China: Paying US Media to Publish Propaganda - Judith Bergman

 

​ by Judith Bergman

'Borrowing a Boat to Go Out on the Ocean'

• In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times.

• China Daily's ads -- in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean" -- come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called China Watch... camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.

• The practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it... This reticence is odd... but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.

The Chinese government-controlled English language newspaper, China Daily, in 2020 paid a variety of US media outlets nearly $2 million for publishing propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party, according to a disclosure that China Daily filed with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Pictured: The entrance to the offices of China Daily in Beijing, on January 18, 2007. (Photo by Voishmel/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chinese government-controlled English language newspaper, China Daily, in 2020 paid a variety of US media outlets nearly $2 million for publishing propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a disclosure that China Daily filed in late November with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to Daily Caller.

China Daily has reportedly been registered as a foreign agent under FARA since 1983, which means it is required to report its activities and financial transactions to the Justice Department.

In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. Other newspapers included the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle and Foreign Policy.

China Daily's ads come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called "China Watch," in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean." According to Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia, Freedom House, in 2017 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission:

"This phrase refers to disseminating Chinese state-media content via the pages, frequencies, or screen-time of privately owned media outlets that have developed their own local audiences... In recent years, its robust expansion to English-language media has garnered much attention and public debate. One of the most prominent examples has been the emergence of China Watch — a paid insert sponsored by the state-run China Daily — that has appeared both in print and online in prominent U.S. papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal."

This form of advertising is sometimes also known as advertorials, or native advertising: the stories are camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.

The Wall Street Journal's "China Watch" website, for example, has published a number of articles promoting China's handling of the pandemic, including articles with titles such as, "Apple CEO: China Getting Outbreak Under Control", "US Sister Cities Get Help From Chinese Friends in Virus Fight", "WHO Chief Highlights China-Africa Cooperation on COVID-19 Fight", and a number of articles criticizing the US for its questioning of China's handling of the pandemic, such as "Washington's Wuhan Travel Claim Rebutted" and "Trump's China Remark Rebuked".

China is not the only foreign government paying to advertise its national propaganda in the US. In 2007, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government newspaper, began to publish its advertorials, "Russia Beyond the Headlines," in The Washington Post, although the ads reportedly disappeared from the newspaper in 2015. In the past, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reportedly also published Russia Beyond the Headlines supplements in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

"China needs to strengthen media coverage...and use innovative outreach methods...to tell a good Chinese story and promote China's views internationally", Xi Jinping said at the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in August 2013. Since then, he has regularly repeated this message. "To present good images," Xi told an August 2018 National Meeting on Ideology and Propaganda, "we should improve our international communication capability, tell China's stories well, disseminate China's voice, show an authentic and comprehensive China to the world, and raise the country's soft power and the influence of Chinese culture".

As pointed out by James Fallows in The Atlantic back in 2010, when The Washington Post was already publishing China Watch, it is one thing when such a supplement is clearly labeled as a paid advertisement, but quite different when such ads are published online and made to look similar to the outlet's other news articles, that only "the tiny words 'A Paid Supplement to the Washington Post' in the upper right hand corner distinguish them from the rest of the content".

"Those who engage in this form of propaganda hope to exploit the higher credibility of the hosting media site to enhance the persuasiveness of their message", wrote researchers Yaoyao Dai and Luwei Luqiu, who did an online survey on the effect of China Daily's ads on American and British readers of The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph. Their findings showed that readers actually struggled "to distinguish political advertisements from standard news stories regardless of their level of education and media literacy".

China does not lack for English language media giants of its own to disseminate the Chinese Communist Party narrative about China across the world. According to Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a fellow at the Wilson Center:

"In early 2009, Beijing announced that it would invest ¥45 billion (roughly US$7.25 billion) into its main media outlets in order to strengthen its international news coverage and global presence. As part of this campaign, known as 'big propaganda' (da waixuan), Xinhua News Service increased its number of overseas bureaus from 100 to 186. That same year, the Global Times (a popular tabloid with an international focus owned by People's Daily) launched an English-language edition. CCTV International also began broadcasting in Arabic and Russian, and in 2010 rebranded itself as CCTV News. China's massive investment in these media attracted considerable international interest and debate".

In a December 2018 report, "Assessment on US Defense Implications of China's Expanding Global Access," the Pentagon assessed China's media expansion:

"Xinhua News Agency, China's official state-run news agency, launched 40 new foreign bureaus and doubled the number of overseas correspondents between 2009 and 2011. Xinhua counted 162 total foreign bureaus in 2017 and aims to have 200 by 2020. China's expanding official media presence reflects a concerted effort on the part of its leadership to shape opinions about the country and promote China's view on key topics. President Xi Jinping urged China Global Television Network, Xinhua's international media service, to 'tell the China story well' and "spread China's voice... a 2015 Reuters report revealed that China Radio International (CRI), a Chinese state-owned entity, was using subsidiaries to mask its control over 33 radio stations in 14 countries, including the United States. These radio stations broadcast pro-China content but have not registered as agents of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)".

The reason China did not rely solely on its own state media, according to Brady, was because the strategy of using state media was "widely regarded by Chinese mass-communication experts as a failure. If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news.'"

With "social justice" having become something of a mantra across the Western mainstream media landscape, the promotion of Chinese regime propaganda to unsuspecting Americans constitutes an oddly incongruent and unethical business practice that the media industry does not appear to have reflected upon publicly, if at all. While several newspapers no longer engage in the practice – The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Times among them – the practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it, such as the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the UK-based Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times. This reticence is odd, not so much because those newspapers want and need revenues, which is understandable, but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.

 

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16865/china-propaganda-us-media 

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Trump Deservedly Tops Gallup’s Most Admired List - Joseph Klein

 

​ by Joseph Klein

A legacy of extraordinary accomplishments.

 

According to a Gallup survey released on December 29th, President Donald Trump is 2020’s most admired man living today anywhere in the world. President Trump beat out Barack Obama – 18 percent versus 15 percent. Last year, Trump and Obama were tied at 18 percent each. Joe Biden ranked a distant third at 6 percent in the 2020 survey. Trump also ranked ahead of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, and the progressive left’s god like figure Senator Bernie Sanders.

The survey results were based on telephone interviews conducted December 1-17, 2020 with a random sample of slightly more than 1000 adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The results have a margin of error of ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. According to Gallup, the samples were “weighted to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both and cell phone mostly).” 

Democrats and their progressive left base, along with their media shills, couldn’t care less about the Gallup survey, which, after all, is only a poll. The Trump-haters are chest-thumping over their success in using universal mail-in ballots and lax election security procedures to push Biden over the finish line in the presidential election. Trump-haters also take solace in the fact that Democrat respondents in the survey split their choices for the most admired male, which lowered Biden’s percentage, while Republicans were more solidly in Trump’s corner.

The critics can scoff at the relevance of the Gallop survey all they want. However, the survey data reveal some curious results that show the fragility of the coalition that Biden has been trying to build between the dwindling number of Democrat centrists and the party’s progressive base. Biden is also relatively weak among independents.

Obama has ranked consistently high in the Gallup survey’s admiration rankings for the last decade. Biden did not register above 1 percent during the same period, until after his election in 2020 when he managed to reach 6 percent. The only other male politician besides Trump in the top ten in 2020 was Democrat-Socialist Bernie Sanders at 1 percent.

In short, a former Democrat president out of office for four years achieved an admiration ranking more than twice that of the current Democrat president-elect. The one progressive in the top ten was trampled by Obama, not to mention by Trump.

It is also worth noting that among the respondents identifying themselves as independent, Trump was the most admired by 11 percent, the same as Obama. Biden was the most admired by only 3 percent of the independent respondents.

On the female side of the Gallup survey’s most admired list, former First Lady Michelle Obama ranked ahead of Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris – 10 percent versus 6 percent. The only other current female politician in the top ten was Democrat-Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC and Hillary Clinton were each chosen as the most admired living woman by 2 percent of the respondents.

Republicans remain solidly behind President Trump. Democrats are split and looking more nostalgically to the past Obama era than to a cohesive vision for the future led by a president they can admire.

President Trump deserves to be on top of the admiration survey and should have been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year instead of the Biden-Harris duo. In four short years, Trump crashed through the stale, politically correct political establishment and scored monumental achievements. He has kept many of his promises, something unheard of in the Washington swamp.

For example, regarding immigration, the massive flow of illegal immigrants coming from Central America through Mexico has been brought under control. The Trump administration has built or heavily reinforced over 300 miles of the wall at the U.S.-Mexican border. Mexico indirectly paid for it by taking on the cost of deploying thousands of troops at Trump’s request at its southern border to deter more migration caravans and by accepting many so-called asylum seekers from the U.S.

Rather than start more wars, President Trump has tried to end the ones already in progress for years and years, including most notably in Afghanistan. Instead of being the warmonger that many of his critics had feared, President Trump turned out to be a peacemaker. He thought outside of the box in the Middle East and brought about historic peace agreements between Israel and each of four Arab countries - the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain.

President Trump has also lowered tensions with North Korea. The North Korean regime had been building and testing nuclear bombs for years, as well as long range ballistic missiles, before President Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Since the first Trump-Kim summit in mid-2018, North Korea has not tested a nuclear bomb or ICBM. Obama could only dream of such an outcome with his failed policy of “strategic patience.”

Iran was on the way to a nuclear bomb long before President Trump came to office. Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal merely kicked the can down the road for a few years. Indeed, Obama has admitted that by 2028 or so, when the sunset provisions on uranium enrichment start to kick in, Iran would have nearly zero breakout time to develop enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, assuming they hadn’t cheated beforehand. President Trump did not want to wait and risk the chance that Iran would be far better prepared to defend its nuclear weapons production facilities in 2028 than it could now. So, he acted to force Iran’s hand immediately, while depriving them of the money they would use to build up their military capabilities. President Trump also decided to take out Iran’s terrorist mastermind, Qassem Soleimani.

When President Trump took office, the jihadist terrorist group ISIS still controlled large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, which it claimed as its caliphate. Trump removed the absurd constraints Obama had imposed on the U.S. military, which permitted our military forces in concert with our allies to put an end to ISIS’s territorial caliphate. Trump also approved a special operations raid that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruthless leader of ISIS.

President Trump was the first president in decades to stand up to China with tough sanctions and insistence on more reciprocal trade. China has played successive U.S. administrations since its professed opening of its economy to global trade and investments. The Chinese Communist regime wants to replace the current rules-based international system with one dominated by China’s authoritarian model. To that end, the regime has been busy deftly exploiting multilateral institutions from the World Trade Organization to the World Health Organization (WHO) to the United Nations itself. President Trump instinctively understood what China was up to and took strong action to back up his tough words. After China used the World Health Organization, for example, to repeat its lies about the coronavirus pandemic, which started in China, President Trump first warned WHO to mend its ways and then pulled the U.S. out of the China-centric organization when it did not heed his warnings.

Talking about the coronavirus pandemic, the vaccines that the Trump administration managed to push forward in record time to the American people under Operation Warp Speed will most likely turn out to be President Trump’s most significant legacy. He used his business experience and contacts to forge a private-public partnership, including investing government risk money up front to incentivize the drug companies to quickly develop and manufacture the vaccines. The Trump administration cut through the bureaucratic red tape to secure regulatory approval and facilitated the distribution of millions of vaccine doses to the American people.

The pre-pandemic U.S. economy during President Trump’s watch saw record employment, a narrowing income gap, and historically low unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics. Trump achieved these astounding results by combining massive deregulation and tax cuts with shrewdly negotiated trade deals.

The current higher deficit and unemployment levels are the result of the pandemic and the severe economic disruption it caused. The Trump administration worked with Congress to address the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in a bipartisan fashion. As a result, novel multi-billion-dollar programs were created to support businesses and their employees until the economy recovers, while the unemployed received supplemental unemployment benefits and needy Americans received direct government payments to help them stay afloat.

President Trump managed to get major criminal justice reform across the finish line, which has begun to undo the mass incarceration of African American males that the 1994 crime bill supported by Biden triggered. At the same time, Trump strongly supported law enforcement against calls to defund the police, and he confronted violent rioters with prudent shows of force.

Finally, President Trump kept his promise to place more conservatives who believe in interpreting the law as written on the federal courts, including three outstanding Supreme Court justices.

President Trump accomplished all this in the face of relentless attempts by Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media to delegitimize his presidency and have him removed from office.

Long after the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, CNN’s Jim Acosta, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and the rest of the Trump-haters fade into the mists of time, President Trump’s legacy of singular accomplishments on behalf of the American people will live on.

 

Joseph Klein  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/trump-deservedly-tops-gallups-most-admired-list-joseph-klein/ 

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Gaslight with COVID: Joe Biden declares scaled down inauguration - Monica Showalter

 

​ by Monica Showalter

Hiding his fraudulent election behind a suddenly convenient mask of COVID.

How's this for never letting a crisis go to waste?  Or taking one festering problem and using it to solve another?  Or just a great gaslight?

Joe Biden has called for a scaled down inauguration, supposedly in the name of containing COVID.

According to Al Jazeera, which seems to be the only one doing straight reporting on this:

"I think you're going to see something that's closer to what the convention was like than a typical inauguration," Biden said earlier this month, suggesting the festivities will be mostly virtual, as was the case for the Democratic National Convention in August.

"First and foremost, in my objective, is to keep America safe but still allow people to celebrate – to celebrate and see one another celebrate," Biden added.

This week, workers dismantled the reviewing stand – the location in front of the White House where the newly sworn-in US president and vice president and their families take in the inauguration parade.

This is a load of gaslighting and hooey.

RedState's Nick Arama has a lede and summary I could not possibly improve on:

Let's just say it's hard to believe that somehow Joe Biden, who was never able to get any real numbers out for any rally, who barely squeaked by in the primary, could have not only gotten more votes than Barack Obama and Donald Trump, but the most in history. For a barely coherent uninspiring stand-in candidate.

The real reason Biden is scaling down his event is that he knows that very few people would even show up. 

It calls to mind the howling from the press over the size of President Trump's inaugural, claiming that it was small, while photos showed that actually, it was pretty big.  They used that argument to compare Trump unfavorably to President Obama, and now the shoe is on the other tootsie.  Obviously, Joe Biden knows he couldn't in a million years win in any such crowd contest, even if COVID were gone and the weather were 78 degrees.  When you are taking office by fraud, the crowds aren't there to be had.

Two things stand out from this.  One, where was Biden's condemnation of the blue-city celebrations of his electoral "victory" last Nov. 3?  Remember how Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot celebrated in the streets, claiming that containing surging COVID wasn't as important as celebrating fraudy Joe?

Yes, there are times when we actually do need to have ... relief and come together, and I felt like that was one of those times. That crowd was gathered whether I was there or not, but this has been a super hard year on everyone. Everyone feels traumatized.

Somehow, Joe didn't have much concern for COVID, either.  No calls to stay inside and celebrate on Zoom, no blasts at crowd irresponsibility.  But now that the inevitable comparisons to Trump's inaugural are sure to come out, Joe retreats behind the mask of COVID, adding a victim memorial segment as a means of blaming President Trump.

And speaking of Trump, here's the other reason he's hollering about staying home.  President Trump's supporters are planning massive "stop the steal" demonstrations, at least one on Jan.6 and another likely on Jan. 20.  Hotels are booking up, and people are making socially distanced travel plans.

The empty inaugural, accompanied by likely massive protests at the stolen election, stolen from the very people likely to be out on the streets calling for the real winner of the election, President Trump, to be inaugurated, present a significant threat to Joe Biden's prestige and legitimacy.  Because if a crowd of a very large size shows up and dwarfs the Biden inaugural, let's face it: it will be clearer than ever that something is wrong with even the existence of a Biden inaugural.  A fraudulently elected president is a new one for America; it's mainly been seen in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua.  Biden coming in and declaring himself president, while cheering crowds stay away, is a hell of a cold opening.

This is why Biden is using COVID.  COVID is the best friend a fraudulently elected president could ever have.  It cuts his need to campaign while the fix is in; it allows him to appear at tiny venues such as junior high schools, if not stay in his basement; it facilitates his walking away from reporter questions; and it enables him to claim he was legitimately elected.  We all know he's there by fraud.  That's his biggest reason for wanting no truck with any claim to crowds — either his own shriveled numbers or else President Trump's expanding ones.

 

Monica Showalter  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/gaslight_with_covid_joe_biden_declares_scaleddown_inauguration.html 

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Germany's "Shameful" Two Years on the UN Security Council - Soeren Kern

 

​ by Soeren Kern

The record shows that during its stint on the UN Security Council, Germany voted for dozens of resolutions — many of which smack of anti-Semitism

• A closer examination of Germany's voting patterns at the UN over the past several years, however, reveals a troubling double standard on a range of issues, especially on human rights, which the German government claims to be "a cornerstone" of its foreign policy.

• The record shows that during its stint on the UN Security Council, Germany voted for dozens of resolutions — many of which smack of anti-Semitism — that singled out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

• Moreover, Germany turned a blind eye as multiple serial human rights abusers, including China, Libya, Mauritania, Sudan and Venezuela, among others, were elected to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN's highest human rights body.

• In 2020, Germany voted 13 times to condemn Israel, but failed to introduce a single resolution on the human rights situation in Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Venezuela — or on 175 other countries, according to UN Watch, a Geneva-based, independent non-governmental watchdog group.

• "While nearly all EU countries backed 13 out of 17 UNGA resolutions singling out Israel this year, they failed to introduce even one resolution for women's right [sic] activists jailed and tortured in Saudi Arabia, dissident artists arrested in Cuba, journalists thrown behind bars in Turkey, religious minorities attacked in Pakistan, and opposition members persecuted in Venezuela, where more than five million people have fled government repression, hunger and economic collapse." — UN Watch, December 16, 2020.

• Germany pursued a similar policy of approving anti-Israel resolutions at the UN in 2018, 2017, and 2016, when Germany voted for an especially disgraceful UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel as the world's only violator of "mental, physical and environmental health."

A close examination of Germany's voting patterns at the UN over the past several years reveals a troubling double standard on a range of issues, especially on human rights, which the German government claims to be "a cornerstone" of its foreign policy. Pictured: Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (left) and Ambassador to the UN, Christoph Heusgen attend a UN Security Council meeting on March 28, 2018 in New York. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Germany's two-year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council ended on December 31, 2020. The German Foreign Ministry, in a self-congratulatory compilation of its supposed achievements to "strengthen the international order," declared that Germany now deserves to obtain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

A closer examination of Germany's voting patterns at the UN over the past several years, however, reveals a troubling double standard on a range of issues, especially on human rights, which the German government claims to be "a cornerstone" of its foreign policy.

The record shows that during its stint on the UN Security Council, Germany voted for dozens of resolutions — many of which smack of anti-Semitism — that singled out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

The anti-Israel resolutions supported by Germany were sponsored by mostly non-democratic Muslim countries including Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, as well as by dictatorships such as Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela — and by Thailand on behalf of China.

Moreover, Germany remained silent as multiple serial human rights abusers, including China, Cuba, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia and Venezuela, among others, were elected to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN's highest human rights body.

Germany also voted for resolutions condemning the United States, which guarantees not only German but European security, stability and prosperity.

In 2020, Germany voted 13 times to condemn Israel, but failed to introduce a single resolution on the human rights situation in China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Venezuela — or on 175 other countries, according to UN Watch, a Geneva-based, independent non-governmental watchdog group.

One of the resolutions approved by Germany referred to Jerusalem's Temple Mount solely by its Muslim name of Haram al-Sharif. The executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, said:

"The UN today showed contempt for both Judaism and Christianity by passing a resolution that makes no mention of the name Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site, and which is sacred to all who venerate the Bible, in which the ancient Temple was of central importance."

In a press release, UN Watch added:

"While nearly all EU countries backed 13 out of 17 UNGA resolutions singling out Israel this year, they failed to introduce even one resolution for women's right [sic] activists jailed and tortured in Saudi Arabia, dissident artists arrested in Cuba, journalists thrown behind bars in Turkey, religious minorities attacked in Pakistan, and opposition members persecuted in Venezuela, where more than five million people have fled government repression, hunger and economic collapse."

In 2019, Germany voted 15 times to condemn Israel, but introduced zero condemnations of human rights abusers such as China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Venezuela, according to UN Watch. One of the texts approved by Germany portray Israel as "occupying" the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the holiest sites of Judaism.

On November 15 — on just one day — Germany voted for seven anti-Israel resolutions and abstained but did not reject another. There were no condemnations of any other country in the rest of the world on that day. The texts condemned Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, renewed the mandate of the corrupt UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and renewed the mandate of a UN special committee to investigate "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people." None of the resolutions mentioned Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Neuer, provided context:

"The UN's assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal. Days after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group assaulted Israeli civilians with a barrage of 200 rockets — while the UN's General Assembly and Human Rights Council stayed silent — the world body now adds insult to injury by adopting eight lopsided condemnations, whose only purpose is to demonize the Jewish state.

"While France, Germany, Sweden and other EU states are expected to support 15 out of a total of 20 resolutions to be adopted against Israel by December, the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, or on 175 other countries.

"Four of today's resolutions concern UNRWA — yet none mentions that the agency chief was just fired after top management engaged in what the UN's own internal probe described as 'sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain.' All EU states are complicit in this conspiracy of silence.

"One of today's resolutions — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — falsely condemns Israel for 'repressive measures' against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights. It's obscene. The resolution condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and demands Israel hand the land and its people to Syria.

"It's astonishing. After the Syrian regime has killed half a million of its own people, how can the UN call for more people to be handed over to Assad's rule? The text is morally galling, and logically absurd.

"Today's resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the UN is oblivious to more than 3,000 Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad's forces.

"Today's farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN's automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone's human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel.

"The UN's disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the institutional credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial international body. Politicization and selectivity harm its founding mission, eroding the UN Charter's promise of equal treatment to all nations large and small."

The vote came after German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted his supposedly unwavering support for Israel:

"FM @HeikoMaas on 70th anniversary of Israel's admission to the UN: We would like to reiterate once again today that Germany stands, also in the UN, shoulder to shoulder with Israel, whose security and right to exist must never be called into question by anyone anywhere."

Germany pursued a similar policy of approving anti-Israel resolutions at the UN in 2018, 2017 and 2016, when Germany voted for an especially disgraceful UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel as the world's only violator of "mental, physical and environmental health."

Germany's anti-Israel voting record at the UN appears to have broad support among the German political establishment. In March 2019, the German Bundestag overwhelmingly opposed a resolution by the Free Democratic Party (FDP) to urge Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to reverse its anti-Israel voting record at the United Nations.

By a vote of 408 to 155 with 65 abstentions, the Bundestag rejected the FPD's call for the government to "clearly distance itself from unilateral, primarily politically motivated initiatives and alliances of anti-Israeli UN member states and to protect Israel and Israel's legitimate interests from unilateral condemnation."

Germany's anti-Israel crusade has been led by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who claims that he entered politics because of Auschwitz, the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps. At his inauguration as foreign minister, he said:

"For me, German-Israeli history does not only entail a historic responsibility. For me personally, it is a deep motivation of my political activity. With all due respect, I did not enter politics because of [former chancellor] Willy Brandt. I also didn't go into politics because of the peace movement or ecological issues. I entered politics because of Auschwitz. And that's also why this part of our work is especially important to me."

Maas had been aided and abetted by Germany's Ambassador to the UN, Christoph Heusgen, who was named by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 2019 as one of the world's top ten anti-Semites.

Germany's largest-circulation newspaper Bild, asked, "Why does Germany repeatedly vote against Israel at the United Nations?" It answered:

"It is a shameful ritual: every year authoritarian states like Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia introduce numerous resolutions at the UN that are directed against one country — Israel. But the bitter thing is: The UN General Assembly is taking part and adopting almost all anti-Israeli resolutions.

"The Federal Republic also mostly votes FOR the resolutions — and thus AGAINST Israel. And this despite the fact that the federal government repeatedly emphasizes that it is on the side of Israel.

"Heusgen is considered a bitter critic of Israeli settlement policy — a legitimate position which, in Heusgen's case, seems to lead to complete lack of criticism towards the Palestinians, and to comparisons that cast doubt on his moral compass.

"Heusgen caused a scandal in March 2019 when he equated the rockets of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas with Israeli bulldozers, with which Israel tore down Palestinian and Israeli illegal houses. He did so in the very week that Hamas carried out massive rocket attacks on Israel and injured seven Israeli civilians.

"No criticism of anti-Semitic statements by Palestinian politicians, no criticism of pension payments for Palestinian terrorists — for Heusgen, the guilty parties for the messed-up situation are solely in Washington and Jerusalem."

The left-wing politician, Volker Beck, said about Heusgen:

"I am always careful with the label 'anti-Semite.' But one thing is certain: Anyone who bears responsibility for Germany's condemnation of Israel tens of times more often than all rogue states in the world at the United Nations applies double standards to the Jewish and democratic state and thus participates in an anti-Semitic campaign. With practical politics, Heusgen counteracts the unambiguous statements of the Chancellor to Israel's existence and security."

Frankfurt Mayor Uwe Becker added:

"The inclusion of Mr. Heusgen on the Wiesenthal Center's list is more than a yellow card for Germany's voting behavior at the United Nations. Germany must show more solidarity with Israel at the UN and consistently refuse anti-Israeli resolutions in future.

"The years of theater of political smear against Israel can only be countered with a consequent 'NO.' The comparison made by Heusgen between the actions of Israel and the terrorism of Hamas has damaged solidarity with Israel and is unfortunately suitable for promoting Israel-related anti-Semitism. Germany must not also be the keyword for Israel-related anti-Semitism."

In its most recent statement, the German Foreign Ministry declared:

"Germany wants to continue playing its part in preserving global peace — as a permanent member of the Security Council. 'We have shown over the past two years that we are capable of filling a seat on the UN Security Council in the long term,' said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. 'We therefore want not only to stand for a non-permanent seat again in eight years' time, but also seek to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council before that date.'"

In a sign that German appeasement has failed to achieve its objectives, Russia and China have both questioned Germany's suitability for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Russian Vice Ambassador Dmitri Polyansky bluntly said: "We will not miss you." The Chinese representative Yao Shaojun added that the German path to permanent membership "will be difficult."

Heusgen, who plans to retire after more than 40 years as a German diplomat, appealed to China to free two detained Canadians for Christmas:

"Let me end my tenure on the Security Council by appealing to my Chinese colleagues to ask Beijing for the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Christmas is the right moment for such a gesture."

China's deputy UN Ambassador, Geng Shuang, accused Heusgen of abusing the Security Council to launch "malicious" attacks on other members "in an attempt to poison the working atmosphere." He added: "I wish to say something out of the bottom of my heart: Good riddance."

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Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16907/germany-un-security-council 

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Pollard and the Great Jewish Divide - Caroline Glick

 

​ by Caroline Glick

The main issue that separates Israelis from American Jews is the issue of exile.

 

The rift between Israeli and American Jews is palpable almost everywhere you turn today. The most glaring disparity surrounds how they view President Donald Trump. The vast majority of Israelis adore Trump. The vast majority of American Jews despise him.

But Trump isn’t the only thing or even the main thing that separates them. The main issue that separates Israelis from American Jews is the issue of exile. Israelis by and large hold to the traditional Jewish view that all Jewish communities outside of Israel are exile – or diaspora – communities. American Jews, by and large, believe that the exile exists in all Jewish communities outside Israel except in America. This disagreement is existential. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

The divide between Israeli and American Jews is more apparent today than it was in the past but it has been around since the dawn of modern Zionism. But if one date marks the point it became an irreversible rift it was November 20, 1985, the day Jonathan Pollard was arrested outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, DC.

From the day of his arrest, Pollard became both the symbol and to a degree, the cause of the divide. That divide was unmistakable on Wednesday morning when the news broke that in the middle of the previous night, Pollard and his wife Esther had landed in Israel.

Israelis celebrated the Pollards’ arrival. Many wept watching the footage of Pollard kiss the ground on the tarmac.

In contrast, American Jews bristled both at the news and the happiness with which Israelis greeted Pollard’s arrival.

One writer angrily wrote on Twitter, “As an American Jew this isn’t a bit exciting. He spied on America. There’s no reason to celebrate this.”

Once Pollard’s parole restrictions were removed in November, it was a foregone conclusion that he would quickly make aliyah. Many Jewish officials in both the Trump administration and previous administrations expressed concern about the upcoming event that resonated with the angry poster on Twitter.

“I really hope you Israelis aren’t going to turn his arrival into a carnival,” one said recently, in a burst of frustration.

What explains their anger and frustration?

The facts of Pollard’s story are well known.

In 1984-85, as an intelligence analyst in the US Naval Intelligence, Pollard transferred highly classified information about the military capabilities of Arab militaries to Israeli intelligence officers in Washington.

After Pollard’s arrest, US and Israeli officials agreed to deal with the incident quickly and quietly. Pollard would confess in a plea agreement to transferring classified information to the US ally for the benefit of the ally. Israel would return all documents it received from Pollard. For their part, federal prosecutors would not request the maximum sentence for Pollard’s crime.

The plea bargain, both sides agreed, would save Israel and the US the embarrassing spectacle of a drawn-out trial. Pollard and the Israeli government were led to believe that he would serve something along the lines of the average prison term meted out for US citizens who transferred classified information to US allies – 2-4 years.

But after Pollard fulfilled his part of the bargain and pled guilty, and Israel returned the documents, then secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger changed the administration’s position on Pollard. In three secret memos to the sentencing judge, that last of which he delivered the morning of Pollard’s sentencing, Weinberger claimed Pollard had caused egregious harm to the US, endangered its forces in the Middle East and weakened its ties to Arab states. In his final memo Weinberger accused Pollard of “treason.” Since Pollard had waived his right to a trial, he had no meaningful opportunity to defend himself from Weinberger’s explosive claim.

On the weight of Weinberger’s accusation, the sentencing judge disregarded the recommendation for leniency and sentenced Pollard to life in prison.

In the decades that followed, several senior national security officials and lawmakers who reviewed Pollard’s classified file rejected Weinberger’s claims. They argued that based on the evidence, the initial plea bargain was accurate. While Pollard had helped Israel, he hadn’t harmed America. He had not committed treason. His punishment did not suit his crime. Weinberger himself admitted in a 2002 interview that the Pollard case was a “relatively minor matter” and “it was made much bigger than its actual importance.”

Most Israelis looked at these facts, and the vitriol with which Pollard was castigated by senior officials and concluded he was unjustly persecuted because he was a Jew who supported Israel.

In private conversations, many American Jews admitted the logic of the Israeli position and even agreed with it. But all the same, aside from a small minority of groups who worked tirelessly on Pollard’s behalf, keeping the story alive throughout the years, the community at large failed to demand justice for Pollard. Instead, they lashed out against him and against the Israelis who supported him.

They did this not because they were blind to the anti-Semitic nature of his treatment but because they were aware of it and feared it. They despised and resented Pollard because his plight reminded them of their weakness. The fact that he was unduly punished for passing information to the Jewish state brought home the fact that despite America’s warm welcome to the Jews, America wasn’t the new Promised Land. The Israelis had a point about the diaspora.

Even now, after Pollard has finally arrived in Israel, evidence abounds of the continued power and prevalence of the double standard. And to find it one need look no farther than the tragic tale of Larry Franklin.

Today, Franklin, a 74-year-old Irish Catholic lives in abject poverty with his invalid wife Patricia in West Virginia. Due to their indigence, they survive on food that Franklin finds in dumpsters behind local restaurants. Last month, the couple were hospitalized for several days after contracting food poisoning from spoiled scraps Franklin fished out of a trash bin.

16 years ago, as an Air Force colonel, Franklin served as the Iran desk officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In what became known as “the AIPAC spy scandal,” Franklin was arrested together with two AIPAC lobbyists. Franklin was accused of transferring classified information about Iran to the lobbyists. They were accused of transferring classified information to Israeli Embassy officials and to a Washington Post reporter.

The story was a bombshell. But once the dust settled, and the details emerged, it worked out that Franklin, a decorated intelligence analyst and operative, was the victim of an anti-Semitic plot. In 1999, the FBI opened an investigation of AIPAC employees and American Jewish Pentagon officials on suspicion of spying for Israel. The suspicions had no basis in fact. But that didn’t stop the investigators from searching under every rock to find a Jewish spy.

Franklin, who served as the Air Force attaché at the US Embassy in Israel in the 1990s, believed that Israel was the US’s most important ally in the Middle East. He viewed AIPAC, an organization dedicated to expanding the US-Israel alliance, as a positive force for good in Washington.

In 2003, Franklin became convinced that Iran was the primary threat to US forces in Iraq. He was concerned that the data he was seeing that led to his conclusion was not being adequately communicated to then-President George W. Bush. So he spoke of his concerns in general terms with the two AIPAC lobbyists and asked them to share them with their contacts at the National Security Council in the hopes that they in turn, would communicate those concerns to Bush.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about Franklin’s behavior. Government officials hold similar discussions with lobbyists, reporters and think tank scholars thousands of times a day, every day in Washington, DC. For government officials, such conversations are a legitimate means to advance their desired policies in the expansive process that surrounds American policymaking.

What Franklin didn’t know was that by speaking to the AIPAC lobbyists he had caught the eye of the investigators.

When FBI investigators first reached out to Franklin, he had no idea he had reason to worry. He met with them ten times without an attorney. But as the meetings proceeded, it dawned on him that the investigators were obsessive anti-Semites. One bragged that his uncle served as a Nazi general in World War II. Another insisted Hezbollah wasn’t a terror group.

And after he recognized he was sitting with stone-cold bigots, he also realized that they were waging a witch hunt against Jews in the Pentagon. They demanded that he help them “get the Jews.” When Franklin refused, they arrested him, along with his two colleagues from AIPAC.

Initially, AIPAC defended its employees. But after a threatening meeting with investigators, AIPAC crumpled. The pro-Israel lobby fired and denounced their long-serving loyal lobbyists.

It took a drawn-out, five-year battle, but in 2009, charges against both men were dismissed. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Franklin had already been destroyed.

Within a few months of his initial arrest, Franklin went bankrupt and had no option other than pleading guilty to something. During a search of his house, investigators found a classified document that he had brought home to work on while he cared for his wife. So he pleaded guilty to mishandling classified documents. As for his meetings with the AIPAC staffers, Franklin pleaded guilty to discussing a classified subject, (but not sharing classified information), with unauthorized persons.

“Crimes” like Franklin’s are committed thousands of times a day every day in Washington. Given their prevalence, the Justice Department’s decision to selectively prosecute Franklin for them was a gross injustice. All the same, the court initially sentenced Franklin to 12 years in prison. After the charges were dropped against the AIPAC staffers, his sentence was reduced to a 10-month suspended sentence. But Franklin was still undone. His felony conviction stripped him of his military and civilian pensions and barred him from working either in intelligence or in academia. Broke and denied all professional opportunities, Franklin was reduced to menial labor. He cleaned septic tanks, washed dishes, hauled furniture and parked cars. Now at 74, with his health failing and his wife incapacitated, Franklin has been reduced to eating scraps from dumpsters.

Last month, Franklin’s pro-bono attorney submitted a request for a pardon and restoration of his pensions to President Trump and his family and friends are praying Trump will grant it.

Franklin’s suffering is a product of the hostile climate that greets American Jews who support Israel in Washington, DC. The FBI’s ambush of a devout Catholic for his “crime” of not being an anti-Semite and for treating Jewish pro-Israel lobbyists as other lobbyists are treated, sends the message to Jews and non-Jews alike. Not only must they be careful of speaking with Israelis. They must be careful about speaking to American Jews who support Israel.

The Pollard saga, which finally ended this week, exposed a much larger tale. It is the tale of exile in America, the land that exile was not supposed to touch. And it is the tale of the divide between the Jews who accept this truth and those who do not.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick  

Source: http://carolineglick.com/pollard-and-the-great-jewish-divide/ 

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What a 'Green New Deal' Will Look Like - Discover the Networks

 

​ by Discover the Networks

And what it will mean for the everyday lives of Americans.

 

In light of the strong probability that a Biden administration will soon take office in the White House, Americans must prepare for the cold reality that one of Joe Biden’s foremost objectives will be to fulfill his party’s pledge to “decarbonize the power sector” by implementing “all zero-carbon technologies.” Toward that end, the Democrats will seek to enact a “Green New Deal,” the highly prized centerpiece of their environmental agenda. What, exactly, will that mean for the everyday lives of Americans.

The origins of the term “Green New Deal” — an idea founded on the premise that the greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide) associated with human industrial activity are responsible for potentially catastrophic “climate change” — can be traced back to Richard Murphy, a British tax scholar and political economy professor, who in 2007 collaborated with a number of newspaper editors, economists, and environmentalists to form a “Green New Deal Group.” This group proposed massive public expenditures to fund: (a) the development of a zero-carbon-emission transportation infrastructure wholly reliant on renewable (wind, water, and solar) energy sources; (b) the wide-scale insulation of homes to make them more energy-efficient; and (c) the establishment of training programs to develop a national corps of workers to carry out these objectives. To raise the money required in order to enact this initiative, Murphy advocated a combination of tax hikes on wealthy people and corporations, “straightforward deficit spending,” and the implementation of quantitative easing – a strategy whereby the government would establish a green infrastructure bank that would issue bonds which the government, in turn, could buy back. On July 21, 2008, Murphy’s “Green New Deal Group” published a report detailing its specific recommendations.

In a similar spirit, on October 22, 2008, the United Nations Environment Programme’s executive director, Achim Steiner, unveiled a “Global Green New Deal” initiative designed to simultaneously strengthen the world economy and curb climate change by creating jobs in a wide array of “green” industries. The following year, the United Nations drafted a report explicitly calling for a “Global Green New Deal” to promote government stimulus spending on renewable energy projects.

In 2008 as well, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama added a Green New Deal to his campaign platform. Obama’s ally, the self-identified revolutionary communist Van Jones — who in 2009 would become President Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” — made clear his desire to incrementally socialize, by stealth, the U.S. economy: “Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we’re not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether … until [the green economy] becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”

In 2012 and again in 2016, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein revived the idea by making a Green New Deal a central part of her campaigns. Moreover, the Green New Deal became part of the Green Party’s official platform.

In an October 2018 campaign appearance, Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made reference to a “Green New Deal” that would aim to make the U.S. 100 percent reliant on renewable energy sources (wind, water, solar) by the year 2035. “There’s no debate as to whether we should continue producing fossil fuels,” she said. “There’s no debate. We should not. Every single scientific consensus points to that.” In another campaign speech that same month, Ocasio-Cortez likened the fight against climate change to America’s battle against Nazi Germany. She also said that “the Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” and would thus “require the investment of trillions of dollars.”

Employing yet another metaphor, Ocasio-Cortez said at a December 2018 climate-change town hall meeting that the Green New Deal “is going to be the Great Society, the moonshot, the civil rights movement of our generation.”

Operationally, the Green New Deal, as originally described by Ocasio-Cortez, would eliminate all fossil fuels from the U.S. electric grid by 2030, thereby forcing Americans to use much more expensive and much less reliable energy sources such as wind and solar. The plan would also mandate trillions of dollars in public expenditures on government-approved “upgrades” and “retrofits” of all existing homes and businesses in the United States — e.g., installing insulation, weather stripping, thermal windows, and storm doors to make the buildings more “energy efficient” — and implementing zero-carbon standards for all new building construction.

It is noteworthy that although Ocasio-Cortez and some other Democrats began promoting a “Green New Deal” during the 2018 campaign season in the United States, it was not until December 2018 – well after Election Day – that their plan was actually fleshed out in the form of a tangible document. Remarkably, their Green New Deal was drafted during a single December weekend by young millennial staffers employed by Ocasio-Cortez and three like-minded progressive organizations – the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats, and the New Consensus. According to Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff: “We spent the weekend learning how to put laws together. We looked up how to write resolutions.” 

Within a matter of weeks, more than 100 congressional Democrats had officially signed on as co-sponsors of the Green New Deal.

In a January 2019 analysis of the Green New Deal’s call for the elimination of fossil fuels, the Heartland Institute points out that “when there is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, plants generally grow faster, which means there’s more food available to feed the world’s growing population of people and animals.” Aside from that, adds the Institute, “regardless of what we do in the United States, the rest of the world is going to continue increasing its fossil fuel use, more than offsetting any CO2 reductions we might make. Even if we were to commit economic suicide and pass the radical Green New Deal, total global CO2 emissions would still increase by billions of tons by 2030.” In short, any carbon-cutting measures taken by the United States would be doomed to irrelevance.

In addition to doing away with fossil fuels, the Green New Deal would seek to raise the living standards of low-income people by guaranteeing that they could be trained and hired for federal “green jobs” paying them at least $15-per-hour to implement the aforementioned upgrades, retrofits, and construction projects, thereby helping those people make a “just transition” from their previous occupations to the new “green economy.” The premise underlying these training/hiring policies is that some form of economic reparations or wealth transfer should be put in place to counteract America’s historical discrimination against “low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, [and] the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution, and other environmental harm.”

And the Green New Deal’s redistributionist measures would not stop there. Scholar Tim Huelskamp, who describes the plan as “the most radical socialist proposal in modern congressional history,” explains that its provisions extend far beyond matters that are even remotely associated with energy efficiency, the environment, and climate. That is, the Green New Deal seeks to remake the entire American economy:

“[T]heir real desire is to accomplish the Left’s longtime goal of moving the United States toward full adoption of socialism. This isn’t just a theory. Significant provisions of the Green New Deal reveal its true purpose of imposing socialism on an unprecedented scale. The plan would create a ‘basic income program’ and federal jobs guarantee providing a ‘living wage’ to everybody who says they want one. It would impose a federal-government-run, single-payer health care system with bureaucrats and liberal politicians in Washington, D.C. in charge of every American’s health care. It would encourage the Federal Reserve to unleash inflation and create a system of government-owned banks to ‘create’ tens of trillions of dollars needed to fund these immense programs. None of these proposals has anything at all to do with climate change.”

On February 5, 2019 — two days prior to formally unveiling her Green New Deal Resolution — Ocasio-Cortez released a backgrounder that laid out all the major provisions of the Resolution. It included a subtle but enormously consequential change from previous descriptions of the Green New Deal. Instead of seeking to entirely eliminate fossil-fuel use in America by 2030, the goal would now be to develop a “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” economy by that point in time. As the climate activist website Generation Yes explains, this means “reducing the volume of greenhouse gas emissions that human activity releases into the atmosphere until our total output is no greater than the emissions we remove, through activities like planting carbon forests, reducing deforestation and using technologies like carbon capture and storage.” “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years,” said Ocasio-Cortez’s backgrounder, “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The long-term objective, however, was to “transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s Resolution was replete with additional ambitious goals, as the backgrounder made plain:

• “Create millions of family supporting-wage, union jobs” in the so-called green energy sector, funded by public money;
• “Repair and upgrade U.S. infrastructure” at a cost of “$4.6 trillion at minimum”;
• “Upgrade or replace every building in [the] U.S. for state-of-the-art energy efficiency”;
• “Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, [and] create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle”; and
• “Plant lots of trees” in order to reduce deforestation.

In addition to environmental and energy matters, the Green New Deal would “build on FDR’s second bill of rights by guaranteeing” a number of major benefits:

• “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work”;
• “a [federal] job with a family-sustaining wage” for those who are in fact able and willing to work; 
• “family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security” for all workers;
• “high-quality education, including higher education and trade schools,” with all tuition costs covered by the government;
• “access to nature”;
• “healthy food”;
• “high-quality health care”; and
• “safe, affordable, adequate housing.”

In a Washington Post interview in July 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief-of-staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, acknowledged that the Green New Deal had not been devised to protect the environment, but rather to implement socialism. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys [reporters] think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

And so, in an unguarded moment of honesty, a key figure in the Green New Deal’s creation let the proverbial cat out of the bag. It isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about implementing socialism in a stealth, deceptive manner, on the fraudulent pretext of “saving the planet.”

 

Discover the Networks  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/what-green-new-deal-will-look-discover-networks/ 

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Video: Who Is Stealing America? - Frontpagemag.com

 

​ by Frontpagemag.com

The first documentary film on the 2020 election investigation.

 

Following election night, the investigative team at The Epoch Times went to work to uncover the controversy behind the election. Senior investigative reporter Joshua Phillip traveled across the country to swing states to interview whistleblowers, big data experts, and election experts. This film documents what he uncovered. Check out the full film below:

 

 

Frontpagemag.com  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/documentary-who-stealing-america-first-documentary-frontpage-editors/ 

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