I want one! where can I buy one of the t-shirts?

For those who like to read:

Richard Drinnon's book Facing West: the Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building does an excellent job of tracing US history from the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, to the Philippines in 1898, to Vietnam in the 1960s.

Doesn't go all the way back to 1492, but focuses on unifying threads of racism, genocide, theft and imperialism in the vicious history of the United States.

I have that shirt. I frequently wear it and mostly get thumbs up, and occasionally a few middle fingers.

A salt lick is a block of salt, about 8-10 pounds of it. And is used to give cows a bit of salt while they eat the grass grown on the prairie...

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

You keep ranting on and on about "the Americans" this and "the Americans" that as if I'm referring to mercenaries run by the American government. Mercenaries from all over the world participated in the botched Iraq occupation: South African mercenaries, Israeli mercenaries, Columbian mercenaries, British mercenaries, etc. These are CORPORATE contractors who do their work for the highest bidder regardless of whether that bidder is a government or a centemillionaire or billionaire or drug cartel or a gaggle of corrupt oil sheiks or just some corrupt Third Party dictator settling some old scores and trying to keep it secret.

The point I'm trying to make is that, in the post-Soviet era, the U.S. has made war such a growth industry around the world and privatized it so extensively and so sloppily that not only have the U.S. government's Pentagon and CIA become a self-incentivizing run amok war machine, but the number and size of the purely mercenary contractor firms has grown to the point where it is also becoming a self-incentivizing multi-national industry. There were more mercenaries in Iraq than the entire British troop contingent. That means as time goes on this new and massive mercenary industry will seek out "growth opportunities" in war around the world to maintain and expand the number of its lucrative contracts--and since these firms are motivated first and foremost by profits they will not necessarily hesitate to refrain in engaging in operations without any government's approval so long as the company's execs think they can get away with it--and look at what Erik Prince has gotten away with already. He's just the tip of that ice berg.

Multinational banks and corporations will soon surpass in power (and many of them will rival in military strength) most of the world's official governments. Some sub-set of them may, in the not so distant future, even turn on the U.S. government that helped create the "growth market" in war for the private contracted intelligence gatherers and mercenary armies in the first place. I suspect the U.S. government has already lost control of "its" mercenaries (by becoming too over-dependent on them) and cannot trust private intelligence gatherers for the same reason.

In this scenario it doesn't matter how furious or violent a Sunni Arab or Persian Shiite backlash is against perceived American assassinations of Muslim leaders because (1) the assassins will be mercenaries and may not even be American mercenaries, (2) they may be operating without the knowledge of the American or ANY government, and (3) these mercenaries only care whether or not THEY OR THEIR COMPANY gets caught or retaliated against, not whether Uncle Sam or other Americans take the fall for them. The multinational mercenary firms are global entities who have had years of multi-billion dollar contracts that enable them to metastasize and hide almost anywhere in the world. Several of them have headquarters in Dubai, no doubt, but they can retire so far out of reach of the "Muslim street" that not even a billion Muslims could find them if they wanted to and also had the plane fare.

Regardless of whether or not the 9/11 attacks were carried out on orders from the old CIA asset Bin Laden as part of an American fascist conspiracy or not, the Muslims who participate in or cheer on the Jihadis and Al Qaeda are thrice damned fools because of all the self-incentivizing war machines of the West that they've given American fascists the excuse to set loose now on the entire world--including the U.S. itself--for DECADES to come.

Those rogue war machines care first about PROFITS. They don't care if they have to drag down the U.S., destroy its domestic economy and completely militarize what's left as a Fascist State. That would be just a brief dip in their war profits until an even larger war fully engulfing Pakistan, Iran, Yemen and possibly India is launched by our Republicans who are just chomping at the bit to do it. Why do you think Israel is still so brazen? They know what's coming. If a wider war is declared then TENS OF MILLIONS of Americans would be fully mobilized along with the remnant U.S. economy in a military Draft. The last time that happened it led to the deaths of over 3 million people in Southeast Asia and the U.S. wasn't even really trying then. The American people weren't as programmed to be terrified of the Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge as they are regarding Al Qaeda. The mercenary firms have made tens of billions of dollars that depend on keeping wars going and growing: Crushing, destroying the infrastructure of, creating massive refugee populations in governments in a ruthless search for control of oil, natural gas, strategic minerals and other resources. Even if the U.S. government decided it wanted peace, by the time it reaches that decision the mercenary armies may be so powerful they may decide to keep the wars going to maintain their own bottom lines anyway.

The old Soviet Union paradoxically helped grow AND kept in check the U.S. military-industrial complex and the global economy. Now there is no military super-power equivalent to divert the U.S. from its own worst capitalist, war profiteering tendencies and thereby help protect the rest of the world from the U.S. Even if the U.S. economy completely crashes before launching a wider Middle Eastern/Central Asian war the mercenary armies and private intelligence gatherers may take on a post-U.S. life of their own and continue the vicious cycle of destruction.