Opposing Lawrence Summers // by Lynette E. Sieger

After living for eight years as a citizen of a nation whose leaders have shown a blatant disregard for the fundamental and universal nature of human rights, the election of Barack Obama initially gave me a renewed hope in the restoration of the recognition of the moral parity of all people within and outside of the arbitrary distinction of national borders.  Today that hope has been shattered by the announcement that Lawrence Summers will be appointed as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council in President Obama's administration.

As Chief Economist of the World Bank, Mr. Summers has proven that his logic—or what he claims to be his sense of irony and satire—is nothing short of genocidal. I fear that with this appointment the Obama administration will continue to sustain the pervasive and causal role that the international order plays in creating and sustaining conditions under which fundamental human rights cannot be fulfilled with Mr. Summer's ideology to impose on poor states conditions which entrench and deepen existing inequalities and lead to the ultimate and irrevocable human rights violation of death.