Albert Einstein Institution
The Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) as described in its own website:
- Founded in 1983 by Dr. Gene Sharp, The Albert Einstein Institution is dedicated to advancing the study and use of strategic nonviolent action in conflicts throughout the world. It is committed to the defense of freedom, democracy, and the reduction of political violence through the use of nonviolent action.
To further its mission, the Institution has supported research projects (for examples, see our publications section), actively consulted with resistance and pro-democracy groups (including groups in Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Serbia, and the Occupied Territories), and worked to publicize the power and potential of nonviolent struggle around the world through educational materials, analyses, translations, workshops, and media visibility.[1]
An alternative description is:
- The Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) has played the key role in recent years in training and deploying youth movements to help prepare the conditions for coups through fostering the impression that the targeted regimes are deeply unpopular, and through destabilizing those regimes through their demonstrations and the like. The group, which is funded by the Soros foundations and the US government, is led by former DIA officer Col. Robert Helvey, and Harvard University's Dr. Gene Sharp.[Mowat, [1]]
In 1989, "The Einstein Institution’s Board of Directors, meeting in September, approved a grant of $6,000 to the Civilian-Based Defense Association, a one hundred percent increase over last year’s funding level. The grant is specifically to provide general support for the production and distribution of the Association’s newsletter, Civilian-Based Defense: News and Opinion." [2]
In 1995, AEI noted that "The Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, which receives financial support from the Albert Einstein Institution, has now joined with the Cultural Survival Center, the research arm of Cultural Survival, a human rights organization, to run the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival (PNSCS) at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs." [3]
Swarming adolescents
Some of this institute's activities were recently described in an article about the recent coup in Ukraine:
- The creation and deployment of coups of any kind requires agents on the ground. The main handler of these coups on the "street side" has been the Albert Einstein Institution, which was formed in 1983 as an offshot of Harvard University under the impetus of Dr. Gene Sharp, and which specializes in "nonviolence as a form of warfare." Dr. Sharp had been the executive secretary of A.J. Muste, the famous U.S. Trotskyite labor organizer and peacenik. The group is funded by Soros and the NED. Albert Einstein's president is Col. Robert Helvey, a former US Army officer with 30 years of experience in Southeast Asia. He has served as the case officer for youth groups active in the Balkans and Eastern Europe since at least 1999.
Col. Helvey reports, in a January 29, 2001, interview with film producer Steve York in Belgrade, that he first got involved in "strategic nonviolence" upon seeing the failure of military approaches to toppling dictators—especially in Myanmar, where he had been stationed as military attaché—and seeing the potential of Sharp's alternative approach. According to B. Raman, the former director of India's foreign intelligence agency, RAW, in a December 2001 paper published by his institute entitled, "The USA's National Endowment For Democracy (NED): An Update," Helvey "was an officer of the Defence Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, who had served in Vietnam and, subsequently, as the US Defence Attache in Yangon, Myanmar (1983 to 85), during which he clandestinely organised the Myanmarese students to work behind Aung San Suu Kyi and in collaboration with Bo Mya's Karen insurgent group. . . . He also trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989" and "is now believed to be acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong, the religious sect of China, in similar civil disobedience techniques." Col. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with Albert Einstein and Soros long before then.[2]
And there are more:
- As we shall see below, with such backing, Col. Helvey and his colleagues have created a series of youth movements including Otpor! in Serbia, Kmara! in Georgia, Pora! in Ukraine, and the like, which are already virally replicating other sects throughout the former Soviet Union, achieving in civilian form what had not been possible militarily in the 1980s. The groups are also spreading to Africa and South America.[ibid.]
Funding
Between 2000 to 2004 they received some funding from:
- Arca Foundation
- California Community Foundation
- Greenville Foundation
- Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
- Miriam G. and Ira D. Wallach Foundation
Report on Activities 2000 to 2004 (pdf)
Between 1993 and 1999 they received funding from:
- Arca Foundation
- Burma Project of the Open Society Institute
- Compton Foundation
- C.S. Fund
- Ford Foundation
- Friedrich Naumann Stiftung
- Greenville Foundation
- International Republican Institute
- Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
- Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
- National Endowment for Democracy
- New York Friends Group
- Olof Palme International Centre
- Ploughshares Fund
- United States Institute for Peace
People
Principals
- Robert Helvey – (Col., Defence Intelligence Agency)
- Edward Atkeson – (Major General, US Army) advisor
- Peter Ackerman – advisor
Board of Directors
- Bob Helvey – President
- Cornelia Sargent – Chair
- Elizabeth Defeis
- Mary King
- Gene Sharp
- Curt Goering
Director 2000 [4]
- Peter Ackerman
- Elizabeth F. Defeis
- Curt Goering
- Chester Haskell
- Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
- Dr. Stephen Marks
- Hazel M. McFerson
- Thomas C. Schelling
- Gene Sharp
- Martin Teitel
Former Directors
- Hazel M. McFerson former chair [3]
- "*In 1994 “At the Albert Einstein Institution’s annual meeting in July, the board of directors elected Elizabeth F. Defeis as its new chair. She succeeds Thomas C. Schelling, who served as the board’s chair for five years… The board also re-elected Christopher Kruegler as president, and elected Hazel M. McFerson as secretary-treasurer. At its fall meeting, the board of directors will welcome a new member," Dr. Stephen Marks.[5]
- Richard Rockwell - 1994/95 [4]
Staff
- Gene Sharp – Senior Scholar
- Jamila Raqib – Executive Director
Staff 2000 [6]
Advisors (1993-1999)
- Maj. Gen. Edward B. Atkeson (ret.)
- Philip Bogdonoff
- I. Roberto Eisenmann
- Dr. Efrain Garza Fuentes
- Rabbi Everrett Gendler
- Prof. Donald Horowitz
- Prof. Robin Remington Wallace
- Admiral Gene R. La Rocque (ret.)
- Prof. Adam Roberts
- William Spencer
- Prof. Hisham Sharabi
- David Szanton
- Peter Szanton
- William Langer Ury
Former Advisors
- James Farmer - 1994/95 [5]
Former Directors (1990)
Accessed August 2008: [7]
Contact information
The Albert Einstein Institution
427 Newbury Street
Boston, MA 02115
USA
Phone: USA +617-247-4882
Fax: USA +617-247-4035
E-mail: einstein AT igc.org
Web: http://www.aeinstein.org
Articles and Resources
Related SourceWatch Articles
- NED - former funder
- Soros Foundation
- Swarming Youths
- Otpor
- Uche Ewelukwa
- Howard Clark
- Stephen Crawford
- Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy
- Arthur Edelstein
- Douglas A. Johnson - former fellow (in the 1980s)
References
- ↑ Albert Einstein Institution, "Background", Albert Einstein Institution website, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ Nonviolent Sanctions Newsletter, AEI, 1989.
- ↑ Nonviolent Sanctions Newsletter, AEI, Spring 1995.
- ↑ Nonviolent Struggle, AEI, vol 7. no. 1.m Fall 2000.
- ↑ AEI, “Nonviolent Sanctions”, vol. 6, no. 3 Winter 1994/95.
- ↑ Nonviolent Struggle, AEI, vol 7. no. 1.m Fall 2000.
- ↑ Biennial Report 1988-1990, AEI, accessed August 6, 2008.
External Articles
- Jonathan Mowat, "The new Gladio in action?: Ukrainian postmodern coup completes testing of new template", Online Journal, March 19, 2005. Contains references to the role played by AEI in Ukraine.
- Jonathan Mowat, "Who is Col. Bob Helvey?", Online Journal, March 19, 2005. Contains discussion of the instigator of AEI.
- Jonathan Mowat, "The Coup Plotters: The Albert Einstein Institution", Online Journal, March 19, 2005. Contains discussion of AEI.
- Thierry Meyssan, "The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA", Voltairenet, January 4, 2005.
- George Ciccariello-Maher, "Einstein Turns in His Grave: AEI and Venezuela", CounterPunch, April 16, 2008.
- Michael Field, "Fiji claims NZ diplomat interfering in Govt", Stuff, June 22, 2008.
- Stephen Zunes, "Sharp Attack Unwarranted," Foreign Policy in Focus commentary, June 27, 2008.
- Stephen Gowans, "Defending the Indefensible: Sham Democracy Promoter Defends Imperialist Ties", What's Left, June 29, 2008. (Response to Zunes article: "Sharp Attack Unwarranted")
- Michael Barker, "Sharp Reflection Warranted: Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism", Swans, June 30, 2008. (Response to Zunes article: "Sharp Attack Unwarranted")
- George Cicariello-Maher & Eva Golinger, "Debate on the Albert Einstein Institution and its Involvement in Venezuela", Venezuelanalysis, August 5, 2008.