In these tough times it is useful sometimes to specify exactly what you stand for and what are the dangers you feel and how do you, as a person consider the issue of the controversy and compromise. I would urge everyone on the OEN to join me in this. Here is my credo. No Pasaran- they will not pass!
1. This is my country. I came here more than 20 years ago with $300 and a family. I became a citizen in 5 years after that and I took an oath to love and protect it. I love and protect it since. The way I love and protect it is that when I see the types of people who destroyed my old country, the greedy malicious coven of medieval minds- I call them what they are and I declare how dangerous they are. This is my home. No Pasaran!
2. I had been homeless and I had been poor. I had taught the poor people and the people chronically hungry. I saw them and lived among them and I saw their eyes. I had been a refugee and a man without a country. I integrated with many kinds of people and anyone who either by stupidity or by malice preaches that poor people are lazy and that they are the reason they are poor is just a malicious harmful creature in my book. No Pasaran!
3. I am an atheist and always will be but I respect religions as the great achievement of human culture, something to learn and admire from the Gothic cathedrals to great Mosques. I declare that anyone who somehow proclaims that his/her religion is superior to ones of others or accuses the religion of others of being ' violent' or something else is either a damned fool or something even worse. Anyone who somehow considers that religious dogmas can be applied as guidelines to the secular living is an enemy of mankind. No Pasaran!
4. Hypocrisy is an enemy of Humanity. This country, my beloved is stricken by it as a malaise. Most of our media, our politicians, our representatives, our public figures are so drowned in it that they had forgotten how to say the truth. They lie from morning till night. No Pasaran!
5. This country is in seizure. This seizure is purely artificial, manufactured by the greedy thieves who used their political muscle and bought our institutions of governing. The best and the brightest are ousted and we have a bachhanalia of demons in power since Y2000. No Pasaran!
6. I am a technical professional. I know what does that mean to have a dynamic economy-it is my livelyhood. Dynamic economy, meaningful jobs- all start with a) cultivating honest workers and b)cultivatiing and nourishing the trade-unions of working class. I am a professional and I am all for a good, highly educated and highly demanding working class. Whoever is destroying the trade -unions is an enemy of this country. No Pasaran!
7. This country is in the crisis of identity. Pseudo- definitions like left or right are the ones misleading. The one and only criteria so far is rich/poor. That must change. We must become one. We must impose equality in the face of institutions of the society. Democracy in such a big country cannot survive without equality being its lubricant. We must switch from money to merit. We must have real power of the people. It is good for all of us except for those who want immediate quick buck. No Pasaran!
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