The Albert Einstein Institution: Non-Violence According to the CIA

Soft and Undercover Coups d’État
The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA
by Thierry Meyssan

Non violence as a political action technique can be used for anything. During the 1980s, NATO drew its attention on its possible use to organize the Resistance in Europe after the invasion of the Red Army. It’s been 15 years since CIA began using it to overthrow inflexible governments without provoking international outrage, and its ideological façade is philosopher Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution. Red Voltaire reveals its amazing activity, from Lithuania to Serbia, Venezuela and Ukraine.

Unknown to the public, Gene Sharp formulated a theory on non violence as a political weapon. Also he first helped NATO and then CIA train the leaders of the soft coups of the last 15 years. Since the 50s, Gene Sharp studied Henry D. Thoreau and Mohandas K. Gandhi’s theory of civil disobedience. For these authors, obedience and disobedience were religious and moral matters, not political ones. However, to preach had political consequences; what could be considered an aim could be perceived as a mean. Civil disobedience can be considered then as a political, even military, action technique.

In 1983, Sharp designed the Non Violent Sanctions Program in the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University where he did some social sciences studies on the possible use of civil disobedience by Western Europe population in case of a military invasion carried out by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. At the same time, he founded in Boston the Albert Einstein Institution with the double purpose of financing his own researches and applying his own models to specific situations. In 1985, he published a book titled "Making Europe Unconquerable " <1> whose second edition included a preface by George Kennan, the Father of the Cold War. In 1987, the association was funded by the U.S. Institute for Peace and hosted seminars to instruct its allies on defense based on civil disobedience. General Fricaud-Chagnaud, on his part, introduced his "civil deterrence" concept at the Foundation of National Defense Studies. <2>

General Edward B. Atkeson, well-known by CIA director, <3> incorporated the Institute to the American interference stay-behind network in allied States. To focus on the moral issues of an action helped to avoid all doubts on the legitimacy of an action. Therefore, non violence, recognized as good-natured and assimilated to democracy, offered a suitable aspect to antidemocratic secret actions.


Gene Sharp

In 1989, when the Albert Institution became well known, Gene Sharp began to advice anticommunist movements. He participated in the establishment of Burma’s Democratic Alliance - a coalition of notable anticommunists that quickly joined the military government - and Taiwan’s Progressive Democratic Party - which favored the independence of the island from communist China, something U.S. officially opposed. He also unified the Tibetan opposition under Dalai Lama and tried to form a dissident group within PLO so that Palestinian nationalists would stop terrorism <4> (he made the necessary arrangements with Colonel Reuven Gal, <5> director of the Psychological Action division of the Israeli armed forces, to train them secretly in the American Embassy in Tel Aviv).

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http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.html

but what strategy did the CIA not use? they had all the tools at their disposal, and blank checks to do what they want.

the problem with promoting this type of historical information is that it reifies American Infinite Influence, and promotes the ultimately conservative notion that Everything is Manipulated.

As I see it this info helps folks to understand the manipulations and hopefully not fall prey to them whether it is on matters of foreign policy or matters in the back yard.