Revolutionary Flowerpot Society

Reflections on the Iran-US Cold War

2012-01-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Thanks for this, we agree with the points made here, some of which have been made before, not just by this blog but also by writers, activists and analysts on leftist Persian language sites.

Some Reflections on the Iran-US Cold War
By: Rostam Rakhshian / Jan. 19, 2012

A lot of people in the western left continue to misread the situation in Iran and the western powers' posturing toward Iran.

We have seen cycles of intensified rhetoric on a regular basis for at least six to seven years now. Every time the rhetoric heats up, the armies of commentators on all sides get into their now familiar routines. The western powers and their allies insist on the usual demands for accountability from the Iranian regime regarding its nuclear program, while the Islamic Republic regime insists on its inalienable right to pursue nuclear energy, and the various west-residing lobbyists for the Iranian regime start their frenzied petition gatherings, letter/commment writing, and warn everybody of the disaster a war would create for the people, and so they call for open, unconditional negotiations (implicitly asking the western powers to recognize the Islamic regime as a legitimate entity representing the people). And of course, the western left continues to see things only in a black and white picture, in which the U.S. and its western allies are the baddies and the Iranian regime is a poor, overly oppressed entity; in the process conveniently forgetting all the terror this regime unleashes on the Iranian people on a daily basis.

Just about everybody forgets the people of Iran, who continue to be held hostage by a mad policy of nuclear adventurism, just so the Iranian regime can gain some bullying rights in the region.

The western powers, however, do not seem to want an open war with Iran. Sabotage, yes. Diplomatic and economic pressures, of course. But, no open war.

To this end, in the past week we have seen the U.S. putting pressure on Israel to tone down its war rhetoric against Iran, and now president Sarkozy is warning the world about the dire consequences of a military attack on Iran.

Here are some points to consider:

1) It should be noted that any open war with Iran would actually help the trend to solidify the regime, not change it. Any military moves, much like the current sanctions and sabotage campaign, would be intended as an act to induce change of behavior without fundamentally changing the regime.

This is exactly why the militant faction inside the Islamic Republic regime would actually welcome a limited military confrontation.

The people of Iran will be the only losers, as they are the only losers now. They and only they, as they do now, will bear the cost in life, health, in economic deprivation, in increased social misery, in more violence and terror hanging over their heads, and of course it is the people who will suffer from further militarization of their society, and the dominance of various mafias, including the state-controlled and related ones.

The further misery for the people is exactly what the imperialists want. One major point here missed by a lot of western left is that, by equating the people of Iran with the state, they actually forget that for the Iranian state too, the people are dispensable. The mullahs' regime has a historical record to prove this disregard for people's lives.

During the Iran-Iraq war, by 1982 Iranian forces had repelled the Iraqi forces from all Iranian territory that had been invaded. At this point, the war could have ended, but the war had proven invaluable in the consolidation of the clerical regime, so they continued it for another SIX years; in the process, sending hundreds of thousands of people (on both sides) to their deaths under the slogan, 'The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad'.

An open fight with the Great Satan can definitely be put to the same use; especially, considering how hated the regime is by the majority of the Iranian people right now. Such open confrontation can be used most efficiently to more effectively suppress any form of dissent.

2) I really don't think the U.S. wants an open war. They are fully aware of the fact that Iran has TWO SETS of militaries (three, if you include the millions-strong - according to the state itself - Basij forces). This military force, unlike what happened to Iraq before being invaded, has NOT been bombarded for a whole decade and some, and its infrastructure has not been completely destroyed. The Iranian regime has vast capabilities, totally intact, including their own military industries, developed during the Iran-Iraq war and well financed ever since. They have their hands in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and can make those places put some real heat on the Americans. So, if or when push comes to shove, the Iranian side is well capable of shoving back. The blustering by the Americans may be loud, but everybody with eyes can see that this great imperial power is incapable of pacifying even Afghanistan.

3) The most reasonable explanation I've come across is that the present rise in rhetoric and covert actions could indeed be hot air and maneuvering before the sides sit down to negotiate, so the Iranian state has chosen to go on the offensive of its own (in response to the offensive by the west, and instead of backing down) with the aim of raising the ante and maneuvering for a negotiating position to its benefit.

4) I think the path of economic sanctions is the Americans' preferred path to achieve change of behavior by the Iranian regime. The Americans know that the Iranian regime is illegitimate, which is exactly why they want it in place (even if some of the faces have to be changed). The Americans therefore know well how mafia-infested the Iranian state apparatuses are. And because they know this, they also know that the regime needs cash to buy its foot soldiers. So, if they can cut the flow of cash, the foot soldiers can then be bought by the rivals and certain modification can be achieved without a hugely costly war, which if it really breaks out in the open, could truly and seriously be too costly for the Americans, and the end-result of it is truly unknown.

5) On the key question being used as an excuse to put pressure on Iran, the nuclear issue, the argument has long been lost. Neither the Iranian opposition (the people, that is, not the reformists), nor anybody else is calling for a complete and total stoppage of all nuclear activity based on environmental and safety grounds. Even after the horrible and ongoing disaster in Japan, a country that compared to Iran is far more technologically advanced and far more thorough-going as far as safety is concerned, even after it has been established that the nuclear plant in Bushehr is sitting on top of an active tectonic plate, even after is has been established for thirty-three years that the Iranian government is not responsive, accountable or responsible toward the Iranian people and in fact considers them as cannon fodder for its bankrupt and expansionist ideology; even after all these factors have become self-evident, still nobody is talking about the most rational and most people-oriented solution: stoppage of all nuclear activity in Iran.

As a result, the skirmishes between the western powers and Iran over its nuclear program have become, and will continue to be, the convenient bone of contention to be picked with the Iranian regime.

Gone is any global attention to the atrocious human rights conditions in Iran, gone are the workers' rights, women's rights, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, gone is attention to the extremely dire situation of the political prisoners. Gone is any form of love for and solidarity with the people of Iran.

For the state powers involved, as well as for a good portion of the western left, the Iranian people have been collapsed into the Iranian regime, and whatever the Iranian regime or the western powers say becomes the criteria for the discussions. And, unfortunately, the western left continues to reproduce this same rhetorical line. We see leftist publications that point to all the horrors and the implications of the Japanese nuclear disaster for the nuclear industry in the U.S., yet the same publications are rabidly jingoistic in supporting even a military nuclear project carried out by a theocracy, under which not a single one of those western leftists would be willing to live, not even for one day.

The Iranian people alone (and in their utter loneliness) remain the only factor capable of enacting true liberation from this madness. Unless the Iranian people take to the streets and intervene with the demand for BOTH no military attacks or economic sanctions AND against the Islamic regime, i.e., unless the Iranian people once again take their collective fate into their own hands, their future will remain one of despair and helplessness, and they will remain the hapless pawns in the power games of the western powers and the Islamic regime.

Letter Writing 'Movement' and Crisis of Collective Subjectivity

2012-01-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

Take Back the Street! Take Back the Leadership!

Translation of an article from Sarbalaee weblog, by Amin Hosuri. This is a very valuable analysis of the role played by the Iranian reformists in imposing their own leadership over the movement that arose after the June 2009 electoral coup, how they snuffed that movement, and how they continue to use its corpse to their benefit. We thank the writer for this insightful article.
[See the original, in Persian, here]

Letter Writing 'Movement' and the Crisis of the Collective Subjectivity
Amin Hosuri / December 24, 2011

1) In a society in which the collective struggle for change - for any number of reasons - is on the wane, conditions are created for hero-worship. Heroes are those who, in their own way and with a particular approach, express and reflect a part of the people's grievances and demands. Lack of social movements and lack of the processes of collective dissent creates a situation, in which, faced with the significance of reflecting and expressing (a part of) the collective grievances, it is not noticed how this 'incidental representation' came about or what its effective content is. People, who consider themselves powerless in the face of the ruling system, see their own un-actualized subjectivity realized in the existence and the acts of a hero. In this way, a flood of moral support flows in the direction of the hero, so that with its spread in the populist media and its reproductions throughout the society, the mythical dimensions of the heroic act can grow. Eventually, an unwritten legitimacy is afforded to the heroes, so that they can present their own understanding of social demands and the methods for political/social change as if they were the demands of the totality of the society, and inadvertently reflect a reduced and distorted view of the social conditions.

The most important criteria for the emergence of tendency toward heroic actions and its social acceptance (hero worship) is the supposition that it's as if the heroes, through their individual acts of sacrifice, open up a new battle front against a tyrannical system, a path that was deemed impenetrable through collective actions. In this trend of social struggles becoming individualized, not only does the struggling subjectivity is reduced to an individual or select figures, but the tyrannical system too inevitably is expressed and personified in the individual faces; for example, Mohammad Nourizad versus Seyed-Ali Khamenei; or a short while ago Moussavi versus Ahmadi-nejad.

2) Social engineers of the reformist trends, with the aid of the 'Green Industry' media and the apostles of 'real politic' amongst the right liberals and the left liberals, during the entire period when the oppositional movement had an active presence across the society in the public spaces and the streets, deployed a systematic and all-out campaign to impose a particular political discourse on the movement, and within that frame they drew and established their own limits and red-lines for the internal developments and the external horizons of the movement. All this, in spite of the fact that this [reformist] political discourse was incompatible with both the wide array of the demands and the roots of the people's dissent, and despite the fact in its political content and strategy the reformist discourse lacked the ability to spread and lead the movement forward toward horizons for change and the growth of the 'collective subjectivity'. In fact, the reformists and their apostles directed all their criticisms and warnings at the mal-intent 'radicals' and their alienation from realities of the society, and in spite of all these claims, they pursued the systematic elimination and distortion of their critics, so as to impose their hegemony on the movement.

Now that it is nearly a year since the oppositional movement has disappeared as a result of the domination of the aforementioned discourse, these power-oriented trends, through their numerous media outlets and through the myriad platforms they enjoy inside and outside the country, not only do not allow for any critique of their past actions, they actually pretend as if the movement is still alive and thriving, so as to be able to profit from the moral capital of the movement for their own benefit! From a certain viewpoint, the reformists are right: what is left (alive) of the movement is exactly that very 'standard' and desired pseudo-movement which, during the one year and some months of the social existence of the actual movement, they tried to transform and engineer the movement into: a pseudo-movement that is symbolic and virtual and that the 'expert overlords' can leash completely. It is therefore not shocking that the players and newsmakers and the dissidents of the 'virtual movement' are singular figures and that the model for struggling should also be of the type exemplified by letter writing to the rulers.

However, the heroic halo that the 'Green Industry' media draw around today's heroes' heads is of the same kind that they drew around Moussavi's and Karroubi's heads during the course of the oppositional movement, so that everything shall be measured according their ideas and strategies, and so that, as a result, only the 'figures' closest to them shall have the right to exclusive interpretation of their strategies and actions. Therefore, the turn to heroic acts and today's social acceptance of heroes have their roots in the populism that is a painful problem that grew in the heart of the 'Green Movement'. Just in the same way that the collective inability that gave rise to hero worship caused the defeat of the movement in overcoming its internal contradictions, and hence its inability to elevate the level of organizational development and people's belief in themselves as a fighting force.

3) To induce an illusion regarding the existence of the movement (as opposed to developing and strengthening people's organized resistance for future leaps), although not productive in creating progressive political and social change, has definite and important use for keeping the monopolistic position of the reformists (and their allies) as the main opposition to the current political system. This fact is especially important because when a tyrannical system reaches its unstable stage, at any point there exists the possibility that the crises and the accumulated discontent, in the various economic, political and social fissures, can explode in the form of mass rage and can place the foundations of the system on the verge of collapse. Against such a background, heroic acts find multiple goals and methods: on the one hand [...] the ultimate strains of the continuation of the current situation can be illustrated as a warning to the ruler (ruling system), and on the other hand those trends supporting heroic actions can still remain within those red lines, so as to leave open the path of return to 'political rationality' (to bring the ruler back to his senses).

On the other side of this coin, the 'alternative building' project for the system is hidden. Alternative building, in this context, means creating the conditions for inhibiting or taming the inevitable and unpredictable developments that face the crisis-ridden society. The current belief of a majority of the people and even a great part of the opposition forces is that the reformist trends are committed to protecting the current system, and since they have no interest in its downfall, they want to lead the developments within the confines of the limits set by the Islamic Republic. However, from about the half point of the oppositional movement, when the ruling regime stubbornly showed that it is not willing to tolerate any change whatsoever, it became well clear that the reformists' strategy changed in the direction of a two-pronged game. Based on this strategy, at the same time that the reformists pretended adherence to the legal struggle within the system, they were busy shaping the social subjective conditions in the direction of imposing themselves as the alternative to this system with its shaky foundations. In fact, the first phase of the 'alternative building' project for the Islamic Republic regime had started many years prior: at the time when a part of the reformist forces turned to 'political migration', and with the aid of their financial and organizational capabilities, and with the widespread support of western governments, in a systematic way they started the trend of the destruction of the traditional oppositional forces outside the country, in order to replace them. ('Alternative building', as it happens, is an important and customary, semi-hidden aspect of the foreign policies of western governments.) Along this trend and with the intensification of internal disputes, other intellectual heads of the reformists also joined this arm of their ilk outside the country; alongside this segment of the 'figureheads', a young generation of journalists who had been trained in the 8-year class of reformism [of the Khatami presidency, 1997-2005 _ translator's note] also joined this political organizational structure in migration, and became its bureaucratic and executive body.

The process of rendering uniform the oppositional discourse and its permutation into the 'virtual green movement', to a great extent was due to the widespread activities of the organizational arm [of the reformists] outside the country, under the cover of the atmosphere created by the western governments' media. (The impact of the more-or-less uniform political positioning of the western governments' media such as 'BBC Persian', 'Voice of America and Parazit', Radio Farda, Deutsche Welle, Radio Zamaneh, etc., in strengthening and consolidating the reformist discourse in the political consciousness of the public cannot be ignored.) This, along the fact that even the dominant atmosphere in the oppositional activities outside the country was under the influence of the reformist discourse, is an obvious objective display of the success of the alternative building project. (Not to forget that certain layers from within the traditional opposition, such as Fedayee'an-Majority, and the Union of Republicans, with their political stance of the recent years, have facilitated the further smoothing of the path for the ultimate success of this project.)

So, the wishy-washy oppositional moves of the reformists inside the country, in the form of their repeated flirtations with the issue of parliamentary elections and such, and their more aggressive moves outside the country, in the form of leading the 'virtual movement' (in websites like 'JRS' and 'Kalameh', 'Green Voice of Freedom', and 'Green Transformation', etc.) are all at the service of the alternative building strategy, which aims for the taming of the inevitable future developments. The repeated and limitless exposes in the form of speeches and articles by the reformist leaders, or the heroic letters by their allied figures should be analyzed in the context of this strategy.

4) Based on the above, the actual audience of the letter writings by such people as Nourizad [whose letters to the supreme leader Khamenei is a hot topic in the reformist media _ translator's note] is not intended to be the glorious leader of the Islamic regime, but the general public of the country, and in particular the disgruntled and the potential dissidents, so as to give the 'hero' the legitimacy of representation and for the people to yield to the authority of the trends supportive of the hero and their allied political discourse [...]

From a general viewpoint, writing letters to the rulers smacks of the usual gaze directed at the top [to the powers-that-be] which is usual for the reformists and a wide segment of the Iranian human rights activists, who, in order to bring about political change, place their emphasis not on the people but on the institutions of power. The fact that in such texts/letters the people are rarely addressed is not accidental, since in the outlook of social engineering (which, due to its power-oriented nature, it considers the political field as the field of managing the people and events), people's role is ultimately that of the mass of pawns, whose supportive presence is necessary for the power-oriented to capture the seat of power. In order to attract the mesmerized or docile support of the people, they must be brainwashed with ambiguous and populist discourse: people's grievances must be spoken of and yet their intervention must be kept to a limited sphere. In other words, the people are viewed as tools (means) for change [at the top] to a 'desired' set of experts, not as [active historical] subjects!

[...] The dominant cliché present in the campaign of letter writing of the last two or three years is to warn the rulers, in view of the protests of the enraged people, about the particular dangers in case of continuing to disobey the 'original principles and ideals of the revolution'. The rulers are invited to correct their ways, and of course it is implied or explicitly stated that the rulers should 'come to their senses' and stop insisting that the reformists must be eliminated from power. In other words, the structural contradictions of the system and the deeply anti-people foundations of the system are reduced to the mistakes and excesses of certain individuals, and it is implied that in order to get rid of the insufficiencies it is necessary to reform from above.

The other aspect of the current letters [to the rulers] is that the history of the deviation from the 'acceptable path' goes back to the point at which the reformists started to be eliminated from power, and the return to the path of sharing power through elections (and not even elections with participants from all political trends) is introduced as the way to a final solution. [...]

In general, those who, due to their 'revolutionary' record or due to their familial labyrinth-like connections to those in power, who enjoy a certain level of immunity, while using their immunity to pursue their factional political agenda, pretend that they are acting to realize people's rights while they put in danger their own and their families lives and well-being (e.g., Nourizad, Tajzadeh, etc.). One can more easily come to terms with such heroic acts as a part of the bitter social realities and reflections of the society, if the heroes and their media supporters, instead of pretending that the heroic acts are representing the interests of all the people, would come clean and tell their audience which social class or political layer is being represented by such acts.

Of course, there is the possibility that some of these heroes - with a sense of selflessness and personal sacrifice - would be used as tools of power-oriented trends. And some of them, by committing such acts of self-sacrifice, in a vague and unclear manner believe or pretend that they have drawn a line against their own political past, whereas in their actions they continue their pervious political line and help their side to reach political power again.

5) Reformist media apparatuses, in order to push forth the 'virtual green movement' and in the service of their 'alternative building' project, in addition to their tame exposes and protest letter-writing and reliance on calendar-driven occasions, have other arsenals as well, one of which is the issue of political prisoners; meaning, while selectively supporting some political prisoners and under the cover of human rights, they also pursue delicately the process of creating political figures (editing the political identity of the prisoners), so as to expropriate the unjust and oppressive nature of prison and the totality of the resistance by political prisoners to the benefit of 'particular' reformist ideals. This means that going to prison and the resistance of the political prisoners and also their symbolic actions inside prison are all used in uniform fashion in conjunction with a particular reading of the 'green movement', so as to use the popularity of certain prisoners among the people and the society's sense of solidarity with the oppressed political prisoners, in order to push forth and proliferate a particular model of 'ideal' form of struggle which falls within the framework and strategies of the reformist camp.

Another campaign tool which has been inaugurated recently is this: those reformist factions that are active are using the opposition to a military attack and economic sanctions to prove that they are 'of the people'. This is a progressive slogan, but without any real backbone and indeed a lie! First, if the opposition to foreign intervention is proposed from the usual human rights angle, it will inevitably involve some sort of war and/or economic sanctions. Another thing is, the opposition to military intervention and economic sanctions can be bereft of any contradictions only when there is a real adherence and commitment to the collective people's subjectivity.

In the case of the our reformist fellow countrymen, however, this commitment (to people's subjectivity) was clearly contradicted by their monopolistic domination over the oppositional movement and its metamorphosis into 'virtual pseudo-movement', and also by the trend of their implicit cooperation with western governments in the process of building an alternative for the current regime (both trends are still being pursued and completed). However, under the conditions in which both the Islamic regime and the dominant global powers beat on the war drums with their own particular interests in mind, we can escape from this nightmare of 'humanitarian imperialist war' (which is becoming more real by the day) only when and if the people build an all-out movement which connects the opposition to war with the opposition to the power structures. Such a necessity requires the growth and nurturing of the collective 'self-belief' and oppositional organizations of the people; and neither of these two factors is compatible with the reformists' political record and their current strategies.

It therefore seems that by raising such seemingly 'radical' slogans in opposition to war and economic sanctions, the reformists' goal is to prevent the radicalization of the social fissures that are created by the military threats and economic sanctions, and to transfer to a more manageable sphere those potential fissures. Just as this was done under the 8-year project of 'religious yet people-oriented rule' under the reformists [i.e., Khatami's two terms as president], and just as the same was done when the 'Green' discourse was imposed on the oppositional movement after the [June 2009] elections.

In short, creating an 'illusory movement', which is reproduced through the media outputs of the 'virtual green movement', is nothing other than the denial of the people's subjectivity and delaying the process of growth of the 'collective subjectivity' with the aid of obfuscating matters and confusing the people. This pseudo movement has been engineered to not serve the ideal of political change, but in particular to serve the 'alternative building' project of the reformists for the inevitable transfer of political power in Iran. The 'virtual green movement', in order to actualize its perspective must create artificial 'events', so as to produce 'heroes' for the society.

Activists and actors who are incapable of distinguishing between the popular foundations of the people's defeated oppositional movement and the power-oriented goals and monopolistic strategies of the reformist trends, are prone to take cover under nostalgia and deny the defeat of the movement, and would find legitimacy for any voice that is raised in the name of the movement. In other words, the fetishism and idolization of the movement causes great many people to turn to passively repeating and proliferating the power-oriented discourse of the reformists, with the illusion of doing some service for the movement and with the hope of progressive change. Not only does this phenomenon not help in building a movement for an alternative (to fundamentally break with the discourse that dominated the previous movement), but it also helps to divert and mislead people's social consciousness and inadvertently to block the formation of the collective subjectivity.

Year End Message: Regarding Taxation

2011-12-29T14:06:00.001-08:00

Things have been quiet here at the blog.

No matter, though. Things have been exciting outside this blog. Thank GOD!

The revolution in the Arab world continues to deepen in Egypt, and for that we are thankful. In Libya, unfortunately, the counter-revolution stole the wave of people's rage before the revolution could even get started decently. And in Syria, the people's struggle to break a most brutal dictatorship continues on unabated and unbroken.

AND ... Thankfully, the people in the U.S. have finally been awakened to the fact that their system is rigged against them. The Occupy movement is a genuine and societal expression of the realization that people are NOT represented.

Movements need all forms of social tools in the course of their development. But, above all they need organization, which is the social tool to become and stay independent of the power structures. They need organization internally in the structures they build as they struggle, and they need organization in areas that define the quality of their relationships with the world outside them.

Movements also need good ideas. Revolutionary ideas that see the ever-present problems in a new frame, and for which there can be a remedy right now!

In this year-end note, we would like to submit once again our idea of Direct Representation for Taxation. The Occupy movement can potentially change the way the American society is organized. This is going to be a long struggle, however, and the opponents of the movement are some of the most powerful and most powerfully organized group of people on earth. So, at the early stages the movement needs to focus on objectives that are achievable but very costly for the system to concede on.

Emanuel Wallerstein has a good take on this. He says (to paraphrase) basically take the system at face value and force them to face up to the glorious propaganda they dish out, by calling them on it. They say this system is democratic, so fight to see how democratic it really is, and push the limits. I think Marx had the same basic approach: find the cracks in the system and push against them, and in that process you learn how to transform the system. The system does not change according to blue prints by social engineers, it transforms through the real and actual struggles that the people do put up, and within historical limits set by generations before them.

One great place where the system can be pushed to its limits is the question of taxation. And for that, we present below a case for pushing the limits on the taxation front.

Happy New Year to all the good people, to all those who fight for freedom and justice, and to the spirit of all the martyred in that fight!

Direct Representation for Taxation

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has been spreading fast and wide, has sprung up in part in response to the social realization that 99% of the society is not represented in any form or shape.

As the police and city administrations in city after city move to destroy the Occupy movement's encampments -- and as we are barred from using our public spaces, the parks, the city hall grounds, the commons, to petition for redress of grievances -- new tactics will become necessary, in order to continue the occupation of various public spaces in different forms.

There are certainly a variety of demands present in the Occupy movement, but it can also be stated that there are fundamental commonalities in all the myriad demands that have brought the citizens to the point of having to take to, and occupy, public spaces in order to voice their grievances about the status quo.

One of those commonalities is the realization that 99% of the citizens recognize they are not represented by the system, as it is set up. They realize it's a fixed game, which by design disenfranchises them. The legislators answer only the call of their billionaire and corporate donors, and the lobbyists for those interests literally write the laws and the regulations. And now the people have expressed, in a loud form of a social rebellion of occupations, that they realize the system is setup against them. And they want it changed.

For the past thirty years, at least, no matter which dominant political party has occupied a majority in the Congress, and no matter who has been the president, there has been a steady and constant erosion of the benefits that the majority of the people have paid for in their taxes.

The corporations, meanwhile, pay a smaller and smaller portion of the overall taxes collected. In newspaper articles published back in 2004, it was reported that: "[A Government Accounting Office] report showed that 61 percent of US corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1996 through 2000, a period of rapid economic growth and rising corporate profits," (Boston Globe, April 11, 2004). The same article states: "The percentage of federal tax collections paid by corporations has tumbled from a high of 39.8 percent in 1943 to a low of 7.4 percent last year [2003]. But since World War II, the share paid by individual income tax filers has remained relatively stable, bouncing between 40 percent and 50 percent." This trend has continued to date, with sixty percent of corporations still paying no taxes, and some corporations such as oil companies even receiving tax rebates, collectively to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.

The debate about taxation has always been limited to who pays how much in taxes. The progressive taxation being that which gives the poor a relative break (there is always the sales tax to make sure that everybody pays up), and the rates increase as the incomes rise. The other way around would be regressive taxation, which has been in force since the offensive of the Reagan years. But, it's time to change the debate.

Time for a New Conception
The conceptual table can be fundamentally turned to the advantage of the 99%, however. The question of taxation can be connected overtly to the political dimension that it possesses. One need only remember that a major pillar of the American Revolution and the War of Independence that a third of the population of the original colonies conducted against the British overlords, was crystallized in the slogan, ‘No Taxation without Representation!’

Today, with the statistical sciences available and with the technology that is at hand, the representative for the taxes paid can be the very individual who pays the taxes. This can be the first real form of direct democracy to be implemented.

What does that mean? A new system of taxation can be one in which we the people dictate a priority list, submitting to the government our instructions for spending our tax money. In other words, at the same time that we hand our money over, we dictate to the government the order of priorities for the expenditure of that money.

So, for example, when paying taxes, the person paying the taxes can tell the government to spend, say, 20% of it on education for undocumented immigrants; 20% on the healthcare for the poor and the undocumented; 20% on environmental clean up in poor neighborhoods and towns; 15% on social infrastructure building in working class neighborhoods; 15% on job training and youth centers in working class neighborhoods; and 5% on proliferation of artistic activities among children in poor neighborhoods, etc. Individuals can choose any number of priorities, and rank them in any percentage they want to.

Such a demand for direct representation, by nature, will bring together all the ‘big-issues’ activists (such as anti-war people, the anti-imperialists, the socialists — i.e., the ‘Grand Narrative’ people) and join them with ‘single-issue’ activists in an immediate alliance, both strategically and organizationally. All the activists who are trying to bring about environmental change, those wishing to change the penal system and the medieval drug laws, those wishing to bring pressure on the government to spend more on healthcare, education, environmental cleanup and infrastructure, all those yearning for cleaner air, water, soil, and food, and all those wishing for more liberal arts education in our schools, and more resources in communities, such as libraries, youth clubs, clinics and hospitals can all unite around and push for a new system of taxation to help bring about a realistic mechanism for having control over the political-financial decisions that shape our lives.

The question of taxation is one that every man and woman can relate to. The current taxation system is the equivalent of a shopping situation, in which the shopkeeper demanded and got whatever amount of money he thought he could get out of you, and in return gave you whatever he wanted to give you!

The move for a tax reform for direct representation can start at the ballot-initiative level, state by state, thus building at the grassroots; a grassroots that can slowly, yet with a growing and realistic confidence, demand a new taxation as a practical necessity; this can in turn transform the way political power is wielded: dispersed and therefore more directly representative.

A movement for direct representation for taxation can ignite the imagination of those potential allies who are yet to be moved enough to join up in the struggle for social justice, and can help the Occupy movement grow.

Let us demand unashamedly and loudly: Direct Representation for Taxation!

NOTE:
See links below for more explanation of this taxation idea:
1) http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/07/tax-cuts-for-the-rich-only-benefit-the-economy-of-the-rich/

2) http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/11/03/taxation-or-racketeering/

A Critique of Ideology-phobia

2011-07-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

Translation of the second installment in a series by Amin Hosuri, on the current conditions of the opposition movement in Iran. This article focuses on the role played by ideology, and how the dominant discourse of the reformists tries to distort this concept.
[Read the original article, in Persian, here ...]

Movement in Labyrinth-2:
In Critique of Ideology-phobia
by Amin Hosuri / June 29, 2011

Introduction: Nowadays, the dominant discourses (whether limited to the dimensions of a political movement or across the norms of the 'global village'), while basing their hypothetical legitimacy on the idea that their discourse is independent of any ideology, are fearful of, and spread fear about, any ideological outlooks entering [people's] beliefs and social movements. In fact, the dominant ideology insists that its generally accepted assumptions and teachings, exactly because of this general acceptance, must be taken as obvious and in fact the crystallization of (political) rationality itself, all exactly because it is not ideological. Naturally, for such trickery to be accepted, appropriate platforms and objective conditions must exist for its spreading, and, as well, the mechanisms for the reproduction and continuation of the 'dominant ideology' must be hidden; meaning, history must be systematically distorted and oppositional/critical ideas must be suppressed or boycotted. For example, in the last two years we have witnessed repeatedly that many independent activists in the [Iranian] opposition movement have been accused of having an 'ideological outlook' by media outlets of the 'Green Industry' or the supporters of the dominant discourse, and have been pushed to isolation. This political literature, which bears very outstanding signs of a very particular ideology on its own forehead, has been constantly issuing excommunication orders against those who do not believe in the prettified ideology of theirs, under the banner of 'Green Movement'. And, while it daily and increasingly merges the Green symbols of protest with the political outlooks of the reformists, with this very Green drawing of lines, it has reduced the boundaries of the movement to the limitations of their own beliefs and the political interests of their own dominant layers; all the while without failing for a second to repeatedly remind us how 'beyond ideology' the movement is.

On the other hand, and on a global scale also, a grand discourse that defends human rights, by depicting the sphere of human rights as apolitical, fits human rights into a non-ideological category. By ignoring the social background and conditions for vast, constant and systematic violations of the most basic human rights (in the grandest possible of dimensions), this outlook has turned the concept of human rights into a 'victim-oriented' fantasy, which actually is a proper global alternative for our late-contemporary depoliticized world, because it preempts in advance any discussion of power structures and grand mechanisms of domination and tyranny. In order to rationalize its de-politicization, 'human rights' discourse generally portrays ideological [state] systems as the cause of the atrocities in the contemporary world, and naturally negates [mass] political actions because of their connectedness to ideology. As a result, the human rights discourse, aided by its threads of neutrality and innocence (and which arise from its inability to understand the hidden ideological origins and consequences of its own views), plays a large role in spreading the game of 'fear of ideology', a fear that at times reaches mass phobia.

Based on this understanding, and since any purposeful political act must at the same time be the object of its own critical gaze, some reflection on the category of 'ideology' is a necessary phase of preparing for a conscious collective struggle. It is with such a motive and for the sake of collective thinking regarding the question of 'What is to be done?' that this text has been put together; a deeper consideration of this question requires a great amount of preliminary discussions. We owe the start of the discussion regarding ideology to a text that was recently published online, in the Mikhak publication, entitled, Green Movement's Myths: 1-Ideology.

1) In contemporary times, a great many people hold assumptions and presuppositions about social/political and cultural/ethical concepts and issues, which have not been chosen consciously by them but have been imposed on them as if they were self-evident ideas. The reason why the obviousness of these assumptions are rarely questioned is their widespread existence and their uninterrupted repetitions by the education systems, the accepted social and discourse customs, and also due to the dominance of the intellectual norms set by the mass-media; that space where general norms and values, much like other mass produced goods, are produced and reproduced. With the passage of time, these assumptions have in actuality become part and parcel of the dominant culture (the hegemonic discourse) that produces the teachings of 'common sense' for the general public.

One obvious example of these generalized teachings is the un-critiqued approach of opposing ideology or fearing ideology; this approach is mainly based on the assumption that in the era of scientific knowledge and wisdom, ideological teachings are not scientific and are based on fantasy and ossified thinking, and if accepted widely, will create disastrous results! (As if the current state of global collective existence is free from disasters.) The practical result of this repulsion or fear from ideology is that any belief or outlook that challenges the current system, or critiques its foundations in any serious fashion, will immediately be classified as an 'ideological view' and without any examination or reflection whatsoever lose all its credibility and credit. As a result, the domain of the popular 'common sense' can be brought to a state whereby, contrary to all the claims to scientific orientation and belief in reason, we must put aside objective propositions about reality/actuality, without any intellectual valuation or testing, and find recourse in pre-determined rulings. In other words, despite the fact that ideology-phobia accuses holders of ideologies of fantasizing [about political realities], 'fear of ideology' itself produces a form of ossification and escape from reason, which [...] further prevents it from critically understanding social reality and prevents it from correctly perceiving and understanding the [social] necessities.

However, can we truly avoid ideologies? Since our collection of intellectual beliefs, norms and our subjective assumptions (whether learned consciously or acquired by default) about the world around us externalize our criteria for judgments and for taking positions on particular affairs, any approach to the human world will inevitably contain some ideological components. The domain of this phenomenon includes even the methodology for viewing oneself and facing oneself, and in this way it also includes a framework within which we define or realize our interests, and also methods to choose from for pursuing our interests. The fact that an individual (or group) outlook is, or is not, filled with ideological assumptions and components is independent of whether or not the individual (or group) holding those ideas has put a name on it, or even that a particular historical name is available for an actually gathered collection of 'beliefs-assumptions'.

2) The customary accusation of 'being ideological', with all its negative semantic weight (including dogmatism, narrow mindedness, etc.) is mainly hurled at individuals and groups who are conscious of their own intellectual-political approach and express it with clarity. However, although the dominant discourse considers the unpleasant implications of this accusation as inevitable consequences of ideologies, it seems that the real problem is not in having an ideology since, as explained before, utilizing some form of personal or collective ideology (whether chosen in a thought-out fashion, or adopted unconsciously through induction and not so well-thought-out) is inevitable for facing social life in the real world. The real problem is when the holder of an ideology lacks the position of being self-conscious toward that ideology, or loses this position [of consciousness] over time. In this case, intellectual dynamism and vitality and the critical gaze toward those internalized beliefs lose their color and impact, and the tendency toward dogmatism and bias starts to grow. Therefore, just because a set of political ideas are close to this or that name or 'forbidden' -ism -- and considered separately from the human holder of those ideas -- we cannot take that alone to prove dogmatism. On the contrary, if we take the human holder of those ideas as the basis for judgment, any political thought/idea can include dogmatic forms and ways of looking at things within limited perspectives. And this is a general characteristic of all ideologies, not simply those that have become taboo nowadays. However, if we wish to escape from dogmatism by not participating consciously in choosing and forming our ideologies, this would be akin to wanting to avoid possible accidents by not ever crossing any streets at all. And, of course, this choice can only exist if the necessity for crossing the street is not that serious; as a result, in actuality, we'd have to be dependent on the willingness and the efforts of others, who are capable of building over-passes above the streets for the safe crossing of pedestrians!

3) Bias and dogmatism are in fact akin to being color blind regarding the realities; realities that were constituted by the social existence of humans and therefore reflect that existence. Therefore, it seems that the best way to avoid bias and dogmatism (for which, at least due to some psychological factors, all individuals have a talent) is to try to understand the dynamics of social existence and [to have] a critical view toward all levels of human world's realities. However, the main point is that the way we understand grand social realities, whether we like it or not, will inevitably be mediated by ideology to a large extent and occurs within the space of ideology (there are no absolute outside observers). This is so because social theories, which are our [intellectual] tools for understanding social existence, are themselves social products shaped by history; as a result, [social theories] are both the basis for different political ideologies and affected by them at the same time. Based of this, it can be said that, since social existence is the stage on which [socially-existing] conflicts and contradictions reveal themselves, the internal dynamics of society are the basis for the formation of different cognitive methods/schools, and for the emergence of different ideologies, and which in the final analysis account for the different (political) tendencies in the society. However, can we, based on this observation and based on a relativistic approach, assign equal value and credibility for all ideologies and deem all ideological choices as equivalents? (For example, by reasoning that everybody has a right to pursue their own interests and therefore can choose an ideology that matches those interests.) A positive answer to this question would mean either to deny the importance of consciously choosing from different ideologies, or to negate that it is possible to evaluate ideologies critically (the first one means the inevitable passivity of human beings and the negation of humans' historical subjectivity, and the second means not believing in the human ability to know and understand critically, which in turn confirms the first).

The actual fact is that, despite the social differences and divisions that are considered the material bases for the rise of different ideologies, there are glaring qualitative differences among the different ideologies [...] at least in terms of the quality of methodologies of their foundational theories, in terms of their ability to explain social complexities (or, by contrast, to hide or mystify them), in terms of their sympathies or animosities to grand human ideals (like freedom and equality), and in terms of their liberating, as compared to conservative, social potentials. In order to better understand how invalid the 'relativism' trick is in this regard (approaching different ideologies), it suffices to mention two points: first, even in a particular area of interests (more or less equivalent) that cover some social layers or a class of society, these interests can be represented by different ideologies. The other point is that, due to the functioning of grand structures of power on a societal level (which itself renders irrelevant the equality of powers assumed by relativism), the social reach of different ideologies are extremely different, and in actuality the dominant classes impose their own favored ideologies on others (internalize it into others) through many different means at their disposal.

As a result, those who values their human sense and intellect and who see their own growth as dependent on the growth of society, must consider it as an utmost important duty to understand the mechanisms of different ideologies and choose from them; this [acquisition of a critical outlook] is a duty that challenges all the senses and our knowledge and intellectual capabilities, and is the basic necessity of any collective and conscious effort that seeks fundamental social transformations.

Based on all the above, and in reference to the customary fears regarding the harmful impacts of ideology, it must be said that the main danger lies on the other side: If we take an approach filled with abhorrence and repulsion toward any ideology, without any independent studying and personal meditation and thinking about social theories and historical experiences, and purely based on some current assumptions considered self-evident -- then, doubtless, we will surrender ourselves completely and vulnerably so to the dominant ideology; that which due to its omnipresence has become invisible and, although it induces us to fear ideology, itself escapes our revulsion!

Iran Opposition Movement: Dead or Alive?

2011-06-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

Time for negation of the negation ...

Translation of an article by Amin Hosuri, on the current conjuncture of the opposition movement in Iran. A must-read!

[Read the original, in Persian, at Amin Hosuri's blog, Sarbalaee (The Uphill)]

Movement in Labyrinth-1:
Is the Movement Alive?
by Amin Hosuri / June 22, 2011

Intoduction: My assumption is that the readers of this text consider themselves as sharing the same fate and pains as the people who live in that geographical site of tyranny [Iran]. There are many among them who, no doubt, consider what has been unfolding in these past two years in the form of a protest movement/Green Movement in Iran is important. Considering this movement to be important, however, is independent of the method of evaluation and judgment regarding its composition, direction and the horizons of the movement. It is purely based on the understanding that this movement (at least in the medium-term) will greatly impact our collective fate (directly or indirectly). Therefore, and since every mass movement of the people carries within it a compressed form of historical developments (since it is both the result of past history and the shaper of its future horizons), using Alain Badiou's conceptual system, we can call this movement an 'Event'. In this case, the addressees of this text are those who wish and try to stay "loyal" to this event. (Though, in the end or from the very start, we must distance ourselves from the common sense and brittle aspects/understandings of "loyalty" and think about "true" forms of loyalty; meaning, going beyond the level of wishes and futile efforts, and in effect doing something that leads to prolonging the life of the 'Event' and nurtures the liberating potentialities of the 'Event'.) [...]

Is the Movement Alive?!
We have heard a lot about whether the movement is dead or alive or petering out; and usually in exaggerated narratives. The movement and its being alive is not separate from our collective actions; however, since this 'us', in its widest meaning, is not represented by any particular collective institution, and since it doesn't have any channels to express its internal tendencies, it is not easily possible to judge the upward or downward trend of 'our collective actions'. If we do not over-generalize based on our own personal observations, and if we do not recognize the media chains of the "Green Industry" as a valid framework for discerning the reality of the movement, the factors indicating the vitality or demise of the movement must be sought in the immediate external impacts of the movement. However, in an oppressive system armed with the all the instruments of deceit and censorship, it is not possible to systematically follow such external impacts; unless, at a time when the system undergoes fundamental changes or else is on the way to definite destruction, when thus the presence of the movement is displayed to all!

Under such conditions filled with uncertainties, conditions have ripened for two groups and lines of thought to spread and disseminate their speculations. On the one hand are tendencies that have always denied the validity of the movement or ridiculed it (for any reasons, such as the presence of the reformists in the movement, or the lack of the presence of organized workers in the movement), and now consider the movement finished and destroyed, and based on this "observation" they conclude the correctness of their previous positions vis-a-vis the movement; in the final analysis, to re-emphasize the legitimacy of their politics (which is essentially independent of any 'Event'). On the other hand are those tendencies who are reliant on an instrumentalist utilization of the movement, and who portray the movement "filled with ever-more vitality". It is as if regardless of the method of interaction/engagement with particular external conditions and the way it addresses its internal needs, the movement is forever surging up and ahead, until that time when the "desired victory" is achieved. The necessity for shaping a "victory" that is independent of the path taken requires banging on the drums of hegemonic discourse, which monopolizes the determination of criteria and the definitions of victory, just like it monopolizes other spheres that are reflective of the movement; it is clear that we are talking about the reformist political discourse.

The Reformist tendencies -- due to their political organization, financial capabilities, media support, and as well due to their old connections with and ideological closeness to the ruling system (which still gives them certain possibilities for maneuvering within the system) -- have been able to impose their discourse on the movement and to keep that hegemony to this day. Of course, in this effort, they have enjoyed the close cooperation of Persian language media outlets of western governments. From the political viewpoint of this tendency, and also their allies in some layers of the [real] opposition, the movement has always traversed a vertical path, and has now bypassed its raw initial phases, which were manifested as street demonstrations, and reached the phase for negotiations and compromise with the ruling system (in this regard, Mr. Rajab-ali Mazroo'ie's straight talk with BBC (1), does not differ much, essence-wise, from the sentimentalist article by Ms. Maliheh Mohammadi, in Rooz Online (2)).

In addition to the two political trends already mentioned, we are faced with a vast array of generally unknown individuals who are 'loyal' to the 'Event' and believe that, "Any social movement is an expansion of the 'possible horizons'". As a result, they hoped/wished and viewed the reformists as the 'driving engine' of the movement (with an array of political understandings and analyses), so they inevitably tied up the fate of the movement, more or less, to the way the reformists acted. Today, however, with ever more evidence of the utilitarian/instrumentalist attitude of the reformists regarding the movement (or, to put it another way, with the take-over of the most degenerate faction of reformists in determining their common strategy), and under conditions whereby the movement has not had any tangible progress forward or any achievements, it seems that great number of such people are frustrated/disappointed, and from this vantage point they see the movement on its way to being defeated.

At the same time, a major segment of this third grouping, despite the ever more clarity of the arena of struggle, still retain their hope in the reformists (whether due to tactical and intellectual reasons or psychological ones (3)); even as it is the case that great many of them, in order to keep this hopes alive, have to regularly adjust their political views to the analyses provided by the organic intellectuals of the reformist factions. From the point of view of this segment of population, under the conditions of no alternatives for oppositional struggle -- which is explained only by reference to government's extreme brutality [meaning, without any reflection on the role played by reformist leaders themselves in misleading and wasting opportunities, not to mention not creating any new paths for fighting __ trans. note] -- any source that defends the movement and reminds us of the growth of the movement (which is an internal dream/wish of theirs) is worth supporting and following; a support that, rewarded by "steadfastness" in struggle and excused by the "brutality" of the other side, is mainly uncritical. For these people, in actuality, the only effective way of participating in the movement is to reproduce and distribute the images/symbols that the reformists have presented as reflecting the movement, along with accepting the sterile strategies that come of these images/symbols. It is obvious that the insistence by the government to deny the existence of the movement, and the daily increase in humiliation of the people by the state along with brutal repression of and crackdown on any external sign of [existence of] the movement, encourage and strengthen the persistence of this trend of thought especially among the youth; a trend that has up to now intensified populist tendencies in the movement.

Under these conditions, though, truly, what reliable criteria can we find to evaluate whether the movement is alive or waning? It is clear that the deepening of general dissatisfactions (which is also tied to the increasing spread of social problems and problems to do with making a living) and even the growth of the internal fissures in the regime (which has always been an essential part of its internal dynamics) alone cannot in and of themselves be an indicator for whether or not the movement is alive and thriving. If the criteria for a movement to be alive and well is, on the one hand, people's willingness and preparedness to participate in that movement and, on the other hand, actual existence of channels and strategies for actualizing this collective participation (and ways to ensure its growth and strengthening), then it has to be said that the movement is not dead, but in [dynamic] suspension.

The movement is in suspension due to the fact that despite having the first factor [willingness to participate] (which was confirmed by the February 14, 2011 demonstrations), the people lack the second factor. This suspension of the movement, which is clearly reflected in the suppressed general desire to recapture the streets (as reflected by, for example, small demonstrations of June 12, 2011 and others like it), can after some time lead to its demise and destruction; since, as mentioned in the outline of criteria for vitality of the movement, the first factor is not independent of the second factor. In other words, in the absence of proper and appropriate alternatives for mass resistance and struggle -- something that would provide the conditions for actualizing and spreading different levels/spheres for people's participation in the movement (despite the existence of oppressive conditions) -- without alternatives that would be in harmony with nurturing and expanding the spontaneity of actions and creativity of people in struggle, the collective motivation for participating in the movement will wane sooner or later, and eventually, with the intensification of the crackdown by the regime, the social hope that could have been transformative turns into collective and ruinous frustration/disappointment.

In actuality, lack of cohesiveness and organization in the body of the movement (which is, more than anything else, the result of the dark history of tyranny and oppression) provided enough space to the only organized layer of the movement (the reformists) to impose their discourse on the whole movement. A discourse which, regardless of any political judgment, in practice and in the ever up and down currents of the movement has shown that it is not only incapable of filling the vacuum of the second factor (effective alternatives and strategies for carrying the struggle forward) but even lacking any motivation to do any such thing, and instead by portraying the movement in distorted manner even denies such necessities, and by continuing to act in monopolistic and power-centered fashion (unconcerned with the fate of the movement), the reformists are rendering sterile all the energies, all the creativities and spontaneities of the people.

Based on all this, it seems that the only criterion that at this stage can testify to the vitality of the movement is the spreading of signs that the movement is going beyond its dominant political discourse [of the reformists]. In other words, the movement's vitality will in fact not materialize unless the movement passes the current phase of waiting and suspension, and goes to the phase of dynamic independence; and this is that very necessity, finding the difficult answer to which is the substance of the challenge that must occupy all our collective ability and intellect. This is so because the movement, in order to step into a dynamic existence, has no choice but to shed its old skin, so as to be able to re-find all its social capabilities and its internal potentialities, and to establish the missing links of organization and struggle. I think that the question of "What is to be done?" confronts us on exactly this point, as an inevitable phase of going beyond this purgatory.

Sa'eed Hajjarian is known to have said: "Reforms are dead; long live reforms!" It is time that we also say: "The movement reliant on reformists is dead; Long live people's movement!"

NOTES:
1) See link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2011/06/110602_l10_mazroui_green_movement_compromise.shtml

2) This Was the Minimum Accomplishment:
[http://www.roozonline.com/persian/news/newsitem/archive/2011/june/19/article/this-was-the-minimum-accomplishment.html]

3) This approach of putting unconditional and indefinite hope in some external source is in fact a result of extreme hopelessness; more specifically, a great portion of the people, affected by age-old oppressive conditions of crackdowns and lack of any people's organizations, do not see any capacity in themselves to prepare for and continue to fight, and inevitably pursue their fight against the source of dominant power-holder by recourse to another source of power.

Iran: 30th Anniversary of 20 June 1981

2011-06-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Translation of an article by Hamid Nozari about a very important historical event in Iran, a pivotal "founding moment" of the Islamic Republic of Iran's regime: the group executions of June 20 1981.

[image to the right: front cover of Ettela'at newspaper announcing the executions of demonstrators arrested on 20 June 1981.]

[Read the original article, in Persian, here.]

20 June 1981: Revisiting a historical event in Iran
by Hamid Nozari / Berlin, 20 June 2011

On the evening of June 21, 1981, Islamic Republic's television networks announced, "15 people convicted of corruption on earth and fighting against God were executed by firing squad in Evin Prison."

Iran's Islamic Republic's prosecutorial authorities issued two statements regarding the 'instigators of the June 20 [1981] riots/disturbances'. In one piece of news, the execution of seven, and in another the execution of eight more were announced. Those executed, however, had been arrested and imprisoned way before 20 June 1981, and had been arrested with charges of committing other "crimes". What happened on 20 June 1981? A look at the then-two and a half year old Islamic Republic can give us the answer.

The Islamic Republic from its inception was an untimely phenomenon in contradiction with its era. The political leaders and functionaries of this so-called republic, during the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and particularly in the major arenas of political activity (universities, intellectual spaces, the prisons and the opposition abroad) were in the margins and the peripheries. It was with the intensification of the people's movement that slowly they were brought from the margins to the center, and subsequently, due to factors and reasons that are beyond the scope of this text, they took hold of power and in an undemocratic referendum, they named it 'Islamic Republic'. Some of the founders and leaders of this power bloc, who had the experience of doing political-organizational work and had been imprisoned, were well aware of the determining impact of the presence, or lack of presence, of opposition political figures, leaders and/or political organizations on the life and vitality, or death and demise, of social or political forces/movements. They also knew that eliminating some of the leaders and the cadres of opposition trends and forces would mean, materially, the weakening of and rendering ineffective oppositional movements, and this would drive them back for the next phase (or phases) of struggle.

It was because of this that very shortly after coming to power, they put the policy of elimination of opposition forces on their agenda, and began to implement it semi-officially. The concerns of the newly-enthroned were not limited to eliminating political figures and organizations, but expanded to preventing the formation of any independent organizations or associations and any organization opposed to the system on principle.

It was thus that organized violence against dissidents was put into practice. Executions without trials, or trials lasting merely minutes, of former leaders and cronies of the previous regime; attacks on Baha'i centers of worship and the killing of their leaders; attacks on women's demonstrations; military assault with live bullets on the assembly of Turkmen's [in north-northeast Iran] and assassination of their leaders; bloody murder of those fighting on the path for "Democracy for Iran - Autonomy for Kurdistan"; the assaults on newspapers and organizations; the shutting down of the universities under the pretext of 'Cultural Revolution', and on and on -- all these created the material conditions for the founding of various institutions of the Islamic Republic (Assembly of Experts [of Constitution-], Islamic Consultative Assembly [parliament], etc.) and the ratification of the constitution, based on which the discrimination between men and women, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and religious and non-religious, etc., became legal. Ratification and execution of laws of Islamic punishments, stoning, eye-for-an-eye justice, torture and terror and abductions became the tools by which this constitution was enforced.

On 31 January 1980, the second coordinating meeting for confronting "counterrevolutionary" parties and organizations finished its work. After distinguishing between "hostile groups" and "dissident groups", this meeting issued a statement in 15 paragraphs. List of participants in this preparatory meeting to plan terror and murder is available.

Protests against this daily, planned violence organized by the government was the everyday work of different political, social and civic groups and social forces, in the first two and a half years of the revolution. Not a day passed that we did not hear news of somebody being tortured, abducted/disappeared, secretly assassinated, etc. [...]

The January 1980 plan was ratified in [late] March. It is worth emphasizing that large numbers of those executed on 20 June 1981, were arrested shortly after this plan was ratified in March 1980, and were imprisoned, charged with various "crimes."

On 20 June 1981, in protest to a clerical coup against the then-president, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, a massive demonstration was held in Tehran with five hundred thousands participants, called for by the People's Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization of Iran. Some of the forces on the left, liberals, democrats and nationalists participated in this demonstration. This peaceful demonstration, much like other oppositional demonstrations and gatherings, was drenched in blood. From June 21, 1981 until the start of 1984, an unprecedented wave of arrests, tortures, killings on the streets and executions were carried out, which were intensified after the armed operations of Mojahedin-e Khalq on 27 June, 1981. Newspapers were reporting executions of tens and [up to] hundreds of people on a regular basis. There is no precise information about the exact numbers of people killed in these two years and some months, and at times we have seen numbers above ten thousand.

20 June 1981 is an important turning point in the short history of the people's democratic battles in Iran, after the 1979 revolution. From that date on, a [type of] regime took hold in Iran, for whose newly formed intelligence ministry it became an established and official duty to kill and terrorize the opposition, both inside and outside the country.

Despite all that, this very important historical event was gradually forgotten, due to different reasons and by different political, social and civil forces.

Today's reformists in the Islamic Republic, a great part of which were the Hezbollahi's of yesteryears, were among the planners and executors of this policy of oppression; of course, in cooperation with other factions and layers comprising the Islamic Republic. The irony of history is that these same people are now called the "new seditionists" and "traitors" and "being manipulated and playing along with foreign forces and governments", and the same labels and accusations that they used to direct at others in the first decade of the revolution are now meted out to them. [...] Nonetheless, when talking about the events of 20 June 1981, they sound exactly like the conservatives and other former colleagues of theirs: extremism and armed struggle by the opposition caused the violence. These lies have gradually become the official story.

This story by the reformists goes along with their overall political line of thinking, which is appeasement of those in power. They have never imagined a deep-rooted break with this system of ignorance and terror, nor have they ever thought of a real confrontation with them. The reformists believed in and still believe in the foundations of this criminal system. Believing in the "values of the Islamic revolution" and its "constitution" are indicative of the fact that the fight between the "reformists" and the "conservatives" is over political power. This battle is neither a historical battle, nor a battle over values, and not even a serious battle over the intellectual and philosophical foundations of Islamic governance.

If these [reformists] wanted to find the roots of the violence of the last 32 years in Iran, they should start with the intellectual and religious foundations of this system and must pause on Islamic rules of punishment. Analysis of the events of 20 June 1981, however, requires political, intellectual and ethical temerity and courage, which the reformists severely lack. Their speechifying nowadays regarding 'civil institutions', 'civil society', 'human rights' and so on, can have meaning only when based on [real] people's sovereignty, people's rule, separation of religion from state, freedom of conscience (whether we believe in different religions or none at all), political freedoms, freedom of thought and speech, freedom to form organizations and parties, equality of men and women, mechanisms to ensure the peaceful coexistence of different ethnicities and nationalities in Iran, and also social justice. Otherwise, it is essentially a fight to gain political power and over how to share power.

Silence regarding 20 June of 1981 is not solely the practice of the reformists, but many of the "nationalist-religionists" and "leftists", who at that time were fellow travelers and supporters of the reactionary criminals, also remain silent regarding that crime and walk right by it. Further, there are still people among these political forces who rationalize regime's violence and portray it as inevitable. One tendency that can be observed clearly among a large segment of these forces is that they always synchronize with one of the factions of the Islamic Republic, and they adjust their tactics and strategies in harmony with the [reformist] defenders of 'values of the Islamic revolution' and its 'constitution'.

Large parts of the opposition also have effectively forgotten this political event, or else they present a distorted version of the events. The most important of these are the Mojahedin-e Khaq organization. On the one hand, they claim ownership over the entirety of the events leading to and including 20 June 1981. On the other hand they refuse to accept the fact that their turn to armed struggle and carrying out of too sudden and shocking military actions, was an immense mistake in analyzing the balance of forces and the people's subjective preparedness [for an all-out battle]. Their tactic reduced the "people" to an audience of the political scene, and it also inadvertently led to the defeat of the movement that had shaped against the clerical coup [that ousted Bani-Sadr].

Available documents and evidence indicate that leftist trends, despite their intellectual confusion, deviations and shortcomings, and despite their superficial understanding of the complexities of a democratic battle, were more or less aware and conscious of the importance of the battle that had been foisted on them, and their supporters were present in the battle. With the defeat of the movement, and with the retreat and exile, an opportunity arose for analyzing the shortcomings and weaknesses, which unfortunately was not used very well. The monopolistic moves by the Mojahedin, in their turn, caused this part of the left to distance itself from a realistic analysis of these events and their impacts, and consequently a part of the values, traditions and the ideals of the democratic movement of the Iranian people were slowly forgotten. 20 June 1981 is one of the most important forgotten events of the contemporary history of Iran.

Today, thirty years after that historical event, and after the ebb in the movement that occurred in Iran two years ago after the tenth presidential so-called elections, again many have been killed, imprisoned, tortured. A large part of the reformists and their social and political activists have been exiled, and a great amount of the media space outside the country has also been given them as a platform for this force, which enjoys overt and covert support from many sides.

After that facing off of June 2009, the Islamic Republic has stepped into a new phase of dealing with its [internal] contradictions/conflicts. The current government finds itself confronted by some of the major factions of the Islamic Republic itself and also by the people, as well as those who oppose it on principle. It seems that in this new facing off, neither of the regime's factions, whether those in power or out, has the ability to eliminate the other faction, or, to put it more precisely, neither [ruling] political layer can eliminate the competing political layer.

Among the serious contradictions, we can point to the contradictions among the ruling factions and layers in Iran, economic problems, and the unity of voices of a part of the regime with the people.

That faction or layer of the regime that is now in "opposition", in order not to lose its social base, has had to voice some of the people's demands, at times implicitly and at times explicitly. Because of this, some among the forces that belong to the regime, or used to belong to the regime but were thrown out of power in the previous phase, have had to provide some explanations regarding the system and the logic of terror and oppressive crackdown of the first decade of the Islamic Republic. Among these forces, there are still those who consider those crimes as necessary, and some look at that period critically and find some similarities between today and those years. The fact is that the logic of the crackdown of the first ten to fifteen years of the regime, both inside and outside the country, was based on the complete elimination of the dissidents; at any price. The logic of the crackdown of the past two years has been based on intimidating and silencing the internal opposition, and to bring to a halt the spontaneous movement of those whose position is to overthrow this entire tyrannical system.

* * *

20 June 1981 was a turning point in the history of the democratic battles of Iranian people. Despite this, that historical event, which turned the path of life of the society and large numbers of people upside down, and which brought a huge catastrophe to the country, has been [mostly] forgotten. Examination of opposition media shows that this historical event does not hold its deserved place in the political life of the exiled community, and it is feared that it will sink into the hole of lost memories.

Ignoring 20 June 1981, however, does not merely mean forgetting an important historical event on purpose or by default and not paying respect to those who were murdered by a criminal regime. It also means that the fact of the presence of leftist forces, of democrats and freedom lovers, in an important contemporary historical event will be wiped out and eliminated from history.

*With gratitude for the help of my friend and scholar, Nasser Mohajer.

Iran: Anniversary of Neda Agha Soltan's Killing

2011-06-22T10:00:00.001-07:00

From Amnesty International.

SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF NEDA AGHA SOLTAN’S KILLING
PUBLIC STATEMENT
20 June 2011
AI Index: MDE 13/061/2011

Iran: Second anniversary of Neda Agha Soltan ’s killing highlights near-total impunity for officials

Two years after the death of Neda Agha Soltan was captured on a mobile phone and came to symbolize the brutal repression meted out by security forces after the disputed presidential election of 2009, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the Iranian authorities to end impunity for officials responsible for unlawful killings, torture and other human rights violations.
Footage of Neda Agha Soltan’s dying moments, after being shot in the chest on 20 June 2009 spread around the world via the internet. No one has ever been brought to justice for her death, and instead of investigating it impartially, the Iranian authorities – following an entrenched pattern of cover-up of abuses – resorted to threats, counter-accusations, obfuscation and further violations to try to evade responsibility. A member of the Basij militia witnessed by onlookers as saying, “I did not mean to kill her”, whose ID card was posted on the internet, has never been put on trial, but appeared in a documentary shown a year ago on state television, denying responsibility. Arash Hejazi, the doctor who was present at the scene, was forced to seek asylum abroad, fearing for his safety. Neda Agha Soltan’s family and friends were made to appear on state televison denying the state was responsible, although her father Ali Agha Soltan told BBC Persian in December 2009 that “her killer can only be from the government”.

Neda Agha Soltan was one of over 70 people killed during the unrest that followed the election. The only instance where any officials have been tried in connection with abuses is in relation to the Kahrizak detention centre where at least four men died as a result of torture or other ill-treatment. Twelve men, believed to be 11 policemen and one detainee, were later tried, two of whom were reportedly sentenced to death, but it remains unclear what has become of the 11 the authorities said had been convicted in connection with abuses against detainees held there. No action has been taken against more senior officials who were implicated by a parliamentary investigation.

Other families also remain in the dark about the exact circumstances of their children’s fate such as Parvin Fahimi, who has campaigned to find out the truth about the death from a bullet wound to the heart of her son, 19-year-old Sohrab Arabi. He disappeared during a demonstration on 15 June 2009 and his family was then unable to find out any information about him until 11 July when they recognized him from photographs of dead individuals in court. His body had apparently been at the Coroner’s Office since 19 June. There remains no information as to what happened to him between 15 and 19 June 2009, including either the exact date, or the circumstances, of his death. The killer of Kianoush Asa, who died from a gunshot to the neck during a demonstration on 15 June 2009, has also never been identified.

Claims by the Iranian authorities to have investigated the events at a Tehran University dormitory on the night of 14 June 2009 appear to have resulted in victims being imprisoned rather than perpetrators. Up to five students were reported by student organizations to have been killed – although the university authorities later denied this - and many others seriously injured when unidentified plain-clothes forces stormed the dormitory, arresting hundreds. In May 2011, the Judiciary Spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie (who was Minister of Intelligence at the time of the election) said that 40 individuals had been sentenced to prison terms and fines for the event. However, according to a statement by Tehran University’s Islamic Association on 15 June 2011, those in prison are students who were arrested at the time, not those responsible for the attack.

Article 2 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Iran is a state party requires states to provide an effective remedy for human rights violations, including the possibility of judicial remedy, and for such remedies to be enforced.

Read the complete statement here ...

Time Is On Our Side

2011-06-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

Demonstrators in Syria burning pictures of Nassrallah and Khamenei

On the second anniversary of the electoral coup, the news of overt resistance to the regime is not at all good. Despite the intensification of all social problems, and despite the fact that the infighting between different factions of the regime are still going as strong as ever -- this time it's between Ahmadinejad faction and the Khamenei/principlists faction -- and despite the intensification of economic hardships for all after the elimination of price subsidies, the people's movement is still struggling to find a way to topple the system.

According to reports from Iran, due to the very heavy presence of security forces on key streets and squares in Tehran, the silent march (called for by the Coordinating Committee of the Green Path of Hope) to mark the second anniversary of the electoral coup, or the rebirth of the people's movement, attracted only some thousands of people, who were outnumbered by security forces easily, and who were dispersed, while some were arrested. This is NOT an indication of the movement fading out, but more so an indication of the success of the regime in effectively occupying the streets militarily and not allowing any assemblies to form. People's rage, however, builds up daily.

Meanwhile, the general news from Iran keeps getting increasingly more depressing and bleaker by the day. Political prisoners keep dying in greater numbers, not just from executions, but also from prison conditions. Others are being killed by regime security forces and plainclothes thugs outside prisons, including at funerals: after the death of a dissident, Ezzatollah Sahabi, while in prison (we can easily say the Iranian regime sentenced him to death by 'prison conditions'), the regime thugs then went ahead and killed his daughter, Haleh Sahabi, by physically assaulting her while she was attending her father's funeral. Iranian people do not even have the right to attend a funeral in peace. Then, as if things weren't bad enough, we heard about another political prisoner, Reza Hoda Saber -- who had gone on hunger strike to protest the killing of Haleh Sahabi -- who died in prison under very suspect conditions, which usually means the security forces beat him to death (and officially reported the cause of death as 'heart attack'!).

Even people such as economists expressing their professional opinions are not safe from random state tyranny (see here).

One of the most widely reported pieces on the second anniversary of the stolen elections was the piece by International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, which was a released video testimony from a young female detainee describing in detail her severe torture and repeated rape after her arbitrary arrest.

The political leadership of the country, meanwhile, is increasingly sounding more insane. Some of the mullahs are demanding the erasure of thousands of years of our history and want to wish away all Iranian-ness altogether, for they consider it un-Islamic! There are influential mullahs who want to eradicate entire thousands of years of cultural and historical accumulation, and they want to pretend that Iran is only about 1,300 years old -- all the rest preparing the ground for the real birth of the nation; and not only that, 1,300 years old religiously speaking, but only 32 years old politically speaking (since all those years of seemingly secular monarchic rule were un-Islamic). There is no end to their irrationalities.

These insanities are incredible enough as they are. We should add to this insanity just in passing, and not in any detail, that there is support given to this barbaric antiquity of a regime by some western 'leftists'. We mention this just to emphasize the bleakness of the situation facing Iranian revolutionaries. When the world is upside down to such an incredible degree that some living leftists lend a helping hand to a bunch of ultra-misogynistic, anti-democratic ... forget that, anti-human, barbaric, pre-historic creatures that run one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, then you KNOW you are living in Dark Ages. This is no post-modern age; this is pre-historical. Brute force, pure violence and no pretense to any worldly legitimacy.

But, we digress. Despite all the bleak news coming from the surface of things social in Iran, the depths of the society are most assuredly experiencing much upheaval.

On the International front, Iranian regime's propaganda and influence among the Arab people, thanks a thousand times to the Arab revolutionary moves, have lost much of their credit. We have had the message of solidarity from the Egyptian revolutionaries to the people of Iran from Tahrir Square; and very significantly, thanks to the uprising by the people of Syria, the aura of Iran's regime being a friend of the Arab people has been smashed to pieces.

There has been some local/regional effects of this loss of legitimacy of discourse. For example, Lebanese Hezbollah and Nassrallah in particular are losing face daily among the Arab people for their call on the Syrians to NOT rise up and demand their rights as human beings, just because it was to the political advantage of Hezbollah's sectarian interests to keep a good face for Syrian AND Iranian regimes (and themselves by extension). Hezbollah now stands as an unambiguous defender of tyranny (OK'd, when exercised by their own allies); and to that degree, Islamists in the Arab world are losing moral and ethical ground, as well as political ground. This creates an opportunity for secular progressive forces in the Arab world to forge forward, much more than they would have been able to under conditions whereby Islamists seemed to have the moral upper ground.

Back to Iran's internal conditions ... though the picture of the political situation is bleak now and getting bleaker daily (it seems), the prospects for the Islamic Republic regime are even bleaker. To start, the most ardent supporters of the regime now openly refuse to agree with the 'Republic' part of the title. For them, the legitimacy of the regime comes from God. Period. No questions allowed. Further, no reforms (in the sense of any opening up of the socio-political conditions) can be allowed. The reform project was shut down long ago. Even if (as some hopefuls think possible) the 'reformists' are allowed back near the houses of power, no real and actual reforms ARE possible.

At the same time, a great many functionaries and supporters of the regime can see clearly that the official ideology, based on the absolutist rule of the religious jurisprudence (velayat-e motlaqh-e faqih), is bankrupt and hardly worth defending. Hence, the Ahmadinejad faction that wants to refashion the official ideology to an openly fascistic form of rule that is not too hung up on the supreme leader, is not too bothered about the Islamic cover (hijab for women mostly), either, and follows a pan-Iranian line of cultural thinking, and for the Islamic part of its rule believes in the Messiah himself; no intermediaries needed (the 12th Imam of the Shiite religion is supposed to appear when socio-historical conditions are ripe). The emphasis on the importance of the Messiah is pretty clear to all the mullahs who support and are allies of the Khamenei faction (the Velayat-e faqih faction): if the messiah is about to come and is the source of all authority for the Velayat-e faqih, then who needs the Valiy-e faqih? Valiy-e faqih is just a link to the messiah, therefore dispensable.

A phenomenon that exists in complete and total contradiction with its living environment, will forever create contradictions within itself. If there is no conflict between 'reformists' and 'hard liners' then there is some conflict between different shades of the hard liners; once that is resolved, there shall be other conflicts that will arise, because this regime is a regime of exceptionalities.

This is a regime that the counterrevolutionary forces of society in Iran (with ample help from counterrevolutionary forces internationally) could put together at a historical moment 32 years ago, when they were caught by surprise by the people of Iran who took to the streets in 1978-79, and fought hard to topple the previous dictatorship, so as to have freedom of speech, to have freedom of assembly, to have the right to form independent organizations (be they political, economic, cultural, social or whatever they desired), the right to have a free press and the right to choose their own representatives to the representative political bodies, regardless of political philosophy or anything else. In short, we had a revolution to have the right to be fully human.

At that historical juncture, 32 years ago, the Iranian counterrevolution won (just like it may win in Egypt or Tunisia or Syria or Yemen, etc.). However, the counterrevolution didn't win in one quick step. It took a good decade before it had stabilized itself. And during that decade, the regime literally fought street battles with demonstrators, protestors and dissidents in a variety of forms, on many social levels (and in many countries; the regime killed many dissidents abroad). That is why today the Iranian regime is such an efficient machinery of oppression and brutality. You can bet all you have that they are involved in helping Syrian and Iraqi regimes with their street protestors (mind you, Syria's Assad had a pretty good teacher in his dad; however, material support is something else and always appreciated, as all counterrevolutionary forces in the region are well aware of!).

In sum, the Iranian counterrevolutionaries, in the form of a medieval theocracy, won the battle back then, 32 years ago. Since then, the Iranian people have been grappling with the horrendous challenge of overcoming this counterrevolution. The future, however, belongs to us. Those who oppress us cannot last forever. If and when any state, any regime, is reduced to ruling by sheer force and openly violent brutality ALONE, that is indeed the end of that state/regime. Time is on our side even if it takes some time to topple these brutal murderers.

Iran: Abolish Death Penalty, Stoning, Torture & Discrimination

2011-06-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

Translation of a statement issued by a group of Iranians abroad.

Statement by a group of Iranians Living Abroad: Death Penalty, Stoning, Torture and Discrimination Must Be Abolished
(May 28, 2011)

As a group of Iranians residing outside our country, we consider Iran as our land and the land of all Iranians wherever they are.

We believe that the people of Iran, regardless of their ethnic background or language, no matter what beliefs or philosophies or religions they hold, no matter their color or gender, must have the most basic of human rights: freedom of expression and thought, democracy and free elections, freedom of political parties, freedom to form associations and freedom to assemble, and the right to individual safety and comfort, social justice and [true] judicial justice.

We consider punishments such as death penalty, stoning, administering lashes and torture in any form as unfit for the people of our country, a nation with a deep and ancient civilization.

Oppression and crackdown against people and use of violence and violent punishments are unfit for our citizens and we demand that they be abolished in the land of Iran.

We demand democratic rights for women and the separation of religion from state.

We believe that the connections that exists between the judicial system [of Iran] and the revolutionary courts and court system with the political leaders of the Islamic Republic and the subservience of the judiciary to the political and economic interests and preferences of the political leaders prevents the carrying out of true justice; as a result, in the face of the totalitarianism and the oppression of the current political system, life, wealth and dignity of all citizens is under threat.

We are demanding the abolition of all inhuman sentences such as death penalty, stoning, ruinous bails and torture in all its forms.

Despite the indefatigable efforts of organizations and political and cultural figures, up to now thousands of Iranians have been sacrificed by the Islamic Republic's violence and have been trapped by the injustice of the judicial system, and the number of such victims rise daily.

It is impossible to suffer through countless public and secret executions, tortures and murders in the streets or in prisons, and not to speak out about the absolute right to life for every human being.

It is impossible to watch the destruction of ancient historical monuments, the destruction of the environment, the drying up of rivers and lakes and forests, and yet to stay indifferent.

No! It is impossible to stay silent in the face of the disregard for, and annihilation of, all freedoms and rights of all Iranian citizens.

Whereas it is the case that in the last few months alone many prisoners have died under torture or due to unbearable prison conditions; and whereas countless [hundreds of] people have been executed or else are awaiting execution in the macabre hallways of prisons, or as in the case of long-term prisoners;

We are asking all Iranians who want to see the establishment of true justice, abolition of all forms of discrimination, elimination of purges and the oppression of minorities, women and those with different beliefs -- we are asking all to sign this statement and to join this humane demand and to make their voices heard by international organizations, governments and world media:

Death penalty, stoning, torture and discrimination in Iran must be abolished!
Democracy and human rights for all Iranians must be established!
Historical monuments, natural wealth, the environment, forests and lakes must be protected!

[To read the original in Persian, or to see signatures, go here]
[To sign/support the statement, contact: farakhan@gmx.fr]

Osanloo Released From Prison

2011-06-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is delighted to announce that imprisoned trade unionist Mansour Osanloo was today freed from jail in Iran almost four years since his arrest and imprisonment, which set off a storm of international protest.

His release is conditional on his ‘good behaviour’ and the payment of a bond.

The ITF has led demands for Mansour Osanloo’s release. ITF general secretary David Cockroft commented: “This is a great day for Mansour and his family – and for his fellow Vahed union members and those of us in the international trade union movement who are honoured to call him a friend. It’s doubly welcome given the deterioration in his health during his time behind bars.

“He is free because trade unionists worldwide demanded justice.”

He continued: “That bail has been set falls short of the full pardon we all wanted, and which the Iranian government promised, but for now we can just take a moment to savour his richly deserved return to his family.”

Read a complete report at ITF's site, here ...

U.S. Role in the Arab Counterrevolution

2011-05-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

Keep formation; Await further instruction!

This is the fourth article in a series analyzing the Arab Revolution, written by M.R. Shalgooni, writer/analyst/activist with Raah-e Kargar (Worker's Path). This installment focuses on the role played so far by the U.S. in relation to the Arab Revolution.
[The original article can be read, in Persian, here. English translation of the first article in the series is available here, the second article is here, and the third here.]

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Arab World - 4
by Mohammad-Reza Shalgooni / May 22, 2011

When any revolution starts, the ruling political system usually proceeds to turn to more violent and more widespread methods of oppression and crackdown. In other words, every revolution instigates a counterrevolution against itself, and it is in the process of this facing off, this struggle, that the fate of the revolution is determined. It is with reference to this reality that Antonio Gramsci says: Every revolutionary condition/situation is simultaneously a counterrevolutionary situation as well. Therefore, in order to analyze the horizons of a revolution it is not enough to look at who the revolutionary forces are and what they want; additionally, we must consider what forces constitute the counterrevolution and what their plans and capabilities are.

Now, let's look at the forces confronting the Arab Revolution. No doubt, at the moment, the ruling dictatorships and their [paid goons and thugs] as well as their social base are at the forefront of the fight [by counterrevolutionary forces]. However, in a larger frame of reference and on the regional level, American imperialism and its allies, especially Israel and the league of the Arab reaction too are against the revolution and are busy planning to defeat it. Previously (in the second article of this series), I reminded that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries under Saudi Arabian leadership constitute the main counterrevolutionary alliance in the Arab world. In view of the fact that most Arab dictatorships enjoy American support, and that these are regimes that would not survive long without that support, before anything we must look at the policies pursued by the U.S. in relation to the Arab Revolution.

American Public Policy on the Arab Revolution
The spark of the Arab Revolution and especially its speedy spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa took the U.S. too completely by surprise, and naturally has been very frustrating for them. This is because the Arab masses' rebellion has brought into question strategic calculations and strategies of the American empire at a very sensitive time and in a very sensitive region. We must not forget that the Middle East (according to Eisenhower) is "the most important strategic region of the world", and any threats against the American hegemony in the region can have very far-reaching consequences. Also, this revolution has started at a time when the U.S. does not enjoy favorable conditions. First, the global capitalist economic crisis, which started from the U.S. itself, and from under the wreckage of which the U.S. economy has yet to emerge, has created a lot of limitations for the U.S. government, which cannot engage in other interventions (military and non-military) in the Middle East. Second, in view of the increasing vulnerability of the U.S. influence in the Arab world -- especially after the Iraqi occupation and the defeat of the new Middle East plan by neo-cons -- a direct confrontation with the rebellious Arab masses can not only have highly disastrous and unpredictable consequences for the American empire, but will also create more favorable conditions for the radicalization of the Arab rebellions. Third, as a result of the reprehensible Iraqi occupation and after the Af-Pak war has turned into a quagmire for the American military forces, the degree of negative U.S. public opinion against war is currently quite high; however, as a consequence of a direct confrontation with the Arab revolution, this opposition to war would rise rapidly, and this is not something either of the political parties are willing to face, especially considering that the preparations for the 2012 presidential elections are starting up. Also, it must be noted that participation in the violent crackdown of the Arab revolution or overt support of the oppression can no longer be sold to the public opinion of the people in the U.S. or Europe under the old banners of "war on terror" or "fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction" or "war of civilizations" because this time, the U.S. and its allies are facing mass non-violent movements that started with demands for freedom and against violent and corrupt dictatorships. And finally, we must not forget the role of the Obama administration, which came to power based on the [promise of] "multi-later approach" in foreign policy and promised to have a different approach to the Arab and Muslim world.

All the mentioned factors have forced the American political leaders to avoid as much as possible a policy of direct confrontation with the rebellious Arab masses, and to support indirect, more complex methods of taming [or leashing] the revolution. We saw the first trial of this policy in the Tunisian revolution: as soon as the army refused to obey Ben Ali's orders to shoot on the demonstrators, the political power cracked, and a few days later the Tunisian dictator found out that he had nowhere to hide but in Saudi Arabia. In less than a month later, the same scenario was repeated in Egypt: Hosni Mubarak, who was trying to escape Ben Ali's fate, was fiercely clinging onto his position that he would neither resign nor leave Egyptian soil. However, when the army pulled the rug from under him, and when he would not read his letter of resignation, the letter was given to his vice president to read it in his stead. All signs show that the U.S. government in both Tunisia and Egypt supported the military's moves.

Some believe that it was the [Tunisian and Egyptian] military's reluctance to stand against the Arab people that forced the U.S. to distance itself from Ben Ali and Mubarak. For example, it is said that the refusal by Gen. Rashid Ammar (the chief of staff of the Tunisian army) to obey Ben Ali's orders to crackdown on people was indicative of the differences between Ben Ali and the military establishment going back a long way; even, due to his fear of a military coup, it is said that Ben Ali conspired to sabotage a military helicopter that was carrying Gen. Abdelaziz Skik, then-chief of staff of army, as well as 13 other senior officers in the spring of 2002, causing their deaths [1]. Or, it is stated that military leaders in Egypt had been left out of the privatizations schemes and lavish investments by key factions of the Mubarak regime, and had especially been disgruntled and worried about monopolization of power by Gamal Mubarak (president's son) [2]. However, for a realistic assessment of the unfolding of events in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, we must pay attention to some points:

1. Any doubting of the novelty of the Arab Revolution would inevitably lead one to nothing but senseless conspiracy theories. There is not a shred of doubt that the explosion of the mass rebellions in the Arab world has put the U.S. in a very difficult and unfavorable position. Also, there is no doubt that in fact it was under the pressure of the revolutionary movements that the U.S. was forced to stop its support of these dictators, who had carried out the American policies in the region for decades. Therefore, even if the scenario regarding the conflicts between the Tunisian and Egyptian militaries and Ben Ali and Mubarak is completely true, that still does not explain the support given both militaries by the U.S.

2. It must not be forgotten that the U.S. government did not merely harmonize with the positions taken by the militaries of these two countries, but in both cases gave very clear signals that the continuation of Ben Ali and Mubarak governments was undesirable. Without these signals, it is not likely that they would have been taken down so quickly.

3. There are many indications that the U.S. government was cognizant of the brittle nature of the dictatorships under its protection in the Arab world, and was encouraging them to implement minor reforms and to observe and allow certain appearances of democracy. For example, let us not forget that even George W. Bush was putting pressure on Mubarak to open up the political atmosphere ever so slightly. Also, the Obama administration placed Ben Ali' regime on its 2010 list of regimes suppressing the press and the media. Or, take the speech by Hillary Clinton at the "Forum for the Future" of the Arab nations at Doha [at a regional development conference in the Qatari capital; Jan 13, 2011__ trans. note], exactly one day before Ben Ali fled, which expressed the U.S. government's position. At the same time that she would not even once utter the word "democracy"; while, in response to a direct question on Tunisia, she could not express a single criticism against Ben Ali, and while worshiping Bahrain's achievements in empowering the "civil society", she warned the Arab regimes that if reforms were not instituted, their foundations would sink into the sand! In other words, the U.S. support for a dictatorial regime does not necessarily mean that they consider it the most favorable regime possible for that country, and that they view all their interests [and options] to be beholden to the total support of those regimes.

4. The military establishment of both countries are so deeply intertwined with the Pentagon that it is unlikely that they would pull the rug from under the dictators without having the U.S. government's OK (especially while facing a mass revolution). Particularly the Egyptian military, which has such an important role in the strategic calculations of the Middle East that the U.S. government cannot stay indifferent to any serious shift of positions among its ranks. Another point is that the animosity between the Tunisian military and Ben Ali (even if totally true) cannot be applied to Egypt. Unlike Tunisia, in Egypt through all of the past 59 years, the political power has been effectively in the hands of the military, and Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi (chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt) has been a close friend of Hosni Mubarak since his youth.

5. Most importantly, we can also see that in both countries the military establishment has generally proceeded in harmony with general U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Arab Revolution, and their main objective has been to prevent [or abort when possible] any radicalization of the revolution.

In view of what was said, it seems that in both Tunisia and Egypt it was not the case that the military establishment forced the U.S. to follow their lead and accept a fait accompli, but that rather it was the U.S. that decided to remove the military in both these countries from an all-out confrontation with the millions-strong masses of people, and to keep them intact [as institutions], to be preserved as levers for controlling the situation in the subsequent stages of the revolution. Of course, we must not forget that the start of the revolution and its escalation in Tunisia and Egypt were so sudden and accelerated that they caught Obama's administration completely by surprise. Due to reasons I have already explained, they [American leaders] knew that an all-out confrontation with the millions of rebellious people who have had enough would be hugely costly, and would jeopardize American long-term interests in this very sensitive region. Consequently, while pressing these dictatorships behind closed curtains to avoid blood baths on a mass scale, in the final analysis, they decided that in order to preserve the ruling regimes, they would sacrifice the dictators themselves.

NOTES:
[1] Amy Aisen Kallander : Tunisia’s Post-Ben Ali Challenge: A Primer, MERIP, 26 Jan 2011
[2] Hazem Kandil : Revolt in Egypt; New Left Review; March/April 2011 (No. 68)

Sharp Rise in Food Prices & the Arab Revolution

2011-05-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Translation of the third installment of an article series by Shalgooni (writer/analyst/activist with Raah-e Kargar). This article focuses on the effects of sharp rise in price of food products in the last few years on initiating the Arab revolts.

[Read the original article, in Persian, here.]

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Arab World - 3
By: Mohammad-Reza Shalgooni / May 4, 2011

In the past four months, 12 out of the 22 members of the Arab League have witnessed widespread protests and rebellions by the people, but in six countries the protests have been more prolonged and more extensive and have in effect become mass general rebellions, and in two countries they have been able to bring down the dictators.

What are the reasons for the differences in continuity and extent of the mass protests in these countries? There is no doubt that the crackdown against the protests plays an important role, but the differences cannot be explained by reference to level of oppression alone. That is so since, first, dictatorship and oppression/crackdown is the general reality in the Arab world; second, in some countries, intensification of the violent crackdown actually intensified the protests. For example, Ben Ali's regime in Tunisia had a very effective system of control and oppression, but it could not survive in the face of people's movements; or, in Yemen, Libya and Syria, very violent crackdowns are in progress, but so far they have not been able to break people's resistance. Therefore, we must also look for other factors.

The Economic Crisis and the Arab Revolution
Many different factors affect the formation and development of mass rebellions, especially when they become generalized and turn to revolutions. For this reason, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict revolutions precisely, and the explanation of the causes of the revolution can take place only after the onset of the revolution, or as they say, "The riddle becomes easy once solved."

Previously (in the second article of the series), I reminded that the Arab countries could be divided into three groups: oil states, non-oil states with strategic importance, and peripheral states. If we go by this grouping, we will find that the most favorable conditions for the spread of the revolution exist in the second group. However, a look at the real arena of protests and rebellions up to now shows that these protests have not been limited to any one group. For example, In Djibouti (which is considered a peripheral state in the Arab public opinion) we have witnessed widespread protests against the dictatorship of Ismail Omar Guelleh; meanwhile, in Palestine (which is the focal point of attention of all Arab masses) there has not been a new uprising against Israel, nor has there been any noticeable protests against the regime of [Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud] Abbas (in the West Bank) or Hamas (in Gaza). Or, take Bahrain (undoubtedly one of the most affluent Arab countries), in which the people's rebellion lasted longer and had a wider participation than in Morocco.

All that said, a little pause over the countries in which peoples' protests have lasted longer and been more widespread, and in which the protests have turned into mass rebellions, shows us that the capacity for development and deepening of the revolution exist more clearly in the second group. Of the six countries that have witnessed the most confrontations between the political system and the people, Bahrain and Libya belong to the first group of nations [oil states], countries with gross per capita product of over US$13 thousand, meaning regimes with great financial room for maneuver, and states that can bribe a small portion of the population to create a social base, and maintain their rule by mixing/combining bribes and oppression. In Bahrain, the revolution has for the moment been leashed through the foreign counterrevolutionary intervention. In contrast, in Libya, the intervention of the foreign powers in the revolution has turned it into a full-fledged civil war. However, in both cases it can be said that the revolution has been defeated, and in the case of Libya the defeat looks definitely more certain.

The other four countries are Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria, all of which belong to the second group [non-oil states with strategic importance]. In Egypt and Tunisia, people have been able to bring down the dictators and have thus struck a big blow against the ruling regimes, and in Yemen and Syria the people who have had it are increasing their pressure on their dictatorships. In addition to the reign of long-lived and harsh dictatorships, the common factor among all four is the economic crisis and the intensification of mass abject misery pressing down on the majority of the population. In all these countries the [sharp] increase in price of food products, widespread unemployment (particularly among the youth), severe lack of housing and the intense increase in class inequality have all created an explosive situation and can explain the extent and rage of the people's protests and rebellions. In fact, by analyzing the process of intensification of the economic and social crises, we may not only explain the major axes of the Arab revolution, but even the timing of the start of the revolutionary fires. The increase in cost of living and particularly of food products is a factor that is highlighted and pointed out by all analyses related to the Arab revolution. This issue is a result of the food crisis on a global level.

The price of all food products, including rice, wheat and corn, increased sharply in international markets from 2006 to 2008. In particular, the price of rice rose three-fold in a five-year period, meaning it went from around $600/ton in 2003 to more than $1,800/ton in May 2008. In 2009, the prices for major grains decreased to a degree, but it never went back to its previous years' level, and in the second half of 2010, based on the general food products index of [United Nations] Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the price of major grains/cereals increased by 23%, and this organization's combined index for December 2010 surpassed that of June 2008 record, and reached the highest level in the history of this record keeping (which started in 1990). This pooled index is the price of a basket of grains/cereals, grain oils, dairy products, meat and sugar in a six-month continuous period, and the [second half of 2010] price increases were mostly due to the increase in the price of sugar, grain oils and grains/cereals [1].

The defenders of the world capitalist system have portrayed the increase in recent years of the price of food products as a result of the increase in the living standards of people, especially in China and India. [...] However, this claim turns reality upside down for many reasons:

One: the absolute amount of the per capita world grain product has decreased sharply since the 1980s, and this decrease means nothing but a decrease in consumption of grains and increase in world hunger, more so than the leap in the price of food products in 2008. In other words, the past few years' global food crisis did not happen just in the last two years, but started more than two decades ago.

Two: The sudden turn by the U.S. and some other countries to bio-fuels in recent years (which was a reaction to the rise in oil prices) has had an important role in pushing up the price of grains/cereals. It should not be forgotten that the U.S., the largest producer and exporter of grains in the world, has in recent years set aside more than a quarter of its grain production, particularly corn, for bio-fuels production, and this must have pushed grain prices up.

Three: In the past three decades, the price of manufactured goods rose more sharply than food prices, and this factor has sharply reduced the purchasing power of the poor and working classes in the world and especially in the third world. In other words, neo-liberal disastrous policies and the ruination of small farmers, as well as appropriation of monopolies by multi-national companies in food production, have all played key roles in striking a big blow to the purchasing power of workers and the poor, especially in the third world countries.

Four: The sharp and massive spread of credit and speculation in the international food markets (which itself is the result of the uncontrolled globalization of finance capital) has also helped the rise in food product prices, and has had particularly important role in causing sharp fluctuations in those prices in recent years.

Five: Besides all these factors, to connect the rise in price of food products to the increased consumption in China and India, even in the most optimistic scenario, is an exaggeration. As Prabhat Patnaik, the Indian Marxist economist, has shown, "per capita foodgrain absorption" (which is calculated as gross product minus gross exports and minus the net increase in inventoried products) in these countries has not gone up, but has gone down. With liberalization of Indian economy, the decrease in "per capita foodgrain absorption" has accelerated; to the point where this index for 2008 was lower than it was in 1953. In China too, between 1996 and 2003 per capita absorption of grains dropped sharply, and although it rose after 2005, it never regained its 1996 level [2].

Six: Alongside all the mentioned factors, of course, we must not ignore the unfavorable natural conditions for agricultural production in recent years. For example, last summer's drought in Russia and Ukraine, which led to a ban of wheat exports from these two countries, and also the severe floods in Australia, India and Pakistan and the drought in Argentina must have undoubtedly been among the short-term factors pushing up the price of food products.

In light of the points mentioned above, we can better understand how the rising prices of food products influenced the formation of the socio-economic crisis in non-oil Arab countries.

The Nile valley has fed the Egyptian people for the past six thousand years, but today Egypt is the world's biggest importer of wheat, and imports nearly half of the wheat it needs. Why? The answer should be sought in the neo-liberalism that has been ruling the country for the past four decades. As Alex Callinicos says, "Egypt can claim to have pioneered neoliberalism in the Global South." This orientation taken on by Egypt in 1974 with "Infitah", or the open-door economic policy started by Anwar Sadat, which opened the gates of the country to trade and investment by foreign countries. In 1991, Hosni Mubarak completed Sadat's plan by accepting "Structural Adjustment Program" suggested by international financial institutions. Included in the plan was the abolition of Gamal Abdel Nasser era land reforms, which allowed the leaseholders and landowners to get rid of peasants and small farmers on agricultural lands. This policy was carried out, with violent crackdown of peasants in 1997, and was a big blow to the agricultural economy of Egypt; a majority of peasants lost their livelihoods, and in particular the production of grains and food products in Egypt was severely broken up and the country became one of the biggest importers of wheat [3]. Thanks to these policies, today nearly half of Egypt's population lives on less than $2 per day and, "Food comprises almost half the country's consumer price index, and much more than half of spending for the poorer half of the country" [4]. Also, thanks to the same policies, as the world's largest wheat importer, Egypt is always hostage to the wheat price fluctuations in the world markets, and is one of the first countries to get harmed by vertical increases in the price of food products in the world. It is enough to remember that the sharp rise in the price of bread, and also its scarcity, caused the workers' strikes of 2007 and 2008 in Egypt; the strikes that played a very important role in creating the conditions for the ongoing revolution in Egypt right now.

The shaping up of the food crisis in Tunisia also took a similar route as in Egypt. In 1984, Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's previous president, under pressure from International Monetary Fund accepted their "Structural Adjustment Plan", and, among other things, eliminated food subsidies. As a result of this policy of the regime, the doubling of the price of bread brought about bread riots. Bourguiba's government reacted with violent crackdown, killing more than 50 defenseless people, but at the same time, the government was forced to return the prices to the previous levels and Bourguiba sacked his interior minister. Three years later (in November 1987), Zein al-Abedin Ben-Ali, Bourguiba's prime minister, who had climbed the ranks through the regime's security/intelligence apparatus, declared Bourguiba "unable to run the nation's affairs" and replaced him, and with open arms implemented all of IMF's guidelines. Ben-Ali's violent dictatorship immediately became the darling of IMF and the World Bank, but with the implementation of those neo-liberal policies, Tunisia just like Egypt became trapped in the fluctuations in the world food products' markets. And the interesting point is that even despite the sharp increases in price of food products in the last year, IMF was still asking Ben-Ali to meet all other austerity measures demanded, by eliminating all the remaining subsidies [5]!

The increase in the price of food products also had an important role in creating the conditions for people's rebellion in Syria. Of course it must be noted that Syria, unlike most Arab countries, has great amount of arable land (24.8% of total land), and unlike Egypt and Tunisia, state-controlled economy still plays a determining role, but the country's economy is more corrupt and poorer than to be able to withstand the world price rises in food products. In Syria, it was the sharp rise in prices of cooking oil and rice that had a role in sparking the mass rebellions. Asad's regime, which had been worried about the spread of the mass rebellions to Syria, had tried preemptively to prevent the rise in the price of key food products to "exceed the purchasing power of the consumers." However, the corruption that is ruling the country caused this very plan of the regime to fight against inflation in food products to lead to hoarding of oil and rice, and therefore led to the sharp increase in the price of these goods in the market!

Even in Yemen, which is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, the increase in the price of food products had an important role in intensifying general poverty and sparking the fires of mass protests. This is so since, even though the livelihood of a majority of the population in Yemen is provided for through agriculture and animal farming, much like most Arab countries, a major portion of food products is imported. And this is one of the most obvious reasons for the bankruptcy of the ruling dictatorship in the country. It must be noted that about 70% of Yemen's population lives in rural areas, yet the share of agriculture and animal farming in the gross domestic product of the country is less than one tenth (8.2%).

However, the catastrophe facing a great majority of the people in countries under discussion is not limited to the rise in prices of food products. A paralyzing mass unemployment and ever-increasing class divide have made the socio-economic crises in these countries even more paralyzing. According to estimates by Ahmad al-Najjar (Egyptian economist) unemployment rate in Egypt in 2009 was about 7.9 million, and the actual number of unemployed was about 26.3% of the labor force, and the rate of unemployment among the youth from 15 to 29 year-olds was three times that figure. [...] In addition to those who are unemployed, even a large segment of the so-called employed suffer through harsh conditions. As stated by Hazem Kandil, an Egyptian sociologist, nearly one fifth of Egyptian population and about one fourth of Cairo's population consist of shantytown dwellers [6].

We know that everywhere in the world "free market" can progress forth through forceful government policies, and that further freeing of markets even in established western democracies can only proceed through hollowing democratic structures of substance and through weakening of people's oversight powers. However, in Egypt and Tunisia this trend has had a more violent form, and the neo-liberal policies were enacted through a combination of generalization of oppression and suffocation of society and an ever-increasing confluence of the political power with the economic sphere. In these countries, "free market" means nothing but the unlimited freedom of action by the ruling dynasties and their cronies and allies to loot the public goods. This freedom of action in Egypt reached its zenith, by bringing in big capitalists and representatives of the World Bank and the IMF directly into the cabinet [...] since 2004, and with the formation of mafia gangs organized by Gamal Mubarak (son of the president) within the National Democratic Party. [...]

However, it was the onset of the global economic crisis that combined the structural weaknesses of these countries that were trapped in neo-liberalism with dictatorships, which brought them to the point of explosion. With the onset of the global economic crisis, first, the income from tourism industry (which in both countries [Egypt and Tunisia] is one of the most important sources of currency earning) dropped sharply; second, the remittances from migrant workers in western countries nearly dried up; third, the income from Suez Canal in Egypt dropped sharply; fourth, the exports from both countries were harmed greatly; and finally, as a result of all these setbacks, unemployment rose even more sharply [7].

In view of all the points mentioned, we can say with conviction that the start of the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt took place as a direct impact of the great crisis of global capitalist system. In the case of Syrian, however, although the global crisis has not had a severe and direct effect, it should not be forgotten that in Syria and Yemen too the rate of unemployment, especially among the youth, is very high and this factor has had a very important role in sparking the fires of the mass rebellions.

NOTES:
[1] Michel Chossudovsky : Tunisia and the IMF's Diktats: How Macro-Economic Policy Triggers Worldwide Poverty and Unemployment; Global Research: January 20, 2011
[2] Prabhat Patnaik : The World Food Crisis; People's Democracy: 27 February 2011
[3] Alex Callinicos : The return of the Arab revolution; International Socialism: No 130 (April 2011 )
[4] Spengler : Food and failed Arab states; Asia Times Online: 2 Feb 2011
[5] see note 1
[6] Hazem Kandil : Revolt in Egypt, New Left Review: March/April 2011
[7] see notes 1 and 3

Iran: Joint Statement in Observance of International Workers' Day

2011-04-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Translation of a joint statement issued by a group of workers' rights groups in Iran. Read the original, in Persian here.

[Poster to the right, about workers' action planned in Wisconsin in support of international solidarity, and immigrant and workers rights.]

Joint Statement in Observance of International Workers' Day - 1 May 2011

May 1st, International Workers' Day, is the global day of unity and protest by workers against the tyranny and inequality of capitalist system. This day is a reminder of the global struggles by workers for achieving their human rights. Iranian workers celebrate this day alongside workers of the world, and, in protest against their inhumane living conditions, they get together on this day every year and by any means at hand they raise their voices in order to achieve their legitimate rights.

The excitement and the militancy of the workers around the world on May 1st, and the freedom of millions of workers to protest against their living conditions in most places around the globe shake our world at the same time that Iranian workers -- in addition to lacking any social rights such as forming any organizations or holding street demonstrations -- are daily and hourly under the severest attacks against their lives and their livelihoods. Any form of workers' protests or any demands for their rights get answered by detention and imprisonment of workers. The so-called 'rationalization of subsidies' [elimination of all subsidies for basic goods being carried out by Ahmadinejad government], started by the ruling capitalism [in Iran] and supported by international capitalist institutions, is ever more destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of workers' families, yet nobody has any right to freely protest against this situation. With the dizzying increase in the prices of energy [gas and electricity] and the ever-increasing shutdown of factories, hundreds and thousands of workers are forced to join the millions of unemployed. Meanwhile, they [the rulers] change the terms and conditions for unemployment benefits to the detriment of workers; they obtain franchises in hospitals and clinics that attend to workers, and set different criteria for retirement benefits; they tie up construction workers' insurances with labyrinthine bureaucratic rules; and at the same time that they raise the prices of basic goods by astronomical amounts [for some items, five-eight fold], they raise the minimum wage for workers by an insulting [miniscule] 9.0%.

In our view, for millions of desperate and destitute workers' families trying to make a minimum of living in these conditions, all the mentioned factors have no meaning other than increased destitute in trying to make ends meet, and impose on the workers a daily intensification of poverty and misery. However, we the workers will not [merely] stay as observers of the slow death of our families and will not accept the daily assault on our lives and livelihoods, and we will stand against poverty, misery and the total lack of social rights in a unified and collective fashion. In this context, we the Iranian workers announce our utter abhorrence for the current conditions, and call on all the people in the country to collectively raise their general [nationwide] demands, and in the existing conditions we are asking for the immediate implementation of these demands:

1. Unconditional right of forming independent workers' organizations, of strike, protesting and marching, freedom of political parties, of assembly and freedom of expression and media -- these are our legitimate and obvious rights. At the same time that all state-created institutions must be abolished from work and living environments of the people, these rights must be recognized as unconditional and undeniable social rights of workers and all the people in Iran.

2. We will not accept or go along with a society in which a small minority owns huge wealth while the [overwhelming] majority does not even have bread on the table. In our view, a [mere] 9% increase in minimum wages, especially given the elimination of subsidies and the tremendously sharp rise of prices of goods, is an insult to the human dignity and the right to life of workers. We consider this as an imposition of abject poverty and misery on millions of workers' families on an even larger scale than before, and by rejecting the current method of determining wages we resolutely demand a halt to the elimination of subsidies; as well, we demand that wages be determined by workers' authentic representatives and be based on the highest standards of human living conditions today.

3. We demand the elimination of temporary contracts with "white signature" [not signed], eradication of sub-contracting companies, and the adoption of direct and collective contracts, provision of job security for workers, and adoption of the highest standards of health and safety in work and living places.

4. All wages that are in arrears must be paid immediately and unconditionally and without any excuses or objections, and any non-payment must be treated as a crime punishable by law, and all damages due to non-payment must also be paid to the workers.

5. Firing workers and rendering them unemployed, under any pretext, must be stopped; additionally, all unemployed workers or all who have reached employment age, must be given unemployment insurance commensurate with a humane standard of living, for as long as they can work.

6. The Social Welfare Organization has become one of the institutions with astronomical wealth in Iran as a result of the sweat and money from the workers. Despite this fact, this institution has become a part of the profit production-circulation, and only thinks of reducing health benefits [of the workers] and obtaining franchise [rights] from the sick workers. We consider social benefit insurance as an inalienable right of all the members of society, and demand that the management of this institution be put in the hands of elected representatives of the workers across the country.

7. While condemning any form of assault [by the state] on workers or people's protests, we are asking for the abolition of death penalty and the immediate and unconditional freedom of all imprisoned workers, as well as all the [activists] of all other social movements, from prisons and an immediate halt to all the judicial/legal [harassment] conducted against them, and the lifting of the security-state atmosphere ruling the country.

8. We demand the abolition of all discriminatory laws against women and the guarantee of complete and unconditional equality of women's rights with that of men's in all social, economic, political, cultural and family spheres of life.

9. We demand that all retired people be provided with a good life without economic worries, and we are asking for the elimination of any discrimination with regards to the payment of retirement benefits, and for social and healthcare benefits.

10. Child labor must be abolished. The right of children and their parents to complete and well established social welfare, the right to education and healthcare and social welfare that is free and standardized, regardless of economic or family conditions, and regardless of gender and/or national-ethnic or religious background must be officially recognized.

11. We consider it an inalienable right of all the people everywhere in the world to want to change their societies, and we are in absolute support of the people's protests and struggles in all the Middle Eastern countries, and we condemn any crackdown or oppression of the people's protests, as well as any deal-making between states [east or west] in order to re-direct or divert the changes taking place from above people's heads, and strongly condemn their usurpations and interventions in determining people's fates in Middle East countries.

12. We are a part of the world's workers, and we condemn firings and all forms of discrimination against migrant Afghan workers in Iran or any other national-ethnic workers.

13. While voicing our gratitude for all the international working class and other support for the struggles of the Iranian workers, and in unconditional support of the protests and demands of workers' demands all over the world, we consider ourselves their allies, and we emphasize now more than ever on international workers' solidarity for liberation from the miseries of the capitalist system.

14. May 1st must be declared an official holiday [in Iran] and be entered into the official calendar of the nation, and all forms of limitations or prohibitions against it must be abolished.

Long Live May 1st!
Long Live Workers' International Solidarity!
May 1st, 2011 / 11 Ordibehesht 1390

Signed by:
Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
Free Union of Iranian Workers
Committee for reopening Painters and Interior Design Workers' Syndicate
Committee for reopening Mechanical Metals Workers Syndicate
Society in Defense of Workers' Rights
Committee for Pursuit of Forming Workers' Organizations
Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations

The Core of Arab Counterrevolution

2011-04-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

But will his side still lick the other side?

Translation of the second part of Shalgooni's analysis of the revolution in the Arab world. This installment focuses on the particular nature and structure of the core Arab counterrevolutionary states, at the center of which are the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The article also looks at some of the differences between the states representing counterrevolution. The original article can be read, in Persian, here.

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Arab World - 2
by: Mohammad-Reza Shalgooni / April 17, 2011

As mentioned before, the Arab people in different countries have such vast linguistic and cultural connections with each other that [a majority] of them consider themselves as belonging to a unitary national identity, and the concept of "Arab nation" is a well established concept among them. This very speedy spread of the revolutionary movement from Tunisia to other Arab countries and their simultaneous development in different countries showed that the feeling of a collective national identity among the Arabs is not an intellectual phenomenon, but spreads wide and vast among the masses. However, the existence of Arab dictatorships is a substantial obstacle for the unity of the Arabs and drives different Arab countries in completely different directions. The more important point is that most these dictatorships are under the influence of American imperialism, which sees the formation of a political-economic union of Arab countries as a threat to its own interests. A look at the position of different Arab dictatorships within the current world system can clarify this point further.

Arab people and the dictatorships ruling over them
Arab states can be divided into three groups depending on their position within the current world system: oil states; non-oil states with strategic importance; peripheral states.

ONE: Oil States
Oil states are rentier states, a major portion of whose income is provided by sale of oil (and gas). Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Libya, Iraq and Algeria can be placed in this group. All these states, by utilizing the oil income, have great powers of maneuver vis-à-vis the society, and have bribed a small portion of population to be their support base, and try to maintain their rule through a mixture of [bribes] and oppression. In all these states there exists a fat layer of privileged bourgeoisie, which enjoys special economic advantages through its connection to political power. Systemic corruption is a well established and paralyzing reality in all these countries.

However, these oil states can be divided into two sub-categories, depending on the ratio of their oil income to their population. The first group consists of states whose rentier income compared to their population is very high. The second group consists of countries that, although oil (and gas) rent provide the majority of state income, the large population of the country imposes certain limits on the state that don't exist in the first group. The members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Libya belong to the first group, and Iraq and Algeria belong to the second group. Countries of the first group (minus Libya) have gross per capita domestic products of higher than $24 thousand, while the second group is in no such shape and their per capita product in below $10 thousand. A look at the gross per capita domestic products and populations of these countries shows their position clearly [see end note*]:

Saudi Arabia: population = 26 million; gross per capita product = $24k
Kuwait: population = 2.5 million; gross per capita product = $51.7k
Qatar: population = 848 thousand; gross per capita product = $145k
UAE: population = 5 million; gross per capita product = $40k
Oman: population = 3 million; gross per capita product = $26k
Libya: population = 6.6 million; gross per capita product = $13.8k
Iraq: population = 30 million; gross per capita product = $3.6k
Algeria: population = 35 million; gross per capita product = $7.4k

Oil states of the first group (minus Libya) are all members of GCC. The other member of GCC is Bahrain, which, unlike its neighbors, does not export a lot of crude oil and has the most diversified economy of the Persian Gulf; yet, export and refining of oil and its related fields still play a very important role in Bahrain's economy, and 60% of the income from exports, 70% of state income and 11% of gross domestic product come from these sectors. Additionally, many other similarities it shares with its neighbors, puts Bahrain in this same group. Incidentally, it should be reminded that Bahrain's population is less an million and its gross per capita product is $40.4k. The truth is that the Gulf Cooperation Council states occupy a very special place both in the current world system and in the Arab world. Therefore, any attempt to understand the line-up of the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in the Arab world cannot yield much without considering the peculiarities of this group [of states].

The most important characteristics of these states are:

1. The biggest share of exports and reserves of oil and gas of the Middle East in the hands of these states, and this region has extraordinary strategic importance for the American empire. It is not accidental that the protection of these states has been put directly in the hands of the U.S.'s own military forces, and the Fifth Naval Fleet and the Central Command are based respectively in Bahrain and Qatar.

2. All these states, having a very high ration of rentier income to population of country, have exceptional maneuvering power and opportunities. It is enough to note that the members of group of Gulf Cooperation Council, with fewer than 39 million people, enjoy a $1.2 trillion gross product. Also, gross per capita domestic product of some these GCC countries is transparently much higher than the average of member countries of OECD, meaning the club of the advanced capitalist countries. For instance, in this regard, in 2010 Qatar ranked first in the world.

3. The economy of all these countries are completely tied with the global economy, and all these states are supportive of American imperial interests. The relationship between these states and the economy of the U.S. and its allies finds particular significance in three spheres. First, the constellation of these states play a very important role in regulating the world oil market. In particular, as the biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia plays a key role in preventing large oil shocks in the world markets. Second, all these states reinvest their huge surplus incomes from oil back into western economies. Third, they are all among the most extravagant consumers in the world market; especially in terms of enormous and meaningless military expenditures. In fact, the honor of having made the biggest military purchases in history goes to these states. [...]

4. Some of the most outstanding characteristics of these states is the severe weakness of their agricultural sector and complete dependence on imports of food products. This is greatly due to shortage of sweet water and arable land. [...] This in turn intensifies the interconnectedness of these countries' economies with the world market.

5. Immigrant/Migrant workers, mostly from Asian countries, play an important role in the economies of these countries. A majority of these migrants who practically live in semi-slave like conditions, doing the most difficult and low level jobs, do not even have the right of an established residency. These migrant who have no rights form a great portion of the work force. [...] In effect, these countries are dependent on the world market even in terms of their labor force.

6. All these states, despite their multi-layered interconnectedness to the world economy, refuse to implement neo-liberal policies inside their own boundaries, and pay out handsome subsidies to their own citizens. Even Bahrain, which was named "Middle East's freest economy" by international financial institutions, was the first Arab country to institute unemployment benefit payments to its citizens. These states know well that they could not continue to exist without keeping their own citizens quiet [and happy]. [...]

7. Although all these states continue to rely on rent income of oil and gas, by investing massive financial means they have been also to create more diversified capitalist economies and been able to distance themselves from sole dependence on oil and gas income. In this regard too, Bahrain is a interesting example, which, despite a sharp reduction in income from oil and gas, has now been able to create a diversified and developed economy with even a high rate of growth.

8. All these states are tyrannical hereditary ruling systems, in all of which the royal families consider themselves the owners of the countries. To this day, in a majority of these countries, the right of people's sovereignty has not been accepted (not even on paper), and political power is completely in the hands of the royal family; the separation of public treasury from the sultans' wealth is practically meaningless and political parties are banned. For example, in UAE and Qatar, there is still not even a hint of the right to vote; in Saudi Arabia, men over the age of 21 can only participate in municipal elections and elect half of the city council, while the other half is appointed by the king. And, of course, women are denied even this "right". In Oman, two 'legislative' bodies exist, one whose members are appointed by the sultan, and both of which play purely consultative roles. Public voting rights and legislative bodies have only recently been introduced in Bahrain and Kuwait, and of course they only have very limited responsibilities and the real power still resides in the hands of the king.

9. Most of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, usually alongside the policies of the U.S. in the region, financially support the Arab dictatorships, as well as those in the Islamic world, supported by the U.S. They also play an important role in financially supporting reactionary Islamic trends in different countries. The role played in this regard by the Saudi dynasty has been particularly considerable, and the Saudi government has been the biggest supporter of reaction and counterrevolution in the Arab world and different Islamic countries. For example, the [Saudi] regime played an instrumental role in organizing a war of attrition against the defensive and progressive nationalism of the Arab people during the Gamal Abdul Nasser era. Also, reinforcing and strengthening reactionary Islam in Islam and Afghanistan would have been impossible with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and UAE. And we must not forget that the 'Taliban' phenomenon was developed/nurtured by Pakistani generals and financial resources of the Saudis and UAE.

Of course, the regimes of Sultan Qabus in Oman and Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in Qatar, due to their anxiety over Saudi hegemony, are always pursuing different policies. In particular, support of the Qatari government for the Al Jazeera TV network has proceeded along policies different from those of the Saudis as well as the Americans, and this TV network has played an important role in awakening the Arabs and in strengthening their common identity in recent years, and with the spreading of the Arab revolutionary fires, it has effectively become the platform of the rebellious people.

In view of the points mentioned, we can see that rentier oil states, and in particular the Gulf Cooperation Council states, are considered the primary stronghold of dictatorship and counterrevolution in the Arab world.

TWO: Non-oil states with strategic importance
These are states that, despite lacking oil resources, have played an important role in shaping the ruling political balance of forces in the Arab world, for the past thirty-to-forty years. Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Yemen and Morocco can be placed in this group. All these (except Lebanon, which has its own exclusive characteristics) are violent dictatorships, but are so different in so many respects that to group them together can be misleading. For example, Egypt, which houses nearly a quarter of the Arab population, and has played a key role in shaping the public opinion of the Arab people in the past century, differs from Lebanon -- with only four million people and a "sectarian" system -- in so many ways that cannot be ignored. However, despite all the differences among all these countries, the main arena of the progress for the revolution most likely lies in these very countries. And, if we consider the Arab world today as the "weak link in the imperialist chain", we must seek the breaking point of this weak link in these very countries. [...]

THREE: Peripheral states
These are that group of Arab states that, due to their underdevelopment and economic and political difficulties, do not play an important role in shaping the political balance of powers in the Arab world, and even today, after the start of the Arab revolutionary fires, will likely not be the arena for big revolutionary rebellions. Sudan, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Somalia, Djibouti, and Comoros islands can be considered as members of this group.

__________________________________________________________________
End Note: * all data is deliberately taken from CIA-The World Factbook, and the figures for gross per capita domestic product are based on [the assumption] "equality of purchasing power"

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Arab World

2011-04-14T00:38:00.001-07:00

Translation of an analysis by Shalgooni about the Arab revolution.
See original, in Persian, here ...

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Arab World - 1
by: Mohammad-Reza Shalgooni / April 9, 2011

The Arab revolution, whose introduction descended on the region like a thunder, and which brought tens of millions of people with their spontaneous protests to the streets in different Arab countries, is now facing a mountain of difficulties and turmoil. In Tunisia and Egypt, where the dictators were brought down, the dictatorial structures are still standing untouched, and the cronies of the dictators that were overthrown are planning to leash the revolution. In Libya, imperialist powers with the support and collusion of the most reactionary Arab dictatorships, in a surrealistic coalition, have entered the arena in support of the Libyan revolution. [Meanwhile] in Yemen, despite his grumblings about "White House conspiracies", Ali Abdullah Saleh's hands are left completely free in slaughtering the Yemeni revolutionaries. In Bahrain, where the Saudi military forces in support of the Al Khalifa royal family are occupying the place, the Al Jazeera TV distorts the truth in the same manner as Hilary Clinton. And finally, in Syria (despite all the predictions and disbelief of "experts"), where revolutionary waves are breaking the levies supporting the Asad dynasty, the Wahabi king of Saudi Arabia, in order to "neutralize the conspiracy," announces its solidarity with the Alawite Baathist monarchic republic. Can the great Arab revolution overcome these challenges and find a way out? Nobody can yet answer this question clearly, but paying attention to the reasons and the conditions that gave rise to this revolution can give us a better understanding of its capabilities and it horizons.

Conditions that gave rise to the Arab Revolution
Before anything, it must not be forgotten that the Arab revolution is a world even. Without attention to this truth, it will be difficult to understand the alignment of the forces and the ups and downs of the revolutionary process, even within the borders of particular countries involved. The factor that gives this revolution a global character is not merely the fact that it travels beyond the borders of this or that country. It is rather the very important and sensitive position of the Middle East in the current world system.

The Middle East is tied to the heart of the world system (meaning the U.S.) in two ways: through the oil and gas resources and through the issue of Israel. So far as the importance of oil and gas resources go, it is enough to remember that 60% of today's world's energy needs are met by oil and gas, and nearly 60% of known oil reserves and more than 40% of known gas reserves are located in the Middle East. The Israel issue, however, is important because it is the source of constant friction between the people of the region and the U.S. Whether we consider Israel as an outpost or a bridge for the American empire in the Middle East, or an out-of-control regime that even threatens American interests in the region, we cannot deny the reality of two factors: first, the "Israel lobby" exercises considerable influence in the power structures in the U.S. and has tied the American Middle East policy with Israeli interests; and second, the goal of the Israeli occupation [of Palestinian territories] is the complete elimination of the Palestinian people from the map of the Middle East, and this is something that the Arab nations cannot stay indifferent about. It was by putting his finger on this very truth that enabled Uri Avnery to write in the second week of the Egyptian revolution: "The turmoil in Egypt was caused by economic factors: the rising cost of living, the poverty, the unemployment, the hopelessness of the educated young. But let there be no mistake: the underlying causes are far more profound. They can be summed up in one word: Palestine." Considering these realities and truths, then, as long as the U.S. continues its [two-pronged] policy of unconditional support of Israel and the control of energy resources of Middle East, the connectedness of the region to the heart of the current world system will continue. For this reason, the Arab revolution in inevitable fashion is a rebellion against the current world system; and the more this rebellion progresses forward (and, of course, if it progresses forward), the more clearly and transparently will it manifest and display its [anti-systemic] nature. Any change in the Arab world will most definitely change the Middle East's relations with the current world system.

It is necessary here to remind the reader that "Middle East", more than being a geographic concept, is a strategic concept invented by the British empire, and has been employed and institutionalized by the American empire (and more so the English language media), and its boundaries vary depending on American policies. [...] However, the Arab world is a geographic and historical reality, without which "Middle East" (within or beyond any limits) loses its importance for many reasons:

1. A significant portion of the energy sources of the Middle East is located in the Arab world.

2. The Arab world is the most connected part of Middle East. Of course, Arab people live in (more than) 22 different countries, but a majority of them have such vast cultural, historical and religious connections that they consider themselves a united collectivity that shares the same destiny. Arabic is the official language of all these countries with a population of 350 million people that mostly live side by side over a contiguous landmass stretching from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the coasts of Persian Gulf. The mother tongue of nearly 80% of this population is Arabic, and the religion of 90% is Islam. [...]

3. History of Islam and the history of Islamic empires, Muslim holy places, and the Arabic language as the religious language of Islam, has bestowed a special place to the Arab world among the peoples of the greater Middle East and even the Muslim world, and this turns Arab issues into issues for the entire Muslim world, and in turn into truly global issues and sensitivities.

It is all these special characteristics together that make the Arab revolution a world event, with larger global resonance. In addition to these factors, the Arab revolution is taking place in a particular time period/era: after the banner of the thesis of "Clash of Civilizations" had been raised by some American imperialist strategists, and the sharp edge of this thesis pointed particularly at Muslims and naturally the Arabs; after the September 11, 2001 disaster, and a bigger disaster called "war on terrorism," whose sharp blade, again, has been drawn against Muslims and specially Arabs and has caused the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq; after PLO had been shut up and made irrelevant, and after the erection of the Apartheid Wall and the imprisonment of one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza ghetto, which was made possible through Mubarak's collusion with Israeli government.

And finally, two more factors tie the Arab revolution to the global clock: First, the Arab revolution set things on fire in an era when the revolution in information and communications had ripened on a world and mass scale; as a result, a significant portions of the Arab youth, by turning to the Internet and social media, could bypass dictatorial regimes' media, and competing satellite TV stations (especially since the creation of Al Jazeera TV) could bring closer together all the millions of the Arab masses in different countries. Second, the globalization of capital and the neo-liberal regime of accumulation have led to the biggest economic crisis of capitalism in the last eighty years, a crisis that is still causing unemployment, inequality, poverty and hunger on catastrophic levels around the world, and has had a determining role in starting the fires of the Arab revolution.

During the first days of the February 1917 revolution in Russia, in a series of articles titled "Letters from Afar", Lenin showed that the contradictions of the capitalist system at the beginning of the 20th century, more than anywhere else, had become critical in Russia, and it was from this that the concept of "the weak link in the imperialist chain" was created. And today, we can say with some certainty that the contradictions of world capitalism of twenty-first century are most critical in today's Arab world more than anywhere else, and the weak link in today's imperialist chain is in the Arab world.

The long road to the Arab revolution

2011-04-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

Whose cartography is to prevail?

This is from Weekly Worker (a publication of Communist Party of Great Britain), and seems to be a reasonable assessment of the situation in Libya; that, among other topics related to the current Arab revolutionary wave. The text is from "Moshé Machover's address at a recent CPGB aggregate on the defeat of the Libyan revolution, Al-Jazeera, and the goal of Arab unity."

The long road to the Arab revolution
by: Moshé Machover / March 31, 2011

It is very difficult to talk in a coherent way about a process which is unfolding and where things are changing all the time. What I would like to do is to initiate a discussion and explore some ideas about where the revolution is going, and what we should expect in both the short term and longer term.

But, given the contention on the left, I think we should start with Libya. There is a lot of confusion, and I think that this is partly for understandable reasons. I am not referring here to the ‘confusion’ of those who effectively cheer the imperialist intervention. Groups like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty are in my opinion simply social-imperialists.

I am actually talking about socialists - people I regard as comrades, such as Gilbert Achcar, who is not a social-imperialist and is very critical of western intervention and of this ‘coalition of the willing’ (and partly unwilling!) that is being sent to ‘protect’ the Libyan revolution.

There is a genuine problem, and it would be unfortunate to appear callous and uncaring about the fate of those in Benghazi who were penned in and faced the terrible prospect of being massacred. Given the despair they are in, I would not actually be too critical of them for calling on the so-called ‘international community’ for help.

We have to be clear that the ‘international community’ is itself an ideological construct, a term used in order to conflate the US-led global hierarchy of states on the one hand and global public opinion on the other. There is world public opinion - civil society - which has real humanitarian concerns, and then there is the so-called ‘international community’, which is the nom de guerre of the US and its followers.

Why Libya?
Why did they go for Libya and not other places? For me there are three main reasons. Firstly, there is the question of oil. Do not underestimate this factor. Of course, the quantity of oil Libya offers is next to nothing in comparison to Saudi Arabia, but it is its quality which makes them interested in it. It is just about the best oil you can find, particularly for aircraft fuel.

Secondly, they have been asked to intervene this time around, which is crucial in providing them with an ideological and political cover: nobody asked them in Egypt or in Yemen; nobody even asked them in Bahrain.

Thirdly, although Gaddafi’s Libya ceased to be a ‘rogue state’ from around 2003, there is some truth in the claim that, from the standpoint of the imperialists, Gaddafi is still a rogue. Why? Well he is obviously a little bit crazy and very unreliable for them. So, although he is ‘our friend’ now (or was until very recently!), he was never somebody who could be fully trusted, as he is unstable in every possible manner - including mentally. How anybody can take him seriously after hearing him speak is simply beyond me.
[...]
It is my view that the Libyan revolution is already defeated. From the moment the Interim Transitional National Council felt it had to invite this intervention it became clear that it was unable to overthrow the regime. As Marx observed a long time ago, revolution is needed not only to overthrow the powers that be, but also to transform the people who are making it - the process of revolution is a transformative one which gives the masses confidence in their ability to change things and to be masters of their own fate. Once you call on other forces to intervene, all this is lost, and in this sense it is a defeat.

The second remark which I think I would add to Achcar’s analysis is this. It may well be that inviting these forces into Libya is the lesser evil, compared to being slaughtered. But it is still an evil. Sometimes one must accept and put up with the lesser evil, but one must never demand it. The people who are not only demanding, but cheering the intervention are renegades to the revolutionary idea. If it is a lesser evil but it comes to pass anyway, then you have to protest against it, you have to denounce it.
[...]
Moreover, the no-fly (now no-drive?) zone is dangerous not only in its immediate effect on the outcome in Libya. It also sets a worrying precedent. Once you give these forces the legitimation to act as the global policeman, then next time they will use it as they please - not for the lesser evil, but the greater one. Giving such forces legitimacy is in the worst interests of revolution both in the Arab world and beyond - it is in the best interests of counterrevolution, because that is how they are going to use it. It is not simply this situation on its own, in isolation, but what it implies for the future as well.

Also, when our rulers make war it is very bad for us - this is a point made by Marx.
[...]
Whilst I have claimed that this moment marks the defeat of the Libyan revolution, I have not said that it is the defeat of the Arab revolution. I certainly hope it is not! This is just one sector of it, but it is not accidental that this defeat happened in a country like Libya. The reasons are quite clear.

Read the complete analytical article here ...

Condemn Camp Ashraf Massacre

2011-04-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

United in Violence and Illegitimacy

On April 8, 2011, the Iraqi government attacked Camp Ashraf, where a group of Iranian dissidents (Mojahedin-e Khalq of Iran) have been staying since 1980s. The U.S. occupying forces assumed the responsibility of first disarming and then protecting the people staying at Camp Ashraf when the U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003. Under the agreements reached between the U.S. and the Iraqi government, Camp Ashraf was supposed to be protected, in agreement with U.N. refugee agency policies regulating such cases. Camp Ashraf came under a similar attack previously, in June 2009.

Amnesty International Calls for Investigation into Camp Ashraf Attack
April 9, 2011

Take Action For Ashraf Resident!

Amnesty International, April 8, 2011 - The Iraqi authorities must immediately launch an independent investigation into reports that Iraqi troops killed and injured residents of a camp for Iranian exiles north of Baghdad in an unprovoked attack, Amnesty International said today.

“Iraqi troops moved into the camp this morning and used excessive force against residents who tried to resist them, according to the information we have received,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“This is the latest of a series of violent actions that the Iraqi government has taken against the Camp Ashraf residents, whose continuing presence in Iraq they oppose.”

Clashes broke out this morning after Iraqi security forces took up positions in the camp using armoured personnel carriers and, apparently, live fire against residents who tried to resist them, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries. As yet, the number of casualties cannot be independently verified.

The camp in Diyala province around 60 km north of Baghdad is home to some 3,400 Iranian exiles and refugees, including members and supporters of the banned Iranian opposition group the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).

Read the complete report here ...

RELATED:

1) See a chronology of the bloody massacre here ...

2) NYT: Iraq Blocks U.S. Aid to Camp of Iranian Exiles After Clash (April 9, 2011)

Acknowledging Bankruptcy of Iranian Regime's Official Ideology

2011-04-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

"Here's your next assignment. But, don't go eliminating everybody all at once now!"

Translation of an article by Mohamad-Reza Shalgooni, an activist/analyst/writer with Raah-e Kargar. The original article can be read here.

This is an important analysis. From its inception, the Islamic Republic has been in a constant process of purging its own fellow travelers. The initial coalition that formed the first elected revolutionary government was soon (within months) purged of its most liberal layers. The subsequent, long and persistent process of eliminating various factions, and the consequent non-stop positioning and re-positioning of different factions throughout the 32-year history of Islamic Republic -- along with the most ferocious barbarity displayed against the people of Iran and their rights by ALL factions, while in power -- are among the notable constants in the life of this regime.

Any phenomenon (e.g., a political state formation) that strives to live in complete and utter contradiction with its environment (e.g., in a complex society like modern Iran) will forever produce and re-produce contradictions and conflicts within itself. This is axiomatic.

In the article below, Mohamad-Reza Shalgooni shows us the application of this axiom to the current situation in Iran. The latest conflict/contradiction is among the ranks of (what I call) fundamentalist factions, and Shalgooni highlights the significance of their skirmishes.

"Iranian Doctrine": Acknowledging Bankruptcy of Regime's Official Ideology
Mohamad Reza Shalgooni / 24 Marh 2011

Organizing widespread and lavish Norooz celebrations by Ahmadinejad government around the country has once again caused a quarrel within the "Principlist" factions regarding the "Iranian Doctrine." In the last two to three weeks, many of the well known Principlist figures -- from Mohamad-Reza Bahonar to Ahmad Khatami, from Yadollah Javani (head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guards) to Gholam-Hossein Gheib-Parvar (head of the Fajr Battalions of Fars province), from Ahmad Tavakoli to Hossein Shariatmadari -- have all raised their voices in opposition to the "Iranian Doctrine" of Ahmadinejad's faction. Their reactions have gone so far as Bahonar calling it "a huge sedition taking shape," which "wants to emerge out of Principlism, but does not recognize the religious seminaries and [Islamic] Shari'a." Also, Ali Motahari has said in majlis [parliament], "We warn the president that if he continues to insist on spreading the Iranian doctrine, and ignoring the hejab [Islamic cover] issue, we will put the questioning of the president on the [parliament's] agenda." It surely must have been an attempt to prevent the further escalation of these very differences when Khamenei, in his Norooz address in Mashad [in northeastern Iran, burial place of Imam Reza, eighth Shiite Imam], with "admonition and a serious warning to the responsible officials of the three branches," asked them to not display [and quarrel over] their differences in front of the people.

What is this "Iranian Doctrine", however, and what goals does Ahmadinejad's gang wish to pursue by proposing this doctrine? From a look at the hodgepodge of things said in this regard by Ahmadinejad and Masha'ie and their fellow-travelers, it is clear that their "Iranian Doctrine", rather than a well defined and coherent intellectual and political system of thought is in fact a sign of distancing from the official ideology of the Islamic Republic, and is an effort to shape a ruling ideology (one that is more effective, in their belief) in the usual manner: through trial and error, erratic movements and pushing forth in darkness. Apparently, they have realized that the official ideology (especially) in today's world and in a country like Iran, is so out of touch and an obstacle to such a degree that, without an effective mobilization of the regime's support base, it will daily cause an increasing number of the majority of the people into rebellion against the regime. It is with an eye on this issue that they are trying to mix up some elements of Iranian nationalism and Shiite ideology, in an attempt to fashion other tools that are capable of mobilizing, and thus save the Islamic Republic from the current predicament (which has constantly become more suffocating for the regime).

In order to better understand their thinking and their goals, it is important to pay attention to a few points:

1. The central core of the official ideology of Islamic Republic is commitment to Shari'a and carrying out its dictates. In fact, it is the commitment to Shari'a which creates the need for Islamic rule, including the velayat-e faqih [rule of religious guradian]. We must not forget that it was this commitment to Shari'a that, before the formation of Islamic Republic and Khomeini's ideas about velayat-e faqih, in the period of Constitutional movement, which led to the proposed necessity of conformity of the laws passed by the parliament to the Shari'a rulings, which was made possible in the Second Principle/Act of the Amendment to the Constitution, which gave veto power to sources of emulation, [represented] through five qualified, predetermined religious scholars. An institution that was a less violent version of today's 'Guardian Council'.

This very Shari'a, however, and especially its rules and regulations regarding social issues, are the most rigid and cumbersome parts of the Islamic ideology that have become intertwined with the "historical Islam" and the conditions for its emergence [initiallty], and is one of the biggest problems of Muslims in today's societies. For example, it is enough to look at "personal rights", and especially women's rights, to see how far out of touch [such rules] are in today's societies. For [another] example, just the intellectual commitment to the principle of women's lesser worth compared to men, the rule of "women are half of men" and the separation of men from women, or gender apartheid, in today's world (in which the equality of individual rights, at least on paper, has become a universal principle) can lead any government to constant confrontations and an attritional war against the majority of the society. [...]

2. The incongruity of the principle of velayat-e faqih [rule of the religious guardian] is no less of an incongruity than that of the ancient rulings of Shari'a. In today's world, dictatorship is not a rare phenomenon, but most of the world's dictatorships portray themselves as elected by the people and as enactors of people's will, and they insist on showing themselves as republics and as being faithful to the superficial rituals of republicanism. This is so because in today's world, people's sovereignty/rule (at least on paper) has become a universal principle.

The big problem with velayat-e faqih is that not only is it a dictatorship, but on the intellectual level too it defends the necessity and righteousness of the dictatorship of the religious guardian. And it is impossible that, in today's world, this would not cause conflict and crises. Of course, in Islamic Republic too the kingly absolute rule of the religious guardian has been wrapped with the cover of 'republic', and is especially portrayed as having arisen from people's revolution and their choice. However, the insistence on the divine source of their rule and the very limited responsibilities of the elected institutions as opposed to the semi-god like lifetime privileges of the religious guardian, and the domination of elected bodies by institutions of the religious guardianship, are all so obvious and clear that the fig leaf of 'republic' can hardly do its job of covering the real face of the absolutist kingly rule. In other words, in a world in which many dictatorships, in order to justify themselves, resort to [rationalizations such as] "enlightened dictatorship" or "developmentalist dictatorship" as a necessary, temporary and transitional stage, the Islamic republic, in contrast, by resorting to the necessity of the absolutist rule of the religious guardian for enacting ancient reactionary laws of Shari'a, is in effect forced to defend the necessity of "Unenlightened dictatorship" and "Reactionary tyranny", and of course of the divine and eternal type.

3. People's rule, or people's sovereignty, manifests itself in today's world in the form of the sovereignty of the nation because citizens' rights have meaning only within the boundaries of the nation-state. And this creates an opportunity for an active role by nationalism in the dominant politics of countries. Nationalism can be one of the most effective ways of confronting the formation of independent awareness and [collective] will of the people, and of preventing the strengthening of democratic institutions. Nationalism's main role is mostly to unite the people in the nation in the face of "others", and these "others" may/can be a foreign "threat", or other nations (mainly neighbors), but (in nationalism's view) "they" always have infiltrators inside the country, who prevent the complete unity of the nation: from trends and organizations that defend class awareness and solidarity with workers and the poor to ethnic, cultural and religious minorities.

The offensive/aggressive form of nationalism, especially when it sees essential freedoms and democracy and even pluralism [among its own ranks] as obstacles, takes the form of fascism. Fascism's role is to inculcate [a sense of] national superiority and to keep the "nation" mobilized to confront the "others", by leveling out and homogenizing (and mostly centralizing) political and economic structures as well as evaluative systems, and by putting them all under a unified command. For fascism, 'nation' has meaning only in the form of herded masses under the guidance of a unitary leader: a leader who is the expression of the homogeneity of the nation and understands and expresses the "spirit" and the will of the nation better than the nation itself. In other words, fascism is not after divine legitimacy from the skies but, like other modern ideologies, understands its legitimacy to be issued by historical necessity and the will of a homogeneous nation, in herd like fashion, and it creates conditions in which the nation cannot express its will independent of the "leader". And it is this very mechanism and essence of fascism that makes it suitable for Ahmadinejad and his gang, as an attractive substitute for ridding themselves of the [current] meddlesome and ineffective official, ancient ideology of the Islamic Republic.

4. From the very beginnings, the Islamic Republic has always had strong fascistic tendencies within itself, which it strengthened, and some of its most important institutions, such as Revolutionary Guards and the Basij and its security and intelligence bodies, were formed with a fascistic logic and culture. Although these "pilars", due to several reasons -- including the multiplicity of centers of power and the traditional ideology of the regime -- could not become the leading centers of power until a decade ago, today they are clearly in a more dominant position and are trying to bring under their own control different ruling institutions. And it is against the background of the climb to a more powerful position of political power by these "pilars" that Ahmadinejad's gang is raising the banner of "Iranian Doctrine." They try to somehow show their displeasure with the fight against bad hejab, and in different [social] spheres they show signs that mean nothing other than taking a distance from the most obvious elements of the official ideology, and exactly for that reason most of the Principlists portray those moves as [sinful]. Numerous signs indicate that Ahmadinejad gang's "cultural" moves are not unrelated to all the hurried and speedy changes being enacted at various levels of power, and we must evaluate these moves as part of the tendency by the political power structures of the Islamic Republic to turning [completely] fascistic.

5. The process of distancing from the official ideology of the regime is still in its early stages, and (as mentioned) is still progressing by trial and error and in darkness. It is therefore still unclear what exactly Ahmadinejad and his supporters' plans are and what goals they pursue. It is clear from right now however that this distancing is, first of all, an acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of the official ideology of Islamic Republic by some of it most rabid supporters; secondly, it will be faced with a fierce opposition from the Principlists, and it may lead to an all-out confrontation between the Principlist factions. The truth is that with the elimination of the reformists from power, the Islamic Republic has not become more homogeneous, and just like Mohamad-Reza Bahonar predicts, another "great sedition" is taking form, a sedition that this time will emerge from within the Principlists themselves.

Campaign in Defense of Political Refugees’ Hunger Strike in Van – Turkey

2011-03-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

This is from Street Journalist.

Declaration of Campaign in Defense of Political Refugees’ Hunger Strike in Van – Turkey

A group of political refugees in the city of Van (Turkey) has announced that they have been on a hunger strike from Tuesday, 29 March 2011, in front of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Van, Turkey.

UNHCR has accepted them as refugees years ago, but in spite of this, UNHCR has not so far carried out the process of their resettlement to a third peaceful country. This problem has created a lot of economic, security and psychological difficulties and problems for these political refugees.

The Campaign in Defense of Political Refugees’ Hunger Strike in Van-Turkey tries to make their voices heard by the authorities of UNHCR and refugee-receiving countries, by drumming up support from organizations and individuals who defend refugee rights and by spreading and reflecting the news of this hunger strike.

The Campaign in Defense of Political Refugees’ Hunger Strike in Van-Turkey appeals to the refugee rights organizations and all human rights activists to help and support these political refugees by sending letters of objection to the office of UNHCR in turkey and demand that they accelerate the process of their transference to a third country immediately.

UNHCR – VAN
Address: Istasyon Mahalle, Terminal 1. Sokak Hayirlar Caddesi 40/2 Van
Phone: 0432 2155470 – 2143630
Fax: 0432 2148404
turan@unhcr.org

Children of Fallujah: DU Victims

2011-03-27T16:53:00.001-07:00

An informational video about DU

First spotted on Uruknet, see below a report from New Weapons Committee on increased cases of birth defects in Fallujah, Iraq. This is of utmost importance.

Imperialist interventions cause more than economic and social destructions of societies, lasting decades or more. Those forms of destruction alone are immensely costly. But, of late, the U.S. and western European interventions such as in Yugoslavia, in Iraq (both in 1991 and in 2003), in Afghanistan, and now in Libya too, have brought with them a form of destruction that is of the most maliciously sinister nature. We are of course referring to the use of uranium munitions in all these aggressive imperialist military interventions.

Use of uranium munitions is a war crime according to the most acceptable rules of war proposed by international law; laws that have determined that use of agent orange, white phosphorous bombs or other chemical agents are similarly war crimes.

Depleted uranium (DU; which is NOT depleted of radioactive toxicity) is a radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. The U.S. and other countries that use nuclear reactors for energy production produce tons upon tons of depleted uranium each year. Storing this waste product safely has always been a huge problem for such countries.

In the U.S., to the extent that any conscious industrial planning has existed, it has been centered on military development. Increasingly, and naturally, all problems are addressed militarily. To address the 'storage' problems of depleted uranium, which is a very hard heavy metal, most western weapons manufacturers are currently using depleted uranium in the production of munitions (as well as armor for tanks, etc.), which adds immense 'kill power' to those munitions.

However, upon impact, the depleted uranium contained in the munitions explode into millions of dust particles that disperse into the air, settle down into the soil, or come back down in the rain, and in all cases eventually contaminate all soil, water and food. The radioactivity of depleted uranium remains immensely toxic for thousands of years.

Increase of birth defects and miscarriages in Fallujah
Newweapons Press release

Increase in time of birth defects and miscarriages in Fallujah since 2003 and its association with toxic metals load in the population and in newborns and children with birth defects and their families

We present here a full scientific investigation on the birth defects increase in Falluhja. Unusually high frequency of birth defects and miscarriages was observed over the years following 2003, with gradual increase since then and with birth defects frequencies not decreasing up to November 2010.

For 2010, medical sources in Falluhja reported to us 14.7% of birth defects. This is about 10 folds higher compared to the frequencies in the same families in the years 1991-2001. Also miscarriage rates have increase considerably over the time from 2003.
[...]
The authors report that absolute levels of teratogenic and carcinogenic contaminants (Vanadium, Cobalt, Molybden, Uranium and Lead) were significantly higher in Iraqi than in controls from other areas, with Lead levels in children with birth defects and Uranium in their parents higher respectively than that in other newborns or parents of normal Falluhja children.

The composite metal load might be a major factor in the increase in time of events that lead to birth defects and miscarriages registered in the last years.
[...]

Read the complete press release here ...

Oppose Death Penalty for Kurdish Activist in Iran

2011-03-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Translation of the statement by Raah Kargar's Executive Council on the death penalty issued for Shirkooh Moarefi, a Kurdish activist, whose day of execution is set for May 1. How do they throw salt into the wound? Here is one way!

We Are All Shirkooh! United and Collectively We Protest the Barbaric Death Sentence for Shirkooh Moarefi!
Statement of the Executive Council of Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran (Raah Kargar)

Shirkooh Moarefi, a Kurdish activist youth, is once again facing death penalty. According to a letter from his family, [town of] Saqhez court issued the sentence at the same time as the Norouz [Iranian New Year] celebrations, and they have announced the date of the execution to be on May 1, at the same time as the International Workers' Day. The upholding of the death sentence for Shirkooh Moarefi by the court occurred right after the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to appoint a special rapporteur to monitor Iran's human rights conditions; the [execution sentence] is a show of defiance to that world body by the Islamic Republic. It also conveys the message that the regime does not intend to cave in to the international pressure and intends to continue the execution of its opponents. The regime, especially given the relentless [political] conditions it is wrestling with, can also not afford to put aside one of its most important and basic weapons and tools of intimidation and of spreading fear among the people.

[We have] a situation in which the removal of price subsidies have caused ever increasing poverty and misery along with uncontrollable inflation. This has increasingly created the conditions for connecting the struggles going on for demands for equality and demands for freedom in our society. There were also the protest actions of workers and the poor in shantytowns [outskirts of urban areas] toward the close of last year [which ended on March 20]. The expansion and spreading of the anti-dictatorial protests and the deepening of its mass nature in the new year have become real important threats to the continuation of the Islamic Republic. Given all these conditions, the court in Saqhez chose May 1 as the day of execution so as to make clear that the punishment for any effort to connect the movement [of workers] for economic demands to the anti-dictatorial movement is execution; furthermore, the Islamic Republic's gift to the working classes on May 1 is not only the continuation of no rights for workers, as well as low wages below inflation levels, not only the continuation of imposed hunger and unsigned contracts, not only slave-like work conditions and even lower wages and the continuation of inflation and the non-payment of wages for months, but also the gallows' noose.

The upholding of the death sentence for Shirkooh Moarefi and the decision to carry out the execution on May 1 creates a new challenge for all the defenders of freedom and democracy: Silence regarding this criminal sentence will create a dangerous divide in the anti-dictatorial movement. This is so because a movement that cannot unconditionally defend all political prisoners regardless of their political ideas and beliefs, a movement that cannot act as one against death penalty as a state crime, that movement cannot become universal and will be set back. On the other hand, widespread protests -- lacking any sectarian narrow mindedness and irrelevant [political] calculations -- against this cruel and barbaric sentence will be an indication of the maturing of the anti-dictatorial movement, and will be an important step in the direction of resolving some of the divisions within the movement, and will strengthen unity and solidarity in the struggle against the oppressors.

The Executive Council of the Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran (Raah Kargar), while strongly condemning this barbaric sentence, calls on all political parties and formations and democratic organizations, all the forces of the anti-dictatorial movement, all individuals and political figures who support human rights and oppose death penalty, and all freedom-seeking Iranians in and outside the country to raise their voices of protest against the death sentence of Shirkooh Moarefi.

Let us get together and with widespread and united protest push the Islamic Republic back once again, and turn this May 1 into a day of shouting our collective pain against death penalty and against the lack of any rights for workers, the poor and all the people in Iran.

Down with the Islamic Republic!
Long Live Freedom, Long Live Socialism!
Executive Council of Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran (Raah Kargar/Woker's Path); March 26, 2011

Khamenei's Jihad against Workers' Livelihood

2011-03-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

Translation of an article by Morteza Kavian. Found the original at Raah-e Kargar website.

A Look at Khamenei's Norouz Address: Call to Jihad from Fear
by: Morteza Kavian / 23 March 2011

With the arrival of Norouz [New Year, first day of spring], Khamenei congratulated all fellow Iranians in and outside the country, as well as all others who celebrate Norouz and hold it in respect. But, he saved his special congratulations for the families of those who are "in the service of the system and revolution."

He said: "Of course, some bitter events occurring in some countries -- in Bahrain, against their dear people, in Yemen, in Libya -- does not make the new year refreshing for us, and prevents people from feeling the full joy of Norouz." But of course he did not show the same [feelings] for the people of Syria since it is totally understood among the regime's ranks that the issue of the anti-dictatorial movement in Syria should at all costs remain hushed and not talked about. Khamenei, along with all his corrupt systems' liars, have an incurable stupidity that prevents them from opening their eyes and seeing the vast and widespread informational and organizational capabilities [for connecting with others] in today's connected and Internet-filled world. However, watching a video clip [available on YouTube], in which the Syrian people who have risen up are shouting, "No Hezbollah, No Iran!" sheds new light on the dimensions of the Iranian rulers' disgraceful infamy [internationally].

More important, however, is that Khamenei could not admit that the refreshing taste of Norouz was spoiled for him not because people in the region were being killed by criminals just like him; but rather because of an incurable fear and dread -- about the determination of the movement of the people who have risen up and their collective decision to topple this ignominious system. A dread that has been forced on him and his supporters and [paid thugs].

Khamenei adds: "[In the past year] in the economic field, in political spheres, and with regards to the glorious presence of people in the political arena and in the service of revolution and ... we have witnessed that the country's officials too, in the executive branch, the legislative and the judiciary, have performed their duties; especially the executive branch in this one year has carried out great tasks, which include this very important and sensitive issue of rationalizing the subsidies."

In the tomb of Imam Reza, Khamenei says: "Carrying out the rationalization of subsidies, which all economic experts agree to, has been a goal and dream for some years, and with god's blessing, it started last year, and the cooperation of the people and the government in carrying it out has been excellent."

He said: "The most basic efforts and plans of the enemies of our people and our country are economic issues." And he adds: "That's why in this new year that has begun, we must pay attention to the most basic problems of the country, and in my view all these are economic problems. That is why I call this year 'Year of Economic Jihad' ... The natural movement [of the economic factors] is not enough; in this arena, we must take a leap with a fighting spirit."

Meanwhile, in this theatrical production Ahmadinejad too, in his Norouz message, displayed his exemplary and brazen shamelessness, and in explaining the "economic successes of last year", said: "Housing plans, investments and production continued speedily, and more than one million and six hundred thousand jobs were created in an unprecedented record in Iran." He also added that the plan for rationalizing subsidies, as a vast and transformative plan, started out well with unrivaled cooperation and support and alertness of the Iranian people, and is well on course. "In two to three years, we shall uproot the problem of unemployment from this shiny land, and in the near future no housing problems shall exist for the youth and the people of Iran."

The factor that reveals the [true nature of the] current conditions is the attempt to push forth with a fascistic policy, which is intent on going down its inauspicious path relying upon truncheons, which is exactly the meaning of the announcement of "economic jihad" by Khamenei, and also the policy of openly lying by Ahmadinejad government. A policy that has a thoroughly fascistic nature.

So now, this most enormous and painful operation on the body of the Iranian economy, from among all the limitless lies of Ahmadinejad and his Imam, arms itself with a naked sword, so as to be able to make possible the looting of the last pieces of livelihood not had by the dispossessed people, and so as to complete the assault against the empty tables of workers.

The magnificent movements in the Middle East and North Africa have so far illustrated clearly, and clarify [further] at each moment, that there exist only a hair's distance between their anti-dictatorial movement and bread issues. Additionally, the intensification and deepening of capital's neo-liberal policies in these countries have increasingly and continuously rendered freedom and social equality into inseparable components [of real liberty]. That is why Khamenei and his supporters know very well that their plans and moves in the political and economic arenas, especially under the conditions of mass collapse of people's support and the [regime's] lack of any legitimacy, will not work any more if lacking the characteristics of a "jihad". This is also why Khamenei included at the top of his advice to "teach and spread awareness" among the people about the "economic successes", which means nothing other than falsifying and lying to the workers and the poor, all the more.

Khamenei says, "Complaints have always existed among the officials from the beginning of the revolution, and that is the nature of such work. But, these complaints should not be brought among the people, and the people should not be made to suffer or get disappointed; the officials should rather solve such complaints amongst themselves." This advice is right along the same policy; a policy that is based on brute force on the one hand, and lies, deceits and secretiveness on the other.

However, the violent assault of the regime of religious guardians against the living conditions of the masses of workers and the poor -- an assault that has started for some months now and with reliance on this fascistic policy is supposed to continue its wretched spread -- will not go unanswered. Capital has always created the forces that are its own gravediggers; the expansion of the assault by the regime against the livelihoods of the workers of the country will create favorable conditions for connecting the anti-dictatorial struggles of the people with the movements seeking equality [and economic justice]. Conditions that will organize and bring the hardworking battalions of the Iranian working classes to the arena of struggle against the corrupt Islamic regime, and soon will uproot and get rid of the system of looting and violence and rotten reactionary religion that exist in Iran.

UN Human Rights Rapporteur Approved for Iran

2011-03-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. Human Rights Council established a special investigator on Iran on Thursday, a move spearheaded by Washington that will subject Tehran's record to U.N. scrutiny for the first time in nearly a decade.

Activists welcomed the move as historic, underlining the need for a focused investigation into widespread allegations of abuse, including arrests of political opponents and torture.

The 47-member forum, overcoming Iran's objections to a resolution brought by Sweden and the United States, approved it by 22 votes in favor, 7 against and 14 abstentions.

Read complete report here ...

Days of Oppression & Resistance

2011-03-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

From Rooz online.

365 Days of Suppression and Resistance
by Fereshteh Ghazi

[...]
[The past one] year began with the en-mass arrest of political, media, civil and public activists; the year is highlighted with executions and horrendous interrogations in which interrogators issued prison sentences on behalf of judges.

The year began with execution sentences for five members of a family. The death penalty of Motahere Bahrami, Reyhane Haj Ibrahimi and Hadi Gaemi were reduced to 19 years of exiled prison who were sent to Rajaishahr prison in Karaj, but the death sentence of two other members Ahmad and Mohsen Daneshpour Moghadam were upheld. This father and son, along with Abdol-Reza Ghanbari - an arrested teacher - remain in danger of being executed.

In Ordibehesht, the second month of 1389 [April 20-May 20, 2010], 5 political prisoners were secretly executed, something that shocked Iran and the world as Farzad Kamangar, a Kurdish teacher, Shirin Elam Hooi, Ali Heydarian, Farhad Vakili and Mehdi Eslamian left us. This marked the beginning of other secret executions that followed. The family members and parents of these prisoners were banned from holding any mourning or memorial services for them and even their bodies were not delivered to them. Some of the family members were arrested as well.

Soon, Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Haj Aghayari, Hossein Khazri and Zahra Bahrami were also secretly executed and buried, their families never seeing them or even their bodies after their disappearance and execution. Saeed Malekpour, according to his wife, and Hamid Ghasemishal face the possibility of execution. Their death sentences were suspended once.

Zeinab Jalalian, Habibollah Gholbarioour, Zonyar and Loghman Moradi, Habibollah Latifi, Shirkoo Moarefi and other political prisoners have been sentenced to death and await their fate. The death sentences of Habibollah Latifi and Shirkoo Moarefi had once earlier been suspended, but there is no certainty this would happen again.

But it was not just political prisoners who were secretly executed last year. Many non-political prisoners, particularly in the city of Mashhad, too were executed in secret.

Like previous years, 1389 was the year when “steps against national security, espionage, fighting God, propaganda against the regime, inciting public opinion, publishing lies, creating suspicion, election rigging, disrupting public order through creating chaos", etc were the charges that were made against most of the prisoners who were given heavy sentences.

In 1389, the staff of foreign embassies, journalists, civil activists, judges, political, media and civil activists, including many prominent personalities inside the regime and some even founders of the Islamic republic were arrested, and some such as Mostafa Tajzadeh and his wife Fakhrolsadat Mohtashemipour continue to remain in detention.

Most of these prisoners remained deprived of even their prison rights and had no visitation rights, telephone calls, etc. But the letters and messages of these prisoners that made it out of prison confirmed their perseverance and resistance against the cruelty inside the prison.

Some, such as Tajzadeh, Mohammad Nourizadeh, Majid Tavakoli, Bahare Hedayat, Issa Saharkhiz, also wrote public letters that exposed what went on behind bars.

Perhaps the cruelest sentence went to Jaafar Panahi, Nasrin Sotudeh, Jila Bani Yaghoob, Ahmadi Zeidabadi, Emad Bahavar, Hossei Ronaghi Maleki, and Hossein Derakhshan, the two latter ones receiving 15 and 19 year prison sentences.

During the year, “safe houses”, which are secret detention centers, once again were used against political activists.

In 1389, regime officials even feared tomb stones of those it executed and so refrained from declaring the site of burial of many of those it murdered to their family members.

These atrocities were so gross that the Kahrizak prison had to be shut. This was the site of brutal murders, rape and torture of prisoners.

Even mothers of prisoners were not immune from arrest and detention. Mothers of Saeed Zeynali and Hesam Tarmesi were arrested as they were pursing to find out the condition of their imprisoned children. These two mothers were eventually released on bail, but Hakimeh Shokri and Neda Mostaghimi, two other mothers were arrested and charged with espionage and acting against national security.

This was [also] the year the people of Iran came to the streets and called the leader of the Islamic republic a dictator and announced that he too would face what Mubarak of Egypt and Bin Ali of Tunisia faced.

The complete article can be read here ...

Into the New Year at Hafezieh in Shiraz

2011-03-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a video clip from a gathering in Shiraz at Hafezieh, tomb of the poet Hafez. People were bringing in the New Year at this old poet's tomb, shouting slogans against the dictatorship and singing songs of freedom.

Iran: Hundreds dead or injured in Ghezel Hesar prison

2011-03-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

On the eve of the Iranian New Year, we can only post this bleak report. This is about the prison clashes that happened in Ghezel Hesar prison (in Karaj), on March 15, 2011. The clashes occurred as a result of prisoners protesting the executions at that prison. Found this on Persian2English.

Hundreds dead or injured in Ghezel Hesar prison clashes, phones cut off

According to the HRANA group, at least 150 prisoners are dead or injured after bloody clashes erupted in Karaj’s Ghezel Hesar prison on the night of March 15th. Thousands of prisoners from units 2 and 3 launched a protest after hearing the news of plans to execute ten inmates.

During the protest approximately 3,000 prisoners attempted to break the doors of their cells while chanting, “Executions must stop.” Security forces attacked the prison cells, resulting in bloody clashes and the transfer of some prisoners from their cells. Reports indicate that prison guards used live ammunitions to control the protesters. Consequently, nearly eighty prisoners were seriously injured or killed, but the number of those shot is at 150 or higher. A handful of officers along with the deputy warden of the prison, Mr. Safakhil suffered leg injuries during the clashes. The prisoners who protested are either serving a heavy sentence or facing imminent execution.

The Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners reported on March 16th that some people attacked the prison from the outside in an attempt to free some of the detainees. According to these reports, some prisoners escaped. The news of the escapes has not been confirmed by other sources.

See complete report here ...

1) Amnesty International: Deaths in Iranian Prison Must Be Investigated (March 17, 2011)

2) Take action on behalf of Iranian political prisoners: AI: Norouz Action

No Nuke Power Plants for Iran, Please!

2011-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

As more detailed news reaches Iran about the disastrous Japan earthquake on March 11, the most powerful in the last century, and about the resultant tsunami that has devastated the Sendai area in northeastern Japan, the Iranian people -- especially those living in Bushehr, the sight of the nuclear power-plant-to-be -- must be feeling not merely a sense of sadness for the people of Japan in these days of severe hardship and suffering. As the people of Bushehr in particular start digesting the implications for them and start to find out about more details of the unfolding disaster in Japan, they certainly will be reflecting on their own situation and the possible threats directed at them by the nuclear power plant that has yet to go live, in their port city on Persian Gulf.

Bushehr residents must be in deep anxiety over the existence of this nuclear plant in their city, built by a government that has demonstrated its absolute disregard for people's lives, a government lacking any and all accountability. They must be dreading the certain oncoming disaster should the nuclear plant start its operations. They know that they too regularly feel the earth shake under their feet since southern Iran often experiences earthquakes. They know that the Iranian government is no Japanese government. Safety standards? Pure fantasy! Earthquakes strengths the power plant is supposed to have been built to withstand? How about, earthquake strengths the plant is actually able to withstand? Evacuation plans? The residents of Bushehr must surely be surveying the available roads leaving the city, and most likely shaking their heads in despair, over the disrepair of the transportation possibilities and the sacristy of available choices of possible refuge.

* * *

The Iranian people have a right to demand accountability for a series of issues involved with nuclear energy production in Iran: Where are the records of seismological surveys carried out to determine how near or far major fault lines lie from the Bushehr power plant? What are the safety regulations put in place? What about the environmental-impact studies for the 'best-case' scenarios (as in, where to store the nuclear waste, and how)? Has any thinking gone into plans for a worst-case scenario, for the necessary evacuations, for containment of the radiation contamination, and on and on?

Equally important, do the people in Iran have any oversight rights over any of the nuclear activities conducted by the government? Of course not. As well, is there a reliable infrastructure available to help rebuild lives in a worst-case scenario? Or, is Bushehr as a city, much like Chernobyl and vicinity, an expendable entity? In other words, are the ruling gentlemen in Tehran - and all the capitals signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - offering the people of Bushehr, as guarantees for their safety, mere luck and divine protection?

Iran rests on many large and active fault lines (you can see a seismicity map of Iran at: Seismic Hazard Assessment of Iran; by B. Tavakoli and M. Ghafory-Ashtiany). As shown in the seismicity map, southern regions of Iran are regions of regular tectonic movements.

Of the major earthquakes that occur in Iran, a good many are stronger than magnitude 6.5 on the Richter scale, from which point on major damage and destruction increase exponentially. Here are some casualty figures from recent major earthquakes in Iran, since 1972:

· Dec. 26, 2003: Southeastern Iran, Bam, magnitude 6.5; 26,000 killed
· June 22, 2002: Northwestern Iran in the Qazvin province, magnitude 6; 500 killed (included for a comparative frame)
· May 10, 1997: Northern Iran near Afghanistan, magnitude 7.1; 1,500 died
· June 21, 1990: Northwest Iran around Tabas, magnitude 7.3-7.7; 50,000 killed
· Sept. 16, 1978: Northeast Iran, magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed
· April 10, 1972: Southern Iran near Ghir Karzin, magnitude 7.1; 5,374 killed

These casualty figures are very high as it is. In each case, additional thousands or tens of thousands more suffered also months and years of dislocation and loss of livelihoods, for which they were never compensated, nor were they helped in any way in rebuilding their lives. Now, imagine the (at least tenfold) additional casualties and displaced if any such earthquake is accompanied by the radiation contamination associated with the melt down of a nuclear reactor.

We cannot even imagine what nightmare we will face if a disaster of the same magnitude as that near Sendai occurred in Bushehr. We can, however, state categorically that not even a shade of Japanese building standards is likely to have been enforced or followed in the construction of Bushehr power plant; and we know for a fact that not one hundredth of the Japanese transportation infrastructure exists in Iran; and we know for a certainty that there will be little if any assistance provided the stricken people by the Iranian government in such a disastrous case.

We would therefore be right to question everything that has anything to do with nuclear activities in Iran. When it comes to nuclear power, transparency and accountability are essential. IAEA inspections are all fine and good for people living all the way on the other side of the globe. Inside Iran, however, and especially for those living in a city with a power plant, people need to have a guaranteed right of citizens' groups - consisting of independent scientists, environmental activists, citizens' direct representatives, etc. - to carry out on-demand inspections of nuclear facilities, the right to review books, regulations, safety measures, evacuation plans, and on and on. Transparency and open accountability are absolutely necessary exactly because nuclear activities can, in a variety of ways, cause very serious harm for hundreds of thousands of people and their entire environment, as well as the adjacent ecosystems.

In Iran, however, there is no accountability for anything the government does. As the world learned in the wake of the 2009 electoral coup in Iran, and in the course of the development of the movement by the Iranian people for the seven to eight months that followed (a movement which has now resumed), the Iranian government does not recognize any rights on the part of the people. The government's attitude toward the people is exactly as a king's would have been in feudal Europe some eight, nine hundred years ago, except that the government of Iran holds such antiquated attitudes towards 'its own' people, in a highly complex modern society in late capitalism.

Freedom of assembly and to peacefully gather in public spaces that rightfully belong to people, freedom of expression, freedom to organize independent labor unions, independent women's organizations or student organizations, freedom of attorneys to defend political prisoners and not be imprisoned themselves -- these are all luxurious terms in the Iranian context. People do not even have freedom from being tortured in secret illegal detention centers, no freedom from being raped (or threatened to), either by humans or objects if the interrogators deem it necessary to 'break' a prisoner; no freedom for parents to hold funerals for their children if those children are killed by the security forces of the regime; no freedom to have the graves of their children left alone by regime thugs who regularly vandalize those graves; and in some cases when the youth is politically imprisoned en-masse and are then mass-murdered in thousands, illegally and in an act of 'ideological cleansing', as happened in 1988, thousands have been denied the right to even have a known grave and are buried in mass graves (see, Khavaran).

This situation clearly does not allow for a system in which the citizens can keep a vigilant eye on the government's handling of nuclear-powered energy production. Should any disasters occur (that is, when a disaster does occur), the government is guaranteed to act in the least responsive manner, to cover up maximally, and to shun as many responsibilities as it can, leaving the citizens to bear the lethal costs of a nuclear disaster on their own.

It is therefore our duty to stand on the side of the wellbeing of the Iranian people and unambiguously oppose any nuclear energy development in Iran carried out by the current unaccountable government.   

Those who, like the Islamic regime in Iran, insist that pursuing nuclear power is an automatic right, must also be prepared to bear the responsibility, and be ready to be held accountable for any adverse outcome of the nuclear activities of the Iranian government; particularly when nuclear facilities are built near densely populated areas, and most definitely if those densely populated areas are sitting on top of active tectonic plates, as is the case with Bushehr power plant.

Lacking transparent accountability for the preparations that have occurred so far, and the plans for the future full operations of Bushehr's nuclear power plant, people have a legitimate right to demand a halt to all activities that could lead to large numbers of fatalities and enormous health threats for hundreds of thousands of people, a threat that will last for at least thousands of years in the best of circumstances (in the case of storing nuclear waste that remains radioactive for millions of years) .

On the other hand, Iran does have access to vast and endless amounts of alternative sources of energy: solar and wind. The right engineers can do the necessary calculations, but it seems clear that cultivating solar panel farms or windmill farms, can easily match the energy produced by wasteful and radioactive-waste-producing nuclear power plants. If China can develop solar panels, why not Iranian engineers? It is not like the development of solar energy is supposed to remain the sole monopoly of the western societies.

It is time for the left in the west to start building international alliances against nuclear energy per se. As regards approaching the nuclear issue in Iran, this would require a reorientation toward solidarity with the people of Iran and to think and act independently of the power calculations of the ruling classes both in the west and the ruling class in Iran.

It is time to stand in unambiguous solidarity with the people of Iran and their wellbeing. To do that as regards the nuclear issue, it is necessary to redefine the issue and to bring to it those missing social dimensions deliberately kept out by both western powers and by the Iranian regime. It is time to approach the nuclear issue from a principled stance, that of the people's interests, and to refuse to accept the terms of the debate presented to us by the western powers or by the militarist theocracy that has taken complete control of the Iranian state apparatuses and is suffocating the Iranian people.

Happy Charshanbeh Suri!

2011-03-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

There are lots of videos being posted of people in Iran taking to the streets on this third Protest Tuesday, this time to celebrate as well as to protest.

Here are a few, showing people having some oppositional political fun, while celebrating Charshanbeh Suri, (according to some) a 3,700-year old festival/celebration, based around a simple ritual of starting a bonfire and jumping over it; an act that is supposed to transfer one's negative energies to the fire, while the person absorbs the positive energies of the fire.

Happy Charshanbeh Soori to all Iranian people!

1) Tehran: Burning Ahmadi's & Khamenei's pictures:

2) Tehran:

3) Large crowd shouting slogans against regime:

4) Tehran: Burning Khamenei's picture:

Iran Workers' Message of Solidarity with Wisconsin Workers

2011-03-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

Translation of a message of solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin, from Iranian workers; more specifically, from the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations. Many thanks to Revolutionary Fesenjan for sending the original our way.

Message of Solidarity with American Workers

American Workers,
We have heard the sounds of your protests against the brazen attack on your rights, imposed on you by the capitalist system. Wisconsin Governor's plan is only one of the latest attacks that, along with all the other attacks, have been conducted against you, our fellow class sisters and brothers. Based on what we have heard about this plan, the workers' share of contribution to the pensions has been raised by 5.8%, to the healthcare services by 12.6%, and the wages are to be cut by 8%, and their work-hours will be increased. [Also,] the legal responsibilities of workers' representatives in bargaining with the employers will be reduced, and special privileges will be granted to the employers for firing/laying off workers and ...

We remember how capitalism in the U.S. has always tried to resolve its crises by putting more pressure on you the workers. The state that protects capital (whether during Republican or Democrat administrations), in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, in order to prevent the bankruptcies of more banks and financial and other companies, has been taking enormous sums of money from people's pockets and taxes in order to inject several hundred billions of dollars into these banks and institutions, so as to prevent a chainlike collapse of key institutions of capital. We know how during periods of growth of capital and capitalists, enormous amounts of wealth is extracted and stolen from our labor and lives, and during the periods of reduced profitability how those wages for us, wage slaves, get even more taken out of them, lest this exploitative system of capital gets harmed or collapses.

Under the guise of 'freedom' and 'democracy' and defense of American people's interests, and using the wealth produced by the workers, [American capitalists] militarily attack other countries in the world. While those who really get harmed by these attacks are the American workers and workers in countries under attack, capitalist states and capitalists in these states -- in short, the capitalist world-system -- find themselves new markets, new resources and new strategic positions that provide the conditions for increasing their power. We know that from these trickeries and deceits, capital's share is the ever more increasing concentration of wealth, and the workers' share is nothing but more misery and more wretchedness.

We are well aware that all of us workers, either directly or indirectly, are the main victims of the crimes of global system of capital, and capitalists and their states have amassed legendary profits and wealth from our work, pain and blood.

Workers' protests in the U.S., which has now gone beyond the state of Wisconsin, is a protest against the latest and the newest pressures that capital's grip is forcing on the throats of workers.

Most assuredly, you must be aware that in other parts of the world too, such as in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and ... various protests have been ongoing, since there are no limits nor no end to the greed and gluttony of capitalists. For example, in Iran, there are workers whose wages are more than thirty percent under poverty line, who have no food to eat, have no job security, who are forced into temporary, unsigned contracts; and yet, they are further subjected to removal of all price subsidies, which means even more will be taken out of their meager subsistence. Lack of freedom of expression [in Iran] and lack of any right to strike or to organize, lack of any and the least democratic rights, [mass] firing/lay-offs and threatening, assaulting and imprisoning workers and workers' rights activists, and suppressing independent workers' organizations, and many other [legal discriminations] are among the gifts that are showered daily on workers by capital.

This inhumane capitalist system, especially in countries such as [Iran], recognizes no rights whatsoever for the workers in the political, economic and social spheres; profit-orientation and brutality are the defining and essential characteristics of the capitalist system. The actual result of the domination of the capitalist class over human societies has been poverty, misery, hunger, injustice and inequality, gender-ethnic-national discrimination, oppression, [mass] imprisonment, wars, torture and violence, and lack of real freedom of expression and organization. Even parliamentarianism [and current representative institutions], here and there, display only shades of democracy.
[...]

American Workers,
It is necessary for us [workers] to rely on our own class power, and not to fall into the trap set by different factions of capital (in the U.S., the Democrats and Republicans), and to believe in the power of our unity and organization, and to strengthen or build our own independent organizations, so as to bypass the trap of yellow/collaborationist unions and institutions, which everywhere in the world cause a substantial waste of the working class energy. We must rely on our own autonomously-organized associations and organizations, and with international solidarity across the globe we must join hands so that we can act to rid not just the Middle East but all the world of the capitalist system.

Fellow Working Class Brothers and Sisters,
We have heard the voice of your protests! And we declare our solidarity with you, and we condemn any anti-workers' actions/steps/policies directed against you.

We strongly declare that any trespass or assault against economic and political rights of the American workers, is an assault on rights and existence and lives of the workers of Iran. We consider ourselves as your allies and share your ideals; as well, with the strengthening of your strikes and organized actions, as well as with the consolidation of your organized strength, we hope that you will be able to achieve your class demands step by step; we wish you success and all the best in your efforts until you reach the ultimate demand of human societies, which is the overthrow of capitalist relations.

Long live international solidarity of the working class!
Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations
Esfand 1389 (February20-March20, 2011)

A Concise Look at Current Political and Economic Situation

2011-03-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Translation of an article from Raah-e Kargar/Workers' Path.

A Concise Look at Current Political and Economic Situation
by: Yousef Langroodi / March 11, 2011

A look at the current conditions in Iran makes it clear that the Islamic Republic continues to face unprecedented economic and political crises. It has not only not been able to take a step toward solving any of the problems it faces but has been spreading and deepening the dimensions of the crises with the policies it has pursued.

The Islamic regime, which in previous months had been using all its capabilities to portray the anti-dictatorial movement as defeated, suddenly -- and with the advent of the protests and demonstrations on February 14 and then 20th and then the Protest Tuesdays that ensued -- saw the reality of people confronting it.

On this year's Char-shanbeh-soori [ceremonies held for the last Wednesday of the year], the Islamic Republic will find out well and truly where it stands, and to what extent it has been able to control people's movement and their struggles. This Char-shanbeh-soori, which is to be held of on the last of the Protest Tuesdays of the current year [Iranian calendar, which ends March 19], will be another occasion for a nationwide opportunity for the people to shout, Death to Dictatro!, and to show this regime of Guardians of Jurisprudence and their planners and functionaries that the Iranian people most definitely wish to overthrow the Islamic Republic. On the eve of a new spring and a New Year and the celebrations for the New Year, people wish to declare the regime as one of the foulest and a thing to be gotten rid of and thrown into history's dustbin.

As well, the political crisis in the most central nuclei of the regime continues; there is not a day that passes that does not witness some conflict between the executive branch, the parliament, the Guardian Council, and the Expediency Council. Dragging the Supreme Leader into political matters, which was used to strengthen Ahmadinejad and his gang, has now become a routine daily occurrence. The elimination of Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who used to be the Number 2 in the line of succession in power, from the chairmanship of Assembly of Experts is one the last and most notable examples of the deepening of the crisis of the Islamic regime. The elimination [from that post] of Rafsanjani, who recently had in any case been sufficiently weakened and was stepping very carefully in the political arena, while giving more cohesion to the most central institutions of regime, at the same time exposes all the more regime's weak points and its [complete] lack of room for flexibility.

In the economic sphere too everything indicates that the economic bankruptcy is still sinking deeper into a crisis. [Mass] unemployment, mass lay offs and successive bankruptcies of productive units and service providers, and the fact of increasing millions of Iranian people falling under the poverty line have all become real threats and predicaments, whose dimensions expand daily. Not even the sudden increase in the price of oil -- due to the recent events in the Middle East/North Africa -- will be able to lend a helping hand to improve the current economic and financial situation for the regime. Due to the old age of [most] refineries and the lack of efficiency of the oil infrastructure and lack of effective investment in that sector, the Islamic Republic is effectively unable to increase production and export of oil products.

Additionally, with pursuing the policy of eliminating price subsidies [for essential goods], the regime has been and is causing increasing poverty and misery amongst a majority of the subjugated people in Iran. The policy of paying out insubstantial cash handouts to compensate for the elimination of the subsidies and to help people with their bills is reaching a dead end, due to the emptying of the country's treasury approaching fast. At the same time, people's grievances due to the sharply increased fuel costs [by 300-400%] as well as those of other necessities are spreading ever wider.

Alongside all these, there have been a number of workers' protests and strikes, including in the oil industry, most of which have been due to non-payment of wages at times going on for months, and these are optimistic signs indicating a counter-offensive against the onslaught by the Islamic Republic and the local capitalists.

We have had many reports of a series of labor actions, such as strikes and gatherings in different cities in Iran, including Abadan, Kermanshah, Rasht, Ahvaz, Isfahan and Shiraz. In two of the most recent labor actions in Iran, 1,800 workers in Tabriz petrochemical plant, in protests against their horrendous economic conditions, went on an 11-day strike. One of the workers' demands is to be contracted officially. The strike did come to an end eventually after the Azerbaijan provincial authorities, as well as the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, accepted the workers' demands. Also, hundreds of textile workers in [the northern province of] Mazandaran, gathered in protest against not-receipt of due compensation and against work conditions, carrying placards in front of Qha'em-shahr provincial offices.

Based on all the above, Islamic Republic's current situation is politically and economically very fragile, and far more vulnerable compared to the past. If we add all the above to the international sanctions against the regime, it becomes clear that with the onset of the workers' actions and struggles taking on a nationwide character and joining up with the [general] anti-dictatorial movement of the Iranian people, the Islamic Republic does not have much of a chance for survival.

Iranian People Preparing for Mass Revolution

2011-03-10T00:36:00.000-08:00

Translation of an article by Mohammad-Reza Shaalgooni, activist/writer/analyst with Raah-e Kargar/Workers' Path (Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran).

Why a 'Velvet Revolution'? People are preparing for a mass revolution
by: Mohamad-Reza Shalgooni / March 9, 2011

The security/intelligence officials of the regime, in order to explain the re-emergence of the people's anti-dictatorial uprising in Iran, are again resorting to thread-bare worn out conspiracies about the American strategy of 'velvet revolution'. Hossein Ta'eb, Revolutionary Guard's chief of intelligence (meaning, regime's real intelligence service) on Wednesday, March 2, in a gathering of the country's attorneys general, announced that, "The Americans are planning to tie the sanctions with the elimination of subsidies in the first quarter of 1390 [next year in the Iranian calendar, which starts on March 20], so as to portray people as unsatisfied, and then by the fourth quarter [they want to] have a velvet coup."

This reaction is an implicit admission, out of weakness, to the actual re-emergence of the movement, which only until even a month ago they were announcing as completely dead and finished. Such reactions also indicate how desperately they are trying to find a solution for the situation. Those who think that with such fantasies they can explain away the vast oppositional movement of the people as the creation of the Americans must have an IQ of less than 50. [...]

First of all, it must be reminded that the very act of resorting to the 'velvet revolution' story-spinning is revealingly embarrassing enough. 'Velvet revolution' is a phrase usually used for bloodless revolutions, which, in particular, became known after the uprising of the people of Czechoslovakia (toward the end of 1989). However, the phrase 'velvet revolution' or 'velvet coup', according to the security apparatus of the Islamic Republic, apparently refers to particular movements. First of these is the Bulldozer Revolution, which in October 2000 took shape in Belgrade and brought down Slobodan Milosevic; next was the Rose Revolution in November 2003 that forced Edward Shevardnadze to resign; after that, it was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in November 2004 [...]. Another similar event was the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in April 2005, which was a reaction to Hariri's assassination and Syrian military presence in Lebanon. [...]

A look at all these events leaves no doubt that all those movements could only have occurred in countries whose governments, due to their corruption and oppression, could be threatened with the slightest of moves [on the part of people].

In his Friday prayers speech on June 18, 2009, attempting to prove the distinction between the Islamic Republic and those governments, Khamenei used the tale of the conspiracy of 'velvet revolution', and triumphantly declared that the planners of the sedition should know that Iran is not Georgia. However, the seventh-months long continuation of the protests by the people and the brutal and criminal suppression [of the activists] by the armies of paid thugs of the Supreme Leader's system revealed that Iran is far worse than Georgia and that Islamic Republic is a regime more on par with the Islamic dictatorship of Karimov in Uzbekistan: a government that in May 13, 2005, in the city of Andijan opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing hundreds and making a mount from their bodies. But, let us not forget the Iranian government's actions last year, killing our youth while they were participating in completely peaceful demonstrations, mounting their bodies in the cold-rooms of the vegetable market [in south Tehran; due to lack of room in morgues], and the tortures [and rapes] in detention centers like Kahrizak that go far beyond and are far more ruthless than what has occurred or been reported up to now in Karimov's dictatorship in Uzbekistan.

If it is the case that 'velvet revolutions' or 'velvet coups' occur only in countries suffering under corrupt and oppressive regimes, then all the sound and the fury by the security and the propaganda apparatuses of the Islamic Republic regarding the 'velvet revolution', must before anything else be interpreted as implicit and inadvertent admission on their part to the presence of dictatorship and complete lack of any rights for the people in Iran.

Take for example their claims that people's protest campaigns and demonstrations were a result of the propaganda by the BBC or Voice of America (VOA) etc. Can such a claim be anything other than an admission to political and cultural bankruptcy? [...]

The regime either has to say that the propaganda put out by BBC and VOA have some kind of magical properties that can easily send people out to face bullets, or else they have to admit that the Iranian people have had it so badly with the mullah's system that they can be nudged into a riot at any moment. In either case, the fear felt by the Islamic Republic regarding BBC or VOA and the like [...] indicates nothing as much as the political, intellectual, cultural and ethical bankruptcy of the mullah's regime.

The objectives of American imperialism and their allies in Iran and the region are well known. However, the hatred felt for the Islamic Republic by the people has reached such dimensions that not even the enmity between the U.S. and the regime can make the regime tolerable.

Additionally, for two reasons, the great Arab revolutionary storm has rendered obsolete regime's traditional use of the tactic of 'enemy at the gates' to justify its mass-detentions and imprisonments [of activists]. First, these revolutions, by attacking pro-American dictatorships and regimes, have severely reduced the space of maneuver for the U.S. itself in the region. The region's political atmosphere has changed to such a degree that the U.S. and its allies do not have a completely free hand in what they can do in our region. Second, these revolutions have shaken our dictatorship-ridden peoples so much that the abolition of dictatorship has become the primary demand of the masses in all the countries of the region. In a situation where, from the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Gulf of Oman, dictatorships are trembling in fear of their people's revolt, the yarn spinning about foreign conspiracies is no longer under the sole monopoly of the Islamic Republic. These days, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's dictator (who on numerously occasions has kissed American leaders' hands) openly speaks of White House plans to topple his regime; Gadhafi also talks nonsense about the western powers' collusion with Al-Qaeda; even Mubarak, in his last speech, attacked foreign powers.

The truth is the Islamic Republic leaders know better than any that their existence is threatened not by any forces from outside its borders but by the people of this very country who have had enough. It is no accident that the regime tries with all its might to prevent any form of public assembly or gathering for protests by the people. [...] But, how long can the leaders of the regime continue this game?

All signs indicate that the Iranian people are preparing for a mass revolution. In such an inflammable atmosphere, in which even lighting a cigarette can start a huge fire, any small incident can start and spread a revolution, whether any a foreign conspiracy is afoot or not.

[See original source, in Persian, here.]

Khiaban No. 86: Women's March for Liberation

2011-03-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

Translation of lead article of latest Khiaban, #86 (Sunday, March 6, 2011). Khiaban's online archive is available (in Persian) here.

March 8: Women's Great March for Liberation
Khiaban, #86 / Sunday, March 6, 2011

1. A majority of Iranian women and girls in private gatherings, in casual settings, and in any space that is bereft of state power -- with its police and the morality patrols and the detentions -- take off their hejab [Islamic cover]. In private parties, in their profile pictures on Facebook, out in the nature in mountains, etc., few girls or women would be seen wearing hejab voluntarily. For Iranian girls and women, to be free is predominantly equated with not having to wear hejab. Hejab is something that is forced, an unpleasant necessity. In those spaces where the state has power and presence, hejab is obeyed; however, in any space that is not thick with state presence or empty of it completely, women let their jehab slip or throw it off entirely.

It is only the rule of the Islamic Republic that is forcing and obligating women to keep their cover over their heads. However, wherever girls and women are free and can choose their own clothing, they take the cover off their heads. In the depths of the society, fundamental events have taken place. Girls and women do not want the hejab; hejab for them is a prison, from which they must free themselves. This prison however has ferociously murderous wardens, called the Islamic Republic. The ruling state power is the first and most immediate form of violence that is forced on women on a daily basis. Each day, before leaving the house they must check their hejab before going to school, university, place of work, to buy groceries or go shopping, [visit a sick family member] or to do anything else. Any unintended fault or shortcoming can expose them to verbal, actual or legal violence, directed at them by morality police agents, school principals, police officers, ethics patrols, Basiji's and on and on. Women don't want the hejab, but the system imposes it forcefully and violently.

2. Unwanted pregnancies, whether among couples not married officially or those officially married, are known to occur often. In many cases, for a variety of reasons, women may decide not to carry the pregnancy all the way to birth. Among girls who are not officially married, it is usually because of the social, legal and psychological hell they would face that they choose abortion; while at the same time, some of them would opt to keep their babies if the society provided a supportive attitude that guaranteed the mother and the child physical and psychological security [and peace of mind]. As well, among officially married couples, there are various causes, such as economic or personal reasons, that would push people to such a decision. However, in a society that has made abortion illegal, such a decision would put women and girls through horrendous experiences: unhygienic environments, unsanitary conditions, exorbitant costs, inhumane behavior and actions of some of the profiteers and on and on, have all struck and been experienced by numerous women in Iran. The story of this dark aspect of the feminine experience in Iran has not yet been written. But, its wounds are there for all. A Woman has no right of choice regarding her own body and has no support system [in that struggle]. The Islamic regime has already made all the decisions for her. Therefore, if a woman does not obey, which she usually does not, she'd have to be wandering the banned back alleys. Iranian women do not want such wanderings. They want to end this pain they are suffering. In order to have an abortion, they need medical health facilities that are free, have some standards and are protected. The ruling regime, however, has banned all those things.

3. Women constitute a substantial part of the unemployed. They have the proper education and they want to participate in the building of their society in whatever fields their university disciplines have trained them for, and want to gain their independence. However, clerical/secretarial office work and working as sales clerks [as well as teaching] are the only large labor markets for them. In their [mostly] temporary places of employment, they daily face sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and they make the lowest wages. They are employed in the least stable jobs, have the least rights, and work the most temporary jobs in the labor market. They are exploited much more generously than men are, and they do not have any [legal] means of pursuing their rights and demands. Women want and demand a fundamental change of the [social] relations of the workplace, but the state is the armed protector of the current situation.
...
This list could continue for a long time, and is very long; it will need the voices of all Iranian women for it to be written down.

Women in Streets
It is therefore not without reason that in these two years women have been standing at the forefront of the fight against the regime in the streets. No matter who may retreat, women will not. Collectively, and without exchanging thoughts and ideas in a big conference or gathering, women have realized the importance of defeating this regime. Decades of struggling over their most basic rights have raised Iranian women into unbeatable warriors.

International Women's Day and the Struggle in Streets
International Women's Day, March 8, is [at least] as old as the history of women's fight for achieving freedom and equality. It is a day to organize the struggle; so that through the joining up and connecting of disparate places through time, women can organize the struggle for their liberation. This day has also shaped a particular history of battles and struggles in Iran. March 8 is an innovation in the direction of going beyond women's spontaneous and daily resistances and struggles against oppression, and to elevating them to an organized and equipped level so that this movement can change the society. At different important junctures of history, whether in Iran or elsewhere in the world, it has been in the streets where women's voices of protest have been heard.

The first March 8 after the 1979 revolution, with the announcement of the slogan, "We didn't revolt to go back in history!" turned into a confrontation and a battle between women, people fighting for freedom and communists on one side, and on the other side the reactionary Khomeini's and other religionists' forces who were issuing fatwas against women. This year, too, March 8 is going to re-engage that historical battle in the streets, and attempt to bring an end to this misogynistic system.

Women's Issues Are Political Issues
In order for women to grow, they must break up the current [political] superstructures. That which is official, legal and legitimate, is in complete conflict with the growing vitality of girls and women in Iran. Those spaces that are unofficial, concealed, secret, illegal, black and invisible must become visible, uncovered and official. A fundamental transformation, a complete overhaul, a revolution: that is what girls and women take to the streets for.

The Green Party and Women
We know that the Green Party has also issued a statement for March 8 this year; this and that political figure, this party and such organization [have all done so]. Many are preparing and organizing for women's protests, and trying to connect them up with the general nationwide protests. However, March 8 and women's issues have exposed the true nature of many of the reformists, especially the Green Party. One of the most important criteria for judging any political formation created after the birth of the Islamic Republic is the status of women in such organizations.

By looking at the kind of future promised to women [in their platform/charter/etc.], we can better understand the more general plans of any party or organization. Which one of women's demands and social needs does the Green Party recognize and would fight for? How about, for the elimination of hejab and the freedom of choice for clothing? For the legalization of abortion? For the freedom of choice of who to pick as a spouse? For the unconditional freedom of speech for women? For the freedom of organization among women?

It is enough to take a look at their published statements. Nothing! On March 8, they [reformists] just want women to take to the streets for the freedom of Green leaders. And not even the freedom of all political prisoners, a lot of whom are women. They do not point to any issue of any particular interest to women. They do not paint a picture of future with any particular hopes for women. They only need women's forces to repair their hardly-holding structure. They escape from engaging with any of women's issues since they know that women's problems will not be solved by merely changing a few faces [in the government]. To really solve women's problems in Iran would require a vast and deep-rooted transformation, and the Green Party is against any such thing.

However, the women who will come to the streets will do so armed with stones and a voice. Stones to break the ruling system, and the voice to shape the society into something, the dreams of which they have been nurturing for years in secret. A free and equal society. Freed from organized religion and tyranny, and equal in ownership over social wealth.

Current Necessities of the Movement

2011-03-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

Still demanding the same!

This is a part-translation of a longer piece in Persian by Mina Khanlarzadeh. Many thanks to the writer, who keeps a blog at Revolutionary Fesenjan.

Some Current Necessities of the Movement
by: Mina Khanlarzadeh

[...]
The first and most basic deficiency of the movement is the lack of a decision making council that at a minimum consists of activists working for women's rights, unions and workers' rights, students' rights coming from different political trends, rights of national minorities, university professors [etc.] and political activists from different viewpoints. Such a body must be created immediately.

After the February 14 protests, a Coordinating Council of the Green Path of Hope was formed, which we do not know who its members are, and also we do not know how pluralistic it actually is. Let's not forget that pluralism of voices is a favorite slogan of the reformists, which of course they only use when they are addressing the fundamentalists [in the regime] and asking them to let them [the reformists] to play too. Other than that, some of the reformists even stay away from the religious-nationalists. Any coordinating committee or council to be formed for the movement must at a minimum include several people from among activists in the women's movement, unionists and workers movement, student activists, national minority activists, university professors active in the movement, and political activists from different groupings. Otherwise, such a coordinating council/committee would not have a correct understanding of the society [and its demands], and would only pay attention to groups from its own ranks and will remain [willfully] ignorant of others.

For example, if the Coordinating Council had within it some women's rights activists, it would not cancel the March 8th protests; although it did reinstitute it after widespread criticisms. If the Coordinating Council were in contact with workers' rights activists, it would be aware of all the protests and strikes by workers around the country, and could issue statements in their support, thereby creating the conditions for the people to join the workers in their struggle. However, the Council is perhaps completely uninformed about such workers' actions since the word 'workers' reminds it of 'socialism' [...].

Whenever [ordinary] citizens -- those not considered to be regime's base and those who actually constitute the majority -- reach some political-social awareness [that's in opposition to the regime], the regime would call them 'seditious' gigolos who are disrespecting the blood of martyrs [of the 1979 revolution], American or Zionist agents, microbes, [history's] tumbleweeds, CIA spies, etc., or ignore them or with the use of overt violence of its security forces would attempt to disappear them. The reformists [must not use the same methods]. [...]

General Strike
Many are waiting for the workers to go on [a general] strike, and then ask: Why aren't the workers going on [a general] strike]? A general strike is not possible right now for many reasons. First, all forms of independent workers' organizations have been destroyed for [more than] thirty years, and the supporters of such organizations are in prisons, or been fired, or are perishing while chained to some [prison] hospital beds, just like Hashem Khastar, Mahmoud Salehi, or Mansour Osanloo. In order to organize a general strike you need workers' [independent] organizations, which don't exist. Second, many large factories and productive companies were security-privatized [meaning, bought by the Revolutionary Guards], which means that strikes in such militarized plants would have severe consequences for the workers. Third, the [historical] record of the reformists is as problematic as those of the fundamentalists in the eyes of the workers. Even though the workers' conditions are the worst they have been since the revolution, we must not forget that the neo-liberal and anti-independent-union policies have been the overall policy of the entire regime, and are not particular to the current government. On the other hand, the reformists consider the Green Movement as a reform movement, and this too could have led to doubts and suspicions among the workers as a class.

So, now that a general strike does not seem likely, what other means are available [for workers' participation to increase]?

__ One of the most basic necessities is for the participation of unionists and workers' rights activists in the decision-making council of the Green movement [or similar councils formed independent of the reformists but with nationwide structures]; this can strengthen the connections between the workers and the different parts of the movement, and can spread the news about workers' issues, actions and their demands. Indeed, there is a big absence of workers' rights activists to be issuing statements and bringing the workers' discourse into the movement.

__ Another [thing that can be done] is the boycott of imported goods by all who consider themselves as part of the movement. Cheap imported goods [mostly from China] have broken the backs of small producers inside the country, and have caused mass unemployment among the workers [...]

__ One of the bigger weaknesses of the movement is a lack of adequate response to the 'rationalization' of [or, removal of price] subsidies on basic goods. In fact, the elimination of subsidies was the most important events of the past year, and is currently among the biggest [political] weaknesses of the government, but the movement's media lost its chance to use the opportunity to express the protest of the movement [against the subsidy eliminations], exactly because this media is in the hands a particular layer of the reformists with neo-liberal economic tendencies. However, it is not too late. [...] It is here that the reformists must realize that pluralism is a necessity of the movement, and they must find the merits of having a multiplicity of social layers in the movement. By raising the demands of the workers, workers' rights activists and leftist social layers, inside and outside Iran, can combine their protests with demands against the subsidies' eliminations on one of the Protest Tuesdays; which will lead to the growth of the movement [...].

__ Every week, we read some piece of news about hundreds of workers getting fired, or else about protesting or striking workers who have not received pay for several months, sometimes up to a year. In such protests, workers are alone but there is a potential/possibility for the student activists and women activists to join them, and to combine democratic demands and demands for the restoration of human dignity with the workers' demands, since restoring human dignity and achieving democracy are not possible without restoring the workers' rights, and restoring workers' rights is not possible without having real democracy and without respect for human dignity. Workers and the toiling classes know this, and as a result they participate in the protests, even if only as individuals not a social class or layer, and many of them have been killed or are in prisons [...] Workers are present in the movement; it is the movement that must connect with and reflect their demands. [This] of course depends on whether workers rights activists and leftist political activists are present in the coordinating council or the Green media, to issue their statements.

__ Some of the Protest Tuesdays must be used to protest against the conditions of workers in prison, conditions of temporary workers, those who have been laid off and those whose wages have not been paid. Such workers presently participate in the movement, albeit in a voiceless manner, and how painful that some even deny their presence [in the movement]. By protesting against the working/living conditions of the workers [and by raising their demands], first, we destroy the delusional claims by the regime about its popularity among the working classes; second, [we follow the principle that] democracy and justice are not possible without fighting for economic and political justice for the working classes; and third, by bringing into the struggle the workers' [demands and] discourse we create the conditions for the movement to grow and spread. Otherwise, the workers themselves will participate in the movement [as individuals], but their agenda and demands will be absent from the movement.

What about the Kurds?
Some among the Kurds are rightly suspicious of the reformist tendency, and may ask, "Why should we fight in this movement, so that tomorrow when the reformists come [back] to power, we will be their first target?" [trans. note: paraphrased] [...]

[It must reminded that] people who take to the streets in Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran, Eslaam-shahr, Rasht, Tabriz and ... and who shout out their slogans, have never [thought or] said that they are facing bullets in the streets so that the reformists would come to power. They are shouting out, "Death to Dictator!", "Not eastern, not western; Iranian Republic!", "Mubarak, Ben-Ali; Next is Seyed Ali!" and more. They shout slogans in defense of Mousavi and Karroubi because these two figures have stood with the people and have moved forward with the people; however, very few [if any] slogans are ever heard in defense of Khatami, the flag-bearer of reformists. Therefore, reducing the Green Movement to a struggle for bringing to power the supporters of ayatollah Rafsanjani and Khatami is short-sighted, although the danger of such a reduction does threaten the movement, and can become a deeper problem if non-reformist groups [...] start leaving the movement. The danger is not the coming to power of the reformists; the danger is rather that such an interpretation can lead to the defeat of the movement. [...] The reformists [...] have no choice but to move forward with the people since they have been completely ousted from power, and the regime could not let them back into power even if it wanted to, since that would signify a retreat and would lead to its downfall. Therefore, the most effective solution is to minimize the schism between the ranks of the forces of the people in the streets who want the end of dictatorship and the ranks of reformists. [...]

[The same logic applies to the Kurdish question]. In this view [that sees only a scenario of reformists coming back to power and nothing else changing] Kurds do not believe in themselves as a social force and don't believe that with their participation in the Green Movement they can change the balance of powers in their favor. Green Movement is nothing but the struggle of courageous people who stand in front of bullets and are unafraid of death, torture, and truncheons; and not even prison can silence them, and would write letters from prison and would still continue the fight [...] The importance of the relation/connection between the Kurdish people and these people in the streets should not be underestimated, for such would be a historical mistake [...] It should be needless to say that the Kurds are present in the movement anyway, and have been killed in this movement, but as a unique social force, their demands and discourse is not present in the movement. [...]

First, presence of the Kurds as a social force in the Green Movement can lead to the spreading of information [and awareness] about Kurdish people's numerous problems. Kurdish people's predicaments have not yet been raised as they should have, and the Iranian regime has been able to de-legitimize their struggle by portraying the Kurdish rights activists as violent separatists. [...] The presence of the Kurds in the movement can help eradicate stereotypes created by the regime, and the demands of the Kurds can be raised in a language that is bereft of [negative] nationalism and a view that set Kurds and non-Kurds against each other. Let us not forget that the immense and widespread protests, by many different political forces, following the execution of four Kurdish activists (Farzad Kamangar, Shirin Alam-houli, Ali Heydarian, and Farhad Vakili) were among the achievements of the Green Movement. Many a times before the onset of the Green Movement, may a Farzad Kamangar's would be executed, but no Mousavi's or Zahra Rahnavard's would issue statements questioning such executions, but the Green Movement made it possible that Kurds and non-Kurds from different political tendencies showed their disapproval to these individuals' executions. This is not an insignificant achievement; though obviously it is not enough.

Whether or not the Kurds enter the movement as a social force, there are many Kurds waiting to be executed, and many more other Kurds are daily suffering poverty, unemployment and lack of safety, as well as systematic violence. Regardless of the absence of Kurds from the movement, will there be an inevitable justice and freedom for the Kurdish prisoners? The answer is negative. Any oppression must first be defined and named, and then must be recognized as an oppression by the people as a result of great effort among the people of different layers, and in this process a [concrete] struggle shapes up for the eradication of that oppression. Presence of Kurds as a social force in the Green Movement can define the oppression against Kurds, and so the groups within the movement can come to understand the problems faced by Kurds as violence against Kurdish people. [...]
[...]

International Relations
Green Movement can move [much] more strongly in relation to international events and struggles. Statements issued by university students in solidarity with the student demonstrations in England, women in solidarity with Tunisia and Egypt, and Mousavi's statement in support of Tunisian and Egyptian movements were among the high points of the movement building relations with international events, but of course the number of such statements in the past two years have been very limited. A part of the coordinating council [or various councils] of the movement -- which is supposed to include women's, workers', students' movements as well as political activists of different tendencies -- must be dedicated issuing/publishing statements and building solidarity between the Green Movement and regional and supra-regional movements. [...] The Green Movement must issue real substantive, not clichéd, statements [regarding the current events in the region]. We do need to find legitimacy in the region and the world; that is a reality. For example, we must issue statements in support of Palestinian women and workers, so that the peoples of the region know that the Iranian regime's support of the Palestinians is a pretence, and that the people of Iran are subjected to oppression [like the Palestinians]. For example, [we must issue statements] in support of Libyan people, or the protesting teachers in Madison, Wisconsin, or the Afghans who have demonstrated in support of the Green Movement [...] Every time such a statement [of support is issued and] gets reflected in the international media, it becomes a more difficult job for regime's liars to claim that the movement [against them] does not exist or does not have legitimacy.

Invisible Presence in the Movement
As long as we [...] do not say that we are in the movement, the media can doubt or shed doubt on our existence, and claim that the movement is just a bunch of 'middle class' people from uptown; which god knows what it means! The best way of fighting against this doubt and suspicion mongering is to write various statements coming from various social groups, no matter how small, comprising of workers, university students, women, the unemployed, teachers, mourning mothers [who have lost their kids to the political prisons, or disappeared], and the rest; statements that present to the movement their demands and social needs. It is possible that some will ignore some of our demands and portray them as unimportant, due to the "crime" of being too radical or "against the system' [wishing to overthrow the system]; however, we must insist on our demands and our presence to such a degree that those with more political power and media capabilities would have to take us and our demands into account. It is in such a process, that such groups can be forced into moving forward with the people, or to put it another way, that would lead to more radicalization.

The Women's Movement
On International Women's Day [Tuesday March 8th], it is the best opportunity to combine and connect, by aid of a careful selection of slogans and posters/placards, the different predicaments of working women (whether as home makers or working for wages) with those of mourning mothers, with that of mothers of political prisoners, as well as the predicaments of women prisoners. It is the best opportunity for re-reading, re-remembering and re-asserting women's demands. It is the best opportunity for the women's movement to issue statements and assert their struggle and demands within the Green Movement, and to announce their solidarity with the struggles of women across northern Africa, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Let us not forget that one of the first victories of the women's movement is the creation of a coordinating council in the Green Movement, in which women's rights activists play an active in all its decisions. Success in having a clear and strong voice and entry into decision-making processes must be started from today. Why delay this to the next day?

Video clip (in Persian) of Mourning Mothers of Laleh Park; title of video clip: We Are Standing!

Khiaban No. 85: To Protest Or Not?

2011-03-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Translation of lead article from Khiaban's latest issue (# 85).

Today, March 1: To protest or not?
Khiaban # 85 / Tuesday, March 1, 2011

March 1 protests. Should we go to them or not? It is doubtful that this question has much currency among that segment of the youth and the people who, in a long march lasting two years of struggle, have been fighting one of the most ruthless regimes on earth. What will happen, of course, depends on the possibilities and the collective capabilities.

However, isn't it the case that the call to action has been issued by a council that calls itself the Coordinating Council of the movement, has offices, definitions and particular goals? A council that, just like that of Khomeini's Revolution Council, is suspect [and secretive] and the youth, women, workers and the poor of the society have no place or representatives in it. Hasn't this council put forth such idiotic slogans as, "Oh Mehdi, Sheikh Mehdi [Karroubi]" for people to shout? Isn't their Charter the same [current] constitution, for the abolition of which people in February 14 protests shouted so loudly? So, how can we go to such protests? Why do people go? Is everybody still living with the illusion that this system is capable of being reformed?

Two Views Regarding the People
Are people, as social human beings, akin to docile puppets, whose movements and behaviors are determined by puppet-masters who control everything, by manipulating connected strings, through, say, their websites or satellite television channels or radio programs or newspapers?

Or, is it the case that people are not puppets? That they are human beings, and they work on and engage with the currents and the signals that reach them, and through re-thinking, re-imagining, re-interpreting, re-evaluating and even rebelling against those [received notions], proceed to act proactively?
[...]

A. The Islamic Republic
The Islamic Republic undoubtedly assumes people to be a bunch of puppets, whose heads can be filled with anything you wish. And in order to render our generation into docile Muslim people who believe in their superstitions and not question their rule, they spent stupendous amounts of the oil money, and from the profits of their exploitation of workers, on their Islamist propaganda; and for [thirty-two] consistent years tried to control all schools, factories, all television networks, magazines and newspapers and ... All that, in order to control the puppets in this geographical location called Iran. The result, of course, was a gigantic defeat. Yes, we all read all those books on religion and on morality and Islamic Revolution and on and on. But, we also read thousands of other things too, and also saw and looked at the life around us, and see also what is being done to our society. So now, while they are supposed to be docile puppets kissing Supreme Leader's feet, people are instead shouting in one voice their demand for the overthrow of the system.

B. The Green Party
Previously, we would refer to the 'Green Industry', to distinguish between the people's movement in the streets and the groupings that, with the aid of websites and periodicals and other material capabilities, were producing a particular product that was not the same as the movement of people on the streets. Now, however, those groupings have auspiciously been transformed into a political party. They have published their own charter (Green Charter) and it has formed its own organizational leadership (Coordinating Council [of Green Path of Hope]). This political party has announced its goals as: a return to the [current] constitution; a merciful and lenient reading of Islam; to have a share of state power in order to facilitate implementation of suspended parts of the constitution; preventing the formation of more radical political parties and organizations within the movement; etc., and using non-violent means it wants to talk the government into changing its mind and wising up.

The Green Party too regards people as puppets. They think it is enough to hold the control of the puppet strings in their own hands. As a result, they have started up at least a hundred and some websites and periodicals, and in all of them they provide very similar content. In their view, it is necessary that there be no competing strings. If all the media space is controlled by the reformists, then people will of necessity be controlled by their fingertips. In their view, people do not have the power of thinking, making decisions and acting on their own accord. If at times people do not shout, "Oh Hossein, Mir Hossein", and instead shout, "We are women and men of war, so fight, and we'll fight on!" then this must be because some agent-saboteur must have snatched the control of the strings. The Green Party sees no reason for seeking to find out what people are really demanding, where do the roots of their problems lie, and what they want. The Green Party just keeps repeating its own line: "Bring a candle and a Koran; stay silent and murmur our name!"

C. The Abdicators
There also exist a large group of political forces, in whose view people are puppets in the hands of powerful actors, and not proactive human beings. "Don't go! Don't you see who has issued the call? How come they didn't call for any action when [the regime] was executing Farzad Kamangar, or even during these past few months of executions? How come there exist all these political prisoners, from Mansoor Osanloo to Behrooz Javid-Tehrani to ... (and unfortunately, the list of he political prisoners is so long that it wouldn't fit into any periodical, and requires its own special book), but only Mousavi and Karroubi's detention is worthy of a call to action? And, who said that this particular group is the leader of the movement? Who elected them? Is all of the movement supposed to be covered under their robe? And what about others who are not in the same party but who are in the movement, and have given blood and limb for this movement and have paid some price, what about them?"

Some of these thoughts and utterances are completely right, to the point and must definitely be expressed. However, their conclusion is strange. They say, 'Don't go to these protests if you disagree with this leadership'. And then, they call anybody who goes to the protests, 'members of the green party'. And previously, they would say, "Don' go to the 13 Aban protests." "Friday prayers? Who, with a brain, would go to Friday prayers to demonstrate against the regime?" "Ashura? Isn't it the case that Islam itself brought us to this wretchedness?"

This view too, though it brings up some arguments worth considering, has a major flaw, which is how it views the people. This view too regards people as a bunch of puppets, and not proactive actors who at each [historical] moment is in the process of evaluating, judging, analyzing and making [social] decisions. The abdicators want to disconnect the puppet strings, and the strings controlled by the reformists.

People Participate in Ways They Consider Feasible
Such views, however, are empty of substance and invalid. People are not puppets to be remote-controlled from afar. Before acting, people constantly go through a process of evaluating and making decisions. They wisely take advantage of whatever opportunities arise to open up their own path. Just as no amount of religious books could render people into slaves of Islam, no amount of slogans of, 'Allaho Akbar' [God is Great] by Green Party members can render people into slaves of secret/underground councils.

People evaluate their own resources, see and analyze the opportunities, and they organize their own political actions against the regime and in order to achieve a free and egalitarian society. The degree of their success depends on their resources and their capabilities. The more equipped they are, the more powerful they are, the more organized they are, the more room for maneuver they will have. Obviously, if the peole had their own powerful organizations, powerful unions or political parties, they would not need to wait for such opportunities to express their demands and needs. In such a disproportionately unbalanced war, in which people are heroically standing up, we must try our best to strengthen the movement, to equip it, to distribute and disseminate political, social and class awareness, and use any means necessary to widen the space and domain of collective maneuvering.

The dissident people and the youth in Iran are engaged in a great war in the streets. They know this, and they have not taken to the arena to lose, either. In order to achieve victory against the Islamic Republic, we must help people become more powerful, more organized, more aware and more on the offensive. No puppets make a revolution. However, people are in the process of a revolution throughout the Middle East and in Iran as well.

Tehran:

Shiraz:

Protest Tuesdays in Iran

2011-02-28T21:33:00.000-08:00

Now ... What to do about those motorcycle gangs?

Translation of a statement by Raah-e Kaargar.

In solidarity with the people of Iran!

Long Live Freedom and Justice!

Long Live the People's Liberation Movement of the Greater Middle East & North Africa!

On the Occasion of the upcoming Protest Tuesdays:
Iranian people's will is to overthrow the system, and they don't need guardians!

After the grand oppositional protests by the people on February 14 and 20, with open slogans against the dictatorship, the continuation of protests, the spreading of the anti-dictatorial movement's domain [of influence], and the ever expanding of the movement has turned into the immediate demand of freedom-seeking people and the youth. In response to this demand, and based on advice of like-minded people, there came the call for Tuesday protests has been suggested by some youth social networks. Based on these calls to action, the plan is for the people to take to the streets in protest [on successive Tuesdays], for the release of all political prisoners as well to protest against Mousavi and Karroubi's detention on Tuesday, March 1; in support of women's movement on International Women's Day on March 8; and using the presence of the masses of people out on Chaar-shanbeh Suri [Tuesday eve celebrations before the last Wednesday of the year, Iranian calendar] to transform it into a day of mass protests against the dictatorship on March 15. These calls have so far been welcomed warmly by a wide spectrum of political forces, people and organizations, including ours, who resolutely support the protest movement against the current murderous and criminal [ruling] system. We believe that in the present conditions, low cost moves [in terms of possible loss of human lives] that widen the participation of the people in the protests and demonstrations against the ruling system; that provide a larger arena for the flourishing of creativity of the people in the methods of their protests; and solidify the solidarity of different social groups and layers opposing the dictatorship, without jeopardizing the independence of action of each and without concealing the reality of the multiplicity of demands and needs present in the movement -- all actions with such characteristics will be to the benefit of the spreading of the anti-dictatorial movement. Based on all this, we support the call for Protest Tuesdays.

It is within this context that we consider the fourth statement issued by the "Coordinating Council of the Green Path's Hope" as a step backward, a reactionary effort to impose a dangerous schism in the anti-dictatorial movement, an instrumentalist approach seeking monopoly [of leadership] over the people's grievances in order to benefit a particular group, and an unwise action that will lead to the weakening of the solidarity in the anti-dictatorial movement and an effort in keeping the system of the velayate faqih [guardianship of the religious jurists], and a move to prevent the growth and spread of the anti-dictatorial movement of the people, and we oppose it resolutely.

At the same time that social networks, as a result of a process of sharing ideas, have come up with the idea of Protest Tuesdays, this Council, which after the announcement of the planned actions has joined them, completely unilaterally has cancelled the March 8 (International Women's Day) actions. Such an action is an insult to the glorious struggles and fights by our country's women, and is an emphasis on the continuation of the thirty-two year old violent and misogynist ruling system. Isn't all the merciless crackdown on women under the Islamic rule enough? [...]

This same Council, in its third statement, issued before the speech by the intelligence minister, had [previously] raised the demand for the release of the political prisoners as a central demand, as well as to protest the house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi. However, after the intelligence minister made his speech -- in which he made threats based on his assertion that the Green Movement had become an anti-revolutionary front -- this same Council, in a rushed, defensive and reactionary effort, and apparently in order to distinguish itself from "anti-revolutionary" elements, in its fourth statement has completely eliminated its demand for the release of political prisoners. And some reformists have stepped even further beyond that, and are asking that the demonstrations on that day be turned into birthday celebrations for Mir Hossein Mousavi. Such efforts not only encourage the spread of a cult of personality mentality but also are ruthless insults to the dignity of hundreds and thousands of political prisoners who have given to the movement with their lives and limb, and have sacrificed everything for the freedom of the people of this country.

While people, on February 14 and 20 [2011] shouted out aplenty slogans such as, "Death to the Dictator", and "Mobarak, Ben-Ali, next is Seyed Ali [Khamenei]", in its fourth statement this Council has decided the slogans for the people, and has asked that only these slogans be used: "Oh Hossein, Mir Hossein [Mousavi]" and "Oh Mehdi, Sheikh Mehdi [Karroubi]". [...] The Iranian people, both in the 2009 protests/demonstrations and in this year again on February 14 and 20, have shouted out the demand for the overthrow of the system the loudest they could have. However, now at a time when the riotous masses who've had enough are shouting the slogan, "Al-sha'b al-yerid esqhaat al-nezaam" (People want the overthrow of the system), all the way from the shores of Tunis to the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the regime's reformists are asking the people to put aside the slogan of "Down with the Dictator" and the demand for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, and instead shout, "Yaa Hossein, Mir Hossein," or "Yaa Mehdi, Sheikh Mehdi!" Such futile efforts to erect obstacles in the way of the raging floods of the people's protests shall be crushed.

[...]

We declare: Denying the rights of women in Iran not only impedes the spread of the anti-dictatorial movement and its growth but is also an insult to the sacrifices and the faultless struggles of the heroic women of our country. It is obvious that the anti-dictatorial movement of the Iranian people is against the house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi and protests those house arrests; however, in a country where thousands of freedom-seeking youths and political and social activists are in chains in dungeons, and where groups after groups of innocent people are hanged for the crime of wanting freedom, nobody has the right to put terms and conditions on political freedoms, or to replace the political freedom of all political prisoners with the freedom of only Mousavi and Karroubi. These two men are not bigger than the people of Iran and their freedom is not the same as the freedom of the people; while people's freedom can guarantee their freedom too. To reverse this equation is to take utilitarian advantage of the explosive potential of people's grievances.

We declare: The era for individuals and tendencies to use monopolistic methods to impose governments, political systems and policies has passed, as has the era for riding the waves made of our youth's blood. People of Iran will get rid of such methods and means along with the ruling dictatorship. In a society, in which oppression and injustice is everywhere, any protest against a particular form of oppression that remains particular and specific, and does not get elevated to the point of overthrowing all oppression, will undoubtedly lead to the oppression to be reproduced in another form.

We support the March 1 move as the first of the Protest Tuesdays, and within the context of the call made by the social networks [of the Iranian youth] for the Tuesdays, March 1, 8 and 15, and we are sure that the brave people and the brave youth of the country will push forth with their common current slogans, meaning, "Death to the dictator", and will crush the futile efforts to subdue this movement that is seeking the overthrow of the system. For us, the protests against Mousavi and Karroubi's house arrests have meaning only within the context of protesting against anybody's rights being taken away from them, regardless of their ideas, ilk or creed; as a result, we persistently insist on the slogan, "Free Political Prisoners!" as a non-sectarian slogan that goes beyond particular groups, and guarantees the strengthening of solidarity within the anti-dictatorial movement of the Iranian people.

Down with the Islamic Republic regime!
Long live Freedom; Long live socialism!

Executive Committee of Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran (Raah Kaargar/ Worker's Path) / 26 February 2011

[Original source, in Persian: here]

Birds of a Feather

2011-02-25T13:32:00.001-08:00

Khamenei and His Craziness, in their younger days: Ahhhh, ain't they sweet looking?

Ahmadinejad can hardly contain himself at the sight of that ugly face!

Iran: Refinery Workers on Strike

2011-02-23T21:05:00.000-08:00

First spotted on Uruknet, from Freedom Messenger.

Iranian Refinery Workers on Strike
TEHRAN, IRAN—The workers at one Iran’s largest refineries have been on strike since last Monday when the opposition movement called for a nationwide day of protest to show solidarity with people in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Abadan’s oil refinery is the largest refinery in Iran. The striking workers announced they have not been paid by the contractor engaged to by the government to complete the expansion of the refinery’s capacity to produce gasoline for domestic consumption.

For the last six months, the wages owned to the refinery workers have not been paid by the government’s contractor. The efforts to expand Abadan’s oil refinery were initiated by the Iranian government amid stringent UN sanctions that prevented Iran from importing gasoline for domestic consumption.

Iran is the world’s fourth largest oil producer but it lacks the refinery capacity to produce gasoline for domestic consumption.

The expansion of Abadan facility was initiated in three phases. The first two phases of the project have been completed. However, the third phase has run into considerable difficulty and is not yet completed.

During a mass prayer gathering on February 4, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini announced “based on reports that I have received, the country will be completely self-sufficient in the production of gasoline by February 11.”

The last phase of expansion for the Abadan facility is stalled despite government assurances that it will be completed by the end of February, 2011.

Meanwhile, the striking workers have no recourse to recover their unpaid wages. The Iranian government has announced that the payment of workers’ wages was the responsibility of the contractor.

See complete report here ...

Iranian Police Using Tear Gas or Poison Gas?

2011-02-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

More disturbing news, from International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, about police tactics; in particular, use of some sort of 'tear gas' that seems to be a lot more harmful than normal tear gas.

Tear Gas Used On 14 February Causes Severe Symptoms Among Protesters
February 20, 2011

Shadi Sadr, an Iranian human rights lawyer, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that at least three people who participated in the 14 February protests have expressed that the tear gas used against the protesters was different from that used previously. According to the three individuals, when they returned home after exposure to the tear gas, they suffered symptoms such as severe nausea, vomiting blood, and loss of voice and their symptoms have not yet subsided.
[...]
“I know of three people who are suffering from pains which were unprecedented as compared to the previous occasions. One of them had severe nausea and vomited blood, to the point where he was seen by a doctor and has had to take tests. One of them continues to have no voice through today and cannot be heard even 10 centimeters away. All three are suffering from severe muscular pains and cramps,” Shadi Sadr told the Campaign. The distinguished Iranian lawyer also said that other people who attended the 14 February gatherings have confirmed the symptoms of this tear gas through her Google Reader. A source reliable to Ms. Sadr told her, “My friend told me today that she and at least three other people are suffering from body aches, sore throat, and severe cold-like symptoms.” They also reported that they were previously exposed to tear gas, but they had never experienced such symptoms before.

Read the complete report here ...

Iron wall around Mousavi's house

2011-02-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

Of the signs of desperation we see coming from the Iranian regime, some are more absurd than others. Their latest record-setting performance in the category of absurdly vicious: stealing the body of a martyr, Saane' Zhaaleh, whom the regime's goons had shot dead, by the security forces and then claiming that the man they had killed was a Basij member killed by protesters (even though he was Kurdish and a Sunni, a student of theater literature at Art College, and an opponent of the government); then, not allowing his friends, family and classmates to participate in his funeral; then, when his brother reveals the truth, arresting the brother; then putting pressure on the whole family to go along with the whole absurd insult.

We are now getting news of some record setting in the category of absurdly futile: erecting an iron wall around Mousavi's house!

This is very instructive. Here is the mild mannered, hardly-ever speaking or saying much, impotent misleader or at best reluctant leader leading to nowhere, Mousavi, a political figure who is a former prime minister of this very system [during a very violent early period of the formation of this regime, during which literally thousands of political prisoners were summarily slaughtered in prisons], a very loyal son to the regime, and a person who, even after the government goons have killed, arrested, tortured and raped dissidents who actually support him, Mousavi, is still set on KEEPING the system and its constitution, "Not a word more, not one less!" And this is the treatment he gets!

Now, can you imagine what the system does to anybody who thinks in paradigms entirely removed from an absolutist theocracy?

The system ASSUMES everybody to be a slave to the state.

BUT ... That is exactly what the PEOPLE in Iran have realized, for some (very long) time now. And that is exactly why a great many of the slogans being shouted these days demand the destruction of the system, and nothing less!

Which is exactly why, in turn, there have been thousands of arrests nationwide since February 14 protests, as well as during the weeks leading to it; arrests and detentions and disappearances which continue apace to this day.

Nevertheless, the people's resistance too continues, and there are fresh demonstrations called for, to be held on February 20th. Student organizations are particularly active organizing for the coming protests.

In this context, it is indeed absurdly futile that the regime is spending so much effort isolating Mousavi and Karroubi, as if they are causing the movement, and as if the real causes are not the social misery daily reproduced by the system itself. Regime's leaders are sticking fingers in holes in the dam, while giant cracks are visibly fracturing the larger structure. A good part of the people's movement has moved well beyond reformists Mousavi and Karroubi, and is already planning for conditions in which everybody is really equal before the law, when people's rights are not rented to them based on how loyal they are to the state or based on how much they believe (or pretend to believe) in some particular obscurantist reading of a particular branch of Islam.

Regime's entire house of cards is falling apart, and they are erecting iron walls!

Long Live People's Movement for Social Justice and Freedom!

Building an Iron Wall around Mousavi's house
Kaleme / Saturday, February 19, 2011

Kaleme [a publication very close to Mousavi]: "They [security forces] are turning Mousavi and Rahnavard's house into a prison with very tall, iron walls." These are the observations of some staff members of the office of presidency, physicians and clients at the Matyr Shoorideh Hospital, which is located near Akhtar Alley, in which Mousavi's house is located.

Some of the upright staff working in the office of presidency, in a telephone contact with Kaleme, have informed us that at this moment [security] officials are working very rapidly in order to build a giant iron wall in front of Mousavi's house.

Apparently what's going on around Mousavi's house is what Ahmad Jannati [a reactionary cleric] said at the Friday prayers recently in Tehran, according to which, we must turn the houses of, as he called them, 'leaders of sedition' into prisons for them.

As Kaleme reports, in recent months, numerous limitations were created for the communications between Mousavi and [his wife] Rahnavard with the society, limitations that were intensified step by step. The circle of security restrictions around Mousavi began tightening from around the end of summer, and simultaneous with the attacks on Karroubi's house as well as on some of the maraaje' [Shiite sources of emulation]. These confrontations coincided at one point with a day when journalists were visiting Mousavi, and since has been applied to people from all layers and personalities attempting to visit him.

Six months ago, we entered a new phase of intensification of limitations against Mousavi and his wife, when a van was stationed in front of Mousavi's office [...]. This van was filled with security personnel who would prevent people and personalities from meeting and visiting Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard. At times, some of the visitors would even be detained temporarily, and after some hours of street interrogation, would be freed; others would be taken to detention centers, and only after signing written affidavits guaranteeing not to return [to Mousavi's office], would be freed.

Mousavi and Rahnavard's house arrest began officially after the February 14 protests started, and starting on February 16, all communications with the house have been cut off, and since then we have no news of their situation or of their health. Currently, Mousavi's guards have been relieved of their duties and security forces have taken their place.

Mousavi and Rahnavard's relatives have not been able to get any news regarding their situation, and the security personnel stationed around their house do not allow anybody to get near their place of residence.

After cutting off all communications means with Mousavi and Rahnavard, including telephone lines and the Internet, now with the building of an iron wall around Mousavi's house, their house arrest has entered a new phase, and it is not clear what other plans are being concocted for Mousavi and [Rhanavard] by judiciary and security/intelligence authorities.

[Original, in Persian: http://www.kaleme.com/1389/11/30/klm-48128/]

RELATED: See also this piece on Mir Hossein Mousavi's prime ministership period, during which a most horrendous mass killing of thousands of political prisoners took place:

http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/observing-iran/mir-hossein-mousavi-and-1988-massacre-political-prisoners

Khiaban No. 84: Current Necessities of the Movement

2011-02-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

Translation of a lead article from the latest Khiaban newspaper (#84).

Necessities
February 17, 2011

The new oppositional wave turned things upside down across Tehran [on February 14, 2011]. Even the fiercely predatory guards of the dictatorship could not stop people's will from taking to the public arena. Bringing down the dictatorship and starting the foundations of freedom has turned into the collective goal of the youth and the people who have had enough.

The February 14 protests, which occurred across a wide area of Tehran and in pockets, showed new capabilities and at the same time brought out certain necessities of the struggle. Of these important necessities, which have now clearly revealed themselves and seek a solution, are political organization and the tactical organization of the struggle against the ruling dictatorship.

Political Organization of the Movement
The movement in its current conditions is suffering severely from a lack of political organization. Although large numbers of people take to the streets, and by sacrificing in the utmost refuse to surrender the society to the rulers, the movement is still greatly without organization and without a political fabric [to give it coherence and strength]. What does 'political organization' mean? Let us clarify the discussion by use of some examples.

In Egypt, and in the main demonstrations in Tahrir Square, we were not merely witnessing a gathering of the masses of the people. On the contrary, when we were observing the masses of people gathering, we were seeing the [result of the prior] organization of the demonstrations by the youth. There were signs and placards there to declare people's demands and positions. This task of preparing signs and placards requires some level of political organization, in which a number of individuals plan to get such things together, decide on the slogans and demands, and then prepare the signs and the placards and bring them onto the street.

We also observed that loud speakers had been prepared [in Tahrir Sq.] and as organized and managed by the people there, certain individuals made speeches and retold people's grievances. Reading out statements, messages of solidarity, and issuing declarations are among other activities that require the political organization of the youth. Different groups participating in the protests must organize themselves in numerous small cells for exactly such moments [of opportunity to take to the streets], so as to be able to act effectively. All participating forces in the movement must have the right to organize themselves to participate and to speak up in organized fashion about their goals, demands and views.

Perhaps it is not possible to reach a high level of organization over night or over a short period of time, but we should be taking steps in that direction. Any group or even small number of people, and whoever is engaged in this struggle for liberation, must begin to organize themselves politically. This work can begin in any space. In a college or university, those youth wishing to change the status quo can form such cells. Consequently, in some sit-in by the students over the release of their imprisoned fellow students or any other matter, their particular demands could be expressed, resolutions reached collectively could be read out loud, etc.

If such organizational forms take shape, then we can move towards more collective and more connected and all-encompassing moves. For example, from the cooperation of such groups, we can get to coordinated efforts such as the 25 January revolutionary youth of Egypt, to express the demands and expectations of the youth and fight over those demands. The same idea can be adopted by the active groups who work in defense of women's rights, workers and ... In the absence of such political organizational forms, however, the struggle carried out by the people and the youth will continue, but their demands and goals will remain vague and unclear.

For example, we can, these very crucial days, organize ourselves in various spaces, around the following demands:

Immediate release of the 1,500 detainees of the Feb. 14 protests, without any conditions, without any bail demands, and without any confiscation of any documents.
Freedom for all political prisoners
Immediate and urgent stopping of all violence against dissident citizens, whether in the form of torture, executions of political prisoners, or in the form of suppressing public gatherings of the people by the [Revolutionary] Guards [and Basij, etc.]

Tactical Organization in the Streets
Urban street struggle requires organizational effort. Without organized cells, the work of confronting the Gurads is extremely thorny. Several obstacles could be observed in [February 14] protests. First, if everybody goes to Enghelaab Square at a particular time one by one, pretending that they're just passersby on some business there or nearby, the possibilities for forming a rally are lowered. Why? Because the large masses of the Guards are standing there and you cannot stop [individually]. They tell you, "Move on!" and since everybody's pretending to be passersby, they move on, without the crowd being able to reach such numbers as to be able to shout some slogans and to start a demonstration. It is perhaps better to form smaller-numbered demonstrations in the side-streets, and then approach the main [gathering] spaces in organized masses. The simultaneous approach of many small demonstrations toward a common center, arriving at a designated place at the same time is far harder to control.

Or, another matter is confronting the motorcycle units [of the security forces]. Motorized units play an important role in attacking the people. In order to confront and de-mobilize them, some ways and means must be sought, and to an extent certain tools and material resources are needed.

In both these matters of importance, there is a need for self-organized coordinating cells. Even ten groups of five or six people organized in different cells provide an opportunity to organize, support and protect hundreds and even thousands, who would otherwise participate in the protests in individual capacity only and in an unorganized fashion.

Organizing is the most important weapon that enables ordinary people to overcome their enemies and adversaries. Organization must, however, always be accompanied with spreading of awareness. We must always be asking: Why are we struggling? What are we fighting for? What are those things we don't want, and those we do want? Up to this point, one thing is agreed by all: the foundations of the current situation are problematic. The dictatorship must be destroyed from its top [to the bottom].

Confront the Islamic Republic's Dementia

2011-02-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Statement of Executive Committee of Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran (Workers' Path / Raah Kaargar)

Confront the Ruling Islamic Republic's Demented Policies of Revenge

The dizzying punch of the million-strong presence of the people on February 14, 2011, has driven the rulers insane. Extortionist members of the parliament, after seeing people's power on the Day of Rage, left their seats to shout slogans, 'Death to Mousavi & Karroubi' in the parliament! Paid clerics conducted a sit-in at Tehran's Arg Square. [After stealing the body of a martyr they themselves had killed] The Basijis and Revolutionary Guards organized a Shiite ceremony, in which they carried the body of martyr Saane' Zhaaleh, a member of the Pen Association of Kurdistan, and by doing so they completed their crimes, and they cracked down on the protests by the students of the Art College [where Saane' Zhaaleh was a theater student]. Those who killed Saane' Zhaaleh and Mohamad Mokhtaari with bullets, were now posing as those burying Saane', and thus threw fresh salt into the deep wounds of his martyrdom. Snatching people's martyrs, shouting 'Death to Mousavi, Karroubi & Khatami' in parliament, conducting vast waves of arrests and organizing utterly and shameless campaigns of lies on the state TV -- all these testify to the fact that the people's move on February 14, 2011, had such an effective impact on the body of the Islamic regime that it has come down with a case of dementia.

The Islamic Republic, which claimed support for the movements of the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples, is faced with widespread infamy, and like a wounded snake is lashing out and seeking revenge. Threats of the nation's attorney general regarding the prosecution of the organizers of the movement, operationalizing other Kahrizak-like [secret torture camps and] detention centers, such as the one in Mesgar-Abaad [on the outskirts of Tehran], attacking the students of Art College, these are all examples of Islamic Republic's revenge-seeking policies. A regime that is in complete international isolation, and in order to break the people's resistance will not refrain from committing any crimes whatsoever.

At the same time that our organization condemns Islamic Republic's revenge-seeking policies and actions, we must raise alarms regarding the criminal moves of the regime against those detained on February 14 [1,500 according to official figures, likely a lot more], against political prisoners and against the reformist leaders, and we call on everybody to use whatever means available to expose these brutal policies. By exposing and shaming to the utmost the Islamic rulers [of Iran], we shall not allow them to place the blade of revenge against the throats of the people who have had enough. It is up to the activists and organizers of the mass movements of the people inside Iran to spread their fight and struggle among the workers and the poor and the dominated classes, and to mobilize ever greater number of people, and to create ever-stronger barricades against the onslaught of the rulers.

Our organization calls on all political activists and democratic organizations to show widespread reaction to these demented policies and campaigns, and by organizing various public actions to spread international awareness regarding Islamic Republic's crimes in Iran. We must not allow the criminal Islamic Republic regime to bludgeon to death our people's anti-dictatorial movement.

Down with Islamic Republic!

Long Live Freedom, Long Live Socialism!

Executive Committee of Revolutionary Workers' Organization of Iran

16 February 2011 / 27 Bahman, 1389

[Original, in Persian: can be read here.]

RELATED: See Fesenjoon for more on related.

Can Molotov cocktails remedy our people's pains?

2011-02-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

Translation of article from Gozareshgaran.

Can Molotov cocktails remedy our people's pains?
By: Behrooz Sooren / Feb. 16. 2011

Discourse regarding self-defense on the part of the people -- who daily come under the assault of the security forces of the Islamic Republic in the streets for various reasons -- is one of the subjects of discussion and commentary among the political organized forces and individuals inside and outside Iran. The points of divergence among these forces are reflections of their views on the leadership and the future of the movement, and the fate of the protests and demonstrations, which have accompanied the entirety of the Islamic Republic's three inauspicious decades of occupation of the state power and running of country. In a violent system that the Islamic Republic has imposed on our people, and which has stripped the people of all personal and social rights, there remains no other choice other than self-defense against the violence that this regime has perpetrated against women, the youth, the students, workers and ...

We remember that a year and a half ago, when the vast street presence of the people was the subject of headlines around Iran and the world, many people still spoke of civic/non-violent struggle, and would advertise non-violent methods of fighting against knife-wielding murderers of the Basij and the Sepaah [Revolutionary Guards]. The slogans such as, 'Death to dictator and dictatorship!' were interpreted as misplaced.

Political perceptions and experience of many in the organized forces as well as individuals confronted these conformists and compromisers, and today we witness that the chief slogan of the people on the streets is, 'Death to Dictators', and 'Down with Islamic Republic'. [The slogan of] separation of religion and state is raised, as opposed to the reactionary slogan [proposed by reformists, Mousavi and Karroubi], "The [Islamic Republic's] Constitution, not a word more nor one less!" and the views of the hangman, Khomeini, the darling of the [reformists]. Mousavi and Karroubi have expressed their dreams and ideals in a recent statement: keeping the existing system and returning it to the golden era of their hangman imam [Khomeini].

These dreams are, however, very far from the level of growth of awareness and experience of the people, who in the streets have repeatedly experienced the bloody face of the Islamic Republic. The idea of self-defense, and preparation for confronting the violent forces protecting the regime, is strengthened daily. It is obvious that if there existed the alternative of removing the regime without shedding blood, and with reference to a free vote of the people, not a single person would opt for a violent overthrow.

It is an elementary fact that people do not want wars, and think of peace, freedom and equality. It is also elementary that any revolution necessitates the burden of some costs, including human lives as well as economic costs. However, the truth is that tyranny never leaves the political scene due merely to some wise advice or diplomatic prodding.

The truth is that a system like the Islamic Republic has been busy for thirty-two years deceiving, oppressing, and looting the people of Iran, and it is the truth that hoarding money and wealth is the one thing that gives the system, from its top to the bottom, its stability and motivation. This utopia -- that at some point, the rulers will give up their tyranny and brutality and ask for forgiveness -- can only be propagated by people who find their interests in keeping this system and its constitution.

Molotov cocktail, throughout its history, has been portrayed not as an instrument of violence, but a symbol of resistance of unarmed people in their own defense. A defense against armed forces, who give themselves the right to attack defenseless people when they demand their rights, which are in conflict with the interests of the rulers; armed forces whose only reason for existence is to keep the existing system; who have bases and garrisons, hot and cold weapons, prisons, rooms and instruments for torture; who expropriate large portions of the national budget so as to line up against the hungry masses, to defend the wealthy, and to stop any change to the status quo.

Their forces, however, will sooner or later confront the will of the people, who are countless, who have ingenuity, and who are not ignorant of other nations' experiences, nor those of their own. Many of those experiences have been put into use in recent years, and have been shared on the cyber space as well. These lessons are now available in many forms. Including, how to put together Molotov cocktails for self-defense.

Most certainly, the executions and the street slaughters by the Islamic Republic will be confronted admirably by dissidents in the streets.

DISCLAIMER: Legality: As incendiary devices, Molotov cocktails are illegal to manufacture or possess in many regions. In the United States, Molotov cocktails are considered "destructive devices" under the National Firearms Act and regulated by the ATF.

A Report from Tehran Protests on Feb 14

2011-02-15T16:39:00.000-08:00

Translation of a report found on Gozareshgaran.

Received: Report of eyewitness observations from parts of Tehran demonstrations on Feb. 14, 2011
by: Anonymous

Hello, Dear Friends,

Once again, we made it back home in one piece. I got home at eight, but I jumped on the back of a motorbike; the guy was a decent man. He's a courier biker in the south of Tehran. He said he was just coming from Navaab. "Southern neighborhoods are locked up." He said that Navaab was set on fire by the youth, and they had given a good beating to some of the plainclothes guys. And then he said something interesting about our kids. He said they really defended their honor. That was interesting.

All in all, some people and we were with them, joined up with others around Jamal-zaadeh Eskandari, and we took to the middle of the street and started shouting slogans. The slogans were basically, 'Death to the dictator!', 'Mobarak, Ben-Ali, next is Seyed Ali [Khamenei]!', 'Free political prisoners!' ...

It was basically a lot of running away and trying not to get caught. If our crowd got bigger anywhere, they would start chasing us and throwing tear gas. Even in small side streets and alleys, all the way from Enghelaab to about Azaadi, were filled with tear gas. And then a woman, around Eskandari, approached our crowd from the west and started to shout slogans. She was about 60 years old, and the whole crowd started following her. She became the leader of the demonstration. And another thing was, all the streets leading to Azaadi St., like North and South Jamal-zaadeh, were mostly on fire and filled with people, who were being forced back by tear gas from pouring onto major streets. Also, I have to say this emotional thing. Naahid and I got very emotional at times, with tears in our eyes, from the masses of the youth who were there.

And like one of our friends said, we also passed through the 'democracy hole'. In Yaadgaar some 14, 15 year old Basiji kids were turning people back saying we couldn't go any further, and were directing people south-bound. So, people, men, women, old and young, just jumped over the guard rail and then from a hole that didn't have a bar went to the other side of the street and continued on. My friend called that little hole the 'democracy hole', through which people for the time being are making their passage.

After it got dark, people were saying that some people had gone to Vanak, some to Arya-shahr and Veela to shout slogans. And another thing was that when people would gather in lines for BRT buses, they would throw tear gas canisters to disperse people, and then after about an hour of this, they completely stopped the bus traffic, to free up the bus lanes for the coming and going of their own motorized units. And some young women who the Basijis were trying to pull down from some buses to be arrested were freed by the people who didn't allow them to arrest the youth, and kept at the Basijis who realized that beating up the kid was of no use and gave up on arresting him, so that they could attack the other protesters.

Original in Persian from: Gozareshgaran / Feb. 14, 2011 (here)

Happy Valentine's Day to the Iranian People!

2011-02-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

We speak from the heart today!

Happy Day of Love to our people in Iran! We love you, brothers and sisters, and we salute your renewed spirit of defiance, loss of fear, and your renewed sense of what is possible!

Long live your positive will! Long live your perseverance! We can only cheer from shores afar. But long live your collective love, your energy and your resistance!

* * *

There is a qualitative difference in a majority of the slogans. Previously, during the demonstrations right after the electoral coup in June 2009, slogans targeting Khamenei [the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, the Pope as it were, to the whole Iranian society, as Pope would be to the Vatican city-state] were not as frequent as slogans such as, "Death to the dictator!" which is ambiguous. Who is the actual dictator; Ahmadinejad, the president, or Khamenei, the supreme leader?

This has a political significance. Ahmadinejad, the president, is a clown (according to the kindest interpretations available among the opposition literature), occupying a post that in the Iranian constitution has limited powers, whereas Khamenei the supreme leader is omnipotent in all matters this-or-other-worldly; and all this according to the current Iranian "constitution" [we should really require quotation marks, as in, this is a mockery of a constitution, because all major rights 'guaranteed' therein have been embedded with a clause stating, "unless this impedes/interferes with Islamic principles/interests." But who decides what those interpretations -- for that's all they can be of a text that dates 1400-some years! -- should be?]

So, the fact that a good and noticeable portion of slogans to have narrowed down and become more specifically focused on the person of Khamenei can indicate that over the one year period of suppressed-depressed existence that the movement is just snapping out of -- during which it must have gone through a process of valuation and reevaluation of events, acts and the thoughts behind the acts -- it must have come to the conclusion that since the crux of the system is the so-called supreme leader, he may as well have to be targeted and targeted by his proper name, not merely by an adjective, 'dictator', that could apply to about anybody with state power in Iran.

At the same time, the Iranian people must well know that by naming the most crucial enemy, they are naming the system as well. It's just the same as an absolutist monarchy, without the monarch, but with something worse: a guy who claims to be god's own representative on earth, so will commit whatever atrocities against his subjects as he pleases, because god told him to do so! His subjects are not born into this world with inalienable rights; they get whatever rights the state, personified in Khamenei, will throw them.

People have learned. "Mobarak, Ben-Ali, nobate Seyed Ali!" (Mobarak, Ben-Ali, next is Seyed Ali [Khamenei, the supreme leader]) That was the most frequently heard slogans being shouted, from an admittedly limited number of video clips observed online.

Naming the enemy has a big positive power. Long live this new/renewed phase of the Iranian uprising for democracy and economic justice.

[Videos found on Iranian.com, available on YouTube:]

"Mobarak, Ben-Ali, Nobate Seyed Ali" (Mobarak, Ben-Ali, Next is Seyed Ali [Khamenei])

"Marg bar Khamenei" (Down with Khamenei)

Motorized security forces preparing to attack:

"Mobarak, Ben-Ali, Nobate Seyed Ali!" "Seyed Ali bi-chaareh, Jonbesh hanooz bidaareh!" (Wretched Seyed Ali [Khamenei], the movement is still alive!)

"Khameni bedooneh, bezoodi sar-negooneh!" (Khamenei should know, soon he'll be overthrown!)

Protests continue into the night ... "Marg bar Khamenei!"

"Freedom, Freedom, Freedom ..."

Khiaban No. 82: On February 14 Demonstrations

2011-02-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

See Below for a lead article from the latest Khiaban newspaper, #82 (Saturday, February 12, 2011).

After the revolutionary movements by the people of Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in starting the process of transformation of their societies, the winds of revolutionary possibilities have blown across the region. Although the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are nowhere nearly finished, and indeed everybody involved in them knows well that the long and hard work has just begun, as first steps go, the first steps of the revolutionary process have now been successful. As a result, the people have learned what they are capable of doing. The next steps are far more complicated, but even at this stage, the audacity of the Tunisian and the Egyptian people has inspired millions across the region.

Iran is no exception. The reactions of the dictators in Tehran have been farcical at best. But deep down they know they are on notice, too.

Iranian people saw their 2009 post-electoral-coup movement brutally suppressed, with thousands arrested, hundreds put on show-trials, tortured confessions aired on national TV, they watched their children raped, threatened to get raped, or they watched their heros suffer virtual death sentences in macabre dungeons for daring to peacefully demonstrate in the streets and to demand their rights (like Osanloo, the leader of Tehran's bus drivers' union, who very recently suffered a heart attack, simply because prison authorities had been deliberately ignoring his deteriorating health conditions).

This year, people of Iran have seen an unprecedented number of executions of political activists, while on the economic front they have observed the removal of subsidies of one essential product after another, meaning the people in Iran must now eat at world market prices while earning (very low) Iranian wages. All these social and economic factors were spreading a deep sense of despair among the Iranian people. The defeat of their movement at the hands of the brutal government was the wound, and the salt was all the executions and the economic punishment.

The winds of possibilities for change, however, have come a-blowing, thanks to the courage and ingenuity, as well as the spontaneity, of the Tunisians and the Egyptians. There are protests organized in Iran, for Monday, February 14, in support of the people of Egypt and Tunisia, and hopefully in support of the annihilated rights of the Iranian people!

Long live the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia!

Long Live People's Self-Organized Free Associations!

On February 14 Demonstrations

by: Alef

The revolution in Tunisia and the insurrection in Egypt have affected the Iranian political atmosphere as well. The organized movement of the people against dicatatorships, which took the form of street uprisings, led in Tunisia to the dictator fleeing, and in Egypt to the fracturing of the system. In Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and some other Arab countries too, we are witnessing vast masses of the people taking to the public arena. Masses are revolting against misery and the suffocating political systems, and are demanding other forms of social organization for their countries. In this regional revolutionary wave, a multi-layered movement has taken shape: the youth (whether unemployed or as social actors from layers that are educated and employed) and dominated social classes, particularly working classes, are among those in the frontlines of the battles against political monopoly of the few and capitalist-dictated [endless] profit accumulation.

In Iran, the effects of this wave have been swift and vast. The society, which has been witnessing the endless executions of its socially conscious actors at the hands of the blood drenched system, deep in the midst of hopelessness and despair, suddenly found a new hope. Our society objectively saw the real possibility of revolution and transformation; and that, merely based on the collective will and solidarity, and despite all the superpowers. "Tunisia could!" The insurrections by the Arabic speaking people have helped spread a critical view of ruling ideas and ideologies. The [reformist] idea that revolutions are dangerous -- and that the only available path is to convince the rulers to change their ways -- melted away as swiftly as a snowflake in August sun.

A new critical self-questioning began: Why and how come we didn't have the slightest achievements, while with demonstrations comprising fewer people and in a short time, both Tunisia and Egypt started taking steps towards transforming their societies, yet Iran is still living with the rule of a macabre gang of murderers? This political atmosphere brought with it a wave of re-thinking of reformist ideas and [the actions of reformist] leaders. People had to rely on their own power and had to think of new paths. The idea of restarting the struggle again was spreading. There arose murmurs of organizing demonstrations in support of the people of Egypt and Tunisia.

In such an atmosphere, Moussavi and Karroubi announced for demonstrations on Bahman 25/February 14; a step that up to this moment has resulted in the arrests of political activists. However, everybody knows that these arrests cannot stop the flood that will come. Moussavi has tried, in his planned action, to not fall behind the social political body, and at the same time impose his own leadership. Additionally, if possible, he wants to prevent the transformation of people's self-questioning into a new movement. However, the reality is that no other social force had the capability or the organization to determine a day to take to the streets. This fact cannot be concealed or denied.

Yet, the people who will participate on February 14 will this time bring to the streets the seeds of new self-organizational forms in their collective consciousness. People have learned from Tunisians and the Egyptians that without your own social fabric, without connections and organization, it is not possible to escape the trap of the deals made by the men of ruling systems. New self-organizational forms are needed in order to bring forth new ideas and to fight for them. Today, the old world is dying. A new world is learning to fly in these days of rage in the region.

Iranian Regime's Nuclear Heel

2010-07-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

As Iranian authorities run the last tests on Bushehr nuclear power plant, and as the authorities slash oil prices so as to find international customers, we feel it is necessary to re-state some positions expressed before regarding nuclear energy in Iran.

Their Nuclear Heel
The Iranian people have a right to demand accountability for a whole host of issues involved with the production of nuclear energy in Iran: Where are the records of seismological surveys carried out to determine how near/far major fault lines lie from the Bushehr power plant? What are the safety regulations put in place? What about the environmental-impact studies for the 'best-case' scenarios (where to store the nuclear waste, and how)? Has any thinking gone into plans for a worst-case scenario, for the necessary evacuations, for containment of the radiation contamination, and on and on? But most importantly, do the people in Iran have an oversight right over any of the nuclear activities? In other words: Is there a reliable infrastructure available to help rebuild lives in a worst-case scenario, or is Bushehr as a city, much like Chernobyl, considered an expendable city? Or, are the gentlemen in Tehran - as well as in the western capitals - dependent merely on luck and divine protection?

And what about evacuation procedures, should the worst happen? Iran's roads are not exactly extensive or kept in decent repair. We know from the 2005 New Orleans experience with Hurricane Katrina, that even in a country with extensive highway systems, evacuating large populations can take a long time and is a very hazardous task at best, and at worst a murderous ordeal. A nuclear accident, by contrast, is capable of precipitating an extremely poisonous atmospheric and environmental set of conditions in less than an hour.

Iran sits on many large and active fault lines; you can see a seismicity map of Iran at: http://www.iiees.ac.ir/iiees/English/bank/report.html (Seismic Hazard Assessment of Iran; by B. Tavakoli and M. Ghafory-Ashtiany).

Of the major earthquakes that do occur in Iran, a good many are stronger than magnitude 6 on the Richter scale, from which point on major damage and destruction increase exponentially. Here are some casualty figures from recent major earthquakes in Iran, since 1972:

· Dec. 26, 2003: Southeastern Iran, Bam, magnitude 6.5; 26,000 killed.
· June 22, 2002: Northwestern Iran in the Qazvin province, magnitude 6; at least 500 killed.
· May 10, 1997: Northern Iran near Afghanistan, magnitude 7.1; 1,500 died.
· June 21, 1990: Northwest Iran around Tabas, magnitude 7.3-7.7; 50,000 killed.
· Sept. 16, 1978: Northeast Iran, magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed.
· April 10, 1972: Southern Iran near Ghir Karzin, magnitude 7.1; 5,374 killed.

These casualty figures are very high as it is. In each case, additional thousands if not tens of thousands more suffered months and years of dislocation and loss of livelihoods, for which they were never compensated, nor were they helped in rebuilding their lives. Now, imagine the additional casualties and the displaced if any of these earthquakes had been accompanied by the melt down of a nuclear reactor.

It should be pointed out that the deaths occurring as a result of these earthquakes are far larger than they should have been, mostly because of lax building codes in Iran. Ours are completely inadequate compared to some of the world's highest standards for earthquake-proofing available in, say, Japan; yet even there serious accidents have occurred due to lack of preparedness for earthquake strengths that did actually occur, which exceeded earthquake levels the construction specifications had required. We can state that not even a shade of such standards are enforced or followed in Iran. The building codes that do exist are regularly ignored and violated by contractors, developers and even individual home-builders more inclined to bribe an official than bear the larger costs of better safety.

We would therefore be right to wonder about the building codes implemented in the construction of Bushehr's nuclear power plant. Likewise, we should be troubled about the maximum quake strengths the plant is supposed to be able to withstand, and even more anxious about safety and rescue procedures foreseen for a worst-case scenario.

When it comes to nuclear power, transparency in accountability is without doubt essential. IAEA inspections are all fine and good for people living all the way on the other side of the globe. Inside Iran, however, what the people really need is a guaranteed right of citizens' groups - comprising independent scientists, activists, and citizens' direct representatives - to carry out on-demand inspections of nuclear facilities, the right to review their books, regulations, safety measures, evacuation plans, and on and on. Transparency and open accountability in all details is an absolutely legitimate demand of any citizenry in such matters, especially as regards governmental activities that can cause harm to potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

In Iran, however, there is no accountability for anything the government does. Just for one example, and directly related to this topic, there is no accountability for the fact that in an oil-rich and oil-exporting country, almost half of the refined petroleum products for daily consumption of the people are imported. Refining oil is not exactly new science. This industry is more than 150 years old. Surely if the regime's military-industrialists can build Shahab missiles and experiment with highly advanced nuclear warhead technology, they can build new refineries. The real reason they don't has very little to do with sanctions or lack of know-how. The real reason is that there is more mercantilist profits to be made from importing the needed refined fuel.

In Iran, it would be impossible to bring to justice any government official who plays with peoples' lives and livelihoods on a daily basis, even while there are thousands upon thousands who would have to be tried in any real legal system. Alas, there's the rub! We do not have the most rudimentary legal structures in place guaranteeing the citizens' right of oversight over anything the governmental does.

As any Iranian could tell you, in Iran there is only one branch of government, the Executive; the other two (legislature and judiciary) are merely decorative stems adorning the state. As enshrined into the theocratic constitution, the legislature, if it is anything but a rubber stamp, can easily be overturned by at least two other bodies standing above it, before the Supreme Leader gets the final say. The same goes for the judiciary, which has historically been a mere enforcer of the executive's will, rather than an adjudicator of the 'laws of the land'.

This situation clearly does not allow for a system wherein the citizens keep a vigilant eye on the government's handling of nuclear-powered energy production. Further, should any disasters occur (which is to say, when a disaster does occur), the government is guaranteed to act in the least responsive manner possible, to cover up maximally, and to shirk as many responsibilities as it can, leaving the citizens to bear the lethal costs of a nuclear disaster on their own.

It is therefore the duty of any democratically inclined person, and more so the duty of any leftist activist, thinker or organizer, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists everywhere, especially among the western left, to stand on the side of the well being of the Iranian people and unambiguously oppose any nuclear energy development in Iran carried out by the current unaccountable government.   

Those who, like the Islamic regime in Iran, insist that pursuing nuclear power is an automatic right, must also be prepared to bear the responsibility, and be ready to be fully accountable, for any outcome of the activities involved in handling of nuclear materials. Particularly if the nuclear facilities are built near densely populated areas; and most definitely if those densely populated areas and the reactors are sitting on top of active tectonic plates; as is the case with the Bushehr reactor.

Lacking transparent accountability for the preparations that have occurred so far, as well as for the future full operations of Bushehr's nuclear power plant, people have a legitimate right to demand a halt to all activities that could easily lead to the enormous health threats of radioactive poisoning potentially lasting thousands of years, causing mutations and deformations in the genetic pool of all living organisms in the area for far longer, and destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people. Nobody has an automatic right to bring about such a scenario.

Too late for hard work?
The western left has, for the most part, acted with utter confusion and lack of principles in its approach to the Islamic regime in Iran, and consequently in its approach to solidarity-building with the people of Iran.

Instead of building real alliances and solidarity between the peoples of the Middle East, including the Iranian people, and the working people of the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, etc., these false friends, feeling magnanimous with our lives, ask the Iranian people to follow their example and push for no demands from the Iranian state, to ask not for their right to assemble in public spaces that belong to them, demand not their right to speak freely, to form free associations, to not be jailed, tortured and raped for expressing critical thoughts regarding an infernal regime so steeped in murder and corruption that there is no wonder it panicked so hard at the sight of millions of people in the streets demanding accountability.

The argument for an unconditional defense of the Islamic regime's nuclear program, however, is fallacious on many levels.

First, their argument has an overtone of wishful thinking, imagining that a nuclear weapon-capable Iran is the only guarantee of a 'détente' that leaves the Iranian people free from imperialist harassment (while leaving the people completely open to rape, torture and imprisonment-by-lottery by the local regime). In effect, this argument advocates a nuclear arms race, as this is presented to be the only deterrent capable of stopping an imperialist invasion; therefore, this view cheers for an increasing amount of the social resources of global south to be sucked up by a mad proposition.

Also, this logic does not explain the case of Pakistan, a nuclear weapons-capable nation, which is a virtual slave to the designs of the imperialists. Pakistan, currently run by a sycophantic regime inseparable from imperialists, is not safe from the insults thrown at it by the U.S. ruling elites and their representatives every so often reminding the Pakistani regime of how much of a slave they are in the eyes of the U.S. ruling classes.

Third, this argument is anti-environmentalist and (fourth) it disregards hard physical facts of geology in Iran, particularly southern Iran. Any leftist, who should be standing with people's health and wellbeing, and who must present a reality-based analysis, yet fails to take basic geological facts into account, is not only an ignorant leftist but also an irresponsible advocate.

Fourth, given that most western leftists recognize the dangers and highly probable harms a nuclear plant can bring to their own environment, we can only assume that racism may have something to do with their blindness regarding the same concerns Iranians may have. They must suppose that either our environment is not worth keeping clean or that Iranians have not 'developed' enough to be worried about such supposedly higher-order concerns such as a clean environment.

Instead of leading a spirited tactical (yet strategically-oriented) fight against the nuclear industry in the U.S. and against the use of depleted uranium in munitions used in Iraq and Afghanistan __ an act by the U.S. armed forces and weapons manufacturers that constitutes a crime against humanity, a war crime, and is actionable in an international tribunal, and which should be used to call for legal mass mutinies by the armed forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan __ in short, instead of strategically joining other international forces calling for a Nuclear-Free World, these false leftists would instead have us Iranians and people around the world read the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty very carefully, wherein we can find the particular clauses pinpointing the guaranteed right of signatory nations to master the enrichment cycle.

Our Argument
A halt to all nuclear activities in Iran is a reasonable demand due to the dangerous convergence of three factors, which are simultaneously and structurally operative:

1. Nuclear energy production, per se, has inevitable, extremely harmful waste-products, including a poisonous radioactive waste (depleted uranium) that cannot be destroyed, and has a radioactive lifespan of 4 billion years. A threat that, through leakage and the resulting contamination, can lead to environmental disasters on a large scale lasting not just decades, but thousands of years, producing genetic mutations among all living beings, leading to fatal deformities affecting all species, capable of contaminating water, air and soil.

2. Geological facts indicate that the region housing Bushehr's nuclear power plant in the southern coast of Iran, on Persian Gulf, will experience numerous earthquakes in the lifespan of the power plant; earthquakes of varying magnitudes, historically as strong as magnitude 7.6, with the high likelihood of stronger earthquakes in the future.

3. Iranian government is thoroughly endemically corrupt, which dictates a complete and total lack of transparency and lack of people's right of oversight over the government's handling of any and all procedures involved in the production of nuclear energy.

The current regime is socially incompetent; therefore, (or is it, because?) maximally secretive, and dangerous to our people. There will be no recourse to justice in Iran should any nuclear accidents happen, nor will there be any meaningful relief.

Further, Iran has access to vast and endless alternative sources of power: solar and wind energy. The right engineers can do the rightful calculations, but cultivating solar panel farms, or windmill farms, can match the energy produced by wasteful and radioactive-waste-producing nuclear power plants.

It is time for the left in the west to reorient itself toward solidarity with the people of Iran and think and act independently of the power calculations of the ruling classes in the west as well as the ruling class in Iran. It is time to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran in an unambiguous way. A major point of intervention can be the nuclear issue. To redefine the issue, to bring to it the social dimensions that are deliberately kept out, that is one of the major tasks of building solidarity with the Iranian people. It is time to approach the nuclear issue from a principled stance, and to refuse to accept the terms of the debate presented to us by world powers or the militarist theocrats that have taken complete control of the Iranian state apparatuses and holding the Iranian people hostage.

Bazr No. 49: Difficult Days

2010-06-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

Translation of an article from Bazr Student Publication (Bazr #49 / May 22-June 21). The article is from Bazr's last issue, for the month of Khordad (in Iranian calendar), and is a good overview of the current situation.

Difficult Days
by Rahaa Kiaa
Bazr Student Publication #49 / Khordad 1389 (May 22-June 21, 2010)

The Iranian year 1388 (March 21 2009-March 20 2010) was a year filled with ups and downs. Many things happened that will never be wiped from people's memory. And in this year too the question remains in many minds, "Will the people's protests continue?" The year 1389, however, has so far progressed very tumultuously. The regime, which has had time to get itself and its forces together, from the very beginning has showed ferocity and been boasting its sharpened fangs to the people. When the slogan of "Extra effort, extra work!" was proposed, people knew that the meaning of this slogan was nothings but more work and less pay. Meaning, get exploited more and say nothing! In protest to this slogan, people started writing on currency notes, in emails, SMS messages, slogans such as, "Extra protests against the regime and religious guardianship (velaayat-e faqih)", or "Extra tyranny, extra pressure."

The plan for rationalizing the subsidies, which was supposed to take effect from the new year, was in flux between the differences between the majlis (parliament) and the government [of Ahmadinejad]. However, inflation has people worried more than ever and they know that with the plan going into effect, they will be under even more pressure than before, especially in the case of lower classes of society. Eventually, the plan passed the parliament, but the government, which due to its memories of what happened in the aftermath of putting quotas on gasoline, is terrified of operationalizing it and facing people's reaction, and has decided to put it into effect in only three cities on experimental basis. However, in relation to this past year's events, the government continues its ideological campaigns.

The most important move by the regime is the campaign against inadequate head and body cover (bad-hejaabi) [for women]. All the parliament and the government talk about is hejaab (Islamic cover). The television and radio talk [incessantly] about bad hejaab. Reactionary government think-tanks hand out fatwa's (religious edicts) and propose plans for fighting against this phenomenon. They organize demonstrations and shout slogans. In the streets, under the name of 'moral security', in lieu of morality patrols, they arrest girls. They say that the hejaab issue has become political and that it must be dealt with seriously, and that, "Hejaab is the cornerstone of Islam," which of course is true. They stop girls with inadequate hejaab from entering universities. They give orders for national chador (head-to-tow, sheet of covering), national clothing and university uniforms. The regime, which had trembled in fear from the audacious presence of the women on the streets last year, realizing that after thirty years of oppression and ideological work it still had not been able to leash and tame the [Iranian] women or force them into surrendering and staying imprisoned in backwardness, right after the ebbing of the protests, set an attack against women as its first order of priority.

On another front, the regime gave the orders for purging the universities of secular students and professors, and they wrote numerous theses and articles about this subject. Various conditions and restrictions were set for studying for a doctorate. Up until now they have 'starred' [translator's note: as the Nazis did with Jews] students and barred them from further studies, and now they place conditions on studying so that the sons of the rulers, instead of having to get phony degrees, can study without any competitors and at ease in doctoral classes. In order to control people in Tehran, and since they have had this past year's experience, they started saying too many people live in Tehran, and they'll pay money and provide the means for people to move away from Tehran. The farther you go, or if you go to a village, the more they will pay. They even gave the orders for the transfer of universities to outside Tehran, and this [plan] was the most important for them.

In the first [big] event of the new year, which was the May Day, regime did all it could to prevent any ceremonies in different cities from taking place. In Tehran, even the ceremonies at Worker's House, which usually would be organized along regime's policies, were cancelled. Although workers' rights activists and unionists had called for gatherings, all Tehran streets were brimming with security forces and plainclothesmen. Some people, in scattered fashion, did actually walk the route announced, and some of course were arrested. The regime does not want to risk the eventuality of a spark for demonstrations. However, the important point is that this year May Day no longer belonged only to a specific layer of society, and for a large number of people this day became important as a global day and an important day of protest.

In Kurdistan, however, as always and as done every year, May Day celebrations were held which led to clashes between the people and regime's security forces, and several were arrested. [Also] on this day, Ahmadinejad went to Tehran University without prior notice, for Teachers Day [held on May 2 in Iran], and was confronted with students' fierce protests. Only people brought from outside and Basiji [students] from the university were allowed inside the hall [where Ahmadinejad was speaking]. However, for many hours a large group of students were shouting slogans against him, and many were arrested.

Kurdistan
After the passing of one week from the May Day, a piece of news appeared on websites that brought with it shock and the wrath of the people. Five political prisoners were executed. How is it possible to close your eyes on violence and injustice and say nothing? The execution of those five people had widespread repercussions that got the regime panicking. Angry people, the youth and families gathered in assemblies in front of Tehran University and Evin prison. Protests outside the country were also widespread, and [in some cases] led to clashes with police. In Kurdistan, however, everything had a different color. The regime had planned special contingencies for Kurdistan. A stealth martial law was in effect there. Widespread arrests were made. However, the people did not give up on their protests. Four of the executed [on May 9, 2010] were Kurdish, and one was a woman. Alongside the plans to crackdown on women, this execution was added to the atrocities, so as to smother women's potential. On the other hand, the Kurdish region has always been a very sensitive one for the regime. People's fighting background against the regime in that region and the radicalism of their struggle has forced the regime to deploy special forces there to control them. However, all those efforts -- meaning all the executions, arrests, the crackdown and the militarization of the region -- have not only had no effects but, quite the contrary, they have spread and given wings to the people's struggle. With the call of the revolutionary forces in protest against the executions, a general strike took hold in all of Kurdistan, which was very important and successful.

In Kurdistan too, like in most places in the country, there exist numerous and varied injustices such as class, gender and other injustices, but discrimination based on nationality is a particular injustice that has given the struggles of the people of that region a special import.

Kurdistan has always had a special place/position in the struggle against the regime for revolutionary forces and the people. After these executions, even Green leaders -- who themselves in the past have had a hand in oppressing the Kurdish people -- expressed concern regarding the executions. Many were vociferous about the fact that Moussavi too had condemned the executions. However, if they had read things carefully, they would have realized that Moussavi did not condemn the executions. He merely says that, in relation to the executions, no illuminating reasons had been given. And we don't expect him to condemn the executions. [...]

What is clear is that no number of Kahrizak's, no amount of tortures and imprisonments can save the regime from the predicament it is in. From a year ago up to now, a new generation has entered the arena of struggle, and all the show of force by the regime cannot win against the women, the youths and the people in all corners of the country.

Khordad (May 22-June21)
The regime was able to temporarily control the situation by use of force, terror and all its financial and military power; however, it has never been able to compensate for its lack of support among the people, its isolation and its political defeat. We are in the month of Khordad. Everybody is readying themselves for June 12 and the days beyond.

Once again, Moussavi's issuing of statements has begun. Moussavi and Karroubi said they would get permits [for demonstrations] on June 12, and if permits were not issued, they would act non-confrontationally. After all the shamelessness, all the killings, executions, arrests, tortures and imprisonment and the disappearances of the youth, what is the meaning of non-confrontational? Isn't an invitation to silence a laughable proposal? Wasn't the [regime's] answer to [the people's silent demonstration on June 15, 2009] violence, assaults and executions? Of course, we cannot expect otherwise from Moussavi and Karroubi. The important thing is that the people and the youth should know that the Green leaders want to keep the people away from finally settling their accounts with the Islamic Republic, since they are themselves an inseparable part of the system. They do not want to see the foundations of the system harmed. Contrary to some who say that a revolution is no longer beneficial for the country and that reforms are necessary, it must be said, "No!" That is not the case. There are plenty of events during the recent years, and especially last year, to contradict such statements, and everything shows that there is enough motivation, reasons and potentials for such a great movement, if we arm ourselves with knowledge and awareness. The struggle will not achieve its goals in one month or one year, since we are faced with an enemy that is equipped with the political ruling system or the governmental power. A government whose backbone is comprised of oppression, military force, imprisonment and torture. We must thus break a regime that is outfitted with all those tools. Both the reformists and the principlists are part of this regime. A spontaneous but very important slogans raised by the people is the separation of religion from state. Yet, Moussavi issues statements declaring that the Green movement is rooted in the people's religious beliefs and if people's religious beliefs are ever tarnished, the Green movement will be meaningless. Are there really any [major] differences between the two factions of the regime? Both say the constitution has the final word. Both say religion covers all of life. Both say Islamic Republic is the legacy of Khomeini. [...] We must drive away such illusions that we can turn the country into a beautiful oasis with the departure of this or that character and by bringing in other individuals [from different factions]. Change can only come about by attacking the roots and by destroying the foundations of this regime. And we should not overlook the role of the imperialists in people's struggles. They are also not interested in people's wellbeing, but only look at their own interests and their relations with Iran, and the effects of the people's struggle on those relations. They too consistently emphasize calm and silence and oppose rage and violence from the people. Behind the curtains, they continue their political, economic, security and espionage dealings. They exchange Clotilde Reiss, the French girl imprisoned in Iran, with merchant [Majid] Kakavand and a killer [Ali Vakili-raad].

On another front, the [international] pressures continue to build and to implement additional sanctions against the regime, and bring with them a lot of [political] chatter and reports. Russia's policies, which used to go along with Iran, have changed. Ahmadinejad finally gave in to the plan for uranium enrichment [for use in Iranian reactors] by other countries, and Turkey played the role of the intermediary in this issue. On the one hand, the regime has put as it first priority the preparations for [anniversary of electoral coup] and the continuation of the crackdown in its different forms, and on the other hand, from a position of weakness and in order to keep its rule, it is giving in to imperialistic agreements. However, it is the people who in all this are the sacrificial lambs for the rule of the leaders of the regime and the interests of imperialists.

Since right before the start of [month of] Khordad (May 22-June21), the regime has brought about all kinds of pressures on the university and the students. On the one hand, they set the date for the last day of classes at before June 12 [anniversary of electoral coup], and declared schools closed after that, and on the other they set the date for the final exams before July 9 [18 Tir; another important anniversary]. All these reveal their trepidation and fear of the university students. They pressure and harass men and women students over bad cover/clothing. They send their functionaries to universities to give speeches, and they of course face protests and demonstrations by students. The dormitories of the Free University of Eslam-shahr were attacked by the security forces because the students had protested against Hamid Rasaee [conservative member of parliament, who had given speech at that university]. Students of Tehran's Free University, which in the past year have been very militant, held protest rallies and assemblies recently. Students at the University of Science and Technology [Elm va San'at] in Tehran, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of the very dear Kianoosh Aasaa, remembered [his death] on that day and held ceremonies.

The university is an important point of strength in the people's struggles, and it must play well its important role in the dissemination and spreading of knowledge and awareness, which of course requires that the university students themselves employ this consciousness correctly and in the right direction. In any event, despite the ups and downs that it will surely have, people's struggle will continue. This is so since deep contradictions exist between the people and the ruling system, so it is necessary for the conscious and revolutionary students to carry out their duties in impacting the events and organizing people (even if a minority) who demand fundamental changes, and form their own independent forces, and with reliance on the liberating knowledge of communism and with an assessment of previous experiences and with attention to ongoing events, and to carry out their duties in correct and effective fashion. Do not allow the leaders and elements of the Green trend and the reformists, who are riding the wave of the people's protests only to assure the continuation of the system, albeit with small changes, to tame, silence and neutralize the people's struggles. Thus, the active participation [in the arena] of us the university students with alternative and revolutionary politics, and creating a revolutionary pole in the progressive struggles of the people, is essential. On June 12 and thereafter, as the struggles continue, we must struggle on with this goal.

Khiaban No. 74: On Moussavi's Green Charter

2010-06-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Translation of a lead article from the latest Khiaban newspaper. You can read most issues of Khiaban newspapers (in Persian) here.

What We Say and Their Charter
by Amir K.
Khiaban #74 / Saturday, June 19, 2010

Today is June 19. Last year on this day, the first issue of Khiaban newspaper was published. Some hours later, in his Friday prayer sermon, Khamenei threatened the people with murder. On June 20, however, people took to the streets courageously, and although their throats and chests were riddled with the Supreme Leader's bullets, they opened up an important phase in the social life of Iran. A phase in which our society came to face the existing contradiction between the political and ruling structures and relationships [on the one hand] and the people's strengths, dreams and demands [on the other], and set out to work on resolving this contradiction, specifically through the form of [mass] street protests and demonstrations.

Now, exactly one year later, in the seventy-fourth issue of Khiaban, this publication, and the society too, carry both memory and imagination simultaneously. Memory keeps our past experience with us, and imagination shapes the future. When we imagine, when we think about the future, bitter memories, sad, happy hopeful memories, memories of solidarities, memories of blood and uprising, these memories of this past year are present. And when each moment of our memories is reviewed, this or that memory becomes a seed for the formation and growth of some thought or a plan for the future.

After a year of collective memories, the need for a collective imagination is spreading wider every day. What kind of future does the society want to create? What path does it want to take? What characteristics does the future society have, and how can it be achieved? It is these questions that make obvious the need for political platforms and plans for the majority of the people.

It is in this social atmosphere that Moussavi was forced to publish a more elaborated/systematized text, titled Green Charter, as a political platform that contains his goals and views on strategy. Of course, for now we'll overlook the fact that [exactly] at a time when people expected political actions from Moussavi, he is selling a political statement to the people instead of acting politically. Nevertheless, is Moussavi's platform loyal to the memories and the imagination of the people? Let us take a more careful look at the Green Charter.

Green Charter's Goal and Strategy
Although the phrase 'Green Charter' is new and it is claimed that it is the essence of this past year's struggle and also the crystallization of the demands of the society for its future, neither the goal nor the strategy proposed by Moussavi have any connection with people's memories and imagination. The goal is the old [demand for] implementation of the constitution and nothing less; the same goal that had also been announced by the reformists for many years before the hot summer of 2009. People's memories are over-filled with moments when they saw the existing laws as [fundamentally] opposed to their demands and their existence: from the principle of the absolute rule of the religious leader (velaayat-e faqih) who sits atop the system, to the principles that qualify and condition, and therefore [severely] restrict freedom of speech, assembly and protest, freedom of forming organizations and political parties, all based on the whims and decisions of the rulers; from the laws that leave the Sepaah [Revolutionary Guards] and Basiji's completely free to murder people, to the laws that deem women as inferior and do not recognize people without religion or of other religions, and many more cases [of legal discrimination].

Whenever in heat of the arena of struggle people's imagination thinks of a society based on freedom and social equality, free from the killing machinery of Sepaah and Basij, without the guardianship of the religious jurists, based on true collective and equal participation of all members of society in shaping their social fate -- when such thoughts were imagined, they were crushed in the streets, and yet Green Charter's goal is defined and marketed as the continuation of the existing conditions, only in its green color.

The strategy of Green Charter (it should be called 'white' since it is so neutral) also has no connection to the memories that have been piling up this last year, or to the imagination that was born this past year. The proposed strategy is the same 'working within the law', non-violence, civic activities and a package in fancy wrapping paper called 'networks', all of which have been the reformists strategy for a decade. There is no sign in this platform of this past year's experiences of the people. It is the same old reformist strategy, which was marketed as 'reformism' before but now is marketed as 'green'. In response to the millions of people protesting, the regime/system did not change a bit and yet Moussavi, while suspending street protests, at the same time in his speechifying brings the promise of wanting to change things by using all the capacities of non-violent struggle. All civil rights activists are imprisoned or exiled, but the 'civil society' people [still expect miracles].

We can find the dissonances between the Green Charter and the people's street movement in this very text, where it states that it emphasizes the necessity of joining with the middle and lower classes and the meek in the society. This very sentence reveals that Moussavi and other drafters of this platform are separate from the dominated people and the oppressed, and that they are above them (even if they really want to join them, they still considers themselves separate from the dominated). They belong to the layer of the rulers, of the dominant classes. Alas, no society has ever been liberated by the dominant layers of that society. Those who in the current situation suffer the most inequalities will be the first to take steps to destroy the bars of this prison house. Only a platform that takes stock of, and bases itself on, the fighters' memories and imagination can stay loyal to the society: a platform, whose lines are not niceties and considerations of the people up above, but one that the wrath and the hopes of the people down below write its lines.

Khiaban No. 73: Realities & Problems

2010-06-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

Translation of a lead article from the latest Khiaban newspaper.

Realities & Problems
by Amir K.
Khiaban #73 / Monday, June 14, 2010

If we overlook some laughable headlines and comments after June 12, to the effect that we were victorious since there was so much military presence on the streets, a majority of the citizens, whose hearts beat to the rhythm of the social events, while going up and down the streets around Enghelaab/Revolution Square, waiting to see if something will or will not happen, have realized there is a need for taking a different path. The blood-thirsty Islamic Republic, with recourse to mass killing and repression, has not taken a single step back, and the people have so far not had the slightest gains. Not only has the Islamic Republic not been overthrown but no laws have changed for the better, no political prisoners have been released, the planners and executers of the killings have not been brought to justice, and the people [still] have no say or control in determining their own fates.

A More Realistic Picture of Civil Struggles
Unless our eyes are blind, or else the observer is up to some trickery so as not to see the developments:

1. Almost all social organizations and activists independent of the regime have been driven out of the society. If two years ago, a large number of Marxist university students fighting for freedom and equality were forced to flee the country while others sat in silent observation of this crackdown, today almost all political trends from liberals to democrats to even Islamic student associations have been forced to flee [...]. Almost all independent women activists and those working with the One Million Signature campaign [to legally make women equal to men] have been forced to leave: Hundreds of young journalists and scholars, hundreds of cultural and political activists from different independent cultural and social circles and centers. This is the fate of those who, in order to change their society, carried out strictly civil activities.

2. Despite all the efforts of activists in different social spheres to organize different social units, not only can no truly independent political party operate openly in the society, not even the smallest organizations of university students, the youth, women, workers and on and on ... have materialized. The smallest of over-ground cells or circles come under the severest security police attacks, and meetings or gatherings of even a few get attacked and broken up by police.

3. With the dwindling of the number of people in street protests, the regime has more room and space to prevent the formation of any seeds of street demonstrations, and the ratio of regime elements [plainclothes Basij, Revolutionary Guards, regular police and myriad other forces] to dissident citizens has been increasing.

4. Since the regime's reformists have sensed the threat to the life of the system, they are not willing to bring about conditions in which people can safely assemble. They are not willing to allow again an atmosphere in which people feel safe to come to the streets and shout their demands. Just as during the presidency of Khatami and after the events of 18 Tir [university student protests of July 8-13, 1999], the reformists had no taste for people's presence in the streets. And the people too are no longer willing to give their lives for the particular goals of the reformists. People, who have had it with this regime and want their own liberation, find it neither wise nor heroic to die in the streets so we can return to Khomeini's era, or so that some charlatan like Mostafa Taaj-Zadeh can pollute the glorious days of protests with that filthy and noxious word 'Yomollah' (in some new tract with a title that is stolen from a pamphlet by Ali Shari'ati, forgetting that almost all followers of Shari'ati, who were organized in the Mojahedin-e Khalq and Armaan-e Mostaz'afeen and others alongside many others were mass murdered by them and their friends, and then called June 15 'Yomollah', without any concerns about bringing to justice the killers who on that very day were raining bullets on people [...] See his: Father, Mother, we are again accused [...]).

5. And the obvious reality, finally, is that all know that Moussavi's suggested strategy is meaningless and absurd. He suggests spreading of awareness as the path toward victory, and perhaps considers some Green websites such as JRS [Jonbesh Raah Sabz /Green Path Movement] as the providers of the solutions. However, it is obvious to everybody that our current problem is not that the majority of people are unaware of the ongoing crimes, irrationalities and the oppression. The [main] problem is that, although this regime has no base in the people, it has stayed in power backed [solely] by bayonets.

This reality calls for a new set of objectives and planning, for new solutions and an effective and practical strategy. Although the distance traveled on the streets in this past year has been bitter and filled with sorrows, blood and injuries, it has nevertheless stored up such an abundance of material experience, awareness and combativeness that if and when another June 15 should come about, the mansions and the national TV and the parliament that belongs to the rulers will be in the hands of the people's power on the next day.

Tehran University Massacre Remembered

2010-06-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

June 14 2009 massacre at Tehran University dormitories remembered. One of the slogans shouted by Tehran University students: Students will die, but won't accept humiliation!

People's Movement One Year On

2010-06-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Below is a translation of a piece from Pezhvak-e Iran. The quotes are by people in response to Moussavi and Karroubi canceling protest rallies after the Interior Ministry refused to issue permits for any anniversary rallies.

[See also video clip of Tehran University students shouting slogans against the regime on June 12, 2010.]

RELATED: 22 Khordad: Reports from Tehran (Live Updates from Persian 2 English)

People's Response to Moussavi & Karroubi's Cancellation of 12 June Demonstrations
Compiled and distributed by: Committee in Defense of Iranian People's Struggle
(Paris: June 11, 2010)

"Did we have a permit on June 15th [last year]? Did we have permits on June 17 and 19 [last year]? Did we have permits on June 20? Did we have permits on July 9? Did we have permits on Quds Day (September 19)? Did we have permits on November 4? Did we have permits on December 7 (Student Day)? Did we have permits on December 28 (Ashura)? Did we have permits on February 11 (Anniversary of Revolution)? Have you forgotten the days that we didn't have permits and still took to the streets? There is no color darker than black. I will take to the street on June 12 because I've been taking a beating for one year, for one year I have paid a price, my brothers and sisters have been killed; we have nothing else to lose."

"A permit is just a piece of paper. Our millions of feet on the streets is the most real permit."

"The millions-strong presence of the people on June 12 and 15 and ... of last year was due to the permit of the collective wisdom of free men and free women, who were seeking to take their fate and their land back from a raping clique of criminals, and they will do so again."

"Protesting is not a place of business which needs a business permit. Just as the dictators give themselves the right to give or not to give permits, we the millions of people too have the right to determine where, when and for what reason to take to the streets, to shout and to protest. The permit for a June 12 demonstration is in the hands of us the people. That is so, because that is our right. With or without a permit, on Saturday we will create an earthquake. We did not suffer fatalities so as to sit behind the gates of the Interior Ministry waiting for a permit. We did not give martyrs so as to suffocate from silence and the weight of our built up sorrows. We suffered fatalities so that we would be free. We say, we will fight and die until we are free."

"There is no room for hesitation. We don't have a right to doubt."

"If scared of cut off heads we were,
In lovers' circles we would not dance. "

"Let us remember: Neda's and Sohrab's did not wait for anybody's decision or permit to give their lives for this land of ours. On June 12, just like the Ashura [December 28, 2009], with a pounding presence we will continue the path to freedom."

"Mr. Moussavi, if you want, you can stay home and watch the World Cup games. But I owe Neda a debt. My path is the revolution and my destination is freedom. There is not much more left to go. Do not forget that we are countless."

"On June 12, millions of movement leaders will come out. Each Iranian a leader."

"Rights and justice, freedom and democracy are things to be taken, and no nation has achieved honor and righteousness without sacrifice and paying a price. No dictatorship or tyranny, as of yet, has chosen on it own accord or voluntarily to step aside. Only a nation willing to pay the price will achieve freedom and democracy. The decision is up to the people."

"On June 12 we will demonstrate since we have nothing to lose, and no darker color than black."

"On Saturday we will come out with honor and pride, like never before, in millions, to capture Tehran."

"All the military maneuverings of the regime has made our efforts less necessary and our glory greater! In fact, we are already the victors of June 12. The stamp of victory too has been applied by the regime itself. A regime that is scared of [even] our silence, scared of our shadows. Congratulations on your victory on June 12!"

"I know that you know that this demonstration will bring nothing but beatings, pain, torture, imprisonment, rape and martyrdom. Despite all that, this very unity of the people will make the murderers hearts tremble and shudder. So, in this ceremony of blood, martyrdom and love for a chained country, accompany us."

Compiled and distributed by: Committee in Defense of Iranian People's Struggle
Paris: June 11, 2010