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

Posted on July 12, 2012 

Syria 360°

Finian Cunningham

The major Western mainstream media outlets have been running a “shock and awe” propaganda offensive against the Syrian government of President Bashar Al Assad for nearly 16 months. The misinformation has been unrelenting, monolithic, unverified, one-sided and, frankly, increasingly preposterous.

With the suppression of mounting facts that Western governments are waging a covert war of aggression in Syria, the Western public is right to treat the conventional media sources with skepticism and outright contempt. Such media are seen as “politicized” and “unreliable”, serving a naked imperialist agenda for Western regime change. In a word, they are damaged goods.

This is where a segment of the so-called alternative media can play a valuable propaganda function for Western powers. Because such media are supposed to be independent, critical, non-corporate, the public tends to consider their reports as objective and unbiased.  One such “alternative” news service is “Democracy Now” hosted by Amy Goodman. Goodman is seen as something of a campaigning critical journalist shedding the light of truth on the depredations of the US government, corporations and the Pentagon. But a closer look at what Goodman’s “Democracy Now” is reporting on Syria shows that the purported critical broadcaster has become a purveyor of Western government propaganda. While the mainstream media’s propaganda function is obvious to the informed public, Goodman’s Democracy plays a more subtle role. Camouflaged with the trappings of critical, independent journalism, “Democracy Now” serves to sow powerful seeds of misinformation in a way that the “compromised” mainstream media cannot.

This misinformation from “Democracy Now” is valuable to the ruling elite because to many of its readers it is not seen as misinformation.

Rather, the “news” on “Democracy Now” is viewed as reliable and representing the views of the anti-war, anti-imperialist constituency. In this way, Goodman is a valuable asset to Washington and Wall Street because her broadcasts can serve to disorient and undermine a constituency that is normally opposed to Western warmongering and imperialism. Many of the subscribers to “Democracy Now” may see through the misinformation. Many, though, may not, and therefore will become embedded with the imperialist agenda. The fact that Democracy Now ratings appear to be holding up would indicate that a lot of its followers are oblivious to the insidious effect of such misinformation. As such, Democracy Now is more valuable to the powers-that-be than, say, the New York Times or the Financial Times. “Democracy Now” ensures that the agenda of the powerful becomes infiltrated in a constituency that would otherwise be opposed to that agenda.

First, let’s recap on the mainstream propaganda offensive against Syria.

Since mid-March 2011, when violence was initially reported in that country, the Western mainstream television, radio and press studiously ignored the evidence of covert foreign-backed subversion and terrorism. Instead these outlets have sought to portray the protests as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring popular movements that were seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. The mainstream media have run saturation coverage to demonise the government in Damascus as a “brutal, authoritarian regime” that is cracking down mercilessly on its civilian population demanding democratic reforms. The narrative is monolithic in the major media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Le Monde, BBC, ITN, the Irish national broadcaster RTE or the Middle East’s much-vaunted Al Jazeera – the “story” on Syria is uncannily uniform. A noble, civilian mass-based movement is being savagely crushed by a tin-eared dictator, so the story goes.

Every possible smear campaign against the Assad government has been indulged in and indeed fabricated. From the alleged killing of innocent civilians by the national armed forces, to the perpetration of massacres by pro-government militias, to self-inflicted car bombs in urban centres by Assad secret services, to the feckless shopping habits of the president’s wife. Russia Today, Press TV, Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Vatican News Service (Agenzia Fides), to name a few, have been honorable exceptions in mainstream media journalism for conveying a more accurate picture of what is really happening inside Syria – showing that “protesters” are far from peaceful civilians, and much of the violence is actually stemming from Western, Turkish and Arab-backed mercenaries that have infiltrated the country. As the facts of US and NATO-backed violence in Syria become more transparent and harder to conceal owing to the sheer volume of covert involvement, the Western public has rightly become more skeptical about what the mainstream media outlets are telling them. Indeed, the blatant misinformation and lies that are being sold as journalism is increasingly seen as contemptible.

The Houla massacre on the 24 May is a case in point. The BBC and other mainstream media outlets have been shown to be outrageously wrong in their initial rush to blame the atrocity on Syrian government forces when the evidence has slowly emerged that it was most likely the grisly work of Western-backed mercenaries.

It is all the more disquieting when a supposedly informed, alternative news service, Democracy Now, peddles such blatant misinformation – more than six weeks after the massacre occurred and after evidence has been reported that points convincingly to Western-backed perpetrators. On 9 July, Goodman broadcast an interview with Rafif Jouejati, a spokesperson for a Syrian opposition group called the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, based in Washington DC. Despite the mounting evidence of Western, Turkish and Saudi/Qatari covert operations, Goodman gave her guest a free rein to regurgitate the litany of mainstream media calumnies on Syria. Without a hint of scepticism from Goodman, her guest said:

“The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity… We have mountains of evidence indicating that [Assad’s] armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country.” 

Really? The majority of the country engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, democracy and dignity? That sounds more like the fanciful imagination of someone safely based in Washington DC. By contrast, sources in Syria have confirmed that people are terrified by Western-armed gangs running amok in their communities, kidnapping, murdering, evicting families from their homes and burning down business premises. According to the leaked Arab League Observer Mission Report, which had initially been commissioned by the Arab League at Washington’s request:

“In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed. “

“Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.” (League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012, 

Ironically, these fact-finding observations of the AL Observer Mission , went against the interests of its Western sponsors. It was barely reported by the mainstream media)

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ):

“Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.”

(Neue Erkenntnisse zu Getöteten von Hula.Abermals Massaker in Syrien, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 7, 2012 translated from the German,
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-abermals-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html)

The FAZ report quoted above echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Also of significance is the report of Der Spiegel (March 29, 2012) entitled “An Executioner for Syria’s Rebels Tells His Story”. A system of “burial brigades” for those executed confirms an organized process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings. This single “burial brigade”, according  to the executioner’s testimony, was responsible for the arbitrary execution of 350-400 people including “prisoners” and “traitors”.  The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the occupied urban and rural areas, who express their opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

“Since last summer, we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 29, 2012)

The Vatican News Service Agenzia Fides largely confirms that the Western backed  “opposition forces” rather than the Al Assad government were responsible for countless atrocities:
“In Homs, called the “martyred city”, “opposition forces have occupied two areas, Diwan Al Bustan and Hamidieh, where there are all the churches and bishoprics,” the Archimandrite told Fides. “The picture for us – he continues – is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.

The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks. “The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.” (Agenzia Fides, Vatican News Service, 4 June 2012)

Overblown Casualty Figures, Blamed on the Government
Goodman indulged in the overblown casualty figures from dubious Syrian opposition sources as if they were verifiable accurate data. She even sounded like Hillary Clinton in talking up the “defection” of the hapless former Syrian Brigadier General Manaf Tlass as “significant” when informed sources discount that news as a minor irrelevance.

In the interview between Goodman and her guest (whom sources describe as belonging to a family formerly aligned with the Syrian government), Bashar Al Assad was portrayed as an unhinged leader who is in denial over massacres – massacres, as we have noted, that have most likely been carried out by Western-backed death squads as confirmed by numerous reports.

Preposterously, Assad was described as guilty of much worse crimes than former Egyptian and Libyan rulers Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. Then the “alternative” Democracy Now broadcast this statement from the supposed opposition spokesperson as if it were normal discourse:

“I would like to think that we will proceed with full prosecution in the International Criminal Court. I think the longer this issue goes on and the more violence he [Assad] commits, the more likely he will wish to have a fate such as Gaddafi’s.” 

Recall that the Libyan leader was lynched on a roadside by a NATO-directed mob, and sodomised with a knife before being shot dead. It may also be recalled that “Democracy Now” gave prominent broadcasts supporting NATO’s intervention in Libya and justifying the criminal subversion of that country. Going by the latest coverage on Syria, Democracy Now is acting once again under a “progressive” cloak as a propaganda tool for US-led imperialist intervention. Given the misplaced respect among many of the public seeking independent, alternative, accurate news and analysis, this insidious role of Democracy Now is reprehensible. May it be suggested, in the name of media transparency, that the programme be aptly renamed “Imperialism Now”.

Democracy Now, Libya, Syria and its continued pro-intervention stance.

from Edifying Debate

Imperialism is desperately trying to expand itself by making Americans more poor, so Goodman’s support of imperialism in Libya must be checked. I am writing this not at all to embarrass Amy Goodman but to reach a greater understanding of how the American state can and will influence “independent” media to become no longer “independent” but polluted and eventually meaningless.
I sincerely hope Amy Goodman can respond to my query about her coverage of Libya and not sink any further in to the polluted mainstream of Americanism. –RF. 

From BAR

Is the independent media movement's flagship radio-TV show Democracy Now! pushing the State Department and Pentagon line on Libya instead of “going where the silence is” and telling the truth without fear or favor? Are its Libyan correspondents embedded with the US-backed Libyan rebels to such an extent that they have minimized and failed to follow up persistent reports of ethnic cleansing in Libya or investigate whether alleged “mercenaries” ever existed or Khadaffi's “massacres” ever took place?  - Are Democracy Now!'s Libyan Correspondents Feeding Us the State Department and Pentagon Line on Libya?

To Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now team:

I've been a devout listener for about 10 years and I've urged others to listen/watch Democracy Now. But DN's blatant, outrageous, pro-US Libya propaganda in today's edition has finally put me over the top. I'm finally coming to terms with the sad fact that I'd better not trust Democracy Now any more for basic honesty or integrity.

All those maudlin voices in Tripoli, supposedly celebrating their new US-brand "freedom"! Were they hired by a PR agency or have they just been badly fooled? Do any of them know the real story behind this occupation and bombing campaign, for whose benefit it's being waged, or for that matter the actual state of the campaign? Do any of them know what is being stolen from them?

No names, no background checks, no questioning, no investigation! Just fluffy celebration! What has befallen my beloved Democracy Now? Ruppert Murdoch must be laughing his head off.

For me, this is a grave occasion. Unless there's a drastic change in the right direction very, very soon, I feel obligated to advise our WZBC listeners specifically to be wary of the honesty or integrity of anything they see or hear on Democracy Now. I will also need to make this adjustment on our website and on our handouts, all of which have been promoting Democracy Now.

Stan Robinson, co-producer Truth and Justice Radio, WZBC 90.3FM Newton MA truthandjusticeradio.org (see more here)

Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA

AUGUST 30, 2011
"Democracy Now?"
by JOHN WALSH


Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”

Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.

Cole claims to be a man of the left and he appears with painful frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning “expert” on the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts. First, can one be a member of the “left” and also an advocate for the brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy Now’s version of the “left.” Second, it appears that Cole’s essential function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war on Libya has been fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?

Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry way back in 2005 in Bush time. The source and reason for this leak and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown. Within a week of the Times piece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as an “interrogator.” Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of the White House request and was at the time employed at the National Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence Estimate.

It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time “consultant” for the CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy Now transcript.):

AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this information from you, said that you should get information?

GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a large number of experts of diverse views that the National Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones—I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work—who had consulted with him. (Emphases mine.)

That seems like strange toil for a man of the “left.” But were the consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep one? It would appear so. Again from the transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes it, he says, “Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.] Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear [that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’”

GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance, perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through interactions. (Emphasis mine.) I would characterize it more as the latter.

And later in the interview Carle continues:

On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing. There was no direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct—for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle questions or so on, to pass those along. (Emphasis mine.)That’s how I—which is totally unacceptable.

It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a “frequent guest,” in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?

This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.

Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the left as he spins out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to Goodman (3/29), “We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary people. We care about workers.” It is strange that a man who claims such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.

Whither the Left on the Question of Intervention?

None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a “humanitarian” hawk. But it is outrageous that he is so often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in Libya, with CounterPunch’s estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the left to have to debate the worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.

This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I have not heard a full-throated denunciation of the war on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s speechwriter on the famous speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 in which King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the militarism it entails.

If one reads CounterPunch.org, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative, one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive outlets, it’s all too clear where a big chunk of the so-called “left” stands, especially since the advent of Obama. In his superb little book Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the left for falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often pointed out that many progressives are actually quite fond of “humanitarian” interventionism. Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya . It is little wonder that the “progressives” are losing their antiwar following to Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the issue of anti-interventionism.

Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com After wading through Cole’s loose prose and dubious logic to write this essay, the author suspects that the rejection of Cole by the Yale faculty was the result of considerations that had little to do with neocon Bush/Cheney operatives.

EXPOSED: Indy “Newspaper” Funded by US Government

Deep network uncovered as fake “indy” rag is forced to disclose funding.
August 11, 2011
landdestroyer



by Tony Cartalucci

Bangkok, Thailand August 11, 2011 – After initially trying to downplay, obfuscate, and deny accusations that the Thai “independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” Prachatai was in fact a US-funded propaganda front, a series of reports from Land Destroyer provided irrefutable evidence taken directly from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy website. Additional backpedaling, lying, and obfuscating prompted a follow-up report on Prachatai featuring several unlisted funding sources the duplicitous organization most likely thought were well buried.

Perhaps fearing a third onslaught, or in a desperate attempt to salvage its sagging legitimacy, just this week Prachatai has made a seemingly complete disclosure of their US government and US corporate foundation funding laying to rest its own supporter’s erroneous assumptions and defense that the organization was “just barely getting by.” In fact, they are doing quite well and receive millions of baht consistently year to year from the US National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and more recently USAID. In fact, an overwhelming 77% of Prachatai’s nearly 8 million baht in funding during 2011 has come directly from Uncle Sam – overt funding that would cut the legs of legitimacy out from under any alleged “news organization.”

Still, Prachatai’s utter contempt for both journalism and their readerships’ intelligence is best encapsulated in a cautionary reminder posted directly before their full financial disclosure which claims, “it is important to state here that none of our foreign donors has ever put up any demands connected to the funds they provided, nor did they ever interfere with our reporting.” One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at such overt duplicity from an organization that has just spent the last 2 months trying to laugh-off, ignore, or otherwise belittle very legitimate concerns regarding its lack of transparency.

The nature of Prachatai’s political narrative is confrontational, directed at Thailand’s establishment, especially Thailand’s traditional institutions which exist independently of the Soros-funded networks of which Prachatai is now irrefutably exposed to be a part. Prachatai’s goal is to undermine the Thai establishment’s legitimacy while concurrently building up the legitimacy of the “international community,” global “civil society,” and to promote globalist talking points. A visit to Prachatai’s homepage reveals links running off to Soros-funded “Open Democracy,” Soros and Ford Foundation funded “Global Voices,” the globalist International Institute for Strategic Studies (which includes Robert Blackwill, former lobbyist of Thailand’s globalist-backed stooge Thaksin Shinawatra), as well as a myriad of pro-Thaksin, pro-globalist, pro-color revolution websites that form the nucleus of Thailand’s foreign-funded “civil society” movement both in and out of the country.

This is analogous to other US-funded organizations, opposition groups, and NGOs around the world including those of the recent US-funded “Arab Spring” which were all admittedly organized, trained, funded, and equipped (in some cases armed) years in advance by the United States government for the expressed purpose of initiating regime change throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. In fact, the New York Times itself would confirm this, stating that, “a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”

The New York Times would go on to explain that “the Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.”

The Funding

Digging into Prachatai’s globalist funding exposes further the inner workings of the Wall Street-London global corporatocracy and how they disingenuously promote their agenda through NGOs, “civil society,” and by perverting the noble ideals of human rights, freedom, and democracy. Prachatai, like its counterparts throughout the world, is a disingenuous and complicit helping hand, pleading ignorance and literally saying “so what?” when the subject of just who funds them is brought up.

Image: Taken from Heinrich Böll Foundation’s 2009 Annual Report, globalist criminal bankster George Soros’ ubiquity within socially engineered movements is confirmed once again. Here he is listed under “Prominent Guests and Partners of the Foundation.” (click image to enlarge)
….

Prachatai, in their latest disclosure, breaks their funding down year-to-year. One name that is ubiquitous is George Soros and his Open Society Institute which has funded Prachatai millions of baht over the years, beginning in 2005 and continuing until today under the Soros-connected Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF). HBF is a shameless promoter of supranational governance, pushing the verified fraud that is the “climate change agenda,” and even helped Soros’ Global Voices in networking and training Arab bloggers in 2009 to prepare them for the upcoming “Arab Spring.” HBF’s 32 page 2009 annual report is a globalist progress report that includes funding and supporting fake progressive-liberal projects and outright worldwide sedition.

Image: From IMS’s 2010 Annual Report, Wikileaks figurehead Julian Assange pops in on a George Soros, ICFJ, IMS orgy of disinformation. Soros’ various funded revolutions have used Assange’s handy work as a rhetorical springboard to get into motion, therefore it is only right that Assange be given yet another stage upon which to promote the ongoing hoax that is Wikileaks. Anti-establishment, Julian Assange is not. (click image to enlarge)
….

Prachatai’s 2009-2010 funding included 1.79 million baht from the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), yet another Soros-funded globalist organization which also includes the US State Department and Soros-infested International Media Support (IMS) as donors. IMS literally trains foreigners to report the news according to Western standards & values, or in other words, according to the Western narrative. It is not surprising to see IMS active in every nation the US State Department is feverishly attempting to create unrest via its National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House organizations, including Belarus, China, Iran, Ukraine, and across the Middle East. In one truly surreal scene taken from IMS’s 2010 annual report, Wikileaks fraud Julian Assange appears via video link on a stage littered with the logos of IMS, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and the Fortune 500 corporate-fascist infested “International Center for Journalists” which suspiciously includes Bank of America’s marketing officer and PR firm representatives from McKinsey & Co. and Edelman (a proud corporate sponsor of the Egyptian revolutions) on its board of directors.

Another name that seems quite active throughout Prachatai’s 8 year existence is the Rockefeller Foundation which initially bought the organization its computers and whose partner, the “Community Organization Development Institute (CODI),” funded Prachatai 1.89 million baht in 2004. CODI also boasts UN support as well as a partnership with the eugenicists at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. There is also the Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR) which has funded Prachatai over half a million baht over the course of two consecutive years. FGHR is nothing more than a funding arm for the Sigrid Trust who also funds the International Crisis Group, an unelected US think-tank that meddles directly in the internal affairs of other nations. In fact, ICG member Mohammed ElBaradei literally led the US-funded Egyptian revolution, a true testament to the disingenuous nature of both these “democratic awakenings” and the dubious personalities attempting to wrestle control away from embattled regimes around the world.

We finally make our way to by far Prachatai’s number one patron, certainly not its own readership – not by a long shot – but rather the US State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), one of the most notorious, duplicitous organization in America, on par with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as it literally works in tandem with the CIA’s activities (along with USAID who is also funding Prachatai via their SAPAN project) in subverting governments and overthrowing entire nations for US corporate-financier interests.

NED has funded Prachatai 1.5 million baht 3 years consecutively, including this year, along with USAID who has funded Prachatai an additional 2 million baht under the guise of the SAPAN Project which presumes to teach Thais how to conduct local government.


Image: NED-funded Freedom House nominates Thailand’s NED-funded Prachatai for the Deutsche Welle Blog Awards earlier this year, thus illustrating the contrived circus that is the collective propaganda outfit’s legitimacy. (click on image to enlarge)
….

And while Freedom House is not listed by Prachatai as a contributing, as it itself is also funded by NED, it is surely worthy of honorable mention. Freedom House contributes a steady stream of rhetorical support and nominations for various contrived awards like this years’ “Deutsche Welle Blog Award” while Prachatai reciprocates by loyally copying and pasting any “helpful” Freedom House reports targeting Thailand or neighboring Asian nations.

NED & Freedom House are run by Warmongering Imperialists

Despite Prachatai’s own “who cares?” attitude regarding especially their NED funding, in reality there exists an immense disparity between the stated goal of NED, that is, “supporting freedom around the world,” and the backgrounds and stated agendas of those populating NED’s board of directors. The same could easily be said of Freedom House and its board of directors.

Upon that board of directors, who, judging by their supposed mission to support “freedom around the world,” we should find Nobel Peace Prize laureates, accomplished diplomats, and definitive examples of democracy in action. Instead, we have John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their “entry into the complex China market easy.” Surely Bohn’s ability to manipulate China’s political landscape through NED’s various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interests. However, it appears “conflict of interests” is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.

Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as “Vice President of Congressional Relations” as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil’s ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.

We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED’s board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate, utterly insane Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this “think tank” are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.” As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates.

The “Statement of Principles,” signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, “we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” Of course by “international order” they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con degenerates that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House’s Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.

A PNAC “Statment on Post-War Iraq” regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House’s Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring “Which Path to Persia?” report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC’s latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America “hostage” and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to “help the Libyan opposition.”

An untitled PNAC letter addressed to then US President George Bush regarding a general call for global warmongering received the seal of approval from Freedom Houses’ Ellen Bork (2007), Ken Adelman (also former lobbyist for Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra via Edelman), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Neo-Con degenerates Richard Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and the always disingenuous demagogue Daniel Pipes.

The list goes on further, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, Leonard Sussman, and Max Kampelman. It is safe to say that neither NED nor Freedom House garners within its ranks characters appropriate for their alleged cause of “supporting freedom around the world.” It is also safe to say that the principles of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights” they allegedly champion for, are merely being leveraged to co-opt well meaning people across the world to carry out their own self-serving agenda.

Conclusion

Organizations like Prachatai that take money from these confessed, ill-intentioned, meddling, neo-imperialist dens of degeneracy, are either knowing accomplices or remiss beyond explanation. In either case, their legitimacy was not compromised the moment they decided to hide their funding, nor after they fully admitted the compromised nature of their paid-for “journalism” when pressured with persistent irrefutable evidence. Instead, Prachtai’s legitimacy was entirely lost the monument they decided to accept foreign funding in the first place – which as their own disclosure accounts for, was on day-one of their operations.

Image: While immature minds succumb to a Pavlovian giggle at the mere mention of the “New World Order,” Anne-Marie Slaughter, formally of the US State Department, has written an entire book about the inevitable global governance she has dedicated her life to ushering in.
….

It is undeniable that a global oligarchy of incredibly wealthy and powerful corporate-financier interests are moving to consolidate power on a global scale, as imperialists have done throughout human history. They are destabilizing and destroying the old world, nation by nation, and replacing it with a new world of their own design, their “civil society.” However, we see the means and ends to which these megalomaniacs gravitate toward. These are means and ends that are entirely abhorrent, self-serving and encapsulated in horrifying dystopian nomenclatures such as “planetary regimes” (current White House Science Adviser John P. Holdren, Ecoscience 1977), or as recent US State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter calls it, the “New World Order.”

Image: A graphical representation of the global corporate-financiers’ emerging “international order.” From the left policy is created by unelected corporate-funded think tanks, where funding arms, contrived international NGOs, and local street fronts like Prachatai carry it out. What is produced is a global, homogenous “civil society” that answers directly to the corporate-financiers that created it. (click image to enlarge)
….

The nefarious, sycophantic helping-hands making this nightmare possible are foreign-funded traitors like Prachatai helping destabilize the old world and eagerly promoting the corporate-fascist funded, globally homogeneous “civil society.” They are traitors not just to the Thai people and the Thai nation, but traitors to humanity, traitors willfully helping usher in global governance under the dominion of autocrats who openly plot a global scientific dictatorship. Prachatai most certainly looked at NED’s board of directors during the last two months the Land Destroyer Report has been pressuring them to disclose their full funding and they most certainly know who the absolute degenerate scum is that funds them and what their warmongering agenda is. Yet they press on, indifferent, even elated over rubbing their duplicity in the face of their own readership.

Their financial disclosure begins with a brief history of Prachatai which includes sniveling accounts of police raiding their office, their director being arrested, and their foreign-funded propaganda website being systematically blocked by the Thai government, as if they are the victims of some gross injustice. They act as if anyone should be allowed to take foreign money, masquerade as journalists, intentionally mislead people, and undermine their own nation on behalf of a foreign government. As mentioned before, Prachatai, according to their own financial disclosure, year-to-year is anywhere between 77% and 100% funded by the US government and/or US corporate-funded foundations. This behavior here in Thailand, and around the world, by the helping hands of the globalist corporate-financier agenda is unacceptable.

Stand up to these paid-for liars. Expose their treachery and their disingenuous abuse of liberal and progressive ideals. Stand up against their horrific exploitation of human rights and representative governance to promote their paymasters’ agenda. The world does face tyranny and its name is globalization. Globalization can be seen in full effect across the deserts of Iraq, throughout the mountains of Afghanistan, and now along the shores of Libya and in the streets of Syria’s border cities. That is the globalist future fake-progressives like Prachatai are the harbingers of.

There will be no liberal singing tomorrows in Prachatai’s Thailand, just as there are no singing tomorrows in Egypt where the paymasters, like John McCain of the International Republican Institute, instrumental in funding and training the Egyptian protesters, now squat upon the Egyptian economy with Fortune 500 corporate-fascists prepared to sink their parasitic probosces into their “newly liberated” markets. That is the future of globalization. That is the future Prachatai is trying to sell Thailand, and just like with their funding, they will deny the truth until the very bitter end.

Notes: 1 US Dollar is equal to approximately 30 Thai Baht/baht. Prachatai also has done a “project” for the “People’s Empowerment Foundation,” another NED-funded NGO front that most recently took part in a Bangkok demonstration for Malaysia’s NED-funded Bersih movement.

________________
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The Anatomy of Globalist-Funded Sedition
And the true path to freedom.
by Tony Cartalucci

Editor's Addition: James Woolsey, formally of the Freedom House, is now on the "leadership council" of the Neo-Con warmongering Foundation for Defense of Democracies along with fellow Freedom House members Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Kampelman, and Paula Dobriansky. Woolsey recently signed off on the Neo-Con war propaganda film Iranium - propaganda so absurd it calls into question the sanity of those that created it. This represents further evidence illustrating how disingenuous "democracy advocates" like Freedom House are and why those receiving their funding & support are cause for alarm.

Bangkok, Thailand July 12, 2011 - While we are told by the self-proclaimed arbiters of humanity the merits of "human rights," "transparency," and "open society," these arbiters themselves are the poorest examples of such values. People indeed do have the right to know who is behind their government, the organizations that support it, and the corporations that fund them, not just in the nations and governments targeted by these nefarious arbiters, but the arbiters themselves. To this end, we hack off one tentacle of the growing Anglo-American planetary regime and dissect it - because indeed, people have a right to know the truth.

Thailand's Prachatai, as described by their US government granters at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), allegedly provides the Thai public with "a credible and respected source of independent news reporting and editorial commentary." It is also supposed to "foster a higher level of public participation and community involvement in Thai political affairs."

However a quick visit to Prachatai's website reveals links running off to Soros-funded "Open Democracy," Soros and Ford Foundation funded "Global Voices," the globalist International Institute for Strategic Studies (which includes Robert Blackwill, former lobbyist of Thailand's globalist-backed stooge Thaksin Shinawatra), as well as a myriad of pro-Thaksin, pro-globalist, pro-color revolution websites that form the nucleus of Thailand's foreign-funded "civil society" movement both in and out of the country. These include Bangkok Pundit, New Mandala of the Australian National University, and Asia Sentinel which frequently features the writings of Giles Ungpakorn, Marxist color revolution leader, author of the "Red Siam Manifesto," and brother of Prachatai founder Jon Ungpakorn. In all, Prachatai is yet another propaganda outlet serving the globalist agenda.

A 2007 cached version of Prachatai's "About Us" page did in fact mention some of their funding - however, they have since taken this down and now entirely obfuscate their finances, year to year from their own readership in a display of grotesque hypocrisy even as they demand "transparency" and "openness" from the Thai government. The 2007 cached version is as follows:

Prachatai (www.prachatai.com or www.prachathai.com ) is an independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper established in June 2004 to provide reliable and relevant news and information to the Thai public during an era of serious curbs on the freedom and independence of Thai news media.

Prachathai was established by a group of concerned Thais who include a senior member of the Press Council of Thailand, a well-known lecturer in Journalism, two members of the Thai Senate, a number of senior journalists, and a number of Thai NGO leaders.

Prachatai has a 19-member Board and a 7-member Management Committee which consists of 4 Board representatives and 3 senior staff. Since January 2006 Prachatai also been registered as a Thai non-profit foundation, named The Foundation for Community educational Media.

On September 6th 2004, Prachatai began its daily publication on the web with a staff of one editor and five reporters. At present Prachathai has a staff of 14: a Manager, Editor, Network Co-ordinator, 6 central office reporters, 3 regional reporters, a web manager, and a finance officer.

Prachatai run the program by received funding support from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (www.thaihealth.or.th/en), the Community Organization Development Institute (CODI) (www.codi.or.th), the Open Society Institution (www.soros.org/initiatives/bpsai/about) and The Rockefeller Foundation (www.rockfound.org/iandr/SouthEastAsia) Regional Office in Bangkok supported the purchase of US$ 5,000 worth of computer equipment.

Prachatai Objectives

1. To provide the Thai public with access to reliable news and information relevant to developing and strengthening the democratic functions of Thai civil society.
2. To focus news coverage on the problems, concerns, activities and accomplishments of local communities and civil society movements and organisations.
3. To strive for freedom and independence of Thai news media.
4. To promote active public participation in Thai news media.

Prachatai Policies

1. To present news and information as professionally as possible with strict adherence to high ethical standards of journalism.
2. To establish mutual co-operation with civil society networks and organisations and particularly with community media such as community radio stations.
3. To recruit civil society leaders in various fields of work and experience as writers for Prachatai.
4. To promote active reader participation in Prachatai as volunteer news sources, writers, commentators, contributors to the Prachatai Community Section etc.
5. Not to accept paid advertising.

Contact to Prachatai:

Mr.Chuwat Rerksirisuk, Editor
E-mail: chuwat@prachatai.com
Send e-mail to Editorial Team at editor@prachatai.com

Ms.Supapan Palangsak, Network Co-ordinator
E-mail: netcord@prachatai.com

Ms.Chiranuch Premchaiporn, Manager
E-mail: chiranuch@prachatai.com

Mr. Jon Ungphakorn General Secretary of Prachatai and the Foundation for Community educational Media
E-mail: ungjon@prachatai.com

Mailing Address: 3/16 Soi Kerdsap, Bangkhunnon, Bangkoknoi, Bangkok 10700 Thailand Telephone: 66-2-8860427 to 8
Facsimile: 66-2-4340906
E-mail: fcem@prachatai.com
....

Interestingly enough, Rockefeller Foundation's regional office, who Prachatai cites as donating to them $5,000 for computer equipment, works in tandem with another globalist Fortune 500-funded NGO called "Ashoka" who features vulgar degenerate Sombat Boonngamanong as yet another key figure within Thaksin Shinawatra's "red shirt" color revolution movement. These are foreign corporations and governments facilitating protests, even violence on the streets of a foreign nation - an act of war as pointed out by US Representative Ron Paul.


Photo: Thailand's "progressive hero" Sombat Boonngamanong thrives on negative attention. While foreign-funded, corporate-serving organizations like "Youth Leader" expound the virtues of Sombat and his contributions to Thailand via the UN and Fortune 500-funded organizations like Ashoka, his recent support of globalist-stooge billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra's "red shirt" street front appears more opportunistic than virtuous.
....

To illustrate the depth these contrived organizations go through to lend themselves badly needed, otherwise non-existent legitimacy, yet another contrived, globalist corporate-financier funded organization, "Youth Leader" wrote a reality-defying biography of degenerate foreign-subsidized meddler Sombat Boonngamanong calling him "one of the most respected leaders’ and cultural activist in Thailand." Of course, "Youth Leader" makes no mention of how the Thai "red shirt" movement is a street-front for globalist-backed Thaksin Shinawatra. Such convenient omissions allows statements like "most respected" to go unchallenged by a readership overwhelmed by slanted, biased, flowery depictions they emotionally want to be true.

Other organizations not listed by Prachatai that have funded their activities over the years include the Sigrid Rausing Trust (who also funds the International Crisis Group) via the Global Human Rights Fund (2008) and the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Prachatai receives rhetorical support from these organizations as well as from Freedom House and a myriad of contrived, corporate-funded organizations that shower the seditious website with various "awards" year to year in yet another example of how the global elite lend themselves otherwise nonexistent legitimacy.

While some may claim receiving such funds from organizations with names like "Freedom House" and "National Endowment for Democracy" is entirely innocuous and that these foreign interests are truly dedicated to worthwhile causes, any thorough examination of these organizations reveals otherwise.

NED & Freedom House are run by warmongering imperialists

We begin with the board of directors of NED, who, judging by their supposed mission to support "freedom around the world," should be filled with Nobel Peace Prize laureates, accomplished diplomats, and definitive examples of democracy in action. Instead, we have John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their "entry into the complex China market easy." Surely Bohn's ability to manipulate China's political landscape through NED's various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interests. However, it appears "conflict of interests" is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.

Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as "Vice President of Congressional Relations" as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil's ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.

We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED's board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate, utterly insane Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses." As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates.

The "Statement of Principles," signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." Of course by "international order" they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con degenerates that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House's Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.

A PNAC "Statment on Post-War Iraq" regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House's Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring "Which Path to Persia?" report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC's latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America "hostage" and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to "help the Libyan opposition."

An untitled PNAC letter addressed to then US President George Bush regarding a general call for global warmongering received the seal of approval from Freedom Houses' Ellen Bork (2007), Ken Adelman (also former lobbyist for Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra via Edelman), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Neo-Con degenerates Richard Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and the always disingenuous demagogue Daniel Pipes.

The list goes on further, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, Leonard Sussman, and Max Kampelman. It is safe to say that neither NED nor Freedom House garners within its ranks characters appropriate for their alleged cause. It is also safe to say that the principles of "democracy," "freedom," and "human rights" they allegedly champion for, are merely being leveraged to co-opt well meaning people across the world to carry out their own self-serving agenda.

Globalist "Freedom" vs. Real Freedom

Organizations like Prachatai are knowingly or unknowingly carrying along the agenda of modern day imperialists. While they propose they are there to keep the Thai government "in check" for the Thai people, in reality they are doing so for the global corportocracy to which they clearly owe their existence to. When Thaksin Shinawatra was in office, Prachatai's US funding was meant to keep him from becoming a nationalist autocratic strongman. With him removed and fully in the service of the global corporatocracy, Prachatai's job has now become undermining the current government and making way for an indebted Thaksin to return to power and pay back his Western patrons. While Thailand will be free of any Thai autocrat, they will be subservant to the various unelected authors and signatories within PNAC calling for American global hegemony. Ironically, the "freedom" Prachatai believes it is bringing to Thailand through the nihilistic destruction of Thailand's traditional institutions will usher in the very colonialism those institutions had warded off for centuries - Thailand being the only Southeast Asian nation to escape European colonization.

Image: Illustrating how large the actual globalist machine is and how small both Thaksin Shinawatra and Prachatai are in comparison. Either is entirely replaceable at any given moment. And while Prachatai was initially receiving money to keep Thaksin in order and now being used to undermine the current Thai establishment, it is being done so not for the Thai people's benefit, but for a globalist empire attempting to prevent any strong nationalist entity from controlling land, resources, and people they presume dominion over. (click image to enlarge)
....

Reading the "Rebuilding of America's Defenses" and the various documents promoted by PNAC and now FPI and even throughout the CFR, Brookings Institution and others, we can see clearly the proposal and pursuit of an international order presumably led by Anglo-American interests with their system of "liberal democracy" imposed upon the collective population of the world. They are building a global homogeneous network they refer to as "civil society" to slowly take over the roles various national governments carry out today. When these networks reach critical mass, or when an opportunity to remove a nationalist government presents itself, governments are toppled, stooges installed, and "civil society" groomed until it reaches full maturity. In turn this "civil society" then interfaces with the myriad of contrived "international institutions" like the UN, IMF, World Bank, the fraudulent International Criminal Court, and the World Trade Organization.

Image: Illustrated are the policy think-tanks funded by the largest, most powerful corporations on earth and representing their collective interests. They are the unelected authors of human destiny. Their funding arms channel money into propaganda, contrived international arbiters, illegitimate "international institutions" like the International Criminal Court, and of course the various armies of dupes, propagandists, and street fronts that operate within any given nation. (click image to enlarge)
....

In the United States we can see the total pervasion of the global corporatocracy in everyday life. Laws and regulations are dictated by unelected policy wonks within organizations like the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, which are then rubber-stamped by feckless, corporate-serving politicians and enforced by an omnipresent, ever growing national security force. We are then expected to believe, somehow, that these very same organizations are "exporting" freedom, democracy, and human rights abroad. Indeed they are not. What is being built in Thailand, as is being built in Malaysia, across the US-backed destabilization of the Middle East and North Africa, and along Russia's western border with Belarus, is the modern day equivalent of Britain's or even Rome's imperial networks.

Consider the insidious methods used by the Romans to pacify and conquer entire populations by "integrating" them into their own Roman "international order."

From HistoryWorld.net:

'His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilization', when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.'

Tacitus Annals of Imperial Rome, translated Michael Grant, Penguin 1956, 1975, page 72

Indeed the alleged freedom proposed to us by the likes of NED and Freedom House and the myriad of foreign-funded dupes carrying out their agenda, is nothing more than features of our own enslavement. As Egyptians rallied to "free" themselves, they toppled a nationalist government and let in Mohammed ElBaradei, a stooge in full service of the United States via the International Crisis Group. Just recently, Senator John McCain, chairman of the International Republican Institute, a NED-funded NGO on record for being behind the "Arab Spring," took with him members of various Fortune 500 corporations for a tour of newly "freed" Cairo. Their agenda is "economic liberalization" and the total integration of Egypt's once sovereign economy into the Anglo-American empire. Like the ancient British, the Egyptian youth are dazzled with their Western trappings and their new liberal democracy, courtesy of the insidious, unseen tentacles emanating from the globalist oligarchy.

Conclusion

True freedom comes from self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and economic and political independence as a community, as a state or province, and as a sovereign nation. Those peddling the allure of regional integration and global community are nothing more than the very same agents that peddled Roman culture to young British tribesmen. For all the promise the Roman Empire proclaimed, it festered into a despotic global regime which eventually collapsed in on itself leaving much of the world in a feudal dark age for centuries. The promise of globalization is no different, with cracks already beginning to show, it is disingenuous in both its intentions and its final outcome. We will not be one world living harmoniously, we will be one world under the thumb of a degenerate self-anointed elite.

If you are not self-sufficient and truly independent, you are not free, no matter how many paper ballots you stuff in a box, no matter how many marches you attend, and no matter how many Freedom House wires you cut & paste onto your foreign-funded "independent media" website. As long as you depend on these corporations, you belong to them, just as you did as a child dependent on your parents. The real revolution, and the real political awakening will occur when the people realize they do not need politicians or their contrived systems to lead and manage them, and begin using their own two hands to work from the land beneath them their own existence.

DemocracyNow Interviews know-nothing Arundhati Roy..AGAIN!

Amy Goodman, fawns Arundhati Roy over know nothing, attention seeker from India. This woman, who's only claim to fame is having written one measly book is a darling of the western left and an "authentic" source when they want a comment on India. What qualifies this woman to address, economic, social, cultural issues is anyone's guess, but she's brown, looks good and allows the left to bash India without seeming racist.

While this interview was being recorded, These "Maoist rebels" killed eight people in Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. Four killings, including that of a woman, were reported from West Midnapore district in Bengal, where Maoists ‘punished’ people for defying their 24-hour shutdown against US President Barack Obama's visit. The woman Sandhya Mahato, was killed because her son was in the police and she had been warned that he should give up his job. Her husband was also missing.

In Jharkhand, Maoists blew up Sadbahani railway station in Palamau district and two government buildings. In Bihar they blew up railway track near Kurhani railway station in the Hajipur-Muzaffarpur section resulting in 10 wagons of a goods train derailing. Maoists also torched trucks and mobile phone towers.

In Orissa, about 60 rebels stormed into the Gamphakunda school premises under Kalimela police station and blew up a newly-constructed two-story school building that to benefit children from to the lowest castes..

All this to protest US President Obama's visit. In a written statement, they call him "the gang leader of US imperialism" and the world's "Enemy Number One," and urge people to use the slogan "Go back Obama."

Arundhati has been a vocal supporter for these murders. She also recently vocally supported an Islamic fundamentalist who wants Kashmir to become an Islamic state and separate from secular India because he claims, Islam does not allow Muslims to live under non-Islamic conditions.

The only thing connecting these two violent movements, one Islamic fundamentalist and the other communist, with are both causes supported ardently by Arundhati Roy are their anti-India stance.

How can the secular Western Left support and cheer this woman?

____________________

Acclaimed Indian Author Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, Poverty and India’s Maoist Rebel

AMY GOODMAN: We move now to Arundhati Roy. Maoist rebels in India called for a strike Monday to protest President Obama’s visit. The Indian media reports, according to the police, Maoists blew up a new school building this morning and killed four people in the eastern Indian states or Orissa and Bihar.

Well, last month, I had the chance to sit down with author Arundhati Roy in London about the Maoists in India. But first I began by asking her for her assessment of President Obama.

ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, I think the big lesson today is that—look at the richest country in the world, America, having attacked and made war on the poorest countries but not being able to win those wars. You know, they have not been able to win. And here’s the lesson. You know, you couldn’t win Vietnam, you couldn’t win Afghanistan, couldn’t win Iraq, cannot win Kashmir. You know, there has to be—Obama, I mean, he’s involved in all these war crimes. It’s not as though—you know, he has expanded the war in Afghanistan, moved it into Pakistan. You know, Pakistan is a country that is in such a lot of trouble because of this. You know, right when 9/11 happened, I remember writing saying you forced them to raise the Taliban in their midst, and now you want them to garret the pit that they grew in their own backyard. It’s going to lead to civil war. You know, you didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. And that has happened, you know? America has interfered with Pakistan from the beginning, and Pakistan now paying a terrible price for that. I mean, I don’t know if it had a choice, when—you know, when America wants to interfere, it doesn’t give anyone a choice. So it’s destroyed Afghanistan, it’s destroyed Pakistan, it’s destroyed Iraq. And it will destroy India, if—because India doesn’t have the spine. The Indian government is just willingly allowing this to happen, the U.S. to dictate everything. So, today, Obama, I mean, whatever he’s doing in America is a separate thing. But certainly outside, he’s no less of—I mean, his foreign policy is not all that different from George Bush, you know? And if they start a war in Iran, they won’t win it. You know, I mean, it’s not possible. These wars cannot be won. So it’s about time somebody realized that and decided to change the way the world thinks about war and thinks about weapons and thinks about putting soldiers on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati, since we last spoke, assassination has taken place—well, at least one—in India. Can you talk about what happened?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* It was—I mean, as you know now, there’s an almost full-fledged war going on. Actually, there are several wars are going on in India. There’s Kashmir, which is up in flames now, and there’s what’s happening in the northeast. But what I’ve been writing about recently is the war on tribal people in the tribal heartland of India, where something like 200,000 paramilitary troops have been called out to really push through about, I don’t know, 200 or more memorandums of understandings with mining companies and infrastructure companies. And there’s—it’s all being fought in the name of clearing the forests of the Maoist guerrillas.

And as the war escalates, there have been, you know, attacks and counterattacks, but really people, the poorest people in the world, are in a lot of trouble now. And there was a lot of pressure to ask for peace talks, you know, because these poor people in the villages, the tribal people, are kind of under siege—no medicines, no food, no ability to come out of the forest. And so, the government actually has been—you know, because it needs to keep on this mask of being a great democracy, it sort of offers peace talks, on the one hand, and then undermines them, on the other.

But the assassination was the assassination of a man who is known as Azad. His real name was Cherukuri Rajkumar, and he is a sort of senior leader in the politburo of the Maoist party, appointed by the party to be the negotiator in the peace talks. And somehow, you know, the carrying back and forth of these documents pulled him up to the surface. And while he was traveling on a train with a young journalist, he was caught by the police and taken to the remote forests of North Telangana, a place called Adilabad, and shot. Of course, they said, you know, he was killed in an armed encounter and so on, which they always say, but post-mortem report says that he was killed at point-blank range, along with this young journalist. So, you know, my point has always been that the government needs this war. To clear the land, it needs this war. And in a situation like this, you know, just at the beginning of peace talks, if one side kills the envoy of the other side, it’s sort of reasonable to assume that that side does not want peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the Maoists—what it represents?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* See, the Communist Party of India, of course, is an old party, which has splintered into the Communist Party-Marxist. And then in 1969, there was something called the Naxalite Uprising, with the sort of precursors of what is today the Maoist party. And, you know, there’s a huge debate, of course, between the orthodox left and the Maoists, because the orthodox left more or less functions in the cities and is more or less a bourgeois party now, you know, whereas the Maoists have operated—they believe in the sort of militant armed overthrow of the Indian state. But for years, they’ve been working among the tribal people in the forests, and they do have a sort of people’s liberation guerrilla army now.

AMY GOODMAN: Of how many?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* Thousands. One doesn’t know. I mean, I don’t really know the exact figure. But right now, the Maoists are just the militant end of a bandwidth of resistance movements who are fighting the onslaught of this kind of "India shining" India, which is really about grabbing land from the poor, you know, and turning them either into mines or into special economic zones. I mean, when I wrote about dams ten years ago, I was talking about the fact that just dams alone had displaced 33 million people. Today, with the reforms and the structural adjustment that the IMF demanded of our country, India, which you know—you know, in America and in Europe is known as the country with the second-highest growth rate in the world, but today, you know, we have more poor people in India than 26 of Africa’s poorest countries put together. You have—

AMY GOODMAN: More poor people in India than 26 African countries?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* Africa’s poorest countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Poorest countries.

ARUNDHATI ROY:* Put together.

AMY GOODMAN: How many poor people is that that you have in India?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* That’s—you know, for example, you have 830 million people living on less than 20 rupees a day. That’s less than half a dollar a day, 830 million people, you know? So, that is where the struggle is now. You know, you have the guerrillas in the forest, you have the militants in the villages, you have the Gandhians on the street, but on the whole, they’re all fighting the same battle right now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think needs to happen? What are you calling for?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* At the moment—I think, at the moment, there needs to be a ceasefire, and I need—from both sides. And I think that the government should come clean on all these contracts and MOUs that it’s signed. And everybody should know exactly what is on the cards, what local people want. You know, all these public hearings and all the sort of rituals of democracy have just been marginalized, you know? But we really need to know what the plans are. Why should it be secret? Why should it be a secret what’s happening to the forests and the rivers and the people and the mountains and the mines?

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel threatened? I mean, a number of critics have said you are now the most prominent spokesperson for a violent revolution in India. What is your response to that?

ARUNDHATI ROY:* No, I am not a spokesperson for the Maoists. But the government wants everybody who doesn’t agree with it—they want to call all of us Maoists, you know? I have never, ever said that I’m a spokesperson for the Maoists. I have—you know, I have my own views on them, which I have written about. You know, I admire some things; I criticize other things, and so on.

But, you know, I mean, Azad was murdered. Many—this is the government’s way of dealing with dissent. They have—you know, one of the things that they’re very, very upset about is that it had sort of thought that the Maoists are in the forest, we’ll just encircle them, demonize them, and finish them off, you know? And when people in urban areas started to complicate the whole debate and say it’s not that simple, you know, this is not acceptable to us, these policies and so on, they started to target those people, who they seem to be almost more annoyed with, because they don’t know what to do with many of us.

AMY GOODMAN: You have an interesting quote in your piece in Outlook: "When the government uses the ploy of peace talks to draw [the] deep-swimming fish up to the surface and then kill them, do peace talks have a future? Does either side want peace or justice? Perhaps our Preamble should read, 'We, the upper castes and classes of India, [having] secretly resolved to constitute India into a Corporate, Hindu, Satellite State...'”

ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, you know, this was—I’ve written a lot in this piece about what happens when a government, you know, institutes a constitution or its—a democracy only functions with a constitution as its legal and moral base. So, when that government is vandalizing the constitution, and in fact, whether it’s the Maoists or whether it’s any of the other resistance movements, if you listen to what they’re saying right now, they’re only people demanding their constitutional rights. So the government is vandalizing the constitution. The "terrorists," in quote-unquote, are demanding their constitutional rights. So I said, look, if the government is not going to respect the constitution, then maybe we should change the constitution, whose preamble, the Indian constitution, says we are a secular, democratic, socialist republic. So change it and say we are a corporate, Hindu, satellite state.

______________
Democracy now should know better, they did an earlier interview with her after the Mumbai Terrorist attacks. Here is Arundhati after that heinous crime, criticizing India and Indians. Yes, here is a supposed leftist, blaming the victims!!



In contrast here is Salman Rushdie taking a principled stand on this matter: Asked to comment on Arundhati Roy's remarks disparaging the "iconic" status accorded to the Taj in the context of 26/11, he said: "I thought that particular remark in her piece was disgusting. The idea that the deaths of the rich don't matter because they are rich is disgusting. The idea that 12 members of the Taj staff who heroically gave their lives to save many of the guests are to be discounted because they are, presumably, lackeys of the rich—this is nauseating. This is amoral. She should be ashamed of herself."