UNDERSTANDING THE PROPAGANDA WAR AGAINST SYRIA

Rape and Torture: Weapons in the Propaganda War

 May 29, 2012
Eric Draitser
StopImperialism.com

Rape and torture have become standard issue in the propaganda arsenal of Western media.  Reports from organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the UN Human Rights Council that claim to document the systematic use of rape and torture by the “enemies” of the West have become usual fair in the soft war against whomever the imperialists have chosen to attack.  We have seen these claims used to legitimize aggression against Libya, Iraq, and now Syria.

In an article published in The Telegraph, the author cleverly uses a quote from a Deputy Director at Human Rights Watch making a general statement about the use of rape in detention facilities in order to humiliate, degrade and instill fear.  However, he makes no direct reference to Syria, though the article clearly attempts to draw that abstract connection.  In fact, as one reads further, the claims of rape and torture at the hands of Syrian security forces come from “activists” (the usual anonymous term applied to any quotable voice parroting the Western talking points regarding Assad and the regime) who have fled Syria.  In fact, the so-called activists are, in many cases, wanted terrorists who have fled Syria not in fear of persecution but for fear of being brought to justice for their crimes.

It is significant to note that, even with the obvious bias from the “eyewitnesses” and the authors of the article, there is still no mention of actual Syrian forces engaging in these actions. Instead, it is all chalked up to “militias loyal to the Assad regime”, an important distinction which goes conveniently understated.  In fact, the only mention of “security forces” involved in this sort of behavior is added in brackets by the authors of the article themselves.  This shows how the Western media constantly manipulate quotes and facts in order to shape them to fit the narrative that the Western propagandists want. →

DEMOCRACY NOW! AND “PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA”: CHEERLEADERS FOR IMPERIALISM AND WAR

by Finian Cunningham

Global Research, July 13, 2012

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

 What are Western NGOs useful for?

Avaaz’s war on Syria: Soros Sponsored Sorrow Pleads for Foreign Intervention

June 14, 2012

By Quoriana

World Mathaba

Global civic organization Avaaz is playing the pity card again. A false pity card again also. Last year the e-activist organisation convinced over 800,000 people to sign up for a no-fly zone in Libya culminating in the NATO destruction of the country; nowadays Avaaz uses the recent Houla massacre to let people demand the United Nations (U.N.) to “immediately commit to sending at least 3,000 international monitors to Syria with a mandate to protect civilians and to move fast to define a political transition plan” through a petition. →

Tawakkul Karman: A Tool for Farcical Democratic Initiatives in the Middle East

By Samra Nasser

02.23.2012

The Arab American News

Who is Tawakkul Karman and more importantly, how and why has this religiously-dressed Yemeni woman come to be the darling of Western-oriented democracy movements?  To understand who is actually reaping the rewards of this activist, we should begin by following the money.  Mrs. Karman has a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Sana’a, Yemen called Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC).  However, for those of you who may not know, an NGO is not always non-governmental because many NGOs invariably receive all or most of their funding through various departments within the government.

Tawakkul Karman

In Mrs. Karman’s case, her WJWC organization asserts it is a non-governmental organization in Yemen that seeks to advocate for rights and freedoms, especially freedom of expression with the aim of improving media efficiency and providing skills for journalists, and particularly women and youth.  Such work, however, should be considered in the correct context being that its funding sources are through U.S. foreign policy organizations. The organization has been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) since 2008.

NED is a quasi-governmental foundation created by the Reagan Administration in 1983 to channel millions of Federal dollars into anti-Communist ‘private diplomacy.’ It is funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress within the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a subsidiary of the U.S. State Department.

NED has a vast influence over U.S. foreign policy initiatives, by way of its Board of Directors who simultaneously represent numerous powerful multinational corporations (MNCs) ranging from AT&T to Boeing to Fannie Mae.  →

Amnesty in the Twilight of Human Rights and Imperialism

Planeta Atabex

24 de mayo de 2012

by Sonia Tejada

Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism

‘Activism’ and ‘human rights’ foundation Avaaz blames the Houla massacre on Assad and calls for foreign intervention. A peek into the background of Avaaz explains its pro-empire position, and who is really behind it.

The ultra-shadowy Avaaz Foundation is purportedly a non-governmental organisation that seeks to⁽¹⁾ “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”

A mere three days after the Houla Massacre in Syria, while all parties were clamouring to figure out what had happened and who was responsible, Avaaz took the opportunity to speculatively blame the Assad regime as part of an online petition campaign. What is even more disconcerting is that this ‘human rights’ organisation also made a thinly-veiled call for foreign intervention – something which would undoubtedly result in astronomical human suffering.

Using emotive and crafty language,⁽²⁾ Alice Jay (Avaaz’s Campaign Director) blames Assad for the Houla massacre indirectly, by alluding to the decision of several Western governments to expel Syrian diplomats:

Dozens of children lie covered with blood, their faces show the fear they felt before death, and their innocent lifeless bodies reveal an unspeakable massacre. These children were slaughtered by men under strict orders to sow terror. Yet all the diplomats have come up with so far is a few UN monitors ‘observing’ the violence. Now, governments across the world are expelling Syrian ambassadors, but unless we demand strong action on the ground, they will settle for these diplomatic half-measures.

This is immediately followed by a thinly-veiled call for an invasion of Syria by foreign powers:

The UN is discussing what to do right now. If there were a large international presence across Syria with a mandate to protect civilians, we could prevent the massacres while leaders engage in political efforts to resolve the conflict. I cannot see more images like these without shouting from the rooftops. But to stop the violence, it is going to take all of us, with one voice, demanding protection for these kids and their families. Sign the urgent petition on the right to call for UN action now and share this campaign with everyone.

The background of Avaaz sheds light on its unequivocal pro-war and anti-Syrian position.

Avaaz – Shadowy Beyond Belief

Avaaz’s latest 990 form,⁽³⁾ from 2010, raises a number of questions. Avaaz has only 16 employees, and is listed as a ‘corporation’ for the purposes of the 990 submission. Oddly, for an organisation that receives no governmental or corporate funding,⁽¹⁾ Avaaz received over $6.7 million in 2010, and paid its President over $180,000 as a salary (still feel good about donating?). On top of this, in 2010 Avaaz gave Res Publica (more on them later) a $100,000 grant. Avaaz is doing extremely well considering this and the fact that it was established relatively recently, in 2006. Where is all of this money coming from?

Avaaz is “incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)4 organization in the state of Delaware, USA“.⁽⁴⁾ The foundation’s office is based in Manhattan, at 857 Broadway – the same address as Res Publica⁽⁵⁾ – an entity which co-founded Avaaz along with Ricken Patel.

The background of Res Publica offers a glimpse into the nature of Avaaz. 24 Hours for Darfur and Darfurian Voices (using the same etymology of “Avaaz”, which means “voice” in Farsi and several middle eastern dialects) are two projects of Res Publica. These projects⁽⁵⁾ are aimed at drawing international attention to Darfur – with a view to demonising and vilifying the Arab government of Sudan:

This is part and parcel of a long-standing Israeli policy to split Sudan along ethnic, racial, and religious lines.

The Israelis have been dug into Sudan like ticks ever since the 1950?s,⁽⁶⁾ fomenting conflict and orchestrating the secession of South Sudan – effecting the policy of separation of all sovereign (especially Arab) states along ethnic lines.

The funders and partners of Darfurian Voices, 24 Hours for Darfur, and Res Publica are incredibly revealing, and constitute a who’s who of Zionist, globalist, pro-empire organisations and bodies, even including the US State Department.⁽⁵⁾

One such partner, Genocide Intervention, boasts amongst its Board Rabbi Steve Gutow, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs who insists that the government should “support Israel”.⁽⁷⁾ Gutow was also the founding regional director of AIPAC’s Southwest Region, and was the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Another Board member is Ruth Messinger – president of American Jewish World Service, and member of Barack Obama’s Task Force on Global Poverty and Development.

Sitting alongside Gutow and Messinger is Joan Platt, who also serves on the board of Human Rights Watch – a prolific propaganda mill that has underpinned the NATO narrative of the wars on Libya and Syria. Human Rights Watch was also funded by Zionist heavyweight George Soros who contributed $100 million in 2010.⁽⁸⁾

Needless to say, George Soros’ Open Society Institute is also listed as one of Res Publica’s partners.

The Zionist ‘democracy promotion’ outfit known as the National Endowment for Democracy – which has been linked to the fraudulent atrocity reports disseminated against Muammar Gaddafi⁽⁹⁾ – is also listed as a partner, as is the US State Deparment. No further comment should be necessary.

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, has consulted for the International Crisis Group⁽¹⁰⁾ – another pro-war ‘think tank’. The ICG boasts Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres and former Saudi ambassador to the US as senior advisers,⁽¹¹⁾ and George Soros as an Executive.⁽¹²⁾ The ICG is peppered with such names at the highest levels such as: Shlomo Ben-Ami – Former Foreign Minister of Israel, Zbigniew Brzezinski – Former U.S. National Security Advisor, Stanley Fischer – Governor of The Bank of Israel, Matthew McHugh – Former U.S. Congressman and Counselor to the World Bank President, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen – Former Secretary General of NATO, Morton Abramowitz – Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador to Turkey, and Wesley Clark – Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (Europe).

The Chair of the ICG, Thomas R Pickering, is Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, El Salvador and Nigeria, and Vice Chairman of Hills & Company.

The President & CEO of the ICG is Louise Arbour – Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

What do these people have to do with the prevention of crises? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. The ICG is a body that exists to further the aims of its benefactors, which notably include NATO, the United States Government, and Israel.

Res Publica’s ‘About Us’ page also reveals⁽¹⁰⁾ that Patel has consulted for the Rockefeller Foundation and the UN.

Akin to the ICG, Res Publica’s advisory board⁽¹³⁾ features financiers, economists, and a former Clinton Chief of Staff.

The fraudulent ‘humanitarian intervention’ concept is built upon atrocious lies and emotive propaganda peddled by these networks of closely interconnected ‘human rights’, ‘democracy promotion’, and ‘crisis prevention’ groups. Before having an emotional knee-jerk reaction to these issues, we must inspect the people behind these voices. Avaaz’s recent petition feverishly entitled “Protect Syria’s Children Now!” currently has over 780,000 signatures. Orwellian ‘human rights’ outfits such as Avaaz have become adept at manipulating well-meaning activists and liberals into supporting the very agenda they purport to oppose – placing them firmly in the same camp as the most virulent Zionists, Neoconservatives, and war hawks one can imagine. This makes the illusory nature of the left-right dichotomy clearer than ever before, but even more worryingly it expedites the march of the NATO-GCC-Israeli war machine that now has Syria in its crosshairs.

Notes

(1) Avaaz.org – ‘About Us’

(2) Avaaz Petition: ‘Protect Syria’s Children Now!’

(3) Avaaz Foundation – Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, 2010

(4) Avaaz.org – ‘Avaaz Expenses and Financial Information’

(5) DarfurianVoices.org – ‘About Us’

(6) ‘Israelis can tell the whole story of Sudan’s division – they wrote the script and trained the actors’ by Fahmi Howeidi

(7) Genocideintervention.net – ‘Board’

(8) HRW.org – ‘George Soros to Give $100 million to Human Rights Watch’

(9) ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Wikipedia’ by Martin Iqbal

(10) Therespublica.org – ‘About Us’

(11) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group Senior Advisers’

(12) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group’s Board of Trustees’

(13) Therespublica.org – ‘Advisory Board’

Syrian Crisis: Three’s a Crowd (Part 1 of 3 Part Series)

Although Empire has always engaged in a civilizing mission to implant liberalism in “authoritarian” cultures, its latest incarnation of liberal imperialism is less the overt cultural colonialism of the past, characterized by Orientalist tropes, and more a campaign which markets an attractive liberal ideology to more discerning intellectual consumers. Thus, unlike its cruder predecessor, which was easier to detect and hence resist, today’s intellectual imperialism works in far more insidious ways on account of its affected benevolence and seeming universalism, both of which facilitate its internalization.

By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb

Al-Akhbar

June 12, 2012

The conflict in Syria has recast the political fault lines in the Mideast. Divisions that were once demarcated by ideology and religion, are today centered around the issue of overthrowing the Assad government. Arab leftists, nationalists and Islamists are now divided between and amongst themselves over the Syrian question, and have borne yet another quasi-movement, the anti-interventionist “third-way” camp. Third-wayers, comprised of intellectuals and activists from academia, the mainstream media and NGOs, support elements in the home-grown opposition, reject the Syrian National Council (SNC) on account of its US-NATO-Israeli-Arab backing, and reject the Assad leadership on account of its repression of dissent and its alleged worthlessness to the Resistance project.

While the third-way camp is anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine in orientation, this hardly constitutes a political position. The Palestinian cause has become deeply etched in the Arab collective subconscious and has even become an increasingly pervasive slogan in western liberal activist discourse. Now the real litmus of Arab intellectuals’ and activists’ commitment to the Palestinian cause is no longer their support for Palestinian rights, but rather, their support for the Assad leadership’s struggle against the imperialist-Zionist-Arab moderate axis’ onslaught against it.

Although part of our duty as intellectuals is to call for political reforms and a greater inclusion of the homegrown, legitimate opposition in the reform process, this must be done in a manner which neither undermines the regime’s current position vis-à-vis our shared enemies.Supporting Assad’s struggle against this multi-pronged assault is supporting Palestine today because Syria has become the new front line of the war between Empire and those resisting it. The third-way progressive intellectuals are failing to see the Syrian crisis through this strategic lens. They have shown an inability to “take a step back from the details and look at the bigger picture,” to quote Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The third-way campaign against Assad only serves the strategy and interests of the US and Israel, who have made no secret of the fact that his fall would help them achieve their wider strategic ambitions of weakening Iran and resistance forces in Lebanon and Palestine. Moreover, agitation against the regime on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes further incites sectarian oppositionists who identify the regime with Alawis, thereby indirectly fanning the flames of Sunni-Shia tension in Syria and the region at large. →

Total War

Intercontinental Cry

Editorial

By Jay Taber

Jun 21, 2012

Amnesty’s Shilling for US-NATO Wars

For decades, Amnesty International has been a respected name in the cause of human rights, but its recent hiring of Suzanne Nossel, a longtime U.S. “humanitarian interventionist,” has swung the organization more behind the Afghan War and the use of U.S. military force, Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley write.

June 19, 2012

Consortiumnews.com

By Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley

Ann Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year U.S. diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She returned to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2010 on fact-finding missions.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a “whistleblower” memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She retired at the end of 2004, and now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

 

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA — Suzanne Nossel — is a recent U.S. government insider. So it’s a safe bet that AI’s decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, “women’s rights in Afghanistan,” at the NATO Conference last month in Chicago came directly from her.

Nossel was hired by AI in January 2012. In her early career, Nossel worked for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke under the Clinton Administration at the United Nations. 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.

She also played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council (where her views about the original Goldstone Report on behalf of Palestinian women did not quite rise to the same level of concerns for the women in countries that U.S.-NATO has attacked militarily).

Nossel would have worked for and with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and undoubtedly helped them successfully implement their “Right to Protect (R2P)” — otherwise known as “humanitarian intervention” — as well as the newly created “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

This cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy (which has served mainly to rationalize the launching of war on Libya) is now being hauled out to call for U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

“Smart Power” = smart wars?

In fact, Nossel is herself credited as having coined the term “Smart Power,” which embraces the United States’ use of military power as well as other forms of “soft power,” an approach which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at her confirmation as the new basis of State Department policy.

An excerpt from Nossel’s 2004 paper on “Smart Power,” published in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine, sounds a lot like Samantha Power’s (and also traces back to Madeleine Albright’s) theories:

To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war.

Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military [our emphasis] — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Following the CIA Red Cell

Perhaps the AI’s hiring of a State Department shill as executive director of its U.S. affiliate was merely coincidental to how/why its “NATO Shadow Summit ” so closely mimicked the CIA’s latest suggested propaganda device, but….

The “CIA Red Cell,” a group of analysts assigned to think “outside the box” to anticipate emerging challenges, was right to worry in March 2010 when the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) found that 80 percent of French and German citizens were opposed to continued deployment of their countries’ militaries in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.

Even though public apathy had, up to that point, enabled French and German politicians to “ignore their voters” and steadily increase their governments’ troop contributions to Afghanistan, the CIA’s newly-created think tank was concerned that a forecasted increase in NATO casualties in the upcoming “bloody summer … could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.”

In a confidential memo, the “Red Cell” wrote:

The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.

Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters …

Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified ‘Afghanistan’ as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked ‘stabilizing Afghanistan’ as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.

According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and ‘not our problem’ was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the ‘not our problem’ sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’ radar.

But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash

If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.

The CIA “Special Memorandum” went a step further, inviting “a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion” to suggest “information campaigns” that State Department polls showed likely to sway Western Europeans.

The “Red Cell” memo was quickly leaked, however, furnishing a remarkable window into how U.S. government propaganda is designed to work upon NATO citizenry to maintain public support for the euphemistically titled “International Security Assistance Force” (ISAF) waging war on Afghans. Here are some of the CIA propaganda expert’s suggestions:

…messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France ‘s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and necessary cause despite casualties… Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission…Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.

Amnesty International struck similar themes in announcements posted online as well as billboard advertisements on Chicago bus stops (like the one above). Telling “NATO: Keep the Progress Going!”, the ads beckoned us to find out more on Sunday, May 20, 2012, the day thousands of activists marched in Chicago in protest of NATO’s wars.

The billboard seemed to answer a recent Huffington Post blog post, “Afghanistan: The First Feminist War?“

The feminist victory may be complete in America, but on the international stage it’s not doing so well with three quarters of the world’s women still under often-severe male domination. Afghanistan is an extreme case in point in what might be termed the first feminist war … a war that now may not be won even if Hillary Clinton dons a flack jacket and shoulders an M16 on the front lines. Still, since the Bush Administration to the present America ‘s top foreign policy office has been held by women … women who have promised not to desert their Afghan sisters.

Our curiosity was further piqued because we consider ourselves to be women’s rights and human rights proponents and also due to our own prior federal careers in intelligence and military. (Colonel Wright is retired from the State Department/US military and Rowley is from the FBI.)

So along with a few other anti-war activists, we packed into a taxi to head to the Chicago hotel where Amnesty International’s “Shadow Summit” featuring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other female foreign relations officials was being held. We happened to carry our “NATO bombs are not humanitarian”; “NATO Kills Girls” and anti-drone bombing posters that we had with us for the march later that day.

As we arrived, an official-looking black car dropped off Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, who was to be a main speaker (on the first panel, along with former Secretary Albright; U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois; and Afifa Azim, General Director and Co-Founder, Afghan Women’s Network; along with Moderator Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program).

Verveer cast a cold glance at us and would not answer Ann Wright’s questions as she scurried into the hotel with her aides surrounding her and us following behind. At first the hotel security guards tried to turn us away but we reminded the registration desk the Summit was advertised as “Free Admissions” and that some of us were members of Amnesty International.

So they let us register and attend as long as we promised to leave our signs outside and not disrupt the speakers. The hotel conference room was about half full. We stayed long enough to hear the opening remarks and the moderator’s first questions of Albright and the other speakers on the first panel.

All generally linked the protection and participation of Afghan women in government as well as the progress made in educating Afghan women to the eventual peace and security of the country as envisioned by the new strategic “partnership” agreement that Obama had just signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Ms. Verveer said Afghan women do not want to be seen as “victims” but are now rightfully nervous about their future. When we saw that audience participation was going to be limited to questions selected from the small note cards being collected, we departed, missing the second panel as well as kite-flying for women’s rights.

We noted, even in that short time, however, how easy it was for these U.S. government officials to use the “good and necessary cause” of women’s rights to get the audience into the palm of their collective hand — just as the CIA’s “strategic communication” expert predicted!

But Why Ms. Albright?

Not everyone was hoodwinked however. Even before the “Summit” was held, Amnesty realized it had a PR problem as a result of its billboard advertisement touting progress in Afghanistan. An Amnesty official tried to put forth a rather lame defense blaming an accidental poor choice of wording.

But many readers (and AI members) posted critical comments and questions, including concerns about Albright’s involvement given her infamous defense of Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, which were estimated to have caused the deaths of a half million Iraqi children, with the comment “we think the price is worth it.”

Under the blogger’s explanation: “We Get It / Human Rights Now,” there were comments like these:

…Could someone from AI please explain why Madeleine Albright was invited to participate in this event? We (and especially those of us who are familiar with AI) should all be able to understand that the wording on the poster was a genuine, albeit damaging, mistake. But why Ms. Albright? The posters are pro-NATO and play into prevailing tropes about so called “humanitarian intervention” via “think of the women & children” imagery. The posters & the forum that includes Albright are neither slight slips nor without context. AI is coping heat because they have miss-stepped dramatically. There is NOTHING subtle about either the imagery nor the message! It is not a case of “oh sorry we didn’t realize it it could be interpreted that way! They used pro Nato imagery & slogans ahead of & during a controversial summit that has thousands protesting in the streets. Tell me again how that is not taking sides? They asked a notorious apologist for mass murder of children to speak on the right of women and children…tell me again: how is that not taking sides. So it is absolutely reasonable for past supporters (and board members like myself) to be asking how it is that Amnesty USA so lost its bearings they could make a critical SERIES of errors like this?

Of course the defensive AI blog author never answered the numerous questions asking why Amnesty had chosen Madeleine Albright as their main speaker. So we will venture an answer that probably lies in the fact that all of the powerful feminist-war hawks who have risen to become Secretary of State (or are waiting in the wings) are now taking their lead from the ruthless Grand Dame who paved the way for them, Madeleine Albright — (see Coleen Rowley’s recent blogs: “Obama’s New ‘Atrocity Prevention Board’: Reasons for Skepticism” and “Militarization of the Mothers: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother’s Day for Peace“).

It’s also possible the highest ranks of the feminist wing of military interventionism (i.e. Madeleine Albright, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, et al.) are so passionate and hubristic about the nobility of their goal and “Amercan exceptionalism” that some have simply succumbed to a kind of almost religious (blind faith) type fervor.

The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

Nossel’s and Albright’s theories are flawed in many ways but suffice it to say that democracies are actually not less prone to war. A long list of “democracies” — including Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, the United Kingdom, France and the United States itself — disprove this assertion.

In any event, the U.S. has been terribly hypocritical in its support of “democracies” in foreign countries, often toppling or attempting to topple them (i.e. Iran’s Mossadeqh, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende) in order to gain easier control of a foreign country through an allied dictatorship.

No one is going to argue that the goals of humanitarianism, preventing atrocities and furthering women’s rights around the world are not “good and necessary” (in the words of the CIA strategic communications expert). We would go so far as to say these ARE truly noble causes!

Testimonials about human rights’ abuse are often true and fundamentalist regimes’ treatment of women seems to vary only in degrees of horrible. But while it’s true that many women lack rights in Afghanistan, some would argue that it’s conveniently true. And that the best lies are always based on a certain amount of truth.

The devil, however, lies in the details of promoting equality and accomplishing humanitarianism. Most importantly the ends, even noble ends, never justify wrongful means. In fact, when people such as Samantha Power decide to bomb the village (Libya) to save it, it will backfire on a pragmatic level.

It must be realized that it is the nobility of the U.S.-NATO’s motivation that — as CIA propaganda department has advised — should be relied upon to convince otherwise good-hearted people (especially women) to support (or at least tolerate) war and military occupation (now known to encompass the worst of war crimes, massacres of women and children, torture, cutting off body parts of those killed, as well as increasing mental illness, self-destructive behavior and suicides among U.S. soldiers and the corresponding cover-ups of all such horrible means).

In the decades after Vietnam, a number of military scholars identified declining American public support for that war as the main factor responsible for the U.S. “losing” Vietnam. One lesson learned and quickly implemented was to get rid of the military draft and put the wars on a credit card so fewer citizens would pay attention.

Some control also had to be gained over the type of free media (that led to trusted TV anchor Walter Cronkite broadcasting his public souring on the Vietnam War). A whole series of war propaganda systems, from planting retired generals as “talking heads” on TV to the assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld deciding to “embed the media,” have worked pretty well to maintain the necessary level of war momentum in mainstream media and amongst public opinion.

But now, with American polls approaching the same problematic levels as those in Europe cited by the “CIA Red Cell,” we suddenly see major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (as well as others) applauding Obama’s (and the feminist war-hawks’) “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

Such sleight of hand seems to work even better amongst political partisans. By the way, it should be noted that Congress may allow these Pentagon propagandists to target American citizens through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. Should we connect the dots?

There are some clear lines where the laudable need to further human rights should not be twisted into justifying harsh economic sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of children or, even worse, “shock and awe” aerial bombing that takes the lives of the women and children the “humanitarian” propagandists say they want to help.

Madeleine Albright’s response about the deaths of a half million children on 60 Minutes, that “the price was worth it,” illustrates the quintessential falsity of what ethicists call “act utilitarianism” or concocting fictional happy outcomes to justify the terrible wrongful means.

It also seems that a human rights NGO, in this case Amnesty International, which had gained a solid reputation and hence the trust of those it has helped through the years, will be jeopardized in aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO.

This is exactly how the Nobel Peace Prize got corrupted, aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO, which is why Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire withdrew from the Nobel Peace forum held in Chicago during NATO.

Good NGOS and non-profits that want to maintain the trust in their humanitarian work tend to be very careful to maintain their independence from any government, let alone any war-making government. When NGOs, even good ones, become entwined with the U.S./NATO war machine, don’t they risk losing their independent credibility?