Avaaz: The Online Pro-War Propagandist And Color Revolution NGO

By Brandon Turbeville

It’s considered one of the globe’s largest NGOs, yet the odds are most Americans have never heard of it. Avaaz, (whose name means “voice” in many languages), is a massive “online activist organization” that claims to promote freedom and democracy all across the world in a variety of different means and for a variety of different causes.

According to its own website, since its creation in 2007, Avaaz’s mission is to “organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”

It also states,

Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. Our model of internet organising allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force. (Read about results on the Highlights page.)

The Avaaz community campaigns in 15 languages, served by a core team on 6 continents and thousands of volunteers. We take action — signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing “offline” protests and events — to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform the decisions that affect us all.

While Avaaz’s stated goals might sound laudable to many Americans, anyone who has observed the number of “people power” revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East might recognize the language from the Avaaz website as indicative of the color revolution apparatus that has helped inflame the world over the last 5-7 years.

Avaaz is, indeed, part of the color revolution apparatus, having apparently received funds from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation to start up in 2007. Avaaz was founded by Res Publica and Moveon.org, both Soros-funded organizations that attempt to co-opt the American left into supporting ideas and campaigns closely associated with the communitarian foundation oligarchs.

The Avaaz Players

In addition, a number of Avaaz founders and board members have close connections to Soros’ Open Society Foundations such as Eli Pariser (both a Board Member of OSF and a member of the Open Society US programs as well as Moveon.org) and Pedro Abramovay (the Regional Director For Latin America and the Caribbean at OSF, the Director of Latin America Programs at OSF and a campaign director of Avaaz).

Conservative organization, Discover the Networks, published a summary of the connections between some of the founders of Avaaz. The website writes,

Ricken Patel: A Canadian, Patel is both the executive director of Res Publica and president/executive director of Avaaz

Eli Pariser: The executive director of MoveOn, Pariser is Avaaz’s board chairman and also serves on the advisory board of Res Publica.

Tom Perriello: This former U.S. congressman from Virginia co-founded Res Publica and has been a longtime advocacy partner with Ricken Patel.

Ben Brandzel: Formerly an advocacy director for MoveOn, Brandzel also served as director of new-media campaigns and fundraising for Barack Obama’s Organizing for America. In addition, he worked for the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and John Edwards.

As one might suspect, despite its constant rhetoric regarding “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy,” Avaaz has openly supported violence, war, and imperialism. In 2011, Avaaz raised its voice as loudly as it could with demands that the EU, NATO, UN, and all other parties “stop the violent crackdown” on civilians in Libya. Translated: Avaaz called on the EU, NATO, UN, and all other parties to come to the rescue of jihadists that had been unleashed against the government and the people of Libya in order to overthrow Ghaddafi for the benefit of the NATO powers.

Avaaz – Propaganda Against Syria

Avaaz soon after turned its sights on Syria, the next country in line to suffer under NATO’s attempt to destroy an uncooperative national government. As a sampling of the drivel Avaaz regularly released regarding Syria, Avaaz posted on its website the following transparent propaganda in an attempt to drum up support for a No Fly Zone in Syria:

It’s inspiring — over 1 million people from across the world have joined the call to protect Syrian civilians. And an Avaaz-commissioned poll shows a majority of Americans supporting a targeted No Fly Zone to save lives. Right now, the US Congress and the UN are talking about how to protect Syrian civilians — let’s keep the pressure on for life-saving action!

The Syrian air force just dropped chlorine gas bombs on children. Their little bodies gasped for air on hospital stretchers as medics held back tears, and watched as they suffocated to death.

But today there is a chance to stop these barrel bomb murders with a targeted No Fly Zone.

The US, Turkey, UK, France and others are right now seriously considering a safe zone in Northern Syria. Advisers close to President Obama support it, but he is worried he won’t have public support. That’s where we come in.

Let’s tell him we don’t want a world that just watches as a dictator drops chemical weapons on families in the night. We want action.

One humanitarian worker said ‘I wish the world could see what I have seen with my eyes. It breaks your heart forever.’ Let’s show that the world cares — sign to support a life-saving No Fly Zone.

Obviously, the purpose of the post was to drum up support for a “No-Fly Zone” in Syria, tantamount to a direct military invasion of the country on the model of that which destroyed Libya and returned the country to the years shortly prior to the Stone Age.

Such has even been admitted by top U.S. Generals when explaining exactly what a No Fly Zone would entail. As General Carter Ham stated,

We should make no bones about it. It first entails killing a lot of people and destroying the Syrian air defenses and those people who are manning those systems. And then it entails destroying the Syrian air force, preferably on the ground, in the air if necessary. This is a violent combat action that results in lots of casualties and increased risk to our own personnel.

General Philip Breedlove also echoed this description when he said,

I know it sounds stark, but what I always tell people when they talk to me about a no-fly zone is . . . it’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability

Also obvious was the glaringly false claim that Assad’s troops had dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. The Syrian military has never been implicated in using chemical weapons against the Syrian people except in the pages of the Western mainstream press and the minds of a gullible public. Every use of chemical weapons has been, at some point, traced back to the Western-backed terrorists fighting against the Syrian government.

Avaaz has also pushed for relocating Syrian refugees and “Syrian refugees” to England as a result of “chlorine bombs” “falling from the sky” “in Syria. Avaaz thus used non-existent “chlorine bombs falling from the sky” to justify relocating “refugees” from a war zone that it is partly responsible for creating itself.

Avaaz has posted dubious “calls for help” from “Syrians” such as this one, entitled “Cry For Help In Syria,” in Homs. Of course, while most Syrians are horrified at the state of war in which they find themselves as a result of the Western destabilization, the overwhelming majority of Syrians support their government and despise the Western-backed savages raping and beheading their way across the country. If one is interested in reading or listening to the opinion of a real Syrian, feel free to consult the videos and articles of Afraa Dagher, a true victim of the so-called “civil war” that would be more aptly named an invasion.

Vanessa Beeley describes typical Avaaz treachery in her article, “The Propaganda War Against Syria Led By Avaaz And The White Helmets.” Beeley is referring to the Avaaz propaganda that emerged in the wake of the Russian attacks against ISIS and other related terrorists in Syria. Avaaz, of course, followed the State Department and NATO line that Russia was bombing the as-yet-undiscovered “moderate rebels.” She writes,

Now let’s examine the unsavoury marketing aspect of the propaganda campaign being waged by a frustrated and increasingly infuriated US alliance. Of course the usual triad has leapt into action. HRW, Avaaz and the White Helmets. Avaaz has produced one of its most poisonous and misleading petitions to date. The inevitable eyewitness statements claim that Russia targeted civilian areas utterly free of ISIS operatives. These statements are already rendered questionable by the evidence I have submitted above.

When we watch the videos, particularly the longer Liveleak version, it is hard to detect the women and children that are being described. The majority of protagonists appear to be male and of fighting age. There is no evidence of “civilian” life among the deserted buildings, the only movement is of males, some on foot, some on scooters and presumably some taking the time to film events even as the bombs are falling. Not the actions of terrified, innocent civilians.

Live Leak Video of Russian bombing of Homs

There is one other video that does show about 2 seconds of a young boy crying and obviously injured. However this video must be questioned as to its authenticity as the claims are that the initial shot of planes overhead is not even of Russian planes. The quality of the video is poor and apart from the footage of the one child, again demonstrates that the majority of people involved are men of fighting age in a deserted built up area to the north of Homs.

In this disgusting display of blatant propaganda calling for the long sought after no fly zone, Emma Ruby-Sachs, deputy director of Avaaz makes the extraordinary statement “Russia says it’s bombing ISIS, but eyewitnesses say their brutal attacks targeted areas way outside of ISIS control. This will only sow instability and radicalisation and should be an urgent wake-up call to the US and its allies to enforce a targeted no-fly zone to save lives, counter ISIS and alleviate the refugee crisis. Syrians civilians need protection now, not further attacks from Russian bombs.”

Speaking to one Damascus resident this morning, I asked for their opinion on this statement. His reply was simple, “I am just relieved that the Russian Air Force is in action”. The hypocrisy of this statement from Ruby-Sachs perfectly mirrors the hypocrisy of Congress, Obama’s Teflon speech at the UNGA, Pentagon’s barefaced obscurantism over the US role in creating exactly this instability and radicalisation in Syria and bringing misery, terror and bloodshed to the people of Syria with the sole aim of securing their interests in the region [and those of their staunchest partner in crimes against Humanity, Israel]

If we wish to speak of civilian casualties perhaps we should turn the spotlight on the pre- existing Coalition bombing campaign. The civilian death rates from these strikes is rarely discussed and often concealed by the Pentagon and US/European associated analysts like the SOHR. Where for example was the Avaaz petition calling for a No Fly Zone when the coalition air strikes resulted in a multitude of non-combatant deaths including children? This report from Airwars reveals the disturbing numbers:

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Syria has also seen a number of troubling mass casualty events attributed to Coalition actions. On the first night of bombing on September 23rd 2014, US aircraft killed as many as 15 civilians in the village of Kafar Daryan. On December 28th at least 58 civilians reportedly died when the Coalition struck a temporary Daesh prison at al Bab (see report). And on April 30th 2015, 64 civilians died in a likely Coalition airstrike at Ber Mahli. In these three incidents alone, 106 non-combatant victims have so far been publicly named – 38 of them children. It remains unclear whether any of these events have been investigated by the Coalition.

Syria’s civilians need a spanner putting in the spokes of this crushing propaganda vehicle that rides roughshod over their genuine needs with devastating consequences. Those needs are simple: stop lying, stop fabricating and stop creating, funding, arming and incubating the terrorist cancer in Syria.

Yet Avaaz is not merely involved in the propaganda side of the war on national sovereignty and the people living in the countries resisting Anglo-American domination, it is and has been involved directly on the ground, particularly in Syria, in attempts to facilitate the so-called “Arab Spring” color revolution and other forms of “Syrian activism” (read: terrorism funded and supported by the West, the GCC, NATO, and Israel).

Avaaz Role In The Syrian Destabilization

Avaaz was instrumental in providing not only the online propaganda supporting terrorists and color revolution participants in Syria and back home in the West, but it was also helpful in providing material support such as technology, propaganda and tech training, and medical supplies to the terrorists on the ground.

As Ed Pilkington wrote for the Guardian in his March, 2012 article, “Avaaz Faces Questions Over Role At Center Of Syrian Protest Movement,”

Syria has certainly been risky. The group was quicker on the draw in responding to the first signs of the protest movement than most aid organisations, even than most media outlets that pride themselves in getting speedily to difficult places.

To begin with, Avaaz sent a team of staff organisers to Lebanon after spotting the first signs of a nascent protest movement in Syria. Contact was then made with Syrian activists inside the country, and go-betweens recruited, notably Wissam Tarif, a highly respected Syrian pro-democracy leader who is widely consulted by journalists and senior western diplomats.

From there its involvement in the Syrian Arab spring drew it steadily further and further into the conflict. First off Avaaz sent in hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of communications equipment – satellite phones and internet connections known as BGANs – that gave the protesters a link to the outside world.

As with earlier Arab spring engagements in Tunisia and Libya, they realised that equipment alone was not enough: the protesters needed to know how to use it if they were to be effective. So Avaaz sent in trainers who could give grounding in how to use the smattphones as well as basic training in citizen journalism.

“Verification was a key element,” says Patel. “We could get stuff out, but the media didn’t know what they were looking at, or couldn’t be sure where it had come from. So we began playing the middle man, verifying information. That was in some ways the greatest value we brought to maintaining the oxygen of international attention on these protest movements.”

Reports coming from Avaaz-trained citizen journalists in Homs and other key conflict zones, channelled through the Avaaz communications hub outside the country, has been a major source of information on the uprising and the regime’s bloody response, used by news outlets around the world.

Getting in the equipment involved opening up smuggling routes across the Syrian border into hotbeds such as Homs and its most badly bombed neighbourhood, Baba Amr, which led Avaaz seemlessly into the next phase of its engagement. With the smuggling routes open, it could help get $2m of blood bags, tetanus shots, respiratory machines and other medical supplies into the country, bringing relief to communities that were desperate for help and that more establishment institutions like the ICRC had failed to reach.

It has also smuggled 34 international journalists into the trouble zones. Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist, entered using another conduit, but the French photographer Remi Ochlik who died with her as a result of Syrian government shelling was helped in by Avaaz.

Thus, Avaaz finds itself among treacherous company – “humanitarian” organizations like Doctors Without Borders, White Helmets, Human Rights Watch, and even Amnesty International.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Avaaz is just one more tentacle of the color revolution octopus partially funded by George Soros, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA as well as the budgets of other NATO countries both above and below publicly available knowledge. Its worldwide Internet organization is nothing more than a hub for dupes and witless participants who are disenchanted with the current system for whatever reason. The human mass is then used as a battering ram against the target government, ushering in a system that is almost always worse than the one the movement helped overthrow.

There is no shortage of color revolution NGOs in Syria or anywhere else in the world. To compile a list of such organizations currently existing would require a full-time commitment even as new groups are formed all the time. It is not necessarily the individual organization itself that must be exposed but the methods by which color revolutions and mass movements are created, facilitated, and accomplished that must be understood.

Only by understanding the nature of the color revolution and destabilization can such tragedies be avoided in the future.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.