Dear Mr. Badass Veteran Nick Powers,
As-salamu alaykum.
I read your open letter to ISIS with much enthusiasm, and thought a badass veteran like you deserved a response.
First off, nice grammar and punctuation. My 12-year-old son fighting in Tikrit sounds more coherent and he has never had a day of formal education. Believe it or not I was actually made aware of the insignificant communication platform you people call a ‘blog’ while I was cutting the head off of someone who does not agree with my own beliefs.
Strange how this world works.
Anyway, you do sound impressive in your open letter. I am sure your combat experience has hardened you into a truly formidable warrior. What was the worst part about being deployed to my part of the world? The long lines in your “Green...
Politics
Dear Mr President,
The world is watching as your administration responds to the most recent evidence of torture and degrading treatment of Iraqis at the hands of US personnel. While Amnesty International welcomes official statements that the allegations are being taken seriously, the ultimate proof of this will be in actions not words. In this regard, your government's record in the context of "war on terror" detentions gives cause for concern, as fundamental principles of law and human rights continue to be violated despite the administration's stated commitment to these principles.
Amnesty International recalls your statement on 26 June 2003, made on the occasion of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, in which you said that "the United States is...
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Dear Representative,
The Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA is a social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of sex workers and their communities, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy. Members of the Seattle chapter of SWOP, SWOP-Seattle, are hoping to offer a dissenting opinion to the pervasive myth that all sex work is inherently damaging and exploitative.
(This letter is in response to multiple bills in both the House and Senate which increase penalties for patronizing a prostitute to include asset seizure and the reclassification to a gross misdemeanor, and widening the definition of “human trafficking”.)
Of particular concern to us is the language inserted into recent bills which conflates prostitution with “human...
3,576
Dear Home Secretary,
I understand that, like me, you personally oppose the death penalty. You may have seen that a majority of British voters now share this position, and that public support for capital punishment has fallen to its lowest level since records began.
Your rejection of capital punishment is of course consistent with the stance of the Government in which you serve, which has a “five year strategy” to abolish the death penalty worldwide.
I am writing to ask how you reconcile this position with your Department’s active support for thousands of death sentences overseas; many of which have been handed down to women and children who faced sham trials in kangaroo courts.
Under your tenure as Secretary of State, the Home Office has been Europe’s most generous funder of...
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Dear Members of Parliament,
Please accept this collective open letter as an expression of the signatories’ deep concern that Bill C-51 (which the government is calling the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015) is a dangerous piece of legislation in terms of its potential impacts on the rule of law, on constitutionally and internationally protected rights, and on the health of Canada’s democracy.
Beyond that, we note with concern that knowledgeable analysts have made cogent arguments not only that Bill C-51 may turn out to be ineffective in countering terrorism by virtue of what is omitted from the bill, but also that Bill C-51 could actually be counter-productive in that it could easily get in the way of effective policing, intelligence-gathering and prosecutorial activity. In this respect, we...
4,115
Dear Paul,
First of all, thank you for writing so much of the New Testament.
Thank you for also teaching inerrancy, not only of the Bible you have (the Old Testament) but of your own letters and those other parts of the New Testament that hadn’t even been written yet!
The actual reason for my letter is to ask you to clear up some confusion for me. I’m reading through Romans, and I see that you quote the Old Testament on pretty much every page.
[Which, by the way, is another thing I appreciate that about your work: you show that the entire Bible is exactly on the same page, that the Old Testament writers were already writing about the coming of Jesus. And you quote chapter and verse to prove it.]
But, getting to my question–and if this is a minor point or I’m missing something,...
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Dear Party Leader,
On February 5th 2015, the parliamentary Political...
3,627
Dear Attorney General:
I am writing to you out of severe concern for recent action taken by your office in opposition to the equality rights of same-sex couples. On August 4, 2011, Counsel for Mr. Wayne Hincks was informed that you will be intervening in the case of Hincks v. Gallardo (Court File No.: FS-11-367046) to “oppose the issuance of a declaration that a civil partnership registered in the United Kingdom is a ‘marriage’ for the purpose of the Civil Marriage Act and that the parties to such a partnership are spouses within the meaning of the Divorce Act.”
As noted in my previous letter to you, dated May 11, 2011, the diverse models of relationship recognition now available in different countries to same-sex couples wishing to formalize their relationship have complicated the...
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Honourable Prime Minister:
As you may be aware, earlier today a member of your national parliament and recent founder of the Greek Christian-Democratic Party used an extremely derogatory term (the Greek equivalent of the word “faggot”) in a Twitter reference to the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Apparently, your fellow parliamentarian’s tweet was nothing more than an expression of his profound disapproval of the Luxembourgian Prime Minister’s engagement to his same-sex partner.
As a proud Greek expatriate, living in a society where bigotry is broadly condemned, I was disappointed but perhaps not entirely shocked by your colleague’s remark. Having escaped the pervasive and often overt homophobia of Greece in search of a fairer society where I could also have the right to do what...
3,295
Dear Prime Minister Stephen Harper
We are writing to encourage the Canadian Government to implement the EITI, alongside requirements for the mandatory disclosure of extractive company payments to governments.
You will have taken note of the UK Government’s recent announcement that it will review whether to implement the EITI, which we expect to come out positively, and the US Government’s implementation efforts. These announcements arise both from domestic reasons and from a recognition that we cannot expect countries to do what we are not doing ourselves. Good management of natural resources begins with strong systems of transparency and accountability, and it is the lack of these fundamental foundations that has left billions of citizens excluded from the benefits of their country...
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