A Christmas Letter to Amnesty International

December 24, 2012

by Red Youth

A 14 year old cadre of Red Youth has written and posted the following letter to his school who have instituted an Amnesty International club for the students. Our comrade, in a short and precise letter exposes the sheer hypocrisy of AI and delivers a challenge to his school, peers and the local AI Club to justify their peddling of imperialist propaganda. The letter is reproduced exactly as it was composed save the name of the school and comrade:

“Dear TGS Amnesty International Club,

I am writing this letter in sheer disgust at the ignorance of xxxx Schools Amnesty International club portrays. Presentations were carried out throughout the school promoting the club and issuing out awareness material to other students. Students were intimidated into signing cards and letters expressing their support for the supposed ‘political prisoners’ locked up in certain nations across the world. The information given to the students about the prisoners was extremely limited and bias. However, my argument is for the millions of oppressed people across the world suffering at the behest of the rich and powerful nations on whose behalf A. I. operates and from where it is based. Why focus on a few individuals and then ignore all the crimes committed by these powerful states? I will be expressing points which will hopefully be answered by the group.

I have no doubt that Amnesty International contains a great number of well-meaning supporters, people with genuine compassion. It is from this standpoint that I express my outrage at the continual stream of lies, hypocrisy and war propaganda that emanates from publications and spokespersons of Amnesty International, hood-winking its members, volunteers and the general public alike into supporting acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regime change throughout the world. →

WATCH: U.N. Troops Slaughter Haitian Civilians | Amnesty & HRW Complicit in Covering Up the Crimes

We Must Kill the Bandits

Kevin Pina Documentary on MINUSTAH, Reviewed By Dady Chery

Haiti Chery

“Since terror is the sole resource left me, I employ it…. We must destroy all the mountain negroes, men and women, sparing only children under twelve years of age. We must destroy half the negroes of the plains….” – French General Charles Leclerc referring to his battle against Haitians in 1803.

 

“We must kill the bandits, but it will have to be the bandits only, not everybody.” – Brazilian General Heleno Ribera, UN Military Commander in Haiti, 2004-2005.

Flag Day protest, May 18, 2004, with tens of thousands of Fanmi Lavalas supporters demanding President Aristide’s return (Source: Haiti Information Project).

Over 15,000 people protested one year later , Flag Day, May 18, 2005, calling for President Aristide’s return (Source: Haiti Information Project).

Kevin Pina’s documentary is the definitive account of Haiti’s most recent anti-imperialist revolt. The new gambit for Haiti began in 2000 with the surprise election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President, but it suffered a setback with Aristide’s February 29, 2004 kidnapping and the installment of a foreign military occupation.

Larceny and lust for gold were certainly key motivators for the new occupation of Haiti. For about 20 years, the United Nations Development Program, the French Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minière (BRGM), a German group, and Canadian junior companies quietly surveyed Haiti’s Massif du Nord for its minerals and stuck to the story that only copper was to be found there. On the other hand, as early as May 2005, the coup government of Boniface Alexandre (President) and Gerard Latortue (Prime Minister) began to sign away Haiti’s mineral rights for 15-year terms to foreign concerns. Now the story is that an abundance of copper had obscured the silver and gold. This would hardly be the first invasion of Haiti for its gold since the 16th-century conquistadors. As recently as 1914, about 24,000 ounces of Haiti’s gold reserves were carried off to Citibank by U.S. kingmaker and banker Roger L. Farnham.

The documentary gives excellent historical context to the new occupation, which followed the letter of the 1915-1934 US invasion of Haiti in the main, with some variations. This time the U.S. and its loyal Haitian paramilitaries teamed up with Canada and France into a Multinational Interim Force (MIF) to purge the country of Fanmi Lavalas (Aristide’s Party) officials and partisans. Haitian patriots were called “bandits,” as they had been 89 years earlier.

When the jobs of killing, imprisoning and torturing Lavalas partisans proved too burdensome for the MIF, a “peacekeeping” force — the so-called United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) — was quickly arranged by the UN Security Council, despite Haiti not being at war. The troops arrived on June 1, 2004.

It is in the roles of “peacekeepers” that emerging powers like Brazil, Chile, and Argentina came to embrace the western imperialist mission. Despite the pretext that the Latin American troops had come “to stabilize Haiti for elections,” the soldiers functioned as the private army of Haiti’s elite. Unarmed Haitians were enthusiastically killed with the same kinds of head shots the racist 1910’s US-occupation marines used to call “popping off Cacos.” Such thirst for Haitian blood from Latin Americans would have been disputable without this brave documentary.

The hard-hitting video also does the great service of exposing the participation of human rights organizations in the persecution of Lavalas officials and highlighting the silence of international NGOs about the large-scale human rights violations that took place in Haiti between 2004 and 2006.

Even without the more than 7000 killed by the UN-introduced cholera and the numerous documented rapes of Haitians by UN troops, the bloodshed that immediately followed Aristide’s removal should have been enough to recommend the non-renewal of the UN mandate in Haiti after MINUSTAH’s first year. Yet year after, (s)election after (s)election, this criminal force has been renewed and expanded.

Current countries represented in MINUSTAH are:

Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, United States, and Uruguay.

As you watch this important documentary, keep an eye on the shoulder patches of the troops for their countries’ flags. Notwithstanding the pretty talk about repaying Bolivar’s debt to Petion, it is quite easy to tell Latin American friend from foe.

VIDEO: Full-length documentary “We Must Kill the Bandits” (1 hour 7 min). Click “CC” for Portuguese subtitles.

Source: Haiti Chery | You Tube

© Copyright 2011, 2012. This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite Kevin Pina as the author of the documentary, and Dady Chery and Haiti Chery as the original source for the review, including a “live link” to the article.

Amnesty International and the Human Rights Industry

Human Rights Investigations

November 14, 2012

by Daniel Kovalik (reproduced by kind permission of the author)

Professor Henkin, rest his soul, while a human rights legend, was not always good on the question of war and peace. I know this from my own experience when I had a vigorous debate with him during and continuing after class about the jailing of anti-war protestors, including Eugene V. Debs, during World War I. In short, Professor Henkin, agreeing with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, believed that these protestors were properly jailed because their activities, though peaceful, constituted a “clear and present danger” to the security of the nation during war time. I strongly disagreed.

That Professor Henkin would side with the state against these war protestors is indicative of the entire problem with the field of human rights which is at best neutral or indifferent to war, if not supportive of it as an instrument of defending human rights. This, of course, is a huge blind spot. In the case of World War I, for example, had the protestors been successful in stopping the war, untold millions would have been saved from the murderous cruelty of a conflict for which, to this day, few can adequately even explain the reasons. And yet, this does not seem to present a moral dilemma for today’s human rights advocates. (I will note, on the plus side, that Professor Henkin did become increasingly uneasy with the Vietnam War as that conflict unfolded, and specifically with the President’s increasing usurpation of Congress’s war authority).

In the end, it was not from Professor Henkin, but from other, dissident intellectuals who I learned the most about human rights and international law. The list of these intellectuals, none of whom actually practice human rights in their day job, includes Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone. And of course, I have read a lot of what they have to say on this subject on these very pages of CounterPunch.

And, what all of these individuals have emphasized time and time again is that international law, as first codified in the aftermath of World War II in such instruments as the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Charter, was created for the primary purpose of preserving and maintaining peace by outlawing aggressive war. And, why is this so? Because the nations which had just gone through the most destructive war in human history, with its attendant crimes of genocide and the holocaust, realized full well that those crimes were made possible by the paramount crime of war itself. As Jean Bricmont, then, in his wonderful book Humanitarian Imperialism, explains, the first crime for which the Nazis “were condemned at Nuremberg was initiating a war of aggression, which, according to the 1945 Nuremberg Charter, ‘is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes is that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’” →

ICT and the CIA

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Nov 8, 2012

As I noted in my comment on her lengthy and vitriolic criticism of Chavez,

While Chavez, like any head of state, needs to be scrutinized for abiding by international human rights law, the assumption that determinations by OAS or the UN human rights bodies are somehow above politics is not born out. If the standard for human rights compliance is abiding by human rights declarations and conventions, then few countries in the world come up short more often than the United States.

As for supposedly trustworthy NGOs like Human Rights Watch, their complicity in US State Department propaganda aimed at furthering US hegemony at the expense of indigenous sovereignty and human rights should give us pause in knee-jerk reactions to demonizing rhetoric with loaded, red-baiting terms. Leave that to warmongering proteges of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, like the new head of Amnesty International Suzanne Nossel.

WATCH: Libya–Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency

Suzanne Nossel Executive Director of Amnesty International USA

September 30, 2012

Human Rights Investigations

Suzanne Nossel was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty International USA in January 2012. This is from her blurb on the Amnesty USA site:

Most recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women’s issues, public diplomacy, press and Congressional relations. At the State Department, Nossel played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council, including the initiation of groundbreaking human rights resolutions on Iran, Syria, Libya, Cote d’Ivoire, freedom of association, freedom of expression and the first U.N. resolution on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. Prior to that, Nossel served as Chief Operating Officer for Human

Suzanne Nossel

Rights Watch, where she was responsible for organizational management and spearheaded a strategic plan for the global expansion of the organization. During the Clinton administration she served as deputy to the Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead U.S. representative to the U.N. General Assembly negotiating a deal to settle the U.S. arrears to the world body. During the early 1990s Nossel worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy; she has also done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. Nossel is the author of a 2004 article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “Smart Power” and coined the term that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a defining feature of U.S. foreign policy.

Fundamental to understanding the thinking behind the new leadership at Amnesty International is an understanding of how Nossel conceives ‘Smart Power’ and her understanding of US foreign policy.

In her 2004 article Nossel states:

The Bush administration has hijacked a once-proud progressive doctrine–liberal internationalism–to justify muscle-flexing militarism and arrogant unilateralism. Progressives must reclaim the legacy of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy with a foreign policy that will both bolster U.S. power and unite the world behind it.

So before having a closer look at what Nossel means by ‘Smart Power’, lets look have a quick look at Nossel’s heroes’ foreign policies.

It was President Wilson who took the US into the First World War and who, despite his splendid internationalist rhetoric, imposed the humiliating Versailles Settlement on Germany, a major factor in the rise of authoritarianism and eventually the Nazi Party. This was a man whose racism is evident from his writing:

“Self-preservation [forced whites] to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes.”

It was under Roosevelt’s watch that the USAF participated in the firebombings of Dresden and other German cities which resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, refugees, innocent women and children.

FDR (and Truman) were also responsible for Operation Keelhaul under which Soviet POWs and refugees were returned to face internment, torture and in many case immediate execution by firing squads.

It was President Truman, another of Nossel’s heroes, who ordered the annihilation of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki via experimental terror weapons resulting in the massacre and maiming of some 200,000 Japanese women, children and old people.

He also took the United States to war against North Korea without consulting congress.

It was President Truman who participated in the McCarthy era witch hunts against American communists calling them “traitors.”

It was President Truman who set forth the Truman Doctrine in order to justify intervening in Greece on the side of the forces of the right against the anti-Nazi partisans saying:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of the minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression of controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

In the campaign against the Greek leftists, President Truman authorised the first use of napalm in warfare using ten spitfires and 200 German-made drop tanks.

The Truman Doctrine was of course a cloak for American imperialism and provided the theoretical justification for the support of repressive regimes, military dictatorships and terrorist gangs the world over.

President John F Kennedy saw Vietnam as an opportunity forth USA to show its “smart power” and by the time he was assassinated 6,000 US military were in the country (up from 900). It was this hero of Nossel who instituted the notorious program (Operation Ranch Hand) using chemical defoliants on the Vietnamese jungle and on farmers’ crops.

It was also Kennedy who on November 30, 1961 authorised aggressive covert operations against the communist government of Fidel Castro known as Operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret program of terrorism against Cuba the ultimate objective of which was to be able to provide adequate justification for a US military intervention in Cuba.

Under President Kennedy, Operation Northwoods was formulated by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer. This operation has been described by James Banford:

Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war

Apparently Kennedy didn’t care for this scheme nor Lemnitzer’s other suggestion which was for the launch of a surprise nuclear war on the Soviet Union. He was so disgusted with him, in fact, that he subsequently appointed him NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

What is smart power?

Suzanne Nossel succinctly explained what she means by smart power in an interview on the Council of Foreign Affairs web site:

I talked about smart power in terms of a couple of different dimensions.

One is combining both hard power, military force, coercion with what has been called soft power; diplomacy, the appeal of American culture, its people, economic ties, and viewing those two elements not as alternatives in an either/or sense but rather as complimentary and elements of US power that need to be brought to bear in concert.

A second key piece is knowing which of these elements to bring to bear at what time and being creative and innovative in terms of combining different sources of US power to influence the situation. So kind of wisely choosing between a wide array of different tools.

And the third piece I talked about was the idea that the use of American power needs to be sustainable and renewable. We need to deploy our power in ways that make us stronger, not weaker.

Just to reiterate, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA believes that the USA needs to use military force and diplomacy, in concert, in order to make American power stronger.

Lets look at some other aspects of Nossel’s published writings so that we have an even clearer idea of where she is taking the organisation. →

Through the Looking Glass

Intercontinental Cry

September 11, 2012

By Jay Taber

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

September 10, 2012

Part one of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

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

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

“I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the spring of truth makes life more humane for you.” – Excerpt from the profound message to Avaaz by poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina

The Art of Social Engineering | The Art of Social Genocide

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

This investigative report examines the key founders of Avaaz, as well as other key sister organizations affiliated with Avaaz who, hand in hand with the Rockefellers, George Soros, Bill Gates and other powerful elites, are meticulously shaping global society by utilizing and building upon strategic psychological marketing, soft power, technology and social media – shaping public consensus, thus acceptance, for the illusory “green economy” and a novel sonata of 21^st century colonialism. As we are now living in a world that is beyond dangerous, society must be aware of, be able to critically analyze, and ultimately reject the new onslaught of carefully orchestrated depoliticization, domestication of populace, propaganda and misinformation that is being perpetrated and perpetuated by the corporate elite and the current power structures that support their agenda. The non-profit industrial complex must be understood as a mainspring and the instrument of power, the very support and foundation of imperial domination.

Within part I of this investigative report:

• The Simulacrum
• Modus Operandi: The 21st Century NGO
• 2004: The Soft Power Imperative | 2011: Mission Accomplished
• Introduction: The Non-profit Industrial Complex: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War
• Historical Amnesia

Part II:

• Corporate “Green” Pedophilia
• The Commerce of Trust
• The Cat is Out of the Bag
• New York City Occupy Wall Street Embraces Otpor and Bombing for Peace
• The WikiLeaks Connection
• Unidentified “Freedom of Speech”
• 15M – Europe’s Occupy Movement
• The Commerce of Exploitation: Change.org

Part III:

• Indoctrinated Subservience & Whitism
• Avaaz’s Founder and MoveOn.org Announce the U.S. “Spring”

Part IV:

• Bread and Circuses
• Avaaz: The Emperor of the NGO Network
• Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention?
• The Avaaz Gate-Keepers
• Avaaz Co-Founder and Executive Director: Ricken Patel
• Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Perriello
• Indoctrination of the Youth is Essential

Part V:

• The Humanitarian Industrial Complex: The Ivory Towers Within the Dark Triad
• The Empire
• Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Pravda
• Avaaz Co-founder: David Madden
• Avaaz Co-founder: Eli Pariser
• Avaaz Co-founder: Jeremy Heimans
• Behavioural Change
• May 2010: Avaaz’s Co-Founders Seek a Purpose-Driven Consumer Life | Behavioral Economics
• The Behavioral Economics of Hatred
• Purpose

Part VI:

• Res Publica
• Avaaz Founding Board Member: Ben Brandzel
• Purpose: James Slezak
• MoveOn.org
• GetUp
• The 21st Century Social Movements
• The Non-Profit Industrial Complex Finally Finds “Success”
• Avaaz Co-founder: Andrea Woodhouse
• Avaaz Co-founder: Paul Hilder
• The Avaaz “Core Campaign Team Members”

+++

The Simulacrum

“As regards the ‘foundations’ created for unlimited general purposes and endowed with enormous resources, their unlimited possibilities are so grave a menace, not only as regards to their own activities and influence but also the numbing effect which they have on private citizens and public bodies, that if they could be clearly differentiated from other forms of voluntary altruistic effort, it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.” – Senator Frank Walsh, 1915

In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image-making. The first is a faithful reproduction, a precise copy of the original. The second is distorted intentionally in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. Plato gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on top than on bottom so that viewers from the ground would see it correctly, whereas if they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed.

This latter representation serves as a visual art metaphor for the non-profit industrial complex. A semblance of entities, united in an ideology encompassing truth, justice and ethics – which is false. This is the simulacrum, distorted in such a way that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle. This report aims to allow you, the reader, to view the matrix from such an angle. By denying the reliable input of our senses while accepting the non-profit industrial complex’s manipulative constructs of language and “reason,” global society has arrived at a grossly distorted copy of ethics and intrinsic worth – a warped simulacrum of thespian complexity, a vast work of superficial depth.

Modus Operandi: The 21st Century NGO

 “What a cluster-fuck of disinformation this world has become. The sinister forces of greed and avarice are, through consolidation of wealth and power, more powerful than ever. Humankind has a huge uphill battle to wage.” — Comment at How Avaaz is Sponsoring Fake War Propaganda from Syria

The 21^st century NGO is becoming, more and more, a key tool serving the imperialist quest of absolute global dominance and exploitation. Global society has been, and continues to be, manipulated to believe that NGOs are representative of “civil society” (a concept promoted by corporations in the first place). This misplaced trust has allowed the “humanitarian industrial complex” to ascend to the highest position: the missionaries of deity – the deity of the empire.

Modus operandi (plural modi operandi) is a Latin phrase, approximately translated and backronymed as “mode of operation.” The term is used to describe someone’s habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning. In English, it is frequently shortened to M.O.

The expression is often used in police work when discussing a crime and addressing the methods employed by the perpetrators. It is also used in criminal profiling, where it can help in finding clues to the offender’s psychology. It largely consists of examining the actions used by the individual(s) to execute the crime, prevent its detection and/or facilitate escape. [Source: Wikipedia]

2004: The Soft Power Imperative | 2011: Mission Accomplished

“Existing soft power initiatives and agencies, particularly those engaged in development and strategic communications, must be reinvigorated through increased funding, human resources and prioritization. Concurrently, the U.S. government must establish goals, objectives and metrics for soft power initiatives. Furthermore, the U.S. government can better maximize the effectiveness of soft power instruments and efforts through increased partnerships with NGOs. By providing humanitarian and development assistance in areas typically inaccessible to government agencies, NGOs are often able to access potential extremist areas before the government can establish or strengthen diplomatic, developmental or military presence, including intelligence.” — Joseph S. Nye, former US assistant secretary of defense, June 2004

The non-profit industrial complex represents a rich portfolio of soft power tools readily available to the ruling elite. Today we witness the near complete metamorphosis of the complex having successfully morphed into the absolute idyllic clearinghouse for the collective and coordinated imperialist agenda shared by a broad spectrum of government institutions, dominated by the financial industrial complex, corporate power and hegemonic rule – all under the guise of a global conscience reflective of “civil society” via self-appointed NGOs.

Joseph S. Nye (quoted above) is a former US assistant secretary of defense, former chairman of the US National Intelligence Council and professor at Harvard University. A world renowned scholar of international relations, Nye co-founded the liberal institutionalist approach to international relations, theorizing that states and other international powers possess more or less “soft power” (a term first coined in the 1980s). In a 2004 article titled The Rising Power of NGO’s, Nye peddled his soft-power theory as the quintessential element that must be employed in order to protect the American public from “terrorists.” Of course, Nye neglected to include the fact that the true “terrorists” are those who hold power within our very own EuroAmerican governments/establishments, waging violence upon sovereign, resource-rich states. It’s an easy sell as it enables one to conveniently deny their assent to (our own) state-sponsored terrorism and continued collective and voluntary servitude as well-behaved, rapturous consumers under the influence of American (non) culture.

If a state can present its power as legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter far less resistance to its foreign policies and agendas. Further, if the Western states’ (non) culture and (illusory) ideology are desirable, other states will more willingly acquiesce. This is an area where the NGOs excel. They do so by never referring to their own “leaders” as dictators or fascists, yet more than willing to apply these derogatory terms to leaders targeted for regime change. Simultaneously, while reporting on human rights abuses or environmental violations in states exploited by industrialized capitalism, the NGOs neglect to comment on their own states’ escalating assault on “democracy.” Most important, the non-profit industrial complex certainly does not address the fact that industrialized and globalized capitalism (imposed by hegemonic rule) is the crux of most all suffering and ongoing crisis in the very states they criticize and deem culpable. A continuous subtle undertone of support/belief in their own states’ democracy is achieved simply by never opening a dialogue on the legitimacy of power structures within their own (imperialist) states.

In essence, soft power is “the universalism of a country’s culture and its ability to establish a set of favourable rules and institutions that govern areas of international activity [that] are critical sources of power” or, more simply, the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce and rather than using force or money as a means of persuasion. This is where states such as Bolivia (and Libya until its recent annihilation) are very real threats to the American superpower. States such as Bolivia and Libya (past-tense) serve the people to advance themselves to a more enlightened, more democratic existence in a very real sense, while democracy and freedoms in the Americas mean little more than “freedom to shop” and buy as much sweatshop junk as one can(not) afford. If corporate-owned/controlled media and corporate-funded/controlled educational institutes actually educated the American public on intellectual enlightenment and progressive advances in other countries – Americans would truly wonder what the fuck was going on. Rather, we are kept in the dark; doped up by big pharma and stupefied by Big Brother, all while such states and leaders are continually vilified and demonized in the media (both corporate and foundation-funded “progressive”), all while NGOs remain silent on their own accelerating fascist governments. American “exceptionalism” is, undoubtedly, the biggest lie ever told sold.

Introducing the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War

Packaging – Uncle Sam is the best in packaging and selling illusions

 “I am convinced that some NGOs, especially those funded by the U.S.AID, are the fifth column of espionage in Bolivia, not only in Bolivia, but also in all of Latin America.” — Evo Morales, February 2012

In 2001, it was George W. Bush who propelled an illegal invasion of Iraq by way of relentless pounding of repetitive messaging of discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq coupled with incessant images of the Twin Towers being destroyed. This psyop (or psychological operation, a new form or warfare) reverberated throughout a mainstream media that obediently fed the lies to the masses. The role of the media was absolutely essential. Yet, in spite of Bush calling for the invasion of Iraq, citizens of the globe, in united cohesion, held the largest mass protests and peace vigils the world had ever witnessed.

Today, however, the push to invade under the guise of humanitarianism is no longer a message from predominantly imperialist governments alone. Rather, there is a new game in town. Flash forward one decade to 2011 and the push for war no longer comes from the lone vacuity of despised war criminals such as George Bush or his charismatic alter-ego, Barack Obama. Rather, the message is now being spoon-fed to global society via the “trusted” NGOs, with Avaaz, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch at the forefront, as documented prior to and during the attack on and subsequent occupation of Libya, and more recently, the destabilization of Syria. [One of many reports of such malfeasance include “HUMAN RIGHTS” WARRIORS FOR EMPIRE | Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch“, by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report.]

“While much was made of the United Nations decision to establish a Human Rights Council in 2006, those who’ve witnessed the evolution of this institution are well aware that the UN was designed by (and functions to serve) the interests of modern states and their supplicants, not the Indigenous nations they rule. For those attached to charitable organizations like Human Rights Watch and other pashas of the piety industry, this is a bitter pill to swallow.” — Jay Taber, Obstacles to Peace, 13 July 2012

 

“The UN Human Rights Council stands as one of the significant obstacles to dynamic political development in the Fourth World. Many individuals and the peoples they represent in the Fourth World have come to believe that the UN Human Rights Council will relieve their pain from the violence of colonialism. It cannot, and it will not.” — Dr. Rudolph Ryser, Chair of the Center for World Indigenous Studies

A decade later, thanks to the non-profit industrial complex awash in an influx of money that flows like the river Nile, partnered with the corporate media complex, it is now “the people” – having been swayed by fabrications, omissions and lies – who lead the demand for invasion of these sovereign states. And, most ironic, it is not the so-called “right” at the vanguard; rather, it is the “progressive left.”

Historical Amnesia

“False reality” requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, “austerity” and “perpetual war”: an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it? — John Pilger, award–winning journalist, in History is the Enemy as “Brilliant” Psy-ops Become the News, 21 June 2012

Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, Fred Hampton, and Erica Huggins – forgotten heroes indeed. The Black Panthers, who emerged on the scene in 1966, drew much inspiration from the ideologies of Malcolm X. Rejecting pacifism and reformism, under the leadership of Fred Hampton, the Panthers recognized the necessity of militant action and self-defense (“by any means necessary”) against racists and the state. The Panthers were effective in organizing the struggle towards a true revolutionary faction, with the state full-well recognizing the very real potential the Panthers held to gain mass support for their revolutionary movement. The state was terrified at this very real threat. It must be noted that during this same time period, white youth were demonstrating against the Vietnam war while 45% of Blacks fighting in Vietnam proclaimed they would be prepared to take up arms within their own state to secure justice for the American people. Considering that in 1960 almost half of America’s population was under 18 years of age, the ample surplus of youth made the threat of a widespread revolt against the status quo a very real possibility. By 1967, the rise in militancy and “Black Power” drew a very tactical response from very anxious foundations. Rockefeller and Ford created the National Urban Coalition (NUC) with the intent of transforming “Black Power” into “Black capitalism.” This was the vehicle designed/created to crush the building momentum that was confronting/challenging the prevailing system of economic control and oppression. By 1970, as Black capitalism took hold, foundations were funneling over $15 million into “moderate” Black organizations in order to effectively deflect the Black Power movement into non-threatening channels. With Black Power successfully transitioning itself into Black capitalism, American corporations utilized the opportunity to cast themselves in a liberal, progressive light by financing Black Power conferences.

The evidence that the Panthers’ revolutionary movement was a very real threat to the American state is indisputable: the FBI (under J. Edgar Hoover) declared the Panthers the number one threat to the internal security of the US. The state tried to eradicate the Panthers “by any means necessary,” gunning down scores of Panthers in the street.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also closely affiliated with the Rockefellers via the 1957 founded Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), which received money from the church and the Rockefellers. Although quite radical, elites considered SCLC moderate and “workable” because of its stance on nonviolence (which protects the state), alongside goals of integration rather than revolution. However, by the late 1960’s, Martin Luther King, Jr. had embraced militancy and radical positions espoused by both the Panthers and Malcolm X. As Martin Luther King, Jr.’s refusal to compromise increased, the foundation funding decreased. A respected man of such stature, speaking out, thus educating a vast public of the oppression caused by the capitalist system/racism, was indeed (and remains so today) a great threat to the powers that dominate. Thus, King was assassinated. Today, in united cohesion, the states work ardently with “progressive” (foundation-funded) media and the non-profit industrial complex, in ensuring that the King legacy is continually and relentlessly sanitized, watered down and co-opted to serve the elitist agenda. The pacifist doctrine, fondly funded by hegemonic rule, is continuously pumped through and circulated throughout the gentrified “movement” like fluoride in the city water – a neutral benevolence of slow poison we drink in voluntary servitude. [June 27, 2012: Black On The Old Plantation | Civil Rights Organizations Enslave Themselves to Corporate Funding]

“We do not fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity. We do not fight exploitative capitalism with black capitalism. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism.” — Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panthers

While Huey P. Newton advocated armed struggle, his ideology did not mean that the end product would be a world in which violence reigns. Rather, Newton believed that the oppressed must use guns as the means to a peaceful end of the oppression. He quoted Mao Tse-tung: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we don’t not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” Within the Panther Party, the gun was not upheld as a means of violence, rather, it was a symbol for empowerment and self-determination. [Huey P. Newton :: Philosophy :: Armed Self-Defense]

In October of 1969, hundreds of youth clad in football helmets marched through an elite shopping district of Chicago. Utilizing lead pipes, they shattered shop windows and demolished parked cars. This was the first demonstration known as the “Days of Rage” – organized by a group who called themselves the Weather Underground. Outraged by the war on Vietnam and the rampant racism in America, the Weather Underground waged a strategic low-level war against the state that continued throughout much of the seventies. The Underground had the state on the run. Members of the Underground bombed state property including the Capitol building (never incurring a single casualty) and even broke Timothy Leary out of prison all while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts ever conducted in US history.

Weather Underground Bombs the Capitol, Pentagon, and State Department (Running time 10:00)

Today, most all the past revolutionary leaders of the Weather Underground, now conformed, apologize for their “tactics,” having been isolated and framed as “violent” by the co-opted left and status quo. [http://youtu.be/S6kPGh0w_-c]

It was during this time of true revolutionary uprising that money and “opportunities” began to siphon into the movements. The art of co-optation had begun with the only weapon (palatable to the public) the oligarchy possessed – money. This money would serve to indulge, thus co-opt, inflated egos scouted from within the left. Co-opting was an absolute necessity for the state to protect the dominant power structures from true systemic change that would effectively transfer power to the people. Examples of revolutionary movements in history, as evidenced in The Weather Underground, the Panthers and others, demonstrate unequivocally that the left became more jingoistic for war only after an influx of money began pouring in from the state and plutocrats via their foundations, which were in many cases set up for this very purpose.

A case in point: Roy Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality/CORE (who advocated “Black control of Black communities” in order to allow for the manifestation of “Black capitalism”) was named a Ford Foundation fellow and became a board member of the Rockefeller/Ford-created NUC/National Urban Coalition. Ford granted CORE Cleveland $175,000 in 1967 to help elect Carl Stokes, who was very much pro Black-capitalism.

Lesser known are the events led by CIA operant Gloria Steinem. The “Black Feminist” movement was created, funded and manipulated by the CIA from the very beginning with Steinem leading the charge. Steinem planted faux “Black feminists” in revolutionary Black Power movements/grassroots organizations in order to instill division and hatred and, ultimately, to dismantle the growing movement. Steinem’s “success” would assist the state’s crushing of the Black Power movement itself. [Read: BLACK FEMINISM, THE CIA AND GLORIA STEINEM]

Throughout the world, there are organizations identifying themselves as the Black Panthers and other true revolutionary movements in existence. However, blinded by the shiny veneer of the big NGOs, few people are aware that such revolutionary movements even exist today. It is the job of the non-profit industrial complex, while waving the pacifist bible in one hand, to deliberately ensure that these groups are not only marginalized, but ignored altogether. Such movements, which have to potential to disrupt (or even dismantle) the power structures that enslave us, must remain invisible or framed in a negative light – if co-opting them is not possible, that is.

And that is something that the Western culture has perfected: co-optation. Forrest Palmer writes: “I am writing a blog post called ‘Malcolm X on a postage stamp.’ It is exactly what you see here [http://www.movements.org/pages/team]. If you know that something is happening at the grassroots and you can’t stop it, the West accepts it, places their handpicked leaders in the forefront who appease the masses into thinking what they are doing is still ‘revolutionary,’  negotiate with the ‘leaders’ ensuring they acquiesce to the state, compromise and either end up with things status quo or so watered down that the compromise doesn’t help the masses at all, but instead helps the state. The best example of a singular event of this: The March on Washington. It went from a black mass rebellion to a benign walk in the park masquerading as a movement. They had all their speeches proofread by the state, including King’s ‘great’ I Have a Dream speech. If the speeches weren’t what the state wanted, they either changed them (John Lewis) or weren’t allowed to speak (James Baldwin).”

“Malcolm predicted that if the civil rights bill wasn’t passed, there would be a march on Washington in 1964. Unlike the 1963 March on Washington, which was peaceful and integrated, the 1964 march Malcolm described would be an all-Black ‘non-violent army’ with one-way tickets.” [Wikipedia, speaking of Malcolm X and his speech The Ballot or the Bullet.]

And so it goes. Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965. And while our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East and the Global South continue to be grossly exploited or altogether annihilated by the imperialist forces, the movement is ever-so acquiescent. Five hundred dollars a day for lodging at the Rio+20 Summit has never been so easy for those within the champagne circuit. And with a Democratic administration and a Black American president in the White House, the modern civil rights movement and dominant left organizations have never found it so easy to remain silent, with little to no criticism from civil society who, self-appointed, they falsely claim to represent.

“While in the US those puppets have traditionally taken on the form of talking heads on corporate and public television, they are increasingly represented in the form of NGO PR puppets employed in the moral theatrics industry…. As the credibility of politicians and pundits plummets, it is these PR puppets that are increasingly responsible for bolstering public support for militarism in general and militarized humanitarian intervention in particular.” — Jay Taber, Intercontinental Cry; Pious Poseurs, 24 June 2012

Although now seemingly normalized, one must consider it slightly ironic that it is in fact no longer the dominant “progressive left” beating the drums against war. [Exceptions include legitimate grassroots groups such as Peacelink in Italy.] Rather, as in the case of climate change, it is primarily the countries seeking to free themselves from the chains of imperialist enslavement that vocally oppose the escalating destabilization campaigns, inclusive of the most recent, in Syria. On 16 February 2012, the 12 sovereign states who voted against the resolution to condemn Syria at the United Nations included North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and Syria, along with states who primarily compose ALBA; Bolivia, Belarus, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua. And it is not coincidence that most all the leaders of all these same states, who continue the struggle for autonomy, are all similarly vilified and demonized by the corporate-media complex, joined recently by the non-profit industrial complex. It is critical to note that the imperialist powers (inclusive of the UN) do not criticize or demonize or withdraw their support from such leaders on any ethical or moral ground. Denunciation of state leaders and emotive language is merely theatre. Rather, the imperialist states strategically set out to destroy any state leader that is unwilling to be controlled by US interests and foreign policy. A case in point is unwavering support of the Saudi royal family responsible for atrocious human rights violations to which the imperialist countries turn a blind eye.

Demonization is a key psyop, directly sponsored by the US Pentagon and intelligence apparatus to influence and sway public opinion and build consensus in favour of invasion. [Prof. Michel Chossudovsky] A recent example can be extracted from the failed 2011 destabilization campaign against the Morales government in Bolivia led by US-funded NGOs including the “Democracy Centre,” which declared: “But the abuses dealt out by the government against the people of the TIPNIS have knocked ‘Evo the icon’ off his pedestal in a way from which he will never fully recover, in Bolivia and globally.” [Further reading: U.S. Funded Democracy Centre Reveals Its Real Reason for Supporting the TIPNIS Protest in Bolivia: REDD $$$. ¿Por qué se defiende el tipnis?, http://youtu.be/RPiw3cDotHA]

A similar situation (developing nations, rather than the “environmental movement,” taking the lead) has taken place on the issue of climate change. ALBA nations, with Bolivia at the forefront, led while the non-profit industrial complex purposely and grossly undermined the strong positions necessary to mitigate the climate emergency. The climate justice movement was acquiescent and thus kowtowed to the “big greens”; “big greens” such as Avaaz, 350.org and Greenpeace who had partnered with HSBC, Lloyds Bank, nuclear giant EDF, Virgin Group, Shell (via TckTckTck partner, the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change) and other corporate giants constituting the “TckTckTck campaign” whereby “the objective was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit” (Havas Press Release). There was no justice to be found, only a cohesive hypocrisy amongst the professional left that flourished like a cancer.

Next: Part II

[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]

Players and Pawns

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Aug 22, 2012

Image via Deep Green Resistance: “How do you learn the truth when the media lies?”

Pussy Riot: Whose Freedom, Whose Riot?

“This is a critique of the Pussy Riot, that regardless of one’s stance on the whole issue, is an important read.”

Radfem HUB Newsfeed

August 20, 2012

Please reblog this radical feminist analysis of the Pussy Riot controversy.

Now while I support without ambiguity the liberation of Pussy Riot’s members, it’s worth pausing for a minute to ask ourselves, as radical feminists, what the political dynamics are here. Why would Western media denounce so passionately the repression of feminists in Russia, when it usually only diffuses information that supports male supremacy and patriarchy? Feminism has long disappeared from any malestream media, except when journalists can turn it into male masturbation material, that is pornify either our suffering or our resistance to it. What’s going on here?

Before learning more about the case, the first thing that made me frown was the fact progressives were hailing Pussy Riot as the “new feminists”, despite that their name is fairly insulting to women. It is certainly not apolitical, since we are in a context in which pornography has deeply colonised our movement and the only groups that the media presents as feminist are those that either insult us or reclaim the very instruments of our subordination, that is, male sexual violence, PIV, pornified femininity and all the associated harmful cultural practices. These tactics of destroying the meaning of feminism form part of a general worldwide backlash against women.

I found it suspicious that Pussy Riot was getting so much media attention, even for pseudo feminist standards. You can measure the degree of feminism of an action by how men react to it, and if men collectively cheer and celebrate it, then you can be pretty sure there’s something wrong about it, or that it doesn’t somehow support our liberation from men. And as far as I can recall, even the slutwalks didn’t get as much coverage or public appraisal. What was it that men liked so much about Pussy Riot?

Well, under closer inspection I discovered that the high level of coverage was related to – though indirectly – promoting men’s right to women’s sexual subordination and the pornification of our movement. The arrested women actually form part (and are victims of) a mixed anarchist group called “Voina” (meaning “war”), founded in 2007 by two men called Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaïev, who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”. Some of Voina’s men have actually already been incarcerated in 2011 for hooliganism – which is punished for 7 years of prison in Russia, but their bail was paid for by an artist named “Banksy” four months after their imprisonment. (More information can be found here and here)

Included in their anti-government actions are a “public orgy” in the national museum of biology in a room full of stuffed bears, where several men anally penetrated their female partners in a position of submission, including one heavily pregnant women, as a metaphor to “bugger/fuck Medvedev”. “Medved” means “bear”, hence all the stuffed bears – this was meant to be symbolic, artistic and revolutionary according to the activists. Here the male anarchists literally used women as dead bodies or receptacles through which to make a political point to other men. Violating women as a means to offend other men is nothing else but an age-old patriarchal mechanism – behind which the intended target are us, for men to bond over our annihilation.

Another planned stunt in the name of “sexual freedom”, inspired by extreme forms of pornography such as zoophilia/ necrophilia, includes a member of Pussy Riot masturbating with a dead chicken in a supermarket under the watch and camera of the anarchist males, after which she inserts the dead chicken entirely into her vagina and hobbles with the chicken inside her out of the supermarket. This is how the male members themselves describe their act of “liberation”:

“How to Snatch a Chicken: A Tale of How One Cunt fed the Whole of the Group Voina… in honor of their hero, a 19th century political philosopher/prisoner, Voina’s president’s wife dubbed “Vacuous Cunt With Inconceivably Huge Tits,” smuggled a chicken out of a grocery store in said “Vacuous Cunt…”  [the journalist comments] : First, the troupe searched for a large and fresh enough chicken. Then, the store isles and CCTV cameras were blocked by the members of the group holding up banners with “FUCK WHORING YOURSELF!” smeared on them in I-don’t-want-to-know-what. The blockade allowed Vacuous Cunt to promptly stuff and smuggle the poultry out of the store, which was then presumably cooked and eaten.[1]

The president is presumably Oleg, and the woman in question, apparently his wife – a situation which would qualify as domestic abuse and sexual slavery given the level of violence, women-hatred and humiliation directed at the women involved. The woman is reduced to a corpse to be ‘stuffed’ in the most degrading and insulting way. No woman would desire such things as inserting a dead chicken in her vagina in public were she not under heavy control and terror. Also of note is the fact that one of their children was brought to this stunt, visibly no older than four. Sexual exhibitionism in the presence of children may also qualify as child sexual abuse. How deeply has women-hatred sunk into men’s minds, that they are incapable of imagining a riot without it being a by-the-book copy of a gonzo porn film? Here again, we see men instrumentalising women and using sexual torture of women as a means to communicate a political message (which if not totally vacuous, communicates nothing other than their hatred of women).

Perhaps the most saddening action of all consisted in filming one of the women naked, covered in cockroaches, meant to be understood as “sexy”. The association of women to filth and parasites to be eliminated couldn’t be clearer. This is women-hating, genocidal propaganda at its most dangerous form. Voina’s men give the world to see where women’s place must be, even when fighting against authoritarian regimes: head down, underneath men and fucked by them.

Now what does this mean for us, what can be understood from the media’s silence about Voina’s pornographic exploitation of women, when all the attention is focused on promoting Pussy Riot as our modern heroines? The effect and intent is political. While all the public eyes are set on the Russian representatives of the state and religion as the ultimate fascists, dictators and machos, we are made to forget that the primary oppressors and tyrants of these particular women are the men closest to them, that is, Voina’s men and their use of pornography to demean, oppress and enslave their female comrades. They are their everyday police, the fascists and colonisers breaking the women’s resistance, occupying their souls, sentencing them to public humiliation and subordinating them through sexual abuse. We are made to forget that these women are doubly victimised: first victims of the violence by the men of their own group, they are then punished and held responsible for the abuse committed against them.

By holding Pussy Riot as examples of resistance, being silent about the pornographic violence and denouncing the state and religious authority as the only oppressor, it follows that the media is complicit with the men from Voina. It protects the anarchist’s individual impunity, and more generally, furthers all men’s interest in promoting rape and women-hating propaganda. It also prevents women in general from identifying men’s sexual violence and the harms of the penis as the primary agents of our oppression. It distracts and disgusts women away from feminism. What kind of dignity and respect for our movement can women have if the only models of resistance given to us by the media are those to be seen by millions of men as humiliated, soiled and degraded in this way?  Even the most brave and valiant women, who fight bare handed and alone against Putin and the religious authority, must be shown by men to the world as surrendering and conquered.

If we want justice for the women imprisoned and to show true solidarity, we need to not only denounce the injustice by the Russian state, but also denounce the violence by the men from Voina. We need to recognise and openly denounce the pandemic levels of sexual violence present in most male-centric leftist or anarchist activist groups, whereby women are often pimped by the men of the group for pornography or expected to submit to extremely violent or degrading acts in the name of “sexual freedom”. What counts for these men is to fight for men’s total public access to women, especially militant women, because it really serves to put all women back in line. The weapon of mass destruction against women is the penis and this is why all men are focusing on making Putin look bad while they say nothing about the bastards of Voina.

For our sisters, for all women, we need to say out loud that this is not feminism.

–  HUB Newsfeed

[1]http://www.animalnewyork.com/2010/voinas-latest-action-is-fowl/ (Warning! Pornographic still image included in this link.)