LAND OF THE NOT SO FREE.

" YOU'RE ALL GOD DAMN COMMIES! (have a nice day)."

I had a conversation with a mate today about his mum, she's your every day run of the mill middle aged Dublin housewife, shes not in any way a political monster, communist, criminal, religious nutter, or drug fiend, she is an average 'normal' person who has never in her life earned the attention of the authorities, American or Irish in anyway what so ever.

Yet this 'Mrs average' has gone and earned herself a lifetime ban from ever setting foot in America, yet she has committed no crime.

The reason why the Americans consider this harmless old lady a threat to the very fabric of the 'apple pie way of life' is because she signed a petition that said the war in Iraq was bad and it was wrong to kill people. This wasn't a campaign run by some rabidly extremist left wing fringe group that was set up to 'to put America on its knees' or discredit the states in any way, it was a petition that went around offices, churches and the like and it was signed by your normal every day 'pillars of the community'.

So why have the Americans come down so hard on people who have no axe to grind with the states? Actually going to all the trouble to tell all the individual people who signed the petition is fucking mad, are they really worried that someone might visit America and actually tell an American that they don't agree on every point of American foreign policy? if the American government are so sure that what they are doing is so right then they surely wouldn't be so afraid of voiceless middle aged ladies disagreeing with them, hardly a threat to American civilisation methinks.

My mates mum wasn't an 'enemy' of America in any way, quite the opposite in fact, she had visited America quite a few times, yet the policy makers in charge have decided to make 'normal people' like her enemies, people who would of never before thought of themselves as anti-American, yet now they do, and its all thanks to the Americans themselves-"hearts and minds" indeed.

And the moral of the tale? well if you don't like war or killing people then you are a pinko commie and you are not welcome in America.

Al-queda isn't America's biggest enemy, its own policy makers are.