Iran: A View from the Labour Front (Rahnema)

This is an extract from a Tehran Bureau interview with Saeed Rahnema, a labour activist in the 1979 Islamic Revolution who is now a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. The full interview includes Rahnema's analysis of labour's role in 1979 and the aftermath of the Revolution:

TEHRAN BUREAU: When I read articles about Iran today, there is a great deal of social unrest around economic issues, particularly workers not getting paid. There are many labor actions but not a labor movement per se. I wonder what kind of possibilities there are for economic issues becoming more of a question for the Green Movement?

The Latest from Iran (29 March): Questionable Authority

RAHNEMA: There is now a major economic crisis in Iran. Massive unemployment, terrible inflation (close to 30%), and at the same time, as you rightly said, there are many factories that cannot pay their employees. In terms of leadership there is political anarchy.


You have got government-owned industries and then you have partially state-owned industries under the control of bonyads or Islamic foundations. The most significant bonyad is the Foundation of the Oppressed and Disabled (Bonyad-e Mostazafan va Janfazan). These are industries which had belonged to the Shahs' family and the pre-revolution bourgeoisie. After the time of the Shah they were all transferred to this particular foundation, which is now run by people close to the Bazaar of Iran and the clerical establishment. The bonyads are so large and so important that they are responsible for 20% of the Iranian GDP [Gross Domestic Product], which is only a bit lower than the Oil sector. Bonyads are not under the control of the state and pay no taxes.

It is an anarchic system with no serious protection for workers. Workers do not have a right to strike. They do not have unions and this is the main problem.

Many of these industries are heavily subsidized. But the government has decided to end some subsidies, along with the elimination of many gas, flour, and transportation subsides too. By ending subsidies, or having targeted subsidies, there will be more problems and more industrial actions. But these industrial actions --- and you rightly separate labor actions from a labor movement --- need labor unions. Labor unions are the most significant aspect of the rights of workers. Unions need democracy and political freedoms, a freedom of assembly and a free press. That is why the present movement within civil society is so significant for the labour movement.

This is something that tragically some so-called Leftists in the West do not understand. We read here and there, for example, James Petras among others, who support the brutal suppressive Islamic regime, and take a position against women, youth and the workers/employees of Iran who confront this regime. It is quite ironic that the formal site of the regime's news agency posted a translation of Petras' article accusing civil society activists of being agents of foreign imperialism.

What we need is continued weakening of the regime by street protests along with labor organizing. And, I think it is very important that we recognize that the Green Movement is part of a larger movement in Iranian civil society. The Green Movement is a very important part, but, it is not the whole picture. The Green Movement is now closely identified with Mr. Mousavi. So far he has been on the side of the people and civil society. Everyone supports him. But what will happen? Will he make major concessions? That remains to be seen.

TEHRAN BUREAU: There is a lot of confusion about the character of the regime because of its populist rhetoric. I am wondering what effect this confusion has on the possibility of organizing a trade union movement in Iran?

RAHNEMA: From the beginning, there were many illusions about the regime. One section of the Left, seeking immediate socialist revolution, immaturely confronted the regime and was brutally eliminated during the revolution. Another section of the Iranian left supported the regime, under the illusion of its anti-imperialism, and undermined democracy by supporting or even in some cases collaborating with the regime. This section paid a heavy price as well. Now, ironically, some leftist in the west are making the same mistakes under the same illusions.

There are four major illusions about Iran. The first is that the regime is democratic because it has elections. Leaving aside election fraud, in Iran not everyone can run for Parliament or the Presidency because an unelected twelve-member religious body, the Guardian Council, decides who can be nominated. Also, the Supreme Leader, who has absolute power, is not accountable to anybody.

The second illusion is the Regimes' anti-imperialism. Other than strong rhetoric against Israel and the U.S., the regime has done nothing that shows that they are anti-imperialist. Actually on several occasions they whole-heartedly supported the Americans in Afghanistan and at times in Iraq. Anti-imperialism has a much deeper meaning and does not apply to a reactionary force which dreams of expanding influence beyond its borders. If that is anti-imperialism, then the better example is Osama Bin Laden.

The third illusion is that this is a government of the dispossessed. A lot can be said about this, but I will limit myself to two income inequality measurements. Currently the Gini coefficient is around 44. (The range is from zero to a hundred, with zero as the most equal and one hundred as the most unequal.) This is worse than Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and many other countries, despite the enormous riches of Iran. Interestingly, this figure is not so different from the time of the Shah. The other measurement, the deciles distribution of the top 10% and lowest 10 % income groups, shows that the top deciles' per capita per day expenditure is about 17 times that of the lowest deciles. This figure is also quite similar to the pre-revolutionary period.

The fourth illusion is that the regime is based on a 'moral' Islamic economy and not a capitalist economy. This moral economy, as Petras calls it, is nothing but the most corrupt capitalist system that we could possibly imagine.

TEHRAN BUREAU: There are some nascent unions, such as the bus drivers, sugar cane workers at Haft Tapeh, as well as teachers. These groups have been asking for international solidarity for a long time now. I wonder why those groups have had such a difficult time developing support. Have the conversations among "left" groups about anti-Imperialism blinded them to these small but very real organizing efforts?

RAHNEMA: No doubt. Some among the left in the West make the same mistakes that the Iranian left made during the revolution -- focusing on anti-imperialism and undermining and minimizing democracy and political freedoms. If the left really cares about the working class, how can this class improve its status without trade unions? How can trade unions exist and function without democracy and social and political freedoms?

Another aspect that some leftists don't take into consideration is the significance of secularism and the dangers of a religious state, particularly, the manner in which such regimes impinge on the most basic private rights of the individual, particularly women. Even if the Islamic regime were anti-imperialist, no progressive individual could possibly condone the brutal suppression of workers, women, and youth, who want to get rid of an obscurantist authoritarian and corrupt regime. The underground workers groups and other activists within civil society need all the support they can get from progressive people outside Iran, and they despise those so-called leftists in the West who support Ahmadinejad and the Islamic regime.

UPDATED Afghanistan Special: Mr Obama's Wild Ride --- Why?

OBAMA WITH AMBASSADOR EIKENBERRY AND COMMANDER MCCHRYSTAL

UPDATE 0925 GMT: We've added new information and analysis.

So let me get this right. The President of the US devotes 25 hours to a round-trip flight to spend six hours in Afghanistan, of which a total of 20 minutes is with the Afghan President?  

Why? 

Afghanistan Video: Obama Speech to US Troops (28 March)

1. Was Obama delivering a message to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that he could trust to no one else? If so, what could that important message be? A dressing down of Karzai? (But note that Obama's special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who is persona non grata in Afghanistan after last August's post-election shouting match with Karzai, did not make the trip.) Confirmation that the US military was going to pursue the offensive, long dangled before the media, against the southern Afghan city of Kandahar? 


2. Or was this just a giant pep talk/photo opportunity for Obama in front of US troops overseas? 

3. Or both? 

Have to honest here: I don't have an answer to this puzzle. Nor, however, do many in the "mainstream" media. The BBC, in stolid BBC tones, tried to get away with "reassurance to Afghan allies" who had not been visited by Obama during his Presidency --- frankly, that's pretty lame, since the President could have done this in a more organised and less last-minute fashion. (Even this was muddled in White House statements to the press: some advisors said the Afghans only had an hour's notice; some said Karzai's office was told last Thursday.) CNN has no information beyond the asserted "need to wipe out terror networks". 

Helene Cooper of The New York Times proclaims: 

President Obama personally delivered pointed criticism to President Hamid Karzai in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday, flying here for an unannounced visit that reflected growing vexation with Mr. Karzai as America’s military commitment to defeat the Taliban insurgency has deepened.... 

While Mr. Obama said “the American people are encouraged by the progress that has been made,” as he stood beside Mr. Karzai at the heavily fortified presidential palace, Mr. Obama also emphasized that work remained to be done on the governance issues that have frustrated American officials over the past year. “We also want to continue to make progress on the civilian process,” Mr. Obama said. He mentioned several areas, including anticorruption efforts and the rule of law. 

The problem with Cooper's supposed scoop of an answer is that it is based on cherry-picking Obama's public statement to the press after his brief encounter with Karzai. As she admits --- lower in the story --- "the language used by Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai in their private discussions was not disclosed". So here's the key message: 

Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One en route to Afghanistan that the administration wanted Mr. Karzai to “understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day 1.” 

General Jones said that the Afghan president “needs to be seized with how important” the issue of corruption, in particular, is for American officials.

Washington Post reporters take the same line, quoting Jones, "In [Karzai's] second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day One." More significantly, the Post gets confirmation from a Karzai adviser and former Foreign Minister, Rangin Spanta, that the discussion with Obama focused on corruption, reconstruction, and "strengthening Afghan state entities". 

An EA reader passes on the slightly different take on Al Jazeera English TV that the President's message was that Karzai should take on a more commander-in-chief role regarding the war so that it eventually becomes Karzai’s war instead of Obama’s. Al Jazeera English's website, however, sticks with the corruption-first theme.

Whichever of the versions you choose above, here's the take-away point: the Americans are now so distrustful of Karzai that the President had to personally lay down the law, taking more than a day out to deliver the message. The supposedly regular conference calls between Obama and Karzai just wouldn't do. If true, that tells you how solid this US-Afghan relationship is and/or how big the stakes are going to be in the near-future.

But then pause for a moment: if this was really the key meeting to declare the big push against the Taliban and other insurgents, why no more than 30 minutes? Surely a momentous decision like this would merit just a bit more discussion. Did Obama take only a half-hour because he wanted to show who was boss, giving Karzai no more of his time? Or did Karzai --- the man who secured a dubious election win in defiance of the US Government, who sent Obama's envoy packing, who has reduced the US Ambassador to a shamed figurehead --- set the limit?

My suspicion is that Washington, on the verge of a military show that will test Obama's decision to follow his commanders and go boots-first in the US intervention, still isn't secure about the Afghan President. If so, however, the Obama Administration has just fired its biggest shot possible, short of trying to toss Karzai out. There is no more political space if Karzai continues to be a corruption/drug/mismanagement/backroom-dealing problem. 

And in the case, the American ride will be far wilder than that taken by Mr Obama in the last 48 hours.

Iran's Nukes: False Alarm Journalism (Sick)

Gary Sick follows up our Sunday analysis of the exaggerated "news" in The New York Times, penned by David Sanger and William Broad, of an impending threat from Iran's nuclear programme:

I was struck by two things in this newly breathless and alarmist front-page NYT report.

UPDATED Iran’s Nukes: The Dangerous News of The New York Times

First, it says its information is based on the word of officials who “insisted on anonymity because the search involves not only satellite surveillance, but also intelligence gleaned from highly classified operations.” Yet the only hard, new information is based on the public statement of the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization [Ali Akhbar Salehi] — all that ultra-classified stuff is by their own admission nothing more than pure speculation.


Second, the other revelation is that no new centrifuges have been added to the Natanz site, which may mean that these are destined for the two new “secret” (but publicly announced) sites. Let’s see, Iran has publicly declared its Qom facility, which is under inspection, and they say that they are going to install 3000 centrifuges there. But the site is not ready, so a less sensational interpretation would be that they are holding their new centrifuges to go there when the site is ready. It’s also not surprising that they are not adding new centrifuges to the Natanz site since more than 50% of the 9000 centrifuges installed at Natanz are not actually producing enriched uranium. Why add to the non-working total?

Why do Sanger and Broad insist on spinning a conspiratorial scenario when there are perfectly rational alternatives? I guess that doesn’t qualify as a scoop, so it doesn’t deserve front-page treatment, and it makes the word of unnamed officials with access to unmentionable intelligence look pretty foolish.

Given the NYT experience with faithfully reproducing sensational and highly selective leaks prior to the Iraq war, which proved to be false and which helped get the US into a war that was initiated on false premises, it is truly difficult for me to believe that the NYT editors still continue to put out this kind of unsourced, circular, prejudicial, and logically challenged reporting — and always on the front page!

Health Care: A Beginner's Guide to the (Non)-Sense of the US System

For us Brits who are used to debates and votes in both Houses of Parliament, followed by a Bill signed into law by a Royal Assent, the passage of the American Healthcare Reform Act was tortuous and confusing. We expect all the politicking to come before the event.

So could we assume that Obama signing the Bill into law on 22 March was the conclusion? Evidently not --- the Bill was required to go back to the Senate to reconcile it with the provisions passed by the House of Representatives, and even then it had to return to the House for a second vote to cover the minor technical differences. I think the process is now concluded, but the reporting in Britain of the Congressional procedures has been so poor that it is difficult to follow exactly what has happened.


Let us assume that the Bill has finally passed. Cutting through the confusion of what has been retained from the original proposals and what has been removed, the immediate changes for the American public are: 1) insurers can no longer deny coverage to insured persons because of pre-existing medical conditions; 2) the elderly will receive a $250 rebate to help them buy prescription drugs; 3) small businesses will receive a tax credit to insure employees; and 4) young people will be permitted to stay on their parents’ policies.

In 2014, the big changes arrive. A majority of Americans currently without insurance will be required to buy cover or pay a fine. Insurers will not be permitted to refuse policies because of pre-existing conditions which, in theory, should ensure that those Americans will be able to acquire cover. Most of the arrangements, under the bill's provisions, will occur in an "exchange" where insurers bid to provide the policies for groups of the newly-insured.

In 2018, a new tax will be imposed on high-cost insurance plans, as part of the effort to limit expenses, and the government expects that by 2019, 94% of Americans will have health insurance cover. The struggle between the executive and legislative branches on the legislation now ends, at least for the time being.

That, in theory, should be the process, but there could be a further complication if the Supreme Court enters the arena. There could be strong grounds to defeat the legislation, based on the 10th and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution. The former entitles the individual US states to object to federal legislation on issues that properly belong to the states.

The Federal Government can point to Medicare and Medicaid, both federally-based programs, to support its right to pass the legislation. However, the States can point to the requirement on individuals to buy insurance, a provision thought to be a matter for the States alone as there is nothing implicit in Article I of the Constitution to the contrary.

The 14th Amendment argument arises because Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law but, even after the legislation takes effect in 2014, there will be 15 million American who will not be entitled to the benefits of the legislation, as they will not be covered by the dealings of the insurance "exchange". Legally, the new law could fail as a result.

The Supreme Court is a political as well as a legal body, and eventually, possibly as early as 2011, cases will come before the Court. No doubt, the messages passed to Republican-appointed Justices by the party's rank and file, not to mention leading politicians, will be clear: “Hear the several appeals that will come before you. Strike the healthcare laws down.”

Does all of this still make little sense, given the fundamental that at least 35 million Americans are uninsured and many more "under-insured", vulnerable to a combination of illness, disease, or accidents and the economic circumstances that leave them unable to protect their health?

Well, if that is the case, it is because the debate in America over healthcare seems to have lost all sense of reality at the same time it has been mired in politics. Under George W. Bush, more than half the expenditure in his last three budgets was covering the cost of federal healthcare and Social Security, yet vast numbers of still Americans were unable to afford to pay medical bills. If “freedom” and “liberty” are basics of the American system, isn’t the right to proper medical treatment at an affordable price just as important?

Iran Movie Break: "No One Knows About Persian Cats"

No One Knows About Persian Cats, directed by Bahman Ghobadi, is beginning to get international attention. Winner of an award at Cannes, the drama with the feel of a documentary is set in the underground rock scene of Iran, where a guitarist and a singer want to play in London.

Iran Politics and Music: Sasi Mankan’s “Karroubi”

The film has now received a short review in The Times and is being shown in independent cinemas in Britain over the next six weeks (schedule below the trailer).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd3oLo2_5a4[/youtube]

LONDON RELEASE


26 March Curzon, Soho

26 March Ritzy, Brixton

2 April Gate Picturehouse, Notting Hill

9 April Cine Lumiere

10 April Picturehouse, Greenwich

11 April Picturehouse, Clapham

13 April Picturehouse, Stratford, East London

REGIONAL RELEASE

26 March The Belmont Picturehouse, Aberdeen

26 March Little Theatre, Bath

26 March Watershed, Bristol

26 March Showroom, Sheffield

2 April Phoenix Picturehouse, Oxford

4 April City Screen Picturehouse, York

5 April Cameo Picturehouse, Edinburgh

8 April Harbour Lights Picturehouse, Southampton

9 April Cornerhouse, Manchester

10 April Picturehouse, Exeter

11 April Picturehouse, Stratford-Upon-Avon

12 April Picturehouse Fact, Liverpool

12 April Phoenix Square,Leicester

13 April Regal Picturehouse, Henley-On-Thames

16 April DCA, Dundee

18 April Picturehouse Duke of Yorks, Brighton

19 April Picturehouse Cinema City, Norwich

27 April Picturehouse at Fact, Liverpool

5 May Campus West, Welwyn Garden City

15 May Dukes Cinema, Lancaster

IRELAND

26 March IFI, Dublin

26 March Lighthouse, Dublin