Sanctions are an act of war."Obama signed an executive order that imposes new sanctions on the Iranian energy and petrochemical sectors to block the country from circumventing existing sanctions. The order also expands sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical industry by making the purchase or acquisition of Iranian petrochemical products sanctionable."


President Obama announced new sanctions on Iran on Tuesday just as lawmakers of both parties in the House and Senate ran out of patience and introduced their own legislation.
In his first action, Obama signed an executive order that imposes new sanctions on the Iranian energy and petrochemical sectors to block the country from circumventing existing sanctions. The order also expands sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical industry by making the purchase or acquisition of Iranian petrochemical products sanctionable.
Separately, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against two international financial institutions – Bank of Kunlun in China and Elaf Islamic Bank in Iraq – for facilitating transactions on behalf of Iranian banks that are subject to international sanctions.
“Since taking office, we have presented the Iranian government with a clear choice: come in line with your international obligations and rejoin the community of nations, or face growing consequences,” Obama said in a statement. “With these actions, we are once again reaffirming our commitment to hold the Iranian government accountable for its actions.”
Administration officials told reporters they weren't trying to derail the congressional sanctions bill but rather were working with Congress to increase the pressure on Iran to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program.

“With respect to the current legislation, we've been working with Congress as they've developed that legislation. We certainly share the goal. And we believe it can be an important tool in adding to the sanctions regime we have in place," said Ben Rhodes, the deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications.
He stopped short of endorsing the current version, however.
“We are reviewing the specific text of the bill that was produced,” Rhodes said, “but we're quite optimistic that we're going to be able to continue to work in lockstep with Congress with this new legislation.”
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments over the weekend that international sanctions haven't slowed down Iran's alleged nuclear program by “one iota,” Rhodes said they should be given time to work. Iran says its research is purely for civilian purposes.
“The purpose of the sanctions is to affect the Iranian calculus,” Rhodes said. “It is certainly the case that Iran has not yet decided to come in line with their international obligations, which is why we're continuing to build out the sanctions...What we do see is the sanctions having a significant impact on the Iranian economy and the government's ability to access revenue, and that has consequences ultimately for what they can spend money on, what technology they can procure for their program.”
The main Senate sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), tweeted his approval of the administration's latest actions.
"Also applaud Pres. Obama & @WhiteHouse for their new sanctions to toughen Iran sanctions & stop Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions," he wrote.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love.

The true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love.

We have all been to protests and marvelled at the flair,
creativity and humour on display. This page is
dedicated to these protests and those
... protesters, the people who have
made active their
desire to change
the world.

"The philosophers have merely
interpreted the world in
various ways,
the point,
however;
is to change
it."

Karl Marx

"Rise like lions after slumber,
in unvanquishable number;
Shake to earth your
chains like dew,
which in sleep
had fallen on
you. Ye are
many -
they
are
few."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"We want to live among people who are conscious that we live in
struggle. A struggle against life, against the spirit. We want to
live among people who don't look down at their feet, or won't
look you in the eyes when you speak of struggle or
insurrection, because in their heart they know
they have surrendered, and because - maybe,
just maybe - they never really hated the
system. Among people who have not
been bought, who carry on because
they preferred to struggle with
their feeling of pathologised
anxiety than to live in the
dead zone. People who
don't pretend to be
struggling when it
is obvious that
what they are
doing is
turning
the
battlefield
into a
garden.

We want to be in a place where the struggle is waged."

Why the Sheople don't want to face the cliff they are about to run off by their governments?

In Claude Lanzmann’s monumental documentary film “Shoah,” on the Holocaust, he interviews Filip Müller, a Czech Jew who survived the liquidations in Auschwitz as a member of the “special detail.” Müller relates this story:

“One day in 1943 when I was already in Crematorium 5, a train from Bialystok arrived. A prisoner on the ‘special detail’ saw a woman in the ‘undressing room’ who was the wife of a friend of his. He came right out and told her: ‘You are going to be exterminated. In three hours you’ll be ashes.’ The woman believed him because she knew him. She ran all over and warned to the other women. ‘We’re going to be killed. We’re going to be gassed.’ Mothers carrying their children on their shoulders didn’t want to hear that. They decided the woman was crazy. They chased her away. So she went to the men. To no avail. Not that they didn’t believe her. They’d heard rumors in the Bialystok ghetto, or in Grodno, and elsewhere. But who wanted to hear that? When she saw that no one would listen, she scratched her whole face. Out of despair. In shock. And she started to scream.”

Blaise Pascal wrote in “Pensées,” “We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.”

Hannah Arendt, in writing “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” noted that Adolf Eichmann was primarily motivated by “an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.” He joined the Nazi Party because it was a good career move. “The trouble with Eichmann,” she wrote, “was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

Bad / Cruel government

Bad / Cruel government

Bad government was the major cause of the famine, Ireland was treated as a colony not as an equal and used for the benefit of England. During the famine laws and legislation were passed which favoured their interest over Irelands. They adopted a policy of lazes fare, free trade and non-interference. Ireland was not the only land effected by potato blight but every other country managed to save its population. Why did it not happen in Ireland? Some countries closed their ports to exports and imported substitute foods, some from Ireland. The Irish party proposed these same measures plus many other positive suggestions. Why did the English government not adopt them? O’Connell asked them to leave the oats, to tax absentee landlords, use the proceeds of the forests and to put people to work on productive schemes. Not one of these proposals was adopted. The government failed the people by not providing the means or measures to save them from starvation. They used the famine to solve the problem as they saw it of overpopulation and poverty. They had felt their power challenged by the repeal movement and the sheer numbers that rallied around it. English officials were also frightened of the vast numbers of Ireland’s population. They allowed the famine to occur because they saw an opportunity to reduce the population, to punish Ireland, and bring it back under its control. Prior to the famine mass emigration was proposed as a remedy to the Irish question of poverty and population control. The idea had been abandoned because the logistics of moving so many people to British North America were thought to be too great. They took advantage of the potato blight to implement policies to achieve their aims and settle the Irish problem permanently.


In a address to the house of commons Lord George Bentinck said that” never before was there an instance of a Christian government allowing so many people to perish without interfering. The time will come when we shall know what the amount of mortality’s been when the public and the world will be able to estimate, at its proper value your management of affairs in Ireland”http://www.wolfetonesofficialsite.com/famine.htm

Soildies are not Hreos

Don't portray all soldiers to be heroes and shower the armed forces with unconditional praise.

Putting on a soldiers uniform does not make you a hero. Supporters of the group generally agree that the wars that our armed forces are participating in at the present time and in recent years are unnecessary and unjust. Therefore we don't feel that we should be pressured into offering "support" to people fighting and killing innocent people for causes that we don't believe in.

We recognize that the government are mainly to blame but also think that members of the forces need to take responsibility for their own actions in choosing to support these causes. Soldiers have free will and the opportunity to not sign/re-sign up if they feel they are being asked to participate in an unjust war, so they also deserve a proportion of the blame if they choose to stay.

Soldiers are not heroes. They can be heroes, they can act heroically, they can do heroic things - but the act of putting on a uniform for the next so many years does not make your life more important than others, it does not make your opinions and insights more worthy of respect than others, it does not exempt you from moral judgement. It does not make you a hero. And we should not fall prey to hero-worship