Back in the day, I was always trying to fly off to report on international combat hot-spots like Iraq and Afghanistan -- always hoping that if the American people back home read my horror-stories of war, they too would somehow become war-resisters and that my stories of brutal, grim and unjustified death in far-away places might even help escalate a strong anti-war movement here at home, one that would finally stop the heartless killing of women and children by American tanks, rockets and drones. But now? Now I'm thinking that I should be doing something even more important than traveling to combat zones far away -- that I, like some modern-day Jonah, should actually be going down into the belly of the American beast itself instead.
Plus it's always cheaper to go to North Carolina or Washington DC or St Louis than to fly off to Syria, Gaza, Haiti or Ukraine.
The main question that I would be asking in these particular American war zones, however, would be, "What makes America tick?"
What has made us become the most dreaded and hated country in the world -- a country that has more weapons and more money to spend on weapons than any other country anywhere, ever? What gives us the right to call ourselves "patriotic" and "brave" and "democratic" when, in reality, it is America that has killed, maimed, tortured and mutilated millions of people all over the world -- and trampled any survivors' chances and their children's chances of ever ever having a decent life again.
Why do Americans support dictators in Ukraine, Palestine, Honduras, Congo, etc. with such enthusiastic glee? And also why do Americans applaud so loudly when elections here at home are stolen and our infrastructure and school systems die and "Christianity" becomes just another excuse to kill, rape, torture and maim God's children both at home and abroad? http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraqi-army-downs-two-british-planes-carrying-weapons-for-isil-terrorists/5433089
And what makes Americans bitch and complain so much about what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria -- when what Americans have done there in the past and are doing there right now is so much much much worse? ISIS fanatics behead hundreds of people. American troops level whole cities and leave them contaminated with radioactive detritus that will kill children and other living things there for the next 500 years.
Why do Americans fight so hard against trying to end climate change? Why are Americans so set against preventing nuclear holocausts both at home and abroad? Why do Americans cheer and get all teary-eyed and proud when our cops turn into robo-cops and spray peaceful protesters with tear gas? And then actually buy tickets to go see women tortured? http://womensenews.org/story/media-stories/150219/fifty-shades-grey-eroticizes-torture
"What makes Americans tick?" I need to know what is going on right here in America before I can possibly understand what the freak is going on in all those American-financed war zones throughout the rest of the world.
So here's my plan. I'm going to go out and see America first. Ukraine and Gaza and Baghdad will just have to wait -- while I, like Jonah, go deep into the belly of the American beast instead.
Despite all the nightmares I have seen in the last decades, I continue to be an idealist and to dream of a better world, a world that Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad would be proud of. Most Americans, however, apparently dream of cruelty, torture, injustice and ruling the world vicariously.
We are the protagonists of our own dreams.
Americans (and all other human beings too for that matter) need to finally learn that it is far better to die with love in our hearts than to live with hatred in our eyes, fear in our guts and evil in our souls.
PS: A Manhattan jury just awarded a $218.5 million verdict against the Palestinian Authority for damages done to Israelis with American citizenship by Palestinian suicide bombers. Do you know what this means? A new precedence has just been set. A new Pandora's box has just been opened.
From now on, relatives of Americans killed in any foreign country, not just Israel, can also use American courts to get recompense for damages done by acts of "terrorism" on American citizens abroad! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/nyregion/damages-awarded-in-terror-case-against-palestinian-groups.html?_r=0
For instance, if any Chilean-Americans were killed in the CIA coup against Allende in Chile, their relatives can now sue Henry Kissinger in American courts -- but of course they will have to stand in line behind the relatives of any Cambodian-Americans killed by him.
And what about the bunches and groups of Palestinian-Americans, Yemeni-Americans, Iraqi-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Somali-Americans, Haitian-Americans, etc. who have been killed by American tanks, rockets and drones?
America? You can no longer pretend to not know what you are doing. See ya in court!
PPS: On March 11, 2015, I'll be going off to Portland, Oregon, to attend a convention -- and can start my exploration of American war (and peace) zones there. http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2015/
