Video of December 27, 2009 protests in Tehran.
Demonstrators take over a police station, they set it on fire, and then they fly a resistance flag from the roof, to the cheers of the crowd.
Click on the video here:
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
"The Peace Prize goes to the commander-in-chief of invading armies in Afghanistan and Iraq"
http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9491&lg=en
Is this the best the world can deliver?
A hypocrite who unsuccessfully tries to justify war and aggression on the starved and brutalized people of Iraq and Afghanistan?
In a silent America, Obama is unchallenged and does all he can to strengthen U.S. ties with Israel (as the rest of the world contemplates boycotts of various kinds to deter Israel from committing more crimes). A year into his presidency, not only are the wars against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan going strong, but Obama is sending 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan.
The American brand of "peace" has surely made a mockery of the word. No one in the Middle East is foolish enough to believe, for a second, that America wants "peace" when all that America, and her handsome new president, does is to reinforce its devastating military presence in countries where they are not welcomed.
More troops for Afghanistan, by Carlos Latuff
An Iraqi mother who lost every child she had (4 boys) as a result of the U.S. invasion in 2003 said: "don't utter that word, it has brought us nothing but death and destruction".
She was referring to the word "peace".
No doubt Palestinian, Lebanese, and Afghan mothers have similar sentiments about this peculiar word that is on the lips of every invading army and colonialist power. But those who live under the brutal occupations of the U.S. and Israel, or those of us still unoccupied (Iranians, Pakistanis, etc) still suffer the political and economic brutality of this "world order" in the form of unemployment and political repression. For us, the word "peace", as spoken by Americans, is void of credibility.
In the Middle East, everyone knows that the U.S. has been involved in covert actions to destabilize the area and control the political arena for decades. In Iran, the 1953 CIA coup d'état has been well documented and disseminated, but still many in the U.S. do not know that the hated dictator of Iraq (Saddam Hussein) was in fact a trained U.S. puppet until he fell out of favor with the State Department.
Even fewer Americans know that the U.S. has been nurturing the most genocidal militias, people who destroyed the nation, from the 1970's until this decade. Colonialist campaigns to dominate the local population, and to install puppet governments to serve the interests of the West, is a familiar scenario for all who live the reality of life in the Middle East. Even in Iran, which has never been militarily occupied, thanks to the resistance of its neighbors to invasions and occupations, the society has continuously been suffering under U.S. covert actions to destabilize the civil society and to stifle democratic development (i.e., the U.S.-instigated war with Iraq and the fueling of this war for 8 years, and constant economic pressure in the form of sanctions).
Mainstream media constantly warns Americans about the wrath that may come to them from their victims. If you ask me, what really "threatens" American is its indifference, as it devastates humanity.
Think about it. Overall, 300,000 American soldiers and private security personnel (heavily subsidized by U.S. government) rampage through every street in Iraq, and no clear statistics are available on how many armed Americans roam the streets of Afghanistan. Life's necessities (electricity and clean water among other things) are often lacking, and deadly bombings kill the occupied population almost daily.
The common denominator to all this is the American military and private security presence.
With no serious "anti-war" movement in sight, in America, what most Americans contemplate is not the miserable reality they have created for people under U.S. occupation; Americans wonder why Iraqis and Afghans are so "ungrateful"!
"Before stabbing your neighbor with a knife, stick a needle in your OWN arm", says the old Iranian proverb. Would YOU be grateful to an invading force whose presence has meant massive violence and wholesale robbing of your resources?
If Obama is given ten more prizes for his "peace" efforts, it would make no difference to those who can clearly see he is just a more attractive invader than Bush Jr. ever was. Unfortunately, the liberal "peace-loving" America seems to be OK with that brand of world war. Obama is the commander-in-chief of invading armies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his record shows that he has no intention of ending American colonial wars. Believe him when he says it, and shows it.
This being the case, local resistance to unjust wars and corrupt U.S.-installed governments, that only function to siphon oil and other resources to Western companies, will continue unless Americans see through the constant smokescreen and realize that complacency and disinterest, regarding the people they help to subjugate, is literally threatening survival of our species.
"Iranians still oppose foreign intervention in the Middle East: U.S. / Israeli military aggression prevents any democratic development"
http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9492&lg=en Iranians demand no foreign intervention in the Middle East. If there is no change in U.S. / Israeli military aggression, then the region will continue to be ruled by a deadlock. That deadlock is imperial power fighting homegrown resistance. Iranians and others fight the empire directly, and also indirectly: by resisting the local dictators who are unable or unwilling to get the empire off of the people’s backs. Seven months after the start of the Green rallies in Iran, Iranian students are still filling the streets of their cities to oppose dictatorship and demand democracy. December 7th is a significant day in the history of Iranian people’s resistance against oppression. On December 7th 1953, just fifty days after the CIA coup d'etat, which had removed the democratically elected government of Dr. Mossadegh, and installed the dictatorial regime of the Shah, Nixon’s arrival was announced to the public. This gesture was perceived by an overwhelming majority of Iranians as putting salt on the wounds of a coup d'etat that had humiliated them a few weeks earlier. To oppose Nixon’s visit, public demonstrations were organized which were brutally put down by the U.S.-backed government of the Shah. Three students were shot and killed on that day. Since then, student organizations across Iran honor their fallen friends on December 7th while at the same time continuing their demands for a democratic Iran. Demanding a home-grown democracy is what these non-violent demonstrations are all about. Earlier in November 2009, millions had come out chanting "Neither East-leaning, Nor West-leaning, Regimes: A National Democratic State in Iran". The people of Iran believe that the current government has stolen the last election (June 2009) and that a repeat of the election is in order; this time with trustworthy observers, and with independent oversight to assure a healthy, honest election process, which will yield accurate results. No Iranian wants a "regime change" imposed by the U.S. and Israel ever again. Iranians know, full well, the devastating effects of war-- they were forced to endure an 8-year war with Saddam's Iraq, imposed by Saddam's ally, the United States. At the time, Saddam’s regime had full U.S. military and political support, while Iran was just emerging from a popular revolution which had overthrown the Shah's U.S. puppet regime. The Shah's regime, with full support of the U.S. and Israel, had brutalized and tortured the Iranian nation for almost 30 years. To weaken the new revolutionary Iran, the United States encouraged and supported an Iraqi invasion of Iran, and continued to support this so-called "Iran-Iraq war" for years. The U.S. offered Saddam chemical and biological weapons to use against people of the region, Iraqis and Iranians alike. The losers of this war were the Iranian and Iraqi people, who lost over a million lives and are still enduring massive public health problems such as cancers, loss of limbs, and psychological disorders inflicted on them by that U.S.-sponsored war. The Iranian people are also well aware of the fact that the U.S. (despite Obama's pretending to oppose the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan), and despite his "change you can believe in" rhetoric, is still imposing crippling sanctions on Iran. Furthermore, the U.S. has not made a single move to end the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The people of Iran are encircled by deadly American military power, which has so far claimed millions of lives in the Middle East and made many more millions refugees. The people of Iran feel that the way to real stability and peace for their country, and for the whole of the region, is peaceful, nonviolent, democratic change that will allow functioning of the civil society without abrupt upheavals that would disrupt life and potentially invite unwanted foreign powers into their land. So, in answer to President Obama's "We have heard for 30 years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for": It must be said that: What the current government in Iran wants, and has been pushing for, is a prolonged verbal cat-fight with the U.S. and Israel, to create an atmosphere of crisis, so that the Iranian public will not protest its illegitimate power grab. This verbal cat-fight is a dangerous game, because the U.S. and Israel keep maneuvering to "obliterate" Iran, a land of 76 million people. After Hillary Clinton threatened to "obliterate" Iran, Obama chose her to be his Secretary of State. The Iranian people, however, want home-grown democratic rule, a demilitarized Middle East, and an independent Iraq and Afghanistan without U.S. intervention. This will guarantee that the people of the Middle East (Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, etc.) will have the ability to organize their elected governments and build a future THEY see fit for themselves and their children. The best way that you, Mr. Obama, can help is by taking your hundreds of thousands of military personnel out of Iraq and Afghanistan, to give people breathing space. You can also help by halting U.S. funding of the violently racist state of Israel. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and a history of constantly bombing and invading Middle Eastern nations. Saying "change you can believe in" is a mockery, when you continue sending soldiers to sustain the occupation of millions of peoples' lands across the Middle East and Afghanistan. A change of perspective, an acknowledgment of past wrongdoings by the U.S., is essential if any change is to come to this violent world order that literally threatens life on earth. |
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Article on the Demonstrations of 4 November 2009:
Poster for the November 4, 2009 demonstrations against dictatorship in Iran.
___________________________________________________
"Neither East-leaning, Nor West-leaning, Regimes: A National Democratic State in Iran"
November 4, 2009
On Tlaxcala at:
http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9191&lg=en
Today, November 4th 2009, in the few hours that a public demonstration was declared legal by the government of the Islamic Republic, Iranians poured into the streets, crying, "Neither East-leaning, Nor West-leaning, Regimes: A National Democratic State in Iran"
Demanding a home-grown democracy is what this recent wave of demonstrations in Iran is all about.
The people of Iran believe that the current government has stolen the last election (June 2009) and that a repeat of the election is in order; this time with trustworthy observers, and with independent oversight to assure a healthy, honest election process, which will yield accurate results.
No Iranian wants a "regime change" imposed by the U.S. and Israel.
Iranians know, full well, the devastating effects of war-- they were forced to endure an 8-year war with Saddam's Iraq, imposed by Saddam's ally, the United States. At the time, Saddam's regime had full U.S. military and political support, while Iran was just emerging from a popular revolution which had overthrown the Shah's U.S. puppet regime. The Shah's regime, with full support of the U.S. and Israel, had brutalized and tortured the Iranian nation for almost 30 years. The Shah had been installed by a U.S. coup d'etat in 1953 which removed the democratically elected government of Dr. Mossadegh.
To weaken the new revolutionary Iran, the United States encouraged and supported an Iraqi invasion of Iran, and continued to support this so-called "Iran-Iraq war" for years. The U.S. offered Saddam chemical and biological weapons to use against people of the region, Iraqis and Iranians alike. The losers of this war were the Iranian and Iraqi people, who lost over a million lives and are still enduring massive public health problems such as cancers, loss of limbs, and psychological disorders inflicted on them by that U.S.-sponsored war.
The Iranian people are also well aware of the fact that the U.S. (despite Obama's pretending to oppose the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan), and despite his "change you can believe in" rhetoric, is still imposing crippling sanctions on Iran. Furthermore, the U.S. has not made a single move to end the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The people of Iran are encircled by deadly American military power, which has so far claimed millions of lives in the Middle East and made many more millions refugees.
The people of Iran feel that the way to real stability and peace for their country, and for the whole of the region, is peaceful, nonviolent, democratic change that will allow functioning of the civil society without abrupt upheavals that would disrupt life and potentially invite unwanted foreign powers into their land.
So, in answer to President Obama's "We have heard for 30 years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for"
It must be said that: What the current government in Iran wants, and has been pushing for, is a prolonged verbal cat-fight with the U.S. and Israel, to create an atmosphere of crisis, so that the Iranian public will not protest its illegitimate power grab. This verbal cat-fight is a dangerous game, because the U.S. and Israel keep maneuvering to "obliterate" Iran, a land of 76 million people. After Hillary Clinton threatened to "obliterate" Iran, Obama chose her to be his Secretary of State.
The Iranian people, however, want home-grown democratic rule, a demilitarized Middle East, and an independent Iraq and Afghanistan without U.S. intervention. This will guarantee that the people of the Middle East (Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, etc.) will have the ability to organize their elected governments and build a future THEY see fit for themselves and their children.
The best way that you, Mr. Obama, can help is by taking your hundreds of thousands of military personnel out of Iraq and Afghanistan, to give people breathing space. You can also help by halting U.S. funding of the violently racist state of Israel. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and a history of constantly bombing and invading Middle Eastern nations.
Saying "change you can believe in" is a mockery, when you continue occupying millions of peoples' lands across the Middle East and Afghanistan.
------------------------------------------------
Iran says:
"Neither East-leaning, Nor West-leaning, Regimes: A National Democratic State in Iran"
See the videos here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/nov/04/iran-protest-mousavi
The article and some videos are here:
"Iran protesters hijack 30th anniversary of US embassy seizure"
Guardian (U.K.), 4 November 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/04/iran-protests-embassy-30th-anniversary
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
People power
Al Ahram, 25 June - 1 July 2009
People power
The Iranian elections show that the people's democratic will can no longer be held in, writes Hamid Dabashi*
Khonak an qomarbazi keh bebakht har cheh budash,
Benamand hichash ella havas e qomar e digar.
[Lucky that gambler who lost all he had,
Left with nothing but the urge for yet another game]
-- Anonymous Persian poet
The Iranian presidential election of June 2009 will go down in history as one of the most magnificent manifestations of a people's indomitable will to achieve enduring democratic institutions. The beleaguered custodians of the Islamic Republic, thoroughly aware of their own lack of legitimacy, were quick to use the occasion as a vindication of their illegitimate rule. They are wrong. This was not a vote for their legitimacy. It was a vote against it -- albeit within the mediaeval juridical fortress they have built around the notions and principles of citizenry in a free and democratic republic. The feeble "opposition" to the clerics abroad also rushed to admonish those who participated in the election, insisting on regime change, at a time when upward of 80 per cent of eligible voters willingly participated in the election. Both these desperate, hasty, and banal readings of the election, predicated on bankrupt positions are false.
Let's begin with the losers of this presidential campaign. The single most important loser of the Iranian presidential campaign of June 2009 is Ali Khamenei, the supreme guide, and the velayet-e faqih. If this election, the process of the election not its fraudulent result, showed anything, it should be the nation is not safih (indigent) enough to need a supreme faqih (most learned) to shepherd it. This election revealed the political maturity of a nation that can now be allowed to return to its own devices and the obscenity of the very notion of a velayet-faqih wiped off its body-politic. The very office of the supreme guide is an insult to the democratic intelligence and the collective will of this nation. If Ali Khamenei had an iota of decency left in him, at the autumn of his patriarchy, he would dismantle this obscene office forever, convene a constitutional assembly and disband the three other undemocratic institutions of the republic -- the Assembly of Experts of Leadership, the Guardian Council of the Constitution, and the Expediency Council of the Regime. These are the enduring vestiges of a theocratic legacy that have no room in a democratic republic. Iranians are Muslim, the vast majority of them, and there are millions of Iranians who are not Muslim, or believing or practising Muslims -- and none of that should matter in their privileges and duties as citizens of a republic. As he witnesses the erosion of every single iota of legitimacy that the Islamic revolution claimed over the nation, the soon-to-be 70- year-old Ali Khamenei can leave a legitimate legacy for himself by seeing to it that this mediaeval banality is wiped out of Iranian democratic aspirations. It is simply unseemly to see grown up people, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Mir-Hussein Mousavi, appear so obsequious and sycophantic towards another man. What is the difference between a shah and a supreme guide? Nothing.
An equally important loser in this campaign, though declared its winner, is the populist buffoonery of that unsurpassed charlatan Ahmadinejad, the bastard son of the Islamist revolution. In his demagoguery and fanaticism he represents the most fascistic tendencies of the Islamic revolution and republic. All revolutions have a dose or two of populism and demagoguery mixed with their idealism and high aspirations. What has happened in the Islamic revolution is that its innate populism has now been personified in one demagogue who seeks to stay in power by manipulating the poor and disenfranchised segments of his constituency by fraudulent economic policies that gives people fish instead of teaching them how to fish, gives governmental subsidies and handouts instead of generating jobs. The economic policies of Ahmadinejad have been catastrophic and institutionally damaging, causing double-digit inflation and endemic unemployment in an oil-based economy at the mercy of global market fluctuation far beyond Ahmadinejad's control or comprehension. His religious populism and ludicrous claims to divine dispensations is a cruel joke on signs and symbols people hold sacred.
The next loser was Mousavi's poorly run presidential campaign -- ill-advised, ill-prepared, sentimental, full of necessary colour symbolism but lacking substance, a clearly articulated platform, economic detail, political programming or an attempt to reach out to a wider spectrum of his constituency. His campaign was too elitist, tied in its visual paraphernalia to a northern Tehran sensibility and lacking appeal across an oil-based economy. His delay in entering the race, his to-ing and fro-ing with Mohamed Khatami, suggested poor preparation, as did his debate with Ahmadinejad. While Ahmadinejad had come with charts and graphs and dossiers, flaunting his lumpen demeanour, thinking himself "a man of the people", Mousavi had nothing except his gentility to offer. He rambled along, read from written statements in a barely audible voice, ran out of things to say before his time was over. The problem with the Iranian democratic movement is not that it is unable to produce an Obama -- if he is the model. Mousavi could have very well been an Iranian Obama. The problem is there was no David Axelrod or David Plouffe, what the Mousavi campaign desperately needed and sorely lacked. A band of self-indulgent Muslim yuppies surround him with not an idea of how to reach his multiple constituencies. If Mousavi did reach these constituencies it was becomrades in arms), for having saved the integrity of the country during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). But he faced a new Iran, a new generation, an entirely different constituency that loved and admired him and his wife Zahra Rahnavard at face value. But you never win a campaign on good will. This is not to suggest that the election was not rigged -- it may or may not have been. But there are rudimentary strategies for reaching out to diverse constituencies which his campaign ignored.
The next big loser in this Iranian election was the legacy of George W Bush, i.e. the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine. Look at Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, on two sides of Iran, and then look at Iran on 12 June 2009. Millions of Iranians in a peaceful, orderly, joyous and enthusiastic march to the ballot box. The second they thought their votes were stolen they poured into the streets, what Americans should have done in 2000. Along with the Bush and Wolfowitz doctrine, the losers include the US Congress, and its headquarters at AIPAC. The US congress can scarce be imagined more transparently hypocritical. On the night before the Iranian election, on 12 June, AIPAC pushed a button and its stooges in the US Congress began pushing for a resolution imposing more severe economic sanction on Iran, knowing only too well that the following day its news would increase the chances of Ahmadinejad, Israel's choice of candidates, as Israeli officials have been only too keen to admit.
Losers also include expatriate Iranian monarchists along with all other politically bankrupt banalities and their native informers and comprador intellectuals, from Washington DC to California, who have established vacuous centres for "dialogue" or and to save "democracy" in Iran. What a band of buffoons they were made to look like after this grassroots, inborn rise for democratic rights.
The sole winners of the presidential election of 2009 were the Iranian people, whoever they voted for -- some 40 million of them, out of an eligible voting population of 48 million, upward of 80 per cent. This election showed the democratic will of Iranians has matured beyond any point of return, no matter how violently the unelected officials of the Islamic Republic wish to reverse it. It is too late. As made evident during the presidential election of 2009, Iranians are perfectly capable of organising themselves around competing views, campaigning for their preferred candidates, peacefully going to polling stations and casting their vote. It is high time that the Shia clerics pack their belongings and go back to their seminaries, and for regime change charlatans like Paul Wolfowitz to retire in ignominy, and for career opportunist comprador intellectuals of one think tank or another in Washington DC or Stanford University to go back to the half decent teaching position they had before.
Before I close, I must also say that a major loser is Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon. Nasrallah must know that the deep and variegated roots of Iranians' commitment to the Palestinian cause and the fate of the Shias in Lebanon are in the vast ocean of their hearts and minds, fed to them with their mother's milk and not in the dirty pool of Ali Khomeini's pocket. Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, ought to know that Iranians are watching them closely, and wish to hear their voices. This is the Iranian Intifada. A leading slogan in the streets of Tehran is Mardom chera neshestin, Iran shodeh Felestin (People why are you sitting idly by, Iran has become Palestine). Arab and Muslims, their leading public intellectuals, must come out and take the side of this grassroots, inborn, and peaceful demand for a healthy and robust democracy.
The US congressional stooges of AIPAC -- the Israeli generals were all squarely on the side of Ahmadinejad -- are in the same league as Hassan Nasrallah.
All Arab and Muslim potentates ought to know that their young are watching events in Iran with a keen interest. It is not only Iranians that are wired to Facebook and Twitter, so are their brothers and sisters around the globe, throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Young Arab and Muslims around the globe are not immune to the demands young Iranians are exacting at the heavy cost, courageously exposing their bare chests against the bullets and batons of tyranny. This is a post-ideological generation. They could not care less about their parents' political hang-ups. They demand, and will exact, human, civil and women's rights, through a grassroots, entirely legitimate uprising, without compromising an inch to the imperial machinations of the United States or the colonial thuggery of Israel. The custodians of the Islamic Republic are in violation of Article 27 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic. To the best of my knowledge, this is not a revolution to topple the Islamic Republic. This is a grassroots demand for civil rights. Iranians being clubbed and shot in the streets of Tehran are not the stooges of the United States. The Arab and Muslim mediaeval potentates suffocating the democratic aspirations of their people are. Fear the day that young Arabs and Muslims learn from their Iranian brothers and sisters and demand their inalienable human rights, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, equal rights for men and women, economic opportunity, respect for human decency and for the rule of law.
* The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.
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