The words “Human Rights” always catch my attention, since along with words like “diversity” and “advocate” they signal the Left at work within the Media. The Media Class specializes in the purloining of words for propaganda purposes and surely “gay” is the classic example. One is reminded of the real estate world in which the words used have a kind of irony about them. For example, in a new development the streets may have names like “Orchard Close”, “The Meadows” and “Foxhill” and you know that orchards, meadows and foxes have been eliminated in the process of building.
“Human Rights” is a Media Class favorite. For the unsuspecting reader it sounds so good, for who could be against human rights? Like “Civil Rights” it conjures up images of Martin Luther King and the oppression of Black Americans during and after slavery.
“Rights” is a dangerously ambivalent word however, since one person’s Rights may impinge on another’s Rights and who is the arbiter of Rights? This though is not the place to debate Tom Paine, something that has been done by others better qualified than me to do so.
In any case, the Media Class and its Leftists know what they mean by “Human Rights” and it doesn’t include the right to keep the money we earn in our own pockets or the right to espouse conservative, Christian or nationalist beliefs on a college campus, or even be on a campus with such beliefs! Neither does “Human Rights” include British National Party (BNP) members enjoying the right to be policemen in the UK or members of a Trade Union, nor doctors and nurses who oppose abortion being offered employment in public health. Visitors to this website will get the point.
So when I saw the headline “Atlantic Philanthropies Names Human-Rights Advocate as CEO” in the Wall Street Journal of Thursday December 7th, my suspicions were aroused and justly so. The reporter of the piece was Sally Beatty, who I think is in the mainstream of the Journal’s journalists, which means that she reports from a Leftist perspective. Her two-column piece should be priority reading for all those that inhabit the mainstream of life but who the Media Class regards as the political “Right”.
Copyright prevents me from setting out the whole article, which is a pity, since it is so informative, so I will pick out the key paragraphs and sentences and then comment. Here are the first two paragraphs: “The Atlantic Philanthropies named Gara LaMarche, a veteran human-rights advocate, its new chief executive officer. He faces one of the more unusual challenges in philanthropy: The foundation plans to spend its entire $4 billion endowment within 10 years and go out of business. Mr. LaMarche, 52 years old, is director of U.S. programs for investor George Soros’s Open Society Institute, where he built and oversaw a grant program that gave away $55 million to $125 million a year. He succeeds departing CEO John R. Healy, 60, who has led Atlantic Philanthropies since 2001. The $4 billion foundation, launched in 1982 by Charles F. ‘Chuck’ Feeney ….”
“Atlantic is different from many U.S. foundations in its focus on human rights, and on controversial causes such as restoring voting rights for convicted criminals and pushing to end the death penalty. Though its CEO is based in New York, it is formally licensed in Bermuda, which allows it to play more of an advocacy role – such as funding organizations that last year staged demonstrations promoting changes in immigration law. Under federal tax law, U.S. foundations are restricted from most forms of legislative lobbying.”
Ms. Beatty reports in her final two paragraphs that LaMarche hopes that increasing interest in the Atlantic’s strategy will help attract more funding and that in 2005 Atlantic spent some $289 million on about 200 grants. As the endowment has had a good year so far La Marche hopes to make grants exceeding $450 million.
These financial sums, available for Leftist causes, are breathtaking and it is sobering to compare them to the income of a struggling party like the BNP which survives on plate collections at small working class meetings.
Let us note, in passing, the approving tone of Ms. Beatty’s WSJ report and the way it glosses over such things as the off-shore arrangement that enables Atlantic to evade U.S. legislation and that this is not philanthropy (active benevolence towards one’s fellow men) so much as Leftist political campaigning in disguise.
We are told nothing informative about Mr. LaMarche (except his age) or about his predecessor. Surely any journalist would want to probe the background of a man who has a plum job working for the shadowy Soros and having control over hundreds of millions of dollars each year, all of it dedicated to changing U.S. society in radical, secretive and unpopular ways. And shouldn’t we all know about this man’s political history, his qualifications, his personal circumstances and how much he earns in his Soros job and how much he will earn in his new job? Are these two massive funds going to have identical purposes?
The big money is all on the Left these days. It is a tribute to the Media Class and the likes of Ms. Beatty that we still all have the false impression that the Left represents and is made up of the working poor, whilst the ordinary mainstream people (who the Media categorizes as the “Right”) are the rich allies of Big Business.
I have no doubt that there are countless other “foundations” covering the same Leftist agenda as Soros and Atlantic. Rockefeller and Ford come to mind. All of them must be providing large numbers of well-paid jobs for Leftists, who are busy directing vast sums of money to other Leftists and their organizations and working to thwart the will of the people on things like borders, capital punishment, same-sex marriage and crime and punishment in general. How much of this money finds its way to the ACLU so that that communist organization can continually frustrate the will of the people in courts? No doubt too, the people in these rich foundations are strategically sited in New York and Washington DC and sipping wine with politicians of all hues night after night in social settings. No wonder those “conservatives” who get to Washington DC soon get seduced by being “inside the beltway”. As if this were not enough, we have the showbiz crowd with all their money and glamour circulating the same social network and peddling the same radical and unpopular agenda. One has to wonder how the poor old conservatives (and “poor” is surely the appropriate word) ever win on any issue!
I suppose we must thank Ms. Beatty for digging up this story, for otherwise it might have easily slipped under the radar. Anything that shines a light on Mr. Soros and his crowd, no matter how small or flattering the beam, is to be welcomed.