Foreigners send agents, surveillance
to photograph your land,
spy on your peoples,
strategize against your national defenses,
map the resources under your earth,
determine profits to be taken
from you and your children,
foment unrest in your streets,
destroy your culture.
Safe at home, they review their investments and drink fine liquor.
Foreigners send their corporations
to take your natural resources, and
they manipulate your government, and
they set up puppet leaders who
impose odious rules on you and
give away your national property, and
they install shipping and pipelines
to carry off your wealth,
leaving you with crumbs.
Safe at home, their families buy without regard to cost.
Foreigners send their missionaries
to convert your children
in the guise of “helping” you, and
they violate your religion
in the streets of your town, and
they build their churches
on the graves of your fathers, and
they teach their ways to your children
in schools built on your homeland.
Safe at home, their children memorize lessons of their church.
Foreigners send death across your skies
not just one or two explosions, no,
countless explosions, bombs,
smart, dumb, clustered
dropping from airplanes,
delivered by missiles,
killing, maiming, destroying,
flattening whole cities, and
spreading ruin over your countryside.
Safe at home, their families live in exclusive neighborhoods.
Foreigners send helicopters, tanks
to spread death in your streets, and
they tear down every place of shelter, and
they defile your places of worship,
bring ruin to your institutions,
pollute the water you drink,
spoil the air you breathe,
dump their sewage where they please, and
then ridicule your suffering.
Safe at home, their families celebrate holidays together.
Foreigners send their armies
to murder your neighbors, and
they abuse your families,
they kick down your doors,
they enter your house and
drag grown men outside,
they threaten with assault rifles,
they curse your women and children, and
they spread your belongings in the street.
Safe at home, they laugh and play with their families.
When you fight back, when
you resist with whatever
side-arms, home-made booby traps, and
any antiquated weapons you can carry,
when you hate them,
when you show them a minute fraction
of the suffering they spread,
then they imprison you
for questioning and torture.
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