Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA
*One thing Obama learned as a community organiser in Chicago is to run for office to win. His initial motivation was to continue the work of Dr King. He seems to have narrowed this to running for office. Not just running but, running to win. If in his view, visiting say, a mosque, is not helping him win, he will not visit the mosque. It may be the ethical thing to visit a mosque, but he is after winning, not ethics. If you miss this about him you are going to be disappointed. As for him committing to Israel, we Africans must form pressure groups to for push our causes. There is not any do-gooder out there to look out for our interests. It is no time to go to sleep. It will be only us to raise our profile. It is a dogie dogie world out there !! Ralph Nader is a Lebanese. He is already pushing for his region's interest. * On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Mulindwa Edward [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC* 11-5-8 Open Letter To Barack Obama Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning...adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism). *Between Hope And Reality* By Ralph Nader Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words hope and change, change and hope have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not hope and change but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas. Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state. During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967
Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA
Ma brotha, Politics by definition is about winning. If you can't win, you can't implement your agenda. Not visiting a mosque for political implications, depending on the context, is not unethical. It is just that the mosque will not help you get to where you want to go--it is that simple. As to Africans; I have found that everything is local and about voting. This does not involve much out-of-pocket expenditures. Just volunteer, as a group, to canvass and help out during elections and vote. It will be noticed, and then you can plug in your agenda. The alternative is to become aggregators of contributions--an unlikely tall order. Odiya Odiyatalks --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Mitayo Potosi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mitayo Potosi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA To: The First Virtual Network for friends of Uganda ugandanet@kym.net Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 10:34 AM One thing Obama learned as a community organiser in Chicago is to run for office to win. His initial motivation was to continue the work of Dr King. He seems to have narrowed this to running for office. Not just running but, running to win. If in his view, visiting say, a mosque, is not helping him win, he will not visit the mosque. It may be the ethical thing to visit a mosque, but he is after winning, not ethics. If you miss this about him you are going to be disappointed. As for him committing to Israel, we Africans must form pressure groups to for push our causes. There is not any do-gooder out there to look out for our interests. It is no time to go to sleep. It will be only us to raise our profile. It is a dogie dogie world out there !! Ralph Nader is a Lebanese. He is already pushing for his region's interest. On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Mulindwa Edward [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC 11-5-8 Open Letter To Barack Obama Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning...adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism). Between Hope And Reality By Ralph Nader Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words hope and change, change and hope have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not hope and change but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas
[Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA
Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC 11-5-8 Open Letter To Barack Obama Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning...adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism). Between Hope And Reality By Ralph Nader Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words hope and change, change and hope have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not hope and change but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas. Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state. During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe. David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President. Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration
