Some Post-1979 Iranian History Revisited--Part 2

(Revisiting some of the following post-1979 Iranian people’s history might help U.S. anti-war activists understand better some of the historical background of what is currently happening within Iran in 2009).

After opposing the Khomeini regime’s decision to release the U.S. Embassy hostages to the new Reagan Administration (following a failed attempt by the Democratic Carter Administration to “rescue” the U.S. Embassy hostages by sending some U.S. military commandos into Iran) and the Islamic Republic’s press censorship law in January 1981, the People’s Mojahadeen declared its opposition to the Khomeini regime in a June 20, 1981 street march. Twenty young Iranian women People’s Mojahadeen protesters were then arrested by Khomeini’s regime and quickly executed.

In response, the People’s Mojahadeen group bombed the headquarters of the pro-Khomeini Islamic Republican Party [IRP] headquarters on June 28, 1981 and eliminated almost the entire leadership of the Islamic Republican Party, whose members held the majority of seats in the Iranian parliament. By means of an armed uprising the People’s Mojahadeen guerrillas apparently hoped to then overthrow Khomeini’s Islamic Republic in the same way they had helped to previously overthrow the Shah’s regime during the late 1970s.

The Islamic Republic authorities responded to the People’s Mojahadeen armed revolt during Iran’s war with Iraq by quickly executing 100 more of its domestic Iranian political opponents in retaliation for the June 28, 1981 bombing of the Islamic Republican Party’s headquarters. But on August 30, 1981, the People’s Mojahadeen insurgents next bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic’s Prime Minister, killing 130 top leaders of the Islamic Republican Party, including Iran’s President and Premier.

In retaliation, 7,746 Iranians were then either executed by the Khomeini regime or killed in clashes with the security forces of the Khomeini regime by 1984. Of these 7,746 Iranians, 6,221 were members of the People’s Mojahadeen, including 933 women members of the People’s Mojahadeen.

Unlike the People’s Mojahadeen group, the Tudeh Party and the People’s Fedayeen group continued to express support for Khomeini’s Islamic Republic regime after June 1981 and both the Tudeh Party and the People’s Fedayeen group continued to be allowed to operate openly by Iranian government authorities.

But after the Tudeh Party criticized the Islamic Republic’s conduct of its war with Iraq and the Khomeini regime’s intention--after the Iranian military forces recaptured the Iranian land that Iraq had occupied early in the Iraq-Iran War--to now invade Iraq, some top Tudeh Party leaders were arrested by Iranian government authorities in February 1983.

Subsequently, the Tudeh Party was outlawed on May 4, 1983 by the Iranian government; and 670 civilian members of the Tudeh Party and 100 Iranian military officers who supported the Tudeh Party were also arrested.

Then, in December 1983, the 100 Iranian military officers who were Tudeh Party supporters were put on trial. And on February 25, 1984, ten of these Tudeh Party supporters within the Iranian military's officer corps were executed by Islamic Republic authorities.

Thirty members of the People’s Fedayeen group were also arrested in the Fall of 1983. And, after the Iranian government declared that the People’s Fedayeen group was subversive and anti-Islamic in December 1983, the People’s Fedayeen group was also outlawed in February 1984.

In their 2006 book Democracy In Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty, University of San Diego Professor of History and Political Science Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr described how the religious, anti-communist supporters of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic regime apparently also started to violate the democratic rights of leftist Iranian supporters of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, after the Democratic Carter Administration refused to extradite the deposed Shah of Iran and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized:

“Fundamentalists began to constrict the Left’s room to maneuver, purging their members from positions of power, attacking their offices, gatherings, and demonstrations, and intimidating or arresting their members and supporters. For instance, they attacked university campuses, intimidated and arrested students and faculty, and in June 1980 set in motion a `cultural revolution’ to cleanse the universities of the Left. Fundamentalists permanently occupied Tehran University by making its grounds the site for the official Friday Prayers…”

In an article that appeared in the June 21, 2003 issue of the Asia Times, B Raman also asserted that in Iran “after seizing power with the help of the communist students, the clerics ruthlessly suppressed the communists, arresting and executing many of them;” and “those who escaped arrest and death at the hands of the clerics managed to flee to West Europe and started organizing their activities from there.” According to the 2006 Democracy In Iran book, the secular Iranian leftist activists “were portrayed by fundamentalists as American stooges, and resistance to religion’s prominence in society was depicted as a Western ploy to destabilize the revolution.” (end of part 2)

Some Post-1979 Iranian History Revisited--Part 1

(Revisiting some of the following post-1979 Iranian people’s history might help U.S. anti-war activists understand better some of the historical background of what is currently happening within Iran in 2009).

The preamble to the October 24, 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran described how the people of Iran were able to create the 1979 Iranian Revolution:

“….The employees of all government establishments took an active part in the effort to overthrow the tyrannical regime by calling a general strike and participating in street demonstrations. The wide-spread solidarity of men and women of all segments of society and of all political and religious factions, played a clearly determining role in the struggle. Especially the women were actively and massively present in the most conspicuous manner at all stages of this great struggle. The common sight of mothers with infants in their arms rushing towards the scene of battle and in front of the barrels of machineguns indicated the essential and decisive role played by this major segment of society in the struggle.”

In response to the large pro-democratization demonstrations in Iran in 1978, the Shah of Iran’s regime also agreed to release some of its Iranian political prisoners before it finally collapsed on February 12, 1979. About 200 members of the People’s Mojahadeen group, for example, were released from prison in the summer of 1978, while another 700 People’s Mojahadeen members were allowed to return to Iran from exile at the same time. By the time the mass demonstrations and general strike had finally succeeded in bringing down the Shah of Iran’s government, about 3,000 to 5,000 Iranian activists were now members of the People’s Mojahadeen group.

It was the traditional Islamic opposition groups led by the anti-communist religious Iranian Bazaar merchant class and the anti-communist Iranian clerical hierarchy, not the Tudeh Party, the People’s Fedayeen guerrilla group or the People’s Mojahadeen guerrilla group, which soon ended up gaining Iranian state power following the collapse of the Shah of Iran’s regime in early 1979.

Led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the traditional Islamic groups were apparently able to gain political power by default because of the absence of mass-based working-class organizations in Iran in the late 1970s and the degree to which the Iranian masses were still strongly religious in 1979. Despite their hatred for the Shah of Iran’s police-state regime and the U.S. government that had installed and backed the Shah’s dictatorial regime, the Iranian masses in 1979 were apparently not willing to then throw their political support behind an effort to establish a new anti-imperialist, secular, democratic, leftist revolutionary regime in Iran.

Almost immediately after the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the People’s Mojahadeen group and the pro-Khomeini Islamic groups began to split apart. Then, in April 1979, a referendum to abolish the Iranian monarchical system of government and set up an Islamic Republic in Iran controlled by Iran’s fundamentalist clerical hierarchy under Ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership was held. Although all the secular Iranian political groups were opposed to the creation of this kind of Sh'ia-led Islamic theocracy (with Khomeini as the supreme and divine authority) within Iran, on the grounds that it would create an undemocratic post-revolutionary Iranian society, an Islamic Republic was soon established in Iran.

Ayatollah Khomeini had initially promised to organize a popularly-elected Constituent Assembly in Iran to draft the Islamic Republic’s new Constitution. But, fearing that a popularly-elected Constituent Assembly in Iran would give some representation to the People’s Mojahadeen group activists who now opposed him politically, Khomeini broke his promise. Instead, the Ayatollah set up a smaller, Islamic clergy-dominated Assembly of Experts which began drafting the Constitution for the Islamic Republic in the summer of 1979.

This new Constitution was completed around ten days before the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Embassy employees in Tehran were taken hostage on November 4, 1979 by young Iranian political activists--who were protesting against the Democratic Carter Administration’s refusal to extradite the [now-deceased] former Shah of Iran back to the new government in Iran to face a post-revolutionary Iranian war crimes tribunal.

On December 1, 1979 the new Islamic Republic’s Constitution was approved by Iranian voters. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran of October 24, 1979 (and as later amended on July 28, 1989) does appear to contain many democratic articles. Article 13, for examples, guarantees religious freedom and Article 38 prohibits torture. Article 29 guarantees the Iranian people the right to universal health care and Article 31 guarantees the Iranian people their right to housing. Article 79 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution also prohibits martial law, Article 81 prohibits the granting of economic concessions in Iran to foreign imperialists and Article 146 prohibits the establishment of foreign military bases in Iran.

With respect to freedom of the press rights in Iran, Article 24 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution guarantees freedom of the press “except when detrimental to fundamental principles of Islam.” And marches and demonstrations are allowed under Article 27 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution, as long as arms are not carried by demonstrators and the demonstration is “not detrimental to Islamic principles.” Under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran “the mass-communications media, radio and television, must” also “serve the diffusion of Islamic culture.”

After the Islamic Republic’s Constitution was approved by Iraqi voters, the Islamic Republic’s first Majlis (parliament) of 270 members was subsequently elected in the Summer of 1980. Fifteen percent of the 11 million Iraqi voters chose to vote for People’s Mohjadeen-supported parliamentary candidates.

On September 22, 1980, however, the then-pro-U.S. imperialist Ba’ath Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein launched a military attack on Iran. And the new external Iraqi military threat to Iran’s national security apparently gave Khomeini’s Islamic Republic officials an internal security pretext for restricting democratic rights in post-Shah Iran. (end of part 1)

An Interview With `The World Is Turning' Author Don Paul--Conclusion

On April 14, 2007, New Orleans-based writer-poet-musician-Marathon runner-activist Don Paul was the Chief Prosecutor for the "San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City" event that was held at San Diego State University. He co-founded the organization Rebuild Green three days after Hurricane Katrina and moved from San Francisco to New Orleans in January 2006 to help with effort for recovery there. The author of more than 20 books and the producer of more than 20 albums, Paul was recently interviewed by email about the Democratic Obama Administration's first 100 days and about his most recent book: The World Is Turning: `9/11,' The Movement for Justice & Reclaiming America for the World. (The text of this interview was originally posted on the http://blog.puppetgov.com site. See below for parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5).

In your new book you also write that "another financier linked to major events of the 9/11/01 day, Warren Buffett, spoke to shareholders of the Berkshire Hathaway company that he heads;" and "Berkshire Hathaway was a big financial winner after 9/11/01." How would you evaluate the way the Big Media and most left alternative media cover the role that Warren Buffett has played in U.S. history in recent years?

Don Paul [DP]: So far as I can tell, mass media is generally fawning toward Warren Buffett, while almost all of what’s called left media ignores the integral roles played by Warren Buffett and similarly mega-financiers in directing society.

In your book you also note that "Warren Buffett was photographed with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lord Jacob Rothschild at a meeting on Rothschild's English estate of investors in Buffett's NextJet Company" and you seem to emphasize the special influence that banking families like the Rothschilds have played in determining the direction of world history. What kind of information about the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Federal Reserve Bank and the Big Banks do you think anti-war readers will find in your book that they wouldn't generally find from just watching CNN and PBS or just listening to left alternative media radio shows like "Democracy Now!'?

DP: Corporations such as CNN and PBS—Corporations that are dependent upon systems of private money-lending as the method of sustaining national economies—that is, Corporations that are ultimately dependent upon the status quo Central Banks such as the Federal Reserve System, the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Canada—completely fail to report the defrauding, life-sucking realities of these private Central Banks.

So-called “Left” media likewise ignore these most fundamental realities, for all of its fuss about scandals and crises. The volume of Project Censored that presents the “Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007-08”—years of bail-outs totaling more than $1 trillion!—has only one instance of misdeeds that involve the Federal Reserve System: the Fed’s shipping of $12 billion of bank notes to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (L. Paul Bremer) over one year between 2003 and 2004.

Then there’s the role of families and Corporations’ Foundations in exercising social control through their funding of media and other agencies of the “Left”--that are supposed to expose and combat inequties--and “Right.”

Do you think any of the liberal establishment foundations on whose boards sit board members of Wall Street firms like A.I.G, the Federal Reserve Bank or the Big Banks are likely to give you a literary grant to write your next book--after they read what you write about banks in The World Is Turning?

DP: Not likely. A grant from any Lord or arm of the empire is as unlikely a prospect for me as suicide. But—you never know. There is no Other in the sea of us and we all may hope to be subjected to more enlightenment.

How can folks who wish to read your new book obtain a copy, if they can't find a copy of your book in their local library or at the local corporate bookstore chain outlet?

DP: Well, readers can—if they’re so moved—request that Public Libraries obtain a copy of The World Is Turning. Ingram or another distributor can bring the book to Public Libraries through standard channels. I love Public Libraries.

If someone wants to order the book for direct purchase, I recommend going to the http://www.wireonefire.com/donpaul/wit.html

sub-site and using the means there. It’s also available there as an e-book and a three-CD audio book. (end of interview)

Over 10 Percent Jobless In 13 States Under Obama Regime

The official unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent in 13 states and in Washington, D.C. in May 2009 under the Democratic Obama Regime, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Following is a list of the 13 states whose official jobless rate was over 10 percent in May 2009:

1. Michigan (14.1 percent);

2. Oregon (12.4 percent);

3. Rhode Island (12.1 percent);

4. South Carolina (12.1 percent);

5. California (11.5 percent);

6. Nevada (11.3 percent);

7. North Carolina (11.1 percent);

8. Ohio (10.8 percent);

9. Tennessee (10.7 percent);

10. Kentucky (10.6 percent);

11. Indiana (10.6 percent);

12. Florida (10.2 percent); and

13. Illinois (10.1 percent).

In addition, the official unemployment rate in Washington, D.C. was 10.7 percent.

An Interview With `The World Is Turning' Author Don Paul--Part 5

On April 14, 2007, New Orleans-based writer-poet-musician-Marathon runner-activist Don Paul was the Chief Prosecutor for the "San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City" event that was held at San Diego State University. He co-founded the organization Rebuild Green three days after Hurricane Katrina and moved from San Francisco to New Orleans in January 2006 to help with effort for recovery there. The author of more than 20 books and the producer of more than 20 albums, Paul was recently interviewed by email about the Democratic Obama Administration's first 100 days and about his most recent book: The World Is Turning: `9/11,' The Movement for Justice & Reclaiming America for the World. (The text of this interview was originally posted on the http://blog.puppetgov.com site. See below for parts 1, 2, 3, and 4).

Recently some Big Media attention has been focused on the American International Group [A.I.G.] because it used a lot of its U.S. taxpayer-provided bail-out fund money to just give big bonuses to A.I.G. executives. But your book seems to indicate that A.I.G. also apparently profited from what happened on September 11, 2001 in Downtown Manhattan. Besides learning more about how A.I.G. may have profited from what happened on 9/11/01, what other kinds of information about the 9/11/01 events which the Big Media or U.S. left alternative media generally never mention, will U.S. anti-war readers find in your new book?

Don Paul [DP]: The insurance pay-outs from demolition of the three World Trade Center Building is dwarfed by profits realized by grants in the insurance and re-insurance businesses since 9/11/01. The biggest of these are the American International Group [AIG] and holdings of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company, including General Reinsurance. Because these giants were able to raise premiums as much as 2000%, their revenues rose about 40% in the three years after 9/11. For the year 2004—before it dove into the global grand casino of “derivatives” and Credit Defaults Swaps et cetera—AIG reported a profit of $9.73 billion.

The giant insurance corporations also got great breaks from Congress post-9/11. Maurice Greenberg, then CEO of AIG, and his son Jeffrey, then CEO of March & McClennan, an insurance-firm that lost 295 employees due to demolition of the South Tower, went to Congress less than two weeks after 9/11. The insurance industry came away with a new law, the Terrorism Risk Prevention Act of 2002, by which the public would absorb 90% of insurers’ losses up to $100 billion after a minor deductible of $5 or $50 million. The TRPA remains in effect under the Obama Administration. (end of part 5)

An Interview With `The World Is Turning' Author Don Paul--Part 4

On April 14, 2007, New Orleans-based writer-poet-musician-Marathon runner-activist Don Paul was the Chief Prosecutor for the "San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City" event that was held at San Diego State University. He co-founded the organization Rebuild Green three days after Hurricane Katrina and moved from San Francisco to New Orleans in January 2006 to help with effort for recovery there. The author of more than 20 books and the producer of more than 20 albums, Paul was recently interviewed by email about the Democratic Obama Administration's first 100 days and about his most recent book: The World Is Turning: `9/11,' The Movement for Justice & Reclaiming America for the World. (The text of this interview was originally posted on the http://blog.puppetgov.com site. See below for parts 1, 2 and 3).

In September and October 2008, Barack Obama expressed support for the Wall Street bail-out bill. And since Obama's inauguration, the Democratic Obama Administration has continued to give corporate welfare grants to Wall Street firms like Citigroup and A.I.G.

Yet in a September 25, 2008 article that is reprinted in The World Is Turning book, you wrote "Now, September into October of 2008, we face a Bail-out Bill and other U.S. Government funding of speculator Corporations' bad debts that already total more than $1 trillion;" and "the almost unbelievable arrogance of the still expanding Bail-out Bill grants unilateral and `unreversable' powers of limitless lending to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve System, and the U.S. President, accomplishing a coup 'd'etat by legislative declaration even more extreme than 2002's similarly USA PATRIOT Act." And in an October 31, 2008 article that is reprinted in your book, you wrote: "The first two weeks of October 2008 have seen the most bare-faced and brazen, yet sly and secretive, theft of a nation proceed, robbing the public of the United States of both rights and posterity."

Could you explain further why you think that last fall's bail-out bill was bad for people in the United States and against the economic interest of most people in the United States? And, if bailing-out Wall Street firms like A.I.G. and Citigroup was, in fact, an economically stupid and undemocratic idea, why would Barack Obama support such an economic plan?

Don Paul [DP]: The “Bail-out Bill” of last October and the much greater, predictable giveaways that have followed it—so that even Bloomberg News is setting the total bail-out around $10 trillion-and-counting—is clearly insane, at best, if its intention is the U.S. people’s well-being.

The public is being driven over a cliff, much as it was between 1929 and 1933 in North America.

Amounts far in excess of the nation’s annual Budget are going to Banks and other speculative institutions that in their turn produce nothing but more debt for the people, even greater and more irremediable toils and pitfalls of debt.

Why would an intelligent and seemingly compassionate person such as Barack Obama support such ruinous insanity? We know that he and John McCain were main movers in persuading legislators to pass the Bill after it first failed last Fall—while others in the Government, such as Secretary Treasury Paulson, were threatening “martial law” if the Bill again failed to pass.

The simple answer for Obama and McCain’s support for the Bailout Bills is that the biggest bettor/debtor Banks and their like are the principal influences, at best, on our Government. They’re actually the principal force in our Government, I think, through their apparatus of the Federal Reserve System.

Three of the top seven donors to Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign were Banks, led by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase gave Obama two to four times more than they gave McCain.

How Barack Obama goes—what he’s able to perceive and to do—we’ll soon see. Will he continue to be financiers’ actor, speaking for the expenditure of trillions of dollars into supranational bankers’ rat-holes, or will he emerge as a champion of the people who produce the world’s food and other life-giving goods?

One thing for certain is that he’s most likely to change for the better if pressured by righteous mass movements from us. (end of part 4)

An Interview With `The World Is Turning' Author Don Paul--Part 3

On April 14, 2007, New Orleans-based writer-poet-musician-Marathon runner-activist Don Paul was the Chief Prosecutor for the "San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City" event that was held at San Diego State University. He co-founded the organization Rebuild Green three days after Hurricane Katrina and moved from San Francisco to New Orleans in January 2006 to help with effort for recovery there. The author of more than 20 books and the producer of more than 20 albums, Paul was recently interviewed by email about the Democratic Obama Administration's first 100 days and about his most recent book: The World Is Turning: `9/11,' The Movement for Justice & Reclaiming America for the World. (The text of this interview was originally posted on the http://blog.puppetgov.com site. See below for parts 1 and 2).

When Barack Obama was campaigning for Democratic presidential primary votes in Louisiana last year he seemed to be promising U.S. voters that he would do a lot to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and elsewhere--if he were elected president. As a writer-activist who has spent a number of years living in New Orleans in the post-Katrina period, do you think the Democratic Obama Administration has done enough to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in its first 100 days?

Don Paul [DP]: Well, again I hate to say but have to say: I know of nothing new and significant that’s been done by the current U.S. Administration to help victims of flooding in New Orleans and elsewhere in southern Louisiana. About 1/3 of New Orleans’ pre-2005 flood natives are still not back in the city—despite widely expressed desires to return by these tens of thousands of dispossessed people—and the percentage is at least 2/3 in the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Lack of communication to pre-flood natives—lack of education, health-care, temporary lodgings, and living-wage employment altogether—are the main reasons so many are still not back. And the Federal, State and City Governments are all to blame.

What’s remarkable and heartening is how much has been done despite the failings of Government—done through work by thousands of volunteers here and done through the seven-days-a-week efforts of pre-flood natives who have formed new, post-flood organizations that are like New Orleans’ long-lived mutual-aid Social and Pleasure Clubs.

That said, the city and the whole Gulf Coast region remains a colossal sitting-duck, more vulnerable to Hurricanes than in 2005, and nothing proposed by any level of Government comes remotely close to meeting needs. Last September Hurricane Gustav veered west in its last 36 hours before landfall and so its main strength missed New Orleans. Still, with winds of only 80 miles per hour and a storm-surge of only nine feet, both walls of the Industrial Canal between the Upper and Lower 9th Wards were overtopped by water.

Immediately after Gustav, we formed a “Levee, Wetlands and Jobs” working group. We came up with a Plan that recommended three broad measures. One builds up levees to a height of 25 feet or higher to protect New Orleans and other communities that are threatened along the Gulf Coast. Two, plant 50 million cypress trees and bunches of spartina grass to restore wetlands lost due to oil-and-gas channels through lower Louisiana. Three, employ at least 50,000 people in the enactment of measures One and Two, giving preference in hiring to those who lived in the region before 2005’s Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Levees. Wetlands. Jobs: simple, urgent broad measures that arrive at fundamental and necessary solutions. (end of part 3)