View Full Version : Iran - THE CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY (yeah right!) -and Media Spin


StrawDog
07-29-09, 07:46 PM
A good example of the hypocrisy of US NGO`s, like the CPD, (and thus the credibility of their professed agenda, "peace") who promote US Foreign Policy under the guise of "Democracy", and the compliant/selective Media is clearly evident in a Q & A document, stating its stance, covering and commenting on the recent Iranian elections. Those of you peaceful folk on the liberal left, who may think you are being represented by organizations such as the CDP and liberal news media will find this interesting. Here are some excerpts from the article.

There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy's "Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis," issued by the CPD on July 7 (http://www.cpdweb.org/news/20090707.shtml), and widely circulated since then.

The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because "some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement," and the CPD believes "those questions need to be squarely addressed."

We believe, on the contrary, that the CPD's 13 questions-and-answers do little to clarify issues related to Iran's June 12 presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath, and even less to help leftists and "American progressives" decide how they should respond to them.

As we try to show below, when stripped of its didactic format, this Q&A amounts to little more than an emotional plea to its target audience to surrender what remains of their leftist instincts (long under siege in the States, and shrinking rapidly), and join its authors for a ride on the "green wave" of yet another color-coded campaign that fits well with one of their government's longest-running programs of destabilization and regime-change. We believe that any "confusion" felt by the left and "American progressives" towards these events is a confusion that has been sown by our would-be instructors.

1. Consider first the CPD's selectivity. A look at its "Past Sign-on Statements and Letters" and elsewhere on its website (e.g., "Statement of Purpose") shows that, in contrast to its lengthy, 4,000-word Q&A of July 7, as well as its earlier statement on the "Crisis in Iran" (June 17), the CPD has yet to put up a Q&A related to or a statement announcing its solidarity with the mass demonstrations in Honduras after the June 27-28 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of the country, Manuel Zelaya. Neither has the CPD announced its solidarity with the 100 or more indigenous victims of a June 5 massacre by the government of Alan García in Peru, which some groups are calling the "Amazon's Tiananmen," nor with the high numbers of civilian victims of the several-year-long U.S. and NATO bombing campaigns over Afghanistan and Pakistan, now sharply escalated by the new Democratic administration.

2. Is it a mere coincidence that these neglected matters, all of which bear undeniably on the cause of peace and democracy, are also ones in which a thoughtful Q&A would inevitably challenge U.S. policy action or inaction, whereas a focus on Iran at this moment fits instead the long-term U.S. policy of demonization, isolation, sanctions, destabilization, and eventual regime-change?

3. By portraying the Islamic Republic as even more of an outlaw regime than it had been portrayed prior to June 12, doesn't this intensive focus on discrediting the Iranian election feed nicely into the U.S.-Israeli destabilization and regime-change campaign? No matter how much the CPD protests otherwise (#13), doesn't its call for "solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement" and its advocacy for "a different form of government in Iran" encourage leftists to pull-down their natural defenses against U.S. imperialism?

4. Even the language used by the CPD displays a revealing bias. At no place in its July 7 Q&A does the CPD refer to the United States or to Washington or to any U.S. leader as "murderous" or "vicious" or "barbaric," or any U.S. action as "ferocious." Instead, such language is reserved for U.S. targets such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic (#9), and for the clerical-state in Iran. [U]Thus, the CPD's introduction speaks of their "horror at the ferocious response" of Iran and the "brutal repression" in support of the "electoral fraud," and later the CPD refers to the "ferocious violence of the security forces" against the protestors and the general public (#8).[/U

The (lengthy) article continues here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/

Any thoughts on this obvious collusion or spin on the events in question?

spidergoat
07-29-09, 07:53 PM
It seems you are the biased one. Most of the western world knows Iran is a much more substantial threat to peaceful people than Honduras or Peru. The Ahmadinejad regime is now anti-Iranian, attacking their own citizens!

hypewaders
07-29-09, 08:06 PM
"Iran is a much more substantial threat to peaceful people than Honduras or Peru."

Por supuesto, peaceful people have never been murdered in Honduras y Peru :rolleyes:

He's no US puppet, but US meddling would still be the Kiss of Death for Mousavi and his supporters.

StrawDog
07-29-09, 08:32 PM
It seems you are the biased one. Most of the western world knows Iran is a much more substantial threat to peaceful people than Honduras or Peru. The Ahmadinejad regime is now anti-Iranian, attacking their own citizens!
And you are swallowing the very spin that the article exposes. :):m:

iceaura
07-29-09, 08:54 PM
Those of you peaceful folk on the liberal left, who may think you are being represented by organizations such as the CDP and liberal news media will find this interesting. The left in general is under no illusions of being represented by any "liberal news media" in the US.

Or so one would hope, by now.

spidergoat
07-29-09, 08:55 PM
Straw, you are so twisted you fail to recognize what is right in front of your face. The USA being wrong does not make Iran right.

baftan
07-29-09, 09:10 PM
NGO does not mean that they will be totally other side of the GOs or Intergovernmental Organisations in their discourses. They may share the same policies with Governments on certain issues. Not all NGOs work or act like Greenpeace or Amnesty International. This is why there is a concept like "semi-NGOs". The type of NGO, their sponsors, the class and ideological background of its members should be taken into consideration.

NGOs are type of interest groups, and the interest group politics is quite widespread "democratic" exercise in US tradition. All in all, there is nothing strange in the example provided by OP.

When it comes to the language they use: Well, if we do not codify certain terms on international level such as we did for "genocide", it will be free to propogate any idea by any organisation using terms like "murderous" or "vicious" or "barbaric". International politics works with codification of everything; flags, law, diplomacy, continental shelf, legitimacy etc. No code, no complaint...

StrawDog
07-29-09, 09:49 PM
NGO does not mean that they will be totally other side of the GOs or Intergovernmental Organisations in their discourses. They may share the same policies with Governments on certain issues. Not all NGOs work or act like Greenpeace or Amnesty International. This is why there is a concept like "semi-NGOs". The type of NGO, their sponsors, the class and ideological background of its members should be taken into consideration.

NGOs are type of interest groups, and the interest group politics is quite widespread "democratic" exercise in US tradition. All in all, there is nothing strange in the example provided by OP.

When it comes to the language they use: Well, if we do not codify certain terms on international level such as we did for "genocide", it will be free to propogate any idea by any organisation using terms like "murderous" or "vicious" or "barbaric". International politics works with codification of everything; flags, law, diplomacy, continental shelf, legitimacy etc. No code, no complaint...

Of course. The article identifies the (CPD) member profile , which includes those that stand for peace and democracy. The article then exposes the selective manner in which CPD focuses on Iran, while ignoring other (non Iran) instances of non democratic/authoritarian government behavior elsewhere. Chiefly because it does not clash with US foreign policy in those regions. Thus a body which supposedly stands for peace and democracy, is nothing but a mouthpiece for and a tool for furthering US Foreign Policy. Donors from the left, who have real "peace" in mind, would find this interesting.

StrawDog
07-29-09, 09:52 PM
Straw, you are so twisted you fail to recognize what is right in front of your face. The USA being wrong does not make Iran right.

Before continuing, what are you alluding that Iran does wrong?

S.A.M.
07-29-09, 11:13 PM
Joanne Landy is a nutjob

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/05/13/joanne-landy-at-it-again/