One reason I’m ashamed to be an american….

As if Bush’s speaking skills alone wasn’t enough….

Gleaned from today’s online version of NYTimes:

“Also last week, however, the administration was on a moral crusade that could lead to a significant rise in AIDS cases in Russia, China, elsewhere in Asia and in the former East bloc. In these places, drug users who inject are a prime risk group for AIDS, and the gateway through which the epidemic will spread into the general population. As many as a third of new AIDS infections outside sub-Saharan Africa are in drug users; in Russia, Unaids estimates that injecting drug users are 80 percent of the infected. Needle exchange programs can help control this part of the epidemic.

But at a Unaids policy meeting this month, a Bush administration official asked that all references to needle exchange be dropped from the group’s governing policy paper.

Unaids doesn’t control much money, but it sets world policy on how to fight AIDS, and usually operates by consensus to give its recommendations more force. Although America is virtually alone in its opposition to needle exchange, its clout as the largest Unaids donor means it might be able to win a vote this week in the group’s program coordination board. If Unaids could no longer work on needle exchange, nations would lose a valuable source of technical help. And a lack of consensus could keep countries from starting needle exchanges.

American law already forbids United States money from financing needle exchange programs. For Washington to decide that it wants to stop everyone else from doing that as well is a breathtakingly dangerous step.”

I read that. I read the parts especially that say “America is virtually alone…” and cringe. Because it implies that america is a whole group, a united front in agreement of this policy recommendation. Which, I’m pretty damn sure, is completely UNTRUE.

WHY THE FUCK must “we” (as in America), get all up in everyone else’s business? Ok. So American law forbids the US to finance needle exchange programs. Fine. Stupid, but fine. What gives the US the right to prevent everyone else from doing it?? US is not the goddamn be all and end all of EVERYTHING. What gives the US the right to control other countries?? Ok. It’s the richest or biggest or most powerful or whatever. But gawd. Must it use brute force and dirty threats to mold the world in to what it wants the world to be?

I’d rather be powerless and poor than powerful and corrupt.

America just needs to stop being one of those teachers who walks slowly up and down the aisles as people take their exams. I never cheated ya know (well, except in German class :p ) but that made me nervous as fuck.

I wish their was a way to…put America back in its place, so to speak, without endangering the innocent. *sigh*

Yet again I remember why I’m not at all proud to be an american.