I want my tax money to support Darfur refugees

[shireen]

I'm guilty, as many of us are, of ignoring Darfur. Sure, I read the newspaper stories, shake my head with disgust, and move on. Why? Because this tragedy is so great that I cannot wrap my head around it. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a woman in one of those camp, with malnourished children, terrified of being beaten and raped whenever I went outside the camp perimeter for firewood.

Meanwhile, my hard-earned tax money is being spent building an embassy in Iraq that's larger than Vatican City. My tax money is breaking the hearts of American and Iraqi families who have lost loved ones in this invasion. My tax money is being squandered in rebuilding efforts in the Gulf region affected by Katrina and Rita. Meanwhile, I am making a disproportionately larger contribution to these outrages because the wealthy are getting tax cuts from a corrupt Executive Office and Congress.

A couple of excerpts from the NYT:

From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/world/africa/28cnd-darfur.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan, April 28 — The World Food Program, the United Nations agency responsible for feeding three million people affected by the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, announced today that it would cut in half the amount of food it distributes there because it is short of money.

The food program said it had received just one-third of the $746 million it requested from donor nations for all of its operations in Sudan. As a result, individual rations of grain, beans, oil, sugar and salt for people in Darfur, where a brutal ethnic and political conflict has raged since 2003, will be halved, from 2,100 calories a day to 1,050.

I WANT MY TAX MONEY SENT TO HELP THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR!!! I WANT IT SPENT WISELY TO HELP KATRINA VICTIMS. I WANT IT SPENT FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY. NOT ON WARS AND MURDERS!!!!


From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/world/africa/27diplo.html
WASHINGTON, April 26 — As the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan grows ever more deadly, Bush administration officials now acknowledge that they have few if any promising policy options for containing the carnage.
...
One proposal, to send 20,000 United Nations peacekeepers to Sudan, has been stymied by Khartoum's adamant opposition. Without the government's agreement, the Bush administration acknowledges, dispatching troops to Darfur would rightly be viewed as an invasion.

THAT DIDN'T STOP YOU FROM INVADING IRAQ FOR NO GOOD REASON, YOU MORON!!!!


I am so beyond mad ... it's exhausting. It's outrageous. What scares me is how used we're getting to it all, it's becoming a normal part of our lives.