Trump previously pulled the U.S out when he was president and there were some well probably will be some challenges if the U.S wants back in here to speak with us about this as Epoch times contributor Alex Newman Alex Newman thanks for being on Crossroads great to be here thanks so
Much Josh you know so first off what are some of the main roles UNESCO in why did the U.S pull out of it well UNESCO is a sprawling agency it it has all kinds of different official responsibilities and then it’s veered out into all kinds of new areas I
Actually wrote an article for The Epic Times a few months ago about one of their newest focuses which is fighting conspiracy theories and misinformation they want teachers to start reporting students to the government they claimed that conspiracy theories and misinformation are fueling populism and climate change but uh denial I guess
Climate change denial people don’t care enough about their carbon footprint because of this stuff so that’s one of their newer areas of involvement traditionally the the name kind of gives it away the U.N educational scientific and cultural organization so they’ve been kind of angling to become the global School Board really since its
Inception uh they’ve got the cultural Focus you know a lot of people are familiar with the world heritage sites the UNESCO world heritage sites that they designate around the world but I would say education is probably their main area of focus they’re working to standardize and globalize education and
From the start they’ve been saying they’re going to build peace into the minds of men as in you know we’re going to educate the students to reject war and believe in kind of the U.N ideal so officially that’s what they’re up to so why does the by Administration want
Us back in like you know what pushed us out in the first place and why do they want us back in well we’ve left twice before under Ronald Reagan we left because according to the Reagan Administration there was extremism there was Radical politization uh one of the things that was really
Troubling to the Reagan Administration they wanted to come up with a scheme to license journalists around the world they’ve always been very hostile to free speech to the Free Press even though they claim they’re protecting free speech and the Free Press uh there was also obviously and this has been the
Case from the very beginning massive communist influence within UNESCO and that’s true to this day I’ve got multiple members of the CCP in very high ranking senior policy making positions there the most recent director General prior to the current one was an actual member of the Bulgarian Communist party
She actually served in a very senior role in the mass murdering Bulgarian dictatorship and so those are some of the reasons why the Trump Administration says we’re not going to participate anymore I spent a lot of time talking to Ambassador Kevin moley who oversaw this decision when he was assistant Secretary
Of State for international organizations he said you know the anti-israel bias was just out of control they were taking Jewish Israeli sites and saying that they were Palestinian they called the the Israelis the occupying power in Jerusalem so it got to be really really extreme on that front and of course
They’ve been very hostile to fundamental American values to our constitutional procedures to our Declaration of Independence and so Trump kind of seized on those things took us out again and now the Biden Administration has under the pretext of countering CCP influence and uh restoring American leadership is
What the state department told me they are now working to re-join this agency but of course they’re going to need a lot of money first well I understand Republicans are trying to challenge it do they have a chance of blocking it what’s their argument yes that’s the big breaking news that we
Broke that story at The Epic Times today on my article I believe was published um yesterday evening if I’m not mistaken so we broke that story uh house appropriators uh House Appropriations Committee they’ve got a subcommittee that deals with foreign operations the Department of State things like that and
Um they decided they were going to terminate funding for UNESCO now uh you know they can easily pass a budget that terminates funding for UNESCO the question is what would Joe Biden do what will the Senate do when that legislation comes before them obviously all Appropriations have to originate in the
House of Representatives so ultimately the house does retain the power of the purse if Republicans stand firm and show resolve they can absolutely stop this process in its tracks uh but you know we we’ve kind of seen this play out numerous times before the house Republican leadership says we’re not
Going to fund this the Democrat President says oh you guys are terrorists you’re shutting down the government soldiers aren’t going to get paid because of you and then House Republicans go back to the drawing board and cave in so we’ll see what happens with this but as of now how’s
Republicans are saying that they’re going to cut all funding for you now and not just UNESCO also a variety of other U.N agencies even the UN General budget is going to be slashed according to house appropriators we’ll see whether they stand by that well you know you mentioned that the bite Administration
Is saying that rejoining UNESCO would help counter the influence of the CCP is that the case I mean would we be able to challenge them if we were back in it well I talked to a lot of people about this I encourage people to read the
Article and and everybody that I talk to you know I reached out to a lot of people not all of them responded but everybody that I talked to said that’s absolutely ludicrous um the only thing that would really be accomplished by this is having the U.S taxpayer help fund the influence of the
CCP again the CCP has numerous operatives in senior roles within UNESCO um even the current director General even though she’s not you know card carrying communist per se she comes from the Socialist Party and you know as we all know socialism is I guess the precursor to Communism so there’s this
Kind of ideological rigidity at the highest levels of UNESCO and what Kevin moly told me was not only will this not help counter CCP influence it will actually be a major Boon to the CCP and he said he also has pointed out that this is not true just of UNESCO right he
Pointed to the g77 plus China it’s a grouping of depending on the day 133 134 governments many of them murderous dictatorships many of them Communists many of them kleptocracies I think kind of group together on critical issues and when they do obviously in a majority vote in the decision-making bodies of these
Organizations they dominate right I mean they have more than two-thirds of the votes wrapped up and so uh the idea that the U.S taxpayers should fund this while retaining very little influence in these organizations has has really been uh rejected as a terrible decision by people like Ambassador moly by people
Like former U.N Ambassador Nikki Haley who helped push through our exit from UNESCO so a lot of people are very upset about this a lot of people in Congress a lot of people in Israel but you know as best as I can tell this is not really
Going to help counter CCP influence you know Alex I know I know some critics argue that even if the U.S is back in UNESCO even if we don’t do it in fact the UNESCO can still influence what’s being done in America’s classrooms I mean how is that possible is this real
Can they still influence it’s taught in American schools UNESCO has a massive influence over what’s taught in schools not just in the United States but around the world one of the people I reached out to for this article was the most recent superintendent of Public Instruction for
The State of Arizona the the top government official over the public school system in Arizona she said even though we were out uh you know she was she was um the the superintendent during the time after we exited she said even though we were out the UNESCO influence
Was still present in classrooms it was still present in our textbooks and that that’s going to continue involved whether the US government is helping to pay for this um you know there is a complication with the paying because U.S law prohibits American taxpayer funding to any organization
That accepts the state of Palestine as a member but even though we’re not paying even though we’re not formerly members you’ve got for ideological reasons I think a lot of people within education circles within what a lot of critics call the education establishment that are very much aligned with UNESCO that
Do believe that we should have kind of global standards uh you know some years ago you wouldn’t even put out what they call the the world Core Curriculum and they said this needed to be taught in all the schools of the world a few years ago they were also boasting about how
They influenced um governments all over the world to adopt National testing regimes to implement national standards they said that when they started this process just a tiny handful of Nations had National testing regimes for their education systems uh by the time they had put out this proud statement it was
Well over a hundred very much including the United States so they are making great deals of progress on transforming education around the world even in the United States where we’re not officially members well you know for Republicans who are considering whether they should I guess block this you know in term in
Terms of funding because they want to charge to get back into it what would you tell them about you know maybe what they should know about this organization and how they weigh this decision well I think some of the key takeaways is that these problems have been systemic at UNESCO from the beginning
Right these problems didn’t crop up when Ronald Reagan was President these problems didn’t just pop up when Donald Trump was President these have been issues that have plagued the organization from the very beginning in fact if you go back and look at the very first leader of UNESCO an individual by
The name of Julian Huxley he was the leader of the humanist Association and the Eugenics Association I mean these were the the you know the racial pseudoscientists who believed some races were better than other races and we ought to selectively breed human beings kind of like we do cattle uh you know so
You’ve had these issues of really problematic ideologies really really serious extremism that have plagued the leadership of UNESCO all the way back to its earliest days and you know the U.S taxpayer has traditionally funded more than anybody else the propagation of this extremism when we left or prior to
The funding being cut off as a result of these federal laws Banning funding for international organizations with State of Palestine as a member we were funding almost one-fourth of of the budget and and they expect that that will continue in fact if we go back part of the
Conditions they’re gonna have a meeting about it on June 29th to see if other governments are even willing to accept the U.S back but if the U.S does return the U.S taxpayer is expected to pay well over half a billion dollars in so-called arrears so this is a huge sum of
Taxpayer money at a time when the U.S government is in more debt than any other entity in all of human history and from all the people that I spoke to I’m trying to figure out you know what is the benefit that U.S taxpayers are getting out of this it’s very difficult
To find any well Alex thank you so much I really appreciate you being here thank you so much Josh
