The top US labor officials' pro-Israel policy is a long-standing commitment.
"In 1998, John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, received the Israeli Bonds 50th anniversary Labor Achievement Award for his efforts to boost union pension holdings of Israel bonds" (David Wildman, "Why Divestment? And Why Now?" The Link 39.3, August-September 2006, Americans for Middle East Understanding, <http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1275.>).
So is their pro-empire policy.
> You went on about how the AFL-CIO has never said
> anything about labor conditions in any US aligned Middle
> Eastern country as proof that the dissisent Iranian labor
> movement is a imperialist plot. When I show you examples,
> you fall silent.
I have already said that "The government of Iran, of course, should _not_ arrest Osanloo nor any genuine labor activists, much less illegally as it did Osanloo; and Iran's workers, beginning with Osanloo, should publicly repudiate symbolic and material support offered by the empire with ulterior motives" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070730/014240.html>).
That's my position.
Besides, it's one thing to support a person's right to due process and other civil rights and liberties; it's another thing to support the person's political objectives and strategies.
Generally speaking, beyond the case of Iran in particular, I'm not one to say, "So and so is a dissident, so we must all support him without knowing anything about his politics."
That A is a dissident against and unjustly repressed by the government B in itself doesn't say anything about A's politics.
By now, we know a few things about where some of the most prominent former East European dissidents stand.
Vaclav Havel The Committee on the Present Danger <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3301>
Adam Michnik "We, the Traitors," Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, Poland, 28 March 2003, <http://www.worldpress.org/article_model.cfm?article_id=1196> Thomas Cushman, "Antitotalitarianism as a Vocation: An Interview with Adam Michnik," A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for the War in Iraq, ed.Thomas Cushman (University of California Press, July 2005) <http://www.ucpress.edu/books/sale/pages/10415.html>
Lech Wałęsa Received 1.01% of the vote in the 2000 Polish Presidential Election <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_presidential_election%2C_2000>
On 10/27/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 27, 2007, at 6:11 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Other Iranian labor activists took note of this contrast. Malm and
> > Esmailian report that "The activists of Mohsen Hakimi and the other
> > council communists of Komiteye Hamahangi, on the other hand, limited
> > themselves to issuing a few statements, one of which was a
> > condemnation of the global day of action" mentioned above (Malm and
> > Esmailian, p. 121).
>
> Funny you should mention Mohsen Hakimi. Check out the photo at the
> link. There he is with some ICFTU folks in an ICFTU photo.
>
> Don't you, even in the back of your mind, feel even a shred of guilt
> over trash-talking unionists who are being beaten and imprisoned by a
> bourgeois state?
>
> Doug
>
> ----
>
> http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=05&d=06&a=11
>
> Iran: 7 Workers Still Held for Celebrating May Day
>
> May 06, 2004
> ICFTU
> International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
Maybe in your corner of the world, things have not changed at all since 2004, but if Iranians saw a bigger threat from the empire in 2006 than in 2004, more suspicious of what it claims to be doing for them (such as the aforementioned global day of action), who can blame them?
In any case, if you want to actually do something for Osanloo or any other Iranian for matter, aside from e-mailing, I'm not stopping you at all. Let us know what you will be doing. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/>