Not "The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave" Anymore

[kpete]

Not "The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave" Anymore
What's Happened in the Last Four Years Has Changed the Nature of Our Nation
By Timothy Gatto

...............

Iraq was a calculated gamble that we could bluff not only the citizens of the United States, but everyone else in the world into believing that Saddam was a world threat. True he was not a nice man, but he was no world threat and the Bush Administration knew it. After no WMD's were found, it was another bluff that became; "We are fighting so that they may be free". The truth then was that we were fighting for our own selfish reasons. Oil, and all that comes with it. It makes no matter that we could have bought all the oil we needed with the money we spent on this war. That's something that just escapes the criminal minds that run this country.

...............

Yes this nation is going downhill in the eyes of the world and in reality. We now say it's OK to torture enemy combatants but we don't have to nerve to rescind the Geneva Conventions. If we did that, it would free us from making a mockery of it. If we rescinded the Geneva Convention, then we would give foreign nations the right to torture our soldiers. So how are we playing it? It's OK if we break the Geneva Conventions by water boarding enemy combatants but it's not OK if they do it to our guys? It's OK for us to grab someone of the street and put him in an airplane and blindfold him, not telling the person why he's been taken, where he is being taken to, or when he'll be let loose. When the plane lands he is turned over to the Syrian government, a nation that we say is part of the "axis of evil" but we still use them to torture our prisoners because we don't want the stigma of doing it. Before you say I'm making this up, this scenario is well documented. Just Google the words "Rendition Flights". This is your land, this is my land.

................

So the next time you hear the words of the Star Spangled Banner, when they get to the part at the end where they sing "O'er the land of the Free, and the home of the brave", just mouth the words. It's not true anymore.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=34735

[terip64]

1. kick and recommend

[liberal N proud]

2. Government for the people by the people has become...

Government for the corporations by the corporations

[AndyA]

3. And we have George Bush and the Republicans to thank for this.

I hope everyone remembers to "thank them" appropriately when they vote in 2008.

And while I'm pointing the finger of blame, I'll include our corporate media, sponsored by the GOP. They don't report the news any longer, they feed us propaganda. We need the Fairness Doctrine updated and reinstated.

[ixion]

4. we have become the Land of the Enslaved and Home of the Terrified.

and it makes me very, very sad. :cry: :-(

[Philosoraptor]

5. Not since columbus showed up.

[Gregorian]

10. And that is the truth.

Then it was free if one was a white landowner. But not black. Not female. Now it's sort of free if you're rich. But even the rich are dependent on oil.

[Monkeyman]

6. K&R

[vickitulsa]

7. "Papieren, bitte!"

From the article:

When I was in Europe I was proud to be recognized as being an American. Now, when Americans go overseas, our own State Department says not to draw attention to the fact that you are an American. Many savvy travelers have learned to tell people that they are Canadian. I have Canadians themselves write to me by commenting on my blog and telling me that they are afraid of the United States nowadays. Why? Is it because in May of 2008 all American citizens will have "Real ID" that will be merged with our driver's license? That this ID will have tons of information on it that lets any policeman know everything about you. Isn't that a bit like Nazi Germany during the war, when the Gestapo would come up to a fellow German and ask for their "papers"? Do we need to carry papers in our own country? Why do we need a passport to go to Canada or Mexico? I thought that we were protecting ourselves from terrorism. It sounds like the government wants to know where we are going and what we are doing. Excuse me, but I'm not a terrorist.

I watched that TV series "Heroes" for only the second time last night, and apparently we had been moved forward five years into the future, after a massive bombing of NYC had reduced it to rubble, killing millions.

As I listened to the speechifying of the evil President, talking about how strict and drastic laws had been made due to the "danger" of the "special ones," I couldn't help but think some writer was trying to point a finger at the current administration, bigtime.

It isn't the first time, for sure, that certain select entertainment offerings have done this, but that was surely the most glaring bit of paralleling I've seen yet.

I hope Americans wake up before it's too late, and we're all left to wonder how we got to here from where we were. Living in constant fear, trembling with anxiety when we have to produce our "papers" for the Gestapo -- er, excuse me, the cops whose job it is to protect us -- is NOT what this country was supposed to be all about.

It's true that our history is replete with abuses and persecutions of "others," including the peoples who lived in this land when the Europeans first arrived on its shores. But I don't think anyone ever dreamed we could have stooped as low as our leaders are doing now.

Thirty-two years after the U.S. made its last humiliating, mad scramble to evacuate our embassy in Vietnam, we don't want to think about what it's going to look like when we finally give up the farcical lies about Afghanistan and Iraq and pull our troops out of there....


The world is right and justified in blaming us for horrors our government has perpetrated on "others" that we're still trying to blame for everything that's wrong with the United States of America.

"Paperien, bitte!"

[Triana]

8. "Land of the Populace as Abused Spouse" is more like it...

...run by a bunch of Psychopaths.

[Az_lefty]

9. The country I grew up in with all it's hopes and dreams no longer exists

we're being run by a criminal enterprise and it will take an entire generation to turn it around. So as the song goes, "teach your children well"

:hippie:

[Zywiec]

11. "O'er the land of the Free, and the home of the brave" is a misnomer

I think about that everytime I have to take off my shoes at the airport. As soon as we get our rights back, I'll feel more free.