Iranian theorocracy exploits Gaza for own ends

Despite their rhetoric the Iranian Mullahs witheld practical support from the Palestinian Resistance. Yassamine Mather reveals the extent of the Mullahs treachery. Full article at link.There can be no doubts that over the last few weeks Tehran has used the most colourful rhetoric amongst Islamic states to ‘prove’ its support for Gaza’s Palestinian population. However Iran’s actions have, as always, failed miserably in matching its slogans. According to one commentator writing in last week’s Economist, “Iranian support for Hamas was more theatrical than practical.”
As late as December 2008 ayatollah Rafsanjani said: “If tanks enter Gaza, something amazing will happen. Palestinians will use new weapons and hunt [Israelis] from a long distance.” However, three days later, General Mohammad Jafari, head of Iran’s armed forces, stated that “Gaza does not need the logistic and military support of other countries to defend itself.” In early January ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said anyone killed defending Palestinians would be a martyr. Islamic student groups claimed that 70,000 signed up to go to Gaza. But when volunteers staged a sit-in at Tehran’s international airport, demanding to be allowed to travel to Palestine, they were told to go home.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including Mothers for Peace, and students involved in protests outside western embassies were arrested. Then Khamenei went on state television to tell the nation that Iranian hands were tied. In other words, despite all the rhetoric Iran’s Islamic regime was going to do absolutely nothing while over 1,400 Palestinians were being massacred.
Yet the theatrical posturings of the regime, combined with constant revelations about its secret dealings with Israel (eg, the arms trade, as exposed by Irangate, and more recently oil sales), has led many people, including sections of Iranian youth, to conclude that everything it says is lies - which has resulted in a degree of apathy towards the plight of Gaza. The Islamic regime’s religious propaganda, far from gathering support for the Palestinians, has created cynicism towards regional issues on the part of these youngsters. This can only help the imperialists and their allies.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/753/gazaexpl.html

Solidarity with the Palestinian people!

Solidarity with the Palestinian people!
No to war in Gaza and the Middle East!

Hands off the People of Iran unreservedly condemns the barbaric onslaught by Israel on Palestinians and the siege of Gaza. We call on supporters of our campaign to join the demonstrations taking place all over the country.

The scale of terror being inflicted shows that the Israeli state is hell-bent on ethnic cleansing the Palestinian people.

George Bush obviously supports the Israeli atrocities. Obama is keeping his mouth shut. But it is clear what side he is on. He supported the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 2006 and has recently endorsed Israel taking ‘firm’ action against Hamas.

But it was actually Israel that breached the ceasefire, not Hamas. They staged an incursion into Gaza on 5 November during the US election. Hamas responded with rockets and Israel was then able to use that as an excuse to collectively punish the Palestinian people once again.

Israel, with US support, is twisting reality to justify horrendous acts against civilians. We call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the siege of Gaza. But Hamas is not an answer. It is the politics of despair. Instead we need a united working class solution in Palestine and throughout the Middle East.

Israel would welcome the chance to widen hostilities to include bombardment of Iran. An attack on Iran is definitely on their agenda – one that would also receive the support of the US under both Bush and Obama.

In the face of this we need to increase our efforts to build solidarity and unity against imperialism and its allies. But our solidarity is with the people, not the Iranian state or any other middle-east regime.

Change must come from below, from progressive and working class forces. Imperialism only brings bloodshed and depravity. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian people and extend our solidarity to them.

Our campaign demands are:
No to imperialist war! For the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US/UK troops from Iraq and the entire Gulf region!

No to any imperialist intervention. The immediate and unconditional end to sanctions on Iran.

No to the theocratic regime!

Opposition to Israeli expansionism and aggression!

Support to all working class and progressive struggles in Iran against poverty and repression!

Support for socialism, democracy and workers' control in Iran!

For a nuclear-free Middle East as a step towards a nuclear-free world!

Contact HOPI at: Anne@hopoi.info http://www.hopi-ireland.org/ http://www.hopoi.org

HOPI events Thursday to Saturday 13-15 November

Don’t miss the events this coming week in Dublin:

Thursday 13th
1pm Trinity College, Room 403 Aras an Phiarsaigh
Moshe Machover, Israeli socialist & anti-Zionist & Yassamine Mather, Iranian political activist & founding member of HOPI debate the situation in the middle-east in the aftermath of the US election
7.30pm Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square Square,
Joint meeting with Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Middle-East – what is the answer to the crisis?
Raymond Deane, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Moshe Machover and Yassamine Mather
Friday 14th
Meeting at UCD, details to be confirmed
Saturday 15th
12.30pm Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square Dublin1
HOPI Ireland founding conference Join us in debate and decisions on the way forward for this vital campaign. We will be joined on the day by Yassamine Mather and Moshe Machover and hear messages from Iranian students and workers in struggle. Find out what is really going on behind the scenes. A proposed motion on the constitution has been circulated already. Please let me know if you need another copy and send amendments and motions to me as soon as possible so that I can circulate everything before Thursday.
Contact Anne on 0862343238 or Anne@hopoi.info for more details or if you want to help.

HOPI conference & Meetings 13-15 November

Hands off the People of Iran will be holding its first conference on 15th
November at the Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin. The event will
start at 1pm with registration from 12.30. Key items on the agenda are the
HOPI aims and constitution, setting up more formal structures and activities
over the coming year. The draft constitution will be circulated very soon
for amendments and proposals. Also we are inviting proposals for people to
go onto the steering committee.

Yassamine Mather, leading Iranian political activist and founding member of
HOPI in Britain will speak at our conference. We have also invited Moshe
Machover, an Israeli anti-zionist socialist. Moshe has written and spoken
extensively on the middle-east. Given the recent reports of Israel planned
attacks on Iran, both talks and the discussion will be very important.

We also plan to have a number of meetings from 13th-14th and we have been in
contact with university societies. If you are a member of a university group
please contact me on Annegmcshane@eircom.net and I can make arrangements for
Yassamine and Moshe to speak.

Also we are hoping to co-host a forum on the middle-east in Dublin on
Thursday 13th. Details to follow.

Please let me know if you can help or be involved in any of our forthcoming
activities.

Anne

Annegmcshane@eircom.net
0862343238

__._,_.___

Message from Trade Unionist in Iran - Haft Tapeh workers

Dear comrades in the Committee in Defense of Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Workers of Iran

I am writing on behalf of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, FWCUI.
We have received your statement about the struggles of the Haft Tappeh workers, which reveals the brutal policies of the Islamic Republic toward the workers.
The struggles of the Iranian workers reflect their heroic position in opposition to the policies of the authorities, such as lay off, privatization, reducing the salaries, delaying the payments, banning independent organizing, imposing the puppet organizations… etc.
At this time, we are stand side by side with the movement of the Haft Tappeh workers. We call for the workers unions and activists in the world to support the demands of the Sugar Cane factory "Haft Tappeh" workers.
We call on to the Iranian authorities to answer the workers' demands, and to stop pressuring the activists and chasing them, to stop jailing and arbitrary judgments of the workers' leaders.

In solidarity,
Falah Alwan
Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq, FWCUI, President
August 17, 2008



Falah Alwan
Federation

20th Anniversary of 1988 Prison Massacre in Iran

Iran: The 20th anniversary of 1988 "prison massacre"

Amnesty International documents the 20th anniversary of the massacre of prisoners in Iran. It notes that no one has been held accountable for this atrocity. Full text at link.

Twenty years after the then Iranian authorities began a wave of largely secret, summary and mass executions in September 1988, Amnesty International renews its call for those responsible for the “prison massacre” to be held accountable. There should be no impunity for such gross human rights violations, regardless of when they were committed.

Amnesty is also calling on the present Iranian government not to prevent relatives of the dead from visiting Khavaran Cemetary in south Tehran, on or about 29 August to mark the anniversary and demand justice for their loved ones. Hundreds of those summarily executed are buried in unmarked mass graves.

In all between 4,500 and 5,000 prisoners are believed to have been killed, including women. Those responsible for the killings should be prosecuted and tried before a regularly and legally constituted court and with all necessary procedural guarantees, in accordance with international fair trial standards.

Article from Guardian - threat on Iran not gone away

Attacking Iran via South Ossetia

Could the conflict between Russia and Georgia be the excuse the Bush administration has been looking for to bomb Iran?

All comments (213)

• 
• • Stephen Kinzer
  • guardian.co.uk

An editor I once worked for told me that when his parents and grandparents discussed the day's news over dinner, they would inevitably finish by asking each other: "Is it good for the Jews?"

"Whether it was a war or an earthquake or men landing on the moon, it would always come down to that," he recalled. "They saw everything through that lens."

This year, I've developed a comparable pathology. I am terrified that the Bush administration is going to attack Iran sometime before it leaves office on January 20. Whenever there is a new tremor in Washington or the wider world, I ask myself: Does this make an American strike against Iran more or less likely?

So it is with the recent dustup in Georgia. I fear it has increased the chances that the United States will bomb Iran.

If there is a single principle that underlies the Bush-Cheney view of the world, it is that all countries must accommodate American interests and none may be allowed to emerge as what the 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review called a "near-peer power". This is a recipe for conflict, since many countries will naturally try to increase their power whether or not the US wants them to.

"Let Hercules himself do what he may," that insightful geo-strategist William Shakespeare observed, "the cat will mew, and dog will have his day."

Russia's day is once again dawning. That is not necessarily bad. A multi-polar world shaped by balances and equilibrium is, in the end, safer and more secure for everyone.

This view, though, is abhorrent to the Bush administration. It remains caught in the post-cold war fantasy that America's brief "uni-polar moment" can last indefinitely.

In recent years, the Bush administration has sought at every turn to challenge Russian interests. It has worked to cut Russia out of energy pipelines, expand Nato up to Russia's borders, build missile defence bases near those borders, promote the independence of Kosovo and encourage former Soviet states like Georgia to spit in Russia's strategic eye.

This approach worked while Russia was prostrate. It was inevitable, though, that Russia would eventually begin to re-emerge as an influential power. Now it has.

Washington protested Russia's crushing of Georgia with howls of outrage. President Bush declared with a straight face that "bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

Mouthing such pious hypocrisy is about all the US can do to reverse Russia's recent gain. The US and Russia need to cooperate on a host of strategic issues, and Georgia is not a vital interest to the US. The logical thing for the US to do now would be to take this hit and move on.

President Bush and vice-president Cheney, however, may have another idea. I'm reading their minds, and this is what I fear they are thinking:

"We're on our way out of office. The way things look now, the last confrontation between us and the bad guys will have been one that they won. We can't let our term end that way. This can't be the last word. We have to go out in a blaze of glory. Where should we set off that blaze? Iran, of course. No country has taunted us more relentlessly. By bombing Iran, we will send the world a defiant farewell message: Forget Russia - We Still Rule!"

For years before the September 11 terror raids, a clique of millenarian ideologues in Washington had been urging a US attack on Iraq. The raids gave them their excuse. Now I fear the same may be happening with Iran. Georgia could be the excuse.

American policy toward Iran has for decades been shaped by emotion, not rationality. Emotions are now running hot in Washington. Iranians have nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Georgia. I hope they do not soon have to pay a bloody price for it.