Warning: Corporate Lobbyists at Work to Control DebateHow big money distorts reality by dominating both sides of every debate. Like a tentacle of a sea monster breaking the surface of the water, a recent news story starring a libertarian think-tanks 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 mans 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. 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 doesnt tell readers is that these very same corporations are recipients of their own John Podestas 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 Podestas 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. 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 Warners 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 Departments 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, Thailands 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 Chinas 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 Chinas 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 MEKs 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 Americas 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 Cartaluccis articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 