Greenschool NZ & the Green and Labour parties.
Summer camps masquerading as schools, oil companies, greenwashing Green Party leaders and Panama Papers mentions.
Until recently the Green Party have had a remarkably easy run to the coming election despite being at the forefront of some very contentious issues such as transgender claims on women's spaces and the coming referendum on the legality, or not, of cannabis. There's also the almost uncommented on shifting aside of Gareth Hughes who is the Green Party's only connection to a previous environmentally focused, rather than identity politics focused, Green Party. In addition there are issues of race which the very white Green Party MPs seem peculiarly focused on making sure in the process that they throw in enough 'Kia oras' and 'e hoas' in an attempt to legitimise their distance from the (Pakeha, i.e. white) New Zealand establishment. You could also add in James Shaw's very strong connections to the oil industry via the London based & PwC raised greenwashing outfit Future Considerations which has had almost no coverage, considered obviously to be of little import by New Zealands (supposedly) fourth estate.
It's a very odd establishment newsmedia protection of the Green Party this is, a gift horse that should not have been looked in the mouth. But nobody passed this on to James Shaw so this rather odd immunity ended last week with the announcement of the Government grant of $11.7 million to the Taranaki based Green School which was by all accounts a decision promoted and pushed hard by the very same James Shaw. Taranaki is of course the epicentre of New Zealand's fossil fuel industries and addressing the need to go past fossil fuels in the (very) near future has been part of the justification of the grant put forward by both Labour party MPs and James Shaw. There is of course a connection but it's a sop to the greenwashing section of the fossil fuel industry and not, as claimed, a way out of the obscene mess that the same industry has bought the world to while creating the Earth's richest elite ever seen in the process. This same elite seem unable to see the world in anything but oil tinted glasses offering one capitalist opportunity after another.
And that's an elite where the Green School is based although the oil connections are not immediately Western as such. As well as the connections to the oil industry it is also a property development business much more so than an education business (some commentators on the Bali school page even wonder if there is an educational focus at all) and it has no genuine ecological claims whatsoever, unless you call Jetson style design fantasies ecological. It is therefore perfect for the current Green Party of New Zealand.
The first Green School was built in Bali and daily tours are conducted to the school for both those who are holidaying in Bali and those rich enough to think about being able to send their children to the school. Ridiculously the school in Bali has a roll that is well over 90% foreign. So the students undoubtedly fly in and out of Bali several times a year, a claim on the environment in CO2 emissions of aircraft that no amount of Bamboo in your school, or residential, build is going to make up for. The business case seems to be to buy some (relatively) cheap land build the school and then build a whole bunch of houses using materials such as bamboo (allegedly imported from South America for the Bali build) nearby on 1000 square metre sections. And that's exactly what has happened in Taranaki where the Green School currently sits alone in a rural area but only if you're not looking at the local council maps. Once you've seen these you will not wonder what's going on when bamboo structures start going up on all the subdivided sections (how did the Green School get around the local Taranaki rural zone regulations one wonders). It doesn't take much effort to figure out what this really is, a summer camp for aircraft addicted oil industry holiday makers with inbuilt babysitting and associated parent's accommodation. Which is about as green as your average aircraft addicted Green Party MP.
This is plainly not a school but an accommodation business built on snake oil, property snake oil, which unfortunately has quite a recent pedigree in New Zealand. So who is involved in the Green School? In New Zealand the Green School has been promoted and, until recently, funded (one assumes) by the Perretts, Michael & Rachel. Michael sold his air conditioning business a few years ago which by their own account has given them quite a lot of money to play with. But it would be remiss to forget that their business partners are in the oil industry not exactly an industry short of capital. Anyway there is a youtube video online, 'Rethining Education' (sic) where the couple are interviewed for 30 (long) minutes about this school. On ecological issues they make not one statement and they show no understanding of the current climate crisis that we are starting to endure. The interview is instead full of the sort of terminology that you'd expect to hear from evangelical preachers and they constantly refer to their notes for their key points.
It is interesting too that the Green School in New Zealand shares its IP with two other domains, one of which is a local website which focuses on big gas guzzling American Cars (americana.com) and the other (wellnesstracker.co.nz which was registered in 2018 for those of a conspirational bent) which resolves to a log-in page at the local New Plymouth Boys High School. Obviously neither of these facts are appropriate for such an enterprise and just as obviously someone at the New Plymouth Boys High School has some questions to answer. But also quite obviously the original Green School in Bali is not of the Perretts' making so a trip to the company register in New Zealand is where you go to seek insight at who started what looks to be a franchise (other 'schools' being opened recently in South Africa and Mexico in areas where gas & oil production is also quite evident). And here we find a person called Salman Ahmad Mannan in the shareholdings (alongside the Perretts) of Green School Farms Limited.
And this brings us to our conclusion although there are other connections but that's for a Ted talk at some later time in the future, Ms Klein. Salman Ahmad Mannan (probably also known by a few other names) is a partner of MarcWhittaker Capital Limited and has also been a partner in Deloitte both based in Singapore. His main work seems to be with the Oil industry including Shell. Green Schools International is also supposed to be a Singapore based company but the Singapore registry indicates that it is actually a Non-registered entity which probably means that it is actually registered in a tax avoiding jurisdiction. Salman Ahmad Mannan has form here as he manages to get a mention in the Panama Papers (Laveco Ltd & Kiraly Enterprises Limited) of a few years ago, being a client of Mossack Fonseca and being associated with various companies, mostly now struck off due to non-payment of registration fees, in the Virgin Islands. Future Considerations, James Shaw's greenwashing agency, is also in this type of jurisdiction. The 'accountants' listed on their website in the late 2000s were Nigerian scammers. In fact as already mentioned Future Considerations is basically a scammer. Nigeria of course produces a lot of oil, as well as scammers, and oil is never far away from James Shaw. Nor it seems is scamming.
The Greenschool grant (not a loan, a grant) is a clusterfuck which due to the Green Party leader's support of, and the support from Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson of the Labour Party should end the Jacinda Ardern Government. James Shaw could possibly resolve this by resigning. Marama Davidson would ideally go at the same time. But the Green Party has no back-up, the MPs down the list are no better.
Where does that leave us? Nowhere good and certainly not addressing climate change, which is rather ironic. But the Green Party is not currently about climate change so a clean out would give it an opportunity to change its focus back to where it should be. The alternative which we have now, and not to put too fine a point on it, is a fossil fueled fascism.
Links for the proof of all the claims in this article shall be added later. Regarding the stupidity and arrogance of Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins & James Shaw & the current Green Party's politics the evidence is all circumstantial but also fairly evident one would think.
Update 20200904: It seems likely this article is now being used as a source for the National Party & media. So I'm going to leave the links out for now as I'm not going to do your job for free guys.
#climatechange #politics #feminism