[lbo-talk] "There Currently Is No Active Policy of Prosecution ofCharges of

[Joel Wendland]

Yoshie:
>is it not a good idea for left-wing
>publications, too, to fact-check their sources as much as possible?

Definitely a good idea.

>Here's my take on the matter, based on the findings of the Committee
>against Torture at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
>for Human Rights:
>"There Currently Is No Active Policy of Prosecution of Charges of
>Homosexuality in Iran":

UNCHR has noted a lot of things about Iran. E.g. treatment of women as 
"tyranny," which if one reads Monthly Review webzine (and the rather 
disapproving editor's note to another article that point by point shreds the 
claims of the first) doesn't exist. It is the same organization that 
deplores Iran's treatment of religious minorities like Jews (and others), 
has criticized its judicial system, and so on.

On Iran's supposed treatment of "gay" prisoners.... UNCHR also notes that 
the majority of prisoners who have caught or spread infectious disease (like 
AIDS and hepatitis) have done so through shared needles rather than sex (not 
that that doesn't take palce).

So who do you believe? It takes us back to the fact-checking question..

Official sources often make pronouncements that don't reflect reality – 
surely we can agree on that – which can be challenged then forced to change 
by the testimony of witnesses and victims, etc.

How long did we know what was happening in Guantanamo before the UN said 
something? Fact check the Guantanamo story. Check with the people who 
control the facts and you will hear that it is a paradise. Of course we have 
to rely on what people who have been imprisoned there say.

At any rate, the underlying question in these series of posts, to me, 
doesn't seem to be specific human rights abuses, but whether or not those 
abuses will be used to bring about a war on Iran.

And I would just reiterate that Parsi is vehemently opposed to this issue 
being used that way. He accuses people who would do that of not really 
having the interest of Iranian gays at heart. There's more he has said on 
this that will appear in my next article.

As to the use of the Iraq's alleged homophobia as a rationale for war...I 
don't really remember hearing it at all. I remember people like Wolofowitz 
and Rice and Bush and Cheney going on about WMD, terrorist ties, both of 
which were known to be erroneous, and that Saddam was a dictator, not their 
main reason, but the only that was true. Nope Bush et al were never really 
big defenders of the gays. I don't doubt that some people used homophobia 
(erroneously of course) to rationalize that Iraq was bad, but I doubt very 
much that persuaded Congress to vote for war in October 2002, or that it was 
the issue that gave Bush just enough political momentum in March 2003 to 
ignore the majority of Americans who opposed rushing to war on the flimsy 
evidence he had offered up. (Situation for gays in Iraq has deteriorated 
tremendously since the occupation.)

I can't accept that we have to buy what really appears to be going here: 
that because the Bush administration says one thing the opposite must be the 
truth, and that is what the left has to pitch to the world. When communists 
did that about the USSR, not only were there not a lot of people who bought 
into it, but huge sections of the left used it to show how they were 
different kinds of socialists than the "Stalinists," and really the 
"Stalinists" were just foreign agents anyway (still hear that one pretty 
frequently). And some even advocated aligning with the capitalists to 
overthrow the Soviet-aligned states.

I'll give another example. PA just published an article severely critical of 
Slobodan Milosevic authored by a Bosnian (forner Yugoslavian) Communist 
Party leader. You can imagine the letters to the editor. Some opponents of 
the war against Yugoslavia and its subsequent dissolution apparently became 
so invested in holding Slobodan up as a great socialist hero they overlooked 
major problems with his leadership. My point is that why, in the process of 
opposing another war, do we have to swing the pendulum to far the other way. 
Isn't there a way to convince the millions of people who need to be 
convinced  in order to stop a war that they should do so without trying to 
convince them of the perfections of the society that is being targeted?

Yes, you are right, fact-checking is a very good idea, and I am open to 
input.


All the best.

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