Twitterers of the World Revolution: The Digital New-New Left by Dr. K. R. Bolton – Foreign Policy Journal
“Young people have no conception of the conspiracy’s strategy of pressure from above and pressure from below…. They have no idea that they are playing into the hands of the Establishment they claim to hate. The radicals think they’re fighting the forces of the super rich, like Rockefeller and Ford, and they don’t realise that it is precisely such forces which are behind their own revolution, financing it, and using it for their own purposes…”
Twitterers of the World Revolution: The Digital New-New Left
Dr. K. R. Bolton. Foreign Policy Journal.
Ephemeris 360°.org
An enlightening article by Tony Cartalucci, entitled “Google’s Revolution Factory”. Here Cartalucci focuses on the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM), a.k.a. Movement.org.
Cartalucci states that Movement.org was started in 2008 to co-ordinate “radical” youth movements of what he calls a “left-liberal” nature. Among the founding groups was the April 6 Youth Movement, which has been the vanguard of the revolt in Egypt. What the naïve, the ill-informed, and those who have the disadvantage of a University miseducation will find perplexing is that these young revolutionaries have been sponsored by corporations such as Pepsi, by sundry globalist think tanks and NGOs, and by the U.S. State Department. Cartalucci comments on this:
It is hard, considering these men’s affiliations, to believe that the change they want to see is anything less than a generation that drinks more Pepsi, buys more consumerist junk, and believes the United States government every time they purvey their lies to us via their corporate owned media.
While the activists attending the Movements.org summit adhere to the philosophies of “left-leaning” liberalism, the very men behind the summit, funding it, and prodding the agenda of these activists are America’s mega-corporate combine. These are the very big-businesses that have violated human rights worldwide, destroyed the environment, sell shoddy, overseas manufactured goods produced by workers living in slave conditions, and pursue an agenda of greed and perpetual expansion at any cost. The hypocrisy is astounding unless of course you understand that their nefarious, self-serving agenda could only be accomplished under the guise of genuine concern for humanity, buried under mountains of feel-good rhetoric, and helped along by an army of exploited, naive youth.
Been There, Done That: The Old New Left
A pseudo-revolutionary youth movement controlled by Establishment wire-pullers is not a new phenomenon. The CIA, Tax Exempt Foundations, and Corporate America experimented with AYM’s precursors during the 1960s as a means of dialectical “controlled opposition.” One of these dialectical aims was to push a paradigm shift of the USA in a moderately (?) Leftist direction by sponsoring the extreme New Left nihilists. A concomitant part of this was to also sponsor the “Women’s Lib” of Gloria Steinem, et al, which has assisted the corporate elite in detaching women from the family and incorporating them into the workforce as part of the capitalist production process behind the facade of “equality.”
The ideological foundations for the 1960s “youth rebellion” were laid by dissidents of the Old Left mostly from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, whose academia fell out with Stalin, escaped from Hitler and ended up in the USA at Columbia University and at the New School for Social Research. This coterie from Europe came in under the direct sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Emergency Program for European Scholars, which had last say in who was to be selected.
Under the direction of Theodor Ardorno, this coterie produced the seminal study The Authoritarian Personality, the purpose being to show by the use of personality questionnaires that those who believed in traditional values and especially the family and parental authority were mentally ill, whereas those with a Leftist outlook (presumably like Jim Jones, for example) were mentally healthy. Hence, the ideological basis was laid for a revolt against familial bonds, including traditional gender roles.
From out of this ideological fermentation the individual most responsible for laying the intellectual foundations of the New Left was Herbert Marcuse, who got his start in the USA as one of the refugees sponsored by the Rockefeller program. During World War II, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, and then for the US State Department until 1950. During the 1960s Marcuse became the “guru of the New Left”, he was “often discussed” by the mass media, and his students began to gain influential academic positions and to promote his ideas, making him a major force in US intellectual life. Marcuse’s Eros & Civilization became the manifesto of the 1960s counter-culture. He received Rockefeller funding for his book One Dimensional Man.
Timothy Leary, like Gloria Steinem, was “handled” by CIA operative Cord Meyer. Leary later credited Meyer with, “helping me understand my political cultural role more clearly.” In 1953, the CIA established a front, The Society for Human Ecology, and spent $25 million on a research programme at Harvard, Stanford and Berkley universities, to experiment with mind-altering drugs, particularly mescaline and LSD. In 1960 Frank Barrow of the CIA established at Harvard the Psychedelic Drug Research Center. At the time, Leary was a lecturer in psychology at Harvard. It is here, under Barrow’s direction, that Leary began his experiments with LSD. Leary later stated, “Some powerful people in Washington have sponsored all this drug research.”
By 1967 Leary had become the icon of the counter-culture, his slogan being: “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out”. The involvement of the Establishment in promoting the drug counter-culture was frankly stated by Leary in an interview with High Times, a leading counter-cultural magazine of which he was an editor, in 1978:
If you look back, many things that we thought were coincidences turned out not to have been accidents. The entire LSD movement itself was sponsored originally by the CIA to whom I give great credit. I would not be here today if it were not for the foresight and prestige of the CIA psychologists. So give the CIA credit for being a truly intelligence agency.
In 1937 the “Radio Project” was established at Princeton University with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation. The head of the Project was Paul Lazarsfeld, an Austrian socialist who had been brought to the USA as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, and became one of the most influential social scientists in America as the founder of “public opinion research.” At Princeton Lazarsfeld established the Office of Radio Research. Lazarsfeld’s students were to become the heads of the CBS, NBC and ABC corporations. A biography of Lazarsfeld states:
In 1939 the Rockefeller Foundation radio research grant was transferred from Princeton to Columbia University, where Lazarsfeld became a professor of sociology. In 1944 the Office of Radio Research was renamed the Bureau of Applied Social Research , which became in the 1950s and 1960s the leading university-based social research institute in the United States.
Theodor Adorno was one of the major research scientists employed by the Radio Project as director of the project’s Music Division. His research was nicknamed “The Little Annie Project”. This examined the emotional reactions of listeners to characters and scenes, so that a scriptwriter could influence the response in an audience. Adorno described addiction to music as similar to other forms of addiction and as a means for the socialization of individuals into a mass.
This is the background of what New Left luminary Jerry Rubin described as the formula of the “youth revolt”: sex, drugs and music, Rubin stating of this in his revolutionary manifesto Do It! (obliging published by Simon and Schuster): “We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason, and that’s a combination hard to beat.”
Organization and Funding
The same type of corporate and Government-connected sponsorship that has been creating the present reanimated “New Left” to act as the vanguard of the world “velvet revolution” pulled the same stunt on youngsters during the 1960s. The specific institution from which the New Left emerged was the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) initially funded by James Warburg, a scion of the Warburg international banking dynasty, and “by the Warburg family” (sic).
According to Sidney Blumenthal, who conducted interviews with IPS for The Washington Post in 1986, “IPS became a bridge between liberalism and the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s.” IPS co-founder Marcus Raskin for example was associated with the Radical Education Project of the primary New Left movement, Students for a Democratic Society. The IPS continues to receive funding from the major Foundations, including Ford and Rockefeller.
The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was born from the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID). This was the youth wing of the Rockefeller-funded, League for Industrial Democracy, (LID) the U.S. branch of Fabian-socialism. According to Political Research Associates, a prominent Left-wing think tank, SLID was the U.S. affiliate of an international socialist youth movement which received CIA money: LID’s Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) was an associate member of the CIA-financed International Union of Socialist Youth. SLID received money to maintain its international contacts from the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs, a major CIA conduit for funds. Another recipient of CIA funding since 1950 was the US National Student Association. Philip Agee states that the NSA provided an important basis for the New Left, and was closely associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the SDS:
…[M]embers of Students for a Democratic Society provided important leadership for campus-based activities. According to Angus Johnston, who had been secretary of the US Students Association, “…NSA played a vital role in the wave of student activism that rose in the early 1960s, doing much to advance a student-centered vision for the American university. Many of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) became involved in national activism through NSA…”
One of those involved with founding the SDS, James Kunen, writes in his memoir The Strawberry Statement that Big Business sought to channel funds to the SDS as part of a dialectical process:
In the evening I went up to the University to check out a strategy meeting. A kid was giving a report on the SDS convention. He said that at the convention men from Business International Roundtables, the meetings sponsored by Business International for their client groups and heads of government —tried to buy up a few radicals. These men are the world’s leading industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives are going to go. These are the boys who wrote the Alliance for Progress. They’re the left wing of the ruling class.
They agree with us on black control and student control…
They want McCarthy in. They see fascism as the threat, see it coming from Wallace . The only way McCarthy could win is if the crazies and young radicals act up and make Gene look more reasonable. They offered to finance our demonstrations in Chicago.
We were also offered Esso (Rockefeller) money. They want us to make a lot of radical commotion so they can look more in the centre as they move to the left.
This Big Business dialectic with the New Left is confirmed independently by Gerald Kirk, who as a student at the University of Chicago, and became active in the SDS, the DuBois Club , the Black Panthers, and the Communist Party, as an informant for the FBI. Kirk broke from the Left in 1969. The following year, he testified before the House and Senate Internal Security panels:
Young people have no conception of the conspiracy’s strategy of pressure from above and pressure from below…. They have no idea that they are playing into the hands of the Establishment they claim to hate. The radicals think they’re fighting the forces of the super rich, like Rockefeller and Ford, and they don’t realise that it is precisely such forces which are behind their own revolution, financing it, and using it for their own purposes…
The manner by which the dialectical process works was specifically demonstrated in 1968 when the SDS Columbia chapter instigated a student revolt and take-over of the University. Revolutionary leadership was taken out of the hands of the SDS and was taken over by the Students for a Restructured University (SRU) that had been funded with a $40,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation 1968 annual report states that:
At the University of California (Berkeley), a grant of $500,000 was given for a new university Office of Educational Development that enlists both students and faculty in the planning and conduct of educational experiments. These include new interdisciplinary courses that reflect contemporary social, political, and economic issues, and a system of residential colleges linked to specific student interests rather than to academic fields.
The Ford Foundation was funding in Berkeley, noted as the centre of New Left radicalism, the institutional promotion of New Left ideology. Note the reference to “educational experiments,” “courses that reflect contemporary social, political and economic issues,” and the promotion of a system of so-called “specific student interests.” The 1968 Foundation report states further:
To facilitate thoughtful student involvement in academic affairs, the Foundation granted $315,000 to the National Student Association for a three-year program. The grant will assist two principal activities: a national dissemination program to inform students of various patterns of educational innovation and change and participation of N.S.A. staff as advisors in student reform efforts.
At Columbia University, which was severely disrupted by student demonstrations in the spring, grants were made to three groups studying and redefining the roles of faculty, students, administrators, and trustees. They included a faculty committee and a student organization that was active in the demonstrations but is dedicated to restructuring, not overturning, the university.
The Foundation report cryptically mentions “a student organization” active in the New Left demonstrations with the SDS, Black Panthers and others, referring here to the Students for a Restructured University, without naming the SRU as the recipient. Students for a Restructured University presented themselves as the “moderate” wing of the student uprising, the strategy being to threaten that if their “moderate” demands were not met, the University administration would have to deal with the SDS and other extremists. This was the dialectical strategy in operation.
Here We Go Again
The current use of the young generation for capitalist revolution behind the banner inscribed with left-liberal slogans is therefore a well-tried formula. A difference is that where it was once the CIA which co-opted “radicals” such as Gloria Steinem and Timothy Leary under a program directed by Cord Meyer, a co-director of the United World Federalists along with banking scion James Warburg, the CIA programs have been replaced with those of the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, Soros, and an array of often interlocking fronts, think tanks and NGOs.
Cartalucci has exposed the background of a contemporary major youth movement that is analogous to the New Left of yesteryear, as well as cogently explaining the real purposes of this movement. The by-line of AYM/Movements.org is: “Identify. Connect. Support.” Movements.org states:
We match members of our global network with necessary resources from the technology, media, private and public sectors as well as with each other in order to foster peer to peer capacity building. Movements.org hosts annual summits, regional training events, and on online hub for best practices, lessons learned, discussion and news about the use of new technologies in social movements.
The focus is on the use of digital technology, a feature of the “velvet revolutions” from Eastern Europe, to Central Asia to the current turmoil in North Africa and Iran. Movements.org calls their constituency “digital activists.”
Whereas the CIA covertly channelled funds to the New Left during the 1960s, now the new generation of young revolutionaries proudly display the logos of their corporate sponsors. Under the category of “Sponsors” Movements.org states:
Movements.org has leveraged its relationships with exciting movements in civil society to bring together some of the globe’s top technology and communications companies to share their knowledge and expertise with online activists from across the world. Movements.org has received sponsorship and continues to be supported by global industry leaders…
These corporate sponsors displayed on the AYM website are: Howcast, Edelman, Google, Music TV, Meetup, Pepsi, CBS News, Mobile Accord, Youtube, Facebook, MSN/NBC, National Geographic, Omnicom Group, Access 360 Media, and Gen Next.
The Public Partnerships are: Columbia Law School, and the US State Department.
Most of the logos on the AYM website link directly to the companies so that Movements.org also serves as an advertising medium for corporate America. What is of interest is that the digital technology companies approve and support the manner by which their services are being used in the world velvet revolution. They are not only not indifferent; they are the sponsors of the revolutionaries. This is because the “brave new world” being created by their young “digital activists” will be one in which young consumers will emerge from the traditional societies that are now being overthrown. There will be a larger consumer market; more youngsters addicted to consumerism, as they are in the West.
Howcast, the primary backer of AYM, has for example made a business empire out of “how to” videos based around the banality of the mass consumer, the subjects of wisdom being imparted including: “How to go on a date with someone you met on the internet,” “How to prevent a blister,” “How to headbang,” “How to enter and elegantly exit a car…” …Not exactly in the same category as The Communist Manifesto or The Little Red Book, but fitting articulations of the type of revolution that neocon strategist Maj. Ralph Peters predicted would overtake the old order and reshape the world in America’s image by means of consumer addiction via what he called “creative destruction.”
Howcast CEO Jason Liebman conceived the idea of the Alliance of Youth Movements/Movements.org. His profile on the Howcast website states of Liebman: “Jason is also a cofounder of the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM), a nonprofit organization that helps young people to effect nonviolent change around the world using 21st-century tools.” Howcast is described as working directly “with brands, agencies, and organizations” such as GE, Proctor & Gamble, Kodak, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Defense, and Ford Motor Company… Howcast is therefore intimately involved not only with global corporations but also with the U.S. Government. Liebman was previously with Google where he forged corporate relationships with Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, Warner Music, Sony Pictures, Reuters, The New York Times, and the Washington Post Company.
The other Movement.org Board Members and Co-Founders are:
Jared Cohen is director of Google Ideas. “He is also an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he focuses on terrorism and counter-radicalization, the impact of connection technologies, and ’21st century statecraft.’” The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the omni-present foreign policy think tank that was founded in the aftermath of World War I by corporate interests in conjunction with academics and politicians, and is the prototype of subsequent think tanks. Cohen is a director and founder of a youth movement that claims to be creating revolutionary change throughout the world, yet simultaneously he advises CFR on “counter-radicalization.” With this it might be discerned the actual purpose of Movement.org: that of co-opting and channeling youth dissent into acceptable forms. The profile for Cohen continues:
Previously, he served for four years as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. In this capacity, he advised on the Middle East, South Asia, counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization, and the development of the “21st century statecraft” agenda. He is twice a recipient of the Secretary of State’s Meritorious Honor Award.
Cohen is author of the books Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East and One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide. He has also written several articles, including “Diverting the Radicalization Track” (Policy Review) and “Iran’s Young Opposition” (SAIS Review).
Cohen has travelled extensively throughout Africa, where he examined issues related to democracy, governance, and genocide. He has also conducted research in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, looking at opposition groups, the spread of technology, and interviewing militants ranging from Hezbollah to several Al-Qaeda affiliated groups.
The other corporate revolutionary Board Member and Co-Founder of Movements.org is Roman Tsunder, founder of Access 360 Media, “the nation’s largest digital Out-of-Home media network focused on shoppers that connects to over 100MM consumers each month in over 10,000 locations through the communication platforms that matter most to them – In-store, Online and Mobile.”
In 2009, Roman created the PTTOW! Summit (www.youtube.com/pttow), an invite only event bringing together 35 top execs from the world’s most innovative companies to discuss the future of the youth industry, representing every major industry category, including: wireless (AT&T), clothing (Quiksilver); gaming (Activision), social media (Facebook), technology (HP), online video (YouTube), beverage (Pepsi), athletes (Kelly Slater) and the US Government.
Tsunder’s agenda is clear enough, as with others, being to create and expand the “youth industry” (sic) and that indicates how youth are perceived by the corporate revolutionaries: as consumers and potential consumers. He is also “a founder and board member of Gen Next (gen-next.org), a non-profit organization focused on ‘affecting change for the next generation.’” Revolution has become another means of profit maximization. Gen Next is one of the corporate sponsors of Movements.org.
The Movement’s “Development and Corporate Partnerships Manager,” itself an interesting title for a supposedly idealistic youth organization, is Rachel Silver, who worked for Liebman’s Howcast, and as such organized the Movement’s summits in New York City, Mexico City and London.
AYM Summits
The Movement has held three summits so far. The 2010 Summit held in London, had as its keynote speaker Scott Heifferman from Meetup.com. Other luminaries at the summit were Kristen Morissey from Google; Juan Zarate, CBS News; Farah Pandith: Special Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State on Muslim Affairs.
“Guests, hosts and sponsors” included representatives from Google, Rand Corp., Edelman, Howcast, Access 360 Media, World Bank, US Institute of Peace, Global Engagement Group, and Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Moderators and Speakers were from the National Democratic Institute, Gen Next, Twitter, CBS, Meet Up, Google, World Bank, and You Tube. Farah Pandith and Jared Cohen represented the US State Department.
Movement.org’s Role in the North Africa Tumult
Lest it be thought that Movement.org is not much more than a bunch of nerdish armchair revolutionaries and a past-time for CEO yuppies, the organization has been playing an important role in the North Africa upheavals. Ariel Schwartz writing for the Fast Company, writes:
File this under: Timing is still everything. Just in time to help organize Egyptian grassroots activists with restored Internet access, the Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) has rebranded itself as Movements.org, an online hub for digital activists….
The AYM has a history of creating change–in 2008, a summit organized by the AYM included leaders of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, a protest movement seeking political reform and a democratic government.
“Movements.org is the source for anyone who wants to keep up to date on the use of technology for achieving real social change,” said Movements.org and Howcast cofounder Jason Liebman in a statement. “We have existed for three years as a support network for grassroots activists using digital tools, and today we come out of alpha launch to make our platform and resources available to everyone.”
In other words, the revolution is now centralized…
It should be recalled that the April 6 Youth Movement has been a major factor in organizing the Egyptian revolt. The link for the April 6 Youth Movement provided by Fast Company goes to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the veteran globalist institutions, which describes the pivotal role “social media” played in the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement.
In the spring of 2008, over 100,000 users of the social networking website Facebook joined an online group to express solidarity with workers protesting in the Delta industrial city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra. As the protests escalated into a nationwide strike, the Facebook group gained momentum and eventually coalesced into a political movement known as the April 6 Youth Movement.
In 2009, the group still claimed a membership of around 70,000 young Egyptians, most of whom are well-educated and politically unaffiliated. Like Egypt’s other protest movements, the April 6 Youth Movement is not a formal political party, but it nonetheless provides an outlet for a new generation of politically conscious Egyptians.
Google’s Ghonim
One of the first leaders of the riots in Egypt to be detained was Google’s Egyptian executive Wael Ghonim, arrested on January 8, and freed ten days later. “Wael was also active on Facebook and Twitter regarding the Revolution…” Newsweek credits Ghonim with a major role in the Egyptian revolt, with the subheading: “Wael Ghonim’s day job was at Google. But at night he was organizing a revolution.” Although based in Dubai as Google’s head of marketing for North Africa, Ghonim “volunteered to run the Facebook fan page of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner who had emerged as a key opposition leader.” According to Newsweek, it was Ghonim’s broadcast that actually instigated the revolt that toppled Mubarak:
On Jan. 14, protests in Tunisia felled that country’s longstanding dictator, and Ghonim was inspired to announce, on Facebook, a revolution of Egypt’s own. Each of the page’s 350,000-plus fans was cordially invited to a protest on Jan. 25. They could click “yes,” “no,” or “maybe” to signal whether they’d like to attend.
Interestingly, it is claimed that Ghonim undiplomatically rejected offers by an “American NGO” to fund him. The claim seems disingenuous, given that Google is a U.S. corporation with close contact with the U.S. State Department, sundry NGOs and think tanks and a pivotal part of AYM. The question arises as to whether this is posturing by Ghonim given his comment that he would like to resume his job with Google if he’s not “fired” for his role in “sparking the Egyptian revolution.” The quip is pure cant, as it seems unlikely that Ghonim is ignorant of the role Google and Facebook have played with AYM and the “velvet revolutions.” The following nonsense is supposed to have taken place between Ghonim and Google head office:
On the record, Google’s not talking about Ghonim or the question of employee activism. For his part, Ghonim told CBS’s Katie Couric in an interview on Friday that his participation in the protests had no connection with his employer.
“They did not know anything about this and actually when I took the time off and I went to Cairo, they did not know I was going to the protest,” he said. “But when everything became public, I talked with the company and they suggested that I take a leave of absence and I also suggested that to them and I think it was a good decision for that. Google has nothing to do with this.”
Columnist Charles Cooper is also writing drivel when he questions whether Ghonim is “one off for Silicon Valley” (sic). Ghonim is “one of” tens of thousands of yuppies around the world being agitated, trained and directed towards revolutionary purposes by an array of think tanks, NGOs and US Government agencies. Cooper continues:
Maybe that was meant as a tongue-in-cheek comment. But there’s a larger truth behind his quip. The key role played by one of Google’s key executives in the Middle East revived a decades-old dilemma that many other technology companies face when it comes to the question of political activism: Where should they draw the line?
“It’s one of those things that companies don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole,” a tech public relations exec told me on background.
The obvious truth du jour is that tech companies don’t want to take political positions – even when regimes use their products to oppress their own people.
Cooper is writing unadulterated CRAP. It might be asked whether Cooper is a liar or a half-wit? If he has never heard of AYM, he must surely know about the role long played by the digi-twits in the velvet revolutions in Serbia and elsewhere? Movement.org identifies Ghonim on its timeline for the Egyptian revolt as being the Google executive who instigated the revolt and who was in contact with the April 6 Youth Movement:
…Spring 2010 A group of activists, including Google executive Wael Ghonim and April 6 leader Ahmed Maher, begin meeting once a week to discuss plans for a protest against the government.
… February 8 – Massive protests continue, with many people—inspired by Wael Ghonim —taking to the streets for the first time. Wael speaks to the crowds at Tahrir Square.
Feburary 11 – Wael tells CNN: If you want to liberate a government, give them the internet. http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/wael-ghonim-if-you-want-to-liberate-a-government-give-them-the-internet/
TechCrunch writes of Ghonim and the role that is played by the “digital activists”:
Ghonim, who has been a figurehead for the movement against the Egyptian government, told [CNN’s Wolf] Blitzer “If you want to liberate a government, give them the internet.”
Ghonim, is of course, referring to the fact much of this revolution was organized on Twitter and Facebook (similar to the Tunisian protests). Ghonim was believed to have hosted the first Facebook page that organized the January 25th protests. When Blitzer asked “Tunisia, then Egypt, what’s next?,” Ghonim replied succinctly “Ask Facebook.”
He went on to personally thank Mark Zuckerberg, and said he’d love to meet Facebook’s CEO. Ghonim says that he’s looking forward to getting back to his work at Google but he plans to write a book, “Revolution 2.0? about the role of social media and the internet in political demonstration. There’s no doubt that social media has changed political activism irrevocably, and this moment will surely be a historic moment for Facebook and Twitter.
There is no meaningless rhetoric here about possibly being “fired” by Google, but confidence that Ghonim will return to his job – and I’m sure a promotion – for being what amounts to the epitome of the very “digital activist” who is sponsored by Google, Facebook, Howcast, and the erstwhile social-revolutionaries from AT&T, Pepsi, U.S. State Department, MTV, International Republican Institute, Freedom House, etc.
AYM Inaugural Summit
Movement.org’s inaugural summit in 2008, which the April 6 Youth Movement attended, included a gala hosted by MTV in Times Square. Sponsors of the summit were AT&T, Howcast, Google, Facebook, MTV, and Gen-Next. Eight representatives of the US State Department were present. Some of the speakers were from Columbia Law School, Facebook, Fortune Magazine, Hoover Institution, MTV et al. Panelists included three members of the Obama presidential media campaign; Shaarik Zafar, senior adviser to the US Department for Homeland Security; and Sherif Mansour, Program Officer for Freedom House.
Among the organizations represented were Young Civilians (Turkey), an online activist network of 2,000,000 comprised of sundry “liberals, leftists, feminists, environmentalists, democrats.” Myanmar has a global network working to bring it into the globalist economic fold, the Burma Global Action Network (BGAN) formed by the “‘Support The Monks’ Protest In Burma” group on Facebook, begun 2007. The group at its peak had 450,000 members, which worked together to organize demonstrations around the world.
No Mas Chavez is dedicated to overthrowing a major bugbear of the globalists and the USA, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, whose aim of a Bolivarian bloc in alliance with other nations such as Russia might pose significant opposition to globalism. No Mas Chavez developed from Facebook networking with 80,000 supporters, and has organized demonstrations against Chavez. Another organization at the summit, opposing Chavez was Sumate.
Cuba Development Initiative flagrantly claims to seek the democratization of Cuba as a means of “joining” its “democratic, economic, and social development [with] international financial resources… CDI works with a vast network of individuals and organizations.” Another organization there that is aimed at subjugating Cuba to globalization is Raíces de Esperanza, Inc.: “Our strategy has been to (a) build and unite a student network of campus groups, (b) sponsor academic conferences for Cuban-American youth, (c) mobilize youth abroad in solidarity, and (d) reach out to our counterparts on the Island. We have a committed volunteer core that works on all levels.” (Comment: Whatever happened to the old youth protest slogan: “Hands Off Cuba!”?). CDI was founded by Felice Gorordo, a businessman who has previously worked with the US Departments of State, Commerce and Homeland Security. Another CDI representative at the 2008 summit was Verónica Nur, who “currently works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the Associate Director of Strategic Communications for Policy while also managing the Spanish-language media for the department at large.” Nur “has also served as a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, the International Youth Committee for Democracy in Cuba, and Raíces de Esperanza.
Speakers at the 2008 summit included Prof. Matthew Waxman from Columbia Law School, who has “served in senior positions at the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and National Security Council.” Larry Diamond, co-editor of the Journal for Democracy, came from the Hoover Institution and is a director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. “He has also advised the U.S. Agency for International Development (whose 2002 report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest, he coauthored), the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations.” Others speakers were from Fortune Magazine, CNN, Facebook, MTV, and PACT (which is said to be the first community youth organization built in the tradition of 1960s New Left revolutionist Saul Alinsky).
Guests included Marc Sageman, founder of Sageman Consulting, who works with think tanks including the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Homeland Security Policy Institute, and is a consultant for the National Security Council, Departments of Homeland Security and of Defense, and “various agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the U.S. Secret Service.” Ambassador Stuart W Holiday from Meridian House, a “public diplomacy institution [that] works closely with the U.S. Department of State, other government agencies, NGOs, international governments, and the private sector to create global leadership programs.” Holiday is also a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and “works closely with the U.S. Department of State, other government agencies, NGOs, international governments, and the private sector to create global leadership programs.”
2009 Summit
The second AYM was held in Mexico City in 2009 and was opened with a video-relayed talk from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This summit was sponsored by Causecast.org, Facebook, Gen Next, Google, Hi5, Howcast Media, MTV, MySpace, PepsiCo, Univision Interactive Media, Inc., U.S. Department of State, WordPress.com and YouTube.
With the revolutionary zeal of a corporate Trotsky, Richard Lee, vice president of marketing at PepsiCo International, told the summit:
We support The Alliance of Youth Movements and especially the passion, purpose and creativity that young people possess. Today is a moment in time when one individual, with the use of technology can create positive change in the world…and Pepsi will strive to enable this change.
From the U.S. State Department AYM co-founder Jared Cohen stated:
The impact of using online tools and social media to advance positive social change is truly remarkable and exciting. It is critical to encourage and enable today’s youth to apply these technologies as means to catalyze social movements around the world.
Among the “guests, hosts and sponsors” were Juan M. Henao, International Republican Institute; Mick Duffy, PepsiCo International; Sarah Cliffe, The World Bank, et al. There were eight from the US State Department.
Among the participating organizations were reps from the Burma Global Action Network, Corporación Foro de la Juventud Guayaquil, Ecuador; Iranian oppositionist newspaper Etemad Melli; Genç Siviller (Young Civilians, Turkey); JuventudDes (Peru); Tehran Bureau, a “virtual” journalism project; ThinkMoldova, a catalyst for the 2009 so-called “Twitter Revolution” which succeeded in ousting a pro-Russian governing party that wasn’t pleasing to “civil society.”
Raíces de Esperanza, the Cuban oppositionist youth movement, was represented again.
Opponents of Hugo Chavez were represented by Latytud Project who, “So far… have established alliances in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, and Bolivia.” Another was Movimiento Joven de Venezuela, its representative at the AYM summit being Yon Goicoechea, who is also President of the Caracas Youth, Member of the National Board of Directors of the First Justice Party and Representative of the Movimiento Joven de Venezuela, an NGO dedicated to training and organizing young democratic leaders. Another anti-Chavez organization present was Un Mundo Sin Mordaza.
“Moderators, speakers and panelists” included Jack Dorsey, Chairman, Twitter; James Eberhard, Mobile Accord; Kristen Morrissey, Principle New Business Development, Google; Mario González, CNN Español; Matthew Brady, Program Director, Freedom House; Nicole Lapin, CNN; Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube; and Tara Lemmey, Founder and CEO, LENS, a corporation involved with technology and security issues, among others…
Among guest luminaries were Juan M. Henao from the International Republican Institute; and Mick Duffy and Richard Lee from PepsiCo International; and Sarah Cliffe, The World Bank, along with the AYM executives and others from Howcast, MobileBehavior, Google, GenNext, and Edelman.
From this it can be seen that particularly well represented were the U.S. State Department; Obama’s media experts; opponents of Hugo Chavez; PepsiCola, Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, the latter two particularly involved with training and funding activists of the “velvet revolution” around the world.
Conclusion
While the “Beat Generation” was too whacked out on LSD to comprehend how they were being manipulated by the CIA and others, what is one to make of the “digital generation”? Are they too stupefied by the puerility of MTV, Twitter, Facebook, and Pepsi to find anything questionable about being involved with the US Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Defense; with AT&T, NED, World Bank, Rand Corp., etc., in the name of “revolution,” “human rights” and “democracy”? It is a generation that has been sold on “ideals” that lead to nothing more than the global shopping mall. Their “ideals” offer the “democratic right” for Muslim, Latin American, Asian, and East European youth to become part of that same consumer society that is a manifestation of a civilization in its cycle of decay.
Notes
[1] Mr Cartalucci , Land Destroyer, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/ [2] Tony Cartalucci, “Google’s Revolution Factory – Alliance of Youth Movements: Color Revolution 2.0,” Global Research, February 23, 2011, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23283 [3] Tony Cartalucci, “Google’s Revolution Factory,” ibid. [4] “(3) Emergency Program for European Scholars, 1940-1945,” Rockefeller Foundation Archives, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:tXK4eQ5oXbAJ:www.rockarch.org/collections/rf/refugee.php [5] T W Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper Row, 1950). [6] K R Bolton, “‘Sex Pol’: The Influence of the Freudian-Marxian Synthesis on Politics and Society,” Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Washington, Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall 2010. [7] Encyclopaedia of World Biography on Herbert Marcuse, http://www.bookrags.com/biography/herbert-marcuse/ [8] Douglas Kellner, “Marcuse, Herbert,” The American National Bibliography, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:5_KUmmTtH7QJ:www.uta.edu/english/dab/illuminations/kell12.html [9] Herbert Marcuse, “Acknowledgements,” One Dimensional Man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, See for the acknowledgement: http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=63QdLKsuqCwC&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq [10] “Gloria Steinem and the CIA: C.I.A. Subsidized Festival Trips: Hundreds of Students Were Sent to World Gatherings,” The New York Times, 21 February 1967, http://www.namebase.org/steinem.html [11] Mark Riebling, Tinker, Tailor, Stoner, Spy, Was Timothy Leary a CIA Agent? Was JFK the “Manchurian Candidate”? Was the Sixties Revolution Really a Government Plot?, Osprey, 1994, http://home.dti.net/lawserv/leary.html [12] Timothy Leary interview, High Times, February 1978. [13] “Biographical Memoir”‘ (Washington: National Academy Press, 1987), Volume 56, p. 255. [14] “Biographical Memoir,” Ibid., p. 258. [15] “Biographical Memoir,” op.cit., p. 260. [16] Paul Lazarsfeld, ‘Biography’, http://www.answers.com/topic/paul-lazarsfeld [17] Jerry Rubin, Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), pp. 19, 249. [18] Institute for Policy Studies, Beginning the Second Decade, 1963-1973. [19] Institute for Policy Studies, Beginning the Second Decade, ibid. [20] Sidney Blumenthal, “IPS – Left-Wing Thinkers,” Washington Post, 30 July, 1986. http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:X-SHxRkyN9YJ:www.tni.org/archives/media_ips-wp1986 [21] Green Tracking Library, http://www.undueinfluence.com/index.html [22] ‘Timeline for the Young Social Democrats’, Young Social Democrats, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:A-JZk7 38J:www.youngpeoplessocialistleague.org/library/timeline.shtml [23] The International Union of Socialist Youth is the youth affiliate of the Socialist International, comprising social democratic and Labor parties throughout the world. The IUSY was founded in Germany in 1919 under the leadership of the German Bolshevik Karl Liebknacht, and became the Communist Youth International. The IUSY was reconstituted in 1946. ‘International Union of Socialist Youth, Statemaster Encyclopaedia, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:OaAnTsZAgKwJ:www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/International-Union-of-Socialist-Youth. [24] Political Research Associates, “League for Industrial Democracy,” Right Web, 10 January 1989, [25] Philip Agee Jr., “CIA Infiltration of Student Groups: The National Student Association Scandal,” Campus Watch, Fall 1991, pp. 12-13, http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa2.html [26] Ibid. [27] Angus Johnston, A Brief History of the NSA & USSA, US Student Association, http://www.usstudents.org/who-we-are/history [28] Left-liberal Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. [29] Conservative Southern Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace. [30] James Kunen The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary, (New York: Avon, 1970), “At the convention, Men from Business International Roundtables,” pp. 130–131. [31] A Communist Party front named after Afro-American scholar W E B DuBois. [32] “Investigation of SDS 1969,” Committee on Internal Security, 91st Congress, 1st Session, Pt. 5, pp. 1654-1705 of hearings. [33] “Columbia University – Students for a Democratic Society – Unrest,” ABC Evening News, 19 September 1968, Vanderbilt Television News Archive, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:hQs-Ccu5i1IJ:tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl [34] An article in a leading British Leftist magazine puts the amount given by the Ford Foundation to SRU at $40,000. Mike Marqusee, “1968 The mysterious chemistry of social change,” Red Pepper, 6 April 2008,$40,000 is also the amount stated by Joel Geier, Associate Editor of the International Socialist Review, “1968: Year of Revolt,” talk at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Il., March 26, 2008. Geier was a leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkley during the 1960s. International Socialist review, http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:Tw1lGIjtOAgJ:links.org.au/node/335+
[35] ‘Higher Education: Academic Reform’, Ford Foundation Annual Report 1968, [36] Cord Meyer was co-founder, with James P Warburg, of the United World Federalists in 1947, to promote a World State. In 1948 Meyer was World Federalist president. (“Opinion in a drawing room”, Time Magazine, 16 February 1948, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794188,00.html. [37] K R Bolton, “The Globalist Web of Subversion,” February 7, 2011 Foreign Policy Journal, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/02/07/the-globalist-web-of-subversion/ [38] Movements.org “Mission,” http://www.movements.org/pages/mission [39] Movements.org “Mission,” ibid. [40] A recent article on the website of Radio Free Europe/Liberty states of this: “The work of groups like Canvas, combined with the proliferation of social-networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, and the coming of age of a wired — and increasingly disaffected — young generation have combined to create a perfect storm threatening authoritarian regimes from Europe to North Africa, to the Middle East.” “Exporting Nonviolent Revolution, From Eastern Europe To The Middle East,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 21, 2011, http://www.rferl.org/content/exporting_nonviolent_revolution_eastern_europe_mideast/2316231.html [41] Movements.org “Mission,” op. cit. [42] Movements.org “Sponsors,” http://www.movements.org/pages/sponsors [43] Edelman is a leading “global” public relations firm,[43] whose clients include fellow Movements.org sponsor Pepsi. [44] Corporate member of the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR “Corporate Membership,” http://www.cfr.org/about/corporate/roster.html [45] Corporate members of the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR “Corporate Membership,” http://www.cfr.org/about/corporate/roster.html [46] Corporate members of the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR “Corporate Membership,” http://www.cfr.org/about/corporate/roster.html [47] Howcast, http://www.howcast.com/ [48] R Peters. “Constant Conflict,” Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 1997, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3011.htm [49] Howcast, “Meet Our Team,” http://info.howcast.com/about/team [50] Movements.org. “Team Board,” http://www.movements.org/pages/team#Jared [51]Movements.org. “Team Board,” ibid. [52] Movements.org. “Team Board,” ibid. [53] Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html [54] Movements.org. “Team Board,” op. cit. [55] Movements.org. “Team Board,” ibid. [56] Movements.org. “Team Board,” ibid. [57] Movements.org. “Team Board,” ibid. [58] US Institute for Peace, “established and funded by Congress.” USIP was created by Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1984. http://www.usip.org/about-us/our-historyThe Chairman of the Board of Directors is businessman, government appointee and CFR member J. Robinson West. http://www.usip.org/about-us/board-directors
[59] Center for Strategic and International Studies: “CSIS provides strategic insights and policy solutions to decision makers in government, international institutions, the private sector, and civil society.” CSIS was founded as a Cold War think tank in 1962 to assure America’s world primacy. CSIS, “About Us,” http://csis.org/about-usZbigniew Brzezinski (CFR), the veteran Rockefeller protégé, “co-chairs the CSIS Advisory Board.” http://csis.org/expert/zbigniew-brzezinski
Another familiar face is CSIS counsellor and trustee is Henry Kissinger (CFR). http://csis.org/expert/henry-kissinger
[60] Movements.org/Alliance for Youth Movements, “Attendee Biographies, Summit Details,” 2010, http://www.movements.org/pages/the-summit [61] National Democratic Institute has sponsorship from The National Endowment for Democracy; U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Middle East Partnership Initiative; United States Agency for International Development (USAID); 18 Governments in addition to that of the USA; OAS, World Bank Group, United Nations organs; and the types of Foundations that one would expect, including Citigroup Foundation, Ford, Soros’ OSI., etc. NDI, “Who supports Our Work,” http://www.ndi.org/who_supports_our_workThe Chairman of NDI is former US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who also serves on the Board of Directors of the omni-present Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “CFR Membership Roster,” http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=A
[62] A Schwartz, “More Tech Tools for Egypt’s Protesters: Movements.org, an Online Hub for Grassroots Activists,” Fast Company, February 3, 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/1723468/movementsorg-an-online-hub-for-grassroots-activists [63] ” The April 6 Youth Movement,” Carnegie Endowment, http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/2010/09/22/the-april-6-youth-movement [64] “Google Executive Freed in Egypt,” February 8, 2011, http://www.politicolnews.com/google-executive-freed-in-egypt/ [65] “The Facebook Freedom Fighter,” Newsweek, February 13, 2011, http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/13/the-facebook-freedom-fighter.html [66] It should also be recalled that ElBaradei emerged from the bowels of the International Crisis Group, where he sits with George Soros, to be the man of the hour in Egypt. See: K R Bolton, “What’s Behind the Tumult in Egypt?,” Foreign Policy Journal, February 1, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/02/01/whats-behind-the-tumult-in-egypt/all/1 [67] “The Facebook Freedom Fighter,” Newsweek, op. cit. [68] “The Facebook Freedom Fighter,” Newsweek, ibid. [69] Charles Cooper, “Wael Ghonim: A ‘One-Off’ for Silicon Valley?,” CBS News, Tech Talk, February 11, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20031608-501465.html?tag=mantle_skin;content [70] Charles Cooper, “Wael Ghonim: A ‘One-Off’ for Silicon Valley?,” CBS News, ibid. [71] Charles Cooper, ibid. [72] “Timeline of the January 25 Revolution in Egypt,” AYM, February 14, 2011, http://www.movements.org/blog/entry/timeline-of-the-january-25-revolution-in-egypt [73] “Timeline of the January 25 Revolution in Egypt,” AYM, ibid. [74] Leen Rao, TechCrunch, February 11, 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/wael-ghonim-if-you-want-to-liberate-a-government-give-them-the-internet/ [75] Movement.org, “The Summit: New York City,” 2008, http://www.movements.org/pages/the-summit#2008 [76] A corporate member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [77] A corporate sponsor of the Council on Foreign Relations. [78] “Alliance of Youth Movement Summits,” New York City 2008, “Attendee Biographies,” http://allyoumov.3cdn.net/f734ac45131b2bbcdb_w6m6idptn.pdf [79] K R Bolton, “An ANZAC-Indo-Russian Alliance? : New Zealand & Australia’s Geopolitical Alternatives,” India Quarterly, Vol. 66, No. 2 April-June 2010. [80] For the role of the National Endowment for Democracy see: K R Bolton, “The Globalist Web of Subversion,” Foreign Policy Journal, op. cit. [81] Alinsky was the organizational guru of the 1960s New Left. [82] Corporate member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [83] “Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,” 2009, Howcast, http://info.howcast.com/youthmovements/summit09 [84] “Alliance for Youth Movements Second Annual Summit,” http://www.movements.org/pages/284/ [85] Cohen serves on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. [86] K R Bolton, “The Globalist Web of Subversion,” op. cit.K R Bolton is a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research, and an assistant editor of the peer reviewed journal Ab Aeterno. Recent publications include ‘Trotskyism and the Anti-Family Agenda,’ CKR website, Sociology Dept., Moscow State University (October 2009); ‘Rivalry over water resources as a potential cause of conflict in Asia,’ Journal of Social Political and Economic Studies, and Russia and China: an approaching conflict?, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2010; Vol. 34, no. 2, Summer 2009.
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