The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a film based on a story by Annie Leonard. Annie Leonard is a critic of excessive consumerism and is most known for this animated film about the life-cycle of material goods.

The film is little more than an anti-capitalist tome designed to convince its viewers that America not only consumes more than its fair share of the planets resources, but we are happily destroying entire third world nations, eco-systems and even people to feed our insatiable appetite for “stuff”. The film makes these assumptions using an almost child-like pursuit of half truths to make its case and is just another new wave, radical environmentalist view of the evils of the American lifestyle. In previous posts I have discussed that the reason why the environmental movement has become so anti-American and so anti-Capitalist is because the environmental movement has been infiltrated and is in fact, the new home of Marxist and Globalist front groups.

The film starts with the assertion that we spend too much on defense, so much so that even though she chose to use the figure of a person to represent the government, she was tempted to use a tank instead. It then goes on to explain that although we only have 5% of the world’s population, we consume 30% of the planets resources. In fact, according Ms. Leonard, we have consumed all of our own resources so we are now “trashing” foreign lands and exploiting foreign peoples to take their resources. She was nice enough to explain that it’s not really our fault because those evil American businesses make us watch all those advertisements that force us to go out and buy and buy and buy and it’s that rampant consumerism that drives the search for even more resources.

The film continues to explain that the cycle that keeps products on our store shelves blindly pollutes the planet, drives people out of their ancestral lands directly into abusive jobs in deadly cities and the pollution that is created to access the resources is just the tip of the iceberg as the manufacturing process wantonly dumps more pollutants into the environment and then those rotten thoughtless American consumers use these products and just dispose of them without a care in the world as to where the trash goes in the end.

The “Story of Stuff” is making its rounds through the education system in the United States in yet another attempt to indoctrinate our youth into liberal and progressive beliefs; beliefs that they are concerned are not being pursued by these poor children’s parents. Of course not all schools have been drawn into this, at least not yet. It is something that is still limited to the areas that are liberal strongholds such as the northeast, California, Oregon, Washington, Chicago, etc. However, now that the President has made some fairly radical appointments in the Federal education agencies, we may see materials like this being “approved” for use or worse, mandated as a requirement of receiving Federal education funds. As long as that is a possibility then it is fair to ask “Who is Annie Leonard, what is her background and who funded this movie?”
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Annie Leonard was born 1964 in Seattle, Washington. She went to college in New York at the liberal arts citadel, Barnard College. Leonard has an undergraduate degree from Barnard College and a graduate degree from Cornell University in city and regional planning. She and a friend created GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives). She created the hour-long Story of Stuff originally as a talk and was asked many times to make a movie. Finally she made and also stars in, the 20 minute film The Story of Stuff, a web-based documentary about the life-cycle of goods and services.

Leonard is coordinator of GAIA and serves on the boards of International Forum for Globalization and the Environmental Health Fund. She previously held positions with Health Care Without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International, and is currently coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. In 1992 she testified before the US Congress on the topic of international waste trafficking.

Isn’t it interesting that someone who claims to be a mere environmentalist is involved so deeply in this many political movements, some of which are dedicated to the globalization of world governance? If you recall, Carol Browner, President Obama’s “Climate Czar” and another so-called environmentalist, was found to have ties with “Socialist International”. Ms. Browner was one of 14 members on their “Commission for a Sustainable World Society”. This group was also anti-American and anti-Capitalist and their principal mandate was to support reforms that would bring about “world governance”; in other words, a single all-powerful one world government. Gee….what a coincidence!

The production of the “Story of Stuff” was made possible with grant money from the Tides Center. The Tides Center is a non-profit organization in the United States which provides grants for progressive groups. Tides Center is classified a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization by the IRS. The Tides organization is based in San Francisco and is administratively linked to, but separate from the Tides Foundation. Tides Center and Tides Foundation are part of a family of organizations linked by a commitment to social change, innovation, and responsible stewardship of resources.

Tides Center’s roots lie in the Tides Foundation, founded by Drummond Pike in 1976. In 1977, the Tides Foundation began working with initiative campaigns, an arrangement that was formalized into the Projects Program in 1979. In 1996, this program became Tides Center, an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Since 1996, Tides Center has provided fiscal sponsorship to over 800 projects with combined revenues of over $700 million, and has worked with well over 1000 projects since the first days as the Projects Program.

Drummond Pike, a former 1960’s Vietnam War protestor and activist, is the CEO of Tides where he used ideas he created to fund programs and projects well outside the mainstream of thought in the United States through the use of donor advised funds. Donor advised funds allowed for the transfer of third party donations so that people that could be politically harmed by a connection with a radical group could use the Tides Foundation to act as a buffer between the donor and the eventual recipient. How expedient.

Most people have never heard of the Tides Foundation but you have certainly heard of some of their “donors”. George Soros, David Fenton and Wade Rathke are just a few. Yes, that is the same Wade Rathke that was the founder of ACORN, another squeaky clean example of progressive social conciseness and a devout follower of the Cloward-Pivens Strategy. Similarly, some of the recipients of Tides grants may ring a bell. The Apollo Alliance (one of the crafters of the current stimulus bill), The Campaign to Defend the Constitution (an on-line group created to expand the separation of Church and State to counter what they perceived was the growing power of the religious right) and Traction (a social network for 20-something and 30-something leftists to promote progressive ideals).

The Apollo Alliance may be the most recognizable among the names of grant recipients. If you recall, Van Jones was a member of the Apollo Alliance and the chairman of their New York office is Jeff Jones, one of the co-founders of the Weather Underground and I’m sure you remember them.

People may wonder what the big deal is about schools using “The Story of Stuff”. After all, if couldn’t hurt to promote taking care of the environment. If that was all this was about, I might agree but that is not the whole story of “The Story of Stuff.” It is an assault on Capitalism and America by people whose ultimate goal is eliminating the only the only roadblock left to a global socialist “new world order”. Before the new can take root, the old must be eliminated and their plan is to cripple our economy through the use of devastating environmental restrictions forced on our industries and our people.

Have you noticed that the only nations where sufficient pressure has been brought to bear to pass these insane “greenhouse gas” reduction acts has been in democratic industrial nations? If you take the time to connect the dots; to research the people that are behind these movements and the stated goals of the organizations they belong to, we can only arrive at one conclusion. This is not a loose movement of un-washed tree huggers; it is an orchestrated and well coordinated attack by groups that are seeking to fundamentally change the face of global politics.
Paul