Eco-Fascism?

(extra: Pizza doh recipe)

The financial world has been thrashing about since the end of colonialism, the birthplace of capitalism. At that point, there was no longer new, free land out there, somewhere to steal from; capitalism being a legalized form of theft and crass exploitation. And you think colonialism was done with a long time ago? No, see, for one instance, “A French Neo-colonialism? The Controversial Concept of Françafrique” in The English Historical Review, Volume 139, Issue 596, February 2024, Pages 193–214, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead179 or https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/139/596/193/7630506 See also more reading in References below.

The neo-colonial “Françafrique” was continuing, brutally, into the 1990s. By the crafty workings of Jacques Foccart in the “Africa cell,” a convenient inter-twining of business interests and the French secret service, control of Africa by the French was maintained essentially by state terrorism but with clever arrangements for the government to deny involvement. Not to mention the American neo-colonialism, such as Operation O.I.L. (quickly re-named O.I.F. - Operation Iraqi Freedom). But these were the death-throes of traditional territorial colonial harvesting of resource wealth. The financial system needed a new frontier, and found it beginning with the Rio summit in 1992, the new frontier of financializing Nature.

But governments at the COP meetings on climate were facing a problem. Over the Twentieth Century, as the power of central government was fading, the power structure was shifting to corporate power so that collectively, corporations could, if they chose, just buy out governments, they now controlled more of the social capital. Therefore governments were eager to find ways to tap into corporate wealth to jointly fund supposed environmental remedies. And with corporations, under cloak of government’ blessings, what’s not to like? But is government’s notion of corporation’s supposed wealth a mirage? Is corporate “wealth” just leveraged debt? Most likely.

The corporately financed environmental schemes seem to be set up to allow government’s deniable culpability, as per the French in neocolonialism.

Here, you can take a little dive into the flummery of putting a price on Nature. These are some statements from a discussion paper from the UK Infrastructure Bank, which you should read, it’s not long. They pull Nature into their prevue by calling Nature another form if infrastructure.

“Society and the economy depend on natural capital assets and services to function – including the carbon locked up by ecosystems, the provision of clean and reliable water supplies, and the biodiversity that underpins our food security. Our natural capital is a form of infrastructure, comparable to engineered solutions to problems such as flood risk and greenhouse gas removals. Often underpinning economic growth, it can protect other infrastructure assets, and deliver wider co-benefits, such as jobs. However, our base of natural capital assets has been rapidly eroded over recent decades and urgent investment is needed if the UK is to meet its net zero targets, adapt to an already changing climate, and secure future economic prosperity.”

Then they make the assumption that they own and control Nature, this capital asset of infrastructure, and pretend that by taking more land for their projects (from the commons and from food production) and assigning values to supposedly stored carbon, they can create this layer of financing that both pays interest to their investors and pays off unhappy former landowners and creates jobs and meets climate goals and everyone lives happily ever after.

“Scaling of nature-based solutions from their current low level will require significant land use change, which may have impacts on land values and local communities. The recent uptick in corporate demand for woodland and peatland carbon credits has led to heated land markets in some areas of the UK, and tensions between communities and project developers. Rapid shifts in agricultural policy have also created additional pressures by moving focus from food production to environmental improvement. To secure the long-term supply of land needed for nature-based solutions, landowners, rural communities and wider stakeholders will need confidence in natural capital markets and their ability to generate value for them fairly and over the long term. This includes considering the balance between food production and the delivery of environmental targets. We are committed to encouraging responsible private investment in natural capital markets, and intend to build on existing initiatives, such as Scottish Government’s Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital, in developing our approach.”

“This paper sets out our latest thinking on where opportunities lie for UKIB to invest in natural capital markets, whilst delivering a financial return and crowding in additional private capital.”

But the underlying issue is the merging of the interests of business and governments, with the supposed assets power of business alongside the enforcement powers of government. Some people call that the breeding ground for fascism. In this milieu, we have an even newer form of colonialism, which can turn inward on its own people, as well as encouraging other nations to do the same to their own people. This is a new assault on the commons, and no land, public or private, is out-of-bounds for this capitalist exploitation. As shown in the UKIB document, any land can be designated as a protected area, and individual rights there are extinguished. Generations of shepherds must quit their lands and take a pittance for it and walk away. This whole structure plays directly into the wanna-be environmentalist George Monbiot’s playbook of re-wilding all of Europe and getting rid of the indigenous pastoralists. All while he bemoans the UK’s crackdown on protestors. And yes, there are Indigenous peoples in the UK that have lived there and managed their lands for millennia. All this is taking place alongside an absolute criminalization of dissent, or even the thinking about dissent. I can’t think of a better way to spell fascism; might as well call it state eco-fascism, individual rights are toast.

Then there is the issue of what is the asset? There are only two types of asset - property and debt. So far, the only asset tradable on financial markets are instruments of debt such as stocks and bonds. Property must be directly bought and sold: a direct sale agreement between seller and buyer. But could this new financialization of Nature be a new trick to take some value directly off of a property that could become a tradable debt instrument? Is this what is being done with extracting a carbon value or a biodiversity value? When trying to follow a thread of business transactions, people advise to “follow the money.” Perhaps in the case of carbon and biodiversity offsets, one should follow the debt. Who gets the debt; in other words, who got robbed?

Trying to use the financial markets to solve environmental degradation is a great charade. The financial markets CAUSED the entire environmental crisis. So theoretically, they should chip in to pay for it. As if throwing money at it will help! The environmental problems arose when capitalists extracted all available inputs - human and available resources, and converted them into money to be horded in the hands of the already wealthy. Life converted into Capital cannot be reengineered back into Life. Life (Nature) was despoiled by converting it into financially-tradable instruments. And now, the financial world is hoping to strike it rich again, in this carbon-trading and biodiversity-trading bonanza. And it goes beyond that! They are trying to financialize all manner of natural areas, such as grasslands, peat bogs, sea grass, kelp, iron-fertilization of the oceans, and the process mentioned in a previous post, “Making Sunsets,” wherein you can buy carbon credits for having SO₂ sent into the stratosphere. The people setting up to do the ocean fertilization try to show that they can trap carbon for 100 years to be able to sell carbon credits. Even though the UKIB article states many times that these financializations of Nature are just to mitigate hard-to-eliminate emissions, (wink,wink) we all know what the game is, that’s why the big polluters keep buying up carbon credits to try to meet their “net-zero” ambitions. For more on the uselessness of carbon credits, see REDD-Monitor.

None of these financial credits/offsets actually achieve a genuine result; every financial transaction has an energy input and is a distraction from real action. It would require several planets to begin to pretend to offset all the carbon emissions by “Nature-based” solutions, the first real actions should be to drastically reduce energy consumption (of all kinds). The first step toward protecting biodiversity should be Not One More New Sacrifice Zone! Believe it or not, good forests are being felled in Indonesia and Canada to make wood pellets for export to Japan and Europe, because some fools think that carbon from “bio fuels” is somehow better to burn than fossil fuels. CO₂ is CO₂, duh.

Corrupting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase: “The arc of moral history is long, but it bends toward money.”

But, even with all this, I don’t think I have yet pin-pointed the deepest core evil in financializing Nature. Any Suggestions?

References:

https://infra-bank-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/download/Natural-capital-discussion-paper.pdf UK Infrastructure Bank Limited, One Embankment, Neville Street Leeds, England LS1 4DW www.ukib.org.uk

Read about “Africa Cell” led by Jacques Foccart on Wikipedia, essentially state terrorism. With 93 references.

“The Man Who Ran Françafrique” by Kaye Whiteman https://www.jstor.org/stable/42897073

This is the best one, use Google translate: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/471170/politique/francafrique-jacques-foccart-le-prince-des-tenebres/

https://en.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/french-espionage-in-africa

Pizza Doh

This is a 66% hydration dough. No additional flour is worked in later. It makes two 12” pizzas.

Dry ingredients: 300 grams “00” flour, about 1/2 teaspoon of salt (or more).

Water: 200 grams, can be a bit less but not more!

Use a Breville stand mixer on medium speed. Don’t buy a Chicken-Aide mixer, they have become consumer junk with weak gears. Warm the water to body temp, nuke about 20-30 seconds. Put the water, at least 1/2 cup of the flour/salt mixture and 1/2 yeast measure of pizza yeast into the mixer bowl and stir to blend. Let stand for at least 1/2 hour. Then add remaining dry ingredients and mix for 2 minutes. Remove dough and stretch four ways, it will be quite coarse. Mix 2 more minutes and stretch again, dough will be smoother. Repeat mix and stretch again. Place dough in in oiled bowl, covered, let rise until doubled. Divide the dough in two, about 254 g each. Stretch again, placing each ball on an oiled spot on a jelly-roll pan, covered with oiled plastic wrap. Let the dough relax and rise a bit, then put in refrigerator until 2 hours before use.

To use the dough, Ah’s tarred of doughs that shrink after stretching out and doughs that stick to the peel. So I put the dough on a piece of non-stick aluminum foil. The dough will be extremely sticky, forget about spinning over your head. With a thin scraper, peel up the edges of the dough (don’t let it fold onto itself) until you can pick it up, pull it a bit wider, and lay it on the foil Lay the piece of plastic wrap which still has some oil on it over the dough and slide your fingers over the wrap to spread the dough out. Leave the rim untouched. When it is all spread out all around, remove the plastic, slide the peel under the foil, and put the toppings on. Be careful carrying the peel to the oven or it will slide off. Does it land on the floor topping side down?