Why Khomeini has launched Tudeh pogrom

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prompted a fall in the proportion that it banned smoking around of smokers from 52% to 38% the computer to protect it of males and 34% to 29% of from damage. (In Britain in 1980, 42% of men restrict smoking in public and 37% of women were smo- places, and San Francisco is HAS Harry Sloan been imbibing yet again from the poisoned pages of Soviet Weekly? His article on Iran (SO 132) would certainly suggest that he has.

How else could he present the banning of the Tudeh Party (Iranian Communist Party.) as "clear confirmation" of the anticommunist nature of the Iranian regime and as "a further blow to any working class resistance to the regime"? The whole record of the Tudeh Party - to which the article itself refers, - makes a mockery of such an analysis. • More likely reasons for the crackdown on Tudeh are:

a) it could no longer fulfill a useful role for the IRP regime in crushing working class opposition, b) its alleged spying activities could be used as a diversion from internal problems in the same way that the American Embassy "scizure was previously). •. Harry Sloan is correct to argue that the banning of Tudeh is meant to be a green light to foreign investment. But this also necds qualification: The Tudeh ARGUABLY the most interestlast week was my birthday. However, several other interesting items came to my attention, including the following:

first, trom the Guardian, Teport of the campaign against tobacco smoke in the u.s.

Worries about health have females between 1965 and 1980.

kers.)

Suffer But non-smokers also suffer smoking effers of avatumary breathllig from other people's cigarettes. Typical short-term effects are runny nose, sneezing, stinging eyes, headaches and asthma, while long-term effects include higher rates of lung cancer and heart disease than in nonsmokers not exposed to tobacco smoke.

In a historic case, a woman employee of Bell Telephones sued her employers for failing to protect her against: tobacco smoke in her office which activated her allergies. She won after the company admitted Party itself has supported capital investment in Iran and raised the slogan of "produce more for less" since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. The politics and activities of the Tudeh were therefore no obstacle to foreign investment. Quite the opposite in fact.

The article then collapses into that mysticism so beloved of the mercenary scribes of Soviet Weekly. We are told that the USA feared that "under the pressuré of the mass movement" Khomeini might "realign Iran with the Soviet bureaucracy?. But when did a mass movement ever exist in Iran pushing Khomeini in this particular direction?

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Even worse is the statement that, "now, overjoyed at the Iranian break from Moscow, American businessmen are scampering around Tehran". But when was Iran ever in any kind of alliance or bloc with Moscow from which it has "broken??

Moreover, American businessNow, most American states bringing in a law to cover all workplaces:

Predictably, the tobacco firms have opposed such laws just as they opposed laws against spitting during the days of tobacco chewing, though this was known to spread tuberculosis!

Second: My birthday coincided with the 30th anniversary of the ascent of Everest and with an article in the Observer describing a developing ecological catastrophe which threatens to dump the Himalayas in the sea. As in last week's articie about the loss of important plant species, the problem is again one of destruction of forests.

The Himalayan forests are part of a delicate ecosystem. The violent rains of the monsoons are absorbed by the soils men have been scampering around Tehran for eight months or more, whilst German and Japanese businessmen have been "scampering around" Tehran since before the start of the Iran-Iraq war. The banning of the Tudeh therefore cannot be equated with a sudden turn to Western imperialism.

Parrot •Equally fallacious is the statement, "links are opening up between Iran and ... Turkey and Pakistan". Links with both these countries are long-standing, particularly with Turkey, through which Western goods were imported during the American trade embargo at the time of the Embassy siege. And Iran and Turkey have long collaborated in the war against Kurdistan's right to self-determination.

Thus, whilst rejecting the Politics of the ludeh and the Kremlin, and their analysis of the IRP regime, Harry Sloan ends up parrotting their analysis of the banning of the Tudeh, ie. that it of the Himalayas which are held in place by the roots of the trees. The waters are then slowly released allowing the terraced fields below to yield plentiful crops of rice and maize.

But in the last 30 years, half of these forests have been felled, mainly to supply the firewood that accounts for 87% of Nepal's energy supplies. And now the monsoon rains just sweep away the unprotected topsoil, in landslides that engulf the centuries-old terraces and the villages that cultivate them. Rivers carry away the soil to the plains below and eventually to the sea. A new island is appearing in the Bay of Bengal!

In Nepal, crop yields have fallen by a quarter in 5 years, with starvation, malnutrition and enforced emigration. The plains also suffer as the unchecked monsoon water causes erosion of river banks and flooding. is a particular blow against the Iranian working class and that it marks a decisive turn towards imperialism. But the Tudeh was an anti-working class agent of Khomeini and the Kremlin, and the IRP regime has long since been an ally of imperialism.

After the defective analysis come the unbelievably insensitive "solutions" • Without batting an eyelid, Harry Sloan calls for mass struggle against Khomeini, including (quite correctly) the struggle of gays. But, in my experience, the better Iranian leftists regard homosexuality as something to be remedied by therapy and genetic engineering; the others regard it as a crime deserving heavy punishment. Perhaps Harry Sloan could propose how such reactionary views are to be challenged and overcome?

Finally, the article concludes by calling for a campaign in defence of the Tudeh. Not a mention of the justified gut reaction that Iranians, who have been beaten up and informed upon by Tudeh supporters in this country and whose comrades in Iran have