Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.
Over the past eight years, I've spent a great deal of time writing about what I've now come to call the "tri-headed serpent" that threatens the larger labor class in our society. Broadly speaking these threats would be capitalism, its violent handmaiden fascism, and ruling class propaganda that prevents us from uniting to stop these threats to our very survival. Recent social and political developments in the Pig Empire have forced me to focus a lot on the rise of fascism, but since these three heads more or less share the same body, it's important to stay focused on all three of these calamities simultaneously.
Today then, I'd like to share a couple of stories from left wing independent media that directly touch on murdering the planet for capitalism, but also indirectly expose the propaganda model media's complicity in "leading us to our own doom." First up, let's look at this October 12th, 2022 feature by Sam Knight over on Truthout.
Lobbyists Admit Big Banks Don’t Plan to Honor Climate Pledges
The story here is simple enough; a powerful banking lobby group, The Bank Policy Institute, has publicly admitted that the banks they represent have zero intention of keeping the various "net zero" pledges they've made. Of course, we've already talked about why even these promises are wholly inadequate to prevent climate crisis and will likely usher us into an ecofascist future; but it really says something when the bankers call even genocidal half measures an "aspirational solution." That's not an exaggeration either, as our article notes:
"Specifically, the lobbying group rejected the notion floated by the agencies that regulations should ensure banks’ greenhouse gas commitments to the public “are consistent with their internal strategies and risk appetite statements.”
“The final guidance with respect to public communications should recognize the aspirational nature of external commitments and the fact that these commitments and plans will need to adapt over time as data and methodologies improve and external circumstances change,” the organization said.
The institute urged regulators to “establish realistic expectations with respect to public statements” and said the government “should calibrate its expectations as to the granularity between external statements and internal risk appetite statements accordingly.”
To be clear, I can't say that as a student of left wing theory and Pig Empire history I'm particularly surprised by this development; the entire history of capitalism is about looting the commons for money, and leaving the labor class to deal with the fallout. Still, when influential capitalist institutions that literally have the power to dictate policy to your government start openly admitting they're fine with destroying all life on earth while pretending to be part of the solution, you'd think that might merit a little notice in the larger discourse.
We'll come back to this idea in a moment; in the meantime let's look at our second article. This October 23rd, 2022 post from Andy Rowell shared on Common Dreams looks at where Big Oil is sitting on the verge of the controversial COP27 climate summit coming this November.
Ahead of COP27, Big Oil Climate Denial More Potent Than Ever
Once again, this isn't really a complicated story. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Chevron CEO Mike Worth pretty much went off; and let the cat out of the bag in the process. Promising to drill more oil, not less, and low key pushing climate science denial, Worth and presumably the company he runs, went on the offensive:
"He told the FT that western governments had made a global oil and gas crunch worse by "doubling down" on climate policies that had made energy markets "more volatile, more unpredictable, more chaotic."
And even though the UN has warned that we cannot afford to drill for more oil and gas if we want a livable future, Worth predicted that fossil fuels are "going to run the world tomorrow and five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now."
He also fudged his belief over whether fossil fuels were the primary driver of climate change. "The IPCC concludes that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing and that the use of fossil fuels has contributed, and so we accept that," he said. But then, according to the Financial Times, Worth "rejected the blame attributed to oil companies" for providing "a legal product that complies with all the laws", and pledged that Chevron would increase oil and gas supply."
Please keep in mind that these aren't random internet cranks or even our esteemed Congresswoman from Q-Anon. These guys are absurdly rich and powerful people in industries, banking and fossil fuels, that drive the entire Pig Empire economy. They can, and do, move governments to forge the rules under which we operate a capitalist society. And they're more or less admitting they plan to kill us all in the not-so long term, because there are profits to be made right now. Furthermore, these are not isolated incidents; they are part of a consistent pattern of capitalist lies uttered while the ruling class locks us all into climate apocalypse proactively.
Alright then; so how does this involve the propaganda model media? Well just ask yourself if your favorite corporate propaganda outlet disguised as news, even reported on either of these events? If so, did they explicitly put it in the context of an open plan to murder billions like I have? Of course not. But you can be sure that those same corporate media outlets, including the ones who portray themselves as somehow "liberal" in their pervading ideology, have told you about these company's climate pledges, and will continue to share their lies with you in the future.
In other words, billionaire investors and the companies they control are actively conducting an open genocide against perhaps all of humanity, and the corporate media they also control, are busy covering it up. It's a closed loop of homicidal capitalist f*ckery; mass murder is on the menu and the capitalist order is happily shuffling us all towards the rotating knives in anticipation of the meal. The simple truth is that it's not a question of fighting capitalism, or fascism, or climate catastrophe; in a reactionary society where the profit motive rules all, these problems are one and the same beast and must be destroyed together.
nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst.
You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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