Lebarcham ([info]kirili) wrote,
@ 2008-09-28 14:41:00
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Entry tags:attempts at articles, usa, war

Seeking for the American Conscience

As a foreign national and a human being I've had to cover my ears and cry my eyes out more than once at the crimes the United States of America has perpetrated on the world at large.

Now, close to choosing your next set of violent murderers you all seem very preoccupied with their skin colours, past killing records (one has in fact killed in Vietnam!) and the fact that both vice presidential candidates are idiots - one is a better idiot though, and in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king blah blah.

Why aren't you asking why you're bombing Pakistan? Yes, you. Ask for solid reasons why destroying parts of a country where the rule of law has already broken down will help. You’re responsible, it’s your money funding their deaths.

Ask why the government was so demented that it wanted to take the writ of habeas corpus away from torture victims in Guantano Bay. Ask why America has gotten away scot free from the killings of countless Afghanis and Iraqis.

Ask what these candidates will do to ask the world forgiveness for the war crimes of the United States of America and what they will do to rectify these wrongs.

Henry Kissinger is a respected man in your country. He's a war criminal out here in the world.

Mr. Bush and co. will have a nice rest after their 8 years of terror, with nary a word of apology for the hundreds of thousands of lives ended and ruined by their politics.

The American people haven't cared enough to properly protest. Make fun of these officials all you want - it's the rest of the world that has to die for your choices.

Melodramatic? Tell that to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chile, the Koreas, Vietnam, Palestine, Cambodia and on and on and on.

Whoever you elect, stop them from killing people out here in the rest of the world. 19 people bombed the trade towers. The thousands that were killed that day, in their name you've killed hundreds of thousands. 9/11 was about 1/4 of a day in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that the USA happily bombs for years.

Please start to give a shit. I know we're brown and insignificant in your big American lives, and when we die you get richer... but here's seeking out the conscience of the American people, if the shreds of the thing that was present during the Vietnam war still exists.


(ONTD_political rejected this post: the mod "agrees" but doesn't think ONTD_political is the place. I'd be offended but I'm more "..." tbh.)


(11 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]chibibluebird
2008-09-28 06:53 am UTC (link)
wow.
well, I'll definitely be voting for an anti-war party in the Canadian election.
& am glad I have that option;

I don't put much blame on American voters for their government, really. They're pretty much trapped in a two-party system just based on the amount of funding it takes to run a campaign.

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[info]kirili
2008-09-28 07:04 am UTC (link)
Ah so much love for Canada.

A country that maintains the freedom of speech and yet bans the word "fag," a country that doesn't allow "policy considerations" to keep police officers from being sued for their negligence, a country that immigrants can go to and live without being harassed. I know a torture victim who was settled there by the UN. He got a job, his family moved there. YAY CANADA.

In a democracy you are responisble for your government.

The people of Israel are responsible for what is done to the people of Palestine.

If the American people had shouted loud enough, as a community, they could have toppled this murderous madman.

But, as in many times before, they were happy enough to allow the killing since it wasn't them themselves dying. The USA should really study that poem "first they came for the trade unionists..."

because when one day someone really comes for the USA, there will be far too much resentment for anyone to help them.

And all manmade empires fall.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]chibibluebird
2008-09-28 07:09 am UTC (link)
In a democracy you are responisble for your government.
The key word is "democracy". Is there a true democracy in the world?
Where candidates don't need the support of capitalists (& even, where candidates don't have to be rich themselves?) Where everyone has equal access to polls & won't mysteriously be prevented from voting(which is still a problem in the US?)
I'm thinking there isn't...

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kirili
2008-09-28 07:16 am UTC (link)
Very true.

However, in democracies there is a concept of civil responsibility.

The USA is a proclaimed democracy. If the people had tested it, found the boundaries and failed it would be a different story. But they did not try, and therefore they do not know how far their democracy (as it were) allows them to go.

In fact, they have every reason to believe they will be listened too. That, at least, is a legacy of the Vietnam protests.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Civic Responsibility
[info]castleclear
2008-10-12 06:36 pm UTC (link)
Even were the U.S. not a self-proclaimed democracy, we held the German people responsible during the Nuremburg trials after World War II for Hitler and the nazis. Yes, we the people of the United States are responsible for our government, whether it be a fascist dictatorship or a democratically representative Republic (what we supposedly are).

I was moved and agree with what you wrote in "Seeking the American Conscience." There have been a number of protests here, actually; but it's been noted that these go most unreported by our privately owned, corporate media. The Right Wing in the U.S. learned after Viet Nam NOT to cover protests and other peaceful demonstrations.

What the United States is/has become is a corporate oligarchy ruled by plutocrats. We the People need to address and correct this. For what it's worth, many, many U.S. citizens do care and are appalled by what our nation has done.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against Pres. Bush and VP Cheney, though thus far our Congress is slow to act on this. We are horrified that our nation now tortures (I've personally seen numerous protests on this) in violation of the Geneva Convention, outsources torture (see PBS Frontline's "Extraordinary Rendition), has "secret" CIA prisons, the suspension of civil liberties, the deceit practiced by the Bush Administration on US citizens about 9/11 to justify our "pre-emptive" invasion of a sovereign state that posed no military threat but rich in a resource (oil). Compounding all these errors and crimes is our neglect of Global Warming/Climate Change, the development of an increasingly "imperial" executive branch, neglect at home for basics such as education, healthcare, infrastructure maintenance, failure to employ diplomacy, failure to work in concert with allies, appalling degrees of corruption, along with the same old "patriotic" hypocrisy about how great we are.

Sept. 11, 2001 unified our nation, but partisan private interest (money) led to partisan politics. Karl Rove of the Republican Party is often credited with using a divide-and-conquer strategy. Not since Viet Nam has this nation been so polarized and divided. The way I see it, while racism exists unto itself, racism has been used as a wedge to further classism. We are in a "culture war" of ideas and ideology.

I am hopeful that the economic hardships most American will face will cause them to wake up and pro-actively bring the government and, through government oversight and regulation, our private industry in-line with the common good, not merely nationally but as a responsible member of the community of nations.

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Re: Civic Responsibility
[info]kirili
2008-10-14 06:11 am UTC (link)
Hey! thank you for the information on Kucinich, I shall research.

[Just to add on the part against torture: it's not only a violation of the Geneva Convention, but the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, as well as (as far as I know) the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.]

Ahhh I think your last setence very accurately sums up how many people in the rest of the world see this economic crisis.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Civic Responsibility
[info]castleclear
2008-10-14 10:06 am UTC (link)
Here is a link: http://www.kucinich.us/

Also against torture,
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<lj/cut>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Here is a link: http://www.kucinich.us/

Also against torture, <lj/cut> An excerpt from http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10036
" ...in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution..."

I first heard of the US Army's specific prohibition against waterboarding on www.democracynow.org Perhaps you already read this site.

It has been quite a shock to the American public to learn that under G.W. Bush our government tortures, violates international accords that the US ratified as law, engaged in domestic spying initially without oversight from the FISA Court and then got the law changed http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/fisa.html
The war-profiteering from companies like Haliburton (VP Cheney was it's former CEO, who only recently admitted that, oh yeah, he does still get money from Haliburton), the private mercenary contractors, such as Blackwater, et al. The news has been so dreadful that even as I feel compelled to learn about it, some days I've lacked the heart or even stomach for it.

When protests do occur, our media only rarely report it, even as our press have been expressly forbidden by Bush to show pictures of coffins of the dead US soldiers returning from Iraq. Only a few news agencies have done the vigorous reporting I would expect were the US truly an Open Society. I feel at times that I'm living in a world far too close to George Orwell's "1984".

I know that at times my nation has behaved egregiously, perhaps as horrifically as what I see today. When then President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980's denounced the former Soviet Union as "the evil empire," I thought, well, what about what WE are doing?!
<lj/uncut>

I'll keep hope, try to keep informed, and continue voting and writing my elected representatives, in addition to attending various protests and peace demonstrations. I am deeply saddened by the gulf between what I was taught as a child my nation is and what I have seen it to be most of my adult life.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Civic Responsibility
[info]castleclear
2008-10-14 10:10 am UTC (link)
I forgot to include this:
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/13/headlines

Maryland Nuns Classified as Terrorists

In Maryland, more details have been released about the state police spying on peace groups and anti-death penalty activists. Late last week, two Catholic nuns, Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Ardeth Platte, learned they were among the fifty-three activists classified as terrorists who had their names entered into a federal terrorism database. The two nuns are longtime peace activists. They recently served time in prison for trespassing onto a military base and pouring blood onto a nuclear missile silo. Sister Carol Gilbert said, "There is no way that we ever want to be identified as terrorists. We are nonviolent. We are faith-based.”

Some commentators are saying it's worse here than the McCarthyism of the 1950's.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]firerosearien
2008-10-18 06:33 pm UTC (link)
Hey--you deleted your [info]metaquotes post so I hope you don't mind me responding to your comment--

It's not that you're the only one that thinks that scenario is funny, but without the appropriate context, I'm not sure any of us really understood what you were referring to!

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[info]kirili
2008-10-18 06:40 pm UTC (link)
ahaha... that kind of was the context. And having people go all not-getting-it made the warm funnies of loving the internet's love of porn kind of... wither so I think it's better for people with my sense of humour to... find it on their own. it's too late in the evening for wank.

andand thanks for coming by to say that :D. bedtime now.

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[info]firerosearien
2008-10-18 06:56 pm UTC (link)
Take it with a grain of salt. In about an hour everyone will have forgotten! Yay internet!

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