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</div><div>MPI, FIRE</div><div>
<div>see weekly std puff simon bolivar</div><div></div><div>https://electronicintifada.net/content/neo-cons-ex-israeli-diplomats-push-islamophobic-video/7731</div><div><h1 class="pagetitle title balance-text" id="page-title" style="line-height: 1; margin: 1.5rem 0px; font-weight: normal;">Neo-cons, ex-Israeli diplomats push Islamophobic video</h1><div class="sumud-region-main" style=""><article class="node-7731 node node-story view-mode-full node-is-page image-portrait" about="/content/neo-cons-ex-israeli-diplomats-push-islamophobic-video/7731" typeof="sioc:Item foaf:Document" style=""><header class="nodeheader" style=""><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-gharib" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ali Gharib</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/eli-clifton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Eli Clifton</a> <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Electronic Intifada</a> 24 September 2008</header>WASHINGTON (IPS) - A group of hard-line United States neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November US presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.The group, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), is working with another organization called the Clarion Fund, which produced the 60-minute video and is itself tied closely to an Israeli organization called Aish Hatorah.The Fund is currently distributing some 28 million copies of the DVD through newspaper inserts in key electoral “swing” states — states like Michigan, Ohio, and Florida that, according to recent polling, could go either way in November’s presidential election.According to Delaware incorporation papers, the Clarion Fund is based at the same New York address as Aish Hatorah, a self-described “apolitical” group dedicated to educating Jews about their heritage.The Clarion Fund’s street address as listed on the group’s website and a DVD mailer for the film is apparently not a physical address, but rather a “virtual address” that goes to a post office box in New York City.Critics allege that the movie Obsession is “hate propaganda” which paints Muslims as violent extremists and, among other things, explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.At least two major metropolitan newspapers solicited to insert the paid advertisement into their product have refused to do so because of a perceived bias in the film.“Despite the perilous state of American newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch advertising department took an ethical stand and refused to distribute the DVD of a film that for two years has troubled American Muslims,” wrote Tim Townsend, a reporter at Missouri’s most influential newspaper earlier this month after it rejected the ad.While the initial press reports about the mass distribution focused on the Clarion Fund’s financing role, it was EMET that organized and oversaw the distribution, EMET’s spokesman, Ari Morgenstern, told IPS. Morgenstern, a former press officer for the Israeli embassy here, said he contacted IPS at the Clarion Fund’s request.EMET, according to a recent press release, is “a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to policy research and analysis on democracy and the Middle East.”According to filings made in compliance with the organization’s tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, “the organization hosts seminars, debates and educational films featuring Middle East experts in order to educate policy makers and the public at large on the common threats facing Israel and the United States.”Morgenstern told IPS that EMET was “partnered with the Clarion Fund” on what he called the “Obsession Project” which he identified as “an initiative of EMET.” He declined to name the Project’s donors. A spokesman for the Clarion Fund, Gregory Ross, has also refused to name the Fund’s donors, whose identity remains a mystery.Morgenstern also declined to specify the cost of the DVD distribution, but did say, “it costs a great deal — it’s a multi-million-dollar effort.” Outside experts have estimated the cost of the operation, including reproduction and distribution, at between $15 million and $50 million.Like hard-line neo-conservatives, EMET opposes any land concessions to Palestinians and takes other hard-line positions identified with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and the “Settler Lobby” there. EMET’s website says, “We regard ourselves as ‘intellectual revolutionaries.’”The group’s acronym, EMET, mirrors the name of a predecessor to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which was called Emet. The word means “truth” in Hebrew.Two weeks ago, EMET sponsored a seminar series on Capitol Hill named for the controversial multi-billionaire casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to right-wing Zionist organizations in the US; the far-right lobby group, Freedom’s Watch; and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), whose efforts to persuade Jewish voters that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is aligned with radical anti-Israel forces in the Islamic world have drawn strong criticism from the mainstream Jewish press here.EMET’s board of advisers includes a list of familiar neo-conservative figures, as well as three former Israeli diplomats, including a former deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Washington embassy.The group is headed by Sarah Stern, who began her activism on Israeli issues in opposition to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestinians. She made a career out of her activism in the far-right Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as its national policy coordinator from 1998 through 2004.Notable members of the advisory board include prominent hard-line neo-conservatives, including former American Ambassador to the UN the late Jeane Kirkpatrick; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; and the Hudson Institute’s Meyrav Wurmser, the Israeli-born spouse of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top Middle East adviser, David Wurmser.Other prominent neo-conservative members of the board include Center for Security Policy (CSP) president Frank Gaffney; former CIA chief James Woolsey; and Heritage Foundation fellows Ariel Cohen and Nina Shea, who has also served for years on the quasi-governmental US Commission for International Religious Freedom.The US-born and -educated hard-line deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at Gaffney’s CSP, Caroline Glick, is also an adviser.Glick, Pipes, and Walid Shoebat, a “reformed” terrorist and EMET adviser, are all featured as experts in Obsession.Also among the top names of listed advisers to EMET are three Israeli diplomats. Two of them, Ambassadors Yossi Ben Aharon and Yoram Ettinger, were among the three Israeli ambassadors whom then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin referred to as “the Three Musketeers” when they lobbied Washington in opposition to the Oslo accords. Indeed, Stern began her career at the behest of three unnamed Israeli diplomats who were based in Washington under Rabin’s predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, according to EMET’s website.Ettinger was at one time the chairman of special projects and is still listed as a contributing expert at the Ariel Centre for Policy Research, a hard-line Likudist Israeli think tank that opposes the peace process.Ben Aharon was the director general — effectively the chief of staff — of Shamir’s office.The third Israeli ambassador, Lenny Ben-David, was appointed by Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as the deputy chief of mission — second in command — at the Israeli embassy in Washington from 1997 until 2000. Ben-David had also held senior positions at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for 25 years and is now a consultant and lobbyist.But EMET is not the only group involved in the Obsession controversy to have direct ties to Israel.The Clarion Fund has also been criticized for initially denying its ties to the Israel’s Aish Hatorah, which were <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6757.shtml" target="blank" style="">first disclosed publicly by an IPS investigation last year</a>.Honestreporting.com, an organization set up by Aish Hatorah and also a client of Ben-David, admitted to IPS that it had aided the production of the film.The Clarion Fund and Aish Hatorah are headed by twin Israeli-Canadian brothers Raphael and Ephraim Shore, respectively. The two groups appear to be connected as Clarion is incorporated in Delaware to the New York offices of Aish Hatorah.“It seems that the Clarion Fund, from what we can tell, is just a virtual organization that is a front for Aish Hatorah,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told IPS. “They don’t have staff, they don’t have a physical address. Nothing.”Little is known about the shadowy Clarion Fund, which is listed with the New York Secretary of State’s office as a “foreign not-for-profit foundation.” The group has rejected requests for information about its donors.IPS has, however, uncovered one donor to the Clarion Fund, the Mamiye Foundation, which gave it 25,000 dollars in August of 2007, according to tax filings. Four Mamiyes, Charles M., Charles D., Hyman and Abraham, are listed as trustees on the forms.According to filings with the New York Secretary of State, a contact listed for a Mamiye company is also the same man listed as a contact and counsel for the Clarion Fund — Eli D. Greenberg of the law firm Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman and Herz.Foreign nationals and companies, and domestic tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profits are prohibited by federal election law from attempting to sway US elections at any level through either contributions to campaigns or advocacy.Morgenstern, EMET’s spokesman, said that the DVD distribution only went to “swing states” because media attention is focused there, and EMET is hoping to spark a public debate about the threats posed by” radical Islam.”But CAIR has filed a complaint asking the Federal Election Commission to review the actions of the Clarion Fund both as a foreign entity and as a non-profit.The complaint by Nadhira Al-Khalili, CAIR’s legal counsel, asked that both charges be investigated.</article></div></div><div>=
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</div><div>https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451</div><div>
</div><div>An Electronic Intifada investigation uncovers evidence that Thor Halvorssen, the founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, receives significant funding from the same financiers who support the Islamophobes who inspired anti-Muslim Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik. Despite being presented with this evidence, the Norwegian government and Amnesty International are embracing Halvorssen, a long-time far-right activist and the scion of a politically-connected family tied to Venezuela’s US-backed opposition.This week in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo">Oslo</a>, hundreds of people from around the world are gathering for the fifth annual <a href="https://www.oslofreedomforum.com/welcome.html">Oslo Freedom Forum</a>, a human rights conference billed as “a three-day summit exploring how best to challenge authoritarianism and promote free and open societies.”Produced by the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/new-york">New York</a>-based Human Rights Foundation (<a href="http://humanrightsfoundation.org/">humanrightsfoundation.org</a>), the event is <a href="http://www.oslofreedomforum.com/supporters.html">sponsored</a> by, among others, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/norway">Norway’s</a> Labor Party government (in the form of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the City of Oslo, and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/amnesty-international-norway">Amnesty International Norway</a>. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide is scheduled to deliver prepared remarks at the forum.Oslo is still scarred by the murderous rampage carried out by the right-wing extremist <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/anders-behring-breivik">Anders Behring Breivik</a>, a Norwegian citizen who fashioned himself as a crusading knight on a mission to save Europe from the scourge of Muslim immigration.His killing spree began on 22 July 2011 with a bombing that killed eight persons and injured 209 others outside Oslo’s main government building. The violence ended some 25 miles to the north at a summer camp for the youth wing of Norway’s ruling Labor Party, where he massacred 69 persons, most of them children and youths.Breivik insisted the bloodbath was necessary to stop those he saw enabling mass Muslim immigration — those he called “cultural Marxists” and especially the Labor Party — accusing them of “contributing to a process of indirect cultural and demographical genocide.”<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Islamophobe inspirations</h2>The killer outlined his views in a 1,500-page manifesto, listing the far-right Americans who helped radicalize him. They included the most notorious purveyors of anti-Muslim resentment, such as <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jihad-watch">Jihad Watch</a> founder <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/robert-spencer">Robert Spencer</a>, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/frank-gaffney">Frank Gaffney</a> of the Center for Security Policy, and Middle East Forum director <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/daniel-pipes">Daniel Pipes</a>, whose writings Breivik excerpted at length.Among the suggestions for “Further Study” provided by the killer were links on YouTube to the 2008 propaganda film <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/neo-cons-ex-israeli-diplomats-push-islamophobic-video/7731">Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West</a>, which has been promoted as “the single most powerful piece of media over the past five years in persuading average Americans to the Islamist threat” (<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc/">Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America</a>, Center For American Progress, 26 August 2011, p. 16).Breivik clearly thought it was powerful too and would help explain and justify his murderous rampage.It is of public record that the Oslo Freedom Forum receives substantial financial support from the Norwegian government. But only a tiny handful of people know that one of the largest donors to the Human Rights Foundation — the producer of the Oslo Freedom Forum — are Donors Capital Fund and its affiliate Donors Trust, Inc.Donors Capital Fund is the same right-wing American foundation that spent millions of dollars to fund the distribution of millions of copies of Obsession, and which has lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years on the network of professional <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/islamophobia">Islamophobes</a> that Breivik cited as his inspirations.Donors Capital Fund is only one of several major funders to the Human Rights Foundation that have been among the principal donors or conduits for funding to the Islamophobic hate groups and ideologues who helped radicalize Breivik.One person who certainly knew this is <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/anti-muslim-group-leaps-defense-american-islamic-congress-after-ei-expose">Thor Halvorssen</a>.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Oslo Freedom Forum’s right-wing brainchild</h2>Who is Halvorssen? He is best known as the founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, where he is <a href="http://www.thehrf.org/staff.php">listed</a> as the lone staff member. The Oslo Freedom Forum is his brainchild, a confab he has sought to brand as “a Davos for human rights.” The theme of this year’s conference is “Challenging Power.”Halvorssen is also a right-wing activist, film producer and scion of Venezuela’s moneyed elite whose years of involvement in ultra-conservative politics enabled him to corral a small coterie of mostly far-right moneymen into bankrolling his Human Rights Foundation.The Electronic Intifada has obtained Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 forms filed by the Human Rights Foundation that include previously undisclosed information about its donors.The forms show that the Human Rights Foundation received approximately $600,000 in donations from the Donors Capital Fund from 2007 through 2011. Based in Northern Virginia, Donors Capital Fund is essentially a slush fund for the cadre of rightist donors who bankroll the conservative movement.The Electronic Intifada’s analysis of IRS filings by Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust shows that the Human Rights Foundation received $764,950 from 2005 through 2011 from Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, all but about $5,000 coming through the Donors Capital Fund.“Since the fund handles money from multiple donors and donors names aren’t disclosed, contributions made through the Donors Capital Fund are difficult to trace,” the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/center-american-progress">Center for American Progress</a> noted in its 2011 landmark report “Fear, Inc.” “Potential donors are required to open a minimum $1 million account to utilize the fund’s services.”In 2009, Donors Capital Fund channeled $60 million to various conservative causes and from 2009 through 2011 a whopping $21,318,600 “to groups promoting Islamophobia,” according to the Center for American Progress.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Shadowy nonprofit funds Islamophobic film applauded by Breivik</h2>In 2008, Donors Capital donated $17,778,600 to a shadowy nonprofit called the Clarion Fund — later renamed the Clarion Project (“<a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/11/16/clarion_fund_obsession_dvds/">Mystery of who funded right-wing ‘radical Islam’ campaign deepens</a>,” Salon, 16 November 2010).The donation paid for the Clarion Fund’s distribution of the film Obsession during the height of the 2008 presidential campaign — an apparent attempt to tar Democrats and then-Senator <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a> as weak on terror.In the film, grainy clips of Nazi youth saluting Adolf Hitler blend into footage of Muslim crowds chanting in unison against Western imperialism. With commentary from a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/11/16/clarion_fund_obsession_dvds/">who’s who</a> of anti-Muslim activists, including Daniel Pipes, the film implies that political Islam is today’s version of Nazism, and that between 10 and 15 percent of the world’s Muslim population poses an imminent, existential threat to the West.Thanks to this support, some <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/26/the-far-right-s-secret-slush-fund-to-keep-fear-alive/">28 million DVDs</a> of the film were tucked into the Sunday edition of local newspapers and delivered to Americans in swing states across the country. Eventually, the film reached Breivik as well and is applauded in his manifesto.Breivik <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/07/25/278677/islamophobic-right-wing-blogger-breivi/">cited Pipes at least 18 times in his manifesto</a>; in one section, he quoted the far-right scholar commenting, “Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions and the arts. They serve as the Islamists’ auxiliary mujahideen.”Pipes’ Middle East Forum has benefited immensely from the generosity of Donors Capital Fund, reaping $2.3 million from the foundation between 2001 to 2009, according to the Center for American Progress.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Halvorssen responds</h2>In 2010, the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen investigated what it referred to as Thor Halvorssen’s “secret funding,” which it suspected was “associated with the right side of the United States.” Halvorssen told reporter Sarah Sorheim: “I receive money from a variety of different people and environments. But that does not mean I necessarily support their political views.”Sorheim asked him: “why not disclose who your sponsors are?” He deflected, explaining, “Since I got so much attention here in Norway, I’m still thinking about whether I can disclose our lists.”Prior to this investigation by The Electronic Intifada, the full extent of Halvorssen’s right-wing funding was unknown. And contrary to the claims he made to Sorheim and to The Electronic Intifada, his political views appear to align neatly with many of his key backers and with those they support.In an emailed response to The Electronic Intifada, Halvorssen stated that the $600,000 donated to the Human Rights Foundation through Donors Capital Fund from 2007 through 2011 that is disclosed in the Human Rights Foundation’s 2011 IRS filing actually came from his own family.“The Harry Halvorssen Fund is an account I set up with Donors Capital/Donors Trust and it is the main vehicle through which my mother and I make our contributions to [the Human Rights Foundation] and other charitable pursuits ranging from ecological concerns and scholarships to inner-city children in New York, to equine rescue,” he stated.None of the money provided through the Donors Capital Fund, he said, went to support the Oslo Freedom Forum, but he and his mother donate separate funds through the Human Rights Foundation to support the Oslo Freedom Forum. “The Harry Halvorssen Fund has never made any contributions to any film called Obsession,” Halvorssen wrote.To be sure, the kinds of donor-advised services for living donors and legacies that Donors Capital Fund provides to major philanthropists are also offered by many well-established foundations, such as the Chicago Community Trust or the New York Community Trust, as well as other financial institutions.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Tainted reputation</h2>So why did Halvorssen choose to support the Human Rights Foundation and other causes through Donors Capital Fund, which is tainted by its reputation as a pass-through for anonymous donors to give enormous sums to virulently Islamophobic and anti-gay causes?“My choice of using Donors Capital Fund/Donors Trust is based on the fact that if I were to pass away unexpectedly I know they will very strictly abide to donor intent,” Halvorssen wrote to The Electronic Intifada.<a href="http://www.donorstrust.org/AboutUs/MissionPrinciples.aspx">On its website</a>, Donors Trust states that it was established “to ensure the intent of donors who are dedicated to the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise” is respected even after they die.Halvorssen offered an analogy to explain his motives: “People I may disagree with may also open a bank account at Chase Manhattan Bank, where I have a debit card; this doesn’t mean that Chase Manhattan Bank is responsible for their activities or that other customers are to carry some kind of collective responsibility for their banking choices.”But this analogy might not be exact; <a href="http://www.donorscapitalfund.org/home.html?x=6">on its website</a>, Donors Capital Fund states that only organizations “approved by the Donors Capital Fund board of directors are eligible to receive grants from donor-advised funds administered by Donors Capital Fund.”<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Anti-Muslim support</h2>Even if Halvorssen were to be taken at his word about his relationship with Donors Capital Fund, he cannot explain why the Human Rights Foundation relies on other key members of the Islamophobia industry’s financial network.The Sarah Scaife Foundation, one of the four foundations controlled by conservative financier <a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Scaife_Foundations">Richard Mellon Scaife,</a> donated $325,000 to Halvorssen’s Human Rights Foundation between 2007 and 2011, according to IRS filings.According to the Center for American Progress, Scaife’s foundations contributed a staggering $7,875,000 to the Islamophobia industry between 2001 and 2009.Among the major recipients of Scaife’s money was the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-horowitz-freedom-center">David Horowitz Freedom Center</a>, which received $3.4 million during the eight-year period documented in the “Fear Inc.” report.The <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-horowitz">David Horowitz</a> Freedom Center happens to be the main sponsor of Robert Spencer, the Islamophobic pseudo-scholar who <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/video-robert-spencer-on-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-white-house/">claimed in a video interview with the conservative website Politichicks</a> that the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated deep into President Obama’s White House inner circle. Breivik referenced Spencer’s work no fewer than 162 times in his manifesto.Then there is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which contributed $145,000 to the Human Rights Foundation from 2007 through 2011, according to IRS forms. As The Electronic Intifada <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/weddadys-free-arabs-american-islamic-congress-and-pro-israel-funders-who-helped-them-rise">recently reported,</a> the Bradley Foundation has helped pay the salaries of some of America’s most virulent anti-Muslim agitators. These include David Horowitz, the creator of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAFEeJoWicU">“Islamofascism Awareness Week,”</a> Pipes and Frank Gaffney, publisher of conspiratorial pamphlets like his 2010 “Shariah: The Threat to America,” in which he warned that American Muslims were engaged in a “stealth jihad” to place the country under the control of “sharia,” or Islamic law.Breivik cited Gaffney and Horowitz a total of nine times in his manifesto.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">False-flag conspiracy theories</h2>Gaffney, for his part, hosted Halvorssen on the <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/04/22/a-growing-closeness-between-the-emir-of-qatar-and-the-muslim-brotherhood">22 April 2013 edition of Secure Freedom Radio show</a>, introducing him as “a remarkable man I’ve had the privilege of knowing for a long time.”Asked by Gaffney about the recent <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/boston-marathon-bombing">Boston Marathon bombing</a>, allegedly perpetrated by the Chechen-American brothers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, Halvorssen suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to exploit the bombings. Putin, he said, sought to distract from “a legitimate government-in-exile” that “wants to look to the West” — a clear reference to the exiled Chechen politician Akhmed Zakayev, whom Halvorssen<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhb8y_Cu52w">hosted</a> at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2009.Gaffney asked Halvorssen, “Did he [Putin] have something to do with this attack in Boston — that he was running Tamerlan Tsarnaev?”“I have questions about it, Frank,” Halvorssen stated in an emphatic tone. “I have serious questions.” With his answer, Halvorssen demonstrated a readiness to indulge wild conspiracy theories that fit his political agenda.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Halvorssen’s hard-right libertarian supporter</h2>Rounding out the small stable of major donors to Human Rights Foundation is Peter Thiel, who contributed $535,000 to Halvorssen’s group through his personal foundation from 2007 to 2011.Thiel earned his fortune as a venture capitalist, helping to found Paypal and investing in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/facebook">Facebook</a>. He is also a right-wing libertarian ideologue who declared, <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/summer/the-old-man-and-the-sea">as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2012</a>, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel went on to blame the extension of voting rights to women for “hav[ing] rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”Besides Halvorssen’s pet human rights project, Thiel has <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/09/acorn_videomake.php">financed</a> the notorious and now-discredited ACORN video sting by right-wing filmmaker James O’Keefe.A February 2012 <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/166421/ron-paul-wants-abolish-cia-his-largest-donor-builds-toys-it">profile of Thiel published by Mark Ames in The Nation</a> noted that the libertarian billionaire “co-authored an anti-affirmative action book, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus — a book that belittles ‘imaginary oppressors’ of minorities, blames homophobia on homosexuals and attacks domestic partnerships.”Halvorssen <a href="http://www.libertopia.org/2013/history/">presented Thiel with an award at the 2010 libertarian film festival</a>, Libertopia, hailing him for “revolutioniz[ing] the monetary system.” The following year, he invited Thiel to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum.“I support the Human Rights Foundation and the Oslo Freedom Forum because their focus on dissidents engages the intellectual debate as well as the moral cause,” he remarked to the website The Street (“<a href="http://www.thestreet.com/story/11154811/1/peter-thiel-urges-investing-in-human-rights.html">Peter Thiel Urges Investing in Human Rights</a>,” 20 June 2011).<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Double standards</h2>In response to questions about the Human Rights Foundation’s acceptance of support from Scaife, Thiel and other major donors of Islamophobic and ultra-conservative causes such as the Bradley Foundation, Halvorssen gave this statement to The Electronic Intifada:<blockquote style="margin: 1.5rem 30px; line-height: 24px;">Any donation or grant accepted by HRF is done with a categorical understanding that the foundation is free to research and investigate regardless of where such investigations may lead or what conclusions HRF may reach. We encourage funding from anyone who cares about human freedom. This does not mean HRF endorses the views or opinions of its donors. In plain language: We are grateful, privileged and proud that we receive support, as this ultimately means that our mission is being endorsed. This does not, however, mean we agree [with] the views of those who support us. Likewise, some donors on this list may ultimately disagree with the decisions and public statements of HRF. Their inclusion on this list in no way implies that they agree with all of HRF’s positions or activities.</blockquote>While Halvorssen takes a relaxed view about the activities of his principal funders, he has different standards for where others should get their money.When actors Hilary Swank and Jean-Claude Van Damme accepted payments to be celebrity guests at the birthday party of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Russian puppet regime in Chechnya, Halvorssen denounced them. “Hilary Swank obviously has the right to earn a living entertaining the highest bidder, but this sort of venality should be exposed,” he said. “We must remember the disgrace of Mariah Carey, Nelly Furtado, Beyoncé and 50 Cent [who] were exposed … singing for Gaddafi’s family and earning millions of dollars for it” (“<a href="http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity/news/a345024/hilary-swank-van-damme-slammed-for-attending-chechen-president-party.html">Hilary Swank, Van Damme slammed for attending Chechen president party</a>,” Digital Spy UK, 11 October 2011).As for libertarian ideologue Thiel, Halvorssen wrote to The Electronic Intifada: “Peter Thiel is not just a donor, I consider him a personal friend. … Peter’s devotion to human rights, education and nonviolence are extraordinary. We are thrilled to have him as a donor and as a former speaker at [Oslo Freedom Forum].”This year, the Thiel Foundation is <a href="https://www.oslofreedomforum.com/supporters.html">listed as a main supporter</a> of Halvorssen’s forum.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Norwegian government, Amnesty respond</h2>The Electronic Intifada shared some of the information about the Human Rights Foundation’s donors with Ragnhild Imerslund, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs communications chief and spokesperson for Foreign Minister Eide.Imerslund acknowledged that the Norwegian government has provided 800,000 Norwegian kroner ($138,000) to pay for “participation by Human Rights Defenders from the Global South to the Oslo Freedom Forum 2013,” which she called “an important arena for discussing human rights issues.”Regarding the donors to the Forum’s producer and creator, Imerslund said only, “Questions regarding sources of funding for the Human Rights Foundation should be directed to them.”Similarly, Gerald Kador Folkvord, Political Advisor to Amnesty International Norway, wrote that “To the best of our knowledge, none of the sponsors of the Oslo Freedom Forum (mind you, it’s the Forum we are concerned with; who might or might not support the organization Human Rights Foundation outside the Forum does not really concern us as we have no other dealings with them) has been involved in activities undermining human rights so seriously that we couldn’t be part of an event they are sponsoring.”“The Sarah Scaife Foundation is not listed among the sponsors of the Oslo Freedom Forum,” Amnesty’s Folkvord added. “When it comes to their support, if any, to The Human Rights Foundation, the latter would have to answer for that.”Folkvord said that Amnesty had paid for one “human rights defender” to travel to Oslo and, “with the other organizations involved, Amnesty participated in discussions around the program of the Oslo Freedom Forum and suggested issues and speakers.”The Electronic Intifada asked both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Amnesty how they thought members of the Norwegian public would respond to the fact that the Human Rights Foundation — the producer and originator of the Oslo Freedom Forum — counted among its most generous supporters the same donors that sustain the Islamophobic activists cited by Breivik as inspirations. Neither offered a reply.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">The right connections</h2>So how did Halvorssen manage to secure funding from Norwegian government sources? And why are government officials so dismissive when presented with evidence that he is simultaneously supported by rightist forces propagating religious bigotry?A 26 November 2010 report in Norway’s daily Klassekampen offers some possible answers (“<a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/58224/article/item/null">Gir millioner til sine egne</a>”).According to the paper, the Oslo city council increased funding for Halvorssen’s Oslo Freedom Forum in 2010 while slashing social spending amid a worsening financial situation. Leading the effort to ramp up public funding of the human rights forum was a politician from the Liberal Party named Ola Elvestuen — the brother of Per Elvestuen.And who is Per Elvestuen? As Klassekampen revealed, he has been listed as a “coordinator” and “director” of the Oslo Freedom Forum. He is also is a board member of Ny Tid, the magazine owned by Halvorssen and a spokesman for the Halvorssen-owned Hunter Media Inc.Thanks to a tangled web of high-level connections and an apparent case of nepotism, the Oslo Freedom Forum has thrived.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Fortunate son of Venezuela’s elite</h2>Halvorssen is the scion of an oligarchic Venezuelan family closely linked to the political opposition that formed against recently deceased former President Hugo Chavez. His mother, Hilda Mendoza Denham, a direct descendant of Venezuela’s first two presidents, is a member of one of her country’s most influential clans.Halvorssen’s father, also named Thor Halvorssen, was a wealthy heir who gained control over Venezuela’s telecommunications monopoly. In 1989, then-President Carlos Andres Perez appointed Halvorssen Sr. as Venezuela’s “anti-drug ambassador.” That same year, President Perez’s government was responsible for committing one of the worst massacres in modern times: up to 3,000 persons were killed protesting President Perez’s harsh International Money Fund-imposed austerity program (“<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12593085">Victims of Venezuela’s Caracazo clashes reburied,</a>” BBC News, 21 February 2011).Halvorssen Sr. is reported to have helped expose the secret bank accounts his longtime friend Perez used to embezzle public money, allegedly earning the wrath of the president and his inner circle.As Perez sought to fend off scrutiny and an electoral challenge, a series of bombs exploded around Caracas. Halvorssen Sr. was immediately arrested and accused of orchestrating a terrorist plot to manipulate the Venezuelan stock market. He was imprisoned under harsh conditions and only freed after 74 days thanks in part to intervention from Amnesty International.With his father cleared of all charges, Halvorssen Jr. <a href="http://tthoro.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/thor_halvorssens_response.pdf">refers</a> to him today as a former “political prisoner,” describing him as the force that helped inspire his interest in human rights. But there was another side to the elder Halvorssen that was wrapped in intrigue and which remains shrouded in mystery.Besides his role as a businessman and government official, Halvorssen Sr. was a part-time spook who, according to a 19 November 1993 report by the Associated Press, “cooperated with the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/cia">CIA</a>” and “was used to funnel money to Nicaraguan Contra leader Eden Pastora” (“Trafficker, Alleged Terrorist Penetrated CIA, DEA in Venezuela”).In her book Hostile Acts, journalist Martha Honey notes that Halvorssen Sr. served during the early 1980s as president of the Committee in Defense of Democracy in Nicaragua, a CIA front group “used to rally regional public opinion against the Sandinistas …” (p. 237).A 29 November 1993 article by US News and World Report describes Halvorssen Sr. as a “CIA source” and notes that he was also a US Drug Enforcement Agency informant at the time, but that the agency eventually cut him loose, citing his tendency towards “duplicity and manipulation.” According to the report, Halvorssen Sr. “had unusual ties to and knowledge of drug traffickers” (“<a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/931129/archive_016185.htm">At play in the fields of the spies</a>”).Just as the father retreated from the international scene, the son began to make his name.<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Anti-feminist, anti-environmentalist, anti-Arab</h2>In a 2010 interview with Klassekampen, Halvorssen said, “Personally, I am no right-wing ideologue, as some have described me. I’m liberal. Period” “<a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/57490/article/item/null">Jeg er liberalist</a>”). He described himself in the same terms to The Electronic Intifada.But a look at the early stages of Halvorssen’s career, which he spent as a conservative operative combating gay rights initiatives, feminism and multiculturalism on US college campuses, suggests otherwise.Like his father, Halvorssen enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He first gained notice in 1994, when he authored a guest commentary for The Daily Pennsylvanian demanding that prospective students be warned before applying to the school that “it may be deadly to live in West Philadelphia,” the mostly African-American area surrounding Penn’s campus.As editor of the conservative student magazine Red and Blue, Halvorssen courted controversy when the magazine ran a November 1994 column called “<a href="http://articles.philly.com/1995-03-02/news/25701981_1_haitian-students-student-magazine-student-groups">One Man’s Vision of Haiti</a>” that was illustrated with a sketch of a voodoo doll. “To the best of my knowledge,” the article’s author wrote, “the only imports from Haiti we have in this country are exiled dictators and cab drivers.”The article’s publication stirred the outrage of African Americans and Haitians on campus, eventually prompting Penn administrators to temporarily withdraw school funding from Red and Blue. For Halvorssen, the incident crystallized his sense that conservatives on campus were an oppressed minority.He emerged after college as the executive director of a newfangled right-wing group called FIRE, or the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, defending evangelical students against charges of anti-gay discrimination and combating hate crimes legislation.FIRE has been funded by two right-wing foundations that also support Halvorssen’s human rights mini-empire: the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the <a href="http://thefire.org/article/13730.html">John Templeton Foundation,</a> an evangelical outfit <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/romney-names-high-profile-supporters-religious-right-committee">directed</a> by John Templeton Jr., a veteran right-wing activist who has <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/a-big-donor-goe.html">donated</a> more than $1 million to ban same-sex marriage in California. In 2009, HRF <a href="http://www.thehrf.org/media/031309.html">noted</a> that the Oslo Freedom Forum “was made possible in large part thanks to a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.”<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Right-wing campus operations</h2>Halvorssen also found work at the time as a program director for the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/intercollegiate-studies">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</a>, another prominent right-wing campus operation. Under his direction, the group condemned the establishment of a women’s studies program at Yale University, complaining in an 1 April 1998 press release that the program “delves into the most radical issues of militant feminism and homosexuality while completely ignoring traditional female roles.”Halvorssen’s political empire expanded with his founding of the Moving Picture Institute, a libertarian film company that produced “Mine Your Own Business.” <a href="http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/opposition_surges_to_romanian_gold_project_propaganda">Financed by a Canadian mining company</a>, the film was promoted as “the world’s first anti-environmentalist documentary” (“<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19stra.html">A Maverick Mogul, Proudly Politically Incorrect</a>,” The New York Times, 19 August 2007). The Moving Picture Institute received more than $300,000 through Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust from 2005 through 2011, according to those organizations’ IRS filings.Next, Halvorssen oversaw the making of a 2007 documentary called Indoctrinate U (the entire film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyvRHrYYBA">is on YouTube</a>). The film features an amateur conservative filmmaker named Evan Coyne Maloney wandering around campuses attempting to interrogate befuddled school administrators and poking fun at feminist students who had established women’s centers on their campuses.Towards the end of Indoctrinate U, Daniel Pipes and ultra-Zionist scholar <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/martin-kramer">Martin Kramer</a> surface as talking heads, warning that Arab donors have been stealthily guiding the anti-American agenda of university departments.Kramer also appears on the pages of Breivik’s manifesto making remarkably similar statements: the killer quotes him attacking the Palestinian-American scholar <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/edward-said">Edward Said</a> and complaining that “academics were so preoccupied with ‘Muslim Martin Luthers’ that they never got around to producing a single serious analysis of bin Laden and his indictment of America.”<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Campaign for Venezuela regime change</h2>In 2004, Venezuela’s US-backed political opposition lost a hard-fought 2004 referendum aimed at recalling Chavez, whom it considered illegitimate from the start. The voting results <a href="http://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html">were certified by former US President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center</a> as “reflect[ing] the will of the Venezuelan electorate.” According to the Carter Center, “balloting day was conducted in an environment virtually absent of any violence or intimidation.”However, at an earlier opposition protest rally demanding Chavez’s ouster, Halvorssen’s mother was shot and wounded, allegedly by a Chavez loyalist.It was then that Halvorssen claimed to realize that “defending [college] students’ rights while there were people in Venezuela being shot for disagreeing with the government” was “a little absurd” (“<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0308/feature3.html">My dinner with Thor</a>,” The Pennsylvania Gazette, March-April 2008).He embarked on an international campaign for regime change in Venezuela, with his Human Rights Foundation leading the way.In 2005, Halvorssen <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/903jhsjt.asp?page=3">took to the neoconservative Weekly Standard</a> to paint Chavez as an anti-Semitic dictator seeking to establish a “resistance bloc” that placed the US, Europe and Israel in grave danger. Halvorssen called for “democratic alternatives to Chavez,” describing him as a key supporter of “terrorist groups in South America and terror sponsors in the Middle East.”That same year, Halvorssen <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2005/08/24/robertson-lies-about-his-chavez-comments-claims/133707">appeared as a guest</a> on the radical right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson’s television program The 700 Club. A week before hosting Halvorssen, Robertson had urged the US to “take him [Chavez] out,” declaring, “if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”When Robertson denied calling for Chavez’s assassination — an obvious falsehood — Halvorssen leaped in to defend his host. “The person who began this, who started the concept of assassination for political reasons, was in fact Hugo Chavez, and his foreign minister is a former guerrilla terrorist,” Halvorssen told Robertson. “They basically have no standing to criticize anyone who made remarks that like — you know, that were misinterpreted, like the ones you made.”Halvorssen’s obsession with overthrowing Chavez deepened after the president was re-elected. In 2008, Halvorssen railed against the actor and film producer Danny Glover in an editorial for Fox News, accusing him of “coddling Chavez” for accepting financing from the Venezuelan government for two films in development. He went on to accuse Hollywood supporters of Chavez of providing “a terrific boost” to the morale of Palestinian “terrorists.” The source for Halvorssen’s unusual claim was Aaron Klein, a writer for the far-right conspiracy site WorldNetDaily (“<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343350,00.html">Hollywood A-Listers Prove Ignorance in Supporting Hugo Chavez</a>,” 31 March 2008).<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Venezuelan terror-sympathizer hired by Human Rights Foundation</h2>Also in 2008, Halvorssen’s Human Rights Foundation hired Aleksander Boyd, a Venezuelan opposition representative based in London. Boyd was a notorious promoter of terrorism against Venezuela’s elected government, having written the following on his website:“I wish I could decapitate in public plazas [Venezuelan politicians] Lina Ron and Diosdado Cabello. I wish I could torture for the rest of his remaining existence Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel … I wish I could fly over Caracas slums throwing the dead bodies of the criminals that have destroyed my country … Only barbaric practices will neutralize them, much the same way [Genghis] Khan did. I wish I was him.” He later declared, “Re: advocating for violence yes I have mentioned in many occasions that in my view that is the only solution left for dealing with Chavez” (“<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/01/friendsinlowplaces">Friends in low places</a>,” The Guardian, 1 September 2007).When the Norwegian magazine Manifest criticized Halvorssen’s hiring of Boyd in a 12 May 2010 exposé, Halvorssen responded, “We knew of his comments before we hired Boyd and asked him about these comments and he stated, plainly, that it was an entry in his dream diary that was online.” He added that Boyd left the Human Rights Foundation in 2009.In 2010, Halvorssen invited his first cousin, the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Lopez, the Harvard-educated mayor of a wealthy district in Caracas, was among the politicians who signed as witnesses in the new government after Chavez was briefly ousted in the failed US-backed coup in 2002.Lopez is the son of a former oil executive — Halvorssen’s aunt — who allegedly funnelled profits from the state-run oil company into his new political party, leading to corruption charges that placed his political ambitions in peril, as the Associated Press reported in February (“<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/17/leopoldo-lopez-corruption-venezuela_n_2705862.html">Leopoldo Lopez, Opponent Of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Faces Corruption Charges In Venezuela</a>”).<a href="http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09CARACAS1408.html">Described</a> by the US embassy in Venezuela as “vindictive, and power-hungry” but also as “a necessity,” Lopez <a href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/weisbrot_testimony_vz_democracy.pdf">received large sums of financial support</a> from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy.At the 2009 Oslo Freedom Forum, Lopez was a <a href="http://vimeo.com/5232625">presented as a “human rights leader,”</a> appearing at an event that had been graced by Nobel Prize recipient Elie Wiesel and Nobel nominee Vaclav Havel. He stirred his audience with lofty rhetoric about peace, democracy and the coming wave of freedom, casting the Venezuelan opposition as “David against Goliath.” “We know that we will overcome,” Lopez proclaimed, “we know that change will come in Venezuela.”Noting that Lopez’s appearance at the Oslo Freedom Forum was covered far more heavily in Venezuelan media than in Oslo, where it was virtually ignored, Manifest accused Halvorssen of using his human rights confab for the purpose of “whitewashing Leopoldo Lopez … to establish a real contender for the Venezuelan presidency.”The magazine described the Oslo Freedom Forum as a cleverly crafted “Washing Machine.”<h2 style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">The burden of knowing</h2>Are those who gathered on stage at the human rights “Davos” being used to whitewash the ulterior political agenda of an ambitious conservative operative with ties to sectarian plutocrats and conspiratorial Islamophobes? Do they know about Halvorssen’s real history, about his funders and friends among America’s far-right? Most may not.Unfortunately for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and Amnesty International, they are not among those with the luxury of pleading ignorance.Presented with the revelations uncovered by The Electronic Intifada, they dismissed them as immaterial, and even irrelevant. In a city still scarred by Breivik’s rampage, it is hard to imagine that these facts could be so easily washed away.Ali Abunimah contributed research to this article.Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author.<h3 class="field-label field field-tag" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 3.75rem 0px -3.75rem; font-weight: normal; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1.28205rem; border: 0px;"></h3><ul class="field field-tag" style="margin: 1.5rem 0px; padding: 0.75rem 1.5rem; overflow: hidden; text-indent: 30px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(221, 223, 224);"><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-freedom-forum" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Oslo Freedom Forum</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/thor-halvorssen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Thor Halvorssen</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/anders-behring-breivik" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Anders Behring Breivik</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/islamophobia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Islamophobia</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/amnesty-international-norway" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Amnesty International Norway</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/human-rights-foundation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Human Rights Foundation</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/norway" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Norway</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jihad-watch" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Jihad Watch</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/robert-spencer" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Robert Spencer</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/frank-gaffney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Frank Gaffney</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/daniel-pipes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Daniel Pipes</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/donors-capital-fund" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Donors Capital Fund</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/clarion-project" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Clarion Project</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/center-american-progress" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Center for American Progress</a></li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/klassekampen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Klassekampen</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sarah-scaife-foundation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Sarah Scaife Foundation</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-horowitz-freedom-center" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">David Horowitz Freedom Center</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-horowitz" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">David Horowitz</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lynde-and-harry-bradley-foundation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/thor-halvorssen-senior" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Thor Halvorssen senior</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/peter-thiel" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Peter Thiel</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/venezuela" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Venezuela</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/moving-picture-institute" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Moving Picture Institute</a></li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pat-robertson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Pat Robertson</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/aleksander-boyd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Aleksander Boyd</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/manifest-magazine" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Manifest magazine</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/raghnild-imerslund" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Raghnild Imerslund</a> </li><li style="display: inline; margin-right: 1ex;"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/espen-barth-eide" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">Espen Barth Eide</a></li></ul><div>
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</div><div>=</div><div><div class="itemFullText" style="line-height: 20px;">Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) convened again this summer. For the fifth consecutive year, organizers brought together "hundreds of the world's most influential dissidents, innovators, journalists, philanthropists and policymakers" to discuss authoritarianism in their home countries. The founders call the event a "Davos of human rights."Many of the invited activists deserve praise and an international platform, but disturbing facts about the OFF have been revealed. This forces us to ask if this is an attempt to use human rights to advance a narrow political agenda. The story of the Oslo Freedom Forum is also a story of US right-wing sponsorship, lack of transparency and "heroes of human rights" involved in supporting serious human rights violations.From the very beginning in 2009 until this year, OFF officials and its founder, Thor Halvorssen, have invited speakers who have supported gross violations of human rights or committed such themselves. A media scandal broke in 2010 as busloads of Norwegian school kids were shipped in to hail people they had been told were "heroes of human rights" and "voices of freedom." It turned out that three of the speakers had recently participated in or actively promoted military coups against democratically-elected governments in Latin America. One of them, Leopoldo López, <a href="http://vimeo.com/11150995" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">was a key figure</a> in the internationally condemned right-wing military coup against Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez in 2002. López demanded the ousting of all elected authorities. Followed by his own armed police force, he broke into the apartment where the minister of interior and justice was hiding and had him handcuffed and dragged out to a waiting mob that beat, kicked and spit at him before he was finally arrested. This was described by Amnesty International as one of the most serious human rights violations, among many, perpetrated during the short-lived coup d'état. López is Thor Halvorssen's cousin.Halvorssen's relative was accompanied to the 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum by fellow coup maker Marcel Granier. He was the general director of RCTV, the most watched TV channel in Halvorssen's native Venezuela. In 2002, Granier and RCTV were supportive of the coup. They also manipulated footage and bluntly lied to their own viewers about the events during the coup to ensure the ouster of Chávez, as shown in the Irish documentary <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id--ZFtjR5c" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">The Revolution will not be Televised</a>. Before Chávez's allies got the president back in power, RCTV and other private TV stations were warmly thanked by the leaders of the coup, saying that they could never have succeeded had it not been for RCTV and the rest of the private media. Granier and López were dubbed "voice of freedom" and "hero of human rights," respectively.Another "voice of freedom," the one-time Cuban prisoner Armando Valladares, was one of the most vocal supporters of the military overthrow of the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, for which he received the highest medal of honor from the illegal Honduran coup government. Valladares and López were presented as "heroes of human rights" and "voices of freedom" at the OFF two years in a row.In 2011, a figure from Argentina's far-right, Victoria Villarruel, was invited to speak about "the forgotten victims of terror." According to respected Latin America experts Benedicte Bull and Johannes Nymark, [Dirty War?] Villarruel is trying to rewrite the history of Argentina's military dictatorship, which killed about 10 times as many dissidents as Chile's Pinochet, and defend the military that committed the atrocities. With this in mind, it might not come as a surprise that the only Venezuelan speaker at this year's Forum, Julio Borges, not only supported the 2002 coup, but also demanded that the democratic institutions be dissolved and the elected representatives be relieved of their duties.In its original mission statement, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), the organizer of OFF, proclaimed that it was founded to "to unite people - regardless of their political, cultural, and ideological orientations - in the common cause of defending human rights and promoting liberal democracy in the Americas." One might argue that violently overthrowing democratically-elected governments is not a human right. And that supporting right-wing coups and regimes that have subjected a continent of 600 million inhabitants to violence, poverty and injustice for decades does not make you a "voice of freedom." The organizers of the OFF, however, have refused all invitations to debate such criticism in the Norwegian broadcast media. Most of the criticism has come on the basis of the Latin American guests, but other speakers have also expressed opinions incompatible with human rights. American columnist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kirchick" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">James Kirchick</a> supported the military coup in Honduras; he has defended the torture of Guantánamo prisoners; and he marked the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion by saluting the decision to go to war in the first place.Peter Thiel, a billionaire hedge fund manager, a personal friend of Thor Halvorssen and a donor to OFF, was a speaker at the 2011 forum. Little did the audience know of Thiel's personal ties with Halvorssen and the fact that he helped fund the Forum. I believe it's safe to assume that the vast majority did not have knowledge of Thiel's views on democracy either. "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," The Electronic Intifada quotes him writing in his manifest. He is also concerned that extensions of women's rights "have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."Thor Halvorssen himself is no stranger to opinions rather peculiar for a man in his position. He surprised many by approving the conspiracy theory that Russian president Vladimir Putin might be the mastermind behind the April Boston bombing. He has denounced the peace talks in Colombia between the government and the FARC guerrilla group, aligning himself with Colombia's far right.There has been considerable controversy regarding the lack of transparency surrounding the OFF's funding. Halvorssen has refused to give details. Max Blumenthal of The Electronic Intifada did a thorough investigation of the Human Rights Foundation. Halvorssen is the creator and director of the HRF, based in New York. While the HRF has attracted little attention, a few journalists and activists have noticed that the Foundation's <a href="http://thehrf.org/HRFDonorList.pdf" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">funding sources</a> seem to come mostly from the right wing. These have included the conservative Sarah Scaife and Lynde and Harry Bradley foundations. Other funders that include the libertarian Atlas Economic Research Foundation; the National Christian Foundation, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/12/rendering-unto-god" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">a major bankroller</a> of US evangelical groups and conservative causes; and the right-wing <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Randolph_Foundation" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Randolph Foundation</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Shelby_Cullom_Davis_Foundation" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation</a>.Blumenthal has uncovered another source of the HRF's funding. The HRF's filings with the Internal Revenue Service, <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Blumenthal writes</a>, "show that the Human Rights Foundation received approximately $600,000 in donations from the Donors Capital Fund from 2007 through 2011. Donors Capital Fund is essentially a slush fund for the cadre of rightist donors who bankroll the conservative movement." Donors Capital has been a major funder of Islamophobic groups and projects, including some that Norwegian white supremacist terrorist Anders Breivik has cited as inspiring his beliefs.So why did Halvorssen choose to support the Human Rights Foundation and other causes through Donors Capital Fund, which is tainted by its reputation as a pass-through for anonymous donors to give enormous sums to Islamophobic and anti-gay causes?Halvorssen would have us believe it is a mere coincidence that all of the HRF's known donors are right wing and that he uses the conservative Donors Trust to contribute to his organization.Knowing these groups find HRF a worthy receiver of such favors, can we take his word that he is just an open-minded liberal who spends millions of dollars on human rights conferences without any political agenda? And why did he choose to hide this information from both the public and the invited speakers while establishing the Oslo Freedom Forum?Halvorssen began his career as a conservative student activist, perceiving conservative students such as himself as sort of a persecuted minority. He would later follow up on these ideas by producing the film Indoctrinate U, which targets feminist academics and other oppressive tyrants. He also took on the environmentalist movement, with a pro-mining movie, Mine Your Own Business, which The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19stra.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">New York Times dubbed</a>, "the world's first anti-environmentalist documentary," sponsored by a powerful Canadian mining company, heavily criticized for using large amounts of cyanide to extract gold.Even more revealing are some of the HRF's past staff and associates. Aleksander Boyd, previously <a href="http://www.thehrf.org/media/092408.html" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">HRF's vice president of programs</a>, is a right-wing blogger <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/01/friendsinlowplaces" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">notorious for his writing</a> describing his fantasies of torturing pro-Chavez Venezuelans. "I wish I could decapitate [. . .] Diosdado Cabello [now the president of Venezuelas National Assembly]," and "I wish I could torture for the rest of his remaining existence Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel," are some of his passages. The HRF and Boyd parted ways in 2009. Many Latin Americans, however, would not feel comfortable with an organization whose then-vice president of programs openly promoted the same kind of torture and assassination that Latin American right-wing dictatorships carried out against hundreds of thousands of leftists, trade unionists, journalists and indigenous people.At this point I'm sure no one will be flabbergasted that in this year's OFF, with the exception of a Bahraini blogger, none of the listed speakers were there to highlight abuses in countries that are strong US allies or violations by the US government. Previous incarnations were little different. Of all the North American speakers <a href="http://www.oslofreedomforum.com/speakers.html#1" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">listed on the Forum's website</a>, for example, none was there to primarily address the role of the US government as a human rights violator. (Julian Assange's participation in 2010 is a notable exception, but this was before Wikileaks' release of the State Department cables that provoked US ire.)The purported liberal views of Thor Halvorssen are at best highly doubtful, and accusations that he uses the platform he himself built to invite friends, family and ideological allies from the far right is serious. But that is far from the most pressing issue. The fact that Oslo Freedom Forum abuses the name of human rights to whitewash human rights offenders, their supporters and apologists is far worse. However, looking at the track record of these people, there should be no doubt that they were invited exactly because of their political affiliation.</div>Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without <a href="mailto:editor@truthout.org" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">permission</a>.<div class="clr" style="clear: both; height: 0px; line-height: 0; float: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: none;"><div id="email-a-friend" style="line-height: 20px;"></div><div class="itemExtraFields" style="margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 8px 0px 0px; border-top-width: 1px; border-top-style: dotted; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); line-height: 20px;"><div><h2 style="margin: 10px 0px; line-height: 40px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; text-transform: uppercase; padding-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/48634" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">JOAKIM MOLLERSEN</a></h2><div>Joakim Møllersen is a Norwegian economist and journalist with economics, war and peace, and Latin America as fields of special interest. He is currently part of the editorial board of the new independent and progressive news site <a href="http://radikalportal.no/%20" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Radikal Portal</a>.</div></div><div class="relart" style="border-top-width: 1px; border-top-style: dotted; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);"><h3 style="margin: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; padding: 0px 0px 8px; line-height: normal !important; text-transform: uppercase !important;">RELATED STORIES</h3><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/2321-rightwing-pundits-jumped-to-blame-muslims-and-jihadists-for-norway-attacks" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important; font-style: italic !important;">Right-Wing Pundits Jumped to Blame Muslims and "Jihadists" for Norway Attacks</a><div class="itemAuthor" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; font-style: italic !important;">By Ali Gharib, Travis Waldron, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/07/23/277310/wapos-jen-rubin-wsj-right-wing-pundits-jumped-to-blame-muslims-and-jihadists-for-norway-attacks/" target="blank" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important;">ThinkProgress</a> | Op-Ed</div><div class="itemAuthor" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; font-style: italic !important;"></div><div class="itemAuthor" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important;">foe</div><div class="itemAuthor" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important;">Alburnus Maior * EARTHWORKS * Friends of the Earth Greenpeace in Romania * MiningWatch Canada80 organizations across Europe and North America sign statement in support of Rosia Montana community, in advance of film screening at National GeographicJanuary 23: Eighty organizations across Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Canada, and the United States released a statement today highlighting the local, national, and international opposition to the Rosia Montana cyanide open pit gold mine project in Romania, refuting accusations of "exaggerations and misleading claims" in a recent film entitled "Mine Your Own Business." The film was financed by Gabriel Resources, the Toronto-based mining company that wants to build the Rosia Montana mine.Contrary to the film's portrayal, local opposition to the project is strong and organized. The statement urges the public to read a message sent by Eugen David, president of Alburnus Maior, a local association based in Rosia Montana which represents families that oppose the mine and refuse to sell their lands to Gabriel Resources. Eugen David was not interviewed by the makers of "Mine of Your Own Business" despite them being well aware of the association's existence.If constructed, Rosia Montana would be Europe's largest gold mine and transform the Rosia Montana valley into four open-pit mines, and the neighboring Corna valley into a tailings dam to hold the mine's toxic waste. Both valleys are densely inhabited, and the project would require 2,000 people to move out of their homes and also lead to the destruction of churches, cemeteries, farm lands, and unique cultural and archaeological treasures in the area."Mine Your Own Business doesn't talk about any of this but instead is a propaganda film paid for by Gabriel Resources which wants to make a lot of money from all this destruction," wrote Eugen David in his message from Rosia Montana. "If anything, this film is reminiscent of times that are long over and does not portray the situation as it is at Rosia Montana."Within Romania, Rosia Montana has become an issue of national significance, with over 96 percent of Romanians opposing the project. The widespread opinion is that the political decision-making about the project is riddled with corruption. The European Parliament has also cautioned against the environmental threat the Rosia Montana project poses not just to Romania but to the whole region, and Romania's neighbor Hungary, whose eastern rivers face the risk of pollution stemming from the mine, has pointed to serious flaws in the project's environmental impact assessment and officially asked for the environmental permit not to be granted."It's important for the public to get the facts about the Rosia Montana project," said Radhika Sarin, international campaign coordinator of Earthworks. "Not only are the environmental risks high, but property owners, including churches and local families, such as those of Eugen David, are facing the threat of expropriation. This is a serious human rights issue.""In order to justify its risky venture, Gabriel Resources touts local employment, but the mine is expected to create a few hundred jobs, and it is unclear if local people will have the necessary qualifications to fill these positions," said Joan Kuyek, national coordinator of MiningWatch Canada.The upcoming screening of the film on Wednesday at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC has prompted strong criticism from environmental organizations, particularly in Romania and Hungary, and from Stephanie Roth, a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious award known popularly as the Nobel prize for the environment. Roth accepted the prize at the National Geographic Society in 2005 for her ongoing work to prevent the destruction of Rosia Montana."It is sad and outrageous that such a renowned center of environmental research has agreed to screen this anti-environmental film. It aims to manipulate the public and does not reflect the values of the National Geographic Society," said Roth. "Gabriel Resources has chosen the National Geographic Society to greenwash its spoilt image and brainwash those it needs to impress. In 2005, the National Geographic Channel cancelled Gabriel Resources's television ads after the Romanian public protested. I hope the National Geographic Society will follow by putting values such as integrity and responsibility above money."- See more at: https://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/opposition_surges_to_romanian_gold_project_propaganda#.V2smNfkrKM8</div><div class="itemAuthor" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; font-style: italic !important;"></div></div></div></div><div>==</div></div></div></div></div></div>