The  true patriots today are those who are out in the streets protesting that the lives of U.S. soldiers and the lives of Iraqis will be sacrificed for the rich, for people like Richard Cheney who is on record for having supported the apartheid slavery government of South Africa, for not wanting freedom fighter Nelson Mandela to be released from prison, as well as for his Haliburton connections, which will profit immensely from controlling the oil
interests in Iraq.

   And the person who deliberately chose Cheney as his running mate, Bush, while coming in second in the popular vote, nonetheless received support from millions of U. S. citizens, demonstrating that millions of people in the United States in the last elections knowingly supported a government led by people who received profits from apartheid slavery in South Africa. A citizenry that supports slavery in any form is evil.  And all those millions of U. S. citizens, as well as those senators and congressman, those in government and industry who now support the imperialism of Bush and Cheney, are likewise evil.

   All the people in government and industry who support the current U.S. government should be named specifically, for they are the Nazis of our day, and they will like Hitler's Gestapo attempt to eliminate all dissent in the name of National Security.  They have already harassed numerous Arab Americans.

   If the U.S. truly represented the free world and equality for all, then being patriotic would mean that we would oppose all forms of oppression and slavery, and do everything possible to eliminate the institutions that split society into the rich and poor, and to replace it with an egalitarian society, one in which all are literally equal, none having privileges that others do not.

  It is we in the streets who agree with the majority of people in the world and with the United Nations, that the United States is guilty of war crimes against the people of Iraq.

   We are living in days morally identical to those faced by the German people who opposed the rise of the Nazis.  Will we stand aside and let the Nazis of our nation further destroy our rights as well?  Or will we confront them on every level in order to eliminate their oppression of others as well as their oppression of the people of the United States?

  I am reminded that one million U.S. citizens are currently in prison for the victimless crimes of using or distributing sacramental herbs, plants that have been used for millennia by aboriginal Shamanic people.  The War on Drugs is just another war against aboriginal people, because it is a war against their Shamanic religion which existed, and still exists, universally among Shamanic people on earth.   Seen in numerous hymns to Soma in the ancient Vedas, Shamanism is a religion that is older than Judaism and Christianity, the two main cultures persecuting Shamanic people.

  Those who say that there is no official Shamanic Religion in the United States refuse to comment on the fact that every Shamanic Church and Temple in the United States has been quickly shut down, and its proponents harassed and jailed by the U.S. government, demonstrating once again that the U.S. government persecutes its own citizens as well.

   The War on Terror, like the War on Drugs, is a war against all people who oppose the imperialist policies of the United States, which without shame or apology has a Vice President who supported apartheid slavery.

  What is the reason for the fact that not one person in the U.S. government, and no industrialists, were punished, reprimanded, or so much as slapped on the hand for supporting apartheid slavery?  It is because profiting from slavery has been the policy of the U.S. government since its inception.

  Therefore the icons of the United States, statues erected to Washington and Jefferson, who supported the oppression of indigenous people and the enslavement of blacks, and universities like Wayne State University here in Detroit named after oppressors like Mad Anthony Wayne, called "mad" because of his enthusiastic oppression of native Americans. And therefore the honoring of tyrants like Christopher Columbus, after whom a holiday is
named, and who is eulogized by the Roman Catholic Church, though Columbus brutally mutilated Aruack natives in front of their own families.

  The majority of people in the world know that imperialists like Cheney rule the U.S. government, and that to say Cheney represents the Free World when the record shows he has supported Slavery, demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who falsely call themselves patriots.

   The true patriots of the United States are those who want to save it from the inevitable retaliation by those cultures whom our nation oppresses. The destruction of the twin towers was an example of that retaliation, retaliation no doubt in part for the unprovoked saturation bombing of Baghdad in 1991 killing at least two hundred thousand Iraqis, and for the sanctions which helped kill over a half million Iraqis, many of them children, but also
for the U.S. intrusions in Lebanon and Iran and the Persian Gulf in general, as well as for the ongoing U.S. support of Israel, whose troops have consistently oppressed and killed Palestinians.

  Those who truly respect U.S. troops and the Iraqi people, and want them both to live, instead of being killed so the rich can profit, are the true patriots. And we are in the streets protesting the immorality of the U.S. War in Iraq.

Fred Rizzo