Pathways to Spectacle | Consumerism as “Activism”

Wrong Kind of Green

February 7, 2016

by Jay Taber

“We’ve been talking in a broader way about the future of consumer activism, of organizing people not as citizens but as consumers.” — Jeremy Heimans, Purpose, 2011

“Tesla’s Model S is powering our US-based Save Our Swirled Tour, aimed at bringing climate action – and free ice cream! – to people’s doors all across the country in partnership with Avaaz.” — Ben & Jerry’s Website, May 27, 2015

Bottom Illustration: “To Change Everything, We Need Everyone” illustration. Source: Ben & Jerry’s website.

Ben & Jerry’s (Unilever) is in partnership with United Nations, 350.org, Avaaz and BICEP (a coalition of more than 20 leading consumer brand corporations created by divestment campaign partner Ceres). Campaigns include Save Our Swirled campaign and the recent Pathway to Paris campaign. Ben & Jerry’s is also a client of the Avaaz sister organization, Purpose Inc. – the for-profit marketing firm.

Pathways to Spectacle

“Purpose also has roots in Avaaz.org a global movement boasting 25 million subscribers worldwide, which Jeremy co-founded. We work with partners with a social mission, ranging from the ACLU to Ben & Jerry’s, to inspire mass participation and build movements for social change.” — Forging Ahead with the Food Revolution, September 26, 2013

The cult of consumerism, through which 350, Avaaz and Purpose adherents identify with their brand, is similar to religion, in that becoming a follower is an act of faith. By unquestioningly accepting the propaganda as truth, they form beliefs that comprise the doctrine supporting this ideology of false hope.

It is not unlike hierarchical religion, in that it is patronizing of the believers, who desire to remain infantile in their psychological and financial dependencies. Political illiteracy reinforces this relationship.

It is, to say the least, unhealthy.

“As the lead developer, you will be joining a startup team of hyper-committed food-interested people evangelizing a better food system through an exceptionally beautiful user experience.” — Purpose job posting for a Lead Developer for “The Food Movement” – a Purpose Start-up/ Incubation

YouTopia

Social engineering in the digital age is amazingly simple for those who have the money and media at their disposal. Wall Street’s Mad Men can easily herd millions of progressives via social media to support catastrophic environmental policy, war, and crimes against humanity. Sold as conservation, “humanitarian intervention”, or development, globalization can then be marketed as a progressive choice, albeit leading to totalitarian corporate control of all life.

The driving force behind privatization through social engineering is the non-profit industrial complex, funded by Wall Street derivatives, and disbursed through tax-exempt foundation grants. Hundreds of millions have been invested by these foundations in the last decade to convince progressives that war is peace, conformity is unity, and capitulation is resistance.

Slogans like “350”, “New Economy”, and “Sustainable Capitalism” are promoted by Mad Men via foundation-funded front groups, and echoed by media, thus generating enough noise to overwhelm critical judgement. Symbols that appeal to progressives’ emotional vulnerabilities, like rising sun logos used to symbolize hope and change, are recycled to mean “This Changes Everything”, thus creating the impression that neoliberal reform is socialist revolution.

https://vimeo.com/118485719

Coming soon: YouTopia: A Documentary About Social Engineering in the Digital Age

Further Reading:

[Jay Thomas Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and journalists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website:www.jaytaber.com]

Nov 18

2015

newWKOGadnim

Avaaz, Center for American Progress, Human Rights Watch, Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, NED | National Endowment for Democracy, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

African Great Lakes region Amnesty International Avaaz Burundi Center For American Progress Congo-Kinshasa Darfur Democratic Republic of the Congo Eritrea Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect Human Rights Watch Hutu International Crisis Grou International Crisis Group (ICG) International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) Nickel Paul Kagame Purpose Inc. Resource Wars Rwanda Samantha Power Tom Perriello Uganda Water

Avaaz Hones In On Burundi as Next U.S. Fait Accompli

Wrong Kind of Green

November 18, 2015

By Cory Morningstar

Beautiful Burundi, “the Beating Heart of Africa” is situated almost in the centre of Africa with a shape like a heart. It’s located between Congo, Tanzania and Rwanda. Burundi is home to the Lake Tanganyika which is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia.

United Nations Development Program Press Release, October 30, 2012: “The normalization of political life has been a remarkable achievement in Burundi, said Rosine Sori-Coulibaly, United Nations Resident Coordinator and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General in Burundi. Burundi’s remarkable development achievements are coming just seven years after the civil war ended… free, fair and peaceful elections took place in 2005 and 2010 and safety and security has been reinforced across the entire national territory.”

“Burundi holds 6 percent of the world’s nickel reserves, with Musongati ranked as one of the 10 largest known deposits of the metal that have yet to be developed… The East African nation produces small amounts of tantalum, gold, limestone, niobium, tin and tungsten and also has deposits of copper, the U.S. Geological Survey says on its website.” [Bloomberg Business, June 23, 2014]

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Above: Avaaz Burundi campaign echos the organizations previous campaigns calling for immediate sanctions and interventions in both Libya and Syria while simultaneously demonizing the leaders of the targeted countries for destabilization. From the petition: “But there’s time to stop another tragedy, if we intervene right now.” [emphasis in original] [Source]

Avaaz Co-Founder Tom Perriello

On July 6, 2015 it was announced by the U.S. State Department that Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello would be fulfilling his role for the expansion of U.S. imperialism as special envoy for the African Great Lakes region and the Congo-Kinshasa:

“Secretary of State John Kerry announced Monday that former Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) will serve as the Obama administration’s special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa, an appointment that covers Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.”

November 6, 2015:

“He will communicate the U.S. government’s alarm at violence by government and non-government actors inside of Burundi, and the recent dangerous rhetoric by the Burundian government…” [U.S. Department of State Press Release: Special Envoy Thomas Perriello’s Travel to Burundi and the Great Lakes Region, Source]

U.S. President Barack Obama with Avaaz co-founder and (former) U.S. Representative Tom Perriello. “Perriello is a former U.S. Representative (represented the 5th District of Virginia from 2008 to 2010) and a founding member of the House Majority Leader’s National Security Working Group.” [Further reading: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I, Sept, 24, 2012]

Above: “Butcher of the Great Lakes” President of Rwanda Paul Kagame with Tom Perriello, US Special Envoy for Great Lakes Region – Kigali, August 19, 2015 [Photo Source]

Mineral Wealth and Political Leverage

Intimate relations: President Obama with his National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, June 5, 2013. From 2005-2006 Power worked in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking and directing Obama’s interest in the Darfur conflict. [Source: Rolling Stone]

Nov 8, 2015: Will the West Create its Next Failed State in Burundi?

‘After Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ultimatum to insurrectionists to lay down their arms, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, and the International Crisis Group, a think tank headed by Western military, government and corporate officials, warned of massacres like those in Rwanda in 1994. In contrast, Charles Kambanda, Rwandan American attorney and former professor at the National University of Rwanda, describes the conflict as political and its larger context as an East/West power struggle for resources.

Charles Kambanda: What is really happening in Burundi is no different than what happened in DRC, in Congo. We have these multinational corporations, Western corporations, fighting for natural resources in that region. The best way for these companies to conquer these natural resources is to create a situation where no government is in control. Burundi is now known for a type of natural resource called nickel and they say six percent of the world’s nickel is in Burundi. And if we want to remember the geography of that region, Burundi borders with Congo, and Congo, the other side, is so rich in minerals. So we have these corporations fighting to control Burundi, to create a failed state in Burundi, so that they can get involved in illegal business in that region.” [Source]

The role of Avaaz, Purpose Inc. (the for-profit PR arm of Avaaz), and Avaaz co-founders in U.S./E.U. led destabilizations/invasions across the globe is now extensively documented. Burundi serves as a rinse, rather, repeat performance, only with far less notoriety/interest.

Video: April 11, 2015: Démonstration de force en faveur du 3ème mandat de Nkurunziza. Massive and entirely peaceful demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of government supporters have been completely ignored. [Source]

May 16, 2015, Are the US and the EU Sponsoring Terrorism in Burundi?

“The US-funded media disinformation campaign is part of the prelude to the mobilization of street protests against the government that can be presented to the world as a ‘popular uprising’against a ‘dictator’ who is ‘killing his own people’ It is a techinique that has been perfected by US ‘democracy’and ‘civil society’ NGOS….

In the case of Burundi, the African Union should have denounced the diabolical terrorist and media disinformation campaign against a young democratic country which has just emerged from a civil war. The fact that they did not shows that they have sided with the enemies of Africa. It is hardly surprising that truly independent, post-colonial countries such as Eritrea will have nothing to do with the sham called the African Union.”[Source]

October 3, 2015, Burundi Accuses Rwanda of Training Rebels for Cross Border Attacks

Kagame and his team want to provoke a genocide in Burundi: “Kagame and his team want to provoke a genocide in Burundi in order to put in power in Burundi the same group as the group which is in Rwanda. Everybody can see that. It is not complicated to see…. this would be the fourth Hutu president assassinated in this region since 1993.” [Source]

Feb 21, 2014: U.S. State Department announces Perriello’s departure from the Center for American Progress:

“Former Rep. Tom Perriello is leaving the Center for American Progress to head the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and development Review, which analyzes U.S. diplomatic and development efforts abroad.”

Turns out Perriello, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry go back a long way. Perriello, then a 22-year-old, worked on Kerry’s 1996 Senate campaign, working on getting out the environmental vote. Seems they began private talks nearly a year ago about Perriello’s coming over to the State Department. [Source]

While Avaaz stokes the fear of “another Rwanda” it is critical to note the role of the Center for American Progress to which Perriello recently served as both president and CEO, in the Rwandan Genocide. ” The simple tale of good and evil was told to the world by Samantha Power” [Source: The Deluge Film Press Release]

Human rights investigator and award-winning journalist Keith Harmon Snow, describing the U.S. Center for American Progress and its use of propaganda in portraying Africa in order to protect and further U.S. interests/ foreign policy objectives. Within the lecture, Snow discusses the psyops/propaganda strategically orchestrated behind the “Save Darfur” campaigns/movements which, in 2004, began to saturate the populace. At the helm of this “movement” was “The Center for American Progress”.

The Center for American Progress, is closely connected with the same players that founded and financed Avaaz. Today, with Avaaz at the forefront, the non-profit industrial complex has been appointed trusted messenger of a grotesque and disturbing ideology; nothing less than a complete reflection and validation of the U.S. administration’s rhetoric intended to justify the annihilation and occupation of sovereign states under the false pretense of “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect”.

December 29, 2004: “Over two days in early December approximately three-dozen religious activists met at the Washington office of the Center for American Progress, a recently formed think tank headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. The Res Publica-driven agenda for the closed-door gathering included sessions on “building the movement infrastructure” and “objectives, strategies and core issues.”

Res Publica was founded by Tom Perriello, Ricken Patel and Tom Pravda.

Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, MoveOn.org, Executive Director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser (MoveOn Executive Director), Andrea Woodhouse (consultant to the World Bank) Jeremy Heimans (co-founder of GetUp! and Purpose), and Australian entrepreneur David Madden (co-founder of GetUp and Purpose) who is the spouse of Woodhouse. Both Madden and Woodhouse took up residence in Burma [Myanmar] [March 23, 2013: Western Media Celebrates Faux Progress in Myanmar] Madden has co-founded a marketing firm, Parami Road in Myanmar: “Our clients are mostly international companies entering Myanmar and they demand an international standard of work.”

Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello served as president and CEO of Center for American Progress from December 2011 to to February 2014.

Perriello and Patel also co-founded and co-directed DarfurGenocide.org which officially launched in 2004.

“DarfurGenocide.org is a project of Res Publica, a group of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance and virtuous civic cultures.” Today, this organization is now known as “Darfurian Voices”: “Darfurian Voices is a project of 24 Hours for Darfur.” The U.S. Department of State and the Open Society Institute were just two of the organizations funders and collaborating partners. Other Darfurian Voices partners include Avaaz, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Centre for Transitional Justice, Darfur Rehabilitation Project, Humanity United, Darfur People’s Association of New York, Genocide Intervention, Witness, Yale Law School, The Sigrid Rausing Trust and the Bridgeway Foundation.

Despite the carefully crafted language and images that tug at your emotions, such NGOs were created for and exist for one primary purpose — to protect and further American policy and interests, under the guise of philanthropy and humanitarianism. Of all the listed partners of DarfurGenocide.org, with exception of one located in London England, all of the entities involved are American and based on US soil. [Source]

Empire is Closing on on Burundi

Today the Obama administration is frothing at the mouth over the imperial capture of Burundi.

November 15, 2015:

To view video, click above screenshot.

Like clockwork, simultaneously, we witness the non-profit industrial complex, key instrument of empire, targeting Burundi for sanctions:

November 12, 2015 Joint NGO Statement Urging Coordinated Global Response to the Escalating Human Rights Crisis in Burundi”:

“Speaking to the UN Security Council, Adama Dieng, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, expressed his alarm at the “inflammatory and threatening language” being used in Burundi, noting that some of it was “very similar to language used before and during the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda.” Dieng warned that Burundi “appears on the verge of a descent into violence that could escalate into atrocity crimes,” adding that “the international community has a responsibility to protect Burundians.” The High Commissioner underscored this urgency, recommending “all possible influence must be brought to bear to halt what may be an imminent catastrophe.”

Preventive diplomacy should be more than a slogan at the United Nations. It should be brought to life through decisive action aimed at preventing serious human rights violations and crimes under international law in cases like Burundi where, as the High Commissioner noted, “member states and the Security Council can intervene effectively to prevent the repetition of past horrors.” [emphasis added]

This statement was signed by the the usual NGOs must subservient to empire: Amnesty International, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group (ICG), and International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

In 2007, ICG and Human Rights Watch were key players in the development of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect in cooperation with prominent governments, NGOs and academia. The George Soros Open Society Foundation is the primary donor of the Human Rights Watch, contributing $100 million of $128 million of contributions and grants received by the HRW in the 2011 financial year.

Perriello is a supporter of the U.S. / E.U. led “War on Terror,” a fabricated psyops, which was and continues to be an essential component to unleash a new wave of wars, invasions and occupations.

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The mythology of Avaaz as a force for “good” can only be matched by the mythology that continues to shroud the facts behind the Rwandan Genocide – the very myths that Avaaz co-founders helped propagate. Myths created to obscure a Western superpower that continues to manipulate every crisis it creates.

A western superpower that strategically utilizes the non-profit industrial complex, bankrolling it to the tune of trillions.

“So, the key question now is this: Can Burundi defy the Empire and protect its people from carpet bombing called ‘humanitarian intervention’, a terrorist invasion called ‘liberation’, a military coup called ‘transitional government’ and a possible genocide where once again the victims will be blamed?”– Gearoid O Colmain, May 16, 2015 [Source]

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The Deluge is a film in progress, undertaken to reveal the truth about invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars that have engulfed the Great Lakes Region of Africa, most of all Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the past 20 years.

[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 and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

Oct 28

2015

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Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Al Nusra British Foreign Office George Soros HRW Iraq ISIS James Le Mesurier Libya NGO Soft Power Complex Psyops Purpose Inc. R2P Syria Syria Civil Defence Syrian National Council Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR) The White Helmets USAID

Part II – Syria’s White Helmets: War By Way of Deception — ‘Moderate Executioners’

The Wind Will Fall

October 27, 2015

by Vanessa Beeley

[Part one: Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception]

“If there is any doubt concerning the nefarious undertones of subversiveness in these NGO dealings, [National Endowment for Democracy] NED founder reportedly said the following in the 1990s: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ What was once done at night under the cloak of ‘imperialism’ is now done during the day under the guise of ‘humanitarianism.” ~ The Wrong Kind of Green

Hindsight is a generous provider of absolution of the guilt from falling for the sophisticated western government or state propaganda and their media sleights of hand that so often deceive us into believing the narrative they present, one that’s so often designed to justify military intervention.

Invariably this is a narrative that all but ensures the massacre of innocent people under the pretext of ‘liberating’ them, or introducing ‘democracy’ that always promises to erase some perceived grievance of an western-backed opposition movement. Western nation-builders normally prescribe the same treatment every time: cutting a swathe through the host country’s society and culture either via proxy armies of foreign mercenaries under the guise of various terrorist factions or with an onslaught of bombs and assorted mass destruction or chemical weapons (including depleted uranium) which can render their land barren for decades and result in birth defects, increased cancer rates and a multitude of devastating side effects for generations after. While all this is going on, a parallel government has already been formed by the west, laying in waiting in some five star hotel in Paris or London.

Despite such hindsight and the universally accepted knowledge that it was in fact pure fiction that took us to war in both Iraq, and in Libya too, there is still a huge degree of cognitive dissonance at play over the Syria commentary. The lies regarding Syria, lies which are designed to justify western military intervention and arming proxy militants, are ongoing. Even today the New York Times provided a key Washington propaganda talking point in its headline which reads, “Violence in Syria Spurs a Huge Surge in Civilian Flight“, with the important subheading which states: “Government Offensives and Russian Strikes Are Catalysts“, essentially blaming Russia’s three week old air campaign for the “surge” of refugees entering Europe through Greece, all the while neglecting to mention most of these originate from the pool of almost 2 million who have been languishing in Turkey from as early as 2012. Like clockwork, western propaganda mills continues, all day, every day.

Disbelief is invariably registered when it is demonstrated that Syria is undergoing the same ‘truth laundering’ treatment as Libya and Iraq underwent previously, or that Syria’s resistance of the West’s open attempt at regime change attempts for nearly 5 years now is the reason for repeated spikes in propaganda. We’ve seen many different versions of the West’s creative narrative at any give moment, especial when Syria or its allies persistently thwarts the Colonialist vision for the region. Failed policies never play well on CNN or the BBC in real time, with any serious criticism reserved until a decade has passed and it’s safe for media operatives to comment because the politicians who sold those failed policies have since retired or have been cycled out of foreign policy decision-making positions.

Lethal Weapon: NGO Soft Power

“Along with military invasions and missionaries, NGOs help crack countries open like ripe nuts, paving the way for intensifying waves of exploitation and extraction” ~Stephanie McMillan

The NGO ‘soft power complex’ is now one of the most destructive global forces. It is employed as an interface between civilians of a target nation, with government, economic or military structures of the colonialist force intent on harnessing any given nation’s resources or undermining its geopolitical influence. The Democratization process, or the path to regime change is facilitated by these undercover government or corporate proxy employees who, once embedded into a society, set about producing the propaganda that will justify intervention, either economically, politically or militarily. NGO propaganda will often employ slick social media marketing which is underpinned by advance applied behavioural psychology and advanced NLP-based ‘social enterprise’ sales pitches.

A recent piece by researcher Eva Bartlett entitled, “Human Rights Front Groups [Humanitarian Interventionalists] Warring on Syria“, provides a detailed insight into how this new breed of weaponized politics is being deployed right now in the Middle East.

The perception of a ‘non profit’ complex who purport to be “working for the betterment and improvement of humanity” can be a difficult nut to crack, but it must be done. In the west. charities, not-for-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are seen as “do gooders” and so they rarely fall under public scrutiny. Western governments know the general public has an inherent faith in their perceived integrity and this provides an ideal cover for western government and intelligence agencies to operate through their NGO and aid organisations.

Syria: Under Seige

As Paul Larudee states in his article, Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch:

“The Syrian army relies on loyal soldiers defending their country and their homes from a heavily subsidized, markedly foreign incursion, including many mercenaries paid by the Gulf monarchies and trained by the US. And the army is loyal because they know that although great sacrifices will be asked of them, they will be defending, not sacrificing, their families and loved ones. The rest of the world that supposedly cares about Syria can start by making it unnecessary for them to make such sacrifices.”

Much of the propaganda surrounding Syria and the “conflict” is indeed, mythology spun-up by western agents of influence. A mythology created and disseminated by the NGO complex working diligently on the ground in Syria and remotely in the labyrinths of power, ensures that a steady flow of misinformation continues uninterrupted, one that is custom designed to alter public perception about the situation in Syria and drive us towards supporting the identical mistakes made in Iraq and Libya.

It is no error or oversight that the media barely mention Libya these days as it is plunged deeper and deeper into anarchy, where warlords occupy the terror vacuum created by the NATO’s deceptive intervention in 2011. Perhaps if people were confronted by images of the daily horrors endured by the people of Libya these day, they would be more reticent about the passive-aggressive re-creation of that same scenario in Syria.

The White Helmet Myth

The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities.

As we pointed out in Part I of this exposé, The White Helmets humanitarian front is mainly financed by the British Foreign Office. According to Richard Spencer of the London Telegraph:

“The Foreign Office is currently the largest single source of funding. It is an irony that if Britain does effectively become an ally of Assad, and starts raids against Isil in Syria, it will be bombing from the air and paying for the bodies to be dug out on the ground. The White Helmets are also operating in at least one Isil-held area.”

In a speech given by Le Mesurier in Lisbon June 2015, entitled “Act 1: Witnesses to history in the making”, Le Mesurier informed his rapt audience that in a recent US Government survey conducted across a “diverse spectrum” of Syrian communities, 67% of those asked, nominated the White Helmets as the most influential community organisation. This, despite, their non-inclusion in the 15 respondents to the survey, that comprised ISIS, Al Nusra, & other political or armed groups. This is a bizarre claim on two fronts:

1. That the White Helmets should be included in this list, by James Le Mesurier, his NGO is a group that promotes themselves to be “unarmed”, apolitical and neutral, inclusion in the list makes it obvious that they are politically biased and armed (see details below).

2. That the White Helmets can lay claim to this influence, despite the fact that when asked, the majority of Syrian people have never heard of them, except perhaps for those in Al Nusra, ISIS or [the dwindling] Free Syrian Army held territories.

Clearly, what Le Mesurier is attempting to create is the myth of an organic, non-aligned and independent humanitarian organisation, when it’s really a synthetic covert intelligence and forward-operating disinformation asset which is being funded by the British government, and headed by one of the UK’s very best military operatives in Le Mesurier.

It is important to analyse the White Helmet mythology, all generated by an incredibly slick and high-gloss media and marketing apparatus, overseen and driven by a George Soros partnered PR company called Purpose.

The following is a direct quote from the White Helmet website:

“The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline”

“The White Helmets mostly deal with the aftermath of government air attacks. Yet they have risked sniper fire to rescue the bodies of government soldiers to give them a proper burial”

As part of the myth-building process, White Helmet members who are repetitively described as ‘ordinary people’, specifically, “bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students”, and are relentlessly depicted as heroes, miracle workers, saints and super-humans scaling the “Mount Everest” of war zones with impartiality and neutrality. “Unarmed and unbiased” is their strapline, as they sacrifice themselves for the “Syrian People”. Indeed, those same Syrian people who have never heard of them. The myth-making continues…

“When I want to save someone’s life I don’t care if he’s an enemy or a friend. What concerns me is the soul that might die” ~ Abed, the White Helmets.

“After the bombs rain down, we rush in to dig for survivors. Our motto, “to save one life is to save all humanity,” is what drives us on.” ~ Raed Saleh, White Helmet leader and UN spokesperson.

Can an organisation be rightly called an ‘independent relief organisation’ when it is being funded by a foreign government who is directly involved in the military over-throw of Syria’s government? Most intelligent people should have no problem answering that question.

The Myth Exposed:’Moderate’ Terrorists

Neutrality

In previous articles we have exposed the White Helmets’ associations with the terrorist group Al Nusra Front and their presence in known ISIS strongholds in Syria. We have also explored, in depth, their donor base and demonstrated how impartiality is a hard claim to justify when taking into account that their finance sources consist of hard-line regime changers, hell-bent on removing the Syrian Government and portraying President Bashar al Assad as the devil incarnate. These donors include, the British Government, known US regime change facilitators USAID, and the US and NATO-backed ‘Syrian National Council’, a parallel government in-waiting which the west claims represents the Syrian opposition. This is discussed in depth in: White Helmets: War by way of Deception Part I

Time now to observe the White Helmets in action and question their impartiality on the ground in Syria…

This video reveals a White Helmet operative describing the “throwing of Shabiha bodies in the trash”. Shabiha is a derogatory term for Syrian Government militia or security forces but is liberally applied by terrorist aka “rebel” factions to any member of the Syrian military, irrespective of if they are Alawite, Sunni, or Shia. I remind you: the White Helmets “have risked sniper fire to rescue SAA bodies to give them a proper burial.”

This same neutral White Helmet operative goes on to pledge allegiance to the terrorist forces in the region.

“They are our role models, the best of people and we have the honour to serve them”

“SERVE THEM [armed terrorists, Al Nusra/Al Qaeda]” ~ curious turn of phrase for a neutral, impartial humanitarian organisation?

He also congratulates the Mujahadeen for liberating Jisr al Shugour from Assad’s forces.

“Glad tidings have reached us in Jisr al Shugour by the hands of our Mujahadeen brothers. May Allah strengthen them and make them steadfast on the correct way and soon, insh’Allah, the strongholds of the Assad regime in Latakia and Damascus will be liberated. “

Moving on, another video, this time revealing White Helmet operatives standing on the discarded bodies of SAA [Syrian Arab Army] soldiers and giving the victory sign. This display of support for the Al Nusra terrorists who have just massacred these soldiers once again demonstrates where their true allegiances lie.

It should be clear that these alleged “moderates” you are watching here are actually moderate extremists and jihadists, and the western media has been very careful in hiding this fact.

We also know via reports from within Aleppo city that it was the Al Nusra terrorists who massacred hundreds if not thousands of civilians before dumping their bodies into the River Queiq: The Truth from inside Syria’s Terrorist Underworld rendering the water supply to Aleppo’s civilian population toxic and undrinkable.

Were these SAA bodies, piled unceremoniously one on top of the other and trampled upon by these White Helmet “saints and neutral saviours”, added to others flung before them, into the disease infested waters of the River Queiq?

“Moderate” Rebels Targeting Civilians in Syria

This is one example of how powerful western propaganda can invert reality. For years now, there’s been a tsunami of western government and media talking points which claim that “Assad is targeting his own people indiscriminately”, and these round-the-clock allegations are always backed up by the same pro-opposition news source – the self-styled ‘Syrian Observatory For Human Rights‘ (SOHR) which until recently, was being run by Syrian ex-convict, Osama Ali Suleiman, who uses the media stage name of “Rami Abdul Rahman”. He runs his dubious organisation (see his website here) from his flat in Coventry, England, and is said to travel frequently to Turkey as part of his operation. SOHR has received funding from the EU and like the White Helmets, has been openly affiliated with the British Foreign Office, being summoned to private meetings there.

The SOHR has been the “go to” source for all civilian casualty numbers in Syria, even though the numbers put forth cannot be independently corroborated or are not checked at all for their veracity.

The SOHR and western media completely ignore (and cover-up) regular incidents of so-called “moderate” rebels, supported directly by the US and its CIA, who regularly target civilian areas. They are targeting civilians and then blaming these attacks on the Syrian government through the same ‘activist’ media channels.

Where is the claimed ‘neutrality’ in the White Helmet reporting in these same conflict areas where they are embedded? We hear incessantly of the “regime barrel bombs”, but we never hear one mention of the flesh tearing ‘Hell Cannon’ fired indiscriminately upon Aleppo civilians, in a hail of mortars and rockets that regularly rain down upon civilian areas, including into Damascus, from terrorist cells embedded in suburbs.

Likewise, we are never told about the car bombs that have devastated civilian areas in Homs and Latakia, including schools and hospitals. When do we hear about the tunnels dug under civilian homes and streets by the terrorists that are detonated – as a distraction to divert the SAA into ambushes and sniper fire?

These neutral humanitarians would do well to talk about the terrorist snipers who kill and maim civilians on a regular basis. Instead, they ignore atrocities committed against the Syrian army, an army which, unlike the foreign mercenary “rebel alliance” terrorists, is comprised of actual Syrian citizens.

For additional details on atrocities committed by terrorists against Syrian citizens, read: Al Houta Abyss, Raqqa: Terrorist dumping ground for the dead & the living.

A genuinely neutral report or analysis should surely take all of these factors into account, or are these “other” Syrian civilians not to be registered as such in the western electorate minds and hearts? If so, why not?

“The UN estimates 220,000 deaths thus far in the Syrian war. But almost half are Syrian army soldiers or allied local militia fighters, and two thirds are combatants if we count opposition fighters. Either way, the ratio of civilian to military casualties is roughly 1:2, given that the opposition is also inflicting civilian casualties. Compare that to the roughly 3:1 ratio in the US war in Iraq and 4:1 in the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-9. (The rate of Palestinian to Israeli casualties was an astronomical 100:1.)” ~ Paul Larudee. Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch.

“In April and June 2014, I spent a cumulative month in Syria, in various areas of Damascus, with visits to Latakia, Homs, and Ma’aloula. At the time, Damascus was being intensely shelled by mortars, frequently in my vicinity, including just behind the hotel housing the Peace Delegation which I accompanied for the first week (photo). This attack killed three civilians and one Syrian soldier. We saw some of the 60 plus children injured in the April 15 shelling of a school, not an isolated occasion, an attack which also killed one child. Mortars rained down at close-proximity on many occasions in different areas of the Old City where I had then found lodging.” ~ Eva Bartlett

This is a statement from an Aleppo citizen. Another Syrian civilian who has never heard of the White Helmets.

“The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call “Hell Canon”. Google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it’s full with explosives?… Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of “barrel bombs”! They came to spread “freedom” among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn’t fight them back?” ~ from Syria, welcome to Hell.

How can the White Helmets make a claim of neutrality while providing simplistic, largely unverified, biased and prejudicial reports that reflect only a percentage of the reality of this complex conflict and blatantly further the objectives of their donors in the region while ignoring the sacrifice being made by the Syrian Arab Army to defend their families and homeland from the invading NATO death squads.

“The Syrian Army is the Syrian people.” ~ Mother Agnes Mariam

From our same civilian contact in Aleppo:

“Aleppo city has shrunk to a fifth of its original size, and became so crowded with refugees that fled their areas after they fell into terrorist hands. I walk everyday in the city. I see children, young girls without limbs because of a terrorist mortar or shrapnel that targets them randomly and causes terrible wounds and horrific memories that will never leave them. The girl who lost one leg is standing on her good leg and selling bread, while the little boy who lost one arm is selling chewing gum. Those are the “injured” people who are mentioned fleetingly in the news, just numbers in one line of a report, after each attack from the terrorists. “Injured” doesn’t mean scratched or having a bleeding finger; it means someone lost his eyes or her limbs.”

Finally, this photo was taken shortly after Russia had legally entered the conflict in Syria at the request of the Syrian Government. Does it not seem a strange message to be conveyed by a neutral, unbiased humanitarian organisation with a self- proclaimed mandate to protect ALL Syrian people? The White Helmets will not kneel? They are neutral are they not, to whom would they kneel or not kneel if indeed they serve all Syrians regardless of “race, religion, gender or political affiliation”

White Helmets: Execution facilitators

There is an entire library of White Helmet propaganda images that have been proven to be recycled, fake or at best, inaccurate but perhaps the most shocking and most widely publicised was the footage of their suspected participation in an Al Nusra execution of a civilian in Hreitan, Northern Aleppo.

This is perhaps one of the most damning indictments of White Helmet collusion with the terrorist group.

This video was wiped from most channels by the White Helmets immediately after its release, however the website Liveleak has managed to keep a protected copy which has escaped YouTube communitarian-style censorship.

Live Leak says: “As expected, youtube deleted this very incriminating video of the s-called “White Helmets” working hand in hand with Al Qaeda. Another CIA fail, trying to sell us these “White helmet” as civilian workers and volunteers, while they are simply Nusra jihadists. What to think of theri claims about ‘chlorine’?”

WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC VIDEO CONTENT NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fd8_1430900709

The White Helmets were forced to release a statement explaining the events in this video. According to their own admission here, the sequence of events on the day, 5^th May 2015 were as follows: Al Nusra called the White Helmets 25 minutes prior to the execution. White Helmets arrived on the scene at 11.35 am, 5 minutes BEFORE the execution was carried out at 11.40. These impartial humanitarian workers did NOTHING to prevent this execution, they appear a full 5 minutes prior to this murder at the behest of the executioners and they are ushered into shot immediately after the victim is shot twice at close range in the head, to collect the body.

Are these really neutral humanitarians at work saving every Syrian civilian “irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation”?

This is also taken from the White Helmet official statement AFTER their execution facilitation had gone viral on social media:

“We unequivocally condemn the killing of civilians no matter who the perpetrator.”

So where is their condemnation of this and countless other executions of civilians by Al Nusra in their reports to the UN?

The perpetrator is clearly Al Nusra Front, and it seems as if the White Helmet are avoiding naming the group, and readers would be right to ask why not. So where is their condemnation of this and countless other executions of civilians by Al Nusra – in those White Helmet reports to the UN?

Here are more responses by the White Helmets to the highly controversial video:

“The discussion over the video from Hreitan has highlighted the absence of a published code of conduct to which civil defence volunteers can be held accountable. The leaders of Syria Civil Defence commit to the development and publication of a code of conduct for members and its public posting on the www.SyriaCivilDefence.Org website in English and Arabic within one month.”

We are now coming up to November 2015, and there has still been no amendment to their “code of conduct”. These humanitarians upon whose testimony, hangs the entire Western intervention policy in Syria, have not been officially investigated or even questioned over their suspected role in the “clean up” of a summary execution of a Syrian civilian by terrorist groups in Syria.

Armed or Unarmed?

“Unpaid Unarmed Lifesavers in Syria.” ~ New York Times headline Feb 2015.

“The White Helmets are unpaid and unarmed, and they risk their lives to save others…….. Wearing simple white construction helmets as feeble protection from those “double-tap” bombings, the White Helmets are strictly humanitarian. They even have rescued some of the officers of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad who are bombing them.”

Video clearly showing armed White Helmets on the streets of Aleppo:

Meet another confused impartial, unarmed White Helmet, Muawiya Hassan Agha based in Sarmine, Idlib [scene of the recent alleged Russian Air Force bombing of a civilian hospital].

It appears that Agha plays a dual role in Syria’s conflict, White Helmet by day and Al Nusra armed terrorist by night, posing on board an Al Nusra tank, gun in hand. Here is a very clear case of the lines between unarmed humanitarian and armed mercenary being more than a little blurred. In one photo Agha is seen clearly celebrating with Al Nusra wearing his White Helmet tabard. In the stills taken from the alleged Russian hospital bombing in Sarmine, Idlib, he is spotted emerging from the “bombed” building. His association with Al Nusra and his brazen show of armed affiliation leaves no doubt as to his role in this conflict and it is far removed from that of an impartial, unarmed Humanitarian.

In fact, the immortal words of Russian Foreign Minsiter, Sergei Lavrov, spring to mind:

“If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”

A very cursory scroll down Agha’s Facebook page also reveals very recent photos of SAA corpses accompanied by a number of celebratory comments.

In Summary

The success of the White Helmet and NGO complex propaganda is dependent upon the skewing of our moral compass by using the media and government institutions that are proven experts at “nudging” public opinion towards any particular policy.

If we really want to support Syria in this battle against such a complex array of interventionist forces, we must locate that compass and allow it to point us squarely towards the truth, however hard that truth is to accept and however remote might appear from the mainstream narrative. In fact I would go as far as to say, the further away you get from the mainstream naarative, the closer you get to the truth.

One final example of White Helmet propaganda at work:

“White Helmets claim to have rescued an SAA soldier who had in reality been captured by Al Nusra terrorists 10 days previously. In the Al Nusra version, this soldier is described as a “Shia pig” and was most probably summarily executed as an apostate according to Wahabi doctrine. Hard to imagine how the White Helmets then rescued him, unless of course they dug up his body for publicity purposes.”

At this point, the question should really be asked, are these two groups working together (or are they one in the same)?

END OF PART II

EDITOR’S NOTE: In Part III we will analyse the recent speeches given by the White Helmet leaders, James Le Mesurier, Raed Saleh and Farouq al Habib, in particular, who have been doing the rounds of Western media trying to regain lost propaganda ground, including their recent guest speaker spot at the prestigious Frontline club last week.

[Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.]

Sep 25

2015

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Avaaz, Human Rights Watch, Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria, The Soros Network | OSI, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Amnesty International Avaaz Hand in Hand for Syria Human Rights Watch Ken Roth Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Purpose Inc. SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) Syrian Civil Defence The Syria Campaign White Helmets

“Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) Warring on Syria

In Gaza

Fall, 2015

by Eva Bartlett

This page will continue to expand as more so-called “Human Rights” groups are outed for propagating anti-Syria war rhetoric and false allegations against the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army. As it is, the list of players is quite extensive. Below, I’ll list the known HR front people and groups (many, if not most, with links to the US State Department and criminals like George Soros). As Rick Sterling wrote in his “Humanitarians for War on Syria” (March 2015):

“A massive campaign in support of foreign intervention against Syria is underway. The goal is to prepare the public for a “No Fly Zone” enforced by US and other military powers. This is how the invasion of Iraq began. This is how the public was prepared for the US/NATO air attack on Libya.

The results of western ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya have been disastrous. Both actions have dramatically reduced the security, health, education and living standards of the populations, created anarchy and mayhem, and resulted in the explosion of sectarianism and violence in the region. Now the Western/NATO/Israeli and Gulf powers, supported by major intervention-inclined humanitarian organizations, want to do the same in Syria.”

The Players:

–Avaaz: “Avaaz is an online lobby organization founded in 2007 by Jeremy Heimans (now CEO of Purpose) and others. Start-up funding was provided by George Soros’ foundation. …they have been prominent in promoting neoliberal foreign policies in keeping with the U.S. State Department. …Avaaz very actively promoted a No Fly Zone in Libya. They are now very actively promoting the same for Syria. In-depth research and exposure of Avaaz can be found here. The titles give some indication: “Faking It: Charity Communications in the Firing Line”, “Syria: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire”, “Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps for Militarism”. Avaaz justifies its call for No Fly Zone in part on White Helmets. Given the close interconnections between Avaaz and Purpose, they are surely aware that White Helmets is a media creation. This calls into question their sincerity.” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

“Avaaz is the operational name of “Global Engagement and Organizing Fund,” a non-profit organization legally incorporated in 2006. Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, described as a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, “an online community that has pioneered internet advocacy in the United States.”…The silent voice behind Avaaz, that of Res Publica, is, in the public realm, essentially comprised of 3 key individuals: Tom Perriello, a pro-war (former) U.S. Representative who describes himself as a social entrepreneur, Ricken Patel, consultant to many of the most powerful entities on Earth and the long-time associate of Perriello, and Tom Pravda, a member of the UK Diplomatic Service who serves as a consultant to the U.S. State Department….In addition to receiving funding from the Open Society Institute, Avaaz has publicly cited the Open Society Institute as their foundation partner. This admission by founder Ricken Patel is found on the www.soros.org website. The Open Society Institute (renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations) is a private operating and grantmaking foundation founded by George Soros, who remains the chair. …Avaaz’s stance on both Libya (now annihilated) and now Syria is in smooth synchronicity with the positions within the U.S. administration, positions such as those vocalized by the likes of war criminals such as Hillary Clinton (of “We came. We saw. He died. Laughter…” fame). The ugly iron fist of war is gently being spoon-fed to the public by way of a very dark velvet glove – that being Avaaz.” [citation from: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I]

–Amnesty International: “Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros (whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other “human rights” advocates). Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department …Amnesty International’s website specifically mentions Nossel’s role behind US State Department-backed UN resolutions regarding Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cote d’Ivoire… Nossel’s “contributions” then are simply to dress up naked military aggression and the pursuit of global corporate-financier hegemony with the pretense of “human rights” advocacy.” [citation from: Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda]

–Hand in Hand for Syria: “The UK Charity Commission’s website states that Hand in Hand for Syria exists for “the advancement of health or saving lives”. Until July 2014 the Facebook banner of Hand in Hand’s co-founder and chairman Faddy Sahloul read “WE WILL BRING ASSAD TO JUSTICE; NO MATTER WHAT LIVES IT TAKES, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CATASTROPHE IT MAKES”. The image was removed shortly after it was commented on publicly. Also on Hand in Hand’s executive team is Dr Rola Hallam, one of the two medics featured in ‘Saving Syria’s Children’. …On 30 August 2013, the day after the BBC’s initial report on the alleged Aleppo incendiary bomb attack, Dr Hallam appeared on BBC’s Newsnight programme expressing her profound disappointment at parliament’s rejection of a military strike against Syria. Dr Hallam’s father is Dr. Mousa al-Kurdi. According to a 2013 article by Dr Saleyha Ahsan – the other Hand in Hand for Syria volunteer medic featured in ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ [3] – Dr al-Kurdi is “involved politically with the Syrian National Council”.” [citation from: UK Charity Which Shares Syrian Opposition “Aims and Objectives” Benefits from Alan Kurdi Tragedy]

–Human Rights Watch: “Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an integral part of the West’s propaganda machine. HRW shapes the narratives of conflicts, narratives which become solidified through repetition, and which eventually become regarded as undeniable facts. Moreover, the language HRW employs, far from being simply stylistic choices, is deliberately utilized to obscure the reality of war zones in the service of the Empire. This is undoubtedly the case with the Israel/Palestine conflict where Israeli actions are never outright war crimes, while Palestinian ones are. It is equally true of Ukraine. This is also the case in Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, countries where HRW has played a critical role in constructing narratives in the interests of its financier and corporate paymasters, not to mention of course the US foreign policy agenda. In both Libya and Syria, HRW has played a critical role in propagandizing the western public against the governments of those countries, thereby justifying the imperialist assault on them. More than simply “collecting the facts,” HRW cobbled together a completely distorted, and in many cases utterly dishonest and factually wrong, narrative which has buttressed the case for “intervention” in Syria, as it did in Libya….Human Rights Watch is undeniably an appendage of US foreign policy. It is in many ways part of the “soft power” arm of US power projection, a means of delegitimizing, demonizing, and otherwise destabilizing countries that do not play ball with the US.” [citation from: HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 2)]

–Ken Roth: “Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, has been vocal in his support for a full scale war on Syria in the name of humanitarianism. Roth has repeatedly called for intervention against the legal government of Syria, having recently tweeted statements such as “Like Sarajevo, could Douma market slaughter finally force Assad to stop targeting civilians?” (@KenRoth, Aug 16). The implication of the statement is quite clear: there should be military intervention, such as the US-NATO war on Yugoslavia and later Serbia, in order to stop the “slaughter” of civilians. It should be noted that this tweet was posted within hours of the news of the incident in Douma long before any investigation. Roth, and by extension his organization Human Rights Watch, further discredits whatever vestiges of impartiality he and HRW might have had with inane tweets such as “Douma market killings show how Assad chooses to fight this war: deliberately against civilians,” (@KenRoth, Aug 16), an obviously biased, and utterly unsubstantiated allegation. Roth could have absolutely no knowledge of either the identities of the dead, or the Syrian government’s motives, when he released the tweet the same day as the attack. He reveals himself here to be little more than a lackey for imperialism, a war hawk masquerading as a human rights defender.” [citation from: The Douma Market Attack: a Fabricated Pretext for Intervention?]

“Last week we found that Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth used an image of destruction in Gaza caused by Israel to accuse the Syrian government of indiscriminate use of “barrel bombs”. We wrote: “This is thereby at least the third time HRW is using a wrongly attributed pictures to depict current enemies of U.S. imperialism as having causing the damage the U.S. empire and/or its friends have caused.That is not mere bias by HRW. It is willful fraud.”[citation from: HRW’s Kenneth Roth Continues Unfounded Accusations With Another False Picture]

–Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders: “Doctors Without Borders is fully funded by the very same corporate financier interests behind Wall Street and London’s collective foreign policy, including regime change in Syria and neighboring Iran. Doctors Without Borders’ own annual report (2010 report can be accessed here), includes as financial donors, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, and a myriad of other corporate-financier interests. Doctors Without Borders also features bankers upon its Board of Advisers including Elizabeth Beshel Robinson of Goldman Sachs. Complicating further Doctors Without Borders so-called “independent” and “aid” claims is the fact that their medical facilities are set up in terrorist held regions of Syria, especially along Syria’s northern border with NATO-member Turkey. In an interview with NPR, Doctors Without Borders’ Stephen Cornish revealed the nature of his organization’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, where he explains that aid is being sent to regions outside of the Syrian government’s control, and that his organization is in fact setting up facilities in these areas….In other words, the Wall Street-funded organization is providing support for militants armed and funded by the West and its regional allies, most of whom are revealed to be foreign fighters, affiliated with or directly belonging to Al Qaeda and its defacto political wing, the Muslim Brotherhood. This so-called “international aid” organization is in actuality yet another cog in the covert military machine being turned against Syria and serves the role as a medical battalion.” [citation from: “Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists]

–Physicians for Human Rights (PHR): “They make bold but sometimes inaccurate assertions….A recent PHR press release is headlined “New Map shows Government Forces Deliberately Attacking Syria’s Medical System.” It looks slick and impressive but is inaccurate. For example, one of the most dramatic attacks on a Syrian hospital was the suicide bombing of Al Kindi Hospital in Aleppo. Yet the PHR map shows the attack having been carried out by “government forces.” Readers are encouraged to look at the 3 minute rebel video of the suicide attack which leaves no doubt who was responsible.” [citation from: About Those Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria]

–PURPOSE Inc.: “This is an international PR firm. CEO is Jeremy Heimans, a co-founder of Avaaz. President is Kevin Steinberg, previous CEO of World Economic Forum USA (antithesis of World Social Forum). Their website describes their goal: “Purpose builds and accelerates movements to tackle the world’s biggest problems.” In this case the “problem” is reluctance to take over Syrian skies and land. For a hefty fee, “Purpose” will dupe the public and break down that reluctance. Toward that end, Purpose created “The Syria Campaign”.”” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

“Purpose Inc. (with its co-founders) is a favourite of high-finance websites such as The Economist and Forbes and sells its consulting services and branding/marketing campaigns to Google, Audi, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many others that comprise the world’s most powerful corporations and institutions. In 2012, it raised $3m from investors. “Ford Foundation, which has given Purpose’s non-profit arm a grant, reckons it is shaping up to be “one of the blue-chip social organisations of the future.” Purpose, like many other foundations, such as Rockefeller (who initially incubated 1Sky which merged with 350.org in 2011), also serves as an “incubator of social movements.”” [citation from: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire]

–“The Syria Campaign”: “The Syria Campaign began in spring 2014…The Syria Campaign is managed by Anna Nolan, who grew up in northern Ireland and has very likely never been to Syria. In addition to promoting the White Helmets, Syria Campaign promotes a new social media campaign called “Planet Syria”. It features emotional pleas for the world to take notice of Syria in another thinly veiled effort pushing for foreign intervention and war. According to their website, The Syria Campaign received start-up funding from the foundation of Ayman Asfari, a billionaire who made his money in the oil and gas services industry. …One of their first efforts was to work to prevent publicity and information about the Syrian Presidential Election of June 2014. Accordingly, “The Syria Campaign” pressured Facebook to remove advertisements or publicity about the Syrian election. Since then Syria Campaign has engineered huge media exposure and mythology about their baby, the “White Helmets” using all sorts of social and traditional media. The campaigns are largely fact free. For example, the Syrian election was dismissed out of hand by them and John Kerry but taken seriously by many millions of Syrians.” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

–White Helmets/”Syrian Civil Defence: “This is a new organization, highly publicized as civilian rescue workers in Syria. In reality the White Helmets is a project created by the UK and USA. Training of civilians in Turkey has been overseen by former British military officer and current contractor, James Le Mesurier. Promotion of the program is done by “The Syria Campaign” supported by the foundation of billionaire Ayman Asfari. The White Helmets is clearly a public relations project. …White Helmets work in areas of Aleppo and Idlib controlled by Nusra (Al Queda).” “White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention. A White Helmet leader wrote a recent Washington Post editorial. White Helmets are also very active on social media with presence on Twitter, Facebook etc. According to their website, to contact White Helmets email The Syria Campaign which underscores the relationship.” [citations from: About Those Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria & Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

UPDATED to include a different type of front “group” (one-man show) that purports to present information on Syria:

–The SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights): “In reality, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has long ago been exposed as an absurd propaganda front operated by Rami Abdul Rahman out of his house in England’s countryside. According to a December 2011 Reuters article titled, “Coventry – an unlikely home to prominent Syria activist,” Abdul Rahman admits he is a member of the so-called “Syrian opposition” and seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad…One could not fathom a more unreliable, compromised, biased source of information, yet for the past two years, his “Observatory” has served as the sole source of information for the endless torrent of propaganda emanating from the Western media….The New York Times also for the first time reveals that Abdul Rahman’s operation is indeed funded by the European Union and a “European country” he refuses to identify…Abdul Rahman has direct access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.” [citation from: EXPOSED: Syrian Human Rights Front is EU-Funded Fraud]

Important Articles:

*listed alphabetically

– About Those Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria: Humanitarians Pushing for Intervention, Apr 3, 2015, Rick Sterling, Counter Punch

-Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda, Aug 22, 2012, Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer Report

-Amnesty International, War Propaganda, and Human Rights Terrorism, Aug 8, 2013, Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Dissident Voice

-Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars, Jun 18, 2012, Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley, Consortium News

-Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War, Sep 20, 2013, Cory Morningstar, Wrong Kind of Green

-Avaaz: manufacturing consent for wars since 2011, Mar 20, 2015, Wall of Controversy

-Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire, Sep 17, 2014, The Art of Annihilation

-Avaaz: the World’s Most Powerful NGO, Feb 11, 2015, Wrong Kind of Green

-Avaaz’s war on Syria: Soros Sponsored Sorrow Pleads for Foreign Intervention, June 26, 2012, Wrong Kind of Green [see also their Avaaz tagged articles]

-“Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists, Aug 25, 2013, Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer

-Doctors Without Borders Aiding Globalists in Syria, Oct 17, 2013, Brandon Turbeville, Activist Post

-Eight Problems with Amnesty’s Report on Aleppo Syria, May 14, 2015, Rick Sterling, Counter Punch

-EXPOSED: Syrian Human Rights Front is EU-Funded Fraud, Apr 12, 2013, Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer

-Humanitarians for War on Syria, Mar 31, 2015, Rick Sterling, Counter Punch

-“Human Rights” Warriors for Empire, Glen Ford, Feb 15, 2012, Black Agenda Report

-Human Rights Watch FAIL: Uses Photo of American Bombing Destruction To Condemn Assad, Mar 11, 2015, Syria Solidarity Movement, Dissident Voice

-HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 1), Aug 1, 2014, Eric Draitser, New Eastern Outlook

-HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 2), Aug 6, 2014, New Eastern Outlook

-HRW’s Kenneth Roth Continues Unfounded Accusations With Another False Picture, May 15, 2015, Moon of Alabama

-Mythology, Barrel Bombs, and Human Rights Watch, Jul 21, 2015, Paul Larudee, Counter Punch

-Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone, Apr 9, 2015, Rick Sterling, Dissident Voice

-Syria: Amnesty International, Regime Change and an Ambassador, Nov 3, 2011, Felicity Arbuthnot, Dissident Voice

-Syria: ‘Human Rights Watch’, Key Player in the Manufacture of Propaganda for War and Foreign Intervention, Feb 1, 2014, Tim Anderson and Mazen al-Akhras, Global Research

-Syria: ‘White Helmets are Soros sponsored anti-Assad propagandists’- Vanessa Beeley, Sep 2015, Sputnik Radio

-The Douma Market Attack: a Fabricated Pretext for Intervention?, Aug 21, 2015, Eric Draitser, Counter Punch

-The Imperial-Left and the Syrian Conflict The Campaign for Peace and Democracy Champions the Proxy War Against Syria, Jul 27, 2013, Jay Tharappel, Dissident Voice

-UK Charity Which Shares Syrian Opposition “Aims and Objectives” Benefits from Alan Kurdi Tragedy, Sept 10, 2015, Robert Stuart, Global Research

-Welcome to the Brave New World – Brought to You by Avaaz, Sep 13, 2013, Cory Morningstar, The Art of Annihilation

-‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria, Sep 1, 2015, Vanessa Beeley, 21st Century Wire

Sep 23

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carbon Markets | REDD, Foundations, Greenpeace, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Oxfam, Pacifism as Pathology, Purpose Inc., Rockefeller Foundation, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

"Light the Way" "Under One Sky" #BLM 350.org Avaaz Behavourial Change Fitsgibbon Media Flood Wall Street GCCA/TckTckTck Global Ocean Commission Greenpeace Payments for Ecosystems Services People's Climate March Purpose Inc. Syria The Varda Grpoup UN Momentum for Change

Under One Bad Sky

TckTckTck’s 2014 People’s Climate March: This Changed Nothing

September 23, 2015

by Cory Morningstar

Walk the Walk

On September 21, 2014, the day of the so-called People’s Climate March, the #WalktheWalk campaign twitter account (@weareherenow) belonging to New York City public relations firm Purpose Inc., had a mere 167 followers (see screenshot below).

Yet, the screenshot below (September 20, 2014) clearly documents the #WalktheWalk hash tag shared (“tweeted”) by none other than the twitter account belonging to U.S. president, Barack Obama. [@BarackObama: “Say you’re ready to #WalktheWalk on climate change.” “—I— #WalktheWalk on climate change.”]

It is necessary to contemplate how the president of the United States would share and promote what was intended to become a powerful marketing meme that with a mere 167 followers, had yet to make any impact whatsoever.

For Purpose Inc. (a for-profit public relations venture created by the co-founders of Avaaz), there was no necessity to build any momentum at all in order for their social media campaign to become a “success”, due to the fact that they were already part and parcel of the elite establishment from the very onset. (The first tweet from the #WalktheWalk account was on September 14, 2014. As of September 25, 2014, there were 286 tweets in total.) Foundation funded “progressive” media (in the example below, Common Dreams), as per usual, was utilized to launch and promote the campaign. The usual suspects, comprised of entities such as the TckTckTck twitter account, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, and Desmond Tutu, were amongst the first to tweet #walkthewalk.

+++

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 – 5:00pm

Thousands To #WalkTheWalk Online During Historic Climate March

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, Desmond Tutu, Celebrities and Other Notables to Join Supporters Across The Globe in Videos Walking to Urge Climate Action

WASHINGTON –

**VIEW VIDEOS HERE: http://www.walkforclimate.com/**

New York, NY — As hundreds of thousands of people head to New York City this week to join the People’s Climate March this weekend, many more from around the world will be marching along with them across the internet.

“Politicians, Fortune 500 companies, large NGOs, as well as influential leaders such as UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, Desmond Tutu and other celebrities and notables to be announced, are joining in to spread the word and walk alongside thousands of other demonstrators both on and offline. Ikea will be calling on their global staff to #walkthewalk, and will be demonstrating public solidarity by changing their website banner leading up to the march.

#WalktheWalk is an ownerless, open-source social media campaign that provides a highly visual, easy, and personal way for people around the world who can’t be at the march or who want to take dynamic action online, to be at the march in spirit and send a message to world leaders that they care about climate change and want to see real action. It’s also a way for world leaders themselves and other high-profile individuals to express solidarity with the citizen effort. [Emphasis added]

The campaign officially kicks off Wednesday, September 17, and will run through the UN Climate Summit.

For more information please go to: http://www.walkforclimate.com/

Twitter: @weareherenow

Instagram: @wewalkthewalk

Vine: @walkthewalk

+++

The full press release (by Fitzgibbon Media) can be accessed here. ** [Domain expired: See archive page: https://web.archive.org/web/20140918001056/http://www.walkforclimate.com/]

To clarify, #Walk the Walk is a campaign of Here Now.

Here Now circles back to Purpose.

To further illustrate the fatuous aspects of the #Walk the Walk campaign regarding our ongoing environmental problems, consider the action of “Hop the Scotch” in response to the dire warning in 2012 by top Russia scientist, Natalia Shakhova, one of the world’s foremost experts on methane hydrates:

“The total amount of the methane (CH4) in the current atmosphere is 5 gigatons. The amount of carbon preserved in the form of methane in the East Siberian Arctic shelf is approx. 100’s-1000’s gigatons. Only 1% of this amount is required to double the atmospheric burden of methane (which is approx. 23x more powerful than CO2). There is not much effort needed to destabilize just 1% of this carbon pool considering the state of permafrost and the amount of methane currently involved. What keeps this methane from entering the atmosphere is a very shallow water column and weakening permafrost which is losing its ability to serve as a seal. It could happen anytime.”

Then consider that when CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, “global temperatures rose by 5 degrees centigrade – all in the space of about 13 years.” [Source]

Since the 2012 interview with Shakhova, in August, 2014, it was discovered that hundreds of methane plumes are erupting along the east coast. And policy makers in tandem with NGOs and their branding executives urge the public to “Hop the scotch”? It appears that Sept 21, 2014 marked the day that 1984 and Brave New World finally collided. Surely something is amiss. It is glaringly obvious that Avaaz, Purpose and their financiers believe Americans are beyond stupid. Yet all signs point to the fact that they were sadly correct, since in response, Americans applaud.

TckTckTck remix: WalktheWalk

In the second paragraph, the description of #WalktheWalk as an ownerless, open-source social media campaign” echoes, almost verbatim, the TckTckTck campaign launched prior to 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2009. The TckTckTck campaign was created by one of the largest advertising agencies in the world (HAVAS) in collaboration with the United Nations. Upon the launch of the media campaign on September 8, 2009, the Havas press release identified Avaaz, 350.org, Greenpeace and Oxfam (founding NGOs of Global Campaign for Climate Action) having partnered with many of the world’s largest multinational corporations such as EDF and the Virgin Group. Hundreds of NGOs would “sign on” and partner with the tcktcktck.org website and the TckTckTck open-source media campaign. By December 2009, the tcktcktck umbrella (over 200 NGOs) and its strategic/calculated weak messaging (a “fair and ambitious agreement”) would successfully come to dominate COP15 and strategically drown out the most radical positions put forward (specifically, by Bolivia and the G77) that the world so desperately needed, deliberately and knowingly sentencing whole nations to certain death.

Jump forward 5 years to September 2014 to the TckTckTck remix: WalktheWalk. The 3-syllable catchphrase, like the 3-syllable TcTckTck campaign is custom-made to feed and flourish a media-induced hypnotic trance — more commonly recognized as the stupefied Euro-American psyche.

Tweets from so-called “leaders” of a now synthetic environmental movement demonstrate how the strategic creation of memes such as TckTckTck and WalkTheWalk, are created with the intent and ardent anticipation that the said meme will successfully penetrate and infest all aspects of mainstream forms of vacuous protest:

Below video (running time: 0.39): Citizens are incited to perform as “ticking” human clocks for the branding-building of TckTckTck. [Climate Justice rally on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 24, 2009, International Day of Climate Action]:

Video (running time 1:00) In a corporate culture consumed by celebrity fetish, celebrities are most always utilized to citizens to accept and embrace symbolism, TckTckTck – Oxfam Climate Change Campaign (Uploaded on Sep 2, 2009)

Below content and video (Millions Walked , running time: 1:30) at Upworthy (incidentally co-founded by Avaaz co-founder Pariser) is intended to compel citizens to “WalktheWalk” via the phrase “Watch some celebrities show you how they walk. It actually matters.” The Upworthy content cites text from a transcript released by Moment for Action (launched September 23, 2014), a collaboration of many participating NGO’s and foundations. Partners include but are not limited to United Nations, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, Avaaz, WWF, Sierra Club, Amazon Watch and Carbon War Room.

“It’s time to do more than just talk about climate change. Watch me #WalkTheWalk. http://goo.gl/0W16io @Greenpeace @greenpeaceusa – Kumi Naidoo, Sept 20, 2014

Six years after the global TckTckTck campaign, it must be considered par for the course that Kumi Naidoo, executive international executive director of Greenpeace International and then chair/president of the TckTckTck/ Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA) would take a leading role in the unveiling and promoting of the 2015 WalktheWalk campaign:

Above screenshots represent just 2 two of Naidoo’s twitter posts being re-tweeted by various creative directors, special advisors and CEO/founder of Purpose Inc. The Naidoo tweet was “retweeted” 21 times and designated as a “favourite”14 times, with 2 twitter users having “asked not to be shown in this view”.

Purpose Inc: Entrenched in the Democratic Party

“Josh [Hendler] joins Purpose after having worked at the intersection of social good and technology throughout his career. His sweet spot is technology leadership roles in politics, having served as the technology chief for the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America. During the 2008 campaign, he was a consultant to the Obama campaign, managing technology for distributed organizing efforts.” — Purpose Welcomes Josh Hendler as New CTO, September 15, 2014

“Henry [Donahue] spent most of the 1990’s on the road as a fund-raiser and consultant for local and national Democratic political campaigns, including U.S. Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). He has worked for progressive candidates in New York City, Tennessee, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas.” Purpose Website – Meet the Team on a Mission

The above screenshot /meme created by Purpose Inc. (under the guise of “Here Now”) makes clear that the job of Purpose Inc. is to ensure Barack Obama is seen in a most a favourable, positive and charming light and as a champion on “clean power”.

It is only by observing the relationships of the individuals that have worked toward the success of this meme, that we can understand the dynamics of the campaign. Dynamics that demonstrate a strong alliance between two key parties: Purpose Inc. and the US Democratic Party.

Naidoo’s tweet (as shown in the section above), is “re-tweeted” and shared by a multitude of Purpose Inc. staff, CEOs and participating organizations with many having prior or ongoing involvement with the US Democratic Party:

Tara McGowan: director of digital for: Priorities USA (The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign), Purpose Inc., Barack Obama (The Obama campaign‘s rapid-response team), and broadcast associate at CBC 60 Minutes. In addition, McGowan was hired to assist hedge fund billionaire Steyer with numerous campaigns

“Digital ads explicitly appealed to voters who may not have considered themselves especially climate-conscious. At a post-election briefing for Steyer on Wednesday, digital strategist Tara McGowan showcased a series of Web ads beginning with the text: ‘I’m no environmentalist …’ In each case, the sentence ended with something like: ‘… but droughts are ruining my farm’ or ‘… but science doesn’t lie'” — Inside a green billionaire’s Virginia crusade (Tom Steyer), Politico, 11/11/13

Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Pupose Inc. Co-founder of Avaaz, GetUp and AllOut. [Video: The Art of Manipulation: Brought to You by Avaaz, Purpose Inc. & 350.org] Heimans promotes the hashtag #newpower, and is his own biggest fan
We Are Here Now (a project of Purpose): “All over the world people are taking heroic action to save our climate. But a fight this big needs a breakthrough. Here now – everything changes.”
Robert Jay Ross, special advisor to the CEO of Purpose Inc. (Heimans). US Executive Director of Child Is Innocent a non-profit providing “leadership training to children living in Northern Uganda.”
Jennifer Edwards (tagline: “Champagne and Campaigns”), Digital Strategy Consultant for Purpose Inc, Sierra Club, The National Council of La Raza and Organizing for Action Digital (https://www.barackobama.com/)
Mercedes Gutierrez, head of sustainability at Ikea Spain
Galit Gun, senior strategy director at Purpose Inc., former global campaigner and founding staff member at Avaaz
Neeraj Narayan, regional director, South Asia, Nike Inc.
Santiago Gowland, general manager for The Nature Conservancy, Latin American Region
Radu Dumitra?cu, communications specialist at Ikea Foundation
Hannah Kreiswirth, creative director at Purpose Inc.

Above screenshot: Sept 19, 2014 tweet by Maggie Aker, Strategist at Purpose Inc.: “Well this is an adorable shuffle from @MarkRuffalo, esp since it’s for our climate. Who will #walkthewalk next?” This tweet was retweeted/favourited by both Anna Jane Joyner, Climate Strategist at We Are Here Now and Purpose Inc.

“As a consultant for the Here Now campaign initiated by the innovative team at Purpose, Anna is part of a group testing new story-telling techniques for discussing climate change with evangelical Christians and other difficult-to-engage audiences.” — January 6, 2015, Source

Above screenshot: @TckTckTck, Sept 18, 2014: “We are a part of the biggest climate march in history. Show us you #walkthewalk on climate change too: http://bit.ly/1qNnY17”

As demonstrated in the above screenshots, TckTckTck took a leading role in promoting this particular campaign. As well, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC), fully exploited 350 board member Naomi Klein’s book launch of “This Changes Everything” blanketing the virtual sphere in catch phrases utilizing and playing off of this meme. The above screenshots which read “to change everything, we need everyone” and “here now – everything changes” are prime examples.

Photo: The Broadbent Institute’s Training and Leadership program

The Purpose Inc. We Are Here Now twitter account follows the twitter accounts of Purpose Inc., United Nations, IKEA, WWF, Barack Obama, Barack Obama Action Committees/Official Organizing for Action (OFA CA, OFA CO, OFA VA, OFA TX), Energy Action Coalition, RAN, the Broadbent Institute , Next Gen (Tom Steyer), Tom Steyer, Greenpeace, UN Foundation, Sierra Club, TckTckTck, Climate Reality (Al Gore) 350.org, 350.org divestment groups, Bill McKibben, The Syria Campaign (destabilization/demonization campaign), and many more of influence.

Those of influence include Paul Hilder, co-founder of Avaaz who now serves as executive director of Here Now. [Hilder background]

The account also follows Tim Dickson, the co-founder of the Syria Campaign, who is also founder of the aforementioned Groundswell Communications. Dickson’s contribution to the Democratic Party is most extensive dating back to 1980. Dixon, former senior political strategist for two Australian prime ministers, now serves as the managing director for Purpose Europe. [Dixon bio]

Avaaz and Purpose Co-founder Jeremy Heimans has made the vision of for-profit Purpose Inc. clear from inception:

Vision: “Purpose is a global initiative that draws on leading technologies, political organizing and behavioral economics to build powerful, tech-savvy movements that can transform culture and influence policy… [Purpose] creates 21st century movements. We look for ways that movements can help solve major global problems. To do this, we work with some of the most exciting players in the new green and social economy to help them get to scale faster and some of the world’s biggest brands to mobilize their consumers for significant social impact….” [Further reading on Purpose: Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II]

That goal continues to be expanded upon in an Orwellian manner with corporations now utilizing CSR [corporate social responsibility] to evolve the brand by empowering their customer (“prosumers”) to become activists:

“On Thursday, November 20th, the Social Innovation Summit held its bi-annual conference in the San Francisco Bay area. The summit brought together some of the most influential innovators and leaders in the business and social impact communities. Representatives from Google, Facebook, PwC and others came together to share and discuss new models businesses can use to transform communities and inspire action. Purpose’s very own Senior Strategist, Max Steinman, moderated a discussion entitled ‘The Rise of the Activist Brand.’ The panel explored how brands are evolving their CSR [corporate social responsibility] efforts by empowering their advocates to become activists.” [Source]

Above @weareherenow screenshots: The promise of perpetual economic growth for corporate America is key

TckTckTck – “How to Herd Cats”

In 2009, global civil society was cleverly seduced into sleeping with the enemy via the TckTckTck campaign. [Further reading: EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé]. In 2014, not one to learn from the past, civil society, would yet again sleep with the enemy. GCCA, an initiative that began in Bali (2007) with a $300,000 funding commitment from the Quebec government, is a “coalition of twenty key international organizations” including Avaaz, 350.org, Greenpeace , Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, OXFAM, WWF, World Council of Churches, Union of Concerned Scientists, Equiterre, Global Call to Action against Poverty (also co-chaired by Kumi Naidoo), and the Pew Environment Group. [Source]

While GCCA/TckTckTck working hand in hand with 350.org, Avaaz and Greenpeace undoubtedly far surpassed the United States United Nations expectations for the 2009 TckTckTck campaign, it would repeat a similar stunning performance for the United Nations just 5 years later with the popular 2014 Peoples Climate March, again uniting citizens with corporate interests:

“GCCA worked behind the scenes for over a year to prepare for the biggest date in 2014, leveraging every possible asset and contact to rally around the historic Peoples’ Climate March in the run-up to the UN Climate Leaders Summit…. In the preceding months, GCCA convened weekly calls with key partners 350.org, Avaaz, USCAN and Climate Nexus to catalyse activities and identify gaps…. Everything came together on the day as we bore witness to the world’s biggest ever climate march, and inspiring events across the globe, with world leaders, business people, activists, parents and artists walking shoulder-to-shoulder.” — GCCA Annual Report 2014

Kelly Rigg, Founding Director, Varda Group, US: The Economics of Sustainable Development, 16-19 June 2012 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Photo: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) website

Based on the UN driven spectacle and 3-syllable catchphrase (WalktheWalk) that mirrored TckTckTck in 2009, perhaps then it should be of no surprise that Kelly Rigg, former executive director of TckTckTck (Global Campaign for Climate Action) and senior campaign director for Greenpeace International, was identified by Forbes (September 25, 2014) as the key organizer of the People’s climate parade creating yet another umbrella group comprised of approx. 1300 NGOs. Rigg is also a founding director and business manager of The Varda Group consulting firm founded in 2003 with Rémi Parmentier, also with an extensive Greenpeace history:

“Rémi Parmentier has been involved in the process of Rio +20 from the start. He participated in the intersession meetings and the Preparatory Committee in New York with “informal consultations” on behalf of various international organizations and alliances. Previously, as the Political Director of Greenpeace International, in the Summit of Johannesburg in 2002, Parmentier was the negotiator and protagonist of the agreement between the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Greenpeace International on the Kyoto Protocol.” [Source]

Parmentier also serves as Deputy Executive Secretary for the Global Ocean Commission which was launched in February 2013. Inés de Águeda who serves as the communications officer for the Global Ocean Commission is also an associate at the Varda Group.

“With Kelly, Inés and Rémi, the Varda Group was almost complete this week at the meeting of the Global Ocean Commission in New York.” — Varda Group Facebook page

Commissioners of the Global Ocean Commission include José María Figueres (co-chair), President of Costa Rica from1994 to 1998; President of the Carbon War Room, David Miliband, John Podesta (chair of the Center for American Progress and a former White House Chief of Staff ), Sri Mulyani Indrawati ( Managing Director at the World Bank), Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation and other high profile individuals.

The link between most, if not all of these commissioners is the shared desire for carbon markets and/or the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (PES).

From the Global Ocean Commission Report 2014, The Value of the High Seas:

“One of the first questions asked by the commissioners was: can we place an economic value on what the high seas provides for our planet? While the science of ‘natural resources accounting’ is still relatively new, work we commissioned made clear that the high seas generates a wide variety of benefits to people and the planet,4 all of which must be considered before recommendations for action can be made.

The high seas supports major categories of vital ecosystem services, including: air purification, waste treatment and lifecycle maintenance; high seas carbon capture and storage; high seas ‘provisioning’ of fish and other seafood; genetic and ornamental resources; and tourism, leisure and recreation. While not all of them can be valued using current data, these ecosystem services do all have demonstrable economic value. Research carried out for the Commission has produced estimates of the economic value of two key high seas ecosystem services – carbon storage and fisheries – showing that they each generate tens of billions of dollars of value to society annually.

The ocean has been responsible for the capture and storage of more than half of the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels and a third of the total produced by humankind. This ability of the ocean to capture and store carbon reduces the rates of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide and can slow changes in global temperature and other consequences associated with climate change. It is estimated that nearly half a billion tonnes of carbon, the equivalent of over 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, are captured and stored by the living components of high seas ecosystems every year. Based on current calculations of the economic cost of additional carbon in the atmosphere, the value of the carbon storage by high seas ecosystems is estimated at US$148 billion a year (with a range of US$74 to US$222 billion for mid-estimates). By comparison, the entire global Official Development Aid outlay for 2013 was US$134.8 billion.”

Rigg is included within the extensive acknowledgments noted in this report (page 84). Rigg is also acknowledged in the 2006 paper Casting the Net Broadly: Ecosystem-based Management Beyond National Jurisdiction.

“Finally, a World Ocean Public Trust that unites governance of the high seas and the Area into one regime under an EBM [Ecosystem-based Management] framework should be established throughout the world’s oceans in areas beyond national jurisdiction.” — Casting the Net Broadly: Ecosystem-based Management Beyond National Jurisdiction, 2006

Considering oceans store 50 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere and approx. half of all the carbon dioxide produced by humans since the industrial revolution, and accepting the Earth’s water sources will only continue to diminish, it is not surprising that the elite establishment seeks to appoint and lock in a small body of special interests in the creation of a single global regime to fully control and exploit the high seas. Water will be secured by privatization and a global government regime that oversees the planet (which is approx. 70% water), the Earth’s remaining and quickly diminishing forests will be secured by the carbon market mechanism REDD, valuable land (thus food) will be secured via land grabs while payment for ecosystems services allows the oligarchs to catch and seize everything that falls between the cracks. Managing oceans ties control into all adjacent life. The non-profit industrial complex is the bitch that makes it all possible, the bitch that makes the dreams of the rich and powerful come true.

This elite regime (with “payments for ecosystems services” as an embraced ideology) is based on further entitlements for the entitled: the desire for private property-type rights under the guise (and subsequent marketing) of custody and stewardship. The Brave New World scheme takes refuge behind the cloak of the much utilized phrases “polluter pays principle” and “externalizing costs” which slowly and meticulously builds the collective acquiescence of ordinary citizens. The goal, which is the blatant monetization of nature, sits relatively concealed, just outside the frame. Such enticing language, catch phrases and holistic imagery are necessary and critical if the elite are to succeed in the most cunning, coup d’état in the history of corporate dominance. In reality, the polluter pays only what the polluter decides he should pay, in exchange for owning/controlling Earth’s final remaining natural resources. It’s not a slap on the hand, it’s literally the rich rewarding themselves with full control of the Earth, a sick scheme created by psychopaths with god complexes.

Current and past clients of The Varda Group include: Amnesty International, Ceres, USA, Conservation International – Marine Programme, Friends of the Earth UK,Friends of the Earth US,Global Call for Climate Action (TckTckTck campaign),Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC),Greenpeace International, Markets for Change, Australia, Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), USA, Oceana, Oxfam-Novib, The Netherlands, Pew Environment Group, UNAIDS, UNEP, WWF and countless others. [Full list as published on the Varda website]

Rigg is also identified as the chair of the recently created UN Momentum for Change Advisory Panel.

Below video: Momentum for Change – Change for Good by UN Momentum for Change. Note that actor Mark Ruffalo lends himself (yet again) in order to incite interest and exhilaration exploiting a pathological celebrity fetish that consumes western societies. The core and unstated message by the UN, delivered by Ruffalo is that those with privilege can retain it as the “new economy” will magically make such privilege benign. Also in regards to the video, it is important to note the language. The word “change” used twice in one sentence, which is the obvious utilization of the title/theme of Klein’s book This Changes Everything.

The key areas of focus for the UN Momentum for Change are the following: 1) the Urban Poor, implemented with the financial support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Further reading: The “Green Revolution” Bill Gates, Philanthropy and Social Engineering], 2) Women for Results, implemented with the financial support of The Rockefeller Foundation [Further reading: 35% of Puerto Rican Women Sterilized], 3) Financing for Climate Friendly Investment, implemented in partnership with the World Economic Forum and 4) ICT Solutions, implemented in partnership with the Global e-Sustainability Initiative.

Forbes, Sept 25, 2014: Leadership Lessons from The People’s Climate March:

“With that as her model of leadership it is perhaps no surprise that so many cats have been so successfully herded. But there is more. The other leadership lesson is putting project before person.”

Truer words were never spoken. As in Africa under the TckTckTck campaign where economic growth was valued as being more important than the life of Africans, such projects (as referred to above), have a singular common thread. They are all based on more of the same perpetual growth; perpetual growth that is dependent upon and interwoven with exploitation and environmental degradation – perpetual growth which society has collectively deemed more important than life itself.

The free-market-based “solutions” have already been designed by the United Nations (think Millennium Goals), leading green-house-gas omitting obstructionist states, think tanks and institutions (think Clinton Global Initiative and 350.org’s “friends on Wall Street” divestment scheme). The NGOs are financed to the tune of billions to build normalization and acquiescence to the “new economy“, also referred to as “sustainable capitalism”. An integral aspect of “sustainable capitalism” (as if there is such a thing), includes the commodification of all Earth’s remaining natural resources to be mainstreamed by the year 2020. [“Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism by 2020 will require independent, collaborative and voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil society, which we hope to accelerate by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability.” – Sustainable Investment Paper, Generation, Feb 15, 2012, Generation Investment founded by Al Gore and Goldman Sachs David Blood]

A key area of work being done at a global level today on behalf of oligarch financiers, is the imposing of western values throughout the world via soft power. No one is in a better position to accomplish this more successfully than those at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex. Both Avaaz and 350, perhaps the most influential (thus most powerful) founding members of GCCA, have successfully spread their tentacles across the globe, having become international in scope. Such soft power not only acclimatizes foreign countries to western (non)values and (corporate)culture, it lends itself to the strategies devised for destabilizations and continued imperialism and colonization by imperial states. Money flows from the corporations and oligarchs, through the foundations (tax free) to the NGOs, to training sessions and workshops set up in countries where the western influence (and authority) subtly seeks to embed itself. The fact that the target audience is youth is not coincidental; rather it is very much strategic.

“A five-day Beautiful Trouble training session for 25 young climate activists was organised jointly with 350.org and Avaaz in September with participants from Belarus, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. GCCA provided expertise, outreach, logistical support and part of the funding for the session, while the group shared an innovative methodology that has proved successful at bringing people out on the street and encouraging them to join the global movement. As a direct result of this session, youth groups organised Peoples’ Climate March actions on 21st September in both Budapest and Warsaw, and successfully used these tactics to take a visible stand against a government squeeze on civil society space in Hungary. GCCA will continue to support the groups involved as they work to mobilise citizens across the region.” — GCCA Annual Report 2014 [Emphasis added]

As the aforementioned avalanche of social media regarding the so-called Climate March demonstrates, Avaaz co-founder Ricken Patel certainly was accurate in his guidance to harness the power of social media via mobile phones in his 2007 report for the Gates Foundation. [Prospects for e-Advocacy in the Global South: A Res Publica Report for the Gates Foundation | Source]

Social Media & the Cellular Savior

In the report, Paten states the following under the heading “The Cellular Savior”:

“The mobile phone is changing the way the global south communicates. Even as the number of landlines grows slowly, the growth of mobile phones is sky-rocketing, changing the connectivity potential for the planet…. What these figures indicate is that mobile phones are a great opportunity for e-advocates who want to reach a mass audience, and the applications are endless. [p. 18]

… After the successful implementation of SMS [text messaging] campaigns at the national level, the Gates Foundation might decide to fund an international SMS campaign. Unlike the local SCO partners of the pilot programs, an international campaign would partner with international advocacy organizations with strong technology programs like Greenpeace, Oxfam, and the new international e-advocacy organization Avaaz.” [p. 41] [highlighted text in original document]

If nothing else, the #WalktheWalk campaign devised by Purpose Inc. must have been a refreshing change from the multiple hate campaigns unleashed by Purpose Inc. that were created to build public acquiescence for illegal U.S. led airstrikes to commence on Syria. [Further reading: SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire]

State of Play on the People’s Climate March

The Climate Spectacle in New York City was overseen/managed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from the onset. The members only “State of Play on the People’s Climate March event listed by the Environmental Grantmakers Association Website (posted August 20, 2014 – 1:00pm) stated the following:

“An unprecedented 550 organizations from labor, faith, environment and justice movements are coming together to make the September 21st People’s Climate March the largest ever public mobilization on climate. Join us to learn why such a huge diversity of organizations, networks, and individuals are mobilizing at this key moment, just days before the Climate Leaders Summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon. We’ll discuss how organizations are working together to bridge movements, as this effort not only seeks to raise awareness for climate impacts, but also open a significant political narrative about economic and environmental justice.

Speakers:

Irene Krarup, Executive Director, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation (moderator)
Emma Ruby-Sachs, Campaigns Manager, Avaaz
Jamie Henn, Political and Communications Director, 350.org
Eddie Bautista, Executive Director, NYCEJA”

“This will be the first of a series of two calls – the second will be a funder-only conversation during the first week of September. If you are unable to make either call and still want to learn more, please feel free to contact Stephanie Bencivenga of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (sbencivenga[at]rbf.org) or Irene Krarup of V.K. Rasmussen Foundation (ikrarup[at]vkrf.org).” [Emphasis added]

Tom Steyer #Walks the Walk

“@*TomSteyer and @NextGenClimate #WalkTheWalk on climate change. Will you?” – Next Gen Climate, Sept 18, 2014

Camaraderie tours: Right: Bill McKibben, left: Tom Steyer

The environmental movement is strategically sought by (and controlled by) the very members of the same 1% whose privileged lives are not only predicated off continued reliance on a carbon based economy, but profit from its continuance: “Notably, the President of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is a close friend of Tom Steyer. Steyer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and founder of Next Gen Climate. In 2012, McKibben and Steyer hiked through the Adirondack Mountains, where the two men bonded and McKibben encouraged Steyer to become active in environmental causes, including opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.” [Source: “How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EP”] In addition, this following excerpt from a Time magazine article illustrates how the elite not only influence NGOs, but government itself: “So when Barack Obama appeared at Tom Steyer’s San Francisco home for a fundraiser last year, the President had to know there would be an ask. The 56-year-old Steyer is a hedge-fund billionaire and a major-league Democratic donor.” [Source]

Photo: People’s Climate March, 2014. Bill McKibben (350.org founder) with Tom Steyer, hedge fund billionaire and founder of Generation Next

Flood Wall Street | Fitzgibbon Media

The #WalktheWalk press release was conducted by the high-profile PR agency Fitzgibbon Media. Fitzgibbon Clients include 350.org, SumOfUs, Purpose, MoveOn (an Avaaz co-founder), Credo, The Nation Institute and Amnesty International to name a few.

Note that the Flood Wall Street press coverage is also featured on the Fitzgibbon website (under the “coverage” section).

Fitzgibbon attributes the “alternative, direct action”, branded “Flood Wall Street” (supposedly independent from the largest climate spectacle in history) media coverage to their client, Energy Action Coalition.

Energy Action Coalition (“a coalition of 50 leading youth organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada.”) partners include The Responsible Endowments Coalition, Southern Energy Network (a founding member of the Energy Action Coalition), Green for All (a Ceres partner; 350.org’s Van Jones is co-founder of Green for All and serves as president) and Groundswell (It is important to note the White House Office and 350.org connections/advisors. Supporters include David Rockefeller Fund, Rockefeller Foundation , Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Calvert foundation (a Ceres partner). Groundswell Board of Directors includes Jessica Bailey, Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brother Fund’s global and domestic Sustainable Development program.

That the “notable” speakers highlighted in the Flood Wall Street media release (Monday September 22, 2014), were an all-white liberal cast (inclusive of 350.org’s Klein and McKibben) is completely lost on society at large is nothing less than a tragedy – classism and racism so normalized that it goes virtually unnoticed. Indeed, the non-profit industrial complex is built on a foundation of white privilege and liberalism with the mainstream populace identifying with those in the ivory towers rather than those being pissed upon down below.

The Flood Wall Street twitter account demonstrates that those at the helm did not choose to take cues from radical activists, nor those oppressed and marginalized, but rather a slew of liberal sycophants and big greens including Bill McKibben, 350.org alliances, Energy Action Coalition, Green For All, Nature Conservancy, WWF, TckTckTck /TckTckTck alliances, Al Gore/Gore Alliances, etc.

Photo: The after-spectacle party with Bill McKibben (350.org) on left and Van Jones (350.org Board, Green for All, etc.) on right. Note the servers and wine glasses in the background.

And while the champagne undoubtedly over-flowed at the A-list celebration that followed the spectacle from afar, a 63 year-old man from Chicago, IL missed his flight as he sat over-night in jail with other well-meaning citizens/protestors that were arrested at the Flood Wall Street action.

Well intentioned Flood Wall Street protestors chanted “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” The problem is that their questions were directed to the wrong group of people.

A Groundswell of Revolving Doors

“Climate change affects struggling communities first and worst. Yet, working families are all too often priced out of being part of the solution. By making clean energy simple and affordable at the community level, Groundswell is paving the way for a strong-and inclusive-clean economy.” – Van Jones, Adviser to Groundswell

Groundswell’s theory of change is that of “civic consumption.” A model to save the planet by further consuming: “When we join together, we can drive prices down and give more business to the companies that are doing the greatest good.” (Emphasis in the original.) [Source] It’s important to note that 350.org & Avaaz are simply the behavioural change agents at the front of the stage. It’s behind the curtain where the future is being designed, by NGOs and institutions further up the food chain of hierarchy (Groundswell, B-Team, Generation Investments, Clinton Global Initiative, United Nations, etc. etc.) This is the paradigmatic design of the NGOs at the forefront and why they are paid to build acquiescence to through financial support. The need to normalize insanity – actions that will change nothing – is paramount.

The revolving door between the foundations and the NGOs they finance can best be demonstrated by the career path of Jessy Tolkan. Tolkan served as the Political Director for Green For All. Green for All was officially launched in September 2007 at the Clinton Global Initiative (as was 1Sky). Prior to her role at Green For All, Tolkan served as Executive Director for Energy Action Coalition. In addition, Tolkan serves/served on the Steering Committee of Rockefeller incubator project 1Sky (merged with 350.org in 2011), as well as the 350.org Board of Directors, Groundswell, and many many others. Tolkan also serves as the Global Director of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Development for two muliti-national automakers Renault and Nissan. Today, joining in the footsteps of a multitude of other establishment “environmentalists” such as Rigg (The Varda Group), Tolkan is the President of Tolkan & Co., strategy firm with clients ranging from the Working Families Party to the Renault-Nissan Corporation.

“SXSW Eco speaker Tolkan has impeccable environmental and social justice credentials. In 2008, she was arrested in front of the White House. By 2011, she was inside, meeting with President Obama to discuss the Keysone XL pipeline. She arrived at the Austin enviro conference fresh from the recent #FloodWallStreet protest. But her presentation, “The Road to Environmental Revolution … Powered by Consumers” wasn’t about public protests. It was about direct action of another kind, the kind determined by where you put your dollars….” — October 15, 2014, Advancing the Electric Car Revolution One Voting Consumer At a Time

The capture of any and all grass roots movements that may gain traction (against all odds) is also a task of paramount importance. The non-profit industrial complex, to which such agencies are part of, are expected to bring radical movements into the fold of “reason”, that is not necessarily spoken but rather just understood:

“When we collaborated on a #blacklivesmatter Die-In at the NYC City Council on December 8, 2014, Groundswell successfully insured our action graced the front page of the New York Times.” – Groundswell Website

Flood Wall Street | Bomb Syria

Wag the dog. Flood Wall Street. Bomb Syria! Image courtesy of Mark Gould

On September 22, 2014, the day following Obama’s regurgitated message “I #Walkthewalk on climate change”… while all eyes were on “Flood Wall Street”, the Obama administration began bombing Syria. With yet another illegal attack/invasion, this would be his 8^th war on Muslim states, making former war criminal George Bush look like a school boy in comparison. Yet, as per usual, the “progressive greens” would not attack Obama on his latest illegal attack on a sovereign country, rather, they would respond with the following comment posted alongside the image featured on the 350.org Facebook page. The date was September 23, 2014; a full day after the Obama administration began bombing Syria:

“Wondering if President Obama was listening this weekend? Here’s what he said when he went to the UN today:”

The above comment with the image (below) was posted on September 23, 2014 on the 350.org Facebook page. A full day after the Obama administration began bombing Syria.

As of September 25, 2014 (9:53am) 4,910 others “liked” this and 3,316 shared it. The commencement of yet another country being bombed by the U.S. government all while the U.S. fails to meet the needs of its own citizens appears completely lost on 350.org followers.

Yet, buried within the comments under the graphic above that captures the delusional 350.org hopium and branding of Obama is a comment that actually does reflect our existing reality:

“fuck his bourgeois imperialist ass, no surprise with all those damn capitalist ngos “marching”….we need a real mass movement not this clownery” – Ricardito Ramos

Sadly, it doesn’t take much these days for a PR campaign to successfully transform the world’s greatest war criminal/terrorist into a hero while simultaneously portraying a leader of a sovereign state, who refuses to be a puppet to the U.S., as yet another crazed “dictator”.

Nor does it take much to sell the white Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, fossil-fuel glutton/consumer extraordinaire, as the United Nation’s “new voice for climate advocacy” and voice of Indigenous Peoples – while Bolivia’s first Indigenous President, Evo Morales (whose 2009 demand for the Earth not to exceed 1C was crushed by the NPIC) and Uruguay President Jose Mujica, a model for voluntary disciplined minimalism, go ignored by the NPIC and the media in tandem.

20 September 2014 – As the eyes of the world turn to New York City, where thousands of people are expected to gather tomorrow for a massive march in advance of a United Nations climate summit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed UN Messenger of Peace, Leonardo DiCaprio, who he has hailed as the world body’s “new voice for climate advocacy.”

Edward Bernays applauds.

The phrase “actions speak louder than words” has no room in a culture intoxicated with celebrity fetish.

People’s Climate March. Celebrity fetish.

“When a strong, powerful and passionate unabashedly INDIGENOUS LEADER [Evo Morales] becomes PRESIDENT of his homelands and uses that to push the notion that Mother Earth is a Living Being and has rights as humans do AND makes a passionate speech the same day as a European/American celebrity [Leonardo DiCaprio] does the same and the European/American celebrity is declared a hero around the village fires there is nothing left to discuss except how assimilated Indigenous people’s minds really value white beauty standards over Indigenous integrity, strength and power. SMDH” – Rosstopher Sirhc

While 350.org et. al. appeal to the populace to place their energy and “hope” into begging to their “leaders”, a dose of reality may be in order. They don’t give a fuck about the planet. They don’t give a fuck about Iraqis. They don’t give a fuck about Ukrainians. They don’t give a fuck about the Congolese. They don’t give a fuck about Syrians. They don’t give a fuck about Haitians. And they DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. Not today, not tomorrow. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better off we will be.

Bromides, Platitudes, and Cliches: Defending those that Protect Capital

“See, I’ve been reading these threads [that pertain to the investigation into the People’s Climate March], and when I ask pertinent questions, what I keep getting is bromides, platitudes, and cliches… I can’t help but ask myself, isn’t that what this march is about? If it weren’t, it seems to me that there would be more substance to the responses I keep getting, and reading.” – Tom Frank, Sept 17, 2014, FaceBook

Who could argue that 400,000 citizens working hand-in-hand with their children, family and neighbours, transforming 400,000 (grass) lawns, boulevards and public spaces into beautiful food gardens (a political act in itself) would have had far more effect in establishing a path to self-sufficiency and energy efficiency than burning fossil fuels and energies to partake in a spectacle – a spectacle created only to build acquiescence to further collective insanity.

Until there is no more bread, finally leaving one too hungry to be entertained by the circus any longer, we will not see the take-down of those who oppress us nor will we bear witness to the necessary destruction of the industrialized capitalist system built upon patriarchy, racism, classism, imperialism, colonialism and ecological devastation. Decades of indoctrination, obedience, pacification and overindulgence has left us docile and incapable of mustering up the necessary courage for meaningful, difficult, real resistance … the kind that puts the fear of “god” into the state. The privileged – until no longer privileged and famished – will not participate in a revolution. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) financed “revolutions” do not count. And this is our reality. This is what we must face – if we are to change the writing on the wall in any regard.

Excerpt from End Game:

“I just got home from talking to a … longtime activist. She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the forests of Oregon. Whenever activists learned a hillside was going to be sprayed, they assembled there, hoping their presence would stop the poisoning. But each time, like clockwork, helicopters appeared, and each time, like clockwork, helicopters dumped loads of Agent Orange onto the hillside and onto the protesting activists. The campaign did not succeed. “‘But,’ she said to me, ‘I’ll tell you what did. A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills, and they sent messages to the Bureau of Land Management and to Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber companies saying, ‘We knows the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.’ “I waited for her to finish. “‘You know what happened next?’ she asked. “‘I think I do,’ I responded. “‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘The spraying stopped.'”

[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, Political Context, Counterpunch, 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.]

Aug 25

2015

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Avaaz, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose Inc.

Avaaz Human Rights Watch Ken Roth Purpose Inc. Syrian Civil Defence The Syria Campaign White Helmets

Note on Credibility & Lack of Impartiality of Those Making Anti-Syria Allegations

In Gaza,

August 25, 2015

by Eva Bartlett

So today, coming across yet another tool of the Imperialist/Zionist war on Syria who is sharing propaganda photos and posts which purport the depicted people to be victims of the Syrian Army, we dug a little deeper.

Who was the photographer? Are these photos *actually* from Syria or elsewhere? *If* in Syria, when were the photos taken, where, what context…?

This would be a gargantuan investigation, if one is to look at every MSM allegation against Syria and follow the photo trail. It needs to be done, but will certainly take much time, as there is SO much mis-information and outright LIES out there on Syria (for example, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeting a video of zionist-bombed and flattened al-Shujayee, Gaza, summer 2014, and claiming it to be Aleppo under “Assad’s barrel bombs”… that is just one of Roth’s many deceitful tweets. Due to outcry, he had to retract his tweet, but that hasn’t stopped his further lies.).

However, let’s take the case of Khaled Khatib, a photographer in Aleppo whose photos many MSM publications have used.

His photos put hearts on sleeves of easily-duped, perhaps well-intended viewers… But where is he photographing from, and with whom?

Khatib, a member of the Imperialist-founded “White Helmets” is embedded in terrorist territory in Aleppo.

This excerpt is from a February 2015 Guardian article, calling for the US to release radar information of Syrian airspace to the terrorists (Oh, sorry, “civilians” and “rescue workers”) in terrorist-held districts of Aleppo.

Who are the Syrian Civil Defence/White Helmets Khatib is a member of and propagates for?

An April 2015 article by Rick Sterling sheds critical light on these nefarious “Human Rights” actors:

“WHITE HELMETS / SYRIAN CIVIL DEFENCE – This is a new organization, highly publicized as civilian rescue workers in Syria. Their video and reports have influenced Avaaz and other humanitarian groups. Avaaz refers to the White Helmets as “Syria’s respected and non-partisan civil protection force.”

In reality the White Helmets is a project created by the UK and USA. Training of civilians in Turkey has been overseen by former British military officer and current contractor, James Le Mesurier. Promotion of the program is done by “The Syria Campaign” supported by the foundation of billionaire Ayman Asfari. The White Helmets is clearly a public relations project which has received glowing publicity from HuffPo to Nicholas Kristof at the NYT. White Helmets have been heavily promoted by the U.S. Institute of Peace (U.S.IP) whose leader began the press conference by declaring “U.S.IP has been working for the Syrian Revolution from the beginning”.

Apart from the PR work, White Helmets work in areas of Aleppo and Idlib controlled by Nusra (Al Queda). The video from a medical clinic on March 16 starts with a White Helmets logo. The next video of same date and place continues with the Nusra logo.

US and UK tax dollars pay for a program which has an appealing rescue component and is then used to market and promote the USA and UK policy of regime change in Syria in de facto alliance with Nusra.

The fake “independence and neutrality” of White Helmets is shown by their active promotion of a No Fly Zone.”

In his article (and it is imperative reading!), Sterling illuminates on the other HR actors (HRW, Avaaz, MSF, PHR…) and rightly notes:

“The humanitarians pushing for intervention in Syria are not R2P (responsible to protect). They are R4W (responsible for war).”

So, when you see a heart-tugging photo by Khatib or any other White Helmet, step back and question: whose agenda do these photos serve? The answer, if you are open to knowing it, is clear.

Hint: it isn’t the Syrian people.

Apr 13

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose Inc.

350/1Sky Avaaz Buffett Department of Defense Internet Fraud Purpose Inc. Soros U.S. Department of State

Internet Fraud: Avaaz, Purpose, 350

Public Good Project

April 11, 2015

by Jay Taber

Soliciting donations and selling memberships in an enterprise that is wholly contrary to that promoted on the Internet is a federal felony in the United States. Internet fraud in the US is policed by the Federal Trade Commission, and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney General.

Avaaz, Purpose and 350 use the Internet for fraudulent purposes, i.e. “humanitarian intervention” and fossil fuel divestment campaigns. As these organizations are a product of the Democratic Party, and tools of Wall Street moguls like Buffett and Soros, they will not be prosecuted for fraud.

They could be charged under international law for abetting crimes against humanity, but with the UN controlled by the US, this will not happen. That leaves civil society moral sanction. Moral sanction against these NGO adjuncts to the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense, because they are politically immune to prosecution by the Department of Justice.

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations.]

Apr 13

2015

newWKOGadnim

The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria, The International Campaign to Destabilize Venezuela, The War on Libya - There Was No Evidence

#withSyria Avaaz Libya New York Times Nicholas Kristof Purpose Inc. Syrian Civil Defence The Syria Campaign White Helmets

Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators | White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof & Syria No Fly Zone

Dissident Voice

April 9, 2015

by Rick Sterling

You might think that after seeing the consequences of their campaign for “freedom and democracy” in Libya, journalists like Nicholas Kristof and “humanitarian campaigners” like Avaaz would have some qualms.

Unfortunately they have learned nothing. They have generally not been held to account, with a few nice exceptions such as this Greenwald/Hussain article. And now they are at it again. Many well-intentioned but naive members of the U.S. and international public are again being duped into signing an Avaaz petition based on fraud and misinformation. If the campaign succeeds in leading to a No Fly Zone in Syria, it will result in vastly increased war, mayhem and bloodshed.

The following illustration shows the sequence and trail of deceit leading to Avaaz’s call for a No Fly Zone in Syria.

Following is a brief description documenting the flow of misinformation and deceit, beginning at the Source and ending with Avaaz’s campaign for NATO/US attack on Syria.

Source

The “Source” is unknown at this time. It might be some US agency with or without the approval of the Obama administration. Or it might be another foreign government which seeks, in plain violation of international law, the overthrow the Syrian government. In addition to the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain and Qatar have each spent hundreds of millions and even billions in heavy weaponry plus 3,000 tons of weapons via Croatia plus arming, training, supplying and paying the salaries of thousands of domestic and international mercenaries sowing mayhem and destruction in Syria.

At this point we do not know but there is a REWARD: $100 finders fee to the first person who can provide credible evidence identifying the SOURCE.

PURPOSE Inc.

This is an international PR firm. CEO is Jeremy Heimans, a co-founder of Avaaz.

President is Kevin Steinberg, previous CEO of World Economic Forum USA (antithesis of World Social Forum). Their website describes their goal:

“Purpose builds and accelerates movements to tackle the world’s biggest problems.”

In this case the “problem” is reluctance to take over Syrian skies and land.

For a hefty fee, “Purpose” will dupe the public and break down that reluctance.

Toward that end, Purpose created “The Syria Campaign”.

The Syria Campaign

The Syria Campaign began in spring 2014. One of their first efforts was to work to prevent publicity and information about the Syrian Presidential Election of June 2014. Accordingly, “The Syria Campaign” pressured Facebook to remove advertisements or publicity about the Syrian election. Since then Syria Campaign has engineered huge media exposure and mythology about their baby, the “White Helmets” using all sorts of social and traditional media. The campaigns are largely fact free. For example, the Syrian election was dismissed out of hand by them and John Kerry but taken seriously by many millions of Syrians.

The Syria Campaign is managed by Anna Nolan, who grew up in northern Ireland and has very likely never been to Syria. In addition to promoting the White Helmets, Syria Campaign promotes a new social media campaign called “Planet Syria”. It features emotional pleas for the world to take notice of Syria in another thinly veiled effort pushing for foreign intervention and war.

According to their website, The Syria Campaign received start-up funding from the foundation of Ayman Asfari, a billionaire who made his money in the oil and gas services industry.

White Helmets

White Helmets is the newly minted name for “Syrian Civil Defence”. Despite the name, Syria Civil Defence was not created by Syrians nor does it serve Syria. Rather it was created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor whose company is based in Dubai.

The trainees are said to be ‘nonpartisan’ but only work in rebel-controlled areas of Idlib (now controlled by Nusra/Al Queda) and Aleppo. There are widely divergent claims regarding the number of people trained by the White Helmets and the number of people rescued. The numbers are probably highly exaggerated especially since rebel-controlled territories have few civilians. A doctor who recently served in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo described it as a ghost town. The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Queda in Syria). Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda.

But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention. A White Helmet leader wrote a recent Washington Post editorial. White Helmets are also very active on social media with presence on Twitter, Facebook etc. According to their website, to contact White Helmets email The Syria Campaign which underscores the relationship.

Nicholas Kristof/New York Times

The “White Helmets” campaign has been highly successful because of uncritical media promotion. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was an advocate of the NATO/US attack on Libya. According to him, villagers who had been shot, injured and their homes destroyed were not bitter, they were thankful! . “Hugs from Libyans” is how he viewed it. It was, of course, nonsense, helping to pave the way in the invasion and destruction of the country.

Now Kristof is uncritically promoting the White Helmets, aiding and abetting their political and propaganda message seeking foreign intervention in Syria.

Avaaz

Avaaz is an online lobby organization founded in 2007 by Jeremy Heimans (now CEO of Purpose) and others. Start-up funding was provided by George Soros’ foundation. While Avaaz has promoted some worthy causes, they have been prominent in promoting neoliberal foreign policies in keeping with the U.S. State Department. Accordingly, they had a major disinformation campaign against Venezuela last year.

Avaaz very actively promoted a No Fly Zone in Libya. They are now very actively promoting the same for Syria.

In-depth research and exposure of Avaaz can be found here. The titles give some indication: “Faking It: Charity Communications in the Firing Line”, “Syria: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire”, “Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps for Militarism”.

Avaaz justifies its call for No Fly Zone in part on White Helmets. Given the close interconnections between Avaaz and Purpose, they are surely aware that White Helmets is a media creation. This calls into question their sincerity.

Conclusion

The manipulators rely on emotional images and messages, not facts. They depend on willing partners in the mainstream media who amplify the easy and glib characterizations of who and what is good and bad. The manipulators depend on their audience not asking questions or investigating on their own. In these times of rapid spread of visual and text information via social media, the potential for deceit is huge.

Snapshots

Avaaz Petition for Libya No Fly Zone — 2011

Avaaz Petition for Syria No Fly Zone — 2015 (Syria Campaign Posting)

Kristoff/New York Times/2011

Kristoff/New York Times/2015

The Real White Helmet Purpose: Propaganda

[Rick Sterling is active with the Syria Solidarity Movement and Mt Diablo Peace and Justice Center. He can be emailed at: rsterling1@gmail.com.]

Mar 05

2015

newWKOGadnim

Avaaz, Purpose Inc., The International Campaign to Destabilize Venezuela

Avaaz Libya Purpose Inc. Syria

As Empire Froths at the Mouth, Avaaz Eyes Venezuela

March 5, 2015

Above: The Avaaz “Good Versus Evil” campaign for the June, 2012 Rio Summit. Above: A downloadable poster as found on the Avaaz Press Centre published in the Financial Times. Vilification: Note the dark cast/ugly sky behind the leaders Avaaz would wish you to believe are “evil,” versus the light and sun shining through over the Imperialist, obstructionist “leaders” that Avaaz is attempting to convince you are “good.” [Further reading: Rio Summit “Good Versus Evil” Advert Displays Blatant Racism and Imperialism at Core of Avaaz]

Via @Karol_en_Red: “As with Libya & Syria, Avaaz sets out for a massive campaign against Bolivarian Venezuela: 1st email circulating”

Those at the helm of Avaaz (and Purpose Inc.) possess a deep understanding of the behavioural economics of hatred. They execute it brilliantly, albeit, cautiously:

Avaaz petition, February 12, 2015:

“Currently Venezuela has the highest rate of HIV infection and teenage pregnancy in South America. So health agencies are alarmed because condoms are needed to prevent these cases are triggered. While the President replied evasively, the local office of the World Health Organization (PAHO) can enact emergency and build international support for massively providing condoms and reasonably priced.”* [Read the full text here.]

Note the framing/language: “while the president replied evasively“. President Maduro is anything but evasive. Evasive is the Avaaz petition itself which deliberately omits the economic warfare, economic sanctions, and an ongoing coup attempt waged upon the Maduro Government, all led by the United States.

Yet none of this is surprising considering Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello is a pro-war former U.S. Representative under the Obama Administration. Nor is it surprising considering Avaaz’s role in the annihilation of Libya and their (failed) attempt to impose of a no-fly zone on Syria. Purpose Inc. (a public relations firm established by Avaaz co-founders) continues multiple campaigns intended to build acquiescence for a war on Syria. [Further reading: SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire | Wag the Dog: Campaigns of Purpose | Avaaz: the World’s Most Powerful NGO]

January 20, 2015: Venezuelan Right-Wing Wants to “Make the Economy Scream”

“As Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro warns that the opposition’s economic war is part of the overall attempt to oust his government, teleSUR English interviews Dr Franciso Domiguez to look at the how this strategy has been previously used against progressive governments in Latin Ameirca in the past.”

Jan 24, 2015: Maduro cites ongoing economic coup d’état in Venezuela

“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro affirmed that there is an ongoing economic coup d’etat in Venezuela orchestrated by the country’s radical right-wing opposition. Maduro called on the National Assembly of Venezuela to launch an investigation to bring those responsible for the economic destabilization offensive to justice.”

January 29, 2015: CELAC summit ends with declaration in support of Venezuela:

“The summit of the Community of Latin and American States (CELAC) concluded in Costa Rica today with a declaration in solidarity with Venezuela. Various Latin American presidents declared their support for the Venezuelan government in the face of destabilization efforts.”

March 4, 2015: Venezuela exposes opposition involvement in coup attempt

“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro revealed new evidence concerning February’s failed coup. During his weekly television show on Tuesday. Maduro played audio recordings of a New York based Venezuelan opposition leader’s declaration to be read had the coup succeeded. Meanwhile, a delegation from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) is scheduled to arrive in Caracas to mediate tensions between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. Participating in the delegation are representatives of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper.”

February 25, 2015: Why the CIA Won’t Give Up on Venezuela:

Interview with Eva Golinger

http://youtu.be/v9AcrvknLEU

[*Original in Spanish: Actualmente Venezuela tiene la tasa más alta de infección por VIH y embarazo adolescente en Suramérica. Por eso las entidades de salud están alarmadas, pues se necesitan preservativos para evitar que estos casos se disparen. Mientras el Presidente responde con evasivas, la oficina local de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (PAHO) puede decretar la emergencia y conseguir apoyo internacional para proveer condones de forma masiva y a precios razonables.] Read the full text here.

Further reading:

February 23, 2015: Venezuelan Health Ministry to Distribute 18 Million Free Condoms: “The Venezuelan Health Ministry announced on Friday that the National Public Health System will distribute 18 million condoms for men and women free of charge over the course of 2015. The move comes amidst artificial scarcities of contraceptives generated by private producers and distributors as part of an economic war against the government of Nicolas Maduro.” http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11226

February 17, 2015: What is Inexcusable is Venezuela’s Political Independence by John Pilger: “There are straightforward principles and dynamics at work here. Washington wants to get rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of U.S. designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious U.S.”

March 3, 2015: What Is Happening in Venezuela? “Coups and countercoups. Crackdowns. Economic crackups. Seven cents for a tube of toothpaste and $755 for a box of condoms. Falling oil prices. The arrest of an opposition leader. Washington plots. Human Rights Watch tweets. South America rallies…. Greg Grandin talks to a panel of experts to find out what really is going on in Venezuela.” http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11246

• Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I
• Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section II
• Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section III
• Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I
• Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II
• Welcome to the Brave New World – Brought to You by Avaaz
• Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section III
• The Grotesque and Disturbing Ideology at the Helm of Avaaz

Image courtesy of Mark Gould

Jan 26

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Non-Profit Industrial Complex

350.org Avaaz Culture Marketing New Economy People's Climate March Purpose Inc.

Communication: the Invisible Environment

A Culture of Imbeciles

January 22, 2015

In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman — American media theorist, humanist and cultural critic — noted that “new technology can never substitute for human values.”

Illustration by Stuart McMillen

In American society today, our social amusements have come to occupy not only our pastimes, but everything about our lives, politics, values and beliefs. Even our most heartfelt emotions and concerns have been hijacked by the amusement industry, penetrating so deeply into our collective psyche, that we have become social robots.

Illustration by Stuart McMillen

Capitalizing on this corrosion of civil society, Wall Street marketing agencies like Purpose and Avaaz — sponsors of campaigns to support “humanitarian war” and the “new economy” — have designed and exploited an advertising niche to make money from this social pathology.

Illustration by Mark Gould

While American faith about the truth in advertising might suffer as a result of these amusements, the deaths that result take place mostly in the Third and Fourth World. As Americans are herded into waving signs and marching around Manhattan wearing the color blue, millions around the world are dying from starvation, disease and murder resulting from American consumerism.

As a professor of Culture and Communication, Postman taught a course called Communication: the Invisible Environment. While he was concerned primarily with the decline in the ability of mass communications to share serious ideas, Postman was aware that the turning of complex ideas into superficial images — that become a form of entertainment — leads to a society where information is a commodity, bought and sold for entertainment, or to enhance one’s status. In contemporary society, mediated by technology, individuals will literally believe anything.

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