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    @Ian M - Archived Message

    Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym on April 29, 2019, 8:07 am, in reply to "Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg?"

    Hello Ian! I wanted to ask: what do you make of all this?

    Let me be clear: I don't ask in any adversarial spirit. You will have picked up by now, I daresay, that I cleave absolutely to an idea of how to respond to the Synergising Global Crises which is much more drastic and radical than anything I've yet seen proposed by many - actually bona fide - environmental campaigners, quite apart from any of the greenwashing astroturf rackets, such as described in these articles from wrongkindofgreen.

    I think it's fair to say that we are probably on the same side of the discussion. And, all these reservations notwithstanding, I loved the feel of the recent XR actions, and only wish that I were young and fit enough to have been there.

    However... !

    It becomes clear - doesn't it? - that there's also a determined racketeering current going on behind the radical climate-action facade, don't you think? I have to say that for my money anything which has the Avaaz racketeers in it is automatically tainted and terminally questionable as an honest, what-it-seems-to-be movement. Nor does the litany of the other key movers and shakers listed in these articles give any ground at all for confidence.

    In a previous comment here, I suggested that it's necessary to work with any movement or outfit which - whatever else it's up to - does manage to drive the climate emergency further up the general public-attention slope. And I think the recent XR actions have definitely done that. No reservations about that.

    But it's obvious, don't you think, that all genuine Earth-revering activists have to be ultra-wary of the kind of corporate/bigbiz capture that's being outlined in these articles from wrongkind...?

    This is a narrow, delicate, crumbly path to tread, much like Corbyn's track to Downing Street (for whatever that will turn out to be worth, with the benefit of hindsight some time in the medium-term future, if it actually gets to happen).

    I come back to that screaming alarm signal, though, about anything that has Avaaz as one of its cronies, quite apart from all the other equally no-no outfits: IMF, World Bank, Davosoids FFS, amongst many others! None of these operators can be trusted as being in any way honest, and genuinely on Gaia's side.

    So what do you think, Ian - or anyone else reading this? How best do you respond to something that's already begun to look like modern high-skill professional public-manipulation racketeering; the not-what-it-purports-to-be kind of scam with which any AAPA person (awake and paying attention) has become wearily familiar in recent years?

    It's clear, though, that whatever racketeering pitfalls are put in our way by the ungodly, the struggle by Mam Gaia's true partisans to help remedy the Crises has to continue; using whatever means come to hand, I suppose, however shit-contaminated; but always aware and wary of the shit, at least?

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