Month: September 2023

R Paul Martin says ED Wells is pushing Pacifica into the embrace of Bank of America – a sweetheart facilitator of fossil-fuel financing. ‘The Great Green Investment Investigation’ report, Tu26Sep2023

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. . . who would have thought Bank of America enables destruction, harming humans & other species? And making a tidy sum too? Compatible with Pacifica’s mission statement, enshrined in its articles of incorporation? – Ties Joosten, Yara van Heugten, & Remy Koens, ‘How banks helped the fossil fuel industry raise more than a trillion euros’, Tu26Sep2023, investigative journalists at Follow the Money, FTM – https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ggii-2-fossil-finance-trillion-euros-oil-gas-bonds, but may need this sharing link (for one-off access), https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ggii-2-fossil-finance-trillion-euros-oil-gas-bonds?share=iVIAT0vSe9sqPGKAGUWtaoKXtGNlsKvtAwFBlfgO%2Fyrb7JqMmb874OMgOuBSB6E%3D (anyway, also in this GGII folder, https://mega.nz/folder/pQEQnLbR#40i5Vhc3mYgbJFqxrwaQng) . . .

For a few months now, Executive Director Stephanie ‘The Breeze’ Wells has been arguing for Pacifica to change the structure of how it banks. According to WBAI Treasurer R Paul ‘I do admin – don’t expect more’ Martin (staff-delegate),

“[t]he executive director has been talking about having all Pacifica bank accounts in one banking chain. And in my opinion, it looks to me like that bank is going to be the Bank of America […] not everybody is thrilled with the idea of all Pacifica accounts being in Bank of America”

WBAI Treasurer R Paul Martin (13:44), W20Sep2023 WBAI Finance Cttee – https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/wbai_fin/230920/wbai_fin230920a.mp3

Ok, so what’s wrong with Bank of America? Not all motherhood & apple pie? Well, the latest report of the ongoing The Great Green Investment Investigation was published just a few days after R Paul spoke. Not taking things at face value, it examines how fossil-fuel companies are able to expand their operations largely by selling debt in the form of corporate bonds. Bonds? This is another world, on a scale that’s breathtaking. Never mentioned by politicians, hardly ever by mainstream media, “the bond market is huge: in 2021, the value of bond investments worldwide was 119 trillion dollars. That is more than the gross world product (GWP) for that year” – this illustrating the difference between annual income & cumulative net income (usually called wealth).

A single segment of this market deals with bonds issued on behalf of the fossil-fuel expanders. Since the Dec2015 signing of the Paris Agreement on climate, bonds have raised more than $1tn to finance the owners’ extension of the worldwide fossil-fuel infrastructure. This alone is a huge number: a thousand billion, so 1 000 000 000 000, & each one a $, enough to give $125 to everyone on Earth. This is the scale of this obdurate structure spanning the globe, allowing even more fossil fuels to be burnt, with the pollutant greenhouse gas emissions trapping heat within the atmosphere, raising surface temperature. (Burning is simple: for oil & coal, C + O2 = CO2; & for ‘natural gas’, which is actually 70-90% methane (sic), & ~95% when refined for use, it’s CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2H2O.)

http://naturalgas.org/overview/background/, & https://www.naesb.org/pdf2/wgq_bps100605w2.pdf (unpaginated, page 5 of the PDF; North American Energy Standards Board)

The methodology note of GGII gives specifics of how they analysed fossil-fuel corporate bonds: “[w]e took into account all bonds issued from January 2016 to 8 June 2023 and ended up with 4 550 active bonds. Some of these bonds were issued by fossil fuel companies that are no longer expanding their fossil operations, in line with climate science [more to the point, what’s needed are deep cuts in supply]. To exclude these, we made use of research done by Urgewald. […] As a final step, we excluded green bonds issued by fossil fuel companies. […] We ended up with a final selection of 1 666 bonds, totalling to 1 011 billion euros. For all of these bonds we collected information from Bloomberg about the parties involved in the issuance process such as banks and law firms. This included their respective roles, such as ‘underwriter’, ‘bookrunner’, ‘paying agent’ and ‘legal adviser’.” – ‘Fossil finance: methodology’, https://www.ftm.eu/ggii-2-fossil-finance (site provides no sharing link, so it’s in the GGII folder, https://mega.nz/folder/pQEQnLbR#40i5Vhc3mYgbJFqxrwaQng)

. . . pic courtesy of Leon de Korte/Follow the Money . . .

Now the mention of that venerable institution, Bank of America:

“[…] The Great Green Investment Investigation found more than 1 600 fossil fuel bonds issued since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement [signed Dec2015; effective 4Nov2016 – as if that matters]. The combined value is over a trillion (thousand billion) euros [€ 1 = USD 1.055, $1 + 5½¢]. Among them are bonds from fossil fuel giants like Shell, BP and Total, state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and Rosneft, and companies active in controversial forms of oil and gas extraction, for example, in the Arctic and the US shale gas sector.

The difference between words and deeds

“The issuing of bonds is an increasingly important source of financing for fossil fuel companies. But those companies cannot do it on their own. It is a complex process that requires the help of financial specialists. 

“Because of their role as facilitators, The Great Green Investment Investigation also mapped the financial service providers involved in fossil fuel bonds. It clarifies who exactly contributed to the creation of each bond. 

“The leading banks in this sector are American: JP Morgan, Citi and Bank of America all helped fossil fuel companies raise over 500 billion euros.” 

Ties Joosten, Yara van Heugten, & Remy Koens, ‘How banks helped the fossil fuel industry raise more than a trillion euros’, Tu26Sep2023 (bold added to ‘Bank of America’) – same links as above: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ggii-2-fossil-finance-trillion-euros-oil-gas-bonds, but may need this sharing link (for one-off access), https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ggii-2-fossil-finance-trillion-euros-oil-gas-bonds?share=iVIAT0vSe9sqPGKAGUWtaoKXtGNlsKvtAwFBlfgO%2Fyrb7JqMmb874OMgOuBSB6E%3D (also in the GGII folder, https://mega.nz/folder/pQEQnLbR#40i5Vhc3mYgbJFqxrwaQng)

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So what are the directors sleepwalkers to do, the guardians of Pacifica’s ethical & moral integrity? ED Steph ‘The Breeze’ is obviously blasé about these things – after all, she keeps talking about Pacifica as “the company”. Well, we’re not quite there, despite the best efforts of Ian Masters, & his own facilitators, such as KPFA station manager Antonio ‘I used to be a professional dancer, I’ll have you know’ Ortiz.

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Whilst they ponder, let’s consider further.

Like trying to avoid a plan for Pacifica, fossil-fuel burning is a practical matter. Together with methane venting (at extraction sites) & methane leaks (at extraction sites, & during distribution), the fossil-fuel system currently causes ~71% of the warming effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, excluding land-use change.

Jos Olivier, Trends in Global CO2 and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2021 Summary Report, PBL (The Hague), Aug2022 [update of the May2022 version], p. 14, https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/pbl-2022-trends-in-global-co2-and_total-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2021-summary-report_4758.pdf; still awaiting the next report

– Calculation of the ~71% figure, one that very rarely appears, even in the scientific & campaign discourses: all per p. 14, re warming from anthropogenic GHG, the split in 2019 was carbon dioxide 73%, methane 19%, nitrous oxide 5%, fluorinated gases 3% (CO2, CH4, N2O, F-gases) … & the responsibility of the fossil-fuel system, its GHG emissions = CO2 + CH4 + N2O + F-gases = (73 x 0.88) + (19 x 0.31) + (5 x 0.18) + (3 x 0) = 64.24 + 5.89 + 0.9 = 71.03% of the total (2020 fossil-fuel data, which dipped during this first COVID-19 pandemic year – deflating this 71%).

– PBL produces excellent reports, & is highly unusual in choosing not to push talk of CO2, but instead focuses on total GHG emissions. Begs the Q, why isn’t this the norm for all state bodies that claim to be scientific?

– PBL: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving – literal translation, ‘Planning Office for the Environment’, but it chooses ‘PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency’, betraying the stray from a social democratic consensus.

– A slightly different gas split is given for 2022 by EDGAR: CO2 71.6%, CH4 21.0%, N2O 4.8%, F-gases 2.6%. EDGAR: Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, maintained by the Joint Research Centre, the “science and knowledge service” of the European Commission, the administration of the European Union. To JRC’s great credit, it has made 4 of its last 7 annual reports re GHG, not just CO2 – https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/booklet/GHG_emissions_of_all_world_countries_booklet_2023report.pdf (8Sep2023).

The most outspoken conventional leader of world capitalist society is António Guterres, 74, head of the UN, its secretary-general. The next is Fatih Birol, 65, head of the IEA, the International Energy Agency, its executive director. (It’s an inter-governmental body of the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development, set up immediately after the 1973 oil price shock.) The cited GGII report gives typical quotes from these spokespeople, vividly capturing the urgency:

Guterres: “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness“, 2022 . . .

Birol: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, [from] now – from this year“, 2021 (sic)

Ties Joosten, Yara van Heugten, & Remy Koens, ‘How banks helped the fossil fuel industry raise more than a trillion euros’, Tu26Sep2023 (emphases added) – links above; the authors don’t give links to the originals, but Guterres, 4Apr2022, is https://press.un.org/en/2022/sgsm21228.doc.htm, & Birol, 18May2021, is https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/18/no-new-investment-in-fossil-fuels-demands-top-energy-economist (this shows the report got its quote wrong: The Guardian says “from now”, whereas they had “starting now”). [UPDATE: Birol was on CNN, Su1Oct2023 – so ‘interviewed’ by Fareed Zakaria. Marshmallowball questions – no surprise. But, sadly, Birol chose not to take the opportunity to seize the agenda – maybe someone’s had a word.]

The urgency: will Pacifica respect this, doing whatever it can, however minuscule? The directors sleepwalkers may not have adopted policy for Pacifica with even the palest shade of ‘green’, but will they instruct ED Wells to pay bank fees to a principal enabler of fossil-fuel burning?

Is this what Pacifica is all about?

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What is to be done? After all, in a world sustained by capitalist production, are there any banks with clean hands? This is one reason why credit unions have been advocated within Pacifica, by peeps such as Darryl McPherson (WBAI listener-member) & Rachel Barr (WBAI listener-delegate). But are they able to satisfy the banking needs of Pacifica, all of them? The matter hasn’t been broached at the highest level, & no director sleepwalker has even asked publicly whether there are possibilities outside the sectors of either big or small banking capital. No surprise there.

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All this leaves the question: what’s Pacifica about, words or deeds?

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All quora met, so no extension! – but the figures are way, way down. Analysis of the NES’ membership & voting data – the 7 tables, Th14Sep, W20Sep, M25Sep, W27Sep, F29Sep, Sa30Sep (2 no.) [placeholder post]

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[This 14Sep2023 temporary post has been updated in parts, recognising that all 10 quora were met by the planned close of polls, Sa30Sep.

[Note, National Elections Supervisor Renée ‘safe pair of hands’ Peñaloza closed these polls one hour early, at midnight EDT, Sa30Sep. Her timetable, on the NES’ homepage, https://elections.pacifica.org, says “September 30[:] Voting Phase Closes at 11:59 PM EST” (bold added). Renée, unfortunately, has been in winter time for quite a while now (hope she doesn’t file an unsafe workplace suit), having made this mistake x3 before (the 2020 & 2021 by-laws referenda, & the 2021 delegates’ pseudo-elections) – and none of the 120 Pacifica delegates, neither then nor now, has publicly pointed out this recurring error. Minions from PacificaWatch have, but what’s new?]

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Have peeps been deluded into thinking that the NES’ website is giving the total number of votes cast, & the numbers needed for quora?

After 2wks of voting, the NES posted a voting counter, finally disclosing some info on the ballots cast (to date?) & the membership (at 30June2023). And on 14Sep2023, the NES finally disclosed the 10-way station split, re both membership & ballots cast. However, the info, on the NES’ homepage, is ambiguous – and the NES has said nothing to avoid this. There are question marks concerning both the counter & the table. [UPDATE: there ended up being 7 tables – all at https://mega.nz/folder/8AlC1bpb#kYZ1wmvc-nr4FIv1kW5a1w.] Two obvious questions: is it a real-time counter? do the counter & table include the cast paper ballots?

https://elections.pacifica.org

The counter: it’s provided by the “ElectionBuddy online voting system”, so how can the cast paper ballots be included?

ElectionBuddy, Inc. say, not surprisingly given the digitising of RealWorld, “we created an online election system with [sic] that could be accessed affordably, using desktop computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet […] Our cloud based voting platform […] our ElectionBuddy online voting system”. So no murdered trees.

https://electionbuddy.com/about/ . . .

Monitoring the counter shows that it usually increases in dribs & drabs, but come Monday, & even Tuesday, there seem to be batch-entries, of a hundred or so. A real-time counter? Almost certainly not.

The table: does it include the paper ballots cast? Presumably, but the NES doesn’t say so. But then at no time has the NES shown that she’s on top of the paper ballots, even doing basics, such as maintaining public counters on the split between online & paper ballots cast, & on the # of paper ballots requested, approved, & sent out. Doing so would at least give the right impression –

but that’s dangerous: as PacificaWatch has always stressed, disclosure allows accountability, & that exposes decision-makers & officeholders to scrutiny, significantly reducing their control of the situation.

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It’s no surprise that none of the 120 Pacifica delegates has publicly asked these questions.

Oh.

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Pacifica’s membership down 27% in two years, to 31 252 … down 67% on 2004’s 95 581

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. . . the plebs finally get thrown some crumbs: after 8wks (sic), the # of Pacifica members; & after 2wks, how many have voted online (ElectionBuddy Inc.’s “online voting system”, by definition, excludes the paper ballots cast – a # never disclosed by the NES, & a deficiency of the NES’ website never acknowledged publicly by any of the automatons of the PNB Elections Cttee or the sleepwalkers of the PNB) – https://elections.pacifica.org (counter installed in the 3rd week of voting, towards the start of week-commencing M28Aug; this screenshot, early F1Sep2023, EDT), & https://electionbuddy.com/about/ . . .

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[UPDATE: the original title, & below calculations, have been changed coz National Elections Supervisor Renée ‘safe pair of hands’ Peñaloza keeps changing the total membership at 30June2023, the record date of the delegates’ pseudo-elections. Presumably coz a few well-motivated peeps, who haven’t received their ballot, have presented evidence of their membership – peeps such as directors sleepwalkers Teresa ‘I’m so vicious I can slice you with my eyes, & as I’m so rich I shall mock you for being so poor’ Allen (KPFT listener-delegate), Adriana ‘point of point, madam Chair’ Casenave (KPFT listener-delegate) & Vanessa ‘the lists aren’t fit for purpose, but what can I do, I’m only a director’ Dixon-Briggs (WPFW listener-delegate), the last two having even just gone thru the process of being certified by the NES as candidates (sic). This month, the size of the electorate (& so the membership) given by the ElectionBuddy counter has changed at least 15 times: moving from 31 146 (F1Sep, if not a few days earlier) thru ‘148 (5Sep, EDT), ‘168 (7Sep), ‘170 (9Sep), ‘195 (14Sep), ‘201 (19Sep), ‘203 (20Sep), ‘215 (22Sep), ‘229 (27Sep), ‘235 (29Sep), ‘249 (30Sep), ‘248 (30Sep), ‘247 (30Sep), ‘250 (30Sep), ‘251 (30Sep), to 31 252 (30Sep), an increase of 106 – a sequence shown transiently on the NES’ homepage, https://elections.pacifica.org.

[Note, it’s one thing the Pacifica higher-ups thinking they have membership lists that can function as elector rolls, that they’re materially accurate – but it’s another thing when they’re tested, in a highly partial way, in the running of a public election. And it’s obvious that testing has to start earlier – much earlier! And as this is Pacifica, with its longstanding history of materially inaccurate record-keeping, the testing also has to be of the membership record-keeping system, & not only of its current, momentary content – this a crucial conceptual distinction never made publicly by any Pacifica decision-maker in the 2018 thru present period covered by PacificaWatch. Oh.

[And what sort of testing has to be done to evidence the credibility, or otherwise, of the content of the 10 membership lists? (The 10: 5 listener-member station lists; & 5 of staff-members, with the Radio Archives peeps in the KPFK list.)

[As a minimum, two exercises in sampling have to be done, & well before any election – work arranged by the station managers, supervised by the executive director. One exercise samples the 10 membership lists, & by trying to contact members this will notably indicate the proportion of false positives in the membership lists (former donors & staff who have never been culled – so getting a ballot for free). The other exercise is of the other pole, sampling the 5 donor lists & 5 staff lists, & seeing if those individuals appear in the membership lists; this notably indicates the proportion of absences, negatives, re the membership lists. As shown, each sampling exercise involves an other, in an attempt at reconciliation – a truly un-Pacifican procedure as it’s a test of authoritative corroboration of what’s claimed.

[Likewise, sampling: so anathema to NES Renée that the word never crosses her lips – except when she’s making her music. Knowing that management had done none, she chose the easy way out & did none herself. And remember, the last time Pacifica had an NES who was an accredited elections supervisor, Graeme Drew, an outsider to boot, he terminated the 2018 elections for reason of material inaccuracy, for the membership lists being so corrupted, & therefore also inadequate to serve as elector rolls:

“I am unable to reliably verify any of the applicants for candidacy due to the poor quality of elector lists […] the elector lists required to proceed with the election process remain incorrect and incomplete.

“Given this, I am unable to verify eligible candidates and proceed with the election.”

NES Graeme Drew letter to the Pacifica National Board (with copy sent to ED Maxie Jackson), 30Oct2018, page 2, original bold & underlining) – https://mega.nz/file/QRsBmKDZ#08vJfqQcRaOyhwnCrP_po1Yd8TiW7Sl_umf5zU9Knt4

[Obviously he was promptly fired by the directors – sleepwalkers even then. And this is the point: since NES Drew’s evaluation in 2018 of the 10 membership lists as materially inaccurate, not one person has even suggested (let alone claimed) that this detritus (no doubt including corpses) has been cleansed – let alone someone providing evidence to the public, not least to the Pacifica members themselves. Rationally, this is sufficient evidence to designate the current process a pseudo-election.

PacificaWorld remains opaque, the rulers countering transparency, be it thru incompetence or intent. Muddling thru. Treating Joe & Joanna Average as cash cows. Unable to think, to come up with a vision for Pacifica – a coherent basis informing plans to arrest a near-20yr continuous decline … plans with integrated content, coordinated implementation, & temporally nested. So, unable to transcend the necro-economics of the Golden Corpses with the bio-economics of the Network Development Plan. And, unable to grasp the nettle, the decisions have been made by others – creditors & state. So, reduced to manoeuvring to cling onto the seats they cherish so dearly – whilst all around they give up to the flames.

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The numbers: in 2yrs, membership crashes 27%

In only 2yrs, membership has crashed 27%, the highest rate by far in such a short period (31252 ÷ 42663 = 0.7325). Taking a wider sweep, back to the year Bush beat Kerry, since 31Aug2004, membership has fallen 67% (31252 ÷ 95581 = 0.3269).

To put the current 31 252 in perspective, here’s the 2004 station split: KPFA 28 539, KPFK 21 503, KPFT 10 472, WPFW 13 942, WBAI 21 125.

(1) The ’42 663′ is an adjustment of the 30June2021 total, the record date for that year’s delegates’ pseudo-elections (NES Renée’s final report, p. 13, being p. 15 of the PDF). It’s adjusted coz there was no WPFW staff-members election (only 3 candidates for 4 seats); but less than 3mths before, at the 7Apr staff referendum on by-laws amendments, they numbered 120, so it’s reasonable to use that at 30June.

(2) The 2004 data are per NES Kenneth Mostern’s final report on the 2004 delegates’ elections (pp. 2, 5, 9, 15, 12) – please see ‘. . . the knell: Pacifica membership, passing over time’, the only article on the whole public internet that has on a single webpage the Pacifica membership data since 2004.

All links at https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/non-financial-pacifica-data/elections/election-of-local-station-board-delegates-2003-present/, & https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/non-financial-pacifica-data/the-knell-pacifica-membership-passing-over-time/

The politics: the Pacifica secrecy culture is alive & well

As said, after 8wks (sic) the plebs were thrown some crumbs: two figures, the membership total, & the # of ballots cast online (so not the # of ballots cast). Have other strata in PacificaWorld received more info? Of course. The online balloting firm has all the online data, & that includes basic info such as the 10-way station split, so of the membership & of the ballots cast online. That means NES Peñaloza has it too, so no doubt she’s provided it all to the 21 directors sleepwalkers, & almost certainly to PNB Elections Cttee Chair Aki Tanaka (& so to the breakers high command – if not to all Cttee members), &, if only out of courtesy, to the person who hired her, ED Stephanie ‘The Breeze’ Wells (& so to the 5 station managers).

All these are privy to this basic info – but for those who fund the whole thing, those slumming it in the plebs rank, they deserve zilch. So get zilch. The Pacifica secrecy culture means that no disclosure of this basic info has been made by NES Peñaloza, PNB Chair Julie Clueless, Cttee Chair Tanaka, or ED ‘The Breeze’. Any of them could have told the other ~31 000 in PacificaWorld – but they all chose not to. They all effectively decided that the online balloting company would know more about what’s going on than almost all of the 120 Pacifica delegates & the ~31k Pacifica members.

Welcome to #PacFam, the Pacifica Family.

Note … a Pacifica member isn’t really a member: almost all are simply donors – plus volunteers, mostly staff

Using the term member is quite misleading. Yes, they have a vote (twice in 3yrs), & can run for governance (being a delegate), but that’s it, really. Unlike a membership organisation, there’s no ongoing structure offered to them – not even a register where they can give details of how they can help, of their experience, expertise, skills, knowledge.

The sad thing is, in functionally being donors, the great majority probably don’t even know they’re members, members of a corporation, members of Pacifica Foundation, Inc.

As it is, the ‘members’ are atomised – not structured. And the only status they really have is being a donor – except for those who volunteer, usually in programme production.

In other words, they’re left to their own devices. And treated as cash cows.

Maybe they’ll offer themselves. Maybe they won’t.

The result? We know all too well.

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