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False Hope

Fourth World Eye Blog

September 7, 2014

by Jay Taber

Communications-in-Conflict-

 

The globalization of poverty through privatization initiatives and austerity measures — enforced by the IMF and World Bank on behalf of Wall Street — would never have been possible were it not for the psychological warfare waged against public consciousness over the last three decades. As concepts, humanitarian warfare, indigenous capitalism, and free market environmentalism would have been laughed out on their ear forty years ago.

Through coordinated consolidation of news ownership, advertising campaigns and educational privatization, Wall Street was able to turn black into white, night into day. Using derivatives laundered by foundations, aristocratic families like Ford and Rockefeller, and financial barons like Gates and Soros helped to defeat the New Deal liberalism of FDR, and supplant it with the neoliberalism of Clinton. Under neoliberalism, Orwellian prophecies have come to pass: war is peace; assimilation is freedom; earth is a commodity.

In the IC Magazine publication Communications in Conflict, is noted a new form of psychological warfare termed “false hope”. False hope, as a tool for subverting social movements, is unparalleled in its effectiveness. What once was crudely accomplished through political repression, censorship, educational indoctrination and misleading propaganda, is now supplemented, if not surpassed, through vertical integration of the non-profit industrial complex. Where Wall Street once had to rely on threats and bribery to intimidate or corrupt social movements, it now has a vast army of neoliberal foundations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social media at its disposal.

By marshaling neoliberal funders, co-opted activists, and writers masquerading as agents for change, Wall Street can literally politicize, organize and mobilize citizens concerned about peace, indigenous peoples or the environment to do its bidding. As evidence of this, we only have to look at the fake revolutions and so-called humanitarian warfare endorsed by Amnesty International, the attack on indigenous governing authorities by Ford-funded activists sabotaging the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus gathering, or at the fossil fuel divestment campaign promoted by Rockefeller darling 350.org.

While NGO celebrities like Amnesty International’s Suzanne Nossel, First Peoples Worldwide’s Rebecca Adamson, and 350.org’s Naomi Klein generate press releases supporting Obama’s neoliberal State Department, Pentagon and Wall Street initiatives — thereby subverting social solidarity and undermining authentic activism — their lasting harm is in creating a seamless spectacle that diverts young peoples’ energy, devotion and commitment away from democratic community-building toward tyrannic social disintegration. As we advance toward the World Indigenous Peoples Conference at UN headquarters September 22-23 2014, the charades of Clinton, Soros, Rockefeller, Ford and Gates Foundation-sponsored public relations puppets continue to disrupt civil society, and to distract public attention from where it should be focused.

Until we are able to have a discussion about such things as the dysfunctional relationship between indigenous nations and modern states, the neoliberal UN Millenium Development Goals, and implementing Indigenous peoples human rights — in fora uncontrolled by capitalist institutions — no amount of bromides issued by the non-profit industrial complex is going to change a thing. Until we start defending democracy against the philanthropists in our midst, social engineering by Wall Street will continue to promote war, undermine indigenous liberation, and wreak havoc on the environment.

Welcome to the rave new world.

 

Mammon’s Missionaries

McKibbenandKlein

Above: Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein (representing 350.org/1Sky) tour America promoting the illusion of an existing and available “carbon budget” (“Do the Math”), while in reality, “there is no available carbon budget“.  This fact is made abundantly clear by both David Spratt (Climate Code Red) and David Wasdell.  [Basis for a Carbon Budget? | Link] [The real budgetary emergency and the myth of “burnable carbon” | Link ]

Image: 350.org photo stream via Flickr. Photo by Ted Cleary | Do the Math Tour | New York City | 11.16.2012

Public Good Project

July 26, 2014

By Jay Taber

 

Continuing our discussion on co-option, I should note that Naomi Klein – as a board member of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded 350.org — functions as an emissary to co-opt Indigenous activist/intellectuals like Arthur Manuel and Leanne Simpson. Having branded herself as part of the eco-avant-garde, Klein’s diplomacy is part of the mission of Wall Street NGOs to assimilate Indigenous thought leaders into the corporate fold.

Klein McKibben Healing Walk

“Tar Sands Healing Walk” | July 6, 2013 | Caption: “At the press conference before the walk formally began, there were many speakers. Among them was Naomi Klein.” Klein is under the purple flag with Clayton Thomas-Muller who is the co-director of the Indigenous Tar Sands (ITS) Campaign of the Polaris Institute and organizer with Idle No More & Defenders of the Land. [July 1, 2013: Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein to join Canada’s tar sands ‘healing walk’ – Idle No More press release] Photo by “taylorandayumi” via Flickr.

 
Manuel, as a Seventh Generation Fund/Ford Foundation-sponsored activist — appointed by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to coordinate the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus — collaborated with Debra Harry in an attempt to exclude tribal governing authorities from participating in the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, and later joined Harry in a fraudulent attempt to cover up their mischief. Manuel, the son of one of CWIS’s founders (where I am an associate scholar), is an articulate and intelligent Indigenous advocate. He has since apparently parted company with NAIPC, but his betrayal of trust remains a black spot on his record.

Leanne seems to have more integrity than Manuel, and I hope she does not get seduced by the insidious forces of Wall Street. The NGOs corrupted by UN flattery and foundation funds are responsible for much of the turmoil taking place behind the scenes of the media spectacle in which 350.org’s Bill McKibben is a star, and promise to be a problem in the lead up to the WCIP in New York come September.

In many respects, Klein and McKibben are like the church missionaries that initially helped subdue the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the US. Instead of the religion of Christianity, however, they proselytize on behalf of the faith in corporate philanthropy, all the while posing as pious champions of the environment, colonized and downtrodden. This is psychological warfare at its most repugnant.

Public Good Project’s role, as protectors and connoisseurs of conflict, is to expose the predators in order prevent their preying on the minds of the innocent. It is a role that rarely garners gratitude, but it is a necessary role if Indigenous Peoples are to prevail in their quest for human rights and environmental sanity.

 

[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 in such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]
The Right Direction

The Right Direction

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Elder Indigenous woman takes part in march for world peace in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico. The Indigenous Peoples’ march was led by Bishop Felipe Arizmendi on March 14, 2003, days before the U.S. began its “official” bombing of Iraq. Chiapas, Mexico 2003 photo: Langelle/GJEP

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Apr 11, 2013

As I observed in See the Light, the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus is in a quandary over how to proceed after its failure to achieve a consensus at its March 1 meeting in Sycuan. With the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues expecting a report from NAIPC before its document consolidation meeting next month in Madrid, some of the NGOs participating in the NAIPC don’t know what to do.
See the Light

See the Light

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Indigenous nations are governing authorities, not NGOs [Mirjam Hirch: Source]

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Apr 8, 2013

The recent implosion of the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus over its mismanagement of responsibilities associated with hosting the North American Preparatory Meeting for the 2014 UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) should come as no surprise. Since the beginning, the UN has undermined indigenous peoples and nations efforts at achieving self-determination, first by denying their existence, and later by treating their political entities as the equivalent of NGOs.