Florence Marathon - Solidarity run by Workers Fund Iran

[Q]

Suddenly, a wild facebook campaign (http://www.facebook.com/events/331568463608795/):



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On 25th November members of Hands Off the People or Iran will join with our Workers Fund Iran comrades to attempt to complete the Florence Marathon (hopefully in a half decent time). The US led sanctions against Iran have been devastating for the Iranian working class - not knowing where your next meal or pay check is coming from makes the struggle for democracy all the more difficult. Our efforts will aim to help try to elevate some of the hardships and show solidarity to our brothers and sisters in Iran. Please help by donating as much as you can.

No to Imperialism, No to the Islamic regime.

To donate go to: http://www.charitychoice.co.uk/fundraiser/jamietedford/florence-marathon

To learn more about Hands Off the People of Iran visit: http://hopoi.org/

To learn more about Workers Fund Iran visit: http://workersfund.org/

Just donated 50 pounds myself :thumbup1:

[Q]

No less than three articles (well, two and a bit) are devoted to solidarity with Iranian workers this week. I'll start out with the solidarity run (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/938/solidarity-run):


Comrades and friends of Workers Fund Iran are doing another solidarity marathon run reports Jamie Tedford


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Sore feet, good cause

On Sunday November 25 Ben Lewis and I will be representing the ‘British section’ of the Workers Fund Iran running team at the Florence city marathon. We will be running alongside around 30 other WFI comrades in a city that promises both beautiful scenery and - rather ominously - a very high number of cobblestones and hills per kilometre.

This is our second marathon this year. And, just as we tried to do in the Vienna marathon, which we completed with other comrades back in the spring, in Florence the aim is clear: to raise political awareness of the situation in Iran and to collect funds for the cause of international solidarity.

One way in which working class solidarity differs from bourgeois charity is in its honest declaration that our modest contribution to alleviate some of the most extreme hardship currently faced by the working class in Iran cannot in and of itself lead to any form of solution for our brothers and sisters in that country. We do not simply wish to rattle tins, raise some funds and foster the illusion that people on these shores have ‘done their bit’. This is a passive conception of how to enact change.

As communists we believe the real solution can only come through the self-liberation of the Iranian working class by and for itself, which also requires the rebuilding of the workers’ movement internationally. So we call upon you not only to donate money, but to become active in the movement against war and sanctions, and in support of the Iranian masses against their own brutal regime. At a time when the entire Middle East region is in turmoil, the slogan, ‘No to imperialism! No to the Islamic regime!’, is as pertinent as ever.

It is hard to find the words to describe just how difficult the situation is for the Iranian masses. One notable absence from Barack Obama’s re-election campaign was the pretence, so prominent four years ago, that an Obama presidency would represent some kind of paradigm shift in US foreign policy in the direction of peace. In fact, Obama has spent the last four years leading a war on the Iranian people. His weapon of choice has been the deepening sanctions regime, ensuring that the Iranian rial has plummeted in value and ordinary Iranians have trouble getting hold of even the most essential goods. But that is not all. As can be repeatedly seen by statements from the more unhinged sections of the Israeli and American elite, the threat of military intervention still looms worryingly large.

Like any good capitalist state, the Iranian regime has deflected the burden of sanctions onto its most vulnerable members. The result has been mass unemployment, poverty and hunger. Extreme hardship has in turn made the fight for democracy, for even the most basic political freedoms, all the more difficult. It is almost impossible to organise effective working class resistance when you do not know where your next paycheck or meal is coming from. With the modest funds that we raise through initiatives like late-night hikes, marathons, cricket matches and rock gigs, Workers Fund Iran activists are attempting to provide material support to those in Iran who are currently hit the hardest.

The WFI solidarity running team is growing in size, and comprises many people from across the world of all ages and abilities. Over the past few years, the team has competed in Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm and Vienna. The next race will be decided after the post-marathon celebratory meal, where the fastest runner traditionally leads the other runners in song. If we did have a ‘leader’ then this would definitely be comrade Ali, an Iranian living in Florence. He is a distinguished member of the ‘50+ club’, having completed over 50 marathons. Now I know that some readers will be thinking that any member of such a club might need their head examined, so I thought I would dispel some myths around marathon running in the hope that you may join us in the future - wherever the next marathon takes us!

Like the actual race itself there are distinct phases to a marathon training programme. The first, or ‘optimistic phase’, begins with signing up to the event - to make this part go more smoothly it is best to be slightly inebriated: not to the point that you completely forget that you have signed up and thus forget to do any training, but just enough to distort your expectations and convince yourself that running 26.2 miles ‘can’t be that hard’. Initially, running is quite fun, a bit of a novelty and it is not long before you are making good progress, running longer distances and feeling good for it.

The middle phase of the training is the hardest: you have to put in most of the effort by gradually increasing your stamina and braving dark, early mornings, biting winds, ice, freezing rains and other niceties of the British autumnal weather. One relief during this time is that you can annoy others around you with endless tales of your progress and complaints of every minor injury you suffer along the way.

When you get through this, the next stage is the most satisfying and, speaking personally, I knew I had reached it when I realised that I had actually come to enjoy running, rather than just counting each kilometre until I could stop. If you get through this without suffering any horrific injuries then there is little more to do other than to pack your stylish WFI T-shirt, wait for the big day … and try not panic too much. The first celebratory beer at the dinner afterwards, oddly enough, has just the effect of making you sign up again too!

If this hasn’t convinced you, then I can only suggest that in the future you come along, meet our comrades and find out more. In the meantime, Ben and I are hoping to raise at least £500 in Florence, so please rush your donations to us via this link: www.charitychoice.co.uk/fundraiser/jamietedford/florence-marathon.

To learn more about Workers Fund Iran visit www.workersfund.org.

[Q]

The second article (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/938/in-the-firing-line) investigates the imperialist aiding "Iran Tribunal".


When is a political tribunal ‘non-political’? Hands Off the People of Iran national secretary Mark Fischer responds to the latest salvo of pro-imperialist apologetics


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Hyperinflation: a tool of war that enriches some

Hands Off the People of Iran and the Weekly Worker have been sent a document authored by Dariosh Afshar, associate member of the Iran Tribunal’s International Communications Work Group. The Iran Tribunal, set up by exiled anti-regime Iranians, was convened to investigate Tehran’s massacre of some 15,000 political prisoners in the 1980s, but has been shown by Hopi and this paper to be a body that objectively aids the US-led drive to impose - by military or other means - regime change from above on Iran.

The long, rambling and self-contradictory document, entitled ‘What the “friends of the people” are, and how they fight the social power of the people’, is presented as a response to a situation where allegedly “professor Norman Paech, a renowned and well respected German politician of Germany’s ‘Left’ party, who had earlier offered his support to Iran Tribunal, was compelled to withdraw his support ...”1 Its stated aim is to refute the criticisms of the IT that soured comrade Paech’s attitude and - pursuing that - the document makes a whole series of counter-accusations against Hopi and one of its leading figures, Yassamine Mather, as well as the Weekly Worker.

We have been challenged to publish the 16,000-word document in our paper, which we have no intention of doing. However, Hopi has reproduced it on its website,2 so comrades can judge its quality for themselves, and we intend - in due course - to comprehensively unpick its amateurish dishonesty and clumsy apologetics. This article will confine itself to presenting some answers to the main political charges that Afshar - presumably with the tacit consent of other members of the IT - has laid against us.

There are other, more involved questions: for example, the funding links of individuals and organisations involved in the IT. These we will take up subsequently in a longer, more detailed reply. Here we will content ourselves with a few observations. For example, the web of influence through which imperialism pursues its global agenda is, naturally, not transparent. It is opaque, highly complex, subtle and circuitous: it is pushed forward financially, through academic patronage, personal pressure/inducement and the ideological cooption of useful dupes. Simply stating that there are no direct, bank-account-to-bank-account transactions that can be highlighted in yellow marker is an idiotic defence - or perhaps, more accurately, a defence that is designed to satisfy no-one but fools.

More often than not, the simplest questions are the most profound. So comrade Paech is to be congratulated for prompting the production of this long, self-contradictory screed with his plainly put request for clarification: “Can the tribunal take a clear position against war and sanctions?” he asked.

No it cannot, Afshar answers. More tellingly, this apologist suggests that its very nature dictates that it should not. This is because the Iran Tribunal is “non-political”, he insists. Comrades who plough through his document online will note that he returns repeatedly to this challenge and - interestingly - provides different definitions of “non-political”.

Non-political politics

Most absurdly, he actually suggests in one place that the IT is non-political because “upholding justice and human dignity and values doesn’t mix with politics. This is one of the main elements which Yassamine Mather cannot see or appreciate.”

On two levels, it is a little difficult to respond to something as silly as this. Historically, the notion that categories such as ‘justice’ and ‘human dignity’ have not been rather hotly contested political concepts should not really detain us too long - Liberté, égalité, fraternité anyone …?

The more pertinent point here is the way contemporary imperialism promotes its interventions as ‘humanitarian’ gestures - Afshar asks whether “any war between two or more reactionary forces” has “ever been motivated, or been used as a pretext, to defend or even pretend to defend or protect human rights”. A smarter question would perhaps be - particularly since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and the second cold war - when have they not?

With this is mind, the recommendations of the IT’s second sitting (ending on October 29) make ominous reading. As others have pointed out, they sound very much like the conclusions reached by the kind of tribunals that preceded the ‘humanitarian’ intervention in the former Yugoslavia - conclusions that conveniently paved the way for the military intervention of Nato. In this context, there is an irony that this final session of the IT was staged in the Hague, where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić is currently on trial.

Afshar’s insistence that “no-one’s political or ideological views play any role whatsoever” in the IT and that “this is absolute” assumes that his audience are morons. A tribunal - with, rather obviously, no powers whatsoever - is specifically set up to investigate the crimes of a particular regime and we are meant to believe that politics do not come into it?

What is more, the Iran Tribunal takes place against the background of sanctions, warmongering and attempts to impose regime change from above. Meanwhile, the international anti-war movement (for which Afshar consistently expresses contempt throughout his document) is very much weakened, compared to its zenith in 2003, and seems incapable of mounting a serious challenge to imperialism’s plans.

Then in this particular historical moment, the ‘non-political’ IT steps forward with its condemnation of the barbaric Tehran regime and its ear-splitting silence concerning the looming danger of another disastrous war in the region. It ignores the ongoing horror of ‘soft war’ sanctions that are fraying the fabric of Iran’s society and making life hell for ordinary people. The evasions of Afshar are worthless - it is clear whose interests are being served by his tribunal. The “absolute” ban on “political or ideological views” is meaningless: what other conclusion are we supposed to draw from the evidence than ‘something must be done’? Moreover, those participating in the stunt who supported sanctions and war had vast resources deployed daily outside the hall to make their case for them.3

The ban is exclusively directed against the left, against anti-imperialist forces - something that has been documented in some detail. For example, in two highly critical statements the Norwegian IT support committee describes how all tribunal witnesses who arrived in London on June 17 were taken to a briefing, where they were explicitly asked not to ‘raise any politics’ during their evidence. One witness wanted to challenge the tribunal and at the end of his 30-minute session made an anti-imperialist statement. Outrageously, his whole evidence was excluded from the record.

In the current world context, to remain silent on sanctions and the threat of war is to play the role of willing dupes; it is to constitute yourself as the ‘human rights’ wing of imperialism’s reactionary campaign.

Third force

Possibly the most absurd argument is Afshar’s attempt to prove that Hopi generally and Yassamine Mather specifically are in effect supporters of the Islamic regime. It is worthwhile examining his text here. A quote from comrade Mather is cited: “without clear opposition to war and sanctions, the tribunal effectively strengthens the hand of all those reactionary forces contemplating a military attack on Iran … I am a strong opponent of the regime in Tehran - but a war would be disastrous for the forces in Iran that have a real interest in democracy: the workers, women’s groups and social movements in that country.”

Absurdly this is taken to show that “Yassamine simply cannot see through her tunnel vision that there is a third force: ie, the people of Iran. They are the ultimate power who could stop any potential war by overthrowing the regime and establishing their own secular and democratic system. Being ‘a strong opponent of the regime in Tehran’ doesn’t mean that one should see the welfare and democratic aspirations of the people through maintaining the balance of power between two reactionary and warring states.”

At this point, some readers may start to doubt the man’s sanity. It is possible to fill a barn with Hopi and Mather quotes that exactly make the point that the working people of Iran are the focus of our work, our hopes for democracy and socialism - indeed the quote used by Afshar himself does that. However, very quickly it becomes clear that what Afshar actually takes offence to is the anti-war component of Hopi’s work.

“Yassamine only sees the US and the rulers of IRI ,” he writes, in contradiction to the words he is actually quoting. “She only worries about weakening or strengthening one or the other. People don’t come into Yassamine’s equation and have no place in her ‘anti-war’ politics. And when people do something collectively and form a social power institution such as Iran Tribunal, she smears it with lies and accusations.”

“[Mather] has focused the main part of her activism on ‘anti-war’ campaigning. Isn’t the balance of power between the USA and [Iran] the main issue with Yassamine? Doesn’t she just want to play ‘anti-war’ games within the ‘anti-imperialist camp’ of some of the mind-twisted so-called ‘Marxists’? Where do the people of Iran come into Yassamine’s active politics?”

Given world politics and relations between Israel, the US and Iran over the last few years, one might have expected that someone like Afshar (who self-defines himself as a ‘Marxist’ in the document) would see anti-war agitation and propaganda in a period like this as rather more than a ‘game’.

In truth, and despite his protestations otherwise, Afshar’s politics lend themselves to, if not active [I]support for sanctions and the war drive, at least indifference. He imagines a scenario where “Yassamine Mather had a successful campaign and not only she prevented the war, but the sanctions were also lifted. Wouldn’t the best achieved outcome and scenario be similar to the time when Khatami or Rafsanjani had the upper hand within the Islamic Republican of Iran factions?”

In contrast, Afshar appears to see the present, dire situation in today’s Iran as preferable. The “country’s disastrous and catastrophic circumstances” mean that “all the right conditions for a revolutionary regime change are ready … The great majority of the Iranian population is faced with unprecedented harsh and unmanageable economic and living conditions, and as far as social unrest is concerned, Iran right now is a massive time bomb waiting to go off at any time ...” An important source of the pressure that has produced these apparently propitious conditions for the struggle of the people of Iran is imperialism itself, of course - its vicious sanctions and the threats of a military strike.

In stark contrast, Hopi’s anti-war/anti-sanctions campaign has nothing whatsoever to do with restoring the hegemony of this or that faction in the theocracy, still less a “balance of power” between US-led imperialism and Tehran. (When on earth did that ever exist, by the way? The United States is the world’s policeman, massively more powerful militarily than its main imperialist rivals, let alone Iran). Our fight to remove the crippling sanctions (which disrupt and demoralise the working people primarily) and to stop the drive to war (which would be a disaster for ordinary people and which facilitate oppression in the here and now) is intended to give the working class and its allies the maximum space and opportunity to impose its own progressive democratic agenda.

Finally, Afshar reaches a truly bizarre conclusion about the motivations of Yassamine Mather and Hopi (comrade Mather has by now clearly become the personification of the campaign for him: any accusation he throws against her holds good for the organisation as a whole in his mind):

“Yassamine doesn’t want Iran Tribunal to succeed because she doesn’t want to be exposed with yet another one of its horrific scandals on the international scene. The reason for this is that [Iran] has, of course, taken full advantage of the concept of being ‘anti-war’, and has marked its own devious influence by launching organisations … to act as impostors within [the anti-war movement] in order to steer and direct the whole of the ‘anti-war’ movement toward its own political advantage. As far as the ‘anti-war’ movements are concerned, the point to make should be that both the USA and Islamic Republic of Iran are reactionary forces who pursue their own agendas.”

Hopi has always said that Iran’s Islamic Republic must be held accountable for its crimes, including the massacre of political prisoners that the IT was convened to look into. Nor has Hopi ever argued that the threat of war means we should ignore or delay such investigations.4 However, to condemn the Iranian regime for its myriad crimes in the current political situation without making crystal-clear at the same time your implacable opposition to any external interference in the country, either in the form of ‘soft war’ sanctions or a military strike, is to effectively make yourself a [I]dupe of imperialist reaction. There were plenty of them in the war in former Yugoslavia; plenty of them cheered on the assault on Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan. So, despite Afshar bleating about the unique and principled nature of the Iran Tribunal, it is actually joining a very long, very disreputable line.

Lastly, two points about the IT’s final report:

1. It seems that the gagging order on the left and anti-imperialists is to be applied retrospectively even to the victims of the Islamic regime’s executions in the 1980s. It is not mentioned that many (if not the majority) of the victims were socialists and communists who would have been appalled by the pro-imperialist use their sacrifice is being put to. Not even an echo of their voices is to be allowed; not even from beyond the grave.

2. The IT’s recommendation “that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation mandate its Independent Permanent Commission of Human Rights to designate these violations a ‘priority human rights issue’ and ‘conduct studies and research’” into it is truly jaw-dropping. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is made up of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - they are being asked to monitor Iran’s human rights record!

Clearly, however, the deciding factor here is not these countries’ own democratic credentials. For example, Saudi Arabia is an undemocratic hell-hole, but it is one of the main allies of imperialism in the region. A coincidence? We think not …

Comrades in Hands Off the People of Iran do not take great pleasure in being proved right about the IT. We took a potentially controversial decision to oppose it so energetically. The only gratifying aspect of the whole affair has been that our stance has been vindicated so quickly and so completely - something rare in leftwing politics. However, the fact that important elements of the Iranian left chose to cooperate with it makes this a sad and worrying ‘victory’ for us.

Notes

1. All quotes from ‘What the “friends of the people” are’, unless otherwise stated. For the full story on Norman Paech see www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/online-only/iran-tribunal-impossible-to-continue-support. A shortened version of this article appeared as ‘Iran Tribunal: credibility drains away’ (Weekly Worker October 4).

2. www.hopoi.org/supporters-of-Irantribunal.pdf.

3. The IT’s ‘chief prosecutor’, Payam Akhavan, is a keen supporter of sanctions on Iran. For many years, Akhavan has been pushing his sponsors’ agenda for ever harsher sanctions. He is one of the authors of the international report published by the Responsibility to Prevent Coalition, which calls for “a comprehensive set of generic remedies - smart sanctions - to combat the critical mass of threat, including threat-specific remedies for each of the nuclear, incitement, terrorist and rights-violating threats”. This 2010 report was, incidentally, also signed by Tory MP Michael Gove and Carl Gershman, president of the US-sponsored National Endowment for Democracy.

4. See, for example, two recent Hopi videos: http://vimeo.com/52090333 and http://vimeo.com/48434673.

[Q]

Last, but not least, a call for affiliation and what HOPI is all about (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/938/solidarity-with-the-people-of-iran):


Solidarity with the people of Iran

Model motion from Hands Off the People of Iran

We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran against the corrupt, oppressive, theocratic regime. We stand in solidarity with the workers, women, students, youth and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people in Iran in their struggle for freedom, democracy and regime change from below.

We stand against imperialist sanctions and war, and against regime change from above. We condemn the covert war already underway, through cyber-attack, assassinations and bombings. We demand an end to economic sanctions, which condemn the people to poverty and undermine their ability to organise opposition.

The threat of military attack by Israel and the US, backed by the UK, excuses the theocratic regime’s attacks on its political opposition, as well as its anti-labour laws and sweeping privatisations.

This branch/organisation resolves to:


affiliate to Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi) (£25 per year);
donate £100 to Hopi;
donate £100 to Workers Fund Iran;
call on individuals to join Hopi (£10pa/£5pa unwaged).

[cynicles]

Iran is a part of the arab world? Seriously though maybe we should change the title of this sub-forum to the middle east instead of just the arab world.

[Q]

Just got this announcement in the mailbox:


This coming Sunday (November 25) Ben Lewis and Jamie Tedford will be pounding the streets on Florence in its annual marathon - a city that Jamie notes boasts a “very high number of cobblestones and hills per kilometre” (Weekly Worker, November 15). The comrades are running their second marathon this year for the charity, Workers Fund Iran.

WFI exists to raise money to alleviate poverty amongst the working people of Iran. It will take no money from any state or any body with funding links to any state. It employs no staff and - outside of basic costs for admin and publicity materials etc, 100% of the money it raises goes to the hard pressed people of Iran. In this sense, WFI is a concrete manifestation of a central political strand in the work of Hands Off the People of Iran. That is, “[Hopi’s] fight to remove the crippling sanctions (which disrupt and demoralise the working people primarily) and to stop the drive to war (which would be a disaster for ordinary people and which facilitate oppression in the here and now) is intended to give the working class and its allies the maximum space and opportunity to impose its own progressive democratic agenda” (Mark Fischer, writing in the November 15 issue of Weekly Worker).

Any financial solidarity - limited though it will be, of course - that can be offered has the same effect. It helps ease the pressure on workers to simply scrabble around to simply keep body and soul together. It means that they can undertake the basic work of organising the movement, supporting strikers and their families, etc.

There are plenty of ways we have raised money for this excellent cause over the years - Jamie writes of late-night hikes, marathons, rock gigs and cricket matches.

That’s right: cricket matches. For a number of years, Hands Off the People of Iran has organised a solidarity cricket match against the Labour Representation Committee to raise funds for WFI. (See John McDonnell MP’s blog for footage of the LRC’s Andrew Fisher being run out in the first contest in 2009 - click here (http://www.johnmcdonnell.org.uk/2009/08/andrew-fisher-run-out-in-lrc-v-hopi.html). The bald bloke in the foreground who looks like a Black Bloc grand dad is actually Attila the Stockbroker).

If you would like to sponsor our intrepid runners in Florence, visit their marathon 'Charity Choice' page here http://www.charitychoice.co.uk/fundraiser/jamietedford/florence-marathon - and make your donation.

Some 180 pounds have been gathered so far. Can you spare a little and help out the Iranian working class in a concrete way?

[hashem]

since Iran Tribunal is mentioned here, for more information about it you can see these articles:

Tribunal´s Closing report (http://www.irantribunal.com/Eng/Documents/Tribunal-closing%20Report.html)

What the “Friends of the People” are, and how they fight the Social Power of the people a reference to “Iran Tribunal” (http://www.kanoon-zendanian.org/PDFs/A%20refernce%20to%20Iran%20Tribunal.pdf)