Pennies From Heaven

The word philanthropy first appears in Western thought in the fifth century BC to denote an act of rebellion and name the crime of treason.

Lapham’s Quartly

Lapham’s Quarterly Summer 2015: Philanthropy

by Lewis H. Lapham

Prometheus Bringing Fire to Mankind, by Friedrich Heinrich Füger, 1817. Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. —The Gospel According to Matthew

But if the rich men are left standing around on earth with the camels, wherefrom the pennies that drop from the skies of philanthropy? Who carries up the treasure to the pay windows in heaven? At what altitude does hard coin resolve itself into dew, and so fall, gently like rain, on the sorrow and heat of the desert? How high the cloud level before greed becomes good?

These questions inform the discussion of the philanthropic largesse that in America over the last fifty years has become a very big business. Big enough to warrant the casting of suspicion on its motives, doubt on its objectives, stones at its privileges. Scolding voices in the media and Congress lobby for the adage that the mark of a good deed is its not going unpunished, and the increasingly harsh tone of the complaints—philanthropy as false front for funding a political campaign, as setup for a tax dodge, preservation of a family fortune, whiteout of a criminal rap sheet—rises to the occasion of the national economy’s nonprofit sector becoming an ever larger part of the whole. The most recent numbers available from the Urban Institute speak to the presence of divinity.

Nonprofit organizations report over $4.8 trillion in total assets, $2.16 trillion in total revenues, $2.03 trillion in total expenses.

Nonprofit organizations account for 5.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, roughly 10 percent of all wages and salaries, $887 billion in annual spending.

Total annual private giving (from individuals, foundations, and businesses) in the amount of $335 billion.

Around 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, roughly one for every 213 Americans, to which more than one in four Americans volunteered an estimated 8.1 billion hours of work valued at $163 billion.

So glorious a concentration of wealth makes a joyful noise unto the Lord; the accounting for its uses opens a Pandora’s box from which swarms forth a screech of lawyers. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code bestows tax exemptions on nonprofit enterprises recognized as “religious, charitable, scientific,testing for public safety,literary,or educational,”but a string of handsomely abstract adjectives doesn’t furnish clear definition of the noun philanthropy. Among the vast multitude of would-be loaves and fishes, how to distinguish those that are morally wholesome, financially sound, socially nourishing? Where is it written that all good intentions are good, and which ones escape or deserve being nailed to a cross? Does support for the Metropolitan Museum of Art require equal protection for the San Francisco Bay smelt?

The questions follow from a careless use of the term philanthropy (“love of humanity” in the ancient Greek) as a catch-all synonym embracing different forms of its expression in societies past and present, among them those noted in this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly under the headings of Sumerian debt forgiveness, Roman bread and circuses, Muslim almsgiving, Chinook potlatch, Catholic charity and sin removal, Protestant good works, democratic government.

 

The deed is everything, the glory naught.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832

Although endowed over the centuries with many benevolent connotations (compassion, forbearance, kindness, humility), the word philanthropy first appears in Western thought in the fifth century BC, in Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound to name an act of rebellion and denote the crime of treason. Alone among the deities on Mount Olympus, the Titan Prometheus takes pity on the “sad, care-laden” human race living like “ants in sunless caves,” their every act without hope or direction, “dayflies” lost in meaningless confusion. Zeus intends to delete the species and “grow another one more to his liking.” Prometheus would have it otherwise. Disposed to the love of humanity (for reasons left unstated, but none of them to do with grace or wit or beauty), he steals the “bright and dancing fire” of the gods and gives to mortal men its “wonderworking power”—heat and light, but also freedom of thought, the stores of memory and the arts of divination, knowledge of numbers and letters, of medicine, carpentry, animal husbandry, and astronomy.

Prometheus thus defies the will and tyranny of Zeus “by granting mortals honor above their due,” and the punishment is merciless—his immortal flesh bound in chains, nailed to a barren rock at the far limit of the world, condemned to endure relentless torture “through endless time.”

The godlike powers transferred by Prometheus as unrestricted gift to mortal men serve their purpose at sea level, here on earth with the hummingbirds and the camels, their saving grace not deferred until the beneficiaries attain celestial cruising speed. The society that was Hellenic Athens didn’t assign high real estate values to an afterlife, and the rich men within the polis, their formidable wealth placing them at Promethean cloud level, were expected (expected, not obliged) to provide, at their own and often ruinous expense, enhancements of the public spirit and the common good—votive offerings, sacrifices and temples, gymnasia, festivals, games, banquets, the outfitting of naval vessels, and the staging of plays.

Generosity was virtue, the value of money the having it to give away. The reward was double-edged—the pleasure inherent in the act of freely giving, the honor for doing so a gift freely bestowed by one’s fellow citizens. Honor, not gratitude. As long as the haves placed a higher value in their stores of virtue than on their hoards of wealth, the have-nots could look to them in admiration instead of with envy and resentment. Pericles delivering his funeral oration in 431 BC (the first year of the Peloponnesian War) praises Athenians as patrons of the public good, willing to make noble expenditures (of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor) to preserve the city’s freedoms of thought and action.

The happy state of affairs didn’t survive the war with Sparta. The government of Athens fell into the grasp of an oligarchy afflicted with the disease diagnosed by the ancient Greeks as pleonexia, the pathological craving for more—more property, more publicity, more bling. Athens divided into a city of the poor and a city of the rich, one at war with the other and neither inclined to temper its bitterness in the interest of the common good. Aristotle mentions a faction of especially reactionary oligarchs who swear an oath of selfishness: “I will be an adversary of the people…and in the Council I will do it all the evil that I can.” (So, too, our Republican members of Congress obliged to sign Grover Norquist’s pledge opposing any and all efforts to increase marginal income-tax rates.)

IMAGE:Adele Bloch-Bauer I, by Gustav Klimt, 1907. © Neue Galerie, New York, USA/De Agostini Picture Library/E. Lessing /Bridgeman Images

Democracy congealing into oligarchy conformed to Aristotle’s theorem of governments changing form in a sequence as certain as the changing of the seasons. Regimes come and go, but the have-nots always outnumber the haves, and no matter what the political name of the game (monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy), the well-being of the less-fortunate many, says Aristotle, must always depend on the philanthropy of a privileged few who give direction to dayflies, light to ants in sunless caves.

 

This issue of Lapham’s Quarterly comes with a follow-up question: To what extent does the glorious concentration of wealth lovingly noted by the Urban Institute portend relief from the diseased oligarchy that for the past forty years has proclaimed itself the enemy of the American democracy, and vows to do all the evil it can to a government of the people, by the people, for the people?

One would like to think the odds favor if not full recovery, at least remission of the illness. Americans in their daily dealings with one another prove themselves unfailingly open-hearted and forbearing; among the world’s peoples few are more generous in the giving of money, time, and effort to the practice of philanthropy. Confronted with sudden misfortune or disastrous accident (the flooding of New Orleans, the bombing of the World Trade Center) they respond with heartfelt outpourings of voluntary assistance. Wealthy patrons of humanity furnish the country with its expensive collection of museums, orchestras, hospitals, libraries, colleges, universities, churches, and football teams—more or less the same goods and services distributed in pagan antiquity by the selfless and therefore self-ennobling rich in the form of amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts, menageries of wild beasts, sacrificial pairs of gladiators.

 

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

– Acts of the Apostles, 80

Add to the inventory of America’s goodwill the Christian love of humanity arising among the poor and for the poor, from the presence of God within all men. The Greek and Roman patrons of the public good bestowed their gifts on citizens belonging to the city or the state, not on slaves, outcasts, beggars, immigrants. Neither Pericles nor Caesar recognized a human life form classified simply as “the poor.” The grouping suited the political ambition of the Christian church rising on the ruins of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the congregations of the faithful drawn from the vast throng of have-nots littering the shores of the Mediterranean and bound together in a commonwealth of suffering. The Christian theologian Tertullian refutes the pagan faith in wealth: “Nothing sacred is to be had for money….We have all drunk of one and the same Holy Spirit…are all delivered as it were from one common womb of ignorance, and called out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Lactantius, early father of the Christian church, says, “The only true and certain obligation is to feed the needy and useless…men may have no use for them, but God has.”

It is Thomas Paine, the incendiary voice of the American Revolution, who in the eighteenth century converts the Christian love of humanity (shared among equals in the lower strata of society) into the promise of democratic self- government—“The strength of government and the happiness of the governed” is the freedom of the common people to “mutually and naturally support each other.” One’s fellow citizens are to be held in honorable regard not because they are rich or notably generous but because they are one’s fellow citizens.

The abundance of Paine’s writings flows from the springs of his optimism. Celebrating the declaring of independence as “the birthday of a new world,” he counts himself a friend of the world’s happiness, invariably in favor of a new beginning and a better deal. His plan for a just society is set forth in Rights of Man, published in England in two volumes, in 1791 and 1792; it anticipates much of the legislation that shows up 150 years later in the United States under the rubrics of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal—government welfare payments to the poor, pensions for the elderly, public funding of education, reduction in military spending.The sale of 500,000 copies prompted the British government to charge its author with treason—the same crime committed by Prometheus in defiance of the will and tyranny of Zeus.

Traveling in America in 1831 and 1832, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville finds democracy to be a work in progress along the lines projected by Paine, the common people mutually supporting one another by forming associations to hold fêtes, found seminaries, build inns, establish hospitals, dispatch missionaries, distribute books. “When the world was controlled by a small number of powerful and wealthy individuals,” says Tocqueville, “they liked to advertise how glorious it is to forget oneself and how fitting it is to do good without self- interest just like God himself…In the United States, the beauty of virtue is almost never promoted. It is considered useful and this is proved daily.”

The fact of which Walt Whitman was daily reminded during his three years as a Civil War hospital volunteer attending to sick and wounded soldiers both Union and Confederate. He notes in his diary that he’d sat next to the cots of as many as a hundred thousand frightened young men, talking to them at length, distributing gifts of writing paper or tobacco, a stamped envelope, an apple or an orange, small pieces of money. From his experience with others like him on his hospital rounds, he learns “one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and unction are, and ever will be, sovereign still.”

 

Governments reflect the quality of the men charged with their conduct and deportment. Within the Greek city states, as also in republican and imperial Rome, the record shows that as wealth accumulates, men decay. An aristocracy that once might have aspired to wisdom and virtue degenerates into an oligarchy distinguished by a character that Aristotle likened to that of “the prosperous fool”—its members so besotted by their faith in money “they therefore imagine there is nothing that it cannot buy.”

Which, most if not all things considered, was the way things were going during America’s late nineteenth-century Gilded Age, so named by Mark Twain to denote a society amounting to the sum of its vanity and greed, so seen by Andrew Carnegie as a parasitical oligarchy devouring the happiness of the many to feed the pleasures of the few. Twain is defender of the democratic motions of the heart, Carnegie the progenitor of what in the twentieth century becomes large-scale philanthropic enterprise established by wealthy patrons of the common good.

Born in poverty in Scotland, Carnegie moved with his immigrant family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1848; as a boy of twelve, he was working twelve hours a day in a cotton mill. By 1889 he is owner of dark satanic steel mills in Pittsburgh, a captain of industry, abundantly rich, fearful for the future of a country herding its working classes into the shambles of desperate, possibly communist, revolt. That same year he brings forth “The Gospel of Wealth” as remedy for all the ills that overfed capitalist flesh is heir to. The manifesto first appeared in the North American Review, offered by its author as “the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor.” Let the rich men throughout the land give over their great fortunes before they die for the use of the living, and “we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many.” Better yet, the rich man acts as trustee and agent for his “poorer brethren,” grants the blessing of his “superior wisdom,” directs the money to its best uses—to dignified public works, never in the form of alms in trifling amounts to “the drunken, the slothful, the unworthy.” Like Cicero in 44 BC, Carnegie distinguished between the deserving and undeserving poor. So did Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841 in his essay “Self-Reliance”, “I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me.” He blames himself for sometimes having given “alms to sots.”

Carnegie’s philanthropy was pagan, not Christian. The reward was honor, not gratitude. A rich man who dies with his wealth intact, he said, “dies disgraced.” It didn’t occur to him to relieve the poverty of the workers in his mills (twelve-hour shifts, paltry wages, crowded and filthy housing), but he did his best to leave no money on the table of his life. When in 1901 he sold his steel mills to J.P. Morgan for $480 million he became the richest man in America; before he died in 1919 he gave away $350 million to the building of 2,811 libraries in America’s cities and towns, to the setting up of numerous institutes and foundations.

The big American foundations formed during the first half of the twentieth century—Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, Sage, Rosenwald, Kellogg—deployed Carnegie’s lines of reasoning and priority.They pursued large-scale projects based on scientific research—the eradication of yellow fever and malaria, the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, the preservation of the Hudson River Palisades.

The good intentions multiplied over the course of the next hundred years, as did the number of foundations lobbying for social and political change, backing civil and human rights initiatives, funding think tanks grouped around the ideological campfires on both the left and the right.

The storylines are appropriately multicultural and diverse, not subject to equal opportunity generalization. What little I know of them I borrow from Mark Dowie’s American Foundations: An Investigative History, published in 2001. Dowie notes that the governance of big foundations eventually passes down over generations from the Promethean figure present at the creation to staffs of foundation officials, philanthrocrats apt to be more concerned about the safety and well-being of the money under their care than about the uses to which it might be put. The law requires the country’s 86,000 grantmaking foundations to distribute every year a minimum of 5 percent of their endowments, but if carefully managed, even that minimum need not leave the premises. The tax returns filed by the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation in 2013 teach the self-promoting lesson. The foundation received more than $140 million in grants and contributions but squandered only $8.8 million on direct aid and research projects, reserving $30 million for payroll and employee benefits, $8.7 million for rent and office expenses, $9.2 million for conferences, conventions, and meetings, $8 million for fundraising, and nearly $8.5 million for travel.

Dowie’s investigation fits with Dwight Macdonald’s account of his meeting in 1955 with the “forty-odd philanthropoids, who, for all practical purposes, are the Ford Foundation.” Assigned by The New Yorker to review the proceedings in what was then the foundation’s new headquarters building on Madison Avenue, Macdonald found the office staff conversing in foundationese—“like Latin, a dead language…designed for ceremony rather than utility. Its function is magical and incantatory—not to give information or to communicate ideas or to express feelings.” Gilded functionaries loyal to the will and tyranny of Zeus, intent upon preserving rather than overturning the status quo.

The character and intent of the early generation of philanthropy I learned to appreciate in the person of John D. Rockefeller III, grandson of the nineteenth-century oil baron, son of the early-twentieth-century philanthropist, elder brother of David and Nelson Rockefeller. John III was the member of the family entrusted to carry forward its tradition of philanthropic largesse, a task he had performed with skill and determination since his graduation from Princeton in 1929, but one for which his chief publicist in 1963 thought he hadn’t received proper recognition. His brother Nelson was governor of New York, his brother David the president of Chase Manhattan Bank, their names in the papers nine mornings out of ten but nowhere a mention of John, who had created the Asia Society and the Population Council and provided strong support for the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, and who was putting together the $184 million needed to complete the building of Lincoln Center on the west side of Manhattan.

I was employed that year as a writer for the Saturday Evening Post when the publicist called to ask if I would consider traveling with John III to Asia for three months with a view to writing an article about his various projects underway in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, India, East and West Pakistan. I would have access to any and all meetings and negotiations with government officials, bankers, scientists, politicians, and I was to be paid a per diem, with John III reserving the right to review the completed manuscript and, if so inclined, to forestall its publication.

IMAGE:Portrait of Sir Francis Ford’s Children Giving a Coin to a Beggar Boy, by William Beechey, 1793. Tate Museum, London.

I had no objection. I didn’t care whether the article was published or not; I was being given a chance to see the world from a high elevation of wealth and power, as it might have looked to Prometheus from the heights of Olympus. Every year for twelve years John III had been making the same journey (concentrating on the problem of birth control and high-yield plantings of rice), and at all points on the itinerary he was met with honors befitting royalty—cars on the airport tarmac, receptions at the palace, banquets with the prime minister. His knowledge of various Asian societies was profound, as was his delight in each of the people to whom he introduced me in the hope I might catch sight of their value as singular human beings. Not once in three months did he not know the name of the person to whom he was talking—the name, the pronunciation of the name, the family story, the problem at hand, the detail of the particular circumstance. Although he was a tall and imposing figure, he was modest to a fault, shy in the company of scholars and politicians, hesitant in the expression of his emotions.

Maya Angelou once said she found that “among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” So it was with John D. Rockefeller III. His philanthropy was his escape from the prison of his shyness, his becoming part of the larger story that is the sharing in man’s love for his fellow man. The Chinese philosopher Mencius came upon the thought around 330 bc. “Not to be benevolent when nothing stands in the way is to show a lack of wisdom. A man neither benevolent nor wise, devoid of courtesy and dutifulness, is a slave.”

The article was never published. The Population Council’s attempt to encourage birth control in Taiwan, India, and Pakistan went against the grain of local sentiment and politics, and John III believed it counterproductive to advertise these difficulties in print. To do so might cause trouble for his friends running the clinics in Asia. Self-glorifying publicity in New York wasn’t worth the price of a doctor’s loss of face in Dhaka.

 

The times have changed. Billionaire philanthropists these days delight in the photo ops of their giving to the public good, stepping down from helicopter or horse to baptize their new naming opportunity of a football stadium or concert hall. Their magnificence recalls the story told by the Stoic philosopher Seneca in the first century about Alexander the Great presenting the gift of an entire city to a man who didn’t think himself deserving of it. “I do not ask what is becoming for you to receive,” replied Alexander, “but what is becoming for me to give.”

 

Charity is murder and you know it.

– Dorothy Parker, 1956

The displays of noble expenditure (on the part of movie stars and prime- time athletes as well as George Soros and the Koch brothers) derive from the far larger stores of private wealth created over the past forty years as a consequence of the systematic rigging of the nation’s economic outcomes to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. The familiar story (democracy smothered by oligarchy) has often been told—long ago by Aristotle, more recently in our American context by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—but it is nowhere better illustrated than by the reversal over the past half century of the meaning within the words public and private. In the 1950s the word public connoted an inherent good (public health, public school, public service, public spirit); private was a synonym for selfishness and greed (plutocrats in top hats, pigs at troughs). The connotations traded places in the 1980s. Private now implies all things bright and beautiful (private trainer, private school, private plane), public becomes a synonym for all things ugly and dangerous (public housing, public welfare, public toilet).

The repositioning of the words underwrites the gospel according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which, among the current generation of big-time philanthropies, is the fairest of them all. It commands an endowment of $43.5 billion (roughly a third of that sum added to its pot by Warren Buffett), and because of its size and market share it points the direction for much of the nation’s foundation giving. No week goes by without the announcement of another Gates Foundation grant meant to allay disease in Africa, improve test scores in American public schools.

A self-made Promethean figure in the image of Carnegie, Gates also looks to avoid the disgrace of dying rich. To the small company of his fellow billionaires he wrote a letter in 2010 suggesting they give, “during your lifetime or through your will,” the majority of their wealth to charity. To help “improve the overall quality” of their giving he offers the superior wisdom of a man who knows that private profit and public good are mutual friends, that doing well is doing good. The thought is as tried and true as the metaphor that Cotton Mather, the seventeenth-century Puritan divine, bestowed upon the Boston faithful in 1701: “A Christian, at his two callings, is a man in a boat, rowing for heaven” with two oars, one of them glorifying God “by doing good for others,” the other by “getting of good for himself.”

Gates repackaged the good news as a speech delivered to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in 2008:

“I like to call this idea creative capitalism…Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don’t fully benefit from today’s market forces…a market-based reward for good behavior.”

The gospel was well received in the temples of the god who also is Mammon; the foundation clergy have learned to come and go speaking of metrics, time frames, benchmarks, grantmaking made “cost-effective,” “impact-oriented,” “data-based.” The language is designed for ceremony, “magical and incantatory” assigning virtue to having and holding wealth, not to letting it wander away, unescorted, into the sorrow and heat of the desert. Philanthrocapitalism opening the golden door to the best of all futures that money can buy, nourishing the belief (very à la mode in the media shiny sheets) that it is the big-ticket, glamorous rich who will rescue the country from ruin.

IMAGE:Nectanebo I presenting an offering to a crocodile-headed demon, dolerite relief, Egypt, fourth century BC. © De Agostini Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images

The hope springs from the publicity from whence the money cometh, not in the accounting for whither it goest. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy estimates that only 8 percent of foundations in the United States bestow as much as 25 percent of their largesse on “social justice purposes.” In 2011 the wealthiest Americans, those with earnings in the top 20 percent, contributed an average of 1.3 percent of their income to charity. Americans in the bottom 20 percent, and therefore unable to itemize a tax deduction, donated 3.2 percent.

Dowie suggests the stores of private wealth likely to be accumulated over the next two generations could increase the total assets of organized philanthropy to $4 trillion. It’s an impressive number, but small in comparison with the money likely to be furnished by individual contributions that now add hundreds of billions of dollars to most of the country’s charitable enterprises set up as credit unions and health clinics, food and wind-power cooperatives, crowdfunding platforms.

The opulent foundations tend to believe that money is good for rich people, bad for poor people, best given to private institutions or public acronyms; they seek the honor of being praised, as did the wealthy suppliers of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, “for doing good without self-interest, just like God himself.” Their philanthropy, like that of Carnegie and Gates, is the giving of direction to dayflies. The philanthropy inherent in democracy as conceived by Paine, attested by Tocqueville, practiced by Whitman, is the care of other human beings, virtue “considered useful,” almost never gloriously promoted. A democratic society places a premium on equality; a capitalist economy does not. The separation of powers is the difference between the worth of a thing and the price of a thing, between the motions of the heart and the movement of a market. Plato in the Republic puts the proposition as simply as it can be put:

“As wealth and the wealthy are valued more in a city, so goodness and the good are valued less…what is valued at any particular time becomes the common practice, what is not valued is neglected.”

Governments reflect the quality of the men charged with their conduct and deportment. Relief from “the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times” (Whitman’s phrase in 1864 as telling now as then) doesn’t fall in a shower of gold from the heaven that is a $95 million apartment on the ninety-fifth floor of a Manhattan co-op. It collects in pennies on the ground, from people who don’t confuse themselves with God, who know, as did Walt Whitman, that love, not money, is “sovereign still.”

[The founder and editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, Lewis H. Lapham is also editor emeritus of Harper’s Magazine. Lapham was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in 2007. He is the author of thirteen books, among them Money and Class in America, The Wish for Kings, Waiting for the Barbarians and Theater of War. He produces a weekly broadcast, “The World in Time” for Bloomberg News, and his documentary film, The American Ruling Class has become part of the curriculum in many of the nation’s schools and colleges. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Lapham has lectured at many of the nation’s leading universities, including Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Stanford.]

The Nonprofit Industrial Complex’s Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education

Truthout [Regeneración, The Association of Raza Educators Journal]

Under One Bad Sky

TckTckTck’s 2014 People’s Climate March: This Changed Nothing

September 23, 2015

by Cory Morningstar

Walk the Walk

On September 21, 2014, the day of the so-called People’s Climate March, the #WalktheWalk campaign twitter account (@weareherenow) belonging to New York City public relations firm Purpose Inc., had a mere 167 followers (see screenshot below).

Yet, the screenshot below (September 20, 2014) clearly documents the #WalktheWalk hash tag shared (“tweeted”) by none other than the twitter account belonging to U.S. president, Barack Obama. [@BarackObama: “Say you’re ready to #WalktheWalk on climate change.” “—I— #WalktheWalk on climate change.”]

It is necessary to contemplate how the president of the United States would share and promote what was intended to become a powerful marketing meme that with a mere 167 followers, had yet to make any impact whatsoever.

For Purpose Inc. (a for-profit public relations venture created by the co-founders of Avaaz), there was no necessity to build any momentum at all in order for their social media campaign to become a “success”, due to the fact that they were already part and parcel of the elite establishment from the very onset. (The first tweet from the #WalktheWalk account was on September 14, 2014. As of September 25, 2014, there were 286 tweets in total.) Foundation funded “progressive” media (in the example below, Common Dreams), as per usual, was utilized to launch and promote the campaign. The usual suspects, comprised of entities such as the TckTckTck twitter account, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, and Desmond Tutu, were amongst the first to tweet #walkthewalk.

+++

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 – 5:00pm

Thousands To #WalkTheWalk Online During Historic Climate March

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, Desmond Tutu, Celebrities and Other Notables to Join Supporters Across The Globe in Videos Walking to Urge Climate Action

WASHINGTON –

**VIEW VIDEOS HERE: http://www.walkforclimate.com/**

New York, NY — As hundreds of thousands of people head to New York City this week to join the People’s Climate March this weekend, many more from around the world will be marching along with them across the internet.

“Politicians, Fortune 500 companies, large NGOs, as well as influential leaders such as UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, Desmond Tutu and other celebrities and notables to be announced, are joining in to spread the word and walk alongside thousands of other demonstrators both on and offline. Ikea will be calling on their global staff to #walkthewalk, and will be demonstrating public solidarity by changing their website banner leading up to the march.

#WalktheWalk is an ownerless, open-source social media campaign that provides a highly visual, easy, and personal way for people around the world who can’t be at the march or who want to take dynamic action online, to be at the march in spirit and send a message to world leaders that they care about climate change and want to see real action. It’s also a way for world leaders themselves and other high-profile individuals to express solidarity with the citizen effort. [Emphasis added]

The campaign officially kicks off Wednesday, September 17, and will run through the UN Climate Summit.

For more information please go to: http://www.walkforclimate.com/

Twitter: @weareherenow

Instagram: @wewalkthewalk

Vine: @walkthewalk

+++

The full press release (by Fitzgibbon Media) can be accessed here. ** [Domain expired: See archive page: https://web.archive.org/web/20140918001056/http://www.walkforclimate.com/]

To clarify, #Walk the Walk is a campaign of Here Now.

Here Now circles back to Purpose.

To further illustrate the fatuous aspects of the #Walk the Walk campaign regarding our ongoing environmental problems, consider the action of “Hop the Scotch” in response to the dire warning in 2012 by top Russia scientist, Natalia Shakhova, one of the world’s foremost experts on methane hydrates:

“The total amount of the methane (CH4) in the current atmosphere is 5 gigatons. The amount of carbon preserved in the form of methane in the East Siberian Arctic shelf is approx. 100’s-1000’s gigatons. Only 1% of this amount is required to double the atmospheric burden of methane (which is approx. 23x more powerful than CO2). There is not much effort needed to destabilize just 1% of this carbon pool considering the state of permafrost and the amount of methane currently involved. What keeps this methane from entering the atmosphere is a very shallow water column and weakening permafrost which is losing its ability to serve as a seal. It could happen anytime.”

Then consider that when CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, “global temperatures rose by 5 degrees centigrade – all in the space of about 13 years.” [Source]

Since the 2012 interview with Shakhova, in August, 2014, it was discovered that hundreds of methane plumes are erupting along the east coast. And policy makers in tandem with NGOs and their branding executives urge the public to “Hop the scotch”? It appears that Sept 21, 2014 marked the day that 1984 and Brave New World finally collided. Surely something is amiss. It is glaringly obvious that Avaaz, Purpose and their financiers believe Americans are beyond stupid. Yet all signs point to the fact that they were sadly correct, since in response, Americans applaud.

TckTckTck remix: WalktheWalk

In the second paragraph, the description of #WalktheWalk as an ownerless, open-source social media campaign” echoes, almost verbatim, the TckTckTck campaign launched prior to 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2009. The TckTckTck campaign was created by one of the largest advertising agencies in the world (HAVAS) in collaboration with the United Nations. Upon the launch of the media campaign on September 8, 2009, the Havas press release identified Avaaz, 350.org, Greenpeace and Oxfam (founding NGOs of Global Campaign for Climate Action) having partnered with many of the world’s largest multinational corporations such as EDF and the Virgin Group. Hundreds of NGOs would “sign on” and partner with the tcktcktck.org website and the TckTckTck open-source media campaign. By December 2009, the tcktcktck umbrella (over 200 NGOs) and its strategic/calculated weak messaging (a “fair and ambitious agreement”) would successfully come to dominate COP15 and strategically drown out the most radical positions put forward (specifically, by Bolivia and the G77) that the world so desperately needed, deliberately and knowingly sentencing whole nations to certain death.

Jump forward 5 years to September 2014 to the TckTckTck remix: WalktheWalk. The 3-syllable catchphrase, like the 3-syllable TcTckTck campaign is custom-made to feed and flourish a media-induced hypnotic trance — more commonly recognized as the stupefied Euro-American psyche.

Tweets from so-called “leaders” of a now synthetic environmental movement demonstrate how the strategic creation of memes such as TckTckTck and WalkTheWalk, are created with the intent and ardent anticipation that the said meme will successfully penetrate and infest all aspects of mainstream forms of vacuous protest:

Below video (running time: 0.39): Citizens are incited to perform as “ticking” human clocks for the branding-building of TckTckTck. [Climate Justice rally on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 24, 2009, International Day of Climate Action]:

Video (running time 1:00) In a corporate culture consumed by celebrity fetish, celebrities are most always utilized to citizens to accept and embrace symbolism, TckTckTck – Oxfam Climate Change Campaign (Uploaded on Sep 2, 2009)

Below content and video (Millions Walked , running time: 1:30) at Upworthy (incidentally co-founded by Avaaz co-founder Pariser) is intended to compel citizens to “WalktheWalk” via the phrase “Watch some celebrities show you how they walk. It actually matters.” The Upworthy content cites text from a transcript released by Moment for Action (launched September 23, 2014), a collaboration of many participating NGO’s and foundations. Partners include but are not limited to United Nations, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, Avaaz, WWF, Sierra Club, Amazon Watch and Carbon War Room.

“It’s time to do more than just talk about climate change. Watch me #WalkTheWalk. http://goo.gl/0W16io @Greenpeace@greenpeaceusa – Kumi Naidoo, Sept 20, 2014

Six years after the global TckTckTck campaign, it must be considered par for the course that Kumi Naidoo, executive international executive director of Greenpeace International and then chair/president of the TckTckTck/ Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA) would take a leading role in the unveiling and promoting of the 2015 WalktheWalk campaign:

Above screenshots represent just 2 two of Naidoo’s twitter posts being re-tweeted by various creative directors, special advisors and CEO/founder of Purpose Inc. The Naidoo tweet was “retweeted” 21 times and designated as a “favourite”14 times, with 2 twitter users having “asked not to be shown in this view”.

Purpose Inc: Entrenched in the Democratic Party

“Josh [Hendler] joins Purpose after having worked at the intersection of social good and technology throughout his career. His sweet spot is technology leadership roles in politics, having served as the technology chief for the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America. During the 2008 campaign, he was a consultant to the Obama campaign, managing technology for distributed organizing efforts.” — Purpose Welcomes Josh Hendler as New CTO, September 15, 2014

 

“Henry [Donahue] spent most of the 1990’s on the road as a fund-raiser and consultant for local and national Democratic political campaigns, including U.S. Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Ron Wyden (D-OR).  He has worked for progressive candidates in New York City, Tennessee, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas.” Purpose Website – Meet the Team on a Mission

The above screenshot /meme created by Purpose Inc. (under the guise of “Here Now”) makes clear that the job of Purpose Inc. is to ensure Barack Obama is seen in a most a favourable, positive and charming light and as a champion on “clean power”.

It is only by observing the relationships of the individuals that have worked toward the success of this meme, that we can understand the dynamics of the campaign. Dynamics that demonstrate a strong alliance between two key parties: Purpose Inc. and the US Democratic Party.

Naidoo’s tweet (as shown in the section above), is “re-tweeted” and shared by a multitude of Purpose Inc. staff, CEOs and participating organizations with many having prior or ongoing involvement with the US Democratic Party:

• Tara McGowan: director of digital for: Priorities USA (The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign), Purpose Inc., Barack Obama (The Obama campaign‘s rapid-response team), and broadcast associate at CBC 60 Minutes. In addition, McGowan was hired to assist hedge fund billionaire Steyer with numerous campaigns

“Digital ads explicitly appealed to voters who may not have considered themselves especially climate-conscious. At a post-election briefing for Steyer on Wednesday, digital strategist Tara McGowan showcased a series of Web ads beginning with the text: ‘I’m no environmentalist …’ In each case, the sentence ended with something like: ‘… but droughts are ruining my farm’ or ‘… but science doesn’t lie'” — Inside a green billionaire’s Virginia crusade (Tom Steyer), Politico, 11/11/13

• Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Pupose Inc. Co-founder of Avaaz, GetUp and AllOut. [Video: The Art of Manipulation: Brought to You by Avaaz, Purpose Inc. & 350.org] Heimans promotes the hashtag #newpower, and is his own biggest fan
• We Are Here Now (a project of Purpose): “All over the world people are taking heroic action to save our climate. But a fight this big needs a breakthrough. Here now – everything changes.”
• Robert Jay Ross, special advisor to the CEO of Purpose Inc. (Heimans). US Executive Director of Child Is Innocent a non-profit providing “leadership training to children living in Northern Uganda.”
• Jennifer Edwards (tagline: “Champagne and Campaigns”), Digital Strategy Consultant for Purpose Inc, Sierra Club, The National Council of La Raza and Organizing for Action Digital (https://www.barackobama.com/)
• Mercedes Gutierrez, head of sustainability at Ikea Spain
• Galit Gun, senior strategy director at Purpose Inc., former global campaigner and founding staff member at Avaaz
• Neeraj Narayan, regional director, South Asia, Nike Inc.
• Santiago Gowland, general manager for The Nature Conservancy, Latin American Region
• Radu Dumitra?cu, communications specialist at Ikea Foundation
• Hannah Kreiswirth, creative director at Purpose Inc.

Above screenshot: Sept 19, 2014 tweet by Maggie Aker, Strategist at Purpose Inc.: “Well this is an adorable shuffle from @MarkRuffalo, esp since it’s for our climate. Who will #walkthewalk next?” This tweet was retweeted/favourited by both Anna Jane Joyner, Climate Strategist at We Are Here Now and Purpose Inc.

 “As a consultant for the Here Now campaign initiated by the innovative team at Purpose, Anna is part of a group testing new story-telling techniques for discussing climate change with evangelical Christians and other difficult-to-engage audiences.” — January 6, 2015, Source

Above screenshot: @TckTckTck, Sept 18, 2014: “We are a part of the biggest climate march in history. Show us you #walkthewalk on climate change too: http://bit.ly/1qNnY17”

As demonstrated in the above screenshots, TckTckTck took a leading role in promoting this particular campaign. As well, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC), fully exploited 350 board member Naomi Klein’s book launch of “This Changes Everything” blanketing the virtual sphere in catch phrases utilizing and playing off of this meme. The above screenshots which read “to change everything, we need everyone” and “here now – everything changes” are prime examples.

Photo: The Broadbent Institute’s Training and Leadership program

The Purpose Inc. We Are Here Now twitter account follows the twitter accounts of Purpose Inc., United Nations, IKEA, WWF, Barack Obama, Barack Obama Action Committees/Official Organizing for Action (OFA CA, OFA CO, OFA VA, OFA TX), Energy Action Coalition, RAN, the Broadbent Institute , Next Gen (Tom Steyer), Tom Steyer, Greenpeace, UN Foundation, Sierra Club, TckTckTck, Climate Reality (Al Gore) 350.org, 350.org divestment groups, Bill McKibben, The Syria Campaign (destabilization/demonization campaign), and many more of influence.

Those of influence include Paul Hilder, co-founder of Avaaz who now serves as executive director of Here Now. [Hilder background]

The account also follows Tim Dickson, the co-founder of the Syria Campaign, who is also founder of the aforementioned Groundswell Communications. Dickson’s contribution to the Democratic Party is most extensive dating back to 1980. Dixon, former senior political strategist for two Australian prime ministers, now serves as the managing director for Purpose Europe. [Dixon bio]

Avaaz and Purpose Co-founder Jeremy Heimans has made the vision of for-profit Purpose Inc. clear from inception:

Vision: “Purpose is a global initiative that draws on leading technologies, political organizing and behavioral economics to build powerful, tech-savvy movements that can transform culture and influence policy… [Purpose] creates 21st century movements. We look for ways that movements can help solve major global problems. To do this, we work with some of the most exciting players in the new green and social economy to help them get to scale faster and some of the world’s biggest brands to mobilize their consumers for significant social impact….” [Further reading on Purpose: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II]

That goal continues to be expanded upon in an Orwellian manner with corporations now utilizing CSR [corporate social responsibility] to evolve the brand by empowering their customer (“prosumers”) to become activists:

“On Thursday, November 20th, the Social Innovation Summit held its bi-annual conference in the San Francisco Bay area. The summit brought together some of the most influential innovators and leaders in the business and social impact communities. Representatives from Google, Facebook, PwC and others came together to share and discuss new models businesses can use to transform communities and inspire action. Purpose’s very own Senior Strategist, Max Steinman, moderated a discussion entitled ‘The Rise of the Activist Brand.’ The panel explored how brands are evolving their CSR [corporate social responsibility] efforts by empowering their advocates to become activists.” [Source]

Above @weareherenow screenshots: The promise of perpetual economic growth for corporate America is key

TckTckTck – “How to Herd Cats”

In 2009, global civil society was cleverly seduced into sleeping with the enemy via the TckTckTck campaign. [Further reading: EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé]. In 2014, not one to learn from the past, civil society, would yet again sleep with the enemy. GCCA, an initiative that began in Bali (2007) with a $300,000 funding commitment from the Quebec government, is a “coalition of twenty key international organizations” including Avaaz, 350.org, Greenpeace , Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, OXFAM, WWF, World Council of Churches, Union of Concerned Scientists, Equiterre, Global Call to Action against Poverty (also co-chaired by Kumi Naidoo), and the Pew Environment Group. [Source]

While GCCA/TckTckTck working hand in hand with 350.org, Avaaz and Greenpeace undoubtedly far surpassed the United States United Nations expectations for the 2009 TckTckTck campaign, it would repeat a similar stunning performance for the United Nations just 5 years later with the popular 2014 Peoples Climate March, again uniting citizens with corporate interests:

“GCCA worked behind the scenes for over a year to prepare for the biggest date in 2014, leveraging every possible asset and contact to rally around the historic Peoples’ Climate March in the run-up to the UN Climate Leaders Summit…. In the preceding months, GCCA convened weekly calls with key partners 350.org, Avaaz, USCAN and Climate Nexus to catalyse activities and identify gaps…. Everything came together on the day as we bore witness to the world’s biggest ever climate march, and inspiring events across the globe, with world leaders, business people, activists, parents and artists walking shoulder-to-shoulder.” — GCCA Annual Report 2014

Kelly Rigg, Founding Director, Varda Group, US: The Economics of Sustainable Development, 16-19 June 2012 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Photo: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) website

Based on the UN driven spectacle and 3-syllable catchphrase (WalktheWalk) that mirrored TckTckTck in 2009, perhaps then it should be of no surprise that Kelly Rigg, former executive director of TckTckTck (Global Campaign for Climate Action) and senior campaign director for Greenpeace International, was identified by Forbes (September 25, 2014) as the key organizer of the People’s climate parade creating yet another umbrella group comprised of approx. 1300 NGOs. Rigg is also a founding director and business manager of The Varda Group consulting firm founded in 2003 with Rémi Parmentier, also with an extensive Greenpeace history:

“Rémi Parmentier has been involved in the process of Rio +20 from the start. He participated in the intersession meetings and the Preparatory Committee in New York with “informal consultations” on behalf of various international organizations and alliances. Previously, as the Political Director of Greenpeace International, in the Summit of Johannesburg in 2002, Parmentier was the negotiator and protagonist of the agreement between the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Greenpeace International on the Kyoto Protocol.” [Source]

Parmentier also serves as Deputy Executive Secretary for the Global Ocean Commission which was launched in February 2013. Inés de Águeda who serves as the communications officer for the Global Ocean Commission is also an associate at the Varda Group.

“With Kelly, Inés and Rémi, the Varda Group was almost complete this week at the meeting of the Global Ocean Commission in New York.” — Varda Group Facebook page

Commissioners of the Global Ocean Commission include José María Figueres (co-chair), President of Costa Rica from1994 to 1998; President of the Carbon War Room, David Miliband, John Podesta (chair of the Center for American Progress and a former White House Chief of Staff ), Sri Mulyani Indrawati ( Managing Director at the World Bank), Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation and other high profile individuals.

The link between most, if not all of these commissioners is the shared desire for carbon markets and/or the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (PES).

From the Global Ocean Commission Report 2014, The Value of the High Seas:

“One of the first questions asked by the commissioners was: can we place an economic value on what the high seas provides for our planet? While the science of ‘natural resources accounting’ is still relatively new, work we commissioned made clear that the high seas generates a wide variety of benefits to people and the planet,4 all of which must be considered before recommendations for action can be made.

 

The high seas supports major categories of vital ecosystem services, including: air purification, waste treatment and lifecycle maintenance; high seas carbon capture and storage; high seas ‘provisioning’ of fish and other seafood; genetic and ornamental resources; and tourism, leisure and recreation. While not all of them can be valued using current data, these ecosystem services do all have demonstrable economic value. Research carried out for the Commission has produced estimates of the economic value of two key high seas ecosystem services – carbon storage and fisheries – showing that they each generate tens of billions of dollars of value to society annually.

 

The ocean has been responsible for the capture and storage of more than half of the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels and a third of the total produced by humankind. This ability of the ocean to capture and store carbon reduces the rates of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide and can slow changes in global temperature and other consequences associated with climate change. It is estimated that nearly half a billion tonnes of carbon, the equivalent of over 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, are captured and stored by the living components of high seas ecosystems every year. Based on current calculations of the economic cost of additional carbon in the atmosphere, the value of the carbon storage by high seas ecosystems is estimated at US$148 billion a year (with a range of US$74 to US$222 billion for mid-estimates). By comparison, the entire global Official Development Aid outlay for 2013 was US$134.8 billion.”

Rigg is included within the extensive acknowledgments noted in this report (page 84). Rigg is also acknowledged in the 2006 paper Casting the Net Broadly: Ecosystem-based Management Beyond National Jurisdiction.

“Finally, a World Ocean Public Trust that unites governance of the high seas and the Area into one regime under an EBM [Ecosystem-based Management] framework should be established throughout the world’s oceans in areas beyond national jurisdiction.” — Casting the Net Broadly: Ecosystem-based Management Beyond National Jurisdiction, 2006

Considering oceans store 50 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere and approx. half of all the carbon dioxide produced by humans since the industrial revolution, and accepting the Earth’s water sources will only continue to diminish, it is not surprising that the elite establishment seeks to appoint and lock in a small body of special interests in the creation of a single global regime to fully control and exploit the high seas. Water will be secured by privatization and a global government regime that oversees the planet (which is approx. 70% water), the Earth’s remaining and quickly diminishing forests will be secured by the carbon market mechanism REDD, valuable land (thus food) will be secured via land grabs while payment for ecosystems services allows the oligarchs to catch and seize everything that falls between the cracks. Managing oceans ties control into all adjacent life. The non-profit industrial complex is the bitch that makes it all possible, the bitch that makes the dreams of the rich and powerful come true.

This elite regime (with “payments for ecosystems services” as an embraced ideology) is based on further entitlements for the entitled: the desire for private property-type rights under the guise (and subsequent marketing) of custody and stewardship. The Brave New World scheme takes refuge behind the cloak of the much utilized phrases “polluter pays principle” and “externalizing costs” which slowly and meticulously builds the collective acquiescence of ordinary citizens. The goal, which is the blatant monetization of nature, sits relatively concealed, just outside the frame. Such enticing language, catch phrases and holistic imagery are necessary and critical if the elite are to succeed in the most cunning, coup d’état in the history of corporate dominance. In reality, the polluter pays only what the polluter decides he should pay, in exchange for owning/controlling Earth’s final remaining natural resources. It’s not a slap on the hand, it’s literally the rich rewarding themselves with full control of the Earth, a sick scheme created by psychopaths with god complexes.

Current and past clients of The Varda Group include: Amnesty International, Ceres, USA, Conservation International – Marine Programme, Friends of the Earth UK,Friends of the Earth US,Global Call for Climate Action (TckTckTck campaign),Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC),Greenpeace International, Markets for Change, Australia, Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), USA, Oceana, Oxfam-Novib, The Netherlands, Pew Environment Group, UNAIDS, UNEP, WWF and countless others. [Full list as published on the Varda website]

Rigg is also identified as the chair of the recently created UN Momentum for Change Advisory Panel.

Below video: Momentum for Change – Change for Good by UN Momentum for Change. Note that actor Mark Ruffalo lends himself (yet again) in order to incite interest and exhilaration exploiting a pathological celebrity fetish that consumes western societies. The core and unstated message by the UN, delivered by Ruffalo is that those with privilege can retain it as the “new economy” will magically make such privilege benign. Also in regards to the video, it is important to note the language. The word “change” used twice in one sentence, which is the obvious utilization of the title/theme of Klein’s book This Changes Everything.

The key areas of focus for the UN Momentum for Change are the following: 1) the Urban Poor, implemented with the financial support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Further reading: The “Green Revolution” Bill Gates, Philanthropy and Social Engineering], 2) Women for Results, implemented with the financial support of The Rockefeller Foundation [Further reading: 35% of Puerto Rican Women Sterilized], 3) Financing for Climate Friendly Investment, implemented in partnership with the World Economic Forum and 4) ICT Solutions, implemented in partnership with the Global e-Sustainability Initiative.

Forbes, Sept 25, 2014: Leadership Lessons from The People’s Climate March:

“With that as her model of leadership it is perhaps no surprise that so many cats have been so successfully herded. But there is more. The other leadership lesson is putting project before person.”

Truer words were never spoken. As in Africa under the TckTckTck campaign where economic growth was valued as being more important than the life of Africans, such projects (as referred to above), have a singular common thread. They are all based on more of the same perpetual growth; perpetual growth that is dependent upon and interwoven with exploitation and environmental degradation – perpetual growth which society has collectively deemed more important than life itself.

The free-market-based “solutions” have already been designed by the United Nations (think Millennium Goals), leading green-house-gas omitting obstructionist states, think tanks and institutions (think Clinton Global Initiative and 350.org’s “friends on Wall Street” divestment scheme). The NGOs are financed to the tune of billions to build normalization and acquiescence to the “new economy“, also referred to as “sustainable capitalism”. An integral aspect of “sustainable capitalism” (as if there is such a thing), includes the commodification of all Earth’s remaining natural resources to be mainstreamed by the year 2020. [“Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism by 2020 will require independent, collaborative and voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil society, which we hope to accelerate by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability.” – Sustainable Investment Paper, Generation, Feb 15, 2012, Generation Investment founded by Al Gore and Goldman Sachs David Blood]

A key area of work being done at a global level today on behalf of oligarch financiers, is the imposing of western values throughout the world via soft power. No one is in a better position to accomplish this more successfully than those at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex. Both Avaaz and 350, perhaps the most influential (thus most powerful) founding members of GCCA, have successfully spread their tentacles across the globe, having become international in scope. Such soft power not only acclimatizes foreign countries to western (non)values and (corporate)culture, it lends itself to the strategies devised for destabilizations and continued imperialism and colonization by imperial states. Money flows from the corporations and oligarchs, through the foundations (tax free) to the NGOs, to training sessions and workshops set up in countries where the western influence (and authority) subtly seeks to embed itself. The fact that the target audience is youth is not coincidental; rather it is very much strategic.

“A five-day Beautiful Trouble training session for 25 young climate activists was organised jointly with 350.org and Avaaz in September with participants from Belarus, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. GCCA provided expertise, outreach, logistical support and part of the funding for the session, while the group shared an innovative methodology that has proved successful at bringing people out on the street and encouraging them to join the global movement. As a direct result of this session, youth groups organised Peoples’ Climate March actions on 21st September in both Budapest and Warsaw, and successfully used these tactics to take a visible stand against a government squeeze on civil society space in Hungary. GCCA will continue to support the groups involved as they work to mobilise citizens across the region.” — GCCA Annual Report 2014 [Emphasis added]

As the aforementioned avalanche of social media regarding the so-called Climate March demonstrates, Avaaz co-founder Ricken Patel certainly was accurate in his guidance to harness the power of social media via mobile phones in his 2007 report for the Gates Foundation. [Prospects for e-Advocacy in the Global South: A Res Publica Report for the Gates Foundation | Source]

Social Media & the Cellular Savior

In the report, Paten states the following under the heading “The Cellular Savior”:

“The mobile phone is changing the way the global south communicates. Even as the number of landlines grows slowly, the growth of mobile phones is sky-rocketing, changing the connectivity potential for the planet…. What these figures indicate is that mobile phones are a great opportunity for e-advocates who want to reach a mass audience, and the applications are endless. [p. 18]

 

… After the successful implementation of SMS [text messaging] campaigns at the national level, the Gates Foundation might decide to fund an international SMS campaign. Unlike the local SCO partners of the pilot programs, an international campaign would partner with international advocacy organizations with strong technology programs like Greenpeace, Oxfam, and the new international e-advocacy organization Avaaz.” [p. 41] [highlighted text in original document]

If nothing else, the #WalktheWalk campaign devised by Purpose Inc. must have been a refreshing change from the multiple hate campaigns unleashed by Purpose Inc. that were created to build public acquiescence for illegal U.S. led airstrikes to commence on Syria. [Further reading: SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire]

State of Play on the People’s Climate March

The Climate Spectacle in New York City was overseen/managed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from the onset. The members only “State of Play on the People’s Climate March event listed by the Environmental Grantmakers Association Website (posted August 20, 2014 – 1:00pm) stated the following:

“An unprecedented 550 organizations from labor, faith, environment and justice movements are coming together to make the September 21st People’s Climate March the largest ever public mobilization on climate. Join us to learn why such a huge diversity of organizations, networks, and individuals are mobilizing at this key moment, just days before the Climate Leaders Summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon. We’ll discuss how organizations are working together to bridge movements, as this effort not only seeks to raise awareness for climate impacts, but also open a significant political narrative about economic and environmental justice.

Speakers:

• Irene Krarup, Executive Director, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation (moderator)
• Emma Ruby-Sachs, Campaigns Manager, Avaaz
• Jamie Henn, Political and Communications Director, 350.org
• Eddie Bautista, Executive Director, NYCEJA”

“This will be the first of a series of two calls – the second will be a funder-only conversation during the first week of September. If you are unable to make either call and still want to learn more, please feel free to contact Stephanie Bencivenga of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (sbencivenga[at]rbf.org) or Irene Krarup of V.K. Rasmussen Foundation (ikrarup[at]vkrf.org).” [Emphasis added]

Tom Steyer #Walks the Walk

“@*TomSteyer and @NextGenClimate #WalkTheWalk on climate change. Will you?” – Next Gen Climate, Sept 18, 2014

Camaraderie tours: Right: Bill McKibben, left: Tom Steyer

The environmental movement is strategically sought by (and controlled by) the very members of the same 1% whose privileged lives are not only predicated off continued reliance on a carbon based economy, but profit from its continuance: “Notably, the President of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is a close friend of Tom Steyer. Steyer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and founder of Next Gen Climate. In 2012, McKibben and Steyer hiked through the Adirondack Mountains, where the two men bonded and McKibben encouraged Steyer to become active in environmental causes, including opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.” [Source: “How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EP”] In addition, this following excerpt from a Time magazine article illustrates how the elite not only influence NGOs, but government itself: “So when Barack Obama appeared at Tom Steyer’s San Francisco home for a fundraiser last year, the President had to know there would be an ask. The 56-year-old Steyer is a hedge-fund billionaire and a major-league Democratic donor.” [Source]

Photo: People’s Climate March, 2014. Bill McKibben (350.org founder) with Tom Steyer, hedge fund billionaire and founder of Generation Next

Flood Wall Street | Fitzgibbon Media

The #WalktheWalk press release was conducted by the high-profile PR agency Fitzgibbon Media. Fitzgibbon Clients include 350.org, SumOfUs, Purpose, MoveOn (an Avaaz co-founder), Credo, The Nation Institute and Amnesty International to name a few.

Note that the Flood Wall Street press coverage is also featured on the Fitzgibbon website (under the “coverage” section).

Fitzgibbon attributes the “alternative, direct action”, branded “Flood Wall Street” (supposedly independent from the largest climate spectacle in history) media coverage to their client, Energy Action Coalition.

Energy Action Coalition (“a coalition of 50 leading youth organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada.”) partners include The Responsible Endowments Coalition, Southern Energy Network (a founding member of the Energy Action Coalition), Green for All (a Ceres partner; 350.org’s Van Jones is co-founder of Green for All and serves as president) and Groundswell (It is important to note the White House Office and 350.org connections/advisors. Supporters include David Rockefeller Fund, Rockefeller Foundation , Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Calvert foundation (a Ceres partner). Groundswell Board of Directors includes Jessica Bailey, Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brother Fund’s global and domestic Sustainable Development program.

That the “notable” speakers highlighted in the Flood Wall Street media release (Monday September 22, 2014), were an all-white liberal cast (inclusive of 350.org’s Klein and McKibben) is completely lost on society at large is nothing less than a tragedy – classism and racism so normalized that it goes virtually unnoticed. Indeed, the non-profit industrial complex is built on a foundation of white privilege and liberalism with the mainstream populace identifying with those in the ivory towers rather than those being pissed upon down below.

The Flood Wall Street twitter account demonstrates that those at the helm did not choose to take cues from radical activists, nor those oppressed and marginalized, but rather a slew of liberal sycophants and big greens including Bill McKibben, 350.org alliances, Energy Action Coalition, Green For All, Nature Conservancy, WWF, TckTckTck /TckTckTck alliances, Al Gore/Gore Alliances, etc.

Photo: The after-spectacle party with Bill McKibben (350.org) on left and Van Jones (350.org Board, Green for All, etc.) on right. Note the servers and wine glasses in the background.

And while the champagne undoubtedly over-flowed at the A-list celebration that followed the spectacle from afar, a 63 year-old man from Chicago, IL missed his flight as he sat over-night in jail with other well-meaning citizens/protestors that were arrested at the Flood Wall Street action.

Well intentioned Flood Wall Street protestors chanted “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” The problem is that their questions were directed to the wrong group of people.

A Groundswell of Revolving Doors

“Climate change affects struggling communities first and worst. Yet, working families are all too often priced out of being part of the solution. By making clean energy simple and affordable at the community level, Groundswell is paving the way for a strong-and inclusive-clean economy.” – Van Jones, Adviser to Groundswell

Groundswell’s theory of change is that of “civic consumption.” A model to save the planet by further consuming: “When we join together, we can drive prices down and give more business to the companies that are doing the greatest good.” (Emphasis in the original.) [Source] It’s important to note that 350.org & Avaaz are simply the behavioural change agents at the front of the stage. It’s behind the curtain where the future is being designed, by NGOs and institutions further up the food chain of hierarchy (Groundswell, B-Team, Generation Investments, Clinton Global Initiative, United Nations, etc. etc.) This is the paradigmatic design of the NGOs at the forefront and why they are paid to build acquiescence to through financial support. The need to normalize insanity – actions that will change nothing – is paramount.

The revolving door between the foundations and the NGOs they finance can best be demonstrated by the career path of Jessy Tolkan. Tolkan served as the Political Director for Green For All. Green for All was officially launched in September 2007 at the Clinton Global Initiative (as was 1Sky). Prior to her role at Green For All, Tolkan served as Executive Director for Energy Action Coalition. In addition, Tolkan serves/served on the Steering Committee of Rockefeller incubator project 1Sky (merged with 350.org in 2011), as well as the 350.org Board of Directors, Groundswell, and many many others. Tolkan also serves as the Global Director of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Development for two muliti-national automakers Renault and Nissan. Today, joining in the footsteps of a multitude of other establishment “environmentalists” such as Rigg (The Varda Group), Tolkan is the President of Tolkan & Co., strategy firm with clients ranging from the Working Families Party to the Renault-Nissan Corporation.

“SXSW Eco speaker Tolkan has impeccable environmental and social justice credentials. In 2008, she was arrested in front of the White House. By 2011, she was inside, meeting with President Obama to discuss the Keysone XL pipeline. She arrived at the Austin enviro conference fresh from the recent #FloodWallStreet protest. But her presentation, “The Road to Environmental Revolution … Powered by Consumers” wasn’t about public protests. It was about direct action of another kind, the kind determined by where you put your dollars….” — October 15, 2014, Advancing the Electric Car Revolution One Voting Consumer At a Time

The capture of any and all grass roots movements that may gain traction (against all odds) is also a task of paramount importance. The non-profit industrial complex, to which such agencies are part of, are expected to bring radical movements into the fold of “reason”, that is not necessarily spoken but rather just understood:

“When we collaborated on a #blacklivesmatter Die-In at the NYC City Council on December 8, 2014, Groundswell successfully insured our action graced the front page of the New York Times.” – Groundswell Website

Flood Wall Street | Bomb Syria

Wag the dog. Flood Wall Street. Bomb Syria! Image courtesy of Mark Gould

On September 22, 2014, the day following Obama’s regurgitated message “I #Walkthewalk on climate change”… while all eyes were on “Flood Wall Street”, the Obama administration began bombing Syria. With yet another illegal attack/invasion, this would be his 8^th war on Muslim states, making former war criminal George Bush look like a school boy in comparison. Yet, as per usual, the “progressive greens” would not attack Obama on his latest illegal attack on a sovereign country, rather, they would respond with the following comment posted alongside the image featured on the 350.org Facebook page. The date was September 23, 2014; a full day after the Obama administration began bombing Syria:

“Wondering if President Obama was listening this weekend? Here’s what he said when he went to the UN today:”

The above comment with the image (below) was posted on September 23, 2014 on the 350.org Facebook page. A full day after the Obama administration began bombing Syria.

As of September 25, 2014 (9:53am) 4,910 others “liked” this and 3,316 shared it. The commencement of yet another country being bombed by the U.S. government all while the U.S. fails to meet the needs of its own citizens appears completely lost on 350.org followers.

Yet, buried within the comments under the graphic above that captures the delusional 350.org hopium and branding of Obama is a comment that actually does reflect our existing reality:

“fuck his bourgeois imperialist ass, no surprise with all those damn capitalist ngos “marching”….we need a real mass movement not this clownery” – Ricardito Ramos

Sadly, it doesn’t take much these days for a PR campaign to successfully transform the world’s greatest war criminal/terrorist into a hero while simultaneously portraying a leader of a sovereign state, who refuses to be a puppet to the U.S., as yet another crazed “dictator”.

Nor does it take much to sell the white Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, fossil-fuel glutton/consumer extraordinaire,   as the United Nation’s “new voice for climate advocacy” and voice of Indigenous Peoples – while Bolivia’s first Indigenous President, Evo Morales (whose 2009 demand for the Earth not to exceed 1C was crushed by the NPIC) and Uruguay President Jose Mujica, a model for voluntary disciplined minimalism, go ignored by the NPIC and the media in tandem.

20 September 2014 – As the eyes of the world turn to New York City, where thousands of people are expected to gather tomorrow for a massive march in advance of a United Nations climate summit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed UN Messenger of Peace, Leonardo DiCaprio, who he has hailed as the world body’s “new voice for climate advocacy.”

Edward Bernays applauds.

The phrase “actions speak louder than words” has no room in a culture intoxicated with celebrity fetish.

People’s Climate March. Celebrity fetish.

“When a strong, powerful and passionate unabashedly INDIGENOUS LEADER [Evo Morales] becomes PRESIDENT of his homelands and uses that to push the notion that Mother Earth is a Living Being and has rights as humans do AND makes a passionate speech the same day as a European/American celebrity [Leonardo DiCaprio] does the same and the European/American celebrity is declared a hero around the village fires there is nothing left to discuss except how assimilated Indigenous people’s minds really value white beauty standards over Indigenous integrity, strength and power. SMDH” – Rosstopher Sirhc

While 350.org et. al. appeal to the populace to place their energy and “hope” into begging to their “leaders”, a dose of reality may be in order. They don’t give a fuck about the planet. They don’t give a fuck about Iraqis. They don’t give a fuck about Ukrainians. They don’t give a fuck about the Congolese. They don’t give a fuck about Syrians. They don’t give a fuck about Haitians. And they DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. Not today, not tomorrow. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better off we will be.

Bromides, Platitudes, and Cliches: Defending those that Protect Capital

“See, I’ve been reading these threads [that pertain to the investigation into the People’s Climate March], and when I ask pertinent questions, what I keep getting is bromides, platitudes, and cliches… I can’t help but ask myself, isn’t that what this march is about? If it weren’t, it seems to me that there would be more substance to the responses I keep getting, and reading.” – Tom Frank, Sept 17, 2014, FaceBook

Who could argue that 400,000 citizens working hand-in-hand with their children, family and neighbours, transforming 400,000 (grass) lawns, boulevards and public spaces into beautiful food gardens (a political act in itself) would have had far more effect in establishing a path to self-sufficiency and energy efficiency than burning fossil fuels and energies to partake in a spectacle – a spectacle created only to build acquiescence to further collective insanity.

Until there is no more bread, finally leaving one too hungry to be entertained by the circus any longer, we will not see the take-down of those who oppress us nor will we bear witness to the necessary destruction of the industrialized capitalist system built upon patriarchy, racism, classism, imperialism, colonialism and ecological devastation. Decades of indoctrination, obedience, pacification and overindulgence has left us docile and incapable of mustering up the necessary courage for meaningful, difficult, real resistance … the kind that puts the fear of “god” into the state. The privileged – until no longer privileged and famished – will not participate in a revolution. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) financed “revolutions” do not count. And this is our reality. This is what we must face – if we are to change the writing on the wall in any regard.

Excerpt from End Game:

“I just got home from talking to a … longtime activist. She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the forests of Oregon. Whenever activists learned a hillside was going to be sprayed, they assembled there, hoping their presence would stop the poisoning. But each time, like clockwork, helicopters appeared, and each time, like clockwork, helicopters dumped loads of Agent Orange onto the hillside and onto the protesting activists. The campaign did not succeed. “‘But,’ she said to me, ‘I’ll tell you what did. A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills, and they sent messages to the Bureau of Land Management and to Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber companies saying, ‘We knows the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.’ “I waited for her to finish. “‘You know what happened next?’ she asked. “‘I think I do,’ I responded. “‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘The spraying stopped.'”

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Political Context, Counterpunch, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.]

Crimes Against Humanity: Pro-War NGOs

Public Good Project

Apr 16, 2015

Above: Participants sit in bleachers at the packed World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights, 2010, Photo by The City Project

As Cory Morningstar reported in 350: Agent Saboteur, the April 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, was the first and only climate conference that was led by indigenous peoples and recognized by the United Nations. The People’s Agreement — that resulted from this conference — called for 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and a 1 degree Celsius limit.

Attending the 2010 conference in Bolivia — created in response to the failure of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — was 350 co-founder Kelly Blynn. After undermining emission reduction targets at Copenhagen, Blynn’s role at Cochabamba was to press for 350 parts per million, and a 2 degree Celsius limit, thus protecting the fossil fuel industry and the very lucrative 350 brand.

Four years later — financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Warren Buffett’s NoVo Foundation – 350 used the Charms of Naomi as a powerful new tool of social engineering by Wall Street. The civil society fad led by Ms. Klein in 2014 evolved into a cult of celebrity worship, as she and Bill McKibben hypnotized thousands of college students into believing divestment of fossil fuel was part of a magical social revolution.

Above: Image from Fossil Free Website (Endorsements)

The KXL hoax — yet another example of hypnotic behavior absent critical judgement — was funded by Buffett in order to distract attention from his oil-by-rail empire, now threatening communities across North America with “bomb trains” for fossil fuel export. By the time Klein’s followers figure out they were duped into being Buffett’s pawns, he and his friend Bill Gates will have made a fortune shipping Tar Sands bitumen and Bakken Shale crude.

In the U.S. Army War College manual on psychological warfare, the stated objective is to destroy the will and the ability of the enemy to fight, by depriving them of the support of allies and neutrals. Some of the methods used in the manual are sowing dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness. Since this manual was published, a new type of psywar has emerged in the form of false hope.

Above image: Communications in Conflict

With support from foundations like Ford, Gates, NoVo, Rockefeller and Soros’ Open Society Institute, U.S. propaganda now has a vast new army of non-profits that serve as a fifth column for destabilization campaigns worldwide. Embodiments of false hope – like Avaaz, Purpose and 350 – use social media as a means of social manipulation.

In Welcome to the Brave New World—Brought to You by Avaaz, Morningstar notes that Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello has had a long relationship with the convicted inside-trader George Soros, and was one of the most pro-war members of the U.S. Congress. Along with Ricken Patel, Perriello made it popular for civil society to become complicit in crimes against humanity.

In 2014, the New York public relations firm Purpose created a campaign to rally international support for NATO to bomb Syria. The campaign was backed by the New York lobby Avaaz. The CEO of Purpose, Jeremy Heimans, is a co-founder of Avaaz. His associate, David Madden, is co-founder of Purpose, Avaaz and MoveOn—a Democratic Party associated PAC. Avaaz and MoveOn are funded in part by the billionaire hedge fund mogul Soros.

In Imperial Civil Society, Jay Taber observes that the power of moral sanction is something Wall Street takes very seriously. So seriously, that hostile takeovers of authentic civil society organizations, and full-fledged displacement by corporate false fronts, has led compromised NGOs to promote privatization, austerity, and military aggression. According to Maximilian Forte, the main purpose of the burgeoning civil society fad – that comprises the international bureaucracy of neoliberalism — is to take over basic functions and powers of the state.

Destabilizing foreign governments, using NGOs like Avaaz as provocateurs, puts authentic non-profits and journalists at risk. Indeed, the imperial network of financiers like Soros makes NGO entrepreneurs in the pro-war champagne circuit accomplices in crimes against humanity.

As affiliated entities, 350, Avaaz, Ceres, MoveOn and Purpose enable the Democratic Party to market itself as a friend of the environment and supporter of democracy, while simultaneously serving Wall Street’s agenda. What those familiar with serious fraud might call “the long con”. As Morningstar describes The Art of Social Engineering by Avaaz, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media.

Paralyzed in a state of collective hypnosis, naive followers of the non-profit industrial complex have become missionaries of empire. From Bolivia to Syria, NGOs now help destabilize and overthrow foreign regimes hostile to American dominance. “Avaaz,” says Morningstar, “is arguably the world’s most powerful NGO”.

Avaaz: Manufacturing Consent for Wars Since 2011

Wall of Controversy

March 20, 2015

By James Boswell

Privatizing Political Power

Public Good Project

March 16, 2015

by Jay Taber

As anyone who follows news from the U.S. Department of Justice knows, Bill Gates is an adherent of monopoly capitalism. His empire, built on privatizing public information and technology, reflects his belief in plutocracy.

Like earlier captains of industry — who used public investment to privatize political power — Gates has harnessed his fortune to evangelize on behalf of privatizing schools, prisons, and plantations. His investments in social engineering have made it possible for Gates to largely avoid public censure.

Along with his close friend Warren Buffett, Gates is now making money shipping Tar Sands bitumen and Bakken Shale crude via tank cars on Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad (owned by Buffett) and Canadian National Railway, of which Gates is the largest shareholder.

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