* Transport Workers to Boycott Honduran Ships
ITF calls for boycott to protest military coup, flags
of convenience
by Bruce Barnard
Journal of Commerce, Jul 20, 2009 3:18PM GMT
http://www.joc.com/node/412425
The International Transport Workers Federation called
for a worldwide boycott of Honduran-flag merchant ships
to protest the military coup in the Central American
nation.
London-based ITF said its call for action "is likely to
affect the loading and unloading of the 650 ships
flying the Honduran flag."
The ITF called on its 656 member unions to take
"peaceful" and "lawful" measures to put pressure on
Honduras's military government, which deposed President
Manuel Zelaya in a coup on June 28. "We have to put
real pressure on the Honduran military to allow the
country to revert to democracy," ITF General Secretary
David Cockroft said.
The ITF had already targeted the Honduran fleet as part
of its long-running campaign against flags of
convenience. It condemned the Honduran flag as "a low-
cost cosmetic ship registration by companies with no
link to the country and no intention of employing its
citizens onboard."
The boycott would hit Honduras's two main exports -
textiles and coffee, which are mostly shipped to the
United States.
Honduras's interim government on July 19 rejected
mediation efforts by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias
aimed at resolving the political crisis.
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman@justforeignpolicy.org
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/world/middleeast/21guards.html?_r=1&ref=world
Hard-Line Force Extends Grip Over a Splintered Iran
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
NY Times: July 20, 2009
CAIRO - As Iran's political elite and clerical establishment splinter over
the election crisis, the nation's most powerful economic, social and
political institution - the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps - has emerged
as a driving force behind efforts to crush a still-defiant opposition
movement.
From its origin 30 years ago as an ideologically driven militia force
serving Islamic revolutionary leaders, the corps has grown to assume an
increasingly assertive role in virtually every aspect of Iranian society.
And its aggressive drive to silence dissenting views has led many political
analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential
election as a military coup.
"It is not a theocracy anymore," said Rasool Nafisi, an expert in Iranian
affairs and a co-author of an exhaustive study of the corps for the RAND
Corporation. "It is a regular military security government with a facade of
a Shiite clerical system."
The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of
Iran's missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a
multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the
economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads
and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market
smuggling, experts say.
Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2005, when he took office, companies
affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750
government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press
reports document. And all of its finances stay off the budget, free from any
state oversight or need to provide an accounting to Parliament.
The corps's alumni hold dozens of seats in Parliament and top government
posts. Mr. Ahmadinejad is a former member, as are the speaker of Parliament,
Ali Larijani, and the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And the
influence of the Revolutionary Guards reaches deep into the education
system, where it indoctrinates students in loyalty to the state, and into
the state-controlled media, where it guides television and radio
programming.
"They are the proponents of an authoritarian modernization, convinced that
the clergy should continue supplying the legitimation for the regime as a
sort of military chaplains, but definitely not run the show," said a
political scientist who worked in Iran for years, but asked not to be
identified to avoid antagonizing the authorities.
They are so influential partly because they present a public front of unity
in a state where power has always been fractured. By contrast, clerics have
many different agendas and factions. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of
fractures under the corps's opaque and disciplined surface.
Political analysts said that behind the scenes there were internal
disagreements about the handling of the election and the demonstrations
against disputed results that gave a second term to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
"I have received reports, at least part of the top commanders in the
Revolutionary Guards are not happy with what is going on," said Muhammad
Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, who says he
has a network of contacts around the country. "There are even reports of
some who have protested."
Even a former commander in the corps, Mohsen Rezai, who served for 16 years,
decided to challenge the status quo by running for president this year, and
he openly complained of the government's failure to investigate accusations
of vote-rigging.
One political analyst said that many of the rank and file were known to have
voted for Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformer, when he was first elected
president in 1997.
The corps is not large. It has as many as 130,000 members and runs five
armed branches that are independent from the much bigger national military.
It commands its own ground force, navy, air force and intelligence service.
The United Nations Security Council has linked its officials to Iran's
nuclear program. The West suspects Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons,
an allegation the government denies.
The corps's two best-known subsidiaries are the secretive Quds Force, which
has carried out operations in other countries, including the training and
arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon; and the Basij militia. The
Basiji, who experts say were incorporated under the corps's leadership only
two years ago, now include millions of volunteer vigilantes used to crack
down on election protests and dissidents.
Members of the Revolutionary Guards and their families receive privileged
status at every level, which benefits them in university admissions and in
the distribution of subsidized commodities, experts said.
Mr. Nafisi, the RAND report co-author, said a former commander in the corps
estimated that all the corps and Basiji members, together with their
families, added up to a potential voting bloc of millions of people. "This
new machinery of election was quite important in bringing Ahmadinejad
forward," Mr. Nafisi said.
Within this bloc is a core of military elites who have displaced - and at
times clashed with - the clerical revolutionaries who worked beside
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in founding the Islamic republic. They are the
second generation of revolutionaries, ideologically united and contemptuous
of first-generation clerics like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, and of reformers and those eager to engage with the West. The
corps has even trained its own clerics.
In an essay describing the rise of the Revolutionary Guards phenomenon,
Professor Sahimi drew a portrait of the new elite: leaders in their mid-50s
who as young men joined the corps and fought two wars: one against Iraq in
the 1980s and another to force out the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United
States considers a terrorist organization and which is now based in Iraq.
The corps then split into two groups. One believed that Iran needed a chance
to develop politically and socially; the other, which emerged the victor,
was intent on maintaining strict control. Mr. Nafisi said Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was close to that second group.
"He went to the war front several times, more than any other commander," Mr.
Nafisi said. "He made personal contact with many commanders, got to know
them and earned their loyalty. Now all the people in charge were basically
assigned to him at the time of war."
Today, the corps has expanded its role and reach. Its financial interests
have, for example, been linked directly to the government's foreign policy.
Iran may well have remained silent on the attacks on Uighur Muslims in China
this month in part because Beijing is one of the main trading partners with
the corps.
Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rafsanjani, then the president,
encouraged the corps to use its engineers to bolster its own budget and to
help rebuild the country. Since then, a Revolutionary Guards company, Khatam
al-Anbia, has become one of Iran's largest contractors in industrial and
development projects, according to the RAND report. Its contracts with the
government, including projects like the construction of a Tehran subway
line, hydroelectric dams, ports and railway systems, are carried out by the
company's subsidiaries or are parceled out to private companies.
What is less quantifiable is the corps's black-market smuggling activity,
which has helped feed the nation's appetite for products banned by
sanctions, while also enriching the corps. The Rand report quoted one member
of Iran's Parliament who estimated that the Revolutionary Guards might do as
much as $12 billion in black-market business annually.
In his will, Ayatollah Khomeini asked that the military stay out of
politics, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been careful to
defend themselves against accusations of political meddling after the June
12 election. But Gen. Yadollah Javani, director of the corps's political
arm, warned the public that there was no room for dissent.
"Today, no one is impartial," he said, according to the official news agency
IRNA. "There are two currents: those who defend and support the revolution
and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it."
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Neil MacFarquhar from
the United Nations.
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