WATCH: Victim of the World Wildlife Fund
ZEMBLA investigates the collateral damage of the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) battle for nature conservation
ZEMBLA discovers that WWF promotes birth control programs that include contraception and even sterilization for men and women. The fight against poachers is getting grimmer all the time. ZEMBLA travels to India, where local inhabitants are wrongly accused of poaching, are being tortured and sometimes even killed. On camera, guards from Kaziranga National Park state that they are allowed to shoot unwanted people.
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What, a documentary criticizing the WWF and no mention of the 1001 Club? Operation Lock, Sir David Stirling and the SAS?
See:
http://powerbase.info/index.php/KAS_Enterprises
See also, for more in-depth information:
https://isgp-studies.com/1001-club-of-the-wwf
The author of the ISGP website is a racist. The historical information he provides, particularly the quotes from experts and newspapers, is nevertheless highly relevant for the topic at hand. Unfortunately, copy and paste is not possible.
This is an issue that causes me great internal conflict on the one hand as a “socialist libertarian” ( i don’t like to be pigeon holed but its the best description to fit my political ideology). & on the other naturalist/conservationist (i don’t subscribe to neo-liberal methods of applied science/corporate conservation “sector”).
But i do fully support the preservation of biodiversity via natural processes. Clearly this ‘program’ is just another one sided leftist liberal propaganda exercise. with pesudo concern for the poorest rural communities by liberal middle class white Europeans trying to apply their liberal values to the natural world, following their grand agenda (what ever that is) to achieve their end game?
Nature isn’t fair, its callous, does discriminate & diversity is something that grows organically only exists through competition & conflict via natural processes (despite some beliefs the Lamb never lays beside the Lion & tow male penguins can not raise an egg) . This is why human civilization finds it self in the mess it has with diminishing biodiversity, global warming, over population & consumption. Its the total disregard for natural process by subverting natural controls & balances that has put humanity in a catch 22 scenario, with final train crash fast approaching.
In an ecological sense we simply can not continue to expand human populations & improved lifestyles. As a species we rely on technology for our survival, from rubbing two sticks together to make fire, hunting mega fauna to extinction, the dawn or agriculture , industrial revolution, dependency on oil & the digital take over of life on earth. With each technological advance fixing the problems of the last, simply puts us further in debt to the consequences of ignoring the laws of nature. At some point there has to be a reckoning. Nature will always win out.
The greatest threat to civilization & humanity is the wholesale destruction of biodiversity & we are well on the way to achieving the end result of a sixth mass extinction. Liberals have no answer to this devastating problem, because you can not apply liberal human rights priorities over the laws of nature. Conservative christian colonial rational of small wildlife reserves for the exclusive enjoyment of a elite wealthy to enjoy & shoot wildlife with a gun or camera was flawed from its concept. Biodiversity is more than a small island of compiled species & habitats. Ecosystems are the sum of how organisms function through connectivity of all life forms for mutual coexistence & none can work in isolation. But nature is not a harmonious utopia!
I am not advocating a survival of the fittest culture! But humanity has to learn the hard lessons that we have to co-exist with all other life forms if we wish to survive, this inevitably means making serious sacrifices in our lifestyles & how we treat wildlife! “property rights” must be one of the first things we must review. Individuals (or corporations) can not lay claim to a mountain or a forest or the life that walks on it, that has existed for millions of years, we are but a small (but very destructive) piece of the jigsaw puzzle of life. If we want to survive we have to return to respecting the natural world & its basic laws.
This means coexisting with difficult species in our back yards, forgoing convenient extravagances (electricity) & in turn for decreasing infant mortality rates via sanitation, hygiene & increased nutrition, all of us must show discipline in how many offspring we have. Civilizations problem is our primitive primate instinct is being ignored by centrist liberal ideology that foolishly ignores the laws of physics, biology & chemistry i.e. pure scientific fact for vapid idiosyncrasy.
There’s truly only one way to end the madness of modern industrial civilization that’s a huge natural disaster because liberal values are never going to recognize the inevitability of their actions. Thankfully for me i am fast approaching the last quarter of my life so as a childless, vegetarian, naturalist, libertarian who conducts his life according to principles of deep ecology & takes great pride in claiming to own almost nothing I have the least to lose.
It just doesn’t work to put human interests above all other species, because we cant survive vacuous technological lifestyles without functioning ecosystems.
Putting a few human “rights” violations above nature & pandering to political points scoring is an indulgent irrelevance.
Some things are bigger than political ideology!
Not on this planet.
Political point scoring is, sadly, what much of this site is reducing to.
Did you actually watch the program? The villagers around Kaziranga National Park accepted that the park needed to expand and that they might have give up some of their farmland – provided they were properly compensated and resettled properly. Which they were not when their lands were appropriated and they were evicted.
The program also states very clearly that overpopulation is not the issue: it is the lifestyles of those living in First World nations – and specifically the lifestyles of the wealthy in First World nations – that encourage governments and the corporations that fund them to claim that the poor are the cause of overpopulation and environmental degradation – in order to justify taking over their lands and resources for their own enrichment.
Where does it say in the documentary that people need to give up electricity, proper sanitation and nutrition to help save the environment and preserve biodiversity? In most cases, proper sanitation and improving nutrition costs very little. Even generating electricity does not have to cost very much, if it is generated by water power. The villagers being evicted – and in some cases, being tortured and killed by the park rangers – already had very little before they had to make way for the expansion of the park.
The underlying issue in the documentary is that the WWF operates according to a hidden political agenda that among other things espouses a racist eugenics policy. Not surprising when one considers that early WWF supporters included Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Prince Phillip of Britain, both of whom had direct or indirect associations with Nazi Germany or the National Socialist Party.
To answer your question fairly & honestly in civil debate. No I didn’t watch the entire “program” I watched the first 10 minutes & saw through the usual arguments immediately. I’ve been reading about & watching these same arguments for decades.
May I ask did you read my comment in its full context? Or just get triggered by leftist political ideology?
What is the population of India?
This false narrative its the consumers & not the breeders, destroying biodiversity is misleading & disingenuous. Whether you are of European decent living an extremely extravagant lifestyle or an impoverished third world Indian breeding for security, really is an irrelevance. Habitat destruction has the same consequence.
Humanity has been destroying biodiversity since neanderthal times. The reality is we haven’t been living sustainable lifestyles for thousand of years & ecological destruction has been accelerating with every technological advance.
We’ve been reliant on electricity for less than a century & just look at the damage our dependence on oil has done in the last 50 years! Do you really think swapping from petrol to electric is actually environmentally better? Changing from omnivore to vegetarian really change anything?
And NO i don’t think there is a solution to the issues civilization faces, sorry to be a killljoy! But does that mean we should all have equal opportunity to destroy biodiversity making thousands species extinct for our smart phones & caffe latte’s?
Sounds like we might best view it all as entertainment before we have a stroke.
I view the comments by Question This as rather less than entertainment – they’re fatuous.
well i guess life is exactly that pointless.
Got to hand it to Nazi’s. They really hang in there.
Hey, guys, come on.
Axis was NOT complimenting them.
It’s sarcasm.
I just ate a Jumbo jack and rather enjoyed it. Nothing is going to change around here outside of a major disaster that brings us all together. The disaster sounds better to me than the getting together part. We’ll be right back where we started in no time. If we live long enough, we’ll have to watch it happening. Nothing is going to change. It’s who we are….a problematic species. Best to just enjoy the ride, count your blessings, be diverse, and embrace hypocrisy.
Can’t fault your analysis there.
The only issue that upsets me is the collateral damage to other species, caused by our own selfish behavior. But that’s just me & who i am, can’t help but care.
The astonishing part of the documentary – though I shouldn’t have been surprised perhaps, given the WWF’s sordid associations with Prince Bernhardt (former Nazi Party member) of the Netherlands and Prince Phillip (whose sisters married ex-Nazi officers) of Britain – is that the park rangers of Kaziranga National Park (and, it seems, park rangers of other parks funded by the WWF) have been receiving paramilitary training, military assault weapons and training in torture methods.
Who trains these rangers and where do these trainers come from?
True, the program did say that poachers can be violent and the park rangers need to be able to defend themselves and the animals they protect against violent poachers, but it seems the level of retaliation is not only excessive but is aimed at the villages around the park and not at the actual poachers if they appear. (And how do we know that the poachers themselves are not the same people who possess the military assault weapons provided and paid for by … the WWF itself?)
We need to know what exactly is the WWF and who and what exactly does the organisation serve? Is its agenda ultimately to preserve animals for the enjoyment of an elite?
You need to look outside the divisive liberal politics, the divisive left/right ideology & rights/wrongs violations are a distraction.
The system is corrupt, its broken beyond repair, the very fact you have a class system where a few rule over the many is by its very existence a corruption of nature. What some lackeys & shills do to protect their masters ideology is irrelevant when you want to replace it with another regime that will pick up the batten using the very same monetary system that will only generate a different victim.
WWF & its founders & the wrongs of the police state, isn’t the question you should be asking! We don’t preserve animals for an elites recreation, we preserve biodiversity for planets & our own species survival!
Some things are bigger than politics & economy, this is a question of survival.
Got a solution? Psychopaths have all the real power. What have we got?
The collective ability to co-operate with them or not.
I remember Thomas Jefferson commenting on how this should be done. Do you think we can start something up down at Starbucks?
Can’t help you there, as a firm anti-ca-pit-alist i’ve never been to a starbucks.
I think the point is more that we, as a concerned people have very few options. The violence option at this point wouldn’t go over well with anyone. Except for the holocausts, inquisitions and genocides, we are a peaceful people. We can dig trenches and wait, this always works and is a healthy workout. We can’t attack. Who would we attack? Would we all agree on who the enemy is? I doubt it. How about what the enemy is? Now we are right back where we started from. This might be better discussed down at the Pub. I will chart out the brothels on our missions journey and suggest we go on Camels. This way CNN will cover us for their ratings and we can figure out where we’re going once we get started. We can just rail against anything that strikes our fancy along the way really loudly. Nobody is listening anyway, and if they are, they will soon be distracted, giving us time to think of a clever slogan. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a divine intervention. Then we’ll know why, why not and what we are doing for sure. It could be kind of like the Children’s Crusade.
Your comments make me smile, but ya know after more than 55 years of analyzing the same old arguments I always end up with the same conclusion.
I know hardly anyone else really cares, i know there’s no hope, but i never stop trying & caring about saving the natural world, no matter how futile & immature it may seem to others.
To me the natural world represents real freedom & objective truth, these are things worth cherishing & fighting for no matter how impossible it may seem.
Exactly this.
Someone may have already posted this. It is James Corbetts info on the WWF
All these organisations are hopelessly compromised and corrupted nw.
Corbett is as corrupt in his thinking as the corporate neo-liberal conservation sector & has just as much credibility as the conservative WWF. 0%
Isn’t this a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water? I don’t agree with everything Corbett says, but I know of no one who gets as much information out there for me to investigate so that I may make decisions for myself. In this respect I find his work helpful.
Do you have a particular example of Corbett’s corruption you would like to share that you consider his poster child of non credibility? It might be something I missed.
He’s a conspiracy theorist clearly not a very well informed one.
Sorry, QT, we don’t consider generic dismissals based on CIA-generated psyop terms to be sufficient grounds for condemnation here. Try to explain in your own terms, using data.
I clearly linked Mr Corbett’s quote in my comment! Corbett is a click baiter, he looks for conspiracy theories to prove.
LOL accusing me of being the deep states shill! gave me a chuckle.
I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next offG reader but Corbett looks for controversy for a living & some of it is just plain wacky.
The state of the planet is evidence enough, his views on population are idiotic which takes away credibility for anything else he says in my view.
There goes the baby!!
OffG, I’d surmise that you are doing a good job in trying to piss off a quarter of your readership with your various quips BLT of this article. Yep, I just wasted my time telling you.
Is that Bacon Lettuce and Tomato?
Sorry for any confusion. I’ve just realised that today due to switching between my tablet and an older PC both my current and older username are coming up in this thread. Frank Speaker / Frank Poster is the same person.
The WWF is heavily subsidised by Washington. I think last year it got funding of about $134 million, not sure of the figure. It is another GONGO, a Government Orchestrated Non Government Organisation, like Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Save The Children, and all the other phoney “charities” and “humanitarian” organisations serving globalist and capitalist interests and their Regime Change agendas. These organisations are incredibly harmful, and should be regarded simply as criminal and evil.
Phony, really? So should they be closed down, aid projects stopped? And replaced by what? The great Bolivarian revolution? Maoism? Stalinism?
Extremists of both right and left use the rest of the people as cannon fodder in their disgusting games.
If you close them down their backers and the real interests they serve just set up under another name, and carry on business as usual. No, people need to recognise them for the phoney outfits they are, give them no money and no respect or credibility.
If they just disappeared, would they be any great loss?
The Red Cross.
It raised $500 million to provide housing for victims of the terrible Haiti Earthquake. All there was to show for that were seven scruffy prefabs. Where the rest went is one of life’s great mysteries. A lot of it seems to have ended up in the Clinton Slush Fund. Probably paid for Chelsea’s wedding.
Oxfam.
If they were closed down, there’d be a few less sex orgies with poor black kids forced to have sex with animals.
Save The Children.
They ran bogus vaccination campaigns in Pakistan to collect DNA material for the CIA to target their drone strikes. Entire villages were wiped out as a result. Genuine health workers were at risk of being shot or lynched afterwards, and set back genuine vaccination campaigns back years. Polio made a comeback. That’s when they weren’t giving Tony Blair their “Humanitarian Of The Year Award.” Yep, they’d certainly be a great loss.
Amnesty International.
Operated as a Neocon propaganda arm shilling for the Bombing of Libya, and bombing the most developed country in Africa back to the Stone Age. Fabricated stories about Black Africans being given Viagra to rape women. A lot of African migrant workers found themselves being lynched from lamp posts as a result. The rest were sold in the new slave markets. Yep, let’s give AI a really big round of applause for that one.
Human Rights Watch.
Constantly shilling for humanitarian bombing in Syria in support of its pet cannibal head choppers. Its ex State Department Directors, previously up to their necks in Rendition and torture, faithfully parroting the Neocon line.
Yep, they’d certainly all be a great loss. Whatever would we do without them?
Yes, there are corrupt and devious people in ALL organisations, governments, companies.
Yet fundamentally, the great majority of people working for NGOs and charities do so as a vocation, to try and enhance people lives and reduce the suffering of humanity.
Cold, callous, Trotskyist viewpoints such as yours are certainly very valid and indeed correct…but only up to a very limited point.
Ignoring the vast majority of the good works of these extremely devoted people, some of who risk their lives in delivering aid, and the vast majority of them being genuine socialists, is disingenuous, to say the least Mark.
In fact, you do them a huge disservice, utterly shameful. You probably don’t know any of them personally, I do, and I know the massive sacrifices and the personal risks that they take all the time. You are utterly, utterly wrong and utterly ignorant. Student politicians of your type are very eloquent, but ultimately utterly wrong in your conclusions an solutions for the REAL world.
It’s a long time since I was a student. If you want to believe in fairy stories about STC, AI, WWF and the rest, you can do. You can believe in Father Christmas if you like. But the evil, murder and mayhem they have caused, enabled and facilitated, and are still doing, far outweighs anything of value they may once have done incidentally. That’s the simple truth of it. It’s a question of evil organisations, not individuals.
Tell that to the lynched Africans and the napalmed Pakistanis.
If you were to watch the Zembla documentary, you would find it contains an answer to your (trolling) query.
The local Assamese people living around Kaziranga National Park are the best people to look after (in the context of the film) the forests and ecosystems that sustain endangered species like the Indian rhinoceros, the Asian elephant and the Bengal tiger. Their ancestors were living with these large animals for centuries if not thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans and their imposition of ideologies (political, economic, social, cultural) that destroyed the livelihoods of people and robbed them of their lands and resources.
As Mark says, organisations like the WWF and others are funded and used by Western governments and intelligence agencies to promote their own neoliberal and regime change agendas. Jos van Dongen’s film was quite clear on this as well in its last few minutes where the journalist interviewed a doctor who admitted that the WWF was funding mass sterilisation masquerading as family planning. (Why the WWF should even be involved in family planning is odd in the first place.)
In most countries where these organisations operate, the people there never asked for them or were duped (or even forced) to accept them. What these NGOs do with most of the money donated to them seems never to reach the communities that are supposed to benefit from the donations. Again, the Zembla documentary touched on this issue where local Assamese people told Jos van Dongen that the money paid by tourists to visit Kaziranga National Park did not percolate down to their communities.
Whatever replaces the WWF and similar “charities” operating in Third World nations will be initiatives that come from the communities themselves and any organisations and political parties they form to represent their interests.
You can pontificate all you sneeringly like on Bolivarianism and previous movements aimed at improving people’s lives and which made mistakes along the way in a context where the countries in which these movements operated were subjected to trade, financial and other economic sanctions from the West.
No wish to come across as a stalker so apologies in advance should you be offended but your views on the preservation of biodiversity are just plain wrong. I was triggered by this quote;
The human population was stable for many hundreds or even thousands of years before it exploded in the early 19th century. Less than a century ago 3 out of 5 children of the Assamese people likely died of malnutrition & disease, most adults died before they were 50. Now they may still live a traditional lifestyle but with the aid of modern medicine, brought by those Europeans, infant mortality rates have lowered & lifespan increased, which means more mouths to feed & more space required to make a living, & that can only come from one place, the natural world!
Humans haven’t lived sustainably for thousands of years, it may be an inconvenient fact, but i’m afraid its a simple truth the planet can no longer sustain any form of growth economic, consumption/population or otherwise. So something has to make the compromise! Unfortunately it always seems to be biodiversity which can only hurt all of us.
And no i do not & have not, ever supported WWF or any corporate conservation body, because their methodology is all wrong. And there is no more critical opponent to the brutal police state than me. But just imagine what its like to die a slow death with a wire snare digging tighter round your leg or neck & dieing slowly of starvation or infection. Suffering isn’t unique to humans indeed they cause most of it.
Why is it that suggesting that the local people living in and around Kaziranga National Park are the best people to look after the forest and its ecosystems that sustain animals like elephants, rhinos, tigers and others is wrong? Where is the problem in that suggestion? Don’t you think that the local people know what plants are there, what the animals eat, how they all behave and interact, what they do each season, whether they migrate or not, and how all their interactions form a network?
If these people have lived with these animals for centuries and more, and the animals still survive to the present day, they have been doing something right for the fauna and flora. If what they have been doing over the centuries has not been sustainable, then perhaps you can suggest what is sustainable.
Simply saying that humans haven’t lived sustainably for thousands of years – I am sure most First Nations people will be surprised to hear that said about their ancestors! – is not much of an argument: you need to say what you mean about “living sustainably” that humans over thousands of years have failed to achieve.
Your argument is skirting the issue that the WWF is using the cause of “nature conservation” as a justification for following a sinister agenda (that includes sterilisation masquerading as family planning, and the use of paramilitary methods, torture and murder to intimidate and bully people) that happens to suit governments and corporations working together to deprive poor and powerless people of their lands so they can steal the resources and wealth these lands contain. What is being done to the communities surrounding places like Kaziranga National Park and others like them parallels the wars that the West has waged and continues to wage against people in places like Syria and Venezuela.
I am surprised you appear to have no compassion for the marginalised communities defending their lands from Western corporate theft – more than you realise, these poor communities are the only real champions that the fauna and flora in these lands have.
Good points. But the quick & simple response is nature doesn’t need human intervention to manage & control it, that’s where yours & the conservation ‘sectors’ methodology is wrong!
Who is to say the police & park guards aren’t local people?
There’s growing evidence that humans at least played a significant part in the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna. Whilst its true to say climate change is a constant throughout earths history, global warming since the last ice age is perhaps the main reason why Homo sapiens were able to migrate spreading across the globe in a killing spree. Ironic really that it could well be man made global warming that’s seals our fate ( but i digress).
Its yours & WWF’s entire philosophy on conservation that’s wrong. It’s not personal, most peoples perspective of the natural world is absolutely corrupt by modern liberal values. Applied science Conservation is an abomination against the natural world, ignoring natural processes. Nature doesn’t need managing or controlling. Human cultures need management & control as they are clearly unable to discipline themselves & their greed.
Nature doesn’t need mankind, we need nature, google is your friend in this respect (only) there’s a huge volume of data describing exactly how Homo sapiens have not been living sustainably since the last ice age. Our species makes other species extinct, its what we do, its what we are best at. The advent of agriculture was in many ways the beginning of the anthropocentric extinction event, 10,000 years later we have reached the end of the beginning there aren’t any ecosystems left untouched by negative human activity.
like i said i’m all for sticking up for the little man against the system but some things are bigger than that, like mass extinction. Its not alarmist, this is real, its happening! I’m against WWF’s conservation policy entirely, i’m against WWF’s existence.
DON’T GIVE THEM MONEY.
I did not say and have never said that nature needs human intervention to manage it – I only said that the communities around Kaziranga National Park are the best people to know how to look after the ecosystems in the park. Their knowledge and experience of co-existence with the megafauna in the park are needed. Looking after the forests and the ecosystems is not the same as intervention, management or control.
Instead the local people are treated by the WWF and the park rangers as vermin, to be shot at and killed if they go into the park either accidentally or to look for lost cattle.
I agree the WWF should go into extinction itself and the people around Kaziranga National Park should have input into what replaces the model of conservation to preserve the park’s ecosystems. What do you suggest that would enable humans to live in a sustainable way with the animals and plant life of the park?
You’re very defensive, I made no accusations, none of my comments are meant as personal attacks.
If biodiversity has any chance & we can stop the tide of extinctions we as a species and civilization needs radical reform, i’d recommend looking into E. O Wilsons 50% for whats required.
As is remaining megafauna of India & Africa are the living dead & Rhino are irrelevant they are unable to provide any ecological function because they can’t be let to run free, not that there’s any free left!
The Natural World is in serious trouble sadly very few people realize just how bad things are & how serious the consequences for us will be!
Technocratic eugenics at work on many levels not just the WWF which crops up more and more in critiques by Cory Morningstar and the anti-capitalist movement. Now with extinction rebellion forcing CO2 based climate change to the front of the agenda this will widely open the door to climate and biological geoengineering and GMO as technocrats extend eugenics to all of a soon to be financialized nature.
Some good observations from James Corbett showing that the founders of the WWF were eugenics fans and he ties all this together with other anti-libertarian concerns such as the IoT and 5G.
https://www.corbettreport.com/mother-nature-demands-child-sacrifice-propagandawatch/
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1446-james-corbett-on-the-post-carbon-energy-eugenics-hoax/
Its well worth also watching his videos on how and why Big Oil conquered the world.
Based upon all the cumulative scientific data and evidence currently available Simon, CO2 climate change is occuring, with a 95% confidence factor.
Research continues and we may one day learn that something in that 5% is what’s actually happening.
However, if your doctors tell you that they are 95% confident that you will be very ill or die if you carry on your current lifestyle, most rationale people would accept expert advice and act upon it…even if they might turn out to be in that very small number of people who can smoke like a chimney and not die of lung cancer unlike everyone else.
I never cease to be amazed at the way in which otherwise smart and awake people become completely gullible dupes when it comes to climate change. Media Lens solemnly churning out the neoliberal fear porn, convinced they’re on the cutting edge, blind to the fact they’re telling the same poorly sourced, distorted propaganda story promoted by the BBC, NYT, Independent, Guardian.
AGW began as a scientific hypothesis, (which at core it still is), that became hijacked by the most fascistic branch of the neoliberals. Its tentative ideas were changed into “facts”, simplified, exaggerated, stripped of the whole scientific context of modulation and uncertainty, and sold in a package to the Green-minded lay person, as an `’emergency” in need of “solution.”
The solution, of course, is more taxation, mote social control, enforced population control, enforced peasant-living for the 99%.
Solutions which almost certainly won’t work on reducing carbon, even IF the hypothesis of AGW turns out to be true.
It’s funny really. In a black, bleak kind of way.
…completely missing the point that it was left wing researchers in the 60s and 70s who were pushing these new theories and the Establishment refused to listen. The latter saw the former group as anti-capitalists and communists pushing their political agendas rather than hard science. Now some in this former group are accusing the Establishment of having set the whole thing up as a conspiracy! Crazy beyond belief, or deliberately mischievous.
As for mitigating measures, society is not yet ready to address what really needs to happen, so the solutions are pretty much what can be achieved within those limits, for the time being.
It’s a shame that otherwise intelligent people make up fantastical theories when simpler answers are available.
The evidence for the neoliberals promoting climate change for their own reasons is simply undeniable. Read Cory Morningtar and others at wrongkindofgreen.org
Neoliberals will try and make money out of anything, that’s all they breathe. They would sell their own mothers. Letting them loose on climate mitigation measures is a neat idea. Finance and markets are being used by policy makers to deliver climate mitigations because incentivising greedy people is easier and quicker and arguably more effective than the Stalinist or Maoist approaches of draconian laws and penalties.
So you think these “policy makers” (the same ones who lie to you every day) are simply and honestly motivated to tell the truth about the climate?
You don’t think it’s even possible the whole thing may be a mix of partial truth, propaganda and deliberately infused hysteria?
I’d say the science is not settled, but “the whole thing” is currently a mix of mostly truth based upon what we know, plus some propaganda to suit certain vested interests (e.g. promoting their solutions not the best solutions), as well as a good dollop of hysteria because our modern media loves that and clickbait to drive their revenues.
Try actually talking at length with people who are climate scientists or working on genuine solutions, then you’ll see that they are mostly very down to earth people, caring socialists working passionately to reduce or remove adverse human impact upon the planet.
I’m on an old PC and my old username is saved, Frank Speaker / Poster is the same person; me.
Clearly true admin. But at the same time, there’s virtually no doubt that climate shift really is happening, whatever the gangster-capitalist-shysters-who-are-always-with-us may think about how they can swindle profits from it.
People of my age have actually, personally witnessed climate shift gathering pace over our lifetimes. The only really uncertain, inherently unpredictable matters are: how fast will it go; how will things change exactly, in any given place in the world; how will things re-stablise eventually; and how might we help the process to be as mild and un-disastrous as possible. (My hunch is that it’s now too late to stop it altogether. But like all other ideas about climate shift, that is just a hunch. An informed one, as the best ones are, but still just a hunch.)
We need to re-think the way we see climate. The idea of climate change as a dangerous new development is at the heart of the neoliberal spin version. It’s nothing to do with the science of climate.
Let’s agree to put aside ALL the current climate panic and just look at the solid facts we currently actually know.
1. Climate is ALWAYS changing, and always has.
2. For most of the several billions of years of earth history there has been NO ice anywhere, not even on the poles.
3. We are currently living in a period of unusual cold known as the Quaternary Glaciation.
4. The QG has been characterised so far by periods of deep cold (ice ages) followed by periods of relative warmth (interglacials).
5. In recent history the temperatures have shifted from the Medieval Warm Period (warmer than it is now, less polar ice), through to the Little Ice Age (colder than now).
6. We are currently warming out of the LIA.
7. How long this will last no one knows.
These are all facts no scientifically literate person disputes. The rest is either hypothesis, guesswork, propaganda, and even lies.
The mere idea global warming is likely to be dangerous is itself pure propaganda. It was grafted on to the AGW theory in order to make it more “scary”, but it never had any factual basis. It is built solely on the assumption of positive feedback loops being built in to climate models, which then predict runaway warming.
The trouble is there is NO real-world evidence that such positive feedback exists in nature.
The entire idea of a climate emergency is simply an idea someone reamed up. Nothing more.
You forgot an item on your explainaway list MLS – perhaps because it doesn’t fit the list’s tendentious purpose:
8. Human activity has been releasing excess greenhouse gases from long-term sequestration at an increasing rate for some centuries now; millennia, even, according to where you start the account. But of course such a thing couldn’t possibly trigger off a catastrophic climatic tipping point event could it? No, of course not; simply not possible; because, as Jim Kunstler often quips: we don’t want it to be like that, so it just CAN’T be. Because we don’t want it. (Even though the geological record shows evidence of previous such sudden catastrophes…)
Read his post. Actually READ IT. Even if we accept AGW 100%, the only reason to believe that warming would be dangerous is if we also accept the idea of positive feedbacks in the system.
There is no evidence for such feedbacks. Everyone admits that. They are just assumed as being probable and then added to the models.
That’s how you get catastrophic warming , but just adding in an assumption for which there is literally no evidence.
It’s crazy.And people are going to throw their freedoms and livelihoods away for this!
Why the hell are you so prepared to accept the word of people like Mann – a proven fraudster and neoliberal hack – and Monbiot (ditto)?
Just calmly consider WHY you believe this, and if you just might have been conned.
MLS
The neoliberal framing of the so-called ‘climate economy’ is purely so they can manipulate a carbon price, carbon tax, swaps and offsets …and find a tradable market value for natural ecosystems. This they can fit in their existing financialisation system of green bonds and eco-derivatives. What they cannot do is solve the broader Human Impact crises – because the for profit, private property, perpetual extractivist, expansionist, and exploitation economy is the problem …and cannot be any part of a truly humanist solution.
Some aspects of the Human Impact convergence crises are:
Debt: militant monetarism – up $150tn since 2003; up $70tn since 2008. The basic problem is overcapitalisation and overfinancialisation destroying productive economics and suppressing any possibility of real recovery.
Primary resource and energy depletion: the economy is biophysical – not financial. It relies oh a source to sink throughput of finite resources and energy. Extractivism has quadrupled since the 70s. There is no way to sustain the exponential quadrupling of the quadrupling.
Entropy: energy and primary resource depletion restricts the amount of surplus energy for economic, social and welfare activity. Debt servicing adds to the economic drag in an entropic Bear market. Falling commodity prices and demand for consumer goods makes unrepayable debts unserviceable.
Overexploitation and overconsumption: economic and ecological overshoot – the biosphere is having to provide 1.7 of its bio-capacity. Renewable and sustainable resources (forestry; fisheries; soil; water; etc) are being depleted faster than they can regenerate.
Agriculture: industrialised ‘Green Revolution’ – 10 hydrocarbon calories per food calorie. Issues of hydrology; overuse of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides; total reliance on hydrocarbons to grow, distribute, process, distribute …wasting as much a third.
Soil depletion: as soon as we add NPK fertilisers and biocides – we go from farming to strip mining the soil.
Biogeochemical flows: disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles; eutrophication; hypoxic dead zones; algal blooms.
Biodiversity loss and species extinction: threatening biospheric interity. Forget the climate: we do not have a clue how to regulate the atmosphere, pollination, waste and pollution management without nature.
Waste and pollution: the big issues are known – the introduction of so called ‘novel entities’ are not. Natural molecules biodegrade: man-made ones do not. We are treating nature as a disposal lab.
Land systems change: primary forest for monocrops; rain forests for palm oil. Extractivism is our biggest polluter: every toxic waste has to go somewhere …and kill something.
Neoliberal framing shifts the balance of blame on to the global poor and overpopulation. Overconsumption by neoliberals is the main problem. Neoliberal objective reductive materialist epistemology separates all these problems out as non-interacting imaginary spheres – the economy does not interact with the ecology of the planet. It does.
Reductive epistemology will argue that all these converging crises are not insurmountable problems and manageable in their own right …which would be true – in a lab. But every facet of the Human Impact crisis are interactive and inter-relational …and they are all peaking at once.
The key is the permanent growth vectors of ‘limitless’ negentropic expansion. Neoliberal capitalism must maintain an exponential growth rate. At 3%: there is a doubling every 23 years – and a doubling of the doubling every 46 years. Even if all the above factors are ‘safe’ for now – which is a wild assumption to make – it should be crystal clear to every man, woman, and child that we cannot double our economic activity …doubling the doubling – quadrupling every 40-50 years is an insane imagination.
Yet this is the basic assumption of virtually all socio-political discourse. The mainstream Overton Window will not allow the criticism of ‘sustainable growth’. It is an axiom of civilisation …but it is totally logically flawed.
Because the only logical conclusion is the end of growth and the end of capitalism …not ‘green capitalism’ – the two are mutually exclusive.
Growth has ended anyway. Monetising debt and reckless militant monetarism are cosmetic at best; destructive at worst. We either manage degrowth consciously and responsibly: or unconsciously and irresponsibly …which is the neoliberal solution. The ‘climate economy’ is a science fiction framing to avoid the inevitable conclusion – modernity is killing the planet.
I don’t think anybody will dispute the weather has been warming the past century (though it has slowed/stopped over the past fifteen years or more). The point is this isn’t unusual or scary. Climate shifts all the damn time. if you had been living in the 8th century you would have seen a far more intense warming kick off. And if you’d lived in the 15th century you’d have seen the winters deteriorate perceptibly over your lifetime.
It’s normal for climate to change. Fucking bizarre the way the propagandists have made people scared of something so totally natural.
Warming has stopped over the past fifteen years? Really? Where are you; on Mars? 🙂 According to the long-period oscillations between glacials and interglacials, brought on by long-period cyclical variations in the Earth’s orbit, and by cyclical variations in sun-spot activity, the Earth should be sliding into a new cooling period, as it has on this long cycle many times before. But this time it isn’t. Wonder why…
The warming halted some time ago. They just try to hide the fact with deceptive headlines and bogus statistics that carefully elide certain data.
You must recall the claims that the oceans have absorbed all the heat and that’s why the planet isn’t warming?A complete piece of guesswork for which almost zero data exists.
Glaciers in Yosemite are growing. So is sea ice in some places.
They DO lie to you. Just check out the other side of the story. The scientists who don’t agree by can’t get papers published. Don’t be brainwashed into self censoring, that’s exactly what the fake Green neoliberals want
Data can be and is doctored. I do not need to dispute what I choose not to accept.
If manmade change to weather is occurring I would call out weather manipulation technologies that have been ‘internationally banned’ as weapons for many decades but not everyone complies with ‘international law’.
The possibility of pivotal influence on already flowing relational balance may be able to divert – for example – the jet stream – to bring the ‘polar vortex’ down to mix with tropical air. The result would be extreme weather. However I also hold that this happens anyway periodically – and that our Cosmology has it backwards – as does our Biology. The terrain is the inducer of actions or events in resonant pathways of expression. the Galactic or in local terms the Solar Field is the context in which and of which we are experiencing the ‘shifting cyclic spirals of change’ that are no less ‘internal’ than ‘external’ because such divisions are entirely a matter of mental filtering. Perception can be and is filtered and distorted to serve its active purpose. Purpose CAN be brought to awareness and yet only true purpose can abide awareness. Thus perceptions are made to replace a clear or direct awareness with images and forms of asserted or accepted identity.
Addiction to image and form or indeed to ‘model’ or any narrative asserted dogma is evasion or denial of truly felt knowing for an illusion of control in a world of chaos read as the necessity of compulsive control – which demands sacrifice of the Living.
Change is the nature of the ever changing – and the fantasy of forms of ‘perfection’ are set in futility within such a flux. Perfection is not in the FORMS but in the balance points of wholeness or contextual embrace of apparently polarised exclusivity. All true movement of perspective in the world of perception is of and as a wholeness that ‘mind’ has learned NOT to see BY the act of a highly selective perception.
Human identity in image and form is periodically undone by the very nature of its dissociation from any true relationship. Its own self-attack manifest as every kind of ill, that is not recognized as a messenger but further attacked in ‘War on Symptoms’.
The attempt to get identity for our self from others and world is itself a symptom of lacking awareness of that which identifies us perfectly. The invested belief in separateness as ‘possession and control’ operates destructive to the awareness of wholeness in all.
The ideas of the ‘electric Universe’ go a long way in undoing the physics based on separated objects in a vacuum ruled by gravity.
Invested identity in maintaining darkness is when a prison is associated with security and personal status or privilege. No one want to lose what they think they have to a greater fear of losing all that they have. But that does not and can not in any way stop change. But the attempt to anticipate and position so as to be in a point of advantage is the art of timing relative to active purpose. Purpose can be conflicted and thus nurture conflict as its primary means of sustainability by masking in the new ideas coming from the cusp of change so as to – in a sense – capture the opposition. But truth doesn’t oppose illusions and so the illusion of a war against truth fuels the justification and call to war as if in righteousness.
At one level this is ‘war against’ or fear of Nature. the demonisation of the true works the progressive destruction of consciousness by its own consent. That this occurs by deceit is because deceit is the currency of the private sense of mind as an autonomous authority unto itself – set apart, against and over others and world in wish if not in truth.
It is such a strange form of logic (or lack thereof) that assumes simply because as we know capitalism and the wealthy oligarchs at the top of the capitalist pyramid will try to weaponize and profit from ANYTHING whatsoever – including the very destruction of the habitability of the planet – that somehow any evidence they are actually doing just that somehow invalidates or indicates manipulation or bias in the scientific consensus behind climate-change.
Obviously both things can be true simultaneously. The climate can be reacting in actual real-time (not geologic time) to our massive inputs of carbon dioxide, AND those profiting from the current economic regime profiting from this can and are also doing everything in their power to profit from any attempts to address our dilemma or consider alternatives to business as usual.
Having spent years studying the science, including the always unfolding new research, and including the comparisons we can make to the past by analyzing ancient ice core samples for example – that calling climate-change a “theory” seems about as intellectually honest as suggesting that it is simply a “theory” that the earth is round rather than flat. That’s my “opinion” – I realize yours may differ.
It appears to me that the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex that both prop up the current neoliberal order have “weaponized” the growing realization by people across the political spectrum that these forces are by and large a group of amoral greedy psychopaths who care noting for humanity or a habitable planet – transmuting that realization into the notion that if the Pentagon for example validates it’s concern about how climate-change is impacting its operations, well, that must mean “climate-change is a lie,” because, well, the “Pentagon promotes it as true.” Hardly a rational argument, though one I can encounter daily should I wish to waste my time debating it.
http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf
Indeed. And I also think there’s an awful lot of ‘shooting the messengers’ going on. Yes. some have vested, even nefarious, interests at heart, but most others in my opinion do not, they are just good and honest people trying to do good works.
Should be a bonanza for Goldman Sachs, trading in Global Warming Certificates like medieval Papal Indulgencies, with a Green Taliban to enforce it all. And plenty of Macron style Green Taxes for all the peasants.
As I warned many, many, moons ago. What confuses people though, is that the science is sound – the agenda not. Too many people can only identify that the agenda is nepharious: therefore the science must be corrupt too?
Take the Club of Rome: funded by a corporate fascist who’s who. They sponsored, among others, the much dissed “Limits to Growth” in 1972. Corrupt funding = corrupt science?
Well, no. The LtG now has over 40 years of corroborating evidence; has been re-visited; and had several meta-analysis (including by Charles A S Hall – who is definitely not corrupt) to verify it. The underlying science – the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – is sound, even common sensical …we cannot have unlimited growth within a finite world system. The axiom that should end all talk of capitalism: but doesn’t because of an imaginary negentropic economy that is the socio-political basis of civilised culture.
The science is sound: the depopulation agenda – based on the science – is anti-human and fascist.
Similarly: Cory is one of the few who can see that corporate fascist agenda is a threat to all humanity – not because the Human Impact convergence crises are false – they are realer than real – but because the proposed mitigation policies are an excuse to financialise ‘natural capital’ and socially engineer ‘human capital’ to consent to the profiteering of the TNCs. Which, of course, is basically evil. And a potential extinction level threat to all life on earth.
Framing it around ‘climate change’ is the neoliberal branding and corporate behaviour change agenda. That is because they can propose a decarbonisation and sustainable growth agenda – framed around the SDGs – that seems plausible, and present it as the Green New Deal or Climate Emergency. But the proposals are science fiction for the gullible.
Unfortunately, ecological luminaries – from Porritt, Monbiot, Naomi Klein to Bill McKibben – have been taken in …or are part of the agenda in Mckibben and Monbiot’s case. Then there is poor Greta, and XR. Even Jonathan Cook and Media Lens have been drawn in (very politely critical of Cory in Cook’s case; not so polite in ML’s case).
WWF are part of it. They are also a key part of the ‘Multi Stakeholder Governance’ (MSG) agenda for ‘Global Governance’ – as a CSO front for the TNCs. But that is a whole other ball game.
There should be no argument that the broader Human Impact crises are threatening civilisation: but there is. Using EROI analysis – unlike framing it as a reductive climate change agenda – we can actually measure our progress to collapse. But this is ignored: or replaced by a negentropic imaginary hopium. Human ingenuity cannot replace extracted minerals. Extractivism that has quadrupled since 1970: it won’t quadruple again.
Forty years I have been waiting for us to start to design a strategy for life after the Petroleum Interval …to develop a human scale plan to live in peace harmony on a finite planet. It should be apodeictic and an axiomatic logical certainty that the plan for peaceful living will not come from the neoliberal corporatocracy. Or their socio-political proconsuls. It has to come from us.
The neoliberal fascist agenda is trying to deceive us: only, maybe not as much as we are trying to deceive ourselves. As I said weeks ago: knowing what an Ecological Civilisation can and can’t be is an existential necessity. The climate change agenda is the new neoliberal Zeitgeist. Not to put too fine a point on it; but decisions made in the next few years will determine the fate of humanity. Assuming the neoliberal TNCs – or their ‘pro-business’ political representatives – will make the correct decisions would likely prove a fatal mistake.
Excellent clarification and arguments BigB.
This is an interesting read at Principia Scientific, has a lot of salient points, especially BTL.
https://principia-scientific.org/sciences-untold-scandal-professional-societies-sell-out-on-climate-change/
You need to be aware that an inner core of the ‘establishment’ is completely without identification or allegiance to anything excepting as it is useful to them for marketising and weaponising – ie possession and control.
The polarised view of social and political thought is a manipulative deceit that serves the politics of mind capture – the controllers and their golems, or predators and prey/assets/proxies. The simple answer is where the problem is stripped of its concealment. But to those who package toxic debt in complex financial or other instruments, to the simpleminded trust in a rigged systemic substitution for truth (aka ‘lies’), the apparent simplicity is an illusion that suits them so as not to face, address or own their own complicity.
A captured ‘media’ attempts to control and direct the narrative. You are unwise to accept anything from such as source at face value. The mind is predicated upon its own survival as if IT is YOU. Minds thus tacitly ‘conspire’ to agree to keep truth unconscious in a masking social reinforcement that is then asserted and defended as ‘self and world’.
Ideas jumps across apparent divides because there are no such compartments in truth.No one has a monopoly on ideas and like parasites, negative or self-destructive thought can and does kill its host while jumping to another.
Getting someone ELSE to pay (the consequence of denials, lies, evils) is the idea of a private or personal escape or salvation – bought at the cost of seeing ‘others’ as worthy of hate or pain or rejection and thus unworthy of love. A key psychic truth is that we see ourself in others – whether we recognize our judgemental denials or act them out as our ‘Reality’. And so the nature of arrogance and ignorance is the accusation of its OWN sins – set in the ‘other’ – and attacked, denied or killed there.
The ‘establishment of fear as power and protector corrupts the mind to then protect the fear against the truth of anyone or anything. Owning what is OURS is the key to releasing what does not belong to us – so that it can return to its rightful owner. Everything comes ‘home’ in the end because in truth it never truly left. Denials and projections may interfere with conscious awareness, but not with the underlying truth that they both attack AND depend on, to even seem to exist in your name. In this sense there MUST be an enemy to justify and maintain the ‘established’ mindset of defences designed to perpetuate conflict – and never to truly resolve or heal it.
Pendulums swing like pendulums do – but never to actually eradicate the appearance and identification in polarised and conflicted identity – UNTIL the desire to heal and be healed is accepted in place of the idea of revenge, in guilted grievance and demanded sacrifice.
Don’t worry, though, Al Gore and Di Caprio and Emma Thompson will still be able to jet set around the planet picking up their Global Warming Awards. That’s the main thing.
Nothing to do with science and everything to do with belief and opinion and the attempt to manipulate the opinion and belief of others.
Probabilities are based on currently asserted or accepted variables.
Real science has been replaced with (computer) modelling. The ‘Model’ demands that facts be conformed to comply or be sacrificed. The ‘Model’ is working extremely well in an extremely distorted way for an extremely few who are so disproportionately wealthy or powerful as to exert controlling influence on everything downstream – or in simple parlance – the foxes run the henhouse.
You are under the religion of experts in a time of unparalleled fragmentation and corruption.
Your ‘worldview’ demands ‘conformity and compliance’ and seeks power to enforce it by fair means or foul, under the unquestioned presumption of being right. That is your payoff. That is what you get out of it. Or to put it the other way around, you outsource the ‘wrong’ to ‘others’.
For better or for worse the nature of a lie is to hide in the truth – where else can it possibly conceal itself? And so any FORM of truth becomes the masking form for denied or concealed evils.
We stand on the shoulders of giant mistakes – and yet when huge budgets and privileged reputations are at stake, the uncovering of these mistakes will be denied at great costs that then demands further and deeper sacrifice of integrity to cover up or protect the cover up.
We are very deeply entangled in lies that we associate with private or personal protection.
The cumulative effect of data gathered to serve a purpose of private agenda and personal status, power, or protection is that of marketising and weaponising change instead of embracing a genuinely new perspective.
Anything invested with identity is protected AS self, and by appeal to identify AGAINST evils such as predicted death and disaster, are millions induced to become prey for a predator class whose speciality lies in the manipulation of minds through the operation of complex devices of deceit.
The crisis of change has both danger and opportunity. If one focuses on the danger as a fear directed agenda, then there is no opportunity BUT to give power to fear and seek refuge in powerlessness as a magical ‘answer’ to ancient fear. Enforced austerity under carbon guilt is not ‘morally’ righteous but rather a mind-capture of human guilt – outsource by Corporate device onto the body politic.
CO2 is being falsely demonised. But don’t let truth get in the way of a good story!
Not at all Binra.
I’ve said earlier that the actual truth of the matter, climate science, may indeed end up laying in the 5% contrarian view, or beyond, rather than in the 95% ‘certainty’ opinion.
However, most of us are not experts in these fields. Therefore, as we seek guidance, for example, from our doctors about an ailment, and they might tell me with 95% confidence that unless I change my unhealthy ways, I’ll progressively become more ill, or even die, then rather than focusing on my contrarian reaction in the 5% segment and thinking “what a load of bollocks, I’m not dumb, and he’s wrong, he’s only selling drugs for Big Pharma and to give himself a nice pension”, well, I, and most likely you, would take with gratitude his 95% confident diagnosis, take the meds, and hope for the best.
Frank
Nothing is more blinding than presuming to know – and nothing more binding than presenting oneself as an expert. If you have a medical advisor who considers your unhealthy ways as part of your condition you are fortunate. Most regard patients as lacking pharmaceutical management and interventions that run in lockstep with the ‘unhealthy ways’. That are in fact a leading cause of sickness and death under guise of saving us from sickness and untimely death.
I don’t have to be contrarian to refuse to accept my doctor’s training as anything other than a highly specific technician’s toolbox. Tests, results; medications. Adverse effects; medications.
The medical state coins the term contrarian because its sees a non compliance with top down mandate. Look very closely at the way language is misused to frame deceits. It is invisible UNTIL you see it. I called it the state because the state is effectively owned or captured by transnational corporate cartel agenda. It edits and changes the law like a cancer edits and changes the blood (food/energy) supply.
To the unquestioning acceptance of conventional belief – non acceptance can only seem to be ‘denial’ but what is unquestioning acceptance BUT unconscious denial? (That then ‘sees’ its own purpose in ‘others’).
In EVERY field of influence, a mind of corruption has replaced genuine relationship and communication such that “Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. ~ Michael Ellner
I do actually have an excellent doctor who will always, unless it’s something immediately urgent, look at the situation holistically. He’s encouraged me to meditate, and prescribes herbal remedies / phytotherapy when appropriate in the first instance. When needed, the conventional medicine is applied. He’s probably saved my life with his approach. That’s why I may have more trust in experts than others.
And you are the one who decides to accept his advice. Is this because you give power away or because you sense a genuine relationship?
I have trust in what I decide to give trust to – and not a blank cheque for any seeming expert in any specialisation.
I am not addressing your personal relationships but the underlying issue of giving power away from a presumption of powerlessness – to whatever form of ‘protection’ is attracted or invoked by such a state.
Before the information presented is acted on, I recommend noticing the way in which it is presented. manipulative intent has noticable signature characteristics. No one need be expert to ‘smell a rat’ – but discernment depends on honesty or transparanecy of self. If we don’t WANT to hear the truth then we will be attracted to hearing something ELSE and investing it with identity. No one welcomes a truth that they fear will damn them. Fear distorts the mind.
I used to have respect for Corbett, on political and economic matters at least. Now it appears that he’s gone loopy with daft theories.
Corbett has no credibility, he believes population isn’t a problem & bases his entire theory on Malthusianism.
Ecologically (pure science) speaking humanity has surpassed its carrying capacity hundreds if not thousands of years ago we are just waiting for the wrath of mother to show her displeasure & enforce the law.
Off topic, can’t see anywhere else to post my question:
is OffG planning to include an article or opinion on the arrest and beating up by the Russian authorities of the journalist Golunov?
Write one and send it to us. What point are you trying to make?
? No too much of a point really, other than it’s pretty shocking news and perhaps other journalists might make a statement in support of him?
I think we’d have to wait to see if the journo deserved it or not quite frankly. I have a sinking suspicion this golunov may be a “liberal”
Nah fuck him he appears to be a liberal who has been given a coordinated press campaign by the liberal papers. I bet they claim Putin knows him personally or ordered it like they claimed of every Russian leader in existence since 1917 except for the two good little boys Gorbachev and Yeltsin who had very few claims made against them
Ah, now I get it! Journalists with whom I may disagree can be beaten up and I don’t care? So you support corruption, because that’s what he worked on exposing?
Where exactly are you getting your gold-plated sure-fire information about Golunov, Frank? Personally, I’ve yet to see any complete, authoritative account of the story that seems trustworthy. (Please note that – like Wikideceivia – I don’t count the Permanent Bullshit Blizzard of the Anglozionist empire’s lamestream media presstitutes as even getting onto the first ladder-rung of reliable reportage. They’re 100% discounted. I’d have to see something more reliable than their politicised, weaponised mind-sewage, to take it seriously. And as for Berkshire Hunt’s crocodile tears over Golunov…)
But yes, in principle, ALL people doing journalism, whether official professionals or citizen volunteers, should have their sacred right to investigate and report supported unequivocally.
Here on RT:
https://www.rt.com/russia/461493-golunov-support-newspapers-headlines/
Sounds like another Magnitsky martyr.
Despicable.
As we rightly support Assange, we should be calling out the framing of a journalist on drugs charges who was investigating well connected Russian criminals. Not of the same scale, I agree, but it’s the principles at stake. As much as I may admire Russia for certain things, it has remained stubbornly corrupt and criminal over the decades and it needs calling out.
Frank Poster – So do you have any credible evidence that this “arrest” is “news” – in other than in the way the recently reported murders of multiple N.Korean’s recently was – “news” – reported throughout Western MSM as fact of course – and of course believed by everyone who is “respectable” – that is until said ‘dead people’ showed up quite alive. How odd indeed. Evidence is hardly to be assumed simply because a story is published by Western media in case you haven’t been paying attention. What if any reputable “evidence” do you have to confirm these events?
By the way, what does the BBC have to say lately about the whereabouts of the Skripnals who it appears UK authorities have simply disappeared in complete violation of their rights as Russian citizens ? Or does the BBC simply not care to ask that question since that particular anti-Russian psyop has done it’s job, so the BBC trying to stay on top of things propaganda wise is more interested in the current – “Russia, Russia, Russia” – line it needs to promote. Just wondering.
Gary, I’m not comparing the Skripals with Golunov. The whole Skripal affair is a disgraceful and dangerous western agencies / Mossad psychop.
Back to Golunov, RT is reporting it, and they are also referring to 3 Russian newspapers reporting it. Based on all that, plus seeing photos of him behind bars and looking extremely anxious in one, and crying in the other, all together it’s reasonable to assume that he’s been banged up in a cell.
Given what he’s been investigating, it’s also not unreasonable to assume that he’s been framed in order to silence him.
In view of what Assange was reporting, it is not unreasonable to assume that he was framed in order to silence him – but all the political and media establishment in the UK/ Sweden/ Australia/ US, seem unable or unwilling to make the connection.
Neither of them were released after a couple of days, with the support of the mainstream media, and those involved in the case being suspended/ investigated/ dismissed.
It is instructive to note the differences in how these cases were dealt with by “authoritarian” Russia, and those paragons of judicial probity, UK/ Sweden/ Australia/ US.
The way to become a writer or a journalist is to, um, do what the moderator suggests.
They did. Russian mainstream media broadly supportive of the Russian government, like RT, criticised the arrest.
How does this compare with the protracted MSM campaigns of smear and vilification against both Assange and Snowden?
What point are you trying to make?!
Especially to a non-journalist or writer.
I think the issue is that whenever a journalist in Russia is arrested by the police on supposed drug charges and they rough up the unfortunate reporter, their actions somehow are a microcosmic example of how the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin hounds seekers of truth, and of how little freedom Russian people have to criticise the Kremlin.
Whereas when the Australian Federal Police invade the home of a journalist called Annika Smethurst and toss things around to find evidence that could reveal the name of the whistleblower supplying information about government spying, or raid the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to find files that might also reveal the names of whistleblowers who spoke to the ABC about Australian troops committing human rights violations in Afghanistan, those actions in no way reflect badly on the Australian government and the state of press freedom and democracy in the Land Down Under Slumber.
I’m making the point that he was an innocent journalist who was framed for his investigations. Clearly the Russian Interior Minister has looked into it and agreed, he’s just dropped the case:
https://www.rt.com/russia/461600-drug-case-against-russian-journalist-dropped/
By the way, what point were YOU trying to make? Really?
This is a business that has just blown up and more details will emerge over the next few days.
This character seems to be an alternative media figure critical of the government, based in Latvia.
He was arrested on drug charges on what seems to be weak evidence. He was released from custody and it looks like the case against him will be dropped.
It is suggested that evidence against him was planted. This may or may not be true.
The arrest was criticised by mainstream Russian media that is normally dismissed as state controlled. They supported this figure. If there was some conspiracy against him, it was thrown out very quickly after the evidence was examined.
What is instructive is the comparison with the Assange case, or Snowden.
Politicians and public figures in Russia did not call for this individual to be murdered or assassinated, as is the case with both Snowden and Assange.
This person did not have to flee for his life, and take refuge in a foreign country, with planes being hijacked by his own country in efforts to arrest him – like Snowden.
He did not have to seek refuge in a foreign embassy for 7 years to avoid extradition on trumped up charges, facing a farcical secret trial in a secret kangaroo court with secret evidence, and 175 years in prison.
He was not subjected to a mainstream media smear and vilification campaign, unlike both Assange and Snowden.
The mainstream media did not instantly and uncritically accept that this person was guilty of allegations against him, unlike Assange.
The case against this man was not dropped, then repeatedly reinstated after political interference, without any charges being brought – unlike Assange.
Instead this man was arrested on apparently dubious, possibly even planted, evidence and promptly released when this became clear, with his case being highlighted sympathetically in the Russian mainstream media. It seems that some of the police officers involved are being suspended and may be dismissed. No doubt more information will come to light shortly.
How does the case of this man compare with that of Assange, or Snowden?
Who do you think has most cause to feel aggrieved or hard done by?
I don’t know the details of this Golunov case but on following up on this article,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48580217
I read:
“Much of Russia’s media is controlled by the state and Russia is ranked 83rd out of 100 countries for press freedom by Freedom House.”
Freedom House? Over to Wiki:
“Freedom House is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) U.S. government-funded non-governmental organization (NGO) that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.”
The “501(c)(3)” just means the organisation is exempt from federal income tax.
Wiki continues:
“It describes itself as a “clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world”, although critics have stated that the organization is biased towards US interests.”
A U.S.-based U.S. government-funded (but also “non-governmental” organization) may be biased towards US interests? Get away!
Ivan Golunov writes for Meduza, a Russian-language news organisation based in Riga, in Latvia.
Meduza’s Managing Director is Kevin Rothrock who also writes for The Moscow Times. In previous life before 2012, Rothrock was a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.
Need I say anything about the American Enterprise Institute or will this link suffice?
Irrelevant. The Russian Minister of the Interior has just intervened and dropped the case against him, as eported on RT.
https://www.rt.com/russia/461600-drug-case-against-russian-journalist-dropped/
I rest my case:
Drug case against Russian journalist dropped by Interior Minister
To the many apparently ‘open-minded’ Trotskyists here, sorry, you are anything but open minded. You are stuck in the primitive binary thinking of USA=satan, Russia=angel.
Yes, the modern US and UK are appalling bullies, imperialists, murderers, torturers. And Russia is badly maligned by the west, but framing every event in the bipolar good/bad narrative is not helpful in ensuring that great and christian Russia improves further. Evil exists, even in Russia, and it needs calling out.