Politicians, Ambassadors, And Administrators - Contact Information

U.S. Government

President: George W. Bush

Phone (comments): 202-456-1111
Fax (comments): 202-456-2461
TTY/TTD (comments): 202-456-6213
E-mail: comments@whitehouse.gov

Congress/Senate: [Yours]

Phone (switchboard): 202-224-3121

Secretary of State: Condoleeza Rice

Phone (general): 202-647-4000
Phone (comment): 202-647-6575
Phone (Sec. Rice’s assistant): 202-647-7098
Phone (Sec. Rice): 202-647-5291(/-5292?)
Phone (Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs): 202-647-7215
Phone (Israeli & Palestinian Affairs): 202-647-3672
Fax (Sec. Rice): 202-647-2283
E-mail: secretary@state.gov
Web: http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

President-Elect: Barack Obama

Phone: 202-540-3000, ext. 2
Web 1: http://www.change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople
Web 2: http://www.change.gov/page/content/contact

Future Secretary of State: (Sen.) Hillary Clinton

Phone ("friends of" org.): 202-595-2620
Web ("friends of" org.): http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/state/?sc=2545
Phone (senate, D.C.): 202-224-4451
Phone (senate, New York City): 212-688-6262
Phone (senate, Albany): 518-431-0120
Web (senate): http://clinton.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm?subj=issue

Former President: Jimmy Carter

Phone (Carter Library general): 404-8654-7100
Phone (Carter Library?): 404-331-3942
E-mail (Carter Library general): carter.library@nara.gov
Phone (Carter Center general): 404-420-5100
E-mail (Carter Center general): centerweb@emory.edu

U.S. Permanent Mission to the U.N. Ambassador: Zalmay Khalilzad

Phone (general): 212-415-4000
Phone (Khalilzad?): 212-415-4050
Fax (general): 212-415-4050
E-mail 1: usa@un.int
E-mail 2: usunpublicaffairs@state.gov

The U.N. in General

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Phone (general): 212-963-1234
Phone (Ki-moon?): 212-963-5012
Phone? (Ki-moon?) Fax?: 212-963-4879
Fax?: 212-963-7055
E-mail (general): inquiries@un.org

Contact information for various members of the Security Council:

see http://www.unscburma.org/UNSCContactList.htm

Stopping The U.S. Shipment Of 3,000 Tons Of Extra Ammunition To Ashdod, Israel

Ship name: Wehr Elbe (owned by a German company) - See http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/arms-embargo-vital-gaza-civilian-toll-mounts-20090115 for details.

German Ambassador to the U.S.: Klaus Scharioth

Phone (general): 202-298-4000
Phone ("administration"): 202-298-4278
Phone (Scharioth?): 202-298-4201
Fax (general 1?): 202-298-4249
Fax (general 2?): 202-333-2653
Fax (Scharioth?): 202-298-4270
E-mail: Klaus.Scharioth@diplo.de
Web: http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/Kontakt.html

German Permanent Mission to the U.N. Ambassador: (name unknown)

Phone (general): 212-940-0400
Fax (general): 212-940-0402
Fax ("political"): 212-940-0403
E-mail 1: germany@un.int
E-mail 2: contact@germany-un.org

Opening The Rafah Border Crossing Between Gaza And Egypt

Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S.: Sameh Shoukry

Phone (general) 202-895-5400
Phone (Chicago): 312-828-9162
E-mail (general): embassy@egyptembassy.net

Egyptian Permanent Mission to the U.N. Ambassador: Maged (f) Abdel Fattah (m) Abdel Aziz (l)

Phone (general): 212-503-0300
Phone (Abdel Aziz) 212-503-0335
E-mail: egypt@un.int

Masa!

No scanned contact list yet...I have to get to that...
...but blogging on a different topic...antojitos.

I think I made some type of antojito tonight.

I now have some sort of thick tortilla with refried beans in the middle, and we'll be adding tomatoes, cheese, salsa, shredded pork, and other stuff to it as soon as my baby's done with work.

I'm very happy to be learning to put together meals quickly out of whatever I have around the house.

Thank you, wonderful tortilleria that made my dough. Thank you, Seeds of Change online diaries, for telling me how to make masa dough less sticky. Thank you, butcher, for telling me how to cook and shred pork.

Bon appetit!

(P.S. I wish I could find the post/comment by BFP about the transformation of corn from something so life-giving into something central to a "bad for you" diet. It was a powerful essay, and I would like people who enjoy this food and read this post to see it.)

Ashdod-Bound Ammunition Still En Route - on the Wehr Elbe

Thank you, everyone, who stopped more munitions from going from Astakos, Greece, to Ashdod, Israel (the closest port Israel has to Gaza).

However, the ship is still en route--it's just under better secrecy now.

Let's get it stopped anyway!

I've found the name of the ship--it's the "Wehr Elbe."

Please call your representatives, members of national governments and embassies, etc. Click here for contact information if you are based out of the U.S. Please feel free to copy/paste, print, etc.

-Katie

How Can I Contact The OMYLE / ΟΜΥΛΕ ?

Someone on The Daily Kos had a great idea.

The Greek port workers could do to this shipment what the South African port workers did to a shipment of additional arms to Zimbabwe last year.

The only question is--how on earth does one get ahold of "the Greek port workers" to ask them to help us U.S.-based activists have more time to get this shipment of gasoline to be poured on a flame stopped?

Apparently, in Greek, their union is called the OMYLE (the L's a delta in Greek), but I can't find a web site.

Callout through Google search terms: Αστακός Γάζα Ισραήλ Άσντοντ Ομοσπονδία Υπαλλήλων Λιμένων Ελλάδος ΟΜΥΛΕ Βοηθήστε
Παρακαλούμε να σταματήσετε την παράδοση.

Edited, in case any Greek readers stop by, to add:

(Not quite sure what it says, but it looks like a basic breakdown of the Reuters news article, in map form.)

U.S. seeks ship to move MANY arms to Israel

The current U.S. administration is seeking a shipment that would make the bombs and shells fired at people in Gaza much more numerous.

U.S. Seeks Ship To Move Arms to Israel (Reuters)

If this doesn't bother you, okay.

If it does, call/write Congresspeople, call/write the State Department, call/write the Department of Defense, call/write the UN, etc.

Callout through Google search terms: Αστακός Γάζα Ισραήλ Άσντοντ Ομοσπονδία Υπαλλήλων Λιμένων Ελλάδος ΟΜΥΛΕ Βοηθήστε
Παρακαλούμε να σταματήσετε την παράδοση.

"Hiding Among" Civilians

Chris Floyd can really apply the English language well to explanations of logic.

"Taking cover among civilians." This is a curious locution. When you launch missiles to kill the democratically elected officials of a government -- especially when you target their private homes -- where else do you expect to find them?
...
Naturally, it would be far more convenient if every member of Hamas -- including, again, the democratically elected officials of the government -- painted themselves bright red and gathered in, say, a soccer stadium, where Israel could then drop bombs on them with no muss, no fuss. But we are dealing with the real world, where human beings of every description, profession, ideology and belief must of necessity live and work in close proximity to one another...

Support Republic Windows And Doors' Former Workers! + Interesting Tidbit

Bank of America claimed to the press that "Neither Bank of America nor any other third-party lender to the company has the right to control" whether or not Republic Windows and Doors pays its former employees severance pay and vacation pay.

Republic Windows and Doors, however, seems to have told the former employees' union, or them--not sure which--that it was largely Bank of America which, in practice, even if they didn't have the "right," told them to pony up to Bank of America and cheat their workers out of their funds.

Not that that makes Republic Windows and Doors owners & managers morally better people for doing it.

But it is interesting.

Source. Seen on p. 3 of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Either way, SUPPORT THE FORMER WORKERS OF REPUBLIC WINDOWS AND DOORS!!! Write more press. Write and call more politicians. Send your friends in Chicago food/gas/El oney if they're wiling to cook and take food to the factory!

"People of Color Don’t Go Outside"

On the lack of portrayal of people of color doing outdoor recreational activity in American imagery, BFP said:

erasure or denial of people of color using public outdoor land has many effects–first, and most importantly, it criminalizes our presence on these lands. It criminalizes people of color for being outside.

I need more explanations of the connection between denial of phenomena existing and what activists mean by the word "criminalization," I think.

On my "things to find literature about" list now.

Organizing agenda

I want to either help organize, or partipate in organization:

• Against the rise in hate crimes that's been going on lately



• Against inhumane border & immigration policies



• Against the Central Corridor light rail train's placement on University Avenue



• For grassroots labor organization rights and mobilization actions (not to mention mobilization rights...freaking Taft-Hartley)



• Against overthrow, or assistance of overthrow, of other countries' governments for the reason that our government/populace disagrees with the politics of those countries' governments



• Against policies that make it hard for poor women to raise their kids to their full God-given abilities



• For policies that help poor women raise their kids to their full God-given abilities, despite being poor

I'll add to this list later, and it will become a place I return whenever I need to remind myself what my 2009 priorities are.

It's Time To Start Community Organizing

The outpouring of open, virulent racism that many feared would arise during the campaign -- and in the secrecy of the voting booth -- never really manifested itself. But I think that it will emerge much more strongly now, in the aftermath, as part of a carefully cultivated dolchstosslegende even now being perpetrated by the rightwing media machine. Fox News and Karl Rove are already pushing stories about "Black Panthers" intimidating voters and widespread vote fraud among the worthless darkies whose votes have propelled Obama to victory. (These would be the same worthless darkies whom the rightwingers also blame for the global economic catastrophe.) There will be much, much more of this in the days and weeks to come.

It will not hurt Obama, of course; he will have the power he has sought, and the upsurge of ugly, unrepentant racism on the Right will only make his "progressive" allies far less willing to criticize his actions -- especially those mysterious "highly unpopular policies" that Joe Biden has promised Obama will adopt in the face of a guaranteed foreign policy crisis sometime next year. (Not to mention the promised escalation of the quagmire in Afghanistan.) But ordinary African-Americans will bear the painful brunt of this pouring of old hatreds into new wineskins. As always, black people will be blamed for all the nation's ills by the overclass that actually controls the machinery of power, and has been grinding its bootheel on the neck of black Americans for centuries.
-Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

Beware that Obama, even if he had any liberal inclinations, is going to be under strict surveillance and pressure to 'govern from the centre', because practically every commentator on the box as well as the Democratic Leadership Council is demanding that Obama do just that and resist pressure from his constituents.
...
the Democrats control all three branches of government, with expanded majorities in the Congress and Senate. They have moved deep into Republican territory...When Obama 'reaches out' to Republicans and starts blustering about bipartisanship, and when he appoints someone like Robert Gates as his secretary of defense, there will be no excuse. If he fails to carry out even his most limited reforms, he has no scope for blaming the Right. If he doesn't close Guantanamo and restore habeus corpus, he has no one else to blame.

All I'm saying is, to those hundreds of thousands of people marching and dancing in the streets, be prepared to be back on the streets soon. The system is designed to lock you out as quickly and quietly as possible.
-Richard Seymour, Lenin's Tomb

Maybe this is why it's okay that I took such a severe break from political and policy organizing since May.

It's just about time to begin.
For fantastic persuasive writing about the importance of community organizing and about good examples of community organizing done well, please see posts written throughout the years at Brownfemipower's blog.

(I don't know where to start. I don't have friends in terribly lousy economic situations in real life, and I don't have leftist friends in real life. I can't really figure out how to get them excited about hustling to dismantle the prison-industrial complex.)
(For online life, I did, by the way, just purchase a good domain name that I'd love to give to the cause of influencing the new White House's policy stances. Contact influenceobama -at- gmail -dot- com if you think it sounds like a good idea. Honestly, I have no idea how to get a comunity web site going. I just bought the domain name to hold onto!)

"A Woman...Should...Because Your Relationship Is Going To Be..."

Ultimately when a woman meets a man for the first time the first thing that she should make sure of is that he is aware of her physicality, because your relationship is going to be dependent on his sexual desire for you, and not on any kind of common interests or kinship. Whether or not he is attractive is certainly not important, a heartbeat and a functioning dick will do.
-Renee at Womanist Musings, mocking the message behind an advertisement

You know, when I was a teenager, I never wanted a revealing swimsuit. I did end up explaining that to some friends, family, babysitters, etc. My words at the time were, "I want a guy to be attracted to my face, not my body."

At the time, I knew that I wasn't interested in physical intimacy beyond kissing for years to come (perhaps not even until marriage). I knew that big breasts were associated with desireability for physical intimacy beyond kissing. I knew that I had big breasts.

I thought the most efficient path to weeding out people whose desires in a relationship would be incompatible with mine (see first sentence, above paragraph) would be to make sure that my breasts' visibility was always secondary to the visibility of parts of my body that, in my culture, don't scream out "desireable for physical intimacy beyond kissing."



That got me through my teen years pretty well.
(Pretty happily, that is. There were really sad times that more friendships would've staved off, but there's no way more courtship would've done that.)

I'm grown up now and know more deeply that attracting no guys but ones who find your face highly attractive can also lead to a lot of courtship from guys you're incompatible with.

So now I like Renee's comment a bit better.

I'll post it again, because it's just such a great piece of sardonic wit to remember and to share.

Ultimately when a woman meets a man for the first time the first thing that she should make sure of is that he is aware of her physicality, because your relationship is going to be dependent on his sexual desire for you, and not on any kind of common interests or kinship. Whether or not he is attractive is certainly not important, a heartbeat and a functioning dick will do.
-Renee at Womanist Musings, mocking the message behind an advertisement

Next Passports Issue: Denying People in the South The Right To Vote?

Maybe "it's just wrong" or "I'm a feminist" doesn't move you.

But perhaps disenfranchisement of people who, on the whole, tend to vote similarly, does.

In that case, here's another point I had not thought of:

"Denying the validity of midwife-signed birth certificates could be used to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Black people in the South if voter ID laws are enacted."
-Workers World

They've got a point.




(In fact, I'd say it's a much more likely "next up" guess than AngryWhiteFemale's prediction. Not that her guess couldn't happen. But I wager the disenfranchisement of large swaths of people whose parents couldn't get hospital births would come first.)

Why Passports are a Feminist Issue

I knew the State Department's actions over passports were wrong, but I'm aware that not all people consider that type of "wrong" something they want to devote their energy to combating.

I didn't know what to say to encourage them to fight the State Department's actions.

I had not thought of this:

"The decision of the State Department to further devalue midwives credentials - ie their ability to certify births - on the basis of a few individual misdeeds, puts this female dominated profession at risk once again."

-Professor Black Woman

Feminists of the blogosphere, PLEASE!

Take action!


Also, pertaining to taking action:
The name of the lawsuit I linked to in "Passports" is "Castelano, et al. v. Rice, et al."

In "Passports," I asked everyone to "support the issue behind this lawsuit."

Now, if you're interested, you can name the lawsuit itself while writing supporting letters and taking other actions.

Help Requested: McKinney Issue Statements Needed 4 T-Shirt

Geez Louise, it's hard to find publications in an "Issues" format from the McKinney campaign.

I pored over "Barack Obama's stances on _____________" documents I got (mostly off the internet) to make this t-shirt that says, "Barack Obama for President - Turn Me Around For Policies and lists policy statements I thought would be persuasive to the public on the back.

But now that the primaries are way over and I want to start pushing McKinney hard to my hobby communities, rather than just voting for her, I can't find her policy statements!

Just platform drafts.

Which aren't really stated the same way.

Dangit.

Any other McKinney fans able to help me look?

Thanks.



P.S. Help a sister out and get the t-shirt sooner if you're thinking about buying one! I always get compliments on my Obama t-shirt, and that's before people even see the back.

I'll sell the t-shirt at cost...but first it has to get made.

Passports

Did you know that the State Department is currently getting away with requesting a neverending stream of documents from some people requesting U.S. passports?

They are withholding passports from people (don't forget--you can't safely leave the U.S. w/o a passport) by being allowed to say, "Y'know, that document doesn't look verifiable enough. We need more evidence that you were born in the U.S." over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over without stop.

Please act to support the issue behind this lawsuit and encourage others, especially who live in D.C. or the areas in question and can write local letters to the editor or organize marches or have who have ins w/ congresspeople or something, to act, too.

After all, if the State Department continues to get away w/ requesting a neverending stream of documents as a way of denying a passport, the next pool of people at risk could be all of those people who should've taken action while it's "just happening to Hispanics" in the first place.

Not Eating and Not Going to School

We are going to be paying for this for generations, y’all, and some of your children and grandchildren will pay by not eating and not going to school.

-Professor Zero


What a huge thing to try to wrap my mind around.

Thank you for writing those words the way you did, Profacero.

But...
Wow.

Cheap late September healthy food prices

Today, I asked farmers to sell me fractions of produce portions for fractions of the price they'd set and did well getting healthy food cheaply.

I bought:
1 small bunch of parsley, $0.25
1 small bunch of cilantro, $0.25
2 green onions, $0.25
2 carrots, $0.25
1 bell pepper, $0.50
a pint? of fancy potatoes, $1.00
Plus a bitter ball and Thai eggplant for free from the same person

$2.50 for just the right amounts of 6 (+2) kinds of vegetable/herb.

Here's to crossing my fingers I can cook them all.

Tonight is mustard greens & cabbage ($1.50 together) I bought earlier this week, chopped, boiled a bit, & thrown into lentils, w/ chopped green onion & cilantro mixed in.



I don't think I'm going to get around to much spreading healthy cheap eating tips around town to those who could use it this year, but I'm thinking about illustrating packets for some of my extra heirloom tomato seeds and giving them to all the farmers who've given me healthy, affordable bargains. Especially the ones growing only conventional tomatoes. I hope that's worth something.

(Non-Statist-Communism) Alternatives and Capitalism

I had my first conversation with a vocal pro-capitalist in a social setting last night. I don't think I was terribly eloquent or knowledgeable or necessarily even persuasive, but I'm proud of myself because I think I managed to do it w/o doing any damage--and might have gotten a single seed of something that will later persuade her in there. If not, well, again, at least I did it, and did it w/o doing any damage.

I have Brownfemipower to thank.

Credit also goes to Benjamin Dangl's The Price of Fire, though I only ended up reading that because bloggers kept recommending a book that, in the hunt for more, led me to that one.

Nevertheless, without Djangl's description of how things work in many different countries, and his chapter on the city of El Alto, I could not have furnished the kinds of descriptions of non-free-market and yet non-command-and-control methods of conducting economic activity that I was able to (however poorly) last night.

She simply didn't know that there were third, fourth, heck, twentieth, ways of conducting economic activity in the world at a scale larger than a small tribe.

I'm proud of myself for listening--I haven't been very good at that much of my life. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found out that she didn't know that anything had ever existed on significant scales besides "our way" and "the Soviet Union's way."

I'm proud of myself for making myself listen to everything she had to say. She said that she wasn't going to judge what people did elsewhere, as long as they didn't mess with our ways of conducting economic activity. Because I listened, I had my fair chance to clarify that actually, I wanted to know if she thought what I'd described could work well for parts of the United States. And I didn't get a kneejerk response to that question. So I'm glad I wasn't kneejerk or interruptive to her, as I can sometimes be.



Last but not least, she gave me a huge shove towards doing more to find a candidate with my set of dream policies and vote for that candidate.

She believed that our political system currently gives people all the power they need to change our way of conducting economic affairs if they don't like it.

I said, "Then how come the few politicians in Roosevelt's presidential era--if I'm correct that that's whom the author was talking about--were able to override the will of the many poor people and farmers who supported alternative forms of economic activity?

She retorted, "They kept voting for him, didn't they?"

She's probably right. They probably did vote for someone who implemented some economic policies that helped them but also implemented a lot of economic policies that hurt them. (Or, more specifically, vote without flooding the streets, creating roadblocks, and giving that politician all sorts of hell over his harmful policies.)

I nodded and said she had a really interesting point. And that she'd probably just convinced me to vote my favorite candidate, no matter what party, this November, so I wouldn't be "a 30's co-op organizer voting for Roosevelt."
*Maybe she'll do the same. Right now she's voting for McCain. She believes government expenditures will be lower under him than they will under Obama (I don't, by the way), but she isn't happy with how high they'd be under him, either. Maybe, if America is lucky, both of us will end up voting and working hard for our true beliefs by November.)

Obama/Biden vs. McKinney/Clemente

Well, well, well.

I thought I was pretty much out of the Obama efforts.

But:

the majority of white people regularly vote against their own best economic interests

My vote's definitely going to McKinney, and eventually, once I have some, some money & time. (Heh--I update so often, you can tell I've got oodles of time, right?)

But maybe I need to use my identity to "relate" to voters and swing them leftwards from the middle-right towards Obama again, just like I tried to from the middle-left during the primaries. Maybe I need to phone bank for both candidates.

It does sound like there are a lot of people like the ones I grew up with who probably need prodding from someone "like them" to vote for Obama.

And I do like a lot of Obama's policies, even if I dislike a lot of the ones he's adopted over the last year or so.

Hmmmm.

RNC Sexual Assault Hotline

Sorry I didn't get on the ball and get this earlier. *sigh*

The Republican National Convention-specific sexual assault peer advocate line, set up through Arise Bookstore, is 651-434-2265. It is open 24 hours a day, but it is only open through Sept. 5 (tomorrow).

Ugh.

So, ummm, if anyone's waiting in frustration because they haven't heard the # yet...there it is...good for another 24 hours or so.

Sorry!

(This line is available and intends to be truly helpful no matter who assaulted you or someone you know. They are very aware that the assaulter could be a liberal protestor and are not afraid to confront that. They want to provide support, healing, and accountability no matter what.)