To See a World View in an Embassy Stand: The D.C. Siege of Venezuela

Humanitarian Aid Blocked from Entering Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. 

by David Swanson - Let's Try Democracy

May 9, 2019

Two months ago, I heard a story. You heard it too, if you went anywhere near a television or a newspaper in the United States. The government of Venezuela needed to be overthrown because it wouldn’t allow in humanitarian aid.

The story was false, of course.

The United States had imposed brutal sanctions on Venezuela for years, resulting in 40,000 deaths (with more being added every day) and sought to cut off electricity, and had no more interest in aiding humanity than ExxonMobil has in sunrises, children, and rainbows.

There are many places on earth in desperate need of humanitarian aid, so that someone actually concerned about humanity would have had no trouble finding somewhere else to deliver their aid.

Not only that, but Venezuela was in fact busy allowing in tons of humanitarian aid (needed largely because of U.S. sanctions) from any nation or agency not attempting to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The United States was apparently trying to ship weapons in with which to take over Venezuela — an overthrow that the U.S. National Security Advisor said would be on behalf of U.S. oil companies.

The outrages and atrocities of the Venezuelan government are, of course, matched by those of dozens of other governments, including the U.S. government, and would be far outstripped by a U.S. war on Venezuela. Moreover, the U.S. wars and coups marketed as humanitarian that have ended up (shockingly each time) as devastating crimes against humanity have included Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and dozens and dozens more. The only humanitarian wars that have ever benefitted humanity have been the imaginary ones that people at think tanks funded by weapons makers keep telling us should have happened but didn’t — as the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) did on Wednesday citing Rwanda in the usual false manner.

But let’s set all context and actual facts aside for a moment in order to play along with the propaganda. Let’s assume that the media outlets that seem unaware of the U.S. sanctions or eager to support them, that falsely report that Juan Guaidó has been elected president, that falsely report that government forces block humanitarian aid and burn aid trucks (actually burned by coup proponents), that falsely report that Guaidó has taken over an airport, and that fail to acknowledge the illegality of overthrowing governments or even to recall Donald Trump’s acknowledgement that such actions are disastrous prior to entering the White House (Trump went so far as to pretend to have opposed the 2003-begun war on Iraq) — let’s assume that these media outlets all mean well.

Operating under that pretense, their goal is not to kickstart another catastrophic bloody war generating millions of refugees who will be duly blamed for it. Au contraire! Their interest is in aiding humanity. If the Venezuelan government were to allow in the aid that we’re pretending it’s not allowing in, then all would be right with the world, and there would be no need to overthrow another nation’s government and install servants of U.S. oil companies.

Let’s pretend that we’re giving the media the benefit of the doubt, and — more than that — the viewers the benefit of the doubt. Certainly many viewers of U.S. media actually believe this stuff at least momentarily. 

Well, then, here’s my question:

Why is it unacceptable to keep humanitarian aid out of Venezuela, but acceptable to keep it out of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C.? Again, the facts are not what is most widely reported. The U.S. government ordered the Embassy staff out but did not lose its obligation to protect the embassy from takeovers. The Embassy staff asked peace activists to protect the Embassy, and they are trying to do so. But the Secret Service, the D.C. Police, and a gang of pro-coup thugs threatening and engaging in violence and vandalism have created a siege.

The nonviolent protectors inside the embassy are now cut off from food, water, medicine, electricity, and communications. Those attempting to deliver humanitarian aid have not yet had their vehicles burned but have been assaulted and thrown to the ground and arrested by “law enforcement” soldiercops.

If we’re in favor of delivering humanitarian aid to those in need, why are we in favor of it in Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran (while trying to starve residents through sanctions) but against it in most of the world, on the streets of Washington, D.C., itself, and in the Venezuelan Embassy in Georgetown? If the protectors of the embassy leave it, it will be taken over by an armed gang hoping to spark the takeover of the nation of Venezuela by the oil interests that many of us claim to be aware are out to destroy the world slowly whenever they’re not making us too uneasy by trying to destroy the world quickly.

On Wednesday in Washington, at a stink tank funded by the world’s biggest weapons dealers, the Secretary General of the OAS Luis Almagro got up and declared that the “archaic” concept of non-intervention has never existed in law. Therefore, he suggested, the United States must attack Venezuela in order to protect it under the banner of “the responsibility to protect.”

Again, the first casualty is truth.

The so-called responsibility to protect (by bombing) actually does not exist in any law anywhere and never has. Meanwhile, the United Nations Charter forbids not only war but also the threat of war, meaning that war mongers who ignore it also violate it, and that “All options are on the table” is both narrower and wider than those who utter it intend: narrower, because what they’re threatening is criminal; wider, because the option exists of arresting them for their crime.

Luis Almagro declares that we must “act” or not. “Act” — like “do something” — is defined as “start another war,” while “not act” is defined as: engage in diplomacy or send actual aid with good intentions or join the world’s treaties and courts and begin cooperating with the rule of law or abolish the Monroe Doctrine before its 200th birthday or literally anything whatsoever other than “start another war.”

I wrote War Is A Lie precisely so that nobody would have to wonder whether to believe a word such people say.

The real tragedy, of course, is that Venezuela, just like the rest of the world, actually needs an intervention from some actually sane and generous group able to develop alternatives to drilling, selling, or burning the oil that is going to kill us all. But U.S. aggression creates predictable demands for sovereignty and oil rights and oil profits and glorification of a flawed government being threatened by a worse one. We’re three steps backward from the starting line in trying to save this beautiful little world. And the environmental groups’ unwillingness to notice the existence of wars for oil, wars as burners of oil, or wars as pits of money needed to convert away from oil exacerbates the problem.

So, I’m not going to tell you to choose between some horrible action or nothing. There are a million and one ways to help. But one of them is this: Go and send others and send food to the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C. Right now. Go there. Do not wait. And — while you’re on your way — tell the U.S. Congress to prevent the war and to protect the Embassy Protection Collective.

Resisting the Irresistible: How China, India, Japan and Russia Established Alternative Trade and Investment Blocs

Resisting the New World Order: How China, India, Japan and Russia Established Alternative Trade and Investment Blocs

by T.J. Coles - AxisofLogic

Apr 20, 2019

This article is an excerpt from my new book, Privatized Planet: “Free Trade” as a Weapon Against Democracy, Healthcare and the Environment (2019, New Internationalist).

A report by Britain’s Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) acknowledges that “[g]lobalization is a brutal process.

Societies accustomed to being at the top of the pyramid are being forced to make harsh structural adjustments” in order to keep their GDPs high; hence the Brussels and City of London-led austerity policies of the last decade, which have killed literally thousands of people.

The report concludes, “[i]t will be important … to engage rising powers inside existing international institutions as equal partners,” meaning that the Western elites hope to keep others in an illusion of equality.

The US model favours economic isolation and military “containment.”

CHINA: NEW SILK ROAD

The only real “threat” that China poses to US elites is that it might pursue an independent course in global affairs, hence US elites’ massive military build-up in the Asia Pacific, or “pivot to Asia” as the Obama-Clinton administration called it.

According to a report from 2009 by the business-linked US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), China has pursued a nationalistic agenda since the 1990s, challenging NATO and Japan, both of which are key US tools of influence. China’s alleged move towards independence is mixed, however; it has “enhanc[ed] its position with other major powers in the region, particularly Japan and the United States.” The Clinton-Obama-era Trans-Pacific Partnership, from which Trump withdrew, was designed in part to create a regional framework to which China would have to adhere. The CFR report notes that “[c]oping with China in a multilateral setting not only gives th[e]” smaller, regional nations (Vietnam, Singapore, etc.) “the power of collective bargaining but also enhances their security.”

In 1991, a newly reformed China joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). APEC was promoted in the late-1980s by Australia’s neoliberal champion, PM Bob Hawke. The US joined the APEC 21, as did Russia, and describes it as “the premier forum for facilitating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment.”

Founded in the 1960s, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) contrasts APEC in that it initially excluded the USA. It has grown as a regional, mutual-interest bloc, which has succeeded in making the region a nuclear weapons-free zone, minus Japan, which probably hosts US nuclear missiles, and China, which developed nuclear weapons in the 1960s. China is not a member of ASEAN, but has associate status through various treaties. One of which is the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area signed in 2002. Members include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In 2001, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In 2017, both India and its supposed enemy, Pakistan, joined SCO. The project is designed to integrate countries in the region, cooperate on military affairs and expand infrastructure projects. In 2006, the APEC states entered into negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The ASEAN-China FTA is a significant organization. In effect since 2010, it is the third largest economic bloc in world.

At the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia 2012, several countries entered into negotiations for a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP); a kind of TPP designed to work in China’s favour. Other signatories are Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. The agreement created one of the biggest economies in the world ($49.5 trillion) and included 3.4bn people. Both FTAAP and ASEAN-China FTA seem to have stalled with the advent of RCEP.

In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced China’s new Silk Road Economic Belt in a speech delivered in Kazakhstan. The supposed aim is to foster economic, trade and cultural cooperation across Eurasia and Southeast Asia. This is a rival to America’s Silk Road Strategy Act 1999, which sought to absorb some of the ex-Soviet states into the “free market”: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In 2011, having occupied Afghanistan (a key route along the “Silk Road”) for a decade, Obama announced a New Silk Road of America to capture “South Asia’s ... population of more than 1.6 billion,” including its “vast energy resources -- including oil, gas, and hydropower” (US State Department).

INDIA

In addition to participating in some of the above trade and investment agreements, India’s economy has been largely Americanized since its adoption of “free market” principles in the 1990s.

After India kicked out the murderous British, the rulers pursued a closed economy until the early-1990s. Unlike the brutal Maoist model in neighbouring China, which had mixed effects ranging from genocidal levels of starvation to improved infant mortality and life expectancy, India’s poverty-induced death toll failed to bring about improvements in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people. With rivals like China gaining power and enemies like Pakistan gaining prestige, India decided to boost its GDP and join the “free market.” This included turning large parts of the country into sweatshops, call centres and assembly plants for American and European businesses. This was called “Shining India.” It also meant turning more of the agricultural sector into an export market, despite the fact that hunger and starvation affects one quarter of the population.

According to a report by the right-wing Brookings Institution, despite joining the WTO, India has not strengthened its rules on intellectual property. This means that it retains some controls over domestic technology patents and drugs. This kind of protectionism has dissuaded the US from investing as much in India as it does in, for instance, South Korea.

Despite some political tensions, such as a border dispute, trade between India and China boomed from under $3bn in 2000 to $66.57bn by 2012. In 2017, however, India boycotted a meeting of 30 heads of state who discussed participation in China’s Silk Road. The so-called China-Pakistan corridor passes through Kashmir, a region whose status remains unresolved since the Partition of India in 1947 and the founding of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. India’s opposition to the Silk Road might affect its relations with China at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank—both of which receive substantial British investments, to the chagrin of the US, which sees the banks as a threat to its World Bank.

As for India’s relationship with Russia: Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan suggested that the ex-Soviet states form a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). It was not until 2015 that the EEU came into force. Its members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. In 2017, India announced plans to work with Russia on a “free trade” zone under the auspices of the EEU. The Economic Times (India) reports that such a deal could create a $37bn (or stronger) market.

JAPAN-EU: JEFTA

During WWII, the US slaughtered 3 million Japanese people, many with incendiary bombs, burning to death over 80,000 civilians in a single bombing raid (March 9-10, 1945). The new symbols of global power—atomic bombs—murdered a further 200,000 or so in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite minor trade spats, like the ‘80s protectionism imposed by Reagan in the US to protect American corporations against superior Japanese vehicles, Japan has been largely subservient to US interests.

Today, Japan hosts approximately 23 US military bases. After WWII, America made Japan include a peace clause in its Constitution. This was to ensure that the bourgeoning US Empire would not be challenged by a resurgent Japan. When it suited America to use Japan as a proxy against a rising China, however, the Obama administration ordered Japan to revoke the peace clause in its Constitution, much to the opposition of the Japanese public. In 2006, Japan proposed forming a Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA) with Australia, China, India, New Zealand and South Korea. At present, CEPEA has not been ratified.

The subservience of Japan’s political elite to the United States is so embarrassing that when PM Shinzo Abe (pronounced Abay) met with Donald Trump—in the USA, of course—Abe actually uttered these words:

“My name is Abe, but in the United States some people mistakenly pronounce my name as ‘Abe.’ But that is not bad, because even in Japan everybody knows the name of that great President, that a farmer and carpenter’s son can become a President. And that fact, 150 years ago, surprised the Japanese, who were still under the shogunate rule [sic]. The Japanese opened their eyes to democracy. The United States is the champion of democracy.” 

The US State Department refers to Abe as the kind of reformer it wants: easing of monetary policy to tackle low growth, “revisions to Japan’s legal code, and pro-active Japanese government policies to welcome [foreign direct investment] and promote corporate restructuring.” The “challenges” include Japan’s “insular and consensual business culture that is resistant to hostile mergers and acquisitions’ and ‘[l]abor practices that tend to inhibit labor mobility.” There is a conspicuous lack of interest in America, at least publicly, concerning the Japan-EU Free Trade Agreement (JEFTA). According to the European Commission’s trade assessment impact, JEFTA is a response to TPP and is designed to boost trade between the EU and Japan, particularly in the timber, motor vehicles and services sectors.

Europe’s trade assessment concludes that the main aim of JEFTA is to export more European-made products. One of the concerns, to give an example, is that Japan still retains some state controls over some of its services, despite Abe’s reforms. This is particularly bothersome in the public railway services (PRS) sector, which is a significant mode of transportation for Japanese people and thus a hindrance to the European automakers. “Ownership of PRS operators has been a critical topic of the EU-Japan FTA negotiations,” says the trade assessment report. “Concerns have been expressed about the possibility of more effective access to the sector given the former or current public ownership of PRS operators.” The report also envisages Japanese farmers requiring more skills in order to manage agriculture-related hi-technologies imported from Europe. The opening of “large-scale production plants” might result in “adjustments in labour” and the “closure or sell-off” of smaller plants, the report concludes.

RUSSIA

Turning finally to Russia, the only real challenge to US global domination:

Following US-led efforts to facilitate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ex-Soviet states and Russia adopted so-called neoliberal free markets (i.e., US-led) in the early-1990s. But when an-ex KGB agent, Vladimir Putin, came along and dismantled many “free market” structures, the demonization process began. A US military study looks back on the Putin years and notes that under Boris Yeltsin, Russia was “economically depressed, militarily enfeebled, and dependent on Western assistance, giving the impression of being pliant and often subservient.” It laments that under Putin, there has been large-scale “de-privatization.” The report notes that Russian nationalism and nationalization is an assault on “Western values, such as respect for contracts and private property.” Putin’s nationalism is a “major obstacle to a more constructive and legal international order.”

In 2011, Russia and the US fought a mini trade war over the former’s accession to the WTO. The US Congress failed to adopt legislation granting Russia most-favoured nation status. Russia retaliated by blocking GATT Article XIII, prohibiting imports. Around the same time, Britain, France and the US began training and organizing Islamic extremists in Jordan and Turkey to invade Syria and depose Russia’s remaining Middle East ally, the government of Bashar al-Assad. The agenda is called the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative and involves demolishing much of the region in order to rebuild it along lines conducive to Euro-American interests.

Sponsoring a coup largely orchestrated by the US State Department and related private interests, America, Britain and NATO then moved into Ukraine, Russia’s next-door neighbour. US military reports preceding the events predicted that if NATO encroached on Ukraine, Russia would annex Crimea in an effort to save its navy port. This is what happened. As neo-Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists launched attacks against ethnic Russians primarily living in the East, Russia engaged in military action.

Shortly after the escalation of proxy wars between the three nuclear-armed powers (Russia vs. Britain and the US), America and the EU imposed sanctions. Obama signed executive orders sanctioning Russia. Ukraine is strategically significant because it is a key energy corridor, bringing Russian oil and gas to markets in Europe. In addition to the general policy of encircling Russia with missile systems in Turkey, Poland and Romania, the US and EU negotiated “free trade” deals with Ukraine during the reign of pro-Western leaders. The coup was, in part, an effort to make long-term investments in Ukraine safe for the US and European Union. In September 2014, the EU also tightened sanctions.

CONCLUSION

The US elites and their commitment to “Full Spectrum Dominance … to protect U.S. interests and investment” don’t take kindly to challenges to their assumed right to dominate the world by force and shape it in their own interests. The major changes in world order are the result of frictions between those nations attempting to pursue independence and the US and its allies trying to keep them in line.

Dr. T.J. Coles is an Associate Researcher at the Organisation for Propaganda Studies and the author of several books, including Human Wrongs (iff Books) and Privatized Planet (New Internationalist).

Maté Pere and Fils: On the Politcs of Our Times

This Talk Between Aaron & Gabor Maté Is The Best Political Video I’ve Ever Seen

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

May 9, 2019

The Grayzone‘s Aaron Maté has done an interview with his father titled “America in denial: Gabor Maté on the psychology of Russiagate”, and it is the single best and most insightful political video I’ve ever seen. In 27 minutes it essentially describes the fundamental problems of our times, not just with Russiagate but with world politics as a whole, from the overarching behaviors of globe-dominating forces all the way down to the ways our own inner reluctance to face reality objectively helps to prop up those forces. 

So it deserves its own article.

Back when I learned that Gabor was Aaron’s father my first thought was, “That makes so much sense.” Aaron had exploded onto the Russiagate debate scene seemingly out of nowhere and quickly became the most thorough and lucid voice on the subject, holding to strict principles of valuing facts and evidence over the aggressive pressure to conform from his media peers and the authoritative assertions of government agencies.

Gabor I’d known of for years because of how widely respected he is in other circles I’ve moved in for his penetrating insights into the human psyche. It makes perfect sense that someone with the moral fortitude to swim against the Groupthink current and speak the truth no matter what would have someone like that as part of his personal formation.

I highly recommend watching the full interview, but since I know many of my readers aren’t big on watching videos I’ll sum up what I consider the highlights here with excerpts from the Grayzone transcript, because I really do think it’s that good and that important.

The elder Maté talked about the public support for the Russiagate narrative, and the inevitable disappointment which followed after Robert Mueller failed to turn up any evidence of collusion between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump campaign, as the result of emotional investment.

“Now, disappointment means that you’re expecting something and you wanted something to happen, and it didn’t happen,” Maté said.

“So that means that some people wanted Mueller to find evidence of collusion, which means that emotionally they were invested in it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to know the truth. They actually wanted the truth to look a certain way. And wherever we want the truth to look a certain way, there’s some reason that has to do with their own emotional needs and not just with the concern for reality.”

Gabor explained that the reason for this emotional investment ensued from the trauma of seeing Trump elected. They had the choice between consciously feeling through the pain and fear of that trauma and then doing some serious examinations of the factors that led to Trump’s election, or blaming the whole thing on a foreign boogeyman and avoiding that self-confrontation altogether.

“You can look at that,” Maté explained.

“Or you can say there must be a devil somewhere behind all this, and that devil is a foreign power, and his name is Putin, and his country is Russia. Now you’ve got a simple explanation that doesn’t invite you or necessitate that you explore your own pain and your own fear and your own trauma.”

“So I really believe that really this Russiagate narrative was, on the part of a lot of people, a sign of genuine upset at something genuinely upsetting,” Maté continued.

“But rather than dealing with the upset, it was an easier way to in a sense draw off the energy of it in to some kind of a believable and comforting narrative. It’s much more comforting to believe that some enemy is doing this to us than to look at what does it say about us as a society.”

Maté went on to discuss Trump himself as not just traumatizing, but traumatized. Someone acting out his own inner issues in the world in a deeply unconscious way:

“Donald Trump is the clearest example of a traumatized politician one could ever see. He’s in denial of reality all the time. He is self aggrandizing. His fundamental self concept is that of a nobody. So he has to make himself huge and big all the time and keep proving to the world how powerful and smart, what kind of degrees he’s got and how smart he is. It’s a compensation for terrible self image. He can’t pay attention to anything, which means that his brain is too scattered because it was too painful for him to pay attention.

“What does this all come down to? The childhood that we know that he had in the home of a dictatorial child disparaging father… who demeaned his children mercilessly. One of Trump’s brothers drank himself to death. And Trump compensates for all that by trying to make himself as big and powerful and successful as possible. And, of course, he makes up for his anger towards his mother for not protecting him by attacking women and exploiting women and boasting about it publicly. I mean, it’s a clear trauma example. I’m not saying this to invite sympathy for Trump’s politics. I’m just describing that that’s who the man is.”

Maté tied his observations about the refusal of Russiagaters to confront their inner trauma and Trump’s refusal to confront his to the refusal of Americans as a whole to confront the horrors that their own country has inflicted upon the world which dwarf even the most severe things the Russian government has been accused of doing to America.

“No serious student of history can possibly deny how the United States has interfered in the internal politics of just about every nation on earth,” Maté said, adding that this interference often consists of mass murder.

“For example, in Chile, there’s an elected government that America cheerfully overthrows, even boasts about it. Not to mention the current interference in Venezuela, the internal politics. Not to mention, how as you’ve pointed out, many others have pointed out, and [Time] boasts about it on its cover, about how United States helped Boris Yeltsin get elected… Even if the worst thing that’s alleged about the Russians is true, it’s not even on minuscule proportion of what America has publicly acknowledged it has done all around the world.”

Maté talked about how “it’s always easier to see ourselves as the victims than as the perpetrators,” adding that “whether it’s Great Britain, or whether it’s France with their vast colonial empires, they’re always the victims of everybody else. The United States is always the victim of everybody else. All these enemies that are threatening us. It’s the most powerful nation on earth, a nation that could single handedly destroy the earth a billion times over with the weapons that are at its disposal, and it’s always the victim.”

“So this victimhood, there is something comforting about it because, again, it allows us not to look at ourselves,” Maté said.

“And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process.”

Maté talked about how Mueller, despite his horrible track record of supporting the WMD lie in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, has been made into a hero, because Hollywood has trained the public psyche to seek out “good guys” and “bad guys” in every intense situation. This is what led Putin to be depicted as an omnipotent supervillain capable of infiltrating the highest levels of the US government, and Mueller as a knight in shining armor who was going to rescue us all.

“Rather than saying, okay, there’s a big problem here. We’ve elected a highly traumatized grandiose, intellectually unstable, emotionally unstable, misogynist, self-aggrandizer to power. Something in our society made that happen. And let’s look at what that was. And let’s clear up those issues if we can. And let’s look at the people on the liberal side who, instead of challenging all those issues, put all their energies into this foreign conspiracy explanation. Because to have challenged those issues would have meant looking at their own policies, which tended in the same direction.

“Rather than looking at how under the Clinton, they’ve jailed hundreds of thousands of people who should never have been in jail. Looking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what’s really going on, let’s just put our attention on some foreign devil again.”

Maté talked about how Obama, despite being a warmonger like the other US presidents, represented a nice ideal in people’s minds, so the contrast between that ideal and Trump’s election made it especially traumatic. This made people unwilling to look at the actual root causes of Hillary Clinton’s loss, which taken together are far more threatening to democracy than anything Russia is accused of doing, even if those accusations are all 100 percent true.

In conclusion the younger Maté asked his father for his advice on what people can do going forward to avoid the mistakes that led to Trump’s election, and to the years of Russia hysteria that followed, or at least to deal with similar challenges in a more mature way.

“Well, first of all, I advise people to do something that I find hard to do myself, but I think it’s essential,” replied the elder Maté.

“Which is that when there’s hard emotions there, just own them. Just own that you’re hurt. Own that you’re confused. Just own it. Say I’m hurt, I’m confused, I’m terrified. And rather than try and find an explanation right away, just own the feeling. And then when you’re ready, then actually ask, what happened here? What actually happened here? What are the facts? What behaviors or beliefs on my part maybe contributed to the situation? So be curious. Be really curious.”

With regard to the press, Gabor advised to be objective and skeptical of the government agencies which have so consistently deceived America into wars:

“At least be objective. Don’t be so quick to jump on board. Don’t be so quick to assume that because almost the whole media is broadcasting, trumpeting a certain line, that that line represents reality. Learn from history. Learn from this one. Learn from this Russiagate thing that they were all saying for years that this is a given fact. All of a sudden it turns out not to be a given fact. Well, next time, don’t be so quick to believe them.”

Gabor pointed out that for all people’s efforts at avoiding the internal confrontations which necessarily come along with disillusionment, it is much better to be disillusioned than illusioned.

“Would you rather believe in something that’s false, which means to have an illusion? Or would you rather be disillusioned?” Maté asked.

“In other words, to see the truth. And I’m saying that we should be glad to be disillusioned. So this Russiagate and this ignoble end to the Russiagate narrative, it’s a disillusionment for a lot of people, but that’s a good thing. If they say, okay, I had this illusion, this illusion I no longer have, which means I’ve been disillusioned, now I can actually look at the truth. So it’s good to be disillusioned.”

“So this could be a positive beginning for a lot of people if they take the right attitude,” Maté concluded.

Man, I really hope so.

____________________________

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New Sino-Russo Link-up Threatens Yankee Gang's Turf

Russia-China Alignment Challenges U.S. Hegemony

by TRNN

May 8, 2019

Markets are reeling from Trump's declaration via Twitter that tariffs will be increased from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. This is happening in the same week in which U.S. Navy destroyers sailed near islands in the South China Sea claimed by China, and as the Pentagon published the 2019 China Military Report.

The report says China is building an army capable of global intervention and accuses China of conducting espionage in order to accumulate military knowledge.

Actual Chinese foreign policy, however, is currently focused not on the United States, but westwards towards Central Asia and Europe as part of the One Belt, One Road Initiative (OBOR). China has one offshore military base in Djibouti and the One Belt, One Road Initiative will place another in Pakistan.

“What's happening is that China is finally going global,” Richard Sakwa told The Real News Network’s Sharmini Peries. “[China] is leveraging its growing economic power into a network of relationships which are spanning not just Eurasia all the way to Europe, but also in Africa.”

How Julian Assange Changed Journalism (And How the State Aims to Undo Those Changes)

Stefania Maurizi on How Julian Assange Changed Journalism

by Dennis J Bernstein and Randy Credico

Special to Consortium News

May 8, 2019

The Italian journalist and WikiLeaks collaborator speaks with Dennis J. Bernstein and Randy Credico about the implications of Assange’s struggle against U.S. extradition.

Julian Assange was back in court twice last week, and will return to a high British court next month for the major legal battle of his life. It will determine whether the U.S. is allowed to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher to the U.S. for prosecution.

In the first of a series of extradition hearings on May 2, Assange appeared in court via video screen. He seemed composed and focused and ready to fight. He told the British High Court:

“I do not wish to surrender for extradition. I’m a journalist winning many, many awards and protecting many people.” 

            Stefania Maurizi

The next procedural hearing is scheduled for May 30 and another substantive hearing for early June.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist for the Italian daily la Repubblica and the author of two books; “Dossier WikiLeaks: Segreti Italiani” and “Una Bomba, Dieci Storie.” She has for years worked closely with Assange on some of the most significant WikiLeaks releases including “Collateral Murder.” Maurizi also worked closely with Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on National Security Agency surveillance.

On May 2, right after Assange’s high court appearance, Maurizi told us that she fears for the health and welfare of Assange. She said she also fears for what it might mean to other journalists and whistleblowers if Assange is convicted in a U.S. court for his crucial work with whistleblowers, which has been used widely by news organizations.

Dennis Bernstein: Stefania Maurizi, I’d like you to start by giving us your gut reaction to what we have seen so far in terms of the treatment of Julian in recent days.

Stefania Maurizi: For me it has been really shocking to witness how Julian Assange has declined in the last nine years. I have been able to see changes in Julian’s health and psychology. It was so sad, and no one could do anything. I could report on it and expose it but the other media and public opinion did absolutely nothing to make the government understand how terrible his treatment was. And all this is happening not in Russia, not in North Korea, this is happening in London, in the heart of Europe. I now realize how little we can do in our democracy.

If you look at what has happened to high-profile whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, and an important publisher like Assange, who had the courage to publish these important revelations, what did your democracy do to save them, to treat them in a human way? Chelsea Manning was put in prison for seven years, where she tried to commit suicide twice. Now she is back in prison. Edward Snowden was forced to leave the U.S. Julian Assange has spent nine years in detainment and no one did anything. We were reporting, we were denouncing, we were exposing how seriously his health was declining. Nothing happened.

Dennis Bernstein: You’ve worked very closely with Julian Assange in Italy. You were in a sense a co-publisher in getting out crucial documentation. Could you talk about why you consider Assange not only a publisher, but one of the most important publishers of our time?

Assange and WikiLeaks won The Economist New Media Award

at the 2008 Freedom of Expression Awards. (Index on Censorship)

Stefania Maurizi: I started working with WikiLeaks in 2009 when very few people knew about them. They hadn’t yet published important documents like “Collateral Murder” or the “War Logs.” I immediately saw that they were going to start a revolution. And that is what has happened: They have changed journalism. Their model of journalism spread and we see now leaks everywhere. We see this model of collaborative media partnership used by many media, like the Panama Papers Consortium.

In addition, you have to realize the importance of what they have revealed. They have revealed the true face of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They have revealed the inner working of U.S. diplomacy, for example, how they put pressure on Italian prosecutors who were trying to convict a CIA agent responsible for the extraordinary renditions here in Italy. Or they published revelations of how the U.S. forced the Italian government to purchase a Lockheed jet fighter.

This information is now available to everyone. You can see how The Washington Post used emails to investigate the [Jamal] Khashoggi murder and they were able to do so because they had the courage to publish these files. Even in the case of the Panama Papers, only the journalists inside the partnership can access the original files. WikiLeaks made these files fully accessible to everyone, so that every journalist, ever activist, every scholar, every citizen can be empowered by this information free of charge. That is the revolution.

Dennis Bernstein: Chelsea Manning is now in jail, refusing to cooperate with the grand jury. This is someone who spent so much time in solitary confinement. One of the key collaborations had to do with the activities of the U.S. government in Central America, destabilizing, undermining governments. Now they say they never get involved. If you look at the documentation in the context of the current attempt by [U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela] Elliot Abrams to destabilize Venezuela, here comes WikiLeaks again.

Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely. Whenever we have a scandal, we can go to the WikiLeaks website and search for any pertinent information. The information they publish continues to inform the public. They are now paying a huge price. I myself feel guilty because I was able throughout the past 10 years to work on all these documents, to verify them and publish them without any risk.

Julian and WikiLeaks are paying a huge price and all the editors are silent. People accuse me of acting as an activist. I am not acting as an activist, I am speaking out because I feel uncomfortable when I see how professional journalists have all sorts of protection and are not facing imprisonment or extradition.

Randy Credico: The last time I saw you was in December of 2017. I had seen Julian three months earlier and his health had declined noticeably in those few months. Now that he is in jail, is he able to see doctors? What is his physical health like at this point?

Stefania Maurizi: I am not sure whether he is able to see visitors. It is a very strict regime, there are very strict rules for suspected terrorists. He spends most of his time completely alone. This comes after spending the last seven years at the embassy almost entirely alone, apart from occasional visits. So you can imagine how his forced isolation is affecting his health.

 (FNPI via Flickr)

Randy Credico: I look at the sentence that judge Deborah Taylor handed down: a year in jail for allegedly skipping bail. Can you go into the bogus charges that were never filed against Julian, and how they were perpetuated with the assistance of the Crown Prosecution Service?

Stefania Maurizi: Five years had passed since the Swedish case was closed. No journalistic organization had ever tried to access these documents. Thousands of journalists had covered the case but no one had the facts clear. At that point I realized that it was important from a journalistic point of view to try to access the documentation. These documents allow us to establish important facts, such as that it was the U.K. that advised the Swedish prosecutors against questioning Assange in London.

The whole case began with this refusal by the Swedish prosecutor. Now we know that behind this decision there was the Crown Prosecution Service. Let’s not forget that this agency is the very same agency which is in charge of deciding whether to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. now. The Crown Prosecution Service entered the case at the very beginning and they advised the Swedish prosecutor against questioning Assange in London. Julian Assange never refused to be questioned, he refused to be extradited because he was convinced that the extradition to Sweden could pave the way for his extradition to the U.S.

Now we see that he was right.

And it was the Crown Prosecution Service which advised the Swedish prosecutor against dropping the case in 2013. At that time the Swedish prosecutor conceded to drop the case but the Crown Prosecution Service advised them against this.

Finally, it was the Crown Prosecution Service who destroyed crucial emails about the case, even though the case is still ongoing. I am still fighting in the U.K. tribunal because I want to access these documents and fill in the gaps. Now the Swedish prosecutor is evaluating whether to open this case once again. The statute of limitations is in August 2012. There is a massive campaign about Julian being a rapist. After one or two years of this campaign, who will care about Julian Assange being extradited to the U.S.? That is a possible scenario.

Dennis Bernstein: Again, Julian had his first hearing today [May 2, 2019] regarding extradition to the United States. He looked okay but he is definitely in danger. Stefania, what responsibility do we have as journalists to stand up? According to Daniel Ellsberg, if they go after Julian and Chelsea the way they want to in the United States, it is the end of journalism.

Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely. This case is about whether the press is allowed to publish documents like the video “Collateral Murder,” which records war crimes and whether the press is allowed to publish documents about the NSA spying on world leaders, whether the press is allowed to publish documents on Guantanamo Bay.

We saw what happened after 9/11: habeas corpus came to an end with Guantanamo, the Fourth Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] was trampled by the NSA. Now they want to destroy the First Amendment and they will do it using Julian Assange. They will not go after The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Dennis Bernstein: Wouldn’t you say that part of the genius of WikiLeaks was the ability to guarantee anonymity?

The reason why Assange has been successful and all these major journalistic organizations were willing to work with him is because of this process he created to guarantee anonymity.

Stefania Maurizi: Julian Assange understands technology and he understands the nature of power. Most geeks know very little about power, about empire. Thanks to his knowledge in the technology field, we have this platform. But let’s not forget that WikiLeaks is in trouble now not because they have this platform, but because they have the courage to publish.

It is not enough to get the documents. Most newsrooms hide such documents. One of the journalists at The Washington Post had the video “Collateral Murder” and he didn’t publish it. WikiLeaks did. It is not enough to have the platform: you have to have the integrity and the courage to publish. The New York Times didn’t publish the important story that the NSA was intercepting the communications of U.S. citizens.

 For years The New York Times didn’t want to use the word “torture,” preferring instead “enhanced interrogation.” The reason the U.S. authorities are hostile toward WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is because they publish what the U.S. media and many other media don’t want to publish.

Dennis Bernstein: Would you like to do a shout-out from one courageous woman there in Italy to a woman who became a woman in solitary confinement and was arrested again on International Women’s Day?

Stefania Maurizi: I feel a huge debt of gratitude because I have worked on Chelsea Manning’s documents for years. I supported her defense fund, I wrote to her in prison. I have tried to explain to my readers why she is tremendously courageous. I really would like to see her go free because I cannot accept that one of the most important journalistic sources of all time is again in prison.

Dennis Bernstein: Both Randy and I are extremely grateful for your work, Stefania Maurizi, investigative journalist for la Repubblica and author of “Dossier WikiLeaks,” which describes the power of a courageous publisher like Julian Assange, who has worked with extraordinary sources to get information out which we would otherwise never have heard.

Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of “Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.” You can access the audio archives at Flashpoint. You can get in touch with the author at dbernstein@igc.org.

Randy Credico is an American perennial political candidate, comedian, radio host, activist and the former director of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice.

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Gunning for Gabbard: "Left" & Right Media Agree to Disagree with Anti-Interventionist Candidate

Corporate Media Target Gabbard for Her Anti-Interventionism—a Word They Can Barely Pronounce

by Owen Walsh - FAIR

May 8, 2019

Featured image: Tulsi Gabbard on CNN‘s Van Jones Show (1/12/19).

Presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has not garnered much press coverage since announcing her bid on February 2; she’s the 13th-most-mentioned Democratic candidate on TV news, according to FAIR’s most recent count (4/14/19).

But when corporate media do talk about the Hawaii congressmember, they tend to reveal more about themselves than about her.

Tulsi Gabbard being challenged on The View (2/20/19) by Ana Navarro:

“Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?”

A veteran of the Iraq War, Gabbard is centering her presidential campaign around anti-interventionism (2/3/19): the belief that US interference in foreign countries, especially in the form of regime-change wars, increases the suffering of the citizens in those countries.

When corporate outlets talk about this anti-interventionist position, they primarily use it to negatively characterize the candidates who espouse it. Few in establishment media seem interested in going any deeper or considering the veracity of arguments raised by anti-interventionists.

The Washington Post (1/15/19) listed Gabbard’s anti-interventionism as a factor that hurts her electability in a video titled, “Why Some See Tulsi Gabbard as a Controversial 2020 Candidate.” Part of the video’s explanation: “The congresswoman has raised concern among Democrats in the past when she criticized Obama’s strategy on Iran, ISIS and Syria.”

CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard’s campaign announcement. The anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing and saying it “doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

When asked to define the candidate’s position, Grube equated it to President Trump’s foreign policy. But “America First” rallying cries aside, it hardly seems accurate to call Trump an anti-interventionist, given his administration’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, his unilateral reimposition of sanctions on Iran (FAIR.org, 5/2/19) and his escalation of the drone wars (Daily Beast, 11/25/18).

When Gabbard appears on talkshows, she is typically on the receiving end of baseless questions coated in assumptions of military altruism. Gabbard appeared on ABC’s The View (2/20/19) and articulated her argument that US intervention does more harm than good to the people purportedly being helped.

Rather than respond to any of the points she raised, however, the hosts resorted to the kinds of shallow questions that have been supporting interventionism for decades.

Sunny Hostin asked, “So should we not get involved when we see atrocities abroad?” Fellow panelist Ana Navarro elaborated:

“I’m very troubled by the tweets about Venezuela that you’ve put out…. [Maduro] is not allowing humanitarian aid, he is a thug, he is a dictator, he is corrupt. And I am very supportive of what the United States is doing right now…. Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?”

Tulsi Gabbard being asked by CBS‘s Stephen Colbert (3/11/19) why

she doesn’t see the US as a “force for good in the world.”

On CBS’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert (3/11/19), the host resorted to old-fashioned American exceptionalism and Cold War–style paranoia to counter the congressmember:

“Nature abhors a vacuum. If we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum…. That might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world, in my opinion.”

Comments like these may seem harmless; why not, after all, fight “atrocities”? In fact, they contain the same language that media have used for decades to justify interventionism and quiet dissenters.

Colbert’s exceptionalism argument, in particular, is reminiscent of the centuries-old vision of the US as a “shining city upon a hill.” It’s also a frame historically employed by media to rationalize the country’s foreign policy. As communications scholar Andrew Rojecki wrote in his 2008 research article (Political Communication, 2/4/08) on elite commentary of George W. Bush’s military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq,

“Over the course of the two crises, American exceptionalist themes made up a constant background presence in elite commentary and opinion.”

In other words, the assurance that Colbert has that the US has been “a force for good in the world” has paved the way for some of the greatest disasters of the modern world, including the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan (or almost 40 years, if you date from the US deliberately provoking the 1979 Soviet intervention) and the half-million-plus killed in the Iraq War.

Other difficult cases for proponents of intervention include Libya, where removing an authoritarian ruler devastated the nation and brought back slave markets, and Syria, where hawks evade responsibility for the hundreds of thousands killed in a US-backed effort to overthrow the government by pretending that the US has failed to intervene.

Currently, in Venezuela, where Navarro is “very supportive of what the United States is doing,” Washington has imposed sanctions that are blamed for killing 40,000 in the last two years (CEPR, 4/25/19). Meanwhile, the US offers as a publicity stunt a convoy with “humanitarian aid” valued at less than 1 percent of the assets it has blocked Venezuela from spending.

Fox News screenshot from a Washington Post video (1/15/19) titled

“Why Some See Tulsi Gabbard as a Controversial 2020 Candidate.”

Another easy to way to discredit anti-war critics is to accuse them of siding with the enemy (FAIR.org, 4/1/06).

So it’s not much of a surprise that when Gabbard gets mentioned in establishment news, a comment about her meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is usually soon to follow.

Gabbard traveled to Syria in 2017, on what her office called a “fact-finding mission.” During her trip, she met and spoke with al-Assad, prompting the media to question her loyalties ever since, equating her meeting to tacit support of his regime. (Gabbard calls Assad a “brutal dictator,” but says US efforts to overthrow his government are “illegal and counterproductive.”)

New York Times columnist Bari Weiss appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast (1/21/19) and confidently called Gabbard an “Assad toadie.” When Rogan asked her what “toadie” meant, she couldn’t define the word, asking the show’s producer to look it up for her. (It means “sycophant”).

The New York Times (1/11/19) and Associated Press (Washington Post, 5/2/19) both identified Gabbard’s meeting with Assad as a factor that made her a controversial candidate. In an article about Gabbard’s apparent fall from grace within the Democratic party, Vox (1/17/19) characterized Gabbard’s opposition to the funding of Syrian rebels as “quasi-support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the dictator responsible for the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the conflict’s worst atrocities.”

Interviewers from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, ABC’s The View, CBS’s Late Show and CNN’s Van Jones Show all asked Gabbard to justify her meeting with Assad, or pressured her to renounce him as an enemy. None were interested in asking even the most basic question of substance,

“What did you and Assad talk about during your meeting?” 

The implication is clear: When it comes to those designated by the state as official enemies, communication is suspect.

So perhaps the simplest explanation for corporate media’s treatment of Gabbard is that she opposes the kind of intervention that they have historically been complicit in.

FAIR (e.g, 4/91, 3/19/07, 8/11) has documented mainstream media’s consistent support for US intervention across the globe. FAIR has also been documenting corporate media’s support for intervention in Venezuela, finding recently that zero percent of elite commentators opposed regime change in that country (4/30/19) and noting corporate media’s harsh admonishment of Bernie Sanders after he tepidly questioned US intervention in Venezuela (3/5/19).

Gabbard’s campaign is just one small piece of a larger phenomenon in the mainstream media: Space for dissenting opinions on the US’s neoliberal, interventionist foreign policies must not be allowed.

Spinning Global Climate Emergency: PR Business Eyes an Opportunity

Greta Thunberg, PR and the “Climate Emergency”

by Brian Davey - Feasta – The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability

via  Wrong Kind of Green

May 6, 2019

I came across a linked series of articles one of which is mentioned on the Moon of Alabama website. They are titled “The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent” and written by an investigative journalist by the name of “Cory Morningstar”. When I started reading them I was at first suspicious that this was another ad hominem attack on Greta Thunberg. However as I read further, to use the Biblical expression, “the scales fell from my eyes”. 

30 March 2019, Berlin: The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg gives autographs to the waiting fans when she arrives at the Golden Camera award ceremony. The award ceremony will take place at Berlin’s disused Tempelhof Airport. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa 

Preliminary remarks – Some notes on terminology:

Climate Emergency – a human-induced increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 leading to rising global temperatures with impacts such as droughts, floods and heatwaves, crop failures, rising sea levels etc

“Climate Emergency” (in inverted commas) – a declaration by politicians that they are taking the climate emergency seriously and that we can trust them to do something effective about it (which can be judged as being for real or as empty rhetoric depending on what happens.)

Because of comments about the first edition of this article I wish to make clear that I am not opposed to wind, solar and renewable energy generation. What I am opposed to is the illusion that wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy can sustain a growth economy and the continuance of the consumer lifestyle in rich countries.

Renewable energy can have a limited place in the future but the priority is degrowth – with energy and materials conservation by sharing more – because the global economy of the rich world has overshot the carrying capacity of the planet and this is very dangerous. In any case there are currently no affordable ways to buffer fluctuations in renewable energy generation between seasons and nor are these likely for a long time, if ever. I am also very opposed to the financialisation of nature for the reasons that I describe here briefly, and at more length in my book Credo which is available for free download (see the references).

Finally, I learned a lot from the articles by Cory Morningstar but my politics and hers should not be taken as identical.

Brian

Greta Thunberg, PR and the “Climate Emergency”

This is by far the best overview of global environmental and climate politics at this time – or what is behind the appearance that you will get if you only read and watch the mainstream media.

The articles show the main actors in the drama, how they are connected to, or part of, major factions of the global corporate elite – and how they are pursuing what is in effect a global public relations campaign to “lead the public into emergency mode” – an emergency where the public will call for action and this part of the global elite will then have a mass backing and be able to deliver.

But deliver what, exactly?

In fact the agenda is to sell the need for a fourth industrial revolution...

I repeat that again – part of the global elite will deliver a green new deal or, as it is sometimes described, “a fourth industrial revolution”. This group of people are networked in organisations like the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Institute as well as 20 not for profit NGOs who are backing the idea like the World Resources Institute, Avaaz and its offshoot Team B, Greenpeace…and others.

To these should be added other organisations and movements like 350.org which are part of the influencing environment for the people who set up Extinction Rebellion, influencing XR’s limited statement of its aims.

At first sight all of this seems great, really encouraging – but only if the way that this network intends to follow through to address “the emergency” would actually work.

Yet there are good reasons to believe that their approach won’t work – although they will be an enormously generous gift to the corporate aristocracy and some NGOs – they won’t solve the emergency. They will make it worse.

This is because they want to address the global climate and environmental crisis to “save nature” by turning it into a huge money spinner. The policies that have been developed are intended to be an engine for re-kindling failing economic growth by “financialisating nature”. Natural processes are to be designated as “natural capital” and natural capital is to be priced and tradable on financial markets.

The key idea here is that, in order to protect nature, you must incentivise nature protection with money. You must pay to protect so called “eco-system services”. The idea is that if we want to prevent extinction we need a system that makes it pay in money terms and we will need a system that will bring about a whole new set of technologies – so called “clean tech”.

What’s wrong with financialising nature?

Indigenous people often regard nature as kin – for example, people in the Andes refer to ‘mother earth’. They protect mother earth just as they would protect their own mother because it gave them life, because they came from it. They know how nature works where they live because that is handed down to them from their ancestors and they hold it in trust for their children and descendants. They don’t expect cash payments – it is a duty not to overuse the earth and that is an ethic they live by. That ethic has been maintained by people living and working on natural commons over centuries before they were stolen by an elite during the enclosures. In commons there is a collective responsibility not to over-use resources – or not to harm the lived in environment to which people feel loyalty and attachment.

Our society lives by different ethics. If we want something doing we must pay money – including not driving the entire ecological system to collective death. That’s mainstream economics for you. In our society the rich see nature as a store of resources – trees are timber which has a money value but the untouched forests do not. If we want to protect the forest then the money junkies tell us that the forest must be given a money value too. Then if someone wishes to cut down trees for timber they have to pay for the loss of the forest too – the eco-system services that would be lost, like absorbing CO2, like the role of the forest in rainfall and the water cycle. Indeed, the new argument is that whoever owns the eco-system services of the forest should get a payment for protecting.

If we are going to think of nature as being like your mother then think of it like this. Say your mother is under threat, the key thing is how much is she worth and how much money can you pull together to protect her? Well it’s like that with nature. If your mother’s not worth tuppence and you’ve got no money anyway, you might as well sell her into slavery. It’s the same with nature. In this regard you sell into the financial markets, because banks can create any amount of money as loans to people who want to buy bits of nature, while other bits of the financial markets can make money organising the exchanges to trade on.

But there are problems with this. For example think of the protection of forests. Forest peoples have been protecting forests for centuries, only harvesting sustainably. They never had to be paid to do this – they understood how to live sustainably in the forests and were not greedy, so stopped forest resources being over-used. These kind of people will now be turfed out. They don’t have certificates of ownership purchased on the financial markets. The new owners will be the people in the financial markets who make money decisions about ecological issues. Will they protect the forests better from their offices? This is the doubtful logic of this new kind of green colonialism.

This is the way the money junkies think. There is a reversal of means and ends in their minds. The ends of the players on the natural capital markets is to make money – and, supposedly, making money is achieved by means of protecting nature.

Yet the experience of schemes like this is that money-making wins over nature because there is no obvious price for eco-system services, or for biodiversity loss or for carbon emitted. There is far too much uncertainty and a real ethical and conceptual question about whether you can or should value the carbon emissions, or the lives of people, species or eco-systems (eco-system services). What’s more there are all sorts of practical problems with coming up with prices – for example people are keen to protect pandas with a high price but less keen to pay a high price to protect creepy crawlers, snakes and spiders, even though they are an integral part of the ecosystem. Most people haven’t a clue how eco-systems work, how the climate works – and nor could they have. So how can they “value them”?

Decisions about climate, vital ecosystem functions and species should not be market decisions, they should be political ones – taken democratically by those affected.

In any case, we know that what happens in such markets is that the actors game the systems to make as much money as possible by scams and frauds. That has already happened on a massive scale during carbon trading. Everyone involved in carbon trading knew it was one massive scam. Nevertheless the religion of the modern world is economics, in the service of the great God money and so:

“The development of the Natural Capital Protocol Project was made possible with generous funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, International Finance Corporation (World Bank) with the support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Netherlands, The Rockefeller Foundation, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The Coalition is hosted by The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Other funders include; World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the Google Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, Unilever, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense and the World Bank.”

“World Resources Institute provided the technical insights and review for the Natural Capital Protocol. The protocol was developed by Conservation International, The B Team, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sustain Value, ACTS, Management (ERM), Imperial College, ISS, Natural Capital Project, Synergiz, WWF, Accenture, Arcadis, eftec, Environmental Resources CDSB, Deloitte, Dow, eni, GIST Advisory, Kering, LafargeHolcim, Natura, Nestlé, Roche, Shell, and The Nature Conservancy. The protocol was led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) consortium.”

. …but back to Greta Thunberg. How did she become an eco-star?

How the Greta Thunberg phenomenon was fostered – the “We Don’t have time” consultancy

Please note that although the title of these articles is “The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg”, they are not saying that Greta Thunberg is a simple puppet doing what she is told. She’s obviously a smart young woman. But she would not have got a place in the World Economic Forum and at the United Nations FCC COP in Katowice, had she not been very well connected and had her rise to eco-stardom not been stage-managed from early on. Her mother had an award from the corporate friendly environmentalists in the World Wide Fund for Nature and she was promoted by an organisation that works with Al Gore and important parts of the Silicon Valley elite.

Greta Thunberg was an adviser to a foundation established by a Swedish business called “We don’t have time”. So what is this business “We don’t have time”?

“We Don’t Have Time is mainly active in three markets: social media, digital advertising and carbon offsets. [“In the US alone estimated market for carbon offsetting amount to over 82 billion USD of which voluntary carbon offset represents 191 million USD. The market is expected to increase in the future, in 2019 estimated 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions to be associated with any kind of cost for offsetting.”] As the company is a niche organization, social networks are able to provide services tailored to platform users. The startup has identified such an opportunity by offering its users the ability to purchase carbon offsets through the platform’s own certification. This option applies to both the individual user of the platform, as well as whole organizations/companies on the platform.

“One incentive of many identified in the start-up investment section is that users will be encouraged to “communicate jointly and powerfully with influential actors.” Such influencers are Greta Thunberg and Jamie Margolin who both have lucrative futures in the branding of “sustainable” industries and products, if they wish to pursue this path in utilizing their present celebrity for personal gain (a hallmark of the “grassroots” NGO movement).” (Further reading here.)

A nice little earner then…and that’s the philosophy of the people at the top who are leading this process. In their world view you have to make it pay to protect nature.

If you are not paying attention this looks like a child doing it all herself and getting a fantastic amount of attention – starting a snowball. Indeed the process is snowballing with big support. That was the idea and it was very successful – but what actually is the agenda of the elite faction behind all of this?

Here’s a quote from Cory Morningstar about how it started:

“The ‘one kid immediately got twenty supporters’ – from a Swedish network for sustainable business. What is going on is the launch of a global campaign to usher in a required consensus for the Paris Agreement, the New Green Deal and all climate related policies and legislation written by the power elite – for the power elite. This is necessary in order to unlock the trillions of dollars in funding by way of massive public demand.”

The industrial agenda

“These agreements and policies include carbon capture storage (CCS), enhanced oil recovery (EOR), bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), rapid total decarbonisation, payments for ecosystem services (referred to as “natural capital”), nuclear energy and fission, and a host of other “solutions” that are hostile to an already devastated planet. What is going on – is a rebooting of a stagnant capitalist economy, that needs new markets – new growth – in order to save itself. What is being created is a mechanism to unlock approximately 90 trillion dollars for new investments and infrastructure. What is going on is the creation of, and investment in, perhaps the biggest behavioural change experiment yet attempted, global in scale.

“And what are the deciding factors in what behaviours global society should adhere to? And more importantly, who decides? This is a rhetorical question as we know full well the answer: the same Western white male saviours and the capitalist economic system they have implemented globally that has been the cause of our planetary ecological nightmare. This crisis continues unabated as they appoint themselves (yet again) as the saviours for all humanity – a recurring problem for centuries…”

When Thunberg goes off message

That does not mean that Greta Thunberg necessarily understands or believes the entire elite agenda. At Katowice she made a speech part of which was off-message – perhaps she got the ideas from Professor Kevin Anderson whom she met there. Anderson is a climate scientist who argues that the economy must contract to meet climate goals. He also argues that it is the rich who must bear most of the burden of this.

Here is a part of Thunberg’s speech:

“You only speak of the green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.”

“But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.”

Thunberg talked about making enormous amounts of money and she talked about growth – but this is the part of the message that Avaaz cut from their reporting of Thunberg. Cory Morningstar comments: “It is not surprising Avaaz would strike Greta’s comments considering a primary function of Avaaz is to promote market solutions that accelerate “green” economic growth – in servitude to “a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.””

In conclusion

The series of articles linked to below shows how elite environmentalists want to revive the Paris Climate Agreement and how the Green New Deal in the USA is supposed to become a global process brought about by having the public clamouring to declare climate emergencies and that to achieve all of this strategic NGOS and campaign movements and new emerging celebrities like Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have been supported and their leaders partially co-opted.

By writing this piece I do not mean here to deny that there is an ecological crisis, and nor that there is a climate emergency and that urgent action is needed. Rather it is to show that there is a sophisticated PR campaign behind what is happening and the agenda is that of a major faction in the global elite. This agenda will not work – indeed it will complete the destruction of nature and the eco-system.

How can I claim that with complete conviction and certainty? Because this is an expansionary programme and ecological footprint analysis has already established that the biosphere is being consumed as if there were 1.7 planets. All serious approaches to resolving the ecological crisis recognise that the global economy must contract back to a one planet level. The economy must degrow.

What’s more it is richest 5% of the planet that consume 50% of planetary carbon – so the very people who are promoting this campaign must cut back the most. Instead they want to expand the economy. But how is this to be made compatible with reducing carbon emissions?

It isn’t – but a careful looks at the language of nature financialisation refers to carbon neutrality, not zero carbon. This is “convenient language when one of the main pillars of the business model is the sale of carbon offsets – rationalizing a continuance of the same carbon based lifestyle by constructing a faux fantasy one, that anyone with monetary wealth, can buy into.”

To conclude this story with another quote from Cory Morningstar: in the quote below, she makes reference to Edward Bernays, the master of Public Relations and Marketing. In the 1920s he helped the tobacco industry achieve a massive new market – women.

Sensing the mood of many young women, Bernays got photos of young women smoking in prominent publications as an expression of their liberation and as an act of defiance and cultural rebellion. It was a fantastic success – for the tobacco industry, though not for women’s health. By engineering a feeling of emergency and rebellion – and channelling public concern and anger to what is an elite agenda for the environment long in preparation, it is hoped to pull off support for a massive policy coup for a section of the elite.

“The ten-year social engineering effort also led to a transition from environmentalism into full-blown yet undetected anthropocentrism. Over a ten year span, “environmentalism ” moved from that of protecting nature, to demanding a roll-out of green technology, industrial in scale, that would further plunder nature. The natural world became irrelevant as the desire for green technology superceded environmental protection. Wind turbines and solar panels replaced images of trees and insects as the new symbols of our natural world. Saving the industrial civilization that is killing off all life became paramount to saving the ecosystems that all life depends on.

“These ideologies slowly took hold until “movements” become nothing more than lobby groups for green energy. Volunteers marching for capital, global in scale. To suggest that Edward Bernays would be impressed would be an understatement. Such is the beauty of social engineering and behavioural change.”

Afterword

After finishing writing this article I read a very interesting article on the same blog – about the appearance of an “XR Business Blog” which revealed some of the business interests behind Extinction Rebellion. Given the controversy it caused this part of the XR blog rapidly disappeared. Several of the named individuals are venture capitalist funders – looking to make money from what they claim to be “sustainability” and very much within the green growth camp. I doubt that many of the companies named, including Unilever for example, would embrace degrowth, the revival of the commons, co-operatives or other types of institutions for sharing so needed for economies which contracting back to the point of one planet living. Above all it seems to bear out the suspicion that for some of its leaders and initiators the XR Rebellion was seen as part of the planned PR offensive to build support for the phony Green New Deal….

For more details: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/04/24/rebellion-extinction-a-capitalist-scam-to-hijack-our-resistance/ http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/21/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-inconvenient-truth-behind-youth-cooptation/

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/28/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-most-inconvenient-truth-capitalism-is-in-danger-of-falling-apart/

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/03/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-house-is-on-fire-the-90-trillion-dollar-rescue/

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/13/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-new-green-deal-is-the-trojan-horse-for-the-financialization-of-nature/

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/24/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-a-decade-of-social-manipulation-for-the-corporate-capture-of-nature-crescendo/

For Reference – “This changes nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality” – Clive Spash https://www.clivespash.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2016-Spash-This-Changes-Nothing.pdf

Brian Davey – Credo: Economic Beliefs in a World in Crisis Chapters 26 and 27 on the sale of “ rights to pollute, biodiversity loss and the valuation of nature” and Chapters 45 and 46 on climate economics – free to download at http://www.credoeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/credo.pdf

Featured image: ‘finance growth’. Source: https://www.freeimages.com/photo/finance-growth-concept-3-1236227

Note: Feasta is a forum for exchanging ideas. By posting on its site Feasta agrees that the ideas expressed by authors are worthy of consideration. However, there is no one ‘Feasta line’. The views of the article do not necessarily represent the views of all Feasta members.

Brian Davey trained as an economist but, aside from a brief spell working in eastern Germany showing how to do community development work, has spent most of his life working in the community and voluntary sector in Nottingham particularly in health promotion, mental health and environmental fields. He helped form Ecoworks, a community garden and environmental project for people with mental health problems. He is a member of Feasta Climate Working Group and former co-ordinator of the Cap and Share Campaign. He is editor of the Feasta book Sharing for Survival: Restoring the Climate, the Commons and Society, and the author of Credo: Economic Beliefs in a World in Crisis.