Moshé Machover speaks on Iran, Israel, and nuclear weapons

This video is from the recent Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) weekend school which took place in London over June 14 - 15.

As well as being a member of the HOPI steering committee, Moshé Machover is an Israeli socialist, a founding member (1962) of the Socialist Organization in Israel (Matzpen). In the 1970s and 80s, he was co-editor of Khamsin, Journal of revolutionary socialists of the Middle East. He is on the Editorial Board of Middle East Forum (formerly Iran Bulletin). He is author of many articles on the Middle East and socialist theory, as well as of several books, including Laws of Chaos: A probabilistic Approach to Political Economy (co-authored with Emmanuel Farjoun), Verso, 1983.

A new wave of protest and strike action at the Iran Khodro Car Manufacturing Company

Thousands of workers at the Iran Khodro Car Manufacturing Company have been on strike. The protest began in the form of a hunger strike on June 28, 2008 and since then it expanded across the company and thousands of workers have jointed protests and strike actions since then. Workers demands include:

- Freedom of labour organizations and prohibition of entry by the security guards to the workstations.

- End to mandatory over-time

- Increases to the productivity benefits

- Wage increased according to the increases to the cost of living

- And end to temporary contracts and hiring of workers on a permanent basis

- Stop the expansion of subcontracting companies; all workers should be under the Iran Khodro

- Participation of workers’ representatives in decision making committees on job classifications

- Participation of workers’ representatives at the hard and hazardous work committee

- Reduce work pressures through hiring new employees.

David Mather and Amir Javaheri Langaroudi speak on the working class movement in Iran

This video is of one of the sessions from the recent Hands Off the People of Iran weekend school. We will feature a number of other videos from this weekend school over the next couple of weeks, so please check back to see the latest updates.

Some recommended reading

Here are some interesting things to read from around the blogosphere:

Vicky Thompson of the Hands Off the People of Iran steering committee has recently set up her own blog, ‘Infantile and Disorderly,’ so check it out.

Over at ‘The Storm Breaking Upon the University‘ there is an interesting article on academic freedom and the case of Hicham Yezza by Alana Lentin.

Imperialist pose - report of Manchester HOPI meeting

Chris Strafford reports a Hopi success in Manchester:

Hands Off the People of Iran held a successful meeting in Manchester on June 24, titled ‘Can imperialism liberate women?’ The meeting discussed how imperialism cynically claims to support the rights of women and others to legitimate its own actions, including its military adventures.

The meeting was opened by Ruth Bergan from the Greens, who reasserted her party’s support for Hopi and spoke about the growing military threat to Iran and its use by the theocracy to attack the social movements. The driving force was not concern for democratic rights, but the pursuit of the west’s economic and political interests, she said. She spoke about the need for change in Iran to come from the Iranian people without the interference of the western powers, and slammed Britain’s hypocrisy in regard to nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.