Have You Ever Heard Of The Henry Jackson Society?

Have You Ever Heard Of The Henry Jackson Society?

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Well if you haven't, It is a right wing, Neocon, Anglo-American group advocating a 'muscular' American foreign policy and a British policy of Atlanticism:

Henry Jackson Society

Henry Jackson Society

Representatives from this organisation seem to be getting a worryingly large amount of air-time on British TV these days:

Broadcast appearances - Henry Jackson Society

Today on the Daily Politics they had a guy called Davis Lewin on there attacking Sadik Kahn, Labour's candidate for London Mayor. I've seen this chap regularly on the BBC's Big Question recently too.

Here's a list of some of the initial signatories to their statement of principles:

Quote:

Members of Parliament Michael Ancram, Michael Gove, Edward Vaizey, David Willetts, Denis MacShane, Fabian Hamilton, Gisela Stuart, former MPs David Trimble, Jackie Lawrence, Greg Pope, former soldier Tim Collins, Sir Richard Dearlove — former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and formerly Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge - and the American economist Irwin Stelzer. International patrons included Richard Perle, William Kristol, James Woolsey (former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency), and Vytautas Landsbergis (former President of Lithuania)

This is interesting:

Quote:

The society advocates an interventionist foreign-policy that promotes human rights and reduces suffering, by both non-military and military methods, when appropriate.

The author and investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed has published some pretty damning articles about them:

White supremacists at the heart of Whitehall

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HJS’ international patrons and supporters amount to a veritable “who’s who” of Anglo-American neocons. They include Paul Beaver, special advisor to the Parliamentary Defence Committee; Irwin Stelzer, Rupert Murdoch's former right-hand man; Col. Tim Collins, CEO of private defence contractor security, New Century; Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 during the Iraq war WMD farce; former secretary of state for education Michael Gove; culture minister Ed Vaizey; minister for universities and science, David Willetts; Wall Street Journal chief editor Gerard Baker; NATO deputy assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges Jamie Shea; former US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); Robert Kagan and William Kristol, co-founders of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC); General Jack Sheehan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic; Richard Perle, former chairman of the Pentagon's Defenxe Policy Board under Bush; and ex-CIA chief James Woolsey. HJS thus has significant connections in Washington, and holds considerable weight in Whitehall. It has also regularly hosted “risk analysis” conferences on corporate and business interests in the Middle East, particularly around oil and gas investment potential, with the participation of senior British government officials.

Who the hell are the Henry Jackson Society?

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While touting their support for freedom, liberalism and democratisation as their core organisational remit, in practice they appear to be a neocon trojan horse for the very opposite: state-expansionism, state-militarisation, interventionism, rampant market deregulation and privatisation in the interests of Western investors, coupled with anti-Muslim hostility and white supremacism. What's particularly shocking is that their pursuit of the latter is not exactly something deeply hidden, but is - for the most part - easily verifiable from the public record, with a little digging. The kind of digging that sadly my media colleagues seem to have not considered to be very important.

The American Far Right's Trojan Horse In Westminster.

Quote:

'They include pro-war hawks like: Richard Perle, a former US Assistant Secretary of Defence, and chairman of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board from 2001 until 2003, who had to resign after criticism over his directorships at companies with “significant business interests linked to the US Department of Defence”; Richard Perle, key Pentagon figure behind 2003 Iraq War William Kristol, founding editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, and co-founder of the notorious pro-Bush pro-war think-tank, the Project for a New American Century, as well as a member of the equally hawkish Committee for the Liberation of Iraq; Robert Kagan, a PNAC co-founder; Clifford May, president of newfangled neocon think-tank, Foundation for the Defence of Democracies and former Director of Communications for the Republican National Committee; Bruce P. Jackson, President of a further neocon group, Project for Transitional Democracies, and previously a military intelligence officer under Richard Perle at the Office of the Secretary of Defence (1993 to 2002); General Jack Sheehan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and commander-in-chief for the US Atlantic Command (1994–1997), serving simultaneously under Perle in the Defence Policy Board and as vice-president of US defence contractor Bechtel, “which received the first major contract for the reconstruction of Iraq”; James Woolsey, former CIA director, another member of Perle’s Defence Policy Board in 2003, while he was also “a principal of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm with investments in homeland security, as well as a vice-president of defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton” — which of course had employed Edward Snowden on behalf of the National Security Agency (NSA); Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, then Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man, and now US business columnist at the Sunday Times. These names speak for themselves. They show that the HJS, at the outset, was intended by some of its key founders to legitimise violent regime-change in the Middle East in the name of spreading “democracy” can hardly be doubted.'

Should such an organisation be so readily provided with a platform by the likes of the BBC?

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Have You Ever Heard Of The Henry Jackson Society?