Corporate NGOs Work Hand in Hand With Walmart to Privatize Earth’s Oceans & Fisheries

illustration: zeeninginlaos

Walton Family Foundation Sunk $71.4 Million into Greenwashing Schemes

 

Over $36 million alone was handed over to “Marine Conservation” grantees including the Ocean Conservancy, Conservation International Foundation, Marine Stewardship Council, World Wildlife Fund and EDF. All of these organizations are notorious for their role in corporate greenwashing efforts across the globe.

 

“The Walton Family Foundation is funding the Environmental Defense Fund, which wants to commodify water through water marketing and privatize our fish through catch shares program,” said Grader. “These are tools used by corporations to further the growing disparity between 1 percent and rest of us.”

 

California Progress Report

November 19th, 2012

By Dan Bacher

 

Much recent media attention has focused on Walmart’s announcement that it is canceling Thanksgiving plans for many of its employees. These workers will now have to work on the holiday as the retail giant kicks off its holiday sale at 8 PM on Thanksgiving Day, rather than waiting until midnight on “Black Friday.”

“The result is troubling for advocates for workers’ rights, as Walmart has encroached repeatedly on a holiday that traditionally involves plenty of time spent with family and away from work,” according to a statement from the Corporate Action Network. “The decision to move up the start of Black Friday sales to Thursday could be an attempt to thwart the workers’ organization efforts scheduled for Black Friday.

Labor, social justice and human rights groups are supporting a nationwide boycott of Walmart on Black Friday to back the strike of Walmart workers that day.

However, less well known to the public is Walmart’s ambitious campaign of corporate greenwashing in recent years.

The Walton Family Foundation proudly reported “investments” totaling more than $71.4 million in “environmental initiatives” in 2011, including contributions to corporate “environmental” NGOs pushing ocean privatization through the “catch shares” programs and so-called “marine protected areas” like those created under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.

According to a press release from the Walmart Headquarters in Bentonville Arkansas, the foundation made grants to more than 160 organizations in the U.S. and other countries “that work to protect natural resources while strengthening the local economies that depend on them.”

The foundation directed an overwhelming majority of the grants toward its two core environmental initiatives – “Freshwater Conservation and Marine Conservation.”

“Our work is rooted in our belief that the conservation solutions that last are the ones that make economic sense,” claimed Scott Burns, director of the foundation’s Environment Focus Area. “The foundation and our grantees embrace ‘conservationomics’ – the idea that conservation efforts can and should bring economic prosperity to local communities.”

The foundation donated $30.5 million to Marine Conservation, $26,842,289 to Freshwater Conservation and $14,022,907 for “Other Environment Grants.”

The Top Five Grantees were Conservation International, $16,208,278; Environmental Defense Fund, $13,683,709; the Marine Stewardship Council $3,122,500; Nature Conservancy $3,024,539, and the National Audubon Society, $2,739,859.

Conservation International, the top recipient with $16,208,278, is an organization noted for its top-down approach to conservation and involvement with corporate greenwashing.

The Walton Foundation press release claimed that, “Conservation International continued to implement a three-year program to empower local communities to manage and conserve fishing resources on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast.”

However, the group’s board features controversial corporate leaders such as Rob Walton and Stewart Resnick.

Rob Walton, Walmart Chairman, serves as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of Conservation International. Serving with him on Conservation International’s Board of Directors is Stewart Resnick, the owner of Paramount Farms.

Resnick has been instrumental in campaigns to build the peripheral canal to increase water exports to agribusiness and Southern California, to eviscerate Endangered Species Act protections for Central Valley Chinook salmon and Delta smelt and to eradicate striped bass in California. The Center for Investigative Reporting describes Resnick as a “Corporate Farming Billionaire and One-Man Environmental Wrecking Crew.”

Resnick is notorious for buying subsidized Delta water and then selling it back to the public for a big profit, as revealed in an article by Mike Taugher in the Contra Costa Times on May 23, 2009.

“As the West Coast’s largest estuary plunged to the brink of collapse from 2000 to 2007, state water officials pumped unprecedented amounts of water out of the Delta only to effectively buy some of it back at taxpayer expense for a failed environmental protection plan, a MediaNews investigation has found,” said Taugher.

Taugher said the “environmental water account” set up in 2000 to “improve” the Delta ecosystem spent nearly $200 million mostly to benefit water users while also creating a “cash stream for private landowners and water agencies in the Bakersfield area.”

“No one appears to have benefitted more than companies owned or controlled by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire, philanthropist and major political donor whose companies, including Paramount Farms, own more than 115,000 acres in Kern County,” Taugher stated. “Resnick’s water and farm companies collected about 20 cents of every dollar spent by the program.”

Likewise, the Nature Conservancy, a group that received $3,024,539 from the Walton Family Foundation, in 2011, is also known for its strong support of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels that Resnick and other corporate agribusiness interests so avidly support. A broad coalition of fishermen, Indian Tribes, environmentalists, family farmers and elected officials opposes the construction of the tunnels because they would hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other species.

Drive to Privatize Fisheries

illustration: zeeninginlaos

Environmental Defense Fund, with the second highest donation at $13,683,709, is known for its market-based approach to conservation and its push for “catch shares” that essentially privatize the oceans. The relationship between the group and the retail giant is so close that it operates an office in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered.

“Environmental Defense Fund released its ‘Catch Shares Design Manual: A Guide for Fishermen and Managers’ to provide a roadmap to catch share design, which is a focus of our Marine Conservation initiative,” according to the Walton Family Foundation.

A catch share, also known as an individual fishing quota, is a transferable voucher that gives individuals or businesses the ability to access a fixed percentage of the total authorized catch of a particular species.

“Fishery management systems based on catch shares turn a public resource into private property and have lead to socioeconomic and environmental problems. Contrary to arguments by catch share proponents – namely large commercial fishing interests – this management system has exacerbated unsustainable fishing practices,” according to the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

True to form, Sam Rawlings Walton, the grandson of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, serves on the Board of Trustees of EDF.

Times Articles Put Spotlight on Walmart, Highlight Media Failures

Two New York Times articles in April 2012 put Walmart and the Walton family’s “dirty laundry” in the international spotlight, leading to a renewed call by the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) for the public to support their boycott of Walmart.

The Times articles covered Walton family support for anti-fishing, pro-privatization efforts in North America, followed by the publication’s exposure of alleged $24 million worth of bribes in Central America to speed up the chain’s expansion into Mexico.

“The headlines prove that Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation are no friends of local communities anywhere, and their ongoing efforts to destroy coastal fishing businesses through support of arbitrary marine reserves and privatization of fish stocks nationwide should not be supported by anglers,” said RFA executive director Jim Donofrio. “We’re asking coastal fishermen who support open access, under the law, to healthy and sustainable fish stocks to send a clear message to this arrogant corporation that we’ve had enough of their greenwashing and grafting efforts.

Donofrio noted that Walmart made world headlines following a New York Times story that charges the Bentonville, Arkansas company and its leaders of squashing an internal investigation into suspected payments of over $24 million in bribes to obtain permits to build in Mexico.

The bribery scandal was exposed on the same day that the Gloucester Times of Massachusetts exposed a reporting lapse in another recent New York Times article about the relationship between Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Walmart partnering together for “more enlightened and sustainable operations.”

The New York Times had earlier reported that EDF “does not accept contributions from Wal-Mart or other corporations it works for.”

However, when confronted on the fact that the $1.3 billion Walton Family Foundation (started in 1987 by Wal-Mart’s founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and directed presently by the Walton family) has been underwriting EDF’s successful effort to replace the nation’s mostly small-business, owner-operated fishing industry with “a catch shares model designed to cap the number of active fishermen by trading away ownership of the resource to those with the deepest pockets,” the author of the New York Times report conceded by email that in her rush to meet deadlines, she had not considered the relationship between the Walton family and Wal-Mart, according to Donofrio.

“I didn’t think to check the EDF board for Walton family members, or Walton Family Foundation donations,” said reporter Stephanie Clifford, adding “None of the third parties I’d spoken to had mentioned that connection, which isn’t an excuse – I should have thought of it myself, but didn’t.

RFA is hoping that saltwater anglers and fishing business owners help send Walmart stocks tumbling by refusing to shop at the corporate giant any longer.

“The Walton family uses their fortune to buy off friends who’ll cover for their despicable business practices, whether it’s corporate greenwashing with EDF, rebranding efforts through national trade association campaigns, or apparently by way of directed bribes to local officials in other countries,” Donofrio said. “Don’t just stop buying fishing tackle at Wal-Mart – stop supporting this company altogether and let’s quit supporting complete buyouts and takeovers of local communities.”

In August 2011, RFA asked fishermen to publicly boycott Walmart stores following issuance of a news release from Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas where the Walton family announced investments totaling more than $71.8 million awarded to various environmental initiatives.

Over $36 million alone was handed over to “Marine Conservation” grantees including the Ocean Conservancy, Conservation International Foundation, Marine Stewardship Council, World Wildlife Fund and EDF. All of these organizations are notorious for their role in corporate greenwashing efforts across the globe.

The RFA pointed out that by contributing over $36 million to NGOs promoting alleged “marine protected areas” like those created under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative and catch share programs in 2010, the Waltons were contributing to the demise of sustainable recreational and commercial fisheries and the privatization of the oceans.

Commercial Fishermen Back Boycott

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, supports RFA’s boycott of Walmart.

“People who are concerned about our environment or labor rights should all be boycotting Walmart,” said Grader. “Their polices are clearly intended to commodify our natural resources and put them under the control of large corporations.”

“The Walton Family Foundation is funding the Environmental Defense Fund, which wants to commodify water through water marketing and privatize our fish through catch shares program,” said Grader. “These are tools used by corporations to further the growing disparity between 1 percent and rest of us.”

“I’ve been boycotting Walmart for decades and it’s absolutely great that recreational and commercial fishermen are together on this,” concluded Grader.

Too Good to be True | First Peoples Worldwide

“Despite millions of dollars being funneled to Indigenous Peoples over recent decades, our communities still lack cultural and economic self-determination,” says FPW Founder and President Rebecca Adamson. “Small-grants programs tailored specifically to the needs of Indigenous communities, including the need for modern property rights to correspond with traditional land use, will contribute greatly to Indigenous empowerment.”

[For more information about such “modern property rights” read “Harper Launches Major First Nations Termination Plan: As Negotiating Tables Legitimize Canada’s Colonialism]

FPW Board member Jim Brumm in February 2012 with San peoples in Molapo Village, Botswana. (photo credit: Jim Brumm)

 

Continuity

November 18, 2012

Return to Philanthropy?

New Left Project

October 31, 2012

by Michael Barker

 

Philanthropy, we are told, is to replace the welfare state: instead of attempting to redistribute wealth via taxation and democratic planning, austerity politicians are in the process of dispatching with what they view as an irritating relic of working class history. In its place we are informed that we should rely upon the charity of the greediest and most exploitative subset of society, our country’s leading capitalists. A group of individuals whose psychological temperament is better described as psychopathic rather than altruistic.^[1]

While many corporate executives may well have numerous commendable personal traits, their commitment to pursuing their own class interests — at the expense of the mass of humanity — necessarily means that they must master the means to mask their illegitimate power and actively encourage a sense of futility amongst the governed. The creation of non-profit corporations, otherwise known as philanthropic foundations, thereby serves a critical function for powerful elites:letting them distance themselves from their psychopathic for-profit offspring, and allowing capitalists to recast themselves as good Samaritans striving to work for the common good.

Under the ideological onslaught of the “Big Society”, philanthropy is now a big and highly profitable business in itself. Tens of thousands of individuals are employed in this booming industry whose very growth is inversely related to the cutting of much-needed public services. Yet this philanthropic sector is hardly new, and can trace its institutional history to the old charity organisations of the nineteenth century.

In fact to this day, the Charity Organization Societies that were initially formed in 1869 continue to be used as a misleading “institutional model to illustrate the alleged advantages of voluntarism over state benefits.”^[2] This is a model of manipulation that was quickly exported to the United States. In time these charity societies found their replacement through the institutionalisation of philanthropy in the form of dedicated foundations, which were quickly used as a weapon of capitalist reform against a militant and increasingly socialist working class.^[3]

For the past several decades the pro-capitalist ideology guiding the foundation-world has been gaining the ears of the rich and powerful in the UK, and its historical lessons are currently being reintegrated into the British ruling classes’ war against life. Groups at the forefront of this educative endeavour are numerous, but perhaps the most significant is the Association of Charitable Foundations, which was set up in 1989 — with grants given by their members amounting to £1.2 billion in 2005 alone.

A former senior executive at private equity company 3i plc, John Kingston, is the current chairman of the Association of Charitable Foundations, a position of authority he bolsters through serving as a board member of David Cameron’s recently launched Big Society Capital. Kingston is supported at the Association by his vice chair, Sara Llewellin, who is the chief executive of the leading liberal foundation — ostensibly “committed to funding and encouraging the promotion of social justice” — the “Big Society”

With the Association of Charitable Foundations being of fairly recent origin, an apt forerunner in the UK sis the Charities Aid Foundation. This Foundation was was formed in 1924 as the Charities Department of the National Council of Social Service, in order to encourage efficiency in charitable giving. In 1959, the Charities Department changed its name to become what is now known as the Charities Aid Fund (CAF); while the National Council of Social Service itself is now called the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

In late 2010, Dominic Casserley, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, became CAF’s chairman, only retiring from his position as the chairman of the major British charity Action on Addiction in 2012. Casserley’s predecessor at CAF was the former chief executive at the London-based investment bank SG Warburg & Company, Lord Cairns; while CAF’s current chief executive is John Low, an individual who in recent months stepped down from his position as the chairman of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) — the professional body for the third sector’s usually overpaid chief executives. Low also serves alongside the aforementioned Sara Llewellin on the board of trustees of Charity Bank, an organisation which helps financial investors “facilitate real social change.” The type of social change being facilitated equates with activities that enable and empower the ongoing priviatisation of public services, something that ACEVO chief executive Sir Stephen Bubb is certainly familiar with, given his recently revealed key role in the ongoing privatisation of the NHS.

The close relationship between capitalist enemies of public services and the promoters of voluntary work should come as no surprise. And a key addition to the ruling classes’ armory in their longstanding efforts to undermine the welfare provisions of the state is Dartington Hall Trust’s School for Social Entrepreneurs. This “School” was founded in 1997 by Michael Young, a former Director of the pro-capitalist Political and Economic Planning think tank, who is best known as being the man who coined the phrase “social entrepreneur.”^[4] Funding for this project came from HSBC Holdings plc, the National Lottery Charities Board and the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust.

The School for Social Entrepreneurs’ founding chairman was the late James Cornford (1935-2011), who just prior to his death acted as the chair of Dartington Hall Trust. Having been a policy wonk for the ruling class for decades, Cornford previously serving as the first Director (1989-94) of the New Labour think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research — the very think tank that helped provide the intellectual fodder to allow the Labour Party to dispatch its working-class roots. Another notable trustee of the School for Social Entrepreneurs is Vaughan Lindsay, who became the CEO of Dartington Hall Trust in 2004 after leaving an illustrious career in the corporate world, where he had most recently worked for healthcare privatizer McKinsey & Company.

Notably the current chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research is James Purnell, who recently served as a board member of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. Blue Labour operative Purnell presently acts as a senior advisor for the world’s leading advisor on business strategy, Boston Consulting Group, and is a trustee of Citizens UK — a group whose “goal is to increase the power of communities to participate in public life.” Dismantling the welfare state being one way sure fire way in which to force increased public participation in public life.

Given the insidious way in which elite philanthropy works to defang and delimit the processes of beneficial social change, it is vital that progressives begin seriously to tackle the vexing questions surrounding the mostly unmentioned power of philanthropy, most especially that of liberal elites. Thankfully in the past few years this dialogue has gained much needed support from the publication of two books, Joan Roelofs’ Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003), and INCITE!’s The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007). However, the most important work still needs to be done: together we need to launch a popular debate about the corrosive influence of foundations on progressive social change, and then begin to propose and support alternative (sustainable) solutions to funding progressive groups all over the world.

Michael Barker is an independent researcher who currently resides in the UK and blogs at http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/.

For more New Left Project coverage of the Big Society project, see Emma Dowling’s series here, here and here.

 

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[1] Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004).

[2] Robert Humphreys, Poor Relief and Charity, 1869-1945: the London Charity Organization Society (Palgrave, 2001).

[3] Sheila Slaughter and Edward Silva, “Looking backwards: how foundations formulated ideology in the Progressive Period,” in Robert Arnove, (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1980).

[4] Asa Briggs, Michael Young: Social Entrepreneur (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p.328.

Subverting Sovereignty

Skookum: *An online journal of the American psyche in transition*

by Jay Taber

November 4, 2012

 

As reported at Wrong Kind of Green, the expulsion of USAID from Russia and Latin America is long overdue, and given the history of USAID’s involvement in overthrowing and destabilizing governments unwilling to yield to US dictates, it’s surprising that it took so long. This doesn’t mean that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency will stop spying on governments that seek independence from the US; it simply means that US spies and provocateurs will no longer be able to work undercover as USAID operatives.

As noted in other WKOG articles and special reports, though, US spies and provocateurs will still be able to work undercover as employees of NGOs, funded by foundations established by US elites to undermine opposition to US hegemony. With help from the Rockefellers, Ford and Soros, subverting sovereignty and derailing democracy worldwide will continue, albeit in a manner that puts authentic non-profits and independent journalists at risk.

While this is a risk that US elites are more than willing to take, it is understandable that some countries will see classifying all Americans visiting their countries as possible spies as a precautionary principle. It’s merely the logical consequence of a half century of perverted US foreign policy.

 

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

October 31, 2012

 

Part five of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

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

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

 

Introduction | By Jay Taber at Intercontinental Cry

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In psychology, Machiavellianism denotes a personality type.

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

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

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

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

The Empire

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

United Nations Emblem 1945

Anonymous Logo 2003-2012

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

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

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

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

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

Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Pravda

Snapshot:

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

 

Education:

•  Balliol College, Oxford

 

Resides in United Kingdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avaaz Co-founder: David Madden

Photo by Lee-Sean Huang

Snapshot:

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

 

Education:

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

 

Resides in New York City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avaaz Co-founder: Eli Pariser

 

Snapshot:

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

 

Education:

• Bard College at Simon’s Rock

 

Resides in New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

If you can’t beat’em – buy’em.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

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

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

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

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

Avaaz Co-founder: Jeremy Heimans

 

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

 
Snapshot:

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

 

Education:

• Harvard University
• University of Sydney

 

Heimans resides in New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

Behavioural Change

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

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

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

TECH PRESIDENT website, May 24, 2010:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Behavioral Economics of Hatred

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

The two minutes hate has risen again.

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

 Purpose

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

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

The Purpose of Purpose

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Next: Part VI

 

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

WATCH: Arundhati Roy Discussing Funding, Capitalism and NGOs

In this lecture *excerpt, Arundhati Roy describes the intersection between foundation and corporate funding, capitalism and the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

*To view lecture (Arundhati Roy: Capitalism – A Ghost Story | 4th Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Trust Lecture) in it’s entirety, visit this link:  http://youtu.be/qv8l9AKZanQ

 

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

Miseducation and the New Slavery

Ceasefire Magazine

By Michael Barker

October 25, 2011

 

Ruling class philanthropists have maintained a long history of subsuming educational needs to capitalist growth prerogatives. Learning from this toxic history is imperative, which is why Donald Spivey’s contribution, Schooling for the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915 (Greenwood Press, 1978), is so important.

In this book Spivey examined how industrial education served as “a major force in the subjugation of black labor in the New South” in the United States, paying particular attention to the influence of Northern industrialists-cum-philanthropists who guided such “progress.” [1]

A good place to begin is with the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau at the end of the Civil War. Ostensibly set-up to aid and protect freedmen, the Bureau actually served “as a conservative bulwark against black self-assertion.” This however did not mean that all of the white men staffing the Bureau acted to circumscribe black freedom, and Charles B. Wilder – who was appointed the first superintendent of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Hampton, Virginia – was just one exception who “sided with the blacks in their complaints and paid for it.”

Indeed, Wilder’s commitment to black freedom, not servitude, meant he was soon ousted from his position and replaced by a “strong supporter of  Bureau philosophy and policy,” General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Here was the ideal man for the job: “Freedmen as a class,” General Armstrong declared, “are destitute of ambition; their complacency in poverty and filth is a curse; discontent would lead to determined effort and a better life.” [2]

By the end of 1867 Armstrong had moved into the educational arena. The General had arrived at the opinion that the freedmen presented a problem that could only be solved through proper schooling. The “only thing is to educate them [blacks] ,” he declared; “there is no other escape from a fearful band of evils that their ignorance will otherwise entail upon the country.” (p.11)

To impart the requisite education upon blacks, in 1868, General Armstrong with the aid of the Freedman Bureau and the American Missionary Association founded the Hampton Normal Institute in Hampton, Virginia.

Through industrial education, the General hoped to control the blacks, not raise them to a level of parity with whites. Armstrong proceeded with the greatest amount of care. “The darky,” he confided, “is an ugly thing to manage.” He was careful to give his students a limited education, just enough to fit them to their prescribed station in society and no more. “Over education” the Founder defined as one of the salient “dangers with the weak races. … For the average [black] pupil,” he contended, “too much is as bad as too little.” (p.26) →

Right Click for War

September 24, 2012

skookum: *An online journal of the American psyche in transition*

by Jay Taber

In his book Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders examined the systematic integration of perception management during the Cold War. Noting how synchronized government propaganda, mainstream media and authoritative academia — the prototype for the Total Information Awareness program at the National Security Agency — was orchestrated to support endless war, Sanders remarked that to keep the money flowing, they had to make everyone believe the Russians were ten feet tall. Fast forward to the post Cold War, and the peddlers of crisis are now online social entrepreneurs, working in tandem with the traditional warmongers on the task of manipulating public sentiment in support of the new and improved American empire.

In her expose of Avaaz — the creme de la creme of neoliberal activism — Cory Morningstar details the consumer branding by the imperial network of financiers like Soros Open Society. Profiling the entrepreneurs in the pro-war, champagne circuit of e-advocacy, Morningstar illustrates the premise that in order to be pro-democracy one has to be anti-fraud. If fraudulent polls and cooked up member lists constitute the justification for the elite’s imperial project, then right-clicking for war means the revolution has finally been funded. The only problem is that the project has consequences–like 9/11.

Blowback from people pissed off at American supported tyrants or American promoted invasions of their countries may not concern the Ivory Tower activists, but for those of us going without food, shelter or medicine while the U.S. Treasury bails out banks and finances aggression worldwide, perpetual warfare at the expense of general welfare is a real problem–not a ten foot tall myth.

 

FLASHBACK: Reporters Without Democracy

Media Watchdog as Democracy Manipulator (Part 4 of 4)

December 16, 2007

[The first two parts of this article firstly investigated Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ‘democratic’ funding ties, and then went on to look at the ‘democratic’ credentials of some of their current and former staff.  The third installment of this article extended this investigation and examined the ‘democratic’ ties of some of the earlier recipients of RSF’s annual Fondation de France Prize, and this concluding part of the article will now continue in this vein and examine the ‘democratic’ ties of some of RSF’s more recent prize winners. Finally, the article will conclude by offering some suggestions for how the issues raised within this article may be acted upon by progressive activists.]

Reporting on ETA

In 2000, Carmen Gurruchaga Basurto, a political reporter for El Mundo, a Madrid-based daily newspaper won the RSF award. Her biography notes that she “writes frequently about the Basque separatist group, ETA.” However, it goes on to note that because “Gurruchaga’s stories have so threatened the terrorist group… since 1984 it has waged a campaign against her, hoping to intimidate her into stopping reporting on their activities.” In 2001, Gurruchaga received awards from two ‘democratically’ connected organizations, Human Rights Watch (from whom she obtained a Hellman/Hammett Grant), and the International Women’s Media Foundation (from whom she was awarded their annual Courage Award).

Regime Change in Iran?

In 2001, Reza Alijani, the editor of Iran-e-Farda – an Iranian newspaper that was banned in 2000 – received RSF’s press freedom award. Although I cannot demonstrate that Alijani has any ‘democratic’ ties, one of his former Iran-e-Farda colleagues, Hojjatoleslam Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, “was arrested on August 5, 2000 in connection with his participation at an academic and cultural conference held at the Heinrich Boll Institute in Berlin on April 7-9 [2000] entitled ‘Iran after the elections,’ at which political and social reform in Iran were publicly debated”. This is significant because the German political foundations (Stiftungen) are according to Stefan Mair (2000) “without a doubt among the oldest, most experienced and biggest actors in international democracy assistance”. Indeed NED historian David Lowe writes that these Stiftungen provided an “important model for democracy assistance” which helped catalyse the creation of the US’s own democracy promoting organ, the NED.[1]

Armed with this knowledge it is perhaps not so astonishing that the Iranian government would choose to imprison many of the activists who participated in the aforementioned Heinrich Boll conference. Furthermore, it is also predicable that some of the other conference attendees would have ties to the NED and the democracy manipulators: these activists included Akbar Ganji (who in 2000 received an International Press Freedom Award from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, that is, the group that manages the ‘democratically’ linked IFEX network, and after spending six years in prison – after attending the conference – Ganji was awarded Rights and Democracy’s 2007 John Humphrey Freedom Award), Ali Afshari (who was a visiting fellow at the NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies from October 2006 to February 2007), and Mehrangiz Kar (who from 2000 to 2001 held a senior fellowship with the Toda Institute for Global Policy and Peace Research, from October 2001 to August 2002 was a NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, in late 2002 served as a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and between September 2005 and June 2006 was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy).

A number of other Iranian journalists – who did not attend the Berlin conference – were also arrested in April 2000, and the two who can be linked to the ‘democracy’ community are Mashallah Shamsolvaezin (who in 2000 then received the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award), [2] and Emadeddin Baqi (who in 2004 was awarded the Civil Courage Prize, and in 1999 co-wrote a series of articles with Akbar Ganji criticizing the government which “galvanized the public and, within one year of their publication, forced the closing by the government of nearly every reform newspaper in the country”).

Environmental ‘Democracy’ for Russia

The 2002 RSF Fondation de France Prize was awarded to Russian journalist Grigory Pasko, who at the time of receiving the award was serving a prison sentence for exposing the dumping of radioactive waste by the Russian fleet in the Sea of Japan, “expos[ing] corruption inside the fleet” and pass[ing] on public information about both issues to Japanese journalists”. Pasko was eventually set free in 2003, and in 2004 he became the editor-in-chief of the Environmental Rights Center’s (otherwise known as Bellona) Environment and Rights Journal – which has been published since February 2002 and is supported by the NED.

Bringing Human Rights to Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Morocco

In 2003 RSF Fondation de France Prize was given to the following individuals and groups, exiled Haitian journalist, Michèle Montas, to the Zimbabwean newspaper, The Daily News, and to the Moroccan journalist, Ali Lmrabet.

In addition, to being a former director of Radio Haiti Inter, the first RSF winner, Michèle Montas, is also a director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights – a group that was initially known as the National Emergency Coalition for Haitian Refugees when it was created in 1982. Two of the better known (now deceased) ‘democracy promoting’ founders of the NCHR are Lane Kirkland (who is a former Rockefeller Foundation trustee, and from 1979 to 1995 served as the president of the AFL-CIO – which is a core NED grantee) and Bayard Rustin (who was a former chairman of the executive committee of Freedom House, and former president of the NED-funded A. Philip Randolph Institute). [3] Other notable former directors of NCHR include Michael H. Posner (who is the president of Human Rights First), Michele D. Pierre-Louis (who is the Executive Director of FOKAL which “is the Open Society Institute foundation in Haiti”), and Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. (who is a former director of the Rockefeller Foundation).

The current executive director of NCHR is Jocelyn McCalla, who has held this position since 1988 (except for a one year break in 2002) and presently serves on Human Right Watch’s ‘democratically’ connected Americas Advisory Board. Other current NCHR directors with ‘democratic’ ties include Mark Handelman (who is a director of the NED-funded International Campaign for Tibet), Max J. Blanchet (who is a director of the Lambi Fund of Haiti which although progressive is a chapter of USAID-funded Partners of the Americas), Muzaffar A. Chishti, (who is the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University School of Law), and Herold Dasque (who is the executive director of the progressive Haitian American United for Progress, but is also connected to Dwa Fanm – a group which has two directors who have previously worked with George Soros’ Open Society Institute).

The second recipient of the 2003 RSF Fondation de France Prize was the Zimbabwean newspaper, The Daily News. This paper was launched by Geoffrey Nyarota in 1999, and it “quickly became the largest selling and most influential newspaper” in Zimbabwe. Therefore, it is significant to note that Nyarota – who “now lives in exile in the United States from where he publishes thezimbabwetimes.com” –was awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award in 2001. In addition, the following year he received the World Association of Newspapers Golden Pen of Freedom award, from 2004 to 2005 he served as a fellow at the US-based Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and he is presently a director of the World Press Freedom Committee. [4] (The Daily News closed operations in 2004 after “constant harassment by state monitors” and is now being published by the Amnesty International’s Irish Section.)

The third RSF prize for 2003 was awarded to the Moroccan journalist and editor of Demain magazine, Ali Lmrabet, while he was “serving a three-year jail sentence, in part for publishing cartoons critical of King Mohammed VI”. However, while Lmrabet was sentenced in May that year he was released from prison one month after he received the RSF award (which he obtained in December 2003). Here it is perhaps relevant to note that he is presently a member of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, although he does not appear to hold any leadership role. This is significant because this association is a member of a broader network known as the International Federation for Human Rights – a group whose work is supported by Rights and Democracy, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Ford Foundation, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.

Promoting ‘Democracy’ in Algeria, China, and Mexico

Three RSF awards were distributed in 2004. The first recipient of the RSF prize was Algerian journalist Hafnaoui Ghoul, who at the time was a correspondent for the daily paper El Youm and was head of the regional office of the Algerian Human Rights League (LADDH). Ghoul’s affiliation to the latter group is noteworthy because LADDH received their first grant from the NED in 2002, and then received further NED grants in both 2004 and 2005.

The second person to receive a RSF award in 2004 was the “former Beijing University philosophy teacher Liu Xiaobo, who heads the Independent Writers’ Association”. At the time of receiving the award Xiaobo was also the chair of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), whose members include two members of the editorial board of the NED-funded magazine, Beijing Spring, Kuide Chen and Zheng Yi. It is also significant that Louisa Coan Greve (who is the senior program officer for Asia for the NED) congratulated Xiaobo on receiving his RSF prize, and noted that the award “also honors the ICPC itself, and NED is gratified and humbled to be a supporter of those efforts.” [5]

Finally, the third winner of the RSF’s 2004 award was the weekly newspaper Zeta – a Mexican paper which was cofounded by the 1998 RSF award nominiee J. Jesus Blancornelas. Blancornelas is currently Zeta’s editor in chief, and his previous nomination for the RSF prize is no accident, as throughout his career he has been showered with numerous journalism awards, the earliest of which appears to be the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award which he received in 1995. Zeta appears to have quite an affinity with the Committee to Protect Journalists, because in 2007, Zeta’s director, Navarro Bello, was also awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award.

A Helping Hand for Somali, Afghanistan, and China

In 2005, Omar Faruk Osman received the RSF award on behalf of National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). This is significant because in 2002 Osman was elected as the secretary-general of the Somali Journalists Network (SOJON), which under his guidance was transformed into NUSOJ. This group is linked to the NED in a number of ways. In 2005 they obtained a grant from the NED to train journalists and “nominate journalists as National Press Freedom Protectors to monitor free press abuses”, while in the same year the International Federation of Journalists received a separate grant from the NED to work with them to organize a journalism conference. More recently, in 2006, Osman “was chosen to be a member of the international jury of the RSF Press Freedom Award”.

Other winners of the RSF’s 2005 Fondation de France Press Freedom Award include the Afghanistan-based Tolo TV (which was launched in 2004 with starter funds provided by USAID, and is reported to be the “most popular station in Kabul” boasting of a “81 percent share of the market”), and New York Times contributor, Zhao Yan.

Zhao Yan is a journalist who worked for China Reform Magazine (from 2002 to March 2004), and has also written for the NED-funded Human Rights in China. Yan stopped working for the China Reform Magazine in March 2004 and “the magazine was subsequently shut down by the government in December 2004”. However, just before the magazine closed down Yan was arrested by the Chinese government for allegedly disclosing state secrets, and then kept in prison until September 2007.

Note that the China Reform Magazine is linked, albeit tenuously, to a NED-supported organization through Professor Tiejun Wen, who is based at the Renmin University of China and was formerly the editor-in-chief for China Reform Magazine. The NED link arises through Professor Wen’s employment as the chief-economist of the China Macroeconomics Network, where he is also a member of their expert group of “more than 130 renowned Chinese macroeconomists” known as The Macrochina Economists 100. It is significant that three other members of this elite group of macroeconomists currently work for the Beijing-based Unirule Institute of Economics – an organization that has received four grants from the NED (which were channelled via the Center for International Private Enterprise in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999): these three macroeconomists are the Unirule’s president and co-founder Mao Yushi, their director Sheng Hong, and the Institute’s director-general Zhang Shuguang. [6]

Democracy for Four: Burma, Cuba, Russian, the and Democratic Republic of Congo

In 2006 there were four RSF laureates, the Burmese journalist U Win Tin, the Cuban writer Guillermo Farinas Hernandez, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (Russia), and the group Journaliste En Danger (Democratic Republic of Congo).

U Win Tin, a former member of the central executive committee of the National League for Democracy (where he acted as their secretary), and a close friend of former RSF awardee San San Nweh, received the 2006 RSF press freedom prize. He has been in prison since 1989 because of his affiliation to Burma’s main opposition party, and while San San Nweh was released from prison in 2001, he still languishes behind bars today. As mentioned previously, in 2001 the World Association of Newspapers awarded U Win Tin its annual press freedom prize.

Another recipient of RSF’s 2006 award was the Cuban cyber-dissident Guillermo Farinas Hernandez, who heads the small Cubanacán Press news agency. As before, RSF support of Cuban dissidents is hardly surprising given the financial support they receive from the NED-funded Center for a Free Cuba, thus it is also not so astonishing that the NED-funded CubaNet media project would publish Guillermo’s work.

The Russian biweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta is now most famous for formerly being home to Anna Politkovskaya (the journalist who was murdered in October 2006), a journalist whose work was recently recognized by the NED who awarded her one of their 2007 Democracy Awards. [7] In addition, in September 2007 Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, was given the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award.

RSF’s “partner organization” Journaliste En Danger (JED), is a member of the IFEX network, was founded in 1997, and is headed by journalists Donat M’Baya Tshimanga and Tshivis Tshivuadi. In what might be considered a conflict of interest, Tshimanga – who is presently JED’s president – also serves on the RSF’s international jury for their Press Freedom Award (and has done so since at least 2002). Also in 2004, Tshivuadi, who is the secretary general of JED, attended an inter-regional workshop that was convened by the NED-linked Panos Institute. [8]

Ending Media Interference Now

“It is very dangerous when press freedom organizations get themselves politically compromised by accepting payment from any government. It is really vital that all such organizations are truly independent.” UK National Union of Journalists

While this article had not demonstrated that RSF receives funding from any government, it has shown how RSF has received funding from the Congressionally funded NED, and it has illustrated how RSF’s work is highly integrated with that of the ‘democracy promoting’ community, much of which is linked to the activities of the NED. Whether RSF is being manipulated to serve as a useful tool of the ‘democracy promoters’, or whether it is itself guiding the media-related priorities of the global ‘democratic’ community is beside the point. What is certain is that RSF’s activities are intimately entwined with those of the NED. The revelations in this article alone therefore provide more than enough reasons for disbanding RSF immediately. However, this is unlikely to happen in the near future given the useful role that RSF currently provides for elite interests determined on promoting low-intensity neoliberal forms of democracy globally.

Undoubtedly future studies will furnish further details concerning RSF’s less than noble ‘democratic’ liaisons, but the question to ask is, will this be enough to close it down permanently, or to even delegitimize their work in the corporate media? Unfortunately, it is all too obvious that such information, without determined action (in the form of grassroots activism) to back it up, will probably not affect the conduct of RSF’s work one iota. This can explained to a large extent by the bipartisan nature (but nonetheless highly political and regressive work) of most ‘democracy promoting’ efforts, which acts to shield their work from critical enquiry. We only have to look to the work of the core NED grantee, the AFL-CIO, to see that ongoing critical reports filed over the past few decades [27] – that have comprehensively documented the AFL-CIO’s involvement in implementing the US’s antidemocratic foreign policies – have had little visible effect on their practices. Indeed, a number of unionists and other activists joined together in the Worker to Worker Solidarity Committee (www.workertoworker.net) have been continuing to campaign to get the AFL-CIO to break any ties it has with the NED. To date, they have been unsuccessful, even though getting the California AFL-CIO State Convention – one-sixth of the entire membership at the time – to unanimously repudiate the AFL-CIO foreign policy program in 2004. At the 2005 National AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago, the AFL-CIO leadership first changed the California resolution to praising their Solidarity Center’s work, and then actively refused to allow anyone to speak on the convention floor in favour of the actual California resolution condemning AFL-CIO foreign policy.

On a more positive note, ideally, the results of this paper will help initiate further critical inquiries into the democracy manipulators colonization of journalism organizations. Yet it is surely an indictment of media scholars and journalists that similar studies have not been conducted years ago. That said, perhaps this judgement is overly harsh, as ignorance concerning antidemocratic funding seems to be a problem of progressive groups’ more generally. Indeed, progressive activists’ seem to have become so fixated on critiquing their ideological opponents that they have neglected to watch the right-ward slide of their would-be-allies. This tactical lapse appears to have left democratic media organizations open to the insidious cooptive assaults waged by those intent on promoting a polyarchal public sphere.

One way to counter the democracy manipulators cynical use of journalism against democracy is for progressive groups to thoroughly investigate the activities of each and every media group working to strengthen the public sphere. This would be a simple project if journalists and media scholars across the world critically examined the work of their local journalism organizations. In this way, a global database might be built up which would enable progressive scholars, activists, and journalists, to lift the rhetorical veil that has so far shielded many media groups’ from criticism. Completion of such studies will then enable keen media reformers to support (and where necessary create new) truly participatory journalism organizations that can effectively challenge the corporate medias’ global hegemony.

 

[Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. All four parts of this article and some of his other recent articles can be found right here.[

 

Endnotes

[1] By the 1990s Germany’s Stiftungen or party foundations, “had resident representatives in more than 100 countries and field offices in some of them for well over 30 years. Between 1962 and 1997 they handled in total over DM4.5 billion reaching around DM290 million annually by the 1990s. Although in the period before 1990 it is debatable how much can be called democracy support rather than activities primarily intended to meet other purposes  In Pinto-Duschinsky’s words they were ‘powerful instruments not only for promoting democracy, but also for furthering German interests and contacts’.” Stefan Mair, Germany’s Stiftungen and Democracy Assistance: Comparative Advantages, New Challenges, In: Peter J. Burnell (ed.) Democracy assistance: International Co-operation for Democratization (London, Frank Cass: 2000), pp.128-149.

Heinrich Boll representative, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, was also a signatory to a recent letter (dated November 11, 2004) which was sent by the NED to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez to urge him “to reconsider the prosecution of the leadership of Sumate, as well as the proposal to criminalize democracy assistance from abroad”. Sumate is the Venezuelan group that received assistance from the NED to facilitate the unsuccessful ouster of Chavez in 2002.

[2] Another recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2000 was Steven Gan who at the time was the co-founder and editor of the online publication Malaysiakini, a publication which was launched in 1999 by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (a group that since their founding in 1999 has received annual grants from the NED to support their work in Malaysia).

[3] Also see Tom Barry, ‘The New Crusade of the Democratic Globalists’, International Relations Center, August 3, 2005; Other NCHR leaders in the early 1980s included Father Antoine Adrien, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Ira Gollobin, Vernon Jordan, Rev. Benjamin Hooks, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and Bishop Paul Moore.

[4] In 2006 Geoffrey Nyaro published the book Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman, and in 2006 he also attended the 7^th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees – a conference that was also attended by the NED’s president Carl Gershman.

[5] http://www.cicus.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=3514 Accessed December 2006.

[6] The Unirule Institute president, Mao Yushi, while based at the Unirule Institute between 1996 and 1997 was also an executive officer for the NED-linked Chinese Economists Society, and “[i]n November 2004, Mao was elected by the International Business Review as one of the ten most influential economists in China”. Other well-known ‘democratic’ funders of Unirule’s work include the major liberal philanthropist the Ford Foundation, the Institute for International Economics (whose most ‘democratic’ directors are David Rockefeller and George Soros), “many foreign embassies in Beijing”, and “international public institutions, such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and African Development Bank”. For further analysis of the Unirule Institute’s ‘democratic’ ties see, Michael Barker, Promoting a Low Intensity Public Sphere: American Led Efforts to Promote a ‘Democratic Media’ Environment in China. A paper to presented at the China Media Centre Conference (Brisbane, Australia: Creative Industries Precinct, 5-6 July 2007).

[7] Novaya Gazeta: “The privately-owned newspaper in which the staff holds 51% of the shares, saw two political figures take over 49% of its capital in June 2006. They were the former Soviet president and originator of glasnost (openness), Mikhail Gorbachev, and Alexander Lebedev, wealthy businessman and member of the Duma.”

[8] The Panos Institute received one grant from the NED in 1997, while more recently in September 2007, the NED’s “Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) and Panos London launched the Panos Institute’s report entitled At the Heart of Change: The Role of Communication in Sustainable Development.”