MORE ON IRAN
Just read the news on the BBC website that Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khameni, has delivered a strong speech during Friday prayers in Tehran refuting allegations of electoral fraud and backing Ahmadinejad, saying his views on foreign policy and social issues were close to his own.
On the specific subject of electoral fraud, the Ayatollah is reported to have said: “There is 11 million votes difference. How can one rig 11 million votes?”
He stressed the moral rectitude of the Islamic Republic in such matters and warned that the protests must stop, emphasising that political leaders would be blamed for any violence.
Interestingly, he singled out the Britain among the western nations for attempting to meddle in Iran’s internal affairs and foment unrest.
The BBC also reports that the Opposition has announced further protests will take place on Saturday.
Additionally, there’s an excellent historical analysis of the situation in Iran by Patrick Cockburn in today’s Independent here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/history-suggests-the-coup-will-fail-1708996.html
Robert Fisk, reporting from Tehran, has revealed the protests have dropped off in recent days in terms of size and scope. What will be interesting now is how the Supreme Leader’s speech impacts on events. Given Mousavi’s intrinsic conservatism, the expectation has to be that he and his advisors will now attempt to pull back the protests and start to make conciliatory noises in order to maintain the integrity of the Islamic Republic.
But will all of those in the ranks of the Opposition take heed? What happens over the coming days will reveal the extent to which this crisis has thrown up a current of opposition to the state itself, rather than merely to the present government.
As for Britain meddling, isn’t this a case of twas ever thus? When will the arrogance of our government ever end when it comes to pointing the finger at and meddling in the internal affairs of nations of the developing world?
Listening to Miliband in particular pontificating over international affairs is increasingly embarrassing, as he attempts to fill the role of the gentleman coloniser of old, replete with ceremonial hat and feathers.
The British media, it has to be said, have once again been a disgrace with the bias of their coverage. In fact, you’d think that the millions in Iran who self evidently support Ahmadinejad don’t exist, given the absence of pro-government voices on the news and in newspaper reports.
Whatever happens in the next few days, such a strong speech and refutation of the allegations of vote rigging is undoubtedly a high stakes gamble by Iran’s Supreme Leader.
It is one that could very well blow up in his face.
I note that you took down your previous post which attacked leftists who supported the opposition. As I said then, in the one comment before your post was removed, Khomenei has threatened a bloodbath. Are you going to be cheering him on?
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
Apollo - I do have a problem with such politically-myopic support for the toppling of the current regime, without knowing what will come in its place and with the obvious delicate situation in the region.
However, it is equally erroneous to attack the Opposition without knowing its composition and where it might lead. Which is why I removed my previous criticism.
As for the bloodbath you envisage, here again we have this propensity to ascribe barbarism to a regime which this far, given the crisis that’s enveloped it, shown remarkable restraint. I wonder if such restraint would be shown by our own govt or the American govt in similar circumstances?
Let’s hope there is no violence. If, however, there is violence, then as with any civil unrest let’s hope that we focus on the underlying social forces and politics involved in order to analyse the situation soberly, without lapsing into the liberal moralising we’re used to receiving in the mainstream press.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
And btw, Apollo, you said in a previous post that you hope Ahamdinejad is ’swept from power.’
Even if he won the popular vote?
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
There has been violence already. People have been murdered, others injured, universities have been trashed. Do you not have any access to the news?
There may well not be a Tiannaman square crackdown because the mullahs, who have done everything they can to suppress the media, including banning foreign journalists from covering the protests, banning text messages and attempting to close down the internet, realise they can’t do so without it being seen by the world. What will happen instead is a re-run of the Disappeared. The brutal liquidation of the left after the Revolution can teach the west a lot about how to get rid of your opposition.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
I’d like to see him swept from power democratically. I do not know for a fact that he won the popular vote since there was no independent monitoring of the elections as there was in Gaza. More and more leaked evidence indicates it was a fix.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
#4 - Of course I see that, but as I said, in relation to the size and frequency of the demonstrations, such incidences of violence reveal a measure of restraint on the part of the authorities.
That of course may change in the coming days.
Where is the concrete evidence of electoral fraud? One thing that has been evident up to now is the lack of concrete evidence. So far it has been circumstantial and anecdotal.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
Where are the independent election monitors which would deal with these questions? In Gaza Hamas gains credibility from the knowledge that there was a scrupulously free and fair election. Right now we have only the world of a regime which handpicks the candidates it will allow to run (no women, of course.)
Restraint? What about the arbitrary arrests, the use of live rounds, the people whose whereabouts are currently unknown? In this was happening in any other country there is no way you would be giving the regime the benefit of the doubt.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
there was nothing democratic about the Iranian election. Non Islamic candidates are excluded. Of course socialists should support the present regime being swept from power by popular revolt. If this happens the working class will be a strong position to take events towards workers power, and it would be a big step forward for the working class movement in the region and the world
and bye the way are you going to continue to politically censor posts on this topic?
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
Sandy, I’ve only ever censored Islamophobic rants and personal attacks, nothing else.
Andy took the step of deleting some of your ultra-left tracts, which I agree with.
As Andy said, you’re more than welcome to post elsewhere or set up your own blog. Nobody’s stopping you.
As for non Islamic candidates being excluded, this is true. Perhaps because it’s a self declared Islamic Republic. The question is, who benefits from the regime’s collapse. The international working class? Venezuela? The Palestinians? The Lebanese? All those resisting imperialism around the world?
Who benefits Sandy?
Where is this class conscious, revolutionary working class ready to assume power in Iran or anywhere else in the region for that matter?
Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
http://www.hopoi.org/articles/iran2.html
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
Comrades,
Hands Off the People of Iran is pleased to have launched it’s first blog that will keep track of the ongoing struggles in Iran. At this time we are receiving videos, pictures and news almost by the minute. Please check it out and share the link on your facebook, website and to your comrades and friends.
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/
Another key section of the workers movement has moved into action in Iran:
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/iranian-bus-workers-statement-on-the-demonstrations/
Comment by Vartan Salakhanian — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
I wish i could enlighten you John but it seems like an increasingly hopeless task
It is interesting that you support Andy- english nationalism is a good thing- Newman in removing my ultra left tracts
In answer to your question- the overthrow of the Islamic republic by a popular democratic mass movement would benefit the working class.
Indeed if it becomes apparent that this outcome is likely- imperialism may try to militarily intervene to prevent it under some pretext or other.
for sure the USA and Israel prefer the present set up to a democratic republic.
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:52 pm
It’s not clear that there was fraud, but there is evidence leaning that way. Walter Mebane from the University of Michigan has done some careful analysis. Skip to the bottom for the conclusions and take home message:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/note18jun2009.pdf
Comment by SteveF — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
You haven’t yet commented on women being unable to stand, John. Do you normally support apartheid systems of ‘democracy’
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
Apollo:
‘Restraint? What about the arbitrary arrests, the use of live rounds, the people whose whereabouts are currently unknown? In this was happening in any other country there is no way you would be giving the regime the benefit of the doubt.’
Reply:
What you fail to take into account with this is the enormous pressure Iran is under from without. For the past few years it’s been the number one target of hawks in the US and Israeli establishments. Sanctions have been imposed, which as I’m sure you know is an act of low intensity war, and it is surrounded by hostile troops, missiles, and a navy battlefleet. Too, the knowledge of what happened to Iraq, another regime which laboured under US driven sanctions, must also be factored in.
Surely, these material conditions have to be taken into account when analysing the present crisis? The surprise for me is that there hasn’t been more violence, more repression or deaths, not that there has been any.
As for Sandy #12:
‘for sure the USA and Israel prefer the present set up to a democratic republic.’
You must be having a laugh. If sanctions, demonisation, and the threat of war, up to and including nuclear armageddon, is how the US treats a regime it prefers, I shudder to think how it treats one that it doesn’t
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:07 pm
And you think that murdering its own citizens and stealing elections is a reasonable response? It’s the excuse of corrupt regimes everywhere. You see it in Israel - ratchet up the people’s fears of an outside enemy and repress them at home. A theocratic powerbase which has already ruthlessly suppressed a left oppotion will cling to power whatever the excuse.
And you still haven’t answered the question of how you can support a regime that bans women from standing for the office of president and handpicks the candidates.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
#14 - Apollo, of course I don’t agree with women not being allowed to stand for elections in Iran, but what of the women who support the culture and social mores under which they exist in Iran? You see, this cultural universalism you espouse is something I reject. I prefer to look at the imperfections in my own culture, of which there are many, instead of judging those in others.
Moreover, women are allowed to stand for election in Israel, the US and this country, of course, so that makes it okay that each has been responsible for slaughtering countless women and children throughout the region, does it?
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
Well, John, there were women who didn’t want the vote and thought the suffragettes were vulgar. Do you think their support of Victorian ‘culture and mores’ should have been respected?
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
So far, the repressiveness of the Iranian state and/or paramilitaries of the Basij type is roughly on a par with those in Turkey when confronted by unsanctioned or oppositional demonstrations. Kurdish New Year and May Day are particular flashpoints in Turkey.
Comment by Faust — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:25 pm
#18 -
Well, Apollo, we live in a different culture from the Islamic culture which currently dominates in Iran and throughout the Middle East. Perhaps if the West hadn’t spent the last 100 years colonising, occupying, and interfering in the region, to the evident detriment of its development, peoples, and cohesion then they may have adjudged our culture and enlightenment values as something to be embraced, rather than rejected as belonging to their oppressor.
What do you think?
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
“…there’s an excellent historical analysis of the situation in Iran by Patrick Cockburn in today’s Independent”
A pox on the thrice cursed Cockburns:-
1) Claude for his slanders during the Spanish Civil War about the POUM being linked to fascism
2) Alex’s for his support for Global Warming denialism
3) Patrick’s apologetics for the Clerical hijackers of the Iranian Revolution.
“Everyone lies”, but with them, it almost seems like a genetic condition.
In fact, the only Cockburn of any real interest is ‘Thirteen’:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Olivia-wilde-house.jpg
But then girl-on-girl action isn’t something Khameini would be likely to be in favour of.
Comment by prianikoff — 19 June, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
“I prefer to look at the imperfections in my own culture, of which there are many, instead of judging those in others.”
I take it you’ll be shutting up about Israel in the future then.
Comment by SteveF — 19 June, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
#22 - Well, Steve, if you consider ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and occupation to constitute cultural values, all I can say is that I weep for your humanity.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 5:32 pm
#22 - or lack thereof.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
“if you consider ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and occupation to constitute cultural values, all I can say is that I weep for your humanity.”
That’s funny. Just now you were arguing that denying women the opportunity to run for political office is a ‘cultural value’.
Should we be shedding tears for you too?
Comment by Mark T — 19 June, 2009 @ 5:46 pm
How is it that a religious leader can threaten the people he rules over? No truly spiritual person could ever do such a thing.
He is a fraud and he is no better than the most corrupt dictators.
Comment by Chris R — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
#25 - Eh, no, I don’t think so. The right to vote is a symptom of the cultural values of a given society, it is not in itself a cultural value. What matters is the role of women in society, how they are perceived, etc. In the society that I live in and would rather live in the right to vote for all is a fundamental right. But I am a product of the West, which has developed economically, socially and politically in response to the development of productive forces which underwent a seismic advance in a 300 year period.
The Middle East was not afforded the same opportunity to develop unimpeded, as it emerged from semi-feudal, agrarian social structure and economies that were held back under first Ottoman and latterly European domination. The only experience this region has had of our so called civilising values of democracy and individual liberty has been expressed in occupation, colonisation, and puppet dicatorships. Is it any wonder then that people would turn to religious forms and structures of society as a reflex, a defence against what they are entirely justified in perceiving as the oppressive values of western civilisation and culture.
You may choose to ignore such historical context and material conditions when analysing or judging a given society, but I don’t.
Under the Shah women were accorded comparable freedoms and rights to women in the West, yet at the same time the dungeons were full as the Savak security police, the most brutal and dreaded in the region, ensured that every other freedom was extinguished.
I have met and spoken with many Muslim women, I don’t know if you have, and I have to tell you that none I have spoken to consider themselves to be repressed. In fact, it is their opinion that women in our society are repressed.
Now you won’t like that, I realise, but this is the difference between attempting to understand a different culture and dismissing one because you neither understand nor approve of it.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
I did so enjoy prianikoff #21, much chuckling.
I only recently discovered Claude Cockburn, his tale about Basil Murray and the ape in his piece ‘Spies and Two Deaths in Spain’ makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
I work for Iranians and they are very decent people. They left Iran because they know their Government is corrupt and evil.
I feel for their plight, and I wish the people of Iran peace and prosperity.
Comment by Ronk — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
#29 - Likewise, Ronk, I have met many British people who live abroad and moved because they know their government is corrupt and evil. I felt for their plight too, as I feel the same way.
Yet there are many British people who are perfectly happy living in this country, as I’m sure there are many Iranians who live in Iran and feel the same way.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Having re-read Patrick Cockburn’s piece in the ‘Independent’, it’s even worse than I thought.
This bloke was actually reporting from Iran at the time and he comes up with this:
“….Politically, this was a potent blend. It appealed to the most conservative cleric and the most radical student alike.
Even so, the marches and demonstrations might have run out of steam over the summer of 1978 if they had not been sustained by a network of clerical supporters of Khomeini in the mosques.”
How did he miss the fact that over 1,000 workers councils were formed in Teheran alone?
The main role of the clerical supporters of Khomeini was to smash them.
This story in the Independent was quite interesting though:
“A young Northern Irish woman has told how she screamed in horror at finding
an 18-inch long snake in her cutlery drawer.
20-year-old Joanne Woods from Ballymoney came face to face with the black and
yellow beast on Monday evening.
Joanne and her boyfriend Aaron Moore, 26, were watching television in their
first floor flat in Trinity Drive when she went into the kitchen to get a
yoghurt.
She opened her top drawer for a spoon but instead nearly reached for the
mice-eating Californian King snake which can grow up to four feet in length.
‘I just screamed and threw the yoghurt in the air’ said Joanne.”
Comment by prianikoff — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
The clerical regime is a bonapartist regime. It balances on the contending class contradictions of Iran. It can fall to the left or the right. The clerics originally came to power on the failure of the working class under Stalinist leadership to take the anti-Shah revolution through to its conclusion. It mobilised a proto-fascist petty bourgeois mass movement to smash the working class organisations that arose during the revolution. Over the years its radicalism has degenerated into a dull conservatism and the regime from fascistic frenzy to teetering bonapartism. The declining fear of western intervention with the defeat of Bush and the increasingly paraiah status of Israel has opened a fissure which ushers in the possibility of defeating this bonapartism and its para-military and military instruments and feudal and capitalist supporters. The key to the situation is the working class and its programme. Can it pull the urban middle classes and peasantry behind it and topple the regime to the left? The election may or may not have been rigged, certainly the feudal aristocracies of more than one nation have given the mass peasantry a vote in order to use their numbers to drown out the growing working class movements. A bourgeois election is only ever a snap shot of class forces and nobody would expect the working class to ditch its economic struggle just because a Tory government got elected in Britain any more than the bourgeoisie stops attacking the workers when a workers’ government gets elected.
The working class with a correct policy can topple this regime to the left whether the election was rigged or not and is in a good position to come forward with imperialism weakened by the antics of Bush and Co and its own economic and political crises.
Western interventionists and zionists are proping up the regime with their faux pro-democracy interventions when only a very short time ago they were calling for military assault on the Iranian people including nuclear assault which had it gone ahead would have prevented the emergence of today’s anti-regime outpourings for decades to come. They fear working class power far more than a bunch of clerical feudalists. It is important for the progress of this movement that it feels that it is acting in the interests of Iranian self-determination. It does not need or want the support of the neo-cons, the zionists or the pro-war `left’.
Comment by Boney — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
Boney:
The working class with a correct policy can topple this regime to the left whether the election was rigged or not and is in a good position to come forward with imperialism weakened by the antics of Bush and Co and its own economic and political crises.
Reply:
In theory, absolutely, but this assumes that the subjective factor in the form of a revolutionary working class and leadership is in place.
Is it? Does anybody know?
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/iran-khodro-auto-workers-begin-work-slowdown-protest-regime
Apparently they’re now on strike. Hospital staff are apparently on strike as well.
Comment by johng — 19 June, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
Some women in Iran want freedom, and are demonstrating for it. Some don’t. John Wight supports the ones who don’t.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
And in addition to supporting them, he supports the regime that beats and kills the ones who do. I’m sure that these are progressive politics. In hell.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
Apollo, whilst it may make you feel better to throw around lies like confetti, as you attempt to distort people’s positions, it doesn’t do much in terms of furthering our understanding of what is taking place.
Try to refrain from indulging in intemperate rants. They serve no purpose.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:16 pm
I think that if there was a revolutionary working class and leadership in Iran, we would have heard about it by now. Perhaps one will develop, but more probably a well-financed bunch of neo-con sympathisers will step into the breach, more Soros than socialist.
Comment by Red skeptic — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
It is not a rant, it’s a concise summing up of your position as you have already stated it.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
#39
or more to the point, as Apollo has misunderstood it.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
“Apollo, whilst it may make you feel better to throw around lies like confetti, as you attempt to distort people’s positions”
I can’t see that you have any position on the conflict that could be considered ‘Socialist’. If anything your position is Reactionary, Relativist and Legal Positivist (you know what that is, right?). You are defending a regime that exterminated it’s Socialist, Communist and Secular movements. Literally, lifted them from their beds and put them up against a wall like the Fascists did. That discriminates against Baha’ai, Jew and others. That has banned Socialist and Secular parties. That has sham elections for President’s with no executive power. That is ruled by an unelected ‘Supreme Leader’ who is a consrvative theocrat to boot. That enforces theocracy even on those that do not want it. It has morality police and right-wing militia and thugs that roam the street. It is a fascist state. Call it benign, but it is Fascism.
Everything here reeks of what the Left should be opposing. Yet you defend it!
I have to say you have no moral backbone. Where are the Socialists with moral backbones? Where is the spirit of ‘36, of the Resistance?
Socialists - defending Fascism!
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:54 pm
If the working class starts to act by taking collective action the Islamic regime will not survive for long. Every socialist should give full support to the fight for democratic rights and against state terror. The regime may try to survive by launching a blood bath against the popular revolt. It is shameful that some on the left try to defend the reactionary Islamic regime against the popular revolt of the people against tyranny.
sandy
Iran Khodro Auto Workers Begin Work Slowdown to Protest the Regime
Posted by Al Giordano - June 18, 2009 at 6:32 pm
By Al Giordano
The workers of the Khodro automobile company in Iran today issued the following
declaration (translated for The Field from the original Farsi by Iraj Omidvar):
Strike in Iran Khodro:
We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.
Autoworker, Fellow Laborers (Laborer Friends): What we witness today, is an
insult to the intelligence of the people, and disregard for their votes, the
trampling of the principles of the Constitution by the government. It is our
duty to join this people’s movement.
We the workers of Iran Khodro, Thursday 28/3/88 in each working shift will
stop working for half an hour to protest the suppression of students, workers,
women, and the Constitution and declare our solidarity with the movement of the
people of Iran. The morning and afternoon shifts from 10 to 10:30. The night
shift from 3 to 3:30.
Laborers of IranKhodor
This announcement - to my knowledge this is the first place it appears in
English anywhere - obtained by The Field by the auto workers of the largest
automobile producer in Iran, is significant on multiple levels.
The obvious one is that once the workers begin to flex their muscles on the
means of production, no illegitimate regime can continue standing.
Another is that it reveals the malicious lie spread by some that the Iranian
resistance is an upper class phenomenon restricted to one or two regions for
what it is: untrue.
Another is that it reminds us that the early resistance movement that led to the
toppling of the Shah in the 1970s was not primarily theological, but secular and
from the left. These workers, many of them, are the children and grandchildren
of union organizers and members from that era. They remember.
If the auto workers work slowdown and protest begins to spread to oil workers
and other sectors of industrial labor, watch out. That is the one factor that
could most hasten the fall of the regime.
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
Hands up if you’re a REAL Socialist - fighting Fascism and oppression.
Let’s RETAKE the LEFT!!
Hands-up!
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
http://counterpunch.org/fiyouzat06182009.html
You Can’t Keep a Good People Down
Iranians in the Streets
By REZA FIYOUZAT
More than a hundred years ago now, Iranians were as loudly as now present in the streets demanding constitutional governance, freedom from random harassment by the state and a legitimate representational system.
In 1906, as a result of that national surge, demanding true legitimacy from the rulers, Iran established the first parliament on the Asian continent, and forced an absolutist monarchy into accepting a constitutional rule by a parliament chosen by the people.
That parliamentary system, by 1920, had been overthrown by Reza Shah, and an absolutist dictatorship was reestablished, which in turn was overturned by the people by the close of 1940’s, and by 1951 the people had regained their relative sovereignty. In 1953, that too was overthrown by a coup carried out by CIA against our popularly elected prime minister, Dr. Mossadegh, and the second phase of the Palhavi dictatorship ensued, which lasted until 1978.
Ever since the establishment of theocracy in 1979, we have witnessed repeated occurrences of mass uprisings in Iran. The last major wave was in 1999, led by university students, and swiftly crushed by the government (at the time headed by a ‘reformist’, Khatami).
continued
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
Does John Wight think its liberal moralising to attack the barbarism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians? I’m increasingly confused by the direction of these discussions. Andy believes it would be ‘irresponsible’ to support a movement in Iran without some sense of what might replace it (perhaps those on the streets are ‘irresponsible’?), and speaks of the ‘delicate situation’ in the middle east as if he were a statesman of some kind. Its all a bit preposterous.
Comment by johng — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
Counterpunch gets it!!!
Hands up!!
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
In 1979, there actually was a significant, secular left in Iran. Yet that was pushed aside by the mullahs without too much difficulty.
In the 1990s, I worked with an Iranian woman and discussed the events of 1979 and later. She mentioned the People’s Mojahedin. According to her, they were Marxists who felt they needed Islam to create a mass basis in a country like Iran. So they were something of a synthesis. They became quite large but were eventually suppressed, the survivors driven into exile.
Thirty years later, I am skeptical about the left’s ability in 2009 to do what it could not do in 1979.
The key to all this is organisation. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. What organisation is there?
Comment by Red skeptic — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
johng: What we are seeing here is the moral paralysis of the ‘Conservative Left’. In fact, they are no longer Socialists or Left-Wing, but Cultural Relativists, who pick and choose their own conflicts according to their own subjective agendas.
We have reached a stage of regression where women’s rights have been sacrificed to defend Fascism. How does it work? I don’t get it.
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
Red Skeptic: The theocratic tyranny in murdered between 50,000-80,000 Socialists, Communists and other perceived enemies of the State. What we have today in Iran is an empty shell - the remnants of a once massive movement. Liquidated. By Fascists. The Left liquidated by Fascists.
We have to start making this very clear. We have to repeat it if necessary so that the degradation of the left can be countered. Without moral clarity, bravery and honesty the Left can never be anything to anyone.
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:16 pm
Mick #41 - Yet another intemperate outburst of ultra left sloganeering masquerading as analysis.
Yes, the tragedy of Iran, and throughout the region, has been the destruction and repression of the left. Its consequences are all too apparent in the confusion this has wrought among the international left in deciding how to relate to the emrgence of Political Islam and states such as the Islamic Republic, exemplified in some of the opinions expressed on this thread.
The point is that in 2009 Iran, whilst not a progressive society as we would understand it, has played a progressive role as a bulwark of resistance to US imperialism and Zionist expansion. Such a role is indisputably in the interests of the international working class, as verified by the likes of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, a man who doesn’t have the luxury of wallowing in pure socialist screeds, but instead is dealing with the concrete realities of attempting to resist a neoliberal juggernaut that has trampled over womens’, gay, workers’, and human rights in every corner of the planet.
As the enemy for socialists, working class and the poor everywhere is capitalism, which in its highest stage is expressed as imperialism, I certainly take the view that the Islamic Republic is an improvement on the western puppet dictatorship under the Shah.
The point is that due to the historical events described there is currently no class conscious, revolutionary working class in Iran ready to assume power.
Johng is an adherent of a tradition which thinks that any protest, no matter it seems the social forces or politics involved, as long as it is against a state, any state, is automatically a good thing. Therein lies the road to mistaking counterrevolution for revolution.
The 1979 Revolution in Iran failed to reach a socialist conclusion. The question now is, is what we’re seeing unfold a continuation of that revolution, or is it the beginnings of something else?
I find it hard to take seriously the lazy retreat behind ultra left slogans and the liberal use of the word fascism to describe regimes and societies we don’t understand.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
I see the autoworkers turn out to be Zionist neo-con Gucci wearing students (Open University of Iran).
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
If Andy and John Wight are saying the situation has to be approached politically rather than with ultra-left, shrill, tub-thumping propagandism that could lead the working class into futile adventures and wreckless action then you’d have to agree with them. This schism in the regime opens up a fissure that the working classes can exploit but it is very early days and thoughtful socialists are required not maniacs. Good to see some workers bravely taking cautious action, testing out the possible without endangering the infant movement. Tomorrow is an important day.
As far as the western war-mongers and zionists are concerned they need to shut their mouths and stop putting this movement in jeopardy.
Comment by Boney — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Mr. Wight
“The point is that in 2009 Iran, whilst not a progressive society as we would understand it, has played a progressive role as a bulwark of resistance to US imperialism and Zionist expansion”
This is the point is it? Iran can liquidate it’s genuine progressive movements and enslave it’s people to religion so that you can admire it’s position on the US and Israel? This makes no sense. Iran still sells Oil to those same ‘imperialists’!
It’s so transparently laughable.
This is not good enough. There is nothing progressive about the Iranian regime or it’s ‘role’. Nothing. It has imported theocracy to Lebanon. Iran is a FASCIST State. It does not matter if it is a “bulwark” against Imperialism or Zionist ‘expansion’. Just as little as it mattered that the Soviet Union was a ‘bulwark’ against Capitalism, Zionism or Imperialism when it sent it’s intelligentsia to the Gulag, or culled it’s ‘Zionists’ in the 60’s and 80’s.
Please, call it what you want. There is nothing Socialist about your position. At least admit that. It is reactionary. It is opportunist. It is relativist.
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
I doubt whether Western governments held the Red-killing characteristics of Mousavi and co. against them at the time - only that Iran was no longer favourable to the West. There was even a fear (late 1979, early 1980 - at the time the USSR intervened in neighbouring Afghanistan) that Iran might tip into the Soviet bloc, until the left was suppressed. Then that fear was laid to rest.
Of course, another bunch of Red-killers have been Western imperialists - and they have sometimes got Islamists to do their dirty work for them.
Comment by Red skeptic — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
The 1979 Revolution in Iran failed to reach a socialist conclusion.
John Wight
Yes because the forces of political Islam drowned the revolution in blood by murdering the socialist revolutionaries and crushing the independent organizations of the Iranian working class. The very people who did this are the people you are now attempting to alibi by claiming that political Islam and the Iranian Islamic regime are somehow progressive. Time to Wake up and reconsider your daft anti democratic and anti working class view of the “anti imperialism” of the reactionary forces of political Islam. Try this- if a movement is anti socialist and anti democratic we should not support it. Now that is not difficult to understand is it?
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
The point is that the working class and the poor cannot possibly stand neutral in a battle for greater freedom to organise and greater freedom of political expression. In a country where both elites want to push through massive privatisation schemes (yes including Ahmadinajad who is no Chavez) the possibility of achieving this is vital. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘purism’. I doubt whether workers starting to take strike action has anything to do with ‘purism’, and I’d suggest that arguments like this are just bizarre.
Comment by johng — 19 June, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Yes, of course, the ultras are more interested in damaging Galloway than anything going on in Iran. And this anti-Islam crap (it is a feudal clerical regime, its actual brand of religion is neither here nor there in the final analysis)is hardly likely to win over the rural peasantry and poor whose support or at least passivity is required for the success of a national democratic and socialist revolution. What would a workers revolution in Iran do, go around the villages ripping the hijabs off the women? Western imperialist forces could do that. Work on a serious programme and plan of action that can take things forward if you must but cut the vacuuous tub-thumpint empty rhetoric.
Comment by Boney — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
#45 John G
I have absolutely no recollection of saying any such thing.
I beleive the only cautious comments I have made on the situation is to say that i) I hope it leads to the country becoming more democratic, ii) both sides have considerable social forces behind them; and iii) this doesn’t seem to me that much like a “colour” revolution.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
Iran’s government hangs gaymen in public.
Iran’s government treats women as second-class citizens.
Iran’s government imprisons and tortures workers in struggle.
Total respect to those courageous comrades fighting the Iranian government.
Shame on those cowardly apologists for the Iranian regime.
Comment by anti-fascist — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
This is in fact the only comment I have made about Iran;
And yet this is interpreted by JOhn, rather misleadingly using quote matks, purporting to be directly quoting me, as saying that:
Come on John,. put up or shut up, why have you completely manufactured a political position and falsely attributed it to me?
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
#59
Well some idiot is posting here, apparebntly in almost total ignorance of the fact that Mousavi supports many of the same reactionary policies that the current regime does.
I have seen no one acting as an apologist for the regime on this web-site, I have however seen people trying to understand what is actually happening, and being cautious that the the one sided media reports may sometimes reflect the jouranlists own preconceptions rather than capturing the complexity of the situation.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
Foreign journalists are banned from covering the protests, so what media reports are you referring to?
Many of us have been relying from information on a very wide range of sources, we have the internet now, you know. They include blogs, twitter, smuggled out footage taken on mobile phones. Very little of the raw material is coming from western journalists and much of the commentary is coming from Farsi speaking commentators, on al Jazeera, Press etc. This exceptionally broad range of material ensures that this narrow spoectrum of reportage you compain about has been swept aside.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
With respect Andy, the hedging and tortured fence-sitting here quite clearly implies a preference for the Ahmadinejad camp. It’s a big political mistake.
Comment by Ed — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
Hanging gay men in public is right or wrong?
Treating women as second-class citizens is right or wrong?
Imprisoning and torturing workers in struggle is right or wrong?
Galloway IS acting as an apologist for a government and regime that carries out all of these fascistic acts of oppression.
Pointing this out to you Galloway sycophants is not idiotic.
Comment by anti-fascist — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
#63
Indeed. the equivocation is quite nauseating.
Comment by rsa — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
My guess is that in the next few days there is going to a violent showdown and those who side with the suppressors will be tainted by it for a long time. If large sections of the left are seen to be supporting the crack-down it will cause huge damage to socialism and progressive forces.
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:46 pm
Good point apollo, supporting Iranian fascism will be the final nail in the coffin of Respect
Comment by anti-fascist — 19 June, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
It occurs to me that this idea of supporting corrupt and brutal regimes because they are bulwarks against western imperialism, is little more that a left-wing version of the Kissinger doctrine. ‘They may be bastards but they’re our bastards.’
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
Andy I have looked and looked through the comments section and can’t find the comment, in which the phrase ‘delicate situation’ was used and the argument that if you are not sure what will replace the current regime one should not support the movement. Clearly it was not you who said this (I’d assumed it was) and I unconditionally apologise. However SOMEONE did. I’m puzzled about why I can’t find it.
Comment by johng — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
I think its never more instructive to see what’s really behind the verbal and logical gymnastics of John Wight than to see him use that golden tongue to say something utterly debased and to notice how skillfully he does it.
A highly repressive right-wing theocracy, after having intentionally disrupted the communications of opposition parties during an election in which it had unilaterally disqualified 95% of the candidates, is having (one hopes) its grip on a nation loosened by mass protests of a size not seen in a generation. Its ongoing attempts to mask the scale of the uprising have failed. We know that university students have been killed in their dormitories by government-sponsored agents, the Basij.
We also know that this is a government that flogs its women in public for theological infractions, that hangs its gays, that busts unions in the most violent ways imaginable, that uses its jails as torture chambers.
Yet to oppose this on ethical grounds, and to share the hope that life in Iran is perhaps to become less of a nightmare, is to be - per Wight - a tool of the zios or something of that sort. As apollo notes, its very difficult to see how defending a government which has liquidated its nations’ socialists is a commendable socialist act. Yet, peel away the filigree, and that is what Wight is asking us to accept. And not inexplicably its going over quite poorly among those allowed to exercise their freedom of conscience.
Comment by driver — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
#68 You are coming across as some deranged lunatic. Who the hell on here has not supported the emergence of this movement? Those who have steadfastly defended Iran’s right to self-determination and opposed Islamaphobic rhetoric, such as Galloway, are far more responsible for creating the conditions for its emergence than you who sounds like some desperate shrill voice for Western intervention the threat of which has been this regime’s greatest strength. I think you are just a meddlesom Harry’s Place nerk or maybe an AWL pro-zionist.
You seem to make a habit of spewing out things that have just occurred to you.
Comment by Get a life — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
The ‘delicate situation’ comment is from Wight: I do have a problem with such politically-myopic support for the toppling of the current regime, without knowing what will come in its place and with the obvious delicate situation in the region.
If there is indeed a Tiananmen Square moment coming up as is feared, I will ask Wight to reassess that statement in the light of the slaughter.
Comment by driver — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
Calm down, getalife and try to make a rational point with some substance.
Comment by Apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
I think Jon and Andy are wrong to say that the shrieking in these comments is from the “ultra-left”. It’s clearly from Blairite B-52 Liberals who are drooling at the chance to get a pro-Western government in Iran, and want to use abuse and shame to line up the radical left behind them. You should remember the throwing around of the term “fascism” from the glory days of the push to invade Iraq. The obsession with “getting” George Galloway and Respect should also be familiar.
I bet next they’ll say “we should drop paratroopers into Tehran, the people will greet us with sweets and flowers”.
Comment by Doloras LaPicho — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
#63 and #65 What equivocation? The situation is genuinely complex, and I hope that the outcome is a more democratic and liberal Iran.
#68 No one is actually saying that though, are they? No one at all has expressed the view that Ahmadinejad should be supported because he is anti-imperialst.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
#70 - Wow, I’ve got a golden tongue. How dramatic. And how utterly devoid of anything except liberal moralism your views are.
Let’s all demomise Iran, a state so demonised it’s good for nothing except either toppling or destruction, a state of 70 million people desperate to get aboard the neoliberal express.
Let’s leave aside, for the purposes of convenience, the realities of imperialism in the region (1953, 30 years of brutal dictatorship under the Shah, 1 million dead so far, boys and girls), or ethnic cleansing and apartheid (1.5 million prisoners in that concentration camp otherwise known as Gaza). Yes, let’s focus on events that took place in 1979 as if fixed in time, rather than use them to understand what’s happening 30 years later in 2009.
How morally pure life is when lived in a bubble of smug sloganeering and moralism.
How utterly disconnected from reality.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the British left.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
#74
” think Jon and Andy are wrong to say that the shrieking in these comments is from the “ultra-left”. ”
Correct, we had ultra-lefts earlier, I think we now have a slight shift in gear and have been joined by the B52 liberals
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
Andy at 75. Actually John Wight’s original post which he took down and amended (see comments 1 and 2) said exactly that.
Comment by Apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
#74 I’ll note in passing that I used none of the words ‘fascism’ ‘Islam’ nor ‘George Galloway’ nor ‘RESPECT’. Nor am I a Blairite, nor did I support the invasion of Iraq.
Other than that, and essentially everything else as well, spot on.
Comment by driver — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:26 pm
And he states it again at # 50
Comment by Apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:29 pm
#72 `If there is indeed a Tiananmen Square moment coming up as is feared, I will ask Wight to reassess that statement in the light of the slaughter.’
You’d like that wouldn’t you? A tiananmen square moment as you so delicately put it is not what the working classes of Iran need. It will push this movement back 30 years and if a petty bourgeois or madly sectarian leadership leads it into such a disaster then caution would have been exactly the right approach.
Hopefully, tomorrow’s demonstrations will be huge and determined and lead on to greater things but the regime is using the rhetoric of the islamaphobic blabber mouths and Western interventionists which the broad masses fear most to mobilise against it.
Comment by Get a life — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:31 pm
#76 And again, its hard not to have the impression that Wight is shadowboxing the wrong shadow. He seems to think he is arguing with someone who has even mentioned 1979. I wonder who that was, as it wasnt me. Mice?
Its telling that when he writes, quite accurately, that Iran is a ’state which represses students, gays, women’ what he actually intends is a satiric effect.
It is sad but true that the opposition of the US is not in itself a guarantor of governmental virtue. I do not let the US determine for me who is or isn’t a repressive regime, nor do I let the US determine for me who I may or may not condemn for fear of accidentally carrying American water.
Comment by driver — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:36 pm
#81 You’d like that wouldn’t you?
Oh yes. I’m always quite pleased by large slaughters. My only disappointment in such a case is that I would not be there to eat the bodies raw and drizzle the blood in lacy patterns onto my garments. So on that objection, and that objection alone, perhaps it would be better if thousands weren’t killed after all.
Berk.
Comment by driver — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
driver:
It is sad but true that the opposition of the US is not in itself a guarantor of governmental virtue. I do not let the US determine for me who is or isn’t a repressive regime, nor do I let the US determine for me who I may or may not condemn for fear of accidentally carrying American water.
reply:
No, but the point is that NO government is either completely virtuous or not. The crucial question, in terms of offering a Marxist or socialist analysis, is what is in the best interests of the international working class.
Vote rigging takes place in every so-called democracy. The Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged from historical events and material conditions that have been set by western invervention.
If what emerges from the present crisis is a continuation of 1979, I will support it. If on the other hand it is a retreat from the gains of 1979 - i.e., Iran’s liberation from the status of American neocolony, I won’t.
As I’ve already stated, the biggest oppressor of gays, women, and workers in the world today is capitalism. It is a global oppressor.
Iran is a nation, like every other in the developing world, and specifically in the M East, which has seen its development distorted and impeded by the West and an economic system which recognises no rights except the right to exploit the labour and resources of the vast majority of people on the planet.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
“Iran is a nation, like every other in the developing world, and specifically in the M East, which has seen its development distorted and impeded by the West and an economic system which recognises no rights except the right to exploit the labour and resources of the vast majority of people on the planet.”
Iran is a highly developed nation. It is not in the ‘Middle East’ but (central) Asia. It is also capitalist. It is run by a theocratic, nepotist junta. It aggressively exploits its labour and resources without significant re-distribution to the masses except as political gifts (hence the perennial food and oil riots) . It recognises no rights whatsoever except those laid down by an unelected body. It has arrested over 300 dissidents and labour leaders. This has nothing to do with the ‘West’.
You have not got a clue. You simply are talking about a country you have made up in your mind. You have swallowed their rhetoric wholesale.
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
#75:Andy Newman.
“No one at all has expressed the view that Ahmadinejad should be supported because he is anti-imperialst.”
That is EXACTLY what John Wight has said.
Comment by Mick — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:01 pm
Mick #85 - Politically, Iran is considered part of the M East. It is has been denied the freedom to develop unimpeded politically and socially as a result of its status as a US/British neocolony and latterly as a consequence of the isolation and threat of war it has existed under for daring to resist western intervention.
Just as with other societies struggling to emerge from years of neocolnialism, such as those in Latin America, Iran’s economy reveals a low level of capitalist development - i.e. a massive gulf between a highly educated urban population and a huge rural and largely uneducated rural population.
It’s only export commodity of note is oil, hence the need to develop nuclear energy for domestic consumption. It also exists under the real threat of military attack.
But you refuse to acknowledge any of that in anything you’ve posted thus far. Instead you fixate on the imperfections in its democratic structures. As if we in this country live in some workers’ paradise or democratic utopia.
In contrast to your assertion that I don’t have a clue, I suggest that you do have a clue.
You’re nothing more than an apologist for war and imperialism.
You’ve swallowed their rhetoric wholesale and repeat it with liberal abandon.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Re the comments about B52 liberals. This just doesn’t hold water. It’s wishful thinking on your part. Sorry but, after a shaky start, you are clearly in a small minority on the radical left now. How many left wing organisations in the UK and internationally haven’t come out in favour of the anti-Ahmadinejad movement?
The best that John Wight can do is say that other states do bad things too and that therefore we can’t support those being beaten, intimidated and shot on the streets and in university dorms. It’s a kind of disinterred Third Period lunacy - that there’s nothing to choose between different forms of capitalist state and that therefore one can’t criticise brutal repression in a state in which an actually existing movement against oppression is in struggle. (And there’s the real ultra-leftism incidentally).
Comment by Ed — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Yes Mick. Here he is on lenin’s tomb today -
“The Islamic Republic, its religious foundation, is of course regressive when analysed on its own, without taking into consideration the material conditions in which it exists and from which it emerged.
But the role it has played as a bulwark against Zionist expansion, allied to US imperialism in the region is eminently progressive.”
Comment by Mark T — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
Mark T #89
Seriously, you’re about as bright as a black out. Please provide an exegesis of that statement which refutes its inherent logic.
Please tell me what is inaccurate in the analysis contained in it and why.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Ed: I’ve never considered “everyone else is doing it” as a good motivator for political activism, and I’m not starting now. Your contentless rhetorical attempts to wave it aside only draw attention to the fact that the people who are yelling FASCISM on this blog are of course the same people who yelled it about the Saddam regime - and with the same purpose, i.e. attempting to use shame and social pressure to get the radical left to support attacks on imperialism’s Big Bogey of the Day.
There’s even the same nonsense going around that suggests “if you don’t support coups, invasions and subversions to get rid of Ahmedinejad, you must love him and want to marry him”. Substitute “Saddam” in that sentence and it’s 2002 all over again.
Comment by Doloras LaPicho — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:35 pm
John is injecting a valuable element of caution into the discussion, that is all.
I don’t follow Iran, but I know that in both Zimbabwe and kenya, with similarly contested elections, the prevailing, simplified narrative from the western media reporting was not shared by the left in the countries themselves.
Certainly I wish to see the repressive aspects of Iranian society overturned, but that doesn’t mean that on the basis of very limited infrmation, i will be bounced into a meaningless and futile “taking sides”, when it s up to the people in Iran to resolve this for themselves, and my views are irrelevant.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:45 pm
Letter from Maryam Namazie
Today, ‘elections’ are not the real issue at hand in Iran. Everyone knows that elections are neither fair nor free there. There are no basic political freedoms and right to organise. Candidates are selected by the Supreme Leader and unelected Guardian Council and are chosen from amongst pillars of the regime. Mousavi - now branded a ‘reformist’ - was prime minister during the 80s when thousands were executed.
Often with regards Iranian politics one must look below the surface to see what’s really going on. The infighting between the regime’s factions has intensified. Both sides refuse to back down for now but this has nothing to do with people’s lives.
The people of Iran have shown that they have their own demands; they want the Islamic regime to go. And it has to go. Thirty years of medievalism and brutality is enough. What this infighting has done and will continue to do is further provide the people of Iran with the opportunity to fight for real freedom and equality.
In all this, one thing is clear. There is a mass movement in Iran that is going to bring this regime to its knees and break the back of the political Islamic movement internationally. Now is the time for people in the west to exert pressure on western governments to politically isolate the regime rather than excuse and legitimise it. Like racial apartheid in the former South Africa, a regime of sexual apartheid must be proclaimed a crime against 21 century humanity.
Maryam Namazie is spokesperson of the Worker-communist Party of Iran.
Comment by Anonymous — 19 June, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
Doloras Lapicho is quite correct. I too remember the atmosphere of 2002.
And, although I wasn’t there personally, accounts of the start of WW1 suggest that socialists resisting the Mood Of The Moment - chauvinist hysteria orchestrated by their various ruling classes - were really up against it. Some of the chauvinism was even packaged as socialism. German SPD members were told that the Great War was about resisting the barbarism of the Russian Tsars, British socialists were told that it was about the defence of small nations like Belgium, French socialists were told it was the continuation of the patriotism of the Paris Commune (which in part arose because of indignation at negotiations with the Prussians) and so forth.
Comment by Faust — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:23 am
John Wight is expressing a very moderate and sensible point of view, within the media-generated atmosphere of outrage at the outcome of the Iranian presidential election.
The aim of the protests, backed unanimously by the Western press (ie, the mouthpieces of the imperialist ruling classes) is the overthrow of Ahmadinejad as President of Iran.
Would it be a good thing or a bad thing were Ahmadinejad to be deposed?
Apart from the factual matter of whether the elections were fraudulent- and none of the arguments put so far to ’show’ that electoral fraud has taken place have any validity- that is surely the main issue.
Is anyone here claiming that the policies of Moussavi and Rafsanjani would be better for the working class and poor people of Iran than Ahmadinejad’s policies?
Not so far. And, if there is anybody here who proposes that Moussavi / Rafsanjani would better advance the interests of the urban & rural poor majority in Iran, please outline / explain this.
Any takers?
Or perhaps the idea is that ‘people power’ on the streets of Teheran- no matter that its social base is among the higher-income groups, and never mind that its global cheerleader is the Western media- must ipso facto be a positive development, given the theocratic Iranian regime, etc.
If so, what are the recent historical precedents? Have any of the ‘colour revolutions’ shown positive results for the working class and the poor masses of the countries involved? Or have they resulted in further privatisation, marketisation and impoverishment?
And what about Iran’s international orientation? Has it got better or worse under Ahmadinejad?
Hugo Chavez has no doubt about this- hence Venezuela’s speedy congratulation to Ahmadinejad on his electoral victory. Iran has aligned itself- politically and economically- with revolutionary Latin America.
The Western media campaign against the election of Ahmadinejad makes perfect sense.
And that the B52 liberals and many Western ‘radicals’ ally enthusiastically with this campaign also makes sense. The ‘democratic’ cultural & political imperialism of the ‘left’ element of the global elite.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:05 am
Scrolling through this thread has been interesting, to say the least.
On the one hand we have the hysterics of people like Mick and Mark T, no doubt parachuted in from HPlace, standing up for the rights of women and gays to enjoy the right to be bombed and occupied in the name of progress, for their own good.
On the other, we have people like John Wight, Noah, Andy and others advising caution, based on the sensible premise that as we don’t live in Iran, and as it is currently the number one target in the sights of the warmongers and hawks in the West, best not to start cheerleading what is going on in case we end up like those leftists in the West who post/911 crossed into the arms of the neocons in cheerleading the war in Iraq.
I may have disagreed with Wight on other discussions that have taken place on this site, but I find his analysis far more persuasive and thoughtful on this issue than the one being thrown around by the Harry’s Place groupies, nothing more than apologists for Israel and its denial of every right to the Palestinians except the right to be occupied and driven from their homes for daring to raise a whimper in protest.
Comment by Anthony — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:39 am
I have no problem with John and Andy advocating caution. But the original version of this post which John wiuthdrew did not do that. It admonished those on the left who failed to support Ahmadinejad, as you’ll see from the first two comments.
#
I note that you took down your previous post which attacked leftists who supported the opposition. As I said then, in the one comment before your post was removed, Khomenei has threatened a bloodbath. Are you going to be cheering him on?
Comment by apollo — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
#
Apollo - I do have a problem with such politically-myopic support for the toppling of the current regime, without knowing what will come in its place and with the obvious delicate situation in the region.
However, it is equally erroneous to attack the Opposition without knowing its composition and where it might lead. Which is why I removed my previous criticism.
As for the bloodbath you envisage, here again we have this propensity to ascribe barbarism to a regime which this far, given the crisis that’s enveloped it, shown remarkable restraint. I wonder if such restraint would be shown by our own govt or the American govt in similar circumstances?
Let’s hope there is no violence. If, however, there is violence, then as with any civil unrest let’s hope that we focus on the underlying social forces and politics involved in order to analyse the situation soberly, without lapsing into the liberal moralising we’re used to receiving in the mainstream press.
Comment by John Wight — 19 June, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:12 am
Only problem with that Anthony is that not one of the posts supporting the protesters has expressed support for either Mosavi or for US/UK intervention.
And neither have they expressed support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
And there is also the troublesome fact that both the Tudeh Party and the Worker-Communist Party have also made statements supporting the protests - and neither of them have expressed support for Mosavi or for US/UK intervention either.
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:19 am
Which Iranian left parties back the Iranian government?
Which Iranian workers’ organisations support Amrmadinejad?
Who on the Iranian or British left is calling for US/UK intervention?
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:24 am
“I may have disagreed with Wight on other discussions that have taken place on this site, but I find his analysis far more persuasive and thoughtful on this issue than the one being thrown around by the Harry’s Place groupies, nothing more than apologists for Israel and its denial of every right to the Palestinians except the right to be occupied and driven from their homes for daring to raise a whimper in protest.”
One-track mind! What can I say? The Nazis used to think that even if the water took a long time to boil, it was the Jew’s blame. Now you “socialists” think that absolutely everything revolves around a small country, hundreds of km West of Iran. If your toasts get burned, don’t forget to cry “Zionists”!
Comment by Fabian from Israel — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:25 am
#97 - Yes, but he admitted that it had been a mistake to jump the gun, so I don’t see how he can be condemned for that. The problem is that everyone is jumping up and down cheering on the protesters without taking time to look at the politics involved.
I remember back in 2000 when there were mass demonstrations against Chavez in Caracas, and look what happened there.
Wight is absolutely correct to look at the history of the country and to point out the huge external pressures it’s under from the West and Israel.
Your view of this crisis is far too narrow, and even if I don’t don’t doubt your honesty, the danger is that as with Iraq in 2002 you end up joining those who want to see Iran removed from the picture.
Comment by Anthony — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:00 am
I don’t see that the protesters are in any way motivated by this ‘huge external pressure.’ The people of Iran have their own agenda to which they are entitled. It’s up to them to deal with the West when and if they achieve their demands.
One thing I find quite distasteful is the idea that Iranians must accept their fate within Iran in order for the state to be a bulwark against Western Imperialism and Zionism. You will find it hard to find a population which is prepared to subsume its own demands for liberty within those of another oppressed people in another country.
In the end, it is up to the Iranian people to determine which direction they want their country to go. My view, obviously unpopular here, is that the protesters represent a progressive force in Iranian society. That does not mean, for example, what happened under the Shah where women were forbidden to wear the chador, but that the women in particular out on the streets cannot not deserve my support in their demands for an end to feudalism. For example, the Guardian yesterday
‘Late that summer, authorities launched a full-scale campaign of intimidation against young people they accused of un-Islamic appearance. Within a few short weeks, police detained 150,000 people, and all the women in my life went out to buy the shapeless, long coats that we had worn back in the late 1990s. Though the campaign targeted young men as well, authorities singled out women with particular brutality. The government’s disdain for women increased by the day. Though Iranians fretted about the impact of western sanctions, the government turned its attention to a bill that would facilitate polygamy. Soon after, it announced a plan that would supposedly solve Iran’s marriage crisis. It called the scheme “semi-independent marriage”, and it amounted to a hollow version of the institution that would secure men legal and piously sanctioned sex, while denying women the security and social respectability of conventional marriage. On internet news sites and newspapers, women reacted scathingly. A girlfriend of mine, whose English classes had recently been segregated by gender, complained the government was imposing seventh-century rules on modern women.’
The revolutionary left have repeatedly told women that their demands will have to wait until after the revolution, or rather that the revolution itself will solve all their problems. This ceased to wash 30 years ago and it won’t do so now.
Finally, today is a crunch day. Yesterday the protesters were threatened. Today either they stay home in large numbers or challenge the authority of the state (what are they asking for after all but a re-run of the election?) by continuing to demonstrate. If there is a severe crackdown, I hope that Andy Newman and John Wight are ready with their defence of violence, and ready to be in a very tiny minority. During the attack on Gaza many people I know sympathetic to Israel were sickened by the images they saw on their screens. This wasn’t liberal moralising. It was a normal human reaction. If there is a crackdown and you try to defend it, think hard about the damage you are going to do to your own movement.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:26 am
No answers yet to anti-fascist’s questions @99 from those who caricature support for the multi-layered people’s movement that is opening up democratic space in Iran as being pro-Western/pro-Zionist.
One more question to add to anti-fascist’s. In what way is support from a backward-looking, repressive, theocratic, holocaust-denying regime of any assistance whatsoever to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and equality in the 21st century?
Of course we need to form independent opinions about what is happening In Iran from the different info sources around but surely we can recognise the relative importance of what longstanding and long-suffering Iranian socialists, communists and feminists are saying about the current situation. All of them seem to be unequivocally in support of the revolt without attaching themselves at all to the politics of Mousavi, None of them are in any doubt about the nature of Ahmadinejad’s regime. They want it to fall and are prepared to take the risk of not knowing what will follow as unlikely to be worse and more likely to offer more breathing space for progressives.
Comment by David Rosenberg — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:39 am
`If there is a severe crackdown, I hope that Andy Newman and John Wight are ready with their defence of violence, and ready to be in a very tiny minority.’
Sounds like you are hoping for a crackdown so that you can be right. I’m sure there are many in this movement who are hoping for a crackdown to invoke Western intervention. There will be others who just want the Shah back. The working classes are reacting cautiously thus far. They have felt the weight of this regime most of all but also sacrificed the most to get rid of the West’s puppet shah.
If this demonstration goes off peacefully today then it will show that the regime is genuinely split and paralysed and the working masses will enter the fray with an independent policy.
Comment by Boney — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:42 am
‘Sounds like you are hoping for a crackdown so that you can be right.’
According to the BBC’s reporter, government forces have been seen armed with kalashnikovs. So no, I’m not.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:46 am
Apollo - The contradictions in Iranian society are self evident, a direct result of the direction the revolution took in 1979. And no one is denying the right of the Iranian people to freedom and liberty.
But you have automatically assumed, at the early stages of this crisis, that the protesters represent the majority view within the country. How do you know that? How do you know that the majority of Iranians consider themselves to be repressed? As in any society there is a class composition, and Ahamdinejad undoubtedly draws the majority of his support from the poor and the lowest strata of the working class.
Of course, it is not black and white, and the Opposition is clearly not a homogenous force (there’ll no doubt be sharp debates and arguments taking place over how far it should go, which direction, and so on).
Mousavi is no progressive, we know that, so the question is if and when it will overtake him.
To suggest that the Iranian people don’t care about western intervention in the region or Israel is ludicrous. The recent history of the Shah’s brutal dictatorship, the subversion of democracy in Iran by the West, and the destruction and devastation visited on neighbouring Iraq are obviously huge factors in how domestic politics have developed in that country.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:48 am
The protesters may indeed not be from the poorest sectors of Iranian society but I don’t consider them to be necessarily the most progressive.
I do not suggest that Iranians don’t care about Western intervention. That would indeed be ludicrous. I am suggesting that they are unlikely to be willing to subsume their own struggle to the role of Iran as a bulwark against it. As you say, the history of both Iran and the region is a huge factor (that’s why yesterday’s rooftops protests consisted of the cry God is Great, not long like Marx/Obama.)
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:56 am
That should have been long live Marx/Obama
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:56 am
The campaign for the vote for women did not begin in the Dickensian squalor of the slums, it began in middle-class drawing rooms. That does not make it a reactionary demand. The fact that large numbers of women did not want the vote or thought it irrelevant to their lives, again does not make it a reactionary demand.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:01 am
David #103 - I don’t see anyone having ‘caricatured’ the Opposition in the terms you describe. This is projection.
Thus far the protests have been in response to Mousavi losing the election, and not against the theocracy itself. I’ve pointed out repeatedly that what remains to be seen is how far the Opposition develops beyond the issue of the election to attack the nature of the state.
Today, as Apollo correctly states, will probably go a long way to determining that.
But I recall when Saddam was being vilified as the new Hitler and a madman ready to visit death and mayhem on the world at the push of a button. Look what happened there. Great, many on the left jumped for joy, jumping so high they landed on the right. There are lessons to be learned from that. For all Ahamdinejad’s ludicrous views on the Holocaust, which are rightly to be condemned, they should not and cannot be the determining factor in analysing an entire state without taking into account the pressures it is under from without. Israel has a huge nuclear arsenal, it is clearly a state which exists in a state of perpetual war, responsible for the dislocation of the entire region as a strategic partner of western interests. Surely we can understand how those who’ve been impacted by this state of affairs may lapse into voicing some regressive views.
Iran has emerged from over 30 years of wetern backed dictatorship, revolution, a devastating war with its neighbour, sanctions, isolation….
To expect it not to have been shaped in large part by the aformentioned might be convenient, but as Trotsky once said: ‘If we leave aside international affairs, we can; but the whole point is that we cannot leave them aside. You can go for a walk naked in the streets of Moscow in the month of January, if you leave aside the weather and the militia. But I am afraid neither the weather nor the militia will leave you aside.’
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:05 am
‘Surely we can understand how those who’ve been impacted by this state of affairs may lapse into voicing some regressive views.’
This may well be true, but having understood it, we don’t continue to endorse those regressive views any more than we endorse Zionism because of the Holocaust/anti-semitism. We support those within the society who wish to be rid of those regressive policies. No-one here is suggesting Iran be invaded or attacked. We are supporting the people right now demonstrating on the streets.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:10 am
#109 - Who’s saying that the vote for women is a reactionary demand? It is one of the many contradictions at the heart of Iranian society though.
But the vote for women on its own is not the arbiter of how progressive or regressive a society is.
How can it be? Women have the right to vote throughout the western world, in countries, as I’ve said, collectively responsible for denying more women an even greater right - the right to life, the right not to see their children slaughered or their lives blighted by war and occupation.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:10 am
To those who accuse we supporters of the Iranian protesters of “interference” and to those who back the Iranian government’s supposed “anti-imperialism,” what do you say in response to statements from the IRANIAN left and the IRANIAN workers’ movement in support of the protesters and against the regime?
Again I repeat, which Iranian left parties support the regime?
Which Iranian workers’ organisations support Armadinejad?
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:11 am
113 - They deserve to be seriously considered.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:15 am
That is a really really feeble response, John. Denying women the right to vote while giving it to men is apartheid. You might as well say that the civil rights movement in the US gave black voters the right to vote for governments which do the same things you cite, therefore the lack of civil rights for African Americans was no marker of the US’s politics.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:21 am
Good to hear it Jon,
In answer to your claim at 110, Anthony has charicatured supporters of the protests as pro-war and pro-zionist, see his arguments at 96 and at 101.
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:30 am
Hows this for a proposition: putting the lid back on the movement will involve enourmous repression. would this be a good or a bad thing for the working class?
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:34 am
actually its a question not a proposition. But the answer is so obvious it might as well be a proposition.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:35 am
Well John, of course the Respect Party have claimed the election took place “with no trouble at all” and predict the protests “will soon fizzle out.”
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:40 am
This is a very useful piece (particularly for the way it draws out the complicity between supposedly polarised positions in evidence on this thread):
http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/06/why-are-iranians-dreaming-again.asp
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:50 am
The piece johng has linked to is excellent.
Comment by David Rosenberg — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:05 am
From that piece:
‘Musavi’s people, as the collective appearing in the rallies, is made of religious women covered in chador walking hand in hand with westernized young women who are usually prosecuted for their appearance; veterans of war in wheelchairs next to young boys for whom the Iran-Iraq war is only an anecdote; and working class who have sacrificed their daily salary to participate in the rally next to the middle classes. This story is not limited to Tehran. Shiraz (two confirmed dead), Isfahan (one confirmed dead), Tabriz, Oroomiye are also part of this movement and other cities are joining with a predictable delay (as it was the case in 79 revolution).
History will prove who the real participants of this movement are but once again we are faced with a new, non-classical and unfamiliar radical politics. Will the Western left get it right this time?’
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:16 am
The article’s certainly interesting, but its positive attitude towards Mosavi is in marked contrast to the statements of the Iranian left that we’ve seen.
And it seems to argue that opponents of the Iranian regime among what it calls “the western left” are largely motivated by “islamophobia,” when actually we are motivated by solidarity for our Iranian comrades.
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:25 am
well I think he provides information we need, and identifies the link between the more hysterical hyper-secularists and those who are uncritical of the regime on the basis of anti-imperialism.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:45 am
I am sure that many in the popular revolt against the Islamic regime have no time for Mousavi. The split in the ruling class is giving the masses a chance to organize and overthrow the anti working class dictatorship
sandy
Mousavi and the 1988 massacres
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-tuesday-students-of-qazvin.html
Friday, May 22, 2009
Students question Moussavi about his role in 1988 massacre !
On Tuesday, students of Qazvin University protested against Moussavi, chanting
slogans of “‘88, ‘88,” and demanding Moussavi to provide explanations in regards
to his role during the political prisoners’ massacre.
Some of the placards held by students read: “Mirhossein, ‘88!,” “Free university
students,” and “Evin now accepts university students,” in a reference to the
increasing number of students being held at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
Mirhossein Moussavi, Islamic Republic’ former Prime Minister in 1980s, was one
of the high ranking officials of the regime during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.
He was responsible for the death of a million Iranian youth in the war and
played a key role in export of terrorism and execution of political prisoners
including the massacre of 30,000 prisoners in summer of 1988.
On Monday students at the University of Zanjan (northwest Iran) disrupted a
speech by Mirhossein Moussavi and demanded explanations about his role during
the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.
“Where were you in 1988, and how many people did you kill?” some students asked
Moussavi. One placard read “Khavaran’s soil is still red,” referring to the
Khavaran cemetery, where thousands of political prisoners have been buried.
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:46 am
#109 “The campaign for the vote for women did not begin in the Dickensian squalor of the slums, it began in middle-class drawing rooms. That does not make it a reactionary demand.”
No, but it’s a complete distortion of the socialist tradition to isolate such democratic demands from the overall socialist programme. Rosa Luxemburg supported votes for women, but was completely scathing about the “equal righters” in Germany.
For very good reasons.
This failure to unite democratic and socialist demands was exactly how the right wing of the Suffragettes in Britain were drawn into support for WW1.
Sylvia Pankhurst on the other hand, participated in the broader working class movement, edited the “Workers Dreadnought” and became and (ultra-left) supporter of the fledgling Communist Party.
Mutatis Mutandis, the same thing applies to the situation in Iran;
Confining the issue to whether Mousavi or Ahamdinejad is elected doesn’t really deal with the questions raised.
A consistent democratic demand, flowing from the logic of the 1979 Revolution would be for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and free elections with no restrictions on candidates.
That might be regarded by some as opening the door to counter-revolution, but they are completely wrong. The question is, whether its overthrown from the left, or the right. Mousavi would represent its overthrow from the right and therefore, his pretentions to lead the opposition must be exposed from the left.
A serious examination of his politics and conduct reveal him to be an unwilling Kerensky-type figure, who is not prepared to confront the regime. In fact, the West wants such a leader and hopes to use his Islamic credentials and links to Rafsanjani to cement a moderate-Islamic leadership. (note how the opposition are chanting “Allahu-Akhbar” at night to voice their protest)
The only way the regime will be overthrown from the left will be through reviving the tradtions of the Workers Councils (shoras) of the 1979 revolution. In practice this means demanding the release of all imprisoned trade unionists and freeing the unions from legal restrictions.
This is a longer term perspective and an independent working class movement will not re-emerge by tying itself to either Mousavi, or the defense of Ahmadinejad.
It has to develop its own programme and undercut the base of both of them.
Comment by prianikoff — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:52 am
I think its a mistake to treat Mousavi as the right and Ahmadinajad as the left. Its not unusual in revolutionary situations for the mass of people to rally around safer oppositional figures before throwing them off as the sense of possibilities begins to open up. I note the students questioning about ‘88. These things can move very quickly. But its just not true that Ahmadinajad represents some kind of Chavez figure who is in some sense left wing. He’s a privatiser distinguished by the fact that he sells off public assets to his chums in the revolutionary guard who are a by-word for corruption, as opposed to opening up to other sections of the Iranian bourgoisie. There is nothing socially progressive about this. The big problem the opposition always had was relating to the layers of the population which the regime built a base in. That base is now disintergrating.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Terrible news:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hLQe1diiYhtUga_UJ51ckJu_4vXQ
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:01 am
Surely that’s bad news. Terrible news would have been a massacre of demonstrators, or Khamenei’s words at Friday prayers implicitly threatening same. A retreat doesn’t necesaarily mean the end.
Comment by skidmarx — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:08 am
No but I think its serious. Its not terrible yet in the sense its unclear whether the call will be heeded. Apparently last night people were on the rooftops again shouting ‘death to dictator’ etc, etc. But its a setback.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:15 am
And in many ways makes repression more likely.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:15 am
But we still have this report below so hard to say if the “leadership” of the revolt are backing down. If so- it will take great courage to attend the demo. We, on the left, have never had to face such a threat from the state in Britain- at least not for a very long time.
sandy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8110582.stm
A key rally against Iran’s presidential elections will go ahead - in defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - opposition sources say.
The wife of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, and an aide to another rival candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, said the rally would go ahead.
Mr Mousavi later announced he would be making a statement imminently.
Police warned they would arrest the leaders of any protest rallies, which they said would be illegal.
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:21 am
Agence France Press have provided a second report of Basij thugs being seen on the streets with clubs and kalashnikovs. Now I’m a middle aged person with a family and not much physical courage, and frankly, were I in Iran I’d probably be hiding under the bed. But if those weapons are used on peaceful protesters today who have the chutzpah to go unarmed into the streets, no denunciation of liberal moralising is going to prevent me and I imagine the rest of the world of coming down hard on their side and harder on those who take the other. And that includes Chavez.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:22 am
Dont know how accurate this below is- got on Guardian site
From within Iran: A reliable and well-connected source, @ProtesterHelp (twitter handle) confirmed today that the ‘Basiji Hunter’ network of organised street-fighting kids of Tehran are referring to themselves as the ‘National Iran Resistance’. They are already known to the authorities, but Iranian protesters are much less aware that there is any physical protection for them going into the demo, so the call has gone out to publicise it far and wide. More info here, compiled by @ProtesterHelp: http://pastebay.com/23415
The ‘Basiji Hunters’ can be read about in pretty much all of the big 3 Iran aggregator blogs - DailyDish, NYT Lede, HuffPo. This info simply confirms their ideological basis in the constitutional duty of fighters to defend Iran from a military coup. Depending on how this pans out, these kids are likely to be the ones who face the very harshest punishment from the regime. They’re not middle class students who might be able to flee the country, but basically an amateur youth-gang urban guerrilla movement.
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:24 am
JON LEYNE, TEHRAN, 0900 GMT (Saturday)
And got this from the BBC site
sandy
Jon Leyne
The opposition leader Mir Hussein Musavi has not made the direct statement himself but his wife, Zahra Rahnavard - who has played a key role in his campaign - has said on her facebook site that the rally is going ahead.
If so, this will be the most direct challenge to the authority of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A huge turnout is expected. Iran and the world will be watching to see how the Iranian security forces respond.
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:31 am
Johng #128 -
This isn’t some game. The avoidance of bloodshed is surely a welcome development.
Custerism is nothing to be sanguine about. Revolutionary hypothetical arguments and predications are way off the mark. A concrete situation requires a concrete analysis. A few protesters chanting ‘death to the dictator’ does not a movement make.
There is no reason to believe that sections of the armed forces or authorities are sympathetic to the protesters, which is crucial, nor do we know the size of the forces in the ranks of the Opposition whose objectives lay beyond the minimum demand of a recount.
As yet this remains a power struggle within the theocracy being played out in the street.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:32 am
But it won’t avoid bloodshed you patronising so and so. It will create it. Precisely because it is not a game. If the movement fades full repression will be unleashed. Do you not think the usual rules apply in Iran or something?
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:36 am
And in fact there are lots of reports of sections of the security services being sympathetic to the demonstraters (wearing green arm bands, intervening to prevent the paramilitaries infiltrating the crowds etc).
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:38 am
No John wrong again - there have been reports of sections of the armed bodies of the state being sympathetic to the demonstrators and even protecting them from the Basiji. Of course this will be the case when the opposition can mobilise millions on the streets as they have
no marxist, at least nobody who is worthy of that designation, would see this as simply “a power struggle within the elite being played out in the streets” The masses are fighting for democratic rights. You are backing the regime against the mass movement for democracy - due to your daft belief that the regime is “progressive” and anti imperialist. Hopeless and disgraceful. Come to your senses!
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:44 am
#134 “Basiji Hunters’ amateur youth-gang urban guerrilla movement.”
Utterly stupid and dangerous drivel being incited by unaccountable and anonymous bloggers. Nothing about social programme and therefore, wide open to being manipulated. Could easily be used to create a massacre, which will then be seized on by the Western press.
Only mass action which involves the majority of the working class and extends into the villages can challenge the regime. The Army and paramilitaries would need to split for any genuine revolutionary situation to occur.
A working class, socialist leadership is the only way to win full democracy and open the road to workers power.
Comment by prianikoff — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:44 am
well there is a real mass movement. I think its irresponsible for bloggers here to sit pronouncing on the irresponsibility of people facing the prospect of vicious repression. I also think that the west might seize on this or that is the very least important thing at the moment. Democracy movements in other parts of the region (including those countries ruled by pro-western stooges) will be watching all this with interest. There is nothing irresponsible about supporting an existing mass movement, and nothing particularly responsible about calling for passivity from the sidelines.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:49 am
140- and if a socialist leadership does not exist at present should the masses stay at home until the SWP has a Iranian franchise up and running. Joker.
it is only within the mass movement for democracy that a socialist leadership will be built- not by abstract calls for socialism.
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:53 am
prinikoff as far as I know is not an SWP member.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:56 am
oh and its clear that it was John W. doing the statesman like thing. once again apologies to Andy N. “we should welcome…” etc.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:57 am
143
what sect does he support?
anyway lets hope the working class of iran are successful in over throwing the reactionary anti democratic Iranian regime. It would be a big step forward for the working class of the world and the first major victory for the working class since the start of the world crisis of capitalism. would send a great message around the globe and encourage all others fighting against tyranny
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
#141-145 Of course I’m not an SWP member! I’m an independent Marxist, with experience in several organisations, including the IS, USFI & LP, doing consultancy work to the left. Think of me as a kind of leftwing ‘House’.
As to the question of “irresponsibility” - I have to disagree with JohnG.
My comments here aren’t going to have any direct impact on what happens in Iran.
But an Iranian blogger with some influence may have.
In fact, I’d argue that rather than seeking an immediate confrontation, the left in Iran might be better off arguing for a tactical retreat, analagous to the July Days in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The aim being ideological consolidation and winning the majority before winning power.
If they don’t do that, they are in grave danger of being drawn into two different kinds of provocation.
(a) by the regime, in order to behead the movement and drive it off the streets.
(b) by the West, in order to create a civil war/coup in which their placemen in the opposition take over the reins of a moderated Islamic State.
The forces of the socialist left should be widening their position of one which seeks the complete overthrow of the Islamic Repbublic and its replacement by an Assembly guaranteeing free elections, with no Council of Guardian vetting of the candidates. They also need to build workers councils along the lines of 1979.
Arguing for a direct confrontation with the Government over the ban is allowing the pace of the movement to be dicated by Khameini and the Clerics and could lead to a serious defeat. If the SWP is calling for that, they could be engaging in another impressionistic flip-flop. Something along the lines of their support for the bizarre Maoist adventurists of the PRP-BR in Portugal and their infamous attempted counter coup in November 1975.
I sincerely hope not.
Comment by prianikoff — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Defend the Iranian Students’ movement
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
146 I am sure the socialist left are already for the overthrow of the Islamic republic. (If your consultancy work for the left consists in such banalities you will
have much time on your hands)
as for your suggestion that the socialist left in Iran should call for today’s demos to be called off until a “better time”- I dont think that would be a sensible position
But i am not in iran so I leave any such call to be decided on by comrades on the ground
In the last analysis it will be the mass of the people who decide if they are going to go out on the streets of Tehran today. I tend to think that the revolutionary socialist current in Iran will tend to be the most intransigent and courageous defenders of the peoples right to protest against tyranny
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
Well actually I have no idea what the SWP position is this afternoon not being in continuous telepathic contact. It just seems to me obvious that a mass movement which pulls back in this situation is going to be beheaded. I also strongly suspect that western countries are as concerned about instability as much as anything else (one finds the neo-cons and leading Israeli politicians desperate to dismiss all this as a storm in a teacup). For one thing they know that there is no popular resonance in Iran for, for example, giving up nuclear power. They would therefore much prefer an unpopular advocate of this then a popular one. So I just think this whole line seeking to read off internal events in Iran off the back of international geo-politics is mistaken. The implications are far more complex then that.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
I also think that the belief that no movements should be supported that don’t lead directly to proletarian revolution is ultimately a quietist and conservative position with respect to actual politics.
I found this interesting in terms of a flavour of the kinds of statements now being made in, to use that much abused term, Iranian ‘civil society’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q1ShappZqk
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
Its also true incidently that calling off the movement to build it would be bizarre in most circumstances, but in a society where its very difficult to organise because of repression, and where it is likely the repression will be especially intense following any such demobilisation is a suicidal recipe. As a matter of interest, the student agitation a few years back: it was sparked by students protesting about the privatisation of Iranian universities…by Ahmadinajad.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
A Question Over Iran: Can the People Make History or Not?
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/a-question-over-iran-serve-the-people-or\
-not/
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
I think this is from where john Wight gets his political line. am i right John?
As I have said hopeless stuff
sandy
http://www.workers.org/2009/editorials/iran_0625/
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
#148 sandy: “I am sure the socialist left are already for the overthrow of the Islamic republic”
Yes, but the mass opposition are clearly not.
Just as the mass movement in Russia in July 1917 were not for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. So the task was to win over the mass movement, represented by the Soviets, to the slogans of the Bolsheviks.
For that reason Lenin opposed even mass street demonstrations and went underground.
Only by the united front tactic of defending the Provisional Government against the Kornilov putsch, were the Bolsheviks able to win a majority in the Soviets and take power.
The situation in Iran is much, much worse than that.
There are no Soviets and barely any functioning opposition parties, just candidates approved by the Mullahs, who act as a prism for the discontents of the mass of the population.
But it’s a distorting prism, because these “oppositionists” are in reality, very close to the regime and won’t support its overthrow. They won’t even support the mass movement who want to go onto the streets today!
So whatever happens to day is likely to be spontaneous, but effectively leaderless.
I think that the odds are that it will be driven from the streets with considerable loss of life, unless it can mobilise a million people at least.
That would undercut the position of Mousavi if he’s seen to have ratted on his supporters and open up the way to more radical voices.
But the question of socialist organisation and workers councils is *absolutely essential* to the issue of whether the regime is overthrown from the left.
No amount of spontaneity can bypass it. In that sense there is a lot of organisational and political consolidation to do before it can take such big step forward.
Anyway, I’m not there and will step aside for other voices.
Comment by prianikoff — 20 June, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
BBC
Crackdown warning over Iran protest*
Iranian police have warned they are ready to use force to prevent a rally in the capital Tehran over the disputed presidential poll.
Hundreds of police are said to have gathered in the city centre, amid an atmosphere of extreme tension.
There are conflicting reports as to whether the rally will go ahead.
But correspondents say a demand by the country’s supreme leader to end street protests appears to have made some protesters merely more determined.
In the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s sternly worded warning on Friday, the wife of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and an aide to another rival candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, said the rally would go ahead.
1100GMT TEHRAN
Jon Leyne
We are waiting to see, crucially, whether a planned opposition rally goes ahead this afternoon, in defiance of the Supreme Leader’s tough warning. My view is that it is so late now, opposition supporters will turn up whatever their leaders say.
It is a very confused and tense situation. The security forces are out on the streets. They have been issuing dire warnings that they will deal with any unauthorised demonstrations with determination.
This is all about the position of the Supreme Leader. Any rally, particularly if it is attended by the opposition leaders, would be the most direct challenge to his authority. If it goes ahead and there is a large crowd, that would be a massive challenge to him. If it goes ahead and it is broken up with violent force, that could also damage his position enormously. It is a very tense situation. These are huge political issues at stake, if not even the future of the Islamic Republic.
But later reports said first that Mr Mousavi would be making a statement, then that Mr Karoubi’s party had cancelled the protest.
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran says that even if the rallies are formally cancelled, it is so late now that many protesters are expected to turn up anyway.
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
#154 before I go.
I should just clarify something: I think the actual line in July 1917 was to have a big demonstration, but not call for the overthrow of the govt.
Will have to double-check that with Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revo”
Main point still stands though.
Comment by prianikoff — 20 June, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
“Only by the united front tactic of defending the Provisional Government against the Kornilov putsch”
I dont want to divert the thread onto another discussion of the russian revolution but the Bolsheviks did not defend the Provisional government. lenin was clear that they were defending the mass movement and gave no support to the provisional government
If the iranian mass movement demobilises now the working class opposition will face fierce repression and be hunted down
if you make a revolution half way you dig your own grave
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
Students beaten, tortured, raped and killed by Iranian security forces:
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/students-beaten-tortured-raped-and-killed-in-iran-statement-of-surviving-students-arrested-in-tehran-university-dormitory/
Who wants to defend Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic now?
Comment by Vartan Salakhanian — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
Tear gas and water cannons used to disperse the protesters. Interesting that the BBC’s man in Tehran thinks that the protests are going to do the opposite of fizzling out.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/06/minute-by-minute-with-revolution.html
iran update live
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
The guardian is now linking to this minute by minute account
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/06/minute-by-minute-with-revolution.html
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
Snap!
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
The attempt to dismiss arguments here in favour of the protestors as the argument of Harry’s Place B52 liberals is just bizzarre. Not one of the major political forces behind the anti-war moblisations in 2003 (except the man Galloway) has come out in favour of Ahmadinejad.
This is not Western military intervention and it is not a coup - it is a mass revolt of Iranians.
Comment by Ed — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
#139
Sandy, what utter codswallop. The masses thus far have stayed at home.
Where is the national strike, where are the troops going over to the Opposition, where is the working class?
You and Johng have jumped at the first whiff of disturbance without properly evaluating the situation, based on nothing more than scattered reports and wishful thinking.
No Marxist worthy of the designation would fall into the trap of mistaking the second month of pregnancy for the ninth.
As yet this is being driven by the middle class, students, with very little, if any, support from the Iranian working class.
Anti-Chavez supporters chanted ‘down with the dictator’ during their mass rallies in 2000. Did you support them?
Prianikoff is absolutely correct. The objective conditions are not in place for the nonsense you’re both spouting.
Rather than jump to these conclusions, surely the sensible course of action to watch and observe how things develop. After all, Sandy, though your revolutionary ardour is commendable, it isn’t going to have a bearing on the outcome of this crisis one way or the other.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
‘As yet this is being driven by the middle class, students, with very little, if any, support from the…working class’
Ah, so it’s being led by the SWP?
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
You know John this is really disgraceful. The mass campaign of intimidation which was launched from the pulpit last night led the reformer leaders to back off. Hundreds of thousands of people are locked down in their homes after days of being terrorised (all of this on youtube). Your position is contemptible.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
‘Anti-Chavez supporters chanted ‘down with the dictator’ during their mass rallies in 2000. Did you support them?’
No because Chavez is not a dictator - he keeps holding free elections, and keeps winning them. If Venezuela had an unelected unremoveable ‘council of experts’ who had to vet election candidates before they could stand, and if 90% of opposition candidates were banned from standing, and if Chavez stayed in power by mobilising gangs of thugs with iron bars to break the bones of his opponents, then I would say he was a dictator, and I would support his removal.
‘…surely the sensible course of action to watch and observe how things develop. After all, Sandy, though your revolutionary ardour is commendable, it isn’t going to have a bearing on the outcome of this crisis one way or the other.’
Personally I cant think of a situation anywhere in the world where my individual ‘revolutionary ardour’ will have a direct bearing on the outcome. So lets all go back to sleep, and invent ‘anti-imperialist’ excuses for doing buggerall while clerical thugs beat the shit out of democrats demonstrating in Iran for their basic rights.
Comment by Stephen Marks — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
Johng, no, your position is contemptible. Without knowing what you’re talking about you’ve jumped to all manner of wild conclusions that are unsubstantiated. It is nothing more than projection driven by emotion.
I know enough to realise that I don’t know what’s developing. You need to calm down and take stock.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
If todays demo is defeated by the forces of the state the focus may move towards calls for a general strike. the left forces on the ground will decide on the best way forward in order to succeed in the struggle for democratic rights against the forces of the Islamic state
the point is that you john are supporting the regime against the protesters or am i wrong and you are in fact supporting the calls of the iranian left for democratic rights and the ovethrow by the Iranian people of the Islamic dictatorship?
sandy
A BBC CORRESPONDENT, TEHRAN, 1320 GMT
I’m in the centre of Tehran close to Enghelab Square, where the demonstration was supposed to have been held. But there’s a huge security presence here, thousands of men from every possible service: police, Revolutionary Guard, military police, the riot police in full riot gear, and the much-feared basiji - religious paramilitaries who see themselves as the shock troops of the Islamic revolution.
It’s impossible for any groups of people to get through these to Enghelab Square and hold their demonstration.
If this continues and the opposition can’t find some way around the fierce security then the protests against the results of the presidential election will have been defeated, at least for the time being.
The real strength of the protest has been its ability to get huge numbers of people together into the streets.
Now, the government has trumped that and shown it has the power to lock down the city centre and regain the streets.
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
If John Wight didn’t exist, Harry’s Place would have to invent him.
Comment by Stephen Marks — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
‘If John Wight didn’t exist, Harry’s Place would have to invent him.’
His views are those of George Galloway.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
Replicated by Milne in the Guardian, Galloway’s close ally.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:26 pm
Stephen #167
Well, in the eyes of the State Department Chavez is a dictator. In the eyes of the international ruling class who’ve been denied access to Venezuela’s resources, human and natural, he’s a dictator.
Ahmadinjead, whether you or anyone else likes it or not, enjoys mass support in Iran. This is self evident. As yet the protests are not against the Guardian Council or the nature of the state, they’re against the election between two establishment political leaders. This is what I mean by projection. You’ve convinced yourself we’re witnessing the first stages of revolution, without knowing.
Iran is a democracy, a deformed democracy, but a democracy. In this country the monarchy has its ‘crown powers’, which empowers it to dissolve Parliament. In fact, these powers were invoked to dissolve the Australian government during the mid 1970s.
The key question for socialists should be the class composition of the Opposition. This can change, of course, but as yet the Iranian working class has not entered the stage.
And johng, are you expecting people to believe that millions of people in Iran are under a de facto curfew? This is patent nonsense.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
If there were cops armed with kalashinkovs and tear gas at the end of my road, I’d be under a de facto curfew - self-imposed.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
John Wight in this piece is the best example of The Anti-Imperialism of Fools !
Comment by Bennett — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
John your not even interested in whats going on. Its all just a bit inconveniant. and you are quite happy to come out with these slanders about people currently being beaten (just a bunch of middle class students etc, actually GLOATING). Its mad and bad.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Well I don’t know how much mass support Ahmadinajad enjoys do I? and nor does anyone else. Its significant that sections of the Bazari classes had started to move against him, and it would not be surprising if some of the allure was wearing off, given his mass programs of privatisation (including universities incidently: its what sparked off the protests a while back) and the way in which this has been linked to corrupt connections with the revolutionary guards. You have not once engaged seriously with any factual argument you did not like the sound of. It seems that you have convinced yourself that Iran represents some kind of socialism and thats the end of it.
Utterly, utterly bizarre.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
Stalinism without Stalinism. The global counterpart to reformism without reforms.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
Johng is absolutely correct on what the situation is at the moment, people are essentially on lock down, the reason we are seeing thousands and not tens of thousands in the roads leading up to the main squares in Tehran is because they have been blocked and the entire population has been threatened with violence if they come out of their homes. Basij scum are attacking people who are just walking down the street. John Wight is simply tying himself up in knots to defend Ahmadinejad, just like Galloway will. Two major working class organisations have backed the protests, the workers a Iran Khodro are on strike and the bus workers have issued a statement of support. These two organisations represent the most organised and militant section of the working class, I know who I am supporting as a socialist and internationalist, I wonder who from Galloway’s fan club will?
I would also like to point out that the STWC position on the revolt has been very encouraging, as a member of STWC since it was formed, and as a HOPI member, I am extremely happy that when the chips were down, the leadership of the anti war movement sided with the people of Iran against the imperialists and the regime.
Comment by Chris S — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
Johng #178
You really do a good line in pithy slogans. Pity they’re always completely devoid of substance.
And where have I even hinted at Iran representing socialism? What shit.
Your problem is, John, you can’t even see that your thrashing around desperately trying to impute a conclusion to an investigation rather than extrapolating a conclusion from your investigation.
I have no love for Ahamdinjad or the Iranian State. But neither am I ready to declare that a socialist revolution is in the offing led by…who?…Mousavi?
Whose leading this red vanguard, John? Perhaps you could enlighten me?
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
I’m afraid I havent got much faith in the abililty of the John Wight types to understand what’s happening in Iran, given the abject imbicility of the ideologic filter they’re locked into - the same abjectly stupid filter which makes them imply that anyone supporting the end of the repressive theocracy in Iran is simply trying to recreate the invasion of Iraq.
Anyone with eyes can see that no one here is calling for an invasion of Iran. Why then are so many here accused of it? Because people like Wight have confused their combination of sloganeering and cynicism for actual reality.
What, for example, is John Wight’s reaction to a week largest street demonstrations in Iran in thirty years, estimates in the high hundreds of thousands? “The masses so far have stayed at home.” That *tink* sound you hear is the reality in the streets of Iran bouncing off Wight’s fact-proof armour.
And the same thing happend with my own comments. So, again - no, I do not support any invasion of Iran; no, I did not support the invasion of Iraq; and shame on those whose understanding is so paper-thin they must resort to such accusations.
Comment by driver — 20 June, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
well john i see no evidence of a red revolt in palestine either but i know which side i’m on. just found this incredibly moving footage of tehran last night. anyone familiar with the story of the iranian revolution will understand its significance. john won’t watch it because he clearly just WANTS to believe that this is not a revolution, that this is just a bunch of students etc. But for the rest this is incredibly powerful. A few students indeed. This is the sound of rage in the darkness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWqTIPsmphM
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
Thats good to hear Chris S. I would be very happy if problems in the relations between HOPI and the STW could be resolved.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:05 pm
Tough on pith and the causes of pith.
Socialist consciousness doesn’t appear overnight. As evidenced by the Russian Revolution, it is often a divide in the ruling class which opens up a democratic space, with the failings of reformers opening up a space for socialists to operate. If that’s too far in the past for you try Giles Ungpakorn on Thailand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAsAQtVaF2Q&feature=related
Comment by skidmarx — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
Reports of several dead now in Tehran according to a friend. Maybe John Wight enjoys counter revolutionary slaughters, do you think he cheered tanks going into Czechslovakia?
Comment by Chris S — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
Apollo is correct that the demand for women’s suffrage in Britain was nontheless just, even though it was led by bourgeois women, most of whom went on to support Britain’s participation in WW1.
But if we look at the analogy a bit closer, it is in fact the case that significant sections of the male-dominated workers movement in Britain and around the Western world took either neutral or hostile positions to the cause, an example being the French CP. The correct position surely would have been to be part of the workers movement and to both fight for womens’ rights and for the workers movement to take up womens’s right as part of its programme.
There would be no contradiction between holding a position that says both that Iranian women should have full democratic rights and that the Amedinijad side are more progressive than the oppositon in terms of economic and foreign policy , if anyone is in fact saying this.
Separately, I am interested to know what Jon Wight, Andy and others have to say about the support the Tudeh Party appear to be giving to the opposition movement.
I would also like to point out that it is possible to condemn violence against peaceful demonstrators, even if you did feel that you had more in common politically with the perpatrators than the victims, (if in fact anyone feels that they do) or even if you are, rightly or wrongly, still assessing the situation.
I think that both sides in this dabate should bear that in mind, as I suspect that the indignation expressed by some may be less effusive were the boot to be on the other foot.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
Was the election rigged? If so, then I’ve yet to see the concrete evidence.
If not, then the opposition is a minority and this is effectively an attempted coup. “We’ve been cheated”, becomes: “We are the cheaters”. This would put an entirely different complexion on events. Commenters would then have to support the opposition on the basis of something other than “democracy” and “where’s my vote?”
But what would that something be that was so powerful it justified a minority overturning an election result? The class composition of the protesters? Anti-imperialism? Womens and gay rights? Other than a couple of commenters projecting their 1917 revolutionary fantasies onto the situation, noone seems to be able that question. Of course, if they are convinced that the election was rigged, then perhaps they don’t have to.
So what is the evidence? Someone posted an article which attempted to make the case. I read it with interest.
http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/06/why-are-iranians-dreaming-again.asp
But the evidence cited was all circumstantial, based on rumour, or simply illogical and factually incorrect. For example, the article claims:
“Moreover, as in any other country, the increase in turnout in Iran’s elections has always benefitted the opposition and not the incumbent, because it is rational to assume that those who usually don’t vote, i.e. the silent majority, only come out when they want to change the status quo”
The author’s assumption is far from rational. “Any other country” presumably doesn’t include Venezuela, where previous abstainers registered and voted for a government that they saw as representing their interests, i.e. they wanted to maintain the status quo against attempts to overthrow it. It is perfectly possible that new voters in Iran, rightly or wrongly, prefered the status quo.
The article goes on to say that “the best proof for rigging” is that the government has attempted to repress the protests. If this is the best proof, I’d hate to see the worst! Repressing an opposition could certainly be done by a illegitimate government. But it’s also perfectly consistent with a legitimately elected government defending itself against a coup led by the loser and backed by the media machines of the country’s principal enemies.
Comment by Calvin — 20 June, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
Calvin I don’t actually think, given the scale of the protests, that it matters very much whether the elections were rigged or not. Unless you think the left has some stake in the survival of Ahmadinajad, the world really doesn’t look that way. And how do you know that some of the protesters have’nt switched sides?
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
So let me get this straight: Trots hated socialism as it actually existed, but LOOOOVE Islamic theocracy. Right. That makes complete sense. Of course the Iranian people want to be governed by Ayatollahs! Right. And just like the neo-cons argue, it’s either US neo-liberalism OR Islamic theocracy. Heaven forbid the other 95% of human beings find any representation in this situation…
Socialists support secularism, or they are total morons who have lost all bearings.
Comment by Now I Remember... — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
Chris #185 - Perhaps you might care to scroll back and read the post in which I specifically criticised Johng for being gung ho for today’s protests and negating the likelihood of bloodshed.
But the state has the right to defend itself from an attempt at counter revoluion, if this is what is taking place.
As per the fixation on the issue of the ‘women’s right to vote’, to focus on this without any analysis of the social relations of a given state is nothing more than liberalism.
Go tell a homeless man, or someone struggling to put food on the table, that they should think themselves lucky they have the right to vote, and see how far such a grotesque notion of freedom takes you.
Is this the best that so-called Marxists can do - pandering to liberal notions of freedom and democracy?
FFS, what about economic freedom, what about the right to food, to shelter, to a job?
Not one poster on this thread has thus far provided an analysis of the redistrubtion of wealth or of social relations in Iran, much less use it to inform any attempt to draw some understanding of what’s unfolding.
I’ve just read a report saying that only approx 3,000 protesters are on the streets. It seems clear that the offical Opposition has retreated and left its most ardent adherents to take the flak.
Repression will undoubtedly follow, as it would in any country under similar circumstances.
I still remain to be convinced that this is anything more than an attempt to swap Ahmadinejad for Mousavi by those who stand to gain from the economic reforms he’s proposing.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
“But the state has the right to defend itself from an attempt at counter revoluion”
Anyone who can read counter revolution into the masses coming out on the streets against a repressive regime has to be nothing more than an apologist for reaction. Why don’t you just be honest and come out as an Ahmadinejad fanboy?
The rest of your post John is just economist idiocy.
Comment by Chris S — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
Apparently the Australian embassy is taking the injured.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:32 pm
At my age I should really no longer be astonished at the propensity for wishful thinking on the part of some people on the left.
But the naievety and self-delusion displayed by johng and some others is absolutely breathtaking.
Johng says of John Wight: “he clearly just WANTS to believe that this is not a revolution, that this is just a bunch of students etc.”
No, johng. You’re the one who so clearly ‘WANTS to believe’ - against all evidence & recent historical precedent - that the attempted colour-coded revolution which is playing out in Iran is a positive development which enhances the prospects of the working class taking power.
Since when has the BBC World Service and Voice of America been involved in whipping up a mass movement to overthrow the government of a country, when that overthrow would lead to anything positive for the working class locally and anti-imperialism globally?
BTW it’s notable that the BBC opened its new TV satellite channel, broadcasting to Iran in Farsi, in January this year. The channel is funded by the British Foreign Office.
And is it credible that a mass political movement whose social base is the wealthier people in the wealthier districts of the country (& opposed by the poorer people in the poorer districts), trying to install a presidential candidate who calls for further liberalisation of the economy and better relations with the West; is it credible that this movement will unleash progress for the working class and poor people, and improve the position of the anti-imperialist forces in the world?
Wake up from your romantic daydream, Johng. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, even when in opposition to a government which we all know has many negative aspects, doth not necessarily a progressive movement make.
But unfortunately, I doubt if people like Johng can ever wake up. Every time there is one of these ‘regime change’ attempts, the aim of which is to remove from power a leader or government whose position is inconvenient for US, British & W. European imperialism, people on the left who have liberal and/or ultra-left illusions fall into line, imagining that something progressive is taking place.
As one out of many examples- in 2000, following the military defeat of Yugoslavia by NATO and a subsequent ‘disputed election result’, Slobodan Milosevic was removed from power by mass protests; this was hailed at the time by the SWP and others as a great victory for people power & the working class.
All that was achieved was a government more compliant with imperialism, and which stepped up the process of privatisation.
When will they ever learn? Never. Johng & his ilk are so wrapped up in their illusions that they become- whatever other good works they do, which are no doubt many- unwitting micro-tools of the imperialism of their own country, and of the imperialist bloc of which their country is a member.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
John Wight- if you think the current set up in Iran is more progressive than what would follow if the Opposition were able to take over, please be clearer as to why.
I’m not at all conviced by those who are gung ho for the protestors, but I can’t help but be influenced by what sections of the Iranian left and workers movement appear to be saying, and I am not prepared to shrug my shoulders at state repression, particularly if it is disproportionate in its ferocity. I dont get the impression that this is an armed uprising for example.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
http://www.livestream.com/persianq?origin=embedplayer
disturbing stuff
Comment by rsa — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
Speaking of wishful thinking, and making promouncements on the basis of very shaky evidence, Noah says…
“Since when has the BBC World Service and Voice of America been involved in whipping up a mass movement to overthrow the government of a country…?
BTW it’s notable that the BBC opened its new TV satellite channel, broadcasting to Iran in Farsi, in January this year. The channel is funded by the British Foreign Office.”
So the people out on the street have been ‘whipped up’ by the international media. What laughable nonsense. When your argument rests on conspiracy theory in which those involved in a revolt are just the dupes and playthings of an all powerful BBC you have officially moved to another planet.
Comment by Ed — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
Whoops, should have quoted the full sentence above rather than put in the ellipsis. It was:
“Since when has the BBC World Service and Voice of America been involved in whipping up a mass movement to overthrow the government of a country, when that overthrow would lead to anything positive for the working class locally and anti-imperialism globally?”
The clear implication is that the protests have been ‘whipped up’ (ie generated) by the BBC World service and the Voice of America. It’s not like Iranians capable of independent thought would ever dream of opposing their glorious leaders.
Comment by Ed — 20 June, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
Armchair #194 - I couldn’t do much better than Noah’s excellent riposte in #193.
Ahmadinejad is a major factor in blocking US attempts to colonise the region. His support for the Arab resistance has been key, as is his close relations with Chavez and his role in forging an economic and strategic bloc to counter US/NATO hegemony.
Domestically, he has orientated towards the poor and the lowest strata of the Iranian working class. It is this class, and only this class, that has any chance of ever breaking the power of the theocracy in Iran, given its potential economic power. But make no mistake, the Islamic Republic of Iran, even with its imperfections and distortions, is a huge advance for the region and the international working class than what went before under the Shah.
Until imperialism and the expansionist policies of Israel are defeated in the region, in my view there is little chance of a strong, coherent, secular movement emerging to continue the work begun by the 1979 Revolution. The political development of nations such as Iran has been turned back by the devastating impact of western colonialism and imperialist intervention. It has so distorted the political, social and economic landscape of the entire region, it has ensured the emergence of Political Islam as the lead actor in offering resistance, a reflex against modernity, which is inextricably linked to the oppression suffered by the masses under colonial domination.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Whipped up by the world service?
Good grief. Have these people actually listened to the world service, in English or any other language? Charlotte Green is not Lenin. Behrouz Afagh is not Herman Goring.
Comment by Boab — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Calvin writes;
‘Was the election rigged? If so, then I’ve yet to see the concrete evidence.
If not, then the opposition is a minority and this is effectively an attempted coup. ‘
This ignores yet again the fact that no elections in the Islamic Republic are democratic whether the count is rigged or not. They are all rigged beforehand by the elimination, by unelected theocratic ‘guardians’ of all candidates they consider ‘unislamic’. I gather that in this presidential election some 90% of would-be candidates were elminated at this stage.
Still I suppose this counts as a ppsitive explosion of democracy by comparison with the sort of elections that used to take place in the ’socialist’ countries so beloved by Calvin and Noah, and in which there was only one candidate.
Comment by Stephen Marks — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
John, I find your interpretation of events in post 198 a little racist. I am sure you are not racist, but these comments do leave you open to that accusation/interpretation.
Boab
Comment by Boab — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
Armchair: “I can’t help but be influenced by what sections of the Iranian left and workers movement appear to be saying…”
Well, very sadly there are historical precedents for both the traditional / orthodox left and the ultra-left in various countries taking positions which are objectively in line with imperialism.
To mention but three out of many embarassing & tragic examples:-
* The Iraqi Communist Party & some other sections of the left in Iraq welcomed the US / UK invasion of their country.
* The Nicaraguan Communist Party joined with the pro-US opposition to help overthrow the Sandinista government, even while their country was under military attack from the US proxy ‘Contras’.
* Ultra-lefts in Venezuela trying to undermine the Bolivarian revolution.
The position of the Tudeh Party etc is quite understandable, given the appalling repression they have suffered under the Islamic Republic. But ones sympathy for their dreadful plight should not cause one to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
Who is arguing for a restoration of the Shah? Who is arguing for Iran falling back into the orbit of US imperialism? None of the demonstraters that I’ve heard. None of the ‘reformist’ leaders (in the electoral debates apparently everyone tried to out-Khomeni each other). Yes Ahmadinajad argues like a populist. He has also presided over a massive campaign of privatisation which makes any comparison with Latin American radicals entirely ludicrous.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:17 pm
John if you have any evidence whatsoever that these demonstrations are orchestrated from Washington and London and are a western attempt at regime change please provide it. Otherwise you are the one living in cloud cuckoo land. All the indications are that the west is as deeply confused by the situation as you seem to be.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:20 pm
Please provide evidence for the proposition that this is a colour coded revolution. And if you seriously think this can be achieved in Tehran with a few radio broadcasts, what does that say about your attitude to the Iranian people?
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:22 pm
#198 So you are backing Ahmadinejad unequivocally now - perhaps since his forces seem to be getting the upper hand on the streets of Tehran (por ahora)?
From a socialist point of view, what are the mere ‘imperfections and distortions’ of the Islamic Republic?
Comment by John H — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:22 pm
An interesting analysis from the comrades at Campo Antiimperialista.
http://www.antiimperialista.org/content/view/6177/50/
Comment by Anonymous — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
What Noah, JohnW, Galloway and other anti-protesters are missing, wilfully ignoring, or simply wishing didn’t exist are the statements in support of the protests that have been made by the Iranian left and the Iranian workers’ organisations.
It is these statements that are key to the situation and you just keep on ignoring them. Why?
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
End of Khamanei? ~ WPI analysis of 20 June 2009 events in Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05DNMpaJJws&feature=channel_page
According to the WPI’s Press Centre, over a million people have come into the streets of Tehran. People are refusing to disperse and there are street battles going on right now with the repressive security forces of the regime in many parts of Tehran. Hundreds have been arrested.
Streets people are in include Azadi Square, Laleh Park, Fatemi Street, Keshavarz Carriageway and streets surrounding Azadi Square.
The slogans are ‘Down with Dictator,’ and ‘Down with Islamic regime’…
http://worker-communistpartyofiran.blogspot.com/
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:39 pm
John #206 - Certainly not unequivocally, no. But in comparison to the alternative that’s presently on offer, yes.
Imperfections would be a theocratic straitjacket placing a restriction on the advance of the working class, culturally, socially and economically.
Iran’s economy is a hybrid of state ownership of an advanced energy sector and a low level of development in other sectors of the economy, due to both internal and external factors.
The poor in rural parts of the country have suffered most as a result of economic inefficency and lack of development, which the regime has attempted to ameliorate with subsidies. This, combined with lack of investment in private industry, has produced a spike in inflation, impacting the middle class in the cities, and given rise to the tensions we’re currently seeing being played out.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
Shooting in Tehran moments ago from BBC Persian:
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
In the 50s there was a vicar who proved by mathematics that the sun is cold.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
Maybe John W and Noah believe that if the going gets tough for the clerical regime socialists should offer to go and fight alongside them against the “imperialist sponsored demonstrators”?
Stalinism has been a real curse of the working class movement but surely we must be reaching the fag end of the phenomenon
My view is that anyone who sides with the Islamic regime against the demonstrators should be expelled from any socialist organization
sandy
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
more footage of a minority of trendy student types who want capitalism and don’t understand geo-political relations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2009/06/090619_op_nightly_protest_tehran.shtml
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 6:57 pm
http://www.marxist.com/iran-khamenei-gauntlet-workers-move.htm
Iran – Khamenei throws the gauntlet, the workers start to move
By Jorge Martín Saturday, 20 June 2009
As reports are coming in about clashes between protesters and police in Tehran, it is clear that the movement against the fraud has reached a critical point. Khamenei’s speech yesterday threw down the gauntlet to the movement and threatened repercussions for continued protests but the organised working class are now joining the struggle against the regime.
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:00 pm
My apologies, John Wight. I was totally wrong. There is TOTAL equality for men and women in Iran. I’ve just been sent a link to a video on Facebook of a demonstration today in Shiraz. Two women in chador’s are beaten up with clubs against some railings by the state. How beautiful to see the feminist revolution reach its fruition under the glorious reign of Ahmadinejad.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
Ed #196:
“So the people out on the street have been ‘whipped up’ by the international media. What laughable nonsense. When your argument rests on conspiracy theory in which those involved in a revolt are just the dupes and playthings of an all powerful BBC you have officially moved to another planet.”
And Boab #199 adds:
“Have these people actually listened to the world service, in English or any other language? Charlotte Green is not Lenin. Behrouz Afagh is not Herman Goring.”
Clearly, both the leadership of the attempted ‘green revolution’ - Moussavi, Rafsanjani & co, and the mainly better-off Iranians who are the ‘masses’ of this regime-change movement, have their own agendas; which would include some things we would be in sympathy with, and other things that would be entirely or mainly negative. But despite some positive aspects, objectively & on balance, it has to be observed that the agenda is pro-imperialist and neo-liberal.
They are not merely playthings of the BBC and VoA, nor have I made any such suggestion.
Nevertheless, to deny that the global media, especially the imperialist state-controlled outlets such as the BBC & Voice of America etc, play a key role in this struggle is absurd.
I am, as it happens, an avid listener of the English-language broadcasts of the BBC World Service. During the two weeks prior to the election, there was intense coverage which promoted the idea that there was a massive surge in support for Moussavi, that this election would be a breakthrough for the ‘moderate’ & ‘reformist’ forces, that young people would vote for Moussavi, etc etc. ‘Vox-pop’ interviews with articulate middle-class Iranians were repeated ad-nauseam.
Then as soon as the election results began to be announced, the BBC started promoting the claim that they were fraudulent.
I doubt very much that the BBC’s Farsi language radio & TV broadcasts (which reportedly get a wide audience; our taxpayers money is no doubt well spent) - or indeed those of Voice of America- have been more objective in their coverage.
And the rest of the Western media- which in our electronically globalised world is easily available in Iran except when jammed by the regime- has been conveying a similar message.
Which is: you were electorally robbed, your votes were stolen, Ahmadinejad is an illegitimate president. The international community supports you in your struggle to overturn the election result.
As nobody here can deny, international solidarity- even intellectual & emotional solidarity- is hugely important in any political struggle.
Ayatollah Khameini - and for sure we don’t like him, for many a good reason - was nevertheless spot on when he identified the BBC as a key enemy of the Iranian people.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:11 pm
reports on BBC that Mousavi has called for a general strike
sandy
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
Noah, John White, why do you know better than the Iranian left and the Iranian workers about the situation in Iran?
ChrisS, well done to the HOPI - I didn’t support it before, but it’s gaining a new respect for its conduct during this.
Sandy, stop going on about “stalinism” that’s bollocks. Apart from that tho, top comments and spot on mate.
Respect party members - you need to say or do something about Galloway or we’ll all continue thinking you back the regime too.
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
I have just seen a horrifying video of a young girl shot through the head, dying in the middle of the road, here
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/06/minute-by-minute-with-revolution.html
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
Nice of Johng at #214 to provide further evidence of the role of the BBC in this process, by giving this link to the British Foreign Office funded & controlled World Service Farsi language website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2009/06/090619_op_nightly_protest_tehran.shtml
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
Noah- I dont think the Iraqi CP welcomed the invasion of Iraq.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
Armchair, I wish it were not so. Sadly, and even understandably give their dreadful repression under Saddam, it’s true.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:38 pm
CNN has just shown the footage of the two chador-clad women in Shiraz being beaten up against the railings with clubs.
This will be seen by Muslims abroad. I don’t think it will go down well.
The game’s over for Noah, John Wight et al. They can mutter all they like in the corner but history will sweep their ideas into the bin.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
Huffington has the footage. Please watch. It’s the death-knell of the regime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Oh Noah so you think the main thing is that the footage is shown on the BBC? God how pathetic. You clearly have an almost bottomless contempt for Iranian people. I’ve just seen the most terrible footage of a young woman shot to death beside her father whilst watching the street fighting today. Its perfectly clear from the footage that those who did not dare go on the streets where watching from their windows. In some cases the Basji shot them. Whatever the election results, Tehran I think is lost forever to the regime.
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
Well just to put my tuppence worth in on this.
I don’t think this is a Western orchestrated colour revolution
Comment by Andy Newman — 20 June, 2009 @ 7:54 pm
johng #205:
“Please provide evidence for the proposition that this is a colour coded revolution.”
Er, that it is backed by the imperialist state controlled global media, eg BBC & VoA, as well as the privately-owned media; that the leadership is corrupt & hugely wealthy elements within the regime; that its mass support is from the wealthy areas; that the programme of Moussavi & Rafsanjani is more marketisation & better relations with the West… need I go on?
Oh yeah. And to make sure that no potential Western sponsor could miss the point, they adopted a colour code: green in this case.
As I said before, you will never learn. No doubt you do many good & positive things. But no factual evidence, and no amount of historical experience, will prevent you from allying yourself with imperialism when it seeks to depose an inconvenient leader or government.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
Hi Andy. You can’t deny that the Western orchestra is playing very loudly. The local forces are of course playing their own tunes - in harmony.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
#228 = Kissinger-socialism.
But fundamentalist socialists will never learn, will they? Call in the Basiji..
Comment by John H — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
Noah
the fact that the MOusavi camp are seeking western support doesn’t in itself mean that the West has decisive influence on the direction of the movement.
it seems to me to be a domestically inspired movement, with its own agenda linked to strategic objectives for part of the Iranian ruling elites.
What it reflects to me is that the division in Iranian society was too great to be peacefully resolved by a constitutional election, and when the Mousavi side lost the popular vote - as they probably did - they took to the streets to overturn the electorate’s judgement. But they may well have done that without any initial Western encouragement
Comment by Andy Newman — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
Green…hmmmmm. Green. Noah you are a plank.
Some of these demos were obviously much larger then was being reported. Noah, I expect you’ll soon be blaming the parents and accusing the demonstraters of using child soldiers. Listen to yourself. Remind you of anything?
Andy Newman might be a revisionist running dog or whatever but he ain’t stupid. (joke Andy).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW3HVHGvgkE
Comment by johng — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:16 pm
Sorry Noah,I think you’ll find that the Iraqi CP opposed the invasion- you may not agree with their subsequent positions but they did not suport the invasion.
I also think thats fairly well documented.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
So in your view Noah, the correct response of the government to this western provocation is to bludgeon chador-clad women with clubs and shoot female teenage bystanders in the head?
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
I can’t believe some of the things that I am reading on here from comrades like John Wight and Noah.
Yassamine Mather has this on the HOPI site about the current state and role of the Iranian left . . .
“However, before the British left gets too excited and starts sending its blueprints for revolution to Iran, let us be clear about some facts: working class organisation remains very weak during this crucial period; most of the Iranian left is as confused and divided as it was in 1979, but now, of course, it is much smaller. Repression against labour activists and leftist students is harsher than ever.
Yet students’ and workers’ organisations have been very active in the anti-government demonstrations and they have managed to change some of the slogans of the protests, turning anti-Ahmadinejad slogans into slogans challenging the entire Islamic ‘order’ . . . the left inside Iran has been conscious of the revolutionary potential of this period and, given its relative weakness, is doing what it can to make an independent, principled, but systematic intervention. That is precisely why the authorities’ attacks on university campuses, where the left is strongest, have been so severe; and why we must do all in our power to support comrades in Iran.”
What more could they be expected to do? And yet some comrades seem to be lining up behind the regime instead of supporting them. Truly shocking.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Ex-official in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, on the issue of whether what is unfolding in Iran could be a colour-coded revolution.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06192009.html
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
Key excerpts from Robert’s piece in Counterpunch:
‘On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.’
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
johng #226:
“Oh Noah so you think the main thing is that the footage is shown on the BBC? God how pathetic. You clearly have an almost bottomless contempt for Iranian people. I’ve just seen the most terrible footage of a young woman shot to death… etc etc”
Hmmm. I think its very sad that people are dying in this struggle. I don’t have contempt for the dead & injured, or for the people on both sides who are fighting in this battle.
My view is that this is a dreadful & tragic episode- not a wonderful opportunity for progressive regime-change. My posts make this very clear.
Your allegation that I have an “almost bottomless contempt for Iranian people” is based on nothing. You have no evidence that this is my opinion.
I suspect that your emotions are getting the better of you. While its good to feel angry when people are being hurt or killed, that’s no substitute for objective analysis.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
Well said on the Iraqi CP Armchair, whatever anyone here thinks of them, they did not back the invasion. Noah is completely wrong on that point.
Comment by anti-fascist — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
It inspiring to see the courage and solidarity of the people on the streets of Tehran today. If the people manage to overcome the tyranny of the islamic republic it will send shock waves around the world. No tyrant will sleep soundly in their bed tonight after these events. And if the iranian people succeed it will drive a stake through the heart of the international reactionary movement assembled under the banner of Political islam. And that will be a big step forward for the international socialist movement.
There is nothing progresive in the so called “anti imperialism” of political islam. In truth poliical islam has been a prop for imperialism and was created by imperialism as a barrier against socialism
sandy
Comment by sandy — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
#239 - A section of the Iraqi CP actively cooperated with the occupation. They had representatives sitting in the US-controlled CPA. I recall listening to a radio interview with one of their comrades on Pacifica Radio and being astonished at his line on how the invasion and occupation was progressive in that it had removed the Baathists from power, thus allowing the communists the freedom to organise again.
This was back in 2003.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
Johng - I invite you to comment on the excerpts from the Counterpunch article by Paul Craig Roberts I posted in #237.
Comment by John Wight — 20 June, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Around 40 dead at the moment - I have just heard from a friend in Tehran that one member of the Sepah has been killed by demonstrators. HOPI news will have more very soon.
Comment by Chris S — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
Sandy #240:
“If the people manage to overcome the tyranny of the islamic republic it will send shock waves around the world. No tyrant will sleep soundly in their bed tonight after these events. And if the iranian people succeed it will drive a stake through the heart of the international reactionary movement assembled under the banner of Political islam… dah de dah de dah, etc”
Too bad for you that GW Bush has retired. But there is hope for you- Sarah Palin may stand again, & no doubt she will need a good speechwriter.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
andy #231:
“the fact that the MOusavi camp are seeking western support doesn’t in itself mean that the West has decisive influence on the direction of the movement.”
Sure. But the fact that the Moussavi / Rafsanjani camp included conciliation with the West as part of their electoral campaign should tell you something.
“it seems to me to be a domestically inspired movement, with its own agenda linked to strategic objectives for part of the Iranian ruling elites.”
Four square with you on this. Nevertheless, that’s the movement which the imperialist media are bigging-up as the best thing since sliced bread. That’s hardly a random decision. The local & global agendas are in harmony.
“What it reflects to me is that the division in Iranian society was too great to be peacefully resolved by a constitutional election, and when the Mousavi side lost the popular vote - as they probably did - they took to the streets to overturn the electorate’s judgement. But they may well have done that without any initial Western encouragement”
Well, that’s as maybe. The reality is that they did have massive Western encouragement- both before and since the vote.
And, as you cannot deny Andy, that is one of the factors which has kept the protests going.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
#238
“I suspect that your emotions are getting the better of you. While its good to feel angry when people are being hurt or killed, that’s no substitute for objective analysis.”
You can’t help but feel that if this was 1937 Noah would be giving us “objective analysis” about tractor production in the Soviet Union.
Comment by Darren — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
apollo, please fuck off back to Harry’s Place where you belontg.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
It’s very difficult to see how the Western media could be fomenting this as they are under a total reporting ban and are reduced to covering twitter, youtube and facebook. The Iranians are barely able to see any western media bar what they can access on the internet, much of which is blocked. It is in fact a one way street - from the street to the international news networks.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
Opps. My apologies for the typo. That should have read:
apollo, please fuck off back to Harry’s Place where you belong.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
I have never posted on Harrys Place, and it is not where I belong.
Comment by apollo — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
#242 I think they anylised the situation dialectically and concluded that every cloud has a silver lining. I also think that if I was an Iraqi trade unionist/ socialist and this struggle that’s going on a the moment was to result in the collapse of the clerical regime I might have similar thoughts.
More to the point, the imperialists are not going to be able to manufacture a counter-revolution in my opinion. The social forces simply don’t exist for a return to the situation at the time of the Shah, and any attempt to manufacture an excuse for an invasion would be met with massive resistance.
Iran is not Iraq, the Baathists rested on coups, counter -revolution, clan ties and out and out terror, while this regime, whether anyone likes it or not, rests on a popular revolution, which as has been rightly pointed out, has resulted in some lasting gains for masses of people, including, in important areas of employment and educational opportunities, and in spite of the horrendous sexual oppression, for women.
I get the impression that Iranians have a great deal of national pride, and much of that is about no longer being under US and British domination, which again flows from the revolution, and I suspect will be shared by most people on both sides in this present conflict.
Its a classic bonapartist situation where the regime relies on making concessions to the working class and peasantry while ultimately preserving captalist property relations, and massively repressing working class organisation.
I do not believe that, whatever the designs OF US or Euro imperialism, this current movement, even if successful will be of any benefit TO imperialism.
Comparisons with Ukraine and Georgia simply don’t work and for all the above reasons.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
Sorry, meant to say an IRANIAN socialist/ trade unionist
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Apollo - mobile comms in the progressive Iranian republic have also been blocked today. Horrible scenes are apparently unfolding as uncontrolled rightist street thugs and theocratic militias are coming down on the people.
This regime is baring its fangs now that 30 years of theocratic oppression, totalitarianism, murder, religious and gender discrimination are coming to a head.
Viva!
Comment by Mick — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
Apollo, don’t be so picky. The humanitarian warlords of HP will welcome you with open arms. Go there.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
Noah gets abusive when he has nothing left worth arguing.
Time to remind people of what the late Steve Cohen used to say :
“Because the enemy of your enemy can also be another of your enemies
And the friend of your friend can be a bastard reactionary”
Comment by Bennett — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
Darren #246: “if this was 1937 Noah would be giving us “objective analysis” about tractor production in the Soviet Union”
LOL
But actually, there is nothing wrong with making an analysis of tractor production in the USSR in 1937. Without the Soviet Union’s industrial achievements during the late 1930s, it is unlikely that Nazi Germany would have been defeated in WW2.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
Somebody once said to me- are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person?
My answer- if someones going to stick it in my face, I dont care whether its half full or half empty.
Comment by Armchair — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
Armchair #251:
“Its a classic bonapartist situation where the regime relies on making concessions to the working class and peasantry while ultimately preserving captalist property relations, and massively repressing working class organisation.”
For sure, & I’m with you so far. But then you assert:
“I do not believe that, whatever the designs OF US or Euro imperialism, this current movement, even if successful will be of any benefit TO imperialism.”
I can’t see how you make that out. Ahmadinejad - & I have yet to see anybody on this thread deny this- has allied Iran with revolutionary Latin America; and he is identified with an anti- US / UK / Israel policy.
Hugo Chavez clearly and explicitly recognises this.
Hear it again. Ahmadinejad has cemented Iran’s alliance- politically & economically- with revolutionary Latin America.
Does anybody deny it?
For that reason alone- and there are several other reasons- getting rid of Ahmadinejad would be helpful to imperialism.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
#255: Noah, I’ve got a rare copy of the picture sleeve 45 rpm ‘Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’ by Robert Wyatt - are you interested? I really can’t think of anyone else I can off-load it onto…
Comment by Deckchair Socialist — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
Hmmm. The song ‘Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’ (covered later by Robert Wyatt of the prog rock group Soft Machine) was issued in the USA during the early 1940s as part of the effort to cement the alliance between the United States and the USSR in the fight against Nazi Germany.
If you, & the people you knock around with, believe that the USA was on the wrong side in that war… well in that case, please fuck off to Harry’s Place along with apollo, where you will find many like-minded souls.
Comment by Noah — 20 June, 2009 @ 11:55 pm
Suit yourself. I’m off to eBay then.
Comment by Deckchair Socialist — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:00 am
Fine. eBay is perhaps where you & your opinions belong.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:06 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvFRuio-3fI
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:40 am
“We did not give blood to give up now” – Eye witness report of June 20 Repression:
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/%E2%80%9Cwe-did-not-give-blood-to-give-up-now%E2%80%9D-eye-witness-report-of-june-20-repression/
Comrades, please repost this as widely as possible.
Comment by Vartan — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:46 am
Noah, you’ve been thoroughly trounced in this discussion over Iran. The “support the regime” position has been repeatedly shown as complete and utter nonsense.
Please don’t link your bankrupt pro-fascist views in Iran to any kind of defence of the former Soviet Union - the two are utterly incompatible.
Comment by anti-fascist — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:20 am
Ok, keep fighting your losing battle to try to defend the utterly indefensible.
If you and Noah insist on stubbornly continuing to make fools of yourselves and completely alienate everyone by trying to argue black is white then so be it.
However, my main point at 264 was to point out that you two clowns do not represent the pro-Soviet Union viewpoint in any way.
Comment by anti-fascist — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:44 am
And JohnW don’t post something and then remove it if you’ve changed your view as a result of developments explain why.
Comment by anti-fascist — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:57 am
No, there has certainly been no change in my position. But these juvenile exchanges serve no purpose whatsoever.
I’ll leave you with this:
Is it utterly indefensible to point out the parallels to what is unfolding in Iran now with the various colour-coded revolutions we’ve seen in recent years?
Is it utterly indefensible to point out that this is a crisis which demands that we pose the question of ‘cui bono?’
For me this has striking parallels with the attempted coup in Venezuela back in 2000. I remain to be convinced otherwise.
I really don’t feel that you or anyone else on your side of the argument have refuted anything that either I or Noah have posted at all. Emotional rants about ’stalinism’ and ‘apologists for the regime’ are simply not good enough.
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:09 am
http://www.payvand.com/news/09/jun/1212.html
Would you like to comment on the statement by 113 Iranian documentary makers about the coverage of the protests on Iranian state tv?
We are documentary filmmakers. Our work takes place through media. Iranian National Television belongs to the entire Iranian society and should be committed to represent social events truthfully and different points of view in their diversity.
It should not be the mouthpiece of a specific faction and ignore a vast part of society.
We are documentary filmmakers. Our work is art and we are committed to the culture, the art, and the language of our country. The language of journalism should respect the dignity and honor of a society. Iranian National Television, by distorting and suppressing the news and with the use of degrading rhetoric, legitimizes lying and slander.
It also addresses people by using degrading and abusive vocabulary and thus provokes people into confrontation and upheaval.
We say this as a warning: depriving citizens of peaceful and respectful communication in the midst of the tense circumstances of the present time, can lead to a violent reaction on the part of society; a society whose people were peacefully and respectfully promoting their diverse views up until election day.
We say this as a warning: this kind of action means sharing the responsibility for any kind of violence, terror, social disruption, and all human tragedies. It divides and antagonizes a society that is able to create unity through justice. In the last 30 years, each and every citizen of this country has shared happiness and sorrow. People have fought side by side, endured sacrifices and lost loved ones.
We are a people with a long history dating back a few thousand years. We all belong together, and we share this country and its history.
Do not tear us apart.
The statement has been signed by 113 filmmakers:
1. Mohammade Reza Aslani 2. Mohammade Tahami Nejad 3. Rakhshan Bani Etemad 4. Pirooz Kalantari 5. Mohsen Abdolvahab 6. Orod Zand 7. Homayoun Emami 8. Naser Safaryan 9.Mojtaba Mirtahmasb 10. Mahboubeh Honaryan 11.Hasan Bahramzadeh 12. Bahram Azim Pour 13. Ebrahim Mokhtari 14. Kamran Shirdel 15. Mohammad Reza Moghadassyan 16. Parviz Kimyavi 17. Khosro Sinayi 18. Mahvash Sheykhol Eslami 19. Farhad Varharam 20. Houshang Azadivar 21. Mahnaz Afzali 22. Reza Haeri 23. Ahmad Mir Ehsan 24. Farhad Mehran Far 25. Mani Potgar 26. Mehrdad Zahedyan 27. Houshang Azadi Var 28. Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami 29. Mahnaz Mohammadi 30. Mohammad Rasoulof 31. Hamid Soheyli Mozafar 32. Mohammad Jafari 33. Azar Mehrabi 34. Gholamreza Katal 35. Nahid Rezayi 36. Majid Movasaghi 37. Soudabeh Mortezayi 38. MOhsen Khan Jahani 39. Hadi Afarideh 40. Mitra Mansouri 41. Banafsheh Khoshnoudi 42. Majed Neysi 43. Iraj Moslehi Milani 44. SAyid Naderi 45. Mahmoud Moghadas Jafari 46. Shahram Derakhshan 47. Nader Khadem Tarighat 48. Lida Moyini 49. Javad Najmeddin 50. Amir Hossein Behbehani 51. Arash RAyisyan 52. Ahmad Zahedi 53. Pouyan Shahrokhi 54. Mostafa Shiri 55. Mohammad Reza Marzoughi 56. Mehdi Bagheri 57. Hamid Bahari 58. Babak Behdad 59. Azadeh Bizar Giti 60. Javad Tavana 61. Mohhamad Razdasht 62. Maryam Hagh Panah 63. Mohsen Gholam zadeh 64. Kaveh Bahrami Moghadam 65. Esmail Emami Langaroudi 66. Hamd jafari 67. Behzad Khoda Veisi 68. Farnaz Jamshidi Moghadam 69. Reza Bahrami Nejad 70. Mohsen Ostad Ali Makhmalbaf 71. Abbas Amini 72. Hiva Amin Nejad 73. Mehdi Ganji 74. Mehdi Parizad 75. Mohammad Sadegh Jafari 76. Mohammad Shiravai 77. Mohsen Nazari 78. Manouchehr Moshiri 79. Ali Shahryari 80. Ebrahim Haghighi 81. Farahnaz Sharifi 82. Pedram Akbari 83. Ali Arkyan Sharifi 84. Hossein Dalir 85. Sousan Bayani 86. Mohsen Amir Yousefi 87. Mohammad Khalil Zadeh 88. Ebrahim Asadi 89. Parivash Nazaryeh 90. Mohammad Rasekh far 91. Hamideh Sharif Rad 92. Saiid Vahidi 93. Khaterh Hanachi 94. Seyed Alireza Rasouli Nejad 95. Morteza Shamli 96. Ali Reza Dehghan 97. Milad Bahar 98. Mehdi Ghorbanpour 99. Mehdi Asadi 100. Babak Shirin Sefat 101. Mohhamad hassan Saemi 102. Ahmad Reza Sedghi Vaziri 103. Mohammad Reza Fatah Hosseyni 104. Kourosh Farzanegan 105. Ahmad Gol Naraghi 106. Kourosh Afshar panah 107. Reza Majlesi 108. Reza Zyayi Doustan 109. Abolfazle Haj Saeed 110. Foad Afravi 111. Mazyar Bahari 112. Bahman Kyarostami 113. Houshang Fazli
Comment by apollo — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:13 am
So why remove your own posts JohnW?
Comment by anti-fascist — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:18 am
Me:
these juvenile exchanges serve no purpose whatsoever.
anti-fascist:
So why remove your own posts JohnW?
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:28 am
So, you’re editing this debate and removing your own posts in order to make replies to those posts appear nonsensical.
Why play these games JohnW?
Comment by anti-fascist — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:28 am
I must admit that I don’t have a clear or confident “position” on this unfolding crisis, though my gut sympathies are with the protesters. But I do find it appalling that John Wight continues to compare the situation to the attempt to topple Hugo Chavez a few years ago. Chavez is a democratically elected socialist who has repeatedly put his policies to the people - any implied comparison with Ahmadinejad or his regime is truly grotesque.
Comment by Deckchair Socialist — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:02 am
http://worker-communistpartyofiran.blogspot.com/
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Khamenei responsible for Neda’s murder
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:45 am
#273
So now it’s all right for a western backed opposition to topple the Iranian govt because it isn’t as democratic as you think it should be.
Iran is a democracy, albeit deformed, albeit under the context of an Islamic state, and there is as yet NO hard evidence to support these claims that the vote was rigged.
A CNN poll carried out 2 weeks before the election predicted the eventual result to within 1%. Ahamdinejad’s vote was comparable to his vote in 2005.
I suggest you’re correct to reserve judgement. The situation with Venezueal is comparable with regard to the way this opposition has taken shape, its class composition, etc.
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
#275 “So now it’s all right for a western backed opposition to topple the Iranian govt because it isn’t as democratic as you think it should be.”
I said no such thing. My comments were addressed to your comparison of the Iranian and Venezuelan situations. In Venezuela, state forces (including the army) vacilated about how to respond to the coup against Chavez until the people came down from the barrios in a mass demonstration of support for the President’s radical policies. It was only in the face of this huge outpouring of popular support that key elements of the armed forces finally came down in favour of Chavez and the constitution. That is very different from sending troops, cops and militia out onto the streets to bludgeon and shoot demonstrators into submission.
You can only compare the situation in Iran if you really see Chavez and the Venezuelan revolution as having little or nothing to do with the socialist project, with socialism in the 21st century, and merely as another useful ally in the war against US imperialism. It is of course far more than that, and your failure to see that strongly suggests to me that you’ve lost your political bearings as a consequence of your arguments in defence of the Iranian regime.
Anyway, I’ll leave the last word to you as I don’t want to hijack this thread onto a discussion about Venezuela.
Comment by Deckchair Socialist — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
A got 11 Million more votes than last time. That’s not comparable that’s unblievable! Why are you supporting a fascist killer?
Comment by Hugh — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
Iran protests: an eyewitness account
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/21/iran-protests-tehran
An Iranian protester describes Saturday’s demonstrations in Tehran as the opposition movement continues to challenge the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Tehran, 4.30 local time, Enghelab Street
We gather up with my students on Saturdays for a private class. We cook and eat together, then talk of philosophy. This time there was no class. We only tried to keep up our morale. We were very determined but scared. That is how I can describe the most people who came out to attend the demonstration today. After the fierce speech at the Friday prayers, we knew that today we would be treated differently. We felt so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time were aware of our power, which, no matter how influential it is collectively, would have done little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside you without mixing with one another. To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.
Then comes another student who would have her lunch with us, but is not coming to the demonstration. She’s too scared and while pretending to be in control bursts into tears. She says she hates to see people suffer. We tell her we have suffered for years. She says she doesn’t want people to die. I tell her tens of thousands die each year on the roads in Iran, at least this time it would be for a good cause. She says we are elites and can save ourselves for better times when we can be more useful. We reply there is no difference between people in such a condition and one cannot be more useful than that.
But we have had enough of that. We too have our own fears. So we finish the lunch and sit to read poems of Mirzadeh Eshgi. That’s what I suggest. He was a revolutionary anarchist at the time of Constitutional Revolution 1906-11, killed for his frankness of speech. It fits our situation. When I forwarded three poems of him, in red, to friends after Friday’s speech, many called to ask if I’m taking care of myself. Then I put a tag next to my name in Gmail: ‘Do you scare us from chopped off heads?’ Quotation from another poet whom I don’t know. Poems play an important role here. At first, I thought maybe it’s too romantic to send poetry to others in such a situation, but then, said to myself, nothing influences Iranians like poetry. And these days, everything is about influence and fear.
continued
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
Add Saeed Valadbaygi of the WCPI to friends on Facebook. He is uploading extraordinary video footage of continuing protests. Men and women in mass defiance of the Basiji. It’s still going on.
Comment by Ed — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
John / Noah
I think you go to far in stessing the importance of the anti-imperialist nature of the Iranian government, as the primary factor around which to judge these events.
That is undoubtedly the factor that is motivating the partisan interest of the Western press (note the much greater coverage than for the similar events in Kenya last year, where neither side was seekign an altered relationship with imperalism), and the international support is probably contributing to the confidence of the protesters, and indeed was possible factor in their confidence to challenge an election they seem to have clearly and legitimatly lost.
But that doesn’t mean that the outcome of a Mousavi victory would be a defeat for progressive forces in Iran. That depends upon the social and economic programme that Mousavi represents, the remaining large resevoir of support for the current government; and whatever new social forces come into political action during the uncertainty.
You are certainly correct to challenge the uncritical optimism of ultra-lefts like the Worker communist Party of Iran, and their cheerleaders in HOPI in this country; but that doesn’t mean that the current government should be defended. Let us see what happens.
Comment by andy newman — 21 June, 2009 @ 12:54 pm
#280 This is a more dialectical i.e. reasonable response neatly bisecting the ultra left and the ultra cautious positions which have hardened into ideologies. The only criticism I would make is the final sentence: `let us see what happens’. A proactive effort to formulate an independent working class policy and plan of action which brings them en mass into this movement against the bonapartist/police regime is required. Couldn’t agree more however that the crazies in HOPI and WCofI are not the vehicle through which to develop such a thing. Their uncritical approach which sees this movement as THE revolution transforms them perhaps indavertently into the evengelists of western interventionism along with the hair-brained sect Mohajedin E Khalk who are desperately seeking alliances and legality in the West whilst carrying out all manner of terrorist and adventurist activity in Iran.
Analagous situation might be the mass movements in the ex-Soviet Union. Those who did not understand the social nature of the USSR simply uncritically cheer-led for what became in the absence of an independent working class policy to be a movement for the restoration of capitalism. Had, however, the working class entered the fray en mass the bureaucracy would have been swept away but nobody would have dared smash up the economy for sharing out to a handful of Russian billionaries and western banks. The task was to bring the workers into the movement and indeed to its head not to oppose the mass movement and transform it into a political revolution as opposed to the completion of the counter-revolution begun by Stalinism.
Comment by Boney — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
If anyone knows of any revolution which did not begin with the participation of elites I’d be interested in hearing about it. This is where I think the arguments of the proponents of an imaginary geo-politics tend towards the circular. Its rather similar to those who endlessly love to point out the middle class nature of the leadership of the Palestinian struggle. Iran was strong enough to follow its own brand of conservative realism in relationship to the designs of imperialism. In a region were most of the more important regimes are pro-American satraps this of course seemed very impressive (see angry arab on the tense relations between the arab and the iranian left). But the notion that Iran is interested in regional change is a joke. Its no more interested in this then Saudi Arabia. Its policies are designed to freeze existing relationships and improve Iran’s geo-political position in relationship to those existing relationships. Nothing particularly heinus about this, but nothing particularly radical either. Given the potential scale of opposition across the region to the various stooges and dictators who run the local states, this realpolitik was always eventually going to be a barrier to the further development of movements for social change. People who have become so pessimistic and desperate that their only dreams are re-arrangements of relationships between existing powers will be swept away by the development of popular movements in the region. To believe for instance that ‘Arab resistance’ is dependent on Tehran, is really just to reverse the lense of US and Israeli propaganda. Missing entirely in this picture are the people themselves and their actual struggles.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/06/all-we-want-is-better-world.html
Andy it is nonsense to describe HOPI as cheerleaders for the ultra left. They have a very sober assessment of the forces confronting the fight for freedom in Iran
I must say I prefer the open opposition of John W and Noah to the mass popular uprising ( repulsive as their politics are to any real socialist )than your slippery evasion and attempts at fence sitting. But then again you do have a record of supporting various anti working class dictatorships for their alleged “anti imperialist” stand (as does Galloway) And you, like him, attempt to provide political cover to the reactionary forces of political islam.
I think the events in Iran will blow up what remains of the misnamed project Respect
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
I’m actually not particularly keen on any section of the left being ‘blown up’. I just think the left should collectively learn lessons from what is likely to be as important a defining moment as the mass global movements against the war five years ago. We are living through a period of mass flux and change, and as always, this means that many old slogans are rapidly being emptied of their content. Its neccessary to move foward. I hope that eventually we can all do this togeather. I’m not surprised by the degree of confusion. Its not unusual in such situations.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Solidarity Message from Carré Rouge to June 20 London HOPI Meeting
June 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment
French Marxist Journal Carré Rouge
French Marxist Journal Carré Rouge
The journal Carré Rouge wishes to express its support to all those present in your meeting and through them to all those fighting in Iran at this moment.
We supported the founding of Hands Off the People of Iran and the stand it has taken against imperialism, against the threat of war and for the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic regime. The political struggle against military and economic intervention by major imperialist powers against Iran must go in hand with the fight against a system of economic and political domination which makes the regime, whatever its utterances one of the pillar of world class domination.
As Obama made it very clear, the real threat in Iran to the world capitalist order is the mass democratic movement of which the students are today the spearhead. The victory of such a movement in Iran would shake per se the foundations of this part capitalist order throughout the Near and Middle East and on into the Indian peninsula. It would also open up, as it had started to do in 1979, on political demands bearing on the conditions of everyday life for the masses and so on capitalist property relationships. This is why Obama has sent the message that he prefers to go on dealing with the capitalist-theocratic regime, whoever are its leaders. His position is that of all “world leaders”. Their priority is “law and order” whatever the price to be paid by students and workers.
We are particularly concerned by the brutality of regime’s attack on university campuses, where the opposition to it is strongest. We will join in the campaigns you be deciding on at your meeting in support of your own comrades and all fighting capitalist-theocracy in Iran.
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
John G
I think you are being far to kind to Galloway and the organization built around him
In the mass circulation Daily record he used his column to attack those fighting for democracy in Iran. It is a disgrace that Respect has not condemned him for this. No wonder the left is marginal in britain when it has leaders who push such anti working class politics. yes i agree we must collectively learn lessons.
One of those lessons is that people who side with tyranny in iran and Burma and china and Zimbabwe etc are not socialists. We have to combat the “anti imperialism” of fools and charlatans or socialism will remain marginal in Britain
sandy
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/
Videos from the Hopi Emergency Solidarity Meeting on June 20
Here are the videos of yesterday’s solidarity meeting, which was attended by over 40 people and raised 230 pounds for our comrades struggling in Iran. The Speakers were Yassamine Mather and Moshe Machover with the Green Party’s Jim Jepps in the Chair. To find out more about upcoming HOPI meetings, or to request a speaker for your organisation, campaign or union – please get in touch with us at office@hopoi.info or on 07590429226.
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
`I think the events in Iran will blow up what remains of the misnamed project Respect.’
I think we can work out where your priorities lie.
Comment by Boney — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:52 pm
My priorities lie in helping create a socialist organisation which can take on and defeat the forces of Capital and establish socialism. My priorities don’t lie in getting a job with Press TV
sandy
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
General strike across Iran called for Tuesday.
Comment by Ed — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
Its not a question of ‘kindness’ Sandy. The kind of reaction you see here is one which exists in one form or another in many parts of the world. It is not the product of some peculiarity of Respect or George Galloway. Its unsurprising that, with a predatory US imperialism abroad, some would place their faith in existing states and re-arrangements of existing states hostile to it. It is in reality simply, as I suggested, a reflection of reformist consiousness. But in the current situation reformist consiousness runs into barriers in the shape of a world which offers limited prospects of reform.
My critique of this line of thinking has nothing in common with those who effectively simply reproduce standard right wing attacks on any who would oppose US imperialism. I am not interested in the disapearence of movements against imperialism and war, movements against exploitation and oppression. I’m interested in those movements being more effective. I don’t think they can be effective without moving away from a politics which is simply not hooking onto the realities of struggle today. That is the problem.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
Ed links?
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Sandy- Given your hatred of “political islam”, what would your position be if this was a mass movement of Islamists complaining that they had been robbed of an election victory?
Part of the problem with pushing secularist democracy (and socialism)in the muslim world are real experiences such as the French- backed military coup in Algeria after the FIS won the election, the attempts by the Turkish military to have the Welfare Party banned, the West’s non-recognition of Hamas as having won the elections in the whole of the Palestinian Authority, the status of Egypt, where Islamists are imprisoned and routinely tortured, as a favoured US ally. Add to that the crude ultra-leftist behaviour of a faction of the stalinists in Afghanistan in attempting to impose reforms and the subsequent Soviet military intervention.
Your obsession with this ill-defined “political islam” makes you suspect in my eyes.
That is not to say that I am comfortable with the positions of John W and particularly Noah, who apart from anything else appear to have failed to distinquish (re Chavez and Iran) between the necessary diplomatic policy of a state, and the sometimes separate programme of the progressive workers movement.
Had the opposition won in Iran, I don’t think Chavez would be saying “fuck you, running dog of imperialism, the deals off”, and neither would Moussavi be saying, “Commie scum, we’re signing back up with Uncle Sam”.
And another queation I would like to put to John and Noah- if we are to asssume that on balance the collapse of the socialist project in the Soviet Union and other E European countries was a bad thing, should the mass movement in the DDR for example have been crushed by the E German military and/or the Red Army?
For the avoidance of doubt btw my answer would be a resounding “no”.
Comment by Armchair — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
It’s announced on the bloke’s Facebook page I indicated above. It’s just a status update for now. It’s not clear who has called it.
Comment by Ed — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
Sorry, John - I was too quick off the mark there. He’s saying it’s a ‘public strike’ (?) across ‘Kordestan’. Appologies.
Comment by Ed — 21 June, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election
Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, June 2009
link from Guardian web site
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
http://www.juancole.com/
some interesting stuff on juan coles site. perhaps most interestingly its been admitted by some senior figures on Khamani’s side that the majority of the population think the voting was rigged. The explanation is that small town and rural voters don’t think like urban voters. the fly in the ointment (as ali ansari noted in his piece on comment is free today) is that two thirds of the country are ‘urban’ rather then ’small town’ and ‘rural’. Its the landslide that seems wholly implausible. Following through Ansari’s argument on comment is free is also interesting because it gives a rationale for the rigging. The desire for a mandate to defeat the reformers, whom most voters, whether urban, rural, or whatever generally preferred in the past. If rigging was carried out for this end its hard to imagine anything more counterproductive as he notes.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
Andy #280 - I disagree. I don’t think the role of imperialism in what is unfolding can be stressed enough. I’m astonished at how many on the left have succumbed and fallen into line with the British govt, US State Dept et al in cheering on what is a blatant attempt to overturn a democratic vote.
We need to keep our nerve in the face of such overwhelming propaganda, else repeat the grievous mistakes made over Yugolsavia, Iraq, and the various colour-coded revolutions that have taken place pace the collapse of the SUnion.
Also, this is much more significant than whether or not Mousavi is less or more progressive than the current incumbent. We are talking about the front line in the struggle against imperialism and the outcome of this will have huge significance with regard to the direction this struggle takes.
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Gabriel Ash says all that needs saying here;
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-gucci-anti-imperialism-and.html
especially;
As long as Ahmadinejad makes the right noises on Palestine (and whether he does that is at least debatable), as long as Khamenei supports Hizbullah, that kind of “anti-imperialist” message means that Iranians who reject the repressive political system imposed on them can drop dead, because getting agitated might, God forbid, cheer Tzipi Livni. The Iranian regime is apparently too valuable for that anti-imperialist cause to allow the Iranians people much say in how it is run. But may I ask who appointed any of us to decide on the right order in which people should queue up to reclaim their freedom? Who decides that the status quo in Iran is just too important for letting the mere aspirations of Iranians shake it? A further frightening aspect of these preposterous accusations is that they can become self-fulfilling. People tend
Comment by Stephen Marks — 21 June, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
I agree. There really isn’t anything more to say.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
Excellent analysis from PSL.
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12365&news_iv_ctrl=1038
In particular:
‘Three days after the election, the U.S. State Department took the unprecedented step of “requesting” that the social networking site Twitter not proceed with a scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service at the moment that Mousavi supporters were using Twitter to mobilize for a scheduled street protest in Tehran. The bosses at Twitter quickly complied with the State Department request.
The street protests in Tehran are not caused by an intervention from foreign powers. But the United States and other western countries are sympathetic to and encouraging the protests, and see in them an opportunity for advancing their regional objectives. Moreover, the U.S. government has been spending tens of millions of dollars to destabilize the Ahmadinejad government. On May 22, 2007, ABC News reported that “President Bush signed a ‘nonlethal presidential finding’ that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.” There is no evidence that Obama rescinded that “presidential finding” or the covert destabilization operation.
The class character of the protest movement must be examined by progressive forces, just as it is by the imperialist establishment.
The fact that the movement is dominated by the middle classes and the more affluent, especially in Tehran but in other cities as well, is considered to be of decisive importance in the calculations of imperialism. Washington knows that this movement has genuine energy and initiative and is also linked to the most pro-western wing of the clerical establishment—those who favor capitalist globalization, privatization and a reorientation of Iran’s foreign policy.’
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
so what? I mean really. So what? So the State department thinks that its interests are served by supporting the reformer. News? But you have no hard facts about the social composition of the movement and would not be interested in any if they were presented to you. News? Not really. Again, if you can find me a single example of a popular mass movement against repression which did not begin with involvement of sections of the elite (from the PLO through to just about every revolution that has ever taken place in the global south) I’ll eat my hat. Your concerns are entirely structured by your belief that Iran is a neccessary element in resistance to US imperialism. Your just wrong about that.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
Oh the PSL will be those folk who also think North Korea is a socialist state?
No doubt there is a grand global alliance possible here.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:49 pm
Andy #280:
“I think you go to far in stessing the importance of the anti-imperialist nature of the Iranian government, as the primary factor around which to judge these events.”
That’s an inside-out version of my position (& I think also that of John W.) What I am stressing is that that a key primary factor is the imperialist nature of the main external forces which are ranged against the Iranian government.
“that doesn’t mean that the outcome of a Mousavi victory would be a defeat for progressive forces in Iran.”
Well, there are regressive and progressive aspects to both sides in this struggle. My prediction is that if Ahmadinejad is overthrown, the result on balance will be a negative one, particularly but not only in its international effect.
That’s what all previous experience of these colour revolutions indicates; and nothing about either the external forces or the internal forces involved in the current struggle in Iran suggests anything otherwise.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
johng:
Again, if you can find me a single example of a popular mass movement against repression which did not begin with involvement of sections of the elite
Reply:
You continue to follow this line that this is somehow a progressive movement begun by a section of the elite and which contains within it the seeds of a movement which will usher in…what?…what exactly is the trajectory of this movement, johng, because as yet your analysis seems to consist entirely of the reductive view that all protest is progressive regardless of the social composition of the moovement concerned. Mousavi is a reformer who advocates cutting subsidies to the poor and the lowest strata of the working class. He represents the urban middle class, students and more privileged sectors of Iranian society.
Where is this socialist revolutionary current within this movement that will turn it left. This political myopia is astounding, really.
As for PSL, they are principled anti imperialists and defenders of the right to self determination. You have lined up with the British govt and the US State Dept, same as you have with regard to Cuba and as your tradition did with regard to the SUnion.
What’s the next slogan going to be johng? ‘With Mousavi but beyond Mousavi?’
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
You have lined up against those risking their lives on the streets today. With nothing more substantial to say then a bunch of half baked warmed over wannabe stalinist goobledejook.
Fantastic footage from today as the Basji scum are forced to retreat under a hail of missiles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00cSHvqTXwI
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
JohnW and Noah, the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the counter-revolutions in eastern Europe were a massive strategic defeat for the working class worldwide.
And in response to Sandy earlier, yes, the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia was right in the circumstances as was the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and as would have been similar action by the DDR government in 1989.
But, in Iran today, the representatives of the communist tradition - Tudeh - as well, incidently, as the representatives of the “dissident communist” tendency, as well as those workers’ organisations we have heard from are all in support of the protests and opposed to the regime.
It is these people and organisations that communists in other nations are listening to and taking their cue from, not the maverick fool galloway and idiot political “freelancers” such as yourselves.
Comment by communist — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:20 pm
Throughout this thread, John, you seem to have drawn a simple equals sign between your definition of who Mousavi represents: “the urban middle class, students and more privileged sectors of Iranian society” and those who has been active on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities over the past week.
Given that those who do not feel represented by Ahmadinejad and oppose his rule only have limited options within Iranian ‘democracy” to express their disenfranchisement/opposition - ie they can vote for another of a tiny group of candidates approved by the regime, and given that, from all the welter of video evidence, there have been absolutely huge numbers of people on the streets over this week, what is your basis for assuming that it is limited to the groups you have described?
Comment by David Rosenberg — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
I tell you what guys. why not agitate for better pay and conditions for Tehran’s ‘anti-riot’ police. This looks like a dangerous job and they look rather badly equipped (footage from today):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2009/06/090621_ag_street_clashes.shtml
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:26 pm
David #308
Thus far these protests have almost exclusively been confined to Tehran, certainly in large numbers, and within Tehran they have emanated from the more affluent northern suburbs.
The pro-Ahmadinejad rally last week drew a massive crowd, as did the Supreme Leader’s speech on Friday in Tehran.
As yet, no mass strike action has taken place and no wholesale support from the armed forces for the Opposition.
The class composition of the movement, along with the section of the elite which Mousavi represents, is key to understanding the politics involved.
As for ‘communist’ in #307 - Again, a section of the Iraqi CP cooperated with the occupation of Iraq and took up places on the CPA. Based on your logic, I take it you took their lead and supported the occupation, did you?
Luckily for me, as a ‘freelancer’, I’ve retained my capacity for independent thought, rather than look for others to do my thinking for me.
Stay by the phone, comrade. After all, you never know when the CC will call with the line.
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
The PSL?? First Paul Craig Roberts, now the WWP-split PSL. Are you kidding me?
Comment by christian h. — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
johng #302:
“so what? I mean really. So what? So the State department thinks that its interests are served by supporting the reformer.”
Hmmm. I would not go so far as to say that we should automatically be opposed to all the policies of the US State Department. There are no doubt some instances where the actions of US imperialism have coincided with the interests of global humanity.
However. I would suggest that when you find yourself in alliance with US imperialism, and especially with the policies that were decided under GW Bush, that would be an appropriate time for a very thorough re-consideration of your analysis and opinions.
More by Johng:
“you have no hard facts about the social composition of the movement and would not be interested in any if they were presented to you.”
Were the poorer districts & people of Iran also pouring out to try to overthrow Ahmadinejad, you can rely on it that this would be enthusiastically reported in the Western media. The fact that the social base of the protest movement has not extended to the masses in the less well-off areas is one of the various factors which have- so far- prevented Ahmadinejad from being deposed.
Further:
“Your concerns are entirely structured by your belief that Iran is a neccessary element in resistance to US imperialism. Your just wrong about that.”
I don’t know who here has claimed that Iran is a ‘necessary’ element in the global resistance to United States Imperialism. But Iran’s political & economic alliance with revolutionary Latin America, particularly Venezuela, has been very helpful.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
christian:
The WWP/PSL are the main actors behind the ANSWER Coalition, responsible for offering the only principled and radical opposition to the Bush administration during the years of probably the most reactionary period in US history.
They organised and mobilised in the belly of the beast demonstrations of hundreds of thousands, and their principled and unwavering stance in solidarity with the Palestinians has set them apart from most, if not every other, left formation in the US.
They are without doubt the most dedicated and committed socialist organisation that I’ve ever been involved with. Do I agree with them on every issue? No I don’t. But certainly on most, including the current situation in Iran.
Comment by John Wight — 21 June, 2009 @ 8:52 pm
Interesting editorial in ‘China Daily’, clearly expressing the view of the Chinese Communist Party:
*****
For peace in Iran
Rallies, demonstrations and violence, the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have gripped Teheran ever since the Iranian election results were declared. Monday saw the worst clashes between supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his rival in the presidential race, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who refuses to accept defeat, which left seven people dead.
The international community is worried over the developments in Iran. But it has to have faith in the Iranian people to solve their problem peacefully. The Guardian Council, Iran’s top legislature, has ruled out annulling the result, but it has agreed to a partial recount of the ballots.
Hopefully, the Iranian people will avoid spreading the violence and all parties will accept the results after the recounting of votes next week. The international community, on its part, has to leave Iran’s internal problems to the Iranian people, and accept their verdict.
This is the best way the international community can deal with Iran now because it does not help to add fuel to the already burning issue.
Attempts to push the so-called color revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous. A destabilized Iran is in no nobody’s interest if we want to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, and the world beyond.
For peace in Iran
In his speech at Cairo University earlier this month, US President Barack Obama apologized for American Cold War intervention in Iran. US-Iranian relations have been troubled ever since, with US presidents trying to stick their nose into Iran’s internal business.
On Tuesday Obama, after his meeting with the visiting South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, said it was not productive to meddle in Iranian elections given the history of US-Iranian ties.
The international community heaved a sigh of relief after Obama changed the US administration’s confrontational policy toward Iran, and hopes US-Iranian ties improve and Teheran’s nuclear issue is resolved peacefully. But now with Mousavi’s supporters vowing to intensify their protests, it seems we have to wait longer for a peaceful solution to Iran’s problems.
A pre-election public opinion poll conducted by the Washington Post showed Ahmadinejad had a 2:1 lead over his nearest rival. Some opinion polls in Iran were more or less similar. But he won the election on a lower margin. Thus, the opposition’s allegations against Ahmadinejad come as a trifle surprising for some.
Win and loss are two sides of an election coin. Some candidates are less inclined to accept defeat.
But it is a tragedy that protests have turned violent claiming innocent lives. We hope supporters of both the presidential candidates accept the ballot recounting, and realize the importance of peace in building a strong and self-reliant society.
******
Source:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2009-06/18/content_8296115.htm
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:11 pm
Oh, the irony - the Chinese CP giving advice on how to accept election results you don’t like.
Comment by chjh — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Completely agree with Johng. Anyone who doesn’t support the uprising should give up on socialism. Best stay in bed. Or maybe lie on the sofa, get your thrills from Eastenders.
Comment by bill j — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
Actually the western media is pretty cautious on the issue as are the politicians. They don’t actually much like REAL upheavels. Might give people ideas.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
communist #307:
“the representatives of the “dissident communist” tendency, as well as those workers’ organisations we have heard from are all in support of the protests and opposed to the regime.
It is these people and organisations that communists in other nations are listening to and taking their cue from…”
Really?
I don’t know the exact figures, but I would hazard a guess that among the several million people on our planet who hold membership of an organisation describing itself as a communist party, the majority of them live in the People’s Republic of China.
And the Chinese Communist Party seems to have a different opinion from yours.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:31 pm
John you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you believe the protests have been confined to Tehran. Do you watch the news ever, scan the internet that sort of thing? Also the protests in Tehran have not been confined to North Tehran. A very large demo on Friday began in South Tehran and was much reported. Like a ghost you just see what you want to see. And the whole analyses is deeply mechanical anyway. When stuff like this really kicks off which it obviously has done for any but the wilfully blind, the chance to hit back at hated figures rapidly goes beyond those who initially called demonstrations. I don’t know the precise social composition of those giving the Basij the kicking they so richly deserve, shouting god is great as they do so, and nor do I know the social composition of those chasing riot police round the streets today. But nor do you. Aside from a few hand-me-down quotes from those opposed to the demonstrations, most of whom were opining before the events really started unfolding.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
John Wight (#310) to ‘communist’:
“Stay by the phone, comrade. After all, you never know when the CC will call with the line.”
Good advice. It might be Hu Jintao, telling you to get a grip.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
The Chinese Communist Party had a different opinion to most of the Western left on June 4 1989 - were they right then as well?
Comment by chjh — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
“There are no doubt some instances where the actions of US imperialism have coincided with the interests of global humanity.” yeh suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure! Are you dreaming Noah or do you keep your mouth and brain in an isolation unit variously known to others as a public toilet because it’s full of something?
Suggested reading..The life and times of the CIA that most honourable of honourable state terrorist organisations responsible for defending the interests of global humanity…not!
Comment by Fleabite — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:49 pm
#321
That is disingenuous, the CCp were deeply divided over how to deal with the 4th June movement in 1989, but the CCP today are pretty much unanimous over foreign policy, and the China daily editorial is consistent with Beijing’s approach of not interfering in the internal affairs of others. the statement is calmly non-confrontational, but expressing disapproval of outside meddling from anyone in Iran’s affairs.
It seems increasingly likely to me, that the election was actually won by Ahmadinejad. And you have to wonder how Western governments would respond to protests on the streets seeking to overturn the result of an election.
That is not to say that the repression is justofied, nor that those on the streets protesting about genuine grievances about life in Iran don’t have a point; but I see little reason for the left to cheer lead for Mousavi.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 June, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
By the way, the sensible & moderate position taken by the Chinese Communist Party on the events in Iran reflects, of course, their opposition to the USA etc gaining international advantage by way of- in their words- ’so-called color revolutions’.
But the Chinese view should also remind us that the improvements in Iran’s foreign policy under Ahmadinejad have not been confined to Iran’s relationship with the revolutionary Latin America, headed by Venezuela.
In the last few years, Iran has increasingly aligned itself with Russia and China through its observer status in the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), an Asian security pact which has sought to replace US military & political hegemony with co-operative arrangements between the governments in the region.
All the more reason for US & W. European imperialism to hate Ahmadinejad, & encourage his removal.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
@ Fleabite #322. Clearly neither subtlety nor irony are among your strong points.
Nevertheless, your mention of the CIA is perhaps overdue in this dicussion. Perhaps in 30 or 50 years time, the USA will release papers which will document some of the CIA’s role in the current events in Iran.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
How did we get to the ’sensible and moderate position’ of the CCP, the one party rulers of the fastest growing capitalist economy in the world? Would someone enlighten me? Andy do you seriously think they’re comrades of yours? Do you think perhaps they read through SUN and occassionally think ‘you know if it wasn’t for party discipline I’d really like to take Andy up on his interesting ideas about English nationalism’?. It seems a bit unlikely really. Funnily enough I’m increasingly convinced that the election was rigged. I think its possible that Ahmadehad won the election. I think the size of his majority is hugely implausible. And there are reasons why that matters and is important in terms of the balence of forces politically (its quite clear that the ruling elite are like rats in a sack). But perhaps more importantly I’m pretty convinced that if the election was re-run today he would be defeated in a landslide. One feature of the present situation utterly confounds Venezuelan or Lebanese parrallels. Where are the counter demonstrations of the majority of the population? All we have are para-political-military thugs and a divided and demoralised ‘anti-riot police’ with much speculation that even the revolutionary guard are split. Arguments that the huge majority resides in the country side don’t really work since 70 per cent of the population live in the big urban centres. If the presentation of the regime was correct the popular districts voted in an unprescedented wave for Ahmadinajad. Do you seriously think they’d be cowering in their homes when given full encouragement by the regime to go out and give ‘gucci radicals’ a good kicking? Think of the Venezuelan parrallel. It really doesn’t scan.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
From Nawal El Saadawi to Iranian men and women demonstrating in the the streets
Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician
( 21 June 2009 )
This is a revolution of the Iranian people against internal and external dictatorships and exploitation, against local and global powers, political , economic and religious powers . Iranian men and women, young and old, are fighting against oppression, inequality, injustices and domination. This is the voice of Iranian people. It is heard clearly all over the world. No power can stop them before they achieve their goals, No power can erase their blood.
Nawal El Saadawi
21 June 2001
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
#326
John
Where have I drawn parallels with lebanon or venezuela, to my mind this is much more resonant of the situations we have seen in Kenya or Zimbabwe.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
http://irangcc.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/translating-the-street-newspaper-circulating-among-iran-protesters/
New newspaper in Iran: Khiaban “The Street”
Comment by sandy — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:05 pm
Massive demonstration today despite the repression yesterday. I think they’re saying off-colour things about Ahmadinajad. It sounds like Ahmadinajad down, down to me, but with a three beat variation (I am told that vocab wise there is an overlap with Hindi, but given my Hindi its a guess).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPHfoayYdlw
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:06 pm
johng #326:
“How did we get to the ’sensible and moderate position’ of the CCP, the one party rulers of the fastest growing capitalist economy in the world? etc etc”
Well, it appears that global opinion- outside the imperialist centres- is perhaps not so solidly behind the anti-Ahmadinejad campaign.
That’s important information. Would you rather that people dod not know about it?
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:08 pm
ok andy. its just frequently alluded to here. Its a little too early to suggest its like Zimbabwe. It seems to me that even after the repression of yesterday the numbers on the streets are growing in militancy and confidence. Bad news for any regime. In Zimbabwe Mugabwe was able to mantain tight control of the state machine. Its unclear that the divisions in the Iranian state do not run much deeper.
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
global opinion and statements by the CCP?
Are these in any sense connected?
Comment by johng — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
johng #333:
“global opinion and statements by the CCP?
Are these in any sense connected?”
Er, yes, some facts would indicate that they are connected. One of them being that 20% of the world’s population is Chinese.
Comment by Noah — 21 June, 2009 @ 11:32 pm
Oh yes and if the CCP says so thats the opinion of that 20 per cent. I get it.
Comment by johng — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:01 am
Andy thought you should know. Press TV has just reported that the Guardian Council has admitted to widespread election fraud. They state it is not as big as the opposition are claiming and are unsure how significant it would be for the outcome of the election. I strongly suspect that the decision about how significant it will be judged to be will be related to the balence of forces on the Guardian Council which is clearly in a panic and split from arsehole to breakfast if you’ll excuse my french:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/98711.htm?sectionid=351020101
Comment by johng — 22 June, 2009 @ 2:10 am
The coverage of this on SU has been truly shocking. There is an attempted revolution underway and you let a former Thatcherite & present day Tory ( http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/ ) slap you silly in the coverage. Wtf is going on here, guys?
Comment by James — 22 June, 2009 @ 3:09 am
As for Britain meddling, isn’t this a case of twas ever thus? When will the arrogance of our government ever end when it comes to pointing the finger at and meddling in the internal affairs of nations of the developing world?
Wow, only just read this post. John Wright supports the supreme leader saying religion is more important than democracy and clearly using non-existent British meddling as a method of blaming everything on the foreigners. A special type of moron would lap that up.
Comment by Ed D — 22 June, 2009 @ 3:27 am
#336
Widespread electoral fraud around postal votes is also common in britain, and the last elections to the Scottish parliament disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters.
Of course non of us actually know how the votes really went. It seesm plausible to be that Ahmadinajad would have won a majority; the similarity with Zimbabwe is that the Ahmadinajad camp does seem to have considrrable social support, and the support of the state apparatus.
BUt there seems to be good reason to suport the calls from Iranian communists to re-run the election, which would settle the question.
Comment by Andy Newman — 22 June, 2009 @ 8:30 am
#337
Well i am trying to avoid the obvious conclusion that the massive interest in Iran, compared to the almost negligible interest in the unrest in Kenya following the botched December 2007 election is simple racism by Westerners.
Afterall, far more people were killed in kenya, 1200 in one week in january 2008, and the violence continues to this day.
Comment by Andy Newman — 22 June, 2009 @ 9:00 am
“Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the council, told state-funded broadcaster IRIB on Monday that up to three million votes were under scrutiny, after it was found that the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters in 50 cities.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096226353443698.html
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 22 June, 2009 @ 9:28 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/22/iran-election-voters-numbers
Comment by Anonymous — 22 June, 2009 @ 11:30 am
A few words with the Iranian workers on recent events
http://www.marxist.com/a-few-words-with-iranian-workers.htm
The workers of Iran have undoubtedly the richest historical experience than any other social layer. Three decades ago the strikes of workers in the big industries and factories like oil, gas, petrochemicals, steel, copper and so on, had a decisive role in overthrowing the Shah. Here we publish an open letter to the Iranian workers from Maziar Razi of the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency.
Honourable and brave workers of Iran
Today we have entered a new stage of mass activities against the threats and intimidation of the capitalist government. You, dear workers, have experienced the threats and suppression of the past three decades more than any other social layer. There is no social force in Iran today that has experienced the economic, psychological and moral attacks meted out by the despotic capitalist government as such as you have.
You have been the only social force in Iran that, despite paying a high price (like unemployment and unpaid wages, arrests, torture and the murder of your brothers and sisters), has persistently continued its struggles against the capitalist government (both during the reformist and fundamentalist periods) for three decades. Your participation in the May Day commemoration despite the suppression and repression, your strikes in various factories against the pressures of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state like the factory security units, the Labour House, the Islamic Labour Councils and so on, have been applauded by millions of workers all over the world. Your continuing struggles have kept open the window of hope in the hearts of millions among the various oppressed layers in Iran.
continued
Comment by sandy — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
Andy, re 340/337
No need to be coy at acknowledging that racism is a major factor in ensuring that similar issues in different parts of the world get far more attention than others. And it is up to us on blogs like this to ensure that such issues wherever they appear in the world get due attention. As well as wanting to know more about what is happening in the Kenyan situation I want to know too what is the situation not so far from there in Congo at the moment and in Northern Uganda
But it is not just a matter of racism. Those areas where America is directly involved or is in very public ideological confrontation will get more attention from a media dominated by Western-centric news values.
Why it has got so much attention here on SU though I suspect is not to do with racism but the difficulty and frustration many of us feel at seeing a couple of individuals making most of the posts on this thread attempting to defend a repressive, anti-democratic, anti-left, privatising, backward-looking, homophobic, mysogynistic, holocaust-denying regime, on the basis that it is in some way a bastion of “anti-imperialism”.
And whatever murderous repression they show towards the demonstrators on the streets, however many students are tortured and disappeared, however much they try to hide from the world what they are doing to repress a popular revolt by banning media and closing down internet operations, these individuals still believe that Ahmadinejad’s simplistic pronouncements on America/Palestine trump all other considerations and that a defeat for him is somehow a defeat for the working class and anti-imperialists everywhere.
Comment by David Rosenberg — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
anybody remembers the Iran-Contra affair?
Comment by Entdinglichung — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
In Latin America and in other developing countries which are trying to break away from US imperial domination, the reaction is very different.
Hugo Chavez says:
“We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution. Ahmadinejad’s triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed.”
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98720§ionid=351020704
Cuba is not questioning the legitimacy of the election results or supporting the opposition protesters.
Brazil’s president Lula says: “It is not the first country that holds an election in which someone wins and the loser protests.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irMZKqj68m9u9BQ-XtqOXgNLuxngD98THP082
Comment by Calvin — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
And incidentally, Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil have extremely progressive social polices on women and gay rights.
Comment by Calvin — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:32 pm
David Rosenberg #344:
Why it has got so much attention here on SU though I suspect is not to do with racism but the difficulty and frustration many of us feel at seeing a couple of individuals making most of the posts on this thread attempting to defend a repressive, anti-democratic, anti-left, privatising, backward-looking, homophobic, mysogynistic, holocaust-denying regime, on the basis that it is in some way a bastion of “anti-imperialism”.
Reply:
Out of everything posted thus far on this thread, this has to be the most reductive, politically bereft, and ludicrously shallow.
What you’re attacking here David is not the regime but the Iranian people and their right to self determination. You’ve not even attempted an analysis of the class composition behind each faction involved, preferring instead to jump on The Daily Mail bandwagon in parroting Islamophobic rants.
Two individuals on a blog are incapable of determining the outcome of the political crisis currently engulfing Iran. Only the Iranian people can do that, though one side does enjoy the considerable weight of US State Dept and British Foreign Office support in pursuing its aims and objectives.
Seamus Milne wrote an interesting analysis, which bears consideration. Though I feel certain you won’t be much interested
in what he has to say, others might.
To wit:
‘That is also reflected in the western media, whose cameras focus so lovingly on Tehran’s gilded youth and for whom Ahmadinejad is nothing but a Holocaust-denying fanatic. The other Ahmadinejad, who is seen to stand up for the country’s independence, expose elite corruption on TV and use Iran’s oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority, is largely invisible abroad.
While Mousavi promised market reforms and privatisation, more personal freedom and better relations with the west, the president increased pensions and public sector wages and handed out cheap loans. So it’s hardly surprising that Ahmadinejad should have a solid base among the working class, the religious, small town and rural poor – or that he might have achieved a similar majority to that of his first election in 2005. That’s what one of the few genuinely independent polls (the US-based Ballen-Doherty survey) predicted last month, when the Times reported Ahmadinejad was “expected to win”.’
The rest of what is a very thoughtful and analytical piece can be read here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/18/iran-elections-us-foreign-policy
I suppose we can now expect Seamus Milne to be calumniated for daring to offer an analysis which swims against what has become an increasingly hysterical stream of emotionally driven outbursts against the Iranian govt - this a mere 7 years after the same was levelled against Saddam prior to the devastation visited on Iraq.
Comment by John Wight — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
he Ayatollah Khameni, has delivered a strong speech during Friday prayers in Tehran refuting allegations of electoral fraud
I think he actually denied the allegations, and may have attempted to rebut them.
Comment by skidmarx — 22 June, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
http://www.tudehpartyiran.org/TPI-CC-statement-election-No5-19June09.pdf
Comment by sandy — 22 June, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
The analysis and demands of the Tudeh Party of Iran can be found at www.tudehpartyiran.org/english.htm.
They give no credence to claims by ex-communists on this thread above that the protest movement is being orchestrated or influenced by imperialist agencies.
A briefing paper being circulated by Tudeh provides very interesting information about privatisation and about the incidence of ballot-rigging. I will try and post it here shortly.
Comment by Party hack — 22 June, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
A Tudeh Party briefing issued on June 21 contains the following points about deteriorating material conditions in Iran and some features of the ballot-rigging. The TPI continues to have by far the biggest left presence in the trade union and progressive movements inside the country, and members and sympathisers inside the state apparatus despite the enormous repression under Khomeini.
NEO-LIBERAL PRIVATISATION
Debate about the economic path the country should take was one of the most important battle-fields between the reactionary and progressive forces, right from the first day after the 1979 revolution. Inclusion of Article 44 in the constitution was one of the accomplishments of the February 1979 revolution. It was revoked by Ahmadinejad’s government, following an executive order issued by the Supreme Leader of the regime. The consequence of these policies is to bring the macro policies of the regime more than ever into line with the policies and prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, as already tried out in various countries. The disastrous consequences of these policies could be clearly observed in the developing countries of the world. The executive order of the Supreme Leader in 2007 regarding Article 44 was warmly welcomed by the IMF. In a report about the economic prospects of Iran, the IMF stated: “Recently the government has been pursuing privatisation more seriously. According to the executive order issued by Ayatollah Khamenei regarding Article 44 of the Constitution, more than 80% of state-owned enterprises must be privatized in the next 10 years. The executive order on Article 44 revitalized privatization plans. Privatisation of state-owned enterprises will be completed by the end of the 5-year plan.”
FOREIGN DEBT AND DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL PRODUCTION
Another key political decision by the Ahmadinejad government has been the opening of domestic markets to the import of consumer goods more than ever before, damaging domestic production and swelling Iran’s debts. According to reports published by Iran’s Customs, in the first 4 months of the current Iranian year from spring of 2008 (in parallel to the increase in value and weight of imported industrial raw material as a result of the imposed sanctions), the import of luxury consumer goods like cars, fully automatic washing machines, fridges, cigarettes, audio equipment, decorations, cosmetics and the like, has drastically increased. The other important economic indicator is that despite the enormous increase in oil revenue, Iran’s foreign debt not only failed to decrease during Ahmadinejad’s term, but soared at an increasing rate. Kargozaran newspaper, 9 March 2008, quoting from ISNA wrote: “Business Monitor International stated in its latest report that Iran’s foreign debts would increase in excess of $8 billion in 4 years. In its 2nd quarter report of 2008, BMI estimated Iran’s foreign debt in the last year at $23.3 billion, which would increase by $500 million this year to reach $24 billion. BMI believes that Iran’s foreign debts in the coming years will grow; in [Iranian] years 1387 (2008) and 1388 (2009) it will increase to $26.3 and $28.1 billion, respectively, and following the same increasing trend, it will soar to $29.2 billion in 1389 (2010). A one billion dollar increase will mean a total national debt of $30.2 billion in 1390 (2011). In 1391 (2012) Iran’s foreign debt will hit $31.6 billion which is $8.1 billion more compared to national debt in 1385 (2006).”
GROWING HARDSHIP AND POVERTY
Although finding accurate and acceptable statistics regarding poverty in Iran is very hard, reading between the lines of existing statistics, the concrete conclusion can be drawn that poverty and destitution has exacerbated during Ahmadinejad’s government. For instance, recent studies by the Central Bank [of Iran] indicate that the number of people living under the poverty line increased during the first two years of the ninth government, from 18% to 19%. Based on these figures, currently between 14 and 15 million people are living under the poverty line. “Noandish” internet site, 8 May 2008, quoted Ali Asgari, Economic Deputy of President Office of Planning and Strategic Control, as saying: “according to the published economic index, about 20% of the population lives under the poverty line.
The dimensions of the escalation of poverty and unemployment are clearer when inflation numbers and the rise of cost of living are considered. This past summer the central bank of the regime reported that “the price of some food items shows an increase of 40 to 45% in just about a month.”
ELECTION RESULTS
There has been much dispute about the election results and there are detailed complaints lodged by all three candidates about the fraudulent nature of the election. The fact that the election results were announced within 2 hours of polls being closed (with some 40 million votes to count) speaks volumes. Furthermore the regime itself has come to confess that at least in 170 ballot boxes there are more votes than voters, as well as the fact that, having analysed the result of every ballot box, it transpires that for every Mousavi vote there are 2 Ahmadinejad votes with an error margin of 0.1% speaks volumes about the validity of the results that are in dispute.
The mass protest movement that has engulfed the streets of Tehran and all major cities against the regime’s shameless attempt to steal the election is a natural phase of the movement of Iranian people for peace, democracy and social justice.
As has been feared since Friday 19th June, when the regime’s unelected Supreme Religious Leader stated that the falsified election results will be enforced, the full military and repressive might of the regime has been deployed to regain political control and silence the popular movement. Well known political leaders and prominent journalists and student leaders have been arrested and transferred to unknown detention centres, universities are declared close, non-governmental media including the newspapers and internet sites have been closed down, military and security forces are deployed in the main squares of Tehran and other main cities. There are reports that the some detained leaders of the reform movement are subjected to inhumane treatment and psychological pressure to “confess their misdeeds”.
But the fact is that those who are demonstrating in the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, Shiraz and other cities in Iran are the workers, women and youth of Iran and they are challenging the rule of the reactionary, dictatorial and free market clique who has ruled Iran by brute force. The regime has driven the country to social and economic ruin. And the people are calling for change of course. They are calling for the true enactment of ideals of the Iranian popular revolution of February 1979, which were betrayed by the theocratic regime.
People are trying to achieve their goal through the democratic process and by peaceful means. During the presidential election campaign people called enthusiastically for change and against Ahmadinejad’s government that has brought unprecedented levels of unemployment, sky-high inflation, full scale privatisation of the economy, corruption and widespread suppression. In the election of 12th June people voted against advocates of neo-liberal economic policies and the free market. The people who voted for change in the presidential election on Friday 12th June were protesting against censorship, against attacks on trade union and workers movement, against the suppression of national, ethnic and religious minorities and the full scale onslaught against the left, communist and progressive movement. They voted in millions for the pro- reform candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi.
As is the case with all despots and corrupt dictators, the regime’s leaders are desperately trying to portray the mass movement of women, youth and working people as being a product of external orchestration. Unable and unwilling to accept that what people are demanding is progressive change and reform, that the people want the fulfilment of independence, democracy and social justice, the ideals of 1979 revolution, that were not fulfilled, the regime blames external forces for the protest movement, exactly as did the Shah’s regime on the eve of the 1979 popular revolution.
Comment by Party hack — 22 June, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
Monday, 22 June 2009
Military in full force in Tehran confrontation is continuing in parts of Tehran
The regime’s armed security forces have occupied the main route from Tehran University to Azadi Square and all side streets. There are protests and streets clashes in many parts of Tehran.
Tehran University students have barricaded themselves in the university with a big picture of Neda hanging at the front gate facing 16 Azar street. People are laying flowers in memory of Neda at the gate.
http://worker-communistpartyofiran.blogspot.com/2009/06/military-in-full-force-in-tehran.html
Comment by sandy — 22 June, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
“What you’re attacking here David is not the regime but the Iranian people and their right to self determination. You’ve not even attempted an analysis of the class composition behind each faction involved, preferring instead to jump on The Daily Mail bandwagon in parroting Islamophobic rants.”
On the contrary John I think it is quite clear who is attacking the people of Iran with bullets, water cannon and tear gas. I am supporting the people who are the victims of that repression and supporting their self-determination. Are you?
As for the Daily Mail, I haven’t read it since the 1980s when I had to for work purposes - I was co-writing a book for the Runnynmede Trust called Daily Racism: the Press and black people in Britain. So I’ve got no idea what they are saying or writing and I don’t take my cue in any way by anything they write. Were we all jumping on a BNP bandwagon when we opposed Blaiar’s war on Iraq. They opposed it too you know.
I am interested in what Seumas Milne says - I’ve known him for many years and have had respect for many thjngs he has written but on this I believe he is seriously wrong and seems to be contrdicted by the insights of Iranian leftists about the economic policies of Ahmadinejad.
I see that since I contributed to this thread earlier Tudeh have issued a lengthy statement. I suspect they know a lot more about the situation on the ground and the social composition of the revolt than you or I do but I can’t see how it supports the analysis or political conclusions you have expressed
Comment by David Rosenberg — 22 June, 2009 @ 4:23 pm
From the SSP
Eddie will not be pleased but it is good to see the SSP supporting the mass
movement for democratic rights and against the Islamic republic
sandy
Uprising in Iran
by an Iranian exile in Scotland - 22nd June 2009
Iran is experiencing the most significant popular uprising since the1979
revolution.
The angry people came to streets after the 10th presidential election result was
announced on 13th June. Two weeks of colourful street festivals, where young
people were exceptionally allowed to let off steam dance and chant “Ahmadinejad
bye bye” ended up in bloodshed.
Fraudulent elections are not new in Iran, but the recent colossal “polls
engineering” has astonished even the most pessimist observers. While millions of
change supporting youth prepared themselves to celebrate a landslide victory
over Ahmadinejad, Iran’s ministry of interior declared him as the winner, having
two times more votes over his main rival, Moussavi.
Three candidates could get the official approval to compete with Ahmadinejad.
Amongst them Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi were considered as
reformists and the third one was a former commander of the revolutionary guard.
Moussavi, an architect and the ex-prime minister in the 80’s , entered into the
contest after twenty years of political silence. He was strongly supported by
many reformists, such as ex-president Khatami and Rafsanjani, the powerful head
of the “Council of Expediency”. Moussavi, known for his clean economic record
and his efficient management of the wartime economy, could specially gain a
massive support among all the strata of the society, and turn out to be the
first chance of winning the election.
He openly criticized Ahmadinejad’s term as wasting of oil revenues, unjustified
social repressions and confrontational foreign policy.
Both reformist candidates pledged to relieve social repressions and limit
censorship, curb 24 percent inflation, and rebuild foreign relation with the
West.
On the other hand, Ahmadinejad, who is strongly backed by the revolutionary
guard (RG) defended his achievement “on earth and the sky” and claimed that he
had revived the “dignity” of the Islamic regime by taking the aggressive stance
towards the West.
The televised debates between candidates, a new phenomenon in Iran’s narrow
political scene, broke many taboos and exposed a long-lasting power struggle at
the top between the Supreme Leader, and his so-called “barrack party” on one
hand and the “moderate” Rafsanjani on the other.
Rasanjani’s wealthy men have financed Moussavi’s massive campaign. Ahmadinejad
condemned all his precedent governments, including Rafsanjani’s, for cowardice
and corruption. The others openly called Ahmadinejad an “extravagant liar”.
While reformists did not pose major critiques of Iran’s nuclear program, one
noticeable shift from previous elections was that social movement’s demands
found more vocal voice within the reformist agenda.
Both reformists published their “charters” of Human Right, pledging to sign the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination and to relax state censorship and suppression, and to give more
rights to ethnic and religious minorities.
Karrubi, a former head of the Parliament, backed by an important student
organisation and more radical figures of reformist intellectuals, even went so
far to ask for revising the regime’s Constitution. This was an ostensible breach
from the official discourse, since the constitution was regarded as the most
sacred asset of the revolution.
These debates raised hope among young people desperate for change.
The growing consensus to participate in the election eventually marginalised the
opposition political parties, notably leftist in exile, who pointed to so-called
reformist government of Khatami’s presidency as a proof of impossibility of
reform from inside the regime.
The leftists called for their traditional policy of boycotting the “so-called”
elections.
The turn out to the polls however was estimated to be over 85% which is a record
since Khatami’s election in 1997. The reformists observers of the polls claimed
that they got 30 million votes out of the 42 million polls. Based on these,
Moussavi declared his victory at the night of vote counting, while complaining
about “widespread manipulations and bias”.
However, at the night of 12th June the ministry of interior turned the tables
and declared Ahmadinejad as the new president, obtaining an improbable 24
million votes, two times more than Moussavi.
The two reformist candidates called the result as “dangerous charade” and
“imaginary and absurd”. People soon called the move a political coup by the
Supreme Leader in order to keep the “barrack party” (i.e the Revolutionary Guard
and its militia “Basij”) in power.
Thousands of people who invested their hopes for change in Moussavi and Karrubi,
immediately came streets shouting “Down with dictator” and “Moussavi, take back
my vote for me”. On the same night, the regime’s Basij, well equipped with all
the light weaponry but in plain cloths, attacked university dormitories in major
cities, beating and injuring hundreds of students, while there are unconfirmed
reports of 5 being killed in the attack to Tehran University dormitory.
In a national-wide demonstration on Tuesday, which was banned by the ministry
of interior, hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out. Moussavi and
Karrubi came to the crowd and stressed that they will not surrender.
The riot police and notorious Basij dispersed protesters using electric batons,
pepper sprays, tear gas and, in some instances, shooting at the people. At least
8 people where killed and dozens injured in Tehran. They suppressed people more
brutally outside the capital. The supreme leader who was the first to
congratulate Ahmadinejad took one step back and vaguely ordered to review the
results. However, people are highly suspicious that this was just a trick to
calm down the people.
On 19th June, when some were still hopeful that these widespread protests would
soften the ruling hardliners, the supreme leader declared threateningly at the
Friday Prayer that the “loser” should respect the “law” otherwise they are
responsible for the human suffering in the street clashes.
This final word of the ultimate authority was regarded as showing the green
light to security forces to escalate hostilities. Angry people who were not
frightened by the threats came to streets on the day after, which turned out to
be the most hideous day since the disputed election.
In Tehran, alone at least 19 people were shot dead by Basij agents and hundreds
injured, among them the tragic death scene of young girl called Neda who has now
become iconic. She had came with his father to participate in peaceful protest
but get shot in the heart, her last seconds were filmed by a pedestrian, spread
virally on Internet and shocked the world.
In response to these brutalities, a national strike is been called as we go to
press. The call for national strike first announced by an officially banned
leftist group called “Sacrifice of the People”. Local workers strikes in
objection to the rigged election have already been held at some instances,
notably in the country’s main car manufacturing complex, Iran Khodro.
At present, all the reformist websites are blocked, mobile communications are
restricted and almost all of the foreign correspondents, even the BBC reporters
which was traditionally among the most “gentle” ones, have been asked to quit
the country.
To circumvent censorship people have extensively used creative ways, for example
they widely use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to organise themselves
and to let the external world to know what is happening in the country. On the
other hand, a series of distributed Internet attacks by Iranian diaspora brought
down some of the regime’s official websites.
Almost all of the reformist leaders, critics, prominent journalists, student
activists, and ordinary protesters are being jailed.
Even aged reformist figures in their 80’s where not immune to the mass-arrests.
Dr. Yazdi, for example, an 80 year old ex-foreign minister , has been taken to
jail straight form the hospital bed, where he was being treated for cancer.
Moussavi and Karrubi are still free and continue reclaiming for re-election.
Perhaps because the ruling class fears that their arrest will put more oil into
people’s fire.
Outside the country, Iranians are mostly surprised by the election results, and
shocked by the regime’s brutalities, are protesting at Iranian embassies and
urging Iranian leaders to respect their votes - Moussavi’s average vote outside
the country, where it were closely observed and thus difficult to forge, was
over 80%.
So not surprisingly almost all expatriates are urging their respective
governments to not legitimise Ahmadinjad as Iran’s president and many are
asking to cut all ties with the mullahs’ regime.
Given the lack of any established resistance organisation and regarding the
iron-fist policy of the government the future of the movement remains to be
seen.
Something that seems clear is that the political cost of the election for the
regime was huge and particularly the legitimacy lost by of the supreme leader
was irreversible. It is rather soon to say that history is repeating but I think
it would be fair to say that Iran have definitely entered into a new political
era.
The unsettling fact is that the ruling class have shown that they are not
worried about the death tolls, as far as their power is at the stake.
Copyright Scottish Socialist Party 2009
Comment by sandy — 22 June, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
Facts on Mir-Hossein Moussavi
http://hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com/facts-on-mir-hossein-moussavi/
Comment by sandy — 22 June, 2009 @ 5:49 pm