Iran 3

josh wrote:

This makes no sense.  It was clear that this was an accident given the military activity in the area going on that night.  (Why it was permitted to take off was a clear instance of negligence, but that's another matter).  What motive would they have had for intentionally shooting it down?

This court decision is based on an uncontested suit. The Iranians don't recognize the jurisdiction of an Ontario court to decide on this matter so they did not appear and it was a default win because nobody opposed it.

Iran: Teachers’ Strikes and Protests Show the Way Forward

The Iranian regime is in an unstable situation, they fear a new wave of generalized protests which is why they have increased repression in the last months.

On 23 December, a national day of action, tens of thousands of teachers and retired teachers — with women workers at the forefront — protested in over 100 cities in Iran, demanding higher wages, a decent and free education system and more. The workers protest at low wages, unpaid wages, a lack of medical insurance, repression and low pensions. The wages of Iranian teachers are mostly below the poverty line, which is a huge problem with rising inflation. Many teachers have to do a second or third job. The protests show the way forward for the working-class movement in Iran — particularly because of their strong organization. The “Coordination Council of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Union confederation” called on all teachers to protest and to express their demands all over the country.

Continued protests

Protests in the education sector have been going on for months and years now, led mainly by independent and combative teacher’s associations and unions. The day of action on 23 December was a reaction to the regime’s new law to restrict strikes and protests, and was also against an inadequate pay rise which won’t be enough to cover teachers’ needs, as well as against the new budget which includes new cuts and austerity measures.

Nationwide strikes were held on the 11 and 12 December. The next day they turned into big protest rallies, in which not only active teachers but also retired teachers took part. The protests spread to more than 200 cities across Iran. In Isfahan alone, over 10,000 teachers participated in a rally with the main slogans pointing towards the repression and arrests: “Imprisoned teachers should be released”. Due to the catastrophic economic and living situation, which is reflected in the high prices of goods, teachers find themselves in an extremely difficult situation.

quote:

Brutal repression

At the last big round of protests and strikes in mid-December, security forces attacked the teachers in a number of cities and arrested some leading activists. In total, over 200 teachers and trade unionists were arrested. The regime is in an unstable situation, they fear a new wave of generalized protests which is why they have increased repression in the last months.

Protesters chanted the regime’s response as “shameless” at the rallies, while authorities beat and temporarily detained several teachers’ representatives in front of the parliament building, including Rasoul Badaghi, the teachers’ union inspector, and threatened to fire others. However, fearing a backlash to Badaghi’s arrest, authorities were forced to release him a few days later.

The protests on 23 December took place despite officials and security forces texting teachers, warning them of the consequences in the days before! In Tehran, the regime tried to disperse the teachers as they exited the subway stations, but they gathered after leaving the stations. In Shiraz too thousands of teachers resisted the strong presence of the security forces. According to published reports, in Baharestan Square in Tehran, officers attacked male teachers to disperse them, but female teachers sat in the middle of the square and continued to sit in the square for about an hour, despite being attacked by security officers.

Organization and leadership

The big strength of the teachers’ movement is in its unity, organization and leadership. The recent strikes and protests were the best organized since years. Unlike other, very spontaneous struggles, the Coordination Council campaigned in the weeks before to mobilize and organize workers, even amongst regime-led unions. It seeks to organize rank and file teachers and radical trade unionists, unifying them under common demands for a decent education system in the interest of teachers and students.

With their combative approach, the leadership of the teachers’ association shows the necessary willingness to win the demands. The Coordination Council has emphasized in a recent resolution that “it will not stop demanding until the demands are fully met and will continue the protest process with the utmost intensity.”.....

EU Unveils Draft Proposal to Revive 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal

European Union negotiators have put forward a final draft text of a document that would restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. President Trump unilaterally pulled the United States from the landmark agreement in 2018, prompting Iran to expand its nuclear activities. On Monday, U.S. and Iranian negotiators wrapped up talks in Vienna, Austria, with a proposal that would see Iran halt the enrichment of some nuclear materials in exchange for relief from sanctions. Negotiations had remained stalled for months, in part due to President Biden’s decision to keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on a terrorist blacklist.

NDPP wrote:

Iran Denies Involvement in Novelist Rushdie's Attack

https://english.news.cn/20220815/7bf205df0d7a47b2965a3b3c2e16750f/c.html

"Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani, on Monday denied Tehran's involvment in the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie and urged Western media to refrain from leveling accusations against the Islamic republic.

When asked about Western media reports concerning Rushdie's attacker's connection with Iran, Kanaani said Iran 'categorically and officially' denied such a claim. 'No one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran, he added."

People don’t have the right to link Iran and its fatwa against Rushdie to the terrible assault and attempted murder of Rushdie???

Very many people are linking the assault on Rushdie to Iran's Islamic government and its fatwa.

Iran Submits Response to “Final Text” of New Nuclear Agreement

European officials are expressing hope that a new Iranian nuclear deal is within reach. On Monday night, Iran submitted a written response to what’s been described as the final text of the new agreement. Officials have told The New York Times that Iran has asked for some clarifications but has not raised any significant new objections to the text. The Biden administration has not yet submitted its response to the final text.

Crisis and class struggle in Iran 

A fresh wave of strikes and protests has swept across Iran since the beginning of 2022. Protests over water shortages and bread prices, as well as national strikes by teachers, have rocked the country. From the smallest province Khorasan, to the capital Tehran, people have taken to the streets with two chants: “Death to the dictator” and “Victory to the workers”. 

The Iranian economy is in a serious crisis. The currency hit its lowest value ever in June and annual inflation is sitting at 41.5 percent and climbing, according to figures from the Statistical Center of Iran. The price of essential foodstuffs has increased by 90.2 percent, and household expenditures have tripled, while real wages continue to decline. The government has responded by intensifying austerity measures. Most recently, the state has slashed wheat subsidies—creating a thirteen-fold increase in the price of bread—and eliminated pharmaceutical subsidies.  

Since 2018, the Iranian working class has shouldered the burden of crushing US sanctions. Then, in 2020, COVID-19 ravaged the country, with a (recorded) 7.5 million cases and more than 143,000 deaths—although the real number is likely to be much higher. Videos of hospitals flooded with sick people were posted on the internet, showing people pleading for medicine and dead bodies piled outside emergency rooms.

The current regime is incredibly unpopular. Last year hard-line conservative Ebrahim Raisi won the presidency after the lowest voter turnout in 40 years. Raisi is infamous for leading a series of witch-hunts against political dissidents. In 1988, he led the “death commission”, which presided over the execution of thousands of political prisoners. Raisi in power signifies the state’s increasingly repressive approach to internal crisis and dissent, as well as the ruling class’s growing imperialist ambitions in the region. 

Bread riots first emerged in the southern province of Khuzestan in early May after the government slashed wheat subsidies. Home to a large Arab minority and the militant sugarcane workers of the Haft Tappeh union, the province is a flashpoint of struggle. Riots and protests spread across 40 cities and towns, people occupying government buildings, storming banks and seizing flour warehouses. People in Junqan even attempted to burn down the base of a state-backed militia. 

These initial riots were crushed by the military, but soon anger resurfaced in Abadan city. The collapse of two high-rise buildings owned by Hossein Abdol-Baghi, one of the richest men in Abadan, killed more than 40 people. Protesters soon flooded the streets calling for Abdol-Baghi’s death and justice for the victims. Anger mounted to the point that Abdol-Baghi had to flee the city under the protection of security forces. When the government tried to pacify protesters by sending a spokesperson to the city, he was shouted down on live television by protesters chanting “Death to the dictator”......

Women Burn Hijabs in Iran as Protests Escalate over Killing of Mahsa Amini by “Morality Police”

quote:

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Well, Amy, we have seen and Iranians have seen image after image, footages, video, hand-held mobile phones capturing the violence of this morality police, or, as they literally call it, the guidance police, which, as they claim, is supposed to be guiding people into how to dress and how to behave Islamically. But it’s turned into an actual force of harassment against women, and some men, on the streets in Tehran, trying to arrest women, violently throwing them into police vans, beating them while arresting them. So, this anger against the morality police and the violence that they’re committing on the streets has been building up for years, and with the evidence that people have seen with their own eyes.

And then the death of this young woman, or, essentially, as people see it, the killing of her while she was in custody of the morality police — she was arrested, thrown in a van, taken to the detention center, where she was supposed to, quote-unquote, “go through a training” to be guided as to how to dress, and then, eventually, she ended up in the hospital, and her body was given to her family.

The anger has been building up for years among women and also men who — many women see herself in Mahsa Amini; many men see their own sister, their own daughter — essentially saying, “This could be any of us. And his could happen to any of us in the hands of the morality police.” So, the anger is just endless. It’s been building up, and now it’s just pouring into the streets of many cities across Iran.

quote:

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Definitely. So, women have been pushing back and resisting against the morality police individually or in smaller groups on a case-by-case situation whenever they were encountering the morality police. But this time it seems like a collective pushback coming to the street, and these iconic images, as you said, basically saying that enough is enough and that they’re fed up with this mandatory dress code that’s being forced on them.

We see images of women throwing their scarves in the fire, which in the past you would see women take off their scarves, and then, when the police was around, they would put it back on. When you throw it in the fire, the scarf is gone. It can’t be retrieved. So it’s an “enough is enough” show of defiance. Also, cutting the hair is a sign of grieving, is a sign of anger, so grieving for Mahsa Amini, showing that they want to take control of their own bodies, their own dignity, their rights.

And it’s just incredible, the bravery of the young generation. These are women in their twenties. University students in major universities in Iran are also protesting. And they’re really risking their lives, because we also see very violent crackdown and security forces shooting at protesters. And so, those who are on the street are really putting their lives on the line to try and demand their rights and equality.

quote:

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Sure. So, the protests have spread to large and small cities, as you said — I think at this point two dozen cities and small towns across the country — because this is the reality of the everyday life of any Iranian woman. There have been numerous stories, many, many stories, of religious women, women who observe the hijab in the private of their home, going outside and being stopped by the morality police because the supposed agent didn’t deem what they were wearing Islamic enough at that moment.

It’s also very subjective. It’s not very clear who they stop, why they stop, what is appropriate, what is not appropriate. Certain people with more resources — if they’re in their own car, if they’re in their houses in certain neighborhoods — seem to be getting away from this harassment. And women who are present in the public space in the cities — they take the Metro like Mahsa did, they take the bus, they go to work — seem to be subjected to more harassment by the morality police.

So, it’s spread to — as you also said, Nermeen, to religious cities, like Mashhad, like Qom, the religious center of Iran, because this is the reality of every woman who’s living in any part of Iran, and they’re angry about it. And again, they see — they feel solidarity because they see themselves in Mahsa, I mean, this young woman, 22-year-old, not even from Tehran, visiting a large city, and this happening to her.....

Chinese TV has some good images from the streets of Iran and the video that the government claims is her collapsing . Clearly she has become a trigger that has caused the people to take to the streets over the morality police. These are very serious defund the police riots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDEWuzO5b_M

Demonstrators chant slogans and clog a Tehran street Wednesday as they protest the death of Mahsa Amini. An unnamed person who does not work for the Associated Press took the photo, which the AP obtained outside Iran.