in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up
Sunday, February 17, 2019
The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: “The Inconvenient Truth” Behind Youth Cooptation
I don't pay much attention to corporate media sources because they are all about deceptions, and instead I focus on news and analysis by reliable independent sources. So, I occasionally miss the scams being committed by our masters in the capitalist ruling class. This post is a result of receiving this morning an article from Climate Code Red (Australian website) which lauded Greta Thunberg and her followers. I knew that Morningstar and Palmer have been running a series of articles on her backers (incidentally, I haven't seen any other exposé of this fake operation other than the series run by Morningstar and Palmer), but I was discouraged by the tome-length articles that they, as usual, write and post. However, this morning's post by Climate Code Red, which has previously run excellent pro-environmental articles, had me concerned. They were obviously taken in by our masters in the capitalist Empire.
As a result of this experience, I admit I didn't read all of the series by Morningstar and Palmer, but I scanned them together with many other articles which supported the astonishing rise of teenager Greta Thunberg as an environmental celebrity. After hours of research I reached a conclusion: there is another sheep-herding operation going on to shepherd those concerned about climate destabilization into the chute that leads--well, maybe not to the slaughterhouse of managed elections as Bernie Sanders did--but to the control and diffusion of the growing worldwide concern about the obvious signs of weather extremes--the first signs of climate destabilization.
At this stage we can only point to the supporters behind this celebrity status of Thunberg and the many other manifestations of this sheep-herding operation. Morningstar and Palmer provide an exhaustive (exhausting?) list of the promoters. The following is only a sample of what the authors found: worldwide coverage from media corporations, and their capitalist backers have managed to have Thunberg appear at the UN Climate Conference; at Ted Talks, at Davos, and they have used her celebrity status to spawn other organizations supposedly concerned about climate destabilization: The Green New Deal (Democratic Party), We Don't Have Time (movement), Sierra Club's Sunrise Movement, and NGO supporters like the World Resources Institute. The articles goes into considerable detail about the capitalist associations of the directors and backers.
It's patently clear what is going on. The hoi poiloi (ordinary people) are once again being played for fools. In contrast to what we've seen in the past: devastating world wars, but this time it will result in human extinction.