Paranoia Strikes Deep
I ran across this chart, and back-tracked it to a web site that closed a year or two ago.
You can see a more legible version at this link. Here is a link to current work by Bob Feldman, who I think put the chart together. One of Bob’s interests is unraveling “university complicity with the war machine.” I have just a few minutes to reflect on this so I don’t have time to fact-check. Rather than nit-pick, let me assume that the chart is essentially true, factual in most details, and that I’ve pointed to the source so an interested reader can unravel further the facts and the logic behind it.
I don’t see “truthout” referenced, but a number of the news outlets on Feldman’s chart are truthout sources. truthout is one place I find clear alternative perspectives to the mainstream reporting (and lack of reporting) on the war and the Bush administration. Another is “common dreams.” Common Dreams is not listed on the chart, but again, a lot of their information is sourced from periodicals that do appear there. Of course none of the mainstream voices on the net from left of center in two party America show up there either. People like Moulitzos and Huffington are conspicuous by their absence.
The gray boxes across the top of the chart are worth visiting for the story they tell. The chart depicts an information control hierarchy with most of the public and private bogeymen at the top implicitly controlling the action. I don’t see the Club of Rome or the Gnomes of Zurich actually listed, but they probably have a place off the chart.
My resistance to the chart is simple. I accept that the relationships below the gray level exist, and I accept that each of the organizations in the gray level has the informal connections depicted. (I was surprised to see Soros associated with the Carlyle group, but billionaires do have intertwining influences, no matter what their personal perspectives). My resistance to the chart relates to the use of the term “gatekeepers.” Mother Jones and Ms. magazine are hardly gatekeepers. I would classify each as a waste of bandwidth. Closer to home, The Progressive and Nation are somehow tainted on this chart by a funding relationships with the foundations aid to be guided by the CIA, but indeed without those funds their work would be even less comprehensive, less wide reaching. Is anybody surprised that politics makes strange bedfellows?
While it’s easy for me to see how Mother Jones and Ms. serve the broader cause of American hegemony, I don’t feel the same way about The Progressive, Nation, and Pacifica. I’m glad they find money from Ford, the MacArthur Foundation and so forth. I have to trust that their staff and their boards will keep a bright line between their work and any “negative influence” that the foundation funds might bring.
