How big money distorts reality by dominating both sides of every debate.

Tony Cartalucci, Contributor

Activist Post

Like a tentacle of a sea monster breaking the surface of the water, a recent news story starring a “libertarian” think-tank’s billboard comparing “climate change” proponents to Theodore Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber) represents but a small part of a much larger beast.

Image: While in reality those behind “climate change” hysteria dwarf the threat of Kaczynski, the Heartland Institute is funded by corporations backing just such people. What we are left with is a false paradigm where both sides are controlled by the same corporate-financier interests producing a strategy of tension and prevent real issues and solutions from being realized.

Like in any movie script, the billboard put up by the Heartland Institute is designed to play the role of the villain. Heroically riding in to fight this villain is “Think Progress,” a so-called “progressive” project maintained by the Center for American Progress. To the average, poorly informed observer, it appears as if an increasingly heated debate over man’s impact on the environment is unfolding, framed by a vitriolic “denier” camp reduced to name-calling, with a dignified progressive camp refusing to move from its foundation of “reason” and “science.”

In reality we are watching two think-tanks funded, backed, and involved with the very same handful of corporations. Both the Heartland Institute and the Center for American Progress are funded by Wall Street and together they create a false paradigm with which to trap unassuming millions while sidelining real issues, problems, and their solutions.

Think Progress itself exposes the Heartland Institute as funded by major corporations including Amgen, Bayer, Comcast, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly & Company, Microsoft, PepsiCo, General Motors, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable. It then berates these corporations for their support for the Heartland Institute in a more recent article of theirs titled, “Heartland Institute Compares Climate Science Believers And Reporters To Mass ‘Murderers And Madmen’.” The US Chamber of Commerce is also listed as a contributor to the Heartland Institute in a .pdf provided by Think Progress.

What Think Progress doesn’t tell readers is that these very same corporations are recipients of their own John Podesta’s lobbying services – because indeed Think Progress and its umbrella organization, the Center for American Progress is chaired by John Podesta, co-founder of the Podesta Group – a notorious corporate lobbying firm involved with some of the most dubious characters and corporations on Earth. Amongst Podesta’s clients are the above mentioned Amgen and General Motors, as well as BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon, British Petroleum, Lockheed Martin, and many others.



Video: Meet the founder of the United Nations Foundation, depopulation and climate change enthusiast Ted Turner previously of Time Warner. Turner peddles Malthusian talking-points on national TV attempting to link overpopulation with global warming. And while Turner is no longer with Time Warner, its subsidiary Time Inc is still a corporate partner of the UN Foundation while Time Warner itself is listed as a supporter of the Heartland Institute – guilty of “climate denial.” The Fortune 500 is replete with examples of corporations playing both sides of the climate debate.

To fully illustrate this false paradigm, it should be mentioned that one of the patrons of the Heartland Institute and their “climate denial” – Time Warner – though its subsidiary Time Inc is also a corporate partner of the United Nations Foundation – a premier promoter of climate change hysteria. Time Warner’s Ted Turner created the foundation with a 1 billion dollar donation and is an outspoken “global warming” and “overpopulation” activist. Joining Time Warner in partnering with the UN Foundation is the Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation, also prominent global climate change activists. Bill Gates being founder and a current chairman at Microsoft – is also a sponsor of “climate denial” at the Heartland Institute.

The Podesta Group openly admits that it conducts media campaigns including planting op-eds in popular newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post. The Podesta Group features a “PG At Work” segment on each page of its website showcasing such articles, written either by journalists approached by the lobbying firm, or by Podesta Group members themselves, often never disclosing their affiliations.

Similarly, Podesta openly admits it “arranges” for Senators to make specific floor speeches. When one wonders the “how” regarding corporate-financier interests purchasing our elected representatives and manipulating our press, the answer is lobbying firms like Podesta. Ensuring the public goes along with such a flagrant abuse of power and influence is left to the creation of false paradigms, false choices, and emotionally charged misdirecting debates.

By the same corporations funding a vicious debate moderated by professional lobbyists in their employ, the corporate-financier elite ensure that the public is herded into a matrix of false choices where both real problems and their solutions are non-issues and instead an endless circular debate mired in infinite minutiae is conducted.

Regardless of which public opinion prevails regarding anthropogenic global warming, the corporate-financier oligarchs have institutions and legislation in place to capitalize, be it big-oil or carbon-credit-trading big banks.

Not Just Climate Change.

Climate change is not the only issue where both sides of the debate are dominated by the same interests for the purpose of maintaining a false paradigm and an effective strategy of tension. Just recently, another media circus was erected around a Chinese “activist,” Chen Guangcheng.

Chen had been built up since at least 2008 by another PR firm of sorts, the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy and its various subsidiaries including Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Like Podesta, NED not only plants op-eds across the corporate-media, but maintains a global network of clearinghouses it funds with US taxpayers’ money. One such example, Thailand’s Prachatai, is fully funded by NED, USAID, and convicted criminal George Soros‘ Open Society Institute (also a sponsor of the above mentioned Center for American Progress). On a daily basis, Prachatai regurgitates US State Department talking points, while masquerading as an “independent” media organization.

Together, these fraudulent media clearinghouses with Congressional members of NED, IRI, and NDI, turn a nameless, inconsequential “activist” or a contrived human rights issue into an international point of contention – not for the cause of human rights, but to be used as leverage for geopolitical and financial concessions. In China’s case, Chen was used as a PR stunt in the lead up to high-profile talks between Washington and Beijing.

And just like with the climate change issue, indeed, the very injustice Chen Guangcheng was protesting, with US money and support, was a creation of the West itself – namely China’s draconian population control policies, funded by the UN with the US the primary donor to its “Population Fund.”

The “War on Terror” is yet another false paradigm, both created and perpetuated by the West, while it simultaneously “fights” against it. In fact, many of the most adamant proponents of the “War on Terror” are literally lobbying for the US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (#29) Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) of Iran, while others are calling on the US to fund, arm, and politically recognize listed terror organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) of Libya, and terrorists currently destabilizing Syria.

Image: Rudy Giuliani consorting with MEK’s political wing leader Maryam Rajavi in Paris, France. Giuliani is best known for his role playing a strong supporter for the “War on Terror” and his incessant fear mongering verses “Islamic extremists.” In real life, he coddles listed terrorist organizations in direct violation of US law and even lobbies for them.

While some may be confused as to why one would simultaneously perpetuate a war while trying to end it, the answer is quite simple – the trillions the US is spending to fight the endless “War on Terror” is not going into a black hole; rather, it is going to a myriad of defense contractors while building the foundation for other large corporate-financier interests to plunder nations previously beyond America’s geopolitical and financial reach – the ultimate goal being to turn the entire planet into a borderless playground for the corporate-financier oligarchs of Wall Street and London.

What To Do When Both Sides of the Debate Are Controlled.

When we are trapped within a matrix of false choices, a paradigm created by and for the corporate-financier elite, our only recourse is to escape it. We do this by creating an agenda and program of our own while recognizing, boycotting and replacing the corporate interests that have constructed this paradigm around us in the first place.

Picking sides between the Heartland Institute and Think Progress is indeed an exercise in futility, but one the corporate-financiers hope you commit to anyway. And no matter where one stands on the issue of “climate change,” they end up supporting the same corporate interests regardless. By deciding for ourselves what issues are truly important and entirely ignoring or exposing as a fraud the false debates put in front of us, we can begin making real progress that is in our collective best interests, while undermining the elitist minority that has dominated and manipulated public discourse for so long.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at

Land Destroyer Report. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.