Russia as Media Manipulator: Nothing New

As the self-aggrieved losing party, the Democratic Party (but that is redundant) has retreated to the dark arts of doubt and deception in efforts to discredit the election of President Trump and hobble the agenda upon which he was elected. A progressive supportive media gaggle of newscasters follows a scripted litany of trumped up allegations, which are largely Russia-centric. Did you ever use Russian toothpaste? Did you ever drink vodka? Did you ever speak to a Russian? Claims of false news and media deception muddy formerly rational thinking. As the optimistically titled independent special investigator Robert Mueller has found more worrisome and factual Russian links to the Obama administration than to President Trump, this witch hunt may ultimately reveal the true source of political maleficence. Of particular outrage to these progressives here and worldwide is President Trump's recent withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. It was not a treaty by common understanding, as was the U.S. non-ratified 2005 Kyoto Treaty, itself a failure in meeting its goals. Notably, if every nation had met its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, the Earth's claimed temperature in 2050 would have been a miniscule 0.07°C lower as a result. The Paris Climate Agreement replaced that hodgepodge of greenhouse gas reduction goals with another hodgepodge of greenhouse reduction goals, whose net effect was calculated to avert 0.05°C of warming by 2030. This meaningless and undetectable temperature change was paired with a most noticeable price tag of over $12 trillion, paid for by the U.S. in dollars, lost jobs, and diminished prosperity and influence. The agreement would have U.S. taxpayers paying ransom to a raft of underdeveloped countries as the price of global climate well-being and demonstrating much needed good intentions on our part.

If the climate was not a demonstrable beneficiary of this energy and economic self-immolation by the U.S., who would have been? A recent article by Cliff Kincaid (Accuracy in Media) gave a convincing answer in "Why the Russians Conceived the Global Warming Scam." He makes reference to the writings of Sovietologist Natalie Grant Wragra, a recognized "leading authority on Soviet deceit" in the words of a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and director of the U.S. Information Agency's office to counter Soviet disinformation, as noted in her 2002 obituary. As environmentalists of all colors, mostly "green but red on the inside," wail over the imminent demise of Mother Earth on the occasion of President Trump's level-headed understanding of a man-made propaganda campaign, they might reflect on Soviet-expert Grant's 1998 essay "Green Cross." She opened with the following: The Moscow regime, expert in political deception, follows attentively western opinion, which it then uses as a foundation to spread disinformation[.] ... By means of selected, slanted and deceptive data, concerns are gradually transformed into fear. Scared and under policies and taking considerable stress, the victims of this Moscow game can thus be influenced into accepting steps harmful to their own interests[.] Also, "[e]xpansion of influence is, therefore, one of the principal purposes of every major Moscow disinformation hoax." Sound familiar? There is a whole cadre of progressives in the media and political office now working overtime to validate Lenin's definition of "useful idiots" buying Russian rope with which to hang themselves. Grant foresaw the success of Mikhail S. Gorbachev in promoting these Soviet objectives by introducing the environment as a winning propaganda strategy. She notes: "[P]rotection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist 'values.'" The United Nations helped this agenda along by promoting the Earth Summits of 1992 and 2012 and Agenda 21 with its "sustainable development" mantra. Presumably, something is sustainable if some acolyte says it is in this ill defined utopian vision. The abandoned Paris Accord was packed with provisions that ensured that the U.S. would be sucked into an economic black hole. The Democrats and MSM may have picked up some of these Soviet propaganda techniques and employed them to sway public opinion against President Trump and his supporters. However, compared to the Russians, they are mere pikers in these media wars; in fact, they are their own victims. They are doing the declared work of Russian interests in trying to debase U.S. competitiveness and leadership by using Soviet-inspired concern for the environment wrapped up in a virtuous green cloak. President Trump is the new face of the brave boy who pointed out the "the emperor has no new clothes." The environmental movement of today has been stripped of its green cloak and shown to be a naked expression of Soviet-era communist goals. Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Heartland Institute policy expert on environment; VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com.