Burnishers

At Politico (via Mr Seymour):

One of the more unlikely figures to have advised a firm which has worked to burnish Libya's image and grow its economy is not registered with the Justice Department. Prominent neoconservative Richard Perle, the former Reagan-era Defense Department official and George W. Bush-era chairman of the Defense Policy Board, traveled to Libya twice in 2006 to meet with Qadhafi, and afterward briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on his visits, according to documents released by a Libyan opposition group in 2009.

Perle traveled to Libya as a paid adviser to the Monitor Group, a prestigious Boston-based consulting firm with close ties to leading professors at the Harvard Business School. The firm named Perle a senior adviser in 2006.

The Monitor Group described Perle’s travel to Libya and the recruitment of several other prominent thinkers and former officials to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s image in a series of documents obtained and released by a Libyan opposition group, the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition, in 2009.

...

A 2007 Monitor memo named among the prominent figures it had recruited to travel to Libya and meet with Qadhafi “as part of the Project to Enhance the Profile of Libya and Muammar Qadhafi” Perle, historian Francis Fukuyama, Princeton Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, famous Nixon interviewer David Frost, and MIT media lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, the brother of former deputy secretary of state and director of national intelligence John Negroponte.

...

Monitor is not listed with the Justice Department as a lobbyist for Libya, as it explained in a 2006 letter to its Libyan client:

“Monitor is not a lobbying organization,” its CEO Mark Fuller and Director Rajeev Singh-Molares wrote to their Libyan client in July 2006. “Our ability to introduce important, influential visitors to Libya’s advantage depends on our experience, prestige, networks and reputation for independence. We are deeply committed to helping you with this program.”

The memo also mentions popularist of the "Third Way" Anthony Giddens, and says of David Frost:

Frost has repeatedly requested the opportunity to interview Qadhafi, in a program that would be broadcast to a global television audience. A date has not yet been agreed.

Better get a wriggle on.

Tinkering

The more interesting the world gets, the less I have to say. So instead I added a bunch of stuff to the blogroll: Things Magazine; Inside Story; Salon.com's War Room; the Verso, LRB, FAIR and Overland blogs; Talking Squid; Pink Tentacle; Greg Palast; Neil Gaiman and Drawn!

I think I'll call it the Alps.

Auld Lang Syne

Robert Dreyfuss finally gets around to penning the piece on the Muslim Brotherhood he promised here. It's a useful overview of the Brotherhood's history, influence, and possible mellowing. Since the January 25 rebellion started, almost everything on the net about the Brotherhood has cheerfully ignored their off-and-on history as clients of the US (and the British), part of imperial policies designed to marginalise Third World leftists and nationalists by abetting the Religious Right. Mr Dreyfuss includes this history - unsurprisingly, as it was a major strand of the thesis of his good-book-with-a-silly-title Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. More comprehensive coverage is supplied in the linked article by Ian Johnson. Both Mr Dreyfuss and Mr Johnson can't resist including the photograph of Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan meeting that radical leftist and coiner of the phrase "the military-industrial complex" Dwight Eisenhower.

Well, Well

What a remarkably interesting year this is shaping up to be.

Niche

In other news, Tom Switzer, Awful Pundit, Is Awful.