Fightback

by John Edmundson

What is going on in Iran? The recent outbreak of massive demonstrations and subsequent repression by the Iranian state, in particular the Basij militias, has left many people confused. For all of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s faults, he has stood up to US imperialism over the years, refusing to bow to hypocritical US and international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme. He has established close links with progressive governments in Latin America. Perhaps most importantly, he has stood firm on support for the right of the Palestinian people to fight for their homeland. And now he has become the subject of huge demonstrations, accusing him of rigging this month’s presidential elections, which he won with a landslide vote of over sixty percent. 

Supporters of the Iranian regime, both within Iran and around the world, have accused the demonstrators, who have adopted green as the symbol of their movement, of manipulation by Western interests, the same interests who sponsored the other “colour revolutions”, such as the orange revolution in Ukraine and the rose revolution in  Georgia. Certainly there is no doubt that the same Western interests that orchestrated those “revolutions” in Eastern Europe would like nothing better than the demise of the Iranian revolution and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They would like nothing better than the replacement of the current theocratic state by a pliable pro-Western leadership that would open up Iran to world capitalism and give imperialism (and Israel) a free rein in the Middle East. So what should the left make of the latest developments? Are we watching the latest case of a CIA engineered “colour revolution”, intended to roll back thirty years of Iranian revolution; are we seeing a new and genuine revolution of the Iranian working class and peasantry; or are we seeing something else? 

Continue reading “Unrest in Iran”

On Sunday June 28^th, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was awoken by the sound of soldiers kicking in the door of the presidential residence. He was abducted, still dressed in his pyjamas, and bundled into a waiting vehicle. The soldiers took him and put him on a flight to Costa Rica. With Zelaya out of the way, his opponents set about justifying their actions and attempting to establish control over the country. 

Manuel Zelaya was a strange target for a rightist putsch. A wealthy banker and rancher, he was the preferred candidate of the Liberal Party which, along with the more conservative National Party, formed the political establishment in Honduras, a country which has been ruled by a mix of military dictatorships and right wing governments of the elite; what Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would call the oligarchs. The ruling classes in Honduras was comfortable with his election. Throughout the 1980s, the country had been turned into an armed camp for Reagan’s war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Decades of death squad operations and a stifling political environment had ensured that the left in Honduras was extremely weak. But conditions in Honduras are extremely hard for the poor. It is one of the poorest countries in the Americas; like many Central American countries, its main source of income is income repatriated from workers overseas. The life expectancy is only 66.2 years and literacy languishes at 76.2%. Approximately seventy percent of the population live beneath the poverty line. 

After being elected, Zelaya began to shift away from traditional Honduran politics. He raised the ire of his own party by raising the minimum wage by sixty percent. He welcomed Cuban doctors into the country to work amongst the poor majority and applied to join, and was accepted into ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. This put him beyond the pale for the oligarchy in Honduras, including in his own party. Zelaya became an obstacle to business as usual.  Continue reading “Coup in Honduras”