Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The International Center for Non-Violent Conflict is all about Violence and War

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(Peter Ackerman top, Michael Ledeen bottom)

Another associate of the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict responded to my diary pointing out the association of Peter Ackerman founder of the ICNC to Michael Ledeen who is a Neo-Con accused of the Niger Forgeries which led to war with Iraq and many other known forgeries, listed below. Here is the response from a ICNC associate. The ICNC and Peter Ackerman are funders of Narco News.

“Dear Mr. Piddy: Like Stephen Zunes, I've also worked with ICNC, and I'm afraid that Mr. Ackerman writing a single op-ed with someone is zero evidence of any relationship with the co-author beyond the words in the article. If all the scholars and pundits who'd ever co-written op-eds were to be held responsible for the other writings and doings of their co-authors, all of them would eventually be responsible for everything that any of them were doing, which of course is impossible. Zunes actually did a trenchant article on why this kind of logic ("X knows Y who knows Z, so X is responsible for what Z does") doesn't hold water:

Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman both share the view that they should involve themselves in creating conflict in other nations based on their view that these nations are not “free”. That’s why they belong to the “Freedom Foundation”.

Here is what Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman wrote together in one of their articles called “Change Needs Help from Friends”.

“Freedom-loving people know what we want to see in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran: the central square bursting with citizens demanding an end to tyranny, massive strikes shutting down the national economy, the disintegration of security forces charged with maintaining order, and the consequent departure of the tyrants and the beginnings of a popularly elected government.” (Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman)

Iran has a democratically elected government for one. Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman of the ICNC seek to destroy it and replace it with another government more to their liking. This is not something that can be accomplished without violence and war. And that has proven already to be an observable truth in Iran where many revolutionary protestors have been jailed, sentenced to death in light of the real violence there that has already occurred. Violence that is inevitable that the ICNC seeks to promote through destablilization.

The ICNC may point to the so called Rose revolution which was funded by George Soros in part and the Orange Revolution. These events were influenced by outside sources who supported groups opposed to the governments in place. On what basis does a foreign source involve itself in the affairs of another country? Usually because it may be profitable to do so. For economic reasons which are covered up in the language of "freedom" and "liberty" by groups like the ICNC.

Michael Ledeen is a person who has an interest in fascism as a form of government. Here are some of his quotes, which are self-descriptive:

On a book he wrote about Mussolini:
"He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism."

September 4, 2001
“Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.” (Wall Street Journal, 9/4/2002)

March 25, 2003 (Referring to the Iraq War)
“I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we’re being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we’re winning, I don’t think casualties are going to be the issue.” [American Enterprise Institute).

Michael Ledeen has lived in Italy and has been responsible for working with SISMI the Italian intelligence agency and promoting propaganda that indicated before the Jimmy Carter defeat by Ronald Reagan that Billy Carter (Jimmy's brother) had accepted bribes that he in fact did not accept. Ledeen attempted to blame the Soviet Union for the attack on the Pope in the 1980’s.

Ledeen is suspected of being the author of the Niger forgeries first published in the Italian magazine Panorama (where he regularly contributed articles), that led the U.S into war with Iraq. All of the above events had their origin in first being published in Italy. They are acts of destablilization.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/American_who_consulted_for_Pentagon_says_0117.html

Ledeen was also involved with Robert McFarlane in the Iran Contra Scandal. Ledeen actually sold TOW missiles to the Israelis who would then sell them to Iran. Iran is the nation Ledeen currently would like to see "regime change" in. Is there a method to his madness?

Iran Contra resulted in War in Nicaragua, many people were killed to remove the Sandinistas and Daniel Ortega from power and bring “Democracy” to Nicaragua. Whoops! Daniel Ortega is currently the democratically elected president of Nicaragua. Narco News reports on the events in Latin America.They have not reported to my knowledge that Michael Ledeen was involved in fighting the Sandanistas.

Michael Ledeen is an unabashed fascist. I don't think anyone can come to any other conclusion. I don't mean fascist in a pejorative sense. I mean he ascribes whooly or in part to fascism as a viable system of government. He can hardly contain himself from saying so. Here is an excerpt from his book on Mussolini.

"Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader a dictator willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures, which few know how, or are willing, to employ."

This is Peter Ackerman’s friend.

Where are the articles Peter Ackerman has written with Michael Moore?

Well, he’s not writing articles with Michael Moore. But he did introduce President Bush when Bush spoke at the Freedom House where Ackerman is Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Why would Bush choose to speak at Freedom House and have Peter Ackerman introduce him? There can be only one answer. Freedom house and Peter Ackerman are representative of Bush’s thinking and policies. It's really not that complicated. This isn't guilt by association. It's guilt by colloboration.

The Cato Institute of which Ackerman is on the board of directors, along with Rupert Murdoch is a Libertarian think tank that wishes to privatize social security they receive funding from the Scaife foundation. Richard Scaife promoted the Monica Lewinsky scandal and is virulently anti Hilliary Clinton. So is Narco News, so is Peter Ackerman.


Freedom house and it’s past or current board of directors: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Steve Forbes.

I didn’t see Michael Moore’s name in there. Ralph Feingold isn’t on there either. Neither is Steven Zunes for some reason. How about Chuck Schumer even? Not even John McCain! The Neo-Cons don’t like McCain.

It’s not really funny.

Here is an excellent article by Stephan Gowans that beautifully describes what is actually going on.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56604.shtml

Stephan Gowans sums it up perfectly

“Ackerman and Helvey’s new type of mercenary are practioners of what the CIA used to call destabilization. To escape the taint of its CIA past, destabilization has been rebranded. It’s now called nonviolent resistance (NVR), shrewdly drawing upon the reputation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent struggles for black civil rights in the 1960s. But where King sought to bring about change within the system, and in the United States, NVR is strictly a foreign affair, seeking to overturn governments abroad that operate outside the system of U.S. imperial domination.”

The conclusion I come to is that the ICNC is a ruse. Like the Freedom Foundation, where Ackerman was a chairperson, and the AEI, these alleged “foundations” seek to undermine other nations in the same way that the CIA has long since undermined other nations. As Markos Moulitsas once blurted, “by killing labor leaders” and by bribing labor leaders to strike, providing propaganda materials, paying off generals to revolt and assassinating world leaders like Allende in Chile. Assassination is not something the ICNC advocates. But it ican often be the inevitable result of interference with other nations internal affairs

It's not to say that everyone in ICNC is a secret agent. Quite the contrary. Many have bonafide leftist credentials. What's happened is they have been seduced by a purposely vague, amorphous hidden ideology which they cannot comphrehend whose objectives are masked by verbally progressive language.

They just aren't real smart people. How many awards or degress a person holds is never a measure of intelligence. Intelligence is exhibited by any organism that acts in a way that is beneficial to it's survival. That almost always requires seeking a stable atmosphere in their environment. Destablilizing other nations is utterly stupid and always results in a contradiction of the alleged stated objective. That's why Michael Ledeen who once sold missles to Iran now wants to destroy their government and why Daniel Ortega is president of Nicaragua. All these actions by Ledeen resulted in 0 benefit to him or his imagined political ideals.

There is, simply put, a kind of mass mental illness in America. It's not new, but it's expressing itself very strongly in these times. Zunes rebuttal to Gowans article is absurd. The proof is exemplified in the actions of people like president Obama who seduced so many "progressives" people into thinking he was liberal, anti-war, anti corporate and protective of the enviornment. He's the prime example of whats being done.

Only now, the CIA works through them and they call themselves “non-violent” centers of CONFLICT. The world CONFLICT almost gets lost. They are creating CONFLICT, destabilization. That means they are ruining people lives in order to remove those people as well as totally innocent people on the periphery. And why are they doing this?

In addition to being very dumb people, they are also very confused people. Typically these people come from suburban or rural backgrounds where their wealth further isolates them from the general population. Then, they attend prestigious Universities which educate them into thinking they are some how “special and privileged”. They are “educated”.

Most of “THEM”…the rest of the world who have to work for a living, the unfortunates, are not “educated” enough or intelligent enough to have amassed private wealth and the "freedom" private wealth affords.

Ackerman formerly worked for Goldman Sachs and his superior intelligence allowed him to amass private wealth and afforded him time to delve into his hobby, "world affairs". I guess he didn't want to become a piano player.


And thus begins the Neo-con never ending circular journey into an unfeeling world of utter confusion, arrogance, intolerance and blatant stupidity all justified by their imagined social standing which exists through an imposed sheer brute force.

They impose their conception of the world on everyone else and attempt to keep the public "down". America has been keeping other nations "down", keeping them from economic independence and being able to resist American influence for decades. Now it's turning more of it's attention toward itself.
There should be an analysis of Narco News and it’s articles. Al Giordano of Narco News is a proponent of this kind of so called community organizing that the ICNC and Michael Ledeen advocate, where gringo’s run around in Latin America and try to help communities overcome the oppression imposed upon them by other gringo’s.

The only problem is, it’s the same gringo. And what the gringo needs to do, is mind his own gringo business. It’s what the Conquistador’s did who were followed by the clergy. The conquistadors would rape, pillage and infect. The priests would come after them offering salvation in exchange for slavery in all it’s forms. They would protect the slaves from the Conquistadors in exchange for building churches, service and sex.

What’s interesting about Narco News is Al Giordano never criticizes Barack Obama. There is no criticism of Obama for what happened in Honduras that I have seen on Narco News.

Obama is currently being hailed by the Neo-Cons as the new War President. William Kristol is delighted, Ken Adelman actually voted for him. Adelman knew what he was getting. So did I.

Many members of right wing groups who were anti- Clinton like the AEI and Scaife groups are actually supportive of Obama as he continues the policies of George Bush. Ken Adelman for example supported Obama who promised as a candidate to expand the war in Afghanistan.

So what we have is a kind of velvet revolution in America. Where right wing groups pose or fund other groups posing in the language of the left to go about seducing listless and sometimes well meaning people on the left by creating appropriate behavioral language that signifiies inclusion, safety and the security of sharing a kind of social like mindedness that seems to embrace the values of the left in terms especially of equality. But it isn't equality, it's freedom. Freedom for corporations that offers the illusion of trickle down freedom for the lower forms. Equality is an imposition of the government. As Neo cons we want less government, more freedom.

And what we get is a Barack Obama who many Neo-Cons voted for. He's got the left eating out of his hand. And what's in his hand has been put there by the likes of Peter Ackerman.

This is really twisted. AEI, ICNC, Freedom House, Scaife have discovered how to manipulate people on a mass scale.

And it's working.

Just ask Steve Zunes.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5643.”

Let me respond by saying the following:

Mr Ackerman has written at least 2 articles with Michael Ledeen, not one. Here’s the second.

http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=05&d=14&a=7

Here Mr. Ledeen calls Mr. Ackerman his friend.

“My friend Peter Ackerman will delight in these pictures; he has long been an advocate of non-violent revolution. As I have.” Michael Ledeen

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/09/17/here-we-go/2/

Michael Ledeen refers to his friend Peter Ackerman often as illustrated in this comment for the American Enterprise Institute

“As Peter Ackerman reminds me, just because the opposition isn’t using guns, the confrontation is not less conflictual. The goal is to bring down the regime and that will take discipline, courage, and very large numbers.” Michael Ledeen

http://www.aei.org/article/22711

Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman are friends and they have a common political point of view. That is why they write articles together, refer to themselves as friends and appear on the same boards together.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The School of Authentic Journalism: AEI/CIA Connections at NARCO NEWS

(What has happened at Narco News is happening everywhere to organizations purporting to represent the left. They are being absorbed by the right. President Obama will announce a troop increase. Many people feel deceived by this. The following is an partial example of how these deceptions occur.)

Peter Ackerman has written political articles with Michael Ledeen a neo-con (American Enterprise Institute AEI) and associate of many members of PNAC. PNAC is the Project for a New American Century. PNAC is the neo-con plan for American world dominance. Peter Ackerman is the founder and funder of a group (ICNC) that funds Narco News and it's School of Authentic Journalism. Michael Ledeen is a neo- con who has been accused of creating the Niger Forgeries that helped lead to war with Iraq on phony WMD issues. Al Giordano wrote a response to a diary on Narco News and it’s involvement with Jack Duvall and Peter Ackerman who have both been board members with former CIA chief and PNAC spokesman James Woolsey at Freedom House and The Arlington Insitute:

Giordano: “The suggestion that contributions to our work (and especially one that is matched by hundreds of small donors that support authentic journalism) would in any way change what we do is absurd and the writer hasn't offered a shred of evidence anyway.”

Well here's a shred.

Jack Duvall's photo is 8th from the bottom on the Narco News website. It turns out that [Jack Duvall, a producer http://www.narconews.com/Issue60/article3813.html] is a instructor of Narco News Journalists (though he has never been identified anywhere as "journalist") with their school, The School of Authentic Journalism, which Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall fund with funds from the International Center for Non Violent Conflict which seeks to overthrow the sometimes democratically elected leadership of nations as varied as Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. Peter Ackerman is also a board member of the ICNC. He has written articles with Michael Ledeen a PNAC member. One of those articles is called “Say you want a Revolution” From Anti War, Justin Raimondo
“Say You Want a Revolution,” is the title of a piece by neoconservative Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen, a tireless advocate of the U.S. waging endless wars of “liberation,” and Peter Ackerman, chairman of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Its theme: more U.S. tax dollars to fund “revolutionaries” in a new model of “regime change” – as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan."
Here the ICNC outlines it’s purpose from it’s website:
The ICNC develops and encourages the use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies to establish and defend democracy provides assistance in the training and deployment of field advisors , to deepen the conceptual knowledge and practical skills of applying nonviolent strategies in conflicts throughout the world where progress toward democracy and human rights is possible."
The School for Authentic Journalism sends it’s investigative reporters out to the “field” to report. Jack Duvall is on the Board of The Arlington Institute. Ex CIA director James Woolsey has also been a member of the Arlington Institute which is described by Source Watch:
Jack DuVall is the president of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), an organization that has produced what can only be termed propaganda films shown on PBS and on university campuses around the US. Note that ICNC is also a project of Peter Ackerman, a right-wing operator. DuVall and James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, founded the The Arlington Institute.
The Arlington Institutes clients are all 4 branches of the military among others. They try to predict the future. Their presentation on video impressed me as unbearably goofy and an attempt to quantify and justify superstition using big words with authoritative voicing. It was in effect really stupid, bordering on silly. These people are pretentious and very dumb, calling themselves futurists.

The CIA is an organization of very backward people who are bereft of any real intelligence and it is not surprising to see an organization like this associated with them. It's another spin off on "Men Who Stare at Goats".

Duvall has been active in the overthrow of Chavez in Venezuela.
However, Duvall does admit in his letter that in March 2005 the ICNC “gave support to the [Albert] Einstein Institute for a workshop it conducted on nonviolent action for Venezuelans, [which was] held in Boston”.
Narco News recently awarded 24 scholarships to up and coming journalists and “communicators” where they receive “training “ in investigative reporting, “documentary film-making, viral video production, use of new media technologies, photojournalism, safety when reporting in conflict zones, use of the Freedom of Information Act to make government documents public, how to write a news story, how to use a cell phone camera, making effective media criticism and other work skills. “documentary film-making, viral video production, use of new media technologies, photojournalism, safety when reporting in conflict zones, use of the Freedom of Information Act to make government documents public, how to write a news story, how to use a cell phone camera, making effective media” critsicism”

So we have a right wing organization involved in the overthrow of some democratically elected governments (Venezuela) funding and providing instructors to what is considered a left wing reporting service, Narco News.

It would appear that Narco News is a compromised news source. Certainly the people who make it up are not all from the CIA. But it would appear that they have been infiltrated, compromised, seduced and altered by the presence of the ICNC with Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall and their PNAC, CIA associations.

I would urge the Narco News 'students" to investigate themselves. Investigate what is really going on and how some of them may be used in the future to gather information from the field for those people associated with PNAC and or the CIA.

The CIA is well known for this kind of work. Jack Duvall will personally instruct the students of journalism. He will get to know them. Perhaps the students will trust him. One day, and that day may never come, or it may soon come. Jack Duvall may call his former students in the field to look into something or provide first hand information as to events in a particular country. He may provide them with information that will lead them to report a story that favors the political point of view of Jack Duvall, Peter Ackerman and PNAC spokesperson, former CIA director, James Woolsey.

Something that the Arlington Institute would approve of.

Many of the people at Narco News I'm sure are sincere. But they have certainly been infiltrated and have or will be used by people asssociated with Jack Duvall and Peter Ackerman. Those people are members of PNAC or may be in the CIA.
The big question is of course why does Al Giordano accept Jack Duvall as a contributor and "instructor".

Perhaps the people at Narco News are just as confused as the general population as to what's going on.

The purpose historically of world leadership and organizations like the CIA is to keep the populace confused, off balance and uninformed.

PNAC and the CIA like it that way.






Obama is a President of Terror and War, not Peace

It seems clear to me that Barak Obama will become the most aggressive, war like President America has ever had in terms of confronting nations that have not attacked America.

The increase in troops in Afghanistan does not reflect a reduction of troops in Iraq. Along with the troop increases will be the invisible private contractors who continue to devour the public's wealth while avoiding their attention.

Barak Obama is presiding over a nation whose largest business is making war.

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We are now hearing the "real" war is in Pakistan. It was first, Iraq then Afghanistan.

What is happening is clearly an inflammation of war that can only result in an inevitable response from Iran or Israel or both.

It seems clear that Obama's actions will result in a larger event.
Obama has always said he is open to the possibility of bombing Iran if necessary. Iran is confronted with U.S. troops at it's border.

Obama, the man of rhetorical peace but war in action is preparing for further adventures in Latin America after the overthrow of Zelaya in Honduras, and the planting of troops in Colombia ready to fight and or threaten into compliance nations like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and perhaps Brazil.

Obama continues the security state buildup in the United States with the training of local police departments by Blackwater.

How serious is Obama about security? Not very. He's serious about funding and developing security corporations who are largely made up of ex-military and former intelligence agents with connections to powerful corporations like Lockheed Martin whose business is keeping America at War.

But he's not really serious about security as witnessed by the entrance of two childish clowns who deceived the heavy security appartus "protecting" him at the Whitehouse.

The whole idea that Americans should be concerned about their safety was amply demonstrated as a hoax intended to disturb, make fearful and confuse the American public by the easy entry into the Whitehouse of two poorly disguised clowns.

The United States is not fighting anyone in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are simply killing people because it is profitable to do so.

No one "over there" is serioulsy seeking to harm America. It's just the opposite. It is America that is the terrorist. And it is Obama who is the Terrorist President