What the hell has happened to you Henny? The New York Times ... mainstream? Have you drank the Kool-Aide?
As for the website I posted, your admitted bias precludes you from an honest assessment.
The New York Times is a newspaper that can be purchased all over the country. It is leftist, but it is mainstream.
Here is the mission statement from the website you are referencing:
What This Site Is About
(The resources on this page are devoted to defining the left, which is one of the purposes of this website. For additional conceptual articles about the left, see ISSUES: "Progressive" and "Liberalism," and particularly the articles by Barry Loberfeld and David Horowitz.)
Welcome to DiscoverTheNetworks. This site is a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.
The site is made up of two principal data elements along with a powerful search engine to locate and explore the information stored. The first of these elements is a database of PROFILES of individuals, groups and institutions, which can be accessed through the heptagram on the home page, or the DTN DIRECTORY on the navigation bar. The PROFILES provide thumbnail sketches of histories, agendas and (where significant) funding sources. More than 1,500 such groups and individuals have already been delineated in the PROFILES sections of this base. The information has been culled from public records readily available on the Internet and other sources, whose veracity and authenticity are easily checked.
The second data element of this site consists of a library of articles, which analyze the relationships disclosed in the database and the issues they raise. These analyses are drawn from thousands of articles, both scholarly and journalistic, that have been entered into the base and linked in the RESOURCES columns that appear on the PROFILE pages. The judgments that inform these analyses are subjective, reflecting informed opinion about the matters at hand. In every case possible, their authors and sources are identified so that users of the database can form their own judgments and opinions about the reliability and value of the analyses.
DiscoverTheNetworks is an ambitious undertaking that would not have been possible before the creation of the Internet with the storage capacities and data linkage features that digital space affords and that such an undertaking requires. As a result of the information that these technologies make available, a user of this site can follow the networks described in the database to arrive at a new understanding of the forces that define our social reality and shape our collective futures.
The database will readily answer many questions that previously would have required volumes of printed text to establish. The primary question is: "Is there a left?" Since the early 1970s, radical activists began referring to themselves as "liberals" (in part to distance themselves from their failures as a socialist left. A sympathetic media culture went along with this deception, with the result that the word "left" has all but disappeared from the political lexicon. The spectrum of views is now regularly described in the media culture as extending from "liberal" to "moderate" to "conservative" or right, as though a left did not exist or was so marginal as not to matter.
Thus Howard Kurtz, the media critic of the Washington Post explains in his 1997 book Hot Air: All Talk, All The Time: "There is... no real left wing in today's talk show environment largely because the left has faded as a political force in America." Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich agrees that there is no significant left in American politics. In his book Reason: Why Liberals Will Win The Battle for America, Reich claims: "Now it's hard to find any Sixties lefties, except maybe in the rarefied precincts of a few universities where aging radicals still debate Marxism and deconstruction. Most of the political passion and intensity these days are on the radical conservative right."
These words were written in 2004 well after Sixties radicals like Leslie Cagan (head of the coalition United For Peace and Justice) organized the anti-war demonstrations in which a million protesters with publicly articulated leftwing agendas participated, and which fed the anti-war Presidential campaigns of Sixties veterans Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean.
Reich wrote his book as head of the "Social Justice and Policy" program at Brandeis University and is arguably a leftist himself. (The pervasive presence of a political left on the faculties of American universities is documented in the ACADEMIA module of this website).
By browsing this database, and familiarizing oneself with the agendas of the individuals and organizations it contains, with the scope of their activities and with the tens of millions of dollars available to support them, a user of this base will find ample evidence for the existence of this left and for the fact that it is a major player in the political destinies of the nation. (See in particular the organizations and individuals associated with ANTI-WAR groups and The Shadow Party.)
The movement to protest the war in Iraq reconfigured the presidential campaign of 2004 and has affected American policy not only in Iraq but in the War on Terror generally. It has changed the face of the Democratic Party and of American politics in general. What is the nature of this "anti-war" movement, who are its leaders, and what are its agendas? The scope and features of this database allow for definitive answers to these questions.
The database provides a complete guide to all the principal groups responsible for organizing the national protests against the war, their leaders, their core agendas and beliefs. (Follow the guide icon, which is shaped like a heptagram on the homepage, by clicking on GROUPS and then ANTI-WAR). While the database cannot account for the motivations and beliefs of all the individuals who participated in these protests or who came in an unorganized fashion to oppose the war, it can describe with reasonable certainty the identities and agendas of all the principal anti-war groups and leaders who initiated these protests, organized their events and shaped the political debate. Inspection of the database shows that without exception the agendas of these groups and the individuals who ran them were anti-corporate and socialist (often Marxist-Leninist), rather than pacifists and non-violent or merely liberal, as described in the general media. Their opposition to the war went well beyond the issue of the war itself.
The relational aspects of this database reveal the paths by which these radicals were able to influence institutions like the Democratic Party that are not radical (See Shadow Party.) Using the information provided in the base, one can thus trace the progress of a radical menu of leftwing policies and complaints into the heart of the American political mainstream.
The database also provides group profiles of the organizations engaged in organizing opposition to the Patriot Act, as well as to frontline homeland security defenses such as border control (GROUPS/IMMIGRATION) and the linkages between them. Following the network of these organizations and individuals through the base reveals that they have agendas and perspectives that range far beyond the legal issues themselves and are rooted in their radical opposition to the American status quo. These agendas are anti-corporate and socialist.
Another tool of the database is the MAPS feature which provides visual networks of the funding and organizational relations between groups and individuals in the base. To view these networks, click on the MAPS icon in the respective profiles and wait for Java to load.
Each Category of INDIVIDUALS or GROUPS comes with a GUIDE which provides analytical texts and overviews of the subject. Click on the INDIVIDUALS button or the GUIDE button to view this feature.
The Guides are supplemented by an ISSUES module that is designed to provide analytic and historical overviews of key subjects -- the terms "liberalism" and "progressive," for example; or pivotal events like the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. Like the rest of this website, this module is a work in progress and its database will be expanded over time.
The information entered into the database has been scrupulously assembled. The sources for the facts entered and the interpretations based on them have been made as transparent as possible - and can therefore be checked by users of the base. Textual analyses of the data contained in this site and attached to the profiles, or provided separately under the ISSUES module in the heptagram and in the specific GUIDES provided on each of the search pages, are identified by author and source so that they can be independently evaluated by the individual user.
We are aware that this base may raise legitimate concerns about the effect of categorizing and labeling individuals and organizations, and that such an enterprise entails and the possibility of inaccuracies creeping into the data. We share these concerns and have provided a contact link on the homepage of this site (CONTRIBUTE INFORMATION) where corrections can be submitted. We will take immediate steps to correct any and all factual inaccuracies that are brought to our attention.
Other concerns are certain to be raised that we will not regard as legitimate but rather as veiled expressions of distress over the factual information revealed on the site. A cry of such distress has already greeted a perfectly reasonable database called Campus Watch, provided by the Middle East Forum. This site records and analyzes the views of leftwing academics concerning terrorism in the Islamic world, views that can fairly be described as apologetic and even sympathetic to the radical Islamist cause. Critics of Campus Watch, many of them with views identical to those reviewed on the site, have claimed that the very enterprise of posting such critical reviews is "McCarthyism" and an Internet "witch-hunt." Such responses reflect an anti-intellectual attitude that seeks to embargo the political debate before it takes place.
We are familiar with such attitudes because they have already been directed at DiscoverTheNetworks in advance of its publication on the worldwide web. Almost a year before the official launching, a radical group in Colorado broke into the site under construction and supplied information about it to several journalists. One of them was Gail Schoettler, a former Democratic Lieutenant governor of Colorado and a regular columnist for the Denver Post. In her column for January 11, 2004, following the break in and the article that followed it, Schoettler wrote:
"Attorney General John Ashcroft and right-wing gadfly David Horowitz no doubt share many views. They also have one dangerous common goal: They want to turn us into a nation of snitches. Just like the good old days of ? Senator Joseph McCarthy, they want Americans to spy on one another?. Horowitz is seeking funds to develop a huge database of so-called 'leftist' and 'liberal' individuals and organizations, a massive snitch file."
This bizarre outburst reflects not only the partisan hysteria of the 2004 Presidential year, but also what appears to be a normal hypocrisy of partisans on the left who react with outrage to practices they themselves have pioneered. There are in fact more than a dozen political databases parallel to DiscoverTheNetworks that have been created by the left to map the political right, which have existed for years. Among these the most active are: MediaTransparency, Namebase, SourceWatch (formerly called Disinfopedia) and MediaMatters, a site created by Democratic Party funders and operatives led by George Soros and John Podesta.
These dedicated "watch dog" sites are supplemented by other leftwing sites that post extensive lists of conservative organizations accompanied by profiles designed principally to stigmatize them. People for the American Way (PFAW), for example, is an organization whose principal activity is falsely tarring conservative judicial candidates as "racists" on the basis of their dissent from leftwing positions. PFAW features a "Right Wing Watch" section of its website which applies the same loose principles of characterization to a wide range of conservative organizations and conservative individuals. Thus conservative organizations that oppose racial preferences are tarred as "racist" for disagreeing with a "liberal" political position. People for the American Way also funds the MediaTransparency site.
By contrast, every effort has been made in the creation of DiscoverTheNetworks to avoid conflating subjective judgments about policy differences with factual descriptions of attitudes expressed by the individuals and organizations listed on this site. Individuals and organizations identified as "Marxist" or "socialist," or as having agendas sympathetic to America's adversaries, are so identified on the basis of their explicit commitment to these agendas. Their profiles are generally linked to analytic articles whose authors and sources are clearly identified. If any errors have been made in characterizing individuals or organizations, the editors of DiscoverTheNetworks will correct these as soon as they are brought to their attention. As already noted, a form is provided on the homepage of this site for this purpose.
DiscoverTheNetworks is not by intent or design or consequence a "snitch file," as the former lieutenant governor of Colorado has absurdly proposed. To whom would the site be snitching and about what criminal activity?! Is the lieutenant governor implying that the leftists identified in this site are hiding something that should not be submitted to public scrutiny? Is she aware of some governmental authority with an official list of forbidden viewpoints ready to impose penalties on the subjects in this base for having offensive ideas? How would the lieutenant governor know in advance of examining the site what its nature and intentions might be? Isn't her accusation an example itself of the guilt-by-association and innuendo she claims in her column to fear?
The purpose of the DiscoverTheNetworks site is not to stifle free speech but to clarify it. We recognize that people are not always candid in what they say in public life, particularly in the arena of political discourse. Truth in political advertising would be a more accurate description of our intentions in assembling this data.
The problem of deceptive public presentation is common enough to all sides in the political debate but applies with special force to the left, which has a long and well-documented history of dissembling about its agendas. In the past, the Communist Party, for example, operated through "front" groups which concealed the radical agendas of those who controlled them. In the 1948 elections, the Party created an entire electoral front - the Progressive Party - to run a candidate in Henry Wallace who opposed the Cold War against Stalin. During the congressional investigations into the covert activities of the Communist Party, its leaders appeared before government panels to proclaim their patriotism and to describe themselves as avid defenders of free speech, denying that they had any radical agendas at all. In fact the Communist Party was an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the American political system, the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship, and the elimination of free speech for those whom it regarded as the "class enemy."
The disingenuous tradition of the political left has continued into the present. In the 1960s, the radical organizers of the mass anti-war demonstrations pretended that their only interest was to "Bring the Troops Home," when in fact their agendas embraced a radical menu that was anti-capitalist and welcomed a Communist victory. In the campaign against the war in Iraq, a similar pattern emerged, as the information provided in this database clearly demonstrates (ANTI-WAR).
