Iran, Honduras, Immigrants and Marijuana

I've got a number of topics to cover today.

Let's start with Iran. Tomorrow is 18 Tir on the Islamic calendar. It marks the 10th year anniversary of a brutal crackdown on university students protesting the closure of Salem, a reformist paper at Tehran University. Public commemorations of the event are illegal, but this could be another increase in action in Iran. Ahmedinejad gave a public address yesterday calling Iran the elections in Iran the world's freest. In a very interesting type of civil disobedience people were asked to turn on all electronics and appliances to put heavy strain on the power grid. There were reported blackouts in numerous cities including Eastern Tehran.

Vice President Joe Biden made a statement that the United States would not interfere if Israel decided to attack Iran. Obama later said this was not a green light for Israel to attack Iran although while clarifying Biden was not sending a signal Obama said, "I think Vice President Biden stated a categorical fact, which is we can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are. What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels." This ignores the fact that the US gives Isreal billions of dollars a year in military aid, and therefore should have a say on how they use it. But as always, this fact was not mentioned by either the president nor vice president.


Nobel laureate and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias will moderate dialog between Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and interim leader Roberto Micheletti of the coup forces. While the Honduran media supports the coup forces despite majority support for Zelaya, similar elements of the media can be seen here on the coverage. Here is a great analysis on the media's handling of the situation. As I wrote last week, even though the US has condemned the coup, their actions are starting to prove otherwise. Even though the event has been called a coup, the administration will not give it the official title cutting off aid to the military forces.


The quote of the day goes to a report by Reason Online in an article discussing how poor, high-immigrant El Paso, just across the border from violent-filled Cuidad Juarez could be one of the safest in the nation. They conclude cities with high immigrant populations usually lead to low violence. The quote:

"Most people in Washington really don't understand life on the border," El Paso Mayor John Cook told the Post. "They don't understand our philosophy here that the border joins us together, it doesn't separate us."

The Marijuana Policy Project has started running ads calling to legalize and tax marijuana in California. The move has been discussed as a way to help with the budget crises. Marijuana is the number one cash crop in the state and a $13 billion a year industry.

Noam Chomsky on the economic crisis, the middle east, the environment and industry in the US

Democracy Now broadcast a great speech by Noam Chomsky last Friday. I highly recommend watching it in its entirety.

Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, author and dissident intellectual, just turned eighty years old this past December. He has written over 100 books, but despite being called “the most important intellectual alive” by the New York Times, he is rarely heard in the corporate media. We spend the hour with Noam Chomsky. He spoke recently here in New York at an event sponsored by the Brecht Forum. More than 2,000 people packed into Riverside Church in Harlem to hear his address, titled “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours.” In his talk, Chomsky discussed the global economic crisis, the environment, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire and much more.

Some excerpts:

Haiti’s first free election in 1990 threatened these economically rational programs. The poor majority made the mistake of entering the political arena and electing their own candidate, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest. And Washington instantly adopted standard operating procedures: the moving at once to undermine the regime. A couple of months later came the military coup, instituting a horrible reign of terror, which was backed by Bush, Bush I, and even more so by Clinton. By 1994, Clinton decided that the population was sufficiently intimidated, and he sent US forces to restore the elected president—that’s now called a humanitarian intervention—but on very strict conditions, namely that the president had to accept a very harsh neoliberal regime, in particular, no protection for the economy.

[...]

One such inefficiency, now recognized to be one of the roots of the financial crisis, is the under-pricing of systemic risk, a risk that affects the whole system. So, for example—and that’s general, like if you and I make a transaction, say, you sell me a car, we may make a good deal for ourselves, but we don’t price into that transaction the cost to others. And there’s a cost: pollution, congestion, raising the price of gas, all sorts of other things, killing people in Nigeria because we’re getting the gas from them. That doesn’t count when we—we don’t count that in. That’s an inherent market inefficiency, one of the reasons why markets can’t work.

[...]

Well, while Obama’s signaling very clearly his intention to establish a firm and large-scale presence in the region, he’s also, as you know, sharply escalating the AfPak war, following Petraeus’s strategy to drive the Taliban into Pakistan, with potentially awful results for this extremely dangerous and unstable state, which is facing insurrections throughout its territory. These are the most extreme in the tribal areas, which cross the AfPak border. It’s an artificial line imposed by the British called the Durand Line, and the same people live on both sides of it—Pashtun tribes—and they’ve never accepted it. And, in fact, the Afghanistan government never accepted it either, as long as it was independent. Well, that’s where most of the fighting is going on. One of the leading specialists on the region, Selig Harrison, he recently wrote that the outcome of Washington’s current policies, Obama’s policies, might well be, what he calls them, “Islamic Pashtunistan,” Pashtun-based separate kind of quasi-state. The Pakistani ambassador warned that if the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism merge, we’ve had it. And we’re on the verge of that.

[...]

By World War II, there was a significant change. Business leaders and elite intellectuals recognized that the public had won enough rights so that they can’t be controlled by force, so it would be necessary to do something else, namely to turn to control of attitudes and opinions. These were the days when the huge public relations industry emerged in the freest countries in the world, Britain and the United States, where the problem was most severe. The public relations industry was devoted to what Walter Lippmann approvingly called a “new art” in the practice of democracy, the “manufacture of consent.” It’s called the “engineering of consent” in the phrase of his contemporary Edward Bernays, one of the founders of the PR industry.

[...]

And they are the architects of policy. Obama made sure to staff his economic advisers from that sector, which has been pointed out, too. The former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, pointed out that the Obama administration is just in the pocket of Wall Street. As he put it, “Throughout the crisis, the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of the financial institutions or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here.” And the “elite business interests” who “played a central role in creating the crisis…with the implicit backing of the government,” they’re still there, and they’re “now using their influence to prevent precisely” the set of “reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive.” He says, the economy—“The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them,” which is no surprise, considering who constitutes and who backs the government.

[...]

The state-corporate program began with a conspiracy by General Motors, Firestone Rubber, Standard Oil of California to buy up and destroy efficient electric transportation systems in Los Angeles and dozens of other cities. They were actually convicted of criminal conspiracy and given a tap on the wrist, I think a $5,000 fine. The federal government then took over. It relocated infrastructure and capital stock to suburban areas and also created a huge interstate highway system under the usual pretext of defense. Railroads were displaced by government-financed motor and air transport.

[...]

So think what’s happening. Spain and other European countries are hoping to get US taxpayer funding for high-speed rail and related infrastructure. And at the very same time, Washington is busy dismantling leading sectors of US industry, ruining the lives of workers and communities who could easily do it themselves. It’s pretty hard to conjure up a more damning indictment of the economic system that’s been constructed by state-corporate managers. Surely, the auto industry could be reconstructed to produce what the country needs using its highly skilled workforce. But that’s not even on the agenda. It’s not even being discussed. Rather, we’ll go to Spain, and we’ll give them taxpayer money for them to do it, while we destroy the capacity to do it here.

[...]

It’s also important to remind ourselves that the notion of workers’ control is as American as apple pie. It’s kind of been suppressed, but it’s there. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution in New England, working people just took it for granted that those who work in the mills should own them. And they also regarded wage labor as different from slavery, only in that it was temporary. Also Abraham Lincoln’s view. There have been immense efforts to drive these thoughts out of people’s heads, to win what the business world calls “the everlasting battle for the minds of men.” On the surface, they may appear to have succeeded, but I don’t think you have to dig too deeply to find out that they’re latent and they can be revived.

United 4 Iran Global Day of Action, July 25th, San Francisco, noon

There will be a mega rally on Saturday, July 25th in front of San Francisco at City Hall Plaza from 12pm to 4pm to support the people of Iran during this remarkable time in their history. This event is to get the entire Bay Area together to stand for Iran. From the organizers:

This is going to be the biggest rally of NorCal Iranians on Ahmadinejad's inauguration day, please invite all your Iranian and non Iranian friends to this event.
There will be live performances by local and out of state artists in support of Iranian's struggle for democracy.
As before we ask you not to bring flags or signs, plain Iran flags with no sign in the middle please.
Let's get United 4 Iran.

If you are on Facebook join the event and invite all your friends.

iran goes on strike

Iran will go on a 3-day strike during a holiday that is usually ignored.

Monday is the start of an unusual three-day Islamic holiday called Itikaf. Sometimes translated as “seclusion” or “retreat,” Itikaf is a time when particularly pious Muslims cloister themselves inside homes or mosques for a period of intense prayer and deep spiritual reflection. It is a practice that the Iranian regime has long encouraged the country’s citizens, particularly the youth, to take part in, usually without much success.

But this year, supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are planning to take up the government’s appeal for religious observance. Mousavi’s Web site has called on Iranians to use the state-sanctioned holiday to launch a three-day, nationwide strike and boycott of businesses and banks in hopes of re-sparking the popular demonstrations that brought the country to a halt two weeks ago.

Socialism 2009 in San Francisco

This weekend I attended the Socialism 2009 conference put on by the International Socialist Organization in San Francisco. It was an amazing event with talks on topics including racism, sexism, immigrant issues, history, the middle east, the prison system, the environment, science, media, unions, and socialism, Marxism, and revolutionary politics. I highly recommend attending next year in either San Francisco or Chicago, and maybe even New York since it was so successful this year in those two locations. Here are some pictures from the weekend. Also, check out my flickr




Talk on Prop 8 is Going Down: Winning Gay Marriage in California


Sherry Wolf speaking on Prop 8 is Going Down: Winning Gay Marriage in California


Prop 8 is Going Down: Winning Gay Marriage in California


John Pilger speaking on Empire and Obama: Power, Illusion, and America's Last Taboo


Main Auditorium at the Women's Building in San Francisco, Ca


Mark Steel's birthday cake


Richard Brown of the San Francisco 8 speaking for Oscar Grant, San Francisco 8 and the History of Political Repression in America


The record spins during the after party


Panel on Will Socialism Eliminate Sexism?


Final Rally: The Return of Socialism

Reform clerics say Iran's presidential vote invalid

A group of reform clerics came forward disputing a statement from the Guardian Council calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of the presidential election.

The pro-reform clerics group said in a statement that the top legislative body, the Guardian Council, no longer had the right "to judge in this case."

In a statement to the press, the Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers said some members of the Guardian Council had "lost their impartial image in the eyes of the public."

I don't know the significance of this. It is important that any clerics are contradicting the Supreme Leader's words, but I'll have to figure out what implications this has in Iran's government.

Meanwhile it's been reported that a handful of protesters have been executed. Prisoners have also been raped. As the government is loosing their grip they use more drastic tactics.

Obama admin control over the press and more on Honduras

Columnist Helen Thomas and CBS reporter Chip Reid criticized White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on the issue of pre-selected questions about health care sent in from email and social networks.

“It feels like the concept of a town hall, I think, is to have an open public forum. And this sounds like a very tightly controlled audience and list of questions. Why do it that way?” asked Reid.

[...]

“We have never had that in the White House,” Thomas said, referring to the degree that press events are pre-scripted in the Obama administration. “I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who called for openness and transparency…”

Watch the video. It's dissapointing seeing this type of action from the White House since this was one of the foundations of Obama's campaign.


For more on Honduras check out this article by Socialist Worker and today's Democracy Now!

Iran: from the revolution to today

I had been planning on writing a brief history of Iran to put the situation today in context, but someone more informed on the topic beat me to it. Since I know some people don't like reading really long articles I decided to paraphrase below. I still highly recommend reading the original article since it's full of great information. I still want to write a history on events before the 79 revolution.

WITH REPRESSION silencing most street protests for the moment as hardliners tighten their grip, is a democratic transformation--or revolutionary change--possible in Iran?

Lee Sustar begins at the revolution of 1979, when US-backed dictator, the Shah of Iran, was forced to flee the country, mainly due to general striked throughout Iran. Factory councils were initially set up but power centered around the clergy and middle-class and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The left was quickly divided and violently smashed and the 1980 invasion of Iran by Iraq backed by the United States allowed Khomeini and the clerics to consolidate power.

[In the post-revolutionary era] divisions broke out roughly into three camps: an Islamist left, which maintained some of the social rhetoric of the revolution; an Islamist right, based around the most conservative clergy; and a pragmatic right dominated by clerics who were close to, or had become part of, big business interests. Over the next two decades, these factions would clash over how Iran should engage with the world, economically, politically and culturally.

The Islamic left took power during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 with Mir Hussein Mousavi becoming prime minister. Mousavi justified social policies on religious grounds, saying "the way of Islam is to attend to social justice." After the war and Khomeini's death, factional struggles came into the open and cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani eliminated the office of prime minister and was elected president. Ali Khamanei became the supreme leader replacing Khomeini. Despite his attemps to engage the West, workers' standards of living declined and lead to riots and repression.

Rafsanjani completed his two alotted terms as president and aligned himself with the Islamic left, who after the fall of the Soviet Union shifted toward pro-market, neoliberal policies. Reformist candidate Mohammad Khatami won the 1997 presidential election, but the Islamic right, with their support from Khamanei controlled the majority of the government. Students in the pro-democracy movement had no support from the president and workers suffered under privatization and deregulation. In addition the clerics' Guardian Council, which approves candidates in office, barred many reformers from running in parliamentary elections.

To counter the mortal threat from Khatami's reform program the right built up networks of former Revolutionary Guards and the basij. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose political connections as well as those with the basij became the right's candidate for the 2005 presidential election, then being mayor if Tehran. With Khamanei's support, and suspected voter fraud, Ahmadinejad one the post. He put himself forward as a populist against Rafsanjani who was seen as the cause for Iran's economic turmoil. Once in office Ahmadinejad embraced privatization, but on a model based on Russia and Eastern Europe, where entrepreneurs are able to create huge private monopolies from former state assets. These assets would go to allies of Ahmadinejad threatning Rafsanjani and the existing capitalist class in Iran.

Rafsanjani supported his old rival Mousavi to counter Ahmadinejad and Khamanei. At the same time the economic and social liberal position of Mousavi gave him backing of young people and the working class. The election took place, Ahmadinajad won and we are where we are today.


For those in the Bay Area, there is a huge rally planned for Saturday July 25th in front of San Francisco city hall. I'll post more as I get information. For now check the Bay Area for Iran group on Facebook.

who makes policy in this country?

I'm on the mailing list for the Organic Consumers Association and usually there's some really interesting stuff in their newsletter. This week they have a list of the top 100 firms that spend the most money lobbying in this country. The amounts are for the first quarter of 2009. Here are the summations by industry:

$42 Million: Health Care, Health Insurance, & Pharma
$31 Million: Oil
$20 Million: War
$17 Million: Telecoms
$15 Million: Financial
$10 Million: Automotive
$7 Million: Life Insurance
$6 Million: Biotech

And the top ten companies:

1. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $9,996,000
2. Exxon Mobil: $9,320,000
3. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000
4. Chevron U.S.A. Inc: $6,800,000
5. Lockheed Martin Corporation: $6,380,000
6. Pfizer, Inc: $6,140,000
7. Conoco Phillips: $5,980,935
8. National Association of Realtors: $5,727,000
9. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: $5,480,000
10. AT&T Services, Inc: $5,134,873

Do you still think our government has your best interest? I'm sure if this were to be further divided by Republicans and Democrats receiving these funds it'd be a near even split. See the full list here. Also note that many of these corporations contract out to lobbying firms so the am mounts are greater than this.


Another interesting article from OCA is about "natural" products and how many times it's a marketing ploy and actually undermines the organic foods industry. Retailers like Whole Foods Market and wholesalers like United Natural Foods Inc. push these products with rather than certified organic products. On the topic of Whole Foods, here's an in depth article about their poor labor standards and union busting.

military coup in Honduras and how the US will act

Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup on June 28, 2009. President Obama has joined many leaders throughout the country condemning the ousting, although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held off formally calling the event a coup which would cut off millions in aid to Honduras. The US administration has not called for Zelaya to be reinstated in office. Zelaya is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and has made a series of moves in opposition of US foreign policy, mainly highly criticizing the war on drugs. The president has said the US is responsible for drug violence in Central America and has called for legalization. In December he wrote Obama a letter outlining these points. He also raised minimum wage by 60 percent in a country where many foreign companies operate factories.

Generals Romero Vasquez and Luis Suazo who led the coup also received training by the United States at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formally known as the School of the Americas. WHINSEC has trained many Latin American soldiers and policemen including generals, dictators, and armies for drug cartels, some of which have been previously involved in CIA sponsored coups.

Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez related these events to Haiti under the Clinton administration.

[T]his reminds me very much of what happened years ago in Haiti, where you had basically a military coup against a legally elected president, Aristide, and where the—a Democratic administration, President Clinton, condemned the coup leaders, as has President Obama, at least in this in the early days here, but where the US military was playing a different role—in essence, had its own ties with the established coup leaders.

It will be interesting to not only watch what the Obama administration does during this event, but also what goes on behind the scenes.