My thoughts on this whole North Korea business

Am I the only person who finds it interesting that the only country to ever nuke another country is the one country that's decided to elect itself to police the entire rest of the planet to make sure they don't do the same?

Why do Americans listen to and incorporate into their own "thinking" the demonizing of nations like North Korea and Iran by the American media for wanting to develop nuclear weapons?  How can they allow themselves to become indoctrinized to believe these regimes are evil for simply wanting to procure the most lethal weapon on the planet?  The United States was first to have them and has had them since.  What does that make US?!  We have given nukes freely to our ally Israel.  What does that make them?

Why is it okay for us to have them, but not other nations?

Does no one else think it's weird that Barack Obama, given a Nobel Peace Prize less than a year after taking office, has killed more innocent people with drone stikes and sent our country into more conflicts than his war criminal predecessor George W. Bush?

Why is this supposedly peaceful president sending armadas toward North Korea?  Why is he flying fleets of bombers in practice runs nearby?  In a time when the federal government itself is forced to cut spending through broad cuts, how much money is it taking to fuel all those war machines?

Another question I have:  If Islamic fundamentalists in middle eastern countries are the greatest threat to our "freedom", and sending UAV drones is the best way of taking care of business where they're concerned, why is Barack Obama readying the entire United States military - not to mention the whole of the country - for old school war?

Furthermore, what has North Korea even done?  Bluster.  That's it.  It's immature playground bully bullshit.  They haven't even done anything, yet our president and our media have cranked up the propaganda machine to full throttle.

Reminds me of the winter of 2003 when the Bush Administration was busy selling the world on WMD and yellow cake uranium, and massing troops in Kuwait.  It's as if there's some sort of ten-year time loop the war profiteering banksters of the world are operating on.

Question is, how are Americans so hideously  blind to all of these paradoxes and coincidences?

It's time to end the death penalty in America

Last week, Amnesty International released it's 2010 report on the use of the death penalty across the globe.  The information should be particularly embarrassing for Americans, as the United States was among the Top 10 countries to use capital punishment. 


The United States of Evil

What could be more humiliating than murdering more prisoners than all but 4 other countries?  Well, the company we're in.  Only China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen killed more in 2010 than the U.S.  We may like to think we're the good guys of the global neighborhood, but we're rubbing elbows with George W. Bush's entire axis of evil.  If one is judged by the company one keeps, we might have to include ourselves on W.'s list, even without taking into account the number of people Barack Obama's America killed last year using the "War on Terror" as an excuse.

Rounding out the list:  Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Bangladesh and Somalia.  It should be noted here that these countries took the lives of around half or fewer prisoners last year than the United States.  I wonder how many war-mongering, death-penalty-supporting social conservatives in America would consider any of the other 9 countries on this Top 10 as having a "culture of life".

Encouraging developments
But there's reason for hope.  Amnesty International notes the global trend is away from using the death penalty. 

At the end of 2010 the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty could not have been clearer... The number of countries that are abolitionist in law or practice has substantially increased over the past decade, rising from 108 in 2001 to 139 in recent years.

Furthermore, in the American state probably most identified with use of the death penalty, Texas, a two-year moratorium has been proposed in the state legislature.  As goes Texas, so goes the nation?  Let's not get carried away.  That said, the state of Illinois just completely abolished capital punishment.  Maybe MLK was right when he said the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, albeit ever so slowly.

One final glimmer of hope is the recent news that Hospira, Inc. - the only U.S. manufacturer of an essential lethal injection drug - stopped making the drug a year ago, and scarce supplies will soon expire.  We have Italy's opposition to the death penalty to thank here.  (Thank you, Italy!)

Ultimately, you can't fuck for virginity.  You can't fight for peace.  And you certainly can't prove killing is wrong by killing killers.  Let's work together for a less evil America.  Support the movement to abolish the death penalty in your state.  Kansas could be next.  Click here to send a message to Kansas legislators supporting a bill to outlaw capital punishment.