Today's Topics:
1. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - ideas, Libertarians and
Marx: what for ? how to do ? in Montpellier on February 1st by AL
Montpellier (fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. anarkismo.net: The Iran Protests: A Third Path to Political
Change? by Fouad Oveisy and Behnam Amini - The Bullet
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. communist anarchism: A Bulgarian Anarchist's Story -
Alexander Nakov (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Czech, afed: "Airsoft" or Penzy terrorists -- Bisk had a
Phoenix, the Russian FSB had devised a secret revolutionary
organization. [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
First event of the year of the cycle "Knowledge is a weapon," we invite you to a drink /
debate Barricade, 1 st February at 19:30.
We will return to the complicated but very interesting relationship between Marxism and
anarchism. What are the convergences what are the differences ? Is it possible to synthesize ?
The discussion will be based on the special issue of the monthly Alternative libertarian
of January which deals with this theme.
The Facebook event
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Les-libertaires-et-Marx-pour-quoi-faire-comment-faire-a-Montpellier-le-1er
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Message: 2
An Alternative to the Politics of "National Security" Emerges ---- Days of protests in
Iran have caught statesmen, analysts and observers by surprise, even though the
anti-austerity and anti-establishment sentiments behind this primarily working-class
revolt have been brewing for years. All the same, surprise is not a common reaction across
the media. An early analysis offered in a tweet by the popular and self-styled Marxist
pundit, Ali Alizadeh, captures a sentiment which is common across an array of responses to
these events from individuals and groups as disparate, in both aim and ideas, as the
Iranian reformists, the Iranian postcolonial left, and middle class Iranians both inside
and outside Iran. Alizadeh asks: "Do you realize that it is because[the Islamic Republic
of Iran (IRI)]is secured and external threats[to Iran's national security]have been
minimized[by the policies of the IRI], that the right to protest[inside Iran]is now
recognized[by the IRI government]?...[This is why I]insist that[regional]security is the
prerequisite to everything else, including[civil, political and personal]freedoms."
Here, Alizadeh suggests that the long term stability of the IRI state is the prerequisite
for the growth of democracy inside Iran, given that the many international and civil wars
plaguing the region have imperilled the prospects of long term security and democracy in
countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya. Over the years, reformist, postcolonial and
conservative commentators have employed narratives similar to Alizadeh's as a key reason
for supporting the Iranian reformist movement. Offering itself as the only viable
alternative for political change in Iran that does not jeopardize the safety and stability
of the Iranian people and state, the Iranian reformist movement has largely deployed
Alizadeh's narrative toward establishing hegemony over articulations and mobilizations of
dissent inside Iran. The reformists claim that concrete political change inside Iran, and
any transfer of power from the conservative faction of power spearheaded by Ayatollah
Khamenei to the Iranian people, is possible only via their gradualist and revisionist agenda.
Neoliberal State and Expansionist Force
The coextensivity of internal security and regional stability for the IRI is, however,
erased in Alizadeh's analysis. In reality, the signature strategy of the IRI's foreign
policy is to mobilize the exigencies of policing the Middle East region as a means of
policing dissent inside Iran: as long as the Middle East is unstable and the IRI must take
an active part in securing its interests all over the region, all political projects for
change inside Iran must take a backseat to the contingencies of national security. Since
1979, the IRI has had to contend equally with the possibility of subversion from both
inside and outside Iran. Therefore, and without reducing the role of international and
regional players such as the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia in destabilizing the
Middle East, it is necessary to foreground how the reformist disavowal of the strategic
relation between Iranian regional and internal security (which Alizadeh here articulates
for the mass media) only works to erase the role of IRI as a neoliberal state and
expansionist force in the Middle East region.
On one hand, this reformist erasure promotes a reductive dichotomy between the Iranian
state and international threats to its regional hegemony. On the other, it establishes an
anti-democratic antagonism between the Iranian state and grassroots movements for radical
change inside Iran. Alizadeh and others employ this erasure to suggest that the new round
of protests in Iran only advances the agendas of IRI hardliners and Washington
neoconservatives, because any form of dissent that projects itself outside the accepted
avenues of reformism ultimately undermines President Hassan Rouhani's reformist-backed
presidency. Evidently, this reformist narrative also overrides the agency of subaltern
classes to present an alternative to the Iranian middle class's reformist agenda, a
strategic and tactical platform that has delivered little in plans and promises in the 22
years of its hegemony over the discourse of political dissent in Iran.
The new round of protests offers an alternative path for political change inside Iran. The
most defining characteristic of this new movement is its differences, in both form and
demands, from the majority middle-class, reformist movements that have appeared in recent
years. From the Green Movement to the many online and electoral campaigns that promote a
mainly liberal agenda, the reformist protests of the past evolved from and revolved around
liberal economic and political demands, with an emphasis on nonviolence as a tactic of
political dissent. But the new protest movement is not only primarily working class, with
demands centered around social and economic justice, but also more defiant, less
conciliatory in tone, and equipped with a strongly anti-establishment array of slogans.
Importantly, the new protest movement's calls for an alternative to the options tabled by
the reformist/conservative status quo harbours a transformative potential for a third, and
more effective, movement for political change in Iran. Its transformative character is
evident, first and foremost, in its unwillingness to confine its political options to the
political gradations and horizons fixed by the IRI state: these protesters chant,
"Conservatives, Reformists, One Way or Another / It's All Over!". Antonio Gramsci famously
remarks that "appearances are historical necessities." We contend that the new protest
movement's anti-establishment counternarratives should be interpreted as such "necessary"
expressions of a deep divide and disconnect between the Iranian working and middle class
movements. These new slogans are making all Iranians inescapably aware of deep
socioeconomic contradictions within their ranks. No matter the outcome of these protests,
the Iranian reformists can no longer claim to represent the political interests and
aspirations of all Iranians.
If the growing debate over a "third path" of "transition" from reformism which presently
occupies Iranian statesmen, analysts and observers is essentially a concern with the
implications of the new protest movement's political counternarrative, it is because
neither the reformist nor the conservative factions of power in Iran can possibly offer a
long-term solution to the unequal labour conditions and subsistence issues and demands of
the Iranian working class. The Iranian economy is structurally incapable of catering to
these demands in the long run, and the neoliberal exigencies of Iran's transition to the
global markets will only exacerbate the shortcomings that plague the lives of Iranian
subaltern classes.
It is therefore necessary to situate the political consciousness of Iran's new protest
movement in the context of the Iranian working class's long-term view of the economic
policies of the IRI state over the past four decades, which have led to the present
impasse in Iranian politics. As we will demonstrate, it is precisely the homegrown and
subversive character of this recent wave of protests which defies any simplistic,
reductive and disempowering classification of this as an "imported," "co-opted" or
"supervised" project of "regime change" devised and navigated by the West and its regional
allies.[1]
The IRI's Violent History of Eliminating Political Alternatives
The IRI has historically confined the limits of the language of political dissent and
organization inside Iran to a choice between its own conservative and reformist/centrist
political factions. And, despite internecine power struggles between these two factions,
which have on occasion led them to conflicts as serious as the contentions over the
results of the 2009 elections, in practice and overall strategy these two groups have
historically functioned as a unified clique of power. This clique has ruled Iran since the
1979 revolution and upholds a tacit, but inviolable, inter-factional agreement regarding
the "principles of the IRI state" (Ayatollah Khamenei's favorite terminology).
The ruling IRI clique consolidated its hold over power in the post-revolutionary 1980s by
way of eliminating all left, liberal, secular and "Islamist-socialist" (Mujahedin-e Khalq)
parties that participated in the 1979 revolution. In 1992, the leaders of Iran's Kurdish
Democratic Party were assassinated in Berlin, and by the time the Serial Killings of
Iranian intellectuals were carried out in 1998 all domestic alternatives to the rule of
the IRI clique had been exterminated from the post-revolutionary political stage.
The IRI's template for consolidating power was first cast and put into practice prior to
the 1990s, however, throughout the Iran-Iraq war. In the name of resisting Western
imperialism and "paving the road to Al-Quds through[the Iraqi city of]Karbala," the ruling
IRI clique led by Ayatollah Khomeini extended and protracted a largely won and waning war
campaign against Saddam Hussein's retreating army, only to domesticate the military
security and ideological imperatives of fighting a war against the U.S.-backed Iraq in
order to exterminate all political opposition that threatened the internal security of the
Iranian state, thus inaugurating Iran's notorious and bloody "eighties."
This ‘wage war and rule' strategy would later set the template for the current hegemonic
"national security" discourse, which justifies political oppression inside Iran in the
name of securing the strategic "Shi'ite Crescent" that extends from Iran to Israel through
Northern Iraq and central-southern Syria. If the strategic import of the state of Israel
to securing the perimeters of American foreign policy in the Middle East region is
indubitable, it is necessary to emphasize - in contrast to all reductionist definitions of
Iran's "national security" - that pursuing an Iranian foreign policy agenda based on
transnational Shi'ite solidarity is shrewdly coextensive with securing the domestic
hegemony of a state ruled by pretensions to Shi'ite jurisprudence. Thus, it is insidious
to argue that the IRI pursuit of regional and international interests does not necessarily
activate the same exigencies internally. Rather than constituting a mere precondition for
ensuring national security, this foreign policy agenda also enables the IRI to maintain
its internal hegemony.
The post Iran-Iraq war era imposed its own imperatives on the IRI's economic agenda.
Having already nationalized and monopolized revenues from big industries such as oil, and
confiscated the assets of the capitalist class loyal to the Pahlavi regime in the
immediate years after 1979, the IRI clique managed to significantly "bridge" the class
divides that it had inherited from the Pahlavi era throughout the early and mid-1980s.
Nevertheless, the high costs of the protracted war campaign and the need to rebuild the
state and country after the war were simultaneous to the devastating 1980s oil glut and
the drop in the global demand for energy.
The loss in oil revenues, coupled with Khomeini's sudden death, served to intensify the
conflict between two competing interpretations of the IRI's foundations and its future:
the centrist-conservative faction led by the then-president Khamenei and speaker of
parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who advanced the cause of the structural adjustment
programs of the IMF and the World Bank; and the left-Islamist (now reformist) faction led
by figures including the Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who instead promoted a
statist program of economic reform and rejuvenation. In this conflict, the latter camp was
ultimately sidelined from power, and the neoliberal phase of the IRI's existence was
inaugurated.
Significantly, the privatization and deregulation policies carried out under this
neoliberal economic regime favoured the economic interests of the ruling power clique and
its affiliates, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which had found its way
to political and strategic decision-making power during the Iran-Iraq war, as a primary
beneficiary. This change of fortunes would transform the IRGC into a powerbroker of the
Iranian economic, military and political spheres over the following decade.
Nonetheless, the conservative faction's economic reform program - officially dubbed "The
Reconstruction Era" - was essentially only a continuation of the Pahlavi regime's own
development program, one that favoured the expansion of industry and services to the urban
metropolises at the expense of under-developing the peripheries and margins of Iranian
urban geography. Consequently, the neoliberal version of the Pahlavi economic agenda
pursued by the IRI during the 1980s and 90s produced the same results as in its earlier
political incarnation under the Shah: it bloated the urban middle class at the expense of
the working and marginalized classes. "The Reconstruction Era" led the country's economy
to such a degree of inflation and recession that a first round of working-class revolts
erupted in 1992 from the urban and economic peripheries.
This first round of working-class revolts, coupled with the legitimacy crisis provoked by
the Mykonos court's revelations and the pressure of Bill Clinton's "D'Amato" round of
economic sanctions, forced the conservative faction of the IRI to reinvite the sidelined
reformist faction to a power sharing project aimed at restoring the legitimacy of the IRI
state. This feat was accomplished with a landslide vote in the 1997 elections, when
Iranians appointed Mohammad Khatami - deemed the "Chief of Reform" - to the office of the
president. But this time around, the reformists were only loyal to the neoliberal economic
agenda of the ruling IRI clique. And even though the reformist government did allow for
controlled expression of criticism within liberal media and culture, the conservative
faction remained in firm control of key state institutions such as the Judiciary, the
Guardian Council, the IRGC and, most importantly, the office of the Supreme Leader. As a
result, Khatami and his reformist faction managed little in the way of critical reforms
during their two terms in the president's office; they rarely challenged the conservative
faction's monopoly over state power, and even gradually lost ground on the media and
cultural reforms that they had initially implemented.
The critical shortcomings of the "Reformist Government" of Mohammad Khatami alienated core
demographics of its support base, and particularly its middle-class power base. In the
absence of middle-class support, the conservative hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rode a
populist wave of working-class dissatisfaction with the reformists' prolongation of the
IRI's neoliberal economic agenda to surpass the reformist candidates in the first round of
the 2005 elections. In the second round, a strong "no" vote cast by the working class
against Hashemi Rafsanjani (the reformists' coalition partner at the time) in favour of
Ahmadinejad, returned the control of the president's office to the conservative faction.
Proving more strategic in his economic plans for the subaltern classes, Ahmadinejad
implemented popular subsidiary, housing and loan policies backed by a sudden upsurge of
oil prices in the international markets. Nonetheless, it was ultimately Ahmadinejad's
notorious "surgical" cuts to many essential subsidies that inaugurated a new era of
austerity politics in Iran, culminating, initially, in the rise and subsequent crackdown
of the working-class "Bread Revolts." Ahmadinejad's two terms in office were also
simultaneous with the inauguration of a notorious era of economic profligacy, corruption
and consolidation of capital by the IRI clique, and in particular by the IRGC
military-industrial complex, which took advantage of Ahmadinejad's popular mandate to
extend its influence to every significant economic and political institution of the IRI.
The fear of Ahmadinejad's corrosive corruption, the dire economic consequences of the U.S.
sanctions against Iran's nuclear program, as well as growing concerns over the IRGC's
widening influence, mobilized the middle classes to rally around the resurrected
reformist-backed candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, during the 2009 elections. Facing the
possibility of a humiliating defeat and - at a critical juncture when the IRI was under
international pressure for accelerating the development of its nuclear program - the
transfer of power to a more conciliatory reformist "nuclear rhetoric", the conservative
faction backing Ahmadinejad hijacked the results of these elections in an organized coup
d'état sponsored by the Supreme Leader and the IRGC, and went on to violently suppress the
reformist Green Movement that disputed this anti-democratic takeover.[2]
Despite mass discontent with the IRI's state apparatuses in the aftermath of revelations
about the violent crackdown on Green Movement protesters, in 2013 the Iranian middle class
once again voted for the reformist-backed candidate, Hassan Rouhani. This time, it was the
crippling and isolating effects of the Obama round of sanctions against Iran's nuclear
program, and the plummeting oil prices resulting from Saudi Arabia's increased production,
which sent the Iranian demos back to the voting booth. As for the IRI hierarchy, they were
already negotiating the foundations of the 2015 nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action) in secret via Omani mediation, and appointed Rouhani - Iran's chief negotiator
during the initial round of nuclear talks in 2003 - as the candidate to bridge a consensus
over the seemingly irreconcilable divide between the IRI state and the Iranian nation.
In the meantime, and throughout Ahmadinejad's second term and Rouhani's first, the IRI
state media, along with many reformist websites and papers, had waged an effective
campaign to convince Iranians that U.S. sanctions against the nuclear program were the
primary obstacle to improving their deteriorating livelihoods.[3]This propaganda campaign
effectively transformed an increasingly subversive disillusionment with the IRI's economic
and political record into popular support for the nuclear program as a matter of "national
security" and "sovereignty", invoking historical comparisons with Mohammad Mossadegh's
Pahlavi-era decolonization of the oil industry in the reformist media. If Iran's economy
were to improve, the Iranian people were convinced that they would have to fully support
the IRI throughout the bargaining process with the Americans. In the process, the IRI also
manufactured the expectation that, with the end of economic sanctions against its nuclear
program, the economic situation of the country would also drastically improve. Though the
dismal effects of the U.S. sanctions on the lives of Iranians cannot be overstated, it was
the IRI's media campaign that galvanized legitimate sentiments against these sanctions
into support for Iran's nuclear program and regional ambitions.[4]
This domestic media campaign was twinned with a foreign policy strategy that ultimately
forced America's hand during the nuclear negotiations. Obama's "Shift to the Pacific", the
decisive interventions in Syria and Crimea by Russia, Iran's ally, the rise of ISIS, an
ineffective U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and the Gulf states (which had handed Iraq over to
Iranian control and spread IRI influence in the mainly Shi'ite nations of Bahrain and
Yemen) and finally the upheavals of the Arab Spring movements in northern Africa, had
altogether destabilized the established balance of power in the Middle East and
jeopardized American control over strategic waterways in the Black, Mediterranean, Oman
and Red Seas that were essential to the movements of its navy and the flow of oil to
international markets.
Throughout this strategic shift, Iran's unilateral support for the Assad government in the
form of intelligence and policing aid had led an initially peaceful Syrian protest
movement down the path of the current civil war. The IRI tactics went even so far as
transferring Al-Qaeda leaders held captive in Iran to Syria, all in order to "radicalize"
the protest movement and justify Assad's crackdown against Syrian opposition. The IRI
therefore kept the Shi'ite crescent intact by maintaining its vital and threatening access
to Israel via Lebanon's Hezbollah; Assad-controlled regions of Syria; and, during Iraq's
civil war, to Baghdad-controlled areas of Iraq. Moreover, the IRI's orchestrations in
Syria helped nurture the violent spectre of ISIS as a formidable straw man with which to
frighten the residents of both the Middle East and the West into cynicism and submission -
a feat accomplished only with the help of other regional powers that pursued their own
political ends in Syria, as well as, critically, the regional and global backlash against
a violent history of Western imperialism in the region.
The stark ‘success' of the IRI's strategy affirmed the status of Iran as an "island of
stability in the region" (Alizadeh's popular reappropriation of Carter's terminology) and
rallied popular support for its "national security" campaign, forcing the U.S. government
into a tactical checkmate: having already conceded part of its control over the Middle
East, the Americans now had to resign themselves to the new status of Iran as a legitimate
nation-state and unacknowledged regional partner. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action soon followed, because the continuation of the Iran - USA dynamic of hostilities
was no longer plausible in its traditional forms and rhetoric.
Having effectively set its strategic depth and borders outside Iran and across state lines
in the region, not only had the IRI secured its bargaining rights over the nuclear deal
and pushed back against U.S. sanctions, but it also appeared for a time (prior to the new
round of protests) that the IRI had finally established and consolidated itself as the
legitimate, rightful representative of the Iranian people. With the success of Iran's
regional project, it was also inevitable that the likes of the security discourse
expressed by Alizadeh would be utilized by the IRI regime and its reformist intellectuals
as a tactical and ideological measure against those expressions of dissent inside Iran
that threaten the IRI hierarchy and the ‘stability' this regime provides for Iranians
through its policing of the Middle East region. In this hegemonic security discourse, the
reformists are then framed as the "rational" and "moderate" faction of Iranian politics
that can secure both the IRI's regional and international ambitions, without risking the
economic and political costs incurred by hardliners such as Ahmadinejad.
Naturally, Iran's renewed access to global markets secured through the nuclear deal could
only materialize through further deregulation and neoliberalization of the labour and
finance markets inside the country. A welcome prospect for many middle class Iranians who
sought renewed ties to the West after years of international isolation, Rouhani's campaign
promises to rejuvenate the post-sanction Iranian economy and its international image -
such as lowering the inflation rate to "below 25%," raising the "minimum wage," and
"improving bilateral ties" with regional actors such as Saudi Arabia - secured him a
second term in office in 2017.
But, having already weathered the storms of the nuclear sanctions and the wars in the
Middle East, the two factions of the IRI's ruling clique waged a vicious election campaign
against each other prior to Rouhani's landslide win. With a bounty of new economic deals
with Europe and the rest of the world at stake in this runoff, the reformists and
conservatives aired each other's dirty laundry during presidential debates live-streamed
on Iranian State TV, exposing the Iranian public to a disillusioning array of scandalous,
corrupt and nepotistic practices by both sides.
Last month, in order to justify cutting subsidies on foodstuff and petrol, Rouhani's team
leaked an overlooked component of his government's budget. Yet, the leak backfired: the
list of offices, institutions and religious, military and paramilitary persons and
organizations connected to the office of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC - all of whom
pocket a large segment of Iran's annual budget - provoked a wide wave of popular
discontent with the direction and policies of his government (and the IRI as whole) that
swept the print and online media landscape. The timing of this leak was critical to the
events that followed: over the course of the months leading up to the new protest movement
in Iran, close to a thousand protests and strikes had been staged all over the country by
various labour and retiree unions who were disenfranchised by the economic policies of the
Rouhani government, as well as by ordinary citizens who had lost their life savings to
fraudulent or bankrupt financial institutions. The climate of domestic public opinion
about the IRI was ripe for an abrupt shift.
Retaliating against Rouhani's targeted leak, a hardline cleric connected to the
conservative factions reportedly staged a protest in the city of Mashhad to underline
Rouhani's poor track record with the poor, and further undermine the reformists' flagging
reputation with the subaltern classes. Staged against a background of dissatisfaction and
impatience with the slow pace of economic recovery after the lifting of U.S. sanctions -
an expectation formed by IRI's own propaganda during the nuclear negotiations - the events
in Mashhad quickly triggered rounds of working class protests all over Iran that lasted
several days and spread to more than 90 cities.
As expected, protests were carried out in the margins and cities peripheral to Iranian
urban centres, and their central rallying cry of "Bread, Work, Freedom!" has translated
marginalized Iranians' economic concerns into an emergent political program.
Interestingly, when these protesters vandalized public and private property, their targets
consisted of venues which were symbolic of the IRI's state power, such as patrols of Basij
(an IRGC-affiliated paramilitary organization), and banks and offices of the Supreme
Leader's clerical representatives in their cities.
So far, more than twenty-two protesters have been reported killed, while close to four
thousand more are believed to be in prisons and detention centres all over Iran. At least
a hundred students with leftist and labour rights backgrounds were arrested early on in
the protests to deprive the new movement of its pulse and representation in universities.
According to the Iranian authorities, no charges have been filed against the arrested
students and the arrests are strictly "pre-emptive" in intent. Besides, a growing number
of demonstrators are believed to have been killed in custody. Having kept relatively
silent about the protests, president Rouhani recently announced that the "security forces
did a good job, and the issue is now over."
Access to Instagram and Telegram are now permanently blocked, the latter of which is the
most popular social media platform among Iranians. Telegram harboured the notorious
channel that reportedly kick-started the social media campaign of the protests, before it
was shut down by the company in response to an official request from Iran's Minister of
Information Communication and Technology. What is more, it seems that the IRI has taken
note of the protesters' demands and is working to ‘alleviate' their discontent by
implementing measures such as barring the forecasted rise in the price of bread and other
items.
In view of the above, to brand this movement - as some reformist, Marxist and postcolonial
commentators do - as simply a "plot" orchestrated by the Saudis, the West or the Iranian
conservatives against the Rouhani government erases the wider and recent histories that
inform the political spirit and demands of these protesters and, moreover, grossly
misrepresents the intellectual and popular roots of a movement that has forced the IRI to
suppress it "pre-emptively."
The Necessity of a Third Path to Political Change
In a live interview with Vahid Yaminpour, an Iranian state TV host and IRGC affiliate,
Alizadeh spoke from London, England, firstly to stress the need to recognize and "manage"
the legitimate anti-corruption demands of the working class, only to then suggest that the
radical and anti-establishment overtones and slogans of this movement had to be repressed,
for "any riot" in England or the U.S. deserves this fate.
Echoing this mindset, some leftist, postcolonial and pro-reformist Iranian academics
inside and outside Iran have equally undermined the new protest movement by reducing its
political demands to "diffuse" expressions of ideological or purely economic "grievances."
Critically, these commentators erase these protesters' deep consciousness of their
treatment by the IRI, a long history from which their new movement draws its radical
aspirations.
Marxist and postcolonial commentators on Iranian politics should instead focus on
countering the right wing and orientalist narratives offered by Western policymakers and
the mass media, without overlooking the many critical nuances of political developments
inside Iran. In overemphasizing the role of the United States and other global actors in
shaping the economic hardships endured by Iranians - which also underestimates the
aforementioned histories of the plundering and brutalizing of the Iranian subaltern
classes by the Iranian ruling clique - these leftist, postcolonial and reformist
commentators risk complicity in reproducing the very conditions of suffering denounced by
Iranian protesters.
In the name of reconciliation with the West and the global markets, the reformist Iranian
middle class has been likewise complicit in Rouhani's economic policies and the IRI's
expansionist agenda in the Middle East. In instigating market reforms and subsidy cuts,
Rouhani's policies have only jeopardized the livelihood of working class Iranians. In a
climate of dissent, where many of the leaders of the working class movement are in prison
for charges of "acting against national security" and Rouhani's popular foreign minister
repeats that "there are no political prisoners in Iran," the Iranian working class is now
articulating its own distinct social movement in order to distinguish its demands from the
middle class support for the IRI's internal and regional agenda; their new protest loudly
chants, "Leave Syria Alone / Do Something for One of Your Own!"
Reformist commentators may very well argue that it is the heavy presence of anti-riot
forces and machinery in the capital and major urban centers, and the recent painful memory
of the Green Movement crackdown, which has prevented the middle class from joining their
fellow working class Iranians. They also highlight how the heavy presence of the IRI task
force in the center has left its disciplinary organs in the peripheries thin and
under-equipped, thus allowing the new working class movement to fill the power void. But
regardless of how the Iranian middle classes choose to heed the chants of their fellow
working class Iranians - "Don't just observe us from up there/ Come and join us down
here!" - the Iranian people as a whole know well enough that the radical economic and
political character of the recent protests is rooted mainly in the long-standing and
cumulative discontent of subaltern classes from the margins, and that their anger is the
expression of a deep dissatisfaction with the entirety of the ruling clique and its
capitalist, authoritarian and expansionist rule over many years.
The political aspirations behind the economic slogans of the new protest movement are
directed at the IRI's economic corruption and political repression. However, outside the
heavily moderated presidential elections and the choice between reformists and
conservatives, there are no other established venues for democratic dissent within the
Iranian political space. Neither will the IRI tolerate any political education and
organization outside the reach of its own state apparatus, leaving the Iranian working
class with a lacking, or poorly-equipped, language of dissent.
The question of transition from reformism must therefore contend with three future
possibilities. The first two of these will not bring these groups any nearer to their aims
and demands, namely, the possibility that the new protest movement may fall prey to the
populist promises and plans of the likes of Ahmadinejad once more, or that the classes
behind this movement may hold other rounds of protests in the future, only to risk even
more arrests and killings. But there is also a third possibility, that of transforming the
new protest movement's class consciousness into a radical platform for political change in
Iran. The stakes for such a practice are high, and the strategic field for its
implementation is mined with danger, but the tactics of Dual Power and Democratic
Confederalism are proven possibilities in the Middle Eastern political scene and could
very well form the strategy for this radical political transition.
The Iranian middle class voted for Rouhani just four years after the Green Movement,
despite his collusion with state oppressors at the height of the crackdowns, and there is
no guarantee that, in the absence of a political alternative, the middle class will not
empower the reformists, its traditional representative in Iranian politics, once again.
What is more, the structural and political deficits that characterize the dichotomies of
Iranian politics are only symptomatic of a late capitalist milieu of confinement to what
we might term the "Clintonite"-"Trumpist" dyad, which currently haunts neoliberal politics
from the USA, to France and Japan. The Iranian people would do well to articulate their
own transition out of this international impasse, toward an egalitarian principle of
democratic self-governance and international politics.
Endnotes
[1]Although the slogans of this movement do, in many instances, openly call for "regime
change," we will show that these subversive chants for the overthrow of the clerical
hierarchy, as well as the songs which refuse the proffered choice of the
reformist/conservative dyad, are different in demands and aspirations from similar
expressions found in the political language of exiled opposition and monarchist groups.
[2]Needless to say, the IRI's clique's costly support of Ahmadinejad's hawkish politics,
and its increasing belief in the necessity of acquiring nuclear technology as a matter of
national security, were directly correlated with the presence of American forces around
Iranian borders in the post 9/11 era.
[3]For example, the ban against medicine - one of the most unpopular items on the U.S.
sanctions list - was not on the U.S. Treasury's official list of sanctions against Iran.
Controversial revelations by Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, Ahmadinejad's health minister,
regarding the IRGC's ‘mismanagement‘ of funds earmarked for medicinal supplies from
abroad, were followed (after her removal) by Seyed Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi's concession
that "The medicine problem is caused by ourselves, it is not related to sanctions at all."
The Iranian public had been led to believe that the drug shortages were mainly due to the
U.S. sanctions.
[4]In fact, this campaign was so comprehensive and effective in manipulating public
opinion in Iran that the results of a controversial 2016 survey by IPOS showed that 59% of
Iranians now believed that no election fraud had taken place during the 2009 elections,
and that Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Forces in Syria, enjoyed a 38%
popularity rating, with Foreign Minister and nuclear deal negotiator Javad Zarif polling
at 76%.
Related Link:
https://socialistproject.ca/2018/01/iran-protests-third-path-political-change/#more-12585
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30808
------------------------------
Message: 3
The following book is the autobiography of the 97 year old revolutionary anarchist
communist in Bulgaria, Alexander Nakov. This first English translation was edited and
contributed to by former AF members now associated with this Communist Anarchism blog.
---- The Dossier of Subject No. 1218 ---- A Bulgarian Anarchist's Story ---- by Alexander
Nakov ---- ALEXANDER NAKOV, BORN 1919: "SECONDARY EDUCATION IN FASCIST PRISONS... HIGHER
EDUCATION IN BOLSHEVIK PRISONS" ---- Of the few who managed to survive the horrors of
Bulgaria's Stalinist concentration camps, Alexander Nakov is possibly the most
representative of the older generation of active and committed anarchists. ---- Initially
reluctant to write his memoirs, Alexander was eventually persuaded by friends that his
story needed to be told. And by telling that story, he now remains a vital link between
the anarchist militants of the past and the youth of today.
In clear and concise prose, Alexander details his youthful activity, his subsequent
imprisonment and his fierce resistance to an inhuman system.
As well as his memoirs, this book also contains official government and state security
documents about the author - documents that give yet another insight into the anarchist
Alexander Nakov, targeted by the "People's State" and classified as "Subject No.1218."
Translated from the Bulgarian original by Mariya Radeva, edited by Rob Blow, foreword by
Nick Heath.
* * * * *
Published by Black Cat Press
ISBN 978-1-926878-16-4 (paperback)
178 pp., index; 5 colour plates; 29 in-text graphics; 213x134x13mm, 245 g.
For a review of the book, click HERE
For more info on Alexander Nakov, click HERE https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/7h4542
https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.il/2018/01/a-bulgarian-anarchists-story-alexander.html
------------------------------
Message: 4
On Tuesday, January 23, Anti-Fascist Viktor Filinkov lost to St Petersburg. Two days
later, the press service of the St. Petersburg courts wrote that he had been detained and
admitted to being in a terrorist society whose members "share anarchist ideology." The
next day, members of the Commission for the Supervision of the Human Rights of Prosecuted
and Sentenced Persons were brought to him, and it turned out that Filinkov was tortured.
On Thursday, January 25, Petrograd resident Igor Shishkin lost his strolling dog. The dog
did not come back home alone, but with the armed cops. Shishkin was found in court on
Saturday. The journalists did not release the proceedings, Igora closed. He was
distraught. This police action was provided by one of the local courts in Penza.
What links Penz, St. Petersburg and the anarchists? The independent Russian media project
OVD Info, which was set up in response to the mass repression at a meeting on December 5,
2011, dealing with political persecution in Russia, published on 11 December 2017 a
detailed account of the persecutions associated with the Maltese Revolution. (The
anti-Potential activist Vjaceslav Malcev proclaimed on 5 November 2017, when mass arrests
were also declared.) The report described the criminal prosecution of the so-called
terrorist association in the Pension. It has been written here that the case concerns five
people, two of whom are anarchists. It was not exactly accurate information. The accused
were six, and none of them had anything to do with Malcev, though the investigation might
have been conducted. In addition, at least some were charged with anti-fascists, and one
of them lived before being arrested in St. Petersburg.
On 17 or 18 October, the first person in this case, Jegor Zorin, was arrested in Penz.
They subsequently arrested anti-fascist Ilja Shakurski and his friend Vasili Kuks. On
October 27, Dmitry Pchelinov was arrested. At the beginning of November, Andrej Cernov was
arrested in Penze and Arman Sagynbajev in St. Petersburg, whom he had taken to Penzy and
put in custody. According to the investigators, they were all members of the 5.11
terrorist group that was preparing the revolution in the country. Five people are
currently in custody, the sixth is in home jail. The investigators reported on
psychological pressure, current torture, hanging their heads down, and the weapons the FSB
secret police had subjected them to.
There is no rating in airsoft as opposed to paintball, as the players themselves have the
responsibility to keep the rules. The player they hit is obliged to admit a hit and
immediately put on a well-recognizable strip of red that represents his death (or injury)
in the game and go to a place designated as a cemetery (or lazer). Accordingly, it is not
for winning, but for the enjoyment of fair play. Asking who perished and who is not, is
not usual, because there is no need to find out these things during the game itself.
The weapon employs imitations with plastic-ceramic beads with a diameter of six to eight
millimeters. The gun is driven by air or a gas mixture, most commonly used with an
electric battery, but it is also manual.
"There is no question that terrorism is bad," says Kuksov's lawyer Alexandr Fedulov, "but
try those who really have something to do with him, not all of them. I used to play
airsoft too. To rest. I also have an airsoft weapon at home. There is no need for
permission. I also shot the night in the park. I just liked the game ... And Vasja Kuksov
went to play airsoft. He fired twice from the imitation ... I talked about twenty minutes
when deciding to extend the[ties], and the only word did not reach the resolution. The
investigator reads the request: "... devoted to the illicit acquisition of proficiency to
survive in the forest and provide first aid." Where is the lawfulness of such proverbs
described? And the judge sits and nods. , They were about to blow up the offices of United
Russia (the governing political party), the post office ... "They did not miss."
When Oct. 19, Kuksov's wife Jelena came home from work, she saw that Vasili was not there
yet, although she should return before she. She telephoned him on the cellphone - he rang,
but the man did not answer him. Within a few hours, Jelena heard that someone was trying
to open the door to the apartment. She looked at the watch and saw about ten unknown men,
one holding her husband's neck. Vasilij barely stood on his feet. The men told her they
had come from the FSB.
Vasilius's trousers and jacket were torn and stained with blood, his head and nose broken,
as if they were knocking him down. According to Jelena, the tour was just superficial.
Then Vasily asked if he had a car. FSB members brought Kuks and his wife to the car and
ordered him to open the door. Kuks went to the car and noticed that the lock was not in
order. At his surprise, some of the members responded abruptly, "What do you mean?" The
police began to search the car and find a gun in it. Kuksov, who had been quiet until
then, began to scream that he had given him the gun.
On the same day they arrested Ilja Shakurski. At first, they suspected that they organized
the group, but then changed the paragraph to "attendance". Shakurskij organized lectures,
cleaned parks in the framework of environmental initiatives, organized animal rights
events. He is a vegetarian and quite well-known figure in the local leftist movement.
His friend Valerie (the name is changed) tells that Shakurski has been picking up a pair
of classmates at school and they went to clean the Moksa River together. Before that, no
one imagined Ilja. After some time, people from the city of Moksan and police officers
appeared at school. They made a special class class for the pupils, where they said that
Ilja was a Nazi and that his peers had to cease to associate with him. This story was
always laughing with Shakurski and his antifascist friends.
On a trial that dealt with the prolongation of custody on December 14, Shakurskij sat for
some reason in the hall, not in a cage along with Sagynbaev and Peciniec. Perhaps the
investigators did not want Shakurski to communicate with the other accused. The hearing
was public. Shakurski looked very depressed, his hood on his head. Beside him, his mother
sat and hugged him all the time. She asked him something, he answered one-word. The
longest the mother said, the holidays were: "Mum, surely the decoration of the tree."
According to Fedulov, Shakurski admitted. They all admitted except Kuks, who refused to
answer the questions under Constitutional Section 51. Some time ago, Shakurski and
Peciniec were friends, coached, sporting, playing airsoft. Then they did not see them for
several months.
Dmitry Pchelin's wife: "He's been treated like this. They suspect and blame you for
something, but if they can not, you are not guilty. So why am I in such a poor condition
that it multiplies the punishment for what I did not do. "
Angelina Pchelincev's Men: "Birthday crap, New Year, other holidays and all the
difficulties I have. You're just important. If I could, I'd be with you and go through all
that. But I know you're against, and it's not possible. I'll do everything I can to help
you, and you do not do it for me, trust me to do it. "
Prior to the arrest, Pcelin was working as a shooting instructor. The expertise was gained
during the service at the Penzenský artillery engineering training center. On October 27,
Pcelincev left the house early in the morning to meet his grandmother. His wife, Angelina,
was still asleep when the man returned to the flat already in the ties and with FSB
members. According to her, the police turned the apartment upside down during the tour and
finally took away personal telephones and other electronic information carriers as well as
registered weapons - two hunting rifles and two gas guns. Then they went to the car. The
horseshoe's car was broken, and recently he had trouble with it to the house. The alarm
did not work. The members of the FSB looked at the car and, as nobody saw them, they found
two grenades beneath the rear seat. Pchelincev said, "The car without an alarm, you're a
jerk." He meant that the grenades were pushing him.
The same day Angelina called and told her that her husband said she wanted to be present
at the interrogation. But when she arrived at the FSB, she found that no such
interrogation was taking place. There were two secret men waiting for her. During the
interview, one of them "played" significantly in the hand with the arrow and began to
threaten that her husband would receive a life sentence. He said, "It's just like shooting
someone in the foot" to stop Pcincen from refusing to testify under paragraph 51.
"Such a crap - this is a terrorist organization that has not done a single terrorist act
or planned it," Pcelinova says. "That means it can not be said at court that they were
planning on a date. This can not be said, because they absolutely did not plan anything.
The only thing they did to teach first aid in field conditions was to survive in the
woods. Is that illegal? "
In a few days in custody Pcelincev announced that he was going to blame. His loved ones,
who were sure Dmitrij was not innocent, were shocked. To pay the lawyer his relatives took
a loan in the bank - lawyer Alexei Agafonov applied for a deposit of 150 thousand rubles
(about 50 thousand crowns). But no matter what this money, he did not care very much about
the needs of his mandate. He came to custody of Peciniec and showed him where to sign on
the papers brought by the investigator. But he could, for example, meet Dmitri before the
arrival of the investigator on Monday and come along with an FBS member on Tuesday. When
Dmitry was surprised, he replied, "I have come."
Dmitry Pchelin's wife: "It's unfair. Dishonestly. Incorrectly. Absurdly. All the paths of
my life led to one. You, grandma, sister, parents, a lot of people who know I'm a good
person. Why, then, do all the things that happen to me coughing? To cheat on a person who
is not dangerous has his joys and problems, thoughts and experiences. What, besides
trauma, will bring me and all my loved ones? It does not even hurt me, but it is terribly
troubled. It's not a coincidence, a coincidence. It's just someone's unjust will. The most
sensible Saturday. At least I took a shower, shaved, I do not want to resemble what they
have for me. What am I doing wrong, Angelina? "
Angelina Pchelinciva's Men: "I believe you, like your whole family and your friends.
Everyone is very afraid of you and understands what is happening. It is clear to us. The
first month I tried to understand how it was possible TAKHLE to deal with a man, but then
I stopped searching for the meaning of this. They do not care how it is who they are so
cruelly rolling. "
Attorney Agafonov met with Pchelincole and asked her if her husband suffered from
exaggerated imagination. Angelina replied that the situation was probably not the most
appropriate. It turned out that Dmitry told the lawyer that FSB members went to him every
day and lead him to other "interrogations". However, according to a lawyer, this can not
be done because it is forbidden there.
Initially, Angel's letters from the man did not go away even though he wrote her
practically every day. The letters were stacked at the FSB office waiting for the
information they needed from Dmitry or Angelina. Then Pcelinova found a thick envelope in
the mailbox, filled with all the men's letters for a whole month. It was then revealed
that he had practically complained to Agafonov from the very beginning. According to
Angelina, he literally arrived that his attorney did not trust him. He sat alone in the
cell, completely isolated, and the attorney was the only person he could trust.
"Because of the relationship of criminal authorities and courts in the territory of our
city, it is condemned with minimal evidence," Fedulov said. "Because this is the first
such case in the area and everyone is interested, it is a big thing: you imagine they
caught the terrorists. Those with wooden bats, with branches running through the woods.
Vasja told me: "Do you know what I was afraid of? That someone will see how I run in the
woods and play the war. I would fall with shame. ' Changing the constitutional order in
some territory ... In the village of Shaluhikha, could they change that arrangement with
their airsoft weapons? "
Once, the Dickinson's Pcelin's letter came on a piece of paper jabbed from the notebook.
At the beginning, something was written about the fact that a man reads a book that has
800 pages and that he likes his wife. This was crossed out, and at the end of Dmitri's
writing he said, "Do not write to me, nothing to me, go away as long as possible, do not
ask me, everything has ended with me." In the same letter Pcelin told him that
psychotropic substances are being injected and given pills and that it is "worse than
death". The woman thought Dmitry was out and wrote the answer.
"I took the paper and, in a trembling hand, wrote that everything would be fine. I
realized that even though it had not been so long for us it was much worse for him. At
that time, his father told lawyer Agafonov to take as much as he needed from the compound
deposit, and the others to return. And we found a new lawyer. "
On December 1, when Angelina and Dmitry were accused, Angelina and Dmitry could meet and
speak together. Dmitry said he had asked to visit a woman "to say goodbye to her."
According to him, he was abusing him every day - they threw his head down, his throat
flowing into his throats. He was afraid they might kill him and murder suicide. He said
his body does not have to endure such torture: "I'm afraid I will not hold my heart and I
will not go out alive. It's a hell. "The beggar asked the woman to tell the investigator
that she was good to her, and then maybe they would not come that day. Angelina had said
beforehand she would not be crying from the secret, so she kept herself trying to
encourage the man. She persuaded him not to lose hope and waited until the new attorney
had made up his mind.
When her husband was taken away, the investigator asked her what they were talking about.
She said, "Stop Dimu killing."
Dmitry Pchelin's wife: "I would not be able to colonize Mars. And even better would be
something far away. Next time, I do not really need anything, so do not go now. I'll write
if anything. Overall, I hold. Imagining how we start living. "
Angelina Pchelinceva's men: "I'll talk to Elon Musk, we'll leave here and we will not come
back to this planet again. Let's wait, okay? They're still building a ship. "
In some interviews, FSB officials said that they found a list of five people during a tour
at Shakurski. One girl on it was left free, everyone else - Zorin, Kuksov, Peciniec and
Chernov, and Shakurski himself - are in jail. Sagynbaev, who was arrested in St
Petersburg, joined them. He has serious health problems, needs constant medical help, he
said in a court hearing about extending his detention in December that he still vomits.
Zorin is a friend of Shakurski, studying together at the Penzión State University of
Physics Teaching. Zosina was arrested first and he also testified first. He said: "... a
terrorist organization of special secrecy, elaborating in the forests the scheme of the
overthrow of power ..." New Year celebrated Zosin at liberty - he was released from
custody in a domestic prison.
According to the version of the investigators, Group 5.11 was founded to prepare a
revolutionary coup and overthrow the use of terrorist activity. In addition, there were
other similar groups in Russia, all of whom joined a common organization with similar
goals and methods. Members 5.11 were conspired, they had split roles. In the group, for
example, he was a janitor and a communications engineer. In this context, according to
airsoft investigators, it was preparing for terror.
At this point, there is no known procedural or de facto connection between the cases
relating to the Maltese Revolution and the anti-fascist penitentiary case - except for
numbers 5 and 11 in the name of the "terrorist association".
Dmitry Pcelince's wife: "The light is on for twenty-four hours. If he does not let me
innocent, he'll let me in for a developed Alzheimer's. He's so damp that he's letting me
out of tuberculosis, and so dirty he's letting me go of jaundice. And I smoke so much that
she lets me out of cancer. And you give me so much chocolate to let me go for diabetes. Of
course, I'm kidding. No one will let me. "
(The correspondence between Dmitry and Angelina Pcelincev was used in the text.)
Source: https://ovdinfo.org/articles/2018/01/29/straykbol-penzenskoe-delo-o-terrorizme
https://www.afed.cz/text/6787/airsoft-aneb-pripad-teroristu-z-penzy
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