Posting to Headlines Wire of Scoop
Opinion: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Date: Wednesday, 4 May 2005

Regulated Resistance: Pt. 2 -
The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
By Charles Shaw

[EXCERPTS]

Last February United for Peace and Justice, the largest representative coalition within the American "anti-war movement", emerged from their second annual Assembly with a 2005 "action plan" that effectively caged the "anti-war" debate exclusively within the Iraq conflict to achieve partisan ends on behalf of the pro-war Democratic Party and their Neoliberal corporate benefactors. Their "action plan" refused to address any of the core issues of US Foreign and Defense policy, which are the root causes of a pervading culture of war and militarism that has taken over the nation in the years since WWII.

These decisions are part of a larger pattern of "regulated resistance", a system by which dissent is carefully managed and constrained by self, overt, or covert censorship; denial-based-psychology; fear of personal or professional criticism and reprisal; and pressure from powers above including elected officials and those establishment foundations which flood millions into the not-for-profit activist sector.

This establishment money, and the access it grants, has caused many ostensible resistance leaders to suddenly and dramatically abandon long-held ideological positions and shift their behavior towards doing what can clearly be seen as the bidding of those in power whose views and values are in direct contravention to the established mores of peace and justice movements throughout history.

These "resistance leaders" of the "Left" act as "Gatekeepers"—influential "progressive" figures who use their resources and visibility to regulate the debate, tactics, and rhetoric of the "anti-war" and other "progressive" movements.

The Gatekeepers of the So-Called "Left"

"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 "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, the Trilateral Commission, 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?" ..

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.

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."

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 Distortion9/11, 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.

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.

..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" 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).

Despite their being a virtual laundry list of inconsistencies to the "official" story, and documented proof of government cover-up activity, the final product, "The New Pearl Harbor" A Debate On A New Book That Alleges The Bush Administration Was Behind The 9/11 Attacks," focused almost exclusively on a handful of weak speculations made by French researcher Thierry Meyssan, not Griffin, about aspects of the Pentagon strike. This well-worn tactic known as the "straw man argument" is used by detractors to attack and undermine the weakest part of an alternative theory in order to dismiss it and alienate the public from the larger issue..

Griffin did end up writing a lengthy response to Berlet's misleading critique, but the damage had already been done. Goodman never really inquired beyond the "straw man" arguments Berlet kept pounding, and no other "Left" media outlet with the audience of Democracy NOW! has touched the story since. [article was written before C-span coverage of David Ray Griffin's lecture in Madison, Wisconsin]

It is important to note that Democracy NOW! was awarded a $75,000 Ford Foundation grant in 2002 "to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11th attack into future broadcasts," and received a further $150,000 from Ford in 2004.

Emanuel Sferios says the Ford Foundation does not have to explicitly tell Democracy NOW! how they want 9/11 to be covered. He explains that "Democracy NOW! will simply self-censor, because they want future money from the Ford Foundation. It's also important to note that Amy Goodman coined a new, pejorative phrase to dismiss the 9/11 Truth Movement. She is the first in history, as far as I know, to refer to us as a "conspiracy theory movement."

The most glaring irony in all of this is that it was Goodman herself who uttered these words

"I think the media has reached an all-time low in this country. And that is a terrible violation of what our profession is supposed to do. We are supposed to hold those in power accountable. We're not supposed to cozy up to those in power, not supposed get the perks of the powerful. We are supposed to be there to, if not keep the politicians honest, show what's going on. And it is very serious now because we're talking about wartime... And when the media acts as a conveyer belt for the lies of the administration, we not only are violating our responsibility, but those lies take lives."

A Story That Would Outrage Anyone—But No One Knows About

The "Left" has also consistently refused, on any level, to report or act on the established connection between the Bush Family and the Nazi Party during the 1930's, 40's, and early 50's.

John Buchanan, the charismatic, relentless independent journalist from Miami wrote about his inability to get any mainstream media source to pick up his New Hampshire Gazette story, "Bush—Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951" in his 2004 book, Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media, and the Religious Right.

Even though Buchanan's reporting was based on facts that came directly from declassified official documents currently in the National Archives, not one single mainstream news source agreed to even look at the government documents, which chronicled the long history of collaboration between Bush's grandfathers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker.

Prescott Bush's employer A. Averell Harriman of Brown Brothers Harriman, and Nazi industrialist and financier Fritz Thyssen. Between 1942 and 1951, under the "Trading with the Enemy Act," the US Government seized 33 Bush-Harriman-Nazi businesses and client assets. But instead of facing a firing squad for treason during war time, Prescott Bush pocketed $1.5 Million from the liquidation of the first and largest of the 33 businesses, the Union Banking Corporation, principle investor in the Silesian-American Corporation which used slave-labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp for mining in Poland. None of the principles in the deal were ever brought to justice.

This story should have resurfaced every time one of the Bush men ran for or was appointed to public office. Instead, it was spun relentlessly, and eventually buried. Only The Guardian of London eventually picked up on this story in one subsequent article nearly a year later titled, "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power".

CONCLUSION: The Death of Authentic Resistance

Michael Novick of the Anti-Racist Action network has been around a long time, and has a list of bona fides pages long. He has seen many an organization come and go, and he believes that the 501(c)3/NGO/not-for-profit corporate model has been the death of popular movements and authentic resistance.

=================================================================
Charles Shaw is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Newtopia,
and has been deeply involved in the anti-war movement since the
bombing of Afghanistan. Newtopia Magazine is a member group of
United for Peace and Justice.