We rank 16th out of 23 countries, according to the Humanitarian Response Index, which determines how well aid dollars reach beneficiaries. [16] And, we are barely in the top 50 countries with the lowest infant mortality rates. [17] We don't even rank on the list of ten best countries to be a mother. [18]
Yet, we are number one when it comes to military expenditures.
Leaders are constantly using 9/11 to push Americans and people from other countries to give up rights and civil liberties. Fear of hidden nightmares is spread to help government maintain support for wars and ridiculously unnecessary homeland security apparatuses and procedures that do little to halt terrorism but plenty for investors who have a stake in the growing security-industrial complex in this nation.
Those in power do not want us to critique the narrative in the "war on terror" that we are being fed but it and the idea that one single catastrophic attack requires us to support a perpetual war for avenging the deaths of civilians and the damage done to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is ludicrous.
The people should not support the country as it produces its chief export --- war, which of course is the highest form of terrorism.
In these times, let us honor the activists fighting for health care for all without regard for the political process, which sucks the humanity out of legislation. Let us honor the mountaintop removal activists fighting King Coal in the name of environmental justice. Let us honor the soldiers refusing to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us honor the peace activists organizing rallies and marches across the country. Let us honor working class people engaging in strikes or battles for dignity in the workplace in one of the worst economic periods in American history.
Let us support the people of Haiti who need us to send more aid and disaster response teams equipped with medical supplies, forgive their debt, and oppose the U.S. militarization of Haiti. Let us support all people in all countries who are waging battles against free trade agreements strangling their human rights. Let us support the Afghanis and Iraqis and all other people of the world who seek self-determination in the face of a U.S. presence in their country.
Not long ago, the spirit of civil disobedience was spreading to war factories, the battlefield, the halls of Congress, and every town and city and it wasn't going to end until the killing stopped and until the children got a world without war, without fierce transfers of wealth upward, without a nation shakes down people for dimes to pay for the cost of cleaning up ruling class crimes. That spirit should be renewed.
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