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New York protests against Ahmadinejad
 international |
anti-capitalism |
news report
 Friday October 02, 2009 11:28 by John Cornford - World People's Resistance Movement wprm_ireland at yahoo dot com
Taking advantage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN in New York, thousands of Iranians from all across North America and beyond held two days of spirited protests against this icon of hate for many millions of their countrymen. They included a wide range of people, including many veterans of the 1979 revolution driven into exile, and U.S. and Canadian-born youth of Iranian descent awakening – and sometimes reawakening their elders – to political life. They also represented a broad range of political opinion, with a strong showing of forces identifying with the pro-Islamic Republic "Green" reformist opposition of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as well as revolutionaries, communists and many others against both the Islamic regime and U.S. imperialism. On 23 September, as Ahmadinejad spoke to the opening of the UN General Assembly, demonstrators gathered in front of the Iranian mission to the UN and marched to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the UN headquarters in mid-town Manhattan. Some had started to protest the night before in front of Ahmadinejad's hotel. On 24 September, a huge crowd marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan carrying a banner saying "Ahmadinejad is not my president" stitched together from cloth signed by Iranians across the globe.
When Ahmadinejad's UN speech was first announced, various Iranian groups started to mobilise people to receive him with the biggest Iranian demonstration abroad since the Shah of Iran visited the U.S. not long before his overthrow. The Islamic regime that stole the fruits of the anti-Shah revolution has brought decades of political and economic suffering to the people. The fraud in the June presidential election detonated a crisis in Iranian society and Iran became the scene of protests and struggle against the regime. Thousands have been arrested, and many have been tortured and raped. Hundreds have been murdered in the streets or in prison.
What has been going on in Iran over the last three months has also angered revolutionary organisations and individuals who care about the people, all over the world. Many revolutionaries and progressives in the U.S. not only joined the Iranians to protest against Ahmadinejad and the regime he represents, but also actively helped to organise the demonstrations. Among them were human rights and other organisations and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. A large quantity of communist literature in Farsi from the RCP and the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) was sold.
Given the presence of many different groups, there were also different slogans representing their political lines, such as "Down with the dictator!", "Ahmadinejad where is your 63 percent?" (the percentage of the vote he claimed to have won in the elections), "Independence, freedom, republic of Iran" and "Torture and rape can't stop us anymore".
Some people marched behind red banners, including a group of ex-political prisoners and families of those killed by the regime's executioners and torturers, chanting slogans targeting both the imperialist system and the whole Islamic political system, and not just one representative or just one faction of the regime. A main slogan was: "From Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to Evin and Kahrizak: Down with Systems of Torture and Execution", along with "Down with the Islamic regime of Iran".
They also carried pictures of comrades tortured and murdered in the above two mentioned Iranian prisons and others in the 1980s when the communists and other revolutionary organisation were the regime's main targets, and pictures of youth recently murdered by the regime.
Two protests
It can be said that 23 October saw two protests against Ahmadinejad. One, outside the UN building in New York, was aimed at his regime's brutality against the people. The other, in the UN General Assembly and in press conferences by the imperialists and big powers, sought to put pressure on the Islamic regime, focusing on the nuclear issue. But these two protests were posed from two different directions. One was meant to expose the regime's brutality and the crimes it is committing against the Iranian people, while this was not an issue for the imperialists. They do not care about it and even did not want to refer to it in the speeches their representatives gave on this occasion. In fact, objectively their attacks on Ahmadinejad served to divert public attention from the Islamic Republic's brutality against the people and instead sought to turn it towards the nuclear issue and Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel.
Over the last few years Ahmadinejad has been trying to give himself a militant image, coupling provocative remarks about Israel and the Western powers with an outrageous and ridiculous denial of the the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Actually, by putting forward an implicit anti-Semitism and failing to expose Zionism's role in the service of U.S. imperialism, his approach also lets the U.S. off the hook. Perhaps he didn't mind the accusations from the imperialists too. He has previously benefited from them at home and elsewhere in the Middle East, especially when he has been attacked by the Israeli authorities. While the contradiction between his regime and the U.S..-led imperialist countries is real, they both agree that the people have to chose between these two reactionary alternatives, and in that sense their mutual attacks also have an element of mutual support.
In his speech this year, as in previous years, Ahmadinejad also declared the death of Marxism, not only to please the Western powers but also to promote his rotten ideology that is embodied in the last 30 years of terror, torture, murder, rape and imprisonment of the people, and economic misery for the majority. On the contrary, the protest outside the UN building was the real problem for the Ahmadinejad. It helped expose his real nature as a liar, torturer and murderer. He will face the same anywhere else he might visit where there is an Iranian population.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Although protests were more restrained this year , Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presence at the United Nations two days ago drew angry bi-partisan condemnation from NY Congress members .
Iran180, a coalition of organizations and advocates dedicated to reforming Iran’s current government, reports that Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) told a press conference and rally organized in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood :
“Ahmadinejad is the embodiment of all that the United Nations was intended to prevent: a sponsor of terrorism, a denier of the Holocaust, the leader of a regime that is determined to destabilize the region by building nuclear weapons, a tyrant who has murdered thousands of his own people and a madman who has threatened the existence of a U.N.-member nation, Israel
Rep. Engel ,a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from the Republican Party , later echoed Ms Maloney’s words in an interview with Iran !80 :
“Iran is a pariah nation led by a leader who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. There is no place for such a tyrant in New York City. The world must stand against this ugliness at every turn, whether it’s Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its backing of the murderous Syrian regime in Damascus, or its support for terrorism around the world.”
This of course isn’t just a simplistic matter of evil Yankee imperialists interfering with the internal affairs of another country , as some on the left would like to imply. The contempt shown to this tyrant by so many ordinary Americans is an emotion that is very much shared by ordinary Iranians – particularly so since Ahmadinejad ‘s theft of the 2009 Iranian election . John Conford wrote two years ago that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s has become an “icon of hate” for millions in his own country . That situation has not changed .
The protest thats getting the headlines this year is the one by MEK/NCRI also known as the PMOI (they have more fronts than the SWP). An organisation which is in the pocket of US Imperialism.
A coalition of Iranian-American groups organized the protest against Ahmadinejad … one of the largest gatherings staged against the Iranian leader in recent years during the General Assembly.
Speakers included high-profile U.S. politicians including two former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy.
Protesters wore yellow vests with photos of people they say were massacred. One sign read: "Fallen for Freedom in Iran."
Maryam Rajavi, an Iranian politician who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance, which opposes the Islamic regime, spoke to the protesters from France via satellite on a giant screen.
The MEK is the main component of Rajavi's organization. The group was disarmed by U.S. soldiers during the Iraq invasion in 2003 and has since renounced violence. ...
"Iran180, a coalition of organizations and advocates dedicated to reforming Iran’s current government,"
This statement is only somewhat correct. I note the author seems to have (deliberately?) left out this little juicy tidbit regarding the origins of "Iran180"
Israel Lobby Creates Anti-Iran Astroturf Group
http://original.antiwar.com/richard-silverstein/2012/06...roup/
Now, Ben Doherty of Electronic Intifada and I have exposed yet another such strange project dreamed up by a PR firm run by a former IDF public affairs officer and funded by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The latter is the political and lobbying arm of the powerful New York Jewish community. Its director is Rabbi Michael Miller. On this project, he went into business with a PR firm "boutique" called Thunder11, founded by Israel-American, Marco Greenberg, who serves as its president. Greenberg was raised in California and attended UCLA. He made aliyah in the 1990s and joined the IDF, where he served in the army public affairs unit. No later than 2002 he had returned to the States, where he and his wife became trustees (page 19) of the AIPAC-affiliated think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This places him squarely inside the pro-Israel policy advocacy community. Aside from the JCRC, Thunder11′s clients include internet and social media firms like Conversocial, Media Friends, and Group Commerce.
Together they created a "group" on behalf of the JCRC called Iran180. I put group in quotation marks since Iran180 is not a non-profit organization in any sense you or I would know it. It has no office, no board of directors, no fundraising, no members. It does have a single staff member, Chris DeVito, its "director of outreach." But DeVito until a few days ago was listed on the website of another firm Greenberg founded, Washington Square Research (WSR), as an "account executive" (his listing was abruptly removed after Ben and I wrote our posts). WSR is supposedly a company that does research to support its clients and those of Thunder11. Greenberg’s partner in WSR is noted New York Israeli-American writer and NYU professor, Liel Leibovitz.
Iran180 is what’s known in political PR circle as an "astroturf" organization. It exists in name only and serves the interests of parties who can’t be seen publicly to be supporting an issue. In the case of this group, the JCRC and others like the Anti-Defamation League, groups like the American Jewish Committee and UJA Federation of New York, joined together as formal sponsors of the group. The JCRC is the only one that has conceded financing the effort.
You do yourself no favours by only publishing part of the story. Aligning yourself with obvious Israeli-backed orgs will just make you look like a puppet of the Zionists.
I'm left wondering why the author neglected to inform readers that the organisation he is referencing is in fact better described as a Zionist-Front-Group
This is not an attack on the person that posted the Harretz article on MEK
but the statement that "The MEK is the main component of Rajavi's organization. The group was disarmed by U.S. soldiers during the Iraq invasion in 2003 and has since renounced violence. ..." is utterly misleading and was probably designed to be so
I don't know whether MEK has actually publicly renounced violence but what I do know is that reportedly they have been working hand in hand with the CIA and Mossad and have been implicated in the murder of Iranian Scientists over the last few years - which tbh is pretty strange behaviour for an orgaisation that has reportedly "renounced Violence"
AND
"The contempt shown to this tyrant by so many ordinary Americans is an emotion that is very much shared by ordinary Iranians – particularly so since Ahmadinejad ‘s theft of the 2009 Iranian election"
Pre-election polls carried out by James Zogby (hardly a pro-regime stalwart) indicated that the 2009 Election was NOT stolen - the final results tallied quite closely to the pre-election polling carried out by Zogby. Not only that but the exit polls carried out by at the time of the election ALSO tallied quite closely to the final result - so to state definitively, as the author of the above quote has done, that the election was stolen is frankly, at a very minimum, highly misleading.
WHY THE MYTH OF IRAN’S “STOLEN” ELECTION STILL MATTERS - http://www.raceforiran.com/why-the-myth-of-iran%E2%80%9...tters
The cartoon below was typical of the coverage of Iran’s 2009 election. [The cartoon could itself be described as racist.]
In fact, ballots in Iranian elections are neither physically transported to nor counted at the Interior Ministry in Tehran.
Ballots are counted in each polling station, by election officials and candidate observers. The counts are transmitted physically and electronically to the Ministry which aggregates national results. It is the electronic transmission of counts from polling stations that allowed the Ministry to announce results as they came in from the field after polls closed on June 12, 2009.
It was compelled to do this by Mir Hossein Mousavi’s public claim he had been informed by the Ministry that he had won—a statement made while polls were still open, Iranians were still voting and not a single ballot had been counted.
Your comments are correct. While I did point out that MEK/NCRI/PMOI were in the pocket of the US, I should also have pointed out that the Haartz story did not give all of the facts.
MEK/NCRI/PMOI will certainly be used to carry out terrorist attacks and false flag operations. What happened to the army that the MEK had in Iraq which was "disarmed" by the US?
The opening story here was posted in 2009 and refers to a protest in that year. This discussion requires a new thread.
the so called "green movement" mentioned in the article author as evidence of native unrest and dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime by its own people was actually part of a deliberately orchestrated destabilisation attempt by imperialists as explained in the indymedia feature article on Gene Sharpe.
see here for more information:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102162
"particularly so since Ahmadinejad ‘s theft of the 2009 Iranian election""
Thats just a smear without any proof
if you want to talk about stolen elections, you don't need to look to Iran. Look at the voter registration campaigns and the altering of voter addresses wholesale on the register by republicans and their private company proxies currently underway in the US, in order to prevent large numbers of likely democratic voters being able to vote.
Not, of course, that it really matters all that much whether tweedledum or tweedledee get elected there as both support the same shitty imperialist pro military, pro rich folk, pro corporate / financial terrorist policies.
Ahmadinnerjacket is not a particularly likeable character, but name one country's leader who is!
Our own "labour" Taniste is currently in the UN spinning one sided lies about the Syrian government (see prime time thursday 27th episode to see him lie directly to the Irish people about the situation in Syria) like the little US lapdog he is, while ignoring US armed and sponsored AlQaeda terrorist bombings and attacks and the killing of press tv journalists live in mid report. There is blood on his hands too.
And for that matter, our government essentially lied their way into government with a series of fairy tales about what they would do when they were elected. Isn't that electoral fraud too?