by Alex Christoforou, The Duran:
In a previous article I documented how liberal billionaires deceive liberal voters about policies to address global warming, so as to support only policies that will fail; but in this article, I address how conservative billionaires deceive conservative voters to believe either that global warming doesn’t exist or that if it does it’s not largely a result of the burning of fossil fuels by humans. So: the present article is addressed to conservatives and will expose how conservative billionaires fund the deception of those voters.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
I should first make clear that there are some issues on which both liberals and conservatives agree, and those are in some ways even more pernicious. For example: both liberal billionaires and conservative billionaires are neoconservatives, and in 2002 and 2003 were funding media that stenographically reported to the American people the lies that ‘justified’ America’s 20 March 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq (a country that had never threatened nor posed any danger to the American people): not a single billionaire was funding any media to expose the lies. Republican billionaires didn’t, and Democratic billionaires didn’t. That invasion, which should have caused all Americans to repudiate both of America’s political Parties and to start demanding democracy in America, did no such thing — not even when all of Bush’s “WMD in Iraq” statements came to be recognized to have been lies.
So: how are Republican billionaires and their donations funding the propaganda that alleges global warming to be either a hoax or not a result of fossil-fuels burning?
On May 31st, Real Clear Energy headlined “Narratives for Sale: The Deep-Pocketed Donors Buying Media to Attack American Energy Have Troubling Ties to Russian Interests”, and Daniel Turner wrote:
The destructive leak of US intelligence documents once again highlights the extent Russia is placing informational warfare front and center in its approach to conflicts of the 21st century. And with questions continuing to circulate about financial ties between Russian interests and many radical green organizations in the US, it’s worth scrutinizing how these groups are adapting their tactics to influence media coverage in an age of unaffordable gas prices and frustration with President Biden’s failed energy policies.
Radical green groups are scooping up reporters to become full-time propagandists for their cause, using their connections and credentials to legitimize false attacks and undermine American energy production. The Associated Press announced a “donation” to fund the salaries of 20 journalists who would push climate change stories. As many media organizations are forced to shed staff, they are cleverly filling the void with misinformation that’s being presented as unbiased journalism in mainstream outlets.
Take the example of the group Floodlight, which advertises itself as a “nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action” and employs a sizable team of “journalists.” Despite openly touting a biased and one-sided agenda, its work attacking American energy companies is published as news articles — not opinion — in publications like The Guardian, The Texas Tribune, NPR, and the Los Angeles Times. The disclosed donors all share Floodlight’s radical mission of “stopping oil and gas at the source” across the US.
The deeper you dig into Floodlight’s funding, the more troubling patterns emerge. In recent years, filings with Bermuda’s registrar of companies revealed that Klein Ltd, a company “run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle,” funneled $23 million to the Sea Change Foundation. At the time, the massive gift to this radical green group that provides grants to “nonprofit organizations focused on climate change” was the company’s “only publicly documented” activity. This bombshell revelation has been the subject of numerous calls for investigation by leading members of Congress.
It doesn’t require much investigation to reveal Floodlight’s close ties to the Sea Change Foundation. One of Floodlight’s most significant donors, the Tides Foundation, has received at least $4 million from the Sea Change foundation. Another major supporter of Floodlight, the Heising-Simons Foundation, is run by Liz Simon — the sister of Nathaniel Simons who founded and runs the Sea Change foundation. The Sea Change foundation has also contributed an eye-popping $125 million to the Energy Foundation, which in turn has given at least $8 million to Floodlight donors. Given these established ties, Floodlight’s repeated attacks on American LNG companies that are posed to replace Russian supply in Europe will inevitably raise eyebrows.
Daniel Turner was for two years the Director of Strategic Communication at the Charles Koch Institute. The libertarian propagandist billionaire, Charles Koch, is the single biggest American investor in the Athabasca Canada tar sands, which is the costliest-to-extract and refine source of oil in North America, and he was the biggest funder of politicians who favored a U.S. Government approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have made those tar sands profitable. Koch, via his foundations, has also been the biggest donor and bundler organizing other U.S. billionaires to donate to the Republican Party. For example, on 5 January 2014, the Washington Post bannered “Koch-backed political coalition, designed to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012” and almost all of that secret money went to Republicans.
