WATCH: Human Resources | Social Engineering in the 20th Century

Source: Metanoia Films

 “Brilliant…Riveting…The amount of material the filmmaker covers and unifies is astounding…Human Resources diagnoses the 20th century.” – Stephen Soldz, Professor, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility

Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century explores the rise of mechanistic philosophy and the exploitation of human beings under modern hierarchical systems. Topics covered include behaviorism, scientific management, work-place democracy, schooling, frustration-aggression hypothesis and human experimentation.

Scott Noble, the filmmaker behind the extraordinary and informative documentary “Psywar” has made another revelatory and important documentary, available free to the public, called “Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century”.

“Essentially”, says Scott, “this film is about the rise of mechanistic philosophy and the exploitation of human beings under modern hierarchical systems.” The film includes original interviews with: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Rebecca Lemov (World as Laboratory), Christopher Simpson (The Science of Coercion), George Ritzer (The McDonaldization of Society), Morris Berman (The Reenchantment of the World), John Taylor Gatto (Dumbing us Down), Alfie Kohn (What does it mean to be well educated?) and others.

Read David Ker Thomson’s review of the film. He writes: It answers the significant events of the last century the way a glass answers the implicit questions of a man who peers into its reflective surface, point for point. It corresponds, in short, to reality.

http://youtu.be/tCNLXj-R5Jc

Black On The Old Plantation | Civil Rights Organizations Enslave Themselves to Corporate Funding

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Metro Atlanta is now the second largest concentration of African-descended people in North America. But with civil rights organizations firmly in corporate pockets, it’s still a spot where the racist corporations like Southern Companies feel free and unashamed to celebrate their history of theft and plunder and future prospects of the same. What does that say about the state of black leadership, about all of us?

 

“Southern Companies purchased its very own civil rights organization…”

There was a time when the master class of the American South would gather under the shade of carefully pruned magnolia trees to gamble, sip mint juleps, tell tales and celebrate themselves in the midst of stolen wealth trampled from the hides of mother nature, Native Americans and African-descended slaves. In the 21^st century South, where as Faulkner said, the past ain’t even past, not much has changed.

Southern Companies is a greedy rapacious corporation that owns power generation and delivery networks throughout the southeast. They own coal, gas and nuclear plants. They endow college and university chairs and scholarships, community organizations and local churches. In whole or in part, they own hundreds of judges and politicians across the region including many black ones, right up to a piece of the White House itself. Their influence is a big reason why Obama called himself the president of “clean coal and safe nuclear power.” One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to grant $800 million in free loan guarantees to build the nation’s first new nuclear power plant in 30 years right next to an existing pair of leaky nukes believed responsible for a cancer epidemic in mostly black Burke County GA, one of the poorest places in the South. Southern Companies-owned politicians have also allowed it to charge millions of ratepayers $15 and $20 monthly to cover advance construction costs of the new nukes so it need not invest any of its vast cash reserves.

To insulate themselves against charges of environmental racism for poisoning poor blacks in Burke County, Southern Companies doesn’t just make wild claims about how many Homer Simpson jobs new its nuclear plants will produce. Southern Companies purchased its very own civil rights organization, the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Council, originally founded by Dr. Martin Luther King himself. A Southern Companies CEO headed up SCLC’s building fund and raised over $3 million to pay for its new office buildings on Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue. →

Editorial | Reforming an Abomination

Editorial

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Jun 23, 2012

Rio Summit “Good Versus Evil” Advert Displays Blatant Racism and Imperialism at Core of Avaaz

June 22, 2012

“Demonization is a psy-op, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favor of war. Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries; it extends to entire populations. It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America. It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader. It denigrates Islam. It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger ‘civil war.'” — Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

 

The Avaaz “Good Versus Evil” campaign for the Rio Summit. Above: A downloadable poster as found on the Avaaz Press Centre published in the Financial Times. Vilification: Note the dark cast/ugly sky behind the leaders Avaaz would wish you to believe are “evil,” versus the light and sun shining through over the Imperialist, obstructionist “leaders” that Avaaz is attempting to convince you are “good.”

Keith Harman Snow (war correspondent, photographer and independent investigator, and a four time Project Censored award winner) discusses the art of so called “humanitarianism” via the industrial non-profit complex with precision and candor in his many lectures.

Keith Harmon Snow discussing western NGOs and Africa: (running time: 2:54):

The following is an excerpt from part one of an in-depth investigative report titled “Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War” by investigative writer and ecological activist Cory Morningstar, to be published by Wrong Kind of Green:

 

 The Behavioral Economics of Hatred

 

“Within George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to “satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which likely do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” [Source: Wikipedia] Orwell did not invent the term “two minutes hate” however; it was already in use/utilized in the First World War by British writers to satirize German propaganda.

 

In a somewhat similar fashion, an economist’s definition of hatred is the willingness to pay a price to inflict harm on others, according to Edward Glaeser, Princeton-educated economist and professor at Harvard.

 

In an article published in Harvard Magazine titled “The Marketplace of Perceptions,” author Craig Lambert writes:

 

“The psychological literature, [Edward Glaeser] found, defines hatred as an emotional response we have to threats to our survival or reproduction. ‘It’s related to the belief that the object of hatred has been guilty of atrocities in the past and will be guilty of them in the future,’ he says. ‘Economists have nothing to tell psychologists about why individuals hate. But group-level hatred has its own logic that always involves stories about atrocities. These stories are frequently false. As [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels said, hatred requires repetition, not truth, to be effective.'”

 

“‘You have to investigate the supply of hatred,’ Glaeser continues. ‘Who has the incentive and the ability to induce group hatred? This pushes us toward the crux of the model: politicians or anyone else will supply hatred when hatred is a complement to their policies.'”

 

One can safely state that the behavior of economics of hatred has been a key component in the psychology behind the recent Avaaz campaigns attacking the sovereign states of Libya, Bolivia and Syria.

 

The two minutes hate has risen again.

 

Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War

 

 “I am convinced that some NGOs, especially those funded by the U.S.AID, are the fifth column of espionage in Bolivia, not only in Bolivia, but also in all of Latin America.” — Evo Morales, February 2012

 

In 2001, it was George W. Bush, who propelled an illegal invasion of Iraq by way of relentless pounding of repetitive messaging of discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq coupled with incessant images of the twin towers being destroyed. This psyops reverberated throughout a mainstream media that obediently fed the lies to the masses. The role of the media was absolutely essential. Yet, in spite of Bush calling for the invasion of Iraq, citizens of the globe, in united cohesion, held the largest mass protests and peace vigils the world had ever witnessed.

 

Today, however, the push to invade under the guise of humanitarianism is no longer a message from predominantly Imperialist governments alone. Rather, there is a new game in town. Flash forward one decade to 2011 and the push for war no longer comes from the lone vacuity of despised war criminals such as George Bush nor his charismatic alter-ego, Barack Obama. Rather, the message is now being spoon-fed to global society via the “trusted” NGOs, with Avaaz, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch at the forefront.

 

A decade later, thanks to the non-profit industrial complex partnered with corporate media, it is now “the people” – having been swayed by fabrications, omissions and lies – who lead the demand for invasion of these sovereign states. And, most ironic, it is not the so-called “right” at the vanguard; rather, it is the “progressive left.”

 

Although now seemingly normalized, one must consider it slightly ironic that it is no longer the progressive left beating the drums against war. Rather, as in the case of climate, it is primarily the countries seeking to free themselves from the chains of Imperialist enslavement that vocally oppose the escalating destabilization campaigns, with the most recent victim of Western aggression being Syria. At the United Nations assembly on 16 February 2012, the 12 states that voted against the resolution to condemn Syria at the United Nations included North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and Syria, along with states who primarily compose the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA): Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua. And it is not a coincidence that the leaders of most of these same states that continue the struggle for autonomy are all similarly vilified and demonized by the corporate-media complex, joined recently by the non-profit industrial complex.

 

“The threats against Syria, co-ordinated in Washington and London, scale new peaks of hypocrisy. Contrary to the raw propaganda presented as news, the investigative journalism of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identifies those responsible for the massacre in Houla as the ‘rebels’ backed by Obama and Cameron. The paper’s sources include the rebels themselves. This has not been completely ignored in Britain. Writing in his personal blog, ever so quietly, Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor, effectively dishes his own ‘coverage’, citing western officials who describe the ‘psy-ops’ operation against Syria as ‘brilliant’. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.”

— History is the enemy as ‘brilliant’ psy-ops become the news by Award–winning journalist John Pilger [1] June 21, 2012

Demonization is a key psy-op, directly sponsored by the U.S. Pentagon and intelligence apparatus to influence and sway public opinion and build consensus in favour of invasion. [2] A recent example can be extracted from the failed 2011 destabilization campaign against the Morales government in Bolivia led by U.S.-funded NGOs including the “Democracy Centre,” which declared: “But the abuses dealt out by the government against the people of the TIPNIS have knocked ‘Evo the icon’ off his pedestal in a way from which he will never fully recover, in Bolivia and globally.”

 

A similar situation (with developing nations, rather than the “environmental movement,” taking the lead) has taken place on the issue of climate change. ALBA nations, with Bolivia at the forefront, led the charge while the non-profit industrial complex purposely and grossly undermined the strong positions necessary to mitigate the climate emergency. The climate justice movement was acquiescent and thus kowtowed to the “big greens.” There was no justice to be found, only a cohesive hypocrisy amongst the professional left that flourished like a cancer.

 

Today, in 2012, with the recent “approved” invasion and annihilation of Libya, which, prior to the NATO-led invasion, had the highest standard of living in Africa, the Imperialist states are frothing at the mouth over the prospects of invading/occupying Syria under the carefully orchestrated guise of “humanitarian intervention.” If one looks closely, we can witness a steady transformation, well underway within the meticulously maintained, well-greased gears of the propaganda machine – a machine that continues to be refined. The blurring of lines between corporate power, the corporate media complex, the non-profit industrial complex, and the United Nations continues to accelerate, while simultaneously the veil begins to lift.

 

Further Reading:

The Grotesque and Disturbing Ideology at the Helm of Avaaz

http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/03/07/the-grotesque-and-disturbing-ideology-at-the-helm-of-avaaz/

U.S. Orchestrated Color Revolutions to Sweep Across Latin America in 2013-2014

http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/04/06/u-s-orchestrated-color-revolutions-to-sweep-across-latin-america-in-2013-2014/

[1] John Pilger has been a war correspondent, film-maker and author, and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of Journalist of the Year. He has also been named International Reporter of the Year, and won the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal.

[2] “Demonization is a psy-op, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favor of war. Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries; it extends to entire populations. It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America. It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader. It denigrates Islam. It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger ‘civil war.'” Source: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

SAMURAI AMONG PANTHERS: RICHARD AOKI ON RACE, RESISTENCE AND A PARADOXICAL LIFE

Title: Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life
Author: Diane C. Fujino
Publisher: Critical American Studies, University of Minnesota Press

Book Review By Abayomi Azikiwe
Libya 360°

This is a combined autobiography and biographical account of the life and times of Richard Aoki, a Japanese-American, who along with his parents spent time in an internment camp in the United States during World War II. The book covers an important time period in history when the civil rights, left and black power movements had a tremendous impact on the political structures of the country.

Born on November 20, 1938, Aoki was three and a half years old when his family was relocated to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California, just twelve miles south of San Francisco. They were later transferred to the Topaz, Utah concentration camp.

This fact of U.S. history which is often deliberately overlooked as a key component of the war mobilization against Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941, lays bare the false notions of American democracy and the myth of non-discrimination against the “ideal Asian-American community.” The strain of the internment camps led to the separation of Akoi’s parents which had a tremendous impact on his life as a youth in the aftermath of the war.

Aoki and his brother would live with his father in Utah and later in Oakland. However, another traumatic occurrence took place when his father left town when he was a teenager leading him back to living with his mother and reestablishing a relationship with her.

His mother was a working class woman who raised her sons on a salary of less than two dollars an hour during the 1950s. He grew up in the predominantly African American community in West Oakland but had strong interaction and mentorship from other males in his family including a grandfather and uncles.

He would join the military prior to finishing high school and later the reserves. He read voraciously but admits to harboring a false consciousness. When he voted for the first time in the 1960 elections it was for Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for president.

Akoi described himself at the time as anti-communist and even read the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Soon afterwards he would pick up a book by Eugene Victor Debs, the socialist organizer and candidate for president during the early 20th century.

He found the writings of Debs inspiring and would then go on to study the history of the labor movement involving the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He landed a job in a factory during this period and participated in a strike.

However, it was during the Watts Rebellion of August 1965 that he learned a lesson in both race and class politics in the United States. Akoi recounted that “I remember when Watts busted loose in 1965. I was working in this one factory where 90 percent of the three hundred people working the line were White southerners. Half of them didn’t show up for work the day after the Watts riots.” (p. 86)

Akoi goes on to say “I asked the forman, ‘We got to get the show on the road. Where the hell is everybody?’ He said, ‘Man they’re at home in Richmond or wherever in the tract homes, and they got their front doors barricaded and their guns out for that invasion coming in from Watts.’ I said, ‘There ain’t going to be no invasion coming from Watts.’”

He therefore concluded that “on the one hand, these coworkers of mine were strong union people, you know proletarian-oriented, class-conscious workers. But when it came to race, half the workers, being White southerners, were freaked out over Watts. I was stunned.” →

Ecuador: New Left or New Colonialism?

“Until rich countries are held to account for the crimes they have committed against countries such as Ecuador — something that will require revolutionary struggles breaking out elsewhere — no foreign leftist has a right to denounce the Ecuador government for using wealth from its natural resources to meet peoples’ needs. … Rather than aiming their fire on a supposed “new model of domination”, leftists would do better to focus on the real enemies we and the Ecuadorian people face in common. Ecuador’s fate is intertwined with our fight against Western governments and corporations at home.”

June 17, 2012

By Federico Fuentes

Green Left Weekly

 

Criticism of Latin America’s radical governments has become common currency among much of the international left. While none have been exempt, Ecuador’s government of President Rafael Correa has been a key target.

But a problem with much of the criticism directed against Correa is that it lacks any solid foundation and misdirects fire away from the real enemy.

Correa was elected president in 2006 after more than a decade of mostly indigenous-led rebellions against neoliberalism.

During his election campaign, the radical economist promised to rewrite the country’s constitution, reject any free trade agreement with Washington, refuse to repay of illegitimate foreign debts and close a US military base on Ecuadorian soil.

The social movements had campaigned around many of these demands, which is why most supported Correa in the second-round presidential run-off against Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man.

Since then, Correa has largely carried out these election promises. This explains why he has an approval rating of more than 80%, a June 13 opinion poll found.

Left criticisms

But foreign leftists do not share this support.

Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist whose anarchist-leaning writings have been widely distributed among the English-speaking left, has denounced the Correa government for presiding over “a new model of domination”.

This new model, Zibechi said last year, differs from past neoliberal governments that promoted free market policies to allow transnational corporations to dominate Ecuador’s economy and natural resources.

Zibechi said that today the state plays a larger role in Equador’s economy. But he said the state has simply replaced the role of the market as the principle guardian of transnational interests, which continue to loot the nation’s wealth unabated.

He said as the Correa government “depends on oil exports and mining concessions to make ends meet … resistance now no longer faces multinational corporations, but rather the state apparatus.”

The criticisms of Correa are not just limited to the anti-state left.

In a May 2 article, US Marxist academic James Petras said Correa’s claims to be renegotiating a better deal for the country were false.

Petras said: “The style and substance of the distribution of the powers and privileges in the oil and gas agreements between progressive governments and the multinationals are no different than what transpired under previous ‘neo-liberal’ regimes.”

He said Correa has instead deepened the country’s reliance on agro-mineral and energy exports in its pursuit of “extractive capitalism”. This is because “state revenue and growth” are now “utterly dependent on the increasing demand for raw materials, high commodity prices and open markets”.

Zibechi and Petras agree that Ecuador today is as much or more dependent than before on raw material exports, while transnational corporations reap the rewards.

Zibechi said this reliance on export-driven growth and revenue derived from natural resources — the logical consequences of “extractive capitalism” — has converted the Correa government into the main enemy for those opposed to this “new form of domination”.

Economic reality

Yet these statements bear no resemblance to Ecuador’s economy or the policies pursued by the Correa government.

There is little evidence that transnationals extract more of Ecuador’s wealth, raw materials or profits.

Oil production, the main extractive industry in Ecuador, has fallen from 195.5 million barrels in 2006 to 182.3 million barrels last year.

Crude oil exports have also fallen. The US remains the biggest market for Ecuador’s crude oil, but falling export volumes to the US have been offset by an almost five-fold rise in exports to Latin American countries.

In the same period, the state’s share of oil production has risen from 46% to more than 70%. Last year, transnationals extracted less that half of what they did in 2006.

Oil prices have risen during this time, but this has been accompanied by government measures to ensure more wealth stays in Ecuador, at the expense of transnationals.

In October 2007, the Correa government increased the windfall tax on profits (accrued when oil prices surpass those set down in the contracts signed between companies and the state) from 50% to 99%. It shifted the tax back to 70% when oil prices fell sharply at the end of 2008.

The government also dismantled several oil funds set up under past neoliberal governments that directed oil revenue towards repaying foreign debt. The state’s oil revenue has been consolidated into the government’s budget.

Similarly, Ecuador’s ability to recover from the 2008 global economic crisis and register record economic growth was not export-driven or dependent on the oil sector.

Rebecca Ray, who co-authored a report on Ecuador’s economy for the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, told the Real News Network that Ecuador was among the quickest countries to recover from the global crisis because “it developed its domestic market and it took care of its people domestically rather than trying to ride out the global commodity wave”.

One important move was the government’s decision to provide grants to first homebuyers and make available low-interest mortgage loans.

This boosted the building industry, which became the main driver of growth. It accounted for more 40% of Ecuador’s GDP growth last year. Other key areas of growth have been agriculture, manufacturing and commerce.

Growth in the non-petroleum sector outstripped petroleum sector growth for every quarter from the start of 2007 to the end of 2010.

Ecuador’s revenue from exports fell 25% in 2008-9, with falling oil prices being a key contributor. But the economy was better able to cope due to rising internal consumption, aided by much higher social spending and wage hikes.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research report said: “Between 2006 and 2009, social spending nearly doubled as a percent of GDP … and spending on social welfare more than doubled – from 0.7 to 1.8 percent of GDP.”

It also said the minimum wage “has risen about 40% in real terms over the last five years”.

Dignified salary

Workers have also benefitted from the introduction of the “dignified salary”, whereby Ecuadorian law requires “any business earning a profit [to] first distribute that profit among its employees, until either the employees’ total earnings rise to the level of a living wage or the entire profit has been distributed before reporting the remainder as its final profits”.

These policies have lead to a fall in poverty rates and unemployment.

It is evident that Ecuador’s government, with the support of the people, has stemmed the flow of oil wealth out of the country and begun redirecting it towards meeting ordinary peoples’ needs.

This is not to suggest that Ecuador does not continue to face big challenges; much less that capitalism has been overthrown. There is still a long way to go.

A study by Ecuador’s National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES) has shown that almost US$45 billion in public investment and recurring costs will be needed in order to eradicate poverty in Ecuador by 2021.

This is 10 times more than Ecuador’s annual budget for infrastructure investment.

To end poverty, all Ecuadorians would need access to basic services such as water, housing, electricity, transport, water irrigation, sewerage and education and health facilities, among others.

On top of this, it is true that Ecuador’s economy has not fundamentally changed under Correa. The path towards industrialisation and diversification of the economy has been slow and full of hurdles.

The continued existence of a capitalist state apparatus designed to serve the interests of the old elites, not the people, compounds these problems.

Valid criticisms can be made of the impacts that oil extraction, and recent moves to open up a new open-cut mine, have had on local communities. There has also been a lack of government consultation about these projects.

But this is not the same as accusing the Correa government of presiding over some form of “extractive capitalism” that does the dirty work of transnational corporations. This claim lacks any factual basis. Ultimately, it pits leftists against the very same people they claim to support.

No government, even one that comes to power on the back of an insurrection and destroys the capitalist state, would be able to meet the needs of the Ecuadorian people while at the same time halting all extractive industries.

However, it can attempt to strike a balance between protecting the environment and satisfying people’s needs, while empowering the people to take power into their own hands. The difficulty of such a task means mistakes will be made, but also learnt from.

Historic debts

To overcome Ecuador’s legacy of dependency on extractive industries, rich imperialist nations will need to repay their historic debts to Ecuador’s people.

The lack of any willingness to do so has been shown by the response from foreign governments to the bold Yasuni-ITT initiative launched by the Correa government in 2007.

The proposal involves Ecuador agreeing to leave 20% of its proven oil reserves (located in the Amazon) in the ground. In return, it asked Western governments and other institutions to provide Ecuador with funds equivalent to 50% of the values of the reserve, about US$3.6 billion, over 13 years.

So far, Ecuador has been offered a paltry $116 million.

Until rich countries are held to account for the crimes they have committed against countries such as Ecuador — something that will require revolutionary struggles breaking out elsewhere — no foreign leftist has a right to denounce the Ecuador government for using wealth from its natural resources to meet peoples’ needs.

Environmental concerns are valid, but so are the very real needs of people to be able to access basic services that many of us take for granted.

And we should never forget who the real culprits of the environmental crisis are.

Rather than aiming their fire on a supposed “new model of domination”, leftists would do better to focus on the real enemies we and the Ecuadorian people face in common. Ecuador’s fate is intertwined with our fight against Western governments and corporations at home.

Population Control: UK Aid Funds Forced Sterilisation of India’s Poor

Russia Today, May 13, 2012

Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money has been spent forcibly sterilising Indian women. Many have died being mistreated, causing outrage from those who suspect Britain simply wants to curb the country’s population for alterior motives. RT’s Priya Sridhar has the details of this controversial programme.

http://youtu.be/Egy4drxs8l8

BLACK FEMINISM, THE CIA AND GLORIA STEINEM

WKOG admin: We found this comment (with a link to the article below) under the article “Twitterers of the World Revolution: The Digital New-New Left” on the Foreign Policy Journal website:

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

 

February 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm

 

I love your analysis of Steinem’s role in convincing American women that they were being “liberated” by doing double duty in a 40 hour a week job and 20+ hours a week taking care of their husband, children and elderly parents. In my view, her intelligence role in decimating the feminist movement was even more destructive. I (like Betty Friedan, who confronted her publicly at a national meeting) hold her personally responsible for the organizational chaos in the National Organization for Women that drove working class women out of the movement and caused the Equal Rights Amendment to fail.

 

Less well known is another operation Steinem ran to plant so-called “black feminists” in grassroots African American groups to break them up (see http://rah.posterous.com/black-feminism-the-cia-and-gloria-steinem-fwd). I ran across some of these nasties in Seattle, while working to set up an African American Museum in the late eighties. I write about it in my recent memoir: THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE (www.stuartbramhall.com). I currently live in exile in New Zealand.

 

BLACK FEMINISM, THE CIA AND GLORIA STEINEM

 

What follows is a fact sheet about Gloria Steinem’s operations against the various social and political movements in America, particularly her role in creating a hateful and virulent strain of Black feminism that attacks Black men while partnering with the white establishment.

Gloria Steinem first came across the radar of Black men in 1978 when Steinem put a book called “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman” on the cover of Ms. Magazine, the magazine which she controlled. The book was “written” by a Black “feminist” and “activist” named Micele Wallace who came out of nowhere. Wallace was in her early twenties at the time, yet she was being touted as the “leader” of Black feminism. In the book, Wallace called abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojouner Truth “ugly” and “stupid” for supporting Black men. She called Black Revolutionaries “chauvinist macho pigs” and advised Black women to “go it alone.” Gloria Steinem said that Wallace’s book would “define the future of Black relationships” and she pushed hard to make sure the book received massive publicity. Gloria Steinem’s work triggered a flood of “Hate Black Men” books and films that continues to this day. Needless to say, some were quite suspicious of Ms. Magazine and Gloria Steinem. Why was Steinem sticking her nose into the affairs of the Black community? So people started doing some research on Steinem. When it came out that Gloria Steinem was probably the ghost writer of the book with Michele Wallace’s name on it, Wallace had a nervous breakdown and went into hiding for two years. However, the damage was already done and the “Hate Black Men” movement was off and running. But the research into Gloria Steinem’s background continued. What follows is the findings of many different researchers.

BOTTOM LINE: The so-called “Black Feminist” movement was created and manipulated by the CIA from the very beginning. The only difference between Black Revolutionaries and Black Feminist on this issue is that the Black Revolutionaries KNOW they were infiltrated and manipulated—But Black Feminist are still unwilling to admit that they were infiltrated and manipulated, largely because they are highly invested in the hateful brand of Black feminism. As a result, the “Hate Black Men” movement has become MORE THAN just a political point a view: It is now a central part of the CULTURE of Black women and this fact has led to the destruction of the Black Revolution and the complete distortion of Black relationships. And the CIA had a direct hand in creating this situation.

The FACTS surrounding Gloria Steinem’s CIA operations follow: →

U.K. Guardian on Britain’s version of the MLPA – Chagos islanders must be allowed home!

“The British government’s plan for a marine protected area is a grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country,” said Ram Seegobin, of the Mauritian party Lalit de Klas, in a letter to Greenpeace seen by the Guardian.

“The conservation groups have fallen into a trap. They are being used by the government to prevent us returning,” said Evenor.

Just as so-called “marine protected areas” (MPAs) are being used by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his collaborators on the California coast to deny the Kashia Pomo Tribe and other tribes their right to gather seaweed and shellfish as part of their religion and culture, the UK government has created a racist MPA in the Chagros Island as part of the legacy of colonialism. Fake “marine protected areas,” created by the Mexican government and corporate environmental businesses like Conservation International (Kern County land baron Stewart Resnick is on the board!) are also used in the Colorado River Delta and Sea of Cortez to deny the Cucapa Tribe and other indigenous communities their right to fish. Fortunately, subcomandante marcos, the Zapatistas and indigenous activists from throughout the U.S. and Mexico stood in defense against this cultural genocide in 2007 as a project of La Otra Campana. That struggle to defend their fishing rights continues. What Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s MLPA (Marine Life “Protection” Act), the Chagros Islands neo-colonial “marine reserve,” and the Sea of Cortez MPAs have all in common is that they do absolutely nothing to stop the real causes of fishery and ecosystem declines – water pollution, habitat destruction, aquaculture, diversions of water from estuaries and corporate industrial fishing – and penalize only the victims of these declines, the indigenous peoples that have been the stewards of marine ecosystems for thousands of years. Please read this article from the U.K. Guardian by Sean Carrey, followed by previous Guardian article about the Chagros Islanders’ protests about their waters being made into a fake MPA without their consent. “The British government’s plan for a marine protected area is a grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country,” said Ram Seegobin, of the Mauritian party Lalit de Klas, in a letter to Greenpeace seen by the Guardian. “The conservation groups have fallen into a trap. They are being used by the government to prevent us returning,” said Evenor.

…

Chagos islanders must be allowed home Hague must use the Mauritian prime minister’s visit to negotiate an end to the shameful eviction of the Chagos islanders Sean Carey guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 May 2010 11.00 BST It was very crafty of David Miliband to instruct the commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory to declare a marine protected area in the Chagos archipelago on the afternoon of Maundy Thursday, 1 April. It wasn’t quite a Jo Moore “it’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury” moment, but it came fairly close. It certainly wrong-footed a significant number of British MPs from all the major parties who had attended a debate on the Chagos islands in Westminster Hall on 10 March and were given the impression that the issue would be discussed in the Commons before any decision was made. The displeasure caused sparked emergency debates in both houses on 6 April, shortly before dissolution. It is also revealing that the former foreign secretary’s announcement was timed to catch out the authorities in Mauritius where, because the National Assembly had been dissolved in preparation for the general election on 5 May, there was no time for a parliamentary debate or statement. Nevertheless, the UK’s unilateral decision caused uproar on the palm-fringed Indian Ocean island, one of Africa’s great economic and political success stories. Predictably, it led to a revival of the threat to take the Mauritian sovereignty claim to the archipelago to the international court of justice in The Hague. The Chagos islands, as successive Mauritian governments have reminded anyone prepared to listen, had been excised in breach of international law from its territory before the country’s independence in 1968 under a deal struck between the US and Harold Wilson’s Labour government at the height of the cold war. But as well as the concern about the sovereignty issue, Mauritian prime minister and leader of the Mauritius Labour party, Navin Ramgoolam, has also made it plain that he expects the UK government to restore the right of return of the Chagos islanders, around 2,000 of whom had been forcibly removed from their homeland and dumped in Mauritius and the Seychelles by the British authorities between 1968 and 1973, to make way for the US military base on Diego Garcia. The new Ramgoolam government, re-elected with an increased majority, has now informed the UK of its willingness to resume talks, which were suspended last year over the FCO’s plan for the marine reserve – designed at least in part to be a lasting environmental legacy for the outgoing British prime minister, Gordon Brown. Back in the UK, in the runup to the general election on 6 May, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats made it clear that they wanted the future of the exiled islanders resolved. In his capacity as shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, stated in a reply to a letter from a long-standing supporter of the Chagos islanders: “I can assure you that if elected … we will work to ensure a fair settlement of this long-standing dispute.” The office of Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, additionally highlighted the financial cost of the protracted legal process which has been running since 1998. An aide told me: “Regardless of the legal arguments, Nick and the Liberal Democrats believe that the government has a moral responsibility to allow these people to at last return home. We have actively supported their cause in the past and we will continue to aid their campaign to see justice done. We have been appalled that the government has wasted time, money and effort defending the indefensible. It is a disgrace that £2m of taxpayers’ money … has been squandered in order to uphold this injustice.” There is a further point. It has been evident for some time that the Obama administration has no objection to the Chagos islanders returning to the outer islands of the archipelago like Peros Banhos and Salomon, which lie around 130 miles from Diego Garcia. Of course, which and how many islanders want to do so, and what infrastructure would need to be put in place to make their return viable, are important questions that will need to be looked at in the near future. The new UK coalition looks likely to succeed in bringing to an end this most shameful episode of recent British colonial history which three successive foreign secretaries – Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and David Miliband – actively entrenched by overturning Robin Cook’s decision in November 2000 to restore the right of return of the Chagos islanders. Pressure is also likely to come from the UK Chagos all-party parliamentary group when it has its first meeting of this parliament on 9 June. Significantly, Glenys Kinnock, former minister of state with responsibility for Africa in the last government, who last month was obliged (though not very convincingly) to defend the UK’s position on the Chagos islands in the House of Lords, has joined the group. An indication that things are moving in the right direction will be given if the new UK government signals that the current case before the European court of human rights is to be withdrawn in favour of a “friendly settlement” as the court has suggested. An early meeting between the UK and Mauritius governments would also be an advantage. As Foreign Office officials are no doubt aware, Ramgoolam will be making a brief visit to London at the end of next week. This obviously provides the UK’s coalition government with a golden opportunity to meet the Mauritius prime minister and thus get substantive negotiations underway. For most of the 700 or so surviving inhabitants of the Chagos islands, many of whom are well advanced in years but who never gave up hope of returning to their paradise homeland, a breakthrough can’t come quickly enough. Alas, for others it is too late. Chagos Islanders attack plan to turn archipelago into protected area UK government proposals a ploy to block displaced Chagossians from returning to their homeland, say campaigners John Vidal, environment editor guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010 19.06 BST The 55 islands and the sparkling seas around them are famed for their clean waters and pristine coral reefs. They are described by naturalists as the “other Galapagos”, “a lost paradise” and a “natural wonder” and are officially recognised as a biodiversity hotspot of global importance. This week the British government, backed by nine of the world’s largest environment and science bodies, including the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Royal Society, the RSPB and Greenpeace, is expected to signal that the 210,000 sq km area around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean will become the world’s largest marine reserve. If it does, all fishing, collection of corals and hunting for turtles and other wildlife will be banned across an area twice the size of the British isles. More than 275,000 people from more than 200 nations have sent messages in support of Britain’s full protection of the Chagos Islands and their surrounding waters, but one group is distinctly uneasy. The original Chagossians, who were deported between 1967 and 1973 to make way for a giant US nuclear air force base on the largest island, Diego Garcia, say they would in effect be barred from ever returning because the marine protection zone would stop them fishing, their main livelihood. “There would be a natural injustice. The fish would have more rights than us,” said Roch Evenor, secretary of the UK Chagos Support Association, who left the island when he was four. The islanders, who number about 4,000 and live in exile in Britain, Mauritius and elsewhere, have battled through the British courts for nearly 20 years for the right to return and appeared to have won an important victory in 2000 when the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, decided in their favour. But following the September 11 attacks, the UK government reversed Cook’s decision and the Chagos case has migrated between courts. Most recently, the House of Lords ruled against them after Britain cited American security concerns. Their last hope is that the European court of human rights will overturn the decision in their favour in the next few months. Today, Chagossian supporters accused the government of duplicity. “The British government’s plan for a marine protected area is a grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country,” said Ram Seegobin, of the Mauritian party Lalit de Klas, in a letter to Greenpeace seen by the Guardian. “The conservation groups have fallen into a trap. They are being used by the government to prevent us returning,” said Evenor. They were backed by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights group Reprieve, who has challenged the UK government on the use of Diego Garcia by the US to render suspected terrorists. “The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug. There is no sense that the British government will let them go back. The government is not even contemplating equal rights for Chagossians and sea slugs.” Supporters of the islanders also suspect that the timing of the announcement of the protected area is highly political. “Clearly, the British government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case in Europe, then there will be another ‘reason’ for denying the banished people their right of return,” said Olivier Bancoult, a Chagossian leader in Mauritius. Today, scientists and conservationists denied that they were being “used” by the government. “The UK government agrees that a marine protection area will not create a barrier for the Chagossians to return. The two issues are separate. If the Chagossians are given a right to return, any conservation measures will be adjusted. The aim is to protect the reserve now so that the resources there would be available for the Chagossians if and when they return. As it is, the seas there are being heavily depleted by French and Taiwanese fleets,” said a spokeswoman for the US-based Pew environment group, which is expected to contribute millions of dollars to establish the reserve.In a letter on its website, Greenpeace said: “[We] acknowledge and support the Chagossians in their struggle, and hope that they are successful. But at the moment, the Chagos Islands are being administered by the UK government, and whatever way you look at it, taking steps to protect the marine life there is a good idea. If and when the Chagossians are repatriated, then the protection of the seas around the archipelago will need to be readdressed, and yes, that may well involve allowing fishing by the islanders.” But David Snoxell, former high commissioner to Mauritius, said the marine reserve would set up a significant barrier to the Chagossians’ return. “The environment groups were beguiled [into giving their support]. If the government were to designate a protection area they would be erecting a psychological, legal and economic barrier against the Chagossians, and send a strong message that they would not be welcome in their homeland. It would be highly prejudicial.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/chagos-island-marine-reserve-plans

Mauritian socialists’ open letter to Greenpeace — `Don’t help cover up colonialism’s crimes on Diego Garcia’