Intellectual honesty demands that we not stretch a perfectly reasonable observation that "there's a lot of repression of feminists, sexual minorities, labor organizers, and dissidents" in Iran, which is true of most countries in the world, into a sensational propaganda that "Iran executes another queer" (as you put it at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-November/022698.html>) or a suggestion that Iran is unique, nay the worst in the world, in these respects, or an insistence that we say little or nothing about what the Iranian government has come to do well in response to its people's demands and benefited them.
Where does the last insistence come from? Ignorance? Partly. But it also must be a fear that the New York Post or something like that might call you "Terror Sponsor's Lefty 'Chum' Henwood," "Imam Henwood," or some such name if you even just point out basic facts that one can learn from BBC (e.g., the government provides free contraceptives in Iran) or the World Bank, such as this:
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/08/iran-rapid-rise-in-womens-labor-force.html> According to the latest report of the World Bank, "In Iran, women's participation in the labor force rose from 33 to 41 percent in five years, a phenomenal leap. In 1990, participation rates for women in Iran were below MENA average; by 2005, they were the third-highest in the region. . . . In Iran, women made up a majority of all additional entrants to the labor market" (The World Bank, 2007 Economic Developments & Prospects: Job Creation in an Era of High Growth, pp. xvii, 34). See, also, "Table 2.2: Women's Participation in the Labor force: Rising Rapidly" on p. 33 and the graph "Women as Share of Labor Force in 2000 vs. Women's Share of Additional Entrants to Labor Force in 2000–05" on p. 34 of the World Bank Report.
On 9/10/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 10, 2007, at 8:34 AM, james daly wrote:
>
> >> From a great distance, that programme looks mostly critical of
> >> Iran for theocracy.
>
> Evidently the distance is rather great. Do you know anything about
> Dabashi, Abrahamian, or Moghadam?
That's hardly the only thing Abrahamian, Dabashi, Moghadam, etc. have to say, but that seems to be the only thing that you get out of them and the only thing that you insist we all hear. -- Yoshie