In July, I was informed that I had won a Project Censored Award for my article "The Ravaging of Africa" published in Briarpatch (February 2003) and the CCPA Monitor (October 2002). I was honoured to get the award as Project Censored is a renowned progressive journalistic program that annually ranks the 25 most important stories censored or underreported by the mainstream media. The top ten of these stories get awards. The Project is based at Sonoma State University in California where 150 students and faculty read thousands of alternative press articles from which they select the 25 stories. The stories are then ranked by a national panel of judges and published in a widely distributed book.

I was invited to the U.S. for the awards ceremony. I thanked Project Censored for the award and was happy to accept it but declined their invitation to come to California. I refuse to go to the U.S. because its government has destroyed two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, killing about 40,000 people and causing unbelievable suffering for already devastated populations. Since 1991, Washington has killed 1.5 million Iraqis through economic sanctions that have strangled the country. The sight of the biggest military power on Earth bombing and invading an enfeebled Iraq and murdering another 37,000 people to occupy the country and steal its oil was repulsive beyond belief.

There is no end to the U.S. government's barbarity. Since 1950, the U.S. has killed about eight million people in the Third World. This includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, the Congo, Angola, Mozambique and Somalia. The reason there is no end to the slaughter is that genocide and plunder are what this country is all about. It was created by the killing of more than five million natives and the theft of their land and resources. The U.S. then carried out a similar policy towards the Third World. And such a bloody state has the nerve to talk about "terrorism" and exact revenge for it. Washington has shown no proof that Afghanistan or Iraq were responsible for the September 11 attacks; in fact many indications point towards official U.S. complicity in the strikes.

One keeps hoping that the American people will rein in their government. But the criminally vicious Bush II Administration has had the overwhelming support of the U.S. population for its wars. 75% of Americans supported the war on Iraq and 70% of them believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the World Trade Center attack even though there is no proof for this. One has to ask, what is wrong with these people? Are they as Michael Moore writes, an "idiot nation"? Are their minds so commodified by consumerism and television that they believe anything an unelected President tells them? But to understand this one has to go back to the origins of the U.S. state and society. As one American said after seeing the World Trade Center collapse, "We should go and wipe 'em out just like we did the Injuns."

A second reason I have for not going to California is the deportation, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Arabs, South Asians and Muslims travelling to or residing in the U.S. since September 11, 2001. Shakir Baloch, a friend of mine and a Pakistani-Canadian (like myself) who was working in the U.S., is a well-known case. He was picked up by U.S. authorities soon after planes hit the World Trade Center, and jailed for seven months simply for being a Pakistani. In prison, he was beaten up, kept in solitary confinement and denied access to legal help. He was blamed for the September 11 attack, threatened with death and told that the U.S. would turn Pakistan "into a parking lot." Upon his release, Shakir was deported to Canada in his prison clothes without a cent in his pocket. Since then he has suffered from severe depression and is unable to work.

Similarly, 100,000 Pakistanis have been deported from the U.S. to Pakistan, many of them blindfolded and shackled. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported by U.S. Immigration to Syria when his plane stopped in New York on the way to Toronto. He was jailed in Syria and his wife believes that he has been tortured. On September 11, 2003, two leading mainstream Canadian Muslim clerics from Toronto were jailed by U.S. authorities in Florida for 16 hours. They had gone to lead a prayer service for 9/11 victims. They were subjected to a hostile interrogation and repeatedly asked "Why do you study Islam?" before being deported to Canada. Another Pakistani friend of mine who lives in Toronto had to endure a nine-hour long interrogation and detention when he went to visit family in New York.