Category: World

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Why Trump Left The Trans-Pacific Partnership

(Straight from the source)

(Trump: T.P.P. is “rape” of our country)

(Trump says T.P.P. would have to be much better)

(Video from Brookings Creative Lab, omits key details)

(Government link for TPP, now referred to as CPTPP)

(Canada’s Bill C-79, October 2018)

1. Offshoring, Globalization, Free Trade

The other posts on outsourcing/offshoring are available here. It focuses on the hidden costs and trade offs society as a whole has to make. Contrary to what many politicians and figures in the media claim, there are always costs to these kinds of agreement. These include: (a) job losses; (b) wages being driven down; (c) undercutting of local companies; (d) legal action by foreign entities; (e) industries being outsourced; and (f) losses to communities when major employers leave. Don’t believe the lies that these agreements are overwhelmingly beneficial to all.

2. Important Links

(1) https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&billId=9970461&View=5
(2) https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/cptpp-ptpgp/index.aspx?lang=eng
(3) https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterpham/2017/12/29/why-did-donald-trump-kill-this-big-free-trade-deal/#28d62e0b4e62
(4) https://www.brookings.edu/blog/unpacked/2017/03/24/trump-withdrawing-from-the-trans-pacific-partnership/
(5) https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/why-trump-killed-tpp-why-it-matters-you-n710781
(6) https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-trump-hates-the-trans-pacific-partnership-so-much-2016-11
(7) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-business-idUSKBN1571FD

3. Media Reviews On T.P.P. Withdrawal

President Trump believes otherwise. Throughout his election campaign, he referred to the TPP as a “horrible deal”, and would withdraw the U.S. from it when elected. When he became president, getting the U.S. out of the TPP was one Trump’s first acts, since he believed that it steals American jobs while benefiting large corporations.

Trump wasn’t entirely wrong. Companies from developed countries that signed up to the deal, such as Japan and the United States, would have outsourced to developing countries that have low-cost labor and fewer labor laws, such as Vietnam. In which case, unemployment in developed countries could have risen.

The Forbes article very bluntly points out that Donald Trump viewed TPP not as an opportunity, but as a threat to American jobs and American prosperity. While corporate heads would have gained from the treaty, those gains would not be shared with the U.S. public. The following NBC article, goes on to explain further.

As divisive as that language sounds, whoever got into the White House was likely to ditch the TPP. Hillary Clinton, adopting a progressive issue from Bernie Sanders, also came out against the deal during her run, saying in August, “I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election and I’ll oppose it as president.”

The idea was that if everyone brought down taxes on exported goods, U.S. companies would pay less for imports — while benefiting from cheaper labor overseas.

“Companies love free trade,” said Velshi. “Companies get to share profits with shareholders, the government gets the taxes, but workers don’t get their fair share.”

The article is extremely critical of free trade agreements, such as T.P.P. In short, jobs can and are outsourced to the 3rd world because it is so much cheaper. In turn, workers on the developed world are forced to accept much lower standards of living in order to compete.

Other media reports much the same content. Overall, Donald Trump believes that T.P.P. would be incredibly harmful to America as a whole.

In a Reuters article, Trump laid it out very plainly what he thinks of exploitive trade agreements:

“A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States, and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States – that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Is this an attack on international trade as a whole? No. It is a rejection of lopsided treaties which one side benefits greatly at the expense of another. It is not a rejection of trade agreements which are MUTUALLY beneficial.

4. “National Treatment” Clause Returns

The so-called “national treatment” provisions were a very harmful part of NAFTA, which was signed in 1995. It allowed governments and companies to sue other governments if their business plans or environmental laws were considered unprofitable. From Chapter 11 of NAFTA.

Article 1102: National Treatment
1. Each Party shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments.
2. Each Party shall accord to investments of investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investments of its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments.
3. The treatment accorded by a Party under paragraphs 1 and 2 means, with respect to a state or province, treatment no less favorable than the most favorable treatment accorded, in like circumstances, by that state or province to investors, and to investments of investors, of the Party of which it forms a part.
4. For greater certainty, no Party may:
(a) impose on an investor of another Party a requirement that a minimum level of equity in an enterprise in the territory of the Party be held by its nationals, other than nominal qualifying shares for directors or incorporators of corporations; or
(b) require an investor of another Party, by reason of its nationality, to sell or otherwise dispose of an investment in the territory of the Party.

This clause has caused all sorts of headaches in the name of “free trade”. (See Free Trade #2 for more details). No longer are there countries, but merely “economic zones”.

Now take a look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Article 9.4: National Treatment
1. Each Party shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory.
2. Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investments in its territory of its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments.
3. For greater certainty, the treatment to be accorded by a Party under paragraphs 1 and 2 means, with respect to a regional level of government, treatment no less favourable than the most favourable treatment accorded, in like circumstances, by that regional level of government to investors, and to investments of investors, of the Party of which it forms a part.

Look familiar? It should. It is virtually the identical language that formed the basis of lawsuits (many successful), in Canada. Being a part of this agreement means signing away a good deal of your sovereignty.

5. Impact Of Previous “Free Trade” Deals

The Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington, releases reports and findings related to trade and commerce. Here are some of the their more interesting reports.

claims that trade with China has grown the bilateral trade deficit between 2001 and 2017 cost 3.4 million U.S. jobs, with losses in every state and congressional district. Keep in mind this wasn’t really free trade, but liberal trade.

This one claimed in 2003 that NAFTA had led to a net loss of 879,000 jobs in the United States, with most of them going to Mexico, where wages are much lower.

This one outlines the growing trade deficit with Canada and Mexico under NAFTA. While some deficit or surplus is to be expected in trade, it should never be one sided.

This one is another report about the mounting job losses as work continues to be outsourced, hurting American families.

This one outlined many harmful effects of free trade policies. One particularly rough one was forcing workers to accept much lower pay in order to keep their jobs. These trade policies bring cheap foreign labour into the equation as new competitors, and have the effect of driving down wages.

There are many other articles on these topics, but the 5 provided here should be enlightening on the dark side of putting profit over societies.

6. Currency Manipulation In “Free Trade”

Donald Trump has repeatedly called out the practice of currency manipulation, particularly with China. By manipulating the currency, nations can sell goods at what amounts to a much lower price.

First, a bit of background. The Chinese currency, called the renminbi, is what’s known as a policy currency. That means that unlike the U.S. dollar, which rises and falls in value in free market trading, the currency’s value against the dollar is set by the People’s Bank of China, an arm of the Chinese government.

While the PBOC has gradually tried to make the value of the renminbi more reflective of market forces, setting trading bands in which the renminbi is allowed to fluctuate every day, in the last analysis it is still under government control. Put another way, the value of the renminbi is manipulated by the government and always has been. It’s just that when Beijing was manipulating the value so that the renminbi appreciated against the dollar in the last few years, nobody in Washington complained.

When the Chinese Government manipulates its currency, it does so in order to artificially cheapen the costs of its products, and to gain an advantage over competitors.

In a “free market” world, this sort of thing should never be allowed.

It’s not free trade if all the nations involved aren’t playing by the same rules. It causes resentment and reduces goodwill.

7. Populism Is Protecting Your People

Leaders should protect the employment prospects of their citizens. The livelihood of the nation depends on there being opportunities for people to work and create lives for themselves. Countries should not be signing one-sided agreements which benefits others exclusively to the detriment of themselves.

So-called economic libertarianism promotes free trade throughout the world. This is sold as economic freedom, but it glosses over the hard truths involved. Outsourcing the employment of your nation is just corporate globalism. There is nothing populist or nationalist about throwing your people out of work en masse.

Perhaps Tucker Carlson lays it out the best. He uses the example of automated truck driving putting millions of drivers out of work.

Donald Trump’s pledge to pull the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was the right decision for the American public. He promised to bring jobs back to the country and create opportunities at home, and that was extremely popular.

In fairness, he has dangled the possibility of rejoining at some point, though the terms would have to be much better.

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UN Global Taxation Efforts & Schemes

(Ways to raise money)

(Details of proposed global tax scheme)

These are not the only examples, but should serve as an illustration for the “taxation” efforts the UN is undertaking in order to finance its various agendas. Of course its ultimate goal is world domination. It’s quite the rabbit hole, and this is just surface level.

(Shiva Ayyadurai, Republican and former Senate Candidate explains how the Carbon tax really works.)

1. Paris Accord Is All About Taxation

(This is the Paris Accord, and “Conservative” Garnett Genuis’ dishonest spin in supporting it in Parliament.)

This is not an exaggeration, or hyperbole. The entire point of the agreement is to generate an enormous slush fund. The UN IPCC and select partners can then put that money into the commodities market and make trillions from it.

If you have any doubts about that, read Article 9 from the Paris Agreement. It spells out the “financial flow” in no uncertain terms.

1. Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention.

2. Other Parties are encouraged to provide or continue to provide such support voluntarily.

3. As part of a global effort, developed country Parties should continue to take the lead in mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels, noting the significant role of public funds, through a variety of actions, including supporting country-driven strategies, and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing country Parties. Such mobilization of climate finance should represent a progression beyond previous efforts.

4. The provision of scaled-up financial resources should aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation, taking into account country-driven strategies, and the priorities and needs of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change and have significant capacity constraints, such as the least developed countries and small island developing States, considering the need for public and grant-based resources for adaptation.

5. Developed country Parties shall biennially communicate indicative quantitative and qualitative information related to paragraphs 1 and 3 of this Article, as applicable, including, as available, projected levels of public financial resources to be provided to developing country Parties. Other Parties providing resources are encouraged to communicate biennially such information on a voluntary basis.

6. The global stock take referred to in Article 14 shall take into account the relevant information provided by developed country Parties and/or Agreement bodies on efforts related to climate finance.

7. Developed country Parties shall provide transparent and consistent information on support for developing country Parties provided and mobilized through public interventions biennially in accordance with the modalities, procedures and guidelines to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Agreement, at its first session, as stipulated in Article 13, paragraph 13. Other Parties are encouraged to do so.

8. The Financial Mechanism of the Convention, including its operating entities, shall serve as the financial mechanism of this Agreement.

9. The institutions serving this Agreement, including the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism of the Convention, shall aim to ensure efficient access to financial resources through simplified approval procedures and enhanced readiness support for developing country Parties, in particular for the least developed countries and small island developing States, in the context of their national climate strategies and plans.

These are quotes directly from the Paris Accord. In particular, Article 9 makes it abundantly clear that this is all about “financial flow” and a transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing world.

Actual environmental changes seem almost to be an afterthought. This is a giant wealth transfer scheme.

2. New Development Finance, Bait-and-Switch

Okay, what are these “revenue sources”?

  • SDR (or special drawing rights), from IMF $150B-$270B
  • Carbon taxes, $240B
  • Leveraging SDR, $90B
  • Financial transaction tax, $10B-70B
  • Billionaire tax, $90B
  • Currency trading tax, $30B
  • EU emissions trading scheme, $5B
  • Air passenger levy, $10B
  • Certified emission reduction tax, $2B
  • Current ODA Flow, $120B

If these numbers are accurate, then the US is viewed as a cash cow somewhere to the tune of $627 billion to $807 billion. Yes, this only refers to revenue potential from the United States. I believe this is annually.

What does the report say about SDAs?

These include taxes on financial and currency transactions and on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the creation of new international liquidity through issuance of special drawing rights (SDRs) by the International Monetary Fund IMF), to be allocated with a bias favouring developing countries or leveraged as development financing. Though their potential may be high, these proposals are subject to political controversy. For instance, many countries are not willing to support international forms of taxation, as these are said to undermine national sovereignty.

No kidding. There is a lot of political opposition to taxes which are deemed to undermine national sovereignty. Could that be because these taxes AREN’T being used to support the well being of the citizenry? Instead the money is being funnelled out of the country in the name of some global good project.

This is how bait-and-switch works:
(1) Raise money using cause A.
(2) Actually spend the money on cause B.

An array of other options with large fundraising potential have been proposed (see figure O.1 and table O.1), but have not been agreed upon internationally thus far. These include taxes on financial and currency transactions and on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the creation of new international liquidity through issuance of special drawing rights (SDRs) by the International Monetary Fund IMF), to be allocated with a bias favouring developing countries or leveraged as development financing. Though their potential may be high, these proposals are subject to political controversy. For instance, many countries are not willing to support international forms of taxation, as these are said to undermine national sovereignty.

(Page 86) Debt-conversion mechanisms
Debt conversion entails the cancellation by one or more creditors of part of a country’s debt in order to enable the release of funds which would otherwise have been used for debt-servicing, for use instead in social or environmental projects. Where debt is converted at a discount with respect to its face value, only part of the proceeds fund the projects, the remainder reducing the external debt burden, typically as part of a broader debt restructuring.

Debt to developing nations can be “forgiven”, at least partly, if certain conditions are met. However, the obvious question must be asked:

Can nations be loaned money they could never realistically pay back, in order to ensure their compliance in UN or other global agenda, by agreeing to “forgive” part of it?

(Page 86) Debt conversion first emerged, in the guise of debt-for-nature swaps, during the 1980s debt crisis, following an opinion article by Thomas Lovejoy, then Executive Vice-President of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in the New York Times in 1984. Lovejoy argued that a developing country’s external debt could be reduced (also providing tax relief to participating creditor banks) in exchange for the country’s taking measures to address environmental challenges. Estimates based on Sheikh (2010) and Buckley, ed. (2011) suggest that between $1.1 billion and $1.5 billion of debt has been exchanged through debt-for-nature swaps since the mid–1980s, although it is not possible to assess how much of this constitutes IDF, for the reasons discussed in box III.1.

If debt can be forgiven in return for environmental measures, then why not simply fund these environmental measures from the beginning? Is it to pressure or coerce otherwise unwilling nations into agreeing with such measures?

(Page 88)
There have been two basic forms of debt-for-nature exchanges (Buckley and Freeland, 2011). In the first, part of a country’s external debt is purchased by an environmental non-governmental organization and offered to the debtor for cancellation in exchange for a commitment to protect a particular area of land. Such transactions occurred mainly in the late 1980s and 1990s and were generally relatively small-scale. An early example was a 1987 deal under which Conservation International, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental non-governmental organization, bought $650,000 of the commercial bank debt of Bolivia (now Plurinational State of Bolivia) in the secondary market for $100,000, and exchanged this for shares in a company established to preserve 3.7 million acres of forest and grassland surrounding the Beni Biosphere Reserve in the north-east part of the country. In the second form, debt is exchanged for local currency (often at a discount), which is then used by local conservation groups or government agencies to fund projects in the debtor country. Swaps of this kind are generally much larger, and have predominated since the 1990s. The largest such swap came in 1991, when a group of bilateral creditors agreed to channel principal and interest payments of $473 million (in local currency) into Poland’s Ecofund set up to finance projects designed to counter environmental deterioration. The EcoFund financed 1,500 programmes between 1992 and 2007, providing grants for conservation projects relating to cross-border air pollution, climate change, biological diversity and the clean-up of the Baltic Sea (Buckley and Freeland, 2011).

We will “forgive” your debt if:
(1) A portion of your land is off limits; or
(2) Debt converted to currency to fund “projects”

The entire document is 178 pages. While a tedious read, it’s worthwhile.

3. UN Wants $400B In Global Taxation

(UN supports global tax to raise $400B)

New York, 5 July 2012 –The United Nations is proposing an international tax, combined with other innovative financing mechanisms, to raise more than $400 billion annually for development and global challenges such as fighting climate  change. In its annual report on global development, World Economic and Social Survey 2012: In Search of New Development Finance, (WESS 2012) launched today, the UN says, in the midst of difficult financial times, many donor countries have cut back on development assistance. In 2011, for the first time in many years, aid flows declined in real terms

The survey finds that the financial needs of developing countries have long outstripped the willingness and ability of donors to provide aid. And finding the necessary resources to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and meet other global challenges, such as addressing climate change, will be tough, especially for least developed countries. 

The need for additional and more predictable financing has led to a search for new sources not as a substitute for aid, but as a complement to it . A number of innovative initiatives have been launched during the past decade, mainly to fund global health programmes aimed at providing immunizations, AIDS and tuberculosis treatments to millions of people in the  developing  world.  The  UN  survey  finds  that  while  these  initiatives have successfully used new methods to channel development financing to combat diseases, they have hardly yielded any additional funding on top of traditional development assistance. 

This source explains it straight from the horse’s mouth. The UN is not taking in enough money for its various schemes. In fact, real contributions are shrinking. Therefore it is necessary to come up with new and innovative ways to tax developed nations.

Of course one of the most common ways is with the “climate change” scam. But it is hardly the only one. The UN views many forms of wealth simply as money to tap into.

4. UN Eyeing Up African Pensions

(Pensions are also being eyed as a funding source)

(Page 10) III. PENSION FUNDS DIRECT INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE
International experience At 36.6 percent of GDP, assets of the pension funds in OECD countries are relatively large. As of end-2013, pension-fund assets were even in excess of 100 percent in countries such as the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Figure 1). In absolute terms, pension funds in OECD countries held $10.4 trillion of assets. While large pension funds (LPFs) held about $3.9 trillion of assets, assets in public and private sector and public pension reserves (PPRFs) stood at $6.5 trillion.

(Page 30) C. Policy framework for investment in infrastructure Pension funds—just like other investors, domestic and foreign—need a fair, transparent, clear, and predictable policy framework to invest in infrastructure and other assets. This is important as infrastructure assets have a number of characteristics that increase investors’ perception of risk. First, infrastructure projects typically involve economies of scale and often lead to natural monopolies with high social benefits and, at times, lower private returns. As a result, infrastructure projects may require heavy government involvement. Second, infrastructure projects are often large and long-lived with a significant initial investment but with cash flows that accrue over a long horizon.

In this regard, improving the policy framework for investment can be useful to countries seeking to develop the investor base for infrastructure. For instance, the OECD’s Policy Framework for Investment (PFI) uses self-assessments and/or an external assessment by the OECD to help a country elaborate policies for capacity building and private sector development strategies, and inform the regional dialogue (OECD, 2015b). The PFI’s investment policy refers not only to domestic laws, regulations, and policies relating to investment but also goals and expectations concerning the contribution of investment to sustainable development, such as infrastructure

(Page 31) D. Infrastructure financing instruments available to pension funds Even in well-performing pension systems where the governance, regulation, and supervision of pension funds are conducive to investment in infrastructure and there is a sound policy framework for investment, there is still a need for adequate instruments to channel pension fund assets into the infrastructure sector. Pension funds can use a number of channels to invest in infrastructure. Direct exposure is gained mainly through the unlisted equity instruments (direct investment in projects and infrastructure funds) and project bonds, while indirect exposure is normally associated with listed equity and corporate debt. More specifically, pension funds can rely on a number of options such as

The paper itself is quite long, but here is the gist of it. (See archive). The UN wants to take African pension funds and use them to “invest” it UN type of schemes.

While this seems harmless enough, remember the Paris Accord. The UN thinks nothing of taxing the developed world hundreds of billions of dollars under false pretenses in order to invest in the commodities market. Nor does the UN object to giving “infrastructure loans” to nations that will likely never be able to pay it back.

It should alarm people that an organization with no inherent loyalty to the region would want to use African pension funds to finance its own agenda.

5. UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

(UN Environment Programme)

United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) is a partnership between United Nations Environment and the global financial sector created in the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit with a mission to promote sustainable finance. More than 250 financial institutions, including banks, insurers, and investors, work with UN Environment to understand today’s environmental, social and governance challenges, why they matter to finance, and how to actively participate in addressing them.

UNEP FI’s work also includes a strong focus on policy – by facilitating country-level dialogues between finance practitioners, supervisors, regulators and policy-makers, and, at the international level, by promoting financial sector involvement in processes such as the global climate negotiations.

Here are the members of the Global Steering Committee. In short, this is a partnership between the UN and banking sector.

Keep in mind the “New Development Financing” agenda discussed earlier. Money is taken and used to “invest” in 3rd World Development Programs. Countries that are unable to pay back are forced either to give up sovereignty, or comply with other arrangements.

Banks are in the business of making money. Alternatively, they are in the business of acquiring assets which can be converted into money, or otherwise make them money. What if this banking alliance has no altruistic roots, and is meant to be predatory?

Uppity Peasants has an interesting take on the UNEP.

Make no mistake, this is exactly what happens to these people, by the way. One cross-country comparison between microloan recipients in Bangladesh and payday loan recipients in Canada found that both ‘products’ tend to attract the same kinds of people to them from very similar backgrounds, for largely the same reasons — i.e., neither group tends to use these loans for re-investment, such as starting a business; rather, they use them to cover day-to-day expenses at exorbitant interest rates, thus entrapping themselves in a cycle of never ending debt (Islam & Simpson, 2018). If you know how bad the consequences of payday lending can be for people in the first world, imagine how bad it is for someone who’s already living in third world-levels of poverty.

Now, part of the reason why the UNEP, of all possible agencies, is so heavily invested (emotionally and literally) into fintech and other start-up technologies is because many of the “incumbent banks” — the top-players of our current system — don’t think that completely up-ending the global financial system to move the focus away from profits and toward complying with heavy-handed, UN-decided environmental regulations is a particularly attractive road to go down. In the next excerpt, the UNEP openly admit that start-ups in this area are better to invest in for the pursuit of ‘change’, specifically because their owners tend to be new to the world of business and, as such, don’t know enough about what they’re doing to avoid being manipulated — and that’s where the UNEP comes in.

Uppity Peasants argues that the UNEP is driven much more on a business model than on any kind altruistic path. Further, the circumstances which the aid recipients require the resources to cover essential expenses means they are unable to invest anything. This is similar to a payday loan type of system.

6. Green Finance For 3rd World $5-7 Trillion

(Green finance for developing countries)

(Page 13)In 2015, governments adopted three major agreements that set out their vision for the coming decades: a new set of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on climate change and the ‘financing for development’ package. Finance is central to realizing all three agreements – and these now need to be translated into practical steps suited to each country’s circumstances.

Sustainable Energy for All estimates that annual global investments in energy will need to scale up from roughly US$400 billion at present to US $1-1.25 trillion. Of that, US$40-100 billion annually is needed to achieve universal access to electricity. Overall, US $5-7 trillion a year is needed to implement the SDGs globally. Developing countries are estimated to face an annual investment gap of US$2.5 trillion in areas such as infrastructure, clean energy, water and sanitation, and agriculture.

(Page 14) The challenge for financial systems is twofold: to mobilize finance for specific sustainable development priorities and to mainstream sustainable development factors across financial decision-making.

Capital needs to be mobilized for inclusion of underserved groups (e.g. small and medium enterprises), raising capital for sustainable infrastructure (e.g. energy, housing, transport, urban design) and financing critical areas of innovation (e.g. agriculture, mobility, power).

Sustainability needs to become mainstream for financial institutions. This starts with ensuring market integrity (e.g. tax, corruption, human rights) and extends to integrating environmental and social (E&S) factors into risk management (e.g. climate disruption, water stress). Sustainability also needs to be incorporated into the responsibilities and reporting of market actors to guide their decision-making. Momentum is building to align financial systems with the financing needs of an inclusive, sustainable economy. This is complementary to ‘real economy’ actions such as environmental regulations, reform of perverse subsidies and changes to resource pricing. However, while these are critical, it is increasingly recognized that changes are also needed in the financial system to ensure that it is both more stable and more connected to the real economy.

Some interesting points here:

  • $5 to $7 trillion (yes trillion) needed annually fulfill these goals. The billions stated before was lowballed.
  • The “sustainability” agenda needs mass marketing.
  • Finance needed for:
    1. 17 goals of Agenda 2030
    2. Paris Climate Accord
    3. Finance for development
  • 3 above items to be integral part of national agendas.
  • Most of this has nothing to do with the environment

In fact, it reads like a global version of the US Green New Deal, proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In fact, her Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted it was about changing the economy, not the environment.

7. International Chamber Of Commerce

(International Chamber of Commerce)

THE INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ICC is the world’s largest business organization with a network of over 6 million members in more than 130 countries. We work to promote international trade, responsible business conduct and a global approach to regulation through a unique mix of advocacy and standard setting activities—together with market-leading dispute resolution services. Our members include many of the world’s largest companies, SMEs, business associations and local chambers of commerce.
.
We are the world business organization.

That quote came from their policy guide. Pretty straightforward. They want to run business on a global level. Now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes, the tax proposals:

Interplay between tax policy making and economic growth The world’s population is predicted to increase by 2 billion people by 2050, and the population of the world’s least developed countries is projected to double by 2053, in some countries even tripling. By 2025 half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas. Under such circumstances, the need for large-scale investment in economic growth and development becomes evident.

Whilst there is no panacea, it is evident that greater alignment of investment and tax policies would be essential in promoting investment, job creation and economic growth. International commerce remains a powerful mechanism to help lift people out of poverty. Tax is intrinsically linked to development as taxation provides the revenue that states need to mobilize resources and reinforce a country’s infrastructure. Taxation “provides a predictable and stable flow of revenue to finance public spending, and shapes the environment in which investment, employment and trade takes place.”

Further, it is important to have a fair, efficient, and effective revenue collection infrastructure to promote economic and social development. Domestic resource mobilization (DRM) has been proposed as a way to meet the SDGs with the development finance already available. However, DRM can be impeded by unclear and confusing tax systems. It is imperative that companies are able to move products and services into areas where they are most needed without unnecessary administrative impediments.

Having a reliable and consistent taxation policy seems reasonable enough. However, the ICC is not being clear on the reason behind the push. They want better taxation methods in order to INCREASE the amount of revenue available.

Governments often side with these groups, even when it is not in the best interests of the citizens themselves. “Investment” dollars are then shovelled into infrastructure projects.

Tax the people, so that the money can be “properly” spent, as the UN and their partners see fit.

8. Addis Ababa Action Agenda

(Addis Ababa Action Agenda)

(Page 10) DOMESTIC PUBLIC RESOURCE
For all countries, public policies and the mobilization and effective use of domestic resources, underscored by the principle of national ownership, are central to our common pursuit of sustainable development, including achieving the sustainable development goals. Building on the considerable achievements in many countries since Monterrey, we remain committed to further strengthening the mobilization and effective use of domestic resources

(Page 10) 22. We recognize that significant additional domestic public resources, supplemented by international assistance as appropriate, will be critical to realizing sustainable development and achieving the sustainable development goals. We commit to enhancing revenue administration through modernized, progressive tax systems, improved tax policy and more efficient tax collection. We will work to improve the fairness, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of our tax systems, including by broadening the tax base and continuing efforts to integrate the informal sector into the formal economy in line with country circumstances.

23. We will redouble efforts to substantially reduce illicit financial flows by 2030, with a view to eventually eliminating them, including by combating tax evasion and corruption through strengthened national regulation and increased international cooperation. We will also reduce opportunities for tax avoidance, and consider inserting anti-abuse clauses in all tax treaties. We will enhance disclosure practices and transparency in both source and destination countries, including by seeking to ensure transparency in all financial transactions between Governments and companies to relevant tax authorities. We will make sure that all companies, including multinationals, pay taxes to the Governments of countries where economic activity occurs and value is created, in accordance with national and international laws and policies

(Page 13) 27. We commit to scaling up international tax cooperation. We encourage countries, in accordance with their national capacities and circumstances, to work together to strengthen transparency and adopt appropriate policies, including multinational enterprises reporting country-by-country to tax authorities where they operate; access to beneficial ownership information for competent authorities; and progressively advancing towards automatic exchange of tax information among tax authorities as appropriate, with assistance to developing countries, especially the least developed, as needed. Tax incentives can be an appropriate policy tool. However, to end harmful tax practices, countries can engage in voluntary discussions on tax incentives in regional and international forums.

(Page 45) 98. We affirm the importance of debt restructurings being timely, orderly, effective, fair and negotiated in good faith. We believe that a workout from a sovereign debt crisis should aim to restore public debt sustainability, while preserving access to financing resources under favourable conditions. We further acknowledge that successful debt restructurings enhance the ability of countries to achieve sustainable development and the sustainable development goals. We continue to be concerned with non-cooperative creditors who have demonstrated their ability to disrupt timely completion of the debt restructurings.

In no way does this cover the entire document. However, there are 3 themes which get repeated over and over again.

  1. Efficient tax collection
  2. Global tax regulations and data sharing
  3. “Sustainable” debt and borrowing

There is very little in this document, about actually improving lives, improving infrastructure, or improving the environment. Instead, it is all about implementing a global taxation system, while eliminating “off the books”, or illicit cash.

9. Global Tax Avoidance Measures

(Global tax avoidance measures)

Exchange of information for tax purposes
Exchange of information has long been included as a feature of tax treaty models. By agreeing to exchange information with respect to taxpayers, countries can become more aware of the global activities taxpayers are engaging in and impose tax that should be due.

The upcoming 2017 revision of the United Nations Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed and Developing countries is expected to bring a new revised version of the exchange of information provision, following the approval of the new United Nations Code of Conduct. The Committee agreed in 2016 to a proposal for a United Nations Code of Conduct on Cooperation in Combating International Tax Evasion. This Code supports the automatic exchange of information for tax purposes as the way forward for countries generally, but recognizes that it is vital for developing countries to exchange information, even if they are not ready for automatic exchange. The Code of Conduct has been approved by the Committee of Experts in 2016, and set automatic exchange of information as the new universal standard after ECOSOC adopted the Code of Conduct in a Resolution in 2017, during the ECOSOC Special Meeting on International Cooperation on Tax Matters. .Furthermore, the OECD model convention and commentaries is expected to broaden the scope of the exchange of information article to allow triangular, or multi-party exchange of information requests.

While this certainly sounds like some well meaning way to prevent money laundering and tax fraud, there is another angle to look at.

Having a global (or at least more centralized) database of people and their taxable income will allow for more efficient and effective tax collection. This is especially true whenever a new “development project” needs funding.

Furthermore, if there is such a global system, it will be easier to determine who isn’t paying “their fair share” when it comes to contributions. Those national governments can then act accordingly. Also, who doesn’t view this as becoming a global version of Revenue Canada, or the American IRS?

10. From Billions To Trillions (SF 2.0)

(Why stop at just billions?)

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require an enormous increase in external financing flows to developing countries. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) have gradually started to shift their business model towards de-risking services to crowd in long-term, low-risk private capital. However, the targeted scaling up of private investment from billions to trillions to realise the SDGs contains massive risks for stability. And good macro-policies are needed, in turn, to address such underlying risks. Countries that need the greatest amount of development finance are often those that have domestic financial resource constraints and underdeveloped markets. Financing their growth and investment opportunities makes the management of exchange rate risks, which are inherent in development finance, a critical challenge.

Merely supplying development finance is not enough. It needs to be done in socially and economically sustainable ways, where risks are allocated to those who can best manage and sustain them. Efficient use of limited public resources, through improved policies and regulatory processes, is required to achieve the SDGs and related efforts. Governments around the world must work together to offer feasible business opportunities to the private sector that are in line with domestic and international development objectives. Only with such coordinated action will we succeed in moving from billions to trillions to realise sustainable progress for all.

This article should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks that this global development system is going to be steady. Wrong. Once considered “fully operational”, the next step is to upscale it, and make it far bigger.

It is not governments who will be paying for these globalist schemes. It is the working class tax-payers who will see more and more of their wealth transferred to these projects.

Of course, once your money leaves Canadian soil, there is little to no accountability or control over what happens to it. But that it routinely downplayed.

11. What To Make From All This?

To state the obvious: these agendas and agreements are bringing nations towards a global taxation model. Countries (presumably under UN control) will be expected to share data on tax paying citizens and other people earning money. While this is touted as an anti-tax avoidance measure, the real goal is making sure the global order accounts for all money and where it goes.

Going towards a “cashless society” also helps in that regard. Hence the push for more and more electronic options, while making cash payments more difficult.

Beyond enforcement, knowing which nations have money and how much will make it easier to determine who shall pay how much as their “fair share” of future projects. We won’t have nations in the traditional sense, just shareholders.

International agreements like the Paris Accord have nothing to do with the environment. That is just the sales pitch. Instead, it an excuse to funnel huge sums of money to the UN to finance their business model. It is taking advantage of an altruistic goal.

This is about having a globalist, centralized economy and taxation. The environmental and humanitarian claims are just talking points.

(1) https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2012wess.pdf
(2) 2012.new.development.finance
(3) https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2012wesspr_en.pdf
(4) 2012, Call To Raise $400 Billion
(5) https://www.fsmgov.org/paris.pdf
(6) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2051AAAA_Outcome.pdf
(7) Addis Ababa Action Agenda
(8) https://iccwbo.org/publication/tax-united-nations-sustainable-development-goals/
(9) https://iccwbo.org/content/uploads/sites/3/2018/02/icc-position-paper-on-tax-and-the-un-sdgs.pdf
(10) http://unepinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Green_Finance_for_Developing_Countries.pdf
(11) Green_Finance_for_Developing_Countries
(12) https://developmentfinance.un.org/international-efforts-combat-tax-avoidance-and-evasion
(13) https://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/pdf/pubs/2017pensionfunds.pdf
(14) https://www.un.org/pga/72/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2018/05/Financing-for-SDGs-29-May.pdf
(15) Financing-for-SDGs-29-May
(16) https://mnetax.com/un-releases-updated-model-tax-treaty-adding-new-technical-service-fees-article-27765
(17) “https://oecd-development-matters.org/2018/07/31/development-finance-2-0-from-billions-to-trillions/
(18) https://developmentfinance.un.org/sites/developmentfinance.un.org/files/FSDR2019_ChptII.pdf
(19) Financing for Sustainable Development 2019
(20) https://www.unepfi.org/about/
(21) https://www.uncdf.org/
(22) https://oim.unjspf.org/
(23) https://www.unfcu.org/home/
(24) https://uppitypeasants.home.blog/2019/08/10/fintech-for-sustainable-development-assessing-the-implications/
(25) https://canucklaw.ca/guest-post-sunrise-movement-and-the-green-new-deal/

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CANZUK — Erasing Canada’s Borders and Sovereignty

(CPC party convention in Halifax, 97%-3% vote in favour of partially erasing Canadian borders)

(Canzuk video on its website)

1. Offshoring, Globalization, Free Trade

(A) https://canucklaw.ca/free-trade-1-thoughts-on-potential-canada-china-free-trade-deal
(B) https://canucklaw.ca/free-trade-2-nafta-lawsuits-sovereignty-massive-job-losses-conflict-of-interest/
(C) https://canucklaw.ca/free-trade-3-nafta-and-the-costs-its-supporters-ignore/
(D) https://canucklaw.ca/free-trade-4-the-trans-pacific-partnership-bill-c-79/
(E) https://canucklaw.ca/free-trade-5-why-trump-left-the-trans-pacific-partnership/

2. Important Links

(1) https://canucklaw.ca/imm-1-temporary-foreign-worker-program-other-migration
(2) https://canucklaw.ca/imm-2-close-to-1m-people-entering-canada-annually-excluding-tourists/
(3) https://www.canzukinternational.com
(4) http://archive.is/dsHPA
(5) https://canucklaw.ca/cpc-endorses-globalism-canzuk-birth-tourism-citizenship-for-refugees-islam/
(6) https://www.canzukinternational.com/2018/07/which-countries.html
(7) http://archive.is/vH7wu
(8) https://www.quora.com/How-many-countries-is-the-Queen-of-the-United-Kingdom-head-of
(9) http://archive.is/YXXxw
(10) https://www.canzuk.org/canzuk_defence_alliance_start_small_think_big.php
(11) http://archive.is/5fTxF

3. CANZUK’s Political Advisors

>

A lot of members of the “Conservative” Party of Canada. Have to wonder exactly what they’re “conserving” here. Also worth mentioning that Andrew Scheer, a “Conservative” also appears on the site with enthusiastic support for the agenda.

It was bad enough to see Scheer chugging a milk at his acceptance speech, (as his win was provided by Dairy Cartel rigging). This is arguably much worse. The erasure of Canada and Canadian borders marketed as opportunity.

4. CANZUK’s Official Mission

CANZUK International (CI) is the leading group advocating closer ties between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, known amongst diplomats at the United Nations as the ‘CANZUK Group’.

Free Trade
CANZUK International seeks to establish a comprehensive multi-lateral free trade agreement between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Customs duties and other barriers to commerce would be removed. Such a union would give its constituent members more collective bargaining power in dealing with large trading partners such as the USA, China, India and the European Union.
.
Freedom of movement within the CANZUK Group for citizens of the four realms would be an essential ingredient for a successfully open market. As these nations have compatible economic profiles, this form of immigration would be unlikely to lead to distortions in labour markets. Not only would an arrangement of this kind make good economic sense, it would reinforce a feeling of solidarity amongst the four kindred peoples. The Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement between Australia and New Zealand is a working model upon which to build. Although freedom of movement exists for citizens of both countries, there is an exclusion provision for those deemed to be a threat to the national interest. In this way mobility can foster trade and economic growth without jeopardising security.

Foreign Policy
CANZUK International endeavours to promote greater cooperation amongst the CANZUK Group with respect to foreign policy, defence and intelligence gathering. The ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) agreement between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America has been highly effective in gathering signals, military and human intelligence. It provides a useful starting point for a more comprehensive diplomatic alliance for the nations of the CANZUK Group, which would compliment the work of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). An association comprising Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom would enjoy a more balanced relationship with the United States. Collectively, these countries could be global rather than merely regional players in the geopolitical arena.

Constitutional Affairs
The shared Sovereign would be an essential aspect of any CANZUK Group association. The monarch, who represents a global institution, has played an important role as a symbol of a common heritage and parliamentary tradition. Furthermore, the Crown has been the cornerstone of democratic government and the rule of law over a long history of peaceful constitutional development. It is instructive to note that the English speaking countries which have retained the monarchy have been far more successful in avoiding civil unrest than their republican counterparts.
.
In concrete terms, the existing dialogue between viceregal representatives and the judiciary of the CANZUK Group should be encouraged. This initiative could build upon meetings that already occur between the Governors-General of the various Commonwealth realms every two years. The joint decision to revise the royal succession laws through the Perth Agreement of 2011 is a good example of effective collaboration in regard to matters of constitutional law.

One interesting thing is that this only talks about such closer cooperation between the “CANZUK” nations: Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. A lot of this seems very reasonable.

However, in a different part of the website, CANZUK International talks about extending memberships far beyond the original 4 members. And it is quite a long list.

Remember: it is pitched to the general populations as increased cooperation between 4 nations of fairly similar language, culture and customs. That is how to sell it. Once it is sold and operational, the goal becomes to expand its size and influence.

Nice bait-and-switch.

5. CANZUK Could Expand To Other Countries

Using political, social and economic analysis, CANZUK International’s Research Associate, Luke Fortmann, explores the future possibilities of other countries joining a free movement and trade alliance with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

It should be said that a new Commonwealth union would be welcoming of any potential members – with each being considered on a case-by-case basis – and that the CANZUK project is very much a work in progress; always receptive of fresh ideas and potential avenues to explore.

A useful way to begin is by taking a look at the CANZUK countries’ dependent territories, such as Christmas Island, the Cook Islands and Anguilla, for example, which are dependencies of Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, respectively, as well as the UK’s Crown dependencies (Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man).

Each area would naturally become full members of the new group along with the nations to which they are related. Some advocates claim that these small islands, and their generally sparse populations, are currently under-utilised, and that a CANZUK alliance would offer a tremendous opportunity for their communities to acquire a far more extensive set of rights by becoming equal partners in a union, while shaking off their somewhat colonial tint.

Widening our scope, we arrive at the Commonwealth realms. These realms are sovereign states who are members of the Commonwealth and who currently share Queen Elizabeth II as their monarch, of which, there are 16 including the CANZUK countries.

But, whether founded or not, the notion that free immigration was causing problems for the UK was undoubtedly a primary motivation for its departure from the European Union. A CANZUK union would seek to avoid such issues by moving slowly and steadily with the original four members, providing economic assistance to the realms before allowing their eventual membership.

Additionally, it’s been noted that, particularly concerning the more populous realms such as Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, immediate free movement would generate a rush of emigrants who may be poorly equipped for employment in the CANZUK countries; while at the same time enticing the more skilled minority away from their homeland in search of better-paying positions in the richer nations, ridding schools and hospitals of vital staff.

Instinctively, the next place to turn is to the Commonwealth as a whole. Broadening our vision in this way does present some of the same issues, as well as some new ones. A complete Commonwealth union would of course be dominated by India, with a population of over 1.3 billion, along with Pakistan (193 million), Nigeria (186 million), and Bangladesh (163 million) who would dwarf the CANZUK countries in terms of inhabitants, rendering them merely minor players.

When weighing up the potential barriers to entry that many of these Commonwealth countries have, we’re often confronted with the challenge that this new alliance is concerned only with nations that are populated by white folk. Such criticism is fairly lazy and can be easily dealt with. Firstly, as we’ve just seen, there’s absolutely no reason why these countries couldn’t join in the future, so long as efforts were directed at bringing them up to par in the ways just discussed.

At first, the project will be challenging enough, and caution will be required. Having said that, and as previously mentioned, CANZUK’s immense potential truly knows no bounds, and, down the line, further options can always be explored.

Theoretically, who could become part of CANZUK at some point in the future? Here is the list, based on the above criteria and comments:

  • Anguilla
  • Antigua
  • Australia
  • Bahamas
  • Bangladesh
  • Barbados
  • Belize
  • Canada
  • Christmas Island
  • Cook Islands
  • Grenada
  • Guernsey
  • India
  • Isle of Mann
  • Jamaica
  • Jersey
  • New Zealand
  • Nigeria
  • Pakistan
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Saint Lucia
  • Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  • Solomon Island
  • Tuvalu
  • United Kingdom

Really? We were told this was an agreement between 4 first world, developed nations. Now we are bringing in half of the third world.

Let’s be clear: marketing with the 4 nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK) is just a sales pitch. The agreement could very well expand once this is in motion. And it likely will.

6. Possible CANZUK Joint Defense Force

The first objective of any government is to protect its own citizens from external danger. How can CANZUK help achieve that goal?

Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have a common military heritage, and this shows in things as diverse as ranks, camouflage patterns and banners. They have a high degree of inter-operability – and in some cases, citizens of one nation can join the armed forces of another.

The nations have strategic similarities as well. Three out of four are island nations, whilst the fourth, Canada has the longest coastline of any nation. This places a premium on naval power – all the nations have considerable dependence on trade, vulnerability to blockades and an interest of open sea-lanes.

No joke. They are open about joint military and naval ventures. Interesting to note: aren’t this countries all part of NATO? How exactly would that square with those obligations, especially as Canada can’t afford to pay for its NATO commitments anyway?

To be fair, this soldier-swap already exists to a degree. The UK accepts Commonwealth citizens in its military. To a limited degree, Canada, Australia and New Zealand allow foreigners in as well. This seems a way to do it on a much bigger scale.

7. Where Is CANZUK Going?

CANZUK International was founded in January 2015 as The Commonwealth Freedom of Movement Organisation, and is the world’s leading non-profit organisation advocating freedom of movement, free trade and foreign policy coordination between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (the “CANZUK” countries).

Our campaign advocates closer cooperation between these four nations so they may build upon existing economic, diplomatic and institutional ties to forge a cohesive alliance of nation-states with a truly global outlook.

This seems harmless enough, but this will not be the end of it. The group will want to expand its sphere of influence and start controlling more issues and policies.

Remember, before the EU, there was a 6 nation bloc (France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium). They started a trade agreement amongst themselves. Today, it is 28 nations — though the UK is leaving — and controls everything from budgets to agriculture to immigration. It swelled far beyond its original purpose.

It is very easy to see the “CANZUK 4” become 6, 8, 12, or 15. And those innocuous issues discussed on the website may morph into foreign bodies actually controlling national agendas.

As is obvious, the Conservative Party of Canada is an enthusiastic supporter of the CANZUK agenda. This is apparently regardless of the long-term erosion of national sovereignty. Globalists.

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Creative (Climate) Communications — Effectively Marketing Psuedo-Science

No joke. There actually is a book out on how to “effectively communicate” on climate change. Loads of logical fallacies and emotional manipulation.

1. Important Links


(Other articles on climate change scam)
https://canucklaw.ca/the-climate-change-scam-part-1/

CLICK HERE, for the article in the ironically named “Scientific American” journal, authored by Max Boykoff, to promote his book.

CLICK HERE, for link to book sale.

2. Site Promoting Book

Conversations about climate change at the science-policy interface and in our lives have been stuck for some time. This handbook integrates lessons from the social sciences and humanities to more effectively make connections through issues, people, and things that everyday citizens care about. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding that there is no ‘silver bullet’ to communications about climate change; instead, a ‘silver buckshot’ approach is needed, where strategies effectively reach different audiences in different contexts. This tactic can then significantly improve efforts that seek meaningful, substantive, and sustained responses to contemporary climate challenges. It can also help to effectively recapture a common or middle ground on climate change in the public arena. Readers will come away with ideas on how to harness creativity to better understand what kinds of communications work where, when, why, and under what conditions in the twenty-first century.

Includes strategies that help people have productive conversations about climate change that involve listening and adapting rather than just trying to win an argument
-Bridges sectors and audiences, bringing together important material for undergraduate and graduate courses
-Shows the importance of being creative in communications about climate change in the twenty-first century – many businesses, institutions, and collectives can benefit from this, not just students and academics

Reading through this, you will notice that the topic of additional reading and research never comes up. There is no push to understand other perspectives or review scientific findings.

Instead, the focus is on using sociological and psychological techniques to convert normies to your position, without actually providing evidence. This is all about language and emotional manipulation.

Ironically, there is science involved here. But instead of science relating to researching “climate change”, the research focuses on how to change people’s minds. Seems that the priorities are all backwards.

Item #1: Strategies that help people have productive conversations. Presumably this is ways to insert climate change topics into otherwise normal talks.

Item #2: Cram more of the propaganda into university classes.

Item #3: Be innovative about #1 and #2.

3. The Scientific American Article

From synthesizing this work, I distill these lessons into some important “rules of the road.”
-Be authentic.
-Be aware.
-Be accurate.
-Be imaginative.
-Be bold.
From there, additional features on the road map help to navigate toward resonant and effective communications.
-Find common ground on climate change.
–Emphasize how climate change affects us here and now, in our everyday lives.
-strong>Focus on benefits of climate change engagement.
–Creatively empower people to take meaningful and purposeful action.
–“Smarten up” communications about climate change to match the demands of a 21st-century communications environment.

The first items on this list would only make sense if truth was actually a goal. Be aware and be accurate are good principles.

However, climate change advocates tend to be extremely dismissive of different ideas, opinions, facts and research. A commitment to being accurate would undermine the sense of superiority that many possess.

Find common ground and emphasizing the effects are attempts to emotionally manipulate people by inserting the topic in places where it really doesn’t belong. Indeed, the goal seems to be to make “everything” about climate change. Make it an omnipresent issue.

Lately, climate change has imposed itself on the public sphere. Through extreme events linked to changes in the climate, new scientific reports and studies, and rejuvenated youth movements (along with many other political, economic, scientific, ecological, meteorological and cultural events and issues) climate change has been increasingly difficult to ignore.
.
But you wouldn’t really have picked up on that in the first round of the U.S. Democratic party primary debates that took place in Miami, Florida. As 20 candidates made their case to the American people, it was striking how minimally and shallowly they discussed climate change.

To be fair, in a debate (10 people each over 2 days), there isn’t much chance to give long answers.

However, the author, Max Boykoff, makes the point — and will repeatedly make this point — that everything is connected to climate change. He takes the Anita Sarkessian approach, though not with gender.

Sadly, this illustrates a contradiction we have been living with for some time. That is this: amid extensive research into the causes and consequences of climate change, climate communications—and thus, conversations about climate change in our lives—have remained stuck.

There are many reasons. Among them:
-Climate change is still regularly treated as a single issue. This was clearly on display in the debates, and even during the paltry time devoted to surface-level discussions of climate change.
-There has continued to be inadequate funding provided to support sustained and coordinated social science and humanities research into what constitutes more effective climate communications.
-We have all been short on creativity, and we generally have stuck to ineffective climate communications approaches (e.g. merely scientific ways of knowing) as we muddle along.

Interesting take on the problem. Max Boykoff goes on about how the science is sound, but that we just aren’t making any headway in communicating the solutions.

Yes, climate change is still treated as a single issue (that part is true). The author’s goal is to make it an issue of everything. Again, the Anita Sarkeesian technique.

All the money that we pay in various carbon tax schemes apparently aren’t needed for climate change research. Rather, they are needed to SHARE THE RESULTS of the climate change research.

Boykoff seems to believe that it is the “strictly scientific” approach to sharing research that keeps people from seeing what is before their eyes. Seems condescending.

<

p style=”padding:2px 6px 4px 6px; color: #555555; background-color: #eeeeee; border: #dddddd 2px solid”>Yet climate change is a collective action problem that intersects with just about every other area of life. It traverses critical issues such as public health, jobs, education, inequality, poverty, violence, trade, infrastructure, energy, foreign policy and geopolitics. While everyday people clearly have the capacity to care, they reasonably often focus on immediate concerns, such as issues of job security, local school quality, crime and the economy. In recent years, however, it has become more and more clear that these issues are interlinked with climate change.

So, in making these connections, we can more effectively get to the heart of how we live, work, play, find happiness and relax in modern life, shaping our everyday lives, lifestyles, relationships and livelihoods.

Apparently we are too naïve to see the forest for the trees. Ordinary people have lives to live. We don’t spend every waking moment trying to connect aspects of our lives with climate change.

Again the author assumes, with no evidence, that every major aspect of your life is connected to climate change. It must all be pointed out.

Of course, Boykoff will never get into the conflict-if-interest that plagues climate change research. Most of it is funded with a certain outcome expected. Remember, if you aren’t concluding that climate change is a threat to humanity, then you likely won’t be funded anymore. Why keep financing climate research if it isn’t an emergency?

There has been an urgent need to improve communications about climate change at the intersections of science, policy and society. With that in mind, I wrote Creative (Climate) Communications. It is essentially a handbook that bridges sectors and audiences to meet people where they are on this critical 21st-century challenge. In the book I integrate research from the social sciences and humanities that has provided insights into better understanding what communications work, where, when, why and under what conditions.

I also examine how to harness creativity for more effective engagement. I integrate these lessons by assembling what I call features on a “road map” along with “rules of the road.” The guide is then meant to help as researchers and practitioners proceed with both ambition and caution into struggles to effectively address the many issues associated with climate change.

Although Boykoff doesn’t come right out an say it, book is about marketing techniques. What tactics are most persuasive and under what circumstances? People can’t straight up accept “facts and truth”, it needs to be pointed out again and again.

In short, most people are too stupid to see the big picture. Boykoff implies it, but doesn’t not actually state it.

Through this guidance, I seek to help maximize effectiveness and opportunities and minimize mistakes and dead ends in a resource-, energy- and time-constrained environment. In putting this together, I also emphasize that successful and creative climate communications strategies must be tailored to perceived and intended audiences and can be most effective when pursued through relations of trust. And I underscore that context is critical; cultural, political, social, environmental, economic, ideological and psychological conditions matter.

Move away from hard data and facts. Use “soft techniques” to sell it. To once more point out the obvious, everything is connected to climate change.

I also argue that an expanded approach involves processes of listening and adapting rather than winning and argument or talking people into something. Authentically considering other points of view fosters meaningful exchanges and enhances possibilities for finding common ground. Facts established through scientific ways of knowing about climate change are important, but they are not enough. We therefore need to enlarge considerations of how knowledge influences actions, through experiential, emotional, visceral, tactile, tangible, affective and aesthetic ways of learning and knowing about climate change.

Facts aren’t enough. Tell people again and again, that climate change impacts everything. Look for more subtle ways to get your message across.

4. Reflection On This Article


To address the elephant in the room: it is darkly amusing to post in “Scientific American” about scientific methods to convince people to accept pseudo-science about climate change.

Boykoff mentions several times about considering other peoples’ perspectives. But this is hypocritical considering the amount of times “skeptics” or “deniers” are ridiculed or scorned for trying to find out the truth.

Boykoff also neglects any mention or idea that any of the “climate change” findings might be exaggerated or flat out wrong.

It seems the climate-change industry has given up on science, and instead focuses its efforts on trying to market their agenda.

Might be worth buying the book just to do a thorough debunking of it. Understand your enemy after all.

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Guest Post: Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal

1. Guest Posting Here

This article is not mine, but the creation of a YouTuber and writer who goes by the handle “BOLD Like a Leopard”. Feel free to check out the channel, there is some interesting content on it.

2. Important Links

CLICK HERE, for message from Mark Ruffalo and Bill McKibbons.
CLICK HERE, for Bill Nye suggests jailing climate deniers.
CLICK HERE, for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders wanting to declare “climate emergency”.
CLICK HERE, for the climate emergency declaration.
CLICK HERE, for manifesto “Lead Public Into Emergency Mode”.

CLICK HERE, for AOC’s June 2018 primary.
CLICK HERE, for tweet claiming we can’t afford an economy that is based on use of fossil fuels.
CLICK HERE, for Sunrise Philadelphia calling for a demonstration.
CLICK HERE, for a live tweet.
CLICK HERE, for Malcolm Nance.
CLICK HERE, for Louise Mensch.
CLICK HERE, for Momentum Core Team.
CLICK HERE, for the Momentum trainers.
CLICK HERE, for efforts to establish a “climate debate”.
CLICK HERE, for Saikar Chakrabarti admitting the Green New Deal was about changing the economy, and the environment was just a pretext.

3. Sunrise Movement & Green New Deal

Once the domain of scientific debates and science fiction disaster movies, the subject of climate change and its influence on natural disasters has now become a major topic of contention among the Hollywood jet set, children’s cartoons, and naturally as a result public officials and policy makers. Much of the discussion over climate change has been shrouded in controversy largely due to acrimonious debate over who has the proper professional standing on how severe the crisis is, whether human activity is the main catalyst of current trends, and if or how government policy must be applied to address it. However, the organizing tactics, funding, and structure of the organizations pushing climate change legislation like the Paris Climate Accord and the Green New Deal suggests a larger goal in mind, one that involves a power grab far beyond environmental and industrial emissions policy. The Sunrise Movement is being cited as a fresh youth-infused answer to the fossil fuels industries, and it is being touted by climate change activism patriarch William McKibben as having “cracked the code of the American political system”. This statement is correct, and Sunrise is hacking into the mainframe of American politics, but if McKibben were truthful he would not be omitting his own role in their germination, as well as the intersection of the group with the Boston-based Ayni Institute and its Momentum Community program. The growing stake that these groups have in the political landscape are not a natural outgrowth of a changing public consciousness, but rather one more chess piece in a grand power grab.

We’ll see what happens. . .

In 2016 TV entertainer Bill Nye, host of the children’s show “Bill Nye the Science Guy” speculated that jailing “climate deniers” may be appropriate. “We’ll see what happens. Was it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive, and so on?” Nye responded when asked.

Unfortunately, this high handed attitude toward the discussion shows that much of the climate change action side of the argument has despaired of properly making their case against their opponents, the “climate skeptics”. The activists scoff at accusations that they are “alarmists”, but their public statements show that they are ratcheting up statements consistently in order to create a sense of panic that climate trends are sloping toward an apocalyptic event:

  • On July 9 Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a joint resolution that they wanted Congress to declare a national emergency over climate change.
  • As documented by the Climate Emergency Declaration, there are 740 jurisdictions that have declared a climate emergency including Scotland, Wales, the Republic of Ireland, as well as London and the Australian cities of Sydney and the Australian Capital Territory among others.
  • There is now a group across Europe dedicated to whipping up the public into a climate emergency frenzy known as “Extinction Rebellion”. The movement is led by clinical psychologist Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon (the “Climate Psychologist”) and she published a manifesto called Leading The Public Into Emergency Mode originally in 2016.

Salamon’s manifesto was endorsed by Bill McKibben on the Climate Mobilization website where he is described as the “Movement Leader”.

According to one of its grant donors, the Guerilla Foundation, Extinction Rebellion (XR) was given between $20 and $40 thousand in order to promote “a fundamental change of the UK’s political and economic system to one which maximises well-being and minimises harm”. In the grant description point number 9 figures prominently in their Theory of Change: “Create a distributed organising model based in ‘momentum’ organising and holocracy (training from the Ayni institute / Carlos Saavedra). This is basically a hybrid of mass protest and structure based organising. Much of this is explained in the book This is an Uprising”. The book in question was written by the brothers Mark and Paul Engler, both of them former Occupy Wall Street activists themselves deeply affiliated with the Ayni Institute.

The Shame Game

While at times climate activists engage in rhetorical threats like Nye or grandstanding like Sanders and the other emergency sponsors, the value that they appeal the most to is shame. This is why the United Nations, European Parliament, Swedish Parliament and numerous other bodies have hosted the 16 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg to speak about climate justice. Speaking about when she will be 75 years old, she asked whether her children would “ask why you didn’t do anything while there was time to act. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you’re stealing their future in front of their very eyes.” Thunberg went on to tearfully decry the 6th mass extinction of species and the acidification of the oceans.

Another statement that Thunberg makes echoes Salamon verbatim:
“Imagine there is a fire in
your house.
What do you do?
What do you think about?”

The idea of using children to shame adults for their poor policy is an understandably ingenious strategy, but it typically yields nothing in terms of policy. In 1982 a ten year old named Samantha Smith wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov to ask him if he was going to vote for a war. Smith’s letter was personally answered by Andropov, and compared her to Tom Sawyer’s friend Becky and invited her to the USSR, where she spent two months as Andropov’s guest on a tour, and she was a “goodwill ambassador” for peace before dying in a plane crash at age 13 in 1985. By then both Andropov and his successor Konstantin Chernenko had both died of old age. Tragic as her story was, Samantha Smith’s story is a footnote in history as there was no major movement behind her personal initiative.

The shame tactic has been mass-produced by the Sunrise Movement in its push to promote the issue of climate change as being an issue of primary concern in the minds of the next generation of youth voters. Sunrise was formed ostensibly by two activists, Varshini Prakash and Sara Blazevic. Both of them are former activists of the Fossil Fuel Student Divestment Network, a campaign by college students to get their colleges to withdraw investments in energy companies. Both of them were involved in student sit-ins at their colleges, Blazevic at Swarthmore in 2015, and Prakash at UMass-Amherst in 2016 where activists were arrested for civil disobedience.

Now they are trying to take the climate change movement to a broader, and younger, forum. But in comments to Energy & Environment News (E&E News) they make it very apparent that their movement is a response to failures of previous groups that they have been active in. In it, their fellow co-founder Evan Weber openly muses about how Sunrise is attempting to compensate for the same flaws that he encountered while he was an activist with Occupy Wall Street. It should be noted that while Prakash and Blazevic are the face of the movement, Weber is listed on its 2016 IRS Form 990 (when it was named US Climate Plan) as the President and Executive Director, and he was listed by the climate action website Grist.orgGrist.org as a former Occupy activist and founder of the US Climate Plan. Weber had also been an activist along with fellow Wesleyan University activist Michael Lichtash for US Climate Plan who traveled to the COP20 Climate Talks in Lima, Peru in 2014. At the time they were already claiming that delaying the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the US was “a step toward climate justice”. At the time all were in one way or another linked through McKibben’s 350.org organization.

The Guru of Green Activism

During the Obama Administration’s tenure, McKibben and 350.org fought doggedly to force the President and his cabinet not to let the pipeline proceed. In 2015 the Nebraska Supreme Court removed legal hurdles to building of the Keystone XL, meaning that it would need approval from several cabinet-level officials including Secretary of State John Kerry, himself a public advocate for climate change action by governments. Until then much of the process had been tied up as conservation and activism groups battled with TransCanada (the builder) in the courts. McKibben was asked if Kerry could salvage his reputation on climate change if he approved the pipeline. According to POLITICO he answered: “No. Keystone’s obviously a keystone,” he said in an email. “Approve that and the rest is happy talk — you can’t cut carbon without cutting carbon.” For months Kerry waffled over the decision while continuing to condemn fossil fuel producers, but in November 2015 he came through for McKibben and denied the pipeline’s permit application. However when Donald Trump was inaugurated as president he approved the Keystone XL pipeline within his first three days by executive order and continues to fight against challenges to it in court.

The issue at hand is not the activism itself, but the veneer of popular will. McKibben has made a long career out of claiming to be the underdog fighting against the corporate fossil fuel industry, and to be sure they are not exactly a sympathetic opponent. There’s also legitimate concern over carbon consumption and its effects on oceans and wetlands leading to extinction of species. He formed 350.org in 2007 based on the notion that 350ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be the acceptable level in order to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. However, the standing that McKibben has within the movement is not a result of any professional knowledge or accomplishment, he is in fact a former New Yorker writer who majored in journalism at Harvard. He then wrote The End of Nature in 1989, the book that is considered to have started the climate change movement. However, as Reason observed when reviewing his 2010 follow-up Earth, humans have adapted to the rising sea levels warned about by climate alarmists like McKibben, using the example of Boston which has reclaimed land consistently since 1775 despite rising sea levels. At one point McKibben and others climate alarmists like Jim Hansen used the global warming trends to raise public consciousness about environmental issues. But according to him, that was during a period when they were “naïve”. However, the new tactic of his supporters is to mask the existing climate movement that he began with The End of Nature in 1989 and institutionalized in the 2000s with 350.org through a youth activist group like Sunrise whose events he frequently headlines. As many climate skeptics point out the ability of climate alarmists to excite public attention diminishes when their predictions are not fulfilled, such as when Gore predicted in 2006 that the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro would melt within a decade. Another member of 350.org’s board of directors, Naoimi Klein, has evaded responsibility for advocating for the Green New Deal while also being a long-time apologist for the Chavez regime that made Venezuela’s entire economy dependent on oil exports.

McKibben was also a major activist during the lead-up to COP21, the 2015 climate change conference where the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was drafted. On November 30 he wrote an opinion in Foreign Policy called “The Paris Climate Talks Will Be a Historic Success. And a Historic Disaster. ” Paris He participated in the climate marches occurring during the event, and even headlined with Klein the Pathway to Paris live concert on December 4 along with Radiohead lead vocalist Thom Yorke, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and other rock superstars. But by December 13, as the conference had just wrapped up, he claimed that it had fallen short.

“The irony is, an agreement like this adopted at the first climate conference in 1995 might have worked. Even then it wouldn’t have completely stopped global warming, but it would have given us a chance of meeting the 1.5 degree Celsius target that the world notionally agreed on.”

Some on the political left were too jaded to take McKibben seriously, and began to characterize his activism as “greenwashing”. They noted that the agreement did much to boost the profile of the international NGO Avaaz that backed the climate march and other events, but little to accomplish anything. They also made it public that Dow Chemicals, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and even BP had been sponsors the Climate Group that had organized the conferences. What McKibben needed to do was inject some steroids into the movement so as to gain ground on those detractors.

Why “grassroots”?

In the same article claiming Paris had fallen short, McKibben made a statement that demonstrated his intentions going forward: “But what this means is that we need to build the movement even bigger in the coming years, so that the Paris agreement turns into a floor and not a ceiling for action.”

McKibben’s influence is felt deeply largely due to the usefulness of his cause to various statesmen and former politicians. In 2010 he wrote an opinion article for GristGrist claiming that Al Gore was “kicking butt” over climate change. In 2016 he became a backer of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and wound up on his five member delegation to the Democratic National Party’s platform writing committee for that year’s election. However this was a summit that led to nowhere as the party continued to accept contributions from the fossil fuel industry. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton received $967,336 from them during that cycle, leading by far any other Democrat in any elected position. The crusade against fossil fuels had to enter a new phase, and the US Climate Plan (founded in 2014) went through a rebranding becoming Sunrise. Since then they have made several inroads in electoral politics including getting eleven state legislators elected throughout the US, including five in Pennsylvania.

Besides Sanders, the Green New Deal advocates can numerous other candidates for 2020 that have endorsed it or proposed their own versions of it:

  • New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in December 2018 a city-wide divestment from fossil fuel companies and a lawsuit against them, a measure cheered by McKibben’s 350.org. In March the Mayor named McKibben to the OneNYC Advisory Board. De Blasio’s new city-wide rules targeting energy usage by sky-scrapers were announced in May at Trump Tower.
  • Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has made climate change the centerpiece of his tenure in office and his presidential campaign vowing to commit to a 100% renewable energy system by 2035. This was praised by McKibben on May 3, and on May 30 another McKibben acolyte Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker issued a raving review in Yale 360.
  • One candidate McKibben may be less bullish about is Tom Steyer, an erstwhile donor. In 2016 in the run-up to the election the two sat down for a joint interview on the need to make climate change a signature issue. Steyer’s TomKat Charitable Trust has given generously to 350.org, and at one point the former hedge fund manager and the environmentalist were joined at the hipjoined at the hip in their efforts to support fossil fuel divestment. Steyer’s public image has diminished since 2016 due to his sensationalist efforts to support the impeachment of Donald Trump including funding The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP).

Not long after the 2018 midterm election Sunrise activists occupied the office of Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, the incoming Speaker of the House. They also ambushed Sen Diane Feinstein (D-CA) in February. Within a day McKibben had written a response in the New Yorker saying he imagines that Feinstein “would like a do-over of her colloquy”. In the same opinion article, McKibben mentioned Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg, and claimed that the Green New Deal was hatched by the Sunrise Movement.

But this is untrue, and McKibben knows that. The original Green New Deal was written in 2008 by the New Economics Foundation when many of the Sunrise activists were not even in high school. The authors included Guardian editor Larry Elliott, Andrew Simms of the NEF, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party and others. Another version, the “Global Green New Deal” was adopted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2008. The American version of the Green New Deal is HR 109 which was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez. No one from Sunrise was involved in drafting it, and if everyone was being above board it would be admitted that there was no coherent “Green New Deal” when it was supported during the 2018 election cycle; so the activists and politicians were endorsing a policy proposal prior to its existence.

Messaging the GND

Does anyone really believe that it was Sunrise activists that wrote the legislation? Even in her own office, Ocasio-Cortez has four staff members, none of whom are members of it. Corbin Trent and Saikat Chakrabarti, her press secretary and chief of staff respectively, are former members of Justice Democrats, but not of Sunrise. The nexus that drives them all together is one of the policy’s most effective and most successful activists, Justice Democrats’ communications director Waleed Shahid who is also a senior leader of the Working Families Party. Based in Philadelphia, Shahid was instrumental in campaigning for the legislative election success in Pennsylvania as well as propelling Ocasio-Cortez to power by focusing on her June 2018 primary.

While McKibben is an overall mastermind of the movement, Shahid is often a point man that issues day to day messages that are often picked up by Ocasio-Cortez and other elected officials regarding climate change, while also directing the defense to the inevitable backlash. A case in point was a June 21 tweet where Ocasio-Cortez claimed that an oil refinery explosion and fire was evidence of an “existential crisis” due to climate change. Up until then very few had made that observation about the accident. However, Shahid had issued a tweet earlier that day claiming that “we can’t afford an economy based on fossil fuels”. Sunrise Philadelphia called for a demonstration within five minutes of Shahid’s tweet. During the confrontation with Sen. Feinstein during the middle of the afternoon on a Friday Shahid was live tweet echoing Sunrise Bay Area’s account in order to hype the event. He issued a total of 23 tweets that day (Feb. 22) regarding the incident, including fighting with delusional mainstream anti-Trump activists Malcolm Nance and Louise Mensch who accused Justice Democrats of uploading the video and using Russian disinformation tactics.

Like the Engler brothers, Shahid was one of the earliest core team members of the Ayni Institute and Momentum Community. Blazevic is also an alumnus of the Ayni Institute, and is a Momentum Trainer along with fellow Sunrise co-founders Will Lawrence and Diyanna Jaye. The derivative of the Momentum training is to create nominally decentralized cells (called “hubs” by Sunrise) that organize on the local level to push a progressive agenda.

But the decentralized organizing is irrelevant when the ideology of Sunrise is not dependent on the membership. The leaders of the movement all come from 350.org, the agenda is set by the ideologues like McKibben and Klein, and the day-to-day messaging is directed by the powers behind the throne like Shahid. Ultimately a green economy is a secondary goal of the movement. So far during the Democratic 2020 primary season, the movement has somewhat successfully lobbied for a “climate debate” between candidates. However, in a moment of surprising candour, Chakrabarti let slip the real truth:

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

So that leads to a concluding question: If McKibben, Salamon, and Klein were portraying the climate crisis as a global emergency on the level of World War II, then why are they pushing a piece of legislation that according to its main legislative advocate was not originally about climate change?

4. Information About The Author

YouTube: BOLD like a Leopard:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqafJgJiTZik1KreMJgy4Eg
Gab.com: https://gab.com/StarScream85
Minds.com: https://www.minds.com/ChefLeopard
BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/bFrSR277N5TG/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChefLeopard
For donations: https://www.subscribestar.com/chefleopard

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Fake Refugees Gaming The System, (United Nations v.s. N.G.O.)

(Lauren Southern reports on asylum fraud)

Original video is here.

(Squatting Slav: Lauren won’t talk about “who” is behind it)

Original video is here.

(UN publication on human trafficking)

1. Trafficking, Smuggling, Child Exploitation

CLICK HERE, for TSCE #1: series intro and other listings.
CLICK HERE, for TSCE #2: suing for the right to illegally enter U.S.
CLICK HERE, for TSCE #3: the U.N.’s hypocrisy on sexual abuse.

2. Important Links

(1) https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1024882
(2) http://archive.is/kjMuB
(3) https://www.iom.int/news/iom-monitors-caravans-central-american-migrants-supports-voluntary-returns
(4) http://archive.is/9SCmV
(5) http://csonet.org/index.php?menu=77
(6) http://archive.is/6Oh4z
(7) https://www.unhcr.org/partnerships.html
(8) http://archive.is/dKxll
(9) https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/71/1
(10) https://canucklaw.ca/new-york-declaration-september-2016-prelude-to-the-global-migration-compact/
(11) https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/180713_agreed_outcome_global_compact_for_migration.pdf
(12) https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/Migrant-Smuggling/Smuggling_of_Migrants_A_Global_Review.pdf
(13) https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/People-smuggling
(14) https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html

3. Advocates Abroad And Ariel Ricker

(Advocates Abroad Homepage)

(Lauren Southern exposing Ariel Ricker on coaching “refugees” to lie).

At least one organization, Advocates Abroad, is openly committing fraud in trying to get bogus “refugees” into Europe. This is done by concocting convincing stories with specific details in hopes of duping refugee agencies.

(From this RT article)

Ariel Ricker, the executive director of Advocates Abroad, a major non-profit NGO which provides legal aid to migrants, has been caught on tape openly discussing how she teaches refugees to lie to border agents. The video was released by Canadian right-wing activist, author and internet personality, Lauren Southern, and will be a part of her new documentary film project ‘Borderless,’ which takes on the European migration crisis.

One method she teaches migrants is to exploit the presumed Christian sympathies of the predominantly Eastern Orthodox Greece by pretending to have been persecuted for being Christian. She even describes telling them how to pray during interviews, ironically because doing so reflects “honesty.”

Advocates Abroad claim the video was selectively edited and manipulated to serve a particular agenda.

4. Other NGO Activities

CLICK HERE, for Advocates Abroad.
CLICK HERE, for smuggling 40 migrants into Italy.
CLICK HERE, for people smuggling into Europe.
CLICK HERE, for NGOs smuggling Muslims into Italy.
CLICK HERE, for “humanitarian” smuggling into Greece.
CLICK HERE, for Soros funded NGOs smuggling ISIS into Europe.

Of course the above links are just a tiny sample.

Interesting that Canada signed the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto.

The Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, adopted by General Assembly resolution 55/25, entered into force on 28 January 2004. It deals with the growing problem of organized criminal groups who smuggle migrants, often at high risk to the migrants and at great profit for the offenders. A major achievement of the Protocol was that, for the first time in a global international instrument, a definition of smuggling of migrants was developed and agreed upon. The Protocol aims at preventing and combating the smuggling of migrants, as well as promoting cooperation among States parties, while protecting the rights of smuggled migrants and preventing the worst forms of their exploitation which often characterize the smuggling process.

Canada claims to be against human smuggling. Yet we sign treaties (like the New York Declaration and Global Migration Compact), which facilitate human smuggling.

5. Interpol’s Take On Human Smuggling

For centuries, people have left their homes in search of better lives. In the last decade, the process of globalization has caused an unprecedented amount of migration from the least developed countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe to Western Europe, Australia and North America.

With this, we have seen an increase in the activities of organized criminal networks who facilitate irregular migration. By providing fake identification documents, organizing transport, and bypassing official border controls, criminals are making huge profits.

People smuggling syndicates are run like businesses, drawn by the high profit margins and low risks. They benefit from weak legislation and a relatively low risk of detection, prosecution and arrest compared to other activities of transnational organized crime.

Smuggling networks can be extensive and complex, and can include people who carry out a number of different roles:

A report published jointly by Europol and INTERPOL in May 2016 estimates that more than 90% of the migrants coming to the European Union are facilitated, mostly by members of a criminal network.

Worth pointing out: that while Interpol cites the UN’s policies against human smuggling, it neglects to mention that the UN’s policies around “rights” for illegals go a long way towards incentivizing mass illegal immigration.

It also neglects to point out the underhanded means which host countries have these forced on their populations by politicians.

6. Media Pussyfoots Around Illegal Immigration

(From a CBC article)

“Desperate migrants are choosing ever more dangerous sea routes to Europe and using smaller and less seaworthy boats, causing a sharp increase in drowning deaths, warns the International Organization for Migration.”

“Meanwhile in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is ratcheting up his attacks on the European Union, calling it a “transport agency” for migrants that hands out funds and “anonymous bank cards” to “terrorists and criminals.”
.
“This is the kind of slippery slope which could again lead to a broken Europe,” Orbán declared today in an interview on Hungarian public radio.

The author of this trash deliberately and repeatedly skirted the main issue here: these hoards of “migrants” trying to get into Europe were doing so ILLEGALLY. Hence places like Hungary have every right to secure their borders.

(From one CBC interview)

“AMT: We all remember the Berlin Wall coming down. In fact it was 30 years ago this year. I’ve got a clip here that I’d like you to hear. These are two Germans talking about what it felt like to stand on top of the Berlin Wall after the crowds started streaming across the border.
.
AMT: Elisabeth Vallet, how did the fall of that iconic wall affect our ideas around the usefulness or function of walls?
.
ELISABETH VALLET: Well actually if you remember in 1989 it opened a almost a hippie era of international relations, where we believed that it was the end of borders me. Maybe even the end of state sovereignty or even the fading sovereignty of the state. We believed that peace would be dominating and that conflicts would be solved by the international community. It actually showed the good the positive aspects of globalization. And we overlooked the negative aspects of globalization. And when 9/11 arrived, it’s as if that negative aspect of globalization showed its face. And that’s when the only solution to that, governments came up with the one only solution which was building border fences, because there is no way to retain globalization, to contain globalization.”

In this garbage, the “expert” compares the Berlin Wall to border walls in general. The Berlin wall was built in the 1960s to keep Germans from fleeing, and in fact kept them prisoner. This is conflated with building walls to stop illegal immigration.

The above are just 2 examples of how media outlets (like the CBC) try to shade and distort the truth by downplaying how serious and criminal these actions actually are. They play to emotion and selectively avoid hard truths.

7. UN Openly Aids And Abets Refugee Fraud

(UN supports ongoing efforts to undermine US/Mexico border)

It involves some serious mental gymnastics to explain how the UN can both:

  1. Support mass, uncontrolled entry into other countries
  2. Oppose circumventing laws to get migrants into other countries

San Jose – The UN Migration Agency, IOM, continues to provide support and assistance to migrants who have joined the migrant caravans crossing Central America and opted to seek asylum in Mexico or return to their countries of origin.

In the Siglo XXI Migratory Station of Tapachula, managed by the National Institute for Migration (INM) of Mexico, IOM and the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE) have been supplying food and basic hygiene kits to over 1,500 migrants from the caravans seeking asylum in Mexico.

“IOM maintains its position that the human rights and basic needs of all migrants must be respected, regardless of their migratory status,” says Christopher Gascon, IOM Chief of Mission in Mexico. “In coordination with UNHCR we will continue to monitor the situation of the caravan counting on field staff, the Mexican Office of Assistance for Migrants and Refugees (DAPMyR), and partner NGOs, providing information regarding alternatives for regular and safe migration, as well as options for voluntary returns.”

“The caravan phenomenon in Central America is another expression of a migration process that the region has been facing for quite some time,” explains Marcelo Pisani, IOM Regional Director for Central America, North America, and the Caribbean. “It is a mixed migration flow, driven by economic factors, family reunification, violence and the search for international protection, among others.

That’s right. The UN admits that many of these cases are not refugees.

The United Nations willingly aids and abets efforts to overwhelm the US/Mexico border. Even knowing that the bulk of the asylum claims are bogus, the UN sees nothing immoral about perpetrating a fraud. Nor is there anything immoral about the burden dumped on the American public.

What is eerie is how coordinated these “refreshment aid packages” are delivered. Almost as if the UN planned this invasion from the beginning.

8. UN Erasing Borders With New York Declaration (2016) and Global Migration Compact (2018)

The New York Declaration (2016) was covered here previously.

5. We reaffirm the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. We reaffirm also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recall the core international human rights treaties. We reaffirm and will fully protect the human rights of all refugees and migrants, regardless of status; all are rights holders. Our response will demonstrate full respect for international law and international human rights law and, where applicable, international refugee law and international humanitarian law.

49. We commit to strengthening global governance of migration. We therefore warmly support and welcome the agreement to bring the International Organization for Migration, an organization regarded by its Member States as the global lead agency on migration, into a closer legal and working relationship with the United Nations as a related organization. We look forward to the implementation of this agreement, which will assist and protect migrants more comprehensively, help States to address migration issues and promote better coherence between migration and related policy domains.

56. We affirm that children should not be criminalized or subject to punitive measures because of their migration status or that of their parents.

77. We intend to expand the number and range of legal pathways available for refugees to be admitted to or resettled in third countries. In addition to easing the plight of refugees, this has benefits for countries that host large refugee populations and for third countries that receive refugees.

The UN Global Migration Compact (2018) was covered here, and again here. Sorry, but I don’t believe Michelle Rempel’s half-assed “rejection” of the Compact.

OBJECTIVE 5: Enhance availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration
21. We commit to adapt options and pathways for regular migration in a manner that facilitates labour mobility and decent work reflecting demographic and labour market realities, optimizes education opportunities, upholds the right to family life, and responds to the needs of migrants in a situation of vulnerability, with a view to expanding and diversifying availability of pathways for safe, orderly and regular migration

OBJECTIVE 11: Manage borders in an integrated, secure and coordinated manner
27. We commit to manage our national borders in a coordinated manner, promoting bilateral and regional cooperation, ensuring security for States, communities and migrants, and facilitating safe and regular cross-border movements of people while preventing irregular migration. We further commit to implement border management policies that respect national sovereignty, the rule of law, obligations under international law, human rights of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, and are non-discriminatory, gender-responsive and child-sensitive.

OBJECTIVE 13: Use immigration detention only as a measure of last resort and work towards alternatives
29. We commit to ensure that any detention in the context of international migration follows due process, is non-arbitrary, based on law, necessity, proportionality and individual assessments, is carried out by authorized officials, and for the shortest possible period of time, irrespective of whether detention occurs at the moment of entry, in transit, or proceedings of return, and regardless of the type of place where the detention occurs. We further commit to prioritize noncustodial alternatives to detention that are in line with international law, and to take a human rights-based approach to any detention of migrants, using detention as a measure of last resort only.

OBJECTIVE 15: Provide access to basic services for migrants
31. We commit to ensure that all migrants, regardless of their migration status, can exercise their human rights through safe access to basic services. We further commit to strengthen migrant inclusive service delivery systems, notwithstanding that nationals and regular migrants may be entitled to more comprehensive service provision, while ensuring that any differential treatment must be based on law, proportionate, pursue a legitimate aim, in accordance with international human rights law.

OBJECTIVE 17(c) Promote independent, objective and quality reporting of media outlets, including internetbased information, including by sensitizing and educating media professionals on migration-related issues and terminology, investing in ethical reporting standards and advertising, and stopping allocation of public funding or material support to media outlets that systematically promote intolerance, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants, in full respect for the freedom of the media

The United Nations is fully on board with erasing borders with their mass migration policies. The 2016 and 2018 agreements leave no doubt of that.

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), or Civil Societies, are involved in bringing large numbers of people from the third world over to the first. Some do it out of guilt or conscience, while others do it for money.

Obvious question: Do these NGOs and the UN work together?

9. Many NGOs (Civil Societies) Work With UN

(NGO Branch Department of Economic and Social Affairs of UN)

(The UN “directly” collaborates with NGOs/Civil Societies)

Faced with many complex challenges in recent years, UNHCR has redoubled its efforts to strengthen its partnerships with UN organizations and NGOs, both international and national, seeking to maximise complementarity and sustainability in its work for refugees and others of concern.

Today, UNHCR works with more than 900 funded, operational and advocacy partners to ensure that the rights and needs of populations of concern are met. UNHCR continues to give high priority to its relations with partners, and strives to strengthen strategic and operational collaboration at global, regional and country levels.

The main goal of the organization’s vast network of partnerships is to ensure better outcomes for persons of concern by combining and leveraging complementary resources and working together in a transparent, respectful and mutually beneficial way. These partnerships also underpin UNHCR’s engagement in inter-agency fora and processes, where mutual understanding and strong alliances help ensure that refugees, IDPs and stateless persons are adequately prioritised.

CLICK HERE, for UN Refugee Partners.

So, how exactly would switching Canada’s reliance on refugee selection be helped here? If NGOs (Civil Societies) directly work with the UN, then is there any real difference?

The UN cites over 900 fully funded partners. Other than possibly decentralizing the process, what is the point here? Is it a policy distinction without a difference?

10. UN Hypocrisy On Human Smuggling

From the UN’s own package on smuggling people:

(Page 8) Salt and Stein suggested treating international migration as a global business that has both legitimate and illegitimate sides. The migration business is conceived as a system of institutionalized networks with complex profit and loss accounts, including a set of institutions, agents and individuals each of which stands to make a commercial gain.

The model conceives trafficking and smuggling as an intermediary part of the global migration business facilitating movement of people between origin and destination countries. The model is divided into three stages: the mobilization and recruitment of migrants; their movement en route; and their insertion and integration into labour markets and host societies in destination countries. Salt and Stein conclude their theory by citing the need to look at immigration controls in a new way, placing sharper focus on the institutions and vested interests involved rather than on the migrants themselves.

Aranowitz puts forward a similar view and claims that smuggling could not have grown to such proportions if it were not supported by powerful market forces. Furthermore, Aranowitz argues that smugglers exhibit entrepreneur-like behaviour and circumvent legal requirements through corruption, deceit and threats. They specialize either in smuggling or in trafficking services, and the profit generated varies accordingly.

Interesting. The UN absolutely does recognize the “business” element of human trafficking, and likens it to any other type of business. It is driven by high demand.

However, the elephant in the room must be pointed out. The UN itself helps to drive such demand with its “one world” policies. By arranging accords (like New York or Global Migration Compact), the UN helps create these conditions. If it becomes mandatory that a host country MUST provide basic services, regardless of legal status, then people will flock to those countries. The UN also tries to facilitate housing and other social services at the expense of taxpayers.

To add insult to injury, these accords limit the ability of host Governments to jail illegals, and attempt to shut down legitimate criticism.

11. Canada’s Aud-G Uncovers Citizenship Fraud

(Rebel Media: Auditor General Michael Ferguson reports)

Citizenship being granted to people:

  • With prior, serious criminal records
  • Who commit crimes after arriving
  • Who are using fake addresses

About the fake addresses, the video talks about 50 people using the same address (as one example) to claim residency.

The Rebel video makes a great point: If this Ministry can’t be bothered to properly follow up on obvious cases of citizenship fraud, how can Canadians expect them to properly screen and select “refugees” for entry into Canada?

From this article.

The report shows that several people and possibly dozens managed to be accepted as Canadian citizens through fraud that went undetected, or through lax controls.

The report noted cases of people with serious criminal records who were accepted as citizens. It also found that between 2008 and 2015, 50 different applicants used the same single address on their citizenship applications during overlapping time periods during which time seven of the applicants became Canadian citizens. It took seven years before the scheme was found during an investigation.

The report also noted that in some 49 similar cases where an address anomaly had been detected, citizenship officials failed to follow-up on 18 of the cases to see if the applicants actually met residency requirements.

The report indicated that citizenship officers did not consistently apply their own standards to identify and deal with suspicious immigration documents including checking travel documents against the department’s database of lost, stolen and fraudulent documents.

12. What About Canada’s “Conservative” Parties?

CLICK HERE, for Conservative Party of Canada policies.
CLICK HERE, for People’s Party on refugees.

Disclaimer: political parties lie all the time, so take this with a grain of salt.

The CPC claims it will focus on “UN selected” refugee claimants, while the PPC claims that “Civil Society Groups” should be making the selections instead. However, this omits several important facts:

  • First, neither party will address the corruption and fraud that goes on both within the UN and with Civil Societies. Finding corruption within the process is a very quick and easy thing to do.
  • Neither will acknowledge that the vast majority of these “refugees” will likely be Islamic, an ideology which is completely incompatible with Western society. There is this MINOR problem of Muslims trying to take over the world.
  • This United Nations v.s. Civil Societies is a false distinction, as many Civil Societies work with the UN.
  • Canadians don’t want, nor were ever asked if they would support hordes of refugees being shipped into Canada.
  • Trudeau and the Liberals are an easy target for criticism for lack of proper screening. However, PPC and CPC fail to indicate how they would properly screen to protect Canadians.
  • Another question they won’t address: will these “refugees” be expected to work and contribute at some point, or will they be permanent welfare cases?

However, it would be fair to point out that Stephen Harper, in 2015, suggested focusing on Christians and Yazidis refugees. This would have been a considerable improvement over importing more Islam (and hence more Islamic violence), into Canada.

13. Little Difference In NGO v.s. UN Selection

Just an opinion, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the 2 ideas.

Considering how many Civil Societies (NGOs) work with the UN, it seems an exercise in futility to try to separate them.

And given the rampant corruption, and total lack of respect for national sovereignty, BOTH seem like very bad options.

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