Ginny’s Thoughts & Things

Assalamu alaikum, alas, it was merely a form letter.

Dear Ginny,

Thank you for contacting Obama for America. The volume of messages we’re receiving has gone up since Barack’s victory in Iowa. While we cannot respond individually to over a thousand messages per day, the level of interest and thoughtfulness of the comments reflected in these communications are very gratifying. Your thoughts on our campaign and America’s future are greatly appreciated.

Individual citizens like you are the foundation of this campaign.

Since his February 10 announcement speech in Springfield, Illinois, Barack has spoken consistently of working together to reclaim the meaning of citizenship, restore our sense of common purpose and rally the power of millions of voices to demand long overdue change. We hope you will explore our website, www.BarackObama.com, to view that speech in its entirety and learn more about Barack, his record and his plans.

If you’re writing because you want change, we need you to help us fight for it. Please sign up here to volunteer:

http://my.barackobama.com/acvolunteer

And you can get started from home right now. We’ve built a set of easy-to-use web tools that empower you to get further involved right now. Click My.BarackObama.com, where you can find events near you, connect with neighbors who support Barack, create your own blog, and do much, much more.

And if you’re not sure you want to get involved, and are writing to express a concern or disagreement, we appreciate that as well. The open discussion we want to facilitate cannot take place without hearing from people expressing a wide range of views.

Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

The Correspondence Team
Obama for America

I love the part where it asks me to volunteer, yeah, well, in case you’ve not noticed I live in Florida which, the last time I checked, the national Democratic Leadership (thanks Howard Dean for taking away our voices!) took away our delegates, so our primary isn’t going to mean anything. Heck, the Democratic front runners won’t even be coming to this state to campaign! So volunteer? Volunteer for what?

So basically, all I got was a form letter that didn’t even remotely address my concerns (and this is supposed to be change we can believe in?) Seems like politics as usual to me. You have a candidate that supports the continued oppression of the Palestinian people, not to mention the construction of a border fence/wall between the US and Mexico, and when a prospective voter, a prospective supporter, writes into express their concerns and attempt to get clarification on some issues that are of concern to me, I get a form letter that has nothing to do with the initial concerns that I raised!

I’d probably expect this from other campaigns, but this one? Well, perhaps I should have. This is supposed to be a different campaign? The people are supposed to matter? Well, obviously, if you support the Palestinian cause, or if you live in a state where your primary doesn’t matter, then I guess your voice doesn’t matter.

“Change we can believe in” “Yes we can” are just political slogans, just as Hillary’s mantra about “experience” is a political slogan. And sadly, I was drawn into the Obama stump speech, it sounded good, it gave me hope, and a part of me is still holding onto that. And it’s difficult for me to let go of it. But can I in good conscience support a candidate who sends me a form letter that doesn’t even address my concerns? I’m not saying respond point by point, I mean, I expected a form letter of some sort, but I at least expected at least a passing reference to my questions like “you can find out more here” or “we’re glad that you brought this up, perhaps he’ll take a look at the issues you’ve raised” something like that. But that is not what I got, and forgive me for being disappointed and feeling let down about this.

A part of me still likes Obama, still wants to support him, I’m in the middle of reading his second book, “The Audacity of Hope” and I’ve read his first book “Dreams from my Fahter”, I’ve enjoyed hearing him speak, and I’ve liked what he’s had to say, and he does inspire me and he gives me hope, and gives me the desire to want to participate in the political process of this country. It’s just, well, there are a certain set of issues that he seems to have a stance on, that I can’t in good conscience ignore. And I’d like some clarification of them, so I can decide whether I should continue to support him or not.

Obama’s victory in South Carolina was bittersweet for me, I was glad he won (admittedly because it wasn’t hillary), but I’m wondering how he’s going to do on Super Tuesday, February 5th. Many states have Hillary leading in the pllls. So we’ll have to see. Perhaps all of this will be a mute point in a few weeks anyway, and as my voice, as I live in Florida, really doesn’t count anyway, perhaps the Obama camp doesn’t feel me worthy of a response (perhaps that’ll change if he actually emerges as the front runner and / or ultimately becomes the Democratic nominee).

Assalamu alaikum, the visual (nonaccessible for blind computer users with screen readers) captcha is still up on the comments section of the New Islamic Directions blog. Would anyone know how I could contact the website administrator directly? Or, has anyone done this already?

This is a test for me, because every time this happens to me, I have to fight the rising levels of indignation I feel, I have to fight the feeling that I’m being locked out, barred, kept from speaking up. A fellow blogger compares it to effectively putting up “no blind people allowed” signs on establishments. Yes, this may sound harsh, but in actuality, that is what it does.

When you use visual captcha with no audio or other alternative for verifying yourself, that is what you are doing, preventing blind people from commenting, signing up for services, or whatever other things you’re trying to prevent spambots from accessing. I need to go and hunt down the link for the web accessibility guidelines, becuase I don’t just want to complain, I want to offer solutions, especially when it comes to sites that I respect, run by scholars that I hold in high regard.

So, while I may have certain feelings on encountering inaccessible sites, I also want to establish dialogue to help actually make the sites accessible, instead of going on and on about how inaccessible they are and doing nothing more than complaining about it.

So, Inshallah, I can find a way to contact the site administrator to point out the problem and Inshallah, we can make the site accessible, while still preventing spam and other not-so-desirable things that the captchas are trying to keep out.

Assalamu alaikum, another iluminating article from Imam Zaid Shakir. I have to say, I’m seriously starting to question, if not withdraw my support altogether, from the Obama candidacy. First, it was the support for building a fence/wall across our southern border with Mexico, secondly, it was his statement on the Palestinian conflict (which I didn’t even get a real response from, just a form letter, which I’ll blog about later). And thirdly, well, this article just brought it all together for me, and has made me seriously consider which candidate, if any, I should support.

I’m even starting to wonder if voting is even a good idea. I’d always been told that voting was a good thing, that I should vote because women in this country didn’t always have that right, that many have fought and died for us and have guaranteed this right, that I should speak up, via voting, in order to make my voice heard, because if I don’t then, as my father said “I have nothing to complain about”. But if I do vote, what am I voting for? Not for change that is for sure.

And I have to say, I’m terribly disappointed! The speeches about “hope”, “change”, etc., really got to me. And I just feel let down and disappointed. How can you talk about “change” when you don’t want to address the issues that Imam Zaid talks about in this article? *sigh* What else can I say?

New Islamic Directions

Assalamu alaikum, I’m using the mobiel version of WordPress as for some reason, I can’t post on the normal site. So here goes, my letter to Barack Obama.

Good evening, I came across a quote from http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/106563.html which goes as follows:

““All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families,” wrote Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, in his letter to Khalilzad. “However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this. Gaza is governed by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, and Israeli civilians are being bombarded on an almost daily basis.”

As an Obama supporter, there are many questions that I have regarding this quote. What would you say of the suffering of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation? Do you consider the deprivation of food, water, medical supplies, and other necesities by an occupying force to be a human rights violation? If not why not? And what of the sealing off of the borders to not only keep supplies out but to keep people in and thus, from getting those supplies on their own? Do you feel that the Palestinian people have a right to speak up and/or take measures to fight their occupation? If not, why not? If it is wrong for the Palestinians to fire rockets into Israel, to conduct suicide bombings and to engage in other so-called “terrorist activities”, would you say that it is also wrong for the Israeli government to not only block essential goods from coming into Gaza, but to engage in other tactics such as the demolition of homes and crops, the bombing of areas with high civilian populations, among other things? I understand that your time is short and thus, I’m only listing a few, very brief examples of the types of tactics employed by the Israelis. However, my question is, why is it wrong for the Palestinians to engage in “terrorist activities” to “bombard Israeli civilians” as you put it, yet the Israelis can engage in far worse atrocities and you, along with much of the rest of the world, support that? I am not saying that it’s OK to terrorize and kill innocent Israelis, but niether is it OK to terrorize and kill the Palestinians either. It’s not OK to engage in suicde bombings, it’s not OK to fire rockets into Israel, but it’s also not OK to deprive a whole civilian population of food, water, electricity, medical supplies, and the freedom to move about. It’s not OK to destroy peoples homes, crops, to curtail their ability to earn a livelihood, and to otherwise engage in collective punishment for the actions of a few of its citizens. If Israel is a “friend of America” then we must have the conscience to tell our “friends” when they are wrong, and to not let them in good conscience, continue oppressing, killing and generally making life miserable for people just because they know that the rest of the world will sit by and watch them do this and barely say anything about it. Are the Israelis the only ones who deserve to live in peace? Don’t the Palestinians deserve to have the same things that Israel says they want for their civilians? Should the same standards of human rights, and the Geneva Convention apply to everyone across the board, whether friend or foe?

As someone who has followed your political career since 2004, I am terribly disappointed that you would take this stance and apparently support the suffering of a people, support the commission of acts that anywhere else would be called for what they are, gross human rights violations, in the name of fighting terrorism. And that you’d do so merely because the one committing these acts are our “friends”. And because we consider them our “friends”, because of the “special relationship” that we, America, has with Israel, we turn a blind eye to these same sorts of atrocities. As a person of conscience, I will not stand for, nor support candidates who will condemn human rights abuses committed by one group of people, yet support the commission of the same sorts of human rights abuses, by others, simply because of friendship, political expediency or some other criteria.

I am asking, as an extremely concerned supporter, that you kindly re-examine this issue and not only speak up for the rights of Israeli civilians, but civilians everywhere who are suffering and oppressed and/or living under occupation.

I thank you for your time in advance.

Ginny Quick
Winter Haven, Florida, USA

Assalamu alaikum, I’m linking to Aaminah’s blog regarding the destruction of the wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. It’s a comment where Barack Obama is quoted as saying that he supports the sealing off of the Gaza Strip because Hamaz is a terrorist Organization, and Israel needs to protect itself, yada, yaa, yada.

Let me leave my disappointment in Obama regarding that statement for a bit. Today on the way home, NPR had a brief report from Gaza talking about how “this was just a day-long shopping spree”, oh, yeah, like Gazans weren’t really suffering or anything, they just used the day to do a little stocking up, OK. But anyway. So after talking to a few people on the street, etc., they then went to a border town in Southern Israel which is, according to the report, bearing the brunt of the rocket attacks. The profile a woman and daughter, the woman can’t work, the woman is suffering stress, they actually describe, in great detail, the woman and her daughter sitting in the hallway, during an alarm, seeking safety from a rocket which is in the area. The daughter is protecting the woman, and after it’s all over, the reporter goes into great detail about how “she then swallows another vallium”.

Now, not to take anything away from what this family is going through, but if you really wanted to be fair, why not go and sit in a house in Gaza, go and sit with a Palestinian family while the Israelis conduct an air strike, or perhaps bomb their house itself, because perhaps their family member was a part of a suicide bombing (so we gotta punish the rest of the family, ya know). Or, go and sit with the family and see how they cope with food shortages, lack of electricity in the middle of the winter, etc., and I mean, don’t just mention it in passsing and then spend the next ten minutes talking about how rough the Israelis have it (who’s actually lost more lives in this conflict?) It’s not the Israelis who are suffering collective punishment fromt he Palestinians, cutting off of their power supply, and other such measures which have been roundly condemned and which violate the Geneva Convention (remember that anyone?) I could go on and on and on about this, however, let’s get back to Obama. You have someone who thinks it’s OK to continue to subject the Palestinian people to this sort of collective punishment, all because they had the gall (the nerve of them) to actually vote for Hamas (what “we” thought was the wrong party). We can argue all day about some of Hamas’s tactics, however, if we really say that we believe in Democracy, yet we turn around and continue to punish a whole group of people for voting for them, that is just something I can’t stand for!

I’m terribly disappointed in Obama’s stance on this issue, and yes, this could probably change my vote (barring of course a change in his statement). Walls to keep people in or out don’t work. And trying to manipulate an occupied people to do what you want doesn’t work either!

These words don’t do my feelings justice, and perhaps I’ll come back and edit this later. But this is what I came up with, in the middle of a migraine-induced, well, not really stupor, but I don’t really feel much like writing.

Perhaps I’ll write a letter to the Obama Camp, and publish it here. Perhaps not.

Assalamu alaikum, am responding to a commentor… Regarding lion meat, perhaps I overstated things (yes I can admit that *smile*). However, whenthe below quote mentions that Kola Boof supposedly went to a Senegalese restaurant because “they were the only ones who knew how to cook lion’s meat”, I just thought, well, if they know how to cook it, they must eat it, right? And even if they didn’t know how to cook it, why would you cook lion’s meat, in a place (Morocco), where probably the vast majority of the people don’t eat it?

I’d like to know, if there are any Senegalese readers, do you, or anyone else you know, eat or cook, Lion’s meat? Because I’ve never known any Senegalese to do so, but well, perhaps, well, I could be wrong. But there were other aspects of Kola Boof’s story that I found to be a bit unbelievable. I mean, can you imaigne, you’re sitting in a restaurant, a guy comes up to you, and he says “you’re mine, youc an’t date anyone else”, you run from him, his “henchmen” supposedly follow you to your house, and they kidnap you, only to release you 4 months later? Just let you go? It seems to me, that one must wonder, were you really in captivity in the first place? Anyway, when I did a Google search to find the quote about lion’s meat, I find it interesting that Google came up with
the following result that when you click on it, the quote regarding lion’s meat is nowhere to be found, though Google shows it in the page summary which highlights the search terms. The quote goes thusly:

“We met at a restaurant, I was there with some Senegalese soccer player I was dating…I had gone to this restaurant, because it was the only place in Marrakech where they knew how to cook lion’s meat–which is the one dish my father would prepare when I was a little girl in Sudan.”

The
cached
version, though, shows the quote. Why is this?

As I’ve said before, the conflicts in the Sudan, as in other places, are not black-and-white issues. Also, the same sorts of atrocities that are going on in the Sudan are going on in other parts of Africa, as well as the rest of the world,
However, I don’t see people as quick to capitalize on or be as outspoken about those. yet when it comes to the Sudan, people can make all kinds of outlandish statements, and not even get questioned on them, and instead be heralded as a “womanist novelist poet”, and be bestowed with honorific titles like “queen Kola”, etc., without most people even checking her story. They believe her because “those Arabs must be evil people”. “We all know Osama is evil so she must be telling the truth”. Never mind that at least one blog seems to be calling her out on her seemingly many very glaring errors.

Assalamu alaikum, a rebuttal to an article in the New York Times, what can I say? Just read it! Because it says more than I could say, and better!

Multiplicative Identity: Obama and the Latino Vote in the NY Times

Blind computer users struck by a very unusual Trojan attack

Assalamu alaikum, more reactions to the story about Deng and Alek. Firstly, I want to say that the story was no less emotional for me, and all that, however, as I’m thinking about it (and I’ve been wondering about all of this since shortly after reading the story), I’ve got some serious problems with the story in general.

Firstly, a lot of the names, places, food eaten, etc., seem to have been taken right out of a Wikipedia article, and if you read the story, and then go to Wikipedia and search for Dinka and Nuer as I did, you’ll see what I mean. Another thing that popped out at me is, toward the end of the story, the lady who finds Alek describes herself as being from the Darfur mission, what? I’d thought for a second I’d fallen asleep and woke up in another story, because firstly, I was not aware that the Dinka were in Darfur, and secondly, I was also not aware that the Junjuweed also operated in South Sudan. It seems to me that the author of the story has gotten two conflicts confused.

Also, the language used, i.e. “sweet Dinka lips”, as well as the language used by the soldiers, was, well, hard to believe. Perhaps that kind of language was used, but well, I just got the feeling that this was written by someone who had know knowledge of the cultures in which they were writing about, except what they gleaned from Wikipedia perhaps, or from some news source. It was as if to me, they were writing what they imagined would have been said and not what was actually said, and then to give the story legitimacy, slapped on the disclaimer about the story being taken from UN accounts.

Also, as I’ve noted before, you have the “black-and-white” depiction of the characters, the black African characters being portrayed as loving, pure, good, and the Arab characters being portrayed as horrible, non-feeling, the opposite of Deng and Alek.

However, after doing some exploration on the Chickenbones site, and finding that they promote Kola Boof, well, to me, that says everything! Especially since she’s got all kinds of flaws in her little story, though some still want to promote her as the “womanist novelist poet” or “queen Kola”, etc. Does the name “Kola Boof” even mean anything? And I came across her account of her alleged affair with Osama Ben Laden, and I stopped believing her when she made the comment about Senegalese eating lion meat! Huh? Unless there’s some obscure ethnic group in Senegal that I don’t know about, the Senegalese don’t, to my knowledge, eat lion meat! So that was enough for me to think that this lady was either crazy, had an agenda, or both. So anyway, I also didn’t see too many good portrayals of Muslims on that site either, except for the story about Seydou trying to migrate to Europe, he, it seems, may have been a Muslim, so I guess that’s one positive thing. Anyway, I also find it interesting that I’m not finding the Deng and Alek story anywhere else. Hmmm.

Assalamu alaikum, seems that there’s a controversy brewing with the Nevada caucuses? I’m starting to wonder if there’s a pattern here? I don’t remember hearing too much about the alleged voting irregularities in New Hampshire, and I really didn’t give much thought to it myself, however, on looking at the quotes pasted below, as well as the original article, I’m really starting to wonder! Now if Hillary truly was the front runner then why would she and her supporters have to resort to such (allegedly) dirty tricks? Sure makes you wonder, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was looking at the Republicans here.

Some tidbits…

“Everyone is reporting election irregularities on the part of the Hillary campaign,” the precinct captain said. “There is widespread cheating and voter suppression going on all over Clark County–and it’s obviously coming in from the top down. Whether it made enough of a difference to swing the election is another question–but there is no question that Hillary was running a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred campaign in which all of her surrogates were instructed to cheat in every way possible.”

“There was also a problem with Clinton supporters closing doors earlier than the scheduled time. EUR received an expletive-filled e-mail rant from an Obama caucus chair, stating: “I’ve never seen so much robbery in all my life from f***ing democrats. Those Hillary people,,,,,,,, closed the doors on our people and we had to call the cops in some precincts to have locks cut from doors, those bastards slipped people in the back doors, they sent people home at 11:30 when it was illegal to prevent people from voting before noon, they called Obama a nigger in some areas, we had fights, we had Hillary crooks who were caucus chairs for the democratic party just pick up cards and send the people home…….no count……………..WE WERE F***ING ROBBED.”

In the original post, a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”

Uh-oh, there’s that race and gender thing again.

EURweb.com - DID HILLARY STEAL NEVADA CAUCUS?: Clinton camp accused of dirty tactics. Plus, did Obama win more delegates Sat night? Has he caused Oprah to lose female fans?