(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.
