Pope Francis didn’t make the list of “Eminent Persons” assembled by the U.N. Secretary General to plan the “global development framework” for the world beyond 2015 and culminating in 2030. But the pope didn’t need to be on the list. After all, the Vatican hasendorsed the anti-capitalist “sustainable development” agenda that is being voted on by the nations of the world at the U.N.
However, the American people, through their elected representatives, have had absolutely no input in developing this new global agenda which President Obama will implement without the input or approval of Congress.
John Podesta, the chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign who previously served as counselor to Obama, was picked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to be a member of the “high-level panel” of “eminent persons” planning the future of the globe.
The world body’s sustainable development goals promise the end of poverty, education, clean water, justice, good health and well-being, jobs for all, decent shelter, and a life of personal dignity. “These are lofty goals,” says Patrick Wood, a commentator on global issues, “but are they for real? Or do they sound like a bait-and-switch scheme that contains a potentially dangerous payload?”
Wood, who has covered global institutions for decades, argues that Pope Francis, the most visible religious figure in the world, has been called upon by the global community to deliver a U.N. address on September 25 “to minimize any possible resistance” to a plan that constitutes nothing less than the overthrow of global capitalism and the destruction of the American way of life.
In his speech to Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis once again demonstrated his pro-Marxist tendencies, hailing the work of Dorothy Day, an American convert to Catholicism who never renounced her pro-Marxist views but has been described by the media as just an activist for “social justice.” She was a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and was the subject of a 581-page FBI file for her connections to communists and communist groups.
Virginia State Senator Richard H. “Dick” Black (R), a Vietnam veteran, has opposed efforts by the American branch of the Catholic Church to make Day a saint, saying that “Vatican archives are filled with reports of Christians martyred under the regimes that Dorothy Day supported.”
While the media pay great attention to the pope, little if any coverage has been given to the involvement of the Vatican in the U.N. “sustainable development” agenda that could radically affect the individual lives of ordinary Americans. Thestated purpose of the Podesta panel’s report is to “transform economies through sustainable development.”
It would be nice if the media asked Hillary about the involvement of her campaign chairman in developing this global socialist scheme.
In addition to destroying the American system, the recommendations of this so-called high-level body, especially on the matter of “climate action,” could also have a dramatic impact on the lives of people around the world, including the poor, who need access to energy and real economic development to escape poverty.
Wood notes that Podesta, founder of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress and member of the elitist Trilateral Commission, went to work for President Obama as a senior policy consultant on climate change. A liberal Catholic, he has an affiliation with Georgetown Law School.
The work of the so-called “high-level panel” was delivered to a “High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development” that met this summer from June 26 through July 8 and produced the final document that nations will endorse.
“In simplest terms,” Wood explains, “Sustainable Development is a replacement economic system for capitalism and free enterprise. It is a system based on resource allocation and usage rather than on supply and demand and free economic market forces.”
The U.N. has been quite open about replacing global capitalism.
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said last March that “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” She added, “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Wood said the proposed “transformation” of the world’s current economic system “for a completely untried and untested one” is “dangerously absurd” and could make life worse for the people in the world that the U.N. and the Roman Catholic Church are supposed to help.
He adds, “Any honest economist would instantly balk at such Pollyannaish promises of utopia, and the American public should do so as well. The fact is that these wild promises of prosperity for all are merely the candy coating to deceive the world into going along with its own economic destruction.”
Nevertheless, at the White House on Wednesday and appearing with President Obama, Pope Francis specifically reaffirmed his support for the U.N.’s “sustainable and integral development” model from his “Laudato Si” encyclical.
In a pitch for global socialism, masked in flowery language, Francis, who insisted on his way to the U.S. that he was not a liberal, said, “I would like all men and women of good will in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world and to stimulate integral and inclusive models of development, so that our brothers and sisters everywhere may know the blessings of peace and prosperity which God wills for all his children.”
The pope says nice things about the poor, but the practical result of ditching capitalism for socialism will be more poverty, suffering, and death.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation, one of many communist groups in the U.S., argues that “the long period of reaction that began in the late 1970s and greatly accelerated under Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States is drawing to a close.” Leaving aside the Marxist rhetoric about “reaction,” one has to say there may be some validity to what the communists are saying. After all, Bernie Sanders seems to be leading the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Marxist Jeremy Corbyn has become head of the Labor Party in Britain, and the socialist New Democratic Party is poised to win national elections in Canada on October 19.
On the Republican side in the U.S., the leading candidate, Donald Trump, seems to have no ideology at all. While he has made illegal immigration into an issue, his statements on other issues demonstrate no coherent outlook on the nature or size of government. On foreign policy, his claim that he could negotiate with Russia’s Vladimir Putin seems to be a reflection of his “Art of the Deal” approach to business matters. But Putin means business, and the Russians can’t be trusted. It’s shocking that Trump thinks he can somehow negotiate a good deal with Putin, whose military position has been enhanced under the presidency of Barack Obama.
In order to understand the Sanders phenomenon, I covered the senator’s Monday night appearance in Manassas, Virginia, where he spoke to a mostly young white audience. The media exaggerated the number of people who turned out, with several reporters putting the size of the crowd at 10,000. But about 2,000 people did, in fact, show up, feeling the “Bern” as Sanders took it to the “billionaire class” and demanded freebies for the “kids,” as he called the students with college debt. He knows that free college has an appeal, like the general socialist notion that government can provide goods and services at little or no cost. It’s a fable that students who should be getting a good education are falling for in increasing numbers. They account for much of the Sanders movement.
Sanders made only one mention of Russia in his Manassas speech, saying that he hoped that the U.S. would join with Russia and other countries to tackle so-called climate change. He didn’t have one word of criticism for Putin over the invasion of Ukraine and threats against other nations, including the U.S.
Russia is a good place to start when analyzing both Sanders and Trump. It is a test of what they know and would do about foreign policy. Sanders, who honeymooned in the old USSR and worked with Communist Party fronts like the U.S. Peace Council, doesn’t want to talk about it. Let’s hope Trump gets pressed on this issue during Wednesday night’s debate on CNN.
On Tuesday, we received more ominous news about Russian military advances. Reuters reported that General Frank Gorenc, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, cited “alarming” moves by the Russian military since the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and its takeover of Crimea. He made the comments at the annual Air Force Association conference.
Air Force Times headlined his remarks, “USAFE commander: Russia catching up with Air Force.” This paper quoted Gorenc as saying, “The advantage that we had from the air, I can honestly say, is shrinking, not only with respect to the aircraft that they’re producing, but the more alarming thing is their ability to create anti-access area denied areas is a challenge that we’re all going to face up to and that we’re all going to have to train to.”
So how would Donald Trump negotiate with Putin over this? It seems the only response the Russians would understand would be for the U.S. to modernize its own military, in order to maintain an advantage.
It’s clear that Sanders and Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn would get along very well. Indeed, Sanders said he was delighted that Corbyn won the election as head of the British Labor Party. Corbyn is considered so far left that it is not unfair to call him a stooge of Putin and Russia.
The Sanders success and the Corbyn victory are two reasons why a communist outfit like the Party for Socialism and Liberation is so optimistic about the future, from the “progressive” perspective.
The Marxist group proclaims, using its familiar jargon, that “A new period of resistance to monopoly capitalism/imperialism is opening up, potentially leading to a revival of not only the trade unions but the revolutionary workers’ movement throughout the world. That this initial revival of anti-capitalism and socialism is being frequently, although not exclusively, expressed through the vehicle of electoral politics is to be expected in the first stage.”
It does indeed look like the socialists and their fellow-travelers are on the move. When you add to their forces a Marxist pope whose anti-capitalist rhetoric has been matched by dealings which enabled President Obama to recognize the communist government of Cuba, one has to acknowledge that the Thatcher and Reagan years are behind us and that their enemies have managed to come out on top.
Against this trend, here in America, we have the spectacle of a businessman leading the Republican race for the presidential nomination who has flip-flopped on every significant public policy issue, including his political party identification. Indeed, The Smoking Gun website cites documents indicating that Trump switched political party affiliations many different times. While Reagan left the Democratic Party and became a Republican, he did this for solid ideological reasons.
Reagan talked issues, while Trump talks about himself, especially his hair. Reagan had a good head of hair and an anti-communist brain to go along with it.
Having been bamboozled into passing a mere bill to thwart the Iran deal, rather than treating the agreement as a treaty, the Republican-controlled Congress is on the verge of being taken to the cleaners again. This time, President Obama is maneuvering to authorize U.S. participation in a United Nations climate change treaty through an executive agreement. The treaty is expected to come out of the December meeting in Paris of parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Rather than submit the agreement to the Senate as an Article II Treaty, it is anticipated that the Obama administration will simply accept the treaty on the basis of what it claims to be “existing” presidential authority.
The agreement could establish or propose legally binding limits on carbon emissions, crippling what’s left of our industrial economy, along with new legally binding financial commitments that could run into the trillions of dollars to be “redistributed” from the U.S. and other “rich” nations. Obama has told the U.N. that the United States will meet a pledge of 26 to 28 percent emissions reduction by 2025.
Eleven top Senate Republicans, led by Senator James Inhofe (OK), had asked for “robust and transparent communication between the Executive and Legislative branches, particularly with respect to the Senate and its Constitutional advise and consent responsibilities.” But such requests are typically treated with disdain by the administration, which is determined to get its way no matter what Congress believes.
In order to provide a basis of some kind for Obama to take this questionable approach, our media trumpeted the “news” that July 2015 was supposedly the warmest month on record for the earth dating back to January 1880—with humans the culprits, of course. The source of this sensational claim was the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance noted that CNN, USA Today, the BBC “and lots of other mainstream media lapdogs all obediently reported” the claim from NOAA. But the Heartland Institute points out that NOAA is using land-based temperature recording stations which “artificially skew the temperatures recorded upward,” and that according to the satellite system data, June 2015 was actually warmer than July. The group says, “When one understands what government scientists are doing in an effort to promote climate alarmism, rather than to record and report accurate data for analysis, one must despair whether accurate data can be obtained from ‘official sources.’”
Rather than expose how the government is manipulating data, 25 media members of a “Climate Publishers Alliance” are moving forward to “collaborate on their coverage of climate change” and promote the U.N. agenda. The initiative will conclude on December 11, the final day of the U.N. conference in Paris. The media organizations include The Guardian (United Kingdom), India Today (India), La Presse (Canada), La Repubblica (Italy), Le Monde (France), Politiken (Denmark), The Seattle Times (United States), The Straits Times (Singapore), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) and To Vima (Greece).
This initiative is in addition to major liberal foundation funding of pro-U.N. propaganda and the training of journalists to toe the U.N. line, as documented by Accuracy in Media.
Meanwhile, a “Week of Moral Action for Climate Justice” has been announced for September 21 through September 25 to coincide with the visit by Pope Francis to the United States and the United Nations.
Here are the basics about the pope’s visit:
September 22. The Pope arrives in the U.S. from Cuba.
September 23. Pope meets with Obama at White House.
September 24. Pope gives an address to Congress.
September 25. Pope gives an address to U.N. General Assembly.
September 26. Pope visits Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
September 27. Pope visits World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
Left-wing activist Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, was invited by the Vatican to address the issue in Rome. She now predicts the pope will put Republicans on the defensive because most of them are opposed to the theory of man-made climate change. She says, “…I think the timing of this trip is obviously going to be very awkward for several Republican candidates who are Catholic and understand that this is a very, very popular pope. He’s particularly popular among Latinos, and that’s a really coveted voting bloc. So, you know, picking a fight with this pope is not a very smart political move if you’re running for office right now.”
At the same time, Klein said that when she was at the Vatican, she talked to “a fairly prominent Catholic” from the United States who told her, “The holy father isn’t doing us any favors by going to Cuba first.” Klein said that “he meant that there are a lot of people talking about how this pope is sort of a closet socialist, and by going to Cuba first, he was reinforcing that narrative.”
The pope secretly collaborated with the Obama administration to begin the process that resulted in U.S. recognition of Castro’s Cuba and the opening of a Cuban Communist embassy in the U.S.
It would be well-advised for the pope to take a look at Cuba’s mismanaged socialist paradise. The Washington Post ran a recent story by Nick Miroff about how the island prison camp is developing a reputation for pursuing “sustainable” development policies, but it acknowledged that the system is still characterized by shortages of food and agricultural equipment. In a previous dispatch, “In an online world, Cuba remains a stand-in-line society,” Miroff noted how Cubans continue to have to stand in line for various products, when they are in fact available.
The concept of “sustainable development,” as endorsed by the U.N. and the pope, could actually make things worse.
Indeed, the Cuban communists insist they have been following this model of development for years. “Cuba is a world leader in ecologically sustainable practices,” says Marce Cameron of the Cuba’s Socialist Renewal blog. It seems socialism always has to be “renewed,” until it finally begins to work.
Years ago, the U.N. Development Program’s Choices magazine published an article touting “Pig Power” as a way to run the economy of the future. It was an article about an experimental energy project in Cuba that involves feeding pigs and using their gasses and excrement to produce energy. In a story datelined Havana, the magazine said, “At a research institute in the suburbs of Cuba’s capital, pigs are pampered with meals prepared by the city’s finest chefs.”
Letting the pigs live “High off the hog” produces the energy for the human population, which seems to have a much lower standard of living.
Will this fact of communist life be noted by Pope Francis when he travels to Cuba, where he will presumably dispense communion to the communist atheists running the island nation?
Equally important, will U.S. political figures have the guts to take on the pope’s pro-Marxist view of the world before the Vatican and the Obama administration prepare to use the U.N. as a means by which to impose their anti-capitalist vision on the U.S. and the world?
If not, consider “pig power” the wave of the future. It will be our future under the U.N.
A CNN story blared, “The American stock market has surrendered a stunning $2.1 trillion of value in just the last six days of market chaos.” The ups and downs of the stock market have been seized upon by those leading a global campaign to steal trillions of dollars from the American people in the name of “sustainable development.”
One aspect of the campaign is a so-called “financial transaction tax,” endorsed by socialist and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which would even affect the stock trades of small investors. The proposal has a global component.
However, the odds are that you will only be treated to positive coverage of this unfolding scheme to “redistribute the wealth” on a global basis. George Russell of Fox News broke the story of how a branch of media giant Thomson Reuters and the United Nations Foundation are training journalists and paying for stories to “popularize” the U.N.-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals and make them attractive to news consumers.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are outlined in the U.N. report, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” a manifesto to be adopted by the nations meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from September 25 to 27, as the global organization celebrates its 70th anniversary.
The SDGs, such as “End poverty in all its forms everywhere,” sound positive. However, in reality, the concept of “sustainable development” is a Marxist scheme that researcher Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute calls “a United Nations plan for the creation of a global socialist utopia thinly disguised as a poverty reduction program.”
Thomson-Reuters says, “The intensive training program aims to provide professionals from 33 countries with information, tools and strategies to understand the complex issues surrounding the next set of UN global development goals. The program will enable reporters, editors and spokespeople to better understand, report and communicate around some of the issues related to two crucial upcoming UN conferences: the UN Summit in New York in September that will see the adoption of the new Global Goals, and the UN Climate Change Conference in December in Paris, which is aimed at reaching a universal climate agreement.”
Marta Machado, who’s in charge of the Thomson-Reuters initiative, has worked for the Muslim Brotherhood channel, Al Jazeera, and CNN.
The United Nations Foundation, started by CNN founder Ted Turner, claims the effort is designed to “increase, enhance and influence global communications and media reporting” on the campaign.
However, in a press release that carried the subheadline, “Why communications matter in 2015,” the United Nations Foundation said the campaign will include media training, financial grants and “a sustained surge in targeted digital media,” designed to “help increase the volume and animate a global public conversation about the new goals, creating the environment to help us achieve success by 2030” (emphasis added).
Hence, the coverage will be slanted in favor of the United Nations.
Another “partner” in the global media campaign on behalf of the U.N. is the Jynwel Foundation, described as the philanthropic initiative of Jynwel Capital, an international investment and advisory firm based in Hong Kong.
As this campaign unfolds, it is a virtual certainty that the real purpose of the SDGs—to punish Americans and other “rich” people—will be carefully concealed.
As amazing as it seems, a report on foreign aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is actually titled, “From Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance.” A United Nations General Assembly report, dated August 14, 2015, calls for “several trillion dollars per year” to be spent to implement “sustainable development” on a global level.
But don’t call it theft; call it “sharing.” Indeed, a report titled, “Financing the Global Sharing Economy,” proposes global taxes on financial transactions, energy and other measures to bring in over $2.8 trillion. The founder of Share the World’s Resources (STWR), Mohammed Mesbahi, has outlined a “strategy for world transformation” that condemns “the materialistic and self-seeking idea of the American Dream.”
In order to acquire these resources, new taxes on the national and global level are being pushed in the name of stabilizing the stock market.
After the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 1,000 points at the open on Monday, the “progressives” in favor of financial transaction taxes went into action. James Henry, senior fellow at the Columbia University Center for Sustainable International Investment, was quoted as saying the stock turbulence is “a great example of why we need a Financial Transaction Tax,” a proposal that he says would raise hundreds of billions of dollars.
Almost on cue, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) endorsed the idea. Sanders, who backs a 90 percent top marginal tax rate, says his proposed financial transaction tax will reduce “risky and unproductive high-speed trading and other forms of Wall Street speculation…” In order to make it attractive, he says the proceeds “would be used to provide debt-free public college education.”
Jared Bernstein, the economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. from 2009 to 2011, says in a New York Times column that Sanders is right. “A financial transaction tax is a smart, fair way to raise urgently needed revenues while reducing unnecessary trading that makes our markets more volatile,” he wrote.
The council of the Socialist International convened on July 6 and 7 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and endorsed the Millennium Development Goals and the “post-2015 development agenda.”
Sanders is reported to be a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S. affiliate of the SI.
Such a tax could be applied on a global basis as well. Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, says in his book, The Confidence Game, that a global financial transactions tax “might net some $13 trillion a year…”
Calls for global taxes and more foreign aid are not new. The difference this time around is that the Vatican has endorsed the SDGs. Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, gave a formal statement to the world body endorsing the “sustainable development” agenda.
Pope Francis will formally address the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Thursday, September 25.
If the Republican establishment thinks it has a problem with Donald Trump, just wait until the Pope visits America next month and endorses socialist Bernie Sanders for president. Such a move, which is not beyond the realm of possibility, would put the head of the Roman Catholic Church firmly in the Democratic Party camp during a critical election year in which Republicans hope to turn back the tide of transformational Marxism represented by President Barack Obama.
A story on a Catholic news site, “Is Pope Francis going to endorse…Bernie Sanders?!,” looks seriously at the possibility. The article noted that the words of the pope, during his trip to America, “will be heard by millions of American Catholics who are one of the most influential voting blocs in today’s political landscape.” It said, “Today, topics such as income inequality, healthcare and the environment are resonating with voters and Pope Francis has come down on these issues in such a way as to annoy many conservative Catholics. The end result is many Catholics could be contemplating a vote for a liberal candidate, particularly the self-described democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders.”
Meanwhile, an article in the Jesuit publication America says there are seven Catholic candidates running for president, but that the one quoting Pope Francis the most often “is a Jewish guy from Vermont”—Senator Bernie Sanders.
But the fact that one socialist quotes another socialist is really not that surprising.
While Sanders openly calls himself a socialist, some in the media are trying to insist that Pope Francis, who is coming to America in September, is not a socialist.
A writer for the liberal magazine Newsweek said back in 2013 that “…the notion that Pope Francis is a true socialist is absurd. Socialists believe in the state taking control of the commanding heights of the economy. They believe the free market should be substituted by a command economy in which goods are produced according to need and prices are fixed to ensure fairness.”
However, in 2014, Francis met with executives from the United Nations andopenly urged “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state…”
Both socialism and communism are based on the ideas of Karl Marx, who proposed an economic system based on state control. His Communist Manifesto had ten planks, perhaps the most famous being abolition of the right to private property. But Marx also proposed the abolition of the family so that the state could control the lives of its members.
In addition to Francis’ call for the redistribution of economic benefits by the state, the Associated Press reported that Bolivia’s Marxist President, Evo Morales, had said that, he, too, “thinks that what Pope Francis preaches amounts to socialism.”
Francis accepted a “communist crucifix” from Morales and took it back with him to the Vatican. It was a crucifix carved into a wooden hammer and sickle. Despite reports to the contrary, Francis said he wasn’t offended by the gift.
“Pope Francis has shown great courage in raising issues that we rarely hear discussed,” Sanders said in a Senate floor speech. “The leader of the Catholic church is raising profound issues. It’s important that we listen to what he has said.”
Sanders seized on the pope’s statement on November 24, 2013, that “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
As we noted at the time, the term “trickle-down” is associated by some in the liberal media with President Reagan’s pro-growth policies. The term is meant to disparage the beneficial impact of tax cuts on the economy. It is telling that Francis would pick up on this smear of Reagan spread by the liberal media. In fact, there is no “trickle-down school of economic theory” or economic thought.
On August 16, speaking at Loras College in Iowa—a Catholic school—in a venue not far from a large crucifix, Sanders again invoked the pope in arguing for socialism in America.
The Des Moines Register reported that Sanders said “his plans for a Sanders White House are parallel to the message of Pope Francis.” Sanders said, “Pope Francis is raising these issues all over the world. And anybody who thinks what I am saying is radical, read what the pope is saying.”
The pope is “becoming very political,” GOP presidential candidate Donald Trumptold CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Trump, who is a Protestant, said he had great respect for the head of the Roman Catholic Church but that he would challenge the pope’s anti-capitalist message. Trump said he would inform Francis that “they better hope that capitalism works, because it’s the only thing we have right now. And it’s a great thing when it works properly.”
While the Jesuit publication America noted how Sanders had been quoting the pope more often than other candidates, Time magazine had run a story in January on how Sanders, who was then just considering a presidential run, was the political figure “whose political philosophy lines up most closely with the economic and social theories of Pope Francis.”
The magazine said, “Unlike many leaders who name-drop Pope Francis to score political points—he is, after all, likely the most popular man on the planet—Sanders quotes the Pope because he actually believes his message.”
Time added, “Sanders’ social-media accounts are filled with quotes from the Holy Father about the need to reform socioeconomic systems.”
Before Pope Francis took over the papacy, in a development involving the mysterious resignation of Pope Benedict, the Vatican had strongly condemned both socialism and communism.
For example, Pope Pius XI said that socialism “cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.” Pope Pius IX referred to “the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism.” John Paul II called socialism a “simple and radical solution” that was being presented in an “attractive” way by its proponents, but which constituted a “danger” to the countries in which it was being imposed.
Before coming to America the pope is going to Cuba, where he will presumably meet with the Castro brothers, who rule over a communist prison camp and socialist economic basket case. Francis worked with the Obama administration and the Cuban regime on the deal for the U.S. to recognize Castro’s Cuba.
Almost one-tenth of the island’s population of 11 million has fled to the U.S., withrecent high-profile defections coming from the Cuban national athletic teams.
In Venezuela, where Marxists have ruled with the support of the Cuban regime, aphoto of a $2 Venezuelan bolivar bill being used as a napkin has gone viral. In addition to the collapse of the currency, Fusion magazine reports that Venezuela’s product shortages “have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap…”
Venezuela’s mentally unstable Marxist President Nicolás Maduro has blamed the CIA and a “Plan Vulture,” which he claims is destabilizing leftist Latin American governments through economic sabotage.
Sanders hasn’t yet echoed Maduro’s accusations. But back in 2006, then-Rep. Sanders participated in a propaganda event to announce the first delivery of fuel under a discounted heating oil program established by the Venezuelan government and the State of Vermont. The purpose was to give credibility to the Marxist regime running Venezuela and lead people in the U.S. to believe the regime was so compassionate that it wanted to help poor people in the U.S., in addition to its own downtrodden.
In view of recent developments, it might be appropriate for the media to ask socialist Sanders and the socialist pope about how their economic theory is working in places like Venezuela and Cuba.
Thanks to Donald Trump, the major media are being forced to cover the illegal immigration movement, such as the proliferation of “sanctuary cities” across the U.S. that attract criminal aliens, give them legal protection, and let them back out on the streets to commit more crimes. But the really taboo topic is how these sanctuary cities grew out of a movement started by the Catholic Church and other churches.
Over 200 cities, counties and states provide safe-haven to illegal aliens as sanctuary cities, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reports. What has not yet been reported is that the Catholic Church, which gave President Obama his start in “community organizing” in Chicago, has been promoting the sanctuary movement for more than two decades.
What’s more, in April, a delegation of U.S. Catholic bishops staged a church service along the U.S.-Mexico border and distributed Communion through the border fence. At the same time, Pope Francis said a “racist and xenophobic” attitude was keeping immigrants out of the United States.
No wonder the pope’s approval ratings have been falling in the United States. Overall, Gallup reports that it’s now at 59 percent, down from 76 percent in early 2014. Among conservatives, it’s fallen from 72 percent approval to 45 percent (a drop of 27 points).
Simpson says Catholic Charities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and its grant-making arm, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, are prominent elements of the open borders movement.
The sanctuary movement has its roots in the attempted communist takeover of Latin America.
With the support of elements of the Roman Catholic Church, the Communist Sandinistas had taken power in Nicaragua in 1979. At the time, communist terrorists known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were threatening a violent takeover of neighboring El Salvador. President Ronald Reagan’s policies of overt and covert aid for the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, known as the Contras, forced the defeat of the Sandinistas, leaving the FMLN in disarray. In 1983, Reagan ordered the liberation of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean, from communist thugs.
Groups like the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) were promoting the sanctuary movement for the purpose of facilitating the entry into the U.S. of illegal aliens who were supposedly being repressed by pro-American governments and movements in the region. The U.S. Catholic Bishops openly supported the sanctuary movement, even issuing a statement in 1985 denouncing the criminal indictments of those caught smuggling illegal aliens and violating the law. Section 274 of the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits the transportation or harboring of illegal aliens.
Two Roman Catholic priests and three nuns were among those under indictment in one case on 71 counts of conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. One of the Catholic priests indicted in the scheme was Father Ramon Dagoberto Quinones, a Mexican citizen. He was among those convicted of conspiracy in the case.
Through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, an arm of the Bishops, the church has funded Casa de Maryland, an illegal alien support group which was behind the May 1, 2010, “May Day” rally in Washington, D.C. in favor of “immigrant rights.” Photographs taken by this writer showed Mexican immigrants wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, and Spanish-language communist books and literature being provided to rally participants.
An academic paper, “The Acme of the Catholic Left: Catholic Activists in the US Sanctuary Movement, 1982-1992,” states that lay Catholics and Catholic religious figures were “active participants” in the network protecting illegals. The paper said, “Near the peak of national participation in August 1988, of an estimated 464 sanctuaries around the country, 78 were Catholic communities—the largest number provided by any single denomination.”
A “New Sanctuary Movement” emerged in 2007, with goals similar to the old group. In May, the far-left Nation magazine ran a glowing profile of this new movement, saying it was “revived” by many of the same “communities of faith” and churches behind it in the 1980s.
One group that worked to find churches that would provide sanctuary to immigrants in fear of deportation is called Interfaith Worker Justice, led by Kim Bobo, who was quoted by PBS in 2007 as saying, “We believe what we are doing is really calling forth a higher law, which is really God’s law, of caring for the immigrant.”
But conservative Catholic Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute says Interfaith Worker Justice is run by “committed Marxist socialists,” and that Bobo is “highly active and involved with the Democratic Socialists of America,” a group which backed Obama’s political career.
Pope Francis has applied his authority and the Catholic Church altering Catholic doctrine and message to high stakes politics. He has solicited high stakes policy wonks on the matter of Climate Change and his team is mobilized.
His shepherds, his Bishops, his Cardinals will install United Nations approved language and actions into all sermons, visits and religious message.
What a shame, there was such hope for renaissance of the Vatican yet it was short lived.
Note: Naomi Klein is a social activist who is against corporate capitalism, and has the DNA of peace activism and her grandparents were communists. She admits to being labeled a red-diaper baby where social justice and racial equality is her continued bent. Climate change is her mission. Klein is an acolyte of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky proven by the third book she authored titled The Shock Doctrine.
Hence, she successfully gained the attention of Pope Francis.
Social activist ‘surprised but delighted’ to join top cardinal in high-level environment conference at the Vatican
She is one of the world’s most high-profile social activists and a ferocious critic of 21st-century capitalism. He is one of the pope’s most senior aides and a professor of climate change economics. But this week the secular radical will join forces with the Catholic cardinal in the latest move by Pope Francis to shift the debate on global warming.
Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen, scientists and activists to debate climate change action. Klein, who campaigns for an overhaul of the global financial system to tackle climate change, told the Observer she was surprised but delighted to receive the invitation from Turkson’s office.
“The fact that they invited me indicates they’re not backing down from the fight. A lot of people have patted the pope on the head, but said he’s wrong on the economics. I think he’s right on the economics,” she said, referring to Pope Francis’s recent publication of an encyclical on the environment.
Release of the document earlier this month thrust the pontiff to the centre of the global debate on climate change, as he berated politicians for creating a system that serves wealthy countries at the expense of the poorest.
Activists and religious leaders will gather in Rome on Sunday, marching through the Eternal City before the Vatican welcomes campaigners to the conference, which will focus on the UN’s impending climate change summit.
Protesters have chosen the French embassy as their starting point – a Renaissance palace famed for its beautiful frescoes, but more significantly a symbol of the United Nations climate change conference, which will be hosted by Paris this December.
Nearly 500 years since Galileo was found guilty of heresy, the Holy See is leading the rallying cry for the world to wake up and listen to scientists on climate change. Multi-faith leaders will walk alongside scientists and campaigners, hailing from organisations including Greenpeace and Oxfam Italy, marching to the Vatican to celebrate the pope’s tough stance on environmental issues.
The imminent arrival of Klein within the Vatican walls has raised some eyebrows, but the involvement of lay people in church discussions is not without precedent.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, delivered the keynote address at a Vatican summit in April on climate change and poverty. Anticipating the encyclical, he said he was depending on the pope’s “moral voice and moral leadership” to speed up action.
When it came to the presentation of the document itself, the pontiff picked a five-strong panel, including a Rome school teacher and a leading scientist. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, used the time to give churchmen a lesson in climate science.
The pope has upset some conservatives for drawing people from outside the clergy into the heart of the debate, while critics have also argued the Catholic church should not be involved in an issue that should be left to presidents and policy-makers.
But Klein said the pope’s position as a “moral voice” in the world – and leader of 1.2 billion Catholics – gives him the unique ability to unite campaigners fighting for a common goal. “The holistic view of the encyclical should be a catalyst to bring together the twin economic and climate crises, instead of treating them separately,” she said.
Much of the pope’s discourse focuses on the need to give developing countries a greater voice in climate change negotiations, a view that sits uncomfortably among some in developed nations. “There are a lot of people who are having a lot of trouble in realising there is a voice with such global authority from the global south. That’s why we’re getting this condescending view, of ‘leave the economics to us’,” said Klein.
She views the rise of Francis as an environmental campaigner as marking a welcome shift not only in the international sphere but also at the Holy See: “We’re seeing the power base within the Vatican shift, with a Ghanaian cardinal [Turkson] and an Argentine pope. They’re doing something very brave.”
While the upcoming conference is centred on the pope’s encyclical, delegates will also be looking ahead to decisive international meetings this year. Before the Paris talks comes a UN summit, where states are due to commit to sustainable development goals, which will inevitably affect the environment.
The pope will fly into New York on the first day of the meeting and address the UN general assembly, reinforcing his message and emboldening countries worst affected by climate change.
For Klein, the papal visit will mark a much-needed change in the way negotiators discuss the environment. “There’s a way in which UN discourse sanitises the extent to which this is a moral crisis,” she said. “It cries out for a moral voice.”
Bolivian President Evo Morales presents Pope Francis with a crucifix incorporating the hammer and sickle symbol during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz. Photo: Juan Carlos Usnayo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
To my Catholic friends, while I am loathe to criticize that which they hold dear, there comes a time when silence is the wrong answer. When Pope Francis first surfaced, I thought he had the potential to be a great Pope. But with the potential of greatness, also comes the opportunity of infamy. Pope Francis is a Marxist and embodies many, many principles that I stand against, not only as a Constitutional Conservative, but as a Christian. This last week just solidified my uneasiness concerning this Pope.
The Bolivian President, Evo Morales (who Trevor Loudon and I have long contended is a Marxist), presented the Pontiff with a crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle, which the Pope returned after a brief examination. What is under contention is what the Pope said when presented with the gift. His comments were pretty much drowned out by a flurry of camera clicks. While some have claimed he expressed irritation, muttering the words “eso no está bien” (“this is not right”), Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Pope more likely said “no sabía eso” (“I didn’t know that”) in bemusement at the origins of the present. Which would make sense as NewsBusters and the Wall Street Journal noted, President Morales also “draped a medallion over [the pope’s] neck that bore the hammer and sickle.”
Communism has murdered well over one hundred million people in the last century alone. Many, many of those were Christians. As Ann Barnhardt put it, “Our Blessed Lord and Savior shown crucified on a hammer and sickle is, by all metrics, worse than Our Lord shown crucified on a swastika.” This constitutes blasphemy for me – Pope or not.
I also disagree that the Pope is being manipulated for ideological reasons. I think he knows full well what he is doing. We seem to have a knee-jerk response now when a leader does something unspeakable, unforgivable or outright evil – he/she didn’t know what they were doing… they were incompetent… or they were being manipulated. Knock it off! These people are not stupid; they are not rubes or babes in the woods who are so easily misled. (That’s not to say that they weren’t misled in very early life, ref. Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” That is to say, if you can indoctrinate someone in his early youth, you won’t need to sway him later: he’s already in your groove, and his decisions and choices will reflect that, not some imagined confusion of the moment.)
As for the Bolivian government insisting there was no political motive behind the gift and the Communications Minister, Marianela Paco, saying that Morales had thought the “Pope of the poor” would appreciate the gesture… bull crap. It’s the melding of politics and religion into a nightmarish agenda that is apocalyptic in scope and intent.
José Ignacio Munilla, bishop of the Spanish city of San Sebastián, tweeted a picture of the encounter, with the words: “The height of pride is to manipulate God in the service of atheist ideologies.” That is exactly right – on all counts, concerning all parties involved. It’s hard to overstate how important that observation is.
The Pope, after arriving in Bolivia, stopped to pray at the death site of Luis Espinal, a Jesuit murdered by Bolivian paramilitary forces in 1980. Espinal is being painted in press reports as a reformer who stood against the military dictatorship in Bolivia. Pope Francis also reportedly received a medal, bearing a hammer and sickle from Morales that was issued in memory of Espinal’s death.
Father Albo showed a reporter a published photo of a crucified Christ attached to a homemade hammer and sickle, instead of a cross, that Father Espinal kept by his bed.
“He was of the left. This is certain. But he never belonged to any party or pretended to be part of one,” said Father Albo, who said he hopes to present a replica of the hammer and sickle crucifix to the pope.
Father Espinal “gave a lot of importance to the dialogue between Marxists and Christians,” he explained. “It was not pro-Soviet … (it was) the need for the church to be close to the popular sectors. Some understand this, others don’t. To me it is very clear.”
It was said that the Pope wasn’t offended by Morales’ gift. “You can dispute the significance and use of the symbol now, but the origin is from Espinal and the sense of it was about an open dialogue, not about a specific ideology,” Lombardi said. Nope, it was all about ideology. This Argentinian Pope has been roundly criticized by many Marxists for not protecting Leftist priests during the military dictatorship in his country. Since becoming Pope, he has made major strides in bringing Liberation Theology to the fore in the Vatican. Thus, his campaigning for massive social and political change. This is Christianized Marxism. The irony of that term has to be savored. Kind of like “therapeutic cancer.”
Although Liberation Theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. It is purported that Liberation Theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty seen as having been caused by social injustice in that region. But its roots are solidly Marxist. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement’s most famous books, A Theology of Liberation.
Latin American Liberation Theology met opposition from others in the US, who accused it of using “Marxist concepts” and that lead to admonishment by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican disliked certain forms of Latin American Liberation Theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin; and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations.
Pope Francis used his trip to Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to highlight problems faced by indigenous communities and to warn against “all totalitarian, ideological or sectarian schemes.” That sounds very good. However, it started to go off the rails when he urged the downtrodden to change the world economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land. That’s sheer Marxism. And exactly what does he mean by ‘austerity programs?’ You mean the over taxing of the general populace in order that elitists can keep up their glutinous spending sprees? Or do you mean austerity as in cutting spending, sticking to a budget and reducing debts? It certainly makes a difference on how the term is being used here.
His speech was preceded by lengthy remarks from the Left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales, who wore a jacket adorned with the face of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Che was executed in Bolivia in 1967 by CIA-backed Bolivian troops. That certainly set the stage for Pope Francis and his speech.
Then the Pope gave a magnanimous and historic speech asking for forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church in its treatment of Native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America.” This is highly offensive and revisionist – it is skewed history. It’s true that American Indians were slaughtered by evil men and eventually, after a length of time, the colonists took over America. It is also true that Indians slaughtered many of the settlers and in horrific ways. Conquest and war are facts of history by the way, something Europe and the Vatican are very familiar with. It is a human condition that is ongoing and never ending as populations replace each other and wars rage on. He’s apologizing as though the Catholic Church had set out to do those things… it didn’t. Men did those things in the name of governments and in the name of the church. Apologizing for the deeds of men who acted on their own volition, but in your name, is to presume responsibility and control of actions over which the church had neither. The colonists did not set out to ‘conquer’ America either. They fled persecution in Europe and wanted to build new lives for themselves. Conflict came with Native Americans and the rest is history. Yes, evil was done, but that evil was not the totality of the story or our history and it certainly was not one-sided. It is also not something we need to ‘apologize’ for.
Then Pope Francis uttered my favorite quote – he quoted a fourth century bishop and called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil,” and said poor countries should not be reduced to being providers of raw material and cheap labor for developed countries. Actually, when I heard the original quote, it said ‘capitalism’ not ‘money.’ While seeking unlimited riches can be a sin, it is not always so and not all wealthy people are guilty of this sin. It is also true that poor countries should not be treated as merely sources of materials and labor, however, those countries also benefit from that part of the economy. Countries are free to prosper and if more lived under free capitalistic governments where free trade was the norm and people were allowed to innovate and work for themselves, then there would be far fewer impoverished countries. But first, you’d have to get rid of the Marxists and dictators. Kind of a conundrum.
For dessert, the Pope repeated some of his encyclical on climate change. That’s Marxism on a global scale and smacks of fascism as well. It’s a twofer. Climate change is a seductive lie wrapped in a green package, but it is rotten from the inside out.
The Pope closes with what sounds to me like the echoes of Barack Obama and communism:
“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” the pope said, decrying a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.“
“This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable The Earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” he said in an hour-long speech that was interrupted by applause and cheering dozens of times.
And the useful idiots cheered on even when they knew in their heart of hearts that all of the above is nothing more than a call to follow those that would rule over us, using Mother Earth as a handy excuse and targeting for blame the engines of free enterprise, using language meant to equate it with greed, while overlooking the primary source of real greed: corrupt totalitarian governments, born of Marxism.
Pope Francis was not finished by any means concerning ‘colonialism’:
“No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice,” he said.
“The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said.
Last week, Francis called on European authorities to keep human dignity at the centre of debate for a solution to the economic crisis in Greece.
He defended labor unions and praised poor people who had formed cooperatives to create jobs where previously “there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy”.
The Pope even went so far as to praise Bolivia’s social reforms to spread wealth under Morales. That’s wealth redistribution and again, Marxism. But that is only scratching the surface on this Pope – there is oh, so much more to be concerned about when it comes to Pope Francis.
My friend and colleague (and someone I truly admire) Cliff Kincaid has done excellent research into Pope Francis and his doings. Americans need to take note who has the ear of this Pope:
Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.
The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”
In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.
Sachs takes aim at the phrase from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.
Sachs is putting forth that the UN should be in charge of all national and individual rights. That we have to sacrifice our individual rights for the greater, collective good. What hive mentality. He’s also for massive global taxation, population control and one world government. “We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” The bill he wants to stick the US with is $845 billion.
The Pope has not only aligned himself with Sachs, but with the UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12th that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.” The pope’s encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade. This spells slavery for the world and an all-powerful tyrannical elite who will ruthlessly rule us through Marxist politics and a one world religion.
Sachs is not alone in his ideas. A short time ago, former President Shimon Peres met with the Pope at the Vatican and proposed that the Pope head up a UN for religions. I kid you not.
But the main topic of conversation was Peres’s idea to create a UN-like organization he called “the United Religions.”
Peres said the Argentina-born pontiff was the only world figure respected enough to bring an end to the wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.
“In the past, most of the wars in the world were motivated by the idea of nationhood,” Peres said. “But today, wars are incited using religion as an excuse.”
Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed to reporters that Peres had pitched his idea for “the United Religions” but said Francis did not commit to it.
“The pope listened, showing his interest, attention, and encouragement,” Lombardi said, adding that the pope pointed to the Pontifical Councils for Interreligious Dialogue and for Justice and Peace as existing agencies “suitable” for supporting interfaith peace initiatives.
The meeting in September was the third one inside of four months. In an interview in the Catholic Magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Peres also called for the Pope to lead the inter-religious organization in order to curb terrorism: “What we need is an organization of United Religions… as the best way to combat terrorists who kill in the name of faith.” I literally cannot believe what I am hearing. This could well be the birth of a one world religion. This looks suspiciously like a move to reclaim the lost glory of the Church, harking back to those centuries when it held sway ’round the world, commanding fealty from kings and nobility. This “progressive” innovation is really a reactionary repackaging of the most sweeping colonialism in history. With one tongue they “condemn” colonialism, while with the other tongue they offer global subservience as the “solution” to the demon du jour.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The Pope is offering the masses the opium of Marxism in his stances. The question is, will the world follow him down this path? So many these days just want someone to give them everything and take care of them… they hunger for a leader who will absolve them of their sins and promise them forgiveness and welcome them with open arms. Will people, in the name of peace, usher in a one world order and willingly give up their freedoms? I’m afraid history says they will, but I know Americans, Christians and others will not be assimilated so easily by Marxist musings and flowery articulation. Pontification will only carry you so far – if you follow this pied piper, you will find yourself in the loving embrace of the UN – that Democracy of Dictators – and all that entails.
The coverage of the economic disaster in Greece, a strategic NATO country, has mostly ignored the role of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the growing global turmoil.
Reports continue to circulate that a new European Union (EU) bailout deal with Greece is possible, as Yanis Varoufakis, a self-described “erratic Marxist,” has resigned as finance minister. But these developments appear to be for the purpose of diverting attention away from the fact that Greece has already become, in effect, a satellite of Moscow.
The Greek regime is a Moscow-backed left-right coalition led by Alexis Tsipras, the pro-Marxist and pro-Russia head of Greece’s “Coalition of the Radical Left.” Tsipras, who presented himself as a moderate when he spoke at the Brookings Institution on January 22, 2013, was a member of the youth wing of the Greek Communist Party, the KKE.
The political party known as ANEL (The Independent Greeks) is supposed to be a “conservative” party in the ruling government and yet it is pro-Russian. This reflects Putin’s cultivation of right-wing forces throughout Europe and even in America.
Back from a recent visit to Russia, Tsipras is now counting on cheaper gas and increased Russian investment from Moscow. The prospect of Russian military bases in NATO territory—Greece—cannot be ruled out at this point.
Tsipras previously signed a memorandum that is designed to make 2016 into the “Year of Greece-Russia relations.”
After his coalition won the elections in January, Tsipras received a congratulatory call from President Obama. The two leaders “reviewed close cooperation between Greece and the United States on issues of European security and counterterrorism,” the White House reported.
That alleged “close cooperation” has been replaced by a Greek deal with Moscow.
It seems like just another foreign policy disaster under President Obama, except in this case the stakes are huge. NATO notes that “Greece is strategically located in the Southern region of the Alliance, in close vicinity to South Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa.”
But other than expressing a vague hope that European leaders would devise a plan to allow Greece “to return to growth and debt sustainability within the Eurozone,” Obama has been AWOL on the crisis, leaving it mostly in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The subject of reports and even a book suggesting she is a Russian agent, Merkel knows full well that Tsipras and Putin have been undermining the NATO alliance at a time when the West fears a Russian invasion of another former Soviet republic.
For example, in the report, “Stop Putin’s Next Invasion Before It Starts,” Terrence K. Kelly of the Rand Corporation argues that “The United States needs to seriously consider stationing forces in Eastern Europe to support the nation’s commitment to protect the independence of the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—NATO members all—against the specter of Russian aggression.”
Some news organizations have alluded to Russia’s role in the current crisis. “Russian President Vladimir Putin feted Tsipras in St. Petersburg last month as bailout negotiations took place in Brussels,” noted Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte in The Washington Post.
During that meeting Tsipras discussed energy and the “Greek Stream” gas pipeline project with Russian Gazprom chief Alexei Miller during a meeting in St. Petersburg. In fact, Russia and Greece signed a deal to construct a Turkish pipeline across Greek territory. Tsipras also met with representatives of the new development bank for BRICS countries, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, “who expressed their intense interest in cooperating with Greece,” one report noted.
“Russia has its eye on Athens, trying to break European unity to put an end to economic sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine,” Birnbaum and Witte noted in the Post.
But the situation is far more serious than the Post lets on. Syriza’s 40-point program includes undermining NATO, the global battle against Islamic terrorism, and Israel:
Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO.
Withdrawal of Greek troops from Afghanistan and the Balkans. No Greek soldiers beyond our own borders.
Drastically cut military expenditures.
Abolition of military cooperation with Israel. Support for creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Syriza, a Greek political party, is a member of The European Left (EL). Member Parties of the EL are described as “socialist, communist, red-green and other democratic left parties of the member states and associated states of the European Union (EU) that work together and establish various forms of co-operation at all levels of political activity in Europe, based on the agreements, basic principles and political aims laid down in the EL Manifesto.” The chairperson of EL is Pierre Laurent of the French Communist Party. Tsipras is the Vice-Chairperson.
In addition to the support from these international Marxist political parties and groups, Tsipras met with the leftist Pope Francis on September 19, 2014. Tsipras said, “We pleaded with him to continue struggling against poverty and to speak in behalf of the dignity of humans as well as the structural causes behind poverty which are the inequality in the distribution of wealth and the rampant behavior of the financial markets. …we agreed that the dialogue between the Left and the Christian Church must go on. We may have different ideological starting points; however, we converge on common values, like solidarity, love for the fellow human being, social justice, and our concern regarding world peace.”
“For the first time ever the head of the Catholic Church will meet a leader of the radical Left,” is how Tsipras described the meeting with the pope at his “Change Europe” website.
In their book, EUSSR, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov argued that the European Union was itself a project of the old Soviet Union, and that the EU has always been subject to manipulation by Moscow and its agents. Based on this analysis, what’s happening in Greece is part of a process of pulling Europe as a whole to the left and away from the United States.
The eventual goal, some observers say, is the removal of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a development that would strike a mortal blow to the global capitalist system.
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In Memoriam My beloved husband Garry Hamilton passed on 09/24/22I will love you always...
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