Hopi's Yassamine Mather debates pro-war columnist Nick Cohen

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Friday February 08, 2008 15:15 by pat c

Soho Theatre, London January 29 2008

Yassamine Mather of Hands Off the People of Iran faced pro-war journalist Nick Cohen of The Observer in London’s Soho Theatre on January 29. There are links below to an artiocle about the debate and to an mp3 of the proceedings.

Yassamine said the peoples of Iran have no wish to be a pariah on the international scene and have a deep antipathy to the theocracy, they also do not want their country to be “humiliated - either by sanctions or air strikes”.

She outlined the disastrous history of western interventions in Iran, the 1953 overthrow of Mossadeq. This event led to decades of repression for democratic and left forces and was a real contributory factor to the coming to power of the islamic regime.

She described the repressive nature of the regime - the petty interference in the details of daily lives, the vicious neoliberal exploitation facing the working people. Yassamine said the growing pressure from imperialism actually had the effect of “strengthening the regime” and insulating it from pressure from below in Iran.

Through persistent organisation the grassroots movements of students, workers, women - were “winning” democratic space. Speaking specifically about the workers who struggled for survival when their wages were not paid for months on end, Yassamine pointed out that “it would be very difficult” for people like this in Iranian society to conceive of a benign “regime change” effected by a world power that forces through the very neoliberal policies the theocratic regime pursues so robustly.

“The threat of war has made the islamic republic stronger,” Yassamine concluded, as it uses that threat “to attack its own population” and thus undermine radical challenges to its rule from below.

I think you will forgive me for neglecting Nick Cohens contibution but its covered in full at:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/706/westerninterests.html

You can listen to the whole meeting by clicking on the link below (MP3)