The Chatham House, a corporate-financier funded think-tank based in the United Kingdom, announced on its website earlier this weekthat it had awarded President Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia their 2012 “Chatham House Prize.” Chatham House claimed on their website that Marzouki has “ensured that Tunisia remains at the forefront of the new democratic wave in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Marzouki, who accepted the award in person (presented by the Duke of York in London) was one of several nominees which also included Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Previous recipients include US-British backed “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.
Image: Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki speaks in London before the Chatham House, a think-tank representing the collective interests of the largest corporations and financial institutions on Earth. Many of these special interests are responsible for the years of support he received while in exile, laundered through fronts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), cultivating him as the future head of the West’s new client-regime in Tunisia.
Ironically, Tunisia’s streets are now, just days later, filled with protesters decrying the very same economic conditions that spurred protests early in 2011 leading to Moncef’s ascension to power. Marzouki’s security forces have begun cracking down using teargas and birdshot, leaving 250 wounded. Protesters claim that some have also been killed, but government sources deny this, and the Western media, unlike in 2011, has granted Tunisia’s new strongman the benefit of the doubt.
Such generosity exhibited by the Western press is owed to who Marzouki really is a representative for – the verycorporate-financier interests that are partnered with the Chatham House.
Marzouki, who had been living in exile in Paris France for years, was head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, a US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) member organization. He was also founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy(WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.
Image: Just some of Chatham House’s “corporate members.” Clearly the think-tank represents big-business and their collective interests, and are not in fact engaged in “independent thinking on international affairs” as their website claims.
Image: A visual representation of the National Endowment for Democracy’s corporate-financier ties found across their Board of Directors. Far from “human rights advocates,” they are in fact simply leveraging such issues to disguise what is in reality corporate-financier hegemonic expansion.
Like the Chatham House, NED is run by and for immense Western corporations and financial institutions, and features upon its board of directions a combination of pro-war Neo-Conservatives and representatives of some of the largest corporate-financier interests in America. Marzouki, like the heads other Western client regimes installed in the wake of the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” has been long-cultivated, well-funded, and vigorously supported for assuming his role in the creation of subservient Tunisian proxy government.
Even as he repeats the very abuses his predecessor, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was accused of, he will continue to receive the West’s support, along with his counterpart in Egypt Mohammed Morsi, in direct contradiction of nearly 2 years of US State Department rhetoric, rhetoric still being sounded against Syria, Russia, China, Iran, and a myriad of other nations still slated for destabilization and “regime change.”
Image: (AFP, Fethi Belaid) This week: Protesters in Tunisia, rising up against the same economic destitution that spurred uprisings in 2011′s so-called “Arab Spring” have been met with teargas and birdshot, with protesters claiming deaths have occurred. Instead of the resounding condemnation sounded by the West in 2011, current Tunisian President Marzouki has instead been invited to London to receive a “prize” for his work regarding “democracy.”
Marzouki’s “Chatham House Prize” is just the latest exhibit in a long history of servile obedience to the West. While Egypt currently is taking the spotlight, it would be wise to keep the West’s other proxy in the region under close scrutiny, especially as his security forces begin sending protesters to the hospital and to their graves.
Tony Cartalucci is the writer and editor at Land Destroyer
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