I don’t know exactly what Lila is referring to…but her request sounds reasonable…could you try to figure it out and ask Addison to add a line such as she suggests?

Thanks

Bill

In a message dated 1/29/2008 12:38:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, lila rajiva writes:

Mr B –

Just a word about those articles (Transit of Venus, Consuming Passions etc) which you’ve published under your name.

I am OK with it because the original pieces were written under your name. But, I should point out that they were not written solely for the DR (as your web page says) but BOTH for the DR and the book. I checked my email record. In fact, we really wrote them for the book and used them in the DR, especially CP.

Writing that it was only for the DR looks like an effort to undermine the copyright. Copyright, I should point out, isn’t affected by our agreement on acknowledgment and promoting……the copyright on all the material is still held by both of us.

The acknowledgment agreement just means we are allowing each other to cite our own work freely as a courtesy but we still accept that the essays were written for the book.

In the case of Transit, it’s all your essay and no input from me, so there is no problem even if there is a confusion.

But Consuming Passions was an essay I worked on and gave you important ideas for (homo farber etc) and it was one we wrote with the intention that it was to be used in the book. And I didn’t mind it being under your name because I knew the copyright would still be under both our names.

So it’s not fine to say it was written for the DR only. It was actually written for Mobs and published on DR.

I’d like a piece like that to have a little thing underneath saying (with the help of Lila Rajiva)…I’m not asking to share the byline, but just a little acknowledgment. Since no one ever knew I helped you on the DR for the period we wrote the book..and your readers don’t know that a lot of the essays under your name have some input from me…

Which means, if I cite my own idea later on, it will just seem – unfairly – like I was poaching on your idea.

You can publish C Passions under your name under your collected works, for eg, but I would like you to acknowledge my help on it and on the essays central to the argument (Consuming Passions, All Men are Created Equal – where it was me who originally gave you the idea of scale from the Hutterite research and argued it  was more important than the  public-private distinction).

In turn, although my solo essays contain references to do-gooders and world-improvers, I would credit you as having coined those terms in any discussions…but that’s less important, because most people who read us would recognize them anyway as your terms since it’s obvious I am imitating you.

Doesn’t mean you can’t publish the essays under your name.  But it means we need to draw up a consistent citation policy that will spare us trouble later. And Addison had better abide by it.

Hope you are OK with that. I will draw up a very detailed analysis of the whole book which will show how each part can be cited which will let you use your own work separately but also acknowledge whenever there was substantial contribution (more than editorial) from me. You will have a chance to vet it of course.

I will consult with a copyright attorney and then send it to you for future citation.

Meanwhile, just let Addison know that those essays were written for the book as much as for the DR..even more so, so he should take that line off..

So that’s something concrete you can give your assent to. Since you asked what you could do to help.

I tried to call you but you weren’t available.
Say hello to Claire. She was nice to me.

Lila

From: William Bonner

Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:11:17 -0500
Subject: Re: foreign rights

I know she thinks she’s been treated shabbily.  But when I ask how…and what can be done about it…I never get an answer that I can understand or act upon.  I just get insults.

She seems to want explanations from me for things that I don’t know anything about.  And when I tell her that I just don’t know anything about it…she believes I am lying.
(And then accuses me of lying to her for the last couple of years…about what, I’m not sure.)

Not that this is your problem…but you seem to believe that she actually has been treated shabbily.  So, I’ll assume you are a reasonable person…and just ask — How?
And if so…is there anything I can do about it?

Bill

P.S.  I’m at my phone..in London…but only for a few minutes more…I have to leave for Paris this afternoon.

From: Lila Rajiva
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 9:15 PM
To: J H
Cc: Bill Bonner; T R
Subject: French contract/Dr Skousen book signing /PR issues

J –

I think we can take care of the Chinese contract this week.

Not a problem except that the Chinese agent is now charging us, a second fee, probably another10% or so, like the Germans.

So, I’m asking DELETED to put a note in that the contract is acceptable assuming reasonable fees. It’s not a deal breaker, it just means I don’t want them asking for something exorbitant like 20% after we sign. Let me know if that might be an issue.

I’ve asked DELETED to go over to your office and sign off on it, including the royalties change and acknowledgment document, whenever you both can arrange it.
[J H] No problem.
French contract:

If you are able, please tell Bill I am willing to do what is reasonably possible to help him on it.
Also, if you can, please ask him if he would consider another (more commercial) publisher?
Or even translating and publishing on our own or through something like Interlink..
It may actually be better that way. [J H] He said that if you or someone can find a publisher it’s okay with him.  He is not interested in publishing ourselves…we have no way to distribute.

PR peculiarities:

Also, a couple of odd things:

1. Wiley refused to let me do a book talk or signing in August/September in Baltimore where it would cost nothing (I had a lot of requests). But now they have Dr. Skousen talking about the book and signing it in Texas (listed on their website) in April… A reader wrote and asked…..Is that some kind of mistake…or did Bill OK it? Is it usual for third parties to sign and talk about books…isn’t that part of the promotion designated for authors? Just asking. [J H] He can’t imagine it…and it doesn’t make sense to him.  He doesn’t know anything about it.

With respect, it wasn’t what we agreed….

2. The invites to Bermuda and to Freedom Fest to me to speak on the book seem to have been canceled around the week in December when I asked for more  time to review the contracts.
Was that related? Not giving offense, just curious.[J H]  He doesn’t know anything about the invitations and has never spoken to anyone about it.

And a couple of corrections I hope can be made:

Corrections:

1. On Bill’s bio on the DR, there is still no reference/link to “Mobs” at all.. I’ve been asking for that for a few months. And it would be nice, if the page mentioned me as author too. Otherwise it really sounds like a deliberate snub. Not good PR.

Attribution isn’t promotion. It’s an ownership issue, like the title to a house. [J H] I will ask them to include this.

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/BillBonner.html

2. On the same page, the page length review by Alex Greene doesn’t credit me at all and then quotes a couple of lines I wrote (and have published on the web) as Bill’s….it was probably a mistake but I’ve asked for it to be changed a number of times[J H] He doesn’t know anything about Alex Greene’s review and nver spoke to Alex. And Bill says that quote IS from you. I will ask whoever controls the website to make the changes you requested.

http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2007/20070827.html

“As Bill writes, “Thus does the neocortex sputter in fits and starts from dubious assumptions to preposterous conclusions with nary a whisper of doubt in between.”

(actually, these are my lines in Ch 4)

(Also, in the review Greene still uses that quote from Faber’s from my private email..Bill told me it’s minor…maybe..).

Not sure if there are other implications for me arising from this…
Does Bill think this is fair and in keeping with our deal on the book?

Not sure what I have done really except ask for some time and clarity on things and do my best to keep my end of the bargain.

Respectfully.
Lila

______________________________________

Note on November 3, Wed.: I added this additional email exchange from the time, to show that I was already working on the Goldman Sachs connection in June 2006, that it originated in my larger research interests from my first book and my writing for Counterpunch, that Mr. Bonner was aware of this, and aware of my ongoing media activism and my professional stake in having my contributions being seen independently, not as simply ghost-writing or editorial work on behalf of Agora’s marketing of its own products. Again, no malice or harm is intended to anyone mentioned here. I post these simply to show I was telling the truth all along, didn’t exploit the company platform in anyway, didn’t insinuate myself into it in order to bust its modus operandi, didn’t manipulate or otherwise do anything self-aggrandizing, but simply negotiated a contract fairly and truthfully…and then found myself at the receiving end of a lot of abuse from several different people who are far more powerful and connected than I am...

Re: Christison CP article on Israeli lobby?

Dear Lila,

We’re honored to have such good comments from a great writer and activist
like you. Thanks so much…… It would be nice to think that
someday we truthtellers will emerge into the light of the mainstream and be
heard, but on most days this seems a forlorn hope

Keep up the good struggle anyway–just in case, as Gandhi said, we win in
the end.

Thanks so much,
Kathy & Bill Christison

—– Original Message —–
From: “Lila Rajiva”
To: kathy and bill christison
Cc: Willam Bonner; editor at dissidentvoice.org
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 11:31 AM
Subject: Christison CP article on Israeli lobby

Enjoyed your critique in CP of Chomsky/Finkelstein over the
Mearsheimer/Walt piece immensely. It’s right on.

When I was researching “The Language of Empire” – on the US media – I
realized that I would have to make the Israeli lobby fairly
central….spent three chapters doing just that only to find them axed
with a lot of feeble excuses by my publisher. Nor have I heard any
alternative magazine mention the conservative Jewish organization EMET
which promoted the Iraq war, though the Wall Street Journal actually did a
piece on it.

I am currently writing about the appointment of Hank Paulson of Goldman
Sachs and even a cursory glance at the literature shows how far back its
influence over government extends and to what it tended.

It’s easy to succumb to the Marxist analysis that US foreign policy is
always only about corporate interests. But in my view, the ascendancy of
Israel’s power in the West has more to do with esoteric religious
claims…from the truth of the Darby Bible to the Lost Tribes of
Israel….to the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple. One needs to connect US
to British history to see this.

And a conspiratorial view of history is merely a view that says that
individuals act at the helm of history not as unconscious forces of a
material dialectic but also and at least equally as conscious forces in
the services of ideas.

Lila Rajiva

__________________________________

Added: November 10, 2009

It was Mr. Bonner who approached me and asked me to work with him. It took 4 months of back and forth before, with some reluctance, I agreed to.

• your writing?

8/25/05

William Bonner

From:	William Bonner
Sent:	Thu 8/25/05 1:35 PM
To:	Lrajiva

I read your piece on Baltimore real estate.

(Someone sent it to me.  I live in Europe.)

I liked the style and content.  It made me wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to meet.  I have a publishing business in Baltimore,  Agora, Inc.  We have offices all over the world (we’re a mini-multi-national).  We hope to open one in India next year, as a matter of fact.

If you are interested in freelance or salary work…it might be worth a visit.

Unfortunately, I’m based in London.  I’m in Baltimore today only (leaving at 6PM).

Of course, we can always follow up by email.

With admiration,

Bill Bonner

Added: November 11, 2005

“Playing Monopoly in Charm City” is the piece  I wrote on the housing market, which Bonner refers to in his letter below above.

One of the reasons I ended up accepting his offer, even though I had doubts about it, was that I’d actually lost quite a bit of money selling out of some mutual funds (where I held my savings), all because of something I’d read in a Daily Reckoning editorial at a certain point in time that turned out later to have been the bottom of the market. After that debacle, I started following other newsletters.

Before my loss, I’d been subscribing to a couple of Agora newsletters – NAMES DELETED.  I wasn’t unhappy with either. They were cheap (about $60 a year) and they gave me some good ideas. I never made any money from them, but, except for one stock, I didn’t really lose. And even that probably had more to do with the fact that I never followed their timing.  Since I subscribed mainly to get ideas, I didn’t think it was a bad deal at all. I enjoyed reading the DR commentary, nonetheless, and considered them to be on the cutting edge of alternative insights into the economy. I still think they are.

As for the money I lost that fall, I guess I learned a hard lesson. And I learned it well. Although it made me too terrified to trade for several years (until 2008 really), I did learn to control my emotions, an invaluable skill in recent years. So, like Ryals, I too lost money, because of Agora. The difference is that I didn’t blame them alone. Instead, I tried to get better at investing.

In any case, at the time I was hired in late 2005, I mentioned my loss to Mr. Bonner and told him that he ought to write in a less alarmist fashion.  I recall he told me then to consider his offer a partial payback. Of course, he was also opening an Indian office, and my  ethnic background, as well as my interests in international politics, propaganda, and globalization, all recommended themselves to him.

Now, before my interview, I’d googled the company and had run into the posts by Ryals.  I’d written to him and asked him what his criticism was about. He wrote back so elaborately and in such detail that I decided he might be a bit unhinged and  imagining things.

Still, I  did ask Mr. Bonner about Davidson and Stansberry. I was told that the former no longer worked there. Bonner also insisted that the Stansberry case was not a “pump and dump,” as the press had dubbed it.  That was certainly true, although my opinion was that Stansberry was nonetheless guilty of hyping, beyond what might be normal even in the newsletter business. I recall telling Mr. Bonner at the time that the first amendment would not protect blatant exaggeration when there was a large sum involved.  He shrugged and remarked that the people who bought these sorts of investments were not innocents. Many of them were speculators and touts themselves, and the rest ought to know better than to gamble. He admitted he had developed a somewhat callous attitude about such things.

Throughout, our conservation was courteous.  As anyone who knows him would vouch, Mr. Bonner, widely known in the direct-mail/online marketing business, is a very polished and persuasive individual, and when he assured me that I could work on my own, without any contact with either of the two people mentioned, I figured it would be worth giving the project a shot.

So that’s what happened. I’ve described it here at length so as to counter the false, malicious, and positively ridiculous allegations Ryals has plastered about me all over Indymedia and other sites.

There was nothing in the slightest bit nefarious about how I went to work for Agora.  I did not know Stansberry or Davidson at the time, or at any point after. I believe I’ve been in the same room as Stansberry just once. And I subscribed to a newsletter published by him. That’s it. Davidson I know nothing about, beyond what I’ve read.

As for Stansberry writing to Ryals at the same time as I did, that’s simply a coincidence. And not such a remarkable one, considering that Ryals was calling Stansberry names all over the net. It would be only natural that Stansberry, or someone like me who was about to work with the company, would find the reams of allegations interesting and write to Ryals.

Ryals also claims some kind of conspiracy because both Stansberry and I said the same thing about Davidson in our letters to him (i.e. that Davidson didn’t work at Agora any more). Well, maybe we both said so because that was precisely the case at the time. Or, at least, that was what the company was saying at the time.

Then Ryals makes a big issue about Davidson now being back at Agora. That too has an obvious explanation. Davidson seems to be an old friend of Bonner’s and has a long history with the company. A friend might well choose to honor that history over whatever happened between Davidson and the SEC. Most people tend to stick up for old friends, regardless of what they do.

So, from these perfectly innocuous events that have quite harmless explanations, Ryals – apparently out of random malice and anger over his own losses  –  concocted a grand conspiracy in which a “strange woman” (“he,” “she”, or “it,” as he puts it), of  “supposedly Indian” origin goes to bat for a far-right Anglo-American conspiracy outfit of epic proportions, all for the mind-boggling sum of $25 bucks an hour… and an advance of roughly $25,000.

Now, I’m a fairly well-off woman, with several degrees and professional skills that would pay me twice that. I’m told I’m a talented writer. I’m in no want of any kind, especially as I live quite frugally. Is it reasonable to believe that I  “sold out” for a monetary sum so piddling? Especially, when those who allegedly bought me are described as “fabulously wealthy”?

Note: This statement should not be seen as any kind of endorsement of the company, its business practices, its past record, or its networks. I have no contact with them, beyond what arises in relation to the book. I believe anyone with common sense can draw their own accurate conclusions.