and list of endorsers on its web site, just below.
http://www.cpdweb.org/statements/1013/stmt.shtml
Crisis in Iran
A Statement from the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
June 17, 2009
Crisis in Iran
We are horrified at what the Iranian government is doing in the aftermath of
the June 12th elections. In a wave of state terror , security forces have
arrested hundreds of oppositionists, reformist officials and ex-officials,
and human rights activists. Using clubs, whips, chains, machetes and guns,
they have viciously attacked protestors; many have been killed. Media, both
domestic and international, have been shut down or restricted, and the
authorities have attempted to prevent people from communicating with one
another via cell phone, text messaging and Internet networking sites. All
protest demonstrations have been banned.
Despite the savagery of the Republican Guards and the religious thugs of the
Basij militia, however, opponents of Ahmadinejad have thus far refused to
back down. Furious over an apparent clumsy and cynical manipulation of the
election results, hundreds of thousands have marched in nonviolent protests
in defiance of the ban. In the face of this courageous resistance, the
government has retreated slightly, and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, has offered to allow a partial recount. The protestors have said
no to this offer -- they are demanding totally new elections.
We do not claim to know the true results of the elections. But there are
certainly many indications of massive fraud; that, plus the fact that
election monitoring by opposition groups and independent observers was
barred, can only raise grave doubts about Ahmadinejad's claim to a landslide
victory. What is clear is that the results lack credibility for masses of
Iranian citizens.
Even if the votes were fairly counted, it must be remembered that Iranian
elections are far from democratic. The unelected Council of Guardians vets
candidates to be sure they support the theocratic order before their names
are ever allowed to appear on the ballot, which usually guarantees that
anyone the authorities seriously oppose is disqualified from running in the
first place. And while the Islamic Republic allows far more freedoms than
many other countries in the region, it is still extremely repressive. Gay
people have been brutally persecuted, women are forced to endure a host of
restrictions on their rights, and workers have been beaten and jailed for
striking and trying to organize trade unions.
Mir Hossein Mousavi does not represent a decisive break from the status quo.
As Iran's prime minister during 1981-89, he didn't challenge the
fundamentals of the system. As Shirin Sadeghi pointed out in the Huffington
Post, Mousavi was "a man known for upholding the values of a Republic that
has systematically deprived Iranians of basic civil rights; a man who, as
senior adviser to President Khatami stood by as the second "cultural
revolution" of the late 1990's and early 2000's swept students off the
streets, shut down semi-free newspapers, terrorized dissidents, and paved
the way for the so called "hardliners"." Nevertheless, Mousavi's support,
albeit limited, of women's rights and political freedom, has given him the
backing of millions of Iranians.
This election has opened up new possibilities for Iranian politics that go
far beyond Mousavi. As women's rights activist Noushin Khorasani noted , its
has already provided an opportunity for the formation of independent
coalitions of women's and students' organizations, which had faced terrible
repression; it is to be hoped that trade unions, too, will be able to take
advantage of this new opening to function and play an independent role in
Iranian society. Long-simmering splits among the ruling elite have become
open fissures. Protestors in the streets and on the rooftops have cried "no
to dictatorship," referring to Ahmadinejad; perhaps the movement will soon
take the next step and demand an end to the dictatorship of Khatamei, the
Guardian Council, the Republican Guards and Basiji, and the whole corrupt
ruling apparatus.
As for the response of our own government, given the long, sordid record of
U.S. policy towards Iran, interference by Washington can only play into the
hands of the forces opposed to democracy. U.S. support for the Shah before
1979 resulted in the evisceration of Iran's secular left. The Bush
administration's threats succeeded only in terrorizing the Iranian people
and providing political ammunition to the mullahs. The Obama administration
can help by removing sanctions on Iran and publicly and unambiguously
renouncing any possibility of military attack, thus eliminating a major
excuse for Ahmadinejad's repressive policies.
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy extends its solidarity to the
protesters in Iran, and salutes their bravery. We express our deep concern
for their well-being in the face of brutal repression and our fervent wishes
for the strengthening and deepening of the movement for justice and
democracy in Iran.
Co-Directors: Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
2790 Broadway, #12 New York, NY 10025
email: cpd@igc.org web: www.cpdweb.org
***
From: earthactionnetwork@earthlink.net
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/
The Three Essentials of Financial Reform
Robert Reich was the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and is a professor at
the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is
"Supercapitalism." This is his personal journal.
Robert Reich
(RR's Blog:) Tuesday, June 16, 2009
As the White House unveils its long-awaited proposals to prevent another
Wall Street meltdown in the future, keep a lookout for three essentials.
Without them the Street will revert to its old ways as soon as the coast
clears. In fact, now that the government has bailed out the Street, the
biggest banks will take even larger and more irresponsible risks because
they're officially too big to fail. So these three reforms are critical.
1. Stop bankers from making huge, risky bets with other peoples' money. At
the least, require they back their bets with a large percentage of their own
capital, and bar them from raising money off their balance sheets through
derivative trades. Also require they take their pay in stock options or
warrants that can't be cashed in for at least three years, so they'll take a
longer-term view. Best of all would be a requirement that investment banks
return to being partnerships and the capital on their books be their own,
not yours or your pension fund's. When investment banks were partnerships,
every partner took an active interest in what every other partner and trader
was doing. The real mischief started once they started selling shares to the
public.
2. Prevent any bank from becoming too big to fail. Separate commercial from
investment banking, as they were before the late 1990s. Commercial banks
should return to their basic function of linking savers with borrowers.
Investment bankers should return to their casino function of placing bets in
the stock market and advising you and others about where to place your own
own bets. Combining the basic utility with the casino only made bankers far
richer and subjected you and me to risks we didn't bargain for. If
separating commercial from investment banking isn't enough to bring all
banks down to reasonable size, use antitrust laws to break them up.
3. Root out three major conflicts of interest. (1) Credit-rating agencies
should no longer be paid by the companies whose issues are being rated; they
should be paid by those who use their ratings. (2) Institutional investors
like pension funds and mutual funds should not be getting investment advice
from the same banks that profit off their investments; the advice should
come from sources without a financial stake; (3) the regional Feds that are
responsible for much bank oversight should no longer be headed by presidents
appointed by the region's bankers; non-bankers should have the major say,
and the regional presidents should have to be confirmed by the Senate.
These three reforms will reduce the possibility that you and I and other
taxpayers will ever again have to spend billions bailing out bankers who
robbed us blind while amassing fortunes. But because that would make it next
to impossible to make such fortunes in the future, the big bankers will
fight every one of these with all guns blazing, and their lobbyists in full
force. They'll try to inundate you in a blizzard of buzz words. They want
your eyes to gaze over, but don't let them. Keep focused on these three
issues. Congress, for its part, may not be much help. It's awash in money
from Wall Street. Big Finance is second only to the health-industrial
complex in owning a large portion of the Hill. Barney Frank at House Banking
can be relied on to try his best but others in the House and Senate may well
roll over. The President wants to do the right thing but he's spread thin
and spending political capital on health care. Tim Geithner doesn't have the
stomach to take on the Street; the plan he announced a few days ago to
regulate pay is a bad joke. Expect lots of blather about rearranging boxes
on the regulatory organization chart.
Bottom line: Genuine financial reform will be almost as difficult to achieve
as real universal health care. Immense private interests are amassed against
the public interest in both cases because staggering amounts of money are at
stake. But they are the two most important domestic issues right now. Keep
careful watch, and weigh in.
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