Tag Archives: New York

John Kachelman, Jr.: Lunacy In Real Time 4 (1)

by John Kachelman, Jr.

You can ignore this, but you cannot escape it!

I love words—their etymology is an amazing study; their composition knits an amazing narrative.

The word of the day for me is the noun “lunacy.” Its earliest use is found in the 1540s and describes the “condition of being a lunatic.” Originally this was used in reference to intermittent periods of insanity, such as were believed to be triggered by the moon’s cycle (hence the tern “lunar” was incorporated and especially during the “full-moon” periods). In later legal use this term evolved to reference any unsoundness (ill-healthy) of mind rendering one incapable of civil transactions or management of personal affairs. A weakened sense is an “act of madness or folly” used from the 1580s.

“Lunacy” is the direct opposite of “reason.” The one devoid of reason is a lunatic.

Immediately associated is the “mental health” of King Nebuchadnezzar as described in Daniel 4. The King “lost” all mental health when he trusted in himself. The King regained his mental health when he returned and submitted to God for directions. This is found in 4:34-36“But…I…raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are of no account, but He does according to His will among the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can fend off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’ At that time my reason returned to me.”

Currently the USA is living in real-time lunacy!

From Jim Gammon I received this email that well frames the focus of this article…

“From the great High Sheriff of the High Plains, who has gone south to get the chill out of his bones! Some observations worth reading:

“I never dreamed that I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America, at least not the one I have known all my life. I have never wished to live anywhere else. This is my home and I was privileged to be born here.

“But today I woke up and as I had my morning coffee, I realized that everything is changing for the worse. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, no matter how much I pray, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same.

“I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life—so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone.

“We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!

“You cannot justify this insanity:

• If a guy pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.

• Somehow, it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.

• Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.

• It was cool for Joe Biden to “blackmail” the President of Ukraine, but was an impeachable offense if Donald Trump inquired about it.

• Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.

• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.

• People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees. (40% never finish)

• Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.

• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang member or terrorist who jumps the southern fence is welcome.

• $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.

• If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.

• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.

• We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan for us.

• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

• Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of THEIR rights.

• And…pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us “racists”

“Nothing makes sense anymore – no values, no morals, and no civility. People are dying of a Chinese virus, but it’s racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China.  We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong but killing unborn babies is okay!                                                

 “WE have ALL been forewarned: ISAIAH 5:20 – Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.  

Wake up America, the great unsinkable ship “America” has hit an iceberg, it’s taking on water, and is sinking fast. We Americans are drowning. Speak up while you still have breath and a voice for soon you will have neither if you don’t!

“Some days you’re the dog; some days you’re the hydrant.”

Well said and you can add multiple points from the current climate of lunacy that is controlling the population’s thoughts and behaviors.

Illustrating the reality of this condition is the below report that you will say “absurd!” BUT, is it any more absurd than the daily behaviors so visible by our current society?  The Scripture is very specific in teaching that when mankind forsakes God and trusts in his own understanding that “reason” is lost. History is very specific in validating that when a nation loses its “reason” because it has forsaken God and trusted in his own understanding, it will be erased. The below report is astonishing but it lays bare and exposes the folly of our culture. It can be used for comedic scoffing but the danger in doing that is that we blind ourselves to the reality of our decaying culture.

Act incredulous that this is not happening and will not impact your life, but it is a reality that you will eventually accept. Joke about it; forward memes about it; ignore it; criticize it…but it is a real-time destructive factor in your civility and family!

Another word from the 1540s is the adjective “insidious.” It refers to that which is “deceitful, cunning, artful, treacherous.” It is a compound word from one term meaning to “plot, snare, ambush,” and from a second meaning to “sit on, occupy.” It is used to refer to cunning actions suggesting that the unfriendly is lying in wait, intending to entrap.

Our real-time lunacy is empowered by those intent on using cunning fears to entrap and disable our reason. We are being convinced that truth is no longer absolute; that science is the controlling god; that a fluid standard of right/wrong is within the individual’s choice; that following the multitudes in lunacy is the best thing to do.

Here is an astonishing illustration of where you are in this lunacy. Please check the links embedded as they take you to unbelievable actions.

Art World

An Italian Artist Auctioned Off an ‘Invisible Sculpture’ for $18,300. It’s Made Literally of Nothing

“It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” Salvatore Garau said of his sculpture.

Taylor DafoeJune 3, 2021

Italian conceptualist Salvatore Garau, via Instagram.

From the department of “They sold that for how much?!” comes today’s story, about an Italian artist who, for the cool price of €15,000 ($18,300), recently auctioned an artwork that is… well, nothing.

Last month, the 67-year-old artist Salvatore Garau sold an “immaterial sculpture”—which is to say that it doesn’t exist.

To be fair, the artist might disagree on conceptual grounds. For Garau, the artwork, titled lo sono (which translates to “I am”), finds form in its own nothingness. “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” he told the Spanish news outlet Diario AS. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”

Lo Sono went up for sale in May at the Italian auction house Art-Rite. The pre-sale estimate valued the piece between €6,000-9,000, according to AS, but competing bidders pushed the price tag to €15,000.

The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, per Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction.

“When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms,” the artist went on.

If you thought that was artsy claptrap, he goes on to draw a rather lofty comparison to the work: “After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?” he added.

The artist didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lo Sono isn’t the only artwork of its kind in Garau’s oeuvre. In February of this year, at the Piazza Della Scala in Milan, the artist exhibited BUDDHA IN CONTEMPLATION, a similarly invisible sculpture demarcated by a square of tape on a cobble-stoned walkway. Meanwhile, this week, he installed APHRODITE CRIES in front of the New York City stock exchange. The effort, evidenced by an empty white circle, was supported by the Italian Cultural Institute.

“You don’t see it but it exists; it is made of air and spirit,” he explained in a video documenting the Milan piece. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination, a power that anyone has, even those who don’t believe they have it.”

Indeed, many people on the internet seem to be having trouble tapping into that power. “So you really just taped a square and called that a sculpture?” reads the most-liked comment on the video page.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181


John Kachelman, Jr. is a Christian patriot, preacher, and missionary for Jesus Christ to foreign countries. He lives in Montgomery, AL.

Peter Rykowski: Illinois Implements Vaccine Passports, Mandates 4 (1)

by Peter Rykowski

Illinois has adopted draconian vaccine passport and mandate policies, opening the door to increasingly tyrannical proposals.

On August 11, 2021, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) announced it had created a portal called “Vax Verify” that will allow individuals to easily show their vaccination status to businesses and other entities.

Although officials did not label the “Vax Verify” system as a “vaccine passport,” in reality, it is essentially identical to the other vaccine-passport apps used in other states such as CaliforniaNew Jersey, and New York. Furthermore, this portal gives businesses, government entities, and other institutions the ability to deny services to unvaccinated individuals.

The IDPH’s director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, confirmed the portal’s intent to enable vaccine passports. He stated, “As more businesses, events, organizations, and others require proof of vaccination, Illinois residents will be able to confirm using Vax Verify that they have been vaccinated for COVID-19.”

Additionally, Illinois local officials had previously, and publicly, discussed implementing “Vax Passes” that are nearly identical to the current “Vax Verify” system. This system is a first, and necessary, step toward further and more extreme actions.

Already, multiple Illinois businesses have mandated that customers have the vaccine in order to do business with them, while certain portions of the Illinois State Fair are requiring individuals to be vaccinated. Furthermore, Illinois and Chicago officials are working on an even broader vaccine passport system.

The “Vax Verify” system also has serious privacy problems. For example, the program requires individuals to verify their information through a specific credit-tracking company, and it could allow businesses to track individuals. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Illinois’ vaccine passport system is “one of the worst.”

Vaccine Mandates

In addition to implementing vaccine passports, Illinois is implementing a vaccine mandate, joining other statescities, and federal agencies. On August 11, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced that all state employees in “high-contact settings” will be ordered to get the coronavirus vaccine. This is likely a first step toward broader and more tyrannical mandates.

Illinois’ vaccine passport and mandate schemes are steps toward the creation of a social-credit system, where unvaccinated individuals are discriminated against and unable to fully participate in society. It is also the beginning of a digital health ID, which denies individuals their privacy in medical matters.

Illinois’ vaccination policies are only the latest actions taken by the state to promote a leftist, anti-freedom agenda. In recent years, for example, it has enacted anti-police and pro-crime legislation, ordered teachers to promote sexual deviancy and indoctrinate their students with far-left ideology, ratified the Equal Rights Amendment 36 years after the deadline expired, and imposed stringent lockdown measures in 2020. As evidence of Illinoisans’ dissatisfaction with their state’s economic and political condition, it has been ranked among the top states to abandon. Furthermore, Illinois was one of only three states to see a population decline in the 2020 Census.

If the Illinois General Assembly has any respect for the U.S. Constitution, it will put an end to the state’s vaccine passport and mandate schemes. Furthermore, citizens in Illinois and other states would be wise to follow Senator Rand Paul’s advice and “simply say no” to the various mandates and other restrictions imposed by all levels of government.

Illinois residents can contact their legislators in opposition to the state’s vaccine passport and mandate policies by visiting The John Birch Society’s legislative alert here. Everyone can take action against forced vaccinations in their respective states by visiting JBS’s national and 50-state alert here.


NA: https://thenewamerican.com/illinois-implements-vaccine-passports-mandates/

 

Bill Lockwood: Black Supremacy Taking America? 4 (1)

by Bill Lockwood

Imagine yourself being at the Custer Battlefield, MT, where Gen. George Armstrong Custer met his end in the Battle of the Little Big Horn against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in 1876.

As you enter the National Park you read a sign that says, “For Indians and People of Indian Descent in Particular”: (1) “Decenter yourself and come to listen, learn, mourn, and witness.” “Remember, you are here to support, not to be supported.” In other words, be supportive of Custer, the Americans, and the White Man.

(2) “Be mindful of whether your volume, pace and movements are supporting or undermining your efforts to decenter yourself.” Translation: if you are of Indian descent, control yourself and your peers. This holy site must not be desecrated by your loudness. You must show reverence.

(3) “Seek to contribute to the energy of the space, rather than drain it. Bring your own processing to other Indian folks so that you will not harm White People.” This is demanding that Indians be worshipful towards whites.

(4) “Consider if you want or need to take photos and post them. Do not take photos of other people without your consent.” Photographs are discouraged.

(5) “If you witness Indians doing problematic things, speak up with compassion to take the burden off of White folks and our siblings of the Caucasian race whenever appropriate. Seek to engage rather than escalate, so that it can be a learning moment rather than a disruption.” Plainly, do not argue about your Indian guilt—just admit it—and be respectful.

What would you think? Besides the obvious unabashed racism, you would assume immediately that the culture that allowed such a sign was controlled solely by White Supremacists. Be respectful to whites. You would also be suspicious that we are not likely to learn anything about the real history of the event.

Or, imagine being at the 9-11 Memorial in NYC. A sign at the front entrance instructs Muslims only to be respectful. Admit Islamic guilt as you enter. Take off your shoes, for you are on holy ground.

Actually, you cannot imagine the above. Our culture is to tilted against only one group of people—white people. Above are the exact instructions emblazoned on a sign at “George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis, directed “White People in particular.” It is declared to be a “sacred space for community, public grief, and protest.” Protest against whiteness.

Our culture is witnessing, in the name of fighting “Whiteness,” and “White supremacy,” a Black Supremacy that is taking over America. And you thought it was about alleged police brutality.

Alex Newman: “Hail Satan”- After Terrorizing Churches, BLM Witchcraft Exposed 5 (2)

by Alex Newman

There is now proof that there are very dark forces behind Black Lives Matter, and it’s not just the blatant Marxism of its founders and leaders. The darkness literally includes summoning dead spirits and allowing them to work through BLM leaders. Sound crazy? BLM bosses admit it.

Clues about the true nature of BLM have been available for quite some time. Last month, Black Lives Matter activists terrorized church attendees in Troy, New York, while chanting “hail Satan.” They even shrieked at black families and young mothers trying to get in the building. Just this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a church with a “Black Lives Matter” sign on it was torched by BLM activists. In a video that went viral this week, a mob of white BLM activists shout at a couple at a D.C. restaurant for refusing to raise their fists, with one activist asking the confused victims, “Are you a Christian?”

Now, newly released audio recordings reveal the occult practices, ancestor worship, African paganism, and literal witchcraft of at least one of the national group’s co-founders, as well as the founder of BLM’s Los Angeles chapter. Apparently the entire George Soros-funded leadership of BLM is involved in these practices as well.

In the audio, BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors, who boasted in a TV interview of being a “trained Marxist,” revealed that she is also consulting spiritual entities and allowing them to “work through” her. “I’m calling for spirituality to be deeply radical,” she said. “We’re not just having a social justice movement, this is a spiritual movement.”

Of course, Christians, pointing to Ephesians 6:12 and its reference to spiritual warfare, have been making this argument since the fruit of BLM became more clear: destruction, hate, looting, burning, Marxism, division, riots, and more. But until recently, the spiritual nature of the struggle was simply inferred and deduced from the Bible and the news. Now, the proof is available to all.

In a recorded conversation with Cullors, BLM Los Angeles founder and California State University Professor of “African Studies” Melina Abdulla reveals more than she thought she should have. “Maybe I’m sharing too much, but we’ve become very intimate with the spirits that we call on regularly, right.” she explained. “Like, each of them seems to have a different presence and personality, you know. I laugh a lot with Wakisha, you know. And I didn’t meet her in her body, right, I met her through this work.”

Cullors echoes the sentiments of Abdulla. “It’s a very important practice, um, hashtags are for us, are way more than a hashtag, it is, um, literally almost resurrecting a spirit so they can work through us to get the work that we need to get done,” said Cullors, one of the three founders of BLM. “I started to feel personally connected and responsible and accountable to them, both from a deeply political place, but also from a deeply spiritual place.”

“Always, you know, in my tradition you offer things that that your loved one who passed away would want, you know, whether it’s like honey or tobacco, things like that,” the trained Marxist and BLM co-founder continued. “And that’s so important, not just for us to be in direct relationship to our people who’ve passed, but also for them to know we’ve remembered them. Um, I believe so many of them work through us.”

Cullors also admits that the very first thing BLM leaders do when they hear of a “murder” is to pray to the spirits and “pour libation.” Again, she emphasized, this is not just about “racial and social justice.” “At its core, it’s a spiritual movement,” she continued. “You can’t pretend like that work is just organizing work. That’s, you know, that’s some serious stuff.”

The whole “say his name” mantra also has deep spiritual significance, according to Cullors. “When we say the names, right, so we speak their names, we say her name, say their names, we do that all the time that, you kind of invoke that spirit, and then those spirits actually become present with you,” she explained, revealing something that virtually none of the “useful idiots” attending BLM rallies understand.

“Spirituality is at the center of Black Lives Matter, and I think that’s not just for us, I feel like so many, um, leaders and so many organizers, um, are deeply engaged and in a pretty, um, important spiritual practice,” Cullors continued. “I don’t think I could I could do this work without that. I don’t think I could do it as long as I’ve done it, and as consistently. Um, it feels like if I didn’t do that it would be antithetical to this work.”

Talk-show host and Christian attorney Abraham Hamilton, III, first aired the audio recordings on August 19 during his show The Hamilton Corner. His conclusion is that the conversation proves top BLM leaders are involved in witchcraft, “summoning the spirits of the dead,” and engaging in other satanic practices that are firmly condemned and strictly prohibited in the Bible.

“What they are describing is their adherence to the Yoruba religion of Ifa, to where they are summoning dead spirits,” Hamilton explained before getting into more depth about the occult pagan practices. What Cullors revealed, Hamilton continued, is exactly what the Apostle Paul was referring to in Ephesians when he explained that Christians wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness.

Quoting the Bible, Hamilton also noted the link between those who sacrifice children to demon gods such as Molech (abortion) and summoning spirits (witchcraft). Interestingly, the Yoruba were known for practicing human sacrifice until Christianity became more prevalent in the region.

The Bible is very clear about what is happening here, as consulting spirits of the dead is strictly prohibited. In fact, under the Old Testament law revealed by God for Israel, necromancy — consulting the dead — was punishable by death. All those who do it are described as “detestable” to God. Multiple passages in the Old and New Testaments also suggest that the supposed “spirits” that necromancers and witches believe they are communicating with, or sacrificing things to, are in fact demons.

Professor Abdulla’s voice message machine said she was on sabbatical for the 2019-2020 academic year. Nobody answered any of the other phone numbers listed at the Pan-African Studies department, and messages seeking comment by The New American were not returned. Abdulla did not respond to an e-mail before press time.

 

Terrorizing Churches

Even before the audio became public, the true nature of BLM was becoming obvious for all to see. Last month, supposedly responding to a church’s giveaway of an AR-15, BLM activists terrorized black and white churchgoers alike in Troy. They literally beat Christian adults and harassed little children while shouting obscenities and chanting “hail Satan.”

A young mother and her very young children, as well as a black family, had to be escorted by church members through the screaming mob of BLM supporters. The mob threatened to call Child Protective Services on parents in the church and started shrieking “save those kids” as families walked by. At least one protester even threatened to torch the church.

While the scenes at Grace Baptist Church were captured on video and made headlines across conservative-leaning independent media, the establishment’s propaganda organs had a virtual black-out on the story. Only the local paper ran an article — a highly biased “article” against the church. No politicians rushed to condone the violence and hatred on display. The government official involved has not been fired.

The mob was angry about a variety of issues, especially the church’s decision to give away an AR-15 rifle. On several occasions over the last decade, the church has given away or raffled off the classic and highly popular AR-15 rifle, partly in response to unconstitutional government attacks on the right to keep and bear arms. The church said on social media that it had no regrets over its decisions.

Much of the barbarism was caught on video. One clip, for instance, shows violent BLM supporters physically attacking church members. At about 1:20 in the video, a protester can be seen grabbing a church attendee and putting him in a headlock after a verbal spat. Another BLM activist then begins savagely beating the victim, throwing punch after punch after punch. A man identified by the church as Alexander Contompasis was seen punching two church members from behind before pushing the pastor. Police eventually show up to stop the physical attacks on churchgoers.

In a statement to The New American, Pastor John Koletas said the church has stood firmly against communism and totalitarianism since it was founded in 1987. “Too many Americans view the church as weak and apathetic to self defense and the biblical command to arm ourselves,” he said, explaining the decision to give away a semi-automatic rifle in light of that and unconstitutional gun-control policies. “We wanted to be an encouragement to lawful gun owners who had been vilified by the anti-Christian, socialist media and fake, phony, and fraudulent religious leaders.”

“When this year’s gun giveaway was announced, it brought out the God haters and devilish forces again,” Koletas continued, adding that the reasons for the attack by the BLM mob included anger over the church continuing to hold services during coronavirus, the preaching, and the promotion of firearms ownership through the AR-15 giveaway. “All were angry that we refused to back down on all accounts.”

Koletas expressed shock about the “screaming” mob of BLM activists who “mocked and jeered” a black missionary family that was attending. Other videos recorded during the attacks showed a man, identified by the church as Lukee Forbes, berating a black man on the steps of the church. The reason: “He dared to stand with the church instead of the communist detractors,” Koletas said, adding that Forbes was a government employee of the City of Albany who did time in prison for nearly beating a homosexual to death after a “Pride” parade.

Making matters worse is that the police refused to intervene until the mob actually became physically violent, Koletas said. In fact, they even sent some church members away rather than protect their rights to religious liberty, freedom of association, and private property from the angry BLM mob. “A black couple from our church were turned away by the police because of the mob: ‘tonight might not be the best day to go to church,’” he continued.

The pastor responded to the hate and extremism by inviting the mob inside, hoping for peaceful dialogue and that the angry protesters would benefit from hearing about the Bible. Some went in, but when invited to receive salvation, they became disruptive, with some again threatening violence and bearing false witness against the pastor, he explained.

All of that evil should have been evidence enough to understand the reality of what is going on and what BLM is really about. But the true spiritual nature of the BLM mob was even more clearly evident throughout the mob’s rampage. According to Koletas and other witnesses, as well as video evidence, an actual witch stood outside the church with candles and ritual drawings. Cries of “hail Satan” could be heard clearly, too.

The spiritual implications of the billionaire-funded BLM attack on America are becoming clearer. As The New American has been documenting for months, the Marxism and the hatred of the BLM has been beyond dispute for quite some time. Now, the occult connections of the leadership and the spiritual nature of the battle are beyond dispute, too.

BLM is not just an attack on liberty, property, statues of great Americans, history, and Western civilization. It is an attack on Christianity and God, too. Churches must take their rightful place on the front lines.

TNR: https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/item/36848-hail-satan-after-terrorizing-churches-blm-witchcraft-exposed


Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Robert Spencer: Elle Magazine Puts White Linda Sarsour on Its List of ‘Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020’ 0 (0)

by Robert Spencer

Elle magazine seems somewhat embarrassed by its list, published last week, of “20 Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020.” The article now carries this prominent disclaimer: “The below list was compiled by She the People, a national non profit network of women of color committed to social justice and voter mobilization. A previous version of this story did not make clear that the list was compiled by She the People and not ELLE magazine.” This was added because Elle faced a backlash for including the vehemently anti-Semitic Leftist activist Linda Sarsour on the list. But no one seems to have noticed another problem: the list is of “women of color,” and Sarsour is white.

Such minor quibbles will fall on deaf ears among Leftists. For the Left is at war not just with conservatives, but with reality itself. This has been clear for quite some time. Instead of trying to achieve some reconciliation with the nature of things as they are, the Left is growing ever more divorced from truth, reason, and ineluctable facts. For example, witness the hijab-wearing feminist (an oxymoron just as much as a white “woman of color,” as white is not a color in the Left’s world) Linda Sarsour’s magical race transformation.

It has been absurd enough to see Sarsour, a hijab-wearing defender of that most misogynistic of legal codes, Sharia, emerge as a champion of women’s rights and a feminist leader. But that was rational compared to the weapons-grade absurdity that Elle, or She The People, is now serving up regarding this palest of “women of color.”

The stage was set for Elle to anoint Sarsour as a “woman of color in politics to watch in 2020” several years ago, when the blogger Elder of Ziyon made an amazing discovery: Linda Sarsour claimed she “magically changed from white to a ‘woman of color’ in an instant,” just by putting on a hijab.

It’s true: in a Vox video published in January 2017, Sarsour said: When I wasn’t wearing hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City.

But in an April 2017 interview of this hero of feminism, there is this: After watching Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Dangerous Minds, Sarsour decided to become a high school teacher, “inspiring young people of color like me, to show them their potential.” She graduated a year early, gave birth to her eldest son, and enrolled in community college.

In the ensuing controversy, Linda Sarsour doubled down, saying: I’m Palestinian. If I want to say “I’m black,” I’m black!

What did being Palestinian have to do in Linda Sarsour’s crowded mind with her spurious claim of blackness? Well, it’s a fictional nationality, so Sarsour might as well take on a fictional race to go along with it. Maybe she was saying that since she had already made one fantasy a cornerstone of her public identity, adding another couldn’t hurt. As The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process demonstrates, the “Palestinians” as a people were indistinguishable from the neighboring Arabs. The “Palestinian” ethnicity or nationality was never known or mentioned throughout human history until the 1960s, when Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented it as a stick to beat the Israelis with. Tiny Israel arrayed against 22 hostile Arab countries looked like the plucky, heroic underdog; but the tinier “Palestinian” people facing the massive Israeli war machine reversed the narrative.

PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977: The Palestinian people does not exist.

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a “Palestinian,” I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem.

However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

If Islamic jihadis (with considerable help from Marxist strategists) can invent an entire ethnic group, why can’t Linda Sarsour, a proud member of this invented ethnic group, change races? For “tactical reasons,” in order to identify with the fashionable victim classes instead of with the universally designated oppressor, white people?

Elle’s article shows that Sarsour’s tactic has worked wonderfully, and reality can take the hindmost. The Left left it behind long ago, and if you still pay attention to it, you’re just not woke.

PJM: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/elle-puts-white-linda-sarsour-on-its-list-of-women-of-color-in-politics-to-watch-in-2020/


Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS

Pamela Geller: The Ground Zero Mosque Project Is Back 0 (0)

by Pamela Geller

Lest we forget, the building of the intended “Islamic center” was destroyed in the 911 Islamic attacks. Human remains were found on the site. 9/11 families were joined by immigrants from India, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Africa, Iran and Europe to show opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque at our protest at Ground Zero. Others flew in from overseas to speak or just to share their particular ethnic communities’ experiences at the hands of moslems.

The news was buried under two dense paragraphs and five large photos in an article in New York YIMBY about a different project: “Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center.”  The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project, a long buried effort to build a triumphal mosque at the site of the worst jihad terror attack in American history, is back.

Construction has yet to begin, but it will: the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal, has been working to build this sinister structure for years.

We defeated the Ground Zero Mosque project once before.  The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built.  Our efforts in showing what an insult it was to the American people and to the victims of 9/11, and how many Muslims worldwide would inevitably view it as a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad attack, defeated it.  Tens of thousands of people came out for our rallies in lower Manhattan against this celebration of this 9/11 attacks, and El-Gamal was beaten in the court of public opinion.

It was a long battle.  President Obama announced his support for the mosque at an Iftar dinner, no less.  Then-mayor of New York City and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg supported the mosque as well, claiming hysterically that “if we don’t build it, the terrorists will win!”  The media actively campaigned for it — the elites in their increasingly fragile ivory towers relentlessly stumped for the Cordoba mosque (euphemistically called an Islamic center with a prayer space) for years.

And yet despite all this opposition and much more, the people stood up and fought the Ground Zero Mosque and won.  An army of Davids.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Crains New York reported on El-Gamal’s new project in 2015 in a story that demonstrated how the developer was hoping to sneak his triumphal mosque into existence: “Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place.  The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.”

That sounded normal enough.  But then the article added: “Adjacent to the tower, Soho Properties will build a public plaza connected to a three-story Islamic museum and prayer space.”  An Islamic prayer space is a mosque.  The article also said: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email.  ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.’”

I think an Islamic museum at Ground Zero dedicated to the half-billion victims of jihadi wars, land appropriations, sharia, cultural annihilations, enslavements, and sharia enforcement is an excellent idea, but is that what Sharif El-Gamal had in mind?  Of course not.  And how did El-Gamal plan to finance this?  The answer was predictable.  The New York Post reported in May 2016 that “the developer of the failed Ground Zero Mosque has nailed down ‘Sharia-compliant financing’ for a new, luxury condominium tower and Islamic cultural museum on the same site, he and his banking partners said.”

Then in May 2017, the New York Times ran a story entitled “Condo Tower to Rise Where Muslim Community Center Was Proposed.”  The Times said that “45 Park Place, a 43-story condominium that will soon rise three blocks from the World Trade Center,” was “something of a consolation prize for the developer,” as it “replaces the developer’s 2010 plan to build a 15-story Islamic mosque and cultural center on this site, an idea that erupted into a national controversy and cable news network bonanza.”

In the last couple of years, there has been virtually no news about this “Islamic museum.”  But the New York YIMBY story shows that the project has been advancing under cover of darkness.  A 71-foot-tall structure is three stories high, as in the revised plans announced in 2015.

El-Gamal has many friends and allies among New York City’s political and media elites.  It is likely that de Blasio city officials and the New York Times and other city papers all met with El-Gamal and agreed to keep the reporting on this project to an absolute minimum, so that it could get built without incurring the righteous anger of the public again.  The first time around, they courted publicity and tried to make El-Gamal a hero.  We demolished that and destroyed their plans.  So now they’ve clearly decided to go ahead surreptitiously.

It is disgusting that El-Gamal continues to taunt Americans and poke at America’s most egregious recent memory.  El-Gamal was there when we had tens of thousands in the streets opposing his Ground Zero mosque.  He knows how angry and upset people get at these Islamic structures on the site of jihad war.  The 9/11 Muslim terrorists extolled Allah no fewer than 90 times in their last letters.  Will those letters be on display at this Islamic cultural center/museum?

There is an important lesson to be learned here — and one we would be wise to adopt.  They never stop.  No matter how absolutely they lose, how many setbacks they suffer, they keep on pursuing their supremacist goals.

The Ground Zero Mosque project was and is a middle finger to the American people.  There has never been a mosque of reconciliation and healing built on the site of a jihadi attack.  Ever.  It is, on the other hand, an Islamic pattern to build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.  History is riddled with triumphal mosques built on the sites of jihad attacks or appropriated from other religions: the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and innumerable mosques built on the sites of Hindu temples that were demolished by Muslims all attest to that.

And now it looks as if Sharif El-Gamal is going to be able to build his own triumphal mosque at Ground Zero after all.

GR: https://gellerreport.com/2019/12/gzm-back.html/


Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of The Geller Report and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of Fatwa: Hunted in America (foreword by Geert Wilders) (Dangerous Books), The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton) (Simon & Schuster) and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books). She is also a regular columnist for numerous publications.

Alex Newman: UN Speakers Push Population Reduction for “Climate Emergency” 0 (0)

by Alex Newman

MADRID — To deal with the alleged “climate emergency,” reducing the number of people on the planet is high on the agenda among activists and speakers at the United Nations COP25 “climate” summit. The growing extremism and even paranoia among population-control advocates, who worry that more people will release more CO2 into the atmosphere, is reaching deafening levels. But the establishment media is largely keeping silent.

The advocates of population control and population reduction are divided, though, on what particular peoples and groups should be targeted most heavily. One key speaker at the UN summit said “white men” and especially Americans and Swedes must stop having babies. An exhibitor promoting “sustainable development,” meanwhile, argued that Africans and Asians ought to be the key target of the depopulation. Others think all of the above.

What means should be used was also a subject of debate. Some activists and speakers promoted propaganda, indoctrination, tax-funded contraception, abortion, ubiquitous birth-control availability, and even coercive population-reduction measures. Others say even more drastic means are needed to deal with the “emergency.” One UN speaker went even further earlier this year, suggesting that actually “killing” people could be on the table.

A major speaker at the UN summit, Oscar-winning director Michael Wadleigh (shown above) of “Woodstock” fame, minced no words in an interview with The New American. “Don’t have children — and I’m looking at you, white man,” he said on camera, speaking in a deep voice, echoing comments he made in high-profile official speeches at the summit.

The reason why it is so important to reduce the population of Europeans and their descendants is because their nations are more developed and they consume more resources, he said. Even Scandinavia and Sweden, which have a “clean” image, are destroying the planet, Wadleigh continued, warning that average Swedes consume 40 times more than average Tanzanians. Even socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is not radical enough on these issues, he said.

“If you were into population control or population reduction, which is good idea worldwide, you should go to Sweden, because if your efforts resulted in one less baby in Sweden, that would be equal to your efforts to go to Africa and reduce populations by 46 percent, sorry, by 46 people in Africa,” said the director turned population-control activist, who spoke just a few hours prior on the same stage as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Wadleigh, who has one child and works closely with the UN, crunched the numbers and became convinced. “So where does it make sense to start your population reduction efforts? Start with the people who are the highest per capita emitters, if your goal is to reduce climate change and unsustainable development,” he explained, without noting that the environment in more developed countries such as Sweden, America, Switzerland, Japan, and so on is generally far cleaner than in Third World nations.

Prominent population-control advocates such as neo-Malthusian Paul Erlich of “Population Bomb” fame and Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren have offered radical ideas on this subject. In their 1977 book EcoScience, the duo — who at the time were peddling “global cooling” alarmism — discussed mandatory abortions and adding “sterilizing agents” to the water supply as potential tools for bringing population levels under control.

When asked if those ideas might be going too far, Wadleigh smiled and responded: “You haven’t heard me talk yet!” The ultra-left-wing UN speaker, a fan of communism, did not elaborate on how much further he would be willing to go to reduce human numbers, before going on to speak about what he sees as over-consumption.

In one of his UN talks from one of the most prominent stages in the entire convention, Wadleigh emphasized the need for government coercion to achieve his vision. One of his main messages was the need to drastically reduce consumption. “We can no longer do this voluntarily,” said Wadleigh, pining for a global government that he said did not yet exist. “Make it a law, not a voluntary action.”

A few hours later, former Senator Kerry took the same stage to bad-mouth America and lie about all sorts of things. Among other “climate whoppers,” he claimed that solar energy was now cheaper than traditional forms of energy “by every metric.” If that were true, everybody would be using it, of course.

Rather than targeting Western nations — virtually all of which have birth rates at less than replacement levels — others in Madrid for the COP25 proposed targeting Third World populations. Alejandro Moran Rodriguez, for example, a UN volunteer at the COP25, was manning a booth promoting the UN’s controversial “Sustainable Development Goals.” He told Rebel News that countries in Africa and in Asia should be high on the list for population-control, because they do not have “that culture.” And so, governments must “manage their population,” he said, calling for UN enforcement of contraception.

Another UN speaker also veered into the highly controversial and sensitive area. Self-described “Eco-Social Strategist” Stuart Scott with the group Scientists Warning, who gave almost a dozen talks and press conferences throughout COP25, spoke on topics such as “Too Many Of Us.” “It is undeniable that humanity’s footprint is the number of us times the consumption,” he said, adding that concerns over upsetting religious people were holding back necessary discussions on how to limit the number of human beings on the planet. The Christian Bible, for example, calls on people to “be fruitful and multiply.”

But Scott does not think that is a good idea at all. Pointing to Project Drawdown, Scott suggested that “educating females” and making tax-funded “family planning” available to them would be among the top three ways to reduce CO2 emissions if combined into one package. “The topic [of population control] needs to be part of the negotiations,” he argued. “We are making tiny progress…. Our request — it should be our demand, but I’m not the one making the demand — is that the UN put it on the agenda.”

Asked about whether the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency tasked with population control, was doing an adequate job, he responded: “I can’t comment on that because I’m not well enough informed.” According to congressional testimony, the UNFPA and Planned Parenthood have worked with Beijing on perpetrating forced abortions.

Of course, Communist China’s coercive population-control regime literally includes kidnapping pregnant women and killing their pre-born children. When asked if the regime had gone too far in its efforts, Scott did not say. “Even though China relaxed its one-child policy, it’s birth rate has not gone up the way they thought it would,” he said, hopefully, suggesting that fears about climate change were causing women not to have children.

While controversial, Scott’s efforts have been endorsed by everyone from prominent global-warming scientist James Hansen and neo-Malthusian Ehrlich to organizations such as 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and Citizens Climate Lobby, which has former Secretary of Treasury and State George P. Schultz on its advisory board. Erlich, one of Scott’s supporters, has been one of the most vocal advocates of reducing human numbers. Scott even spoke on a panel with Hansen during COP25.

This zealotry for reducing the number of people on the planet has become a common theme at UN gatherings. Earlier this year, at the 68th UN Civil Society Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, one speaker went further than most would dare to in public. After speaking on a panel with UN Assistant Secretary-General Satya Tripathi, Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP) Executive Director David Michael Terungwa dropped a bombshell. “We can’t kill them all,” he said, twice, laughing.

Before that, at the COP24 in Poland last year, Al Gore trumpeted the theme. Among the solutions to the supposed “climate crisis,” Gore touted more and stricter population-control policies by government. Perhaps oblivious to the ghoulishness of his words, Gore praised the population-control regime operated by the government of India, which has been widely condemned as abusive and coercive. Showing a graph of China’s population, he also celebrated the policies of the mass-murdering dictatorship in Communist China.

However, showing a graph of Africa’s population, Gore suggested that Africans were still having far too many babies for planet Earth to sustain in the face of supposed “climate” change. Despite lip-service to the pope and Catholicism, Gore demanded, among other tactics, that contraception be made “ubiquitously available” all over the world. The goal: Help reduce the number of children, and especially Africans.

The New American asked Democrat presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, known for his desire to have Big Government disarm you and regulate everything from Big Gulps to salt content in food, for his thoughts on the population-control subject. “Thank you, have a nice day,” he responded with a strange grin. His handlers promptly rushed in — “he’s not taking interviews right now” — before his armed security, looking grumpy, whisked him away. 

Children are already being bombarded by UN propaganda at school and in official UN publications. The goal: convincing students that having babies is bad for the planet. The the 1994 UN-produced book Rescue Mission: Planet Earth : A Children’s Edition of Agenda 21, the UN’s self-styled “education” agency teaches children that “the planet groans every time it registers another birth.” And that is just the start of what critics say is the anti-human, anti-Christian, anti-freedom propaganda that has been peddled by the UN to children for decades now.

During the recent debate on a whether or not to declare a “climate emergency,” German Members of the European so-called Parliament expressed deep unease over the declaration. The reason is that the German term for emergency, der Notstand, is associated with a Nazi law adopted by Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party to consolidate power.

The UN summit, led by international socialists such as Antonio Guterres, appears to be hoping for vast new powers to deal with this supposed “climate emergency.” And at the top of the list will be reducing the number of people on the planet, by any means that they consider necessary.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/34329-un-speakers-push-population-reduction-for-climate-emergency


Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

William F. Jasper: Exposed: Media Collusion for Greta Thunberg and UN Climate Hysteria 0 (0)

by William F. Jasper

The Fake News Media has been caught again with pants down. The Daily Callerbroke the story on November 18, revealing that more than 250 U.S. news outlets and journalists had colluded in an effort to promote the idea that the planet faces a “climate crisis,” and to build support for the United Nations Climate Action Summit of world leaders held in New York City, September 15-23. Not that there was any paucity of lurid global warming propaganda; anyone who hasn’t assumed room temperature knows that we have been marinated in “news” stories proclaiming climate apocalypse for decades now.

However, there are still too many skeptical Americans who haven’t bought the over-heated hype and are not quite ready to accept the draconian government controls and pay the trillions of dollars we are told will be necessary to save the planet from man-made global warming. So “the good and the great” of the Fourth Estate decided they need to kick it up a few notches and really saturate the American public with intense fright peddling to drive home the new meme that we are facing a truly dire “climate emergency.”

Thus was launched Covering Climate Now, a massive effort to shape and coordinate an advocacy campaign camouflaged as news.  According to the organization’s own website, “Covering Climate Now is a joint initiative of The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review.” The Nation prides itself in being the oldest socialist magazine in America, and Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), flagship publication of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, postures as a model of professionalism and journalistic ethics.

The Covering Climate Now website boasts: “Our initiative includes more than 350 outlets worldwide, and dozens of institutional and independent partners, with a combined audience of more than 1 billion people. We’re growing every day.”

“Covering Climate Now’s founders kicked off the project in April and announced in May that they would ask partners to devote a week to climate-related news, starting in September,” the Daily Caller reported. “The Nation environmental correspondent Mark Hertsgaard co-founded the project under the assumption that the news outlets don’t cover climate change as urgently as he thinks they should.”

“We believe that every news organization in America, and many around the world, can play a part,” CJR stated in May. ”Sometimes that will mean committing your newsroom to important and high-impact stories. Other times it will mean sharing your content, engaging your community, or adding a few lines of climate information to stories that wouldn’t otherwise have them.”

“Much of the group’s coverage leading up to the U.S. climate summit,” notes the Daily Caller, “focused on Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl who traveled to the U.S. in August on a racing yacht. Her visit was designed to galvanize American support for policies that seek to tackle climate change.”

That the tsunami of Thunberg stories was a completely orchestrated affair comes as no surprise to anyone who glimpsed even a fraction of the staged “news” events for the bratty, self-righteous teen, who delivered her venomous “How dare you!” speech to world leaders at the UN. Her apotheosis from pigtailed schoolgirl to beyond-rock-star, messiah status was obviously a contrived, concerted effort that went beyond the usual “Leftward Ho!” herd mentality of the “mainstream” media pack.

Among the media “partners” listed on the Covering Climate Now website are: BuzzFeed News, Bloomberg, Scientific American, Slate, Vanity Fair, Variety, VICE Media, Vox, The Weather Channel Digital, The Weather Channel, Al Jazeera, CBS News, PBS NewsHour, Huffington Post, The New Republic, Newsweek, and Harvard Business Review. In addition to these liberal-left/globalist organs, the climate propaganda cabal also includes such extreme-left Marxist outfits as Mother Jones, In These Times, Democracy Now!, The Intercept, and The Young Turks.

Collectively, the cabal succeeded wildly in drenching the planet with a suffocating blanket of global warming hype. As one example, take BuzzFeed. The Daily Caller reports: “BuzzFeed News reached more than 27 million unique views between September and October, according to Quantcast, a website measuring audience size. BuzzFeed is owned by Jonah Peretti, an internet entrepreneur who founded the outlet in 2006 to track viral online content, and the left-leaning HuffPo is owned by Verizon Communications. Media tycoon Arianna Huffington originally founded HuffPo in 2005 with the help of Peretti.”

This not the first time the media mavens have been caught in flagrante delicto. Remember the JournoList scandal of 2008, the scheme by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that recruited hundreds of reporters and news organizations to promote and defend then-candidate Barack Obama?

Then there was the Gamechanger Salon scandal, in which lesbian “community organizer,” CNN commentator and Obama/Clinton crony Sally Kohn was ringleader to more than 1,000 activists from Planned Parenthood, Big Media, Big Labor, and other “progressive” centers of power.

Then, last year there was the very open collusion scandal of more than 100 newspapers agreeing to simultaneously run anti-Trump editorials.

The media collusion exposed in the Covering Climate Now scandal is but the latest revelation proving that most of the “legacy media,” as well as much of the newer “alternative media” are indeed Fake News, as President Trump has charged.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/34107-exposed-media-collusion-for-greta-thunberg-and-un-climate-hysteria


William F. Jasper is an American journalist and author, and a senior editor of The New American, and long-time member of the John Birch Society.

 

Alex Newman: Trump Tells Bankrupt UN to Find Money Elsewhere 0 (0)

by Alex Newman

Facing a massive hole in its budget, the United Nations is implementing “emergency measures” to avoid missing payroll and other obligations before the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, UN bosses are demanding that taxpayers in America and other nations hand over more money now or face global catastrophe. Even UN officials and apologists, though, have blasted the “bloated” organization for squandering massive amounts of money on everything from luxurious air travel and fancy hotels to globalist propaganda promoting its own agenda. Trump reacted to the whining by calling on the UN to go look for money elsewhere.

According to the UN, one third of all “member states” are delinquent in paying their “dues” to the UN this year. That includes the United States, which funds between a fourth and a third of the UN’s overall budget, compared to Communist China’s meager 8 percent. In exchange, the regime in Beijing runs almost one third of all UN specialized agencies, while an American runs just one out of 15. State Department officials said the U.S. government would pay up at some point in the fall.

While the exact numbers are hard to pin down because so many federal agencies provide so many funding streams to the UN and its maze of bureaucracies — not to mention the “peacekeeping” — official estimates suggest the U.S. government sends well over $10 billion per year. American taxpayers pay more than 185 other UN member states, combined. And in return for all that money, the UN constantly attacks Americans’ liberties while praising and aiding mass-murdering regimes.

The official UN deficit is about a quarter of a billion dollars. In a letter addressed to the almost 40,000 bureaucrats based at the UN Secretariat, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a radical socialist, sounded the alarm about the numbers. “Member states have paid only 70 percent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019,” he complained. “This translates into a cash shortage of $230 million at the end of September. We run the risk of depleting our backup liquidity reserves by the end of the month.” If the situation does not improve, the UN could default on salaries to employees and payments to vendors very soon.

But Trump was unmoved by the whining. “So make all Member Countries pay, not just the United States!” he fumed on Twitter in his typical style. Prior to that, speaking at the UN in New York City, Trump told “world leaders” last month that the UN needed to ensure that “no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden.” As of right now, the General Assembly, which UN bosses such as then-Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon have dangerously characterized as the “Parliament of Humanity,” decides how much each government is expected to hand over from their citizens.

But Americans and their elected president are getting tired of shouldering an outlandish portion of the burden. On the campaign trail, for instance, Trump noted that the UN was not a friend to freedom or the United States. He has also repeatedly blasted globalism, most recently telling the UN General Assembly that the future did not belong to globalists, but to patriots. And the UN’sraison d’etre at the moment — the man-made global-warming hypothesis — was described by Trump as a “hoax” to benefit the dictatorship enslaving mainland China. And he won the election in an electoral college landslide.

Since his victory, Trump has dealt several major blows to the UN, even before this budget impasse. For instance, in 2017, the administration managed to get the UN budget slashed by a quarter of a billion dollars. That same year, Trump announced that the U.S. government was withdrawing from the UN Paris Agreement on “climate change.” He also withdrew from several key UN organs including UNESCO, the UN’s totalitarian-controlled “education” bureaucracy; and from the dictator-controlled UN “Human Rights Council,” which specializes in praising mass-murdering regimes while constantly attacking America and other nations that still enjoy some freedoms. Trump defunded a number of UN programs, agencies, and schemes, too.

As might be expected, the U.S. State Department used a more diplomatic tone to emphasize American reluctance to continue paying so much for the UN. “Overall the United States, as the largest contributor to the UN, contributes roughly $10 billion annually in assessed and voluntary contributions across the United Nations system,” a spokesman for the department was quoted as saying in media report. The Trump administration “has been very clear on its position that no one member state should pay more than one-quarter of the Organization’s budget,” the spokesman added.

Even before Trump was president, though, it was clear that there was growing bi-partisan outrage about the UN. In 2016, following a UN Security Council vote attacking Israel, leaders of both parties in Congress blasted the UN and threatened to withhold funding. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for instance, blasted the global outfit for being “fervently anti-Israel.” And in previous Congresses, lawmakers have come very close to nixing funding for the globalist body.

Just the UN Secretariat alone has over 44,000 overpaid bureaucrats working for it, not including the tens of thousands of additional bureaucrats working at the 15 UN specialized agencies or the dizzying array of auxiliary UN outfits. Adding insult to injury, UN bureaucrats make enormous amounts of money, too, including $400 per day per diem while in New York. According to a 2012 report, there were 637 employees of the UN Development Program (UNDP) with over $1 million in their accounts. There were over 1,000 who had homes worth more than $1 million, too. Leaders at the UN pull down salaries and benefits that would boggle the mind.

Even UN officials see it. Former First Vice-President of the UN Staff Union Guy Candusso, who worked for the UN until retiring recently, slammed the global body. “Over the last 10 years, the UN has become a bloated organization, especially at the top,” he argued, adding that financial shortages in the 1990s were even worse but had somehow been solved. “If the cash crunch is considered so serious now, there should be a complete hiring freeze along with the other measures announced.”

Among the measures being taken by the UN to deal with the problem is an end to all “non-essential” travel. Why UN bureaucrats were flying around the world in luxury on “non-essential” travel paid for by taxpayer money was not made clear. Ironically, thanks partly to air travel, the UN’s carbon-dioxide footprint was larger than the entire population of some of its own member states, ranging from Malta to Liberia. Even UN officials have lambasted the globalist organization for using tax money so they can fly around the world in business class or even first class, while the people who pay their salaries sit in much smaller economy-class seats or struggle to even survive.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric urged member states to immediately pay up “to avoid a default that could risk disrupting operations globally.” But this has been a long time coming. UN boss Guterres, a socialist politician who has lived all his life feasting on the fruit of taxpayers’ labor, warned back in June that the UN was facing big money problems. “The solution lies not only in ensuring that all Member States pay in full and on time, but also in putting certain tools in place,” he warned the budget bosses at the UN’s Fifth Committee. “We are at a tipping point and what we do next will matter for years to come.” Apparently nobody listened, since the press is now acting surprised.

Calls for the UN to cut spending, or scale back its commitments, or quit paying exorbitant salaries to corrupt UN officials, are not wrong — but they seriously miss the point. Yes, the UN is bloated. Yes, it wastes outlandish amounts of the public’s money. But that is not the real problem. “The best thing that you can say about the United Nations is it’s mostly ineffective and a waste of money,” Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has a bill to get the United States out of the UN, told The New American magazine. “That’s the best thing you can say about it. So I’m glad that they are somewhat ineffective, but I don’t like that we waste the money.”

But rather than making it more efficient, or less corrupt, Massie and other liberty-minded lawmakers say the time has come for the U.S. government to completely ditch the UN and remove its headquarters from U.S. soil. “It’s full of dictators, and it’s also something that I don’t think our sovereign government should defer to,” Massie explained. The bill, known as the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R. 204), would sever all U.S. ties and funding to the UN while evicting it from New York. The legislation is currently in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where Democrats hope to keep it bottled up. But if they lose control of the House at the next election, an “Amexit” from the UN may well end up on the agenda.

TNA:https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/north-america/item/33652-trump-tells-bankrupt-un-to-find-money-elsewhere


Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

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