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Amnesty's Letter to Rice; My Letter to Obama
Amnesty International has sent an urgent letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the worsening humanitarian conditions resulting from the siege of Gaza, in which it expresses it's dismay "at the lopsided response by the US government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
Gaza is at this point little more than an joint Egyptian-Israeli internment camp stuffed with 1.4 million impoverished remnants of the dispossessed, and the descendants of the dispossessed. Israel with its massive war machine, and well-connected and wealthy Western backers, continues its long-run strategy of domination and oppression, designed to crush forever that little which remains of the Palestinian resistance. It inflicts outrageous amounts of collective punishment on the wretched Gazans, allegedly in response to generally ineffective Hamas pin-prick attacks with homemade rockets, while the outgoing US administration responds with corrupt and malevolent diplomatic assistance to the Israelis, and the incoming adminstration chooses the path of cowardly and complicit silence.
And as I write, almighty Israel has just launched a ground invasion of the impoversihed strip of Gazan slum-dwellings it claims to fear.
While this is occurring, I received an idiotic email letter from "Obama for America" today, asking for another $100, this time to fund the upcoming inauguration bash, which the letter informs me will take "unprecedented resources". If I give, I may even win a contest and be flown to Washington to attend the parades, the ball and the swearing in, and presumably rub shoulders with the Democratic poohbahs!
Obama's people have all sorts of time to pen juvenile financial pitches, but no time for issuing statements on an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe wrought by America's dubious ally in the Middle East. My emailed reply:
Fuck off. Do you think I am going to send Obama another $100 as a reward for his cowardly silence on the devastation in Gaza? Enjoy your damned inauguration party. Have fun dancing and gorging yourself while the world's dispossessed and miserable are trampled underfoot.
I do not regret helping elect Obama, because he will be far better than McCain would have been. But I am extremely disappointed in the choices and decisions Obama has already made in the foreign policy sphere. And I see no reason to support decadent and wasteful indulgences like an inauguration blow-out.
And if Obama stupidly sinks his administration by wading into another Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan, don't come running to me for more money in 2012. I'll be supporting a more progressive alternative.
Dan Kervick
Gaza is at this point little more than an joint Egyptian-Israeli internment camp stuffed with 1.4 million impoverished remnants of the dispossessed, and the descendants of the dispossessed. Israel with its massive war machine, and well-connected and wealthy Western backers, continues its long-run strategy of domination and oppression, designed to crush forever that little which remains of the Palestinian resistance. It inflicts outrageous amounts of collective punishment on the wretched Gazans, allegedly in response to generally ineffective Hamas pin-prick attacks with homemade rockets, while the outgoing US administration responds with corrupt and malevolent diplomatic assistance to the Israelis, and the incoming adminstration chooses the path of cowardly and complicit silence.
And as I write, almighty Israel has just launched a ground invasion of the impoversihed strip of Gazan slum-dwellings it claims to fear.
While this is occurring, I received an idiotic email letter from "Obama for America" today, asking for another $100, this time to fund the upcoming inauguration bash, which the letter informs me will take "unprecedented resources". If I give, I may even win a contest and be flown to Washington to attend the parades, the ball and the swearing in, and presumably rub shoulders with the Democratic poohbahs!
Obama's people have all sorts of time to pen juvenile financial pitches, but no time for issuing statements on an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe wrought by America's dubious ally in the Middle East. My emailed reply:
Fuck off. Do you think I am going to send Obama another $100 as a reward for his cowardly silence on the devastation in Gaza? Enjoy your damned inauguration party. Have fun dancing and gorging yourself while the world's dispossessed and miserable are trampled underfoot.
I do not regret helping elect Obama, because he will be far better than McCain would have been. But I am extremely disappointed in the choices and decisions Obama has already made in the foreign policy sphere. And I see no reason to support decadent and wasteful indulgences like an inauguration blow-out.
And if Obama stupidly sinks his administration by wading into another Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan, don't come running to me for more money in 2012. I'll be supporting a more progressive alternative.
Dan Kervick
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Amen! I agree totally!
January 3, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Way to go Dan!
January 3, 2009 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, I received an entertaining reply to my letter from Obama for America:
Dear Friend,
Thank you for contacting President-elect Barack Obama and Obama for America. Barack greatly appreciates the outpouring of messages he is receiving from across the country and from Americans around the world. He is deeply honored by the confidence the American people have placed in him and in Vice President-elect Biden. Please click here to see President-elect Obama’s speech on Election Night: Etc. Etc.
I thought the standard robot reply was particularly humorous in this instance.
January 3, 2009 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The robot comment just clinched my recommendation DanK! Classic. :)
January 3, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I keep forgetting about Obama's Afghanistan promise. You're right, Dan. He could trade one quagmire for another. Even worse, he might not get us out of Iraq and could compound our problems in Afghanistan.
January 4, 2009 12:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem goes way beyond Obama. Can anyone listen to Harry Reid on MTP without thinking you've just elected a right wing Republican majority?
January 4, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink