Stop the Bomb

A German friend has sent me a link to Stop the Bomb, a site which hosts a petition calling on the German government to impose trade sanctions as a means of exerting real pressure on the Iranian regime to drop its nuclear weapons programme.


The initiative has the support of politicians across the spectrum from Christian Democrats to Left Party members, plus sundry academics. Names with a resonance outside Germany include Matthias Küntzel (see my links section), Benny Morris and Nobel Literature Prize winner Elfrida Jelinek (something of a surprise to me - I evidently need to revise my perceptions of her politics).


You don't have to be German to sign! Germany is Iran's leading European trade partner, and that should concern everyone.


Oh, and by the way. Yes, of course Israel has the Bomb. What it doesn't have is leaders who talk openly about wiping nearby countries off the map (and, no, that wasn't a 'mistranslation'). Or who host conferences for genocide-denying racists. I haven't been celebrating Obama's triumph, but I'll start partying retrospectively if and when he convinces me that he has the measure of the seriousness of the Iranian threat.