Defend the Iranian people! Support Iran’s right to a nuclear deterrent

On March the 18th, protesters will gather in towns and cities around the world to mark the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and the beginning of a war that still kills thousands of Iraqis every month.

This year the anti-war movement faces the threat of a new imperialist war, against Iraq’s eastern neighbour.

The United States is leading a campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme, and threatening the country with military action if it does not dismantle the uranium enrichment technology in its nuclear facilities.

Bush’s government used aggressive diplomacy to make sure that the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to send the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council, where the US has a permanent seat and immense influence. Bush has repeatedly said that is prepared to use violence to stop Iran’s nuclear programme even if he can’t get his way on the Security Council.

Iran’s government maintains that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, and after the lies they told about Iraq’s phantom ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ the US and other Western governments can’t be trusted when they say they are certain Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.

But even if Iran is seeking nukes, what right do the US and its allies have to complain?

The US is a country with many thousands of nukes aimed at targets around the globe and a history of aggressive action against scores of other states. The Middle East’s neighbourhood bully and US ally Israel sits on an arsenal of several hundred warheads.

Both the US and Israel continue to build new nuclear weapons – what right do they have to condemn Iran if it wants to do the same?

Poll after poll shows that Iranians support their country’s nuclear programme, and believe that they have a right to nuclear weapons.

Even the pro-Bush media admits the popularity of Iran’s nuclear programme. Karl Vick, the Iranian correspondent for the pro-Bush, pro-war Washington Post, recently admitted that ‘Ordinary Iranians overwhelmingly favour their country’s nuclear ambitions, interviews and surveys show’.

Why are the Iranian people so keen on nukes?

Some racist commentators in the Western media have suggested that it is because they are a fanatical, bloodthirsty people, who long to fight a holy war against the US and Israel. But the Iranians know better than almost any other people the bloody reality of war. In the 1980s a million of them died defending their homeland against an invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At the time Saddam was an ally of the US, and the US had encouraged him to invade Iran because it wanted to topple the government there. More recently, Iranians have watched the US fight two bloody wars against Iraq. The war that began in March 2003 is estimated to have killed 150,000 Iraqis already. Now the Iranians hear Bush threatening attacks on their own country.

It is because they don’t want another war that the Iranians want nukes. Iranians realise that nukes would be a powerful deterrent against an attack by the US. They can see that the US invaded Iraq knowing that it had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but backed away from attacking North Korea because that country had developed nukes.

A look at the whole history of the nuclear era bears out the Iranian point of view. The US says that nuclear proliferation is a threat to world peace, but the only time nukes have been used was before nuclear proliferation began, in the days when the US had a monopoly on the weapons. US President Harry Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to defeat Japan, which was already about to surrender, but to intimidate the rest of the world, and especially the Soviet Union and Red China. The US wanted to use nukes to make sure it controlled the post-war world.

In 1950 the US was bogged down in a war against Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of their army, drew up plans to explode thirty nukes inside territory held by the North Korean army. Millions of Koreans were saved from death only because the Soviet Union had recently developed its own nukes as a deterrent to US aggression. The US was forced to shelve MacArthur’s plan after the Soviets threatened to retaliate for any nuclear strikes in Korea. Again and again in later years, the Soviet nuclear deterrent saved vulnerable Third World countries from US aggression. Who can blame the Iranians for wanting the same deterrent?

Most Kiwis dislike George Bush and oppose the wars he has started

At the same time, though, many of us are uneasy about the prospect of another country developing nuclear weapons. If a poll were taken today it is likely that only a fraction of us would support Iran’s right to nukes. But we only think like this because we haven’t stood in the shoes of Iranians and other peoples threatened by US imperialism. We live on islands at the bottom of the world, far away from hotspots like the Middle East. We’ve never been invaded, and we don’t have the hostile army of a nuclear superpower camped on our doorstep. The Iranians don’t have the luxury of rejecting nuclear weapons, and we need to understand that. If we don’t, we risk taking the side of the US and Israel in a new war.

The Green Party has already fallen into the trap of supporting the US campaign against Iran, by urging that the UN be used to ‘restrain Iran’.

Others are in danger of going down the same path. In a debate on the Indy media website, one activist said that he wanted to show ‘solidarity with anti-nuclear sentiments among the Iranian and wider Middle Eastern population’. If he looks, he will soon find that the only people in the Middle East interested in campaigning against Iran’s nuclear programme are Israelis and the US armed forces. Anti-war activists should show solidarity with the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to nukes.

But solidarity with Iran doesn’t mean political support for the country’s government

Iran is run by a gang of Islamic fundamentalists who hijacked the 1979 revolution against the US-backed Shah. The fundamentalists took power by killing their secularist rivals on the left, and they use violence to stay in power. In the last few months, for instance, the Iranian police and pro-government paramilitary organisations have been attacking and detaining the bus drivers of Tehran. The bus drivers have been campaigning and striking for better conditions and union rights, and three hundred of them have been detained for this ‘crime’.

It’s not only trade unionists that the Iranian government attacks

Iranian women are regularly stoned to death for ‘crimes’ like adultery and pre-marital sex, and gay men are often hung if they are caught having sex.

We should support the Iranian nuclear programme, but we should also support trade unionists and other groups fighting against government repression.

Some Westerners argue that there is a contradiction between these two types of support. They say you can’t support Iran’s right to nukes without giving political support to the country’s government. What they ignore is the fact that Iranian people themselves support their country’s nuclear programme, at the same time as many of them oppose their country’s government. As Karl Vick notes, “Support [for the nuclear programme] runs deep in the population of 68 million, cutting across differences of education, age and, most significantly, attitudes toward the fundamentalist government”.

When we gather next month to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we should also protest against the aggression of the US and the UN against Iran. But we can only oppose Bush’s new war drive by taking the side of the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to a nuclear deterrent.

Leaflet issued by Workers Against the War Of Terror (WAWOT) February 2006

From Class Struggle 65 Feb/March 2006

An international drugs war on workers

New Zealand was locked into an anti-drug war / policy through United Nations policy, where NZ and most of the world, were forced by the United States (US) into their anti-drug / war on drugs policies. In drug policy NZ are lapdogs to the USA policy. Internationally, the US war on drugs has given the U.S. another excuse to justify its campaigns and interventions into other nations. US lies have clearly been exposed: the Iran-contra scandal showed the CIA was involved in drug dealings. In the US, the “War on Drugs” has given the USA an excuse for imprisoning the highest proportion of the working class, in the world. The USA spent heaps on keeping state forces in practice, police and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Law on Drugs

Drug laws are a frequent sideshow in the parliamentary circus. In the last month we have had Jim Anderton introduce Joe Walsh in the “fight against ‘P’” and the Green party has re-released its policy. Anderton plays on people’s fears by saying he is fighting organized crime with his anti-drug policy. In the workplace, employers are trying to make drug testing mandatory and to justify this level of control of the working class.

US lapdog: Jim Anderton

The Associate Minister of Health in the Labour lead NZ government sounds off with the same fighting anti-drug talk, typical of US policy.

Joe Walsh was happy to come to NZ because he is a born again drug-free rocker, who found god with in some Maori spiritual experience. He was ready to weigh in against drugs. Jim Anderton was borrowing Joe Walsh as support for a war on drugs.

Anderton tours NZ to promote himself as a politician who is doing something to protect communities. His initiative is a spin for himself, without real solutions to the problems. His only solution is police control, and ambulances to pick up the pieces.

He now says lowering the drinking age was a mistake, (but good for the taxes). And that alcohol is the main drug problem in NZ. (I doubt that Alcohol will ever become illegal – the taxes on it are too good).

Restaurant & Hotel workers threatened

“Prevalent drug use” had prompted the Restaurant Association to launch a drug and alcohol education programme, said chief executive Neville Waldren. According to research by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), up to 40 per cent of the New Zealand workforce had tried illegal drugs at least once over the past 12 months. The employers group thinks that: drug abuse was the number one cause of workplace violence and workplace theft in the restaurant industry.

Mr Waldren said because of the social nature of the hospitality industry, combined with the relative youth of the workforce, the 40 per cent figure held true for the hospitality and food service sectors. The Restaurant Association/ESR has promoted employment agreements that allowed drug testing.

Was this an attempt of the part-privatised (now competitive – commercialized) former Department of Industrial and Scientific Research (DSIR) to gain some business? They are the testing agency in the NZ. Has the commercial pressure (capitalist profit motive) over-ridden the ethics of scientific practices?

"We see this as a crucial health and safety issue. Kitchens can be hazardous places to work ... and for front of house, it is essential our staff act in a professional manner ... A barman or waitress under the influence of drugs or alcohol does not live up to that image."

Union criticises bosses’ drug testing plan

The Service and Food Workers Union has condemned employers in the hospitality industry. Union spokesman Alistair Duncan said if the industry had the welfare of its customers and its workers at heart, it would put money into training, improving wages and, for the tiny proportion of staff that had drug problem, providing assistance.

Mr Duncan said that, "just because 40 per cent of workers may have tried illegal drugs once over the past 12 months doesn't mean all of that percentage has a problem that is affecting their work." A court case between Air New Zealand and the Engineers Union, earlier this year had showed judges thought that widespread drug testing was not appropriate. The Employment Court in Auckland decided Air New Zealand could drug test some of its employees in specific circumstances. The court found that the Health and Safety in Employment Act and general law imposed "absolute duties on employers to take all practicable steps to eliminate hazards to employees and others". Because of this, the court said, it was reasonable that employers should be able to take measures, including drug testing, in "safety-sensitive areas".

Fighting unions could claw back pay rates and overtime for working anti-social hours. Let’s fight in the unions for protection against unnecessary shift-work, and against long hours for youth.

Green Party

The Green Party had a re-release of their drug policy. Capitalist class makes drug policies that control the working class, and that make sure workers are fit and ready for work, the Green Party policy is no different. They do not go so far as to advocate the legalisation of cannabis. Rather the Greens just re-classify the drugs on a scale of bad to worse. Their scale is from illegal in some situations to illegal in all situations. This leaves workers vulnerable to police harassment using the excuse of suspected drug use or trafficking.

A Marxist explanation

Drug use has been an aspect of all cultures. Drug use in current society occurs for many reasons, at different levels. A Marxist explanation, which the capitalist class will not wish to acknowledge, is that some workers may use drugs to cope with the alienation of the working class from the means of production and the fruits of our labour. Or that the some of the working class use drugs to cope with the stress of their work, Or to try to have a social life as well as work.

Marxists see drug use on a social scale as a symptom of capitalist exploitation. The real solution is the overthrow of a capitalist system, the sharing out of work, and the creation of meaningful community that truly belongs to us all. This would take out the capitalist motor that drives many people to try drugs to escape harsh realities.

To counter the capitalist anti-drug policies Marxists argue for the legalisation of all drugs. Why legalise?  No excuse for as many police. The police are used as strike breakers in times of working class resistance, the less organized state forces that may act against workers, the better. Fewer police raids. Legalisation of drugs would remove one excuse of the police for raiding workers in their homes and / or searching people in their cars or walking down the street.

Less unpredictable reactions. If drugs were made in standardized laboratories then they could come at a predictable strength and quality. Like, tobacco (nicotine) other drugs could be sold with warning labels on them. Unlike cigarettes currently – it is possible to measure the drug content (e.g. amount of nicotine) and print that ‘dose’ on the labels. This is beginning to occur with alcohol; “standard drinks”.

Crime would decrease. There would be easier access to drugs and the price would fall, so there would be less and less money to be made through drug trafficking. When the price fell drugs would be more affordable, and so theft (to fund drug use) would occur less. Would the market price of “P” be so high if it was a legal drug? No – 40 years ago amphetamines (speed or ‘P’) used to be available as a diet pills on a prescription and affordable to workers.


Fight in your unions
Resist drug testing in the workplace
Protection from harsh hours of work, especially for youth
Overtime rates for anti-social working hours
Legalise all drugs : Ditch the US / UN war on drugs policy
Workers control of the production and packaging for all drugs
Against police control of workers 

From Class Struggle 58 October-November 2004

Victory to Iraq!

On Sunday April 18 about 140 members of Auckland's Arab community and a handful of their supporters marched to the US consulate. Organised at short notice and almost totally ignored by the media, the march was a powerful show of support for the armed insurrection shaking Iraq.

The demonstrators chanted slogans like '1,2,3,4 We don't want your racist war!', 'ANZAC troops, out of Iraq!', and 'With our lives, with our blood we defend you, Iraq!'. CWG members on the march shouted slogans condemning the US repression of Iraq's trade union movement, and called for the rebuilding of the Iraqi union movement and international working class solidarity with the resistance.

A group of young Palestinians delighted the march by improvising a song which paid tribute to the heroism of the defenders of Fallujah. A number of Islamist chants were aired, but when a CWG member raised an old Iraqi revolutionary chant at least a third of the crowd joined in, and others applauded.

Outside the US consulate a series of speakers emphasised the criminal nature of the US/UN occupation of Iraq, and the need to support the the Iraqi resistance to occupation. One Iraqi addressed the US government, saying 'We are not responsible for the killing - get out of our country and we will stop killing you'.

Another Iraqi blasted Bush's talk of democracy, saying 'Freedom exists in Iraq only for Americans. Our country is being made safe only for Americans and Zionists'. A Palestinian speaker announced the news of the murder of Hamas leader Rantissi, and vowed that the intifada would continue until Israel was destroyed.

Bystanders were divided in their response to the demonstration. A handful were enraged, and shouted racist abuse and threats. Many, though, were very supportive. When the march passed a music store near the bottom of Queen Street a crowd of young people poured out of the store and applauded wildly. Dozens of motorists honked their support. A CWG member talked to a young American tourist who had spontaneously joined the march to show her opposition to Bush and solidarity with Iraq.

A disappointing feature of the demonstration was the absence of almost all of Auckland's left-wing community. Apart from Students for Justice in Palestine, the CWG seemed to be the only left group represented. Several speakers emphasised the need for the Arab community to liaise better with the rest of Auckland's anti-war movement, and to explain its cause better to the general public, and one speaker urged demonstrators to come on Auckland's Mayday march.

It is certainly true that Sunday's march could have been better advertised, and that the Arab community could make stronger links with the many Aucklanders who hate Bush and his imperialist war.

But the left and the labour movement also have some work to do, if they are to reach out to the community most affected by the War of Terror. In particular, the left and the union movement must learn from the militant anti-imperialism of last Sunday's demonstration, and of the Iraqi resistance as a whole.

Auckland's Arab community is connected by family and history to an occupation which is for most of the rest of us a matter of TV images and newspaper stories. For Auckland's Arabs, the brutality of US imperialism is especially keenly felt, and the necessity of armed resistance to this imperialism is easily understood.

Last Sunday's message of solidarity with armed resistance to US and NZ troops contrasts very sharply with the official line of this country's mainstream peace movement and larger left-wing parties. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq last year, both the Alliance and the Green Party refused to support Iraqis' right to defend their homeland against Bush's armies.
Instead of backing the Iraqis, Green MPs like Keith Locke and peace movement 'celebrities' like Bishop Randerson used prime speaking slots at massive anti-war demonstrations to promote illusions that the UN and 'international law' could stop the war. When the war wasn't stopped, disappointed demonstrators disappeared faster than Saddam's WMDs. The active anti-war movement faded at the very moment the Iraqi resistance needed it most.

Twelve years of sanctions costing a million lives and a year of brutal UN-sanctioned occupation have made Iraqis somewhat sceptical about the charms of the UN. The Green Party, though, is still blindly calling for a UN 'solution' for Iraq. 'Resistance' is a word that is still absent from Comrade Locke's vocabulary.

Our union movement has an even worse record than the Greens. Echoing Helen Clark, the national leadership of the Council of Trade Unions voted to oppose unilateral US war, but said nothing against a UN-sanctioned bloodbath. When the UN rubber stamped Bush's conquest, Helen was happy to send troops, and the CTU was happy to keep quiet.

Some unions are going further, and seeking a slice of the War of Terror pie. The Engineers' Union, for instance, has been lobbying John Howard's government to build several frigates in Whangarei. (What's next fellas - a tender for a New Zealand leg of the Star Wars system Howard is co-sponsoring with Bush?)

As rank and file trade unionists, we are disgusted and embarrassed by the failure of our movement to distance itself from the imperialist war machine and to show solidarity with the people fighting to stop that machine in its tracks.

Instead of acting as cogs in the War of Terror, our unions should begin a campaign of aid to the Iraqi workers’ organisations opposing the occupation of their country. In the 1930s, New Zealand unions sent money to the Spanish republicans fighting Franco and the Nazis, and some left-wing Kiwis travelled to Spain to join the International Brigade that took on the fascists on the battlefield.

Today, the Iraqi people are defying a colonial occupation every bit as dangerous as fascism. We need to support them by getting Kiwi troops out of their country, and by aiding their struggle for real liberation. Anything less would be a betrayal of the spirit of last Sunday's demonstration. When we march with our Arab sisters and brothers this Mayday our slogans should be:

Victory to Iraq!
Defeat US/NZ Troops!
Build the Iraqi workers' movement!


From Class Struggle 55 April-May 2004

Asylum for Ahmed Zaoui, 'Terrorist' or not!

 
Green Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Keith Locke went on Auckland 1ZB radio station recently to talk about the Ahmed Zaoui case. Locke correctly called for Zaoui to be granted asylum in New Zealand, but the arguments he used on behalf of Zaoui can only be criticised.

Locke defended Zaoui by comparing him to Helen Clark, saying “Helen Clark is known around the world as a peacemaker, and so is Ahmed Zaoui - throwing Ahmed in jail is just as absurd as throwing Helen in jail would be.” Locke went on to differentiate Zaoui from members of groups which use armed struggle against oppression - he contrasted Zaoui the man of peace with the Algerian armed resistance and with the IRA, saying “there's no excuse for violence, whatever the circumstances.”

Yet the modern IRA was built originally as a self-defence force, and fought against Military occupation by an imperialist power, and the armed groups in Algeria are resisting a military dictatorship backed by French and British imperialism. Obviously there are many political criticisms that can be made of both the IRA and the Algerian Islamists, but equally obviously both are national liberation movements with wide support and many just demands. To support their suppression, as Locke implicitly does, is reactionary in the extreme.

What Locke's 'defence' of Zaoui actually does is (a) whitewash Helen Clark's and Labour's role in the ongoing War of Terror, and (b) reinforce the efforts of the White House to run together terrorism and national liberation struggles (think of Colombia, where Bush is calling the leftist guerrillas 'narcoterrorists', or the Philippines, where the Communist Party's New People's Army and the large Muslim insurgent groups are tarred with the brush of Abu Sayaff and Al Qaeda). We should support Locke when he calls for asylum to be given to Zaoui, but we need to accompany our support with criticism of the continuing rightward drift of the Greens and some other parts of the peace movement.

We have to take aim not only at the surface absurdities of Green and liberal arguments, but also at that their underlying view that the state and armed forces of Western countries can be 'turned' by the left and made to act for progressive ends in the Third World.

It is this underlying belief which has many Green supporters happily going along with their party's support for the invasion of the Solomons, and unconcerned about the way their party jumped into bed with the emerging Euro-imperialist bloc by backing a Franco-German occupation of Iraq under the banner of the UN back in March.

Trapped in their reformist illusions, the Greens and organisations like Peace Movement Aotearoa tend to hold back the anti-war movement by advocating forms of protest designed to 'pressure' Labour to act progressively on international issues. PMA, for instance, is now calling for letters to be sent to Helen Clark demanding the release of Zaoui.

The truth is that Labour will never be pressured into changing direction and dropping its support for US and European imperialism. Labour is dedicated to administering capitalism, and at the dawn of the twenty first century wars of recolonisation and rollbacks of civil liberties are the survival mechanism of capitalism. The War of Terror is a necessity, not some mistake a few well-worded letters can persuade honourable politicians to put right. We need organized workers' action, not symbolic pressure protests, to counter the War of Terror and help its victims like Ahmed Zaoui.

The absurdity of the Green-liberal position on the capitalist state and army was shown up by another part of Locke's performance on 1ZB. Locke condemned the SIS as an untrustworthy player in the Zaoui case, pointing out the closeness of the organisation's ties to the CIA and MI5. Where, though, does Locke think the information being used to justify the invasion of the Solomons comes from? If the SIS is not to be trusted over the facts concerning one man, how can it be trusted over the fate of a nation?

Locke also pointed to the role of French security services in helping the Algerian regime demonise opponents like Zaoui. Of course, France has a long history of acting against the interests of Algerians - in the 1950s and early 60s it killed tens of thousands of Algerians in a futile effort to defeat an independence movement in its biggest colony.

Closer to home, the French state has an appalling record in Pacific colonies like New Caledonia, where it killed a quarter of the Kanak population in the nineteenth century, and French Polynesia, where it tested nuclear bombs as recently as 1994. And then, of course, there's the role of French security services in the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985. Why, given this record, does Locke think that France offered a progressive alternative solution to the crisis in Iraq last March? Why did he trust the French army and security services over the Pentagon and the CIA? Why does he continue to advocate Franco-German occupation as preferable to US occupation? It is questions like these that rank and file Greens should be asking. 

From Class Struggle, 52 September-October 2003