Corporate Clown Cast Out of Climate Circus

CODE of CONDUCT CONSERVED; ELITES ELATED as CLIMATE COLLAPSES!

After a press event held by Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) at COP17 in Durban, South Africa today, one of the panelists, Kevin Buckland, was ejected from the Summit.

Kandi Mossett, Ricardo Navarro, and Clown. Photo: Conant/GJEP

His offence? Clowning around.

The press conference also included Desmond d’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, Ricardo Navarro of Friends of the Earth El Salvador, Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project. The topic at hand was the failure of COP17 to meet the needs to the great majority of the world’s population, and social movements’ concerns that the looming emergence of the so-called “Green Economy” is bringing a wave of landgrabs, speculative bubbles, and the increasing commodification of all forms of life.

In a gesture intended to stimulate critical thought, to bring levity to the profoundly gloomy conclusions of the COP, and to garner media attention for the grassroots community perspectives that are summarily excluded from this high level global event, a team of clowns, with Buckland as their ringleader, were invited by GJEP to speak on the panel.

Buckland, who has been involved with Occupy COP17 as part of the youth delegation, began his statement to the media with the statement, “I have a dream. My dream is that one day corporations will be judged not for their actions, but for the amount of the earth’s surface that they control.”

Unfortunately, the United Nations failed to get the joke.

While being interviewed following the press conference, Buckland was grabbed and hauled away. His badge was taken, and he was barred from the International Conference Center.

See the interview here:

Photographer Orin Langelle, on assignment for Z Magazine (and, in full disclosure, also the co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project), followed the clown and his UN Police escort, and received his own share of rough treatment. UN Police “shoved the camera into my face,” says Langelle. The photographer’s vocal reaction, defending his status as a journalist, drew more attention by both UN Security and delegates.

The incident serves to reveal that, in the words of Andrea Palframan, one of the filmmakers who shot the video above, “these negotiations are so corporate controlled that there really is not place for civil society here anymore.”

The backstory, with analysis: