by Brandon Turbeville
January 05, 2016
from
BrandonTurbeville Website
It's considered one of the globe's
largest NGOs, yet the odds are most Americans have never heard of
it.
Avaaz,
(whose name means "voice" in many languages), is a massive "online
activist organization" that claims to promote 'freedom' and
'democracy'
all across the world in a variety of different means and for a
variety of different causes.
According to its own
website, since its creation in 2007, Avaaz's mission is to,
"organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world
we have and the world most people everywhere want."
It also states,
Avaaz empowers millions of people
from all walks of life to take action on pressing global,
regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to
conflict and climate change.
Our model of internet organizing
allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be
rapidly combined into a powerful collective force. (Read about
results
on the Highlights page.)
The Avaaz community campaigns in 15
languages, served by a core team on 6 continents and thousands
of volunteers.
We take action,
-
signing petitions
-
funding media
campaigns and direct actions
-
emailing
-
calling and lobbying
governments
-
organizing "offline" protests and events,
... to
ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform
the decisions that affect us all.
While Avaaz's stated goals might sound laudable to many
Americans, anyone who has observed the number of "people power"
revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East might
recognize the language from the Avaaz website as indicative of
the color revolution apparatus that has helped inflame the world
over the last 5-7 years.
Avaaz is, indeed, part of the color revolution apparatus, having
apparently received funds from George Soros'
Open Society Foundation to start up in
2007.
Avaaz was founded by
Res Publica and
Moveon.org, both Soros-funded
organizations that attempt to co-opt the American left into
supporting ideas and campaigns closely associated with the
communitarian foundation oligarchs.
The Avaaz
Players
In addition, a number of Avaaz founders and board members have close
connections to Soros' Open Society Foundations such as,
-
Eli Pariser (both
a Board Member of OSF and a member of the Open Society
US programs as well as Moveon.org)
-
Pedro Abramovay (the
Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at
OSF, the Director of Latin America Programs at OSF and a
campaign director of Avaaz)
Conservative organization,
Discover the Networks,
published a summary of the connections
between some of the founders of Avaaz.
The website writes,
-
Ricken Patel: A Canadian, Patel is both the executive
director of Res Publica and president/executive director of
Avaaz
-
Eli Pariser: The
executive director of MoveOn, Pariser is Avaaz's board
chairman and also serves on the advisory board of Res
Publica.
-
Tom Perriello: This former U.S.
congressman from Virginia co-founded Res Publica and has
been a longtime advocacy partner with Ricken Patel.
-
Ben Brandzel: Formerly an
advocacy director for MoveOn,
Brandzel also served as director of new-media campaigns
and fundraising for
Barack Obama's
Organizing for America. In addition, he worked for the
presidential campaigns of
Howard Dean and
John Edwards.
As one might suspect, despite its
constant rhetoric regarding,
-
"human rights"
-
"freedom"
-
"democracy,"
...Avaaz has openly supported
violence, war, and
imperialism.
In 2011,
Avaaz raised its voice as loudly as it could with demands
that the EU, NATO, UN, and all other parties "stop the violent
crackdown" on civilians in Libya.
Translated:
Avaaz called on
the EU, NATO, UN, and all other parties to come to the rescue of
jihadists that had been unleashed against the government and the
people of Libya in order to
overthrow Ghaddafi for the benefit
of the NATO powers.
Avaaz
- Propaganda Against Syria
Avaaz soon after
turned its sights on Syria, the next country in line to
suffer under NATO's attempt to destroy an uncooperative national
government.
As a sampling of the drivel Avaaz
regularly released regarding Syria,
Avaaz posted on its website the following transparent
propaganda in an attempt to drum up support for a No Fly Zone in
Syria:
It's inspiring - over 1 million
people from across the world have joined the call to protect
Syrian civilians.
And an Avaaz-commissioned poll shows a
majority of Americans supporting a targeted No Fly Zone to
save lives. Right now, the US Congress and the UN are
talking about how to protect Syrian civilians - let's keep
the pressure on for life-saving action!
The Syrian air force just
dropped chlorine gas bombs on children. Their little bodies
gasped for air on hospital stretchers as medics held back
tears, and watched as they suffocated to death.
But today there is a chance to
stop these barrel bomb murders with a targeted No Fly Zone.
The US, Turkey, UK, France and
others are right now seriously considering a safe zone in
Northern Syria. Advisers close to President Obama support
it, but he is worried he won't have public support. That's
where we come in.
Let's tell him we don't want a
world that just watches as a dictator drops chemical weapons
on families in the night. We want action.
One humanitarian worker said,
'I
wish the world could see what I have seen with my eyes. It
breaks your heart forever.'
Let's show that the world cares
- sign to support a life-saving No Fly Zone.
Obviously, the purpose of the post
was to drum up support for a "No-Fly Zone" in Syria, tantamount
to a direct military invasion of the country on the model of
that which destroyed Libya and returned the country to the years
shortly prior to the Stone Age.
Such has even been admitted by top U.S. Generals when explaining
exactly what a No Fly Zone would entail.
As General Carter Ham
stated,
We should make no bones about
it. It first entails killing a lot of people and destroying
the Syrian air defenses and those people who are manning
those systems.
And then it entails destroying
the Syrian air force, preferably on the ground, in the air
if necessary. This is a violent combat action that results
in lots of casualties and increased risk to our own
personnel.
General Philip Breedlove
also echoed this description when he said,
I know it sounds stark, but what
I always tell people when they talk to me about a no-fly
zone is... it's basically to start a war with that country
because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take
out their air defense capability
Also obvious was the glaringly false
claim that Assad's troops had dropped chemical weapons on Syrian
civilians.
The Syrian military has never been
implicated in using chemical weapons against the Syrian people
except in the pages of the Western mainstream press and the
minds of a gullible public.
Every
use of chemical weapons has been, at some point,
traced back to the Western-backed terrorists fighting
against the Syrian government.
-
Avaaz
has also pushed for relocating Syrian refugees and
"Syrian refugees" to England as a result of "chlorine
bombs", "falling from the sky" in Syria.
-
Avaaz thus used non-existent
"chlorine bombs falling from the sky" to justify
relocating "refugees" from a war zone that it is partly
responsible for creating itself.
-
Avaaz has posted dubious "calls for help" from "Syrians" such as this one,
entitled "Cry
for Help in Syria," in Homs.
Of course, while most Syrians are
horrified at the state of war in which they find themselves as a
result of the Western destabilization, the overwhelming majority
of Syrians support their government and despise the
Western-backed savages raping and beheading their way across the
country.
If one is interested in reading or
listening to the opinion of a real Syrian, feel
free to consult the
videos and
articles of
Afraa Dagher, a true victim of the so-called "civil war"
that would be more aptly named an invasion.
Vanessa Beeley describes typical Avaaz treachery in her
article, "The
Propaganda War Against Syria Led by Avaaz and the White Helmets."
Beeley is referring to the Avaaz
propaganda that emerged in the wake of the Russian attacks
against ISIS and other related terrorists in Syria. Avaaz, of
course, followed the State Department and NATO line that Russia
was bombing the as-yet-undiscovered "moderate rebels."
She writes,
Now let's examine the unsavory
marketing aspect of the propaganda campaign being waged by a
frustrated and increasingly infuriated US alliance.
Of course the usual triad has
leapt into action:
-
HRW
-
Avaaz
-
the White Helmets
Avaaz has produced one of its
most poisonous and misleading
petitions to date.
The inevitable eyewitness statements
claim that Russia targeted civilian areas utterly free of
ISIS operatives. These statements are already rendered
questionable by the evidence I have submitted above.
When we watch the videos,
particularly the longer Liveleak version, it is hard to
detect the women and children that are being described. The
majority of protagonists appear to be male and of fighting
age.
There is no evidence of
"civilian" life among the deserted buildings, the only
movement is of males, some on foot, some on scooters and
presumably some taking the time to film events even as the
bombs are falling. Not the actions of terrified,
innocent civilians.
Live Leak Video of Russian bombing of Homs:
There
is one other video that does show about 2 seconds of a
young boy crying and obviously injured. However this video
must be questioned as to its authenticity as the claims are
that the initial shot of planes overhead is not even of
Russian planes.
The quality of the video is poor
and apart from the footage of the one child, again
demonstrates that the majority of people involved are men of
fighting age in a deserted built up area to the north of
Homs.
In this disgusting display of
blatant propaganda calling for the long sought after no fly
zone, Emma Ruby-Sachs, deputy director of Avaaz makes
the extraordinary statement,
"Russia says it's bombing
ISIS, but eyewitnesses say their brutal attacks targeted
areas way outside of ISIS control.
This will only sow
instability and radicalization and should be an urgent
wake-up call to the US and its allies to enforce a
targeted no-fly zone to save lives, counter ISIS and
alleviate the refugee crisis.
Syrians civilians need
protection now, not further attacks from Russian
bombs."
Speaking to one Damascus
resident this morning, I asked for their opinion on this
statement.
His reply was simple,
"I am just relieved that the
Russian Air Force is in action".
The hypocrisy of this statement
from Ruby-Sachs perfectly mirrors the,
-
hypocrisy of Congress
-
Obama's Teflon speech at the UNGA
-
Pentagon's barefaced
obscurantism over the US role in creating exactly this
instability and radicalization in Syria
-
bringing misery,
terror and bloodshed to the people of Syria with the sole
aim of securing their interests in the region [and those of
their staunchest partner in crimes against Humanity,
Israel]
If we wish to speak of civilian
casualties perhaps we should turn the spotlight on the pre-
existing Coalition bombing campaign.
The civilian death rates from
these strikes is rarely discussed and often concealed by the
Pentagon and US/European associated analysts like the SOHR.
Where for example was the Avaaz
petition calling for a No Fly Zone when the coalition air
strikes resulted in a multitude of non-combatant deaths
including children?
This report from
Airwars reveals the disturbing numbers:
Cause for Concern - Civilians Killed
in Coalition Strikes
Page 8
Syria has also seen a number of
troubling mass casualty events attributed to Coalition actions.
On the first night of bombing on
September 23rd 2014, US aircraft killed as many as 15 civilians
in the village of Kafar Daryan. On December 28 at least 58
civilians reportedly died when the Coalition struck a temporary Daesh prison at al Bab (see
Cause for Concern - Civilians Killed
in Coalition Strikes).
And on April 30, 2015, 64 civilians
died in a likely Coalition airstrike at Ber Mahli.
In these
three incidents alone, 106 non-combatant victims have so far
been publicly named - 38 of them children. It remains unclear
whether any of these events have been investigated by the
Coalition.
Syria's civilians need a spanner
putting in the spokes of this crushing propaganda vehicle that
rides roughshod over their genuine needs with devastating
consequences.
Those needs are simple:
stop lying, stop fabricating and
stop creating, funding, arming and incubating the terrorist
cancer in Syria.
Yet Avaaz is not merely involved in the
propaganda side of the war on national sovereignty and the people
living in the countries resisting Anglo-American domination, it is
and has been involved directly on the ground, particularly in Syria,
in attempts to facilitate the so-called "Arab Spring" color
revolution and other forms of "Syrian activism" (read: terrorism
funded and supported by the West, the GCC, NATO, and Israel).
Avaaz Role In
The Syrian Destabilization
Avaaz was instrumental in providing not only the online propaganda
supporting terrorists and color revolution participants in Syria and
back home in the West, but it was also helpful in providing material
support such as technology, propaganda and tech training, and
medical supplies to the terrorists on the ground.
As Ed Pilkington wrote for The Guardian in his March, 2012
article, "Avaaz
Faces Questions Over Role at Center of Syrian Protest Movement,"
Syria has certainly been risky.
The group was quicker on the draw in
responding to the first signs of the protest movement than most
aid organizations, even than most media outlets that pride
themselves in getting speedily to difficult places.
To begin with, Avaaz sent a team of
staff organizers to Lebanon after spotting the first signs of a
nascent protest movement in Syria.
Contact was then made with
Syrian activists inside the country, and go-betweens recruited,
notably Wissam Tarif, a highly respected Syrian pro-democracy
leader who is widely consulted by journalists and senior western
diplomats.
From there its involvement in the
Syrian Arab spring drew it steadily further and further into the
conflict.
First off Avaaz sent in hundreds of
thousands of dollars' worth of communications equipment -
satellite phones and internet connections known as
BGANs - that
gave the protesters a link to the outside world.
As with earlier Arab spring
engagements in Tunisia and Libya, they realized that equipment
alone was not enough: the protesters needed to know how to use
it if they were to be effective.
So Avaaz sent in trainers who could
give grounding in how to use the smart-phones as well as basic
training in citizen journalism.
"Verification was a key
element," says Patel.
"We could get stuff out, but the
media didn't know what they were looking at, or couldn't be
sure where it had come from. So we began playing the middle
man, verifying information.
That was in some ways the
greatest value we brought to maintaining the oxygen of
international attention on these protest movements."
Reports coming from Avaaz-trained
citizen journalists in Homs and other key conflict zones,
channeled through the Avaaz communications hub outside the
country, has been a major source of information on the uprising
and the regime's bloody response, used by news outlets around
the world.
Getting in the equipment involved
opening up smuggling routes across the Syrian border into
hotbeds such as Homs and its most badly bombed neighborhood,
Baba Amr, which led Avaaz seamlessly into the next phase of its
engagement.
With the smuggling routes open, it
could help get $2m of blood bags, tetanus shots, respiratory
machines and other medical supplies into the country, bringing
relief to communities that were desperate for help and that more
establishment institutions like the ICRC had failed to reach.
It has also smuggled 34
international journalists into the trouble zones.
Marie Colvin, the Sunday
Times journalist, entered using another conduit, but the French
photographer Remi Ochlik who died with her as a result of Syrian
government shelling was helped in by Avaaz.
Thus, Avaaz finds itself among
treacherous company - "humanitarian" organizations like,
Conclusion
At the end of the day, Avaaz is just one more tentacle of the color
revolution octopus partially funded by,
...as well as the budgets of other NATO
countries both above and below publicly available knowledge.
Its worldwide internet organization is
nothing more than a hub for dupes and witless participants who are
disenchanted with the current system for whatever reason.
The human mass is then used as a
battering ram against the target government, ushering in a system
that is almost always worse than the one the movement helped
overthrow.
There is no shortage of color revolution NGOs in Syria or anywhere
else in the world.
To compile a list of such organizations
currently existing would require a full time commitment even as new
groups are formed all the time. It is not necessarily the individual
organization itself that must be exposed but the methods by which
color revolutions and mass movements are created, facilitated, and
accomplished that must be understood.
Only by understanding the nature of the color revolution and
destabilization can such tragedies be avoided in the future.
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