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Wednesday 9 September 2015

The UN’s “Sustainable Development Agenda” is Basically a Giant Corporatist Fraud

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This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognize that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.

– From the Preamble to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 

UN records reveal that the intergovernmental body has already marginalised the very groups it claims to be rescuing from poverty, hunger and climate disaster.

Records from the SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the international body for pandering to the interests of big business and ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the world’s poor.

Formal statements issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the process favourably.

This allegation is borne out by UN records, which show that its own Major Groups representing the very people the global institution professes to be empowering — poor people in developing countries — are increasingly sceptical of the SDG agenda.

– From Nafeez Ahmed’s recent article: UN Plan to Save Earth is “Fig Leaf” for Big Business

On September 25th, Pope Francis will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. To much fanfare, the Pope will celebrate the unveiling of the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.

A key plank of this agenda relates to the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals,” or SGDs. While this sounds all warm and fuzzy, several well meaning participants have become horrified by the extent to which multi-national corporations have influenced the entire process. So much so, that insiders are claiming the UN is actually marginalizing the very people it claims to be saving. The poor, the weak, and the voiceless.

In an invaluable piece of investigative reporting, Nafeez Ahmed writes the following:

UN records reveal that the intergovernmental body has already marginalized the very groups it claims to be rescuing from poverty, hunger and climate disaster.

At the end of this month, the UN will launch its new 2030 Sustainable Development agenda for “people, planet and prosperity” in New York, where it will be formally adopted by over 150 world leaders.

The culmination of years of consultations between governments, communities and businesses all over the world, there is no doubt that the agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an unprecedented vision of the interdependence of global social, economic and environmental issues.

But records from the SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the international body for pandering to the interests of big business and ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the world’s poor.

Formal statements issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the process favorably.

Among the ‘Major Groups’ engaged in the UN’s SDG process is ‘Business and Industry.’ Members of this group include fossil fuel companies like Statoil USA and Tullow Oil, multinational auto parts manufacturer Bridgestone Corporation, global power management firm Eaton Corporation, agribusiness conglomerate Monsanto, insurance giant Thamesbank, financial services major Bank of America, and hundreds of others from Coca Cola to Walt Disney to Dow Chemical.

Despite claims that the UN’s previous Millennium Development Goals (MDG) have succeeded in halving global poverty since the 1990s, there is good reason to question this narrative.

Today, 4.3 billion people live on less than $5 a day. Although higher than the World Bank poverty measure at $1.25 a day, the development charity ActionAid showed in a 2013 report that a more realistic poverty measure would be under $10 a day.

Yet far from decreasing, since 1990 the number of people living under $10 a day has increased by 25%. Global poverty has not reduced — it’s got worse.

But all we know what has gotten better…a lot better. Corporate profits.

I asked Hickel why, despite so much internal criticism from UN stakeholders within the SDG process itself, these concerns had not impacted on the text of the SDG ‘Zero Draft.’ “In an early version of the Zero Draft, there was a commitment to replace GDP with an alternative measure of economic well-being. But somehow that disappeared from the final text,” said Hickel. “I don’t know what happened behind the scenes.”

This allegation is borne out by UN records, which show that its own Major Groups representing the very people the global institution professes to be empowering — poor people in developing countries — are increasingly skeptical of the SDG agenda.

The civil society statement also points to parallel efforts by Western governments to forge new ‘free-trade’ agreements, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) along with proposed Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses.

Yep, sounds exactly like the “free trade fraud” being perpetrated on the global populace at the moment. The current status quo strategy is to put a “nice spin” on what are essentially corporatist takeovers. See:

U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP

Forget the TPP – Wikileaks Releases Documents from the Equally Shady “Trade in Services Agreement,” or TISA

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

These new trade and investment frameworks are being negotiated by governments in secret without public accountability. The UN’s civil society group notes that the ISDS clauses “empower corporations to sue governments for reducing the value of investments through regulations that promote human rights, the environment, and labor standards.”

Yet the SDGs offer little to protect vulnerable communities in the face of such corporate encroachment.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This whole thing is just corporatist PR.

On 25th March, the Indigenous Peoples Working Group told a Major Group dialogue hosted by the Trusteeship Council Chamber at UN headquarters that the SDG process “is in jeopardy of excluding Indigenous Peoples from the agenda.”

The SDGs make no clear reference to the human right to water, for example, effectively providing “an open door for turning water into a commodity.”

The UN workers group particularly opposes the emphasis on public-private partnerships, which it describes as “an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and services, since they conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies.”

As I have maintained for years, the moment you hear “public-private partnership” run for the hills. You are being screwed over in unimaginable ways. See:

Meet Cyber P3 – The U.S. Military’s Public-Private Partnership to Create Corporate/Government “Cyber Soldiers”

Wall Street Teams Up with U.S. Intelligence Cronies in Bid to Form Fascist “Cyber War Council”

Bread and Circuses – The Shady, Slimy and Corrupt World of Taxpayer Funded Sports Stadiums

A Deep Look into the Shady World of the Private Prison Industry

In fact, despite overwhelming support from UN member states for a more robust and transformative approach, the report reveals that “a vocal minority, including the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, has once again blocked consensus.”

The failure of the SDG process to incorporate such criticisms from the UN’s own Major Groups representing marginalized communities, is a direct result of entrenched power disparities within the UN itself.

According to an expert report circulated to UN officials, a detailed analysis of SDG documents reveals that the entire process has been “fundamentally compromised” by corporations with a vested interest in continuing business-as-usual.

In addition to mis-framing the structural origins of poverty, the report shows that the very concept of “development” deployed within the UN’s SDG documents derives from a “specifically neoliberal and corporatist conception of how the world does and should work.”

Despite acknowledging “deep problems and contradictions when relying on GDP growth to tackle poverty”, the SDG agenda still leaves “undifferentiated, perpetual growth” as the prime basis of development.

Hidden between the lines of the SDG vision, then, is a great delusion — the unflinching blind faith of the rich industrialised elite in the unquestionable perfection and immortality of neoliberal capitalism as a ‘way of life.’

According to Brewer, by removing all discussions about power from the SDG process, “the increasingly unpopular neoliberal agenda remains fully in place.”

The total omission of corporate and banking power from SDG texts, despite their unprecedented prevalence in the UN process, “is very telling in its own right,” he told me. “We know that multinational corporations are the most powerful political actors, and that they are profoundly concentrated vehicles for wealth consolidation.”

This is why, Alnoor Ladha explained, TheRules.org did not engage in the formal UN civil society SDG process.

“The process is a sham,” he said. “They will co-opt our engagement and say they have consulted us. All of the civil society groups that have tried to reform the SDGs have been co-opted by the UN, including the more critical voices.”

In other words, the SDG stakeholder engagement process draws selectively on the input of civil society groups to promote its public legitimacy, while systematically ignoring the voices that challenge the wider political and economic structures in which the entire process is embedded.

The above represents only excerpts from Dr. Ahmed’s piece, which can be found in its entirety here.

I previously highlighted his excellent work in the post:

Additional Details Emerge on How U.S. Government Policy Created, Armed, Supported and Funded ISIS 

Elites Want More Refugees: Why?



There is much being written about the refugee crisis in Europe at the moment but none of what I have read explains why the problem is occurring and what will need to be done for the problem to be addressed.

Refugees are just one symptom of a deeper crisis. Moreover, like other symptoms of this deeper crisis, the global elite is happy to use this symptom to keep us utterly preoccupied; after all, the immediacy of the refugee problem is all too demanding of our attention and our compassion.

Thirty years ago, on 9 September 1985, I tried to resuscitate a baby in the Shagarab East 3 Refugee Camp in Eastern Sudan at the height of the Ethiopian war and famine. As a lifesaver, I had been expertly trained in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. My attempt to resuscitate this child failed: the doctor advised me that the baby was dead and I watched her mother as I handed the dead child back to her. The mother was, understandably, utterly distraught. And, frankly, I was in considerable emotional pain myself.

In the adjacent camp, where I worked as a relief worker, five refugees died every day, mostly from simple illnesses, like diarhoea, associated with malnutrition. In the jargon of the UNHCR, our death rate was 2.5 per 10,000 per day. That meant, in our camp of 20,000, five people died each day. Every day.

My time spent working in that camp and visiting many others during the same period, taught me one thing: ultimately, while support for refugees is necessary for the survival of some of the individuals forced to flee their countries and homes, this will not stop the creation of circumstances which generate refugees in the first place.

At the geopolitical level, Thalif Deen has adequately summarised the major cause of the current 'refugee problem' in Europe:

'The military conflicts and political instability driving hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe were triggered largely by U.S. and Western military interventions for regime change – specifically in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria (a regime change in-the-making).

'The United States was provided with strong military support by countries such as Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain, while the no-fly zone to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was led by France and the UK in 2011 and aided by Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Canada, among others.' See 'Europe Invaded Mostly by "Regime Change" Refugees'. http://bit.ly/1EOgGm2

Of course, there are other reasons why people become refugees. But war and the destructive environmental consequences of human industrial and other activities (leading to 'climate catastrophe' refugees) are primary drivers of the problem. Or are they?

When I read the news on progressive news websites, I have no problem identifying the multitude of problems we face: war itself, economic exploitation of the people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America, environmental problems too numerous to list and violence against women and children, indigenous peoples, working people, people of color and various other social groups (depending on the society) to mention some of the main ones. And these problems are so advanced that humans stand poised on the brink of precipitating our own extinction.

Except it is not us, as a collective, who is responsible for this catastrophic state of affairs. It is a relatively small number of people, each of whom is quite insane. And it is these people who drive the decisions being made in our world that have, for example, created the current refugee crisis in Europe.

These people seek power, profit and personal privilege at the expense of the rest of us. They decide to destroy countries or regions because, in their insane worldview, it 'benefits' them to do so. The military destruction of a region might give them the power to share in the control of a resource or market. It might make them a profit. It might privilege them in relation to others in their (very limited) social world. The discourse in which these people are engaged is incredibly limited. It is always about control.

And the reason for this is simple: They are utterly terrified. They had all of their control taken from them as children and now seek it endlessly as highly dysfunctionalised adults. Adults who are insane: devoid of the love, compassion, empathy and sympathy that makes those of us who are normal respond with genuine concern to the plight of refugees and others who suffer.

So when you hear people – whether it be politicians, corporate figures, academics, military leaders or media personnel – justify policies and actions, such as military violence, that lead to greater human suffering, remember that you are listening to someone who is seriously psychologically damaged. Conflict is not always easily resolved but it requires listening and understanding, as well as talking. You cannot resolve conflict by killing people.

If you would like to read more about the state of mind of those who act to create circumstances that generate refugees, you can do so in this article: 'The Global Elite is Insane'. http://bit.ly/1IY6xOt And you can read much more detail in 'Why Violence?' http://bit.ly/1EOgFOP and 'Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice'. http://bit.ly/1IY6wtR

So what do we do? Well, I am heavily in favour of doing what we can to reduce the suffering of refugees now. But, as I committed myself thirty years ago, I am also working towards creating a world in which no human being ever becomes a refugee again.

A big ask? You bet. But I don't intend to let the insane people who seek total control of this planet do so without making every effort I can to stop them. If you agree with me, here's some key things we need to do.

We need to stop terrorising children so that they don't become like the elite and their paid agents in politics, the business world, academia, the military, the judiciary and the corporate media. See 'My Promise to Children'. http://bit.ly/1EOgGm3 People who are not insane have a much better chance of resolving conflicts nonviolently, even if it still isn't easy.

We need to take drastic personal action, not rely on politicians who virtually all function as agents of the global elite, to reverse much of what is wrong with our world. If you like, you can participate in a fifteen-year strategy for doing so by joining those involved in 'The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth'.http://bit.ly/1IY6wtS

In some circumstances, such as in response to the current attempts to consolidate their control of the global economy via mechanisms such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) or to destroy the natural environment by logging rainforests for example, we also need to take collective action to resist the insanity of the global elite. This is done most effectively by using strategically applied campaigns of nonviolent resistance. See 'The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach'. http://bit.ly/1EOgGCg

And if you wish to publicly declare your commitment to doing everything you can to end the elite-driven violence and exploitation in our world, you can do so by signing the online pledge of 'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World'. http://bit.ly/1IY6wtT

In essence, elites generate one crisis after another as an inevitable outcome of their insane actions to perpetuate, consolidate and expand their control over the rest of us. If we are not sufficiently aware, we can become preoccupied in just dealing with one or more symptoms of their insanity. Elites want more refugees partly because it helps to distract us from analysing and resisting what they are doing overall.

While we must act in solidarity with those they victimize, like the refugees fleeing their war zones at the moment, we also need to expose and strategically resist the global elite itself or, eventually, suffer the same (or an equivalent) fate as today's refugees.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?'http://bit.ly/1EOgFOP His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://bit.ly/1IY6xOv