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.</blockquote>
Discrimination against and oppression of women exist in Iran, as they do in all nations to various degrees; conditions are worse than in Japan, the USA, and Europe, but they are better than several other Middle Eastern and African states that should come to anyone's mind easily. The main disagreement is over how -- not whether -- to fight against discrimination and oppression based on gender, sexual orientation, etc., which I've discussed at PEN-l (among other places) with others (as well as here before unsubscribing): <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2006w27/msg00104.htm> <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2006w27/msg00119.htm>.
My argument is that women's rights might be better advanced -- especially in countries like Iran -- if they were embedded in class demands on the economic front in the Bolivarian fashion. Otherwise, women's rights supporters will remain confined in small urban circles of relatively well-educated, better-off people, their demonstrations will remain small, and they will be no match for the ruling clerics. That's not in their interest, nor is it in the interest of the constituency they claim.
Joel asked: "So who do you believe? It takes us back to the fact-checking question."
As far as Arsham Parsi is concerned, do you know for sure that he "is under death sentence in Iran for being a gay activist" (at <http://www.homanla.org/New/pgloArsham.htm>)? Or are you taking his word for it? If the latter, shouldn't you fact-check that yourself? You know how the politics of exile works.
As for Iran, I intend to visit the country sometime soon myself (hopefully before the relation between Iran and Japan will change badly and my passport won't be welcome any longer!). I have found an Iranian-Canadian researcher who recently spent six months studying the conditions of AIDS patients, treatment, and policy as well as sexual questions in Iran for his MA thesis, and I will try to interview him about his observations if I can find his contact info and he is willing. I have other potential resource persons, too, so I will try to get them to write.
Joel says: "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."
That's part of the question, but that is not all there is to it. I don't believe there will be a war on Iran any time soon. There might be economic sanctions, but it won't be easy to build multinational ruling-class consensus for it either.
The question is truth -- or lack thereof -- about the claims and allegations made. Surely, we should care about whether Iran is really executing gay men more than about Ward Churchill's footnote, shouldn't we? Since they concern the present, not what happened nearly two hundred years ago?
I had seen some extraordinary claims made by Iranian exiles, _long before_ the end of the Khatami era: "In the mid-1990s, an exiled Iranian gay-rights group, Homan, estimated that 4,000 homosexuals had been executed by the government since 1979" (David Graham, "Fearless in Canada," 25 June 2006, <http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151185832022&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home>).
Are we supposed to buy things like this without checking?
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>