She had also better not offend the major lobbies in the USA or she
might find herself in the same boat with Victoria Fontan who was fired
from Cornell University after a press release said she was "embedded in
one of Iraq's resistance groups."
Some young men have admired the freedom in the West to date girls,
something that's not easy to do in the Middle East. Young lovers can
get in trouble in this part of the world, just for being lovers. In the
West, they find a freedom to go to bed with girls who are loose and
easy, saving their praise for the virginity of their Middle Eastern
wives and the hereafter.
When you ask most people in the Middle East what freedoms appeal to
them in America, they never speak of the kinds of freedoms that are
major issues today or concerns about those freedoms that were
incorporated into the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So what's wrong with America? Here are a few of the astute voices from the wilderness:
Craig Winters, from New Mexico, says:
Multinational corporations sell our jobs to the lowest overseas
bidders. The credit industry preys on our poor. The for-profit
healthcare system is the leading cause of bankruptcy while hospitals
dump indigent patients on skid row. Our country's infrastructure is
breaking down from New Orleans levees to Minnesota bridges even as we
are mired in a war that drowns us in debt and advances only the
interests of big oil and arms merchants.
Another voice from the wilderness, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich writes from Southern California:
The demon of greed never seems to get enough. Over 1 million dead
Iraqis - with Dick Cheney's old company KBR/Halliburton being the prime
benefactor of theft, Mr. Cheney now has his eyes on Iran. More bodies,
dead ones, are needed for the task. Once again, his old company,
KBR/Halliburton, not only comes to the rescue, but benefits from the
deal.
This cogent observation comes from Chris Floyd, American journalist based in the wilderness of the UK:
Most people persist in believing that the Bush Administration has
"mishandled" or "bungled" the war in Iraq, when in fact they have
achieved almost all of their goals. They have vastly enriched their
cronies. They have installed a U.S. military presence in Iraq. They
have expanded the size, power and scope of the armed forces and the
intelligence services (which now have their own secret armies) beyond
the wildest dreams of the most hawkish Cold War militarist. They have
not only gutted the Constitution but proved that you can get away with
it — an invaluable lesson for dictators to come.
From the wilderness of Washington comes the voice of journalist Mike Whitney:
The contamination from the massive real estate bubble has now infected
nearly every area of the broader market. The swindle which began at the
Federal Reserve — with cheap, low interest credit — has spread through
the entire system and is threatening to wreak financial havoc across
the planet. The Fed's multi-billion dollar bailout will do nothing to
contain the brushfire they started or avert the catastrophe that lies
just ahead.
Paul Craig Roberts, economist and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
under Ronald Reagan, said that it's old-line Republicans like himself
who are the diehards in warning of the danger.
It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the
corridors of power. There's no belief in the people or anything like
that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is
in the way.
Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the
terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the
Constitution... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we
face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government
in the name of fighting terrorism.
These voices point to only some of the things that are wrong with
America today. There’s more, but none of it will get corrected by
apathetic people who remain unconcerned and uncommitted in a deafening
silence.
These are powerful voices coming from the wilderness. They're all
revolutionaries worth following and worthy of guiding, each a true
patriot, a modern version of an American founding father and
pamphleteer Thomas Paine. They tell unpleasant truths about what’s
wrong with America. They’re voices for change, for an America worth
immigrating too.
George Orwell, author of
Brave New World, observed, "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
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