There were three more very different examples of the United States Government's hypocrisy on Monday.

First, pro-democracy demonstrators in Yemen clashed with the police for the fourth straight day demanding the resignation of the repressive President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled the nation for 21 years. Meanwhile, the U.S.Government has spent the last several months beefing up its military assistance to Saleh, and as Al Jazeera notes, "is shortly to embark on a $75 million project to train Yemen's counterterrorism unit." (To bring U.S. terror to people like pro-democracy demonstrators!).

Second, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 275-144 to extend intact the anti-democracy act ironically called the PATRIOT Act. This odious act
allows the U.S. secret police (i.e. FBI) to use "roving wiretaps," conduct
individual or group surveillance, and to access personal records from banking to medical to library checkouts for whatever reason they wish, if
they are deemed "a person of interest" by the Feds. (The ACLU has a poster
slogan for this: "The Patriot Act ... here to protect you FROM your freedoms").

And Third, Argentina caught the U.S. using an Air Force C17 transport to
smuggle arms and drugs, valued at over $2 million, into their country;
intended to train Argentine Federal police. Argentine promptly cancelled
the training program and sent the goods back to the U.S., with the Argentine ambassador to the U.S. calling the incident, "a shameful embarrassment." (Of course, if any Argentine even attempted to smuggle
anything into the U.S., he/she would be promptly arrested!).