Rights Books - Page 2

I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, Special 75th Anniversary Edition (Martin Luther King, Jr., born January 15, 1929)

Martin Luther King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous words, "I have a dream . . ." It was a speech that changed the course of history.

This anniversary edition honors Martin Luther King Jr.'s courageous dream and his immeasurable contribution by presenting his most memorable words in a concise and convenient edition. As Coretta Scott King says in her foreword, "This collection includes many of what I consider to be my husband's most important writings and orations." In addition to the famed keynote address of the 1963 march on Washington, the renowned civil rights leader's most influential words included here are the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the essay "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," and his last sermon, "I See the Promised Land," preached the day before he was assassinated.

Editor James M. Washington arranged the selections chronologically, providing headnotes for each selection that give a running history of the civil rights movement and related events. In his introduction, Washington assesses King's times and significance.

No Pity : People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

Joseph P. Shapiro

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Essential Reading for ALL "Tinytimisms" 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

The Essential Primer from a non-disabled person's view. The 1994 book covers history, policies, and the interdependence we have together.
Judy Heumann and Evan Kemp recommended this to me in 1990's, and my eyes were opened wide after I read it. Ch. 1 and Tinytimism (as I call it)applies to many groups. Some call it 'Uncle Tom','assimilationist', or other. 'No Pity' describes why the charity model is fatalistic and damaging. You can see this played out in the Congress about 'welfare', 'healthcare', Clint Eastwood's attack on the ADA, and 'special needs'.
Sorry folks - we just want what you think we have, but we don't really have it: civil, legal, accessible, culturally affirming human rights.
Even if you have a disability, it is vital to read the sections that you think you know- and definately read the ones you don't know. Anyone working in health care, Addiction, Mental Health, VA, CILS, advocacy for any disability related group should read this first.

My only regret was I didn't read it sooner.

Access is a civil right and an attitude, not just a ramp (TM)!

Editorial Review:

People with disabilities forging the newest and last human rights movement of the century.

Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo

Murat Kurnaz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

American disgrace 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

In this book, translated from German, Murat Kurnaz, a German Turk, tells his tragic story. When only nineteen and an apprentice shipbuilder, while taking time off in Pakistan for religious study, he was hauled off a bus and imprisoned for a short time before being `sold' to the US Administration for $3,000. This was a bargain - the Americans were offering $5,000 - $25,000 to locals for anyone suspected of being Taliban or Al Qaeda. With such tempting offerings, many innocent men - usually foreigners - were gladly exchanged for the money which converted into huge amounts in the local currency.

Murat was sent first to a prison camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan and then later to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In both places he was repeatedly and relentlessly tortured. Among other things he was constantly beaten, often for no reason, he was water boarded, he was electrically shocked on the soles of his feet, he was hung from the ceiling by his arms tied behind him for hours on end, he was deprived of sleep for weeks at a time, he was forced to stand for days, he was starved, he was force fed, he was put in an air-tight metal container and subjected to extreme heat and cold and of course there were the months of solitary confinement. In Guantanamo he came across prisoners as young as 14 and a few even in their 80s and 90s.

Like all the books on Guantanamo, there is almost a shock a page. Besides the main tortures listed above, what I found almost as deplorable was how vindictive, sadistic and cruel the soldiers were to the detainees in little ways all the time and always there were endless lies. Also appalling were Murat's descriptions of female soldiers in one of the camps, watching while naked male prisoners defecated in a communal bucket in the open pen. And in Guantanamo, scantily dressed young women rubbed themselves against him and made sexual suggestions. One wonders if their male superiors ordered them to do this or if they thought up these little torments themselves. But it should also be said that a few guards treated the detainees with basic decency.

At the end of the book we learn that the Administration knew 6 months into Murat's capture that he was innocent, but kept him on, continued the torture and even made wild accusations against him - presumably to save face. After 5 years when he was finally to be sent back to Germany, on the way out they made a last ditch effort to make him sign a statement saying he was either Taliban or Al Qaeda or he must stay in Cuba. He refused.

How do we know all this is true? Having read so many similar accounts from so many prisoners of many different nationalities and languages, from different cell blocks, who could not have collaborated - talking between the detainees was almost always prohibited - I am convinced that what is described is essentially what happened. The Epilogue, written by his American attorney, Baher Azmy, a law professor in New Jersey, is excellent. Murat was robbed of part of his youth with no explanation or apology so it is hardly surprising he felt compelled to tell his story. He finishes with - "We have to tell the world how Abdul lost his legs and how the Moroccan captain lost his fingers. The world needs to know about the prisoners who died in Kandahar. We have to describe how the doctors came only to check whether we were dead or could stand to be tortured for a little longer."

Editorial Review:

In October 2001, nineteen-year-old Murat Kurnaz traveled to Pakistan to visit a madrassa. During a security check a few weeks after his arrival, he was arrested without explanation and for a bounty of $3,000, the Pakistani police sold him to U.S. forces. He was first taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was severely mistreated, and then two months later he was flown to Guantanamo as Prisoner #61. For more than 1,600 days, he was tortured and lived through hell. He was kept in a cage and endured daily interrogations, solitary confinement, and sleep deprivation. Finally, in August 2006, Kurnaz was released, with acknowledgment of his innocence. Told with lucidity, accuracy, and wisdom, Kurnaz's story is both sobering and poignant--an important testimony about our turbulent times when innocent people get caught in the crossfire of the war on terrorism.

Letters from Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Much more than just a book ! 5 out of 5 stars.
41 of 43 people found this review helpful.

This is not just a book. Along with Aung San Suu Kyi's two other major books ("Freedom from Fear" and "Voice of Hope"), this book is destined to be at the heart of the struggle - and eventually the victory - for democracy in Burma. Among the three, this is the one I found most wonderful. Vivid, direct, it makes the reader feel as if she/he is listening to Suu Kyi, with her wonderful Asian voice and Oxford accent. Suu Kyi talks about Burma, about her people, about herself. She tells of the tragedies of her people, in the most natural and serene way, as if she were telling of everyday life - because indeed, this is the Burmese everyday life. She does not inflate things, she does not push for her views, yet she reaches the reader's heart immediately - at least she did with me ! She simply expresses views and feelings along with plenty of thrilling facts and anecdotes. I can't imagine of any reader who won't love this book and won't feel inspired by this account from Burma's heroine. After reading this and the other books, I felt so close to Burma's struggle that I absoliutely had to go there and meet Suu in person. So I did, I took off for Burma and managed to meet her. I had met many world personalities before, but this was truly a unique event in my life. The pages of the book kept coming back to my mind, as I could finally see the source of all that strength and hope, the incarnation of Burma's struggle. In the end I was deported from Burma for having made contact with her. Now these books are my inspiration to keep fighting on for democracy in Burma in all ways I can.

Editorial Review:

Human-rights activist and leader of Burma's National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to six years' house arrest in Rangoon in 1989 by the ruling military junta SLORC. She paints a vivid, poignant yet optimistic picture of her native land in this collection of writings from her imprisonment. Aung San Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford World's Classics)

John Stuart Mill

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Triumph of the individual 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This Oxford collection of four definitive essays by John Stuart Mill, arguably the most famous Victorian writer who could be called a philosopher, gives an excellent profile of a rigorous social reformer and political thinker. The subjects of these essays--liberty, utilitarianism, government, and women's rights--are interrelated to the extent that they reveal a man with a sharp sense of history and its impact on the methods and mores of contemporary society. Mill, after all, was of Charles Dickens's generation and therefore witnessed an era in which the British crown was inclined to manifest its power through tyranny in its efforts to maintain a costly worldwide empire.

Mill's basic concern is liberty, both social and civil. He identifies a difference between freedom and liberty--freedom is the state of being free, while liberty is the freedom that a government or governing body grants its people. Briefly a member of Parliament (the workings of which are described in great detail in "Representative Government") and heavily informed and influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," Mill recognized that the most important (and perhaps the only proper) function of a government is to protect the liberties of its citizens. However, people generally get the form of government they deserve; if laws they allow to go unchecked become the tools of despotic powers, they have only their own ignorance or indolence to blame.

An enumeration of Mill's finer points may suffice as a summary of his ideas:

1. Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are essential rights of man. You don't have to accept as true what other people say, but let them say it because there's always the chance that they're right and you're wrong. Mill points out that even the Roman Catholic Church, most intolerant of religions (his words, not mine), allows a "devil's advocate" to offer repudiative evidence before it canonizes a new saint. He notes instances in which religious intolerance still rears its ugly head in the British Empire of his day.

2. Christianity does not have a monopoly on moral authority; literary history gives evidence of this.

3. Individuality should be fostered so that new ideas may flourish, but society, specifically the middle class, establishes the normative values that unfortunately tend to stifle individuality. You have an unlimited right to your opinion, but you are free to act only so far as you do not harm or molest others. Long before Orwell, Mill had the insight that institutional deprivation of liberty is effectively suppression of thought, for how can someone train himself to think independently when doing so could lead to persecution for heresy or treason?

4. State-sponsored education should restrict itself to teaching scientifically provable or reliably documented facts rather than push religious or political agenda. When or if polemical issues are raised, arguments for and against are to be presented as opinions so that students may draw their own conclusions.

5. The utilitarian principle states that actions that promote happiness (in its most obvious form, pleasure) are "right" and those that reduce happiness are "wrong"--in other words, utilitarianism is the opposite of puritanism. Consider how much better it is to be a dissatisfied human being than a satisfied pig, because the human has the potential for so much more happiness than the pig, whose breadth of experience is contained entirely between the trough and the slaughterhouse, could ever know.

6. Women deserve the same rights as men because the social and mental limitations attributed to women are for the most part a male-conceived artifice. Chivalry is a fallacy.

And so on. I'm not sure if it's correct to call Mill a libertarian in modern terms, but he was certainly concerned with the issues with which modern libertarians are concerned. Much of his discourse is relevant to today's world, even though he often draws upon the past for contrast in order to make his conclusions, the implication being that improvement comes with increased knowledge and experience. Anyone who is interested in nineteenth-century thought on democracy and individualism will find much to ponder in Mill's eloquence.

Editorial Review:

This edition contains four essays--"On Liberty," "Utilitarianism," "Considerations on Representative Government," and "The Subjection of Women"--never before presented in one volume. Contrary to the muddled eclectic of traditional interpretations, Mill emerges as a consistent and strikingly modern thinker, no less ambitious than Marx.

Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty

James Bovard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A potent and well documented book. A must read for every citizen concerned about growing government 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

With Lost Rights, James Bovard follows the increase in the size of the federal government in the 20th century and demonstrates how, with each successive layer of new laws and bigger government, the citizens are being coerced in ways that would make the Founders roll over in their graves.

With a style that masterfully intersperses meticulously documented incidents with his own dry, acerbic and often mocking wit, the author demonstrates how an overabundance of laws are increasingly written, not by Congress, but by bureaucrats and regulatory agencies, who see their jobs as a way to tyrannically impose their personal ideologoies on American citizens and business with little regard to the cost or burden. And all too often, the rules they write have the express intention of favoring one party or destroying another.

Bovard gets to the root of governmental expansion. Namely, overstating a problem is the fast track to more fame, more money, and more power for many politicians and bureaucrats. They have every incentive to exaggerate a problem, foster new legislation, and boast about being proactive. This goes on perpetually until nearly every area of life is subject to some kind of government oversight and regulation. And it's so pervasive, most have become immune and oblivious to it.

The author shows, in one frightening anecdote after another, how the government intends to prevail against the citizen one way or another. The outcome of bureacratic hearings are predetermined. Citizens going up against the IRS are presumed guilty and are subject to property forfeitures until they prove otherwise. Citizens who have property (especially cash) seized by police under the thinnest of pretexts stand little chance of ever getting it back, and the procedural cost of doing so negates the effort.

These are just a few of the injustices detailed in Lost Rights that will leave you shaking your head in disbelief and seething in anger. Others include the abuse of teachers unions and their disdain for parental involvement, the futility of the war on drugs and pornography, the failure of public housing, the subjugating effect of government subsidies, and the power to destroy that comes with the power to tax. To be fair, Bovard does inform the reader parenthetically that some of the most egregious abuses of government have been rejected by the courts.

Time after time, Bovard shows that the best governmental intentions go awry and the realities rarely live up to the promises. Government also has a knack for not anticipating the secondary (often negative) consequences of their policy proposals. Bovard calls for us to start judging government programs more by how effective they have been rather than the flowery rhetoric that always accompanies a new proposal.

For those who favor a more laissez faire government, and want to know just how corrupt, inept, and coercive our government has become, Bovard is a treasure. He convincingly makes the case that the more laws we have, the more injustice increases.

Bovard's one weakness is a flaw common among libertarian advocates and that is he weighs the benefit of every policy on a "net good" basis. If government intervention in a problem doesn't result in an appreciable postive change, the government program should be cast aside. But such a conclusion doesn't examine whether, in the absense of the program in question, would the problem be even worse? Such suggestions also ignore political reality. Right or wrong, people expect the government to "do something" about perceived problems whether it will be effective or not. The solution is obviously to have a more informed and skeptical populace. If everyone in America read this book, it would be a good start.

Bovard's style can be a little too bombastic and bellicose for some who might be of a more left/moderate persuasion. He opens himself up criticism by seeing the world in a very binary fashion with almost no shades of grey. Many will say he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater every time he sees injustice on the part of government. But for the most part, his outrage is justified, as well as infectious, and his anecdotes are faithfully documented.

One of the saddest, and all too real, insights Bovard comes to is about the drama that unfolded in Waco, Texas in 1993 at the Branch Davidian property. Bovard concludes, and I believe he is correct, that the show of force at Waco was intended primarily to send a message, "Obey the government or else." Only after the fact did the FBI admit most of the justifications made contemporaneously for raiding the compound were completely fabricated.

Editorial Review:

Journalist Bovard presents an entertaining and outrageous expose of the misuse of government control. He maintains that the only way many government agencies can measure their "public service" is by the number of citizens they harass, hinder, restrain or jail. Lost Rights provides an analysis of the bloated excess of government and the plight of contemporary Americans.

Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move

Katherine Albrecht, Liz McIntyre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Road to 1984 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Like many people, I have tended to neglect the downside of new technologies. Even though we are bombarded with advertising these days, it never occurred to me that supposedly responsible corporations would stoop to the lengths described in this book, such as literally spying on my movements while I am shopping! Parts of the book were a bit repetitive, but it certainly made me realize how very easily all of us could be led onto the road to 1984 and away from the privacy and freedoms we have long enjoyed.

Editorial Review:

As you walk down the street, a tiny microchip implanted in your tennis shoe tracks your every move; chips woven into your clothing transmit the value of your outfit to nearby retailers; and a thief scans the chips hidden inside your money to decide if you’re worth robbing. This isn’t science fiction; in a few short years, it could be a fact of life.

Spychips takes readers into the frightening world of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).While manufacturers and the government want you to believe that they would never misuse the technology, the future looks like an Orwellian nightmare when you consider the possibilities of surveillance and tracking these chips embody. Combining in-depth research with firsthand reporting, Spychips reveals how RFID technology, if left unchecked, could soon destroy our privacy, radically alter the economy, and open the floodgates for civil liberty abuses.

Fear No Evil

Natan Sharansky

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

David vs. Goliath 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

"[Saul] put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on [David's]head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around... "I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached [Goliath]".

So begins the story of the famous battle between the future King David of Israel and the giant Phillistine during Biblical times. In Natan Shcharansky's "Fear No Evil" (the title taken from one of David's own psalms), the author is less equipped even than young David in battling the ubiquitous and evil KGB, which maintains an illegal presence in the prisons he's held in (again, illegally), accused of spying for western countries. But because of decisions he makes early in his arrest, he is the victor in the struggle waged over his soul by men who would like him to acknowledge he is wrong, who would like him to implicate others in his "crimes" in order for favors from them, or who would simply like him to stop being the delightful fly in the prison ointment he is.

Shcharansky's only weapons during his trial and during his following prison term, consist of his personal integrity, which remains unsullied; his faith and trust in his family and friends; and a tiny book of psalms that he will spare nothing in reminding prison officials he is entitled to. He sometimes has to wage a hunger strike for these things, but always wins. It is true that his wife, who managed to reach Jerusalem before Shcharansky's arrest, is on a worldwide campaign for his release, resulting in no less than two sitting US presidents mentioning him by name in speeches heard by Soviet officials as a political prisoner, as well as global support, but Shcharansky does not learn this until later, and so believes he is virtually alone in the fight.

This gritty autobiography is a lovely example of human survival, and how one can keep his humanity in a horrific place. Shcharansky's relationships with his fellow "zeks" (prisoners) is especially touching, and we're able to get a glimpse of how even the guards in the system have surrendered their souls in this "police state".

A great read for anyone questioning how to survive while it seems suffering and injustice are towering overhead. Very inspiring.

Editorial Review:

The classic, inspiring memoir of a political dissident-a man whose fierce spirit and drive for freedom triumphed over imprisonment, solitary confinement, the Soviet Union, and Communism itself.

Black Power : The Politics of Liberation

Charles V. Hamilton, Kwame Ture, Stokely Carmichael, Charles Hamilton, Kwame Ture

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A Bible for Black Nationalism 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 17 people found this review helpful.

I first read this book in 1993, after reading this book again it gives a not only a revealing truth of the american black experience, but a foundation for these beliefs and clear logical thought which makes this book a MUST READ and not just angry rhetoric printed on paper.

Open your eyes 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 19 people found this review helpful.

After reading this book I began to think of many different things about myself. At first the book seemed kind of dull but give it a chapter or so and you won't want to put it down. This book gives references of the once again if you've read any other of my reviews by the people for the people. This book deals with big politics and community politics. It offers approaches as a person to realize the problems of the inner city but not so much but how blacks are being taken advantage of. This book is an insight into how businesses in the black community should under contracts be forced to spend at least ten to twenty percent of their earnings in the black community on schlorships, helping businesses,helping the homeless,etc. It gives case studies of different black comunities and how they confronted the powers that be. This book is a must read for all blacks, going into the next political change for us to understand where this system of government between Gore and Bush will leave minorities for the next term. This will also give non-minorities a chance to see what are the struggles that us as so called minorities go through that some quite can't understand. Everyone reading this review stay peaceful in your endeavers and life and stay focused, Assalaamu Alaykium

Editorial Review:

In 1967, this revolutionary work exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a radical political framework for reform: true and lasting social change would only be accomplished through unity among African-Americans and their independence from the preexisting order. An eloquent document of the civil rights movement that remains a work of profound social relevance 25 years after it was first published.

The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992 (American Century Series)

Harvard Sitkoff

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Struggle for Balck Equality is an aresting history of the civil-rights movement--from the pathbreaking Supreme Court decision of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, through the growth of strife and conflict in the 1960s to the major issues of the 1990s. harvard Sitkoff offers not only a brilliant interpretation of the personalities and dynamics of the civils-rights organization--SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC, and others--but a superb study of the continuing problems plaguing the African-American population: the future that in 1980 seemed to hold much promise for a better way of life has by the early1990s hardly lived up to expectations. Jim Crow has gone, but, forty years after Brown, poverty, big-city slums, white backlash, politically and socially conservativepolicies, and prolonged recession have made economic progress for the vast majority of blacks an elusive, perhaps ever more distant goal.

All Americans who strove and suffered to make democracy real come vividly to life in these compelling pages.