Farnoosh Moshiri: An Open Door in the Bend of an Iranian Alley

Author Farnoosh Moshiri was born in a literary family in Tehran, Iran. She holds a B.A. in dramatic literature from the College of Dramatic Arts in Tehran, an M.A. in drama from the University of Iowa and an M.F.A in creative writing from the University of Houston. Her novel The Bathhouse is the story of a young woman arrested and detained during the fundamentalist revolution in Iran.

"It's happening and I'm not there," I embrace my belly, as if having unbearable cramps of a miscarriage. I hold back tears and move back and forth like a mother on her child's grave. On the TV screen Iranian youth chant, demanding justice. The election has been a fraud and they want re-counting of the votes. They want their elected president, not the little dictator, the puppet of the old despot, the "Absolutist Ayatollah." They march peacefully, some with tapes over their mouths, meaning they are quiet, all wearing green shirts, waistbands, or bandanas, holding flags and banners, arms up, showing V signs. They are millions—men and women, boys and girls, children, babies, sitting on the shoulders of fathers, green ribbons decorating the crown of their fluffy hair. It's a massive demonstration, a reminder of 1979, when I was one of them and we fought for a republic—not an Islamic one. This was before the West aimed the spotlight on Khomeini and he was shipped from Paris with his entourage and the people's revolution was hijacked.

I watch all this, remember my youth, sway like a pendulum, and swallow my tears. But suddenly men in black shirts attack the green sea of the peaceful rally and blood covers the streets of Tehran. Cell phones capture the clubbing and stabbing. Someone's camera records the shooting of a girl. I watch with disbelief. Blood gushes out of the girl's chest, a young man presses his hand over the wound to stop it, an old man screams, "They killed her! They killed my daughter!"

After this scene, I experience a turmoil unlike any emotional crisis in my life. Anger, sorrow, and the worst—guilt and self-hatred overcome me. I sob for a moment, then I shout at my husband, "Haven't I been telling you? Haven't I been writing for years that this is a fascist regime? Haven't I? So why has no one believed me? No one ever believed me! I was right! They are fascists. Look! They're killing our children!"

He rubs my shoulder to calm me down and gently reminds me that no one has ever rejected my books; no one has ever defended this regime.

But this does not help. I'm out of my mind. I contradict myself: "I haven't done anything! Nothing!" I weep. "I escaped and they are getting killed--"

With each new image, each YouTube film clip of beatings and stabbings of innocent people, I go through another wave of rage and sorrow, guilt and self-bashing. I mumble incoherently between tears—either insisting that I'd been right writing against this regime, or lamenting that I haven't done enough.

Have I been suffering from PTSD and have never been diagnosed? Am I remembering the Revolution, my forced exile, the execution of my comrades after I crossed the border, my father's arrest and beating and his subsequent blindness and stroke? Am I remembering the harsh life of the refugee camp in war-infested Afghanistan? Am I remembering everything at once and experiencing a breakdown?

And why such back breaking guilt, such self-condemnation?

"I want to be there!" I demand childishly. "I want to be shot, get beaten up, clubbed, killed! Why am I here?"

Observation Post by Philip C. Winslow Ending Israel’s Settlements

Today's post is the latest in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean's magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.

Ever since Barack Obama's inauguration in January, there's been talk of a looming policy confrontation with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office in March, over Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Headlines like "U.S., Israel square off over settlement expansion" boosted hopes or worries (depending on one's viewpoint) that the U.S. would use its considerable leverage to crack down on the continuing growth of the settlements, which are illegal under international law. At the first hint that Washington might do so, inflammatory posters popped up all over the West Bank (see this photo).

And after Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4, when he called for the settlements to stop, it seemed that the two leaders indeed were headed for a showdown over the most contentious issue in the Middle East.

Partly in response to Obama's address, a major policy speech by Netanyahu was promised. It came on June 14, struggled for lift and landed with a dull thud. "In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect," Netanyahu said. "Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other."

Some commentators made much of Netanyahu's use, for the first time ever, of the words "Palestinian state." The phrases the prime minister actually used were "armed Palestinian state" and "demilitarized Palestinian state," and pointed only to a future territory without an army, without control of its airspace, and one that provides "ironclad" security guarantees for Israel. The speech offered nothing new, and was breathtakingly ungracious to the Palestinians.

Fred Pearce: Consumption Dwarfs Population As Main Environmental Threat

Today's post is by Fred Pearce, author of Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff. Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the UK. He is environment consultant for New Scientist magazine, and his other books include When The Rivers Run Dry and With Speed and Violence. This post originally appeared at Yale Environment 360 (e360.yale.edu).

It's the great taboo, I hear many environmentalists say. Population growth is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet, but we are afraid to discuss it.

It sounds like a no-brainer. More people must inevitably be bad for the environment, taking more resources and causing more pollution, driving the planet ever farther beyond its carrying capacity. But hold on. This is a terribly convenient argument-- "over-consumers" in rich countries can blame "over-breeders" in distant lands for the state of the planet. But what are the facts?

The world's population quadrupled to six billion people during the 20th century. It is still rising and may reach 9 billion by 2050. Yet for at least the past century, rising per-capita incomes have outstripped the rising head count several times over. And while incomes don't translate precisely into increased resource use and pollution, the correlation is distressingly strong.

Moreover, most of the extra consumption has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population.

By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world's people take the majority of the world's resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Take carbon dioxide emissions-- a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world's richest half-billion people-- that's about 7 percent of the global population-- are responsible for 50 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.

Although overconsumption has a profound effect on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts of our high standard of living extend beyond turning up the temperature of the planet. For a wider perspective of humanity's effects on the planet's life support systems, the best available measure is the "ecological footprint," which estimates the area of land required to provide each of us with food, clothing, and other resources, as well as to soak up our pollution. This analysis has its methodological problems, but its comparisons between nations are firm enough to be useful.

Observation Post by Philip C. Winslow Cluster Weapons: On the Way Out

Today's post is the latest in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean's magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.

Ten years ago this spring an historic international treaty came into force banning antipersonnel land mines. Although the U.S. has not joined the 156 nations who ratified the treaty, American forces have not used antipersonnel mines since 1992, and have destroyed three million stockpiled mines; call it a reluctant phasing out of an indiscriminate weapon that U.S. forces have used since the Civil War.

Now a world movement to ban cluster weapons is gathering pace. It’s possible that this time around the U.S., which has not used cluster munitions since 2003 in Iraq, will join, helping make the weapons and their explosive sub-munitions a military artifact. So far 96 nations have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) and seven have ratified it. The treaty will enter into force on the thirtieth ratification.

Civilian deaths and disabilities from antipersonnel mines have been well documented. The unnecessary suffering and a persistent international campaign brought about the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty. Cluster munitions casualties are less well known, in part because the weapons have been used in fewer countries, about 30. But where they have been used, the terrible wounds and denial of land access have led arms control experts, doctors and civil society groups, under the umbrella of the Cluster Munition Coalition, to demand that this weapon be added to the list of prohibited weapons along with antipersonnel mines, dum-dum bullets, poison gas and blinding lasers.

Although antipersonnel mines and cluster munitions are in different military categories, they have one thing in common: catastrophic results for the civilians who come across them. America’s massive bombing of Laos from 1964 to 1973 still claims casualties today. One is Ta Douangchom. “I was living in a village called Ka Oy . . . in southern Laos. I was a farmer. One day, I was 28 years old at the time, I went out with my two sons to look for food and found a strange object. It looked green.” You can read the rest of Ta’s story here.

Tom Hallock: Genocide Prevention Month

Today's post is from Tom Hallock, Associate Publisher at Beacon Press.

The Indie Bound Red Box, The American Bookseller Association’s monthly In-store Action Kit, contained a flyer this month for a remarkable idea: Genocide Prevention Month. The ABA is teaming up with Genocide Prevention Month, a group of survivors and survivor advocates “to make sure history does not repeat itself.” Mitch Kaplan (owner of Books and Books in Coral Gables Florida), writing for the program, described his store's efforts to hold a commemoration event with genocide survivors in April and to organize a table display of books about genocide. A list of notable titles compiled by the ABA is available at www.bookweb.org/files/open/pdf/genocideprevention.pdf. The list includes general titles about genocide and others about Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda and the Holocaust.

Beacon's list also includes titles that speak to these issues: Man's Search for Meaning, Rena’s Promise, Walls and Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence. The author of one of these titles, Heather Dun Macadam, just sent me an article about research in the UK where some schoolchildren believe Auschwitz is the name of a type of beer or a religious festival, rather than a concentration camp. It’s evidence of the ongoing need for a program like Genocide Prevention Month.

Perhaps what's most remarkable is the underlying idea that independent booksellers have the power to bring a global concern to the attention of their communities-- and to create the kind of awareness that might help prevent such things from happening again. When I taught English in Beijing China fifteen years ago, I met an extraordinary pair of booksellers who were survivors of the Cultural Revolution. They had been branded rightists, sent to prison and, when they were released, opened a bookstore. It was their response to the chaos that had engulfed their lives. They wanted to create a space in which Chinese readers could find books about the world and create a new culture in which such a destructive mass movement could never again take root. They called the store San Wei, three flavors, a term used in the Qing dynasty to identify the three most important categories of books: history, poetry, and philosophy.

I thought it was a powerful and appropriate response. Genocide Prevention Month is a chance for all of us, as writers, publishers and booksellers, to exercise this same kind of power. It’s a chance to bring change to the world in one of the oldest ways-- by the sharing of stories.

Monday Media Roundup: Bill Ayers in the NY Times, Awards, TreeHugger Radio

Bill Ayers spoke for himself on the op-ed pages of the New York Times this past weekend.

Kai Wright's Drifting Toward Love was selected as an Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. A profile of Wright ran his past weekend in Edge Boston.

John Hanson Mitchell's The Paradise of All These Parts was selected as one of 2008's most memorable books by the Boston Globe.

TreeHugger Radio ran the first of a two-part interview with Fred Pearce about his new book, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner. Last week in the Guardian, Pearce examined what Coca-Cola's claims of becoming "water-neutral" really mean.

McCain and Obama on Colombian Free Trade: Business as Usual

Today's post is from Garry Leech, author of Beyond Bogota: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia. Leech is an independent journalist and editor of Colombia Journal. For the past eight years his work has primarily focused on the US war on drugs and Colombia's civil conflict. He is the author of several books including Crude Interventions: The United States, Oil and the New World (Dis)Order (Zed Books, 2006) and Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of US Intervention (Inota, 2002). He also teaches international politics at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

In the final presidential debate, the South American country of Colombia briefly became a central theme in the U.S. election campaign, not so much because of its infamous history of drug trafficking and civil conflict, but because of international economic policies. In November of 2006, the Bush administration signed a free trade agreement with the Colombian government. However, its ratification in Congress has been stalled because many Democrats oppose the pact on human rights grounds. During the debate, Republican candidate John McCain decided to take the offensive against his opponent Barack Obama by attacking the Democratic candidate's opposition to the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement. The arguments presented by each candidate are telling with regard to the degree of difference between the two of them on international economic issues.

In the debate, McCain repeatedly made Colombia a topic of discussion. In fact, as Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker put it, McCain appeared to have a "strange preoccupation" with the South American country. In actuality, McCain was preoccupied with suggesting that Obama's opposition to the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement exemplified the Democratic senator's protectionist tendencies and that such an economic approach would be bad for Americans. "I just recited to you the benefits of concluding that agreement, a billion dollars of American dollars that could have gone to creating jobs and businesses in the United States, opening up those markets," McCain argued.

Obama responded by suggesting that the United States should ensure such agreements contain adequate human rights and environmental protections, particularly in the case of Colombia where more unionists are killed each year than in the rest of the world. "We have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights," Obama declared, suggesting that human rights trump U.S. trade interests.

Not surprisingly, McCain's position on free trade agreements is consistent with that of President George W. Bush, who again urged Congress to ratify the U.S-Colombia pact the day after the debate. McCain, like the Bush administration and many other Republicans, advocates the expansion of the neoliberal, or "free market," global economic order that has been established over the past quarter century. But is Obama's position markedly different?

Link Roundup: Immigration, High Food Prices, Loving Memorial

David Bacon, author of the forthcoming Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants , sent these pictures from Oakland in the wake of last week's raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near schools in Oakland and Berkeley. You can read more about the impact the raids had on school children in Oakland at New American Media:

As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.

Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."

Mayor Dellums, whose memoir Lying Down with the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power chronicles a life of fighting for social justice, "labeled the ICE actions 'inappropriate and unnecessary' and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. 'There should be no raids in Oakland,' he said."

The last picture here is from a rally last Friday in San Francisco to protest of the raids. For more on immigration in California, read Bacon's post from last week about immigrant farm workers in California, and also read his commentary at Truthout.org about the May Day rallies for immigrant rights.

Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap, posted on his blog about the effects of the rising cost of food on those who are already experiencing food insecurity:

For some, these events may mean that those weekly strolls down the tastefully lit aisles of Whole Foods now become monthly. For those who have naturally spurned such discount pariahs as Wal-Mart, second thoughts may be in order.  

But for another class of American shoppers, rising food prices, whether organic or conventional, is just another bump in the road on an already trying journey. I’m speaking of low-income families, and increasingly low-to-middle income families who now find themselves treading closer to the lower end of the income spectrum.

Also be sure to check out Mark Winne's post on our blog about the Food Gap, Poverty, and Income Disparity.

American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression (whose president Chris Finan has posted here about free speech) has joined the Media Coalition in a lawsuit challenging an Indiana law requiring bookstores to register with the state if they sell sexually explicit material. ABFFE has also joined Powell's Books, Dark Horse Comics, and others in Oregon to fight a law in that state making it a crime to allow a minor under 13 to view or purchase a “sexually explicit” work. An affidavit from Dark Horse explains why they feel the law is unconstitutionally vague:

“I believe the only way for Dark Horse to ensure compliance under the statute would be to refrain from publishing this material entirely,” He said. “Attempting to determine, book by book, what may fall under the purview of the satute, including whether there are any ‘sexually explicit’ portions and if so whether such portions ‘serve some purpose other than titillation’ (even if I knew what that meant) is totally impractical, unduly burdensome and surely would result in our over-inclusive self-censorship.”

The recent death of Mildred Loving, whose fight against a Virginia interracial marriage ban took her all the way to the Supreme Court, inspired this post on the Courting Equality blog about the ban on gay marriage in Virginia. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended racial discrimination in marriage, Loving issued a statement in support of gay marriage:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry.  I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.  Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

Living Under the Trees: Indigenous Mexican Farm Workers in California

Today’s post is from award-winning photojournalist David Bacon. Bacon spent thirty years as a labor organizer and immigrant rights activist. His articles appear in The Nation, American Prospect, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he hosts a weekly radio show on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, will be published by Beacon Press this fall. The photos in this essay are from his photography project, Living Under the Trees, and are used here with the photographer’s permission.

In 2006, Mexico experienced profound social turmoil. Dramatic political and economic conflicts uprooted and displaced thousands of families, forcing many to consider leaving home. Teachers struck in Oaxaca, and after their demonstrations were tear-gassed, a virtual insurrection paralyzed the state capitol for months. Economic desperation lies at the root of these political and social movements — one major basis of the pressure on people to migrate north. But repression brought to bear on those movements also leads to migration.  It's no accident that Oaxaca is one of the main starting points for the current stream of Mexican migrants coming to the U.S.

About 30 million Mexicans survive on less than 30 pesos a day — not quite $3. The minimum wage is 53 pesos a day. The federal government estimates that 37.7% of Mexico’s 106 million citizens — 40 million people — live in poverty. Some 25 million, or 23.6%, live in extreme poverty. In rural Mexico, over ten million people have a daily income of less than 12 pesos — a little over a dollar. In the southern state of Oaxaca that category of extreme poverty encompasses 75% of its 3.4 million residents, according to EDUCA, an education and development organization. That makes Oaxaca the second-poorest state in Mexico, after Chiapas.

Bloody Foundation for U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Garry Leech is editor of Colombia Journal, author of Crude Interventions and Killing Peace, and coauthor of The People Behind Colombian Coal. A lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University, Leech lives in Nova Scotia. His account of being held captive by guerrillas, Beyond Bogotá, Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia, will be published by Beacon Press this fall.

There has been an ongoing debate in Washington about a potential free trade agreement with Colombia. The failure to implement a hemisphere-wide agreement—the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)—led President George W. Bush to push for a bilateral pact with his ideologically-aligned ally in Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe. The Bush administration signed a free trade pact with Colombia in November 2006, but congressional Democrats have stalled its ratification due to ongoing human rights abuses in Colombia, particularly against unionists.

The Bush administration repeatedly points to a recent reduction in the number of Colombian labor leaders killed as justification for the free trade agreement. In October 2007, U.S. State Department spokesperson, R. Nicholas Burns, declared, "Homicides of trade unionists have shown a steep decline…. Rather than condemning as insufficient the considerable progress already made by the Colombian people, we should help them consolidate that progress through expanded trade."

In the past 20 years, more than 3,000 Colombian unionists have been assassinated. In 2007, Colombia remained the most dangerous country in the world for unionists with thirty-nine labor leaders killed; a number significantly lower than the 197 assassinated in 2001—the year before President Uribe assumed office. Consequently, the Bush administration is clearly correct when it points out that there has been a marked decrease in the number of unionists killed under the Uribe administration.

Link Roundup: Israeli Soldiers Speak, UUs in Kenya

Beacon author Philip Winslow, in his recent book Victory for Us is to See You Suffer, several times quotes and highlights the activities of the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, "an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah."

Breaking the Silence sponsors tours to Hebron, and has organized exhibits to illustrate the enormous strain the occupation places on the soldiers who are assigned to protect settlements, as well as the myriad injustices and indignities inflicted upon the Palestinians in the Territories. Currently on display in Philadelphia until February 24, and coming to Cambridge March 1, is their exhibit of photos taken by soldiers (including the one featured here), artifacts of the occupation, and video testimonies from former soldiers. Hours and locations are available on their website, as well as photos, video, testimonies, and more information about the group and their goals.

Via Philocrites, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee just returned from a trip to Kenya. The emergency delegation was dispatched to assess the political and human rights situation there in the wake of the election in December. UUSC President Charlie Clements, in addition to submitting testimony to Congress on the mission (pdf), sent blog dispatches describing the unrest:

Kenya feels like it is on the edge of a precipice. Anguish and anger are pushing people into a free fall toward communal violence, which neither the leaders nor the security forces may be able to easily stop once it begins. As Kisumu, and now perhaps Nakuru (if the reports we got this afternoon are true), slip toward economic meltdown, the volatility of the situation will only increase. I fear that both Kibaki and Raila may be too insulated by hardliners to sense that they are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

For more information on the crisis, visit the UUSC's Kenya Crisis page.

Interrogation or Torture?

by Jennifer Harbury

The issue of water-boarding has become quite the political flashpoint in recent weeks. First there was an uproar when Michael Mukasey, now our Attorney General, stated his uncertainty as to whether or not this “interrogation” technique constituted torture. Shamefully, he is not alone. Many officials in our intelligence community insist that it does not. (Perhaps they should give it a try.) Next, Congressional leaders urged that this and other special CIA methods be banned for good, with predictable protests from the White House. Now we learn that the CIA has destroyed secret videotapes of two high value detainees being subjected to water-boarding. Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who gave the order, is a colleague of Terry Ward, who covered up my husband’s ongoing torture and eventual murder in Guatemala years ago. There are too many historical ironies here.

To begin with, the sanitized and highly deceptive language being used should itself be banned. Duping the American public is hardly the proper solution to international charges of war crimes. Our intelligence leaders tell us that water-boarding consists of placing a cloth over the prisoner’s face, then pouring water over him until he "thinks he is going to drown." This sounds like little more than a scare technique. The description is so benign, in fact, that one wonders how the method could convince any prisoner to talk.

A number of my friends survived water-boarding sessions in Latin America, and they give a rather different description. As my friend "O," a former POW in Guatemala tells me, his army tormentors immersed him in a vat of water. He tried desperately to hold his breath, but finally the water rushed into his head, causing terrible pain. He remembers gagging and choking, and a mounting pressure that made him think his eardrums would burst. He felt himself vomiting and going into convulsions. He awoke on the floor to find his torturers administering CPR. We shared this description with the United Nations Committee Against Torture last year. The Committee members had no difficulty in declaring this technique a form of torture, and banning it outright. Senator John McCain, himself a torture survivor, has long said the same. Water-boarding is a slow and very painful mock execution, in short, "exquisite torture."

How to solve the problem of illegal immigration with the stroke of a pen

by Aviva Chomsky

As I’ve been doing interviews and talks over the past several months about my book, "They Take Our Jobs!" And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, I've become more and more convinced that a key, central issue that's hampering those of us who support immigrant rights is the absence of a basic, fundamental ability to say “immigrant rights are human rights.” No politician or talk-show commentator is going to risk saying this—but we have to.

Although I stand by my arguments about the myths I try to deconstruct in the book (Immigrants DON’T take American jobs! Immigrants DO pay taxes! Immigrants ARE learning English!) I also, deep down, think these arguments miss the point. Immigrants are human beings who have arbitrarily been classified as having a different legal status from the rest of the country’s inhabitants. The only thing that makes immigrants different from anybody else is the fact that they are denied the basic rights that the rest of us have. There is simply no humanly acceptable reason to define a group of people as different and deny them rights.

Memories of Burma, 1998

Editor's Note: Today, thousands of bloggers around the world are taking part in an International Bloggers Day for Burma. Instead of the usual blogging, they've put up just one post with a image (like the one here) showing their support for the peaceful revolution brought to the streets by thousands of Buddhist monks. We applaud these bloggers for their attention to this struggle, but instead of going dark today ourselves we wanted to share with you this story, from scholar and Beacon author Sarah LeVine, which gives some context to the great acts of courage we've recently witnessed and the vicious reprisals in their wake.

by Sarah LeVine

In mid-September when I began to hear news reports that thousands of monks—and a few days later, nuns as well—were out in the streets of Yangon and other Myanmar cities demonstrating against the government, I could hardly believe my ears.

In April 1998 I joined a group of Nepalese Theravada Buddhists on a pilgrimage to Myanmar. Led by a nun who had been trained many years before in what was then Burma, we flew from Kathmandu to Bangkok, a veritable fleshpot, where we visited temples and hung out with Nepalese novices; and then we flew on to Yangon where, though it was a charming well-laid-out city and the people were strikingly attractive, the military were much in evidence and the atmosphere was palpably repressive and austere.

The Disappearance of Burmese Monks

In a comment on yesterday's post about International Non-Violence Day, one reader prodded us to address the alarming situation in Burma/Myanmar. Many of us are probably wondering what we can do to educate ourselves about the country and to help bring an end to the egregious human rights violations being committed there. Here's a quick overview of some resources to help you learn more and take action.