Today, your song actually comes from Afghanistan (I think), and there’s kind of a funny story behind it; the newscaster at the beginning of the clip will tell you more. Watch the video too, it’s way interesting. Oh, if you don’t speak German, you won’t understand what the newscaster is saying (haha, eat it):
Now that you’re sufficiently weirded out, let’s start by covering that beloved topic of this blog, Iran. The fresh push for sanctions by Congress (and people who probably shouldn’t have any say in what Congress does in regards to Iran – I’m looking at you, AIPAC) is only going to get worse next month, apparently. According to this brilliant post on the NIAC blog, Congress hopes to blockade Iran’s foreign oil supplies. Why would this be bad, you ask? Doesn’t Iran already have tons of oil? Yes, but Iran has been in the unfortunate position of not necessarily having the refining capacity to deal with all of their own oil, so they’ve historically had to actually ship oil out to be refined, and then buy it back. Iran imports 40% of its refined petroleum, so it really would hurt them a lot.
Probably the most important point the post makes can be found here:
Next, even if the sanctions were effective in harming the Iranian economy, there isn’t a single historical example of economic sanctions translating into a desirable change in the Iranian government’s behavior.
Thank you! It’s true; there is no proof that these sanctions have ever worked and there is no reason to believe they will this time. I will apologize to everyone if they do, but that’s just how sure I am that they won’t.
And as the post points out (like so many others have before), the sanctions wouldn’t hurt the Supreme Leader, Ahmadinejad, or the mullahs (lots of them have turned on the Supreme Leader anyway, at this point), it would hurt the common people…the ones we were so vigorously supporting a few weeks ago.
So it’s people like Senator McCain, who has recently said this…
“The United States of America must, and this body must, affirm our support for fundamental human rights of the Iranian people who are being beaten and killed in the streets of Tehran and other cities around Iran. We are with them.”
…who are now pushing for “crippling sanctions” that will “bring the Iranian economy to its knees.” When asked whether or not he realized that the “Iranian people” he was referring to actually lived in Iran, Senator McCain fell asleep. Bad form, Senator McCain. Okay, I haven’t got the patience for this right now.