NOVANEWS
Berlin – AJC is deeply troubled with the new agreement between Germany’s state scholarship program DAAD and Iran’s education ministry to foster academic exchanges. “When the European Union is tightening sanctions to protest Iran’s program to achieve nuclear-weapons capability, German universities expanding academic ties with Iran is simply counter-productive,” said Deidre Berger, director of AJC’s Berlin office. “It is naïve to think that dialogue and exchange on human rights issues with students handpicked by an authoritarian regime will contribute to more democratic structures in Iran.” “Continuing expansion of ties between German and Iranian academic institutions while Germany is participating in ever-tightening sanctions against the Iranian regime sends mixed signals to Iran and the world,” said Berger.
The University of Potsdam’s exchange program with Qom University’s Department of Religion already has generated controversy in Germany. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an expert on Iran at the European Foundation for Democracy, has identified Qom University as a center for Iranian religious ideologues. “Dialogue can be enlightening but, sadly, there can be little benefit engaging in a grossly asymmetrical discussion with designated representatives of a repressive regime about issues of religion, human rights and legal issues,” said Berger. “The Iranian people can best be helped by isolating a regime that menaces its neighbors and threatens regional security.”
[ED NOTES;HOW DARE YOU GERMAN NAZIS SUPPORT A PROGRAM THATS DESIGNED TO ADVANCE AND FOSTER EDUCATION?THOSE IRANIAN STUDENTS ARE PERSONALLY HANDPICKED BY THE MULLAHS(AJC) LOL THESE ZIONAZIS ARE INSANE!!!LOOK HOW THEY CITED EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY EXPERT(THATS THE EUROPEAN EQUIVELANT OF FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES IN U.S.)..THAT FOUNDATION IS MADE UP OF ZIONISTS,AND PRO ISRAHELLI ZEALOTS.. ITS ALSO A FRONT FOR ISRAHELL
In a 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed co-written with Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Bonazzi claimed, “Iranian-backed terrorist organizations are deploying another dangerous weapon in their war against Western democracies—terrorist television stations. Thanks to Arab satellite companies, Hezbollah’s al-Manar and Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV stations can still beam their incitement and hatred into European living rooms, radicalizing Muslim immigrants throughout the Continent.
EFD, which is directed by Roberta Bonazzi, has been closely associated with neoconservative-led advocacy initiatives and has hosted Islamophobic scholars like Walid Phares, formerly of the neocon think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. According to one assessment, EFD “basically imports the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s (FDD) formula to Brussels to influence European policy makers and opinion.”
EFD was one of several rightist European groups that were represented at the Democracy and Security Conference in Prague, an event whose primary agenda appeared to be the promotion of a neoconservatives Mideast agenda among political groups overseas. Sponsored by the Prague Security Studies Institute, the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies (funded by Sheldon Adelson), and Spain’s Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies, the conference’s featured speaker was President George W. Bush, who compared the “war on terror” to the Cold War. He said, “The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs—it is the universal appeal of freedom. Freedom is the design of our Maker, and the longing of every soul.”
Conference participants included: Bonazzi of EFD; Adelson of the Sands Corporation and Freedom’s Watch; Peter Ackerman of Freedom House; former Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar; Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute; Jeffrey Gedmin of Radio Free Europe; neoconservative figures Reuel Marc Gerecht,Joshua Muravchik, Michael Rubin, Michael Novak, and Richard Perle, all of whom were then based at the American Enterprise Institute; Farid Ghadry of the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria; former Czech President Vaclav Havel; Bruce Jackson of the Project on Transitional Democracies; Josef Joffe of Germany’s Die Zeit; Garry Kasparov, the famous chess player and member of the Russian opposition party United Civil Front; U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT); Tod Lindberg of theHoover Institution; Herb London of the Hudson Institute; Clifford May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Harold Rhode, a former Pentagon employee close to many core neoconservatives like David Wurmser; and Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
In 2008, the UK-based Henry Jackson Society hosted then-EFD fellow Walid Phares to give a talk based on his book Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. The talk, titled “To Counter the Jihadi Lobbies, You Need Independence from Petro Dollars,” channeled a number of neoconservative talking points, including energy independence and the idea that there is a powerful lobby pushing the views of radical Islamists in western capitals. Phares claimed that “there are strong Jihadi lobbies which are derailing international and U.S. efforts to defeat the terrorist forces.
Posted by Nysoulcontrolla aka Ali