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The United States treats people living in
the Middle East with the same attitude southern whites treated
blacks in the days of Jim Crow:
we take their dignity away by denying them their
freedom, their power, their basic human rights.
We cheat them out of their unalienable right to life, liberty, and dignity
which they otherwise might have if they
were able to enjoy the wealth that rightfully belongs to them
and not to us. We
made their
oil our slave. We
steal their power.
Most Americans are as guilty as white
supremacists ever were who ignored the pain and suffering of
blacks while conspiring to treat them as underclass citizens,
all the while pretending to be upper class and innocent
themselves. White
men and women took advantage of cheap black labor, the fair
remuneration for which was usurped by a vast social conspiracy
of fraud and deceit while refusing to
lift a finger, a voice, or an eyebrow to acknowledge that the
injustice even existed.
In the same way, Americans today refuse
to see what is blatantly obvious to everyone else but them, as they
painstakingly refuse to acknowledge that their
government cheats and betrays not only the unfortunate people
who live in and around oil rich countries, but even they
themselves, staying purposefully blind lest they be trapped by
the transformative power of becoming aware.
We look back and shake our heads in
disbelief, that our countrymen could have been so callous as
to treat other human beings as less than human.
And yet, by remaining
purposefully and consciously ignorant of our own
government’s betrayal of human beings around the world, we
have become, (when you consider the carnage), not one iota
different than they were.
It’s our very refusal to acknowledge what our
government does in our name that destroys millions of
families, steals their hope, and diminishes our own.
The United States is the greatest
purveyor of treasonous acts against life and liberty on the
planet today. We
are in denial, even as the truth is revealed, witnessed,
proved, and available to anyone who wants to know about it. We
have become what we say we hate simply by remaining
purposefully and intentionally unconscious.
The will to not see and not know is to commit treason against
our own
humanity.
As I see it, our honor does not
necessarily require that we protest in the streets, brave the
cold, or get fired for missing work. We don’t need to face
rubber bullets, dogs, fire hoses, police batons or any of the
new weapons our government has conjured up to disperse
and dissuade us from making a ruckus in order to make a point.
We don’t need to spend a dime or stand on street
corners and pass out leaflets.
We don’t even need to say a word.
Basic human decency and intellectual integrity simply
requires that we first open our minds and our hearts and acknowledge
the truth when we see and hear it, and not deny it when others speak
it. If we could
just do that much, maybe we could learn to believe in ourselves
again. And once we do that, I believe we’ll know
exactly what to do--and celebrate our new found
self-respect--doing it.
The oil in the world does not belong to
us. It took nature 300 million years to
create all that was ever there and it took us less than 150
years to already consume half of it.
What's left does not belong to us.
It’s time to change our attitude.
It’s time to change our behavior.
It’s time to be better than who we used to be.
http://www.gpln.com/childrenofiraq.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/05-2
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/07-0
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff03112011.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gnxiOZ0Fhc
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