Middle East Agenda

1. Middle East Agenda Chosen emirate in the GCC Bahrain

2. CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN LEBANON • Established in 2006, Ralph Peters in the Armed Forces Journal wrote: How a better Middle East would look • http://www.democracyinlebanon.org/Documents/CDL-World/Better-ME-Peters06.htm

3. The Importance of Bahrain- John Elan • Whatever happens in Bahrain will be what other nations in the region will emulate. If it turns out to be a sham in Bahrain, the other nations will install sham democracies. If it turns out to be a genuine system, then other nations will feel the pressure from their own people to install a genuine system of participation and fairness. That’s what is at stake and the West must do what it can to preserve a favorable outcome.

4. Social media:Bahrain Bloggers- 2004 • In 2004 a “blogfest” was organized and FahadDesmukh (chanadbh) was calling all prominent bloggers in Bahrain to participate: • “This Thursday we will be holding the first official Bahrain Blogfest, thanks to Haitham. We already have five people confirmed (including a visitor from Qatar!) and it would great to have even more people show up”………. • “We promise not to reveal your identity, and feel free to bring a friend along if you want. I’m really looking forward to finally meeting you all in person.”…. • “Our meetup planned for this Thursday promises even more, with a Qatar-based American muslim convert, and the author of Bahrain’s first novel in English.”

5. Bahrain Bloggers First meeting 2004

6. Reporters Without Borders • By 2005 and Reporters Without Borders quoted FahadDesmukh: • “We’ve broken the government’s news monopoly.” via his Chan’ad Bahraini blog. • Originally from southeast Asia, Chan’ad Bahraini was living in Bahrain, where he set up his blog http://chanad.weblogs.us.

7. Vital media outlet: Blogs 2005 • On the 17th of May 2005 Mark Glaser wrote : Online forums, bloggers become vital media outlets in Bahrain. • http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050517glaser/ • He wrote: Bahrain finds itself in the stutter-start of democratic reform, a longtime emirate which shifted gears in 1999 when Sheikh Isa died and a more liberal prince, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, took over. • Political prisoners were freed, and a new constitution allowed for elections to a lower house of parliament in 2002, but the new king retained power to appoint an upper house of parliament, the prime minister and cabinet and all the judges.

8. The importance of Bahrain as the smallest emirate 2005 • The country's population is about 700,000 total, with a literacy rate of almost 90%, more than half owning cell phones and nearly 200,000 Internet users in 2003, according to the CIA Factbook on Bahrain. As in Iraq's history, Bahrain has a majority of Shi'ite Muslims but is ruled by Sunni Muslims • While the U.S. considers Bahrain to be an important ally, with the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet based there as a jumping off point during the second Iraq War, Bahrain has backslid on its program of reforms, especially with regards to the Internet. There are laws restricting freedom of press, the MoI has given all Web sites six months to register with the government, and three proprietors of the popular Bahrainonline.org forum were arrested in February

9. Blogging a new media outlet 2005 • While blogger Juan Cole complained that the American media hasn't been paying much attention to Bahrain -- including protests by Shi'ites for constitutional reform -- the Wall Street Journal recently fronted a deep report on problems in Bahrain titled, "After High Hopes, Democracy Project in Bahrain Falters.“ • While the kingdom has seen a surge of tourism from other Arab countries since its liberalization, the recent bad publicity from the registration drive and the Bahrainonline arrests show that reform isn't easy

10. Blog father 2005 • Mahmood Al-Yousif, 43, is the first “prominent” blogger In Bahrain and runs a technology company there called Computer Point. After the MoI announced it wanted all Web sites and blogs to register with the government, Al-Yousif didn't hold back • "They think that they are putting in more controls," he told me. "More important to them is keeping tabs on thoughts. The Ministry of Information's main purview is making sure ... they are there as a censorship office for the local papers as well as international papers. They are there as spin doctors for any article that comes up for or against the Bahraini government. Rather than being a facilitator for creativity, they are the creativity graveyard."

11. Mahmood’ s den 2005 • Al Yousif posted those thoughts to his blog, Mahmood' s Den, which acts as more of a news and conversation hub. And most prominently, he displayed Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the top of his blog as the reason he is not registering with the government -- along with a Creative Commons license, with the tagline, "I don't need the Moi's protection, thanks very much!"

12. THE GCC 2005 In 2005 Sapienza University in Rome prepared a study on the bloggers and their influence http://marcomontemurro.altervista.org/cyberantropologia/cyberantropologia.pdf http://marcomontemurro.altervista.org/cyberantropologia/15_intervista.html Included in the study besides Bahrain: KSA KUWAITUAE

13. Least Democratic political Structure? 2007 • In 2007 Esra’a al-Shafei wrote : “The Arab region is known as a home to some of the least democratic political structures in the world. Basic human rights are barely met even in some of the apparently liberal countries in the region, such as Bahrain or the UAE.” • Esra’a Al-Shafei is a Bahraini civil rights activist, blogger, and the founder and executive director of Mideast Youth and its related projects. Al-Shafei is a senior TED Global Fellow, an Echoing Green fellow, and has been referred to by CNN reporter George Webster as “An outspoken defendant of free speech”. According to Fast Company, Al-Shafei is one of the 100 most creative people in business in 2011 . And according to The Daily Beast, Al-Shafei is one of the 17 bravest bloggers worldwide . Esra’a Al-Shafei is also a promoter of music as a means of social change.

14. The Importance of Blogging and the social media • Blogging was a part of the “democracy promotion” it provided a voice and an outlet to the west on how the Arab world “thinks” and provided the west (in particular the US (+ Israel) and UK) indirect reports as to the voices in Bahrain and the MENA region. • Blogging started to influence public opinion in the direction pre determined by democracy promoters in the MENA region. • Prior to the ArabSpringin Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria etc the social media Facebook went into action

15. How did Tunisians and Egyptians use social media during the uprisings? • We decided to answer that question by reporting what actually happened, and we sent Pollock, a writer who specializes in Africa, to interview the principals behind the region's youth movements. • Pollock's piece follows the journey of two Tunisians known as "Foetus" and "Waterman" (their real names are unknown even to Pollock) whose organization, Takriz, helped incite the mass protests against Tunisia's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Takriz, Pollock writes, began as a "cyber think tank" in 1998. Early on, its aims were freedom of speech and affordable Internet access. Pollock writes: • Waterman recalls that the Internet was the only viable option for organizers in 1998, because other media were controlled by Ben Ali. Foetus, Takriz's chief technology officer, a skilled hacker who started hacking because he couldn't afford Tunisia's then-exorbitant phone and Internet costs, saw another advantage online: safety. Takriz meetings "in real life" meant "spies and police and all these Stasi," he says, using the term for East Germany's secret police. "Online we could be anonymous.“ • Over the next decade, more and more Tunisians slowly came online. Even in 2008, when protests broke out in Tunisia's mining region, fewer than 30,000 Tunisians were on Facebook. Ben Ali's online censorship was so severe that Tunisia ranked below Iran and China on measures of Internet Freedom. But by the end of 2009, more than 800,000 Tunisians had Facebook accounts and when Ben Ali fled earlier this year, the number was just shy of two million, nearly a fifth of the country's total population. • Takriz used many other online tools: It created a fake Twitter account and website for Tunisia's foreign minister. Activists used Skype and Mumble to talk to one another over the Internet. One activist even used Foursquare to broadcast his location when he was being held in the Ministry of the Interior. "We were online every day," Foetus told Pollock, "and on the streets pretty much every day, collecting information, collecting videos, organizing protests, getting into protests."

16. Tunisia • In the days following the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, protests erupted in towns across Tunisia's poor interior. Dozens of protesters were killed. One video emerged filmed inside a hospital in the town of Kasserine: a young man lay dead with his brains spilling out. • Posted and reposted hundreds of times on YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere, [the video] set off a wave of revulsion across North Africa and the Middle East. Like thousands of Tunisians, Rim Nour, a business consultant, was "online almost 24 hours a day," spending a lot of time identifying government stooges on Facebook groups. She remembers the video vividly: "A friend put it up and wrote something like 'You don't want to see this, it's horrible, but you must. You have a moral obligation to look at what is happening in your country.'" • Even though these other tools played their parts, Facebook was on a plane of its own. Foetus calls it "the GPS for this revolution" -- quite a helpful analogy. Facebook is what guided the protests, but the true vehicle for change was the protests themselves.

17. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube’s role in Arab Spring (Middle East uprisings) • The “Arab Spring”inthe Mid-East heavily relied on the Internet, social media and technologies like Twitter, TwitPic, Facebook and YouTube in the early stages to accelerate social protest. • You Tube videos have supported the social media with recorded coverage of events. • Recently social media has spread to neighboring KSA, UAE and KUWAIT

18. First Twitter Accounts Feb14 2011 Bahrain • @ealshafei A Bahraini woman who is a TED Global fellow and the director of the youth activism site Mideast Youth. • @MideastYouth The aforementioned youth activist organization. • @JustAmira Amira al Husaini is the Middle East and North Africa editor of Global Voices Online. I’ve followed her work for years. • @ahmedalsairafi I don’t know much about him, but he has posted fervently from Pearl Square and from the hospital where the two people died after being shot by police. He is frequently cited by the others on this list. • @NickKristof He arrived in Bahrain yesterday. • @BahrainRights A twitter feed from the The Bahrain Center for Human Rights. • @RedhaHaji Don’t know too much about this user. He’s written very frequent and descriptive updates from Pearl Square. • @NABEELRAJAB @MAHMOOD @MARYAMALKHAWAJA @ANGRYARABIYA and so on..

19. Gene Sharp:FromDictatorship to Democracy • The guidelines used in the Bahrain uprising • The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion • http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

20. From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp • 31. “Haunting” officials • 32. Taunting officials • 33. Fraternization • 34. Vigils • Drama and music • 35. Humorous skits and pranks • 36. Performance of plays and music • 37. Singing • Processions • 38. Marches • 39. Parades • 40. Religious processions • 41. Pilgrimages • 42. Motorcades • Honoring the dead • 43. Political mourning • 44. Mock funerals • 45. Demonstrative funerals • 46. Homage at burial places • Public assemblies • 47. Assemblies of protest or support • 48. Protest meetings • 49. Camouflaged meetings of protest • 50. Teach-ins • Withdrawal and renunciation • 51. Walk-outs • 52. Silence • 53. Renouncing honors • 54. Turning one’s back Formal statements 1. Public speeches 2. Letters of opposition or support 3. Declarations by organizations and institutions 4. Signed public statements 5. Declarations of indictment and intention 6. Group or mass petitions Communications with a wider audience 7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols 8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications 9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books 10. Newspapers and journals 11. Records, radio, and television 12. Skywriting and earthwriting Group representations 13. Deputations 14. Mock awards 15. Group lobbying 16. Picketing 17. Mock elections Symbolic public acts 18. Display of flags and symbolic colors 19. Wearing of symbols 20. Prayer and worship 21. Delivering symbolic objects 22. Protest disrobings 23. Destruction of own property 24. Symbolic lights 25. Displays of portraits 26. Paint as protest 27. New signs and names 28. Symbolic sounds 29. Symbolic reclamations 30. Rude gestures Pressures on individuals

21. WHY? Ask the NDI – National Democratic Institute • In 2010: Leslie Campbell wrote : ” After 16 years working in the field of democracy PROMOTION, 14 of those leading the Middle East and North Africa division of the National Democratic Institute(NDI), it has been my experience that the citizens of the Arab world prefer to be able to choose their leaders” • http://www.ndi.org/files/Party_Building_MENA_Campbell.pdf

22. Hillary Clintons speech at the NDI 2011 • “I think it is important to recognize that back when the streets of Arab Cities were quiet, the National Democratic Institute was already on the ground, building relationships, supporting the voices that would turn a long Arab winter into a new Arab Spring” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfQma50EnhQ&feature=related

23. Just Iran? Plans for Redrawing the Middle East • No one can deny that Iran was not involved. They were via their lobby the NIAC, their media Press TV, Al Alam TV, Hezbollah’s Al Manaretcetc • TRITA PARSI : National Iranian American Council – note in the article HOW they are involved. http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4370 • Human Rights orgs – all members at one point in the NIAC • However with the recent “arrivals” into Bahrain egHuwaidaArrafet al proves that Iran could not have done this on their own. Arraf and her associates all came in on new American passports. • And remember Ludovic Hood? • -Ludovic Hood and Alisa Newman Hood – went to browns with Maryam Al Khawaja. • http://alumni.brown.edu/classes/1996/news.html • http://bh.linkedin.com/in/ludohood

24. American Studies Center • http://userspages.uob.edu.bh/asc/activities.htm • First Entry: November 3, 2002: Lecture on "Inspiring Children to Teach Themselves" by Master Teacher Sophia Shehadeh, UC Santa Barbara • Note the last entry: December 13, 2010: Professor John Hillis will update the ASC on alumna Maryam Al Khawaja who was an FLTA last year, 2009-2010, at the University of Scranton and Brown University and is currently planning to do graduate studies in London at 11:00 in the ASC (S17-229). All are invited. Students who would like to apply for the FLTA program should feel free to come and ask any questions.

25. Fulbright scholarships • Fulbright “program” is an exchange program where Bahraini’s have the chance to go on for further studies in the US • But the same applies for American’s coming to Bahrain • However they use the American students to mix with society promote “democracy” and report back. • http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4761

26. All directly or indirectly funded by • National Democratic Institute • George Soros • MEPI • USAID • http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4917

27. Involved Organizations Otpor! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor! CANVAS http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=3891 HuwaidaArraf, Adam Shapiro: International Solidarity Movement http://frictionfacts.org/?p=216 Anonymous http://frictionfacts.org/?p=242 Code Pink http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4605 Soros and the US trained Activists in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4882

28. Just Iran? Plans for Redrawing the Middle East • The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.” • The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.”

29. Just Iran? Plans for Redrawing the Middle East • This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives. • "Arab Revolutions" Predicted Back In 2003 - Don't Be Fooled By Plans For A "Greater Israel" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nR7-Cmszpo

30. Just Iran? Plans for Redrawing the Middle East • http://www.christianzionism.org/BibleSays/Sizer04.pdf • http://real-agenda.com/2011/02/25/whats-happening-in-the-middle-east/ • http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28610 Henry Kissinger: "If You Can't Hear the Drums of War You Must Be Deaf” • The Arab Spring http://www.bahrainviews.com/?p=4882

31. Bahrain, an unsynchronized revolt • The Arab revolt when it comes specifically to the GCC states and in particular Bahrain was not the intended pre-planned time to revolt. • The timing of the promoted planned “revolution initial execution” was set to take the stage between 2014- 2019 and not in 2011, however following the Arab “spring” in Tunisia and Egypt, the Shia opposition with the training and backing from America took advantage of the situation and tried to make it look like any other Arab uprising claiming a lack of jobs, housing needs and so on and yet with the initial demand for jobs in Bahrain and according to the ex- minister of labor at the time was one of the lowest percentages in terms of unemployment standing at just 4% • So although the questions raised with housing had legitimacy, the housing issue question can be raised all over the world and Bahrain is no different to any country where these issues are visible yet don’t lead to a revolution. • However when it came to Bahrain, Bahrain was the initiation of an American agenda, GCC domino effect, a democratic experiment that was pre-planned to work except not at this particular time.

32. Bahrain, an unsynchronized revolt • Projected initiation date : 2014-2019 was the estimation based on Les Campbell’s time frame and placing the fact that the joint working paper Democracy Middle East was published in 2010 and the time frame he provided was 20-25 years, and if we start at the “beginning” of the initiation of Campbell’s democracy promotion which started in 1994 then 2011 was not the proposed planned time frame. • However if we look at Campbell’s publication timing (20-25 years from 2010 from the time of of publication) then the “execution” date would have been 2030. The “vision 2030″ would be a mission to end all visions of the Ruling Monarchy.

33. Bahrain, an unsynchronized revolt • In 2010 Les Campbell wrote about Party Building in the Middle East where he went on to state “after 16 years working in the field of democracy PROMOTION, 14 of those leading the Middle East and North Africa division of the National Democratic Institute(NDI), it has been my experience that the citizens of the Arab world prefer to be able to choose their leaders” and in a joint working paper Democracy Middle East” wrote “A comprehensive strategy should also incorporate a realistic time frame for the development of true democracy, 20 to 25 years in many cases”.

34. Party-building in the Middle East • http://www.ndi.org/files/Party_Building_MENA_Campbell.pdf Democracy in the Middle East: Foundations for a Constructive American Policy • http://www.cgpacs.uci.edu/files/cgpacs/docs/2010/working_papers/les_campbell_democracy_middle_east.pdf Engaging the Muslim World: How to Win the War of Ideas • http://www.acslaw.org/files/Engage-Muslim-World.pdf

35. Project on Middle East Democracy • POMED • http://pomed.org/ • The project started officially on the ground 2 decades ago with Leslie Campbell of the NDI • Bahrain survived the unsynchronized planned Arab Spring of feb14th 2011 • But we must note, it’s not over, it’s the beginning.

36. NGOs: The Missionaries of Empire • Non-governmental organizations are an increasingly important part of the 21st century international lanscape performing a variety of humanitarian tasks pertaining inter alia to issues of poverty, the environment and civil libertites.However, there is a dark side to NGOs. They have been and are currently being used as tools of foreign policy, specifically with the United States. Instead of using purely military force, the US has now moved to using NGOs as tools in its foreign policy implementation, specifically the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Amnesty International. • National Endowment for Democracy • According to its website, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is “a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world,” [1] however this is sweet sounding description is actually quite far from the truth.

37. Just an NGO? • The history of the NED begins immediately after the Reagan administration. Due to the massive revelations concerning the CIA in the 1970s, specifically that they were involved in attempted assassinations of heads of state, the destabilization of foreign governments, and were illegally spying on the US citizens, this tarnished the image of the CIA and of the US government as a whole. While there were many committees that were created during this time to investigate the CIA, the Church Committee (led by Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho) was of critical importance as its findings “demonstrated the need for perpetual surveillance of the intelligence community and resulted in the creation of the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.” [2] The Select Committee on Intelligence’s purpose was to oversee federal intelligence activities and while oversight and stability came in, it seemed to signal that the CIA’s ‘party’ of assassination plots and coups were over. Yet, this was to continue, but in a new way: under the guise of a harmful NGO whose purpose was to promote democracy around the world- the National Endowment for Democracy.

38. National Endowment For Democracy • The NED was meant to be a tool of US foreign policy from its outset. It was the brainchild of Allen Weinstein who, before creating the Endowment, was a professor at Brown and Georgetown Universities, had served on the Washington Post’s editorial staff, and was the Executive Editor of The Washington Quarterly, Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, a right-wing neoconservative think tank which would in the future have ties to imperial strategists such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. [3] He stated in a 1991 interview that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [4]

39. Endowment a front for the CIA • The first director of the Endowment, Carl Gershman, outright admitted that the Endowment was a front for the CIA. In 1986 he stated: • We should not have to do this kind of work covertly. It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the ‘60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created. [5] (emphasis added) • It can be further observed that the Endowment is a tool of the US government as ever since its founding in 1983, it “has received an annual appropriation approved by the United States Congress as part of the United States Information Agency budget.” [6]

40. US interests • No sooner than the Endowment was founded did it begin funding groups that would support US interests. From 1983 to 1984, the Endowment was active in France and “supported a ‘trade union-like organization that for professors and students’ to counter ‘left-wing organizations of professors,’” [7] through the funding of seminars, posters, books, and pamphlets that encouraged opposition to leftist thought. In the mid and late 1990s, the NED continued its fight against organized labor by giving in excess of $2.5 million to the American Institute of Free Labor Development which was a CIA front used to undermine progressive labor unions. • Later on, the Endowment became involved in interfering with elections in Venezuela and Haiti in order to undermine leftwing movements there. The NED is and continues to be a source of instability in nations across the globe that don’t kneel before US imperial might. Yet the Endowment funds another pseudo-NGO: Freedom House.

41. Freedom House • Freedom House was originally founded in 1941 as a pro-democracy and pro-human rights organization. While this may have been true in the past, in the present day, Freedom House is quite involved in pushing US interests in global politics and its leaders have connections to rather unsavory organizations, such as current Executive Director David Kramer being a Senior Fellow to the Project for the New American Century, many of whose members are responsible for the current warmongering status of the US. [8] • During the Bush administration, the President used Freedom House to support the so-called War on Terror. In a March 29, 2006 speech, President Bush stated that Freedom House “declared the year 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since the Freedom House began measuring world freedom more than 30 years ago” and that the US should not rest “until the promise of liberty reaches every people and every nation” because “In this new century, the advance of freedom is a vital element of our strategy to protect the American people, and to secure the peace for generations to come.” [9]

42. Arab Spring • Later, it was revealed that Freedom House became more and more supportive of the Bush administration’s policies because of the funding it was getting from the US government. According to its own internal report in 2007, the US government was providing some 66% of funding for the organization. [10] This funding mainly came from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Thus, we see not only the political connection of Freedom House to US government, but major financial connections as well. • It should be noted, however, that Freedom House was not alone in supporting the government. Under the Bush administration, the US government forced NGOs to become more compliant to their demands. In 2003, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios stated in a speech given at a conference of NGOs that in Afghanistan the relationship between NGOs and USAID does affect the survival of the Karzai regime and that Afghans “believe [their life] is improving through mechanisms that have nothing to do with the U.S. government and nothing to do with the central government. That is a very serious problem.” [11] On the situation in Iraq, Natsios stated that when it comes to NGO work in the country “proving results counts, but showing a connection between those results and U.S. policy counts as well.” [12] (emphasis added) NGOs were essentially told that they were tools of the US government and were being made part of the imperial apparatus.

43. Active Freedom House • Most recently, Freedom House was active in the Arab Spring, where they aided in the training and financing of civil society groups and individuals “including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like EntsarQadhi, a youth leader in Yemen.” • RECENTLY THE GULF CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WAS ESTABLISHED which covers KSA, UAE, KUWAIT, YEMEN, QATAR, BAHRAIN, OMAN, IRAQ.- but not IRAN • While the Endowment and Freedom House are being used as tools of US foreign policy that does not mean that the US government isn’t looking for new tools, namely Amnesty International.

44. Amnesty International • The human rights organization Amnesty International is the newest tool in the imperial toolbox of the American Empire. In January 2012, Suzanne Nossel was appointed the new Executive Director of Amnesty International by the group itself. Before coming to Amnesty, Nossel already had deep connections to the US government as she had “served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State.” [14] • Nossel is known for coining the term ‘smart power’ which she defined as knowing that “US interests are furthered by enlisting others on behalf of U.S. goals, through alliances, international institutions, careful diplomacy, and the power of ideals.” [15] While this definition may seem harmless, ‘smart power’ seems to be an enhanced version of Joseph Nye’s ‘soft power,’ which itself is defined as “the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion.” [15] A possible example of this ‘smart power’ is the war in Libya, where the US used the UN as a means to get permission to engage in ‘humanitarian intervention.’

45. Amnesty on Syria • Yet, even before Nossel was appointed to Amnesty, the group was unwittingly aiding in the media war against Syria. In a September 1, 2011 Democracy Now interview, Neil Sammonds, the researcher and one of the author’s for Amnesty’s report Deadly Detention: Deaths in Custody Amid Popular Protest in Syria, spoke about the manner in which the research was done for the report. He stated: • I’ve not been into Syria. Amnesty International has not been allowed into the country during these events, although we have requested it. So the research for this report was done mostly from London, but also from some work in neighboring countries and through communications with a large network of contacts and relatives of the families, and, you know, other sources. [16] (emphasis added) • How can one write a report with any amount of authority if their only sources are through second-hand sources that may or may not have a bias or an agenda to push? How can you write a report using sources whose information has no way of being verified? It is reminiscent of the media war against Gaddafi, where it was reported in the mainstream media that he was bombing his own people and had given Viagra to his soldiers as so they could rape women, but absolutely none of this was verified.

46. Beware of NGOs • While NGOs could have a positive influence on society at large, one must be aware of their backgrounds, who is in charge of them, and from whom they are getting funding from because the nature of the NGO is changing, it is being more and more integrated into the imperial apparatus of domination and exploitation. NGOs are fast becoming the missionaries of empire. • http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29595m

47. END • THANK YOU