[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Tainted hands across the water

[Bill Totten]

The values we share with America are those of rapacious power and wealth.

by John Pilger

New Statesman (December 13 2007)


When Gordon Brown spoke recently about his government's devotion to the
United States, "founded on the values we share", he was echoing his
Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, who was preparing to welcome the
Saudi dictator to Britain with effusions of "shared values". The meaning
was the same in both cases. The values shared are those of rapacious
power and wealth, with democracy and human rights irrelevant, as the
bloodbath in Iraq and the suffering of the Palestinians attest, to name
only two examples.

The "values we share" are celebrated by an organisation that has just
held its annual conference. This is the British-American Project for the
Successor Generation (BAP), set up in 1985 with money from a
Philadelphia trust with a long history of supporting right-wing causes.
Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge this origin, the source
of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan in 1983 for "successor
generations" on both sides of the Atlantic to "work together in the
future on defence and security matters". He made numerous references to
"shared values". Attending this ceremony in the White House Situation
Room were the ideologues Rupert Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.

As Reagan made clear, the need for the BAP arose from Washington's
anxiety about the growing opposition in Britain to nuclear weapons,
especially the stationing of cruise missiles in Europe. "A special
concern", he said, "will be the successor generations, as these younger
people are the ones who will have to work together in the future on
defence and security issues". A new, preferably young elite -
journalists, academics, economists, "civil society" and liberal
community leaders of one sort or another - would offset the growing
"anti-Americanism".

The aims of this latter-day network, according to David Willetts, the
former director of studies at the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies,
now a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, are simply to "help reinforce
Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do or will
occupy positions of influence". A former British ambassador to
Washington, Sir John Kerr, was more direct. In a speech to BAP members,
he said the organisation's "powerful combination of eminent Fellows and
close Atlantic links threatened to put the embassy out of a job". An
American BAP organiser describes the BAP network as committed to
"grooming leaders" while promoting "the leading global role that [the US
and Britain] continue to play".

The BAP's British "alumni" are drawn largely from new Labour and its
court. No fewer than four BAP "fellows" and one advisory board member
became ministers in the first Blair government. The new Labour names
include Peter Mandelson, George Robertson, Baroness Symons, Jonathan
Powell (Blair's chief of staff), Baroness Scotland, Douglas Alexander,
Geoff Mulgan, Matthew Taylor and David Miliband. Some are Fabian Society
members and describe themselves as being "on the left". Trevor Phillips,
chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is another member.
They object to whispers of "a conspiracy". The mutuality of class or
aspiration is merely assured, unspoken, and the warm embrace of power
flattering and often productive.

BAP conferences are held alternately in the US and Britain. This year's
was in Newcastle, with the theme "Faith and Justice". On the US board is
Diana Negroponte, the wife of John Negroponte, Bush's former national
security chief notorious for his associations with death-squad politics
in central America. He follows another leading neocon, Paul Wolfowitz,
architect of the invasion of Iraq and discredited head of the World
Bank. Since 1985, BAP "alumni" and "fellows" have been brought together
courtesy of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Saatchi & Saatchi, Philip Morris and
British Airways, among other multinationals. Nick Butler, formerly a top
dog at BP, has been a leading light.

For many, the conferences have the revivalist pleasures honed by
American PR techniques, with management games, personal presentations,
and a closing jolly revue to lighten the serious business. The 2002
conference report noted: "Many BAP alumni are directly involved with US
and UK military and defence establishments".

The BAP rarely gets publicity, which may have something to do with the
high proportion of journalists who are alumni. Prominent BAP journalists
are David Lipsey, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and assorted Murdochites. The BBC
is well represented. On the Today programme, James Naughtie, whose
broadcasting has long reflected his own transatlantic interests, has
been an alumnus since 1989. Today's newest voice, Evan Davis, formerly
the BBC's zealous economics editor, is a member. And at the top of the
BAP website home page is a photograph of Jeremy Paxman and his
endorsement. "A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of
transatlantic friends", says he.

www.johnpilger.com

_____

John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary
film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's
top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and
the US. In a New Statesman survey of the fifty heroes of our time,
Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John
Pilger", wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts,
the filthy truth. I salute him".

http://www.newstatesman.com/200712130022



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