Another socialist blog

because the politicians are all wrapping themselves in stars and stripes this week. At issue is a ruling by a federal appeals court declaring that requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance violates their religious freedom. The Senate has rushed to declare the Court was wrong and laid plans to intervene on behalf of the Pledge and against the First Amendment.

Refusing to stand and participate in the Pledge has been getting school children in trouble with school authorities for generations. But the law is on their side: the Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that the state cannot “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion….” Students cannot be compelled to affirm their loyalty “by word or act.”

Those who express contempt for this week’s court ruling conveniently forget why we have legal protection for religious freedom. It’s because we have a long and shameful history of religious intolerance and persecution. The 1943 case involved the religious freedom of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which was far from trivial. In 1940 alone, there were 3,035 reported instances of mob violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.

The Pledge, was, by the way, written by a Socialist named Francis Bellamy. Bellamy, a Baptist minister, didn’t include “under God” in the original Pledge.

The Bush administration will support a Palestinian state, it seems, conditioned on the ouster of Yassir Arafat. Never mind that Arafat is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people, that independent observers have determined the election to be free and fair, and that the Bush administration has publicly admitted Arafat’s legitimacy in the recent past.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with CNN, said “Chairman Arafat is head of the Palestinian Authority, and he is recognized — whether you approve of it or not — as the leader of the Palestinian people.” On April 9, 2002, Powell said “I have said this repeatedly: it is up to the Palestinian people to decide who their leader will be.” That tune has changed. Powell told NPR today that the Palestinians don’t have “the right kind of democracy.”

Indeed. So the Bush administration supports democracy in Palestine, but only if that democracy produces the concessions demanded by the United States.

It’s especially clawing that Bush would call for “multi-party” elections in Palestine, considering the opposition of Republicans and Democrats to multi-party elections here at home.

Interesting piece this morning on NPR on the promotion of fear by the U.S. government. David Ropeik points out that so-called “dirty bombs” are more scary now than they were before, because John Ashcroft and the Justice Dept. made this type of bomb sound as horrible as possible so as to make the arrest sound as heroic as possible. He wonders aloud whether the Bush Administration wants us afraid, so we’ll support military spending and the curtailment of civil liberties. Of course, having the population terrified is exactly the goal of terrorists.

one defendant at a time: a United States citizen has been placed in a military prison on the orders of President Bush, who declared him an “enemy combatant.”

Watch the magician’s hands carefully: simply declare that the rules of war apply, and presto! the rights of the accused can be made to vanish into thin air. This is ironic in the extreme, given the fact that the rules of war apparently do NOT apply to those enemy combatants who bore arms against the U.S. in Afghanistan. It’s also a bit shocking, or should be shocking, coming as it does from someone who swore at his unfortunate inauguration to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Remember what Bush said after September 11? “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world,” he said. His true agenda, which was clear already on September 11, is to drastically curtail our freedom, exactly as he accuses the permanent terrorist enemy of doing.

Fine article in the Register discusses the proposed Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. They see it, as do I, as a smokescreen for vast amounts of new domestic spying, plus a handy political club for beating up on Democrats who don’t march in step.

This racist gaffe by George W. Bush is hard to believe, but is in fact documented in Der Spiegel: the President, during a meeting with the Brazilian president on April 28, 2002, interrupted him to ask: “Do you have blacks, too?” Condoleezza Rice came to his rescue before he could embarrass himself further.

I can’t vouch for this English translation of the original German.

Former Senator Bob Kerrey is on a book tour, and NPR did a lovely puff piece about it this morning. Kerrey was asked about the raid on Thanh Phong, in which he led a Navy SEAL team now accused of war crimes. Kerrey dismisses those accusations as the lies of former Viet Cong soldiers. But by no means all of Bob Kerrey’s accusers are former “enemy” soldiers. His account of the raid on Thanh Phong is disputed by Gerhard Klann, a member of Kerrey’s own team. As reported in The Nation,

“Upon arriving at a hut on the outskirts of the village, the team killed five members of a family consisting of two grandparents and their three grandchildren. The SEALs used knives in an attempt to preserve silence. Klann says that when he had trouble killing the grandfather, Kerrey held the man down with his knee while Klann cut his throat. The team, Klann goes on, proceeded to the village, where it ordered about a dozen women and children out of their bunker, lined them up and executed them at close range.”

Kerrey whines that there is a “double standard” applied to his account of the events of that night, and the accounts of those who say he’s lying. No, I’d say there’s just one standard: who’s got a motive to lie? Kerrey, who has been protecting a political career? Or Klann, whose account is against his own interests?

in an interview with the BBC: “Now, I think both sides recognise that the most horrific thing that could happen in the year 2002 is, for the second time in history, a nuclear exchange to take place,” he said (emphasis added). As many others have pointed out, Hiroshima was not a nuclear exchange: it was a one-sided nuclear first strike by the United States. Indeed, since the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal was used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clearly an all-out nuclear war, albeit a one-sided one.

Note the word “horrific” is absent from all Bush Administration comments on the United States nuclear arsenal. Nuclear war, apparently, is only unthinkable when waged by other nations.

An early casualty of the war between India and Pakistan may be the credibility of nuclear deterrence. If the logic of deterrence were correct, the nuclear arsenals of Pakistan and India would be leading them away from the brink of war right now. Clearly no one thinks we are safer because of the nukes on the subcontinent. Indeed, the U.S. government has advised U.S. citizens in India to get out.