When it was the Serbs, portrayed as a nation of rapists and their cheer-leaders int the corporate media, who were the West's official enemy, few on the Left seemed to mind the Iranians, and some of them -- including such disparate intellectuals as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ariel Dorfman, Michael Foot, Todd Gitlin, Christopher Hitchens, Quintin Hoare, Julius and Phyllis Jacobson, Branka Magas, Edward Said, and Cornel West -- found themselves on the same side as the government of Iran concerning arms to the Bosnian Muslims: see "A Call to Lift the Arms Embargo Against Bosnia-Herzegovina," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1999/1999-October/018121.html>.
<http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1996_hr/eur50031.htm> Iran/Bosnia Arms House International Relations Committee 30 May 1996
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REDMAN: But what one can say is that there was already Iranian deliveries of arms into Bosnia in the summer and fall of 1992; that the revolutionary guards were deployed in Bosnia in late 1992 to begin a training program for the Bosnian army; that by 1993, hundreds of revolutionary guard personnel were in Bosnia; that the number probably never exceeded 500, which I believe is the same number that you made reference to; and that since we have begun to implement the Dayton agreement, the numbers have been very substantially reduced, and we would have to have someone in a better-placed position than ourselves to give you the exact estimate of what would -- (inaudible).
HAMILTON: In 1992, were not the Bosnian leaders calling Iran Bosnia's best friend in the world?
REDMAN: That is true. And Bosnian leaders had visited Tehran already in spring of 1991 in order to try to solicit assistance because of the situation they found themselves.
HAMILTON: And Iran was the first Muslim country to recognize Bosnia, was it not? Izetbegovic had gone to Tehran in 1991 seeking economic help. The foreign minister had been there in 1992. The Organization of Islamic Countries, which was led by Iran and Turkey, were very heavily involved in all of this, were they not?
REDMAN: That's right, sir.
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GEJDENSON: And so what we had here were a number of choices. You could have said no to the request, and even though the Iranians had been shipping arms and had relations here since '92, the magnitude was clearly changing. Had you said no, the consequence to the Muslims, it is both of your estimate, would have been devastating?
REDMAN: Yes, sir.
GEJDENSON: Had you chosen to unilaterally lift the arms embargo, you would have both most likely injured our embargo against Libya, and additionally, put American servicemen in harm's way. So instead of those two choices, you took a choice that the Congress itself made clear that it supported only three months later, and that the House of Representatives, with Mr. Gilman, Mr. Hyde and Mr. Gejdenson, for a very rare occasion voting on the same side, to tell the president not to interfere with arms shipments from other countries to the Muslims, and it did not list any exceptions in that legislation. Is that correct?
REDMAN: Yes, sir.
On 4/27/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> the US has such a policy doesn't mean Iran gets a blank check.
It's really simple. You live in the USA, not in Iran. You get to vote here, whereas you can't vote in Iran's elections, and you get to protest here, whereas you are not planning to live in Iran to protest there. It's your job to help change America,* stopping it from attacking Iran or any other country among other things**, and it's the job of the Iranians to change Iran the way they see fit.
As for a blank check, the Iranian government as well as those of other oil exporters everywhere from Canada to Kuwait*** to Mexico to Nigeria to Sudan to Venezuela, I'm sure, has been getting a lot more blank checks from nearly all other people on this mailing list than me, for I don't have a car. :->
In any case, it says a lot about the moral compass of leftists in the North when an increasing number of them draw moral equivalency between Iran and America or go one step farther and regard the former as a bigger problem than the latter, at a time when Washington is waging two wars to the east and west of Iran, funding covert actions against it, doing all it can to organize international sanctions against it (though only minor ones so far, thanks mainly to Moscow).
* If you have spare time after the work of changing America, you are welcome to boycott Japanese goods, services, and investments when you get around to it: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/furuhashi150806.html>. You might even get at Iran indirectly that way, as Japan is one of Iran's best customers. Besides, how can you possibly give the Japanese government a blank check for _this_? (I'm being facetious here. I know just about everyone is perfectly content to give a blank check to the government of Japan or any other rich country, for whatever atrocities -- including sexual slavery -- it has committed, is committing, or will commit in the future.)
<http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070428a1.html> Saturday, April 28, 2007 Top court: No war redress for Chinese Rights void but abuses admitted; suits to fail Kyodo News
In a precedent-setting first pronouncement, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that postwar agreements effectively deny Chinese individuals the right to demand reparations from Japan for the severe suffering they endured during the war.
The decision apparently dooms a raft of ongoing wartime damages suits, filed mainly by Chinese and South Koreans, that will view the ruling as a precedent.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/world/asia/28japan.html> April 28, 2007 Japan Court Rules Against Sex Slaves By NORIMITSU ONISHI
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Historians have estimated that 50,000 to 200,000 women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were taken as sex slaves by the Japanese military during the war.
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In both statements, Mr. Abe avoided assigning responsibility for the practice and did not retract his denial of the military's direct role in it, a crucial point to his nationalist supporters, who argue that the women were prostitutes or forced into brothels by private brokers.
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In the sex slavery ruling, the court acknowledged that Japanese soldiers abducted the two plaintiffs, who were 13 and 15 at the time, in Shanxi Province, China, in 1942.
According to the court, Japanese soldiers took the 15-year-old from her older sister's house to a Japanese military base. There, the girl — a virgin who had yet to have her first period — was raped repeatedly by soldiers, including the commanding officer, the court said. Her family obtained her release after two weeks, but soldiers kidnapped her again, confining her and raping her repeatedly, the court said.
The 13-year-old — also described by the court as a virgin who had yet to have her first period — was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers and raped repeatedly for 40 days. Relatives of this woman, who died in 1999, pursued the lawsuit.
Toshitaka Onodera, the lead lawyer for the Chinese plaintiffs, said that despite the rulings against them, the Supreme Court had now established the historical record, including the military's direct coercion of women into sex slavery.
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In the forced labor case, the court overturned a lower court's ruling in 2004 ordering Nishimatsu Construction to pay $230,000 to five Chinese plaintiffs who were forced to work at a hydroelectric plant in 1944. But the presiding judge took note of the plaintiffs "extremely large mental and physical suffering" and called on the company to "provide relief to the victims."
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According to Japanese government data, about 38,935 Chinese men were forcibly brought to Japan, most of them after March 1944. They were made to work in 135 sites for 35 companies, 22 of which are still in business.
Of the total, 6,830 men, or nearly 18 percent, died in a little more than a year because of brutal working conditions. Countless others died after their capture in China or during their transit to Japan.
** Ideally, US activists should be getting Americans acquainted with aspects of Iran that have been excluded from, marginalized in, or distorted by the dominant discourse in the US corporate media, but apparently that's a task beyond most of them, excepting those who run organizations such as the National Council of Churches (cf. <http://www.ncccusa.org/news/070226iranopen.html> and <http://www.ncccusa.org/news/070326irandirecttalks.html>), Fellowship for Reconciliation (see its Iran program at <http://www.forusa.org/programs/iran/>), Global Exchange (which organizes citizen diplomacy tours of Iran among other countries: <http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/byCountry.html#17>), and Just Foreign Policy (at <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/issues/iran.html>).
*** According to Amnesty International, Kuwait had the highest number of executions per capita in 2006, and in absolute number, China leads, having executed "at least 1,010 people" in the same year ("Death Penalty Statistics 2006," <http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGACT500122007>).
On 4/27/07, Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> Yoshmadinejad --
>
> >As for stoning, the [Iranian] government has issued a moratorium on that.
>
> Thus putting hundreds of rock breakers out of work. Some "progress."
Even before the moratorium, Valentine M. Moghadam says that "Sharia-derived punishments" had "not been applied frequently" in Iran ("Towards Gender Equality in the Arab/Middle East Region: Islam, Culture, and Feminist Activism," Background paper for HDR 2004, p. 37, <http://hdr.undp.org/docs/publications/background_papers/2004/HDR2004_Valentine_Moghadam.pdf>).
Besides, you don't think that the moratorium or any other reform in favor of women came about because suddenly Ali Khamenei or the head of the judiciary appointed by him had an epiphany, do you? It's due mainly to the work of women activists and men allied with them in Iran, inside and outside the government. To dismiss it just like that basically amounts to "denigrating the long and noble struggle of women all over the colonised world to ascertain their rights against both domestic patriarchy and colonial domination" as Hamid Dabashi put it ("Native Informers and the Making of the American Empire," Al-Ahram 797, 1-7 June 2006, <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/797/special.htm>). Not only that, dismissing the Iranians' own social change in Iran gives ammunition to America's regime change enthusiasts, who want to deny that the Iranians have been reforming their country and government on their own, so that they can justify their interventions, from the use of soft power (like funding for NGOs) all the way to military attacks.
What happens to a country when the American regime change enthusiasts get their way? Just look at Iraq.
Iraqis are fleeing Iraq, in large numbers, not only to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and Turkey, but even to the Gulf states, compared to whose female citizens and migrant workers Iraqi women once enjoyed many more rights and entitlements (the USA is accepting few refugees from Iraq): "UN Urges Help for Iraqi Refugees," 17 April 2007, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6562601.stm>. That says a lot about what the loss of the former government, far more brutal than the Iranian government and not in the least democratic, meant for the Iraqis. The functioning government is worth having, unless and until those who live under it are really ready to overthrow it and build a better one, which those, such as most US leftists, who have never been deprived of one seem to fail to understand.
Even after the end of the US occupation (which doesn't seem to be any time soon), it won't be you or me, or your government or mine, who will be rebuilding anything that our tax dollars have destroyed in Iraq (or any other country for that matter). It will be remaining Iraqis themselves and perhaps also their neighboring countries' governments, using their citizens' tax dollars, that will be responsible for that (they'll have to at least try to fix Iraq a little even just to stem the tide of refugees, though probably it's beyond repair, and what they will do can very well make things worse, too). We'll walk away, after this comes to an end, without paying for anything. Every thinking person in the world knows that, including you. It's our luck that there exist but a few in the world -- namely international jihadists of the Al-Qaeda tendency, which the US government is doing its utmost to multiply -- who hold that against us. -- Yoshie