Feature: Doorways

Happy 4th of July..... Independence Day....Described as the Birth day of America...Revolution against British Rule..... On July 4th, Americans celebrate with vigor..FREEDOM we shout from the rooftops.

Ironically, it was the beginning of the American Empire...the mirror image of exactly what was revolted against...Imperialism....Colonialism...Empire..

This is what America was destine to become….

It started... the first onslaught of imperialism.. shortly after the Revolutionary victory. The genocide of the original Indigenous inhabitants of the land they called America.
The Injustices imposed upon the Indigenous peoples of this land, go untold in most American elementary schools, go un noticed in most white universities. Go unremembered in the collective American consciousness. When dare to be spoken of, the typical eye-rolling, or general disinterest, or claim of anti- patriotism, all display the obvious ignorance of the truth; all display that the tactics and the rule of the British imperialists continue to exist in American mentality…we never achieved independence, we only achieved freedom to impose the same authoritarian, religious restriction and financial tyranny on to others. Hello Iraq, Afghanistan, & Iran for the current "others"!
The American Indian Removal Act 1830...(“The Indian Removal Act, part of a United States government policy known as Indian removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830.^[1] The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the "Five Civilized Tribes". In particular, Georgia, the largest state at that time, was involved in a contentious jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokee nation.” ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars

The Trail of Tears 1831...(“The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of Native Americans from their homelands to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the Western United States. The removals were motivated by U.S. desire for expansion, the desire to "save" Native Americans from extinction, and to profit from the acquisition of their assets and resources.”) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars

Little Crow's War/Dakota War 1862 (“Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota forces. By late December, more than a thousand Dakota were interned in jails in Minnesota, and 38 Dakota were hanged in the largest one-day execution in American history on December 26, 1862.”) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars

Wounded Knee... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7fZonjD1M

“In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations.^[5] This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east and was in accordance with the government’s policy of "breaking up tribal relationships"^[6] and "conforming Indians to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must."^[7] Once on the half-sized reservations, tribes were separated into family units on 320-acre (1.3 km²) plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to boarding schools that forbade any inclusion of traditional Native American culture and language.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars

It was against American law; forbidden; for the indigenous to practice their religion, to speak their language or to live rightfully on their land. (in accordance with the right way they were Christianized)

(sounding quite like George Bush’s ridiculous comments about the Iraq people and now the Iranians…the similar tactics are nauseating at best to the conscious beings of the planet)

In a response to the Wounded Knee massacre, a young newspaper editor, L. Frank Baum (later known as the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on January 3, 1891: “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.^{[13]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre}

So today….as described so elegantly by code pink….Again; America displays its British roots. Go to: http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?list=type&type=5

Directly from CODEPINK : “This nation was born out of a longing for freedom from domination by the British empire. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all warned that the invasion and occupation of other lands would turn America into precisely the sort of occupying force they had rebelled against. "If there be one principle more deeply written than any other in the mind of every American," said Thomas Jefferson in 1791, "it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."

Our founding fathers who fought against empire and foreign entanglements would be horrified that right before leaving for the July 4 break, Congress passed the largest funding bill ever--$165 billion--for the continued occupation of Iraq. They would also be horrified that instead of applying the diplomatic lessons of North Korea to the case of Iran, Congress and the Administration seem hell-bent on dragging us into another war.

Take a moment to read the appalling language of House Resolution 362, sponsored by "liberal" New York Congressman Gary Ackerman with over 200 cosponsors. It calls for imposing stringent inspection requirements "on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran." Do we really want to blockade Iran's borders? Wouldn't Iran be justified to view this as an act of war?

• Take some time to educate yourself about the danger of a new war with Iran. Read Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker and see an interview with him on the Real News Network.

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