Religious Environmentalists Lament Earth Day Commercial Opportunism, as Too Many Company Converts Raise Risks of 'Green' Vendor Fraud

http://adage.com/article?article_id=126362

Is Earth Day the New Christmas?: As More Marketers Pile On, Consumerism May Eclipse Spirit of Event


By Natalie Zmuda


April 14, 2008


NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet.

As April 22 approaches, marketers of all stripes are bombarding consumers with green promotions and products designed to get them to buy more products -- some eco-friendly, some not so much. And while that message seems to contrast with the event's intent, the oxymoron seems to have been lost on marketers jumping on the Earth Day bandwagon in record numbers. This year it seems that just about everyone has found a way to attach themselves to what is fast becoming a marketing holiday that barely resembles the grass-roots event founded in 1970.


[IT IS QUITE COINCIDENTAL THAT THE 'MAKE OR BREAK' DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY IN THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA WILL TAKE PLACE ON APRIL 22, 2008, EARTH DAY. AMERICANS SHOULD EXPECT TO HEAR MUCH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT FROM MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA.]



"This month I've definitely seen a lot of companies that I never would have associated with green popping up," said Steven Addis, CEO of Addis Creson, a branding firm. "Companies are saying, 'We need something to green ourselves up, so let's ... sponsor Earth Day.' ... It's really now in this hype curve, and hopefully we're getting toward the top, so we can start having some fallout."

Sustainable for one day

Indeed, many have begun to worry that as nearly every company out there paints themselves green, they are losing touch with Earth Day's reason for being. "My concern is that some companies just view [Earth Day] as a marketing event, like Thanksgiving or Christmas," said Larry Light, chairman-CEO of Arcature, a management consulting firm.

"Then they've fulfilled their obligation for the rest of the year. The whole issue of sustainability means that a commitment also has to be sustainable. If it's only for one day, then it's a marketing event."


[THE PAGAN RELIGION OF ENVIRONMENTALISM HAS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE TO THANK FOR THIS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNISM AND 'ONE-DAY' CONSUMER CONFESSIONAL WORSHIP, GIVEN HIS GLOBAL CELEBRITY, BOX OFFICE RECEIPTS AND 'NOBEL PRIZE'.]


To be fair, many companies are already looking beyond the month of April by embracing comprehensive sustainability programs. But, regardless, the fact remains that as Earth Day approaches, consumers will find it difficult to avoid green messaging.

Consumers can, for example, shop at Banana Republic, where 1% of sales from April 22 through April 27 benefit the Trust for Public Land. Or they can participate in Macy's "Turn Over A New Leaf" campaign by making a $5 donation to the National Park Foundation. In exchange, customers receive 10% or 20% off most merchandise the weekend of April 26.


Newsweek subscribers can actually fashion the cover of the April 14 issue into an envelope to send plastic bags to Target in return for a reusable tote bag. Then there's Toys 'R' Us' launch of "enviro-friendly playthings," Sweet Leaf Tea's missive to "Don't just think green. ... Drink green" and Fairmont Hotels' introduction of "Lexus Hybrid Living Suites." These days even Barbie has a green-accessories collection.


Seeing green


Major marketing dollars are behind these efforts. Experts concede it's difficult to quantify the amount of money spent on green marketing, but, collectively, it's clear companies are spending tens of millions.


This month, Wal-Mart is running seven national 30-second spots, created by the Martin Agency. The commercials, bearing the tagline "Budget-friendly prices. Earth-friendly products," promote T-shirts made of recycled bottles and organic coffee, among other things.


In addition to charity shopping days, Macy's campaign involves giveaways of saplings and reusable totes, promotes eco-friendly merchandise and includes TV and newspaper advertising, as well as mention in the retailer's direct-mail catalog and in-store signage.


Clorox is also flexing its green muscles this month. Its Brita brand's integration with NBC's "The Biggest Loser" has resulted in the elimination of plastic water bottles from the show's campus. And with the season finale slated for Earth Day, the brand is planning plenty of in-store marketing around the TV program.


"It's not black or white," said Mr. Addis, of the Earth Day conundrum. "It's great that people are paying attention. It's great that companies are starting to do something, but what really drives me crazy is when it's used as a vehicle of greenwashing. I call it the 95-5 rule. Five percent of somebody's business is green, but 95% of their PR is green."


[WE WONDER WHEN THE STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL OF THE 50 U.S. STATES AND THE U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WILL DECIDE TO CONDUCT FORMAL INVESTIGATIONS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE WHETHER CONSUMERS HAVE UNWILLING BECOME THE VICTIMS OF WIDESPREAD VENDOR FRAUD and/or MISREPRESENTATION AS THE RESULT OF CORPORATE 'GREENWASHING'.]


Wolves in green clothing

And that seems to be the sentiment among many experts, who recognize that separating the good from the bad is a tricky endeavor.


"There are some companies that are still feeling their way around and probably greenwashing to some extent," said Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer of Tree Hugger and VP-operations of Planet Green Interactive. "This is the problem of our times, but anything that raises awareness is good."

Experts said that, generally, initiatives that raise money for a specific cause or increase awareness, such as Macy's "Turn Over a New Leaf" campaign, are in keeping with the Earth Day message. However, those companies that play up tenuous links to Earth Day simply to drive sales are contributing to the din and confusing consumers.



[UNTIL NOW, RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DIDN'T MIND TOO MUCH IF THE ADHERENTS WERE HERETICS AS LONG AS IT SOUNDED GOOD.]


The Federal Trade Commission has begun to respond to concerns about that. It announced in November it would begin reviewing its green-marketing guides, last updated in 1998, this year. The move comes a year ahead of schedule, in response to the increase in green-advertising claims, the FTC said.


Wal-Mart: Ads tout recycled materials.


But until the FTC updates its guidelines, the green-marketing landscape is akin to the Wild, Wild West. Anybody, it seems, can claim the mantle of green, if it suits them.


[THIS IS THE PRIMARY PROBLEM WITH PROCLAIMING ONE'S GREENNESS - THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE-BASED STANDARDS, ONLY SUBJECTIVE POLITICAL STANDARDS.]


"The combination of indiscriminate messaging, where everybody has a green message [and some are] flat out greenwashing, and people who are clearly not friends of the environment portraying themselves as that is leading a lot of people to be a little more skeptical," said Alex Steffen, executive editor of World Changing, a sustainability blog.

[IN OTHER WORDS, MANY WHO SUPPORT MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA, AND ARGUABLY EVEN THESE CANDIDATES, AND AL GORE, ARE INSINCERE ABOUT THEIR 'GREEN' CREDENTIALS. THEY MERELY SEEK TO MAKE $$ GREEN FROM APPEARING 'GREEN'. THIS REALITY GIVES CREDENCE TO THE ARGUMENT THAT CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED BY THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS INTO AN HYSTERIA TRULY SERVE AS FALSE PRETENSES FOR MORE & MORE GOVERNMENT REGULATION THAT CAN MAKE POLITICAL SUPPORTERS MUCH $$ MONEY.]


Saving the world ... yawn


And, if skepticism among consumers increases, one concern is that they could stop paying attention altogether. "Consumers can see through messaging that is not backed with a longer-term commitment to green," said David Wigder, senior VP-Digitas and author of the blog Marketing Green. "Moreover, if consumers are bombarded with too much messaging, they may simply tune it out."


[EVEN THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS SENSE A 'TRAIN WRECK' OF SORTS IF CONSUMERS BEGIN TO LEARN HOW THEY ARE BEING DUPED BY ALL OF THE GREEN PROPAGANDA PROMOTED IN THE MEDIA AND NOW BY INDUSTRY.]


Maureen O'Connor, publisher of sustainability blog Alternative Consumer, said the number of green pitches hitting her inbox is just one indication of the amount of noise in the market. "There are so many wannabes, it's frightening," she said. "There is such a proliferation of PR efforts that are over the top."


[EXACTLY RIGHT. ENVIRONMENTAL 'NOISE' / CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA / RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NONSENSE / GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON.]


That is leading some to declare Earth Day an overcommercialized event that has lost the cachet that made it so successful in the first place.


"Earth Day's usefulness has passed," said Mr. Steffen. "The idea that we're going to direct our attention to the planet for a day or a week ... is not a sufficient response anymore. An awful lot of people view Earth Day as the time to express the idea that they are sympathetic to change. We need to move from being sympathetic to change to actually changing things."


[THIS IS WHERE MONSIEUR OBAMA'S 'CHANGE' MANTRA COMES IN - HE WANTS TO CHANGE AMERICA INTO EUROPE WHERE THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DETERMINE EUROPEAN UNION SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND LEGAL POLICIES.]


Beware the Bloggers

As consumers become increasingly skeptical of green marketing messages, there's no better forum than the blogosphere.


Bloggers, with their witty posts and reputation for carefully vetting information, are fast becoming the most trusted resource for truly green products and promotions. As David Binkowski, senior VP-director of word-of-mouth marketing at Manning Selvage & Lee put it, "[It] better not just be window dressing, because bloggers fact-check everything."


[THAT IS WHY THE ITSSD JOURNALS HAVE BEEN CREATED: TO EXPOSE THE HYPOCRISY AND FALSE PRETENSES BEHIND THE DESIRED OVERREGULATION OF PRIVATE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES/PROPERTY RIGHTS, HERE & ABROAD.]


Blogroll:


alternativeconsumer.com

biopact.com

causerelatedmarketing.blogspot.com

eco-chick.com

ecofriend.org

ecogeek.com

ecorazzi.com

greenlivingideas.com

greenthinkers.org

gristmill.org

groovygreen.com

inhabitat.com

jetsongreen.com

lime.com

marketinggreen.wordpress.com

sustainablog.org

thegoodhuman.com

theoildrum.com

treehugger.com

worldchanging.com


A recent report from Nielsen Online ranked Tree Hugger, World Changing, The Oil Drum and Alternative Consumer among the most popular sustainability blogs on the web. And all are far from ragtag operations.


Motley crew


The sites boast a mix of activists, scholars and experts in topics as varied as green building, energy and nutrition. Some came to the cause early -- one of Alternative Consumer's bloggers is Zach McGrath, a high-school junior -- but others, such as Tree Hugger's Kenny Luna, turned green more recently in response to climatic events.


Tree Hugger is the largest of the environmental blogs, with 10 staffers and more than 50 regular contributors around the world. Its founder, Graham Hill, dabbled in fashion, viral e-mail and plant-based air filters, among other things, before launching the site in 2004. He's also the guy that designed the ceramic cup that looks like a paper cup and reads, "We are happy to serve you."


According to Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer, as one of the more influential green sites out there, Tree Hugger aims to take advertising that adds as much value to the site as the content. Advertisers include Wal-Mart, Simple Shoes, Envirolet composting toilets and a band, The Weepies.


Pitching in


But even a smaller organization, such as Alternative Consumer, has eight regular contributors. Founded in 2007 by Maureen O'Connor, a native New Yorker, the site takes more of a lifestyle approach to green topics. Recent posts highlight hemp skirts and outdoor furniture made from recycled milk jugs, detergent containers and the like. Advertising, meanwhile, runs the gamut from smaller green companies touting plastic-free diapers and eco-friendly dog sweaters to national brands such as GE, Sun Chips and Hush Puppies.


The nonprofit blog World Changing counts 150 contributors around the globe, with 25 regulars and five staff members. Its ranks include writers in Stockholm, Shanghai, Mumbai and Las Vegas, as well as one "Global Nomad." The Oil Drum, which carries only barebones Google ads, is slightly more mysterious. Its writers are largely anonymous and include "Prof. Goose," a professor in the social sciences, and "Heading Out," a faculty member in an energy production discipline.


-- Natalie Zmuda and Michael Bush

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http://news.aol.com/story/_a/even-funerals-are-going-green/20080420074309990001


Even Funerals Are Going Green


AP


LONDON (April 20)


It's no longer enough to live a greener life — now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too.


Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. See, e.g., http://www.stibbards.co.uk/ecocoffins.htm ; http://www.greenendings.co.uk/coffinsandurns.htm ;

"People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals.
Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition.


Some may expect green funerals to be as cheap as a do-it-yourself project, while others might brace for price hikes similar to those fair trade food.


But, funeral directors say green funerals — like any — run the gamut.


"It's about choice, not price," said Fran Hall, marketing director for Epping Forest Burial Park.


For a concept aimed at saving the Earth by going back to basics, an eco-funeral can be more complicated than it sounds. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries.


"You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director.


In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system.


Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Coffins on display included one made from wicker and decorated with flowers.


One visitor, Linda McDowall, admired another coffin bundled in a beige, leaf-adorned felt shroud, saying it looked comfortable.


"Cozy and warm are not words you associate with death," said McDowall, a 48-year-old German and French translator.


Cardboard coffins — which are as thick as their wooden counterparts — can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months.


"The trouble is, they are a bit ungainly to use," said Oakfield Wood burial ground director Oliver Peacock. "They're not terribly easy to handle and if it's wet, they don't look their best either."


Particular care is taken in how coffins are buried at eco-friendly graveyards like Oakfield Wood, Peacock said.


The cemetery was a pasture when it opened in 1995. It is now speckled with more than 1,600 trees that mark plots along with a wooden plaque.


Marble tombstones are frowned upon. Jeremy Smite, a funeral director at Green Endings, notes that shipping and mining produce carbon and that marble is not a renewable resource.


For cremations — which account for 70 percent of British funerals — a person's ashes and the remains of the eco-friendly coffin are placed in bamboo, glass or ceramic urns.


New legislation in Britain requires reductions in the mercury content of plastics and treatments used in coffins starting in 2010. All biodegradable coffins meet the new standards.


Cassidy said small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions.


"What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.

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http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about/environz/environz-nov07/page10.html


Move over for Sustainable Product Design

(New Zealand Ministry for the Environment website)


November 2007


Sustainability is a driving force for product innovation and yes, it’s good for our environment, too.


Mortality is not something people like to dwellon every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin?


Mortality is not something people like to dwell on every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin? Plastic, synthetic linings and glue containing formaldehyde are features in most New Zealand coffins. Now that more New Zealanders are becoming aware of their impact on the environment, the demand for natural burials and eco-friendly coffins is growing.


[WE SURMISE THAT ALL OF THAT ISOLATION & SHEEP FARMING IN OCEANIA MUST HAVE GOTTEN TO THESE KIWIS]


This is where the Return to Sender eco coffin, designed by Greg Holdsworth from Holdsworth Design, comes into play. It uses a minimum of materials which are also bio-degradable and non-toxic.


The interest in and uptake of the coffin are proof that its stylish, unique design appeals to a wide range of people, not just ‘green’ consumers. It is a great example of how good product design can go hand-in-hand with sustainable principles.


Designers are increasingly aware they have a responsibility to include sustainable principles into their work, says Cathy Veninga, Chief Executive Officer of Designers Institute of New Zealand.


“Ideally, products should be designed in such a way that consumers can rest assured the product of their choice is sustainably sound,” said Veninga.


With research showing that about 70 per cent of the environmental impacts of a product are determined at design stage, thinking about sustainability at the drawing board is an effective way to improve a product’s green credentials.


The Return to Sender eco coffin won a silver award for sustainable product design at the 2007 BeST Design Awards, supported by the Ministry. Formway Furniture struck gold, at the same awards, for their Met Adapt office furniture range.


However, the design world are not the only ones thinking sustainability at the drawing-board. Awareness is also gaining moment in the packaging industry.

The Moral, Ethical & Religious Justification for the European Regulate, Tax & Spend Welfare State; Will Clinton & Obama Import This System to America?

http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070830/COMMENTARY/108300003


Papal indulgence of OECD thugs


August 30, 2007


Walter E. Williams - London's Times Online recently reported that, according to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI is working on his second encyclical, a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as "socially unjust." (See www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2237625.ece ) The pontiff will denounce the use of tax havens and offshore banking by wealthy individuals because it reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole.


Pope Benedict could benefit from a bit of schooling. Tax avoidance is legal conduct whereby individuals arrange their affairs to reduce the amount of income that is taxable. Tax avoidance can run the gamut of legal acts, such as investing in tax-free bonds, having employer-paid health plans, making charitable gifts, quitting a job and banking in another country. Tax evasion refers to the conduct by individuals to reduce their tax obligation by illegal means. Tax evasion consists of illegal acts such as falsely claiming dependents, income underreporting and padding expenses.

Pope Benedict's second encyclical puts him squarely in company with a group of thugs known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international bureaucracy headquartered in Paris and comprised of 30 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. One OECD report said low-tax nations are bad for the world economy and named 35 jurisdictions as guilty of "harmful tax competition."


To the OECD, harmful tax competition occurs when a nation has taxes so low that saving and investment are lured away from high-taxed OECD countries. The countries they've identified as tax havens, having strong financial privacy laws and low or no taxes on certain activities, include Panama, the Bahamas, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands and Monaco.


The OECD demands these nations, as well as offshore financial centers in the Caribbean and the Pacific, in effect surrender their fiscal sovereignty and act as deputy tax collectors for nations like France and Germany. This would be a dream for politicians and bad news for the world's taxpayers. Fortunately, the hard work of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has stymied the OECD's proposed tax cartel.


Pope Benedict shares some of the OECD goals in its attack on low-tax jurisdictions. To support their welfare states, European nations must have high taxes. Government spending exceeds 50 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in France, Sweden, Germany and Italy.
If Europeans, as private citizens and businessmen, relocate, invest or save in other jurisdictions, it means less money is available to be taxed to support their welfare states.


The pope expresses the same concern in saying tax havens reduce revenues for the benefit of society as a whole. Survival of an ever-growing welfare state requires an assault on jurisdictional tax competition.


[See: Martin De Vlieghere, Paul Vreymans and Willy De Wit, "The Myth of the Scandinavian Model", The Brussels Journal (11/25/05) at: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/510 .]


[THIS IS A FALSE PRETENSE-BASED JUSTIFICATION FOR TRANSATLANTIC, AND EVEN GLOBAL REGULATORY AND TAX HARMONIZATION. THIS WAY, EUROPEAN INDUSTRIES IN HIGH-TAX JURISDICTIONS WILL NO LONGER BE AT A COMPETITIVE DISADVANTAGE. IT IS WHAT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES CLINTON & OBAMA REFER TO AS, 'LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD'.



IT IS ALSO WHAT UK PRIME MINISTER REFERRED TO IN HIS RECENT SPEECH AT THE JFK LIBRARY AS MORAL / ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR EACH NATIONS' CITIZENS BEING THEIR BROTHERS' KEEPER ALL AROUND THE WORLD.

BUT, NO MATTER HOW YOU DRESS IT UP (OR 'SEX IT UP', TO BORROW A PHRASE FROM FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR), EUROPEAN-STYLE REGULATION & TAXATION REGIMES REMAIN UNDESIRABLE. WHY THEN WOULD MADAME CLINTON AND MONSIEUR OBAMA BE DARING ENOUGH TO IMPOSE THEM HERE IN THE U.S.??]


There's a more fundamental question I would put to the pope: Should the Roman Catholic Church support the welfare state? Or, put more plainly, should the Church support using the coercive powers of government to enable one person to live at the expense of another? Put even more plainly, should the Church support the government taking one person's property and giving it to another to whom it doesn't belong? Such an act done privately is called theft.


The pope might say the welfare state reflects the will of the people. Would that mean the Church interprets God's commandment to Moses "Thou shalt not steal" as not an absolute, but as "Thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Parliament or Congress"?


I share Pope Benedict's desire to assist our fellow man in need. But I believe that reaching into one's own pocket to do so is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into another's pocket to assist one's fellow man in need is despicable and worthy of condemnation.


Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist.

France's Continuing Existentialist Crisis Leads to the Return of European Power Politics

http://www.stratfor.com/theme/europes_return_power_politics

Europe's Return to Power Politics

The European Union has grown to the point where it constitutes a market powerhouse but cannot function as a coherent geopolitical entity. So after 60 years of integration, Europe has returned to the style of power politics that reigned before World War II.


By George Friedman


Stratfor Strategic Forecasting


December 7, 2007

French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the week of March 16 that France is cutting its nuclear arsenal to less than 300 warheads, which he said was less than half the number France had during the Cold War. Meanwhile, plans are under way in Paris to return to full membership in NATO; Sarkozy will travel to London the week of March 23 to discuss reintegration.


Sarkozy spoke while attending the launch of France’s newest nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine in Cherbourg. During his speech, he added that, at present, none of France’s nuclear weapons is aimed at anyone. During the same appearance he said, “All those who threaten to attack our vital interests expose themselves to a severe riposte by France.” This was said in the context of discussions of Iran, which he said was among those countries in the process of developing nuclear weapons. France is simultaneously calling attention to its nuclear capability and adopting an increasingly hostile posture toward Iran. While the media focus is on Sarkozy, it seems to us that this issue goes deeper than personalities. Processes are under way that are shifting French foreign policy.


The shift is not a dramatic one yet; there is more continuity than discontinuity in French foreign policy. Like all French leaders for the last half-century, Sarkozy is focusing on his country’s strategic independence, particularly on its nuclear capability. At the same time, France is aligning itself more closely with the U.S. view of Iran, and, to some extent, with the U.S. view of the Middle East. In doing so, France is creating stresses within the European Union and reshaping its relationship with Germany. These small changes have broad implications that need to be understood.


Foreign Policy Since 1871


Since 1871, France has had two foreign policies. The year 1871 saw German unification. Prior to 1871, the fragmentation of Germany into numerous ministates secured France’s eastern frontier; France concerned itself with the rest of Atlantic Europe, particularly Spain and England. German unification redefined French geopolitics by creating a major power to its east. This major power was insecure because it was caught between France, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. German insecurity made it a threat to France. A united Germany had to deal with the causes of that insecurity, and France was one of those causes. German unification effectively coincided with the defeat of France by Prussia, and drove home the significance of a unified Germany.

From German unification and the Franco-Prussian war until 1945, the essence of French foreign policy consisted of managing Germany. That meant France had to change its relationship with its historic rival, the United Kingdom, and keep Russia aligned with the Anglo-French alliance. For more than 80 years, French foreign policy could be boiled down to containing Germany. The strategy proved successful, assuming one accepts the losses incurred in World War I and five years of occupation during World War II. In the end, France survived.


This set in place France’s second post-1871 strategy, which evolved over the 1950s until its institutionalization by Charles de Gaulle. This postwar strategy consisted of two parts. The first part involved embedding France into multinational institutions, particularly the European Economic Community (EEC) — which evolved into the European Union — and NATO. The second part involved using these institutions to preserve French sovereignty and independence. Put differently, France’s strategy was to participate in multinational structures while using them for its own ends, or at least defining a limited relationship with the structures.


France’s overriding concern was to avoid getting caught in a third world war after having been devastated by the first two world wars. Preventing this outcome meant exploiting German disunification, effectively ending France’s primordial fear of Germany. It did this in two ways. The first involved drawing close to West Germany economically, creating a system of relationships that would make Franco-German conflict impossible.

The second involved blocking the Soviet threat by participating in NATO.

France’s problem was that the deeper that it went into European institutions and NATO, the more tenuous its sovereignty became.

It needed the economic and military relationship with Germany, but it had to retain its room for maneuver. More precisely, it wanted to draw closer to Germany and take advantage of a collective security scheme, but not become a client state of the United States. It therefore belonged to NATO, but pulled out of the alliance’s integrated military command structure in 1966. NATO’s military structure made certain responses to a Soviet invasion automatic. France refused to allow its response to be automatic, but remained committed to collective defense.

France was concerned with maximizing its autonomy, but it had a deeper fear as well.


The defense of Western Europe was predicated on U.S. intervention. The doctrine of massive response held that, in the event of a Soviet invasion that could not be contained conventionally, the United States would use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. The U.S. position was thus to initiate a nuclear war that would potentially see America’s cities decimated, all in order to protect Europe.

The French problem, however, was that Paris would not know whether Washington would honor this commitment until after the initiation of hostilities. From the French point of view, it would be irrational for the United States to invite its own devastation to protect Europe. Therefore, the American commitment was at best untestable. At worst, it was an implausible and transparent attempt to jeopardize Europe so as to deter a Soviet attack without the United States risking anything fundamental.


An Independent Deterrent

The need to protect French sovereignty intersected with what Paris saw as a genuine requirement to maintain a military capability outside the framework of NATO, all the while remaining part of NATO and the EEC. France wanted NATO to function. It wanted to be close to Germany. And it wanted a set of options outside the context of NATO that would guarantee that France would not be reoccupied, this time by the Soviets.

The decision to construct an independent French nuclear deterrent was based on this reasoning. As de Gaulle put it, France wanted to retain the ability to tear off an arm if the Soviets attacked France through Germany. It was unsure whether the United States would act to deter the Soviet Union, but even a small nuclear force in the hands of a power likely to suffer occupation — and thus a force very likely to be used — would deter the Soviets. Therefore, the French developed (and retain) the nuclear force that Sarkozy decided to cut but not eliminate.


This issue remained at the heart of U.S.-French tensions both during and after the Cold War. The American view was that the United States and all of Western Europe (plus some Mediterranean countries) had a vested interest in resisting the Soviets, and they could do so most effectively by joining in multilateral economic and military organizations allowing them to operate in concert. The Americans viewed the French reluctance to follow suit as France seeking a free ride. From the American point of view, the U.S. bore the brunt of the cost of defending Europe, as well as underwriting Europe’s economic recovery in the early years. France benefited from both, and would benefit as long as the United States defended Germany. Paris wanted the benefits of the American presence without committing itself to burden-sharing. Put another way, how could the

Americans be certain that, in the event of war, France would protect Germany, Italy or Turkey? Perhaps Paris would remain aloof unless France were attacked.


The French mistrust of the credibility of U.S. commitment to Europe collided with American mistrust of French reasons for being part of NATO without committing itself to collaborate automatically in NATO’s response to the Soviets. France was comfortable with this ambiguity. It needed it. It needed to integrate economically with the Germans, to be part of NATO, but to retain its own options for national defense. If this meant increasing American distrust, and even a sense of betrayal, this was something France must tolerate to achieve its strategic goals.


With the fall of the Soviet Union, France entered a new strategic phase. The French responded to the Soviet collapse and to German reunification by maintaining and extending its core policy. It remained ambiguously part of NATO, participating as it saw fit. It really concentrated on transforming the European Union into a multinational federation, with its own integrated foreign policy and defense policy.

This position appears paradoxical. On the one hand, France wanted to maintain its national sovereignty and freedom of action. On the other, it wanted to be a counterbalance to the United States and to draw ever closer to Germany — permanently eliminating the historic danger from its eastern neighbor, however distant the German threat might appear under current circumstances. France could not resist the United States alone. It could do so only in the context of a European federation, which would of course include the critical French relationship with Germany.


Independence vs. Europe


France therefore had to choose between a wholly independent foreign policy and federation with Europe. It tried to have its cake and eat it too. It supported the principle of federation, and within this federation it sought a particularly close relationship with Germany. But its view of this new federation was that while, in a formal sense, France would abandon a degree of sovereignty, in practical terms — so long as France could be the senior partner to Germany — the French would dominate a European federation. In effect, federation would open the door to a Europe directed, if not dominated, by Paris.


This is why Central Europe revolted against French President Jacques Chirac on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Central Europeans were not particularly enthusiastic about the war, but they were far less enthusiastic about Chirac’s actions. From their point of view, he was using the Iraq issue to create a European bloc, led by France in opposition to the United States. For a country such as Poland that had relied on French (and British) guarantees prior to World War II, the idea that France should lead a Europe in opposition to the United States was unacceptable. Chirac gave a famous press conference in which he condemned the Central European rejection of French opposition to the invasion as representing nations that were “not well brought up.” This was the moment in which French frustration welled over.

France was not going to get the federation it hoped for. Too many countries of Europe wanted to retain their freedom of action, this time from France. They were not opposed to economic union, but the creation of a federation with a joint foreign and defense policy was not enthusiastically greeted by smaller European countries (and some not-so-small countries such as Britain, Spain and Italy). As anti-federationism grew, it swept forward to include France as well, which rejected the European constitution in a plebiscite.


This moment was the existential crisis [??] created the Sarkozy presidency. Sarkozy has raised two questions that have been fundamental to France. The first is France’s relationship to Germany. France has been obsessed with Germany since 1871, at first hostile, later nearly married, but always obsessed. The second question relates to France’s relationship to the United States. Chirac represented postwar Gaullism’s view in its most extreme form: Convert European institutions into a French-dominated multinational force to balance U.S. power. This attempt collapsed, so Sarkozy had to define the relationship France might have with the United States if France could not counterbalance the United States.


The Mediterranean Union

The questions of Germany and of the United States were addressed in the French idea of a Mediterranean Union. Since German unification in 1871, France has obsessed about the north German plain. But France is also a Mediterranean power, with long-term interests in North Africa and the Middle East in such countries as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Syria. Where Germany is entirely a northern European power, France is not. Therefore, Chirac proposed that, in addition to being a member of the European Union, France should create a separate and distinct Mediterranean Europe. The latter grouping would include the rest of the Mediterranean basin, extending as far as Turkey and Israel. It would exclude non-Mediterranean powers such as Germany and Britain, however.

France had no intention of withdrawing from the European Union, but saw the Mediterranean Union as a supplemental relationship, and argued that it would allow EU expansion without actually admitting new EU members. The Germans saw this as a French attempt to become Europe’s strategic pivot, leading both unions and serving as the only member that was both a northern European and a Mediterranean power. The Germans did not like this scenario one bit. The French then backed off, but did not abandon the idea.

If the French are going to be a Mediterranean power, they must also be a Middle Eastern power. If they are playing in the Middle East, they must redefine their relationship with the United States. Sarkozy has done that by drawing systematically closer to American views on Iran, Syria and Lebanon. In other words, to pursue this new course, the French have drawn away from the Germans and closer to the Americans.


This is all very early in the game, and the moves so far are very small. But the French have slightly backed off from their German obsession and their fear of the United States.

The collapse of European federationism has set off a reconsideration of France’s global role, a reconsideration that will — if continued — radically redefine France’s core relationships.

What the French are doing is what they have done for years: They are looking for maximum freedom of action for France without undue risk. Though France has long pursued its interests with consistency, its current moves are different. It appears to be pulling away from Germany and seeking power in the Mediterranean.

And that means working with the Americans.

The US Riskless Society & Europe's Precautionary Principle

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RisklessSociety.html


Riskless Society


by Aaron Wildavsky


Since the late fifties the regulation of risks to health and safety has taken on ever-greater importance in public policy debates—and actions. In its efforts to protect citizens against hard-to-detect hazards such as industrial chemicals and against obvious hazards in the workplace and elsewhere, Congress has created or increased the authority of the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and Consumer Protection Agency, and other administrative agencies.


Activists in the pursuit of a safer society decry the damage that industrial progress wreaks on unsuspecting citizens. Opponents of the "riskless society," on the other hand, complain that government is unnecessarily proscribing free choice in the pursuit of costly protection that people do not need or want. This article describes some facts about risk, along with some academic theories about why people on both sides of the risk debate take the positions they do.


The health of human beings is a joint product of their genetic inheritance (advice: choose healthy and long-lived parents), their way of life (the poor black person who eats regularly and in moderation, exercises, does not smoke or drink, is married, and does not worry overly much is likely to be healthier than the rich white person who does the opposite), and political economy (live in a rich, democratic, and technologically advanced society). Contrary to common opinion, living in a rich, industrialized, technologically advanced country that makes considerable use of industrial chemicals and nuclear power is a lot healthier than living in a poor, nonindustrialized nation that uses little modern technology or industrial chemicals. That individuals in rich nations are far healthier, live far longer, and can do more of the things they want to do at corresponding ages than people in poor countries is a rule without exception.


Prosperous also means efficient. The most polluted nations in the world, many more times polluted than democratic and industrial societies, are the former communist countries of Central Europe and the Soviet Union. To produce one unit of output, communist countries use two to four times the amount of energy and material used in capitalist countries. Therefore, individuals unfortunate enough to live in an inefficient economy die younger and have more serious illnesses than in the Western and industrial democracies. A little richer is a lot safer. As Peter Huber demonstrated in Regulation magazine, "For a 45-year-old man working in manufacturing, a 15 percent increase in income has about the same risk-reducing value as eliminating all hazards—every one of them—from his workplace."


Among the many facts that might be observed from tables 1 and 2 is that longevity has increased dramatically (with only occasional downturns) since the middle of the last century. Black Americans and other minorities lag behind white Americans, but their life expectancy has also nearly doubled, albeit from a lower starting point. The most unequal relationship, though seldom commented upon, is the far greater longevity of females of all races compared to males (a 6.7-year advantage to white females, a 7.9 year advantage to black females). This female advantage is far greater than the lead in longevity of white men over nonwhite men (4.9 years) or of white women over nonwhite women (3.7 years).

See: TABLE 1 - Expectation of Life in the United States Calendar period

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RisklessSociety.html

1. Massachusetts only; white and nonwhite combined, the latter being about 1% of the total. 2. Original Death Registration dates. 3. Death Registration States of 1920. 4. Data for periods 1900-1902 to 1929-1931 relate to blacks only. 5. Alaska and Hawaii included beginning in 1959. 6. Deaths of nonresidents of the United States excluded starting in 1970. Sources: Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics. SOURCE: The 1991 Information Please Almanac, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991, pp. 817, 820.

TABLE 2 - Mortality Death Rates for Selected Causes

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RisklessSociety.html

1. Based on a 10% sample of deaths. 2. Rates per 1,000 live births. 3. Ratio per 1,000 births. 4. Includes only deaths occurring within the registration areas. Beginning with 1933, area includes the entire United States; Alaska included beginning in 1959 and Hawaii in 1960. Rates per 100,000 population residing in areas, enumerated as of April 1 for 1940, 1950, and 1980 and estimated as of July 1 for all other years. Due to changes in statistical methods, death rates are not strictly comparable. n.a. = not available. Sources: Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics. SOURCE: The 1991 Information Please Almanac, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991, pp. 817, 820.


Turning to death rates, note the decline by half since 1900 of deaths from all forms of accidents, and the spectacular declines in all sorts of diseases. The sixfold drop in deaths from pneumonia and influenza is par for the course. On the other side of the ledger, cancer continues to rise, though it has slowed down, and major cardiovascular diseases remain high. Why these discrepancies? Cancer is largely a disease of old age. When people died at roughly half the present life expectancy, they died before having an opportunity, if one may call it that, to get cancer. Of course, people must die of something. Lacking other information, it is usual to classify deaths due to heart failure, given that heart stoppage is one of the signs of death.

The most dangerous activities are precisely what we might think they are—sports such as motorcycling and parachuting and occupations such as fire fighting and coal mining. On the other hand, many of the risks that people have begun to worry about in recent years are far smaller than generally perceived. However low the risk of being killed by lightning (see table 3), the risk of getting cancer from drinking tap water (chlorine forms chloroform, which is a weak carcinogen) is less than one-third of that, and the harm done by pesticides in food, based largely on animal studies, is even less. The lowest risk that statisticians have measured—getting killed by a falling meteorite—measures in at six-millionths of 1 percent.

TABLE 3 - Annual Fatality Rates per 100,000 Persons at Risk Activity/Event
Death Rate Motorcycling

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RisklessSociety.html

SOURCE: Adapted from E. L. Crouch and R. Wilson, Risk/Benefit Analysis, Cambridge: Balinger, 1982. Reported in Paul Slovic, "Informing and Educating the Public about Risk," Risk Analysis, 6, no. 4 (1986): 407.

In its regulations specifying maximum discharges of potentially harmful substances from factories, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets a safety threshold of one additional death in a million. How, we might ask, did the EPA arrive at one in a million? Well, let's face it, no real man tells his girlfriend that she is one in a hundred thousand. But the real root of "one in a million" can be traced to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) efforts to find a number that was essentially equivalent to zero.

Many experts argue that insisting on essentially zero risk is going too far. As Professor John D. Graham, director of the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Risk Analysis, wrote, "No one seriously suggested that such a stringent risk level should be applied to a hypothetical maximally exposed individual." This mythical, "maximally exposed" human being is created by assuming that he or she lives within two hundred meters of the offending industrial plant, lives there for a full seventy years, remains outdoors day and night or at least all day, and will get cancers at the same level as rodents or other small animals that are bred to be especially susceptible to such cancers, and who are given doses running into the thousands of times larger than any person other than those who receive lifetime occupational exposures on the job.

The other assumption is that cancer causation is a linear process, meaning that there is no safe dose and that damage occurs at a constant rate as exposure increases. Yet scientific evidence increasingly shows that there are, indeed, threshold effects, and that the cancers animals develop as a result of being subjected to huge doses in short periods of time tell us essentially nothing about the reactions of human beings. To go from mouse to man, for instance, requires statistical adjustments for the hugely different weights of the two creatures and for the hugely different doses. Many statistical models fit the data that scientists have about risks. These models vary in their outcomes for risk by thousands of times over. And yet there is no scientifically approved way of choosing among them. Only if the mechanism by which a chemical causes cancer is well-known would it be possible to choose a good model. In short, current measures of risk from low-level exposures to industrial technology have no true validity whatsoever. This explains why health rates keep getting better and better while government estimates of risk keep getting worse and worse.

Why are some people frightened of risks and others not? Surveys of risk perception show that knowledge of the known hazards of a technology does not determine whether or to what degree an individual thinks a given technology is safe or dangerous. This holds true not only for laymen, but also for experts in risk assessment. Thus, the most powerful factors related to how people perceive risk apparently are "trust in institutions" and "self-rated liberal and conservative identification." In other words, these findings suggest strongly that people use a framework involving their opinion of the validity of institutions in order to interpret riskiness.

According to one cultural theory, people choose what to fear as a way to defend their way of life. The theory hypothesizes that adherents of a hierarchical culture will approve of technology, provided it is certified as safe by their experts. Competitive individualists will view risk as opportunity and, hence, be optimistic about technology. And egalitarians will view technology as part of the apparatus by which corporate capitalism maintains inequalities that harm society and the natural environment.

One recent study sought to test this theory by comparing how people rate the risks of technology compared to risks from social deviance (departures, such as criminal behavior, from widely approved norms), war, and economic decline. The results are that egalitarians fear technology immensely but think that social deviance is much less dangerous.

Hierarchists, by contrast, think technology is basically good if their experts say so, but that social deviance leads to disaster. And individualists think that risk takers do a lot of good for society and that if deviants don't bother them, they won't bother deviants; but they fear war greatly because it stops trade and leads to conscription. Thus, there is no such thing as a risk-averse or risk-taking personality. People who take or avoid all risks are probably certifiably insane; neither would last long. Think of a protester against, say, nuclear power. She is evidently averse to risks posed by nuclear power, but she also throws her body on the line—i.e., takes risks in opposing it.

Other important literature pursues risk perception through what is known as cognitive psychology. Featuring preeminently the path-breaking work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, using mainly small group experiments in which individuals are given tasks involving gambling, this work demonstrates that individuals are very poor judges of probability. More important, perhaps, is their general conservatism: large proportions of people care more about avoiding loss than they do about making gains. Therefore, they will go to considerable lengths to avoid losses, even in the face of high probabilities of making considerable gains.

In regard to the consequences of technological risk, there are two major strategies for improving safety: anticipation versus resilience. The risk-averse strategy seeks to anticipate and thereby prevent harm from occurring. In order to make a strategy of anticipation effective, it is necessary to know the quality of the adverse consequence expected, its probability, and the existence of effective remedies. The knowledge requirements and the organizational capacities required to make anticipation an effective strategy—to know what will happen, when, and how to prevent it without making things worse—are very large.

A strategy of resilience, on the other hand, requires reliance on experience with adverse consequences once they occur in order to develop a capacity to learn from the harm and bounce back. Resilience, therefore, requires the accumulation of large amounts of generalizable resources, such as organizational capacity, knowledge, wealth, energy, and communication, that can be used to craft solutions to problems that the people involved did not know would occur. Thus, a strategy of resilience requires much less predictive capacity but much more growth, not only in wealth but also in knowledge. Hence it is not surprising that systems, like capitalism, based on incessant and decentralized trial and error accumulate the most resources. Strong evidence from around the world demonstrates that such societies are richer and produce healthier people and a more vibrant natural environment.

About the Author

Aaron Wildavsky, who died in 1993, was the Class of 1940 Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He wrote Cultural Theory (with Richard Ellis and Michael Thompson), The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism, and Searching for Safety.
Further Reading
Dake, Karl, and Aaron Wildavsky. "Theories of Risk Perception: Who Fears What and Why?" Daedalus 119, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 41-61.
Dietz, Thomas, and Robert Rycroft. The Risk Professionals. 1987.
Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky. Risk and Culture. 1982.
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. "Variants of Uncertainty." Cognition 11, no. 2 (March 1982): 143-57.
Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. 1982.
Keeney, Ralph L. "Mortality Risks Induced by Economic Expenditures." Risk Analysis 10, no. 1 (1990): 147-59.
Moronwe, Joseph G., and Edward J. Woodhouse. Averting Catastrophe. 1986.
Schwarz, Michael, and Michael Thompson. Divided We Stand: Redefining Politics, Technology and Social Choice. 1990. Wildavsky, Aaron. Searching for Safety. 1988.

Things About Behavior Modification That You Should Know

It isn’t surprising that advocates of “sustainable development” would turn to methods of behavior modification to influence their audience.


However it is most surprising that they would brazenly attempt to integrate these methods with traditional marketing techniques and devices that have heretofore been associated with advertising techniques of the dreaded free market.


Behavior modification has a lengthy history, as a facet of psychological science. Begun around the turn of the last century, its first practitioner was James Watson. He successfully conditioned fear into an unsuspecting child named “Little Albert”. Granted Watson accomplished much more in his career than simply terrorizing a young child. However, the Little Albert experiment simply intended to demonstrate the efficacy of Pavlov’s research in directing and guiding human behavior.


In the succeeding years, Watson was succeeded in behaviorist circles by the renowned American behaviorist, B.F. Skinner. Skinner changed the direction of the paradigm, but also was interested in applying his principles to changing and controlling human behavior. Having created the “Skinner box” to experiment with animals, he utilized the device on his own daughter as a means of further testing its effectiveness.


Later in his career, Skinner authored as book called “Beyond Freedom & Dignity”.


The text suggested a means whereby society could rid itself of all the negative human traits, by controlling the opportunity to access all the “reinforcers” which people would seek.


Loudly rejected by civil libertarians of the time, including Noam Chomsky, it advanced a brave new world in which all the reinforcers were controlled by the benevolent government, which acted in everyone’s best interest.

UNESCO Promotes Behavior Modification For Sustainable Future Through Universal Mandatory Education

Globalization and Education for Sustainable Development: Sustaining the Future


United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(2006)


http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001492/149295E.pdf


UNESCO and the international community in general, believes that we need to foster – through education – the values, behavior and lifestyles required for a sustainable future. Indeed, sustainable development is not so much a destination as a process of learning how to think in terms of “forever”. Sustainable development involves learning how to make decisions that consider the long term future of the economy, ecology and equity of all communities. Building the capacity for such future-oriented thinking is a key task of education.


Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future is rooted in a new vision of education, a vision that helps students better understand the world in which they live, addressing the complexity and interconnectedness of problems such as poverty, wasteful consumption, environmental degradation, urban decay, population growth, health, conflict and the violation of human rights that threaten our future.


This vision of education emphasizes a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to developing the knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future as well as changes in values, behavior, and lifestyles. This vision requires us to reorient education systems, policies and practices in order to empower everyone, young and old, to make decisions and act in culturally appropriate and locally relevant ways to redress the problems that threaten our common future. Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future will enable teachers to plan learning experiences that empower their students to develop and evaluate alternative visions of a sustainable future and to work creatively with others to help bring their visions into effect.


...By requiring us, individually and collectively, to make difficult choices about how we live, sustainable development is an ethical and moral challenge as well as a scientific concept...Ultimately, the Decade’s goal is to integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into all aspects of learning strong>to encourage changes in attitudes and behavior that allow for a more sustainable and just society for all.


...Sustainable development means that we need to embrace the values, behaviors and lifestyles required for a sustainable future. We need to transform mentalities and visions; and be able to transform those visions into reality.


...What path can humans follow in order to achieve prosperity and sustainability? Most people believe they need only adjust and adapt to local society. This represents a basic type of diversity, whose needs are addressed through basic education covering reading, writing, math, and a rudimentary understanding of science and social behavior. However, advanced education, starting at the high school level and continuing onward, develops each person’s unique, innate abilities in order to spur progress towards a sustainable society.


...UNESCO and the international community in general, believes that we need to foster – through education – the values, behavior and lifestyles required for a sustainable future. Indeed, sustainable development is not so much a destination as a process of learning how to think in terms of “forever”. Sustainable development involves learning how to make decisions that consider the long term future of the economy, ecology and equity of all communities.


...This vision of education emphasizes a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to developing the knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future as well as changes in values, behavior, and lifestyles. This vision requires us to reorient education systems, policies and practices in order to empower everyone, young and old, to make decisions and act in culturally appropriate and locally relevant ways to redress the problems that threaten our common future.


...What is the state of best practice in e-learning today? Today’s best practice is being shaped by mobile, ambient technology. It is changing the dynamics of how we will live, work, and learn in the future. These new experiences will shape behaviors, practices, and social groupings for knowledge sharing.


...Doing first what matters most is another way of describing priority analysis, which leads to the question of who is going to hold the most influence at the end of this decade and beyond. It will likely be people in their late twenties and thirties who will be shaping how we view business and politics in the future.


...The vision of education for sustainable development is a world where everyone has the opportunity to benefit from quality education and learn the values, behavior and lifestyles required for a sustainable future and for positive societal transformation: every world citizen must learn to contribute to a sustainable future for all humankind.

Marching Toward Global Solidarity

By Berit Kjos


July 27, 2006NewsWithViews.com


http://www.newswithviews.com/BeritKjos/kjos61.htm"The new generation...[has] a deeper sense of solidarity as people of the planet than any generation before them.... On that rests our hope for our global neighborhood." [1] Report of The UN Commission on Global Governance.


"Welfare depends on the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind,"[2] Federico Mayor, then Director General of UNESCO .


During the 1996 UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), I attended a day-long "Dialogue" on the meaning of "Solidarity" at Istanbul’s elegant Ciragan Palace. Registered as a reporter, I received a list of 21 panel members. It included UNESCO's Director General Federico Mayor, the now discredited UN leader Maurice Strong, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin, and Millard Fuller who founded Habitat for Humanity. Together with other globalist dignitaries, they would explore the missing factor in the old Soviet version of dialectical materialism: a spiritual foundation for an evolving global ethic.[3]


"To speak of solidarity is to speak of things of the spirit," began Habitat Secretary-General Wally N’Dow. "For we are well aware that the future of our human settlements... is not just a matter of bricks and mortar but equally a question of attitudes and determination to work for the common good.... This spiritual dimension is the only ingredient that can bind societies together."[4]N'Dow had chosen an American moderator who would add credibility to the discussion: Robert McNeil (of McNeil-Lehrer), "one of the gurus, the spiritual lights of the media industry today."[4] Moments later, McNeil introduced the panel of dignitaries ready to shape the new vision of oneness.


"What’s needed is an interfaith center in every city of the globe," said James Morton, former dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. "The new interfaith centers will honor the rituals of every… faith tradition: Islam, Hinduism, Jain, Christian… and provide opportunity for sacred expression needed to bind the people of the planet into a viable, meaningful, and sustainable solidarity."[4]


...Millard Fuller, President of Habitat for Humanity, fit right into this interfaith dialogue. Like other emerging leaders in the neo-Christian movement, he redefined Scriptures to "prove" his message:


"When Jesus launched His ministry 2000 years ago, He said, 'We must repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' In English, that sort of connotes feeling sorry for getting caught. But in the Greek, we read that what He really said was to metamorphose. Metamorphose is what a butterfly becomes when it metamorphoses out of a little fuzzy caterpillar.... Change your whole way of thinking, because the new order of the spirit is confronting and challenging you. ... The only way we will achieve human solidarity in dealing with it is to have a completely new way of thinking."


This "new way of thinking" has already permeated every segment of society: education, business, government, and the church growth movement, including Purpose-Driven churches. Pushing transformation in all these sectors are the leadership training programs that pursue the vision of management gurus such as Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, and Ken Blanchard. The core of their teaching is "general systems theory" or "systems thinking." In short, everything is interconnected, therefore all is One and all divisions and boundaries must be eliminated in order to establish the "Global Neighborhood," i.e. New World Order. Emerging Church leaders like Brian McLaren call it "The Kingdom of God."


...Let’s not forget that familiar words with strategic new meanings are likely to mislead the masses. For example, in Webster's Dictionary (1989) the familiar meaning of solidarity sounds perfectly safe: "common interest and active loyalty within a group." But contemporary change agents have infused that word with a far more revolutionary meaning. Let's take a closer look.


THE NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT


During a break, I asked moderator Robert McNeil to define solidarity for me. In his answer, he acknowledged that solidarity is strengthened by a common enemy as well as a "common good":


"It means people with shared values or responsibilities cooperating or working together. In our culture, it was probably exemplified most often by the union movement. Industrial unions often used the phrase solidarity-- 'solidarity forever.' And in the socialist movement, of course, solidarity was a very strong word -- the solidarity of the workers against the employers, their oppressor, capitalists.... whatever it was...."[4]


"Solidarity is like a social contract, like people agreeing that this is the way it should be. Whether I am poorer or richer than you are, we somehow agree that the way it is set up works best for all of us."


What if we don't agree? Then we are vilified as divisive resisters -- excluded from the feel-good solidarity. Pastor Brian McLaren, an acknowledged leader in the Emerging Church movement, summarized it well:


"...to be truly inclusive, the [earthly] kingdom must exclude exclusive people, to be truly reconciling, the kingdom must not reconcile with those who refuse reconciliation.'"[5]


Social contracts hold people accountable to the new standard. It pushes people toward the planned conformity, whether the society is a church, a school, or the "global neighborhood." So it didn't surprise me to hear UNESCO's Federico Mayor make the same point. "The 21st Century city will be a city of social solidarity," he said. "We have to redefine the words... [and write a new] social contract."[4]


This evolving "social contract" has been written into every UN treaty and declaration. And former President Clinton's Executive Order 1310 helped turn that UN "contract" into US policy. It is being implemented through government policies as well as laws whether the treaties were ratified by Congress or not. [See Trading U.S. Rights for UN Rules]


This "social contract" guarantees "freedom from want," from fear, from hunger, and from offense by those who might voice contrary values. It also promises "freedom of thought and expression" -- but only to those who share the UN vision. Remember, Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "...these rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."[6]


Reflecting the same communitarian constraint, Ismail Serageldin, then Vice President of the World Bank, said:


"We should stop bemoaning the growth of cities. It’s going to happen and it’s a good thing, because cities are the vectors of social change and transformation. Let’s just make sure that social change and transformation are going in the right direction.... The media must act as part of the education process that counters individualism."[4]


BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION


A cooperative media is essential to the planned change in public consciousness. As in totalitarian regimes, "voluntary" social transformation relies on effective propaganda. That's why our Education Department's Community Action Toolkit, The President's Council for Sustainable Development, and the UN's Local Agenda 21 all call for partnerships between educators and the news and entertainment media in every community. The public must be persuaded to give its consent; the people must learn to feel so uncomfortable with dissent that contrary voices would be silenced.


The masses must never notice that this manipulative process is changing their minds and actions. Since few people do notice, Professor Raymond Houghton's triumphant promise in a 1970 NEA publication is becoming an alarming reality:


"...absolute behavior control is imminent. ... The critical point of behavior control, in effect, is sneaking up on mankind without his self-conscious realization that a crisis is at hand. Man will never self-consciously know that it has happened."[7]


This plan for "behavior control" would include three essentials steps: (1) a supportive news and entertainment media willing to disseminate politically correct information and inspire values that erode the old boundaries, (2) a management system for measuring and monitoring change, and (3) universal participation in the dialectic (consensus) process.


The latter has become the norm in US schools, corporations, government agencies, and communities. The dialectic process used to control the masses in the former Soviet Union has invaded every corner of U.S. society – even churches. The goal is to involve every human resource (human capital) in the UNESCO program of lifelong learning -- a continual process of training and immersion in the new way of thinking and relating to others.

Footnotes:

1. Our Global Neighborhood, "UN Report of The Commission on Global Governance" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) at 357.
2. Forum Discusses Ways in Which To "Humanize" The City.
3. Maurice Strong didn't come to the Dialogue as scheduled.
4. I taped and transcribed this part of the "Dialogue" at the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, 1996.
5. Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that could change everything (Nashville: Thomas Nelson's W Publishing Group, 1006), at 169-170.
6. Trading US Rights For UN Rules .
7. Raymond Houghton, To Nurture Humaneness: Commitment for the '70's (The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development of the NEA, 1970).
8. Brainwashing in America and Moulding Human Resources For The Global Workforce.

Americans Targeted for Behavior Modification

By Paul Walter *


November 16, 2004


http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/nov2004/16/ameicans.htm


"Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal - and power." -- Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End.


A recent measure in Santa Cruz, California was a prime example of how the people are being manipulated at the local level through what's called 'sustainable development' being done incrementally. Measure J was defeated by the people, but it is imperative that Americans fully understand that 'sustainable development' is the blueprint for destroying liberty and private property rights. Americans should make no mistake about the seriousness of this issue and how it will affect your life. Like a giant octopus spreading its tentacles, this type of measure and similar legislation is spreading across this country like a cancer.


[See, e.g.: The Image of the UN 'LOST' Leviathan, at: http://itssdjournalunclos-lost.blogspot.com/2008/01/lost-leviathan.html ].


['Negative' Sustainable Development] can be defeated by an educated citizenry as was demonstrated by the voters in Santa Cruz on November 2, 2004.


Measure J in Santa Cruz exemplified the underpinnings of 'sustainable development' by using local laws deceptively presented, but which were in fact, mini steps in behavior modification. This statement is validated by Linda Wilshusen, who was Executive Director of the Transportation Commission from the seventies until a short time ago expressed her opinion in 1988 when she said, "This concept of 'traffic management' has very little to do with science and engineering and a lot to do with sociology, marketing and behavior modification, as well as land use, parking and fuel availability, demographics and the like."


Wilshusen wasn't the only person to let the cat out of the bag. On September 16, 2004 during a presentation on Measure J to their local Chamber of Commerce, Supervisor Ellen Pirie insisted that the HOV lane proposed was needed: “If we add this lane, then we have more possibilities, because then we have a way of getting people out of their cars.” This is behavior modification through the back door.


Sustainable development should be the subject of discussion all across America, but most people don't know what it means, how it's being implemented and that the federal government is a willing participant in destroying our Republic. While some may automatically knee-jerk over such a statement, America's continued participation in the UN and programs like UNESCO spell even further destruction of our sovereignty and standard of living. Whether it's a 'traffic control' measure or one pertaining to the environment, non-governmental organizations, the worker ants of the globalists, push ahead each day in pursuit of world wide communism disguised by various labels. All of this is being kissed and blessed by local city fathers and state governments.


In his excellent piece titled 'Social Engineering for Global Change,' Carl Teichrib further educates on the 'International Baccalaureate Organization:


"Originally, the IBO was established to provide a common educational basis for international students that would be acceptable to universities around the world. With this in mind, IBO curriculum has, for over 35 years, emphasized that its students broaden their understanding of various cultures, languages, and points of view.


"Understanding other's points of view, cultures and languages is, in itself, a noble task - it's something that I work at pursuing and instilling within my own children and in myself. But underlining IBO's philosophy is something deeper; according to George Walker, the Director General at IBO, "International education offers people a state of mind: international-mindedness. You've got to change people's thinking." Hence, "students develop an awareness of moral and ethical issues and a sense of social responsibility...fostered by examining local and global issues."


"This is not simply ambiguous language. In advancing the international-mindedness of IBO, the organization has endorsed the Earth Charter - an earth-centered declaration which venerates global political-ethical-moral and spiritual unification. Some, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, have gone so far as to compare the Earth Charter with "those 10 or 15 Commandments which we all know about...those famous testaments."


"Providing the Earth Charter initiative with advanced support, the International Baccalaureate Organization has agreed to become an Earth Charter partnership entity, along with such groups as the Association of World Citizens, Friends of the Earth, Global People's Assembly, Rain Forest Action Network, the U.S. branch of the United Nations Association, and the World Parliament of Religion.


"Furthermore, IBO Deputy Director General, Ian Hill, sits on the Earth Charter Initiative Education Advisory Committee. Going further, IBO is currently looking at ways to incorporate the Earth Charter into the following curriculum areas; Theory of Knowledge, Environmental Systems, Environmental Science, Technology and Social Change, Peace and Conflict Studies, Experimental Science, Philosophy, Geography, History, Math, and the Arts.


"None of this would be very remarkable if the IBO were a small entity stuffed somewhere in a forgotten corner of the world - but it's not. Presently, almost 1,300 schools around the globe are authorized to offer IBO programs. And in the U.S. and Canada, just under 650 schools are tied in to the IBO, with 473 in the U.S. Adding to this, the IBO is linked into a number of United Nations' functions beyond the U.N. inspired Earth Charter and UNESCO - where it holds a special consultative status. The IBO has been involved in prep work for the U.N.'s World Summit on Sustainable Development, it's involved in a number of U.N. International Schools, and the organization works with a variety of United Nations Model programs. In other words, it's an organization with considerable "social change" inroads at the international level.


"Funding for the body also reflects this global-local-global approach. During the month of October, 2003, in a monetary show of support, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the IBO a grant of $1.17 million. According to the IBO press release, these U.S. taxpayer funds were to be specifically channeled into setting up IBO programs "in six middle and high school partnerships in disadvantaged areas in Massachusetts, New York and Arizona."


Fighting back means fighting smart. I urge you to educate yourself , your family, friends, neighbors and work colleagues on this issue. As time is precious for Americans working hard each day to bring home the bacon and familial obligations, NWVs has a fine six-hour video presentation on sustainable development that will help you and everyone you know understand this issue from the inside out. This excellent series should be shown at meetings for all groups and organizations. This is an American issue that affects you, your family, our liberty and freedoms.


Order: Liberty or Sustainable Development© 2004 Paul Walter - All Rights Reserved

Paul Walter was born in socialist Yugoslavia in 1945. He and his family emigrated to America in 1959. He served 3 years in the U.S. Armed Forces and became a U.S. citizen in 1963.