Campaign Announcement: NO Deal For Nature | Stop the Corporate Capture of the Commons

February 9, 2020

 

Illustration: Betrayal, artist Mario S. Nevado

A new international campaign has been launched which alleges the WEF is guilty of spearheading a bid by corporations and financial institutions to “monetize” nature on a global scale.

It is calling on people across the world to hold public meetings, disseminate information, form local campaign groups  and “to take whatever action is necessary” to halt the so-called “New Deal for Nature”.

An online statement from the “No Deal for Nature” alliance [1], whose slogan is “life is not a commodity”, has already won the support of several academics and campaigners.

It warns that “under the guise of environmental protection” a massive exploitation scheme is in fact being drawn up, with the aim of maintaining the current wealth and power transfer from the poor to the rich.

The WEF boasted on its own website that “young climate activists, including Greta Thunberg” would be attending the Davos event in Switzerland from January 21. [2]

WEF stated it would be discussing “how to address the urgent climate and environmental challenges that are harming our ecology and economy” and “how to transform industries to achieve more sustainable and inclusive business models”.

However, the WEF also revealed it would be examining “how to govern the technologies driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution so they benefit business”. [3]

The package of policies known as the “New Deal for Nature” is being promoted not only by the WEF, but also by  the United Nations (UN), [4] the World Bank [5] and the controversial World Wildlife Fund (WWF).[6]

The UN has admitted it wants to “advance a new political agenda” involving “increased promotion of innovative financing that supports green infrastructure”. [7]

The new campaign describes this agenda as a “monstrous and unprecedented assault on our living world by the capitalist system”.

It warns that nature and humanity alike will suffer, with the threat of “further Indigenous displacement and genocide”.

The campaigners conclude: “The NDFN must be stopped. We call on all those who care about nature to speak out now”.

 

[1] http://nodealfornature.org

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/davos-abandon-fossil-fuel-economy-climate-change-greta-thunberg/

[3] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_AM20_Overview.pdf

[4] https://truepundit.com/al-gore-un-officials-team-up-to-push-a-new-deal-for-nature/

[5] https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/five-ways-help-nature-help-us

[6] https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?339010/A-new-deal-for-Nature-and-Humanity

[7] http://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28333/NewDeal.pdf

 

CONTACT: nodealfornature@protonmail.com

Twitter:

 

5 reasons to say “no” to the New Deal For Nature

1. Conceived of by vested interests. The “The New Deal For Nature” (NDFN) is being drawn up by the world’s most powerful corporations, financial institutions, and conservation NGOs, including WWF. WWF has been complicit in human rights abuses for years. At the helm of the NDFN is the World Economic Forum which entered into partnership with the United Nations on June 13, 2019.

 

2. Undemocratic. The NDFN is being negotiated without any participation from the wider public. The deal will be concluded at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference in Beijing in October 2020 without any vote by our local, regional or national parliaments, bypassing full democratic scrutiny.

 

3. Represents the corporate coup of the commons. During negotiations on free trade agreements such as TTIP and CETA, we saw how our governments work hand-in-hand with multinational corporations to hand over even more power to big business, privatising more public services. Now nature is up for grabs. Under the guise of taking action on the climate and ecological crises, what the NDFN entails, in practice, is the financialization and privatisation of nature (defined as “ecosystem services”, “natural capital”, “natural climate solutions” or “nature-based solutions”)— global in scale. Assigning monetary value to nature enables industries such as the fossil fuel industry to continue polluting as long as they commit to engaging in net zero activities such as offsetting carbon emissions by planting trees, or by “restoring” nature.

 

4. Rescues the very system destroying nature. The NDFN would involve the total transformation of the global economic system to create new markets, thereby salvaging the failing global economic capitalist system that has brought us to the brink of ecological catastrophe.

 

5. Harms those best placed to protect biodiversity. The NDFN would threaten the further displacement and genocide of Indigenous and tribal peoples as global corporations and conservation NGOs seek control of their lands to maintain hegemony under the guise of tackling climate change and restoring nature. This represents a new wave of colonisation, for peoples in the Global South in particular.

 

Further resources to learn more about the New Deal For Nature:

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – For Consent: The Green New Deal is the Trojan Horse for the Financialization of Nature [Volume I, Act V], an investigative report by Cory Morningstar https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/13/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-forconsent-the-new-green-deal-is-the-trojan-horse-for-the-financialization-of-nature/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – A Decade of Social Manipulation for the Corporate Capture of Nature [Volume I, Act VI – Crescendo], an investigative report by Cory Morningstar https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/24/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-adecade-of-social-manipulation-for-the-corporate-capture-of-nature-crescendo/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – For Consent: To Plunder What Little Remains: It’s Going To Be Tremendous [Volume II, Act III], an investigative report by Cory Morningstar https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/09/15/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-forconsent-to-plunder-what-little-remains-its-going-to-be-tremendous-volume-ii-act-iii/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – For Consent: They Mean Business [Volume II, Act IV], an investigative report by Cory Morningstar https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/09/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-forconsent-they-mean-business-volume-ii-act-iv/

To learn more about the issue of monetising nature: Climate Capitalists, a page created by Winter Oak Press providing links to over 50 resources in various formats and languages https://winteroak.org.uk/climate-capitalists/

Accumulation by Restoration: Degradation Neutrality and the Faustian Bargain of Conservation Finance, an intervention by Amber Huff of the Institute of Development Studies and STEPS Centre, University of Sussex and Andrea Brock of the University of Sussex in the journal Antipode Online https://antipodeonline.org/2017/11/06/accumulation-by-restoration/

Guatemala: Petén at the center of the sustainable development plans of the NGOs, an investigative report by Aldo Santiago in Avispa Midia
https://avispa.org/peten-at-the-center-of-the-sustainable-developments-plans-of-the-ngos/  

Guatemala: Carbon, the Metric of Displacement in Petén, an investigative report by Aldo Santiago in Avispa Midia
https://avispa.org/guatemala-carbon-the-metric-of-displacement-in-peten/

Banking Nature, a documentary by Denis Delestra and Sandrine Feydel https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/10/30/watch-banking-nature/

To learn more about WWF’s human rights abuses: WWF Silence of the Pandas, a documentary by Wilfried Huismann
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2013/07/22/watch-wwf-silence-of-the-pandas-a-journeyinto-the-heart-of-the-green-empire/

Victim of the WWF, a documentary by Zembla
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/06/04/watch-victim-of-the-wwf-world-wildlife-fund/

 

 

D. Rockefeller’s Gruesome Legacy

New Eastern Outlook

March 26, 2017

by F. William Engdahl

Breaking Free

A New Age Ghost Dance

Salish Sea Maritime

May 15th, 2016

By Jay Taber

 

Clean Energy

As I noted in the introduction to Hijacking the Environmental Movement: Just Say No to 350, in 2011, when the oil industry tycoon Warren Buffett poured $26 million into TIDES foundation—funder of 350–he was making a strategic long-term investment in public relations (PR), while simultaneously scheming to cash in on the gullibility of young, impressionable activists.

Most recently, 350 has come out with new propaganda to mislead climate activists. As they did with the KXL charade and the fossil fuel divestment hoax, 350 is promoting ineffective disobedience as a means of diverting activist energy from reality-based social change that might actually threaten the 350 funders’ fossil fuel investments.

As a fossil fuel industry-financed organization, 350 is the most insidious Wall Street Trojan Horse since Avaaz and Purpose. The 350 followers, like most activists, are utterly clueless.

The 350 break free moral theatrics, as a follow-up to the college campus fossil fuel divestment fraud, is not going to shut down Pacific Northwest oil refineries any more than divestment was going to shut down the oil industry. Divestment made the oil industry more powerful, and the break free scheme is part of Wall Street’s clean energy scam to build nuclear power plants.

New Economy

The ‘New Economy’ unveiled by the global financial elite at COP21 has two main components: 1. ‘clean energy’, and 2. ‘sustainable capitalism’. These, in turn, comprise two of the elements of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the 21st Century–a partnership project between Wall Street, the UN and international NGOs, i.e. Avaaz, Ceres, Purpose and 350.

The primary promoters of the ‘New Economy’, ‘clean energy’ and ‘sustainable capitalism’–that form the core of the UN SDGs–are Bill Gates, Jeremy Heimans (Avaaz & Purpose) and Bill McKibben (350). Economic development under the SDGs relies on financial investment from the World Bank, and compliance enforcement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)–in partnership with Wall Street and regional investment banks.

The results of this ‘sustainable capitalism’ can already be seen in the form of mega-dams, mega-plantations, and mega-mining projects in South America, Africa and Asia. This industrial development–while profitable to the investors–has unfortunately resulted in major deforestation, toxic pollution of fresh water, and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples who formerly called these territories home.

Adjacent to the mega-dams, mega-plantations, and mega-mines of the ‘New Economy’ are makeshift camps for the industrial laborers, as well as rural shanty towns for displaced farmers and fishermen. The Indigenous peoples–those that aren’t murdered by corporate security personnel working in tandem with the police and military–are frequently relocated to urban slums far away, where many die a slow death of poverty and substance abuse.

The mega-dams provide electricity for industry, including the processing of minerals from the mega-mines, as well as the GMO soy and palm oil produced on the mega-plantations. The ‘clean energy’ minerals include gold, copper, and lithium, which are used in consumer electronics, solar panels, wind mills, and batteries for electric vehicles. They also include coal, oil, and uranium that is used to fuel the electrical grids in countries such as France, Japan and the UK.

The ‘clean energy’ plan of the UN, Wall Street and NGOs–that championed the financial elite at COP21–relies on two primary projects: 1. a global nuclear power renaissance, and 2. privatization of Indigenous and public resources worldwide.

Enchanting as the chimera of clean energy might be, it doesn’t scale to meet energy demand, and its use by marketing agencies like Avaaz, Purpose and 350 is to perpetuate the misbelief that Wall Street — which caused all our social and environmental problems — is our only hope for salvation. Sort of a New Age Ghost Dance.

Bomb Trains

The reason for the glut of Bakken crude now rolling into the March Point and Cherry Point refineries in Washington State goes back to 2012, when Obama opened up millions of acres for gas and oil in 23 states, ushering in the fracking boom that brought us the ‘bomb trains’ owned by Obama’s friend Warren Buffett since 2009, when he purchased Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) for $34 billion–the same year TIDES Foundation funded 350.

In 2010, 350 launched the campaign to reject KXL; by 2014, crude-via-rail in the US soared to 500 thousand car loads per year, up from 5 thousand in 2008, with trains exploding across Canada and the US.

To refresh readers’ memories, the KXL ‘grassroots’ hoax was funded in large part by TIDES (flush with Buffett money) with 350 at the helm. Funds laundered through Buffett’s foundation NOVO and the TIDES Foundation — a money laundry used by Tar Sands investors and other elites to control NGOs — helped finance the KXL NGO charade, thus eclipsing any discussion about shutting down the Tar Sands, and making possible the explosive growth of bomb trains and other pipelines.

Divestment

When Klein and McKibben herded thousands of college students across America to fight climate change by forcing their schools to divest in fossil fuels, no one stopped to ask if that would make any difference. Using the emotive force of the idea of divestment as people power — based on an intentional association with its use in South Africa and Palestine — 350 inducted hypnotic behavior that omitted any critical judgment.

The fact that apartheid was opposed by a combination of boycott, divestment and sanction by national and international institutions in support of armed insurrection was lost on the climateers. Instead, they were hypnotized into believing that colleges selling back fossil fuel shares to Wall Street (where unscrupulous investors could then make a killing) was part of a magical social revolution. The same could apply to the nonsensical demand to end fossil fuels.

As a Wall Street shell game, the global fossil fuel divestment campaign — exposed by Cory Morningstar in Divestment as the Vehicle to Interlocking Globalized Capital — is a PR masterpiece.

As noted in the November 4, 2014 Harvard Business Review,

Were divestment ever to succeed in lowering the valuations of fossil fuel companies, an unintended consequence could be a shift from public markets to private markets… Such a shift could hurt transparency; companies that go private have minimal reporting obligations and they typically become very opaque. This could limit everyone’s ability to engage the management of these companies in a discussion around climate change.

As an indicator of the scale of fraud perpetrated by the divestment campaign led by 350, Exxon in 2014 spent $13.2 billion buying up its own stock. As I noted previously,

Discursive monoculture is the result of investment in private equity media, university endowments, and NGOs. The energy industry understands production and consumption cycles, and makes just as much on low prices as high. When the glut from fracking is burned up by frolicking consumers, they’ll double the price again, and make a killing on the divested shares.

Using hedge funds and other non-transparent private equity trading firms, the aristocracy – that is heavily invested in fossil fuels – is betting on increasing oil and gas consumption, long into the future. Corporate media rarely discusses the American aristocracy and how their agenda affects society. Consumers blame banks, but they have no idea how financial institutions are used by private equity traders to constantly replenish aristocratic wealth at our expense.

Private equity funds are not openly traded in any public stock exchange system, and therefore face considerably less regulatory oversight from institutions such as the Securities and Exchange Commission than their publicly traded counterparts.

Buying energy assets on the cheap as a result of fossil fuel divestment by universities and pension funds, investors such as Goldman Sachs Capital Partners “wield an immense amount of political influence” that divestment on college campuses helps to increase. While students celebrated divestment at their schools, private equity in 2015 raised $34 billion for oil and gas funds—a 94% rise from 2012.

Meanwhile, 350 promotes its ongoing Wall Street-funded revolution. As someone wise once said, “A half-truth is a whole lie.”

Tilting at Windmills

The kids mobilized by 350 don’t understand how they are being manipulated, but that’s the reality of the power elite behind the 350 hoaxes. They might get some token windmills and solar panels–which require fossil fuels to make, maintain, and replace–but those won’t come anywhere near to meeting the electrical demand now met by burning fossil fuels.

The funders of 350 know all this, which is why they finance 350 campaigns that don’t address the consumerism or militarism that drive fossil fuel demand. Instead, they promote the idea that Americans can continue consuming vast quantities of minerals for electricity and electronics, car and jet travel at the expense of the rest of the world. If the kids think Americans are going to tolerate them shutting down refineries, they are going to be unpleasantly surprised.

The oil trains are a problem that can be addressed as a public safety issue, but the refineries will still receive oil by ships and pipelines. Our society would collapse without it. Imagine no fossil-fueled shipping by air, land or sea of food, medicine, clothing or building materials. Where do they think their coffee, kayaks, bicycles, polar wear and yoga mats come from?

France went for fossil-free electricity, and they have nuclear power plants and radioactive waste instead. They have to invade African countries to get uranium, and now they have nuclear contamination to deal with. That’s the reality of breaking free.

 

Recommended viewing

Green Illusions

Recommended reading

A Culture of Imbeciles

Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests

The Society of the Spectacle

 

 

[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.]

False Hope: The Core Strategy of 350

April 27, 2016

By Jay Taber

 

 

Bomb train protest events are good. They help to remind people of the looming threat. Some of the participants might even get involved in politics, where decisions are made. Good for them.

That said, while taking selfies and holding placards is good clean fun that builds camaraderie, it is not the same as getting involved in electing authentic leaders and fighting government corruption. That takes a lot of hard work and sustained commitment over years, even decades.

So protests are a good start, but the point of protest is to do the research, education, and organizing that lead to effective community action and changes in public policy. Symbolic protests that generate delusional expectations, however, are in the long run disempowering. When unrealistic demands go nowhere, protestors become frustrated, cynical, and disheartened.

Social movement entrepreneurs, i.e. 350, know this. Indeed, organizing designer protests and vanity arrests, while making unrealistic demands, is the MO of 350. While disempowering of its followers, it appeals to these pious poseurs by making them feel righteous and forceful, while not asking them to make any real sacrifices. Endless protests and other staged 350 events also dissipate the energy of its followers, leaving them worn out before the real work begins.

The half-truth of the need to stop oil trains sets up 350 followers for the whole lie, i.e. “an end to fossil fuel development and an immediate transition to a renewable energy” that is absolutely infeasible—unless everyone is willing to stop driving cars, flying on planes, and heating their homes, while simultaneously growing all their own food and building their own housing from baked-mud bricks. For Wall Street NGOs, the nature of campaigns is to undermine movements.

The half-truth—whole lie strategy of 350, that promotes magical thinking like ending all fossil fuels is actually a textbook case of psychological warfare. As the core strategy of 350, the false hope of fossil-free renewable energy is complemented by the magical thinking of the end times of capitalism. This popular disinformation, drilled into the minds of 350 followers ad infinitum, is the core of 350 psywar that is essential to the privatization strategy of the financial elite.

You can see it in play with the false hope message that ‘capitalism is dying’. Really? It’s flourishing like never before. Just look at all the executive pay raises and people evicted by greedy slumlords driving up rents with venture capital used for gentrification. A pervasive term from those that flog false hope is ‘late-stage capitalism’, distorting the fact that capitalism is in its prime–stronger than ever. Another phrase false hope agent provocateurs use about this fantasy is that capitalism is now ‘winding itself down from system-level harms’, as though it wasn’t turbo-charged on total control of government institutions and rolling in stolen U.S. Treasury funds.

One of the magical ideas false hope promotes is that capitalism is dying because there is ‘no more profit to extract’. Jesus, where do they come up with this stuff? Capitalists are profiting hand-over-fist on everything from food to water to housing to medicine to energy with no end in sight. Do they think false hope followers aren’t paying rent and utility bills, or having to choose between food and medicine on their meager paychecks or social security benefits?

Lastly, the false hope pipe dream of ‘thriving prospects for all’ while we ‘live in harmony’ after the death of capitalism makes me wonder if they are smoking crack. Of course, they are not; they are preying on the misery of those who are desperate or gullible enough to fall for the core message of false hope, in order for their Wall Street paymasters to plunder what little we have left.

 

 

[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.]

Wall Street Taking Over Nonprofit Sector

Shadow Proof

January 4, 2016

by Daniel Wright

 

“What’s new is the increased concentration of directors drawn from one narrow sector of business and industry: finance.”— Study: “The Wall Street Takeover of Nonprofit Boards”, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) 

 

“Practices such as data-driven decision-making, an emphasis on metrics, prioritizing impact and competition, managing with three- to five-year horizons and plans, and advocating executive-style leadership and compensation have all become an essential part of the nonprofit lexicon…”— Study: “The Wall Street Takeover of Nonprofit Boards”, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) 

 

 

While there has traditionally been a close relationship between Wall Street donors and nonprofit organizations like charities and universities, a new study from the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) reveals a growing Wall Street takeover of nonprofit boards of directors.

Using data from what are referred to in the study as major private research universities, elite small liberal arts colleges, and prominent New York City cultural and health institutions, SSIR calculates that “[T]he percentage of people from finance on the boards virtually doubled at all three types of nonprofits between 1989 and 2014.”

SSIR posits that nonprofits favor Wall Street partly because “nonprofit organizations are simply following the money.” Wall Street has grown increasingly rich in the past decades and fundraising is a vital aspect of running a nonprofit organization. Hedge fund managers’ compensation regularly outstrips other corporate executives, making them prime fundraising targets.

But the banksters are not content to just donate to the nonprofit organizations, financial service industry executives are taking positions of influence and control. As one might expect, the vision Wall Street players have of and for the world often clashes with the preexisting culture within those organizations. The most pronounced conflict, according to SSIR, is the effort to make nonprofits more like businesses:

As financiers come to dominate the boards of leading nonprofits, it is not surprising that their approaches and priorities have made their way, very explicitly and fundamentally, into the governance of the nonprofit sector … Nonprofit leaders regularly hear about these finance practices from board members and donors whose native habitat is the financial services world. Moreover, nonprofit managers have come to accept them as reasonable principles upon which donors base their giving …

 

Numerous critics have written thoughtfully about the ways in which market-based thinking and approaches applied to the nonprofit sector provide false promise, with the potential to dilute charitable values, undermine long-term mission focus, incentivize small, incremental goals, and threaten shared governance and other forms of participatory problem-solving.

In other words, Wall Street is helping bring dubious management practices to the sector that was setup, in part, to deal with the failures of an economic system run by said dubious management practices. What could go wrong?

It is apparently lost on many donors to the nonprofit sector that if nonprofit work could have been achieved through a business approach it would already have been. For Wall Street, the problem with the nonprofit sector appears to be that it’s nonprofit.

 

[Daniel Wright is a longtime blogger and currently writes for Shadowproof. He lives in New Jersey, by choice.]

The De-Klein of a Revolutionary Writer: From Subcomandante Marcos to Angel Gurria

Wrong Kind of Green

January 25, 2016

 

Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight. (Shock and awe – Overview”, Oxford University Press). In the context of today’s completely top-down environmental/climate “movement” funded by the world’s most powerful institutions, we have a soft-power doctrine serving western hegemony based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force via the non-profit industrial complex, that succeeds in paralyzing the public’s perception of the “battlefield” (power structures) and destroy its will to fight. Further this doctrine coupled with social engineering and behavioural change tactics manipulates the populace in not only acquiescing to, but even demanding further servitude and oppression.

“I continue to dream what many say is impossible.  I’m sitting in a hotel in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico writing this blog post a week after the Cancún mess.  In Chiapas, when the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect on New Years Day in 1994, a band of  Indigenous Peoples called the Zapatistas started a revolution in Chiapas stating that NAFTA ‘is a death sentence for Indigenous Peoples.’” — Running to Catch a Bus to the Apocalypse by Orin Langelle

In 2007 Naomi Klein visited Chiapas, sharing a platform with Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) at a conference in CIDECI (Das Centro indígena de Capacitación Integral) on the outskirts of San Cristobal, Mexico. [Source]

December 2007: Coloquio Internacional Inmemoriam Andrés Aubry: “Planeta tierra, movimientos antisistémicos”

Klein in Chiapas, December 2007 | No Logo Website: “At the end of the conference, Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos issued a communiqué warning that “the signs of war on the horizon are clear” and noted, “In the words of Naomi Klein, we need to prepare ourselves for the shock.”

However in the actual physical manifestation of a person doing a proverbial 180 degree turn regarding ideological allegiances, it was only a scant eight years later, on November 24, 2015 where an exuberant Klein is photographed with Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To illustrate the difference between the rebel comandante and Klein’s current ally in “revolution”, Gurría served as Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (under the Zedillo administration) from 1994–1998. Prior to his appointment in 1994, Gurría served as the party’s foreign affairs secretary. Gurría “co-chaired [the] financial affairs team for NAFTA” (World Economic Forum) and “also took part in negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)” (AACSB International). In January 1998 Mexican President Zedillo appointed Jose Angel Gurría as Minister of Finance.

As Gurría was a person who not only supported NAFTA, but negotiated it, there is no more telling a statement regarding Klein’s change as far as who and what she supports than the following:

“The Zapatistas chose January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) came into force, to “declare war” on the Mexican army, launching an insurrection and briefly taking control of the city of San Cristobal de las Casas and five Chiapas towns. They sent out a communiqué explaining that Nafta, which banned subsidies to indigenous farm co-operatives, would be a “summary execution” for four million indigenous Mexicans in Chiapas, the country’s poorest province.” — The Unknown Icon, Naomi Klein, March 3, 2001

Photo: 24 November 2015: Naomi Klein (left) and Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). [1]

Further evidence in terms of the establishment Garria and Klein’s blatant about-face regarding her current cooperative relationship with the establishment can be found in the following responses:

“One top official at Nomura Securities summed up Wall Street’s euphoria upon hearing of Gurría’s appointment. ‘He’s one of ours.’” — Our “Man in Mexico” and the Chiapas Massacre, 1998

+++

“Long considered a fortress of nationalism, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now been taken over by the neoliberal elite. José Angel Gurría is a technocrat through and through, a specialist in financial affairs with almost no real experience in the traditions of Mexican foreign policy. This would seem to be the future of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the post-NAFTA era.” — ROMAN LOPEZ VILLICANA, Mexico and NAFTA: The Case of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, March 1997

+++

“In December 1997, there was the brutal Acteal massacre in which 45 Zapatista supporters were killed, most of them women and children. And the situation in Chiapas is still desperate, with thousands displaced from their homes.” — The Unknown Icon, Naomi Klein, March 3, 2001

In addition, the subsequent statement is an excerpt from the 1998 article Our “Man in Mexico” and the Chiapas Massacre written by James Petras:

“The massacre of 45 Indians in Chiapas by government-sponsored paramilitary forces has to be viewed within the broader context of regimes’ vigorous implementation of the socio-economic model and its growing political isolation within Mexican society. While there was worldwide condemnation of the massacre (over 58 cities and several parliaments in Europe) and its perpetrator in the Mexican government, Wall Street, the city of London, and other financial centers around the world have been lauding the “economic recovery” and the 5 percent to 6 percent growth rate over the past two years. The polarization within Mexico is reproduced overseas. The very essence of “the model” is the attraction of investment based on lowering living standards to cheapen the costs of the booming exports sector. The policies that attract investors deepen poverty in Mexico: the opening of markets has led to a flood of cheap imports, particularly basic grains, while privatization has meant the sell-off of public enterprises. The former has condemned millions of peasant producers to poverty while the latter has led to the concentration of wealth, the firing of hundreds of thousands of wage and salaried workers and the growth of the informal economy…

Outside of government circles he is called the “Angel of Dependency,” for his generosity with foreign investors and his willingness to give free sway to U. S. police, military, and drug officials within Mexico’s borders. To ensure continued growth to guarantee the continued flow of overseas funds and to consolidate foreign investor confidence, President Zedillo appointed Jose Angel Gurría as Minister of Finance, the position directly responsible for negotiating with the international banks and U.S. Treasury. Outside of government circles he is called the “Angel of Dependency,” for his generosity with foreign investors and his willingness to give free sway to U. S. police, military, and drug officials within Mexico’s borders. One top official at Nomura Securities summed up Wall Street’s euphoria upon hearing of Gurría’s appointment. “He’s one of ours.”…

The Angel of Dependency

To emphasize his determination to maintain the lopsided dependent growth model, President Zedillo appointed the above mentioned Jose Angel Gurría to head the Finance Ministry. After learning of Gurría’s appointment the Mexican newspapers reported “euphoria on Wall Street,” and a financial advisor in the city of London gloated that “It couldn’t be better.”

Why does Gurría come so highly recommended? First and foremost was his role in sabotaging a Latin American debtors cartel that was in the process of being organized in 1986. While the rest of Latin America’s finance ministers were preparing a | document to collectively I reduce the percentage of debt payments to the overseas bankers, Gurría went ahead and signed a new agreement with the IMF in which he committed Mexico to following a strict payment plan. In the follow-up, he supported the strict subordination of the Mexican economy to all the articles and clauses of the IMF austerity plan, in effect becoming an unpaid functionary of IMF policy makers. He was particularly generous in setting the terms for the privatization of Mexican public enterprises, thus providing speculators with prodigious windfalls.

More than any official in recent history he has been instrumental in undermining Mexican sovereignty. While foreign minister between 1995-1997 he abolished Mexico’s traditional respect for political asylum for refugees. He eliminated constraints on the operations of the DEA, FBI, and CIA operatives in Mexican territory (in the name of international cooperation)…

As further proof of Garria’s complicity in the Mexico’s oppression of the indigenous, the aforementioned author James Petras goes into detail about deepening social crisis and the role of the state in the Chiapas Massacre within his previously referenced article. He summarises his research as follows:

“U.S. military doctrine and training of the repressive forces accompanies U.S. support for the free market economic policies of President Zedillo. The massacre in Chiapas highlights the real meaning of U.S.-Mexican cooperation; free markets and machine guns. On the other side of the barricades, the continued struggle of the Chiapas Indian communities, their growing allies in the countryside in Mexico City and overseas represents another kind of international cooperation: popular solidarity in defense of autonomous self-governing communities.” [Read the full article here]

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“OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi signed a partnership agreement while attending the Summit taking place at UN headquarters in New York from 25–27 September. Building on each other’s comparative advantage, the OECD and UNCTAD have joined forces to help decision makers take actions towards inclusive growth.” [Photo: Julien Daniel / OECD] [Dr. Kituyi Echoes His Master’s Voice in Mombasa]

Sustaining Privatization

Today Gurría serves as Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Gurría launched the “New Approaches to Economic Challenges”, “an OECD reflection process on the lessons from the crisis with the aim to upgrade OECD’s analytical frameworks and develop a comprehensive agenda for sustainable and inclusive growth.” [2] Gurría’s background is extensive, currently serving on the Advisory Board for the Global Green Growth Forum (3GF). 3GF’s works on building public-private partnerships for a “global green growth agenda”: “This industrial transition has the potential to unlock new growth engines and spur global economic growth… Studies on green growth opportunities from the OECD, UNEP and the World Bank conclude that the economic opportunity in ‘going green’ is worth several trillion dollars between now and 2030.” ” [3Gf website]

The epitome of the black bourgeoisie. December 1 2015: “OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi signed a partnership agreement while attending the Summit taking place at UN headquarters in New York from 25–27 September. Building on each other’s comparative advantage, the OECD and UNCTAD have joined forces to help decision makers take actions towards inclusive growth. [Photo: Julien Daniel / OECD]

Today “Klein is the Oprah Winfrey of the Toy Che Brigades–another vapid luminary on the cover of Vogue.” Immersed and drowning in a society of spectacle, the increasing vogue for capitalist-friendly climate discourse flourishes like a cancer. Celebrity fetish coupled with sophisticated (yet evasive) holistic linguistics is further mobilized to protect, expand and strengthen capitalism and growth under the guise of a “new economy”. Blinded by privilege, while enraptured with one’s own ego, fame and fortune entice today’s environmental “leaders” who are appointed/chosen and bankrolled by the world’s most powerful oligarchs and are nothing more than recherché brands serving as valuable commodities insulating current power structures. As writer Milan Kundera once wrote: “Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi.” An alibi shared amongst those who reap the benefits of white supremacy and privilege.

 

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[1] Klein came to the OECD in the context of the “Coffees of the Secretary-General” series. Paris, France. “Since 2010 some of the world’s foremost thinkers–economists, historians, environmentalists, writers, artists, photographers–have come to the OECD to meet Secretary-General Angel Gurría and chat about the world over a relaxing cup of coffee… After coffee, the conversation then opens out into a lively discussion with a packed audience of OECD experts.” [Source: OECD] [2] “In 2008, Geoffrey Lean wrote that a UN plan for a Green New Deal “will be formally launched in London next week.” He noted that the GND “draws its inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which ended the 1930s depression.” UN leaders promised that “‘green growth’ will rescue the world’s finances.” The very next spring the UN released its core description of a world-wide plan for recovery called the Global Green New Deal (GGND). Its list of collaborators included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO)…. The GGND was designed to expand Green Capitalism and the Green Economy. It emphatically states that economic issues must be understood as a compilation of techno-fixes: “Technological solutions will be essential drivers in the transition towards a green economy.” Nowhere are problems presented as caused by social relationships of domination. Instead, it seeks to tie economic “improvement” to global carbon markets and REDD…. With no plan to actually restrict the extraction, refining and sale of fossil fuels, the UN hopes to add the alternative fuel market on top of the existing fossil fuel market as a way to expand the total energy market…. For indigenous peoples around the world, the fight is often against corporations extracting minerals. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, hundreds or perhaps thousands of struggles against economic growth of extraction industries broke out.” [Source: So How Green Is the Green New Deal?, July 11, 2014]

Climate Evangelism

A Culture of Imbeciles

January 23, 2015

by Jay Taber

June 8, 1988: Overhead portrait of disgraced PTL evangelist Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye, surrounded by members of the Bring Bakkers Back (BBB) group, outside the HQ of the New Covenant Ministries, the latest Bakker movement, at the Carousel shopping center. Photo credit: Will McIntyre

November 15, 2012, Boston, MA: Do The Math tour

True to form, Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein — the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of climate evangelism — are exhorting their mindless followers to double down on ‘activist’ charades in the wake of COP21. Unlike the disgraced televangelists, however, the climate opportunists probably won’t face a Federal grand jury probe or do any time for fraud. As the loyal ‘opposition’ of the financial elite, they will stick with the Wall Street script, keeping their devotees busy whining but ineffective in confronting the power politics of their billionaire paymasters.

Susan Rockefeller, Co-Executive Producer of the “This Changes Everything” documentary film and founding partner of Louverture Films, LLC. Louverture is the production company for the documentary film “This Changes Everything” (with The Message Productions, LLC / Klein Lewis Productions ). Photo: Rockefeller at her home on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 8, 2015. Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times) Further reading: Financing “The Message” Behind Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’ Project

 

 

 

 

[Jay Taber 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 ]

 

 

Imperial Social Media: Avaaz and the Arms Merchants

Skookum

December 25, 2015

by Jay Taber

Avaaz Hones In On Burundi as Next U.S. Fait Accompli

 

Promoting the imperial social media fad of equivocating on US and NATO invasions that destroy entire societies, ostensibly because the current head of state is ruthless or corrupt, Avaaz apologists neglect the growing list of countries where these invasions have made things worse. Indeed, I am at a loss to find a country in my lifetime (1952-present) where US military aggression — either directly or through proxy mercenaries and US-financed and trained death squads — made things better.

Of course, if you look at militarism as a market-oriented strategy, then making war or creating armed mayhem is just part of doing business. With the crippling financial sanctions available to the US through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, invasion is just for show — part of the expected social spectacle — that routinely transfers wealth from the U.S. Treasury to Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

Given the US influence at the UN Security Council, any country seeking to conduct its governance, diplomacy and trade independent of the US and EU risks destruction. The evidence can be seen in the chaotic, murderous aftermath reigning in these unfortunate societies, and in the tsunami of refugees seeking asylum. Meanwhile, the revolving door between the arms merchants, the Pentagon and the State Department is now open to NGOs like Avaaz and its PR firm Purpose.

 

Image: U.S. President Barack Obama with Avaaz co-founder and former U.S. Representative Tom Perriello

The Empire’s War against Burundi: War Propaganda in Preparation for an R2P “Humanitarian Intervention”

Meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame (R) and Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the UN- Washington DC, 4 August 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry releases the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) with USAID Acting Administrator Alfonso Lenhardt, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom, and Special Representative for the QDDR (and Avaaz co-founder) Tom Perriello at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC on April 28, 2015. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame (R) and Tom Perriello, US Special Envoy for Great Lakes Region- Kigali, 19 August 2015

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame (R) walks past US President Barack Obama (2nd R) as US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and National Security Advisor Susan Rice (C) look on during a “Peacekeeping Summit” at the United Nations headquarters on September 28, 2015 in New York. AFP PHOTO/MANDEL NGAN

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gives the thumbs-up to participants in the “Leaders’ Summit on Peacekeeping” with National Security Advisor Susan Rice (R), U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Rwandan President Paul Kagame during the 70th annual UN General Assembly at the UN headquarters September 28, 2015 in New York City. Source: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

 

 

 

 

New World Order—Same Old Crimes

Wrong Kind of Green Op-Ed

December 21, 2015

by Jay Taber

November 2015: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with Mary Robinson and Ricken Patel, Executive Director of Avaaz at “One Heart One Tree: Lighting of the Eiffel Tower”. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

In terms of relevance to the indigenous nations often referred to as the Fourth World, the rollouts from the COP21 gathering of UN member states, Wall Street-funded NGOs, and the global financial elite resemble colonial initiatives undertaken as a result of similar 19^th Century gatherings to carve up the world for capitalism. Then, as now, indigenous territories and resources were targeted for expropriation through coercion, with Africa being a prime target.

Photo: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (fourth from left) and Christiana Figueres (centre), Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), meet with “Civil Society Leaders” at the Le Bourget-Paris exhibition site, for Cop21. From left: Jagoda Munic, Chairperson, Friends of the Earth International; Ricken Patel, President and Executive Director, Avaaz; Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation; Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International; May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org; Wael Hmaidan, Director, Climate Action Network International; and Bridget Burns, Administrator on Climate, Global Gender and Climate Alliance.

As statements emanating from COP21 by Wall Street-driven entities like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition were tailored to seduce the naïve into believing that First World consumption of indigenous territories and resources for luxury goods could continue unabated under the pretext of saving the planet, the agenda of the financial elite at Paris was to subsume human rights to the all-encompassing ‘clean energy’/New Economy regime.

A look at the ‘clean energy’ Ponzi scheme — led by magnate Bill Gates, and promoted by Havas – reveals two key attributes of the plan are 1. Expanding nuclear power development and 2. Privatizing public process and policy. Indeed, privatization of the planet, which led to the indigenous revolution in Bolivia and elsewhere, is a core component of the Natural Infrastructure for Business launched at COP21.

“Clean” energy: Lithium mining in Mexico

“Clean” energy: Lithium mining in Chile

While the allure of the ‘clean energy’ chimera is appealing to First World consumers of electronics and energy storage devices such as electric car batteries, the Fourth World reality in Africa, Asia and South America – where resources for these technologies are mined — is one of utter devastation. Indeed, it has been convincingly argued that the recent misadventures of AFRICOM, NATO, and the UN in Libya, Mali and the Great Lakes region of Africa are aimed at securing these minerals for the US and the EU.

COP15, 2009: Bill McKibben of 350.org, Ambassador Antonio Lima of Cape Verde (Vice-President of AOSIS), and Ricken Patel, Avaaz Executive Director

The NGOs and PR firms behind the social engineering used to drum up support for Wall Street’s privatization plan — Avaaz, Havas, Purpose and 350 — are key to saving the planet for the financial elite. While their choreography of the climate drama has resulted in lots of moral theatrics, the failure of 21 years of lobbying and protesting suggests something more serious is needed. Organizing for political power requires challenging these Wall Street-funded fronts. ‘Civil society’ does not equal NGO.

 

FURTHER READING

BREAKTHROUGH BOONDOGGLE

CLEAN ENERGY PONZI SCHEME

COP21: SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE

MARCHING FOR MONSANTO

PRIVATIZATION STRATEGY

RAVE NEW WORLD

WANTED FOR DESTROYING OUR FUTURE: AVAAZ

 

 

 

Climate Opportunists

Skookum

December 18, 2015

by Jay Taber

 

 

 

True to form, Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein — the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of climate evangelism — are exhorting their mindless followers to double down on ‘activist’ charades in the wake of COP21. Unlike the disgraced televangelists, however, the climate opportunists probably won’t face a Federal grand jury probe or do any time for fraud. As the loyal ‘opposition’ of the financial elite, they will stick with the Wall Street script, keeping their devotees busy whining but ineffective in confronting the power politics of their billionaire paymasters.