I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
While appearing on radio host Alex Jones’ show in 2009, Harrison Schmitt said that leaders of the environmental movement are communists. Earlier this month, Gov. Susana Martinez selected Schmitt — a former U.S. Senator and astronaut — to head the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, which oversees environmental issues.
“I think that there are individuals, [Obama science czar John] Holdren apparently among them, a very large number who have taken the — shall we say captured the environmental movement and turned it into what was previously considered the communist movement,” Schmitt said in a 40-minute interview with Jones. “And that’s just something that people of common sense are going to continue to have to counter and wake up enough so that they can take control of their government again.”
Later in the interview, Schmitt expanded on the theme saying that this came to be after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union,” Schmitt said. “Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement. That’s not to say there aren’t some major and significant environmental issues, particularly at the local level, but they converted environmental activism to a political movement and some would say a religious movement.”
If confirmed by the state Senate, Schmitt would be in charge of the Mining and Minerals Division, State Parks Division, Oil Conservation Division and Energy Conservation Management Division.
Among other controversial views held by Schmitt: He does not believe man-made global warming exists and says the government pressures scientists to support its existence.
And a Jan. 12 Up Front column in the Albuquerque Journal gathered a range of statements from Schmitt, including his belief that the “state-committed media supports proposals to silence or regulate alternative media sources and broadband communications as well as generally limit the 1st Amendment’s freedom of political speech.”
Schmitt, who told Jones that the media “is in the tank for this socialistic change in our political system,” faults the school system which “has been dominated by people who have less respect for liberty than you and I.”
He also blamed education for those who believe that the moon landings were faked. Schmitt was on Apollo 17, the final manned mission to the moon. Schmitt, who has a Ph. D in geology from Harvard, was the only civilian to step foot on the moon and is credited for taking the iconic “Blue Marble” photo of Earth.
When asked about “forced abortion” and “eugenics,” a phrase associated with Nazis, Schmitt told Jones, “I really think it is more visible now because the people who think this way have gained power. It does not mean that they are going to be supported by the vast majority of the American people.”
Jones has a syndicated radio show where he espouses a number of conspiracy theories, including the claim that the United States government was behind the attacks on 9/11 and, more recently, that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was not an accident.
