Posted on 12/09/2007 4:51:49 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination.
The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one.
Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof.
For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and dissemination of concepts hostile to American democracy - in hopes that the emerging picture would reveal a dictatorial smoking gun. Results ranged from isolated case studies to pathetic conspiracy theories. They missed the mark because there was no visible mark to hit.
All that changed March 14, 2002.
On that date, Randall Hayes, president of the radical Rainforest Action Network, presented a paper at the Johns Hopkins 2002 Symposium on Foreign Affairs in Baltimore, Maryland. Its title was Restructuring the Global Economy: Eradicating Bretton Woods and Creating New Institutions.
It's the smoking gun.
Restructuring the Global Economy is a detailed roadmap to a green future ruled by radical elites from new command structures to be created in the United Nations. It is not an insignificant personal quirk of Randy Hayes individually. It is, he tells us, the result of his participation in a think-tank called the International Forum on Globalization (IFOG).
IFOG itself turns out to be an assortment of some 60 anti-capitalist organizations and intellectuals from 25 nations who have been assembling pieces of the roadmap since the mid-1990s, some much earlier.
About the time Hayes made his presentation, IFOG released a document titled, A Better World Is Possible: Alternatives to Economic Globalization. It was characterized as the "Summary of an Upcoming Report by the Alternatives Committee of the International Forum on Globalization." The 18-member drafting committee included Hayes. The committee's document is the source of Hayes' shorter, more concise Restructuring the Global Economy.
Quick Assessment Hayes opens the text of Restructuring the Global Economy with a prologue by author Jerry Mander, regarded by many as today's most articulate and outspoken critic of technology and economic globalization. Mander is founder and president of the International Forum on Globalization. Mander sets Hayes' stage:
"Economic globalization is the greatest single contributor to the massive ecological crises of our time, yet this is an aspect that is often ignored-by the media, NGOs, policymakers, and citizens. Its inherent emphasis on increased trade requires corresponding expansion of transportation infrastructures-airports, seaports, roads, rail-lines, pipelines, dams, electric grids-many of these are constructed in pristine landscapes, often on Indigenous people's lands. Increased transport also uses drastically increased fossil fuels, adding to the problems of climate change, ozone depletion, and ocean, air, and soil pollution. Further, under trade liberalization rules, corporations have easier access to already depleted natural resources and environmental standards are harmonized to the lowest common denominator."
Hayes then fills twelve pages with the IFOG plan and supporting arguments. The core of their message is contained midway through in these six paragraphs:
"When we look at global governance we find two competing sets of global governing institutions. The first set, of course, includes the United Nations with related institutions such as the World Health Organization, International Labor Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Environment Program, UNICEF, and others."
"At the end of World War II there was a seminal meeting at a New Hampshire hotel called Bretton Woods that spawned the "Bretton Woods" institutions. These include the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the GATT, out of which came the WTO. This is the second set of governing institutions."
"The Bretton Woods institutions offer much less democracy and accountability. It is time to throw out those babies?"
"We have to wrest control of global economic rule making away from the tiny, powerful clique of WTO and transnational corporate executive powerbrokers"
"First, we argue for the dismantling to the Bretton Woods Institutions: the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO. Second, we claim this must be done hand-in-hand with reforming and strengthening certain U.N. agencies. Third, we believe that new institutions within the U.N. must be created."
"With this three-part package, we will see global economic governance unified under the U.N. system."
The gun couldn't be much smokier.
Caution: Hayes has a reputation for bluster and show.
Warning: His colleagues in IFOG do not.
Danger: His Rainforest Action Network also has financial backing from more than a few of those "transnational corporate executive powerbrokers" he derides. Although most of RAN's donors are executives of nonprofit corporations, some important ones are profit-making capitalist moguls with a bent for anti-capitalist philanthropy, such as Ted Turner (CNN-Time-Warner), Douglas Tompkins (Esprit and North Face clothing), and Richard Goldman (insurance). Mander's International Forum on Globalization has even more ties to great wealth.
As we examine Restructuring the Global Economy in detail, we might think of it as the plan of a radical many, paid for by a wealthy few.
Content Hayes follows Mander's prologue with three stock paragraphs echoing the anti-capitalist, anti-globalization theme. As soon as these obligatory remarks are out of the way, Hayes makes his first major point:
"Attractive alternatives to a capitalistic economic system are not popularly available. After talking with friends and colleagues across the progressive spectrum, I know of no coherent alternatives gaining momentum. Capitalism is the ruling system; therefore we must ask the fundamental question: Can capitalism be radically improved, humanized, and ecologized?"
We learn a great deal in this short paragraph:
Progressivism is the basic IFOG ideology, not just environmentalism.
The IFOG authors are practical; they won't waste resources promoting unpopular alternatives.
This is not an attempt to revive communism, but something more radical.
They are not curious whether capitalism could survive being "radically improved, humanized, and ecologized." Hayes now rambles through three pages of justifications for wresting control of economic rulemaking from capitalists, national governments, and international financing institutions, but he does not yet explain why economic rulemaking is so significant to him. Instead, he begins:
"I have three important premises to provide a general context for my perspective. First, nature bats last. The second premise is that the house is on fire. Finally, in times of crisis our plans [should] be commensurate with the scale of the problems. We need something akin to another Marshal Plan-starting with restructuring the rulemaking processes for the global economy-to provide a roadmap to help reverse dangerous trends and get us to a better world."
The first two premises are bogeymen we must fear if we are to answer his later call to action.
Nature bats last. Catchphrase meaning nature will destroy you if you violate her rules, and capitalism violates nature's rules. We're doomed.
The house is on fire. Capitalism is the fire, earth is the house, capitalism is destroying everything, air, water, soil, all life on earth. We're doomed. That's sufficient reason to justify destroying capitalism.
The third premise is a scheme to save us from the two bogeymen: "another Marshal Plan," which Hayes later calls, "Marshal Plan II."
It's worth recalling that the original Marshal Plan, officially dubbed the "Economic Recovery Plan," was proposed in 1947 by Secretary of State George C. Marshal, and ended up pumping vast amounts of American money into war-torn Europe to prevent the spread of communism and to stabilize the international order in a way favorable to the development of political democracy and free-market economies. It is ironic that Hayes named his proposal - which would prevent the spread of capitalism and eliminate free-market economies under United Nations control - after the diametrically opposed Marshal Plan.
The "better world" that Hayes and the IFOG see coming from Marshal Plan II is one of "sustainability." Hayes is emphatic that it is not a world of "shivering in the dark," but one of "rich and rewarding lifestyles" lived "within the planet's natural systems." Sustainability, Hayes teaches us, "has three fundamental parts to a whole-systems approach": 1) ecology, 2) economy, and 3) equity, the "Three E's." He assures us this is a "unifying, something-for-everybody approach." Since that's a little thin on details, Hayes explains:
"A more precise definition of sustainability would be: diverse and rewarding lifestyles many would want to emulate and, if they did, the planet's natural systems and wildlife populations would increasingly flourish, generation after generation."
Hayes seemed to think that was much clearer.
Before getting into the key discussion of rulemaking for the global economy, Hayes tells us:
"The rules of the global economy are not the only strategic concern. Other root causes of the social and ecological crisis must be addressed simultaneously. Below is an eight-point list-in-progress of root causes. The first six points draw from the work at the Foundation for Deep Ecology in Sausalito, California.
Anthropocentrism, the assumption of human superiority over nature. This is related to patriarchy and the "dominator" paradigm.
Unlimited, linear economic growth in a world dependent on nonrenewable resources and closed loop cycles.
Technology worship, the prevailing paradigm that technological evolution is invariably good and that problems caused by technology can be solved by more technology.
Modern chemistry, the invention of substances that cannot be returned productively into the planet's natural cycles. For many modern chemicals, such as DDT or PCBs, there are no organic counterparts capable of biologically degrading these substances.
Domination of mass media (particularly TV and advertising) by viewpoints that serve the interests of the industrial world and suppress alternate views.
The concentration of power amongst corporate executives and owners, and the consequent loss of democratic empowerment that has been profoundly detrimental to human beings as well as nature.
The absence of a geologic or long-term time perspective: actions based on the desire for short-term gratification can degrade the conditions for life and reduce options for subsequent generations.
Lack of education in industrial cultures in general systems theory or whole-systems thinking leading to eco-illiteracy and lack of ecodesign." Since the Foundation for Deep Ecology paid for most of the International Forum on Globalization report that underlies Hayes' paper, this eco-sociology lesson comes as no surprise. IFOG's president is the same Jerry Mander who is the program director of the Foundation for Deep Ecology.
The International Forum on Globalization (IFOG) is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization based in San Francisco. It was formed by Jerry Mander in 1997 and received increasing foundation contributions up to the most recent IRS filing, which shows $933,017 in 2000. Its primary donor has been Esprit and North Face clothing mogul Douglas Tompkins through his Foundation for Deep Ecology ($852,500), which has also given large amounts of money to Hayes' Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
Other IFOG donors, listed in order of funding totals, are: the MacArthur Foundation ($200,000); Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($165,000); Ford Foundation ($150,000); Educational Foundation of America (the Prentice-Hall textbook fortune, $55,000); HKH Foundation (the AMAX mining fortune, $25,000); and Turner Foundation ($20,000). Five of the seven also fund RAN. All fund other anti-globalization groups.
"It's an extraordinarily incestuous world out there," as foundation consultant Robert Schaeffer once told the Boston Globe.
Four pages into his presentation, Hayes finally begins his discussion of economic rulemaking:
"Let me explain why I focus on the economic aspects and, in particular, the rule-making systems of the global economy. At Rainforest Action Network, fighting to save the rainforest has largely involved trying to stop billions of dollars from being used to fund deforestation and disaster. Groups around the world put their shoulder to the task. With the Burger King boycott and 18 months of demonstrating in the streets, we stopped the funding flow from a thirty-five million dollar contract that was turning ancient tropical rainforests into cattle pastures to provide the U.S. market with cheap, greasy hamburgers. On the heels of that success-and with just the threat of a boycott-we stopped hundreds of millions of dollars that would have funded giant U.S. companies, such as Scott Paper, from slaughter-logging Indonesian forests to make toilet paper for the Japanese market. We prevented the World Bank from lending billions of dollars to ill-advised projects. In countries such as Brazil, such projects would have cleared vast areas of the Emerald Forest to build giant hydroelectric projects-shortsighted dams that would soon silt up and become useless legacies. It was influencing the flow of money that saved the most acres, species, and traditional Indigenous economies."
In short, Hayes understands the power of stopping economic activity by going outside the political mechanisms of constitutional democracy. He tells us how he does it:
"Home Depot is the largest retailer of old growth wood products in the world. The company claims to account for ten percent of the world's retail wood sales, opening a new big box store an average of every 48 hours. Home Depot's marketing of old growth contributes to the slaughter logging that is rapidly deforesting the planet. When asked to stop selling old growth wood, Home Depot executives did not return our calls. We had to generate pressure. Grassroots pressure resulted in more than 250,000 calls and letters, and hundreds of demonstrations in the United States and Canada. The company's branding faded from a clean Home Depot orange to mud. Now Home Depot answers our calls. The campaign resulted in Home Depot and several other large retailers agreeing on a 'no old growth sales' policy."
In other words, Hayes runs a shakedown operation, as RAN's arrest record indicates. He doesn't mention here that his organization used unlawful activities such as trespass, intimidation and vandalism against his targets. The Internal Revenue Service has been asked to revoke RAN's tax exempt status for various offenses.
Hayes makes one thing clear: progressivists will use unlawful tactics to reach their goals.
What did Hayes learn from his activism?
"I came to realize that the most important environmental policy is, in fact, economic policy"
"Asking "who makes the economic rules" is essentially the same question as "who rules the world." Increasingly, transnational executives and boards of directors, whose worldview is "corporate economic globalization, control the global rulemaking processes." That amounts to corporate global governance."
Hayes and his colleagues appear to want that job for themselves. It is at this point that Hayes launches into his remarks quoted at the outset, ending with IFOG's three-part package that "will see global economic governance unified under the U.N. system."
Finally we get to the details of the IFOG plan to rule the world.
"The first part of the IFOG plan is to dismantle the Bretton Woods institutions. In terms of the World Bank, the plan would be to appoint an International World Bank Decommissioning Commission. Just as aging nuclear power plants must be decommissioned, so should other failed concepts. Perhaps half of the members would come from outside government, since we're the ones who informed governments and the world of the Bank's destructive projects. We would start by cutting the World Bank staff from about 8,000 (including 3,000 consultants) to about 1,000. Bilateral loans and grants, which generally have more accountability, could help fund worthy projects in the Global South and former Soviet Union. This commission would develop plans to distribute the assets of the Bank. Perhaps the General Assembly would vote on final distribution.
In terms of the IMF, the plan would be to appoint an International IMF Decommissioning Commission. Again, half of the members would be from outside government. We could start by cutting the IMF staff from about 1,000 to about 200. We would dismantle all structural adjustment programs in the Global South and former Soviet Union. This commission would also develop plans to distribute the assets of the IMF.
With the WTO, we believe the aim is not to reform the institution, but to radically reduce its power and to eventually eliminate it. This can be done. The alternative to the WTO is not chaos, as the corporate powers would have you fear. We achieved a temporary reduction of the WTO power at the ministerial meeting in Seattle when concerned citizens stopped expansion such as the Free Logging Agreement. As described in the IFOG report, shrinking and eventually eliminating the WTO will help citizen movements around the world to break apart transnational corporate power. This will help eliminate special corporate rights and privileges, eliminate corporate welfare, and decharter corporations with a pattern of criminal activities."
In short, the IFOG plan to dismantle the instruments of capitalism and take control away from the nation-states that charter corporations.
Now for Step 2:
"The second part of our package is strengthening and reforming the U.N. We need to achieve more clarity on the U.N.'s mandate. It must assume the role of global economic governance. This would be under the jurisdiction of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations General Assembly."
In short, the IFOG plan to put total power within its grasp and take it away from national governments.
Now for Step 3:
"The third part of our package involves creating new organizations within the U.N. Here these five examples serve not as blueprints, but as a basis for an ongoing dialog. Consider a U.N. with:"
"The International Insolvency Court to deal with debt relief. For many countries in the Global South, external debt has become a kind of indentured servitude that is paralyzing. Here we endorse the recommendations from the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Jubilee 2000, and the Canadian government. It would arbitrate settlements between debtors and creditors. Where conciliation cannot be reached, an arbitration panel would make legally binding final rulings.
The International Finance Organization (IFO) would help U.N. member countries achieve and maintain balance and stability in global financial relationships. The IFO would promote domestic investment and domestic ownership of productive resources. The IFO would effectively replace the IMF, but with full accountability to the U.N. Its charter would favor community and ecological concerns over corporate or finance interests.
The Regional Monetary Funds (RMFs) would help with the legitimate need for short-term emergency foreign exchange loans. The RMFs would be accountable to the member countries in their region.
As for replacing the WTO, some colleagues argue that no global trade organization is necessary. We should just strengthen regional bodies. Others say we should go back to GATT and make it more transparent and democratic. Still others say that we need an International Trade Organization, changed to bust cartels, foster ecological economics as well as be more transparent and democratic.
The Organization for Corporate Accountability or (OCA) would be under the U.N., but enforcement would be at national or local levels. The OCA would support national initiatives on corporate accountability by providing the public with authoritative information on corporate practices around the world for possible legal action and boycotts.
I would add a sixth agency, the World Overconsumption Reduction Bank. We need to break the patriarchal approach and underscore the ecological and social harm done by the wasteful lifestyles and systems of the industrial north: Japan, Europe, Canada, and the United States." In short, the IFOG plan to rule the world.
Hayes also calls it the "kickoff to Marshal Plan II."
The rest of Hayes' paper is more or less pep-talk, calling the faithful to action, and of no further concern to us here. It can be read in its entirety at www.ranamuck.org/restructuring.htm.
Context We've now seen what IFOG has in mind: Give non-profit groups access to supreme economic decision-making power within the United Nations framework. Remove corporations and nations from economic decision-making. Dictate austere lifestyles to the industrial north. Do it in the name of ecology and the oppressed poor. Do it with foundation money.
Their plan was written by 18 people on a special Alternatives to Economic Globalization committee.
Who are these guys?
Hayes tells us:
"In order to work more effectively in the economic arena, I joined a San Francisco-based think tank called the International Forum on Globalization (IFOG). As a result, I'm now working with leading social, ecological, and systems thinkers and activists from around the world, including Vandana Shiva from India, Teddy Goldsmith from Europe, Martin Khor from Malaysia, John Mohawk from Six Nations Confederacy in upstate New York, Maude Barlow from Canada, Oronto Douglas from Nigeria, Sara Larrain from Chile, Victoria Tauli-Corpus and Walden Bello from the Philippines, as well as David Korten and Jerry Mander from the United States. The web site-www.ifg.org-has more information on what we mean by 'economic globalization.'"
That's not much to go on. Here are thumbnail profiles of these people and Randy Hayes himself:
Randall Hayes, filmmaker, produced The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn for Earth First! in 1982, where he met Mike Roselle. Made award-winning anti-mining film The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? Co-founder of RAN in 1984 with Mike Roselle (co-founder of Earth First! and campaigner with Greenpeace) with mentoring of David Brower, who conceived the need for a rainforest-focus organization, and Herb Gunther of Public Media Center. RAN was originally located in a storage room in Gunther's office, later moved to space in Brower's Earth Island Institute offices. At the kickoff meeting in 1985, Hayes was credited as the sole founder of RAN to hide influence of Roselle and Brower. Has been arrested in several "ceremonial" banner-hanging protests involving celebrities.
Vandana Shiva, Indian small-farm advocate strongly opposed to biotechnology, is founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, based in Delhi. She is also the ecology advisor of the Third World Network, and is author of Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge.
Edward Goldsmith, a catastrophist and anti-technology advocate, is the brother of the late billionaire, Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, and founder of the journal The Ecologist. He is president of 'Ecoropa', France; member of the board of the JMG Foundation (part of the fortune left by his brother), principal environmental consultant to the Ecological Foundation; member of the Council of The Rainforest Foundation; and trustee of the Foundation for Gaia. Co-editor with Jerry Mander of The Case Against the Global Economy and For a Turn Towards the Local (1997).
Martin Khor is director of the Third World Network, a nonprofit organization based in Penang, Malaysia, with offices in Delhi, India; Montevideo, Uruguay; Geneva; London, and Accra, Ghana.
Professor John Mohawk is co-director of the State University of New York (Buffalo) Center of the Americas and Director of Indigenous Studies. He is author of many articles and 3 books, including A Basic Call to Consciousness (1978) and Exiled in the Land of the Free (1991). His work emphasizes Native American spirituality.
Maude Barlow is chair of the anti-corporate organization, Council of Canadians, and co-author of Global Showdown: How the New Activists Are Fighting Global Corporate Rule.
Oronto Douglas, a lawyer from the Niger Delta, is founder of Environmental Rights Action (affiliate of Friends of the Earth), and leader of the Chicoco movement, an anti-government, anti-Shell Oil organization.
Sara Larrain, director of Chilean Ecological Action Network (RENACE).
Victoria Tauli-Corpus, director of the anti-capitalist Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples' International Center for Policy Research & Education), a United Nations consultative group based in Baguio City, Phillipines.
Walden Bello, director of the Bangkok-based anti-capitalist group Focus on the Global South. He is Professor of Public Administration and Sociology at the University of the Philippines. He is also a Fellow of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, created by the cosmetics fortune of Samuel Rubin and headed by Rubin's daughter, Cora Weiss, both of whom described themselves as "socialist." Weiss used the Rubin fortune to establish the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., the premiere leftist think-tank in the United States, from which emerged the Transnational Institute.
David Korten, chairman of the anti-corporate Positive Futures Network, based on wealthy Bainbridge Island in Washington State (funded by the Ford Foundation $875,000; Foundation for Deep Ecology $35,000; Rockefeller Brothers Fund $20,000; Kellogg Foundation, $11,909), is author of When Corporations Rule the World; The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism; Globalizing Civil Society: Reclaiming Our Right to Power. "Civil society" in that last book title means, in progressivist jargon, only non-governmental organizations with a progressivist agenda; other non-profits and all for-profit enterprises are excluded. Edward Goldsmith and John Mohawk were not on the Drafting Committee of the IFOG Alternatives to Economic Globalization report. Hayes did not mention eight others who were on the committee. The missing eight are:
John Cavanagh, Drafting Committee Chair; Director, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C.; Fellow, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. They don't get a lot more anti-American or anti-capitalist than this man.
Sarah Anderson, director, Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Debi Barker, co-director of the International Forum on Globalization.
Robin Broad is a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Tony Clarke, Director, Polaris Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, chair IFOG's committee on corporations.
Colin Hines, author of Localization: A Global Manifesto, associate, IFOG.
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of ISEC (International Society for Ecology & Culture), based in Devon, United Kingdom.
Simon Retallack, managing editor for special editions of Teddy Goldsmith's The Ecologist in the United Kingdom. Studied government at the London School of Economics.
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a Ralph Nader group. There are 60 organizations with such people. And that's just in IFOG.
In closing, we come to the man who made this all happen.
Jerry Mander is the founder of the International Forum on Globalization. He has written two books, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), and In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure Of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (1991) and co-edited with Edward Goldsmith, The Case Against the Global Economy (1996). He is senior fellow of the San Francisco-based Public Media Center, and program director of the Foundation for Deep Ecology.
Mander's foundation role makes him influential. He is active in the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization, a project sponsored by the Environmental Grantmakers Association. FNTG is governed by a 12 person steering committee. The current members are: Anannya Bhattacharjee, Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program Diana Cohn, Solidago Foundation Michael Conroy, Ford Foundation Jon Cracknell, JMG Foundation Melissa Dann, Wallace Global Fund Carolyn Deere, Rockefeller Foundation Sarah Hansen, Environmental Grantmakers Association Jerry Mander, Foundation for Deep Ecology Michael Northrop, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Christina Roessler, FACT Marni Rosen, Jenifer Altman Foundation Ada Sanchez, CarEth Foundation
Congrats on your third year.
Grampa Dave and I have been referring to that effort by them as “Rural Cleansing” ever since the stupid bombing of Belgrade by Madeline Half-bright and Billious Clinton!!!
Well! As Ronald Reagan would say... It’s about time!!!
Following this logic to a conclusion, we must all die in order to save the planet.
Anyone on the Left Coast, who isn’t a left wing liberal quisling knows that the Green Enviral Nannies want to control and rule our world.
These green fascists are in our faces 24/7/365 telling us where to build, not to build, where we can farm, where we can’t farm, what we can drive, what we can’t drive. Whaat your gasoline must have in it and can’t have in it. Who, we can work for, who, we can’t work for. They want to control every major and minor decision in our lives.
They will seize your property or force you to sell it because the red legged frog or ghost snake might like to live on it. They don’t care if there are no signs that either critter lived there.
They may be even more dangerous to Americans than their allies the Serial Killer Islamofascists.
I keep wondering how the ‘Terminator’ became a US citizen. He may have violated his visa terms:
http://www.visalaw.com/03sep4/15sep403.html
Schwarzenegger May Have Violated Terms Of Non-Immigrant Visa
Also, he still has citizenship in Austria. That violates the Oath of Allegiance.
Actually, I’m an expert on this subject. I wrote a 200,000 word book for the nuclear energy industry that traced the roots of most of this back to Nader and his decentralist anarchism and some Rawlsian ethics. Solar was to be used to disperse political power, not because of the energy needs. Hazel O’Leary under Clinton got me blackballed. But ‘I’ll Be Back!’
>>>The ultimate goal of the environmentalists is to destroy civilization as we know it.<<<
And replace it with a utopian vision. Environmentalism in its current form is either cult or religion, sort of a secular animism. Which would make Al Gore one of the shamans. LOL
I believe the greatest threats today are intra-government MOUs and regionalism in government.
When the legislature creates an agency, it delegates to them certain authorities. Through MOUs, the agencies have jumped the boundaries of their authorities to join with other agencies to create new powers to implement regulation. For instance, the California Endangered Species relies mostly on private landowners to determine that they have a species “take” problem and become willing to apply for a “take permit.” The terms are then negotiated between the agency and the landowner in a lengthy process. Otherwise, the agency has to prove that a landowner action actually killed a critter. However, if the state can get the local County to do a Natural Communities Conservation Planning permit, then the County passes local laws/ordinances making the avoidance, minimization and mitigation measures of a permit the requirement for all resource users.
Right now we have a regional water quality control board wanting to do studies on groundwater in our area. They have no authority to come on people’s land and do the study. So they are trying to get the County to do it. If that doesn’t work, I predict that they will make willing participation in the study a condition of some “waste discharge” permit for sediment or temperature that they are forcing on the landowner.
The state loves to set up watershed groups and regional integrated water groups. I sit on one of these. I made sure that our participation as a county was conditional on retaining our local autonomy and authority and resisting any notion of a JPA or new regional authority.
Of course the environmentalists want to dissolve the authority of local governments. We are less likely to buy into the economic and cultural suicide they promote.
Enviroweenies will not rule the world because they don’t have the balls to stand up to the muslims.
Marsh2, above is right as rain! I can vouch for what she says from recent experience! It is truly sinister and actually evil in it's inexorable coercion, like hydrolic pressure from relentless, remorseless, ruthless fanatics!!!
They many times make Muslim fundamentalists pale by comparison in their religious zeal!!!
That's one of the best impassioned summation rants I've seen anywhere! More power to YOU Grampa dave... You RULE!!! (and you're absolutely right, too)
Merry Christmas, you old fly fisherman and God Bless YOU!!!
And in practice it would resemble another "alternative" to communism, namely the Khmer Rouge.
I’m about ready to stick a bumpersnicker on his Hummer that says:”WWJD” (What Would Judas Do?) He’s really running CA into a much deeper ditch than even Gray Davis was ever able to do!!! It really sucks canal water!!!
It IS an attempt to revive communism. It's just not called that. Communism, Nazism, all forms of fascism, islamo-, enviro- or otherwise -- they're the same thing, right down to the way their armies march like they've got something stuck up their asses. They're totalitarian and they're ruthless. No one has any rights except the elite, and THEY all suspect each other at all times. It is institutionalized paranoia -- just listen to algore talk; he even uses the phase two mantra, "The house is on fire!" Nice essay.
You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy’s approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist’s analysis.
Now that Congress has violated the First Amendment by restricting free speech with “campaign finance reform” laws, in the name of getting the influence of money out of politics, have you noticed any less influence of money in politics?
The next time somebody in the media denies that there is media bias, ask how they explain the fact that there are at least a hundred stories about the shrinking arctic ice cap for every one about the expanding antarctic ice cap, which has now grown to record size...
I believe in libertarian principles but not in libertarian fetishes. In any context, the difference between principles and fetishes can be the difference between night and day...
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmZlMDkxNWUxNzA5ZGVjMjJiZmQ3NDg5MTYxMzRmOTY=
Fits right in with congress banning incandescent lights.
I'm gonna make sure and kill all the red-legged frogs, snail darters, ghost snakes, sand lizards, wolves, bear and baby seals on my land so the only endangered species will be the greenies that come a lookin' fer 'em.
There’s still something that just does not ring at all true about him. Wish I could put it into words.
If he’s against these orgs . . . is it a case of the left hand talking about dismantling the right hand?
I wonder.
” :The irony of the environmental/religious movement is that these draconian environmental laws leave nothing but devastating rural poverty in their wake. How moral is that? I am seeing my communities falter one after the other. Families are disintegrating and our children are being raised in poverty,...”
Because that is what the envirals want.
Remember Hayfork ? Was once a thriving rural community.
They killed it.
They used the phony endangerment of the Spotted Owl — to rally public support for the murder of Hayfork...
The rural families have been effectively demonised as
crass, ignorant, selfish forest-hating-baby-owl-slaughtering
white supremist etc etc...
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