73. Animals in Captivity as Subjects of Medical Research

In the past, I have offered accounts of animal captivity such as aquariums as business, or their abuse such as bull fighting.  Of course, there are many other ways of human tyranny.  Today's New York Times carries the following article about a group of chimpanzees who have been subject to various abuses, from serving zoos and circuses to becoming medical or military research subjects.  Now, at their old age, National Institute of Health wants to once again use these old chimpanzees for hepatitis research.  Dan Frosch gives a moving account of these close evolutionary cousins of ours that should be read.  Just remember that there are literally millions of animals used as "research" subjects, including military "research."  

For a fuller account of such criminal practices read chapter 2 of the powerful book by Peter Singer, bioethicist, Animal Liberation.  Some may ask if its is necessary to use animals for medical research.  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has consistently and convincingly argued that alternative options are generally available.  I hope to write more about these issues in the future.  For now, please take a moment to read the following article. 

By Dan Frosch, The New York Time, Sep. 2, 2010

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — Flo the chimpanzee bounds about her enclosure, hurls a rubber ball then stares quizzically at the New Mexico green chili pepper that will be her morning snack.

It has been a long time since Flo was on exhibit at the Memphis Zoo, even longer since she learned to smoke cigarettes during a stint with the circus. Most recently, she was a research chimpanzee here in New Mexico, part of an expansive biomedical testing program for hepatitis C and H.I.V.

At the moment, though, she is out of a job — but perhaps not for long.

Flo and the 185 other chimpanzees who live at the Alamogordo Primate Facility at Holloman Air Force Base have not been research subjects for nearly a decade — part of an agreement between the National Institutes of Health and the military, which prohibits using the animals for biomedical tests on the base.

But recently, the health institute decided it wanted to use the chimp colony for medical research again, primarily to help develop the elusive hepatitis C vaccine. This past June, the institute began shipping some of the animals by special trucks to the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio and plans on moving the remaining chimpanzees by the end of 2011.

The move has spurred outrage among animal rights advocates, primate experts and politicians, who say the chimpanzees — many of them middle-aged and elderly — should get to live out the rest of their lives in peace after years of invasive research. It has also cast a fresh light on the debate over the tipping point between science and ethics, with everyone from the legendary primatologist Jane Goodall to Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico weighing in.

“These chimpanzees have given up their freedom, if not their natural environment, their bodies, their health, their children to research,” said Laura Bonar, program director for Animal Protection of New Mexico, which wants the government to turn the Alamogordo facility into a retirement sanctuary for the chimps. “And at the end of their lives, we can give them something back.”

For the health institute, though, the Alamogordo chimpanzees represent an invaluable resource. As per the agreement with the Air Force, biomedical research cannot be conducted on the animals. That agreement was forged after the institute acquired the chimpanzees from the Coulston Foundation, an infamous New Mexico research laboratory that was found by federal officials to have abused and neglected the animals.

In 2001, the institute gave the private Charles River Laboratories a 10-year contract to provide medical care to the chimps, most of whom have been infected or exposed to hepatitis C and H.I.V. through prior research.

These days, chimps like Flo, who at 53 is the oldest of the Alamogordo colony, spend their days living in small groups in geodesic domes: foraging for food, swinging from structures and whooping greetings at visitors and one another.

Harold Watson, who heads the chimpanzee research program for the National Center for Research Resources, said that with the end of the contract, it only makes sense to use the chimps for their original purpose. The research — which will most likely entail drawing periodic blood samples, liver biopsies and in some cases inoculations of hepatitis C — will be carefully monitored, he said.

“I think people envision pictures of monkeys with electrodes in their heads,” Dr. Watson said. “This is not what we’re talking about.”

The history of primate research, however, has been long and controversial. Because of their genetic closeness to humans, chimpanzees are considered well-suited for studies of how various infectious diseases or psychological environments might affect mankind.

But some have questioned whether that research has yielded any substantive breakthroughs, and the United States is currently the only developed country that continues large-scale confinement of chimps in laboratories, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Supporters of the research say the animals have been critical in the development of hepatitis A and B vaccines.

Pending Congressional legislation known as the Great Ape Protection Act would retire about 500 federally owned chimpanzees currently in laboratories to permanent sanctuary. The Alamogordo colony traces its lineage to the Air Force’s space chimp experiments in the late 1950s. A decade later, the toxicologist Frederick Coulston set out to build the world’s largest captive colony of chimpanzees for research, in New Mexico. His foundation’s tenure was marred by charges of severe mistreatment.

That legacy still haunts the health institute, which got 288 of the chimpanzees around 2001 and has tried to distance itself from the Coulston Foundation.

John Gluck, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of New Mexico, who has visited the Alamogordo colony at least four times since the 1970s, is worried what a move to Texas would mean for the animals’ physical and mental health, particularly given “the tremendous price” paid by most of the chimpanzees while research subjects of the Coulston Foundation, he said.

“N.I.H., in general, is a place I respect,” Dr. Gluck said. “But it seems to me that they’ve lost both their ethical and scientific compass here.”

Governor Richardson has also urged the institute to reconsider, and Ms. Goodall wrote to the institute that the chimpanzees “will surely suffer considerable physical and emotional distress from this plan.”

Dr. Lon Lammey, the director of the Alamogordo primate facility for Charles River, the private contractor, disputed the notion that the move would be harmful, and said he was “confident the animals would continue to receive optimal medical care.”

Despite the mounting pressure, the institute has shown little sign of changing its plan.

Some 15 miles from the base, a separate group of 82 chimpanzees are also waiting to be moved, but to a lush Florida sanctuary run by Save the Chimps, a rescue group.

The animals were part of a larger group handed over to the rescue organization by the Coulston Foundation after its demise and have gradually been moved to Florida over the past few years. Save the Chimps wants the institute to permanently retire the rest of the Alamogordo chimpanzees to a sanctuary as well.

At the old Coulston facility, which has been transformed into a temporary sanctuary itself, a 13-year-old chimp named JJ clutched a bundle of security blankets while readying for lunch. As a worker placed bushels of fruit in the enclosures, the chimpanzees began to yelp in unison, their cries carrying across the high desert.

72. Fidel Castro Takes Blame for Prosecution of Gays in Cuba

BBC, August 31, 2010

The former president told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that there were moments of great injustice against the gay community.

"If someone is responsible, it's me," he said.

In the 1960s and 70s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned or sent to "re-education camps".

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• Castro 'to address Cuba assembly'
• Castro champions gay rights in Cuba
• Country profile: Cuba

Mr Castro said homosexuals had traditionally been discriminated in Cuba, just as black people and women.

But, nevertheless, he admits he didn't pay enough attention to what was going on against the gay community.

"At the time we were being sabotaged systematically, there were armed attacks against us, we had too many problems," said the 84-year-old Communist leader.

"Keeping one step ahead of the CIA, which was paying so many traitors, was not easy."

In 1979, homosexuality was decriminalised and, more recently, there have been efforts to legalise same-sex unions.

71. Study Implicates Humans in Giant Turtle's Demise, 3,000 Years Ago

BBC, July 16, 2010

Humans helped drive a species of giant turtle to extinction almost 3,000 years ago, according to a study in PNAS.

It is one of the first cases that clearly shows that humans played a role in the demise of the giant, extinct animals known as "megafauna".

An Australian research team discovered turtle leg bones - but not shells or skulls - on an island of Vanuatu.

The bones date to just 200 years after humans' arrival, suggesting they were hunted to extinction for their meat.

However, the turtles lived far longer than other megafauna - which included the famed woolly mammoth; while Australian megafauna is thought to have died out almost 50,000 years ago, it appears that these turtles survived for far longer - until the arrival of a people known as the Lapita.

Debate over what caused the megafauna to die out has raged for 150 years, since Darwin first spotted the remains of giant ground sloths in Chile. Possible causes have ranged from human influence to climate change in the past, even to a cataclysmic meteor strike.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS).

'Enormous pressure'

The research team, led by Professor Matthew Spriggs from the University of New South Wales, discovered a graveyard full of bones on a site on the island of Efate that was known to be home to a Lapita settlement.

The turtles, of a never-before-seen species in the genus Meiolania, had a length of two-and-a-half metres and sported fearsome horns on their heads.

But the bones were overwhelmingly from the creatures' legs - their only fleshy and edible part. The team went on to date the bones, finding the last ones occurring in layers of sediment that were laid down about 200 years later than the arrival of the Lapita.

Professor Chris Turney of the University of Exeter in the UK called the paper a "really good piece of work", second only to a similarly damning find in New Zealand confirming humans' role in the extinction of the giant birds known as moa.

"It's a really lovely example - you have this amazing beast that's been around for tens of millions of years surviving as a relic population on this island. Then these people arrived and they basically disappear in a couple of hundred years," he told BBC News.

"When people turn up they put these populations under enormous pressure - they might not be giving the final, killer blow but they're adding another level of stress. It looks like these fantastic turtles are another example."

70. Disaster at the Top of the World

The readers of Our Place in the World would be interested in an essay by Thomas Homer-Dixon, professor of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, in today's New York Times.  He reports on the fast disappearing arctic ice cap and its implicaitons for human societies.  For the bulk of humanity, melting ice cap is neither observable nor tangible.  Other much more mundane issues, such as what to eat for dinner will come first.  So, it is worthwhile to read the learned opinion of someone who has studied the arctic to report on the crisis and its implications.  Unfortunately, professor Homer-Dixon's concerns are limited to the stability of the world's geopolitical status.  However, it does not take much imagination to realize, as this journal has pointed out consistently, that the future of human race is imtimately tied to the health of the planet and its ecosystems and species.  He ask policymakers to prepare for the ensuing crisis but not to take measures now to prevent further damage and to reverse it.  He also does not address how his readers can act as citizens of the world to force the power structure to take step and prepare to throw out the entire political class and act directly in their own and in planet's interest.  In the same page, Paul Krugman write on how it is very likely that Congress will keep tax cuts for the top 1% of the U.S. population (those with annual income of 500k or more), amounting to 680 billion in ten years, while asking to cut the budget for social programs in the name of cutting the deficit. 

*     *     *

By Thomas Homer-Dixon, The New York Times, August 23, 2010

Standing on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.

In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and this summer its sea ice is melting at a near-record pace. The sun is heating the newly open water, so it will take longer to refreeze this winter, and the resulting thinner ice will melt more easily next summer.

At the same time, warm Pacific Ocean water is pulsing through the Bering Strait into the Arctic basin, helping melt a large area of sea ice between Alaska and eastern Siberia. Scientists are just beginning to learn how this exposed water has changed the movement of heat energy and major air currents across the Arctic basin, in turn producing winds that push remaining sea ice down the coasts of Greenland into the Atlantic.

Globally, 2010 is on track to be the warmest year on record. In regions around the world, indications abound that earth’s climate is quickly changing, like the devastating mudslides in China and weeks of searing heat in Russia. But in the world’s capitals, movement on climate policy has nearly stopped.

Democrats in the Senate decided last month that they wouldn’t push for approval of a climate bill. In Canada, Australia, Japan and countries across Europe, the global economic crisis and other near-term concerns have pushed climate issues to the back burner. For China and India, economic growth and energy security are more vital priorities.

Climate policy is gridlocked, and there’s virtually no chance of a breakthrough. Many factors have conspired to produce this situation. Human beings are notoriously poor at responding to problems that develop incrementally. And most of us aren’t eager to change our lifestyles by sharply reducing our energy consumption.

But social scientists have identified another major reason: Climate change has become an ideologically polarizing issue. It taps into deep personal identities and causes what Dan Kahan of Yale calls “protective cognition” — we judge things in part on whether we see ourselves as rugged individualists mastering nature or as members of interconnected societies who live in harmony with the environment. Powerful special interests like the coal and oil industries have learned how to halt movement on climate policy by exploiting the fear people feel when their identities are threatened.

Given this reality, we’ll almost certainly need some kind of devastating climate shock to get effective climate policy. That’s the key lesson of the recent financial crisis: when powerful special interests have convinced much of the public that what they’re doing isn’t dangerous, only a disaster that discredits those interests will provide an opportunity for comprehensive policy change like the Dodd-Frank financial regulations.

It is possible that the changes I’m seeing from the ship deck are the beginning of the climate shock that will awaken us to the danger we face. Scientists aren’t sure what will happen when a significant portion of the Arctic Ocean changes from white, sunlight-reflecting ice to dark, sunlight-absorbing open water. But most aren’t sanguine.

These experts are especially concerned that new patterns of air movement in the Arctic could disrupt the Northern Hemisphere’s jet streams — which are apparently weakening and moving northward. This could alter storm tracks, rainfall patterns and food production far to the south.

The limited slack in the world’s food system, particularly its grain production, can amplify the effects of disruptions. Remember that two years ago, when higher oil prices encouraged farmers to shift enormous tracts of cropland from grain to biofuel production, grain prices quickly doubled or tripled. Violence erupted in dozens of countries. Should climate change cause crop failures in major food-producing regions of Europe, North America and East Asia, the consequences would likely be far more severe.

Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to do in the meantime. When a crisis does occur, the societies with response plans on the shelf will be far better off than those that are blindsided. The task for national and regional leaders, then, is to develop a set of contingency plans for possible climate shocks — what we might call, collectively, Plan Z.

Some work of this kind is under way at intelligence agencies and research institutions in the United States and Europe. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has produced one of the best studies, “Responding to Threat of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes.” But for the most part these initiatives are preliminary and uncoordinated.

We need a much more deliberate Plan Z, with detailed scenarios of plausible climate shocks; close analyses of options for emergency response by governments, corporations and nongovernmental groups; and clear specifics about what resources — financial, technological and organizational — we will need to cope with different types of crises.

In the most likely scenarios, climate change would cause some kind of regional or continental disruption, like a major crop failure; this disruption would cascade through the world’s tightly connected economic and political systems to produce a global effect. Severe floods dislocating millions of people in a key poor country — as we’re seeing right now in Pakistan — could allow radicals to seize power and tip a geopolitically vital region into war. Or drought could cause an economically critical region like the North China plain to exhaust its water reserves, forcing people to leave en masse and precipitating a crisis that reverberates through the world economy.

A climate shock in North America is easy to imagine. Say a prolonged drought causes major cities in the American Southeast or Southwest to run out of water; both regions have large urban populations pushing against upper limits of water supply. The news clips of cars streaming out of Atlanta or Phoenix might finally push our leaders to do something serious about climate change.

If so, a Plan Z for this particular scenario would help us make the most of the opportunity. It would provide guidelines for regional and local leaders on how to respond to the crisis. We would decide in advance where supplies of water would be found and who would get priority allocations; local law enforcement and emergency responders would already have worked out lines of authority with federal agencies and the military.

Then there are the broader steps to mitigate climate change in general. Here, Plan Z would address many critical questions: How fast could carbon emissions from automobiles and energy production be ramped down, and what would be the economic, political and social consequences of different rates of reduction? Where would we find the vast amounts of money needed to overhaul existing energy systems? How quickly could different economic sectors and social groups adapt to different kinds of climate impacts? And if geoengineering to alter earth’s climate — for example, injecting sulfates into the high atmosphere — is to be an option, who would make the decision and undertake the operation?

Looking over the endless, empty horizon of the Arctic, I find it hard to imagine this spot being of any importance to global affairs. But it is just one of many places now considered marginal that could be the starting point for a climate shock that plays a central role in the evolution of human civilization. We need to be ready.

69. Animal Welfare Activists to Protest Bullfighting in Spain

By Raphael Minder, The New York Times, August 20, 2010

MADRID — The Guggenheim museum in Bilbao is set to be the scene of a vivid protest on Saturday as about 150 semi-naked animal welfare activists, some smeared in red paint to simulate the blood of a dying bull, plan to lie on the museum grounds to demand an end to bullfighting.

Later in the day, a larger protest organized by three animal rights associations is due to be held in front of Bilbao’s bullring before the opening corrida of the city’s annual festival.

After a decision last month by lawmakers in Catalonia to ban bullfighting in their region starting in 2012, proponents of such a ban have renewed their efforts to spread similar legislation to other parts of Spain.

Protests have recently been staged at almost every city festival, which are traditionally held during the summer vacation period and include bullfighting as part of the celebrations.

In Vitoria, which like Bilbao is in the Basque region, activists plastered posters around the city this month showing a man in underwear spitting blood, with banderillas — the barbed sticks used in a corrida — planted in his back.

“We want to benefit from this major success in Catalonia to extend this ban to the rest of the Spanish territory,” said José Ramón Mallén Vargas-Machuca, a coordinator of the Bilbao event and a representative from Fundación Equanimal, an animal welfare association. “But we’re not trying to get into any debate about identity and nationalism and any of the arguments that are now being used by politicians that have nothing to do with animal rights.”

Indeed, the vote in Catalonia was overshadowed by a fierce political debate over whether the region should be granted a greater degree of autonomy after a disputed ruling by Spain’s constitutional court over the issue. Some local politicians argued that bullfighting no longer had its place in Catalan identity.

In turn, Spain’s main opposition center-right Popular Party has turned its defense of bullfighting into a rallying cry to protect Spanish values. The party’s leader, Mariano Rajoy, attended a bullfight shortly after Catalonia’s decision. Mr. Rajoy not only called for people to take more pride in being Spanish but also said the ban was an attack on individual freedom akin to preventing hunting, fishing or motorbike racing.

Galicia is another region where supporters of a ban hold high hopes because bullfighting does not feature so prominently in local traditions. The Canary Islands, meanwhile, banned bullfighting in 1991, several years after the last fight had been held there.

Since the Catalan vote, however, animal welfare activists have also criticized as hypocritical the decision to maintain festivities in several Catalan towns this month in which bulls take center stage, but without being fought to death. Instead, the horns of the bull are set on fire or the animals are run into the sea.

Legal experts like José M. de Areilza, dean of the IE Law School in Madrid, noted that the government had long anticipated a backlash against bullfighting but expected such pressure to come more from outside than within the country. Spain pushed for a clause to be added to the Treaty of Amsterdam, which amended European Union treaties in 1997, to guarantee that animal welfare considerations would be weighed against Europe’s traditional cultures.

68. Human Noise Pollution in Ocean Can Lead Fish Away from Good Habitats and Off to Their Death

Science Daily (August 13, 2010).  

The growing amount of human noise pollution in the ocean could lead fish away from good habitat and off to their death, according to new research from a UK-led team working on the Great Barrier Reef.

After developing for weeks at sea, baby tropical fish rely on natural noises to find the coral reefs where they can survive and thrive. However, the researchers found that short exposure to artificial noise makes fish become attracted to inappropriate sounds.

In earlier research, Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Researcher in the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences discovered that baby reef fish use sounds made by fish, shrimps and sea urchins as a cue to find coral reefs. With human noise pollution from ships, wind farms and oil prospecting on the increase, he is now concerned that this crucial behaviour is coming under threat.

He said: "When only a few weeks old, baby reef fish face a monumental challenge in locating and choosing suitable habitat. Reef noise gives them vital information, but if they can learn, remember and become attracted towards the wrong sounds, we might be leading them in all the wrong directions."

Using underwater nocturnal light traps, Dr Simpson and his team collected baby damselfish as they were returning to coral reefs. The fish were then put into tanks with underwater speakers playing natural reef noise or a synthesised mix of pure tones. The next night the fish were put into specially designed choice chambers (long tubes with contrasting conditions at each end in which fish can move freely towards the end they prefer) with natural or artificial sounds playing. All the fish liked the reef noise, but only the fish that had experienced the tone mix swam towards it, the others were repelled by it.

Dr Simpson said: "This result shows that fish can learn a new sound and remember it hours later, debunking the 3-second memory myth."

His collaborator, Dr Mark Meekan added: "It also shows that they can discriminate between sounds and, based on their experience, become attracted to sounds which might really mess up their behaviour on the most important night of their life."

In noisy environments the breakdown of natural behaviour could have devastating impacts on success of populations and the replenishment of future fish stocks.

Dr Simpson said: "Anthropogenic noise has increased dramatically in recent years, with small boats, shipping, drilling, pile driving and seismic testing now sometimes drowning out the natural sounds of fish and snapping shrimps. If fish accidentally learn to follow the wrong sounds, they could end up stuck next to a construction site or follow a ship back out to sea."

The study is published in Behavioral Ecology and was carried out at Lizard Island Research Station. The work was supported with a fellowship for Dr Simpson from the UK Natural Environment Research Council and by the Australian Institute of Marine Science for Dr Mark Meekan.

67. The Iranian Revolution, Imperialism, and Fidel Castro

By Kamran Nayeri, October 12, 2010

The Iranian revolution of 1979 was a truly popular democratic and anti-imperialist urban uprising

A friend and occasional reader of this page in Cuba has asked me for my perspective on the recent development concerning Iran.  

No doubt her interest is reinforced by Fidel Castro’s recent commentaries.  It is refreshing to see, once again, Fidel stepping up as the world leader that tells the truth about the current affairs; in this case the danger posed by the nuclear armed U.S. and Israeli warships that are poised to enforce the fourth round of UN Security Council economic sanctions against Iran.

Castro, who will turn 84 on August 13, is a highly insightful revolutionary politician.  So, his warnings should be taken seriously. In his June 24 “Reflections” column ("How I Wish I Was Wrong") in the Communist Party newspaper Granma he offered his first warning. On July 4, he followed the same theme in "Impossible Joy." He returned to this topic in the popular TV program Roundtable, the first time he appeared on TV since he fell ill four years ago.  He reiterated the same theme in a second TV appearance, this time addressing the Cuban diplomats.  And finally this past Saturday, he included the present danger to Iran in his 10 minutes address to Cuba’s national assembly of People’s Power in Havana.  Clearly, Fidel Castro feels very strongly that the United States and Israel are seriously considering imminent attack on Iran, possibly using nuclear weapons.

As an Iranian-born socialist who was part of the movement that overthrow the CIA-installed dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and a participant in the 1979 Iranian revolution, and as a long time supporter of the Cuban revolution, I feel in agreement with Fidel’s warnings intended to mobilize support for Iranian people in the face of imperialist and Zionist war moves.  I further believe that the Iranian socialist currents, and more broadly international socialist movements, are not paying sufficient attention to this danger.

The revolutionary socialist strategy against imperialism requires a transitional program for ecosocialist revolution to advance the power of working class and its allies.[i] The logic of the proletarian anti-imperialist struggle is the establishment a government workers and their allies that will dismantle the capitalist state machinery, establishes its own institutions and extend the process of the ecsocialist revolution.  I use the verb “extend” because the ecosocialist revolution is a world process in time and in space.  This revolutionary ecosocialist strategy is based on the understanding that imperialism is the foreign policy of capitalism.  As long as capitalism exists, imperialism lives: capitalism by nature strives to exploit all corners of the world.

It follows that struggle against imperialism is not a conjectural struggle even though it will include many tactical confrontations.  Further, it is an essential part of the international process of transition from capitalism to socialism.  The Cuban revolution itself offers a great example.  To solve their historic problems, Cuban revolutionaries, led by the team organized by Fidel Castro, not only overthrow the Batista dictatorship but had to go on to establish a workers and peasants government, and a state based on the power of the working people, and a planned economy.  The internationalism of the Cuban revolution is not a choice but a necessity.  The struggle against imperialism, in particular, American imperialism, continues to be an integral part of the process of Cuban socialist development, itself being part of a world-historic process.

*    *    *

In this context, I find myself also compelled to clarify some errors of historical and political nature in compañero Fidel’s statements.  If left uncorrected, they will confuse and undermine effective anti-imperialist defense of the Iranian people in Cuba and perhaps elsewhere.

1.   There are disturbing factual errors in Fidel's historical recollections.  For example, in his June 24 Reflection ("How I Wish I Was Wrong) he writes:

"The Shah of Iran had been defeated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 without using a single weapon. The United States imposed the Shah after the war on that nation with the use of chemical weapons, whose components it supplied to Iraq together with the information needed by its combat units and which were deployed by them against the Revolutionary Guards." (please see the first comment to this post regarding this paragraph.  KN)

First, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died in exile in Egypt on July 27, 1980, before the start of the Iran-Iraq war.  The war began on September 22, 1980, when Saddam Hussein’s army invaded oil-rich Khuzestan province in southwest Iran.  So, somehow Fidel is confusing a number of things: (1) U.S. imposition of the Shah in August 19, 1953 after a successful CIA coup; (2) U.S. attempts to return the Shah to power after the 1979 revolution (that ended by July 27, 1980 when he died); (3) Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces that occurred a few years later (one occasion conclusively verified was in Huwaizah on March 13, 1984).  I am puzzled with this confusion of historical facts and how it is that no one (including the editors of Granma International) bothered to check the “Reflection” before it appeared in print.  But that is another matter.

Second, it is surprising from a communist leader to ascribe the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah to one man, Ayatollah Khomeini.  And it is erroneous to say that the victory was achieved "without using a single weapon."

Surely, compañero Fidel must known that the rebellion against the Shah's autocracy began by Tehran's slum dwellers (peasants who were forced off land after his “land reform”).  This and other factors (including president Carter’s “human rights” oratory) opened political space for intellectuals and others.  The clergy joined in, not as a single block and not with the intention to overthrow the regime.  Surely, Ayatollah Khomeini led the least compromising faction.  But he also worked extra hard to systematically eliminate any independent political forces from the leadership of the mass movement. Who led the February 1979 revolution? It was the working people in their millions who defied all dangers and made the streets of major Iranian cities their own.  It was the Iranian youth who appealed to the soldiers not to shot even as they opened fire, killing dozens.  It was workers strike, especially the general strike of the oil workers that defeated the state of emergency in Tehran and forced the Shah into exile. The February insurrection happened despite Ayatollah Khomeini's attempt to make a deal with the Shah's army brass. When armed conflict broke out between junior officers and ranks of the air force that were attacked by the Royal Guards forces, masses intervened, some with arms in hand, in an insurrection that lasted three days to complete nation-wide. While relatively bloodless, the victory was assured with armed insurrections in Tehran and other major cities.  Thus, the notion of a “bloodless” revolution waged by an Ayatollah is a fiction.

As Marxian theory predicated, the revolution was the emergence of grassroots movements of workers, peasants, oppressed nationalities, students, intellectuals, soldiers, and women to fight for their own demands.  Like all genuine revolutions, this historic event was a deep going democratic and free process, more free and democratic than any institutionalized process I have seen anywhere else in the world.  

An outlines of how this historic revolution unfolded and then destroyed resulting in the formation of a theocratic capitalist state can be found in The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iran Revolution: Its Lessons for Today. I, and Alireza Nasab, another socialist participant in the revolution, presented this brief outline to the Third Marx Conference in Havana, in 2006. 

A key point is this: the joint claim of Islamic Republic and imperialism that the Iranian people rose up to bring down the monarchy and to install a theocratic capitalist regime is a lie.  It is true that only a month after the February 1979 revolution, in an undemocratic referendum that Ayatollah Khomeini put before the Iranian people a large voted “for” an “Islamic Republic.”  However, neither Ayatollah Khomeini nor no one else at that time offered even an outline of what this regime would look like.  Furthermore, a “no” vote was interpreted as opposition to the revolution that had just overthrew the monarchy!  Thus, the “yes” vote could only be interpreted as an overwhelming affirmation of the revolutionary overthrow the old regime and not as support for a theocratic capitalist regime that was gradually built through bloody repression of the masses.

Third, it is not true, as it is implied by companero Fidel’s reference to president Ahmadinejad’s role in the Iran-Iraq war, that the leaders of Islamic Republic followed a revolutionary strategy to fight Saddam Hussein’s invasion or imperialist backing of Iraq.  While Saddam Hussein’s regime bears the responsibility for starting the war by invading Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime did not try to prevent this imminent attach or to prepare the Iranian people. Moreover, despite the inaptitude of the Islamic Republic government in the face of invading Iraqi army, Iranian armed forces supported by tens of thousands of revolutionary youth that included most political currents, including socialist parties, were able to push the Iraqi army out of practically all Iranian territory within the first 18 months of the war.  With the liberation of Khoramshahr, it was possible to sue for peace from a position of strength. Instead, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the continuation of the war to “liberate Karbala” (a holly region for the shia Muslims) and to “liberate Quds” (Jerusalem).  A world-class socialist military strategist like Fidel Castro does know that such a war policy has little to do with a revolutionary socialist strategy or would have had no chance of success.  But Ayatollah Khomeini’s policy was a cold calculated move to use the war to suppress all internal political opposition to his rule, beginning with the independent movements of workers and peasants.  Yadullah Khosroshahi, a central leader of the oil workers before and during the revolution, who died last February in exile in London, explained how Saddam Hussein’s invasion aimed at the center of oil workers power in Khuzestan and how Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime completed Saddam Hussein’s work by dispersing and repressing oil workers throughout Iran.  I should add that the invading Iraqi forces executed leaders of peasant shoras (councils) in the early phase of the war.  Khosroshahi shared the same message with the Cuban workers when he told the Lenin steelworkers in Havana on April 29, 2001 that he was jailed and tortured five years in the Shah’s jails and five years in Ayatollah Khomeini’s jails for defending workers rights.[ii] Khosroshahi had a list of 500 workers who were executed by the Islamic Republic for their activities in defense of workers’ rights. So, the Iran-Iraq war continued for another 6 ½ years with at least 500,000 death and 1,000.000 wounded and hundred of billions of dollars in damages.[iii] At the time, the Cuban position correctly described the Iran-Iraq as fratricidal and called for a negotiated peace.  

Fourth, Fidel’s overtly optimistic view of the current ability of the Islamic Republic to fight off an imperialist attack is misplaced.  He writes:

“Today, in 2010, after 31 years, both the United States and Israel are underestimating the one million soldiers in the Iranian Armed Forces and their capacity for fighting on land, and the air, sea and land forces of the Revolutionary Guards.

“In addition to these, there are the 20 million men and women, aged from 12 to 60, selected and systematically trained by its diverse military institutions... (How I Wish I Was Wrong).”

However, due to the influence of warring Islamic Republic factions in the Iranian armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards,[iv] they are far from unified.  As the events of the past 18 months and the history of Islamic Republic regime demonstrate, this is a regime in constant crisis.  It is far from clear that the armed forces will fight an imperialist attack with a singular purpose.[v] 

Further, the view that there is a volunteer armed force of “20 million men and women, aged from 12 to 60” ready to fight imperialism is even more naive. 

Ayatollah Khomeini first raised the idea of the “Army of 20 Million” during the early stages of the Iran-Iraq war.  It never went beyond the propaganda stage.  And how could it?  Just consider my own experience.  Right after the February insurrection, I and about 30 other young men in our neighborhood in Tehran formed an armed defense committee to protect against sabotage by the agents of the old regime.  Armed with 15 G3 guns expropriated from the army base nearby during the insurrection, we recruited a revolutionary member pf the armed forces to train us.  However, one of the first demands of the Ayatollah after the insurrection was to disarm the people.  A mullah from the local mosque showed up asking the youth to return the arms and continue their “revolutionary work” under his command. This intervention divided our small group.  Some who considered themselves “Muslim” and agreed to take orders from the Mullah left and took the arms with them. The untied defense committee composed of youth with different ideological views and political affiliations was dissolved forcing us to return to sectarian group politics. The same policy was carried out throughout the country.

The Mobilization of the Poor (Bassij-e Mostazafin) that was suppose to be the nucleus of the “Army of 20 Million” continually purged volunteers in factories, schools and neighborhoods who did not pass ideological test of loyalty to Ayatollah Khomeini and local clerical authorities.  The same policy was carried out in the war fronts.  Today, the core of Bassij-e Mostazafin is mostly semi-fascist motorcycle ridding, chain wielding gangs that attack students, workers and others who dare to protest repressive clerical capitalist policies of the Islamic Republic regime.

Fifth, compañero Fidel also mischaracterizes the protest mass movement in Iran. He writes:

“The government of the United States drew up a plan to instigate a political movement that, supporting itself on capitalist consumerism, would divide Iranians and defeat the regime (How I Wish I Was Wrong).”

There are several problems with this formulation. Is compañero Fidel referring to a specific U.S. plan at a specific time?  Is he alluding to a specific “political movement”?  Is he talking about the mass protest movement that erupted after the presidential election last year? 

Of course, United States has a history of instigating “political movements” that serve its policy in Iran or elsewhere.[vi]  But including a blanket statement without a specific reference to the political situation in Iran will only confuse the revolutionary strategy against imperialism.  If Fidel is referring to the recent mass protest movement, it was certainly not an imperialist plot.  Ayatollah Khamenei (the “Supreme Leader”) and president Ahmadinejad, and their allies made such a claim as part of their factional struggle.  But in reality hundreds of thousands of people from all social classes and groups protested what they believed was a sham election.  The truth is that all elections in the Islamic Republic, beginning with the referendum noted earlier, have been undemocratic.  Working people have generally never had a chance to vote for their own parties and platforms in these elections.[vii] So, in the 2009 presidential election, when factional struggle within the Islamic Republic regime heated up, ordinary Iranians saw an opportunity to express their own demands.  The two leading “opposition” candidates, Mir Hussein Mussavi and Ayatollah Karoubi, courted these angry voters.  Some of Mr. Mussavi’s election campaign positions and statements aimed to draw voters from the pro-western Iranians.[viii]  Some factions of imperialism saw an opportunity in the Islamic Republic factionalism and the entry of masses into the political arena.  So, they began to orient their positions towards the “reform” factions.  However, this is a far cry from claiming that the U.S. instigated the mass protest movement of hundreds of thousands of Iranians.  What is true, however, is that Islamic Republic used, as always, semi-fascist gangs, armed intervention, arrest, torture and executions to repress the mass movement.  This experience should reveal for all how the Islamic Republic theocratic capitalist policies divides and repress the Iranian working people in the face of determined imperialist hostility and potential military attack.

To sum up:  Compañero Fidel Castro’s has done the Iranian people and the world a favor by his timely warning about the imperialist danger.  The source of hostility of imperialism and Zionism to the Iranian people lies in the 1979 revolution.  The Iranian people, empowered by their own grassroots organizations, overthrow the U.S. installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  The rise of grassroots organizations of the Iranian working people made it possible to advance to an anti-capitalist revolution and to a workers and peasants government.  However, the historical damaged caused by Stalinism and reformism in the Iranian working class movement precluded this option.  Instead, Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power and used his influence to consolidate the power of clergy and save capitalism in Iran.  Historically, monarchy and Shia clergy have served as the supporters of capitalists and landlords.

While revolutionary socialists unconditionally defend Iran against imperialist attacks—whether it is Security Council sanctions or threat of military attacks—they do so from the perspective of their own political program to mobilize and empower working people.  In Iran, that means defending democratic and human rights for all as well as a program to fight unemployment and inflation. It also means supporting independent organization of workers, peasants, oppressed nationalities, women, students, and others.  It calls for democratization of the armed forces, dismantling of all repressive forces of the Islamic Republic, and training and arming the people in their workplaces and neighborhoods. Further, revolutionary socialists will call for a reorientation of the development policy, from a capitalist policy based on fossil fuels and nuclear power to an ecosocialist development policy where the emphasis will be on quality of life and not on consumerism.  It is essential to stop degrading of nature and reviving it.  Iran and the world should have fewer not more people in line with sharing the planet with all other species.

Internationally, socialists will educate and mobilize to end current imperialist wars, including the U.S. led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, as well as support for Palestinian right to self-determination beginning with unconditional end to the siege of Gaza.  Socialists should demand “Hands Off Iran and North Korea!” As well as “End U.S. Blockade of Cuba!”  In the U.S., after a long decline the anti-war movement seems poised to move forwards (see this report).

The Cuban revolution has been a beacon of internationalism since the days of Ernesto Che Guevara.  Solidarity with the Iranian people will require nothing less than defending the Iranian working people to build their own power not only to resist imperialist attacks but also to replace the Islamic Republic theocratic capitalist regime with a government of workers and peasants. 

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[i] In the best Marxian tradition, socialist revolution has been understood as rebuilding social relations on a non-exploitive and non-oppressive basis.  By ecosocialism revolution, I mean a radical process of de-alienation of human relations not only with themselves and others, but also with the rest of nature.

[ii] We were part of the international delegation to observe the 18^th Congress of Central de Tabajadores de Cuba).

[iii] There are no accurate figures.

[iv] This is a common mistranslation; the correct translation is Guards of the Islamic Revolution.  The mistranslation imparts a “revolutionary” attitude to the “guards,” whereas the correct translation reminds one that this is a force dedicated to a regime and not to the 1979 revolution. There is nothing “revolutionary” about it. It is the armed body of a theocratic capitalist regime.

[v] Although there are limits in any analogy, one should not forget Saddam Hussein’s rhetoric and the performance of his military in the face of imperialist invasion. 

[vi] I am placing “political movement” inside quotation marks because a Marxist cannot subscribe to the notion that political movements can be created from the outside of a society.  Political movements are rooted in social classes and groups with their own interests.  It is possible that some of these movements’ come to share interests with imperialism; thus coming under its influence.  But the source of their existence is internal.

[vii]  In the first year after the February 1979 revolutions, socialist parties and others, including labor candidates, were able to wage limited election campaigns not because of the Islamic Republic regime but in spite of it.

[viii] This included a claim that granting of visas to Iranians has become difficult due to the confrontational policies of president Ahmadinejad and the position that the money used to support the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza should be spend in Iran.  Such nationalistic demagogy is a mark of rightwing pro-imperialist groups that Mr. Musssavi campaign used to get voted.  But it is important to recall that Mr. Mussavi was Khomeini’s handpicked prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war and continued to hold positions within the Islamic Republic hierarchy until last year.  Ayatollah Karoubi was the Speaker of the Islamic Republic parliament.