Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 514
September 18, 2022
The Justice Department Was Dangerous Before Trump. It’s Out of Control Now
Clockwise from top left: The “Blind Sheikh,” attorney Lynne Stewart, singing Attorney General John Ashcroft, Enron defendant Ken Lay
On Monday, August 8, Justice Department officials spent nine hours raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, carrying out 12 boxes of material. When criticism ensued, FBI spokespeople in wounded tones insisted the press eschew the harsh term “raid,” and use “execution of a search warrant” instead.
“Agents don’t like the word ‘raid,’ they don’t like it,” complained former assistant FBI counterintelligence director turned MSNBC analyst Frank Figliuzzi. He added with unintentional irony: “It sounds like it’s some sort of extrajudicial, non-legal thing.”
But it was a raid, as the surprisingly enormous number of people who’ve been on the business end of such actions since 9/11 will report. The state more and more now avails itself of a procedural trick that would have horrified everyone from Jefferson to to Potter Stewart to Thurgood Marshall. Investigating, say, one lawyer, prosecutors raid a whole firm, taking everything — emails, client files, cell phones and personal computers — then have a supposedly separate group of lawyers, called a “taint” or “filter” team, examine it all. In this way they learn the private details of hundreds or even thousands of clients in a shot, all people unrelated to the supposed case at hand.
But, they say, don’t worry, we’re not using any of those secrets, you can trust us. After all, we’re United States Attorneys.(And their paralegals. And legal assistants. And, perhaps, a few IRS or DEA or FBI agents, whose only job is to make cases against the types of people in those files. But still, don’t worry). Just because the whole concept of attorney-client privilege, as well as the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments — guaranteeing rights to free speech, against unreasonable searches, and to due process and legal counsel, respectively — were created to bar exactly this kind of behavior, they insist the state would never abuse this authority.
Taint team targets are unpopular. They’re accused drug dealers, terrorists, corporate tax cheats, money launderers, Medicare fraudsters, and, importantly of late, their lawyers. You can add Trump administration officials to the list now. In cases involving such people government prosecutors have begun making an extraordinary claim. As a citizen cries foul when the state peeks at attorney communications, the Justice Department increasingly argues that affording certain people rights harms the secret objectives of the secret state.
The Trump case is almost incidental to this wider story of extralegal short-cuts, intimidation, improper searches, and especially, a constant, intensifying effort at discrediting the adversarial system in favor of an executive-branch-only vision of the law, in which your right to stand before a judge or jury would be replaced by secret bureaucratic decisions. “Trump has become the way they sell this,” says one defense attorney. “But it’s not about Trump. If you focus on Trump, you’ll miss how serious this is. And it started a long time ago.” When? “Go back to 9/11,” he says. “You’ll see.”
What follows is a brief history of the cases leading to the controversial decisions in Donald J. Trump v. United States of America, as told by some of the key figures in those episodes. TV experts have told you Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to appoint a Special Master in Trump’s case is an “atrocious,” “shady as fuck,” “utterly lawless” ruling by a “stupid” and “profoundly partisan” jurist, placing Trump “above the law.” Have you noticed these analyses almost always come from ex-prosecutors, that you’ve been trained to not even blink at headlines like, Ex-CIA officer calls judge’s ruling in Trump case “silly,” and that defense attorneys on television are rarer than pearls?
There’s a reason for that:
[…]
Via https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-justice-department-was-dangerous-dbe
Lawsuits Claim Hospitals Targeted Unvaxxed for Deadly Forced Remdesivir and Respirator Protocols
NWO Report
Posted by: J.D. Rucker
Attorneys have filed three lawsuits against hospitals for forcing the use of Remdesivir and respirators to treat people for Covid-19, oftentimes against the wishes of the patients and their families. They claim that doctors, hospitals, and even states were given ample incentive by the federal government to use the ineffective and dangerous protocols instead of treatments that were more effective but less profitable.
It was a blockbuster interview all the way through, but there was one comment in particular that should chill Americans to the bone. As the attorneys claim in their lawsuits, the unvaxxed were primarily targeted.
According to Infowars, attorneys Michael Hamilton and Dan Watkins joined The Alex Jones Show to break down their fight against medical tyranny and the deadly Covid protocols, such as the Remdesivir and respirator campaign.
“If there’s any group that was targeted, it’s the unvaxxed,” Watkins said. “As soon as they know you’re unvaxxed, you are immediately moved into this protocol and your care is put down on the backburner and no one pays attention to you until you’re done.”
September 17, 2022
‘Caste System’: Tucker Carlson Calls Out Dem ‘Privilege’ On Martha’s Vineyard Migrants
Posted BY: NWO Report
Fox News host Tucker Carlson hammered what he described as hypocrisy Friday evening as he discussed the removal of roughly 50 migrants from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
“If there’s one thing we have learned about the people who make the rules, it’s that they have no intention of following them, any of them ever. Ever. They command you to wear a mask as you jog alone in the park while they head to dinner barefaced at the French Laundry. That happened,” Carlson said. “They harangue you about the carbon footprint of your lawn mower as they fly to Aspen on their private jets.”
“How many members of Congress who have voted to expand the powers of the IRS that don’t pay their own taxes? More than a few,” he added.
Trending: The Tree of Death DefinedCarlson discussed Nancy Pelosi’s maskless visit to a hair salon during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citing it as one example of the elites not following rules they set for others.
WATCH:
“She knows what she is doing. Nancy Pelosi is affirming her position in the social order,” Carlson said. “Nancy Pelosi is in charge. You are not. Nancy Pelosi can do whatever cares to do. You can’t. Another word for this is a caste system, increasingly what we have in the United States. Caste systems are common in poor countries, where immigrants come mostly, but it’s the opposite of the traditional American system.”
Carlson described how the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida were relocated to Cape Cod within 48 hours. Liberals blasted DeSantis for the decision, with some invoking the Holocaust and others calling for a Justice Department investigation.
“Under normal circumstances, the residents of Martha’s Vineyard would have no choice but to say, thank you, Governor DeSantis. You must accept the immigrants. That’s the rule. It doesn’t matter how disruptive these new people are,” Carlson said. “It’s irrelevant how much they cost to support or how dramatically your quality of life may decline after they arrive, if the crime rate spikes, if your daughter is afraid to go inside, the school becomes unusable, the hospitals fall apart, it doesn’t matter, you take it like a man. You don’t mention it’s happening, even in private text messages to friends. If you do, you’re a dangerous racist, and could wind up on a government list. That’s how America works. Everybody knows it, because it’s been going on for a long time. That’s the rule. But it turns out the people of Martha’s Vineyard are the people that make the rules. They had no intention of following them, not even for a day.”
“You may remember how hysterical they became a couple years ago when a few old-fashioned souls dared to say that all lives matter, which they certainly do,” Carlson said. “The people in charge hated that. They don’t think that all lives matter. In their view, some animals are more equal than others.”
[…]
None of GoFundMe Money Will Go to Martha’s Vineyard Migrants
Cloudhedges
‘How much of that money is going to the migrants? Oh, none’
Tucker Carlson on Friday night mocked the residents of Martha’s Vineyard for their response to the arrival of 50 Venezuelan migrants, and pointed out that the $43,000 raised in a GoFundMe was not even going directly to those affected.
The migrants were flown to the holiday island from Texas on Wednesday, on flights chartered by Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis. On Friday morning, the 50 left Martha’s Vineyard, bound for a Cape Cod air base which was better equipped to house them.
Carlson laughed at the residents for what he saw as hysteria over the newcomers, and noted that their donations to help were not being used to help the immediate situation.
‘It’s one of the richest places in the United States and it has more available beds than any other place probably in North America right now, but it’s just they can’t swing it – but you can do your part by donating to the fund, and by donating the fund, they’ll help the migrants,’ Carlson said.
‘Well, a lot of people believed it. The fund raised $40,000 – but here’s the best part. You’re going to love this part.
‘How much of that money is going to the migrants? Oh, none. None.
‘An update on the fundraising page reveals that the funds will instead go toward, ”building up a reserve to assist situations like this in the future, rather than directly helping this group of migrants in their situation.”
[…]
Facebook reporting users to FBI
RT
Facebook has been reporting users to the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit for nothing more than anti-authority sentiment, the New York Post reported on Wednesday, citing Justice Department (DOJ) sources.
“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena,” the sources claimed, explaining this is done “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”
Merely expressing concern about the legitimacy of the 2020 US election results was enough to get users flagged, they said.
Excerpts from those messages, often highlighting the “most egregious-sounding comments out of context,” were offered to nearby FBI field offices as “leads.”
Upon receiving them, the local offices could request subpoenas from their partner US attorney’s office in order to legally obtain the private messages they had already been shown by Facebook outside the legal process, the Post’s sources claimed.
None of the subsequent FBI investigations turned up any criminal or violent activity, the sources said.
“It was a waste of our time,” one source complained, describing a “frenzy” of subpoena requests and other activity over the last 19 months aimed at backing up the claims made by the administration of President Joe Biden about the threat posed by domestic terrorism in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot.
The users targeted by Facebook for this kind of surveillance were all “gun-toting, red-blooded Americans who were angry after the election and shooting off their mouths and talking about staging protests,” the source said, adding there was “nothing criminal, nothing about violence or massacring or assassinating anyone.”
Facebook initially called the DOJ sources’ claims “false” before releasing a second statement to the Post an hour later characterizing them as “wrong,” insisting the company’s relationship with the FBI was “designed to protect people from harm” rather than to “proactively supply” law enforcement with the names of users expressing anti-government sentiment.
“We carefully scrutinize all government requests for user information to make sure they’re legally valid and narrowly tailored and we often push back,” Erica Sackin, a spokesperson for parent company Meta, said in the statement.
The FBI admitted it receives information “with investigative value” from social media providers and that it “maintains an ongoing dialogue to enable a quick exchange of threat information,” but would neither confirm nor deny the specific allegations made by the DOJ whistleblowers.
Via https://www.rt.com/news/562971-facebook-fbi-election-users-subversive/
Facebook reporting users to FBI
RT
Facebook has been reporting users to the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit for nothing more than anti-authority sentiment, the New York Post reported on Wednesday, citing Justice Department (DOJ) sources.
“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena,” the sources claimed, explaining this is done “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”
Merely expressing concern about the legitimacy of the 2020 US election results was enough to get users flagged, they said.
Excerpts from those messages, often highlighting the “most egregious-sounding comments out of context,” were offered to nearby FBI field offices as “leads.”
Upon receiving them, the local offices could request subpoenas from their partner US attorney’s office in order to legally obtain the private messages they had already been shown by Facebook outside the legal process, the Post’s sources claimed.
None of the subsequent FBI investigations turned up any criminal or violent activity, the sources said.
“It was a waste of our time,” one source complained, describing a “frenzy” of subpoena requests and other activity over the last 19 months aimed at backing up the claims made by the administration of President Joe Biden about the threat posed by domestic terrorism in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot.
The users targeted by Facebook for this kind of surveillance were all “gun-toting, red-blooded Americans who were angry after the election and shooting off their mouths and talking about staging protests,” the source said, adding there was “nothing criminal, nothing about violence or massacring or assassinating anyone.”
Facebook initially called the DOJ sources’ claims “false” before releasing a second statement to the Post an hour later characterizing them as “wrong,” insisting the company’s relationship with the FBI was “designed to protect people from harm” rather than to “proactively supply” law enforcement with the names of users expressing anti-government sentiment.
“We carefully scrutinize all government requests for user information to make sure they’re legally valid and narrowly tailored and we often push back,” Erica Sackin, a spokesperson for parent company Meta, said in the statement.
The FBI admitted it receives information “with investigative value” from social media providers and that it “maintains an ongoing dialogue to enable a quick exchange of threat information,” but would neither confirm nor deny the specific allegations made by the DOJ whistleblowers.
Via https://www.rt.com/news/562971-facebook-fbi-election-users-subversive/
Changan: Tang Capitol of Two Million
Episode 22: Changan and the Glittering Tang
Foundations of Eastern Civilization
Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)
Film Review
In this lecture, Benjamin looks specifically at the reign of the Tang emperor Xuanzong (713-756 AD).
By now, Changan, which had been the Chinese capitol for 2,000 years was 30 square miles in area. It had one million inhabitants inside the wall and one million inhabitants on the outskirts.*
Changan was home to large numbers of foreigners, eg 8,000 Korean students studying at the Confucian academy, thousands of Indian Buddhists and thousands of Persian, Syria and Arab merchants trading at hundreds of markets. In an era known for religious tolerance, there were numerous churches for Manichaeans,** Zororastrians and Nestorian Christians, as well as Islamic mosques.
Confucian scholars and official lived in mansions, and sought out foreign hairstyles, musicians, actors and jewels. With Confucian scholars were all expected to excel at calligraphy, oratory, dancing and poetry, these arts flourished. As the Chinese developed block printing, literacy increased. History has recorded the names of at least 2,000 Tang poets, while royal courtesans set many poems to music, as well as composing songs of their own.
The An Lushan Rebellion (755 – 763 AD) significantly weakened the Tang Empire, leading court eunuchs to take increasing control of governance. The Equal Field System** fell apart During the final 100 years of the Tang empire, leading many peasants to become bonded serfs. At the same time, taxation increase, with property tax gradually replacing income tax.
In 845 AD the emperor Wuzong launched a campaign of persecution against Chinese Buddhists, destroying 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 temples.
During the last century of the dynasty there was serious tension between the government bureaucracy and the military. Benjamin believes intervention on the side of the emperor by newly arrived Turkic speaking nomads*** briefly postponed the Tang Dynasty’s collapse.
In 960 AD, the last Tang emperor was deposed by one of his regional governors.
*At this point in history, Cordova Spain had a population of 450,000, Constantinople 300,000 and London/Paris 50,000 each.
**See How the Silk Road Promoted Buddhism and Other Major Religions and Written Language
***See 9th Century AD: Mass Migration of Uighur Turks to China Leads to Rise of Seljuk Turks on the Steppes
Film can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.
September 16, 2022
California Sues Amazon for Inflating Prices and Crushing Competition
Isobel Asher Hamilton
Insider
-California is suing Amazon accusing it of anticompetitive conduct.
-The lawsuit says Amazon coerces third-party sellers into agreeing not to sell their products cheaper anywhere else.
-It says Amazon’s market dominance mean sellers have no other option but to agree.
California filed a lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday accusing it of strong-arming sellers and driving up prices for consumers.
The lawsuit was filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta argues in the lawsuit that Amazon coerced sellers into signing agreements that they wouldn’t sell their products for cheaper anywhere else. He argues Amazon’s market dominance meant sellers had no realistic alternative option but to comply.
Bonta quoted an anonymous third-party seller in his lawsuit who said: “We have nowhere else to go and Amazon knows it.”
The lawsuit says sellers who break with Amazon’s policy risk having their products removed from the “buy box,” the box on the right hand side of a product page that has the “add to basket” icon, and placing their products lower down on the results page when a shopper searches for an item.
The suit seeks to stop Amazon from enforcing contracts that restrict the prices sellers can set for their products off Amazon.
It also seeks damages for sellers and penalties for Amazon, but does not stipulate how much money that would equate to.
“We won’t allow Amazon to bend the market to its will at the expense of California consumers, small business owners, and a fair and competitive economy,” Bonta said in a statement.
In response to the lawsuit an Amazon spokesperson told Insider: “Sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store.”
“Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively,” the spokesperson added.
They also referred to a similar lawsuit that was brought against Amazon in Washington DC, which was thrown out in March.
“We hope that the California court will reach the same conclusion as the DC court and dismiss this lawsuit promptly,” Amazon’s spokesperson said.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has been accused of anticompetitive conduct in relation to third-party sellers.
The company shut down a third-party seller program and agreed to a $2.2 million settlement in January after Washington accused it of price-fixing.
In July 2020 House lawmakers grilled then-CEO Jeff Bezos about how Amazon treats third-party sellers and whether the retail giant uses data from sellers to give its own products a leg-up.
Bezos said Amazon has a policy against using third-party data to help its own-brand business, but added he couldn’t guarantee that policy had never been violated.
[…]
Paul clashes with Fauci over child vaccinations
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Wednesday clashed with White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci about whether children who were previously infected with COVID-19 need to be vaccinated, the latest in his long-running feud with the nation’s top infectious diseases doctor.
During a Senate hearing about the administration’s response to monkeypox, Paul played a clip of Fauci on C-SPAN in 2004. In the clip, Fauci told someone who was infected with the flu they did not need a flu shot.
“If she got the flu for 14 days, she’s as protected as anybody can be because the best vaccination is to get infected yourself,” Fauci said in the video.
Paul then pressed Fauci on why his comments about COVID-19 differed from what he said about the flu, and why he recommended parents vaccinate their children even if they’ve previously been infected with the coronavirus.
“What you’re doing is denying the very fundamental premise of immunology that previous infection does provide some sort of immunity,” Paul said. “People decry vaccine hesitancy — it’s coming from the gobbledygook you give us. You’re not paying attention to the science.”
Fauci replied that Paul was taking the clip out of context and produced a Reuters fact check that said his comments on the flu in the interview did not contradict his COVID-19 pandemic stance.
“I have never, ever denied fundamental immunology. In fact, I wrote the chapter in the textbook of medicine on fundamental immunology,” Fauci countered. He said a previous infection is a “very potent way” to be protected but that getting vaccinated on top of a previous infection gives an “added, extra boost.”
Paul then pivoted to berating Fauci about vaccine royalties and whether he or anyone on the agency committees that vote on authorizing vaccines get any payments from pharmaceutical companies.
“We’ve been asking you, and you refuse to answer, whether anyone on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies. I asked you last time, and what was your response? We don’t have to tell you,” Paul said.
Paul got into an argument with Fauci over the same topic in June, when Fauci told him that, according to regulations, people who receive royalties are not required to divulge them.
[…]
Via https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3642890-paul-clashes-with-fauci-over-child-vaccinations/
Lies Big Food Tells Consumers to Cover Up Destruction Caused by Industrial Ag
By GRAIN
As food sovereignty and agroecology increasingly are seen as solutions to the loss of biodiversity, world hunger and the climate crisis, food and agribusiness corporations are using misleading or false marketing claims to make it appear the products they sell provide solutions to these problems.
The global food system is broken. It is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is the leading driver behind the collapse of the world’s biodiversity.
Meanwhile, 1 in 10 people around the world goes to bed hungry, while hundreds of millions more suffer from diabetes, obesity, cancers and other health issues caused by unhealthy foods.
The global food system is even a major factor in the emergence of new diseases and pandemics.
Social movements and communities have been struggling for decades to build and maintain alternatives.
Many of these movements have come to identify themselves as part of a global movement for food sovereignty, in which food production is centered on the needs and cultures of local communities and on the protection of local environments and territories, not the profits of distant corporations.
These grassroots agricultural practices pivot on the knowledge that indigenous and small farmer communities have developed over generations and that offer concrete ways to confront the climate crisis. Many movements refer to these practices as “agroecology.”
Food sovereignty and agroecology represent a severe challenge to the interests of the food and agribusiness corporations profiting from the current global food system.
In these food systems, corporations cannot profit.
They do not use genetically modified organisms (GMO), hybrid seeds or chemical inputs sold by agribusiness corporations, nor do they produce the uniform agro-commodity crops that supply factory farms or the processing plants of the big food corporations.
So, as these social movements have gained strength and as food sovereignty and agroecology are increasingly seen as necessary solutions to the climate crisis, food and agribusiness corporations have ramped up their efforts to undermine them.
A principal tactic used by food and agribusiness corporations is greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a marketing or advertising strategy where corporations recognize environmental problems but then use misleading or false information to make it appear as if they and the products they sell are providing solutions to these problems.
‘Net Zero’
“Net zero,” according to the United Nations, means “cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere.”
Put simply reductions + removals = zero GHG emissions.
In 2015, the world’s governments agreed to get to “net zero” emissions by 2050, and since then there has been an avalanche of “net zero” commitments by governments, as well as voluntary “net zero” commitments by corporations.
The problem with the corporate “net zero” commitments, however, is that they are nowhere near real “zero.”
Corporations are merely using the “net zero” equation as a way to avoid making significant cuts to their emissions.
They claim that they don’t have to cut their emissions because they can offset them through projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere by planting trees, by conserving forests, or by geoengineering the planet.
This is a fraud.
[…]
Carbon offsets
Carbon offsetting is a mechanism through which a government or company buys credits generated by projects that avoid, reduce or remove greenhouse gases to compensate for its own emissions. What is traded on carbon markets are essentially permits to pollute.
In some countries, such as the U.K., China, New Zealand or the Republic of Korea there are regulations that force companies to gradually eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions but allow them to sell or buy “rights” or credits from other companies to offset emissions above the maximum allowed.
These are compulsory carbon markets also called emissions trading systems.
Most carbon offset projects, however, sell credits into voluntary markets where the criteria are looser and carbon credits prices are nearly 10 times lower.
Although these credits cannot be used (yet) towards each country’s official emissions reductions, they do have the effect of lowering the value of credits in compulsory markets and they serve public relations purposes for corporations claiming to offset their emissions.
Demand is growing in voluntary markets because corporate “net zero” commitments rely heavily on offsets as a means to avoid direct cuts to their emissions.
In 2021, offsets from forests and land grew by 159%, accounting for a third of all credits.
There’s a whole industry of companies, consultants and non-governmental organizations now working to generate offsets through schemes like large-scale tree plantations or farming programs that claim to restore carbon in soils.
There are no established, rigorous standards or measurements governing these schemes and the offset business is riddled with cases of fraud and biased calculations.
[…]
Nature-based solutions
The term “nature-based solutions” (NBS) was initially coined by big conservation non-governmental organizations to help them raise funds by emphasizing the multiple benefits of preserved forests.
These days it is mostly used by corporations and states to promote carbon offsets to achieve their “net zero” commitments.
Among the main precedents for NBS are pilot projects financed by the World Bank to estimate the monetary value of ecosystem services and propose market-based solutions for biodiversity conservation and climate change.
Under this narrative, “nature,” in the form of protected forests, wetlands, oceans and even farmlands and tree plantations, can be harnessed to remove 37% of all GHG emissions that have accumulated in the atmosphere.
And they say these removals can be quantified and sold to them so that they can go on polluting. After the adoption of the first official — and extremely broad — definition for NBS by the UN Environment Assembly, a large range of activities now fall under this category.
Already, the demand for such “nature-based solutions” is generating a rush to zone off and enclose large areas of land.
[…]
Other “nature-based solution” offset projects that these and other corporations are pursuing involve sinking carbon in large areas of farmlands through carbon farming programs.
“Nature-based solutions” are rightfully described as “nature-based dispossessions” because of the massive grabs of people’s lands and forests they require, in particular in the Global South.
But they are also based on fundamental fraud.
They assume that the emissions from burning fossil fuels can be permanently absorbed in equal amounts in forests, soils and oceans.
This is a false equation widely rejected by climate scientists.
Zero deforestation
Deforestation is a major driver of both climate change and biodiversity loss and international attention on the issue has been growing.
In response, the world’s largest food corporations agreed in 2010 to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2020.
They made a similar pledge for “zero-deforestation” at the UN Climate Summit in 2014 and another one at the 2021 Climate Summit.
One-third of the money needed for this is supposed to come from private sector investors and asset managers. But voluntary pledges have done nothing to slow the rate of deforestation.
Today, an area of forest equivalent to 27 football fields is destroyed every minute and the rate of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon hit a record high for the first half of 2022.
Most deforestation is caused by the production of global agricultural commodities, like beef, soybeans and palm oil.
[…]
So instead they create and sign up for ” climate-smart agriculture ” standards and certification schemes that are more effective at greenwashing their products than preventing deforestation.
Corporate “zero-deforestation” plans are full of loopholes and lack enforcement and accountability. They only apply to certain types of commodities and certain types of forest and do not consider historical or indirect deforestation.
Cargill can buy “zero deforestation” maize from lands that were deforested and grabbed from communities only a decade ago.
Unilever can buy “zero deforestation” palm oil from plantations that destroyed community forests not considered to be of “high conservation value.”[
Bunge can buy “zero deforestation” soybeans from converted pasturelands in Brazil’s savannahs even though this is known to displace cattle production into the Amazon rainforest.
What’s more, when corporations are caught violating their own certification schemes, as repeatedly happens, there are few consequences because the schemes are voluntary and non-binding.
Nestlé and the Deutsche Bank, for example, signed the 2014 “zero deforestation” pledge but continued to buy and finance beef production from companies sourcing cattle from illegally [.deforested areas in the Amazon.
[…]
Climate-smart agriculture
“Climate-smart agriculture” is a term that agribusiness corporations devised about a decade ago to counter growing support for agroecology in international forums on agriculture and climate change.
The world’s largest fertilizer companies propelled it into the mainstream with a massive lobby campaign and the creation of a global alliance of corporations, governments and multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
While agroecology involves a major transformation away from the industrial agriculture model, “climate-smart agriculture” encompasses any practice that can claim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliberately avoids consideration of the larger consequences of industrial agriculture.
It can be “climate-smart” to use highly polluting nitrogen fertilizers because these increase yields and therefore reduce pressures to expand agriculture into forests.
It can be “climate-smart” to spray a field with toxic herbicides to avoid plowing the soil and releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
Converting pastureland to soybean plantations in Argentina or Brazil can be “climate-smart” because soybeans fix nitrogen and do not require nitrogen fertilizers.
The “climate-smart” label can be applied to pretty much all practices of industrial agriculture, be they chemical pesticides and fertilizers, drip irrigation systems, large-scale monoculture, factory farming or GMOs.
[…]
Agriculture 4.0
The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” or “Industry 4.0” is a concept hatched by the elites of the World Economic Forum to describe changes brought about by new technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing and advanced robotics.
“Agriculture 4.0” refers to the revolutionary changes these technologies could have in farming.
So far, the impacts for most food producers are far from revolutionary.
[…]
The digital agriculture platforms of agribusiness and big tech companies, like Microsoft, also offer few benefits for small farmers.
Small farmers tend to be located in areas without extension services and they cannot afford the high-priced data-gathering technologies used by the digital platforms.
The programs are usually designed for large-scale monoculture and factory farms.
Without high-quality data, digital platforms are unable to provide quality advice and information to small farmers, especially those who practice agroecology, grow a diverse array of crops, work with indigenous livestock and plant local seeds.
But corporations have other reasons for promoting digital agriculture.
Digital platforms, when combined with digital money systems (via cell phones), present an opportunity to integrate millions of small farmers into centrally controlled digital networks, who are encouraged — if not obligated — to buy some type of corporate product (genetically modified seeds, pesticides, herbicides, machinery), often conditional on access to rural insurance and financial services.
[…]
Carbon farming
The heavy use of chemicals in industrial agriculture has destroyed vast amounts of soil organic matter over the years, and thereby released millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
Now, with a growing market for carbon offsets, the companies responsible for this destruction are championing programs to rebuild carbon in the soils through what they call carbon farming.
Farmers sign up for carbon farming programs online and start implementing practices that are supposed to draw carbon into their soils, mainly by planting cover crops and spraying herbicides instead of plowing their fields.
After a set number of years, they are paid for the amount of carbon that is estimated to have been captured in their soils.
Nearly all of the biggest agribusiness corporations — such as Bayer, Yara and Cargill — have launched or joined carbon farming initiatives in countries dominated by large-scale, industrial farming, such as the U.S., Brazil, Australia and France.
Not only do they get a cut from selling the carbon credits, but they also use the programs to enroll farmers into their digital platforms where they can encourage them to buy seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.
There are major flaws with these carbon farming programs.
To start with, they produce offsets that corporations buy to avoid necessary cuts to their own emissions.
But even if we leave this fundamental problem aside, any offset program must, at a minimum, guarantee the permanent removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
Carbon farming programs provide no mechanism to keep carbon in the soil beyond a mere 10 years when carbon needs to be stored for at least 100 years to meaningfully make a difference to global warming.
[…]
Bioeconomy
A bioeconomy relies on plants and other biological resources to produce materials, chemicals and energy.
Examples include biodiversity-based medicine and cosmetics developed by pharmaceutical corporations, factories that burn woodchips to generate electricity, buses that run on ethanol made from sugarcane, plastic bottles that are made of corn starch.
Corporations already use a quarter of all biomass, often with a devastating impact on the environment, but studies indicate that up to 60% of the physical inputs needed for the global economy could be produced biologically.
Proponents argue that carbon is better for the climate because it is based on renewable resources.
Yet, bioeconomy could describe most rural communities.
Whereas corporations are only interested in oil palms for producing palm oil and animal feed, communities in West and Central Africa, where oil palms originate, use every part of the plant, from its roots to its branches to produce everything from wines and soups, to soaps and ointments, traditional medicines and animal feeds and even a whole range of textiles and housing materials.
Agribusiness corporations, however, have a particular understanding of bioeconomy.
They see it as a way to develop more markets for agricultural commodity crops — like maize, soybeans and palm oil — by using new patented technologies like synthetic biology, nanotechnology, or gene editing.
Palm oil corporations, for instance, are working with energy companies to promote and produce aviation fuels made from palm oil.
This is already leading to an expansion of oil palm plantations in Brazil and Southeast Asia.
Under the umbrella of the bioeconomy, biofuels have been trying to make a comeback.
Presented over a decade ago as an alternative to fossil fuels and a source of “green energy” able to tackle climate change, the expansion of monoculture to produce biodiesel and ethanol soon raised concerns due to competition for the arable land used to produce food and fuel, and the increase of greenhouse emissions.
[…]
By transforming biomass and biodiversity into commodities for Global North countries, the agribusiness pitch for bioeconomy is increasing land grabbing and deepening ecological damage, especially in the biodiverse countries and territories of the Global South (where 86% of the world’s biomass is located).
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/big-food-industrial-agribusiness-greenwashing/
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