source: http://ibht.blogspot.com
Is the most regrettable fact that human beings are getting more criminalized than ever before for the sake of money and selfish ends. Newer and more horrible crimes are happening in the human society labeled as advanced and civilized. World mechanisms are working for individuals who hold power and resources.Dividing the people into different subgroups, rulers are sharing their heaven.
Unless the world people understand this and baffle their design with the help of their conscience, such ill-intentioned rulers are not going to admit to their crimes.Smugglers are celebrating their days for ever. Criminals believe the existing laws are not for them. They think the laws only bind the helpless and the deprived people.
For those with access to power and resources, the law is just a scrap of paper.Criminalization process is increasing mainly because of state mechanisms and selfish characters holding them.People need to be really educated. They must be taught to think and act rightly and ethically. They must be educated enough to understand that this world runs with co-existence, not with ultraselfish motives.
Of course, individual interests and ends matter. But trying to grow prosperous by torturing or murdering others is not a sign of humanity. It is an obvious sign of bestiality.Let the people of USA, Australia, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italiy, Russia, Japan, China and many other nations understand this. Advocate against massacre politics.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Single-chamber Diet among LDP manifesto pledges
source: The Yomiuri Shimbun
The Liberal Democratic Party's campaign platform for the next House of Representatives election likely will include a pledge to make the Diet a single chamber and to cut the number of lawmakers by 30 percent in 10 years, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
According to a draft of the campaign manifesto, the LDP will pledge to cut the number of lawmakers by 10 percent within four years as a midterm target for achieving the 10-year goal.
Regarding the issue of restricting so-called hereditary candidates, which has been in the spotlight, the party's election pledges likely will include a restriction that prevents relatives with up to a third degree relationship with a Diet member who held a constituency from being able to run for the same constituency. This would come into effect in the lower house election that eventually follows the one to be held by autumn.
As the centerpiece of measures to stimulate the regions, the party will pledge to review the system in which local governments shoulder part of the burden of projects conducted in regional areas, but administered by the central government. Local governments strongly wish this requirement that they share the cost of projects beyond their control to be scrapped.
Regarding social security, the party likely will pledge to raise the level of reimbursement to medical institutions as a measure to improve provincial medical services and emergency services. The party will also pledge to make public preschool education free in about three years.
LDP Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda, the head of the party committee tasked with drawing up the campaign manifesto, and Yoshihide Suga, deputy chairman of the party's Election Strategy Council and the head of the project team under the committee, on Monday submitted the draft to Prime Minister Taro Aso, who also is LDP president, at the party headquarters. Aso gave the draft his initial approval, party sources said.
The Liberal Democratic Party's campaign platform for the next House of Representatives election likely will include a pledge to make the Diet a single chamber and to cut the number of lawmakers by 30 percent in 10 years, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
According to a draft of the campaign manifesto, the LDP will pledge to cut the number of lawmakers by 10 percent within four years as a midterm target for achieving the 10-year goal.
Regarding the issue of restricting so-called hereditary candidates, which has been in the spotlight, the party's election pledges likely will include a restriction that prevents relatives with up to a third degree relationship with a Diet member who held a constituency from being able to run for the same constituency. This would come into effect in the lower house election that eventually follows the one to be held by autumn.
As the centerpiece of measures to stimulate the regions, the party will pledge to review the system in which local governments shoulder part of the burden of projects conducted in regional areas, but administered by the central government. Local governments strongly wish this requirement that they share the cost of projects beyond their control to be scrapped.
Regarding social security, the party likely will pledge to raise the level of reimbursement to medical institutions as a measure to improve provincial medical services and emergency services. The party will also pledge to make public preschool education free in about three years.
LDP Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda, the head of the party committee tasked with drawing up the campaign manifesto, and Yoshihide Suga, deputy chairman of the party's Election Strategy Council and the head of the project team under the committee, on Monday submitted the draft to Prime Minister Taro Aso, who also is LDP president, at the party headquarters. Aso gave the draft his initial approval, party sources said.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Honduran court defiant on Zelaya
source: BBC
The Supreme Court of Honduras has rejected a demand by the Organization of American States to reinstate the ousted President, Manuel Zelaya.
OAS chief Miguel Insulza was told that the court's position was "irreversible" when he met its president for two hours in the capital Tegulcigalpa.
Mr Insulza, in Honduras on a mission to have Mr Zelaya reinstated, said he had detected no will to bring him back.
Troops forced President Zelaya out of the country on Sunday.
[OAS chief Miguel Insulza] can negotiate all he wants, except for Zelaya's situation
Enrique Ortez Honduran interim foreign minister The interim government formed after his removal says Mr Zelaya's attempts to change the Honduran constitution, and possibly extend his power, justified the army's actions. It can now expect diplomatic isolation and likely international sanctions, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs reports from Tegulcigalpa.
The OAS is expected to meet on Saturday to formally suspend the membership of Honduras.
Mr Zelaya is expected to return from exile to the country on Sunday, accompanied by OAS officials and Argentine President Cristina Kirchner.
he new Honduran government says he will be arrested. 'Despotic ambitions' Danilo Izaguirre, spokesman for the supreme court, confirmed that it had rejected the OAS secretary general's demand. http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8133981.stm
Referendum 2009: Decision-Making Flowchart
Source: Scoop (New Zealand)
Satire by Lyndon Hood
Today the Governor-General is due to "direct the Clerk of the Writs to proceed immediately to issue a writ to the Returning Officer for the holding of the indicative referendum".
This means that the proposer of the referendum now cannot take it back, even if they had their fingers crossed.
So the writ signals that the end of this acrimonious debate is near: the three-week voting period will begin in just 28 days, so there is a mere seven weeks of campaigning left to endure.
You probably already know what you think. But because of certain qualities of the question that may not be the same as knowing how to vote. To help you out, and to give you something to do during the dark evenings of the campaign period, Scoop has produced a handy decision-making flowchart which simplifies the process as much as is feasible.
Once voting is over, the decision for politicians will be a simpler one, revolving around the question, "Can I find an excuse not to touch this issue with a barge pole?" Perhaps the following will be of use to them, too.
Satire by Lyndon Hood
Today the Governor-General is due to "direct the Clerk of the Writs to proceed immediately to issue a writ to the Returning Officer for the holding of the indicative referendum".
This means that the proposer of the referendum now cannot take it back, even if they had their fingers crossed.
So the writ signals that the end of this acrimonious debate is near: the three-week voting period will begin in just 28 days, so there is a mere seven weeks of campaigning left to endure.
You probably already know what you think. But because of certain qualities of the question that may not be the same as knowing how to vote. To help you out, and to give you something to do during the dark evenings of the campaign period, Scoop has produced a handy decision-making flowchart which simplifies the process as much as is feasible.
Once voting is over, the decision for politicians will be a simpler one, revolving around the question, "Can I find an excuse not to touch this issue with a barge pole?" Perhaps the following will be of use to them, too.
Knowing Canada
You may be interested in Canadian affairs based on progressive perspectives but you may lack proper links. We, therefore, think better to provide you with links that serve you as an excellent reference directory with which you will be able to find bulky information on the phenomena around Canada. Please go to the follow links:
Act.Cuts.Ont
Activist Network
The ACTivist Magazine (Toronto)
Alberta Activist Network
Alberta Coalition against Poverty
Alberta Federation of Labour
Alberta Food Not Bombs - Calgary, Edmonton
Alberta Strike Solidarity Page
l'Alliance Canadienne pour la Paix / Canadian Peace Alliance
Alternatives . . . for a Different World/pour un Monde différent (Montreal)
Anarchist Black Cross (Montreal)
Anarchism Canada
Anti-Racism Links
Anti-Racist Action Lethbridge, Alberta
Anti-Racist Action Toronto
Anti-Racist Action Welland, Ontario
Anti-Racist Action Winnipeg
ARCNet: Networking the Nations since 1996
Artists against War
The Assembly of First Nations/ L'Assemblée des Premières Nations
Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (Quebec)
Autonomy & Solidarity (Toronto and Sudbury)
BC Mining Watch
Bill's Aboriginal Links
Black Rose Books (Montreal)
Bread Not Circuses
Brigade Québec-Cuba
British Columbia Teachers' Federation
Business & Human Rights in Vancouver
Caledon Institute of Social Policy
Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout (Ottawa) The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom
Canada Aboriginal Super Information Highway
Canada Asia Pacific Resource Network (CAPRN) (Vancouver)
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver
Canada Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet)
The Canadian : Canada's New Socially Progressive and Cross-Cultural National Newspaper
Canadian & International Green Links
Canadian Activist - Anti-War Movement
Canadian Association of Labour Media
Canadian Auto Workers Home Page
Canadian Business for Social Responsiblity
Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) - " is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice. Our research and analysis show that there are workable solutions to the policy questions facing Canadians today."
The Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace (Okotoks, Alberta)
The Canadian Coalition against the Death Penalty (Toronto)
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
Canadian Committee on Labour History
Canadian Co-operative Association, Ontario Region
Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association, Toronto
Canadian Dimension Magazine
Canadian Environmental Defense Fund
Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) - "is a non-profit, public interest organization established in 1970 to use existing laws to protect the environment and to advocate environmental law reforms. It is also a free legal advisory clinic for the public, and will act at hearings and in courts on behalf of citizens or citizens’ groups who are otherwise unable to afford legal assistance."
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Canadian Federation of Students/Fédération canadienne des étudiantes et étudiants
Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) (Ottawa)
Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy
Canadian International Labour Network
Canadian Labour Congress/Congrès du travail du Canada
Canadian Labour News 1998
Canadian Nature Federation
Canadian Network on Cuba
Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Canadian Network to End Sanctions on Iraq/Réseau canadien pour la levée des sanctions contre l'Irak
Canadian Political Parties/Les Partis politiques du Canada
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) - Ontario
Canadian Unitarian for Social Justice
Canadian United Auto Workers Local 199 - Niagara Region
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace/ La Voix Canadiennes des Femmes pour la Paix (Toronto)
Canadian-based Publications Online/Publications canadiennes en ligne
Canadians for Direct Democracy (CDD)
CanTeach: Links - First Nation
Capucine's Native Resources
Carpenters Union BC
Centre for Social Justice (Toronto)
The Christian Task Force on Central America (British Colombia)
Citizens Concerned about Free Trade (Saskatoon)
Citizens for Public Justice
Coalition against War on the People of Iraq (CAWOPI) (Vancouver)
Coalition for a Public Inquiry into the Death of Dudley George
Coalition in Solidarity with the People of Iraq (CESAPI) (Vancouver)
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COATS) -- "is a national network of individuals and organizations in Canada that began in late 1988 to organize opposition to ARMX '89, which was the country's largest weapons bazaar. COAT has continued to expose and oppose Canada's role in the international arms trade, particularly where there is trade to governments which are engaged in war or which violate human rights.
Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada/Syndicat Canadien des Communications de la'Energie et du Papier
The Communist Party of Canada
Conscience Canada - Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation: Alternative Service for Our Taxes
The Council of Canadians
Creative Resistance
Crosspoint Anti-Racism - Canada
David Orchard Campaign for Canada
Defense of Canadian Liberty Committee: MAI
Democracy Street - "a group lawsuit representing 27 protesters who were assaulted, pepper-sprayed, unjustly detained and arrested, and strip-searched (women only!) during anti-APEC activism at UBC surrounding the November 25, 1997 leader's summit."
Democracy Watch Campaigns
Directory of Peace Groups in Canada
Earth Day Canada
Earthroots Canada
Ecology Action Centre (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Edmonton Anti-Racist Action
Educating for Peace
EGALE Canada / Equality For Gays & Lesbians
Electronic Frontier Canada/La Frontière Électronique du Canada - "as founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remain protected as new computing, communications, and information technologies are introduced into Canadian society."
ETAN Canada: The East Timor Alert Network
Ethical Socialist Movement
Fair Trade Online
FirstNations.com: The Village of First Nations
Fire This Time (Vancouver)
First Nations Site Index
Flipside: Canadian Alternative Daily Newspaper
Food Not Bombs Canada
Food Not Bombs Kitchener-Waterloo
Foundation for Rural Living (Ontario) - "To advance the rural non-profit and voluntary sector, build sustainable rural capacity and enhance the quality of life for rural citizens – through the growth and development of community investment in the form of philanthropy, citizenship and collaboration."
Freedom Socialist Party: Revolutionary Socialist Internationalists
Friends of the Lubicon
Friends of the Woodwards Squat
George Woodcock Resources
Gerald and Maas Night's Lantern
GlobalJustice.ca
The Green Party of British Columbia
The Green Party of Canada and Ontario
Greenpeace Canada
Halifax Peace Coalition
History of the Canadian Auto Workers
Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC): University of Ottawa
Humanist Association of Canada
Innu Nation/Mamit Innuat WWW Site
IWW Canada
INFACT Canada - The Infant Feeding Action Coalition (Toronto)
Institute for Work & Health (Ontario)
Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories (British Columbia)
Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Collective
La Gauche : Journal pour l'indépendance, le féminisme et le socialisme
LabourNet (Canada)
Lethbridge Activist Network
Libertas Legal Collective (Montreal)
MAI-Not! Project (OPIRG-Carleton)
Maquila Solidarity Network (Toronto)
The Markland Group: For the Integrity of Disarmament Treaties (Ancaster, Ontario)
Métis National Council
Mobilization against War and Occupation (MAWO) (Vancouver)
Mondragon Bookstore and Coffee House (Winnepeg)
The Montreal Raging Grannies
My Canada Network ( The Canadian National Newspaper )
NAPE Aboriginal Links: Canada's Source for Native Sites
The National Action Committee on the Status of Women/Le Comité canadien d'action sur le statut de la femme
The National Anti-Poverty Organization: A Voice of Canada's Poor
National Farmers Union
National Inuit Youth Council
The Native Trail Canada
New Democratic Party (NDP) Socialist Caucus
New Democratic Party/Nouveau Parti démocratique (NDP) Home Page
The New Democratic Party of Canada
New Socialist Group (Toronto)
Newfoundland & Labrador Federation of Agriculture
NOWAR-PAIX (Network to Oppose War And Racism): Ottawa peace activist coalition
The Nova Scotia-Cuba Association
Nonviolent Peaceforce Canada - "s a member organization of Nonviolent Peaceforce. Nonviolent Peaceforce is an international initiative to establish a standing "peace army", ready to respond to requests to provide nonviolent international presence where that will help reduce violence and allow local people striving to achieve peace and justice to continue their important work."
The North-South Institute/L'Institut Nord-Sud
Nova Scotia Nurses' Union
The Nisga'a Nation
The North-South Institute/L'Institut Nord-Sud (Ottawa)
Oakville and District Labour Council
Ontario Activist Network
Ontario Coalition against Poverty (Toronto)
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
The Ontario Federation of Labour
Ontario Network for Human Rights
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) - Peterborough
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) - Toronto
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF)
Ontario Teachers Mobilize
Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton)
ORIHWA: Aboriginal public affairs, management and development
Ottawa Activist Network
Ottawa Raging Grannies
Palestine Solidarity Group (Vancouver)
Partnership for Public Lands (Toronto)
Peace Brigades International (PBI) Canada (Toronto)
Peace Calgary
Peace Kingston
Peace Quest - Cape Breton
PeaceWeb: A Quaker Home Page for Peace (Ottawa)
Peacewire Canada
The Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development
Peterborough Coalition for Social Justice
Peterborough Collective
Physicians for Global Survival (Canada)
Presse-toi à gauche ! Une tribune pour la gauche québécoise en marche
Productions Multi-Monde (Montréal)
Project Plowshares - " is an ecumenical agency of the Canadian Council of Churches established in 1976 to implement the churches' call to be peacemakers and to work for a world in which justice will flourish and peace abound. The mandate given to Project Ploughshares is to work with churches and related organizations, as well as governments and non-governmental organizations, in Canada and abroad, to identify, develop, and advance approaches that build peace and prevent war, and promote the peaceful resolution of political conflict."
Project Sudan (Calgary)
Public Service Alliance of Canada/Alliance de la Fonction publique du Canada
Public Workers' Union
Québec solidaire
Radically Canadian
Raging Grannies Without Borders of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario
Redwire Magazine
Reform Watch: Critical Eye on the Reform Party of Canada
Regina Peace Action Coalition
Regroupement autonome des jeunes (Montréal)
The Republic: Vancouver's Opinionated Newspaper
Resist!: A Revolutionary Marxist Feminist 'Zine (Toronto)
Revolutionary Communist Party/Parti communiste révolutionnaire (Organizing Committees)
Revolutionary Knitting Circle (Calgary)
Rights & Democracy/ Droits et Démocratie
Rooting Out Evil
Saskatchewan Federation of Labour
Saskatchewan International Labour Program
Saskatoon Activist Network
Saskatoon Raging Grannies
Saskatoon Peace Coalition
Science for Peace - " is a charitable Canadian-based organization of natural scientists, engineers, social scientists, scholars in the humanities and lay people throughout the world. It brings together professors, graduate students and first degree students who are concerned about peace, justice and making an environmentally sustainable future."
Settlers in Support of Native Sovereignty (Vancouver)
Small World Media
Social Activist Law Student Association (S.A.L.S.A.) (Halifax)
The Social Justice Committee/Comité pour la Justice Sociale (Montreal)
Socialist Party of Canada
Socialist Project
Socialist Resistance-the Canadian Section of the Committee for a Workers International
Socialist Worker (International Socialists)
SoliNet SoliNotes - A weekly publication of labor news from Canada.
South Asia Partnership Canada (Ottawa)
Stec's Commie-Pinko Home Page
Stephanie's Progressive Political Pages: An Eastern Ontario perspective
StopWar.ca: Vancouver's Anti-War Coalition
Straight Goods (Killaloe, Ontario) -- "Canada's leading independent online newsmagazine."
Student Christian Movement of Canada
Student Organized Resistance Movement (University of Alberta)
Students against Sweatshops -- Toronto
The Taskforce on the Churches and Social Responsibility (TCCR) (Toronto)
Ten Days for Global Justice: Empowering Canadians for Global Change
This Magazine (Toronto)
This Magazine (Toronto)
Toronto Coalition to Stop the War
Toronto Raging Grannies
Transparency International Canada
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada (Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance)
The Union Art Service (Toronto)
Union des forces progressistes
Union des Producteurs Agricoles (Quebec)
Union of Western Ontario New Democrats
University of Saskatchewan Centre for the Study of Co-operatives
Vancouver and District Labour Council
Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba
Vancouver Co-op Radio (CFRO 102.7 FM)
The Vancouver Island Public Interest Group (VPIRG)
Vancouver Status of Women - "works with women to ensure our full participation in the social, economic & political life of our communities in the profound that women's self-determination is a crucial step towards a just & responsible society."
Veterans Against Nuclear Arms (Richmond, British Columbia)
Victoria Peace Coalition
Vive le Canada - Our Country, Our Voice
Vote for a Change.ca: Voter Education Campaign
War on Terrorism Watch (Canadian Association of University Teachers)
War Resisters Support Campaign/Campagne d'appui aux résistantEs à la guerre - "is a broad-based coalition of community, faith, labour and other organizations and individuals that have come together to support U.S. soldiers seeking asylum in Canada because they refuse to fight in the illegal war in Iraq."
Web Networks Community: Canada's Online Home for Social Change
Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) (Vancouver)
Winnipeg Labour Council
WomensWeb: An Online Community for Women
working TV (Vancouver)
Woodstock (Ontario) Raging Grannies
The Workers' Health & Safety Centre (Toronto)
Working TV: Labour News on Television (Vancouver)
World Federalist Movement - Canada
Writers against the War
WTO Action.Org
Youth Action Network (Toronto) - " is dedicated to helping youth become more informed and actively involved in order to move towards a just and sustainable society. We strongly believe in the ability of youth to affect change in the world. We understand the need for a stronger voice and for greater participation in our local and global communities. The main functions of YAN are to provide information and promote action."
Youth for Social Justice (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Act.Cuts.Ont
Activist Network
The ACTivist Magazine (Toronto)
Alberta Activist Network
Alberta Coalition against Poverty
Alberta Federation of Labour
Alberta Food Not Bombs - Calgary, Edmonton
Alberta Strike Solidarity Page
l'Alliance Canadienne pour la Paix / Canadian Peace Alliance
Alternatives . . . for a Different World/pour un Monde différent (Montreal)
Anarchist Black Cross (Montreal)
Anarchism Canada
Anti-Racism Links
Anti-Racist Action Lethbridge, Alberta
Anti-Racist Action Toronto
Anti-Racist Action Welland, Ontario
Anti-Racist Action Winnipeg
ARCNet: Networking the Nations since 1996
Artists against War
The Assembly of First Nations/ L'Assemblée des Premières Nations
Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (Quebec)
Autonomy & Solidarity (Toronto and Sudbury)
BC Mining Watch
Bill's Aboriginal Links
Black Rose Books (Montreal)
Bread Not Circuses
Brigade Québec-Cuba
British Columbia Teachers' Federation
Business & Human Rights in Vancouver
Caledon Institute of Social Policy
Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout (Ottawa) The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom
Canada Aboriginal Super Information Highway
Canada Asia Pacific Resource Network (CAPRN) (Vancouver)
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver
Canada Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet)
The Canadian : Canada's New Socially Progressive and Cross-Cultural National Newspaper
Canadian & International Green Links
Canadian Activist - Anti-War Movement
Canadian Association of Labour Media
Canadian Auto Workers Home Page
Canadian Business for Social Responsiblity
Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) - " is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice. Our research and analysis show that there are workable solutions to the policy questions facing Canadians today."
The Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace (Okotoks, Alberta)
The Canadian Coalition against the Death Penalty (Toronto)
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
Canadian Committee on Labour History
Canadian Co-operative Association, Ontario Region
Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association, Toronto
Canadian Dimension Magazine
Canadian Environmental Defense Fund
Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) - "is a non-profit, public interest organization established in 1970 to use existing laws to protect the environment and to advocate environmental law reforms. It is also a free legal advisory clinic for the public, and will act at hearings and in courts on behalf of citizens or citizens’ groups who are otherwise unable to afford legal assistance."
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Canadian Federation of Students/Fédération canadienne des étudiantes et étudiants
Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) (Ottawa)
Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy
Canadian International Labour Network
Canadian Labour Congress/Congrès du travail du Canada
Canadian Labour News 1998
Canadian Nature Federation
Canadian Network on Cuba
Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Canadian Network to End Sanctions on Iraq/Réseau canadien pour la levée des sanctions contre l'Irak
Canadian Political Parties/Les Partis politiques du Canada
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) - Ontario
Canadian Unitarian for Social Justice
Canadian United Auto Workers Local 199 - Niagara Region
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace/ La Voix Canadiennes des Femmes pour la Paix (Toronto)
Canadian-based Publications Online/Publications canadiennes en ligne
Canadians for Direct Democracy (CDD)
CanTeach: Links - First Nation
Capucine's Native Resources
Carpenters Union BC
Centre for Social Justice (Toronto)
The Christian Task Force on Central America (British Colombia)
Citizens Concerned about Free Trade (Saskatoon)
Citizens for Public Justice
Coalition against War on the People of Iraq (CAWOPI) (Vancouver)
Coalition for a Public Inquiry into the Death of Dudley George
Coalition in Solidarity with the People of Iraq (CESAPI) (Vancouver)
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COATS) -- "is a national network of individuals and organizations in Canada that began in late 1988 to organize opposition to ARMX '89, which was the country's largest weapons bazaar. COAT has continued to expose and oppose Canada's role in the international arms trade, particularly where there is trade to governments which are engaged in war or which violate human rights.
Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada/Syndicat Canadien des Communications de la'Energie et du Papier
The Communist Party of Canada
Conscience Canada - Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation: Alternative Service for Our Taxes
The Council of Canadians
Creative Resistance
Crosspoint Anti-Racism - Canada
David Orchard Campaign for Canada
Defense of Canadian Liberty Committee: MAI
Democracy Street - "a group lawsuit representing 27 protesters who were assaulted, pepper-sprayed, unjustly detained and arrested, and strip-searched (women only!) during anti-APEC activism at UBC surrounding the November 25, 1997 leader's summit."
Democracy Watch Campaigns
Directory of Peace Groups in Canada
Earth Day Canada
Earthroots Canada
Ecology Action Centre (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Edmonton Anti-Racist Action
Educating for Peace
EGALE Canada / Equality For Gays & Lesbians
Electronic Frontier Canada/La Frontière Électronique du Canada - "as founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remain protected as new computing, communications, and information technologies are introduced into Canadian society."
ETAN Canada: The East Timor Alert Network
Ethical Socialist Movement
Fair Trade Online
FirstNations.com: The Village of First Nations
Fire This Time (Vancouver)
First Nations Site Index
Flipside: Canadian Alternative Daily Newspaper
Food Not Bombs Canada
Food Not Bombs Kitchener-Waterloo
Foundation for Rural Living (Ontario) - "To advance the rural non-profit and voluntary sector, build sustainable rural capacity and enhance the quality of life for rural citizens – through the growth and development of community investment in the form of philanthropy, citizenship and collaboration."
Freedom Socialist Party: Revolutionary Socialist Internationalists
Friends of the Lubicon
Friends of the Woodwards Squat
George Woodcock Resources
Gerald and Maas Night's Lantern
GlobalJustice.ca
The Green Party of British Columbia
The Green Party of Canada and Ontario
Greenpeace Canada
Halifax Peace Coalition
History of the Canadian Auto Workers
Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC): University of Ottawa
Humanist Association of Canada
Innu Nation/Mamit Innuat WWW Site
IWW Canada
INFACT Canada - The Infant Feeding Action Coalition (Toronto)
Institute for Work & Health (Ontario)
Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories (British Columbia)
Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Collective
La Gauche : Journal pour l'indépendance, le féminisme et le socialisme
LabourNet (Canada)
Lethbridge Activist Network
Libertas Legal Collective (Montreal)
MAI-Not! Project (OPIRG-Carleton)
Maquila Solidarity Network (Toronto)
The Markland Group: For the Integrity of Disarmament Treaties (Ancaster, Ontario)
Métis National Council
Mobilization against War and Occupation (MAWO) (Vancouver)
Mondragon Bookstore and Coffee House (Winnepeg)
The Montreal Raging Grannies
My Canada Network ( The Canadian National Newspaper )
NAPE Aboriginal Links: Canada's Source for Native Sites
The National Action Committee on the Status of Women/Le Comité canadien d'action sur le statut de la femme
The National Anti-Poverty Organization: A Voice of Canada's Poor
National Farmers Union
National Inuit Youth Council
The Native Trail Canada
New Democratic Party (NDP) Socialist Caucus
New Democratic Party/Nouveau Parti démocratique (NDP) Home Page
The New Democratic Party of Canada
New Socialist Group (Toronto)
Newfoundland & Labrador Federation of Agriculture
NOWAR-PAIX (Network to Oppose War And Racism): Ottawa peace activist coalition
The Nova Scotia-Cuba Association
Nonviolent Peaceforce Canada - "s a member organization of Nonviolent Peaceforce. Nonviolent Peaceforce is an international initiative to establish a standing "peace army", ready to respond to requests to provide nonviolent international presence where that will help reduce violence and allow local people striving to achieve peace and justice to continue their important work."
The North-South Institute/L'Institut Nord-Sud
Nova Scotia Nurses' Union
The Nisga'a Nation
The North-South Institute/L'Institut Nord-Sud (Ottawa)
Oakville and District Labour Council
Ontario Activist Network
Ontario Coalition against Poverty (Toronto)
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
The Ontario Federation of Labour
Ontario Network for Human Rights
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) - Peterborough
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) - Toronto
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF)
Ontario Teachers Mobilize
Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton)
ORIHWA: Aboriginal public affairs, management and development
Ottawa Activist Network
Ottawa Raging Grannies
Palestine Solidarity Group (Vancouver)
Partnership for Public Lands (Toronto)
Peace Brigades International (PBI) Canada (Toronto)
Peace Calgary
Peace Kingston
Peace Quest - Cape Breton
PeaceWeb: A Quaker Home Page for Peace (Ottawa)
Peacewire Canada
The Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development
Peterborough Coalition for Social Justice
Peterborough Collective
Physicians for Global Survival (Canada)
Presse-toi à gauche ! Une tribune pour la gauche québécoise en marche
Productions Multi-Monde (Montréal)
Project Plowshares - " is an ecumenical agency of the Canadian Council of Churches established in 1976 to implement the churches' call to be peacemakers and to work for a world in which justice will flourish and peace abound. The mandate given to Project Ploughshares is to work with churches and related organizations, as well as governments and non-governmental organizations, in Canada and abroad, to identify, develop, and advance approaches that build peace and prevent war, and promote the peaceful resolution of political conflict."
Project Sudan (Calgary)
Public Service Alliance of Canada/Alliance de la Fonction publique du Canada
Public Workers' Union
Québec solidaire
Radically Canadian
Raging Grannies Without Borders of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario
Redwire Magazine
Reform Watch: Critical Eye on the Reform Party of Canada
Regina Peace Action Coalition
Regroupement autonome des jeunes (Montréal)
The Republic: Vancouver's Opinionated Newspaper
Resist!: A Revolutionary Marxist Feminist 'Zine (Toronto)
Revolutionary Communist Party/Parti communiste révolutionnaire (Organizing Committees)
Revolutionary Knitting Circle (Calgary)
Rights & Democracy/ Droits et Démocratie
Rooting Out Evil
Saskatchewan Federation of Labour
Saskatchewan International Labour Program
Saskatoon Activist Network
Saskatoon Raging Grannies
Saskatoon Peace Coalition
Science for Peace - " is a charitable Canadian-based organization of natural scientists, engineers, social scientists, scholars in the humanities and lay people throughout the world. It brings together professors, graduate students and first degree students who are concerned about peace, justice and making an environmentally sustainable future."
Settlers in Support of Native Sovereignty (Vancouver)
Small World Media
Social Activist Law Student Association (S.A.L.S.A.) (Halifax)
The Social Justice Committee/Comité pour la Justice Sociale (Montreal)
Socialist Party of Canada
Socialist Project
Socialist Resistance-the Canadian Section of the Committee for a Workers International
Socialist Worker (International Socialists)
SoliNet SoliNotes - A weekly publication of labor news from Canada.
South Asia Partnership Canada (Ottawa)
Stec's Commie-Pinko Home Page
Stephanie's Progressive Political Pages: An Eastern Ontario perspective
StopWar.ca: Vancouver's Anti-War Coalition
Straight Goods (Killaloe, Ontario) -- "Canada's leading independent online newsmagazine."
Student Christian Movement of Canada
Student Organized Resistance Movement (University of Alberta)
Students against Sweatshops -- Toronto
The Taskforce on the Churches and Social Responsibility (TCCR) (Toronto)
Ten Days for Global Justice: Empowering Canadians for Global Change
This Magazine (Toronto)
This Magazine (Toronto)
Toronto Coalition to Stop the War
Toronto Raging Grannies
Transparency International Canada
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada (Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance)
The Union Art Service (Toronto)
Union des forces progressistes
Union des Producteurs Agricoles (Quebec)
Union of Western Ontario New Democrats
University of Saskatchewan Centre for the Study of Co-operatives
Vancouver and District Labour Council
Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba
Vancouver Co-op Radio (CFRO 102.7 FM)
The Vancouver Island Public Interest Group (VPIRG)
Vancouver Status of Women - "works with women to ensure our full participation in the social, economic & political life of our communities in the profound that women's self-determination is a crucial step towards a just & responsible society."
Veterans Against Nuclear Arms (Richmond, British Columbia)
Victoria Peace Coalition
Vive le Canada - Our Country, Our Voice
Vote for a Change.ca: Voter Education Campaign
War on Terrorism Watch (Canadian Association of University Teachers)
War Resisters Support Campaign/Campagne d'appui aux résistantEs à la guerre - "is a broad-based coalition of community, faith, labour and other organizations and individuals that have come together to support U.S. soldiers seeking asylum in Canada because they refuse to fight in the illegal war in Iraq."
Web Networks Community: Canada's Online Home for Social Change
Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) (Vancouver)
Winnipeg Labour Council
WomensWeb: An Online Community for Women
working TV (Vancouver)
Woodstock (Ontario) Raging Grannies
The Workers' Health & Safety Centre (Toronto)
Working TV: Labour News on Television (Vancouver)
World Federalist Movement - Canada
Writers against the War
WTO Action.Org
Youth Action Network (Toronto) - " is dedicated to helping youth become more informed and actively involved in order to move towards a just and sustainable society. We strongly believe in the ability of youth to affect change in the world. We understand the need for a stronger voice and for greater participation in our local and global communities. The main functions of YAN are to provide information and promote action."
Youth for Social Justice (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Challenge to Tesco: Stop exploiting the workers
Source: Morning Star Daily (UK)
The Unite union has issued a public challenge to Tesco CEO Terry Leahy at the company's AGM in Glasgow to personally meet exploited workers employed at companies which supply meat to his firm.
The union took the unusual route of tabling a motion at the AGM, calling for action to end the exploitation and discrimination of workers employed by companies in Britain and Ireland that supply meat to Tesco.
The motion was defeated by shareholders, but the point was made.
From the floor of the AGM, Unite deputy general secretary Jack Dromey said: "Will Terry Leahy personally meet with workers employed at companies that supply meat to Tesco to hear first hand how some workers are experiencing harsh and divisive conditions that in some cases are abusive?"
Mr Dromey also called on Mr Leahy to state whether he was prepared to work with the union to end what the described as discrimination in many parts of the supply chain.
He said that agency workers - overwhelmingly migrant - were on poorer conditions of employment, undercutting indigenous workers.
"The exploitation of migrant agency workers and undercutting of indigenous workers divides workplaces, damages community social cohesion and fuels racism," he stated.
"Now, we have taken their cause to the AGM of Tesco shareholders, holding Terry Leahy to account.
"Tesco leads in size but lags behind competitor supermarkets who are accepting their responsibilities.
"The meat industry will forever be scarred by exploitation, undercutting and discrimination if the dominant player washes its hands of responsibility."
Protesters from Unite also demonstrated outside the AGM, brandishing flags and placards.
It is not the first time that allegations of human rights abuses have been levelled at Tesco.
Anti-poverty charity War on Want has accused the firm of paying sweat shop wages in the developing world while the global UNI union has accused Tesco of anti-union intimidation. Tesco has vigorously rejected the claims.
The concerns over temporary workers in the meat industry have sparked an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
A spokeswoman for the EHRC commented: "We are carrying out an inquiry, using our powers under section 16 of the Equality Act 2006, to look at how people working in the meat and poultry processing industry are recruited and treated once they are at work.
"We are particularly interested in any differences in pay and conditions of agency and temporary workers doing the same job as permanent employees."
Responding to the latest criticism, a Tesco spokesman said: "Temporary workers have been a feature of the agricultural and meat processing sectors since at least the second world war. Consumer demand for products changes which means there has to be flexibility.
"Our suppliers are independent businesses. But we apply - and audit against - robust standards for how all workers should be treated, regardless of their employment status or nationality.
"Unite should not be making unfounded allegations against responsible businesses or suggesting that Tesco has walked away from cross-industry endeavour, which is not the case." The EHRC investigation is still at the evidence-gathering stage and no fixed date has been set for its conclusion.
The Unite union has issued a public challenge to Tesco CEO Terry Leahy at the company's AGM in Glasgow to personally meet exploited workers employed at companies which supply meat to his firm.
The union took the unusual route of tabling a motion at the AGM, calling for action to end the exploitation and discrimination of workers employed by companies in Britain and Ireland that supply meat to Tesco.
The motion was defeated by shareholders, but the point was made.
From the floor of the AGM, Unite deputy general secretary Jack Dromey said: "Will Terry Leahy personally meet with workers employed at companies that supply meat to Tesco to hear first hand how some workers are experiencing harsh and divisive conditions that in some cases are abusive?"
Mr Dromey also called on Mr Leahy to state whether he was prepared to work with the union to end what the described as discrimination in many parts of the supply chain.
He said that agency workers - overwhelmingly migrant - were on poorer conditions of employment, undercutting indigenous workers.
"The exploitation of migrant agency workers and undercutting of indigenous workers divides workplaces, damages community social cohesion and fuels racism," he stated.
"Now, we have taken their cause to the AGM of Tesco shareholders, holding Terry Leahy to account.
"Tesco leads in size but lags behind competitor supermarkets who are accepting their responsibilities.
"The meat industry will forever be scarred by exploitation, undercutting and discrimination if the dominant player washes its hands of responsibility."
Protesters from Unite also demonstrated outside the AGM, brandishing flags and placards.
It is not the first time that allegations of human rights abuses have been levelled at Tesco.
Anti-poverty charity War on Want has accused the firm of paying sweat shop wages in the developing world while the global UNI union has accused Tesco of anti-union intimidation. Tesco has vigorously rejected the claims.
The concerns over temporary workers in the meat industry have sparked an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
A spokeswoman for the EHRC commented: "We are carrying out an inquiry, using our powers under section 16 of the Equality Act 2006, to look at how people working in the meat and poultry processing industry are recruited and treated once they are at work.
"We are particularly interested in any differences in pay and conditions of agency and temporary workers doing the same job as permanent employees."
Responding to the latest criticism, a Tesco spokesman said: "Temporary workers have been a feature of the agricultural and meat processing sectors since at least the second world war. Consumer demand for products changes which means there has to be flexibility.
"Our suppliers are independent businesses. But we apply - and audit against - robust standards for how all workers should be treated, regardless of their employment status or nationality.
"Unite should not be making unfounded allegations against responsible businesses or suggesting that Tesco has walked away from cross-industry endeavour, which is not the case." The EHRC investigation is still at the evidence-gathering stage and no fixed date has been set for its conclusion.
"People Beware! Mousavi is not your brother and he is not on your side!"
source: Revolution
June 2, 2009. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from Communiqué no. 6 of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), put out on the morning of June 20.
These words might sound unpleasant for many of you engaged in bloody battle with the enemy, but open your eyes and ears!
Mir Hossein Mousavi called on you to "consider the Basiji your brothers." This means you should consider your brothers those who used knives and machetes on the bodies of your dearest sons and daughters. Mousavi told you "not to consider the army to be against you." This means considering to be your friends those who under the orders of Khamenei are trying to smash your uprising and are shooting our youth in many corners of the country.
Young people, be alert!
Mousavi claims that "the genuine call of Islamic revolution" is what has moved you. This is a blatant lie. He knows very well that what has moved you is a burning desire to change this world. It's impossible to change the existing order without overthrowing the Islamic Republic.
Mousavi claimed that "the heritage of the far-sighted Imam [Khomeini]" is what has inspired you. This is also a blatant lie. Khomeini's first measures after taking power were to slice women's faces with knives, force them to cover their heads, and take away their basic rights. He sent the army to suppress the people of Kurdistan, Khoozistan, and Turkmen Sahra. Is that what has inspired you?
Brave young women and men, pay attention to Mousavi's real demands!
He calls you to "the Islamic revolution as it was and the Islamic Republic as it should be." He tells you, "You are not against the sacred Islamic Republic system and its legal structures." He tells you that you must seek reform, "a reform with a return to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution...."
Look at this society drowning in corruption, destruction, superstition, dark religious ignorance, drug addiction, and prostitution. These are the fruits of those pure principles. Principles against which you have courageously risen.
Mousavi says, "Many of our problems are the consequence of lies." But he himself is lying... One of Mousavi's big lies in 1981 was to slander the Sarbedaran uprising in Iran as "inspired by the Shah." The Sarbedaran uprising was waged to overthrow the Islamic Republic and save the people's revolution, but it was defeated. These are facts that you all must know.
In these decisive days, besides bravery and perseverance in the battlefield, you must arm and strengthen your mind with the truths of the last 30 years. These truths light up our road and further strengthen us. Mousavi, with his religious preaching, wants to numb your searching brains. If you know the truth—that the quarrel between Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and [opposition figure Mehdi] Karoubi on the one hand, and Khamenei and Ahmadinejad on the other, is a quarrel between two power- and money-hungry Mafia gangs and has nothing to do with your interests—then you can find the real liberating road and dare to scale the heights for your liberation.
Young women and men—fight! But fight with open eyes and lofty goals!
Mousavi's trademarks are the slogan "God is great" and the [Islamic] color green. Many of you think that these symbols are important for your unity. But they are first and foremost the symbols of the society that Mousavi promises to build—nothing but the same Islamic Republic with minor reforms to make it stronger.
Is this really the kind of society you want? Is it worth so much sacrifice? Why can't we make sacrifices for much higher and loftier goals? Why not struggle for a fundamentally different society and future? A society free of all oppression and exploitation. A society where everyone shares and cooperates. Where the equality of women and men is a fundamental and self-evident principle. Where the beautiful scenes of collaboration, mutual help, and consideration we are witnessing in our common battles today would be institutionalized. A society that is rid of boredom and stagnation, and always lively and active.
Shouldn't we think about these things and debate them even in the midst of the battle? In fact it is decisive for the future of our uprising to know what kind of society we want and how we can bring it about. This view, perspective, and commitment must be linked up broadly with your anger and struggle today against this bigoted and fraudulent rule. This is the only way to prevent our efforts in this historical juncture from going to waste and prevent us from confusing friends and enemies.
Let's raise our level of consciousness! And widely stir debate among the masses!
Form revolutionary cells of the most advanced young women and men in each neighborhood, factory, and university to widely distribute leaflets, do exposures and raise consciousness among the masses and bring more people into the various militant struggles.
Iran—a power structure cracked but far from swept away
June 22,2009. A World to Win News Service. Rage continues to sweep Iran. Young women and men are prepared to offer their lives to confront a brutal regime. The pillars of Iran's power structure have been shaken and cracked.
At Friday prayer services on June 19, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei firmly took the side of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his electoral dispute with the opposition and announced that any attempt to repeat the week-long protests would be crushed. Nevertheless, thousands of youth and others came out into the streets the next day, knowing very well that they would face batons, teargas, and gunfire.
The security forces tried to create an atmosphere of terror around the area between Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) and Enghelab (Revolution) squares. Nobody was allowed to gather. People of all ages were beaten indiscriminately. Then the security forces closed the cross streets to prevent those in one area from joining those in another. Some people, feeling powerless and discouraged, chose to go home. But thousands of youth had the courage and ingenuity to get around the obstacles. They gathered and marched toward Azadi Square. More people joined them and the crowd—tens of thousands according to some reports, hundreds of thousands according to others—began marching together from there. That was not the end of it. The protesters had to confront the forces of reaction blocking the way. Clashes continued throughout the day and until midnight. Some people who couldn't get to the main crowd joined another large march in Forsate Shirazi Street or smaller ones in various Tehran neighborhoods.
People also protested in other cities, particularly Shiraz, Isfahan, and Rasht, as well as others where confrontations with the security forces were reported. They faced special anti-riot police wearing body armor and the vicious club-wielding two-man motorcycle teams of the Basij, a volunteer vigilante corps led, trained and armed by the regime's elite Revolutionary Guards. The regime presents the Basij as representatives of the masses of people, especially the poor.
Protestors shouted, "Death to dictators, Death to Khamenei, Death to this deceitful regime!" During moments when the reactionary forces were preparing to attack and moments when the protestors decided to break through the lines of the reactionary forces, they boosted their own spirits and the spirits of their comrades by chanting, "Fear nothing, we're all together, fear nothing…."
As the bullets of the reaction targeted the hearts of the precious children of the masses, this strengthened the determination of their comrades, as they shouted, "Death to Khamenei, Death to Ahmadinejad." A young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan got out of the blocked car where she was riding with her music teacher to get some fresh air and sat down on a curb. She was shot in the chest by a Basij sniper and fell to the ground. People all over the world saw a video showing the last moments of her life. She was murdered on Amirabad Shomali Avenue just north of Enghelab Square. People in the crowd that day vowed it would be renamed Neda Street.
On some of the footage that has appeared, groups of Basij militiamen can be seen firing their handguns directly into crowds—and people charge them anyway, running toward them under fire until the Basiji turn and run—and are overrun. The regime says 10 people were killed that day; others put the toll much higher. Angry protestors set fire to a Basij base facility and two petrol stations that night.
Sporadic protests continued on June 21 and the cries of "Death to dictators" echoed even louder. The next day, the Revolutionary Guards issued a threat that they would put down any further unrest themselves. Until then, the regime often tried to hide behind the phony ''civilian'' Basiji and pretend that it didn't know who was shooting protestors.
An hour later, thousands of young demonstrators gathered in Haft-e Tir Square in the more southern part of Tehran to express their determination. They shouted that they would rather die than accept being treated with contempt.
The significance of this protest stands out even more when Ayatollah Khamenei's speech after Friday prayers at Tehran University is analyzed. Many people were waiting for this speech to see how he would resolve the electoral dispute between the president and the opposition. Khamenei's speech was unprecedented, and shocked some people. He not only took Ahmadinejad's side more enthusiastically than ever, but also condemned and threatened anyone who questioned the election results. Cheating was impossible in the Islamic Republic, he said, and any suggestion otherwise represented impermissible questioning of the Islamic Republic itself.
This was aimed at opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has tried to keep the protest movement entirely within the framework of the Islamic Republic founded by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khamenei said that the election was a referendum on the Islamic Republic and that the 85 percent of the voters who allegedly took part were voting for the system. Then, using very strong language, he threatened protesters. He demanded that the candidates pursue their complaints through the legal system. But he also clearly said he did not recognize the legitimacy of any opposition to the Islamic Republic. He put aside the unbiased father-of-the-nation role that he had long cultivated and came out as the godfather of one faction of the Islamic Republic, claiming the right of that faction to bully the whole nation.
This Friday prayer service was a show of force, since the heads of all the military bodies, parliament, and court system were present to show their solidarity and intimidate the people. He was clearly issuing orders to the other factions to shut up and accept his decision, submit to his faction and call off all protests—or else.
Yet while the people's uprising was what had terrified the dominant faction and made the people the real target of Khamenei and his clique, there is no doubt that the internal conflicts were what triggered the whole upsurge. This speech was the sign of a new stage in the deepening crisis.
This speech could be taken as a parallel to Khomeini's speech on June 18, 1981, which marked the end of the alliance between his Islamic fundamentalists (including Khamenei and Akbar Rafsanjani, now Iran's richest man, a pillar of the Islamic regime, and a powerful backer of Mousavi) and the so-called Islamic liberals such as Abul-Hassan Banisadr, who was president at that time. Khomeini stripped Banisadr of his title as commander of the military forces and forced him out of office. Khomeini's coup d'état and the establishment of the Islamic Republic provoked mass protests. But the Islamic regime responded with extreme brutality. The arrest, imprisoning, and massacre of the communists and other revolutionaries started immediately. The reign of terror continued all through the 1980s until the Iran-Iraq war ended. Then, to try to make sure nothing of the spirit of revolution was left, in the summer of 1988 they massacred thousands (according to some accounts tens of thousands) of the communists and revolutionaries who were still in prison.
Despite the similarities, the situation today is not the same. Most importantly, a huge and growing part of the people no longer have trust or faith in the regime. People who had not yet voiced any response to the political situation clearly shouted, "Death to Khamenei," a slogan seldom if ever heard before at any protest in Iran. Others shouted, "You want a fight, let's fight—we are fighting women and men!"
But Khamenei and his clique are not the only ones trying to maintain the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and the economic and social system this power structure serves. While fighting for the interest of his faction, Mousavi is trying hard to restore the "values of the Islamic Republic of Imam Khomeini." These are not words—the state system called Velyat-e-Faqih, the regime's foundational doctrine of "the rule of the Supreme Jurisprudent," is the apple of his eye. In a statement to his supporters he said, "We are not confronting the Basij, Revolutionary Guards or the army. The Basiji are our brothers, the Revolutionary Guards are the protectors of our revolution and our system. The army protects our borders. We are not confronting our sacred system and its legal institutions. We are confronting the wrong-doing and the lies, and we are seeking a reform that requires going back to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution."
As the "reformist" ex-president Khatami, warned Khamenei, "When you close off the legal avenues of protest, you are in fact opening another way, and god knows where it may lead."
Because of the determination and persistence of the people's struggle, what began as a quarrel within the regime has brought Iran to a crisis of legitimacy and an institutional crisis. During the 1979 revolution, when the Shah could no longer hold onto power, the U.S. convinced him to abdicate to preserve the cohesion of the army and prevent the revolution from going any further. That's how that crisis was resolved, to the advantage of the imperialist system, and the people paid the price. The U.S. and the other imperialist powers have long done their best to determine events in Iran (invasions, coups, etc., not to mention the workings of the international market itself) and will do whatever they can to push this crisis toward a resolution that is to their relative advantage, which would certainly be to the disadvantage of the revolutionary interests of the people. Several observers have commented that American indignation about a stolen election is criminal hypocrisy coming from a power and a government that has for so long held up puppet tyrants like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, whom Obama embraced just a few weeks earlier in Cairo. When it comes to rigged elections and torture-enforced repression, Mubarak is hard to surpass.
As the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) said in one of their frequent leaflets addressed to the Iranian people during this period, "One thing is clear: We still have a long way to go on what we've started. People should prepare themselves for days and months ahead, to remain in the streets in different forms. The slogans of the uprising should become clearer and deeper, and the level of struggle raised so that it can seize victory."
At Friday prayer services on June 19, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei firmly took the side of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his electoral dispute with the opposition and announced that any attempt to repeat the week-long protests would be crushed. Nevertheless, thousands of youth and others came out into the streets the next day, knowing very well that they would face batons, teargas, and gunfire.
The security forces tried to create an atmosphere of terror around the area between Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) and Enghelab (Revolution) squares. Nobody was allowed to gather. People of all ages were beaten indiscriminately. Then the security forces closed the cross streets to prevent those in one area from joining those in another. Some people, feeling powerless and discouraged, chose to go home. But thousands of youth had the courage and ingenuity to get around the obstacles. They gathered and marched toward Azadi Square. More people joined them and the crowd—tens of thousands according to some reports, hundreds of thousands according to others—began marching together from there. That was not the end of it. The protesters had to confront the forces of reaction blocking the way. Clashes continued throughout the day and until midnight. Some people who couldn't get to the main crowd joined another large march in Forsate Shirazi Street or smaller ones in various Tehran neighborhoods.
People also protested in other cities, particularly Shiraz, Isfahan, and Rasht, as well as others where confrontations with the security forces were reported. They faced special anti-riot police wearing body armor and the vicious club-wielding two-man motorcycle teams of the Basij, a volunteer vigilante corps led, trained and armed by the regime's elite Revolutionary Guards. The regime presents the Basij as representatives of the masses of people, especially the poor.
Protestors shouted, "Death to dictators, Death to Khamenei, Death to this deceitful regime!" During moments when the reactionary forces were preparing to attack and moments when the protestors decided to break through the lines of the reactionary forces, they boosted their own spirits and the spirits of their comrades by chanting, "Fear nothing, we're all together, fear nothing…."
As the bullets of the reaction targeted the hearts of the precious children of the masses, this strengthened the determination of their comrades, as they shouted, "Death to Khamenei, Death to Ahmadinejad." A young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan got out of the blocked car where she was riding with her music teacher to get some fresh air and sat down on a curb. She was shot in the chest by a Basij sniper and fell to the ground. People all over the world saw a video showing the last moments of her life. She was murdered on Amirabad Shomali Avenue just north of Enghelab Square. People in the crowd that day vowed it would be renamed Neda Street.
On some of the footage that has appeared, groups of Basij militiamen can be seen firing their handguns directly into crowds—and people charge them anyway, running toward them under fire until the Basiji turn and run—and are overrun. The regime says 10 people were killed that day; others put the toll much higher. Angry protestors set fire to a Basij base facility and two petrol stations that night.
Sporadic protests continued on June 21 and the cries of "Death to dictators" echoed even louder. The next day, the Revolutionary Guards issued a threat that they would put down any further unrest themselves. Until then, the regime often tried to hide behind the phony ''civilian'' Basiji and pretend that it didn't know who was shooting protestors.
An hour later, thousands of young demonstrators gathered in Haft-e Tir Square in the more southern part of Tehran to express their determination. They shouted that they would rather die than accept being treated with contempt.
The significance of this protest stands out even more when Ayatollah Khamenei's speech after Friday prayers at Tehran University is analyzed. Many people were waiting for this speech to see how he would resolve the electoral dispute between the president and the opposition. Khamenei's speech was unprecedented, and shocked some people. He not only took Ahmadinejad's side more enthusiastically than ever, but also condemned and threatened anyone who questioned the election results. Cheating was impossible in the Islamic Republic, he said, and any suggestion otherwise represented impermissible questioning of the Islamic Republic itself.
This was aimed at opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has tried to keep the protest movement entirely within the framework of the Islamic Republic founded by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khamenei said that the election was a referendum on the Islamic Republic and that the 85 percent of the voters who allegedly took part were voting for the system. Then, using very strong language, he threatened protesters. He demanded that the candidates pursue their complaints through the legal system. But he also clearly said he did not recognize the legitimacy of any opposition to the Islamic Republic. He put aside the unbiased father-of-the-nation role that he had long cultivated and came out as the godfather of one faction of the Islamic Republic, claiming the right of that faction to bully the whole nation.
This Friday prayer service was a show of force, since the heads of all the military bodies, parliament, and court system were present to show their solidarity and intimidate the people. He was clearly issuing orders to the other factions to shut up and accept his decision, submit to his faction and call off all protests—or else.
Yet while the people's uprising was what had terrified the dominant faction and made the people the real target of Khamenei and his clique, there is no doubt that the internal conflicts were what triggered the whole upsurge. This speech was the sign of a new stage in the deepening crisis.
This speech could be taken as a parallel to Khomeini's speech on June 18, 1981, which marked the end of the alliance between his Islamic fundamentalists (including Khamenei and Akbar Rafsanjani, now Iran's richest man, a pillar of the Islamic regime, and a powerful backer of Mousavi) and the so-called Islamic liberals such as Abul-Hassan Banisadr, who was president at that time. Khomeini stripped Banisadr of his title as commander of the military forces and forced him out of office. Khomeini's coup d'état and the establishment of the Islamic Republic provoked mass protests. But the Islamic regime responded with extreme brutality. The arrest, imprisoning, and massacre of the communists and other revolutionaries started immediately. The reign of terror continued all through the 1980s until the Iran-Iraq war ended. Then, to try to make sure nothing of the spirit of revolution was left, in the summer of 1988 they massacred thousands (according to some accounts tens of thousands) of the communists and revolutionaries who were still in prison.
Despite the similarities, the situation today is not the same. Most importantly, a huge and growing part of the people no longer have trust or faith in the regime. People who had not yet voiced any response to the political situation clearly shouted, "Death to Khamenei," a slogan seldom if ever heard before at any protest in Iran. Others shouted, "You want a fight, let's fight—we are fighting women and men!"
But Khamenei and his clique are not the only ones trying to maintain the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and the economic and social system this power structure serves. While fighting for the interest of his faction, Mousavi is trying hard to restore the "values of the Islamic Republic of Imam Khomeini." These are not words—the state system called Velyat-e-Faqih, the regime's foundational doctrine of "the rule of the Supreme Jurisprudent," is the apple of his eye. In a statement to his supporters he said, "We are not confronting the Basij, Revolutionary Guards or the army. The Basiji are our brothers, the Revolutionary Guards are the protectors of our revolution and our system. The army protects our borders. We are not confronting our sacred system and its legal institutions. We are confronting the wrong-doing and the lies, and we are seeking a reform that requires going back to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution."
As the "reformist" ex-president Khatami, warned Khamenei, "When you close off the legal avenues of protest, you are in fact opening another way, and god knows where it may lead."
Because of the determination and persistence of the people's struggle, what began as a quarrel within the regime has brought Iran to a crisis of legitimacy and an institutional crisis. During the 1979 revolution, when the Shah could no longer hold onto power, the U.S. convinced him to abdicate to preserve the cohesion of the army and prevent the revolution from going any further. That's how that crisis was resolved, to the advantage of the imperialist system, and the people paid the price. The U.S. and the other imperialist powers have long done their best to determine events in Iran (invasions, coups, etc., not to mention the workings of the international market itself) and will do whatever they can to push this crisis toward a resolution that is to their relative advantage, which would certainly be to the disadvantage of the revolutionary interests of the people. Several observers have commented that American indignation about a stolen election is criminal hypocrisy coming from a power and a government that has for so long held up puppet tyrants like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, whom Obama embraced just a few weeks earlier in Cairo. When it comes to rigged elections and torture-enforced repression, Mubarak is hard to surpass.
As the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) said in one of their frequent leaflets addressed to the Iranian people during this period, "One thing is clear: We still have a long way to go on what we've started. People should prepare themselves for days and months ahead, to remain in the streets in different forms. The slogans of the uprising should become clearer and deeper, and the level of struggle raised so that it can seize victory."
“A Society Drowning in Corruption, Destruction, Superstition, Dark Religious Ignorance, Drug Addiction and Prostitution”
source: Revolution
by Larry EverestJune 26, 2009
When the results of Iran’s presidential election were announced on the night of June 12, barely three to four hours after the polls had closed, millions of Iranians were shocked. Incumbent—and widely hated—President Ahmadinejad was supposedly re-elected by a 63 to 33 percent margin. Millions were outraged by what they felt was a blatant theft of the election—a coup many called it—and massive street protests began almost immediately.
As many forms of protest erupted, eyewitnesses reported that anti-regime sentiments were being openly expressed by more and more people, even beyond outrage at what was widely perceived as a stolen election: “....a huge and growing part of the people no longer have trust or faith in the regime. People who had not yet voiced any response to the political situation clearly shouted, ‘Death to Khamenei,’ a slogan seldom if ever heard before at any protest in Iran.” (“Iran—a power structure cracked but far from swept away,” A World To Win News Service [AWTWNS]), 6/22/09).
Many forces are in the field, including those loyal to and looking to reform the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). And many of those in the streets look to those forces as a positive alternative to the intolerable status quo, and are raising the green banner of Islam (for more in-depth analysis of the various forces involved in the current situation in Iran, see "Uprising in Iran,” by V.T. at revcom.us).
At the same time, there are also more radical forces, and big questions are being debated and struggled over. Among those involved in the protests, there is an exhilarating atmosphere of challenging things that have been accepted for years, and urgent debate over the way forward. For a revealing and very unique snapshot of this atmosphere, I highly recommend readers read—and circulate—the article "Saturday, Azadi Street, Tehran," from A World To Win New Service (6/22/09, available at revcom.us).
These heroic and just protests, which have gone on for over two weeks at this writing, have been met with vicious and escalating repression, including threats, beatings, torture and murder by the IRI. Students from Tehran University who were arrested write that their prison conditions—which included sexual assault, beatings, and withholding food and water—were “worse than Guantanamo.” Journalists are being harassed, arrested, and expelled from Iran in an effort to suppress news coverage. Opposition newspapers and websites are being shut down and supporters rounded up and imprisoned, with reports that some are being tortured to force them to “confess” to being part of a “foreign plot.” (Guardian UK, 6/26)
”Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes, trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants,” a Human Rights Watch representative stated. (BBC, 6/27).
Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a leading cleric (unrelated to former President Khatami), threatened to execute protestors in a nationally broadcast sermon on Friday, June 26, declaring they should be “dealt with without mercy,” because they were opposing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who is supposedly anointed by God to rule and must be obeyed, making any who rebel against him “at war with God.”
Behind the Anger and Outrage
The widely perceived theft of the election was the immediate trigger for this outpouring of anger and mass defiance. But more fundamentally, Iran’s mass uprising is being propelled by the suppressed rage of millions of Iranians at the suffocating and oppressive character of life in the IRI, life marked by what the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) calls a “society drowning in corruption, destruction, superstition, dark religious ignorance, drug addiction and prostitution.” (CPIMLM) communiqué no 6: "People Beware! Mousavi is not your brother and he is not on your side!")
The roots of these conditions lie in a whole history, and present-day reality, of a world dominated by imperialism—by a system driven to maximize profit through exploitation, whose logic and political and economic relations are enforced through systemic brutality and oppression. You could spin the globe, point to any country on it, and discover a legacy of imperialist invasions, coups, puppet regimes, torture chambers, death squads, and repression to enforce those relations, and this is certainly the case with Iran. With its massive oil reserves, and strategic geopolitical location, Iran has long been in the crosshairs of imperialist powers—the British until World War 2, and then mainly the U.S.
Until 1978, imperialist domination of Iran took the form of the rule of the Shah, a tyrannical monarch who had been installed by the U.S. CIA in a coup in 1953 and remained a loyal client throughout his reign. Widely hated by Iranians, the Shah remained in power, including thanks in large measure to SAVAK, his U.S.-trained secret police.
In 1978, a revolutionary wave drawing in millions of Iranians swept across Iran. The Shah initially tried to drown the revolution in blood—murdering thousands on one day—“Bloody Friday”—in September.
Little as this is known, the coming to power of the current regime was in significant ways facilitated by the U.S. When it became clear the Shah's massacres were backfiring, the U.S. made a call that their best option, under the circumstances, was to facilitate the coming to power of the forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. The U.S. judged these Islamic forces to be a better bet for maintaining U.S. imperialist domination of the region, than allowing the revolution to develop.
I was in Iran shortly after the revolution and again in 1980, reporting for Revolution (then the Revolutionary Worker), and I saw the Islamic Republic being consolidated with the kind of violent attacks on the regime’s opponents we’re witnessing today. A flowering of political activity and debate had mushroomed in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution, evidenced by rallies involving tens of thousands, radical and revolutionary literature covering sidewalks, and a host of other political activities. This situation had the potential to develop into a revolutionary movement that actually broke the chains of imperialist domination.
The forces around Khomeini served, under the circumstances, the interests of imperialism. These forces were not a perfect fit for their interests, but they did violently crush radical and revolutionary political forces, and brutally repress sections of the people—like women—whose demands came up against the political, economic, social and cultural structures and traditions that enforced the old order. During my trips I saw the regime set about crushing its opponents and consolidating its power. Scenes today recall those images—pipe-wielding thugs from Iran’s Hezbollah (the “party of God”) attacking those who were opposed to an Islamic theocracy—from bourgeois and Islamic democrats to revolutionary communists assaulting demonstrations, then arresting and murdering thousands of communists and other opponents of the regime during the 1980s. Then, as now, women were a prime target of the violently patriarchal Islamic clerics.
Since then, repression and tight control of the state’s many armed police and security organizations and extreme, religiously sanctioned punishments have been prime elements in the Islamic Republic’s survival. And, as I have outlined, U.S. imperialism, including its current president Barack Obama, is responsible for the fundamental conditions that created this situation. They have no right to shed crocodile tears or express outrage over all this—it has been the workings of their system, both its exploitative nature and conscious U.S. political policies in service of that, which fundamentally created these conditions, even as the U.S. now finds these forces an obstacle and threat to their economic, political and military objectives in the region.
Growing Discontent
Today discontent and alienation over the suffocating, repressive, dead-end and obscurantist—or Dark Ages—character of Islamic rule has been rising particularly among the young, especially those in urban areas and in particular among students and women. All this has been reflected in the slogans of today’s protests: death to dictatorship, freedom of thought, freedom or death, and the widespread demand for an end to press, artistic, and intellectual censorship and suppression. And it reflects huge social, political and economic changes—in the world and in Iran—Iran’s urbanization (where 70 percent of the people now live), its youth (over 60 percent are under 30), and wider access to education than before—including for women.
The regime has intensified its punishment of those who get out of line. Last year in Iran there were at least 346 executions (including by hanging), the second highest number in the world according to Amnesty International. On one day alone—July 27, 2008—29 people were hung in Iran for alleged crimes including armed robbery, selling drugs, and even drinking alcohol and possessing ammunition. (Telegraph 7/27/08).
Workers’, students’, and women’s protests are routinely attacked and suppressed. Anyone arrested or detained faces a cleric-controlled judiciary in which proceedings are often secret, where defendants have few rights or access to lawyers, and “the world learns of [detainee’s] fate only if a verdict happens to be announced on state TV.” (AP, 6/26).
The Oppression of Women
A tremendous and powerful force that is emerging through the uprising and protests in Iran is opposition to the oppression of women, including large numbers of women in the streets. The IRI has imposed Islamic sharia law, codified legal discrimination—really apartheid—against women, reimposed a host of medieval strictures and punishments, and denied women basic rights:
The suppression of women is a cornerstone—ideologically, politically and socially—of Islamic rule. “The ideal society of the Islamic fundamentalists is based on the total subordination of women to men at every level of society. The morality of their ideal society absolutely hinges on women knowing the role assigned to them as loyal sex objects of the men they belong to and actively producing offspring for them—especially of the male variety.” (Statement from March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), “For An Internationalist March 8--The International Women’s Day; Revolutionary Women Cry Out: Revolution Is the Way Out for Humanity,” Revolution #157, February 22, 2009, http://www.revcom.us/a/157/mar8_call-en.html)
“The compulsory hijab (veil) was imposed for women in public, with even slight violations bringing severe punishment (seventy-four lashes or a year's imprisonment)… Lashing, amputation, and stoning have been applied by the courts, with the latter punishment reserved for women convicted of adultery. The courts apply lighter sentences than previously for husbands, fathers, and brothers accused of ‘honor killings.’ There are even regulations against public displays of affection. Under Khomeini child marriage was allowed once more, with the age of marriage reduced from eighteen to nine for girls (revised, after protests, to thirteen) and fifteen for boys. New laws encouraged polygamy and prevented women from leaving abusive husbands.” (“Divided Iran on the Eve, Malise Ruthven, reviewing “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,” Janet Afary, New York Review of Books, 7/2/09)
Women found guilty of adultery or other offenses can be stoned to death—with the barbaric means for carrying out this sentence legally prescribed for maximum suffering: “Iran's Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning. It even dictates that the stones are large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately,” Amnesty International reported on a day nine women and two men were awaiting stoning. “Article 102 of the Penal Code states that men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones.” (“Iran: Death by stoning, a grotesque and unacceptable penalty,” Amnesty International, 1/5/09)
Women are also discriminated against in employment, and prevented from playing their full and rightful role in society, despite constituting some 60 percent of Iran’s university students: “The fact is that 30 years after the revolution, women constitute only 15% of the formal sector paid labor force (that is, those entitled to paid holidays, maternity leave, pension, and other provisions of labor law). According to the results of the 1385/2006 Iranian census, only 3.5 million Iranian women are salaried workers, compared with 23.5 million men....The most recent Iranian census (1385/2006) shows that the female share of the labor force is less than 20%, considerably below the world average of 45%.” (“Where Are Iran’s Women?,” Valentine M. Moghadam, The Iranian Revolution at 30, The Middle East Institute—www.mideasti.org, 2/10/09)
As the March 8 Women’s Organization summed up after the regime’s murder of Neda Agha-Soltan during the recent uprising, “Neda became target of the hatred of medieval Islamic System who cannot even tolerate the simple participation of women in society.” (Statement of June 2009)
Social developments, including the impact of the revolution and the eight-year Iran-Iraq War as well as global changes generally, have raised tensions in Iranian society between the social position, experience, and aspirations of Iran’s women and the regime’s Islamic strictures. Women’s literacy is over 95 percent, and most families want their daughters to get an education. The situation of women in Iran is a stark concentration of the nature of the regime. But, as with all the oppression people in that country face, the roots of this are found, again, in the global system of capitalism and imperialism, and the ways in which it integrates, and works through reactionary feudal forces, traditions, and social relations in countries dominated by imperialism.
Those who see the solution to the oppression of women coming from the West would be well served to look at the kind of "women's liberation" U.S. invasion, war, and death have brought to women in the U.S. puppet state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (yes, that is the official name of the U.S.-installed puppet regime), and the U.S.-installed Iraqi regime which has adopted Islam as the basis of government.
The "Statement from March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan): For An Internationalist March 8—The International Women’s Day; Revolutionary Women Cry Out: Revolution Is the Way Out for Humanity" posed this:
"Pause and ask yourselves: what kind of society is this (in the world) that the subordination of half of humanity to the other half is one of its pillars and moral canons? What kind of world are we living in that from one end to the other, organized (state sanctioned) women’s oppression and religious ignorance are used for maintaining “social coherence”? Honor killing, stoning to death and forced marriage in parts of the world like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Kurdistan, and India are rampant, while hidden conjugal violence in the “civilized” West kills women in silence, and yet all this is said to have resulted from the “weakening of family values,” “abortion,” and the “weakening of religious beliefs”—these are all too pervasive features of our world.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is the most reactionary oppressive state that the women of Iran have experienced. But the imperialist ruling classes of the U.S. who are preparing new rounds of aggression and war in the Middle East are no better and their attempts to justify their crimes in the Middle East with hypocritical words about liberation of women is disgusting. They equally benefit from the oppression of women in the U.S. and around the world. In fact this oppression is built into their world capitalist system."
"Trade in women’s flesh is accepted as another legitimate capitalist commodity to be bought and sold. Marx said capitalism generalizes prostitution. Indeed, we see that today. In Iran and Afghanistan, ruled by Islamic Republics, women are stoned to death for sleeping with the wrong man but prostitution is increasingly one of the most accessible jobs offered to women."
The IRI—A Reactionary Regime—And Not Anti-Imperialist At All
Some political trends in the U.S. and elsewhere argue that because of the IRI’s conflicts with the U.S., it’s an anti-imperialist regime. These forces echo accusations by the IRI that the source of the people's unrest is Western intrigue, and that the protests are an uprising of the privileged elite against the common people. These arguments are profoundly wrong and represent a complete misunderstanding of the nature of imperialism, the nature of the IRI, and the kind of genuinely liberatory radical change needed in Iran, and around the world.
It is true that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism poses a serious challenge to U.S. imperialist objectives. And Iran, a relatively stable and powerful Islamic Republic, has in many ways been at the epicenter of that challenge.
Today, the U.S. doesn’t have the kind of tight grip on Iran that it did under the Shah, and, “due to a combination of factors, [Iran] has acquired greater maneuvering room and geopolitical reach. Chief among these factors are its extensive oil and natural gas reserves in combination with its coherent, ideologically driven, deeply rooted, and far reaching (within Iran and elements beyond, especially regionally) state institutions and structure.” (See “An Assessment of the Momentum Towards War Between the United States and Iran: Causes and Potential Ramifications,” available at revcom.us, for a detailed analysis.)
But the basic reality is that Iran remains a dependent and oppressed nation within the framework of, and subordinate to, world imperialism (including many imperialist countries and other reactionary powers). Take Iran’s very extensive oil and natural gas industries, over which it has relative control. The IRI has been able to wield its control of these industries and the revenues they generate (an estimated $70 billion last year) to enact various welfare measures (often aimed at cultivating a loyal social base) and subsidies (particularly for food and gasoline), which together with its extensive apparatus of social, economic, and political control has enabled it to maintain a tight grip on power.
These state sectors of Iran’s economy are not an expression of national liberation. They sharply illustrate Iran's subordination to the world economy and the twisted and distorted economic and social relations that it spawns. Iran’s economy is still geared to producing oil for the world market (80 percent of its government revenue still comes from oil sales), so the global financial crisis and the wild swings in the world market and the price of oil have a major ripple effect in Iran. Even when oil prices and income have risen, they haven’t always meant growth and rising incomes, but often inflation and greater inequality instead. Iran remains dependent on the imperialist world for the technology needed to expand and modernize its energy sector, so—in part due to U.S. sanctions—while Iran has the world’s second largest natural gas and third largest oil reserves, it doesn’t have the capacity to refine gasoline and produce enough natural gas for its domestic market, so it’s forced to import them (making it subject to all manner of pressure by other countries and the vagaries of the market).
Because of this structural dependency on the "world market" (imperialism), the economic situation for Iranians has worsened in the last several years. Subsidies have been slashed; and inflation is now over 23 percent a year. Economic growth in 2009 will be less than half what it was in 2007. (NY Times, 6/10/09) Many factories have shut down and some 40 percent live below the poverty line. “The official rate of unemployment has been 20%; among young people this figure stands at 40%. Every year, 250,000 graduates seek to enter the work force, but only 70,000 of them find work.” (“Economic War Against the People: a Surge of Crisis and of Resistance,” November issue of Haghighat, Number 36, Organ of the CPIMLM).
In short, in the form of the Islamic Republic, Iran's economy is profoundly enmeshed in the global networks of world capitalism-imperialism. And the social relations that exist in that country reflect and serve that, including the powerful role of feudal and religious fundamentalist forces and traditions.
With this understanding, one can appreciate how positive it is that sections of society with some access to education and culture are rebelling against the deadly, deadening, life-crushing Islamic fundamentalist morality and world outlook. This is a good thing.
It is true that absent a strong pole representing the oppressed with nothing to lose but their chains, acting as emancipators of humanity, with a revolutionary communist leadership, these forces and their demands will get pulled under the wing of this or that reformist trend—bourgeois democracy, attempts to find a moderate Islamic solution, or bouncing back and forth between the two. But that only indicates the need for revolutionary forces to embrace all this, and to lead; to put their arms around a wide, diverse, complex, and potentially very positive spectrum of sections of society rebelling against oppression in any form.
Imperialism—The Core of the Problem, Not Part of the Solution
During the current uprising, the U.S. rulers have posed as the friends of the Iranian people, supporters of their protest and struggle against repression and injustice. On June 23, President Barack Obama declared that he was “appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” that he mourned “each and every innocent life that is lost,” that the U.S. “respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs.”
As I briefly sketched out earlier in this article, these are the words of the commander-in-chief of the world’s dominant imperialist power, a power that in its quest for global hegemony directly dominated Iran for 25 bitter years under the Shah, and has tried to regain its grip on Iran ever since. Is Obama “appalled” by the fact that the U.S. fueled an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq and encouraging Saddam to use chemical weapons against Iran, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives)? No. Obama has never mentioned this. Obama claims to respect Iran’s sovereignty, yet in 2001 and 2003 the U.S. empire he heads invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq—two countries right on Iran’s borders.
Most essentially, the "solution" promised by "Western Democracy" is really the “solution” of bringing Iran more firmly under the domination of, and integrated into the networks of U.S. imperialism. But it is the very economic and social relations fundamentally dictated by imperialism that are at the heart of all the misery, poverty, brutal repression and dark-ages obscurantist oppression that the Iranian people are rising up against.
The world, and the people of Iran need, something far more liberating than either the horrors of Islamic fundamentalist rule, or the horrors U.S. imperialism brings to the world. And, as part of bringing forward another way, worldwide, it is essential to support the uprising of the Iranian people against the IRI’s oppressive tyranny whatever twists and turns it goes through, and appreciating what a tremendous thing it is when millions seize on the openings created by divisions among the powers-that-be to step onto the political stage. And especially for people in the United States, it also means actively exposing and opposing the actions of our “own” rulers to shape events in Iran to further their imperialist interests.
by Larry EverestJune 26, 2009
When the results of Iran’s presidential election were announced on the night of June 12, barely three to four hours after the polls had closed, millions of Iranians were shocked. Incumbent—and widely hated—President Ahmadinejad was supposedly re-elected by a 63 to 33 percent margin. Millions were outraged by what they felt was a blatant theft of the election—a coup many called it—and massive street protests began almost immediately.
As many forms of protest erupted, eyewitnesses reported that anti-regime sentiments were being openly expressed by more and more people, even beyond outrage at what was widely perceived as a stolen election: “....a huge and growing part of the people no longer have trust or faith in the regime. People who had not yet voiced any response to the political situation clearly shouted, ‘Death to Khamenei,’ a slogan seldom if ever heard before at any protest in Iran.” (“Iran—a power structure cracked but far from swept away,” A World To Win News Service [AWTWNS]), 6/22/09).
Many forces are in the field, including those loyal to and looking to reform the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). And many of those in the streets look to those forces as a positive alternative to the intolerable status quo, and are raising the green banner of Islam (for more in-depth analysis of the various forces involved in the current situation in Iran, see "Uprising in Iran,” by V.T. at revcom.us).
At the same time, there are also more radical forces, and big questions are being debated and struggled over. Among those involved in the protests, there is an exhilarating atmosphere of challenging things that have been accepted for years, and urgent debate over the way forward. For a revealing and very unique snapshot of this atmosphere, I highly recommend readers read—and circulate—the article "Saturday, Azadi Street, Tehran," from A World To Win New Service (6/22/09, available at revcom.us).
These heroic and just protests, which have gone on for over two weeks at this writing, have been met with vicious and escalating repression, including threats, beatings, torture and murder by the IRI. Students from Tehran University who were arrested write that their prison conditions—which included sexual assault, beatings, and withholding food and water—were “worse than Guantanamo.” Journalists are being harassed, arrested, and expelled from Iran in an effort to suppress news coverage. Opposition newspapers and websites are being shut down and supporters rounded up and imprisoned, with reports that some are being tortured to force them to “confess” to being part of a “foreign plot.” (Guardian UK, 6/26)
”Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes, trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants,” a Human Rights Watch representative stated. (BBC, 6/27).
Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a leading cleric (unrelated to former President Khatami), threatened to execute protestors in a nationally broadcast sermon on Friday, June 26, declaring they should be “dealt with without mercy,” because they were opposing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who is supposedly anointed by God to rule and must be obeyed, making any who rebel against him “at war with God.”
Behind the Anger and Outrage
The widely perceived theft of the election was the immediate trigger for this outpouring of anger and mass defiance. But more fundamentally, Iran’s mass uprising is being propelled by the suppressed rage of millions of Iranians at the suffocating and oppressive character of life in the IRI, life marked by what the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) calls a “society drowning in corruption, destruction, superstition, dark religious ignorance, drug addiction and prostitution.” (CPIMLM) communiqué no 6: "People Beware! Mousavi is not your brother and he is not on your side!")
The roots of these conditions lie in a whole history, and present-day reality, of a world dominated by imperialism—by a system driven to maximize profit through exploitation, whose logic and political and economic relations are enforced through systemic brutality and oppression. You could spin the globe, point to any country on it, and discover a legacy of imperialist invasions, coups, puppet regimes, torture chambers, death squads, and repression to enforce those relations, and this is certainly the case with Iran. With its massive oil reserves, and strategic geopolitical location, Iran has long been in the crosshairs of imperialist powers—the British until World War 2, and then mainly the U.S.
Until 1978, imperialist domination of Iran took the form of the rule of the Shah, a tyrannical monarch who had been installed by the U.S. CIA in a coup in 1953 and remained a loyal client throughout his reign. Widely hated by Iranians, the Shah remained in power, including thanks in large measure to SAVAK, his U.S.-trained secret police.
In 1978, a revolutionary wave drawing in millions of Iranians swept across Iran. The Shah initially tried to drown the revolution in blood—murdering thousands on one day—“Bloody Friday”—in September.
Little as this is known, the coming to power of the current regime was in significant ways facilitated by the U.S. When it became clear the Shah's massacres were backfiring, the U.S. made a call that their best option, under the circumstances, was to facilitate the coming to power of the forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. The U.S. judged these Islamic forces to be a better bet for maintaining U.S. imperialist domination of the region, than allowing the revolution to develop.
I was in Iran shortly after the revolution and again in 1980, reporting for Revolution (then the Revolutionary Worker), and I saw the Islamic Republic being consolidated with the kind of violent attacks on the regime’s opponents we’re witnessing today. A flowering of political activity and debate had mushroomed in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution, evidenced by rallies involving tens of thousands, radical and revolutionary literature covering sidewalks, and a host of other political activities. This situation had the potential to develop into a revolutionary movement that actually broke the chains of imperialist domination.
The forces around Khomeini served, under the circumstances, the interests of imperialism. These forces were not a perfect fit for their interests, but they did violently crush radical and revolutionary political forces, and brutally repress sections of the people—like women—whose demands came up against the political, economic, social and cultural structures and traditions that enforced the old order. During my trips I saw the regime set about crushing its opponents and consolidating its power. Scenes today recall those images—pipe-wielding thugs from Iran’s Hezbollah (the “party of God”) attacking those who were opposed to an Islamic theocracy—from bourgeois and Islamic democrats to revolutionary communists assaulting demonstrations, then arresting and murdering thousands of communists and other opponents of the regime during the 1980s. Then, as now, women were a prime target of the violently patriarchal Islamic clerics.
Since then, repression and tight control of the state’s many armed police and security organizations and extreme, religiously sanctioned punishments have been prime elements in the Islamic Republic’s survival. And, as I have outlined, U.S. imperialism, including its current president Barack Obama, is responsible for the fundamental conditions that created this situation. They have no right to shed crocodile tears or express outrage over all this—it has been the workings of their system, both its exploitative nature and conscious U.S. political policies in service of that, which fundamentally created these conditions, even as the U.S. now finds these forces an obstacle and threat to their economic, political and military objectives in the region.
Growing Discontent
Today discontent and alienation over the suffocating, repressive, dead-end and obscurantist—or Dark Ages—character of Islamic rule has been rising particularly among the young, especially those in urban areas and in particular among students and women. All this has been reflected in the slogans of today’s protests: death to dictatorship, freedom of thought, freedom or death, and the widespread demand for an end to press, artistic, and intellectual censorship and suppression. And it reflects huge social, political and economic changes—in the world and in Iran—Iran’s urbanization (where 70 percent of the people now live), its youth (over 60 percent are under 30), and wider access to education than before—including for women.
The regime has intensified its punishment of those who get out of line. Last year in Iran there were at least 346 executions (including by hanging), the second highest number in the world according to Amnesty International. On one day alone—July 27, 2008—29 people were hung in Iran for alleged crimes including armed robbery, selling drugs, and even drinking alcohol and possessing ammunition. (Telegraph 7/27/08).
Workers’, students’, and women’s protests are routinely attacked and suppressed. Anyone arrested or detained faces a cleric-controlled judiciary in which proceedings are often secret, where defendants have few rights or access to lawyers, and “the world learns of [detainee’s] fate only if a verdict happens to be announced on state TV.” (AP, 6/26).
The Oppression of Women
A tremendous and powerful force that is emerging through the uprising and protests in Iran is opposition to the oppression of women, including large numbers of women in the streets. The IRI has imposed Islamic sharia law, codified legal discrimination—really apartheid—against women, reimposed a host of medieval strictures and punishments, and denied women basic rights:
The suppression of women is a cornerstone—ideologically, politically and socially—of Islamic rule. “The ideal society of the Islamic fundamentalists is based on the total subordination of women to men at every level of society. The morality of their ideal society absolutely hinges on women knowing the role assigned to them as loyal sex objects of the men they belong to and actively producing offspring for them—especially of the male variety.” (Statement from March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), “For An Internationalist March 8--The International Women’s Day; Revolutionary Women Cry Out: Revolution Is the Way Out for Humanity,” Revolution #157, February 22, 2009, http://www.revcom.us/a/157/mar8_call-en.html)
“The compulsory hijab (veil) was imposed for women in public, with even slight violations bringing severe punishment (seventy-four lashes or a year's imprisonment)… Lashing, amputation, and stoning have been applied by the courts, with the latter punishment reserved for women convicted of adultery. The courts apply lighter sentences than previously for husbands, fathers, and brothers accused of ‘honor killings.’ There are even regulations against public displays of affection. Under Khomeini child marriage was allowed once more, with the age of marriage reduced from eighteen to nine for girls (revised, after protests, to thirteen) and fifteen for boys. New laws encouraged polygamy and prevented women from leaving abusive husbands.” (“Divided Iran on the Eve, Malise Ruthven, reviewing “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,” Janet Afary, New York Review of Books, 7/2/09)
Women found guilty of adultery or other offenses can be stoned to death—with the barbaric means for carrying out this sentence legally prescribed for maximum suffering: “Iran's Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning. It even dictates that the stones are large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately,” Amnesty International reported on a day nine women and two men were awaiting stoning. “Article 102 of the Penal Code states that men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones.” (“Iran: Death by stoning, a grotesque and unacceptable penalty,” Amnesty International, 1/5/09)
Women are also discriminated against in employment, and prevented from playing their full and rightful role in society, despite constituting some 60 percent of Iran’s university students: “The fact is that 30 years after the revolution, women constitute only 15% of the formal sector paid labor force (that is, those entitled to paid holidays, maternity leave, pension, and other provisions of labor law). According to the results of the 1385/2006 Iranian census, only 3.5 million Iranian women are salaried workers, compared with 23.5 million men....The most recent Iranian census (1385/2006) shows that the female share of the labor force is less than 20%, considerably below the world average of 45%.” (“Where Are Iran’s Women?,” Valentine M. Moghadam, The Iranian Revolution at 30, The Middle East Institute—www.mideasti.org, 2/10/09)
As the March 8 Women’s Organization summed up after the regime’s murder of Neda Agha-Soltan during the recent uprising, “Neda became target of the hatred of medieval Islamic System who cannot even tolerate the simple participation of women in society.” (Statement of June 2009)
Social developments, including the impact of the revolution and the eight-year Iran-Iraq War as well as global changes generally, have raised tensions in Iranian society between the social position, experience, and aspirations of Iran’s women and the regime’s Islamic strictures. Women’s literacy is over 95 percent, and most families want their daughters to get an education. The situation of women in Iran is a stark concentration of the nature of the regime. But, as with all the oppression people in that country face, the roots of this are found, again, in the global system of capitalism and imperialism, and the ways in which it integrates, and works through reactionary feudal forces, traditions, and social relations in countries dominated by imperialism.
Those who see the solution to the oppression of women coming from the West would be well served to look at the kind of "women's liberation" U.S. invasion, war, and death have brought to women in the U.S. puppet state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (yes, that is the official name of the U.S.-installed puppet regime), and the U.S.-installed Iraqi regime which has adopted Islam as the basis of government.
The "Statement from March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan): For An Internationalist March 8—The International Women’s Day; Revolutionary Women Cry Out: Revolution Is the Way Out for Humanity" posed this:
"Pause and ask yourselves: what kind of society is this (in the world) that the subordination of half of humanity to the other half is one of its pillars and moral canons? What kind of world are we living in that from one end to the other, organized (state sanctioned) women’s oppression and religious ignorance are used for maintaining “social coherence”? Honor killing, stoning to death and forced marriage in parts of the world like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Kurdistan, and India are rampant, while hidden conjugal violence in the “civilized” West kills women in silence, and yet all this is said to have resulted from the “weakening of family values,” “abortion,” and the “weakening of religious beliefs”—these are all too pervasive features of our world.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is the most reactionary oppressive state that the women of Iran have experienced. But the imperialist ruling classes of the U.S. who are preparing new rounds of aggression and war in the Middle East are no better and their attempts to justify their crimes in the Middle East with hypocritical words about liberation of women is disgusting. They equally benefit from the oppression of women in the U.S. and around the world. In fact this oppression is built into their world capitalist system."
"Trade in women’s flesh is accepted as another legitimate capitalist commodity to be bought and sold. Marx said capitalism generalizes prostitution. Indeed, we see that today. In Iran and Afghanistan, ruled by Islamic Republics, women are stoned to death for sleeping with the wrong man but prostitution is increasingly one of the most accessible jobs offered to women."
The IRI—A Reactionary Regime—And Not Anti-Imperialist At All
Some political trends in the U.S. and elsewhere argue that because of the IRI’s conflicts with the U.S., it’s an anti-imperialist regime. These forces echo accusations by the IRI that the source of the people's unrest is Western intrigue, and that the protests are an uprising of the privileged elite against the common people. These arguments are profoundly wrong and represent a complete misunderstanding of the nature of imperialism, the nature of the IRI, and the kind of genuinely liberatory radical change needed in Iran, and around the world.
It is true that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism poses a serious challenge to U.S. imperialist objectives. And Iran, a relatively stable and powerful Islamic Republic, has in many ways been at the epicenter of that challenge.
Today, the U.S. doesn’t have the kind of tight grip on Iran that it did under the Shah, and, “due to a combination of factors, [Iran] has acquired greater maneuvering room and geopolitical reach. Chief among these factors are its extensive oil and natural gas reserves in combination with its coherent, ideologically driven, deeply rooted, and far reaching (within Iran and elements beyond, especially regionally) state institutions and structure.” (See “An Assessment of the Momentum Towards War Between the United States and Iran: Causes and Potential Ramifications,” available at revcom.us, for a detailed analysis.)
But the basic reality is that Iran remains a dependent and oppressed nation within the framework of, and subordinate to, world imperialism (including many imperialist countries and other reactionary powers). Take Iran’s very extensive oil and natural gas industries, over which it has relative control. The IRI has been able to wield its control of these industries and the revenues they generate (an estimated $70 billion last year) to enact various welfare measures (often aimed at cultivating a loyal social base) and subsidies (particularly for food and gasoline), which together with its extensive apparatus of social, economic, and political control has enabled it to maintain a tight grip on power.
These state sectors of Iran’s economy are not an expression of national liberation. They sharply illustrate Iran's subordination to the world economy and the twisted and distorted economic and social relations that it spawns. Iran’s economy is still geared to producing oil for the world market (80 percent of its government revenue still comes from oil sales), so the global financial crisis and the wild swings in the world market and the price of oil have a major ripple effect in Iran. Even when oil prices and income have risen, they haven’t always meant growth and rising incomes, but often inflation and greater inequality instead. Iran remains dependent on the imperialist world for the technology needed to expand and modernize its energy sector, so—in part due to U.S. sanctions—while Iran has the world’s second largest natural gas and third largest oil reserves, it doesn’t have the capacity to refine gasoline and produce enough natural gas for its domestic market, so it’s forced to import them (making it subject to all manner of pressure by other countries and the vagaries of the market).
Because of this structural dependency on the "world market" (imperialism), the economic situation for Iranians has worsened in the last several years. Subsidies have been slashed; and inflation is now over 23 percent a year. Economic growth in 2009 will be less than half what it was in 2007. (NY Times, 6/10/09) Many factories have shut down and some 40 percent live below the poverty line. “The official rate of unemployment has been 20%; among young people this figure stands at 40%. Every year, 250,000 graduates seek to enter the work force, but only 70,000 of them find work.” (“Economic War Against the People: a Surge of Crisis and of Resistance,” November issue of Haghighat, Number 36, Organ of the CPIMLM).
In short, in the form of the Islamic Republic, Iran's economy is profoundly enmeshed in the global networks of world capitalism-imperialism. And the social relations that exist in that country reflect and serve that, including the powerful role of feudal and religious fundamentalist forces and traditions.
With this understanding, one can appreciate how positive it is that sections of society with some access to education and culture are rebelling against the deadly, deadening, life-crushing Islamic fundamentalist morality and world outlook. This is a good thing.
It is true that absent a strong pole representing the oppressed with nothing to lose but their chains, acting as emancipators of humanity, with a revolutionary communist leadership, these forces and their demands will get pulled under the wing of this or that reformist trend—bourgeois democracy, attempts to find a moderate Islamic solution, or bouncing back and forth between the two. But that only indicates the need for revolutionary forces to embrace all this, and to lead; to put their arms around a wide, diverse, complex, and potentially very positive spectrum of sections of society rebelling against oppression in any form.
Imperialism—The Core of the Problem, Not Part of the Solution
During the current uprising, the U.S. rulers have posed as the friends of the Iranian people, supporters of their protest and struggle against repression and injustice. On June 23, President Barack Obama declared that he was “appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” that he mourned “each and every innocent life that is lost,” that the U.S. “respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs.”
As I briefly sketched out earlier in this article, these are the words of the commander-in-chief of the world’s dominant imperialist power, a power that in its quest for global hegemony directly dominated Iran for 25 bitter years under the Shah, and has tried to regain its grip on Iran ever since. Is Obama “appalled” by the fact that the U.S. fueled an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq and encouraging Saddam to use chemical weapons against Iran, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives)? No. Obama has never mentioned this. Obama claims to respect Iran’s sovereignty, yet in 2001 and 2003 the U.S. empire he heads invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq—two countries right on Iran’s borders.
Most essentially, the "solution" promised by "Western Democracy" is really the “solution” of bringing Iran more firmly under the domination of, and integrated into the networks of U.S. imperialism. But it is the very economic and social relations fundamentally dictated by imperialism that are at the heart of all the misery, poverty, brutal repression and dark-ages obscurantist oppression that the Iranian people are rising up against.
The world, and the people of Iran need, something far more liberating than either the horrors of Islamic fundamentalist rule, or the horrors U.S. imperialism brings to the world. And, as part of bringing forward another way, worldwide, it is essential to support the uprising of the Iranian people against the IRI’s oppressive tyranny whatever twists and turns it goes through, and appreciating what a tremendous thing it is when millions seize on the openings created by divisions among the powers-that-be to step onto the political stage. And especially for people in the United States, it also means actively exposing and opposing the actions of our “own” rulers to shape events in Iran to further their imperialist interests.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More Civil Wars Imminent in the Developing World
We have observed that more civil wars are imminent in the developing countries. Their political instability and aggravated conflicts reflect this possibility.
A most dangerous trend in the recent years is the process of rapid puppetization of the world where the ruling class members submit their national sovereignty to the hegemonistic powers equipped with nuclear technologies.
On the one hand, the advanced nations are spreading their war business, especially arms production and trade. On the other, they are globalizing their 'war on terrorism'. War on terrorism is definitely another war that adds to human sufferings. Terrorism originates not from arms itself but from evil intentions. Therefore, fighting one's intentions is very important. But contrarily, so-called democratic forces or Gurus are promoting war business through anti-terrorism war.
Likewise, so-called democratic forces of the world have in themselves developed a serious dictatorial nature. They have proved it by imposing their agenda (e.g. WTO) on the weaker loan-taking nations.
To make developing nations move according to their intentions, they are forming their own loyal (puppetized) groups in the developing countries where they cultivate civil wars and where their weapons sale volume goes up considerably.
Therefore, the only best alternative in this context is to unite people against war business and corrupt politics, especially the puppetized political gambles. Will intellectual forces really prove that they are intellectuals capable of thinking and behaving humanistically and logically, quite different from the existing corrupt intellectuals who always enjoy personal lives by betraying masses?
A most dangerous trend in the recent years is the process of rapid puppetization of the world where the ruling class members submit their national sovereignty to the hegemonistic powers equipped with nuclear technologies.
On the one hand, the advanced nations are spreading their war business, especially arms production and trade. On the other, they are globalizing their 'war on terrorism'. War on terrorism is definitely another war that adds to human sufferings. Terrorism originates not from arms itself but from evil intentions. Therefore, fighting one's intentions is very important. But contrarily, so-called democratic forces or Gurus are promoting war business through anti-terrorism war.
Likewise, so-called democratic forces of the world have in themselves developed a serious dictatorial nature. They have proved it by imposing their agenda (e.g. WTO) on the weaker loan-taking nations.
To make developing nations move according to their intentions, they are forming their own loyal (puppetized) groups in the developing countries where they cultivate civil wars and where their weapons sale volume goes up considerably.
Therefore, the only best alternative in this context is to unite people against war business and corrupt politics, especially the puppetized political gambles. Will intellectual forces really prove that they are intellectuals capable of thinking and behaving humanistically and logically, quite different from the existing corrupt intellectuals who always enjoy personal lives by betraying masses?
Gov`t Starts Accepting Chinese Investment Applications
Source: CENS Publications
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) publicized a list of 192 permitted investment items for Chinese investors and started to accept their investment applications yesterday (June 30), ushering in the era of two-way cross-Taiwan Strait investments.
Shortly afterwards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) also publicized corresponding measures, according to which Chinese investors will be able to set up companies and purchase realties on the island.
The list focuses on sectors with mature domestic industries, covering manufacturing, service, and infrastructure, which underscore the trial nature of the policy.
An MOEA official noted that the MOEA can complete the screening process for Chinese investment applications within one month, adding that Chinese investment benefits can surface within half a year.
Liang-tung, executive secretary of the MOEA`s Investment Commission explained that the permitted investment list includes 64 manufacturing items, 117 service items, and 11 infrastructure items.
The manufacturing items include textile, auto/motorcycle, rubber/plastic, home appliances, computer peripherals, passive components, excluding, though, such sensitive items as flat panel display (FPD), semiconductor, Chinese herbal medicine, and construction.
The service items consist mainly of retail and wholesale businesses for daily necessities and direct cross-Strait marine and air transportation. Chinese investors can engage in second-category telecom businesses but their stakes are capped at 50%.
For infrastructure, Chinese investors can hold under 50% stakes in civil airport and harbor facilities. They, though, cannot undertake engineering works for infrastructure projects.
John Teng, vice economics minister, pointed out that Chinese enterprises can now apply for the establishment of subsidiaries or branches in Taiwan directly or invest in subsidiaries via a third place. Those with Chinese military background and those with monopolistic or dominating business nature or with threat on national security will be denied of the right to invest in Taiwan.
According to the corresponding measures publicized yesterday, Chinese corporate investors will be able to purchase offices, factory buildings, or dormitory buildings, and individual Chinese can also purchase properties on the island. To avoid manipulation, Chinese people can only transfer their residence ownership after having registered their possession for three years, but commercial-property ownership is exempt from the restriction.
Chinese property owners can stay on the island up to four months a year, up from one month now, and are free from the restriction on the duration of each stay and the number of stays.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) publicized a list of 192 permitted investment items for Chinese investors and started to accept their investment applications yesterday (June 30), ushering in the era of two-way cross-Taiwan Strait investments.
Shortly afterwards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) also publicized corresponding measures, according to which Chinese investors will be able to set up companies and purchase realties on the island.
The list focuses on sectors with mature domestic industries, covering manufacturing, service, and infrastructure, which underscore the trial nature of the policy.
An MOEA official noted that the MOEA can complete the screening process for Chinese investment applications within one month, adding that Chinese investment benefits can surface within half a year.
Liang-tung, executive secretary of the MOEA`s Investment Commission explained that the permitted investment list includes 64 manufacturing items, 117 service items, and 11 infrastructure items.
The manufacturing items include textile, auto/motorcycle, rubber/plastic, home appliances, computer peripherals, passive components, excluding, though, such sensitive items as flat panel display (FPD), semiconductor, Chinese herbal medicine, and construction.
The service items consist mainly of retail and wholesale businesses for daily necessities and direct cross-Strait marine and air transportation. Chinese investors can engage in second-category telecom businesses but their stakes are capped at 50%.
For infrastructure, Chinese investors can hold under 50% stakes in civil airport and harbor facilities. They, though, cannot undertake engineering works for infrastructure projects.
John Teng, vice economics minister, pointed out that Chinese enterprises can now apply for the establishment of subsidiaries or branches in Taiwan directly or invest in subsidiaries via a third place. Those with Chinese military background and those with monopolistic or dominating business nature or with threat on national security will be denied of the right to invest in Taiwan.
According to the corresponding measures publicized yesterday, Chinese corporate investors will be able to purchase offices, factory buildings, or dormitory buildings, and individual Chinese can also purchase properties on the island. To avoid manipulation, Chinese people can only transfer their residence ownership after having registered their possession for three years, but commercial-property ownership is exempt from the restriction.
Chinese property owners can stay on the island up to four months a year, up from one month now, and are free from the restriction on the duration of each stay and the number of stays.
Rio Group demands reinstatement of Zelaya
source: Granma (Cuba)
MANAGUA, June 29.— The Rio Group today condemned the coup d’état perpetrated in Honduras and reaffirmed its unconditional backing for the only president of that Central American country, José Manuel Zelaya.
The final declaration of the emergency meeting of member countries in this capital refused to recognize the de facto government installed yesterday in Tegucigalpa.
The Rio Group members said that the coup executed this past Sunday in Honduras was an affront to the peoples and democracy of Latin America.
They particularly condemned the violence and injustice of Zelaya’s kidnapping, and affirmed that his mandate was the only one that the Rio Group would recognize.
They reiterated their support for the constitutional president of Honduras and demanded his immediate and unconditional reinstatement to the office conferred upon him by his people through their vote.
Moreover, the declaration said it was "indispensable" to guarantee freedom of speech and the physical integrity of journalists in Honduras, several of whom had been arrested for reporting the repression of peaceful civil disobedience protesters.
The group noted that the installation of Roberto Micheletti as de facto president lacked legitimacy, and that they would not recognize any official appointed by the imposed government.
The declaration’s signatories urged Honduran soldiers to subordinate themselves to Zelaya, the country’s only commander in chief of the armed forces, and demanded that the coup leaders respect human rights and constitutional guarantees.
The Rio Group also agreed to create a delegation of presidential representatives to investigate crimes perpetrated by the coup organizers and called on the Organization of American States (OAS) to adopt drastic solutions to restore democracy in Honduras.
The Rio Group will remain in constant consultation until the only constitutional president of Honduras is unconditionally restored, Prensa Latina reported.
PRESIDENTS CONDEMN COUP
Bolivian President Evo Morales stated the need for administrations with diplomatic or other types of relations with Honduras to go into action against the de facto government installed in that country.
The president asked how was it coups could be effected in this third millennium and noted that Southern Command of the U.S. Armed Forces still prevails, teaching the region’s soldiers that social movements are their internal enemies.
"I think there are still groups of soldiers in Latin America who believe that the organized peoples are internal enemies and therefore must be abused, and those social movements destroyed," Morales affirmed.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez stated that constitutional law must be unconditionally reinstated in Honduras, and called for concrete actions to oust the coup leaders.
Chávez advocated a peaceful solution to the Honduran crisis, but warned that if necessary, the progressive forces of Latin America would take up arms to defend their social conquests.
Likewise, he warned that allowing the coup leaders to maneuver so as to gain time – for example, the supposed free elections at the end of this year, would make other Latin American governments accomplices to the coup.
The Venezuelan president announced that his country is to cut oil supplies to Honduras until the government of José Manuel Zelaya is reinstated.
For his part, the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, affirmed that Honduras has only one president, and that is Manuel Zelaya; the other is a usurper, he said. Mexican President Felipe Calderón highlighted the maturity and responsibility of the leaders present in agreeing, despite their differences, to a common position opposing the coup d’état.
And Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom called for Zelaya to be restored to his office as soon as possible and thus avoid a bloodbath.
Likewise, OAS general secretary José Miguel Insulza condemned the military coup and highlighted the unanimity in recognizing Zelaya as the only legitimate president of Honduras.
The Honduran president, for his part, said that not only was democracy at stake in his country, but also humanity’s conquests with respect to citizens’ participation.
He asked: "What is failing in Latin America’s democracies today that such things can happen? Is it people who are failing or the system?
"The fact that we have become independent and formed states and overthrown dictatorships means nothing if brute forces once again prevails over reason," Zelaya affirmed.
"I believe that in Honduras there is only one president and he is here in Managua," Zelaya said. "I have six months to go to complete my presidential term; after I have been to Washington I will return to Tegucigalpa and they should expect me. I am going to complete my mandate, whether or not you agree, putschists. The president is returning to his country on Thursday."
Representatives of Chile, Peru, Argentina and Colombia also expressed their support for the Zelaya government and agreed that the meeting showed determination in defending democracy on the continent. (SE)
Translated by Granma International
MANAGUA, June 29.— The Rio Group today condemned the coup d’état perpetrated in Honduras and reaffirmed its unconditional backing for the only president of that Central American country, José Manuel Zelaya.
The final declaration of the emergency meeting of member countries in this capital refused to recognize the de facto government installed yesterday in Tegucigalpa.
The Rio Group members said that the coup executed this past Sunday in Honduras was an affront to the peoples and democracy of Latin America.
They particularly condemned the violence and injustice of Zelaya’s kidnapping, and affirmed that his mandate was the only one that the Rio Group would recognize.
They reiterated their support for the constitutional president of Honduras and demanded his immediate and unconditional reinstatement to the office conferred upon him by his people through their vote.
Moreover, the declaration said it was "indispensable" to guarantee freedom of speech and the physical integrity of journalists in Honduras, several of whom had been arrested for reporting the repression of peaceful civil disobedience protesters.
The group noted that the installation of Roberto Micheletti as de facto president lacked legitimacy, and that they would not recognize any official appointed by the imposed government.
The declaration’s signatories urged Honduran soldiers to subordinate themselves to Zelaya, the country’s only commander in chief of the armed forces, and demanded that the coup leaders respect human rights and constitutional guarantees.
The Rio Group also agreed to create a delegation of presidential representatives to investigate crimes perpetrated by the coup organizers and called on the Organization of American States (OAS) to adopt drastic solutions to restore democracy in Honduras.
The Rio Group will remain in constant consultation until the only constitutional president of Honduras is unconditionally restored, Prensa Latina reported.
PRESIDENTS CONDEMN COUP
Bolivian President Evo Morales stated the need for administrations with diplomatic or other types of relations with Honduras to go into action against the de facto government installed in that country.
The president asked how was it coups could be effected in this third millennium and noted that Southern Command of the U.S. Armed Forces still prevails, teaching the region’s soldiers that social movements are their internal enemies.
"I think there are still groups of soldiers in Latin America who believe that the organized peoples are internal enemies and therefore must be abused, and those social movements destroyed," Morales affirmed.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez stated that constitutional law must be unconditionally reinstated in Honduras, and called for concrete actions to oust the coup leaders.
Chávez advocated a peaceful solution to the Honduran crisis, but warned that if necessary, the progressive forces of Latin America would take up arms to defend their social conquests.
Likewise, he warned that allowing the coup leaders to maneuver so as to gain time – for example, the supposed free elections at the end of this year, would make other Latin American governments accomplices to the coup.
The Venezuelan president announced that his country is to cut oil supplies to Honduras until the government of José Manuel Zelaya is reinstated.
For his part, the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, affirmed that Honduras has only one president, and that is Manuel Zelaya; the other is a usurper, he said. Mexican President Felipe Calderón highlighted the maturity and responsibility of the leaders present in agreeing, despite their differences, to a common position opposing the coup d’état.
And Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom called for Zelaya to be restored to his office as soon as possible and thus avoid a bloodbath.
Likewise, OAS general secretary José Miguel Insulza condemned the military coup and highlighted the unanimity in recognizing Zelaya as the only legitimate president of Honduras.
The Honduran president, for his part, said that not only was democracy at stake in his country, but also humanity’s conquests with respect to citizens’ participation.
He asked: "What is failing in Latin America’s democracies today that such things can happen? Is it people who are failing or the system?
"The fact that we have become independent and formed states and overthrown dictatorships means nothing if brute forces once again prevails over reason," Zelaya affirmed.
"I believe that in Honduras there is only one president and he is here in Managua," Zelaya said. "I have six months to go to complete my presidential term; after I have been to Washington I will return to Tegucigalpa and they should expect me. I am going to complete my mandate, whether or not you agree, putschists. The president is returning to his country on Thursday."
Representatives of Chile, Peru, Argentina and Colombia also expressed their support for the Zelaya government and agreed that the meeting showed determination in defending democracy on the continent. (SE)
Translated by Granma International
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