Is ‘Forth’ magazine an unwitting front for a bizarre neo-liberal network?

Editor suggests he may be 'useful idiot’

INTRO

SpinWatch (www.spinwatch.org), created in 2005, provides public interest reporting on spin and deception, and campaigns for lobbying transparency.

Spinwatch are co-founders of the Europe-wide Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation and the more recent UK campaign, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency.

Spinwatch has come under sustained attack from a bizarre group of former left wing activists who switched to the pro-market right in the 1990s. Today, this 'LM Network' act as lobbyists for and defenders of multinational corporations. As such, the LM Network features on the associated SpinProfiles.org website (http://spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=LM_network). Because of that fact the LM network, that guards its origins and activities from prying eyes, has attempted to undermine Spinwatch's credibility.

One vehicle used by members of the network has been the Irish internet magazine Forth (www.forth.ie), edited by Jason Walsh.

Yesterday (May 5, 2010) Forth published a reply from Spinwatch to a recent attack. The editor, Jason Walsh (who supposed in his reply that he might be a 'useful idiot'), replied to Spinwatch’s charges:

On hidden agendas, the LM network and SpinWatch: A Response to Will Deighton:
http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/on_hidden_age...0504/

Forth, editor replies:
http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/an_open_lette...0505/

The original article by 'Will Deighton' attacking Spinwatch, was removed by the editor and then later replaced with some editorial corrections:
http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/uk_election_h...ement:

The article was also and separately removed permanently from a blog run by 'Will Deighton', presumably by 'Will Deighton'. In fact, the entire 'Will Deighton' blog shut up shop completely yesterday (5 May 2010).

[Below is a summary of the article by DAVID MILLER and CLAIRE ROBINSON of SpinWatch - the original (with notes) is at the website above and linked at www.spinwathch.org]

Spinwatch.org was started to monitor PR and lobbying activities.

It has grown into a resource for monitoring power networks in a more general sense. In 2009 Spinwatch attempted to catalogue the conflicts of interest of all Members of the European Parliament in its MEPedia project. On the UK Parliament, it has begun the work of covering MPs and Lords. It has focused some campaigning work on Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) with lobbying industry connections - as can be seen in many of the posts on SpinWatch in the past few weeks and months.

There are many gaps remaining which will be filled as the work continues.

Much of the work done by SpinWatch is critical of the hidden agendas pulling the levers of public policy in the UK, the EU and across the world. In particular Spinwatch is critical of neoliberal ideology – the notion that the market acts as a guide and ethic for action in all matters of public policy. With few caveats, the neoliberal model has been accepted by the Tories and New Labour alike – as well as by most mainstream parties in Ireland and beyond. Spinwatch also focuses on human rights abuses, class polarisation, and the crisis in democracy occasioned by the rise of neoliberalism, corporate power and the US dominance in global politics.

Many of the attacks on critics of neoliberalism over the past two decades have followed certain narrow and repeated lines of argument. They are often non-rational ad hominem attacks, labelling environmentalists and other critics in emotive yet ill-defined terms such as ‘anti-science,’ ‘anti-technology,’ ‘terrorists’, and ‘Nazis’.

One grouping that takes money from large multinational companies to lobby discretely on their behalf is a group known as the LM network which has never been transparent about its funding.

Not one of LM network's myriad organisations provides a breakdown of all funders and how much they have provided. We do know, however, that they are funded by some of the same corporations that fund the right wing think tanks that are dedicated to obscuring the damage that corporations do to the environment, human rights and democracy.

For example, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has funded the LM Network fronts, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas.

As well as funding the LM network, Pfizer also funds a wide range of free market think tanks such as the US-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute, the Netherlands-based Edmund Burke Foundation, the Brussels based Centre for the New Europe (which also does work on climate funded by Exxon), and the UK’s Social Market Foundation. Pfizer’s bosses fund these organisations for the same reason, they are part of one of the most important global corporate lobby groups, the International Chamber of Commerce - to safeguard their licence to make profit.

Pfizer also funds the American Council on Science and Health, a deceptive front group, and two organisations with which the LM network has connections, the Science Media Centre and Sense About Science. Both are engaged in managing debate about scientific issues. The obvious evidence-based conclusion is that all these organisations are useful to Pfizer’s corporate strategy.

Other corporations and corporate lobby groups that have funded the LM network are BT, Cadbury Schweppes, IBM, Novartis, Orange, O2, The Mobile Operators Association and the Society of the Chemical Industry. This kind of funding makes it look as if the LM network is a collection of lobbying or PR outfits. Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest lobby firms also fund the network. Hill and Knowlton is one of the most controversial lobbying and PR firms in the world, having famously been behind the deception on the incubator baby story in Kuwait in 1990/91. It also worked for a long list of controversial corporations, including some from the oil, tobacco, pharma, fast food, and GM industry. It worked too for repressive regimes, including Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey – and China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Along with PR firm Luther Pendragon (which has worked for the Hinduja brothers, Macdonalds, Pepsi, the GM industry and others), Hill and Knowlton has put up cash for LM network events.

The LM network has also worked with other free market think tanks such as the International Policy Network (which took money from Exxon for climate change ’outreach’) and the Social Issues Research Centre (which takes money from the food, alcohol and tech industry and downplays the risks from their products).

Since the rise of the anti-capitalist movement in the late 1990s, the corporations have attempted to undermine their critics in any way they can. The full range of tactics is used, from infiltration to the use of legal and other complaints. They have also conducted aggressive ideological onslaughts intended to staunch the flow of funds to groups that campaign against corporate power.

As early as 2001, the Financial Times reported, ‘In recent months, companies and conservative foundations have been clubbing together behind the fronts of industry-wide lobby groups to try to staunch the flow of funds to counter-capitalist groups.’ The FT mentioned in particular Frontiers of Freedom (backed by oil companies such as Exxon, defence groups and pharmaceuticals businesses), and the Guest Choice Network, who ‘are backing groups which they describe as being part of the ‘Nanny culture’. The US-based Guest Choice Network is now known as the Center for Consumer Freedom and is one of the most notorious smear operations targeting progressive activists and campaigns. The CCF has also worked with Ron Arnold’s Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Back issues of LM Magazine feature a number of articles from such pro-market voices, including in 1998 one from Ron Arnold himself which, according to journalist George Monbiot, claimed that

‘the Unabomber is an environmentalist, ergo all environmentalists are terrorists.’

LM is on these questions little different from a corporate-funded front group. Just like the front groups that write to the corporations offering to do work on GM, tobacco, food or climate, LM’s Frank Furedi and John Gillott wrote in 1998 offering their services ‘to the major superstores and the Food and Drink Federation, proposing to “educate” consumers towards a “less emotive” consideration of food safety’.

All this suggests that the LM network continues to be interested in attacking critics of the corporations or of its own activities.

Forth

Forth magazine, an Irish internet magazine edited by Jason Walsh, has published a number of authors connected to the LM network. The author of the articles attacking SpinWatch, Will Deighton, has written for Living Marxism/LM Magazine. Jason Walsh, the editor of Forth, has written for the LM-linked online magazine Spiked.

Nine other Forth writers have either written for Living Marxism, or for LM network initiatives:

• Andrew Calcutt, contributor to Forth, is described on a Battle of Ideas (a project of the LM-linked Institute of Ideas) website bio as a ‘longstanding contributor to spiked-online, and before that Living Marxism/LM’.
• Michael Fitzpatrick, named as a “contributor” to Forth, had a regular column in LM and was a contributor to Spiked.
• Pauline Hadaway has written for Spiked and LM and been involved with LM-connected initiatives, the Battle of Ideas, the Manifesto Club and the Belfast Salon.
• James Heartfield, a contributor to Forth, has a long list of publications in Living Marxism/LM magazine.
• Rob Lyons, journalist, editor and IT developer, is deputy editor of Spiked.
• Brendan O’Neill, contributor to Forth, is the editor of Spiked. He started his career in journalism at Spiked’s predecessor, Living Marxism.
• Patrick West, contributor to Forth, also writes for Spiked.[53] According to his blog, he has written for Living Marxism.
• Philip Hammond and Timandra Harkness, both writers for Spiked, have provided articles for Forth.

As far as we can tell from the Forth website, that is ten (excluding Walsh) out of a total of about thirty-five contributors. None of this shows that Forth is a project of LM or a front for it. However, we think that these links raise important questions about Forth.

On this occasion Forth has been used as a vehicle by the LM network in an attempt to undermine Spinwatch and SpinProfiles. The LM agenda is in part about trying to remove from the web factual information about their connections [details in original article on Forth website]. The attack on SpinProfiles.org is part of that attempt. Part of the reason for this may well be that SpinProfiles is one of the best and most prominent sources of information on the LM network on the web.

Questions for Forth.

These connections do not by themselves show that Forth is a ‘front’ for LM.

Indeed, the editor Jason Walsh has claimed in an email to SpinProfiles that ‘Forth publishes all kinds of arguments, including pro-green ones‘, adding that he doesn’t have a ‘line’. Certainly Forth lists a number of writers from across the political spectrum, including green, socialist, Republican and Unionist voices. We are happy to give Forth the benefit of the doubt for the moment. However, there are some questions that we think that Forth needs to answer, as well as making the corrections to the original article that we list above.

So, Jason, can you tell us:

1. Did you know that Will Deighton was a pseudonym when you published the article?
2. Are you aware of the real identity of ‘Will Deighton’, and if so, can you confirm it, providing evidence, in Forth?
3. Do any other writers for Forth use undisclosed pseudonyms? If so, please disclose this – and where possible, reveal who they really are.
4. What is Forth’s view on anonymous or pseudonymous contributors and will you now include as one of Forth’s stated policies that such contributions will not be accepted in future?

[The above is a summary, full article and editor’s response at website below:

On hidden agendas, the LM network and SpinWatch: A Response to Will Deighton:
http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/on_hidden_age...0504/

Forth, editor replies:
http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/an_open_lette...0505/]

www.spinwatch.org
www.spinprofiles.org