#state

The timing of this sudden interest in the plight of Iraqi women cannot be overemphasized. For decades, many Iraqi women activists in the US and UK had tried to raise awareness about the systematic abuse of human and women's rights under Saddam Hussein, the atrocities linked to the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, and the impact of economic sanctions on women and families. . . . 'We wrote so many letters and we organized many events. . . . They did not want to know. They were just not interested. It was only in the run-up to the [2003] invasion that the governments started to care about the suffering of Iraqi women. ↗

— Nadje Al-Ali

#iraq #state #uk #us #women

I believe that religion should be totally separated from the state. That's not the way it is today, not even in Sweden. ↗

— Bjorn Ulvaeus

#even #i #i believe #i believe that #religion

My shadow falling over a spot of land always increases its real estate value. Buy it now, because at high noon, all value will vanish.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny #humor #noon #random #random-thought

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as knowi that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

— Lynn Hersha

#control #free-will #government-abuse #manipulation #military

Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#freedom #frontier #individualism #justice #liberalism

[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. ↗

— Samuel Adams

#american-revolution #citizenship #freedom #state #freedom

All the technology of our production was still pre-War. They were sort of '38, '39 and the War had been stable and so we were infinitely behind whatever had been going on in the United States for instance. ↗

— Gianni Agnelli

#behind #going #had #infinitely #instance

Natalie's estate is handled by Global Icons, and they police the world so her picture isn't on a T-shirt or coffee cup unless we approve of it. ↗

— Robert Wagner

#coffee #cup #estate #global #handled

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#inspiration #liberty #political-philosophy #strength #tyranny

We desire an expansion of relations with regional states and the establishment of extensive public contacts. ↗

— Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#desire #establishment #expansion #extensive #public