Excuse me, we will take it from here

from Almasry Alyoum

Textile strikers tell government they will self manage their factory, Hossam El Hamalawy reports.

The Tanta Flax and Oil Company workers renewed their call for the nationalization of their factory, threatening to take over the factory and run it independently from the investor and the government if the latter didn't intervene on behalf of the strikers.

"The strike enters its 41st day and the government has neither moved nor intervened to help us," Ashraf El Harti, a worker who's sacked a year ago for taking part in a previous strike, told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Friday during a mass meeting held at the leftist Tagammu Party premises, downtown Cairo, in solidarity with the strikers. His colleague, Abdel Aziz Fathi, a telephone operator in the company which was privatized four years ago to a Saudi investor stressed: "Our first demand now is the return of the company to the Public Sector ownership. Forget about anything else. We don't want anything except this now."

But other strike leaders are even more ambitious. "I want to tell the government of Egypt something," thundered Hisham El Okal, a sacked trade unionist who's among the strike organizers. "You had more than 40 days to solve our problems, but you didn't do anything. Ok, why don't you lift your hands now off the issue and leave it for us to solve? We neither want the government nor the Saudi investor. We will take over the factory and self manage it." El-Okal's proposal drew standing ovation from the audience.

Representatives of the strikers took turns to address hundreds of workers and solidarity activists who packed the meeting hall, decorated by banners denouncing the Saudi investor and privatization. Their speeches were usually interrupted by strikers' chanting against "greedy capitalism, privatization and the looting of the country by investors."

The Tanta strike reasons go beyond the nationalization issue. Around 1000 workers have been staging a strike in the Nile Delta textile plant, since 31 May, demanding the reinstatement of nine sacked workers--including two trade unionists--and increasing the food allowance as well as receiving overdue bonuses and incentives.

"If the investor was Egyptian," shouted one of the strikers during the meeting, "do you think they'd have allowed him to do so?" The striker then went on a frenzy, chanting: "No Saudi, No Japanese. Tanta Flax Company is returning to Egyptian ownership."

Gamal Othman, one of the strikers' spokespersons, also warned that workers' patience was running out. "My advise to the government is to leave us to act if the Labor Ministry officials are not planning to intervene on our behalf. Do not blame us for what will happen. We stayed civil for 41 days and our voices were not heard. It seems we have to do another Mahalla to get the government's attention," he said referring to the food riots that rocked the neighboring Nile Delta province last year.

El Okal, the sacked trade unionist, passionately spoke about what he described as the bigger picture. "If we manage to succeed in Tanta Flax, this will be the end of privatization in Egypt. All companies will follow suit and strike to be renationalized or self managed. Our fight is not only a fight for the workers of Tanta, but all of Egypt."

Member of parliament Mohamed Abdel Aziz Shaaban attended the public meeting, and spoke in support of the strikers, denouncing the "Saudi slave labor system the investor wants to apply in Tanta." The MP repeatedly denounced "Saudi Wahabbism and Gulf Arabs who enslave Egyptian workers," only to be interrupted by one of the strikers from the floor: "But the management is Egyptian! A Saudi owns the company, but he uses Egyptians to run it. Egyptians are enslaving Egyptians. The management is the enemy."

The Tanta strike is part of a series of industrial action recently witnessed in privatized firms. Though nationalization is increasingly becoming a popular demand by strikers, self-management was rarely put on the agenda. Only two companies are self-managed by the workers in the 10th of Ramadan City. Workers took over production in textile dyes and electric bulbs manufacturing firms around four years ago after the owners fled abroad to escape their bank debts.

And while the strike continues, a court is expected to look into complaints by the nine sacked workers on 17 September. Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to get a comment from the company's management failed, as managers had evacuated the factory from the start of the strike and left behind only security personnel, and police agents.

Billy Wharton on FOX Business News

Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis

July 08, 2009

By Stephen Shalom
and Joanne Landy
and Thomas Harrison
and Jesse Lemisch

Source: Campaign for Peace and Democracy

(July 7, 2009) — Right after the June 12 elections in Iran, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a statement expressing our strong support for the masses of Iranians protesting electoral fraud and our horror at the ferocious response of the government. Our statement concluded: “We express our deep concern for their well-being in the face of brutal repression and our fervent wishes for the strengthening and deepening of the movement for justice and democracy in Iran.” Since the elections, some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement. The Campaign’s position of solidarity with the Iranian protesters has not changed, but we think those questions need to be squarely addressed.

Below are the questions we take up. Questions three, four and five deal with the issue of electoral fraud; readers who are not interested in this rather technical discussion are invited to go on to question six. And we should say at the outset that our support for the protest movement is not determined by the technicalities of electoral manipulation, as important as they are. What is decisive is that huge masses of Iranians are convinced that the election was rigged and that they went into the streets, at great personal risk, to demand democracy and an end to theocratic repression.

1. Was the June 12, 2009 election fair?

Even if every vote was counted fairly, this was not a fair election. 475 people wished to run for president, but the un-elected Guardian Council, which vets all candidates for supposed conformity to Islamic principles, rejected all but 4.

Free elections also require free press, free expression, and freedom to organize, all of which have been severely curtailed.”1

2. You call the Guardian Council un-elected, but isn’t it true that it is indirectly elected by the Iranian people?

Every eight years the Assembly of Experts is popularly elected. Candidates must be clerics and must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Assembly of Experts then chooses a supreme leader, who rules for life (though he can be removed by the Assembly of Experts for un-Islamic behavior). The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary. The supreme leader chooses half of the 12 members of the Guardian Council and the judiciary nominates the other six, to be ratified by the Parliament. The Guardian Council then vets all future candidates for president, parliament, and the Assembly of Experts.2

Thus, once this system was in place the possibilities of fundamentally changing it have been essentially nil. If 98 percent of the Iranian people decided tomorrow that they opposed an Islamic state, the rules would still enable the theocracy to continue in power forever — because the only people who could change things have themselves to be vetted by the theocratic rulers. Even amending the constitution requires the approval of the supreme leader.

Iran is not a dictatorship of the Saudi Arabian sort, where there are no elections and where people have zero input. But the basic prerequisite of a democratic system — that the people can change their government — is missing.

3. OK, but was there fraud? And was it on a scale to alter the outcome?

There was certainly fraud: The Iranian government acknowledges that in 50 cities there were more votes cast than registered voters. (In Iran, voters can cast their ballots in districts other than those in which they reside, but “many districts where the excess votes were recorded are small, remote places rarely visited by business travelers or tourists.”3) Moreover, the vote total also exceeded the number of registered voters in two provinces.4 (Province-wide excess is more significant than city-wide, because people would be less likely to vote in another province than another city.) Perhaps the most damning indication of fraud was the fact that Mousavi’s observers, as well as those of the other opposition candidates, were frequently not allowed to be present when ballots were counted and the ballot boxes sealed — a flagrant violation of Iranian law.5 Moreover, supporters of opposition candidates had planned to independently monitor the results by text messaging local vote tallies to a central location, but the government suddenly shut down text messaging, making this impossible.

The question, though, is whether the extent of fraud was sufficient to change the results of the election. We can’t be fully sure. But there is very powerful evidence that either no one emerged with a majority, which would have required a run-off election, or that Mousavi won outright.

According to an analysis by researchers at Chatham House, a British think tank, and the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews:

“In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.”6

Since Ahmadinejad’s victory in 2005, when many reformists boycotted the elections and questions of fraud were raised, the hardliners lost their control of local councils in 2007. So an Ahmadinejad sweep in 2009 — when reformist leaders, responding to a growing wave of discontent with the regime, were newly energized to challenge the President — is hard to credit.

Ahmadinejad allegedly won in areas where other candidates had strong ties and support, including their home provinces. Some have suggested that this was a result of people not wanting to “waste” their votes on candidates unlikely to win.7 But in Iran, elections are in two stages: if no candidate gets a majority in round one, then there is a run-off. So there was no reason for anyone to refrain from voting for her preferred candidate in the first round.

4. Didn’t a poll conducted by U.S.-based organizations conclude that Ahmadinejad won the election?

The poll, conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation, found that Ahmadinejad was favored over Mousavi by two to one. But the poll was conducted between May 11 and May 20, 2009, before the official beginning of the three-week election campaign, and before the (first-ever) televised presidential debates. These debates were a turning point: millions of Iranians saw displayed the deep divisions in the leadership of the Islamic Republic. They sensed that there was now an opportunity for real change.

More importantly, however, Ahmadinejad received the support of only a third of the poll respondents, with almost half either refusing to answer or saying they hadn’t yet made up their minds:

“At the stage of the campaign for President when our poll was taken, 34 percent of Iranians surveyed said they will vote for incumbent President Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s closest rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, was the choice of 14 percent, with 27 percent stating that they still do not know who they will vote for. President Ahmadinejad’s other rivals, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai, were the choice of 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

“A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don’t know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system.”8

When a government acts in secret, conducts an election lacking in transparency, and bars and restricts foreign journalists and the free flow of information, it makes sense not to accept its claims.

5. But didn’t Ahmadinejad get lots of votes from conservative religious Iranians among the rural population and the urban poor? Might not these votes have been enough to overwhelm his opponents?

Ahmadinejad’s support from ultraconservative voters was certainly not insignificant. In addition, his social welfare programs, funded from oil revenues, have undoubtedly induced many among the poor to give him their allegiance (see below). And then there are the members of the security apparatus — the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, the pro-government religious paramilitary force — who, together with their families, number in the millions. But there is no evidence that these were enough to give him the huge majorities he claims. As for peasants and villagers, only 35 percent of Iranian voters live in rural areas. And in any event, there is good reason to believe that rural voters are not strongly pro-Ahmadinejad.9 As Chatham House noted, “In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.”10

6. Hasn’t the U.S. (and Israel) been interfering in Iran and promoting regime change, including by means of supporting all sorts of “pro-democracy” groups?

In the 1950s and 60s, rightwingers charged that the U.S. civil rights movement was actually controlled by the Soviet Union, through the U.S. Communist Party. Of course Communists were involved in the civil rights movement and no doubt Moscow approved. But that’s a far cry from indicating that the Soviet Union was a decisive force in the civil rights movement, let alone that it controlled the movement.

There is no doubt that U.S. agents, as well as those of other countries, are hard at work in Iran, as elsewhere. It is well known that Washington has meddled in the politics of Venezuela and Bolivia, as well as Georgia, Ukraine and Lebanon, to take only the most recent examples. Congress has even set up a special fund for “democracy promotion” in Iran. But foreign meddling does not prove foreign control. And foreign meddling does not automatically discredit mass movements or their goals; it depends on who is calling the shots. In any event, there is no evidence that the CIA or any other arm of U.S. intelligence — or Mossad — had anything to do with initiating or leading the protests in Iran. And it is absurd to see a parallel between the rightwing elements in Venezuela and Bolivia — who are not fighting for greater popular control over their governments — and the millions of protesters who have demanded democracy in Iran.

In 1953 U.S. and British intelligence engineered a coup to oust the democratically-elected Mossadeq government in Iran. But that coup involved bribing street gangs and a treasonous military. There was nothing like the mass upsurge that we’ve recently seen in Iran, and there has been not a scrap of credible evidence that the millions of people in the streets these past few weeks were brought out by CIA money.

On the contrary, for years now leading Iranian human rights activists, feminists, trade unionists — people like Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji — have taken the position that Iranian dissidents should not accept U.S. financial support.11 They have a consistent record of opposing U.S. bullying, sanctions and threats of war,12 and they know that any hint of links to Washington would be the kiss of death in Iran.

Recently, Iranian state television has broadcast footage of alleged rioters stating “We were under the influence of Voice of America Persia and the BBC” and some detainees — politicians, journalists, and others — are said to have confessed to all sorts of Western plots.13 Surely, though, no one should take such claims, elicited under torture or duress, seriously.14

7. Has the Western media been biased against the Iranian government?

Mainstream Western media have clearly been more interested in pointing out electoral fraud and repression in Iran than in states that are closely allied with Washington. But this doesn’t mean that there has been no fraud or repression in Iran.

For example, a video of the killing of Neda Agha Soltan spread widely on the internet and the media was quick to turn her death into a icon of the brutality of the Iranian government. We never saw a similar response to the many victims of government atrocities in Haiti or Egypt or Colombia. Nevertheless, the claim by some Iranian officials that she was killed by the CIA or by other demonstrators just to make the regime look bad15 is totally lacking in credibility.

Western media have always selectively publicized and often exaggerated the crimes of official enemies. But we shouldn’t conclude from this that crimes have not been committed. And in the case of Iran, there is no good evidence so far that Western news reports on the government’s electoral fraud and violent repression of dissent have been fundamentally inaccurate.

8. Is Mousavi a leftist? A neoliberal? What is the relation between Mousavi and the demonstrators in the streets?

Mousavi’s politics and economic program are not very clear. He is in many ways a pillar of the Establishment — approved as a candidate by the Guardian Council and a former prime minister who served under Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. He had a reputation for being one of the leaders more sympathetic to welfare state programs. Under his prime ministership many such programs were enacted, but also leftists were brutally repressed. With Washington’s assistance: using U.S. intelligence information, the Iranian government rounded up members of the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party and conducted mass executions, virtually eliminating the Tudeh in Iran and killing many other leftists as well.16 It has been argued that the repression was carried out by the ministry of intelligence and the judiciary, and that these institutions were not in fact under his control even though he was prime minister. Whether or not this is the case, at a minimum Mousavi neither resigned nor publicly protested the violent repression that took place when he was prime minister, and thus he cannot be absolved of responsibility.

More recently, he has been an ally of the powerful billionaire cleric and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is close to major private business interests. Mousavi supports turning over many of the publicly-owned sectors of the Iranian economy to private hands, but so does Ahmadinejad, who boasts that he has privatized more public assets than his predecessors,17 and in fact privatization has been going on for several years and is mandated by recently passed legislation.18 In his campaign for the presidency, Mousavi called for loosening some of the Islamic Republic’s restrictions on personal liberties, especially as concern women’s rights. But Mousavi came to embody the aspirations of millions of Iranians for more than this — for an end to the terrorism of the Basijis and the Revolutionary Guards and for an even broader democratization of the Islamic Republic. Undoubtedly, some of them hoped — as do we — that the protests would be a first step towards dismantling the fundamentally anti-democratic system of clerical rule itself.

During the weeks that followed the election, demonstrators protested voting fraud, but also called increasingly for equality and freedom — “down with dictatorship!” The marches may have been started mainly by students and liberal-minded middle class people, but they were quickly joined by growing numbers of workers, elderly people and women in conservative chadors.

It seems that Mousavi’s electoral organization did not anticipate the massive outpouring of protest after the election and was unable (and perhaps unwilling, given Mousavi’s Establishment ties) to provide any organization or real leadership. The ferocious violence of the security forces has left the protesters, and the general public in Iran, stunned and understandably intimidated. However, their outrage is deep, and it will not go away. Protest may soon return to the streets and rooftops. And many are looking for other forms of protest. Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani have not made their peace with Ahmadinejad, and the split in Iran’s clerical establishment deepens.

The millions who have gone into the streets have already shown themselves capable of acting independently of Mousavi, and, as has often been the case in democratic struggles historically around the world, there is good reason to believe that the masses of protesters who have entered into the fight for limited demands can transcend the political, social and economic program of the movement’s initial leaders. In Iran, this is especially the case if trade unions are able to use the opening created by today’s challenges to Ahmadinejad to assert the interests of the poor and lend their organized strength to the movement.

9. Is Ahmadinejad good for world anti-imperialism?

There is a foolish argument in some sectors of the left that holds that any state that is opposed by the U.S. government is therefore automatically playing a progressive, anti-imperialist role and should be supported. On these grounds, many such “leftists” have acted as apologists for murderous dictators like Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has always argued that we can oppose U.S. imperial policy without thereby having necessarily to back the states against which it is directed.

Ironically, despite their current rhetoric, some U.S. neoconservatives favored an Ahmadinejad victory.19 They knew that on the main issues dividing the U.S. and Iran — Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear energy, its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and its insistence on forcing Israel to withdraw completely from the Occupied Territories — Ahmadinejad’s position was no different from that of Mousavi or that of Iranian public opinion.20 But Ahmadinejad, with his confrontational style and his outrageous “questioning” of the Holocaust, is a much easier leader to hate and fear; his continuing grip on power therefore serves the goals of neoconservative hawks and Israeli hardliners.21 And they know that Iranian public opinion solidly supports the cause of Palestinian rights; and that Ahmadinejad’s anti-Jewish rhetoric has harmed, not helped, the Palestinians.

Some of these “leftists” say that whatever Ahmadinejad’s faults, the mass upsurge in Iran plays into the hands of U.S. imperialism. On the contrary, a people’s pro-democracy movement is the worst fear of the many authoritarian regimes on which Washington relies to maintain its hegemony; such as the rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and elsewhere. And not just among U.S. clients. It is significant that news of the demonstrations was heavily censored in China and Myanmar, and that the Russian government was one of the first to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his “victory.”

Hugo Chavez too congratulated Ahmadinejad. As Reese Erlich, author of The Iran Agenda who frequently appears on Democracy Now!, has commented,

“On a diplomatic level, Venezuela and Iran share some things in common. Both are under attack from the U.S., including past efforts at ‘regime change.’ Venezuela and other governments around the world will have to deal with Ahmadinejad as the de facto president, so questioning the election could cause diplomatic problems.

“But that’s no excuse.”22

*10. Is Ahmadinejad more progressive than his opponents in terms of social and *economic policy? Is he a champion of the Iranian poor?

As leftists we are very familiar with rightwing politicians disingenuously claiming to care about the poor and the working class. The Islamic Republic has long included a social welfare component to help it maintain support. Ahmadinejad has undertaken some populist programs, utilizing some of the revenues generated by the sharply higher price of oil. But, even ignoring the fact that basic democratic rights and women’s rights are hardly the exclusive concern of the well-to-do, the Islamic Republic, and especially Ahmadinejad’s presidency, have not been good for the workers and the poor of Iran.

Anyone purporting to support the working class has to back independent unions so that workers can defend their own interests both in the work place and in the society at large. However, Iran has still not ratified international labor conventions guaranteeing freedom of association and collective bargaining and abolishing child labor,23 and unions in Iran have been subjected to horrendous repression. As the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has reported24:

“Iranian workers are still unable to form independent trade unions, a right denied both within Iran’s labor code and de facto repressed by the government in action. The government routinely arrests and prosecutes workers demanding their most basic rights, such as demands for wages unpaid, sometimes for periods as long as 36 months. Security forces often attack peaceful gatherings by workers, harass their families, and even kill them, as happened during a gathering by copper miners in Shahr Babak, near the city of Kerman, in 2004.”

Under Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the situation has been especially grim:

“Two leading trade unionists, Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi, are currently in prison. Another one, Majid Hamidi, recently the target of an assassination attempt, is hospitalized. In addition to being imprisoned and fined, eleven other workers were flogged in February 2008 for the crime of participating in a peaceful gathering to commemorate International Labor Day, May 1st.

“In January 2006, security forces arrested nearly a thousand members of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, attacked some of their homes, beat their families, and even detained the wives and children of the leading members, to prevent a planned strike. Since then, most members of the Syndicate’s central council have been targets of prosecution and imprisonment. The Syndicate’s leader, Mansour Osanloo, is currently serving a five- year sentence, while he suffers from eye injuries due to earlier beatings, and is in danger of going blind. Fifty-four members of the Syndicate have been fired from their jobs and are prosecuted in courts for their peaceful activities.”

Teachers’ attempts to organize and collectively bargain have also met violent repression.

Just this past May Day, the government beat participants in a peaceful labor event and arrested the leaders.25 And in June, a committee of the International Labour Organization cited Iran for the “grave situation relating to freedom of association in the country.26

What makes the need for unions in Iran so important is that large numbers of workers are forced to work under temporary contracts that permit even more exploitation of labor than usual. One common practice is for workers to be fired and then rehired every three months as a way to deny them pensions and other benefits.

11. What do we want the U.S. government to do about the current situation in Iran?

There is a great deal that the Administration can do. Obama should promise that the U.S. will never launch a military attack on Iran or support an Israeli attack. He should commit the United States not to support terrorism or sabotage operations in Iran, and immediately order the cessation of any such activities that may still be occurring. He should lift sanctions against Iran — certainly not as a reward to Ahmadinejad for stealing the election, but because the sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian people and provide one of the main justifications for Ahmadinejad’s iron rule. He should take major initiatives toward disarmament of U.S. nuclear and conventional weapons, and he should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan. And he should work to promote a nuclear-free Middle East, which includes Israel. By reducing these threats, Obama would thereby be removing one of the main rationalizations for Iranian repression (as well as for its nuclear program).

12. What should we do about the current situation in Iran?

We need to make it clear to the Iranian people that there is “another America,” one that is independent of the government and opposed to its oppressive and anti-democratic foreign policy. Our support comes with no strings attached and no hidden agenda. Iranians should be made aware that it is American progressives — not the U.S. government or the hypocrites of the right — who offer genuine solidarity.


13. Is it right to advocate a different form of government in Iran?

As leftists, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy supports radical change everywhere that people do not have full control over their political and economic lives. We advocate such change in the United States, in France, in Russia, in China. And we support it in Iran too. But we do not support the United States government — or Britain or Israel or any other country — imposing “regime change” outside its borders by force. What was wrong with Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not that the regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown — his was a hideous regime and anyone concerned with human decency wanted it ended — but that Bush asserted that the United States had the right to invade. Political change imposed by a foreign army, or brought about by the covert operations of foreign intelligence agencies, is unacceptable, and it is especially unacceptable when the foreign power concerned has a long history of interventions for its own sordid motives: to impose its domination, to control oil resources, to establish military bases.

But do we support the Iranian people if they act to end autocratic rule in Iran? Of course! This is a government that, in addition to its just-completed election fraud and vicious attacks on its own citizens, imprisons, tortures, publicly flogs and hangs political opponents, labor activists, gays, and “apostates,” and still prescribes execution by stoning as the penalty for adultery. The Head of the Judiciary declared a moratorium on executions by stoning in 2002, but at least five people are known to have been stoned to death since then, two of them on December 26, 2008.27 Workers have no right to strike. A woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s and women have limited rights to divorce and child custody. The regime imposes gender apartheid, segregating women in many public places. Veiling is compulsory and enforced by threats, fines and imprisonment. We should support Iranians’ efforts to end these barbaric practices.

Notes
1. See, for example, Amnesty International, “Iran: Worsening repression of dissent as election approaches,” 1 February 2009, MDE 13/012/2009; Amnesty International, “Iran’s presidential election amid unrest and ongoing human rights violations,” 5 June 2009; Amnesty International, “Iran: Election amid repression of dissent and unrest,” 9 June 2009, MDE 13/053/2009.

2. See BBC, “Iran: Who Holds the Power”.

3. Michael Slackman, “Amid Crackdown, Iran Admits Voting Errors,” New York Times, June 23, 2009.

4. Ali Ansari, ed., Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election, Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews, 21 June 2009.

5. Kaveh Ehsani, Arang Keshavarzian and Norma Claire Moruzzi, “Tehran, June 2009,” Middle East Report Online, June 28, 2009.

6. Ansari, op. cit.

7. George Friedman, “The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test,” Stratfor, June 22, 2009; Esam Al-Amin, “A Hard Look at the Numbers: What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election?” CounterPunch, June 22, 2009.

8. Terror-Free Tomorrow & New America Foundation, “Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Presidential Elections; Iranians Continue to Back Compromise and Better Relations with US and West; Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Iran before the June 12, 2009 Presidential Elections,” June 2009.

9. Eric Hoogland, “Iran’s Rural Vote and Election Fraud,” June 17, 2009, Agence Global.

10. Ansari, op. cit.

11. Karl Vick and David Finkel, “U.S. Push for Democracy Could Backfire Inside Iran,” Washington Post, March 14, 2006; Akbar Ganji, “Why Iran’s Democrats Shun Aid,” Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2007; Patrick Disney, “Iranian Civil Society Urges US to End ‘Democracy Fund,’ Ease Sanctions,” 16 July 2008.

12. See, for example, “Iran’s Civil Society Movement Sets Up ‘National Peace Council’,” CASMII Press Release, 10 July 2008.

13. AFP, “Iran shows footage of ‘rioters influenced by Western media’,” 23 June 2009; Michael Slackman, “Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares,” New York Times, July 4, 2009; CNN, “Newsweek reporter in Iran reportedly ‘confesses’,” July 1, 2009.

14. Of course, when similar torture was carried out by the U.S. government, U.S. media only referred to “harsh interrogation techniques.” See Glenn Greenwald, “The NYT calls Iranian interrogation tactics ‘torture’,” Salon, July 4, 2009.

15. Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin, “Iranian cleric says protesters wage war against God,” Boston Globe, June 27, 2009.

16. The Tower Commission Report, President’s Special Review Board, New York: Bantam Books/Times Books, 1987, pp. 103-04.

17. Ehsani, et al., op. cit.

18. Billy Wharton, “Selling Iran: Ahmadinejad, Privatization and a Bus Driver Who Said No,” Dissident Voice, June 28th, 2009.

19. Stephen Zunes, “Why U.S. Neocons Want Ahmadinejad to Win,” AlterNet, June 17, 2009.

20. See Obama’s assessment of the lack of difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad; on public opinion, see Terror Free Tomorrow poll cited above.

21. Joshua Mitnick, “Why Iran’s Ahmadinejad is preferred in Israel; The incumbent president will be easier to isolate than reformist leader Mr. Mousavi, say some leading Israeli policymakers,” Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 2009.

22. Reese Erlich, “Iran and Leftist Confusion,” ZNet, June 29, 2009.

23. See ILO, “Ratifications of the Fundamental human rights Conventions by country” (7/1/09).

24. International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “Workers’ Rights.”

25. Amnesty International, “Iran: Prisoners of conscience / fear of torture or ill-treatment,” 10 June 2009, MDE 13/054/2009.

26. International Labour Organization, “ILO Governing Body elects new Chairperson — Committee on Freedom of Association cites Myanmar, Cambodia and Islamic Republic of Iran,” Press release, 19 June 2009, ILO/09/41.

27. Amnesty International, “Iran: New executions demonstrate need for unequivocal legal ban of stoning,” 15 January 2009, MDE 13/004/2009.

This source of this interview is the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, and it was re-posted on Znet.

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Statement by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Iran

On The Current Protests In the Iranian Cities

Workers, Liberated People of Iran!

The regime of the Islamic Republic is facing one of its most extensive political and economic crises in its past 30 years. The extent and dimensions of this crisis has clearly manifested itself in inflation and unbearable high costs, unemployment in millions, successive bankruptcies of production centers and industrial firms, international isolation, growth of social movements and mass protests and intensive differences amongst the different strata of the ruling class.

The dominant faction of the Islamic regime wants to get over this crisis by strengthening the position of the Guards Corps within the state and through a harsh military dictatorship, and thus guaranteeing the survival of Islamic Republic. In pursuit of this goal, the regime once again pulled out Ahmadinejad from the ballot boxes by utilizing and organizing military-security forces, by playing a behind-the-scene role in the election scenario. At the moment, the dominant faction is going through the last scene of the election scenario and with the aid of Martial Law and various government sectors, public television and radio as well as other publications and media outlets, it is turning the presence of those very social strata it drew to the ballot boxes to a reserve for their own suppression.

Now, different social strata and groups disillusioned and regretful over participating in the elections shoulder to shoulder with the people who have always been disgusted by the regime’s existence in its totality are turning the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities into a space for protest against the electoral coup d’etat by the Guardians Corps. The Security forces are brutally attacking the protesting, angry masses. Universities, streets and various squares in Tehran and other Iranian cities have turned into the field of an unequal clash between empty handed masses and the regime’s security forces armed to teeth.

The people who went to ballot boxes influenced by demagogy and deceitful campaign commercials by the regimes leaders, government reformers, Western press and that section of bourgeois opposition supporting the regime, should not repeat their historical mistake in another form by following Mousavi, Karoubi or Khatami. These top officials of the regime have always been a constant pillar of 30 years of rule by the Islamic Republic, and have participated in every crime committed by the regime against the people. Now that Mir Hossain Mousavi advises people to chant “Allah o Akbar” at night from their rooftops, people should know that for 30 years bat-wielding thugs of Hezbollah groups have been attacking protesting workers, women, students, and the revolutionary movement in Kurdistan while chanting “Allah o Akbar,” under the guidance of these very same gentlemen. The chant of “Allah o Akbar” is a symbol of theocratic state and as such a manifestation of utter lack of most basic human rights for Iranian people.

Government reformers have never had the inclination, credentials or the ability to lead Iranian people’s just struggles and they never will. The Iranian masses should not turn into a reserve force for settling the accounts by the candidates that lost to Ahmadinejad. They should not follow their reactionary slogans.

It is important for the people to participate in the struggle with their own slogans and demands; demands which stem from their real everyday lives and needs. They should choose such slogans and demands, which, if implemented, will jolt pillars of the state and function as a genuine prospect in people’s lives.

The people should turn the demands for the separation of religion from state, unconditional political freedom, freedom for all political prisoners, guaranteeing of complete equality between women and men in every single aspect of social life, abolition of forced veils for women, freedom of self-organization, salary increase proportionate to the inflation rate, securing the individual liberties, end to national oppression, abolition of death penalty… into slogans for their struggles and protests.

Labor movement and other vanguard social movements should organize their ranks through struggles for attainment of these demands. Overthrowing the Islamic Republic and realization of social revolution goes through this path. Party activists and socialist vanguards in the social movements are required to actively engage in the current situation and take these orientations into the midst of people’s protests.

Down with the Islamic Republic!
Long Live Freedom, Equality and the Workers’ State!
Long Live Socialism!

15 June 2009

Selling Iran: Ahmadinejad, Privatization and a Bus Driver Who Said No

by Billy Wharton / June 28th, 2009
from Dissident Voice

A creeping assumption lies just beneath the surface of arguments concerning the disputed election in Iran. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cast as an anti-US populist crusader resisting the materialistic advances of the West. His opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as his foil — a Western-backed liberal intent on implementing free-market policies. Violent street battles have been presented as a re-enforcement of the Western disposition to see the two idealized positions as the limit of what is politically imaginable. Such arguments conveniently avoid a third force — the people of Iran, whose street politics threaten to move well beyond the confines of the electoral campaigns. Questions remain. Is Ahmadinejad really a populist — the only force preventing a wave of pro-market policies in Iran? Does Mousavi’s campaign mark the limits of the reform movement?

Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under the guidance of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has overseen a regime dedicated to the privatization of state-controlled industries. The intention of the regime, as stated by the newly appointed Governor of the Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Seyyed Shams Al-din Hosseini, is to privatize 80% of state-owned industries by 2010. This mandate was made real just prior to the disputed elections as a state-owned bank, Saderat, announced it would offer 6% of its shares to private investors (Press TV, 6/8/09). Other significant privatizations during Ahmadinejad’s reign include the postal service, two other state-run banks, Tejerat and Mellat, and, in February 2008, a 5% bloc of shares in the publicly owned steel maker, Foulad-e Mobarakeh, was sold out in eight minutes (Iran Daily, 2/14/08). In total, since 2005, 247 enterprises have been processed by the Iran Privatization Organization, the state-ministry specifically charged with overseeing privatizations (Iranian Privatization Organization website).

Khamenei has propelled the process forward. While Ahmadinejad crafted just enough populist rhetoric to provide headlines, the Supreme Leader issued a letter in 2006 ordering the sell-off of banking, mining, industrial, and transport companies — 80% across the board. Ahmadinejad’s ministers have aggressively followed suit. In September 2008, Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi described the fact that so many of the country’s resources are located in the public sector as an “obstacle” to growth (Iran Daily, 9/29/08). Heidari Kord-Zangeneh, Ahmadinejad’s deputy finance minister and head of the Iran Privatization Organization, drew pro-market policies together with the myth of anti-imperialism. “We are going to activate our private sector and our private banks,” he exclaimed, “in order to fight against these [US] sanctions.” He punctuated this with a pre-election promise, “I promise that if I am here for the next two years, between 80 and 90 percent of the government will be sold” (Iran Daily, 2/12/08).

Ahmadinejad’s supposed anti-Western approach stops short when it comes to allowing foreign investors to penetrate Iran’s economy. His Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Davoud Danesh-Jafari boasted at a 2008 meeting of the Islamic Development Bank that foreign direct investment in Iran had increased by 138% since 2007. (Iran Daily, 2/17/08) Some 80 projects had been initiated during that period. Key to this capital penetration was the 2004 acceptance of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Article VIII Obligations (IMF Press Release, 9/14/04). Under this provision, Iran agreed to refrain from imposing restrictions on currency transactions and other elements essential to capital flow.

While Ahmadinejad has been the implementer of privatization policies, the reform camp was its architects. Central to this process was the creative violation of Article 44 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article mandates that key sectors of the economy remain in public hands. It represented the radical-populist edge of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Parliamentary legislation in 2004, near the end of the regime of reformer Mohammad Khatami, created the first breech in Article 44. The legislation called for a “change in the role of government from direct ownership and management of enterprises to policymaking, guidance and overseeing” (Iranian Privatization Organization website). The one consistent voice pushing this process forward is Khamenei, whose tenure as Supreme Leader encompasses both reformer and populist presidential regimes.

The IMF has hailed this process describing Iran in a 2007 position paper as, “Managing the Transition to a Market Economy.” The Fund has had a constant presence in the country since 1945, surviving even the turbulent 1979 Islamic Revolution. IMF officials have employed the usual equation of debt and technical assistance to enforce their pro-market agenda. The next phase, according to IMF planners, of market transition is to “curb the growth of internal demand” through the reduction of state subsidies. Ahmadinejad’s Central Bank appointee, Al-din Hosseini, indicated a shared sentiment, “The government plans to implement a strategy that involves significant reforms, the most important of which is the reform aimed at better subsidy system” (IMF Meeting, 10/13/08).

Pro-market privatizations have been combined with harsh restrictions on worker’s ability to organize in order to advance Ahmadinejad’s neo-liberal restructuring of Iran. Although Iran is technically a member of the International Labor Organization, and thereby mandated to allow free trade unions, workers are restricted from forming independent unions. Under the constitution, they are only allowed to join ideologically-centered Islamic Worker’s Councils, which hold no right to deal with worksite issues or collectively bargain. Despite these legal restrictions, privatization and soaring inflation have resulted in a series of escalating confrontations between workers and security forces.

In March 2007, thousands of schoolteachers spilled out into the streets in front of Parliament demanding that their collective grievances be heard and their salaries increased. They were attacked by security forces and their leaders received prison sentences of up to five years. Such repression did not deter Mahmoud Salehi, a baker, from making his annual demand to celebrate May Day. Salehi was found guilty of “acting against national security” and imprisoned. This year, in a small preview of the post-election street protests, Ahmadinejad’s security apparatus was used to repress 2,000 workers who attempted to organize a May Day celebration.

But the real foil to Ahmadinejad’s pro-market policies is a middle-aged bus driver from Tehran. Mansour Osanloo, acting as the president of the 17,000 worker-strong Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, led a 2005 strike in which drivers refused to accept fares in protest of working conditions and rising fares. The strike was immediately criminalized with Osanloo and fellow leaders placed under arrest. Undeterred, Osanloo led another strike attempt in 2006. He was again arrested and today sits in a cell in Iran’s notorious Evin prison — a living testament to both the courage of Iranian workers and the repressive nature of the regime.

Soon to be joining Osanloo in Evin are thousands of protesters who have also been criminalized by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei’s regime because of their protests over the stolen election. While it is difficult to describe a candidate with as many establishment credentials as Mousavi as a reformer, it is easy to see how the demonstrations on the street have rapidly progressed beyond his campaign. Slogans have moved from “Mousavi get our votes back” to “Death to the Dictator.” With this shift come possibilities for more radical measures. Automotive workers at Khodro Automobile Company have pledged resistance, university students are conducting sit-ins, and the Bus Drivers Union has issued a call for international solidarity.

Meanwhile, somewhere deep inside Evin prison, clandestine communications may be being initiated between a jailed bus driver and a newly minted student radical or an ailing baker and young rock-throwing worker. These actors need little help in understanding that Ahmadinejad’s regime, despite all his populist rhetoric, has worked hand-in-hand with IMF privatizers. After failing to deliver on his populist rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has stolen the election. Now, his only recourse is state repression. On the streets, something far more brilliant is underway — an open-ended emancipation project demanding nothing less than political freedom.

Will the cat above the precipice fall down?

by Slavoj Zizek
from Infinite Thought

24 June 2009 - When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…

In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?

There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% - can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough - they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.

Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests.

The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.

And, last but not least, what this means is that there is a genuine liberating potential in Islam – to find a “good” Islam, one doesn’t have to go back to the 10th century, we have it right here, in front of our eyes.

The future is uncertain – in all probability, those in power will contain the popular explosion, and the cat will not fall into the precipice, but regain ground. However, it will no longer be the same regime, but just one corrupted authoritarian rule among others. Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

Wake Up Jim Cramer! In Iran It’s Much Ado About Something.

by Billy Wharton

On the June 15 edition of CNBC's Street Signs, business analyst, Jim Cramer decided to lend his considerable analytical talents to international politics. He described the street protests in Iran following the disputed re-election of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as, “much ado about nothing.” His proof? The price of oil declined by $1.40 on Monday.

What Cramer found most odd was that Iranians might be even slightly upset that their votes had not been counted. After all, in countries like “North Korea and Syria, there are a bunch of people who don’t vote for the right guy,” and they do not complain when the outcome goes against them. “Obviously,” he said incredulously, “you were able to vote against this guy. But the idea that you thought there was going to be a fair count, I mean…” He then shared a chuckle with his co-host at the expense of the protesters.

In only one minute and thirty-three seconds, Cramer managed to trivialize the beliefs of millions of Iranians who have risked arrest and even death to demand that their voices be heard. The protestors believe, in the firmest terms possible, that they have the right to participate in what they understand as a free and fair election. Cramer’s examples of North Korea, Syria and, as he mentioned later, the former Soviet Union offer little comparative value to viewers trying to understand the Iranian political system.

Iran describes itself as an Islamic Republic. In broad terms, the system is a mixture of an Islamic theocracy and a traditional republican government. In practice, unelected religious leaders - Council of Guardians, Supreme Leader and Assembly of Experts – sit atop lower level officials, including the President, who are elected by a system of universal suffrage. For example, all candidates for president must be approved by the Council of Guardians. This system has produced a repressive government, which has demonstrated little respect for the rights of women, workers and homosexuals.

What is also important about the political model of the Islamic Republic is that it has allowed this largely repressive regime to claim legitimacy internally through electoral participation. People go to the polls in Iran. They cast votes and expect them to be counted. This is a fundamental part of the social contract. By stealing the election, Ahmadinejad and the Council of Guardians have violated this contract—perhaps endangering the very existence of the Islamic Republic. The intensity of the protests, not the price of oil, demonstrate this point.

Cramer would do well to consider a different point of comparison with Iran. How about the United States? We had an election stolen in 2000 that drove the government to the constitutional brink. Although we do not have a Council of Guardians, we do have some of the worst restrictions on ballot access among democratic governments in the world. For instance, in the 2008 Presidential election, third-party candidates in Oklahoma needed to collect more than 43,000 signatures. As a result, in 2008, voters in Oklahoma could only choose between two presidential candidates. Iranians had four choices in 2009. Even freedom of speech is limited in US elections. Access to presidential debates is determined by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a body controlled by representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties. No independent candidate has been given access to the debates in more than 15 years.

So, in the end, perhaps Jim Cramer did us all a service. His flippant attitude toward Iranian protesters allows a space to think through what links everyday people in the US and Iran—the desire for democracy and freedom, which may contain the universal ability to break through the cynicism of the business analysts, oil traders and would-be dictators.

Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, the Monthly Review Zine, NYC Indypendent and the Links Journal. He can be contacted at billyspnyc(at)yahoo.com

Swine Flu and the Case for a Single-payer Healthcare System in the United States

by Billy Wharton
from Links: The International Journal of Socialist Renewal

June 3, 2009 -- On April 13, 2009, 39-year-old Adela María Gutiérrez Cruz became the first victim of a new virus that would become known as the swine flu (H1N1). By the time Cruz arrived at a local hospital on April 9, she had already entered acute respiratory distress due to an “atypical pneumonia”. Further investigations led to a town outside of a factory farm, run by a subsidiary of the US meat conglomerate Smithfield Foods, in the neighbouring state of Vera Cruz. Causalities began to mount. Yet, nearly two weeks after the first deaths, none of the families of the dead had received anti-viral medications.(1) Mexican health officials claimed to not have the resources to visit the families.

The swine flu grew from a local event to a global pandemic. Strategies of isolation and containment proved futile as human carriers circulated through all corners of the globe. Grounded airlines in Japan, a travel ban in Cuba and masked pedestrians on the streets of New York City did little to stem the tide of this potent disease. Early medical intervention proved important, as those infected who had immediate access to anti-viral medications, such as Tamiflu, tended to fare better. The flu was shorter and the possibility of complications thereby reduced. Some European governments used their public health systems to quickly distribute such medications. However, the response in Mexico and the US was different. There, decades of lack of medical access and limited capacity left populations vulnerable to being infected rapidly. An ominous question began to be raised: Was healthcare in the Americas capable of responding to the swine flu?

Mexico's healthcare system `overrun and underfunded'

Since 1983, Mexican officials have followed the World Bank blueprint for healthcare reform. This plan decentralised control of public facilities from the federal government to impoverished state governments. The result is a tripartite system as exclusionary as it is underfunded. Only 1% or 2% of Mexicans, the country’s elite, receive medical care in well-funded private hospitals. About 50% of the population, those with either state or formal sector employment, rely on a system of public hospitals. This leaves half the society, those employed in the vast informal sector of the economy, to a network of uncoordinated and severely underfunded municipal or state-run hospitals. Though doctors move seamlessly inside this system, taking shifts in all three parts, the quality of care is often determined by the level of funding. One commentator described municipal/state facilities as “overrun and underfunded”, with wait times for care from “hours to days”.(2) This, despite the fact that access to care is a stated right in the Mexican constitution.

People have attempted to adapt to the structural limitations of this separate and unequal system by fostering a culture of self-diagnosis and self-medication. Pharmacies in Mexico work fast and loose, providing nearly any medication, on demand, to those able to tender hard currency. However, for one-third of those self-medicating home remedies substitute for expensive trips to the pharmacy.(3) Easy access to medication, the precarious position of employment in the informal sector and an inaccessible health system, has rendered most Mexicans defenceless in the face of a virus that demands early intervention.

Specific complaints about the slow response of the federal government have also emerged. John Ackerman, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, claims that at least one month of cases went unnoticed because of a lack of systemic coordination. Only the first death on April 13 elicited a response from the right-wing government of Felipe Calderon.(4) Even then, the lack of medical technology resulted in a three-day delay in identifying the swine flu as samples needed to be mailed to a lab in Winnipeg, Canada for analysis.

The Calderon government has also been reluctant to reveal the names of the swine flu victims. Ackerman, as well as other opponents of the president, suspect that most of the deaths are of poorer Mexicans who fall into the lowest rung of the system. “Poverty and inequity”, he argued, “really explain who dies in this crisis”. 25 years on, the neoliberal healthcare schemes of the World Bank bear an important responsibility for facilitating the rapid spread of the swine flu in Mexico and throughout the globe. Separate and unequal access to care left millions of people vulnerable to a virus for which they had no natural immunity.

Exclusion in the land of plenty

Most Americans would shudder to think that the healthcare system in US features some of the same inequities as that of Mexico. However, the United States' privately controlled system now excludes 48 million people (16% of the population), under-insures another 20 million and leads to the death of more than 20,000 people a year from treatable illnesses. Even those who are insured have faced a 117% increase in the costs of healthcare since 1999 as employers shift rising costs onto their workers.(5) Private control has also translated into long wait times for care. In Boston, for instance, it is easier to schedule an appointment for cosmetic surgery than for a skin cancer treatment, the average wait time of which is 73 days.(6) Despite utilising the highest levels of medical technology in the world, healthcare in the US is often inaccessible, costly and features long wait times for necessary procedures.

Americans, just as their Mexican counterparts, have adapted to this unjust system by avoiding care. A recent study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 6 in 10 of those polled had delayed or skipped medical treatment in the last year.(7) In this environment of avoidance, chronic conditions can quickly be converted into hazardous public health crises. Diabetes, hypertension and HIV/AIDS infection all continue to spread at alarming rates within the borders of the US.(8) Yet, access to care continues to be dependent on a person’s ability to pay. An airborne virus, such as the swine flu, becomes all the more efficient while filtering through a healthcare system directed by profiteering health insurance companies such as Oxford, CIGNA and Aetna. Both Americans and Mexicans have been left exposed by inefficient health systems.

Private corporations over public interest

Working Americans and Mexicans are not the only ones who have adapted to their countries exclusionary healthcare systems. With 85% of “critical infrastructure resources” in private hands, including much of the healthcare system, even US Department of Homeland Security officials avoid discussions regarding roadblocks in accessing care in their “preparedness strategy”.(9) Its December 2006 report, “Pandemic Influenza: Preparedness, Response and Recovery”, focuses almost exclusively on isolating and containing any outbreak of influenza. “Radically increased demand”, they argue, “will overwhelm local public health systems that currently have insufficient surge resources”.(10) One study estimates that a significant episode of influenza would create demand for 10 million hospital beds, yet there are only 1 million, two-thirds of which are currently occupied.(11) Instead of seeking necessary healthcare, employers are directed to send workers home.

The fault lines in the relationship with private industry can be clearly seen in the increasingly fierce debate over a potential H1N1 vaccine. The “seed stock” needed to create a vaccine is currently being produced by the taxpayer-funded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Once produced however, the stock is turned over to private pharmaceutical companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis, which then concoct a vaccine for the commercial marketplace.

The problem with this arrangement is two-fold. First, drug companies limit their production capacity to levels that will be profitable in a “normal” business environment. Thus, much like the lack of hospitals, they cannot make a sufficient amount of the vaccine to meet demand for both H1N1 vaccination and the regular flu vaccine.(12) The same problem holds true for limited supplies of Tamiflu, which is produced primarily by the Swiss drug maker Roche.(13)

The resulting vaccine shortage has spurred intense competition between nations to purchase supplies for their citizens. After a round of arm-twisting by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations, Roche agreed to allow drug makers in China, India and South Africa to create generic versions of Tamiflu.(14) No such compromise has been reached regarding the potential vaccine. First World countries, such as the US, France and Britain, have already secured deals for delivery of the first batch of vaccine while nations in the Global South remain on the outside of this emerging market. Sangeeta Shashikant of the Third World Network used clear terms to describe the precarious relationship, "There needs to be a better system in place so that WHO does not have to rely on the goodwill and charity of drug makers to get medicines for poor countries."(15) Viruses, of course, have little concern for levels of development or drug maker’s desire to conquer market share. H1N1 can easily spread into the Third World claiming millions of victims, mutate and return to stalk First World prey, setting off new “pandemic alerts” and creating more customers for the next set of privatised anti-virals.

Healthcare for the Americas

A virus that knows no borders or human immunity demands a fundamental re-thinking of what constitutes disaster preparedness. Open access to healthcare resources for all people in a society is a key for human survival. As the buzz around Washington now revolves around “healthcare reform”, single-payer healthcare, the proposal that most clearly addresses the weaknesses exposed by the swine flue panic, has been yanked off the table. Activists who demanded consideration of single-payer during recent US Senate finance hearings were silenced by arrest. In single-payer’s place is US President Barack Obama’s plan, which offers a public and private mix and seems to have gained the support of his benefactors in the private health insurance industry.

A single-payer healthcare system, as embodied in House Resolution 676 (HR 676), would eliminate private health insurance companies, thereby providing universal access to care regardless of the ability to pay. This would go far toward challenging the culture of avoidance, which has been a feature of an inequitable health system and facilitates the transmission of airborne infections such H1N1.

A single-payer healthcare system would do more than make healthcare universally accessible. Removing private interests from health insurance would also clear the ground for the development of a unified system of record keeping. Under our current privatised system, companies such as Google, Texas Instruments and Microsoft market incompatible records systems to an uncoordinated network of hospitals and practitioners. “A unified computerised database”, wrote single-payer advocate Dr Mary O’Brien prior to the appearance of H1N1, “would permit early detection of epidemics like a severe flu season and allow prompt immunisation to better control it”.(16) Only a single-payer system administered nationally could allow for such a development.

Winning a single-payer system in the US would only be a first-step toward a rational healthcare system. As demonstrated above, the role of private drug makers place severe limits on the general ability to respond to outbreaks and reinforces divisions between rich and Third World nations. This puts millions of people at risk. Adding private drug makers to a program of publicly administered universal healthcare would greatly enhance the health prospects for all Americans, while providing a platform to build a global response capacity.

Finally, this most recent flu panic should serve to challenge the imaginations of all single-payer system advocates. Perhaps, in fact, we have been thinking too small. What may really be needed is a universal healthcare plan for the Americas ambitious enough to encompass a wide geographic area and sensitive enough to provide local controls over some operations. There is certainly a wealth of knowledge draw on in the region. From Canada, there are many lessons about maintaining universal access. Brazilian drug makers have pioneered the production of low-cost generics. Cuba is a forerunner in the education of doctors and the dispensing of primary care. From the US, there is another type of lesson. That private companies should have no role in the dispensing of healthcare or production of pharmaceuticals. Such things should be located in the realm of human rights.

[Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Monthly Review Webzine and The Indypendent.]

Notes

1. Niko Price, “Mexico Faces Criticism Over Swine Flu Response”, Associated Press, April 27, 2009.

2. Interview with John Ackerman, Chicago Public Radio, http://www.wbez.org/content.aspx?audioID=33869.

3. Leyva-Flores R, Kageyama ML, Erviti-Erice J., ``How people respond to illness in Mexico: self-care or medical care?'', Health Policy 2001;57:15–26.

4. Interview with John Ackerman, Chicago Public Radio.

5. “Employer Health Benefits 2008 Annual Survey”, Kaiser Family Foundation, September 24, 2008, http://ehbs.kff.org/.

6. Joanne Landy and Oliver Fein, “It’s What Most Americans Want – and We Can Make it Happen”, in 10 Excellent Reasons for National Healthcare, Mary E. O’Brien and Martha Livingston, ed., New York: The New Press, 2008, 112.

7. Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, April 23, 2009, Kaiser Family Foundation, http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/posr042309pkg.cfm.

8. For instance, at least 3% of residents in Washington, DC, have HIV/AIDS well above the 1% mark for a “severe and generalised epidemic”. Jose Antonio Vargas and Darryl Fears, “HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3%”, Washington Post, March 15, 2009.

9. “Pandemic Influenza: Preparedness, Response and Recovery: Guide for Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources”, Dept. of Homeland Security, September 19, 2006, 24.

10. “Pandemic Influenza: Preparedness, Response and Recovery: Guide for Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources”, Dept. of Homeland Security, September 19, 2006, 28.

11. Nicholas D. Kristof, “A Nation of Typhoid Mary’s”, New York Times, May 2, 2009.

12. Maria Cheng and Frank Jordans, “WHO Meets on Production of Swine Flu Vaccine”, Washington Post, May 14, 2009.

13. Maria Cheng, “Critics: WHO Slow on Generics for Swine Flu”, Washington Post, May 11,2009.

14. E. Eduardo Castillo, “As Swine Flu Spreads, Who Should Get Tamiflu?”, Washington Post, May 12, 2009.

15. Maria Cheng, “Critics: WHO Slow on Generics for Swine Flu”, Washington Post, May 11, 2009.

16. Mary E. O’Brien, “It Will Assure High-quality healthcare for all Americans, Rich or Poor”, in 10 Excellent Reasons for National Healthcare, Mary E. O’Brien and Martha Livingston, ed., New York: The New Press, 2008, 32-3.