Lucky for Stephen Zunes Go Fírinnes Steve Weissman "did not provide a link" to Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi’s January 2006 op-ed for the New York Times agus an International Herald Tribune -"
Because of Weissman’s oversight in his June 21 criticism of the duo, Zunes was able to respond to Weissman via the June 29 Fírinne, and to accuse Weissman of misrepresenting both the op-ed and the work of Ackerman’s An tIonad Idirnáisiúnta ar Choinbhleacht Neamh-Fhoréigneach — without Fírinne‘s readers being able to check the op-ed for themselves.
So let me correct Weissman’s oversight. — As of this moment, Fírinne‘s (not to mention ZNet’s) readers need look no further than the website of the Comhairle Náisiúnta Friotaíocht na hIaráine, where the NCRI re-posted a copy of the Ackerman – Ahmadi op-ed almost as soon as it turned-up in the NYT and IHT in early January, 2006: See "
(Yes. That’s right. The website of the Comhairle Náisiúnta Friotaíocht na hIaráine, a.k.a., the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO). While the U.S. Department of State was still compiling its annual Patrúin Sceimhlitheoireacht Dhomhanda reports (the last was issued on April 29, 2004 — see Aguisín B), the MEK was listed among the U.S. Government’s "Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations." Still Bhí designated a "Eagraíocht Sceimhlitheoireachta Eachtrach," as a matter of fact, as recently as April 8, 2008 (see Uimh 29). One of the MEK’s eight or so different incarnations over the years has been the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Nor let there be any doubt about it: The NCRI – MEK’s reason for being is to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. So if you want to read what Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi wrote back in January 2006 about watching the streets and the future of Iran, and you can’t find it via Fírinne, remember to Google the names ‘Ackerman’ and ‘Ahmadi’ and the ‘National Council of Resistance of Iran’.)
Here, then, was the opening paragraph of the Ackerman – Ahmadi op-ed:
For months Iranian activists and even moderate clerics have been concerned about the radical tendencies of
Would anyone care to parse the falsehoods in this paragraph? I mean, I myself get so sick and tired of doing it in daily conversations and whatnot.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed the office of the President of Iran on August 6, 2005. — Do Ackerman and Ahmadi — or Zunes — honestly expect the non-gullible part of the reading public to take the ridiculous claims that this paragraph makes about Ahmadinejad as anything other than the authors’ contribution to the ongoing demonization of a man who at the time had held office in
"[Ahmadinejad’s] performance [during his first five months] is disturbingly reminiscent of those European fascist leaders of the 1920s and 1930s," Ackerman and Ahmadi wrote.
Can you believe this stuff? As of January 2006, it wasn’t
Since the start of 2002, as the most violent and powerful killing machine on earth prepared to attack Iraq, having just attacked Afghanistan three months earlier, which five or ten theaters of conflict do you suppose have witnessed the most intense work on behalf of nonviolent action by Peter Ackerman’s ICNC? (Note that if I could find one or more annual reports by the ICNC, I’d provide this information without bothering to ask.)
If the activism of the Washington D.C.-based ICNC truly were informed by its "Treoirlínte Oibriúcháin," rather than deploying these guidelines selectively, the way that every other partisan of American Power does, the
Instead, Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi argued the importance of a "grass-roots movement…waiting to be roused in Iran," whose "prospects will not be enhanced either by pleading with Iran’s rulers for moderation or threatening external intervention." — As if, even then, the U.S. military had not attacked and occupied Iran’s neighbors, and continued threatening to attack Iran. As if who needs to be (a-)roused are the peoples of Iran.
And Stephen Zunes rises to their defense against Steve Weissman, asserting bizarrely that it is "bizarre to imply that the United States has anything to do at all with the uprising in Iran" since the June 12 presidential election. - Amhail is dá mba the American wars in two neighboring countries (three, counting Pakistan; four, counting the Occupied Palestinian Territories), the American military exercises around Iran’s borders, Washington’s use of the International Atomic Energy Agency to harass Iran over its nuclear program, and the series of economic and political sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States, its allies, and the Security Council, do not count as "external interventions" by the United States (et al.) in the internal affairs of Iran.
Like hell.
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"A Response to Steve Weissman’s ‘Non-Violence 101’," Stephen Zunes, Fírinne, Meitheamh 29, 2009
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"Iaráin agus na Meiriceánaigh,” ZNet, 22 Meitheamh, 2009
Nuashonraigh (July 2): It is one thing to seanmóir nonviolence. Something quite else to ina gcónaí é. And yet a third to ligean that when the first and the second do not match — in fact, are light-years apart — what we should look at to resolve the contradiction between words and deeds is not what people do, but what people say.
On the morning after the Bush regime ordered the American military to attack Iraq in March 2003, Peadar Ackerman, then a member of Teach Saoirse‘s Board of Trustees (later he’d become its Chairman from September 2005 through early 2009), and the founding Chair of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, added his signature along with Freedom House’s other 21 Board members to an egregious Ráiteas that not only did not condemn this violent, barbarous, and criminal act of U.S. military aggression (this "outbreak of hostilities," as the statement put it) — but that "fervently hope[d] that the war effort American forces are now engaged in goes well and that Saddam Hussein’s tyranny falls with minimal loss of life."
Of course, as co-belligerents in the U.S. Government’s war, this brief, 559-word Ráiteas did not make the mistake of saying one word about the philosophy of "nonviolence."
Instead, its big casus bellum was something called "democracy." Cínte. Forms of the word ‘democracy’ turned up no fewer than 18 different times in this Ráiteas — Freedom House has always pretended that along with "freedom," it seeks to bring "democracy" to the democratically backward parts of the world.
Thus, along with their support for the belligerent’s supreme international crime and its grave breach of the peace and security of the world, this Ráiteas noted that with the U.S. war against Iraq, the "Gulf has the potential of making a clean break with a past rooted in repression and entering into the growing global community of democratic states" — all to be desired, Peter Ackerman et al. unambiguously affirmed.
Recounting Peter Ackerman’s pro-chogaidh stance here at the very moment his Government unleashed monumental levels of violence against an entire region of the world, I now await somebody smart enough to show me how to square co-belligerence of this mighty caliber with both the philosophy of nonviolence as well as the substance of democratic will-formation.
Or might we not instead file all such efforts under the rubrics ‘hypocrisy’, ‘fraud’, ‘deception’, and the like?
"Ráiteas Teach Saoirse ar Chogadh na hIaráice," Press Release, March 20, 2003
ICNC Operating Guidelines, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
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