Nigeria: The Persecution of Heroes and the Patent on Terror

Boko Haram: Just another US terrorist brand to suppress Islamic movement in Nigeria

The Wall Will Fall

December 17, 2015

by Vanessa Beeley

We live in a world where those who are honoured are the sowers of discord and the reapers of mayhem, the state sponsored agents of chaos.  We no longer honour the true heroes, we honour an illusion called power and greed.  The state media apparatuses serve only to keep historic Fitna (sedition) wounds festering and the “NGO complex” pied piper plays the tune of stake-holding in human suffering, created in advance by the Empire’s composers of death.

According to the Nigerian Government forces, a traffic infringement justifies the massacre of over 1000 Muslims who were performing the religious ceremony of ushering in the new month of Maulud, honouring  the birth of the Prophet Mohammed of Islam [pbuh].

In a statement on Sunday the army said: “The Nigerian Constitution guarantees the rights of any group of persons and Sheikh El Zakzaky’s followers to hold a peaceful march or procession unhindered, but it also guarantees other people’s rights of way on public highways.”

Claims of an attempted assassination of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai or even of the alleged attacks by the Islamic sect on the military convoy are rendered questionable by the sheer lack of reported casualties on the military side and the shockingly disproportionate loss of life and bloodshed among the Islamic Sect supporters and leaders.

If indeed, this were a simple fracas over “right of way on a public highway” which resulted in the shooting of unarmed Muslims, why then did the same Nigerian government armed forces attack Hussainiyah, the sect’s headquarters later the same evening, hours after the initial clashes?   Why did they deliberately target high ranking members of the Shi’ite Islamic movement and execute Hamad Zakaky, son of the movement leader Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky.  Why did they attack and wound the Sheikh’s wife, Zeenat?  Why did they shoot the Sheikh himself, four times in his hands, publicly humiliate and arrest him? Why, if this was not a premediated act of aggression and suppression, had the Army ensured the presence of camera teams at both attacks and why were women and children not spared the murderous hail of bullets?

These are all questions that the mainstream media should be asking, yet this massacre has been swept under the carpet of indifference by Western media.

Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky is a man of peace, unity and vision. These qualities alone represent a threat to the hegemony and neo-colonialist strategy of the Axis of Empire in Africa and would justify the repeated attempts to suppress and inhibit the growth of his Shia Muslim movement and his popular, unifying influence that transcended the borders of Nigeria and was taking root in many countries on the continent.

To more fully understand this violent targeting of the Sheikh and the Islamic Movement, we must take into consideration, both the historical and more recent influences upon Nigeria.

China has been an evolving partnership in Nigeria, investing heavily in the development of infrastructure and fixed assets, refineries and factories.  In a role diametrically opposed to the traditional plundering partnerships of the US and other neo-colonialists with sovereign nations, China contrarily seems to have a genuinely vested interest in the stability of Nigeria to support a mutually beneficial economic and trade relationship reliant upon the growth and profitability of Nigeria itself.

This concept adopted by China of a symbiotic expansion & growth, is an anathema to the US neo-colonialism in the region, and particularly in Nigeria.  The presence of China in a country so abundant in oil, uranium, diamond, mineral & timber resources is an acute thorn in the side of the US carpetbaggers who have perceived the Continent’s largest economy & oil producer to be their bread basket and theirs alone.

President Buhari is the US man in Nigeria, brought to power by the familiar US think tanks and “Change” promoters, channelling well researched “public” opinion through slick marketing campaigns and endorsed by the most elite of the US political “casting” directors, the New York Times who raised Buhari to the dizzy heights of a “born-again Democrat!” and deemed his ascent to power a “a turning point in Nigeria’s democratic evolution”.

The democratic suit worn by Buhari has been designed, cut and sewn into place by the corporate & financial elite tailors in Washington to ensure that Buhari remains firmly stitched to the coat tails of their agenda in Nigeria and never extends the threads of true democracy to the people who elected him on empty promises of “change”.

It is logical, rational and reasonable to speculate that Boko Haram is effectively another terrorist trade name, brought into existence, to destabilize a region that is daring to jailbreak from US colonialism and to explore alternative bi-lateral trade pathways that deviate from the US regional “road maps”.

Boko Haram’s presence, has a threefold purpose:

1. It successfully elevates the Nigerian army to defender of the “meek” against the “terror” threat and provides cover for any violent opposition suppression.
2. It gives the US justification for “boots on the ground”, military support for anti Boko Haram aka pro US factions,  and the ubiquitous drone strikes against the alleged “terror” strongholds,  a devastating strategy already observed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen to name a few.
3. It ensures the fragmentation, sectarian division, and fracturing of unity and a state of perpetual chaos which will seismically derail China’s investment in Nigeria’s physical and economic infrastructure essential to their US exclusive growth.

Sheikh Zakzaky had alluded to this very terror “patent” in his reaction to the suicide bomb attack on the Shia Arba’een procession in Kano on the 27th November 2015.  Over 24 died and many were injured in further violent targeting of the minority Shia community in Nigeria.

“We know the names of the contractors and those contracted to commit the massacre, their identity is not hidden from us. Therefore we cannot be cowed by an imaginary Boko Haram tale, let them tell it to the fools and ignorant. They should know that they are dealing with those with foresight, wisdom and intelligence, and above all with the real religion”.

This statement struck at the very heart of the US/NATO, Israeli and GCC strategy in Nigeria and threatened to undermine their architecture of “terror” foundations.  The Sheikh made it clear that Boko Haram were none other than gangs of mercenaries, hired contractual killers, being unleashed to foment sectarian violence and an atmosphere of fear and division where only US appointed, backed and controlled “saviours” would emerge victorious.

When we consider the sheer numbers of gangs and rival gangs, extremist factions and sects emerging inorganically and globally, we can begin to connect the dots. All have as their purpose, the sowing and reaping of rapacious violence, the construct of division, the provocation of turmoil, the incitement of hatred and fear. All are posing as the enemies of Imperialism whilst serving Imperialist agendas.  All fulfil roles of humanity- averse abomination and simultaneous US alliance proxy forces percolating from one target region to the next.

Grey Wolves, FSA, ISIS, DAESH, Al Qaeda, Khorasan, AQAP, Jabhat al Nusra and Boko Haram [to name a few], are they all nothing more than trade names, successfully managed brand images, logos and IDs all emanating from the US/NATO, Israel and Gulf State holders of the patent on terror and their associated marketing agents and concept creators?

Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky also challenges another malevolent bastion of Nigeria’s landscape, the powerful pro- Israel lobby whose growth and expansion in Nigeria had been hugely facilitated by former President and Christian Zionist, Goodluck Johnathan.  Nigeria is now home to Africa’s largest Israeli Jewish community [15, 000 in 2014].

The Sheikh is a steadfast and vociferous opponent of the illegal state of Israel and an uncompromising defender of freedom for Palestine, and the right to return for Palestinians living in Diaspora since the 1948 Nakba. His son Hamad, who was reportedly murdered during the 12/12 attacks had been with us at the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine 3rd Annual Conference being held in Beirut and had only left us on the 11th December, one day before he was to be targeted by the pro-Israel Government forces.

Hamad’s final recorded speech before his untimely death had been one that supported and celebrated the Al Quds Day rallies and protests particularly in Nigeria and Pakistan where lives have been routinely lost in the battle to honour and protect the core identity of the Palestinian struggle, Al Quds. Hamad had, himself, lost his three brothers, Ahmed, Hamid and Mahmood during one such rally in 2014 when hundreds of the Islamic Movement supporters were also mown down during another Nigerian army attack on unarmed solidarity demonstrators for the Palestinian cause.

“I would like to give a message to Pakistan’s brave nation, especially to those families who have sacrificed the lives of their loved ones and to those whose loved ones were martyred in Quetta during Al-Quds’ rally. I am proud that my brothers were martyred in Al-Quds’ rally and they gave their lives for supporting Palestinians”.

These were Hamad’s last words to the world before the 12/12 bloodbath in Nigeria stripped one more son from the family of Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky, Hamad gave his young life in the service of peace & freedom.  A life that was unrecognised by Western or even Palestinian media on the day he died.

Paul Larudee of Free Palestine had this to say about a young man who impressed all who met him at the Beirut conference with his quiet humility and unassuming humanity:

“Such a sweet and intelligent young man, very quiet and unassuming.  Made me want to know him better.  

 

According to him Boko Haram is just another group of terrorist thugs, thriving like ISIS through infusions of money and arms from both outside and inside Nigeria.  Our tax dollars at work.  Why does the greatest evil always seem to rise to the top of our societies, while the poor and the meek are always ready to help others?  Is evil the only way to rise to a position of strength?”

 

Hamad Zakzaky with us all at the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine Conference.

Into this maelstrom of lawless and Machiavellian meddling in Nigeria we can add one final component without which the neo-colonialist frontlines would not be complete: the Saudi Wahhabi agents of Islamic “change” who are the subterranean source of Muslim extremism and religious fanaticism;  the funders and suppliers of the brand name proxy forces, deployed to whip up the “terror” frenzy wherever it is required to destabilize or unhinge unity that may jeopardize Empire’s intent.

With ultimate irony, it is Riyadh that is self- appointed to combat the terrorism created in its image, by forming a coalition of 34 predominantly Muslim nations, Nigeria included, with the predictable exclusion of Iran, Syria and Iraq all of whom are involved in battling the Saudi NATO sourced terror hordes on the ground.

In direct contrast with this deliberate policy of divide and conquer,  Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky is a man of religious respect and tolerance, he embraces Christians, Sunnis and Sufis alike despite his Shia centric movement and its ties with Tehran, which naturally represents an additional and perceived monumental threat to US/NATO and Saudi/Israeli regional hegemony.

The Islamic Movement is also renowned for its reformist policies, prioritizing education and establishing Islamic schools incorporating secular subjects in addition to Quranic teaching.  Hospitals and health clinics have been set up where care is free for those without the means to pay for it.  The Sheikh has deterred his supporters from shedding their own blood to commemorate the shedding of Imam Hussein’s blood and redirected them to donate this blood to local hospitals, thus saving lives in memory of their beloved Imam Hussein.

The Western media silence over the Zaria massacre is indicative of their collusion in this mass killing of innocents and proof of the role they play in exacerbating global sectarian division at the behest of their Washington, Tel Aviv and Saudi donors and backers.

The initial silence of the Palestinian community, the media, the NGOs, the solidarity organisations is less expected and more worrying given the Islamic Movement’s steadfast support of the Palestinian cause and opposition to the illegal State of Israel.

This is a missed opportunity for the unity of peoples suffering from the same symptoms of neo colonialism, regardless of creed, sect or religion.  Al Quds represents the identity, not only of Palestinians but of the entire Arab world. Those who defend it from Israeli occupation are those who are enduring their own form of occupation by the patented terror armies: Nigeria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria. As these nations unite behind Palestine to prise loose Israel’s jaws from the third most sacred site for the Muslim Ummah, Palestine is needed to unite behind those who give their lives for Palestine and thus for Humanity.  It is this unity that will resolve the ancient theological disputes that are permitting the externally induced sectarian fault lines to widen and deepen.

We live in a world where those who are honoured are the sowers of discord and the reapers of mayhem, the state sponsored agents of chaos.  We no longer honour the true heroes, we honour an illusion called power and greed.  The state media apparatuses serve only to keep historic Fitna (sedition) wounds festering and the “NGO complex” pied piper plays the tune of stake-holding in human suffering, created in advance by the Empire’s composers of death.

Leaders, visionaries,  like Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky show us the way to a new world, one that is driven by justice and progress, dependent upon compassion, communication and unification. They show us that courage, universal respect & humility is needed to evade the dystopian future that is being forced upon us by the ruling elite. It is these men of integrity who resist corruption and maintain their morals and fundamental principles despite their own personal suffering and loss, that we should honour and aspire to emulate.

“Reason with this: Who is carrying out senseless killings in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon? They are the same people carrying out attacks here, and we know them. We cannot be cowed” ~ Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky.

END.

Thanks to:

Dan Glazebrook:  https://www.rt.com/op-edge/323656-deadliest-terror-boko-haram/

WSWS:  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/30/nige-j12.html

21st Century Wire:  http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/12/14/gladio-global-gangs-and-counter-gangs-in-europe-ireland-iraq-and-now-in-syria/

Plfpakistan:  http://www.plfpakistan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47167:hammad-zakzakys-message-to-pakistani-nation-a-day-before-his-martyrdom&catid=4:general

Elbinawi.wordpress.com:  https://elbinawi.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/why-they-targeted-sheikh-zakzaky/

+++

The Debate – Massacre of Shias in Nigeria (Dec 14th, 2015):

[Vanessa Beeley is a photographer, writer, peace activist and volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine.  She lived in Gaza during Operation Pillar of Defence and again in 2013.  In 2014 she established the Gaza Smile Project to raise funds for children in Gaza. Since 2011, Vanessa has spent most of her time in the Middle East .  She was recently invited to be on the steering committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement.]

There Was Nothing Key about Keystone XL – Except Diverting our Attention for More Dirty Profit

November 7, 2015

 

“The reality is that oil production continues to break record highs. The reality is that the deadly 21st century oil via rail empire – engineered by Warren Buffett (BNSF) has been deadly to dozens of people with horrific environmental consequences to life and ecosystems. The reality is that these victims, along with these facts, fall under the same category as those on the front lines: the invisible. The fact that this so-called “victory” is being cheered symbolizes the greatest lack of critical thinking – an ongoing social engineering project that continues to surpass all expectations of the oligarchs who finance it.” — Cory Morningstar, The Art of Annihilation, November 7, 2015

Reality:

“Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.  (Applause.)  That’s important to know.  Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.  We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore.  We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high.  We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some..” — US President Barack Obama, March 22, 2012 [Source]

 

[Gloat like Rockefeller When Watching Trains [ Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse | Part I, April 12, 2013]

 

“The ONLY thing that kept Barry from approving this thing was for political reasons that had nothing to do with a grassroots movement…a basic public relations move since he had nothing to gain by approving a permit of which TransCanada wouldn’t be able to utilize during his administration – period.” — Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green

Crude Production is Booming:

September 17, 2014: “U.S. crude oil imports from Canada hit a record high of nearly 3 million barrels per day in the week ended Sept. 12, U.S. Energy Information Administration data showed on Wednesday. The weekly data showed Canada, the top supplier of crude to the United States, exported 2.994 million barrels of crude to its southern neighbour. That was a 20 percent increase on the same period a year earlier. The four-week average to Sept. 12 was 2.932 million bpd. Canada has been able to ship more crude to the United States as production in the Alberta oil sands rises despite tight capacity on export pipelines, due in part to the emergence of crude-by-rail.” [Source]

November 4, 2015: “In September, the U.S. imported 101.3 million barrels of crude oil from Canada, the most this year and the second-highest level in records going back to 2010, according to data from the Census Bureau.” (that’s 3.37 million barrels per day) [Source]

Buffett’s BNSF is Booming

“A whopping 28,000 per cent increase in the amount of oil shipped by rail over the past five years is coming under the microscope following the deadly rail blast in Quebec.” — July 8, 2013 [Source]

“Mass organizations under this system (such as collaborationist unions and NGOs) are usually dominated by institutionalized bureaucracies whose very functions are, first: to make money, and second: to pacify the masses by diverting their discontent into compromises with capital.” — Stephanie McMillan, Capitalism Must Die!

 

 

 

Part II – Syria’s White Helmets: War By Way of Deception — ‘Moderate Executioners’

The Wind Will Fall

October 27, 2015

by Vanessa Beeley

[Part one: Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception]

 

 

 

[Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.]

The Intercept’s Interference: Notes on Media, Capitalism, & Imperialism | Part II: Non-Governmental Force Multipliers

Cats, Not War

April 6, 2014

In wondering whether Marcy Wheeler could plausibly claim legitimate doubt about the activities of Pierre Omidyar’s NGO in Ukraine, Tarzie asked whether an NGO could ever be anything other than an arm of soft imperialism. The answer to that latter question is actually yes, conceivably and even probably, although I can’t think of any such NGOs off the top of my head. The reason to believe that an NGO can be something other than a soft arm of imperialist power is that there are just so damned many of them. To shine a light on this, we have Eyal Weizman, to whose work I will return several times in this post. He offers specifics on the explosion of NGOs in just a few slivers of the world:

‘While in 1980 there were about 40 NGOs dealing with the Ethiopian famine, a decade later 250 were operating during the Yugoslavian war; by 2004, 2,500 were involved in Afghanistan.’

One must now imagine how many NGOs are operating worldwide. They serve a wide range of purposes, receiving money from a wide range of donors. The question as it pertains to Marcy Wheeler and The Intercept more generally is not about any old NGO; it’s about an NGO funded by USAID, a worldwide organization that shares funding and partnerships with the CIA and the State Department, and, in Ukraine, an oligarch, Pierre Omidyar. Therein lies the proper question: can this specific kind of NGO ever be anything other than the soft arm of imperialism? Of course not, I say.

A ‘transparency’ NGO against a rival regime of the United States plays a very particular role, which is why I mentioned multiple locales of NGOs in my last post about The Intercept. The meaning of an NGO funded by USAID in Ukraine is quite different from the meaning of a humanitarian NGO operating in the West Bank. The first is, in Ames’ words, ‘a force multiplier’ for the goal of regime change; the second is mainly a humanitarian agent, very often nominally aligned against Israel’s military occupation, or at least against the general spirit of it, but nonetheless tolerated by Israel. In both cases, the NGOs, as I mentioned before, obscure class consciousness; the reason is that the fascist state–as an absorber of superfluous capital and, through its police forces, protector of private property–is fundamentally opposed to the emergence of the communistic movements of the societies they are tasked with governing, by which I mean controlling and containing.

I’ll begin with the Israeli case and then work back to Ukraine. In the case of Israel, NGOs exist in lieu of the military policies and architecture that have ghettoized hundreds of segments of society within historic Palestine. Palestinians have been separated from Israelis; Druze have been separated from Palestinians; Palestinians have been separated from Palestinians (think of the distance between Gaza and the West Bank); Palestinians have been separated from Ethiopian refugees, which have in turn been separated from Israeli Jews, and you are beginning to get an idea of the utter fragmentation that Israel’s divide-and-conquer strategies have produced. But one more fragmentation must be mentioned, among the most crucial: class fragmentation, which includes even the strategic placement of the Israeli working and under classes in relation to the upper classes. In physically organizing its society according to relatively modern identities it’s helped to shape, Israel has thus far successfully thwarted communistic threats to its power (albeit not very often with ease), and that success increases if these respective identity groups embrace as political projects in themselves the various identities given to them by power. The political dilemma of identity cannot be ignored, as there are real differences between the marginalization of the Israeli working class and that of Palestinians under Israel’s racializing project. (As the Palestinians experience a more advanced form of alienation, it is the job of the Israeli working class to offer proper solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.) But this is not to say that the procurement of identity makes for a worthy political end goal in itself. Should these groups treat identity formation as a critique and a resistance in itself, they will, as subjects of Israeli power, from Israeli working classes to the Druze to the Palestinians, overlook the demands of their own struggles, as well as the possibilities hinted at by famed Palestinian revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani in a 1972 interview (a possibility again hinted at by the Qassam Brigades on November 17, 2012, as mentioned in the above-linked article by Max Ajl):

‘So you do see contradictions within the Israeli population which can divide them in the future, and provide the Palestinian resistance with allies within Israeli society?

‘Of course. But this will not happen easily. First of all, we must escalate the revolution to the stage where it poses an alternative to them, because up to now it has not been so. It is nonsense to start talking about a ‘Democratic Palestine’ at this stage; theoretically speaking it establishes a good basis for future debates, but this debate can only occur when the Palestinian resistance is a realistic alternative.

‘You mean it must be able to provide a practical alternative for the Israeli proletariat?

‘Yes. But at the moment it is very difficult to get the Israeli working-class to listen to the voice of the Palestinian resistance, and there are several obstacles to this. These include the Israeli ruling class and the Arab ruling classes. The Arab ruling classes do not present either Israelis or Arabs with a prospect of democracy. One might well ask: where is there a democracy in the Arab world? The Israeli ruling class is obviously an obstacle as well. But there is a third obstacle, which is the real, if small, benefit that the Israeli proletariat derives from its colonialist status within Israel. For not only is the situation of Israeli workers a colonialist one, but they gain from the fact that Israel as a whole has been recruited to play a specific role in alliance with imperialism. Two kinds of movement are required to break down these barriers, in order for there to be future contact between an anti-Zionist Israeli proletariat and the Arab resistance movement. These will be the resistance movement on the one hand and an opposition movement within Israel itself; but there is no real sign of such a convergence yet, since, although Matzpen exists, what would be necessary is a mass proletarian movement.’

Within the primarily Palestinian space of the West Bank, countless NGOs have cropped up, which leads to another Tarzie question: can’t the Israeli working class work with NGOs in the West Bank? The answer is, once again, conceivably, but that’s as far as it goes. This has not been the case, and we must account for the reasons. The first question worth asking is, why does Israel, a state that typically gets away with whatever brutality it wishes to exact, tolerate so many NGOs working nominally against it in territories under its direct military control? Answering that question requires another question: what do these NGOs do? There are two primary types of NGOs in the West Bank: humanitarian ones, those which offer general health supplies to the brutalized Palestinian population, and informational NGOs, those which provide the brutalized population with a space for political organization, things like publishing pamphlets and setting up lectures and panel discussions.

The humanitarian NGOs working in Palestine have, according to Weizman, adopted an essentially theological ethos to address the issue of suffering. (This would not be the first or only time social justice movements have adopted monotheistic tenants to meet the world’s problems; I hope to address this in a future post.) Weizman proposes that the main theological presupposition animating humanitarian impulse in an occupation situation is St. Augustine’s principle of lesser evil: lesser evils are to be tolerated when they are deemed unavoidable. More:

‘The lesser evil is the argument of the humanitarian agent that seeks military permission to provide medicines and aid in places where it is in fact the duty of the occupying military power to do so, thus saving the limited military resources. The lesser evil is often the justification of the military officer who attempts to administer life (and death) in an “enlightened” manner; it is sometimes, too, the brief of the security contractor who introduces new and more efficient weapons and spatio-technological means of domination, and advertises them as “humanitarian technology”. In these cases the logic of the lesser evil opens up a thick political field of participation bringing together otherwise opposing fields of action, to the extent that it might obscure the fundamental moral differences between these various groups. But, even according to the terms of an economy of losses and gains, the concept of the lesser evil risks becoming counterproductive: less brutal measures are also those that may be more easily naturalized, accepted and tolerated—and hence more frequently used, with the result that a greater evil may be reached cumulatively.’

So there it lies. A calculation that seeks to alleviate a suffering tacitly accepts the endurability of that suffering and ultimately prolongs it. The Israeli ruling class is, like most imperialists, not stupid; it knows that humanitarian NGOs pose zero threat, and so it tolerates them.

Informational NGOs in the West Bank are more so the hangouts of those foreigners too politically savvy to get caught up in the obvious pitfalls of liberal humanitarianism, which is really just so Daily Show and Obama ’08. Here is where young foreigners of a more radical bent can go to exchange political ideas with Palestinians, perhaps even to set up times and dates for attending demonstrations so that they can make themselves useful by obstructing an IDF’s soldier’s path when he attempts to arrest a Palestinian. And these young internationalist activists will likely help with lectures from guest speakers around the world and will help to publish pamphlets detailing the harsh realities of Israeli occupation. It is telling how these outlets are staffed so overwhelmingly with volunteers from around the world, as opposed to Israeli proles, but not necessarily surprising. This is the class makeup that can be expected in the wake of Israel’s forcible fragmentation of the society underneath it: the class makeup of the propaganda NGO is first of all a function of Israeli structure. After all, who can afford to take up life in the West Bank, an area deprived of water and job opportunities (outside these NGOs, of course) and right to movement? Not Israeli proles, generally speaking, but rather upper class students from the United States and Europe. And Israel tolerates this form of Palestinian political expression because it allows Palestinians a vent for their frustrations without forming the kinds of political bonds that can easily (if at all) upend the Zionist system. In this sense, these NGOs play the same role as state-sanctioned demonstrations in the United States, allowing people the illusion of impact because people are, at the end of the day, ‘doing something.’ There simply is no comparison between a bond formed between a Palestinian and an international student only in Palestine for a semester or two (and with a bright future to lose) and a bond formed between a Palestinian and an Israeli worker condemned to existence in Israeli society for the long haul. Not all bonds are equally dangerous.

The role of NGOs in places where the U.S. desires regime change is markedly different, because the situation is markedly different. Admittedly, when examining the situation in Ukraine, claims about U.S. regime change require more work to prove, because the policy there is less overt than was regime change in, say, Iraq. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is the main dilemma of detailing imperialism in the age of Obama. But it is worth noting still that even in those instances of overt regime change, brought about through land invasion and long-term occupation using ground troops, NGOs played an important role in U.S. policy. To quote Weizman once again, ‘After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, American NGOs funded via USAID were informed by the US Administration that “their cooperation was linked inextricably to America’s strategic goals.”‘ Weizman notes that Colin Powell referred to these NGOs operating in Iraq as a ‘force multiplier,’ which perhaps explains where Mark Ames picked up the phrase.

One way of knowing that Pierre Omidyar knew what he was getting into when he decided to share an investment with USAID in Ukraine is that USAID’s worldwide purpose is openly available knowledge, especially to those money men with a direct financial interest in USAID’s purpose. Powell and the ‘U.S. administration’ acknowledged it. If one fails to be satisfied by the open declarations of the U.S. regime, one can of course consult its ‘private’ correspondences about USAID, revealed in leaked Wikileaks cables. As with open declarations, the private dialogues of the U.S. regime are loaded with euphemism; ‘regime change’ is described as a ‘transition to democracy.’ Over at the Anti-Empire Report, William Blum quotes a cable mentioning USAID’s activities in Venezuela:

‘During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.’

Blum goes on to describe these initiatives as ‘a transition from the target country adamantly refusing to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs to a country gladly willing (or acceding under pressure) to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs.’ These initiatives were to be taken against Chavez and ‘his attempt to divide and polarize Venezuelan society using rhetoric of hate and violence. OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to counter this rhetoric and promote alliances through working together on issues of importance to the entire community.’ Eventually the cable becomes mercifully frank about the efforts USAID and OTI must take against this hateful rhetoric (also know as class conscious agitation): ‘1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez Internationally.’ Sounds like a recipe for regime change to me.

As I mentioned in my previous article, NGOs participate in PsyOps. Among the most common forms of PsyOp is the attempt to convince a subject population (or potential subject population) that the United States supports it. One way this is done is by providing aid to underclass populations; the example I provided was the aid Junglas provide to rural Colombians. As these PsyOps are simple and common, one can easily learn about them–and USAID’s role in them–by doing a simple Wikileaks search. Here USAID’s PsyOps efforts in Nigeria are described:

‘Nigerians reacting to Mission-sponsored media reports June – September 2003 on U.S.-Nigeria partnership successes on health, HIV/AIDS, agriculture, education, and conflict resolution, say they are amazed at the level of support given to Nigeria by the U.S. Government.  They expressed similar sentiments on their assessment of media reports on the Ambassador’s Self-Help and the Ambassador’s Girl Scholarship programs, as well as the Widernet’s university interconnectivity program.  The positive impact of the success stories was clearly evident during the recent defeat of stiff conservative northern opposition to the August polio vaccination rounds.  Reactions have been very positive on USAID’s contributions towards revival of agriculture, especially gum arabic trade, and the LEAP program to upgrade primary educational standards in northern Nigeria.  The Basketball for Peace Project is another success story that Nigerians say they value greatly because the program targets jobless youths in the crisis-prone Kaduna State.  Radio listeners, television viewers and Hausa readers in 19 northern States, including conservative Muslim radicals in Nasarawa, Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Katsina, Borno, Plateau, Zamfara, and Jigawa States, say the success stories surprised them because they never knew the U.S. was doing so much for Nigeria. Hopefully, these images may change some of their negative views about the U.S.’

I especially like this example because it includes mention of a basketball program–my Colombia example included mention of basketball courts constructed for poor Colombian youth. So because the function of USAID’s programs is so obvious, it is reasonable to say that Omidyar knew what he was getting into when he decided to collaborate with USAID in Ukraine. So reasonable that it is not necessary to assume anything. USAID’s goals in Ukraine are clearly described in other leaked cables; they are economic goals in which any sensible billionaire would interested–the most salient example being intellectual property rights to be ensured by the World Trade Organization, that is, ‘types of intellectual property rights that will be protected by the State Customs Service… or the customs regimes in which Customs will intervene to protect these rights. Customs reform that is anchored into a modern code consistent with international standards, will be critical for greater market integration.’ In other words, in order for international investors to make profits off of investments in Ukraine, the legal standards must first exist by which corporate conduits can extract those profits and deliver them to individual oligarchs. If you’re wondering how intellectual property accomplishes this, do yourself a favor and read Kevin Carson’s definitive essay on the subject.

Those are just a few examples. I. Could. Go. On. All. Fucking. Day. About. This. USAID. Shit.

We know what kinds of interests Omidyar held in the Ukraine, and we know even more about the means by which he tried to secure them. But even if we didn’t know these matters exactly, we’d have enough information to reach reasonable conclusions about the activities of this billionaire. That some progressive journalists think we don’t seems to me, well, counterintuitive. Either that, or the effect of a billionaire buying progressive journalists is that progressive journalists cease to be skeptical of billionaires, which rather cancels out the ‘progressive’ part. It’s a matter of rich men removing ‘Eat the Rich’ from the political program, for self-explanatory reasons. In addition to that, the employees of rich men are marshaling group acceptance and ostracizing those hungry for the rich. More on that, specifically on our favorite celebrity journalist, Glenn Greenwald, in the next and final post of this series. See you tomorrow for that one, everybody.

 

Further Reading:

Introduction: The Intercept’s Interference: Notes on Media | http://catsnotwar.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-intercepts-interference-notes-on.html

Part 1: Financial Capital is Destructive Capital | http://catsnotwar.blogspot.ca/2014/04/part-i-financial-capital-is-destructive.html

Part 2: Above

Part 3: A Return to Conspiracy and Its Theories | http://catsnotwar.blogspot.ca/2014/04/part-iii-return-to-conspiracy-and-its.html

 

SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire

September 17, 2014

by Cory Morningstar

 

 “The Ivy League bourgeoisie who sit at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex will one day be known simply as charismatic architects of death. Funded by the ruling class oligarchy, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media. Yet, it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis – rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests.” — From the article Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I, Sept 10, 2012

The organization Avaaz was instrumental in building public approval for the No Fly Zone for the illegal invasion of Libya in 2011. The NATO-led destabilization/illegal war in Libya resulted in the annihilation of a formerly sovereign country that has since descended into brutal chaos. Tens upon thousands of Libyans died and the most savage ethnic cleansing that the mind can imagine has been widespread. The destruction of Libya has been nothing less than a full-scale bloodbath.

 

Above image from the Avaaz website: “Libya No-Fly Zone: As Libyan government jets drop bombs on the civilian population, the UN Security Council will decide in 48 hours whether to impose a no-fly zone to keep Qaddafi’s warplanes on the ground.” [Emphasis in original] [Further discussion of the flag within this Avaaz image can be read in the epilogue.]

Above image: Avaaz takes credit for the implementation of the Libya No Fly Zone. [Further Reading: “Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention?” A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.]

When Avaaz rolled out the same rinse, lather and repeat campaign for the seizing of Syria, the public did not fall prey as easily. The campaign failed. Below are three separate links to the Avaaz campaign calling for a no-fly zone over Syria.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130609103019/http://www.avaaz.org/en/syria_the_last_straw_a/ (June 4, 2013) (Avaaz utilizing the “chemical attack” that has since been discredited.)

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_the_last_straw_0/ (June 14, 2013) (Avaaz alleges a “rape crisis” committed by soldiers of the Syrian army – the same tactic used to incite hatred against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that was later discredited.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20130825092136/https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/ (Again, utilizing the “chemical attack” that has since been discredited)

 

Of the Avaaz campaigns pressing for a no-fly zone (air strikes) over Syria that flourished in June of 2013, at least two employed the use of chemical weapons to incite fear and hatred toward the Assad government. It does not take much stretch of the imagination to consider Avaaz had inside knowledge of the upcoming chemical attack that would take place in outer Damascus approximately 10 weeks later. Considering Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello’s connection to the Obama administration and its well known war criminals, it is entirely plausible that Avaaz was churning out propaganda that would lead up to and sensationalize a false flag attack.

Photo: Avaaz co-founder and Congressman Tom Perriello with war criminal, General David Petraeus (far left). Under this Flickr photo the caption reads: “Passing the Baton, United States Institute of Peace” [2009] [Photo: Jon-Phillip Sheridan | Source] [In July, 2011, “General David Petraeus was approved as CIA Director by both the Senate Intelligence Committee and then the full Senate, whose vote was an astounding 94-0, astounding because this is a man who was deeply implicated in war crimes, including torture.” Source] [Welcome to the Brave New World – Brought to You by Avaaz, Sept 13, 2013]

The August 30, 2013 article “On the Eve of an Illegal Attack on Syria, Avaaz/350.org Board Members Beat the Drums of War” documents Avaaz links imploring a no-fly zone on Syria – both public links have since been removed. The article also featured 350.org board member Van Jones calling for air strikes on Syria. (Adding twisted irony, Van Jones also serves as co-founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The co-opting of deceased civil rights revolutionaries to advance the goals of hegemony has become common practice within these foundation-financed projects.)

Screenshots of an email from co-founder of Avaaz, Ricken Patel to Avaaz subscribers dated August 27, 2014 can be found here (1) and here (2). The email from Patel represented a last-ditch effort to garner support for a no-fly zone as the US prepared to launch an attack on Syria.

One year earlier, in 2012 Avaaz was allegedly sponsoring fabricated videos of civilian massacres, to back deeper foreign intervention in Syria. Fact-checking and videos appear to collaborate these claims.

Jump forward to 2014.

In the September 8, 2014 article Pentagon Planning Points to Possible Anti-Syria US Military Campaign, author Stephen Gowans observes:

“Now, it appears that Washington is on the cusp of pressing ahead with its planned campaign of military action. The New York Times has reported that ‘Pentagon planners envision a military campaign’ to destroy ISIS ‘in its sanctuary inside Syria’ that could last ‘at least 36 months.’ According to The Wall Street Journal, airstrikes would support anti-Assad fighters unaligned with ISIS, who would be bankrolled by $500 million in US funding, and backed by a global coalition, including the UK and Australia, that would ‘provide a range of assistance, including humanitarian aid and weapons.’ These countries could also join the United States in an air-war over Syria.”

It should not be considered a coincidence that at the same time, a polished, sophisticated and highly financed “Save Syria” campaign is being created in the board rooms of the Empire’s favourite Harvard boys.

Where, under the organization Avaaz, the public hasn’t acquiesced to an air strike on Syria, the New York public relations firm Purpose Inc. has stepped in.

Purpose is a for-profit enterprise that is marketed to appear like a non-profit. Their area of expertise is behavioural change.

 “[Purpose] has a non-profit arm, which incubates protests and accepts donations. This is cross-subsidised by its for-profit arm, which makes money in a variety of ways. It sells consulting services to big companies such as Google and Audi, and to charities such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.” – The Economist

GetUp, Avaaz and Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, 2010.

Purpose Inc.: The Crème de la Crème Agents of Behavioural Change

Purpose  | Avaaz Co-Founders

Vision: “Purpose is a global initiative that draws on leading technologies, political organizing and behavioral economics to build powerful, tech-savvy movements that can transform culture and influence policy.”

Avaaz and GetUp co-founders Jeremy Heimans (CEO) and David Madden [2] are also founders of the New York consulting firm, Purpose Inc.

Avaaz was created in part by MoveOn, a Democratic Party associated Political Action Committee (or PAC), formed in response to the impeachment of President Clinton. Avaaz and MoveOn are funded in part by convicted inside-trader and billionaire hedge fund mogul, George Soros.

Avaaz affiliate James Slezak is also identified as a co-founder and CEO of Purpose at its inception in 2009.

The secret behind the success of both Avaaz and Purpose is their reliance upon and expertise in behavioural change.

While the behavioural change tactics used by Avaaz are on public display, double-breasted, for-profit Purpose, with its non-profit arm, sells their expertise behind the scenes to further the interest of hegemony and capital. Whether it be a glossy campaign to help facilitate yet another illegal “humanitarian intervention” led by aggressive U.S. militarism (an oxymoron if there ever was one), or the creation of a new global “green” economy, Purpose is the consulting firm that the wolves of Wall Street and oligarchs alike depend upon to make it happen.

Make no mistake, the Yale (for example, Avaaz co-founder and former U.S. Representative *Tom Perriello) and Harvard graduates that comprise the “Avaaz boys” (many having been groomed by McKinsey and Company) are considered “the dream team” by the globe’s most powerful capitalists, including those at the United Nations and the World Bank. Avaaz co-founder Andrea Madden works for the World Bank in Burma [Myanmar]. Her husband is Avaaz co-founder David Madden who has taken up residence in Burma. [March 23, 2013: Western Media Celebrates Faux Progress in Myanmar] Madden has co-founded a marketing firm, Parami Road in Myanmar: “Our clients are mostly international companies entering Myanmar and they demand an international standard of work.”

“After years of isolation, Myanmar is opening up. Opportunities abound. However international companies have little experience here and local firms have little experience working with them. Parami Road meets this need.” – Parami website

Another key co-founder of Avaaz is none other than pro-war, pro-Israel, U.S. Democrat Tom Perriello, former U.S. Representative (represented the 5th District of Virginia from 2008 to 2010) and founding member of the House Majority Leader’s National Security Working Group. As demonstrated in the 2012 investigative report on Avaaz, Perriello’s curriculum vitae, built upon privilege within elite circles, is quite extensive.

[*Full profile on Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I [Link]

The former Managing Director of Partnerships for “Purpose” is Marilia Bezerra. From 2006 to 2011 Bezerra held an integral position within the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) executive leadership. As Clinton Global Initiative director of commitments, Bezerra led the redesign of member engagement and commitments services into a year-round operation. From 2007 to 2008, Bezerra held the position of sponsorship manager of the Clinton Global Initiative where she directly managed five major sponsorship accounts, including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Procter & Gamble, valued at over $2 million dollars. From 2006 to 2008, Bezerra held the position of Commitment Development Senior Manager for the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2009, Bezerra was Deputy Director of Commitments for the Clinton Global Initiative.

One should note that in the case of many NGOs, on 990 tax forms it appears as though those at the helm are paid minimally, if at all. Rather than salaries, many founders of institutions make immense fees via consulting services where their names are not identified on 990 forms. In the case of Avaaz, co-founder Ricken Patel does take a salary (approx. $190,000.00 per year) plus consulting fees. Consulting fees must be considered the bread and butter of many “progressives” whose incomes rival CEOs of multinational corporations. The salaries and incomes are incredible when one accounts for the fact that many NGOs, such as Avaaz, rake in millions of dollars in donations from well-intentioned and hard-working citizens who are at or below the poverty line.

[Full profile of Ricken Patel: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I [Link]

Purpose Inc. (with its co-founders) is a favourite of high-finance websites such as The Economist and Forbes and sells its consulting services and branding/marketing campaigns to Google, Audi, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many others that comprise the world’s most powerful corporations and institutions. In 2012, it raised $3m from investors. “Ford Foundation, which has given Purpose’s non-profit arm a grant, reckons it is shaping up to be “one of the blue-chip social organisations of the future.” ^[Source] Purpose, like many other foundations, such as Rockefeller (who initially incubated 1Sky which merged with 350.org in 2011), also serves as an “incubator of social movements.” ^{[Further reading on Purpose]}

Heimans, the Avaaz front man of Purpose, is a darling of the high-finance corporate world. “In 2011, Jeremy received the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary Visionaries Award. The World Economic Forum at Davos has named him a Young Global Leader, and the World e-Government Forum has named Jeremy and Purpose co-founder David Madden among the “Top 10 People Who Are Changing the World of the Internet and Politics.” [Source]

The New York public relations firm Purpose has created at least four anti-Assad NGOs/campaigns: The White Helmets, Free Syrian Voices [3], The Syria Campaign [4] and March Campaign #withSyria.

• White Helmets / Syrian Civil Defence on Facebook and Twitter
• The Syria Campaign on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

“Who are we? Three years after the peaceful uprising in Syria, politicians and the media have largely forgotten what the UN calls ‘the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our time.’ But we haven’t.” — Front page of “The Syria Campaign” and the “White Helmets / Syrian Civil Defence” website

The March Campaign #withSyria | Over 130 Partners

Purpose’s March campaign #withSyria website (which doubles as a hash tag for Twitter) partners include: Open Society Foundation (George Soros), Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Care, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and many more of the largest “humanitarian” NGOs within the non-profit industrial complex which makes up a billion dollar industry. [Full list of partners: http://marchcampaign.withsyria.com/partners0]. Utilizing the consumer culture’s celebrity fetish to sell war (and the illusory “green economy“) is a vital marketing strategy of Purpose. In the case of #withSyria, famed street artist Banksy has reworked his “Young Girl” famed graffiti stencil in support of the campaign. On the main page of this website the behavioural change strategists at Purpose promote a slick, emotive video of a white child (in America) slowly becoming traumatized by the violence in Syria. No doubt, Purpose’s marketing executives have taken this avenue because they know that the majority of Euro-Americans with privilege simply are not moved by images of suffering children that are non-Caucasian. Non-White children being slaughtered by imperial states became normalized for most Euro-American citizens long ago.

And of course corporate media is not far away to promote the cries for war peace. Consider today, on September 17, 2014, ABC “reports“:

“What if we could reverse the explosion of a bomb? A group of 130 organizations from around the world, known collectively as the ‘With Syria’ campaign, released a video Wednesday that shows just what that would look like. The campaign hopes to bring attention to the violence in Syria. (video) Warning: Contains disturbing imagery. In the video, the act of a bomb exploding near children playing is reversed: The blood returns to their heads, the children stand back up, run in reverse and continue the game they were playing. A message says, ‘We can’t reverse what’s happened in Syria, but we can change how the story ends.'”

Indeed Purpose is being paid to bring about the ending that the elites have hired them to ensure.

“Even more impressive than her military, America has built the most sophisticated propaganda machinery the planet has ever seen.” – Garikai Chengu

Free Syrian Voices partners include Amnesty International, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, FIDH, Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and “other international, regional and Syrian organizations” – which conveniently go unnamed.

Such emotionally charged campaigns are critical tools for empire. They have become critical (and successful) in building the acquiescence required for “humanitarian interventions” (aka regime change with extensive “collateral damage” thrown in for good measure).

“In the IC Magazine publication Communications in Conflict, is noted a new form of psychological warfare termed ‘false hope.’ False hope, as a tool for subverting social movements, is unparalleled in its effectiveness. What once was crudely accomplished through political repression, censorship, educational indoctrination and misleading propaganda, is now supplemented, if not surpassed, through vertical integration of the non-profit industrial complex. Where Wall Street once had to rely on threats and bribery to intimidate or corrupt social movements, it now has a vast army of neoliberal foundations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social media at its disposal.” — Jay Taber, False Hope, September 6, 2014

It is important to note that Purpose is a for-profit business strategically presented as though it is a non-profit (similar to the Change.org petition site). This begs the question of who is financing the Syrian campaigns. The fact that a group of wealthy elites from Harvard living privileged lifestyles in New York City (and abroad) decide, via glossy marketing campaigns, who will live or die on the other side of the world is the ultimate representation of whitism and racism – an egregious affront to people everywhere. [Further reading on Purpose]

“If there is any doubt concerning the nefarious undertones of subversiveness in these NGO dealings, [National Endowment for Democracy] NED founder reportedly said the following in the 1990s: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ What was once done at night under the cloak of ‘imperialism’ is now done during the day under the guise of ‘humanitarianism.'” — WKOG 30-point Primer

The many facets of Purpose:

1) Purpose (tax identification number 68-0607622) is a for-profit certified B-corporation “that uses an innovative model to pool some of the world’s leading experts and practitioners in order to fund, launch and accelerate the growth of new social movement organizations.”

2) Purpose Action (tax identification number 45-2451509), the non-profit arm of Purpose, is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization “focused on changing policy.” Purpose Action Board of Directors includes Brett Solomon, executive director of Access, former campaigns director at Avaaz, former executive director of GetUp! ^[5]

3) Purpose Foundation (tax identification number 27-3106760) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization “focused on education and changing culture.” ^[6]

4) Purpose Campaign (tax identification number 68-0607622) “Develops social and consumer movements.”

US Military Utilize NGOs to Induce Pacification & Advance Western Ideologies on Iraqi Citizens

The video below captures highlights from the 2004 Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs and should that be at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs – The Role of NGOs in Global Governance and Society. Attention to the title is key: “NON-governmental organizations in global GOVERNANCE.” [Note the use of the term “guerrilla” (4:13) in describing any citizen/person resisting the occupation/assault by US military on Iraq soil.] Since the filming of this video, accelerating regime change operations are being conducted by Western militaries, hand in hand with Western NGOs throughout the globe. [See more: http://www.interventionism.info/en/Re…]. In essence, NGOs have become an indispensable instrument of destabilization and regime change for imperial states and hegemonic interests. NGOs also serve as the primary agents to implant neoliberal policies and western ideologies in targeted states to advance and protect the interests of the NGOs’ funders.

 

The Hate Campaign

The June, 2012, Avaaz “Good Versus Evil” campaign for the Rio Summit. Above: A downloadable poster as found on the Avaaz Press Centre published in the Financial Times. Vilification: Note the dark cast/ugly sky behind the leaders Avaaz would wish you to believe are “evil,” versus the light and sun shining through over the Imperialist, obstructionist “leaders” that Avaaz is attempting to convince you are “good.”

 

 “‘You have to investigate the supply of hatred,’ Glaeser continues. ‘Who has the incentive and the ability to induce group hatred? This pushes us toward the crux of the model: politicians or anyone else will supply hatred when hatred is a complement to their policies.'” — The Behavioural Economics of Hatred

 

Heiman’s work been recognized in publications like The New York Times and The Economist. In The Economist, Heiman states he chose his career path when “in 2001, a college student named Eli Pariser created an online petition calling for a multilateral response to the ‘9/11 terrorist attacks.'” Over a decade on, with civilian deaths that amount to millions, I’m sure the Iraqis are most grateful. It must be noted that Eli Pariser, too, is a co-founder of Avaaz and Co-Founder and Executive Director of MoveOn.org (Avaaz founder) PAC.

Above: The Syria Campaign, Non-profit Organization, created by Purpose, launched March 7, 2014.

 

“We were afraid the regime would fire another rocket, as they always come back to the area of attack when people come to rescue to bomb them, so we started evacuating people in a hurry so no more lives would be lost. This picture was taken then! That boy holding my neck like that was one of the moments in which I knew why I am a civil defender!” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

Purpose Inc. strategically employs images, carefully worded text and slick video that provoke intense emotion. Key language includes children, refugees, regime, and their work “in the most dangerous place in the world.”

 “A year ago today, the Syrian government used Sarin gas against its own people killing over a thousand, many of them children. The world was outraged and demanded Assad destroy his stockpile of chemical weapons. Today chlorine gas is still being used on civilian neighbourhoods, rolled out the back of helicopters in rusty ‘barrel bombs.’” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm, Image by Designer : FaDi zyada whose work is also featured on the Heinrich Von Arabien Foundation website. This same website features an absurd photo of Syrians holding up a poster that features a “thumbs up” illustration for USA and the UN.

[***Reference list for deconstructing the myth that Syrian army + “dictator” used chemical weapons in August 2013 by Susan Dirgham: http://australiansforreconciliationinsyria.org/reference-list-chemical-attack-in-damascus-august-2013/]

Exploiting the death of Syrian children to provoke air strikes and military aggression demonstrates that such agencies go to any extreme to further American foreign policy. Note that the very carnage described above: “killing over a thousand, many of them children” is par for the course for the U.S. military, which carries out such atrocities on innocent civilians, including children, on a daily basis, all over the world. But don’t expect an Avaaz or Purpose campaign against the Obama Regime any time soon. They will be too busy under the guise of their NGO MoveOn, working on his re-election.

The following quote represents the real purpose of Purpose:

“The media may have turned away from what’s unfolding daily in Syria but today we all have the tools to tell the world the truth. Please share widely and remember the children of Syria in your thoughts today.”

The lapdog media have not turned away, but much of the public has. It’s the job of Purpose to employ netwar methods (“a form of low intensity conflict, crime, and activism waged by actors using social networking services” according to Wikipedia) on the public (targeting Euro-Americans) that will instill hatred toward the democratically elected Bashar al-Assad.

“It’s past time for President Obama to present a plan for dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Syria.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

“Today we remember the more than 1,300 who lost their lives in the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks. Let’s also remember those +150,000 who face torture and death while being detained.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

Let’s not mention Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and a mile long list of the Obama administration’s involvement in torture, shall we? Syria certainly demonstrates that the first casualty of war (in this case a destabilization effort) is truth. The following excerpt is from the article Foley & Sotloff’s Reporting Show Why the US Should Stop Its Proxy War on Syria, which lays bare that “both journalists documented the reality of Free Syria Army”:

“While in Turkey Sotloff broadcast news of Syrian rebels being found and arrested with chemical weapon Sarin gas.  He used Twitter to send out the Turkish news report.  That was in May, three months before the August 21 2013 chemical weapons deaths in outer Damascus. The Syrian rebels were arrested by Turkish police but quickly released, giving evidence to claims of Turkish government support for Nusra. Sotloff was puzzled why the mainstream media was not giving this event coverage.”

 

 

 

 

“This Thursday marks the one year anniversary of the chemical weapons attack that took the lives of over 1,000 Syrians. Since then tens of thousands more have been killed by different methods. Starvation is one. But the international media and world leaders still haven’t come together to put an end to it.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

Above image: Another call for “world leaders” to “come together to put an end to it.” Yet while Purpose may cry crocodile tears over the starvation of Syrians, Avaaz has asked for tough sanctions against Syria. Purpose and Avaaz want to “have their cake and eat it too” – while Syrian lives are destroyed by the oligarchs that both Purpose and Avaaz serve.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130911002219/https://www.avaaz.org/en/syria_end_the_terror/

The High Gloss Veneer

The following video highlights human rights investigator and award-winning journalist, Keith Harmon Snow, detailing the corrupt NGOs and their portrayal of Africa in order to illicit funds. Snow must be considered one of our finest Western reporters for obtaining true independent, grassroots news from the continent of Africa. Within the lecture, Snow discusses the psyops/propaganda strategically orchestrated behind the “Save Darfur” campaigns/movements which, in 2004, began to saturate the populace. At the helm of this “movement” was “The Center for American Progress.”

The Center for American Progress is closely connected with the same players that founded and financed Avaaz. Today, with Avaaz at the forefront, the non-profit industrial complex has been appointed trusted messenger of a grotesque and disturbing ideology; nothing less than a complete reflection and validation of the U.S. administration’s rhetoric intended to justify the annihilation and occupation of sovereign states under the false pretense of “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect.” [7]

 

“The Syrian government has been dropping ‘barrel bombs’ on civilian areas despite a UN order to stop, targeting schools and hospitals. Those too poor to flee their homes can only hope that if the bomb drops, the White Helmets will be there to help get them out.… Let’s tell the world about the White Helmets and help get them the support they need.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

“Know multiple languages? We need you! Help us get as many eyeballs on the Miracle Baby video by translating the subtitles into as many languages possible here: http://bit.ly/1tKSmrz” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

Firms and agencies such as Purpose write and develop the scripts and design the sets. They bring the stories to life, strategically exploit and manipulate our emotions, ultimately ensuring we come to accept and partake in their politically acceptable means of discourse – discourse sanctioned (and financed) by the empire.

“Syrians welcome Iraq’s Yazidi refugees into their country with warm meals, giving them their clothes and in some cases opening up their homes.” – Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

The above quote is representative of perhaps one too many spin doctors, for who is allowing Iraq’s Yazidi refugees into Syria, if not the Assad government? Indeed, Assad’s government has accepted more refugees per capita than any other country in the Middle East.

“In the wake of Robin Williams’ death, the people of Idlib remember the actor/comedian with a quote on freedom.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

This image takes absurdity to a new level. Recap: In the midst of being bombed, starved, and rained on by chemical weapons, Syrians take time to pay homage to an American actor/comedian (because the love of the America that is destroying the Middle East is so great), by quoting a line from a genie in a bottle from a scene in an animated Disney movie and creating a banner in the English language.

 

 

“Understand what this infographic says, and you’ll understand why The Syria Campaign exists. And why you and your friends need to join. http://bit.ly/VlYOsi” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

In the infographic above, Purpose deliberately keeps the stats limited to 2014. Otherwise they would have to visualize the millions of Iraqi citizens who have been murdered due to the U.S. illegal war and occupation in Iraq. Further, Purpose gives no attention to the deaths in Ukraine, Honduras, Libya, Haiti, Congo (millions) and all of the other countries being decimated by Imperialism and foreign interference.

 

 

“Tell Obama we need a plan set forth to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria. bit.ly/1nITTtO” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

The message is clear. Purpose wants the green light for military intervention in Syria, well-cloaked under the guise of humanitarianism – an oxymoron if there ever was one.

“How were you to know you were approving posts from one of the world’s most violent dictators? A man who’s ordered the dropping of bombs on hospitals and primary schools?” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

“Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has been re-elected and he can thank Facebook for being a propaganda platform.” — Purpose Inc. Marketing Firm

“It is critical to note that the imperialist powers (inclusive of the UN) do not criticize or demonize or withdraw their support from such leaders on any ethical or moral ground. Denunciation of state leaders and emotive language is merely theatre. Rather, the imperialist states strategically set out to destroy any state leader that is unwilling to be controlled by US interests and foreign policy. A case in point is unwavering support of the Saudi royal family responsible for atrocious human rights violations to which the imperialist countries turn a blind eye.” (from Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I)

 

The Behavioural Change Dream Team:

·         Full profile of Jeremy Heimans: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II [link]

·         Full profile of David Madden: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II [link]

·         Full profile of James Slezak: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section III [link]

Further reading on behavioural change: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II [link]

Further reading on Avaaz and Purpose: This Changes Nothing. Why the People’s Climate March Guarantees Climate Catastrophe

+++

 

Epilogue

Consider that the colour of the national flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya (from 1977 to 2011; The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) was pure green in colour. Unlike the one featured in the Avaaz campaign. The green colour traditionally symbolizes Islam. In Libya, green was also a colour traditionally used to represent the Tripolitania region (commonly referred to as Tripoli) that NATO forces fought to seize. The iconic green flag was chosen by Libyan leader/brother Muammar Gaddafi to symbolize his political philosophy (after his revolutionary Green Book). On 10 March 2011, France was the first state to recognize the council as the official government of Libya, as well as the first to allow the Libyan embassy staff to raise the red, black, green and white flag that would replace the green flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya. On 21 March, the “new” flag was flown by the Permanent Mission of Libya to the United Nations and appeared on their official website … this flag, which reigned prior to the Libyan Jamahiriya, is now the only flag used by the United Nations to represent Libya. According to the following UN statement: “Following the adoption by the General Assembly of resolution 66/1, the Permanent Mission of Libya to the United Nations formally notified the United Nations of a Declaration by the National Transitional Council of 3 August 2011 changing the official name of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to “Libya” as well as a decision to change Libya’s national flag to the original.” [Wikipedia]

On August 24, 2011 it is reported by yet another mouthpiece for empire that:

“As Libyan rebels take over, embassies worldwide have been replacing the old Libyan flag with a new one…. But starting in February, a new flag – red, black, and green with a white star and crescent in the center – has been hoisted at Libyan embassies around the world, from Switzerland to Bangladesh. It is the same flag being flown by the jubilant rebels themselves as they descend on Tripoli.”

In the article, the words “U.S. funded mercenaries” have been replaced with “the jubilant rebels.” It would be well worth investigating who ordered, manufactured and paid for thousands of these new flags (prior to or commencing in February of 2011) and ensured they would replace the national flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya that flourished from 1977 to 2011.

 

Further Reading:

 

·         The Grotesque and Disturbing Ideology at the Helm of Avaaz, March 7, 2012

·         Sostenere il governo USA senza saperlo: il grave esempio di “Avaaz,” March 8, 2012

·         SPEAKING TRUTH: A Profound Message to Avaaz from Poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina, March 12, 2012

·         Argentine Journalist Stella Calloni Denounces Avaaz | Latin American Unions Follow Her Lead, March 12, 2012

·         Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism, June 9, 2012

·         Avaaz’s War on Syria: Soros Sponsored Sorrow Pleads for Foreign Intervention, June 14, 2012

·         Rio Summit “Good Versus Evil” Advert Displays Blatant Racism and Imperialism at Core of Avaaz, June 22, 2012

·         Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I, Sept 24, 2012

·         Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section II, Sept 24, 2012

·         Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section III, Sept 24, 2012

·         Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I, Sept 24, 2012

·         Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II, Nov 1, 2012

·         Welcome to the Brave New World – Brought to You by Avaaz, Sept 13, 2013

 

Endnotes:

[1] Jeremy Heimans on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyheimans

[2] David Madden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmadden

[3] Job Detail for Social Media Intern, Syrian Voices Movement Job Location: Purpose Inc, New York, NY, 10176: http://jobs.climber.com/jobs/Media-Communication/New-York-NY-10176/Social-Media-Intern-Syrian-Voices-Movement/55687863

[4] Purpose is hiring: Join the Syria Campaign: http://www.purpose.com/were-staffing-up-on-the-syria-campaign/] [5] Purpose Action Board of Directors: Jon Huggett, founding chair of Social Innovation Exchange, former partner at The Bridgespan Group and Bain & Company; Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.org and former senior director of media programs at GLAAD; Brett Solomon, executive director of Access, former campaigns director at Avaaz, former executive director of GetUp!; Douglas Atkin, director of community at Airbnb, former chief community officer of Meetup, author of The Culting of Brands; Andre Banks, executive director of Purpose Foundation, former strategy director at Purpose and former deputy director of ColorOfChange.org; Jeremy Heimans, co-founder & CEO of Purpose, co-founder of Avaaz and co-founder of GetUp! [Source] [6] Purpose Foundation Board of Directors: Carla Sutherland, research scholar at Columbia University’s Gender and Sexuality Law Center’s Engaging Tradition Project, former program officer at Ford Foundation and Arcus Foundation; Jeremy Heimans, co-founder & CEO of Purpose, co-founder of Avaaz and co-founder of GetUp!; Michael Evans, president of Moynihan Station Development Corporation and former chief of staff to the Lieutenant Governor of New York State. [Source]| Purpose Foundation’s organizational documents and annual reports on Form 990 can be found here.

[7] December 29, 2004: “Over two days in early December approximately three-dozen religious activists met at the Washington office of the Center for American Progress, a recently formed think tank headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. The Res Publica-driven agenda for the closed-door gathering included sessions on “building the movement infrastructure” and “objectives, strategies and core issues.” Res Publica was founded by Tom Perriello, Ricken Patel and Tom Pravda. Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, MoveOn.org, Executive Director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser (MoveOn Executive Director), Andrea Woodhouse (consultant to the World Bank) Jeremy Heimans (co-founder of GetUp! and Purpose), and Australian entrepreneur David Madden (co-founder of GetUp and Purpose). Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello is now President and CEO of Center for American Progress. Perriello and Patel also co-founded and co-directed DarfurGenocide.org which officially launched in 2004. “DarfurGenocide.org is a project of Res Publica, a group of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance and virtuous civic cultures.” Today, this organization is now known as “Darfurian Voices”: “Darfurian Voices is a project of 24 Hours for Darfur.” The U.S. Department of State and the Open Society Institute were just two of the organizations funders and collaborating partners. Other Darfurian Voices partners include Avaaz, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Centre for Transitional Justice, Darfur Rehabilitation Project, Humanity United, Darfur People’s Association of New York, Genocide Intervention, Witness, Yale Law School, The Sigrid Rausing Trust and the Bridgeway Foundation. Despite the carefully crafted language and images that tug at your emotions, such NGOs were created for and exist for one primary purpose — to protect and further American policy and interests, under the guise of philanthropy and humanitarianism. Of all the listed partners of DarfurGenocide.org, with exception of one located in London England, all of the entities involved are American and based on US soil.

 

 

CLARIFICATION (August 10, 2018): In an earlier version of this article, a sentence reads “Avaaz co-founder James Slezak is also identified as a co-founder and CEO of Purpose at its inception in 2009.” This was intended to read as it reads now: “Avaaz affiliate James Slezak is also identified as a co-founder and CEO of Purpose at its inception in 2009.” The article references the original researched bio of Slezak: “Full profile of James Slezak: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section III [link]”. The original research does not list Slezak as an Avaaz co-founder. We regret the error was not caught in the editing process. Further clarification Slezak co-foundered “Win Back Respect” with Avaaz co-founders Andrea Woodhouse (World Bank), spouse, David Madden (World Bank) and Jeremy Heimans (co-founder of MoveOn and GetUp!). Win Back Respect was supported/funded by MoveOn (co-founder of Avaaz) and Soros Fund Management. Soros Open Society Institute provided the original seed money for Avaaz. The fifth co-founder of Win Back Respect was Brian Vogt, Senior Advisor to the Partnership for a Secure America.

Thirty Years After the U.S. Invasion of Grenada, the First Neoliberal War

Zero Anthropology

October 28, 2013

by Maximilian Forte

On the Eve of an Illegal Attack on Syria, Avaaz/350.org Board Members Beat the Drums of War

“Here’s the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed, head first and at full speed, toward total disaster for one major reason. The military produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction.” — Barry Sanders, The Green Zone

Today’s commentary by Cory Morningstar, WKOG Collective

August 30, 2012

Appalling.

350.org’s Van Jones (U.S. Advisory Council Board member and NRDC trustee), is calling for airstrikes on Syria. [CNN Video below.]

From the 350.org website:

“Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He is a co-founder of three successful non-profit organizations: The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change and Green For All. Jones is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs, The Green-Collar Economy. He served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009. Jones is currently the President of Rebuild the Dream.” [Emphasis added.]

Never has the legacy of Ella Baker been so disgraced. Ella, today, spinning in her grave, once conveyed to the world:

“Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”

Ella would surely spit on Van Jones if she were alive today.

350.org’s Ricken Patel (350.org International Advisory Council member – and Avaaz founder) is also pounding the drums of  war. Just 4 days ago, on August 22, 2013, Patel himself urged Avaaz supporters to demand world leaders “place a no-fly zone over Syria.” Those who comprise Avaaz are already up to their necks – in the blood of the Libyan people who they helped annihilate. [Further reading: Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention? A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.]

The following link is Google’s cache of the Avaaz/Patel campaign to demand a no fly zone (https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/). It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 22 Aug 2013 18:08:13 GMT: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vzBe8PMa7H8J:https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

Screenshots of Patel’s email:

Of course, organizations such as Avaaz and 350.org/1Sky, are created and financed by the very fraudsters that the World Bank whistleblower, Karen Hudes, warns us about. [WORLD BANK WHISTLEBLOWER ON SYRIA [THE IRAN, IRAQ, SYRIA PIPELINE PROJECT]

The notorious war criminal, George Bush, first used the term “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002. He repeated the term throughout his presidency, to describe the governments that he accused of helping “terrorism” and seeking “weapons of mass destruction”. Media perpetually echoed the message until it sunk into the American psyche. Iran, Iraq and North Korea were the key “Axis of Evil” countries targeted for demonization.

Perhaps forgotten is that the “Beyond the Axis of Evil” countries included Cuba, Libya, & Syria.

The demonization of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, (distinguished guest of U.S. Colombia University, 2006) was never so skillfully orchestrated.

The public lapped it up.

Over a million dead and counting.

Today, “The Axis of Evil” psyops (still drilled into the Euro-American psyche) has been coupled, if not superseded, with the manufacturing of fear. Add to this orchestrated fear, the “Humanitarian Intervention” and “Responsibility to Protect” doctrines. The crème de le crème of imperial rhetoric. Such doctrines, created by American “think-tanks”, for the elite, by the elite, are of critical use for a declining and morally bankrupt empire. An empire that brilliantly attempts to convince and portray, utilizing the language within these doctrines, that the atrocities they manufacture, call for, and carry out, are somehow honourable and admirable – as opposed to what they actually are: crimes against humanity. Orwell would have called this psychopathic persistence a stunning feat in doublespeak.

Many so-called civil society organizations/NGOs have been instrumental in making these doctrines palatable to the public.

The empire really needs you to believe.

Don’t.

Above: The video that Avaaz et al did not want you to see. “That a million Libyans came out and filled Green Square, under the threat of NATO bombing, to show their support for Muammar al-Gaddafi was easily overlooked. A seduced person, a person who is loving the thrill of being seduced, no longer has any use for truth or facts.” [The “Arab Spring” and the Seduction of the Western Left]

 

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Political Context, Counterpunch, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.]

 

Further Reading on 350.org:

Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion

Why I Refuse to Promote Bill McKibben

The Climate Cartel: 1Sky, 350.org and Rockefeller Brothers | Stronger as One

Tar Sands Action & the Paralysis of a Movement | Part I

Obedience – A New Requirement for the “Revolution”

Unravelling the Deception of a False Movement

When Will Environmentalists Ever Wake Up? The Great Pipeline Scam

Keystone XL | The Ivory Towers Crushing the Last Remnants of Climate Justice

SumOfUs are Corporate Whores | Some Of Us Are Not

The Most Important COP Briefing That No One Ever Heard | Truth, Lies, Racism & Omnicide

Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests in DC

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse | Part I

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse – Part II

Working for Warren: Corporate Greens

Further Reading on Avaaz:

The Grotesque and Disturbing Ideology at the Helm of Avaaz

SPEAKING TRUTH: A Profound Message to Avaaz from Poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina

Argentine Journalist Stella Calloni Denounces Avaaz | Latin American Unions Follow Her Lead

Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism

Rio Summit “Good Versus Evil” Advert Displays Blatant Racism and Imperialism at Core of Avaaz

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section II

Through the Looking Glass

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section III

Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II

Stella Calloni: Disinformation Against Syria is Criminal

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part V

October 31, 2012

 

Part five of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2012 [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2017 [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III

 

Introduction | By Jay Taber at Intercontinental Cry

In his seminal study Science of Coercion, Christopher Simpson observed that communication might be understood as both the conduit for and the actual substance of human culture and consciousness. As Simpson noted, psychological warfare is the application of mass communication to modern social conflict.

 

In the U.S. Army War College manual on psychological warfare, the stated objective is to destroy the will and ability of the enemy to fight by depriving them of the support of allies and neutrals. Some of the methods used in the manual are sowing dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness.

 

In the decades since these publications were first published, a new form of psywar has emerged in the form of false hope. With unlimited funding and organizational support from foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, Gates and Soros, U.S. Government propaganda now has a vast new army of non-profits that, along with corporate media and academia, serve as both a third wing of mass consciousness and a fifth column for destabilization campaigns worldwide.

 

As Cory Morningstar captures The Simulacrum in her multi-part series on the non-profit industrial complex, domesticating the populace is a fait accompli, and the only question remaining is what will happen if and when capitalist activism is seen for what it is. By following the money from aristocratic derivatives to embodiments of false hope like Avaaz, MoveOn, and Change, Morningstar steps through the looking glass to expose how NGOs have become a key tool of global dominance using social media as a means of social manipulation.

 

When the smoke generated by phony progressives clears, all that is left is an industrial wasteland of false hope and real threats. When the betrayals of NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are known, we can finally begin to exercise our responsibilities. Until then, programs like Democracy Now remain little more than adult versions of Sesame Street for the toy Che brigades.

[The article above titled “Through the Looking Glass” was published by Intercontinental Cry on September 11, 2012. Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, an author, a correspondent to Fourth World Eye, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]

 

The Humanitarian Industrial Complex: The Ivory Towers within the Dark Triad

 “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Image: U.S. President Barack Obama with Avaaz co-founder and former U.S. Representative Tom Perriello.

Tom Perriello’s ideologies espouse the Machiavellian principle in which “the end justifies the means.” In essence, unethical, morally reprehensible, criminal and contemptuous behaviour is justified in order to, in Perriello’s words, “expand the use of force to advance key values.” Of course, the values Perriello speaks of are American “values.” Perriello’s belief that such noble key “values” are at the foundation of today’s America demonstrates even further delusion.

It is interesting to note the parallels. Scholars often note that Niccolò Machiavelli glorified instrumentality in statebuilding, embodied by his infamous suggestion that the ends justify the means. “Violence may be necessary for the successful transfer of power and introduction of new legal institutions; force may be used to eliminate political rivals, to coerce resistant populations, and to purge previous rulers who will inevitably attempt to regain their power.”

In the 1958 essay, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Leo Strauss proposed that the Machiavellian principles, embraced as a promotion of progress, would lead directly to the modern arms race. “Strauss argued that the unavoidable nature of such arms races, which have existed before modern times and led to the collapse of peaceful civilizations, provides us with both an explanation of what is most truly dangerous in Machiavelli’s innovations, but also the way in which the aims of his apparently immoral innovation can be understood.” [Source] “Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use for designating a kind of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his influence, a politics guided exclusively by considerations of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends – its end being the aggrandizement of one’s country or fatherland – but also using the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one’s party.” [Strauss, 1958, p. 297]

Antonio Gramsci drew great inspiration from Machiavelli’s writings on ethics, morals, and how they relate to the State and revolution in his writings on “Passive Revolution.” It was the belief of Gramsci that society can be manipulated by controlling popular notions of morality. [Gramsci (1891 – 1937), renowned for his ideology of cultural hegemony as the means of upholding the state in a capitalist society must be considered one of the most critical thinkers and influential intellectuals of the 20th century.]

In psychology, Machiavellianism denotes a personality type.

In cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, Machiavellian intelligence (known also as political intelligence or social intelligence) is the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups. The first introduction of this concept to primatology came from Frans de Waal’s 1982 book “Chimpanzee Politics,” which described social manoeuvring while explicitly quoting Machiavelli. Machiavellian intelligence is also known as Machiavellianism.

“Machiavellianism is the art of manipulation in which others are socially manipulated in a way that the user benefits from it, whether it is to the detriment of the people being used. The user would feel little to no remorse or empathy when their actions harm others.” — Wikipedia

Further, “the ‘Dark Triad’ is a group of three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, all of which are interpersonally aversive – three theoretically distinct but empirically overlapping personality constructs….That is, individuals who possess characteristics of any of the personality disorders that make up the Dark Triad are likely to be selfish, possess a grandiose sense of importance, and feel an increased sense of entitlement. Further, these individuals are often pre-occupied with dominance and power and will use aggressive tactics such as manipulation and exploitation to get whatever it is that they feel that they deserve.

“Individuals who possess characteristics of the Dark Triad do not make for good friends. Not only are they not concerned with others, they are constantly focused on their own wants and needs and will do whatever they feel is necessary to achieve their goals, regardless of the consequences to others. This blatant disregard for others may lead individuals with these aversive personalities to behave anti-socially and to commit crimes. While there has been much research done to support the link between psychopathy and criminal behavior, there is currently no research supporting a direct link between individuals with Machiavellian and narcissistic personalities and criminal behavior. It is known that individuals with these personality characteristics are often found in offender populations, but further research must be done to learn more about the dark triad and criminal offending.” [Source: A 2011 European Association of Psychology and Law – Student Society Publication, Wikipedia]

The Empire

Roman Empire Emblem 753 BC – 476 AD [Senatus Populusque Romanus -“The Senate and People of Rome”]

United Nations Emblem 1945

Anonymous Logo 2003-2012

PSYOPS or Psychological Operations: “Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives. Also called PSYOP. See also consolidation psychological operations; overt peacetime psychological operations programs; perception management.” (Source: U.S. Department of Defense)

“Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 – mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets – almost exactly equals Britain’s thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty. America is well-situated to take over – everything” (The Green Zone, p. 36).

As stated in the propaganda model theory, the leaders of modern, corporate-dominated societies employ indoctrination as a means of social control. Working in unity, the marketing, advertising, and public relations industries utilize mass communications to protect and advance the interests of elites. The theory elaborates on how powerful economists and lobbyists have often used school systems and centralised electronic communications to influence public opinion. (Note that many liberals and some academic media analysts of the left despised the “propaganda model.”) It is critical to acknowledge that the non-profit industrial complex is a vital tool of the public relations industries, as well as 21^st century lobbyists – experts in centralised electronic communications to influence public opinion.

With the Harvard Journalism reports (discussed further on in this report) and the role of NGOs in opening up/attempting to pry open the doors to foreign invasion in sovereign states such as Libya, Syria, Uganda and so forth, Herman’s and Chomsky’s propaganda model theory, criticized by the liberal left, has been both prophetic and vindicated.

In the race for global domination of the Earth’s final remaining resources, our shared planet is being decimated by cabals of psychopaths in collaboration with the corporate media complex and the non-profit industrial complex. In perfect synchronicity, they promote extreme fabrications of reality that must be considered nothing less than a brilliantly executed global psyops.

Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Pravda

Snapshot:

• Avaaz International: Co-founder
• Avaaz International: Secretary 2009
• Avaaz International: Treasurer 2010
• European Union: Advisor
• Global Witness: Intern
• Integrity: Senior Advisor
• International Center for Transitional Justice: Consultant
• Oxford Analytica: Consultant
• Res Publica: Co-founder
• UK Diplomatic Service: Member
• UK Foreign Office: Advisor
• United Nations Development Program: Consultant
• U.S. State Department: Advisor
• World Development Movement: Intern

 

Education:

•  Balliol College, Oxford

 

Resides in United Kingdom

Tom Pravda is a British diplomat who co-founded both Res Publica and Avaaz. He has been listed as both secretary and treasurer to Avaaz. Pravda also sits on the advisory board of Res Publica. Pravda has worked for the United Nations in New York and is an advisor to the U.S. State Department, the UK Foreign Office and the European Union. Pravda has been a member of the UK Diplomatic Service since 2003 where he has worked on EU trade and development policy and relations with the Middle East and Africa.

Pravda is senior advisor to “Integrity.” [“While working in Afghanistan, directors Andrew Cleary and Anthony Ellis identified a need to provide organisations working in conflict, post conflict and fragile environments with insightful research and ethically driven localised consultancy services. Based on these principles they founded Integrity.”]

“Integrity” states Pravda’s qualifications as: “Tom is a diplomat and public entrepreneur, specialising in peace and security issues. At Integrity he is leading on public sector reform and good governance projects and is currently conducting independent research on global peacekeeping capacities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and West Africa. Tom is a specialist in the Great Lakes Region [not the North American ones], particularly the DRC, where he advised the U.S. State Department, the UK Foreign Office and the European Union on diplomatic, security and development strategies and programming for the region. Alongside his diplomatic career, he has set up and run successful NGOs in Africa and the U.S., most recently co-founding the world’s leading online advocacy community, Avaaz.org. He has consulted extensively on political, security, research and advocacy issues for a range of clients, including the UNDP, the International Center for Transitional Justice and Oxford Analytica.”

Oxford Analytica is “a global analysis and advisory firm which draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.” They provide an analysis services that gives “corporate and government executives a proven edge in assessing the impact of global events and turning risks into opportunities.”

Pravda has also interned for Global Witness and the World Development Movement. Global Witness receives immense funding from governments including Canada and the UK. In 2005, Global Witness also received funding from the NED for their work to “advocate for good governance of natural resource management in Liberia.”

It is unclear what NGOs Pravda has set up successfully and run in Africa, but one can safely assume 1) they were financed in whole or in part by Soros and 2) they have served and protected foreign interests since their inception.

Pravda received his degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College.

Avaaz Co-founder: David Madden

Photo by Lee-Sean Huang

Snapshot:

• Avaaz International: Co-founder
• GetUp!: Co-founder
• MoveOn.org: Co-founder
• TwitterPeek: Creator
• United Nations Development Program: Consultant
• World Bank: Consultant

 

Education:

• Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
• University of New South Wales

 

Resides in New York City

David Madden, is the co-founder of the Australian NGO, GetUp, co-founder of its U.S. counterpart MoveOn.org, as well as co-founder of Avaaz.

Madden has consulted for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program. As well, Madden has worked for the World Bank in Timor Leste, and for the United Nations in Indonesia. Prior to this, Madden served as an officer in the Australian Army.

Madden began his career with the Inspire foundation which created ReachOut.com. Reach-out.com is an organization that essentially targets the country’s most vulnerable and broken youth. ReachOut reaches out to those youth in deep pain and turmoil, such as those suffering from self-mutilation, depression, suicide, bullying and other societal problems.

Corporate Pedophilia: In the 21^st century, children who have been left emotionally starved as a consequence of lack of nurturing, along with emotionally broken youth, are relentlessly targeted by corporations. This escalating, burgeoning crisis is a direct result of a toxic society. Therefore, one should not be surprised that the corporations who sponsor and enable this site to exist are none other than Bristol-Myers Squibb (through their foundation, which simply serves as a front group), “the philanthropic arm” of the Macquarie Group, the News Corporation and the American Australian Association. In other words, let us help you in your time of need while we feed you to the wolves.

Like many of his cohorts, Madden was educated at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He also attended the University of New South Wales, where he was President of the Student Guild. He is the co-author of Imagining Australia: Ideas for our Future, which he authored in 2004.

The Harvardite also understands the power of social media. Madden is credited with the creation of TwitterPeek, the world’s first and only mobile Twitter device for under $100.

In our culture’s growing addiction to instant gratification, society has become insatiable. Clicktivism serves as another form of instant gratification. “TwitterPeek” and applications like it will serve to enhance the clicktivism fetish. Remember kids, don’t think … just click.

Avaaz Co-founder: Eli Pariser

 

Snapshot:

• AccessNow.org: Founding Board Member
• Al Gore: Sponsored Speech Writing
• Author: New York Times Bestselling Book, The Filter Bubble
• Avaaz International: Chairman of the Board 2006, 2010
• Avaaz International: Co-founder
• Campaign for America’s Future: Board Member
• John Kerry: Fundraising for Kerry’s Presidential Campaign
• MoveOn.org PAC: Executive Director
• MoveOn.org PAC: President
• MoveOn.org: Chairman
• MoveOn.org: Director of Foreign Policy Campaigns
• New Organizing Institute: Co-founder
• Res Publica: Advisory Board
• Roosevelt Institute: Senior Fellow
• SumOfUs: U.S. Advisory Board Member

 

Education:

• Bard College at Simon’s Rock

 

Resides in New York

Eli Pariser is co-founder of Avaaz as well as president/chairman of MoveOn.org’s board. Prior to position of chair, Pariser served as the Executive Director of MoveOn.org. Pariser has worked directly with former Vice President Al Gore on drafting MoveOn-sponsored speeches and assisted in fundraising for John Kerry’s presidential campaign. In December 2003 Pariser worked with Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros, on a MoveOn.org campaign. On December 9, 2004, one month after Kerry’s defeat, Pariser declared that MoveOn had effectively taken control of the Democratic Party.

In an e-mail distributed to MoveOn.org members on November 22, 2005, Pariser announced that his organization had created a spinoff entity called the New Organizing Institute, “a unique grassroots program that trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations.”

“The Internet has made huge changes in politics…. Now, our [MoveOn’s] former Organizing Director Zack Exley is working on cultivating the next generation of ‘online organizers’ at the New Organizing Institute. The first step: find 50 talented up-and-coming organizers, put them through an all-expenses-paid training week, and place them on 2006 campaigns where they can really make a difference.”

A fellow of the Soros-funded New Organizing Institute, he served as Obama’s ghostwriter for social media applications such as Twitter.

Pariser is a founding board member of AccessNow.org, which also helped launch the New Organizing Institute, “which has trained thousands of organizers to bring people together online.”

AccessNow.org is endorsed and supported by Avaaz, MoveOn.org, Witness.org, Blue State Digital and GetUp!

The AccessNow International Advisory Board includes Andrew MacLaughlin, Vice President of Tumblr, Chris Hughes, Co-founder of Facebook and Director of Online Organizing for Obama’s Presidential Campaign, Joe Rospars, New Media Director for Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign and Founding Partner of Blue State Digital, Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of Meetup and many other prominent technologically savvy “leaders” in the world of social marketing.

On the AccessNow Twitter account, one can view an image of the Tehran protest in the background where a Western-backed coup d’état failed in 2009.

Those in the Soros network, with the help of seemingly naïve and bourgeois technological sycophants, are building an army of technological wizards to seize and condition the minds of the global population via internet technology (primarily via cell phones), SMS applications and social media.

In addition to overseeing MoveOn.org, Pariser is the board chairman of Avaaz.org. Pariser also serves on the advisory board of Res Publica and is a board member of the Campaign for America’s Future. In 2008, Pariser transitioned the Executive Director role at MoveOn.org to Justin Ruben and became President of MoveOn’s board.

Pariser, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Filter Bubble, undoubtedly understands exactly why the corporate world has embraced him and has no qualms about funding his many ventures: Pariser understands the psychology of, and thus the power behind, personalization on the internet. He recognizes that internet via personalization poses a very real danger that people will not get exposed to viewpoints that differ from their own. Rather, they will be fed only what is familiar and, more importantly, what is comfortable, thus closing citizens off to new ideas, subjects and information that could challenge their belief systems. The “filter,” which one assumes gives us a much greater view of the wider world, is in reality, more and more effectively succeeding in screening the wider world from us. It is not difficult to understand how valuable an individual with such knowledge and perception is to the global oligarchy. The Filter Bubble reviews:

“On the Web, we often see what we like, and like what we see. Whether we know it or not, the Internet creates personalized e-comfort zones for each one of us… And what’s wrong with that? Plenty, according to Eli Pariser, the author of ‘The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You.’ Personalization on the Web, he says, is becoming so pervasive that we may not even know what we’re missing: the views and voices that challenge our own thinking.” — Natasha Singer, The New York Times

 

“Eli Pariser is no enemy of the Internet. The 30-year-old online organizer is the former executive director and now board president of the online liberal political group MoveOn.org. But while Pariser understands the influence of the Internet, he also knows the power of online search engines and social networks to control exactly how we get information — for good and for ill.” — Bryan Walsh, TIME

Pariser has been granted celebrity status by corporate media such as Good Morning America, World News Tonight and a multitude of major cable news channels. His op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post and other corporate media. Pariser lectures can be found on the C-span library as well as TED. Lavishing celebrity status on progressive voices has been an integral tool for those who wish, and most always succeed, to co-opt those who have a progressive voice or appear to/have the capacity to gain influence.

If you can’t beat’em – buy’em.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

In essence, Pariser is a key asset of the elites; that of a valuable commodity.

The simple fact that corporate media bends over backwards to promote these individuals and their organizations should alone raise red flags and set off alarm bells.

The chosen ones by Rockefeller, Soros, the Clintons and others perhaps do naïvely believe that they are capable of harnessing the power of the Internet to democratize society, yet in reality, they are harnessing the power of the internet for those who wish to project their own flawed ideologies on global society. The corporate masters are using these minds to manipulate, shape and mould the public’s psyche and perceptions in order to homogenize world views, while crushing those who seek to protect their own autonomy – and resources.

Pariser has recently aligned himself with SumOfUs as a U.S. Advisory Board member and is currently working on Upworthy, a new startup focused on making trending issues go viral online.

Avaaz Co-founder: Jeremy Heimans

 

“From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the U.S. is the White Savior Industrial Complex.” — Teju Cole

 
Snapshot:

•  Avaaz International: Co-founder
• Davos: Award Recipient
• Ford Foundation: Award Recipient: Ford Foundation Visionary
• GetUp!: Co-founder
• McKinsey and Company: Consultant
• MoveOn.org: Co-founder
• AllOut.org: Co-founder
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Consultant
• Purpose: CEO
• Purpose: Co-founder
• SumOfUs: Australian Advisory Board
• United Nations: Consultant
• World e-Government Forum: Award Recipient

 

Education:

• Harvard University
• University of Sydney

 

Heimans resides in New York

Jeremy Heimans is co-founder of both Avaaz and GetUp! GetUp, founded in 2005, is an internationally recognized social and political online “movement” that purports to have more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined. Heimans is also co-founder and CEO of Purpose: “a profit-with-purpose business that builds movements to help solve major global problems.” On his TEDxTeen talk, Jeremy Heimans tells us to “aim higher than the president.” Well, jesus h. christ, that certainly wouldn’t be too difficult.

Jeremy Heimans has consulted for the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

 “The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.” — Teju Cole

In 2011, Heimans received the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary Visionaries Award. The award, which came with $100,000, declared Heimans “a next generation leader.” Heimans’s other awards include recognition from the World Economic Forum at Davos who named Heimans a Young Global Leader. Honours also came from the World e-Government Forum who named Heimans and Purpose co-founder David Madden (co-founder of GetUp!, MoveOn.org and Avaaz) among the “Top 10 People Who Are Changing the World of the Internet and Politics.” Heimans’s “contributions” have been given glowing coverage in publications such as The New York Times and The Economist. Heimans has worked for the international strategic consulting firm McKinsey & Company (“trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential businesses and institutions”), a research scholar at Oxford University and a consultant for the UN, OECD and ILO (UN).

Heimans is co-founder of AllOut.org, as well as a member of the SumOfUs Australian Advisory Board. The only other member on this Australian advisory board is Heimans’s cohort, Brett Solomon, who is Executive Director of AccessNow.org and former Executive Director of GetUp.org.au.

On June 26, 2011, The Guardian published commentary on the “successful” “Arab Spring”:

“This is what democracy activists in the Middle East have been saying about the Arab spring. The real change for Egyptians was not the technology of Facebook – it was the moment when one by one, people realised they were not alone. As the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page accumulated thousands and thousands of people, young Egyptians for the first time realised that together, they had the numbers. Collectively, they had power.

 

Many observers have been struck by the absence of visible leaders in the Arab spring uprisings. But this is precisely what online organising makes common: movements based on shared values, not charismatic leadership. The new model for social movements is not leaderless, but it is focused on building individuals’ sense of their own agency – not the leader’s power.

 

New movements also bring together the global and the hyper-local. Avaaz.org is helping to create a sense of global identity for individuals, where their local actions are dots on a larger canvas. Climate change campaigners 350.org have staged simultaneous days of action in local neighbourhoods throughout the world, engaging hundreds of thousands of people.”

Two red flags jump out from this article: 1) The Arab spring was not spontaneous, and 2) the fact that the Guardian promotes Rockefeller’s (and Clinton’s partner) 350.org and Avaaz as prime examples of successful movements. This would be considered an excellent example of an NGO-media partnership as outlined by Harvard. [To be discussed further in this investigative report.]

Above photograph by Dan Calliaster: Ricken Patel: “A recent portrait commission for The Guardian Newspaper. Ricken Patel is co-founder and executive director of Avaaz.org, the largest global political web movement in history with 5.5 million subscribers in all 193 countries.” (Bold emphasis added)

Behavioural Change

Just prior to this article, on June 10, 2011 in a separate Guardian interview, Heimans states:

 “…’the revolution doesn’t happen when people adopt new tools, it happens when they adopt new behaviors’ is a big part of what we do at Purpose. Twenty-first century activism is all about evolving models of social interaction, with the increased ease of peer-to-peer communications, and a many-to-many model that coexists and sometimes challenges a one-to-many broadcast model. Right now we’re only glimpsing the full potential of these new ways to tap the collective power of citizens and consumers.”

Organizations such as Purpose, 350.org/1Sky, Avaaz, in a sense, play both sides of the fence. While the persona, via branding, that they exude is one of youthful grassroots, in reality, they are drinking champagne and jet-setting with the Imperialist dinosaurs keeping us caged within the twentieth-century.

TECH PRESIDENT website, May 24, 2010:

“Two of the minds behind the global advocacy platform Avaaz.org and Australia’s social action network GetUp! are taking what they learned in the non-profit online organizing space and applying it to the world of consumerism.

“[Purpose] creates 21st century movements. We look for ways that movements can help solve major global problems. To do this, we work with some of the most exciting players in the new green and social economy to help them get to scale faster and some of the world’s biggest brands to mobilize their consumers for significant social impact….

“Purpose was born out of some of the most successful experiments in mass digital participation. Our principals are co-founders of Avaaz, the world’s largest online political movement with more than nine million members operating in 14 languages, and the creators of Australia’s GetUp!, an internationally recognized social movement phenomenon with more members than all the country’s political parties combined…. Our movements are deploying huge numbers of people, online and on the ground, to influence the political process. At the same time, we are working to create the consumer demand and behavioral shifts required to bring about the kind of change that politics alone cannot.”

Purpose was founded in 2009. Both GetUp and Purpose are the creations, and ultimately the million dollar project, of Avaaz co-founders Heimans and Madden. All three of these organizations work in similar fashion to their sister organizations – MoveOn and Avaaz – by activating their members in what they term “mass digital participation.”

On the “Purpose” website, more irrelevant, brand-bolstering “highlights” along with promotion of a delusional “green” economy can be found on the media page. “Free Livestrong bracelet for your Twitter avatar” and “Avaaz’s Co-Founders Seek a Purpose-Driven Consumer Life” represent just two revealing examples of many.

What one may not notice is that Purpose is not listed as a non-profit – it is privately held.

On June 13, 2011, an interview published by The Design Observer Group, titled “How to Start a Movement in the 21st-Century,” highlighted Heimans’s latest venture, Purpose. Purpose was described as “a (for profit) New York-based consultancy on movement formation and development that has a not-for-profit arm that launches its own campaigns.”

Into the interview, when the journalist stated it actually sounded “a bit like a marketing, PR, or advertising firm,” Heimans was forthright in his answer: “The tools of marketing and design are critical to our work. We have clients who look to us because we’re good at building mass participation.”

After hiring his first employee in June 2009, by June 2011 Heimans’s company had grown to over 40 employees. And make no mistake, Heimans understands exactly what makes an NGO a success. Heimans’s staff are comprised of political organizers, behavioral economists, interaction designers, technologists, and, last but certainly not least, “brand strategists who know how to tell stories, [the] people who understand business.”

The difference between Heimans and the other Avaaz co-founders is the fact that Heimans is upfront in presenting himself, unequivocally, as a businessperson. Unlike his peers, he does not hide behind a false illusion of humanitarianism nor does Heimans pretend he is an environmentalist. Heimans’s company provides services that build “movements” for organizations. When creating his own “movements” under his “Purpose” foundation counterpart, Heimans establishes partnerships. A recent partner is the BBC. Heimans is also working with other NGOs in Rio “to make sure that ordinary Cariocas have a voice in the development that occurs there leading up to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.”

Whereas a real environmental and social justice activist understands that the Olympics are nothing less than a thinking person’s nightmare, Heimans believes the capitalist illusion that this corporate atrocity can co-exist with social justice. Rather, the Olympics is an ongoing perpetual chain of never-ending resource depletion and exploitation belonging to 20^th century (non)thinking, which serves to further corporate profit and dominance, an abomination that must end. Yet, blinded by indoctrination, bright-green “progressives” continue to reject reality and perpetuate the falsehoods: that the Olympics can be made to be “green” and “ethical.”

 “Even as tech changes, the need for real human connections and storytelling will be key.” — Jeremy Heimans as featured in the Guardian Activate Summit, June 10, 2011

May 2010: Avaaz’s Co-Founders Seek a Purpose-Driven Consumer Life | Behavioral Economics

Vision: “Purpose is a global initiative that draws on leading technologies, political organizing and behavioral economics to build powerful, tech-savvy movements that can transform culture and influence policy.”

What is behavioural economics? Behavioral economics is the fusion offspring of economics and psychology. In 1979, two psychologists of Princeton and Stanford Universities published “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.” This was considered a “breakthrough” paper on how people deal with uncertain rewards and risks. It has become one of the most widely cited papers in economics. The authors argued that the ways in which alternatives are framed – not simply their relative value – heavily influence the decisions people make. This influential paper in behavioral economics, with its meticulous equations, suggested that the core assumption of the standard model was in fact backwards: It was found that it is only the mode of presentation (framing) that matters and not the actual value of alternatives, as previously believed. As an example, one may observe this very ideology held by a professor of business administration Nava Ashraf, who has worked extensively with NGOs in Africa and the Philippines. In 2006 she noticed that “farmers and small-business owners were often not doing the things that a development policymaker or economist thinks they should do” and considered this very problematic. While working in Zambia for Population Services International, a nonprofit that seeks to focus private-sector resources on the health problems of developing nations, Ashraf stated “There are ways of manipulating people’s psychological frameworks to get them to buy things. How do you use this knowledge to get them to adopt socially useful products or services? It’s so practical, and very important in development, for anybody who wants to help people reach their goals.”

The Behavioral Economics of Hatred

The Avaaz “Good Versus Evil” campaign for the Rio Summit. Above: A downloadable poster as found on the Avaaz Press Centre published in the Financial Times. Vilification: Note the dark cast/ugly sky behind the leaders Avaaz would wish you to believe are “evil”, versus the light and sun shining through over the Imperialist obstructionist “leaders” that Avaaz is attempting to convince you are “good”. Keith Harman Snow (war correspondent, photographer and independent investigator, and a four time Project Censored award winner) discusses the art of so called “humanitarianism” via the industrial non-profit complex with precision and candor in his many lectures.

Keith Harmon Snow Discussing Western NGOs and Africa: (running time: 2:54)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6l0zsdf2Zc

Within George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to “satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which likely do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” [Source: Wikipedia] Orwell did not invent the term “two minutes hate” however; it was already in use/utilized in the First World War by British writers to satirize German propaganda.

In a somewhat similar fashion, an economist’s definition of hatred is the willingness to pay a price to inflict harm on others, according to Edward Glaeser, Princeton-educated economist and professor at Harvard.

In an article published in Harvard Magazine titled “The Marketplace of Perceptions,” author Craig Lambert writes:

“The psychological literature, [Edward Glaeser] found, defines hatred as an emotional response we have to threats to our survival or reproduction. ‘It’s related to the belief that the object of hatred has been guilty of atrocities in the past and will be guilty of them in the future,’ he says. ‘Economists have nothing to tell psychologists about why individuals hate. But group-level hatred has its own logic that always involves stories about atrocities. These stories are frequently false. As [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels said, hatred requires repetition, not truth, to be effective.’

 

‘You have to investigate the supply of hatred,’ Glaeser continues. ‘Who has the incentive and the ability to induce group hatred? This pushes us toward the crux of the model: politicians or anyone else will supply hatred when hatred is a complement to their policies.'”

One can safely state that the behaviour of economics of hatred has been a key component in the psychology behind the recent Avaaz campaigns attacking the sovereign states of Libya, Bolivia and Syria.

The two minutes hate has risen again.

“When we have reached the point of utilizing placards with childlike fantasies to convey a message between purported forces of ‘good and evil,’ then we will turn to those same fantasies, such as ending fuel subsidies, as being the solutions to the much deeper problems of environmental and ecological collapse from capitalism.”— Forrest Palmer

 Purpose

“Purpose has built global movements to fight cancer (with LIVESTRONG) and eliminate nuclear weapons in 20 years (with Global Zero, a new initiative led by more than 200 world leaders and endorsed by President Obama). Purpose also works with some of the world’s biggest companies to mobilize their consumers for social impact, and is currently incubating new consumer movements to help the green economy achieve scale, including a platform to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.”

The fact is, “free Livestrong bracelets for your twitter avatar” are never going to solve cancer. Further, there are already cures for cancer that are being suppressed in order to protect corporate interests and unfathomable corporate profits, which are only protected if people continue to be sick. Of course there is no information regarding the atrocious harassment by the FDA of Dr. Burzynski nor is there any campaign to focus attention on his plight – and cure. And the fact that President Barack Obama, President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister David Cameron, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have endorsed Global Zero (a stated campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons in 20 years) guarantees that GlobalZero is nothing more than an effort to pacify the public today by pretending to do something in the far away future that no one has any intention of doing.

The Purpose of Purpose

The fact that Purpose works with the world’s biggest corporations “to mobilize their consumers for social impact, and is currently incubating new consumer movements to help the green economy achieve scale” is more than just a little revealing and more than just a little terrifying.

When Heimans was asked how he was going to use the $100,000 he received from the Ford Foundation, he stated:

 “I’d like to use the funds to promote the idea of movement entrepreneurship and to incubate a couple more movements. We’ve been talking in a broader way about the future of consumer activism, of organizing people not as citizens but as consumers.

 

“We think there’s a massive untapped opportunity to organize consumers for social change.”

There you have it, as honest and blunt as it comes: “….organizing people not as citizens but as consumers.”

And if you’re not angry that citizens are considered first and foremost as consumers, to be herded like a flock of sheep in order to serve corporate interests, maybe you don’t deserve any better.

The Managing Director of Partnerships for “Purpose” is Marilia Bezerra. From 2006 to 2011 Bezerra held an integral position within the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) executive leadership. As Clinton Global Initiative director of commitments, Bezerra led the redesign of member engagement and commitments services into a year-round operation. From 2007 to 2008, Bazerra held the position of sponsorship manager of the Clinton Global Initiative where she directly managed five major sponsorship accounts, including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Procter & Gamble, valued at over $2 million dollars. From 2006 to 2008, Bazerra held the position of Commitment Development Senior Manager for the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2009, Bezerra was Deputy Director of Commitments for the Clinton Global Initiative.

Bezerra took a central role in building the Clinton Global Initiative from its start-up. The Clinton Global Initiative was integral to the creation and funding of the Rockefellers’ incubator project 1Sky, now merged with 350.org (which was also integral to the creation of 1Sky). The CGI is a partner to 350.org/1Sky. Bill Clinton is recognized as a notable ally.

In November 2011, VoltaireNet.org reported in the article “Hillary Clinton aide at the helm of Amnesty International USA”: “Suzanne Nossel, former assistant to Richard Holbrooke in his capacity as UN Ambassador and currently Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for International Organization Affairs, has been selected as the new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. In the discharge of her duties at the State Department, she diligently exploited human rights to benefit imperial ambitions. Ms. Nossel had previously worked for Human Rights Watch, as well as for Bertelsmann Media Worldwide and the Wall Street Journal as Vice President of Strategy and Operations.”

 

Next: Part VI

 

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Counterpunch, Political Context, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on Twitter @elleprovocateur]

Amnesty’s Shilling for US-NATO Wars

For decades, Amnesty International has been a respected name in the cause of human rights, but its recent hiring of Suzanne Nossel, a longtime U.S. “humanitarian interventionist,” has swung the organization more behind the Afghan War and the use of U.S. military force, Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley write.

June 19, 2012

Consortiumnews.com

By Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley

Ann Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year U.S. diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She returned to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2010 on fact-finding missions.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a “whistleblower” memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She retired at the end of 2004, and now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

 

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA — Suzanne Nossel — is a recent U.S. government insider. So it’s a safe bet that AI’s decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, “women’s rights in Afghanistan,” at the NATO Conference last month in Chicago came directly from her.

Nossel was hired by AI in January 2012. In her early career, Nossel worked for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke under the Clinton Administration at the United Nations. Most recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women’s issues, public diplomacy, press and congressional relations.

She also played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council (where her views about the original Goldstone Report on behalf of Palestinian women did not quite rise to the same level of concerns for the women in countries that U.S.-NATO has attacked militarily).

Nossel would have worked for and with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and undoubtedly helped them successfully implement their “Right to Protect (R2P)” — otherwise known as “humanitarian intervention” — as well as the newly created “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

This cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy (which has served mainly to rationalize the launching of war on Libya) is now being hauled out to call for U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

“Smart Power” = smart wars?

In fact, Nossel is herself credited as having coined the term “Smart Power,” which embraces the United States’ use of military power as well as other forms of “soft power,” an approach which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at her confirmation as the new basis of State Department policy.

An excerpt from Nossel’s 2004 paper on “Smart Power,” published in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine, sounds a lot like Samantha Power’s (and also traces back to Madeleine Albright’s) theories:

To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war.

Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military [our emphasis] — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Following the CIA Red Cell

Perhaps the AI’s hiring of a State Department shill as executive director of its U.S. affiliate was merely coincidental to how/why its “NATO Shadow Summit ” so closely mimicked the CIA’s latest suggested propaganda device, but….

The “CIA Red Cell,” a group of analysts assigned to think “outside the box” to anticipate emerging challenges, was right to worry in March 2010 when the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) found that 80 percent of French and German citizens were opposed to continued deployment of their countries’ militaries in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.

Even though public apathy had, up to that point, enabled French and German politicians to “ignore their voters” and steadily increase their governments’ troop contributions to Afghanistan, the CIA’s newly-created think tank was concerned that a forecasted increase in NATO casualties in the upcoming “bloody summer … could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.”

In a confidential memo, the “Red Cell” wrote:

The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.

Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters …

Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified ‘Afghanistan’ as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked ‘stabilizing Afghanistan’ as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.

According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and ‘not our problem’ was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the ‘not our problem’ sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’ radar.

But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash

If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.

The CIA “Special Memorandum” went a step further, inviting “a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion” to suggest “information campaigns” that State Department polls showed likely to sway Western Europeans.

The “Red Cell” memo was quickly leaked, however, furnishing a remarkable window into how U.S. government propaganda is designed to work upon NATO citizenry to maintain public support for the euphemistically titled “International Security Assistance Force” (ISAF) waging war on Afghans. Here are some of the CIA propaganda expert’s suggestions:

…messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France ‘s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and necessary cause despite casualties… Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission…Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.

Amnesty International struck similar themes in announcements posted online as well as billboard advertisements on Chicago bus stops (like the one above). Telling “NATO: Keep the Progress Going!”, the ads beckoned us to find out more on Sunday, May 20, 2012, the day thousands of activists marched in Chicago in protest of NATO’s wars.

The billboard seemed to answer a recent Huffington Post blog post, “Afghanistan: The First Feminist War?“

The feminist victory may be complete in America, but on the international stage it’s not doing so well with three quarters of the world’s women still under often-severe male domination. Afghanistan is an extreme case in point in what might be termed the first feminist war … a war that now may not be won even if Hillary Clinton dons a flack jacket and shoulders an M16 on the front lines. Still, since the Bush Administration to the present America ‘s top foreign policy office has been held by women … women who have promised not to desert their Afghan sisters.

Our curiosity was further piqued because we consider ourselves to be women’s rights and human rights proponents and also due to our own prior federal careers in intelligence and military. (Colonel Wright is retired from the State Department/US military and Rowley is from the FBI.)

So along with a few other anti-war activists, we packed into a taxi to head to the Chicago hotel where Amnesty International’s “Shadow Summit” featuring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other female foreign relations officials was being held. We happened to carry our “NATO bombs are not humanitarian”; “NATO Kills Girls” and anti-drone bombing posters that we had with us for the march later that day.

As we arrived, an official-looking black car dropped off Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, who was to be a main speaker (on the first panel, along with former Secretary Albright; U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois; and Afifa Azim, General Director and Co-Founder, Afghan Women’s Network; along with Moderator Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program).

Verveer cast a cold glance at us and would not answer Ann Wright’s questions as she scurried into the hotel with her aides surrounding her and us following behind. At first the hotel security guards tried to turn us away but we reminded the registration desk the Summit was advertised as “Free Admissions” and that some of us were members of Amnesty International.

So they let us register and attend as long as we promised to leave our signs outside and not disrupt the speakers. The hotel conference room was about half full. We stayed long enough to hear the opening remarks and the moderator’s first questions of Albright and the other speakers on the first panel.

All generally linked the protection and participation of Afghan women in government as well as the progress made in educating Afghan women to the eventual peace and security of the country as envisioned by the new strategic “partnership” agreement that Obama had just signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Ms. Verveer said Afghan women do not want to be seen as “victims” but are now rightfully nervous about their future. When we saw that audience participation was going to be limited to questions selected from the small note cards being collected, we departed, missing the second panel as well as kite-flying for women’s rights.

We noted, even in that short time, however, how easy it was for these U.S. government officials to use the “good and necessary cause” of women’s rights to get the audience into the palm of their collective hand — just as the CIA’s “strategic communication” expert predicted!

But Why Ms. Albright?

Not everyone was hoodwinked however. Even before the “Summit” was held, Amnesty realized it had a PR problem as a result of its billboard advertisement touting progress in Afghanistan. An Amnesty official tried to put forth a rather lame defense blaming an accidental poor choice of wording.

But many readers (and AI members) posted critical comments and questions, including concerns about Albright’s involvement given her infamous defense of Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, which were estimated to have caused the deaths of a half million Iraqi children, with the comment “we think the price is worth it.”

Under the blogger’s explanation: “We Get It / Human Rights Now,” there were comments like these:

…Could someone from AI please explain why Madeleine Albright was invited to participate in this event? We (and especially those of us who are familiar with AI) should all be able to understand that the wording on the poster was a genuine, albeit damaging, mistake. But why Ms. Albright? The posters are pro-NATO and play into prevailing tropes about so called “humanitarian intervention” via “think of the women & children” imagery. The posters & the forum that includes Albright are neither slight slips nor without context. AI is coping heat because they have miss-stepped dramatically. There is NOTHING subtle about either the imagery nor the message! It is not a case of “oh sorry we didn’t realize it it could be interpreted that way! They used pro Nato imagery & slogans ahead of & during a controversial summit that has thousands protesting in the streets. Tell me again how that is not taking sides? They asked a notorious apologist for mass murder of children to speak on the right of women and children…tell me again: how is that not taking sides. So it is absolutely reasonable for past supporters (and board members like myself) to be asking how it is that Amnesty USA so lost its bearings they could make a critical SERIES of errors like this?

Of course the defensive AI blog author never answered the numerous questions asking why Amnesty had chosen Madeleine Albright as their main speaker. So we will venture an answer that probably lies in the fact that all of the powerful feminist-war hawks who have risen to become Secretary of State (or are waiting in the wings) are now taking their lead from the ruthless Grand Dame who paved the way for them, Madeleine Albright — (see Coleen Rowley’s recent blogs: “Obama’s New ‘Atrocity Prevention Board’: Reasons for Skepticism” and “Militarization of the Mothers: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother’s Day for Peace“).

It’s also possible the highest ranks of the feminist wing of military interventionism (i.e. Madeleine Albright, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, et al.) are so passionate and hubristic about the nobility of their goal and “Amercan exceptionalism” that some have simply succumbed to a kind of almost religious (blind faith) type fervor.

The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

Nossel’s and Albright’s theories are flawed in many ways but suffice it to say that democracies are actually not less prone to war. A long list of “democracies” — including Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, the United Kingdom, France and the United States itself — disprove this assertion.

In any event, the U.S. has been terribly hypocritical in its support of “democracies” in foreign countries, often toppling or attempting to topple them (i.e. Iran’s Mossadeqh, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende) in order to gain easier control of a foreign country through an allied dictatorship.

No one is going to argue that the goals of humanitarianism, preventing atrocities and furthering women’s rights around the world are not “good and necessary” (in the words of the CIA strategic communications expert). We would go so far as to say these ARE truly noble causes!

Testimonials about human rights’ abuse are often true and fundamentalist regimes’ treatment of women seems to vary only in degrees of horrible. But while it’s true that many women lack rights in Afghanistan, some would argue that it’s conveniently true. And that the best lies are always based on a certain amount of truth.

The devil, however, lies in the details of promoting equality and accomplishing humanitarianism. Most importantly the ends, even noble ends, never justify wrongful means. In fact, when people such as Samantha Power decide to bomb the village (Libya) to save it, it will backfire on a pragmatic level.

It must be realized that it is the nobility of the U.S.-NATO’s motivation that — as CIA propaganda department has advised — should be relied upon to convince otherwise good-hearted people (especially women) to support (or at least tolerate) war and military occupation (now known to encompass the worst of war crimes, massacres of women and children, torture, cutting off body parts of those killed, as well as increasing mental illness, self-destructive behavior and suicides among U.S. soldiers and the corresponding cover-ups of all such horrible means).

In the decades after Vietnam, a number of military scholars identified declining American public support for that war as the main factor responsible for the U.S. “losing” Vietnam. One lesson learned and quickly implemented was to get rid of the military draft and put the wars on a credit card so fewer citizens would pay attention.

Some control also had to be gained over the type of free media (that led to trusted TV anchor Walter Cronkite broadcasting his public souring on the Vietnam War). A whole series of war propaganda systems, from planting retired generals as “talking heads” on TV to the assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld deciding to “embed the media,” have worked pretty well to maintain the necessary level of war momentum in mainstream media and amongst public opinion.

But now, with American polls approaching the same problematic levels as those in Europe cited by the “CIA Red Cell,” we suddenly see major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (as well as others) applauding Obama’s (and the feminist war-hawks’) “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

Such sleight of hand seems to work even better amongst political partisans. By the way, it should be noted that Congress may allow these Pentagon propagandists to target American citizens through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. Should we connect the dots?

There are some clear lines where the laudable need to further human rights should not be twisted into justifying harsh economic sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of children or, even worse, “shock and awe” aerial bombing that takes the lives of the women and children the “humanitarian” propagandists say they want to help.

Madeleine Albright’s response about the deaths of a half million children on 60 Minutes, that “the price was worth it,” illustrates the quintessential falsity of what ethicists call “act utilitarianism” or concocting fictional happy outcomes to justify the terrible wrongful means.

It also seems that a human rights NGO, in this case Amnesty International, which had gained a solid reputation and hence the trust of those it has helped through the years, will be jeopardized in aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO.

This is exactly how the Nobel Peace Prize got corrupted, aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO, which is why Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire withdrew from the Nobel Peace forum held in Chicago during NATO.

Good NGOS and non-profits that want to maintain the trust in their humanitarian work tend to be very careful to maintain their independence from any government, let alone any war-making government. When NGOs, even good ones, become entwined with the U.S./NATO war machine, don’t they risk losing their independent credibility?

 

SIX QUESTIONS FOR THE MEDIA, THE UN AND NGOS REGARDING THE HOULA MASSACRE

May 29, 2012

Syria 360 – Editor’s Note:

I received this statement through private correspondence with Marinella Corregia.  I am posting the original Italian version. It appears on her website as “Lettera aperta al Ministro degli Esteri: Massacro degli innocenti a Hulé (Siria), contraddizioni dei media e dei politici internazionali”.

~Alexandra

SEI domande (ai media, alla Pillai-Onu, alle ong, sul massacro di Hulé (Siria)

1. Cui prodest? A chi giova un simile massacro? Quale risultato ha avuto a livello internazionale? E’ evidentissimo. Ambasciatori siriani espulsi, e ormai si parla di attacchi militari non appena la Russia dirà sì (come nel caso libico). Ovviamente l’Italia sarà in prima fila. Non si è fatta mancare una guerra in questi decenni.

2. I media dicono che l’Onu accusa il governo siriano. Ma il generale Robert Mood capo degli osservatori Onu non l’ha fatto. E Navi Pillai, Commissario Onu per i diritti umani, accusa il governo siriano ma – risulta perfino nel suo comunicato! – lo fa sulla base di “unconfirmed news” (notizie non confermate) a proposito appunto degli assassini recatisi casa per casa. In un altro comunicato il Commissariato sostiene che “i residenti” (sentiti da chi?) accusano le forze pro-Assad. Ma non è probabile che gli assassini fossero non riconoscibili? (Ricordo anche en passant che da mesi e mesi la Pillai prende come fonte assoluta l’Osservatorio londinese Sohr e interviste a oppositori. E che anche nel caso libico si distinse per l’operazione di disinformazione, un grande aiuto all’avvio della guerra).

3. I raccapriccianti video su youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=7B2_iY9ALpg&feature=endscreen) e (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=bLab9mIl750&feature=endscreen&skipcontrinter=1) mostrano i bambini ammassati in diverse ambientazioni, case o moschee. Dove sono stati trovati i bambini? Chi li ha trovati? Perché assassini mandati dal governo avrebbero dovuto lasciarli alla vista di tutti e degli osservatori Onu? Secondo il centro di informazione cattolico Vox Clamantis che si trova a Qara, in Siria, i bambini e gli adulti sono stati uccisi da terroristi in diversi luoghi e poi portati dai complici nella moschea per mostrarli agli osservatori e incolpare l’esercito, così da provocare (finalmente) un intervento armato esterno diretto e non solo indiretto. Del resto lo stesso Ban Ki Moon parla dell’esistenza di una terza forza, terrorista, in Siria. →