    NGOs as the opium of the Left.

    A visit to the developing world, be it Palestine or Pakistan , shows a
    disturbing trend. Increasingly, NGOs are luring away middle class youth
    away from political participation and membership of political parties,
    to what Tariq Ali refers to as "virtual politics," where good money can
    be made while satisfying the youth's guilty conscience as well--the NGO.

    Questioned about the role of NGOs at the recent World Social Forum in
    Karachi , Tariq Ali said, "We can't generalize, but by and large, NGOs
    have taken people away from politics. It's a misnomer, and I like to
    think of them as WGOs - Western Governmental Organizations. This is not
    just peculiar to Pakistan but all over the globe. Nevertheless this is
    not a substitute for political process. It's not real politics; it's
    virtual politics."

    Some estimates say there are today over 5,000 NGOs, just in occupied
    Palestine, sucking up the best and brightest from political
    participation and leaving the field open to religious organisations and
    their militias.

    Where in the 60s someone would have joined the PFLP, today they set up
    an NGO and get funding from European or North American foundations or
    universities to "build civil society".

    From Hanan Ashrawi to Mustafa Barghouti, it is said they all run their
    own NGOs. In Pakistan , one party of the Left operates its own parallel
    NGO!

    Locally in Canada , many who would otherwise have been active in the
    political process, are today employed by such NGOs. Conveniently
    labelled as the harmless "non-profit sector," they are funded by the
    very governments these activist purport to oppose. Being smart,
    articulate and suave, these activists, who shy away from political
    parties, should not be expected to cut the hand that feeds them!

    I see NGOs and the so called "Non-Profit Sector" as the opium of the
    Left. Here is a well researched article on the phenomena of NGOs and who
    is behind them.

    Read and reflect.

    Tariq

    ------------ -----

    http://www.counterp unch.org/ roelofs05132006. html

    The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy

    Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too

    By JOAN ROELOFS

    In recent years, nations have challenged the activities and very
    existence of non-governmental organizations. Russia , Zimbabwe , and
    Eritrea have enacted new measures requiring registration; "Open Society
    Institute" affiliates have been shut down in Eastern Europe; and
    Venezuela has charged the Súmate NGO leaders with treason. In Iraq and
    Afghanistan , staff of Western charitable NGOs (CARE and Doctors Without
    Borders) have been assassinated.

    What are these organizations, and who or what is behind them?

    They are heirs of the missionaries, who did many good deeds, bringing
    sewing machines to Bulgaria , ideas of women's liberation to Chinese
    footbinders, and life-saving medicines to the less industrialized world.
    Yet the missionaries also served as scouts for corporations and
    colonizers, tying knots with the most ambitious local people, especially
    those adept at bilingualism.

    Missionaries are still operating today, but the field has become more
    intensely populated and diverse. Today's NGOs are elephantine,
    serpentine, and Byzantine. They may be international organizations,
    their local affiliates, or seemingly spontaneous grassroots groups.

    Most funding and direction come from the wealthy nations. Often the
    donors form a conglomerate creating mutual responsibility and
    considerable ambiguity. CIVICUS, a partnership to promote "civil
    society" worldwide, is funded by, among others, American Express
    Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Carnegie Corporation,
    Canadian International Development Agency, Ford Foundation, Harvard
    University, Oxfam, and United Nations Development Programme.

    If the source is confusing, the message is usually clear:
    "democratization" strives for civil rights and elections, but it also
    must include an open door to foreign capital, labor contracts, resource
    extraction, and military training. These networks also define "civil
    society" to include rock concerts and street mobs, but not
    government-provided maternal health clinics, child care, or senior
    services.

    Affluent nations' government agencies are important NGO funders. The
    most notorious is the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED;
    ostensibly a nongovernmental foundation), created by Congress in 1983
    to do openly what had been CIA cold war covert activities. When these
    operations were revealed in 1967, there was shock, not so much because
    the US was covertly funding foreign political and labor groups, but
    because organizations such as the National Education Association,
    American Newspaper Guild, American Federation of State, County, and
    Municipal Employees, and the National Student Association were secretly
    used as pass-throughs, and all but the top officers were unwitting.
    Actual and phony foundations also distributed CIA funds.

    NED changed this-but not very much. It distributes grants both directly
    and through other organizations, now overtly. Its "core grantees" are
    the Center for International Private Enterprise (of the US Chamber of
    Commerce), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (of
    the AFL-CIO), and, affiliated with the parties, the National Democratic
    Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican
    Institute. Some private foundations chip in, for example, Smith
    Richardson and Mellon-Scaife. The Mott Foundation gave the NDI $150,000
    in 1998 "to increase public confidence in democratization and the
    transition to a market economy in Ukraine ." Foundations also directly
    co-fund NED's ultimate grantees. Thus, the Lilly Endowment supports the
    Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru , headed by Hernando de Soto
    , which offers free-market remedies for poverty.

    Other capitalist democracies now have government foundations similar to
    NED, and they work collaboratively, e.g., the Canadian Rights and
    Democracy and the British Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
    Additional US agencies have joined NED and the CIA in this work,
    notably, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and United
    States Information Agency (USIA), which support and create foreign NGOs
    and media.

    Germany, France , the Netherlands , Greece , Italy , and Sweden fund
    their political parties' foundations. The European members of the
    Socialist International' s fund, the European Forum for Democracy and
    Solidarity, distributes "democratization" aid.

    The European Union has worldwide grant programs for sustainable
    development and democratization. NATO grant programs support
    environmental organizations, among others. United Nations agencies such
    as UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, UNDP, and FAO have long operated this way, and
    the World Bank funds, sponsors, guides, and coordinates grassroots poor
    people's organizations.

    NGOs in prosperous nations have extensive grant programs overseas. These
    include not only the obviously international ones, e.g., Rotary,
    American Friends Service Committee, and Oxfam; but also labor
    organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers Educational
    Foundation. Corporate foundations are active throughout the world, and
    sometimes have separate funds directed by employees, for example, the
    Boeing Employees Fund, which supports charities in Japan and England .

    Why would these philanthropic efforts offend anyone? Why do they hate
    our kind hearts?

    In the first place, these public-private philanthropies have worked
    together to fund and direct overthrow movements. We had a "Subversive
    Activities Control Board" here, but export was encouraged. The grantees'
    activities included destabilization, the creation of mobs preventing
    elected governments from ruling, chaos, and violence. Among those funded
    were the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia , Solidarity in Poland , Union of
    Democratic Forces in Bulgaria , Otpor in Serbia , and, more recently,
    similar groups in the succession states of the USSR . Sometimes mobs
    (especially of young people) have been moved around from one country to
    another to give the impression of vast popular opposition. The NED,
    Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the Soros philanthropies have been
    particularly active in these operations. Human Rights Watch (formerly
    Helsinki Watch) has nurtured opposition groups. Reformers seeking social
    democracy or democratic socialism were excluded; such systems might
    oppress the "vulture capitalists. "

    It is hard to know how much native support existed for the
    Western-funded revolutions, as media and information (especially if we
    can't read Mongolian, Bulgarian, or Uzbeki) are produced by the same
    conglomerates. Of course, all revolutions are made by minorities, often
    with assistance of foreign allies. However, by today's standards as
    embodied in the UN Charter, subverting with the intention of
    overthrowing foreign governments is a grave violation of international
    law. Many were shocked by the NED activities complementing other
    instruments of intervention that helped to destroy the Sandinista
    revolution in Nicaragua . Yet the 1990 election was judged by the NGO
    observers to be a free one; neither threats of physical annihilation nor
    millions of foreign dollars violated the purity of that process.
    "Cold-war liberal" policymakers have advocated covert actions as a
    peaceful alternative to invasion, but it isn't as if military action has
    faded away; they work together.

    Such attempts are ongoing. The Venezuelan indictment is just one
    indication of a larger NED-NGO operation. Plans for annihilating the
    Cuban revolution, via "independent libraries," "Red Feminista Cubana,"
    and other created organizations, are clearly spelled out on the NED web
    site(http://www.ned.org/).

    NGOs are also used to disrupt revolutionary or even reformist movements
    that might interfere with neo-liberal goals, hampering the ability of
    corporations to go anywhere and do anything. Thus, as James
    Petras(http://www.monthlyreview.org/1297petr.htm) has reported, radical
    social groups and their leaders are co-opted into NGOs dedicated to
    worthy, ameliorative projects that are no threat to Western interests.
    Instead of broad movements challenging systemic causes of oppression,
    activists are recruited into discrete, well-funded "identity" politics
    and single-issue organizations, and poverty is just another minority
    status.

    In India and South Africa, the very poor have been organized into Slum
    Dwellers and Shack Dwellers Associations, which meet with the World Bank
    people to discuss what is to be done. Protesters against the Free Trade
    Area of the Americas (FTAA) were channeled into groups that were invited
    and funded to attend the meetings preparing this treaty. Those concerned
    with the devastation of oil, lumber, and mineral extraction throughout
    the world can utilize the "participatory mechanisms" of the Earth
    Council, one of whose board members is Klaus Schwab, director of the
    World Economic Forum. Conferences for the protesters "parallel" to the
    globalization elite's are supported by that same elite. These do create
    fruitful interaction among dissidents; yet they may also function as a
    diversionary tactic. We won't know unless these possibilities are
    investigated.

    Amelioration is important to keep those societies newly "marketized" on
    a steady course despite crushing poverty. In Mongolia (as elsewhere),
    "shock therapy," decimating both employment and social services, has
    resulted in street children, child prostitution, and increasing maternal
    mortality, none of which occurred in its "undeveloped" or communist
    phases. However, the rock concerts and street mobs have attained
    freedom. Enter PACT (originally, Private Agencies Collaborating
    Together; funders now include the Ford Foundation, US AID, Mercy Corps
    International, the Nature Conservancy, the World Bank, Citigroup,
    Chevron, Levi Strauss, and Microsoft), which provides some substitutes
    for the former socialist institutions, while desperation drives
    Mongolia's leaders to welcome foreign garment industries and copper and
    gold extraction.

    For many nations far from the North Atlantic , NATO seems to promise
    economic security. This inclination has been abetted by the creation,
    through NATO's grant programs, of NGOs to foster the NATO spirit, and in
    Bulgaria , a charitable NGO to provide employment for their former
    military officers, who wouldn't fit in. NATO also supplies research
    funds for universities in Eastern Europe, which now have little
    government funding, and is attempting to expand its charities throughout
    North Africa and the Middle East .

    Prominent insiders, who sit high in the democracy-promotion turrets of
    the foundation-NGO international world, have problems with the system,
    although they may ignore or applaud the overthrow operations. What
    concerns them is the feudal relationship existing between the wealthy
    Western institutional patrons and the clients in poorer lands, and the
    NGOs lack of a genuine local constituency. Thomas Carothers, of the
    Carnegie Endowment, has written: "Transnational civil society is . . .
    very much part of the same projection of Western political and economic
    power that civil society activists decry in other venues."

    Others are concerned about the "brain drain" drawing the scarce educated
    people away from government service or authentic grassroots
    organizations, neither of which can offer comparable pay or perks. They
    protest the imposition of a foreign culture that denigrates indigenous
    knowledge, and paradoxically, programs such as microcredit in South Asia
    that reinforce the more oppressive patriarchical aspects of traditional
    cultures.

    NGO staff members have been accused of being spies. Whether or not this
    is the case, the system allows access to remote native cultures, where
    the lay of the land and sociograms of local influentials can be charted
    for any purpose. This type of missionary penetration, attained through
    Bible translation in the Amazon River basin , has been recounted in Thy
    Will Be Done, by Colby and Dennett.

    NGOs are now extensively occupied in the relief of disasters, whether
    natural or man-made, and the US military (with its "coalition") is
    deeply involved in both the comforting and the afflicting. To receive US
    funds, humanitarian organizations must support US foreign policy.
    Consequently, some, such as Oxfam UK , have withdrawn their workers from
    Iraq . Those remaining are often regarded as collaborators, which is not
    surprising, as many international NGOs have been handmaids to
    subversion, overthrow, and occupation. Some have even supported
    "humanitarian" bombing, especially in the case of Yugoslavia .

    It is hard to assess accurately NGOs' complicity because there are few
    incentives for critical studies by journalists or academics, and
    anti-capitalist activists are often knotted up in some way. Information
    about NGOs mostly comes from the same funding sources, such as
    "Transitions on Line" of the Soros enterprises, or OneWorld.net,
    sponsored by the Ford Foundation and others. A networking resource,
    Ngo.net, is administered by Freedom House and funded by the USAID.

    The peak of international NGOs, the World Social Forum, meets at the
    same time as the World Economic Forum, only far away. The WSF's general
    funding is rarely scrutinized by the participants, whose travel expenses
    come from similar sources. An exception is a report by the Research Unit
    on Political Economy-India, which explains why foundation funding was
    refused for the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, and discusses critically the
    activities of the Ford Foundation in India .

    It is news when any NGO nibbles at the hand that feeds it, as did a
    Pakistani theater group last November. Invited to a women's theater
    festival in India , they were sent home because the organizers deemed
    their contribution too anti-US for a Ford Foundation-sponsore d event.

    As all generalizations have exceptions, let it be noted that some NGOs
    are impeccable, and even peccable ones often have humanitarian staff and
    directors. A recent attempt by dissidents seeking international donors
    to "democracy promotion" in the US , the International Endowment for
    Democracy, could give an effective jolt. Yet it may be that democracy,
    justice, or equality are not readily attainable by such means. For
    several centuries NGOs have been providing "disaster aid" for societies
    being "marketized. " What can we learn from this history?