Maxime Bernier wants us to think he is sorry. The leader of the extremist People's Party of Canada had tweeted that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is "clearly mentally unstable. Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression, and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear. She wants us to feel the same."

Facing a ferocious backlash, he has since backpedaled, calling the 16-year-old "a brave young woman" who unfortunately is a "pawn" of the climate movement.

Thunberg is nobody's pawn. I have rarely met anyone - child or adult - who better knows their own mind. And this is not despite her autism; it may well be because of it. In fact, a big part of what has made Thunberg such an inspiring figure, is the fact that she is living proof that diversity - in her case neurodiversity - is absolutely key to the survival of our species.

Every person with autism is different, but there are some traits that many with the diagnosis share in common. As Thunberg has said, people with her type of autism tend to be extremely literal and often have trouble coping with cognitive dissonance, those gaps between what we know and what we do.

Many people on the autism spectrum are also less prone to imitating the social behaviors of people around them and instead forge their own unique paths. This can make them intensely vulnerable to bullying.

"For those of us who are on the spectrum," Thunberg says, "almost everything is black or white. We aren't very good at lying, and we usually don't enjoy participating in this social game that the rest of you seem so fond of."

Many people on the spectrum also have a powerful capacity to focus on a particular area and to not be distracted. This is often a gift, but it can also be painful, as it was in Thunberg's case. She turned her laser-like focus on the climate crisis, including the failure of politicians to do what is required to protect a habitable planet. The fact that other people around her seemed relatively unconcerned about the urgent need for transformative action did not send her reassuring social signals, as such signals do for children who are more socially connected. The lack of concern terrified her even more.

According to Thunberg, the only way she was able to cope was to find ways to reduce the cognitive dissonance between what she had learned about the climate crisis and how she lived her life. If she desperately wanted powerful politicians to put our societies on emergency footing to fight climate change, then she needed to reflect that state of emergency in her own life.

So, at age 15, she decided to stop doing the one thing all kids are supposed to do when everything is normal: go to school. Every Friday, she skipped class and stationed herself outside of Sweden's parliament with a handmade sign that said simply: "School Strike For the Climate."

"Why," Thunberg wondered, "should we be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future?"

The rest is history - the speeches at United Nations conferences, at the European Union, at TEDx Stockholm, at the Vatican, at the British Parliament.

To the rich and mighty at the annual World Economic Summit in Davos she said: "I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."

Videos of her went viral. It was as if by yelling "Fire!" on our warming planet, she had given others the confidence to believe their own senses and smell the smoke coming in under all those tightly closed doors. And so, children around the world began taking their cues from her - the girl who takes social cues from no one - and started organizing student strikes of their own every Friday. (They have now called on people of all ages to join them, starting on Sept. 20.)

Thunberg's voyage from "invisible girl," as she described herself, to global voice of conscience is an extraordinary one, and it has a lot to teach us. In a way, she is asking those of us whose mental wiring is more typical - less prone to extraordinary focus and more capable of living with moral contradictions - to be more like her. And she has a point.

During normal, non-emergency times, the capacity of the human mind to rationalize, compartmentalize, and be distracted are important coping mechanisms. It's also extremely helpful to unconsciously look to our peers and role models to figure out how to feel and act - those social cues are how we form friendships and build cohesive communities.

When it comes to rising to the existential threat of climate breakdown, however, these traits are proving our collective undoing. They are reassuring us when we should not be reassured. They are distracting us when we should not be distracted. And they are easing our consciences when they should not be eased.

In part this is because pretty much every aspect of our economy would have to change if we were to decide to take climate change seriously, and there are many powerful interests that like things as they are. Not least the fossil fuel corporations, which have funded a decades-long machine of disinformation, obfuscation and straight-up lies about the reality of climate change.

As a result, when most of us look around for social confirmation about climate disruption, we are confronted with all kinds of contradictory signals: Don't worry about that; it's an exaggeration; there are countless more important problems; there are no alternatives; you'll never make a difference, and so on. And it certainly doesn't help that we are trying to navigate this civilizational crisis at a moment when some of the most brilliant minds of our time are devoting vast energies to figuring out ever more ingenious tools to keep us running around in digital circles in search of the next dopamine hit online.

This may explain the odd space that the climate crisis occupies in the public imagination, even among those of us who are actively terrified of climate collapse. One minute we're sharing articles about insect apocalypse and viral videos of walruses falling off cliffs because sea ice loss has destroyed their habitat. The next we're online shopping and willfully turning our minds into Swiss cheese by scrolling through Twitter or Instagram.

"I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones, and the rest of the people are pretty strange," Thunberg has said, adding that it helps not to be easily distracted or reassured with rationalizations.

"Because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me, that is black or white."

(c) 2019 Naomi Klein is an award"winning journalist and syndicated columnist. Naomi Klein's book "On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal" will be published in September by Simon & Schuster. On September 9, she will appear with Greta Thunberg at an event hosted by The Intercept. To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org. You can follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.

For avalanche-level lying, deceiving, and misleading, mega-mimic Donald Trump need look no further than the history of the corporate advertising industry and the firms that pay them.

Dissembling is so deeply ingrained in commercial culture that the Federal Trade Commission and the courts don't challenge exaggerated general claims that they call "puffery."

Serious corporate deception is a common sales technique. At times it cost consumers more than dollars. It has led to major illness and loss of life.

Take the tobacco industry which used to sell its products in the context of health and facilitating mental concentration. Healthy movie stars and athletes were featured in print and on TV until 1970.

Despite studies showing that sugary soft drinks can damage health, increase obesity, and reduce life expectancy, the industry's ads still feature healthy, fit families in joyous situations guzzling pop. Fortunately, drinking water has regained its first place position as the most consumed liquid in the U.S.

Whether it is the auto industry's false inflation of fuel efficiency or the e-cigarette companies deceiving youngsters about vaping, or the food industry selling sugary junk cereals as nutrition for children, or the credit banking companies misleading on interest rates, truth in advertising is oxymoronic.

To counter these "fake ads," the consumer movement pushed for mandatory labeling on food and other products. The Federal Trade Commission is a chief enforcer against deception in advertising, but it has waxed and waned over the decades. The FTC describes its duties to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices as follows:

"In advertising and marketing, the law requires that objective claims be truthful and substantiated. The FTC does not pursue subjective claims or puffery - claims like "this is the best hairspray in the world." But if there is an objective component to the claim - such as "more consumers prefer our hairspray to any other" or "our hairspray lasts longer than the most popular brands" - then you need to be sure that the claim is not deceptive and that you have adequate substantiation before you make the claim."

Another way consumers fought back is the spectacular success of Dr. Sidney Wolfe and his associates at Public Citizen's Health Research Group. They researched hundreds of prescription drugs and over the counter medicines and found they were not effective for the purpose for which they are advertised. Relentless publicity on such dynamic mass media as the Phil Donahue Show led to the withdrawal of many of these products, likely saving consumers billions of dollars and protecting them from harmful side-effects (see Pills that Don't Work),.

When large companies are fighting regulation their lies become "clear and present dangers" to innocent people. I recall at a technical conference in the early nineteen sixties, a General Motors engineer warned that seatbelts in cars would tear away the inner organs of motorists from their moorings in sudden decelerations as in collisions. For the longest time, lead, asbestos, and a whole host of chemicals were featured as safe, not just necessary. All false.

Someone should write a book about all the prevarications by leading spokespersons of industry and commerce justifying the slavery of the "inferior races," arguing against the abolition of child labor in dungeon factories, and predicting that legislating social security would bring on communism.

Interestingly, corporations can lie vigorously and not lose credibility. Artificial corporate personhood comes with immunity from social sanctions that apply to real human beings.

In 1972, The People's Lobby in California, led by the impressive Ed and Joyce Koupal, qualified an initiative called "The Clean Environment Act." Corporations threw millions of dollars and made false claims to defeat the Act. Their public relations firm, Whitaker and Baxter, put out a fact sheet reaching millions of voters. The oil companies declared that "lowering the lead content of gasoline would cause automobile engines to fail, resulting in massive congestion and transit breakdowns." They also claimed that "reducing sulfur oxide emissions from diesel fuel would cause the state's transportation industry to grind to a haul," with huge joblessness and "economic chaos."

Other companies said a "moratorium on nuclear power plant construction" would lead to "widespread unemployment and darkened city streets." Banning DDT in California would "confront the farmer with economic ruin and produce critical shortages of fruits and vegetables" and more lurid hypotheticals.

The lies worked. Voters turned down the initiative by nearly two to one. All these reforms have since been advanced nationwide with no such disasters.

The media did not distinguish itself by separating the lies from the truth. Later in 1988, the media, led by the Los Angeles Times, did not let the auto insurance industry get away with lies about Prop 103, pushed by a $70 million television/radio buy. Prop 103 won and has saved California motorists over $100 billion according to leading actuary and consumer advocate J. Robert Hunter (see here).

Corporate fibbing pays monetary rewards. Informed consumers, their champions and regulatory agencies at the national, state, and local level must continue to make these companies pay a price, especially over social media. Madison Avenue calls the effect of such pushback "reputational risk."

In any alliance with corporate oppression and militarism, Black America squanders reservoirs of respect among the Earth's peoples. We betray ourselves and become Black Gringos.

There was a time, not so long ago, when most Black Americans of all classes were highly skeptical of every word that emanated from the mouths of white folks in power in the United States. A substantial body of Black opinion believed nothing at all that appeared in the corporate media - which, back then, we simply called the "white press." It was a wise and healthy skepticism, learned over generations of enduring a constant stream of lies and slander against Black people from politicians and mass media of the two governing parties. These organs and mouthpieces of rich white people's power were no more to be trusted, as Malcolm X counseled, than "foxes" (Democrats) and "wolves" (Republicans). The logic of the collective Black domestic experience extended to international affairs, as well. We empathized with the "colored" peoples of the world under attack by the U.S. government and media. If white politicians and press lied about us, we knew they were probably lying about their foreign non-white victims, as well. And we were right.

" Then came the Sixties and our grassroots movement's victories over official American apartheid. One of the governing parties (the foxes) opened its doors to Black participation, and big business media began putting Black faces in front of the cameras. Racial euphemisms replaced outright slander against Blacks and the lies became more nuanced. But it was not until the advent of the First Black President that African Americans lost much of their traditional skepticism of U.S. government motives, at home and abroad. When Barack Obama threatened to bomb Syria in retaliation for an alleged -- and provably false - chemical attack on civilians, in September of 2013, polls showed more Black Americans than whites wanted the bombs to fall. Although only minorities of Americans of all races favored bombing Syria, it was the first time in the history of U.S. polling that Blacks were more bellicose than whites.

Only a decade earlier, in the run-up to President Bush's 2003 assault on Iraq, the Zogby polling organization had asked a representative sampling of Americans the question: "Would you favor an invasion of Iraq if it resulted in the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians?" Large majorities of white men and nearly a majority of white women were in favor of such an invasion, as were 16 percent of Hispanic Americans. But only 7 percent of African Americans said, "Yes" - meaning, the U.S. government and media demonization campaign against Iraq had been effective among only a very marginal segment of African Americans. Blacks still empathized with the masses of Iraqi civilians, while whites definitively did not.

The fact that overwhelming numbers of Blacks also perceived George Bush and his party as hostile to African American lives and interests, certainly made them more empathetic towards Bush's foreign victims, and the specific reference to "civilians" in the Zogby question is significant. But the erosion of Black internationalism - or, at least, Black American solidarity with other peoples of color in the world - is palpable and inarguable. Two years before the false-flag Syria chemical attack crisis, half of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against a bill that would have halted Obama's murderous and totally unprovoked bombing of Libya- an African country! - with virtually no protest from Black America.

Obama has retired to the luxurious haunts of the rich and famous classes that he served so well as president. Catastrophically, however, his replacement in the Oval Office by overtly racist Donald Trump is viewed as such an existential threat that much of Black America has made common cause with the FBI, the CIA and the worst warmongers in the Democratic Party in a hysteria to be rid of the Orange Menace. Russiagate is perhaps the most successful psychological warfare operation in U.S. history, and has largely neutralized Black America's traditional aversion to U.S. imperial aggressions.The Democratic Party and most of the corporate media have for the past three years been furiously mobilized behind a CIA-instigated "resistance" that is NOT directed against Trump's pro-rich, anti-Black and poor people policies, but rather seeks to solidify public support for U.S. military and economic domination of the world -- an imperialism of planetary terror and blackmail and domestic austerity and deprivation.

Black America cannot possibly achieve anything meaningful by siding with corporate Democrat Foxes and CIA Rattlesnakes in their ongoing coup against the Orange Peckerwood and his legions of crackers. Russiagate is a stealth assault on all who disagree with the corporate narrative and rich people's version of Truth. The only victors will be the oligarchy of Fat Cats and military-industrial complex Wolves. African Americans are admired the world over as a people that Fight the Power, not as conniving co-conspirators with humanity's enemies. The Foxes need Black votes to get their turn at stealing the eggs, but their leaders have assured the Fat Cats that there will be no Medicare for All, no dignified minimum wage, no forgiveness of college debt, no Green New Deal, no relief from gentrification and no retreat from half a century of militarized policing and mass incarceration of Black America.

There will certainly be no let-up in the campaign of starvation that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of mostly Black, brown and indigenous Venezuelans, a bipartisan, 20 year-long aggression; or the Dem-Rep tag-team's multi-generational siege of Iran, a country that has not invaded anyone in centuries; or the Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump military occupation of Africa, which has killed more than six million in Congo, alone.

The Foxes want to annihilate Russia, while the Wolves would blot out China. Neither can accept a world in which the U.S. ruling class is not supreme over the planet. In an alliance with such evil, Black America loses more than its soul - we squander the reservoirs of respect that generations of African American fighters for human dignity have earned among the Earth's peoples. We become Black Gringos, while still at the bottom of the American heap - a most ignominious end to our saga.

We find our real allies in struggle against the Lords of Capital -- the Fat Cats that have made our world a killing field. The epic struggle for Black self-determination is inseparable from the struggle for peace and a livable planet. Join the Black Alliance for Peace, the Black is Back Coalition and the Black Agenda Report team at the People's Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet, September 20 - 23rd, in New York City.

Great news, people! We have a new ally in our historic battle against corporate plutocracy: Corporate plutocrats.

Yes, we've now been joined by the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Amazon, and nearly 200 other giant corporations. They're members of the Business roundtable (the chief lobbing front for America's biggest corporations), and they've declared their solidarity with all of us by issuing a grand declaration titled "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation." For 50 years, that purpose has been ruthlessly clear: Maximize their investors' profits, no matter who or what they have to run over. But now, the barons of big business are putting on a softer face, proclaiming that their "fundamental commitment" is not merely to serve shareholder greed, but also to benefit workers, reduce inequality, protect the environment, etc. It's corporate kumbaya, y'all - solidarity forever!

Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson, was designated to write the Roundtable's new declaration of concern for the common people. He later expressed an historic sense of pride in the task: "There were times when I felt like Thomas Jefferson," Gorsky gushed.

But wait - this is the guy who presided over Johnson & Johnson's profiteering role in spreading deadly opioids throughout America. An Oklahoma jury just assessed a half-billion-dollar fine on his corporation for foisting the opioid horror on the common people he now professes to love.

So forgive me for not believing for a moment that there's one iota of sincerity in this sudden assertion of egalitarian sentiment by the soulless organizers of today's corporate plunder. They're still going to plunder your unions, paychecks, jobs, health, environment, and overall well-being. The only difference is that they now want you to think they feel badly about it.