economy of resistance – Imam Khamenei

The fifth point is that this economy is justice-based. The standards of the capitalist economy such as national growth and gross national production are not the only standards that it relies on. In this economy, the issue is not only about the rate of national growth and gross national production. These are things which global standards and capitalist economies pivot around. A country may have a high GNP, but some people inside this country may die of hunger. We do not believe in such an economy.

Therefore, the standard of justice – economic and social justice – is one of the important standards in the economy of resistance. But it does not mean that we should show indifference to the existing knowledge-based standards in the world. The economy of resistance does not mean that we should do this. These standards receive attention as well, but the task pivots around justice. Justice on this issue and in this paradigm does not mean the division of poverty among people. Rather, it means generating capital and increasing national wealth.

Ahmadinejad honra al comandante Chávez desde Teherán

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El expresidente, visiblemente conmovido, realizó un recorrido por todo el centro de exposiciones para ver las obras elaboradas por artistas iraníes, sobre las distintas facetas y momentos de su amigo, el Comandante Hugo Chávez.

Caracas,

Durante la clausura del primer concurso internacional de pintura “Por aquí paso Chávez”, el expresidente y compañero revolucionario y antiimperialista, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, participó en los actos culturales y políticos llevados a cabo por la embajada de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela en la nación iraní.

El expresidente, visiblemente conmovido, realizó un recorrido por todo el centro de exposiciones para ver las obras elaboradas por artistas iraníes, sobre las distintas facetas y momentos de su amigo, el Comandante Hugo Chávez.

En su intervención, Ahmadinejad sentenció que, “cada vez estamos más cerca de la libertad y justicia por la que luchó Hugo Chávez y que los pueblos del mundo saldrán victoriosos ante el imperialismo norteamericano”.

Asimismo, destacó que “Irán y Venezuela seguirán trabajando contra toda forma de dominación y no permitirán injerencia alguna en las decisiones que deben tomar nuestros pueblos”.

Agrego además, que Venezuela saldrá fortalecida de este intento de desestabilizar a la Revolución Bolivariana y recordó que Chávez construyó un poderoso sistema político y social, que incluye a los más pobres y a la gran mayoría del pueblo y esto garantizará el futuro de la Patria Grande.

Para finalizar, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad transmitió al embajador de Venezuela en Irán, Amenothep Zambrano, un saludo al pueblo de Venezuela y al presidente Nicolás Maduro; y reiteró su voluntad de seguir contribuyendo con la Revolución Bolivariana y su pueblo.

Por su parte, el embajador Zambrano entregó al exmandatario iraní, en nombre del presidente Nicolás Maduro y de todo el pueblo venezolano, un busto del Comandante Supremo, Hugo Chávez.

the meaning of resistance – Imam Khamenei

What does resistance mean? It means that the people of Iran stand up for the ideals of the Revolution. Well, we have both affirmative and negative [in logic, an affirmative proposition is a statement that asserts something and a negative proposition is a statement which denies or negates something] slogans. These are our affirmative slogans: we are after social justice, we are after public presence in different events of the country, we are after Islam, we think that the happiness of the country lies in observing Islamic teachings, we are after an independent economy, we are after the kind of culture which is independent of foreigners, we are after a completely Islamic and Iranian culture, we are after offering refuge to the oppressed and confronting the oppressor, we are after the progress of the country, we are after the scientific prominence of our country and we want our country to play a leading and pioneering role in economy, culture, social issues, morality and spirituality. These are the affirmative slogans of our Revolution.

Our Revolution had also certain negative slogans. These are the negative slogans of the Revolution: we do not give in to bullying and blackmailing and we do not give in to arrogance.

Arrogance means that a few powers – which have gained materialistic capabilities and which have weapons, money and other such things – want to rule over the world. And today, arrogance is manifested by America. During the Revolution, during subsequent events and during the imposed war, the people of Iran said, “We do not give in to America’s bullying and blackmailing”.

Some people should not put make-up on the face of America and erase the ugly parts, savagery and violence from its face. They should not describe America as a friendly and philanthropic government to our people. Even if these people make an effort to do this, their effort will be vain. Notice what America has done throughout the world over the last 70, 80 years – of course, there are many things in the history of America before this era which I do not want to discuss now. Take a look at the wars which America has waged, the innocent and civilian people whom it has viciously killed in these wars and in other events and the dictators which have been supported by America in the East and in the West.

One of these dictators was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran and tens of other such dictators in Asian, African and Latin American countries including military and non-military figures. These dictators oppressed their people for many years. They viciously oppressed the people, they looted their wealth and they created many disasters for them. This support for dictators exists in the performance sheet of America.

An example is its support of international and governmental terrorism. The fake and criminal Zionist regime, which has usurped Palestine, has been receiving support from America for tens of years. It kills people, destroys houses, oppresses and imprisons youth, women, men and children.

The Zionists have attacked Beirut, they have destroyed Sabra and Shatila and they have committed many other crimes. These measures have been recorded in the performance sheet of America. It launched an attack on Iraq and it killed tens of thousands of people. We do not know the exact figure. It is estimated that in recent years, the Americans have killed around one million Iraqi people directly or indirectly.

I do not know the exact figure, but at least tens of thousands of people have been killed. Even killing one person is enough for this act to be condemned. In Afghanistan, they are committing crimes in a different way.

They have established certain terrorist organizations for killing people. In a certain meeting, I mentioned the name of one of these organizations. They have established the well-known Blackwater company whose job is to kill, to create terror and to destroy people. It was the Americans who first established these extremist, murderous and takfiri groups. Of course, in the present time, this bullet which the Americans fired has ricocheted and has hit themselves. The government of America is such a government.

The issue is not about the people of America. They are like other people. The issue is about the regime and the government of America. How can this face be beautified with make-up while these acts are in front of the eyes of the people of Iran?

How did we people of Iran suffer from these crimes? Around 25, 26, 30 years – from the coup d’état launched on the 28th of Mordad of 1332 to the year 1357 – the people of Iran suffered from the oppressive regime of Mohammad Reza and after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the people of Iran were faced with many oppressive, malevolent and evil acts.

The people only remember the recent sanctions, but they started imposing sanctions from the beginning of the Revolution. In the beginning of the Revolution, the Americans supported anyone who wanted to do something against the Revolution. The Americans did not care if these people were leftist, rightist, military or non-military figures. They did their best to help anyone who had certain motives against the Islamic Revolution. These people took the form of ethnic groups and many other different forms.

The last plot which the people of Iran saw with their own eyes was the fitna of the year 1388. The President of America shamelessly supported the provokers of fitna in Tehran. At the present time too, they are supporting them. This is the list of the malevolent acts that they have committed. Today, many of their evil intentions over which they used to draw a veil are gradually becoming clear.

This year, I said in Mashhad – in Samen al-Hujaj’s holy shrine – on the first day of the year 1392, that I am alright with negotiations. I said that a number of officials and executives of both the previous administrations and the current administration think that we should negotiate with the Americans on the nuclear issue so that it can be resolved. I said, “Well now that you insist, you can go and negotiate with them particularly on this issue”. But during the same speech in the beginning of the year, I said, “I am not optimistic. I do not oppose you, but I am not optimistic”.

rise of the neo-liberal/capitalist regime in Iran

A good article articulating the rise of a neo-liberal/capitalist regime in Iran, that if not checked, will bring about the fall of the Islamic Republic.

“The ‘Final Settlement’: Decline and Fall of the Islamic Nationalist Republic?

The real goals of the US sanctions policy and the recent decision to enter into negotiations with Iran have to do with several imperial objectives. The first objective is to facilitate the rise of a neo-liberal regime in Iran, which would be committed to privatizing major oil and gas fields and attracting foreign capital even at the cost of strategic national defense.

President Rohani is seen in Washington as the Islamic version of the former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev. Rohani, like his ‘model’ Gorbachev, ‘gave away the store’ while expecting Iran’s imperial adversaries to reciprocate.

The ‘5 plus 1’, mostly veterans of the ‘imperial shake down’, will take all of Rohani’s concessions and demand even more! They will “allow” Iran to recover its own frozen assets in slow droplets, which the neo-liberals in Tehran will celebrate as ‘victories’ even while the country stagnates under continued sanctions and the people suffer! The US Administration will retain sanctions in order to accommodate their Israeli-Zionist patrons and to provoke even deeper fissures in the regime. Washington’s logic is that the more concessions Teheran surrenders, the more difficult it will be to reverse the process under public pressure from the Iranian people. This ‘rift’ between the conciliatory government of Rohani and the Iranian people, according to CIA strategists, will lead to greater internal discontent in Iran and will further weaken the regime. A regime under siege will need to rely even more on their Western interlocutors. President Rohani ‘relying on the 5-plus-1’ will be like the condemned leaning into the hangman’s noose.

Rohani and the Neo-Liberal Collaborators

The ascendancy of Rohani to the Presidency brings in its wake an entire new political-economic leadership intent on facilitating large-scale, long-term penetration by Western and Chinese oil and gas companies in the most lucrative sites. Iran’s new oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, has made overtures to all the oil majors, and offers to revise and liberalize the terms for investment and provide concessions designed to greatly enhance multinational profits, in the most lucrative fields (FT, 11/27/13, p. 2). Zangeneh has kicked out the nationalists and replaced them with a cohort of liberal economists. He is preparing to eventually lay-off tens of thousands of public sector oil employees as an incentive to attract foreign corporate partners. He is prepared to lower fuel subsidies for the Iranian people and raise energy prices for domestic consumers. The liberals in power have the backing of millionaires, speculators and political power brokers, like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani head of the key Expediency Council, which drafts policy. Many of Rafsanjani’s followers have been appointed to key positions in President Rohani’s administration (FT, 11/26/13, p.3).

Central to the ‘Troika’s (Rohani-Rafsanjani-Zangeneh) strategy is securing the collaboration of multi-national energy corporations. However that requires lifting the US-imposed sanctions against Iran in the shortest time possible. This explains the hasty, unseemly and one-sided Iranian concessions to the ‘5-plus-1’. In other words, the driving force behind Iran’s giveaways is not the “success of sanctions” but the ascendancy to power of the Iranian comprador class and its neo-liberal ideology which informs their economic strategy.

Several major obstacles confront the ‘Troika’. The major concessions, initially granted, leave few others to concede, short of dismantling the entire nuclear energy infrastructure and lobotomizing its entire scientific and technical manpower, which would destroy the legitimacy of the regime. Secondly, having easily secured major concessions without lifting the sanctions the ‘5-plus-1’ are free to escalate their demands for further concessions, which in effect will deepen Iran’s vulnerability to Western espionage, terrorism (as in the assassination of Iranian scientists and engineers) and preemptive attack. As the negotiations proceed it will become crystal clear that the US intends to force the ‘Troika’ to open the gates to more overtly pro-western elites in order to eventually polarize Iranian society.

The end-game is a weakened, divided, liberalized regime, vulnerable to internal and external threats and willing to cut-off support to nationalist regimes in the Middle East, including Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The US recognized and seized upon the rise of the new neo-liberal Rohani regime and secured major unilateral concessions as a down payment to move step-by-step toward bloody regime change. Washington’s “end game” is the conversion of Iran to a client petrol-state allied with the Saudi-Israeli axis.

As far-fetched as that appears today, the logic of negotiations is moving in that direction.”

¿Qué puede ofrecer el Islam en América Latina?

Un renacimiento indígena, con una cosmovisión muy destacada: el “Vivir Bien”, en especial con la Pachamama, o la Madre Tierra, que debe ser liberada de las cadenas del Capitalismo, el lujo del Consumismo y de la cultura de la muerte. Los pueblos indígenas son parte de la vanguardia de la defensa de la Naturaleza y de la vida. Además, las raíces culturales Andina y Amazónica, luego del ataque europeo de cinco siglos, se levantan emancipadas de la cultura occidental.

-El proceso de Socialismo del Siglo XXI, que en general es definido en forma negativa: anti-imperialista y anti-capitalista. Hay, digámoslo de una vez por todas, cierto vacío teórico que invita a “crearlo”, permitiendo así no depender de experiencias pasadas, y reelaborar una teoría nueva: es interesante destacar que este socialismo no es ateo por definición.

Alejados de las cosmovisiones de occidente y del materialismo europeizante, el “socialismo del siglo XXI” enunciado por estos procesos populares, toma justamente su denominación de la búsqueda de construir una sociedad radicalmente más justa y equilibrada sin retomar caminos ni reflotar doctrinas que han significado un estrepitoso fracaso para las aspiraciones revolucionarias de los pueblos del mundo.

Estos dos procesos se identifican también culturalmente con el proyecto de la Revolución Islámica en Irán. Esta última, anclada en una espiritualidad que nace con el hombre mismo, reivindica con el mensaje de su fundador, el Imam Jomeini, la lucha de todos los oprimidos del mundo. Además, posee en su mensaje la excelencia de la espiritualidad por sobre cualquier otra cualidad en el hombre. Dijo el imam Jomeini: “Nuestra gran Revolución Islámica es más bien una revolución moral y espiritual que política y social.”

Vemos cómo la revolución islámica, se refugia en la tradición de todos los Profetas y Mensajeros de Dios, quienes emancipan y liberan a los hombres de los males del politeísmo social, la opresión y la explotación en cualquiera de sus formas. Los Profetas inculcaban el amor a Dios y la afirmación de Su unidad para liberar a los hombres de la perversión moral y de la injusticia, consecuencia del politeísmo que Occidente ha establecido.