Institute for Policy Studies
"Progressive" party line, funded by Ford
On Oct. 18, 2005, a Eugene, Oregon lecture by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) was marketed as "solutions to the problems of empire." However, her strongest suggestions were to attend occasional peace rallies and to write our congressional representatives (most attendees were familiar with pressuring our Senators).
She told us that there were no "weapons of mass destruction" found in Iraq and that Iraq was not responsible for Sept. 11, as if the audience had never heard this before.
Unfortunately, there was no interest in discussing the reasons for the war on Iraq, or using the gathering as an opportunity for dialogue and strategy. It was a "limited hang-out" (exposing a moderate-sized crime to avoid the deeper issues).
During question time, she was asked about the role of peak oil in the Iraq War (she had no response), how 9/11 was allowed to happen to create the war pretext (even less interest), and about vote fraud (she told the audience that Bush won the "popular vote" in 2004, even though there's lots of evidence that is not true).
This form of "activist malpractice" that avoids the deeper issues is caused by denial and funding from philanthropic foundations invested in oil. IPS's major donors include the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and billionaire currency speculator George Soros. Do these elite interests want left-wing groups to succeed in their goals of social transformation, or to control them to ensure that they don't succeed?
Bennis is a major player in United for Peace and Justice, a national umbrella for peace efforts. UFPJ's board includes the "Communist Party USA" (whatever that is), yet UFPJ does not discuss Peak Oil and has officially refused to discuss evidence for 9/11 complicity. It's worth noting that a couple obnoxious people promoting hoaxes about 9/11 complicity attended a UFPJ national meeting that considered a resolution to include this in their analysis - but that meeting was several years after 9/11. UFPJ, like other foundation funded liberal groups, made sure to avoid the issues of 9/11 foreknowledge when this information might have strengthened their efforts to prevent the attack on Iraq. Perhaps they will expand their analysis to examine Peak Oil after gasoline rationing begins.
From the Ford Foundation website:
Organization: Institute for Policy Studies
Purpose: Core support for the Foreign Policy in Focus project to build constituencies for multilateralism in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy
Location: WASHINGTON, DC
Program: Peace and Social Justice
Unit: Governance and Civil Society
Subject: Governance
Amount: $ 300, 000
Year: 2005
from her official biography on the IPS website:
Ms. Bennis is a senior analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington,DC, and a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. While working as a journalist at the United Nations during the run-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, she began working on U.S. domination of the UN, and stayed involved in work on Iraq sanctions and disarmament, and later U.S. war and occupation in Iraq.
In 1999 Phyllis Bennis acompanied a group of congressional aides to Iraq to examine the impact of U.S.-led economic sanctions on humanitarian conditions there, and later joined a speaking tour with former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, who resigned his position as humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq to protest the impact of sanctions. In 2001 she helped found and currently co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, and she works closely with the anti-war coalition, United for Peace and Justice.
Bennis appears frequently as a commentator/analyst on U.S. and international television and radio, including CNN, National Public Radio, CBC and more. Bennis has written about UN and Middle East issues for almost 20 years, with work appearing in the The Nation, Baltimore Sun, New York Newsday, Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and many other publications.
Recent publications include: Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (published by TARI), Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis (Interlink Publishing 2002), and Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN (Interlink Publishing, 2000).
Note: Interlink is the publisher of one of the best books about 9/11 complicity -- Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed's "The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism" Interlink also publishes David Ray Griffin's books about 9/11, which are well written but not well fact checked (and therefore not recommended).