The U.S. allows China to buy the AMC Theater chain but blames China for a "Communist takeover?" Really...where`s the duplicity in that?

Photo credit: Infowars

Chinese company Wanda has announced it will buy AMC, the second-largest theater chain in the USA, increasing fears that the Chinese Communist Party is expanding its influence globally as part of a media takeover.

“Beijing is investing heavily in projecting its “soft power,” or cultural influence, by boosting Chinese state media’s presence abroad, including the USA, where the Chinese government has also run advertisements in New York’s Times Square,” reports USA Today.

Wanda’s acquisition of AMC increases concerns that Chinese-style censorship of politically controversial movies may become commonplace in the United States.

“We have no plan whatsoever to promote Chinese movies in the U.S. market,” said Wang Jianlin, Chairman and President of Wanda.

Billionaire Jianlin, the 15th richest person in China according to Forbes, is also a “Communist Party member, who sits on the nation’s top advisory council.”

However, box office money from the Chinese market is already influencing movie industry titans in America to tone down negative portrayals of China itself.

During the 2009 production of Red Dawn, a re-make of the 1984 classic which featured Soviet troops invading America, producers changed the identity of the villains after initially having agreed to portray the bad guys as Chinese troops.

When distributors became nervous about the film harming profits from Chinese movie-goers, MGM decided to ditch Chinese soldiers in favor of North Korean invaders.

“As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake,”reported the L.A. Times.

Despite being in the can for years, the movie has been delayed and will only be released at the end of this year – absent the Chinese troops.

“Around the time MGM first delayed the release of Red Dawn, a Chinese newspaper called the Global Times expressed concerns that the film would demonize their state and its citizens (thanks in part to certain leaked images from the set). Evidently, this may have been a factor in scaring off potential distributors who were apprehensive about what effect their involvement with the film would have on future dealings with China,” writes Chris Schrader.

Undue Chinese Communist Party influence on the U.S. movie industry and the media in general is just one of numerous sectors where concern is growing about the authoritarian country’s projection of its “soft power.”

In 2010, China launched CNC, a global news channel run by Xinhua, the state news agency. The launch was seen as a test of “Beijing’s ability to adjust its propaganda machine.”

The Obama administration recently gave Beijing the green light to buy up U.S. oil and gas deposits worth billions of dollars, with the companies involved mostly or wholly owned by the ruling Communist Party.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Obama snubs Zardari at NATO summit for increasing transit fees for U.S. military supply trucks but has no problems killing scores of Pakistani`s via drone strikes

Obama snubs Asif Ali Zardari at NATO

Brad Norington
The Australian
May 21, 2012

Asif Ali Zardari has met the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, at the Nato summit but Obama will not sit down with Pakistan's president. Photograph: Bob Strong/Reuters

Barack Obama has snubbed Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari despite inviting him to a NATO summit in Chicago, as a bitter dispute rages over supply routes that could disrupt the planned US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US President refused to meet Mr Zardari yesterday in the midst of Pakistan’s refusal to compromise over increasing the fee for trucks to pass through its territory to Afghanistan from $US250 ($253) to $US5000.

[The fact that Zardari had to settle for a meeting with Clinton rather than the president is in itself a snub.]

Pakistan closed its borders and then demanded the huge price rise for moving US supply trucks through its territory after US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

(click here to read more)

The Obama Administration obstructing justice in Israeli-occupied Palestine on Human-Rights Commission probe into illegal settlements...`aint that a surprise

U.S. pressing UN Human Rights Commissioner to put off West Bank settlements probe
Israeli Foreign Ministry officials believe the aim of Obama administration pressure is to postpone the probe until at least after the presidential elections in November.

By Barak Ravid
Haaretz
May 2, 2012

The Obama administration is trying to delay the establishment of a panel appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

U.S. Middle East envoy David Hale met in Bern last week with UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay and asked her not to advance the matter in the near future.

An Israeli settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus. 

Photo credit: AP

According to the text of the decision to establish the panel, it is meant "to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." However, the UN Human Rights Commissioner has yet to formulate a clear mandate for the panel and has not appointed a chairman or members.

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Foreign Ministry officials noted that the U.S. wants to postpone the establishment of the panel to the latest possible date, hoping this will lead to the unofficial burial of the matter. However, the assessment is that it will not be possible to prevent the establishment of the panel, so the aim is therefore to delay it until at least after the U.S. presidential elections in November.

On March 30, a week after the decision by the UN Human Rights Council, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon traveled secretly to Washington to meet with his U.S. counterpart Bill Burns. Ayalon asked for help in thwarting the establishment of the panel and even suggested that the U.S. publicly threaten to quit the UN Human Rights Council if the panel is established.

The Americans did not respond to that threat, as they view membership in the UN Human Rights Council as a central issue in the foreign policy of the Obama administration. However, the Americans agreed to pressure the UN Human Rights Commissioner on the date of the establishment of the panel and the mandate that it will receive.

Following the UN Human Rights Council's decision to establish the panel to investigate the settlements, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman decided to halt cooperation with the UN Human Rights Commissioner and her staff and to boycott the proceedings of the UN Human Rights Council.

A Foreign Ministry official told Haaretz that one of the people who tried to change Lieberman's mind from taking that step was none other than Israel's ambassador to UN institutions in Geneva, Roni Leshno-Yaar.

Leshno-Yaar came to Israel several weeks ago for policy consultations, met personally with Lieberman, and tried to convince him to go back on the decision. Leshno-Yaar said that the damage of the decision would outweigh the benefits.

Lieberman listened to Leshno-Yaar, but did not accept his view. Leshno-Yaar returned to Geneva and received written instructions to cut all ties with the UN Human Rights Commissioner and to not appear at UN Human Rights Council discussions. Consequently, much of the work of Israel's envoy to UN institutions in Geneva was frozen in place.

Incidentally, Leshno-Yaar will finish his role in Geneva in a few months and return to Israel to serve at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Jerusalem as the deputy director-general of ties between Israel and the UN.