Strange Americans

Fear and suspicion of all foreigners makes for strange observations of American behaviour and reactions to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedajindad, who extended a request to lay a wreath at the site of the 9/11 attacks and the chilly response has me scratching my head. None of the alleged hijackers were Iranian or even Shi-ite Muslim and yet the Americans have declared a collective blame on all Muslims for the attacks. This evident in the blatant and ferial racism and islamaphobia on every news network and talk show across the United States, daily there is this pervasive hysteria and obsession with all things Muslim and Arab. As an outside viewing this vulgar and often bizarre behaviour, I'm left wondering when the Americans lost their collective minds. The attacks on September 11th, 2001 put Arabs and Muslims and all brown people in the cross hairs with the American hegemony but this fear and hostility by white Americans towards all other peoples is ingrained in the fabric of their nationhood and history beginning with slavery and carrying on to this day. I often find myself wondering, are all white Americans crackers and bigots and racists? They sure seem to behave that way.

I have concluded that this bigotry towards Ahmedajindad is merely a small part of a very large pot of melting, stewing, stinking hatred that festers at the heart of America. I have met many wonderful Americans and count some as friends but, this doesn't change my opinion because the problem is the very core of the structure of American life that is rotting with the inertia of hatred and it permeates every single layer and societal structure.

I will site two case examples in my analysis to highlight the rampant racism infesting the American society and democracy; the first is American foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically the diabolical relationship with Israel. There are between thirty and sixty million Zionists in the United States and they have been wreaking havoc on every democratic, legal and intellectual institution in the country for decades. A Zionist has a very clear definition: those who support the creation and maintenance of a purely Jewish state called Israel in Palestine based on biblical revelations with borders encompassing all of Palestine and all of Lebanon; Israel is achieved via terrorism, war and genocide. The relationship between the Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists heated up in the 1970s as part of a bizarre suicide pact of religious fanaticism and mutual annihilation organized by American evangelical Pat Robertson whose millions of followers believe we are entering the End of Times and all the Jews must live in Israel so that Jesus Christ can return and convert or kill all the Jews and take up all the American evangelicals body and all to heaven for eternal joy and salvation.

Robertson is not clear about what will happen to the rest of us but the Jewish Zionists are delighted to have such a committed ally to use to Israel's' full advantage to continue its expansion wars and ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Lebanon. The American Zionist, who are primarily white, have been extremely successful in convincing the American public that Arabs and Muslims are evil and need to wiped off the face of the earth through lobbying by groups like AIPAC and Christians for Israel which has resulted in endless wars in the Middle East against the Arab and Persian populations and the relentless military arming and funding of the Jewish State. Which brings us to 9/11 and the reasons for the attacks that have caused so much suffering and war and death, look no further than these Zionists who in 1975 the United Nations passed resolution 3379 declaring Zionism is Racism and the crux of superiority inherent in Zionism found an endless friend in the white American echelon that craves legitimization of its sense of supremacy. This need to dominate and destroy people of color has found a place to direct its hatred openly through Zionism as a political and religious glue holding the white racists together in an Apocalyptic dance that is disturbingly powerful and is the root cause of this bizarre reaction to Ahmedajindad, who is merely a figure head for the new Zionist enemy, who happens to be Muslim and brown.

The full scale war declared on the people of the Middle East by Zionists is only surpassed by the utter indifference by the white leadership during the catastrophe of Katrina. Poor black families were literally abandoned on roof tops and left to die while their white neighbours armed themselves with shot guns to keep the devastated population from finding refuge in their homes and towns. Those of us in the rest of the world watched simultaneously with horror and disgust as the Bush administration and the FEMA did nothing and continued to do nothing for these people who were drowning, hungry, scared and traumatized by a natural disaster of mammoth magnitude. The complete indifference to the poor, black population of New Orleans is the further expression of the racism and hatred that continues to rot America and its democracy of any real equality for all of its citizens. Like cattle they were herded into the Astrodome and treated like criminals and undesirable nuisances and left without the basic necessities of food, water, proper sanitation and security from the vultures who would take advantage of the chaos to steal, rape and murder. Rounded up, trapped and helpless looking out to their fellow Americans pleading for assistance and what was reflected back was utter distaste, indifference to their humanity and blame; the insensitive blaming of the victims of Katrina the white public demanding to know why they didn't leave. It seemed they were being blamed for the storm itself, and the federal government continued doing nothing. It was blatantly obvious to the international community that George Bush and his cabal saw the people of Katrina as an irritating nuisance to their much more important religious and imperialist wars in the Middle East; he wanted to get back to the work of war.

Black leaders stepped in to fill the vacuum and express the outrage at the ugly fact of American racism leaving its fellow black citizens to suffer, live in squalor and die. Some members of the media began to express their own anger and demand that the federal government step in to help save the people of New Orleans from further catastrophe. The day Katrina slammed through the levees and hell was being unleashed on the mostly poor black population of New Orleans, Bush went to a birthday party and visited a senior's home and then went to bed without doing anything. The White House staff made the president of the United States watch a video tape of the devastation in New Orleans so that he could finally get this is an emergency which forced action from Bush in the form of photo ops and self-congratulations and patting FEMA on the back, "you're doing a heck of a job Brownie". The parade of incompetence lies and condescension and blaming and passing the buck became a tragedy played out for all of us to see and the people of Katrina continued to suffer. Who can forget Barbara Bush saying the New Orleans population living in squalor and homelessness was better off than before the storm; this rich white woman wearing pearls prancing around the poverty and pain of Katrina flaunts her ignorance, insensitivity and innate racism.

The entire American system ignored, abandoned and failed the people destroyed by Katrina because the victims are mostly poor and black; from the top of the power structure and the president of the United States to average Americans, racism was the overpowering declaration of that tragedy.

The veneer of the American dream is fading in the face of the truth of the content of the character of nation, a national character stymied and fuelled by racism, bigotry and hate. This kind of societal, economic and political system of inequality and oppression must burn itself to the ground in order to rebuild and bring on a new day for all the peoples of America.