A 16 year old girl is obviously not behind a “global movement” demanding “climate action” from governments.
The massive corporate Western media is. And anything the corporate media is behind certainly cannot be described as “grassroots.”
It is the Western media’s daily promotion of this 16 year old that has created “her” movement for her.
Her family background of entertainers and performers is particularly interesting in this regard – Greta Thunberg being the daughter of entertainer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg, and granddaughter of actor Olof Thunberg. She is the perfect candidate surrounded by the perfect coaches to become a central figure in an exercise of corporate public relations.
Also behind the growing momentum of this “climate action” movement is a myriad of corporate-foundations – notorious for their support of regime change around the globe, the protection and promotion of corporate-financier special interests, and the co-opting of legitimate causes ranging from human rights to now concerns over our collective impact on the environment.
Just like the “war on terror” was a fraudulent campaign aimed at very real terrorists – Greta Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future” climate movement is a fraudulent campaign aimed at the very real environmental damage being done around us.
And just like the “war on terror” where the US was caught in fact arming and funding the very terrorists they were supposed to be fighting – all as a pretext to advance otherwise indefensible wars of aggression, “Fridays for Future” is supported by and being advanced for the very worst environmental offenders on Earth to advance an agenda that allows for otherwise indefensible and unpopular policies – many of which will be easily delayed or redirected in the West while forced on developing nations.
“Climate action” forced on the developing world is aimed at crippling progress and granting the West a reprieve from its otherwise irreversible economic, political, and military decline upon the global stage and its ability to coerce and exploit these nations, their people, and their resources.
What is “Fridays for Future?”
Following the money is particularly easy in unravelling “Fridays for Future.” The “movement’s” own website - under “About” contains a list of websites that make up the “movement’s” network.
Each page listed contains the School Strike 4 Climate (SS4C) logo. They also contain links to various supporters and affiliates. The Canadian page – for example – has a “Promo Toolkit” page full of resources provided by corporate foundations.
One foundation in particular that turns up repeatedly is 350.org.
350.org has published the “Climate Resistance Handbook” which includes a “foreword” by Greta Thunberg herself.
The handbook itself lists zero relevant concerns or actions regarding actual environmental issues and instead is a rehash of familiar CIA-honed tactics used by the US for its so-called “color revolutions” around the globe.
The handbook even cites the US overthrow of Serbia and Ukraine as examples for environmental activists to follow.
Regarding Serbia, the handbook would claim:
A group of young people in Serbia nonviolently fought their powerful, ruthless dictator in Serbia. Tey required every person who joined their movement to learn the upside-down triangle. They led trainings to explain the concept and their plan to remove the pillars they saw.
This approach was a key ingredient to their movement. And they were successful in overthrowing the brutal Serbian dictator.
In reality, the US itself would eventually reveal no such tactics worked and instead it was the millions of dollars the US government funneled into Serbia to back a covert coup that eventually overthrew the Serbian government.
This coup was not to stop a “brutal dictator,” but rather to fold Serbia, its people, and resources into America’s eastward expansion toward Russian borders.
The New York Times in its article, “Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?,” would admit:
Backed by extensive financing from the United States, Otpor steadily coaxed them from the inertia and introspective desperation of the 1990’s, when the most decisive act of the best and the brightest was emigration or draft evasion. Through marches and mockery, physical courage and mental agility, Otpor grew into the mass underground movement that stood at the disciplined core of the hidden revolution that really changed Serbia. No other opposition force was as unsettling to the regime or as critical to its overthrow.
The New York Times would also admit details of the extent of US financing:
American assistance to Otpor and the 18 parties that ultimately ousted Milosevic is still a highly sensitive subject. But Paul B. McCarthy, an official with the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, is ready to divulge some details.
The article continues:
…McCarthy says, “from August 1999 the dollars started to flow to Otpor pretty significantly.” Of the almost $3 million spent by his group in Serbia since September 1998, he says, “Otpor was certainly the largest recipient.” The money went into Otpor accounts outside Serbia.
Not only were the “young people of Serbia” successful only because of dubious, secretive US funding, they were successful and their “efforts” lauded by the Western media only because their efforts ultimately served US special interests.
Serbia is no more “free” or “democratic” today than it was under Milosevic. The only real change has been efforts to draw the broken nation westward into Washington and NATO’s orbit and away from its traditional ties to Russia. In essence, the youths of Serbia were drawn in as unwitting participants in expanding American hegemony, not promoting “democracy.”
In many ways then – 350.org picked the perfect example to help illustrate just exactly what “Fridays for Future” is really about – a cynical public relations exercise obviously funded and directed by Western special interests using “youths” and a well-meaning agenda as cover.
Instead of specifically and explicitly targeting the worst environmental offenders on Earth – corporations like Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, and Syngenta spraying our food and environment with poison, or Exxon, BP, and Shell for their attempts to perpetuate petrol-driven energy, or labor unions like America’s United Automobile Workers which is part of a concerted effort to sabotage electric vehicle manufacturers like Telsa – “Fridays for Future” is allied with them in making ambiguous demands and giving naive youths the illusion that something is being done.
Worst still is the likelihood that this movement will actually result in much of the burden for these corporations’ offenses against the environment and human health being shifted onto the public in the form of new taxes and regulations.
Who Funds 350.org?
Since 350.org has written the handbook “Fridays for Future” is following, it would be useful to know who exactly is behind 350.org itself and thus the agenda and movement it is promoting.
The organization lists around 200 different private and corporate foundations funding its activities.
This includes notorious actors like CREDO – a for-profit telecom corporation that uses the cover of activism to build up a loyal – if not fanatical – customer base. It also includes the big-pharma linked Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
The KR Foundation both directly funds 350.org and also funds other foundations listed on 350.org‘s donor list including the New Venture Fund and the European Climate Foundation.
The Oak Foundation also not only directly funds 350.org – it too funds many other donors appearing on 350.org‘s list including the Climate Works Foundation and the European Climate Foundation.
The Oak Foundation is deeply involved in virtually every aspect of US “soft power,” sponsoring organizations involved in US-funded “color revolutions” as well as fronts posing as human rights advocates like Amnesty International whose role is to fabricate human rights offenses to justify US wars of aggression in which very real human rights abuses thus unfold.
Alongside The Oak Foundation is George Soros and his Open Society Foundation as well as the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various subsidiaries and affiliates.
On “Fridays for Future’s” official website Amnesty International is openly listed as one of several organizations assisting the movement with legal matters. The Open Society-linked Tides Foundation also appears on 350.org‘s list of donors.
NED-linked “labor unions” – the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) – are also heavily involved in the “Fridays for Future” movement. Labor unions in other countries like Australia openly admit they are involved in organizing the actual protests themselves.
Older stories from Democracy Now! like, “Unholy Alliance? The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela,” illustrate the ties between the NED and AFL-CIO and their role in promoting US foreign policy. The NED has since deleted links from its webpage documenting its direct funding for the AFL-CIO and its activities worldwide.
The Sierra Club is also listed as one of 350.org‘s donors. It receives funding not only from dubious off-shore accounts – it has also literally taken money from big-oil.
Time would report in a 2012 article on just one instance of the Sierra Club’s big-oil sponsorships that:
TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
While Time claims the Sierra Club “stopped” taking this money – it was only because the information became public – not because of any fundamental issue against taking big-oil money or working on behalf of big-oil’s agenda.
What is also revealed by the 2012 article is that the Sierra Club promoted an “anti-coal” agenda – not on behalf of the environment – but on behalf of the shale gas industry.
“Fridays for Future” – a movement ultimately sponsored and directed by these very same collection of interests and organizations – has no intention of helping the environment – but rather helping the special interests that created the movement under the cover of promoting “environmentalism.”
Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
The youths joining these movements undoubtedly have the right intentions at heart – but the movement itself is marketed toward youths specifically because they lack the experience and discernment needed to understand the difference between how government “works” in their school books and how it actually works when money and special interests are involved.
Greta Thunberg and “her” movement – should they in any way acutally threaten the special interests that still dominate Western society – would be marginalized, censored, smeared, and attacked across the media. At their protest venues – they would be tear-gassed, beaten, and chased off the streets. And any tangible “action” that threatened to undermine big-business they advocated for would be promptly outlawed.
The fact that those responsible for repressing actual change in the West are eagerly aiding and abetting Greta Thunberg and “Fridays for Future” should tell the average onlooker all they need to know about the legitimacy and agency of these protests even without looking into the financials and ties of organizations openly sponsoring, promoting, and even directing the movement.
But the financials and ties are undeniable and quite familiar evidence that closes the case on “Fridays for Future.”
The Environment Needs Real Help
Human civilization – without doubt – is negatively impacting the environment.
Big-agriculture poisons our land and water with chemicals and genetic contamination. Big-oil chokes our air. Big-defense litters battlefields with depleted uranium constituting a modern-day equivalent of plowing the earth with salt. Plastic packaging necessary for “globalized” consumerism fills our land and seas.
Even if one does not believe in mainstream notions of “climate change,” petroleum-based transportation has a direct and undeniable impact on human health that must be reduced if not entirely eliminated. The wealth and power consolidated by big-energy is also a major social problem that needs to be confronted.
If Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future activists wanted to “save the Earth,” they would be gathering outside the headquarters of the corporations responsible for these offenses – not protesting outside the offices of the politicians they own.
When “Fridays for Future” begins advocating boycotts of big-box stores and their oil-dependent, global-spanning supply chains in favor of local industry and business – when they protest genetically modified organisms and big-ag food in favor of locally produced organic produce, and when they begin advocating and investing in alternative energy rather than demanding the government do it for them – they will finally be on the road with a growing number of very real activists already working to truly save the environment.
They will also realize that these real activists – toiling for years – have never been known to them because the cameras and studios eagerly promoting “Fridays for Future” and their anemic, co-opted “activism” have already long ago worked hard to marginalize, censor, smear, and attack these genuine activists.
Genuine activism – like promoting and investing in local manufacturing and agriculture – has already been targeted by legislation to outlaw it or at the very least – seriously complicate it to the point of being impractical to pursue.
This is how one can tell the difference between genuine activism and co-opted or even manufactured activism – by seeing where the corporate media’s camera’s are pointed and who corporate special interests through their faux philanthropic fronts are promoting.
The environment is indeed facing an emergency – not only because of the real damage human civilization is doing to it – but also because of who the public has put their faith in to fix it.
And finally – if the environment is in such dire straits why is the world entrusting it to a 16 year old and a movement allegedly comprised of children?
Children are being enlisted because they are the only demographic left that are still capable of putting their faith into fronts like the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, The Tides Foundation, The Oak Foundation, and many other instruments of Western corporate-financier power long since exposed, distrusted, and disdained by the rest of the global public.
Greta Thunberg’s story isn’t one of inspiration and activism – it is one of child exploitation, one of manipulating public perception, and one of re-entrenched special interests desperately seeking an audience – any audience – still gullible enough to believe in and help reconstruct the facades used to cover up their otherwise transparent and self-serving agenda.
The environment needs to be saved, but not by big-business’ “Fridays for Future” charade.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.
