Netwar in the Northwest

The Native American rally in Seattle, to protect the Salish Sea from fossil fuel export developments in Washington and British Columbia, is a sign that Netwar in the Northwest is escalating. Indeed, coal and oil exporters — hoping to cash in on creating a colossal carbon corridor for Tar Sands bitumen, Powder River Basin coal and Bakken Shale crude — are already laundering money through the Washington Republican Party to help elect pro-carbon candidates to the Washington State Legislature.

While the rally to save the Salish Sea was led by American Indian tribes, it was supported by environmental groups, and as noted in a series of articles on the totem pole journey led by Lummi Nation elder Jewell James, mainstream churches involved in programs like Earth Ministry are taking an active role in adding their voices to those of Native Americans and organizations like Sierra Club, to stop the madness of fossil fuel export from North America to Asia.

Sometimes lurking in the shadows of Idle No More, and always seeking to hijack the growing “movement” against fossil fuel consumption and pollution, however, is 350.org– a Rockefeller Foundation-funded NGO (led by Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben) that misdirects activists into fruitless activities like college campus fossil fuel divestment campaigns. While 350 Seattle was not the primary participant in the referenced rally, 350.org is the key player in the Climate Change March distraction scheduled for September 20-21 in New York.

Netwar in the Big Apple: Wall St. vs the Indigenous Peoples Movement explains in more detail how pied pipers like Klein and McKibben function as agents of Wall Street who lead naive youth and gullible adults astray. For the credulous, photo-ops with Wall Street-created celebrities like Klein and McKibben might make them feel virtuous or important, but for tribal authorities challenging the fossil fuel industry, they are a dead end.

Fantasies about political power that NGOs like 350.org promote on behalf of their Wall Street benefactors allow pooh-bahs like Klein and McKibben to manipulate well-intentioned citizens into meaningless activities, thus dissipating the energy they bring to the environmental and human rights movements. Countering this insidious subversion of civil society requires shining a light on the dark corners of the non-profit industrial complex; following the money is a good place to start.