It would be well to remember how and why the USA was founded in the first place, and ask the question...why was it founded?

It was founded in order to establish radical new social and political freedoms from a distant and autocratic monarchy, and to set up those freedoms in a brand new way.

It was NOT done to make a shitload of money and sell consumer goods to a jaded and regimented public living a bloated lifestyle at the expense of much of the rest of the world.

The founders of America would not recognize what it has become...and yet the same cliches are spoken again and again by American presidents about freedom, democracy, and justice...as though those values had anything to do any longer with American policy.

American policy has to do with money and the gun. Money and the gun. Markets. Banks. Stocks and bonds. Military supremacy. Pork bellies. Oil. Territory. Immediate material gain. Wrap it in the flag and call it democracy, but the world outside America is not fooled.

What is going on is plainly obvious to the rest of the world, and that is why such hatred has been engendered against America and its allies (one of which is my own country) among the poor and disenfranchised people in smaller and weaker countries. America is now Boss Tweed, and her allies are his cronies, running a new Tammany Hall over most of the world. The whole world knows it! It's as obvious as a total eclipse of the sun at high noon. America's corporate logos are seen in every corner of the Earth now.

As long as big money behind the scenes wins every election (because it owns every large political party) and calls every shot in North America...how can this be changed?

When men live just for money they lose their souls. Talk about the Heart of Darkness! It lives and beats on your TV and your radio. It beckons you to the mall. Eat, drink, and spend...for tomorrow you die. (Maybe even today.) Grow fat, like a guinea pig in a cage.

All that money and all that creative genius has largely gone to waste. The real problems in the world have been ignored while ways were sought to sell even more stuff so some huge corporations could make an even bigger profit.

And none of that has anything to do with real freedom at all. In fact it's beginning to threaten everyone's freedom now. Everywhere. The poor people are not your real enemy...it just looks that way reflected on the grinning shiny surface of the corporate mask that beckons you to the mall, and enslaves you nine to five...if you haven't been downsized yet.

A corporation has no soul, but it does have hunger, needs, and a continual agenda to enlarge itself...just like a cancerous growth on the human body.

To oppose American policy in the world is not to be anti-American, because ordinary Americans are themselves the victims of it, as are other people, but in a different way. The desire for money without consideration of morality, actual need, or sanity has brought us to our present pass...and insanity in high places is very good at provoking opposing insanity in low places...as we have all seen recently.

Can terrorism be eradicated through an aggressive response? I doubt it. There are too many "Injuns" out there this time for you to kill and pen up in reservations, but I do think poverty, homelessness, injustice and inequity can be eradicated...a piece at a time.

That will not, however, happen when 98% of the USA's national effort continues going toward playing the same old games of money and the gun which exterminated 30 million buffalo a century and a half ago...for a quick buck. The native people who witnessed it could hardly believe such corrupt greed could exist. It still commands your armies to this day, from way back behind the outer facade of patriotism, honor and duty. That is not to judge your soldiers, who are, like most people, innocent men of good intention, but they know not what they serve.

- LH