Bishop Hill The inhumanity of the environmentalist, part 234
Oct 6, 2014 Greens From time to time, I have observed that the BBC has never broadcast a programme the focus of which was criticism of environmentalism or environmentalists. It is simply not allowed. It is this kind of mindset that allows the sort of evil uncovered in this article to continue:
Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has uncovered serious abuses of Baka “Pygmies” in southeast Cameroon, at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported and funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The Baka are being illegally forced from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation” because much of their land has been turned into “protected areas” – including safari-hunting zones.
Rather than target the powerful individuals behind organized poaching, wildlife officers and soldiers pursue Baka who hunt only to feed their families.
Reader Comments (38)
Aunty is also conspicuously quiet on the relationship between unnecessarily-high renewables-favoured UK power prices, and, increased UK winter death rates exacerbated by fuel poverty.
Could it be because those most at risk are >75, so don't actually contribute towards BBC revenue?
What you are missing is that these Baka pygmy people are precisely that – people. (Why the quote marks around pygmies, by the way? You either are or not a pygmy; is there some other meaning lost to me?) In an enviroloons mind, people are not and cannot be part of “the environment” as “the environment” is some precious, mythical thing that the very presence of people causes great damage to… Unless, of course, these people are the very enviroloons who are sworn to protect “the environment”, no matter how much damage it causes.
While I will not condone poaching is any of its many guises, the enviroloons are, as usual, sending out all the wrong (and, as usual, scary) messages, and, as usual, beating up the wrong guy – who is, as usual, the weakest. In a sense, it is another form of poaching. Aunty, as usual, utterly ignores any story that is outside its particular, peculiar bias – perhaps they fear that the use of the word “pygmy” might offend someone (as Survival imply it might do).
I can't tell you how much I appreciate Bishop Hill on reading this post.
You have a wicked aunt running the news. But her relations in the USA, Australia, NZ, etc. are at least as disreputable.
There was a tiny hint of doubt expressed on "Start The Week" on radio 4 this morning, a panel discussion of Naomi Klein's latest oeuvre, Capitalism vs Climate. The panel was various shades of committed greenery, so it was down to the presenter to suggest that maybe climate was just being used as an excuse to pursue an anti-capitalist agenda, though Klein reassured the listeners that it was necessary to mobilise the masses against the fossil fuel vested interests.
All the panelists seemed to know exactly when (to the nearest year) the temperature would reach some maximum allowed figure. Is the BBC allowed to broadcast works of fiction as if they are science?
Aren't Baka hunter-gatherers? The type of society our eco-nutters aspire to.
I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think the damage that environmentalists do to people and the land is far greater than the public are aware of. I am sure those who donate to such organisations who be horrified if they ever found out what they actually did and the scale of it. Perhaps they would hand back their cuddly toys!
The BBC loves the environmentalists and regularly brings them on as "experts". The Beeb thinks they walk on water and can do no wrong.
Nice to see how well the BBC spend public money on their own beliefs.
You can say you are a member of the peoples that live on the planet, but you don't have any rights really.That would be the rights about having a roof over your head, the food to sustain you/yours and the means to cook food and stay warm/cool. Be safe in other words. No...that all has a dependency on any VI's needs and many of them will kill to get their way.
The BBC...way up its own ar*e.
Christopher Booker (and Survival International) has for years been championing the rights of the Bushmen of the Kalahari who have been driven from their land.
See The Bushmen of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve are Africa’s last hunting Bushmen. In 2006 they won a landmark case against the government, giving them the right to return to their ancestral land after they were forcibly evicted.
The story should stop there, but Botswana has continued to ruthlessly and relentlessly persecute its first people in an attempt to drive them from their land. Banned from hunting, and forced to apply for permits to enter the reserve, they are now being pushed to the brink of extinction.
If I may add some other examples.
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"The author of Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie, is the former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine. Six books and 200 articles have won him 18 awards. Researching this peer-reviewed M.I.T. Press-published text involved years of globe-trotting and the interviewing of many conservation and indigenous leaders. Dowie was privy to several leaked documents from major conservation organizations. Unusually, this book has no Acknowledgements section and does not mention Dowie's patrons.
Highlights:
Between 1900 and 1950 about 600 wilderness parks were created worldwide. 400 were added in the 1950s. Today there are 110,000 such parks. 12% of Earth's land is now conservationist controlled. This is an area larger than Africa. This is an area equal to half of humanity's farmland.
There is nothing civil about Third World environmental activism. Truckloads of armed men arrive at frontier villages. They torch shacks, wreck wells, rustle livestock, and confiscate firearms. This has happened thousands of times.
The global tally of conservation refugees is somewhere between 5 and 20 million. Dowie estimates 10million. One scholar estimates 14 million conservation refugees in Africa alone. The topic of conservation refugees has been assiduously neglected by academia. Conservation refugees are invisible because visibility raises the price of conservation.
After 1970, in a top-down process, elite enviro-organizations recruited and indoctrinated an auxiliary from the world's most atavistic indigenous peoples. This puppet sub-movement is now fronting much environmentalist obstruction.
Conservationists are divided between those who advocate complete depopulation of hinterlands and those who want indigenous-environmentalist auxiliaries to govern these areas."
more at http://www.ecofascism.com/review29.html
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"Members of the Samburu people in Kenya have been abused, beaten and raped by police after the land they lived on for two decades was sold to two US-based wildlife charities, a rights group and community leader have alleged.
The dispute centres on Eland Downs in Laikipia, a lush area near Mount Kenya. At least three people are said to have died during the row, including a child who was eaten by a lion after the Samburu were violently evicted in November last year.
The London-based NGO Survival International said the Samburu were evicted following the purchase of the land by two American-based charities, the Nature Conservancy and the African Wildlife Foundation.
The groups subsequently gifted the land to Kenya for a national park, to be called Laikipia National Park.
Survival International said the land was officially owned by former president Daniel arap Moi, although AWF simply said it bought it from a private landowner.
With nowhere to go, around 2,000 Samburu families stayed on the edge of the disputed territory, living in makeshift squats, while 1,000 others were forced to relocate, Survival said."
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refdaily?pass=463ef21123&id=4ee99fc45
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"Silence of the Lambs
For do-gooder NGOs in Cambodia, accommodation with the regime is very profitable.
By Ken Silverstein
On a typically warm, muggy evening in Phnom Penh earlier this year, I asked a twentysomething British woman for directions to Titanic, a restaurant overlooking the Tonle Sap River.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I heard the food was good," I said, somewhat confused.
"Oh, because there's a massive party there tonight for the Westerners!" she breathlessly replied.
Yes, it's always a fine time to be an expatriate aid worker in Cambodia, where several thousand NGOs and aid organizations operate. By day, swarms of foreign do-gooders clog the streets of Phnom Penh in their company-provided SUVs, and by night they fill bars, restaurants, and nightclubs. Collectively, NGO workers represent a privileged caste, isolated and detached from the people who serve as the objects of their benevolence. It's all reminiscent of those clueless young GOP zealots sent to staff the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, except the NGO workers in Cambodia aren't peddling Republican philosophy and the American way, but rather the ideology of altruism.
Scan the world's hot spots and disaster areas, and you'll invariably find NGOs and advocacy groups living high off the hog from donor money and hyping their causes with artfully presented information designed to prompt people to reach for their checkbooks. Nonprofits rushed in after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, but one survey of 60 U.S. relief organizations found that they had spent less than 40 percent of the $1.4 billion they raised during the first year. Many major projects are still stalled, and around 1 million Haitians live in squalid tent settlements.
Many of the billions of dollars allocated to USAID to rebuild Afghanistan never made it to the country, because about half of all funds were handed out to U.S. companies. Meanwhile, USA Today reported that four chief executives of nonprofit corporations delivering U.S. foreign assistance to Afghanistan earned more than $500,000 in 2007."
Much more at http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2011/06/silence_of_the_lambs.html
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"Just in time for Earth Hour this coming Saturday – that annual feel-good, accomplish-little World Wildlife Fund (WWF) event – a news story in the Jakarta Globe quotes Firman Subagyo, the head of the forestry commission for that country's House of Representatives:
Foreign NGOs like the WWF are like thieves visiting our homes to steal our treasures without us realizing it. The NGO's arrogance has impacted our weakened industrial competitiveness overseas, which will [in the] end worsen Indonesia's economy. [bold added, backed up here]
It seems the WWF took responsibility for helping to slow deforestation in a particular part of that country, but matters haven't gone according to plan. The article quotes Ir. Darori, the director general for forest protection:
We will evaluate [the WWF's work]. If it proves to have no benefit, we will terminate the partnership.
The willful blindness of groups such as the WWF and Greenpeace toward economically struggling nations around the globe is breathtaking. Their own, narrow agenda is the only thing that matters to these activists. The welfare of ordinary people who reside in those countries doesn't make it onto their radar (see a discussion of Mexico and Poland in this context).
History is unlikely to be kind to green NGOs. Their behaviour in the developing world is starting to look a great deal like foreign adventurism. They aren't just arrogant – they're reckless, exploitative, and anti-democratic.
They presume to know, better than local populations, what decisions should be made and what policies should be pursued. Moreover, they don't hesitate to trash a country's international reputation on the thinnest, most petty of grounds."
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/03/19/indonesian-official-compares-wwf-to-thieves/
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"KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company's proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a "peaceful" and "voluntary" manner.
People here remember it quite differently.
"I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside," said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. "The houses were being burnt down."
Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.
"They said if we hesitated they would shoot us," said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. "Smoke and fire."
According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.
"Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods," Oxfam said in the report. "This interest in land is not something that will pass." As population and urbanization soar, it added, "whatever land there is will surely be prized."
Across Africa, some of the world's poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.
But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.
The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.
The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html?_r=3&scp=3&sq=uganda&st=cse&
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How a biofuels landgrab has destroyed the life of an African village
http://www.actionaid.org/2011/10/how-biofuels-landgrab-has-destroyed-life-african-village
em meanwhile the WWF is being attacked from the left as well for providing "greenwash for cash" for nasty corps to hide behind
via repealtheclimatechangeactRR
"perhaps they fear that the use of the word “pygmy” might offend someone"
The word 'Pakistani' certainly seems to have had a pretty chilling effect on official investigations in Rotherham.
We may need the Baka before long, if only to teach us how to survive in the enviroloons' brave new world...
The laughable thing is that some people still think the BBC isn't biased.
The reality is that the BBC are probably one of the most biased media organisations around - and that bias really shows itself when its between a group like sceptics or these Pygmies who can't afford to take them to court and the massively (and publicly) funded "green" groups. Whose main spending appears to be on getting the PR to get government to give them even more of our money.
Mikky, did I understand this correctly? Naomi Klein says her anti-capitalism thesis is merely a ploy to get the ignorant masses on board with her environmental program? Did the panel heave a collective sigh of relief (whew! Capitalism is safe!) when they picked up on her clever plan for tricking the barricades into fighting for the environment? I suppose it's hard to tell on radio, but did she wink while explaining this?
Jamesp:
True. However, you might be able to see that, and I might be able to see that, but an enviroloon cannot. Such blatant truth is totally invisible to them – only they know how we should live in their mythical, idyllic world. Peculiarly, it is only others enviroloons want to live that; the enviroloons themselves will have their only little safe havens of luxury to monitor us all from.The Pointman has a very good post on the "Inhumanity" of envorinism and especially the Global Warming Brigade.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/tell-me-why/
UN Agenda 21 in action.
This is deliberate and by design.
Another disgraceful contribution from the eco-zealots. There is a list of many of them here, scroll down to find what may be the most relevant category for these atrocities in Cameroon:
For example, this one from 2009 http://www.irinnews.org/report/82436/chad-panic-outcry-at-government-charcoal-ban
Extracts:
I wonder if NGOs were involved? There is some evidence that people in and around the US government were actively encouraging this effort to help make an impact at the Copenhagen conference scheduled for December 2009.
I note also that the WWF had established an office in Cameroon in 1990: http://theredddesk.org/countries/actors/wwf-central-africa-regional-programme-office-cameroon
Blatant, unapologetic propaganda it is.
Slightly off the point....
An ad on Sky seen recently - in the last few days.
I watched askance, in between some programme [maybe Sky news I think] or other. Like a dark and unwelcome storm cloud it appeared. A WWF ad came projected into my google box, and before I could flick over but then, I thought to myself - well lets take a look-see.
In this execrable piece of agitprop - they're running the "warming Arctic" ice disappearing meme again, about how the northern edge of the Tundra is 'warming' and how it affects depletion of beasties large and small*[1] AND....the poor ol' Poley bears came up too.................................[FFS].
As Pointman alludes to in all sorts of ways and as we have known for many a year, organizations like the green mafia - of which the WWF are a 'family' of gone berserk misanthropists.
A blight on the Universe are the Green mafia, all act the part in a manner of irksome and onerous punctiliousness, the pity of it is that they cannot and will not devote equal time and energy to divining the truth.
WWF, Greenpi99, Foes of the earth et al; they won't be happy until mankind is wiped off the face of the earth - oh.......all but and except the wonderfully foresighted green mafia - of course.
WWF: are an evil in this world that: we could all well do without.
*[1] Species depletion, "Wildlife numbers in decline!" - is the latest angle from the green blob, the meme has been pervading BBC sites and newspapers while for the moment climate Armageddon takes a backseat.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2008/2008_40-49/2008_40-49/2008-45/pdf/28-29_4435.pdf
Check this one out.
WWF diverting funds from Local Refugee Population fleeing the Rwandan Genocide into protecting the Local Gorilla Population.
John Shade: When you said Cameroon, did you mean Chad? I know they share a border. I'd be interested in any reference that pertains to Cameroon, as I have friends involved in humanitarian work there.
RR
"it is only others enviroloons want to live like that"
I thinking along those lines this morning, when Naomi Klein was on. No doubt she will be jetting around the world promoting her book about the evils of capitalism, blissfully unaware of the irony.
I used to write about this kind of thing in East Africa. Many conservation groups are not as direct as these WWF people seem to be. Having got wise that it would do their image no good to be seen to be turfing people off their land, most groups now prefer to set up education programmes as part of their conservation efforts, in which they lecture the (mostly uneducated) people who use the land they're after about why they shouldn't be able to farm or hunt or whatever they want to do on it. Along the lines of: "These gorillas/elephants/whatever are of universal value and so belong to everyone on the planet. So if you stop using the land, tourists will come and you can sell them trinkets and everything will be fine."
In some cases, they offer help to communities to set up alternative livelihoods. I'm not sure how democratic the decision-making process is and one suspects an element of bribery at some point.
In one case I came across a group of pygmy women in Congo (who had told me their favourite food was elephant) who had been told they were no longer allowed to collect plants or hunt for meat in the nearby forest. Instead they were given some sewing machines and told to make shorts for the local tourists. The problem was there were no tourists because of the civil war.
I have never had the chance, but it would be interesting to follow up such programmes to see how much lasting satisfaction local populations derived from such programmes. I bet there wouldn't be much.
Richard, 2:03 PM. No, but I can see I was confusing. The charcoal example is from Chad, but the nearest WWF office is in Cameroon. They do seem to be taking a widespread interest in charcoal across tropical Africa, but I do not know if they were involved in the Chadian initiative of 2009. Here is some common ground involving forests and the Baka people in Cameroon: http://www.redd-monitor.org/2010/07/08/baka-bagyeli-and-bakola-forest-people-express-their-concerns-about-redd-in-cameroon/
REDD is a UN programme aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation. The WWF's Cameroon office was set up in readiness for REDD initiatives. Protecting forests was one motivation for the charcoal ban in Chad in 2009.
John: That was the ref and explanation I needed, thanks.
Charcoal is a big deal for conservation and sustainability as not only does it release carbon dioxide when burned but also involves cutting down trees
"I'm from
the governmentan environmentalist NGO, and I'm here to help."from baka.co.uk:-
THE BAKA FOREST PEOPLE are hunter-gatherers from the central African rainforest. They mainly live in South-Eastern Cameroon, but a few also live in Congo and Gabon. Sometimes referred to as Pygmies, they are generally shorter than their Bantu neighbours, but are experts in forest life. They are reknowned throughout Africa for their hunting, musical and dancing skills.
Martin Cradick & Su Hart of Baka Beyond have been regularly visiting and working with a group of Baka near the Congo-Cameroon border where there lives are changing rapidly. In the time since 1992 that they started working with the Baka from a small village called Banana, they have seen many changes. In 1998 electricity arrived in Moloundu, the nearest town, bringing music and television (mainly French chat shows) to the bars.
In 2000 Banana was a tiny village with a few mud huts and Baka mongolus. Now there are several shops, and an influx of Congolese refugees has put extra pressure on the forest.
Although the Baka have the right to hunt for food enshrined in both Cameroonian and international law, on the ground they are told that they are not allowed to hunt larger animals and are often intimidated into giving up even small game.
Global Music Exchange are actively working to raise their status and self esteme, as well as educating them and those around them about their human rights.
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The Wiki page on Baka people gives a different slant on things.
Using the word pygmy is now considered disrespectful. Don't know what else one would say without being disrespectful apart from just not mentioning their height at all.
"Vertically challenged"?
@ Charlie Furniss Oct 6, 2014 at 2:32 PM
"Charcoal is a big deal for conservation and sustainability as not only does it release carbon dioxide when burned but also involves cutting down trees"
Like the firewood we import from across the pond, to feed Drax?
If only you were consistent in your outrage????
Need sturdy boots for that kind of work. Jackboots, for example.
Can we call them ecofascists now?
The odious ecoloonies doing their worst, yet again.
Part of the reason why indigenous peoples such as the Baka are so still dependent on this hunter-gather style of life is because the greenies, such as WWF, are encouraging local farmers to turn over their arable and pasture to growing biomass for energy generation - and, of course, they get paid a lot more for biomass crops than for food crops than locals can afford.
The IPCC's predictions the climate change will result in food shortages will be entirely down to this shift from food agriculture to subsidised biomass production. And, you also need to consider if the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is down to a shift from managed agriculture back to forged food, such as bushmeat - which is a primary reserviour of the virus.
What happens when you give enviroloons the helm: 40,000 elephants slaughtered in the name of environmentalism.
(Some of them can actually learn from experience; others sadly not.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/08/a-bridge-in-the-climate-debate-how-to-green-the-worlds-deserts-and-reverse-climate-change/
I have some personal experience of Survival International in Botswana. It looked to me that the San people were the "cause" that SI were exploiting to raise money to run their show ( office, salaries, cars, travel, advertising etc.) rather than SI being a vehicle that rises money to fight the corner of the San people. Someone should look at their accounts. The latest " cause" SI are promoting may be an indication they need money!
I wonder. How many of these people want the Washington Redskins to chane their name.
Can the diminutive Bakka rely on such great hearts as the Bishop & Brenchley to invite them to Scotland to restock their larders by stalking roe deer ?
Philip Bratby
You arebadly mislead by Survival International which is a gravy train of well remunerated London based spivs who use the San people as their lever to fund their status, life stye, cars, perks , travel, conference attendance, and advertising campaigns.
I lived in the Central Kaahari Reserve of Botswana in aggregate for several years and I have personally witnessed the lies, damned lies and propaganda about the Botswana Government's treatment of the San that SI uses to keep its gravy train on the tracks.
Since a water well was first drilled in the CKGY in 1903 the San became cattle farmers and their traditional hunter gatherer life lifestyle became the local equivalent of following your local pack of Beagles.
BAH!