Three Responses to Bill McKibben’s Article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”

Global Justice Ecology Project

July 24, 2012

The following three pieces, by Anne Petermann, Dr. Rachel Smolker, and Keith Brunner were written in response to Bill McKibben’s new article in Rolling Stone magazine, titled, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – make clear who the real enemy is.”

The System Will Not be Reformed

Response by Anne Petermann

Bill McKibben, in his new Rolling Stone article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” does an effective job at summarizing the hard and theoretical numbers that warn us of the devastating impacts of continuing to burn the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel reserves–yet it somehow falls short of its stated goal to help mobilize a new movement for climate action.

While the article is full of facts and figures and the future they portend, it falls into several traps common to US-based environmentalists, which undermine its movement-building objective.

The first and most obvious trap is relying on math to mobilize a movement. Environmentalists, often worried about attacks on their credibility, or afraid they will be labeled “emotional” by industry, tend to focus on statistics, mathematical analyses and hard science to make their case.  Unfortunately statistics like “565 Gigatons or 2,795 Gigatons” do not inspire passion.

While McKibben is focusing on Gigatons and percentages and degrees Celsuis, however, corporations like Shell are running multi-million dollar ad campaigns with TV commercials that feature families having fun, hospitals saving lives, children getting good educations, because of fossil fuels.  Coal = energy security; natural gas = maintaining the American way of life.  And as Dr. Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch points out below, some of these very same companies are moving into the bioenergy realm–wreaking yet more havoc on communities and ecosystems in the name of supposedly “clean, renewable energy.”  They are playing both sides of the field in the effort to ensure Americans do not feel their way of life is in any way threatened–ensuring them that they can have their cake and eat it too.  For while China may have surpassed the US in total annual carbon emissions, the US still leads, by far, the per capita release of CO2 emissions.

The second trap is filling the article with prophesies of doom and gloom, which do not mobilize effective action, but are very effective at disempowering and disengaging.  Just take a look at the recent report on the attitudes of Generation X on climate change–66% claim they aren’t sure it’s happening. While McKibben explains the need to keep the temperatures under 2° centigrade, which would already cause unforeseeable and dire consequences, he also quotes an official with the International Energy Agency on the current trend toward carbon emissions, “when I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.”  McKibben  goes on to explain what this means: “that’s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.”

But while expending the first half of the article on these numbers-based horror scenarios, McKibben then disempowers his audience yet further by reminding us that with the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, the fossil fuel industry is well-positioned to outspend anyone whose motives run counter to their own–enabling them to elect the best politicians money can buy–a strategy which, so far, has ensured a US government that will not challenge corporate dominance. →

Non-Profit Corporate Power: Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

November 16, 2010

Ceasefire Magazine

by Michael Barker

Massive corporations wield immense power, and their ability to crush lives is commensurate with their insatiable demands for profit: profit that is derived from, and necessitates, exploitation. Therefore, working to end such anti-social activities should be a top priority for humankind. But if in some bizarre act of humanity a small proportion of the profits derived from capitalism are churned back to the very people who suffer worst from the necessary ill effects of corporate power, what then? Does such charity mean that the institutionalized exploitation of the bulk of human life is not so bad after all?

I would argue that the answer is ‘no’; corporate profit gained at the expense of humans can never be justified by such philanthropic gestures. No doubt such noblesse oblige is allocated by some elites with noble intentions; but if the price for such charity is for its recipients to ignore economic exploitation, then it is hardly distributed with altruistic intentions. Instead it is given with economic intent to profit more handsomely from a workforce, in a manner that assuages each individual capitalist’s desire to feel (and advertise) their own neglected humanity. →

Walking the Talk

Editorial

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Jul 9, 2012

 

 

What the “Professional Left” Refuses to Share With Their “Followers”: 2011-The Year of the Dupe

WKOG editor: This article contains a mountain of factual information/evidence. Acknowledging such evidence is critical if we are to see the light through veils and illusions. As only then does the possibility for a real influence and positive outcome arise from orchestrated events which are being engineered with a false exterior to serve corporate and Imperialist interests. The very forces we claim to oppose continue to successfully reabsorb us into the very system destroying us – the very system we must starve, struggle against and ultimately dismantle. This is where we fail. If we continue to deny these truths, rather than confront them, our collective denial will serve as the instrument to our own annihilation. [About WKOG]

A timeline & history: One year into the engineered “Arab Spring,” one step closer to global hegemony

by Tony Cartalucci

Editor’s Note: The title, “Year of the Dupe,” was inspired, and indeed coined by Dr. Webster Tarpley of Tarpley.net, who is noted below as giving the initial tip-off regarding Egypt’s unrest back in January 2011.

dupe (dp, dyp)

tr.v. duped, dup·ing, dupes To deceive (an unwary person).

December 24, 2011 – In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated:

“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. As we will see, preparations for the “Arab Spring” and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011’s “The Middle East & then the World,” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

The Timeline – 2008-2010 Preparing the Battlefield

December 3-5, 2008: Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.

Photo: Serbia’s “Otpor,” a model for future US-backed color revolutions.

Foreign Policy Magazine would report in their article, “Revoluton U,” that CANVAS assisted protesters in the “Rose Revolution” of Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” of the Ukraine, and is currently working with networks from Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), all across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as with activists in North Korea, and 50 other countries.

2009: In a US State Department funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery (RFE/RL) article titled, “Exporting Nonviolent Revolution, From Eastern Europe to The Middle East,” it was stated, “Popovic then exported his nonviolent methods, helping train the activists who spearheaded Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. And now, Popovic is deploying his new organization, called Canvas, even farther afield — assisting the pro-democracy activists who recently brought down despotic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.”

Activists from Iran, Belarus, and North Korea were also confirmed by RFE/RL as having received training from CANVAS. The RFE/RL article places the activists’ meeting with CANVAS sometime during 2009.

February 2010: The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while awaiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”

Clearly then, unrest was long planned, with activists from Tunisia and Egypt on record receiving training and support from abroad, so that they could return to their home nations and sow unrest in a region-wide coordinated campaign.

An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.”

The Timeline – 2011 Year of the Dupe

January 16, 2011: Al Arabiya News reported in their article, “Tunisian exiled reformist to head back home,” that Moncef Marzouki was returning to Tunisia (from Paris) amidst the chaos sown by US State Department trained, supported, and equipped mobs who were “triggered” by the convenient release of US State Department cables via Wikileaks. Quite clearly, considering the training Tunisian opposition groups received long before the cables were released, the Wikileaks cables were merely used as a planned rhetorical justification for long ago premeditated foreign-funded sedition. Since then, Wikileaks has been employed in an identical manner everywhere from Egypt to Libya, and even as far flung as Thailand.

Moncef Marzouki, it would turn out, was founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy (WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.

A “call for solidarity” by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) mentions by name each and every group constituting the Tunisian opposition during the “uprising” in January 2011 as “FIDH member organisations.” These include Marzouki’s “Tunisian League for Human Rights,” the “Tunisian Association of Democratic Women,” and the “National Council for Liberties in Tunisia,” or CNLT. FIDH, acting as an international nexus for various foreign-funded organizations carrying out sedition worldwide under the guise of “human rights,” is itself fully funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros’ Open Society, and many others with clearly compromised affiliations.

January 28, 2011: After a warning by journalist/activist Dr. Webster Tarpley of World Crisis Radio, the alternative media began looking closer at the unrest in Egypt which began shortly after Tunisia’s growing crisis. In “All is not what it seems in Egyptian Clashes,” it was noted that protest leader Mohammed ElBaradei was in fact a devoted agent of the West, with a long standing membership within the Wall Street/London funded International Crisis Group (ICG) along side “senior Israeli officials” including the current Israeli President Shimon Peres, the current Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, and former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. The ICG also includes senior American bankers and geopolitical manipulators including George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Armitage, Samuel Berger, and Wesley Clark.

Ironically, Western media outlets insisted ElBaradei was both anti-American and strongly anti-Israeli in a rouse best described a year earlier in March 2010 in the Council On Foreign Relations’ paper, Foreign Affairs’ article “Is ElBaradei Egypt’s Hero?”:

“Further, Egypt’s close relationship with the United States has become a critical and negative factor in Egyptian politics. The opposition has used these ties to delegitimize the regime, while the government has engaged in its own displays of anti-Americanism to insulate itself from such charges. If ElBaradei actually has a reasonable chance of fostering political reform in Egypt, then U.S. policymakers would best serve his cause by not acting strongly. Somewhat paradoxically, ElBaradei’s chilly relationship with the United States as IAEA chief only advances U.S. interests now. “

The most recent manifestation of this came when Israel farcically called ElBaradei an “Iranian agent.” This latest performance further illustrates the immense level of duplicity with which world events are being manipulated.

February 17, 2011: The London-based National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage” to match the US-destabilization rhetoric used in Tunisia and Egypt. The NFSL has been backed by the CIA-MI6 since the 80’s and had made multiple attempts to overthrow Qaddafi’s government with both terrorist attacks and armed insurrection.

Photo: Please note the “EnoughGaddafi.com” signs. EnoughGaddafi.com’s webmaster is listed on the US State Department’s Movements.org as the “Twitter” to follow.

February 18, 2011: In the wake of Honsi Mubarak’s ousting, billionaire bankster George Soros’ Open Society Institute was found to be behind NGOs drafting Egypt’s new constitution. These “civil society” groups include the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information openly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Neo-Con lined NED funded Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. It appears that while the International Crisis Group was turning out the strategy, and their trustee ElBaradei leading the mobs into the streets, it is the vast array of NGOs their membership, including Soros, fund that were working out and implementing the details on the ground.

February 21, 2011: An interview with Ibrahim Sahad of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on ABC Australia, featured every talking point covered by the mainstream corporate media from previous weeks regarding Libya, all with the White House and Washington Monument looming over him in the background. He made calls for a no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi was strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.

March 2011’s “US Libyan Policy: Zero Legitimacy,” noted the clearly heavily armed, western-backed insurgency that was still being disingenuously portrayed by Western media as “peaceful protests.”

February 28, 2011: “Destroying Libya” stated:

While Libyan opposition leader Ibrahim Sahad leads the rhetorical charge from Washington D.C., his National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on the ground is armed to the teeth, as it has been throughout its 20 year history of attempted CIA backed rebellions against Qaddafi. In 1984, the NFSL tried to overthrow Qaddafi in a failed armed coup. The Daily Globe and Mail also recently confirmed that the NFSL along with the Libyan National Army, both under Sahad’s new National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO), had both “attempted coups and assassinations against Col. Gadhafi in the 1980s.”

Already at this point, both British and US representatives were admitting Libyan rebels were indeed heavily armed, and instead of condemning the violence, openly called for additional weapons and military support to be provided.

March 17, 2011: The UN decided to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to save the globalist-backed rebellion sputtering in failure and bordering on a “Bay of Pigs” disaster. Canadian, US, French, Arab, and UK jets were already reported to be preparing for the operation.

March 24, 2011: Unrest had already begun in Syria, as NATO began bombing Libya while Egypt and Tunisia had already fallen into political and economic chaos. In “Globalists Hit in Syria,” the opposition is closely examined and documented to be once again a creation of Western-backed opposition groups.

Much of the “evidence” of Syria’s unrest was being filtered through organizations such as the London-based Syrian Human-Rights Committee whose hearsay statements posted on its website were cited by corporate news media in outlandish reports of violence that also include “activists say” after each allegation. The “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” also London-based, is now the exclusive source cited by corporate-media reports regarding Syria.

March 26, 2011: In Egypt, signs of a counterrevolution and the first signs of weakness in ElBaradei’s chances to be installed as president began to show. Mobs pelted ElBaradei with rocks calling him “an American agent.” Wikileaks would again come to the aid of US interests and try to reintroduce the “anti-Western” image ElBaradei had been hamfisted in portraying.

Photo: The “barrier of legitimacy” is broken: a mob shouts “American agent” as they hurl rocks at ElBaradei who most certainly is an American agent – a trustee of the US International Crisis Group alongside George Soros.

March 28, 2011: Fortune-500 funded Brookings Institution’s “Libya’s Test of the New International Order” is reported on – exposing the war as not one of a “humanitarian” nature, but one aimed explicitly at establishing an international order and the primacy of international law.

April 17, 2011: Syria’s unrest yields widespread arson as well as reports of gunmen targeting both protesters and state security forces in a bid to escalate violence. In, “Globalist War Machine Fixates on Syria,” the “Libyan Precedent” is already being cited by US and French politicians as justification to use force against Syria. A later article, “Color Revolution’s Mystery Gunmen,” establishes a historical context within which to view the current violence in Syria and the fact that it is provocateurs sowing much of the violence.

April 21, 2011: Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko announces that his nation is now also under covert attack by Western forces to foster an “Arab Spring-style” insurrection. In, “Besieging Belarus,” documented ties between Belarus opposition members and the same Western organizations and institutions fueling the Arab Spring are illustrated.

April 22, 2011: John McCain touches down in Benghazi, Libya and consorts with verified terrorists who were fresh back from Iraq and Afghanistan, killing US troops. A West Point report would later confirm (.pdf from West Point’s CTC can be found here) with absolute certainty that the region from which the Libyan rebellion began was also the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) center of operations. It would also expose the fact that LIFG were in fact long-time affiliates of Al Qaeda with LIFG members occupying the highest levels of leadership within the terrorist organization.

Photo: Ultimate act of treason: McCain calls for recognition and extra-legal support for the very men who had killed US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. By denying “Al-Qaeda” a base in Iraq, but handing them the entire nation of Libya, he has brought American foreign policy
to a new level of surrealism.

May, 2011: In “Libya at Any Cost,” the conflict in Libya was reported to be escalating, including NATO attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and the targeted killings of several of his family members including several of his grandchildren.

“America’s Arab Deception” attempted to review the past several months of engineered chaos blowing through Northern Africa and the Middle East, while it was noted in, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” that the National Endowment for Democracy already began its first round of self-aggrandizing, and passing out awards to several of the dupes and collaborators that made its campaign of carnage throughout the Arab World a reality.

June, 2011: In “Arab Spring brings Corporate Locust,” the true agenda behind Egypt’s, and indeed the entire “Arab Spring’s” unrest became apparent as US representatives gave Fortune 500 executives a tour of destabilized Egypt and Tunisia in an effort to promote economic liberaliztion and privatization. John McCain and John Kerry led the tour and had co-sponsored bills to promote what would essentially be the meshing of Egypt and Tunisia’s economy into the Wall Street/London international order.

Photo: McCain (left) and Kerry (right) gesticulate as they explain their paymaster’s agenda within the confines of an Egyptian Coca-Cola factory. This is part of their latest trip surveying the effects of their US-funded opposition overthrowing Hosni Mubarak’s government.

In late June, France would admit to violating the terms of UN resolution 1973, and arming Libyan rebels.

July, 2011: The African Union would wholly reject the International Criminal Court’s mandate against Libya, exposing the severe illegitimacy with which it operates. Ties to corporate-financier funded organizations are revealed in “It’s Official: International Criminal Court has ZERO Mandate,” as well as the tenuous nature of the ICC’s claims against Libya’s Qaddafi. It would later be confirmed by members of Libya’s “human rights” community that indeed they, in collaboration with the rebel leaders, fabricated the numbers supplied to both the UN and the ICC, and that no verified or documented evidence of Qaddafi’s “atrocities” were produced.

In Thailand, another long-running US-backed color revolution finally yielded results and saw the return of Wall Street proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra’s political party to power. Various mouthpieces of the global elite, including the Council on Foreign Relations itself, gave stern warnings to Thailand’s establishment to accept the tenuous results of the July election or face isolation and other consequences. Another Southeast Asian country, Malaysia would also see color revolution take to their streets – this time in Malaysia by the yellow-clad, NED-funded Bersih movement.

Photo: Thaksin Shinawatra, a long time servant of the global elite, since before even becoming Thailand’s prime minister in 2001, reports to the CFR in New York City on the eve of the 2006 military coup that ousted him from power. He has now returned to power in Thailand via a proxy political party led by his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Securing the votes of only 35% of eligible voters puts on full display how tenuous his support really is within a nation he claims stands entirely behind him.

August, 2011: By August, even the corporate-media began admitting that Syria’s opposition was “mostly unarmed,” or in other words, armed. The opposition was starting to be more clearly defined as armed ethnic groups and armed militants of the Muslim Brotherhood.

By late August, NATO began a coordinated attack on Tripoli, Libya, involving an elaborate psychological-operation that claimed to have eliminated or captured the entire Qaddafi family in a single day. The following day, Saif Al-Qaddafi would turn up alive and well, and free, while leading fierce fighting that would carry on until October and result in NATO leveling the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte in particular, into piles of rubble. It had become entirely clear that NATO was providing air support not for democracy-loving freedom fighters, but for hardcore terrorists who were carrying out a systematic campaign of genocide and reprisals throughout the country.

Photo: Libya’s rebels are far from motivated by democratic aspirations. Their grievances lie along ethnic, not political divides. “Gaddafi supporters” is the euphemism being used by the global corporate-media in describing the generally darker skinned and African tribes that form the majority of Western Libya’s demographics and who are bearing the brunt of NATO-backed rebel atrocities.

September, 2011: Sensing victory in Libya, corporate-financier funded think-tanks began preparing for the rebuilding and despoiling of the Libyan economy. In “Globalists to Rebuild Libya,” NATO’s Atlantic Council wrote a report detailing just how they would go about doing this.

Also as Libya’s violence spiraled out of control and atrocities carried out by the rebels and their NATO backers became more obscene, it became clear how fraudulent the “War on Terror” was. In “Libyan Rebels Listed by US State Department as Terrorists,” it is illustrated how NATO members were guilty of anti-terrorist laws for providing material support for listed terrorist organizations.

Image: A screenshot taken directly from the US State Department website showing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) clearly listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This is important, as US Code prohibits providing material support to listed terrorist organizations. With revelations of Al Qaeda and LIFG fighters leading the Libyan rebellion with NATO-members’ full military, financial, and diplomatic support, attempts are being made to plea ignorance as to the true nature of the rebels. Listed below LIFG, is MEK, an Iraqi/Iranian group also being armed and supported by the US. (click on image to enlarge)

September also saw real humanitarian catastrophe unfold in Uganda, where a British corporation sanctioned genocide to clear land they had “leased” from the Ugandan government. Thus illustrates how the cause of “humanitarian concerns” is called on only when it serves Wall Street and London’s interests, and otherwise ignored when it involves verifiable genocide carried out in the pursuit of furthering their wealth and power.

Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company’s despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and “helps” people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was “helping” had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company’s encroachment on their land. These villagers would be forcibly displaced, many of them killed by Ugandan troops acting on behalf of Devereux.
….

John McCain would land once again in Libya, this time in Tripoli to celebrate the destruction of the country and shake hands once again with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that delivered Qaddafi’s Libya into the hands of the Wall Street/London elite.

Photo: It’s all smiles and laughs in Tripoli as McCain, a chief proponent and driving force behind the US intervention in Libya, literally glorifies Al Qaeda’s exploits in the now ruined nation. Miles away, the very rebels he was praising are purposefully starving the civilian population of Sirte in an effort to break their will, while they and NATO indiscriminately use heavy weapons aimed at crowded city centers.

October 2011: While Tunisia and Egypt had fallen, and Libya too being seized by proxy forces fueled by the West, the Obama administration began withdrawing troops from Iraq. This suspicious withdrawal when otherwise the rest of the Middle East was under US proxy assault raised serious suspicions that an escalation, not retreat was to follow.

Rhetoric for war with Iran had been steadily increasing and the beginning of what looked like a covert war was being fought inside and along Iran’s borders. A disastrous ploy of framing Iran for the alleged planned assassination of a Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. fell apart when Iranians linked the plot to US-backed terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

Image: MEK. Admittedly a terrorist organization, listed by the US State Department as being such, it is fully funded, armed, and backed by the United States, based in France and US-occupied Iraq, and allowed to conduct terrorist operations against the Iranian people. The “War on Terror” is a fraud.

It is more than likely that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would simply provide the US “plausible deniability” for an Israeli airstrike on Iran.

November 2011: Syria’s “peaceful protesters” who had been all along fully armed and attempting to stoke a Libyan-style civil war, were finally acknowledge as such by the corporate-media and more importantly by the corporate-funded think-tanks that supply them with their talking points. In “IISS: Syria’s Opposition is Armed,” it is states that a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies by Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East, Emile Hokayem openly admitted that Syria’s opposition was armed and prepared to drag Syria’s violence into even bloodier depths.

Also in November, Wall Street and London’s assault on Libya came full circle with the installation of Abdurrahim el-Keib as prime minister. El-Keib who spent decades in exile in the US, was formally employed by the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Photo: And so begins the farce that is Western “democracy.” One corporate-fascist puppet Mahmoud Jibril , steps down, another, Abdurrahim el-Keib, takes his place. In reality, it is NATO-states and their corporate sponsors that now determine Libya’s fate. Pictured above, el-Keib poses with Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the unelected, NATO-backed “National Transitional Council.”
….

In Egypt, in late November, a second “revolution” began unfolding on the streets. In reality it was the same Western-backed forces led by ElBaradei and the emerging Mamdouh Hamza, against Egyptian military forces that seemed to have gone back on whatever arrangements they made with the West after the fall of Mubarak.

The UN, in another attempt to escalate foreign intervention in Syria, would release a UN Human Rights Council report regarding Syrian “crimes against humanity” which was actually co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.

The report itself contained no verifiable evidence, but rather hearsay accounts recorded in Geneva by alleged “victims” “witnesses,” and “defectors,” put forth by “all interested persons and organizations.” In other words, it was an open invitation for Syria’s enemies to paint whatever image of the ruling government they pleased.

December 2011: With Tunisia and Libya fully run by Western proxies, Egypt and Syria still mired in chaos, and with globalists calling for war on Iran, the “Arab Spring” was nearly complete. However, the “Arab Spring” was only the first leg of a grander strategy to encircle Russia and China. In December, the campaigns to move in on Russia and China would begin in earnest.

Image: The “String of Pearls:” China’s oil lifeline is to be cut by the destabilization and regimes changes being made throughout Africa and the Middle East. Along the “String” the US has been destabilizing nations from Pakistan to Myanmar, from Malaysia to Thailand, to disrupt and contain China’s emergence as a regional power.

Hillary Clinton, in Foreign Policy Magazine would pen, “America’s Pacific Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in Asia for the next 100 years. From “Hillary Clinton and the New American (Pacific) Century:

“Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

 

As reported in June, 2011’s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

 

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long standing, well documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.””

In Myanmar (Burma) “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi, whose entire movement is a creation of Wall Street and London, received Hillary Clinton as well as Thailand’s proxy-PM Yingluck Shinawatra in a globalist show of support designating her as the defacto leader and point of contact within the Southeast Asian country. Clinton’s visit coincided with a successful campaign led by US NGOs to oust Chinese interests in the nation that resulted in the halting of a dam that was to provide electricity, revenue, flood control and irrigation for the people of Myanmar.

Image: The Myitsone Dam, on its way to being the 15th largest in the world until construction was halted in September by a campaign led by Wall Street-puppet Aung San Suu Kyi, a stable of US-funded NGOs, and a terrorist campaign executed by armed groups operating in Kachin State, Myanmar.

Meanwhile in Russia, Wall Street and London attacked more directly, attempting to interfere with Russian elections in December and resulting in several street protests led by overtly linked NED, Soros, and Rothschild operatives. NED-funded NGO “Golos” played a key role in portraying the elections as “rigged” and constituted America’s extraterritorial meddling in Russia’s sovereign affairs.

Image: NATO’s creeping encirclement of Russia has now been combined with another round of “color revolution” destabilizations in Belarus and now in Russia itself.

A concerted effort by the corporate-media to misrepresent the unrest in Russia was pointed out in, “Russian Protests: Western Media Lies ,” illustrating just how coordinated the overarching global destabilization being carried out actually is. In “Wall Street Vs. Russia,” it was concluded:

“It is quite clear that the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and even the US State Department whose new foreign affairs advisory board is full of think-tanks representing overt corporate-financier interests, are not interested in “democracy,” “human rights,” or “freedom” in Russia, but rather removing the Kremlin out of the way, and reestablishing the parasitic feeding on the Russian people and its economy they enjoyed after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

In late December it would be confirmed that the same Al Qaeda militants that ravaged Libya with NATO’s aid, were on their way to Syria to help overthrow the Assad government. LIFG leader Abdel Hakim Belhaj was confirmed to be on the Syrian border preparing troops of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”

This wasn’t the only recent example of the West operating in tandem with listed terrorist groups. It was also reported in, “EXPOSED: US Troops Guarded Terrorist Camp in Iraq,” that the US has been guarding a terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq training camp inside Iraq with US troops and is planning to relocated them, possibly in a freshly abandoned US military base in Iraq while D.C. lobbyists work feverishly to have them de-listed, armed, and sent to conduct terrorist operations in Iran. Shocking comments are made in the Brookings Institution’s report, “Which Path to Persia?” where US policy experts conspire to use the terrorist organization against the government of Iran. In essence, corporate-funded policy makers have transformed the US into a state-sponsor of terror.

Conclusion

The year 2011 was surely the year of the dupe. Youth enamored with lofty, naive notions of “freedom” sold to them by corporate-fascist funded NGOs were brought into the streets to create chaos and division which was then capitalized on by covert political and even military maneuvering by the West and its proxy forces. In Egypt the nation is teetering on the edge of being fully integrated into the Wall Street/London international order, while a big-oil representative is enjoying his new position as prime minister of Libya. In Tunisia a life-long stooge of Western machinations is now president, and an alarming campaign of NATO-backed violence and terrorism is gripping Syria.

With the encirclement of Russia and China, these dupes have witlessly brought the world to the edge of World War III, and clearly done nothing at all to improve their own state of being. As their nations fall under the control of increasing Western influence, the resources once used to placate them and defend their nationalism will now be diverted into the bottomless maw of the parasitic banking combines that are currently destroying both North America and Europe.

February’s “The Middle East & then the World” is well worth reading again – to see how far we’ve come over the last year since it was written, and what is left for the globalists to do. As the globalists come ever closer to China and Russia’s doorsteps the stakes will continue to rise and the placid spectating Americans and Europeans have enjoyed this year will forever be lost.

Finally, consider what was written in one of the last articles of this year, “The End Game Approaches:”

“Complacency will kill, apathy is complicity: as the elitist-engineered “Arab Spring” reaches its conclusion, we stand on the precipice of being meshed into an inescapable, corporate-fascist, scientific planetary regime…. the End Game approaches.

 

Now more than ever, “we the people” must steel ourselves against this immense corporate-fascist empire as it sprawls death, destruction, and domination, militarily and economically, across the planet. We must, our very survival depends on it, boycott and replace entirely the corporate-financier interests that drive this dark, expansive agenda. It has been literally spawned of our apathy, complicity, and ignorance, fueled by us – the very source of corporate fascism’s power – and it must be our activism, resistance, and intellect that brings it to an end.

 

As far fetched as it may sound, every Pepsi we swig, every day we decide to drink beer and tune into our corporate-sponsored bread and circus, be it the modern day chariot races of NASCAR or the gladiatorial contests of the NFL, we bring inescapable eternal servitude to a corporate-fascist scientific dictatorship one step closer.

 

It is now “do or die” – unlike in the past, mankind now possesses the technology to render the vast majority of the population intellectually inferior through mass medication, food poisoning, GMO crops that rot our bodies and minds from the inside-out, and the martial means of eliminating vast swaths of the population permanently. Not only is this a possibility, it is a reality the global elite have conspired over at great length through texts like Ecoscience penned by current White House science adviser John Holdren and former White House science adviser Paul Ehrlich who openly talk about mass, involuntary medication to forcibly sterilize the population, reduce our numbers and confine us within what they literally call a “planetary regime.” The End Game approaches.”

Let us not “hope” next year fairs better for free humanity. Let us with our two hands, our will, and our capable intellects ensure that it is better. The decision is not that of our “leaders” or “representatives,” it is the decision of each and every one of us and what it is we do with our time, our money, our resources, our energy, and to where we pay our attention – each and every day. Let us define where it is we want our destiny to take us, and start taking one step at a time to get there.

Let us wait no longer for “saviors,” but rather look in the mirror and realize, God, the Universe, or whatever higher power you believe in, has already endowed you with everything you need, in your heart, your mind, and within your hands to prevail in whatever noble pursuit you, or “we the people” choose.

Source: Land Destroyer

Published December 24, 2011

 

Symbolic Action? You Came To The Wrong Place

www.moving-planet.com in partnership with The Wrong Kind of Green, brings you the truth behind the mainstream environmental movement; a movement that consists of industry-funded NGOs and countless other well-meaning groups that think symbolic actions like banners, bike rides and sit-ins will make a difference. We all know what a difference they have made: NONE AT ALL!

The articles on this website have been collected to show the hollowed-out reality of groups like 350.org, WWF and Greenpeace who are run from the top down and have one overriding policy: to keep the industrial system running at any cost, even if it means salvaging the reputations of corrupt politicians (all of them), inviting corporations to come and play (and making sure the water’s nice and warm), lying to the public about how much power they have (none under this system), and ignoring the simple fact that industrial civilization is terminally unsustainable and has to end (the truth).

Thank you.

Tar Sands Action & the Paralysis of a Movement [PART II OF AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT] [Obedience – A New Requirement for the “Revolution”]

Published September 19, 2011 by Political Context: http://bit.ly/njUko9 and Canadians for Action on Climate Change: http://bit.ly/pLDqQi

Part two of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

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

Obedience – A New Requirement for the “Revolution”

We have now reached a new level of subservient conditioning in an action ironically titled Stop the Machine. If the freedom fighters from liberation armies and resistance fronts read “the rules” that the organizers have established in order to “stop the machine,” they would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Americans are insane.

The rules put forward by the organizers of this action clearly demonstrate how the mainstream liberal movement as a whole is further embracing its false belief that they (the “leaders” of the movement) have the moral superiority and authority to impose their unnegotiable, absolute tactical doctrine on all others, framing anyone who falls out of line with the dogma as provocateurs or “haters” who wish to incite violence. Such free-thinkers will be verbally chastised, stigmatized, then isolated and marginalized to the best of the ability of those wish to cling to denying reality. To date, these simple steps have proved most effective in stifling dialogue and shutting down dissent.

Some of the actions that have been undertaken include: training “peacekeepers,” a request that participants undergo nonviolence training, employing “peace cameras” to video anyone who might initiate violence with a request that participants bring cameras too and work with police to make them aware of threats and to isolate counterprotesters if they should attend.

Other rules include turning your anger at injustice into a positive, non-violent force; no destruction or vandalism of non-sentient objects; no running or other “threatening” motions; no insulting or swearing; protecting those who “oppose or disagree with us” (i.e., police) from insult or attack; no verbal or physical assaults on those who “oppose or disagree with us” (i.e., police) “even if they assault us.”

Participants are to embrace an attitude, as conveyed through their words, symbols and actions, of openness, friendliness, and respect toward all people encountered, including police officers and military personnel. The participants agree to be obedient to the organizers of the action or, if they do not obey, they must withdraw from the action.

It is nothing less than appalling that citizens are essentially being trained to completely submit to the corporate state – even if they are beaten with weapons. The organizers have obviously embraced the Gandhian myth that all neo-pacifists wear something akin to a shield. They will need this shield in order to protect themselves from their own hypocrisy.

Who needs big brother when you have “the movement” itself protecting the corporate state that is hell-bent on eradicating us?

If it were presented as educational outreach to further ideas and crucial analysis/critiques, this campaign would be deserving of much credit (if we removed the “rules”), as it highlights critical issues such as capitalism, corporate-controlled state and other vital truths that bright green NGOs refuse to address. However, as currently presented – an action to “stop the machine” – to even imply that “the machine” could actually be stopped through the outline and extensive “rules of non-engagement” is nothing less than an irresponsible, misleading nightmare that shields the truth rather than exposing it.

Of course, this is often what happens when activists are replaced with global strategists, finance officers, marketing executives and branding agencies. For countries exploding with citizens holding business degrees and MBAs, we could not possibly be more unintelligent and out of touch with reality, even if we tried. How many species on this planet knowingly and deliberately destroy their own habitat, their own future?

The movement with the corporate greens at the forefront refuses to admit – and in many cases refuses to even acknowledge the cold hard fact – that our success in achieving truly substantive change has been essentially zero, completely impotent. And a million “likes” on Facebook won’t make this fact any less so. And as far as preventing our own mass-eradication of unparalleled proportions, the “leaders” of the movement are a trillion miles away in La-La Land and racking up the airmiles. Reality cannot and will not be altered by a belief that the white middleclass can stop the very forces oppressing us with a dazzling dress code and impeccable manners.

Further, a dogmatic refusal to see reality and failure, along with an obdurate insistence on condemnation of those who may choose to take up self-defence (thereby framing anything other than “their way” as unacceptable in the eyes of the public) does nothing but further displace ongoing violence and bone-grinding poverty onto the billions of citizens and species already marginalized and suffering. This is not to say that everyone is expected to participate in self-defence. Rather it is to say that one’s decision must be base upon real facts – not on the doctrinaire delusion that pacifism is a moral virtue.

Militarism and Fossil Fuel Subsidies – A Vicious Cycle of Addiction

Considering that militarism is likely the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, does it not make more sense for a united global campaign to divert trillions in military funds, which destroy life, to peaceful endeavors that sustain life? Funding militarism ensures we are kept dependent upon oil while continuing to inflict massive suffering and civilian casualties as imperialist states expand their occupations in the Middle East and beyond. Occupying countries in order to steal their resources, which are necessary to fuel further occupations which, in turn, require more resources, commits to a vicious cycle that serves the interests of a handful of corporations tied into the Military-Industrial Complex.

If citizens occupied the industries that supply the occupations, if we stopped this madness as a unified front, on top of eradicating energy wastage (56% of all energy is wasted in the U.S. economy alone) through extensive conservation, we would create the swiftest, most massive dent in the climate crisis possible. Further, if we transferred all fossil fuel subsidies to zero-carbon energy, the dent would be astronomical; over half a billion dollars in direct subsidies are handed over each year to the most profitable fossil fuel corporations on the planet. This does not include indirect subsidies (via externalized costs), which equate to approximately three times that of the direct subsidies. Further, a recent study suggests that indirect and direct subsidies for coal alone in the U.S. amount to a half billion dollars per annum. This equates to more than a trillion dollars per year and tens of trillions of tax dollars (in direct and indirect subsidies) over the upcoming decades gifted to the very industry ensuring our demise. Although this is fairly common knowledge with most NGOs (even the World Bank reached this logical conclusion over a decade ago in 1990), none of them campaign on this imperative. It is a sad statement that the World Bank has more effective solutions than the environmental movement who claims to represent civil society.

These strategies would also slow down the destabilization and leaking of methane hydrates – FAR MORE dangerous than the Keystone XL or anything else for that matter. Methane hydrate release is now occurring in Siberia, and in the short-term (5 to 20 years), methane is 72 to 100 times more powerful than CO2. This is the true carbon bomb that no one speaks of. This discussion has been essentially censored from the public.

“My view is that the climate has already crossed at least one tipping point, about 1975-1976, and is now at a runaway state, implying that only emergency measures have a chance of making a difference.… The costs of all of the above would require diversion of the trillions of dollars from global military expenditures to environmental mitigation.” — Andrew Glikson, Earth / Paleoclimate Scientist

We ignore the solutions at our own peril. Of course, no matter what we do, until we begin to dismantle the root causes of climate change – that of the global industrialized capitalist economic system based on consumption and growth – the planet will continue to heat up. Further, until we reach zero emissions (actually negative emissions) there will be NO LOWERING of atmospheric CO2, which is now approaching 400 ppm (parts per million). Not even a return to 390 ppm is possible until we stop burning all fossil fuels. A return to pre-industrial levels will take hundreds if not thousands of years – which again, is only possible if zero emissions are actually achieved. And this is only possible if specific tipping points are not passed. Once enough tipping points have been passed it is essentially GAME OVER. There is no going back. No second chances. This is what mainstream NGOs, even ones claiming they are the leaders in the climate movement based on climate science (350.org/1Sky), do not share with the public. Why? Because it is terrifying. We must fight to achieve the impossible.

“The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means. It is this species of man who so vehemently and militantly participated in that classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons. Their fears of action drive them to refuge in an ethics so divorced from the politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not men.” — Saul Alinsky

Ideologies Have Never Won Any Revolutions

“The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.” — Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology

Film director Josh Fox states that “There’s only been one tool that people have turned to in desperate times to change the world: Civil disobedience.” However, the tactics being pushed by McKibben and others bear no resemblance to those used in the past by the oppressed. Ask the people of Bougainville Island how non-violent civil disobedience worked for their communities who were being exploited and sickened by the mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc, before, in self-defence, they rose up in arms against the poisoning of their land and people and forcibly closed down the mine – despite a military occupation and blockade.

The Papua New Guinea Army were mobilized in an attempt to strangle the citizens into submission and destroy the rebellion. The Bougainville Revolutionary Army began the fight with bows and arrows, and sticks and stones. Against a heavily armed adversary they still managed to retain control of most of their island. This is not a story of “uncivilized” citizens; this is a story of courageous people who refused to submit to oppression and exploitation – the world’s first eco-revolution. This story and its documentary could be considered – along with stories told through documentary films such as END:CIV and other courageous screenings (think John Pilger) which speak the unpopular truths – the greatest stories ever told; real life stories of a rising up of the people against all odds – by any means necessary. Such are the stories that the plutocracy and the big greens, who are dependent upon them for their very existence, hope citizens never hear about.

Such instances of people reclaiming their power and land are not televised on corporate media, not even in self-proclaimed progressive media outlets (funded by corporations via their foundations, which serve to protect their interests). Ask the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation (Ipperwash); the Mohawk community of Kanesatake (Oka); or the Six Nations of the Grand River (Caledonia). Ask them how passive resistance assisted their ongoing struggle for rights, respect and compliance with treaties and claims, including land claims. It did not. After exhausting all recourse, these First Nations communities embraced self-defense tactics. In the case of Caledonia, the resistance forced Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to implement a policy of “passive containment,” which ostensibly stopped enforcement of the rule of law in that area. (Also see “UNDER SIEGE: How the People of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation Asserted Their Rights and Claims and Dealt with the Backlash.”)

“Since the crisis began, Dalton McGuinty’s government has been petrified of taking decisive action, lest the Toronto media compare his actions to those of Mike Harris’ government during the Ipperwash Crisis of 1995. At numerous points during the Caledonia standoff, the OPP has been ordered to sit on their hands despite numerous provocations by native protestors.” — National Post, 16 September 2007

Today, the Canadian federal government, army, police and security agencies are essentially panicked in what they expect will be a unified resistance of First Nations rising up across Canada to reclaim and protect their rightful territories and resources. The strategy to prevent such an uprising from succeeding is continued efforts to further destroy traditional communities: “The First Nations Chiefs and Leaders who become more known and prominent are largely the individuals who have been trained and supported by federal bureaucrats.” (Source: First Nations Under Surveillance: Harper Government Prepares for First Nations “Unrest”)

Video: Photomontage – Crise d’oka (Running time: 2:55)

[Watch the full length Canadian National Film Board documentary, Kanehsatake 270 Years of Resistance: http://www.nfb.ca/film/kanehsatake_270_years_of_resistance. “On a July day in 1990, a confrontation propelled Native issues in Kanehsatake and the village of Oka, Quebec, into the international spotlight. Director Alanis Obomsawin spent 78 nerve-wracking days and nights filming the armed stand-off between the Mohawks, the Quebec police and the Canadian army. This powerful documentary takes you right into the action of an age-old Aboriginal struggle. The result is a portrait of the people behind the barricades.” “The most gripping scene for me was when the Warriors were down and ready to go with the Vandoos; one of the Mothers turned a Warrior right on his heel. You could see his shoulders slump. The love of the women that love us and that we love is a powerful thing.” –Arthur James]

Pacifism is a deadly position for those exploited and facing death. In the case of escalating climate change and collapsing ecosystems, those facing death are us and all living species on the planet. Forever.

Therefore, to be clear, when we speak of force, by any means necessary, we are embracing this essential and vital position, in self-defence.

Hypocrisy

One cannot participate in this system while at the same time morally judging the use of violence – if necessary – as a means to end relentless oppression, and in this case a global genocide / mass eradication of all species on the planet.

The global industrialized capitalist economic system – which most citizens of wealthy nations all happily (to one degree or another) not only condone but also support – is a system built upon and dependent upon unadulterated violence of unparalleled magnitude. Every time one fills their gas tank, they support violence. Every time one flies in an airplane, consumes animal flesh (speciesism), cracks open a can of Coke, purchases garments manufactured in China and other poverty stricken countries by exploited workers, turns on their fossil-fuel-powered heat, purchases the latest war “game” for their nine-year-old or simply pays their taxes – one participates in violence. The list goes on and on. To take the hypocritical position that non-violence is the only acceptable “moral” choice for fighting the system is only possible if one refuses to acknowledge the reality – deep denial in a most dangerous form. And it is of no surprise that such positions are primarily held by the comfortable middle class who are not subjected to severe hardships, gross injustices and bloody warfare.

Pacifism and non-violence are, and will continue to be, critical tactics of resistance. But the rejection of other tactics is detrimental to our survival.

Impartiality is not acceptable either as the question really is one of which side we will ultimately choose to stand on.

Skilled saboteurs are desperately needed. Underground movements and radicals who have the bravery to fight for humanity and for the rest of Nature, by any means necessary, deserve and require our undivided respect, gratitude and public support. Self-defense is not a crime.

During the Civil Rights Movement, organized racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan terrorized and murdered thousands of African Americans. In the face of such violence, would anyone judge the brave people who fought back to protect their families from slaughter? In such repressive violence, fighting back to protect those you love from death was, and still is, the only sensible option.

An image from the television series Deacons for Defense, about a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana who became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent strategy and a rallying point for a militant working-class movement in the South. Lance Hill, in The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, said of non-violent civil rights organisations, “The hard truth is that these organizations produced few victories in their local projects in the Deep South – if success is measured by the ability to force changes in local government policy and create self-governing and sustainable local organizations that could survive when the national organizations departed … the Deacons and all other blacks who resort to self-defense represent a simple answer to a simple question: what man would not defend his family and home from attack?” – Property is Theft Website

Peaceful protests – as the only tolerated vice – will not end our escalating climate genocide and environmental collapse. We must follow up protests with action that uphold Malcolm X’s phrase ‘by any means necessary’.

In the 29 August 2011 article “¡Will Miller Presente! May Day 1971 D.C. Mobilization: This is What Revolution Will Look Like,” the author states: “The May Day action plan was for affinity groups – tightly knit groups willing to take direct action together and risk arrest – to take over key locations across D.C. and shut them down. In Orin’s case, it was one of D.C.’s circle intersections. In the case of Will, it was the 14th Street Bridge. This collective direct action to shut down the city showed the country’s ‘leaders’ that the anti-war movement was escalating its tactics in response to the growing body counts in Vietnam of both U.S. Soldiers and Vietnamese people.” This represents such actions designed to obstruct the system – not comply with it. Not to be obedient and passive to those oppressing us.

It is imperative that escalating tactics be ensued following any action – especially with respect to the fact the Obama Administration announced their decision to proceed with Keystone XL immediately following the first day of the tar sands action. One would hope there are bulldozers secured and waiting.

“The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one’s adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative.”— George Jackson, Black Panther Party

From the Phil Dickens article “Why Pacifism is Morally Indefensible“:

My argument here is not that nonviolence is ineffective as a tactic. Indeed, it can yield considerable success given the right arena. It is that pacifism, as an absolute, is fundamentally immoral and unjustifiable within the context of the world we live in….

Whatever else one might say about him, Gandhi could not be accused of mincing his words or shying away from the logical conclusion of absolute pacifism. In Non-Violence in Peace and War, Gandhi offered the following advice to the British people: “I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions … If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.

This is one of the comments which inspired George Orwell to declare that “pacifism is objectively pro-fascist“: “This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me.’ The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security…. I am not interested in pacifism as a “moral phenomenon.” If Mr. Savage and others imagine that one can somehow “overcome” the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand “moral force” till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.” …which brings us to the core point on why absolute pacifism is immoral. Unlike a pragmatic recourse to nonviolent resistance only in situations where it will be effective, it offers no recourse for the defense of innocents from injustice and brutality. And, ultimately, there is nothing heroic, even in principle, in offering yourself to the butcher’s knife.

With the Tar Sands Action campaign, spearheaded by Bill McKibben, we also witness a resurgence of religion. From the article “Religious Witness at Tar Sands Action”: “On Monday, August 29, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Sojourners has organized more than 50 prominent religious leaders from Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, and other faiths to risk arrest at the White House. A Jewish morning prayer service in Lafayette Park will begin at 9 a.m., followed by an interfaith prayer service that will conclude with a blessing for those risking arrest. At 11 a.m. religious leaders will cross to the White House sidewalk.” Bill McKibben said, “It was hard but not impossible – and we woke up Sunday morning singing that old spiritual ‘Certainly Lord.'” Throughout history religion has been used over and over again as a tool – as a means of conditioning, control and obedience to the state. In the meantime the Catholic Church has billions invested in BPI, Philex, San Miguel and other corporations who profit from decimating the planet. Like the Big Greens, the religious organizations are also dependant and feeding upon the very system destroying us.

The Tar Sands Action campaign has no political strategy at all; no plans, no platform. Rockefellers’ McKibben is successfully hindering and delaying the formation of a strong, uncompromising and unified movement. Yet, instead of constructive criticisms and demands coming from citizens and grassroots, even the most intelligent and informed activists are lining up to receive McKibben’s blessing. One would think we’ve witnessed ‘the second coming of Christ’. Hallefuckingluiah and amen. Pass the soma. Perhaps soon we will bear witness to McKibben making an offering or a sacrifice to appease the gods (which will be just as effective).

The Role of Censorship, Which Allows Us to Deny

The role of the elitist Left in furthering and protecting the false illusion and indoctrination of pacifism (as pathology) is clearly demonstrated in headlines such as the Bill McKibben article featured in the Guardian, titled “Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience.” (Here it is critical to note that it was the Birmingham, Alabama civil rights marches, protests and direct actions that degenerated into riots; those riots represent the instrumental element behind what forced law changes at every level of government. As King later said: “The purpose of … direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”) Of course, such fodder by McKibben and others is welcome by all who are secure and comfortable, as a movement based on symbolism will ensure that the violent continuation of full repression, which is felt by others all over the world as a direct result of imperialism, colonialism and our industrialized economic system, will not be felt by our society in the immediate future. (Aside from our growing apathy, denial and sense of superiority.) The mainstream movement has a pivotal role in censoring all but the tactics they embrace, providing justification for us to do essentially nothing – at a time when we must employ all tactics to force the hand of the corporate state. No doubt they are terrified that we may have to fight our oppressors head on – as witnessed by those fighting for their very lives in different countries all over the world. (Whew! Thanks, Bill! Thanks, corporate greens!) Self-proclaimed “progressive” and “alternative” media outlets (such as Grist – whose board McKibben sits on; funded by those dependent upon the industrial machine, including Rockefeller) perpetuate and propel this meme (– nonviolence at all costs), drilling this ideological view into the mindset and conditioning of civil society.

Conditioning

“Ours must be a leadership democracy, administered by the ‘intelligent minority’ who know how to regiment and guide the masses. The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality.… If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.” – nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, considered the father of the field of public relations

We are being psychologically conditioned to believe that if only we continue to follow the rules and behave responsibly, we need not act in defence of our collapsing ecosystems and other crises unveiling themselves in unprecedented magnitude. This is only possible by clinging to false illusions, deep denial, and an irrational belief in an economic system that is destroying our planet – upon which we all depend – before our very eyes. We have been given a choice: resist or die. Thus far, we have demonstrated that we would rather cling to our illusions, thereby choosing death.

Is this campaign – funded by the world’s plutocracy – nothing but a means to give the false illusion of democracy while successfully conditioning people to further submit to the state – which would be an extremely valuable asset to the state as our planetary multiple crises deepen and escalate? Psychology and propaganda have always been recognized by leaders and the plutocracy as crucial and imperative means of controlling the masses.

http://youtu.be/9Ah20IAyYxg

http://youtu.be/IyPzGUsYyKM

Pacifism as Pathology | Tar Sands Action Déjà vu

“I just came home from Vietnam where I spent twelve months of my life trying to pacify the population. We couldn’t do it; their resistance was amazing. And it was wrong; the process made me sick. So I came home to join the resistance in my own country, and I find you guys have pacified yourselves. That too amazes me; that too makes me sick….” — Vietnam Veteran Against the War, 1970 (quoted in Pacifism as Pathology)

Below is an excerpt from Ward Churchill’s “Pacifism as Pathology,” first published in 1986 (endnotes removed). For anyone interested in mitigating the global collapse of all ecosystems and deterring planet-wide and species-wide genocide, this is essential reading.

For anyone wishing to take a critical look at the tar sands protests by groups funded (and in some cases created) by the Rockefellers and other corporate foundations – who will stop at absolutely nothing to keep the current power structures intact – the excerpt from this essay is sure to wake one from the paralysis that is trapping and constraining movements and societies in the status quo. The parallels between Churchill’s essay and the events in Washington, D.C. that were celebrated and endorsed – while the planet rests on the precipice – are nothing less than Orwellian.

The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been a truly pacifist formulation – “How can we forge a revolutionary politics within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?” On the contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, “What sort of politics might I engage in which will both allow me to posture as a progressive and allow me to avoid incurring harm to myself?” Hence, the trappings of pacifism have been subverted to establish a sort of “politics of the comfort zone,” not only akin to what Bettelheim termed “the philosophy of business as usual” and devoid of perceived risk to its advocates, but minus any conceivable revolutionary impetus as well. The intended revolutionary content of true pacifist activism – the sort practiced by the Gandhian movement, the Berrigans, and Norman Morrison – is thus isolated and subsumed in the United States, even among the ranks of self-professing participants.

Such a situation must abort whatever limited utility pacifist tactics might have, absent other and concurrent forms of struggle, as a socially transformative method. Yet, the history of the American Left over the past decade shows too clearly that the more diluted the substance embodied in “pacifist practice,” the louder the insistence of its subscribers that nonviolence is the only mode of action “appropriate and acceptable within the context of North America,” and the greater the effort to ostracize, or even stifle divergent types of actions. Such strategic hegemony exerted by proponents of this truncated range of tactical options has done much to foreclose on whatever revolutionary potential may be said to exist in modern America.

Is such an assessment too harsh? One need only attend a mass demonstration (ostensibly directed against the policies of the state) in any U.S. city to discover the answer. One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing, welcoming singers who enunciate lyrically on the worthiness of the demonstrators’ agenda as well as the plight of the various victims they are there to “defend,” and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to sign a petition and/or write letters to congress people requesting that they alter or abandon offending undertakings.

Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers of the demonstration will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits from the state and instructions as to where they will be allowed to assemble, how long they will be allowed to stay, and – should a march be involved in the demonstration – along which routes they will be allowed to walk. Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others – the elite. Adorned with green (or white, or powder blue) armbands, their function is to ensure that demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-sanctioned, arm-banded plan of protest. Individuals or small groups who attempt to spin off from the main body, entering areas to which the state has denied access (or some other unapproved activity), are headed off by these arm-banded “marshals” who argue – pointing to the nearby police – that “troublemaking” will only “exacerbate an already tense situation” and “provoke violence,” thereby “alienating those we are attempting to reach.” In some ways, the voice of the “good Jews” can be heard to echo plainly over the years.

At this juncture, the confluence of interests between the state and the mass nonviolent movement could not be clearer. The role of the police, whose function is to support state policy by minimizing disruption of its procedures, should be in natural conflict with that of a movement purporting to challenge these same policies and, indeed, to transform the state itself. However, with apparent perverseness, the police find themselves serving as mere backups (or props) to self-policing (now euphemistically termed “peace-keeping” rather than the more accurate “marshaling”) efforts of the alleged opposition’s own membership. Both sides of the “contestation” concur that the smooth functioning of state processes must not be physically disturbed, at least not in any significant way. All of this is within the letter and spirit of co-optive forms of sophisticated self-preservation appearing as an integral aspect of the later phases of bourgeois democracy. It dovetails well with more shopworn methods such as the electoral process and has been used by the state as an innovative means of conducting public opinion polls, which better hide rather than eliminate controversial policies. Even the movement’s own sloganeering tends to bear this out from time to time, as when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) coined the catch-phrase of its alternative to the polling place: “Vote with your feet, vote in the street.”

Of course, any movement seeking to project a credible self-image as something other than just one more variation of accommodation to state power must ultimately establish its “militant” oppositional credentials through the media in a manner more compelling than rhetorical speechifying and the holding of impolite placards (“Fuck the War” was always a good one) at rallies. Here, the time-honored pacifist notion of “civil disobedience” is given a new twist by the adherents of nonviolence in America. Rather than pursuing Gandhi’s (or, to a much lesser extent, King’s) method of using passive bodies to literally clog the functioning of the state apparatus – regardless of the cost to those doing the clogging – the American nonviolent movement has increasingly opted for “symbolic actions.”

The centerpiece of such activity usually involves an arrest, either of a token figurehead of the movement (or a small, selected group of them) or a mass arrest of some sort. In the latter event, “arrest training” is generally provided – and lately has become “required” by movement organizers – by the same marshals who will later ensure that crowd control police units will be left with little or nothing to do. This is to ensure that “no one gets hurt” in the process of being arrested, and that the police are not inconvenienced by disorganized arrest procedures.

The event which activates the arrests is typically preplanned, well publicized in advance, and, more often than not, literally coordinated with the police – often including estimates by organizers concerning how many arrestees will likely be involved. Generally speaking, such “extreme statements” will be scheduled to coincide with larger-scale peaceful demonstrations so that a considerable audience of “committed” bystanders (and, hopefully, NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN) will be on hand to applaud the bravery and sacrifice of those arrested; most of the bystanders will, of course, have considered reasons why they themselves are unprepared to “go so far” as to be arrested. The specific sort of action designed to precipitate the arrests themselves usually involves one of the following: (a) sitting down in a restricted area and refusing to leave when ordered; (b) stepping across an imaginary line drawn on the ground by a police representative; (c) refusing to disperse at the appointed time; or (d) chaining or padlocking the doors to a public building. When things really get heavy, those seeking to be arrested may pour blood (real or ersatz) on something of “symbolic value.”

As a rule, those arrested are cooperative in the extreme, meekly allowing police to lead them to waiting vans or buses for transportation to whatever station house or temporary facility has been designated as the processing point. In especially “militant” actions, arrestees go limp, undoubtedly severely taxing the state’s repressive resources by forcing the police to carry them bodily to the vans or buses (monitored all the while by volunteer attorneys who are there to ensure that such “police brutality” as pushing, shoving, or dropping an arrestee does not occur). In either event, the arrestees sit quietly in their assigned vehicles – or sing “We Shall Overcome” and other favorites – as they are driven away for booking. The typical charges levied will be trespassing, creating a public disturbance, or being a public nuisance.

Documentary: PsyWar – Wake UP!

Chart below +++ Telling. TransCanada (and incidentally Enbridge as well) has managed solid gains in their stock prices despite the latest market volatility.July 14, 2011, Bloomberg News: “TransCanada Corp., Enbridge Inc. and the four other Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index companies that store and transport oil and gas are offering average dividend yields of 4.05%. That’s 1.48% percentage points above the full index’s rate and 1.16 points more than the payout on Canadian 10-year government bonds. The industry’s valuation has jumped to 21 times earnings and reached 22 in May, the highest since 2006.”

Tar Sands Action & the Paralysis of a Movement [PART I OF AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT]

 

Published September 15, 2011 by Political Context: http://bit.ly/oxDG33 and Canadians for Action on Climate Change: http://bit.ly/nyA0kB

Part one of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

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

Only Death Will Save Us

“Only death will save us. Mediocrity begets mediocrity. It is tragic that the conditioning of civil society is so deep – that most everything relevant beating them on the head is received as nothing more than a cool breeze.” — Harold One Feather

What are the underlying motivations and loyalties of the social and political forces involved in the Tar Sands Action campaign, and, indeed, the bourgeois environmental movement as a whole? In our inability to avert an oncoming ecological collapse, coupled with what appears to be an insurmountable climate genocide, we must understand how the forces we seek to resist constantly absorb opposition, through compromised NGOs and other means. Never underestimate the strategies and mechanisms of the global elites for retaining their power, control, and domination of Earth and her inhabitants.

Cognitive dissonance compromises environmental activism. We must open our eyes, even if the ugliness is difficult to accept. Many seemingly credible activists who are paid to “lead” environmental organizations cannot admit to themselves that they have caved into the very systems they purport to oppose; there is no acceptable excuse for such lack of judgement and foresight – for if it is ignorance, it is willful. It is no longer singular individuals who create and shape our systems. Instead, the plutocrats construct and mould the systems and sustain illusory movements. As the majority of environmentalists and citizens who support such movements are not fully conscious of the role they play in propping up the industrial machine, this article attempts to inspire the courage to break free, re-organize, and move forward.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” — Elwyn Brooks White

Remix version 2011:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to enjoy the world and a desire to tear down the systemic structure that is destroying the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

Prologue — Lambs to the Slaughter

“As with any pathologically-based manifestation, hegemonic pacifism in advanced capitalist contexts proves itself supremely resistant – indeed, virtually impervious – to mere logic and moral suasion.” — Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology, 1984

Holding hands, singing songs, and forming circles has little effect beyond making individuals feel good about themselves. Of course, this is the main objective of the mainstream NGO: to appeal to one of our ugliest human traits – that of individualism, which our toxic culture celebrates. Such niceties also serve as fine fodder for media and for rounding up donations.

To have falsely promoted what was at best an educational campaign (which did not speak to the root causes of climate change) as “civil disobedience” was disingenuous, if not fraudulent. Yet, the NGOs continue to promote their publicity stunt under this guise. And it worked. Branding agencies and marketing executives will take note of this latest “success.” In truth, this (in)action merely succeeded in having seduced the public into a false belief that this system, into which violence is inherently built, can be overcome with moral suasion. At the eleventh hour, campaigning to build upon such a notion is not only incredibly deceiving – it is incredibly dangerous.

Organizations both within and outside of the nonprofit-industrial complex continue to unabashedly further the idea that passiveness, obedience and submissiveness to the corporatized state – which has made the conscious decision to allow billions to suffer and die – is the only moral choice. They insist that we must dismiss reality (that the Earth and her inhabitants are being killed all around us) while they dismiss the fact that moral suasion cannot stop this. They insist that we embrace their delusion at any cost. Tragically, such a suicidal position only serves to further weaken our own position as it strengthens the position of the corporate state tenfold. Like lambs, we are being led to the slaughter with stops all along the way for refreshments and photo ops. It’s the final step in the art of annihilation that the NGOs have adherently become so skilled at. The puppet masters are shaking in their boots, not with fear but with derisive laughter.

Those who know better, who choose to lend legitimacy to such organizations by way of supporting or promoting such grand spectacles of illusion, are in fact biting their own foot. Some of the statements heard echoing off the walls of delusion are “But where would we go?” and “Yes, I know, I agree, but it’s better than nothing.” Yet subduing and disempowering citizens is not better than nothing. And silence is complicity.

A “better than nothing” approach for a campaign such as Tar Sands Action is deeply flawed. By supporting / promoting compromised organizations and/or leaders of such compromised organizations, one provides a tract of general legitimacy for those who continue to prop up the malignant, capitalistic system and guarantee planetary demise while undermining the grassroots. Right or wrong, when we vocalize support or otherwise endorse such sanitized “actions” and the players behind them, we are seen as sanctioning them on the whole, and it makes walking the fine line of organizing an effective movement much more difficult.

Directing thousands of well-intentioned citizens to follow a false god with the last name of McKibben – whose organization (350.org/1Sky) is funded, overseen and partnered with the planet’s most powerful corporations and families – only ensures that society will be led to believe in the false illusion of “green capitalism” – what the corporate enviros have termed “climate wealth.” In McKibben’s own words: “Greed Has Helped Destroy the Planet – Maybe Now It Can Help Save It.” A vision based on rejecting ethics while further nurturing one of the worst human traits is one that any sane person working towards a just world must automatically reject. A vision based on the very same system that has now brought us to the precipice is a fool’s game, a deadly game that flies in the face of logic.

Many of the corporate greens can demonstrate strong points in regard to many issues – this is of little surprise as it is imperative for them to retain a level of credibility. Furthermore, they have millions of dollars available for specialized reports, which makes it easy. Of course, rarely will they campaign on such reports when they are released (quietly in most cases) to the public. We have to accept the fact that much of the environmental movement is now funded primarily with Rockefeller Family money (McKibben himself now states this proudly after a somewhat embarrassing incident on Climate Challenge TV) and corporate funnelled foundation money, which defines (dilutes) success in increments that, in the grand scheme of things, mean little. We can’t tolerate another 6,000 mW of coal active in FL, for example, but that is a victory to the Beyond Coal campaign because they managed to stop another 13K mW. In the next cycle, industry will again ask for 20K mW, and will get 5-8k mW. And that will be labeled another victory. At which point are these victories pyrrhic?

Eyes Wide Shut – Death by Denial

April 2011 Statement by the Indigenous Women of the Movement:

We felt that this was not an issue of semantics, that this was deliberately being taught to our peoples, our youth and our communities by the interests of government and corporations, who we began finding out more and more, were actually helping to fund well-paid activists who ran well-funded workshops, training and retreats on “non-violence” and “civil disobedience.” Some of this was traced back to funding which came from “ethical oil” strategies, and that’s when we started realizing the sickening accuracy of our premonitions…. We believe in honouring the dreams of women, in freeing ourselves from judgement and bias, decolonizing our minds and our hearts. We believe in being action-oriented, not paper-oriented. We don’t need Canada’s approval or consent, and we don’t need government or corporate funding. We have always had what we will always need: the Kaianerenkowa, the Medicine Wheel, our teachings, our clan systems, our languages, our ceremonies…. We can empower ourselves, we don’t need to wait for an NGO or a suit to tell us how to feel empowered. We aren’t the ones who need “non violence training”; the ones who need to stop using violence are the ones in power: police, government and corporations.

In the article “A Tar Sands Partnership Agreement in the Making?” social justice activist and journalist Macdonald Stainsby writes: “Many other foundations – most but not all American – now play the same game of social manipulation in the environmental field. Foundations such as Rockefeller Brothers, Ford and Hewlett have not only entered into the fray in a major way, in the case of the tar sands campaigns, they have collaborated with the Pew to take social manipulation to a new level.”

What the manipulated public does not understand, is the fact that, while these environmental groups have had years to unite behind a sane, comprehensive, unified energy policy that would have included opposition to tar sands and oil shale, and other false solutions, they have done nothing to this effect.

The money powers (who fund our “movement”) have decided that clean, zero-carbon, everlasting energy will not take over from fossil fuel energy or even increase its market share (see International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2010). The money powers do this consciously, in the face of evidence that the failure to make such a transition spells the end of the world. The insane logic behind such policy is that, as fossil fuel resources run out, corporations will increase profits. The devastating consequences for the biosphere are ignored.

We are hence warned once again that the campaigns dominating our movement are nothing more than impromptu, “whatever is popular at the moment,” laissez-faire, feel-good public relations escapades. This is not a movement that has any chance of staving off guaranteed climate genocide on top of multiple global crises, all happening simultaneously.

Corporate environmentalism is merely a movement designed to make us feel good today – much like capitalism – while killing us slowly.

From climate change, to the BP oil spill, then onto the tar sands bandwagon, these symbolic campaigns are orchestrated and echoed throughout the faux environmental movement.

Is the Left Suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

 

Hooray for Change!

“Somehow we need to get back the President we thought we elected in 2008. We are just now finishing up the largest civil disobedience in this country in this century. We won’t attack the President. We will only hold him to the standard he set in 2008. We have been arrested for two weeks straight, but without bitterness or hate. Only joy and resolve.” — Bill McKibben

To believe Obama or the state will be moved by moral suasion as bombs are dropped on occupied countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya while covert U.S. wars are underway in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia – murdering untold numbers of men, women and children – all in the name of resource exploitation (under the egregious auspices of democracy and liberation) is nothing more than delusion bordering on insanity.

Let’s break this down.

“Somehow we need to get back the President we thought we elected in 2008.”

First of all, the president that the people “thought” they elected in 2008 has proven himself (beyond a doubt) a mere voicebox for the plutocracy and a bona fide war criminal.

“We are just now finishing up the largest civil disobedience in this country in this century.”

Secondly, the Tar Sands Action must not be considered true civil disobedience when it was sanctioned by the state, while demonstrating to the state absolute compliance. It is only a massive withdrawal of compliance that actually has any possibility of even slight effect. Civil disobedience draws its strength from open confrontation and noncooperation – not from evasion or subterfuge. History has proven this time and time again. Demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of citizens have failed in a world of corporate-dominated government. Case in point would be the protests against the illegal invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and Britain. This was the largest global civil disobedience in our history. Citizens numbered in the millions. Yet the occupation continues to this day. As citizens, we can only retain as much power as we refuse to relinquish to the state. If one insists on calling the Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C. a true civil disobedience, it is a sad reflection on what the meaning and intent of true civil disobedience has been reduced to.

Third, to call 1253 trained protesters (with the exception of the first day, all who were arrested over the course of the two weeks were released within an hour or two – approximately 90 people per day including the elite “leaders” and staff of a slew of mainstream NGOs) “the largest civil disobedience in this country in this century” is delusional. There have been protests against globalization in the U.S. in which citizens numbered in the thousands.

“We won’t attack the President. We will only hold him to the standard he set in 2008.”

Fourth point – citizens are extremely fortunate to have John Pilger and others who will attack the president openly, as the public needs and deserves to hear the truth. Why would any rational person hold Obama to a fantasy standard, when we know, based on his actions to date and our knowledge of corporate dominance, that Obama will never meet any standard that could stop the ongoing ecocide?

“We have been arrested for two weeks straight, but without bitterness or hate. Only joy and resolve.”

Fifth point – We should be bitter, pissed off, furious and sickened that our planet is being killed and that our children are going to not live long enough to reach old age. The myth that emotions such as bitterness, hate and anger are destructive prevents us from trusting our own intuition based on our life experiences. As we stand on the precipice, bitterness, hate and anger are all normal feelings upon coming to the full realization that the corporate state has chosen economic growth over life itself. Those who protect it are deserving of our bitterness and hatred. And if you’re not angry that our planet is being raped before our eyes – then perhaps you have forgotten what love is.

“In the run-up to the UN climate change conference in December 09, an advertising industry initiative, ‘Hopenhagen,’ was supported by Coca-Cola, DuPont and BMW, among others. Clearly, some organisations do not grasp the concept of irony. Nevertheless, more than six million people from around the world signed up. Hamilton wonders when such well-meaning individuals will begin to think ‘I have been doing the right thing for years, but the news about global warming just keeps getting worse.’ In other words, when will the dreadful reality hit home?

 

“…Clinging to hopefulness becomes a means of forestalling the truth. Sooner or later we must respond, and that means allowing ourselves to enter a phase of desolation and hopelessness, in short to grieve.

 

“…Painful though it is to do so, we come to terms with grief and loss. We mourn, we feel periods of shock and anger; slowly, we adjust. Adjustments may be unhealthy – denial, as we have seen, or apathy or nihilism. A healthy adjustment involves accepting the loss, making it part of who we are and what we will become.” — Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change

Of course McKibben (and his disciples, whom he apparently believes he speaks for) have no bitterness or hate, only joy and resolve as their greatest sacrifice (by only a handful) was 48 hours in jail while the rest paid a hundred bucks and were home in time to watch themselves on the 4 o’clock news. One can appreciate the good intentions of citizens who are no doubt desperate to somehow make a difference. Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that we are becoming completely out of touch with reality if we choose to lend the words “sacrifice” and “courage” to educational outreach media blitz campaigns.

One must wonder if McKibben would feel such “hope” for the president if his family was murdered in one of the occupied countries Obama continues to pummel with bombs. One must wonder if McKibben would be such a kind and kindred spirit to Obama if he was on the other end of the stick of industrialized capitalism – working in a mine developing lung cancer in order to feed his children one meal a day. If the Left is buying into this charade – and it appears they are – we must the conclude that the emasculated Left is indeed suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. (Source: Wikipedia)

Video: Obama celebrates Earth Day. (Running time: 0:44)

The Choice

“In concrete terms, this means … civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.” — Cornel West, Dr. King Weeps From His Grave, New York Times, 26 August 2011

It’s time we remove our comfortable cocoons of self-righteousness and moral superiority and fully recognize / acknowledge that we are all participating in a culture where violence is now inherently built into the system. Thus we all have blood on our hands and there can be no denying this fact.

The movement must choose for what type of future we wish to fight. A future of the people, by the people, for the people? Or a future of the corporations (i.e. corporations via foundations), by the corporations, for the corporations (i.e., commodification of the last remaining elements of nature; continued violence until the remaining elements of nature are destroyed, or mass extinction by way of climate genocide a.k.a. green capitalism)?

We must choose one. We cannot have both.

Choosing the first provides a future for all life our Earth graciously sustains. It will not be given. It must be taken.

Further, the future we resolve to claim must be articulated.

Meanwhile in the real world of activism (being eclipsed by the state-sanctioned Tar Sands Action and its negotiated arrests), more Amazon Rainforest activists receive death threats as assassinations escalate. Closer to home, in Messina, New York, on 11 August 2011, Larry Thompson, a Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) man was arrested. Thompson, “sick of waiting for a General Motors Superfund site cleanup that will never happen,” took a backhoe to a toxic landfill site. “Thompson drove onto the notoriously polluted mound, scooped up contaminated soil and loaded it into railroad cars that were waiting to cart away debris from the GM building that is being torn down in the wake of bankruptcy proceedings…. Larry was given this order by the Clan Mother. She directed him to do this. So he had to do it. No matter what, she is the supreme law of the land.” Of course, the criminals that poisoned the land (i.e. those responsible for the violence) continue to walk free.

A Very Civil Civil Disobedience

“I believe it’s a crime for anyone being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.” — Malcolm X

“When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.” — Emma Goldman

20 August 2011: The article “A Very Civil Civil Disobedience” said it all. Anything other than submissive obedience to the police state is not to be considered “civil.” The word “civil” is loaded. How “civilized” is a society whose very existence is dependent upon the violent and relentless assault on the planet, while simultaneously exploiting the struggling classes?

Organizing citizens to get themselves peacefully arrested in order to “appeal to the better nature of Obama” are based on a delusional strategy. Appeals to Obama and other members of the ruling class serve to distract us from the unwillingness of states to change their practices without being forced to do so. Mainstream environmentalists’ calls for “rolling sit-ins” (10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. daily) and other passive tactics would be considered by many to be an insult to activists throughout the world who have fought against state and police repression with their very lives.

Who knew you would have to RSVP to the “revolution,” agree to the conditions, be trained by God himself, and that a dress code would be in effect? On 28 August 2011, a participant to the Tar Sands Action sent out a mass email to her lists. Within the communiqué she states, “The action was relatively simple, to be honest, and I don’t feel super brave for ‘risking arrest’ when it was a simple procedure and a $100 fine. (A ‘post and forfeit’ thing, similar to a traffic violation, not a misdemeanor or anything that would be likely to taint a record). It was fun to ride in the paddy wagon with 15 other awesome activists, kinda like a sauna. The cops were nice to us and some of us helped educate them on why we were there. (The organizers are encouraging everyone to cooperate and pay the fine, to seem dignified in the media, and to keep the story on the pipeline rather than on ‘us vs. them’ with the parks police. Yet they did say that, if we’re not listened to here, perhaps for a future action the strategy may be different.)”

And although the McKibben show pumps out headlines loaded with words such as “terrified”, “scared out of my mind”, “risk arrest”, and on and on, Darryl Hannah (the ultimate triumph for any campaign in today’s celebrity-obsessed culture) topped them all off, proclaiming “Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice your freedom for a greater freedom.”?These words/descriptions are so over-the-top (to be kind), they are ludicrous. Let’s be honest – most of us cannot even begin to comprehend what real sacrifice means. Here is another much more honest commentary posted on September 1, 2011:

“Getting arrested in the Tar Sands Action was fun and it felt like the right and responsible thing to do. The scariest part of it was navigating the D.C. Metro. No, that’s not exactly true. It was the anticipation of navigating the D.C. Metro that terrified me, not the actual navigation. … The female officer took my ID but stuffed my money back in my bra. Then they took my mug shot, handed me my ID and squeezed me into the paddy wagon with Kidder. It was very hot and close in there but we joked around with the cute police officers, told stories and had a pretty good time…. I was released at 12:46 p.m.” (The author notes she was arrested at 11:33 a.m.)

From the Tar Sands Action website:

Question: Does this demonstration have a permit, or are we by attending breaking a regulation?

Answer: As long as you are on the sidewalk in front of the White House and keep moving you aren’t breaking any regulations. The action organizers have applied for permits to be on the sidewalk in front of the White House for the entirety of the action.

Question: What should we do if there are opponents trying to disrupt the action or people who start to act outside of the agreed Action Guidelines?

Answer: Dealing with inappropriate escalation (or confrontation from our opponents) is going to be a main duty of the support team that will be on site for every action. They’ll be ready to talk with folks who seem to be getting out of hand and to help direct energy to the more strategic, productive parts of the action.

Did Rosa Parks obtain a permit from the state before she decided she would sit at the front of the bus? Why do citizens choose to submit to an authority who that tells us / convinces us that we must seek approval to stand on a public sidewalk, a sidewalk that has been paid for by the people themselves?

State Sanctioned “Civil Disobedience” & Propaganda Wars

20 August 2011: The article “Tar-sands protesters in jail longer than expected” states:

In negotiations with the police prior to the action that began on Saturday, the police were very clear that what would happen after people were arrested was the vast majority would get what’s called “post and forfeit,” where you put up $100, get released from jail after several hours, and you don’t have to come back again. It’s basically like a traffic ticket.

The article continues:

But this is not what they did. Instead, after arresting the first day’s 70 people, they decided to hold most of them, all those not from within a 25-mile radius of Washington, D.C., in jail until a Monday afternoon arraignment. This works out to 48 or more hours in jail before being released. [Emphasis added]

We can sense that the author is appalled the police did not honor their pre-arranged deal. He appears to be outraged that middle class citizens were inconvenienced for 48 hours or more. The author continues that another “action” earlier this year ran into a similar situation where “despite many weeks of communication between the protest organizers and various state, county and local government officials, agreements to camp overnight were revoked.” Such comments reveal how state-sanctioned “civil disobedience” has become normalized. But no worries, the author plans to hope and pray that the tar sands “action” will “rise to the occasion” – whatever that means in real life.

In a true act of civil disobedience, one adopts a position of absolute non-cooperation with the state, the perpetrator of both violence and oppression. No prior negotiations. No obedience.

Adding further Orwellian bizarreness, it was announced in a media advisory issued 1st September 2011, by the Indigenous Environmental Network what would occur on the following day: “Native Americans and First Nations to be arrested at White House protesting TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline.”

Recognizing that this protest involved several hundred well-intentioned individuals looking for direction and a way to make a difference, the Washington, D.C. “civil disobedience” cannot truly be considered disobedient when it has been organized with the very state they are supposedly resisting. Prior to the action, the organizers fully engaged / conversed with police in order to find out exactly what risk they would be susceptible to in undertaking such a protest in Washington, D.C. en masse. We see this over and over again. It is only once it is established that the “approved” action will be most benevolent with trivial consequences (no real risk) that the privileged classes then build upon such campaigns. The ruling class does not fear such campaigns in the least.

Yes … the state will undoubtedly be so moved by our arguments and our good behaviour that it will voluntarily, someday soon, overthrow itself and join us in a circle of sing-songs.

States only fear acts of civil disobedience and direct actions when they threaten to disrupt the system through a demonstration of overwhelming strength. They do not respond to appeals to morality or guilt. When a protest is controlled, sanctioned and supported by the state, the action will not be feared, because the state will never fear what it can control. Planting seeds of love is a beautiful thing, yet on their own, in the absence of struggle and true sacrifice, such seeds of love have never won any revolutions.

Tar Sands Action Civil Obedience Campaign

Naomi Klein under state sanctioned arrest.

Naomi Klein should be mortified at promoting and participating in such a staged event – as she knows better. In her book “No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies” (2000), Klein remarks: “Since the days when Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies infused self-conscious absurdity to their ‘happenings,’ political protest had lapsed into a ritualized affair, following a fairly unimaginative grid of repetitive chants and scripted police confrontation.”

Nine Nobel Peace Laureates including “Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama” have written to President Obama, urging him to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. A media release states that “the opposition to the pipeline has surged in recent weeks as more than 1,250 people were arrested in 14 days of sit-ins at the White House – perhaps the largest wave of civil disobedience ever for an environmental cause in the U.S…. In asking you to make this decision we recognize the thousands of Americans who risked arrest to protest in front of the White House between August 20th and September 3rd. These brave individuals have spoken movingly about experiencing the power of nonviolence in that time.”

And there is the language, the sound bites, highlighted yet again to further pacify our public as our multiple crises escalate: references to religion and the “power of non-violence” when speaking to civil disobedience and arrests. McKibben and friends had to have recognized and taken solace in the fact that the public is severely naïve to have even attempted to pass off the state-sanctioned orchestrated event as true civil disobedience.

What kind of civil disobedience is it where the police themselves carefully fold up protesters’ banners (with weapons completely exposed) and collect the protest signs prior to the arrests? It is telling that the “Park Police” were placed in charge of the daily 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. rolling sit-ins. It appears that the only exception was the initial week-end, commencing Saturday, August 20th, the first day of arrests (which included McKibben) when the D.C. police arrested the protesters and held the non-resident arrestees until Monday.

It also appears that no one other than McKibben and participants from his group ever went to jail. (A media bonanza that legitimized McKibben). All other trained arrestees for the remaining 2 weeks were police-escorted (motorcycle escorts with sirens wailing) to the Anacostia station of the Park Police where they simply paid a $100 fine. During training, the organizers instructed the participants to pay the fine rather than opt to go to jail – stating that otherwise, the police would get angry and treat subsequent arrestees less courteously. The multiple references comparing this “civil disobedience” to the sacrifice and bravery demonstrated during the civil rights movement, as well as references to Martin Luther King throughout this campaign, are abominable. In reality, in direct contrast to civil disobedience, this “action” must be considered an act of passive civil obedience.

How is it that North America has become so completely removed from reality? How is it that such weak and cowardly leadership – so out of touch with what is happening all over the world – can be considered noble, rather than what it really is – an embarrassment?

The photos below from the Tar Sands Actions Flickr account tell a story far more revealing than anything anyone can attempt to reveal in a piece of writing. The intention was to include photos of people smiling and laughing when placed under arrest. Unfortunately it is not possible, simply because there are too many that fall under this description. In fact, this action may be the happiest and most enjoyable “civil disobedience” to have ever been presented to the public. Let’s have a look:

Organized! Police set up a convenient processing station on the site.

Protesters were trained to march up to the front of the fence. The protesters lined up and were then adjusted by the organizers. Citizens were permitted to walk into the front area, however, they were not permitted to remain in this area as it was reserved for tourists and media to take photographs. The police gave three warnings for the protesters to leave or be arrested. Citizens who did not wish to be arrested left the area. It was at this point the police assisted in carefully gathering up the signs and banners and placed barricades at all sides of the arrestees (the back is a fence). Processing was done on site (see above). Then the arrestees were driven for approximately ten minutes to the Anacostia station of the Park Police where they finalized paperwork, paid a $100 fine and were released (with the exception of August 20th). The yellow tape reads ‘Police Scene – Do Not Cross’.

Confronting the state.

A policeman taking photos.

Policeman folds banner with much care.The officer, apparently under extreme duress and fear, has forgotten he has a gun on his side belt in reach of the “resistance.”

A 350 supporter is arrested by the Park Police. The first people arrested, including McKibben, were turned over to the D.C. police who unexpectedly kept them 48 hours (as this is not what the organizers had negotiated in advance). Following this initial arrest it was then managed by the Park Police who were apparently very nice. They handcuffed and took the trained protesters to a tent where they were frisked. The arrestees were then brought inside the tent where their photo was taken. They were then given a number and placed on a bus or wagon. (The buses were air conditioned and the wagons were hot). Arrestees were then police escorted to a station where the Park Police removed the plastic zip handcuffs, checked ID once more, took the money, and then sent the released protestors off towards the Metro. We can only hope the approx. $130,000 raised by the police, goes to the park to assist with the trees dying from polluting ozone. We can only assume the police escort was necessary in order to prevent any real protesters from trying to beat some sense into them.

Image of Park Police.

Everyone is in great spirits including the Park Police.

Compare the Tar Sands Action to civil disobedience in other countries who are being brutally oppressed and exploited by the violent system we participate in on a daily basis. Apathy in the face of injustice is also a form of violence.

Photo above: An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state police who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs, and were evicted from the land. (REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE)

Another real act of confronting and resisting the state is the G2O protests.

 

Two leaders of civil disobedience in North America: Betty Krawczyk and the late Pacheedaht warrior Harriet Nahanee/Tsibeotl (above).

Indoctrination

The Tar Sands Action organization, initiated and led by 350/1 Sky spokesperson Bill McKibben, actually has no plan in place for when the Keystone pipeline is approved by Obama. What escalating tactics will be pursued? What does the state have to fear?

Intoxicated by the idea that Obama can be won over with moral persuasion and reject a pipeline which promises billions in projected profits, and which will enable his crumbling empire to control North America’s oil this action is merely an educational campaign to draw attention to the appalling tar sands. And this is where the problem lies. Citizens are being led to believe that pre-negotiated civil disobedience – one that assures no sacrifice or risk will be endured by citizens as long as they abide by the rules of the state – can stop the violence being waged upon our shared Earth. Not so. We know it will not. It never has, and never will. (See Pacifism and Pathology, by Ward Churchill, 2007 Version.)

We cling to our deep belief of business-as-usual. The inertia makes this easy. The gradual systemic violence upon us is a gentle, slow kill. This month feels no different than last month, therefore everything must be okay. Our intense desire for non-disruption in a life we perceive as non-violent traps us into a false belief system.

Whether Media or NGOs – The Funding of Silence is Destroying Us

“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”

The strange silencing of liberal America – by John Pilger

7 July 2011

How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, ‘Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia’, was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? ‘Year Zero’ had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant’s rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Six months later, a PBS official told me, “This wasn’t censorship. We’re into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry.”

In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, deniable censorship. The journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of more than 50 television films in Britain that were never shown or indefinitely delayed. The word “ban” was rarely used, and those responsible would invariably insist they believed in free speech.

The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free speech. The foundation’s website says it is “dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity”. Authors, film-makers, poets make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford.

Lannan also awards “grants” to America’s liberal media, such as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio programme Democracy Now! In Britain, Lannan has been a supporter of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. In 2008, Patrick Lannan personally supported the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is “devoted” to Obama.

On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, ‘The War You Don’t See’, which investigates the false image-making of war-makers, especially Obama.

I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the Lannan official organising my visit. The tone was incredulous. “Something has come up,” she wrote. Patrick Lannan had called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. “I have no idea what this is all about,” she wrote.

Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that “all” my events were cancelled, “and this includes the screening of your film”. On the Lannan website “cancelled” appeared across a picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls were returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing descended.

The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the Foundation put out a brief statement that too few tickets had been sold to make my visit “viable” and that “the Foundation regrets that the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr. Pilger or to the public at the time the decision was made”. Doubts were cast by a robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The paper, which has long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan events, disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be hurriedly pulled. “Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre].”

The manager of The Screen, the Santa Fe cinema that had been rented for the premiere, was called late at night and told to kill all his online promotion for my film, but took it upon himself to re-schedule the film for 23 June. It was a sell-out, with many people turned away. The idea that there was no public interest was demonstrably not true.

Theories? There are many, but nothing is proven. For me, it is all reminiscent of the long shadows cast during the Cold War. “Something is going to surface,” said Barsamian. “They can’t keep the lid on this.”

My talk on 15 June was to have been about the collusion of American liberalism in a permanent state of war and the demise of cherished freedoms, such as the right to call government to account. In the United States, as in Britain, serious dissent – free speech – has been substantially criminalised. Obama, the black liberal, the PC exemplar, the marketing dream is as much a warmonger as George W. Bush. His score is six wars. Never in US history has a president prosecuted as many whistle-blowers; yet this truth-telling, this exercise of true citizenship, is at the heart of America’s constitutional first amendment. Obama’s greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the United States, including the anti-war movement.

The reaction to the Lannan ban has been illuminating. The brave, like the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, were appalled and said so. Similarly, many ordinary Americans called into radio stations and have written to me, recognising a symptom of far greater suppression. But some exalted liberal voices have been affronted that I dared whisper the word, censorship, about such a beacon of “cultural freedom”. The embarrassment of those who wish to point both ways is palpable. Others have pulled down the shutters and said nothing. Given their patron’s ruthless show of power, it is understandable. For them, the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote, “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-strange-silencing-of-liberal-america

Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion

April 18^th, 2011

By Cory Morningstar

World’s Greatest Magic Trick

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

On 6 April 2011 it was announced that the RINGO (Rockefeller initiated NGO) 1Sky and their sister organization 350.org have ‘officially merged’ into one mass climate movement – the ‘NEW’ 350.org.

Let the Vatican preach, hallefuckinglujah, as we double-up on the soma followed by a double shot of absinthe burning like the embers of hell. Thank you Rockefellers, Clintons, McKibben and friends. Make way for the onslaught of illusion in which green capitalism and false solutions will somehow save us. In one last final performance – the elites will now perform their final magical act that defies all logic. Drum roll please … ladies and gentleman … we will now embrace the same system which is systematically destroying us – splash it with a green patina … and now … this same system will magically save us. Justice for all! The illuminated signs flash toward the audience … applause! applause! applause!

Follow the Money

An example of what two prominent environmental groups, 1Sky and 350.org, receive from the Rockefeller foundations alone:

Step it Up and 350.org (Sustainable Markets Foundation)

·         $100,000 for 1 year awarded on March 13, 2008 to support its project, Step it Up’s new initiative called Project 350
·         40,000 2008 RFF Sustainable Markets Foundation | 350.org
·         $100,000 for 1 year awarded on March 3, 2009 for its Project 350
·         $200,000 for 1 year awarded on March 12, 2009 for its climate accountability project, The Sustainable Market Foundation
·         $75,000 for 1 year  awarded on November 7, 2009 for its project 350.org
·         $25,000 for 1 year awarded on March 22, 2010 for its Eco-Accountability project
·         $100,000 for 1 year awarded on June 17, 2010 for its 350.org project

1Sky Education Fund

·         $1,000,000 for 2 years awarded on December 13, 2007
·         $20,000 for 1 year awarded on November 17, 2008 for an alignment meeting of U.S. climate change leaders
·         200,000 2008 RFF
·         45,000 2008 RFF
·         $250,000 for 1 year awarded on June 18, 2009
·         $30,000 for 1 year awarded on April 9, 2009 to support a consultant to coordinate the alignment of U.S. climate change leaders and large grassroots organizations
·         $250,000 for 1 year awarded on November 2, 2009
·         $250,000 for 1 year awarded on November 19, 2009
·         50,000 2009 RFF
·         15,000 2009 RFF
·         20,000 2009 RFF

When 350.org, whom founder Bill McKibben describes as a ‘scruffy little outfit’, was requested to disclose their financial statements and provide complete list of funders in 2010, they responded via email that they would discuss this via a phone communication. The email communication can be read here. To date, they have not responded further. Karyn Strickler of Climate Challenge Media asked McKibben, in a 2010  interview, similar questions regarding the funding. You can listen to his response in the Strickler interview here:

This interview is unique as Strickler actually pins McKibben down on perhaps the first policy statement McKibben has offered – zero carbon by 2030. Yet, although McKibben admits in the Strickler interview that it is imperative to achieve zero emissions, you will not find this vital information, nor any other roadmap on what must occur in order to achieve 350 ppm on the 350.org website. 350.org, 1Sky, and friends have yet to speak to the media or the US Congress on the imperative of zero carbon, nor have they declared this position in their numerous communications with supporters and the general public. When it comes to the fact that we are: 1) already beyond dangerous climate interference (as declared by leading scientist John Holdren in 2006), 2) in a global planetary emergency (as declared by world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen in 2008) and 3) zero carbon is the only solution to our escalating climate emergency (as recognized by the IPCC) – the silence pounding within the walls of the non-profit industrial complex is deafening.

According to annual reports and internal revenue service reports collected by Climate Shift, 350.org’s revenue for 2009 was $1,661,440 and 1Sky’s revenue for 2009 was $3,425,549.

1Sky | A Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Image: www.radicalgraphics.org

“I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those doing the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the colour of the skin.” – Malcolm X

In the Rockefeller Family Fund 2007 annual report, it is clear that 1Sky is an actual Rockefeller-initiated NGO. Such incubator projects are common within powerful foundations, although the public has little knowledge of such practices. An example of a Rockefellers’ incubator for an in-house project that later evolved into a free-standing institution is The Climate Group, launched in London in 2004. [1] This practice allows corporate-funded foundation boards to exert influence on the policies and intent of projects. Such projects should be independent of corporate influence if the projects are truly intended to benefit the interests of civil society.

From the 2007 annual report:

“In December 2007, the Fund received a pledge from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. in the amount of $1,000,000, designated to 1Sky, a project of the Fund, for which the Fund provides fiscal and legal oversight. As of December 31, 2007, $100,000 has been received by the Fund towards this pledge, with the remaining $900,000 receivable expected to be collected during 2008.”

At the same time of the 10:10:10 launch, 350.org revealed its first order of business – that of business. In 2011, the Green Market website published an article titled “350.org and Business.” The website promotes the 350 campaign to ask businesses to leave the US Chamber of Commerce in response to climate change; however, it neglected to critically analyze why such a campaign can only fail. The reality is that incrementalism in the face of a planetary emergency dooms humanity to failure. No amount of justification excuses any organization, large or small, to play politics in the face of our daunting climate reality. Yet 350.org is doing exactly that. Many may consider this a strong step and the greenwashing cabal will applaud; after all, if you have the token voice of the climate movement praising sweat-shop driven, mining-dependent Apple, you’ve won the day. However, the reality is this: No matter how many businesses leave the Chamber, they will still be doing what they do. Apple continues to abuse those most vulnerable while simultaneously destroying the environment for the sake of profit. Nike still manufactures shoes in China. A campaign such as this will never extricate these corporations from the business model they worship that enables several barrels of oil to be burned for the sake of the Swoosh through symbolic campaigning and the mighty victory this campaign seeks. No amount of symbolic campaigning will accomplish anything remotely close to a solution to the current planetary emergency. Such a campaign makes for good press for the times; however, in terms of outcomes, it will provide nothing of consequence to the solution set. It’s nothing less than delusion, if not a crime against humanity, that those who understand the science actually believe such campaigns are helpful beyond our psyches. Tragically, this undoubtedly will become more obvious rather soon.

The 2011 Power Shift conference is closing with no defined significance within the context of a required movement to mitigate an escalating global planetary emergency. The big green diversion makes it much easier to keep focused on the real agenda. The task at hand. Keeping the wealth and power in the hands of a few. As long as the elites control the Non-Profit Industrial Complex we will never defeat the climate crisis. Not ever. As long as the elites control the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, we will never stop the exploitation of neither people nor our shared environment. This is why we have no choice now but to walk away from the big green lie. A paramount victory for 2011 would be for citizens, climate justice activists, and community groups willing to deal in reality, to reject 350.org/1Sky outright. This would send an absolute message that the neo-liberal funded, non-profit industrial complex does NOT represent civil society. Such rejection states that Rockefeller and the ruling classes do not own us. Such rejection states that we reject the system that is successfully destroying us. This is the only way to take back the control which has hijacked the true grass-roots groups of the climate justice movement who are effectively marginalized and whose voices are drowned out. The non-profit industrial complex ensures this remains so.

Today | Orwellian Madness

Political Corruption and corporate dominance have reached dimensions of unparalleled magnitude.

The plutocracy has stolen approximately 40 trillion dollars from the people, leaving ordinary citizens to fight for imaginary scraps at the bottom of the barrel. The wealthiest 10% control 85% of the worlds monetary wealth, while the wealthiest 1% control 40%.

General Electric, the 4th most profitable corporation in the world in 2010, has successfully avoided all federal income taxes on its $14.2 billion profits, while 18 children starve to death every 60 seconds.

With the launch of 112 Tomahawk missiles on Libya, the US has now begun its fifth concurrent war/occupation. As award winning veteran journalist John Pilger so concisely states: “The Euro-American attack on Libya has nothing to do with protecting anyone; only the terminally naive believe such nonsense.”

Comprehensive coverage of Japan’s nuclear meltdown catastrophe and radiation levels around the world have disappeared from mainstream media.

Canadians have had their privacy rights stripped away in December 2010 via the quiet passage of Bill C-36. The bill essentially destroys the rule of law in Canada with its ability to bypass parliamentary procedures. Few noticed.

More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, even though crime rates are now at historical lows. [2] The ‘war on drugs’ is cited as a most significant reason, all while the pharmaceutical industry reaps in the profits ($500 billion each year), while quietly obtaining complete liability protection from vaccine injuries and deaths caused from government mandated vaccines. [3]

Actual criminals with psychopathic tendencies run rampant, receiving lavish bonuses and securing esteemed positions to protect the elitist circus, they are presented as successful and respected icons by corporate media and their subordinates.

And like the pharmaceutical industry thrives and depends upon sickness, fear, and disease, the military-industrial complex can only thrive and exist through new wars and occupations. It, too, is dependent upon the successful marketing of fear, passivity, and a society embedded with apathy.  Inherently, destructive industries are absolutely dependent upon these factors.

To be clear, multi-national corporations are not in the business of protecting the environment or your family; they are in the business of making the maximum profit possible via the highest available rate of return. Those who think this is not true would be well-advised to think again. (Mainstream news footage which appeared on national television in 2006 revealed the Bayer corporation had knowingly sold Aids tainted blood overseas. The US government had full knowledge yet did nothing: http://youtu.be/spnEaO3yumk) The current system feeds upon the most negative and most vulnerable character traits in our human family. In contrast, a physically and emotionally healthy society is the greatest threat to corporate wealth and domination. Likewise, a movement towards zero carbon societies based on liberation, empowerment, autonomy and self-determination leading to the formation of decentralized publicly owned energy systems, is the greatest threat to the fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel based economy that exists today.

Meanwhile, climate change is so far gone, scientists and professional activists have essentially accepted a 4C temperature rise as early as 2050, at which point Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research believes we may have 10% of the global population remaining – approximately half a billion people. Methane hydrates have begun venting. Denialism runs deep.

Rockefellers’ 1Sky

From Rockefeller Family Fund 2008 annual report:

“Included in the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2007 are the activities of the Environmental Grantmaker’s Association (EGA), a project of the Fund over the past two decades. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has granted EGA its 501(c)(3) status and as such, EGA became completely independent of the Fund effective January 1, 2008. For the first nine months of 2008, the Fund provided fiscal and legal oversight to 1Sky, another project of the Fund, and as such, the activities of 1Sky from January 1, 2008 through September 30, 2008 are included in the Fund’s financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2008. During 2008, the IRS granted 1Sky its 501(c)(3) status, and 1Sky became completely independent of the Fund effective October 1, 2008.

“In December 2007, the Fund received a pledge from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. in the amount of $1,000,000, designated to 1Sky, a project of the Fund, for which the Fund provides fiscal and legal oversight. The Fund received $100,000 in 2007 toward this pledge and the remaining commitment of $900,000 was received in 2008.”

From Rockefeller Family Fund 2009 annual report:

“The Environmental Grantmaker’s Association (EGA), a project of the Fund over the past two decades, was granted its 501(c)(3) status by the Internal Reve­nue Service (IRS), and as such, EGA became completely independent of the Fund effective January 1, 2008. For the first nine months of 2008, the Fund provided fiscal and legal oversight to 1Sky, another project of the Fund, and as such, the activities of 1Sky from Janu­ary 1, 2008 through September 30, 2008 are included in the Fund’s financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2008. During 2008, the IRS granted 1Sky its 501(c)(3) status, and 1Sky became completely independent of the Fund effective October 1, 2008.”

Rockefeller | Getting REDDy to Cross the Finish Line

The following text appears 8 March 2010 in an article titled Getting REDDy to Cross the Finish Line, Two Decades in the Making: “It’s hard to imagine with all the progress REDD has achieved, that it all started less than 20 years ago with the Rio Summit in ’92, when the makings of a global sustainability architecture in the form of a climate treaty began to take shape. But a forestry treaty had yet to happen … With over 20 years of experience in the forestry sector, Michael Northrup, Program Director of Sustainable Development at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, was invited by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation to give a Distinguished Lecture, ‘After Copenhagen: Implications for U.S. Climate, Energy, and Forest Policy’ at the high brow, exclusive Cosmos Club. Northrup casually described to the 30 or so people in the room where we are with REDD today and how we got here. Plus he played the “name game” as he knew most of the people in the room.”

Of course, Rockefeller is not alone in its quest to lead and dominate on the promise of ‘green capitalism’; other members of the elites will not be left behind to feed on the breadcrumbs.  For example, The Climate and Land Use Alliance, whose member foundations include the ClimateWorks Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, have joined forces to push forward the false solution of REDD. Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environment Network: “The carbon market solutions are not about mitigating climate, but are greenwashing policies that allow fossil fuel development to expand.” The Declaration created at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth clearly condemned REDD, stating that it violates “the sovereignty of our Peoples.”

In October 2011, Rockefellers’ Northrup will be speaking at a forum to be held in China titled “Emission Trade toward Green Economy”.

On 1 May 2006 on the Climate Change Capital website, an article titled The Gold Mine in the Greenhouse publishes an abstract published in Environmental Finance by Michael Northrop and David Sassoon explaining how the Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading scheme, are laying new foundations for an international market directing capital to tackle climate change: “The port of Shenzhen in China faces south towards Hong Kong across a 35-kilometre stretch of water. Home to a mere 20,000 people in 1979, today you’ll find 12 million people there, a bursting economic development zone, a microcosm of the new China. Look a little closer and you’ll find the landfill that receives 600  truckloads of garbage a day. The piles grow ever higher and rot in the coastal sunshine. But even this refuse is now generating serious income.”

Yes, the more degradation to our Earth, the more money there is to be made by the wealthy few. This is what the plutocracy, inclusive of the Rockefellers, describes as climate wealth. The climate wealth plutocracy is funding the world’s token climate movement and utilizing, through manipulation, the naïve, well-intentioned individuals to set in place the necessary climate legislation – they have essentially written themselves. There is a reason why the legislation is completely inadequate and focused on false solutions and commodification of Earth’s final remaining natural resources. And when the ‘protesters’ show up on Capitol Hill to ‘demand’ the solutions – already written and agreed upon by the wealthy elites, they just sit back and laugh. The joke is on us. And what a cruel joke it is: short-term comfort and sanctioned denial in exchange for the lives of our children.

1Sky Science is Grossly False

Today, 1Sky proclaims itself one of the largest national campaigns in the country, with support of 605 organizations, 200,932 advocates, 4,230 volunteer ‘Climate Precinct Captains’ covering more than 394 congressional districts in 50 states, and a team of 38 including 21 organizers in 26 states working to mobilize constituent support. 1Sky states that “the scientific bottom line is that we need to cut carbon at least 25% by 2020 and at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It’s what is necessary, and what is right.”  This statement is grossly false. The carbon budget presented by Hans Schellnhuber at the 4 Degrees & Beyond Conference in September 2009 stated that the high emitters including the US and Australia will have used up their entire carbon budget by 2019. At the time this budget was created it was stated that even if this target was achieved, it only gives the world a 67% chance at staying under a lethal 2C. When Schellnhuber briefed US President Obama on the fact that the US and friends have only years to reach zero carbon – just for the world to avoid a deadly global 2C – Obama chided Schellnhuber stating that this imperative was not grounded in ‘political reality’. Unfortunately for humanity, nature is not concerned with our political realities in the slightest and will not compromise. Keep in mind that today, at under 1C, we are advised by James Hansen that we have no cushion left. A recent study in 2010 discovered that even though the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) was approximately 19ºC warmer than today, CO2 levels were only slightly higher than they are today.

Institutions such as 1Sky, many whom present themselves as grassroots, while labelled as ‘non-profit’ are manufactured and funded to serve the system and create a false pretext of dissent. And as long as such organizations refuse to focus on and examine the fundamental relationship between green capitalist logic and ecological disaster, they simply serve as nails in the coffin of humanity and nothing more than brilliantly executed distractions that allow us to embrace the comfort of denial. Yet one things remains certain – better is not better when better means dead.

Step it Up

In January 2007, Bill McKibben launched ‘Step It Up’, a national campaign calling on the US Congress to cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050. ‘Step It Up 2: Who’s a Leader?’ sent 14,000 messages to members of Congress to urge them to be ‘real leaders’ on climate change. Presidential candidates including John Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, and Senators Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton attended Step It Up events and issued statements of support for the campaign’s goals.

Step it Up Morphs into 1Sky

1Sky is registered to John Fogerty, 1Sky executive director and director of the New Energy Economy.

James Gustave Speth is director of 1Sky, trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, trustee of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Director of World Resources Institute as well as holding many other esteemed positions.

Jessica Bailey, integral to the creation of 1Sky, is the Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brother Fund’s Sustainable Development program, where she focuses on climate change. Bailey also serves on the board of directors for 1Sky.

1Sky states it emerged from 3 retreats which took place in 2007. The first was said to have taken place in April of 2007 at the Garrison Institute. Funding of 10,000.00 was provided by the Rockefeller’s Brothers Fund.

The BIG ASK Climate Retreat was held from 11-13 July 2007. The programs relevance was promoted as sustainable development for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.

‘Leaders’ from across the climate movement joined with experts in the field of communications, branding, online organizing, and messaging to turn an idea into a campaign. Putting the pieces in place to spark this movement was the mandate for a meeting at Rockefeller Pocantico Centre. At this meeting, a presentation by Brand Taxi led to the selection of a name for the campaign: 1Sky. Presentations by the founders of Facebook.org and meetup.org helped refine an online organizing strategy. Conversations about communications strategy flowed from a presentation by J. Walter Thompson (JWT). Detailed discussions about the heart of the campaign – the policy platform around which it would be hubbed – led to the finalization of the ‘big ask.’ JWT is one of the largest advertising agencies in the United States and the fourth-biggest in the world. JWT Clients include the richest and most powerful corporations such as Shell. Finally, “the magic of Pocantico helped assure that each participant in the meeting became a partner in the campaign”. The 1Sky communications strategy was created by Fenton Communications, the nation’s ‘foremost media/communications firm’ for the non-profit industrial complex.

From 1 Sky’s 1st Annual Report: 2007-2008:

“We still have a long way to go, but we are very proud of our early achievements. Those accomplishments stem from the dedication and hard work of many leaders. The initial gathering in April 2007 and two subsequent retreats, the early strategic plan, the 1Sky Solutions, the early investments and the day-to-day efforts that launched 1Sky were executed by several people, but above all by KC Golden of Climate Solutions [K.C. Golden is Policy Director for Climate Solutions, a research and advocacy organization pioneering practical and profitable solutions to global warming], Jessica Bailey of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, John Fogarty of New Energy Economy and myself [Betsy Taylor – President of Board of Directors- Taylor is also founder of Center for a New American Dream] . Others who played absolutely essential roles include Jamie Henn, May Boeve, Will Bates and Bill McKibben of Step It Up/350, Bracken Hendricks of Center for American Progress, Van Jones of Green For All, film producer Marshall Herskovitz, Steve Smith of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Jessy Tolkan and Billy Parish of Energy Action Coalition, Eli Lee of Center for Civic Policy, Sarah Jaynes of Washington Progress Alliance, Jonathan Rose of the Garrison Institute, Kelly Gallagher of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs, Greg Haegele of Sierra Club, Larry Schweiger and Jeremy Symons of National Wildlife Federation, Bill Becker of Presidential Climate Action Project, Emily Figdor of Environment America, Rev. Sally Bingham of The Regeneration Project, Kevin Knobloch of Union of Concerned Scientists, Mike Tidwell of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Michael Noble of Fresh Energy, Harriet Barlow of HKH Foundation, Jesse Fink of MissionPoint Capital, Jon Isham of Middlebury College, Pam Johnson, and Robert Gass, facilitator and retreat designer par excellence. John Grace and Arthur Congdon of Brand Taxi, Inc. donated time and effort to create our name and brand. Garrison Institute donated staff and board time to help support two retreats. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund supported our second gathering at the Pocantico Conference Center and provided us with a bold early investment that leveraged grants from other key donors. The Clinton Global Initiative and Power Shift 2007 helped put us on the map, and EchoDitto donated time to help launch our interactive website. When we hired Gillian Caldwell as Campaign Director in September 2007, things rapidly accelerated forward. Indeed, the growth trajectory of this campaign has been breathtaking.”

In August of 2007, an article titled ‘Bill McKibben: Creating the World’s Biggest Grassroots Movement’ was published by Grist. (McKibben also serves on Grist’s Board of Directors). McKibben states: “In April, at 1400 iconic places across the nation, we made history and united around a common call to action. Then in November we came together under 1 Sky to present our leaders with the climate solutions that science and justice demand. Now it’s up to all of us keep this movement moving.” Bill exclaims:“When they get there, organizers will present them with the platform drawn up over the summer by One Sky, a new coalition of climate campaigners from around the country.”

The 1Sky donors list is massive. One donor, the Wallace Fund refer to 1Sky as the 1Sky Campaign/Rockefeller Family Fund. Sponsors during the first year of operations included the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Garrison Institute, and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. Monies from foundations and corporations for the first year totaled $1,973,381 while ‘individuals’ contributed $374,450.

In early 2008 climate code red authors David Spratt and Philip Sutton, asked direct questions on why the most pertinent information regarding climate change was not being shared with the public. In response to the questions raised, a comment suggests: “It’s time to ask: what if the “big ask” is actually B.S.?”

McKibben was not creating the ‘World’s Biggest Grassroots Movement’, he was in fact creating the world’s most heavily funded token movement tightly controlled by world’s most powerful ruling classes. This was a movement bought and paid for by the plutocrats for the peasants. 1Sky and all of the other interconnected heavily funded organizations are little more than convenient messengers for the ruling classes who continue to excel in ensuring ‘all the ducks are in a row’. Nothing is left to chance. Big Greens are a mere business expense in building up the empire. Further, they are a tax write-off.

Access to immense funding, the ruling classes and corporate media will ensure your message gets heard.

At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton announced the 1Sky campaign. Clinton personally congratulated the 1Sky campaign’s commitment to accelerate bold federal policy on global warming. Rockefeller Brothers Fund President Stephen Heintz; Betsy Taylor, 1Sky Chair; and Jesse Fink, Mission Point Capital Partners, joined President Clinton on stage in recognition of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund commitment to 1Sky. The Rockefeller family contributed at minimum 1-5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

http://youtu.be/_3PVGLseoGE

It’s common sense to understand that ‘government leaders’ are not going to feel pressured or threatened, no matter how many people show up on their doorstep, when the ‘platform’ McKibben speaks of is one that the very government with the ruling classes devised themselves and funded.

1Sky Year Two | 2008-2009

The National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions

“Whether you believe in climate change or not, it doesn’t matter. If your goal is profitability, you’ll act as if you do.” – Promotion of the book Climate Capitalism by Hunter Lovins

On 31 January 2008 in an event titled “Focus the Nation” and 9 February 2009 in an event titled “Solutions for the First 100 Days”, 1Sky organized national days of engagement, involving over 2500 educational institutions and a million Americans. In 2009 the ‘National Teach-In’ was comprised of four opportunities to ‘engage your school or community in critical climate dialogue’. The second opportunity held on October 22, 2009 was a 350 teach-in which promoted a one hundred year global goal: stopping global warming. The advisory board for the National Teach-In included Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capitalism Solutions, Gillian Caldwell, 1Sky Campaign Director, Billy Parish, co-founder of the Energy Action Coalition, Jessy Tolkan, Executive Director of Programs for Rockefeller funded Energy Action Coalition. Billy Parish is also on the board of directors of 1Sky as well as having integral involvement in Its Getting Hot In Here. In April of 2011, Lovins launched her new book; Climate Capitalism – Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change. Carbon War Room acclaimed: “Climate Capitalism is a must-read for entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts, and corporations interested in capitalizing on the greatest wealth-creation opportunity of our lifetime…”

On 3 April 2008 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Awarded $1 Million to 1Sky. The total take from foundations and corporations reached $3,061,500 (89.5%) with ‘individuals’ totaling $246,707.60 (7%). On page 6 of the 1Sky 2nd annual report it features a photo of McKibben. Under the photo caption it states: “350/1Skys Bill McKibben”. Also in the report: “350.org and 1 Sky have been close partners ever since our common origins in the Step it Up Days of action in 2007. On November 18th 2008, 1 Sky and 350.org partner with the Energy Action Coalition to recruit over 4,000 grassroots activists.”

Most all of these groups and names listed thus far are signatories, if not playing influential roles within the Presidential Climate Action Plan Institution. A Rockefeller project. This is just a taste in a massive web of compromise, deceit, delusion and manipulation. The advisory committee of this influential Rockefeller project looks somewhat more progressive than the typical elite climate projects of the past. This is no accident. In order to have maximum effect, it is critical that these groups have credible, high-profile individuals who have demonstrated in the past they have the ability to engage citizens. Such individuals successfully help the project deflect criticism and minimize skepticism. One of the most corporate and compromised big green of all, NRDC, is featured on the front page of the PCAP website. Bill Becker, the Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project was integral in the creation of 1Sky.

We can be absolutely certain of one thing. If we do have a revolution, a war time mobilization if you will to avert the climate crisis, not only will it not be televised but you can bet your life that it certainly isn’t going to be funded by the elites in the ruling classes, the Rockefellers of the world. They are anything but stupid. They are not about to fund the crucial changes that will enable us to shift the paradigm, rather, they are controlling the entire movement, ensuring the imperative changes, that threaten their very existence, will never occur. We are allowed to participate only in the illusion of real change. Citizens can be manipulated to believe they’re doing their part and have a voice in shaping such a revolutionary change. That’s why the plutocracy initiates it. However, the shape has already been formed – it is the shape of a big S with a line through it and it looks like this: $

From the article Can the climate bill’s death help build a living climate movement? The Rising can defeat the pirates of the new age written by Gary Lipow 7 Aug 2010: “In 2009, 1Sky celebrated the Waxman-Markey’s passage along with Greenpeace. Greenpeace nominally opposed the Waxman Markey bill initially yet remained and remains a member of 1Sky. It is believed that an ‘updated’ analysis of the Waxman Markey bill was posted the 1Sky website only after receiving much criticism and not on 6/4/09 as 1Sky claimed. If we do accept that the 1Sky analysis existed beforehand, then why were the deficiencies not made clear to 1Sky supporters? 1Sky claimed the proposed changes would ‘strengthen’ the bill while admitting that the reductions the bill would deliver would only be 28% emission reductions by 2020, with a 2005 baseline opposed to 1990.” Perhaps such riddles can be explained by the fact that the CEOs of the top ten green groups in the US rake in from $308,000 to $496,000 per year. (Remember that the next time they call you for a donation, needed to push corporate hand-out suicide pacts, passed off as “win-win” legislation.)

Other members of 1Sky read like a who’s who of Rockefeller grantees including the Rainforest Action Network who has been under attack by the real grassroots climate justice groups for their involvement in the selling out of the Boreal Rainforest with other ENGOs such as Greenpeace. The public was also left in the dark while the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) was negotiated in secret between nine environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and 21 forestry companies. Indigenous governments and organizations were left out of the creation of the CBFA agreement. Most recently, Sandra Odendahl of Royal Bank Canada (RBC), finished giving a whirlwind tour of Trinidad where she proclaimed that the RBC agreement with RAN allows her to unveil investment plans for RBC in the country of Trinidad, thanks to the deal they obtained “in the oil sands”. RAN and others paved the way for this.

Do we really believe that the Clintons and the Rockefeller family had a whole Earth economy concept in mind when they pushed the 1Sky agenda forward? Do we really believe that elites had a vision to commence the deconstruction of the existing system and initiate a transition towards building an alternative system which would redistribute the wealth equally amongst citizens of the world? Do we believe the plutocrats would seek, let alone willingly abandon, dismantlement of the capitalist system which has brought our species to the precipice of self-annihilation. Do we believe the wealthy elites would celebrate and embrace the self-determination struggles of the planets citizens and indigenous peoples for their economic, social and cultural liberation? If we truly want to save some resemblance of a livable planet for our children, we must confront and reject the non-profit industrial complex, who in reality, cannot and will not bite the hand which feeds them – the hand upon which they depend, in order to continue to exist.

A People’s History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

April 20^th, 2011 will mark the 97 year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre resulted in the violent deaths of 19 people including 2 women and 11children were asphyxiated and burned to death during an attack on 1,200 striking coal miners. One of the 3 largest companies involved was the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. Howard Zinn has described the Ludlow Massacre as “the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”.

Training the Puppets
Art of Leadership Retreat

1Sky bourgeoisie attended the Art of Leadership retreat workshop for social change leaders from the nonprofit, philanthropic, labor and ‘socially responsible’ business sectors facilitated by Robert Gass, facilitator and retreat designer par excellence. Each participant receives a “360-degree” performance evaluation to clarify areas for skills development. In the Art of Leadership, professional trainers deliver a curriculum that provides leaders with (a) clarity of vision in their work; (b) partnership skills, including listening, speaking, conflict resolution and negotiation; (c) “personal mastery” and emotional intelligence skills; (d) teamwork development skills; and (e) performance skills.  What to expect?  A four-day intensive residential seminar led by nationally recognized facilitators and held in a beautiful retreat setting.

1Sky also partnered with NYPIRG.

The 1Sky and 350.org PIRG Connection

350.org is registered by Sustainable Markets Foundation (SMF). Who is on the SMF Board of Directors?  Of three board members cited, one name is listed. Her name is Elizabeth Hitchcock. Hitchcock is public health advocate for US PIRG and the US PIRG Education Fund. Hitchcock researches and conducts advocacy campaigns. Prior to becoming public health advocate, she served for eleven years as the Communications Director for US PIRG, working with the program and field staffs of the state PIRGs to release reports to the national and local media. Prior to joining the US PIRG staff in 1990, she worked on a number of environmental campaigns with PIRGs in Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, and Florida.

The 350.org domain belongs to that of a Jay R. Halfon. An associate of Rockefeller, Jay R. Halfon is also listed as the executive and Director & General Counsel of Sustainable Markets Foundation.

Halfon was executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), with over 25 offices throughout New York State, for a decade ending in 1997.

Halfon is a practicing attorney specializing in the law of tax exempt organizations and a public policy strategist. He represents tax-exempt organizations, including public charities, private foundations, advocacy groups and political entities. From May 1998 to December 2001 Mr. Halfon served as executive director and general counsel of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. He has a broad range of experience influencing public policy in both Congress and state legislatures. He is the director of Earthworks and former Director of TechRocks. TechRocks came into play from the merged operations of the Rockefeller Technology Project and Desktop Assistance.

The US Public Interest Research Group known as PIRG is a political lobby non-profit organization. The first PIRG was a public interest law firm started by Ralph Nader in Washington, D.C. and was far different from the modern conception of PIRG. The State PIRGs emerged in the early 1970s on college campuses across the country. After students organized on college campuses for nearly 10 years, the different State PIRGs established the D.C. arm, the US PIRG, to advocate for change on the national level. Nearly simultaneously, the PIRGs founded the Fund For Public Interest Research (FFPIR), the fundraising and citizen outreach arm of the PIRGs. Since the early 1990s, the fund has also canvassed for other groups, working very closely with the big green Sierra Club, and many others institutions within the non-profit industrial complex.

In the book Activism, Inc: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher, Fisher writes that the outsourcing of grassroots organizing by groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace to organizations like the Fund has led to the decay of grassroots infrastructure and opportunities for involvement on the left. In response to the criticisms by Fisher and others, the PIRG Fund created a website, Canvassing Works. The site includes testimony by former fund staff who have moved into leading roles in other institutions within the non-profit industrial complex and testimony of big greens within the elitist circles, such as Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network.

PIRG also receives Rockefeller foundation money while at the same time stating that they avoid any funding directly from corporations, stating that such funding would restrict their autonomy. No one is in a better position to tap into and influence the impressionable youth across North America than that of PIRG.

1Sky Steps it Up | 350.org

14 April 2008: In the same post where ‘Step It Up’ announces they have helped form 1Sky, 350.org is announced: “Meanwhile, the science around climate change has continued to darken. We all watched the Arctic melt last summer, and an ice shelf the size of Connecticut crumple in the southern ocean this winter. James Hansen, our foremost climatologist, has just issued the most important scientific assessment of global warming in many years, which you can read here. Basically, it calls for limiting carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to below 350 parts per million. In fact, Hansen says: “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. Therefore, our organizing team is launching a new venture: 350.org. The final website won’t be ready for a few weeks, but since you’re family we’re letting you know now. In fact, we hope very much that you’ll visit the preliminary website that we’ve set up and start figuring out how to help.

On 15 April 2008 Bill McKibben writes: “Don’t let it distract you from pressuring your Senator or from working with 1Sky — that remains crucial. In fact, think of us as the global arm of 1Sky. We just need this commitment to international action to be another part of your hard work on climate change. You can’t believe how encouraged people in other parts of the world are to find that Americans are working on these questions — it breaks down their sense that our country has turned its back on the rest of the world.”

In another article published 15 April 2008 McKibben ends with: “P.S. Some people have asked us if they can help financially in this new effort. The answer, of course, is yes — we could really use the money to hire organizers all around the globe. Some people, in fact, are committing to sending us $350 from the ‘economic stimulus’ checks the government is mailing out. You can donate online at http://www.350.org/donate but if you’d rather mail a check make it out to the Sustainable Markets Foundation. Sustainable Markets Foundation is the official name used (sometimes hyphenated with 350.org) for registering events with the United Nations climate talks.  The 2007 990 tax filing shows total revenue as $2099699, fundraising as zero, total expenses as $1250902, and $1118006 in net assets.

350.org is Registered to Sustainable Markets Foundation.
c/o Sustainable Markets Foundation
Attn Jay R. Halfon
80 Broad St., Ste. 1600
New York, NY 10004

A fiscal sponsor must be a non-profit and must have a mission that aligns with the project or organization being incubated. This is an IRS requirement. There are complexities to such an agreement. Fiscal sponsorship is more than a “money conduit” role, as the sponsor’s board assumes significant responsibility for the managed project. While day-to-day program management is handled by the incubating organization or project, the sponsor accepts both legal and financial liability for that group’s activities in addition to funds management.

350.org’s symbolic 10:10:10 campaign was funded by Global Greengrants Fund (GGF), a pro-REDD entity which works with, and receives funding from, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. GGF states: “Our advisers and partners are currently focusing on REDD and REDD+ efforts around climate mitigation. REDD stands for ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and (forest) Degradation’. It is one of the areas of discussion at COP15 where some believe the most positive movement was made.” Yet, Indigenous groups across the world continue their struggle in opposition of REDD which aims to commodify the worlds remaining forests.

McKibben and 350.org events also promote biochar, yet another false solution opposed by grassroots climate justice groups all over the world.

To date, McKibben/350.org refuse to endorse or promote The People’s Agreement, agreed upon during the World’s People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth on April 22nd, 2010, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The People’s Agreement is the first agreement, democratically written by global civil society, to uphold substantive positions on a range of policies, as well as demanding the necessary targets based on the realities nature and climate science demand.

In contrast, McKibben continues to highlight the 350.org campaign which claims to include over 100 of the most vulnerable countries signed onto the 350 ppm target, which 350.org presented in Copenhagen (COP15). Yet, privately, McKibben states, “The list of countries changes all the time, but I think this is the latest. It’s long – the trouble is, it only represents about 7% of total global emissions, Hence not much political power. Hence, much more work to do.” This statement is powerful. McKibben clearly equates the amount of emissions produced to the amount of political power one has. This statement that McKibben provides exemplifies why the current system is grossly unjust; yet he neither acknowledges nor attempts to critically analyze the meaning behind his own words. A global economic system, where over 100 countries represent a mere 7% of all global emissions, is a failed and unjust system. McKibben is clear: the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting states have no power – no matter how many they number. The major greenhouse gas-emitting, obstructionist states retain all power. In this capitalist system, the more destruction achieved, the more monetary wealth accumulates – money being the mechanism and the epitome of power. McKibben as much admits the capitalist system is blocking all progress – yet this is the very system he protects or otherwise condones – at all costs.

Manipulating the Well-Intentioned Youth | Power Shift

As with PIRG the Energy Action Coalition taps into youth across the US and  Canada. The work of Energy Action is focused on four strategic areas: campuses, communities, corporate practices, and politics.  It is part of the Global Youth Climate Movement. The Energy Action Coalition was founded in June 2004 at a meeting of representatives from almost 20 ENGOs in Washington, D.C.

In the fall of 2007, Step It Up partnered with Power Shift 2007. The first national youth climate conference, Power Shift ’07, took place from November 2 to 5, 2007 with between 5,000 and 6,000 students and young people in attendance. The aim of the conference was to: “urge elected officials to pass legislation which would include three planks taken from the platform of the climate advocacy coalition 1Sky.” Keynote speakers included Bill McKibben, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

PowerVote

In 2008 Powervote was a featured project of Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative, and hosted Al Gore in a live nationwide webcast. Over 350,000 young people got involved in the movement as climate voters and ‘new leaders’.

Power Shift 2009

Energy Action held a second national youth climate summit, Power Shift 2009 which took place February 27 through March 2, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The event drew over 12,000 student and youth climate activists, representing all 50 U.S. states, all Canadian provinces, and 13 other nations including Brazil, Austria, the United Kingdom. The goal of the conference was to “push the Obama administration and Congress to pass ‘bold, comprehensive, and just national climate legislation’ before entering international climate negotiations in December 2009.

Power Shift 2009 turns Orwellian

Meeting with key strategic members in Congress, these young activists were told that congress was ready to start promoting the essential legislation to achieve the just energy future we all deserve. The youth were told Power Shift needed a mobilization (they specifically asked for an “army”) on the ground spreading the word and gaining support. So, at Power Shift ’09 they gathered in record numbers, 12,000 plus, to demonstrate that the youth climate movement is that “army.” Power Shift claims the 2009 conference was the largest gathering of young people to solve the climate crisis in history. The Power Shift ’09 summer campaign seized the momentum from the conference and worked to organize the “army,” behind a highly strategized and unified national effort to pass climate and energy policy in 2009. During fall of 2009 there were 11 regional Power Shifts. Power Shift states: “There couldn’t have been a more important time for these summits; the Senate was working on a much needed climate and energy bill and President Obama needed such legislation to head to the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen with the tools necessary to lead the world toward a ‘fair, ambitious & binding global treaty’.”  If this slogan sounds familiar … “A Fair, ambitious & binding global treaty” … it should.  It is the infamous corporate TckTckTck slogan which demands essentially nothing.

The critical questions we must ask ourselves are these: With access and opportunity to thousands of students, why were students not educated on the what the real climate targets are that must be achieved, and the fact that nature does not compromise regardless of our politics? Why were students not educated on false solutions? Why were students not made to understand the fact that the cost of the emergency measures that we must undertake, at break-neck speed, requires a non-negotiable diversion of the trillions of dollars from global military expenditures to environmental mitigation? Why did they not use their ‘army’ to demand real targets reflective of reality and climate science as opposed to grossly inadequate, watered down legislation?

‘It’s Getting Hot in Here’ (I’ll say)

“There is no doubt that the Capitalist class will blast and Burn this world before it leaves the stage of history. But it is we the workers who built these palaces and cities, who toiled the fields and worked the factories, and we can build them again, better than before. We are not afraid of ruins” – Buenaventura Durruti

The McKibben article titled Step It Up, Power Shift, and 1 Sky: A United Movement was featured on the website It’s Getting Hot in Here. It’s getting Hot in Here is registered to the ‘Energy Action Coalition’ (EAC) under the registrants name of Danny Marx. EAC states it is comprised of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice organizations including ‘Earth Day’, most noted recently for their repulsive climate wealth dinner event in 2010. Danny Marx is also the managing editor on Powershift09.org. Powershift is a project of the EAC. The team for It’s Getting Hot in Here is comprised of the following people; Matt Leonard ( RAN, TckTckTck climate insider, Greenpeace), Richard Graves (TckTckTck climate insider, online campaigner for the Global Campaign for Climate Action – A.K.A TckTckTck), Scott Parkin from RAN, Jamie Henn (co-coordinator of 350.org), Morgan Goodwin (TckTckTck climate insider, Avaaz), Juliana Williams (co-founder of the Cascade Climate Network) and Zoë Caron (TckTckTck climate insider, Board of Directors of Sierra Club Canada, founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and climate policy and advocacy specialist for World Wildlife Fund Canada). The late Godfrey Rockefeller was a founder of WWF and a former executive director.

Confused? That’s o.k. – you’re supposed to be. And remember, this is just a tip of the iceberg.

Not to worry, on 2 March 2011, 350.org partner, the Havas created corporate lovechild tcktcktck announced “today you can change the Fate of the world for only $9.99!” In the eyes of TckTckTck, the fate of the world has literally been reduced to a cheap video game.

Like the Ku Klux Klan did not fund the civil rights movement, like the right-wing Christian fundamentalists did not fund the movement for gay rights, like the big oil Harper Government (formerly known as the Canadian government) is not going to fund the movement to abolish fossil fuels, the plutocracy is not about to fund any movement whose actions would could actually serve to deconstruct the current economic system, destroying the elites power to dominate and control.

Civil Society.  Manipulation.  Till death do we part.

As Jacque Fresco states unequivocally: “This shit has got to go.”

End.

Image: www.radicalgraphics.org

Cory Morningstar is climate justice activist whose recent writings can be found on Canadians for Action on Climate Change and The Art of Annihilation site where you can read her bio. You can follow her on Twitter: @elleprovocateur

References
[1] The Climate Group: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund also acts as an incubator for in-house projects that later evolve into free-standing institutions – a case in point being ‘The Climate Group’, launched in London in 2004.  The Climate Group coalition includes more than 50 of the world’s largest corporations and sub-national governments, including big polluters such as energy giants BP and Duke Energy, as well as several partner organizations, one being that of the big NGO Avaaz. The Climate Group are advocates unproven carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), nuclear power and biomass as crucial technologies for a low-carbon economy. The Climate Group works closely with other business lobby groups, including the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which works consistently to sabotage climate action. The Climate Group also works on other initiatives, one being that of the ‘Voluntary Carbon Standard’, a new global standard for voluntary offset projects. One marketing strategist company labeled the Climate Group’s campaign ‘Together’ as “the best inoculation against greenwash”. The Climate Group has operations in Australia, China, Europe, India, and North America.  It was a partner to the ‘Copenhagen Climate Council’.

[2] There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports. (Global Research)

[3] On February 22, 2011, in a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court granted pharmaceutical companies complete liability protection from vaccine injuries and deaths caused from government mandated vaccines. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/7886018/no_pharma_liability.html?cat=25

Critical questions to ask before supporting any environmental organization to determine if they are the right people to represent your goals (suggested by the New York Climate Action Group):

·         What are their demands and what clear steps are they proposing to obtain them?
·         Do their actions match their purported goals?
·         What are their measures for quantifying any “realistic” effective compromise they have/would accept short of obtaining their goals?
·         Do they state consequences for all politicians responsible (not just the Republicans) for failure to work for what’s necessary effectively?
·         Do they take money from corporations or corporate-funded foundations?

When Silence Kills | The Art of Annihilation

Published November 8, 2010 | Huntington News: http://bit.ly/d0OEOd | | http://bit.ly/bVUXif

As we stand on the edge of apocalypse, we must wake up and acknowledge that what the big greens are not saying is far more important than what they are saying.

From the Non-Profit Industrial Complex with Love. Excerpts from a controversial new book to be released 2010-2011. This article – When Silence Kills | The Art of Annihilation –is thethird in a series in which we continue to discuss the connection between environmental campaigns and their corporate sponsors.

When Silence Kills | The Art of Annihilation

By Cory Morningstar

 

“The evidence that large-scale climate change is unavoidable has now become so strong that healthy illusion is becoming unhealthy delusion. Hoping that a major disruption to the Earth’s climate can be avoided is a delusion. Optimism sustained against the facts, including unfounded beliefs in the power of consumer action or in technological rescue, risks turning hopes into fantasies. Sooner or later the constant striving to control events must come up against reality. How long will it be before well-meaning people who have accepted the message of green consumerism – that we can all make a difference by changing our personal behavior – begin to say to themselves, ‘I have been doing the right things for years, but the news about global warming just keeps getting worse?’ Clinging to hopefulness becomes a means of forestalling the truth.” – Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species

Criminal Negligence

What defines criminal negligence? In Canada, the criminal code states that lack of intent to harm is no defence if the damage results from conscious acts performed in careless disregard for others: “Everyone is criminally negligent who (a) in doing anything, or (b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons” (where “duty” means a duty imposed by law). Significantly, Section 222(5)(b) states that “a person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, he causes the death of a human being, by being negligent.”

In the United States, the definition of criminal negligence is even more compelling: “Crimes Committed Negligently (Article 33.1) A crime shall be deemed to be committed with clear intent, if the man or woman was conscious of the social danger of his actions (inaction), foresaw the possibility or the inevitability of the onset of socially dangerous consequences, and willed such consequences to ensue.” “A crime shall be deemed to be committed with indirect intent, if the man or woman realized the social danger of his actions (inaction), foresaw the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences, did not wish, but consciously allowed these consequences or treated them with indifference.” “A Crime Committed by Negligence (Article 33.1): A criminal deed committed thoughtlessly or due to negligence shall be recognized as a crime committed by negligence.” “A crime shall be deemed to be committed thoughtlessly, if the man or woman has foreseen the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences of his actions (inaction), but expected without valid reasons that these consequences would be prevented.” “A crime shall be deemed to be committed due to negligence if the man or woman has not foreseen the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences of his actions (inaction), although he or she could and should have foreseen these consequences with reasonable.”

A Moral Minefield – RINGOS

Why is it that well informed international environmental NGOs who claim to represent the best interests of civil society are not accusing the climate skeptics, the big investment banks and the fossil fuel energy corporations of high crimes against humanity? Is it because they fear that their funding from wealthy friends such as the Rockefellers will decline?

Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke March 19, 2010 at Innovative Philanthropy for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing: “In this second phase of philanthropic innovation, our Rockefeller Foundation predecessors helped establish the non-governmental organization sector as the ‘missing middle’ between giving and direct impact. This included support for entities – we call them RINGOS, Rockefeller Foundation Initiated NGOs.”

The concept of philanthropy was first embraced in the days of 19th century American robber barons. As the monetary wealth of these robber barons grew to astronomical levels, so did the anger of the working classes. Philanthropy was the answer to this problem, resulting in the end of public hostility and the acceptance of obscene individual wealth. And how we have evolved. Today, the CEOs of the top ten green groups in the U.S. rake in from $308,000 to $496,000 per year. (Remember that the next time they call you for a donation, needed to push corporate hand-out suicide pacts, passed off as “win-win” legislation.)

Meanwhile, the Global Humanitarian Forum reported in 2009 that every year, climate change leaves over 300,000 people dead and exacts economic losses of US$125 billion. Four billion people are vulnerable, and 500 million people are at extreme risk. An estimated 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change every year. This estimate is derived by attributing a 40 percent proportion of the increase in the number of weather-related disasters from 1980 to current climate change and a 4 percent proportion of the total seriously affected by environmental degradation based on negative health outcomes.

Sandy Gauntlett, Oceania focal point for the Global Forest Coalition, is amazed that no one has yet charged large corporations with negligent homicide as a result of their actions in deforestation. Gauntlett states: “When we look at the amount of climate gases resulting from deforestation alone, we see enough emissions created by some countries to account for the level of unprecedented climate catastrophes occurring around the planet.” He adds: “Even worse than the actions of the corporate criminals responsible for the rise in climate emissions, at least morally, are the actions of some of the large environmental NGOs. These NGOs, who made their names and reputations as defenders of the victims of environmental abuse, now seem to be courting the corporate lobby in the belief that within these actions lies the solution to all of the problems of the world created by the corporate lobby. These are the people to whom we have given our voices, our monies and our mandate. To think that they are prepared to even consider working with the creators of this devastation is like being stabbed in the back by an old friend.”

Gauntlett continues: “Even more so we, as Pacific Indigenous Peoples, ask that when they call for your donation, you remember the small island states who, 10 years ago, asked for urgent action by the rest of the world, pointing out that their (the industrialized world’s) growth was resulting in coral bleaching, flooding, and salination of the fresh water supplies without which the islands face a grim and very uncertain future. Several years ago, when French nuclear testing in the Pacific seemed at least partially responsible for contamination and health problems on small Pacific atolls, the Rainbow Warrior sailed out and relocated people from the most threatened islands. The world cheered these environmental heroes and all of us gave monies, time and energy to support Greenpeace and other organizations who were daring to take on the might of the developed world in defense of the small islands. So impactful was the campaign by Greenpeace at the time that the French Government sent saboteurs and spies into the harbour of a political ally to sink the flagship of the organization. A photographer paid for denying the French with his life. The scuttled ship was towed to Matauri Bay at the beaches of local Maori and sunk there as a permanent memorial to those horrible days. It is an incident I remember well as I had been on the ship only the day before. I later went on to work at Greenpeace as a fundraiser and believed passionately in their mission statement and campaigns.”

Gauntlett’s final words on this subject demonstrate a growing sentiment across the globe: “Amazingly, times change and the once proud and anti-market campaigners of Greenpeace seem to (like myself really) have grown old and tired of banging heads against brick walls, and with regret, I have decided to never again give money to or support Greenpeace while I am uncertain of the level of cooperation between them and the industrial lobby. After more than 30 years of environmental action and support, it is time that I took back my mandate and gave it instead to organisations that I trust with the same amount of certainty I once did with Greenpeace. They are certainly not alone and probably far from being the worst, but this is the country where the Rainbow Warrior lies as a memorial to defiance.”

The Ethics Resource Center’s 2007 National Nonprofit Ethics Survey reports troubling observations. The report states that conduct that violates the law or an organization’s standards is on the rise, and nonprofit violations have reached levels comparable to business and government. It observes that financial fraud is higher in nonprofit organizations than it is in business or government and furthermore, the boards, while critical in shaping the perceptions of employees with regard to ethics, are not setting clear ethics standards for their organizations. Where boards have heavy influence, we also see high levels of misconduct. In conclusion they state: “The recent erosion of ethical behavior in this sector is very troubling, and the trend cannot be allowed to continue.”

Runaway Climate Change

Leading climate expert James Hansen (among many other scientists from several disciplines) believes that methane clathrates (or hydrates) played a crucial role in the largest mass extinction, the “end-Permian” event 251 million years ago, in which more than 90 percent of terrestrial and marine species were exterminated. Methane clathrate is frozen methane gas that lies on ocean floor sediment off the continental coasts of our planet. Since 1992 it has been recognized that the shallow Arctic methane clathrates would be subject to melting by global warming, releasing methane gas into the atmosphere (U.S. Geological Survey Marine and Coastal Geology Program, Gas (Methane) Hydrates – A New Frontier, September 1992).

The end-Permian event was accompanied by a temperature rise of as little as 6ºC. Life took 50 million years to recover the diversity that had existed prior to the mass extinction. It is considered that methane clathrates may also have played a role in other mass extinctions, such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 55 million years ago. Hansen warns that humanity is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today at a rate that is 10,000 times higher than the rate during the PETM.

In Hansen’s recent book, according to the penultimate chapter, The Venus Syndrome, it might be even worse. Hansen posits a possible future Earth in which a “runaway greenhouse effect” takes over: anthropogenic global warming from greenhouse gases causes a massive increase of water vapor into the atmosphere as the heated oceans evaporate, which in turn causes further warming. Today, the Arctic methane clathrate deposits are destabilizing, and if not re-stabilized will release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere and add more acid to our oceans. The oceans will then become more acidified by dissolution of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This scenario would end all life on Earth. Today, the rate of ocean acidification exceeds anything witnessed in the past 65 million years.

Tragically, the Arctic summer sea ice has now passed its tipping point to melt down – the Arctic has finally shifted to a new climate pattern in which “normal” has become obsolete (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 21 October 2010). A recent study (funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council in Canada, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the European Research Council) shows that even though during the Pliocene Epoch (2.6 to 5.3 million years ago) it was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit, or 19 degrees Celsius, warmer than today, CO2 levels were only slightly higher than present. According to another study by David Lawrence, this means that the rate of permafrost thaw will likely triple. No Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPPC) climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. Leading scientist Shakhova and colleagues estimate that roughly eight million tons of methane are now leaking into the atmosphere each year from the East Siberia Sea. As previously stated, studies suggest that the destabilization of methane clathrates likely triggered the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum that saw global temperatures rise by around 6°C (over 20,000 years as opposed to what we are experiencing / causing over 200 years) with a corresponding rise in sea level as the whole of the oceans warmed. The rate of carbon addition at that time almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today.

“My view is that the climate has already crossed at least one tipping point, about 1975-1976, and is now at a runaway state, implying that only emergency measures have a chance of making a difference…” “The costs of all of the above would require diversion of the trillions of dollars from global military expenditures to environmental mitigation.” – Andrew Glikson, Earth/Paleo-climate scientist

Drinking the Kool-Aid

The model-based projections of the rate of future global warming take no account of the loss of the Arctic summer ice, nor of the methane emissions from thawing permafrost, nor of the methane emissions from the melting Arctic gas hydrates. It has been well known for a long time that these are by far the greatest dangers, all unavoidable with enough warming. To date, the world has agreed to being led (to the gallows) by the climate modellers. Yet, the models have already been proved to be sensationally wrong. Modellers are not climate experts, nor in life sciences, nor ecologists – the climate science leaders are complex math/computer modellers. The reliance on models has given the governments and compromised NGOs an excuse to do nothing.

As it is, the IPCC relies on models that exclude approximately half of the adverse climate change impacts on food crop production (two examples being heat waves and floods). Even so, the IPCCstates that the absolute limit for agriculture is a 3ºC global average warming (from pre-1900). Beyond a 3ºC temperature increase, we had best consider that agriculture would enter into an irreversible decline headed to collapse in all regions of the world, even when we use the dangerously incomplete models that attempt to give us a sense of what is coming down the pipe.

What do the big greens have to tell us about the alarming changes to our food crop production now being witnessed? Nothing. The big greens have been deadly silent. They continue to ignore the risks and the projections of global warming and climate disruption on our food security. We have to expect disastrous impacts on northern hemisphere agriculture resulting from the loss of the summer sea ice in the Arctic. If the Arctic summer sea ice is already in irreversible melt down, as many scientists now believe, the food security situation of the northern hemisphere is no better, and perhaps even worse, than that of the southern hemisphere.

Meanwhile in Canada, the Harper regime government has the propaganda machine working overtime, selling the lie of “Climate Prosperity” to Canadian citizens while planning to slip 16 billion of our tax dollars to his friends at Lockheed Martin for F-35 stealth fighter jets. Compare this to the four-year, $1.43-billion ecoEnergy program, introduced in 2007, which provided money to corporations for the development of false solutions passed off as new clean-energy technology. This program expires in 2011. The new budget (2010) offers a token $25 million for the next four years. Military budgets have steadily increased from $15 billion in 2005-2006, to $18 billion in 2008-2009, and this year $20.6 billion – representing one-fifth of the total government direct program spending on an annual basis. The 2010 budget is 56% higher than the 1998-99 budget. But why spend money on clean, safe renewable energies that will save lives when you can spend money that results in the extermination of men, women and children in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq? And why do anything to protect citizens from catastrophic climate change when you can unveil an outrageous greenwash campaign instead? For the Conservative government led by Stephen Bush Harper, this massive Suncor-sponsored campaign to reframe dangerous climate change as something positive for Canada’s economy and our children is just another example of the dangerous denialism that has slowly and effectively saturated the most critical issue of our time.

Denialism has proven to be almost as effective as Jonestown Kool-Aid. For many years, Western democracy has been considered and designed as governance by a process of negotiation and compromise between three partners: 1) governments 2) corporations, and 3) civil society (with the big greens at the forefront). In the case of our Earth, her inhabitants and climate, we must consider this nothing less than a three-way silent truce for global catastrophe.

“The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.” – H. L. Mencken,Chicago Tribune, 23 May 1926

Soma and the Big Greens | A Love Story

“The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream somawas passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, ‘I drink to my annihilation,’ twelve times quaffed.” – Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the soma routine was not a private addiction; it was nothing less than a political institution. Soma was the very essence of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness – all of which were guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. However, this most valued of the slaves’ subjects’ absolute privileges was, at the same time, by far the most powerful instrument of rule in the dictator’s arsenal. The systematic drugging of citizens for the benefit of the state (and incidentally, of course, for their own pleasure and amusement) was a main vice in the policy of the world controllers. Soma was invaluable. The daily soma ration was nothing less than insurance against personal maladjustment, social unrest and the spread of subversive ideas. [www.huxley.net] Sound familiar?

Where is the line that distinguishes the bystander from the perpetrator when atrocity becomes both systemic and political? Passive messaging and symbolic campaigns creatively and successfully do nothing less than deny the existence of universal truth and scientific knowledge. Such brilliant tactics effectively and subtly refute the crisis, thus enabling further denial discourse and behavior. If we do not challenge and successfully eradicate what has evolved into the universalizing of symbolism and hegemonic ideology of the big greens, indeed, we will be crushed by them. The evidence is upon us that climate change is now incontrovertible, as is the realization that this is by far the greatest catastrophe to ever confront our species.

One Sky – But Many Puppets

Truth and Deception

“We were warned repeatedly by highly paid consultants and well-funded studies that discussion of global warming or the climate crisis was unproductive. But we reject the either/or dichotomy, and maintain, as our founding 1Sky principles above suggest, that we must be clear about the planetary emergency we are facing….” – 1Sky Board of Directors (Jessica Bailey, KC Golden, Bracken Hendricks, Bill McKibben, Billy Parish, Vicky Rateau, Gus Speth and Betsy Taylor), 6 August 2010

The above is a key statement that supports the (non)meaning behind what climate justice activists have come to call “the big greens.” Organizations whose CEOs live fat cat lifestyles thanks to exorbitant paychecks that exceed those of state senators. The faux climate movement no longer reflects the reality we must all face – now or never. This is it. Pollyanna’s cheerleading days have officially expired and it is time to send her and her fellow cheerleaders packing. On August 6, 2010 the big greens state that we must be clear about the planetary emergency we are facing, yet, immediately following this statement, they call upon citizens to celebrate and participate in a day of actions that had nothing to do with solving a planetary emergency and everything to do with perpetuating a meaningless brand.

McKibben and friends are planting daffodils in the shape of 3-5-0 as the planet advances in a crisis of such magnitude that our children will most likely not survive it. Not so surprising considering in Cochabamba Kelly Blynn, 350.org co-founder, explicitly stated that they (350.org) would NEVER change their brand (by endorsing/reflecting the 300 ppm as per the People’s Agreement) as 350 was “the most powerful brand in the world.” Her words – as spoken in Cochabamba in April 2010. McKibben now refers to the number 350 as “iconic.” They have come to believe their own hype. Pass the soma please….

We can acknowledge that 350.org has been most successful in creating global awareness in regards to the number 350 – that being the uppermost amount in parts per million of atmospheric carbon that humanity must target. However, the reality is that we are at 390 today and only accelerating. Is this considered dangerous climate interference as defined by the IPCC? The answer is yes. Did NASA’s James Hansen call upon civil society to declare a planetary emergency in 2008? The answer is yes. Yet McKibben and friends speak of neither. Hansen’s dire plea is ignored. Dead silence. Epic fail. Most critical, why do McKibben and friends not educate on the necessary emissions reductions we must achieve if we are ever to get back to 350? It has been known by scientists for years that only zero CO2 emissions can make atmospheric CO2 drop. Nothing less. Could it therefore be considered nothing less than criminal negligence for McKibben, 350.org and friends to tell us that we are on the road to hell but refuse to give directions to the only way to get off that road (a freshly paved one of eco-asphalt lined with happy daffodils and shiny new electric cars, no less)? The map to safety is M.I.A.

“No one on the corner has swag like us? – Hit me on my banner prepaid wireless? – We pack and deliver like UPS trucks? – Already in hell just pumping that gas – ??All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)? – And (KKKAAAA CHING!) – ?And take your money” – Paper Planes, by M.I.A.

Message to Pollyanna – this is Cassandra. Please go away before you kill us all. We don’t want to go down on your sinking ship.

The big greens understand the global implications of runaway climate change – the implications being the elimination of humanity and all evolutionarily advanced life. They recognize the current major calamities all over the globe. Yet, they continue to deny out loud to the public the critical state of the atmosphere, confirmed by the world’s leading research organizations; NASA, NSCDC, Potsdam, Tyndall, Hadley-Met, CSIRO, BOM, the world’s academies of science and others. By depriving the public of the gravity of this emergency, big greens effectively ensure that humanity remains ineffective in the imperative, urgent task of implementing changes in our social and economic spheres – at a speed and magnitude of such force, the world has yet to ever witness an effort of such scale.

“We are unleashing hell on Australia.” – Prof. Neville Nicholls, world expert and lead author for the IPCC, Monash University

“… many, many scientists now … are frantically, hysterically worried.” – Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers, former head of the UN’s World Climate Research Program, now at Macquarie University

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the Oxford 4 Degrees and Beyond Conference that “Political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it’s completely useless.” Schellnhuber briefed U.S. officials from the Barack Obama administration who chided him that his findings were “not grounded in political reality” and that “the [U.S.] Senate will never agree to this.” Schellnhuber told them that the U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero tonnes per person by 2020 to have even a chance of stabilizing the temperature increase at around 2ºC.

Could it be that 350.org does not campaign on the imperative of zero because 350 ppm, in fact, demands a zero fossil fuel economy at breakneck speed? This is a vital observation being that the money “donated” by such foundations as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is only possible because of an explosive oil economy that continues to break record profits in the billions.

Did any of the big greens ever message the critical Potsdam Institute information to their supporters? (TckTckTck, for example, claims to have over 17 million members.) Of course not – informing U.S. citizens of the reality that they must achieve zero emissions by 2020 to avoid catastrophic 2ºC could result in: 1) negative impact on the economy, and/or 2) negative impact on NGO funding, and/or 3) negative impact on the brand.

Dangerous Messaging

The dangerous symbolic messaging that the big greens churn out has done far more damage than good. Such passive messaging, in which they excel, ensures that society remains indoctrinated under the illusion of happiness only made possible by consumer capitalism. This indoctrination has been suicidal. Literally. What is even uglier is that it seems McKibben and friends have accepted, therefore believe, their marketing strategists’s advice that there is no other way to reach their audience – other than to appeal to their selfish identity. Do they believe that their supporters (Americans being their primary target) are so shallow that the only way to entice change is to market campaigns and messaging that will lure citizens by feeding into the most negative characteristics of the human species – those of selfishness, greed and apathy? Such marketing campaigns succeed not by motivating people to make any meaningful change or sacrifice, rather such marketing motivates individuals to do only the actions that people may consider when they are not motivated enough to make a real change or sacrifice.

Big greens may not have zero faith in humanity – but they certainly do appear to have zero faith in their target audience. They have identified their audience first and foremost as self-serving consumers – as opposed to recognizing and building upon the fact that these are people. Citizens. With families. A reality that encompasses characteristics to be nourished. It is true that contemporary profit-driven, capitalistic and money-worshipping wealthy societies have fallen into a death trap, losing perspective and failing to realize that the value of money is totally subjective. However, does this mean that organizations should cater to these characteristics – brought about by relentless corporate messaging that has inundated and polluted our minds – thereby reaffirming them? Do we believe that our citizens are so shallow and so past the point of human sentience, empathy, capacity for critical thinking, and the ability to love beyond themselves that we just continue to distribute soma to the masses? Because the 21-year-old marketing prodigy told us so in between texting his investment banker on his Blackberry?

We may have lost our own self worth, beaten down by unwavering, relentless indoctrination – our bare souls laid siege by unabashed propaganda hell, but should the role of those who claim to speak for civil society not be the one to help civil society reclaim our humanness?

Fittingly, in our consumer capitalism society we now find that even social conscience itself has become a hot commodity. If the markets see our social conscience as an asset to exploit – and they absolutely do – at least this means we still collectively have a conscience, even if we have to peel back a thousand brands to eventually uncover it.

“People with strong intrinsic values must cease to be embarrassed by them. We should argue for the policies we want not on the grounds of expediency but on the grounds that they are empathetic and kind; and against others on the grounds that they are selfish and cruel. In asserting our values we become the change we want to see.” – George Monbiot

Unfortunately, the multimillion dollar social structure of the non-profit industrial complex is ruled by the expediency of public relations, politics and funding – not by high moral values. Furthermore, we are all ruled by the multi-billion-dollar banks who remind us of our enslavement to the system whenever we threaten to allow our moral values to lead us.

The bizarre “party” on 10:10:10 forgot to mention in the “top ten” ideas for the day that we must use all of our democratic powers and rights – including our moral obligation to break the laws that continue to protect the corporations while sentencing people to certain death. 350.org and partner TckTckTck proclaimed on 10:10:10, “We Own the Media Today.” In reality, the media own 350.

The Consequences of Modern Day Soma

Deconstruction, reconstruction, muzzling and outright lies within the corporate-owned mainstream media (MSM) have been a long-term barrier to truth. From organizing public support for controversial issues that threaten our very well being, even when our own children will be paying the ultimate price, to ensuring that certain political “leaders” are elected, or that women start smoking and the public keeps buying the consumer products they don’t need which ensures billions in corporate profits, the role of “communication” has been and remains pivotal. Today we witness that mainstream communication and public relations have become nothing more than basic propaganda, because the underlying facts and reality have to be reconstructed and watered down to make the message easy to swallow.

The plutocracy needs us to continue to buy crap we don’t need, consume things we don’t need, waste things we never needed to begin with, and most important of all – to quit thinking. Be passive. Be complacent. Dissent is effectively framed as unpatriotic or ungrateful. Take your soma three times a day, more if necessary.

The greatest threat to the corporate power that has a complete stranglehold on our global society, including governments, is a society of people who can sustain themselves independent of the corporate institution. A zero-carbon perpetual-energy world made up of citizens who embody and value the right to critical thinking, free of mind pollution, provides the greatest threat to corporate power. No corporation can dominate every drop of sunshine. No corporation can capture every breath of wind.

“So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting. The acceptance of policies which counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st Century. In the United States, blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires should pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?” – George Monbiot

2100|Tomatoes and Flat Screens for the Bourgeois

In a “good news scenario” posted on 4 October 2010, titled Policy Reform to 350, McKibben envisions the future. A scenario whereby global society reverses levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350ppm by 2100 – this made possible by the consequences suffered by way of devastation that finally resulted in the imperialist governments waking up and smelling the coffee – thus acting. McKibben assumes in this scenario that governments are simply unaware, which is not at all true. Governments are absolutely aware of the consequences that we will face – and they have chosen not to act. They have all been briefed, in no uncertain terms, by the world’s foremost scientists and military experts.

The scenario McKibben writes of is neither factual, nor is it scientific. Indeed, he omits the most critical aspect of failing to deal with this crisis at breakneck speed – that of the amplifying feedbacks, many of which are now operational. Climate change has a full spectrum of dangerous consequences spread over many centuries into the future, however McKibben makes no mention of this reality. The reality that this scenario excludes is this: If we do not stabilize the climate by achieving virtual zero carbon emissions within a decade (Annex 1, or developed, countries), positive feedback mechanisms will continue to amplify, and become irreversible. This would result in runaway climate change. Humans will not survive this. The positive feedbacks will not simply retreat when Nature sees that we have finally learned our lesson and repented, as McKibben fantasizes within the article. He makes zero mention of tipping points and the point of no return. In fact, his scenario is survivable, including plug-in cars, tomatoes and even flat screen televisions. There is no mention of the billions who will have perished south of the equator nor is there mention that Africa will now be a furnace – void of all life. In McKibben’s “good news scenario,” exceeding 2ºC does not lead to uncontrollable temperatures of 4ºC, 6ºC, 8ºC and higher. This fantasy demonstrates the ultimate in denialism. If the “leader” of 350.org is believing in such delusional fantasy while packaging it as possible and rational, we are in terminally serious trouble. NGOs should be opposing this nonsense head on – but they won’t. Because in the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, when it comes to the critical issues of climate change, mum is the word.

350.org would like you to believe that 350 ppm is the most important number in the world. Not true. 350 ppm is recognized by climatologist James Hansen as the highest tolerable carbon level allowing survival of life on Earth. In reality, we need to get back down to levels below 300 ppm in order to re-freeze the Arctic sea ice. Then return to pre-industrial levels, which we know were safe. Until then, the Arctic sea ice will continue to accelerate in its death spiral, accelerating feedbacks. As we lose the albedo effect (reflection of sun off the ice), the solar energy, rather than being reflected, is then absorbed into the ocean. Such warming amplifies further feedbacks such as ocean acidification and melting of permafrost, which has led to the current situation of destabilized methane hydrates that are now leaking methane into the atmosphere. There is double the amount of carbon in the methane hydrates than in the entire atmosphere. We’re talking big numbers here.

These are all tipping points, beyond which catastrophic runaway feedback loops become irreversible. At this point, no amount of human ingenuity will save us. No amount of monetary wealth will save us. The term runaway greenhouse effect is best described as the conditions that led to the current greenhouse state of Venus. Terrifying? Yes. Yet this is the path we are currently on. For anyone who wishes to see what is happening to our ice – as you read this – watch the unbelievable time lapse footage that has only recently been witnessed by scientists. It is nothing less than incredible. You will understand the enormity of our situation once you see these images: http://bit.ly/bbH8mV

Thawing frozen soils could unleash a carbon bomb – massive volumes of carbon dioxide and methane frozen in the earth’s soils are a “time-bomb ticking under our feet.” – World Congress of Soil Science, 4 August 2010

Watch for the next article – fourth in the series, in which we continue to discuss the connection between environmental campaigns and their corporate sponsors. Article number one in the series ‘10:10:10 – Marketing, Manipulation, and the Status Quo’ and article number two in the series ‘Explosive Climate Report Text Revealed’ can be read at: http://bit.ly/cUYCrn

Cory Morningstar is climate justice activist whose recent writings can be found on ‘Canadians for Action on Climate Change’ and ‘The Art of Annihilation’ site where you can read her bio. You can follow her on twitter:@elleprovocateur