Let Them Eat Pizza [“People’s Climate March” & “Flood Wallstreet”]

Wits End

September 25, 2014

by Gail Zawacki

I would have gone to the People’s Climate March in Manhattan, even though, as a permitted Sunday parade, I didn’t expect it to amount to anything more than tilting at windmills (ha!) – but I had already missed all of first daughter’s competitions this season, and her last show for the year, in Saugerties, NY was scheduled for the same day.  I had a lovely weekend with her and was very glad I went, especially as she took two firsts.

Thus, I was happy having learned there was to be another protest on Monday that I could join, #FloodWallStreet, especially because the plan was for mass civil disobedience and arrests.  I met up with a Wit’s End reader, Lucas, who had come all the way from Hawaii and was willing to serve as jail support for me.

However, the march from Battery Park to the Stock Exchange was deflected, and the big banner buckled backwards around the barricaded Bull while we watched, incredulous, as the organizers negotiated with police.  Apparently the Mayor informed them that there would be no arrests, and we could have the street space AROUND the Bull, but were blocked from approaching Wall Street.  Astonishingly, the organizers informed the crowd that they had made a decision to stay obediently in place, and…declare victory!  Whatever happened to consensus?  There was no discussion, no mic check, we were just informed that rather than exercising our rights, we were to behave just like the Sunday Paraders and, as one commenter phrased it, whimper in a fucking free speech zone.

source

At one point they encouraged us to sit and thump our chests like our beating hearts, I’m not sure why.  Was I the only one who found the comparison with this scene just a tad ironic?

Reactions to the capitulation ranged from indifference to mild surprise to utter fury.  Luckily I had come across a friend from the Age of Limits Conference, Cameron Kelly, who also had traveled a great distance at non-trivial expense to take part in the mass civil disobedience.  She was decidedly in the latter category.  We pointed out to the organizers that the action was presented as mass CD – and the response was that if we still wanted to get arrested, we were free to dive over the barricades flanking the Bull.  However, if my goal was to be arrested for a single personal criminal act, I would rather choose my own symbolic icon…and it wouldn’t be about capitalism.  When I pointed out that the action was titled #Flood WALL STREET, and we were stymied at Broadway and Morris, I was informed by several indignant organizers that we actually were *on Wall Street*  – since the financial district and Wall Street are synonymous.  So they conveniently redefined the very meaning of the words “Wall Street”…uhhhh, but what about this MAP they handed out to the marchers (that Camus so rightly wishes to chew up into mush)?   Do you see the arrow for the 12 PM ACTION pointing directly to the NYSE on the actual WALL STREET??

Apparently to mollify the disgruntled, we were informed that 100 free pizzas were being delivered, and that we would sing and dance.  Finally one courageous fellow named Sparks who, having come all the way from Fridley, Minnesota was not about to slink meekly away, bellowed “MIC CHECK” and urged the boisterous but confused assembly to move along to Wall Street.  Here he is with the famous firecracker Cameron, having finally made it to the intersection.

Even after we arrived though, other than a short tussle over the barricades leading to one incident of pepper spray, the pizza party continued in place for hours unmolested, presided over by glowering phalanxes of billyclub-wielding and mounted police.   Not wanting to wait hours more for the order to disperse and having long trips home, Cameron and Lucas and I left around sunset.  It wasn’t until after darkness had fallen that finally about 100 people were “allowed” to relinquish their freedom, and were cuffed and bussed to jail.   The Sans Culottes must be rolling in their graves at this pathetic excuse for a revolution.  I don’t suppose we’ll ever know why the protest turned into a cheesy picnic – whether the organizers were outsmarted by the Mayor, lost their nerve, or are completely intoxicated with ego gratification from media attention – “…oh, we’re on the front page of HuffPo right now!” one told me, by way of explaining that no further action on our part was necessary.  Actually, some of the slick promotional material makes the project smell suspiciously of moveon.org funding, which makes me wonder if the Sunday and Monday events, despite their ostensible differences, aren’t both just mirrors of each other’s deliberate ineffectiveness, like the two political parties in the USA.

The climate activist insiders were in short-lived heaven following the huge turnout for the PCM in New York and other cities around the world.  (Short-lived because nobody has the vaguest idea what to do next and the UN meeting is being widely denounced as a useless corporate festival.) Privately they are rejoicing what they see as the triumph of the climate movement over the environmental movement, something they been trying to eclipse for years. To put the rosiest perspective on this, you might say that they have shunned any association with holistic ecology simply because they believe that being tainted by tree-huggers is detrimental to progress – since hippies have a bad reputation for extremism and dirty toes.

source

To look at it in a slightly more cynical way, you might conclude that the motivation stems from two pernicious influences…first, that climate change in theory lends itself to continued growth via a technological fix (if you ignore the fact that it’s too late to avoid catastrophe, which virtually all activists and scientists do), which leads to the second motivation, a corollary to the first…there is oodles of money from corporate foundations, governments, book sales and speaking engagements for research and political activism in climate “solutions”, as long as none of them include reducing population and consumption.

source

This strategy has always struck me as an epic failure, since climate change is only one symptom of a more general, lethal overshoot.  The single-minded focus on carbon emissions over other issues, such as pollution, habitat destruction, and overextraction of everything from lumber to fish to minerals simply enables more of the same destruction to proceed even as it pretends to challenge the status quo, Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges notwithstanding.  In fact their supposedly more radical critique of capitalism is a red herring, and an insidious deflection of the true dimensions of the tragedy of the commons that has ensnared humans into ecocide.  Underlying their exhortations to change or even dismantle the economic system is the false belief that “green energy” will ensure free pizza forever.  While chants like “We are Unstoppable, Another World is Possible” and “Put up Your Fist, Resist, Resist” are rousing good fun, really, as Candide would say, we ALREADY are in the best of all possible worlds…as in, it ain’t gonna get any better than this…and there is no obvious way to resist OURSELVES.  Here’s all you need to see of Naomi Klein and her own special brand of bullshit.  (Well, hey, it sells books, apparently.)  [update:   OMG this is too funny.  This video has been taken down – in it, Klein is interviewed on HuffPo saying that so many people have reacted to her book by saying IT’S TOO LATE.  I guess that message was too scary so the record has been deleted.  TOO hilarious!]

Here’s a screenshot from the video that has been removed, and here is a link to the clip still up.  This quote from John Gray’s Straw Dogs sums up why the narrative she peddles is so wrong:  “The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, “Western civilisation” or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.”

It seems like this cohort of so-called activists, whether prancing in costumes for Sunday’s celebrity climatepalooza photo-ops or moaning ineffectually about capitalism on Monday, is persuaded that all we have to do is WANT things to be different (you know, close your eyes and say I DO believe in fairies!  I DO!  I DO!) which is really just an extension of everything that is wrong with the very consumerist society we are urged to reject.  Mention the word “sacrifice” and the entire spectrum frowns.  When I was on my way to the city I was thinking about how many in the doomer community (invariably white middle-class) appropriate the culture of indigenous peoples and claim affinity with their supposed peaceful, sustainable, harmonious and spiritual relationship with nature when actually, most if not all hunter-gatherers (other than those who were defeated by overshoot, natural disaster or neighboring tribes) were proud warriors who trained boys from an early age to be fierce, and to defeat enemies.  The accumulation of ancient weapons, armor, fortifications, skeletal remains and artifacts testify to this universal human attribute.  Contemplating arrest with its very real potential for bodily injury is nerve-wracking, to say the least, and I took comfort from thinking about how tribal people prepared for conflict with an infinite variety of rituals to embolden them.  Too bad this willingness to confront harm isn’t the inspiration taken by so many who claim to be “fighting” climate change by tapping on their computer keyboards or designing posters and t-shirts.  Hell, most of them can’t even be inconvenienced, let alone put their safety in jeopardy (Tim DeChristopher being a shining exception).  I don’t know if it is iphones or football or Cheetoes, but something has turned us into spineless wimps.

Following are some pictures of trees and leaves around Wit’s End.

Remember the trees?

They are supposed to hit peak autumn color around the third week of October hereabouts.

Instead the leaves are falling off even earlier than they did last year, and those that remain look terrible.

The Virginia creeper lit by the setting sun into a bright scarlet from a distance actually looks dreadful close up.

The world is dying all around us, and most people still think there is time, if they think at all.

Let Them Eat Pizza!

If Only We Believe: The New Green Economy

A Culture of Imbeciles

September 10, 2014

Queen of Con | Comrade Klein: Queen Klein

Public Good Project

August 22, 2014

by Jay Taber

Above: REVEL 2011 Awardee Naomi Klein with Michael Kieschnick. Michael Kieschnick is a founder  (1 of 3 individuals)  and president of Credo Mobile. Prior to co-founding Working Assets, he served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as an economic advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown of California (1980–1982), and helped create several “socially responsible” investment funds. [Image: Rainforest Action Network via Flickr. Rainforest Action Network’s ultra white and ultra elite,  annual benefit REVEL event : “It was a gorgeous affair.”] Both Klein and 350.org counterpart Tom Kruse (Rockefeller Brothers Fund) are utilized to promote the illusion that “philanthropy is an engine that drives activism” when in truth, philanthropy is an engine that protects capital interests. Kieschnick (“eco” capitalist extraordinaire) and  Bill McKibben (Klein’s counterpart: 350.org/1Sky),  go back to at least 2007 during the days of Step It Up.

If Naomi Klein’s colossal con sets the standard for mesmerizing the infantile, then we might want to investigate how stating the obvious makes one a celebrity. When we examine Klein’s claim to fame, what is it that makes her such an iconic cult figure? Did she uncover some deep, dark secret? Reveal some sinister conspiracy? Unveil some magical alchemy?

The threat of climate change has been documented for over a decade; the causes are well-known. Any school child knows fossil fuel consumerism is the culprit, and that capitalism is the driving force.

So what new insight did Naomi Klein bring to the discussion? That ecological and social collapse means This Changes Everything? How trite can you get?

Nevertheless, as the queen of climate change, Comrade Klein has considerable influence, helped immensely by the capitalists sponsoring her royal float (350.org) in the upcoming parade of imbeciles. Her innate ability to mesmerize the infantile is undoubtedly her biggest asset, certainly a reason for Wall Street’s support for her charlatan charade.

Deceiving the despondent by celebrating silliness (i.e. fossil fuel divestment) is but one of Queen Klein’s devious skills; manipulating the credulous into marching behind her logo of false hope is the envy of Mad Men everywhere. At this rate, her brand recognition is right up there with the king of con, Barack Obama–master of Hope and Change!

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice in such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.l

Welcome to Netwar

Public Good Project

August 19, 2014

by Jay Taber

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

In 1999, when the AFL-CIO herded protestors away from the WTO ministerial in Seattle, it was following through on its nefarious 1994 bargain with President Clinton over NAFTA. Having sold its soul to Wall Street for the few crumbs promised in the aftermath of the opening salvo of globalization, organized labor in the US fell all over itself to become Clinton’s lapdog. Looking back, one might ask, What side were we on?

By November 30, 1999, the fact of labor’s complicity in destroying the economies of the US and Mexico was somehow overlooked or forgotten by the thousands of marchers leaving the AFL-CIO rally. When hundreds of these innocents inadvertently left the labor parade to see what was going on at the WTO convention site, they experienced a rude awakening to reality. As they became enveloped in what came to be known as the Battle in Seattle, these newcomers to activism became witnesses to civil disobedience and police misconduct on a scale not seen since the Civil Rights Movement. As the tear gas-laden fog of war left many choking and disoriented, those on the front line (that labor leaders had hoped the marchers would never see) had opened America’s eyes to the brutality experienced daily in the Third and Fourth World.

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

In a parallel of history, AFL-CIO in November 2012 joined Wall Street fossil fuel exporters in promoting a carbon corridor of global proportions on the Salish Sea between Seattle and Vancouver. As part of a campaign to annihilate First Nations treaty rights in Washington and British Columbia, the organized labor alliance was engineered by the world’s largest public relations firm for the purpose of clearing the way for the Tar Sands bitumen, Powder River Basin coal and Bakken Shale crude armada to overwhelm Coast Salish communities, inundating the San Juan and Gulf Islands with fleets of colliers and supertankers carrying fossil fuels from North America to Asia.

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

By 2013, Wall Street had learned some important lessons from the multitude of post-1999 protests against globalization. This time around, it owned its own NGOs, which are extremely effective in herding the naive away from making clear and effective demands. Amplifying these lapdog NGO voices with Wall Street-funded Wurlitzers, celebrities like Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein (350.org) were created and marketed to lead the credulous astray. As pied pipers of climate change, McKibben and Klein have managed to deceive thousands of American youth into believing fossil fuel divestment on college campuses, or XL photo-ops in front of the White House, are revolutionary. Continuing the historical parallel, In September 2014, 350.org is organizing a Peoples Climate Change March in New York City.

As Wall Street hijacks the environmental movement using foundation-funded NGOs, Indigenous peoples struggle to be heard, hoping to survive the onslaught of organized labor, compromised greens and militarized police. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon have reorganized to counter Indigenous insurgencies around the globe.

Welcome to Netwar.

Maasai Protest Against New Land Concessions For Geothermal Extraction In Kenya. Read more: 

https://intercontinentalcry.org/maasai-protest-aginst-new-land-concessions-geothermal-extraction-kenya-24504/

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice in such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]

Welcome to Netwar

Public Good Project

August 19, 2014

by Jay Taber

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

In 1999, when the AFL-CIO herded protestors away from the WTO ministerial in Seattle, it was following through on its nefarious 1994 bargain with President Clinton over NAFTA. Having sold its soul to Wall Street for the few crumbs promised in the aftermath of the opening salvo of globalization, organized labor in the US fell all over itself to become Clinton’s lapdog. Looking back, one might ask, What side were we on?

By November 30, 1999, the fact of labor’s complicity in destroying the economies of the US and Mexico was somehow overlooked or forgotten by the thousands of marchers leaving the AFL-CIO rally. When hundreds of these innocents inadvertently left the labor parade to see what was going on at the WTO convention site, they experienced a rude awakening to reality. As they became enveloped in what came to be known as the Battle in Seattle, these newcomers to activism became witnesses to civil disobedience and police misconduct on a scale not seen since the Civil Rights Movement. As the tear gas-laden fog of war left many choking and disoriented, those on the front line (that labor leaders had hoped the marchers would never see) had opened America’s eyes to the brutality experienced daily in the Third and Fourth World.

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

In a parallel of history, AFL-CIO in November 2012 joined Wall Street fossil fuel exporters in promoting a carbon corridor of global proportions on the Salish Sea between Seattle and Vancouver. As part of a campaign to annihilate First Nations treaty rights in Washington and British Columbia, the organized labor alliance was engineered by the world’s largest public relations firm for the purpose of clearing the way for the Tar Sands bitumen, Powder River Basin coal and Bakken Shale crude armada to overwhelm Coast Salish communities, inundating the San Juan and Gulf Islands with fleets of colliers and supertankers carrying fossil fuels from North America to Asia.

Illustration: http://stephaniemcmillan.org/

By 2013, Wall Street had learned some important lessons from the multitude of post-1999 protests against globalization. This time around, it owned its own NGOs, which are extremely effective in herding the naive away from making clear and effective demands. Amplifying these lapdog NGO voices with Wall Street-funded Wurlitzers, celebrities like Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein (350.org) were created and marketed to lead the credulous astray. As pied pipers of climate change, McKibben and Klein have managed to deceive thousands of American youth into believing fossil fuel divestment on college campuses, or XL photo-ops in front of the White House, are revolutionary. Continuing the historical parallel, In September 2014, 350.org is organizing a Peoples Climate Change March in New York City.

As Wall Street hijacks the environmental movement using foundation-funded NGOs, Indigenous peoples struggle to be heard, hoping to survive the onslaught of organized labor, compromised greens and militarized police. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon have reorganized to counter Indigenous insurgencies around the globe.

Welcome to Netwar.

Maasai Protest Against New Land Concessions For Geothermal Extraction In Kenya. Read more: 

https://intercontinentalcry.org/maasai-protest-aginst-new-land-concessions-geothermal-extraction-kenya-24504/

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice in such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]

Mammon’s Missionaries

Above: Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein (representing 350.org/1Sky) tour America promoting the illusion of an existing and available “carbon budget” (“Do the Math”), while in reality, “there is no available carbon budget“.  This fact is made abundantly clear by both David Spratt (Climate Code Red) and David Wasdell.  [Basis for a Carbon Budget? | Link] [The real budgetary emergency and the myth of “burnable carbon” | Link ]

Image: 350.org photo stream via Flickr. Photo by Ted Cleary | Do the Math Tour | New York City | 11.16.2012

Public Good Project

July 26, 2014

By Jay Taber

Continuing our discussion on co-option, I should note that Naomi Klein – as a board member of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded 350.org — functions as an emissary to co-opt Indigenous activist/intellectuals like Arthur Manuel and Leanne Simpson. Having branded herself as part of the eco-avant-garde, Klein’s diplomacy is part of the mission of Wall Street NGOs to assimilate Indigenous thought leaders into the corporate fold.

“Tar Sands Healing Walk” | July 6, 2013 | Caption: “At the press conference before the walk formally began, there were many speakers. Among them was Naomi Klein.” Klein is under the purple flag with Clayton Thomas-Muller who is the co-director of the Indigenous Tar Sands (ITS) Campaign of the Polaris Institute and organizer with Idle No More & Defenders of the Land. [July 1, 2013: Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein to join Canada’s tar sands ‘healing walk’ – Idle No More press release] Photo by “taylorandayumi” via Flickr.

 
Manuel, as a Seventh Generation Fund/Ford Foundation-sponsored activist — appointed by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to coordinate the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus — collaborated with Debra Harry in an attempt to exclude tribal governing authorities from participating in the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, and later joined Harry in a fraudulent attempt to cover up their mischief. Manuel, the son of one of CWIS’s founders (where I am an associate scholar), is an articulate and intelligent Indigenous advocate. He has since apparently parted company with NAIPC, but his betrayal of trust remains a black spot on his record.

Leanne seems to have more integrity than Manuel, and I hope she does not get seduced by the insidious forces of Wall Street. The NGOs corrupted by UN flattery and foundation funds are responsible for much of the turmoil taking place behind the scenes of the media spectacle in which 350.org’s Bill McKibben is a star, and promise to be a problem in the lead up to the WCIP in New York come September.

In many respects, Klein and McKibben are like the church missionaries that initially helped subdue the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the US. Instead of the religion of Christianity, however, they proselytize on behalf of the faith in corporate philanthropy, all the while posing as pious champions of the environment, colonized and downtrodden. This is psychological warfare at its most repugnant.

Public Good Project’s role, as protectors and connoisseurs of conflict, is to expose the predators in order prevent their preying on the minds of the innocent. It is a role that rarely garners gratitude, but it is a necessary role if Indigenous Peoples are to prevail in their quest for human rights and environmental sanity.

Honestly, Ms. Klein, Author of NO LOGO & 350.org Board Member – You Really Don’t See This Intentional, Psychological Manipulation of Citizens?

“As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, Obama is a “brand” like none other, having won the highest advertising campaign accolade and attracted unprecedented sums of money. The brand will sell for a while. He will close Guantanamo Bay, whose inmates represent less than one per cent of America’s 27,000 “ghost prisoners.” He will continue to make stirring, platitudinous speeches, but the tears will dry as people understand that President Obama is the latest manager of an ideological machine that transcends electoral power. Asked what his supporters would do when reality intruded, Stephen Walt, an Obama adviser, said: “They have nowhere else to go.” – John Pilger

“Every brand comes with a set of associations,” explains study co-author Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of psychology and marketing at Duke University. “When we’re exposed to logos, those associations fire automatically, activating our motivational systems and leading us to behave in ways that are consistent with the brand image”—and our preexisting drives. Over the years, all the Think Different ads we’ve seen have seared a link in our brains between Apple and creativity… — Psychology Today 

“With enough repetition, people encode the brands identity (usually not as read words but as the recognized look, shape and feel) in their brains, preferably linked to things that matter to them.” – Branding Strategy Insider

“So the original brands were comforting logos that were often people, like Quaker Oats or Aunt Jemima, that were essentially surrogate relationships, it’s like, ok, you’re not buying it from the local shopkeeper, you’re not buying it from the local farmer, but here is this image that you can relate to – you could form a personal relationship – albeit a fake personal relationship – with this mascot, with this figure. But the message was that you can trust it as much as you would trust it if you actually had a real relationship.” – Naomi Klein

“And this idea was the idea of lifestyle branding, the idea that if companies wanted to be truly successful and competitive in a global marketplace they had to understand that their true product was not their product, i.e. sneakers, movies, lattes, computers, it was an idea, a lifestyle. It was meaning itself. The idea of brands not products explains for me a few things at once. It explained the assault on the public sphere in the form of corporate sponsorship. It explained why we were seeing evermore new and creative forms of marketing particularly directed at young people.” – Naomi Klein [Source]

“The point is that you don’t have the choice whether or not to turn it off because it is in the streets, it’s right in front of your face, on the subway or even in the bathroom, in a public bathroom. The point is to take choice out of the equation because choice, even when you can click with your converter, that is seen as the enemy in the world of marketing, that’s why you need to get your ad woven into the content of television shows, so choice is taken out of the equation.” – Naomi Klein [Source] →

The Problem With the Big Green’s Naomi Klein Gripe

Counterpunch Weekend Edition

September 13-15, 2013

by Macdonald Stainsby

Stockholm Syndrome in a Three Piece Suit

Degrees of Evil: Savoring the Nuances of Co-optation

Photo: Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein of 350.org

Intercontinental Cry

Sept 6, 2013

By Jay Taber 

YES LOGO | The McKibben-Klein Doctrine

Sept 6, 2013

WKOG admin: This is an excerpt from the investigative report Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse – Part II, by Cory Morningstar. (Originally published by Counter punch, June 4, 2013.)

We republish this excerpt today in response to Klein’s article Green groups may be more damaging than climate change deniers published Sept 5, 2013 by Salon. It is a welcome criticism of “big greens,” albeit ironic, coming from a woman who sits on the Board of Directors of one of the most powerful social engineering NGOs of all, 350.org/1Sky. Klein wants us to believe in her and more importantly, to believe in 350.org/1Sky. The irony is pushed further as Klein, who endlessly jets around the planet spewing carbon high in the atmosphere, claims the “other” corporate foundation-fed “greens” (“It’s not 350.org, because it didn’t even exist yet.”) are “irrelevant” when the REAL pipeline is already completed (the focus of 350.org being the Stop the KXL campaign) and all that’s left is the unnecessary Phase 4 that Obama will cancel to bleatings of “victory” from Klein and her ilk.

In the meantime, the growth in oil via rail continues to skyrocket and pipeline projects are booming. One can safely assume that both Obama and Buffett are ecstatic. Working for Warren has never been so eagerly embraced by the environmental movement. As 350.org/1Sky remain silent on Obama’s fracking adventure, they are publicly, albeit quietly, endorsing biofuels via the “Flying Clean” campaign. No word yet on the root causes of climate change (the industrialized capitalist economic system), the necessity to eradicate militarism (as 350.org board members beat the drums of war), or even what must be achieved before the planet can even begin to cool – virtual zero emissions. The future will show that 350.org, with Avaaz and a handful of other key NGOs, will be in the vital, leading role of ensuring that the illusory green economy is palatable to, and ultimately embraced by, the masses. One need look no further than the 350.org Board of Directors, International Advisory Council, U.S. Advisory Council, financiers and the history of 1Sky creators to see where this is going. It’s really not rocket science.

It appears that Klein wants to have her cake and eat it, too. Klein presents herself, and her 350.org/1Sky NGO, as a new kind of brand – a radical RINGO. (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.”)

It is sad, and to be blunt, tragic, to witness a woman of Klein’s ability, pretend to be so utterly unaware of her own surroundings.

Writer/playright Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill documents how the left loves to be seduced and that “[A] seduced person, a person who is loving the thrill of being seduced, no longer has any use for truth or facts.”

As of today, Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill appears to be correct. As for the future, time will tell.

And speaking of No Logos, 350’s “forward on climate” logo is a mere retouching of Obama’s as the excerpt below elaborates on.

YES LOGO | The McKibben-Klein Doctrine

Above: 350.org DC rally signs (far right and bottom two) clearly promote the powerful Obama brand. Above left: MoveOn.org (founder of Avaaz), front group for the Democratic Party. Image to right of MoveOn.org poster: 350.org “Forward on Climate” poster/logo. Top image: Obama 2012 campaign poster/logo.

“Together, the team has marshalled every tool in the modern marketing arsenal to create and sustain the Obama brand: the perfectly calibrated logo (sunrise over stars and stripes).” — Naomi Klein, author of No Logo (10th Anniversary Edition). Klein now sits on the board of directors of Rockefellers’ 1Sky/350.org

“… A lot of times when he’s at a podium what you’ll see is, centered right beneath him, at the very top of the blue field that usually says something like ‘Change You Can Believe In,’ it’ll be just that little symbol, functioning in the same way the Nike swoosh does. People look at that and know what it means, even though it’s just an ‘O’ with some stripes in it…. The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface…. If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don’t understand how it’s happening. It’s unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.” — Expertinent: Why the Obama “Brand” Is Working, Feb 27, 2008

“Attitude” branding is essentially defined by the ability to elicit/represent/instill a larger, more powerful feeling on an emotional, subconscious level. It need not be connected with the product or the consumption of the product whatsoever. At a deeper level, attitude branding drills into the consumer psychology of (“attitude”) choice –as much as the term “choice” is applicable in the 21^st century of accelerating social engineering. The brand “Obama” does not represent nor sell a president, rather it embodies an emotional chimera of “hope” and “change” that we can choose to believe in. One could quite safely describe attitude branding as a very sophisticated and calculated method of indoctrination, perhaps one of the highest (and most subtle) forms of psychological manipulation/brainwashing.Corporations excelling in “attitude” branding include Apple and Nike, to name two. Branding a person is not fundamentally different from branding a product. In 2008, Obama-the-brand beat out the aforementioned Apple and Nike, capturing first place for Advertising Age’s marketer of the year. →