The Iranian question is on
everyone’s lips at the moment, and judging by the ongoing discussions in both
the mainstream and alternative (progressive) media, it is apparent that, one
way or the other, the US (and its coalition of willing cronies) has its sights
firmly set on bringing regime change to Iran. So far, for the most part, the
alternative media has focused on the nuclear threat posed by the Middle East’s
most dangerous lawbreaker, Israel. The mainstream media, however, has
persistently and erroneously portrayed Iran as the “real” nuclear threat. Even
Britain’s so-called liberal media is demonstrating its ability to “manufacture
consent” for elite interests, with the BBC recently devoting an entire
(Israeli-made) documentary to the issue of the Iranian problem, ironically
titled “Will Israel bomb Iran?” [1] This is not really surprising, as the
governments guilty of involvement are heavily reliant on the mainstream
media’s willingness to legitimize their “War on Terror,” which in turn, could
turn out to be the catalyst for an illegal and catastrophic foreign
intervention in Iran (and thereby a catalyst for a global war).
Thus, although the alternative media has tended to focus on the Israeli
nuclear threat in relation to the “Iranian problem,” military intervention is
only one among many instruments available to the architects of imperialism to
promote regime change in Iran. Other methods commonly used to “encourage”
geo-strategically favourable “changes” in leadership include economic and
diplomatic persuasion. However, a relative newcomer to the armoury of foreign
policy elites – and the topic of this article – is the use of democracy itself
as a tool of foreign policy. A tool which is arguably one of the most potent
weapons in the war of ideas waged by policy elites against progressive
activists.
The strength of this new “democratic strategy” lies in its unique public
relations value, which allows those who wield it to cloak their “free-market”
agendas in the powerful rhetoric of human rights and humanitarianism.
Ironically, the democracy idea was first picked up with gusto in the early
1980s, when President Reagan (with bipartisan support) created the
quasi-nongovernmental organisation, the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED). Needless to say, the Reaganites newly defined “democracy” quickly
debased democracy as commonly understood by the American populous: a not
wholly unexpected development from a government reliant upon covert propaganda
for implementing their deeply regressive domestic politics.
Nicaragua was one of the first and most logical targets for the born-again
“democratic” zealots manning the NED, and their commitment to democracy
complemented the slaughter of the thus far US-supported Contras in the war
against the Sandinistas. Professor William I. Robinson was the one of the
first researchers to draw attention to the hypocrisy that was the
antidemocratic practices of the NED’s activities in Nicaragua. His seminal
work on this topic was Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention,
and Hegemony, which examined the “hijacking” of democratic transitions in
Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines and Chile. Crucially, Robinson concluded
that the success of foreign interventions can “be understood only when seen in
its entirety – as a skilful combination of military aggression, economic
blackmail, CIA propaganda, NED political interference, coercive diplomacy, and
international pressures.” [2] (Robinson uses the term polyarchy to describe
the “democracy promoters” actual unstated mission which is to promote
low-intensity democracy as opposed to more participatory forms of democracy.)
Although most of the NED’s work eludes critical commentary (by the mainstream
and alternative media alike), a lot of attention was paid to the 2002 coup in
Venezuela, which although ultimately unsuccessful (due to genuine popular
resistance), obtained vital support from US “democracy promoters.”
Furthermore, recent research undertaken by this author also illustrated the
crucial coordinating role the NED played in facilitating the Serbian
revolution in 2000, and in the ensuing coloured revolutions across Eastern
Europe. [3] Therefore, given the lack of critical analyses of the NED’s
activities, this article will now attempt to shed some light on the role of
the NED in promoting a “democratic” transition in Iran.
War or Revolution?
First of all, although the focus of this article is on the cynical utilization
of “democracy” as a foreign policy tool, much evidence still suggests that the
Bush administration plans to unleash yet another blood bath upon the Middle
East (700,000 and counting – or not in the case of the Western aggressors – in
Iraq). Indeed, Bush’s “democracy promoting” ambitions for Iran certainly don’t
rule out the possibility that the US may have an actual attack in mind;
especially considering the polyarchal precedents set in Nicaragua and Serbia,
where “democratic” success relied in large part upon the preceding US-backed
wars.
Alternatively, it is still also possible that the election-conscious American
regime may consider the “mere” threat of a nuclear holocaust to be enough of a
stimulus for regime change within Iran. Perhaps they are even hoping that a
non-violent revolution will be led by a terrified majority desperate to
prevent their countries imminent destruction.
Either way, war or no war, it is urgent that progressive activists understand,
expose, and criticize the insidious nature of the mechanisations of all
would-be “democracy promoters.” In this respect, this article will only
examine the role of the most prominent US-based “democracy promoting”
organisation, the NED. However, it should be noted that the “promotion of
democracy” is a global phenomena, whose very legitimacy relies upon the
support from a multitude of international actors. [4]
The NED Goes to Iran
The 2005 Iranian election was “met with worldwide approval.” [5] It was, it
seemed, a signal to the rest of the world that Iran was preparing itself for a
more western style of democratic governance. But, despite the apparent
legitimacy of the elections, it became evident in February 2006 that the US
administration was now in “Iranian democracy promoting mode.” It was then that
Condoleezza Rice first announced she was requesting $85 million from Congress
for the newly formed Office of Iranian Affairs. This initiative built upon the
earlier activism of Senators Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas)
who had introduced the Iran Freedom and Support Act of 2004 which declared the
need for democracy and regime change in Iran. [6] However, to date the NED’s
activities in Iran (which are carried out openly and even described on their
website) have not even been mentioned in the media. Their “democratic”
rhetoric seems to have worked its wonders and allowed the NED to completely
slip under the radar of the world’s media. In fact, even before the advent of
the Iran Freedom and Support Act the NED had been openly meddling in Iranian
affairs. According to the NED’s online project database five Iranian groups
received NED aid prior to 2004: the Iran Teachers Association, the Foundation
for Democracy in Iran, the National Iranian American Council, the Women’s
Learning Partnership, and the Abdorrahaman Boroumand Foundation. [7]
Therefore, in a bid to understand what US-led “democracy” will mean for Iran,
the activities of each of these organisations will now be examined in turn.
The Iran Teachers Association (ITA) was one of the first Iranian groups to
receive NED aid. Between 1991 and 2003 they were the recipients of seven NED
grants. These grants – worth a total of just over $300,000 – were distributed
to support the ITA’s quarterly cultural and political journal, Mehregan. In
1992 the neoconservative Bradley Foundation provided them with a further
$25,000 grant to help build a democratic Iran. [8] Unfortunately, due to the
closure of their website little other information has been obtained regarding
their activities.
The next recipient of NED largess was the US-based Foundation for Democracy in
Iran (FDI), which was founded in 1995 by Kenneth Timmerman, Peter Rodman and
Joshua Muravchick (with the assistance of some unidentified Iranian exiles).
[9] The FDI received their first $50,000 grant from the NED in 1995, which was
used to support their work in “document[ing and publicising] the human rights
situation inside Iran through first-hand monitoring.” The following year they
received their second NED grant ($25,000), which enabled them to continue
their documentation of human rights violations, which were to “be aired
through international broadcast services such as the Voice of America and the
BBC, in both English and Farsi.” [10] The value of these start-up funds, not
to mention the power of an NED endorsement, must have been invaluable to the
FDI as a budding “democracy promoter.”
Since then FDI have gone from strength to strength, and earlier this year they
were even predicting that Tehran was going to test a (thus far seemingly
non-existent) nuclear weapon before the Iranian New Year on (20th March). [11]
Not too surprisingly, Timmerman, the foundations executive director, has been
described as being “umbilically connected to the godfather of right-wing think
tanks, the American Enterprise Institute.” The other American cofounders of
the FDI also seem to be card carrying neocons, as Muravchick is closely
connected to the American Enterprise Institute, while Rodman signed the
infamous letter sent from the Project for a New American Century to President
Clinton in 1998. [12] (Incidentally, the American Enterprise Institute has
leant its “moral support” to the newly formed Iran Enterprise Institute.) [13]
Like the FDI, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) which was launched
in 2002, received its first NED grant ($25,000) in its founding year. The NIAC
notes that their purpose is to promote “Iranian-American participation in
American civic life,” and the initial NED grant was used to help them organize
a “two-day media training workshop in Iran for forty staff members from five
civic groups.” [14] Sticking with the media theme, in July 2006 they launched
the US-Iran Media Resource Project, which is “aimed at ensuring that the [US]
national media has the best information and interpretation available.” [15]
Of particular interest are the establishment credentials of the Council’s
president, Dr. Trita Parsi, who earlier this year completed his doctoral
thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under the guidance of Francis Fukuyama and
Zbigniew Brzezinski. [16] Last year NIAC also received a $64,000 grant to
“foster cooperation between Iranian and international civic groups and
foundations”: this grant was also used to “hire a Farsi-English speaking
expert to advise local groups on project development, proposal writing and
foreign donor relations.” Interestingly, a few years ago NIAC was associated
with the controversial funder of the US Democratic Party, Hassan Nemazee
(director of the Iranian American Political Action Committee). At that time,
Nemazee was involved in “a ten-million-dollar damage claim against the Student
Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) and its
coordinator, Aryo B. Pirouznia.” [17]
As his support of the Kerry campaign suggests, Nemazee moves in influencial
“democratic” circles, and he has been a trustee of the Asia Society since
2003. [18] The Asia Society provides an early example of a “democracy
promoting” organisation, which was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III
“to foster understanding between Asians and Americans”; furthermore, former
chair of the Asia Sociey, Richard Holbrooke, is currently on the board of the
NED. [19] From 2001 to 2002, Nemazee was also a member of the board of
directors of the American Iranian Council, a nonprofit organization “dedicated
to improving US-Iran relations.” [20] Notable “democratic” directors of the
American Iranian Council include, Judith Kipper (director of the right wing
Middle East Forum), Shireen Hunter (director of Islamic Studies at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies), and chairman David J. Lesar
(president and CEO of Halliburton). [21]
The third group to receive NED backing is the Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP),
which in 2003 obtained $115,000 from the NED to work with the Afghan Institute
of Learning “to develop an e-learning center… for Afghan and Iranian Persian
speakers” to “advance women’s rights and democracy advocacy.” WLP was founded
in the mid 1990s by former Minister of State for Women’s Affairs in Iran,
Mahnaz Afkhami, who now lives in exile in the US. WLP describes itself as “a
builder of networks, working with 18 autonomous and independent partner
organizations in the Global South, particularly in Muslim-majority societies.”
[22] WLP’s president, Ms. Afkhami, is currenltly also the executive director
of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and in the past she was the president
of the Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI). [23] During the 1990s, SIGI
received two NED grants for their work promoting women’s rights in the Middle
East, and in 1996 they received $25,000 from the Bradley Foundation to
“support a series of workshops in Tehran, Iran under the direction of Dr. Azar
Nafisi” (a writer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a trustee of
FIS). [24]
Ms. Afkhami has also worked with a number of other global NGOs, including the
World Movement for Democracy and the Global Fund for Women. [25] Both of these
organizations are ideologically linked to the NED, as the former was created
by the NED in 1999, [26] while lasy year one of directors of the Global Fund
for Women, Professor Sakena Yacoobi, received the NED’s prestigous Democracy
Award. [27] Professor Yacoobi is also a founder and executive director of the
Afghan Institute of Learning (which works closely with WLP). In addition,
Yacoobi is the vice president of Creating Hope International where she works
alongside fellow director, Betsy Amin-Arsala – American-born wife of
Afghanistan's vice-president, Hedayat Amin-Arsala. [28] (Hedayat is a former
World Bank staffer and Senior Advisor and member of the Afghan Mujahideen
Unity Council.) [29]
The final Iranian group to receive NED funding prior to 2004 was the
Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), a non-governmental organization which
promotes human rights and democracy in Iran. ABF was founded in 2001 by Ladan
and Roya Boroumand, the daughters of Abdorrahman Boroumand, “an Iranian lawyer
and pro-democracy activist who was assassinated, allegedly by the agents of
the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Paris on April 18, 1991.” [30]
ABF received their first NED grant of $25,000 in 2002 to “establish an Iranian
human rights memorial web site” with a “Farsi-language electronic library on
human rights laws and instruments.” They then received $30,000 in 2003 to help
develop their website, and a further $135,000 the following year to continue
their work and to launch the “Iran Human Rights Memorial.” Like many of the
other Iranian organisations receiving NED aid, the ABF’s connections with such
“democratic” organisatiions are more diverse than the funding alone, as Ladan
Boroumand was formerly a visiting fellow at the NED-founded International
Forum for Democratic Studies. [31] In 2003, ABF also received a $150,000 grant
from the conservative “Smith Richardson Foundation” for a project entitled
Iran’s Transition to Democracy.
NED’s Work in Iran Post-2004
Since 2004, five other groups, not mentioned in the preceding discussion, have
also received NED money, they are the Vital Voices Global Partnership, the
Institute of World Affairs, and three of the NED’s four core grantees, the
American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the Center for the
International Private Enterprise, and the International Republican Institute.
In 2004, Vital Voices Global Partnership received $40,500 to “conduct a
leadership training-of-trainers seminar in Washington, DC for five emerging
women leaders” to help “improve the political, economic and social status of
Iranian women.” The three honorary chairs of the partnership include former
First Lady Hillary Clinton, and two US senators, Kay Hutchison (R-TX) and
Nancy Baker (R-KS). [32] This in itself is a case in point as, who else could
promote democracy better than a bona fide Democrat like Ms. Clinton? Likewise,
in 2004, the Center for the International Private Enterprise received $56,000
to “inject the voice of business into the reform debate in Iran.”
The Institute of World Affairs (IWA) is a non-profit organization ostensably
“devoted to international understanding and the peaceful resolution of
conflict.” In 2005, they received a $45,800 grant from the NED to “start the
debate for judicial reform through research, training programs, and legal
consultations focusing on problematic issues of law and justice in Iran.” Dr.
Hrach Gregorian is the current president of the IWA, and his biography proudly
notes that he has also “helped to establish the international conflict
resolution skills training program at the United States Institute of Peace” (USIP).
[33] Judging by the paucity of critical enquiries into the USIP’s activities,
it seems that it is an institution that is familiar to few. The USIP is a
quasi-nongovernmental organization created by Congress in 1984 (the same year
the NED was formed), whose board of directors was, in the 1980s, described as
being “a who’s who of right wing academia and government.” [34] The USIP also
shares more with the NED than just its birth date. Carl Gershman (the NED’s
president) was a contributor to the USIP’s Journal: and Allen Weinstein (who
directed the creation of the NED) and Evron Kirkpatrick (the husband of fellow
NED creator Jeane Kirkpatrick) are both well connected to the USIP. [35]
In 2005, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS also
known as the Solidarity Center) obtained $185,000 from the NED to “support the
emergence of a sustainable independent labor movement” in Iran. To understand
the type of labor groups usually drawn into cooperating with the Solidarity
Center, it useful to examine recent NED-related activities in Venezuela. Here
we find that the NED provided aid to the organisations involved in the
(temporary) ousting of democratically elected Hugo Chavez in 2002. They also
provided the Solidarity Center with nearly US$600,000 between 1997 and 2001,
significant due to the close links to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers
(the group involved in the strike actions against Chávez in 2003). [36]
With regard to the Solidarity Center’s recent work in Iran, the NED notes that
the money they received in 2005 would be used to “conduct an international
workshop for Iranian labor leaders to acquire skills and benefit from the
experiences of other trade unionists.” To protect the attendee’s identities,
such meetings are carried out in secret. However, it is likely that such
workshops are used to put Iranian labor activists in contact with other NED
activists, like for example those involved in opposing Chavez in Venezuela.
Finally in 2005, the International Republican Institute (IRI) received
$110,000 to help link reformist “Iranian political activists to democratic
reformers in other countries” and to “strengthen their communications and
organizing capacity through the provision of skills-building and increased
access to information.” These activities were acknowledged by the IRI’s
president, Lorne W. Craner, who reported to the New York Times earlier this
year that they have been offering training to Iranian democratic activists for
the past few years. [37]
Although there is no direct connection, in 2005, a secretive “skills-building”
meeting for Iranian activists – self described as a “human-rights” workshop –
was held in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). According to an attendee, the
workshop was organized by “a mixture of Los Angeles-based exiled Iranians,
Americans… and three Serbs who said they belonged to the Otpor democratic
movement that overthrew the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in
2000.” [38] The Serbian connection suggests the possible involvement of two
NGO’s formed by ex-Otpor members after the ouster of Milosevic, those being
the Centre for Non-violent Resistance and the Center for Applied Non-Violent
Action and Strategies; both of which offer training courses all over the world
on how to create and run resistance movements. [39] Other possible workshop
organizers include the Washington-based International Center on Nonviolent
Conflict, as the Dubai workshop focused on teaching how the non-violent
tactics used in Serbia could be used “to bring down the [Iranian] regime.”
[40]
Locking-in Neoliberal Democracy (or Polyarchy)
For the sake of brevity this article has limited itself to the NED’s work in
Iran, however, in the past few years a number of other writers have been
exploring other ways in which the US is “promoting democracy” in Iran. For
example, see the work of Laura Rozen, Guy Dinmore, Howard LaFranchi, and Farah
Stockman. [41] Furthermore, it should be clear that many other countries are
working alongside the US to promote polyarchy in Iran, although few studies
have scrutinized the significance of their roles in the global “promotion of
democracy.”
No properly informed person would argue that democracy (particularly
participatory democracy) is flourishing in Iran, but the major problem with
the promotion of polyarchy, is that its spells the effective death knell for
(possible) future transitions to more participatory forms of governance.
However, for the time being, as Benjamin Isakhan has recently shown, the
Middle-East can take pride that it, and not Greece, was the birthplace of
modern day democracy (contrary to popular beliefs promoted in and by the
West). [42]
In reaction to the recent expansion (and discussion of) the NED’s “democratic”
interventions, two US-based groups have begun documenting and exposing the
fraudulent activities of the NED – they are the International Endowment for
Democracy (www.iefd.org) and In the Name of
Democracy (http://inthenameofdemocracy.org).
Furthermore, Wikipedia sites such as the Center for Media and Democracy’s (www.sourcewatch.org),
provide useful means to research the interlocking relationships between the
numerous “democracy promoting” organizations and their grantees.
Sadly, however, it will take more than the limited distribution networks of
alternative news media to seriously challenge the hypocritical and
antidemocratic practices typified by the NED. It is therefore vital that all
people, with even a passing interest in the foreign affairs of their elected
governments, work to return journalism to the mainstream media, so that we,
(as responsible citizens of the world), can begin to have free, open and
participatory discussions about the future of democracy. As Robert McChesney
observes; “regardless of what a progressive group’s first issue of importance
is, its second issue should be media and communication, because so long as the
media are in corporate hands, the task of social change will be vastly more
difficult, if not impossible, across the board.” [43] So let’s reclaim media
and reclaim democracy.
Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He
can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au
I would like to thank SourceWatch, through which much of the research for this
article was undertaken.
References:
[1] Jonathan Cook, Israel's Plan For A Military Strike On Iran, (Zmag, 15
October 2006),
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11190
[2] William I. Robinson, A Faustian Bargain: US Intervention in the Nicaraguan
Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era, (Westview
Press, 1992), p. 146.
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/faustista.pdf
[3] Michael Barker, Taking the Risk Out of Civil Society: Harnessing Social
movements and Regulating Revolutions, Refereed paper presented to the
Australasian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Newcastle
25-27 September 2006,
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/ept/politics/apsa/PapersFV/IntRel_IPE/Barker,%20Michael.pdf
[4] Thomas O. Melia, The Democracy Bureaucracy: The Infrastructure of American
Democracy Promotion, (2005),
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns/papers/democracy_bureaucracy.pdf
[5] Ignacio Ramonet, Democracy To Order, (Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2006),
http://mondediplo.com/2006/03/01democracy
[6] According to Laura Rozen, The Revolution Next Time, (The Boston Globe, 10
October 2004)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/10/10/the_revolution_next_time/;
this act “declared that ‘it should be the policy of the United States to
support regime change for the Islamic Republic of Iran and to promote the
transition to a democratic government to replace that regime’ and would
authorize the president to ‘provide assistance to foreign and domestic
pro-democracy groups opposed to the non-democratic Government of Iran.’”
[7] Data on NED funding before 1990 is unavailable on their online grant
database.
[8] Media Transparency, Grant Detail,
http://www.mediatransparency.org/grantdetail.php?grantID=3582
[9] According to his Timmerman’s official biography (http://www.kentimmerman.com/bio.htm),
since 1987 he has “operated Middle East Data Project, Inc., a small business
that has provided investigative support and policy guidance to government
agencies and private companies on three continents.”
[10]
http://www.ned.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/projects-search.htm
[11]
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012206A.shtml
[12] Project for a New American Century, (26 January 1998),
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
[13] Laura Rozen, Iran Hawks Reorganize (The American Prospect, 13 November
2006),
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12209
[14]
http://www.niacouncil.org/intro.asp
[15] This project is also funded through grants by Connect US Fund and the
Ploughshares Fund, see
http://www.niacouncil.org/us-iran.asp
[16] Dr Parsi’s doctorate work will be published next year by Yale University
Press and is titled Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel
and the United States, see
http://www.tritaparsi.com/biography.htm
[17] Nemazee’s lawyer also built “the case about the relationship between
Pirouznia and another pair of stalwart Iran democracy activists: Banadsheh
Zand-Bonazzi and Elio Bonazzi.” “Zand-Bonazzi’s father, Siamak Pourzand, is a
well-known Iranian journalist, intellectual, freedom fighter – and political
prisoner of the Islamic regime.” See Robert Spencer, Kerry's Iranian
Connection Fights Democracy, (FrontPageMagazine.com, 8 September 2004),
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14977
[18]
http://www.iranianamericanpac.org/leadership/p_nemazee.shtml
[19]
http://www.asiasociety.org/about/officers.html [2] (http://www.asiasociety.org/about/mission.html
[20]
http://www.iranianamericanpac.org/leadership/p_nemazee.shtml
[21]
http://www.american-iranian.org/home.php?mains=2&subs=14
[22]
http://learningpartnership.org/about
[23]
http://www.fis-iran.org/index.php/about
[24]
http://www.ned.org/grants/04programs/web-multi04.html
http://www.mediatransparency.org/grantdetail.php?grantID=1791
http://www.mediatransparency.org/grantdetail.php?grantID=1790 Brian
Whitaker linked Dr. Nafisi to a bevy of neoconservatives in his article,
Conflict and Catchphrases (Guardian Unlimited, 24 February 2003),
[25]
http://www.learningpartnership.org/about/board#council also involved with
and the International League for Human Rights
[26] http://www.wmd.org/
[27]
http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/1work/team/team-board.html CHECK
[28]
http://studentaffairs.depaul.edu/ministry/via_oct31.html
[29]
http://www.export.gov/afghanistan/pdf/minister_bios.pdf
[30]
http://www.abfiran.org/english/foundation.php
[31]
http://www.abfiran.org/english/foundation.php
[32]
http://www.vitalvoices.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?page_id=9
[33] http://www.iwa.org/
[34]
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/usip.php; Richard Hatch and Sara
Diamond, Operation Peace Institute, (Zmag, July/Aug 1990).
[35]
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/usip.php
[36] Kim Scipes, AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Dejà vu all over again, (Labor Notes,
2004),
http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2004/04/articles/e.html; Kim Scipes, An
Unholy Alliance: The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in
Venezuela, (Zmag, 2005),
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=19&itemID=8268
[37] Steven R. Weisman, U.S. Program is Directed at Altering Iran's Politics,
(New York Times, 15 April 2006),
http://www.iri.org/newsarchive/2006/2006-04-15-News-NYT-Iran.asp
[38] Annon, Inside the US's Regime-Change School, (Asia times, 14 March 2006),
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC14Ak04.html
[39] KS, Serbian Regime Topplers Share Know-How, (Agence France Presse, 2
October 2005).
[40] Annon, Inside the US's Regime-Change School; for further details on the
International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts see, Jonathan Mowat, The Coup
Plotters (Online Journal, 17 March 2005),
http://onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/031905Mowat-1/031905Mowat-3/031905mowat-3.html
[41] Laura Rozen, U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran (New York Times, 19 April 2006),
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13111.htm;
Guy Dinmore, US and UK Develop Democracy Strategy for Iran, (Financial
Times, 21 April 2006)
Howard LaFranchi, A Bid to Foment Democracy in Iran, (Christian Science
Monitor, 17 February 2006),
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0217/p03s03-usfp.html;
Farah Stockman, Rice Wants Funds for Democracy Initiative in Iran, (The
Boston Globe, 9 March 2006),
Farah Stockman, Iran Tensions Rise, (The
Boston Globe, 9 March 2006),
[42] Benjamin Isakhan, Re-thinking Middle Eastern Democracy: Lessons from
Ancient Mesopotamia, Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Political
Studies Association conference, (University
of Newcastle, 25-27 September 2006),
[43] Robert R. McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, (Seven
Stories Press, 1997), p.71.
