The Gatekeepers of the So-Called "Left"

:: The incoming address of this article is :
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/40

The Gatekeepers of the So-Called "Left"
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11513&l=i&size=1&hd=0

"The press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, set up for no other reason than to tell us lies where their interests are concerned." — Henry Adams
In his shocking investigative report < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html > "The Left Gatekeepers", journalist Bob Feldman researched purportedly "Left" activist and media organizations that receive substantial funding from large establishment foundations with known ties to the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations
< http://www.cfr.org/ > , the Trilateral Commission < http://www.trilateral.org/ >, and even the much-maligned Carlyle Group, the arms dealing "investment fund" featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, of which GHW Bush, the Saudi royal family, and, at one time, the Bin Laden family, are all equity partners.

The Foundation structure is used by these organizations to funnel corporate and personal wealth into the policy-making process. Foundations are tax-free, and contributions to foundations are deductible from federal corporate and individual income taxes. The Foundations themselves are not subject to federal income taxation, and they control hundreds of billions of dollars of money that would normally go to pay these necessary taxes.

Feldman asks, "Are the interests of the people being served by 'dissidents' who are being subsidized by the agencies of the ruling class whom they should be exposing? What does this say about the motivations behind the Left establishment's ideological warfare against conspiracy researchers, and their adoption of an increasingly watered-down analytical view which fails to look closely at the inner power structures and conspiracies of the ruling elite?"

Many of these "dissidents" Feldman describes are members of the UFPJ Steering Committee, and he specifically cites prominent peace activist Medea Benjamin, and Leslie Cagan, the renowned anti-nuke activist who is now UFPJ's National Director.

Disproportionate Influence and a Profound Conflict of Interest

Medea Benjamin and Kevin Danaher co-founded the international human rights organization Global Exchange < http://www.globalexchange.org/ >17 years ago. In that time they have been consistently clear and outspoken with their views on war and Neoliberalism—more commonly known as corporate globalization. Because of their combined intellectual acuity and renowned fearlessness, Benjamin's media savvy, and the access they have been granted through some of their more prominent benefactors such as the MacArthur Foundation and billionaire financier George Soros, they have come to command a high level of visibility in progressive politics.

Benjamin has fast made a name for herself as a leading figure in the "anti-war movement" with well-publicized media stunts at the Republican and Democratic Conventions, disruptions of FCC and Congressional hearings, and frequent trips to the Middle East to showcase the suffering of the Iraqi and Afghani people. She also benefits from her proximity to well-known "progressive" leaders, celebrities, and journalists.
Alongside her Code Pink Women for Peace < http://www.codepink4peace.org/index.php, and Danaher's Green Festivals < http://www.greenfestivals.com/ >, Global Exchange has come to command a significant market share in the larger peace and justice community, reaping enormous "street cred" within the activist world.

Benjamin also wields a disproportionate amount of weight within the Green Party of the United States, having run for Senator of California on their ticket in 2000, and within the anti-war umbrella group United for Peace and Justice < http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ >, where she sits on their Steering Committee and is arguably their most influential member. As testament, Benjamin and her Global Exchange/Code Pink cadre were the authors of three of the five proposals passed by UFPJ at the February Assembly.

But during the 2004 Presidential campaign, Benjamin's message and tone began to shift dramatically into what came to be known as the "ABB" movement—Anybody But Bush. She and eighty fellow prominent leaders who once formed the one hundred-thirteen member "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee"< http://www.vote2stopbush.com/ > put forth a petition urging anti-war Nader not to run, and instead threw their support behind pro-war Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. At the Green Party National Convention in Milwaukee last June Benjamin campaigned heavily for "safe-state" candidate David Cobb, who was also unabashedly ABB and even initially pledged not to run in swing states, though he now denies it. Benjamin cajoled Greens into neither nominating Nader nor giving him the official endorsement he and running mate Peter Camejo had publicly sought from the party.

The pro and con arguments of ABB have been argued exhaustively, and many do not find the issue relevant any longer. But they are relevant when considering just how UFPJ became ABB and has since found itself embroiled in partisan politics working to attack exclusively the Bush Administration and their competing Neoconservative movement, despite the fact that American war policy is a bipartisan program.

Leslie Cagan's Pacifica Foundation is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which was recently taken over by what has been described as a "Right Wing coup": http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0412-11.htm ), the Rockefeller-funded Working Assets group, and the ubiquitous George Soros.
Like PBS , the Pacifica Network recently went through a takeover drama < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_2_61/ai_7
2274469 > where a cabal of Board members attempted to sell the station off to center-mainstream corporate interests. Cagan is also reportedly connected to the right-wing Ford Foundation, which funnels money to her through a Lesbian advocacy group known as Astraea.

Peace Action < http://www.peace-action.org/ >, which describes itself as "the nation's largest grassroots peace group" that "gets results," is funded in part by a Working Assets grant.

Both Peace Action and Working Assets gave UFPJ a combined total of $45,000 for their 2003 operating budget (the last year UFPJ published their financial statements, < http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=1762 >something they are required by law to do annually). UFPJ also received a $151,000 grant from the Funding Exchange, a network of social justice foundations throughout the United States that gives money to progressive organizations.

What outrages many of those within the activist community who are aware of these funding sources is that these so-called "dissidents" would consent to take money from these foundations given the long and voluminous history they have as part of the war-making establishment < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html >.

In his book Trading with the Enemy, Charles Hingham documents how both the Rockefeller and Ford fortunes were enhanced in part through collaboration with Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers by selling the Nazis oil through the Standard Oil Company, and the Fords by selling the Nazis tanks through subsidiary corporations (note: the only industrial infrastructure spared in the Allied bombing of Germany was the Ford Motors plant near Cologne). Both Standard Oil (eventually Amoco) and the Ford Motor Co. made huge profits from Defense contracts following WWII. Since 1950 a Rockefeller has held a prominent leadership position in the Council on Foreign Relations, and David Rockefeller was cofounder of the Trilateral Commission. Both organizations helped craft the "Carter Doctrine" of the late 1970s which stated that the US would heretofore intervene militarily to protect its oil supply from the Middle East.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been the historical driving force behind such bedrock institutions of corporate globalization as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Trade Organization, and NATO, and which Esquire magazine referred to in 1962 as "that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." In 1950, the Chicago Tribune published a story on the CFR in which they stated, "[the members] have used the prestige that their wealth, their social position, and their education have given them to lead their country towards bankruptcy and military debacle. They should look at their hands. There is blood on them—the dried blood of the last war and the fresh blood of the present one."

Billionaire George Soros, who refers to himself as a "progressive philanthropist", has since 1995 been part of the arms-dealing Carlyle Group < http://www.rense.com/general45/georgesorosistheissue.htm >, in which he has invested a reported $100 Million, and has substantial stock holdings in weapons manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
He is a member and former Director of the CFR, and is a member of the enigmatic Bilderberg Group < http://www.bilderberg.org/ >, a collection of approximately 1300 of the world's richest and most powerful figures in business, banking, media, military, and government, who meet once a year in extreme secrecy and under almost unfathomable security, and whose official purpose and actions remain a mystery, spurring a deluge of wide-ranging speculation.

The 353-member American contingent of Bilderberg is a bipartisan cavalcade that includes Paul Wolfowitz, David Rockefeller, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, Melinda Gates, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan. It is long argued and well documented that the mission of this organization, working in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, is to manipulate world governments and economies to promote a global, capitalist agenda commonly referred to as the "New World Order". These supranational bodies seek to dismantle national sovereignty (through mechanisms such as "Free Trade" agreements) in favor of a one-world government which primarily upholds the rights of corporations and the wealthy over the people.

This connection begs the question: How much influence does Soros and his ilk have over Benjamin et al, and, by proxy, the "anti-war movement"? Is this relationship the reason Benjamin has dropped the anti-Globalization rhetoric and instead become immersed in partisan wrangling over the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq? Is this the reason she has adopted a "blowback" stance with regards to 9/11 and the resultant "War on Terror"? At the UFPJ Assembly, Benjamin abstained from voting on the 9/11 Truth proposal, and afterwards explained her abstention by claiming she was "afraid a vote for the proposal would mean that UFPJ would have to work with certain 'difficult people' involved in the 9/11 Truth movement."

It is unfortunate Benjamin cannot bring herself to work with "difficult" people (even though it is doubtful she is even aware of just who is and is not a recognized credible member of 9/11 Truth). Because of the nature of 9/11 research, it sadly finds itself constantly infiltrated by the proverbial kook and various degrees of disinformation, but Benjamin and UFPJ have taken an all-inclusive, monolithic view of this very complex and diverse movement. It is even more unfortunate, and some might argue tragic, that personal foibles take priority over justice for the families of 3,000 people killed on that fateful day in September, and the hundreds of thousands killed in the name of the "War on Terror" as some form of retribution for 9/11. Unless, of course, it was not a personal foible that influenced her decision to abstain, but something more direct, such as a mandate from her funders, the threat of some form of professional backlash or reprisal, or simple peer disapproval.

And perhaps the greatest insult to injury is that she is now raising money for the (somewhat oxymoronic) Progressive Democrats of America. As Ralph Nader's running mate Peter Camejo wrote in an open letter to the Green Party < http://www.geocities.com/grnsfrdmcrcyndndpndnc/-2005-april-.
html >, "In the fund appeal for the PDA [Benjamin] says the PDA is not the Democratic Party. It is like saying the Panama Canal is not Panama."

The Failed Obligations and Inexcusable Denials of the "Left" Media

To offer a clear portrait of how "regulated resistance" works within the "Left" or "progressive" media, consider their steadfast refusal to report on or organize around two of the most important incidents in modern American history as pertains to our present situation—possible US government involvement in 9/11, and the relationship between the Bush family and the Nazi regime in Germany.

Sins of Omission and Distortion: 9/11, and the Rubber Stamp

As mentioned throughout this article, the first and perhaps greatest failure of the "anti-war movement" is the shameful irresponsibility the "Left" has shown by their refusal to challenge the "official" story behind 9/11. < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_911.html >

Bob Feldman writes:
Not surprisingly, the rank and file didn't buy into the hype—nor were many convinced by the gatekeepers' offhand, passionless calls for an official investigation. Interest in alternative 9/11 reporting continued to grow, and by the time that members of 9/11 victim's families began publicly demanding an end to the government cover-up and even mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times were admitting that the lack of an independent investigatory commission was "extraordinary," the Left media gatekeepers backed down and adopted a new tactic of silent stonewalling and tacit support for the official story.
Despite widespread and well-documented critiques that even "War on Terror" apologists acknowledge, the corporate media has never once challenged the "official" story < http://www.oilempire.us/media.html>.
Instead, they gleefully lapped up the Osama theory fed to it by the Bush Administration while the fires at Ground Zero were still burning, and in the 18 months between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq settled comfortably into its role as "Bush handmaiden and peace movement disciplinarian." < http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=
News&file=article&sid=24&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 ... >

But the absence of any challenge to this story from the "anti-war movement" is frankly disturbing on a level that supersedes even the craven behavior of the corporate media. Although the "Left" has no compunction attacking Bush and his Neoconservative cabal, it consistently fails to see how the ongoing bipartisan validation of the "official" story is the license the US Government takes to continue their imperial ambitions through the chimera known as the "War on Terror", and by proxy, the corporate neocolonialism occurring across the globe.

The 9/11 Truth movement got a fledgling chance to make its case to the "Left" on May 26th, 2004, when, Amy Goodman, host of the flagship Progressive news source Democracy NOW!, agreed to host prominent theologian David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. Her decision followed a long and relentless "Waking Amy" < http://www.septembereleventh.org/alerts/dn.php > campaign organized by Emanuel Sferios of the 9/11 Visibility Project.

However, at the last minute, Goodman abruptly and without explanation changed the format of the show from an interview to a "debate," and brought in long-time "anti-conspiracist" Chip Berlet. Berlet is not an expert on 9/11 research, and his group, Political Research Associates, is an alleged "Left" organization that is funded in part by the Ford Foundation. (It is interesting to note that "Chip" Berlet's full name is John Foster Berlet. He was named after John Foster Dulles who, with his brother Allen, designed the CIA for Harry Truman in 1947, and played a prominent role in smuggling Nazis into America to help build the post-WWII American "Defense" and Intelligence apparatus).