2012-07-10
Charitable Weaponry
Open Letter to Tony Abbott, Leader of Opposition, Australia
Dear Sir,
I am very busy at the moment, e.g. operating on 3 hours sleep per day. So I am writing to you instead of Julia Gillard (Australian PM) because:
1. I hope you care. I know Julia doesn't.
2. I hope you will read my letter - I'm pretty sure Julia doesn't - she certainly doesn't reply.
3. I am hoping that you will pass on the concepts in this letter to the two right-wing independents so that they switch allegiance to you, for the good of the country.
4. If there was any way of getting Julia to act, I would expect that you can pass on the message to Julia yourself, since you have staff available to assist, while I am alone.
Anyway, here is my issue. In the financial year just passed, I scrambled at the last minute to find a tax-deductible charity to donate my money to. I want my donated money to go as far as possible to a sustainable cause that has a real effect. When I look around the world right at the moment, what I see is brave Syrian people going up, unarmed, against the automatic weapons of the Assad dictatorship. The freedom and prosperity of 23 million Syrians lies in their ability to perform the once-off task of overthrowing their evil dictatorship. A dictatorship that aligned itself with the evil USSR during the Cold War, and has never had to answer for that malfeasance.
Anyway, ideally the brave Syrian people would have the Turks or someone simply wage a war of liberation in Syria. Australia could do this itself if it had basing rights in some other country near Syria.
Regardless, for whatever reason, it appears that no country has the balls required to overthrow the Assad dictatorship. That means the only alternative is for the Syrian people to slug it out themselves. I've never been in the military myself, but my understanding is that there's simply no way to win without disabling Assad's aircraft. Modern military doctrine requires one to obtain air superiority which then allows ground troops to advance. The Syrian rebels have none of this, so they're unlikely to win. But if they were given SAMs (surface to air missiles) capable of knocking out Assad's superiority in aircraft, then the military equation would change somewhat, and the result less certain.
As such, as far as I can see, the absolute best charity one can donate to in the world today is to purchase SAMs for the Syrian rebels. Please correct me if your military advisers have a different understanding, so that we can try to find common ground.
Anyway, looking around at charities today, I find nothing that is dedicated to the Syrian people. As a Muslim, I am required to pay zakat (2.5% of income) to charity. I would like this to go into weapons for the Syrians. The charities that do exist at the moment are general "we will help the world" type charities, which is code for "left-wing parasites bleeding money from efficient whites to prop up African thugs". My understanding is that 90% of donated money is wasted on the organization itself, and only 10% reaches the people themselves, and that 10% is simply a fungible commodity meaning the dictator/thug doesn't need to deliver that themselves, so has more money for themselves to waste on holiday homes or palaces or their relatives etc. No serious attempt is being done at root cause analysis, which I suspect would conclude "recolonization is the least worst option available given the scale of the problem".
Ideally I would like to donate money to the Free Syrian Army, but their website doesn't have a "donate" button. Also I am not sure that this would be considered tax-deductible. Also it would really kill me to find out that the FSA was channelling money away from the Syrian rebels and using it to support Palestinian terrorists instead. Given the importance of what is happening, I would trust the Australian government more than anyone else to ensure maximum due diligence is done. As such, I would like the Australian government to set up a website that allows the funding of weapons for the Syrian people. I could then place my entire zakat into that website, knowing that to the best of anyone's ability, the money was going to the best bang per buck available anywhere in the world. I would also accept it if the Liberal Party itself set up such a charity, in lieu of the Australian government doing it. Also, if necessary, I would donate to the charity even if it was not tax-deductible, although that is obviously not ideal.
Please provide feedback with further direction. I would also consider donating to the Red Crescent or whatever, with the understanding that money, being fungible, I could ostensibly be funding food aid for starving Guatemalans, while every dollar donated to that cause was internally offset by sending the same amount of money to the Syrian rebels. Again, please advise.
Yours faithfully,
Paul Edwards.
|
Dear Sir,
I am very busy at the moment, e.g. operating on 3 hours sleep per day. So I am writing to you instead of Julia Gillard (Australian PM) because:
1. I hope you care. I know Julia doesn't.
2. I hope you will read my letter - I'm pretty sure Julia doesn't - she certainly doesn't reply.
3. I am hoping that you will pass on the concepts in this letter to the two right-wing independents so that they switch allegiance to you, for the good of the country.
4. If there was any way of getting Julia to act, I would expect that you can pass on the message to Julia yourself, since you have staff available to assist, while I am alone.
Anyway, here is my issue. In the financial year just passed, I scrambled at the last minute to find a tax-deductible charity to donate my money to. I want my donated money to go as far as possible to a sustainable cause that has a real effect. When I look around the world right at the moment, what I see is brave Syrian people going up, unarmed, against the automatic weapons of the Assad dictatorship. The freedom and prosperity of 23 million Syrians lies in their ability to perform the once-off task of overthrowing their evil dictatorship. A dictatorship that aligned itself with the evil USSR during the Cold War, and has never had to answer for that malfeasance.
Anyway, ideally the brave Syrian people would have the Turks or someone simply wage a war of liberation in Syria. Australia could do this itself if it had basing rights in some other country near Syria.
Regardless, for whatever reason, it appears that no country has the balls required to overthrow the Assad dictatorship. That means the only alternative is for the Syrian people to slug it out themselves. I've never been in the military myself, but my understanding is that there's simply no way to win without disabling Assad's aircraft. Modern military doctrine requires one to obtain air superiority which then allows ground troops to advance. The Syrian rebels have none of this, so they're unlikely to win. But if they were given SAMs (surface to air missiles) capable of knocking out Assad's superiority in aircraft, then the military equation would change somewhat, and the result less certain.
As such, as far as I can see, the absolute best charity one can donate to in the world today is to purchase SAMs for the Syrian rebels. Please correct me if your military advisers have a different understanding, so that we can try to find common ground.
Anyway, looking around at charities today, I find nothing that is dedicated to the Syrian people. As a Muslim, I am required to pay zakat (2.5% of income) to charity. I would like this to go into weapons for the Syrians. The charities that do exist at the moment are general "we will help the world" type charities, which is code for "left-wing parasites bleeding money from efficient whites to prop up African thugs". My understanding is that 90% of donated money is wasted on the organization itself, and only 10% reaches the people themselves, and that 10% is simply a fungible commodity meaning the dictator/thug doesn't need to deliver that themselves, so has more money for themselves to waste on holiday homes or palaces or their relatives etc. No serious attempt is being done at root cause analysis, which I suspect would conclude "recolonization is the least worst option available given the scale of the problem".
Ideally I would like to donate money to the Free Syrian Army, but their website doesn't have a "donate" button. Also I am not sure that this would be considered tax-deductible. Also it would really kill me to find out that the FSA was channelling money away from the Syrian rebels and using it to support Palestinian terrorists instead. Given the importance of what is happening, I would trust the Australian government more than anyone else to ensure maximum due diligence is done. As such, I would like the Australian government to set up a website that allows the funding of weapons for the Syrian people. I could then place my entire zakat into that website, knowing that to the best of anyone's ability, the money was going to the best bang per buck available anywhere in the world. I would also accept it if the Liberal Party itself set up such a charity, in lieu of the Australian government doing it. Also, if necessary, I would donate to the charity even if it was not tax-deductible, although that is obviously not ideal.
Please provide feedback with further direction. I would also consider donating to the Red Crescent or whatever, with the understanding that money, being fungible, I could ostensibly be funding food aid for starving Guatemalans, while every dollar donated to that cause was internally offset by sending the same amount of money to the Syrian rebels. Again, please advise.
Yours faithfully,
Paul Edwards.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 04:06 
