42, I USA

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God Bless Amerikkka

To the true patriots:

America is the greatest country on Earth. We have guaranteed free speech, freedom to vote, do not have to fear the retaliation of the state for political activity, and can purchase whatever material comforts we want. We promote this ideal of democracy and freedom across the globe.

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Consider the recent excursion to Iraq, beginning in 1990. There, we were told, we defended the Kuwaiti people from the invasion of that menacing Iraqi villain, Saddam Hussein. Of course it should be pointed out that Saddam Hussein was armed and installed in power by the United States government, and whatever military might he has was given to him by the American government. We went to Kuwait, not because Saddam dared to encroach on the territory of another sovereign nation (if so, we would have done something when American-trained and armed Indonesians slaughtered East Timorese in 1999), not because we felt for the suffering of a group of people (if so, we would have stopped the sale of weapons to the Turks, who are currently the top U.S. arms client, when they began slaughtering Kurds), and not because we wanted to stop a dangerous regional superpower from crushing our allies (if so, we would not have armed the thug in the first place). The fact is, we went to Iraq because Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait directly threatened our oil interests, and that could not be tolerated. So we went in, burned their oil fields, bombed the people of Baghdad, cut off their food and medical supply, and left them to starve for ten years. The death toll from our economic sanctions against the Iraqi people is approaching two million – near Holocaust proportions. So much for ‘Never again’.

If you are under the illusion that the Iraqi people deserve their fate, let me correct that illusion: The Iraqi people, unfortunately, live under a dictator, who keeps his power through force of arms (given to him by the United States). After the Gulf War, the Iraqi people arose in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. President Bush promised them help in their struggle, but gave none. He withdrew without even attempting to depose Hussein and left the Iraqi people to be slaughtered by Saddam’s men. Why did he do this? Because a dictator, even a hostile one, would be better for United States interests than popular rule. (Observe our support of Saudi Arabia, an oppressive dictatorship with one of the worst human rights records in the region.) So much for the ideal of ‘democracy’.

We sent a million troops to Iraq. Ten thousand of them are now dead of a disease the United States Department of Defense claims is psychosomatic. Vets with ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ are given Prozac instead of life-saving antibiotics, and attempts to secure medication that has been demonstrated to cure their ailment are stymied by the same government they fought for in Iraq, because that government wishes to cover up its culpability in their illness: they wish to hide the fact that the biological weapons sold in 1989 by a company in which President George Bush held stock to Saddam Hussein were the same biological weapons used against our own troops. They wish to hide the use of U-238 (“depleted uranium”) in the tanks and weapons the soldiers used, which not only poisons the soil of foreign nations for years to come, but kills our own soldiers at the same time. So much for looking out for ‘our boys’.

Where to not start on the home front, where free speech has been sold to the highest bidder, and how all of what is written above has been kept from you by a corrupt and state-friendly news media that seeks to keep the American people in ignorance. The owner of the Washington Post said this about media in America: “There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” Tom Brokaw of NBC (owned by weapons manufacturer General Electric) said this about the freedom of information on the Internet: “We can’t let that generation and a whole segment of the population just slide away out to the Internet and retrieve what information it wants without being in on it.” Soon they’ll add a new one to the Bill of Rights: You have the right to have your thoughts controlled.

Ask yourself, before you bow down in unquestioning obeisance to the American flag, what are you bowing to? Are you bowing before that ideal of freedom and democracy? Or are you bowing to a government that represents the corruption and betrayal of that ideal? If you truly love what this country is supposed to represent, you won’t pay homage to the flag of the American government.

You will burn it.