[Marxism] 2 views on the Iran election

[Stephen Zunes]

What "behavior" are you referring to?  I've never been to Iran or 
worked with Iranians through ICNC or any other entity.  I have, 
however, worked through ICNC with Palestinians, Egyptians, Western 
Saharans and others trying to resist U.S.-backed regimes, as well as 
Guatemalan Indians and Mexican-American immigration rights activists 
struggling or justice.  Sorry you find that so offensive, but I think 
it's important work....


At 05:55 AM 6/15/2009, Louis Proyect wrote:
>Jacob Levich wrote:
>>This is absolutely correct. Events in Iran are precisely following 
>>the "color revolution" playbook, as developed by the State 
>>Department, the NED, and a variety of Soros-funded NGOs -- 
>>doubtless with the enthusiastic participation of the CIA. These 
>>attempts to create "peaceful" regime change are _always_ kicked off 
>>by charges of a stolen election; the opposition (typically led by 
>>affluent college students and disgruntled sectors of the business 
>>class) is always supplied with lavish funds, media-friendly 
>>scripts, branding in the form of a distinctive color (Rose in 
>>Georgia, Orange in the Ukraine, et al.) , and so on.
>
>As many of you know from my blog and from Michael Barker's 
>reporting, one of the main instruments of a privateer contra NGO is 
>the Albert Einstein Institute on Nonviolence, funded by Bruce 
>Ackerman, a corporate raider who somehow eluded arrest when he was 
>working closely with Michael Milken at Drexel-Burnham.
>
>One of the academics associated with the institute is Stephen Zunes, 
>who has a fairly good record as a critic of Zionism and other US 
>foreign policy abuses but who insists on the right of people like 
>Ackerman and Soros to use their millions to meddle in the internal 
>affairs of other countries.
>
>Here is Zunes's rather tortured justification for his behavior on Alternet:
>
>
>In an effort to head off such a popular uprising and discredit 
>pro-democracy leaders and their supporters, Iran's reactionary 
>leadership has been making false claims, aired in detail in a series 
>of television broadcasts beginning in 2007, that certain Western 
>nongovernmental organizations that have given workshops and offered 
>seminars for Iranian pro-democracy activists on the theory and 
>history of strategic nonviolent struggle are actually plotting with 
>the U.S. government to overthrow the regime. On several occasions, 
>Iranian authorities have arrested and tortured these activists, 
>forcing them to sign phony confessions allegedly confirming these allegations.
>
>Some Western bloggers and other writers, understandably skeptical of 
>U.S. intervention in oil-producing nations in the name of 
>"democracy," have actually bought into these claims by Iran's 
>hardline clerics that prominent nonviolent activists from Europe and 
>the United States -- most of whom happen to be highly critical of 
>U.S. policy toward Iran -- are somehow working as U.S. agents. These 
>conspiracy theories have in turn been picked up by some progressive 
>websites and periodicals, which repeat them as fact. Unfortunately, 
>such accusations do little more than strengthen the hand of Iran's 
>repressive regime, weaken democratic forces inside the country, and 
>strengthen the argument of U.S. neoconservatives that only U.S. 
>intervention -- and not nonviolent struggle by the Iranian people 
>themselves -- is capable of freeing the county.
>
>full: 
>http://www.alternet.org/world/140639/iran%27s_stolen_election_has_sparked_an_uprising_--_what_should_the_u.s._do/

Stephen Zunes
Professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA  94117

ph:  415-422-6981
fax: 415-422-2101
cell: 831-234-9468

www.stephenzunes.org
_____________________

"Americans who think and read are patriots of the first order."  -- 
Barbara Kingsolver