A follow-up on Ray's posting Johns Hopkins AICGS to Honor Bertelsmann Chief for "Global Leadership".
John Rosenthal at Transatlantic Intelligencer has compiled an interesting array of background information on "Bertelsmann's View of America". Quote:
I would add to David's (Note from David: Ray wrote the piece) observations that Bertelsmann is not only a - indeed the - major player in the German and, more generally, European media landscape, but also a major player in the US media: notably, via its ownership of Random House, America's largest book publisher. It was Random House imprint Alfred A. Knopf - and hence Bertelsmann - that in 2001 paid Bill Clinton the astronomical advance of $10 million for the literary (and presumably commercial) dud that would be his "My Life" memoirs. It was also - coincidentally or not - Bertelsmann, via Knopf, that last year in the middle of the American election season, published Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint, a novelistic dialogue about killing President Bush.
Read John's posting in full.
Steve did some additional research on our posting and came up with some surprising results:
Your post alerting me to the Johns Hopkins award to the Bertelsmann
executive inspired me to hunt down some of the personalities and groups
that seem to keep popping up in European and UN anti-American
campaigns.
Did you know that a Swiss-based Anti-gun "research group" was one
financier, along with Johns Hopkins University, of the Lancet Study -
whose bogus body count of 100,000 is now used universally by anti-Bush
rhetoricians to "prove" Bush is guilty of war crimes in Operation Iraqi
Freedom?
The Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) joined the United
Nations Development Program in underwriting this Small Arms Survey
Research Group, and thus indirectly, the Lancet Study. The UN
contribution can't be verified because the link is disabled, but a look
into the GIAN's contributor list reveals a pot pouri of Swiss Canton Ministries
and UN offices engaged in the cooperative production of anti-American,
anti-capitalist "research."
From the GIAN's introductory blurb: "Various international
organizations, notably the United Nations Office in Geneva and the
International Committee of the Red Cross, have also participated
significantly in the network's establishment. The GIAN benefits from
the collaborative and financial support of the Swiss Confederation
(Federal Department of Home Affairs) and the Republic and Canton of
Geneva (Ministry of Education)."
The GIAN's participating members include directors of
the International Institute of Labour Studies, International Committee
of the Red Cross, and the Geneva Humanitarian Forum. Interestingly,
and probably significant, the GIAN also gets support from the Geneva
Canton Ministry of Education, which was headed at the time of the
Lancet study by current Swiss Foreign Ministry head, Micheline
Calmy-Rey.
I'm smelling the aroma of Marc Rich in here somewhere, too. He's
hidden somewhere under a rug or a lamp-shade, but I'll bet the $100M
that he owes NY State is repaying Clinton's presidential pardon by
financing a gaggle of progressive Swiss "research groups" and their
volumes of transnational, socialist pabulum.
With contributors like John and Steve - is this a great blog or what?
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