Not 'appy - by Richard... Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Not 'appy - by Richard... Wednesday, December 16, 2009

... with Mr Cameron is our James. And who can blame him?

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Global warming: an economic war - by Richard...

The avuncular face of Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, currently chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, represents in part the face of modern India. He projects a nation striving for modernity yet tempered by a social conscience as it seeks to avoid the pitfalls of developed countries.

In fact, he is the human face of an economic war being waged against the West by the Asian economies, in which the campaign to prevent "global warming" has been deployed as a powerful weapon. It is seen as a mechanism for plundering Western economies and thereby weakening them, while attracting cheap investment capital and enriching the growing Corporatocracy.

As an economic warrior, Pachauri has been enormously successful, not least through his guileless demeanour, his carefully cultivated image as a "scientist" and his skilful use of his network of front organisations. 

Yet, he is a company man, bought and paid-for by the Tata Group, a family-owned Indian multinational founded in the nineteenth Century on the profits from opium growing, the drug shipped to China under the protection of British guns. It now has annual revenues in excess of $20 billion and rising. 

Pachauri is part of an elaborate front, a tool shaped by a well-crafted public relations strategy, concealing the rapacious behaviour of the Asian Corporatocracy, of which Tata is a key player. It is an unprincipled dynasty which, through its flagship company Tata Steel, has made its riches from large-scale seizure of tribal lands in eastern states of Jharkhand and Orissa, the exploitation of labour and ignoring pollution controls. 

Its history is marked by trail of human rights, labour and environmental abuses. It stands accused of genocide against indigenous tribes, fomenting civil war to achieve commercial ends, and dictatorial behaviour in the only private city in India, the steel city of Jamshedpur, where democracy has never existed and local elections are unknown.

In the troubled states where it operates, a state of civil war exists which the government is losing. In the majority of the districts, writ of government no longer prevails. Indigenous fighters are branded as "Marxists" and hunted down by company and state-financed militias, some recruited from the ranks of criminals, their barbarism and ferocity facilitated by rigorous media control and censorship, where Western journalists are not welcome.

The unrest is used by the company and its other corporate allies as an excuse to clear out tribal villages and forcibly resettle populations on a massive scale, fuelling tribal tensions andexacerbating the violence. 

Tata in particular has a vice-like grip over the weak and corrupt national and state governments and, with mining and metals enterprises, effectively controls the State Pollution Control Board, which consistently acts against the interests of the people and the environment. Gross pollution is rampant, with unchecked deforestation. 

Collectively, the corporates have enough power and economic clout to frame their own laws and weaken existing laws on human rights, investment, corporate liabilities and labour relations. Yet the "business-friendly" outward face presented to Western investors is a sham. The Corporatocracy, as represented by Tata, is a ruthless predator, bent only on enhancing its own power and wealth, regardless of the cost to others, plundering Western capital and assets.

Encompassing all the major Asian nations outside China, including Thailand and Indonesia and Japan, and with the support of the kleptocratic African nations and South Americans, they have suborned the already corrupt United Nations institutions such as the IPCC, in their bid to hamstring the Western economies.

In so doing, they have been exploited the emerging "green" movement, harnessing it with "white guilt" over previous colonial adventures and left-wing ideology which seeks redistribution of wealth as a matter of principle.

Ironically, for a cause espoused by the Left, the greatest allies of the Asian Corporatocracy are the Western corporates, in particular the banks and finance houses. They are the greatest beneficiaries of the emergent "carbon" markets. Other natural allies are "Big Oil", mining conglomerates and multi-national manufacturing enterprises, which need access to raw materials and cheap, non-unionised labour. But other big names are involved.

Western governments have been keen to engineer their own surrenders. Partly through stupidity, partly from a misplaced idea that core production industries can be replaced by "knowledge-based" and financial enterprises, and partly through ideology, they have been willing accomplices to what amounts to a major transfer of wealth and power.

Their enthusiasm has been reinforced by the potential for "green issues" to widen and deepen the tax base, legitimising raids on personal incomes which would otherwise be difficult to justify. "Green" products have given them the opportunity to engineer new subsidyregimes for favoured groups, circumventing the raft of trade and other agreements which restrict traditional regimes. 

And the interventionist and cross-border nature of many measures is seen as an opportunity to further regional and global governance, at the expense of nation states.

However, the enthusiasm is misplaced. Competition is one thing. But this is war in which everyone loses except the Corporatocracy élites. It is a very dangerous war, all the more so for being unrecognised for what it is, the drama being played out in Copenhagen being one tiny part of the theatre. When the last riot is over and the media caravan has moved on to fresher fields, it will continue, above the smiling face of Dr Pachauri. It is a war we are losing. We need to fight back.

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They've been had! - by Richard...

"So many people are being excluded. The process is farcical. Civil society is being shut up, developing countries are being shut up, critical voices are being shut up," said Nicola Bullard, working with Focus on The Global South, a member of the climate justice movement.

One of the complaints being heard from an activist after Friends of the Earth international, Avaaz, Tck Tck Tck and other mainstream environment coalition groups were refused entry to the Copenhagen slugfest this morning without being given any reason.

Furthermore, hundreds of non-government groups are to be individually banned from the centre or have their numbers slashed from tomorrow to make way for world leaders. Only 1,000 people from civil society will be allowed in to the conference hall tomorrow, and 90 on Friday when world leaders are present to strut their stuff.

What the poor little darlings don't seem to realise is that they are no longer wanted on passage. They've done their bit, stoking up the fantasy, but now the money men need peace and quiet to stitch up their deals and parcel out the loot. 

This may have something to do with Denmark's Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard resigning as president of the conference. She describes the move as "procedural", which is about as convincing as Gore's predictions on Arctic ice.

With further disorder experienced this morning, it is going to be interesting to see how the greenies react when it dawns on them that they've been had. The police, however, have seen them coming and there are plenty of detention facilities ready for them.

It would almost be funny if it wasn't so serious, but the "joke" is on all of us. We are going to have to pay the bills for a long time to come.

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Depends what you want to hear - by Richard...

In a poll of Daily Express readers yesterday, 98 percent said they believed Britons are being conned over man-made global warming theories, we are told.

In The Guardian, however, we see: "three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll."

Voters overwhelmingly reject the view of climate change sceptics that world leaders "are panicking about an exaggerated threat", says the paper.

I guess it depends how you ask the question – and the context. Polls are a bit like statistics ... especially of the global warming kind. They seem to find what those who commission them want to hear.

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A "compromise" solution? - by Richard...

After flying in on his personal RAF jet to the slugfest at Copenhagen, the Prince of Wales sternly warned that the world has only seven years before climate change causes a "point of crisis" that will drive food shortages, terrorism and poverty. 

Mark Lynas of The Independent is not sanguine about a "success" though." At this rate, Copenhagen will be a disaster," he says.

With just hours left before the "high-level" segment (with ministers, and – increasingly – heads of state themselves) begins, several different texts were in circulation, all laden with square brackets (indicating disagreement) around even minor issues of contention that should have been resolved last week.

But he's looking in the wrong direction. The Times has a better picture. "The United States will be allowed to buy its way out of adopting a more stringent target on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in a compromise being brokered by Britain," it reports.

President Obama, we are told, is unlikely to increase his previous weak offer on emissions when he joins the Copenhagen climate change summit on Friday. He will instead be expected to make a significant financial commitment to a global climate protection fund.

That is what it is all about. Even if the emission targets on the table were adopted – which they won't be – all but the kindest critics claim that they will not contain the supposed 2°C global temperature increase (as measured by CRU and others).

The clue is in the statement from Ed Miliband, who is braving the snow over at the slugfest. "Countries have to do what they are able to," he says. "I think we have to judge what everyone has to offer in the round. For developed countries, both the [carbon reduction] and the finance they provide is crucial."

Rather like development aid, this "finance" goes to a comparatively small élite, the new "carbon barons". Miliband's "compromise" – or something very like it – will send them away happy. There will be ritual grumbling and the greenies will be furious, but as long as the revenue stream is protected, Copenhagen will have served its purpose.

Then, amid the flurries of snow and recriminations, this long-drawn-out and expensive farce can enter its next phase.

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Killing the media - by Richard... Tuesday, December 15, 2009

"The more I think about this the more upset I get. Why is there nobody in the major media who hasn't made Climategate his or her signature issue? Why did a weblog called EU Referendum have to be the one to detail the financial holdings of the chairman of the IPCC? Why has no-one 'followed the money' regarding global warming, showing how corporate contributions to environmental lobbies and thence on to politicians have influenced the debate?"

Thomas Fuller, SF Environmental Policy Examiner, on why global warming is a prime example of what is killing the major media.

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Democracy in action - by Richard...

Faced by a mini-revolt from climate change sceptics within his own party, David Cameron said: "A very small number of people take a different view on the science, but the policy is driven by me, and that is the way it is going to be."

And this is before he gets elected.

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