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http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2010/06/realities-problems.html Realities & Problems by Amir K. Khiaban #73 / Monday, June 14, 2010 If we overlook some laughable headlines and comments after June 12, to the effect that we were victorious since there was so much military presence on the streets, a majority of the citizens, whose hearts beat to the rhythm of the social events, while going up and down the streets around Enghelaab/Revolution Square, waiting to see if something will or will not happen, have realized there is a need for taking a different path. The blood-thirsty Islamic Republic, with recourse to mass killing and repression, has not taken a single step back, and the people have so far not had the slightest gains. Not only has the Islamic Republic not been overthrown but no laws have changed for the better, no political prisoners have been released, the planners and executers of the killings have not been brought to justice, and the people [still] have no say or control in determining their own fates. A More Realistic Picture of Civil Struggles Unless our eyes are blind, or else the observer is up to some trickery so as not to see the developments: 1. Almost all social organizations and activists independent of the regime have been driven out of the society. If two years ago, a large number of Marxist university students fighting for freedom and equality were forced to flee the country while others sat in silent observation of this crackdown, today almost all political trends from liberals to democrats to even Islamic student associations have been forced to flee [...]. Almost all independent women activists and those working with the One Million Signature campaign [to legally make women equal to men] have been forced to leave: Hundreds of young journalists and scholars, hundreds of cultural and political activists from different independent cultural and social circles and centers. This is the fate of those who, in order to change their society, carried out strictly civil activities. 2. Despite all the efforts of activists in different social spheres to organize different social units, not only can no truly independent political party operate openly in the society, not even the smallest organizations of university students, the youth, women, workers and on and on ... have materialized. The smallest of over-ground cells or circles come under the severest security police attacks, and meetings or gatherings of even a few get attacked and broken up by police. 3. With the dwindling of the number of people in street protests, the regime has more room and space to prevent the formation of any seeds of street demonstrations, and the ratio of regime elements [plainclothes Basij, Revolutionary Guards, regular police and myriad other forces] to dissident citizens has been increasing. 4. Since the regime's reformists have sensed the threat to the life of the system, they are not willing to bring about conditions in which people can safely assemble. They are not willing to allow again an atmosphere in which people feel safe to come to the streets and shout their demands. Just as during the presidency of Khatami and after the events of 18 Tir [university student protests of July 8-13, 1999], the reformists had no taste for people's presence in the streets. And the people too are no longer willing to give their lives for the particular goals of the reformists. People, who have had it with this regime and want their own liberation, find it neither wise nor heroic to die in the streets so we can return to Khomeini's era, or so that some charlatan like Mostafa Taaj-Zadeh can pollute the glorious days of protests with that filthy and noxious word 'Yomollah' (in some new tract with a title that is stolen from a pamphlet by Ali Shari'ati, forgetting that almost all followers of Shari'ati, who were organized in the Mojahedin-e Khalq and Armaan-e Mostaz'afeen and others alongside many others were mass murdered by them and their friends, and then called June 15 'Yomollah', without any concerns about bringing to justice the killers who on that very day were raining bullets on people [...] See his: Father, Mother, we are again accused [...]). 5. And the obvious reality, finally, is that all know that Moussavi's suggested strategy is meaningless and absurd. He suggests spreading of awareness as the path toward victory, and perhaps considers some Green websites such as JRS [Jonbesh Raah Sabz /Green Path Movement] as the providers of the solutions. However, it is obvious to everybody that our current problem is not that the majority of people are unaware of the ongoing crimes, irrationalities and the oppression. The [main] problem is that, although this regime has no base in the people, it has stayed in power backed [solely] by bayonets. This reality calls for a new set of objectives and planning, for new solutions and an effective and practical strategy. Although the distance traveled on the streets in this past year has been bitter and filled with sorrows, blood and injuries, it has nevertheless stored up such an abundance of material experience, awareness and combativeness that if and when another June 15 should come about, the mansions and the national TV and the parliament that belongs to the rulers will be in the hands of the people's power on the next day. http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-moussavis-green-charter.html Sunday, June 20, 2010 Khiaban No. 74: On Moussavi's Green Charter Translation of a lead article from the latest Khiaban newspaper. What We Say and Their Charter by Amir K. Khiaban #74 / Saturday, June 19, 2010 Today is June 19. Last year on this day, the first issue of Khiaban newspaper was published. Some hours later, in his Friday prayer sermon, Khamenei threatened the people with murder. On June 20, however, people took to the streets courageously, and although their throats and chests were riddled with the Supreme Leader's bullets, they opened up an important phase in the social life of Iran. A phase in which our society came to face the existing contradiction between the political and ruling structures and relationships [on the one hand] and the people's strengths, dreams and demands [on the other], and set out to work on resolving this contradiction, specifically through the form of [mass] street protests and demonstrations. Now, exactly one year later, in the seventy-fourth issue of Khiaban, this publication, and the society too, carry both memory and imagination simultaneously. Memory keeps our past experience with us, and imagination shapes the future. When we imagine, when we think about the future, bitter memories, sad, happy hopeful memories, memories of solidarities, memories of blood and uprising, these memories of this past year are present. And when each moment of our memories is reviewed, this or that memory becomes a seed for the formation and growth of some thought or a plan for the future. After a year of collective memories, the need for a collective imagination is spreading wider every day. What kind of future does the society want to create? What path does it want to take? What characteristics does the future society have, and how can it be achieved? It is these questions that make obvious the need for political platforms and plans for the majority of the people. It is in this social atmosphere that Moussavi was forced to publish a more elaborated/systematized text, titled Green Charter, as a political platform that contains his goals and views on strategy. Of course, for now we'll overlook the fact that [exactly] at a time when people expected political actions from Moussavi, he is selling a political statement to the people instead of acting politically. Nevertheless, is Moussavi's platform loyal to the memories and the imagination of the people? Let us take a more careful look at the Green Charter. Green Charter's Goal and Strategy Although the phrase 'Green Charter' is new and it is claimed that it is the essence of this past year's struggle and also the crystallization of the demands of the society for its future, neither the goal nor the strategy proposed by Moussavi have any connection with people's memories and imagination. The goal is the old [demand for] implementation of the constitution and nothing less; the same goal that had also been announced by the reformists for many years before the hot summer of 2009. People's memories are over-filled with moments when they saw the existing laws as [fundamentally] opposed to their demands and their existence: from the principle of the absolute rule of the religious leader (velaayat-e faqih) who sits atop the system, to the principles that qualify and condition, and therefore [severely] restrict freedom of speech, assembly and protest, freedom of forming organizations and political parties, all based on the whims and decisions of the rulers; from the laws that leave the Sepaah [Revolutionary Guards] and Basiji's completely free to murder people, to the laws that deem women as inferior and do not recognize people without religion or of other religions, and many more cases [of legal discrimination]. Whenever in heat of the arena of struggle people's imagination thinks of a society based on freedom and social equality, free from the killing machinery of Sepaah and Basij, without the guardianship of the religious jurists, based on true collective and equal participation of all members of society in shaping their social fate -- when such thoughts were imagined, they were crushed in the streets, and yet Green Charter's goal is defined and marketed as the continuation of the existing conditions, only in its green color. The strategy of Green Charter (it should be called 'white' since it is so neutral) also has no connection to the memories that have been piling up this last year, or to the imagination that was born this past year. The proposed strategy is the same 'working within the law', non-violence, civic activities and a package in fancy wrapping paper called 'networks', all of which have been the reformists strategy for a decade. There is no sign in this platform of this past year's experiences of the people. It is the same old reformist strategy, which was marketed as 'reformism' before but now is marketed as 'green'. In response to the millions of people protesting, the regime/system did not change a bit and yet Moussavi, while suspending street protests, at the same time in his speechifying brings the promise of wanting to change things by using all the capacities of non-violent struggle. All civil rights activists are imprisoned or exiled, but the 'civil society' people [still expect miracles]. We can find the dissonances between the Green Charter and the people's street movement in this very text, where it states that it emphasizes the necessity of joining with the middle and lower classes and the meek in the society. This very sentence reveals that Moussavi and other drafters of this platform are separate from the dominated people and the oppressed, and that they are above them (even if they really want to join them, they still considers themselves separate from the dominated). They belong to the layer of the rulers, of the dominant classes. Alas, no society has ever been liberated by the dominant layers of that society. Those who in the current situation suffer the most inequalities will be the first to take steps to destroy the bars of this prison house. Only a platform that takes stock of, and bases itself on, the fighters' memories and imagination can stay loyal to the society: a platform, whose lines are not niceties and considerations of the people up above, but one that the wrath and the hopes of the people down below write its lines. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
