Medea Benjamin

documented them on a barrel-shaped baked clay tablet inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform writing (now known as the Cyrus Cylinder). This ancient record has been officially recognized as the first human rights charter. The United Nations has translated the text into all six official languages and used it as the basis of the first four articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Iran has not signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), making it one of only seven countries out of the UN’s 194 member states failing to do so (one of the other non-signatories is the United States).

Very few would know that the empire of ancient Persia, now the state of Iran, actually set

the precedent of human rights in 539 B.C. when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. In a major step forward for humankind, this conqueror set the slaves free and granted them the right to return home, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established a system of racial equality. Not only did Cyrus the Great take the first stand for establishing these human rights, he actually

To achieve this goal, the government took some steps that were helpful to families, such as increasing maternity leave from six months to a full nine months (compared to three months in the United States)

but, in reality, it was arming both sides. Shortly after taking office in 1981, the Reagan administration secretly worked with Israel to ship several billion dollars of American weapons to Iran, despite the U.S. embargo against such sales. Then in 1982, when the CIA warned Reagan that Iraq was on the verge of being beaten on the battlefield

by Iran, the U.S. government secretly provided Iraq with highly classified intelligence, including on Iranian troop movements, and covertly shipped American weapons to Iraq.163 Basically, the United States was arming both sides so that neither side would dominate this key oil region. By 1983, however, the U.S. began to favor Iraq, turning a blind eye while U.S. arms dealers sold sophisticated Soviet arms to Iraqi

concoction of bureaucratic punishments the U.S. government cooked up over the years to squeeze Iran economically. They include 27 Executive Orders, 11 Statutes, 23 Interpretive Guidance documents.148 They are meant to scare U.S. companies from even contemplating deals with Iran, but they are also meant to influence foreign companies around the globe.

strongman Saddam Hussein.

A look at the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control shows the vast con