Yet, ‘roeien met de riemen die we hebben’ is for now the device, until our little discussion is joined by other like minded people and other not so like minded people with opposing views so we can create our own Avaaz and have the same influence they wield on our political discourse. The day will come my friend, as said, we’ve reached critical mass, it is time for the world to realise it.

As for:

“the concept of platform creation for individual thought and opinion and the implementation thereof in the political sphere.”

The problem with Avaaz is that only few of its supporters actually practice individual thought and opinion. The great majority simply align themselves to a particular idealist philosophy, without properly thinking for themselves. They then proceed to sign petitions (in Avaaz’ wording) en masse. So in that way, it’s more of a ‘groupthink’ phenomenom than each individual expressing, in their own words, their own independent opinion.

This does not apply to you or me, but people are putting their signatures below opinions formulated by an organisation co-founded by someone who said they (moveon.org) ‘owns’ the Democratic party. This is not as much as showing your own individual opinion as it might be showing that you agree with another individual or group’s opinion.

It’s good that now we can do at least this, compared to 10 years ago, but we need to move on (no pun intended). Avaaz is a product of the system the internet should collapse. The ‘cloud’ needs to create an Avaaz, not the most powerful people in the world.

Power to the people!

Whether Avaaz is backed or supported by an organisation with a political agenda is not even relevant in terms of the possibility that they create towards ‘spreading your opinion’. The function they perform, in my eyes, is to give the individual a platform and place in the lobby in political institutions.

I’m not saying I agree with the political agenda Avaaz seems to support, I’m not saying I disagree, what I do support is the concept of platform creation for individual thought and opinion and the implementation thereof in the political sphere.

Whether one, on an individual basis, decides to support this, is, thanks to the increased transparency enabled by Internet, up to oneself. And I believe these are the first steps to increased de-centralisation of political power.

I don’t know if there was an Avaaz petition back then, but if there was, I’m sure I signed one declaring my support of the Georgian people and their Rose Revolution, mostly because I had no idea that it was completely funded by the US (well, George Soros’ foundation to be exact).

By supporting that, I have helped them. The situation in the country now is not better than before. You can read about this here:

http://markalmondoxford.blogspot.com/2007/11/georgia-strange-silence-of-george-soros.html

“Officers in Georgia are encouraged to study foreign languages and are given extra pay if they do. Average monthly officer pay is $700–800; with extra language pay they can make as much as $1,000 a month—a substantial sum by Georgian standards. Saakashvili has a reformed and loyal military to face the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia or their Russian backers. The military may also be used to back up the police in case of internal unrest, making a new revolution unlikely.”

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=33144

This money from learning a foreign language doesn’t come from Georgia itself, they have no money. It comes from NGOs, funded by the Open Society Institute.

The NGOs are practically interwoven with their government now. I read a quote about this from a Georgian minister, but have done some googling and can’t find it at the moment, maybe I will.

It’s really no wonder Russia feels threatened by NGOs and for instance the British Council. We think that they’re crazy and paranoid when we read in the news that they’re ejecting a human rights NGO or British Council employees, but on the other hand it’s very understandable.

It’s also no wonder that they felt threatened and invaded Georgian regions one year ago.

The philanthropy has not made Georgia a better place and even if it had, it comes at a great price.

I have the feeling that his is not just the case with Georgia, but with most of Avaaz’ initiatives. They’re furthering an agenda. They understand outright oppression and torture is not a stable way to run a country. Instead, creating the feeling of freedom, opportunity and choice, works much better. Especially as long as the few can control the many financially.

Avaaz is a great thing, but for me its ties are too close with political and corporate players in the US.

The thing is, in my opinion, that most organisations functioning worldwide are indeed corrupted in one way or another. The fact of the matter is that, through the lack of transparency in our current world, and (business)models, the influence of companies/organisations is not entirely visible and thus hard to judge whether you fully agree with them. The good thing about Avaaz, I find, is that you have the possibility to choose in which projects you participate and which not, giving you the opportunity to make a personal decision upon which initiatives you support, and which ones you don’t.

Thank you for your comment.

As for Avaaz. I have a problem with them. They’re founded by two parties, one of them is MoveOn.org, which lobbies for the Democratic Party. MoveOn is, because of the huge donations it’s getting from him, more or less under the control of philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Institute. Between 1979 and 2007, his foundation made an estimated $5 billion of grants. Himself, as well as other donators forming a ‘Shadow Party’ behind the Democratic Party.

“During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, ‘Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it.…’”"

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977

This guy has also founded American Universities over Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia, promoting Western values and training the future leaders of those countries. This way, they’ll be more likely to open their countries up to Western ideas like ‘free’ market capitalism.

He has also founded propaganda radios during the Balkan wars and is proud to take credit in potentially causing the Rose Revolution in Georgia which brought Saakashvili to power. And look how that turned out.

This guy gets countries to do things his way by abusing terms like freedom and human rights, weakening these concepts in the process. It’s no wonder Sharia-law is becoming increasingly popular in Africa – these countries have been stripped of their resources under the guise of free markets and human rights – no wonder these people don’t believe in human rights at all.

Google a bit about Avaaz and the Open Society Institute and you’ll find they were very involved with the Burma campaign – a very closed market.

I haven’t unsubscribed from Avaaz’ mailinglist yet, but I’m not participating for now. I don’t want to be part of Soros’ tools to manipulate the world. He’s powerful enough as it is.