„Das Landgericht Wuppertal hat heute Holger W. wegen schwerer
Brandstiftung zu einer Freiheitsstrafe von 3 Jahren und 6 Monaten ohne
Bewährung verurteilt. Der Angeklagte bleibt bis zur Rechtskräftigkeit des
Urteils in Untersuchungshaft - es bestehe Fluchtgefahr. Ihm wird zu Last
gelegt, am 1. September 2011 den Flur im Wartebereich des Wuppertaler
Jobcenters Üllendahl in Brand gesetzt zu haben. Damit folgt Richter Jochen
Kötter der Staatsanwaltschaft in der Begründung und im Strafmaß. Zwar
räumt das Gericht ein, dass es sich bei dem brennenden Teppich in der
vierten Etage des Jobcenters um einen Kleinbrand handelte, bei dem eine
konkrete Lebensgefahr weder beabsichtigt war noch real vorlag. Desweiteren
sei dem Angeklagten zu Gute zu halten, mit Ort und Zeitpunkt, sowie der
konkrete Art der Brandlegung und der Aufforderung zur Evakuierung die
Gefährdung gering gehalten, aber dennoch "billigend in Kauf genommen zu
haben". Das Gericht sieht keinen Grund für die Einstufung als
"minderschweren Fall". Die Verteidigung hatte damit und dem freimütigen
Geständnis ein Strafmaß von 1 Jahr 3 Monaten zur Bewährung gefordert. Ein
Großteil der etwa 30 anwesenden Zuschauer hält das Urteil für politisch
motiviert. Das Gericht verhängte die Strafe "auch unter generalpräventiven
Gesichtspunkten", so der Vorsitzende bei der Urteilsbegründung. Der
fälschliche Vorabzug vom Regelsatz und insbesondere die schroffe
Zurückweisung des Angeklagten durch die Leiterin des Jobcenters, Annette
Fusch am Morgen der Tat seien "zwar wenig hilfreich" (so der Vorsitzende
Richter) gewesen, wurden als Umstände aber nicht berücksichtigt. Es habe
angeblich kein grobes Unrecht seitens der Arge vorgelegen. Der Angeklagte
hat eine Woche Zeit Revision einzulegen.“ Bericht von Agenturschluss vom
20.3.2012
Sonntag, 25. März 2012
Vor einem Jahr wurde Prof. W.I. Iljuchin ermordet
Pawel Barabanschtschikow, Pensa
Quelle: KPRF vom 19. März 2012
Auf Kommunisten-online am 22. März 2012 – Heute vor einem Jahr, am 19. März, kam Genosse Iljuchin ums Leben. Der Tod trat plötzlich und unerwartet ein, der offiziellen Version nach – auf Grund von Herzversagen. Aber bis heute wissen wir nicht, und vermutlich werden wir es niemals erfahren, wieso dies einem bis dahin vollkommen gesunden Menschen geschieht, der sich niemals über sein Herz beklagte, und der noch kurz vor seinem Tode zu einer planmäßigen medizinischen Untersuchung war. Viele sehen die Merkwürdigkeiten um das plötzliche Ableben Prof. Iljuchins im Zusammenhang mit seinem kompromißlosen politischen Kampf.
Am 10. Februar 2011 fand in Moskau auf Beschluß der Gesamtrussischen Offiziersversammlung ein Militärtribunal zur Verurteilung der destruktiven Tätigkeit Putins statt. Die Seite der Anklage vertrat der Duma-Abgeordnete und Kommunist Wiktor Iljuchin, der auch die Anklagerede hielt. Das Militärtribunal faßte den Beschluß, daß ein weiterer Verbleib Putins im Staatsdienst für undenkbar gehalten wird, und seine Tätigkeit einer sorgfältigen Untersuchung durch Rechtsschutzorganen zu unterziehen sei.
Die Merkwürdigkeit besteht darin, daß zwei Tage vor dem Tode Iljuchins die Antworten fällig waren, die die Abgeordneten im Ergebnis des Tribunals an den FSB und den Präsidenten gerichtet hatten. Bemerkenswert ist auch die Tatsache, daß weder vom Präsidialamt noch von der Regierung zur Beerdigung von Wiktor Iljuchins an die Adresse seiner Familie ein Wort der Kondolenz übermittelt wurde.
Wiktor ljuchin nannte während seines Lebens die Dinge beim Namen und fürchtete sich nicht, dafür geradezustehen. Es war sein wesentlicher Charakterzug. In den letzten Jahren der Perestroika wurde Iljuchin zu einem scharfen Kritiker der politischen Machthaber der UdSSR, und später auch Rußlands. In verschiedenen Jahren beschuldigte er die drei Präsidenten des Staatsverrats. Als diese der Sowjetunion den Todesstoß gaben, fand sich unter allen Staatsanwälten nur ein anständiger – Wiktor Iljuchin –, der gegen Gorbatschow Strafanzeige stellte, wofür er nach zwei Tagen entlassen wurde. Zur Absetzung des Präsidenten fehlten nur 17 Stimmen der Abgeordneten.
Bei seinem Auftreten auf der Offiziersversammlung im Jahre 2009 wandte sich Iljuchin an die Versammelten mit der Frage: „Sehen Sie denn nicht das Genick des Feindes, dieses Schuftes, der unser Land zerstört?“. Unter demselben Leitmotiv seines Auftretens stand auch die Kundgebung in Moskau am 23. Februar 2011, die von Victor Iljuchin einberufen worden war, um die Petersburger Mafia von der Staatsmacht zu entfernen.
In den letzten Lebensjahren widmete sich Iljuchin der Untersuchung der Ereignisse der „Katyner Sache“ und bewies die Fälschung dieser Ereignisse, die heute von den polnischen und russischen Machthabern als wahre Sachlage vorgeführt werden.
Am 19. April 2010 organiserte die Fraktion der KPRF in der Staatsduma einen runden Tisch zum Thema „Katyn – rechtliche und politische Gesichtspunkte“. Im Ergebnis der geleisteten Arbeit richtete Prof. Iljuchin einen Brief an den Präsidenten Rußlands. Und kurz darauf, im Mai 2010, legte Wiktor Iljuchin, nach den Worten einer von ihm nicht genannten Quelle, den Mechanismus der vermuteten Fälschung von Archivmaterialien über die Erschießungen in Katyn dar. Iljuchin beschuldigte den Leiter des Staatsarchivs, Rudolf Pichoj, den ehemaligen Vizepremierminister und Vorsitzenden der Kommission zur Aufarbeitung der Dokumente des ZK der KPdSU, Michael Poltoranin, den ersten Stellvertreter des Leiters des Sicherheitsdienstes des Präsidenten, den General-Major des FSB, Georgi Rogosin und andere der Fälschung der Archivdokumente.
Wiktor Iljuchin, war einer der wenigen Politiker, die nicht mit Regierungsmitteln Kübel voller Schmutz und Verdächtigungen ausschütteten. Die Persönlichkeit Iljuchins konnten sogar die bestellten Schmähberichte Karaulows unter der verlogenen Bezeichnung „Augenblick der Wahrheit“ nicht verleumden. Man muß sich nur daran erinnern, daß die Aussagen Karaulows vor Gericht später widerrufen wurden. Die zur Wiedergutmachung des moralischen Schadens von Karaulow gezahlte Summe war an einen der Kindergärten im Wahlbezirk des kommunistischen Abgeordneten Iljuchin überwiesen worden. Es wurde auch aufgeklärt, daß es für Karaulow aus moralischen Sicht besser wäre, im Umgang mit dem minderjährigen Kind seiner dritten Frau Xenia zu folgen, die sich 2007 um Rechtsbeistand an Wiktor Iljuchin gewandt hatte.
Leider finden sich auch noch heute Menschen, die versuchen, die Bedeutung Iljuchins in den Augen der Umgebung herabzusetzen. Zum Beispiel der vor kurzem aus dem Gebiet Pensa von „Einheitliches Rußland“ in die Staatsduma gewählte Abgeordnete Makarow, der von 1985 bis 1990 als Staatsanwalt im Gebiet Pensa tätig war. Höhnisch erinnert Herr Makarow sich daran, daß damals Iljuchin bei ihm angestellt war. Tatsächlich übte Wiktor Iljuchin in den Jahren 1984-1986 in der Dienststelle die Funktion des Stellvertreters des Gebietsstaatsanwaltes aus, und wurde später in die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft der UdSSR zum Stellvertreter des Leiters der Hauptverwaltung berufen. Makarow dagegen blieb in Pensa. Seine Mitarbeiter aus jener Zeit geben ein negatives Urteil über ihn ab, die nachfolgenden Gebietsstaatsanwälte zogen es vor, über seine staatsanwaltliche Arbeit zu schweigen.
Man kann über die persönlichen und fachlichen Qualitäten Wiktors Iljuchins nicht reden, ohne zu erwähnen, daß er über die Fähigkeit verfügte, Menschen verschiedener politischer Ansichten für ein gemeinsames Ziel zu vereinigen. Bis zum Ende des Lebens blieb er seinen Prinzipien treu, ertrug den Verrat und beugte sich vor niemandem. Alle, denen es nicht dennoch gleichgültig ist, was mit Rußland und der Gesellschaft geschieht, verehrten und unterstützten ihn.
An historischen und juristischen Fakultäten der Hochschulen war Iljuchin stets ein gern gesehener Gast. Die Studenten hörten seine Vorlesungen mit anhaltendem Interesse. Im Unterschied zu den angestellten Professoren referierte Iljuchin in einer lebendigen Sprache und sprach dabei auch jene Probleme an, über die es gewöhnlich nicht erlaubt war zu reden.
Wiktor Iljuchin war ein vielseitiger Mensch. Wenn man sich seine Biografie anschaut, stellt man fest, daß er neben seiner Tätigkeit als Abgeordneter der Staatsduma Rußlands des Gebietes von Pensa (von 1995 bis 2011) auch als Vorsitzender der gesamtrussischen politischen Bewegung „Zur Unterstützung der Armee, der Verteidigungsindustrie und der Militärwissenschaft“ und als Leiter des Interregionalen öffentlichen Fonds zur Förderung der strategischen Sicherheit (FSSB) tätig war. Das alles hinderte ihn nicht, sich mit gemeinnütziger und wissenschaftlicher Arbeit zu beschäftigen. Die zahlreichen Bücher und wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten Wiktor Iljuchins, die in hohen Auflagen erschienen, haben an Aktualität nichts eingebüßt.
„Ein Mensch der Wahrheit und der Sachlichkeit“ – so wird er uns in Erinnerung bleiben. Sogar die Machthaber von Pensa sahen sich nach dem Tode Iljuchins gezwungen anzuerkennen, daß der kommunistische Abgeordnete des Gebiets Pensa einen größeren Nutzen gebracht hat, als alle übrigen Abgeordneten von Pensa zusammen. Ja, die Autorität Wiktor Iljuchins in Moskau war um vieles größer.
Ein Jahr ist vergegangen, seit es unseren Genossen nicht mehr gibt, aber das bedeutet nicht, daß seine Sache vergessen ist und nicht fortgesetzt wird. Jetzt verspüren wir, wie nie zuvor, daß Iljuchin uns fehlt, und er für uns viel zu früh weggegangen ist. Wiktor Iwanowitsch Iljuchin hat uns mit dem Beispiel seines Lebens gezeigt, wofür man zu leben, und wie man kämpfen muß. Wir werden seinem Beispiel folgen!
Quelle: KPRF vom 19. März 2012
Auf Kommunisten-online am 22. März 2012 – Heute vor einem Jahr, am 19. März, kam Genosse Iljuchin ums Leben. Der Tod trat plötzlich und unerwartet ein, der offiziellen Version nach – auf Grund von Herzversagen. Aber bis heute wissen wir nicht, und vermutlich werden wir es niemals erfahren, wieso dies einem bis dahin vollkommen gesunden Menschen geschieht, der sich niemals über sein Herz beklagte, und der noch kurz vor seinem Tode zu einer planmäßigen medizinischen Untersuchung war. Viele sehen die Merkwürdigkeiten um das plötzliche Ableben Prof. Iljuchins im Zusammenhang mit seinem kompromißlosen politischen Kampf.
Am 10. Februar 2011 fand in Moskau auf Beschluß der Gesamtrussischen Offiziersversammlung ein Militärtribunal zur Verurteilung der destruktiven Tätigkeit Putins statt. Die Seite der Anklage vertrat der Duma-Abgeordnete und Kommunist Wiktor Iljuchin, der auch die Anklagerede hielt. Das Militärtribunal faßte den Beschluß, daß ein weiterer Verbleib Putins im Staatsdienst für undenkbar gehalten wird, und seine Tätigkeit einer sorgfältigen Untersuchung durch Rechtsschutzorganen zu unterziehen sei.
Die Merkwürdigkeit besteht darin, daß zwei Tage vor dem Tode Iljuchins die Antworten fällig waren, die die Abgeordneten im Ergebnis des Tribunals an den FSB und den Präsidenten gerichtet hatten. Bemerkenswert ist auch die Tatsache, daß weder vom Präsidialamt noch von der Regierung zur Beerdigung von Wiktor Iljuchins an die Adresse seiner Familie ein Wort der Kondolenz übermittelt wurde.
Wiktor ljuchin nannte während seines Lebens die Dinge beim Namen und fürchtete sich nicht, dafür geradezustehen. Es war sein wesentlicher Charakterzug. In den letzten Jahren der Perestroika wurde Iljuchin zu einem scharfen Kritiker der politischen Machthaber der UdSSR, und später auch Rußlands. In verschiedenen Jahren beschuldigte er die drei Präsidenten des Staatsverrats. Als diese der Sowjetunion den Todesstoß gaben, fand sich unter allen Staatsanwälten nur ein anständiger – Wiktor Iljuchin –, der gegen Gorbatschow Strafanzeige stellte, wofür er nach zwei Tagen entlassen wurde. Zur Absetzung des Präsidenten fehlten nur 17 Stimmen der Abgeordneten.
Bei seinem Auftreten auf der Offiziersversammlung im Jahre 2009 wandte sich Iljuchin an die Versammelten mit der Frage: „Sehen Sie denn nicht das Genick des Feindes, dieses Schuftes, der unser Land zerstört?“. Unter demselben Leitmotiv seines Auftretens stand auch die Kundgebung in Moskau am 23. Februar 2011, die von Victor Iljuchin einberufen worden war, um die Petersburger Mafia von der Staatsmacht zu entfernen.
In den letzten Lebensjahren widmete sich Iljuchin der Untersuchung der Ereignisse der „Katyner Sache“ und bewies die Fälschung dieser Ereignisse, die heute von den polnischen und russischen Machthabern als wahre Sachlage vorgeführt werden.
Am 19. April 2010 organiserte die Fraktion der KPRF in der Staatsduma einen runden Tisch zum Thema „Katyn – rechtliche und politische Gesichtspunkte“. Im Ergebnis der geleisteten Arbeit richtete Prof. Iljuchin einen Brief an den Präsidenten Rußlands. Und kurz darauf, im Mai 2010, legte Wiktor Iljuchin, nach den Worten einer von ihm nicht genannten Quelle, den Mechanismus der vermuteten Fälschung von Archivmaterialien über die Erschießungen in Katyn dar. Iljuchin beschuldigte den Leiter des Staatsarchivs, Rudolf Pichoj, den ehemaligen Vizepremierminister und Vorsitzenden der Kommission zur Aufarbeitung der Dokumente des ZK der KPdSU, Michael Poltoranin, den ersten Stellvertreter des Leiters des Sicherheitsdienstes des Präsidenten, den General-Major des FSB, Georgi Rogosin und andere der Fälschung der Archivdokumente.
Wiktor Iljuchin, war einer der wenigen Politiker, die nicht mit Regierungsmitteln Kübel voller Schmutz und Verdächtigungen ausschütteten. Die Persönlichkeit Iljuchins konnten sogar die bestellten Schmähberichte Karaulows unter der verlogenen Bezeichnung „Augenblick der Wahrheit“ nicht verleumden. Man muß sich nur daran erinnern, daß die Aussagen Karaulows vor Gericht später widerrufen wurden. Die zur Wiedergutmachung des moralischen Schadens von Karaulow gezahlte Summe war an einen der Kindergärten im Wahlbezirk des kommunistischen Abgeordneten Iljuchin überwiesen worden. Es wurde auch aufgeklärt, daß es für Karaulow aus moralischen Sicht besser wäre, im Umgang mit dem minderjährigen Kind seiner dritten Frau Xenia zu folgen, die sich 2007 um Rechtsbeistand an Wiktor Iljuchin gewandt hatte.
Leider finden sich auch noch heute Menschen, die versuchen, die Bedeutung Iljuchins in den Augen der Umgebung herabzusetzen. Zum Beispiel der vor kurzem aus dem Gebiet Pensa von „Einheitliches Rußland“ in die Staatsduma gewählte Abgeordnete Makarow, der von 1985 bis 1990 als Staatsanwalt im Gebiet Pensa tätig war. Höhnisch erinnert Herr Makarow sich daran, daß damals Iljuchin bei ihm angestellt war. Tatsächlich übte Wiktor Iljuchin in den Jahren 1984-1986 in der Dienststelle die Funktion des Stellvertreters des Gebietsstaatsanwaltes aus, und wurde später in die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft der UdSSR zum Stellvertreter des Leiters der Hauptverwaltung berufen. Makarow dagegen blieb in Pensa. Seine Mitarbeiter aus jener Zeit geben ein negatives Urteil über ihn ab, die nachfolgenden Gebietsstaatsanwälte zogen es vor, über seine staatsanwaltliche Arbeit zu schweigen.
Man kann über die persönlichen und fachlichen Qualitäten Wiktors Iljuchins nicht reden, ohne zu erwähnen, daß er über die Fähigkeit verfügte, Menschen verschiedener politischer Ansichten für ein gemeinsames Ziel zu vereinigen. Bis zum Ende des Lebens blieb er seinen Prinzipien treu, ertrug den Verrat und beugte sich vor niemandem. Alle, denen es nicht dennoch gleichgültig ist, was mit Rußland und der Gesellschaft geschieht, verehrten und unterstützten ihn.
An historischen und juristischen Fakultäten der Hochschulen war Iljuchin stets ein gern gesehener Gast. Die Studenten hörten seine Vorlesungen mit anhaltendem Interesse. Im Unterschied zu den angestellten Professoren referierte Iljuchin in einer lebendigen Sprache und sprach dabei auch jene Probleme an, über die es gewöhnlich nicht erlaubt war zu reden.
Wiktor Iljuchin war ein vielseitiger Mensch. Wenn man sich seine Biografie anschaut, stellt man fest, daß er neben seiner Tätigkeit als Abgeordneter der Staatsduma Rußlands des Gebietes von Pensa (von 1995 bis 2011) auch als Vorsitzender der gesamtrussischen politischen Bewegung „Zur Unterstützung der Armee, der Verteidigungsindustrie und der Militärwissenschaft“ und als Leiter des Interregionalen öffentlichen Fonds zur Förderung der strategischen Sicherheit (FSSB) tätig war. Das alles hinderte ihn nicht, sich mit gemeinnütziger und wissenschaftlicher Arbeit zu beschäftigen. Die zahlreichen Bücher und wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten Wiktor Iljuchins, die in hohen Auflagen erschienen, haben an Aktualität nichts eingebüßt.
„Ein Mensch der Wahrheit und der Sachlichkeit“ – so wird er uns in Erinnerung bleiben. Sogar die Machthaber von Pensa sahen sich nach dem Tode Iljuchins gezwungen anzuerkennen, daß der kommunistische Abgeordnete des Gebiets Pensa einen größeren Nutzen gebracht hat, als alle übrigen Abgeordneten von Pensa zusammen. Ja, die Autorität Wiktor Iljuchins in Moskau war um vieles größer.
Ein Jahr ist vergegangen, seit es unseren Genossen nicht mehr gibt, aber das bedeutet nicht, daß seine Sache vergessen ist und nicht fortgesetzt wird. Jetzt verspüren wir, wie nie zuvor, daß Iljuchin uns fehlt, und er für uns viel zu früh weggegangen ist. Wiktor Iwanowitsch Iljuchin hat uns mit dem Beispiel seines Lebens gezeigt, wofür man zu leben, und wie man kämpfen muß. Wir werden seinem Beispiel folgen!
Women and the "Arab Spring"
19 March 2012. A World to Win News Service. After the collapse of long-time dictators kept in power by the support of the imperialists, the struggle of women and the people as a whole in North Africa and the Middle East did not end. The thieves of the people's struggles who are women's oppressors too emerged and claimed the fruits of the people's struggle.
Since 8 March 2011 concerns about women's rights, their marginalisation in those countries on the one hand, and on the other their struggle to defy these attacks and struggle for their rights, have reverberated internationally. The various assaults on women and the protest of thousands of women in Cairo on 21 December 2011 are some of the highlights of these developments.
Tahrir square in Cairo, which inspired millions of people all over the world during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, has also been the site of some of the ugliest attacks on women during the following months.
On 8 March 2011, women attempted to hold a demonstration to celebrate International Women's Day, in hopes of playing a more active part in their society. However, they found themselves surrounded and attacked by a group of hundreds of men, possibly a combination of Islamists and pro-Mubarak forces. While the role of the army is not clear, at a minimum it did not intervene.
A witness who described the scene said unidentified men attacked the women, "forcing some to the ground, dragging others out of the crowd, groping and sexually harassing them as police and military figures stood by and failed to act… As I struggled to stay upright, a hand grabbed my behind and others pulled at my clothes." (Guardian, 9 March 2011)
This was a clear warning to all people that Mubarak may be gone but others who might look different but are made of the same stuff are still very powerful, and they are particularly opposed to women playing an active role in society.
On 9 March 2011, a day after this incident, at least 18 women along with 200 men were arrested by the army during a protest in nearby Tahrir Square. They were subjected to torture, including electric shocks. The women were transferred to a military detention centre and forced to take their clothes off before being subjected to a forced "virginity test". One of the victims, Samira Ibrahim 25, describes the assaults: "The person that conducted the test was an officer, not a doctor. He had his hand stuck in me for about five minutes. He made me lose my virginity. Every time I think of this, I don't know what to tell you, I feel awful… I know that to violate a woman in that way is considered rape. I felt like I had been raped." (Guardian, 11 October 2011)
In another show of brutality against women, on 17 December 2011 the people of the world saw a video of soldiers beating a young woman and stripping her down to her bra, outside the Cabinet offices near Tahrir Square.
This gave rise to the demonstration of thousands of women in Cairo angrily protesting this brutality against women.
This demonstration, which according to some observers was the largest march of women the country had ever seen, included women from all walks of life, young and old, daughters and mothers, Muslims, Christians and secularists. The importance of this demonstration cannot be explained by its numbers alone. It highlighted the determination of women in Egypt to fight back for their rights. It was a clear statement by the women that they are not an easy target, as some people might think, and if the army and the Islamist forces intend to suppress women and send them back home to play the role of wife and mother, they had better be prepared for a fight with women.
All this has been only one of the fronts on which women in Egypt have been attacked. Other developments that have made women in the Middle East and North Africa concerned about their rights and their future role in society include the advance of Islamist forces in Egypt and Tunisia and other countries in the region where the people have been revolting.
In the Egyptian parliamentary elections last December, the Muslim Brotherhood won half of the seats, and the more fundamentalist Salafists won another fifth. In Tunisia, the Islamist party Ennahda won 40 percent of the seats in the Constitutional Assembly.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in Egypt and the Ennahda party in Tunisia played little or no role in the people’s revolts and are far from being the real representatives of the people's basic interests. With the help of the imperialists and powerful financial backing from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, they have been taking advantage of the people's religion. In no small part because of the weakness and/or absence of revolutionary forces, they have become the most organised forces in those countries and have unexpectedly come to play a central role in the emerging new governments.
As the Egyptian author Nawal al-Saadawi wrote in a statement on International Women's Day this year, "We were able, by the power of the united millions, to remove the head of the regime (Hosni Mubarak) on 11 Februray 2011, but the body of the regime is still in power, supported by the American colonial government and its Egyptian allies in the High Military Council, in the post-revolutionary government, in big business and the ultra-rich elites, in the big media, in the old liberal political parties and the new fanatical religious groups (which gained more and more power since the Sadat era during the seventies and his submission to the Israeli regime and the American military and economic aid).
"Since then poverty and women's oppression increased under... increasing religious fundamentalism and class exploitation. Women are half of society. They cannot be liberated in a country which is not liberated. We combine our liberation from patriarchy with the liberation of our country from both colonialist and religious oppression." (The full statement can be found on Nawal al-Saadawi's Facebook page, posted 5 March.)
The US and other imperialists who wanted to protect the dominant structure of these countries before the people’s revolts deepen cut a deal with forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda who, they thought, could better guard and represent the state and old economic and political relationships that serve their interests.
While the Salafists have openly declared their aim of establishing strict Sharia law (similar to Saudi Arabia, where in most situations women have to cover themselves with a niqab – full face covering – and are excluded from the life of the society, the two main Islamic parties in Egypt and Tunisia have said that they are "encouraging traditional roles but respecting women’s career choices." (The New York Times, 9 January 2012)
The experience of Islamic forces in power in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan (especially under the Zia regime) and other countries shows that their "Islamic values" are mainly centred around the role of women in society and the family, and that the women are not considered equal to men. They clearly state that a woman should be considered as half a man in many situations, that women should be covered by a veil and be mainly good mothers and wives, and in the final analysis, that women are owned by men. Women's role in society should be eliminated where possible or reduced. If those parties are not going to implement these Islamic laws, fully or partially, then why did they enter into the world of political Islam in the first place?
To explain this contradiction, some observers have come to the conclusion that the Islamic forces don't believe that the people, and especially women, are in a mood that would welcome the full expression of the Islamist views. Further, they don't have enough forces to move from a position of strength. So they have to deceive people and consolidate their position, and then they take further steps.
If we look at the experience in Iran, in order to win over the people and other political forces, Ayatollah Ruholah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamist forces, promised equal rights for women and freedom for all political forces, including the communists. However, after they took over the government, the first attack was against women. When they tried to make the hijab (head covering) compulsory, women fought back with an historic five-day outburst of protest. Khomeini had to retreat and wait for another time. He found that moment when the Islamist forces consolidated their political power.
Egypt is a conservative society. Women have been under pressure, and most, especially in the countryside, have been kept out of social and political activity. About 42 percent of women cannot read and write and only about 25 percent work outside the home. While these figures might be high in comparison with some other countries in the region, still they indicate the existence of obstacles to women who want to go beyond the household walls. Genital cutting is still widespread, especially in rural areas, despite the Mubarak government's claim to have combated it. The level of sexual harassment against women has risen to a terrifying degree. Whether veiled or not, unaccompanied women can expect verbal harassment and being groped in crowded spaces.
However during the uprising of the people in Egypt and especially the 18 days in Tahrir Square, this situation changed. Women took part in the protests and played a much more active role. This also reflected the women's abhorrence of the situation, especially young women.
Hadeer Ahmad is a 20-year-old woman from a Salalfist family. Her mother covers her face and entire body. After taking part in the protest that toppled Mubarak, the young woman was inspired to take off her scarf.
"I realized that I believe in complete equality with men… I used to think that I could get married and stay at home, and now I think that I belong to this society and that I want to contribute to it. A number of my female friends decided after the revolution that they wanted to leave their homes, to live independently from their families. The revolution gave us energy and power.” (NYT, 21 November 2011)
And this is how the women changed. Women from all walks of life participated in those unforgettable days of Egyptian history. According to some accounts, despite the constraints, nearly a quarter of those protesting in Tahrir Square were women.
Women's satisfaction with and enjoyment of the important role they were playing made many think that they had defeated familial, social, cultural, traditional and religious limitations and constraints. In fact they were able to push back these obstacles for that period of time, but that victory was not finalised. The guardians of the backward relations soon started to counter-attack.
The regime that replaced Mubarak was not what the people were fighting for. The imperialists had to give in to the downfall of their man, Mubarak, but they also had to try and limit the extent of the blow to the state structure and the social and economic relations serving world imperialism. So they helped piece together a combination of forces, mainly the army and Islamists.
The rise of the Islamists has added to women's concern about their future. There are also fears that even existing rights, though mostly they exist only on paper, are threatened. Human rights activists and women’s groups have confirmed the assault on women and the backlash against their political participation by those in power and their unofficial thugs. For example, in Egypt Salafist men have been accusing women in villages and small towns of "disrespectful" behaviour. However in some cases they have been confronted with the women who fought back and made them flee.
The unity of Egyptian reactionary forces against women
The coalition of the army and the Islamists is determined to protect the old system with all its values centred on anti-women policies. It seems that both factions are most united when it comes to anti-women policies. The army is using violence against women and wielding the state apparatus to humiliate them, while the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to use and strengthen backward traditions, so-called culture and religion, and Salafists are using unofficial thugs to harass and attack women in the streets. All three forces are working towards the same end, even if approaching it from different directions.
Why are all these reactionary forces so anti-woman? Apart from the general view they all share, that women should be defined as wives and mothers, in backward countries where pre-capitalist modes of production or some aspects of them still persist, men's ownership of women shapes policies regarding women in the family and society.
But there is another important reason. Women's increasing role in recent years and especially in Tahrir square inspired women to take more active part in society and fight for their rights. Many women do not want to put this important experience behind them and go back to their traditional role, but to learn more and go even further.
But the guardians of the old system and old relations, the generals and various Islamic and religious forces, want women to go back to their traditional role and can't tolerate their enthusiasm. The brutality is an indication that they have seen that the genie is out of the bottle.
Some wrong thinking regarding raising the oppression of women
While determination is essential for women to fight for their liberation, it is not enough. It is important to be clear and see where the subordinate role of women originated and how this has been reinforced by all class societies and the exploiting nature of the ruling classes throughout history.
If Mubarak and a few figures around him are removed but the main structure of the old system remains untouched and is even protected by the institutions that actually were and still are running the country, the old values and the same differences and discrimination, the same oppression and exploitation will remain in place. The old system will continue to function, even though there might be a brief interruption in some parts of it. And even if those institutions are abolished, there is no guarantee that exploitation and oppression, including the oppression of women, will be vanquished. A revolution replaces those old institutions with a new state, one that establishes a new mode of production and works for a society without classes, gender oppression or antagonistic social differences of any kind, a society that needs and makes possible the work, efforts and conscious participation of all people.
However, among those who demand respect for women' rights and the end of violence and discrimination against women, some people believe that it is possible within the existing system, and even that it can be achieved by respecting religion and the existing traditions. Yet not only are such goals not achievable in a system based on exploitation that requires the oppression of women for its functioning, but furthermore, religion and traditions work in the superstructure of society to reinforce and consolidate the system of oppression and exploitation. Consequently tailing religion and tradition can only preserve the oppression of women. This is why the Islamist parties are accepted at the top of the pyramid of such a system, and why they are willing to work at the top of such a system. This is why the top of the pyramid is united to oppress and marginalize women.
Women's oppression in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region has taken specific forms for many reasons, including the fact that tradition and Islam play a powerful role in their own right. But most fundamentally these traditions and religion reflect the oppression maintained by imperialism and its local backward allies, and outmoded modes of production – pre-capitalist production relations – whose persistence is related to the subordination of these countries to imperialist capital.
Let's put it this way: the oppression of women in Islamic countries does not mean that women in Western countries are not discriminated against or that their rights are not violated. Even more fundamentally, the equality in the eyes of the law that prevails in most Western countries has not and cannot lead to the emancipation of women, who remain subjugated, lesser beings in every country in today's world. But at the same time the form of oppression of women in Western countries should not be used to justify any kind of oppression, or allow Islamist forces to impose their own particular brand of oppression of women. Furthermore, the oppression of women in any form will strengthen, instead of challenge, the economic and social relations that facilitate imperialist domination.
So women in North Africa and the Middle East, as in all countries, have a responsibility to fight against imperialism and the relations of production that pave the way for the oppression of women, and that means they have a responsibility to fight against ideas and views that help to reinforce those modes of productions and the oppression of women. So the separation of religion from state is an initial and a basic demand for the liberation of women. Clinging to religion can never and will never result in women's liberation.
Another wrong notion about women that is very common everywhere, even among some left-minded people and groups, is the tendency to ignore the woman question or oppose emphasizing it under the pretext that it is not the main aspect of the revolution. This view tends to leave women's demands for a later time, which indirectly helps prolong the oppression of women. Such views seem to have influence in Egypt too. A young Egyptian journalist worried about women's rights reports:
"I have attended rallies for the Islamist parties dominating the elections and I have talked to many of their voters. And they all tell me that my fears as a working independent woman who likes her life exactly as it is are secondary to more important pressing issues for the future of this country. I'm secondary to the reconstruction of Egypt and my fears are trivial compared to crucial matters such as security, the economy and the power struggle between the ruling military council and the Tahrir Squares around the country." (Mayye El-Sheikh writing in the NYT, 15 December 2011)
This kind of thinking is also common among some leftists who think that it is futile and misleading to fight for women's rights in capitalist society, since the liberation of women can only be realized by socialist revolution. Therefore, they argue, women's demands are secondary, and this is not the time to raise them.
"Ola Shahba, 33, a socialist who, during the uprising, joined the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, took a break from organizing a protest of teachers' unions to describe her frustrations with feminism.
"'I think I am too socialist to be a feminist,' Ms Shahba said. Though she believes in women's empowerment, she said, she feels that in present-day Egypt, an explicit focus on women's rights just serves to isolate women further. The Egyptian labour movement, she pointed out, has long had powerful female leaders." (NYT, 21 November 2011)
Though it is true that women's liberation can only be fully achieved in a communist society, that doesn’t mean the struggle for women's rights should be abandoned and left for after the revolution. In fact, the other side of this is that without the vast participation of women in struggles, a socialist revolution can never happen. It is true that there have been women leaders in the communist movement, but the women leaders and activists have never been nearly as many as is needed. So to encourage women in an organized way and organizing them around their demands is an integral part of the revolution.
The abolition of the oppression of women is not a single event that can happen the day after the revolution. It is a process that can and should be initiated from the first day that struggle starts.
Overall the uprising of the people in the Middle East and North Africa, while it brought the collapse of some dictators and is shaking others, has taken place in conjunction with other developments, including the rise of Islamists, in some cases with the cooperation of imperialist forces. We have seen from the day they enter government that they are pressing to give Islam a commanding force in social life, and push women back into their traditional subjugated role. This has provoked grave concern.
Of course women in this region have shown great courage and determination. Their worry is an indication of their awareness of their rights and a sign that they are not going to give in easily, at least not without a fight.
Since 8 March 2011 concerns about women's rights, their marginalisation in those countries on the one hand, and on the other their struggle to defy these attacks and struggle for their rights, have reverberated internationally. The various assaults on women and the protest of thousands of women in Cairo on 21 December 2011 are some of the highlights of these developments.
Tahrir square in Cairo, which inspired millions of people all over the world during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, has also been the site of some of the ugliest attacks on women during the following months.
On 8 March 2011, women attempted to hold a demonstration to celebrate International Women's Day, in hopes of playing a more active part in their society. However, they found themselves surrounded and attacked by a group of hundreds of men, possibly a combination of Islamists and pro-Mubarak forces. While the role of the army is not clear, at a minimum it did not intervene.
A witness who described the scene said unidentified men attacked the women, "forcing some to the ground, dragging others out of the crowd, groping and sexually harassing them as police and military figures stood by and failed to act… As I struggled to stay upright, a hand grabbed my behind and others pulled at my clothes." (Guardian, 9 March 2011)
This was a clear warning to all people that Mubarak may be gone but others who might look different but are made of the same stuff are still very powerful, and they are particularly opposed to women playing an active role in society.
On 9 March 2011, a day after this incident, at least 18 women along with 200 men were arrested by the army during a protest in nearby Tahrir Square. They were subjected to torture, including electric shocks. The women were transferred to a military detention centre and forced to take their clothes off before being subjected to a forced "virginity test". One of the victims, Samira Ibrahim 25, describes the assaults: "The person that conducted the test was an officer, not a doctor. He had his hand stuck in me for about five minutes. He made me lose my virginity. Every time I think of this, I don't know what to tell you, I feel awful… I know that to violate a woman in that way is considered rape. I felt like I had been raped." (Guardian, 11 October 2011)
In another show of brutality against women, on 17 December 2011 the people of the world saw a video of soldiers beating a young woman and stripping her down to her bra, outside the Cabinet offices near Tahrir Square.
This gave rise to the demonstration of thousands of women in Cairo angrily protesting this brutality against women.
This demonstration, which according to some observers was the largest march of women the country had ever seen, included women from all walks of life, young and old, daughters and mothers, Muslims, Christians and secularists. The importance of this demonstration cannot be explained by its numbers alone. It highlighted the determination of women in Egypt to fight back for their rights. It was a clear statement by the women that they are not an easy target, as some people might think, and if the army and the Islamist forces intend to suppress women and send them back home to play the role of wife and mother, they had better be prepared for a fight with women.
All this has been only one of the fronts on which women in Egypt have been attacked. Other developments that have made women in the Middle East and North Africa concerned about their rights and their future role in society include the advance of Islamist forces in Egypt and Tunisia and other countries in the region where the people have been revolting.
In the Egyptian parliamentary elections last December, the Muslim Brotherhood won half of the seats, and the more fundamentalist Salafists won another fifth. In Tunisia, the Islamist party Ennahda won 40 percent of the seats in the Constitutional Assembly.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in Egypt and the Ennahda party in Tunisia played little or no role in the people’s revolts and are far from being the real representatives of the people's basic interests. With the help of the imperialists and powerful financial backing from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, they have been taking advantage of the people's religion. In no small part because of the weakness and/or absence of revolutionary forces, they have become the most organised forces in those countries and have unexpectedly come to play a central role in the emerging new governments.
As the Egyptian author Nawal al-Saadawi wrote in a statement on International Women's Day this year, "We were able, by the power of the united millions, to remove the head of the regime (Hosni Mubarak) on 11 Februray 2011, but the body of the regime is still in power, supported by the American colonial government and its Egyptian allies in the High Military Council, in the post-revolutionary government, in big business and the ultra-rich elites, in the big media, in the old liberal political parties and the new fanatical religious groups (which gained more and more power since the Sadat era during the seventies and his submission to the Israeli regime and the American military and economic aid).
"Since then poverty and women's oppression increased under... increasing religious fundamentalism and class exploitation. Women are half of society. They cannot be liberated in a country which is not liberated. We combine our liberation from patriarchy with the liberation of our country from both colonialist and religious oppression." (The full statement can be found on Nawal al-Saadawi's Facebook page, posted 5 March.)
The US and other imperialists who wanted to protect the dominant structure of these countries before the people’s revolts deepen cut a deal with forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda who, they thought, could better guard and represent the state and old economic and political relationships that serve their interests.
While the Salafists have openly declared their aim of establishing strict Sharia law (similar to Saudi Arabia, where in most situations women have to cover themselves with a niqab – full face covering – and are excluded from the life of the society, the two main Islamic parties in Egypt and Tunisia have said that they are "encouraging traditional roles but respecting women’s career choices." (The New York Times, 9 January 2012)
The experience of Islamic forces in power in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan (especially under the Zia regime) and other countries shows that their "Islamic values" are mainly centred around the role of women in society and the family, and that the women are not considered equal to men. They clearly state that a woman should be considered as half a man in many situations, that women should be covered by a veil and be mainly good mothers and wives, and in the final analysis, that women are owned by men. Women's role in society should be eliminated where possible or reduced. If those parties are not going to implement these Islamic laws, fully or partially, then why did they enter into the world of political Islam in the first place?
To explain this contradiction, some observers have come to the conclusion that the Islamic forces don't believe that the people, and especially women, are in a mood that would welcome the full expression of the Islamist views. Further, they don't have enough forces to move from a position of strength. So they have to deceive people and consolidate their position, and then they take further steps.
If we look at the experience in Iran, in order to win over the people and other political forces, Ayatollah Ruholah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamist forces, promised equal rights for women and freedom for all political forces, including the communists. However, after they took over the government, the first attack was against women. When they tried to make the hijab (head covering) compulsory, women fought back with an historic five-day outburst of protest. Khomeini had to retreat and wait for another time. He found that moment when the Islamist forces consolidated their political power.
Egypt is a conservative society. Women have been under pressure, and most, especially in the countryside, have been kept out of social and political activity. About 42 percent of women cannot read and write and only about 25 percent work outside the home. While these figures might be high in comparison with some other countries in the region, still they indicate the existence of obstacles to women who want to go beyond the household walls. Genital cutting is still widespread, especially in rural areas, despite the Mubarak government's claim to have combated it. The level of sexual harassment against women has risen to a terrifying degree. Whether veiled or not, unaccompanied women can expect verbal harassment and being groped in crowded spaces.
However during the uprising of the people in Egypt and especially the 18 days in Tahrir Square, this situation changed. Women took part in the protests and played a much more active role. This also reflected the women's abhorrence of the situation, especially young women.
Hadeer Ahmad is a 20-year-old woman from a Salalfist family. Her mother covers her face and entire body. After taking part in the protest that toppled Mubarak, the young woman was inspired to take off her scarf.
"I realized that I believe in complete equality with men… I used to think that I could get married and stay at home, and now I think that I belong to this society and that I want to contribute to it. A number of my female friends decided after the revolution that they wanted to leave their homes, to live independently from their families. The revolution gave us energy and power.” (NYT, 21 November 2011)
And this is how the women changed. Women from all walks of life participated in those unforgettable days of Egyptian history. According to some accounts, despite the constraints, nearly a quarter of those protesting in Tahrir Square were women.
Women's satisfaction with and enjoyment of the important role they were playing made many think that they had defeated familial, social, cultural, traditional and religious limitations and constraints. In fact they were able to push back these obstacles for that period of time, but that victory was not finalised. The guardians of the backward relations soon started to counter-attack.
The regime that replaced Mubarak was not what the people were fighting for. The imperialists had to give in to the downfall of their man, Mubarak, but they also had to try and limit the extent of the blow to the state structure and the social and economic relations serving world imperialism. So they helped piece together a combination of forces, mainly the army and Islamists.
The rise of the Islamists has added to women's concern about their future. There are also fears that even existing rights, though mostly they exist only on paper, are threatened. Human rights activists and women’s groups have confirmed the assault on women and the backlash against their political participation by those in power and their unofficial thugs. For example, in Egypt Salafist men have been accusing women in villages and small towns of "disrespectful" behaviour. However in some cases they have been confronted with the women who fought back and made them flee.
The unity of Egyptian reactionary forces against women
The coalition of the army and the Islamists is determined to protect the old system with all its values centred on anti-women policies. It seems that both factions are most united when it comes to anti-women policies. The army is using violence against women and wielding the state apparatus to humiliate them, while the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to use and strengthen backward traditions, so-called culture and religion, and Salafists are using unofficial thugs to harass and attack women in the streets. All three forces are working towards the same end, even if approaching it from different directions.
Why are all these reactionary forces so anti-woman? Apart from the general view they all share, that women should be defined as wives and mothers, in backward countries where pre-capitalist modes of production or some aspects of them still persist, men's ownership of women shapes policies regarding women in the family and society.
But there is another important reason. Women's increasing role in recent years and especially in Tahrir square inspired women to take more active part in society and fight for their rights. Many women do not want to put this important experience behind them and go back to their traditional role, but to learn more and go even further.
But the guardians of the old system and old relations, the generals and various Islamic and religious forces, want women to go back to their traditional role and can't tolerate their enthusiasm. The brutality is an indication that they have seen that the genie is out of the bottle.
Some wrong thinking regarding raising the oppression of women
While determination is essential for women to fight for their liberation, it is not enough. It is important to be clear and see where the subordinate role of women originated and how this has been reinforced by all class societies and the exploiting nature of the ruling classes throughout history.
If Mubarak and a few figures around him are removed but the main structure of the old system remains untouched and is even protected by the institutions that actually were and still are running the country, the old values and the same differences and discrimination, the same oppression and exploitation will remain in place. The old system will continue to function, even though there might be a brief interruption in some parts of it. And even if those institutions are abolished, there is no guarantee that exploitation and oppression, including the oppression of women, will be vanquished. A revolution replaces those old institutions with a new state, one that establishes a new mode of production and works for a society without classes, gender oppression or antagonistic social differences of any kind, a society that needs and makes possible the work, efforts and conscious participation of all people.
However, among those who demand respect for women' rights and the end of violence and discrimination against women, some people believe that it is possible within the existing system, and even that it can be achieved by respecting religion and the existing traditions. Yet not only are such goals not achievable in a system based on exploitation that requires the oppression of women for its functioning, but furthermore, religion and traditions work in the superstructure of society to reinforce and consolidate the system of oppression and exploitation. Consequently tailing religion and tradition can only preserve the oppression of women. This is why the Islamist parties are accepted at the top of the pyramid of such a system, and why they are willing to work at the top of such a system. This is why the top of the pyramid is united to oppress and marginalize women.
Women's oppression in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region has taken specific forms for many reasons, including the fact that tradition and Islam play a powerful role in their own right. But most fundamentally these traditions and religion reflect the oppression maintained by imperialism and its local backward allies, and outmoded modes of production – pre-capitalist production relations – whose persistence is related to the subordination of these countries to imperialist capital.
Let's put it this way: the oppression of women in Islamic countries does not mean that women in Western countries are not discriminated against or that their rights are not violated. Even more fundamentally, the equality in the eyes of the law that prevails in most Western countries has not and cannot lead to the emancipation of women, who remain subjugated, lesser beings in every country in today's world. But at the same time the form of oppression of women in Western countries should not be used to justify any kind of oppression, or allow Islamist forces to impose their own particular brand of oppression of women. Furthermore, the oppression of women in any form will strengthen, instead of challenge, the economic and social relations that facilitate imperialist domination.
So women in North Africa and the Middle East, as in all countries, have a responsibility to fight against imperialism and the relations of production that pave the way for the oppression of women, and that means they have a responsibility to fight against ideas and views that help to reinforce those modes of productions and the oppression of women. So the separation of religion from state is an initial and a basic demand for the liberation of women. Clinging to religion can never and will never result in women's liberation.
Another wrong notion about women that is very common everywhere, even among some left-minded people and groups, is the tendency to ignore the woman question or oppose emphasizing it under the pretext that it is not the main aspect of the revolution. This view tends to leave women's demands for a later time, which indirectly helps prolong the oppression of women. Such views seem to have influence in Egypt too. A young Egyptian journalist worried about women's rights reports:
"I have attended rallies for the Islamist parties dominating the elections and I have talked to many of their voters. And they all tell me that my fears as a working independent woman who likes her life exactly as it is are secondary to more important pressing issues for the future of this country. I'm secondary to the reconstruction of Egypt and my fears are trivial compared to crucial matters such as security, the economy and the power struggle between the ruling military council and the Tahrir Squares around the country." (Mayye El-Sheikh writing in the NYT, 15 December 2011)
This kind of thinking is also common among some leftists who think that it is futile and misleading to fight for women's rights in capitalist society, since the liberation of women can only be realized by socialist revolution. Therefore, they argue, women's demands are secondary, and this is not the time to raise them.
"Ola Shahba, 33, a socialist who, during the uprising, joined the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, took a break from organizing a protest of teachers' unions to describe her frustrations with feminism.
"'I think I am too socialist to be a feminist,' Ms Shahba said. Though she believes in women's empowerment, she said, she feels that in present-day Egypt, an explicit focus on women's rights just serves to isolate women further. The Egyptian labour movement, she pointed out, has long had powerful female leaders." (NYT, 21 November 2011)
Though it is true that women's liberation can only be fully achieved in a communist society, that doesn’t mean the struggle for women's rights should be abandoned and left for after the revolution. In fact, the other side of this is that without the vast participation of women in struggles, a socialist revolution can never happen. It is true that there have been women leaders in the communist movement, but the women leaders and activists have never been nearly as many as is needed. So to encourage women in an organized way and organizing them around their demands is an integral part of the revolution.
The abolition of the oppression of women is not a single event that can happen the day after the revolution. It is a process that can and should be initiated from the first day that struggle starts.
Overall the uprising of the people in the Middle East and North Africa, while it brought the collapse of some dictators and is shaking others, has taken place in conjunction with other developments, including the rise of Islamists, in some cases with the cooperation of imperialist forces. We have seen from the day they enter government that they are pressing to give Islam a commanding force in social life, and push women back into their traditional subjugated role. This has provoked grave concern.
Of course women in this region have shown great courage and determination. Their worry is an indication of their awareness of their rights and a sign that they are not going to give in easily, at least not without a fight.
CPI(M): "Condemn the arrests and torture of Maoist activists in Kolkata and Mumbai!"
12 March 2012. A World to Win News Service. India has been on a fast track to playing a more major role in the global economy. Indian and international corporations are itching to tear up the land inhabited by tribal peoples to get their hands on the riches that lie under them, minerals like bauxite, coal and iron ore. The Indian government cannot tolerate the fact that large swaths of the country are not under their control, and are determined to crush any resistance that stands in their way, especially the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the masses hungry for radical change who make up the army they lead. In late 2009, with an array of military forces and the utmost cruelty, the Indian government unleashed a war on the people called Operation Green Hunt. Following is a press release dated 2 March, 2012 from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), signed by its spokesman, Abhay.
In the last week of February 2012, the police have arrested activists of our Party, including some senior cadres from Kolkata and Mumbai. On the specific intelligence inputs provided by the murderous Andra Pradesh Special Intelligence Bureau (APSIB), joint forces of police and Special Task Force (STF) of Andra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal have raided the shelters of our comrades in Kolkata and Mumbai suburbs and arrested at least nine comrades, including two women comrades. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna, Deepak Kumar Pargania, Sukumar Mandal, Bapi Mudi and Sambhu Charan were arrested from Kolkata, while Comrades Dinesh Wankhede, Aasimkumar Bhattacharya, Suman Gawde and Paru Patel were picked up from Thane in Maharashtra.
Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna alias Santosh (62) and Aasimkumar Bhattacharya (65) were the seniors among the arrested. Senior comrade Sadanala Ramakrishna has been working for the revolution for at least four decades. He has been ailing with serious health problems for so many years. A mechanical engineer graduated from the prestigious Regional Engineering College (REC) of Warangal where other martyred leaders like Surapaneni Janardhan and Azad emerged as great revolutionaries of their times, Comrade Ramakrishna sacrificed his bright life for the cause of the liberation of the downtrodden.
Both the two women comrades arrested – Vijaya and Suman – have been undergoing medical treatment for some time, staying in the shelters outside the struggle zones. Particularly, comrade Vijaya has been suffering from serious heart problems.
The police forces, known for worst kind of cruelty, have been torturing these comrades mentally and physically while in custody. They have foisted several false cases against these comrades so that they could be languished behind bars forever.
On one hand the ruling classes are asserting that these arrests are a big success for them, and on the other hand, they are trying to portray our comrades as dangerous criminals, claiming that they have recovered huge amounts of cash and other material that is used for making arms.
These arrests are nothing but a part of Operation Green Hunt (OGH), i.e. the "War on People" which has been underway since 2009. The comprador ruling classes, in connivance with their imperialist masters, particularly with the US imperialists, have unleashed this brutal war of suppression in the poorest parts of India so that their neo-liberal policies of plunder of resources could go unhindered. They are particularly targeting the revolutionary leadership and eliminating them. As the Pentagon itself claimed recently, the US Special Forces are not only actively involved, but also assisting their Indian counterparts on the ground in the counter-insurgency operations aimed at eliminating the revolutionary leadership. This fact also shows us that the US has been patronizing in the ongoing Operation Green Hunt, making the values such as the freedom, independence, and sovereignty of our country a joke. The exploiting rulers of our country are daydreaming that this movement can be suppressed if its leadership is wiped out.
The revolutionary movement cannot be crushed with arrests and murders. The bars of the dungeons cannot restrict the revolutionary ideas from spreading among the vast masses.
The CC of CPI (Maoist) strongly condemns these arrests and the inhuman torture being inflicted on them. We demand immediate and unconditional release of these comrades, as well as all of the political prisoners languishing in various jails in all corners of our land. We also demand the lifting of all the false cases foisted against these comrades.
In the last week of February 2012, the police have arrested activists of our Party, including some senior cadres from Kolkata and Mumbai. On the specific intelligence inputs provided by the murderous Andra Pradesh Special Intelligence Bureau (APSIB), joint forces of police and Special Task Force (STF) of Andra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal have raided the shelters of our comrades in Kolkata and Mumbai suburbs and arrested at least nine comrades, including two women comrades. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna, Deepak Kumar Pargania, Sukumar Mandal, Bapi Mudi and Sambhu Charan were arrested from Kolkata, while Comrades Dinesh Wankhede, Aasimkumar Bhattacharya, Suman Gawde and Paru Patel were picked up from Thane in Maharashtra.
Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna alias Santosh (62) and Aasimkumar Bhattacharya (65) were the seniors among the arrested. Senior comrade Sadanala Ramakrishna has been working for the revolution for at least four decades. He has been ailing with serious health problems for so many years. A mechanical engineer graduated from the prestigious Regional Engineering College (REC) of Warangal where other martyred leaders like Surapaneni Janardhan and Azad emerged as great revolutionaries of their times, Comrade Ramakrishna sacrificed his bright life for the cause of the liberation of the downtrodden.
Both the two women comrades arrested – Vijaya and Suman – have been undergoing medical treatment for some time, staying in the shelters outside the struggle zones. Particularly, comrade Vijaya has been suffering from serious heart problems.
The police forces, known for worst kind of cruelty, have been torturing these comrades mentally and physically while in custody. They have foisted several false cases against these comrades so that they could be languished behind bars forever.
On one hand the ruling classes are asserting that these arrests are a big success for them, and on the other hand, they are trying to portray our comrades as dangerous criminals, claiming that they have recovered huge amounts of cash and other material that is used for making arms.
These arrests are nothing but a part of Operation Green Hunt (OGH), i.e. the "War on People" which has been underway since 2009. The comprador ruling classes, in connivance with their imperialist masters, particularly with the US imperialists, have unleashed this brutal war of suppression in the poorest parts of India so that their neo-liberal policies of plunder of resources could go unhindered. They are particularly targeting the revolutionary leadership and eliminating them. As the Pentagon itself claimed recently, the US Special Forces are not only actively involved, but also assisting their Indian counterparts on the ground in the counter-insurgency operations aimed at eliminating the revolutionary leadership. This fact also shows us that the US has been patronizing in the ongoing Operation Green Hunt, making the values such as the freedom, independence, and sovereignty of our country a joke. The exploiting rulers of our country are daydreaming that this movement can be suppressed if its leadership is wiped out.
The revolutionary movement cannot be crushed with arrests and murders. The bars of the dungeons cannot restrict the revolutionary ideas from spreading among the vast masses.
The CC of CPI (Maoist) strongly condemns these arrests and the inhuman torture being inflicted on them. We demand immediate and unconditional release of these comrades, as well as all of the political prisoners languishing in various jails in all corners of our land. We also demand the lifting of all the false cases foisted against these comrades.
Are women considered human yet?
Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter, Virago, 2010
5 March 2012. A World to Win News Service. With the approach of 8 March, International Women's Day, marked by revolutionary mobilizations in many countries, we are reprinting the following book review by Lindsay Wright which first appeared in the 11 October 2010 AWTWNS. We welcome book and film reviews and other articles that express our readers' opinions.
It can be easy for those of us who grew up in the 60s to believe that in the West much of the battle to win equality between the sexes has been won. Living in London in 2010, my gas engineer is a woman and the midwife a man; I can obtain as much free contraception and abortions as I require; most schools now provide childcare from 8 am to 6 pm, allowing mothers to work full-time; and the social controls attempting to prevent women having sex before marriage appear to have been lifted with young women appearing to be having sex whenever they want, with whom ever they want.
However, a deeper look at reality shows that the inequalities that women rebelled against in the 60s are alive and well, even if in some countries these inequalities are taking different forms. Living Dolls exposes extremely well the inequalities that exist between men and women in 21st century England and how these inequalities are (pseudo) "scientifically" explained away and justified by the current revival of biological determinism.
Most of us were brought up in the 50s and 60s grew up with societal norms that said that only bad girls had sex before marriage and that sex, when it did occur, was about ensuring the man's pleasure. In Living Dolls Walter illustrates how young women today are exposed to just as heavy societal pressures and norms as we were then, except now they face extreme pressure to have sex whenever the men in their life want it. So, in the middle of the 20th century women were under extreme pressure to not have sex before marriage and then to stay with their husbands "until death thy do part"; now young women are under extreme pressure to have sex and are commodified as much as they ever were. Physical appearance and the ability to satisfy men still determine a woman's value.
Walter argues very convincingly that women and girls, "are encouraged to see their sexual allure as their primary passport to success." Today's society equates women's empowerment and liberation with sexual objectification, women are encouraged to look like Barbie dolls and to see their value by how well they meet the sexual needs of others. She quotes UK research from 2006 that found that half of the teenagers surveyed would consider becoming fashion models and half see Jordan (a glamour model famous for her huge breast implants) as a role model!
Walter exposes how the "marketplace" reinforces certain acceptable behaviours for women and makes it hard for women, particularly young women, to behave differently or to seek their empowerment in ways that are not about being sexually promiscuous. She states that, "Many young women seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole dance… the constant reinforcement of one type of role model is shrinking and warping the choices on offer to young women."
Chapter 2 focuses on pole-dancing and prostitution, and Walter exposes the impact of these on both the individual women involved and on the community as a whole. For example, she quotes research from the Lilith Project in Camden Town in north London that found that in the three years after four lap-dancing clubs opened in Camden Town the "incidents of rape and sexual assault rose in the area". She believes that lap-dancing clubs are responsible for changing cultural attitudes towards the greater objectification of women. She notes that in the 21st century prostitution, rather than being shameful, is now increasingly seen as an aspirational career choice for women, yet the misogyny expressed by the men who use prostitutes remains ugly and the stories told by the many prostitutes remain disturbing. She notes that the standardised mortality rates for sex workers in the UK are six times higher than the general population.
Chapter 3 focuses on young girls, in particular, how "the main journey for a young girl is expected to lie along her path to winning the admiration of others for her appearance." So that it is becoming more and more prevalent for girls as young as eight or nine to become involved in "'the body project'", i.e., being "expected to devote energy to dieting, grooming and shopping…The imperative is to better oneself not through any intellectual or emotional growth, but through physical remaking." So from this viewpoint, one achieves empowerment only through physical perfection. One study, reported in 2005, found that most six year-olds "would prefer to be thinner than they are", and another in 2006 found that one in four girls were considering plastic surgery by the age of sixteen.
Kidscape (a UK children's charity) reports have gone from receiving 2-3 calls a year to their helpline regarding sexual bullying to receiving 2-3 calls per week in 2009. With ready access to pornography on the internet (which is easily printed) and via mobile phones, boys can regularly bring porn into school to "tease and discomfort" girls. Walter quotes Hannah White of Womankind Worldwide (who runs a project aimed at tackling sexual bullying) who says that sexual bullying has "been normalized in this generation in a way that makes it very hard to challenge."
The most important fact quoted by Walter to indicate that young girls are not in control of their sexual behaviour is a survey from 2000 that found that 80 percent of girls who had their first sexual experience aged 13 or 14 regretted it (this compares to 50 percent in 1990). As Walter points out, "since one in four girls has sex below the age of sixteen, that's a lot of regrets."
Chapter 4 examines women's sexual behaviour and the desire of the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1970s to encourage women to lay claim to their own desires and pleasures rather than being held back by traditional social expectations and simply subsuming their own sexual desire into that of their partner. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s fought hard to undermine bourgeois marriage and to bring about freer sexual relationships in which women focused on their own sexual needs. However, although the second feminist movement "undoubtedly created a real shift in the way that women saw their sexuality", this movement mainly failed because women's sexuality is still very much about doing what pleases men. The forms this takes may have changed (the greatest status is no longer attained via virginity but through having lots of sexual experience); however, fundamentally many women are still not taking full control of their own sexuality.
Walter acknowledges the improvements in Western societies, where (unlike traditional societies) a woman's honour is no longer tied to virginity and monogamy. Feminism in many ways released women in the West from the repression of the old societal conventions around sex. However, Walter raises concern over many of the new societal conventions around sex. For example, the "the cultural shift towards embracing sex with no emotional commitment" leading to an increasing separation between sex and emotion – something never intended by the feminist movement. Walter interviewed many women for her book, many of whom seemed "to feel that their lives had been impoverished by the devaluation of sex into exchange and performance rather than mutual intimacy."
Chapter 5 looks at pornography. The Internet has meant that pornography, including hard core pornography, is readily available. Walter quotes a Canadian study that found that amongst 13-14 year-olds 90 percent of the boys and 70 percent of the girls have viewed pornography. In a UK study one out of four adult males aged 25-49 had viewed hardcore online porn in the last month, and 40 percent had viewed some kind of porn in the previous year. Walter reviews the criticisms historically raised by feminists, and how the old feminist positions have been discredited. She laments that these days we rarely hear any condemnation of pornography or even any discussion of the effects of pornography, concluding that, "This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experiences will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually." Hence, the rise in the demand for plastic surgery, including to the labia! Pornography encourages the view that there is only one correct way for a woman and her labia to look.
Not only does much of the porn available today still rely on depicting male domination, but it actually is becoming increasingly demeaning of women. The abuse of women and violent painful acts, acts that used to be the exception, are becoming the norm. Further, porn not only increases the objectification of women, but threatens intimacy in real relationships, with sex becoming "something that has to be performed, not felt". Yet, at this time, pornography is becoming an increasingly accepted part of life, and there is less and less criticism of it. Walter argues that sex should be about intimacy and emotion, not exchange and performance.
Chapter 6 is entitled "Choices" and examines the claim that the inequality between the sexes can be explained as the result of gender differences in personal choices. Walter argues that not only is our hypersexual culture "rooted in continuing inequality, it also produces more inequality".
Women are chosen for their looks, so that the older, life-experienced woman will be overlooked in favour of a younger, more beautiful but less sophisticated woman. For example, the television show Strictly Come Dancing replaced their only female judge, the hugely experienced and knowledgeable Arlene Philips, with the much younger and inexperienced, but very beautiful, Alesha Dixon. Even women working in high-powered jobs will still be judged by their appearance before their ability and will have to weather comments about their appearance.
Likewise at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, who plays on the coveted centre court is determined by attractiveness not tennis rankings. Walter argues that, in the current context of women being valued for their sexual allure, certain choices made by women are celebrated whilst others are marginalized, which has major effect on the choices women make, as well as having an effect on men. She writes, "The objectified woman, so often celebrated as the wife or girlfriend of the heroic male rather than the heroine of her own life, is the living doll who has replaced the liberated woman who should be making her way into the twenty-first century."
Biological determinism (which sees behaviour as being determined by genes and hormones rather than societal norms and the internalisation of stereotypes) now reigns supreme in many university departments and in the media when it comes to explaining differences between men and women. Biological determinism is used to uphold and encourage more traditional gender roles, and argues that traditional femininity is biologically rather than socially constructed, and leads to the fatalistic belief that sex inequality is inevitable and unchangeable.
This "scientific" justification for inequalities between the sexes needs to be exposed and challenged. Part II of Living Dolls, although not the most thorough criticism of this trend, does provide some valuable exposure of the inadequacies of this perspective. Walter argues convincingly that to uphold biological determinism, as much of the media and many researchers do, means to see the status quo of relations between men and women as natural and unchangeable rather than as something to be challenged and changed.
Biological determinism is used to "explain away" the inequalities between men and women, so that these inequalities become the natural consequence of evolution, genes and the differing hormonal levels between the sexes. Biological determinism sees human biological make-up as fixed, yet Walter refers to some really interesting research that shows how behaviour and experience can actually change biological make-up, including the size of anatomical structures in the brain.
Her most impressive example is some research looking at the posterior hippocampus part of the brain in London (taxi) drivers. This research found that the posterior hippocampus was larger in cab drivers with over two years' experience than in controls. Further, the greater the number of years of taxi driving, "the bigger the posterior hippocampus, so that as they went on adding detail to their knowledge of the city, their grey matter grew. Since the volume of grey matter in this part of the brain correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver, this suggests that the human brain can change physically in response to the environment, even during adulthood." This example convincingly suggests that rather than biology being responsible for the differences seen between men's and women's brains, these differences could be explained by differences in upbringing, behaviour and experience. Walter also examines research exposing how expectations, power differences and culture can determine behaviour.
Walter exposes how the power held by biological determinists in academic circles is reflected in the fact that research papers showing traditional sex differences are more likely to get published than those that fail to provide evidence of sex differences. Furthermore, even where sex differences in activation and structure between men's and women's brains are found, Walter argues, "there is nothing to prove as yet that these must be put down to innate differences rather than differently learned behaviours."
Walter also looks at the role of sexual stereotyping in determining the differences found between the sexes in levels of such things as empathy and mathematical ability. Society expects to see good little sensitive, sociable girls and aggressive little boys, and for girls and boys to have very distinct styles to their play and choice of different toys. Even when children deviate from the stereotype, this does nothing "to dent the strength of the stereotypes". Walter argues that these stereotypes are stifling children's "true variability, their true individualism, their true flexibility", and these parental and societal stereotypes lead to many of the differences seen in adulthood between the sexes.
She reports research from 1984 showing that if children aged 3-5 are exposed to a non-sexist curriculum, they show significantly less preference for sex-stereotyped play. Yet such research is largely ignored in preference for biological determinist explanations for gender differences in play. Looking at the role of hormones, she surmises that, "What we may think is evidence of the effects of testosterone may in fact be evidence of the effects of societal expectations." For example, research interviewing men and women after they have played aggressive computer games has found that women used the same level of aggression as men during the game, but when interviewed afterwards the women (unlike the men) will attempt to hide their levels of aggression. Likewise research looking at mathematics ability has shown that on average women will perform worse than men will, but if they are told that women will perform as well as men, then there was no difference in performance. Walter concludes that even "supposedly objective tests may not be a reflection of pure ability" but rather the enactment of expectations derived from stereotypes. She goes on to discuss research that illustrates how "the operation of stereotypes in the wider culture can constrain the choices we make in our real lives."
Walter argues that biological determinism blinds us to the true variability that exists among men and women. Those "tiny" average differences that have been found between men and women as groups pale in comparison to the "vast differences" found among individuals of the same sex, e.g. gender accounts for only 1 percent of the differences found in verbal skills. Walter concludes that, "instead of a recognition of the true variability of men and women, we are presented simply with stereotypes" of male and female behaviour. Walters also laments that masculinity and femininity are seen as mutually exclusive. There is no room for a person to decide to combine the best of masculinity with the best of femininity. The differences seen in male and female roles are put down to personal choice rather than cultural grooming. Both men and women lose out by the promotion of distinct roles for men and women.
The full title of her book is Living Dolls – The Return of Sexism, but it is clear that sexism has at no time ceased and, therefore, cannot be considered to have returned. Reading this book, one can only conclude that "sexism" is very much alive and well and, at this time growing from strength to strength.
Although she is only looking at mainstream UK society (she does not even look at ethnic minorities within the UK), her observations have global implications and are as valuable for people in the East as in the West. After all, if women are not free even in the most developed countries, if they are oppressed in both "traditional" and "modern" societies, if "modern" conventions and values are in many ways a continuation of the most backward patriarchal rules and beliefs, then "modernity" or modern society as it is practised, for instance, in the UK, is most certainly not the answer. Many readers will draw the conclusion that radical change – a different kind of society – is the only realistic alternative.
Walter's own suggested solutions are based on her belief that the current system can be reformed to end the oppression of women. This does not meet the test of reality that she herself insists on and that allows her to so thoroughly expose 21st-century sexism, the impact of sexual stereotyping and the falsity of biological determinism.
We can all wholeheartedly agree with her hope that, "one day women and men will be able to work and love side by side, freely, without the constraints of restrictive traditions" when "rather than modelling themselves on the plastic charm of a pink smiling doll, women can aim to realize their full potential".
5 March 2012. A World to Win News Service. With the approach of 8 March, International Women's Day, marked by revolutionary mobilizations in many countries, we are reprinting the following book review by Lindsay Wright which first appeared in the 11 October 2010 AWTWNS. We welcome book and film reviews and other articles that express our readers' opinions.
It can be easy for those of us who grew up in the 60s to believe that in the West much of the battle to win equality between the sexes has been won. Living in London in 2010, my gas engineer is a woman and the midwife a man; I can obtain as much free contraception and abortions as I require; most schools now provide childcare from 8 am to 6 pm, allowing mothers to work full-time; and the social controls attempting to prevent women having sex before marriage appear to have been lifted with young women appearing to be having sex whenever they want, with whom ever they want.
However, a deeper look at reality shows that the inequalities that women rebelled against in the 60s are alive and well, even if in some countries these inequalities are taking different forms. Living Dolls exposes extremely well the inequalities that exist between men and women in 21st century England and how these inequalities are (pseudo) "scientifically" explained away and justified by the current revival of biological determinism.
Most of us were brought up in the 50s and 60s grew up with societal norms that said that only bad girls had sex before marriage and that sex, when it did occur, was about ensuring the man's pleasure. In Living Dolls Walter illustrates how young women today are exposed to just as heavy societal pressures and norms as we were then, except now they face extreme pressure to have sex whenever the men in their life want it. So, in the middle of the 20th century women were under extreme pressure to not have sex before marriage and then to stay with their husbands "until death thy do part"; now young women are under extreme pressure to have sex and are commodified as much as they ever were. Physical appearance and the ability to satisfy men still determine a woman's value.
Walter argues very convincingly that women and girls, "are encouraged to see their sexual allure as their primary passport to success." Today's society equates women's empowerment and liberation with sexual objectification, women are encouraged to look like Barbie dolls and to see their value by how well they meet the sexual needs of others. She quotes UK research from 2006 that found that half of the teenagers surveyed would consider becoming fashion models and half see Jordan (a glamour model famous for her huge breast implants) as a role model!
Walter exposes how the "marketplace" reinforces certain acceptable behaviours for women and makes it hard for women, particularly young women, to behave differently or to seek their empowerment in ways that are not about being sexually promiscuous. She states that, "Many young women seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole dance… the constant reinforcement of one type of role model is shrinking and warping the choices on offer to young women."
Chapter 2 focuses on pole-dancing and prostitution, and Walter exposes the impact of these on both the individual women involved and on the community as a whole. For example, she quotes research from the Lilith Project in Camden Town in north London that found that in the three years after four lap-dancing clubs opened in Camden Town the "incidents of rape and sexual assault rose in the area". She believes that lap-dancing clubs are responsible for changing cultural attitudes towards the greater objectification of women. She notes that in the 21st century prostitution, rather than being shameful, is now increasingly seen as an aspirational career choice for women, yet the misogyny expressed by the men who use prostitutes remains ugly and the stories told by the many prostitutes remain disturbing. She notes that the standardised mortality rates for sex workers in the UK are six times higher than the general population.
Chapter 3 focuses on young girls, in particular, how "the main journey for a young girl is expected to lie along her path to winning the admiration of others for her appearance." So that it is becoming more and more prevalent for girls as young as eight or nine to become involved in "'the body project'", i.e., being "expected to devote energy to dieting, grooming and shopping…The imperative is to better oneself not through any intellectual or emotional growth, but through physical remaking." So from this viewpoint, one achieves empowerment only through physical perfection. One study, reported in 2005, found that most six year-olds "would prefer to be thinner than they are", and another in 2006 found that one in four girls were considering plastic surgery by the age of sixteen.
Kidscape (a UK children's charity) reports have gone from receiving 2-3 calls a year to their helpline regarding sexual bullying to receiving 2-3 calls per week in 2009. With ready access to pornography on the internet (which is easily printed) and via mobile phones, boys can regularly bring porn into school to "tease and discomfort" girls. Walter quotes Hannah White of Womankind Worldwide (who runs a project aimed at tackling sexual bullying) who says that sexual bullying has "been normalized in this generation in a way that makes it very hard to challenge."
The most important fact quoted by Walter to indicate that young girls are not in control of their sexual behaviour is a survey from 2000 that found that 80 percent of girls who had their first sexual experience aged 13 or 14 regretted it (this compares to 50 percent in 1990). As Walter points out, "since one in four girls has sex below the age of sixteen, that's a lot of regrets."
Chapter 4 examines women's sexual behaviour and the desire of the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1970s to encourage women to lay claim to their own desires and pleasures rather than being held back by traditional social expectations and simply subsuming their own sexual desire into that of their partner. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s fought hard to undermine bourgeois marriage and to bring about freer sexual relationships in which women focused on their own sexual needs. However, although the second feminist movement "undoubtedly created a real shift in the way that women saw their sexuality", this movement mainly failed because women's sexuality is still very much about doing what pleases men. The forms this takes may have changed (the greatest status is no longer attained via virginity but through having lots of sexual experience); however, fundamentally many women are still not taking full control of their own sexuality.
Walter acknowledges the improvements in Western societies, where (unlike traditional societies) a woman's honour is no longer tied to virginity and monogamy. Feminism in many ways released women in the West from the repression of the old societal conventions around sex. However, Walter raises concern over many of the new societal conventions around sex. For example, the "the cultural shift towards embracing sex with no emotional commitment" leading to an increasing separation between sex and emotion – something never intended by the feminist movement. Walter interviewed many women for her book, many of whom seemed "to feel that their lives had been impoverished by the devaluation of sex into exchange and performance rather than mutual intimacy."
Chapter 5 looks at pornography. The Internet has meant that pornography, including hard core pornography, is readily available. Walter quotes a Canadian study that found that amongst 13-14 year-olds 90 percent of the boys and 70 percent of the girls have viewed pornography. In a UK study one out of four adult males aged 25-49 had viewed hardcore online porn in the last month, and 40 percent had viewed some kind of porn in the previous year. Walter reviews the criticisms historically raised by feminists, and how the old feminist positions have been discredited. She laments that these days we rarely hear any condemnation of pornography or even any discussion of the effects of pornography, concluding that, "This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experiences will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually." Hence, the rise in the demand for plastic surgery, including to the labia! Pornography encourages the view that there is only one correct way for a woman and her labia to look.
Not only does much of the porn available today still rely on depicting male domination, but it actually is becoming increasingly demeaning of women. The abuse of women and violent painful acts, acts that used to be the exception, are becoming the norm. Further, porn not only increases the objectification of women, but threatens intimacy in real relationships, with sex becoming "something that has to be performed, not felt". Yet, at this time, pornography is becoming an increasingly accepted part of life, and there is less and less criticism of it. Walter argues that sex should be about intimacy and emotion, not exchange and performance.
Chapter 6 is entitled "Choices" and examines the claim that the inequality between the sexes can be explained as the result of gender differences in personal choices. Walter argues that not only is our hypersexual culture "rooted in continuing inequality, it also produces more inequality".
Women are chosen for their looks, so that the older, life-experienced woman will be overlooked in favour of a younger, more beautiful but less sophisticated woman. For example, the television show Strictly Come Dancing replaced their only female judge, the hugely experienced and knowledgeable Arlene Philips, with the much younger and inexperienced, but very beautiful, Alesha Dixon. Even women working in high-powered jobs will still be judged by their appearance before their ability and will have to weather comments about their appearance.
Likewise at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, who plays on the coveted centre court is determined by attractiveness not tennis rankings. Walter argues that, in the current context of women being valued for their sexual allure, certain choices made by women are celebrated whilst others are marginalized, which has major effect on the choices women make, as well as having an effect on men. She writes, "The objectified woman, so often celebrated as the wife or girlfriend of the heroic male rather than the heroine of her own life, is the living doll who has replaced the liberated woman who should be making her way into the twenty-first century."
Biological determinism (which sees behaviour as being determined by genes and hormones rather than societal norms and the internalisation of stereotypes) now reigns supreme in many university departments and in the media when it comes to explaining differences between men and women. Biological determinism is used to uphold and encourage more traditional gender roles, and argues that traditional femininity is biologically rather than socially constructed, and leads to the fatalistic belief that sex inequality is inevitable and unchangeable.
This "scientific" justification for inequalities between the sexes needs to be exposed and challenged. Part II of Living Dolls, although not the most thorough criticism of this trend, does provide some valuable exposure of the inadequacies of this perspective. Walter argues convincingly that to uphold biological determinism, as much of the media and many researchers do, means to see the status quo of relations between men and women as natural and unchangeable rather than as something to be challenged and changed.
Biological determinism is used to "explain away" the inequalities between men and women, so that these inequalities become the natural consequence of evolution, genes and the differing hormonal levels between the sexes. Biological determinism sees human biological make-up as fixed, yet Walter refers to some really interesting research that shows how behaviour and experience can actually change biological make-up, including the size of anatomical structures in the brain.
Her most impressive example is some research looking at the posterior hippocampus part of the brain in London (taxi) drivers. This research found that the posterior hippocampus was larger in cab drivers with over two years' experience than in controls. Further, the greater the number of years of taxi driving, "the bigger the posterior hippocampus, so that as they went on adding detail to their knowledge of the city, their grey matter grew. Since the volume of grey matter in this part of the brain correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver, this suggests that the human brain can change physically in response to the environment, even during adulthood." This example convincingly suggests that rather than biology being responsible for the differences seen between men's and women's brains, these differences could be explained by differences in upbringing, behaviour and experience. Walter also examines research exposing how expectations, power differences and culture can determine behaviour.
Walter exposes how the power held by biological determinists in academic circles is reflected in the fact that research papers showing traditional sex differences are more likely to get published than those that fail to provide evidence of sex differences. Furthermore, even where sex differences in activation and structure between men's and women's brains are found, Walter argues, "there is nothing to prove as yet that these must be put down to innate differences rather than differently learned behaviours."
Walter also looks at the role of sexual stereotyping in determining the differences found between the sexes in levels of such things as empathy and mathematical ability. Society expects to see good little sensitive, sociable girls and aggressive little boys, and for girls and boys to have very distinct styles to their play and choice of different toys. Even when children deviate from the stereotype, this does nothing "to dent the strength of the stereotypes". Walter argues that these stereotypes are stifling children's "true variability, their true individualism, their true flexibility", and these parental and societal stereotypes lead to many of the differences seen in adulthood between the sexes.
She reports research from 1984 showing that if children aged 3-5 are exposed to a non-sexist curriculum, they show significantly less preference for sex-stereotyped play. Yet such research is largely ignored in preference for biological determinist explanations for gender differences in play. Looking at the role of hormones, she surmises that, "What we may think is evidence of the effects of testosterone may in fact be evidence of the effects of societal expectations." For example, research interviewing men and women after they have played aggressive computer games has found that women used the same level of aggression as men during the game, but when interviewed afterwards the women (unlike the men) will attempt to hide their levels of aggression. Likewise research looking at mathematics ability has shown that on average women will perform worse than men will, but if they are told that women will perform as well as men, then there was no difference in performance. Walter concludes that even "supposedly objective tests may not be a reflection of pure ability" but rather the enactment of expectations derived from stereotypes. She goes on to discuss research that illustrates how "the operation of stereotypes in the wider culture can constrain the choices we make in our real lives."
Walter argues that biological determinism blinds us to the true variability that exists among men and women. Those "tiny" average differences that have been found between men and women as groups pale in comparison to the "vast differences" found among individuals of the same sex, e.g. gender accounts for only 1 percent of the differences found in verbal skills. Walter concludes that, "instead of a recognition of the true variability of men and women, we are presented simply with stereotypes" of male and female behaviour. Walters also laments that masculinity and femininity are seen as mutually exclusive. There is no room for a person to decide to combine the best of masculinity with the best of femininity. The differences seen in male and female roles are put down to personal choice rather than cultural grooming. Both men and women lose out by the promotion of distinct roles for men and women.
The full title of her book is Living Dolls – The Return of Sexism, but it is clear that sexism has at no time ceased and, therefore, cannot be considered to have returned. Reading this book, one can only conclude that "sexism" is very much alive and well and, at this time growing from strength to strength.
Although she is only looking at mainstream UK society (she does not even look at ethnic minorities within the UK), her observations have global implications and are as valuable for people in the East as in the West. After all, if women are not free even in the most developed countries, if they are oppressed in both "traditional" and "modern" societies, if "modern" conventions and values are in many ways a continuation of the most backward patriarchal rules and beliefs, then "modernity" or modern society as it is practised, for instance, in the UK, is most certainly not the answer. Many readers will draw the conclusion that radical change – a different kind of society – is the only realistic alternative.
Walter's own suggested solutions are based on her belief that the current system can be reformed to end the oppression of women. This does not meet the test of reality that she herself insists on and that allows her to so thoroughly expose 21st-century sexism, the impact of sexual stereotyping and the falsity of biological determinism.
We can all wholeheartedly agree with her hope that, "one day women and men will be able to work and love side by side, freely, without the constraints of restrictive traditions" when "rather than modelling themselves on the plastic charm of a pink smiling doll, women can aim to realize their full potential".
The imperialist threat and the Islamic Republic of Iran 33 years after its foundation
27 February 2012. A World to Win News Service. By N. Peyman. The threats against Iran, the sanctions and other economic pressures and the military movements and manoeuvres all testify to the intensification of the contradictions between the US and Iranian regime, 33 years after its foundation. These contradictions have reached such a critical point that an air strike or other form of military intervention against Iran by the US and some of its allies has become a clear possibility.
Why have relations between Iran and the Western powers, especially the US, been so tense for most of the last three decades, and why are they now fast approaching such a dangerous point? What are the forces driving the imperialist powers to another war in a region that is already overloaded with various wars?
These questions are even more striking if we take into account the fact that both the Western powers and the Iranian regime are undergoing crises internally.
According to the constant barrage from the mainstream media, the main concern of the Western powers is Iran's nuclear programme. They argue that the Iranian regime intends to build nuclear weapons. So the Western imperialists are pushing harder and harder to force the Iranian regime to stop enriching uranium, while Iran denies this charge and claims its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes.
The pressure so far has included UN Security Council approval for several rounds of economic sanctions against Iranian institutions and the personnel involved in its nuclear programme. Now the US and EU have taken it upon themselves to impose further sanctions against Iran's central bank. On July 1 of this year a ban on the importation of Iranian oil will take effect. These measures are meant to block Iranian exports and make it impossible for the country to import for lack of foreign currency.
But is the US and Western powers' concern about Iran's nuclear programme the real driving force behind the current crisis?
Despite the claims of the mainstream media and political officials whose job is to repeat and spread Western imperialist ruling class propaganda, the claims about the Iranian regime's nuclear programme are highly questionable. In fact their assertions have repeatedly been challenged by genuine experts, investigative reporters and observers familiar with the issue.
First of all, the Western powers and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have not, so far, been able to provide any credible evidence, let alone proof. Even their intelligence and military officials have not been able to back the claims of their leaders. So they seem to be making so much noise and heading toward war based on a case built on the "suspected intentions" of the Iranian regime that no one has been able to prove.
The US and its allies also claim if Iran succeeds in making nuclear bombs, it would start attacking other countries, especially Israel, and endanger American and Western security.
There seems to be a consensus among experts, however, that even if the US and its allies are right about the Iranian regime's intentions, it could become capable of making only one or a very few bombs in the near future. There is no way that it could match the nuclear arsenal of Israel, said to include more than 200 warheads, let alone the nuclear capability of the imperialist powers. According to experts, this cannot change the military balance of power in the region.
There is also the argument put forward by some imperialist apologists that if Iran goes nuclear, that would start a nuclear arms race in the region, so that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries would have to compete. First of all, experts familiar with the region's economic and political situation argue that political problems in some countries such as Egypt and the lack of infrastructure in others such as Saudi Arabia would make it impossible for them to undertake full-scale nuclear programmes. Secondly, this nuclear arms race has already been started with India and Pakistan. Thirdly, countries such as Turkey are not waiting for Iran to go nuclear. They are already working on it.
So not only is there no definitive evidence that Iran is making nuclear bombs, the arguments about the danger that an Iranian nuclear programme would represent for the security of the world and the stability of the region are exaggerated and do not match the reality. In fact, these arguments are little more than justifications for a hidden agenda – the preparations by the US and its allies for a war against Iran.
Also, as everyone now knows, or should know by now, the US and its allies have repeatedly made up various excuses to start wars in different parts of the world. The most memorable example is the 2003 invasion of Iraq under the cover of accusations about the Saddam Hussein regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction that proved to be a pure invention by George W. Bush and Tony Blair. This has cast even more doubt on the Western powers' real intentions. Many people all over the world simply don't trust the US imperialists and their allies on this issue.
Thus it is not difficult to conclude that even if the Iranian regime's nuclear programme is a concern, it is not the main issue. It cannot, in itself, explain the US's agenda – why it is intensifying the contradictions with Iran and building a case for and preparing military intervention.
If that is not the real issue, what are the real contradictions that are pressing so hard on both sides, and what are its real sources? Why are the US and its allies unhappy with the Iranian Islamic regime?
Some points on the real contradictions between the US and the Islamic Republic and their sources
Anti-Americanism has been a feature of the Iranian Islamic regime over the last three decades. Its content should be more deeply discussed and understood. Yet no matter how much the US might have had difficulty with this feature, still it has gone along with the regime for most of the last three decades. At the same time the history of the relationship between the Iranian Islamic regime and the US over these three decades has been very complex and full of contradictions and compromises that can hardly be explained by noting one or two simple contradictions.
In fact, over the last three decades the world has been in a state of great turbulence. To be more precise, there have been various factors shaping and effecting the relations between the US and the Iranian regime. Among the most important factors are the history of US interference in Iran and the Iranian clergy's attitude towards the US during the reign of the Shah. Another very important factor, one that in most cases has been decisive, is that it has been the world situation that has influenced the relationship between the US and the Islamic regime of Iran. Also this relation has been affected by the contradiction between the US and Islamic fundamentalists that was much intensified for a time.
The 1979 Iranian revolution was not the first time that a popular uprising forced the Shah to abandon his throne and flee the country. He was overthrown by another uprising in 1953 under the nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and brought back to power by a CIA-backed coup d'état. The Shah launched a reign of terror, including the imprisonment, torture and murder of leftist and nationalist activists. The coup and the following 25 years of the Shah's rule, backed and supported by the US, instilled a deep hatred among the Iranian masses for both the Shah and the US. This played a powerful role in the 1979 revolution.
The early 1960s saw a growing contradiction between the clergy and the Shah and the US. This led to the emergence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and later his exile to Najaf, in Iraq. However, this contradiction was of a very different nature than that between the people and the Shah and the US. The clerics mainly did not support the 1953 uprising of the Iranian people; in fact, they supported the Shah's coup. (Ayatollah Abolghasem Kashani, the most prominent religious representative of the clergy, supported the coup and became the head of the Shah’s Parliament afterward.) That position was never refuted or countered by Khomeini or any of the leaders of the Islamic regime.
The primary reasons for the clerical establishment's opposition to the Shah had to do with aspects of the Shah's 1962 reforms (the so-called "White Revolution") in the country's social and economic structure. These US-backed reforms were meant to more fully integrate Iran's relatively closed economy into the network of world capital. The Islamic forces had a strong connection to the land and feudalism. They particularly did not like the partial land reforms and the rights given to women to vote and hold office, which they saw as a threat to women's traditional status and traditional society in general. They blamed the Shah and the US for opening the country to Western culture, which they saw as anti-Islamic.
During the 1979 Iranian revolution two different contradictions became entangled: on the one hand the people's struggle against the monarchy and the US that supported it, and on the other the contradiction between the clerics and the Shah and the West. This interference paved the way for Khomeini and the clerics to steal the leadership of the revolution and abort it. The overthrow of the Shah was a blow to US interests. But the West was also aware that they could better tolerate the Islamist forces than a revolutionary left that could possibly grow through the continuation of the revolution and take the lead. The West was also very concerned about Soviet influence and pro-Soviet forces such as the Tudeh Party, which had also influenced the Fedayeen guerilla organisation. So the US and other Western powers were quick to limit the extent of the Iranian revolution and the blow to their interests by negotiating the Islamists into power before the revolution got deeper and even more out of hand.
Khomeini and his followers claimed to be the manifestation of the people's revolution, but with their backward ideology they were in fact the thieves of the Iranian revolution and their rise to power was the result of a compromise between backward, reactionary forces and various imperialist powers seeking to put an end to the Iranian revolution.
Clearly one of the main concerns for the US and the West was Soviet influence and the possibility of a Soviet takeover of Iran after the revolution. So they rushed to cut a deal with the Islamists – in other words, the contradiction between the East and West blocs ended up playing a decisive role in this situation. But the East/West conflict over Iran did not end with the bringing of the Islamists to power. In fact, this contradiction continued to colour Iran's political sky over the next decade.
The Soviets saw that an opportunity had opened for them to influence the political scene in Iran and the Middle East, and they did not want to let it pass. They already had the Tudeh party, with its experienced leaders and cadres whom the USSR had trained for years. Through the Tudeh party they were able to split the Fedayeen and pull the majority section to their side, and retain some influence on the other faction as well. Both through the Tudeh party and other channels the Soviets were also influencing some factions of the Islamic forces in power.
During the first eight months of the Islamic regime, its relationship with the US was not acute. There even seem to have been some diplomatic contacts. The occupation of the US embassy in Tehran by so-called pro-Khomeini students had a dramatic effect on this situation. Khomeini subsequently supported the occupation, leading to the collapse of the first Islamic government, which had been formed by the religious nationalists.
While some observers try to explain the US embassy occupation as a spontaneous move by pro-Khomeini students, others believe hidden forces were also at work, or at least taking advantage. For example, some people interpret this move as part of a power struggle between the clerics and the religious nationalists. Others see it as a result of the influence of the Tudeh Party or Soviet influence through other channels. Whatever the real story behind the occupation, the opening for the Soviet Union to enter Iran's political sphere had widened. At the same time, some of the most vicious elements of the Islamic regime, such as the ayatollahs Beheshti, Rafsanjani and Khamenei, became stronger and played a bigger role in the regime. Some clerics, especially those in contact with the students, seemed to have adopted a pro-Soviet tone. This is not to say that Beheshti, Rafsanjani or Khamenei were associated with the Soviet bloc, but at that time there was common ground between them and the pro-Soviet elements and others who wanted to oust the religious nationalist government.
After the US embassy occupation, anti-US slogans became a hallmark of the regime. The revolutionary movement came under even more serious attack by the reactionaries in power. They tried to pin the label of pro-US or US spies on the revolutionaries who had been fighting the Shah and the US, even as negotiations between the US and some elements of the Islamic regime regarding the hostages and how to release them continued. While the Islamic regime claimed to be "neither East nor West", in fact some elements within the regime tended towards the Western bloc and others the Eastern imperialist bloc. In other words, the acute contradiction on the world level had its impact on the Islamic regime.
Ten months after the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, the Iran-Iraq war started. Again this was the result of a combination of contradictions. This time the US, which encouraged and fuelled this war for eight years, had multiple goals: to eliminate the pro-Soviet elements of the Iraqi regime, to regain the initiative in Iran's internal affairs, and, most importantly, to attack whatever was left of the revolution's achievements.
Doubtlessly there was an implicit unity between the US and the Islamic regime on the issue of suppressing the revolution. In fact, from very early on the Islamic regime used the war to suppress the revolutionary movement and unify and consolidate the regime around the Khomeini, Rafsanjani and Khamenei gang. This lead to the coup by Khomeini and the Islamic Republic Party on 20 June 1981, nine months after the start of the war.
Because of the rivalry between the superpowers and their respective attempts to grab Iran, and also the existence of the forces within the Iranian regime who had tendencies towards the West and the East, the Islamic regime was able to swing between the West and East bloc.
During the following years of terror and the suppression of the people and revolutionaries, tens of thousands of communists and other revolutionaries were murdered and many more imprisoned. Tens of thousands were driven into exile. During this period, the silence of the US and the West was deafening. This was an indication that they were satisfied with the brutality they saw the Islamic regime carry out.
The end of the war brought the consolidation of the Islamic Republic. The vast majority of the remaining political prisoners were executed in 1988. Western media and officials began talking about what they saw as the regime's stability. The end of the war meant an era of reconstruction for the Islamic regime. To accomplish that, it had to more fully integrate the country into the world economy and establish close relations with imperialist financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Ali Akbar Rafsanjani became president and his supporters gave him the name of "commander of reconstruction".
This period coincided with the beginning of the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The closing of the gap between the East and West began to limit the Islamic Republic's ability to manoeuvre between the two blocs. The elements close to the Soviets became weaker and had to change their position. At the same time the need for capital to build up the war-ravaged infrastructure and economy based on a new imperialist-dependent bourgeoisie exerted a Westward pull on the Islamic regime.
Due to the history of the relations between the West and the traditionalist Islamic clergy and the memory of the American embassy occupation, on the one hand, and on the other the Iranian people's hatred for US imperialism, it was impossible for the process of normalisation between the Islamic regime and the West to go smoothly. There were many contradictions and obstacles.
In fact, anti-US gestures and slogans had allowed the Islamic regime to gain many things, including stealing and then suppressing the revolution and murdering and imprisoning the revolutionaries, and consolidating its power and achieving a kind of legitimacy both in Iran and in the region. It was not easy for them to abandon such slogans, even though they had already taken up many aspects of imperialist dependency.
During Rafsanjani's presidency, relations with the West increased mainly through economic and financial cooperation. The export of oil to Western countries returned to its pre-revolution level. Trade with US allies in the region as well as European countries such as Germany and Italy also increased.
In the mid 1990s a regime faction that had helped it consolidate through the years of terror and suppression won the presidential election under the banner of reformism. Mohammad Khatami became the president and subsequently this faction won the majority in parliament.
They started to increase and improve Iran's relations with Western countries. Aiming to normalize relations with the West and Europe in particular, Khatami visited Germany, France and Italy. Germany and Italy became Iran's main trade partners. The giant French oil company Total invested a huge amount of capital in Iranian oil fields. The European countries objected to and defied the US law that would punish foreign companies for doing business with Iran.
France, Germany and UK even formed a team to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear programme, mainly to cool down the US approach towards Iran and prevent a possible military intervention.
With the reformist faction running the government, the power struggle within the Islamic regime sharpened. The conservative faction fought with all its might to regain the initiative. During this period the Islamic regime laid the basis to move towards a more defined relationship with the West. However this development was influenced not only by the regime's internal power struggle, but also, in a different sphere, the 11 September 2011 events in the US, the contradiction between the US and the Al-Qaeda Islamic fundamentalists, and the subsequent American strategy for the region. Along with Iraq and North Korea, Iran was termed part of the "axis of evil", countries the US accused of supporting terrorism.
After Khatami's two terms as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president with the help of the Basij (a paramilitary force) and the Pasdaran (the so-called Revolutionary Guards). He won a second term through a rigged election with the support of Ayatollah Khamenei, the spiritual leader of the Islamic regime after Khomeini. This sparked a massive protest movement that lasted for months and brought millions into the streets of Tehran and other cities. This power struggle within the Islamic regime was resolved violently with the elimination of the reformist faction of the ruling party from the regime and the imprisonment or exile of many of its leaders and members. As the reformists were sidelined, relations with the Western powers, in particular the Europeans, also went into decline.
Since then, Iran has strengthened its economic, political and military relations with China and Russia. During the last three years China became Iran's leading economic partner by far. China imports 22 percent of Iranian oil exports, whereas before the oil embargo all the EU countries combined were importing 18 percent. Overall, Asian countries, including China, India, Japan and South Korea, account for 60 percent of Iran's oil exports. Iran has increasingly conducted its currency transactions through Russian and Chinese banks. During the first four months of 2011, 80 percent of the regime's income from oil and gas exports went through Russian and Chinese banks. Other reports indicate that Iran is calling on Chinese and Russian oil companies to invest in its oil and gas industry.
While the Iranian economy has been increasingly integrated into the world capitalist system and this course has accelerated with today's globalization, at the same time the world situation has allowed its Islamist rulers to bounce between different imperialist powers. If the bouncing during the 1980s was between the US and Soviet blocs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it has been first between the US and European countries, and then between the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.
This change of direction by the Iranian regime is not unrelated to the orientation of different factions who have benefited from establishing relations with various imperialist powers. At the same time this approach also explains the Europeans' tougher position on the Iranian nuclear programme in the last few years.
Some points on the recent crisis
Going back to the recent crisis and the intensification of the contradiction, both the West and the Islamic regime are in the middle of economic and political crisis. The question is why both sides are heading towards a confrontation in such a situation.
The US and the West as a whole are pursuing their global interests in terms of control over the world, the new order that the US has been seeking to establish and stabilise for nearly two decades. Control of the Middle East and its oil is crucial and central to this world order. In fact, to secure its long-term position as the chief of the imperialist system in the present world situation, the US needs a regime in Iran that would cooperate with the American regional programme. Because of its nature, its factions and its historical formation, the Islamic regime refuses to play the classical role that the US requires in the region. Moreover, seeking allies it can rely on, it has increasingly distanced itself from the West and become oriented towards Russia and China in recent years. This is something that the US and the West cannot tolerate any longer and why they are running out of patience.
In addition to the crisis in the Islamic regime's relations with the US and the West, it is facing deeper internal crisis, too.
The regime's economic, political and ideological policies have reached their limits and put tremendous pressure on the masses. The uprising of the Iranian people after the rigged election showed the depth of discontent with the regime. The Iranian economy, driven by the interests of a narrow section of the ruling class inside the country and the world capitalist system, was in crisis even before the current sanctions. These sanctions imposed by the Western powers, particularly the boycott of Iranian oil and gas, will surely magnify the pressure on the country's economy, due to Iran's dependency on world imperialism.
Another crisis the Iranian regime is struggling with is the growing contention among its various factions. The most important aspects of this political crisis are the regime's chronic inability to unite its various factions and the loss of legitimacy among the masses. Both aspects have intensified in recent years. The ousting of the regime's reformist faction after the rigged election was considered a coup, but the elimination of the reformists did not result in unity among the other factions. On the contrary, it ignited a factional fight within the conservative sections of the ruling power structure. This has led to the formation of various military and security centres within the same state, leaving it weaker than ever, with no prospect of regaining its lost strength.
While the US is counting on the regime's weaknesses to make regime change possible now, despite the dangers inherent in an attack from abroad the Iranian regime might also be counting on it as a way to resolve its internal crisis, at least temporarily. It is already using the current threats and sanctions to unite its ranks and the masses, even if temporarily, and justify the economic crisis that is making people's lives harder and harder. In short, it is trying to use these various contradictions as a way to navigate safely through the current crises.
The people and the threat of a war
In this situation, both the imperialists and the Islamic regime are trying to fool the people and win their support. Some anti-regime forces call on people to support an invasion by the US and other imperialists to get rid of it. There are also those who oppose the US and call on the people to support the regime. Neither stance considers the people as a potentially independent force that can free itself from both the imperialists and the backward, reactionary Islamic regime.
The various contradictions in Iranian-US relations have been complex and involved compromises. But the contradiction between the people of Iran and US imperialism is not the same as the contradiction between the US and the Islamic Republic. At the same time the contradiction between the people and the Islamic regime is not the same as the contradiction between the US and the Islamic regime. If the people tail any of those forces, they will end up oppressed and exploited by one or both of them.
The Islamic religious regime is brutal, ideologically backward and anti-women. It is economically dependent on world imperialism and belongs to the past. The various factions within the regime are seeking to gain the upper hand over one another by relying on different big powers so as to be able to impose their rule over the people for the long term.
The people of Iran and the real anti-imperialists have no interest in siding with any of those forces. Their interests lie in fighting them all.
Why have relations between Iran and the Western powers, especially the US, been so tense for most of the last three decades, and why are they now fast approaching such a dangerous point? What are the forces driving the imperialist powers to another war in a region that is already overloaded with various wars?
These questions are even more striking if we take into account the fact that both the Western powers and the Iranian regime are undergoing crises internally.
According to the constant barrage from the mainstream media, the main concern of the Western powers is Iran's nuclear programme. They argue that the Iranian regime intends to build nuclear weapons. So the Western imperialists are pushing harder and harder to force the Iranian regime to stop enriching uranium, while Iran denies this charge and claims its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes.
The pressure so far has included UN Security Council approval for several rounds of economic sanctions against Iranian institutions and the personnel involved in its nuclear programme. Now the US and EU have taken it upon themselves to impose further sanctions against Iran's central bank. On July 1 of this year a ban on the importation of Iranian oil will take effect. These measures are meant to block Iranian exports and make it impossible for the country to import for lack of foreign currency.
But is the US and Western powers' concern about Iran's nuclear programme the real driving force behind the current crisis?
Despite the claims of the mainstream media and political officials whose job is to repeat and spread Western imperialist ruling class propaganda, the claims about the Iranian regime's nuclear programme are highly questionable. In fact their assertions have repeatedly been challenged by genuine experts, investigative reporters and observers familiar with the issue.
First of all, the Western powers and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have not, so far, been able to provide any credible evidence, let alone proof. Even their intelligence and military officials have not been able to back the claims of their leaders. So they seem to be making so much noise and heading toward war based on a case built on the "suspected intentions" of the Iranian regime that no one has been able to prove.
The US and its allies also claim if Iran succeeds in making nuclear bombs, it would start attacking other countries, especially Israel, and endanger American and Western security.
There seems to be a consensus among experts, however, that even if the US and its allies are right about the Iranian regime's intentions, it could become capable of making only one or a very few bombs in the near future. There is no way that it could match the nuclear arsenal of Israel, said to include more than 200 warheads, let alone the nuclear capability of the imperialist powers. According to experts, this cannot change the military balance of power in the region.
There is also the argument put forward by some imperialist apologists that if Iran goes nuclear, that would start a nuclear arms race in the region, so that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries would have to compete. First of all, experts familiar with the region's economic and political situation argue that political problems in some countries such as Egypt and the lack of infrastructure in others such as Saudi Arabia would make it impossible for them to undertake full-scale nuclear programmes. Secondly, this nuclear arms race has already been started with India and Pakistan. Thirdly, countries such as Turkey are not waiting for Iran to go nuclear. They are already working on it.
So not only is there no definitive evidence that Iran is making nuclear bombs, the arguments about the danger that an Iranian nuclear programme would represent for the security of the world and the stability of the region are exaggerated and do not match the reality. In fact, these arguments are little more than justifications for a hidden agenda – the preparations by the US and its allies for a war against Iran.
Also, as everyone now knows, or should know by now, the US and its allies have repeatedly made up various excuses to start wars in different parts of the world. The most memorable example is the 2003 invasion of Iraq under the cover of accusations about the Saddam Hussein regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction that proved to be a pure invention by George W. Bush and Tony Blair. This has cast even more doubt on the Western powers' real intentions. Many people all over the world simply don't trust the US imperialists and their allies on this issue.
Thus it is not difficult to conclude that even if the Iranian regime's nuclear programme is a concern, it is not the main issue. It cannot, in itself, explain the US's agenda – why it is intensifying the contradictions with Iran and building a case for and preparing military intervention.
If that is not the real issue, what are the real contradictions that are pressing so hard on both sides, and what are its real sources? Why are the US and its allies unhappy with the Iranian Islamic regime?
Some points on the real contradictions between the US and the Islamic Republic and their sources
Anti-Americanism has been a feature of the Iranian Islamic regime over the last three decades. Its content should be more deeply discussed and understood. Yet no matter how much the US might have had difficulty with this feature, still it has gone along with the regime for most of the last three decades. At the same time the history of the relationship between the Iranian Islamic regime and the US over these three decades has been very complex and full of contradictions and compromises that can hardly be explained by noting one or two simple contradictions.
In fact, over the last three decades the world has been in a state of great turbulence. To be more precise, there have been various factors shaping and effecting the relations between the US and the Iranian regime. Among the most important factors are the history of US interference in Iran and the Iranian clergy's attitude towards the US during the reign of the Shah. Another very important factor, one that in most cases has been decisive, is that it has been the world situation that has influenced the relationship between the US and the Islamic regime of Iran. Also this relation has been affected by the contradiction between the US and Islamic fundamentalists that was much intensified for a time.
The 1979 Iranian revolution was not the first time that a popular uprising forced the Shah to abandon his throne and flee the country. He was overthrown by another uprising in 1953 under the nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and brought back to power by a CIA-backed coup d'état. The Shah launched a reign of terror, including the imprisonment, torture and murder of leftist and nationalist activists. The coup and the following 25 years of the Shah's rule, backed and supported by the US, instilled a deep hatred among the Iranian masses for both the Shah and the US. This played a powerful role in the 1979 revolution.
The early 1960s saw a growing contradiction between the clergy and the Shah and the US. This led to the emergence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and later his exile to Najaf, in Iraq. However, this contradiction was of a very different nature than that between the people and the Shah and the US. The clerics mainly did not support the 1953 uprising of the Iranian people; in fact, they supported the Shah's coup. (Ayatollah Abolghasem Kashani, the most prominent religious representative of the clergy, supported the coup and became the head of the Shah’s Parliament afterward.) That position was never refuted or countered by Khomeini or any of the leaders of the Islamic regime.
The primary reasons for the clerical establishment's opposition to the Shah had to do with aspects of the Shah's 1962 reforms (the so-called "White Revolution") in the country's social and economic structure. These US-backed reforms were meant to more fully integrate Iran's relatively closed economy into the network of world capital. The Islamic forces had a strong connection to the land and feudalism. They particularly did not like the partial land reforms and the rights given to women to vote and hold office, which they saw as a threat to women's traditional status and traditional society in general. They blamed the Shah and the US for opening the country to Western culture, which they saw as anti-Islamic.
During the 1979 Iranian revolution two different contradictions became entangled: on the one hand the people's struggle against the monarchy and the US that supported it, and on the other the contradiction between the clerics and the Shah and the West. This interference paved the way for Khomeini and the clerics to steal the leadership of the revolution and abort it. The overthrow of the Shah was a blow to US interests. But the West was also aware that they could better tolerate the Islamist forces than a revolutionary left that could possibly grow through the continuation of the revolution and take the lead. The West was also very concerned about Soviet influence and pro-Soviet forces such as the Tudeh Party, which had also influenced the Fedayeen guerilla organisation. So the US and other Western powers were quick to limit the extent of the Iranian revolution and the blow to their interests by negotiating the Islamists into power before the revolution got deeper and even more out of hand.
Khomeini and his followers claimed to be the manifestation of the people's revolution, but with their backward ideology they were in fact the thieves of the Iranian revolution and their rise to power was the result of a compromise between backward, reactionary forces and various imperialist powers seeking to put an end to the Iranian revolution.
Clearly one of the main concerns for the US and the West was Soviet influence and the possibility of a Soviet takeover of Iran after the revolution. So they rushed to cut a deal with the Islamists – in other words, the contradiction between the East and West blocs ended up playing a decisive role in this situation. But the East/West conflict over Iran did not end with the bringing of the Islamists to power. In fact, this contradiction continued to colour Iran's political sky over the next decade.
The Soviets saw that an opportunity had opened for them to influence the political scene in Iran and the Middle East, and they did not want to let it pass. They already had the Tudeh party, with its experienced leaders and cadres whom the USSR had trained for years. Through the Tudeh party they were able to split the Fedayeen and pull the majority section to their side, and retain some influence on the other faction as well. Both through the Tudeh party and other channels the Soviets were also influencing some factions of the Islamic forces in power.
During the first eight months of the Islamic regime, its relationship with the US was not acute. There even seem to have been some diplomatic contacts. The occupation of the US embassy in Tehran by so-called pro-Khomeini students had a dramatic effect on this situation. Khomeini subsequently supported the occupation, leading to the collapse of the first Islamic government, which had been formed by the religious nationalists.
While some observers try to explain the US embassy occupation as a spontaneous move by pro-Khomeini students, others believe hidden forces were also at work, or at least taking advantage. For example, some people interpret this move as part of a power struggle between the clerics and the religious nationalists. Others see it as a result of the influence of the Tudeh Party or Soviet influence through other channels. Whatever the real story behind the occupation, the opening for the Soviet Union to enter Iran's political sphere had widened. At the same time, some of the most vicious elements of the Islamic regime, such as the ayatollahs Beheshti, Rafsanjani and Khamenei, became stronger and played a bigger role in the regime. Some clerics, especially those in contact with the students, seemed to have adopted a pro-Soviet tone. This is not to say that Beheshti, Rafsanjani or Khamenei were associated with the Soviet bloc, but at that time there was common ground between them and the pro-Soviet elements and others who wanted to oust the religious nationalist government.
After the US embassy occupation, anti-US slogans became a hallmark of the regime. The revolutionary movement came under even more serious attack by the reactionaries in power. They tried to pin the label of pro-US or US spies on the revolutionaries who had been fighting the Shah and the US, even as negotiations between the US and some elements of the Islamic regime regarding the hostages and how to release them continued. While the Islamic regime claimed to be "neither East nor West", in fact some elements within the regime tended towards the Western bloc and others the Eastern imperialist bloc. In other words, the acute contradiction on the world level had its impact on the Islamic regime.
Ten months after the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, the Iran-Iraq war started. Again this was the result of a combination of contradictions. This time the US, which encouraged and fuelled this war for eight years, had multiple goals: to eliminate the pro-Soviet elements of the Iraqi regime, to regain the initiative in Iran's internal affairs, and, most importantly, to attack whatever was left of the revolution's achievements.
Doubtlessly there was an implicit unity between the US and the Islamic regime on the issue of suppressing the revolution. In fact, from very early on the Islamic regime used the war to suppress the revolutionary movement and unify and consolidate the regime around the Khomeini, Rafsanjani and Khamenei gang. This lead to the coup by Khomeini and the Islamic Republic Party on 20 June 1981, nine months after the start of the war.
Because of the rivalry between the superpowers and their respective attempts to grab Iran, and also the existence of the forces within the Iranian regime who had tendencies towards the West and the East, the Islamic regime was able to swing between the West and East bloc.
During the following years of terror and the suppression of the people and revolutionaries, tens of thousands of communists and other revolutionaries were murdered and many more imprisoned. Tens of thousands were driven into exile. During this period, the silence of the US and the West was deafening. This was an indication that they were satisfied with the brutality they saw the Islamic regime carry out.
The end of the war brought the consolidation of the Islamic Republic. The vast majority of the remaining political prisoners were executed in 1988. Western media and officials began talking about what they saw as the regime's stability. The end of the war meant an era of reconstruction for the Islamic regime. To accomplish that, it had to more fully integrate the country into the world economy and establish close relations with imperialist financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Ali Akbar Rafsanjani became president and his supporters gave him the name of "commander of reconstruction".
This period coincided with the beginning of the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The closing of the gap between the East and West began to limit the Islamic Republic's ability to manoeuvre between the two blocs. The elements close to the Soviets became weaker and had to change their position. At the same time the need for capital to build up the war-ravaged infrastructure and economy based on a new imperialist-dependent bourgeoisie exerted a Westward pull on the Islamic regime.
Due to the history of the relations between the West and the traditionalist Islamic clergy and the memory of the American embassy occupation, on the one hand, and on the other the Iranian people's hatred for US imperialism, it was impossible for the process of normalisation between the Islamic regime and the West to go smoothly. There were many contradictions and obstacles.
In fact, anti-US gestures and slogans had allowed the Islamic regime to gain many things, including stealing and then suppressing the revolution and murdering and imprisoning the revolutionaries, and consolidating its power and achieving a kind of legitimacy both in Iran and in the region. It was not easy for them to abandon such slogans, even though they had already taken up many aspects of imperialist dependency.
During Rafsanjani's presidency, relations with the West increased mainly through economic and financial cooperation. The export of oil to Western countries returned to its pre-revolution level. Trade with US allies in the region as well as European countries such as Germany and Italy also increased.
In the mid 1990s a regime faction that had helped it consolidate through the years of terror and suppression won the presidential election under the banner of reformism. Mohammad Khatami became the president and subsequently this faction won the majority in parliament.
They started to increase and improve Iran's relations with Western countries. Aiming to normalize relations with the West and Europe in particular, Khatami visited Germany, France and Italy. Germany and Italy became Iran's main trade partners. The giant French oil company Total invested a huge amount of capital in Iranian oil fields. The European countries objected to and defied the US law that would punish foreign companies for doing business with Iran.
France, Germany and UK even formed a team to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear programme, mainly to cool down the US approach towards Iran and prevent a possible military intervention.
With the reformist faction running the government, the power struggle within the Islamic regime sharpened. The conservative faction fought with all its might to regain the initiative. During this period the Islamic regime laid the basis to move towards a more defined relationship with the West. However this development was influenced not only by the regime's internal power struggle, but also, in a different sphere, the 11 September 2011 events in the US, the contradiction between the US and the Al-Qaeda Islamic fundamentalists, and the subsequent American strategy for the region. Along with Iraq and North Korea, Iran was termed part of the "axis of evil", countries the US accused of supporting terrorism.
After Khatami's two terms as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president with the help of the Basij (a paramilitary force) and the Pasdaran (the so-called Revolutionary Guards). He won a second term through a rigged election with the support of Ayatollah Khamenei, the spiritual leader of the Islamic regime after Khomeini. This sparked a massive protest movement that lasted for months and brought millions into the streets of Tehran and other cities. This power struggle within the Islamic regime was resolved violently with the elimination of the reformist faction of the ruling party from the regime and the imprisonment or exile of many of its leaders and members. As the reformists were sidelined, relations with the Western powers, in particular the Europeans, also went into decline.
Since then, Iran has strengthened its economic, political and military relations with China and Russia. During the last three years China became Iran's leading economic partner by far. China imports 22 percent of Iranian oil exports, whereas before the oil embargo all the EU countries combined were importing 18 percent. Overall, Asian countries, including China, India, Japan and South Korea, account for 60 percent of Iran's oil exports. Iran has increasingly conducted its currency transactions through Russian and Chinese banks. During the first four months of 2011, 80 percent of the regime's income from oil and gas exports went through Russian and Chinese banks. Other reports indicate that Iran is calling on Chinese and Russian oil companies to invest in its oil and gas industry.
While the Iranian economy has been increasingly integrated into the world capitalist system and this course has accelerated with today's globalization, at the same time the world situation has allowed its Islamist rulers to bounce between different imperialist powers. If the bouncing during the 1980s was between the US and Soviet blocs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it has been first between the US and European countries, and then between the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.
This change of direction by the Iranian regime is not unrelated to the orientation of different factions who have benefited from establishing relations with various imperialist powers. At the same time this approach also explains the Europeans' tougher position on the Iranian nuclear programme in the last few years.
Some points on the recent crisis
Going back to the recent crisis and the intensification of the contradiction, both the West and the Islamic regime are in the middle of economic and political crisis. The question is why both sides are heading towards a confrontation in such a situation.
The US and the West as a whole are pursuing their global interests in terms of control over the world, the new order that the US has been seeking to establish and stabilise for nearly two decades. Control of the Middle East and its oil is crucial and central to this world order. In fact, to secure its long-term position as the chief of the imperialist system in the present world situation, the US needs a regime in Iran that would cooperate with the American regional programme. Because of its nature, its factions and its historical formation, the Islamic regime refuses to play the classical role that the US requires in the region. Moreover, seeking allies it can rely on, it has increasingly distanced itself from the West and become oriented towards Russia and China in recent years. This is something that the US and the West cannot tolerate any longer and why they are running out of patience.
In addition to the crisis in the Islamic regime's relations with the US and the West, it is facing deeper internal crisis, too.
The regime's economic, political and ideological policies have reached their limits and put tremendous pressure on the masses. The uprising of the Iranian people after the rigged election showed the depth of discontent with the regime. The Iranian economy, driven by the interests of a narrow section of the ruling class inside the country and the world capitalist system, was in crisis even before the current sanctions. These sanctions imposed by the Western powers, particularly the boycott of Iranian oil and gas, will surely magnify the pressure on the country's economy, due to Iran's dependency on world imperialism.
Another crisis the Iranian regime is struggling with is the growing contention among its various factions. The most important aspects of this political crisis are the regime's chronic inability to unite its various factions and the loss of legitimacy among the masses. Both aspects have intensified in recent years. The ousting of the regime's reformist faction after the rigged election was considered a coup, but the elimination of the reformists did not result in unity among the other factions. On the contrary, it ignited a factional fight within the conservative sections of the ruling power structure. This has led to the formation of various military and security centres within the same state, leaving it weaker than ever, with no prospect of regaining its lost strength.
While the US is counting on the regime's weaknesses to make regime change possible now, despite the dangers inherent in an attack from abroad the Iranian regime might also be counting on it as a way to resolve its internal crisis, at least temporarily. It is already using the current threats and sanctions to unite its ranks and the masses, even if temporarily, and justify the economic crisis that is making people's lives harder and harder. In short, it is trying to use these various contradictions as a way to navigate safely through the current crises.
The people and the threat of a war
In this situation, both the imperialists and the Islamic regime are trying to fool the people and win their support. Some anti-regime forces call on people to support an invasion by the US and other imperialists to get rid of it. There are also those who oppose the US and call on the people to support the regime. Neither stance considers the people as a potentially independent force that can free itself from both the imperialists and the backward, reactionary Islamic regime.
The various contradictions in Iranian-US relations have been complex and involved compromises. But the contradiction between the people of Iran and US imperialism is not the same as the contradiction between the US and the Islamic Republic. At the same time the contradiction between the people and the Islamic regime is not the same as the contradiction between the US and the Islamic regime. If the people tail any of those forces, they will end up oppressed and exploited by one or both of them.
The Islamic religious regime is brutal, ideologically backward and anti-women. It is economically dependent on world imperialism and belongs to the past. The various factions within the regime are seeking to gain the upper hand over one another by relying on different big powers so as to be able to impose their rule over the people for the long term.
The people of Iran and the real anti-imperialists have no interest in siding with any of those forces. Their interests lie in fighting them all.
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