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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz At 60, the United Nations is still taking fireThe Hudson Institute's new 'EYE On The UN' website aims to make sure the UN is transparent, accountable and doing what the US wants"If member countries want the United Nations to be respected and effective, they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect," President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly during a September 15 speech at organization's New York City headquarters. "When this great institution's member states choose notorious abusers of human rights to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, they discredit a noble effort and undermine the credibility of the whole organization," Bush said. Like many projects that have languished in the backrooms of some of the nation's right wing think tanks -- immigration, or the fight against "judicial activism," which dates back to the John Birch Society's beef with Earl Warren's Supreme Court -- the United States-out-of-the-United Nations and the United Nations-out-of-the United States crowd is growing, and getting ready for its close up. The Bush Administration's recess appointment of longtime UN-basher John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the unrelenting focus on the Iraqi Oil-for-Food program by Fox News, and now, a new project from the conservative Hudson Institute aimed at keeping a watchful "EYE on the UN," has escalated the situation from merely an ongoing attack to a battle-plan for obliteration. Author and New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub recently suggested, in a piece in the magazine dated September 11, that the U.N. be abandoned and a new "democracy-friendly" institution be created. The new organization might look "more like NATO, which consists only of members with a (more or less) shared understanding of the world order and thus a shared willingness to confront threats to this order." The new entity would define and battle terrorism, demand that countries protect the rights of its citizens, and combat extreme poverty. Traub's bottom line: "No such organization, no matter how constituted, could prevent the United States from pursuing what it deemed a matter of vital national interest, as the U.S. did in the case of Iraq." Whether Traub's vision, or a similar one, comes to fruition remains to be seen. Nevertheless, since Team Bush took office in January 2001, it has displayed a general antipathy, if not downright disgust, for the U.N.: The administration threatened that the international body would descend into irrelevancy if, among other things, it did not offer its unqualified support for President Bush's War on Iraq. The administration insisted that UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were taking too much time to do their work and risked being snookered by Saddam Hussein. Moreover, apparently without any regrets, Team Bush allowed Secretary of State Colin Powell to debauch the Security Council with a pre-invasion of Iraq presentation that consisted of a litany of misinformation and disinformation. Now, along comes the Hudson Institute with its "EYE on the UN" (website) project to promote the Bush Administration's grousing about the U.N. Starting from the premise that the UN "has squandered the commitment and passion of its original benefactors," "EYE on the UN" is dedicated to "making the U.N.'s record transparent, offering a unique analysis of U.N. output and bringing together a wide range of articles and documents detailing U.N. failures to live up to its Charter." The site is produced and edited by Anne Bayefsky, a Senior Fellow with the Institute and a Visiting Professor at Touro College Law Center, who has been "following the UN for more than 20 years." Other participants include assistant editors Gillian Collins, the Project Coordinator and Chief Researcher of the Human Rights Treaty Study at York University, Toronto, Canada, and Rebecca Tobin, a researcher at the Hudson Institute specializing in human rights and the United Nations "EYE on the UN" offers a series of articles on a broad cross-section of issues including: Anti-Semitism;Darfur and Sudan;Discrimination against Israel;Genocide;Human Rights;International Court of Justice;Management Issues;Oil for Food Scandal;Sexual Harassment;Suicide Bombing;Syrian Occupation of Lebanon;Terrorism;Criticism of the US;UN Expansion;UN Peacekeepers;UN Reform;UN RWA;Using the UN as terrorist cover. The web site touts an impressive stable of prominent conservative writers and longtime UN-bashers, including:
"EYE on the UN" is a project of the Indiana-based Hudson Institute, which was founded in 1961 by the late Herman Kahn, and his colleagues Max Singer and Oscar Ruebhausen from the RAND Corporation. According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, until his death in 1963, the Hudson Institute basically focused on Kahn's interests; domestic and military uses of nuclear power, the future of the US workplace, and the science of "futurology." While the Institute hasn't cleared the vaults of right wing foundation money, it received a respectable $15 million between 1987 through 2003. According to Media Transparency, a website tracking the money behind the conservative movement, the Institute received some 237 grants from such conservative foundation heavyweights as The Carthage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. In 2003, the Olin Foundation gave $10,000 to support the work of Robert Bork and $50,000 for a research fellowship for neoconservative Norman Podhoretz. Over the years, the Bradley Foundation has ponied up well over $1.5 million, promoting the Institute's Welfare Policy Center and its Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal. On Wednesday September 7, the much-awaited report of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Iraq oil-for-food-program, headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, did not find UN Secretary General Kofi Annan guilty of wrongdoing, but it did report that his "cumulative management performance" fell short of the standard the United Nations "should strive to maintain." Two days later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support for Annan, as long as he continued to pursue a "reform" (US) agenda at the UN. "We are going to continue to press management and secretariat reforms. They have to be concrete reforms, not just oratory language about how important it is to reform," Rice said. "In the light of the oil-for-food problem, I think it's even more urgent that those get done." Rice's statement is quite ironic given the several hundred billion dollars spent rather capriciously on the war on Iraq. Rice added that since the United States "is the largest single donor to the United Nations ... we owe the American taxpayers an accounting for the fact that their tax dollars are being used well." In a speech to the World Jewish Congress, new US Ambassador John Bolton called for a "cultural revolution" in the way the United Nations does business: "This is the kind of development that I think shocks our conscience in America, to see the humanitarian impulse so cynically manipulated," Bolton said in a speech to the World Jewish Congress. This year, the U.N. is celebrating its 60th anniversary. On September 17 Condoleezza Rice said in her first participation in the General Assembly "the time to reform the United Nations is now. And we must seize this opportunity together." "The United States believes in the United Nations," Rice added. "And we have ambitious hopes for its future." "When President George W. Bush greeted Secretary General Kofi Annan last week," the New York Times recently reported, "he gestured toward" U.S. ambassador John Bolton "and asked: 'Has the place blown up since he's been here?'" According to the newspaper, "The internal United Nations television sound boom that picked up the jest did not record any response from the secretary general, who simply smiled." On Sunday, September 18, Anne Bayefsky, the producer of the Hudson Institute's "EYE on the U.N.," blasted U.S. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for "delud[ing] the world about the consequences of the [recently concluded World] Summit and the future of the United Nations... further damage[ing] ... his credibility..." Bayefsky concluded, "The Summit was closer to a nail in the coffin of UN-led multilateralism than to its resurrection." With Bolton in place and the Hudson Institute's "EYE on the UN" tracking the organization's every move, the U.N. is in for a bumpy ride. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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