Public Letter to Bob Rae [Original Post, ~April 2024]
Hello,
I am attempting to contact Bob Rae, the ambassador of Canada to the UN. I am a Canadian citizen.
I have been watching the war on Gaza for months. There appears to be an area of land that two different societies wish to occupy. Logically, the only possible solutions are for one of them to move, or to take the walls down and create one unified area. In practice, however, it seems nearly impossible for one of them to move. Therefore, what we will definitely be doing is something like a mini European Union with two countries in it, or like Northern Ireland, with no physical border infrastructure.
I have a suspicion that international politics is somewhat like a normal workplace in that there are accepted norms for who makes suggestions. I have myself found that in the past that managers do not like it when their reports make suggestions for the entire team. In the workplace this can cause some inefficiencies, as the emotional resistance to taking the suggestion of the employee can cause the manager to delay solving the problem for a very long time.
In this case, however, the delay of politicians in order to satisfy their ego is actually very significant. Sometimes it is understandable when it takes a while to realize what you should do. However, every day that the solution has been presented to you without you solving it is another day of killing that you are responsible for causing.
Shane
Upon re-reading my post I realize that I may need to apologize to the people of Ukraine for not posting this message in support of them a long time ago. The letter works perfectly for their case as well if you replace the word Gaza with Ukraine.
Do we have to overthrow our governments? How do we start? What is the first step? I have been thinking about the best way to do this. Unfortunately the urgency of the problems in Gaza and Ukraine seem to suggest that solutions that work quickly are preferred.
Since I did just specifically reference overthrowing the government, I might as well provide a few more details so you know I do not mean a scary thing.
I think we should have a new worldwide currency that is printed by some central agency which will distribute the money more fairly around the world, rather than giving it mostly to the west and leaving many other places in poverty. If the existing governments do not participate we simply create the currency anyway and ignore them. Eventually our currency is so influential that what we think is more important than what the current governments think, and so we ignore them unless they are participating.
Unfortunately, building a new currency will take a long time and we have this problem of urgency created by the situations in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as Sudan and all those other places where people are dying and the government does not care.
To solve the problem of urgency, right now I am thinking public protests are good, and sending messages online. I have personally messaged several ambassadors to explain that my government does not represent me when it comes to our lack of response on the issue of Gaza. If enough people send those messages, it may actually bring into question the legitimacy of our governments internationally since so many of their own citizens disagree with the government. This might motivate them to change their position.
Unfortunately we also have this problem of universal surveillance, where literally everything we do on our phones is probably recorded somewhere for the government to inspect. This creates an incentive for people to hide their true feelings out of concern for retribution. I understand this concern, and I have personally decided to take the risk. I am trying my best to always propose solutions which are in the best interest of everyone, so that even if I am surveilled, there should not be any group that feels like I am attacking them specifically.
I have mentioned the US government as a target a bunch of times, but I think they can take it. They are the big scary government and even in US media they portray the federal government as scary. I think the US federal government should just voluntarily let us overthrow them, and then Hollywood can make a shitload of money on the movies that could be made.