… when first we kiss up to Saif.
A fellow contributor to The Nation asks Benjamin Barber about his Libya gig.
When I asked Barber about the Libyan funding for his article, he replied, “I didn’t take money from Qaddafi. The money to Monitor was coming from the Qaddafi Foundation, funded by Saif [Qaddafi’s son], who was providing the impetus for reform.”
But this turns out not to be true. Nothing in the Monitor documents that have been released mention the foundation. The Monitor documents David Corn obtained are all about PR for Qaddafi. And the Guardian obtained other documents showing that Monitor’s PR deal with Libya was submitted to the head of military intelligence for Qaddafi, Abd Allah al-Sanusi — he has been held responsible for atrocities in the present uprising.
Defending his acceptance of Libyan money, Barber also said, “Everyone gets paid. Consultants get paid, and I was paid by Monitor. I’ve been paid by lots of different people – the Department of Education, the state of New Jersey.”
But wait a minute – isn’t there a difference between working for the State of New Jersey and working for the state of Libya, to burnish its image in the eyes of Americans?
Barber went on to say, “The pay isn’t the issue. The issue is what I was doing there: working to build democratic capacity.”
In fact the issue is not what Barber told Libyans about democracy, but rather what he told Americans about Qaddafi.
Barber also pointed out that the US was courting Qaddafi at the time, seeking his help in fighting Al Qaeda and opening Libya to American oil companies. “Nobody criticized Condi Rice for shaking hands with Qaddafi,” Barber told me. “But when somebody goes in saying ‘maybe we can create some democratic capacity,’ they say we were duped in a P.R. scheme to burnish the image of a dictator. I just don’t get it.”
But it’s not that hard to understand: people expect intellectual integrity from Ben Barber, and Tony Giddens and Joe Nye. They expect something different from [a government official] …
March 5th, 2011 at 3:35PM
Who could have imagined that selling your soul could have negative consequences? It’s such a small thing.
March 5th, 2011 at 9:50PM
Somewhat related: my post Journalism’s Nuremberg?
March 7th, 2011 at 10:36AM
[…] Barber says, in his defense, “Everyone gets paid.” It’s exactly the same way university presidents defend giving four million dollars a year to […]
March 7th, 2011 at 12:47PM
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. “If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas.”
I wonder if Mr. Barber is enjoying the frantic scratching?