Breaking Free

A New Age Ghost Dance

By Jay Taber

Introduction
Now that the battles over oil export at March Point, Washington State, have begun between the
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and oil refineries owned by Shell and Tesoro, 350 has
taken on the role of agent provocateur. The fact that Warren Buffettowner of BNSF Railway,
and partner in oil export with the refineriesis also a major funder of 350 via TIDES
Foundation, has been actively covered up by both mainstream and alternative media.
Through its Break Free campaign, 350 is now luring environmental activists into unlawful acts,
likely to create a public backlash against environmentalists and the Indian tribes. The publicly
stated intent of Break Free to close down refineries altogether threatens the livelihood of refinery
workers, and threatens to disrupt all transportation in Washington State.
This escalation of hostilities--that alienates the public--is bound to attract Tea Party and violent
white supremacist attention, and indeed, Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA)the Ku Klux
Klan of Indian Countryhas already been involved in inciting the anti-Indian movement in
Washington State over fossil fuel export. Anti-Indian, Tea Party-led PACs, in 2013, received
$149,000 from a coal export consortiumthat included BNSFover the battle at Cherry Point.

Clean Energy
As I noted in the introduction to Hijacking the Environmental Movement: Just Say No to 350, in
2011, when the oil industry tycoon Warren Buffett poured $26 million into TIDES foundation
funder of 350--he was making a strategic long-term investment in public relations (PR), while
simultaneously scheming to cash in on the gullibility of young, impressionable activists.
Most recently, 350 has come out with new propaganda to mislead climate activists. As they did
with the KXL charade and the fossil fuel divestment hoax, 350 is promoting ineffective
disobedience as a means of diverting activist energy from reality-based social change that might
actually threaten the 350 funders fossil fuel investments.
As a fossil fuel industry-financed organization, 350 is the most insidious Wall Street Trojan horse
since Avaaz and Purpose. The 350 followers, like most activists, are utterly clueless.
The 350 break free moral theatrics, as a follow-up to the college campus fossil fuel divestment
fraud, is not going to shut down Pacific Northwest oil refineries any more than divestment was
going to shut down the oil industry. Divestment made the oil industry more powerful, and the
break free scheme is part of Wall Streets clean energy scam to build nuclear power plants.

New Economy
The New Economy unveiled by the global financial elite at COP21 has two main components:
1. clean energy, and 2. sustainable capitalism. These, in turn, comprise two of the elements of
the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the 21st Centurya
partnership project between Wall Street, the UN and international NGOs, i.e. Avaaz, Ceres,
Purpose and 350.
The primary promoters of the New Economy, clean energy and sustainable capitalismthat
form the core of the UN SDGsare Bill Gates, Jeremy Heimans (Avaaz & Purpose) and Bill
McKibben (350). Economic development under the SDGs relies on financial investment from
the World Bank, and compliance enforcement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)in
partnership with Wall Street and regional investment banks.
The results of this sustainable capitalism can already be seen in the form of mega-dams, megaplantations, and mega-mining projects in South America, Africa and Asia. This industrial
developmentwhile profitable to the investorshas unfortunately resulted in major deforestation,
toxic pollution of fresh water, and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples who formerly called
these territories home.
Adjacent to the mega-dams, mega-plantations, and mega-mines of the New Economy are
makeshift camps for the industrial laborers, as well as rural shanty towns for displaced farmers
and fishermen. The Indigenous peoplesthose that arent murdered by corporate security
personnel working in tandem with the police and militaryare frequently relocated to urban
slums far away, where many die a slow death of poverty and substance abuse.
The mega-dams provide electricity for industry, including the processing of minerals from the
mega-mines, as well as the GMO soy and palm oil produced on the mega-plantations. The clean
energy minerals include gold, copper, and lithium, which are used in consumer electronics, solar
panels, wind mills, and batteries for electric vehicles. They also include coal, oil, and uranium
that is used to fuel the electrical grids in countries such as France, Japan and the UK.
The clean energy plan of the UN, Wall Street and NGOsthat championed the financial elite
at COP21relies on two primary projects: 1. a global nuclear power renaissance, and 2.
privatization of Indigenous and public resources worldwide.
Enchanting as the chimera of clean energy might be, it doesnt scale to meet energy demand, and
its use by marketing agencies like Avaaz, Purpose and 350 is to perpetuate the misbelief that
Wall Street which caused all our social and environmental problems is our only hope for
salvation. Sort of a New Age Ghost Dance.

Bomb Trains

The reason for the glut of Bakken crude now rolling into the March Point and Cherry Point
refineries in Washington State goes back to 2012, when Obama opened up millions of acres for
gas and oil in 23 states, ushering in the fracking boom that brought us the bomb trains owned
by Obamas friend Warren Buffett since 2009, when he purchased Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Railroad (BNSF) for $34 billionthe same year TIDES Foundation funded 350.
In 2010, 350 launched the campaign to reject KXL; by 2014, crude-via-rail in the US soared to
500 thousand car loads per year, up from 5 thousand in 2008, with trains exploding across
Canada and the US.
To refresh readers memories, the KXL grassroots hoax was funded in large part by TIDES
(flush with Buffett money) with 350 at the helm. Funds laundered through Buffetts foundation
NOVO and the TIDES Foundation a money laundry used by Tar Sands investors and other
elites to control NGOs helped finance the KXL NGO charade, thus eclipsing any discussion
about shutting down the Tar Sands, and making possible the explosive growth of bomb trains and
other pipelines.

Divestment
When Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben herded thousands of college students across America to
fight climate change by forcing their schools to divest in fossil fuels, no one stopped to ask if that
would make any difference. Using the emotive force of the idea of divestment as people power
based on an intentional association with its use in South Africa and Palestine 350 inducted
hypnotic behavior that omitted any critical judgment.
The fact that apartheid was opposed by a combination of boycott, divestment and sanction by
national and international institutions in support of armed insurrection was lost on the climateers.
Instead, they were hypnotized into believing that colleges selling back fossil fuel shares to Wall
Street (where unscrupulous investors could then make a killing) was part of a magical social
revolution. The same could apply to the nonsensical demand to end fossil fuels.
As a Wall Street shell game, the global fossil fuel divestment campaign exposed by Cory
Morningstar in Divestment as the Vehicle to Interlocking Globalized Capital is a PR
masterpiece.
As noted in the November 4, 2014 Harvard Business Review,
Were divestment ever to succeed in lowering the valuations of fossil fuel companies, an
unintended consequence could be a shift from public markets to private markets Such a shift
could hurt transparency; companies that go private have minimal reporting obligations and they
typically become very opaque. This could limit everyones ability to engage the management of
these companies in a discussion around climate change.

As an indicator of the scale of fraud perpetrated by the divestment campaign led by 350, Exxon
in 2014 spent $13.2 billion buying up its own stock. As I noted previously,
Discursive monoculture is the result of investment in private equity media, university
endowments, and NGOs. The energy industry understands production and consumption cycles,
and makes just as much on low prices as high. When the glut from fracking is burned up by
frolicking consumers, theyll double the price again, and make a killing on the divested shares.
Using hedge funds and other non-transparent private equity trading firms, the aristocracy that
is heavily invested in fossil fuels is betting on increasing oil and gas consumption, long into the
future. Corporate media rarely discusses the American aristocracy and how their agenda affects
society. Consumers blame banks, but they have no idea how financial institutions are used by
private equity traders to constantly replenish aristocratic wealth at our expense.
Private equity funds are not openly traded in any public stock exchange system, and therefore
face considerably less regulatory oversight from institutions such as the Securities and Exchange
Commission than their publicly traded counterparts.
Buying energy assets on the cheap as a result of fossil fuel divestment by universities and
pension funds, investors such as Goldman Sachs Capital Partners wield an immense amount of
political influence that divestment on college campuses helps to increase. While students
celebrated divestment at their schools, private equity in 2015 raised $34 billion for oil and gas
fundsa 94% rise from 2012.
Meanwhile, 350 promotes its ongoing Wall Street-funded revolution. As someone wise once
said, A half-truth is a whole lie.

Tilting at Windmills
The kids mobilized by 350 don't understand how they are being manipulated, but that's the
reality of the power elite behind the 350 hoaxes. They might get some token windmills and solar
panels--which require fossil fuels to make, maintain, and replace--but those won't come
anywhere near to meeting the electrical demand now met by burning fossil fuels.
The funders of 350 know all this, which is why they finance 350 campaigns that don't address
the consumerism and militarism that drive fossil fuel demand. Instead, they promote the idea that
Americans can continue consuming vast quantities of minerals for electricity and electronics, car
and jet travel at the expense of the rest of the world. If the kids think Americans are going to
tolerate them shutting down refineries, they are going to be unpleasantly surprised.
The oil trains are a problem that can be addressed as a public safety issue, but the refineries will
still receive oil by ships and pipelines. Our society would collapse without it. Imagine no fossil-

fueled shipping by air, land or sea of food, medicine, clothing or building materials. Where do
they think their coffee, kayaks, bicycles, polar wear and yoga mats come from?
France went for fossil-free electricity, and they have nuclear power plants and radioactive waste
instead. They have to invade African countries to get uranium, and now they have nuclear
contamination to deal with. Thats the reality of breaking free.
Recommended viewing
Green Illusions
Recommended reading
A Culture of Imbeciles
Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests
Earth Economics: Running with Bad Company
The Society of the Spectacle

[Jay Thomas Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a
contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications
director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and journalists
defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted Indigenous peoples in the European
Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations.]