Progressive Org's continued

Progressive Organizations: Run by Big $ (Continued Pg. 3)

The Progressive Magazine

"The Progressive is a monthly magazine of investigative reporting, political commentary, cultural coverage, activism, interviews, poetry, and humor. It steadfastly stands against militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, and the disenfranchisement of the citizenry. It champions peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy. Its bedrock values are nonviolence and freedom of speech."

Who publishes The Progressive? As indicated at the bottom of this web page, "The Progressive Media Project is an affiliate of The Progressive, Inc., the nonprofit educational institution that also publishes The Progressive magazine." Who funds the Progressive Media Project? Curiously, The Progressive Media Project proudly displays a list of its funders on its website; here it is:

THE PROGRESSIVE MEDIA PROJECT FUNDERS
Arcus Foundation www.arcusfoundation.org
Argosy Foundation

Boehm Foundation Carnegie Corporation www.carnegie.org
Annie E. Casey Foundation www.aecf.org
Chicago Tribune Foundation about.chicagotribune.com
Community Shares of Wisconsin www.communityshares.com
EGrants.org

Ford Foundation www.fordfound.org
Gill Foundation www.gillfoundation.org
GiveForChange.com giveforchange.com
Lifebridge Foundation www.lifebridge.org
John S. & James L. Knight Foundation www.knightfdn.org
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation www.macfound.org
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation www.mott.org
Ms. Foundation www.ms.foundation.org
Purple Moon Foundation

RealNetworks Foundation www.realfoundation.org
Rockefeller Foundation www.rockfound.org
Tides Foundation www.tidesfoundation.org
Town Creek Foundation www.towncreekfdn.org
Wisconsin Community Fund www.wisconsincommunityfund.org
Working Assets www.workingassets.com

The Progressive Media Project is able to continue bringing independent voices to the op-ed pages of our nation’s newspapers thanks to the past and present support of these foundations, and also thanks to the support of our many individual donors.

Each year, the Progressive Media Project produces an annual report detailing the project’s accomplishments and activities.
Download our 2006 Annual Report here. Please contact us if you would like to request a copy by mail.

Download our 2005 Annual Report here. Please contact us if you would like to request a copy by mail.

Not surprisingly, the list of funders includes the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and Tides (which is discussed at length above and receives money from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.) The first-listed foundation in the above list is Arcos. The board president and founder of Arcos is Jon Stryker who happens to be personally worth $1.94 Billion. Another funder of The Progressive is the well known John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation whose board of directors includes Joi Ito who, according to his bio, "is a member on the boards of the Sony Corporation, The New York Times Company, The Knight Foundation and The Mozilla Foundation." The Tides Foundation gave The Progressive $10,000 in 2013.

The Progressive never writes about how the government's official 9/11 story doesn't hold water. Instead it ridicules (as in this article) those who point out how the official 9/11 story is, literally, not credible. Could this be related to the fact that The Boehm Foundation Carnegie Corporation is on the list of the magazine's donors? This foundation's website is given (on The Progressive website) as carnegie.org, which goes to the Carnegie Corporation of New York with its Board of Trustees given here. The chairman of the board is Thomas H. Kean, whose bio, courtesy of the Carnegie Corp, tells us that:

"On December 16, 2002, Thomas H. Kean was named by President George W. Bush to head the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon theUnited States. The Commission’s work culminated on July 22, 2004, with the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, which quickly became a national bestseller."

Also not surprisingly, The Progressive adopts "white privilege" rhetoric (here and here and here for example), which promotes the Big Lie that ordinary whites benefit from racial discrimination against non-whites (as discussed in "Why and How Big Money Promotes 'White Privilege' Rhetoric.") Might this have anything to do with the fact that, as I document here, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations--both on the list of The Progressive's funders--promote "white privilege" rhetoric?

The Progressive does not ever hint that racial discrimination against non-whites is harmful not only to the obvious non-white victims but also to ordinary whites. The Progressive does not discuss how the ruling class uses racial discrimination to undermine solidarity between ordinary people of all races, to create mistrust and resentment between those targeted by racial discrimination and those who are not, in order to divide and rule ALL races of ordinary people. The Progressive does not explain that An Injury to One is an Injury to ALL. Why not? Because these true ideas are not the ones that its Big Money funders want in the minds of people who call themselves progressives. The Progressive's funders want people to believe that racial discrimination is bad for non-whites and good for whites, so that the rulers' divide-and-rule strategy will remain effective. Needless to add, it is not surprising that The Progressive never tells its readers that most Americans want to remove the rich from power to have real not fake democracy with no rich and no poor.

Democracy Now!

Here's what Democracy Now! says of itself:

Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR, community, and college radio stations; on public access, PBS, satellite television (DISH network: Free Speech TV ch. 9415 and Link TV ch. 9410; DIRECTV: Free Speech TV ch. 348 and Link TV ch. 375); and on the internet. DN!’s podcast is one of the most popular on the web.

Democracy Now!’s War and Peace Report provides our audience with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S.corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts. In addition, Democracy Now! hosts real debates–debates between people who substantially disagree, such as between the White House or the Pentagon spokespeople on the one hand, and grassroots activists on the other.

Despite having an anti-establishment flavor, Democracy Now! carefully avoids expressing the kind of ideas that an egalitarian revolutionary movement expresses. Thus one never hears the following from Amy Goodman and her guests on Democracy Now!:

Most Americans know we are living under a dictatorship of the rich.
Most Americans want to remove the rich from power to have real not fake democracy with no rich and no poor.
The government's official 9/11 story is literally not credible.
Racial discrimination harms not only its obvious targeted non-white victims but also ordinary whites, because its purpose is to undermine solidarity between people of ALL races by creating mistrust and resentment between those racially discriminated against and those not. Without this solidarity ALL ordinary people are more easily dominated and oppressed by Big Money. This is why An Injury to One is an Injury to All. It is NOT a "white privilege" to be dominated and oppressed this way. Big Money promotes "white privilege" rhetoric to prevent people from knowing that An Injury to One is an Injury to All and to make its divide-and-rule strategy of racial discrimination more effective.
The problem with Israel's government is not simply that it occupies land in Palestine that is not part of Israel (the Occupation). The problem is that Israel's government refuses to allow the millions of Palestinian refugees--people (or the children born to such people in refugee camps) whom Israel's Zionist leaders violently drove out of their homes and villages inside the 78% of Palestine that is now called Israel--to return to their homes and villages inside Israel, simply because they are not Jewish. The problem is that Israel, in order to implement its wrongful aim to make most of Palestine a Jewish state, insists on keeping the population of the part of Palestine called Israel at least 80% Jewish and relies on ethnic cleansing to do this. Furthermore, Israel's ethnic cleansing is not only an attack on Palestinians; it is ALSO an attack on ordinary Jews.

If Democracy Now! expressed these kinds of revolutionary egalitarian ideas instead of studiously avoiding doing so, what would happen to its funding? Let's see who's funding Democracy Now!

Tides gave Democracy Now! $305,000 in 2013.

RSF Social Finance funded the Pacifica Foundation in 2009. The Pacifica Foundation launched Democracy Now! in 1996. The board of trustees of RSF includes Siegfried Finser whose bio states that:

"After teaching in the Rudolf Steiner School in New York, he managed a division of Xerox Corp. Mr. Finser then served as Director of Human Resource Development at ITT, with worldwide responsibility for the development and placement of more than 10,000 of its executives. Since then he has consulted with major corporations and advised clients for RSF." [my emphasis--J.S.]

Democracy Now!'s parent organization--Pacifica Foundation, receives funding from the United States Government, specifically the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The details are in this pdf file produced by the NEA with their search application at https://apps.nea.gov/grantsearch/).

If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then it is not hard to see why Democracy Now!'s tune is never the need for or the possibility of egalitarian revolution to remove the rich from power. Why would the rich pay for such a tune?

Mother Jones Magazine

One source of funds ($40,000 in 2013) for Mother Jones is the Wallace Global Fund. The Wallace Global Fund is intimately connected to the Tides Center (which, as discussed above, gets it money from Big Money sources such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations) as indicated by Wallace Global Fund website pages here and here and here. The Wallace Global Fund has also given money to the Foundation for National Progress ($320,000 from 2007 to 2013), which is (according to Mother Jones) an "umbrella organization that exists to publish and support Mother Jones."

The Tides Foundation also directly gave the Foundation for National Progress (hence Mother Jones) $30,000 in 2013.

Mother Jones received at least $200,000 from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (which seems not to exist anymore, but whose president was Bill Moyers who has now retired.) According to a Wikipedia article:

"The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (formerly The Florence and John J. Schumann Jr. Foundation) was established in 1961, by Florence Ford and John J.Schumann Jr. ...

John J.Schumann Jr was the former president of General Motors Acceptance Corporation. Florence Ford brought to the foundation wealth that she had inherited from her father, who was one of the founders of IBM.

Current officers and trustees of the foundation include the founders' sons Robert F. Schumann, chairman and W. Ford Schumann, vice president as well as Bill Moyers, president."

It is extremely significant that Bill Moyers, as president of the Schumann Center, gave $200,000 to Mother Jones. Why? Because Bill Moyers has been an over-the-top supporter of the War on Terror who, in April of 2004, wrote "Winning the War on Terror," about which the late Dave Stratman (my co-editor of NewDemocracyWorld.org) wrote the following:

Moyers' "Winning the War on Terror" (http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/47643-bill-moyers--winning-the-war-on-terror) is a lament over President Bush's leadership. Moyers accepts Bush's narrative of the war on terror without question. He doesn't point out that Bush's war on terror has done nothing but multiply terrorists, or that Bush could easily have isolated terrorists after 9/11 by addressing the authentic grievances of Arabs, or that Bush in fact needs terrorists to justify Administration policies. On the contrary, Moyers has no doubts about who the real enemy is: "Islamic fanatics have declared war and seem willing to wage it to the death. If they prevail, our children will grow up in a world where fear governs the imagination and determines the rules of life." Apparently to Moyers' mind we are always at Orange Alert or worse; it's almost as if it is Americans -- rather than, say, Iraqis or Palestinians -- who live under constant threat of being bombed or strafed or tortured or starved; the brutal realities of life for many Muslims are transformed somehow into omnipresent dangers for Americans. And so, writes Moyers, "Like most Americans, I want to do my part in the war." He makes clear that this war is not just another issue du jour. In language evoking the grand old days of World War II, Moyers agrees with Bush that the war on terror "is an inescapable calling of our generation."

For Mother Jones to be viewed by a person such as Bill Moyers as a worthy recipient of (at least) $200,000 it has to be a magazine that is trusted to keep its criticism of U.S. foreign policy within the limits of "respectable" discourse, as does Bill Moyers himself. This means, among other things, never even hinting that the War on Terror is really an Orwellian War of social control that should be thoroughly opposed, and certainly not viewed--as does Bill Moyers--as "an inescapable calling of our generation." While increasing numbers of people, both experts and non-experts, are coming to see that the government's official story of 9/11 is not credible (and therefore 9/11 is very likely an inside job), Mother Jones will never publish anything that entertains these thoughts. Instead they publish articles like this one. Otherwise their benefactors, like Bill Moyers, would not approve.

There seems to be a friendly relationship between Mother Jones and the Rockefeller family. In this Wikipedia article about the Rockefeller Brothers Fund one learns that the Pocantico Conference Center

"was created when the [Rockefeller Brothers] Fund [RBF] leased the area from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1991.

Since its opening in 1994, the Center has hosted 482 meetings with 13,223 attendees, on subjects directly related to the RBF's program objectives, including dialogues held by outside organizations.

Some recent (2005) Conference subjects have included:

...

Independent Media and the Future of Democracy - In the wake of the November 2004 election, three leading independent magazines - Mother Jones, The Nation, and The American Prospect - convened the leadership of independent media organizations from the worlds of print, radio, television and the internet to assess the political, technological, and demographic changes to come in the next decade. Sponsored by the RBF."

Mother Jones is evidently connected to Big Money in numerous ways, which explains why it engages in muckraking but does not ever inform its readers that most Americans know that we live in a dictatorship of the rich and most Americans would love an egalitarian revolution to remove the rich from power and have real not fake democracy with no rich and no poor. This is a taboo subject. The people who fund Mother Jones and who invite its key people to meet with them at the Rockefeller-owned Pocantico Conference Center would not keep funding it if the magazine "went rogue" and started advocating revolution. So it never does.

Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution: Advancing Freedom Through Nonviolent Action

Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Instiution works for the ruling class, as discussed in some detail by Michael Barker in his article, "Sharp Reflection Warranted: Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism." The Big Money ruling class uses violence to suppress anybody who challenges its wealth, power and privilege. As Barker demonstrates, Big Money also uses nonviolent tactics when it suits its needs. At the same time Big Money also wants ordinary people to believe that violence in self-defense is immoral, unwise and unnecessary. Big Money uses the thinking of Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution for both purposes: to foment "regime change" trouble for regimes it wants to undermine, (as Barker discusses) and to weaken foes of Big Money by preaching to them the wrongness of ever using violence in self-defense (as I discuss here).

MassEquality

MassEquality describes itself this way:

"MassEquality is the leading statewide grassroots advocacy organization working to ensure that everyone across Massachusetts can thrive from cradle to grave without discrimination and oppression based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

MassEquality is one of the main organizations in Massachusetts that defends and fights for the legalization of same-sex marriage. It also oppossed letting people vote on the question and for this purpose coined the phrase, "It's wrong to vote on rights." (But, one might well ask, shouldn't the voters be allowed to DETERMINE if same-sex marriage is a right? We have a marriage law that prohibits sibling marriage. Is that a denial of a right to siblings? Is it wrong to let the voters decide if sibling marriage should be legal or not? If that's not wrong, then why is it wrong to let voters decide if same-sex marriage should be legal or not. Isn't MassEquality's position about as anti-democratic as one could imagine?)

MassEquality's theme is that people who oppose same-sex marriage do so because they hate or fear homosexuals ("homophobia") and wish to deny equal rights to them. By this absurd logic, people who oppose sibling marriage do so because they hate or fear siblings ("siblingphobia"?) and wish to deny equal rights to them. MassEquality's role is to help the ruling class orchestrate a phony debate on same-sex marriage; it's phony because the actual reason that many people oppose same-sex marriage is essentially the same reason many people oppose sibling marriage--because children created by such couples are at risk of harm.

In the case of siblings the harm is genetic. In the case of same-sex couples (who can only create a child by using donated sperm or a donated egg from a third party, typically anonymous, donor) the harm is psychological, due to the child not knowing and being known by its biological father (or mother as the case may be.) A genuine debate about same-sex marriage would be about whether this risk of psychological harm is great enough to make same-sex marriage a bad idea. Good and decent people may disagree about this question, because neither position stems from bigotry or a desire to deny anybody equal rights. The ruling class censors THIS debate--the proper and appropriate detae, and orchestrates instead the phony debate in which the only permitted views are 1) "equality means everybody has a right to marry whomever they wish" or 2) "God says same-sex marriage is a sin." The mass media makes sure advocates of same-sex marriage perceive the other side as so bigoted and irrational that they don't even deserve to be allowed to vote on the question. (Read more about the same-sex marriage phony debate here.)

So, who funds MassEquality? Answer: Big Money. Specifically the Tides Foundation (a conduit for money from the Ford and Rockefeller and Heinz foundations and similiar Big Money sources, as detailed above) fund it. In 2008 Tides gave the MassEquality Education Fund $50,000, in 2010 it gave it $43,000, in 2013 it gave it $40,000 and in 2014 it gave it $60,000. In 2014 the MassEquality Education Fund received $40,000 from the Evelyn & Walter Hass, Jr. Fund. This fund was established by Walter A. Hass, Jr., who was a president and CEO (1958–1976) and chairman (1970–1981) of Levi Strauss & Co, succeeding his father Walter A. Haas (1889–1979): Big Money!

Ubuntu Planet

The introduction to Ubuntu Planet's website reads:

THIS IS WHERE WE MANIFEST THE LIVING UBUNTU PHILOSOPHY
Uniting people across borders and cultural divides imposed on humanity - laying the foundations for communities of abundance and prosperity on our beautiful planet of infinite abundance. Join the rapidly growing global UBUNTU family today - meet like-minded activators like you and become a seed of consciousness in your area.

We are the creators of our own reality - so let us use our collective consciousness to co-create the utopian world we all want to live in.
In love, unity and resonance.

Ubuntu Planet is an example of organizations that have a very nice (essentially egalitarian) vision of how society ought to be. These organizations aim to make society be better by establishing small collectives (or "communes" or little communities) based on their utopian principles. Ubuntu Planet is asking for donations to enable them to buy land in one town to set up such a community. The Ubuntu Planet website says that we should make society be very different, but it never talks about removing the rich from power and how to do that.

Big Money wants people to think that we can make an egalitarian society on a large scale without removing the rich from power. This is why Big Money foundations fund cooperative social experiments such as Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Education Fund received $5,000 in 2014 from the Tides Foundation, which, as detailed above, gets its money from Big Money sources such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Heinz foundations and George Soros. This money apparently comes with a string attached: the recipient is not supposed to talk about seriously aiming to remove the rich from power. Big Money funds these utopian organizations for the same reason it keeps telling us to vote. The very rich know that as long as people believe that something (voting or creating some kind of "alternative" economic enterprise) other than removing the rich from power can enable us to make our society genuinely equal and democratic, then the rich have nothing to fear.

How We CAN Remove the Rich from Power

Read about practical steps to start building an egalitarian revolutionary movement to actually remove the rich from power here: https://www.pdrboston.org/how-we-can-remove-the-rich-from-power .

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