does not draw billions in advertising revenue nor does it allow for the obtainment of public acquiescence to the financialization of Earth’s remaining commons. Thus, the framing of capitalism itself is most critical: “[Klein] leaves too much wiggle room for capitalism to escape a definitive condemnation…. She seems clear enough in the analysis that pervades the book that it is capitalism, yet she repeatedly qualifies this position by decrying ‘the kind of capitalism we now have,’ ‘neoliberal’ capitalism, ‘deregulated’ capitalism, ‘unfettered’ capitalism, ‘predatory’ capitalism, ‘extractive capitalism,’ and so on.” [When History Knocks, December 2014]

Capitalist friendly climate discourse has only become increasingly vogue because that’s what global media, on behalf of their owners, wish to sell us. And they have succeeded. The storyline has been swallowed, hook, line and sinker.

Klein’s contributions have not threatened capitalism; rather her efforts are utilized to not only protect it, but strengthen it.

The United Nations Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 document states that “with concerted efforts at all levels, we can achieve the goals and targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020.” (Note again the re-occurring references to the year 2020 in this report.) This is identified as critically important, as the world/UN intensifies its actions to meet the Millennium Development Goals, and “craft a successor agenda for sustainable development, and adopt a meaningful legal climate change agreement – all by the year 2015.”

And although the targets are not being met (the UN did not meet its Millennium Development Goals by 2015, for example; nor did nations adopt a legally binding climate change agreement that impact climate change), it matters little as the key goal is not mentioned in articles (such as those published in the Guardian) that focus solely on biodiversity loss. The Strategic Plan includes a set of 20 targets (the Aichi Biodiversity Targets) [2], most of which are supposedly to be achieved by 2020, with the overarching goal “ultimately aimed at achieving a 2050 vision of a world where biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.”

2015: On the Road to Paris

This Changes Everything: The 2015 TckTckTck

Based on the premise that “in December 2015, the world will get a new climate deal at the COP21 meeting in Paris,” it follows that the UN and those whose interests it serves had a vested interest in ensuring that the campaign “This Changes Everything” superseded the last campaign of this scale, which was the 2009 TckTckTck campaign leading up to COP15 in Copenhagen.

“This Changes Everything, initiated by an independent and growing network of young activists and campaign groups, aims to support the global movement against climate change by building bridges with social justice movements and the science that supports them. We want to raise awareness and participation, launching a wave of protest and direct action in the run up to December’s UN climate summit in Paris – and beyond.” [See screenshot below]

TckTckTck was a corporate-driven communications campaign from its very inception. TckTckTck’s gross undermining of the world’s most vulnerable states that fought to defend the Earth will one day be understood as one of the greatest crimes against humanity the world has ever known. The following text is from a press release obtained from Havas advertising:

“As its co-founder and co-creator, David Jones has led Kofi Annan’s ‘Tck TckTck Campaign for Climate Justice’ and is Global CEO of Havas Worldwide, running all creative, marketing and design companies throughout the network of more than 300 offices. Kate Robertson is one of the co-founders of the TckTckTck campaign and has been Chairman of the Euro RSCG Group since 2006.”

It is critical to note that 350.org, Avaaz , Greenpeace and Oxfam are the first NGO signatories to have partnered in this effort (as well as founding members of Global Campaign for Climate Action) with many of the planet’s most powerful corporate entities such as EDF (owns/operates three of the world’s top ten nuclear power plants by capacity), Virgin Group and Lloyds Bank. According to Hoggan and Associates Public Relations Firm (a venture of the DeSmog Blog co-founder, Jim Hoggan), during the 5 months of the campaign, TckTckTck and its partners registered 15.5 million names worldwide on an online petition. Also note that GCCA/TckTckTck was the leading NGO behind the 2014 People’s Climate March.

Consider the cunning and exhaustive marketing endeavour to re-frame the corporate global capture of nature’s commons (ecosystem services) as holistic, honest and ethical. Thus, one could reasonably hypothesize that the foundations and institutions that brilliantly strategize for the protection and expansion of hegemonic power would gladly welcome, and far prefer, the “This Changes Everything” campaign. A multi-million dollar “Tck-esque” campaign, financed by the United Nations, is as old and tired as the “green economy.” The patina is damaged. A citizen-led mobilization lends much needed legitimacy – for the most fraudulent agenda to ever be realized by the world’s most powerful psychopaths.

With the 350.org divestment movement and Klein at the helm, in addition to its partnership with The Guardian (which has also partnered with Klein personally outside of 350.org) and endorsement from the UN, 350.org et al have a position in the media to create mobilizations on cue, simply by calling out its army of divestment students, now global in scope. In the This Changes Everything website it should be noted that within Klein’s bio, 350.org continues to be referred to as a global grassroots movement – disregarding the fact that 1Sky (which merged with 350 in 2011) was an incubator project of the Rockefeller Foundation; it is still an NGO whose annual incomes exceeds millions; and it rewards staff with six-figure salaries. Due to its now global size (not to mention its oligarchic origins), 350.org is very far removed from the true concept of grassroots. The word disingenuous, in regard to this claim, is an immense understatement.

The Message

Of course. disingenuous is to be expected when one looks at the financing behind Klein’s This Changes Everything book and film project, formerly referred to as The Message.

Susan Rockefeller is the Co-Executive Producer of the documentary film This Changes Everything and founding partner of Louverture Films, LLC. Louverture is the production company for the documentary film This Changes Everything in partnership with The Message Productions, LLC / Klein Lewis Productions.

The fiscal sponsor of this endeavour was New York-based Sustainable Markets Foundation (SMF). SMF is financed by a multitude of foundations including Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Energy Foundation, Park Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Schmidt, Global Wallace Fund, Tides, etc. In addition, Tides receives millions in funding from Warren Buffett laundered through the Buffett family foundation NoVo.

“‘The Message’ is a multi-platform project on climate change. The first part of the project is a non-fiction book expected for release in fall 2014 by Naomi Klein, to be followed by a documentary currently in production. In 2011 and 2012, SMF received donations for and distributed grants to ‘The Message.’ Specifically, in 2011, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave SMF $50,000 for ‘The Message,’ Wallace Global Fund gave SMF $75,000 for ‘The Message,’ and Schmidt Family Foundation gave $40,000 to SMF ‘to support development of a film titled, The Message.’

 

“While those donations total $165,000 in 2011, that year SMF gave $112,360 – the difference seemingly represents SMF’s fiscal sponsor fee. The following year, the Schmidt Family Foundation gave SMF $100,000 ‘to support “The Message” film.’” [Source: United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Minority Staff Report, July 30, 2014]

Photo: Susan Rockefeller at her home on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 8, 2015. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)

“But what appears as a natural property of the charismatic celebrity is actually produced by discourses of celebrity. (Matt Hills, 2005:151) The capitalist system uses celebrities to promote individualism and illusions of democracy (the ‘anyone can do it’ myth) […] capitalism retains its hold on society, by reducing all human activity to private ‘personalities’ and the inner life of the individual.” (Giles, 2000:19 and 72)

“Credible celebrity endorsers can be deadly efficient in cutting into the toughest markets and combating the fiercest consumer resistance.” —Celebrity Culture, 2006

 

 

“Any account of celebrities must be predicated on the recognition that ‘the interests served are first of all those of capital.’” — Celebrity Culture, 2006 citing Graeme Turner

 

When promoting her 2000 book, No Logo, in an interview with the Guardian, Klein claimed that Apple and other corporations were selling the consumers’ own ideas back to them (by tapping into their aspirations and dreams). Klein stated: “People are drawn to these brands because they are selling their own ideas back to them. They are selling the most powerful ideas that we have in our culture such as transcendence, and community, even democracy. These are all brand meanings now.” Her observation was dead-on. This begs the question of how an individual, once astute, can 15 years later, be blind to the parallels: an almost identical global marketing scheme now being applied to the populace in order to capture and privatize the natural environment. Today, Wall Street and other corporations are selling back to consumers their own ideas by tapping into their aspirations and dreams.

Just as hopes and dreams can now be bought and sold by advertising moguls, states and corporations, nature will be bought and sold by states and corporations, in large part made possible by the same social media that serves as the gateway for unprecedented manipulation, coercion, social engineering, and distraction. People are drawn to the manufactured illusions and false promises (renewable energy for all, a green utopia, etc.) precisely because they are being sold their very own ideas (embodied in aspirations and dreams). Indeed, as Klein herself stated, “They are selling the most powerful ideas that we have in our culture such as transcendence, and community, even democracy. These are all brand meanings now.” The difference is that Apple and other corporations delivered on ideas embodied in aspirations and dreams via singular consumer products. But the “new economy” that Klein et al advocate for has every intention of delivering on our ideas embodied in aspirations and dreams – in relation to our future within the natural world – by further expanding capital and commodifying the whole of Earth’s natural commons. Klein and her ivory tower cohorts provide the hope and dreams (“The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed system and build something radically better,” said Klein in This Changes Everything) while the world’s most powerful institutions and oligarchs provide the predetermined solutions – “solutions” that the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) ensures remain shrouded in darkness behind the façade of solar panels, wind mills and co-operatives.

Some things don’t change. Two things that don’t change are 1) permanent/continual economic growth is a non-negotiable imperative of the capitalist economic system, and 2) capitalists will stop at absolutely nothing to grow/expand their capital. It is only through the acquisition of the labour of “visible minorities,” the oppressed and colonized peoples (via racism, classism, imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy) that the privileged can cling to their belief that the current crisis is somehow salvageable. With this in mind, the strategy is to have a global populace not only simply acquiesce to, but also demand that global leaders roll out “sustainable capitalism” (in other words, payment for ecosystems services, which is marketed, and consequently interpreted by the public, as nothing more than the “new economy,” sold by McKibben, Klein and others under the guise of vogue, capitalist-friendly climate discourse).

This strategy must be considered the most brilliant hoax since Buffett’s KXL. The people taking to the streets, demanding what the establishment decided upon long ago, is surely worth a toast of champagne on Wall Street as the world’s most powerful capitalists laugh all the way to the bank.

The paradox of having been blinded by the spectacle is the cult-esque faith that the new economy will save us, even as it further propels us to complete and absolute annihilation.

“We will tell you what you want to hear. You need not ever look in the mirror. We are your moral alibi. Love us. Protect us. We are you.” —Ivory Tower Saviours

+++

While Klein writes that “What the climate needs now is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands is unfettered expansion”, her push on divestment promises us the exact opposite. The “renewable energy revolution” (for those of privilege) based upon and dependent upon infinite and unfathomable amounts of steel, cement, aluminum and copper (all to be pillaged from an already exhausted planet), represents just one aspect of a goal grounded in denial. Further, when one takes into account that approx. 70% of all wind turbine supplies are manufactured by just 10 corporations, we can better comprehend a global campaign whose goal is to further empower the technocratic elite classes and strengthen corporate dominance. In the paper Fetishisms of Apocalypse, the author observes the pervasive framing of what mirrors the divestment ideology: “ruling elites have to be persuaded to act in their own interest now… forcing a wholly separate Society to homogenise itself around elite managers and their technological and organisational fixes.”

Branding the Bourgeoisie

While Oprah Winfrey’s goal/vision is to divert protesters into Martin Luther King’s “strategic” model, Klein’s efforts divert protestors into the establishment’s “strategic” model. Klein’s celebrity partner Russell Brand (at the forefront of the 21st century trend of the bourgeoisie-revolutionary), makes his revolutionary stance clear (This Changes Everything UK, March 28, 2015) when he instructs his followers that “a facility for the will of the people [is] to be represented… so we have the ability to influence the institutions that control us….” Unfortunately, Brand has not been privy to a simple fact articulated by legitimate revolutionary voice, Assata Shakur, who warned long ago that “nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” Brand adds that “if we can’t influence those institutions, then the institutions have to go.” Yet, the reality is that institutions are merely bureaucracies “whose very functions are, first: to make money, and second: to pacify the masses by diverting their discontent into compromises with capital.” [Source] In Brand’s urging to create a facility “so we have the ability to influence the institutions that control us,” he reinforces both the system’s authority and the illusion of democracy.

The following observation is quickly becoming most prophetic as the populace continues to be enraptured by the spectacle:

“These historical distortions aren’t just academic: they affect how we view militancy and moderation today. If activists and supporters aren’t aware of the contribution that rowdy non-nonviolent marches made to the campaign, they might instead chalk it up to King’s horse-trading, and thus submit to elite calls for tighter leadership and a cooling-off period – a course that would undermine the crucial momentum of the movement. (Selma producer Oprah Winfrey has said it’s precisely her intention to divert protesters into King’s ‘strategic’ model.) If they come to associate the archetype of the well-funded, well-connected leader with strategic wisdom, they may find themselves embracing the next faux messianic figure who emerges to channel revolutionary energies into reformism, despite the fact that decades of liberal church leadership have brought real losses to the black community, including rollback of the Voting Rights Act.” — Beyond MLK

Poet and writer Ryszard Kapuscinski once offered that “oil is a resource that anaesthetizes thought, blurs vision, and corrupts.” Perhaps this anaesthetization also lends itself to the origins of infinite growth as sacrosanct, coupled with a collective and insatiable thirst for artificial needs and false prophets – which seemingly cannot be quenched. Like the 17^th century mad hatters poisoned by mercury, perhaps the thought processes of today’s productivist environmentalists have been anaesthetized, blurred and corrupted – by oil.

Embracing Our Icons of Privilege

“Celebrities are developed to make money.” — Graeme Turner, 2004

Vogue Magazine (August 26, 2014: “Naomi Klein on This Changes Everything, Her New Book About Climate Change”)

 

Getty Images

“A high-profile sports star like Michael Jordan or David Beckham can become a one-man super brand (Naomi Klein, 2001), able to move his audiences into new regimes of consumption.” — Understanding Celebrity, 2013

It is not mere coincidence that the progressive left’s most cherished idols are white, privileged, lucratively financed, climate/environmental “activists” that continuously jet-set around the globe. This is the same progressive left addicted to their Starfuck lattes, semi-annual vacations, cottages and shiny new cars. Rather, they love their idols – because they identify with them. Take a day to listen to likes of activists such as Dhoruba bin Wahad, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, or Omali Yeshitela, and one quickly realizes that today’s white, privileged, lucratively financed appointed “leaders” are as flimsy, weak and homogenized as a loaf of Wonder Bread.

Even if our progressive left crowd stumbles across radical and critical thinkers – even when facts hit our progressives between the eyes – they do not dismiss their false prophets. Rather, insulated within their own identities and obscured by privilege, the liberal left is quick to dismiss any and all factual information and rush to their idols’ defense. Never before has it been so easy for pied pipers to lead the credulous astray.

Actress Marisa Tomei, honoree Bill McKibben and wife Sue Halpern arrive at the 23rd Annual Environmental Media Awards and after party, presented by Toyota and Lexus at Warner Bros. Studios on October 19, 2013 in Burbank, California

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben speaks on stage during the United Nations 2014 Equator Prize Gala at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center on September 22, 2014 in New York City. Partners behind the celebrity-fetishized event include Conservation International, Nature Conservancy, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Foundation, and USAID.

Honoree Bill McKibben at the 23rd Annual Environmental Media Awards and after party, presented by Toyota and Lexus at Warner Bros. Studios on October 19, 2013 in Burbank, California.

It is not mere coincidence that most liberals admire those that tend to reflect their own lives, those with whom they can identify. Until recently, 350.org board member Naomi Klein lived between two homes in Canada; one home in Metropolitan Toronto and one on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. Klein is an author. Klein is married to a documentary film-maker. She is a jet-setter. Her fan base is somewhat similar in status. The same holds true for McKibben with homes in both the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks: A beautiful custom-built home with panoramic views of red pines on land once owned by the poet Robert Frost (Vermont) complete with a wood-fired hot tub. A second home in Johnsburg, New York, deep in the beautiful Adirondacks [Source]. Cars, travel, famous friends and a good job. Both McKibben and Klein are appointed and given celebrity status by the establishment, in a culture that feeds on celebrity fetish. It is safe to say that everyone who believes in them already lives like them – or wants to live like them. They do not identify with someone like Omali Yeshitela, whose rightful anger is not hidden, and who constantly is subjected to harassment by cops, on behalf of the state. Nor do they identify with any Indigenous radicals other than the tiny token handful who are stamped and certified by the NPIC. How can they identify with Indigenous radicals who face increasing suicide rates, impoverishment, lack of access to clean drinking water, and worse, on a daily basis? The critical thinkers and thought leaders in these unpopular realms would only invoke guilt for the privileged supporters of 350.org, etc. – most with good jobs and ample money and who very much want to keep their aforementioned privilege, good jobs and ample money. The liberal left embraces those who make them feel good and deserving of their privilege.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune, February 7, 1990: “Faced with his belief that the world is literally going to hell, McKibben decide not to construct a wood-fired hot tub in his backyard. Instead he bought thermal-pane windows… And so it seems it has come to this…. That forsaking hot tubs and powerful leaf blowers and environmentally unsound communication is simply not enough. We must do more.”

What a difference a day makes… The Boston Globe, January 22, 2012. “McKibben is no Luddite: His house near Middlebury College has indoor plumbing, a microwave, and a wood-fired hot tub.”

“Clearly activism is not what it used to be. Resistance was never what it was understood to be. And, capitalism is always reinventing itself. The power of capitalism as a global force has always been in the capacity of a system to adapt, incorporate and expand. Yet the prevailing sense that capitalism is undergoing a new phase in relationship to activism and resistance is palpable. [It is] in this shifting, murky, hard to define terrain, that critical consumer studies has emerged as an important new field of study.” — Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, 2013

The “new economy” promises that this is possible. And that is what people of privilege want (and need) to hear. Who wants to ride a bike or take public transit when you can be seen in your new Tesla wearing your Prada scarf – a latte in one hand and the latest smart phone in the other?

Video: Ac”CLIMATE”izing Society to the “New Economy” featuring “actress” (celebrity) Michelle Rodriguez (running time 1:30)

 

 

Why should the 1% creating 50% of the global greenhouse gas emissions give up flying – when you can simply “fly clean,” dismissing the fact entirely that 95% of the world’s population have never flown. (“Air travel hit new records as well: in 2004, 1.9 billion passengers traveled 3.4 trillion kilometers. Yet only 5% of the world’s population has ever flown.” [Source]) With so many innovative consumer products, and collaborations that promise a sustainable future as pitched by the green new economy (designed exclusively for the wealthy), why give up anything at all? It is little wonder that the status quo have fallen in love with the illusion that the new economy will miraculously save us.

“In this, these markets of emotion and care come into their own: celebritis politicus is used to sell causes, contributions, concerns and socially responsible consumerism through a competitive market for poverty and enviro-tainment designed to develop, capture, and ‘use’ the fans of this poverty and enviro-tainment towards progressive ends.” — Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, 2013

The irony is that while nature requires our colossal consumption to come to a grinding halt, the signals embedded in our messengers and subtexts (celebrities, sponsors, advertising, false hope and minimizing of reality, etc.) ever so subtly and skillfully demand the opposite. Collectively, the cognitive dissonance (in all political spectrums: left, centre and right) stemming from our disregard as a species for Earth’s natural limits guarantees the destruction of the shared biosphere and most likely, all life within it. Adding to this multifaceted psy-war is the fact that if fossil fuels were actually to be removed from the equation, whole societies would quickly collapse and cease to exist. As seductive as clean energy tales are as told by the UN, the NPIC and the media – at the bequest of the oligarchs, on whom they depend – there are no new Lexuses, Toyotas or Teslas, designer clothes, Vanity Fairs or jet travel in a fossil fuel-constrained world. Such desires will have to be wrestled from the hands of the privileged. Voluntary curtailing of consumption by those that consume the most is mere fantasy. Alas, such a fantasy is not only the last thing the elites would wish for, but indeed their greatest nightmare.

“Celebrities offer peculiarly powerful affirmations of belonging, recognition and meaning.” — Chris Rojek

Akin to how Halo cars serve to, first and foremost, capitalize the brand (Bloomberg: “The Beauty and Logic of the Million-Dollar Car”), our celebrity “leaders” are constructed in the same way: to capitalize the “new economy” (or “next system,” etc.) brand. The same holds true for the privileged left – those with purchasing power. The real value is in the association … the tapping into the elite aura emitted by the upper-echelon luminaries who have been appointed as the messengers for the environment. “[T]he everyday drivers of the lower-tier cars get to feel like they’re part of the correct club.” Indeed, “…celebrity culture can be visualized as a form of corporate incarceration, confining consumers in a tight social space in which they can aspire to the Good Life and find gratification only by following the imagined lives of others and striving to emulate them. If this is a prison, then it is one where the prisoners are ‘busily keeping the walls intact.’” [Source]

Avaaz founder Ricken Patel (left) and Zadie Smith (celebrity/author). PUMA Impact Award, The Times Center, November 13, 2013, NYC (Photo by Lauren Colchamiro)

Left to right: Avaaz co-founder Ricken Patel, celebrity Susan Sarandon, and author/celebrity Zadie Smith for the PUMA Impact Award, The Times Center, November 13, 2013, NYC

Executive Director of Greenpeace Kumi Naidoo (left) and celebrity/actor Djimon Hounsou (right) at the 3rd Puma Creative Impact Award. Radialsystem V, Berlin, Germany, 13 Nov 2012 (photo: Zucker Kommunikation)

Left to right: Kate Dillon, Olivia Zaleski, Michael Brune and Summer Rayne Oakes, at RAN’s Don’t Bag Indonesia’s Rainforest campaign launch at the GreenShows, New York Fashion Week, December, 2009. Prior to his position as executive director working for the Sierra Club, Michael Brune was the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) for seven years. Prior to his employment at RAN (1998-2010), Brune worked for Greenpeace as a public outreach director. Photo credit: Rainforest Action Network

Amy Goodman (L) of Democracy Now and Susan Sarandon. PUMA Impact Awards at Times Center, November 13, 2013, New York City. (Photo: Robin Marchant)

Avaaz and Purpose Inc. co-founder, Jeremy Heimans (far right) in Opportunity Green panel discussion for the “green economy,” with celebrity spokesperson Don Cheadle (second from left) (2011)

As author John Stauber observes: “Liberals need to believe reform is possible, liberal oligarchs need investments, liberal politicians need votes, liberal activists need jobs, and it all is done in acceptance of a corporate oligarchy which needs to make sure no real threat arises to its status quo. So we have many marriages of convenience.”

Those of privilege will not make leaders of non-white activists who identify privilege and whiteness as systemic constructs of an institution structured to maintain and expand the privileges of tyrannical powers – a system, within a structure, that promises nothing more than the acceleration of our global, ecological crisis, unparalleled in magnitude. Nor will those of privilege accept as their mentors those who accurately warn that the very structure and systems that protect and maintain privilege must be dismantled (and other ugly truths we refuse to acknowledge). There is a reason why Indigenous activists such as Kat Yang-Stevens take Rockefellers’ poster boy, Bill McKibben, to task – while 350’s Naomi Klein, in partnership with the Guardian, presents McKibben as a 21^st century deity.

The truth is, we’re not going to talk about avoiding the catastrophic temperatures we’ve already allowed to transpire 1) because it is more than likely no longer possible to avoid them and, more importantly, 2) because collectively, the 1% creating 50% of the global greenhouse gas emissions will not willingly risk or give up their privilege. The wealthy minority, largely Euro-Americans of the western and northern hemispheres, will never voluntarily stop over-consuming energy – or anything else. The system demands that we continue. A contrived, false belief system rewards us for doing so. All necessary, disruptive, difficult and radical pathways are avoided by embracing illusory fantasies of a world where our privilege stays intact, simply by adding more infrastructure and expanding capital markets. Thus, we embrace the environmental “leaders” that the oligarchs have sanctioned / pre-approved for us, those with whom we, the privileged, identify and made iconic via the media, their most vital asset.

“Spectacle celebrities like Naomi Klein, while raising valid (albeit hypocritical) criticism of the complex, count on infantile consumers to maintain their activist credentials. Serving as proxies for consumer rage, yet asking nothing serious of them as citizens, makes these capitalist activists popular and profitable PR puppets. (I especially love Ms. No Logo’s logos.)” — Degrees of Evil: Savoring the nuances of co-optation, September 6, 2013, Intercontinental Cry

The Art of Conflation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrysanthemums (translit. Khrizantemy; 1914): a conflation of art, performance, and death  [Source]  

 

conflation
verb from “conflate”
occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places,
sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity
— the differences appear to become lost.

 

2007: “Former President Bill Clinton and musician Bono appear on stage during ‘Giving – Live At The Apollo’ presented by the MTV and Clinton Global Initiative at the Apollo Theater on September 29, 2007 in New York City.”

2008: “U2 singer Bono speaks with Al Gore during the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on September 24, 2008, in New York City. Gore attended the fourth annual meeting of the CGI, a gathering of politicians, celebrities, philanthropists and business leaders to discuss pressing global issues.” (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

 

In the October 12, 2007, CNN article The Bono-ization of Activism, Klein (rightly) criticizes the “Bono-ization” of the protest movement:

“…the new style of anti-poverty campaigning, where celebrities talk directly with government and business leaders on behalf of a continent (such as Africa) is another form of ‘noblesse oblige’ where the rich and powerful club together to ‘give something back.’ They are saying we don’t even need government anymore, it’s the replacement of nation states with corporate rule — this Billionaires Club, including Bill Clinton, that gets together to give a little something back.”

And yet, eight years later, Klein has fully immersed herself in this same (yet even more powerful) “Billionaires Club,” having replaced nation states with corporate rule. If anyone could be characterized as embracing “another form of ‘noblesse oblige’” it is Klein, the 350.org NGO she serves, and the climate cartel they run with – inclusive of Wall Street.

In 2007, Bill McKibben launched the national ‘Step It Up’ campaign (Clinton Global Initiative Commitment 2007) targeting members of the U.S. Congress to be ‘real leaders’ on climate change. Presidential candidates including Senators Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton attended Step It Up events and issued statements of support for 1Sky’s goals. Step it Up then morphed into 1Sky. 1Sky was an incubator project of the Foundation at its inception. [Further reading: Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion] At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, then President Clinton announced the 1Sky campaign. [Video, September 29, 2007: 1Sky at Clinton Global Initiative published by Step It Up][Clinton Foundation Press Release, September 27, 2007: “Working with partners 1Sky will raise $50 million to advocate for a simple set of goals and policy proposals to improve the federal government’s policies on climate change.”]

Four years (2011) after voicing very strong criticisms of the anti-poverty campaign’s engagement with Bill Clinton, a campaign that coincided with the 2007 Step It Up and 1Sky alliances with the Clinton Foundation, Klein would choose to serve on the 350.org board of directors as it officially merged with 1Sky.

“What’s complicated about the space that Bono and Geldof (Bob Geldof, founder of Live Aid) are occupying is that it’s inside and outside at the same time – there’s no difference. What’s significant about the Seattle movement (the WTO protests in 1999 and 2000) is that it’s less the tactics but the fact that it identifies that there are real power differences, winners and losers in this economic model.” [Klein: The Bono-ization of Activism]

In similar fashion, the space that 350.org and the NPIC “are occupying is that it’s inside and outside at the same time” – they are part and parcel of the same elite power structures Klein criticizes. “There’s no difference.” Like Bono’s Live Aid that Klein condemned, the divestment campaign, which Klein actively promotes, deliberately avoids the fact that “there are real power differences, winners and losers in this economic model” (i.e., the divestment model).

“Klein believes when celebrities such as Bono engage in talks with world leaders at forums such as Davos they are legitimizing the structures in place, and the inequalities that arise from these structures, rather than promoting any radical change. ‘The story of globalization is the story of inequality. What’s been lost in the Bono-ization is ability to change these power structures. There are still the winners and losers, people who are locked in to the power structures and those locked out.’” [The Bono-ization of Activism]

The official Road to Paris website cites Klein as one of the top twenty influential women in respect to this year’s “Road to Paris, United Nations Conference of the Parties” (with McKibben being cited as one of the top influential men). Like Bono lending legitimacy to Davos, Klein’s and McKibben’s luminary (and manufactured) status is being fully utilized in the same fashion: legitimizing the structures in place and the inequalities that arise from these structures. While Klein spoke to Bono’s legitimizing of globalization and inequality, 350’s partnership with the United Nations is stealth marketing that serves to whitewash the United Nations’ pivotal role as part of the finance/credit cartel subverting state sovereignty and undermining Indigenous autonomy. [Absence of the Sacred]

Failure to publicly expose and condemn the third pillar of the new economy – the commodification of nature via implementation of ecosystem services accounting – not only legitimizes the current power structures in place, but expands them and shields them from reproach. The inequalities that arise from this one single, and most critical, false solution (of many) not only legitimizes inequalities, it guarantees the finish line for the ongoing genocide – nothing less than total annihilation – of the world’s Indigenous peoples. The NPIC, as the third pillar of contemporary imperialism [3], which Klein has submerged herself in, ensures current power structures are not only kept intact, but strengthened and insulated.

Of course, this is not the first time 350.org has taken to subverting state sovereignty and undermined Indigenous autonomy.

“Bono’s Red initiative is emblematic of this new Pro-Logo age. He announced a new branded product range at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last year called Product Red. American Express, Converse, Armani and Gap were initial partners, joined later by Apple and Motorola. The corporations sell Red branded products, with a percentage of profits going to Bono-approved causes. In this Pro-Logo world there is an irony of consuming to end poverty. Perhaps an even bigger irony: through initiatives like the Red card, consumer culture and branding is buying a stake in anti-globalization and alleviating poverty movement.” [The Bono-ization of Activism]

The global divestment campaign (as was the Stop the KeystoneXL! campaign) is emblematic of the increasingly sophisticated 21^st century Pro-Logo age. Today, Bono’s 2008 branded product range promoting his Product Red has been replaced in the public realm with the divestment campaign’s ‘Fossil Fuel Free’ Funds and portfolios (while in the background, hedge funds and private investments comprise the portfolios of the ultra wealthy). Responsible Endowments Coalition, Energy Action Coalition, Sierra Student Coalition, As You Sow, Better Future Project (financed by Wallace Global Fund) and Ceres were initial partners, joined later by the Guardian and the United Nations. In this “capitalism vs the climate” world, there is a strengthening/expanding of capital markets to counteract capitalism. Perhaps an even bigger irony: through initiatives like the global divestment campaign, investment (which furthers consumption/consumer culture) is buying a stake in the anti-capitalist and environmental movements.

“What they’ve tapped into is a market niche. There’s nothing that’s inherently wrong with these initiatives except when they make radical claims that it’s going to end poverty. There’s a long history of radical consumption – what’s pretty unbelievable about this (the Red Label) is that they say it’s revolutionary and it’s going to replace other forms of politics.” [The Bono-ization of Activism]

What the divestment campaign has tapped into is a market niche. While the future will bear witness that there is / was everything inherently wrong with the divestment (dis)course, the framing that the campaign is in service to the fight against climate change is more than insulting. Remix: There’s a long history of “radical” consumption – what’s pretty unbelievable about this current version (the divestment campaign) is that they say it’s revolutionary and it’s going to replace other forms of politics.

In the 2007 article, Klein argued that Bono’s supporters believed he was being constructive because his camp was engaging with power, which she disagreed with. Yet eight years later, Klein has aligned herself with some of the most powerful oligarchs and institutions in the world.

Toward the end of the 2007 article, the author quotes an unidentified activist who stated charity concerts were a way to recorporate the issue. The parallels are striking, for who could disagree that the divestment campaign does perform the exact same function – “a way to recorporate the issue”?

In a single quote that serves to be most prophetic, the unidentified activist added: “It changes nothing.”

Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray (Radnitzky, Emmanuel)

 

Klein’s partnership with the Guardian newspaper; her placating of 350.org’s foundation funding; her chosen decision to remain silent on warmonger NGOs such as 350.org’s strategic partner Avaaz (in large part responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands in Libya [4], which they seek to be repeated in Syria); her silence on the NPIC undermining of vulnerable states at COP15 (with Greenpeace, 350 and Avaaz being the first signatories of TckTckTck); her acceptance of 350’s undermining of a sovereign state and the world’s Indigenous peoples; her scant, almost non-existent references to the military-industrial complex in relation to its massive (and exempted) contribution to both climate change and ecological devastation (case in point, consider the US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world – the avoidance of this subject is even more unconscionable considering US President Barack Obama is one of the most (if not the most) militarily aggressive US presidents in history, authorizing various airstrikes and military operations in at least seven Muslim countries); her silence on industrialized factory framing (livestock stats); and her failure to disclose the relation between 350’s KXL campaign and Buffett’s 21^st century oil by rail dynasty, etc. — all demonstrate Klein’s own “noblesse oblige.”

Klein’s most glaring “noblesse oblige” is the exclusion of ecosystem services accounting in her international best seller, This Changes Everything. The promotional description reads: “The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon – it’s about capitalism.” The solution is delivered in the next line: “The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed system and build something radically better.” The elites are indeed seizing this existential crisis to transform our failed system – it’s the financialization of the Earth’s commons referred to as “valuing ecosystem services.”

Consider that in a 505-page book written on climate and capitalism not a single chapter, or even a single page, explores the most pathological intent of the 21^st century. One is tempted to conclude that investigative journalist Klein has simply overlooked another critical issue pertaining to the climate. Or perhaps Klein simply has no knowledge of this scheme. However, the word financialization does garner one vital mention – buried in the acknowledgements: “Two years ago, Rajiv and I were joined by Alexandra Tempus, another exceptional and diligent journalist and researcher. Alexandra quickly mastered her own roster of topics, from post–Superstorm Sandy disaster capitalism to financialization of nature to the opaque world of green group and foundation funding to climate impacts on fertility. She developed important new contacts, uncovered new and shocking facts, and always shared her thoughtful analysis.” (The single reference to ecosystems services within the book is found within one sentence on p. 34: “Nor have the various attempts to soft-pedal climate action as compatible with market logic (carbon trading, carbon offsets, monetizing nature’s “services”) fooled these true believers one bit.”A second reference is found in relation to offsets on p. 68.) [6]

Further consider an Earth Island Institute “Conversation” with Naomi Klein (Fall 2013) during which Klein is asked a direct question on monetizing ecosystem services. Interviewer to Klein: “It’s interesting because even as some of the Big Green groups have gotten enamored of the ideas of ecosystem services and natural capital, there’s this counter-narrative coming from the Global South and Indigenous communities. It’s almost like a dialectic.” Klein’s response is not only incoherent, she evades the question altogether:

Klein:

“That’s the counternarrative, and those are the alternative worldviews that are emerging at this moment. The other thing that is happening … I don’t know what to call it. It’s maybe a reformation movement, a grassroots rebellion. There’s something going on in the [environmental] movement in the US and Canada, and I think certainly in the UK. What I call the “astronaut’s eye worldview” – which has governed the Big Green environmental movement for so long – and by that I mean just looking down at Earth from above. I think it’s sort of time to let go of the icon of the globe, because it places us above it and I think it has allowed us to see nature in this really abstracted way and sort of move pieces, like pieces on a chessboard, and really lose touch with the Earth. You know, it’s like the planet instead of the Earth.

 

“And I think where that really came to a head was over fracking. The head offices of the Sierra Club and the NRDC and the EDF all decided this was a “bridge fuel.” We’ve done the math and we’re going to come out in favor of this thing. And then they faced big pushbacks from their membership, most of all at the Sierra Club. And they all had to modify their position somewhat. It was the grassroots going, “Wait a minute, what kind of environmentalism is it that isn’t concerned about water, that isn’t concerned about industrialization of rural landscapes – what has environmentalism become?” And so we see this grassroots, place-based resistance in the movements against the Keystone XL pipeline and the Northern Gateway pipeline, the huge anti-fracking movement. And they are the ones winning victories, right? I think the Big Green groups are becoming deeply irrelevant. Some get a lot of money from corporations and rich donors and foundations, but their whole model is in crisis.”

 

Noblesse oblige indeed.

Klein’s contributions have not threatened capitalism; rather her efforts are utilized to not only protect it, but strengthen it.

Perhaps this is the icing on the cake that is the Rockefeller and Clinton 350.org/1Skye project: Participation in the Clinton Global Initiative is by invitation only. The membership fee is $20,000 ($19,000 tax deductible) per year. 2014 annual meeting sponsors include HSBC, Barclays, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, Ford Foundation, Monsanto, Proctor and Gamble, The Rockefeller Foundation, Blackstone, Deutsche Bank, Dow, Exxon Mobil, and others. Clinton Global Initiative University includes McKibben’s Middlebury College within its network. (“These 70 schools have pledged more than $800,000 to support CGI U 2015 student commitment-makers.”) Thus, it is of little surprise to find that in December of 2014, Global CEO cites both McKibben and Klein as those within the top ten list of “inspirational CSR leaders” as voted by their readers.

Identified in the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative membership along with princes, baronesses, heads of states, and CEOs are none other than:

• Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres (in 2013, Morgan Stanley created the Institute for Sustainable Investing – Lubber serves on the Institute’s Advisory Board, which is chaired by Morgan Stanley’s Chairman and CEO James Gorman), Stern Citi Leadership & Ethics Distinguished Fellow
• Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation (Chair/president of Greenpeace and TckTckTck aka GCCA, International Advisory Council for 350.org and SumofUs)
• Billy Parish, Coordinator and Co-Founder, Energy Action Coalition (1Sky Board of Directors)
• Betsy Taylor, Chair 1Sky Campaign (Ceres Board of Directors, Greenpeace Board of Directors, President of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions, SumofUs Advisory Board)
• Lynne Twist, Trustee of The John E. Fetzer Institute (Pachamama Alliance founder)
• Timothy Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation (Next System Initial Signatory)

 

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Markets and Corporations: The Appointed Stewards of Nature

“Recognizing that public awareness of the economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity and the fair and equitable sharing of this economic value with the custodians of biodiversity are key incentives for the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components ….” [COP 10 Decision X/1, 2004]

Over the last decade, and in particular since Rio+20 in 2012, the goal to implement payment for ecosystem services (PES) has been further developed and expedited by UNEP, the World Bank, the UK Government, TEEB for Business Coalition, WBCSD, and a wealth of other institutional and organizational actors.

The promise of the “new economy,” in which the “biosphere economy” will play a pivotal if not leading role, can perhaps be best understood simply by carefully absorbing the following direct quotes. The quotes are taken from the report titled The Biosphere Economy: Natural Limits Can Spur Creativity, Innovation and Growth – a 2010 paper by Volans, Business for the Environment (B4E) and Tellus Mater. (Volans and Tellus Mater are discussed later in this series). Note that the new economy of ecosystem services, markets and corporate entities will be considered the custodians (as referred to at COP10) or stewards of Earth’s “natural capital.”

“…issues that governments, policy-makers and regulators should be considering as a matter of urgency: 1 Steward national natural capital. Take early steps towards the reshaping and eventual regulation of financial markets and business, based on their role as stewards of ‘national natural capital.’”

 

 “This has led the Global Canopy Programme (GCP) to create the concept of tropical rainforests as ‘Eco-Utilities.’”

 

“New markets are emerging in the ecosystems space, with marketplace intelligence provided by firms like the Katoomba Group and Ecosystems Marketplace, both part of Forest Trends. The biggest market is for carbon, with the world market growing from $11 billion in 2005 to $32 billion in 2006, $64 billion in 2007, $126 billion in 2008 and being forecast to reach $170 billion in 2010 and $3.1 trillion dollars in 2020, with $1 trillion of that value relating to the USA.”

 

“Other growing ecosystem-related markets include: $3.4 billion of regulated biodiversity offset transactions per year, water ($500 million in 2010), and ‘forest carbon’ ($149.2 million in 2008). Currently, there are at least 40 local water quality market experiments in the USA.”

 

“Mainstream banks already playing into this space include JP Morgan, which bought both the carbon broker Ecosecurities (for $130 million) and the offset intermediary Climate Care. Goldman Sachs is also increasingly active through its GS Sustain, while a steady trickle of new investment firms, among them EKO Asset Management Partners, are being formed to work in this space.”

 

“While most of these markets are still voluntary, and many focus on offsetting business impacts, other experiments are emerging that aim to direct capital flows to sustain ecosystem services. One example focuses on the creation of ‘forest bonds,’ driven by an agreement between UK-based Canopy Capital and the Government of Guyana. The central idea is to channel capital to preserve forest services such as rainfall generation, moderation of extreme weather, carbon storage and biodiversity maintenance. The shape of things to come?”

 

“Already, global economic losses due to the degradation of ecosystems and biodiversity from deforestation alone is estimated to be running at somewhere between $1.9 and $4.5 trillion – every year…. On the positive side of the coin, however, the market opportunities likely to be created by the shift in the prevailing market paradigm are likely to be at least as extraordinary.”

Among the “innovators” tailoring “ecosystem metrics for business” is Gretchen Daily, co-founder of the Natural Capital Project (NCP), a 10-year joint venture of Stanford University with the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

Keep in mind that the Nature Conservancy and WWF represent two of the most corporate of all NGOs within the NPIC. The Nature Conservancy is in partnership with Monsanto and Lockheed Martin (to name just two). WWF is partnered with and greenwashes corporations such as Coca-Cola (responsible for the murder of union leaders in Columbia and Latin America) while actively advancing the agenda of Monsanto (invested in by Gates). The “green” capitalists who are proponents of a commodified ecosystem share Monsanto’s and WWF’s disturbing genetic engineering ideology. A said solution as designed by Natural Capital Project is the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVest) software:

“InVEST quantifies the ecological assets in a region – and models how their value will change under alternative scenarios. The metrics developed to assess the biophysical and economic value of ecosystem services are intended for integration into business strategy and policy decisions.” [Shaping Climate-Resilient Development: A Framework for Decision-Making, a Report of the Economics of Climate Change Adaptation Working Group by The ClimateWorks Foundation, Global Environment Facility, European Commission, McKinsey & Company, The Rockefeller Foundation, Standard Chartered Bank and Swiss Re, 2009.]

 

“Introduce natural assets as a key area of value across the C-Suite agenda. Map and understand your company’s critical dependencies on ecosystem services – and the early actions that can be taken to create a better balance between your business and nature. Again, pick high-powered partners, such as Global Footprint Network, the Natural Capital Project, the World Resources Institute, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, TEEB (the Economics of Biodiversity and Ecosystems) project team, or WWF.”

 

“Take Pavan Sukhdev, former managing director of the Markets Division of Deutsche Bank – who later in 2010 will launch the findings of the TEEB study, the acronym standing for ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity,’ an initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The focus of his work – and of a growing number of economists – is the creation in the coming decades of what we will call here the ‘Biosphere Economy.’ And the evidence suggests that this will be as profound in its impacts as the original Industrial Revolution, with the critical difference that this time the economy will be working with the grain of the biosphere, rather than against it.”

‘As NCP economists began preparing to include a value for ‘natural capital’ in Britain’s GDP calculations by 2020,” they recognized this concept as a move that promises to be the greatest change in national accounting practices since their creation 70 years ago. [Source: Whipple, 2012]

The Bank of Natural Capital is an “educational initiative” of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project (TEEB), the brainchild of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); the European Commission; the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. [5]

Like climate, biodiversity is no longer about ecology – it’s about economics.

“The ‘biodiversity treasure trove’ provides the global economy with an invaluable and extensive potential for innovative products and processes that is still widely untapped.” — Sigmar Gabriel, Environment Minister of Germany, leading up to the Potsdam Initiative [7], March 9, 2007

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Who will be the Bill Gates of Ecosystem Services?

“The financial value at stake is mind-boggling – and the business opportunities likely to be created by the shift in the prevailing market paradigm are astonishing…. Who will be the Bill Gates of ecosystem services?” — The Biosphere Economy, 2010

The February 19, 2015 Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University) article, Time to Reconnect to the Biosphere, represents a brilliant example of how to skillfully and ever so subtly manufacture public acquiescence for payment of ecosystem services under the guise of ethics:

“Too many consider environmental issues to be an obstacle for development. But the conflict between financial growth and ecological sustainability is nothing but a mental construction…. It is time to realise that societies and economies are integral parts of the biosphere and start working on more adaptive ways of governing our natural capital, not for the sake of the environment only, but for our own development. Poverty alleviation and future human development cannot take place without a wider recognition of nature’s contribution to our well-being, health and security.” — Stockholm Resilience Centre, February 19, 2015

Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre [5], is a leading advocate for the valuation/payment for ecosystem services, the key pillar of the “new economy.” Rockstrom panders to the most powerful foundations, institutions and capitalists on the planet.

The Great Transition Initiative provides an example of how NGOs create the illusion of democracy and feigned concern, as detailed in the August 2014 article Monetizing Nature: Taking Precaution on a Slippery Slope. The article concludes the following: “Even though the trend toward the privatization of public goods has been pervasive over the past decades, we should not acquiesce so easily in allowing the privatization of the most basic public good of all – nature itself. We must meet the grave environmental challenges of the twenty-first century with boldness and prudence, using the precautionary principle, along with the principles of fairness and democracy, to set boundaries that human action must not transgress.”

Such articles give the illusion that NGOs will fight to ensure “democracy” is adhered to, with “boldness and prudence.” The reality is that such fence-sitting articles that feign concern are instrumental in the normalization, slowly over time, of specific language, terminologies and corporate ideologies in order to create acquiescence to further the corporate capture of nature and further the corporate domination of our minds. The objectification of Nature becomes normalized; both anthropocentrism and speciesism are strengthened. This is the identical strategy utilized for creation and gradual acceptance of the carbon trading mechanism REDD/REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries). [Further reading: Fundación Pachamama is Dead – Long Live ALBA | Part II]

When the public became aware of REDD, scores of NGOs spoke out against it, as did the Indigenous people across the globe. Yet while publicly the environmental “movement” appeared to be against REDD, behind closed doors, an army of NGOs and jet-setting climate “activists” were quietly and effectively building public consent, which was being sought by the foundations, corporations and the UN. As the Bolivian delegation stood alone on the world stage opposing carbon markets and REDD/REDD+ (while also developing and presenting alternatives), behind the marketing and branding veneer of the non-profit industrial complex, some realities were made crystal clear: “In September 2011, the 64th Annual UN DPI/NGO Conference took place in Bonn, Germany. About 1,500 people from 70 countries turned up. On the third day of the meeting, a remarkable thing happened. Not a single participant at the conference put up their hand to disagree with a declaration which promotes REDD as a carbon trading mechanism.” [Source]

“No one raised their hand to object to a single word in the declaration text. In an email distributing the document, Dodd states that, ‘The Declaration was accepted unanimously by the 1500 NGOs and other stakeholders present.’” — Manufacturing Consent on Carbon Trading, Chris Lang

A similar strategy can be identified in respect to divestment.

Lock up the Treasury.

 

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One of the most human-centric beliefs of all those in pursuit of commodifying the commons must be accredited to Julia Gray, Head of Sustainable Development and Environmental Management, Allianz Group, who states: “It is clear that our man-made infrastructures and Nature’s ecological infrastructures are becoming increasingly interdependent.”

Nature’s ecological “infrastructures” (formerly known as ecosystems – and before that, forests, meadows, Nature’s gifts, etc.) have never and will never become dependent – in any way – on manmade infrastructures. Considering the Earth is billions of years old, and humans have been in existence for a mere blink of an eye, such a belief is nothing less than distressing. Yet so is the unceasing belief in the global economic capitalist system that is slowly but surely destroying us. The idea that nature needs humans in any way, shape or form must be considered human narcissism at its most extreme.

Carbon Disclosure Project

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York [Source: Unilever website], is cited as an independent not-for-profit organization, formed after an initiative led by the institutional investor community. [Source] CDP has 501(c)3 charitable status through Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York and is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. [Source]

According to the Natural Edge Project, the Carbon Disclosure Project began in *2003 with a group of 87 institutional investors with assets of over US$9 trillion under management who wrote to the 500 largest quoted companies in the world, asking for the disclosure of investment-relevant information concerning their greenhouse gas emissions. [Source] [*Other sources show CDP was formed in 2002.]

By 2007, five years after its inception, CDP had morphed into a coalition of over 315 global investors with more than $41 trillion in assets. [Source: Unilever website]

In 2010, CDP was called “The most powerful green NGO you’ve never heard of” by the Harvard Business Review. [Source] A powerful alliance was formed that would engage with international bodies that implement policy described in the following way:

“The four regional climate change investor groups – IIGCC, INCR, IGCC and AIGCC – also announced today the formation of the Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change (GIC) to represent the international investment community on climate change policy and investment issues at a global level. The GIC, which will be working closely with other networks including UNEP FI (Finance Initiative), Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), will provide a focal point for engagement with international policy-making bodies.” — Principles for Responsible Investing, UNEP Financing Initiative, November 20, 2012

Note that the five institutions above (IIGCC (Europe), INCR (North America), IGCC (Australia and New Zealand), AIGCC (Asia) and GIC (Global Investor Coalition) are all Ceres NGOs.

By 2014 CDP’s coalition had again more than doubled: “More than 767 institutional investors support the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). In total, these investors manage assets worth more than US$92 trillion, thus owning a stake in the majority of the world’s listed companies with the highest revenue.” [Source: Seimens Press Release]

Paul Dickinson is a co-founder of CDP, with Tessa Tennant and the financier Jeremy Smith. Prior to founding CDP (for which he continues to serve as executive chairman), Dickenson encountered the economist Dr. Hazel Henderson whose statement “turn your deepest purpose into a revenue stream” struck a chord with Dickinson. Dickinson is an author of numerous books, including Beautiful Corporations, which have been translated into six languages. [Source]

April 24, 2012, Ceres website:

“Tessa Tennant, President and co-founder of The Ice Organisation, has been awarded the fourth-annual Joan Bavaria Award for Building Sustainability into the Capital Markets. The announcement was made at Tuesday’s opening reception of the Ceres annual conference, which runs April 25-26 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA.”

Also a CDP co-founder, Tessa Tennant’s expertise in investment is extensive. Tennant co-founded The Ice Organisation, which “encourages consumers to purchase more sustainable products and services from a wide range of retail partners, mobilizing mass consumer purchase power to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change”; co-founded the UK’s first equity investment fund for sustainable development in 1988, now called the Jupiter Ecology Fund; is the chair and co-founder of the UK Social Investment Forum; co-founded the Association for Sustainable & Responsible Investment in Asia (ASrIA) in 2001 and remains on the board; served as a member of the UK Government’s Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment in the early nineties; assisted in the development of the HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business in the Environment initiative, which educates senior business executives on practical ways to integrate social and environmental solutions into their business operations; is chair of the Global Cool Foundation; and served as a World Wildlife Fund UK Ambassador and fellow of the Schumacher Society. [Source: Ceres]

Another CDP co-founder and financier, Jeremy Smith, is a Partner at Berkeley Energy, a private equity firm focused upon renewable energy projects and project developers in the emerging markets. Smith has worked in the investment and clean energy realm since 2000. Prior to Berkeley, Smith gained experience with Tersus Energy, Conduit Ventures, and Gartmore (acquired by Henderson Global Investors in 2011). Smith began his career with Credit Suisse First Boston in the International Mergers & Acquisitions Group. [Source]

CDP corporate partnerships include Siemens, Turkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi, Dell, Hewlett Packard, L’Oréal, PepsiCo, Cadbury Schweppes, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Unilever, Lloyds TSB, Amcor, Johnson Controls, Métro-Richelieu, Schneider Electric, NH Hoteles, and Ventas, Inc.

The so-called clean energy economy (recognized as the greatest “climate wealth opportunity” of our time) is in dire need of a massive cash injection. The required magnitude is colossal:

“Financing (of renewable energy) must double by 2020 and double again to $1 trillion by 2030 in order to avoid global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius, reports Ceres, the host of yesterday’s conference…. The goal of quadrupling investment from its current state ‘is the right order of magnitude.’” — Ceres Press Release, January 16, 2014

It is critical to once again note that Ceres has been both a key partner and an advisor to the divestment campaign from inception. In summation, today’s leading social capitalists insist the world must quadruple its investments in “renewable” energy by 2030, which also means that climate change is the greatest opportunity to expand capitalism beyond its current limits.

Why the Oligarchs Have United in Pushing the Divestment Campaign

At a Glance:

 

• The economic models of the 20th century are now hitting the limits of what is possible.
• Assigning nature’s resources as monetary assets (ecosystem services/payment for ecosystem services) visible in national accounts and economic strategies is the key to growth in the 21st century.
• The most vital pillar (of three) identified under the “new economy” is the valuing and mainstreaming of nature’s services (biodiversity) into national and international accounts.
• Financial markets and business will be assigned as the new “stewards of national natural capital.”
• Global growth has become stagnant, as identified by global institutions such as McKinsey: Can long-term global growth be saved? (January 2015, McKinsey and Company).
• The IMF and World Bank Group identify a reduction in the growth of the global economy as a primary risk to the world (October 10, 2014).
• The “greening of economies,” as recognized by the UN, is not a reduction in global economic growth, rather, it is considered a new engine of growth.
• Changing the capitalist system is not to be considered (Generation Investment).
• The three key dates are 2015 (international agreement), 2020 (sustainable capitalism and ecosystem services accounting in place), and 2050 (the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity to be fully commodified).
• The mainstreaming of “sustainable capitalism” is to be in place by 2020 (Generation Investment).
• Economists have been “preparing to include a value for ‘natural capital’ in Britain’s GDP calculations by 2020.”
• The ideologies/concept behind the commodification of the commons began in earnest at least 25 years ago and likely far earlier than that.
• $60-70 trillion over the next decade-and-a-half is required for planned mega-infrastructure projects [Source].
• The biggest market is for carbon, with the world market growing from $11 billion in 2005 and being forecast to reach $3.1 trillion in 2020, with $1 trillion of that value relating to the USA.
• A steady flow of new investment firms is expanding to exploit the emerging eco-systems markets.
• Financing (of renewable energy) must double by 2020 and double again to $1 trillion by 2030; quadrupling investment from its current state is the stated goal.

 

From Part XI: 2 Degrees of Credendum | In Summary, Divestment as symbolism:

 

• The Do the Math tour, as the precursor to the global Divestment campaign, established and reinforced the false premise that the world retains a “carbon budget” that enables us to safely keep burning for decades to come.
• Like 1Sky/350, the campaign is top-down, not grassroots up as presented. Not only has this global “movement” been sanctioned by the elites, it has been developed in consultation with Wall Street and financed from inception by the world’s most powerful oligarchs and institutions.
• The campaign successfully invokes a certain naiveté and innocence due to the said premise (a moral divestment imperative) of the campaign.
• It provides a moral alibi and evokes illusions of white saviour/moral superiority of those that divest/divest-invest while the very people divesting are those that comprise the 1% creating 50% of all global GHG emissions (anyone who can afford to board an airplane). Shuffling their investments does not change this fact or alleviate/absolve one’s role in accelerating climate change and ecological destruction.
• Protesting fossil fuels cannot and will not have any effect on fossil fuel consumption, production or destruction without legitimately and radically addressing Annex 1 consumption, economic growth under the capitalist system, human population (specifically in Annex 1 nations), the military industrial complex and industrial factory farming.
• The chosen campaign of divestment rather than the boycott of fossil fuels in combination with proposed sanctions on fossil fuel corporations demonstrates the insincerity of the campaign and its true intentions as sought (and developed) by its funders.
• Divestment effectively constructs the moral acceptance of “green” consumption. The global divestment campaign confirms that the “market” can be and is the solution.
• The campaign constructs and further reinforces the falsehood that there is no need to change either the economic system (beyond reforming capitalism) or dismantle the power structures that comprise it; nor is it necessary to address the underlying values, worldviews, classism, racism, colonialism and imperialism that are driving this physical and psychic
• It diverts attention away from the proliferation of private investments, hedge funds and privatization – key mechanisms in the “new economy.”
• It provides a critical discourse to divert attention away from the most critical issue of the 21st century: the commodification of the commons (in similar fashion to how the Stop the KeystoneXL! campaign was instrumental in enabling Buffett’s rail dynasty, only far more critical in significance).
• It builds on the 21^st century corporate pathology “Who Cares Wins,” whereby “kindness is becoming the nation’s newest currency.” The pathology behind this intent is the corporate capture of “millennials” by manipulation via branding, advertising and social media.
• Direct contact with “millennials” in colleges and universities around the world invokes pre-determined and pre-approved ideologies as sought after/controlled by hegemony while building loyalties: future NGO “members” / supporters, future “prosumers,” future “investors.”
• The campaign draws attention to the statistic that “just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made emissions” while making no mention that a mere 1% of people are creating 50% of all the global GHG emissions – the very people that comprise their target audience.
• Although highlighting the fact that “just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made emissions” is critical, this information is being conveyed and utilized only to implement the financialization of nature.
• The campaign stigmatizes fossil fuel investments which, by default, protect the 1% creating 50% of the global GHG emissions from similar stigmatization.
• Success is measured by the number of institutions divesting-investing, and “shares/likes” on social media, ignoring the fact that divestment does nothing to reduce emissions as the world burns.
• The divestment campaign presents a capitalist solution to climate change, presenting, repackaging and marketing the very problem as our new solution. Thus, the global power structures that oppress us are effectively and strategically insulated from potential outside threats.

 

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“There is, of course, something contradictory in calculating a price for some­thing you do not wish to trade. Perhaps realising this, one ecological advocate of ecosystems valuation has tried to claim that: ‘Valuing ecosystem services is not identical to commodifying them for trade in private markets’ (Costanza, 2006: 749). That there is no commoditisation, or market-like exchange, implicit in ecosystem services valuation is plainly wrong. As the NRC report states: ‘The use of a dollar metric for quantifying values is based on the assumption that individuals are willing to trade the ecological service being valued for more of other goods and services represented by the metric (more dollars).’ This requires converting ecosystem functions into goods and services, and is clearly identical in approach to a model for trading commodities in a market. — Clive Spash, 2008 [Source]

Akin to those of privilege pretending their screen-addicted children are actually gifted computer geniuses, such are the lies we tell ourselves in order to believe in a system whereby we “benefit” at the expense of others and the destruction of nature.

 

Next: The final segments of this series will be published in 2016

 

 

[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, Counterpunch, Political Context, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on twitter @elleprovocateur]

 

 

EndNotes:

[1] ICSU’s principal source of “core” income is dues from members and a subvention from the host country, France. The other major sources of income are grants from various organizations and foundations. [Source] [2] The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, and its 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, were agreed by the international community in 2010 in Nagoya, Japan, and have since been re-affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly and at the Rio+20 summit in 2012. [Source] [3] “Accordingly, a nonprofit-corporate complex (based in international non-governmental organizations, NGOs) dominating an array of social services, many of which were performed by the state in the past, emerged as the third pillar of the triangular structure of contemporary imperialism during the 1980s. It represents a kind of “Third Way” on the part of capital that privatizes state functions and occupies key strategic points within civil society (co-opting social movements) while seemingly outside the realm of private capital – thereby enabling an acceleration of privatization and reinforcing the hegemony of monopoly-finance capital globally.” [Source] [4] 500,000 dead, 30,000 in terrorist-run prisons, 2.5 million exiled, tens of thousands of refugees.

[5] The original TEEB study was launched by Germany and the European Commission in response to a proposal by the G8+5 Environment Ministers in Potsdam, Germany in 2007, to develop a global study on the economics of biodiversity loss.

[6] “Particularly in the early days of offsetting, after forest conservation projects began appearing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, by far the most persistent controversy was that—in the effort to quantify and control how much carbon was being stored so as to assign a monetary value to the standing trees— the people who live in or near those forests were sometimes pushed onto reservation-like parcels, locked out of their previous ways of life.”

[7] The Environment Ministers of the G8 countries and of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, the European Commissioner for the Environment and senior officials from the United Nations and the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) met in Potsdam in March 2007. The meeting resulted in, among other things, the announcement of a course of action for the conservation of biological diversity and for climate protection: “The clear message of this meeting is that we must jointly strengthen our endeavours to curb the massive loss of biological diversity. It was agreed that we must no longer delete nature’s database, which holds massive potential for economic and social development.” [Source]

 

 

Non-Profits and the Pacification of the Black Lives Matter Movement

Counterpunch

August 14, 2015

By Brendan McQuade

Misunderstanding the Civil Rights Movement and Diversity of Tactics

The Hampton Institute

June 13, 2015

By Lorenzo St. Dubois

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s gotten to be a pattern on the Left. When Black protest erupts into insurrection, as it did in Ferguson and Baltimore, most liberals and white radicals express empathy for the cathartic release of anger, but urge the oppressed that this is not the way. This is “not strategic,” says the leftist concern-troll. This is “what the police want.” Most of the time they manage to stop short of asking “why are they burning down their own neighborhood?” -if only to be mindful of clichés-but some can’t even help themselves there. In the aftermath, Amy Goodman (seemingly channeling Alex Jones) will spread conspiracy theories on how the government “orchestrated” the rioting.[1] The respectability politics of nonviolence will return.

It’s hard to believe that anyone who has paid attention to Black Lives Matter takes these positions in good faith because, of course, the riots in Ferguson were objectively the best thing that happened to a movement that was already more than a year old. In August 2014, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman had been almost completely forgotten by white America except as grim punchlines, while national civil rights leaders were more concerned with Chicago’s gang killings than with the national wave of police terror. Yet by December, in the wake of recurring rioting in both Ferguson and the Bay Area, the Ferguson PD was under investigation by Amnesty International, the Justice Department and the United Nations ( and #BlackLivesMatter had been named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society ).

This month the pushback comes with Jonathan Chait’s promotion of a scholarly paper on the effects of rioting on Black liberation in the 1960s. Chait’s argument can be critiqued on just about every level: the paper has a distorted idea of what liberation is (apparently, it means electing Democrats), an undefined idea of what rioting is, and on top of that the paper isn’t even accredited scholarship, in the sense that it hasn’t been peer-reviewed by anyone (except of course by Jonathan Chait).

Chait first got uptight about this subject last year, when he and Ta-Nehesi Coates had an indirect back-and-forth over the efficacy of Black insurrection. Chait wrote regarding Ferguson that “Property damage and looting impede social progress.” Coates replied with a concise historical sketch of militancy in the civil rights era:

The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is inseparable from the threat of riots. The housing bill of 1968-the most proactive civil-rights legislation on the books-is a direct response to the riots that swept American cities after King was killed. Violence, lingering on the outside, often backed nonviolence during the civil-rights movement. “We could go into meetings and say, ‘Well, either deal with us or you will have Malcolm X coming into here,'” said SNCC organizer Gloria Richardson. “They would get just hysterical. The police chief would say, ‘Oh no!”

But now Chait claims that a draft research paper by Omar Wasow, an assistant professor at the department of politics at Princeton, fills in the blanks left within the broad strokes of that sketch. “And his answer is clear,” Chait announces. “Riots on the whole provoke a hostile right-wing response. They generate attention, all right, but the wrong kind.”

Chait and Wasow’s position is a restatement of the timeworn “backlash thesis.” Over the years, this thesis has been largely discredited by various studies (studies which, unlike Wasow’s, were peer-reviewed). The weakness with the thesis is not that there was no serious white backlash to the anti-racist movement, but that the backlash started as soon as the civil rights struggle began in the mid-1950s, not suddenly after the mid-60s Northern rebellions.

The Limits of Nonviolence

Take for instance Michael Klarman’s book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights (which one reviewer calls “the first great and indispensable work of American constitutional history in the twenty-first century”). Klarman demonstrates that Brown vs. Board of Education didn’t inspire an unambiguously effective civil rights movement; it inspired an uncertain experiment in passive resistance which in turn provoked the segregationist “massive resistance” movement. And just as Brown didn’t lead to widespread desegregated schools, the Supreme Court decision that emerged from the Montgomery bus boycott didn’t lead to widespread desegregated buses-most Southern municipalities simply ignored it, and launched highly effective repression against Black activism and liberalism generally. Montgomery itself enacted new segregation laws after the boycott victory, and terrorized both moderate and radical political figures (Rosa Parks fled the city after the campaign, both because she was blacklisted from work and because of credible death threats). On the rare instances where the federal government stood up for school desegregation, like in Little Rock in 1958, the conservatives were strong enough to wait out the withdrawal of troops, or else simply shut down the schools rather than comply.

A new hope seemed to emerge in the early 1960s with the lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and the Mississippi voter registration drives. But the sit-in movement only led to the desegregation of Woolworth’s luncheonettes-most Southern eateries remained Jim Crow. The Freedom Rides were actually unpopular with the American public, most of whom thought Blacks were moving too fast. And the Freedom Rides led to yet another federal decision that was seldom honored in the South. The Mississippi movement provoked a wave of lynchings that the Kennedy administration did nothing to prevent. Klarman noted that the early civil rights movement had a “backlash-counterbacklash” dynamic.

Klarman’s work builds on that of scholar Gerald Rosenberg who demonstrated that no dramatic change for Black liberation occurred until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The direct impetus for that law was rioting in Birmingham in May of 1963: thousands of local blacks defied Martin Luther King’s exhortations to nonviolence, set fire to nine square blocks of downtown, and sent a police officer to the operating room. The author of the most comprehensive study of President Kennedy’s civil rights policy, Nicholas Bryant, noted that

It was the black-on-white violence of May 11 – not [the nonviolence of the previous weeks] – that represented the real watershed in Kennedy’s thinking…Kennedy had grown used to segregationist attacks against civil rights protesters. But he – along with his brother and other administration officials – was far more troubled by black mobs running amok.[2]

Birmingham wasn’t an isolated episode; Black insurrection flared across the country for the rest of 1963 and into 1964. Sometimes it was milder than Birmingham and sometimes it was more explosive. SNCC leader Gloria Richardson recalls that in her campaign in Cambridge, Maryland, activists exchanged gunfire with National Guardsmen just a few months prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

“Burning in Every City, North and South”

President Kennedy’s response to Birmingham is the key historical moment of the movement. According to White House tapes, the president initially thought about sending federal troops to Alabama in May 1963 with the idea of acting against Blacks if the rioting continued-not against Bull Connor. He ultimately kept the troops on stand-by. As the month wore on and Kennedy saw Black rebellion spread to Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, he eventually concluded he would have to make a major gesture of support for African-Americans. On June 11, he gave his landmark Civil Rights Address, in which he first proposed the Civil Rights Act. The Address acknowledged the role of riots:

This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety… The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.

Kennedy’s speech is the first time the federal government even acknowledged it had a major racial problem in the North. The post-Birmingham uprisings were indeed the root of the nationwide white backlash, but they were also the beginning of a truly nationwide civil rights movement. And they proved to be the first real federal breakthrough in either the North or South.

Some of Professor Wasow’s charts actually illustrate my points better than they illustrate his:

We can see in this chart that there was little violent activity in the early sixties movement-but we can also see that there was very little nonviolent activity in the movement either. The marked decline of nonviolent protest shown in 1962 confirms Malcolm X’s characterization in his “Message to the Grassroots” speech that the movement seemed to be on its last legs that year. Then, in 1963, we see violent and nonviolent activity spike in unison – if anything violent protest leads the trend. The riotous tendency in that year helped to stimulate nonviolent protest (including preparations for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom). And as we’ve already seen, it directly inspired Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address and proposal of his civil rights bill.

The chart also shows a smaller but still significant curve towards violence in 1964. The peak of this curve appears to be June 1964- the month the Civil Rights Act was finally passed. And once again, riots and peaceful protests rose and fell together in similar timeframes. Also note that the Watts rebellion doesn’t spring out of nowhere in August 1965; it’s part of a general increase in militancy that begins in the first half of the year, which means that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is also inseparable from the threat of riots (Note too that the overall rates of violent protest in 1965 and 1963 are nearly the same).

Wasow doesn’t mention the Birmingham riot, or the Cambridge riot, or the “fires of frustration and discord…burning in every city, North and South,” in 1963. They don’t help his case. But they do prove the case of the anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos, who’s noted for years that the civil rights movement at its strongest was a model of diversity of tactics.

The underlying premise of Wasow and Chait seems to be that since it’s dangerous to win (there’s a backlash) it’s much better to lose. In his study of the struggle for the Civil Rights Act, legal historian Gerald Rosenberg has a more heartening message:

“Overcoming discrimination is a good news/bad news story.The bad news is that discrimination is deeply enmeshed in the fabric of American life; it is hard to change. But there is good news. The good news is that change is possible.”

Notes:

1. Democracy Now! uncritically publicized the idea that the National Guard stood down in Ferguson in order to encourage rioting. However, it was documented later that the officials’ motivation was concern about the public image of militarized policing.

2. Nicholas Andrew Bryant, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality (Basic Books, 2006), p. 393

Originally posted at Lorenzo’s blog, Diversity of Tactics.

Fetishisms of Apocalypse

Authoritarian Leftists | Kill the Cop in Your Head

The Anarchist Library

1996

by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin

Video: Police Brutality and Black Sellout Organizations | Published on Aug 14, 2014

 

Allende was Wrong: Neoliberalism, Venezuela’s Student Right and the Answer from the Left

Venezuela Analysis

February 10, 2015

By Lucas Koerner 

“Defend university autonomy for a true popular democracy.” “Freedom and Autonomy.” “Movement 13 welcomes you to study, struggle, and love.” 

No, these slogans I saw adorning the walls were not copied from the University of Chile, where I studied in 2012-2013, researching and struggling alongside the Chilean student movement that is militantly fighting to overturn the neoliberal educational regime imposed under Pinochet. But they very easily could have been. No, I was not at a militant Leftist public university; I was in Mérida, at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Los Andes (ULA), which is regarded as the principal recruiting ground for Venezuela’s rightwing student movement.

On Friday, January 23, the ULA erupted once again in violent student protests in which masked students temporarily set up barricades and attempted to forcibly enter several local stores. For local residents, these protests represented a bitter reminder of the “Guarimba,” the several months of violent opposition demonstrations in which rightwing students together with Colombian paramilitaries shut down major avenues with barricades and assassinated police and Chavista activists in a desperate bid to force the salida, or exit, of President Nicolás Maduro.

What is most confusing and troubling is the fact that the discourse of “university autonomy” has always been a slogan of the Left, which young people from Chile to Greece have utilized to defend themselves from outright repression at the hands of dictatorial regimes as well as from the far more nefarious structural violence of neoliberal privatization. Moreover, the practices of donning the capucha, or mask, setting up street barricades, and hurling molotov cocktails in pitched street battles with police are tried and true Leftist tactics developed in the course of grassroots struggles against the authoritarian capitalist state in contexts as distinct as Venezuela, France, and Palestine.

Yet in contemporary Venezuela, these historically Leftist forms of struggle, encompassing discourses, symbols, and tactical repertoires, have been appropriated by rightwing students, but with an ideological content that could not be more radially opposed: far from rebels or revolutionaries, these rightwing students are reactionaries through and through, bent on reversing the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution and restoring the oligarchic order firmly in place for 500 years prior to the conquest of power by the revolutionary grassroots movements that comprise Chavismo.

Here we are confronted by the stone-cold realization that there is nothing inherently revolutionary about young people, or students for that matter. Sadly, we are forced to concede that Salvador Allende, who famously said, “to be young and not revolutionary is a biological contradiction,” was wrong.

In what follows, I will offer some cursory notes towards an explanation of this rightward shift among certain segments of Venezuelan students together with their paradoxical appropriation of historically Leftist modes of struggle, focusing on the gentrification of the Venezuelan university as well as the ascendancy of neoliberal ideology as two crucial conditions for this overall process of ideological mutation. I will conclude with an interview with Javier, a student of political economy at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, who currently put his studies on hold to pursue worker organizing in coordination with local communal councils. Javier will discuss the Bolivarian University as a radical pedagogical alternative from below as well as the struggles faced by revolutionary students in the face of a resurgent Right.

The Gentrification of the Venezuelan University

This dramatic ideological metamorphosis undergone by Venezuelan student movements cannot be explained outside the context of the neoliberal “gentrification” of the university. Nonetheless, this neoliberalization only came in the wake of the brutal repression of decades of radical student struggles that sought to bring down the walls that separate the “ivory tower” from the social reality of the poor, excluded majority.

At its height; the 1969 movement for “Academic Renovation” fought for a radical democratization of the university, whereby students, faculty, and university workers would have equal decision-making power; which George Ciccariello-Mahr terms a “radicalization of the very notion of autonomy itself, one that asserted autonomy from the government while insisting that the university be subservient to the needs of the wider society of which students and workers were a part.”1 As we will see later, it is precisely this more nuanced, dialectical notion of autonomy that is lacking among those presently claiming to speak on behalf of Venezuelan students.

The revolutionary Renovation movement was savagely crushed by the government of Rafael Caldera, who unceremoniously sent tanks to close down the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Nonetheless, this outright repression was tame by comparison to the “more insidious… subtle, and long-term policy of ethnic cleansing within the public university [which was realized] by limiting popular access and returning the institutions to their previous status as refuges for the most elite segments of society.”2 This progressive embourgeoisement of the Venezuelan university prefigured a similar process that would occur globally in the context of the neoliberal turn of the subsequent decades, in which public universities from the University of California to the University of Chile saw ruthless cuts in public funding, privatization of services, dramatic tuition hikes, and creeping technocratization, all with profound implications for social class composition. That is, the youth filling the halls of Venezuelan public universities came increasingly from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, which rendered them all the more vulnerable to the seductive appeal of neoliberal ideology.

Unfortunately, this tendency has not been entirely reversed under the Bolivarian governments of Chavez and Maduro. While the Bolivarian Revolution has seen the creation of a new system of Bolivarian universities in an effort to outflank the traditional public universities as we will see below, the government and the array of radical social forces driving it from below have thus far been unable to launch a frontal assault.

In other words, whilst these traditional universities are “public” in name and nominally free for all students, historic public universities such as the UCV nevertheless retain all kinds of classist filtering mechanisms, such as entrance exams and additional fees for registration, books, etc., that serve to effectively bar working class students from attending. Most egregious in this respect are the so-called “autonomous universities” such as the ULA, which are conferred unquestioned authority over internal decision-making, while at the same time receiving full state funding, amounting in some cases to the budget of a Caribbean nation, for which they are obligated to give little in the way of formal accounting.

Moreover, this lingering bourgeois form of education in the traditional universities is matched by a thoroughly technocratic content, in which education is conceived as the production of upwardly-mobile experts insulated from the daily struggles of the masses, who are destined to serve the bureaucratic state or capital. As Javier, a student of political economy at the recently founded Bolivarian University succinctly put it, this capitalist model of education is about getting you to subscribe to the bourgeois careerist fiction that you need to study in order to “be someone,” fetichizing education as a sterile commodity purchased like any other in order to augment one’s “human capital,” as consistent with neoliberal logic.

Given this disproportionately elite class composition and thoroughly bourgeois educational paradigm, it is no wonder then that the student federations of public universities like the UCV and the ULA are now governed by the Right.

Neoliberalism: The Illusion of Subversion

While the changing class composition of Venezuelan universities over previous decades represents an important structural factor behind the rise of Venezuela’s rightwing student movement, we cannot neglect the particular characteristics of neoliberal ideology, namely its seductive capacity for passing as radical or revolutionary. But first, what is neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism might be defined as “historical, class-based ideology that proposes all social, political, and ecological problems can be resolved through more direct free-market exposure, which has become an increasingly structural aspect of capitalism.”3 Emerging as the political response on the part of the capitalist state to the economic crisis of the 1970s, neoliberalism sought to roll back the “democratic gains that had been previously achieved by the working classes, and which had become, from capital’s perspective, barriers to accumulation.”4 It was in this context of the ‘68 revolt that the revolutionary Left and the neoliberal Right would share a proclaimed common enemy, namely an overbearing, bureaucratic state engaged in bloody imperialist wars abroad and fierce repression at home, although the anti-statism of the latter was pure rhetoric, as neoliberal politicians were content to use the state to implement their class project.5

In what followed, the post-’68 demands leveled against the capitalist state for formal individual rights by the hegemonic variants of the feminist, LGBT, civil rights, etc. movements were perfectly compatible with the neoliberal agenda, which in turn spawned the “NGOization” of Leftist politics whereby non-profits progressively took over the leadership of social movements and channeled them in a de-radicalized, localized direction.In what followed, the post-’68 demands leveled against the capitalist state for formal individual rights by the hegemonic variants of the feminist, LGBT, civil rights, etc. movements were perfectly compatible with the neoliberal agenda, which in turn spawned the “NGOization” of Leftist politics whereby non-profits progressively took over the leadership of social movements and channeled them in a de-radicalized, localized direction. These developments gave rise to the normalization of petty-bourgeois lifestyle politics, especially in the newly gentrified universities, wherein demands for “diversity” and “inclusion” of underprivileged minorities could safely be made without ruffling any feathers. Thus, the dangerous lure of neoliberal ideology lies in its ability to render individualistic lifestyle politics, i.e. demanding access to consumer items, as cathartic acts of authentic revolt and resistance. Even as critical a thinker as Michel Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism’s apparent radicalism, joining in its chorus against the welfare state and praising it as a vehicle to promote the rights of the “excluded” (prisoners, LGBT people, women, those deemed “mentally ill,” etc.).6

We should not, therefore, be surprised by the fact that a segment of Venezuelan students don the traditional clothing of the Left and actually consider themselves revolutionaries facing down what they consider an oppressive dictatorship. But we must not be fooled. What the Venezuelan Right is attempting to do is appropriate the historic slogans, symbols, and tactics of the Left, but strip them of all collective emancipatory content, which is replaced with bourgeois individualist demands for consumer choice. Thus, the “freedom” that they demand has nothing to do with the plethora of social rights conquered under the Bolivarian Revolution, but here connotes unregulated access to dollars, weekend getaways to Miami, the “right” to own and exploit.

The “autonomy” that they clamor for amounts to nothing short of total unaccountability to the rest of society, while continuing to lay claim to the latter’s resources. The militant tactics of the street barricade, the capucha, and the Molotov do not figure here as legitimate forms of mass resistance or revolutionary intervention, but represent instances of fascist, paramilitary violence enacted by individuals against a government of the people. Nonetheless, it is precisely the apparently “anti-authoritarian” character of neoliberal ideology that enables the Venezuelan student Right to retrofit traditionally Leftist forms of struggle with reactionary bourgeois content, effectively disguising their shrill cries for individualist consumer choice as a righteous chorus of social rebellion.

However, this rightwing appropriation does not go uncontested. If symbols like the capucha and the barricade ultimately constitute what Ernesto Laclau terms “empty signifiers” that can be filled with any ideological content, then their meaning is perpetually disputed in the heat of social struggle. In other words, the Right’s usurpation can and must be reversed by new generations of revolutionary young people, struggling to at once reclaim the past and win the war for a socialist future.

The Bolivarian University of Venezuela: The Answer from the Bolivarian Left

The flagship of the Bolivarian government’s revolutionary initiative for higher education, the Bolivarian University of Venezuela (UBV) was founded in 2003 as part of the Mission Sucre, which has saw the radical expansion of access to quality public education among the popular classes historically excluded from the Venezuelan educational system. Today, the UBV annually graduates more students than any other institution of higher education in the country. Apart from rupturing with the traditionally oligarchic form of Venezuelan higher education, which has historically been the province of the elite, the UBV also proposes a revolution in the practical content of education, which it defines as “liberating, with criteria of social justice, inclusive, free and quality.”

I had the opportunity to sit down with Javier, a student of political economy at the Bolivarian University, who has temporarily frozen his studies in order to take on worker organizing in his community in 23 de Enero, located in the vast working class area in the west of Caracas known as Catia. He also works as a facilitator in the Bolivarian University for Workers “Jesus Rivero” in the Capital District government, which aims to raise political and class consciousness amongst public workers and prepare them for “assuming the direct and democratic management of the social process of work”. All facilitation sessions take place at the workplace itself.

His words paint a provisional picture of the depth of the revolution in educational praxis currently underway in Venezuela.

Q: Can you speak about the popular pedagogical project of the Bolivarian University?

A: Well if I were to talk about a popular project towards the structural transformation of the state and also the structural transformation of our thinking that we have currently, I would openly uphold [the example of] the Bolivarian University of the Workers, because, it’s a university that breaks with the top-down, positivist framework of education. The worker or compañero takes on the process of self-education in the space of work itself. This leads to the complete reevaluation of the education I have in my mind that I reproduce in practice, and this critical reevaluation of thought and practice lets me reinvent myself. The thinking that I have is a different kind of thought pattern that breaks with the frameworks of the capitalist system.

Moreover, our university sets down [the model of] self-education through reading, debate, and writing. This means that we don’t deny existing theories. We read the current theory, which is the systematization of struggles, for theories are the systematization of the struggles of the people, of the experience of the people. We debate this systematization, and we see if it can be adjusted to our present moment in order to not be dogmatic, but rather dialectical. Continuous, collective, integrated, and permanent self-education, that is the strategy. It is collective, because we all educate ourselves through the exchange of knowledge. It is continuous and permanent, because it never stops and we are always educating ourselves. It is integrated: We can specialize in an area, but we truly have to also know a little about everything, because labor is not an individual process, but a social one, where we all participate and we are all important in the development of the nation.

We also address the question of the management of the social labor process in order to be able to bring about structural transformations. When we talk about taking on the management of the social labor process, it’s the whole process. We realize this when we look at the arepa: the person who sows the corn, the person who harvests the corn, the person, who transports the corn, the person who processes the corn. In other words, the arepa comes out of a process in which there are very many people participating, the truck driver, the compañero in the factory, the compañera amassing the cornmeal; it’s all important work. So we propose that we take on the whole process and view ourselves as equals in struggle. This then is what permits us to truly form a culture of work that is not the competitive culture of work of the capitalist system, but rather a culture of work that guarantees the happiness of our people, we ourselves taking over the organization of what is truly socialism, the structural transformation of the state that we have.

Q: I want to follow your last point to a more macro level. How do you place the Bolivarian University in the context of the socialist struggle more broadly in society, particularly in terms of struggles over education?

A: Many of the universities teach the students a [large] number of lies that we at the Bolivarian University of Workers work to dismantle. We therefore have to dismantle the [large] number of lies that the capitalist system has sold us. One of these things that that they sell you in the universities is that you have to study to be someone. But they don’t explain to you that from the moment that you are in your mother’s womb, you already are someone, someone important. If you were to lose vital signs in the womb, your, mother would feel a great pain, and not only your mother, but your father, your closest family members. So, we are headed towards breaking with this framework of education, this deceitful education that continues to view you as labor-power.

[In contrast], the Bolivarian University of the Workers teaches, which is fundamental and essential, the review of the development of struggle in our society from the perspective of labor. How did our society undergo transformations? How were the instruments of labor forged, and how also how were the mechanisms of social division created? How did this social division take us to the point of creating systems of domination? In one moment, we lived under what was primitive communism, then we lived under slavery, and then what was feudalism, and now we are living under a system that continues to be slavery, that is the capitalist system, where they continue to dominate us with miserable wages and there’s no just distribution of wealth.

In our revolutionary Bolivarian process guided by our President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias, he addressed all of these historic struggles, but he also set down the important and timely objective in our Constitution and organic law of the just distribution of wealth. And if a compañero has a great factory bought with what he says is the product of his labor, we don’t believe him above all because the amount of property that he has is the product of alien labor and he pays [his workers] a miserable portion of the wealth that he receives from their labor. So, we are going to rupture with this system, go about rethinking, to understand that we can have other forms of organization for managing public administration. It could be a counsel administration, of counsels with revolutionary leadership, where the most dedicated compañeras and compañeros are vindicated and recognized. In this dynamic, we are not saying that we [the workers] are the only historic subject of our Bolivarian process, but rather that the campesino, the fisherman, the transport worker are also important. The path of communal [organizing] is also important, and so is the struggle of the compañeras and compañeros in the student centers, who keep on despite being pounded by this education of the capitalist system. For us, it is the recognition of all of the compañeras and compañeros in our struggles that matters.

We have also proposed that this process of collective, continuous, integral, and permanent self-education has to reach the communal councils, the communes, the colectivos, the social movements, whatever organizational expression that they might have. It has to reach [these spaces], because, we have to break with and decentralize the [traditional] conception of the university. It’s a great struggle we all have to take on, because what is the university, but the universalization of knowledge. You, I, all of  the compañeros here, the bus driver, all of the people who are here in this medium of transport possess knowledge.7 What we have to do is create the spaces where we can expound the amount of knowledge that we have and expound as well the amount of needs that we have, and in function of this, begin planning [society, especially the economy] ourselves.

Q: Many young people in this society, in the universities, have been deceived, and there’s a struggle for hegemony among young people in this country. For instance, we have a rightwing student movement that is producing openly violent and fascist leaders. How do you view the role of these alternative pedagogical projects in this struggle with the Right?

A: For us, the fact that the compa is young does not mean that he is revolutionary, that he is for structural transformation. The Right has many young people, but they are old in their thinking, because they continue upholding capitalist thinking. One has to be young in different areas, physically, but above all in one´s thinking. If there is a man who we could say marked a watershed in our history, not just for decades, but for centuries, it is Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias, because he shattered the framework, he imploded the schema of the bourgeois state. He imploded a space of great domination with new thinking. With liberating thinking, he imploded the space of the army, of our armed forces, a repressive organ that was directed against its own people on February 27th and 28th, 1989.8 He had a reflexive capacity, because Comandante Hugo Chávez Frias had already been doing this work. It’s continuous, it’s work that is going to take a long time, and we have to dedicate our heart and soul to the work that we are called to do and not neglect a single area.

The other task is to recognize our advances. The fact is that we have graduated an amount of compañeras and compañeros who have not graduated in forty years during which they didn’t have access to education. Yes, we can and must deepen our revolutionary process to advance towards socialism, but it’s also important to recognize all of the advances that we’ve had thus far.

Q: I went to the ULA last week and I fascinated by the discourse of autonomy and freedom appearing in their murals, the capucha that they use, all of which is an appropriation of the discourse and symbolism of the Left. How do you respond to this?

A: They have always tried to take our symbols away from us. For us, the capucha is a symbol of struggle. It’s ours. It was us who had to mask our faces [and protest in the streets], because we didn’t have an adequate education, above all in high school, but also in the university. We had many problems during the Fourth Republic, and we had to take to the streets, because they raised the student transportation fare. We had take to the streets, because we had to have class on the floor, because there were no chairs, because the roof was leaking. We lived through all of this, and for those reasons, we went out into the streets.

Today, there is a movement that is trying to take the streets, but responding to the interests of the private companies and the private media, which regrettably under our revolutionary process continue to have an economic power, which is expressed in the media, in the rumor campaigns. What we have to do is dismantle this vast amount of lies, but these rumors have an effect, because there’s a number of lies that we still have in our heads, that we have not yet dismantled. It’s a great challenge.

Evidently, many groups there [at the opposition marches] are paid, many groups that don’t truly represent our people. You can ask them. There were some compañeros of the people interviewing  some of the people who participated on January 24th in the “March of the Empty Pots,” which we might rather have called the “March of the Empty Heads,” because they don’t think. So they interviewed them and asked them if they were poor, to which they quickly respond, “I’m not poor.”

Besides, this is an example of them trying to steal our symbols, the pots, which our people took out to the streets before the Caracazo and after the Caracazo, because the pots were truly empty, there was nothing to eat. Today no, it’s an economic war, they are hoarding everything, and everyone has seen the amount of food that we have. They tell us that there is no flour, but there’s not a single arepera closed. They say that that there’s no milk, but there’s no shortage of yogurt. So they are trying to escape from the regularization of the sale of these products in order to reap greater profits, but not only to reap greater profits, but also to boycott the revolutionary government and that this unrest be directed against the revolutionary government of Nicolás Maduro.

From here, we have to go out in the streets with an alternative popular communication that engages face-to-face with our people and dismantles the large amount of lies, but we also must develop the productive forces. Beyond a crisis, well there is a crisis, but it´s a crisis of their system, a crisis of capitalism, because the socialist system still doesn’t exist yet. So we have to take advantage of this crisis of the capitalist system and come out of it advancing ahead with the development of our productive forces, evidently organized according to a distinct logic of work, a new culture of work that is liberating: labor that truly educates you to build this new republican order envisioned by our philosopher and pedagogue Simon Rodriguez, the teacher of Simon Bolivar.

 

 

Notes

1 Ciccariello-Maher, G. (2013). We created Chávez: A people’s history of the Venezuelan revolution. Durham; Duke University Press, p. 113.

2 Ibid., p. 112.

3 Marois cited in Weber, J.R. (2011). Red october: Left-Indigenous struggles in modern Bolivia. Brill: Boston, p. 30.

4 Panitch, L., & Gindin, S. (2012). The making of global capitalism: The political economy of American empire. Verso: London, p. 15.

5 Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press: New York, p. 42.

6 See Zamora, D. (2014). “Can we criticize Foucault?” Jacobin, 10 December 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/

7 Note: This interview was conducted on a public metro bus en route from Ciudad Caribia to Metro Gato Negro in Catia.

8 February 27 and 28, 1989 refers to the Caracazo, the explosion of mass social mobilizations rejecting neoliberal measures imposed by the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, under whose orders the army occupied the streets of Caracas and proceeded to gun down anywhere between 300 and 3000 people.

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