Random House, among the biggest publishing houses in the US, has announced that it will publish Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi´s memoirs. Although there had been an embargo under a Treasury Department regulation on publishing books from nations embargoes by the US, a lawsuit filed late last year resulted in a revision to permit publications of books by individuals from those nations. (20-JAN-05)
 
It was the New York Times on Sunday that passed on the news released last Friday by Random House that it will publish Mrs Ebadi´s memoirs. The news brings to a happy end what could have been a sad and embarrassing consequence of the US´ otherwise uncompromising policy of total embargo of anything and everything of Cuban, North Korean, Sudanese or Iranian origin.

Bush, aligning himself with the fundamentalist clergy
For quite a while, and in open conflict with the US Constitution´s First Amendment, equally uncompromising that there should be no restrictions on the freedom of expression and opinion, the White House held on to the embargo also in the case of Ebadi´s memoirs, simply in the basis that she is an Iranian. Hence, instead of promoting human rights and democracy, which is what the Bush administration claims to be doing throughout the Middle East, it ironically aligned itself with the fundamentalist clergy which ever since the Iranian revolution of -79 has ruled out any real reform towards democracy and improvements of human rights standards.

At last, the White House realised the irony of its position
Now, the White House has come to relise the irony of its own initial position and opened up for books by individuals from the four nations listed to be published in the US. The turn follows, among other international protests, a resolution from PEN International´s world congress in Tromsø, Norway, last September. The current chair of the US section of PEN International also happens to be Salman Rushdie, in recent times the world´s most famous and thus also credible victim of boycotts, embargoes and fatwas related to the writing and publishing of books. 

See also:
Summons against Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi withdrawn (20-JAN-05)

Ebadi wants a human rights house in Iran Speech at the HRH Conference 13 October 2004