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Greenbacks for Blue Buckets: USAID Support for Instability in Russia

Strategic Culture Foundation

January 13, 2014

By Wayne Madsen

One «themed revolution», for which the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its allied operatives of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the George Soros Open Society Institute have become so infamous, went virtually unnoticed in the English language Western media.

In 2010, anti-Russian government provocateurs, financed by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs), staged a number of protests featuring plastic blue buckets. The buckets were meant to symbolize the portable flashing blue lights, known in Russian as migalki, used atop many vehicles for Russian VIPs, including government officials and private businessmen.

The themed blue bucket protests were directly linked to the «pro-democracy» activities of USAID in Russia. American-backed provocateurs began placing blue buckets on top of their cars to mock the use of blue lights by officials. In response, three parties represented in the State Duma, United Russia, A Just Russia, and the Liberal Democratic Party, proposed a bill to crack down on the use of the blue buckets by protesters who were intent on causing traffic problems, sometimes resulting in vehicle accidents.

U.S. NGO support for the «blue bucket» revolution preceded by a year the nomination by President Barack Obama of anti-Russian activist Michael McFaul as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. McFaul began his tenure in Moscow by opening up the U.S. embassy to all sorts of anti-Russian political activists, provocateurs, and troublemakers.

AVAAZ, Libya & Syria: The Art of War

The Western Left had no such excuse in 2011, when Libya was being attacked. Here we had a small nation, of only six million people, under attack from the most devastating military power ever put together. 120 Cruise missiles fired in the first few days, and then over 26,000 sorties by NATO military aircraft, over an eight month period. To put that into perspective, its adds up to 150 bombing raids per day on a population the size of Ireland’s – every single day – for eight months. And all through, the Western Left cheered on the smashing of the Socialist state infrastructure and cheered on the racist lynch mobs…

…this same Left would have become the cheerleaders for a genocidal, racist, campaign against a Socialist state, with one of the highest standards of living in the Developing World, and with a human rights record that was gaining widespread praise in the UN? Not to mention an advanced system of Direct Democracy…

Without having any real idea of who or what these “rebels” were, the Western Left became complicit. They were sucked in. Joyfully sucked in. They filled out the missing spaces with their fantasies of democratic protestors, valiantly standing up to the Viagra drugged soldiers of a hated dictator. 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. And so, even after the brutal murder of Muammar al-Gaddafi, by drone and fighter jet attack, and then by a crazed mob, the madness of the Western Left continued… — Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill,The “Arab Spring” and the Seduction of the Western Left

President Obama Attends Rally For Rep. Tom Perriello

WKOG editor: As Avaaz continues to beat the drums of war, it is critical to reflect upon the vital role Avaaz served in framing the attack on Libya as not only palatable, but righteous and moral. The No Fly Zone placed upon Libya, which Avaaz relentlessly campaigned for, facilitated the complete annihilation of Libya and the slaughter of tens of thousands of her citizens.

Today, Libya is absolutely destroyed and in deep turmoil. Yet, two years later, Avaaz continues to push for the same in Syria: a no fly zone and the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine by the United Nations. Few would be surprised, if only they knew, that a key founder of Avaaz is none other than pro-war Tom Perriello, a former U.S. Representative (represented the 5th District of Virginia from 2008 to 2010) and a founding member of the House Majority Leader’s National Security Working Group. Perriello’s curriculum vitae, built upon privilege within elite circles, is extensive.

The following is an excerpt from Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I, written by Cory Morningstar, published on Sept 24, 2012.

Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention? 

A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.

“The call for a no-fly zone originated from Libyans – including the provisional opposition government, Libya’s (defected) ambassador to the UN, protesters, and youth organizations.”

Today Avaaz claims 13,649,421 members, 70,432,165 “actions” (taken since January 2007) and 194 countries with Avaaz members according to the information provided by Avaaz, retrieved on 2 March 2012. During the typing of this single paragraph, the Avaaz membership rose by 30 people to 13,649,451. [Avaaz Facts]

The members are primarily citizens residing within Imperialist or wealthy states. Consider the following three examples: (Stats retrieved from the Avaaz global “membership” virtual map.)

Avaaz members situated in United States: 923,968

Avaaz members situated in Canada: 667,592

Avaaz members situated in Libya: 3,167

Capitalising On Nonviolence

Capitalising On Nonviolence

OtporMarch32013

Above image: March 3, 2013: Otpor/Canvas (fist symbol) rears its ugly head in Venezuela. Today’s youth are the oligarchy’s sacrificial lambs.

Massive displays of nonviolent resistance have always been an essential component to challenging oppression successfully. One can only hope that Western citizens will learn from contemporary history and rise up to overthrow the ultra-violent warmongers who manage their countries too, mindful of the fact that nonviolent liberal institutions are routinely complicit in the brutality of the systems they ostensibly criticize. – Michael Barker

Swans Commentary

June 20, 2011

By Michael Barker

Berel Rodal is the founding vice chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) — a center that was formed in 2006, ostensibly “as a catalyst to stimulate interest in nonviolent conflict…” Like many peace reformers, members of the ICNC’s cadre of intellectuals are happy to work with a wide variety of institutions, organizations, and groups. This includes peace groups, resistance movements, and — strangely — war academies and intelligence agencies. While their engagement with the latter groups may seem contradictory, teaching peace to leading members of the military-industrial complex is critical to peace advocacy efforts at the ICNC. This is because they aim to change the views of people they disagree with, not just confirm the ideas of those who are already close to their views. Therefore, in this respect, it is fitting that at the peak of his former career Berel Rodal served as the director general of the policy secretariat for Canada’s Department of National Defence and continues to maintain close connections to leading hawks in the US foreign policymaking circles, like, for example, long-time cold warrior Richard Perle (see later). This should not be taken as a demonstration of a massive conspiracy, but is simply evidence that imperial elites are interested in co-opting critical voices.

Desperate for Destabilization in Venezuela, US Funded OTPOR Rears It’s Ugly Head

“We had a lot of financial help from Western nongovernmental organizations. And also some Western governmental organizations.” Slobodan Homen, Otpor, 2000

 

Otpor logo

 

“Just how much money backed this objective is not clear. The United States Agency for International Development says that $25 million was appropriated just this year. Several hundred thousand dollars were given directly to Otpor for “demonstration-support material, like T-shirts and stickers,” says Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator. Otpor leaders intimate they also received a lot of covert aid — a subject on which there is no comment in Washington.” Who Really Brought Down Milosevic? New York Times, Nov 26, 2000

 

Otpor, as reported by the New York Times, was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States via the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Otpor (now calling itself CANVAS) has since been most instrumental in the recruiting and training behind the imperialist destabilization campaigns crushing sovereign states, and the far from spontaneous “Arab Springs”.

“The tranquility prevailing in Tachira, Venezuela, was interrupted a few days ago by violent right wing youth groups that are sponsored by foreign NGOs. The so-called “white hands” that do not recognize the government and the vice president, Nicolas Maduro, as well as the decision by the Supreme Court of Justice allowing President Chavez to take oath before this judicial institution. COPEI Party, the Popular Will Party and the first justice party are encouraging sabotage and terrorism in the state of Tachira. They are wishing for a person to die or be injured, but we will not allow it. … [Source: TelesSUR]

In the following video published January 14, 2013, at exactly 1:07 in, the Otpor symbol on the t-shirt of the “protestor” is clearly identifiable.

Democracy Promotion: America’s New Regime Change Formula

 

“On a trip to South Africa to train Zimbabweans in 2003, Djinovic and Popovic decided to establish CANVAS.  … Djinovic had founded Serbia’s first wireless Internet service provider in 2000 and was well on his way to becoming a mogul. Today he is head of Serbia’s largest private internet and phone company and funds about half of CANVAS’s operating expenses and the costs for half the training workshops out of his own pocket. (CANVAS has four and a half staff employees. The trainers are veterans of successful democracy movements in five countries and are paid as contractors. CANVAS participates in some workshops financed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations Development Program, an international NGO called Humanity in Action, and Freedom House, an American group which gets its money from the U.S. government. But CANVAS prefers to give Washington a wide berth, in part due to Otpor’s experience. Like the entire opposition to Milosevic, Otpor took money from the U.S. government, and lied about it. When the real story came out after Milosevic fell, many Otpor members quit, feeling betrayed.” – REVOLUTION U – FOREIGN POLICY FEATURE, FEB 16, 2011, BY TINA ROSENBERG

 

Otpor has also surfaced in North America’s Occupy Wall Street and 350.org

Image on far left: In 1998 the Otpor logo appears in Belgrade. Image on left: Otpor logo as found on the New York Occupy Wall Street Official website (2012),  featured above an Avaaz destabilization campaign against Syria. (screenshot below). Read more about Avaaz here.

 

350.org presents Otpor

350.org | Sept 22 and Sept 29 2011, Creative Activism Thursdays Srdja Popovic and Slobo Djinovic Lecture

“Due to the widespread interest in the Creative Activism Lecture Series this fall, and in order to better accommodate all guests, RSVP is required; please show up early. If you don’t RSVP, you can still show up and we’ll let you in 5 minutes before the lecture starts if there’s room. Note: immediately after the lecture, the audience will head down to #occupywallstreet!”

NGO’S AND INREVENTIONISM AS A GEOPOLITICAL INSTRUMENT

by Hannes HOFBAUER

October 01, 2012

Strategic Culture Foundation

The mother of all coloured revolutions was black and white. Its name: «Otpor», «Resistance». Its symbol: a white feast in front of a black ground, red colour was hated. «Otpor» was founded in the beginning of the 1990s in Belgrade. The group understood itself in sharp opposition to the rise of Slobodan Milosevic and his «Socialist Party of Serbia» (SPS). «Otpor’s» battle-cry: «gotov je!», «he is finished». «He» was the big enemy: Milosevic. The first manifestations against his government began in 1988. Their social character was evident. People protested against rising prices for living. These «bread-riots» pointed at the government, but meant the IMF that dictated what they called «reform», the abolishment of state subsidies for housing and goods of daily use. Out of parts of these protesters «Otpor» formed a political group with one single goal: to get rid of whom they called «the autocrat», Slobodan Milosevic.

After the end of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia the legitimacy of rule and governance was debated widely in a political and philosophical sense. Where rulers of the old type or their supposed revenants did not give way voluntarily, oppositional groups felt legitimated to overthrow the system. This also happened in Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic and his SPS undermined the shock therapy of the IMF in Winter 1990/91 by setting in motion the money-printing machine. The fresh banknotes allowed paying state employers like teachers, doctors and military. Hence he obstructed the restrictive monetary policy, prescribed by the IMF. What was appreciated by vast parts of the people, provoked Western organisations, and he became an enemy of them. «Otpor» repeated its standpoint: «Milosevic has to leave». It took some time until the potential of this oppositional group was discovered by Western financiers.

Civil society intervention

Since the middle of the 1990s masses of so-called Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have been operating in the countries of ex-Comecon and Yugoslavia. Their «mission» followed slogans of «democracy», «nation-building» or «new governance». They aimed at interfering in politics by supporting local oppositional groups of civil society.

One of the most prominent and strongest «Mission»-organisation to bring Western democracy to Eastern and Southern countries is the American foundation named «National Endowment for Democracy» (NED). Founded by the US-Congress in 1983 and financed by state-money since then, NED has the function to distribute an annual amount of a three-figure million Dollar number to four so-called NGOs: The «National Democratic Institute for International Affairs» (NDI), which stands under the influence of the Democratic Party, its Republican vis-à-vis, the «International Republican Institute» (IRI), the «Center for International Private Enterprise» (CIPE) and the «American Center for International Labor Solidarity» (ACILS), one representing the Chamber of commerce, the other the AFL/CIO-union. These four NGOs, all of them fully backed by state-money and therefore cheating with the «N» in their self-representation as «NGO», work in their respected fields on the ground in Eastern Europe, the Islamic world and elsewhere.

The ideological background of foundations like NED, the United States Agency for International Development USAID, «Freedom-House» or its British variant «Westminster Foundation for Democracy» is rooted in a specific understanding of what they call «universal democracy», which they claim to be spread all over the world. The concept is based on the declared necessity of economic competition and its political administration through democratic institutions. Democratic institutions have to follow the principles of market economy and not vice versa. The ideal, universalistic form of this model of democracy can be described as «constitutive liberalism» in a parliamentary two-party-system under a strong presidency. The electoral freedom excludes the social and economic system and reduces socio-economic debates, if admitted at all, to measures of tax policy.

This understanding of democracy is not compatible with revolutionary processes having taken place in Eastern Europe and North Africa. There the vision of democracy reaches beyond the system of «constitutive liberalism» and its defence of property. On the contrary: revolutions overwhelm such things like property laws and open new radical perspectives. Political and media observers are well aware of this fact and its potential danger. Therefore all missions of civil society-interventions by Western foundations are united by one goal: to direct revolutionary processes in East and South towards the Western understanding of liberal democracy; to pave the way for «constitutional liberalism».

Many democratic elections, for example in Eastern Europe, but also in the Arab world after 1989/91, did not reflect the Western idea of liberal democracy. The outcome were «false results» in the cases of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Slovakia, when leaders like Milosevic, Iliescu, Meciar or Fico received majorities at the ballot-box. The American political scientist and redactor in chief of the influential magazine «Foreign Affairs», Fareed Zakaria, named these democratic elections, when Milosevic or Meciar took legal power, «illiberal democracies». (1) In his view it is not the democracy as such that are in ill health condition, but the constitutional liberalism. He even makes his view more concrete: «Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous». Meciar, Iliescu, Milosevic, Yanukovych… they all won elections and got majorities, some of them more than one time. Nevertheless Western media and politicians call them despots, autocrats, nationalists, communists or national communists. Western foundations like NED, USAID, Westminster or Freedom House see their task in spreading their universalistic claim of a bourgeois, liberally constituted democracy throughout the world. In the societies of transformation they intervene into civil society by moulding local protests into coloured revolution.

How do these interventions function? At the beginning local or national discontent, which almost always is rooted in social problems, has to be «politicised». That means that social revolutionary elements have to be excluded. They could be dangerous for the establishment of a liberal democracy. In a second step cadres are formed. They run through different seminars in «regime change», «liberal democracy», «institution building», «nation building» etc. Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of NED, once stated openly, what the function of organisations like NED was like at the beginning of the 1990s: «A lot of what we [NED] do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA». (2) In some cases like in the case of James Woosley this statement can be proved even biographically. Woosley was head of the CIA between 1993 and 1995, before he led the board of «Freedom House».

If the civil society interventions do not fulfil the aim of «regime change», a military intervention can take place, like it did in Yugoslavia in March 1999. Since the rule of Bill Clinton civil mission and military threat go hand in hand. Barack Obama brings this system to perfection.

With the help of Western foundations, the Serbian «Otpor» positioned itself as a more or less successful export model. From Georgia to Ukraine, Belarus and Egypt former activists of «Otpor» hold trainings and seminars in civil resistance to form NGO-units of oppositional groups to overthrow the respective political leaders and governments like Shevardandze, Kuchma/Yanukovych or Lukashenko. Not everywhere the plan is functioning, like the case of Belarus shows. There the local coloured revolutionaries were persecuted and moved to Lithuania or Poland, where they now maintain their infrastructure like radio stations, offices and «universities».

Moscow is warned

In July 2012 the Russian Duma passed a law which obliges civil society organisations to financing transparency. This includes the declaration and control of foreign money. The Western resentment at this law is dishonest in some regards. On the one hand, the civil society interventions of Western foundations for Eastern and Southern coloured revolutions get more and more visible. Their function is evident. Even more: For example NED is publishing openly which NGO is getting how much grants. In its annual statement of accounting (2011) NED notes that it concentrated on subsidising NGOs in Belarus, where organisations like «Freedom of information» (1,23 Mio Dollars) or «Civil Society» (300.000 Dollars) all together received 3,5 Mio. Dollars in 2011.

On the other hand, Russia is not the first country to hinder civil society interventions from outside. So Venezuela closed down the NED-bureau in Caracas in December 2010. And Egypt checked the bureaus of five foreign foundations and brought more than 40 responsible employees (Americans, Germans, Serbians and Egyptians) to the court. They are accused of «illegal activities with illegal money transfers».

After all the experiences with intervening in civil societies in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus, nobody can be astonished that Moscow is trying to protect its civil society from foreign attempts to implement coloured opposition. Let’s be frank: what would happen if Russian foundations would intervene in Western European civil societies? How would the European Union, for example, react, if Russian of Chinese financial support would be given to – let’s say – groups for national self-determination. They could even use the same political argument Berlin did in the 1990s by supporting Croatian and Bosnian nationalists and their fight against Belgrade. National discontent is widespread in Europe. And easily young people from Greece to the Netherlands could be found to fight EU-establishment with social or national arguments. Russian money could help them to organise. It is for sure that in the case of logistical and financial intervention into EU-inner politics, Brussels would immediately stop the flow of money from outside, for example from Moscow. This restriction would be labelled as a necessary «capital control» to protect EU-European interests, as it is done in other fields of the economy. Moscow is doing exactly the same, but Western media and politicians are defaming the restriction for being «undemocratic» representing «Soviet-type politics». With the new Russian law controlling foreign money flow into civil society organisations, the Western «NGOs are forced to react. USAID is the first to close down its office end of September 2012…

____________________________________

(1) Fareed Zakaria, The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. In: Foreign Affairs 76/6 (1997), 42

(2) Washington Post, 21th of September 1991

Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part IV

Part four of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2012 [Further Reading]: Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VI

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2017 [Further Reading]: Part IPart IIPart III

 

Bread and Circuses

Panem et circenses. A metaphor for a superficial means of appeasement, in Latin. It was the basic Roman formula for the well-being of the population, and hence a political strategy unto itself. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion, distraction, and/or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace. The phrase also implies the erosion or ignorance of civic duty amongst the concerns of the common man (l’homme moyen sensuel). In modern usage, the phrase is taken to describe a populace that no longer values civic virtues and the public life. To many across the political spectrum, left and right, it connotes a supposed triviality and frivolity that characterized the Roman Republic prior to its decline into the autocratic monarchy characteristic of the later Roman Empire’s transformation about 44 BCE. [Source: Wikipedia]

Avaaz: The Emperor of the NGO Network 

“The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.” — Teju Cole

Avaaz is the operational name of “Global Engagement and Organizing Fund,” a non-profit organization legally incorporated in 2006.

Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, described as a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, “an online community that has pioneered internet advocacy in the United States.”

Launched in 2007, Avaaz is the fastest-growing online movement in history. The deliberate choosing of the word Avaaz, which translates to “voice” in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages, begs the question of whether the core purpose of Avaaz from the onset was to build influence and “befriend” the populations in the Middle Eastern and Asia.

9 December 2009: Ricken Patel of Res Publica: “Each organization [MoveOn and ResPublica] has roughly equal international memberships that will be invited to join Avaaz (Res Publica has built a list of almost 400,000 at http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/) … I think it’s fair [to say] that we’re starting with a MoveOn model plus SMS….” [SMS is the acronym for Short Message Service, or texting.]

The Service Employees International Union and GetUp.org.au were also publicly recognized as founding partners of Avaaz: “Avaaz.org also enjoys the partnership and support of leading activist organizations from around the world, including the Service Employees International Union, a founding partner of Avaaz, GetUp.org.au, and many others.”

The silent voice behind Avaaz, that of Res Publica, is, in the public realm, essentially comprised of 3 key individuals: Tom Perriello, a pro-war (former) U.S. Representative who describes himself as a social entrepreneur, Ricken Patel, consultant to many of the most powerful entities on Earth and the long-time associate of Perriello, and Tom Pravda, a member of the UK Diplomatic Service who serves as a consultant to the U.S. State Department.

9 December 2009, Tech President: “The organization is pursuing an ambitious growth path…. It is beginning with 700,000 members spread across 148 countries. It also has an Advisory Board that comprises politicians, diplomats, activists and celebrities from around the world…. Open Society Institute indeed made a one-year grant of $150,000 to Res Publica last summer to help them get Avaaz off the ground.” (Two appreciative comments from Avaaz associates can be found under this article, including one from a lesser publicly credited Avaaz co-founder, Paul Hilder.) (Hilder is discussed further within this report.)

In addition to the $150,000 in seed money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Res Publica gave Avaaz $225,000 in 2006. (Form 990, page 18), $950,000 in 2007 (Form 990, page 18), and $500,000 in 2008 (Form 990, page 9). (Form 990 allows the IRS and the public to evaluate nonprofits and how they operate.)

Avaaz states that they take “absolutely no money from governments or corporations…. While we received initial seed grants from partner organizations and charitable organizations, almost 90% of the Avaaz budget now comes [from] small online donations.” The 2009 Form 990 for George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society reports (page 87) $300,000 in general support for Avaaz and an additional $300,000 to Avaaz for climate campaigning.

The Avaaz co-founding team is comprised of a group of “global social entrepreneurs” from six countries: 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 is lucky to have the founding partnership and support of leading activist organizations from around the world.” [1]

The 2010 Avaaz Form 990 states: “Avaaz Foundation is comprised of two members: Res Publica (U.S.) Inc. and MoveOn.org Civic Action.”

Both Heimans and Madden were instrumental in forming the vision of Avaaz; the “global online political community inspired by the success of GetUp and the U.S. group MoveOn.org.”

In 2002, MoveOn’s political action committee (PAC) raised and distributed $3.5 million to more than 36 U.S. congressional candidates. Don Hazen (executive director of the “Independent” Media Institute (IMI), as well as executive editor of AlterNet, which is a program of IMI) [2] was quoted as stating: “MoveOn’s member list [is] mostly white, highly educated, computer savvy … and willing to give dough.”

Based on the “success” of Avaaz co-founder, MoveOn, we can safely assume that “mostly white, highly educated, computer savvy … and willing to give dough” should be considered the targeted demographic for Avaaz and the Avaaz network.

On 23 November 2003 it was reported by San Fransico Chronicle that “MoveOn.org reeled in a $5 million matching pledge from currency speculator billionaire George Soros.” This represented the largest-ever individual donation to the five-year-old organization. The model described by The Chronicle was “an organization with six full-time employees, no offices,” which has been successfully replicated by many NGOs within the non-profit industrial complex, including 350.org.

In 2010 Avaaz paid Ricken Patel $183,264 as executive director, and paid Ben Wikler (Avaaz campaign director) $111,384 plus $921,592 in “campaigner fees and consulting” and $182,196 in travel expenses. During 2011, Avaaz did not miss a golden opportunity to set up a live-stream for the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York in order to give a voice to the “99%.” Yes, the rich get richer. The poor get poorer.

In addition to receiving funding from the Open Society Institute, Avaaz has publicly cited the Open Society Institute as their foundation partner. This admission by founder Ricken Patel is found on the www.soros.org website. [As discussed in part I, The Open Society Institute (renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations) is a private operating and grantmaking foundation founded by George Soros, who remains the chair. Soros is known best as a multibillionaire currency speculator, and of late, an avid supporter of Occupy Wall Street. Soros is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is essentially the promotional arm of the ruling elite in the U.S. Most all U.S. policy is initiated and written by the exclusive membership within the CFR.]

Avaaz utilized/utilizes their Open Society Institute relationship to distribute member donations via “Avaaz partners at the Open Society Institute.” [3]

March 2008 – Avaaz co-founder, Ricken Patel explains: “Avaaz is a campaigning organization and not in this business. So we chose a foundation partner with long experience…. That group is the Open Society Institute, one of the largest and most respected foundations in the world. OSI is taking no overhead on the funds we are granting to Burmese groups, and has also increased its own support to this cause in 2008.” [4] In the instance of Burma, all Avaaz campaign donations have been directly funneled through the Soros Open Society Institute Burma Project (website). Although nowhere on the Avaaz website will you find any connection to George Soros, within this statement Patel clearly states that The Open Society Institute is in fact a partner of Avaaz. Why Avaaz chooses to funnel the money through the Soros foundation is not clearly understood, but we might assume Soros insists upon it in order to control which groups in Burma receive funding. Today, Myanmar (Burma) “is eagerly genuflecting before an onslaught of foreign private investors zeroing in to dispossess her” (24 May 2012, Myanmar Learns the Lesson of Libya).

Avaaz partners are many, including one.org [5] [discussed further in this report] and the infamous TckTckTck. The Tcktcktck campaign was launched 26 June 2009 by Havas, one of the world’s largest global advertising and communications firms, in conjunction with the United Nations (Kofi Annan) and Bob Geldof. The stated objective of this corporate-driven advertising campaign was “to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.” It is revealing that the “environmental organizations” listed as partners were, first and foremost, none other than 350.org and Avaaz.org who partnered with the likes of such corporations as EDF Nuclear, Lloyds Bank, MTV, and other multi-national corporations who simultaneously destroy our shared environment. The organizations flourish under the guise and branding of “grassroots,” yet “grassroots” are generally not connected to the dominant global structures that are able to absorb, shape and dominate entire movements such as in the case of Tcktcktck at the climate change talks in Copenhagen.

And while the stated initial goal of Avaaz, according to Avaaz co-founder Madden, was “a web-based campaign against the foreign policy of United States President,” the reality is anything but.

Avaaz’s stance on both Libya (now annihilated) and now Syria is in smooth synchronicity with the positions within the U.S. administration, positions such as those vocalized by the likes of war criminals such as Hillary Clinton (of “We came. We saw. He died. Laughter…” fame). The ugly iron fist of war is gently being spoon-fed to the public by way of a very dark velvet glove – that being Avaaz.

As of July 2011, Avaaz claimed to have more than 9.65 million “members” in 193 countries. Most recently, the Avaaz  campaign, which demands foreign intervention by the Imperialist states in a synchronized effort to destabilize Syria, has resulted in the Avaaz membership skyrocketing to over 13 million members. According to Avaaz, this surge of an additional 3 million members or so was achieved in less than 30 days of an intense campaign against the Sovereign Syrian Government. What’s happening in Syria today is a destabilization campaign in which the terror unleashed upon the population is financed by foreign interests.

In the midst of the Avaaz destabilization campaigns of both Libya and Syria, Avaaz, in unison with other U.S.-funded NGOs, also waged a destabilization campaign against the Morales Government of Bolivia in October 2011. The attempt failed. Unlike westerners, Bolivians are, today, far advanced in their intellectual understanding of global politics and carefully orchestrated propaganda, having been on the receiving end of Imperialism/colonialism and the capitalist economic system itself, for what surely must feel like an eternity.

Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention? 

A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.

“The call for a no-fly zone originated from Libyans – including the provisional opposition government, Libya’s (defected) ambassador to the UN, protesters, and youth organizations.”

Today Avaaz claims 13,649,421 members, 70,432,165 “actions” (taken since January 2007) and 194 countries with Avaaz members according to the information provided by Avaaz, retrieved on 2 March 2012. During the typing of this single paragraph, the Avaaz membership rose by 30 people to 13,649,451. [Avaaz Facts]

The members are primarily citizens residing within Imperialist or wealthy states. Consider the following three examples: (Stats retrieved from the Avaaz global “membership” virtual map.)

Avaaz members situated in United States: 923,968

Avaaz members situated in Canada: 667,592

Avaaz members situated in Libya: 3,167

On 10 March 2010, John Hilary challenged Avaaz in a Guardian article titled “Internet activists should be careful what they wish for in Libya. Calls for a no-fly zone over Libya ignore the perils of intervention. Long-term solutions aren’t as simple as the click of a mouse.”

Hilary writes:

A no-fly zone would almost certainly draw Nato countries into further military involvement in Libya, replacing the agency of the Libyan people with the control of those governments who have shown scant regard for their welfare. As long as the oil kept flowing, western governments have been happy to prop up dictators who kept a heavy boot on their people’s freedom. Libyans are unlikely to be grateful to be bombed by those same western governments attempting to enforce a no-fly zone. Indeed such action would help Muammar Gaddafi by justifying his rhetoric about foreign intervention, not to mention stopping fledgling revolutions across the region in their tracks.

 

Clearly a no-fly zone makes foreign intervention sound rather humanitarian – putting the emphasis on stopping bombing, even though it could well lead to an escalation of violence.

 

No wonder, too, that it is rapidly becoming a key call of hawks on both sides of the Atlantic. The military hierarchy, with their budgets threatened by government cuts, surely cannot believe their luck – those who usually oppose wars are openly campaigning for more military involvement.

Although Hilary knowingly or otherwise dismisses the very real foreign intervention as “rhetoric” while not divulging the fact that the “fledgling revolutions” he speaks of were instigated/infiltrated/financed by foreign interests, Hilary ends with a prophetic note:

Calling for military intervention is a huge step – the life and death of hundreds of thousands of people might hang in the balance. The difference between the ease of the action and the impact of the consequence is vast.

 

In the Spanish civil war many brave people felt so strongly that they sacrificed their own lives to support the struggle against fascism in that country. How incredible it would have seemed to them, less than a hundred years later, that people would be using a click of their mouse to send armies to fight battles that might end in the death of so many others.

Avaaz’s campaign director, Ben Wikler, posted a comment in response to Hilary’s article. Bold emphasis have been added.

“Dear John,

 

“Thanks for this piece. Sorry that you felt we got this wrong. We’re doing our best and of course, people of good will with similar values can sometimes disagree. Here’s a bit more background and explanation for you on our decision on the no-fly zone –

 

Avaaz is people-powered. Our member community makes the calls. We use polls to gauge members’ views; 84% of members supported this campaign, while 9% opposed it. Since launching it, we’ve found intense support for the campaign from around the world.

 

Our staff also play a key role in consulting with leading experts around the world (and most of our staff have policy as well as advocacy backgrounds) on each of the campaigns we run, and Libya was no exception.

 

In some ways, we work a lot like journalists like you do, talking to people and weighing the facts before we form conclusions. However, our staff’s personal conclusions also have to pass the test of our membership being strongly supportive of any position we take.

 

We’re acutely aware of your and some others’ objections to this campaign. Here are the main issues that people have raised, and where we’re coming from regarding them:

 

Would imposing a no-fly zone really be a Western military intervention motivated by oil?

 

If Western powers use the no-fly zone as a pretext for self-interested military action, Avaaz would be among the first groups to campaign against it – just as Avaaz has campaigned to end the Iraq conflict and ensure that Iraq’s oil rights are reserved for the Iraqi people.

 

The call for a no-fly zone originated from Libyans – including the provisional opposition government, Libya’s (defected) ambassador to the UN, protesters, and youth organizations.

 

The same Libyan groups have strongly opposed any western military presence on Libyan soil. They clearly feel that a no-fly zone is not equivalent to or a step towards invasion. Avaaz staff are in close and constant contact with activists inside Libya and have been repeatedly asked to move forward on this campaign.

 

Meanwhile, among governments, Gulf States have demanded the no-fly zone, and the U.S. government, far from itching to move ahead, appears deeply divided on the idea.

 

Furthermore, our advocacy has been for the UN Security Council to authorize a no-fly zone, not any coalition of western nations. You can bet that China and Russia will not sign off on a no-fly zone if they think it’s a cover for a Western oil grab.

 

Would imposing a no-fly zone lead to a full-blown international war?

 

No-fly zones can mean a range of different things. Some analysts and military figures have argued that it would require a pre-emptive attack on Libya’s anti-aircraft weapons. Others, however, contend that merely flying fighter planes over the rebel-controlled areas would ensure that Qaddafi wouldn’t use his jets to attack eastern Libya, because he knows his air force is weaker than that of Egypt or NATO states. The best solution is the one that reduces civilian deaths the most with the least violence. Things might not turn out as expected, but while there are potential dangers to an international war, there are certain dangers to civilians if things continue without a no-fly zone.

 

Is Qaddafi really killing civilians with this air force?

 

Based on reports from our partners on the ground, from the Red Cross, and from a variety of local and international news reports, we believe Qaddafi’s bombing runs are indeed killing civilians. Qaddafi’s air power is a key advantage over those fighting to remove him: as long as he has control of the air, attacks seem likely to continue for months or even longer, with disastrous consequences for civilians.

 

Wouldn’t a UN resolution for a no-fly zone violate national sovereignty?

 

We believe that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians when national governments threaten their fundamental human rights.

 

National sovereignty should not be a legitimate barrier to international action when crimes against humanity are being committed. If you strongly disagree, then you may find yourself at odds with other Avaaz campaigns as well.

 

All told, this was a difficult judgment call.

 

Calling for any sort of military response always is. Avaaz members have been advocating for weeks for a full set of non-military options as well, including an asset freeze, targeted sanctions, and prosecutions of officials involved in the violent crackdown on demonstrators.

 

But although those measures are moving forward, the death toll is rising. Again, thoughtful people can disagree – but in the Avaaz community’s case, only 9% of our thoughtful people opposed this position – somewhat surprising given that we have virtually always advocated for peaceful methods to resolve conflict in the past. We think it was the best position to take given the balance of expert opinion, popular support, and most of all, the rights and clearly expressed desire of the Libyan people.

 

Respectfully,
Ben Wikler

Let’s break this down. In the Avaaz rebuttal Wikler states:

Avaaz is people-powered. Our member community makes the calls. We use polls to gauge members’ views; 84% of members supported this campaign, while 9% opposed it. Since launching it, we’ve found intense support for the campaign from around the world.”

The question must be asked – why does “intense support of the campaign from around the world” from an organization co-founded by MoveOn that, as stated in 2002, caters to members comprised of “mostly white, highly educated, computer savvy … and willing to give dough” supersede the rights of a sovereign nation and her citizens against foreign interference? How would unleashing a military operation in Libya affect Avaaz constituents attending Harvard? In fact, the Avaaz demographic is one that is being trained to not think – just click. Indeed, critical thinking is a detriment and a very real threat to the entire Avaaz phenomenon. Surely, the “wish” for foreign intervention and no-fly zones (more commonly known as war and bombs) should only be considered by those who will be affected directly by such a military campaign. As Avaaz states, their Libyan membership is a mere 3,167 people – one must ask how Avaaz considers the 3,167 Libyan Avaaz “members” as representative of “the Libyan people” in a country with (prior to the invasion) a population of almost 6 million citizens.

“This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.” — Teju Cole

The fact is that the Libyan people as a society had no representation in the Avaaz campaign calling for foreign military intervention to be inflicted upon the Libyan tribal society. In spite of Wikler’s ridiculous rhetoric, the fact is Libyan citizens were considered by Avaaz to hold little significance. Avaaz, iconic symbol of the white ivory towers of justice, followed in the path of other international NGOs in the racist ideology that the belief system upheld by the “educated” “middleclass” in the wealthy states is far superior to any contrary beliefs and ideologies of tribal/civil societies in African and Arab nations. It is only the people from within these privileged classes whose opinions matter, hence the victorious proclamation of the 84% support. The Avaaz position is even more problematic when you consider the following.

What constitutes becoming an Avaaz “member”? As with the other “online activism” NGOS, Avaaz’s actual membership is open to interpretation. For example, Avaaz affiliate GetUp states, “Join the movement of 589,261 Australians. Become a member now.” However, this figure is derived from the entire database of signed GetUp petitions, whereby each signatory is automatically enlisted as “a member.” [6] As Avaaz is modeled after GetUp and MoveOn, and considering the membership increases rapidly within a 60 second time-frame, one can assume with certainty that an Avaaz “membership” is instantly granted to each and every individual signing a petition. This ruse serves as a brilliant method of disguising where the majority of their largesse (i.e., investment) originated from (i.e., the corporate state) while further reinforcing the false impression that their funding originated from grassroots sources.

(The latest feel-good consumer NGO (first media mention 29 November 2011, first “tweet” on 4 November 2011), yet another thinking person’s nightmare named SumOfUs, already boasts 262,950 members worldwide. Where did these members come from? Affiliated NGO membership lists?)

If one signed an Avaaz petition in 2007, long before realizing whose interests this organization truly represents, is this same individual still considered a member in 2012? If 3,167 Libyan Avaaz members signed an Avaaz petition in 2008 to save elephants in Africa, this does not constitute a Libyan majority demanding military interference in 2011.

Wikler states:

“Our staff also play a key role in consulting with leading experts around the world (and most of our staff have policy as well as advocacy backgrounds) on each of the campaigns we run, and Libya was no exception.”

The question is, just exactly who are these experts Avaaz continues to refer to? Nowhere does Avaaz disclose these “experts” nor their affiliations. And which institutions and societies shaped their policy and advocacy backgrounds?

 Wikler states:

“If Western powers use the no-fly zone as a pretext for self-interested military action, Avaaz would be among the first groups to campaign against it.”

Yet, there has been a massive amount of evidence demonstrating, unequivocally, that this was exactly what the pretext was. “Self-interested military action” is exactly what happened, which begs the question – what happened to Avaaz claiming they “would be among the first groups to campaign against it”? [Self-interested military action: Madeleine Albright appearing on 60 minutes, Running time 23s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4] Not only does Avaaz contradict this statement, but this organization has done NOTHING to inform the public of any evidence of the deliberate destruction of Libya under the guise of a “humanitarian war.” To this day, not only is there NO EVIDENCE to support this invasion (made possible by the collaboration of yet another 77 NGOs), rather, there is a massive amount of evidence to the contrary. This was a well-planned, deliberate destabilization project that unleashed hell on a sovereign country – a country that had neither attacked nor invaded another nation. Avaaz has never released any material criticizing the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by NATO and the rebel militias that Avaaz was supporting. Nor has Avaaz shared with their supporters the horrific, racist rebel crimes and ethnic cleansing that NATO turned a blind eye to, and that were thoroughly documented throughout the invasion upon Libya. On the shocking racial atrocities filmed and documented in Tawergha, the white ivory towers remain silent. Aside from the evidence, prior to the invasion of Libya, and after, one would think that the “experts” of Avaaz would have vast knowledge of how destabilization campaigns are strategically planned and carried out by Imperialist states as documented in past and recent history. And of course, when one looks at the background of the founders who comprise Avaaz, we can understand they knew full well.

Video below: Humanitarian War in Libya: There is no evidence! (Running time: 19:42)

 

Wikler states:

“the call for a no-fly zone originated from Libyans – including the provisional opposition government, Libya’s (defected) ambassador to the UN, protesters, and youth organizations.”

As for Libya’s (defected) ambassador to the UN: “Just a few days after the street protests began, on February 21, the very quick to defect Libyan deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ibrahim Dabbashi, stated: ‘We are expecting a real genocide in Tripoli. The airplanes are still bringing mercenaries to the airports.’ This is excellent: a myth that is composed of myths. With that statement he linked three key myths together – the role of airports (hence the need for that gateway drug of military intervention: the no-fly zone), the role of “mercenaries” (meaning, simply, black people), and the threat of ‘genocide‘ (geared toward the language of the UN’s doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect). As ham-fisted and wholly unsubstantiated as the assertion was, he was clever in cobbling together three ugly myths, one of them grounded in racist discourse and practice that endures to the present, with newer atrocities reported against black Libyan and African migrants on a daily basis. He was not alone in making these assertions.” [Source: TOP TEN MYTHS IN NATO’S WAR AGAINST LIBYA]

It is an outrageous statement to claim it was the wish of the Libyan people to impose a military zone upon their own country. Further, the defected ambassador was clearly carrying out duties for the Imperialist states. Who were these protestors and youth organizations Avaaz speaks of? Are these the Libyans that comprise the 3,167 Libyan Avaaz members? Are they the youth groups set up by Avaaz funder and partner, the Soros Open Society Institute? Are they connected with the U.S.-funded Otpor or funded by another NGO fed by the U.S. administration? Nowhere is this information disclosed. Further, do the 3,167 Libyan Avaaz members actually live in Libya? Did all 3,167 Libyan Avaaz members sign the Avaaz petition, essentially demanding that their country become a war zone?

Wikler states:

“The same Libyan groups have strongly opposed any western military presence on Libyan soil. They clearly feel that a no-fly zone is not equivalent to or a step towards invasion. Avaaz staff are in close and constant contact with activists inside Libya and have been repeatedly asked to move forward on this campaign.”

It is beyond obvious that a no-fly zone in an oil rich country would open the door to Imperialist vultures. Who told these so-called “Libyan Groups” (whoever they are we do not know) such a ridiculous thing, “that a no-fly zone is not equivalent to or a step towards invasion”? One must assume this information was conveyed to the “Libyan Groups” by the Avaaz “experts” since the Avaaz staff claim they were “in close and constant contact with activists inside Libya.” Further, in response to the proposed no-fly zone, Wikler goes on to say “there are potential dangers to an international war…” One must question why Wikler is aware of the potential of international war in response to a no-fly zone while the “Libyan Groups” believe (according to Avaaz) that “a no-fly zone is not equivalent to or a step towards invasion.”

Wikler states:

“Meanwhile, among governments, Gulf States have demanded the no-fly zone, and the U.S. government, far from itching to move ahead, appears deeply divided on the idea.”

Yet, as Wikler convinced and assured the Guardian readership that the U.S. was hesitant to “intervene” in Libya, the reality was that two U.S. destroyers and a number of missile-launching submarines were in fact already deployed and headed for the Libyan coast. These destroyers decisively delivered 110 Tomahawk missiles 9 days later on 19 March 2011 as part of the military operation titled “Operation Odyssey Dawn.”

“The Royal Navy bought 65 Tomahawks in 1995 at a cost of $1 million (£650,000) each from U.S. defence firm Raytheon Systems. Two American destroyers, the U.S.S Barry and Stout, have been deployed. According to a Pentagon source, each carries up to 96 Tomahawk missiles.” [Source]

19 March 2011: “Cruise missiles from U.S. submarines and frigates began the attack on the anti-aircraft system. A senior defense official speaking on background said the attacks will ‘open up the environment so we could enforce the no-fly zone from east to west throughout Libya.'” [Source]

Wikler states:

“[T]here are certain dangers to civilians if things continue without a no-fly zone.”

Perhaps Wikler was speaking to certain dangers to American and European civilians if Gaddafi were to have succeeded in replacing the U.S. dollar and the Euro with an African Dinar, backed by gold, to build unity and autonomy throughout African nations. Perhaps he was referring to civilians who are living under an economic system that is dependent upon the continued exploitation and stealing of other nations’ vast resources. As Libya was a nation with no debt, interest-free loans, free education, free healthcare, and a state-of-the-art water system and a country that held the highest standard of living in Africa, it is difficult to imagine what exactly Libyans would have been fearing aside from a pending invasion by Imperialist states.

Wikler states:

“Based on reports from our partners on the ground, from the Red Cross, and from a variety of local and international news reports, we believe Qaddafi’s bombing runs are indeed killing civilians.”

Wikler is purposely vague. What reports exactly are they referring to? What partners?

March 1st Pentagon Briefing: Q: Do you see any evidence that [Gaddafi] actually has fired on his own people from the air?  There were reports of it, but do you have independent confirmation? If so, to what extent? Secretary of Defence – ROBERT GATES: A: “We’ve seen the press reports, but we have no confirmation of that,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – Admiral MICHAEL MULLEN A: “That’s correct. We’ve seen no confirmation whatsoever.”

In the following video, General Wesley Clark explains the Libyan invasion, Syria and Somalia, all planned years in advance: http://youtu.be/fSNyPS0fXpU.

Wikler states:

“We believe that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians when national governments threaten their fundamental human rights.”

Here Wikler echoes the current dogma being repeated incessantly by the U.S. administration and their corporate media lackeys. If Avaaz truly had any “experts” on civilian interests trumping those of corporate interests, Avaaz would tell us that this is merely language designed to facilitate societal acceptance of war by presenting it as “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect” (R2P). Prior to this lovely terminology, it was formerly known as “the Right to Intervene.”

Wikler states:

“Again, thoughtful people can disagree – but in the Avaaz community’s case, only 9% of our thoughtful people opposed this position – somewhat surprising given that we have virtually always advocated for peaceful methods to resolve conflict in the past. We think it was the best position to take given the balance of expert opinion, popular support, and most of all, the rights and clearly expressed desire of the Libyan people.”

This highlights a very dangerous experiment, and now precedent, set by Avaaz. Wikler openly expresses that they were surprised to find only 9% of their “membership” (based upon their polls) opposed a no-fly zone. Wikler stating that this position was “somewhat surprising given that we have virtually always advocated for peaceful methods to resolve conflict in the past” is, by his own admission, acknowledging that this new direction is one that is not peaceful. One should note that all NGOs use polls and marketing executives to create and lay out most all campaigns and campaign strategies. Avaaz is no exception; rather, Avaaz should be considered the rule.

Avaaz’s integration into militarism can be seen in their continual polling that outlines, in essence, what citizens are responsive to, and what they are willing to tolerate. In the 13 January 2010 global Avaaz poll, participants were asked to rate 6 priorities in order of importance. The stated priorities from which one could choose included human rights, torture and genocide (#2), democracy movements and tyrannical regimes (#3) war, peace and security (#4) and corruption and abuse of power (#5). Incidentally number 1 was climate change, however after the failed Copenhagen climate talks, this issue was no longer considered a hot commodity for NGO branding purposes and thus the campaign on climate was, for the most part, abandoned altogether. All other proposed “choices” are key elements/issues associated with militarism.

How Wikler and his Avaaz cohorts sleep at night, knowing the Avaaz campaign contributed to the annihilation of as many as 100,000 Libyan civilians and unleashed a racial war, is anyone’s guess. Although it certainly must help when one is surrounded by like-minded people who all reinforce your distorted world views while reassuring each other that each is more brilliant than the other and the end justifies the means. This is the beauty and the power of neo-liberalism activism conformity. It allows one to behave like an asshole, while those indoctrinated into the same belief system, including corporate and so-called “progressive” media, portray you as a celebrity. The oligarchy’s willingness to ensure the egos remain plump and well-nourished is strategic. This ensures that the narcissist’s delusions are reinforced while simultaneously ensuring any doubt is cast far away. No one wishes to be ostracized from the champagne circuit. Wikler recently left Avaaz to become Executive Vice President at Change.org, another Soros (for-profit) NGO, while thousands upon thousands of Libyans paid the ultimate price for his campaign, which can be found on the Avaaz website under recent “victories.” Ben Wikler’s compensation as Avaaz Campaign Director in 2010 was a reported $111,384 (990 Form).

Not everyone was so gullible. One reader (“derazed”) comments beneath the Guardian article: “Up until its latest, I had appreciated Avaaz – even gave some money in the direction of providing Arab activists telecommunications equipment. When the no-fly email arrived, I created my own “no fly” zone – by terminating my email relationship with Avaaz. The internet and real-life events have taught me something about warmongers in virtual clothing.”

[28 March 2011: Fortune-500 funded Brookings Institution’s “Libya’s Test of the New International Order” is reported on – exposing the war as not one of a “humanitarian” nature, but one aimed explicitly at establishing an international order and the primacy of international law.]

The Avaaz Gate-Keepers 

Consider all of the following information within this report as a mere tip of the iceberg. Note that most, if not all organizations discussed in this report are, in part or full, financed by, and in many cases established in partnership with, George Soros’ “Open Society Institute.”

Avaaz Co-Founder and Executive Director: Ricken Patel

Life in the Champagne Circuit: In this photograph taken by AP Images for Avaaz, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, center left, accepts the ‘End the War on Drugs’ petition from Avaaz Executive Director Ricken Patel, center right, accompanied by Richard Branson, right, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, left, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Friday, 3 June 2011.

Snapshot:

  • AccessNow: International Advisory Board
  • Avaaz International: Co-founder
  • Avaaz International: Executive Director/President
  • CARE International: Consultant
  • CeaseFireCampaign.org (discontinued): Co-Founder
  • CeaseFireCampaign.org (discontinued): Executive Director
  • DarfurGenocide.org: Co-director
  • DarfurGenocide.org: Co-founder
  • Faith in Public Life: Board of Directors
  • Faith in Public Life: Co-founder
  • Faithful America: Board of Directors
  • Faithful America: Co-founder
  • Gates Foundation: Consultant
  • Harvard University: Consultant
  • International Center for Transitional Justice: Consultant
  • International Crisis Group: Consultant
  • J Street: Advisory Council
  • Namati: Board of Directors
  • Res Publica: Chairman/Executive Director
  • Res Publica: Co-founder
  • Rockefeller Foundation: Consultant
  • United Nations: Consultant

 

Education:

  • Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
  • University of Oxford
  • Queen’s University

 

Compensation from Avaaz (990 Forms):

  • 2006:   $61,650 (Res Publica)
  • 2006: $120,000
  • 2007: $120,000
  • 2007:   $10,000 (Res Publica)
  • 2008: $126,000
  • 2009: $120,000
  • 2010: $183,264

 

Resides in New York

Ricken Patel is co-founder and executive director of Avaaz International. Patel has served as a consultant for the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Crisis Group, Harvard University, CARE International, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Patel’s consulting to the United Nations should be of little surprise. Like Avaaz, the United Nations has become nothing more than an instrumental tool that serves the interests of the Imperialist states. This too should come as little surprise since it was the oligarchy who founded the UN in the first place. For decades, those states oppressed under the claws of Imperialism have demanded reforms within the UN. This fact is well-documented in a long list of impassioned speeches by leaders of sovereign nations constantly fighting against oppression and foreign meddling. The speeches are rarely, if ever, publicized by either corporate or “progressive” media (funded by the same corporate elites). Not surprisingly, the non-profit industrial complex does essentially nothing to support the states who continue to fight for their autonomy and liberation, only possible by smashing the chains of Imperialist states. This is what Libya was helping Africa achieve before it was targeted and destroyed.

Patel was voted “Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics” in 2009 by the recently acquired Huffington Post (purchased by AOL Time Warner in 2011) and named “a Young Global Leader” by the infamous Davos World Economic Forum. When an “activist” receives accolades from international corporate entities and corporate media, alarm bells should be going off and red flags should be seen waving from those within civil society.

Patel is a graduate of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and Oxford and is considered in elite circles a “Balliol”:

Oxford: “Institutions as diverse as the Workers Educational Trust, the National Trust, Amnesty International, Ashoka (the global association of leading social entrepreneurs), and Avaaz (now the largest online advocacy group in the world) were all established by Balliol people.”

The International Crisis Group, for which Patel has served as a consultant, is also an institution for which George Soros is a trustee. In 2008, ICG helped establish the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, along with Human Rights Watch, Oxfam International and other influential NGOs of the Soros network. As of April 2011, ICG was one of the 31 member organizations belonging to the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. Operating on an annual budget of $17 million (2011), ICG raises funds from governments, charitable foundations, private companies, and individual donors. Among the organization’s key benefactors are the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Compton Foundation, and the Flora Family Foundation. In 2008 George Soros’ Open Society Institute pledged to give $5 million to ICG.

The International Crisis Group has been a key player in the “revolutions.” In the January 2011 article “All is not what it seems in Egyptian Clashes,” it was disclosed that the Egyptian protest leader Mohammed ElBaradei “was in fact a devoted agent of the West, with a long standing membership within the Wall Street/London funded International Crisis Group” [Source: Land Destroyer].

Patel is also co-founder and executive director of Res Publica, which was formally launched in 2003. Res Publica is based in New York.

Res Publica is a primary co-founder of Avaaz along with MoveOn. Res Publica’s stated goal is to “develop innovative solutions to global justice and security threats.” Res Publica “ran as a pilot project” in Sierra Leone in 2001-2002 and has three full-time fellows, Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello and Tom Pravda. Res Publica is supported by a broader network of “Friends of Res Publica” and a Global Advisory Board. Who the broader network of “Friends of Res Publica” actually are, is anyone’s guess.

29 December 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.'”

Perriello (now President and CEO of Center for American Progress) described Res Publica as an “incubator for social entrepreneurship.”

The Res Publica email address is actually respublica@avaaz.org.

Up to at least 2008, Patel remained a board of directors member with Faithful America of which he was also a principle founder (founded in 2004, launched in 2006) along with former (2009-2011) U.S. Representative Tom Perriello. The aim of “Faithful America” was to create a “religious version of MoveOn.org.” Both Patel and Perriello served as the project’s first co-directors. This NGO was later taken over by Faith in Public Life, where, as of 2008, Patel was also a member of the board. On 13 April 2008, Faith in Public Life, in partnership with the ONE Campaign and Oxfam America, organized the Democratic candidates’ “Compassion Forum” during which corporate media partners CNN and Newsweek hosted an evening with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and a number of faith “leaders.” Faith in Public Life received $400,000 from the Open Society Institute in 2007 and again in 2008.

Patel was co-director of DarfurGenocide.org, an organization he helped establish with Perriello and the U.S. State Department.

Patel also serves on the board of Namati, an organization “that offers technical assistance to development organizations, governments, and civil society actors interested in enhancing legal empowerment aspects of existing work, or launching new legal empowerment initiatives.” Its partners include UKAid from the Department of International Development; AusAid, the Australian government’s Overseas Aid Program; UNDP, the United Nations Development Program; and the Soros Open Society Foundations. Patel also sits on the organization J Street’s advisory council with Eli Pariser, co-founder of Avaaz and the current executive director of MoveOn.

Patel also serves on the International Advisory Board of AccessNow.org, an organization which will be discussed further in this report. [Source: Source Watch]

Patel’s rise to superstardom in the corporate world is due to the fact that he specializes in “E-advocacy” and web-based movement-building – the key to securing control of all “consumers,” all “movements” and essentially all information on the planet.

Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Perriello

Snapshot:

  • AccessNow: International Advisory Board
  • Afghanistan Watch: Analyst
  • Avaaz International: Co-founder
  • Avaaz International: Secretary 2008
  • Avaaz International: Trustee 2006, 2007
  • Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: Co-founder
  • CeaseFireCampaign.org (discontinued): Co-founder
  • Center for a Sustainable Economy, now part of “Redefining Progress”: Assistant Director
  • Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) — the home of ThinkProgress and the advocacy arm of the Center for American Progress (CAP): President and CEO
  • Consultant on Youth and Environmental Campaigns
  • E-Mediat Jordan: Country Director
  • Faithful America: Co-director
  • Faithful America: Principle Founder
  • International Center for Transitional Justice: Consultant
  • International Centre for Transitional Justice: Employed by
  • J Street: Advisory Council
  • Namati: Board of Directors
  • National Council of Churches of Christ: Consultant
  • National Council of Churches of Christ: Fellow
  • National Security Consultant
  • New York State Bar: Member
  • Open Society Institute: Teaching Fellow
  • Res Publica: Co-founder
  • The Century Foundation: Fellow
  • The Century Foundation: National Security Analyst
  • The Century Foundation: Special Advisor/Spokesperson
  • United Nations: Special Adviser to the International War Crimes Prosecutor
  • U.S. Representative: Virginia Democratic Congressman, 2008-2010
  • U.S. State Department: Employed by
  • Virginia House of Delegates: Legislative Page
  • Yale Law School: Teaching Fellow
  • Yale Scroll and Key: Secret Society Member

 

Avaaz Compensation:

  • 2006: $48,000

 

Education:

  • Yale University

 

Resides in Virginia, U.S.A.

Tom Perriello is a long-time collaborator with Ricken Patel. Together, they co-founded Avaaz.org, Res Publica and FaithfulAmerica.org.

Perriello is a former U.S. Representative (represented the 5th District of Virginia from 2008 to 2010) and a founding member of the House Majority Leader’s National Security Working Group.

Perriello was also co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. He worked for Reverend Dr. James Forbes on “prophetic justice” principles. Many of these organizations were created with the intent of creating a broad-based “religious left” movement.

Indeed, it has been stated by Marx that “religion is the opium of the masses.” In 1974 the late Edward Goldsmith argued that religion must be considered an integral part of a culture; the key control mechanism that ensures the stability of a social system. Goldsmith noted that, indeed, no traditional societies appear to have a word for “religion” while “only when religion breaks away from the rest of a society’s cultural pattern and ceases to be the effective force governing it, that the word ‘religion’ appears necessary.” Goldsmith cautioned in 1974 that contrary to what was being taught, people in Western societies were never more miserable, explaining why they resort to so many different forms of escapism such as addiction and suicide. Goldsmith believed it was essential to urgently create new systems of belief in an effort to “recreate an orderly society held together by a clearly formulated religio-culture.” Goldsmith stated that movements attempting to achieve this have already begun to proliferate. One can assume this was the ideology behind Patel’s and Perriello’s religious groups they began to create. The only problem for Patel, Perriello, Pravda and Soros was that the religious angle did not work. The masses did not buy in.

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 organization’s 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 the exception of one located in London, England, all of the entities involved are American and based on U.S. soil.

 “Most of us have policy or diplomacy backgrounds, as well as activist, so the hope is that we will be doing these things at key diplomatic moments.” — Tom Perriello on Avaaz, 5 February 2007, speaking to The Nation

Consider the explosive investigative report titled “Burying the Darfur Genocide Myth”, published by Pravda on 16 August 2011. Excerpts are as follows:

“To start with, my investigation has found that the victims of the Darfur conflict were the beneficiaries of the largest, best run relief works in history. This is a fact, demonstrated repeatedly by the situation on the ground in Darfur, and every honest, knowledgeable aid worker in the Darfur relief works will tell you that Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir has played a critical role in the relief works success and that without the leadership and support of President Bashir the Darfur relief works would not have been possible.

 

The charges of genocide laid against President Bashir by, amongst others, the International Criminal Court in the Hague, are based on reports of the most shaky provenance, mainly UN ‘sources’ of very questionable backgrounds….

 

The Darfur genocide myth has been promoted by western ‘human rights’ NGOs who have collected over $100 million under the rubric of ‘Enough’ and ‘Preventing Genocide.’ The claims of genocide are based on estimates of the number of deaths that were rapidly inflated as the dollars started rolling in. First it was 100,000, then 200,000, then 300,000 and finally, in a claim so ludicrous that even the British government media watchdog yanked off the air, 400,000 people were supposed to have been victims of genocide in Darfur….

 

The west, in particular the U.S.A, are hell bent on keeping Africa in a state of crisis, the better to exploit. And the ‘save Darfur’ lobby is all for bringing more violence to Africa under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention,’ while little of the over $100 million they collected ever reached the Darfur people it was intended for.”

Videos: Human rights investigator and award-winning journalist Keith Harmon Snow Speaking on Propaganda and NGOs (Running time: 2:56)

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

The International Criminal Court (ICC) (led by Luis Moreno Ocampo) is widely discredited in Africa. Since its inception in 2002, the ICC has targeted solely African and other developing world leaders. Jean Ping, head of the African Union: “We Africans and the African Union are not against the International Criminal Court. We are against Ocampo who is rendering justice with double standards.” The ICC has had many opportunities to indict Western war criminals/leaders (Bush, Blair, Cheney) since its inception, yet, of course has made no attempts to do so. [Source]

Before co-founding Res Publica, Perriello served as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a United Nations Tribunal, and as a Yale Law School/Open Society Institute Teaching Fellow in West Africa. Perriello is a member of the New York State Bar.

Perriello’s 2005 organization “Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good” (CACG) stated that the concept of “the common good” reportedly came from the Center for American Progress founded by co-chair of President Obama’s transition team John Podesta, which subsequently helped form alliances between CACG and similar organizations. The chair of this organization is Elizabeth Frawley Bagley: “Bagley is a member of the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. She served as senior advisor to the secretary of state from 1997–2001.” CACG’s listed advisers include/included Clinton’s Paul Begala and John Podesta and Clinton’s former press secretary Mike McCurry.

Perriello has worked for the U.S. State Department, and as a consultant for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, as well as the National Council of Churches of Christ. Perriello has been an analyst for Afghanistan Watch, as well as a Special Advisor/Spokesperson and National Security Analyst for The Century Foundation in which he is a “Fellow.” The URL for Afghanistan Watch now brings up The Century Foundation. Prior to law school, Perriello worked as assistant director of the Center for a Sustainable Economy (now part of “Redefining Progress“) and as a consultant on youth and environmental campaigns.

Perriello has worked as an independent national security consultant in central and southern Afghanistan. In 2005 and 2007, he spent time assessing “the Taliban’s resurgence and strategies (primarily political) for restoring control.” Perriello conducted research in seven different provinces and managed a team of 60 across the country. Under the auspices of his own organization (Res Publica) and others, Perriello briefed embassy leaders in Kabul, UN mission chiefs, and various agencies of the Bush Administration. He also provided background briefings for media, U.S. Representatives, and various think tanks such as the Center for American Progress, of which he is now CEO and President. He has also worked in national security efforts in Sierra Leone (United Nations Special Court), Liberia, Kosovo, and Darfur. Perriello has worked as a humanitarian aid worker national security consultant and is on the board of directors for Namati.

Perriello has had a long relationship with Soros’ Open Society-funded Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, which continue to this day. Amnesty International is also financed by the Soros Open Society Institute. All of these organizations have been instrumental in opening up the doors for foreign invasion into Libya and now Syria.

Excerpts from the 3 May 2011 article “International Crisis Group Sweating over Syria,” published by Land Destroyer Report:

“The International Crisis Group (ICG) has been at the center of the unfolding ‘Arab Spring’ since the very beginning. Mohamed ElBaradei, a member of the ICG board of trustees, was literally leading the color revolution in the streets of Cairo along with his admitted underling, Google executive Wael Ghonim. The ICG has also recently made a heeded call for intervention in the Ivory Coast.

 

ICG includes George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two men notorious for their extraterritorial meddling and their fomenting of color revolutions in far flung lands. To explain why they are so eager to pry their way into sovereign nations, despoil, topple, and rebuild them, one only has to look at ICG’s corporate supporters. They include such ignoble organizations as Chevron, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank Group with equally ignoble intentions that are confidently expressed through ICG’s nefarious agenda.”

The International Crisis Group (ICG) was founded in 1995 by World Bank Vice-President Mark Malloch Brown, former U.S. diplomat Morton Abramowitz and Fred Cuny, an international disaster relief specialist who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995. The Crisis Group raises funds from mainly western governments, foundations, corporations and individual donors. In 2006, 40% of its funding came from 22 different governments, 32% from 15 “philanthropic” organizations, and 28% from individuals and private foundations. Soros, who is chairman of the Open Society Institute, is on the Board of Trustees. The ICG Advisory Council includes corporations such as Chevron and Shell.[Source] The Board of Trustees, Executive Committee and the Crisis Group Senior Advisors read like a who’s who of the political elites and banking cartel. The ICG executive committee includes Kofi Annan,former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Lawrence Summers, Former Director of the U.S. National Economic Council and Secretary of the Treasury, andJavier Solana,NATO Secretary-General and Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain.

In 2007, ICG and Human Rights Watch were key players in the development of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect in cooperation with prominent governments, NGOs and academia. [For background on R2P read The Real Motives behind a Rapacious Imperial Power’s Real Objectives and History and Timeline of R2P.]

Excerpts from the 15 February 2012 article, “‘Human Rights’ Warriors for Empire,” published by Black Agenda Report:

“Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are swigging the ale with their fellow buccaneers. These ‘human rights’ warriors, headquartered in the bellies of empires past and present, their chests shiny with medals of propagandistic service to superpower aggression in Libya, contribute ‘left’ legitimacy to the imperial project.

 

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency – the side of Empire. As groups most often associated with (what passes for) the Left in their headquarters’ countries, they are invaluable allies of the current imperial offensive….

 

There was great ambivalence – the most polite word I can muster – among purported leftists in the United States and Europe to NATO’s bombardment and subjugation of Libya. Here we are again, in the face of existential imperial threats to Syria and Iran, as leftists temporize about human rights while the ‘greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’ blazes new warpaths.

 

There is no such thing as an anti-war activist who is not an anti-imperialist. And the only job of an anti-imperialist in the belly of the beast is to disarm the beast. Absent that, s/he is useless to humanity.

 

As we used to say: You are part of the solution – or you are part of the problem. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are part of the problem.”

The George Soros Open Society Foundation is the primary donor of the Human Rights Watch, contributing $100 million of $128 million of contributions and grants received by the HRW in the 2011 financial year.

Perriello is a supporter of the “War on Terror,” a fabricated psyops, which was and continues to be an essential component to unleash a new wave of wars, invasions and occupations. Indeed, if people are frightened, they will accept authority.

“As far as America’s war against terrorism is concerned [the] senator provides unequivocal support to Barrack Obama.” — Perriello of Congress website

Perriello’s view of Israel borders on fantasy. He views Israel as one of the most “dramatic and exciting creations of the international community” in the 20th century and believes that a permanent moral and strategic relationship exists between the U.S. and Israel.”

In May 2009, 60 Congress members voted against dumping another $97 billion into the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Perriello voted for it. [Source]

On 16 June 2009, 202 Congress members voted against that same war funding (May 2009) combined with a massive IMF bailout for Eastern European bankers. [This authorized supplements and rescinds appropriations for the Department of Defense totaling $80.93 billion including $29.51 billion for operation and maintenance, including $3.61 billion for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund; and $400 million for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund; $25.3 billion for Procurement; $18.73 billion for military personnel; $2.87 billion for military construction; $1.12 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund; $1.06 billion for the Defense Health Program; $9.7 billion for the Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, and other agencies for costs associated with international assistance, including $4.65 billion for bilateral economic assistance, $2.97 billion for the Economic Support Fund; $2.18 billion for international security assistance, $1.29 billion for the Foreign Military Financing Program; $1.94 billion for Diplomatic and Consular Programs.] Perriello voted in favour of both. (Key Vote | HR 2346)

On 26 June 2009, Perriello voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey bill, a bill which promoted the false solution of cap and trade. This bill was vehemently opposed by many climate justice groups, all while corporate greens unapologetically lobbied for it extensively and relentlessly. In all, six of the world’s 15 largest publicly-traded corporations in 2009 supported cap and trade legislation: JP Morgan Chase (#1), Bank of America (#2), General Electric (#3), Shell (#8), British Petroleum (#10), and Walmart (#14). Three of the six were members of U.S.CAP. During this fiscal year the national environmental groups took in $1.7 billion in revenue. Of the $1.7 billion, $12.8 million was spent on lobbying, with the great proportion of these expenditures focused on cap and trade legislation. [7] (Key Vote | HR 245)

On 8 October 2009, Perriello voted in support of the defense bill for military appropriations in the amount of $681.02 billion. This authorized $639.32 billion in Department of Defense authorizations for fiscal year 2009-2010, $24.75 billion in military construction, $16.94 billion in Department of Energy national security authorizations, $309 million for research and evaluation, procurement, or deployment of an alternative Missile Defense System in Europe and authorization to increase the active-duty number for the U.S. Army to a number greater than otherwise allowed by law up to the 2010 baseline plus 30,000 troops, and $136.02 billion for military personnel for the fiscal year 2010. (Key Vote | HR 264)

In March of 2010, a reception was hosted by two leading corporate greens: the “League of Conservation Voters” and “Environmental Defense” Action Fund to raise funds for Perriello’s re-election campaign for Congress. MoveOn.org raised $100,000 for Perriello’s re-election campaign.

President Barack Obama visited Perriello’s district, the only Congressman for which he did so. (In spite of extensive campaigning, Perriello would fail to win his re-election campaign.)

On 10 March 2010, 65 Congress members voted to end the war on Afghanistan. Perriello voted in favour of keeping it going. [Source]

On 28 May 2010, Perriello voted in support of the defense bill for military appropriations. This included $32.42 billion for the Defense Health Program, $3.42 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles, $3.46 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund and $71.2 million for the operation of the Armed Forces Retirement Home. (Key Vote | HR 5136)

On 1st July 2010, 100 Congress members voted to fund only withdrawal from Afghanistan. Perriello voted against this amendment. Rather, Perriello was in favour of an amendment requesting the President to devise an exit plan (any exit plan) for Afghanistan. The amendment did not call for a date let alone any enforcement. In essence it was nothing more than rhetoric to appease a nation that was beginning to awaken to an increasingly corporatized government: unprecedented debt, home foreclosures, escalating resource wars and corruption – all unparalleled in scale in the nation’s history, while the wealthy became even wealthier. Thus, Perriello voted in favour as he did with the supposed “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq” – a plan that was weaker than the treaty George Bush had signed. (Key Vote | HR 4899)

On 27 July 2010, Perriello opposed removing the United States Armed Forces from Pakistan. (Key Vote | H Con Res 301)

On 27 July 2010, 115 Congress members (12 Republicans and 103 Democrats) voted against a supplemental bill authorizing $33.29 billion dollars to escalate the war on Afghanistan. Tom Perriello voted in favour of it. When a small group of concerned citizens met with Perriello prior to the vote, Perriello refused to say what, if anything, he thought. (Key Vote | HR 489)

On 30 July 2010, Perriello voted against “Offshore Drilling Regulations and Other Energy Law Amendments” (Key Vote | HR 3534) and voted yes to ending the “Moratorium on Deepwater Drilling Rigs that Meet Certain Safety Standards” (Key Vote | H Amdt 773).

On 6 October 2010, Perriello received the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the race in recognition of his “strong support for veterans, national security and defense, and military personnel issues.”

On 29 October 2010, “War Is A Crime” reported: “136 Congress members have signed a letter promising not to cut Social Security. Perriello has not.”

Yet, in spite of these pro-war positions, the liberal left and their so called “progressive media” continued to shine a glowing light on Perriello and frame him as a stand-out progressive.

Like Orwell’s War is Peace, the liberal left’s demigods were more and more demonstrating “right” conduct all while professional left continued to portray them as “progressive.” However, the changing landscape did not silence everyone. David Swanson, founder of warisacrime.org wrote:

“Do we oppose this? Well, some of us used to. When our congressman was a Republican, we denounced this course of action in the media, phoned his office, picketed his office, and went to jail for sitting in his office. But for the past year and a half, while the military budget and the war budget have both increased, we’ve said almost nothing. A small group of us have begun organizing protests at the new Democratic congress member’s office, but we’re the only ones he hears from. We’ve spent a good deal of time in his office on two occasions, and I think I have heard his phone ring there a total of twice. Nobody’s calling. And everyone who is not calling is communicating their approval of the mass murder of individual and remarkable and precious human beings.”

On 15 December 2011, the Center for American Progress announced new leadership roles for its advocacy arm. Former Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) became the new President and CEO of CAP Action and Counselor for Policy at CAP.

In the 2012 winter issue of Democracy Journal, Perriello pens a grotesque and delusional article titled:”Humanitarian Intervention: Recognizing When, and Why, It Can Succeed”:

“The use of force always entails grave dangers and human costs, and progressives have been leery particularly since the Vietnam era of supporting it, even to prevent or end mass atrocities, repression, and other systematic human suffering. Wise leaders will always remain wary of war. But wisdom also requires us to acknowledge two dramatic changes in our ability to use force for good. First, in a single generation, our ability to intervene without heavy casualties has improved dramatically. Second, the range of diplomatic and legal tools for legitimizing such interventions has likewise expanded….

 

Operational developments since the end of the Cold War have substantially improved our capacity to wage smart military operations that are limited in time and scope and employ precise and overwhelming force. This presents progressives with an opportunity – one that is too often seen as a curse – to expand the use of force to advance key values….

 

While the UN Security Council remains the most formal standard for international legitimacy, many nations consider it less representative than regional bodies and less responsive than reality sometimes demands. Today, the United States has a range of options to validate such uses of military might for humanitarian concerns….

After highlighting “the success” in Libya, Perriello goes on to say:

“Today, Gadhafi is dead, and the Libyan people have their first chance for democratic, accountable governance in decades…. American casualties were zero. Insurgent fighters and the vast majority of the population have cheered the victory as liberation, and courageous Syrians who face daily threats of death for standing up to their own repressive regime have taken comfort in Gadhafi’s fall. These accomplishments are no small feats for those who care about human dignity, democracy, and stability….

 

Progressives often demand action in the face of abject human suffering, but we know from recent history that in some situations moral condemnation, economic sanctions, or ex-post tribunals don’t save lives. Only force does.”

In closing, Perriello states:

“We must realize that force is only one element of a coherent national security strategy and foreign policy. We must accept the reality – whether or not one accepts its merits – that other nations are more likely to perceive our motives to be self-interested than values-based. But in a world where egregious atrocities and grave threats exist, and where Kosovo and Libya have changed our sense of what’s now possible, the development of this next generation of power can be seen as a historically unique opportunity to reduce human suffering.”

Make no mistake – this is the ideology at the helm of Avaaz.org.

In December 2011, Perriello disclosed that he served as special adviser to the international war crimes prosecutor and has spent extensive time in 2011 in Egypt and the Middle East researching the Arab Spring. Therefore, based on this disclosure alone, there can be no doubt that the deliberate strategy being advanced by Avaaz cannot be based upon any type of ignorance or naïveté.

The 12 January 2012 RSVP event “Reframing U.S. Strategy in a Turbulent World: American Spring?” featured speakers from Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rosa Brooks of the New America Foundation, and none other than Tom Perriello, CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Perriello advanced his “ideology” during this lecture.

Indoctrination of the Youth is Essential

On 18 January 2012, Perriello, as the Center for American Progress’s Advocacy Director, joined Mark Schneider, the International Crisis Group’s Senior Vice President and Maria McFarland, Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Washington Director to present a lecture titled: “The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ after the Arab Spring: A Discussion” at Georgetown University in Washington, DC with the synopsis as follows: “Governments’ repressive responses to the social upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa have sparked a shift in international approaches to civilian protection and mass atrocities prevention. The decade-old ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine has figured centrally in international responses to repressive regimes. However, between the tenuous success of NATO’s Libya intervention and the international community’s weak-kneed response to violence in Syria, R2P’s future is far from certain.”

In this video Perriello is introducing himself to the youth involved in a training organization named “e-mediat Jordan” who, Perriello states, are prepared to “sacrifice for their country.” Perriello is listed as director: “E-Mediat Jordan Country Director – Honorable Tom Perriello.” This organization is situated in Jordan, which is located in the Middle East and borders Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea, Palestine, Israel, and Iraq. This NGO describes itself as a “Tools, Technology and Training” Centre. Training youth has become instrumental to advancing the Imperialist agenda. In essence, the exploited youth are the sacrificial lambs of the ruling classes in the 21st century.

Perriello no doubt believes in the myth of American exceptionalism. His patriotic views are reinforced by like-minded individuals from the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the scores of organizations who “understand” the “need” to expand America’s “democracy” and “economic prosperity” around the globe. And while these myths are pushed forward by Imperialist administrations, the non-profit industrial complex and corporate media, civil rights in America are being stripped away faster than you can say fascism.

 

Next: Part V

 

[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]

 

End Notes:

[1] Source: http://www.wiserearth.org/group/AvaazDotOrg. Information compiled/created April 7, 2010 and updated Feb 9, 2012.

[2] “Independent Media Institute Funding Funding for AlterNet comes from private foundations, site advertising, and individual donors.” “Several of our additional funders wish to remain anonymous.”

[3] Source: http://www.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2

[4] Source: http://www.anmag.org/issues/25/02/250207.php

[5] “In total with ONE partner organizations Avaaz.org, Jubilee U.S.A and Oxfam International, more than 415,000 signatures in all will be delivered tomorrow to Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, host of this week’s G7 Finance Ministers meeting.” http://www.one.org/c/us/pressrelease/3242/

[6] MoveOn’s annual report for 2008-09, the total number of individual donors (not members, as membership is automatically established upon a citizen “clicking” on a petition) was 17,295.

[7] http://climateshiftproject.org/report/climate-shift-clear-vision-for-the-next-decade-of-public-debate/#convergence-on-cap-and-trade

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

September 11, 2012

Part two of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

The Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2012 [Further Reading]: Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VI

Avaaz Investigative Report Series 2017 [Further Reading]: Part IPart IIPart III

 

 Corporate “Green” Pedophilia

After the success of TckTckTck, Havas (a global advertising firm) cut out the middleman (that being the NGO), creating their own NGO named One Young World. One Young World could be defined as predatory corporate pedophilia. On the TakingItGlobal website, under the headline How to Mobilize Youth Globally to Support the Goals of the Rio 2012 Summit [the illusory “green” economy], a IYY HLM (INTERNATIONAL YOUTH YEAR – HIGH LEVEL MEETING) RSVP event is described as follows: “The vast networks represented by AVAAZ, Taking IT Global, Peace Child and One Young World represent an excellent way of building on the momentum of the IYY to promote the Rio+20 goals through online media, advertising and PR – and good, old-fashioned campaigning…. The Rio+20 Summit is as good a moment as any to mark that watershed moment: young people – through their schools, their community groups and their online network are well-placed to support the UN and its member states to explain that transition and embed it in the hearts and minds of the general public. This side meeting will raise the profile and importance of the Rio+20 meeting in the minds of all who attend the IYY HLM – and send them home with new skills and new inspiration to support the UN to achieve a stunning success in Rio in June 2012.” Featured speakers included David Jones (founder/director, One Young World; director, Havas Global Advertising) and Jeremy Heimans (founder/board member of AVAAZ.org; director of Purpose Inc.). At breakneck speed, One Young World is establishing partner organizations throughout the globe (H. W. Bush is an endorser in the One Young World Pittsburgh org). It has also secured a partnership with Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (AIESEC); present in over 110 countries and territories and with over 82,000 members, AIESEC is the world’s largest student-run organization.

The Commerce of Trust

One must recognize that the non-profit industrial complex, not unlike the oligarchy, retains its power via a constant influx of corporate cash (via foundations). When an NGO becomes as wealthy as the corporations who made such wealth possible, the necessity to funnel the corporate funding through foundations is no longer necessary. Recent examples are Coca-Cola partnering with World Wildlife Fund for $3 million and Nature Conservancy merging with Dow Chemical for a cool $10 million. This does not begin to take into account the money doled out by the US administration to NGOs under the guise of “humanitarianism.” [PR Newswire, WASHINGTON, 24 May 2012, “NGOs welcome Senate leadership in international humanitarian funding; The Senate FY2013 State, Foreign Operations appropriations bill provides for $52.1 billion in discretionary spending for the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other international development and humanitarian assistance programs….”]

Today, in 2012, with the recent “approved” invasion and annihilation of Libya, which, prior to the NATO-led invasion, had the highest standard of living in Africa, the imperialist states are frothing at the mouth over the prospects of invading/ occupying Syria under the carefully orchestrated guise of “humanitarian intervention.” The imperialists steal and plunder every last drop of wealth from resource-rich countries – both monetary and cultural, as well as ecological. Of equal importance to the imperialists is protection of the decaying US dollar and Euro and keeping resource-rich countries poor via debt. (Case in point: Libya had no debt. Further, Gaddafi was working toward the introduction of the gold dinar, a single African currency, made by gold, which was to be a “true sharing of the wealth” for the African people that would have resulted in their oil no longer being traded in American or Euro currency, thus liberating them, to some extent, from the chains of imperialism.) If one looks closely, we can witness a steady transformation, well underway within the meticulously maintained, well-greased gears of the propaganda machine – a machine that continues to be refined. The blurring of lines between corporate power, the corporate media complex, the non-profit industrial complex, and the United Nations continues to accelerate, while simultaneously the veil begins to lift.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

In the 21 December 2011 Strategic Culture Foundation article, “A Third-Rate Intelligence Agency for a Failing Super-Power: The CIA’s Global Demise,” the author closes by stating:

“The CIA’s political influence operations around the world are also being exposed every day. Run in tandem with international financier George Soros and his network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and not-for-profit foundations, the CIA’s attempts to foment rebellions through ‘themed revolutions’ and election engineering are becoming better understood, ironically through the media that Soros and the CIA champion the most – social networking. From the streets of Egypt and Syria, where the CIA’s and Soros’s involvement in artificially-created uprisings is no longer a secret, to Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, and China, where political intervention by the CIA and its team of Soros ‘do-gooders’ is now being met with strong opposition, the cat is out of the bag.

 

“While the CIA has for decades enjoyed the luxury of hiding behind NGOs, missionaries, aid workers, and journalists, the Internet has allowed CIA influence networks to be exposed and its agents, shills, and dupes to be identified. Time magazine has named as its ‘Person on the Year’ for 2011 the generic ‘protester.’ However, as the CIA’s worldwide operations become further exposed, the ‘protester’ lauded by Time will no longer be a paid provocateur working for the CIA or Soros – taking orders and money from Human Rights Watch and Global Witness – but one who is genuinely protesting the interference and aggression of the United States. And that protester will be found not only in Cairo, Moscow, Caracas, and Beirut but in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles.”

The Open Society Institute (renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations) is a private operating and grantmaking  foundation founded by George Soros, who remains the chair. Soros is known best as a multibillionaire currency speculator who became known as “the man who broke the bank of England” when he gained one billion (US) in investment profits in a single day on September 16, 1992. Soros is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), created in 1924 by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. The CFR is essentially the promotional arm of the ruling elite in the US with most all US policy initiated and written by the exclusive membership within the CFR. Soros has deep ties to the Trilateral Commission, which is the international counterpart of the CFR created in 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski (who worked with CIA operant Gloria Steinman) and McGeorge Bundy. Soros also is privy to the exclusive Bilderberg Group, which functions behind closed doors. The Bilderberg Group is an offshoot of the CFR, founded by David Rockefeller; Dean Rusk, former head of Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph Johnson, head of Carnegie Endowment; John J. McCloy, Ford Foundation Chair, and some notables of the European oligarchy. Most revealing, Soros is an avid supporter of Occupy Wall Street.

New York City Occupy Wall Street Embraces Otpor and Bombing for Peace

 “Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.” — Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la servitude volontaire), c. 1553

Murray N. Rothbard asks, “Since despotic rule is against the interests of the bulk of the population, how then does this consent come about? Again, La Boétie highlights the point that this consent is engineered, largely by propaganda beamed at the populace by the rulers and their intellectual apologists. The devices – of bread and circuses, of ideological mystification – that rulers today use to gull the masses and gain their consent, remain the same as in La Boétie’s days. The only difference is the enormous increase in the use of specialized intellectuals in the service of the rulers.”

There is little doubt that if he were alive today, Étienne de La Boétie would consider the non-profit industrial complex an integral component, indeed the intellectual apologists, of the oligarchy. La Boétie wrote, “This is the establishment, as it were the permanent and continuing purchase, of a hierarchy of subordinate allies, a loyal band of retainers, praetorians, and bureaucrats.” La Boétie considered this factor “the mainspring and the secret of domination, the support and foundation of tyranny.”

The following text contains factual information/evidence obtained from many months of research that undoubtedly will be met with much hostility and resentment by many. Yet, analyzing such information is critical if we are to see the light through our veils and illusions. As only then does the possibility for a real influence and positive outcome arise from orchestrated events that are being engineered with a false exterior to serve corporate and imperialist interests. The very forces we claim to oppose continue to successfully reabsorb us into the very system destroying us – the very system we must starve, struggle against and ultimately dismantle. This is where we fail. If we continue to deny these truths rather than confront them, our collective denial will serve as the instrument for securing our own annihilation.

This is NOT TO SAY that there are not legitimate Occupy Wall Street (OWS) sects that have broken off from the core, neoliberal-funded and dominated OWS reform movement.

A reconnaissance of corporate funding (via foundations), coupled with a rock solid understanding of history, is vital. The understanding of how our movements have been financed, designed and controlled by the forces we seek to oppose, of the very sequence of events that has led society to the present moment, is vital if we are to transcend the barbed wire barriers that keep us enslaved within the system.

It should come as little surprise that MoveOn.org, founder of Avaaz with Res Publica, heavily promoted Occupy Wall Street. (Both MoveOn and Res Publica will be discussed further in this report.)

Image: The Otpor/Canvas logo as prominently featured on the New York City General Assembly website

“Youth enamored with lofty, naïve notions of ‘freedom’ sold to them by corporate-fascist funded NGOs were brought into the streets to create chaos and division which was then capitalized on by covert political and even military maneuvering by the West and its proxy forces.” 2011-Year of the Dupe

From 2011-Year of the Dupe: February 17, 2011: “The London-based National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage” [note the hijacked term from the real revolutionary Weather Underground movement] to match the US-destabilization rhetoric used in Tunisia and Egypt. The NFSL has been backed by the CIA-MI6 since the 80’s and had made multiple attempts to overthrow Qaddafi’s government with both terrorist attacks and armed insurrection.

 Note the “EnoughGaddafi.com” signs. EnoughGaddafi.com’s webmaster is listed on the US State Department’s Movements.org as the “Twitter” to follow.

“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.

“The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED): “The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.

“It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. As we will see, preparations for the “Arab Spring” and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011’s “The Middle East & then the World,” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

“December 3-5, 2008: Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman, attended, as did Jared Cohen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

“Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO ‘Otpor’ who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a ‘well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.’ After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.” [Source: 2011-Year of the Dupe]

Foreign Policy Magazine (a major organ of the Council on Foreign Relations promoting globalization) would report in their article, “Revoluton U,” that CANVAS assisted protesters in the ‘Rose Revolution’ of Georgia, the ‘Orange Revolution’ of the Ukraine, and is currently working with networks from Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), all across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as with activists in North Korea, and 50 other countries.”

 Above screenshot: Occupy Wall Street Screenshot featuring an Avaaz destabilization campaign against the Syrian Government. Note the red Otpor logo (fist).

 

Above screenshot: Earth.350.org.blog: Leading up to the 15 October 2011 Occupy movement, Rockefellers 350.org’s past presenters include Ivan Marovic, founder of US-funded Otpor (22 September2011), Srdja Popovic founding member of Otpor and Slobodan Dinovic, one of Otpor’s original organizers (29 September 29 2011).

Like the Egyptian “Revolution,” the change in venue and transition of key players we witness today has been anything but spontaneous. And although it is tragic that most of the entire globe has been conned, far worse is the fact that global society as a whole, with “the left” movement at the forefront, continues to swallow and perpetuate the lies that the continued “uprisings” of the countries targeted for destabilization are spontaneous revolutions. The logic being, if the revolutions were spontaneous uprisings, then the Occupy movement was also spontaneous; arising from the people, not orchestrated by the ruling classes. “The left,” in an act of insanity and denial, has committed itself to supporting what the ruling classes, via corporate media and a network of Soros-funded NGOs, have framed as “revolutionaries” in sovereign states under strategic invasion, while in reality, these so-called revolutionaries are foreign-backed insurgents/terrorists, including the CIA-created Al-Qaeda terrorist cell, which the US now acknowledges publicly as having partnered with.

The “progressive left,” in order to save face, has sided with the 1% they claim to oppose – millions, no doubt, unwittingly. Well-intentioned citizens who believe themselves to be progressive in their ideologies, who believe they are of sound intelligence, continue to cling to this position as volumes of evidence dispels all myths of Gaddafi having turned on his own people. If tens of thousands must die in order for the “left” EuroAmericans to feel good about themselves, then so be it. No one wants to be the dupe. The oligarchy understood this unequivocally. And while Occupy preached the virtues of non-violent direct action, the imperialist countries advanced their destabilizations, invasions and occupations in the Middle East and Africa at an unparalleled speed – murdering, some estimate, as many as 100,000 Libyans in the process. The silence of dissent was deafening. Very few of us have despaired at our complicity; most people simply turn a blind eye to the truth so they don’t have to feel bad about their coffee shop assent.

The Occupy Wall Street “movement” website www.15October.net was registered and paid for on 12 July 2011 by Paulina Arcos, spouse of Francisco Carrión Mena, the Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations.

Meaning, by 12 July 2011, certain individuals were aware of, planned and banked on “spontaneous” global occupations that would take place 15 October 2011 – long before the rest of us knew anything. The address provided for the October15.net domain is identical to that of Francisco Carrión Mena’s address at the UN. One can safely assume that the credit card used to pay for the domain was a United Nations corporate credit card; if it were Arcos’s personal credit card, the domain registration would display her home residence address rather than the UN address. On 19 October 2011, the 15October.net domain registration was changed to a (web) domain privacy service that protects the registered owner’s information and other relevant information. [13 October 2011, Occupation & Infiltration: Questions Regarding 15October.net http://thewrongkindofgreen.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/pertinent-questions-regarding-the-websitecampaign-www-15october-net/]

The WikiLeaks Connection

Santiago Carrión has founded and/or partnered with, and/or is affiliated with the following organizations:

  • 15 M
  • 15October.net
  • EuroRevolution.net
  • Future Press
  • Roar Magazine
  • Take the Square
  • The Global Square
  • United for Global Change (May 12)
  • US Day of Rage
  • WikiLeaks Central
  • WikiLeaks World

 

The son of Arcos and Carrión is Santiago Carrión, a partner/collaborator of Europe’s TakeTheSquare.net, partner/affiliate of Roar Magazine (Reflections on a Revolution), founder of EuropeanRevolution.net, FuturePress, 15October.net, United for Global Change (also known as May 12), The Global Square, and a writer specializing in WikiLeaks cable analysis. [From WL Central (the Wikileaks-endorsed news site): “We are Pedro Noel and Santiago Carrión Arcos, two Philosophy graduates from different origins, who met while studying in Spain. We were always concerned with politics and human rights, so when Wikileaks broke into the scene we decided to contribute by writing cable analysis…. From November 2010 we have been working on a daily basis in different fields of Internet activism and journalism anonymously. We have decided, however, to become public. The reasons are many, our personal security being the main one…. Recently, we have also collaborated in running the @wlfind Twitter account, hoping to provide a complete record for findings in the latest crowd-source initiative #wlfind, started by Wikileaks.]

Santiago Carrión’s associate, Pedro Noel, is a Brazilian Internet media activist known in the Romanian media as “the man who made 700 thousand Spaniards take the streets.” In 2011, along with other internet activists, researchers and volunteers, Pedro Noel started the project The Global Square in partnership with Delft University of Technology and its project Tribler. Roarmag.org website lists the founders of The Global Square as volunteers of the following organizations: Take the Square, United for Global Change, 15october.net, European Revolution, and Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR). Note that all of these organizations are founded by or affiliated with Carrión.

On 5 November 2011 at 10:04pm, WikiLeaks tweeted: “The Global Square: an online platform for our movement,” citing the link: http://wlcentral.org/node/2328.

On 16 February 2012, Truth-out announced that Wikileaks is now “dabbing” in social media: “Wikileaks is dabbling in social networking. In March, the whistleblower website will launch its “Global Square” project – which Wikileaks calls the, “first massive decentralized social network in the history of the Internet.”

In truth, we have approximately 2 people, openly identifiable (who, until recently worked in complete anonymity), at the helm of designing and shaping the entire global occupy “movement” into the ultimate platform for the accumulation, coordination and dissemination of information. A platform “where people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and aspirations” (bold emphasis added).

With a massive throng of WikiLeaks supporters that has only grown stronger with the attack on WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is there anyone, in any spectrum of the left, who won’t trust Carrión’s, Noel’s and Wikipedia’s Global Square project? While steadfastly upholding lost values with which the left wishes to be associated, Assange has been vilified by the very forces that the left opposes. Thus, Assange has embodied impenetrable hero, if not martyr, status. Could this be the most brilliant psyops ever conducted via internet technology, utilizing the world’s leading technocrats and global social media – or has WikiLeaks simply been infiltrated? Will the Global Square serve to be the ultimate coup de grâce on a society both manipulated and intoxicated by the non-profit industrial complex? Interestingly, this infrastructure very much follows the strategy behind the Climate Action Network (CAN), co-founded by Michael Oppenheimer (Environmental Defense Fund) in 1988, which successfully reigned in and presided over a global network of environmental organizations, thus ensuring that no movement would ever threaten economic growth. Occupy/15M, now transcending into The Global Square, is quickly being established as the official clearinghouse for all dissent, direction, communication – and as the global technological superpower for social engineering, soft power destabilizations and a cooling mechanism to keep the public passive and controlled.

One major theme within all of the aforementioned organizations has been the persistent framing of imperialist destabilizations as revolutions and uprisings, prior to and during the unprovoked annihilation of Libya, and the heavily financed destabilization now well underway in Syria. [Case in point: On 15 June 2012, Take the Square posts the article Syria Sectarian Divide Takes Alarming Turn, which states: “A perpetual and repugnant war is likely to replace the collective aspirations for equality, freedom and democracy that fuelled the non-violent uprising nearly 15 months ago.”] The demonization of Gaddafi, Assad, and other governments of sovereign, resource-rich states in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, has been key, thus mirroring and amplifying the very sentiments put forward by the US State Department. On the WikiLeaks Central website we find several Avaaz petitions. Most striking are the headlines: Stop the Massacre – Save the Libyans and To the UN Security Council, both posted on 03/22/2011. The second highlighted the Avaaz petition demanding a no-fly zone be imposed on Libya.

Carrión and Noel perhaps should be considered the Marovic, Popovic (Otpor/Canvas) adaptation for Europe. Whether Santiago Carrión’s and Pedro Noel’s intentions (along with many others) were or are sincere, whether they are naive patsies or CIA operatives – matters little. The global Occupy movement was the psyops needed, and brilliantly executed, that would build a cohesion of silence within the left against the deliberate destabilization of the Middle East and Africa. For the “revolutionaries” cannot be wrong. The “revolutionaries” are united as one. To admit that the revolutions were strategically set into motion and financed by the ruling plutocrats is to admit we’ve been co-opted by the very forces we seek to oppose – yet again.

And the need of imperialists and corporate interests to expand their growing corral of such recruits teamed with social media/marketing executives extraordinaire has never been greater:

“Pressing for unchallenged hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, Washington keeps the populist regimes in Latin America under permanent pressure. Outwardly, the U.S. Administration pledges not to resort to military force to displace the ALBA governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, or Cuba, but in reality Washington’s efforts to undermine them are a constant background of the continent’s political picture. The activity began under president G. Bush and shows no signs of subsiding under president Obama. Supposedly, plans are being devised in the White House that a series of color revolutions will erupt across Latin America in 2013-2014 and derail the continent’s advancement towards tighter integration in the security and other spheres. As the fresh experience of Libya showed with utmost clarity, Washington’s new brand of color revolutions will – in contrast to the former coups which used to be accompanied with outpourings of pacifist rhetoric – involve ferocious fighting and massive fatalities.” — 4 February 2012: Destabilizing Arsenals Concealed in US Embassies. Emphasis in original.]

And as Avaaz coordinated the OWS live stream in 2011, perhaps one single tweet is the most revealing of all.

An OWS “tweet” to over 86,000 followers on 20 October 2011 exclaims: “Congrats Libya! Your struggles against the #Gadhafi regime is [sic] over. Let’s hope for a bright future #solidarity.” @OccupyWallSt states it is an “official account” of https://occupywallst.org, followed by 86,347 as of that date (155,565 by 26 March 2012). The “tweet” echoed the sentiments of the imperialist states and “leaders” such as Hillary Clinton, and demonstrated a total upside down ideological pandemonium by a so-called “leftist” movement. This sentiment of “congratulations” over the horrific murder of the brother leader of a sovereign nation who refused to abandon his people was “retweeted” by over 100 “followers.” Yoshie Furuhashi summed it up best via Twitter: “IMHO, capitalists have nothing to fear from #OccupyWallStreet, who can’t tell imperialist regime change from popular revolution.”

Jump forward to the present. In a 6 July 2012 article titled SYRIA: Wikileaks – hard at work for NATO, Jorge Capelán wrote:

“With the decision to commit this act of psy-warfare against Syria, Assange himself may have provoked doubt as regards the seriousness of his request for political asylum. Publishing 2 million e-mails is not an overnight action. It takes weeks and months of preparation, not to mention the time required to establish appropriate contacts with international media.”

It would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of the CIA working in tandem with or within the United Nations (Carrión) or WikiLeaks when it has been documented that Kofi Annan, the United Nations “Peacekeeper” was handpicked by the CIA (30 March 2012, Kofi Annan: black skin, white mask].

Consider that in June 2011 LulzSec claimed responsibility for an attack on both the FBI and CIA websites. Flash forward to March 2012 to find that the leader of the hacker group LulzSec (affiliated with Anonymous) was exposed as an FBI operant.

Video: Uploaded 1 August 2011, the group Anonymous promotes the Global Occupy Demonstration to take place on 15 October 2011:

http://youtu.be/RPd25yDiOwU

Veterans Today, Military and Foreign Affairs Journal, 23 January 2011:

“It is illuminating that none of Assange’s document dumps have revealed any notable scandals involving Great Britain or Israel. No US public figures have had to resign because of anything Wikileaks has done. No major ongoing covert operation or highly placed agent of influence has been blown. After all these months, there are still no US indictments against Assange, even though we know that a US grand jury will readily indict a ham sandwich if the US Attorney demands it. If the CIA had wanted to silence Assange, they could have subjected him to the classic kidnapping aka rendition, meaning that he would have been beaten, drugged, and carted off to wake up in a black site prison in Egypt, Poland, or Guantanamo Bay. Otherwise, the CIA could have had recourse to the usual extralegal wetwork [not sic; euphemism for murder or assassination]. We must also assume that the new US Cybercommand with its vast resources would have little trouble shutting down the Wikileaks mirror sites, no matter how numerous they might be. The same goes for Anonymous and other flanking organizations of Wikileaks. But these considerations are purely fantastic. Assange emerges today as the pampered darling and golden boy of The New York Times, Der Spiegel. The Guardian, El Pais – in short, of the entire Anglo-American official media Wurlitzer. He reclines today in baronial splendor in the country house of a well-connected retired British officer who should be quizzed by the media about his ties to British intelligence. The radical-chic world, from Bianca Jagger to Michael Moore, is at Assange’s feet.” — Webster Griffin Tarpley, in Nihilists of The World Unite: Wikileaks Is The “Cognitive Infiltration” Operation Demanded by Cass Sunstein

Unidentified “Freedom of Speech”

The iNEWP – Freedom of Speech (formed in 2010) is yet another new highly suspect “news media” outlet where one can find highlighted a recent Avaaz destabilization campaign against the Morales (MAS) government of Bolivia. It lists its affiliates as Anonymous, The Occupy Movement (note the red Otpor/Canvas fist above the featured Avaaz campaign in the screenshot prior), The Sun Maker, TesfaNews, and VVVPR (VVV Public Relations: BPR + Guerrilla Marketing). This once very public information (accessed 30 March 2012) has since been removed from the iNEWP website. One must wonder how an organization such as iNEWP – Freedom of Speech solidifies and retains a partnership with an Anonymous group (that being Anonymous), and how the Occupy Movement has partnered with this organization without a democratic vote of its occupiers, considering the Occupy Movement claims there are no leaders. One may also question why iNEWP – Freedom of Speech uses a (web) domain privacy service that protects the registered owner’s private information, offers first names only of their international staff, and purposely neglects to offer any information as to who they are funded by. Further, one must ask oneself exactly if any entity within or outside of the Occupy Movement is paying VVV Public Relations for their services. There is one item of interest disclosed in the domain registration of iNEWP and that is the address listed as 666 NY, New York. This should be considered an inside joke whereby they are mocking the masses. They are playing with us.

 “But there is one state function which, if fully privatised across the world, would make the profits made even from essentials such as health care and education look like peanuts. That is the most basic and essential state function of all, indeed the whole raison d’etre for the state: security.” – Dan Glazebrook

And where consumerism made the plutocrats monetarily rich in the 20th century, the 21st century riches will flow from privatized security. One can safely assume the Occupy Movement (promoted heavily by the Democratic Party and the Rockefeller/Soros NGOs such as MoveOn – sister organization of Avaaz) will assist in advancing “the imperative” to expand privatized security [See Council on Foreign Relations: Armies Without States: The Privatization of Security]and the “need” to override civil liberties and freedoms by introducing fascist censorship and legislation; the most recent example being martial law itself in the U.S. The plans that we witness being unveiled today are years, if not decades, in the making. Nothing is left to chance.

15M – Europe’s Occupy Movement

In Europe we find the “revolutionary movement” 15M who identifies itself as “global Occupy/15M movements.” They are heavily promoted by a slew of NGOs from the Soros network (one being that of Global Voices, whose sponsors include the Ford Foundation and the Soros Open Society Institute) to Take the Square, whose partners include US Day of Rage (this terminology was discussed earlier in this report; it is terminology we continue to witness, as in Libya, being co-opted by NGOs funded by globalists). US Day of Rage (a finance reform organization founded by Alexa O’Brien that seeks to distract by directing their followers to believe in the US electorate, marketing the phrase One citizen. One dollar. One vote. O’Brien also is identified as a founder of Occupy Wall Street by Wired as well as a reporter for WikiLeaks Central.) US Day of Rage lists its partners, all promoting 15M, as: EuroRevolution (over 30,000 Facebook followers), Anonymous (over 300,000 twitter followers, and whose logo bears uncanny resemblance to the logo shared by the United Nations), Roar Mag, WikiLeaks Central, and Take the Square – all founded by and/or affiliated with (with the probable exception of Anonymous, whose primary focus is the highlighting/promotion of #OWS) Santiago Carrión. It is worth noting that the movement is also referred to as the Spanish Revolution. The creator of this web platform is none other than Chris Moya, software developer and author for the Soros Global Voices network.

And where did the 15M movement originate? Was the 15M campaign also founded in part by Santiago Carrión, or as in many cases, was this simply a case of co-opting a legitimate concept from near inception in order to corral it, thus absorbing it into the NGO matrix where it can be controlled. The following facts speak volumes.

15M.cc was launched in September of 2011 with the intent not to represent the movement but rather to serve as the umbrella for data/history/projects organized (past, present and future) on behalf of the 15 May 2011 mass demonstration/movement organized by Democracia real YA! (Real Democracy NOW! or DRY!). It is publicly stated that there are 3 key people behind the 15M.cc initiative: an entrepreneur/developer and self-described “founding father” of P2P (peer to peer) social networking (Pablo Soto), a filmmaker (Stéphane M. Grueso) and an expert in marketing, design and journalism (Patricia Horrillo).

AOL/Time Warner’s Huffington Post “explains” 15M on 25 May 2011 (see excerpt below) while Soros’s Global Voices highlighted 15M on 17 May 2011. This mass demonstration was also referred to by these outlets as the #spanishrevolution. On 5 July 2011, leading “progressive left media” outlet/Soros shill, Democracy Now! really lays it on in an interview with DRY founder Olmo Gálvez in Madrid, Spain. Amy Goodman continually employed specific language such as “grassroots movement” and “crowd-funding platform” – phrases that provoke the idea of credibility and legitimacy behind the idea of spontaneous uprisings rather than corporate engineered/managed venting mechanisms. [For more information on Democracy Now! Read: DEMOCRACY NOW! AND “PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA”: CHEERLEADERS FOR IMPERIALISM AND WAR.]

The Huffington Post’s vague description on who is behind the #spanishrevolution is pitiful yet revealing:

“The #spanishrevoution is an internet movement that was started by leading figures on the internet, including top bloggers and internet entrepreneurs, to harness the distress of the Spanish people into action ahead of this past weekend’s elections.

 

Some of the most important figures/initiators of the 15M movement are Fabio Gándara (who has been part of the movement since the beginning), Jon Aguirre Such (DRY’s spokesperson) and Olmo Gálvez (whom El País calls a social networking “crack”). It’s interesting to point out that all three of them are quite young, between 26 and 30, and didn’t know each other until shortly before 15M….

 

As I already mentioned, most of the initiators didn’t know each other at the beginning and only met in person a couple of weeks before the 15M event. The main platforms enabling them to join forces were social networks like Facebook and Tuenti, and of course platforms like Twitter and hundreds (or even thousands) of blogs that supported the movements and spread the word. The sit-in at Plaza del Sol even has its own TV channel, with a mind-blowing 11 million accumulated views so far. Around 45 million people live in Spain.” (Emphasis added)

RoarMag.org disclosed one key player while stating that the other key the player wished to remain anonymous:

“Fabio Gándara, the man at the origin of it all, a 26-year old lawyer, started the social mobilization project with two friends: Eric Perez and another person who prefers to remain anonymous.”

Although Huffington tells us that it “was started by leading figures on the internet, including top bloggers and internet entrepreneurs,” the author only discloses three names: Fabio Gándara, Aguirre Such and Olmo Galvez. Gándara is a campaigner for Change.org – a for-profit NGO. Gándara states:

“Before joining Change.org as campaign organizer, I worked as a lawyer in the prestigious law firm Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira, in the areas of Spanish and European Public Law. I also have been working as an activist in a Spanish grassroots organisation, Democracia Real Ya, seed of the #Spanishrevolution.”

The Commerce of Exploitation: Change.org

“And nobody’s making more money from online petitions than Change.org. I wonder how many people visiting a change.org petition know that despite its dot-org name, the organization is a for-profit lead generation business. Just take a look at their partners page, and you’ll see what they do…. Change.org is being deliberately deceitful through the use of the change.org name. I’d suspect that the average change.org user does not know that Change.org is a for-profit corporation, and that the corporation plans on using the contact information being provided to them to earn revenue.” — Clay Johnson, Information Diet

Change.org (based in San Francisco, CA), founded in 2005, was launched on 7 February 2007 by current CEO Ben Rattray (with a background in economics), with the support of current CTO Mark Dimas and Adam Cheyer (co-founder of Siri software and director of engineering in the iPhone group at Apple). As of February 2012, the site has 100 employees with offices on 4 continents. By the end of 2012, Rattray “plans to have offices in 20 countries and to operate in several more languages, including Arabic and Chinese.” It was reported on 5 April 2012 that Change.org hit 10 million members, and is currently the fastest-growing social action platform on the web. They are currently receiving 500 new petitions per day. [Source: Wikipedia]

The founding Change.org team of advisors include Darren Haas, developer of financial trading and currency exchange software with Euronet Worldwide; Sundeep Ahuja, founder/product manager/marketing/strategy advisor/investor/co-founder/president at blissmo, Kiva.org, indiegogo, DailyFeats, Sparked.com, richrelevance, friendput, MySpace, and an actor, to boot; and Joe Greenstein, software developer and co-founder and CEO of Flixster.

Change.org is a member of George Soros’s Media Consortium. Change.org is subtle yet clear in their affiliations. Ample media coverage provided by Media Consortium partners and social media/tech sites, etc. Change.org seldom fails to mention the other effective organizations – Avaaz.org, Sumofus.org, and 38degrees.org.uk.

On the Change.org partner page, the corporation states they have hundreds of partners, yet only 5 are made public. Yet they make no secret of their expanding empire:

“We’re Hiring!: Change.org is a rapidly expanding and profitable social venture, growing by more than a million new members a month by empowering people across the globe to win social action campaigns on a wide range of issues such as human rights, global poverty, and environmental protection. Our current partners include hundreds of the world’s largest nonprofits, including Amnesty International, Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign, and the United Nations Foundation.”

Change.org  is the darling of corporate media powerhouse TIME magazine, which having named change.org founder Ben Rattray, as one of TIME’s, 100 Most Influential People of 2012 while profiling of Olmo Gálvez in TIME Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year – The Protestor. Goodman (of Democracy Now!) describes Gálvez as “a young entrepreneur with experience in several countries….” Such corporate-controlled entities lend credibility and legitimacy to “leaders,” movements and ideologies that secure and protect corporate power. Such well-greased mechanisms are essential in establishing a collective consent to the hegemony of the ruling oligarchy. Other recent instances of corporate-sponsored NGO “leaders” that have been praised by the likes of TIME and foundation-funded “progressive” media include “green” capitalist Al Gore, who is also deemed by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential, while Rockefeller’s lovechild Bill McKibben seems to have taken up symbolic residence at the studio of Democracy Now! In a patriarchal society, charismatic fellows such as Gore and McKibben are key members of a manufactured, managerial elite, building global public acceptance for the illusory green economy – formerly known as industrialized capitalism – the goal being to protect capitalism, thereby protecting the current structures at all costs, by any means necessary, by every means available.

Francisco Polo is now director of Change.org Spain, after founding Actuable, a Spanish-based campaign platform that merged with Change.org in 2011. Prior to this, Polo was coordinator of Amnesty International in Barcelona. On 7 October 2011, techPresident reports the following in an article titled Change.org’s International Move:

“This was a crucial night for the protestors calling themselves ‘indignados,’ who had descended upon Puerta del Sol on May 15 intent on staying until national elections in Spain. Frustrated with a political system they feel does not work for them, many of them out of work, they stayed to protest in defiance of a national law that prohibits discussion of electoral politics so close to the elections. But it was also a crucial night for Actuable, an online petitions platform then just a few months old. Protesters wanted to tell Spanish elections authority, the Junta Electoral Central, that they had a right to be heard. While they rallied in Madrid despite the electoral rules, they also went online – to Actuable, where a petition asserting their right to demonstrate, even immediately before an election, collected 200,000 signatures….

 

“Actuable co-founder Francisco Polo told techPresident in a recent interview. ‘It was an unprecedented way to empower people.’ It’s hard to know what impact the petition actually had, but the chance to see use by the indignados was a moment in the sun for Actuable. Founded last year, Actuable was always intended to operate in the style of Change.org – which recently acquired the Madrid-based platform. Now it is a new international presence for Change.org, and part of the company’s new plans to expand globally….

 

“Polo is now director of Change.org Spain, and Actuable will be rebranded with Change.org’s colors over the next few months….

 

“A company spokesman says that the two platforms will be completely merged by 2012, with languages and campaigns localized for each visitor. Actuable’s 720,000-some-odd members will be rolled into Change.org’s user base, which already grows – or so the company claims – by about 400,000 users a month.

 

“Actuable rolling into Change.org comes as ‘indignados’ emerge in Mexico City, and one of our own commenters points us to student protesters advocating for education reform in Chile.”

One must ask oneself if these European organizations founded by Carrión, with deep UN connections, are involved in the US Day of Rage campaign. Adbusters (originator of Occupy Wall Street, announcing it 12 June 2012, one day prior to the registration (via UN) of the 15Octber.net website) features 15M in their June 2012 issue in an article titled Spain’s Indignados, written by Marta Sánchez at, none other than, ROARmag.org. The article focuses exclusively on the 15M movement. Almost from inception, www.15October.net has been publicly affiliated with Adbusters in videos (25 September 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y3X2VFruLM) and other branding/marketing campaigns while Anonymous has also actively promoted it (15 August 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPd25yDiOwU). Under the Adbusters website link “Get Involved,” Adbusters recommends going to the website Takethesquare.net “for international perspective.”

The founder of US Day of Rage (and Occupy Wall Street) cites four principles:

  1. Non-Violence
  2. Principles before Party – US Day of Rage will never endorse, finance, or lend our name to any candidate or party.
  3. Volunteer – Every US Day of Rage organizational committee on the state, city, and federal level should be entirely self-supporting, declining outside contributions from any political party, association, or candidate. US Day of Rage is not a money making operation. We are volunteers.
  4. Autonomous Except in Matters Affecting the Whole – We do not support, for example, violations to our principle of non-violence. USDayofRage.org is here to help facilitate city and state level organization, and to organize the federal protest at the US Capitol.

And although volunteers of US Day of Rage are told to decline outside contributions, this did not stop the founder’s other venture, Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Wall Street affiliates, from accepting $3.6 million from George Soros. Although some media found this interesting enough to cover, it was of little interest to the Occupy Movement itself, who downplayed the connection or ignored it altogether. Soros gave $1.1 million to MoveOn.org (founder of Avaaz) and tossed $8,900.00 to Rockefeller’s 350.org. [October 14, 2011]

When organizations set up Twitter accounts, it is always revealing to see who has been added “to follow” first and foremost as this demonstrates their closest affiliations. In the case of 15M, it is important to note Take the square (@takethesquare) was the sixth account to be “followed” by @15M_cc twitter upon registration, with the first three chosen to follow being that of the founders of original 15M concept: (1) Pablo Soto, @pabloMP2P (2) Patricia Horrillo, @patrihorrillo (3) Stéphane M. Grueso, @fanetin (4) Acampada Sol TL, @acampadasolTL (5) tomalosbarrios, @tomalosbarrios (6) Take the square @takethesquare: “Tweeting from the #spanishrevolution to connect our struggle with people all around the world. Global problems, global uprising. https://takethesquare.net

[For more information on 15M within Latin America (including Periodismociudadano.com), read the investigative report titled FUNDACIONES GLOBALISTAS y ONGs -15M.]

 

Next: Part III

 

[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]

 

U.S. Covertly Funds North Korea Destabilization While Training With South Korea to “Re-stabilize” It Using an Army of 100,000 [Canvas/Otpor, NYC OWS, 350.org]

April 12, 2012

S.Korea, U.S. Practice Stabilizing N.Korea in Civil War

The annual joint South Korean and U.S. exercises dubbed “Key Resolve” last month for the first time practiced deploying more than 100,000 South Korean troops in North Korea to stabilize the country in case of regime collapse.

The two countries “practiced deploying a large contingent of troops to bring stability in the North in case of civil war in the wake of sudden change there,” a government source said on Thursday. “Seoul and Washington practiced preparing for sudden change in the North for the first time during last year’s Key Resolve drill, but this was the first time we went on the assumption that South Korean troops would be deployed in the North.”

This year’s exercise supposed that civil war breaks out due to conflict between hawks and doves in the North Korean military. It envisioned deploying several South Korean Army corps south of Pyongyang to bring hardliners under control and stabilize the North.

A few years back, the two countries’ militaries formulated a contingency plan for six scenarios of sudden change in the North — a coup, civil war, a mass exodus of North Koreans, a massive natural disaster, and kidnapping of South Korean citizens by the North. But they did not stage a drill on the specific assumption of civil war for fear of upsetting the North.

“We conducted the drill this time because top military leaders in South Korea and the U.S. concluded that nobody knows what scenario will materialize because the regime of new leader Kim Jong-un is still unstable,” the source added.

Seoul is reportedly worried that North Korean military hardliners have strengthened their position since former leader Kim Jong-il’s sudden death late last year.

FLASHBACK: REVOLUTION U – FOREIGN POLICY FEATURE, FEB 16, 2011, BY TINA ROSENBERG

U.S. funds North Korea destabilization efforts via CANVAS

Revolution U Excerpts:

“Belarus,” said Djinovic, shaking his head. “They were extremely tough to motivate — extremely passive. I couldn’t find the spark in their eyes.” And then there were the North Koreans: “They were great young students in a big hotel in Seoul,” Popovic told me. “We worked for two days and had no idea how the hell we were doing. People didn’t change the expression on their faces. They sat like monuments. It was awful.”

Background information on both Djinovic and Popovic from the same feature:

“On a trip to South Africa to train Zimbabweans in 2003, Djinovic and Popovic decided to establish CANVAS.  … Djinovic had founded Serbia’s first wireless Internet service provider in 2000 and was well on his way to becoming a mogul. Today he is head of Serbia’s largest private internet and phone company and funds about half of CANVAS’s operating expenses and the costs for half the training workshops out of his own pocket. (CANVAS has four and a half staff employees. The trainers are veterans of successful democracy movements in five countries and are paid as contractors. CANVAS participates in some workshops financed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations Development Program, an international NGO called Humanity in Action, and Freedom House, an American group which gets its money from the U.S. government. But CANVAS prefers to give Washington a wide berth, in part due to Otpor’s experience. Like the entire opposition to Milosevic, Otpor took money from the U.S. government, and lied about it. When the real story came out after Milosevic fell, many Otpor members quit, feeling betrayed.”

Who is Canvas? | Egypt Leads Fight Against NGO Agitators, A real revolution may be about to follow

Image on far left: In 1998 the Otpor logo appears in Belgrade. Image on left: Otpor logo as found on the New York Occupy Wall Street Official website (2012),  featured above an Avaaz destabilization campaign against Syria. (screenshot below). Read more about Avaaz here.

February 19, 2012, by Tony Cartalucci. The following is an excerpt. The full article can be read here.

Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.

 

The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, a full year before the “Arab Spring,” along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while waiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”

350.org | Sept 22 and 29 2011, Creative Activism Thursdays Srdja Popovic and Slobo Djinovic Lecture

 Due to the widespread interest in the Creative Activism Lecture Series this fall, and in order to better accommodate all guests, RSVP is required; please show up early. If you don’t RSVP, you can still show up and we’ll let you in 5 minutes before the lecture starts if there’s room. Note: immediately after the lecture, the audience will head down to #occupywallstreet!

What the “Professional Left” Refuses to Share With Their “Followers”: 2011-The Year of the Dupe

WKOG editor: This article contains a mountain of factual information/evidence. Acknowledging such evidence is critical if we are to see the light through veils and illusions. As only then does the possibility for a real influence and positive outcome arise from orchestrated events which are being engineered with a false exterior to serve corporate and Imperialist interests. The very forces we claim to oppose continue to successfully reabsorb us into the very system destroying us – the very system we must starve, struggle against and ultimately dismantle. This is where we fail. If we continue to deny these truths, rather than confront them, our collective denial will serve as the instrument to our own annihilation. [About WKOG]

A timeline & history: One year into the engineered “Arab Spring,” one step closer to global hegemony

by Tony Cartalucci

Editor’s Note: The title, “Year of the Dupe,” was inspired, and indeed coined by Dr. Webster Tarpley of Tarpley.net, who is noted below as giving the initial tip-off regarding Egypt’s unrest back in January 2011.

dupe (dp, dyp)

n.

1. An easily deceived person.
2. A person who functions as the tool of another person or power.

tr.v. duped, dup·ing, dupes To deceive (an unwary person).

December 24, 2011 – In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated:

“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. As we will see, preparations for the “Arab Spring” and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011’s “The Middle East & then the World,” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

The Timeline – 2008-2010 Preparing the Battlefield

December 3-5, 2008: Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.


Photo: Serbia’s “Otpor,” a model for future US-backed color revolutions.

….

Foreign Policy Magazine would report in their article, “Revoluton U,” that CANVAS assisted protesters in the “Rose Revolution” of Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” of the Ukraine, and is currently working with networks from Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), all across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as with activists in North Korea, and 50 other countries.

2009: In a US State Department funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery (RFE/RL) article titled, “Exporting Nonviolent Revolution, From Eastern Europe to The Middle East,” it was stated, “Popovic then exported his nonviolent methods, helping train the activists who spearheaded Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. And now, Popovic is deploying his new organization, called Canvas, even farther afield — assisting the pro-democracy activists who recently brought down despotic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.”

Activists from Iran, Belarus, and North Korea were also confirmed by RFE/RL as having received training from CANVAS. The RFE/RL article places the activists’ meeting with CANVAS sometime during 2009.

February 2010: The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while awaiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”

Clearly then, unrest was long planned, with activists from Tunisia and Egypt on record receiving training and support from abroad, so that they could return to their home nations and sow unrest in a region-wide coordinated campaign.

An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.”

The Timeline – 2011 Year of the Dupe

January 16, 2011: Al Arabiya News reported in their article, “Tunisian exiled reformist to head back home,” that Moncef Marzouki was returning to Tunisia (from Paris) amidst the chaos sown by US State Department trained, supported, and equipped mobs who were “triggered” by the convenient release of US State Department cables via Wikileaks. Quite clearly, considering the training Tunisian opposition groups received long before the cables were released, the Wikileaks cables were merely used as a planned rhetorical justification for long ago premeditated foreign-funded sedition. Since then, Wikileaks has been employed in an identical manner everywhere from Egypt to Libya, and even as far flung as Thailand.

Moncef Marzouki, it would turn out, was founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy (WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.

A “call for solidarity” by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) mentions by name each and every group constituting the Tunisian opposition during the “uprising” in January 2011 as “FIDH member organisations.” These include Marzouki’s “Tunisian League for Human Rights,” the “Tunisian Association of Democratic Women,” and the “National Council for Liberties in Tunisia,” or CNLT. FIDH, acting as an international nexus for various foreign-funded organizations carrying out sedition worldwide under the guise of “human rights,” is itself fully funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros’ Open Society, and many others with clearly compromised affiliations.

January 28, 2011: After a warning by journalist/activist Dr. Webster Tarpley of World Crisis Radio, the alternative media began looking closer at the unrest in Egypt which began shortly after Tunisia’s growing crisis. In “All is not what it seems in Egyptian Clashes,” it was noted that protest leader Mohammed ElBaradei was in fact a devoted agent of the West, with a long standing membership within the Wall Street/London funded International Crisis Group (ICG) along side “senior Israeli officials” including the current Israeli President Shimon Peres, the current Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, and former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. The ICG also includes senior American bankers and geopolitical manipulators including George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Armitage, Samuel Berger, and Wesley Clark.

https://i0.wp.com/www.mideastnewswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/elbaradei.jpg

Photo: ElBaradei’s ties to the West go much deeper than merely play-acting within the ineffectual, genocide-enabling UN. He is also a memberof the corporate-financier funded International Crisis Group.

….

Ironically, Western media outlets insisted ElBaradei was both anti-American and strongly anti-Israeli in a rouse best described a year earlier in March 2010 in the Council On Foreign Relations’ paper, Foreign Affairs’ article “Is ElBaradei Egypt’s Hero?”:

“Further, Egypt’s close relationship with the United States has become a critical and negative factor in Egyptian politics. The opposition has used these ties to delegitimize the regime, while the government has engaged in its own displays of anti-Americanism to insulate itself from such charges. If ElBaradei actually has a reasonable chance of fostering political reform in Egypt, then U.S. policymakers would best serve his cause by not acting strongly. Somewhat paradoxically, ElBaradei’s chilly relationship with the United States as IAEA chief only advances U.S. interests now. “

The most recent manifestation of this came when Israel farcically called ElBaradei an “Iranian agent.” This latest performance further illustrates the immense level of duplicity with which world events are being manipulated.

February 17, 2011: The London-based National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage” to match the US-destabilization rhetoric used in Tunisia and Egypt. The NFSL has been backed by the CIA-MI6 since the 80’s and had made multiple attempts to overthrow Qaddafi’s government with both terrorist attacks and armed insurrection.


Photo: Please note the “EnoughGaddafi.com” signs. EnoughGaddafi.com’s webmaster is listed on the US State Department’s Movements.org as the “Twitter” to follow.

….

February 18, 2011: In the wake of Honsi Mubarak’s ousting, billionaire bankster George Soros’ Open Society Institute was found to be behind NGOs drafting Egypt’s new constitution. These “civil society” groups include the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information openly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Neo-Con lined NED funded Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. It appears that while the International Crisis Group was turning out the strategy, and their trustee ElBaradei leading the mobs into the streets, it is the vast array of NGOs their membership, including Soros, fund that were working out and implementing the details on the ground.

February 21, 2011: An interview with Ibrahim Sahad of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on ABC Australia, featured every talking point covered by the mainstream corporate media from previous weeks regarding Libya, all with the White House and Washington Monument looming over him in the background. He made calls for a no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi was strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.

March 2011’s “US Libyan Policy: Zero Legitimacy,” noted the clearly heavily armed, western-backed insurgency that was still being disingenuously portrayed by Western media as “peaceful protests.”

February 28, 2011: “Destroying Libya” stated:

While Libyan opposition leader Ibrahim Sahad leads the rhetorical charge from Washington D.C., his National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on the ground is armed to the teeth, as it has been throughout its 20 year history of attempted CIA backed rebellions against Qaddafi. In 1984, the NFSL tried to overthrow Qaddafi in a failed armed coup. The Daily Globe and Mail also recently confirmed that the NFSL along with the Libyan National Army, both under Sahad’s new National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO), had both “attempted coups and assassinations against Col. Gadhafi in the 1980s.”

Already at this point, both British and US representatives were admitting Libyan rebels were indeed heavily armed, and instead of condemning the violence, openly called for additional weapons and military support to be provided.

March 17, 2011: The UN decided to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to save the globalist-backed rebellion sputtering in failure and bordering on a “Bay of Pigs” disaster. Canadian, US, French, Arab, and UK jets were already reported to be preparing for the operation.

March 24, 2011: Unrest had already begun in Syria, as NATO began bombing Libya while Egypt and Tunisia had already fallen into political and economic chaos. In “Globalists Hit in Syria,” the opposition is closely examined and documented to be once again a creation of Western-backed opposition groups.

Much of the “evidence” of Syria’s unrest was being filtered through organizations such as the London-based Syrian Human-Rights Committee whose hearsay statements posted on its website were cited by corporate news media in outlandish reports of violence that also include “activists say” after each allegation. The “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” also London-based, is now the exclusive source cited by corporate-media reports regarding Syria.

March 26, 2011: In Egypt, signs of a counterrevolution and the first signs of weakness in ElBaradei’s chances to be installed as president began to show. Mobs pelted ElBaradei with rocks calling him “an American agent.” Wikileaks would again come to the aid of US interests and try to reintroduce the “anti-Western” image ElBaradei had been hamfisted in portraying.


Photo: The “barrier of legitimacy” is broken: a mob shouts “American agent” as they hurl rocks at ElBaradei who most certainly is an American agent – a trustee of the US International Crisis Group alongside George Soros.

….

March 28, 2011: Fortune-500 funded Brookings Institution’s “Libya’s Test of the New International Order” is reported on – exposing the war as not one of a “humanitarian” nature, but one aimed explicitly at establishing an international order and the primacy of international law.


Image: Red = US-backed destabilization, Blue = US occupying/stationed. China’s oil and sea access to the Middle East and Africa are being or have already been cut. A similar strategy of isolation was used on Japan just before the onset of World War II.

….

April 17, 2011: Syria’s unrest yields widespread arson as well as reports of gunmen targeting both protesters and state security forces in a bid to escalate violence. In, “Globalist War Machine Fixates on Syria,” the “Libyan Precedent” is already being cited by US and French politicians as justification to use force against Syria. A later article, “Color Revolution’s Mystery Gunmen,” establishes a historical context within which to view the current violence in Syria and the fact that it is provocateurs sowing much of the violence.

April 21, 2011: Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko announces that his nation is now also under covert attack by Western forces to foster an “Arab Spring-style” insurrection. In, “Besieging Belarus,” documented ties between Belarus opposition members and the same Western organizations and institutions fueling the Arab Spring are illustrated.

April 22, 2011: John McCain touches down in Benghazi, Libya and consorts with verified terrorists who were fresh back from Iraq and Afghanistan, killing US troops. A West Point report would later confirm (.pdf from West Point’s CTC can be found here) with absolute certainty that the region from which the Libyan rebellion began was also the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) center of operations. It would also expose the fact that LIFG were in fact long-time affiliates of Al Qaeda with LIFG members occupying the highest levels of leadership within the terrorist organization.


Photo: Ultimate act of treason: McCain calls for recognition and extra-legal support for the very men who had killed US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. By denying “Al-Qaeda” a base in Iraq, but handing them the entire nation of Libya, he has brought American foreign policy
to a new level of surrealism.

….

May, 2011: In “Libya at Any Cost,” the conflict in Libya was reported to be escalating, including NATO attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and the targeted killings of several of his family members including several of his grandchildren.

America’s Arab Deception” attempted to review the past several months of engineered chaos blowing through Northern Africa and the Middle East, while it was noted in, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” that the National Endowment for Democracy already began its first round of self-aggrandizing, and passing out awards to several of the dupes and collaborators that made its campaign of carnage throughout the Arab World a reality.

June, 2011: In “Arab Spring brings Corporate Locust,” the true agenda behind Egypt’s, and indeed the entire “Arab Spring’s” unrest became apparent as US representatives gave Fortune 500 executives a tour of destabilized Egypt and Tunisia in an effort to promote economic liberaliztion and privatization. John McCain and John Kerry led the tour and had co-sponsored bills to promote what would essentially be the meshing of Egypt and Tunisia’s economy into the Wall Street/London international order.


Photo: McCain (left) and Kerry (right) gesticulate as they explain their paymaster’s agenda within the confines of an Egyptian Coca-Cola factory. This is part of their latest trip surveying the effects of their US-funded opposition overthrowing Hosni Mubarak’s government.

….

In late June, France would admit to violating the terms of UN resolution 1973, and arming Libyan rebels.

July, 2011: The African Union would wholly reject the International Criminal Court’s mandate against Libya, exposing the severe illegitimacy with which it operates. Ties to corporate-financier funded organizations are revealed in “It’s Official: International Criminal Court has ZERO Mandate,” as well as the tenuous nature of the ICC’s claims against Libya’s Qaddafi. It would later be confirmed by members of Libya’s “human rights” community that indeed they, in collaboration with the rebel leaders, fabricated the numbers supplied to both the UN and the ICC, and that no verified or documented evidence of Qaddafi’s “atrocities” were produced.

In Thailand, another long-running US-backed color revolution finally yielded results and saw the return of Wall Street proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra’s political party to power. Various mouthpieces of the global elite, including the Council on Foreign Relations itself, gave stern warnings to Thailand’s establishment to accept the tenuous results of the July election or face isolation and other consequences. Another Southeast Asian country, Malaysia would also see color revolution take to their streets – this time in Malaysia by the yellow-clad, NED-funded Bersih movement.

Photo: Thaksin Shinawatra, a long time servant of the global elite, since before even becoming Thailand’s prime minister in 2001, reports to the CFR in New York City on the eve of the 2006 military coup that ousted him from power. He has now returned to power in Thailand via a proxy political party led by his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Securing the votes of only 35% of eligible voters puts on full display how tenuous his support really is within a nation he claims stands entirely behind him.

….

August, 2011: By August, even the corporate-media began admitting that Syria’s opposition was “mostly unarmed,” or in other words, armed. The opposition was starting to be more clearly defined as armed ethnic groups and armed militants of the Muslim Brotherhood.

By late August, NATO began a coordinated attack on Tripoli, Libya, involving an elaborate psychological-operation that claimed to have eliminated or captured the entire Qaddafi family in a single day. The following day, Saif Al-Qaddafi would turn up alive and well, and free, while leading fierce fighting that would carry on until October and result in NATO leveling the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte in particular, into piles of rubble. It had become entirely clear that NATO was providing air support not for democracy-loving freedom fighters, but for hardcore terrorists who were carrying out a systematic campaign of genocide and reprisals throughout the country.

Photo: Libya’s rebels are far from motivated by democratic aspirations. Their grievances lie along ethnic, not political divides. “Gaddafi supporters” is the euphemism being used by the global corporate-media in describing the generally darker skinned and African tribes that form the majority of Western Libya’s demographics and who are bearing the brunt of NATO-backed rebel atrocities.

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September, 2011: Sensing victory in Libya, corporate-financier funded think-tanks began preparing for the rebuilding and despoiling of the Libyan economy. In “Globalists to Rebuild Libya,” NATO’s Atlantic Council wrote a report detailing just how they would go about doing this.

Also as Libya’s violence spiraled out of control and atrocities carried out by the rebels and their NATO backers became more obscene, it became clear how fraudulent the “War on Terror” was. In “Libyan Rebels Listed by US State Department as Terrorists,” it is illustrated how NATO members were guilty of anti-terrorist laws for providing material support for listed terrorist organizations.

Image: A screenshot taken directly from the US State Department website showing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) clearly listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This is important, as US Code prohibits providing material support to listed terrorist organizations. With revelations of Al Qaeda and LIFG fighters leading the Libyan rebellion with NATO-members’ full military, financial, and diplomatic support, attempts are being made to plea ignorance as to the true nature of the rebels. Listed below LIFG, is MEK, an Iraqi/Iranian group also being armed and supported by the US. (click on image to enlarge)

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September also saw real humanitarian catastrophe unfold in Uganda, where a British corporation sanctioned genocide to clear land they had “leased” from the Ugandan government. Thus illustrates how the cause of “humanitarian concerns” is called on only when it serves Wall Street and London’s interests, and otherwise ignored when it involves verifiable genocide carried out in the pursuit of furthering their wealth and power.


Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company’s despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and “helps” people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was “helping” had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company’s encroachment on their land. These villagers would be forcibly displaced, many of them killed by Ugandan troops acting on behalf of Devereux.
….

John McCain would land once again in Libya, this time in Tripoli to celebrate the destruction of the country and shake hands once again with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that delivered Qaddafi’s Libya into the hands of the Wall Street/London elite.


Photo: It’s all smiles and laughs in Tripoli as McCain, a chief proponent and driving force behind the US intervention in Libya, literally glorifies Al Qaeda’s exploits in the now ruined nation. Miles away, the very rebels he was praising are purposefully starving the civilian population of Sirte in an effort to break their will, while they and NATO indiscriminately use heavy weapons aimed at crowded city centers.

….

October 2011: While Tunisia and Egypt had fallen, and Libya too being seized by proxy forces fueled by the West, the Obama administration began withdrawing troops from Iraq. This suspicious withdrawal when otherwise the rest of the Middle East was under US proxy assault raised serious suspicions that an escalation, not retreat was to follow.

Rhetoric for war with Iran had been steadily increasing and the beginning of what looked like a covert war was being fought inside and along Iran’s borders. A disastrous ploy of framing Iran for the alleged planned assassination of a Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. fell apart when Iranians linked the plot to US-backed terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

Image: MEK. Admittedly a terrorist organization, listed by the US State Department as being such, it is fully funded, armed, and backed by the United States, based in France and US-occupied Iraq, and allowed to conduct terrorist operations against the Iranian people. The “War on Terror” is a fraud.

….

It is more than likely that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would simply provide the US “plausible deniability” for an Israeli airstrike on Iran.

November 2011: Syria’s “peaceful protesters” who had been all along fully armed and attempting to stoke a Libyan-style civil war, were finally acknowledge as such by the corporate-media and more importantly by the corporate-funded think-tanks that supply them with their talking points. In “IISS: Syria’s Opposition is Armed,” it is states that a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies by Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East, Emile Hokayem openly admitted that Syria’s opposition was armed and prepared to drag Syria’s violence into even bloodier depths.

Also in November, Wall Street and London’s assault on Libya came full circle with the installation of Abdurrahim el-Keib as prime minister. El-Keib who spent decades in exile in the US, was formally employed by the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Photo: And so begins the farce that is Western “democracy.” One corporate-fascist puppet Mahmoud Jibril , steps down, another, Abdurrahim el-Keib, takes his place. In reality, it is NATO-states and their corporate sponsors that now determine Libya’s fate. Pictured above, el-Keib poses with Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the unelected, NATO-backed “National Transitional Council.”
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Joining el-Keib would be US-funded activist, Moncef Marzouki, named Tunisia’s president. Marzouki’s organization, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, was a US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) member organization. Marzouki, who spent two decades in exile in Paris, France, was also founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy (WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored byNED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.

https://i0.wp.com/images.alarabiya.net/9b/b1/640x392_70612_182256.jpg

Photo: US NED-funded activist leader Moncef Marzouki after spending two decades in Paris, helps foist the facade of “democracy” onto the Tunisian people. Of course, he, or someone of equal servitude to the West was going to become “President.” In 1993 Noam Chomsky would concisely describe the work of NED as “an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures.” In other words, those fighting in the “Arab Spring” did so for gilded tyranny.
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In Egypt, in late November, a second “revolution” began unfolding on the streets. In reality it was the same Western-backed forces led by ElBaradei and the emerging Mamdouh Hamza, against Egyptian military forces that seemed to have gone back on whatever arrangements they made with the West after the fall of Mubarak.

The UN, in another attempt to escalate foreign intervention in Syria, would release a UN Human Rights Council report regarding Syrian “crimes against humanity” which was actually co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.

The report itself contained no verifiable evidence, but rather hearsay accounts recorded in Geneva by alleged “victims” “witnesses,” and “defectors,” put forth by “all interested persons and organizations.” In other words, it was an open invitation for Syria’s enemies to paint whatever image of the ruling government they pleased.

December 2011: With Tunisia and Libya fully run by Western proxies, Egypt and Syria still mired in chaos, and with globalists calling for war on Iran, the “Arab Spring” was nearly complete. However, the “Arab Spring” was only the first leg of a grander strategy to encircle Russia and China. In December, the campaigns to move in on Russia and China would begin in earnest.


Image: The “String of Pearls:” China’s oil lifeline is to be cut by the destabilization and regimes changes being made throughout Africa and the Middle East. Along the “String” the US has been destabilizing nations from Pakistan to Myanmar, from Malaysia to Thailand, to disrupt and contain China’s emergence as a regional power.

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Hillary Clinton, in Foreign Policy Magazine would pen, “America’s Pacific Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in Asia for the next 100 years. From “Hillary Clinton and the New American (Pacific) Century:

“Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

 

As reported in June, 2011’s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

 

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long standing, well documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.””

In Myanmar (Burma) “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi, whose entire movement is a creation of Wall Street and London, received Hillary Clinton as well as Thailand’s proxy-PM Yingluck Shinawatra in a globalist show of support designating her as the defacto leader and point of contact within the Southeast Asian country. Clinton’s visit coincided with a successful campaign led by US NGOs to oust Chinese interests in the nation that resulted in the halting of a dam that was to provide electricity, revenue, flood control and irrigation for the people of Myanmar.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Rendition_of_Myitsone_Dam.jpg

Image: The Myitsone Dam, on its way to being the 15th largest in the world until construction was halted in September by a campaign led by Wall Street-puppet Aung San Suu Kyi, a stable of US-funded NGOs, and a terrorist campaign executed by armed groups operating in Kachin State, Myanmar.

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Meanwhile in Russia, Wall Street and London attacked more directly, attempting to interfere with Russian elections in December and resulting in several street protests led by overtly linked NED, Soros, and Rothschild operatives. NED-funded NGO “Golos” played a key role in portraying the elections as “rigged” and constituted America’s extraterritorial meddling in Russia’s sovereign affairs.


Image: NATO’s creeping encirclement of Russia has now been combined with another round of “color revolution” destabilizations in Belarus and now in Russia itself.

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A concerted effort by the corporate-media to misrepresent the unrest in Russia was pointed out in, “Russian Protests: Western Media Lies ,” illustrating just how coordinated the overarching global destabilization being carried out actually is. In “Wall Street Vs. Russia,” it was concluded:

“It is quite clear that the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and even the US State Department whose new foreign affairs advisory board is full of think-tanks representing overt corporate-financier interests, are not interested in “democracy,” “human rights,” or “freedom” in Russia, but rather removing the Kremlin out of the way, and reestablishing the parasitic feeding on the Russian people and its economy they enjoyed after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

In late December it would be confirmed that the same Al Qaeda militants that ravaged Libya with NATO’s aid, were on their way to Syria to help overthrow the Assad government. LIFG leader Abdel Hakim Belhaj was confirmed to be on the Syrian border preparing troops of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”

This wasn’t the only recent example of the West operating in tandem with listed terrorist groups. It was also reported in, “EXPOSED: US Troops Guarded Terrorist Camp in Iraq,” that the US has been guarding a terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq training camp inside Iraq with US troops and is planning to relocated them, possibly in a freshly abandoned US military base in Iraq while D.C. lobbyists work feverishly to have them de-listed, armed, and sent to conduct terrorist operations in Iran. Shocking comments are made in the Brookings Institution’s report, “Which Path to Persia?” where US policy experts conspire to use the terrorist organization against the government of Iran. In essence, corporate-funded policy makers have transformed the US into a state-sponsor of terror.

Conclusion

The year 2011 was surely the year of the dupe. Youth enamored with lofty, naive notions of “freedom” sold to them by corporate-fascist funded NGOs were brought into the streets to create chaos and division which was then capitalized on by covert political and even military maneuvering by the West and its proxy forces. In Egypt the nation is teetering on the edge of being fully integrated into the Wall Street/London international order, while a big-oil representative is enjoying his new position as prime minister of Libya. In Tunisia a life-long stooge of Western machinations is now president, and an alarming campaign of NATO-backed violence and terrorism is gripping Syria.

With the encirclement of Russia and China, these dupes have witlessly brought the world to the edge of World War III, and clearly done nothing at all to improve their own state of being. As their nations fall under the control of increasing Western influence, the resources once used to placate them and defend their nationalism will now be diverted into the bottomless maw of the parasitic banking combines that are currently destroying both North America and Europe.

February’s “The Middle East & then the World” is well worth reading again – to see how far we’ve come over the last year since it was written, and what is left for the globalists to do. As the globalists come ever closer to China and Russia’s doorsteps the stakes will continue to rise and the placid spectating Americans and Europeans have enjoyed this year will forever be lost.

Finally, consider what was written in one of the last articles of this year, “The End Game Approaches:”

“Complacency will kill, apathy is complicity: as the elitist-engineered “Arab Spring” reaches its conclusion, we stand on the precipice of being meshed into an inescapable, corporate-fascist, scientific planetary regime…. the End Game approaches.

 

Now more than ever, “we the people” must steel ourselves against this immense corporate-fascist empire as it sprawls death, destruction, and domination, militarily and economically, across the planet. We must, our very survival depends on it, boycott and replace entirely the corporate-financier interests that drive this dark, expansive agenda. It has been literally spawned of our apathy, complicity, and ignorance, fueled by us – the very source of corporate fascism’s power – and it must be our activism, resistance, and intellect that brings it to an end.

 

As far fetched as it may sound, every Pepsi we swig, every day we decide to drink beer and tune into our corporate-sponsored bread and circus, be it the modern day chariot races of NASCAR or the gladiatorial contests of the NFL, we bring inescapable eternal servitude to a corporate-fascist scientific dictatorship one step closer.

 

It is now “do or die” – unlike in the past, mankind now possesses the technology to render the vast majority of the population intellectually inferior through mass medication, food poisoning, GMO crops that rot our bodies and minds from the inside-out, and the martial means of eliminating vast swaths of the population permanently. Not only is this a possibility, it is a reality the global elite have conspired over at great length through texts like Ecoscience penned by current White House science adviser John Holdren and former White House science adviser Paul Ehrlich who openly talk about mass, involuntary medication to forcibly sterilize the population, reduce our numbers and confine us within what they literally call a “planetary regime.” The End Game approaches.”

Let us not “hope” next year fairs better for free humanity. Let us with our two hands, our will, and our capable intellects ensure that it is better. The decision is not that of our “leaders” or “representatives,” it is the decision of each and every one of us and what it is we do with our time, our money, our resources, our energy, and to where we pay our attention – each and every day. Let us define where it is we want our destiny to take us, and start taking one step at a time to get there.

Let us wait no longer for “saviors,” but rather look in the mirror and realize, God, the Universe, or whatever higher power you believe in, has already endowed you with everything you need, in your heart, your mind, and within your hands to prevail in whatever noble pursuit you, or “we the people” choose.

Source: Land Destroyer

Published December 24, 2011

 

Egypt Leads Fight Against NGO Agitators | A real revolution may be about to follow

Feb 20, 2012

by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer Report

Neo-Conservative Max Boot is a certified warmonger, an elitist policy wonk sitting on the Fortune 500-funded Council on Foreign Relations, has signed his name to letters that called for sidestepping both national and international law to militarily intervene further in Libya, as well as call for troops on the ground even after Tripoli fell last year. He is a man you would least expect to champion NGOs and their liberal-progressive agendas.

However NGOs are not “liberal-progressive.” They are the system administrators of modern empire, an empire being forged by the wars and covert operations Boot is a chief proponent of. The absence of NGOs in any given nation, means a nation free from the influence of Wall Street & London’s networks and meddling. That is why Boot feverishly penned, “Obama’s Egyptian Hostage Crisis,” in an attempt to spur a more vigorous response to what would seem like a very minor event in the context of greater global conflicts. Egypt’s arrest and trying of 19 Americans, all of whom are directly involved in Wall Street’s network of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded NGOs, including the head of the International Republican Institute (IRI) office in Egypt, signifies a potential turning point not just in Egypt, but around the world.