ilovemylife: WHAT IF PRESIDENT OBAMA CARED ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR?

WOULD HE DO SOMETHING?
To STOP this MASS MURDER IN PROCESS

THE WONDERFUL people at http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7/day6
are making it all real for us to understand on a human to human basis what it is like to try to stay alive during a genocide. And they are asking us to act each day to get a hold of our leaders and say YOU ARE FAILING. SINCE 2003, THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON. IT IS NOT ALL RIGHT AND WE WANT YOU TO START DOING WHAT IT TAKES TO BEGIN TO END THIS MASS MURDER IN PROCESS.

The following is taken from their website:

"Wake Up, Brush your Teeth, Call your Leaders"

Each day we will have a new action item for you to participate in during i-ACT. However, we are also offering a single action, for each of the 10 days, that you can take. As part of an Urgent Call-in Campaign to pressure the Obama Administration we want to keep the phone lines busy. At least once a day please call President Obama at 202.456.1111 (9am-5pm EST Monday-Friday), State Department at 202.647.6575 (call anytime to leave a message), or text Secretary Clinton at 90822 and tell them:

“I am from _____ and I want the Obama Administration to uphold his promises of action for Darfur with ‘unstinting resolve.’ Work to get aid back into Darfur. Support an effective Peacekeeping Force. Support the ICC. ”

Make the pledge by commenting below. Tell us how many times you will call and with whom during i-ACT. If you are a teacher call with your students. If you are a student, maybe use the loud speaker at school. Get creative in your pledges and actions. We need more people to call. Each and every one of us counts, and the people of Darfur are counting on us.
If you are from another country and have a phone number for our leader, please share it here and we will post it on the full action item!

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Day 5 Action: Ban ki-Moon, Don’t Do it!

John Norris from ENOUGH has brought to our attention in a recent post, Bad Moon Rising, that the United Nations Secretary General BAN KI-MOON is thinking about meeting with Sudan’s indicted war criminal, President Bashir. We need to act fast to make sure that this does not happen at the Arab League Meeting in Doha. Inevitably, as Norris notes, pictures will be leaked and a media blitz from Bashir and his colleagues will follow. Contact Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and send him the message: Don’t meet with Bashir, an indicted war criminal, you will be legitimizing his regime and their actions.

Contact him the following ways:

Leave a message on the United Nations general comment line: 212-963-4475 and Press * to leave a message.
Contact Ban ki-Moon’s Special Assistant on the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, and urge him to pressure the Secretary General not to meet with Bashir. Phone: 917-367-2078; Email: DengF@un.org.

Today, when you Wake Up, Brush your Teeth, Call your Leaders, add the above ask to your message! Pressure from all sides must come.

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i-ACT 7: Day 6, Reunion with Adef's family
Uploaded by iACTivism

Action to take
DAY 6 Action - Fast For Darfur

NOTE: this action is for March 29 - Sunday

Posted by Webmaster on March 28th, 2009

We are requesting that you join us in the fast and also send in the donation towards nutrition. Besides this, in order to work on the political will that is missing, we would like you to call your Senators’ office and tell them about your fast, and that you expect them to be your LOUD voice in Washington. Action is needed now. Click here to find the phone number for the Senator of your state.

Please donate to improve nutrition in the camps:
Make checks out to: USA for UNHCR
On memo line, write: SGN - Fast for Darfur

Send to:
Stop Genocide Now
1732 Aviation Blvd. #138
Redondo Beach, CA 90278

100% of tax-deductible donation will go to UNHCR’s work to improve nutrition at Darfuri refugee camps.

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From the journal entries from Chad
We Hope for Stronger, Not Weaker

Posted by Katie-Jay on March 28th, 2009

It’s hard to see it when I am in front of them. When I return to our little compound at night and look through past slides, it becomes apparent. When I toggle between pictures from today and from last January of our friends here in camp Djabal, the difference is like night and day. The children are growing smaller, sicker, and more fragile as they age, not stronger as we hope for all children.

Oumar seemed skinner, as if he had been sick for a sometime, but we don’t know for sure. When I saw his mother again, Genie, she had Hydar with her. In a little over a year, he looks no bigger or stronger; his little shoulder poking through a tank.

Gabriel and Yuen-Lin saw again our friends Adef, Achta, and their children. Well, some of them. Marymouda died. She got sick. When they took her to the clinic there was nothing they could do for her. Guisma was not smiling and laughing as she was last year. Her giggle was contagious and she would get her twin brothers rolling. Achta, their mom, said she had been sick too, but healed. It seems her sole and laughter have not returned.

One of Guisma’s twin brothers looks so different.

The lucky ones who made it here are still struggling to survive on the little that we, as the international community, have been able to provide. Food distribution starts next week. That means that many of the people we have visited in the last few days have no food, as it usually runs out before the end of the month.

Please join Gabriel and Yuen-Lin as they fast in solidarity with the refugees. It can be whatever type of fast that works for you. I will not be joining them myself, as I have developed a small ear infection that kept me from the field this afternoon. I hope to return with full strength tomorrow. Nobody worry, I am fine! I just keep thinking, what if I were a refugee and felt like this?

Peace, ktj

With the children

Posted by Webmaster on March 28th, 2009

This is the third day we visited refugee camp Djabal. We are doing work for the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program, which will connect students in the US with students in the refugee camps in Eastern Chad, starting with camp Djabal. It is fun collecting the profiles of Darfuri children and spending time with them at school and at their homes. They are so much like the children I’ve worked with in the US. They’re very much like my own kids.

There is one huge exception, though. All of the children we’ve been talking to have to grapple with some facts and memories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. They’ve all seen their villages destroyed; they say nothing is left standing, where it was once their homes. They’ve all seen families and friends killed, leaving voids that we visitors just cannot see. They’ve had to walk weeks across the desert, with some not making it. They’ve had to settle in to a life of receiving and survival, when they really want to produce and thrive.

At times I feel powerless and ineffective. What can I do that goes beyond the symbolic and seemingly trivial? I really wish I knew what it took to bring about change for these children, even if it seemed almost impossible to reach. That way, we could go all out and exhaust ourselves, but going in the right direction. For now, I truly believe that our leaders and experts could bring about change, but the political will is missing. It is not easy to pin down how we can create that will.

For today—Sunday’s—action, we are reverting to what feels symbolic and trivial, compared to what is happening to the people of Darfur. The team here will be fasting, in solidarity with the children in this camp and the more than one million people that will go without food soon inside of Darfur. We will also make a small donation ($25 each) towards nutrition, through USA for UNHCR.We are requesting that you join us in the fast and also send in the donation towards nutrition. Besides this, in order to work on the political will that is missing, we would like you to call your Senators’ office and tell them about your fast, and that you expect them to be your LOUD voice in Washington. Action is needed now.Thank you for standing with these children.

Peace,Gabriel, for the i-ACT team

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This is my United States Postal Service version of my letter to President Barack Obama, which I mailed Saturday, March 28, 2009

GENOCIDE FLOURISHES WITH OUR COMPLICITY

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

The last time (March 12, 2009) I wrote a letter to you about the emergency regarding the Darfuri people and the NGOs being expelled from Sudan since March 4, 2009, I received a response that you are working on the economy. I found this very disappointing that my letter received a response that had nothing to do with my letter's subject. I wrote using the http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact form. And I also sent a second copy through the United States Postal Service to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Please, tell me if there is contact information for the Sudan Special Envoy Scott Gration.

President Obama, two United States citizens and a Malaysian citizen are together in Chad (starting March 23) through April 1st including a trip to a Darfuri refugee camp, camp Djabal. They post daily journal entries, photographs and videos from there. The videos are posted on their website, as well as on Youtube. They are Gabriel Stauring, Katie-Jay Scott and Yuen-Lin Tan. Here are links to Day 4, 5 and 6 of their time there: http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7/day4
http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7/day5
http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7/day6

They are also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iact

We are so very grateful that Gabriel, Katie-Jay (their seventh trip) and Yuen-Lin are doing this for the Darfuri people and for us to be better informed. I so wish you, President Obama, could be there with them. Or at least following them online on this trip. March 26th in your online “town meeting” while talking about health care, your mother and your appreciation for nurses, you mentioned your daughter Sasha having meningitis when she was younger. I know that meningitis is one of the diseases that is spreading through the IDP camps. This is a connection that you have personally with the Darfuri people. But may I respectfully point out that your family wasn’t living in a refugee camp with doctors ordered to leave?

I so appreciate reading the daily journal entries from Chad of these three dedicated citizens who care so genuinely for our Darfuri brothers and sisters. It helps me - brings me closer to understanding what it is really like there for the Darfuri people.

Genocide has never happened without the complicity of millions or billions of human beings going about their daily business.

Two days ago, a comment was left at my “Dear President Obama – A Letter sent March 12, 2009” on Youtube regarding Darfur http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XBDP3ZdmEE by a 24 year old which reads: “As important as this is President Obama needs to sort out our economy before we go trying to save other countries”. I respectfully disagree wholeheartedly. I believe President Obama, you are quite capable of doing both.

There is not enough money in the world that can give us back our dignity if we continue on the path of least resistance regarding this human disaster of the Darfuri people that now has heaped upon it another disaster with the expulsion of the humanitarian aid men and women.

I plead with you, please, do read this letter. Please do not send a response about all the other deeply pressing issues that we face in the United States of America. Genocide will stop when enough leaders use their will to make ways to end it. My hope is that you, President Obama, will reach into your heart and realize that although “’we’ are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, we need your leadership to help we citizens move forward on this true crisis of our existence as the human race. Genocide never happens when we have an opening in our schedule to add something to our “to do” list. We are counting on you, Mr. Obama, to do what you said:

"The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes…we have the most stake in creating an order in the world that is stable...in which people have hope and opportunity and when you see a genocide whether it's in Rwanda, or Bosnia or in Darfur - that's a stain on all of us, that's a stain on our souls...I was the first along with Senator Brownback to focus on ratcheting up sanctions and getting an envoy in there who was serious. We worked diligently to get the Darfur Peace and Accountability act passed…I think the level of commitment and the way that I’ve spoken out on this issue indicates not only knowledge, but also passion in bringing an end to this crisis. It’s very encouraging to see activism based not on self-interest, but on moral imperative and it’s especially heartening to see young people engaged in expressing their idealism through this movement …We can't say 'never again' and then allow it to happen again. And as President of the United States I don't intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEd583-fA8M November 2007

With much respect,

“The Most Important Office is That of Private Citizen” Louis D. Brandeis
“Now, Let’s Go Change the World”. Barack Obama

P.S. I am not one of the “young people engaged in expressing my idealism through this movement”, as I will be 60 years old April 2nd.

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Source for the following article:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/18908/stopping_bashir.html?breadcrumb=%2F

Stopping Bashir: Obama's "Never Again" Moment of Truth

Authors:	Stewart M. Patrick, Senior Fellow and Director, Program on International Institutions and Global Governance Kaysie Brown, Deputy Director, International Institutions and Global Governance

March 23, 2009

During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama called the crisis in Darfur a "stain on our souls," promising vigorous action to save its victims if elected. But since taking office he has been more cautious than President George W. Bush. Overwhelmed by the global economic downturn and internally divided over this issue, his administration has been slow to react to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's most recent provocation: expelling humanitarian aid groups in retaliation for the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against him for crimes against humanity.

Bashir's defiance is staggering--the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the United Nations can't even touch an eyelash of his, or so he says--and his intent is clear. By expelling aid workers in Darfur, he hopes to divide the international community and blackmail the UN Security Council into deferring the ICC's indictment. This gambit creates a moment of truth for the Obama administration.

Beyond resisting calls for a deferral, Washington must regain the initiative it has lost to Bashir. Although President Obama has appointed a special envoy for Darfur, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has publicly promised to hold Bashir accountable for every innocent death, the president has postponed more forceful action pending a comprehensive review of Sudan policy.

Unfortunately, the crisis is not standing still. The president must begin dictating rather than merely responding to events. The boldest way to do so is to declare Bashir beyond the pale, launch a full-bore campaign to isolate him diplomatically, and ultimately bring him to justice.

Some, positing a trade-off between peace and justice, recommend deferring the ICC indictment, as permitted under the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the court. Proceeding with Bashir's prosecution, they warn, will jeopardize prospects for peace in Darfur and the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the long-running civil war between northern and southern Sudan in 2005.

This argument represents a triumph of hope over experience. It flies in the face of what we know about and can expect from Bashir and exaggerates the prospects of peace in either place without regime change in Khartoum.

In fact, support for Bashir's arrest and prosecution reflects realism, not idealism. The United States has three national interests in Sudan: stopping mass atrocities in Darfur; ensuring stable peace between northern and southern Sudan; and preserving intelligence cooperation with Khartoum in the struggle against global terrorism. The best way to advance all three is to arrest Bashir and to transfer him to The Hague, not to bargain with a known killer who has no record of keeping his word.

Bashir is committed to total victory in Darfur, where five thousand people already die each month, according to ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. That number could now surge, as one million victims lose access to food aid and medicine. An indicator of Bashir's callousness toward Darfur is his 2006 appointment of the genocidal Ahmed Haroun, former minister of the interior, as minister for humanitarian affairs. This is akin to naming Joseph Goebbels as head of concentration camp welfare. Haroun was indicted by the ICC in 2007 for crimes against humanity and war crimes, after which Bashir appointed him to lead an investigation into human rights abuses in Darfur.

Nor can Bashir be counted on as a faithful custodian of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Since its signature in 2005, Khartoum has worked to undermine its terms, fomenting violence in the strategic oil-rich region of Abyei and sabotaging the planned referendum on southern independence, scheduled for 2011. This includes delaying steps necessary for a functioning national election this year. It is nave to imagine that Bashir, freed of indictment, would suddenly live up to his side of the bargain.

Finally, Washington cannot hope to maintain an effective intelligence-sharing arrangement with Khartoum if Bashir remains in power. Such a relationship is critical, given ongoing threats from al-Qaeda affiliated groups in North Africa and the Horn. Unfortunately, the steady deterioration in Sudan-U.S. relations jeopardizes such cooperation.

A hard line from Washington is essential to stiffen the resolve of wobbly members of the international community, and to embolden fence-sitters within Sudan's ruling National Congress Party who may be in a position to depose Bashir. But those individuals are unlikely to help remove him unless the world community stands firm on the ICC indictment, ratcheting up pressure on a regime whose days they make clear are numbered.

President Obama can take five concrete steps to regain the initiative in the face of Basir's intransigence. First, he should openly dismiss any possibility of Security Council deferment and insist that any country that is able to do so should remand Bashir to the court. This includes U.S. ally Qatar, host of the 2009 Arab League summit, which Bashir plans to attend. Second, Obama should engage Beijing on tighter UN sanctions for Bashir's criminal regime, which by its actions is now endangering long-term Chinese interests in Sudan. Third, he should welcome the African Union's creation of a new Darfur panel under former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has promised that "war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other abuses will be punished resolutely." Fourth, he should commit U.S. logistical support for the UN peacekeeping mission and jointly with Europeans, declare a no-fly zone in Darfur enforced by Western warplanes. Finally, he should shore up the ICC's global standing, by signaling willingness to consider eventual U.S. membership, pending a bipartisan review of its performance and adequate safeguards.

As Pulitzer Prize winner and current National Security Council official Samantha Power observes, mass atrocities present the United States with a "problem from hell." But it is not one we can wish away. Rather than negotiating with Bashir, Washington needs to lead an all-out push on the Security Council and among Arab and African countries to isolate the Sudanese leader and ultimately remove him from power.

Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown are director and deputy director, respectively, of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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END THE GENOCIDE

"The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes.. we have the most stake in creating an order in the world that is stable...and when you see a genocide whether it's in Rwanda, or Bosnia or in Darfur - that's a stain on all of us, that's a stain on our souls... I was the first along with Senator Brownback to focus on ratcheting up sanctions and getting an envoy in there who was serious. We worked diligently to get the Darfur Peace and Accountability act passed…I think the level of commitment and the way that I’ve spoken out on this issue indicates not only knowledge but also passion in bringing an end to this crisis. It’s very encouraging to see activism based not on self-interest but on moral imperative…We can't say 'never again' and then allow it to happen again and as President of the United States I don't intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.” November 2007 Hear Barack Obama say these words.

Write to President Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

You can also write to the President at:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

President Obama can be called:

202-456-1111
or
1-800-GENOCIDE

The White House comment line is available
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. weekdays

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Find USA elected politicians contact information at this link:
www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

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www.stopgenocidenow.org

www.enoughproject.org
www.savedarfur.org

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Monday, March 30, 2009
UPDATE:

Order of Play

STADIUM start 11:00am
J Tipsarevic (SRB) vs [6] J Del Potro (ARG) - ATP

Not Before 1:00 PM
[1] R Nadal (ESP) vs [Q] F Gil (POR) - ATP
[4] A Murray (GBR) vs N Massu (CHI) - ATP

Not Before 4:30 PM
[1] S Williams (USA) vs [17] J Zheng (CHN) - WTA

Not Before 7:00 PM
[12] F Gonzalez (CHI) vs [18] R Stepanek (CZE) - ATP

Not Before 8:30 PM
E Makarova (RUS) vs N Li (CHN) - WTA

GRANDSTAND start 11:00am
[13] C Wozniacki (DEN) vs [4] E Dementieva (RUS) - WTA
[10] A Radwanska (POL) vs [5] V Williams (USA) - WTA

Not Before 2:00 PM
[11] D Ferrer (ESP) vs [17] M Cilic (CRO) - ATP
[20] I Andreev (RUS) vs [16] S Wawrinka (SUI) - ATP
[32] F Lopez (ESP) vs [8] F Verdasco (ESP) - ATP

Not Before 5:30 PM
[WC] M Lopez (ESP) / R Nadal (ESP) vs [6] B Soares (BRA) / K Ullyett (ZIM) - ATP

Link to pictures to Rafa's match with Gabashvili

End of UPDATE.

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It just feels wrong, to put this here. My mind is on the above issue. I am a tennis fan, particularly a Rafa Nadal fan.

And I am a college basketball fan, too. However, I have watched no basketball games during the best time of the college basketball season, so far.

Here's a bit from Miami...