Flagging the False Flags

[Mark]

Yet another false flag operation, the Oklahoma City bombing. Was Timothy McVeigh a patsy, or as Fred Burks suggests, a Manchurian candidate?

You can always spot a government coverup. Tapes are erased, stories change, black boxes disappear, films are confiscated, and on and on.....

Oklahoma City bombing tapes erased

So the truck bomb alone couldn't have done it and there were other explosives planted in the building that apparently didn't go off. I guess the Murrah Building bombing wasn't as well thought out as Operation Northwoods. There wasn't enough evidence pointing to foreign terrorists to justify a war. Of course there wasn't with 9/11 either. Some blurry photos at the wrong airport, a miraculously unsinged passport, some supposedly fanatical Moslems who were drinking and womanizing, names of alleged hijackers who turned out to be still alive, no black boxes from the planes at the WTC, all the film confiscated at the Pentagon, and on and on.....

[pan]

Still don't understand how you can say that Ethiopia's population growth is sustainable when clearly it isn't sustainable in Ethiopia. Yes, doesn't have the lasting effects and global effects of capitalist overconsumption on the planet but - in Ethiopia's territory - they have populated themselves beyond sustainability.

The article I cited stated that this was due to Ethiopia's history and lack of industrial base which would allow them, like the capitalist and former colonial power U.K. to import all of the food they need - to suggest that Ethiopia just lacks the capitalist power to not be unpopulated directly refutes the central thrust of your concerns - and this is why I insist upon AND. The world will not be able to sustain the human population due to overconsumption but, even if that is controlled (and that is a mighty big if), Ethiopia still won't be able to sustain its overpopulation at its current levels - especially if food distribution becomes more local.

You rationalize China's one-child policy which has led to infanticide of girls (not to say anything of the extreme infringement on the rights of individuals to make choices about their own lives) as the appropriate response to prevent overpopulation yet you deny that overpopulation is really a problem. This requires such sophistry to pull off it is staggering.

China banned the driving of autos prior to the Olympics because their air pollution is so thick. Yet you dismiss the rapid and accelerating industrialization in the most populous country in the world as not being of their making - somehow reinventing history so that China was still not an independent nation.

You also ignore both BO and my statements that clearly state that we definitely agree with you understanding of overconsumption driven by capitalism in order to condemn us as supporting the racist fatties because we also insist that the problem must be seen as one of both overconsumption and overpopulation.

You complain that we use personal attacks, not logic and facts - yet you were the one who started this whole discussion with a labeling of BO - AND you seem unwilling or unable to deal with logic that contradicts your private hegemony in a rational manner. You simply dismiss, ignore or rely upon sophistry to avoid inconvenient information.

[Mark]

Pan, I'm saying that Ethiopia's population growth does not threaten the survival of the planet. I suspect that Westchester County alone probably contributes more to global warming than the entire country of Ethiopia. The executives of only two corporations, AIG and Citi-bank, whose salaries are more than a million dollars a year, as a group, probably contribute more to global warming than the entire country of Ethiopia.

If you think overpopulation is an equivalent problem to overconsumption, then you should be supporting rather than condemning population control programs in China. Which is a greater infringement on human rights, limiting population or destroying the planet? Nixon made a deal with China because he wanted them to help us oppose Russia. China opened itself to U.S. investments and adopted a capitalist lifestyle. It is now a large polluter. The same population without capitalism, would not threaten the survival of the planet.

Given that half the U.S. contribution to global warming and more than half of our national budget is due to our military, if we cut our overconsumption by half (that half), Africa and Latin America would be able to get rid of the fascist dictators we've imposed on them to protect U.S. business interests, restore democratically elected socialist governments so that their resources could be used for their own benefit instead of ours, and would then, as long as they did not adopt our consumer lifestyles, be able to support much larger populations than they have now and provide them with much better nutrition.

The discussion didn't start with my labeling of BO, it started with BO saying, "India is fucked. Way too overpopulated to do much of anything. What they need is a massive die-off. Then some major fumigation."

That's what you're defending, Pan.

Look at the last article BO posted. That's not insisting that the problem "be seen as one of both overconsumption and overpopulation," that's saying that overconsumption of climate-changing petrochemicals is moral, and that it is a human right rather than a problem.

[pan]

A couple of things from your long post:

You left out Hanauer's mention of being homeless in you list of things we should do without. Does this mean you believe that it is OK to expect housing?

I think it was on the previous incarnation of RBC that Waldo started a rather extensive discussion on cheap and low-impact housing

We've also had extensive discussions on alternative transportation, self-sustaining food (consider the Grow Your Own group), alternative sources for energy, etc. Since moving to the ning site our discussion have been more centered around the problem rather than methods of dealing with it on a personal level - perhaps we feel more pessimistic now. The Solutions(?) discussion I started was an attempt to revive the exchange of ideas that we engaged in before but it hasn't been the liveliest of freds.

Point is this: based upon many, many, many discussions that we have participated in prior to your arrival here at this site, the only conclusion that one can rationally come to is that - when it comes to the need to change the obscene waste of resources/creation of pollutants that has come from the unsustainable capitalism that is based in the creation of debt and the creation of the perception of need for frivolous products - you are preaching to the choir here.

Not saying you should stop, not saying that it doesn't need to be continually put out there - just that all of the empirical evidence demonstrates that we completely agree with you about the crisis created by capitalism.

Based upon discussion I have had with conservatives (both in the real and virtual worlds) I believe that it is unrealistic to think that they will embrace a lifestyle informed by sustenance rather than luxury. This is a meme that they must be seduced into AND it is far more likely that they will accept lower-impact substitutions for their current luxury items rather than being told they have to go without. The U.S., E.U. as well as China and India will not accept mere sustenance whether or not this is the correct or moral way to go.

The only pragmatic solution is one of substitution rather that sacrifice of luxury that is perceived as basic needs.

[Mark]

I left out housing because I agree that cheap, low-impact housing is sustainable.

The fatties don't have to embrace anything, and we don't have to seduce them into embracing anything. All we need to do is keep putting out the truth. Like Waldo said, "The fatties don't have to listen. They only have to die. Once there are enough women in any counter-meme (like "9-11 Truth") the fatties are toast."

The conservatives who are committing cold-blooded, calculated genocide for oil don't deserve molly-coddling. The capitalist consumers who are more concerned with having cars, central heat, and refrigerators, than with opposing genocide and stopping global warming, need to take a hard-headed look at the bottom line. Being able to pass on a habitable planet to our grandchildren has to be more important than our own creature comforts.

There is no possibility whatsoever that conservatives might be seduced into sacrificing luxuries and be willing to accept substitutions. GM let Detroit and the auto industry die rather than produce cars that got higher mileage. The duty of corporations is to maximize profits to their stockholders, not to consider their own survival, no less that of the planet.

There are some really wonderful things happening right now. For the past twenty years I've gone to average of one movie a year. I'll watch documentary films online or when there are free (or "donation requested--nobody turned away") documentary films being shown locally, but I won't pay to watch a movie at a theater unless it is paradigm shattering. In the past couple of weeks I've gone to three movies. "The Age of Stupid," is about global warming. "Crude" is about how oil is destroying the Amazon. And "Capitalism: A Love Story" names names and kicks ass. I may go to another. I've got a reserve in on the book, but I think "No Impact Man" is worth the price of a ticket because I'm going to learn more about how to reduce my consumption and be able to have a good laugh at the same time. I don't expect the 1% of Americans who control more wealth than the bottom 80% combined to see any of those films. Like Waldo said, they don't have to. These are powerful counter-memes and many people will see them.

People who perceive luxuries as basic needs are deluded. When their false perceptions lead them to commit war crimes to obtain luxuries, they are criminally insane. This coming economic collapse, according to many futurists, is going to be much worse than the Great Depression. Sometimes we learn the hard way that the old ways are better than the new ways. I think what we're going to learn this time, is that you can do more for your own survival and the planet's survival with a pitchfork than with petroleum. How you choose to use that pitchfork is up to you. ;)

[pan]

Yes, the information is out there but how many people are actually viewing it? As you pointed out with your report on the showing of The Age of Stupid, there were very few in the audience.

This is one of the reasons why Michael Moore is so demonized - he has a mass audience. It is also one of the reasons why there is such a concerted effort to discount Climate Change.

The problem is that the counter-revolutionaries have more resources to put out their counter-memes. Witness the health insurance debate current to the U.S.: the one plan that Obama admitted is the only one that really would solve the problem - single payer - was even put on the table. And the very people who would benefit from reform are the loudest ones shrieking about the gubmint killing granny.

As Moore recently commented to Olbermann, if he is successful in getting his message out he will put himself out of business - I don't think that is going to happen any time soon.

[pan]

Mark writes:The people living on this continent before the European invasion numbered in the millions.

Not sure what your point is. The current population in North America is exponentially larger than what it was prior to the European immigration. There is absolutely no way that the primarily hunter-gatherer economy of that time would sustain the current population. Are you suggesting that we return to the economies of pre-European N.A.? If so, isn't the continent overpopulated?

You currently reside in L.A. - the poster child for the overconsuming lifestyle - which even if all the concrete and grassy yards were converted into victory gardens couldn't possibly sustain its population without piping in water from the north, which has had devastating environmental impact.. Clearly, in the territory where you reside, overconsumption has made overpopulation possible which multiplies the effect of overconsumption.

AND........before you try to make what I stated into something else.....I'm not talking about just the brown Angelenos who live in East L.A........I'm talking about the fatties AND the middle class who are struggling to pay their mortgages AND the artists who drive hundreds of miles every week to piece meal together enough part-time gigs in different cities throughout the Basin and the Inland Empire. I'm talking about the total number of Americans that have destroyed that once beautiful basin through Overpopulation AND Overconsumption.

[Mark]

Get a map, or google it, Pan. I live in San Diego and San Diego is not in L.A. The overconsumption is similar, but many of us are striving for more sustainable lifestyles instead of defending the status quo.

You ask, "Are you suggesting that we return to the economies of pre-European N.A.?"

Yes.

You going to tell me that you've never seen Charlie Chaplin's classic film, "Modern Times"? Fuck industrialization and let's go back to the horse it rode in on. Industrialization is crazy-making and planet-killing, and horses are not.

[pan]

Sorry about confusing S.D. with L.A. - I'm a San Franciscan so the whole Southland is just "down there" to me ;-)

My dad sent me a video commemorating the sesquicentennial of Iowa's statehood. The thing that struck me was the discussion about the huge change of the culture of farming that occurred with the industrialization of the farm. How every farm had stock animals and the farmer had an intimate relationship with these animals that helped him cultivate and harvest the land.

Recently my dad told me that there are cultivators now that plant 48 rows at a time and how, when he was a kid he planted two rows per pass.

They now have computerized, completely automated milking parlors where the dairy farmer doesn't even have to have any real contact with his animals. As my cousin recently said, "you raise pigs to pay the mortgage, you have dairy cows because you love the animal" - where is the love of the animal if you never interact with it?

There have been some positive changes: no-till farming that leaves the rubble of the past year's harvest and doesn't leave turned soil vulnerable to erosion, less overfat livestock are the norm and there is a miniscule but much larger proportion of organic and/or permaculture approaches. But most, if not all of these changes have come about due to economic factors.

Unfortunately, all of the foresight and good intentions in the world ain't gonna mean diddly when it comes to the bottom line in this world. Until it is shown that financial gains can be made by making less of an impact, or the whole thing completely crashes and burns it isn't going to really change.

[Mark]

Pan writes, "Until it is shown that financial gains can be made by making less of an impact, or the whole thing completely crashes and burns it isn't going to really change."

Small financial gains can be made while making less of an impact. The enormous financial gains that multinational corporations are accustomed to, cannot.

That's why the whole thing is going to crash and burn. Millionaires are more interested in becoming trillionaires, and trillionaires are more interested in continuing to be trillionaires and making more trillions, than in preventing the crash and burn. Short-terms profits are made by short-sighted people. Rockefeller figures that all it takes to compensate for his overconsumption is for a few million poor people to die. Then he can go on living in the manner to which he is accustomed. He doesn't give a fuck about global warming because he's old and the worst of it won't happen during his lifetime. And he and the other trillionaires would rather spend a few million in chump change funding overpopulation groups than own one fewer jet plane or a few dozen fewer luxury cars.

Population Control, Nazis, and the U.N!
by Anton Chaitkin

ROCKEFELLER AND MASS MURDER

"The Rockefeller Foundation is the prime sponsor of public relations for the United Nations' drastic depopulation program. Evidence in the possession of a growing number of researchers in America, England, and Germany demonstrates that the Foundation and its corporate, medical, and political associates organized the racial mass murder program of Nazi Germany."
----------------------------------

THE ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION ON POPULATION GROWTH
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I just posted the first paragraph of the first article, and only a link to the second item my google search turned up, but this article, while lengthy, is worth reposting in its entirety, as it speaks directly to the discussions we've been having here:

Liberal Philanthropy and the "Birth" of Population Control Environmentalism
by Michael Barker

Many environmentalists can rightly claim that they (as a social movement) have made valiant efforts to temper the relentless destruction wrought on Planet Earth by its human inhabitants (those luxuriating in their consumer lifestyles in the 'developed world' have waged the war against life most relentlessly). Environmentalists can even claim to have successfully prodded many governments into grudgingly paying lip service to the rhetoric of environmentalism, as evidenced by many governments' adoption of the principles embodied in the omnipotent concept that is 'sustainable development.'

However, what many environmental groups are loath to discuss, especially the largest ones, is their (ongoing) cooption by political and corporate elites. While the elitist foundations of the conservation and preservation movements are commonly acknowledged, the elite sponsorship that the environmental movement received during the 1960s is less well understood.1 This article aims to correct this deficit and to contribute to the growing literature on the cooption of social movements by examining the role of liberal philanthropic foundations (and some of their most influential proponents) in facilitating the rise of environmentalism.

Liberal philanthropists have had a profound effect in shaping the contours of civil society, actively influencing social change through a process alternately referred to as either channeling or co-option (for further details see Green Left Weekly #752). Indeed, by institutionalizing their philanthropy in liberal foundations, leading capitalists have funded all manner of progressive social causes in an attempt to preempt potentially revolutionary social change and maintain the status quo.

Perhaps the first environmental historian to critique the influence of foundations on the environmental movement was Professor Robert Gottlieb: he noted in 1993 that foundations "[a]s much as anyone else . . . had become part of the process of creating the environmental policy system of the 1970s," creating a "new breed of environmental organization, with expert staff, especially lawyers and scientists, and a more sophisticated lobbying or political presence in Washington."

This article will focus specifically on the role of the two liberal foundations which provided the environmental movement with the most monetary support during its early days -- that is, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations -- by critically examining the ways in which their longstanding population control interests have crucially influenced the development of the environmental movement.

An important area of foundation funding that is now explicitly linked to the environmental agenda -- arguably to its detriment -- is population research, and one of the most influential groups initially involved in this field was the Population Council, which was founded in 1952 with a US$100,000 gift from John D. Rockefeller III (JDR3). In 1954 the Ford Foundation started funding the Population Council's work, and during the Council's first 23 years they provided it with a staggering US$94 million.

Such a massive investment paid substantial dividends to both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations -- which during this time had also been working hand-in-hand with the CIA in waging the cultural cold war against the Communist 'threat' -- and, by 1959, population issues had begun to "assume the weightiness of a major geopolitical force on the world scene, soon to be adopted as a cherished cause by the 'military-industrial complex'." This led to the creation of what was referred to as the population-national security theory (PNST), a dubious theory that causally linked "overpopulation, resource exhaustion, hunger, political instability, communist insurrection, and danger to vital American interests." As JDR3 explained in a lecture to the United Nations in 1961, "population growth is second only to control of atomic weapons as the paramount problem of the day."

With the backing of the broader population lobby, shortly after the 1964 elections, JDR3 was able to exert pressure on President Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk (head of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1952 to 1960), to encourage the President to mention the overpopulation issue in the forthcoming State of the Union address -- which President Johnson went on to do, making him the first American President to highlight population in such an address to the nation. By the end of January 1965, an Office of Population was created within the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which initially obtained about $10.5 million a year: USAID funding 'exploded' thereafter, and by 1972 their annual budget was $123 million.

Around this time, the population question also gained support from other quarters, and in 1968, the new Ford Foundation trustee, Robert McNamara, in his inaugural speech as the World Bank's new president, "emphasized the central importance of curbing population growth." Thus McNamara was firmly following in the steps of his predecessor at the World Bank, Eugene Black, who had recently joined the board of the population control group, Planned Parenthood, and sat with him on the Ford Foundations board of directors.

Needless to say, the mass media also played a crucial role during this period, helping thrust the population issue onto the public and political policy agendas. The logical end result was, as Steve Weissman noted in 1970, that "[e]nvironmentalists, along with their enemies, 'the industrial polluters,' found the chief cause of every problem from slums to suburbs, pollution to protest, in the world's expanding numbers."

It was in the midst of this population-fixated period that the now celebrated environmentalist Paul Ehrlich released his bestselling book The Population Bomb (published by the Sierra Club in 1968). The message contained in this influential book was essentially a crude Malthusian argument, reiterating the earlier work of other Rockefeller- and Ford-linked popular authors like Fairfield Osborn, Frederick Osborn, and William Vogt.

However, with the publics' interest in the population issue already primed by years of propaganda, the arguments presented were accepted as commonsensical, and, in less than two years, Ehrlich's book sold more than one million copies and went on to become the most popular environmental book ever published. Maximising the public interest generated around the sale of his book, in 1968 Ehrlich created the Zero Population Growth (ZPG) group, whose stated goal was to "place the population issue at the center of environmental policy."

Another well received Malthusian tract that has successfully linked population and environmental issues is Professor Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons (1968). Professor Eric Ross has undertaken a valuable task in tracing the evolution of Hardin's work and suggests that when his work is considered in its entirety one can see how this book "embodies all the cardinal qualities of Cold War Malthusian thinking: it is anti-socialist, anti-democratic and eugenic." Unfortunately, although the myth of the tragedy of the commons has now been discounted, it still remains popular, no doubt in part because of its compatibility with elitist concepts of environmental management.

The increasing focus of liberal foundations on the population issue -- or more precisely the high birth rates among the poor in the Third World, throughout the 1950s and 1960s -- led many New Left activists to be highly suspicious of the foundations' motivations, suspecting that their population fixation was closely wedded to US imperialism. In a special Earth Day issue of Ramparts magazine in 1970, Katherine Barkley and Steve Weissman explained "Why the Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby" born of the foundations agendas tied to elite interests more concerned with devising way to minimize the increasing Third World upheavals than with protecting the environment.

Another article in the same issue described the liberal foundations' favorite groups, the Conservation Foundation and the Population Council, as the Eco-Establishment, a coalition whose aim was to protect and conserve natural resources for the benefit of big business interests.

In fact, the summer after the first Earth Day celebrations in 1970, a classified National Security Council memorandum, signed by President Nixon's security advisor Henry Kissinger, "elevated population control to a 'top priority item' on the multilateral agenda." This population policy supported the United States' already brutal foreign policy, and, in 1972, in an effort to deal with the so-called 'population emergency' in India, the World Bank funded a $21 million project which "resulted in millions of involuntary sterilizations and thousands of deaths." The inherent contradictions of these policies were clear to many, and as early as 1970 it was obvious -- to Steve Weissman at least -- that waging a "war on people" would "not eliminate the need for each nation to determine how best to balance resources and population."

Not coincidentally, the chief public rationale for the so-called Green Revolution (which, too, was generously financed by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations) -- which has often naively been associated with Western humanitarianism -- was also Malthusian. As Professor Ross points out, "The Green Revolution was an integral part of the constellation of strategies -- including limited and carefully managed land reform, counterinsurgency, CIA-backed coups, and international birth control programmes -- that aimed to ensure the security of U.S. interests." As Professor Ross continues, such Malthusian ideas have always "tended to flourish in times when capitalism has been most severely challenged," providing an "essential ideological weapon against popular reform . . . by dismissing any alternative to capitalist relations of production as hopelessly utopian."

In summary, the strategic grant-making practices of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations played a crucial role in shaping the early evolution of the environmental movement so that it maintained focused on issues that were compatible with elite interests. Because this issue of elite manipulation has never been seriously addressed, liberal foundations have continued to exert a large (for the most part undocumented) influence over the evolution of modern-day environmentalism.

Nowadays, foundation funding for environmental groups usually lags behind membership fees. Yet, despite the fact that the proportion of an environmental group's income derived from foundations is typically relatively small, such funding has a disproportionate influence on policy decisions (compared to membership dues) because (1) it is usually tied to specific environmental projects, (2) foundation board members are often offered influential positions sitting on the boards of the organizations they aid, and (3) foundations utilize proactive grant making, whereby experts associated with the foundations guide environmental groups to concentrate on projects identified by the foundations themselves.

Understanding how liberal foundation have historically worked to coopt progressive social movements is perhaps the first step environmental activists will need to take to enable them to work towards finding a collective solution to the problems raised in this article. However, organizing truly sustainable means of social movement support needs to become a priority for all activists, especially in a political climate where corporations are rapidly extending their philanthropic tentacles into all corners of the non-profit sector. Therefore, the task that lies ahead for all citizens committed to a participatory and ecological democracy is to develop alternate funding mechanisms for sustaining grassroots activism. Only then will they be able to break free from the guiding hands of liberal philanthropists, and begin to devise ways of supporting radical activism that can present a serious challenge to the injustices that are daily perpetuated by capitalism and its liberal capitalist elites.

1 Despite the relevance of investigations into this subject to the development of sustainable environmental activism, though, only a handful of researchers, to date, have critically examined how liberal foundations have affected the evolution of the environmental movement. (For example, see the work of Mark Dowie, Brian Tokar, Robert Brulle, and Daniel Faber.) None of these authors, however, provides more than a cursory examination of the involvement of foundations in shaping environmental developments throughout the 1960s.

Michael Barker is currently co-editing a book with Daniel Faber and Joan Roelofs that will critically evaluate the influence of philanthropic foundations on the public sphere. His other work can be found here. This article is based on an article published in the June 2008 issue of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. For further details, email the author at .

[pan]

Mark, you wrote:
You ask, "Are you suggesting that we return to the economies of pre-European N.A.?"

Yes.

If your statement is serious rather than a romantic longing for a simpler time then you must recognize that all of the major population centers as well as most of the entire continent have unsustainable population levels (North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska may be exceptions).

A return to the past ways is impossible - what may be possible is a change towards an economy that is less unsustainable - my hope is that maybe, just maybe, Americans and the rest of the G20 may realize from the economic crash that the expectation of 20% annual increases in profit margins is completely absurd. That would be the first baby step.

[Mark]

Pan writes, "A return to the past ways is impossible...."

Nonsense, Pan. If our economy crashes or we run out of oil, we would return to the past ways immediately.

What you mean is that the fatties won't do it voluntarily. They'll keep marketing cars and petroleum products whether people want those things or not, and whether those things are destroying the ecosystem or not, because it is profitable.

Not only is a post-consumer lifestyle NOT impossible, it happens to be inevitable. The only choice is whether we want to do it the easy way, voluntarily, or the hard way, involuntarily.

Can our 5% of the world continue to consume 50% of the world's resources? Only by spending trillions on our military. Did you happen to notice how quickly and easily our multi-trillion dollar military conquered Viet Nam, North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan? I admit we wiped the floor with Grenada and Panama--we've number one at beating up people who can't fight back. Ask any businessman what our chances are when the only defense we have against a fifty-cent improvised explosive device, is a five million dollar tank or even a five thousand dollar drone. Every time they spend fifty cents, we have to spend five thousand or five million. Is that economically sustainable? Can you take that to the bank?

[pan]

What I mean is a return to the past ways is impossible if not accompanied or preceded by a mass die-off (of all colors of the spectrum, including white). The current population is not sustainable with old methods of agriculture and hunting/gathering - especially with the devastation of N.A. forests and the concretization of the planet.