Venezuela devalues its currency by nearly half

AP | FEBRUARY 8, 2013

Venezuela’s government announced Friday that it is devaluing the country’s currency, a long-anticipated change expected to push up prices in the heavily import-reliant economy.

Officials said the fixed exchange rate is changing from 4.30 bolivars to the dollar to 6.30 bolivars to the dollar.

The devaluation had been widely expected by analysts in recent months, though experts had been unsure about whether the government would act while President Hugo Chavez remained out of sight in Cuba recovering from cancer surgery.

It was the first devaluation to be announced by Chavez’s government since 2010, and it brought down the official value of the bolivar by 46.5 percent against the dollar. By boosting the bolivar value of Venezuela’s dollar-denominated oil sales, the change is expected to help alleviate a difficult budget outlook for the government, which has turned increasingly to borrowing to meet its spending obligations.

Planning and Finance Minister Jorge Giordani said the new rate will take effect Wednesday, after the two-day holiday of Carnival. He said the old rate would still be allowed for some transactions that already were approved by the state currency agency.

Venezuela’s government has had strict currency exchange controls since 2003 and maintains a fixed, government-set exchange rate. Under the controls, people and businesses must apply to a government currency agency to receive dollars at the official rate to import goods, pay for travel or cover other obligations.

While those controls have restricted the amounts of dollars available at the official rate, an illegal black market has flourished and the value of the bolivar has recently been eroding. In black market street trading, dollars have recently been selling for more than four times the official exchange rate of 4.30 bolivars to the dollar.

The announcement came after the country’s Central Bank said annual inflation rose to 22.2 percent in January, up from 20.1 percent at the end of 2012.

The oil-exporting country, a member of OPEC, has consistently had Latin America’s highest officially acknowledged inflation rates in recent years. Spiraling prices have come amid worsening shortages of some staple foods, such as cornmeal, chicken and sugar.

Seeking to confront such shortages, the government last week announced plans to have the state oil company turn over more of its earnings in dollars to the Central Bank while reducing the amount injected into a fund used for various government programs and public works projects.

It was the fifth time that Chavez’s government has devalued the currency since establishing the currency exchange controls a decade ago in an attempt to combat capital flight.

Giordani said at a news conference that the government also decided to do away with a second-tier rate that has hovered around 5.30 bolivars to the dollar, through a bond market administered by the Central Bank. That rate had been granted to some businesses that hadn’t been able to obtain dollars at the official rate.

Central Bank President Nelson Merentes called that bond trading system, known by the acronym Sitme, “imperfect.”

“It doesn’t make much sense to keep a system that seeks the country’s debt to feed it,” Merentes said.

The government’s announcement drew strong criticism from opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who said that the government’s heavy spending was to blame for the situation and that officials were trying to slip the change past the public at the start of a long holiday weekend.

“They spent the money on campaigning, corruption, gifts abroad!” Capriles said in one of several messages on his Twitter account.

Capriles criticized Vice President Nicolas Maduro’s handling of the situation. Maduro, who was named by Chavez as his preferred successor before undergoing cancer surgery Dec. 11, has taken on more responsibilities and a higher profile during the president’s nearly two-month absence.

“They give Mr. Maduro a little more time in charge and he finishes with the country,” Capriles said. “Look at the inflation in January, and now the devaluation.”

 

How Long Will the Dollar Remain the World’s Reserve Currency?

RON PAUL | THE REAL AGENDA | SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

We frequently hear the financial press refer to the U.S. dollar as the “world’s reserve currency,” implying that our dollar will always retain its value in an ever shifting world economy. But this is a dangerous and mistaken assumption.

Since August 15, 1971, when President Nixon closed the gold window and refused to pay out any of our remaining 280 million ounces of gold, the U.S. dollar has operated as a pure fiat currency. This means the dollar became an article of faith in the continued stability and might of the U.S. government.

In essence, we declared our insolvency in 1971. Everyone recognized some other monetary system had to be devised in order to bring stability to the markets.

Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it– not even a pretense of gold convertibility! Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind-boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC in the 1970s to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence backed the dollar with oil.

In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite radical Islamic movements among those who resented our influence in the region. The arrangement also gave the dollar artificial strength, with tremendous financial benefits for the United States. It allowed us to export our monetary inflation by buying oil and other goods at a great discount as the dollar flourished.

In 2003, however, Iran began pricing its oil exports in Euro for Asian and European buyers. The Iranian government also opened an oil bourse in 2008 on the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf for the express purpose of trading oil in Euro and other currencies. In 2009 Iran completely ceased any oil transactions in U.S. dollars. These actions by the second largest OPEC oil producer pose a direct threat to the continued status of our dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a threat which partially explains our ongoing hostility toward Tehran.

While the erosion of our petrodollar agreement with OPEC certainly threatens the dollar’s status in the Middle East, an even larger threat resides in the Far East. Our greatest benefactors for the last twenty years– Asian central banks– have lost their appetite for holding U.S. dollars. China, Japan, and Asia in general have been happy to hold U.S. debt instruments in recent decades, but they will not prop up our spending habits forever. Foreign central banks understand that American leaders do not have the discipline to maintain a stable currency.

If we act now to replace the fiat system with a stable dollar backed by precious metals or commodities, the dollar can regain its status as the safest store of value among all government currencies. If not, the rest of the world will abandon the dollar as the global reserve currency.

Both Congress and American consumers will then find borrowing a dramatically more expensive proposition. Remember, our entire consumption economy is based on the willingness of foreigners to hold U.S. debt. We face a reordering of the entire world economy if the federal government cannot print, borrow, and spend money at a rate that satisfies its endless appetite for deficit spending.

Pension Scandal Shakes up Venezuelan Oil Giant

Reuters
August 17, 2011

Venezuela received an enviable honor last month: OPEC said it is sitting on the biggest reserves of crude oil in the world — even more than Saudi Arabia.

But the Venezuelan oil industry is also sitting atop a well of trouble.

The South American nation has struggled to take advantage of its bonanza of expanding reserves. And a scandal over embezzled pension funds at state oil company PDVSA has renewed concerns about corruption and mismanagement.

Retired workers from the oil behemoth have taken to the streets in protest. Their beef: nearly half a billion dollars of pension fund money was lost after it was invested in what turned out to be a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme run by a U.S. financial advisor who was closely linked to President Hugo Chavez’s government.

The fraud case centers on Francisco Illarramendi, a Connecticut hedge fund manager with joint U.S.-Venezuelan citizenship who used to work as a U.S.-based advisor to PDVSA and the Finance Ministry.

Several top executives at PDVSA have been axed since the scandal, which one former director of the company said proved Venezuela under Chavez had become “a moral cesspool.”

Pensioners are not the only ones still wondering how such a large chunk of the firm’s $2.5 billion pension fund was invested with Illarramendi in the first place.

The question cuts to the heart of the challenges facing PDVSA, one of Latin America’s big three oil companies alongside Pemex of Mexico and Brazil’s Petrobras.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries issued a report last month showing Venezuela surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest holder of crude oil reserves in 2010.

PDVSA is ranked by Petroleum Intelligence Weekly as the world’s fourth largest oil company thanks to its reserves, production, refining and sales capacity, and it has been transformed in recent years into the piggy-bank of Chavez’s “21st Century Socialism.”

The timing of the scandal is not good for Chavez: the charismatic, 57-year-old former coup leader underwent cancer surgery in Cuba in June and is fighting to recover his health to run for re-election next year. He needs every cent possible from PDVSA for the social projects that fuel his popularity.

MULTI-TASKING

The company does a lot more than pump Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Tapped constantly to replenish government coffers, PDVSA funds projects ranging from health and education to arts and Formula One motor racing. From painting homes to funding medical clinics staffed by Cuban doctors, the restoration of a Caracas shopping boulevard and even a victorious team at the Rio carnival, there’s little that PDVSA doesn’t do.

Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela who now heads the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego, points to the occasion when PDVSA senior executives turned down invitations to a regional energy conference at the last minute back in May, saying they were too busy because of PDVSA’s leading role in the government’s “Gran Mission Vivienda” project. It aims to build two million homes over the next seven years.

“In poorly-managed societies, national oil companies tend to be the most efficient organizations, so the government gives them more work to do, instead of letting them focus on being better oil companies,” Davidow told industry executives in the ballroom at a luxurious La Jolla hotel.

That’s the kind of criticism that Chavez, who has nationalized most of his country’s oil sector since he was elected in 1999, says is rooted in a bankrupt “imperial Yankee” mind-set.

He purged perceived opponents from PDVSA’s ranks in response to a crippling strike in 2002-2003 that slashed output, firing thousands of staff and replacing them with loyalists. Since then, the company has endured one controversy after another.

There was the “maleta-gate” affair in 2007, so-called after the Spanish word for suitcase, when a Venezuelan-American businessman was stopped at Buenos Aires airport carrying luggage stuffed with $800,000 in cash that U.S. prosecutors said came from PDVSA and was intended for Cristina Fernandez’s presidential campaign in Argentina. Both Fernandez and Chavez denied the charge.

There have also been persistent allegations by industry experts and international energy organizations that Venezuela inflates its production statistics — which PDVSA denies — and a string of accidents, including the sinking of a gas exploration rig in the Caribbean last year and a huge fire at a giant oil storage terminal on an island not far away.

In a big blow to its domestic popularity, tens of thousands of tons of meat and milk bought by PDVSA’s importer subsidiary, PDVAL, were left festering in shipping containers at the nation’s main port last year, exacerbating shortages of staples on shop shelves. Opposition media quickly nicknamed the subsidiary “pudreval” in a play on the Spanish verb “to rot” – “pudrir”.

In an apparent damage-limitation exercise after the pension scandal, five members of the PDVSA board were relieved of their duties in May, including the official who ran the pension fund. They were replaced by Chavez loyalists including the country’s finance minister and foreign minister.

Gustavo Coronel, a former PDVSA director in the 1970s and later Venezuela’s representative to anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, said the fraud had been going on right under the noses of the PDVSA board.

“What this scandal shows is that Venezuela has become a moral cesspool, not only restricted to the public sector but to the private sector as well,” he wrote on his blog.

“Money is dancing like a devil in Venezuela, without control, without accountability. Those who are well connected with the regime have thrown the moral compass by the side Venezuelan justice will not move a finger. Fortunately, U.S. justice will.”

SHOW ME THE MONEY

U.S. investigators say Illarramendi, the majority owner of the Michael Kenwood Group LLC hedge fund, ran the Ponzi scheme from 2006 until February of this year, using deposits from new investors to repay old ones. He pleaded guilty in March to multiple counts of wire fraud, securities and investment advisor fraud, as well as conspiracy to obstruct justice and defraud the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He could face up to 70 years in prison.

By those outside the circles of power in Venezuela, Illarramendi was seen as one of the “Boli-Bourgeoisie” — someone who was already wealthy but grew much richer thanks to the “Bolivarian Revolution,” named by Chavez after the dashing 19th century South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. In one widely-circulated image, Illarramendi is seen overweight and balding, wearing a dark blue overcoat and clutching a blue briefcase as he left federal court in Bridgeport, Connecticut after pleading guilty.

An ex-Credit Suisse employee and Opus Dei member in his early 40s who lived in the United States for at least the last 10 years but traveled frequently to Venezuela, Illarramendi is on bail with a bond secured on four U.S. properties he owns.

He was close to PDVSA board members and Ministry of Finance officials, but is not thought to have known Chavez personally. The son of a minister in a previous Venezuelan government, Illarramendi did enjoy some perks — including using a terminal at the capital’s Maiquetia International Airport normally reserved for the president and his ministers, according to one source close to his business associates.

His sentencing date has not been set yet, but a receiver’s report by the attorney designated to track down the cash is due in September. In June, SEC regulators said they found almost $230 million of the looted money in an offshore fund.

That was just part of the approximately $500 million Illarramendi received, about 90 percent of which was from the PDVSA pension fund, according to the SEC.

PDVSA has assured its former workers they have nothing to worry about, and that the money will be replaced. But what concerns some retirees are allegations the company may have broken its own rules for managing its pension fund, which should have provided for more oversight by pensioners.

A representative of the retirees should attend meetings where the use of the fund is discussed, but no pensioners have been called to attend such a meeting since 2002.

PDVSA’s investment in capitalist U.S. markets may seem to be incongruous given the president’s anti-West rhetoric, but the scale of such transfers is not known, and the investment options for such funds at home in Venezuela are sharply limited, not least by restrictive currency controls.

Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told Reuters that Illarramendi only had an advisory role with PDVSA, and that it ended six years ago. So quite how he came to be managing such a big chunk of the pension fund is a hotly debated topic. Ramirez said the pension fund had been administered properly, and that the losses were of great concern to the company.

In July, PDVSA boosted pension payments to ex-employees by 800 bolivars a month, or about $188. The government also allocated nearly half the income from a new 2031 bond issue of $4.2 billion to the company’s pension fund — probably to replenish deposits lost in the scandal.

Still, ex-PDVSA worker Luis Villasmil says his monthly stipend barely meets the essentials for him, his wife, a diabetic son and a niece. One morning in April, he rose early and met several dozen other PDVSA retirees to march in protest to the company’s local headquarters in Zulia, the decades-old heartland of Venezuela’s oil production.

“I never thought we would be in this situation,” the 65-year-old told Reuters with a sigh. “I think PDVSA should show solidarity with the retirees and pay their pensions whatever happens because it is responsible. But that’s not the heart of the issue, which is to recover the money if possible.”

Ramirez, who once proclaimed that PDVSA was “rojo rojito” (red) from top to bottom, says the firm’s 90,000 staff have nothing to worry about. “Of course we are going to support the workers,” he told Reuters in March. “We will not let them suffer because of this fraud. We have decided to replace it (the lost money) and to make ourselves part of the lawsuit (against Illarramendi).”

ORINOCO FLOW

The latest scandal comes at a time when observers are focused on the future of PDVSA, given Chavez’s uncertain health, next year’s election and OPEC’s announcement on reserves.

The producer group said in July that Venezuela leapfrogged Saudi Arabia last year to become the world’s no.1 reserves holder with 296.5 billion barrels, up from 211.2 billion barrels the year before.

“It has been confirmed. We have 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves … we are a regional power, a world power,” Chavez said during one typical recent TV appearance, scribbling lines all over a map to show where planned refineries and pipelines to the coast would be built.

The new reserves were mostly booked in the country’s enormous Orinoco extra heavy belt, a remote region of dense forests, extraordinary plant life and rivers teeming with crocodiles and piranhas.

And there lies the rub. Not only is the Orinoco crude thick and tar-like, unlike Saudi oil which is predominantly light and sweet, it is also mostly found in rural areas that have little in the way of even basic infrastructure. It costs much more to produce and upgrade into lighter, more valuable crude.

So hopes now rest on a string of ambitious projects that Venezuela says will revitalize a declining oil sector, eventually adding maybe 2 million barrels per day (bpd) or more of new production to the country’s current output of about 3 million bpd, while bringing in some $80 billion in investment.

The projects are mostly joint ventures with foreign partners including U.S. major Chevron, Spain’s Repsol, Italy’s Eni, Russian state giant Rosneft and China’s CNPC, as well as a handful of smaller companies from countries such as Japan, Vietnam and Belarus. Even after the nationalizations of the past, investors clearly want a seat at the Orinoco oil table.

In June, Ramirez announced new funding for Orinoco projects this year of $5.5 billion through agreements with Chinese and Italian banks.

The question remains: will PDVSA have the operational capacity required as the lead company in each project, and will it be able to pay its share?

“Processing that extra heavy crude requires a lot of capital and equipment, and the climate is not good for that at the moment,” said one regional energy consultant who has worked with PDVSA and asked not to be named.

There may be billions of barrels in the ground, but the pension scandal will only underline the risks going forward for foreign companies with billions of dollars at stake.

Iran Presides over OPEC

Rostam Ghasemi joins Ahmadinejad cabinet as oil minister, automatically making him head of global oil organisation.

London Guardian
August 3, 2011

Rostam Ghasemi

A senior Iranian revolutionary guards commander targeted by international sanctions has taken over the presidency of Opec after he became Iran‘s oil minister on Wednesday.

Rostam Ghasemi, head of the Khatam al-Anbia military and industrial base, was one of four ministersnominated by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to join his cabinet last week and approved by Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament.

Ghasemi is currently subject to US, EU and Australian sanctions and his assets have been blacklisted by US Treasury and western powers. He took 216 votes from the 246 deputies present in the 290-seat parliament.

Iranian state media interpreted the vote as a reaction by Iran’s parliament to international sanctions against the country, especially those which have targeted the revolutionary guards and the country’s nuclear programme.

“The clever and decisive vote of Iranian MPs for engineer Ghasemi to become the oil minister is a meaningful and crucial response to the attacks against the guards from the west’s media empire,” said Ramedan Sharif, the head of the revolutionary guards public relations’ unit, in quotes carried by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

In a parliamentary debate before the vote, however, Ali Motahari, a prominent conservative MP who has previously threatened to impeach Ahmadinejad, spoke out against the involvement of the revolutionary guards in Iran’s politics.

“The integration of the guard, as a military force, in political and economic power is not in the interests of the system,” Motahari told the parliament. “In neighboring countries, military officials are distancing themselves from politics and power, while it’s the opposite in Iran.”

The appointment of Ghasemi as Iran’s oil minister automatically makes him the head of Opec which has a crucial role in determining oil prices.

As its second-largest crude oil exporter, Iran took the presidency of Opec after 36 years last October and Ghasemi’s position will give the revolutionary guards a unique opportunity to influence an international organisation.

Sustainable Development: Genocide turned into a Necessity

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | APRIL 30, 2011

Often times, we hear sustainable development and sustainability were originated in the early 70’s and strengthened through the 80’s and 90’s. During any given research effort, most publications allege that the concern to maintain natural resources as tools for current and future generations was born in 1972, when a United Nations Conference in Sweden brought forward three principles: the interdependence of human beings and the natural environment, the links between economic development, social development, and environmental protection and the need for a global vision and common principles. Credit for developing those principles is given to the World Commission on Environment and Development of 1987.

The United Nations is the main enactor of Eugenics, a policy initiated by the founders of the Nazi movement.

Common wisdom portrays the collectivist view that sustainability and sustainable development with policies and initiatives to protect the environment from humanity’s abuses and with this to promote the benefit of the masses. Nowadays, the protection of the environment has become the most luminous spear carried by anyone and everyone, independent of race, social status, age or religion. In fact, environmentalism has become in itself the religion of choice for many. The environmentalist support for sustainability is almost inherently rooted in our lives; more than we even think. It has been applied to economics, construction, community planning, agriculture, security, natality and so on.

Countless meetings were arranged in the past 50 years in order to convince the masses that no future was complete without a sustainable approach to human existence. First, the Club of Rome came up with documents like “Limits of Growth” and “A New Path for World Development” which have as their bastion the movement to globalize the planet and social engineer everything from social values to employment, trade, demographics, politics, economics and so on; all in an effort to deindustrialize the planet and turn it into what predecessor organizations -League of Nations- wanted. Along with think-tanks like the Club of Rome, other equally prominent organizations operate in order to bring a new social, economic and developmental order into place. The United Nations, a child of the globalists who founded the League of Nations with the intention of ‘ending conflict’, has its own list of pro-deindustrialization branches and documents. For example, the United Nations Environment Programme for Development (UNEP), preaches the principles of failed green policies and green economies. The United Nations Conference on Environmental Development of 1992, better known as the Earth Summit, promotes plans like Agenda 21, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity which intend and are slowly achieving Kurt Waldheim’s ecofacist dream to depopulate the planet.

Where did modern environmentalism originate?

Although there is plenty of documentation regarding how false environmentalism is linked to the so called “green wing” of the Nazi Party, no one gets into that history in depth. Main line historians and environmentalists usually decide to ignore it and the public that is bamboozled into believing the dogmas of modern genocidal ecology does not know about it. Pertinent questions to ask regarding the Nazi origins of the green movement is, What is its inspiration? What were the goals it wanted to achieve? How did the murdering ideology of the National Socialist Party gave in to what is in appearance an unheard love for nature?

Germany was not only the place where the genocidal policy of sustainability was born, but it was also the land where it became reality. The Nazi germans and its followers adopted many of the green policies we see in modern societies and brought them to prominence. Science and the study of creatures and their environments were first talked about in Germany during the years that preceded the Nazi rise to power. The genocidal nature of environmentalism originated from a demented love for nature. (1)

Nazi thinkers and some predecessors were sure humans had to be equaled to plants, animals and insects in order to have balance in the world. These train of thought has been seen in modern environmentalist minds such as Bolivian president Evo Morales and the promoter of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, who believe that massive amounts of people must die in order to gain natural balance. Recently, author and environmentalist Keith Farnish used one of his books to call for acts of sabotage and environmental terrorism like blowing up dams and destroying cities to return the planet to its form before the Industrial Revolution occurred. Along with Farnish, other highly respected so-called scientists like NASA’s Dr. James Hansen endorsed this line of thought.

Ernst Moritz Arndt

One of the fathers of what we call today environmentalism is Ernst Moritz Arndt. Together with Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Arndt had infinite hatred for the Enlightenment. Both were well-known for their extreme nationalistic views which they used to advance the ideals of the welfare state. These two men, but mainly Arndt was identified as the first ecological thinker. Arndt wrote on an 1815 article that “When one sees nature in a necessary connectedness and interrelationship, then all things are equally important — shrub, worm, plant, human, stone, nothing first or last, but all one single unity.” (2) What separated Arndt’s environmentalist ideas from those of others was that he closely blended his thoughts on respecting nature with xenophobic discourses and entangled them with the very existence of the Germans and Germany. While he defended the environment in most of his writings, he also called for racial purity and damned other races such as the Jews and the French. It was that love for nature and hatred towards the Jews what would later guide the persecution and murder of those who were not Arians.

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, a graduate from Arndt’s school of thought made sure his teacher’s work did not wastefully dissipate. In an article dated 1853, Riehl showed his strong opposition to industrialism and said: “We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German.” (3) He opposed any type of urbanization while using anti-Semitism to approve of peasantry and its way of life. Both Riehl’s and Arndt’s ideas were later adopted by the völkisch movement, which was a mixture of nationalistic populism and mad love for nature. The leaders of the völkischs advocated a move back to the simplicity of living off the land while blaming urban living and rationalism for the environmental destruction. (4) At the core of the hatred was an old but meaningful element that had driven antisemitic groups like the völkischs for a long time: The Jewish people. Why? The Jews were the middle class of the time, and the apparent sick love for nature and the environment included an equally sickening hatred for anyone and anything that endangered that thought or way of life. (5)

After establishing their long sought relation between antisemitism and love towards nature, the völkischs extended their prejudice through the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The anti-industrialization, anti-jewish type of speech rooted itself along with racial purity and Arian superiority just in time for the rise of the Nazi Party’s trip to power.

Nazi ecology and the link to racism

In 1867, Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist first used the term “ecology” and linked it to the study of creatures and their environments. Haeckel was heavily influenced by social Darwinism to a point that he became the father of a kind of social Darwinism known as “monism”. He founded the German Monist League, an organization guided by völkisch principles. Haeckel as well as Riehl and Arndt believed in racial superiority and were strongly opposed to social mixing. In addition, he also approved of racial eugenics. His thoughts were the base for what later would be known as the anti-semitic National Socialism in Germany. Indeed, Haeckel became a prominent speaker on racism, nationalism and the german model of imperialism. (6) Towards the end of his life, Haeckel became a member of the Thule Society, an organization that later served as the political base for the creation of the Nazi Party. (7) Haeckel, as the creator of ecology, Riehl and Arndt as his predecessors and other thinkers such as Willibald Hentschel, Wilhelm Bölsche and BrunoWille, get all the credit for tightly threading environmentalism to national socialism, racism, anti-Semitism and the political environmental that we all know took over Germany pre and post World War I.

One of the most revealing facts about ancient and current ecological authoritarianism is the belief by sponsors of this view that humans must be encapsulated in “biological categories” and “biological zones” over which an iron fist technocratic authority must rule. Haeckel said that civilizations and nature should be governed by the same laws. The origin of this way of thinking is a reactionary anti-humanist thought. The Monists, believed humans although not themselves- were insignificant when compared to the greatness of the environment. Similar ideas are seen in modern initiatives sponsored by the Club of Rome, The Carnegie Foundation, The United Nations, NASA, as well as some colleges and universities that are funded by globalists who endorse eugenics for the sake of cleansing the planet. Take for example the text of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversitywhich has been named as the politics and religion of modern environmentalism. Among other goals, the Convention intends to “reorganize” Western civilization by excluding all human activity from 50 percent of the American continent. It wants to divide the land into “bioregions” with “buffer zones” and “corridors”. Under this plan, humans will live in tightly guarded and heavily monitored areas, from which they can never leave. This green globalist agenda is promoted by the United Nations since 1992, when it was officially presented during the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The same policies will be implemented in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Ernst Haeckel

Writings from the Carnegie Foundation also commit treasure to the implementation of policies like Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biodiversity. The foundation has expressed pride on ancient practices that resembled mass murder by the powers that be in an effort to cleanse the lands from undesirable people. The Carnegie Institution touted the work of Emperor Ghengis Khan and “validated his work as a “green emperor” due to the fact his actions included the murder of 40 million people. According to its writings, this helped lower carbon emissions and keep the planet cool.

Monists used their anti-humanist sentiment together with the völkisch ideas to discriminate against progress, urbanism and those who thought differently. On his Lebensgesetze (Laws of Life),biologist Raoul Francé, wrote that natural order determines social order. He said racial mixing was unnatural. He is up until today an acclaimed founder of contemporary eco-fascism for “pioneering the ecological movement.” (8) Francé also promoted an alleged connection between environmental purity and ‘racial’ purity. Francé and his disciples claimed that a change from peasant life to modernism would mean the degradation of the race and that the cities were diabolical and inorganic. (9)

By the early years of the twentieth century an ‘ecological’ argumentation, saturated with right-wing political content, had become somehow respected within the culture of Germany. During the turbulent period surrounding World War I, the mixture of ethnocentric fanaticism, regressive rejection of modernity and genuine environmental concern proved to be a very deadly mixture.

The Nazi Environmentalism in Action

Some people see it as a contradiction that modern eugenicists although still pushing for Nazi-style environmentalism also belong to the technocratic corporate elites. This is not a surprise because the elites that supported the Third Reich were also industrialists who, as it usually happens, controlled many segments of the population and the thinking classes. This practice has always born fruits because it guarantees complete control, no matter what the outcome is. Men like Fritz Todt, a heavy weight of the National Socialist movement in Germany as well as Albert Speer, his successor after 1942, were involved in the construction of infrastructure such as the Autobahn, one of the largest projects in the history of engineering in Germany. Todt wanted to build the Autobahn in a way that benefited his class the most, but that at the same time promoted and maintained certain sensitivity towards nature. (10)

“Todt demanded of the completed work of technology a harmony with nature and with the landscape, thereby fulfilling modern ecological principles of engineering as well as the ‘organological’ principles of his own era along with their roots in völkisch ideology.” (11) Just as it happened with Arndt, Riehl and Darré, Todt and his partners had an endless and inseparable bond to völkisch nationalism. Todt said once: “The fulfillment of mere transportation purposes is not the final aim of German highway construction. The German highway must be an expression of its surrounding landscape and an expression of the German essence.” (12) One of Todt’s aides, Alwin Seifert, was the Reich’s advocate for the Landscape. In discharging his official duties Seifert stressed the importance of wilderness and energetically opposed monoculture, wetlands drainage and chemical agriculture. He criticized Darré as too moderate, and “called for an agricultural revolution towards ‘a more peasant-like, natural, simple’ method of farming, ‘independent of capital’.” (13)

The prominent place that nature had within the Nazi Party helped enact the massive industrial and military advancement that enabled Hitler to bully the rest of Europe for a while. The most radical initiatives were created and carried out as they always received the seal of approval by the highest officers of the Nazi state. Another influential member of the Reich was Chancellor Rudolph Hess, who was the green wing’s strong point within the party. Hess’s power in the governmental institutions of the National Socialist regime as he was Hitler’s personal assistant. Many even consider him the Führer’s most trusted man.Hess became a member of the Nazi party in 1920 and rapidly made his way up to the top. He was the second man in the waiting list to take power if Hitler and/or Göring were unable to take on the duty. Any and all new laws that were approved by the government were had to go through Hess’ hands first, before being enacted.

In the photo: Adolf Hitler, Göring and behind him, Rudolph Hess.

In the early thirties, a complete series of laws and ordinances were passed under Hess’ sponsorship. One of those ordinances which closely hits home today is the the foundation of the nature preserves. But perhaps the most successful accomplishment of Nazi environmentalism in Germany was the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz. This nature protecting law established guidelines for safeguarding flora, fauna, and “natural monuments” and restricted commercial access to remaining tracts of wilderness. Similar policies have been written now under United Nations Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biodiversity. Just as it happens with these two documents, the Nazi required local officials to ask for permission to higher authorities before making any alterations in the countryside.Along with the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz, the most important contribution that the Nazis made to modern eugenics and false environmentalism was to integrate mainstream environmentalism into the Nazi enterprise.

Sustainable Development Today

Page 350 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment Report says that livestock such as cows, sheep, goats and horses are not sustainable. People and organizations that support sustainable development claim that animals humans should stop eating meat, because animals pollute the environment. The complete program of sustainability is based on an effort to change human behavior to states that ordinarily humans would not approve or enjoy. This changes in human behavior are mostly brought upon by instigating fear. Fear of global warming, climate change, natural disasters, wars, famine, droughts and so on.

What kinds of things does sustainable development actually want to do? Sustainability and changes in human behavior are not only related to environment, agriculture and pollution. It is a complete package of reforms that will ultimately change societal behavior at a global scale. It is common to find educational programs that sponsor and teach children how to prepare in order to live in a sustainable world. But when the tactics do not work successfully, the globalists in charge of the sustainable agenda, the foundations and organizations financially supported by globalist corporations resort to fear tactics.

Along with the educational systems, the sustainable agenda also acts directly in the economies, health care systems, farming, social and cultural affairs as well as public safety. In the last 50 years we have seen a run to create alliances between corporations and the government, which has resulted in the corporate controlled governmental systems or corporate fascism we all live under. On private property, new ordinances and laws continue to end the right to buy and maintain any kind of land without the auspices of the authorities. That is why property taxes are charged to property owners even though money was paid when the purchase of such land occurred. Under the guidelines of Agenda 21 and the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, the largest masses of lands, namely national parks, natural reserves and conservation areas have been signed to the United Nations.

The obesity pandemic that ravages the planet up until today, brought upon by massive propaganda campaigns paid for by the food industry was the tool to bring along laws and directives that basically allow the government to tell people what they can eat or drink. In the United States, school principals and boards now do not allow parents to pack their children’s lunches and snacks. In the meantime, new regulations introduced through Codex Alimentarius ban the sale and use of natural supplements and the plantation of food crops in small and medium sized farms, while allowing big agricultural corporations to pollute the environment with genetically modified plants and animals. These kind of policies have caused the suicide of hundreds if not thousands of Indian farmers who have gotten in debt to purchase Monsanto’s genetically engineered pesticide ready corn and cotton seed. Since farmers signed their lives away to Monsanto, crop yields have been significantly lower, and the soils have been completely depleted of all nutrients.

In the social and cultural aspects, political correctness has been massively adopted and dissent is seen as a form of racism and terrorism. Immigration policies have gone from mildly protecting private property and the rights of the individual to sponsoring open borders, fake free-trade agreements that destroy industry and production in the west costing the jobs of millions of people across the continents. Religious criticism of homosexuality and other practices or ways of living is labeled as homophobic, while deep religious beliefs are seen as extremist. Mobility in urban areas has also been touched by the fake environmentalist policies first thought out by the Nazis. Oil speculation and price manipulation by the OPEC cartel makes the cost of transportation to rise exponentially. The same has happened with food prices. Car pooling as well as bus and train commuting is encouraged in order to reduce CO2 pollution, while the elites that beg for the end of industrialization live in lavish palaces and fly around the planet in their fuel-guzzling private jets and yachts.

When it comes to societal safety, the governments, also under policies of sustainable development continue to work on laws to step over the constitutions of the sovereign states they claim to represent and defend. Freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the rights to privacy are continuously violated with the establishment of a techno-military industrial complex that monitors everyone’s moves, financial records, behaviours, health, habits, politics, religious beliefs and so on, all in the name of security.

What is the ultimate goal of the current sustainable development policies? Population reduction. Sustainable Development is indeed a plan to be applied for the length of human existence. It is a plan created by someone else to apply it to you, your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The belief behind the supposed need to massively reduce the planet’s population is Thomas Malthus’ mistaken idea that population growth outpaces food availability. He thought overpopulation occurred due to reductions in mortality rates and that the world would be out of food by 1890. He then recommended to kill the poor, the old and the sick, and leave the rest to die of hunger. Malthus’ ideas were picked up more recently by Paul Earlich in 1968. Earlich said that irresponsible reproductive behavior would leave the planet with no food in the 1970’s. This imaginary crisis has proven false every time the globalists schedule another date for it to happen. Calculations of the Population Research Institute reveal that today the world’s population can live comfortably with enough food in an area the size of the American state of Texas.

The truth is that at the current natal rate, many countries in Europe and Asia are experiencing the problems related to an aging population which is not being properly replaced by new citizens. In North, Central and South America, governments struggle to support their traditional welfare systems due to the fact that more people are retiring and less people are contributing to the coffers of the central governments, social security and health care programs. Ironically, population growth will become stable naturally -that is it will stop growing and begin to decrease- once the sum of all humans gets to about 9 billion. Learn more about the science of population growth here.

Well, so what if there is enough land mass to leave? Is there enough food for everyone? If you are a believer of only ‘official’ information an statistics, it so happens that the very own United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation as well as the World Food Programme agree that there is currently enough food on the planet to feed everyone. The problem is, not everyone has access to food. Why? Several reasons. Price speculation, using food such as corn and sugar cane to produce inefficient fuels and of course artificially created food scarcity. Modern cultivation techniques would even allow to plant crops in the most arid areas of Africa. Many believe that the giant continent may be able to feed the whole world if such techniques are applied with due diligence. So, why are more people going hungry everyday? Simply put, poverty, conflict and poor agricultural infrastructure in countries where those hungry people live. War is one of the main causes of crop destruction. And who are the sponsors of war and conflict? The military industrial complex controlled by the same globalists who want us to be green and friendly to the environment. Reducing the number of people on the planet would not solve an overpopulation problem, if it existed. That is just another fear tactic used by the globalists who up until today perpetuate the Nazi dream. For a detailed explanation on how the United Nations hides its eugenics programme under supposed initiatives to promote reproductive health, end poverty and decrease the appearance of disease, watch the four-part report (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

Sources for this article include:

(1) Raymond H. Dominick, The Environmental Movement in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871-1971

(2) Der Begriff des Volksgeistes in Ernst Moritz Arndts Geschichtsanschauung, Langensalza, 1914.

(3) Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Feld und Wald, Stuttgart, 1857, p. 52.

(4) George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, New York.

(5) Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945, New York, 1975, pp. 61-62.

(6) Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League, New York, 1971, p. xvii.

(7) Gasman’s thesis about the politics of Monism is hardly uncontroversial; the book’s central argument, however, is sound.

(8) See the foreword to the 1982 reprint of his 1923 book Die Entdeckung der Heimat, published by the far-right MUT Verlag.

(9) Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, p. 101.

(10) Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, p. 197.

(11) Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1974, p. 337.

(12) Quoted in Rolf Peter Sieferle, Fortschrittsfeinde? Opposition gegen Technik und Industrie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart, München, 1984, p. 220.

(13) Dominick, “The Nazis and the Nature Conservationists”, p. 529.