Culture-Jamming Social Media: A Public Health Measure

May 30, 2016

by Jay Taber

 

 

As I noted in my comments about the unjust transition of the Break Free campaign, sponsored by 350, it is urgent to stop fossil fuel export for a couple reasons: it creates expedited demand for fracking and new terminal development, and it exhausts our reserves for our own future needs–making it more likely we will turn to nuclear power. Indeed, the idea–promoted by 350–of ending fossil fuel use altogether is a charade used to cover for nuclear power development plans.

The financial backers of 350 and other Wall Street, hedge fund and private equity investors know from intensive studies that oil and gas use is going to continue increasing for a long time, so what we get by following the Break Free game plan is increased fossil fuel use, increased toxic pollution from solar cell manufacture, and an increased likelihood of nuclear power dependence.

The only workable plan is to decrease consumer demand for gasoline and petroleum-based plastic products, and to decrease military usage for wars used to maintain access and control of foreign mineral deposits. Anti-consumerism and anti-war campaigns are the two things that promise the largest climate change payback, and they are omitted from the 350 agenda.

There is, unfortunately, little public discussion about social engineering through social media, which indicates there is little learning taking place–when there is much to be learned.

In the digital era, we live in a society where thought control is consolidated to such a degree, that few recognize how pervasive social engineering has become in our lives. The constant drumbeat by corporate media (mainstream and alternative) to panic the multitudes into actions orchestrated by corporate NGOs, i.e. Avaaz, Purpose, and 350, stampedes many to react according to these campaigns–choreographed by these marketing agents on the payroll of the financial elite.

Public relations (PR) firms, such as 350, and corrupt alternative media such as Democracy Now!, adhere to the prescribed art of manipulating public opinion on behalf of the financial elite, without anyone questioning, for instance, how it is that millions of people–on several continents–could be reacting in exactly the same way, on the same date, chanting the same slogans. It is, I observe, because the herded are not self-organized, participating in action based on independent research and discussion. Rather, they have ceded their judgment to the central authority of NGOs funded by corporations, laundered through private foundations.

In this aspect, privatized activism subservient to Wall Street–just like government, academia, and media–comprises organizers in it for a career, not as a duty of citizenship, who cater to the agenda of corporate philanthropic funders. This is not democracy in action; it is social tyranny.

The Break Free quotes in the media are a mix of official organizers working for the corporations, and the followers that participated in the staged 350 events. For the most part, they repeat mantras about the salvation of ‘clean energy’ that are corporate fabrications, but widely and uncritically accepted, due to the network drumbeat. This is what Netwar (networked psychological warfare) is all about–drowning out other perspectives, and dominating all forms of communication.

This creates a sense of panicked urgency that, in turn, drives followers to believe they are on a holy mission–one that exempts them from both social conventions and the law, and that limits the choices for public response to those composed by corporate decision-makers, in order to benefit the corporations. What we need to do is take the time for more discussion, research and education–that doesn’t begin by adopting the assumptions prepackaged by the financial elite.

I think it might help to recount other examples where the public has been coerced or seduced by corporate PR firms into accepting or supporting actions contrary to the public interest, yet very much in the interest of those who pay the PR firms, that stand to profit from public ignorance or complacency. The Gulf War, Iraq War, War in Afghanistan, War in Libya, and War in Syria were all based on PR fabrications–intended to mislead public opinion, and to stampede public officials into urgent actions–that later turned out to be harmful to the public interest.

The same thing happened with the bank bailouts, and is now repeating itself in the false hope of 350s corporate-funded propaganda about climate change adaptation. One might get the impression from all this that the public never learns, has given up, or doesn’t care.

On the other hand, perhaps the majority of citizens are now either addicts, cynics or fanatics, resulting in an impossible organizing task for sober, constructive engagement in public affairs. Either way, culture-jamming social media–that promotes hysteria–is a public health measure.

 

 

 

[Jay Thomas Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and journalists defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted Indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations.]

Breakthrough Boondoggle

Skookum

December 7, 2015

by Jay Taber

 

While corrupt world leaders fawn over the Breakthrough Energy Coalition as world saviors promoting so-called  ‘climate solutions’, the reality is that these con artists are setting us up for a global heist that we’ll be paying for long into the future.

Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) is an assemblage of private sector venture capitalists. The BEC agenda is carbon capture and nuclear power, both of which are unsafe, and require enormous public subsidies.

Two of the architects of the so-called ‘climate solutions’ — e.g. Bill Gates and George Soros — are noted for past involvement in serious fraud.

George Soros

Hedge Fund Mogul

Convicted Inside Trader

 

[Jay Thomas Taber (O’Neal) derives from the most prominent tribe in Irish history, nEoghan Ua Niall, the chief family in Northern Ireland between the 4th and the 17th centuries. Jay’s ancestors were some of the last great leaders of Gaelic Ireland. His grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather emigrated from Belfast to South Carolina in 1768. Jay is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

COP21 – IT’S SHOWTIME | “Earth to Paris” Event Launch

The Big Three: The 21st Century “Clean Energy” Regime: https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/12/07/the-big-three-the-21st-century-clean-energy-regime/

Breakthrough Boondoggle: https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/12/07/breakthrough-boondoggle/

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry remarks: http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/12/250423.htm

The Big Three: The 21st Century “Clean Energy” Regime

Wrong Kind of Green

December 7, 2015

*Breakthrough Energy Coalition Founders

The “big three” that comprise the 21st century “clean energy” regime are Mission Innovation, Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC), and the Global Apollo Programme, with BEC in the driving seat.

What we are witnessing is militarized advertising campaign for pseudo ‘public interest’ purposes. This is an example of ‘gray ops’ in psywar terminology. Promoting it as a patriotic mission sets up the opposition as ‘unpatriotic’. A massive and unspoken con for a pre-orchestrated bailout under the guise of “climate solutions”. A last ditch effort to save an ailing capitalist economic system which has become dangerously stagnant for those in power.

Larry Summers was a primary architect of the modern U.S. financial system, which collapsed in 2008 leaving some 8 million Americans unemployed and destroying some $13 trillion in wealth, according to the GAO. (Sourcewatch)

“The global economy is in serious trouble as emerging markets have basically taken a major turn down. We are flying at close to stall speed — Larry Summers, Financial Review, October 22, 2015

Mission Innovation was announced by Bill Gates at COP21 on 30 November 2015, on stage with President Obama, President Hollande and Prime Minister Modi. [Source] Its link to private sector investment is via the Breakthrough Energy Coalition group of private investors, also spearheaded by Bill Gates and which formed in parallel at COP21.”[Source]

Nuking the Future

Public Good Project

by Jay Taber

August 4, 2015

“Tiger Direct’s getting ready to release the Kube X15, the world’s first home mini-nuclear generator (and a pretty good-looking one, too). Even the starter pack’s plutonium will keep you going for 50 years!”  (Users that inquired about the Kube X15 Mini Nuke were sent the following email from Tiger Direct. April Fools’! This is not a real product and it is not pending approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”)

 

The best estimates I’ve seen for projected energy production in the US all say it would be a significant achievement if sustainable electrical generation comprised 10% of the mix. With hydro-power dropping in the Western US, due to drought conditions, coal is picking up the slack; if coal plants are closed as part of the clean energy revival, that leaves us with nuclear.

Nuclear power — as part of an energy investment portfolio that includes coal, oil and gas — is attractive to Wall Street investors because it is taxpayer-insured, guaranteeing a profit, even as mining reclamation and waste disposal remain disasters with no solution in sight.

The greatest challenge to energy efficiency in the US is long distance transmission power loss; roughly half of the electricity generated in the country is lost between the power plants and the ultimate consumer. Dispersing production might help, but that isn’t possible with coal.

One solution recently proposed is to install mini-nukes all over the country, using technology derived from nuclear-powered submarines. Disturbing as this sounds, it is the logical consequence of shutting down coal.

As climate catastrophe beckons us to back bold energy initiatives, we want to be careful we don’t jump ‘out of the pan and into the fire’.

 

 

[Jay Thomas Taber (O’Neal) derives from the most prominent tribe in Irish history, nEoghan Ua Niall, the chief family in Northern Ireland between the 4th and the 17th centuries. Jay’s ancestors were some of the last great leaders of Gaelic Ireland. His grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather emigrated from Belfast to South Carolina in 1768. Jay is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

 

FLASHBACK | China Syndrome

Skookum

February 24, 2006

by Jay Taber

Aerial of Three Mile Island with crippled reactors, April 2, 1979

When I was in college in the early 1970s, I did research on nuclear-related carcinogenic medical statistics for the people who ultimately stopped the proliferation of plants in Washington state. Later in that decade it was revealed that two of the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) plants, halted after construction, had life-threatening structural deficiencies due to fraudulent x-rays submitted by the contractor in order to omit the required steel reinforcement for the massive concrete structures and thence pocket substantial profits on the bid.

Later yet, watching the movie China Syndrome, I was reminded of this simple fact about nuclear energy: it’s a boondoggle for heavy industry at taxpayers’ expense–always has been–and with that amount of public funds on the table, it will always attract crooks. So when I heard our President Enron and Vice President Halliburton recently touting a resurgence of nuclear plant construction, let’s say I was more than a little sceptical about it’s viability, even under the best of circumstances–circumstances that gave us the (pre-Chernobyl) most-contaminated-site-on-earth Hanford Nuclear Reservation across the Columbia River from where I grew up, as well as the meltdown at Three Mile Island.

This morning on NPR, I listened to a nuclear sceptic debate a nuclear apologist, and learned about both improved technology and the still-unsolved waste storage dilemma, as well as nuclear power’s unavoidable vulnerability to sabotage. I also learned that each plant in the US requires a billion dollars annual government subsidy just to operate, waste disposal and management issues aside.

And I almost learned about a recent failure of the most modern of designs built in France before NPR’s host scrambled to commercial and then went to the phone-in calls immediately afterward. Seems like the WPPSS fiasco all over again; let’s hope it doesn’t get as far along toward criminal catastrophe as it did last time.

Rave New World

Center for World Indigenous Studies

November 30, 2015

By Jay Taber

 

As the establishment rave in Paris winds down, the chimera of clean energy propels industrial societies toward nuking the future. The new age ghost dance, as an expression of social despair, has led to progressive self-delusion that promises us the world, if only we believe.

Stepping through the looking glass, Michael Swifte examines the metrics of messaging by establishment social media and philanthropy, that, combined, is the driving force of the non-profit industrial complex. As Swifte observes, “Money speaks most loudly in the messaging sphere.”

The non-profit industrial complex, says Swifte, “incubates a constantly expanding web” to amplify establishment messaging, which requires maintaining silence about “lines of inquiry best left alone”. These lines of inquiry include such things as following the money behind social media stars, as well as examining the false hope they and their funders promote.

Manufacturing consent to the establishment energy agenda through messaging is what Swifte calls “a particularly diabolical manipulation” leading to a massive explosion in new fossil fuel plants under the guise of carbon capture. The party line of the establishment, says Swifte, is to force a false choice between ‘clean coal’ and nuclear power.

Meanwhile, the stable of establishment NGOs — used to bolster establishment media — continues “feigning care for the earth while plotting the future for the oligarchs”.

 

 

 

[Jay Thomas Taber (O’Neal) derives from the most prominent tribe in Irish history, nEoghan Ua Niall, the chief family in Northern Ireland between the 4th and the 17th centuries. Jay’s ancestors were some of the last great leaders of Gaelic Ireland. His grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather emigrated from Belfast to South Carolina in 1768. Jay is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

 

Condemn Not Just North Korea; Deal with Global Nuclear Hypocrisy

WKOG Editor: One must note that while the international community is busy condemning both North Korea and Iran, the US corporation Westinghouse, in full collaboration & conspiratorial alliance with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, is going ahead with a massive nuclear power ‘park’ consisting of 6 units of 1000 MW – against a massive local resistance. Westinghouse continues to bulldoze popular resistance in order to thrust their dangerous reactors on millions of unwilling people, while Indian grassroots activists remain committed to stop the new reactors.

Unsinkable – Artist: Chris Jordan, 2013, 60×107″ | Depicts 67,000 mushroom clouds, equal to the number of metric tons of ultra-radioactive uranium/plutonium waste being stored in temporary pools at the 104 nuclear power plants across the U.S. [1] →

WATCH: Nuclear Apologetics and the Left Wing Environmental Movement in Canada

By Canadian documentary filmmaker Zach Ruiter.

Nuclear is the rape of Mother Earth and all people living on it, I won’t be silent about the complicity we have individually, in our movements, and I certainly won’t be silent about the complicity of United Steel Workers such as Carolyn Egan for claiming to speak for the environment, the complicity of news sites like Rabble, and Environmental Justice Organizations such as Environmental Defense that take money from United Steel Workers. USW + CAMECO = NuKillers destroying land with mining, radiation exposure, and high level waste. – Zach Ruiter

“Carolyn Egan of the Toronto United Steel Workers Claims Ignorance on how USW represents Cameco’s uranium miners and refiners, but will talk your ear off about tar-sands… this is co-optation and direct complicity with ecocide.”

http://youtu.be/vtQ_ZmNb7ng

Black On The Old Plantation | Civil Rights Organizations Enslave Themselves to Corporate Funding

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Metro Atlanta is now the second largest concentration of African-descended people in North America. But with civil rights organizations firmly in corporate pockets, it’s still a spot where the racist corporations like Southern Companies feel free and unashamed to celebrate their history of theft and plunder and future prospects of the same. What does that say about the state of black leadership, about all of us?

 

“Southern Companies purchased its very own civil rights organization…”

There was a time when the master class of the American South would gather under the shade of carefully pruned magnolia trees to gamble, sip mint juleps, tell tales and celebrate themselves in the midst of stolen wealth trampled from the hides of mother nature, Native Americans and African-descended slaves. In the 21^st century South, where as Faulkner said, the past ain’t even past, not much has changed.

Southern Companies is a greedy rapacious corporation that owns power generation and delivery networks throughout the southeast. They own coal, gas and nuclear plants. They endow college and university chairs and scholarships, community organizations and local churches. In whole or in part, they own hundreds of judges and politicians across the region including many black ones, right up to a piece of the White House itself. Their influence is a big reason why Obama called himself the president of “clean coal and safe nuclear power.” One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to grant $800 million in free loan guarantees to build the nation’s first new nuclear power plant in 30 years right next to an existing pair of leaky nukes believed responsible for a cancer epidemic in mostly black Burke County GA, one of the poorest places in the South. Southern Companies-owned politicians have also allowed it to charge millions of ratepayers $15 and $20 monthly to cover advance construction costs of the new nukes so it need not invest any of its vast cash reserves.

To insulate themselves against charges of environmental racism for poisoning poor blacks in Burke County, Southern Companies doesn’t just make wild claims about how many Homer Simpson jobs new its nuclear plants will produce. Southern Companies purchased its very own civil rights organization, the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Council, originally founded by Dr. Martin Luther King himself. A Southern Companies CEO headed up SCLC’s building fund and raised over $3 million to pay for its new office buildings on Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue. →