This has not gotten anywhere near enough publicity—like a lot of things these days that you are not supposed to notice. One wonders about the ethnic commitments of at least some of these NGOs.

“I’M YOUR FATHER!” @okeefemedia EXPOSES secret ‘Alitas’ facility at 1150 W. Drexel in Tucson as well as ‘Alitas Angels’ located at 112 Park street inside old Bank Building in Nogales

NOGALES — We just followed the trail of the migrant vans right to the source, visiting the… pic.twitter.com/9saIUWyHYh

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 17, 2024

Mint Press dissects United Against Nuclear Iran, a neocon advocacy group that clearly wants to destroy Iran because of its hostility toward Israel. These are excerpts. As usual with neocon groups, the money and most of the work is performed by Jews but they recruit a lot of sympathetic non-Jews, like Jeb Bush, in order to diffuse the reality that it is a pro-Israel organization. The entire article is well worth reading.

By Alan McLeod

CONFLICTS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

For such a large, well-financed, and influential organization filled with senior officials, United Against Nuclear [UANI] Iran keeps its funding sources very quiet. However, in 2015, Clifton was able to obtain a UANI donor list for the 2013 financial year. By far and away, the largest funders were billionaire New York-based investor Thomas Kaplan and multibillionaire Israeli-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Kaplan, whose $843,000 donation supplied around half the group’s 2013 funding, is a venture capitalist investor concentrating on metals, particularly gold. He is the chairman of Tigris Financial and the Electrum Group LLC. Both of Kaplan’s firms employ UANI CEO Mark Wallace as CEO and COO, respectively.

A 2010 Wall Street Journal article titled “Tigris Financial Goes All-in on Gold” noted that the company had bet billions of dollars on the price of gold rising, more than the reserves of the Brazilian central bank. As Clifton has noted, both Kaplan and Wallace have marketed gold to clients as the perfect commodity to hold if there is increased instability in the Middle East. Therefore, both Kaplan and Wallace stand to make massive sums if the U.S. or Israel were to attack Iran, making their UANI warmongering a gigantic and potentially profitable conflict of interest.

Adelson provided the majority of the rest of UANI’s funding. The world’s 18th-richest individual at the time of his 2021 death, the tycoon turned his economic empire into a political one, supporting ultraconservative causes in both the United States and Israel. Between 2010 and 2020, he and his wife donated more than $500 million to the Republican Party, becoming GOP kingmakers in the process. He would often vet Republican presidential candidates at his casino in Las Vegas, and it was often said that this “Adelson Primary” was almost as important as the public one.

An ardent Zionist, Adelson bankrolled numerous pro-Israel lobby projects, such as AIPAC, One Jerusalem and Taglit Birthright. He also owned Israel Hayom, the country’s most-read newspaper, with 31% of the national share. Relentlessly pro-Netanyahu, it was said that the Israeli prime minister asked his friend Adelson to set up a newspaper to help his political career.

Adelson and his influence have been one of the driving forces of American hostility towards Iran. In 2013, during a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, he called for the United States to stop negotiating and drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to show that “we mean business.”

A potential third, even more controversial, source of funding is the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Leaked emails show UANI officials soliciting support from the Emirati royal family. Both Mark Wallace and Frances Townsend, for example, emailed the Emirati Ambassador to the U.S. detailing cost estimates for upcoming events and inquiring about support from the UAE.

Thomas Kaplan himself is extraordinarily close to the nation. “The country and the leadership of the UAE, I would say, are my closest partners in more facets of my life than anyone else other than my wife,” he told the Emirati outlet, The National News, which also detailed his friendship with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.

PUTTING IRAN IN THE CROSSHAIRS

One of United Against Nuclear Iran’s primary activities, Iranian political commenter Ali Alizadeh told MintPress, is to create a worldwide “culture of fear and anxiety for investing in Iran.” The group attempts to persuade businesses to divest from the Islamic Republic and sign their certification pledge, which reads as follows:

The undersigned [Name], the [Title] of [Company] (the “Company”), does hereby certify on behalf of the Company that until the Iranian regime verifiably abandons its drive for nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, routine human rights violations, hostage-taking, and rampant anti-Americanism as state policy, that neither the Company nor any subsidiary or affiliate of the Company, directly or through an agent, representative or intermediary.”

One corporation that UANI targeted was the industrial machinery firm Caterpillar. UANI hectored the firm, even erecting a roadside billboard outside its headquarters in Peoria, IL, insinuating that they were aiding Iran in constructing a nuclear weapon. Caterpillar quickly ordered its Iran projects terminated. Wallace took heart from his group’s victory and warned that other businesses would be targeted.

These have included French companies such as Airbus and ​​Peugeot-Citroen, who were threatened with legal action. In 2019, UANI earned an official rebuke from the Russian Foreign Ministry for attempting to intimidate Russian corporations trading with Tehran. “We think such actions are unacceptable and deeply concerning,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “Attempts to pressure and threaten Russian business … are a follow-up on the dishonorable anti-Iranian cause by the U.S. administration,” she added, hinting at collusion between the government and the supposedly non-governmental organization.

Some of UANI’s campaigns have been markedly petty, including pressuring New York City hotels to cancel bookings with Iranian officials (including then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) visiting the city on United Nations business. Others, however, have been devastating to the Iranian economy, such as the SWIFT international money transfer terminating its relationship with Tehran, cutting the country off from the global banking system.

On UANI’s actions against businesses, Freeman said: “It’s effective, and (in some cases, at least) it’s to the detriment of the people of Iran; it’s to the detriment of these companies; and it’s to the detriment of peace in the region.”

While the group presents itself as against a nuclear Iran, UANI was strangely opposed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the deal between Iran and the West that limited the former’s nuclear technology research in exchange for sanctions relief from the latter. [Not so strange. UANI et al. want Iran destroyed.] As MintPress reported at the time, UANI spent millions on T.V. advertisements trashing the agreement. As Wallace noted, “We have a multi-million-dollar budget, and we are in it for the long haul. Money continues to pour in.”

Aporia Magazine has some really good material devoid of typical leftist nonsense. This article, by Bruce Gilley posted on January 4, 2024, skewers sections on art from the New York Times issue of October 22, 2023. If you ever had any doubt that the Times and the art world in general are entirely on the anti-White left, this should clear that up. As Gilley notes, “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the art establishment of the contemporary United States is staffed by culturally and historically ignorant, mostly-female activists who don’t really love art, even if they knew what the term meant.” Sadly, these activists, including any random males (likely gay or transgender) who have managed to become curators in this environment, are all too likely to be White.

Many writers on the arts have noted how art has gone from being political and politicized – things it has always been – to being totalitarian, which is the opposite of being political. What I found new in these pages, and perhaps this is no surprise if the totalitarian thesis holds, is that it has also become profoundly ignorant as well.

The lead story enthuses that “The Art World Expands Its Notion of What Art Is and Who Can Make It.” An 80-year old Russian-Jewish artist from Buenos Aires is having a retrospective at the Jewish Museum of New York. Her work includes dropping live chickens and lettuce onto a crowd from a helicopter and dressing up like a mattress (“That’s why mattresses are so important.”) The 30-something curator expresses a “deep frustration” that no one likes the art. “As curators we have an obligation and a commitment to bring unheard, unrecognized, or underrepresented artists into the discussion,” she explains. The museum prefers works “that focus on Black, Jewish, queer and trans experience in the United States.” It makes a point to display such works “in a German and Nazi context.” All this apparently represents the latest thinking in “the art world.” Mattresses in a Nazi context. …

Our first port is a story on the yeoman’s work being done by university galleries at Yale, Princeton, Duke and Vassar to atone for their “systemic racism.” These “historically white spaces with pasts that are entangled with slavery” are now hastening to host shows by blacks, the Times enthuses. One need not read further to know in advance that the art will be superb, the artists under-appreciated geniuses, the curators ebullient about their newfound virtue, and the didactic purposes beyond overdue. One featured artist glues Post-It notes, bits of her hair, and other items found on the floor onto Ghanaian textiles and calls it a “multiplicity of elements with which to engage.” Another sells photographs of herself nude mocking classical Western paintings (including a Last Supper where she is Christ and only Judas is white). She simultaneously complains to the Times reporter about the “dehumanization and commodification of the Black body.” The Duke exhibition is hosted by an institution “whose history is entwined with slavery…segregation, and white supremacy.” But visitors are also warned against “portraying Black people as victims.” …

Can we ever again have art for art’s sake? An opportunity arose at the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis when the war in Ukraine erupted. It was a rare moment when a cultural institution could bring people together to celebrate art for art’s sake. Let’s not associate the great Russian art tradition with today’s rulers. On second thought, let’s, according to the enthusiastic report on the museum’s decision to go all in for anti-Russia messaging with the headline “Taking Sides.”

The museum has taken sides by “focusing on work critical of Russia.” It features a newly-commissioned work called “Glory to Ukraine.” All the art is now being mobilized for this glorious political project centered on “oppression and resistance.” Every item in the museum has been given a “context” label. Those beautiful Russian icons of the 5^th century are now identified as precursors to the seizure of Crimea. “You don’t just say ‘Oh, look at this art, how great it is’,” instructs the curator. You don’t? The Russians used to have a word for this. They called it agit-prop. It is another icon of the diminished artistic imagination evident in the Times art section. …

Section Two opens with a precis of the story so far: “Artists and Art Institutions Take On Social and Political Issues of the Day.” If our knowledge of the contemporary art world had been drawn from Section One, we might wonder what else they could possibly be doing. In this story, a Nigerian artist has “tackled colonialism, the subjugation of peoples that enabled the global slave trade and carved a callous cartography across Africa and other continents.” Another thing that “we did not learn about”, apparently, was that the global slave trade existed long before European colonialism and was ended because of that colonialism, and that the myth of “artificial borders” forced on hapless black people by devious colonialists has been demolished time and again, though its staying power is impressive.

The artist is not satisfied to scotch the colonialists for their slavery and borders. He insists they stole modernity itself from Africa. The more he looked at Picasso, the more he realized that these abstract ideas were looted from Mother Africa. The “white male artists were lionized by Western art history” while the true geniuses in Africa went unrecognized. “Throughout Black culture,” he proposes, “it’s always happened.” (The injunction back at Duke against “portraying Black people as victims” is now wearing very thin.)

The Nigerian was inspired to his latest work by “the zeitgeist since the George Floyd moment.” He apparently took seriously the assertions on NPR that blacks are now leading “the whole global conversation on culture.” The Times seems to agree. Take blacks out of modern music and what are you left with, he chortles to the reporter. “Folk music? Yodeling?” Well, Yes, we might reply. Also Stravinsky, Debussy, and Sibelius, as well as the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Kiss. And speaking of looted art, is it time for black jazz artists who appropriated Benny Goodman and the Big Band tradition to pay up? What about black classical and opera performers who have been lionized for their looting of these Western traditions? …

Our final offering from the front page of Section Two tells us “We’re all living in Indian territory.” True enough. My flight to Portland is now over the Great Plains where many an Indian tribe once subjugated, murdered, and enslaved his fellow Indian before U.S. expansion forced a modern state upon the primitive mayhem. The artist claims Cherokee ancestry. Like so many “native” artists these days, she looks wholly European. WalkingStick, or so she is called, was raised in white American society by her white mother and did not identify as Indian until attending art school in her late 30s, according to a 1985 Times article. Another thing “we did not learn”, in this case in journalism school, was to consult the back issues of the publication we write for. In 1989, the Times noted with arresting candor: “With romanticism still the order of the day, nobody wants to be considered white and Ms. Walkingstick is fortunate, for her father is a Cherokee.” Or so she says. The label has certainly allowed her to trade in Indian art fetish. When Congress passed a law in 1990 requiring sellers of “Indian art” to prove their native bona fides, WalkingStick complained about the personal intrusion, according to a Times article of that year. I’ll reserve judgement until I see a DNA test verified by a third party.

Our weekend read now turns to a “people’s art” exhibit featuring the not-very-typical people of San Francisco. The “democratic” and “inclusionary” jury process opened new vistas of hitherto oppressed art, the curator explains. The result? A trove of “socially or politically loaded” works. The people are apparently very concerned with “immigration, Ukraine, Black Lives Matter, January 6 and election deniers, and people who are unhoused,” enthuses the curator. A life-sized wooden toy soldier of General Robert E. Lee lies on its back “to evoke the way in which racial reckonings have toppled historical figures.”

Both journalist and jurors offer grave assent to these “socially or political loaded” works. Yet another thing that “we did not learn” in college was that brutalist and didactic works were the stock-in-trade of the socialist-realist tradition in communist lands. The response of free societies at the time was to treat them as kitsch, as in Andy Warhol’s Mao series. But the arts savants in the Times are so beholden to a totalizing ideology that they can’t bring themselves to invert the meaning of this latest iteration of “people’s art” as the only possible critical response. It is not just the inability to judge good art from bad. It is the inability even to know what art is anymore.

Next up: Annie Leibovitz, at 74, has a new show of photographs in, wait for it, Bentonville, Arkansas. The regulars of the financial page will be savvy to the location. Yes, it is the Walmart fortune, in this case from the founder’s daughter who has funded the exhibition. Leibovitz swoons that it’s the best endowed and freest project she has ever worked on. No underfunded socialist-realist party diktat guiding this show. In gratitude, Leibovitz created new portraits of Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, and John Locke to celebrate the capitalist spirit that created the jobs, consumer welfare, and philanthropy of Walmart. Correction: she took a series of photos of her liberal friends, including Stacey Abrams, Rachel Maddow, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all sporting angry faces about the social injustice of late capitalism.

Perhaps Abrams, Maddow, and Jackson were not told that it was the Walmart fortune paying for it all. Or perhaps Leibovitz did not notice the irony. Nor did the reporter. Maddow, a San Francisco lesbian, has been hammering away at Walmart for years. Capitalism, it seems, is OK as long as its fuels the anti-capitalist arts community. …

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the art establishment of the contemporary United States is staffed by culturally and historically ignorant, mostly-female activists [bolded for emphasis] who don’t really love art, even if they knew what the term meant. What they were not taught, what our whole civilization is not being taught, is more than just how to think about art. It is how to think at all.