Dirty Old Town
by Not Sure
16 July 2023
Between 1952
and 1954, the U.S. Congress held the Select Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt
Foundations and Comparable Organizations, which was first known as the “Cox
Committee” and later as the “Reece Committee,” named for the two chairmen who
oversaw the work during two separate sittings of Congress. The Reece Committee had “the almost
impossible task” of telling the taxpayers “The almost incredible fact that the
huge fortunes piled up by such industrial giants as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew
Carnegie and Henry Ford were being used to destroy or discredit the
free-enterprise system which gave them birth.”
In the
preface to Rene A. Wormser’s book, Foundations:
Their Power and Influence, written about Wormser’s
work on the Reece Committee and his subsequent investigations, Senator B.
Carroll Reece wrote that “the work of the Cox Committee had left several
important unanswered questions, the gravest of which was: to what extent,
if any, are the funds of the large foundations aiding and abetting Marxist
tendencies in the United States and weakening the love which every American
should have for his way of life?
The word politics comes from the
Greek “affairs of the city.” Politics is
how nations, regions and organizations are governed and can also describe the
relationship among individuals who want to attain and retain power.
Much of what
we call politics is theatre for the public, as the attainment and retention of
power is usually accomplished in back rooms, on golf courses, over drinks at
gatherings far from the madding crowd.
The public must have Senators to love, Ministers to hate, legislation to
support, and scandals to chatter about.
People with real power wouldn’t have it any other way. They need calm seas and a wide berth for the
HMS Change.
When corruption is noticed by the
public, we’re given committees to investigate it. Often these are televised or heavily reported
on. Sometimes outside “expertise” must
be sought, and we’re given commissions, with “independent” consultants and
auditors to get to the bottom of the stinking barrel of fish. Commissions can last years, their work is
seldom conducted in public view.
Most
political commentary and reporting have little to offer. You knew the play would be terrible, so you
didn’t bother to go to the theatre. Why read the review? But
I am interested to read Wormser’s book, because this
is a rare glimpse at the supra-government, the unelected philanthropists who
have been shaping policy and guiding the “affairs of state” for a long time
now.
Sadly, had Wormser’s book had the desired effect on the American
taxpayer, we would not be governed today by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Rockefeller Foundation,
Hewlett Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Open Societies Foundation, to
name but a few of the “thousand points of light.”
Wormser wrote that by using these “ingenious legal
creatures,” a type of socialism could be reached, even if that was an
unintended result. A nod is given to the
Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations for their work in the fields of medicine,
public health, and science. He wrote,
“It is in the fields of education, international affairs and what are called
the “social sciences” that the greatest damage can be done to our society. For this reason the
Reece Commission confined its inquiry almost entirely to these areas.”
This
commission was formed seventy years ago, the book written sixty-five years
ago. If a diligent and honest commission
was formed today, its members would certainly observe that a terrifying amount
of damage can be done when foundations direct the fields of medicine, public
health, and science.
The concepts
and dangers being addressed a lifetime ago are eye opening. The “social engineering” with a left-leaning
bent was obvious to the commission.
These weren’t McCarthy-style witch hunters, though the press
characterized them in that way. The
Rockefeller foundation received their criticism for the funding of Alfred
Kinsey’s “scientism.” We learn that at the time of Kinsey’s “research,” it was
widely considered “pseudoscientific.”
People were disgusted by Kinsey’s attempts to normalize child molesters,
aided by the Rockefeller Foundation’s funding of “bestsellers” to promote
Kinsey’s “scientism.”
In this
Redux 118 from May 10, 2007, entitled “Don’t Drive – Behave – Beehive
(or) Hitchhiker’s Guide to Behaviour Modification,” Alan Watt talked
about how the “science” on global warming as complete. This is how it’s put across to the public: The debate on global warming is over. The facts are real. The only question remaining is how to remedy
it.
He read an
article entitled “The Climate Engineers” by James R. Fleming, writing for The
Wilson Quarterly, a publication of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. Alan
said, “…it also mentions in here of his different
affiliations. Those are interesting to look up, always. The affiliations tell
you an awful lot about who's who and who's writing what. He's a “public policy
scholar,” interesting, at the Wilson Center and holder of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science’s Roger Revelle
Fellowship in Global Environmental Stewardship.
It's written by one of THEM, you know, “those guys”—those guys "in
the know" on the big CON that's going on, and so they can't give obviously
anything near a fair description.”
I
looked up those affiliations. The Wilson
Center is a public-private partnership and receives one third of its annual
funds from the U.S. government.
According to Wikipedia, “The
remainder of the center's funding comes from foundations, grants and contracts,
corporations, individuals, endowment income, and subscriptions.” The Center was established within the
Smithsonian Institution but has its own board of trustees. The current board chairman is Bill Haslam, a
billionaire who has a background in Tennessee politics, including serving as
the state’s governor for two four-year terms.
The Wilson Center is a Governmental
Organization think-tank, instrumental in shaping policy, but the bulk of its
money is from private sources or foundations which often have the label “public.”
They are anything but public.
The simplest way to characterize the
American Association for the Advancement of Science is to liken it to the
U.K.’s Royal Society. It’s old and
august.
Roger Revelle
of the Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global
Environmental Stewardship (of which James R. Fleming was a holder) was among
the early scientists to study anthropogenic global warming. Revelle was born in
1909 and died in 1991. Revelle’s 1957 paper, co-written with Hans Suess, was the
first paper on the “greenhouse effect.”
In that paper, the term “global warming” appeared for the first time.
***
Alan ended this talk with the song
“Dirty Old Town” performed by The Dubliners, an Irish folk band formed in
1962. Alan liked The Dubliners,
particularly the early recordings when the lineup featured Luke Kelly and Ronnie
Drew. “Dirty Old Town” was popularized
by The Dubliners and later The Pogues, but it was
written in 1949 by James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name, Ewan MacColl. MacColl was a folk singer-songwriter, labour activist and
actor, born in England to Scottish parents.
“Dirty Old Town” has been described
as a love song written for the town where MacColl was
born, Salford, Lancashire. MacColl wrote the song to cover an awkward scene change in
a play he wrote entitled “Landscape with Chimneys.”
The first verse refers to the
gasworks “croft,” a piece of open land adjacent to the gasworks, and then the old
canal, which was the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal. The original line in the song about “the
Salford wind” is most often sung as “the sulphured wind”.
MacColl’s
parents were socialists, and he joined the Young Communist League and was a
member of a socialist acting troupe. MI5
opened a file on him in 1932. MacColl met actress Joan Littlewood in 1934 when she joined
his acting company, Theatre of Action, and married her shortly after. In 1941, Littlewood was banned from
broadcasting on the BBC, and MI5 opened a file on her as a security risk. She and MacColl
divorced in 1949, and some years later she began a long relationship with
Philippe de Rothschild. Rothschild was a
member of the banking dynasty, a race car driver, poet, playwright, and vintner,
but evidently not a security risk.
Luke Kelly has sometimes been called
Ireland’s red troubadour. Born to a poor
family, he was raised in a building with a communal toilet and tap shared by
eight families. In his youth, he left
Ireland and became an itinerate worker in England. He cleaned windows and worked on the
rails. He described himself as a
beatnik. It was during those years in
England that he met Sean and Mollie Mulready,
Communists who had left Ireland because of what they described as persecution
from the church and state. The Mulreadys introduced Kelly to Marxism. He joined
the Young Communists League and the Connolly Association, an Irish emigrant
group linked to the Communist Party in Britain.
The Mulreadys and Marxist “classicist” George
Thompson oversaw his studies in literature and left-wing politics. One article I read described his decision to
move away from politics and focus on folk music, but it is more accurate to
consider this as an extension of his politics, especially since he was
musically mentored by Ewan MacColl and his new wife
Peggy Seeger.
Peggy Seeger was the daughter of Charles
Seeger, a musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and folklorist. Charles Seeger attended New York City’s The
New School for Social Research, founded in 1919 by a group of men including
John Dewey. Amongst scholars associated
with The New School for Social Research (NSSR) were Erich Fromm and Max Wortheimer and others from the Frankfurt School. Charles Seeger would later teach at the NSSR.
One of Charles Seeger’s more
interesting jobs was his 1936 appointment to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal
Resettlement Administration, formed in 1935.
It relocated
struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal
government. This was succeeded by the
Farm Security Administration in 1937.
Seeger was technical advisor to the Music Unit of the Special Skills
Division of the Resettlement Administration.
The agency that “relocated” struggling families to communities planned
by the federal government had a music department.
Peggy
Seeger’s brother was folk musician and folklorist Mike Seeger, and her
half-brother was folk singer and activist Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League
in 1936 and in 1942 became a member of Communist Party USA, leaving that
organization in 1949, but maintaining left-leaning social activism throughout
his long life.
In Pete Seeger’s career, it is an
early job with his father’s friend and colleague Alan Lomax, that is worth
pondering. In 1938, Seeger took a position
from Lomax who was working at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library
of Congress. They sifted through all the
commercial “race” and “hillbilly” recordings to find music that best
represented American folk music. This
sifting of recordings was funded by the music division of the Pan American
Union (later the Organization of American States.) The Pan American Union was conceived by
Franklin D. Roosevelt as a League of Nations of the Americas. The music division of the Pan American Union
was headed by Pete Seeger’s father, Charles, from 1938 through 1953.
Before the revolution was
televised, it was set to music.
Peter Doherty is an English musician, songwriter, actor,
poet, writer, and artist. His music has
been described as indie-rock, post-punk, and eclectic. Doherty was raised in a military family. His father was a major in the Royal
Signals. His mother was a lance-corporal
in Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps.
Doherty has battled drug addiction and said, “I nearly lost my feet from
injecting.”
Doherty is
the latest in a long line of performers who’ve sung “Dirty Old Town.” In February of this year, on England’s
Channel 4, he sang MacColl’s song in Ukrainian. At the end of the song, he shouted “slava Ukraini!”, meaning “glory
to Ukraine”.
©
Not Sure
Additional reading:
Ewan
MacColl: the godfather of folk who was adored – and feared
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/25/ewan-maccoll-godfather-folk-adored-and-feared
Ireland’s
Red Troubadour
https://jacobin.com/2018/03/luke-kelly-ireland-folk-rare-ould-times-socialism
Pete
Doherty sings ‘Dirty Old Town’ in Ukrainian in rare TV appearance