NGOs and Empire | Canadian Aid Agencies Take Empire Building Seriously

Jul 1, 2012

Photo Credit: Creative Commons: googmami

On November 30, 2009, the Conservatives fired the opening salvo of a far-reaching assault against Canadian development non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The concerted campaign to shift the political centre of the NGO world began when the head office of KAIROS Canada received a phone call from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) notifying the church-based development NGO that its request for funding had been rejected. CIDA officials cryptically informed the organization that its $7.1 million in federal funding had been cut because its activities did not fit the agency’s development priorities. It rapidly became clear, however, that KAIROS had run afoul of Stephen Harper’s foreign policy priorities, most notably his Conservative government’s staunchly pro-Israel stance.

NGOs guilty of similar transgressions soon faced cuts as well. In December 2009, Alternatives – another NGO critical of Israel’s occupation of Palestine – learned that its $2.1 million in CIDA funding would be cut. In April 2010, over a dozen groups concerned with women’s rights, including development NGOs such as MATCH International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), also suffered funding cuts. MATCH International ($400,000 in CIDA funding in 2009) and the IPPF ($6 million in 2009) had been critical of the Harper government’s anti-abortion stance internationally. For the targeted organizations, the loss of government funding meant between 40 per cent and 75 per cent of their annual budgets disappeared overnight. The cuts exacted a heavy toll: overseas programs were shut down, offices were closed, staff positions were eliminated, and properties were liquidated. →

Jul 03

2012

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, The Occupation of Haiti, USAID

Big Pharma Colonialism Disaster Capitalism GE GMO Haiti Imperialism International Monetary Fund World Bank

Haiti: A Time Bomb Which Must Be Defused Immediately

Addicted to power and white privilege in poor countries, the large NGOs are funded mostly to make way for the imperialist and global corporatocracy stealing natural resources, destroying , for instance, Haiti’s food sovereignty, water, public health, democratic governance. All, the better to make a market and jobs for foreigners, their vaccines, fertilizers, pesticides and pharmaceuticals behind the mask of “development.”

March 26, 2012

by Ezili Dantò

Ezili Dantò

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” — Lily Watson

Ezili Dantò of HLLN — Transcending the 2002 Ottawa Initiative for Haiti

There’s a reason to recall the efforts responsible Haitians make to survive the Western rabid rage hidden behind the do-gooders’ benevolence.

Few in power want to hear that the World bank and the International Monetary Fund contain the poor in war, poverty, disease so to save them with Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals, USAID tied-aid, the Clintons’ subsidized Arkansas rice and Monsanto GMOs-hybrid seeds. Not when this is the age where Barrack Obama nominates Paul Farmer’s partner, Jim Yom Kim, co-founder of what some from Haiti call “Partners in Death”, to head the World Bankers fleecing Black and poor countries worldwide.

It’s not news that the post-World War II alliance, use the World Bank, the IMF, the IFIs and the UN to pillage poor countries and continue the old colonial lines of domination.

Addicted to power and white privilege in poor countries, the large NGOs are funded mostly to make way for the imperialist and global corporatocracy stealing natural resources, destroying , for instance, Haiti’s food sovereignty, water, public health, democratic governance. All, the better to make a market and jobs for foreigners, their vaccines, fertilizers, pesticides and pharmaceuticals behind the mask of “development.”

Certainly in this age, the Nobel Laureates won’t be lining up to honor and give prizes to the homeless street boys in Haiti who dug up the earthquake victims, lifting steel and concrete, saving lives with bare, bleeding hands. Won’t be lining up to honor Haitians battling to end the US occupation. Won’t be lining up to honor and give those, like Rea Dol, Jean Ristil Jean Baptise, Jean Jafrikayiti Saint-Vil, Yves Point Du Jou, Dahoud Andre, Pierre Labossiere or Ezili Dantò a peace prize for saving lives, battling tyranny. The neocolonial narrative on Haiti won’t allow it.

We don’t exist. Whitemen speak for us. Mr-lets-hoard-it-all wants everything.

He forgets. We reMEMBER. Laugh. Do battle. Walk with honor.

Sean Penn is saving us along with Paul Farmer and his acolytes. We who have made no dishonorable alliances and stood, from the beginning, against the return to dictatorship, oppression, re-colonization of Haiti, don’t exist. In fact, they say they treat Haitians well. You know, as well as the godly Thomas Jefferson was treating 14-year old Sally Hemings nightly at Monticello. As well as the slaveholders who provided food and shelter to their slaves and only really beat them senseless when they were not working hard enough on the plantation, or were so ungrateful as to speak for themselves, or escape.

He forgets. We reMEMBER. Laugh. Do battle. Die with honor. Suffer humiliating pains, defeats. Endure.

Constantly under fire. But made of fire. Unborn. Never burn. We roll with it. Handling seismic shifts. Freestyling to murder Tarzan, Jane and their Uncle Toms.

Acid and Clorox hunger we know. Stigmas we know. World Bank structural adjustment policies we know. IFM death plans we know. We’re never filled with the humiliating defeats. Our sorrows run deep. Yet and still, Ibo granmoun lakay Ibo.

We don’t exist. We’re the Haitians who save ourselves. We keep honor. We reMEMBER, always. The Ancestors. Don’t forget their traditional enemies. Never. Bay kou bliye pote mak sonje.

“Cut your chains and you are free. Cut your roots and you die” –Haitian Proverb

What is the Ottawa Initiative?

Haitians and those still blind or in denial and who are participating in the International crime and travesty going on in Haiti right now are urged to recall the Ottawa Initiative .

What is the Ottawa Initiative? Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere? (See the UN’s own Global Study on Homicide at page 93 ).

Why is Haiti the only place in the world where the UN has a Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission without a peace agreement amongst warring parties to enforce? Why is the third largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world really in Haiti?

What’s the secret behind the rush of the international mining and oil companies to Haiti?

Why the amazing strings of catastrophes in tiny Haiti these last 8-years of occupation? During the period since US regime change in 2004, the US managed to build, in “corrupt” and “resource-less” Haiti, the largest US Embassy in the Western Hemisphere and the 5th largest US Embassy in the world after Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Germany. (See Haiti’s Riches, and Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the US occupation.)

The majority in Haiti have not been allowed to vote in elections since the US occupation began. Haitians suffer Clorox hunger, yearly floods and drownings, no development. The US military closed schools when they landed in 2004, which still have not reopened. The UN’s personnel sodomize a Haiti child daily. The UN mission in Haiti is getting paid nearly one billion dollars per year by the Western powers.

Haitians abroad have not been spared either. A puppet government is in place doing what an authentic government would never be able to get cooperation from the world bankers and financing houses to do.

The powerful bankers and global politicians have finally found a way to tax the poor majority by unilaterally, without accountability, authorizing taxing Diaspora phone calls and remittances. The $2billion,360million per year in Diaspora remittances is the only real direct and aid-with-dignity the people actually get.

But the world turns away, marginalizes Haiti and other voices who tell the truth.

Paul Farmer and his UN and World Bankers continue to “heal” Haitians from the “threat” we pose to ourselves they advertise, not to the white predatory system. They’ve brought us “healing” with UN guns, (37,000?) NGOs , foreign diseases, vaccinations, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, pedophiles, priests, charity workers and such.

What is the Ottawa Initiative? In 2002, high level Western officials secretly got together in Ottawa, Canada and made plans for Haiti because Haiti with popular democracy was a “threat to North American countries. “

The expressed and reported concern was that “Haiti might have, by some estimates, a population of 20 million by 2019…It is a time bomb, the high level Canadian diplomat said, ‘which must be defused immediately.’” (The Ottawa Initiative; and Transcending the 2002 Ottawa Initiative.)

We are the Haitians

We shall overcome this latest US occupation and subjugation. We are the Haitians. The first to put liberty into application in the Western Hemisphere. The first to help liberate five “Latin” American countries.

The first to bring the music now called Jazz into being in the West. The first to beat all the European powers and their white settle derivatives in combat and end slavery, direct colonialism, the slave trade, forced assimilation. The first to defeat the Western bankers attempts at taxing the labor of the peasants through control of the foreign-backed Bank of Haiti.

The first, in the 1946 Haiti Revolution, to successful overthrow a U.S.-backed regime in the Americas. The first to reject bourgeois democracy. The first to refuse to make taxable income for the bankers, mulatto elites and politicians to enrich themselves, preferring a peasant ownership economy pursuing balance, Viv, family stability, Lakou sufficiency, not wealth, not profit to become taxable income. Haitians work to live, not live to work.

Haiti was the first to reject wage-slavery – the Western serf-like system of valuing and turning the human body/soul into a commodity useful solely for its labor for making profit for some bigmen’s enterprise, or to improve someone else’s land and life. Haitians prefer to be small business entrepreneurs on their own plot of land, living the sunny ocean, small farmers Island life without government interference or taxation without representation.

Haitians suffer the agony of endless debt, domination, starvation, imported diseases and all sorts of other deprivation to deny the Western inhuman economic and value systems.

In 1990 with the election of Aristide, the Haitians were the first to thwart US imperialism hidden behind the pretense of bringing democracy through sham elections and the false promises of tied aid.

The Haitians see through the current US occupation behind UN guns and shall again successfully overcome all US-backed puppet regimes, until the subjugation of the voice of the Haitian peasant and patriot stops, sovereignty regained, the foreigners, white saviors and their NGOs and World Bank bankers are gone.

He forgets. We reMEMBER. Laugh. Do battle. Live with honor. The Haitian union forged at Bwa Kayiman has never wavered. Nou se Ginen, nou fè yon sèl kò.

The Bwa Kayiman call is still our call.

Ezili Dantò,
Li led, li la
March, 2012

*********

“Si nou fè silans,
Y’ap fè l pou nou,
Y’ap fè l sans nou
Y’ap fè l kont nou…Ki vle di, pran peyi Ayiti lan men nou…”–Alina Sixto , Sept. 2007

Jun 26

2012

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria

Amnesty International Syria UN

AMNESIA INTERNATIONAL AND WESTERN NGOs: THE WHORES OF THE U.S.A.

What are Western NGOs useful for?

by Luc MICHEL

2012 06 15

For Syria Committees with PCN-SPO & Le Monde

ELAC

In full communication campaign of Hillary Clinton and the State Department against Russian support for Syria, the good soldiers of Western NGOs come into campaign. And directly attack Russia over “its arms shipments to Syria.” The speech is identical to that of the USA and NATO. And occurs within 24 hours of the Clinton attacks. “The His Master’s Voice” is set but not very smart this time in timing issue … →

Jun 21

2012

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, The Occupation of Haiti

Capitalism Deparment of Defense Exploitation Haiti UN

NGOs Spend More Than 80 Percent of Donations to Haiti

Prensa Latina

Port-au-Prince, Jun 18 (Prensa Latina)

More than 80 percents of the reconstruction donations sent to overcome the aftermath of the January 2010 massive earthquake in Haiti are drained to meet the needs of NGOs from the USA, Canada and Europe, denounces the Conference “Post-Quake Work of NGOs in Haiti”, held in Canada.

Haitian Nancy Roc refuted allegations that Haiti squanders the international relief and wondered why none such officials were invited to the event while Prof. Stephane Pallag,of Canada, urged to reformulate the aid to Haiti for it remains ineffective near three years later.

In message to the colloquy, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe warned their presence can now be called damaging since their operations never fund state projects, hence his call to the world to review their destination.

He also warned that his government plans to urge for more transparency from the NGOs -today some 595 but the exact numbers remain shady- and to channel every relief efforts and aid reaching Haiti to state-run institutions for it is the foreign companies who are managing the donations if they ever reach Haiti.

“The government is the best suited to channel this aid as long as it meets the rigour and act as transparent as the donors demand.”

President Michel Martelly denounced last January that his government has not seen one single cent from the international reconstruction donations and just one percent the four billion USD sent for the purpose were invested in social programs, obviously frustrating reconstruction.

The independent magazine Dissident Voices also blames NGOs, private contractors and some governments for the contradictory management mechanism and corruption that turned the US Administration into the largest recipient of the relief funds for Haiti.

Just after the quake, they assigned $379 million as preliminary relief budget but sent in troops, so 33 cents in every dollar returned to the mainland to refund their salaries or pay checks.

The magazine also quotes a report from the US Congress Investigations Office on more funds sent later ($655 million) which returned to the Deparment of Defense and $220 million refund to the Health and Human Services Deparment and the United Nations confirmed that Haiti just got half the aid request in 2011 and this year just 8.5 percent of the promised aid.

Jun 21

2012

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies, Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Cambodia Displacement

NGOs Contribute to Cycle of Corruption: Filmmaker

10 May 2012

Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer

“There is a lot of nepotism, false contracts, and so the dollars that are meant to get to the poor and the impoverished…”

Photo: Courtesy of Tim Sorel

Cambodia is facing a cycle of continued aid dependency and corruption, with much of the money granted by the international community getting lost and little being done to curb the problem, an American filmmaker says.

Tim Sorel, who produced the short documentary “The Trap of Saving Cambodia,” told VOA Khmer that local and international NGOs are complicit in the nation’s corruption because they allow it or abet it.

The government is granted more than $1 billion in aid money each year from a host of countries, including the US and China. Much of it is lost to corruption or other malfeasance.

“There is a lot of nepotism, false contracts, and so the dollars that are meant to get to the poor and the impoverished never quite get there because they are being tied up in the system of corruption,” Sorel said.

However, some NGOs are starting to stand up to it and refusing to pay bribes or tolerate other forms of corruption, he said.

The film came after Sorel worked with a rural NGO to provide drinking water to rural Cambodians and found it had to bribe local officials in order to conduct its work.

“I was absolutely shocked by this,” he said. “It’s absurd.”

The 27-minute film follows the work of a leading NGO working to rally support for an end to widespread land grabbing in Cambodia. Rampant corruption in Cambodia has meant that thousands of families in both the cities and the countryside have been displaced.

“People are being herded like cattle onto trucks, driven 20 miles outside the city and dropped into a rice paddy,” Sorel said.

And while some observers have warned that these conditions could lead to social unrest or an uprising, Sorel said he doubts this will happen in the near future.

“I think the citizens are very tired,” he said. “They are exhausted. They just want peace and quiet in their lives right now, so I don’t think that there is enough spirit, if you will, right now in current-day Cambodia to have that kind of civil uprising.”

http://vimeo.com/35064591

Jun 21

2012

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria, The War on Libya - There Was No Evidence

Amnesty International NATO

Total War

Intercontinental Cry

Editorial

By Jay Taber

Jun 21, 2012

With war as America’s largest export, it should perhaps come as no surprise that warmongers with experience in government, or even the war-making industry, should end up in executive roles in the non-profit sector. After all, they’re in academia and media, and occasionally get awards like the Nobel Peace Prize, so why not the leadership of human rights NGOs?

Of course, capturing and consolidating media in order to promote war as a way of life was expensive, but given the constant flow from the US Treasury through the corporations that now own both mainstream media and the armaments factories, money really isn’t a problem. With the bailout of Wall Street investment firms that are heavily invested in fossil fuels and military weapons, their ability to purchase governments abroad and humanitarian organizations at home is essentially unlimited for the foreseeable future.

As noted at Wrong Kind of Green, even the executive director at Amnesty International USA is now an insider from the halls of institutionalized aggression posing as humanitarian relief. Under such scenarios as this, we should anticipate synchronized propaganda in the form of advertising that advocates war as the highest and noblest calling. Indeed, Amnesty International USA has already begun such a campaign in support of NATO.

Given that NATO is the “humanitarian war” enforcement arm for US/UN/EU joint aggression, the psychological warfare conducted in education, advertising and social media can now focus on infiltrating and corrupting human rights organizations–leaving only civil society networks and Indigenous liberation activists as a viable opposition. How viable they remain, of course, depends on their ability to strategically outmaneuver the Government/Wall Street/BINGO Axis.

Key to this resistance, I would note, is freeing our imagination. Playing by the old rules of the game is a losing proposition. If our enemies are pulling out all the stops in order to destroy humanity in their perverted psychodrama, then total war is all that is left. How we conduct that war will make all the difference.

[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.]

Jun 19

2012

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies

Capitalism IMF UN World Bank

Poverty Pimping

By Jay Taber Jun 19, 2012

Intercontinental Cry

Anyone who has observed politicians and developers in action knows that the quickest way to destroy community cohesion is through programs like the war on poverty. Under the myriad schemes by governments to use the plight of the poor to enrich themselves, the cover of moral sanctity is essential to success.

On the global scene, the UN Millenium Development Goals — auspiciously aimed at poverty reduction — contain the seeds of warfare, genocide, and ethnic cleansing–-all in the name of charity. Lined up against indigenous self-determination and sovereignty in this battle are the World Bank, IMF, and poverty pimps like William Jefferson Clinton, Bill and Melinda Gates.

Caught in the crossfire are native peoples whose idea of appropriate development does not include the extraction of their resources by transnational corporations backed by the armies of UN member states.

Jun 05

2012

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Humanitarian Agencies, Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Amnesty International Islamic Relief Kiva Rugmark

Why Do We Trust NGOs?

by The Global Journal May 18, 2012

The Credibility of Transnational NGOs: When Virtue is Not Enough, by Peter Gourevitch, David Lake, Janice Gross Stein, €24.39, $32.99.

We live in a world where NGOs are not only multiplying in number, but are increasingly entrusted with a role as the de facto guardians of the common interests of humanity. Major international – or ‘transnational’ NGOs in particular, have assumed a unique position in global governance processes. These institutional heavyweights are able both to mobilize substantial funds, as well as shape global norms – and therefore social change – in a way that has no precedent in history. Yet, as the editors of this volume ask, why do we trust transnational NGOs? Though The Credibility of Transnational NGOs is a collection of theoretically framed political science researches, this central theme has more than scholarly interest. Many of the activities in which NGOs engage – from humanitarian relief to human rights monitoring, microcredit lending to ethical certification – are premised on their position as impartial, principled actors. Credibility is a ‘valuable asset’ that NGOs strive to acquire and protect. Through a series of in-depth case studies covering organizations as diverse as Rugmark, Amnesty International, Islamic Relief and Kiva, the authors featured in The Credibility of Transnational NGOs investigate the sources of NGO credibility, as well as the strategies NGOs employ to augment their reputations and further their ‘brand’. While many of the findings would appear self-evident – the importance of common values, for example – the very fact that scholars are turning their rigorous gaze towards an under-researched sector is nonetheless a step in the right direction.

May 10

2012

newWKOGadnim

Human Rights Watch, Humanitarian Agencies

Afghanistan Center For American Progress CIA Human Rights Watch NATO UN

FLASHBACK: Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

September 10, 2009

Care Tactics

by CHASE MADAR

Source: counterpunch

American liberals rejoiced at Samantha Power’s appointment to the National Security Council. After so many dreary Clintonites were stacked into top State Department positions—Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke, Hillary herself—here was new blood: a dynamic idealist, an inspiring public intellectual, a bestselling author of a book against genocide, a professor at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights. And she hasn’t even turned 40. The blogosphere buzzed. Surely Samantha Power was the paladin, the conscience, the senior director for multilateral affairs to bring human rights back into U.S. foreign policy.

Don’t count on it. “Human rights,” a term once coterminous with freeing prisoners of conscience and documenting crimes against humanity, has taken on a broader, more conflicted definition. It can now mean helping the Marine Corps formulate counterinsurgency techniques; pounding the drums for air strikes (of a strictly surgical nature, of course); lobbying for troop escalations in various conquered nations—all for noble humanitarian ends.

The intellectual career of Samantha Power is a richly instructive example of the weaponization of human rights. She made her name in 2002 with A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. In this surprise global bestseller, she argues that when confronted with 20th-century genocides, the United States sat on the sidelines as the blood flowed. Look at Bosnia or Rwanda. “Why does the US stand so idly by?” she asks. Powers allows that overall America “has made modest progress in its responses to genocide.” That’s not good enough. We must be bolder in deploying our armed forces to prevent human-rights catastrophes—to engage in “humanitarian intervention” in the patois of our foreign-policy elite.

In nearly 600 pages of text, Power barely mentions those postwar genocides in which the U.S. government, far from sitting idle, took a robust role in the slaughter. Indonesia’s genocidal conquest of East Timor, for instance, expressly green-lighted by President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, who met with Suharto the night before the invasion was launched and carried out with American-supplied weapons. Over the next quarter century, the Indonesian army saw U.S. military aid and training rise as it killed between 100,000 and 200,000 East Timorese. (The figures and the designation of “genocide” come from a UN-formed investigative body.) This whole bloody business gets exactly one sentence in Power’s book.

What about the genocide of Mayan peasants in Guatemala—another decades-long massacre carried out with American armaments by a military dictatorship with tacit U.S. backing, officer training at Fort Benning, and covert CIA support? A truth commission sponsored by the Catholic Church and the UN designated this programmatic slaughter genocide and set the death toll at approximately 200,000. But apparently this isn’t a problem from hell. →

May 10

2012

newWKOGadnim

Humanitarian Agencies, The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria

Brookings Institute IMF Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)

PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS JOIN THE RANKS OF PRO-IMPERIALIST NGO’S

Posted on May 10, 2012

Source: Syria 360° – Syria News

Starving Syrians For Human Rights

*John V. Walsh

The wing of the U.S. human rights movement which targets foreign countries can wind up as a cruel business, aiding the ruthless and violent actions of the U.S. Empire, wittingly or not. For the U.S. all too often uses human rights as a cover for taking action against countries that defy the Empire’s control.

Some weeks back, I decided to look into one such group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an organization I had long refrained from joining out of skepticism. But perhaps, I thought, PHR had sidestepped the dangers inherent in this work. So I joined to find out.

Some days later I received my first email from PHR. I was floored by the heading, “Protect Syrian Citizens: Help Make Sanctions Tougher.” The word “tougher” struck me. The email read in part: “Help us impose tougher sanctions on Pres. Assad’s brutal regime. The Syria Sanctions Act of 2011, S. 1472, will target Syria’s energy and financial sectors. Contact your Senators today and urge them to back S. 1472.” The sponsor of this bill was Kirsten Gillibrand, and among the 12 co-sponsors were two neocon leaders, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, the latter hardly a human rights stalwart when it comes to Palestinians. Did that not ring alarm bells at PHR? →

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