This article, reprinted with the consent of the author, has been banned from a wide variety of progressive

news outlets. Her reporting on this subject is independently consistent with my own articles on the Spring movement The CIA and Nonviolent Resistance One important aspect of the diversity of tactics debate (i.e. the debate whether to be exclusively nonviolent) in the Occupy movement relates to mounting evidence of the role CIA and Pentagon-funded foundations and think tanks play in funding and promoting nonviolent resistance training. The two major US foundations promoting nonviolence, both overseas and domestically, are the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Both receive major corporate and/or government funding. The latter comes mainly through CIA pass-through foundations. While the ICNC is funded mainly by the private fortune of hedge fund multimillionaire (junk bond king Michael Milkens second in command) Peter Ackerman, the AEI has received funding from the Rand Corporation and the Department of Defense, as well as various CIA-linked foundations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the US Institute of Peace and the Ford Foundation (see The Ford Foundation and the CIA),which all have a long history of collaborating with the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in destabilizing governments unfriendly to US interests.

This is a strategy Frances Stonor Saunders outlines in her pivotal Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. According to Sanders, right wing corporatebacked foundations and the CIA have been funding the non-communist left since the late sixties, in the hope of drowning out and marginalizing the voice of more militant leftists. Gene Sharp, the Fervent Anticommunist Much of this debate focuses around the American godfather of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, the founder and director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharps handbooks on nonviolent protest were widely disseminated in the Eastern Europe color revolutions, in the Arab spring revolutions and in the Occupy movement in the US (see Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism). Unfortunately Sharp has become a decoy in this debate, deflecting attention from the larger question of whether the US government is actively financing and promoting the work of the AEI, the ICIC and other groups that promote nonviolent resistance, to the exclusion of other militant tactics. The question is extremely important, in my view, because it possibly explains the rigid and dogmatic attitude in the US progressive movement regarding nonviolence. Is Military-Intelligence Funding Compatible with Progressive Politics? The institutional nonviolence clique has cleverly refocused the debate on whether Sharp, who is eighty-three, is a CIA

agent and whether he actively participated in US-funded destabilization efforts in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and elsewhere that resulted in so-called Arab Spring revolutions. The obvious answer to both questions is no. The more important question is why the alternative media and official progressive movement embrace Sharp unconditionally as a fellow progressive without a careful look at his past or his ideological beliefs. Sharp has never made any secret of his fervent anticommunist views. He also makes no secret of the funding he has received from the Defense Department; the Rand Corporation; CIA-linked foundations, such as NED, the IRI and the US Institute of Peace; and George Soross Open Society Institute. All this information is readily available from the AEI website. Thierry Meyssans 2005 Expose The current brouhaha over Gene Sharp was first triggered by an article, The Albert Einstein Institution: Nonviolence According to the CIA, Thierry Meyssan published on Voltaire Net in October 2005. Meyssan, a French intellectual and political activist, first gained international prominence in 2002 by publishing a French best seller entitled Leffroyable imposteur (English title: The Big Lie). The book claimed that the 9-11 attacks were directed by right-wingers in the U.S. government and the military industrial complex, who were seeking justification for military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meyssans 2005 article on the Albert Einstein Institutes enumerates a long list of collaborations between Sharp and opposition groups receiving covert US support in campaigns to bring down

Asian and Eastern European governments unfriendly to US interests. Iran and Venezuelas Denunciation of Sharp The article was widely reposted on leftist and libertarian websites. In 2008, it resulted in a formal denunciation of Sharp by the Iranian government and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, both targets of AEI destabilization activities. In June 2008, Stephen Zunes, chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peter Ackermans International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) issued a rebuttal, Sharp Attack Unwarranted, in Foreign Policy in Focus. The latter is an on-line magazine of the Institute for Policy Studies, where Zunes serves as Middle East Editor. The article was simultaneously reprinted in the Huffington Post. Zunes subsequently persuaded Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Code Pink and other high profile progressives to help launch an on-line petition defending Sharps progressive credentials. However, as numerous critics point out, he never addressed Meyssans most important concerns: the military/intelligence backgrounds of many of the Albert Einstein Institutions (AEIs) directors and advisory board members; their documented collaboration, together with Sharp, with opposition groups responsible for the color revolutions in Eastern Europe; and their work with Venezuelan opposition groups in an effort to topple president Hugo Chavez.

AEI Links with the State Department and the MilitaryIntelligence Complex Australian researcher Michael Barker, Canadian activist Stephen Gowans and CIA watchers wrote detailed critiques defending Meyssans 2005 expose. Barkers rebuttal is entitled Sharp Reflection Warranted. Barkers main argument is that the problem of elite manipulation of ostensibly progressive groups isnt at all new. He also points readers to excellent links regarding collaboration between the CIA and the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and others. Gowans argues that Zunes, a paid adviser to the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), is hardly a neutral or objective party, given his involvement with Peter Ackerman and the ICNC. Ackerman, hardly the progressive peace activist, is a Wall Street investment banker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and head of Freedom House. The latter, according to Noam Chomsky (in Manufacturing Consent), is interlocked with the CIA and a virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing. According to Louis Proyect, Ackerman is also on the advisory board of the ultraconservative Cato Institutes Project on Social Security Choice. Not surprisingly, this group strongly advocates for privatizing Social Security.

A Close Look At Sharps Past There is no question that Thierry Meyssans 2005 article on Gene Sharps extensive links to the US militaryintelligence complex is one of the most important exposes of the 21st century. Its only weaknesses is Meyssans failure to cite many of his references. What follows is the best publicly verifiable chronology of Sharps life I could come up with (most comes from Meyssans 2005 article with sources added):
1953

conscientious objector during Korean War, imprisoned for nine months for refusing to report for alternative duty. Imprisoned for refusing to fight in Korean War (People and The Progressive). 1973 publishes The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) with an introduction by Thomas C. Shelling. Shelling was a well known economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control. After working with US ambassador Averel Harriman in Paris in 1948 to implement the Marshall Plan, Shelling had a fifty year affiliation with the Rand Corporation (US military think tank) and is widely credited as the theoretician behind military escalation in Vietnam. 1983 founds the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) in Boston, with the assistance of Major General Edward B Atkeson, who was on the first AEI advisory board. The AEI website identifies Atkeson as Senior Fellow at the Institute of Land Warfare Association of the US Army. According to the CIA website, during the

1980s Atkeson was also a National Intelligence Officer for General Purpose Forces. 1985 publishes a book entitled Making Europe Unconquerable: the Potential of Civilian-base Deterrence and Defense. The second edition includes a preface by George Kennan, historian and State Department senior diplomat whose writings influenced Truman in the creation of the Truman Doctrine. Kennan is viewed as the father of the US foreign policy of containment (by force) of Soviet expansion. 1986, 1988 and 1989 travels to Israel/Palestine to bolster support for the Palestinian Center for the History of Non-Violence, founded in 1983 by one of Sharps disciple. Its a matter of public record that Sharp met with Colonel Reuvan Gal, who directed the Israel Defense Force (IDF) Psychological Action Division. Meyssan claims the two conspired to create a split in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) by creating a dissident nonviolent group. Gal and Sharp claim the purpose of their meetings were to devise ways to dissuade IDF commanders from using tanks and excessive military force against Palestinian settlers (see The Jeruselem Fund, Mubarak Awad, and Nonviolence). 1987 receives funding from the US Institute of Peace to host seminars instructing US allies on defense based on civil disobedience. By law, the US Institute of Peace is an extension of US intelligence. 1989 assists Colonel Robert Helvey in training anticommunist Burmese opposition groups concerned

about the growing strength of the Burmese Communist Party. The AEI website refers to Helvey as a retired US military officer and ex-military attach in Burma. He was actually a thirty year veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency with extensive experience in overseeing clandestine and subversive operations in Southeast Asia (see Who is Col Bob Helvey and Peace Magazine Archive). Following his retirement from the DIA, he became chairman of the board of the Albert Einstein Institution. 1990 with his AEI team (according to AEI website), assists Lithuanian opposition leaders in organizing popular resistance against the Red Army. According to the website, the AEI also did trainings with anticommunist opposition groups in Tibet, Estonia, and Belarus. 1998 travels, with Helvey, to Eastern Europe to train Otpor, a group of Serbian youth opposed to Slobodan Milosevic and Europes last communist government. Milosevic was immensely popular with Serbian people for standing up to NATO and for his generous social policies. The trainings were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). (See 2000 New York Times interview with NED officer Paul B. McCarthy). 2003 assists, with AEI staff, in the launch of the Rose Revolution in Georgia (see The Secrets of the Georgian Coup). 2004 Helvey and other AEI members meet with the

Ukrainian resistance in Kiev (see Mowats The Coup Plotters). 2003-2004 travels, with Helvey and other AEI team members to Venezuela to meet with wealthy Venezuelan opposition leaders, following the failed 2002 CIA-sponsored coup against Chavez. The AEI advises them in organizing a recall referendum against Chavez. They also train the leaders of Smate during the August 2004 demonstrations and assist in the formulation of Operation Guarimba, a series of often-violent street blockades that result in several deaths. According to an analysis published by Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), Venezuelan student leaders traveled to Belgrade in 2005 to meet with representatives of AEI-trained OTPOR/CANVAS, before traveling to Boston to consult directly with Sharp himself. Fast Forward to the Arab Spring In the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) seem to have handed the baton to his disciple Peter Ackerman. It was Ackerman who conducted nonviolence trainings in Cairo and Tunisia in 2009-2010 (see Bloomberg Markets, Foreign Policy Journal and New York Times). As others have documented elsewhere, the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa were neither spontaneous nor indigenous. Many of the individuals and groups who helped organize them received training (in the

US) sponsored by the State Department and CIA-linked democracy manipulating foundations (see LAbarabesque Americaine by French-Canadian analyst Ahmed Bensada and Tony Cartaluccis Soros Celebrates the Fall of Tunisia). The New York Times lends further credibility to these claims in their April 2011 U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings. *** About the author: Dr Bramhall is a 64 year old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has just published a free non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution, which can be downloaded at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/120942. Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. Her website is at: www.stuartbramhall.com. Note: CIA methods of discrediting excellent work such as Dr Bramhalls above article includes [but is not limited to] leaning hard on the better known progressive sites [alternet terminated Dr Bramhalls' relationship, probably faced with funding threats] not to run the pieces while providing other so-called 'alternative' news sites where the articles CAN be run but subjected to guilt by association and other method of discrediting the information. For instance 'Daily Censored' ran this article but only allows negative comments through 'moderation' and concurrently

ran an article supporting David Icke's 'lizard DNA' theories [to associate her work with nut jobs.] It then becomes the dilemma of the author whether to publish in less than optimal circumstance or not get the information out at all My own work supporting Dr Bramhall's conclusions here