Usefulidiot.eco

Get a load of this! According to the Telegraph, Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev – “keen environmental campaigners” – are “fighting over the right to own and run the new domain name, .eco, which is an alternative ending to web addresses, as opposed to .com or .co.uk.”

Strange pair? Not really. As Rush explained after Climategate broke:

Years ago, folks — years ago on this program — I explained that communists, leftist ideologues flocked to the environmental movement after the end of the Cold War. Collectivists found cover for their new agenda, and the collectivists attracted leftist pseudoscientists who were milking the scam for grants from corporations, universities and government entities. There are so many whores in our midst, from members of Congress, members of the US Senate, and members of the scientific community who are whoring themselves out for money, abandoning science, the pursuit of truth, in exchange for advancing a leftist political agenda. I have known this, and I have warned of this. I’ve not been able to prove it, however. I’ve simply had to rely on my powers of persuasion, my common sense, and my belief in God to convince people I’m right. Now we have these e-mails. It was a lie from the beginning. I laid out the reasons why it should be scrutinized and nobody listened because the issue was so important, saving the climate, saving the air, saving the water, saving the polar bears.

Rush, of course, was right all along. In December 2008, a report from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum discussed “Green Cross International, an organization founded in 1993 by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to offer aid to the environment without consideration of national borders” and explained that “Gorbachev’s focus on the environment through the UN is a clear embrace of what is green on the outside, but red on the inside. It is sometimes called the watermelon effect, which is communism. As a matter of fact, the entire focus of the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Poznan, Poland] and next year’s [2009] meeting in Copenhagen is twofold, the creation of an infrastructure for: 1) technology transfers from developed to developing nations and 2) finance from developed to developing countries. Simply put, the aim of the “climate change” treaty of 1997 and its proposed replacement by a new treaty to be completed in Copenhagen in 2009, is to redistribute wealth around the globe.”

A few years latter, Phyllis conducted an almost 1 hour long live interview with Brian Sussman, who wrote a book about Climategate and expanded on how climate alarmism is rooted in and driven by marxism, communism and a lust for power – a quest to control every aspect of private life from what car you drive to remote control of your thermostat. Sussman also appeared Hannity’s show to discuss the book and his findings on Al Gore:

SUSSMAN: Al Gore stands to make perhaps a billion dollars or more off of global warming. And listen, he doesn’t believe in global warming. He doesn’t believe in any of this. He believes in money. That’s what this is all about, Sean.

HANNITY: How do you know that? How do you — I mean, I’ve got to believe at least he believes the lie, in spite of it. You don’t think so. You think this is — he knows it’s a hoax?

SUSSMAN: In 1995, he was part of the president’s Council on Sustainable Development. He put together something called the “New Consensus.”

In “The New Consensus,” and this is a handbook used at legislative level all across the country in every state. And [in] the new consensus, he says, even when the science is uncertain, we need to go ahead with these plans and we need to build consensus. Sean, in my book I clearly prove there is no consensus. This is a myth.

Al Gore’s real environmental values – and their connection to Sussman’s overall thesis that green is really just a shade of red – were exposed for all to see in National Review in the year 2000:

Today’s Wall Street Journal carried a story by crack investigative reporter Glenn R. Simpson titled “From Al to Zinc: Story of a Mine Shows How a Fatherly Favor Still Haunts Gore.” That headline is inaccurate: Gore’s zinc royalties have never haunted Gore, at least in public. (Insert exasperated sigh here.)

Simpson begins by noting that the rare mineral germanium, combined with zinc, “for which Carthage is the primary source in the Western Hemisphere,” is “increasingly used in fiber optics and other sophisticated communications equipment.” Bully for the Internet inventor.

He then discounts the political value of Gore’s mining investment: “Though any pollution from zinc mining on the Gore property is minor and the campaign calls the accusation ‘old and tired,’ the plant that processes the zinc 100 miles away in Clarksville is a high-pollution Superfund site, and a previously undisclosed Environmental Protection Agency study cites it for dangerous contamination. But in another irony, if zinc has been Mr. Gore’s friend, he has been the industry’s enemy — pushing to declare it a toxic substance requiring tougher regulation.” (Simpson also softens the case against Gore later by noting “The state of Tennessee doesn’t consider it dangerous.”)

This “old and tired” accusation against Gore — the strident voice who railed against the “ecological Kristallnacht” making a half-million in mining royalties–would be a brand-new story to almost every American voter. It first came to the national media’s attention on August 15, 1992, when Washington Post investigative reporter Charles Babcock did a story. (Okay, it was buried inside the paper on a Saturday.)

Babcock began: “Next month, Democratic vice presidential nominee Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) will receive a $ 20,000 check for the mineral rights on his farm in Carthage, Tenn., just as he has almost every year since 1974.

“The check is the product of an unusually valuable lease for zinc rights his father, Albert Gore Sr., negotiated with the late legendary oil man, Armand Hammer, and passed on to him. A review of candidate Gore’s personal finances, based on his financial disclosure statements, land records and interviews, shows that the $ 330,000 he has collected from the lease over the years has been his most important source of income after his salary.”

Later, after ticking off other details of Gore’s financial disclosure forms, Babcock noted the unusually lucrative arrangement: “The $20,000 a year amounts to $227 an acre, much more than the $30 an acre Occidental Minerals, part of Hammer’s oil company, paid the senior Gore and some neighbors a few years before the 1973 arrangement was made. For the first 11 years, Occidental paid the younger Gore $190,000 for the lease without mining under the property because it never built a mine in the area.”

Babcock also wondered how Gore Junior, who said he made “slightly above slave wages” as a reporter at the time Hammer dealt with his father, could buy the property from dear old Dad. “Land records show the younger Gore paid his father $140,000 for the property and the lease (his father keeping the first $20,000 lease payment), and took out a $100,000 mortgage. The down payment came from profits from two previous real estate investments, Gore Jr. said.”

…

Gore’s Occidental payments didn’t become much of an issue again until 1997, when Edward Jay Epstein released his book Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, which reported on Gore Senior’s elaborate business dealings (and political favors for) Hammer. Epstein also revealed Hammer was a financier of Soviet espionage in the United States, which never complicated young Gore’s hawkish reputation.

It’s true – Hammer was the Soviet’s “capitalist prince”, and was completely exposed by Epstein’s book (see Epstein’s interview about the book on C-Span and Charlie Rose). In fact, Hammer and his organization Occidental Petroleum were a key tool of Moscow in Libya in their Petropower schemes. This is important because Hammer’s close relationship with both the Gore family and Libya may be part of the reason why the Clinton Administration helped the UN get Gadhafi off the hook for the Lockerbie bombing by agreeing to not go above Gadhafi’s designated scapegoat (the agent that carried out the attack, who was in prison until Obama supported his release in 2009).

While Gore was running for President in 2000, Cliff Kincaid wrote an in-depth article about the Gore family-Hammer relationship. I excerpt it at the end, along with an excerpt a 2001 article from Insight about Gore Sr.’s FBI file that tackles other Commie friends of his. But Kincaid’s concluding comment could not be more timely: “Armand Hammer is dead, but the Occidental connection lives on. The media must dig deeper. A good place to look is Libya.” I agree, especially now that the rebels and the media have been raiding the Gadhafi regime’s archives.

One of the great ironies of this tale is that Hammer, a tireless self promoter, spent much of his old age trying to obtain the Nobel Peace Prize (for supposedly promoting better relationships between the superpowers – which was a lie), and through bribing the right Nobel Committee officials, almost succeeded – making the “short list” of two choices, himself and the Dalai Lama (the Dalai Lama won). In the end it was Gore Jr. who got the prize, and for his own act of deception! (Gorbachev also won the Prize – again for less then true reasons)

Epstein writes in Dossier that Armand Hammer was Senator Al Gore Jr.’s guest of honor at Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address. Reagan refused to shake Hammer’s hand.

The FBI characterized Gore Sr. as “uninterested in facts,” and as one who made “wild accusations and lies”. Looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

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Excerpt I

From “Gore, Occidental and Libya”, undated (written some time in the year 2000), by Cliff Kincaid:

Pressure is mounting on Vice President Al Gore to tell the complete truth about his family’s relationship with Occidental Petroleum and its late chairman, Soviet agent Armand Hammer. Pressure is even coming from the political left, where human rights groups are angry over Gore’s failure to oppose Occidental’s oil operations in Colombia that are said to threaten a native Indian tribe down there. After stonewalling media questions about his financial relationship with Occidental, he has finally made a statement on the matter, whitewashing his father’s involvement with the firm.

According to Associated Press writer Karin Miller, “He said his family’s involvement with Occidental began after his father’s 1970 defeat when Gore Sr. opened a law firm and Occidental became a client.” But this is demonstrably false. A quick look at any biography of Hammer or Gore discloses that the relationship between Hammer and Gore Sr. dates back to the 1950s or before.

In his book, Gore: A Political Life, former ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick puts it this way: “Throughout the 1950s and well into the following decade, Hammer counted on [Gore Sr.] as his principal link to the Democratic congressional leadership, and to defend his economic interests.” By 1950, Hammer had taken Gore as a partner in his cattle-breeding business, an arrangement that was very lucrative for the Gore family. Zelnick adds that Hammer “also supplied Gore with Christmas gifts of expensive silver.”

It appears that Gore Jr. is trying to avoid a discussion of how his father’s services were bought and paid for by Occidental when he was a senator. He is also trying to avoid a discussion of how his own services were bought and paid for. Hammer financially supported Gore Jr.s’ runs for public office and met frequently with Gore in Washington. When Gore Jr. first ran for president, back in 1988, Hammer intervened to try to get then-Senator Paul Simon to drop out of the race. Hammer offered Simon a cabinet position in the Gore Administration if he would do so. Zelnick also reports that Hammer’s luxurious private jet was put at the disposal of the Gore family.

Gore Sr. played a role in a foreign policy debacle that is still unfolding before our eyes — U.S. involvement in Libya. In 1967 — three years before Gore Jr. says his father developed a relationship with Occidental — Gore Sr accompanied Hammer to Libya to dedicate Occidental’s oil fields there. According to various sources, Occidental got the oil concessions after millions of dollars in bribes were paid to Libyan officials and middlemen.

This corruption played a role in the 1969 military coup by Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who turned out to be one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism against the West. But today, Occidental is trying to get back into Libya, and the Clinton-Gore Administration has been trying to help. On March 26th, in the Washington Post, columnist Jim Hoagland exposed how the administration is laying the groundwork for the normalization of relations with Gadhafi. He said U.S. oil companies were behind it. He didn’t name them, but they include Gore’s friends at Occidental.

Gore’s failure to tell the truth about his family connection to Hammer and Occidental also flies in the face of a story that appeared on March 19 in the New York Times. Reporter Douglas Frantz said Gore Sr. and Hammer met back in the 1940s, and that the two men were partners in the cattle business. Frantz said Hammer “helped make the elder Mr. Gore a wealthy man, and the politician became one of the oilman’s most valued allies in Washington.” This was mainly during the 1960s – many years before Gore Jr. claims his father developed a relationship with Hammer. Frantz did not shy away from Hammer’s Soviet connection, noting that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute Hammer for being a Soviet agent. But Gore Sr. defended Hammer on the Senate floor, and Hammer wasn’t charged.

…

Gore’s statements about his family’s connection to Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum strongly suggest that he is trying to hide something. It may be as sinister as the Buddhist Temple fundraising scandal and Gore’s connection to a Communist Chinese agent. In this case, however, the agent represented the old Soviet Union. Armand Hammer is dead, but the Occidental connection lives on. The media must dig deeper. A good place to look is Libya.

Excerpt II

From “Secret FBI file on Albert Gore Sr.”, Insight on the News, Sep 10, 2001, by Timothy W Maier:

Little Albert briefly is mentioned in his father’s FBI file as a curious 11year-old who in 1957 requests and receives “two souvenir targets” as mementos of a private FBI tour. The FBI characterizes the elder Gore as “one who harbors strong personal animosity toward the Bureau and is uninterested in facts,” and as “no friend of the FBI and, in fact, appears to delight in jumping on the bandwagon when people attack us.”

Hoover regarded the senior Gore with such contempt, the file shows, that in 1954 he was placed on the “not to contact” list after Gore blasted FBI pursuit of Soviet espionage cases. Indeed the file raises serious questions about Gore’s own ties, especially his relationship with the wealthy Soviet agent Armand Hammer, from whom Gore Sr. received large sums of money (see “Gore Family Ties;’ May 22, 2000). It also contains new revelations linking Gore Sr. to Harry Dexter White, the deputy treasury secretary in the Roosevelt administration who repeatedly was identified under oath as a Soviet agent. White died of a heart attack in 1948, two days before he was to appear before a congressional committee to answer spy charges by former Communist couriers Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley.

“Bureau files indicate that Senator Gore’s bias against the FBI resulted from resentment over the Director’s testimony in the Harry Dexter White case,” the file says. “Gore has previously expressed his personal antipathy to the FBI and is regarded by many from his own state as being stupid and completely no good.”

Russian defector Igor Gouzenko since has fingered White as a spy, as did the Venona intercepts of Soviet dispatches that linked him to the code names Richard, Reed and Lawyer. These confirm that in 1945 White was providing a Soviet KGB officer with sensitive economic information. One of the intercepts established that the KGB even offered to pay the college tuition of White’s daughter when he complained that he might have to return to the private sector to pay her education bills. Coupled with the earlier sworn testimony, these revelations prompted former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y) to declare without hesitation that White was a Soviet agent.

Yet the elder Gore was so outraged at Hoover’s testimony about White before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee under Sen. William Jenner (RInd.) that he blasted the FBI in a closeddoor meeting with G-men in 1954 for destroying White and libeling others. Previously released FBI memos reveal that Hoover regarded White as a “national-security risk.” Gore claimed the FBI “overstepped its boundaries on that case” and called Hoover’s bureau a “snooping police agency” that “smeared innocent people” with “guilt by association.” At the same time, Gore bragged about attending school in Baltimore with a special agent to whom Gore said he wanted the FBI to relay his frustration.

Hoover responded to a memo about this: “I see no reason to further contact Senator Gore. Also our offices in Tenn. should be briefed on Gore’s attitude. Gore’s name should be placed on list not to be approached at any time. H.” In 1954, Hoover’s agents characterized Gore as one who made “wild accusations and lies.” In fact, the file indicates that Gore’s so-called school buddy in Baltimore said he had never met Gore.

For whatever reason, Gore nonetheless requested the names of “known communists” in Memphis shortly after the arrest of Junius Scales, the first person convicted under the Smith Act for a being a member of the Communist Party and conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government by force and violence. The FBI declined to provide Gore with the list.