I Started this blog years ago to save all Feldman, feldman; questions, questions that I has stored on a GeoCities page...Who remembers THAT Fiasco?
I recently received extremely helpful links to the Missing Articles, and I realise I cannot sit and Reassign the Proper Layout to create a Readable and Conprehensive Read. I apologize, I am in poor mental state, and wither tis' truth or 'tis is 'flubberish, my Beamish Boy, Galloupmph.
The Website http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_1.html Is DEAD,,I am saving everything from the WayBack Machine.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Barry Zwicker: Noam Chomsky And The Left Gatekeepers
Barry Zwicker: Noam Chomsky And The Left Gatekeepers
My Comment:
This piece was published on the web in October
2008
2007 and is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of
“Towers of Deception,”
Barry Zwicker, New Society Publishers, September 1, 2006.
The left gatekeepers referenced in the piece include well-known and
well-respected activists like
Amy Goodman,
Sonali Kolhatkar,
David Basarmian,
Howard Zinn, and
Noam Chomsky.
One
doesn’t want to asperse the motives of these activists and
intellectuals. They might very well be doing their best in the
circumstances. given the nature of their funding and employment..
Nonetheless, with another war about to unfold, it’s crucial for the
public to notice the disturbing fact that the focus of their criticism
is almost solely on such issues as the corporatist right, the
neo-conservative agenda, and scripts like “war-for-oil” or
“privatization of public resources’ that automatically feed a dynamic of
binaries (black -and-white oppositions).
The globalists, naturally, are quite happy with such a dynamic, since
it leads people to react along predictable lines: capitalist versus communist, right versus left, workers versus bosses etc. The dynamic of the binary (either-or) inevitably
leads to what is presented to the public as “compromise,” but is in
reality an ever-changing “consensus” that moves inexorably toward the
goals of the underlying globalist agenda.
Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Barrie Zwicker’s
Towers of Deception
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/zwickergatekeepersofleft05oct07.shtml
October 5, 2007
October 5, 2007
A
surprisingly large number of Left/ radical / alternative /
non-establishment media outlets – most of them, in fact – have adopted
the same stance on 9/11 as Chomsky: refuse to investigate 9/11, and discourage and ridicule those who do.
Most wind up using the familiar “wacky conspiracy theorists”
put down to describe others on the Left who want to discuss the evidence
of an inside job on 9/11. The almost total uniformity within the media
(of all political alleged political persuasions) in sync with the White
House is more puzzling. In
other cases, the Left media pursue questions of malfeasance on the part
of the power elites, including some conspiracies such as Iran-Contra.
Individuals and media outlets that have exhibited this stay-away-from
9/11 stance, entirely or in large part, for more than four years now
include David Corn and The Nation;
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!;
Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates in
Somerville, Massachusetts; David Barsamian of Alternative Radio; Michael
Albert of Z Magazine; Alexander Cockburn , Norman Solomon, The
Progressive, Mother Jones, Alternet.org; Global Exchange; PBS; South End
Press; Public Research Associates’ FAIR / Extra; Counterspin; Columbia
Journalism Review; Deep Dish TV working Assets; Molly Ivins; Ms
Magazine; Inter Press Service; MoveOn.org; Greg Palast; David Zupan;
Northwest Media Project ….
Of course, different people can independently or through dialogue arrive
at the same or similar conclusions. Bu it it’s a startling anomaly for
so many organs and leaders of the conscious Left to be seemingly
unconscious regarding 9/22. More than a few on the Left share the
opinion of progressive film maker Roy Harvey that “the greatest single
obstacle to the spread of 9/11 Truth is the Left media.” To
my mind, the relationship of Chomsky and the Left Gatekeepers on 9/11
is analogous to the relationships of the White House and the 9/11
Commission. Both relationships are so tight as to invite close
scrutiny. Elementary pattern recognition reveals a common agenda among
these otherwise well-informed, intelligent, investigative critics of
corporate greed, the power elite and the US hegemony. The agenda,
completely atypical of their approach generally, is to vigorously reject
investigation into 9/11. This is prima facie. One example, that of
perhaps Chomsky’s best known protégé and amplifier,
David Barsamian, is typical of 9/11 blindness on the Left.
On March 7, 2006, Barsamian spoke at a small event in a church basement
in his home city of Boulder, Colorado. He made points about the
immorality and wrongness of the war in Iraq, the US imperial project,
corporate greed, etc. His audience was appreciative of him, his
approach, his knowledge of the territory and his ability to express
himself. At the question period, the first hand up was that of a Denver
man. It’s worth nothing that, while Barsamian knew many in the room by
name, he did not know who this questioner was except that he was sitting
with a 9/11 Truth activist known to Barsamian. Barsamian recognized
other hands one after the other, repeatedly ignoring the first hand up.
Finally the Denver man’s still raised arm could not be ignored any
longer. His question in part: “There’s been a lot of research into 9/11
in the four-plus years since it’s happened.” He then gave examples
including the WTC Twin Towers, WTC7, the inadequate military response,
the multiple war games. “…my question is this: given this regime is
murderous – you have to use that word, you’ve been talking yourself
about what’s been going on in Iraq – when are we going to stop calling
people ‘conspiracy theorists’ and dismissing them and be willing to look
at 9/11 as an inside job, because it’s been the thing that’s been
galvanizing this fear that’s been gripping us?”
Barsamian replied: “I’ve looked into some of these things and I haven’t found any convincing evidence that would persuade me…”
he agreed the Bush administration has taken advantage of 9/11.
“It’s 9/11 24/7. That’s their theme song. That’s their national anthem.”
Barsamian said Osama bin Laden “took credit for what happened on
September 11th 2001. Why don’t we take him at his word?” This overlooked
the first audio tape ostensibly from Osama, in September 2001, denying
involvement.
The murky December 2001 videotape allegedly [ostensibly from bin Laden,] “found” by US military in Kandahar, “took credit.”
There
are many reasons to believe the second is fake. Barsamian pointed to
statements by Zacarias Moussouai that he had foreknowledge of 9/11 and
said famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh “doesn’t find compelling
evidence.”
(Lila’s Note:
In “Language of Empire” I noted that Seymour Hersh’s role in
the disclosure of the torture at Abu Ghraib seemed like part of a
‘controlled opposition’ operation. It was a conclusion I reached from
analyzing the press coverage, but something of the kind was later
confirmed to me personally by two very credible, brave, and accomplished
journalists, Doug Valentine (with regard to the torture issue), and Ann
Williamson (with regard to the Russian debt crisis and US banks). After
I published a piece by Valentine on the CIA on my blog, I was targeted
by a former CIA officer and journalist who commented on the piece
negatively. My blog readers wrote back vehemently and demolished his
arguments, so he dared not use his own name to respond (he has his own
archive on the web). Instead, he started making pseudonymous blog posts
at Townhall and in other places claiming I was a fraud, a jihadi
operative, and anti-American (most nebulous of crimes) etc. and asking
people to shut down my blog. That went nowhere of course, but I’ve no
doubt it hurt the blog for a while. Not for the first time).
Zwicker (Continued):
“If
there was a whiff, a whiff… this would be the greatest story in the
history of the world… bigger than Watergate,” Barsamian said.
He then said “there’s a little bit here and there (which sounds like a
whiff) but it doesn’t connect. It reminds me of the grassy knoll.” He
stated: “We know of criminal activities of this administration that can
be proven beyond a scintilla of doubt. I think we should concentrate on
those things.” He did not specify which these were or who would
concentrate on them or in what ways. He concluded by saying that
pursuing the truth about 9/11 is a “black hole,” worse than a waste of
time. The questioner said later he was “shocked into silence by his
response.”50
Barsamian’s
response was remarkable for its synchronicity with Chomsky’s and for
the way it echoed that of David Ray Griffin’s critics Chip Berlet and
Robert Baer, David Corn of The Nation, Michael Albert of Z Magazine, and
Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive.
That the agenda of Chomsky, Barsamian et al would be so widespread and
pursued with such intensity begs explanation. One theory would be
incompetence – that for some reason all these “thinkers”, editors,
producers and writers have just lost their curiosity and forgotten how
to use the tools of their trade when it comes to 9/11. This theory
requires the belief that such widespread persistent incompetence is also
coincidental.
Another
theory would be that some, perhaps a surprisingly large percentage, of
these individuals are following instructions that benefit the national
security state; that they are, in other words, agents.
The nature and consistency of the anomalies they present
prohibit a focus for potentially acrimonious debate. That is, indeed, a
not unreasonably founded conspiracy theory. The situation beings to mind
the line from the famous Sherlock Holmes mystery The Sign of Four by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “Whenever you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Acrimony can be diminished in a proportion to facts being brought to bear on the discussion.
Because of the suffocating secrecy that attends operations by agents of
influence, finding direct evidence is next to impossible.
That is why those who want to investigate this intensely troubling and important situation are obliged to turn to circumstantial
evidence, intuition and principles of inquiry such as the
identification of contradictions, pattern recognition, and the Latin cui
bono?
(To whose benefit?)
There
are other possible, and possibly overlapping, explanations for
near-uniform 9/11 blindness on the part of the Left leaders and
alternative media. These lead back, in part, to the CIA. Left
media increasingly have been seeking and receiving funding from the
likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie
Endowment, and MacArthur Foundation.
Bob Feldman of San Francisco has been a tireless researcher of
Left-foundation connections. His articles paint a picture rarely
mentioned because both Left and Right have an interest in perpetuating
the paradigm and keeping quiet about it.
The accompanying chart shows recent money flows from establishment
foundations to Left / alternative media. In a recent article for
critical Sociology entitled “report from the Field, Left Media &
Left Think Tanks: Foundation-Managed Protest?” Feldman begins “:Left
media and their organizations of grants from liberal foundations has
transformed their organizational priorities, subjected them to elite
control, or channelled their energies into safe, legalistic,
bureaucratic activities and mild reformism.”
However, 5,000 words and dozens of charts later, he concludes:
“..there is much evidence that the funded left has moved towards the
mainstream as it has increased its dependence on foundations.
.
This is shown by the “progressive”, reformist tone of formerly radical
organizations; the gradual disappearance of challenges to the economic
and political power corporations or United States militarism and
imperialism; and silence on the relationship of liberal foundations to
either politics and culture in general, or to their own
organizations.”51
Specifically on the subject of 9/11, some subtle inducements and
pressures on Left media by Right-wing and overtly CIA-connected
foundations have come to light. For instance Deep Dish TV Inc was given
$75,000 is 2002 by the Ford Foundation to enable “the television news
series Democracy Now! to continue incorporating the aftermath of
September 11th attacks into future broadcasts.” 9/11 Truth activist
Emanuel Sferios of Seattle, who found the information, commented at the
time: “They never told us a reason [that Democracy Now!] refused to
consider any programming about 9/11, but it’s quite simple.
The Ford Foundation, by supplying so much money to Democracy Now! so
they can ‘continue incorporating’ 9/11 into their broadcasts, does not
have to explicitly tell Democracy Now! how they want 9/11 to be covered.
Democracy Now! will simply self-censor, because they want future money from the Ford Foundation.”52
A few of the left-wing organisations are primarily concerned about
threats to media independence, yet all their attention is focused on
for-profit corporate (or government) control; they ignore the possible
influence of large subventions from non-profit institutions such as
foundations, says Feldman. Journalist Ron Curran maintains that: “The
only money nonprofits can get these days is from private foundations –
and those foundations want to control the political agenda and
debate.”53 Another critic of the grant system, Brain Salter, makes a
strong case against foundation funding of left media and think tanks.
After examining the corporate and political connections of Ford and
similar foundations’ board members, Salter concludes: “The big
establishment foundations are likely to seek out ‘alternative’ media
that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and
dismiss sensitive topics … as ‘irrational distractions’ or ‘conspiracy
theory.'” [emphasis added]
(Lila’s Note 2:
in a month or two, when I have the time, I will put together my own
encounters with the left-liberal propaganda machine, as well as with the
“vast right-wing conspiracy.” The story is especially instructive for
non-Westerners, immigrants, and those who blindly follow Western
academics and intellectuals, left or right. My latest experience of this
was the way in which I was dis-invited to a conference at the last
minute, solely because material on my blog “might offend”. This was a
“libertarian conference,” mind you. Some libertarianism. It isn’t afraid
of criticizing people at the bottom, but quivers in its shoes to
mention the glaringly obvious at the top. So it’s quite okay in
libertarian circles to make jokes about Hispanic immigrants who shoplift
or blame Haitian culture for the damage caused by the earthquake, but
not to describe in similar terms the Wall Street culture responsible for
most of the financial crime in this country).
Zwicker (Continued):
“The Kind of Opposition the US Elite can Live with” and Chomsky as its leader
Salter
points out that recipients of funding protest that they are not swayed
by any conflicts of interest and don’t allow the sources of funding to
affect their decisions, “but whether or not these claims are actually
true is already somewhat of a red herring.
Judging
by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by The Nation, FAIR,
The Progressive, IPA, Mother Jones, AlterNet.org and other recipients of
their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully
sponsoring the kind of ‘opposition’ that the US ruling elite can
tolerate and live with.”54
During the cold War, the CIA utilized foundations such as Ford “to set
up and finance a ‘parallel’ organization to counter known left-wing
bodies.55 In 975, the radical US feminist group Redstockings asserted
that: “one major CIA strategy” during the Cold war was “to
create or support parallel organizations which provide alternatives to
radicalism and yet appear progressive enough to appease dissatisfied
elements of society.”56 There are no grounds to imagine the CIA
or their partners in the foundations have changed their tune or their
methods – except to make them more effective.
Chomsky’s record shows little or no attention to this kind of subversion.
To conclude,
Chomsky, the most quoted “radical progressive” or “Leftist” in the Left
media, systematically engages in deceptive discourse on certain key
topics, such as 9/11, the JFK assassination and with regard to the CIA.
In warning the Left against examining the evidence on JFK and 9/11, he
lines himself up with George Bush and the corporate media, thereby
advancing their agenda – which he otherwise opposes. When he is not
appearing to undermine the American Empire, which is the main thing he
does, he is buttressing it by undermining the most effective and
therefore dangerous for the Empire faces – a conscious radical
intelligentsia.
A study of Chomsky’s stands on particularly dreadful actions such as
JFK’s assassination, 9/11, and with regard to the roles of the CIA and
FBI, shows Chomsky to be a de facto defender of the status quo’s most
egregious outrages and their covert agency engines. He conducts his de
facto defence of the Empire he appears to oppose through applying the
very propaganda methods against which he has warned, including use of
the derogatory phrase “conspiracy theorist,” which in one context he has
characterized as “something people say when they don’t want you to
think about what’s really going on.”
His recommendation that people practice “intellectual self-defence” is
well taken. But how many could dream the person warning you is one of
the most perilous against whom you’ll need to defend yourself? That he
is the fire marshal who wires your house to burn down, the lifeguard who
drowns you, the doctor with the disarming bedside manner who
administers a fatal injection? If
Noam Chomsky did not exist, the diaboligarchy would have to invent him.
To the New World Order he is worth 50 armoured divisions.
Barrie Zwicker
[POSTSCRIPT:
In preparing this book, I contacted Chomsky well in advance and asked
him if he would respond to a few questions. No response was received.
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
HYPOCRITE
"True believers in the god
of the market would leave us to the ruthless cruelty of unfettered
monopolistic capital where even the law of the jungle breaks down."
-- Bill Moyers, Keynote speech to the Environmental Grantmakers Association, October 16, 2001 Complains against capitalism and fossil fuels while his foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, owns millions worth of investments in oil, natural gas, and coal firms.
BAD BOY
Pays activists
to generate bad stories about corporations, then brings them on his PBS
television shows to denounce the targets - but doesn't admit giving the
activists big grants to do the dirty work.
Pays activists
to generate good stories about his political preferences, then brings
them on his PBS television shows to praise his preferences - but doesn't
admit they're his preferences or that he gave the activists big grants
to tart things up for him.
Bill
Moyers, his son John, and their moneyed sidekicks, the Schumann
brothers, hate the free market with intemperate ferocity, as the quote
above suggests.
They spend millions inherited from an IBM founder and a president of the
General Motors Acceptance Corporation to tear down America's free
market economy. They have their hands in many pies. Here are some.
Triple roles: journalist, advocate, financier  Bill Moyers:Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), The money, the message, and the messenger. Conflict of interest? The Florence and John Schumann Foundation, renamed The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President (part time, 1998 salary $100,043, benefits $4,626. 2007 salary $25,100) Former board of directors member, George Soros' Open Society Institute. Bill Moyers is mapped on Muckety. Bill's background: was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration and Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963-1967. He was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation for 12 years, and currently serves as president of The Florence and John Schumann Foundation.
Bill's tactics:
Bill Moyers pays advocates to come up with an anti-corporate,
anti-capitalist message, then reports the totally biased outcome on PBS
television as unbiased fact without mentioning his role in creating the
fiction.
For example: Bill's message: On March 26, 2001, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations across the country aired a 90-minute investigative report on the chemical industry titled "Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report." It came with a 30-minute panel discussion afterward. The report hit the chemical industry. It portrayed them as having engaged decades ago in a cold, calculated cover-up of deadly health effects linked to certain chemicals, resulting in death and illness for many workers. In other words, the program implied that the chemical industry was guilty of premeditated murder of its own employees. Bill's money: For the post-show panel, Moyers chose Kenneth A. Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a rabidly anti-capitalist group funded by big foundations, including Moyers' Florence and John Schumann Foundation. Moyers acknowledged that he had given a "small grant" to EWG (In fact it was four grants, $225,000 in 1989, $35,000 and $50,000 in 1995, and $15,000 in 1999, for a total of $325,000 - a third of a million isn't "small" to most of us). Moyers also had Dr. Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and chairman of preventive medicine from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In his on-air introduction of Landrigan, Moyers failed to mention that the doctor is also a long-time activist with Physicians for Social Responsibility, an anti-corporate advocacy group. Both Cook and Landrigan had advance knowledge of the show's subject matter. The chemical industry was represented by two men who had no advance knowledge of the show's contents. Bill the messenger: He let the chemical guys comment on how he beat them up. To Bill, that's fair. Bill's faked naïveté: Bill Moyers pays advocates to come up with a politically loaded message that he favors, then invites them to appear on his PBS television shows so he can pretend to be interviewing them, when he not only gave the guest money, but also specified in the grant description what the message would favor. For example:
Bill's rigged "interview:"
In 1994, when campaign finance reform was a hot political topic, Washington activist
Ellen Miller appeared on
Bill Moyers’ Journal
in
a segment titled, "Money Talks."
Moyers wanted a government-funded campaign law, but a simple ban on big political donations was winning in Congress. So he invited Miller, a government-funding advocate, to give her viewpoint. During the show, Moyers fed Miller softball questions that revealed her depth of knowledge of the issue, elicited intelligent answers and displayed her activism favorably, all the while pretending he didn't know what she would say. He had good reason to know in advance exactly what she would say: he paid her to say it. Moyers introduced her by saying, "Her Center for Responsive Politics is a nonpartisan group that tracks the money trail through the political jungle of Washington." He did not say, "I gave her Center $800,000 to favor government-funded election campaigns through my position as president of the Schumann Foundation, and you'll never be able to trace it through the money jungle of Washington." And this guy wanted money OUT of politics? Not all money talks. Then there's the Moyers fossil fuel hypocrisy. For example: Bill's talk: "The single most important thing environmentalists can do to ensure America's national security is to fight to reduce our nation's dependence on oil, whether imported or domestic." Bill Moyers, EGA Keynote Bill's walk: The Schumann Foundation gets the money for its environmental grants in large part from investments in oil and gas companies, according to its most recent available tax returns:
Message?
The single most important thing
Bill Moyers
can do is get rich from
our nation's dependence on oil, whether imported or domestic.
Son of Bill
John Moyers: The Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Executive Director (salary $85,000, benefits $22,228) The Florence Fund, Executive Director TomPaine.com (website project of Florence Fund) "TomPaine.com is a project of The Florence Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation based in Washington, D.C. We are funded by foundations and individual donors, and we take no corporate or union funding. Nor do we accept advertising -- that gives us editorial independence, and it gives you, our reader, freedom from annoying banner advertising. Our principle funding comes from the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, a major supporter of other independent media efforts, including National Public Radio, the Columbia Journalism Review, public TV's "Frontline" and "POV" documentary series, and The American Prospect magazine."
TomPaine.com may be independent from you and me, but it's not independent from Bill Moyers' money or his opinions.
In 2004, the Florence Fund and TomPaine.com were merged with Robert Borosage's Institute for America's Future.
Friends of Bill
W. Ford Schumann Robert Schumann Heirs of the IBM and General Motors Acceptance Corporation money The Florence and John Schumann Foundation, both brothers are officers The Florence Fund, both brothers are directors
W. Ford Schumann is principal of the W. Ford Schumann Foundation, trustee of the Aspen Music Festival and School.
Bucks for Bill
Bill got bucks from 12 foundations, funneled through 13 recipients. Bill's Donors: 1. Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Inc.; 2. The Kohlberg Foundation, Inc.; 3. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; 4. Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc.; 5. The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Inc.; 6. The Annie E. Casey Foundation; 7. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; 8. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; 9. The Joyce Foundation; 10. The California Wellness Foundation; 11. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; 12. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Recipients That Pass Bucks to Bill: 1. W N E T Channel 13, NYC, NY; 2. Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY; 3. American Library Association, Chicago, IL; 4. Genesis Project, NYC, NY; 5. Public Affairs Television, NYC, NY; 6. Jewish Media Fund, NYC, NY; 7. Institute for Christian Jewish Studies, Baltimore, MD; 8. Educational Broadcasting Corporation. WNET Channel 13, NYC, NY; 9. Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, MI; 10. Communications Consortium Media Center. Media Center, DC; 11. MDC, Chapel Hill, NC; 12. ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Spartanburg, SC; 13. Chicago Educational Television Association, Chicago, IL.
Grants Bill got:
Record 1 FOUNDATION NAME: Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: W N E T Channel 13, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For teacher's guide and Web site to accompany PBS series Fooling With Words, with Bill Moyers, based on 1998 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival AMOUNT: $150,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1999 Record 2 FOUNDATION NAME: The Kohlberg Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For Bill Moyers-On Our Own Terms AMOUNT: $500,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1998 Record 3 FOUNDATION NAME: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation RECIPIENT: American Library Association, Chicago, IL ABSTRACT: For public education programs in conjunction with PBS Series, On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying in America AMOUNT: $170,313 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1999 DURATION: 1.25-year grant Record 4 FOUNDATION NAME: The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Inc. (The Sara Lee foods fortune) RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: To conduct research for television series, Living with Dying, with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $40,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1997 Record 5 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Genesis Project, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For various nonprofit organizations to create educational materials and education programs in conjunction with the series, Genesis: A Living Conversation, with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $150,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1996 Record 6 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Genesis Project, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For various nonprofit organizations to create educational materials and education programs in conjunction with the series, Genesis: A Living Conversation, with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $34,500 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1996 Record 7 FOUNDATION NAME: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation RECIPIENT: Public Affairs Television, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For research and development of Bill Moyers television special on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission AMOUNT: $40,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1997 Record 8 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Public Affairs Television, NYC, NY RECIPIENT TYPE: Television (A32); Public affairs (W99) ABSTRACT: To complete film production and development of educational materials for public television series based on stories in the Book of Genesis, with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $50,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1995 Record 9 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Jewish Media Fund, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For initial development phases of educational and outreach activities for Genesis series with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $18,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1995 Record 10 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles H. Revson Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Institute for Christian Jewish Studies, Baltimore, MD ABSTRACT: To develop model for interfaith and interracial discussion groups in conjunction with Genesis series with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $10,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1995 Record 11 FOUNDATION NAME: The Joyce Foundation RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation. WNET Channel 13, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For What Can We Do About Violence, program by Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $150,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1994 Record 12 FOUNDATION NAME: The California Wellness Foundation RECIPIENT: Public Affairs Television, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For Bill Moyers production, Overcoming Youth Violence, four-hour introduction to The National Public Television Campaign to Combat Youth Violence AMOUNT: $250,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1994 Record 13 FOUNDATION NAME: The Annie E. Casey Foundation RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For production and promotion of Families First with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $35,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1992 Record 14 FOUNDATION NAME: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation RECIPIENT: Public Affairs Television, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For cultural and public affairs productions of Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $1,500,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1992 DURATION: 3-year grant Record 15 FOUNDATION NAME: The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, MI ABSTRACT: For Healing and the Mind, with Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $250,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1990 Record 16 FOUNDATION NAME: The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation RECIPIENT: Communications Consortium Media Center. Media Center, DC ABSTRACT: For staff to work with grantees to develop communications strategies in states where family preservation programs are well-established by focusing national media attention on initiatives and by building additional communications activities around Bill Moyers' documentary on family preservation AMOUNT: $175,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1991 DURATION: 1 1/2-year grant Record 17 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (General Motors money) RECIPIENT: MDC, Chapel Hill, NC ABSTRACT: For outreach work related to documentary All Our Children with Bill Moyers and subsequent teleconferences AMOUNT: $20,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1991 Record 18 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation RECIPIENT: ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Spartanburg, SC ABSTRACT: For additional promotional and production costs for Bill Moyers' documentary, All Our Children AMOUNT: $75,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1991DURATION: 1 1/4-year grant Record 19 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation RECIPIENT: ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Spartanburg, SC ABSTRACT: For reprinting and distributing additional promotional materials and technical assistance guides in support of repeat telecasting of Bill Moyers All Our Children documentary AMOUNT: $35,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1991 Record 20 FOUNDATION NAME: Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Inc. RECIPIENT: W N E T Channel 13, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: To produce teacher education guide for high schools and colleges to accompany Moyers: The Power of the Word, six-part series on contemporary poetry inspired by Dodge Foundation's biennial Poetry Festival at Waterloo Village AMOUNT: $80,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989 Record 21 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation RECIPIENT: MDC, Chapel Hill, NC ABSTRACT: For outreach activities related to Mott-funded documentary on at-risk youth being produced by Bill Moyers for airing in early 1991 on national public television network AMOUNT: $99,221 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1990 Record 22 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation RECIPIENT: ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Spartanburg, SC ABSTRACT: For outreach programs and activities related to Mott-funded documentary on at-risk youth produced by Bill Moyers for airing in early 991 on national public television network AMOUNT: $300,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1990 Record 23 FOUNDATION NAME: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For production of programs by Bill Moyers for WNET, Channel 13 AMOUNT: $625,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989 DURATION: 3-year grant Record 24 FOUNDATION NAME: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For challenge grant for weekly production of The World of Ideas, under direction of Bill Moyers, for WNET, Channel 13 AMOUNT: $1,875,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989 DURATION: 3-year grant Record 25 FOUNDATION NAME: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation RECIPIENT: Chicago Educational Television Association, Chicago, IL ABSTRACT: For weekly production of The World of Ideas, under direction of Bill Moyers AMOUNT: $1,875,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989 DURATION: 3-year grant Record 26 FOUNDATION NAME: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation RECIPIENT: Chicago Educational Television Association, Chicago, IL ABSTRACT: For production of programs produced by Bill Moyers for WTTW, Channel 11 AMOUNT: $625,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989 DURATION: 3-year grant Record 27 FOUNDATION NAME: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation RECIPIENT: Educational Broadcasting Corporation, NYC, NY ABSTRACT: For production costs of 90-minute documentary by Bill Moyers building upon findings of 1988 Mott-sponsored report, America's Shame, America's Hope: Twelve Million Youth At Risk AMOUNT: $850,000 YEAR AUTHORIZED: 1989
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Bill Moyers, CIA "Liberal" (and Nazi Joseph Campbell)
By Alex Constantine
The Power of the Bill Moyers Myth - Who will Tell Amy Goodman?
On PBS, Moyers promotes the work of the late fascist eugenicist Joseph Campbell, a vicious anti-Semite who has proposed relocating Jewish people to the moon. Moyers seems to have no problem with that, though - as long as his audience doesn't know and he continues to reap his share of Campbell's book profits UNDER THE TABLE, a massive perk that he has publicly denied ...
Bill Moyers is the most visible "liberal" in the national media, and Amy Goodman's icon of progressive journalism. The Schumann Foundation, chaired by Moyers for years, has been busily shaping the mass-market progressive press. Television Quarterly, a journal of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, ranks Moyers among the ten journalists who have most influenced television news. He has won more than 30 Emmys, a George Peabody award, a Ralph Lowell medal and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel. His documentaries have paid off handsomely in network fund drives. Several of his books have been best-sellers. The avuncular Moyers, a former Baptist minister from Marshall, Texas, has been an Arthur Morse Fellow at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Social Research Institute.
But Moyers does not exactly fit the traditional liberal profile. Morley Safer of 60 Minutes fame recalls that, as President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary, Moyers was responsible for the FBI's bugging of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the leaking of transcripts to the media. Moyers denied the bugging and leaking allegations in a letter to The New Republic in 1991, but did allow that he leaked "information" only to "officials involved in national security." This much was confirmed by a Senate Intelligence Committee staff report released in 1976: "Moyers expressly approved the circulation within the Executive Branch of a secret FBI report on King."
Moyers was also the instigator of a disgraceful episode at the White House, one that anticipated Nixon's "dirty tricks." His pissing match with Safer began in August, 1965, when CBS News reported that U.S. Marines had torched a village in Vietnam. The story was followed by public indignation and it fed the rising opposition to Johnson's escalation policy. CBS president Frank Stanton was called on the carpet for the exposé at a private meeting with LBJ and his Kennedy-coifed aide. LBJ told Stanton that Moyers had a damaging file on Safer compiled from the records of the FBI, CIA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The extortion "file" was an idle threat - it didn't exist. Unless Safer "cleaned up his act," the administration would "go public" with the CBS reporter's "communist ties." Safer scoffed at the accusation and held his job at CBS. Today, Moyers waves off the episode as "a bluff."
McGeorge Bundy
Public television's premiere "liberal" is as practiced at the art of deception as he is blackmail. In October, 1977, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame reported in Rolling Stone that Bill Moyers ran a "super-secret" CIA task force mustered to study the feasibility of short-waving propaganda to the People's Republic of China. The project was overseen by the CIA's Cord Meyer, McGeorge Bundy, a national security advisor to Johnson, USIA director John Marks and Moyers.
He certainly wore hawk feathers when taped in the White House by LBJ: "Mr. President, I would like to suggest that you really keep pressure on Bundy and Rusk and McCone and others to press forward on what we can do about Cuba - about subversion, espionage and intelligence. Now there are two reasons for this: One, I think we've got to do it. It's necessary. Cuba has got to be dealt with..."
"Moyers regards himself as the "catalyst' of the Johnson administration," Current Biography (1966 edition) reported, "and Johnson has described him as my vice-president in charge of anything.'" Vice President Moyers became Hoover's pipeline to Johnson in 1964, after Walter Jenkins, his predecessor, was busted for "disorderly conduct" in a Beltway men's room.
Moyers dropped from the sinking Johnson administration in 1967 to become publisher of Newsday in Long Island, then owned by millionaire Harry Guggenheim. Two years passed and Guggenheim confided to Moyers his intent in selling the newspaper. In an attempt to save his job, Moyers tried to interest CIA director William Casey, Chase Manhattan Bank, the New York Times and Time-Life in buying it. He moved on to PBS the same year – after Guggenheim reneged on bequeathing him his fortune, as promised – and joined the board of the Rockefeller Foundation where he remained for 17 years. In 1980, Moyers produced The World of David Rockefeller, an unabashed PR whitewash.
In 1976, CBS forgave his White House antics and drafted Moyers to the news division. Employees of the network recall him as "brilliant" ... also "duplicitous," "calculating," "cunning." Gordon Van Sauter, a right-wing CBS executive, recollects "a truly reprehensible human being." The multi-faceted news analyst dropped CBS two years later for PBS.
In 1981, he bugged out once again when his contract at Bill Moyers' Journal expired and returned to CBS News. He passed through the revolving door, from corporate compromise to public pabulum, for years. "Everybody calls me Hamlet," he explains of his own seeming indecisiveness, "but I call it brilliance."
Say what you will of Bill Moyers, his Muckrake Lite approach (fascism in government? No mention of the obvious ...) has actually served the public interest on occasion. His October, 1973 "Essay on Watergate," delivered on a program funded by the Ford Foundation, was a dirge that warmed the republic to Nixon's impending political collapse. His documentaries, What Can We Do About Violence?, Minimum Wages, and The Secret Government (it didn't tell the half the story) served the commonweal in their fashion.
But it is the larceny in his heart that TV Guide does not probe. Nowhere was his dark side more apparent than in his series of highly-publicized interviews with famed mythologist Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). A book based on the series was an immediate best-seller. Ruppert Murdoch's New York Post found it "provocative and inspirational." Truth to tell, The Power of Myth was an inspirational but deceitful promotion of a Nazi occultist and a vicious anti-Semite with ties to the American neo-Nazi underground. Promotion of the book was a display of greed that would put a blush on the face of a fugitive financier.
After the series aired, the September 28, 1989 number of New York Review of Books published an article by Brendan Gill, a long-time friend of Campbell's at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Gill reports that in December 1941, three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Campbell delivered a talk discouraging students from supporting American entrance into the war with Nazi Germany. Campbell soiled German author Thomas Mann, an exile in the States who had "lost altitude" as a writer by criticizing the Nazi Party. Mann, in a letter to Campbell, responded that he found this rebuke "strange," and pointed out that his books were "forbidden in Germany and in all countries that Germany rules, and whoever reads them or even should sell them, and whoever would so much as praise my name publicly would be put into a concentration camp and his teeth would be bashed in and his kidneys split in two. You teach that we must not get upset about that ... once again, this is strange."
Not necessarily, considering Campbell's acute and unswerving anti-Semitism. Ms Carol Wallace recalled in a letter to NYRB: "In the early 1970s, I worked with Joe Campbell on his Mythic Image at Princeton University Press. It was amazing to me that this man of cosmic vision could harbor such mean-spirited and seemingly unexamined biases against much of humankind. In addition to anti-Semitism, I remember in particular his vexation over blacks' being admitted to Sarah Lawrence."
"When the astronauts landed on the moon," Gill recalled, "Joe made the repellent jest to a member of my family, who was a student of his at the time, that the moon would be a good place to put the Jews..."
A correspondent, Carol Luther of San Anselmo, California, wrote Gill to say that she once "attended a lecture in which Campbell recounted what he called a popular Indian fable (a favorite of Campbell's in old age), the gist of which was that we are not all mere mild grass-eating goats but, instead, are blood-thirsty, carnivorous tigers, who do well to prey upon whatever lower species of animal makes up our natural diet." Incited, Luther "rose shaking from my chair and shouted, 'What about the six million [Jews] who were gassed during World War II?'" In response, Campbell simply shrugged and spat, "That's your problem."
Joseph Campbell not only shrugged off the Holocaust – he was a major force in the racial eugenics movement until his death in 1987. For many years he sat on the editorial board of Mankind Quarterly, the notorious "race journal" subsidized by the notorious Pioneer Fund. The Quarterly's founder, Robert Gayre, held that African-Americans are "worthless." The Quarterly was long published by Roger Pearson, an official of the pro-fascist Northern League, an organization that included among its ranks a number of veterans of Himmler's SS. Other prominent academics who contributed to the journal: Henry Garrett of the White Citizens Council, Ottmar von Verschuer, Josef Mengele's mentor, and Corrado Gini, an Italian biologist under Mussolini, author of The Scientific Basis of Fascism.
But here he was on the "public" airwaves, discussing Buddha and the Burmese Snake Goddess and following his bliss with an obsequious, doe-eyed Bill Moyers.
Even the Campbell approach to myth recalled Nazi Germany – handed down from Carl Jung, a CIA recruit, former editor of the ranking psychiatric journal of the National Socialist Party, whose books, translated in the United States with funding from Edith Rockefeller, reek of proto-Nazi occultism.
The Power of Myth still reaps a windfall in donations to the network and its affiliates. A book based on the series was co-authored and edited with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by a consultant to the series, Betty-Sue Flowers, a former English professor at the University of Texas and director of the LBJ Library. John Trimble, a UT English professor who has known her for 30 years, calls Flowers "the female Bill Moyers." Like the original, she is comfortable in the boardroom and knows her way around Washington. The Austin American Statesman observed on April 7, 2002 that Flowers travels "in the world of multinational corporations – and once spent a couple of weeks in the Pentagon as a special advisor to the secretary of the Navy. "
The "female Bill Moyers" sits on the boards of Breckenridge Petroleum Co. Also the Arlington Institute, a research center in Virginia with blue-chip corporate and federal clients, a distinction Flowers shares with former CIA director James Woolsey, Gerald Ford appointee George H. Kuper, and Colin Crook, former chief technologist at Citicorp. The institute was founded in 1989 by John Peterson, formerly an official of the Institute for National Security Studies, the office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council.
Like Joseph Campbell, Ms. Flowers is enrolled in the Jung school of comparative religion. Besides The Power of Myth, she edited Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership (1996), a Jungian romp for corporate executives by tin-horn visionary Joseph Jaworski, son of the Watergate prosecutor appointed by then Attorney General Robert Bork, Leon Jaworski.
Fascination with Nazis is apparently imprinted on the Jaworski phenotype. A repugnant hallmark of Leon Jaworski's career was his release of Nazis to the American intelligence services as a Nuremberg war crimes trial prosecutor.
He also worked with the Red Cross International Rescue Division to relocate SS officers around the world. In exchange, he was made chairman of Houston's Red Cross chapter in 1954. Other blots on the old man's résumé include his legal work for the Warren Commission. Despite a career of collaboration with fascists, he was endowed with every honor the legal profession has to offer. He was "very close" friend of George H.W. Bush, and supported his fellow Houstonian in his 1980 bid for president.
"The constant act of being true to oneself – authentic in thought, work and deed – is what carves the path in front of you, a path you can't predict," Flowers says. Who could predict that the bubbly former beauty pageant contestant, feminist, poet and Jungian from Austin would make a splash promoting the work of a Nazi mystic for PBS, and pouring on a lubricious New Age veneer?
Perdido magazine had it in a review of Synchronicity: "Jaworski begins by telling the story of his father, Leon Jaworski, a nationally prominent litigator, and his role as special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. 'The Colonel,' as Jaworski called his father, related the dimensions of the conspiracy to his son one day, before the details of the Watergate tapes became public. Watergate marked a significant revelation in Joe Jaworski's life, the realization that a crisis in leadership existed in this country. With an immensely personal style, Jaworski examines the experiences of his life that seemed to transcend the moment, that were guided by some unseen hand." In 1990, Jasworski was hired by Royal Dutch/Shell Oil in London to direct a multinational panel on future "global scenarios."
Jung defined synchronicity as "a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved."
Synchronicity
Every turn in this story leaves chance begging for something to do. The main beneficiary in the pimping of Joseph Campbell was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) when presided over by Robert Coonrod. Coonrod was executive VP and chief operating officer of Voice of America for five years. In 1992 ,VOA director Richard Carlson moved to CPB and Coonrod followed. When Carlson set sail in April, 1997 to run King World Public Television, Coonrod was promoted to head up CPB.
Under President George W. Bush, the CPB was overseen for one year by CEO Kathleen Cox. Executive vice president and CEO Ken Ferree succeeded her as interim president in April 2005. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told Media Week that Cox’s departure was integral to a plan to bring public television and radio into line with right-wing policies. "The ideologically driven majority on the board is pursuing a zealous campaign to promote conservative/GOP-approved public broadcasting programming,” Chester said. Ferree, who hailed from Michael Powell's FCC, joined the CPB one month before his the promotion was announced. At the FCC, Ferree served as chief of the media division, where he paved the way for greater corporate control of the airwaves.
Posted by Alex Constantine at 9:55 PM
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