A brief update on Devon Gaffney Cross’ Policy Forum on International Security (www.policyforumuk.com) whose cozy, off-the-record briefings by senior Pentagon officials, fellow-neo-cons and fellow members of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) for select British and European reporters in exclusive clubs and cafes in London and Paris, we discovered earlier this year, were the beneficiary of a no-bid contract by Defense Undersecretary Eric Edelman’s Policy office last September. We just learned that the Policy Forum was also the beneficiary of the Smith Richardson Foundation, for which Cross has in the past served as director of research and a program office, according to the Foundation’s 2006 annual report which was published late last year. Cross’ group, the report said, was to have received a grant for $25,000 during 2006 to “organize a series of events that bring current and former U.S. policy makers and strategic thinkers together with leading European journalists and opinion makers to discuss key foreign and security policy issues.â€
Smith Richardson, whose considerable endowment is based on the Vick’s VapoRub fortune, has been a big funder of neo-con organizations and individuals since the 1970’s, as well as more-mainstream organizations and universities.
Despite the Pentagon’s and Smith Richardson’s largess, the Policy Forum’s website remains as dormant as ever. For more on the Forum’s and Cross’ activities, just type in her name on this site. I’ve posted about half a dozen times on them over the past year or so. Cross, of course, is the sister of Frank Gaffney, the ultra-hawkish president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP) who last week wrote a remarkable column in the Washington Times in which he associated Sen. Obama’s use of the phrase “citizen of the world†in Berlin with the Terror in Revolutionary France, “Citizen Kane,†the Organization of Islamic States (â€a Muslim mafia organizationâ€), “Communist China,†Russia, the non-aligned movement, the specter of gun control, and Rodney King. As you will see from the other posts, the Policy Forum appears to be closely associated with the people at Anatol Sharansky’s OneJerusalem.
Dear Jim Lobe,
You mention the money of Richardsons and other rich, right wing activists in America. However, there is one rich person, fully behind the neocons, that you make no mention of. He is worth perhaps over 100 billion dollars, by some estimates even 200 billion dollars in today’s money. He is richer than Bill Gates, and that Oracle guy and King of Saudi Arabia put together, but hardly a word about him out of you or anyone else in the media. He is one of the first people, outside of the circle of New York mayor’s office and firefighters and police, who was interviewed on American television, in which he advocated bombing Tehran because as he would naturally have it, “Iran is the eye of the octopus”. He is the most steadfast supported of the neocon cause in America, so much so, that the sentences and the words that neocon commentators are using has become indistinguishable from the articles that the monarchists of Iran produce, and have been producing long before the neocons became the media force that they are today. He is of course Reza Pahlavi the son of the last Shah of Iran, and heir to his wealth which was stolen from the people of Iran, much to the pleasure of the American government at the time. He has declared himself stateless in an American court and enjoys a tax-free, probe-free, existence in America. As an Iranian, I would be very much interested in knowing what that 100 billion dollars is doing right now. I think you ,as an American, have a very big interest in that particular behemoth as well.
As you correctly point out, America is turning, or has turned into a big casino. It is not a democracy anymore. The tools that democracy provides to the average citizen have all been hijacked, or so to say repurposed or even the whole mechanism has been retooled to advance the interests of only the big betters (i.e. those who bet big! :) ). Ironically what you do here, namely using the freedom to report on them, is used by them to advance their bets even more vigorously. But that is no longer the news, anyway.
I am here at a forum newcomer. Until I read and deal with the forum.
Let’s learn!