Apr 7th, 2013
Egyptian opposition holds march in Cairo wearing T-Shirts with “Otpor!” sign
Opposition parties and groups of Egypt held march in Cairo on Saturday to mark anniversary of the 6 April general strike in Mahalla in 2008, which eventually turned into the largest anti-regime protest in the 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak in power.
The event was organized by the 6 April Youth Movement, which also marks 5-year anniversary of establishment – (mediachecker-> the labor unions). The movement stands against Egyptian President Morsi’s rule. Members of other opposition parties joined the march. Participants have been gathering for the march since morning. Security forces established increased protection of a number of buildings that could be potentially targeted by the demonstrators.
“Otpor!” Serbia (Archive)
What is interesting in this story is that members of the movement members are wearing T-Shirts with “Otpor!” sign. ”Otpor!” (English: Resistance!) was a civic youth movement that existed from 1998 until 2003 in Serbia (then a federal unit within FR Yugoslavia), employing nonviolent struggle against the regime of Slobodan Milošević as their course of action. In the course of two-year nonviolent struggle against Milosevic, Otpor spread across Serbia and attracted more than 70,000 supporters. They were credited for their role in the successful overthrow of Slobodan Milošević on 5 October 2000.
It is widely believed that “Otpor!” was financed by the Western governments, and after its success, Serbia’s Otpor continued receiving funds from the West and become a “coup college” of sorts, under the name CANVAS, or “Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies”. That would explain why exact the same “Otpor!” logo turned up 11 years later in the streets of Cairo, illustrating further foreign-backed nature of the Egyptian uprisings.
02/01/2012
The first mention of the Academy of Change (AOC) in relation to the Egyptian Revolution of 25 January, came in a Reuters report published on 13 April 2011, under the title of “Inside the Egyptian Revolution”.
In the report, Reuters stated that the Academy of Change was founded in London in 2005 by Hisham Morsy, Wael Adel, and Adel’s cousin Ahmed Adel, and that the Academy moved to Qatar later on. Reuters claims that the AOC was involved in training Egyptian dissidents (Kefaya and April 6 Youth among others) ever since 2005. Reuters also claims that the Academy is one of those involved in the planning of the events that took place Tahrir, and the training of the revolutionaries, through a vague character with the name “Saad Bahaar“.
Reuters report wrote:
“Inspired by the way Serbian group Otpor had brought down Slobodan Milosevic through non-violent protests in 2000, the trio studied previous struggles. One of their favorite thinkers was Gene Sharp, a Boston-based academic who was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. The group had set up a webpage in 2004 to propagate civil disobedience ideas in Arabic.
At first, the three young Egyptians’ activities were purely theoretical. But in November 2005, Wael Adel came to Cairo to give a three-day training session on civil disobedience. In the audience were about 30 members of Kefaya, an anti-Mubarak protest group whose name means “enough” in Arabic. Kefaya had gained prominence during the September 2005 presidential elections which Mubarak won by a landslide. During these protests, they had been attacked by thugs and some women members had been stripped naked. Bahaar joined Adel on the course and his career as an underground trainer in non-violent activism was born.
Adel taught activists how to function within a decentralized network. Doing so would make it harder for the security services to snuff them out by arresting leaders. They were also instructed on how to maintain a disciplined non-violent approach in the face of police brutality, and how to win over bystanders…
… The Academy became a window for Egypt’s activists into civil disobedience movements outside the Arab world. To disseminate the new methods of resistance, it wrote books about nonviolent activism with a focus on the Arab world: “Civil Disobedience,” “Nonviolent War the 3rd Choice” and “AOC MindQuake” that were published in 2007.
A year later the Academy published “Shields to Protect Against Fear”, a manual on techniques to protect one’s body against attacks by security services during a protest. “The idea of non-violent protest is not martyrdom,” Adel said. “We knew to get ordinary Egyptians, and Arabs, to face their governments and security, they have to have tools to protect themselves. This boosts the morale and enthusiasm to go to the street.”
Then the report goes on to make the link between the Egyptian Revolution and the Academy of Change:
“February 2010. Mohamed ElBaradei was back in Cairo. The former head of the International Atomic Energy Association and Nobel peace prize winner had inspired some of Egypt’s younger generation that change was possible. Several of them had created a Facebook page backing ElBaradei as the country’s next president. But how were they to achieve their goal given Mubarak’s repressive regime? They turned to the Academy for help.
Watch The Great Deception Addendum
The Academy directed them to its online training manuals, which the Facebook activists tried for a while. But despite their internet savvy, many felt that relying entirely on online training was too theoretical. Couldn’t the Academy give them practical training? Enter Bahaar.
Those who had signed up to the Facebook page were divided into groups of 100. Bahaar trained eight of the groups in different parts of the country using, among other tools, PowerPoint presentations that explained how you maximize the power of a protest movement. Every protester had a family, and around the family was a wider community, Bahaar explained. If a protester was arrested or beaten by the police, his or her family might be radicalized. Similarly, if a policeman engaged in brutality, his family and social network might not be supportive. By maintaining disciplined non-violent activity, the regime’s power could be progressively weakened.”
To verify the report we searched for the Academy of Change, and we found it’s website, under the name “AOC: Mind Quake”, with an English Mirror website. The AOC website lists the following data:
The academy was officially founded in London, UK March, 2006 as a scientific institute that is specialized in studying and researching the sciences social, cultural, and political transformations especially in Arabic and Islamic region.
Although established in London, its focus has been the geopolitics of the heart of the world, which happens to be the Middle East and its adjacent countries.
This gave the AOC its unique edge of being one of the earliest scientific research establishments in the West with deep roots at the East that tackles the concepts of “social transformation” and “political change” through a set of independent or overlapping research programs. AOC has been a success in its activities so that it is expanding and recently established its first branch in the Middle East in Qatar in 2009. Then it established its branch Vienna, Austria, 2010.
The AOC website verifies that the founders of the Academy are:
Hisham Morsi – physician Ahmed Adel Abdelhakeem – chemist Wael Adel – civil engineer In the Publications section, the English website contains these downloadable books by the Academy: The Anti-Coup, by Gene Sharp and Bruce Jenkins On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals, by Robert Helvey Path Of Resistance, by Per Herngren Nonviolent Action Handbook, by Sanderson Beck Civil Disobedience, By Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience Training Act Up
But more importantly, the Arabic website contains these books: From Dictatorship to Democracy, by Gene Sharp (in Arabic and English) Nonviolent War the 3rd Choice, سلسلة حرب اللاعنف by the Academy, 2007 The Weapons of Nonviolent War, أسلحة حرب اللاعنف by the Academy, 2007 AOC MindQuake, سلسلة ثورة العقول by the Academy, 2007 Shields to Protect Against Fear, الدروع الواقية من الخوف by the Academy Demonstrations, التظاهرات by the Academy A Road Map to operations and Tactics, خارطة العمليات و التكتيكات by the Academy
There is also a list of “Recommended” movies which includes (but are not limited to): The Matrix V for Vendetta Battle in Seattle and Hitler: the rise of evil
The Academy website links to:
The Facebook page of “The Academy of change”: listing it’s Headquarters in Doah, Qatar, notable to mention is that the Facebook page had little over 6,000 followers. The AOC twitter account with little over 400 followers and it’s YouTube channel.
However the most disturbing thing about the Academy of Change, is that both AOC websites (Arabic and English) do NOT list a team or staff, or the Academy’s funding sources.
We tried to search online for any indication where the AOC FUNDING comes from, with no avail. Sources:
Reuters Special Report: Inside the Egyptian revolution AOC Mind Quake website
The Centre for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) is a non-profit, non-governmental, educational institution focused on the use of nonviolent conflict to promote human rights and democracy. It was founded in 2004 by Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic, former members of the Serbian youth resistance movement, Otpor!, which played a key role in the successful overthrow of Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000. Drawing upon the Serbian experience, CANVAS seeks to educate pro-democracy activists around the world in what it regards as the universal principles for success in nonviolent struggle.
Established in Belgrade, CANVAS has worked with pro-democracy activists from over 50 countries, including Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma, Venezuela, Belarus, Palestine, Western Sahara, West Papua, Eritrea, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Tonga and, recently, Tunisia and Egypt. It works only with groups with no history of violence and only in response to requests for assistance.
CANVAS’ training and methodology has reportedly been successfully applied by groups in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Lebanon (2005), The Maldives (2008) and Egypt (2011).
Mission
The core of CANVAS’s work is rather to spread the word of “people power” to the world than to achieve victories against one dictator or another. Our next big mission should obviously be to explain to the world what a powerful tool nonviolent struggle is when it comes to achieving freedom, democracy and human rights.
Origins
CANVAS was established in Belgrade in 2004. Its founding members, Djinovic and Popovic, were leaders of the Serbian youth resistance movement Otpor! (Serbian for Resistance!), which played an instrumental role in deposing Milosevic in 2000. CANVAS says it sees itself as the successor to a host of non-violent campaigners from India’s Mohandas Gandhi to Martin Luther King. CANVAS has become known for its work with nonviolent democratic movements worldwide through the transfer of knowledge on strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle.
Its founder`s dream seems to be: a world where political change comes through nonviolent struggle. It says it brings a more rigorous, strategic model and skill-set to the process, as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of recent global protest history.
http://anarchitext.org/2011/12/05/canvas/#more-1322
Otpor! (Serbian Cyrillic: Отпор!, English: Resistance!) was a civic youth movement that existed as such from 1998 until 2003 in Serbia, employing nonviolent struggle against the regime of Slobodan Milošević as their course of action. In the course of two-year nonviolent struggle against Milosevic, Otpor spread across Serbia and attracted more than 70,000 supporters. They were credited for their role in the successful overthrow of Slobodan Milošević on 5 October 2000.
Otpor boasted tremendous leverage in the months following Milosevic’s resignation, but failed to focus it into permanent political or social structure in the new transitional and more democratic reality of Serbia. An intensely heterogeneous movement of leftists and conservatives, monarchists and republicans, nationalists and cosmopolitans, after Milosevic’s departure, Otpor had lost the most important glue that bound it together. It was unclear whether the movement should continue as a watch-dog political party or just dissolve after its 2000 triumph. Acting against Milošević earned them wide praise, but when the time came to channel popular support into a clear ideological position, a definite disconnect occurred. In short, it was always clear what Otpor was against, but it was less clear what this movement represented in a new political era.
When three years later Otpor! eventually emerged as a political party, it failed to resonate with voters and received less than 2 percent of the national vote. This was not helped by wide media exposure of broad overt US support for the regime change in Serbia.
Revelation of U.S. involvement
Information started appearing about substantial outside assistance Otpor received leading up to the revolution. Otpor was a recipient of substantial funds from U.S. government-affiliated organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency for International Development (USAID).
In a November 2000 article from the New York Times Magazine, Times journalist Roger Cohen talked to various officials from US based organizations about the extent of American assistance received by Otpor. Paul B. McCarthy from the Washington-based NED stated that Otpor received the majority of US$3 million spent by NED in Serbia from September 1998 until October 2000. At the same time, McCarthy himself held a series of meetings with Otpor’s leaders in Podgorica, as well as Szeged and Budapest. Read more…
Rueters: Serbian activist export their revolution
By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent
Serbian activist takes Yugoslav revolution lessons abroad: Unity, strategy and non-violent action key to success Training for activists in Middle Easter, Zimbabwe
LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) – Eleven years ago, Srdja Popovic (Otpor!) was at the heart of the uprising to oust Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Now, he travels the globe helping other protest groups to plot the overthrow of autocrats.
As executive director for the Belgrade-based Centre for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), he and his colleagues have worked to train activists in 46 countries in the face of repression and sometimes brutality.
His organisation began working with some Egyptian and Tunisian protesters in 2009, teaching skills that helped bring down their presidents and spark regional revolt.
“I don’t want to overstate what we do,” he says, adding that the success of uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia was “100 percent down to brave Arabs”. Read more…http://anarchitext.org/2011/12/05/rueters-otpor/#more-1323
Cooptation of April6 Youth & Opposition Leaders
by Michel Chossudovsky
The cooptation of the leaders of major opposition parties and civil society organizations in anticipation of the collapse of an authoritarian puppet government is part of Washington’s design, applied in different regions of the World.
The process of cooptation is implemented and financed by US based foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Freedom House (FH). Both FH and the NED have links to the US Congress. the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the US business establishment. Both the NED and FH are known to have ties to the CIA.
The NED is actively involved in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. Freedom House supports several civil society organizations in Egypt.
“The NED was established by the Reagan administration after the CIA’s role in covertly funding efforts to overthrow foreign governments was brought to light, leading to the discrediting of the parties, movements, journals, books, newspapers and individuals that received CIA funding. … As a bipartisan endowment, with participation from the two major parties, as well as the AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce, the NED took over the financing of foreign overthrow movements, but overtly and under the rubric of “democracy promotion.” (Stephen Gowans, January « 2011 “What’s left“)
While the US has supported the Mubarak government for the last thirty years, US foundations with ties to the US State department and the Pentagon have actively supported the political opposition including the civil society movement. According to Freedom House: “Egyptian civil society is both vibrant and constrained. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations devoted to expanding civil and political rights in the country, operating in a highly regulated environment.”
In a bitter irony, Washington supports the Mubarak dictatorship, including its atrocities, while also backing and financing its detractors, through the activities of FH, the NED, among others. 
Freedom House: Freedom Maps & meddling with the Middle East
Freedom House publishes an annual report assessing the degree of perceived democratic freedoms in each country.
Freedom House is supposedly an international non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Washington, D.C. which conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights, but it is accused by a lot of analysts and activists to be a front for the American Council on Foreign Relations and its British counterpart the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Noam Chomsky has criticized Freedom House for receiving funding from and allegedly furthering the interests of the U.S. government.
In it’s annual report, titled “Freedom in the World”, Freedom House claims to evaluate the state of global freedom. The report is published with illustrated maps, titled the “Freedom Maps”.
Here are the maps of the last 3 years alongside their charts:
As you can see from the maps above and charts below, according to “Freedom House” most of the Middle East countries are labeled as NOT FREE, while three countries only (Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait) are labeled as PARTLY FREE, and ONE Country only is FREE, and that’s ISRAEL! <mediachecker-> One can’t put too much faith into FH as they have an agenda but one doesn’t have to think too hard to realize that Israel is the only country that’s free – some might believe that there’s a little of jealously involved here.)
Of course the Middle East, being a NOT FREE region, requires alot of meddling on behalf of Freedom House’s Freedom loving operatives, to help “Free” the region. That is why, Financial Times has reported that Freedom House is one of several organizations selected by the State Department to receive funding for ‘clandestine activities’ inside Iran.
***And that is also why on June 8, 2006, the vice-chairman of Freedom House’s board of trustees asked the U.S. Senate to increase the share of NGO funding aimed at helping support non-violent foreign democratic activists organize for potential overthrows of their non-democratic governments.***
In regards to the Arab Activists who still defend or deny Freedom House’s role in the ongoing Arab Spring, Read:
Cooptation of Opposition Leaders
Related Freedom House Press releases:
Freedom House Demands Release of 8 Activists in Egypt, Jan 5, 2011.
Blogger Illegally Detained and Beaten in Egypt, Nov 10, 2010.
Egyptian Security Forces Shut Down Freedom of Association Conference, Sep 24, 2010.
Egypt Detains Freedom House Employee,Sep 14, 2010.
Ayman Nour Should Be Freed; U.S. Should Reassert Need for Democratic Reform in Egypt, Aug 1, 2007
***U.S. Can Better Balance Human Rights Promotion with Other Strategic Interests, Freedom House Emphasizes in Testimony, Jul 12, 2007
Soros backs Egypt ANHRI’s “Wasla” to give Arab bloggers exposure
AFP, Saturday, 3 April 2010
A weekly magazine aiming to link Arab bloggers with politicians and the elderly was launched in Egypt on Thursday at the initiative of a women’s group backed by US billionaire George Soros.
The weekly Wasla – or “The Link” – is being touted as a first for the Arab world, with plans for articles by bloggers as a way of giving them a wider readership.
It is published by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and financially supported by the Open Society Institute created by Soros, said ANHRI director Gamal Eid.
“We want to challenge our audience, and open its eyes to the changes society is experiencing, particularly through youths and blogs in which they appear,” he said.
***“The goal is to show the older generation that certain things exist,” he said, adding as an example: “Whether we agree or not, gay communities are a reality in Egyptian and Arab societies.” (advocating for gays – is Soros really interested it gays? Or is this the Gnostic Elitists aims)
The 16-page weekly will include two pages in English and will have an initial print run of 1,000 copies for distribution to political, academic, and literary circles. An electronic version will also be available.
Source: Independent.UK
View the complete SOROS FILES
US Embassy Cables: Egypt Democracy & Governance Funding sums +140 million USD in 2008 & 2009
EGYPT´S FY 2009 ESF: PROPOSED BUDGET FOR D&G
Ref ID: 07CAIRO3423
Date: 2007-12-06 15:07
Origin: Embassy Cairo Classification: CONFIDENTIAL – VZCZCXYZ0009 OO RUEHWEB
DE RUEHEG #3423/01 3401507 ZNY CCCCC ZZH O 061507Z DEC 07 FM AM EMBASSY CAIRO TO SEC STATE WASH DC IMMEDIATE 7663
C O N F I D E N T I A L CAIRO 003423
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/05/2017
TAGS: EAID PGOV EG
SUBJECT: EGYPT´S FY 2009 ESF: PROPOSED BUDGET FOR D&G
REF: A) CAIRO 3343 B) CAIRO 3420
Classified by Ambassador Francis Ricciardone for reason 1.4 (d).
1. (C) SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION: After a great deal of deliberation, in which Embassy Cairo participated fully the inter-agency agreed to allot…
$66.5m for democracy and governance programs in Egypt for FY08
and $75m for FY09.
These figures represent annual totals of our support for ***civil society*** — both US and Egyptian NGO´s — and also for programs carried out with the Government of Egypt in the areas of administration of justice, media reform and decentralization. ***We believe that the likely negative Egyptian response to this level of funding, and the inability of US and Egyptian NGO´s to spend at this level with intended results and required accountability, argue for reducing the FY09 D&G figure to $50m.*** If conditions change, or our projections prove too conservative, we could consider adding funds from other Egypt ESF sources. END SUMMARY. Read more…
Alliance of Youth Movements: Color Revolution 2.0
by Tony Cartalucci
In 2008, the Alliance of Youth Movements held its inaugural summit in New York City. Attending this summit was a combination of State Department staff, Council on Foreign Relations members, former National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and a myriad of representatives from American corporations and mass media organizations including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV.
One might suspect such a meeting of representatives involved in US economic, domestic and foreign policy, along with the shapers of public opinion in the mass media would be convening to talk about America’s future and how to facilitate it. Joining these policy makers, was an army of “grassroots” activists that would “help” this facilitation.
Among them was a then little known group called “April 6″ from Egypt. These Facebook “savvy” Egyptians would later meet US International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei at the Cairo airport in February 2010 and spend the next year campaigning and protesting on his behalf in his bid to overthrow the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The Alliance of Youth Movements mission statement claims it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists to build their capacity and make a greater impact on the world. While this sounds fairly innocuous at first, even perhaps positive, upon examining those involved in “Movements.org,” a dark agenda is revealed of such nefarious intent it is almost difficult to believe.
Movement.org is officially partnered with the US Department of State and Columbia Law School. Its corporate sponsors include Google, Pepsi, and the Omnicon Group, all listed as members of the globocrat Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CBS News is a sponsor and listed on the globocrat Chatham House’s corporate membership list. Other sponsors include Facebook, YouTube, Meetup, Howcast, National Geographic, MSNBC, GenNext, and the Edelman public relations firm.
Movement.org’s “team” includes Co-Founder Jared Cohen, a CFR member, Director of Google Ideas, and a former State Department planning staff member under both Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton.
Founding Movements.org with Cohen is Jason Liebman of Howcast Media which works with mega-corporate conglomerates like Proctor & Gamble, Kodak, Staples, Ford, and government agencies such as the US State Department and the US Defense Department, to create “custom branded entertainment, innovative social media, and tardeted rich-media campaigns.” He was also with Google for 4 years where he worked to partner with Time Warner (CFR), News Corporation (FoxNews, CFR) Viacom, Warner Music, Sony Pictures, Reuters, the New York Times, and the Washington Post Company.
Roman Sunder is also credited with co-founding Movements.org. He founded Access 360 Media, a mass advertising company, and he also organized the PTTOW! Summit which brought together 35 top executives from companies like AT&T (CFR), Quicksilver, Activison, Facebook, HP, YouTube, Pepsi (CFR), and the US Government to discuss the future of the “youth industry.” He is also a board member of Gen Next, another non-profit organization focused on “affecting change for the next generation.”
It is hard, considering these men’s affiliations, to believe that the change they want to see is anything less than a generation that drinks more Pepsi, buys more consumerist junk, and believes the United States government every time they purvey their lies to us via their corporate owned media.
Watch The Great Deception 2011
While the activists attending the Movements.org summit adhere to the philosophies of “left-leaning” liberalism, the very men behind the summit, funding it, and prodding the agenda of these activists are America’s mega-corporate combine. These are the very big-businesses that have violated human rights worldwide, destroyed the environment, sell shoddy, overseas manufactured goods produced by workers living in slave conditions, and pursue an agenda of greed and perpetual expansion at any cost. The hypocrisy is astounding unless of course you understand that their nefarious, self-serving agenda could only be accomplished under the guise of genuine concern for humanity, buried under mountains of feel-good rhetoric, and helped along by an army of exploited, naive youth.
What we see is not a foundation from which all activists can work from, but a foundation that has a very selective group of activists working on “problem spots” the US State Department would like to see “changed.” Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Venezuela, and even Thailand – where ever protesters and movements are working to undermine governments non-conducive to corporate America’s agenda, you will find Movements.org supporting their efforts.
The April 6 Movement of Egypt is one of them, and their role in the apparent success of the US ousting of Hosni Mubarak that may see their man Mohamed ElBaradei in office is a perfect example of how this new army of prodded youth will be deployed. It is color revolution 2.0, run directly out of the US State Department with the support of corporate America.
It would be strongly recommended that readers go to Movements.org themselves and explore the website, in particular the 3 summits they have held and those that were in attendance. Everyone from the RAND Corporation to the Council on Foreign Relations comes to “prod.” Movements.org truly is a new tentacle for manipulating and undermining the sovereignty of foreign nations.
Source: Global Researcher
I read where this Academy of Change has headquarters in Qatar. One might wonder if they’re sharing it with the official new Taliban headquarters (opened in June 18th 2013) also in Qatar. 🙂
mediachecker 
Pingback: Ferguson Rowdies: Theodore Barrett/Mustafa Osiris/Mustafa Hussein a Child Molester – Baseem Masri a Palestinian Activist – Charged w/ Assault…. | mediachecker