Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.
One specifically American contribution to the discourse of empire is the specialized jargon of policy expertise. You don’t need Arabic or Persian or even French to pontificate about how the democracy domino effect is just what the Arab world needs. Combative and woefully ignorant policy experts, whose world experience is limited to the Beltway, grind out books on “terrorism” and liberalism, or about Islamic fundamentalism and American foreign policy, or about the end of history, all of it vying for attention and influence quite without regard for truthfulness or reflection or real knowledge. What matters is how efficient and resourceful it sounds, and who might go for it, as it were. The worst aspect of this essentializing stuff is that human suffering in all its density and pain is spirited away. Memory and with it the historical past are effaced as in the common, dismissively contemptuous American phrase, “you’re history.” — Edward Said †
*
When democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, took the fateful decision to nationalise his nation’s oil reserves, thus depriving BP – known then as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – of its primary revenue stream, the West quickly retaliated, first with sanctions and then with a full-fledged colour revolution and coup carried out in 1953 to ouster Mosaddegh and usher in a quarter century-long brutal dictatorship and repressive police state under the Shah.
The American role in what was codenamed Operation Ajax is comparatively well documented and those familiar with the story will already be aware of the central role played by Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, who afterwards wrote a book entitled Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran in which he described how he and the CIA carried out their operation. By contrast, far fewer details are known about British involvement.
A Radio 4 documentary broadcast in 2005 finally revealed evidence that not only was the BBC World Service prominent in a campaign to flood Iran with anti-government propaganda, but also disclosed how the World Service is directly implicated in the coup by signalling British support to the Shah. As notes on the BBC website state:
“Even the BBC was used to spearhead Britain’s propaganda campaign. In fact, Auntie agreed to broadcast the very code word that was to spark revolution.” 1
Curiously, the BBC has since refused to comment on its own disclosure!
The pivotal role played by MI6 remains to this day a very closely-guarded secret, however in a newly released documentary Coup 53, British-Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani has managed to piece together fragments to tell the story of one British secret service officer called Norman Darbyshire – a man whose existence had been almost entirely erased from history:
Coup 53 is the result of years of sleuthing from Amirani, and he has been helped by the legendary editor and sound editor Walter Murch, who is co-writer. Also on board is actor Ralph Fiennes. In a dramatic reconstruction, he plays real-life MI6 agent Norman Derbyshire [sic], who in 1985 gave an interview to the Granada TV documentary End of Empire in which he rashly asserted that the whole thing was effectively being run by the British – by him, in fact. Coup 53 concludes that his appearance was cut at MI6’s insistence but the transcript survived. 2
Click here to read the full Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw.
Although centred around redacted transcripts from just a single television interview, Coup 53 is a quite brilliantly constructed and important documentary, which by the end leaves the audience to consider what might have been had the plot to remove Mosaddegh failed – as it so very nearly did. Besides a more hopeful future in a Middle East with Iran permitted to develop as an affluent, democratic and progressive power, it also seems unlikely, as the film intimates, that the CIA would have gone on so avidly to pursue future campaigns of destabilisation beginning with the toppling of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala the very next year.
Embedded below is George Monbiot’s short guide to why everything you know about the British Empire is a lie:
Instead, the imperialist success of the Iranian coup simply marked the passing of the baton from the British establishment more firmly into American hands with the major difference in the running the empire owing much to differences of national character: the British eager to hide their dirty secrets to the extent of completely erasing the historical record (and the main Wikipedia entry still makes little mention of Norman Darbyshire) while the Americans appear happier to brag.
Click here to view the official Coup 53 website and here to watch the film.
In January 2020, Codepink’s Jodie Evans spoke with Taghi Amirani shortly after the original release of the Coup 53:
*
Correction:
In the original post I incorrectly wrote Norman Derbyshire rather than Darbyshire (the same mistake appears in the Guardian review) and wrote that “the main Wikipedia entry still makes no mention of Norman Derbyshire”. If you search the current Wikipedia entry you will however find the following inclusion (with all links and footnotes retained):
Robert Zaehner alone spent over a £1,500,000, smuggled in biscuit tins, to bribe Iranians, and later his colleague Norman Darbyshire admitted that the actual coup cost the British government a further £700,000.[48]They hoped to fill the Majlis with deputies who would vote to depose Mosaddegh. It would be a coup carried out by seemingly legal means.”[18]:135
Although not linked from this article, there is also a separate entry for Norman Darbyshire that read as follows (again with links retained):
Norman Darbyshire (1 October 1924 – 17 June 1993) was the British MI6 operative who led the 1953 coup d’état that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran. Credit and blame for the coup has long been attributed solely to the United States CIA, while the dominant role of the British, and MI6 operative Darbyshire in particular, has been hidden. Among other things, he was involved in the kidnapping, torture, and assassination of General Mahmoud Afshartous, Mossadegh’s chief of police,[1] and bribed the twin sister of Shah Reza Pahlavi to play a key role in the coup and to eventually become a power behind his resulting dictatorship.[2]
Darbyshire died in 1993, aged 68.
In the 2019 documentary Coup 53 by the British-Iranian film-maker Taghi Amirani about the 1953 Iranian coup d’état – in USA, the coup was known as Operation Ajax, while in Britain it was Operation Boot – actor Ralph Fiennes plays the part of Darbyshire.[3]
1 From BBC notes to Document: A Very British Coup broadcast on Monday August 22, 2005. Even the BBC was used to spearhead Britain’s propaganda campaign. In fact, Auntie agreed to broadcast the very code word that was to spark revolution. https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20050822.shtml
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
*
The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.
This is the sixth of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to climate change, ‘sustainability’ and the future of Capitalism:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
*
“Suddenly, saving our planet is within reach. We have a plan. We know what to do. Stop the damaging stuff, roll out the new green tech, stabilise the human population as low as we fairly can, keep hold of the natural wealth we have currently got and we’ll have built a stable, healthy world that we can benefit from forever. We now have the choice to create a planet that we can all be proud of, our planet, the perfect home for ourselves and the rest of life on earth.”
— narrative spoken by Sir David Attenborough on World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) promo
WWF recently released (June 5th, 2020) a short video 2 of British “national treasure” and conservation icon, Sir David Attenborough, telling us that “suddenly” saving the world is within reach. He says they know what to do and have a plan to build a stable, healthy world that we can benefit from forever. What’s not to like? Well, a lot! WWF’s plan regurgitates a 19th century racist assumption: That too many of the wrong kind of people threaten us all.
Their “plan” has four commandments: 1) “stop the damaging stuff”; 2) “new green tech”; 3) get population down, and; 4) keep hold of “natural wealth we have currently got.” Let’s begin by removing the two “no-brainer” outliers, the first and last in the plan, stopping doing damage and keeping existing advantages. Both are self-evident approaches to pretty much anything. What we’re left with then is just two answers to the planet’s problems – new green tech and reducing population.
So begins a damning critique of the ‘Big Green’ agenda and a recent WWF promotional film to “save the planet” written by Stephen Corry, an activist and campaigner who has worked since 1972 with Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights. 3
Corry continues [all footnotes retained from the original]:
[I]t’s in the other “solution” – getting the population down – where both Attenborough and WWF really plumb the depths of their elitist ideology. One can visualize the meetings of writers who struggled to express this without attracting attacks from those like me who think the 200-year old cry of “overpopulation” is ideological, fundamentally racist, certainly eugenic, and nothing to do with science.
The writers finally came up with, “stabilize the human population as low as we fairly can.” They presumably thought that using “stabilize” rather than “reduce” (which is what they mean), and that inserting “fairly,” would satisfy the critics. That only goes to show just how little they understand what the problems with their “overpopulation” dirge actually are!
The inconvenient truth, never mentioned by the ideologues, is that the Global North’s population has been dropping for generations. Overall numbers are still growing there only because they’re boosted by newcomers from the Global South. 4 The largest growth area is sub-Saharan Africa, where the population density remains extremely low and where they use very little of the world’s resources themselves. 5 That’s because the “natural wealth they have currently got” is largely stolen from them by the North. 6 Have a look at the area at night from a satellite to see just how little energy is used in Africa compared to Europe, or get the view from a plane, as Attenborough will have done hundreds of times.
In other words, if you’re worried about overpopulation threatening the environment, then you’re blind to the real menace: It’s not the growing number of “have nots” in the South, but growing overconsumption by the “haves” in the North.
Adding:
The story reminds me of WWF fundraising from 1994, which posed the very odd question: whether to send in the army or an anthropologist to stop indigenous people destroying the Amazon (its proposed answer, needless to say, was to give WWF yet more money). Yes, WWF actually suggested that indigenous people, not the industry bigwigs 7 it invites to sit on its boards are the destroyers of the world’s largest rainforest, an ecosystem which those same indigenous people are both responsible for creating and by far the best at protecting. That can now be proven from satellite pictures and data about the higher biodiversity in indigenous-controlled territories.
The real tragedy here is not what Attenborough and WWF believe – that won’t change unless and until savvier folk get a controlling hand – it’s that they are able to foist their propaganda on so large a sector of the Global North, including on many progressives. Perhaps many white environmentally-aware people really do believe that “overbreeding” will overrun the Earth and see it as a duty, even “sacred” duty, to defend the planet from the barbarian hordes. That’s been the really big lie drummed into us for over a century, it’s a key component of racism and anti-immigration. It has financial support from corporations and big foundations, and enormous backing from governments which dedicate massive amounts of our money to foment it. Worst of all, those who promulgate this lie are now planning on getting billions more dollars through their terrible “new deal for nature,” which is warming up to be the biggest land grab in history. They want control of no less than one-third of the globe for their “Protected Areas,” and yes, they are sending in the army, often private militias, to get local people out. 8
Click here to read the Stephen Corry’s full article entitled “The Big Green Lie” published by Counterpunch on June 26th, 2020.
*
In the short clip embedded above, recorded in November 2014, Baka from Ndongo, a village where WWF has a regional base, call upon WWF to stop funding the anti-poaching squads that have persecuted them for years. A slighter longer report is embedded below featuring the Baka at Yenga, Cameroon:
Many Baka refer to both WWF and the anti-poaching squads it funds as “dobi-dobi” or ‘dobi-dobiyu’ (WWF). Here, they are referring to WWF itself.
Click here to learn more at Survival International.
*
Big Green
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Whenever I peruse the list of participants for any forthcoming Bilderberg meeting, the names that really stand out are not those of the bankers, hedge fund bosses and major industrialists; and nor are my eyes especially drawn to the inclusion of usual suspects from journalism, academia (especially economics departments) and the major political parties, or with high ranking attachment to the military and intelligence agencies, nor even the occasional monarch; last year it happened to be His Majesty the King of the Netherlands – Funny how they include NLD after his title presumably as a token to their inherent egalitarianism!
But the names that always grab my attention are instead those I’m just not expecting to see at all. For instance last year:
Henry, Mary Kay (USA), International President, Service Employees International Union
Hers was certainly amongst the names stood apart. These are a few of the others:
Solhjell, Bård Vegar (NOR), CEO, WWF – Norway
Rockström, Johan (SWE), Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Buitenweg, Kathalijne (NLD), MP, Green Party
With sincere apologies to Oscar Wilde: to invite one environmentalist may be regarded as a misfortune; to invite three looks like a plan of action. Not that environmentalist ties to Bilderberg are as novel as they may first appear.
#BP at #Bilderberg: the chairman, Helge Lund, arrived in Montreux in his travel sneakers. I just hope he brought some headphones, so he can tune out during the session on 'Climate Change & Sustainability'. Also at #Bilderberg is BP board member & ex-MI6 boss Sir John Sawers. pic.twitter.com/BvqxBsfOAo
In fact, anyone familiar with the history of Bilderberg knows that the attendance of the King of the Netherlands is also in keeping with the origins of the meeting, which had been co-founded by Prince Bernhard, consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. And those familiar with the generally unspoken history of modern environmentalism will recall that Prince Bernhard is one of the co-founders of the World Wildlife Fund (as WWF was originally known); becoming its first President in 1961.
nothing to see here, just the King & Prime Minister of the Netherlands arriving at #Bilderberg to meet with the heads of #NATO, Davos, the Bank of England, HSBC, Microsoft, AXA, Total, Thales, Santander, the German defence minister, the Irish finance minister & the PM of Estonia. pic.twitter.com/Dv3JOcuhr9
Moreover, when Bernhard was forced to step down as WWF President in 1976 because his involvement in the Lockheed Bribery Scandal came to light, he was immediately succeeded by John Loudon, the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (called “Royal Dutch” for very good reason) And there was more to Loudon’s network of interests:
After [John Loudon] stepped down as chairman in 1965, he continued to be active in the company as chairman of the board of supervisory directors for 11 more years.
When David Rockfeller, the president of Chase Manhattan Bank, set up an advisory committee in 1965 to counsel the bank on its growing international business, Mr. Loudon was named as chairman. He retired from the group in 1977. 10
From an obituary published by The New York Times on February 9th, 1996.
What the NYT fails to mention here is that once Loudon became WWF President in 1976, his appointment also crossed over with tenure on that advisory committee of Chase Manhattan. Noteworthy too is the fact that President of Chase Manhattan, David Rockefeller, has sat alongside Prince Bernhard as a fellow member of Bilderberg since its inception in 1954. Afterwards he became co-founder of closely-allied globalist body, the Trilateral Commission.
These unseemly beginnings of WWF ought to serve as a caution, and especially to those on the left, that the environmental movement is not all it seems. That Bilderberg is back to greening itself ought to come as no surprise either.
*
On 22 June 2011, German public broadcaster ARD aired a documentary by Wilfried Huismann in which WWF was directly accused of contributing to the willful destruction of habitat and species it claims to protect and of harming indigenous peoples. The documentary entitled “Silence of the Pandas – what the WWF does not tell us” [In German: Pakt mit dem Panda – was uns der WWF verschweigt] (which is embedded below) calls into question the WWF’s close associations with major corporations including Monsanto:
In it [Wilfried Huismann] complained above all about the proximity [of WWF] to the agricultural industry. One of the problems is that the WWF is sitting with so-called round tables for soybean (RTRS) and palm oil (RSPO) producers together with large agricultural groups such as Monsanto. 11
From a review of the documentary by Der Spiegel.
The excerpt below is from an earlier report by Der Spiegel that was similarly critical of the WWF’s soy and palm oil policies at this time:
SPIEGEL has traveled through South America and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to test this. In Brazil, an agro manager talked about the first shipload of sustainable soy that was certified according to the WWF standard and reached Rotterdam with a lot of PR noise last year. The manager conceded that the origin of the cargo was not exactly known. In Sumatra, members of a tribe reported how hired troops from WWF partner Wilmar [International Limited is Asia’s leading agribusiness group] had destroyed their homes. They had been in the way of undisturbed palm oil production.
Representatives of independent non-governmental organizations such as Rettet den Regenwald [trans: Rainforest Rescue] and Robin Wood no longer see the aid organization as just the trustee of the animals. To many, the WWF seems more like an accomplice of the corporations to whom it grants the license to destroy nature in exchange for large donations and small concessions. 12
Click here to read the full Der Spiegel article entitled “Kumpel der Konzerne” which translates as “Buddy of the corporations”
Huismann was subsequently sued by WWF over the documentary and the book he based on it, and in an out of court settlement agreed to remove or else revise some of the claims.
As the Der Spiegel review explains:
In fact, the “black book” was not available for a long time from providers such as Amazon or Thalia – for fear of legal disputes. “Rarely has the book trade been so intimidated after the publication and deterred by the distribution of the book,” complained Random House lawyer Rainer Dresen. The German Journalists’ Union (DJU) also criticized the environmentalists’ “legally questionable attempts at intimidation” and the “anticipatory obedience” of the dealers in a statement. 13
*
‘Natural Capital’ and ‘Green Growth’
“We must adapt our ways to the carrying-capacities of this planet and distribute the resources more fairly. And the only way to achieve that is to move toward a model of economic growth where the value of natural capital is fully integrated in economic and political decision-making by governments and by businesses and citizens alike. This to me is the essence of green growth, which of course means that the dichotomy between green growth and just growth is a false one. Just as you cannot take on a larger financial debt you can handle, you cannot use natural resources, which is like taking up a loan from nature, beyond nature’s capacity to renew itself. However, done properly, green growth means prosperity and a better future.” [from 7:40 mins]
From then-Norwegian Minister of the Environment, Bård Vegar Solhjell’s keynote speech during Forests: the 8th Roundtable at Rio+20, a CIFOR-hosted event, which brought together over 550 scientists, policy makers and members of civil society to discuss the role of forests in providing the world with food, energy, income and clean water:
*
“Natural capital” has become a buzzword in the sphere of environmentalism. It means literally putting a price tag on nature or as the World Forum on Natural Capital puts it:
Natural capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geology, soil, air, water and all living things.
It is from this natural capital that humans derive a wide range of services, often called ecosystem services, which make human life possible.
The most obvious ecosystem services include the food we eat, the water we drink and the plant materials we use for fuel, building materials and medicines. There are also many less visible ecosystem services such as the climate regulation and natural flood defences provided by forests, the billions of tonnes of carbon stored by peatlands, or the pollination of crops by insects. Even less visible are cultural ecosystem services such as the inspiration we take from wildlife and the natural environment 14
This is the top result from a Google search on the topic. The next result brings up the Natural Capital Coalition which “was launched in January 2020 and hosts over 370 leading organizations to accelerate the use of capitals thinking”. The blurb on their website continues:
Originally established in 2012 as the TEEB For Business Coalition and hosted by ICAEW, the Natural Capital Coalition quickly became the global leader in mainstreaming natural capital approaches in the private sector, and released the internationally recognized Natural Capital Protocol in 2016.
The ICAEW for those not fully literate in contemporary acronyms is the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which perhaps doesn’t need further comment, while TEEB is a group whose title in full is The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. The opening statement on their official website begins:
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is a global initiative focused on “making nature’s values visible”.
Interestingly, one of their listed partners is the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, another is Pricewaterhouse Coopers. I think the picture is becoming clearer, arguably all the more so when we discover the World Bank has its own entry that is again ranked on page one of any Google search. Here’s how the World Bank lists “natural capital” with commendable frankness as just another “asset”:
Long‐term development is a process of accumulation and sound management of a portfolio of assets—manufactured capital, natural capital, and human and social capital. 15
A decade ago, Forbes magazine ran an article entitled “Names You Need to Know In 2011: Natural Capital Project”. It explains:
[U]ntil recently it’s been difficult to put a truly measurable value on what are often threatened natural resources. The Natural Capital Project, a non-profit venture led in part by scientists from Stanford University, has changed that. Its software tool, called InVEST, helps to map out the value of natural land or seascapes—assets the group calls “natural capital.” 16
The same Natural Capital Project is still going strong and back in March 2019 they had teamed up with Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) in an official partnership. Prior to his invitation from Bilderberg, Professor Johan Rockström had been the Executive Director of SRC for twelve years (2004–2012) where he led a team of scientists in developing a scientifically debatable, neo-Malthusian Planetary Boundaries framework.
Alongside Rockström’s SRC, the National Capital Project also proudly lists three more “world-class academic institutions – Stanford University [its host], the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota” and amongst its six core partners, two of the world’s largest NGOs, The Nature Conservancy and Bård Solhjell’s World Wide Fund for Nature. 17 In short, last year’s Bilderberg meeting brought together two attendees who are both deeply embedded within this ‘natural capital’ matrix, which aims to set a price on everything in nature.
As Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher write in an excellent rebuttal of this new environmental accountancy:
The fact that the food we eat and the water we drink apparently need to be labeled “natural capital” only becomes meaningful in the context of capitalist growth. In this context everything should, in principle, become “capital”.
It is therefore vital to be clear on what “capital” really means. In daily conversations and some economic theory, the term is frequently defined as a “stock” or as “assets”. More accurate, however, is to see capital as a process, a dynamic. It is about investing money (or value) in order to make more money (or value). In short, capital is “value in motion”.
Capital in a capitalist economy is therefore never invested for the sake of it. The aim is to extract more money or value than had been invested. Otherwise it would not be capital.
It follows that the move from “nature” to “natural capital” is not an innocent change in terminology, another word for the same thing. Rather, it constitutes a fundamental reconceptualisation and revaluation of nature. Natural capital is about putting nature to work for capitalist growth – euphemistically referred to as green growth.
The move from nature to natural capital is problematic because it assumes that different forms of capital – human, financial, natural – can be made equivalent and exchanged. In practice – and despite proponents’s insistence to the contrary – this means that everything must potentially be expressed through a common, quantitative unit: money. But complex, qualitative, heterogeneous natures, as these same proponents acknowledge, can never adequately be represented in quantitative, homogenous money-units.
And even if we try, there is an untenable tension between the limitlessness of money (we can always generate more money) and the limits of natural capital (we cannot exchange evermore money-capital into natural capital, for all eternity).
Natural capital is therefore inherently anti-ecological and has little to do with giving value to nature, or rendering this value visible. It is the exploitation of nature to inject more value, and seeming legitimacy, into a faltering capitalist growth economy.18
Click here to read the full article published by Wrong Kind of Green in September 2016.
*
It’s not the end of the world
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.
— The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome19
*
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
Michael Shellenberger, quoted above, has credentials that give weight to these contentions. He was named a Time magazine Heroes of the Environment in 2008 – the same year he won the Green Book Award – has provided expert testimony to US Congress and was invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report. Just as importantly, Shellenberger is able to draw upon his wealth of experience as an environmental activist as the next statement in this recently published mea culpa entitled “On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize For the Climate Scare” (soon afterwards retracted by Forbes magazine), goes on to add:
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
Unsurprisingly then, Shellenberger’s piece (which is still available online at other sites) has caused a bit of a stink. In response, for instance, the Guardian ran a long item which criticises some of the claims but mostly highlights Shellenberger’s close links to the nuclear trade association Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). My purpose here is not to defend or promote Shellenberger and I certainly do not share his opinions about the need to expand nuclear power (as many previous articles testify) however, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that the Guardian’s chief environmental columnist, George Monbiot, is another well-known and outspoken advocate for nuclear power (read my previous criticism here).
In any case, the most significant issue Shellenberger raises goes beyond such particular concerns as the dangers of ‘climate change’ and our best response to it (including nuclear); points which remain highly contested. The point is that we are no longer allowed to contest any of this – the constant demand being that we must “get with the programme”. As he says:
Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a life long progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”
Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.
As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct.
And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.
Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.
Click here to read Michael Shellenberger’s full article.
*
Final thoughts: XR and the ‘Fourth Industrial Repression’
“I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic”
These days you will often find grown men dressed in polar bear costumes parading outside the entrances to the G20 or COP, rubbing their eyes to brush away fake tears. The TV companies flock to it. They love every kind of manipulative theatrics. Not that we are supposed to believe the polar bears are truly sad of course; that’s just for the children. No, this otherwise quite blatant appeal to sentimentality – well, polar bears are cute, let’s face it – is deliberately tempered. They are crying dry self-conscious tears that are laced with postmodern irony: crocodile tears shed for the presumed fate of the human race.
And I wonder what they really want, sweating beneath those layers of Mickey Mouse costuming. What do modern environmentalists want in general? Most of ones I know (many are friends) actually consume a great deal more than I do, and whenever I propose modest solutions of my own, the response is highly predictable.
Here is one challenge I sometimes like to set them. If you really wish to put a stop to overconsumption – as in principle I do too – then let’s begin with a straightforward ban on advertising, I will say. After all the primary purpose of such ubiquitous mass psychological manipulation is in driving our desire to consume – and I don’t even bother mentioning the unseen role advertising plays both in weakening our personal sense of self and buttressing the extant free market system (There are a whole host of good reasons to place a ban on advertising – read this for my fuller thoughts).
A ban can be rolled out in stages, I propose (maintaining the inherent modesty of my proposition and reminding them of the successful restrictions that now prohibit advertisements for cigarettes and other tobacco products), and the first step might simply introduce bans on commercials for SUVs or airlines or oil companies or something else that is considered especially polluting.
It’s then that the eye-rolling generally begins. Excuses are sought for why a ban of this kind would make no real difference and the conversation moves on. Thus, although, they say they dream of radically changing the world, my experience is that even such a simple and workable idea is likely to be rejected out of hand. This response is telling don’t you think?
Do they want to allow corporate providers to go on lying to us all on a daily basis, cajoling us to buy their unnecessary products? Or are they just afraid of the economic repercussions such a ban might have? In fact I believe both answers apply, and the reasoning is quite straightforward and understandable. The environmental movement is itself inherently consumerist: beset with ingrained market-led values of a system it claims to oppose; and all the environmentalists I know are happy consumers of eco-friendly brands.
Yet, and though modern environmentalism seeks inherently materialist solutions including, if it is deemed necessary, the final commodification of the entirety of the natural world, it habitually confuses all of this with spiritual ends. Even the word ‘ethical’ is becoming narrowly redefined in some quarters. In the future it may simply mean obeying controls on how much one consumes and observing the proper restrictions on provision and/or access to ‘natural resources’. Being a good consumer will finally equate to being a good person.
Unlike the old-style conservationism it supplanted (which had serious issues too as described in sections above), a darker side to the new environmentalism has gradually evolved as focus was shifted from preservation of our natural environment by acting primarily on a local scale to calls for the prevention of an impending global catastrophe. The threat of a terror it evokes is of such magnitude that it seems nearly impossible to surmount: an existential crisis that arguably calls for miraculous or semi-miraculous modes of intervention.
“The end of the world” is of course attractive to some, if only because of its unique power to diminish all other problems and fears by rolling them up into a single ball of quintessential evil. Old-style religious zealots, chastising sinners or else parading their own sinfulness under the burden of heavy banners that declare “The End is Nigh” are seldom seen on our high streets nowadays. Their self-inflicted mournfulness intensified all the more by the derision of the average passerby and unintentionally sanctified: “for blessed are ye, when men shall hate you” 21
But many of today’s eco-prophets of doom have picked up the same banners to parade in their stead. Enter the ‘Red Rebel Brigade’ furies (not to be confused with Mao’s Red Guards!) dressed in scarlet gowns and veils, weeping blood over funereal face-paint:
Other emblems of the new faith are the death’s head and the increasingly familiar and starkly angular XR hourglass, which always looks to me like a neatly folded swastika:
Screenshot from Guildford Extinction Rebellion website
Aspects of these performances are presumably intended to give you the creeps, at least if you take them seriously, though it’s hard to see beyond the amateur dramatics and cappuccino angst. As death cults go, this has to be one of the most convivial – most greenies I know wouldn’t hurt a fly (some literally).
And what plans do they have to save the planet, besides new bicycle lanes, shopping ‘bags for life’, bamboo toothbrushes and veganism? To judge by the literature on affiliated websites whatever this envisioned transformation involves, its goals are remarkably vague – waking people up to the ‘climate emergency’ is enough for now basically.
Meanwhile, the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR) or ‘Industry 4.0’ constructed around 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) is awaiting implementation – a development I discussed in greater length in a previous article within this series. As Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, writes in his book of the same title:
“The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.” 22
And behind the overarching 4IR hi-tech rollout that combines artificial intelligence, gene editing and advanced robotics – “blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds” to quote the current UK government website 23– there are other gilded labels like ‘smart growth’ and ‘sustainable development’ that disguise more insidious intent: translated it will mean the microscopic monitoring of our personal lives and household activities with attendant regulations and social controls allied closely to an incrementally tightening regime of ‘austerity measures’. Economic hardship applied not only to our western economies, but stifling development across the third world. (Rest assured that the billionaire class with their private jets, private yachts and private islands, whose agenda is being inadvertently pushed, will not be subjected to the same privations and exclusions).
As anarchist author Paul Cudenec outlines in a short essay published by Wrong Kind of Green, “The Fourth Industrial Repression wants to replace everything true and authentic with its replicas, with a reality not so much virtual as entirely fake”:
The 4IR wants us all to be on our own, online and in line.
The 4IR empties everything of meaning, particularly words. It says “sustainable” when it means ecocidal. It says “development” when it means destruction. It says “basic universal income” when it means slavery.
When the 4IR talks about “social impact investing” it really means it wants to turn human beings into lucrative investment opportunities.
When the 4IR talks about “a new deal for nature” it really means it wants to privatise the whole living world so as to make the billionaire class even richer than it already is.
Concluding:
The 4IR employs huge armies of professional liars and gullible fools to spread its propaganda and scream abuse at all who dare challenge its fearmongering falsehoods.
The 4IR is a death cult which dreams of wiping out everything that is natural, everything that is wild, everything that is free.
Click here to read the full article entitled “Resist the Fourth Industrial Repression!”
Finally, should any of these demands require the further hollowing out of western democracies in order to put greater powers into the hands of technocratic administrators, then so be it. For what sacrifice is too great when you believe the fate of the whole planet hangs in the balance, and worse, when we are so swiftly “running out of time”?
*
It is interesting to note that in 2018 Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, was invited and attended the Bilderberg Conference when it convened in Turin. What is relevance? Well, almost precisely twelve months later, in the wake of an audience with chief executives and chairs from global finance and multinational energy companies, Pope Francis officially declared a global “climate emergency”:
“Future generations stand to inherit a greatly spoiled world. Our children and grandchildren should not have to pay the cost of our generation’s irresponsibility,” he said, in his strongest and most direct intervention yet on the climate crisis. “Indeed, as is becoming increasingly clear, young people are calling for a change.”
The Pope’s impassioned plea came as he met the leaders of some of the world’s biggest multinational oil companies in the Vatican on Friday to impress upon them the urgency and scale of the challenge, and their central role in tackling the emissions crisis. It followed a similar meeting last year, but this time the Pope’s stance was tougher as he warned that time was running out and urged them to hear “the increasingly desperate cries of the earth and its poor”.
From a Guardian article published last year entitled “Pope Francis declares ‘climate emergency’ and urges action”.
The chief executives or chairs of BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, ConocoPhilips, Chevron and several major investors including BlackRock and Hermes, responded by calling on governments to put in place carbon pricing to encourage low-carbon innovation, and called for greater financial transparency to aid investors.
However, they made no pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and set no timetable for action.
But, as the article goes on to say, carbon indulgences may be offered in lieu…
In two statements, which came at the end of a two-day meeting in the Vatican that was addressed by the pope and led by senior Vatican churchmen, the signatories called for a “combination of policies and carbon pricing mechanisms … designed in a way that simultaneously delivers innovation and investment in low-carbon solutions while assisting those least able to pay”. 25
Click here to read the full Guardian report published in June 2019.
*
Additional: The technocratic society
“UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL.
“Have you wondered where these terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘smart growth’ and ‘high density urban mixed-use development’ came from? Doesn’t it seem like about 10 years ago you’d never heard of them and now everything seems to include these concepts? Is that just a coincidence? That every town and county and state and nation in the world would be changing their land use/planning codes and government policies to align themselves with…what?
“Far from being a ‘conspiracy theory’ or a ‘tin-foil hat’ fantasy, this is an actual United Nations plan, signed onto in 1992 by President George HW Bush along with 178 other world leaders. The UN called it Agenda 21 because it is the Agenda for the 21st century. According to UN Secretary General Maurice Strong, the ‘affluent middle-class American lifestyle is unsustainable.’ That includes single family homes, private vehicles, appliances, air-conditioning, & meat-eating. They are a threat to the planet” — Rosa Koire 26
*
Embedded below is Rosa Koire’s special presentation to the New Hampshire Legislature. It took place in the Legislative Office Building just behind the Capital in Concord on June 25, 2012. She shared with concerned legislators what she has learned about the true nature of Sustainable Development:
*
1 Quote taken from Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 7, by Aldous Huxley.
4 The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “Migration and population change – drivers and impacts”. Population Facts, no 2017/8 (2017).
9 Quote from philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality” (1754) which has the formal title, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes), also commonly known as the “Second Discourse”.
Before translation, the original passage reads:
“Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s’avisa de dire: Ceci est à moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de misères et d’horreurs n’eût point épargnés au genre humain celui qui, arrachant les pieux ou comblant le fossé, eût crié à ses semblables: Gardez-vous d’écouter cet imposteur; vous êtes perdus, si vous oubliez que les fruits sont à tous, et que la terre n’est à personne.”
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Darin beklagte er vor allem die Nähe zur Agrarindustrie. Problematisch sei unter anderem, dass der WWF zusammen mit großen Agrarkonzernen wie Monsanto an sogenannten Runden Tischen für Soja- (RTRS) und Palmölproduzenten (RSPO) sitzt. Auch der SPIEGEL hatte kritisch über die Soja- und Palmöl-Politik des WWF berichtet.
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Der SPIEGEL ist durch Südamerika und auf die indonesische Insel Sumatra gereist, um das zu prüfen. In Brasilien erzählte ein Agro-Manager von der ersten Schiffsladung nachhaltigen Sojas, die nach WWF-Standard zertifiziert wurde und im vergangenen Jahr mit viel PR-Getöse Rotterdam erreichte. Die Herkunft der Ladung, räumte der Manager ein, kenne er gar nicht genau. Auf Sumatra berichteten Angehörige eines Stamms, wie angeheuerte Trupps des WWF-Partners Wilmar ihre Häuser zerstört hatten. Sie waren der ungestörten Palmöl-Produktion im Weg gewesen.
Auch Vertreter unabhängiger Nichtregierungsorganisationen wie Rettet den Regenwald und Robin Wood sehen in der Hilfsorganisation längst nicht mehr nur den Treuhänder der Tiere. Vielen kommt der WWF eher wie ein Komplize der Konzerne vor, denen er gegen große Spenden und kleine Zugeständnisse die Lizenz zur Zerstörung der Natur erteilt.
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Tatsächlich war das “Schwarzbuch” längere Zeit über Anbieter wie Amazon oder Thalia nicht zu beziehen – aus Angst vor Rechtsstreitigkeiten. “Selten wurde der Buchhandel nach der Veröffentlichung derart flächendeckend eingeschüchtert und vom Vertrieb des Buchs abgeschreckt”, beklagte Random-House-Jusitiar Rainer Dresen. Auch die Deutsche Journalistinnen- und Journalisten-Union (DJU) kritisierte in einer Erklärung die “rechtlich zweifelhaften Einschüchterungsversuche” der Umweltschützer und den “vorauseilenden Gehorsam” der Händler.
NatCap is a partnership of four world-class academic institutions – Stanford University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre – advancing new science together with, inspired by, and implemented through two of the world’s largest NGOs, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.
19 Quote from The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome, Part I “The Problematique”, Ch 5, “The vacuum”, p 75, written by Alexander King & Bertrand Schenider, published by Pantheon Books in 1991. https://archive.org/details/TheFirstGlobalRevolution/page/n85
Here are some further extracts:
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
A few pages earlier
“The old democracies have functioned reasonably well over the last 200 years, but they appear now to be in a phase of complacent stagnation with little evidence of real leadership and innovation. It is to be hoped, with a new found enthusiasm for democracy in the liberated countries today, that people will not reproduce slavish copies of existing models that are unable to meet contemporary needs.”
Which leads us to a different subheading “The limits of democracy”, following which the text continues:
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely, sacrilegious although as this may sound. In its present form, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time. Few politicians in office are sufficiently aware of the global nature of the problems facing them and little, if any, awareness of the interactions between the problems. Generally speaking, informed discussion on the main political, economic and social issues takes place on radio and television, rather than in Parliament, to the detriment of the latter. Political party activities are so intensely focused on election deadlines and party rivalries that they end up weakening the democracy they’re supposed to serve. This confrontational approach gives an impression that party needs come before national interests. Strategies and tactics seem more important than objectives, and often a constituency is neglected as soon as it is gained. With the current mode of operation, Western democracies are seeing their former role decline and public opinion drifting away from elected representatives. However, the crisis in the contemporary democratic system must not be allowed to serve as an excuse for rejecting democracy.
Adding:
In the countries now opening up to freedom, Democracy is being introduced in a situation which demands greatly changed attitudes and patterns of behavior demands from citizens. The inevitable problems of phasing in democracy are difficult to solve. But there is another, still more serious question. Democracy does not necessarily build a bridge between a colonial or neo-colonial economy or a centralized bureaucratic economy towards a market economy based on competition and producing growth. In a transitional situation such as the present which because of sudden and unforeseen change has been neither planned nor prepared for. The necessary structures attitudes market relations and managerial styles simply do not exist. If such a situation is allowed to go on too long, it is probable that democracy will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power by extremists of one brand or the other.
20 From a speech delivered by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to the World Economic Forum at Davos on January 25, 2019 [from 2:20 mins]:
21 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Luke 6:22.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.
Taken from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) 1
*
At one point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, [police Chief Inspector] Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of breath. “Eighteen months?” The reason for all the secrecy? “Terrorism”.
After 59 years of Bilderberg guests scuttling about in the shadows, ducking lenses and dodging the news, that’s the rationale we’re given? The same rationale, presumably, is behind the Great Wall of Watford, a concrete-and-wire security fence encircling the hotel. As ugly as it is unnecessary, it looks like the kind of thing you throw yourself against in a stalag before being machine-gunned from a watchtower. Appropriately fascistic, you might say, if you regard fascism as “the merger of corporate and government power”, as Mussolini put it.
The same threat of “terrorism” was used to justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they had “no specific intelligence” regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984.
So writes Charlie Skelton, who is again one of the only mainstream journalists reporting from this year’s Bilderberg meeting which officially opened yesterday. Skelton, who also has a career as comedy script writer, adding with typically understated irony:
The audience was an odd mix. Half were residents from around the venue worried about the possibility of tyre-damage to a strip of lawn; the other half were journalists from around the world worried about the geopolitical implications of a conference at which BAE, Stratfor and General Petraeus will be discussing “Africa’s challenges”.
Both halves were worried about the funding for the gigantic security operation. The police assured sceptical residents that the conference would be “cost-neutral” for Hertfordshire, thanks in part to a “donation” from the conference organisers. This “donation” will have come, in part at least, from the Bilderberg Association, a registered UK charity that takes “donations” from BP and Goldman Sachs.
So, in a sense, the Herts police are doing charity work for Goldman Sachs. Which must be a comfort for the executives of Goldman Sachs attending the conference: the vice-chairman, a director and the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. They’ve got their charity team out patrolling, keeping the lenses at bay.2
Click here to read his full article entitled “Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984” published by the Guardian on Wednesday 5th.
Here is Skelton again reporting a few days earlier on his same Bilderblog, and on this occasion delving deeper into Bilderberg’s wonderful and little known works of charity whilst also pointing out how the timing of this year’s get-together happens to coincide with a long overdue scandal about political lobbying:
If you’ve been wondering who picks up the tab for this gigantic conference and security operation, the answer arrived last week, on a pdf file sent round by Anonymous. It showed that the Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706).
According to its Charity Commission accounts, the association meets the “considerable costs” of the conference when it is held in the UK, which include hospitality costs and the travel costs of some delegates. Presumably the charity is also covering the massive G4S security contract. Fortunately, the charity receives regular five-figure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP. The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008 (pdf), since when the charity has omitted its donors’ names (pdf) from its accounts.
Public education! From an organisation that hides its face in shame behind armed guards and steel cordons. Skelton adds:
If you are concerned about transparency or lobbying, Watford is the place to be next weekend. Whether the delegates reach out to the press and public remains to be seen. Don’t forget, they’ve got their hands full carrying out the good works of Bilderberg. The conference is, after all, run as a charity.
A charity which specialises in helping those most in need of a little corporate lobbying:
It’s a remarkable spectacle – one of nature’s wonders – and the most exciting thing to happen to Watford since that roundabout on the A412 got traffic lights. The area round the hotel is in lockdown: locals are having to show their passports to get to their homes. It’s exciting too for the delegates. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat’s year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group’s founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin.
Here is the definition of “bribe”: Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person’s views or conduct. So surely then, every form of lobbying is a kind of bribery.
Just imagine, for example, if my college discovered that I or any of my colleagues were accepting cash payments (or other ‘gifts’) from students – they would rightly sack us on the spot. Would it make any difference if I told them that the students were only “lobbying me” about their coursework, or would it be deemed more acceptable if I had “registered their interests”? Of course it wouldn’t! So in what way is lobbying not bribery?
That said, some kinds of bribery are more prosecutable than others. So was Prince Bernhard ever criminally charged after accepting a $1.1 million bribe from Lockheed? Of course not, after all he’s Prince Bernhard. Although apparently he was forced “to step down from several public positions and was forbidden to wear his military uniforms again.”4 Rough justice.
Back to Skelton’s comparative analysis of the current goings on at the Grove hotel to the on-going parliamentary scandal:
It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. “It runs contrary to [George] Osborne’s public commitment in 2010 to ‘the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen’,” says Michael Meacher MP. Meacher describes the conference as “an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach of public scrutiny”.
But, to be fair, is “public scrutiny” really necessary when our politicians are tucked safely away with so many responsible members of JP Morgan’s international advisory board? There’s always the group chief executive of BP on hand to make sure they do not get unduly lobbied. And if he is not in the room, keeping an eye out, then at least one of the chairmen of Novartis, Zurich Insurance, Fiat or Goldman Sachs International will be around.
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article.
Charlie Skelton is doing an excellent job again this year, and when, later today, I finally make it down to Watford myself, perhaps I’ll happen to run into him. If not then I’d certainly like to express my gratitude to him here before I leave.
I must also say that it is quite pleasing to see others in the media finally picking up the gauntlet and taking serious note of this most extraordinary annual general meeting for globalisation. There was even a surprisingly balanced report on Channel 4 news broadcast yesterday. You can watch it here:
Finally, here is Charlie Skelton talking to Max Keiser on Tuesday’s Keiser Report:
*
This year’s official list(which is reliably unreliable) has been released and includes amongst many the following names of particular interest:
George Osborne – Chancellor of the Exchequer
Ed Balls – Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Tim Geithner – Former US Secretary of the Treasury
Christine Lagarde – Head of IMF
Peter Sutherland – Chairman of Goldman Sachs
Mario Monti – Former appointed Prime Minister of Italy
Ken Clarke – who is listed merely as “Member of Parliament”
Peter Mandelson – listed as Chairman of Global Council and also Lazard International
José Barroso – President, European Commission
Richard Perle – neo con, veteran warmonger and well known member of PNAC
Henry Kissinger – listed only as “Chairman of Kissinger Associates”
last, but certainly not least, I notice the recently disgraced Gen David Petraeus – why he, we might wonder?
And so to Watford… I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for Mark Carney who has attended previous meetings at St Moritz (2011) and Chantilly (2012) and is about to replace Mervyn King as the next Governor of the Bank of England.
Various livestream broadcasts of the event can also be found here.
1 From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.
I have already postedan earlier article which details the process of fracking and the long-term environmental devastation it has already caused across America and beyond.
Basically, if you were ever looking to systematically pollute vast tracts of land, then you’d struggle to beat the process of fracking. It goes like this: take huge quantities of freshwater, mix in a secret and highly toxic cocktail of chemical ingredients, and then inject it into the ground under high pressure. The results are impressive, as this recent article in The New York Times shows:
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.2
And here is a short documentary film made by Earth Focus and UK’s Ecological Film Unit, who looked into the effects of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale of the Appalachian Basin, North-East America:
A word of caution though, because if you feel angered or worried about any of this, then do be careful how you raise your objections. Some in America, who have expressed opposition, are now being treated as eco-terrorists:
As for Britain, exploratory drilling around Blackpool was suspended due to earthquakes, and an announcement is expected in the next thirty days as to whether permission will be granted for further fracking:
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said it had to ensure any operations which went ahead were properly regulated.
“We welcome the news that Cuadrilla believe there to be good quantities of gas contained in the shale covered by their licence,” he said.
The DECC spokesman also told the BBC that “nothing will temper the government’s firm and unbending commitment to safety and environmental protection”. Nothing that is, except money and influence perhaps…
Cuadrilla Resources is owned by its management team and two substantial investors, AJ Lucas and Riverstone LLC. And the Managing Director of Riverstone is Lord John Browne of Madingley.
Prior to his appointment at Riverstone, Lord Browne, who was also a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, had spent 41 years working for BP, having been appointed as Chief Executive in June 1995. Indeed, he was the immediate predecessor to the much reviled Tony Hayward, who assumed the position of CEO after Lord Browne’s forced resignation from BP in May 2007. So could Lord Browne have been culpable in any way for what was to occur just a few years later in the Gulf of Mexico?
In July 2010, just a few months after the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Tom Bower wrote this about Lord Browne:
Last Monday, amid the elegant surroundings of Dartmouth House in London’s Mayfair, Lord Browne of Madingley, the dapper former chief executive of BP, gave a lecture about ‘inspiration and vision in business’.
At ease in front of 60 hand-picked guests, the ultra-smooth tycoon shrugged off all personal responsibility for the company’s unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
He brushed aside critical questions about the poisoned legacy he bequeathed his beleaguered successor Tony Hayward.3
In his article, entitled “Return of Lord Oil Slick: Why has Cameron handed this Labour luvvie such a key job?”, Bower continues:
After his appointment as BP boss in 1998, Lord Browne swiftly transformed the firm from a dying oil corporation with just two fields – in Alaska and the North sea – into the world’s second largest behemoth.
By re-focusing on so-called ‘elephants’ (the big oil reservoirs) and ruthlessly cutting costs, his mastery of financial engineering used BP’s rising share price to launch audacious take-overs of failing oil companies, especially in America.
His success earned worldwide plaudits.
After re-branding BP as ‘Beyond Petroleum’ – the world’s most environmentally friendly oil company – he boasted during visits to Washington that BP was not only the largest producer of oil in America, but also the most successful explorer in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most difficult places to extract oil. […]
Success depended on BP earning high profits, which could be used to set up a merger with Shell. Lord Browne went for broke by cutting costs.
His philosophy was ‘more for less’: operations would be completed at a cost that was 10 per cent cheaper than the previous time, and so on.
Taking his cue from New Labour, targets became the Holy Grail. In July 2000, he announced that production would annually grow over three years by 5.5 to 7 per cent, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Angola.
This optimism was hailed and BP’s share price soared. But, in fact, BP’s growth turned out to be only 2.9 per cent and BP could hit its targets only by more ruthless cost-cutting.
Hundreds of engineers were sacked. Budgets for safety and maintenance were slashed. Skilled oil men resigned in disgust.
Bower’s catalogue of criticisms and failures goes on and on. Click here to read more.
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Following the explosion on April 20th that killed 11 workers, an estimated 200 million gallons of oil were released into the ocean, making this the biggest environmental disaster in US history; so could it have been prevented?
Investigative reporter Greg Palast says that 17 months before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, another BP deepwater oil platform in the Caspian Sea had already suffered a blowout.
In an article published on Tuesday 19th April for Truthout, Palast draws comparisons between these events:
“The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP’s Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea. As one memo marked “secret” puts it, “Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition.” The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers. It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP’s controversial “quick set” drilling cement.”
Yet BP had completely failed to inform Congress or the US safety regulators about this earlier incident, leading Palast to ask why there isn’t a clear law that requires disclosure:
“If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.
Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP’s Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company’s knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company’s man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP’s methods are, “both safe and protective of the environment.”
Really? BP’s quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?”
As Palast explains, putting profits before environmental protection and human life means that “regulation” has become a dirty word in politics:
“In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning “blowout” or “cement,” the company placed the leak “under” the platform [as opposed to “in the area of” the drilling platform, as BP had originally told reporters].
This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP’s financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That’s not so clear.”
“’Regulation’ has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, ‘Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn.’”
“Let me just deal with the oil thing because… the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It’s not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons…”
However, given the complete absence of WMDs, the true purpose of the Iraq invasion has never been officially explained. But now, with over 1,000 documents obtained under Freedom of Information by Greg Muttitt, a part of the truth has at last been exposed.
We now know, for instance, that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002, and an article in today’s Independent also reveals that:
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”
Greg Muttitt, the author of “Fuel on the Fire”, which is due to be published next week, said:
“Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq’s oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.
“We see that oil was in fact one of the Government’s most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize.”
Click here to read the full article “Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq” by Paul Bignell, published in The Independent on Tuesday 19th April.
Click here to read reviews of “Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq” by Greg Muttitt
Broadcast on Channel 4 at 8:00pm — 9:00pm on Monday 28th March
Executive producer Peter Grimsdale
Produced and directed by James Brabazon
Greg Palast investigates BP and its close ties to the British government and MI6.
In part 1, Palast examines how the oil industry has devastated the wetlands of Louisiana, with catastrophic consequences for New Orleans, and how plans for future oil exploration in the Arctic will soon pose a further threat to the environment.
In the final part, he turns his attention to how the oil company does its business in “the wild East”. Investigating BP’s operation inside Azerbaijan, Palast uncovers allegations of bribery and espionage.
wall of controversy 