Why Jason Jones Wants to Bring Foreign Children Coal for Christmas
The Stream’s Contributing Writer Jason Jones wears many hats. One of them, this year, is a Santa cap, since his group the Vulnerable People Project is stepping up to provide crucial help staying warm to families in conflict-ridden regions, from Mongolia to Malawi, from Ukraine to Afghanistan. On Wednesday December 6 Jones is leading an online event at 9 p.m. (ET) highlighting the very real need for heating assistance in afflicted communities. John Zmirak interviewed him about the event and the project.
John Zmirak: I know that millions of Americans are obsessed right now with obtaining just the right presents for their children, which they will give them on behalf of Santa Claus, on the pretext that those children have been good all through the year. It is your goal to collect lumps of coal for “Santa” to deliver to thousands of non-American children instead of gifts. Are you claiming that those foreign children have been bad all year? On what factual basis do you assert this?
Jason Jones: Well, John, that’s an interesting question. It’s a well documented fact that VPP has delivered more coal over the past two years than Santa Claus has in 17 centuries. And the secret to our success is that, unlike Santa, who reserves coal for bad children, we deliver coal to good children and wonderful families. We don’t just deliver them coal, but we also deliver wood, other heating fuels, chickpeas, flour, oil, rice, and other necessities of life … to give the most vulnerable people in the world the chance to survive the winter. In two years, we have provided enough coal to give 40 million hours of heat and given out over 5 million meals.
Aren’t They Amalekites, Though?
John Zmirak: I know it’s convenient and saves a lot of time for well-off American Christians to look at all the troubled regions of the world, with their needy inhabitants, and classify those people as “Amalekites,” who must be getting what they deserve. But your organization, the Vulnerable People Project, takes a surprisingly different perspective. Could you explain it for us?
To paraphrase Ecclesiastes 4:1, Solomon said, “I looked over the whole world and all I saw was oppression, and on the side of the oppressor is power. And there are none who stand with the oppressed.” This is a tragic truth that has stood for most of human history, but everything changed when the second person of the Trinity became man. The Messiah became a member of the human family, and He was the person Solomon was longing to find. As Christians, we are the Body of Christ. At The Vulnerable People Project, we seek to stand with people in communities who have been placed outside the circle of concern by the mainstream media and the powers of the world. Whenever I think about the people we serve, I say that vulnerable people are not weak people, but rather they are strong people who have been placed in impossible situations.
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One of the Most Brutal Winters in Recorded History
John Zmirak: Okay, being serious now. How extensive and widespread is the crisis of home heating this winter of 2023-2024? Is it somehow worse than in previous years? Why would that be?
Let’s take Afghanistan for example. Last year was one of the most brutal winters for them in recorded history, made especially challenging by Biden’s clumsy withdrawal. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the widows and orphans of our former Afghan allies who were killed in action, along with other persecuted religious minorities. As the world seems to be falling apart, with the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh, 5 million Sudanese displaced by civil war, record famine in Malawi and Nigeria, the war in Ukraine and Russia, the World Food Program announced several months ago they would be decreasing their aid due to major budget shortfalls.
Eradicate Coal, So the Poor Can Freeze to Death
John Zmirak: How widely do people in poverty rely on coal — a much maligned fossil fuel which the Biden administration wants to stop Americans from even digging out of the ground?
When you hear politicians like John Kerry say they want to eradicate coal, they’re calling for a genocide one step removed. Our partners on the ground last year went into a village where a significant number of villagers had already died of exposure to the cold. Our team members entered their modest homes and would see what looked to be a family sleeping, but in fact it was a family that had slowly drifted to death from exposure to the cold. Just $250 would have given that family enough fuel to survive the winter.
In Lieu of Magic Reindeer, Do You Just Fedex the Coal?
John Zmirak: How does your project operate? I assume you don’t just FedEx coal to the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, or send a man in a sleigh to seek out Afghan chimneys. How does VPP identify who needs heating fuel? How is it delivered?
We have an extensive network of partners on the ground. They earned our trust, and we earned their trust in working to evacuate Afghan allies (SIVs) in the wake of the Afghan collapse. In 2021, as a brutal winter approached, we leveraged our evacuation teams to build an infrastructure to distribute food and coal to the most remote corners of Afghanistan. We’ve tried to replicate this model of using on-the-ground partners in the other countries in which we serve now.
John Zmirak: Who else is joining you in this project and at this event?
We’ll have Prince Wafa, a former Afghan special forces interpreter, who is not only a small business owner in California, but is also our Afghan Programs Director. We’ll also have Marilis Pineiro, who is our Rome-based Diplomatic Liason who has worked tirelessly the past two years to secure visas for all the displaced persons we help, and we’ll have Nicole Ibrahim who is our Development Manager, who works to find the funds we need to keep our work going.
Let’s Frustrate Global Elites Who Want to Wipe Out the Poor
John Zmirak: The global Climate Cult is trying to stomp out the use of coal, oil, and natural gas for any purpose. The claim is that we can transition the entire planet to “green” sources of energy in just a decade or so — and that if we don’t, that the planet will become uninhabitable. What do you say to such claims?
Dubai is currently playing host to the COP28 climate meet, attracting a swarm of private jets and an assembly of politicians, along with approximately 65,000 other participants. This gathering marks the most emission-intensive climate conference of the calendar year. It’s quite ironic that these individuals, who frequently travel on private jets and commercial airlines across the globe, are advocating for some of the world’s most impoverished people to relinquish their basic right to access energy for survival.
Luckily, Sultan Al Jaber, the host of this year’s COP28,, is finally pushing back. In an event at the conference, the Sultan said: “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C (referring to the temperature warming mark which policymakers want to achieve).” He further questioned the apparent lack of solutions to meet the energy needs that are currently being met by fossil fuels. “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” asked the Sultan.
John Zmirak: The batteries for supposedly climate-saving electric cars rely on rare-earth elements mined from the earth by child laborers, who must rely for heat on coal. Would you suggest that Americans spending tens of thousands on going “green” direct at least some of that money to keeping poor foreign children warm this year?
I call “green” energy black and brown energy. Black coal, mined by brown kids. There may be practical reasons with tax credits for someone to decide to use an electric vehicle, but there are no ethical arguments that hold up to the truth of the destruction and exploitation involved in the manufacturing of electric cars.
Fighting Back Against the Great Reset
John Zmirak: You have a new book coming out this spring, The Great Campaign: Against the Great Reset. It devotes an entire chapter to how the Climate Cult affects the poorest families on earth. Can you give us a preview?
In my book, I speak about victimism, which is a perverse, cowardly, and narcissistic spiritual sickness, which feigns concern for the vulnerable in exchange for wealth, power, and prestige, while abandoning those who are actually vulnerable. The Climate Cult is peak Victimism. Climate Cultists feign concern for the environment, Mother Nature, and the atmosphere, while abandoning the poorest people in the world to death by exposure in winter, famine, and lithium mines.
John Zmirak: Where can people go to help?
If you’d like to help, please go to The Vulnerable People Project’s website, www.thegreatcampaign.org, where you can find more information about our Coal for Christmas campaign and our other campaigns around the world.
Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.