WKOG OP-ED: THE NIHILISTS

Wrong Kind of Green Op-Ed

December 23, 2015

by Jay Taber

Illustration remixed from an original image by andres.thor under Creative Commons License – Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

When it comes to the annals of shady people in the U.S. federal bureaucracy, few figures in American history figure so prominently, if obscurely, as Richard Armitage. As U.S. Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2001-2005), Armitage was deeply involved in events surrounding 9/11 and the Plame affair. As Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (1983-1989), he was connected to the Iran-Contra affair.

In part of his taped March 24, 2004 testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Armitage noted that getting arms to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan was not so difficult: “It was making sure that we wouldn’t be, one, embarrassed by what they were. And no matter the charismatic nature of Ahmed Shah Massoud – and he was quite charismatic – that doesn’t make up for raping, drug dealing, et cetera, which many of the Northern Alliance had been involved with. So it’s not easy.”

As Deputy Secretary of State, Armitage was responsible for outing undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband Ambassador Wilson’s refusal to go along with the fraudulent Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) campaign promoted at the UN by Secretary Powell.

One of the myths deposed by the 2010 Wikileaks U.S. State Department embassy cable cache is the notion of diplomacy as a benign exercise, above the fray of dirty dealing that takes place at the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. With the revelation of spying on UN officials — authorized by Secretary of State Clinton — the continuity of malpractice under the previous White House by Secretary Powell, with help from his long-time associate at the Department of Defense, Richard Armitage, proceeded seamlessly under the Obama administration.

As documented by Jerry Sanders in his book Peddlers of Crisis, Cold War hawks in Washington made their bones by producing and disseminating misperceptions about the Russian threat, that in turn justified the inordinate military buildup by the US and NATO. In essence, says Sanders, the national security military industrial complex, while perhaps warranted at some level, was nevertheless a colossal fraud concocted by Washington insiders at Langley and the Pentagon.

Deliberately falsified information and wildly exaggerated threats were, in fact, not only used to enable looting of the U.S. Treasury to meet these false threats, but also to promote some notorious characters into the halls of power. People like Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, and Richard Armitage.

Today, through agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, lessons in psychological warfare learned by Cold War hawks and private sector friends like George Soros are still being applied in the interest of US hegemony, albeit in more creative ways. As noted in this 2011 article about NED-funded political opposition groups in Russia, the exaggerations, while containing an element of truth, are leveraged to perpetuate popular myths that can be capitalized on by US interests.

Further Reading

9/11 As Sequel to Iran-Contra: Armitage, Carlucci and Friends

Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars

Wag the Dog: Campaigns of Purpose

Welcome to the Brave New World — Brought to You by Avaaz

[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. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

Dec 21

2015

newWKOGadnim

Amnesty International, Avaaz, Foundations, Human Rights Watch, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose Inc., The Soros Network | OSI, United Nations, USAID, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Avaaz Bolivia Burundi Congo IMF Libya NATO Purpose Syria UN Human Rights Council UN Security Council US hegemony USAID

THE PURPOSE OF AVAAZ: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Wrong Kind of Green Op-Ed

December 21, 2015

by Jay Taber

Avaaz (initially financed by convicted inside trader George Soros) is the Blackwater of PSYWAR–mercenaries posing as missionaries. The non-profit Avaaz works closely with its for-profit arm and PR firm Purpose. As a social media NGO, Avaaz promotes campaigns to undermine governments hostile to US hegemony, especially in South America, Africa and the Middle East.

Avaaz co-founder and former U.S. Congressman Tom Perriello with war criminal, General David Petraeus (far left). Under this Flickr photo the caption reads: “Passing the Baton, United States Institute of Peace” [2009] [Photo: Jon-Phillip Sheridan | Source] [In July, 2011, “General David Petraeus was approved as CIA Director by both the Senate Intelligence Committee and then the full Senate, whose vote was an astounding 94-0, astounding because this is a man who was deeply implicated in war crimes, including torture.” Source]

The core cadre of Avaaz – Tom Perriello, Ricken Patel, Tom Pravda, Jeremy Heimans, David Madden, Eli Pariser and Andrea Woodhouse — have working relationships with the UN and World Bank, and coordinate with US-controlled institutions like the UN Security Council and UN Human Rights Council. When challenges to US hegemony arise — such as in Bolivia, Libya, Syria, Burundi and Congo — Avaaz and Purpose create campaigns to discredit and destabilize these independent governments.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry releases the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) outlining the strategic priorities to be pursued by the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with USAID Acting Administrator Alfonso Lenhardt, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom, and Special Representative for the QDDR and Avaaz co-founder Tom Perriello at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC on April 28, 2015. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

With the US-controlled NATO as the de facto military enforcement arm of the UN, the interests of Wall Street merge with the Pentagon and U.S. State Department to thwart challenges from regional bodies like the African Union. Public support in the US and EU for murdering indigenous African leaders like Lumumba and Gaddafi is aided by Wall Street control of media, especially social media, which positions Avaaz as a key player in Neoliberal imperialism.

Above: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad demonization campaign by Avaaz. Avaaz The Behavioural Economics of Hatred: SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire

This conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity is well-documented, but not well-known. Most consumers of social media are under the illusion that the UN is an honest broker, and that the Wall Street fronts Avaaz and Purpose are somehow ‘grassroots’. Working with increasingly corrupt NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — essentially owned by Soros — Avaaz and Purpose create the illusion of advocating for human rights, which, in turn, serves as pretext for economic sanctions by the IMF and military invasions by NATO.

Ironically, the mass murders and warlords that NATO and the UN use as justification for invasion are often armed by the US and EU, which begs the question—Who is really committing crimes against humanity, the gangsters on the ground, or the manipulators of public opinion?

Sep 05

2014

newWKOGadnim

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

350.org Avaaz Ford Foundation National Endowment for Democracy oros Open Society Institute Rockefeller Brothers Fund U.S. Institute for Peace US hegemony USAID Wall Street

Imperial Civil Society: False Fronts for Wall Street

Counterpunch

Weekend Edition September 5-7, 2014

by Jay Taber

The power of moral sanction is something Wall Street takes very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that over the last two decades, hostile takeovers of authentic civil society organizations, known for exercising moral sanction (i.e., Sierra Club and Pacifica Radio Network), have evolved into full-fledged displacement by corporate false fronts (i.e., Avaaz and 350).

While the membership-based Sierra Club and Pacifica Radio Network fought back and reclaimed their boards of directors, false fronts and compromised NGOs (i.e. Amnesty International USA) have become what is known as imperial civil society. Used to justify privatization, austerity, and military aggression by NATO and the US, they reflect a perversion of moral sanction.

As Maximilian Forte writes in Civil Society, NGOs, and Saving the Needy, the main purpose of the burgeoning civil society fad – that comprises the international bureaucracy of neoliberalism – is to legitimate anti-democratic politics. In order to take over basic functions and powers of the state, this bureaucracy – engaged in development, governance and aid – justifies itself by creating a “need,” thereby cornering the market on “humanity.”

With corporate and government funding, often laundered through banks and foundations, international NGOs inspire pathos by constantly producing images of despair—thus allowing them to dominate discourse from an emotional vantage point. As a market-oriented institutional apparatus, this vast bureaucracy works hand in hand with military and finance authorities, thus functioning as Trojan horses on a par with transnational organized crime.

As a fifth column of fascism, imperial civil society – funded by such entities as Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, and Soros Open Society Institute – operates worldwide (in tandem with official false fronts like USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, and U.S. Institute for Peace) to subvert sovereignty and derail democracy in favor of US hegemony.

Overthrowing and destabilizing governments, using NGOs like Avaaz as provocateurs, puts authentic non-profits and journalists at risk. Indeed, the imperial network of financiers like Soros makes NGO entrepreneurs in the pro-war champagne circuit accomplices in crimes against humanity. As frontline opportunists in the psywar waged against public consciousness, these false fronts legitimate “humanitarian warfare” and “free-market environmentalism,” employed against indigenous peoples and independent states.

With help from Ford, Rockefeller, Gates and Soros, imperial civil society is admittedly a formidable foe, but not an invulnerable one. Built on a foundation of fraud, the power of moral sanction they have hijacked can effectively be turned against them. While false fronts are able to dominate social media, they do not own our minds; they are merely social engineers operating under false pretenses that we can reject at will.

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, and a featured columnist at IC Magazine. 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.]

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WKOG OP-ED: THE NIHILISTS

THE PURPOSE OF AVAAZ: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Imperial Civil Society: False Fronts for Wall Street