'Accusations include reports that prisoners have been deprived of sleep, beaten, exposed to psychological torture and shot with rubber bullets.'

Helen Angove loves the US for its warmth and friendliness and hates it for its imperialistic outlook.

White phosphorous is a particularly unpleasant substance that bursts into flame on contact with oxygen, and causes extremely severe burns if it gets on the skin. Because once it has started burning it doesn’t stop, it can easily burn down to the bone.

Its military applications include use as camouflage by providing smoke-screens, but it does not take much imagination to picture the possibility of it being used directly as a weapon.

If it is used in such a way, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (the body which monitors the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which the US is party) says that it falls under the definition of a chemical weapon.

And yet evidence has come to light of the use of this substance as a weapon by the US military, most notably in an attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004.

This is just one of three news stories that struck me as significant when I came across them one day last year, when I was idly surfing a few news sites on the web.

The second of these stories concerns a small shopkeeper in Mexico City. Raquel Chavez had begun to stock a Peruvian brand of cola. It was proving popular in the impoverished area in which she ran her business, because it was significantly cheaper than other big name brands. Then she was visited by a Coca-Cola salesman who told her to remove the product from her shelves.

Intimidated

It seems that Ms Chavez is not easily intimidated. She reportedly told the Coca-Cola distributor: "You may call the shots everywhere else, but I'm the boss in my store." She then complained to Mexican federal competition authorities, who have since hit Coca-Cola with fines totalling $68m (£40m).

The third story returns us to matters of “national security“. The treatment of captured terrorist suspects is an ongoing story, with reports that the CIA set up what have been dubbed “black-sites” in Eastern Europe and Asia, where terrorist suspects have been held - away from the gaze of the word’s media, and where the prisoners have no legal protection or rights under US law.

There are also ongoing allegations of abuse by US forces that have come from former Iraqi prisoners. Accusations include reports that prisoners have been deprived of sleep, beaten, exposed to psychological torture and shot with rubber bullets.

I have a love/hate relationship with the US. On the one hand, there’s the genuine warmth and friendliness of most American citizens, the many excellent friends we have made since living here, the amazing wilderness areas, the fantastic film industry.

And then, on the other hand, there are stories like the three above that seem to suggest an almost imperialistic outlook. An extraordinarily pervasive belief that the rules the rest of the world abides by somehow don’t to apply to America - that America’s strength and sense of superiority give it the right to treat the rest of the world with a paternalism that regularly tips over into tyranny.

Belief

And this belief seems to be found, not only in the military and in the political administration, but also in commerce, and in ordinary people. I do not think it would be stretching things too much if to draw a parallel with the British Empire in the nineteenth century, with its complacent paternalism and unthinking oppression of other peoples.

Which is not to say, of course, that there are not many, many American citizens, who would, and do, find these news stories as disturbing as I do.

And many are trying to do something about it - human rights organisations, churches, political pressure groups. The church we go to engages in prayer and meditation events, study opportunities and political canvassing to raise awareness about just these kinds of issues. Please pray for it in the work that it is doing.

Helen Angove is a former Anglican priest from the UK who moved to California in July 2003.

• Read other Emails from America