Capitalism is irredeemably destructive, warns George Monbiot. So why is he shilling for the Guardian, when its role is to create bipartisan support for crushing the anti-capitalist, anti-war left?
Many of you seem to be having a problem sharing this article. Facebook, like X, doesn't much like Substack (or me for that matter!). A workaround may be to share the link below to my website version. I have added a link to Matthew Alford's reading at the end of the piece. You could alert any followers who prefer an audio version to scroll to the end to find the link.
Unmitigated support for European Terrorists living on stolen land in North America is mandatory for their Vassals in Europe and elsewhere. Military occupation within lands populated by many brown and black people has beeen replaced by ownership of individuals that "rule" them. On the other hand, Western Europe has been occupied by the United States since 1945. Europe in it's entirety became occupied between 1992 and 2024, the latest willing "slaves" being Finland and Sweden. A "nation" built on murder, slavery and theft, the United States has no intention of abandoning it's hegemonic aims "at any cost". Likewise, the European invaders of Palestine have zero compassion for the indigenous population, they want them out or dead. A successful Global Hegemonic process requires total control of the media, German NAZIs understood this in the 1920s. Joseph Goebbles portrait should replace "Slave Trader Washington" on the U.S. $1 dollar bill.
I agree that George Monbiot serves a very useful function in 'greening' the Guardian. I would say from a Marxist position that he has illusions in the state as a neutral force in society, hence his support for imperialist wars.
I don't read the Guardian now so I don't follow Monbiot but from what I recall he went along, as did Gary Younge, with the fake 'antisemitism' smear campaign and has likewise never taken a position of opposition to Zionism.
Monbiot's support for civil nuclear power, which is inextricably linked to its military uses, speaks volumes.
There was a time when the Guardian/Observer had good columnists - John Palmer, Jonathan Steele, Neil Ascherson, Michael Adams for those who remember the first pro-Palestinian journalist in the MSM, David Hirst etc. Now what have we got? The execrable Marina Hyde (does she serve any purpose), Ralph Behr in all his superficiality and of course Freedland himself. I can only thing of Nesrine Malik as someone who retains any principles.
So sad and so true. It is intensely frustrating for those of us who were adults in the 70s to watch the regression of human development to a more brutish, unequal and callous society, until only a few billionaires and some food plants will remain to live on a denuded planet.
Jonathan, you seem not to realize that the climate movement has been fully corporate-captured. That is how The Guardian fits into the picture, as does George. George sells a narrative of "climate" for The Guardian, a narrative which unfortunately has a very thin connection to any actual science on the subject. Anyone who relies on a corporate source to give them "information" on ANY subject needs to take a step back and ask themselves why they think such a source is telling lies about some things, but can be trusted about others. Is that source not manufacturing consent 24/7? Who stands to gain from the climate narrative they are pushing? To take just one example of how George is pushing "corporate climate inc.," just consider his constant harping on how eating meat is bad for the climate, how cows are a huge source of dangerous methane, etc. The trouble is, this canard is not supported by any data or science whatsoever. If you go back and back and back to the source of this endlessly repeated nonsense, you will find it is a decades-old bit of hucksterism that has just been repeated over and over until Goebbels-like it has become reality. No, cows are not bad for the climate--in fact, the reverse. All savannas worldwide depend on ruminants for health. Those ruminants are part of the carbon cycle, and in fact help store carbon. Savannas/prairies store more carbon than trees. Millions and millions of ruminants roam savannas everywhere and have for many many thousands of years. In the 18th and 19c centuries, we had billions of bison on American grasslands, many more than we have cows today. They did not warm the planet. So what about the claim that cows produce a huge percentage of the methane emitted in a year? This also is false. If you consult the actual science (say, from UC Davis Dept. of Agricultural and Environmental Science), you will find the amount of methane produced by cows raised for beef or dairy is not a huge percentage at all, and of course, methane breaks down quickly in the environment anyway. Compared to say, methane vents in the oceans, cows produce very little methane, and the idea that we could affect the amount of methane worldwide by getting rid of cows is risible. Finally, of the methane produced by cows all over the world, how much is produced by the Western nations George and The Guardian are preaching to? Almost none. That's right, Western cows do not produce much methane at all. Where DO cows produce a high percentage of bovine methane? India. Why? Because they DON'T eat them or control their reproduction. So, cows raised for beef or dairy don't produce a lot of methane percentage-wise; they do help store carbon; they manifestly don't heat the planet, and ruminants produce the most high quality protein available to human beings, a protein source humans evolved eating over millennia. All of the information I just wrote here is quite available to George and The Guardian, but they do not share it. Why? Because George and The Guardian are pushing a narrative that benefits corporations trying to make a profit from selling inferior protein sources, or corporations trying to put vast solar arrays across prime farmland, or pharmaceutical companies who profit from humans who are constantly sick from an inferior diet, or governments trying to encourage a passive and credulous public. Please realize, Jonathan, that when George shills for the Guardian, he is shilling not just about an economic ideology, he is shilling about everything.
Have no doubt, I've heard it all before. I'm afraid you're playing three-dimensional chess, in a four-dimensional game, as I have explained in these pages a few times before.
No, Jonathan, I'm just reading the actual science and then asking myself why it is not being reported. It is not being reported for exactly the same reason that the truth about Gaza and Israel is not being reported.
He's written many very good articles for the Guardian that highlights how British media, especially the BBC, are failing in their coverage of the Gaza genocide.
He never criticises the main offender The Guardian! I say show some balls for once or just continue writing about the horrible horrible Boris and his mates, that always plays well
1984 (as it turns out) my flatmate skipping through the house riffing off the free market theme. It’s ‘free!’ Everything is ‘free’! Free! Free! FREE! Weeeeeee!
I’m grateful for Monbiot’s thoughtful research, on this subject but yes his chosen employer speaks volumes about his integrity. Bad luck George.
What blows my mind is that none of these so called anti-capitalist environmental warriors ever questions the environmental impact of forever wars. Hey, for as long as you're drinking from a limp paper straw, and you hand carry your plastic wrapped shopping we're good 🙄
People seem to think socialism is an appropriate answer to crony capitalism. It presents its own dangers, like its purveyors pushing consensus and censorship on people. What we need is a free society governed by a strong court system, which is hampered by torte ‘reform’, which only disempowered juries to punish predatory corporations.
Are capitalism and the free market evil, really? Isn’t it corporatism, which absolves investors of consequences for funding exploitation? Capitalism without consequences is bad, but free markets do perform a function, if regulated by a powerful and independent court system that empowers, instead of eviscerating, juries and important decisions they make.
In what sense do you understand "free market" not to be a euphemism for "survival of the most psychopathic"? If you allow a tiny group to amass money in a free market, how are you going to stop them buying influence, including in the legal and political systems. Corporatism emerged out capitalism. It's just a stage in its evolution. There's much worse to come.
1.) Shouldn't we be asking for whom is it "free"? And at what cost to us peasants?
2.) How about considering The Market to be a prime example of what Alfred North Whitehead termed "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"?
3.) In the U.S. we workers in unions are covered by contract law. Non-union employees come under a provision inherited from English Common Law--it's called a Master-Servant Relationship. A reminder what the privileged have always thought of us lessers.
4.) Among the many, many participants in the huge 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in my hometown known as the Battle of Seattle was a group dressed in business suits, carrying brief cases, and marching in drill formations. They carried signs saying "Billionaires for Bush--Because Trickle-Up Isn't Happening Fast Enough." Prescient.
I'd bet you're right "there's worse to come." The neolibs have united with the neocons because in the short term wars are profitable...also an indication there's not much left to extract from us workers or from devastated ecosystems. And Milton Friedman said he preferred Pinochet because democracy interfered with (neolib) "free" "Markets." Which along with the corporate preference for one dollar, one vote, is the neo cabal's ideal government. In the long run, well, as Keynes said in a very different context, we're all dead.
“Americans inherited the legal form of the corporation from Britain, where it was bestowed as a royal privilege on certain institutions or, more often, used to organize municipal governments. Just after the Revolution, new state legislators had to decide what to do about these charters. They could abolish them entirely, or find a way to democratize them and make them compatible with the spirit of independence and the structure of the federal republic. They chose the latter. So the first American corporations end up being cities and schools, along with some charitable organizations.”
Corporatism actually arose out of monarchism, didn’t it? When i say free market, I mean a market in which government regulations are not used to create an onerous barrier to entry in that marketplace to protect predatory monopolies from amassing great and outsized amounts of wealth. Or, i am talking about the better use of government regulation to dismantle monopolies, which hasn’t been used in decades, even though these laws remain ‘on the books’ as they say. Bill Gates and Microsoft would be an example. Netscape sued him for bundling his OS with internet explorer, which gave IE an unfair market advantage. In a functional, independent court system, checks on undue power would be effected by juries. Read about jury nullification.
Many of you seem to be having a problem sharing this article. Facebook, like X, doesn't much like Substack (or me for that matter!). A workaround may be to share the link below to my website version. I have added a link to Matthew Alford's reading at the end of the piece. You could alert any followers who prefer an audio version to scroll to the end to find the link.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-10-10/monbiot-wickedness-capitalism-propagandist/
Unmitigated support for European Terrorists living on stolen land in North America is mandatory for their Vassals in Europe and elsewhere. Military occupation within lands populated by many brown and black people has beeen replaced by ownership of individuals that "rule" them. On the other hand, Western Europe has been occupied by the United States since 1945. Europe in it's entirety became occupied between 1992 and 2024, the latest willing "slaves" being Finland and Sweden. A "nation" built on murder, slavery and theft, the United States has no intention of abandoning it's hegemonic aims "at any cost". Likewise, the European invaders of Palestine have zero compassion for the indigenous population, they want them out or dead. A successful Global Hegemonic process requires total control of the media, German NAZIs understood this in the 1920s. Joseph Goebbles portrait should replace "Slave Trader Washington" on the U.S. $1 dollar bill.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/06/rebuilding-gaza-climate-cost?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other to be fair to the G, they have reported on the environmental cost of the genocide (or ‘war’ if you like) in Gaza.
I guess Facebook don’t like you, Mr. Cook; every time I post one of your emails, they threaten me. Keep it up!
The Guardian‘s useful idiot. He his getting a lot of ill gotten loot for his hypocritical service.
Good on you Jonathan. Another fantastic article. Wow it’s like spy-craft in the media world.
I agree that George Monbiot serves a very useful function in 'greening' the Guardian. I would say from a Marxist position that he has illusions in the state as a neutral force in society, hence his support for imperialist wars.
I don't read the Guardian now so I don't follow Monbiot but from what I recall he went along, as did Gary Younge, with the fake 'antisemitism' smear campaign and has likewise never taken a position of opposition to Zionism.
Monbiot's support for civil nuclear power, which is inextricably linked to its military uses, speaks volumes.
There was a time when the Guardian/Observer had good columnists - John Palmer, Jonathan Steele, Neil Ascherson, Michael Adams for those who remember the first pro-Palestinian journalist in the MSM, David Hirst etc. Now what have we got? The execrable Marina Hyde (does she serve any purpose), Ralph Behr in all his superficiality and of course Freedland himself. I can only thing of Nesrine Malik as someone who retains any principles.
Aditya Chakrabortty.
Owen Jones?
In addition to being good at cognitive dissonance, humans are remarkably skilled hypocrites! Outstanding article as always!
So sad and so true. It is intensely frustrating for those of us who were adults in the 70s to watch the regression of human development to a more brutish, unequal and callous society, until only a few billionaires and some food plants will remain to live on a denuded planet.
Jonathan, you seem not to realize that the climate movement has been fully corporate-captured. That is how The Guardian fits into the picture, as does George. George sells a narrative of "climate" for The Guardian, a narrative which unfortunately has a very thin connection to any actual science on the subject. Anyone who relies on a corporate source to give them "information" on ANY subject needs to take a step back and ask themselves why they think such a source is telling lies about some things, but can be trusted about others. Is that source not manufacturing consent 24/7? Who stands to gain from the climate narrative they are pushing? To take just one example of how George is pushing "corporate climate inc.," just consider his constant harping on how eating meat is bad for the climate, how cows are a huge source of dangerous methane, etc. The trouble is, this canard is not supported by any data or science whatsoever. If you go back and back and back to the source of this endlessly repeated nonsense, you will find it is a decades-old bit of hucksterism that has just been repeated over and over until Goebbels-like it has become reality. No, cows are not bad for the climate--in fact, the reverse. All savannas worldwide depend on ruminants for health. Those ruminants are part of the carbon cycle, and in fact help store carbon. Savannas/prairies store more carbon than trees. Millions and millions of ruminants roam savannas everywhere and have for many many thousands of years. In the 18th and 19c centuries, we had billions of bison on American grasslands, many more than we have cows today. They did not warm the planet. So what about the claim that cows produce a huge percentage of the methane emitted in a year? This also is false. If you consult the actual science (say, from UC Davis Dept. of Agricultural and Environmental Science), you will find the amount of methane produced by cows raised for beef or dairy is not a huge percentage at all, and of course, methane breaks down quickly in the environment anyway. Compared to say, methane vents in the oceans, cows produce very little methane, and the idea that we could affect the amount of methane worldwide by getting rid of cows is risible. Finally, of the methane produced by cows all over the world, how much is produced by the Western nations George and The Guardian are preaching to? Almost none. That's right, Western cows do not produce much methane at all. Where DO cows produce a high percentage of bovine methane? India. Why? Because they DON'T eat them or control their reproduction. So, cows raised for beef or dairy don't produce a lot of methane percentage-wise; they do help store carbon; they manifestly don't heat the planet, and ruminants produce the most high quality protein available to human beings, a protein source humans evolved eating over millennia. All of the information I just wrote here is quite available to George and The Guardian, but they do not share it. Why? Because George and The Guardian are pushing a narrative that benefits corporations trying to make a profit from selling inferior protein sources, or corporations trying to put vast solar arrays across prime farmland, or pharmaceutical companies who profit from humans who are constantly sick from an inferior diet, or governments trying to encourage a passive and credulous public. Please realize, Jonathan, that when George shills for the Guardian, he is shilling not just about an economic ideology, he is shilling about everything.
Have no doubt, I've heard it all before. I'm afraid you're playing three-dimensional chess, in a four-dimensional game, as I have explained in these pages a few times before.
No, Jonathan, I'm just reading the actual science and then asking myself why it is not being reported. It is not being reported for exactly the same reason that the truth about Gaza and Israel is not being reported.
Another example, Owen Jones.
He's written many very good articles for the Guardian that highlights how British media, especially the BBC, are failing in their coverage of the Gaza genocide.
He never criticises the main offender The Guardian! I say show some balls for once or just continue writing about the horrible horrible Boris and his mates, that always plays well
1984 (as it turns out) my flatmate skipping through the house riffing off the free market theme. It’s ‘free!’ Everything is ‘free’! Free! Free! FREE! Weeeeeee!
I’m grateful for Monbiot’s thoughtful research, on this subject but yes his chosen employer speaks volumes about his integrity. Bad luck George.
What blows my mind is that none of these so called anti-capitalist environmental warriors ever questions the environmental impact of forever wars. Hey, for as long as you're drinking from a limp paper straw, and you hand carry your plastic wrapped shopping we're good 🙄
fb is f'd. they censor art with breasts and pump out titillating pictures of breasts, but what are you gonna do.
People seem to think socialism is an appropriate answer to crony capitalism. It presents its own dangers, like its purveyors pushing consensus and censorship on people. What we need is a free society governed by a strong court system, which is hampered by torte ‘reform’, which only disempowered juries to punish predatory corporations.
You need some Richard Wollf to explain how things work
Are capitalism and the free market evil, really? Isn’t it corporatism, which absolves investors of consequences for funding exploitation? Capitalism without consequences is bad, but free markets do perform a function, if regulated by a powerful and independent court system that empowers, instead of eviscerating, juries and important decisions they make.
In what sense do you understand "free market" not to be a euphemism for "survival of the most psychopathic"? If you allow a tiny group to amass money in a free market, how are you going to stop them buying influence, including in the legal and political systems. Corporatism emerged out capitalism. It's just a stage in its evolution. There's much worse to come.
1.) Shouldn't we be asking for whom is it "free"? And at what cost to us peasants?
2.) How about considering The Market to be a prime example of what Alfred North Whitehead termed "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"?
3.) In the U.S. we workers in unions are covered by contract law. Non-union employees come under a provision inherited from English Common Law--it's called a Master-Servant Relationship. A reminder what the privileged have always thought of us lessers.
4.) Among the many, many participants in the huge 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in my hometown known as the Battle of Seattle was a group dressed in business suits, carrying brief cases, and marching in drill formations. They carried signs saying "Billionaires for Bush--Because Trickle-Up Isn't Happening Fast Enough." Prescient.
I'd bet you're right "there's worse to come." The neolibs have united with the neocons because in the short term wars are profitable...also an indication there's not much left to extract from us workers or from devastated ecosystems. And Milton Friedman said he preferred Pinochet because democracy interfered with (neolib) "free" "Markets." Which along with the corporate preference for one dollar, one vote, is the neo cabal's ideal government. In the long run, well, as Keynes said in a very different context, we're all dead.
“Americans inherited the legal form of the corporation from Britain, where it was bestowed as a royal privilege on certain institutions or, more often, used to organize municipal governments. Just after the Revolution, new state legislators had to decide what to do about these charters. They could abolish them entirely, or find a way to democratize them and make them compatible with the spirit of independence and the structure of the federal republic. They chose the latter. So the first American corporations end up being cities and schools, along with some charitable organizations.”
https://hbr.org/2010/04/what-the-founding-fathers-real
Corporatism actually arose out of monarchism, didn’t it? When i say free market, I mean a market in which government regulations are not used to create an onerous barrier to entry in that marketplace to protect predatory monopolies from amassing great and outsized amounts of wealth. Or, i am talking about the better use of government regulation to dismantle monopolies, which hasn’t been used in decades, even though these laws remain ‘on the books’ as they say. Bill Gates and Microsoft would be an example. Netscape sued him for bundling his OS with internet explorer, which gave IE an unfair market advantage. In a functional, independent court system, checks on undue power would be effected by juries. Read about jury nullification.