A Letter to my 'Congressman'

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To Congressman Schock and Grant Jones:

       I was struck by utter dismay, awe and shock (pun is indeed, intended) when I found out that you voted in favor of spending $33 billion  to continue the financing of our illegal and immoral military occupation of Afghanistan (7/27/10).  You did this when the vast majority of your calls concerning this funding bill were in favor of not funding  the Afghan debacle.  You went against the will of the people of your district, contrary to your employers to whom you have sworn to represent and carry out our wishes.  Since being elected to Congress you have consistently voted to support emotionally and reinforce financially our limited taxpayer dollars to invest in this felony as well as subsidizing the continuous occupation of Iraq as well.
       Its time to admit that it was not only wrong to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, but it was quite illegal too. After 9+years we are no closer to success in Afghanistan than you are in becoming Muslim.  It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  After 9+ years you would think someone, anyone would try a different approach there.  It seems  rather obvious that we are only not trying anything different but we are actually escalating the methods that are proving completely unsuccessful. Civilian causalities are increasing which in turn increases the number of angry people seeking vengeance, which is absolutely understandable. This war on terrorism  actually sows the seeds of growing more terrorism. The justification for the attack and occupation of Afghanistan was that the Taliban were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.  This is false since Bush attacked and then occupied  Afghanistan because the Taliban didn’t turn over Osama bin Laden at our demand.  Bush offered no evidence, since he had none and we had no extradition treaty, or even diplomatic relations with Afghanistan.  This war of wasted resources sent over there should stay over here to heal a hemorrhaging economy.  Those $33 billion dollars could have been used here to give out COLA’s to those collecting social security, for a war on poverty, for a stimulus for businesses to hire the unemployed, for many other things that are constructive and altruistic not wasting taxpayer money on destruction, violence and murder.
         Over 1.5 trillion dollars have been spent since the beginning of the unlawful invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Who can or will not in their right mind could not say what a tremendous waste of resources human and otherwise this is?  We are slated to start removing troops from Afghanistan yet then why are we constructing $100 million air base projects?  “One such allocation of the  $100 million dollar area is set for at Shindand Air base for Special Operations helicopters and unmanned intelligence and surveillance aircraft.  Another $100 million is to expand the airfield at Camp Dwyer, a Marine base in Helmand province, also to support  Special Operations forces; and a final $100 million for expansion of air facilities at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.  None of these projects are to be completed until well after July 2011.” Requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear constriction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before you and your fellow congressmen which to no doubt in my mind, you good servants will authorize.   This is all part  of  the ‘stated goal’ for the desired annihilation of approximately 100-700 member of al-Qaeda for an alleged attack on our fatherland, I mean homeland 10 years ago.  Which means presently at 963 admirals and generals, we currently have more generals and admirals in US military service than  there are  al-Qaeda members world-wide.  They seem to be slightly overmatched since they don’t have any aircraft carriers, not one tank, or nuclear submarines in their arsenal.  And they’re winning!  Something then is very wrong with our strategy, our tactics wouldn’t you say?  Or maybe the whole picture isn’t being presented to us back here about what’s going on over there. With true transparency and honesty.
         Our armed conflict in Afghanistan is just ½ of our global war of terror.  We are also bogged down in Iraq,  are we not?  Even though our president made a recent eloquent and glorious announcement of wonderful bubbling fanfare  announcing that fighting is now over in Iraq after 7 years even though we are leaving 50,000 non-combat troops over there.  Non-combat troops that are armed to the teeth backed up by the Air Force, getting combat pay and are still fighting and dying over there. My question for you Congressman Schock  is, didn’t any of these overpriced, over paid military morons ever advice you politicians that you never, ever fight a  two-front war, under any circumstances?  Yet why should you and I worry eh Aaron, since the price and accountability will  all be pushed forward as financial and moral IOU debt for the next generations to pay, right?  And its not like your shooting or getting shot at.  I think that I  understand how you believe individually that you personally felt that you did the right thing by
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sending our money over there, but you voted against your constituency which is far more in favor of you voting against further funding and for our immediate extraction from Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Since you were hired to represent us not yourself, since you are a Congressional district 18 employee not the employer and you do work for us, not for the oligarchy, then you in fact violated  that trust, and dishonored the system of representative democracy that supposedly we have here in America.
        Where do you members of Congress plan on finding the money for this endeavor sir?  As you and your fellow Republicans cynically decry and berate social programs that you claim are overly funded, cost ineffective, unnecessary and that we just cannot afford.  Where then is the money for these acts of foreign violence against nations that have done us no harm to come from?  Will it come from the banks, the corporate world, discount selling from the arms industry, Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, the armed merchants or from your pocket?  No, of course not, the payment will come  from none of these opulent areas  since, as usual, the federal government has  accumulated a deficit of over 1.5 trillion dollars in this fiscal year already. And this amount will just be simply, silently added to this amount.  The funding will come from bonds and treasury bills sent out on the international market to be gobbled up by any who wants a piece of American debt to be paid for with interest.  Mr. Congressman, if you had any children would you leave your overwhelming personal debts to them to pay for?  Of course not, yet that is exactly what you and your fellow funders are doing with money that is not your own.  Every bullet you purchase by loan  is a loaf of bread stolen from the mouth of a kid in America.  Every dollar that is borrowed could have been spent for maintenance of our national infrastructure, for health care, to finance under-funded veterans homes, for our woefully under-funded  schools and of course helping the overlooked poor, the under-funded disabled, and the ignored needy.  But it is obvious that  you would rather borrow money that we can’t afford to proudly and patriotically sponsor a violent, unwarranted, unwelcome occupations of two ancient lands  that violates virtually everything the founding fathers stood for, warned against. By voting for this funding, you politicians support which is absolutely unlawful and blatantly unconstitutional as well as internationally unlawful.  77% of the American taxpayers  live paycheck to paycheck and your bill is just too damn expensive to pay, to suffer for morally and financially which will be a debt for our generation and generations to come to shoulder, and we don’t want to!
         I have gathered here many quotes from all over the world, by philosophers, politicians, poets, humanitarians, religious leaders and more from the ancient to the present and I hope that you read them, learn from them and then hopefully become inspired from them as I have. Enjoy.
Lao Tzu: (1)“When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about ‘patriotism’.” (2) “Throw away profit and greed, and there won’t be any thieves.” (3) “Those who call themselves righteous don’t know how wrong they are.”(4) “Using force always leads to unseen troubles.”(5)“In the places where armies march, thorns and briars bloom and grow.”(6)“After armies take to war, bad years must always follow.”(7)“The strong are always weakened with time.”(8) “Weapons are the bearers of bad news; all people should detest them.”(9) “Weapons are meant for destruction, and thus are avoided by the wise.”(10) “Those who resort to violence will never bring peace to the earth.”(11) “Those who rejoice in victory delight in the slaughter of humanity.”(12) “The soft and the pliable overcomes the hard and the inflexible.”
Sun Tzu: (1) “All warfare is based on deception.”(2) “Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.”(3) “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”(4) “Poverty of the State exchequer cause an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance.  Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.”(5) “In war then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.” (6) “The onrush of a conquering force is like the busting of  pent-up waters in to a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.” (7) “How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics-that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.”(8) “Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivation the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.” (9) “Hence the saying: the enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.”
Marcus Cicero:  “Endless money forms the sinews of war.”
Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
 James Madison: (1) “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it
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comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies, form these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing  the many under the domination of the few.  In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended, its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing thee force, of the people.  The same malignant  aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing our of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both.”   (2) “It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, form abroad.”(3) “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” (4) “A standing military force, with an overgrown executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.  The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.  Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.  Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretense of defending, have enslaved the people.”
Thomas Jefferson: (1) “If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.” (2) “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”(3) “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.” (4) “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” (5) “I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.”(6) “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”(7) “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” (By coincidence the entire military budget for the Iranian military is the same amount that the Pentagon will spend on propaganda this year; $4.8 billion dollars.  This should make you pause and think.). (8) “War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.” (9) “We do not raise armies for glory or for conquest.”(10) “The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.” (11) “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (12) “It is incumbent  on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.  A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”(13) “The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”(14) “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”(15) “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms, is as last resort, it protect themselves against tyranny in government.” (16) “Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”
Alexander Hamilton: “ Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?”
 Thomas Paine: (1) “To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might to nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.” (The Military-Corporate-Complex is the now forest of that endeavor).(2) “He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”  Or in our case, an untenable debt. (3) “If there must b e trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” And not pay for our errors and bills. (4) “When shall it be said  in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness.  When these things can be said, then that country can boast of its constitution and government.” For who can respect a boastful braggart?  Can you? For those who blow their own horn, blow bull.
President Teddy Roosevelt: “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”
Congressional Representative Giles: “ We must march from ocean to ocean, It is the destiny of the white
race.” This was manifest destiny then and it is now rephrased as American Exceptionalism as we march all over the globe pot-marking the planet with our military bases as we seek to dominate the world in our image forour enjoyment, for our national security which is in our national interests, contrary to the worlds interests.
Senator Albert Beveridge: (1)“The Philippines are ours forever…and just beyond the Philippines are

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China’s illimitable markets…the Pacific is our ocean.”(2) “The power that rules the Pacific is the power that rules the world… that power is and will forever be the American Republic.”(3) “We are the ruling race of the world.  We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God of the civilization of the world.  He has marked us as his chosen people… He has made us adept in government that we many administer government among savage and senile peoples.”
The Second Treaty of Civil Government 1690: “That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them…”
Robert Jackson; US representative to the International Conference on Military Trial, Aug. 12,1945: “We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.”
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
Ho Chi Minh: “We take the liberty of setting fourth the claims of the Annamite people on the occasion of the Allied victory.  We count on your great kindness to honor our appeal by your support…Since the votary of the Allies, all subject peoples are frantic with hope at the prospect of an era of right and justice which should begin for them…in the struggle of civilization against barbarism.”
UN Chief Kofi Annan: “The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN Charter .”
Heroes like  Private First Class Bradley Manning who had the courage and strength of conscience to turn over war crimes information that was swept under the rug by the American military buried in their files  but thanks to Brad Manning they are given their day in the light at WikiLeaks are kept in confinement, far from the camera, far from the public to voice the truth that sparked their acts. His words are not here for he is gagged and bound far from the media, shackled in solitary confinement  but his act is not, it lives and breathes in the hearts of people of conscience.
Albert Einstein: (1) “The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.”(2) “He that joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been give a large brain by mistake, science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once, Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violent I hate all this, how despicable an ignorable war is,  I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action!  It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
Mohandas Gandhi:(1) “Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and therefore were not those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?”(2) “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for, but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”(3) “Violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.” (4) “Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the word cease to exploit each other.” (4) “Love governs the world.  Life persists in the face of death.  The universe continues in spite of destruction going on.  Truth triumphs over untruth.  Love conquers hate.” (5) “The policy of retaliation has never succeeded.” (6) “One thing is certain.  If the mad race for armaments continues, it is bound to result in a slaughter such as never occurred in history.  If there is a victory left, the very victory will be a living death for the nation that emerges victorious.  There is no escape from the impending doom save thought a bold and unconditional acceptance of the nonviolent method with all its glorious implications.”
Martin Luther King : (1) “We must all learn to live together as brothers.  Or we will a perish as fools.”(2) “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”(3) “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence.” (4) “it may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring nosiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people.”(5) “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he
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stands at times of challenge and controversy.” (6) “We cannot have peace in the world without mutual
respect.”(7) “To believe in nonviolence does not mean that violence will not be inflicted upon you.  The believer in nonviolence is the person who will willingly allows himself to be the victim of violence, but will never inflict it upon another.  He lives by the conviction that through his suffering and cross bearing, the social situation may be redeemed.”(8) “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people. The giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”(9) “ Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete.” (10) “It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.”(11) “This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.  We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our
brothers.”
Ernesto Che Guevara: (1)“We must not let these times destroy the warmth in our hearts” (2) The true revolutionary is guided by a feeling of great love”
Mother Teresa: (1) “We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace.  We need love and compassion.” (2) “Only humility will lead us to unity, and unity to peace.” (3) “Humility is truth”(4) “ If all the money that is being spent on finding ways to kill people was used  instead to feed them and house them clothe them and educate them- how beautiful that world would be.”(5) “We are all capable of good and evil.  We are not born bad: everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but is there.”
Ayn Rand: “ The smallest minority on earth is the individual.  Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”(7) “The world is sick unto death of blood-spilling.  The world is seeking a way out…”
Professor Stephen Hawking: “The war (Iraq) was based on two lies.  The first is that we were endangered from weapons mass destruction.  The second was that Iraq was somehow to blame for 911.  It has been a tragedy for all of the families who have lost members.  As many as 100,000 may have died, ½ women and children.  If this not a war crime, what is it?”
US Code: War Crimes: “(A) Torture (B) Cruel or inhumane treatment (D) Murder (F) Intentionally causing serious bodily harm (I) Taking hostages.”
Patrick Buchanan: “On Sept. 11 they were over here…because we are over there. Americans are being killed for the reasons Osama said we should be killed…not because of who we are, but because of where we are and what we do.” America lost 4,000 solders in six years in Iraq, with 30,000 wounded.  Yet not one American of the 125,000 soldiers in Iraq was killed in December.  Why not?  Because we no longer conduct raids, patrol streets, kick down doors and pat down suspects.  We have ended our combat operations, withdrawn to desert bases and seem anxious to go home.  When we stopped fighting and killing them, they stopped fighting and killing us.   But if, as Obama said; “we are at war with al-Qaeda,” why are we fighting the Taliban when al Qaeda is in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa?  The Muslims stayed out of our Thirty Years War.  Perhaps we would do well to get out of theirs.  But as long as we take sides in their wars, those we fight and kill over there will come to kill us over here.  This is payback for our intervention.  This is the price of empire.  This is the cost of the long war.”
Jay Janson:  “We millions of long deficient citizens knew that our president and our general and our troops had no right in heaven or hell to be killing anyone in Afghanistan. Millions of us, eight years ago, before this Sunday strike that cowardly blew away a line of vans full women and children, were aware  that not one single Afghan had ever attacked the US or any other nation during recent centuries.  Millions of us remembered that no Afghan was with the Saudi Arabians who amazingly had the steel resolve to suicide themselves in the name of justice for their people. We many millions  of Americans, the people of the nation of America, knew both of you were in violation of Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal regarding Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity, under which conviction meant to be hanged as a war criminal. Hundreds of thousands of us were aware that General Telford Taylor,  our Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg had said that he would have been proud to have prosecuted the US airman that had been shot down for having bombed Hanoi.  Who can explain insanity?  In intellectual Buddhist thought everything, every event small or large happens within grand universal cause and effect. Big nations attack little ones.”
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Paul J. Balles: “Its ironic.  Its hypocritical.  It s a fraud.  The ‘war on terrorism’ branded by America is a
propaganda cover for the worst terrorists in the world.  What was the invasion and occupation of Iraq but an act of terrorism?  Everyone now knows that the faux war was born  of a fraud  The deception  had no legitimate purpose except to terrorize countries that (a) produce oil, (b) harbor al-Qaeda  or (c ) threaten Israel. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, considered a legitimate response to 9/11, could have been avoided.  The Taliban appropriately asked the US to provide  evidence of Osama bin Laden’s complicity in the 9/11 affair before deporting him.  Instead we attacked Afghanistan to the cheers of terrorizing avengers. “We’ll show you what we do to those who terrorize America!” was the mantra .  The USA is still terrorizing Afghanistan, thereby increasing al-Qaeda cells.  The icing on the spread-fear cake has involved the USA terrorizing Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.  Not only are the countries America bombs terrorized.  Every other country that might disobey our commands is threatened and made to fear for its existence.  Human life outside America and its stooges isn’t  worth a tinker’s damn to  terrorist America.  Some 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died from American sanctions on Iraq.  On 60 minutes in 1996, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said: “ We think the price is worth it.”  As of January 2010, and since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, 1,366,350 Iraqi lives have been lost to terrorist slaughters.  “Never mind” you say?  “The price is worth it.  Besides, they’re only Muslims who want to multiply and take over the world.”  Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and rendition programs have been nothing but terrorizing to plant fear in the hears and minds of any Arab or Muslim with negative feelings toward the USA. American Arabs and Muslims have been the objects of terrorism ever since 9/11.”
Robert Bear(former CIA agent): “What the US faces when it comes to the Afghan insurgency isn’t terrorism, but a war of national resistance. The people that want their country liberated from the west have nothing to do with al Qaeda.  They simply want us gone because we’re foreigners and they’re rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters. Because these insurgents see the US as a colonial force, they are unlikely to ever rally around the Afghan national army the US is looking to establish.”
Matthew Hoh(former US official in Afghanistan): “This is an occupying force.” Who resigned October 2009 over US policy and the occupation of Afghanistan.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow: “While American schools rot, while our sewer mains crack, while our bridges fall, while our autos speed and even our trains crack along  burning oil and coal to send still more CO2 into the atmosphere to scorch our planet and give asthma to our children. Increasingly, we hear talk about cutting the entitlement budget to reduce the monstrous deficits that allegedly may haunt our grandchildren.  What are these entitlements?  Social Security…Unemployment insurance payments-which the Congress just shrugged and walked away from, while planning to actually increase the military budget and refusing to spend the money to make sure the millions of underemployed can find jobs so as not to need unemployment insurance…And state pension funds…Not to speak of salaries for teachers, cops, social workers, firefighters, who are being laid off because the biggest banks used cute tricks to make huge profits, then go the taxpayers to do what was indeed necessary to save the banks and the system, but made sure Congress did not meet these desperate needs of state and city governments that can’t govern sanely anymore.  But one “entitlement” we must not even mention is cutting the military.  Our own empire is eating us alive.  It is a cancer, eating up the body that feeds it.  Murdering pregnant women and tampering with the truth are sins as well as crimes.  Murdering civilians who are desperate trying to save the lives of wounded journalists is a sin as well as a crime.”
Chris Hedges (1) “An Arab-American, Syed Fahad Hashmi, made provocative statements; including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world”. That led to his arrest and prosecution on trumped up charges, in much the same way that Professor Sami al-Aryan lost his job and freedom for being an outspoken citizen of US and Israeli policy.” (2) Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.”
Ted Rall: “ CIA Atrocities Revealed to a National Shrug-We Have met The Nazis, And They Are Us”
Paul Craig Roberts: “Many Americans would reply that ‘their’ government would never even dream of killing Americans by hijacking airliners and destroying buildings in order to advance a government agenda.  But on Feb 3 2010, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the US government can assassinate its own citizens, when they are overseas.  No arrest, trial, or conviction
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of a capital crime is necessary.  Just straight out murder. Obviously if the US government can murder its
citizens abroad it can murder them at home, and has done so.  For example 100 Branch Davidians were murdered in Waco, Texas, by the Clinton administration for a legitimate reason.  The government just decided to use its power knowing that it could get away with it, which it did.  Americans who think ‘their’ government is some kind of morally pure operation would do will to familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods.  Operation Northwoods  was a plot drawn up by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,  for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in American cities and fabricate evidence blaming Castro so that the US could gain domestic and international support for regime change in Cuba.  The secret plan was nixed by President John F. Kennedy and was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board.  It is available online in the National Security Archive.  There are numerous online accounts available, including Wikipedia, Wikileaks, James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets, also summarizes the plot: Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the  of the Chairman [Gen. Lemmitzer] and every member of  the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent  people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington DC, Miami, and elsewhere.  People would be framed for bombings they didn’t commit; planes would be high-jacked.  Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemmitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.” Prior to 9/11 the American neo-conservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in  the middle east required a new Pearl Harbor.”  Which is of course is exactly  what they got with 9/11.”
John Pilger: (1) “Well, the war you don’t see is expressed eloquently by the New York Times, that range of extraordinary media apologists that we’ve just seen.  The reason we don’t see the war on civilians, the war that has caused the most extraordinary devastation, human and cultural and structural devastation on both Iraq and Afghanistan, is because of what is almost laughingly called the mainstream media.  The one apology, not these apologies that we’ve see this morning from Fox to CBS, right across the spectrum, to the New York Times, this morning, the real apology that counted was the New York Times when it apologized to its readers for not showing us the war in, or the reasons that led up, rather, to the invasion of Iraq that produced this horrific war.  I mean, these people now have become so embedded with the establishment, so embedded with authority, they’re what Brecht called the ‘spokesmen of the spokesmen’.  They’re not  journalists.  Brooks writes about a “culture of exposure”.  Excuse me, isn’t that journalism?  Are we so distant from what journalism ought to be, not simply an echo changer for authority, that somebody in the New York Times can attack a journalist who’s done his job?  Hastings did a wonderful job.  He called out McChrystal, as he should have done.  That’s his job.  In a country where the media is constitutionally freer, nominally, than any other country on earth, the disgrace of the recent carnage in the Middle East and in Afghanistan is largely down to the fact that the media didn’t alert us.  It didn’t report it.  It didn’t question.  It simply amplified and echoed authority.  Hastings has proved-God bless him- that journalists still exist.”(2) “Well, I mean, one of the key stories is the devastation, the economic devastation, in peoples lives, that it seems to me extraordinary.  And this is true in Britain, as it is in the United States, the ordinary people have suffered since the collapse in September  2008 of significant parts of Wall Street, since the bubble burst.  The idea that a president was elected as a man of the people- at least that’s the way he presented himself-is still, I think, promoted by the media, whereas Obama has made clear that he has very much reinforced Wall Street.  He’s reached into Goldman Sachs for his senior people.  I think that that the anger that I’ve felt in the United States over the past last few years, that anger at a popular level, is still not expressed in the so-called mainstream media.  I remember in the last year of George W. Bush, someone said that in one day 26,000 emails bombarded the White House, and almost all of them were hostile.  That suggest to me a popular anger in this country that is often deflected into-down in cul-de-sacs, like the Tea Party movement.  But the root of that anger- and that is  a social injustice in peoples lives, in the repossession of houses, the loss of jobs, a rather weak reform, if is a reform, of the scandalous healthcare arrangements, none of these-this popular disenchantment, disaffection, is not expressed in the media.”
HL Menchen: “The most  dangerous man to any government (as someone) who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.  Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.”
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Thomas Emerson: “the FBI jeopardizes the whole system of free expression which is the cornerstone of
our (raising)  the specter of a police state…In essence, the FBI conceives of itself as an instrument to prevent radical social change in American…The Bureau’s view of its function leads it beyond data collection into political warfare.”
Peter Benenson: Open your newspaper an day of the week and you find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured, or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.”
Stan Willis: “The United States is very, very concerned when its citizens begin to raise questions in these international forums, because (America) still prefers to posture itself, including the Obama administration,  as the leader of the free world and that they don’t have any human rights violations, and they certainly don’t have any political prisoners, and we have to dispel that notion in the international community.  American officials don’t want to have these issues reach the world’s people.  How do you go into Iraq and Afghanistan telling people about their democracy when ( you’ve got innocent people locked down in prison for 30-40 years as political prisoners…(activists) against social injustice, colonialism and /or imperialism, incarcerated  (for) their political commitments. Others are victimized by judicial unfairness, get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and your out, and what the Innocence Project calls “McJustice-the crisis of indigent defense.”
Noam Chomsky: “I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering here at home.”
Rep. Ron Paul: (1)“After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait, we reacted with gusto and have been militarily involved in the entire region 6,000 miles from our shores ever since.  This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.  After 20 years of killing, a couple trillion dollars wasted, not only does the fighting continue with no end in sight, but our leaders threaten to spread our bombs of benevolence on Iran.  For most Americans, we are at war, at war against a tactic called terrorism, not a country.  This allows
our military to go any place in the world without limits as to time or place.  But how can we be at war?  Congress has not declared war, as required by the Constitution, that is true.  But our Presidents have, and Congress and the people have not objected.  Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the war.  Was al Qaeda in Iraq?  Not under Saddam Hussein.  Our leaders lied to us into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan.  There is still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only 100 or so in Afghanistan, and yet there is no end in sight to the war.  Could there had been other reasons for this war that is not a war?  A military victory is illusive.  Does anyone really know who we are fighting and why? Why has the war not ended?  Nine years, and it continues to spread.  Some claim it is to keep American safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedom, defending the Constitution.  Are we being lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960’s to keep us in Vietnam?”
(2)“We own the Iraq government, as we do Afghanistan.  In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their homeland.  Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980’s.  In that effort, our CIA funded radical jihad against that nasty foreign occupier, the Russians.  What gratitude.  Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation, with a little violence thrown in.”
“The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes.  Our people are waking up, but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay, the greater is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans who resent all foreign occupation.”
(3)“Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals without changing our policies or our policymakers perpetuates our agony and delays the inevitable.”
“The sad story is, this war is against ourselves, our values, our Constitution, our financial well-being and common sense.  And at the rate we’re going, it’s going to end badly.  What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy.”
First Lt. Watada: “ When you are looking your children in the eye to the future, or when you are at the end of your life, you want to look back on your life and know that at a very important moment, when I had the opportunity to make the right decisions, I did so, even knowing there were negative consequences. It is my
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duty as a commissioned officer of the United States army to speak out against grave injustices.  My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders.” (The order to deploy to Iraq as an officer in the United States Army) “It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law.  Although I have tried to resign out of protest, I will be forced to participate in a war that is manifestly illegal.  As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order. The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare.”  Lt. Watada also asserted that the war violates our War Powers Act, The UN Charter, The Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles, which “bars wars of aggression.” To which of course, he is quite right.  This stance that Lt. Watada took, to me, is the epitome of what it means to be an  American hero in every sense of the word.  For he stands up to injustice, refusing to participate in crimes against humanity, to be a partner in war
crimes, or to violate of his oath that runs counter to his commission even though his superiors have sent him to trial to be court-martialed and probably to prison time for what was his violation of unlawful orders.
Private First Class Bradley Manning is in this same small class of hero as he decided to follow his conscience, his commitment to God and justice as he chose to release information that was buried and
prescribed as top secret as to not ‘embarrass’ the American military and the movement of the United States of America.  Brad Manning,22 years old is now in solitary confinement for daring to stand up for justice and he faces 44+years in military prison for believing in the American way and her principles and ethics that are documented and many have died defending.
Nuremberg War Tribunal: To initiate a war of aggression, therefore is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Pastor Niemoller: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.  Then they came for the Trade-Unionists but I was not a Trade-Unionist and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade-Unionist.  Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
General David Shoup (Commandant of the Marine Corp 1960-63): “I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own-- and if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the “haves” refuse to share with the “have-nots” by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed  down their throats  by Americans.”
Dwight Eisenhower; (1)“In most communities it is illegal to cry “Fire!” in a crowded assembly.  Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aim?”(2) “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”(3) “When people speak to you about a preemptive war, you tell them to go and fight it.  After my experience, I have come to hate war.” (4)“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.  War settles nothing.” (5) “Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine.” (6)”If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison.  They’ll have enough to eat, a bed an a roof over their heads.  But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being. He must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.”
Eugene Debbs: “Wars throughout  history have been waged for conquest and plunder…the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or peace.  It is the ruling class that invariably does both.  They alone declare war they alone make peace…They are continually talking about their patriotic duty.  It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about.  There is a decided difference.  Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches .  .”  But to go to the front to visit a few troops far behind the lines and far from the distasteful violence, as you did at taxpayer expense, did and does it still satisfy your guilt or conscience
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Mr. Congressman?  You show the pictures at home and use them in your flyers as a voting prop to show voters that you are a good patriot who went to see the troops and fully supports them.  Jump in a trench, and pick up a gun then you would find my respect as you would then  practice what you preach, but to ask a politician to do such, is as if asking a pig to fly, to fly high and gracefully, and that I have never, ever, seen in my life.
US Marine Major General S. Butler: (1)“War is a racket, I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time.  Now I am sure of it.  Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service,  My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups.  This is typical with everyone in the military service.”(2) “I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service…And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers, In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” (3) “Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in.  I helped in the raping of ½ a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of  Wall Street.”(4) “I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.  I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.  I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903.  In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”(5) “Our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them.  No one told them dollars and cents were the reason they marching off to kill and die.”
President Truman: “ We pray that God might guide us to use the [atomic] bomb in His ways and for His purposes.”
President John F Kennedy: “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind…war will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
President Johnson: “The weakest chink in our armor is American public opinion.  Our people won’t stand firm in the face of heavy losses, and they can bring down the government.”
Leo Welch (Former COTB-Standard Oil): “We must set the pace and assume the responsibility of the majority stockholder in this corporation know as the world.”
Henry Kissinger: “Oil is too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.” Who happened to be the owners of middle eastern oil.
President George HW Bush: (1)“Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly
countries around the world would all suffer if control the worlds great oil reserves fell in to the hand of Saddam Hussein.” (2) “He’s going to get his ass kicked.”(3) “What we say goes.”(4) “In the life of a nation there comes a moment when we are  called upon to define who we are and what we believe.”(5) “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”
Vice President Cheney: “It may never end.”
Richard Hass (National Security Council): “Television was our chief tool in selling our policy.”
Lawrence Grossman (PBS-NBC News): “The job of the President is to set the agenda and the job of the press is to follow the agenda that the leadership sets.”
Charles Wilson (GE Board Chairman 1950): “If the people were not convinced [that the free world is in mortal danger] it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert this danger.  With the support of the public opinion, as marshaled by the press, we are off to a good start.  It is our job-yours and mine-to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America’s might.”  For a nice profit, of course-rah-rah.
Robert Parry: “ The United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of US benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists.  Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press.  That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.”
Mark Hertzgaard: “Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world.  In a democracy, even one has corrupted as ours , ultimate authority rests with the people.  We
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empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence.  If we are passive in the face of Americas official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them.”  We are also responsible and accountable too.
William Blum: (1) “ What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists--whatever they might be--might also be rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions.  Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.”
(2) “But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed ruined, a failed state.  The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured…the people of that unhappy land have lost everything- their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology , their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives…More than ½ the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile…the air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium…the most awful birth defects…unexploded cluster bombs, lie in wait for children to pick them up…an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East. Europe, and Central Asia…a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris…through a country that may never be put back together again.” (3) “Since the Great Flood hit Pakistan In July…many millions have been displaced, evacuated, stranded, or lost their homes; numerous roads, schools and health clinics destroyed-hundreds of villages washed away-millions of livestock have perished; for the rural poor something akin to a Western stock market crash that wipes out years of savings-countless farms decimated, including critical crops like corn; officials say that the damage is in the hundreds of millions of dollars and it does not appear that Pakistan and will recover within the next few years-infectious diseases are rising sharply-airplanes of the United States of America have flown over Pakistan and dropped bombs on dozens of occasions.” These bombings have killed dozens and dozens of women and children. So they are now free… from life… thanks to America rah rah rah.(4) “Just like the commercials that warn you ‘Don’t try this at home’, I urge you not to waste your time trying to educate the likes of Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who not long ago referred to the “the men and women of the US Army, Navy Air Force and Marine Corps” as the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century.”  In that, good reader, they invariably took the place of the German troops of WWII marching through Poland. And as then, it is now most distasteful, dishonorable and a crime against humanity and a crime against the Maker of us all.
Yvonne Ridley: “The United States of American has reached a new level in its discredited War on Terror just when we thought it could not sink any lower.  And what makes this even more tragic is that the new depths being plumbed are on the express orders of Mr. Change We Can Believe In; Barack Obama…A US President who promised the world so much and has delivered so little. The President who came into power on the promised winds of change and hope has authorized  the assassination of a Muslim scholar by the name of Anwar al-Awalaki.  But which is really breath-taking and revolting is that Al-Awalaki is an American citizen, born in Las Cruces in the state of New Mexico of Yemeni parents.  He has now become the first US citizen placed on a targeted killing list.  His nationality should not really be an issue because in the eyes of most right minded people extra-judicial killing is wrong, it is an action which pit’s the killer above the law- and no one, not even the president of the United States should think himself above the law.”
       “ George Bush brought us the War on Terror and during a bloody decade he brought us a new language with words like rendition and waterboarding becoming commonplace. He quickly squandered the good will for the rest of the world after the horrific events of 9/11 by carpet bombing freedoms and liberties along with hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and child who got in the way of his military in Iraq and Afghanistan.  When he left the White House it marked the end of an era and those of us who believe in equality, justice and human rights for all breathed a sigh of relief.  A new man was at the helm…a man who promised transparency, the course of Guantanamo an end to torture among men among other things…But I
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digress- we are not putting him (Al-Awalaki) on trial by media for the truth is none of us has any concrete evidence although there are still men in British jails who are being held without trial or charge because of it.  Could it be that Obama has simply signed off the Iman’s execution because there isn’t enough solid evidence to indict him and he doesn’t want to go down the embarrassing route of opening yet another Guantanamo?  And it seems he has signed off the order in the same casual manner that Bill Clinton signed off permission for the bombing of the aspirin factory in Khartoum, Sudan…Call it al-Qaeda and no one will ask a question.”
       “But the Sixth and the 14th Amendments clearly require due process of law, the Fifth Amendment includes this: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces,  or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger…” “Islam Karimov, a leader who routinely boils alive pious Muslims in vats of scalding water, has already justified the work of those who torture for the Uzvbekistan state by citing the actions of the Bush torturers and interrogators from Bagram, Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo.”
       “The US President has, like Islam Karimove and other vile little tin-pot dictators, set himself above the law and the American courts  can not do a thing because judges will never be called upon to decide if such an extra-judicial killing is legal or not.  Why? Because as I write this, al-Awlaki has not been indicted and charged most certainly never will.  And just in case your in any doubt that the US president has signed off his death warrant without realizing the full consequences, few weeks ago Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence told a congressional panel that there were certain counter terrorism cases that could involve killing an American citizen.  Then he emphasized that it would require a special process through the National Security Council-for safeguards after saying: “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community.  If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
Bertold Brecht; “ Unhappy the land has no heroes…No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.”
michael hall: (1)“ There are no heroes in  illegal and immoral wars instigated by the America, the  greatest purveyor and exporter of violence and terrorism in the world. There are only just war ho’s, war criminals, carpet baggers, invaders, occupiers, private armies, thieves and their countless victims with names you will never hear.” (2) “How and why is it that when budgets  need to be cut, trimming needs to be done, invariably it is those who have the least and will suffer the most who are the first to see their portions sliced, while those who have the most and could the take the cut the easiest without pain are instead the last to have anything taken?”
(3) “First they came for the Indians and it was swell for all their land is now ours.
Then they came for the Mexicans as they were booted out and now we have California.
But then we went overseas and fought the Nazis and then brought back communists.
We found them in Hollywood and in the schools, My God they were even in the government.
Now we go after Muslims and terrorize them like we did so many before, and it is good.
Now yoked by our governments surveillance we keep an eye on each other and this is very good.
For if we don’t obediently conform and submissively obey  we wont be free anymore
As we harass and arrest dissidents, freedom-fighters, peace lovers and environmentalists what would become of us?  We wouldn’t be Americans.”  
(4) “If a person walks into a theater with a bomb and detonates it killing himself and 100 people, he is called a terrorist.  But if a bomb dropped from a airplane 35,00 feet from above, or a drone fires off a missile by remote-control 6,000 miles away killing100 people in a village, that is not terrorism?  More so since its state-sponsored terrorism.”
Seymour Hersh: “I’ll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan…They’re being executed on the battlefield.  Its unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn’t necessarily get reported.  Things don’t change…What they’ve done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban.  You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately.  And if you cannot conclude they’re Taliban, you must turn them free.
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What this means is, and I’ve been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place.  Well, if they cant prove they’re Taliban, bam.  If we don’t do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and  by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying.  And that’s going on now.”
Clarence Darrow: “ The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common solder whose trade is to shoot his fellow men.  In youth he may have learned the command; ‘Thou Shalt  not kill’, but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet though his neighbors heart- and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word.”
Chaz Bufe: “COWARDICE, n.  A charge often leveled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences.  These ‘cowards’ are to be contrasted with red-blooded, ‘patriotic’ youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars that they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so -all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed courageous.” (ie: See Lt. Watada and Private F. Class Brad Manning above)
 Mark Twain (Vice President; Anti-Imperialist League 1900) (1) “I have seen that we do not intend to free but to subjugate the Philippines.  And so I am an anti-imperialist.  I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land…I have a strong aversion to sending our bright boys out there to fight with a  disgraced musket under a polluted flag.”(2) “Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque
self-deception.” (3) “America cannot have an empire at home and a Republic at home.”(4) “ Sheeples of the day who drink the sacred words of their ministers of war who join the government in its holy quest to bring enlightenment of the pagan hordes that live in distant lands across the seas.”
Ronald Reagan:(1)“To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom.  Their courage teaches us a great lesson that here are things in this world worth defending.  To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors.” (2) “ In Afghanistan, the freedom fighters are the key to peace.  We support the Mujahidin.  There can be no settlement unless all Soviet troops are removed and the Afghan people are allowed genuine self-determination.”
Osama Bin Laden: “What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years.  Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years.  Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and on one heeds.  Millions of innocent children being killed as we speak.  They are  being killed in Iraq without committing any sins…To America, I say only a few words to it and its people.  I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without  pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security  before we live it here in Palestine and not before all the infidel armies leave the  land of Mohammad.  Peace be upon him.”  Hard to disagree with or deny his arguments eh, Aaron?
President George W Bush:(1) “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil… this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” (2) “We cant wait for the final proof-smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”(3) “There are some who feel like… they can attack us there.  My answer is-bring them on!” (4) “So long as anybody’s terrorizing established governments, there needs to be a war.”  So do we declare war then against ourselves?
US Secretary of State Colin Powell : “We didn’t take on this huge burden not to have significant dominating control.”
Unknown US soldier somewhere in Iraq: “ They don’t want us here and we don’t want to be here.”
Muntazer al-Zaidi (the hero who threw his shoes at the war criminal Bush): “ I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.  There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.  But simply, I answer: what
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compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.  Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million  orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed.  Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.  Our patience and solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbor from neighbor.  It turned our homes into funeral tents.  I am not a hero.  But I  do have a point of view.  I have a stance.  It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed.  Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib.  The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar. And every inch of our wounded land.  I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved.  And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless. As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.  The opportunity came, I took it. I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.  I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw entered?  How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims?  Maybe the shoe was the appropriated response when all values are violated.  When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people.  My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure.  And casting out its sons into a diaspora.  If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologize.  All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.  The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism.  And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.  I didn’t do this so my name would enter history or for material gains,  All I  wanted was to defend my country.”
Candidate Barack Obama: “I promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home.  We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.”
John le Larre‘: “The United States of America Has Gone Mad”
Milton Mayer: “They Thought They Were Free”
Malcolm X: “I’m for truth no matter who tells it.  I’m for justice no matter who it is for or against.  I’m a human being  and foremost as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
Jesus: “Love thy enemy”
God: “Thou Shalt Not Kill”
        You state the UN gave the US permission to invade and occupy Afghanistan.  This is not true at all. There was no legal justification for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.  Since the founding of the United Nations international law has been defined and adhered to by the UN Charter.  Back in November of 2001 a well known professor of international law (Majorie Cohn) declared quite equivalently and with simple lucidity that; “The bombings of Afghanistan by the United States and the United Kingdom are illegal.”
Here are the reasons that confirm the illegality of the violence perpetrated against Afghanistan;
1) Disputes are to be brought to UN Security Council, which alone may authorize the use of force.  Without this authorization, any act of violence committed against another country is illegal.
2) Of course there are exceptions and they are as follows; A) If your country has been attacked by armed aggression by another nation you may respond militarily in self-defense.  This condition was not met by terrorist attacks coming not from a nation but from a terrorist organization. (This also happens to be the legal defense that we use in not allowing captured Al Qeada operatives to be called prisoners of war, they are referred to as enemy combatants).  Afghanistan did not attack America and those who did were by a vast
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majority were Saudi Arabians who just happened to also be financial sponsors for years of this organization. But we did not attack Saudi Arabia, and when we sent the FBI to do interviews in Saudi Arabia they were rebuffed by the Saud government who refuse the FBI to interview anyone at all.  Six months ago a suit was dismissed in Federal court with the assistance of the Justice Department’s heavy hand by 187 families who suffered losses at 9/11.  They were told that American citizens cannot sue a foreign government so their suit was thrown out of court. Yet just today Iraq quietly, without fanfare, without the MSM reporting it  that the Iraqi government  agreed to pay American citizens 400 million dollars from their ‘mistreatment’ from the hands of Saddam Hussein. This is hypocrisy and double standards wrapped in utter injustice.
       Obviously my question is, who is going to pay the Iraqi people from our 20 years of massive, unjustified mistreatments that are nothing less than war crimes and crimes against humanity inflicted by the United States of America on Iraq and its people? Our country is  responsible and accountable for the destruction and deaths in that country. We are accountable for the millions of refugees and the complete desecration of its infrastructure.   We should be paying them for the damage we have done while down on our knees begging the Iraqi people to accept our humble apology. B) The other exception  is when one nation has certain information that an armed assault by another country is imminent-too imminent to bring that matter to the Security Council.  The absolute need for self-defense must be ; “Instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” In other words to press the panic button.
       Our government did claim that our attacks were justified by a need to prevent a possible second attack.  Yet this ‘need’ was not urgent as shown by the fact that the Pentagon did not assault Afghanistan until a month later and it attacked, then occupied the whole breath and width of Afghanistan and are still there even though the group that we claim did the attack of 9/11 is reduced to approximately 110 members. So in other words our government’s decision to attack Afghanistan did not conform to UN Security Resolution 1368.  Of course The UN Security Council could have determined that one of these steps was authorization to attack Afghanistan but it did not.  Resolution 1373  was the only other resolution concerning this matter which laid out various responses one must take such as freezing assets, criminalizing the support of terrorists, exchanging police information about terrorists, prosecuting terrorists but the use of military force is not one the stipulations or grounds given to authorize said assault.  The American attack then and of course, the proceeding military occupation of Afghanistan was never approved by the UN Security Council in 2001 and nor anytime since.  This ‘war’ was begun in complete illegality and remains illegal today.
        Under US law this attack was illegal.  Since the signing of the Supremacy law we are bond by international law and the UN Charter as a treaty, which was ratified by the United States and according to Article VI of the US Constitution, any treaty ratified by the United States is part of the “supreme law of the land.”  So our precept  that our military went to Afghanistan under the banner and acquiesce of international and sanctioned legitimacy is quite, completely false.  Yet you and so many now try to convince me that this war is now one of moral justification since the Taliban are such evil creatures because  just look at what they do to their women.  The  recent Time magazine cover was corporate-media-governmental propaganda at its most transparent, vile and ludicrous.  They didn’t even bother to put a question mark at the end of their statement implying that if we leave this is what will happen to Afghanistan.  What is going on there now?  Murder of women and children by weekly drone attacks, assassinations by American special operation forces, bribing of petty and unscrupulous warlords, tens of thousands of Afghans in prisons uncharged, untried and  tortured again by American forces. Lets talk of the how many million Afghans that are homeless, as displaced refugees and many have been for years.  After 9 years of our imported violence we are turning this nation back to the time of the stone age which is what we did in Vietnam in our repulsive and revolting over-kill over there.  Seems that our military tactics have grown comfortable with the using of  the sledgehammer strategy.  But to those who are observant it gives the impression that much like the Vietnamese, these Afghans are tough, lovers of national freedom and no matter how much terror, injustice, and destruction to their nation America rains down upon them, they will not give up, and it actually seems after 9+ years that they are winning, just like what happened in Vietnam.  It appears that fighting against foreign forces, even if they have overwhelming firepower spraying willy-nilly in your country, only brings out the tiger in the people struggling for their freedom, for their homes and for their nation does it not?  This is one lesson that America can’t, or refuses to learn time after time after time. After witnessing all the death and destruction America has brought to Afghanistan is it any wonder that they want American forces gone?
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Can you blame them?  I don’t fault  them at all for defending themselves against our military occupation and quite the contrary to what is portrayed by our propaganda, many Americans are rooting for the Afghans to win by overthrowing the foreigners of violent enterprise and then expelling out the American occupation forces along with their carpet-baggers and other vultures . I am definitely one of them. Isn’t that what we good Americans are  taught at home, at school and at Church to do?  We have always supported the rights of those who fight for their freedom, for their emancipation, for the right of self-determination, especially when they are fighting for their rights and nation against aggressive bloody invasion and vicious strangling occupation.  Isn’t that at least part of the reason why we went to war in Europe in WWII?  We went off to fight the fascist bullies who attacked the weaker nations.  Are we not the self-proclaimed; world policeman?  Is it now we’re just crooked cops?  Is Pogo right about America and we have morphed into just a muscled-bound gang of thieves and bullies?  This ancient land of Afghanistan is the justified graveyard of empires and hopefully, in all likelihood it is the beginning of the end of ours. Afghanistan is not just America’s Vietnam it is also her Stalingrad and Verdun.
       Moral Justification?  How could any American bring up that phrase with a straight face?  We assume that we have self-prescribed moral justification to be in Afghanistan and our Christian-blessed moral justification is actually our colossal faux pas while we  keep assassinating people in Pakistan virtually everyday (to whom we are not at war and who are supposed to be our allies) while they suffer through the worst flooding in decades as millions are now homeless, without food, water and medicine and thousands dead. With allies like this, you sure don’t need enemies.  In south Pakistan a few days ago 2 dozen fuel tankers were destroyed by the freedom fighters and not one person was killed, not one person was even hurt.  Do you know why?  Because they let all the drivers run off before they started destroying things.  This is why America and NATO will lose.  America bombs a target and one or two militants are killed along with dozens of civilians.  The other side does an attack and no one dies.  See the difference? Military  and political overconfidence blinds one to  tactics into a stumble and a mighty fall. It seems no one read Sun Tzu, or if they did they became so inebriated with overwhelming military power that could kill without suffering casualties but its not working, is it? America and Obama are Xerxes and his mighty Persian  military force being bled white and getting beaten by the Afghan 300 and it’s a route…to defeat.
        While we suffer our disgraces on the ground sputtering and hacking, the propaganda war is full swing, polished like chrome over here in the newspapers and on MSM with supporting our heroes, our troops wrapped in old glory and a tear to ones eye.  While the truth is strained through a high-mesh filter as  information is ineradicably  diluted for the American public to sip like a fine whiskey?  Semantics is an integral part of the propaganda war and George Orwell himself would be most shocked by the addiction to doublespeak that America thrives on. We  call Afghan farmers, clergy, traders and merchants fighting  for their homes, towns and nation insurgents, terrorists, radical Islamic fighters and militants fighting an insurgency and yet what they are is in the same vein as the Minutemen of our own rebellion so many years ago fighting against that great kingdom; the British empire. They are Freedom Fighters fighting for self-determination and self-emancipation trying to throw off a foreign yoke of repression and occupation just as the Viets did to the American military in Vietnam.  Instead of bringing in reinforcements because we are losing, we call it a surge, which sounds so much more palatable,  to bulk up our forces to make it sound like we‘re not losing, which of course we are.  Our forces are called fighters of freedom and defenders of democracy at the wrong end of a gun while we call those who oppose us terrorists supporting an insurgency.  Insurgency is fighting against a legal government.  The Taliban were the legal governing body when the US attacked, so it is the US forces who are the insurgents. George Orwell would be spinning like a top in his grave from the whirling of doublespeak exploited for this mess.  We are the insurgents blazing terrorism upon this nation year after year, murder after murder, war crime after war crime. These ugly crimes against humanity. War?  This is no war since only Congress can declare war and they never did.
        While we are deadlocked fighting this illegal incursion, at the same time our scampering corporate-hired geologists have discovered gold in them dere’ hills, uranium in the mountains and other valuable resources at the cost maybe of a finders fee we charge the Afghans?  Its all for their own good, right?  New contracts and markets will be  opening up after the fighting and a McDonalds and Wal-Mart will be coming to an Afghan village near you. As soon as we wipe out these  pesky terrorists who dare oppose us.  Again, its for their own good right?  How dare they defend themselves and their country against us.
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To the word that has been the microcosm of this nightmare since 9/11; terror.  Someone invented the phrase ;War on Terror. The ultimate in doublespeak, nonsensical jargon. By definition, Terror is an act that causes great fear, to achieve a political purpose. Whereas terrorism is the policy of using acts inspiring terrorism as a method of ruling or of conducting political opposition.   Like  the military tactic of Shock and Awe which was used on Iraq is the classic definition of terrorism as it was used to instill utter incapacitating fear into the Iraqi military and people so they would melt before our ground assaults.  The Predator and Reaper drones are also acts of terror as they circle, instilling fear in the populous as they await orders to strike from 6,000 miles away.  The  recent FBI and Police SWAT raids here in America on peace activist in their homes  was the epitome of political terror as they smashed into homes, bursting through doors in the manner worthy of SAVEK shouting, pointing guns as they confiscated data, computers and made no arrests, just delivered subpoenas to appear at a grand jury at a later date.
       Just remember that a terrorist is someone with a bomb but without a plane to deliver it.  A terrorist is also just as much, is someone with a bomb and who does have a plane to deliver it. Terror is now no more than another tactic of Orwellian doublespeak as is a word like beauty, for it is in the eye of the beholder, the victim and the perpetrator.   When we, us, the good guys murder and slaughter civilians, women and children by our democracy from the skies or from our nasty black-ops on the ground in the middle of the night terrorizing some sleepy isolated farming villages back in the mountains, it is labeled  a strike against ‘insurgents’, against ‘militants’, and if it is reported that civilians were killed or wounded it is humanely described as an ‘regrettable incident’ or its ‘under investigation’ becoming a one-time, one paragraph blurb and then maybe some poor heart-broken parents or husbands, brothers or sisters will be paid-off with a few hundred bucks, then we do it again in a few days, and again and again until we all become too numb to the odious acts we inflict with increasing vigor and recurrence.  Finally to barely warrant a whisper or nod here in the states as it becomes just another act of war, unfortunate, lamentable, but unavoidable for the price of freedom isn’t free and the inhabitants over there, pay the ultimate price for our freedom over here, which is horror, poverty, destitution, imprisonment, occupation, and for some death.  But the truth is, nonetheless, they are all victims of terror, terror that is unjustified, terror that has the stained stars and stripes wrapped around it as backblow will eventually come back to America after thousands miles of travel to repay in kind.  Terror we inflict upon them over there will boomerang back to our shores over here as simply cause and effect. Still, for now it is magically gift-wrapped by the corporate media  as  our patriotic  war on terror which we never see the results of, we never hear the screams or see the mangled bodies while we watch our football games and buy candy for Halloween.   For this war over there, doesn’t really come over here except for the random ‘homegrown radical’ always caught before a bomb goes off.  This is a divinely blessed and glorious crusade of a  mission, for it is our manifest destiny to dominate the globe and we are well on our way. And us proud Americans back over here in our spectator boxes are snuggly crowded in the creaking bleachers gorging on super-sized hotdogs and hamburgers, while our kids are slurping cokes and the adults are slugging down beers as we are spectators this great God blessed struggle for truth, justice and the American way. Go team Go!
        Still, call me naively optimistic but I  do believe that if the American people were properly and completely informed they would be outraged by the damage we cause others and would then hang their heads in shame and demand that our troops come home while leaving  behind a profound, soul-cleansing apology in our wake. Yet to be blunt and truthful, that is not part of our M/O or history is it? Our country is led by our opulent dollar patriots who really call the shots then and now and profit has always been the prime motive.  We ‘tamed the west’ as we spread like a plague, as a swarm of locust destroying all that was in our way.  We wiped out the buffalo, the bear, the wolf, great expanses of forest, and the most evil deed was the destruction of native nations, the extinction of wonderful cultures and  the  assimilation of  330+ tribes that lived in this land for thousands of years.  We stole it fair and square, eh Aaron?  Then we went south during the 20th century  with our United Fruit Co., Standard Oil, Domino sugar, Anaconda Copper and other fine businesses as we then exploited lands and peoples and if the rumble of dissent was heard, our marines were then sent there to be the muscle  and our intelligence services as the brain to overthrow a government and then our intelligence services would gladly assist in  instilling a compliant and obedient government  that could take a bribe and keep their  mouths shut.  Gringo Go Home was heard from Mexico to Argentina and could you actually blame them?  Now our sights, our corporations and our hired guns the
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armed forces of the United States have been in the middle east and Asian southeast looking for more resources and markets  to access and obtain.  It doesn’t matter what century, what year, what party, or who is president, the M/O is always the same.  Discover American un-owned resources declare them as American vital interests and then control them at the least cost for the most gain using illegal and immoral methods whenever convenient and profitable then if needed, keep the marines there as an occupying force.  
        But in these modern times we are under the general consensus and agreement ,  that, that  was then, this is now, we don’t do things like that  anymore for example, as we’ve just found out that we  infected Guatemalans with STD in the 1940’s like our military did to Black citizens in the 1950’s.  So we whitewash our history books, and sweep the dirty deeds under the rug and our leaders tell us to look forward not behind as people who should be arrested for crimes against humanity run and hide from justice.
        So as we deal with today without learning from anything we did yesterday.  We look forward and wipe the slate clean as it were.  We have been instructed that we are over there because the 9/11 attacks nine years ago that were done over here were carried out by 19 Muslim members of al-Qaeda trained over there in Afghanistan even though most were Saudis and were trained over here in the United States.  These attacks were supposedly authorized by the founder of al-Qaeda Osama Bin Laden (Though even to this day he is not the FBI‘s most wanted list for this attack because of the lack of evidence).  The US invasion and occupation were necessary because the Taliban, which was in control of 90% of Afghanistan had refused to turn over Osama to the United States even though there was no extradition treaty between our two countries and we didn’t even have diplomatic relations with them.  These 3 points of justification are then completely false and without basis in fact.  Ten days after 9/11, CNN reported that “The Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden without proof or evidence that he was involved in those attacks.  The Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan said that deporting him without proof would amount to an “insult to Islam.” CNN also reported that “Bin Laden himself has already denied he had anything to do with  the attacks, and Taliban officials reportedly said he could not have been involved in the attacks.”    
       Bush stated; “The demands were not open for  negotiations or discussion.”  With Bush’s refusal to provide any evidence at all concerning Bin Laden and his role in 911, the Bush administration made it impossible for the Taliban to turn him over.   Which was in all probability, their intent in the first place. The Taliban, in order to turn over a fellow Muslim needed a face-saving procedure.  Milton Beaedon, who had been the CIA station chief in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, put it this way;  “While the United States was demanding, “Give up bin Laden,” the Taliban were saying; “Do something to help us give him up.”  But of course the Bush administration refused to compromise.  This was too eerily similar two years later when Bush gave Saddam and his sons ‘24-hours to get outta town’ and we all now know that Saddam was agreeable, he just wanted 1 billion dollars.  After 1+ trillion dollars later, thousands of dead American service people, a million dead Iraqi’s and millions of homeless Iraqi’s, one billion dollars seems like a very small price indeed wecould have and should have paid, does it not?
        After the bombing started in October 2001,the Tailiban again tried through channels offered to turn Osama over a third time if only the United States would stop the bombing and provide evidence of his guilt.  Bush retorted; “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt.  We know he’s guilty.”  In the London Guardian a piece which reported this development was titled; “ Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand Bin Laden Over.”  So in reality it was the Bush administration and not the Taliban which was accountable for the fact that Bin Laden was not turned over to the United States. Again, like it was in Iraq, how many lives would have been saved if we would have chose a face-saving and life-saving compromise?  National pride,
patriotic arrogance, overblown military-ego, muscle-headed hegemony, and groundless self-righteousness were the hurdles we refused to jump over even when it would have saved American lives, Iraqi lives and Afghan lives.  What stupidity and insanity. WE are guilty of Crimes against Humanity without a shred of doubt.  Those responsible should be arrested instead of pardoned by Obama.  But of course he called this a war not of choice but one of necessity.  To the contrary these were acts of unjustified aggression for economic opportunity and national interests nothing less.  The continuing game of world domination for exploitation of your neighbors natural resources and strategic positioning.
       Intelligence reports have been circulating that the United States made the decision to invade Afghanistan two months before the 9/11 attacks.  Part of this decision was America’s hunger and support for UNOCOL’s proposed pipeline which would transport  natural gas and oil  to the Indian Ocean from the
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Caspian Sea through Afghanistan and Pakistan and thereby circumventing Iran in the process.  This venture had been thwarted all through the 1990’s due to the civil war raging in Afghanistan since the Russians left in 1989.  All through the mid-1990’s the US had been supporting the Taliban with the expectation that its military power would enable it to unify the nation, provide a stable government which could then protect the pipeline.   Near the end of the 90’s though, Clinton gave up on the Taliban as a viable and reliable force.  Then Bush and his minions came to power via the Supreme Court, not by the proletariats  vote  and they sent representatives to hold talks with the Taliban.  During a 4-day meeting in Berlin back in July of 2001, representatives of the Bush administration  insisted that the Taliban should craft a government of true ‘national unity’ and thus share power with factions that were ‘friendly’ to the United States. It has been widely circulated since then that the US representatives supposedly said; “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we will bury you under a carpet of bombs.”  Of course the Taliban refused  this ‘kind offer’ and then US officials informed a former Pakistan foreign secretary that “military action against Afghanistan would go ahead…before the snows stared falling  in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”
        Since that fateful October day back in 2001 did any ‘evidence’ ever surface supporting the hypothesis that Bin Laden and his minions were responsible  and hence accountable for the 9/11 attacks?  According to Secretary of State Colin Powell two weeks after 9/11 he expected “in the near future…to put out…a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking Bin Laden to the attack.”  Yet at a joint press conference with President Bush  the next morning, Powell withdrew this promise, stating that “most of the evidence is classified.”  Syemour Hersh, citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, said the real reason why Powell withdrew the pledge was simply for “lack of solid information.” The following week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair produced a document to prove that “Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network which he heads,  planned and carried out the atrocities on
September 2001.  Tony Blair’s report began by stating; “This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law.” So the case was not strong enough to take to court and win but good to go to war over.  The BBC the next day, empathized this weakness in the case by saying; “There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking  Osama Bin Laden to the September 11attacks.”  And to which I alluded to earlier, the FBI did not have enough evidence against Osama either.  When asked why Bin Laden was not on the  FBI’s wanted list for the 911 attacks, the FBI’s chief of investigative publicity replied: “Because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 911.”                                                      
In conclusion let me present the 9/11 Commissions claim that the men who allegedly took over the airplanes were devout Muslims, ready to sacrifice their lives for their cause.   The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Atta and  other hijackers had made “at least six trips” to Las Vegas, where they had “engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited  pleasures.”  The Chronicle then quoted the head of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada as stating: “ True Muslims don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t go to strip clubs.” And especially if they are going to sacrifice themselves as martyrs they wouldn’t go against everything they believe in the night before.   Devout Muslims do not do such things. Devil is in the details but as long as the story seems plausible enough for the gullible and the desperate looking for scapegoats and enemies, as self-serving short-term memory is the sum of history, while fear is constantly stirred on the front burner as the boogeyman is always just around the corner, while his is under the bed ready to stab us in the back, with our latest, greatest adversary just one year from possession of nuclear weaponry as Hannibal is at the gates of
Washington DC,  then the fairy-tale becomes fact and policy destined for the embedded newspapers and then the history books, does it not?
       Now as a pretext, as a false flag with the government finding terrorists and subversives under every bed, at the gates of Rome, as the seeds of our demise are sown in the homegrown land of freedom and democracy now turning into a paranoid surveillance state with the president holding powers only dreamed of by Nixon and Reagan those who live here  in freedom react in aghast and disgust.  When a republic morphs into a despotic autocracy, when a government of the people turns into  granny government with invasive powers seeping and creeping into every crevice of civil liberty like an octopus with power to control who you talk to and what you do by keeping a big brother eye on you,  your actions and their ears on your phone, while they legalize surveillance for then the  liberty of thought becomes invasive. When the freedom to disagree and  dissent becomes dangerous, suspicious, watched and shackled by our government, by our
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neighbor where then do you seek freedom?  Who then Aaron watches the watchmen?  Quis custodiet ipos custodies?  We are no longer free citizens of a nation, but simply temporary assets  and our youth are indoctrinated cannon fodder in a great militaristic empire whose aims and desires are simply to politically, economically and culturally dominate the world by an imperial doctrine as we invade nations, impose regimes of our choice and if we get any interference or complaints we use our muzzled MSM as a paid-propaganda machine and our international hectoring tactics to bully our friends into following our lead in imposing and enforcing infantile, hypocritical sanctions on those countries that dare to stand up to our interference, to our goals and  global strategy.
         Secretary of State Hilary Clinton just yesterday ordered a sovereign state (Pakistan)  to tax her people and to tax a certain group.  By what right has this Tammy Wynette to command a nation on how to conduct its internal affairs while at the same time we have killer squads going around their country killing and murdering at whim while our drones are doing the same thing and the bizarre part of this complete madness is that we are not at war with Pakistan. So by what right do we dictate to them while killing their men women and children  by our illegal drone attacks almost on a daily basis as we create future terrorists from the war crimes we do today.  Between 2006-2009, 253-315 Pakistan civilians were slaughtered by Predator and Reaper drone attacks.  Other reports put these numbers much higher. A study called the Year of the Drone published in February 2010 by the New American Foundation found that a total of 114 drone strikes in Pakistan carried out between 2004 and early 2010, approximately 834-1,216 people have been murdered.  The Brookings Institute highlighted the “horrendously indiscriminate nature of drone attacks in Pakistan.” It concluded that more than 600 civilians had been killed due to the attacks in Pakistan.  For every insurgent killed, 10 civilians are murdered.  This ratio should be unacceptable to anyone with morals, with a conscience, with even just a shred of decency but it is American policy on an ally.
       The drone attacks by the US violates both the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which strictly prohibits willful killing. Article(4) of the UN Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”  Also the Geneva Convention of 1949 and their Additional Protocols I and II of 1977 form the bedrock of International Law and they aim to resolve matters of humanitarian concern arising directly from armed conflicts whether of international  or non-international nature.  Bombing homes containing people having dinner as 3 houses were destroyed and 22 civilians murdered at the Damdola Village located in the Bajaur  tribal area in Pakistan  January 2006 is not a justifiable military target.
       Since a house hosting a religious dinner is not of military character and does not qualify as a military objective unless it was clear that the house itself was by its location and use is making an effective contribution to the military action, in accordance with Article 52(2).  “The US drone attacks are also to be in clear violation their own precautionary obligations under Article 57 of the Additional Protocol I According to Article 57(2) (a)(1), the planners of the attack  must take utmost precautionary measure to verity that the objects the attack are not civilians and under Article 57(4) reasonable precautions must be taken to avoid losses of civilians lives and civilian objects.”  When civilians are being slaughtered at a ratio of 10-1, obviously that criteria is not being met.  Where is the international outrage?  Where is the outrage here back in America?  We are performing min-9/11’s and it seems that since they are not Americans being wounded and killed, it doesn’t matter since a non-American life has a value much lower than an American one.
       “In addition to International Humanitarian Laws, further liability can be imputed on the US under the concept of extra judicial assassinations which are prohibited under international human rights laws.  Extra judicial executions constitute the illegal assassinations of individuals whether by the state, government or by the state authorities, like the armed forces.  Extra judicial executions are prohibited in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICC-PR), which the US has ratified.”  According to Article 6(1) of IC-CPR, “every individual has the inherent right to life and no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” Also, Article 6(2) stipulates that the summary penalty of death can only be rendered by a competent court of law.  This is further reinforced by under Article 10 and 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Article 10 ensures that every human being is entitled to a fair public hearing and Article 11(1) says that any person charged with a penal offense is presumed innocent until proven guilty in accordance with something that our policy has apparently thrown away, the law. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extra judicial Executions, Phillip Alston has also criticized the drone strikes in Pakistan on
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the basis that they violate the laws described in the last few paragraphs here.  My question is then, if we can kill indiscriminately wherever we deem fit, be it friend or foe, then anyone anywhere can the same thing, right?  Does not what we do now then legalize the 9/11 attacks then? For if we can legally kill civilians in nations we are not at war with, then other groups, individuals, nations can do the same thing!  Then by our own actions, definitions and denials, then 9/11 was no terrorist attack it was a legitimate attack against the ‘enemy’, completely legal by interpreted US standards of law, rules of engagement and rules of combat.  3,000 civilians killed?  That’s collateral damage, that’s war and unfortunately  an unavoidable aspect of conflict. Double-standards are an idiocy.
        In Afghanistan recently, 30 high schools were shut down because the parents said their kids are distracted by those flying maniacs of death those Reaper and Predator drones flying overhead and this makes it unsafe for them to gather in schools. These sophisticated buzzing American versions of V-1’s, give hourly intelligence and information to US war commanders, but the machinery can’t inform Americans about the justified rising rage as the US operates these drones and other more conventional special-operations assassinations. Fred Branfman writes; “Sold as defending Americans, it is actually endangering all of us.  Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, who has betrayed us, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come.”  And what of the damage done to our souls, to our moral justification, to our concepts of right and wrong?
         We were intended to be republic, we were once even a democracy.  This could have been a decent nation living within its means and atop the foundation of its high ideals but it has distorted itself into a giant, overbearing, narcissistic, tyrannical bordering on fascism, muscle-bound militaristic violent empire with not a public servant president, but with a king, no an emperor wearing no clothes ruling an empire that is  psychotically insecure and afraid of even honest and deserved dissent. America is consumed by its fear and addicted to its lust for complete security which only reflects its own lack of self-confidence.  All this paranoid security is like an octopus reaching everywhere to spy, listen and watch for signs of discontent or resentment at home and abroad with it’s a security apparatus that is worthy of Darth Vadars  darkest desires.  
       What happened in Chile is a great example for comparison of what we claim to be and what we really are. Thirty-three Chilean miners were trapped for months down under their collapsed mine and they all came up one by one yesterday. The Chilean president was there to shake each miners hand as they came out.  Did you notice they didn’t have tanks and helicopters and thousands of secret service people about?  This is a  far more free country than ours because this couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened in the home of the brave, land of the free.  We’re too scared for one thing.  To have the President of this country come down and shake hands would be impossible ‘for security reasons’. We have so many enemies that this would have been too good of an opportunity for someone to try to take him out.   Instead, if it happened here in America, lets say in West Virginia, where we did happen have a mine collapse last year killing 6 miners, and who came?  The miners would get an ‘invitation’ to come and grovel at the feet of the emperor at the white house where it can all be controlled and secured by state of the art safety measures.  Photo-ops and reporters. Fox news would have angrily thrown a temper tantrum, as they usually do and berated it unmercifully. While the other media networks would have played it up as America at its finest hour. And in two days forgotten, right?
       But our ‘head of the government’  is not the emperor is he?  He is not even the head of the government,  not really.  WE THE PEOPLE  are the true rulers of our government, at least on paper we were intended to be such.  Obama is just the figurehead of 1/3 of a democratic government in which he is bestowed the title of president, not king, nor monarch.  He is just another public servant serving temporarily at the whim and desire of the people.  Yet within this nation, the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, we would  be too afraid  for the Presidents life for him to do what the Chilean president did.  Now that speaks volumes about us and where we are now, does it not?   If we were truly a decent freedom loving, tolerant, generous, kind nation then we wouldn’t have such hatred and anger pointed at us, would we?
         Maybe we’re not so well-liked anymore because we even forgot how to treat ‘allies’.  When it comes to Pakistan, they are a ‘well-paid partner in the war of terror’, but we continuously operate killer drones quite often as weapons of choice in North and South Wazirstan. These weapons are the most coercive tactics employed in the war on terror. Unlike capture and then interrogation, the US is institutionalizing rampant assassinations as a valid policy.  Does this make any of us safer, serene, or morally superior?  The
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sins of the fathers will be paid by the suckling breast, as we sow the seeds of backblow and chickens will come home to roost. We are indeed obtuse to not think our acts will not have consequences in this life and in the next.
        We are an American version of the Weimar Republic.  Our war crimes and crimes against humanity are whitewashed, swept under the rug, declared top secret, as state secrets, national interests, national security and exposure of the truth by an American citizen is paramount to treason and sedition subject to arrest, court martial far from the media, stripped of  their rights simply for doing what a decent person with a conscience should do, obligated to and must do; expose crimes especially when they committed by the persons own  government who in their transparency tries to  have it buried.  Information released by an non-citizen subjects this person or persons to potential character assassination or physical termination.
       Just a few days ago SWAT teams led by the FBI burst into 6 homes of 8 peace activists in several different states.  They came in like it was a paramilitary operation with guns drawn, smashing furniture, sizing computers, phones, and other data without making any arrests. They never confiscated any weapons since their were none, hauling away in boxes leaflets, newsletters, and any material with the word Palestine on it.  This is part of the change we can believe in right?  Coincidently, these raids came just a few days after a report by the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice from the examination of thousands  of documents taken from the FBI from 2001-2006.  The report stated that the FBI spied on anti-war activists, animal-rights groups, and environmentalists as it called these activities “terror investigations, unreasonable and inconsistent with FBI policy.”  Among those targeted were dangerous and subversive Quakers, a Quaker anti-war activist, the Thomas Merton Center, a Catholic worker, Greenpeace, and the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).  According to the Inspector General their was “little or no basis” for the investigations.
        Another report discovered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used lies and trickery to illegally obtain thousands of records, then issued after-the-fact approvals in a pathetic attempt to cover it up. “The Inspector General focused on the FBI’s unlawful misuse of the already unconstitutional informal requests known as “exigent letters” to demand information which they knew was illegal. The DOJ report described a “complete breakdown” of procedures within the FBI.  According to the report, the FBI broke laws for years in phone record searches.  Agents repeatedly and knowingly violated the law by invoking nonexistent “terror emergencies” to get access to information they were not authorized to have.”
        It has been widely reported that another Inspector General report that hundreds of FBI employees cheated on their exams related to domestic surveillance.  Now there has been a consistent and constant struggle between the law of the land, the Constitution and the dirty domestic surveillance of political activists, especially those troublesome and utterly dangerous activists for decades.  The FBI has a long and consistent M/O of abusing its power and being used for  political purposes. It is the responsibility of the citizens and their employees, the elected public servants the politicians  to oversea this organization and bridle it with a tight leash.  I have always found it extremely  ironic how those who are playing cloak and dagger on their fellow citizens for breaking the law as they themselves  break the law, and in so do they are trampling on the principles and ethics of some of most basic foundations of law and civil rights such as in privacy, and the right of to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
      You and I, whether you know it or not, whether you except it or not are now living under the benevolence of a police state.  One that pulled over a car recently with a couple that was arguing privately, and after working over 30 hours on weekend shifts for the developmentally disabled, the woman had her purse dumped on the hood of her car and then the cop wouldn’t even put the stuff back.  She had nothing.
As she and her boyfriend are padded down and we’re informed  that a lot of drugs are being transported and used in this area and it has nothing to do with her boyfriend being a black man.  Of course not.  Jane Doe was told she was doing 37mph in a 35 but she won’t get a ticket this time.  This happened today, this happens all over this country every day and 90% of the time the accosted citizens are silent in their submissiveness which is what the cops expect and demand.  Be docile are you are in for a world of trouble. Yes Aaron we have rights but only a fool  tries to use them when dealing with the police on the road, at the park or at those safety check points and sobriety check points which is all part of the new and shoddier New America that considers you guilty till proven innocent.  We have more citizens in our prisons and jails than every other country in the world and the majority of those are the mentally ill and people who were just
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wanting to escape our stressful society by getting ‘high’ and instead of helping our fellow citizens with rehabilitation we punish them and wreck so many lives doing such. While presidents who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of foreign people who never done us harm as an attack and occupation is commenced as a false flag based on lies gets a pardon instead of getting arrested and it’s a disgusting turn of events in a nation that prides itself on the equality of justice.        
       Our national governments criminal investigative agency can now execute its own warrants without approval as it passes them on to private companies to demand information about people who are not necessarily suspected of criminal wrongdoing; and they forbid the company from informing anyone, not even the target of the investigation.  This is done by the psychological process called Predictive Analytics. Inflections of emotion and stress by voice, by emotion is just a part of the new technological apparatus that is utilized without any oversight whatsoever.   This is copulated with these wonderful pieces of tyranny and autocratic rules requiring no judges signature that are called national security letters.  Innocent sounding and quite patriotic, right? Within the last 9 years the FBI, Defense Department and the CIA have issued well over a hundred thousand national security letters. But this doesn’t go far enough for the President who was voted in on a wave of change who campaigned quite passionately against Bush’s Administrations civil-rights violations like warrantless wiretapping.  Obama is demanding that Congress, that you Aaron  and your colleagues expand the scope on national security letters even more, much, much more. This is a fine example of absolute power corrupting absolutely and those who have power have one desire, more power. Now these letters according to an administration official: “allows us to intercede in plots earlier than we would if our hands were tied and we were unable to get this data in a way that was quick and efficient.”  In other words to catch those who may, might, mind you, break the law, they want the ability to break the law as they seem fit without any oversight to nab folks who may be thinking about breaking the law. Does this sound reasonable to you?
       This obviously and quite blatantly boilerplate rationalization-complete with the tied-hands trope-for unchecked executive power, power gone raving mad. Recently, a ruling by the Supreme Court (6/22/10) was passed that took rights and authority away from  the people to think and act within and outside their conscience beyond the government’s in dealing and interacting with groups and people that the administration deems as unsavory and naughty.  This new expansion of interpretation by the Supreme Court  now allows the government sole power to not only decide but to declare who is good and who is bad nationally, internationally and if you disagree and still interact or talk with groups (Foreign Designated Terrorist Organizations-FTO) that the government deems dangerous and disagreeable,  then you are then supporting terrorism and are subsequently subject to arrest for supporting terrorism. Now the new wording is purposely ambiguous on the semantics as they use phrases like ‘material support’ and ‘any…service…training expert advisor or assistance…’ Even if all you are doing is talking with people, meeting with groups or organizations to discuss nonviolence, changing ways, rectifying social-injustice, peaceful co-existence, or giving milk to children under their control and the like of these designated groups, then you are giving aid to the enemy.  You are breaking the law and can be arrested.  I could imagine the founding fathers would be spinning in their graves over this one. This law enforces that the government is supreme in interacting with people, groups and nations, as now they have sole and complete power over the right of the people to interact with whom they please.  This is the epitome of tyranny which by the way the founding fathers in their foresighted wisdom put into the declaration of independence; “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it.” “It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government…” This decree forbids Americans to give vaguely defined ‘material support’ to government-designated foreign terrorist organizations, even if that support is nothing more than conducting conversations.  This is exactly like when you were a kid and your parents tried to tell you who you could and who you couldn’t hang around with.
       We’re adults within a ‘free society’ and I decide who I interact with and with whom I don’t.  How else will we ever get together with people and discuss our differences, solve our problems than by interacting?  If we leave it up to the government. we will be in conflicts forever, and usually their conflicts are economic ones and have nothing to do with the people themselves.  Every war fought between nations, are decided by politicians who never have to fight them, who commonly profit from them, which are fought by the people, suffered by them, who never get a say in the decision of ‘declaring hostilities’ and instead of discovering that
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the conflict involves some great ideological differences, it is usually just a struggle over resources and the solution that the leaders choose is to send our kids to kill their kids and the one who kills the most wins the prize.  We must kill war plain and simple. We must practice what we preach to our children dealing with violence and so do as we say as examples   We must see beyond our illusory borders to view other human beings as lucid and  honest reflections of ourselves and not as ‘enemies’ to see them as they really are; us.          We need to step outside our conniving and manipulative governments and reach to each other across deceptive divisions that our governments builds between us but are illusionary.   But as our pundits and orators stand up on their soapboxes passionately and eloquently berating them while praising us contending that our differences  are insurmountable, unconquerable and don’t you dare talk to the other side because it is full of evil lunatics who want to see us conquered or dead. And according the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, even intellectual intercourse is deemed now illegal. This nation that is build upon the principles of civil liberty; the right of the individual of free speech and free association.  I assert that  this ruling is despotic, morally corrupted,  misleading, infantile and to be absolutely constitutionally illegal.
      It seems rather obvious that  in order to resolve these conundrums we must circumvent our governments and do it ourselves, at an individual basis, people with people. The seemingly elusive pursuit for peace and the simplistic solution to the end of conflicts between nations will be discovered by the grassroots  interactions with each other at the cultural, social, economical and political one on one level, as we eschew our governments, as we ignore their phony fears, divisionally racist and egomaniacal rants.  We won’t find solutions at those fancy 5-star hotels, with our leaders eating 5-star meals with  5-star toasts in front of the media smiling their 5-star smiles. Peace, social justice and nonviolent solutions will develop in the schools, on the road, at the market, next door to each other over a coffee, watching our kids play together, sharing simple respect.  We need to reach out and grasp the hand of each other all over the world and interact in tolerance to find out that we are not that different, we all want the same things, and without selfish and self-motivated government interferences, we can and should.  We people, without our sneaking and self-serving governments,  in deference to WE THE PEOPLE, should be telling the government whom they can and cannot associate with.  If we are free then we are free without restraints. We should disobey laws of the government that we disagree with, when they are immoral, self-serving and ignore their directives and when they are unjust. Injustice served on one is injustice harmed  upon all.  Remember at one time when our founding fathers were praising themselves, patting each other on the back for coming up with the first government that actually could be a government of the people by the premise that all of us are created equal, based on civil liberties and freedoms, yet the slavery of human beings, the ownership of American citizens by other American citizens  by the color of their skin was quite legal. We each, have not just an moral obligation but a civic,  a spiritual duty to disobey unjust laws as well as perversions of standards along with principles if they live not up to their intentions.  Each one us is born free by our maker.  Each one of us is a sovereign entity with the will of free choice and to allow ourselves to become oppressed is ridiculous and eventually untenable.  Oppression is a crime against humanity and wherever, whenever we cause it, allow it or stand silently by our betrayal is immoral and must be rectified immediately. To allow ourselves to be muzzled like dogs in the privacy our own backyards is odious.
        Back in august of this year two of our ‘allies’ Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not exactly bastions of democracy and freedom, decided to ban the use of Blackberries because the company that operates Blackberry (Research in Motion) refused  to hand over data to those nations.  They demanded the ‘right’ to intercept and monitor every speck of information within their respective borders.  This is the core of the mindset of totalitarian, omnipotent surveillance states. All in the name of security and peace they must have the ability to control their people and all that they say and think. Of course here in America our media snobbishly pooh-poohed the censorship and the all-consuming powers of those two states. Yet the next week, Richard Falkenrath- a top level Homeland Security official  in the Bush administration and current principle in the private firm of the former Bush DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff expressed his support for the ban. Falkenrath said that “among law enforcement investigators and intelligence officers [in the US], the Emirates decision met with approval, admiration and perhaps even a touch of envy.”
        Obviously with pending legislation our government hungrily craves to tightly control the internet, and other forms of private communication, especially electronic, at least through a backdoor key.  Who should rule the airways Aaron, the government or the people?  Since the world wide web was begun with the
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explicit intent to be a free unregulated network connecting free individuals, it should be unrestrained and governed by the people not subject to the whims and paranoia of censorship by governments, any government.  Who would then watch the watchers? Quis custodiet ipos custodies? But too many in our government believe that in order for us to be safe and secure in our freedom we must be shackled and caged by surveillance and constant scrutiny and yet in bizarre irony it is the government that constantly, increasingly, is avoiding transparency, hiding behind locked doors, which the current administration highlighted in the earlier elections as an area that needed reforming.  But instead  ‘state ‘secrets’ and  ‘national security’ are constantly and incessantly used in the courts to keep information behind locked doors. These are kept away from the citizens who have the need and right to know when laws are broken, when our principles are trampled and usually they are invariably used for the covering up of crimes to avoid embarrassment, imprisonment, responsibility for their accountability as the facts get swept under the carpet of truth and then white-washed down the drain of history to be eventually forgotten or brushed off as myth.
      Charlie Savage recently wrote an article in the New York Times describing how the Obama administration is proposing new legislation calling for the mandating of US government having access to all forms of communication, “including encrypted e-mail transmitters like Blackberry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct’ peer to peer’ messaging like Skype.”  So in other words we are doing exactly what Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates are doing. The government will not allow any communication done by citizens without Big brother government  having the ability to access any and all  by eavesdropping.  I found it quite hilarious when the American government was caught once again in its double-standard and utter hypocrisy by Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE Ambassador to the US, when he pointed out that State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley’s comments were disappointing and “contradicts the US government’s own approach to telecommunication regulation. In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and it is asking for exactly the same regularity compliance-and with the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight- that Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more.  Importantly, the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to protect national security and to assist law enforcement.”
       But this isn’t  where it ends for Mr. Obama and our grand intrusive government and their quest for control, for this administration also wants US banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country.  This proposal also calls for banks to provide annually the social security numbers for all wire-transfer senders and recipients.  Now of course this would allow the government to monitor financial transactions engaged in by people who are under no suspicion whatsoever of criminal activity.  And this is the crux of this new and improved surveillance state of America. The ability and the right of the government to spy on people who have done nothing wrong as the people’s privacy is absolutely smashed.   You should and ought to remember that  this was the hallmark, the foundation of basic American liberty.  This was the epitome of freedom established by our founding fathers;  that the individual has the right to be left alone, to be safe and “secure in their persons, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants issue, but upon probable cause…”
       Remember the American premise of ‘innocent till proven guilty’?  Now we are guilty till we can prove our innocence.  At security checkpoints, at sobriety pullovers we must prove that we are good obedient and docile citizens and that we, eyes cast downward submissively have our papers in order. I find this absolutely  abhorrent and entirely un-American and of course it is unconstitutional.  But they get away with it because too few stand up to them.  Warrants are longer needed just the word and it’s a go to spy.  It used to be that you would have to have some evidence of criminality, reasonable suspicion, reasonable cause, or at least intent before you are granted unfettered access to the communications and private financial matters of an individual, a law abiding citizen. This used be such a basic right of our liberty now it has been morphed into a privilege and usually only enjoyed by the opulent few and the very same members of  government that has promised us transparency and ‘real oversight’.  
      This government,  our government within Orwellian truth is waging war on our liberty while proclaiming it defends our freedom.  This ‘war on terrorism’ our government is pursuing  and building brick by brick, card by card, a new and improved police state called the United States of Security. There are four words that will slam the final nails in the coffin of freedom here are called ‘electronic communication transactional records’.  The FBI would be able to use these 4 words to demand without a court order access to your files.
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This is forbidden under the fourth amendment and an ugly and blatant attack upon the freedoms of the individual.  Yes, this is change we can believe in as we sing; ‘look at the new president, same as the old president.’  We are not supposed to fear the government in a ‘free society’s within the ruler-ship of a democracy, the government should fear us.
        Unfortunately most of my fellow citizens have been reduced to a frightened and meek puddle of acquiescent contented cows and Wal-Mart grazing sheep who not only tolerate, but seem to crave a complete deprivation of privacy to feel safe and secure which manifests itself in the ‘well, if your not doing anything wrong, you don’t have to worry, or the giggle and chuckle of a police dispatcher who said ; ‘let them see what’s in my house, its just a mess anyway.’ This last remark was done in a classroom when parents had a meeting with the school officials concerning new Mac computers that will be offered to the kids.  But, everything that is done on these computers, every site that is visited will be logged at the school and also at the home when the student brings it to his house after school hours. Now of course this trains and conditions  the child to accept that in America, it is now policy and far more frightening, its ok  to have you under surveillance 24/7. When they grow up, with the likely advancements in surveillance technologies it will probably be common and mundane to be under some sort of observation 24/7 and most folks won’t even bat an eye or give it a thought, lest they be questioned by those who watch.  
        Recently in the new it was reported that in Philadelphia they had the same computers and the Principle at one school took a picture of a student at home doing something ‘inappropriate’ and thank goodness a huge fuss was made about this.  It seems these laptops have not just web-cams but software that allows remote viewing.  Which means that if the computer is turned on within the home, who ever is on the other end can watch what is going on in that home.  I was assured that the school where my sons go, (JFK in Spring Valley) they would never do such things.  Mmmm, can I trust the watchers?  What is the definition of appropriate? Of course I have contacted the ACLU to which I have been a member for many years and we’ll see about this big brother remote viewing and logging matter.  Several parents snickered and giggled like little children when I brought up the question  about rights, but I was not surprised, for if we had good, informed  citizens they wouldn’t need folks like me to stand up and throw lights would they, or writing 46+ pages of common sense? But it seems that we all have our duties, and this is part of mine, no matter how many of us are left striving for freedom in the land of the free, trying to be courageous in the home of the brave. Still wondering, when they might come a’ knocking one late night.
       Justice Louis Brandeis wrote his great piece of dissent in the 1928 case Olmstead v. United States; “The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness.  They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect.  They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are to be found in material things.  They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations.  They conferred, as against the government, the right to be left alone- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.”  It seems we have de-evolved exquisitely and are no longer so ‘civilized’ or so concerned about our rights as long as we seem to safe  and if the lie is gift-wrapped prettily with bows of spin  while being palatable for the discerning taste buds of the proletariat, so be it for then it is consumed hook, line and sinker.
        Senator Frank Church said after chairing a mid-70’s Senate investigation into the spying abuses of the prior decades and the enlarging surveillance technology capabilities of the NSA: “That capability at any time could be turned around the American people, and no American would have any PRIVACY left,  such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter,  There would be no place to hide.”  We have found that place, that time and it is here in American in the year 2010 and beyond. Even though we have proof of abuses through surveillance powers by law enforcement agencies and their masters, the government director‘s, it doesn’t seem to matter or register and still, we think we are free.
       The most ironic part of this nightmare is that while the government is becoming totalitarian with all the seeing eye, at the same time it is, they are, you are Aaron, decreasing the citizens ability to oversee and monitor you and them.  As the walls and barb wire of secrecy become more formidable and harder to perceive behind. We are left in the dark more and more without recourse. While criminal acts such as illegal wars based on lies and false flags, rendition, torture, assassination of foreigners as well as American citizens and all encompassing warrantless surveillances and FBI confiscations of private material of peace activists
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and humanitarians  becomes beyond our reproach and reach.  As we find out too late that we are  no longer  in a democracy but encased within  a tyrannical society.  The truth to which we require and demand is  becoming more and more off-limits as it becomes state secrets that not even the courts can pry free to see and judge. How can we have informed citizens that can make intelligent and good decisions if we are not informed and instead  kept in the dark?  Of course, I realize this this not the plan for us is it?  To be uninformed, happy, medicated, materialistic, embedded stupid citizens who are subservient, submissive, obedient trained, goyim is the future for the American citizenry, is it not?
        Who suppressed the truth when General Taguba was given  the responsibility to ascertain the facts concerning the horror of Abu Gharib years ago?  He did an impeccable job.  Good enough to have Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld call him to his office and force him to resign in humiliation.  General Taguba should have received a medal for bravery being such a rare thing in today’s American military, a man of character and integrity. Obviously that is precisely what got him fired.  Remember Rumsfeld going on the news and acting so shocked and horrified that such things could happen under the American flag?  He promised compensation to all who were subject to the iniquity from the acts done to them at  Abu Ghraib.  That was 6 years ago.  In court just the other day, we were informed that not one person has been compensated yet. No one ever will.
      In his war memoir, Aidian Degado told of his commanders attempts to smother the truth about Abu Ghraib.  At first the captain said that the army had nothing to hide.  What went on at Abu Ghraib was just a rumor.  But then the captain said: “We don’t need to air our dirty laundry in public.  If you have photos that your not supposed to have, get rid of them.  Don’t talk about this to anyone, don’t write about it anyone back home.”  In the US military, the truth is seditious.  Just ask Ehren Watada or Brad Manning.  Only a few non-coms ever were ‘charged’ with what happened at Abu Ghraib even though General Taguba proved that it went all the way up the White House.  This is transparency that was promised by Obama.  He pardoned all the war criminals and expunged the crimes against humanity as more pictures were produced, he buried them in the sand and we wont get to see them.  While the government hides what it does, it increases its spying on us.  The poetic irony is incredulous ,is it not?
         But this not  is nothing more than rambling paranoia by a lone wolf rebel, right Aaron?  Yet I fear not the terrorist who in reality is a freedom fighter in every sense of the word in lands thousands of miles away who is angered by  my countries  illegal and immoral violent inferences and military forays. This the pretext and false flag you politicians and so-called pundits spin like a top upon us to believe.  What idiocy. Hannibal is not at the gates of America and I fear not those whom our military hectors, bombs and robs.  I empathize with them and support them with my heart, soul and mind.  I wish them freedom and they won’t ever in a million years find it at the end of our guns, under exploding bombs or among the destruction which we create from their homes and lands with our malevolent might.  I fear only my government for what it has become and what it now does with increasing regularity and escalating repression as I know my fear is too well founded.  My liberty and freedom are under assault and attack. I wish my government to fear proletariat wrath as the founding fathers aspired for us to possess and cherish.
        What we are doing these days at home and abroad are not the hallmarks or actions of a confident, open and  free society, this is fear, paranoia and gangster tactics similar to Nazi-Germany or Stalinist Russia.  We are quite comparable to the forces that we are odds with as we are their bookends to whom we call terrorists, doing much of the same vicious acts upon civilians you deride with such expansive expounding.                    
      The current President, the man who brought us change we can believe in(?) did not just pardon war criminals and whitewash war crimes he has continued those same policies of criminal behavior and in some aspects of it, has actually increased it from the previous administration.  For example the war crime of targeted assassinations, the murdering of civilians in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Bob Woodard’s recent book “Obama’s Wars” our CIA has an army of 3,000 paid assassins, the Pentagon has its own assassin army, and the State department is amassing its own 7,000 man army while we all know about Xe and those other private armies and killer squads as gangsters of capitalism and the filthy crimes that they commit overseas in lands they have no right to be in.   So our nation is now institutionalizing assassination as a legalized valid policy.  Should we be patriotically proud of our Waffen killer squads whose honor is their loyalty to the State roaming the world murdering freedom fighters, passionate men who strive for justice and are murdered for it like Ernesto Che Guevara was by the CIA so
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many years ago?  And it doesn’t change much does it Aaron, the same murders on the same people seeking the same unreachable social justice just with different faces, different names in different lands.  But always the same; murdering people whom the US has no right to murder in lands the US has no right be, doing evil deeds done dirt cheap all for the octopus reach for  profit of empire. You should find what we have done, still do and will do tomorrow at the  least illegal and at most totally depraved and completely revolting.   Who are we really murdering?  Is it people who don’t want us over there in their nations while they stubbornly resist our yoke?  Ungrateful, are they not?  We have the most honorable intentions for them.
       Our policy of targeted assassinations by drone and special operation groups is such a far cry from Executive Order 12333 signed into law by President Ronald Reagan which said quite eloquently in its simplicity; “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination”.  What happened to us?  Less than 30 years later with a President who had the audacity to hope we could change things for the better has instead chosen the slippery slope of the dark side and so many of us not only want to know why but how did absolute power corrupt this decent man so absolutely and completely?  The dogs of perpetual war are devouring not just our rights and freedoms but our prosperity, our dreams of a good future as blind phony patriotism and unquestioning maniac militarism becomes our end all solution to quandaries we cannot solve politically, socially or economically as  we plummet down into a  moral and political abyss.
        Ex-CIA agents are confirming long held suspicions that we tortured prisoners at the Polish black site.   Then we hear about through, anonymous sources, our coup as we kidnapped the Iranian nuclear scientist who told us Iran was not pursuing the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons and then we finally  sent him home with a target on his back as we ordered  our media to report that ‘he was most cooperative’.  Our CIA has been doing illegal acts since its inception and even its own former employees have admitted to “killing many westerners including some US passport holders.”  Much as our brethren in Palestine, the MOSSAD believes, we have faith in that we can kill anyone anytime for any reason we deem fit.  And since we’re the good guys, we can do things like that without feeling too guilty…not to do them again and again.
      We have supported many repressive governments in our past and we still do.  Saudi Arabia, Honduras, China is our bread and butter banker, Indonesia Egypt, Kosovo, Columbia and that constantly at war state of Israel which was founded illegally and is an illegitimate state born of robbery from those who lived there, still live there and are treated as second class citizens in their own lands as others are forced into shrinking reservations and ruled under military occupation by military dictatorship.
       What of the millions of refuges who are refused the right of return, who are kept out  of their homes, living bare existence in other nations as outcasts? Israel the nation armed with American might that used some of those American weapons in violation of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts last memorial day at 4 in the morning as its commandos rappelled down while shooting at peace activists on an unarmed humanitarian ship bringing in much need vital medicines and food items to a people suffering under an illegal and immoral blockade at the open-air prison of Gaza.  A 19 year old American student was murdered on this ship by military personal of a foreign power.  According to a fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) shows conclusively that US citizen Furkan Dogan was murdered execution style by Israeli commandoes.  Dogan was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot . The report discovered through forensics evidence established the fact there was “tattooing around the wound in the face”.  Their conclusion was that Dogan was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground on his back semi or fully unconscious. Why did our politicians defend Israeli action by calling this murder self-defense?  Why have you Aaron Schock not raised your voice in outrage at the murder of an unarmed American kid on an humanitarian ship in international waters using American weapons in violation of American and International law?  Why the silence of your betrayal sir, why?  I have called your office concerning this and I get nothing but silence, silence, the crescendo of deafening silence, so refreshing coming from an employee, my representative.
         Why was this not slapped on the front pages of our  vaunted MSM?  Why haven’t our leaders, our politicians jumped on the pulpit and screamed out their, your dismay and demands for justice?  By the utter avoidance by virtually one and all?  If  they were Iranian commandos doing what was done instead of  Israeli commandos we would have been at war.  But this merely, unfortunately proves my point about law in the
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21st century. There is no law of egalitarianism, no parity, no equality, no social justice between nations, just petty favoritism, backdoor deals and arm twisting,  preferred treatment for the few, blatant biasness and its twin, prejudice with different rules  for the rich nations, different regulations  for the poor nations.  Permanent membership for archaic dusty winners of an old war unreflective of the times, and downright unfair as vetoes are  used commonly to protect unlawful acts of the members and their allies.  For the strong and their buddies the law is really of no concern for them, for they are above the law. They have the privilege, the power and the money to rise the  above the mediocrity like a loose helium balloon above a circus. For the outcasts, for the not so rich and powerful and influential, law is used a  biting whip to slap them, as a weapon, as a punishing apparatus which usually causes  suffering under hypocritical, infantile sanctions that typically only harms the common folk.  Some Afghan girl gets her picture on Time magazine as a propaganda ploy for immoral and illegal war support while an American kid gets murdered in cold blood in international waters and where is the justice for this kids parents and friends from the  people who swear an oath to protect American citizens no matter where they are say nothing.  I am disgusted and ashamed.
        What incredulous hypocrisy you politicians display yet with such  blatant impertinence.  As you wrap yourselves in the flag, spouting on about the importance of the safety for American citizens, how your doing all in your power to make sure we are out of harm’s way and secure.  As Obama said once about how the last thought he has  at night and his first thought in the morning is the safety of the America people. Well, here we have an American student murdered in cold blood and instead getting justifiably upset and demands for justice and accountability,  Obama submissively and diversely says Israel has a right to defend itself.  A foreign nation has the right to murder an unarmed 19 year old American peace activist armed with a camera? When something horrible happens, on memorial day, just like it was back in 67 on the USS Liberty, to one of our own, since it was done by our little buddy, you do absolutely nothing about it, as one of your predecessors did.
         It seems that we use UN when it serves our purpose but when it  runs counter to our interests or calls out those who are friends whose crimes we veto introduced sanctions or proposed condemnations and then embrace it when you think that it will and usually after behind closed doors we bribed bullies.   and coerce those who dare to stand up to up us. Some of our actions at the UN are just plain infantile like when the President of Iran recently gave a speech and our reps walked out like little children because they didn’t want to hear what the big bad Iranian had to say.  As our UN reps walked out the door I wonder if they were holding their breaths and plugging their ears with their fingers.  Absolutely immature and infantile reactions to a man giving a speech which consisted of much truth.  But that is what we are and were afraid right?  If not we would have stayed and countered with logical rebuttals and facts.  Obama called it “a hateful speech”.  A speech given by a president whose country is in the 6th? round of sanctions for what crime?   Because his country supports the Palestinian cause?  Because Israel is upset that they do so and then Israel gets us to hector Iran with childish sanctions that only hurt their people which further marginalizes those in Iran who seek discourse with us and normalized relations aspiring to a democratic process of government, with wider and more inclusive representation and rights?  Our policy consists of cherry picking international law and that is spurious.  Who is above the law?  Are the exceptional above the rule when it doesn’t suit them? Are the rich and mighty exempt from the rule of law?  When adhering to principles of law and edicts  that runs counter to an allies interests we look the other way and then we convince ourselves, high on the hill  that we have the right to condemn and hold  any to the letter of the law if they are not friends.    It seems that we invoke law when it serves our purpose and if it doesn’t we ignore it.  We go running to the UN when we need a vote to agree to our warmongering and if some hesitate we lock the doors and bribe and bully them into acquiesce.  America uses this same formula for friend and rivals at home or abroad.  Our friends can do no wrong so we look the other way, and our rivals can do no right so we badger them unmercifully.  Example;  Israel is allowed to posses nuclear weapons because they are our ‘friend’ and we look the other way when they ethnically cleanse, murder, commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, ignore and violate international laws, collectively punish and violate our Arms export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts. Which  they just recently did on memorial day by using American supplied military equipment to attack, massacre, commandeer, kidnap  un-armed humanitarians who were in international waters heading to break an unlawful blockage Israel has illegally imposed on 1.5 million innocent people
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inside the open-air prison camp that is Gaza.
        But when it comes to Iran, who is not our buddy they are not allowed to attain nuclear weapons because they are not our friend mainly because they dared to take umbrage when in 1953 we overthrew their government, our CIA then helped to install the Shah, assisted the Shah in violently throttling opposition and with USA technical and surveillance support for decades until after years of tyranny and despotism as the Shah lived the life of a king while his people starved and suffered. The Iranian people finally became fed with the yoke of the Shah and his American overlords who then started protesting and striking against the government en masse.  After a popular uprising  the Iranian people overthrew the shah  who then fled to America where we comforted and protected him like we do to many of our former proxy dictators when they get the boot from popular uprisings.
         Iran is the first fundamentalist Islamic country to be formed in the modern age and that seed was planted by the West, by us, by our dirty deeds done dirt cheap in the sand over there. We have no one to blame but ourselves by our iniquities, by our elitism, by our arrogance, by our injustices we inflict on so many and the error of our short-term goals that always backblow in the long-term. We kicked the dog one too many times as we chained him and abused him and how can anyone be surprised when he doesn’t wag his tail and lick our hand after years of abuse? Are we so out of touch with our own criminality and how we treat other peoples?  Are we that conceited? It seems that we were then, we still are now. And the seeds we sow grow into sometimes something we struggle with. That is a crime unto itself. This is injustice we inflict on others.  This is injustice we commit upon ourselves and on the principles and creed we say we stand for and live up to as we instead don’t. Then we twist the facts, tell the people back home a spin of the truth to feed their ego, stoke fear and label them ungrateful and a rouge state bent on harming us when it was we who harmed them.
        Do you remember when Ronald Reagan clandestinely, illegally sold Iran stinger missiles violating his own words, disobeying Congress and violating his oath the constitution and to comply with her laws? Then he used the profits of the sale to arm the Contras to commit crimes in Nicaragua. Sorry I digress in the devilry of details concerning history yet its always connected and by cause and effect it reverberates incessantly and without knowing most of the pertinent aspects you cannot understand the whole.  So great and powerful America, wielder of ½ the worlds nuclear weapons, the worlds only superpower is afraid Iran, who ironically spends the exact same amount on its military defense that our Pentagon does on propaganda and marketing, might want to develop nuclear weapons to protect itself?  Wouldn’t you if you were them and after all we have done to them?  We constantly threaten Iran with our nukes so why shouldn’t they covet to possess them as a deterrent to us?  Isn’t that exactly what we’ve learned about  Korea yesterday in those declassified files?  They developed nuclear weapons to deter us from using them on them which we threatened them constantly since the 40’s and still do!  Its used as a deterrent from attack.  Its common sense to want to protect yourself from nuclear weapons especially when the other side threatens you constantly, incessantly.  But there we go with that favoritism thing again.  The ‘do as I say and not as I do’ silliness. If we like you, you can have what you want but if we don’t get along, watch out because we demand to have your throat bared to our whims.
       The UN Charter provides that members must settle their disputes by peaceful means and no nation, even the exceptional like us or even our  protected little buddy Israel can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council.  After the blowback incident called 91/1, the council did pass two resolutions but neither authorized the use of military force against Afghanistan. The reason simply being that Afghanistan did no attack us.  A small group of freedom fighters who were tired of American interference and pursing national interests in the area for the past fifty years may have committed the act. They were mostly Saudi Arabian citizens who received training in America and received most of their funding from Saudi Arabia and yet we did not attack Saudi Arabia or even put pressure on them.  “Operation Enduring Freedom” was not legal  self-defense because the attack was a crime against humanity not ‘armed attacks’ by another nation. They were political acts of terror committed by people fed up with 50 years of our interference, our acts of terror and our funding and supporting tyrannical regimes friendly to us and willing to look the other way as long as they were paid off and supported.   Afghanistan never did not attack us, The government of Afghanistan run by the Tailiban never authorized an attack upon us or did it themselves.  14 Saudi Arabians did led by the master Saudi-Arabian; Bind Laden.  So by that logic we
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should have attacked Saudi Arabia but we couldn’t do that since they are our friends, they sell us oil and they allow us to have many military bases on their soil, or in this case, sand.  After the 9/11 attack, the FBI did go there to do interviews with the Bin Laden family and others  but the Saudi government wouldn’t allow it.  187 families tried to sue Saudi Arabia in the American court system seeking justice and restitution for financing Al Qaeda through the years  but the Justice department stepped in and quashed that to alleviate embarrassment as it smothered justice. The reason was that American citizens cannot sue a foreign government since foreign governments  have immunity from civilian lawsuits.  Yet we just allowed American families to sue and win a 400 million dollar suit against the country of Iraq when it was under Saddam’s rule  Again its that cherry picking.
       Bush attacked Afghanistan  3 weeks after 9/11because the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden without proof.  Bush did not offer proof because he hand none and we still don’t.  Just ask the FBI why.  Matter of fact Bin never said he did ‘authorize’ it till 2004.  Taking credit for an act he didn’t commit since he was accused and convicted of it in the first place?
         Speaking of that pretext, that red herring ,that false flag called 9/11, how many American kids (nonmilitary) have been killed in America by Muslims since that ‘incident’?  How many have been tortured, subject to rendition, disabled, imprisoned without charges?  Not a one.  How many Muslim kids and mothers, daughters, grandmothers have been wounded, murdered, tortured, by our glorious free the masses policies?  Thousands? Tens of thousands?  Probably hundreds of thousands.  Who has the right to point the finger at whom?  And now we have  the first ‘terrorist’ from Guantanamo in court for alleged crimes against humanity for throwing a grenade at foreign troops shooting at him and his colleagues for three hours.  Wouldn’t you do the same? If I wasn’t a nonviolent person I would be fighting American occupiers too because warmongering supporters and inflictors  are in the wrong for causing such torment on them.   While he was subject to rendition ,then imprisoned and then tortured since he was 15 at that Gulag of Guantanamo. So now our court system has cast not just a stone but throws it to hit anything from eyes blinded by the mote in our own?  Incredulous and outrageous.
        Before you were born when I  was in civics and history classes, we would snicker and snob at those poor junior members of the Warsaw Pact, laughing about how the average citizen was dirt poor, treated like criminals by their police with their; Papers Please demands on the streets anytime anywhere even when the citizen was not accused or suspected of criminal activity. It seemed to us that they lived in dark, sneaky, cant trust your neighbor, police states. Guilty till proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt,  seemed to be their way and we free American citizens would puff out our chests and smugly say to each other; ‘Look at that over there. That couldn’t happen  here. We would never allow ourselves to be treated like that, this is America and we‘re free forever.’  Now look at us, how the shoe is on the other foot and all the freedoms we took for granted and sneered at others for not enjoying somehow we had taken from us one by one until we must endure  blanket security checkpoints, safety checkpoints with a; Yes Sir, No Sir while we mumble under our breath our righteous indignation but we don’t dare exercise our rights, for who is stupid enough to do that?  Try something like that and then your really in trouble.  Guilty till proven innocent, with a state intelligence apparatus trolling the airways and phone lines, even now GPS attached to your car, as this is  designed to locate and separate the dissenters, the disobedient and those trouble makers who dare to exercises freedoms of speech, liberty, and pursuits of unfettered happiness.  Have you ever driven the streets on a holiday?  Why all the police?  To keep us safe from partiers, from the citizens who dare to speed?  No, of course not, we all know better. When we are out of our homes  we are prey and we all know it.  Our society is rusting, failing and becoming heaver under the weight of untenable debts, insane military forays, a thousand bases in 151 countries that we don’t need, cant afford and yet we still do, why?  
        Look upon the streets and highways anywhere in America and notice all the older folks picking up aluminum cans?  What kind of society is this that cant even afford to take care of its elderly?  Who delivers your paper to your home?  Its probably not the neighborhood kid like it was in my day, invariably it is a middle-aged couple who do this because their full time jobs don’t pay enough for them to get by on.  Both parents working full-time jobs and it still isn’t enough, why?  Stagnant wages for decades while government fees and taxes keep going up along with food costs, soaring housing costs spiraling beyond what we can reach.  Now where are the kids while the parents are out working?  They are being supervised and raised by cell phones, the TV or themselves with their friends who are in the same boat if they’re lucky.  The unlucky
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ones find gangs that offer the love, the food, the comradeship that they cant have at home.  What is your solution Congressman Schock?  Send money that we don’t have for empire building?  To shove our hypocrisy down the throats of those who don’t want us there?  To go create 10  terrorists after killing a freedom fighter who dared to stand up to the great American empire bombing his nation into the stone age? That taxpayer money that you send over there to bribe warlords who do what their told while cultivating opium and heroin for payoffs and kickbacks under the table, is off the record, right?  This is beyond stupidity, far outside the parameters of national interests and national security this is within the realm of odious and if you really thought about you do  without  a flag around your skull with objectivity you would know this.
        Out of every spent federal outlay dollar, 53 cents goes to the military-corporate conglomerate, while our total accumulate states debt adds up to over 1 trillion. The US trade imbalance is 533 billion, Social Security liability is 14.5 trillion. The US foreign debt is 4 trillion, US total debt is 54 trillion and our American unfunded liabilities is 110 trillion dollars what’s a few trillion for war eh, Aaron?  This is beyond insanity, this is a crime against the American people, against America’s future since this bill has a myriad of negative ramifications.  Our military yolk of occupation is internationally illegal and it violates our Constitution and violates your oath to the country, to its people and the constitution.  Only Congress can declare war and Congress never declared war upon Iraq nor Afghanistan.  You fight a war of deception on borrowed funds and that  dishonesty and deception is deplorable and disgusting.  While our nations infrastructure rots, our schools suffer from squeezed funding and our states borrow  from tomorrow to pay for today you sell out our future to occupy foreign nations to dominate them for their recourses and trade routes like this is some global game of Risk.  My question is, are you so far out of the loop of reality that you cannot comprehend common sense, right vs. wrong ?  Why are we becoming Rome in 400 AD, and more the incredulous of this question is why do we think and believe that is ok? When will we discover that our insanity is not a good thing but a bad thing?
       In your letter you ’expounded’ on why you feel it is righteous for us to be in Afghanistan  without their permission committing horrific violence and you gave the very, very clichéd to death, tried and true old; ‘we good they bad’ spiel. Aaron, how can you see the splinter in the Taliban’s eyes when your blinded by the mote in your own?  First off, one of your Republican heroes Ronnie Reagan publicly supported and financed the Muljadeen which morphed into the Taliban. When it serves Americas purpose we bed with the most base groups and governments.  And then when they’ve served our purpose we go down the road about our way, leaving a mess behind, without a backward glance because we always seem to see, believe and act in the short-term without ever a long-term plan, outlook or foresight.  We seem to get in trouble all the time bringing our military all over the world to subjugate a military solution to a political, economic or social problem and then failing, we find no end, no way out, no peace with honor.
       “Since the early 80’s, we have covertly supported the most conservative and fundamentalist factions of Islam, largely with a view to weakening secular, nationalist and progressive movements in the Middle East and Central Asia.”  The fundamentalist Wahhabi and Salafi missions for Saudi Arabia, were dispatched not just to Afghanistan but they also ended up in the Balkans and to the Muslim republics of the former Soviet republics which were again covertly supplied with funds training and arms by Us intelligence.   (Ibid ) What is often referred to as “Political Islam” is in large part a Frankenstein creation of the US Intelligence octopus apparatus with the kindly support, of course, of the M16 and the Mossad. We also did this with Hamas when it was convenient to use them as a counter to Arafat and the PLO.  Then when Arafat became irrelevant and the PLO too corrupted by Israeli and American bribes for the Palestine people to support and take seriously anymore, we discover we made something that we did not expect or desire as we invariably find over and over again, they have minds and agendas of their own which they develop into what they want, which can come into conflict with our own.  This what happened to Al-Qaeda  which also had a long ongoing relationship our CIA, with its role as a US sponsored ‘intelligence asset’ going back to the Soviet-Afghan war is never mentioned, why?  Our CIA has helped overthrow governments all over the world if it served our purpose, and many of them were democracies and popular elected officials but when they got in the way of USA corporate exploitation, we would come in and do our dirty work. The CIA has morphed into a paramilitary organization that kidnaps, tortures, renditions, bribes foreign political figures and at least understands that eventually the world will start putting 2 +2 together and summarizing that we are exporters
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of not just self-serving violence but exporters of terrorism as well (Per the recently released Wikileaks document-Red Cell Special Memo).  But in truth we have  done that since before we became America. Using reverse history you can trace these dirty deeds from the most recent to the first interactions with the natives on this continent.
       To which in a nutshell, just ask any Indian tribe if they felt that they were treated fairly and honorable by the American government and if the trust in the American government was or is today well worth it.  Just for one example of a broken treaty is the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868 which promised land to the Lakota Sioux, but gold was found in them dere Black Hills of South Dakota, also called the Badlands, speculators came in, the troops followed to protect them, the land was confiscated since it was overrun by white people, even though they had no right to be there and since our government protects its citizens and not natives, so then that treaty was broken and consequently the promised land was stolen.  Last summer if you recall, a Sioux delegation came before Congress demanding that you and your fellow congressmen honor at least one treaty, this one treaty, but instead they were told by you members of Congress that ‘it is too late’ and you offered to bribe them again by attempting to trade land for money but they refused even though that amount is now over 800 million dollars. How can a nation claim blessed divinity when it has no integrity with whom it stole from, and still does?
      We did the same thing with our southern neighbor around the same time when President Polk instigated and then started  the war of 1846 against Mexico as a false flag, as a pretext to steal ½ of Mexico and then after the war, when the treaty of Guadeloupe was forced upon Mexico, we flippantly tossed them 23 million dollars for it like so much spare change.  Even Colonialist  Europe derided such blatant land stealing in their newspapers.  In the Congress speeches were made justifying the war as the glory of expanding “Anglo-Saxon democracy” The marines glorify this dirty deed as a line in their hymn (From the halls of Montezuma…) like it was some amazing and noble endeavor when it was something this nation should be ashamed of. It was  simply lust for gold that was discovered in the west and the Southerners thirst for land.  Now by a karmic twist of history, the Mexicans are coming back to the land that was stolen from them. Good legal American citizens  now call the returning Mexicans illegal immigrants in this bizarre historic piece of irony since it is we who are the illegal immigrants from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond.
     Hawaii was ruled by  Queen Liliuokalani and her island nation was overrun and conquered by the Marines who then put her in house arrest while we made sugar and pineapple plantations of their islands by Dole and Del-Monte.  Ever read about the Platt amendment?  Named after Senator Platt who said in the Senate; “I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development we ought to lose no time in acquiring it.”  The Platt Amendment gave us the right to intervene in  in Cuban affairs at will, as it  basically also gave us Guantanamo Bay forever as long as we send them a check, and we do send them a check for its use every year which they cashed…once, by mistake. Also part of  the deal, was that Washington should determine Cuba’s financial and foreign policies. Pure unadulterated  imperialism.  Why don’t we give them back this land at Guantanamo Bay? It is not ours, they want it back and still we refuse to.  Instead we commit war crimes  and crimes against humanity there and Bush was right when he said that we don’t torture in America.  That was true because we did and still do it at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other foreign lands where we  pay to have it done. We pay to have it done in courtiers that we label ‘terrorist states’.  Who is the real terrorist state?  Our past is full of imperialistic violence, aggressive occupations and always for power, money and markets. Are we no different today.  Though I do know that some ‘conservatives’ in Texas are working  very hard to rewrite the history books so that this type  information is swept under the rug so that our precious American kids don’t read such things. For many,  too well, the lies work, work very well indeed.
        Yet I wish to be honest and prefer it to the lies and spin.  This is all consistent American foreign policy that is very old indeed.  The United States strives to dominate the world.  Once this is understood, all the apparent confusion, bizarreness, ambiguities and contradictions slip away.  Before WWII, we sought to financially and militarily dominate Mexico, Central and South America. As we exploited the weaker smaller nations in the Western Hemisphere we refused to let  the European powers do such. We reluctantly went to war in WWI and then went home immediately and let Europe sort out the carving up of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and the sick man of Europe; The Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire
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collapsed under its own weight with the October Revolution in 1917 just before it surrendered to the German Empire. We did dabble in the Pacific until the eventual, unavoidable ,FDR desired, confrontation with the other major pacific power; Japan.
       After WWII, we took the mantle from the last great empire; the British empire and took off running as our only real rival was the Soviet Union whose only real concern was self-preservation which was quite understandable after what they suffered during WWII and resentfully felt were left holding the bag and purposely bled white by the West, which, to a degree, they were.  They developed a certain bitterness towards the West. While the Soviet Union was basically consolidating its own acquisitions and fortifying its Warsaw Pact, its international outlook was utterly defensive.  It feared our first strike capability and their military was never designed or intended for a 1st strike or offensive purposes.  As in the giant chess board game (the Great Game as it was coined by a British journalist from the Russian-British conflict in Afghanistan back in the Nineteenth century) of the globe as the powers played, if they saw an opening to capture a territory, they quite naturally took it, as did we. Now we know this, too bad we didn’t back then, or did we?
        After WWII we tried to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments (two of which were Iran and Iraq) most of which were democratically-elected.  We massively intervened in  democratic elections in at least 30 countries,  which were mainly in Central and South America. We waged war/military actions either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army in 30 other nations.  While during the same period we attempted to assassinate 50 foreign rulers and dropped bombs in 30 countries. We also suppressed dozens of leftist or populist movements all over the world as we would try to assist in installing rightist groups keen on taking bribes and doing as we command for our financial exploitation.  Name me one year, just one year since America’s birth that she has not been at war or had military forays going somewhere in the world?  You cant, because  we’ve always have.  Martin Luther King was being too kind and conservative when he called America the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today back in 1967.  
        Aaron, you talk of the Taliban as being evil human beings who eat babies and throw acid in women’s faces and such. How about the Saud government which we support and now are going to sell 60 billion dollars worth of military equipment to?  What do they need all that military hardware for?  Against whom, should I ask?  When we’re there to protect them against any and all threats, and have done so.  Why should they need or require such quality and quantity of war equipment?  Is it for to eventually use against its own people over whom the Saud family rule as autocrats, as despots and who know that eventually will rise up and overthrow them one day?  This Saudi Arabia that produced Osama bin Landen and 15 member of the so-called 9/11 attacks.  Are  the Sauds global or internally humanitarians? Of course not.  They are a despotic monarchy ruling people by force with a autocratic system that we ignore and keep our mouths shut about as long as the spigot is running, right?
        In Saudi Arabia recently, a 19-year old female girl has been sentenced to 3 years in prison and 200 lashes for being in the company of an non-relative male as they were then kidnapped and raped by 7 men.  This is the type of nation we support and can you please tell me why justice here is not justice by the Taliban for the same crimes?  Its called hypocrisy Aaron.   But of course you may say that is over there and we don’t do that type of behavior to our people over here.  Don’t we Aaron?  When our FBI backed by goon-squad Police SWAT members armed to the teeth raided anti-war groups in 5 states all in the name of fighting  potential homeland terrorism, defending  freedom and civil liberty given to us by the supreme law of the land; the Constitution, to ‘counter terror’ as peace activists had stolen from them I-pads, computers, x-boxes and anything ‘pointy’.  This was political terrorism. This was pure Gestapo tactics and SAVAK harassment before the Democratic Convention coming up and getting some pre-information as to who is going to be there to do what.   Quite the democracy eh Aaron?  As we change our helpful police who are supposed to be here to serve and protect, into the American version of Stasi.  This is done against American citizens because they hold differing views, because they despise the crimes that are committed in our name, in foreign lands where we have no right to be and where they don’t want us.  This is the mark of totalitarianism  not autonomy. And this is in America.
         What we do in Afghanistan is America’s choice, right?  Trophy hunting, war crimes, atrocities and such.  I would find it amusing if it wasn’t so violent and why doesn’t anyone every ask the Afghans if they want us over there in their land?  Over here I hear debates all the time about a time-frame, how long we
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should stay or if we should go and if we do choose to leave should we start drawing down at such and such a date?  Yet never, not once, have I’ve heard one of our great leaders or pundits talk about what the Afghans want. Their wishes and desires are not just ignored, they are a void to the ears and thoughts of us over here and do you not Aaron find this odd?  Because what the Afghan people want doesn’t matter does it?  Secretary of Defense Gates recently made that attitude quite lucid  in his quote as he  just said  yesterday; “In fact we’re not ever leaving.”  Not when they have over a trillion dollars worth of our, I mean their resources waiting for us to extract, right?
      Now the latest drum beat for hate and war is against Iran.  The media is swarming over the story about a poor little Iranian girl about to be stoned for committing adultery.  She is also slated to be hanged for murdering her husband but somehow that information has slipped through the cracks. We execute by firing squad, by lethal injection, by hanging but stoning?  How barbaric. Yea Aaron we just bomb nations back into the stone age don’t we?  We also use a newer improved version of napalm, phosphorus shells, depleted uranium bullets, landmines and cluster bombs to name just a few of the more nasty items in our arsenal, but stoning?  How crude. But one woman about to be stoned?  That cuts to the very core of the  American conscience right? What a red herring, a false flag used for propaganda purposes as we arrest and harass journalists from Al Jeezera, imprison and torture children, pay for bounties for bodies, slaughter thousands, but we wouldn’t stoop to stoning.  We have our standards.  What about an American woman living in Arizona who made here living from prostitution  who was left in a cage to be baked for at least 4 hours in 107 degree heat?  Her guards ignored her requests for water.  She wasn’t even allowed to use the bathroom so she was forced to soil herself before she passed out.  She was still alive when she was taken to the hospital where she later died.  Surprisingly no charges were filed.  Maybe she didn’t have family, or her family didn’t know what happened to her.  Either way, such brutality should deserve our condemnation but alas she was no celebrity, she was an unknown American nobody and hence no one cared about Marcia Powell, 48, who died in an Arizona prison hospital in May of 2009.  The mainstream ignored her of course, she was not a somebody and her death could not be politically or otherwise exploited.  Do you think that what happened to her is an anomaly?
        If we are to judge by our own dastardly double-standards and blatant hypocrisy how would you rate and compare them to catholic priests who turn out to be pedophiles, who invariably are quietly shuffled to another church and parish under the cover up of the whitewash as not to embarrass the church?  Its an economic thing we learn later. As long as the victims family is properly paid off no one is the wiser, right? Or compare this to a President attacking a non-belligerent nation by means of pure shock and awe terrorism designed to frighten them into traumatized submission on false pretenses, on lies by twisted facts and spun fiction and after 7+ years what do we have to show for our war crimes?  Thousands of dead American service people, tens of thousands disabled and wounded while our actions have virtually destroyed one of the worlds great ancient civilizations, as 1+ million are now dead, millions are homeless refugees and this is the fruit of our assault and occupation.  And this is the country that did absolutely nothing to us and was no threat.
        Back in Afghanistan, we should dare to compare the Taliban to our kidnapping by rendition, our hiring of nations we despise to commit torture. Did you know that prior to the recent Supreme Court ruling ending the practice, that the United States was only one of six nations in the world in which the juvenile death penalty was legal? The great moral United States has been responsible for two-thirds of the juvenile executions worldwide since 2002.  We are of only three countries left that still use cluster-bombs and Obama last year refused to sign a treaty banning landmines which most of the world did. Moral high ground is where, here?  I have pictures like the one gracing the cover of the recent Times magazine.  It is a picture of Japanese people still suffering the effects of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  I have a photo of a 3 year old boy with horrific enlarged ‘bug-eyes’ compliments of Dupont and the American military dropping toxic waste on them in Vietnam.
         In this paragraph I will get far more detailed in the war crimes we committed by using Agent Orange and other such chemicals used in Vietnam as examples.  That ‘war’ which wasn’t a war ended 35 years  ago and children are still being born with birth defects from the chemical poisoning caused by defoliants sprayed by the millions of gallons by the US military.  For example there is a man named Phuong who is 19.  Phuong has severe physical deformities that would break your heart, and he is just like 3 million other Vietnamese who
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suffers from the residue of Agent Orange, that toxic chemical the US military forces used to clear out the shrubbery in Vietnam.  In its manufacture, the chemical was contaminated with TCDD or dioxin, according to an investigation done in the journal Science;  “The most toxic substance known to humans.” Peter Schuck wrote a book Agent Orange on Trial published by Harvard University Press, in which he reported that those companies which made this defoliant knew “as early as 1952” that the deadly dioxin has contaminated the chemical. In 2003 the journal Nature reported that between 1962and 1972 the US military sprayed an estimated 80 million litres of Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam.  Dr. Nguyen, a Vietnamese researcher in a 2007 interview said that; “I met one family of victims with four blinded children, no eyes-period.”
        Admiral ER Zumwalt Jr wrote in a now declassified report for the Department of Veterans Affairs reporting that Dow Chemical and other manufactures knew Agent Orange exposure could cause “general organ toxicity” and “general systematic problems” as early as 1964. This is all part of a trend that started in WWII where civilian casualties rose in percentage to the decrease in military casualties in which today it is estimated that 75% of all causalities are now civilian and that has even increased higher when it comes to the Predator and Reaper drone affair, civilians account for 90% of those causalities. Thank goodness we are the good guys or these deeds would be considered war crimes.  But since we’re the big kid on the block and we hold sway at the UN we will never have be held accountable, and if by chance we do, we will just pay off some victims like we do now in Afghanistan or hector and /or bribe members of the Security Council.  And then of course back at home we rewrite the truth with a elbow-greased scrub of rub-uh-dub-dub in our school history books. Remember history has always been written by the victors.
        Dr. Wayne Dwernychich, who led the first team of western scientists to study the long-term affects of spraying in Vietnam said in an interview; “We did a number of soil samples and followed [dioxin contamination from Agent Orange spraying] through the food chain into ponds, to fish, into ducks and then into humans.  We found it in children who had been born long after the war ended.  We concluded that the only way they could be contaminated is through food and nursing.”   “Former US military bases including Bien Hoa, Phu Cat and the infamous Danang are the worst sites of present day contamination.”
      Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was recently in Vietnam trying to do a bit of  white-washing and sweeping under the rug from former war crimes and had the audacity to lecture the Vietnamese government and people on human rights while she was quoted as saying; “ We have been working with Vietnam for about nine years to try to remedy the effects of Agent Orange.” Clinton, also in the microcosm of hypocrisy lectured and criticized Vietnam for jailing rights activists and censoring the internet and urged the communist party to “strengthen its commitment to human rights.”  Since 2007 the United States Congress using taxpayer money and  funds squeezed from the guilty chemical companies who sold this nightmare to the US military, magnanimously spent a whopping 9 millions dollars to clean up contaminated areas and for related health actives. I presume that you, Aaron voted for this?   Now this amount is approximately equal to the cost of 12 Tomahawk cruise missiles or 3-times of what the Clintons spent on their daughters wedding.  Mighty white of us eh Aaron? Especially since in June, a joint panel of Vietnamese and American policy-makers, citizens and scientists estimated the true cost of a genuine proper clean up and rehabilitation for the sick and disabled at over 300 million dollars.  A comprehensive white-wash and a sweet sweeping job wouldn’t you say?
        Back in 1984, a suit filed by US Veterans reached an out-of-court settlement with companies that produced the chemicals, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical.  Incredulously Dow Chemical maintains that there is no evidence to link Agent Orange to illnesses from US Veterans and Vietnamese civilians.  Hence saving themselves much money and accountability for their responsibility, which is the same position the Veterans Administration held for years, again, of course for the purpose of saving money and much embarrassment.
       Good thing for many who’ve suffered from this horrific contamination that the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the scientific authority in the US when it comes to settling government policy, has linked exposure to a myriad of conditions including cancers, diabetes, and spina bifida. Just like their American counterparts, the Vietnamese victims have also tried to gain justice in the US courts, but after a series of cases, much to social justice’s despair, the US supreme court refused to hear the case in 2009.  Ruling on the right of corporations to finance political advertising was more enticing and far more lucrative for them.
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Steve Milloy, a scholar at the Cato Institute, wrote a commentary for Fox news; “It is difficult to rationalize why [American] Vietnam veterans are compensated for Agent Orange exposure but Vietnamese civilians shouldn’t be.”  No it isn’t.   In the decades before any responsibility was ever acknowledged by the government or those companies for American Veterans, it is still denied to the Vietnamese victims and so when it comes to foreigners, we aren’t exactly knowng as gentle  philanthropists more as psychotic killers. If we did admit to our responsibly we would be held accountable for it and it would be considered a war crime, which no matter what happens we could never endure nor admit to.  Because we’re America huff huff.
          Now let us go backward by going into the future,our present.  We never did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which was our original false flag for attack, invasion and occupation until we showed up and used them ourselves.  We used them as collective punishment on a defiant city (Fallujah) in November of 2004, which by the way, of course is a war crime.  What we did in Fallujah not only killed thousands of civilians who were trapped but it totally destroyed their infrastructure and after 6 years the sewage system is still nonfunctional as raw sewage flows in the streets.  But freedom isn’t free right?  The price might be your liberty, security, cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, along with genetic abnormality.  “Young women in Fallujah are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs.  In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemia’s.”  Yep, freedom sure isn’t free for those who now suffer under it magnanimously endowed by our American grace.  We now have statistics of increased rates of leukemia and other horrors form the use of depleted uranium bullets that were used by the illegal American Military Forces in Falluja. “Results of a population-based epidemiological study organized by Malak Hamdan and Chris Busby are published on 03 July 2010 in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH) based in Basie, Switzerland.  They show increases in cancer, leukemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human  population birth sex ratio significantly greater than those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”
        Within five years of the attacks on Fallujah when the United States forces used depleted uranium bullets within the city, their was an 4-fold increase in all cancer. Strange how the spectrum of cancer is similar to that of the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to the ionized radiation from the bomb and the proceeding fallout from the uranium in the fallout.  Studying samples of cancer rates in Egypt and Jordan, researchers found that there had been a 38-fold increase in leukemia and almost a 10-fold increase in female breast cancer while also finding increases in lymphoma and brain tumors in adults. The 12-fold increases in childhood cancer was particularly odd since the cancer and leukemia rates were in a younger age group than normally would be expected.  Dr. Busby who is a visiting professor in the University of Ulster and is the Scientific Director of Green Audit, an independent environmental research organization stated; “To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks occurred.”  Which is when and where the United States armed forces were using depleted uranium bullets.
        Reports have been compilied with information about numbers that confirm that 1 out of 6 Iraqi’s  is an orphan.  What a price they must pay for freedom and democracy.  Freedom from the love and security of a mother and father.  Do you wonder if they find democracy in the streets of their cities, in the towns or in the refugee camps, maybe in  the alleys where they sleep, or in the open fields and neighboring countries where hundreds of thousands of children now live? Freedom from a full belly?  We hand out lip service about children’s rights by the truckload as the real truth hits the fan with gusto. But lets put a girl on the cover of Time magazine to convince ourselves that this is the future for the innocents if we extract ourselves from our occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.  But this is where we sit upon our  high ground in our exceptional  moral justification. It should shock you to find out that 16% of the Iraqi population are orphans which means that  ½ of all this nations children are orphans.  What have we wrought here?  These are the most vulnerable, the voiceless children of Iraq who never deserved what we in our messiah complex gave them year after year.  A devastated country with a ruined infrastructure and now we leave in the middle of the night with the stars and stripes flying high in jingoistic splendor.  Who pays the price over here for what we do over there?
      The former US Ambassador to the Vatican has often told a story of hosting a delegation of Iraqi bishops who were in Rome shortly after the 2003 invasion.  When the ambassador greeted the bishops at the steps of the ambassadors residence they said to him; “Thank you for liberating our country.” But 7 years later it is quite evident that sentiments have changed.  Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shelemon Warduni of Baghad has now said;
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“The Americans leave behind an Iraq worse off than the one they found seven years ago.  After toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein, the United States never achieved what they promised to the world.  Now there’s only rubble.  We’ve become targets, we’re afraid to even leave the house.  The situation is worse for everyone, but especially for us Christians.  The withdrawal of the United States is a disastrous flight from responsibly, which will multiply the atrocities and increase the instability even more.”
       The Bishop went on; “That the great saint Karol Wojtyla was right to condemn the war in Iraq.  It created far more problems than it resolved.  Given how its ended up, it would have been better not to intervene.  The recourse to force has simply meant destruction, without producing any benefit for the country.  Economic profit was put at the center of everything, the protection of foreign interests, and not the defense of values, of conscience, and of the common good.  Thus in the streets of our cities there’s no trace of democracy, only fear and violence.  We’re paying an extremely high price in blood and terror.  The United States thought exclusively about their own financial interests, and no one worried about the welfare of Iraq and the Iraqi’s.  We’re suffering from the absence of a stable government.  Without real authority and an effective sovereign, chaos rules.”
       We shouldn’t have gone to Iraq, we have no right to stay in Iraq no matter what bs Obama is spinning about our leaving Iraq.  We are not leaving the green triangle, we are not leaving a 1 billion dollar embassy, we are not leaving 48 US military bases.  We are  leaving tens of thousands of private contractors.  We are leaving 50,0000+ combat troops who are called non-combat troops who get combat pay, who go to combat when needed and have. This doublespeak concerning troops left behind in Iraq is like saying virgin prostitutes-its just as ridiculous and nonsensical.   We’re there until we get kicked out since this has all been part of a preconceived scheme designed years ago by backroom autocrats inside a think tank who decided to take advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union, to keep the military-conglomerate-complex profits rolling in by the pretext of inflated fear to sell to the American public and to Congress who hold the purse strings.                            
       Though China’s military is purely defensive, regionally-based and non-threatening obviously her economic muscle was growing and this potentiality was then stoked up as a future threat to America, her domination and secondarily a threat to the West and Taiwan.  So a well conceived propaganda backroom plan and the bonus of  911 were the perfect red herring’s to initiate their plan by the rising tide of xenophobia  whose objective is to instill fear, ethnic hatred  to rouse and harness our good citizens unbending, patriotic fever of support for the next stage of America’s two-front war that is a global war.  The whole world is now a battlefield then.  The last great ultimate, never-ending world war to end all time.
        Who is this global enemy of ours? Our enemy is a word, an euphonium, we are at war on those dastardly Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists. Or so our MSM would have you believe.  Yet while “all Muslims are not terrorists”, all terrorist attacks are reported by our unbiased media as being perpetrated by Muslims, Islamic militants, Radical Fundamentalist Islamic Terrorists.  In America the Muslim community is a target, racial profiling is rampant, much as the Jews in Germany were targets, as scapegoats for this war, which is a crusade, a religious war while our President Bush stated emphatically that this is not a war on Islam.  Can you name any other group we are fighting or killing?  Is there a non-Muslim country we are militarily occupying…against their will?  Ask your friends, your colleagues as to who is the enemy and I’ll lay 10-1 that the vast majority of them say that Muslims are the enemy.  
       And then our media has spun another false flag for the American public to get steamed about and keep the pot stirred good and hot.  Building a mosque on sacred hollowed ground!  A mosque at Ground Zero?  What audacity!  What a false flag.  What a nifty propaganda ploy keeping Americans  stirred up with hate and anger at those Muslims who dare to build a mosque on ground zero.  Never mind that the truth that  it’s really a community center with Christian, Jewish and Islamic places of worship 2 blocks from that hole in the ground that after 9 years we still cant get anything built there as a memorial or shrine.  What a farce.  Maybe 9/11 wouldn’t had happened over here if we weren’t over there committing mini-9/11’s on the sly for decades over there.
      What nation has been to war more often or longer or killed more than America has since WWII?  No doubt the Taliban and al-Qaeda are not boy scouts but does judging them justify assassinations, death squads, mass-murder of children and women, the bribing of warlords who do the same but at a much smaller scale and the starvation of an entire population whom 25% are refugees in neighboring nations? How many have we slaughtered? And we get away with it. We have a right to judge them?  Does the devil have the
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right to judge Pol Pot?  How can we see well enough with the giant mote in our own eyes to accurately toss a stone at the silver in another’s?
      Let us do some reverse recent history Aaron. Let us start in Iraq a few years back, when Madeline Albright said that after being informed that ½ a million Iraqi children are dead directly because of sanctions we imposed and she said; “We think the price was worth it”.  How bout later when we carpet-bombed  Iraqi towns and cities as acts of terrorism for punishment for daring to rise up against us in anger over our war crimes.  Didn’t hear anything like that on Fox news or CNN did we?  The media we allowed over there was muzzled like a rabid mutt at a fancy dog show.  What about Abu Ghraib that according to General Taguba the orders for torture went all the way to the White House.  Of course that American hero was forced to resign while another hero we have (Brad Manning)  was in solitary confinement in Kuwait, but now he’s in solitary confinement in a cage in  Virginia while this 22-year old kid is facing over 50 years for having a conscience, who found moral justification for reporting war crimes that were covered up, buried and stashed away from prying eyes, but one pair found them belonging to a  real American hero.  There is no flag large enough, glorious nor exceptional enough to justify the crime of killing innocents or violating the same morals and laws we say we believe in and which you have take an oath to defend and protect.  Hypocrisy and double standards are then  at their most base and Orwellian in the punishment of people of conscience who shine with rare courage and stand out in the glory and epitome of what is good and right  expounding the principles of the American creed .  What is his reward Aaron?  He gets solitary confinement and the threat of many years in an American military prison.  While those American leaders who are responsible and  who have committed wars crimes and crimes against humanity get pensions and live life free and clear.
        It seems that the heart of our difference on this subject of war that is not war against people who didn’t attack us and who we now illegally occupy is as follows;  I would rather take the hundreds of billions of dollars and instead of losing them (9.1 billion like they did in Iraq), or using them to kill people, maim children, churn out orphans, invent widows, bribe warlords and devastating an ancient nations infrastructure over there. I would rather use the money to fix our own crumbling infrastructure back here in the states.  How bout cutting back on the debt and the horrific interest payments that could be used for other endeavors instead of making your bosses the bankers richer while making our kids poorer?  US total interest debt is 2 trillion dollars and rising like a rocket as this years interest payment is over 300 billion and next year it will increase since our debt increases. State debt is 1.2 trillion dollars.  US foreign debt is 4 trillion dollars.  US federal budget deficit this year is 1.5 trillion dollars. Our Social Security liability is 14.5 trillion dollars.  Our Medicare debt is 76 trillion dollars and US unfunded  liabilities bill is now 110 trillion dollars.  And while you know this as well as I, you send over to Afghanistan another 33 billion dollars this year that is not even paid for in contrast to the demands of your constitutes in contrast to reality and common sense. We don’t want our money, our kids, our war machines, our hubris sent over there.  We want it all back here where it belongs, to work for us and our needs here.
        We need to use the money that you sent over there, over here to build shelters for the homeless, rehabilitation centers for the drug addicted and  alcoholics.  We need to fund social programs and supply schools with adequate staff and fund the schools so that they aren’t firing teachers, cutting back programs and having the school kids coming home every week with a new angle to make money to assist in financial supporting financially teetering on the brink schools.  I want my kids to go to public school to get a good education not to come home and be a salesman for the school.  I don’t blame the school, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I blame you politicians who waste our taxes on empire building while the infrastructure of our society is crumbling and falling apart and it doesn’t need to be this way. You send our hard earned taxpayer money overseas  and it gets horribly wasted killing civilians like back in July 2010 when 39 women and children were slaughtered by our attack.  The bombing took place in the city of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand. Of course NATO had previously stated that 6 people were killed and most of them were militants. What were these militants?  Were they simply freedom fighters trying to kick off the yoke of our occupation and from our continuous, incessant war crimes?  No, they weren’t even that, just simply women and children in the wrong place at the wrong time in their own country.  This information came from a report released by the Afghan government that is basically a proxy government and they had the gumption to at least release this information.  This is how you create terrorists.  By war crimes like this.  Maybe if we weren’t there doing crimes against humanity over there  they would have no reason to come
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over here and pay us back.  Its too simple.  This isn’t rocket science.  Its common sense.  But you politicians refuse to listen or learn and so what happened in Sangin will happen again some other place in another town with the same ugly results and more angry men and women with be created looking for justified revenge. How much money did that attack cost?
        I work for a not for profit agency called Horizon House who assist the developmentally disabled and 6 months ago the state was late by 1.5 million in payments.  We had to cut back services, and this is just plain wrong.  For ‘free’ public schooling in Spring Valley this year it will cost my wife and I  nearly $400 for two kids. The cost went up 20% from last year and by coincidence it is just the same amount that vehicle registration went up this year too while my wages stayed the same.  Actually we lost money since our health care went up from $72 a month 8 years ago to more than double that today for deeply reduced services.  Do I blame the schools, the state, or our wonderful federal government and specifically our elected officials in the senate and congress for the problems we all face?  You folks in Washington spend money like we’re in a glut instead of hard times.  You turn on the spigot and everyone has their mouth under it getting all they can get without any sense of responsibility or conservation, let alone what’s best for the country. Flagrant selfish consumption is disgusting and robs everyone else, especially our future, the children.  I don’t think you folks in Washtinton should be paid a salary.  You should get a free apartment, 3 free meals a day and that’s it.  How much money would that save the taxpayers, eh Aaron.  Please feel free to add that to your platform.  For I quite sure that the voters would definitely go for it.
     You politicians waste so much on so many things that are unneeded and just plain stupid.  We have more than 1000 military bases in 152 countries while we spend more on militarism than the whole world does combined to fight an ‘enemy’ that has no submarines, no jet fighters, no tanks, no cruisers let alone an aircraft carrier.  Who seem to be fighting us only because we are over there in their land as economic/political overlords and military occupiers.  This is exactly what Eisenhower was talking about and warned us about concerning the military-industrial complex which  I have modernized into the; corporate military conglomerate.  One half of the federal budget is consumed by the military and 53 cents on the federal dollar is geared to it. While only a penny of every federal dollar goes to relating to the world through diplomacy ,development, and international cooperation.  Militarism is a maw too wide to feed anymore. It robs every other endeavor and program of the recourse they need.  We are going to spend over 323billion dollars for 2,443F-35 fighter jets as the largest defense program of all time.  For what?  Why?  For an enemy that doesn’t even have a hot air balloon?  This is beyond waste.  it’s a con job to feed obese corporations like Lockheed/Martin who was awarded this contract who have thousands of lobbyists filling the coffers of congressmen to make sure they get contracts like this today and in the future at the price of the rest of the country. How can we save our life if we cut out our heart and drain ourselves of blood? Because…Cha-Ching, our weapons manufactures and war profiteers are too big to ignore, trim or deny. Because they are true rulers of this empire, they are the owners and people like you and I are merely their servants and I know that  you must know this by now.
      Fear is used as a false flag to fund massive, unsustainable, unneeded, military expenditures. All wars are economic and rackets.  When you commit and then execute a military solution to a political problem the net result is a Verdun.  The president of Germany, who just recently resigned for doing something very rare for a politician, he told the truth about why Germany was in Afghanistan;  “We are there for trade routes, jobs, income  and resources.”  Which of course, is why we’re over there because we want over here what they have over there.   We have worldwide national interests that honor no borders or boundaries, that roughshod over any people or culture so long as we get what we are addicted to and have become; a selfish, self-centered, self-serving, self-absorbed materialistic-worshiping, consuming society of jingoistic egocentric muscle-bound bully’s and brats. Now again we’re lost in a war that is not a war, seeking a military solution to a political problem. But we’ve lost our way, as we seem to do over and over again like it was a repeat of Vietnam, as we bomb the hell out them without the expected and desired results assuming that terror and violence will force them into submission but instead we discover that they are resolute and determined to throw off the American yoke of oppression and foreign intervention.  Can you blame them, can you not see that we would do the same if that was done to us?   But we seem to be  so enclosed and blinded by our false exceptionalism, insensitivity and hubris that most Americans  can’t see, hear, or notice  beyond a nationalistic myopic view that the whole world wants to be America.  What conceit, what rubbish.  Take
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your paid war ho’s and go home where they belong and defend your beaches, your cites your borders and then you wouldn’t have so many problems.  But that’s not the real game is it? The continuing game.  The game of world power and domination and great profits to be had.
         Read our history without the ‘exceptional’ stars and stripes as blinders and as an pretext, then you will notice that the marines invaded Cuba four times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times (In 1846 we invaded and stole ½ of Mexico in our mad, manifest destiny sanctioned robbery which is gloried by the charge up San Juan hill and the to the Halls of Montezuma),and Columbia 4 times.  Our government has intervened in foreign lands more than 200 times and we keep doing it because who can stop us right Mr. Schock?  We loved the Platt amendment so well, we keep trying to force it on every nation that we intervene in.  And all those victims of our imperialism, all those people not only died in vain they died from our vanity, from our so called exceptionalism which is nothing more that that dried out, re-spun, historical manifest destiny revisited upon those unfortunates who dare to have what we want, won’t get out of the way or sell it to us, or allow us our bases in their lands.  We are on an imperialistic quest and have been for centuries.  We just wrap a flag around it, claim its for their own good whether they want it or not and we go in guns a` blazing.
        We are lucky enough, or maybe not lucky, to live in times where the horror and ugliness of war can be shown for what it is on the internet circumventing government censorship that is quite rampant and growing by leaps and bounds.  The ugly violence of war  that should be avoided at all costs, that solves nothing and they knew thousands of years ago that violence begets violence and that those who live by the sword will die by it.  Thank God we have people like Julian Assange, Major General Taguba, Army Private Bradley Manning, Lt. Watada, in the world today who don’t allow those mad warmongers to hide the truth, to spin war as some glorious endeavor when in reality it is the ultimate crime. And yet the cost of conscience can be the life of a good citizen, a good heart, like Alyssa Peterson who committed suicide, as one of the first American soldiers to become a victim in Iraq who chose to take her own life rather than to continue to watch or participate in  the torture of prisoners under American control at Abu Ghraib.  Another ‘incident’ that was whitewashed, swept and covered up with the armies massive broom and carpet and very few people  knows about her or what she suffered for and against.  Alyssa Peterson isn‘t even a footnote in our book of war victims.  She should be revered as an American hero for refusing to commit war crimes or to violate her principles and her moral and innocent adherence to the meaning of the Constitution and to what her nation says it stands for. What did it to her?  It killed her.  And those who are used like Pat Tillman for propaganda purposes as it twisted the truth, lied to his parents and as the truth is finally found out, there is justified outrage and even a movie is now about it and in militaristic irony, it is not allowed to be shown at US military bases.  What a travesty of justice based upon his story and honestly, we should be ashamed for the cynical ploy to use Pat Tillman and then lying to his parents for so long is just inexcusable. Funny how the military is not going to showing this movie at the military theaters on base
         These people who dare to dissent, to exercise their rights, exposing dishonorable deeds, corruption, war crimes and vileness are the heroes who are shining lights on the darkness of cover-up, on the lies, as our bureaucrats conceal and suppress information as they tag ‘truth’ as classified in the name of national security and state secrets, or wrap it in a flag to protect our troops out in the field simply to prevent embarrassing information or discomforting photos of our crimes from coming to light. Not wanting the public to know what we do over there is knowledge that  might inspire us to stop them over here as our citizens commit their crimes over there and thus no one would have the justification to come over here as blowback. It really is simple as that.  We must have transparency and total public disclosure or we give our government officials a blank check, allowing our elected officials to do whatever they want, however they want to do it, to whomever they want,  to violate our laws, to dishonor our creeds and defy our codes all in the name of national security and national interest.  We then lose the last vestiges of our freedoms, honor and integrity.  We cannot abdicate our right and duty to be fully informed so that at the very least we can then make the proper decisions concerning our governments actions.  We must demand our right to know what our government is really doing in our name which then in a democracy even as polluted and corrupted as ours is completely our responsibility.  We are accountable.
          Today we have incarcerated individuals uncharged and untried locked up as they are tortured and suffering in a country year after year, that doesn’t want us there, in a nation that we have an embargo against
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as we label them a terrorist state as we occupy their land on an open-ended lease which they don’t recognize or even cash they checks we send them yearly as payment.  Can you blame them as they despise what we do on their land at Guantanamo Bay? The wrong we do here we do at all our black sites, at prisons we control in other nations and it is a blight on our former good name and honor. Yes, today it may be a caged Muslim in Cuba, Poland, Afghanistan, etc. Yesterday it was communists we went looking for and hunting, tomorrow it could be you for daring to disagree with the government or having a resentment against authority and their won’t be anybody left to defend you in the land of the free, encaged, home of the brave, afraid, oh yes very much afraid of that banging that might come at 3 o’clock in the morning as armored, armed to the teeth police break down your door wanting to talk to you down at the station.
       Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  Winston Churchill: “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge know to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.” Now we live in such times,  within a nation that has given its president the power to assassinate our own citizens if they are deemed by him to be terrorists and/or a threat to the nation.
         I find this abhorrent and the ultimate in oxymoron and Orwellian logic to say that Julian Assange ‘might have blood on his hands.’ for releasing information on WikiLeaks exposing many examples of the
wrongs our military has committed and our public servants tried to cover-up.   In truth it is those who support, fund, engineer and participate in  this violence that are criminals by drowning in blood. Blood of the innocents, blood of the duped, blood of those freedom fighters who fight our illegal and immoral invasion and occupation as they fight coalition troops who are themselves the real insurgents while being  part of this Americanized nightmare.  Blood on the flag, innocent blood on our ethics and principles, blood dripping from every armed merchant, war profiteer,  blood on  those complacent, on those who are acquiescent in this crime against humanity, and innocent blood on those who betray their faith, who sully and soil their morality and principles  by their silence of betrayal.
      I personally have downloaded copies of the Afghan  War Diaries and I am placing them in laundry  mats,  grocery stores, churches, synagogues, mosques, schools and everywhere else I can think of and do you know why?  Nonviolent non-cooperation with injustice  is a sacred duty.  This duty is my right and I take it very seriously for what we do with our military overseas is forcing them to commit war crimes and those who support it, participate, and fund it are war criminals and hence I must do what I can to stop this offense against all that we truly hold dear and true.  This is just another rich man’s war and a poor mans fight for resources that are not ours to steal, for domination of a region where we have no right to be and which is not our lot, for glory that is inglorious, for a lie that is spun as truth. Because what you don’t understand is that the best laid plans of mice and men with inflated ego, vanity, bigotry, and narcissist hegemony are meaningless as it heads towards a slippery slope overlooking  a mighty fall and all the flim -flam conceived and spun as an honorable foreign endeavor is not going to cover up the truth.
        These conflicts are themselves a running train of abuses and war crimes that staggers the imagination and should sicken your stomach.  As in the Vietnam Conflict  I remember the reports coming about Lt. Calley  who ordered an assault on 2villages(one was known as Pinkville) containing mostly women and children. Between 344-507 were slaughtered.  Many were tortured, beaten and sexually assaulted.  If it wasn’t for an brave helicopter pilot seeing it from above and reporting, it would have stayed buried in the jungles of Vietnam.  Three servicemen did try to stop the carnage and protect the wounded and for their humanitarian efforts they were rewarded by being denounced by US Congressmen. Back home, in the states they received hate mail and death threats. Mutilated animals would sometimes show up on their front yards.  Lt. Calley was eventually charged, convicted and his punishment for murdering hundreds of  women and children was a life sentence that became 6 years of house arrest of which he served only 3 years.  The most celebrated war crime of this conflict and the war criminal serves a whopping 3 years of house arrest. He was quoted as saying; “I was just following orders.”  This is just a minor foot note in the war crimes committed by America. Our M/O does not change, just the acts, the places, faces and names do but not the acts per se.  Dennis Bunning a member of that company involved in the MY Lai Massacre said; “ I would say that most people in our company didn’t consider the Vietnamese human.”
       This year, an Iraqi veteran by the name of Josh Stieber revealed some similar attitudes towards non-
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Americans. He said the United States Military trains its members to dehumanize Iraqis. During cadence marches he told of this little ditty; “I went down to the market where all the women shop- I pulled out my machete and I began to chop-I went down to the park where all the children play- I pulled out my machinegun and I began to spray.” And the price for such noble humanitarianism and attitudes are the Department of Defenses stats that tell us that every 36 hours a member of the military service is committing suicide.  After 3-4 combat deployments its seems these human beings suffer from acute stress and depression, can you imagine that Aaron?  In today’s volunteer army where they are paid to be war prostitutes so many find their service and deeds unlivable since they find them, many times too late, that they are mendacious and fraudulent.  Throw enough money at these soldiers and they become tempted to go back again. It’s a sick ploy since you know that this is the only way that we keep our ‘wars’ going into perpetual motion forever since if we had a draft, we would have had revolution in this country years ago. Is the price worth it to you ‘war supporters’ since it’s a price you don’t have to pay or even consider a price?  But its such an honor and wonderful duty to serve, right?  To serve ones country like the Nazis were doing( Every German soldiers of WWII had on his belt buckle; Go with God), or every Russian solder as they marched into Hungary in 1956 or Poland in September of 1939. Just like our kids who serve and marched into Afghanistan and Iraq with God on their side too.
        I try to teach the children a different higher servitude.  Serve your principles and your values first.  Place your principles much higher than nations because morality stretches miles above petty nations.  Egalitarianism is inclusive for all not exclusive to any one nation or religion.   While these usually poor and desperate kids get bribed big bucks to re-enlist and then many find that its just too much for them to psychologically handle anymore. More die from suicide each year than from combat and this is a red flag that should be hoisted high above Congress but its shushed down instead. Its too inconvenient.  It’s a casualty of war and it’s a price that must be paid as orators spew out their explanations from their lofty soapboxes in the air-conditioned finely carpeted halls of Congress right after a fine 5-star lunch created by highly trained Chefs.
         Rewind to the President of change who in Dec/2009 ordered cruise missiles to be launched on a nation we are not at war with (Yemen) with the resulting 120 murdered human beings. Ah, but who bats an eye, eh Aaron?  Its not like their life’s had the value equal to that of an American.  I didn’t know that America has the right to assassinate people without due process on the mere suspicion they may be linked to terrorist organizations. Can the CIA be jury, judge and executioner in any land it deems to act?  What about Blackwater, who employees were convicted of murder and the name of this gang of killers changes its name to escape persecution to Xe and then the organization gets rehired to commit its war crimes in Afghanistan and who screams our their voices in our halls of Congress for justice and accountability?  Dennis Kuchinich and Ron Paul.  But their voices are drowned out by the tidal waterfall of silence from the vast majority of the government, from the MSM, and this is a outrage to our principles, to our founding fathers,  to our ideals.
         For every person we murder we create 10,100, no a thousand enemies who seek vengeance.  And how could anyone, in their right mind, mind you, blame them?  We break the law we shout from the pulpit we adhere to, we violate our rules of engagement, we commit war crimes and expect no one to object, to simply get away with it like Israel does.  Wrong!  Cause and effect, black blow, chickens coming home to roost and simple, beautiful karma. Our leaders, our people need to be held accountable for they are responsible for what we allow to happen. Crimes are no less nor more because an American does them. Crimes should be judged by the crime, not by who does them. And the worst crime of all is this is only and all about money.  Making money for those who have more than they know what to do with  but are addicted to the acquisition of it and the power it creates.
        Here is a poem written by Layla Awar(2009), an Iraqi citizen that conveys her thoughts, anger and pain; “Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us..
You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you…
Come and search for them in the rubble of your “surgical”  air raids, you may find a little leg or a little hand…pleading  for your attention.
Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morels of food…Yes, come and see…”
          Tell me sir, how important is it you, to us, that those who are responsible for the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan and the slaughtered victims are served justice?  Seems it doesn’t even get a shrug, quite the
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contrary you and so many duped and deceived good citizens feel that we’re going a good job, we are scarifying for the messiah complex, the price of our brave American forces and the resolve of those back home.  Are you all simply just insane? And here sir, is an inconvenient truth, War is ugly, never justified and the carnage we inflict will eventually backblow in spades upon our shores, ocean or not.
      If we are really serious about ending or curtailing domestic terrorism, then help end foreign wars and hold those accountable for war crimes instead of pardoning them as they are allowed to get off scott-free to then live the rest of their lives as rich smiling, smug, self-satisfied men and women occasionally giving their vaunted opinions on MSM as if they have nothing to be held accountable to.  What do you think this tells the rest of the world?  What do you think this tells our children here in America who learn that law, and justice is rotten swiss cheese and only applies to some not all, and if you reside in the high strata of power, you will be pardoned for your crimes no matter how heinous? . Instead we allow not just torture to continue we allow confessions squeezed from torture to be used in our court system.
       For example, the confessions of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen  charged with terrorism can be used at his trial.  Now this person was 15 years old when he was captured and he has spent years at the Guantanamo Bay Resorts getting tortured, traumatized beyond his humanity and he will have the distinction of being the first child to be prosecuted for war crimes in modern history.  Charged with war crimes?  We charge a child with war crimes, a child that we tortured in a country that we label a terrorist state on land we refuse to give back?  How crazy can we get before we stop and take a breath and comprehend what we‘re doing?  Omar Khadr is  accused of killing a US solder after throwing a grenade at the end of a four-hour long bombardment of an al-Qaeda compound back in 2002.  Now understand that after being attacked for four hours by a military force that had no right to do this since this constitutes war crime, this 15 year old kid became fed up with the 4-hour attack and then threw a grenade at the very military force that was trying to kill him. Afterwards  he is captured, tortured for 8 years and now he will be tried for war crimes. This will be the first case to go to trial under the system of military commissions for ‘detainees’ captured by US forces.  Another proud moment not just for America, but for the American justice system and the American concepts of justice.  This stuff is just too unbelievable to be true but it is.
       Within our culture of violence it is not even worth mentioning hardly anymore when it comes to causalities and destruction.  It is a blurb, a temporary blip on the radar screen of American societies  very short attention span.  We have become numb to the suffering of others over there because its not done to us over here and that in itself is great cause to reflect upon and ponder. But when we are conditioned by double-speak to be seen as truth and Americans are too medicated to think clearly as we adapt and adjust to the bizarre as the norm, as we accept crimes as a price we pay for the spin of our deeds.  Drones are murdering innocent people in Afghanistan and Pakistan every week.  But its Monday Night Football! Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I gotta get a turkey and start calling  my relatives.
      What do you call a nation, no an empire that glorifies patriotic militarism as a cure-all for virtually every problem in the name of peace, democracy and freedom?  What do you call a nation that was build upon  dissent, confrontation to tyranny, individualism, civil rights and freedom where, the one who rights this letter is now afraid that the protectors of freedom  may come a’ knockin’ in the wee hours of the morning, beat down the door and steal his words, his thoughts and principles?  So I am not docile, obedient and curbed.  Quite the opposite actually and that is my choice.  How could I in good conscience stand by meekly and quiet as I watch this country become the exact monster that  it used to stand up to and defend against?
       I refuse to fear tyranny or Gestapo-like tactics used in this country to serve warrants,  to search for drugs or seditious material. What do I do when the eagle comes with talons outstretched and in response I have just a middle finger to respond?  What kind of country breaks into the homes of its citizens with brutality and overwhelming force?  This just happened the other day to an elderly Russian immigrant couple.  The storm-troopers busted in with a wrong address smashing things, overturning private property with overwhelming brutality. Throughout this attack the old couple were trying to tell the kind police officers that they had no drugs but when the police come busting in your house, they are not there to reason, think or listen they are there to terrorize with overwhelming force.  Because of the publicity, the sheriffs office is in contact now with the couple to work out how to redress the $3,000 worth of damage done. Just an everyday occurrence in the land called America, home of the free, shining light for all the world to see.
        I live in a nation  that values the greed and hunger for materialism and self-gratification anyway it can
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get it more than its responsibly to achieve its stated aspirations upon its principles and creeds which it plays over and over again like an old song and dance all over the news.  Where gun ownership is a right more important that the right to speaks ones mind though it may dissent from the majority, when a voice calls upon the society to look at what it does and think in an unflattering way.  I fear for my freedom as I practice the right to write and do what I want in a nation that has the right of freedom as the number one amendment in its law.  How can I fight, nonviolently against such spin?  This nation that calls itself a Christian nation as it spoils and violates Christianities three most valued principles; (1) Love your neighbor as thyself (2) Eschew materialism and self-gratification (3) Thou Shalt Not Kill.   How do I, an average joe with no great talents contend with the most powerful nation that the world has ever seen and by a vast majority believes that  its own bs doesn’t just not smell but smells sweet as milk and honey?  How to get American citizens to become aware  that what they believe is not what they perceive and what they see through rose-colored glaesse is horrifying and needs fixing? I have no articulate answer or easy solution  but only my words, my fragile words tossed out like fireflies into the tempest of a raging hurricane.  But isn’t that what each of us is here for?  To discover injustice and transform it into justice?  To do the right thing no matter cost nor price? To walk upon crime and cry-out  no I will not let this happen!
        While this  whole society is based on avariciousness and infantile self-centeredness as it utilizes its massive military prowess to attain what it craves and behind in its bloody wake the broken remains of victims, the many victims of its locust-type mentality. Greed is the motive, hunger is the whip and the carrot is a life style that is frivolous, unsatisfying and no dream but a horrible price for those who supply it as nothing more than indentured servants.
       But at one time years back, in my opinion, we had a wonderful opportunity. We were at the crossroads of 1989 when we had a chance to change direction of not just our nation but the world as well.  With the demise of the Soviet empire we could have been good sports and reached down, helped them up and ushered in a new era of cooperation, of mutual respect and worked to heal the harm we caused not to just us, but to our planet as well. We could have done the right thing and chose the better path. The pathway  to egalitarianism, nonviolence, respectful negotiations when confronted with conundrums between people and with a more mature, altruistic approach and outlook with an inclusive viewpoint for the betterment of all not just for a pre-selected chosen few.  We could have opted  to aspire towards a more spiritual course. To strive towards attainable lofty goals of tolerance, empathy, selflessness, and to eschew self-centered nationalistic stance and egocentric concerns as we could have, back at that crossroad in time, selected less narrow minded and exclusive items inside our interests.  We could have changed the world for the better but we allowed the warmongers, the owners, the deceivers, the dollar patriots and the ultra rich to stay on their selfish course, on the road of violence, of confrontation, of divide and conquer conflicts since it was such a profitable one and had a myriad of uses to control the populous.  We allowed those old politicians and their masters the military-corporate-conglomerate to decide our destiny and path.
        Where is that path leading us to today?  Escalating violence rampant upon the world, wasted precious resources squandered on arms purchasing, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  The distain for money spent on cleaning up our environment, habitat destruction and the denial of global climatic change because it means that we have to pay to fix our mess, to clean our nest.  Nationals debts are skyrocketing out of control with a pass the bill forward mentality which our kids will suffer for as we lay our bills upon their future and that is a queer inheritance to pass on. Yes, so much was lost at the crossroad of 1989 and so much unneeded and unnecessary suffering by so many and yet I am still optimistic today for you can always change your path by simply going off in a different direction and that only takes one step.  One step at a time. One step at a time to reach the promised land.  The promised land that is in your heart.  The promised land is in the good deeds you do, it’s the morality of your passion for the downtrodden, its working for the victimized and the promised land  is nonviolently resisting violence and confronting social injustice as a sacred duty.
      Yet, here we are today. Thanks to the Defense Planning Guidance or otherwise known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine we have gone down a quite nasty slippery slope instead.  They waited for a false flag, a pretext for implementation which 911 turned out to be.  I am not necessarily saying 911 was an inside job, but inside information was known by many who were in power. And this was exactly what they were praying for, working for, building for and by coincidence, here it was handed to them on a silver platter.
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       The perfect excuse for perpetual war and conflict while those who suffer not, enjoy incredible profit.  While the people rally around the flag and those who dissent are branded  un-American compatriots pushed off to the sidelines as marginalized rejects and potential homegrown terrorists who must now be kept under surveillance, just in case.  Project for a New American Century rewrote this into its “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” This final solution for the planned domination of the world is not a clichéd conspiracy theory, it is a now implemented plan that has been run rough-shot all over the globe including here in America starting with the Patriot Act and with no end in sight.  This is the blueprint for the Economic, Political, Militarily and Cultural domination of the globe as a totalitarian system that is cementing itself tighter and stronger like an anaconda upon the freedom and health of our world.
       What is the Americans peoples reward for all the sacrifices of their military heroes and for being on the ‘winning team’?  We get repressive laws, mass-unaccountable spying, shackled rights, crumbling social services, a government hiding behind ‘state secrets’ and most painful of all, the debt that towers in giant filing cabinets in the dark and dusty basement of our government under the heading of; Sucker. Our senior recipients suffer for empire too as they will see benefits cut year after year with no cola for the second year in a row.  But this is the price of phony patriotism as the stock holding rich wrap themselves in the flag all to procure immense  war profits. This is the result of living within a culture of violence.  Numbed and conditioned by seeing 200,000 acts of violence on TV including 16,000 murders by the time our children are 18.  And our military knows this as their advertising budgets has ballooned to 4.8 billion dollars and as they target our kids about how fun it is to play war for real just like they did as kids with video games and pressing thumbs.  And of course, again and again its wrapped around a flag as their egos are fed on ‘American Exceptionalism’ moral superiority, moral justification, and the innate goodness of living in a shining nation that the Almighty has chosen  to lead the world.  Don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when those hero celebrations occur over and over everywhere you look?  Flags like grass on the yard, everywhere you turn.  Sniff, we’re so good and their so bad Thank God I is an American.  Give me a break.
        Obama last year  refused to join a treaty banning landmines that 156 other nations signed because “We determined we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention.”.   US Senator Patrick Leahy called this decision. “A default of US leadership.”  So what else is new? I guess to Obama and others in our government who were silent about this since 5,197 casualties were not enough to sway our signing, even though 1/3 of these casualties were children and many of these accidents were from kids trying to dig them up for the change they get from dealers and metal traders.  Three people die a day in Afghanistan from landmines, many of them ours built here in the good ol’ usa..
       We are living within a decrepit, decaying failing state that is a house of cards crumbling around our very feet.  We spend $759,000 a year to maintain each of our occupying soldiers, while our real economic growth has shrunk 5 decades in a row.  Wages are stagnant, too many of you in government keep threatening to cut back on entitlement programs while your pay, with raises, perks, and pension plan is never ever on the items for discussion let alone for the chopping block.  Our poverty is at the highest its been since the Great Depression with tent cities cropping up all over the US.  Health care costs go through the roof and we’re the only nation in the developed world that doesn’t have a single payer system (funny how ½ of your donations came from the health industry) which you argue against while you all decry it as a product of socialism without seeing that you yourself live under socialism.  The government (us poor over-burdened taxpayers) pays your wages, pays for your free health care, your staff, your pension plan and you don’t see that this is the epitome of socialisms?  Career Politicians should be done away with as should wages for them, and the complete of utter banning of lobbyists. This would save quite a bit of money for the American people would it not?  It would basically wipe out the greasy palms too.
      Our American provision of public services such as health care, education, social welfare, and public safety is a complete and utter failure as you spend taxpayer money that could be used to deal with these issues and instead you send it to Afghanistan to pay for crimes against humanity and to finance an occupation that is beyond illegal, it is an abomination and we can’t afford it.  Our jobs are emigrated to overseas labor markets while our corporations get tax cuts, most don’t even pay taxes and this is simply suicidal.  One of my favorite statistics is from an 1968 World Book encyclopedia article with the Federal
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government as the source.  It stated that in 1956 36% of Federal Income came from corporations.  From another source back in 2004 I have learned that amount has shrunk to 7%.  Guess who has to shoulder the difference of 36 years?
        The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th in health care delivery, the infant mortality rate has sunk from 12th in 1960 to 29th in 1990 and 30th in 2005.  The United States ranks 35th in the Environmental Performance Index and 96th in the Global Peace Index. We’re 1?  In what?  Money wasted on militarism? As we spend more on militarism than the whole world does combined?  We have a debt that is greater that the whole world’s combined and we have more of our citizens in prison and jails than any other country in the world.  Even more than communist China with its 1+billion people.  We are #1 in the least amount of time averaged for vacation time by our workers at 2 weeks.  We’re also #1 in time spent off maternity leave as we and only two other nations who don’t pay for maternity leave.  We’re #1 in some fine categories are we not? Who has killed more people by assassination last year?  Who is involved in more wars than us? Who has more foreigners in jails in their own countries  and prisons that the good ol’ usa?  Sure are some ugly stats are they not?  The last and not the least is that we are 4.6% of the worlds population as we consume 25% of its energy while ‘creating’ 40% of its physical garbage.  Yes we are a failing state and in my opinion it would be quite a boon for the health and well-being of the planet when it does completely fail and its swept into the dustbin of history.
        What does the good book say of pride?  What does it say about living by the sword?  What does it say about wealth and the lust for it? I hear over and over about America being a  Christian state.  If America was a Christian nation then shouldn’t it abide and follow the message of Christ? Are we not commanded to Love our enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that which despitefully use you, and persecute you? How can we say we’re one thing and practice another?  I believe that is what is defined as utter hypocrisy, is it not?
             As for the prophetic foresight from the warnings of our forefathers who so long ago knew that this day would come, they are now rolling in their graves in utter shame and disgust at what they sacrificed and wrought now spoiled into the nightmare that they feared.  There are no heroes in this illegal war and occupation, just duped kids committing acts that cut against all the principles that they were taught at home and in church.  Traumatized and shell-shocked from the hell they’ve been exposed to and participated in.  No heroes here just war criminals sullying their souls under a polluted and soiled flag dripping with the blood of the innocents. And yet I maybe in err.  We do have heroes, men like Lt. Watada who refused to be deployed to Iraq.  Private Brad Manning who released page after page of secret memos and info that was covered up to hide the ugliness of what we do.  Julain Assange who is a hero who shines a light with his
Wikileaks site that is designed, again, to put illumination on the horrors of deception, acts of war crimes, and other odious endeavors that governments seek to hide by sweeping it under state secret right which is violation of a democracy and what it stands for.  It seems that in America we have an incredible flaw in our collective national memory.  We keep redoing the same mistakes over and over again with virtually the same results.  Our high minded intentions are instead a cover-up for a more selfish, nationalistic pursuit of economic agenda of hegemony and ends justify the means actions.  We use the same old violence to solve political problems that are none of our business and then wonder why we are unsuccessful, the natives rise up in anger and indignation and there we are again, stuck in a war that is not war, uncomprehending why our flaunted military doesn’t beat the natives into fear, submission and obedience. Its an old axiom gentlemen that all empires overlook; easy to conquer, hard to rule.
        If at all feasible for you and your entourage when you have your summer off, you and I could debate in front of the public.  The debate would be quite simple and upfront.  It would involve the question of what does the public want to do with their taxes?  It is up to the citizens of the18th Congressional District to decide by our democratic process what they would like to do with the hard-earned money that is taken from them and decide where it should go.  Do you think congressman, that the good citizens that you serve want their taxes to feed the bloated and obese arms industry who obviously profit quite handsomely from their fallacious self-sacrificing patriotism, to fill the wide and deep pockets of the opulent who profit most generously as well?   By supplying an over-extended militaristic empire with its tentacles circling the globe and building forts everywhere it can get away with it utilizing gunboat diplomacy, bribes or outright take-overs we slash our own throats. As  the poor, duped, desperate and the conned  get sent overseas in wars
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that are wrong, evil and odious or does America really want them here behind our borders to stay here for our schools, our infrastructure, to pay our debt?  Or that since you support the ‘war’ with taxpayer money maybe you could support it with your person over there.  You could rally round the flag, sing a few patriotic songs, and you all can lie and the convince each other about the quality  and honor of the America manifest destiny mission, about  our self-righteous crusade that is stained in hypocrisy, reeking of double standards and wrapped in a flag that is no more than a swastika banner. You could try to articulate your reasons for  the spending hundreds of billions of dollars for violence against people who never did us any harm, murdering innocent men, women and children, obliterating cultures that are thousands of years older than ours.   I would take the position that keeping American  money here in America spent for the benefit of America and Americans while using it here for the good of the American people and our country is responsible and good for the country.  I await your reply.  And if not, you will be seeing me in January.  I promise. We have a great deal to discuss and much to do. Yet, in all honesty,  I would be surprised to hear from you since I am not a corporation, foreign or domestic and I don’t have millions of dollars to stuff into any politicians coffer or ad campaigns. To which, thanks to the good ol’ Supreme Court it is quite legal now.  Corporate contributions have no limits, no nationality requirements and are the true political sponsors, finally out of the closet, now and forever.
         If you were wondering about the title of this letter, it is from an old Star Trek episode that is a play on words and it also art imitating life.  It was a story about two planets at war for hundreds of years. It was war of perpetual impetus, a war that had no ending.  Yet it was a war that caused no physical destruction whatsoever. No cites nor towns were damaged or destroyed , no harm was done to either planet.  They
fought a virtual computer war in which simulated attacks were committed on each other, damage and casualties were analyzed and then assessed as the planet that was attacked,  subsequently, would then randomly take the number of citizens, by a lottery system that would have died in that attack and killed them as casualties.  The infrastructure was never impeded and the citizens lives carried on uninterrupted except by the deaths that were sacrificed for the patriotic war effort.  In a nutshell, near the end of the program Captain Kirk destroyed their computers and then explained with passionate oratory that that from now on they’ll have to negotiate with their adversaries to work out some type of a solution to their war and now without the tools of war.  Because if they don’t they are faced with real war.  War that is horrifying and terrible.  For this is war as it should be.  This is war as it has to be. War must be ugly, appalling, and something to be avoided at all costs.  For if war is not gruesome and horrific then we would have hardly any reason to eschew then, right?
        Dare to Resist Violence is a precept they dare to try to teach my kids at grade school here in Spring Valley as they preach and subscribe to a zero-policy towards violence at school. Which I of course support. I support nonviolent solutions to violent conundrums and I feel myself in a vast minority.  For justified and politically sanctioned violence is  taught in a nation morphed into a militantly aggressive empire that is the greatest purveyor and exporter of violence  and terrorism in the world today, bar none that goes back decades if not centuries.  We now bow, fawningly worship to our flawless, never can do wrong military, and we never question our troops or what they do as our national and our international policy are bookends with our militarism and never questioned by a patriotic, a nationalistic supporter of the city on the hill, the exceptional, the greatest nation that world has ever seen; The United States of America.  The narcissistic, hegemonic, self-worshipping and arrogant epitome of becoming the monster that we fought against and stood against.  We mourn and feel sorry for ourselves over our 911 as we reek out a vengeance a thousand-fold year after year at whoever and whenever we so desire for who can stop us being the biggest and baddest bully in the global neighborhood?  9/11 maybe was an inside job,  it sure was a pretext, a false flag , a red herring, a gulf of Tonkin incident as it becomes our Remember the Alamo and Remember the Maine.  And each one of those was the pretext to go robbing, killing and a’ pillaging nations who had what we lusted for and wouldn’t give up without a fight.  9/11 used to wipe out the Magna Carta, habeas corpus, privacy, freedoms, human rights and the shredding of the Constitution.  911 used to rendition, to torture the untried and uncharged.   911 stirred around and around over and over as something never to be forgotten but never learned from that his was a political attack and they came over here to repay what we’ve been doing over there over and over again decade after decade since WWII. How many 911’s paid back is enough to sate your vengeance?  How many more must be sacrificed until you say enough?  Hundreds of thousands dead,
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wounded and disabled, millions displaced and homeless refugees.  God man ,are you not yet ashamed, sick of the harm we have caused so many?  Aren’t you yet ill by the evil we inflict?  Is it not time yet to go home, weed our overgrown garden and let others have the god-given freedom to tend their own?
         We are involved in a so-called war on terror which is really a war of terrorism today by committing terrorism upon the world, that continues year after year with no end, no victory, nor solution in sight to this global two-front war that has the  majority of American people and leadership drowning in cognitive dissonance  which by queer coincidence is  extremely similar to that  45 year old science fiction episode described in the previous chapter as art imitates life in the future.
        Our leadership has learned a few lessons from the Vietnam ‘war’.  For one, don’t let the media report
freely the truth on the battlefield, or what the troops feel and think.  Control every word and photo from everyone in the media’s employ.  And even more and above that, don’t allow the media to show the people back home to see what war is really all about.  Don’t allow them to report the truth about the insanity, the falsity, the absolute horror  and stupidity of the conflict. By controlling the process of information going out, you then control the perception of what the public thinks.
       This is why in the beginning of the land conflict in the second Iraq conflict Defense Secretary Rumsfled ordered a military attack by an Apache helicopter on a civilian news organization, Al Jeezera in Baghdad  and one photographer was murdered in this attack. Using military equipment and personal to attack nonmilitary targets constitutes a war crime yet back home in America nary a word was spoken, hardly an eyebrow raised at this infraction, this murder for this was war, right?  No it wasn’t war since members of Congress never did declare war and had no right to. Did you know that the very first casualties of America’s assault called Shock and Awe in the Iraqi ‘War’ II was a family consisting of a mother, father and two daughters?  This family was in the same building where Saddam was and American intelligence sources reported to the military that information, so they tried to ‘cut the head’ by taking out Saddam, but the problem was, by the time the F-116 got there and dropped its bomb, Saddam was no longer there, he left twenty minutes earlier.  So in fact, the beginning of an illegal war, an illegal attack by the American armed forces on another country was in fact an act  murder on a family of civilians.  This was a foreboding of things to come, was it not?  Just one crime after another.  If truth be told in complete accuracy then the start of the Iraq war was actually just an escalation of continuing military air operations that have been going on since the end of the first Iraq ‘war’ started by George Bush senior.  Those idiotic, ill-conceived  immoral fly by zones and the sanctions imposed that did nothing but force the Iraqi people to suffer horrendously causing the UN estimated deaths of ½ million children.  Was it worth it?
        This is a type of war that we’re in now which we are waging with the jingoistic acquiesce and complicity within our nation by the vast majority of its citizens.  And over the horizon, war with all it’s  wasteful violence, ugliness and horror whitewashed and swept under the rug from the view and perception
of the American public.  A war of tactics without a political nor strategic mission or solution. Yet this is a war with a myriad of benefits for this is a war in which the conflict itself is the reason, the purpose and resolution.  It feeds upon itself. This is a war that gathers and unifies the patriotic rabble under the stars and stripes with dissent ignored, marginalized and labeled at  best unpatriotic, misguided, foolish and at the most (in all likelihood in the near future) traitorous, treasonous and liable for punishment.
       This a war that is not paid for today but is instead pushed forward as a bill in a filing cabinet, as an IOU.  While the profits and benefits to be enjoyed in the short term by the war profiteers, the bankers, the arm merchants and the contractors and their employers, the corporations like GE, Lockheed/Martin, Halliburton or even more sleazy ones like  Xe as it changes its name, changes nations and continues its horrid crimes from lessons learned from their last contract.
        To me personally the greatest problem of all, is the apathy of so many who have that disdainful obviously xenophobic  ‘out of sight, out of mind’ if it doesn’t affect me and mine I don’t care mentality.  As long as our towns and cities do not suffer, as long as the cost is paid for by salaried and glorified ‘heroes’, or as I call them; war ho’s who fight for God, country and our way of life with no questions asked, as  the war is gift-wrapped and packaged as a crusade of good vs. evil. It goes without saying that our side always is self-righteous and good, as we kill and destroy only  for the noblest of causes with the finest of principles and if by chance of war, errors are made, then they are packaged as anomalies or accidents, or inflicted by a few bad apples.  Bu let me ask you two a question.  Do you think it really matters to a mother if her child
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was killed by an American drone or an al Qaeda rocket?  Murder is murder and intentions are irrelevant and inconsequential to the fact that a loved one is dead to a mother’s broken heart. Murder caused by tyranny or murder caused by democracy is still an ugly crime.  While in Iraq, as our brave American warriors are hiding up on the tops tables with their skirts up in the air within the green triangle, safe behinds slabs of reinforced cement in their $100million dollar forts surrounded by tanks, armored hummers and machine gun nests one in every 6 Iraqis is an orphan, many homeless without no where to go. Where is the shelter, where is security for them?  You’ve brought this nightmare to them and now the American quest for democracy in the middle east is coming to an end and as our troops flee in the middle of the night leaving this ancient land decimated, bombed into rubble, in chaos and the truth of this crime cannot be stilled or abandoned.  Over 1 million slaughtered with millions homeless and wandering aimless as hollow-eyed refugees while America magnanimously  takes in 6000 to her shores as refugees.  This simply turns my stomach as it would any who care for what we do and are accountable for.  As we learn that torture at the Polish Black site, at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo are not anomalies but actually policy.  What a disgrace as we learn that we do all the evils we claim others do which reinforces the notion that all who have died, killed, have done so in vain, for lies, for everything they thought they were fighting for as they learn  they are the monsters not the freedom fighters they fight.  And our new and improved manifest destiny is just an excuse to go over there and bring back here what we have been grown accustomed to and demand; self-gratification and self-indulgence and they are not boons but banes.  Not worthy of a good society and certainly just the opposite of what Jesus taught and what Christianity is all about practiced by the Unitarian Universalism creed, the Mennonites and the Quakers who are unfortunately in a vast minority.
        What a disgraceful and disgusting  double-speak Orwellian farce are these global aggressive attacks and occupations we  have committed  on two non-belligerent nations, who were no immediate threat to us as we spin and paste a label on their freedom fighters combating for the liberation of their countries as we call them insurgents, militants, violent radical activists, Islamic fundamentalists and other colorful inaccurate euphuisms.  While the real insurgency is populated by insurgents carrying the American flag and American corporate employees paid for by the American taxpayer. It seems that we have lost not just our tolerance but our compassion as well. We are morally lost here in lands where we have no right to be.  We are on the wrong side of a conflict that shouldn’t have been as we traded our moral high ground, our moral justification for the only purpose of war; economic gains for the oligarchy.   For the price and karmic bill for the horrors of innocent children orphaned, kids disabled and children murdered by our CIA, Special Ops, Air Force and Army, hired Private Armies doesn’t even cause any of us to bat an eye, or even warrant a tear as we are shielded by propaganda, by the oppressive suppression of truth, the refusal for the release of photos or video clips depicting  the horrors of war as journalists and photographers are muzzled and used as propaganda fluff which is  a price that could fill the grand canyon and rise higher than the top of Mount Rushmore, which by the way is stolen Indian land and another broken Indian treaty; the treaty of Fort Laramie 1868.  Another American crime done to the rightful owners on land where we had no right to be let alone steal and we still have the gall and audacity not to seek redress or give it back.
        So in conclusion after these many pages I have tried to influence your views which is not just my right and duty, it is also my responsibility as your employer, as a fellow human being and world citizen, it is of
course, more so, also my obligation as a spiritual caring person with a conscience and an empathy for those who never deserved this nations violence, yet suffer most horrendously from it 24/7 year after year,  to whom you arrogantly and contemptuously  label and brand as; enemies, subhumans, insurgents, terrorists and militants and are yet none of these things, for they are freedom fighters, farmers, citizens, human beings, people, men and women fighting for the freedom of their ancient country suffering  from under the savage
and condescending, haughty, conceited and over-confident snootiness from  under the yoke of your countries oppression, violence and hegemonic occupation. Because they are not just our equals but my brothers, people who deserve emancipation, who have the right to self-determination from our interference and have by God, the sovereignty to solve their own problems without the  vaunted American superciliousness stuffed down their throats which they don’t deserve nor want.
      I have tried to teach you two that what you support is virtually the opposite of what you pray to, deem, reason, dream, work for, think, preach and unfortunately as yet, practice not.  As to what you hold as principles and values and what is committed in your name are instead the prefect examples of cognitive
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dissonance.  You have just started your careers in public servitude for your nation and for  the citizens in the 18th district in Illinois.  Yet the path you’ve taken and what you expound upon can  easily take a wrong turn and more so, can easily become perverted and corrupted  through myopicism, blind nationalism, jingoistic tribalism, fraudulence, self-righteousness, bandwagon, infantile patriotism, xenophobia,  obtuse nepotism  all encased by our non-kosher Chutzpah, when it comes to comprehension by the difference between right and wrong.  This soliloquy you may find long-winded and even to a degree somewhat pretentious preaching.  Maybe so, and yet at the bottom line I simply propose that violence and war are never, ever justified.  Violence always begets violence and wars are always economic. That the ends never justify the means and the fee for an empires reach and grasp is much too costly if the price is the murder of innocent men, women, children with the polluting and staining of ones convictions, human rights, massive untenable debt pushed forward to the future, the staining and polluting of our principles and values. And your voting to send more money to Afghanistan to finance war crimes with my money is a crime that I cannot turn my back to.  The Afghan war is no humanitarian effort and never was and no matter many times its spun as such, I will not stand idly by and not resist it. You cant make a silk purse out of this pigs ear no matter how hard you all try.  The government tries to shamelessly join its military effort with humanitarian efforts to pegmatite its debauched efforts and I find this especially cynical and revolting.
        When will our thirst for retribution and hunger for vengeance be finally sated, when is enough, enough?  When will we tire of our hypocrisy and grow up to be an honest member of the global society and practice what we preach, which we state is our creed, to treat other nations as equals not as pawns or potential assets to be exploited and consumed? We have signed treaties and we must honor them and obey them without exception.  We have eloquent axioms, maxims, statements in our Constitution, in the UN preamble, laws concerning human rights, self-determination, individual and national emancipation, and equal rights with equality of nations where all are commanded to be treated equally under the law as no one is favored or given special treatment.  We have promised ourselves as we dragged ourselves bloodied and wounded from the abyss of carnage at Yalta, San Francisco, Potsdam, the UN Charter, The Hague and Geneva Conventions that are now our foundations of international laws to adhere to.  We must honor those words into the action that will carry for today and into tomorrow. I much respect and honor the symbolism concerning justice. Justice is blind with a balancing scale in one hand.  This speaks of justice as it should be.  Justice that treats all equal no matter which class one belongs to, which country on resides in, without favoritism, without nepotism, without bias, without prejudice, distaining bigotry, without discrimination, with complete integrity and objectivity.  Justice can be this if we honor it as such which is what it stands for; utter egalitarianism in our nationhood and global mutuality.
        I was born free here as a spiritual being encased around a physical body  with the gift of free choice. And this wasn’t handed to me by my Chief Magistrate but by the love of my Maker and no one can take that freedom from me unless I allow them to.  And sure as hell as I’m sitting here I don’t need some duped, brainwashed  kid with a gun to get on a plane travel 6,000 miles to kill some person I don’t know, inhabit his house and occupy his land to keep it. As this is played off as some grotesques favor for me as he is ‘fighting for my freedom’.  No thanks.  I decide to what I owe allegiance to and to what I obey.  When a law is unjust, hypocritical, applied as a double-standard or enforced with favoritism I decide as a sovereign entity on this planet if I obey it or not.  As an individual I decide my philosophy, my way of life, where and how I live and no other person nor ‘nation’, or law is my ruler nor supervisor and I am subordinate to no other person nor society unless I cede that right by free will and choice. If it is imposed upon me by force than it is my right and duty to my freedom of self to decide how I confront that force. The basic pillar of this nation founded in 1776 was decided upon the right of the individual and a group of like-individuals  to disagree, dissent, revolt, overthrow and then institute new government that more reflects to the wills and the rights of WE THE PEOPLE.  It was so important to the founding fathers that they put it within the Declaration of Independence not once but twice. Stating that is the not just the right but it is the duty of the people to revolt against tyranny, against unjust law, against the government  when it decays, when it morphs into despotism and autocracy as an obligatory system I must serve under and pay homage to as a pledge of peer-enforced compulsory allegiance to which  I refuse. I pledge my allegiance to no flag nor government.  They in fact owe me as a person, as a citizen their allegiance instead.  The government serves me since I am its employer and ruler not the other way around. If it was that it would autocracy, not democracy.  
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        I believe in nonviolent non cooperation resistance to repression to oppression to violence and to resist a government that has become not the will and tool of the people but a tool of the plutocracy to rule the people as indentured servants, which is what we are heading.  This republic was  founded upon the rights of the individual and with the civil rights entitled by our maker within a society of like-beings. So that when I see the law ignored by the few and powerful I take umbrage and I resist.  When I see basic rights and life snuffed out by leaders and politicians who get away with murder then the house of cards collapses and it is my right and duty to set it right.  When people like a president can say and get away with statements like; “If the president does its not a crime.” Then I am subject to none of it, only to my depth of conscience and the measure of my morality.
        My humanity is far more important that my nationality.  I am a world citizen and I eschew illusory borders and boundaries. I do believe that all people are created equal which means one persons value over here has no more worth than a human being over there.  Since the color of a persons skin means as much as the color of their eyes compared to ones worth of soul, as to the quality of their religion and belief system no lesser nor greater than mine own.  The worth of human life is the same no matter where they are born, where they live, what work they do.  If we are the children of a maker then we are all brothers and sisters and hence we are all equal, worthy without any one society, nor any particular  nation, or culture, ethnic group  more exceptional than another. I believe in absolute and utter egalitarianism.  If one feels the need to measure, calibrate then ones humility not ones pride for the former is worthy and the latter not.
         My strata of allegiance is to principles and values that  are far more important than anyone I know, including my self.  I bow before no flag, no nation.  My loyalties are to ahimsa and altruism., to justice, human rights, human dignity, social justice, tolerance.  I  aspire to follow the golden rule as I attempt to walk the noble eightfold path.  Religions to me are sections of the color wheel.  Each religion a section of that wheel. Again their core values are compatible, and equal to each other. My loyalty is to this planet as a steward not as a locust, and to a developing tolerance and it brooks no obedience to laws that are bias or, unfair.
       I disagree and eschew with violence, unjust laws, selfish capitalism and aim to teach what I have been taught and I am obligated to teach what I comprehend. My only tools are my words and deeds.  Words that I toss out like fireflies in the tempest of a hurricane and I watch them fly free.  Tiny white things in a darkest dark. But I see them. They fly with others from the past.  Little tiny bits of light, lights of justice forever on the wind.  Lights on the wing. The quest for egalitarianism born of love.
       Justice more times than not is in conflict with law and it is every persons duty to disobey law when it is unjust.  When the regime is committing crimes at home or overseas then it needs to be overthrown and institute a new government “and to provide new guards for their future security.”
       I understand that to resist iniquity and injustice is a sacred duty no matter where I find it.  I am obliged to disobey law that I find hypocritical selectively applied and  unjust.  Slavery was at one time the law.  The robbing of the Indian tribes became legal even when treaties were proven to be illegally broken by the United States government.  Just as the military occupation of a foreign nations land at Guantanamo we made legal. Yet  it is highly immoral and it is illegal but it suits our purpose to control this place where we torture uncharged and untried human beings we call ‘detainees’.  The same place where 3 men were murdered under our custody and the military commander  called them suicides and then we sent their bodies home with the evidence gone, their throats  were cut out.
      The founders of this nation were breaking the law as King George called them terrorists, which they were, but their cause, in their eyes, was just.  War crimes committed by presidents and by men in power though illegal became pardonable. If justice forced upon any, anywhere is injustice committed and suffered, then to be docile and silent is itself a crime to ones conscience, to morality to ones Maker. How can I or how could I  teach my children to respect law when such things occur?  It doesn’t matter to me if I live within the confines of a society when I find  its overseas acts are horrifically unjust, its harassment of dissenters at home tyrannical as the government and its military is committing violence against it owns people and beyond its borders are acts I cannot ignore nor resist.  I truly believe in justice.  Just laws I will comply with if no one is above it.  But when I see the privileged few flutter daintily above it, then it releases me from its shackles and constraints. And as to unjust laws, I not only ignore them but teach others to do so as well.  And what you ask is unjust law?  Unjust law is when it is selective, when it treats not all as equals,
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when it binds me and you are not bonded by it.  That is when law is unjust.  Like when the have not’s are taxed to the breaking point of existence and the have most slip over taxes through loopholes designed just for them to pass through virtually untouched.
        I refuse to salute or honor the dishonorable just because it is done under our flag.  I do not believe in nepotism or favoritism and hence I rebel against our violent polices abroad. I despise how we support and commit terrorism when it suits our purpose as we sustain despotic nations because they support our views and we are in collusion with them satisfying national interests. The friends of my nations are not necessarily my friends and the reverse is true also.
       As an individual, as a sovereign entity I have my own ideals of right and wrong and they are uncompromising, they are unbiased and  I have my own standards, my own principles that are no less than any society.  I have my own rules, my own laws and they are unbending to backdoor dealing, to dishonesty and the like. Torture is wrong and it doesn’t matter who does it.  Extraordinary rendition is odious,  is against international law without exception and no one, no nation, no group of nations should be above the law.  Egalitarianism ought to be the highest aspiration and it could be reachable  since it is attainable it should be for one and all.
       The fundamentals of civilization should be justice for one and all with complete and utter fairness. Doctrines of equality should be true for everyone without exception. Liberty is a right not a privilege. Transparency should be a governments litmus testing.  Law should be the same for one and all if they are not then law is irrelevant and inconsequential.  Lady Justice must be blind in order to be impartial, to be fair, to treat all equally by the scales of right and wrong without exception, without bias, without favoritism, with fairness, in parity that is pure as new snow.  We must live by this or we will surely suffer our eventual demise by violence. Without our applied violence and occupation, we would have no terrorism over here or over there.  There would be no need if we had fair courts and just as fair rulings and honest implementation from the court systems. Until the poor are treated as equally as the opulent, until the strong quit exploiting the weak and vulnerable we will have conflict.  We must have a true world court system with teeth, with meaning with final say over every nation on this planet.  We must have laws that shackle any so-called super power, residing over any colossal corporation and these laws must make priority environment over profit, human rights and human dignity over revenue and humanism over capitalism.
        Why are we destroying ourselves, demolishing this  planet, which is our only nest, in some bizarre rite of self-mutilation and self-destruction by the most evil cut of all; mindless cyclic violence?  We do know better and yet we choose it not.  Are our short-term desires and gains more important than what we do and leave for the future, for our kids?  For our deeds will have consequences while we are liable, responsible and accountable for everything that we do here on this spider web of existence.  Deep in our conscience, each and every human being on this planet knows this and if we are to survive, we must grow up.
        We cannot wage war forever, we must one day stop the slaughter that we inflict upon each other. We must break free from our destructive addiction to militarism or  militarism will cage and break us cold and hard.  We should be compelled by our principles, by our conscience to sit down with each other, to interact with  each other as equals under the same sun, under the same maker and through negotiations, coming to just terms in complete egalitarianism utilizing wit, tempered with tolerance and encased with inclusive
broadmindedness.  We ought to make an effort to craft this vision into fruition instead of following our present path as we seem to be slip sliding down the slope to our obliteration which is where at our present course we are headed to.
         Now who can say when that day is?  Could it be far in the future or nigh upon the next sunrise?   Peace is…inevitable, have no doubt and it could happen today if we, the members of humanity, by means of free-will, with the courage, fortitude and faith to choose this course, simply reach for  the right principle and merely grasp it. Yesterday is the past, we have the present and tomorrow to rectify and come to grips with by the worth of our struggle, passion and quest for justice.  What choice do you choose?  I choose nonviolent non-cooperation with injustice, so hence I rebel by unarmed revolution. As I hope most Americans understand that this path is our only hope. I choose to teach children every chance I get to every child I can find.
        We could be smart using other successes as examples for the rest of us.  We could use Finland as an example of how to educate by public school systems, our children.  Iceland should be our beacon for
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environmental causes and Sweden a model for transparency of dastardly deeds and for the protection of our civil liberties. The American bill of rights, implemented, should be a light shining over the globe like it was meant to, but by the worth of our example not by the threat of a gun.
       In this small, insignificant neighborhood of earth we all have significant contributions to donate for the wellness of the whole and we should take the concept of the UN, raise the bar into the next stage and make it a supreme entity that oversees and is the final voice for all the nations of the earth without exception, without permanent members on a security council with veto rights that reflects the order of nations 70 years ago but is archaic today.
      What divides and segregates us into unstable and unnatural nations is fictional and illusory. The sun shines the same for one and all without bias or favoritism. What migratory bird ever hesitated between Canada and the United States on its yearly journey?  What fish ever paused to get its papers checked between Windsor and Detroit?  The air each and everyone breathes is no different between rich and poor, strong and weak, the exploiter and exploited, it is the same regardless of who you are, whether you live in the desert or the rain forest, how much money you think you have or how powerful you feel you are.
       We are not many species, we are only one species, one humanity and the genetic differences between a old male norwegian king to a young African pygmy girl is far less than the differences between chimpanzees in the same social group. This speaks volumes to those willing to learn and listen.  We are one people and must unite into the success and maturity of our species or we continue our present course which is a descent into our present cycle of conflict, war, spreading disparity of the have and have nots, environmental degradation, fed by superficial differences that are exploited by those who are the most selfish. We must finally utterly and completely disallow war, outlaw once and for all military aggression and wanton violence committed usually by the strong upon the weak. We must defeat injustice by acts of justice. This cycle of idiocy  that has ruled our planet since the beginning of the twentieth century should teach us to quit repeating it.  We must break free.  We can break free.  We will break free by our choice, by growing up and begin a revolution that starts in an individuals heart to travel the globe as it tears down every wall, every border, and we become finally inclusive not exclusive. The species of humanity becomes family.  It is the epitome of egalitarianism, social justice, that we could, no we must embrace as our mantra, our aspiration.  As our hope for the present, for the future.   A dream?  A vision?  A task.  A path. A will.


Sincerely,
michael hall
115 W 1st street
Spring Valley, IL
61362