`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 9

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 8 of article).

According to the book Little Wonder by John Bainbridge, the “transformation of the Reader’s Digest into something other than a digest began in the early 1930s.” The magazine began to hire writers directly to produce articles for Reader’s Digest to reprint—after Reader’s Digest first “planted” these same articles in other magazines. Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry recalled: “The Digest…subsidized original articles in its client magazines” like Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, but “nowhere in those magazines, were readers given notice that articles purporting to be original with the respective editor of each publication were, in fact, either original with the Digest or paid for with Digest money.” According to Little Wonder:

“In the five years from 1939 through 1943, the Digest planted articles in more than 60 publications…Of 47 articles reprinted from Harper’s, eight were Digest plants; of 39 furnished by the Atlantic Monthly, eight were plants;…of eight taken from The Nation, five were plants; of 26 credited to the New Republic, eight were plants and 13 others were on the Digest’s presses before the New Republic appeared on the stands with them…The Digest gave Commonwealth credit for nine reprinted articles; all were plants…”

By 1962, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom, “articles planted in other magazines for reprinting later in the Digest now constituted 70 percent of every issue in the U.S. edition.” Its policy of subsidizing and planting articles in other magazines before re-printing them in Reader’s Digest “gave the Digest power to propagandize its right-wing political views across a broad spectrum of the periodical press,” according to a reference book titled The Magazine In America. (end of part 9)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

African-American Male Worker Jobless Rate Under Obama Regime: 17 Percent

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American male workers over 20 years-of-age under the Democratic Obama Regime jumped from 15.8 to 17 percent between July and August 2009; while the rate for African-American female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 11.7 to 11.9 percent in August 2009, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all African-American workers (which also takes into account the 34.7 percent jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years of age) increased from 14.5 to 15.1 percent between July and August 2009.

Between July and August 2009, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Hispanic or Latino male workers over 20 years of age increased from 11.2 to 12.3 percent. For all Hispanic or Latino workers over 16 years of age (which takes into account the 34 percent “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino youth), the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate increased to 13 percent in August 2009.

For white male workers in the United States over 16 years of age, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate increased from 10.5 to 10.9 percent between July and August 2009, while the rate for white female workers over 16 years of age increased from 8.1 to 8.2 percent.

The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Asian-American workers did decrease from 8.3 to 7.5 percent in August 2009. But the official “seasonally adjusted” national jobless rate for all U.S. workers increased from 9.4 to 9.7 percent between July and August 2009.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September 4, 2009 press release:

“In August, the number of unemployed persons increased by 466,000 to 14.9 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.3 percentage points to 9.7 percent…

“In August, the number of persons working part time for economic reasons was little changed at 9.1 million. These individuals indicated that they were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job…

“About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August…

"These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey...

“Among the marginally attached, the number of discouraged workers in August (758,000) has nearly doubled over the past 12 months. (The data are not seasonally adjusted). Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them….

“Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 216,000 in August….

“In August, construction employment declined by 65,000...

“In August, manufacturing employment continued to trend downward, with a decline of 63,000…Motor vehicles and parts lost 15,000 jobs in August…

“Financial activities shed 28,000 jobs in August, with declines spread throughout the industry…

“Wholesale trade employment fell by 17,000 in August. Employment in information continued to trend down over the month…

“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from -443,000 to -463,000, and the change for July was revised from -247,000 to -276,000…”

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 8

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 7 of article).

After Reader's Digest Founder DeWitt "Wally" Wallace started selling Reader’s Digest on U.S. newsstands in 1929, some of the editors and publishers who had been letting him reprint their magazine articles in condensed forms for free finally realized how profitable the Digest had become by that time. Some now began to view Reader’s Digest as a competing product on the newsstand. So to induce them to keep allowing Reader’s Digest to reprint articles from their magazines and to insure that imitators would not have access to a similar source of articles, Wallace signed exclusive reprint agreements with 35 other U.S. magazines in 1929, in which he agreed to now pay these magazines quite generously.

By 1934, 1.5 million copies of Reader’s Digest were being circulated in the U.S., including over 500,000 copies that were sold on U.S. newsstands. The magazine’s then-net profit exceeded $400,000 during the height of the Great Depression and by 1938 Reader’s Digest’s circulation had jumped to three million—the largest of any U.S. magazine at that time. By 1942, its U.S. circulation was five million. And by 1946, the U.S. circulation of Reader’s Digest was 9 million.

After 1939, the Reader’s Digest Association began publishing the international editions of its magazines in nine foreign languages, as well as in English, which the CIA apparently utilized as propaganda outlets following World War II. By 1947, the combined circulation of Reader’s Digest’s international editions exceeded 4.6 million. The nine foreign languages utilized were Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, French and German. (end of part 8)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

70th Anniversary of World War II

September 1, 2009 marks the 70th anniversary of German imperialism’s bombing and invasion of Poland. As Hammer or Anvil? Modern Germany 1648—Present by Heoger Herwig recalled, “at 4:45 a.m. on the morning of September 1, 1939, the German armored cruiser Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on Polish fortifications near Danzig as German troops crossed the border into Poland.”

According to the book The Second World War: A World In Flames:

“By 16 September [1939] the German forces had the Polish capital, Warsaw, surrounded, and they proceeded to bombard the city from the air and the ground…Warsaw eventually surrendered on 27 September [1939] with around 40,000 civilian casualties…The Poles…did manage to inflict significant casualties on the Germans. They…killed 13,000 German soldiers, wounding a further 30,000…

“The Polish campaign had been blighted by numerous acts of cruelty by German formations—SS and police units mainly…Now with Poland defeated, these isolated acts of cruelty were approved in the highest quarters of Nazi German and were formalized into a program of terror…During the years of the German occupation, six million Polish citizens died…

“As the German war machine moved eastwards, overrunning territory and population, it also encountered millions of Polish and Russian Jews. Some were shot in mass killings and many others were corralled into walled areas of major cities known as ghettos.”

The Hammer or Anvil? book also noted:

“Stuka dive bombers attacked major concentrations of Polish forces and civilian centers…Covered by a special amnesty issued by Hitler and General von Brauchitsch, five special SS execution units (Einsatzgruppen) roamed the Polish countryside and murdered preselected doctors, priests, civil servants, country squires and merchants. Reinhard Heydrich of the Security Forces [SD] crowed as early as September 27 [1939] that only 3 percent of the Polish intelligentsia survived…On September 21 [1939], Heydrich developed his initial blueprint for the Polish [and later European] Jews. The Jews were to be herded into special `reservations’ through the auspices of Councils of Jewish Elders (Judenrat) for eventual concentration in…ghettos at Warsaw, Craw, Lublin, Radon…”

The same book also recalled that “in Berlin, Adolf Hitler began the war with a lie, informing the Reichstag that regular units of the Polish army had fired on German territory.”

According to The Second World War: A World In Flames book:

“Despite Hitler’s ambition and confidence, the Germans went through an elaborate charade in order to convince the world that Germany was provoked. Men from the…SD department of the SS, under the overall direction of Reinhard Heydrich, planned an operation to precipitate the war that Hitler wanted. This operation, code-named Hindenburg, involved three simultaneous raids: the first was on the radio station at Gleiwitz, the second on the small customs post at Hochlinden, and the third on an isolated gamekeeper’s hut at Pitschen. The raids were to be conducted by men dressed in Polish uniforms, and at Gleiwitz the plan was that the attack would be heard live on radio—with the attackers’ voices, speaking in Polish and declaiming Germany, being broadcast live over the air to maximize their impact…

“…Four condemned men from the Sauchsenhausen concentration camp and a single German (a local Polish sympathizer) were murdered to provide evidence for the Polish incursions—the corpses, dressed in Polish uniforms, were photographed to complete the provocation. Despite the planning, the radio attack failed to be broadcast because of the poor strength of the transmitter. Hitler was nevertheless able to announce to the Reichstag on 1 September [1939] that `Polish troops of the regular army have been firing on our territory during the night [of 31 August/ 1 September]. Since 05.45 we have been returning that fire.’ The Second World was up and running..”

As a result of World War II, 55 million human beings were killed. The same book summarized the World War II casualty figures in Europe in the following way:

“During the five-year conflict, Germany incurred 2.8 million military and 2 million civilian deaths, including 500,000 by Western Allied strategic bombing. The Soviets suffered the worst, with 6.3 million military and perhaps 17 million civilian deaths. Europe’s other populations suffered a further 1.8 million military and 10.5 million civilian deaths, the latter including 5.5 million Jews. The three Western Allied powers incurred 700,000 military deaths in the European theater…”

Remembering Kennedy Dynasty's Historic Time-Warner/CNN Media Conglomerate Connection

Although Henry Luce’s Time Inc. [n/k/a/ Time-Warner/CNN] media conglomerate endorsed Richard Nixon during the 1960 Nixon vs. Kennedy presidential contest, Henry Luce was also a close friend of JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Luce had utilized the Time Inc. media empire during the 1950s to transform John F. Kennedy into a media-star and Democratic Party presidential nominee [in a similar way to how Time-Warner/CNN transformed the Kennedy Dynasty-backed Barack Obama into a media-star and Democratic Party presidential nominee in recent years].

According to Henry R. Luce And The Rise of The American News Media by James Baughman, in the 1930s “Joseph Kennedy began a family tradition of winning allies in the fourth estate.” Luce’s Time Inc. publications “had usually treated Joseph Kennedy and his family admiringly” and Time Inc. Founder Henry Luce wrote the introduction to John F. Kennedy’s first book, Why England Slept. The Henry R. Luce And The Rise of The American News Media book also noted that on “the night John Kennedy delivered his acceptance speech before the Democratic convention, his father watched the event on Luce’s television set in New York” and at JFK’s inaugural ball Henry Luce and his wife, Claire Booth Luce, “”sat in Joseph Kennedy’s box.”

The Right Places, Right Times book by former Time magazine editor-in-chief Hedley Donovan noted that “Time Inc. was in some respects closer to the Kennedy Administration than to the Eisenhower Administration.” The same book also revealed that during JFK’s Administration “the White House got a special copy of Time a day ahead of the rest of Washington” and U.S. President Kennedy would complain about “a picture caption or an unflattering photo angle.” Luce would then usually attend “to Kennedy’s complaints” personally “by mail or a visit to the Oval office.”

(Downtown 1/29/92)

Remembering Kennedy Dynasty's 1980s Wealth--Part 2

According to the 1983 book by Harrison Rainie and John Quinn, Growing Up Kennedy, prior to his death in 1990, Steve Smith managed the family trusts and parceled out individual payments through the Park Agency to the 29 grandchildren of Joseph Kennedy. The Park Agency is “in effect a private family bank” which was managed by the late Steve Smith, according to the same book.

Growing Up Kennedy also noted that “there is a deliberate effort to obscure rather than reveal the extent and disposition of family funds” which are dished out to Kennedy Dynasty members, but indicated that Joseph Kennedy’s 29 grandchildren received their handouts according to the following procedure:

“Upon reaching 18, each grandchild begins receiving between $15,000 and $20,000 a year. The full inheritance income begins at age 21, when each grandchild collects up to $30,000 a year. Each cousin’s personal capital is said to be about $300,000. Some also share in their parents’ portions, and Caroline and [the now-deceased] John have separate income from earnings on their [now-deceased] mother’s $20-million share from the estate of Aristotle Onassis. A major advantage of the trust arrangement is that the Park Agency pays the taxes, so that each cousin gets spendable income, equivalent to a taxable salary of at least $50,000.”

The same book also revealed that several of Joseph Kennedy’s grandchildren “drive BMW sport cars” and all 29 of the grandchildren “take regular and spectacular vacations, which they arrange simply by calling a number at the Park Agency.”

One of Joseph Kennedy’s grandchildren, former Congressional Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II of Massachusetts, used $250,000 of his handout money to make a loan to his own congressional campaign fund when he ran for U.S. Congress in 1986, according to The Best Congress Money Can Buy by Philip Stern. Another grandchild of Joseph Kennedy, Maria Shriver [the wife of Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger] used to be seen reading the news on the Establishment’s television screen—although she didn’t often read us news about the latest developments at the Kennedy Dynasty’s Park Agency.

(Downtown 12/25/91)

Remembering Kennedy Dynasty's 1980s Wealth--Part 1

In his book The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, John Davis described how the Kennedy Dynasty’s family holding company, Park Agency Inc., and its Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation operated in the early 1980s:

“The Kennedy enterprises that are managed in room 1850 at 125 Park Avenue represent money accumulated by Joseph P. Kennedy during the years 1920 to 1969 and consists of trust funds the patriarch established for his wife and children, several charitable foundations, and a string of businesses that feed those trusts and foundations. The aggregate value of these enterprises, which, taken together, constitute `the Kennedy fortune,’ has never been revealed, but it is thought to amount to something in the neighborhood of $350 million [as of 1983]...

“Since John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy [and Edward M. Kennedy] are dead, their trusts have passed on to their children. John F. Kennedy Jr. [now-deceased] and Caroline Kennedy receive income from Kennedy trusts worth from $7.5 million to $10 million each, in addition to the substantial trusts established for them by Aristotle Onassis, and the children of Robert F. Kennedy receive income off trusts worth about $1 million…

“Feeding the Kennedy trusts, foundations, and memorials are the various Kennedy-owned businesses that are either held or managed by the Park Agency.

“The largest of these, by far, is the Merchandise Mart, a 24-story structure in Chicago with 1,000 tenants, currently [as of 1983] worth about $200 million, which generate an annual income of about $25 million a year. Other Kennedy businesses include the Corpus Christi-based Mokeen Oil Corporation, and the Kenoil Corporation, worth around $20 million, with oil-producing properties in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and California. These are the principal moneymakers. Other Kennedy-controlled businesses include the Park Agency’s considerable real estate holdings, the Sutton Producing Corporation, a small oil company based in San Antonio, and the Forest Oil Corporation of Bradford, Pennsylvania, which is [was] wholly owned by [the now-deceased] Senator Edward Kennedy. Finally, rounding out the Kennedy holdings is a substantial portfolio of stocks and bonds containing such standard blue chips as Exxon, IBM and Eastman Kodak.”

(Downtown 3/25/92)