AVAAZ: THE EMPEROR OF THE NGO NETWORK
“The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.” — Teju Cole
Avaaz is the operational name of “Global Engagement and Organizing Fund,” a non-profit organization legally incorporated in 2006.
Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, described as a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, “an online community that has pioneered internet advocacy in the United States.”
Launched in 2007, Avaaz is the fastest-growing online movement in history. The deliberate choosing of the word Avaaz, which translates to “voice” in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages, begs the question of whether the core purpose of Avaaz from the onset was to build influence and “befriend” the populations in the Middle Eastern and Asia.
9 December 2009: Ricken Patel of Res Publica: “Each organization [MoveOn and ResPublica] has roughly equal international memberships that will be invited to join Avaaz (Res Publica has built a list of almost 400,000 athttp://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/) … I think it’s fair [to say] that we’re starting with a MoveOn model plus SMS….” [SMS is the acronym for Short Message Service, or texting.]
The Service Employees International Union and GetUp.org.au were also publicly recognized as founding partners of Avaaz: “Avaaz.org also enjoys the partnership and support of leading activist organizations from around the world, including theService Employees International Union, a founding partner of Avaaz, GetUp.org.au, and many others.”
The silent voice behind Avaaz, that of Res Publica, is, in the public realm, essentially comprised of 3 key individuals: Tom Perriello, a pro-war (former) U.S. Representative who describes himself as a social entrepreneur, Ricken Patel, consultant to many of the most powerful entities on Earth and the long-time associate of Perriello, and Tom Pravda, a member of the UK Diplomatic Service who serves as a consultant to the U.S. State Department.
9 December 2009, Tech President: “The organization is pursuing an ambitious growth path…. It is beginning with 700,000 members spread across 148 countries. It also has an Advisory Board that comprises politicians, diplomats, activists and celebrities from around the world…. Open Society Institute indeed made a one-year grant of $150,000 to Res Publica last summer to help them get Avaaz off the ground.” (Two appreciative comments from Avaaz associates can be found under this article, including one from a lesser publicly credited Avaaz co-founder, Paul Hilder.) (Hilder is discussed further within this report.)
In addition to the $150,000 in seed money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Res Publica gave Avaaz $225,000 in 2006. (Form 990, page 18), $950,000 in 2007 (Form 990, page 18), and $500,000 in 2008 (Form 990, page 9). (Form 990 allows the IRS and the public to evaluate nonprofits and how they operate.)
Avaaz states that they take “absolutely no money from governments or corporations…. While we received initial seed grants from partner organizations and charitable organizations, almost 90% of the Avaaz budget now comes [from] small online donations.” The 2009 Form 990 for George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society reports (page 87) $300,000 in general support for Avaaz and an additional $300,000 to Avaaz for climate campaigning.
The Avaaz co-founding team is comprised of a group of “global social entrepreneurs” from six countries: Executive Director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser (MoveOn Executive Director), Andrea Woodhouse (consultant to the World Bank) Jeremy Heimans (co-founder of GetUp! and Purpose), and Australian entrepreneur David Madden (co-founder of GetUp and Purpose). “Avaaz is lucky to have the founding partnership and support of leading activist organizations from around the world.” [1]
The 2010 Avaaz Form 990 states: “Avaaz Foundation is comprised of two members: Res Publica (U.S.) Inc. and MoveOn.org Civic Action.”
Both Heimans and Madden were instrumental in forming the vision of Avaaz; the “global online political communityinspired by the success of GetUp and the U.S. group MoveOn.org.”
In 2002, MoveOn’s political action committee (PAC) raised and distributed $3.5 million to more than 36 U.S. congressional candidates. Don Hazen (executive director of the “Independent” Media Institute (IMI), as well as executive editor of AlterNet, which is a program of IMI) [2] was quoted as stating: “MoveOn’s member list [is] mostly white, highly educated, computer savvy … and willing to give dough.”
Based on the “success” of Avaaz co-founder, MoveOn, we can safely assume that “mostly white, highly educated, computer savvy … and willing to give dough” should be considered the targeted demographic for Avaaz and the Avaaz network.
On 23 November 2003 it was reported by San Fransico Chronicle that “MoveOn.org reeled in a $5 million matching pledge from currency speculator billionaire George Soros.” This represented the largest-ever individual donation to the five-year-old organization. The model described by The Chronicle was “an organization with six full-time employees, no offices,” which has been successfully replicated by many NGOs within the non-profit industrial complex, including 350.org.
In 2010 Avaaz paid Ricken Patel $183,264 as executive director, and paid Ben Wikler (Avaaz campaign director) $111,384 plus $921,592 in “campaigner fees and consulting” and $182,196 in travel expenses. During 2011, Avaaz did not miss a golden opportunity to set up a live-stream for the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York in order to give a voice to the “99%.” Yes, the rich get richer. The poor get poorer.
In addition to receiving funding from the Open Society Institute, Avaaz has publicly cited the Open Society Institute as their foundation partner. This admission by founder Ricken Patel is found on the www.soros.org website. [As discussed in part I, The Open Society Institute (renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations) is a private operating and grantmaking foundation founded by George Soros, who remains the chair. Soros is known best as a multibillionaire currency speculator, and of late, an avid supporter of Occupy Wall Street. Soros is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is essentially the promotional arm of the ruling elite in the U.S. Most all U.S. policy is initiated and written by the exclusive membership within the CFR.]
Avaaz utilized/utilizes their Open Society Institute relationship to distribute member donations via “Avaaz partners at the Open Society Institute.” [3]
March 2008 – Avaaz co-founder, Ricken Patel explains: “Avaaz is a campaigning organization and not in this business. So we chose a foundation partner with long experience…. That group is the Open Society Institute, one of the largest and most respected foundations in the world. OSI is taking no overhead on the funds we are granting to Burmese groups, and has also increased its own support to this cause in 2008.” [4] In the instance of Burma, all Avaaz campaign donations have been directly funneled through the Soros Open Society Institute Burma Project (website). Although nowhere on the Avaaz website will you find any connection to George Soros, within this statement Patel clearly states that The Open Society Institute is in fact a partner of Avaaz. Why Avaaz chooses to funnel the money through the Soros foundation is not clearly understood, but we might assume Soros insists upon it in order to control which groups in Burma receive funding. Today, Myanmar (Burma) “is eagerly genuflecting before an onslaught of foreign private investors zeroing in to dispossess her” (24 May 2012, Myanmar Learns the Lesson of Libya).
Avaaz partners are many, including one.org [5] [discussed further in this report] and the infamous TckTckTck. The Tcktcktck campaign was launched 26 June 2009 by Havas, one of the world’s largest global advertising and communications firms, in conjunction with the United Nations (Kofi Annan) and Bob Geldof. The stated objective of this corporate-driven advertising campaign was “to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.” It is revealing that the “environmental organizations” listed as partners were, first and foremost, none other than 350.org and Avaaz.org who partnered with the likes of such corporations as EDF Nuclear, Lloyds Bank, MTV, and other multi-national corporations who simultaneously destroy our shared environment. The organizations flourish under the guise and branding of “grassroots,” yet “grassroots” are generally not connected to the dominant global structures that are able to absorb, shape and dominate entire movements such as in the case of Tcktcktck at the climate change talks in Copenhagen.
And while the stated initial goal of Avaaz, according to Avaaz co-founder Madden, was “a web-based campaign against the foreign policy of United States President,” the reality is anything but.
Avaaz’s stance on both Libya (now annihilated) and now Syria is in smooth synchronicity with the positions within the U.S. administration, positions such as those vocalized by the likes of war criminals such as Hillary Clinton (of “We came. We saw. He died. Laughter…” fame). The ugly iron fist of war is gently being spoon-fed to the public by way of a very dark velvet glove – that being Avaaz.
As of July 2011, Avaaz claimed to have more than 9.65 million “members” in 193 countries. Most recently, the Avaaz campaign, which demands foreign intervention by the Imperialist states in a synchronized effort to destabilize Syria, has resulted in the Avaaz membership skyrocketing to over 13 million members. According to Avaaz, this surge of an additional 3 million members or so was achieved in less than 30 days of an intense campaign against the Sovereign Syrian Government. What’s happening in Syria today is a destabilization campaign in which the terror unleashed upon the population is financed by foreign interests.
In the midst of the Avaaz destabilization campaigns of both Libya and Syria, Avaaz, in unison with other U.S.-funded NGOs, also waged a destabilization campaign against the Morales Government of Bolivia in October 2011. The attempt failed. Unlike westerners, Bolivians are, today, far advanced in their intellectual understanding of global politics and carefully orchestrated propaganda, having been on the receiving end of Imperialism/colonialism and the capitalist economic system itself, for what surely must feel like an eternity.
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