Foundation Funding: Tightening the Bonds of Our Own Oppression

February 15, 2013

Author/illustrator Stephanie McMillan of Minimum Security writes:

The awareness of capitalism’s core mechanisms (as opposed to its effects) is so crucial because the system has numerous methods of assimilating our struggles, and we have to make sure we don’t get sidetracked. It diverts discontent into forms that reinforce its own institutions. These are very sophisticated and persuasive – they make people feel that they are making a difference when in fact they’re tightening the bonds of their own oppression.

 

 

Lisa Inti, WKOG, adds:

 

It seems that when one attempts to engage in a critical discussion regarding the political problems of working with these and other foundations, and especially when one is interested in naming them as the gently repressive “evil” cousins of the more prototypically evil right-wing foundations, the establishment Left becomes profoundly defensive of its financial patrons. I would argue that this is a liberal-progressive vision that marginalizes the radical, revolutionary, and proto-revolutionary forms of activism, insurrection, and resistance that refuse to participate in the Soros charade of “shared values”, and are uninterested in trying to “improve the imperfect.” The social truth of the existing society is that it is based on the production of massive, unequal, and hierarchically organized disenfranchisement, suffering, and death of these populations who are targeted for containment and political/social liquidation –a violent social order produced under the dictates of “democracy,” “peace,” “security,” and “justice” that form the historical and political foundations of the very same white civil society on which the NPIC Left is based.

 

If we take seriously, for the sake of argument, the political analysis articulated by Palestinians struggling against the Israeli occupation, or that of imprisoned radical intellectuals/activists and their free-world allies desperately fighting to dismantle and abolish the prison industrial complex, or that of Indigenous peoples worldwide who, to paraphrase Haunani-Kay Trask, are literally fighting against their own planned obsolescence, then it should become clear that the Soros philosophy of the Open Society, along with other liberal foundation social imaginaries, are at best philanthropic vanities. At worst, we can accuse the Soros, Ford, Mellon, and Rockefeller foundations, and their ilk of NGOs and non-profit organizations, of accompanying and facilitating these massive structures of human domination, which simply cannot be reformed or “reconciled” in a manner that legitimates anything approaching a vision of liberation or radical freedom.” –Dylan Rodriguez (The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)

 

McMillan adds:

Elections, corporate-funded nonprofits, NGOs and CBOs, personal change, political pressure, culture-jamming, tinkering with the economy, green jobs, withdrawing our support, symbolic protests – all are offered up as options for dissent. None of them are sufficient; on the contrary, they serve to reinforce the system’s authority and the illusion of democracy.

If you like this cartoon and text, please consider contributing to make them a book! Ends at midnight PST tonight (February 15, 2013). http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/capitalism-must-die

Human Rights Watch in Democratic Republic of the Congo … Watchdog or Master Puppeteer?

The New Times | Rwanda’s First Daily

September 14, 2012

Anneke Van Woudenberg is a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

HERE we go again… Human Rights Watch, true to its mantra of “Hating Rwanda Much” has come up with yet another damning report accusing Rwanda, alongside the M23 mutineers, of a “horrific trail of new atrocities in Eastern Congo” defined as large-scale war crimes. This, of course, reeks of déjà vu… an ‘encore’ of some sort! We have indeed already witnessed the same methodology and media relays with the UN Group of Experts (GoE) report on the matter. Interestingly enough, the author of the HRW report and Senior Researcher in its Africa Division, Anneke Van Woudenberg, was omnipresent in mainstream media, vouching for a report she didn’t author… or did she? The similarities are too striking to ignore. →

SILENCES IN NGO DISCOURSE: THE ROLE AND FUTURE OF NGOS IN AFRICA

by ISSA G. SHIVJI

Born in Kilosa, Tanzania in 1946, Issa G. Shivji is one of Africa’s most radical and original thinkers. A public intellectual, he remains amongst Africa’s leading experts on law and development issues. He has served as an advocate of the high court and the Court of Appeal of Tanzania since 1977, and as an advocate of the high court in Zanzibar since 1989. Shivji has recently retired from his formal position as professor of law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania where he has taught since 1970. He has taught and worked in universities all over the world, including the University of Zimbabwe, the University of Warwick, the University of Hong Kong and el Colegio de Mexico. He is a prolific writer and researcher, producing over a dozen books, monographs and articles, as well as a weekly column published in national newspapers.

First published 2007 by Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice

…the transformation from a colonial subject society to a bourgeois society in Africa is incomplete, stunted and distorted. We have the continued domination of imperialism – reproduction of the colonial mode – in a different form, currently labelled globalisation or neoliberalism. Within this context, NGOs are neither a third sector, nor independent of the state. Rather, they are inextricably imbricated in the neoliberal offensive, which follows on the heels of the crisis of the national project. Unless there is awareness on the part of the NGOs of this fundamental moment in the struggle between imperialism and nationalism, they end up playing the role of ideological and organisational foot soldiers of imperialism… Issa G.Shivji

Download the paper: shivji_forweb

 

 

FLASHBACK 2007 | Hijacking Human Rights | Human Rights Watch

August 03, 2007

ZCommunications

by Michael Barker

In our increasingly public relations-driven world, it is of little surprise that cynical political elites regularly use the rhetoric of democracy, peace, and human rights to disguise their overtly anti-humanist policies. Why should we expect less of our leaders in a world where the corporate media wages a relentless war to manufacture our consent for ruling demagogues? Thus it seems a logical assumption that budding mind managers will attempt to pervert the very concepts that their voters/targets hold most dearly. That this doublespeak is rendered invisible in the mainstream media is a given, but the lack of debate about this process in the alternative media is more worrisome. →

FLASHBACK | The Velvet Slipper And The Military-Peace Nonprofit Complex

The following excerpts are from the article The Velvet Slipper And The Military-Peace Nonprofit Complex written by Michael Barker. The article in its entirety can be read at Swans Commentary where it was published February 18, 2011.

The political clout of the military-peace nonprofit complex is growing apace, and too many people at home and abroad are in danger of being lulled and then crushed by an oligarchy capable of wearing both the velvet slipper and the iron heel. Such anti-democratic developments hold no surprises to opponents of the oligarchy, but apologists for the velvet slipper who seek to teach anti-democratic intelligence agencies about the power of nonviolent activism must be identified and excluded from further involvement with progressive social movements. A good example that springs to mind is Lester Kurtz, who — in addition to residing on the advisory board of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict — recently responded to an article that challenged the fact that he had given a lecture to the CIA, by “arguing”: “I spoke as an independent academic and in no way as a representative of the ICNC when my government asked me to dialogue with members of its intelligence community. I feel that it is my duty as a citizen to educate others…” and “was glad to give my modest input…” (17)

In his timeless novel The Iron Heel (1907), Jack London was all too aware of John D. Rockefeller and his plutocratic ilk’s desire to crush humanity “under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man.” Yet London recognized the other dangers that capital posed to an increasingly powerful revolutionary movement, as he warned how the oligarchy complemented their violence against organized labor by providing selective subsidies to conservative unions much as the Rockefeller Foundation went on to do in the wake of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. (1) But in 1907, when London first published his book, the art of capitalist philanthropy was not fine-tuned, and so if he were writing today, London might well have authored a second book titled The Velvet Slipper. →

FLASHBACK | 350.org: Environmental Corporatism

The following excerpts from the article Harnessing People Power Continued – The 99% Spring and the “Professional Left” are written by Edmund Berger. The article,  in its entirety, can be read on Swans Commentary where it was published May 21, 2012.

 (Swans – May 21, 2012)   “Astroturfing” is a term that has entered the popular lexicon of the politically educated, referring to the ability of largely unseen actors to mold and direct grassroots social movement. Awareness of this phenomenon is a direct fallout from the ascendancy of the Tea Party, as it became rapidly apparent that its transition from a protest movement to a legislative powerhouse was guided with the help of the now-renowned Koch brothers. These conservative-minded billionaire philanthropists, working through their interlocking family foundations, had invested vast sums of money into intermediary organizations that helped plan, facilitate, and execute successful protests, rallies, and political campaigns. Yet those who flaunt the term “astroturfing” — namely, those on the left of the spectrum — have shown a certain reluctance to acknowledge the fact that this same method is being applied to progressive grassroots movements as well, re-concentrating disenfranchisement with the dominant institutions of power into a manageable opposition capable of acting as a voting base. This is not a recent development; it dates back to the “Progressive Era” of American political history, and it forms a central apparatus of US foreign policy abroad under the non-descript diplomacy of “democracy promotion.”

350.org: Environmental Corporatism →

Editorial: Partners in Crime

Intercontinental Cry

Jan 24, 2013

By Jay Taber

 

With the scandalous abuses of power by US, EU and UN humanitarian agencies over the last dozen years, little attention has been paid to the creation, co-optation and corruption of human rights NGOs that help lay the groundwork for humanitarian intervention using the militaries of NATO to subdue states resistant to US control. Yet, as an increasingly vital element of justifying military aggression for allegedly humanitarian purposes, NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have become what the Centre for the Study of Interventionism terms partners of the UN Human Rights Council that are in reality, “para-governmental organisations whose goal is to introduce the concept of interventionism in those regions where NATO and its allies want to intervene to pursue their geo-strategic interests.” →

Human Rights, Geopolitics and the Union for the Mediterranean

Centre for the Study of Interventionism

Date of publication: 21/05/2012

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies is a key NGO within the Network and it is also a member of the International Federation of Human Rights.  It was founded in 1993 by Bahey El Din Hassan who was elected member of the Executive Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network at its second meeting in 1997.  In December 2011, he participated in a meeting of the Atlantic Council co-organised by the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East dealing with Egypt which is his country or origin. (7)  That meeting discussed the arrest of members of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy who were accused of interference in Egyptian internal affairs.

The US Department of Defense’s Unified Command Plan, 2011

 

The Union for the Mediterranean:  An Instrument of Soft Power for the Globalisation of NATO

US foreign policy displays a clear will to preserve control over the armies of conquered territories.  The geographical division of the world into zones of responsibility – American responsibility – is an obvious proof of this.  In this regard, NATO is in fact the result of a conquest – that of the European nations who were occupied at the end of the Second World War.  In the pursuit of its interest in globalising its power and rendering nations subservient, NATO has progressively revealed its true goals by pursuing enlargement in spite of the collapse of the USSR which it was supposed to contain. →

Capitalism, the Highest Stage of Imperialism

By Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International. Thanks to an Uhuru comrade from Milwaukee for making this piece available.

“Elaborating, Marx declared, “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation… →

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words … | Haitians Want to Know: “Where’s the Money?”

Photo courtesy of Ezili Danto, Haitian News