Te Papa Dead Protest Growing International Weapons Network

The world has been paying attention to the transformation of the United States of America. They see what’s been going on, how we have been moving away from the ideals that once distinguished us, as we move through vengeance into a fear beyond all reason, a fear with no end in sight. Our country’s movement into darkness accelerated today, as America gave up the foundations of its liberty with the signing of the Military Commissions Act into law, and the world has taken notice.

No more habeas corpus. No more right to a fair trial. For the rest of the world, most importantly, no more application of the Geneva Conventions to the American military. Now that the American military regards itself as no longer accountable to the standards that the Geneva Conventions set for a basement of depravity during wartime, the other nations of the world are now encouraged to disregard the laws of war as well. The terror agenda of the American government is now a threat to anyone who visits our country, and to anyone who is suspected of defying our government anywhere else in the world. The entire surface of the Earth has been reinterpreted as a battlefield, upon which agents of the American government can swoop in, snatch people, and throw them into secret torture prisons without ever explaining why.

Protests against the international military system that sustains the United States as the world’s only superpower thus are taking on extra urgency. In New Zealand yesterday, fifteen people laid themselves out in a symbolic death in front of a meeting of the New Zealand Defence Industry Association. These weapon merchants, or gun runners, as someone yesterday suggested that I call them, are working with American corporations to sell weapons to governments around the world, promoting a state of armed conflict, and the use of power gained through the constant threat of attack.

These protesters weren’t just taking a stand against the actions of the New Zealand Defence Industry Association. They were, in their way, taking a stand against the immense system that profits from war and the fear of war wherever it exists. They protested New Zealand’s own links to the industry of violence that is centered here in the United States, with Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, and our many other businesses who profit from instability, insecurity, intolerance, and insurrection.

They stood against the same system of power that promoted the Military Commissions Act – a system of power that tells us that talk is dangerous and torture is the foundation of safety. The world may never again see the people who have been condemned without hope of justice to America’s international system of gulags. The world will certainly see more protests of the sort that occured at Te Papa yesterday, as the people of the world see that the United States has forsaken its traditional attachment to liberty, in pursuit of power by any means necessary.

As an American, I want to thank the protesters at Te Papa, and all the others who are working for the causes of nonviolence and liberty around the world. Know that there are still some Americans who are working for the same thing, struggling against those who use the petty violence of Islamic terrorists to excuse a campaign of terrorism all their own.