Overtime May 2004
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OVERTIME--May 2004 issue
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Dedicated to reflecting the collective wisdom of enlightened workers.
Linda Featheringill
4651 West 41st Street, Down
Cleveland, OH 44109
(216) 661-0794
lfeatheringill@hotmail.com
May 2004
Volume 4, Number 12
Greetings!
The news this month has been mainly bad news - focused on war and elections, almost to the exclusion of everything else. But spring has come to Cleveland, with mild temperatures and lots of green leaves, so I am happy anyway. I hope you have a very pleasant month of May. - Linda Featheringill
Religion I.
A battle in John Kerry’s United States presidential election campaign may soon be fought at the altar rail, if senior traditionalists in the Catholic Church get their way.
Priests and bishops across the US are being urged by members to refuse Communion to the first Catholic to run for the presidency since John F. Kennedy. The sanction would be imposed until Senator Kerry abandons his permissive views on abortion and other issues, such as same-sex marriages.
The campaign - which has the explicit blessing of the Vatican - is gathering force and Senator Kerry’s aides have been forced to visit churches before allowing him to attend Mass. Rome has become increasingly concerned about the possibility of an avowedly Catholic president who is pro-choice and approves of gay civil unions.
In a surprisingly frank statement, a Vatican official told Time magazine: “People in Rome are becoming more and more aware that there’s a problem with John Kerry and a potential scandal with his apparent profession of his Catholic faith, along with some of his stances - particularly on abortion.”
[The Telegraph Group, London, April 5, 2004.]
The media covered Senator John Kerry’s Easter Sunday attendance at Boston’s Paulist Center, where he received Communion even though some of his Catholic political foes called upon American bishops to deny him the sacrament. The argument was that Kerry supports legal abortion, a position at odds with one of the church’s basic teachings. At the same time, Kerry supports his church’s position in opposing capital punishment (except for terrorists), along with many other fundamental Catholic social justice teachings.
Kerry’s critics call this “cafeteria Catholicism” [because he chooses the teachings he likes and leaves the rest]. The internal Catholic firefight is likely to intensify as we near Election Day.
What is frequently overlooked is that Bush, a strong supporter of capital punishment, is at odds with the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) General Conference, his denomination’s top policy body. In 1996, the UMC declared, “We oppose capital punishment and urge its elimination from all criminal codes.”
Opposition to strict gun control is a major plank in Republican platforms, but the UMC supports “federal legislation to regulate the importation, manufacturing, sale, and possession of guns and ammunition by the general public.”
Is Bush practicing “cafeteria Methodism?”
[A James Rudin, Religion News Service, April 24, 2004.]
The Paulist Center (Boston) attracts Catholics uncomfortable with some of the Vatican’s orthodox teachings or who otherwise feel alienated from the Roman Catholic Church. The congregation includes same-sex couples, whose adopted children are baptized there, unlike in some other Boston parishes. The service area of the Center is not geographical but rather is ideological, drawing people from as far away as New Hampshire.
[From an article by Jennifer Peter, Associated Press, April 25, 2004.]
April - the Fools month - brings very apt news as the Iraqi chaos intensifies. All the warring parties fight under the banner of the same God, who obviously has split himself up into a multiplicity of divisions. God (with his followers) is fighting himself on several fronts simultaneously. At the same time, he is portrayed by his followers as benevolent and loving.
Gone are the days when God was simply a trinity of entities. He has progressed now into at least 20 fragments, all of which are fighting each other. Is this a case of multiple personalities, or some other form of frenetic lunacy?
Those who willingly become God’s foot soldiers must see some sense somewhere in all this, if only to be provided with 70 over-sexed virgins when they die, if they are Muslims. And Christians have an even more grandiose vision of heaven - reclining on clouds, playing harps, and having every wish granted!
[Gogglesworth, West Australia, Australia.]
The War in Iraq I
The Pentagon’s ban on images of dead soldiers’ homecomings at all military bases was breached Thursday, as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the internet by a web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.
The web site, The Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of caskets arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware. The Pentagon on Thursday labeled the decision to grant the request a mistake but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Department of Defense photographers.
The release of the photos came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon in Iraq fired a woman who had taken photos of coffins of war dead being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired.
The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio and her husband, David Landry, had “violated Department of Defense and company policies.”
“It wasn’t my intent to lose my job or become famous or anything,” Silicio said, according to the Associated Press.
The firing was first reported Thursday in The Seattle Times, which published an April 7 photo on Sunday (April 18).
The picture shows several workers inside a cargo plane parked at Kuwait International Airport securing 20 flag-draped coffins for the trip to Dover Air Force Base. Silicio, who took the picture, told the newspaper she hoped it would portray the care and devotion with which civilian and military crews treat the remains of fallen soldiers.
The firing underscored the stringency with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy to ban news organizations from taking photographs or news footage of the homecomings of the war dead.
[From an article by Bill Carter for the New York Times, April 23, 2004.]
This and That
Church and State
If one religion takes over the country, it might not be your religion. Then you will not be allowed to practice your beliefs. It would be like the Taliban in Afghanistan. We would have the Inquisition all over again.
[Irene Hamlin Stephenson, Mini Examiner, April 6, 2004.]
Economic battlefront
I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn’t say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn’t detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing is competitive edge, vis-à-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation.
Several executives explained to me that they were opening new plants in Asia - not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component in an automated high-tech manufacturing plant. It was because governments in those countries are so eager for employment and the transfer of technology to their young populations that they are offering huge tax holidays for US manufacturers who will set up shop. Because most of these countries also offer some form of national health insurance, US companies shed that huge liability as well.
Other executives complained bitterly that the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in the US that many have given up the age-old dream of coming to our shores. Instead, they are opting to study in England, Western Europe and even China. This is leading to a twofold disaster.
First, one of the greatest assets of this country - its ability to skim the cream off the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world and bring them here to innovate - will be diminished and that in turn will shrink our talent pool. And second, we could lose a whole generation of foreigners who would normally come he to study and then take US ideas and relationships back home. In a decade, we will feel that loss in our standing around the world.
[From an article by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 23, 2004.]
Extraterrestrial Life
The amount of money spent on scientific search for intelligent extraterrestrial life forms in space has me quite baffled. I can’t understand why nobody else has ever projected the following queries.
Why would such a life form necessarily live on a planet similar to our own? Statistics show clearly that the vast majority, in fact almost all, other planets contain environments in which we humans could never survive. But life forms have been found on our own planet in places where we could never exist - on deep ocean floors where pressure, complete darkness, and poisonous volcanic gases would be fatal to humans.
I figure that if intelligent life forms exist in the universe, they probably live on planets that would be hostile to us. Such beings would have evolved and adapted to their freezing or boiling and poisonous environments, just as we have adapted to our own conditions.
Any such alien life form could easily have produced systems of communication completely different and unknown to us. Why would they be using radio and electronic type methods of communication, which is what scientists on earth are continually searching for? If they have advanced beyond our present stage of development, they might use thought waves or gasses to direct messages. Who knows? If feel that we humans are ridiculously arrogant to automatically assume that we have devised and ultimate and ONLY method of communicating and that other intelligent species on other planets will have done the same things we have.
As I say, I am quite baffled at the expense of this apparently meaningless search. I would like the purpose explained to me if someone can see a flaw in my tOne more thing: If intelligent radio signals ever are picked up and they are traced from a planet hundreds or thousands of light years away, then it means that those radio signals (which travel much slower than light) were sent at least hundred thousand years ago. The senders are long gone and the whole species may have disappeared. Would we answer the signal and wait hundreds of thousands of years to get a reply?
As I say, I am quite baffled at the expense of this apparently meaningless search. I would like the purpose explained to me if someone can see a flaw in my thought processes. One more thing: If intelligent radio signals ever are picked up and they are traced from a planet hundreds or thousands of light years away, then it means that those radio signals (which travel much slower than light) were sent at least hundred thousand years ago. The senders are long gone and the whole species may have disappeared. Would we answer the signal and wait hundreds of thousands of years to get a reply?
[Gogglesworth, West Australia, Australia.]
Racism in Vidalia
While working t the Hatch Nuclear Plant located south of Vidalia, Georgia, I leaned the bigotry and “whites only” values still exist. Vidalia is known as the onion capital of the world. There was a small hole-in-the-wall type place that served some the best steaks anywhere, especially the T-bones. Rumor had it that they were so fresh because some of the cows were rustled the same day. The owner, Mr. Lee, could serve as the model for Porky from the movies of the same name.
Engineers, draftsmen, and other plan personnel all liked dining with Mr. Lee. Even those traveling from corporate headquarters and on expense accounts knew it was the best place to get a steak. That was before Adale went to eat.
Adale was a young Afro-American draftsman from Southern Services in Birmingham, Alabama. He was born after the riots and schooled after segregation in Birmingham. For him, prejudice and bigotry were events of the past.
Like everyone else, Adale was exciting about the prospects of a T-bone steak at Mr. Lee’s when he got a field assignment to the Hatch plant. He accompanied three other plant employees (all white) to Mr. Lee’s to order T-bones. As they entered the restaurant, Mr. Lee rose from his rocking chair and asked Adale what he wanted.
Adale responded, “A T-bone.”
To this, Mr. lee responded, “Around back.”
This exchange was repeated over and over, as Adale attempted to explain that all he wanted was to order a steak.
Growing tired of the repetition, Mr. Lee got straight to the point. He grabbed his shotgun and flatly told Adale that “niggers pick up their steaks at the back door.”
As rumors of this event circulated throughout the power plant company, members of management discretely advised employees visiting the Hatch plant for field assignments to avoid Mr. Lee’s.
[C.W. Brown, Tennessee, USA.]
Republican National Convention
Driven by arrogance and self-confidence, the Republican Party decided to hold its 2004 National Convention for the first time ever in New York City. With every passing day, it is appearing more and more likely that this is a decision they will come to regret.
For more than 35 years, protests have been organized at the presidential nominating conventions of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. Mainstream media often characterize such events as amusing sideshows that lend some flavor and color to these boring and carefully scripted proceedings that are really little more than public relations gimmicks. This year, things will be quite different - the protests themselves may very well displace the Republican National Convention (RNC) from center stage. Even though the RNC is still six months off, it is now a virtual certainty that the protests will be far more massive than anything realized before.
The initial call for worldwide protests during the RNC was issued as part of the Jakarta Peace Consensus, the unity document forged by antiwar coalitions from 24 nations meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia in May 2003. Two weeks later, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the coalition that organized the historic rally at the UN on February 15 as part of a day of unprecedented global protest, got the ball rolling by filing for permits for a march by the convention site and for a rally in Central Park on august 29, 2004, the day before the RNC officially begins.
The early filing date was intended as a statement to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Mayor’s Office, which denied that organization a permit to march on February 15.
More than 7 months passed before the NYPD saw fit to begin negotiations. When an official from the NYPD asked why the protests were expected to be so large, Leslie Cagan, UFPJ Coordinator, answered, “The Bush Administration.”
While honesty has not been a virtue of any US administration within memory, the lies, the hypocrisy, the cronyism and the deceit of the Bush Administration are particularly blatant and transparent. Among New Yorkers there is yet another factor motivating people to take to the streets. Not only is the RNC convening there for the first time, the date has been pushed back to make it the latest nominating convention ever - and little more than a week before the anniversary of the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. Many New Yorkers deeply resent their city being used as a prop and their pain and suffering manipulated to advance the agenda of the Bush Administration.
The criminalization of dissent and the militarization of the police, as witnessed in Miami and elsewhere, are concerns for those organizing protests at the RNC in New York City. However, denying people the right to march, along with the well-documented brutality of the NYPD on February 15, has not sat well with the court of public opinion. In a TV interview on January 18, 2004, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who was criticized over February 15 in the mainstream media, stated that he would be a “guardian” and “facilitator” to those who are practicing free speech during the RNC. That this statement must be met with a healthy dose of skepticism does not negate the fact that the RNC is, after all, a public relations event. Trampling upon democratic rights and police brutality could translate into defeat in November. One can presume full awareness of these circumstances by Republican Party officialdom and protest organizers alike.
[Steve Ault, Independent Politics News, Spring 2004.]
Africa
Africa is a continent endowed with almost all necessary for development. However it has remained the poorest continent. Ills, evils and self-destructions of all kinds continue to plague the African continent. Africa has lost its natural, human and material resources to wars and massacres. Coups and counter coups have continued to play havoc with African society.
The self-centeredness and mass corruption of our leaders play a big role in the cause of Africa’s problems. Most of our African leaders struggle to be in positions of leadership/ruling and struggle to maintain themselves in these positions simply because of being power hungry and for their personal gains only-to enrich themselves.
There is lack of respect and intolerance to those whose beliefs, thought/views and behaviours differ from one another’s. Consequently we are involved in killing each other and destroying the continent’s resources.
Those who are involved and or participating in wars and conflicts should stop and think; attempt to question the ethics of the work they are doing, why they are doing it and for whom. It is because so few questions or no questions are asked that wars are waged and people who have no vested interest in fighting them are killed or maimed.
J.K.Tukwasiibwe.
(jkweijagye@yahoo.com)
The Truth
There was a popular song during the first World War. Its title was “Over There.” It encouraged young men to “get your gun” and “make your mother proud of you.” It told the world “the Yanks are coming” and we won’t come back “until it’s over, over there.”
Today, for most of us, war is indeed “over there.” It arrives only in green-screen TV reports and controlled press briefings and presidential photo ops that say “Mission Accomplished.” Some of us would like to keep it that way.
So this week, when images of flag-draped coffins appeared on the Internet, many complained. And when USA Today ran photos of 116 US soldiers who died last month in Iraq, many complained again. When Ted Koppel, host of “Nightline,” announced he was devoting his program Friday to simply listing names of all US soldiers killed in this conflict, critics screamed he was a lefty.
And when photos emerged of naked Iraqi detainees, bent in horrible, sexually suggestive poses, while a US soldier smiled and pointed nearby, critics yelled that this was undermining our national interest.
Really? Since when was our national interest to stick our heads in the sand?
The first rule of war is: Young People Die. As we coddle ourselves more and more in this country, we seem to believe that, through enough talk or “American Idol” or other distraction, we can make death go away. We can’t.
When I hear people compare this war to Vietnam, I shudder - not because both were accompanied by misguided perceptions but because in that war, everyone’s son was a potential soldier. We had a draft. If you were 18, you could be going, no matter what you thought.
Today, we scram louder and have less on the line. Who’s really fighting this war for us? Young men and women, mostly poor to middle class, largely minorities. We’re very quick to urge them to go over there and stick a boot in some Arab’s behind but we don’t want to know when they come back in a body bag.
Shame on anyone who hides behind “national security” or “respect for the families” as reasons for shielding the real cost of war: human life. Most military families I know want the world to know of their loss and they pride they have in their fallen loved ones. Just as most of them want atrocities brought to light.
And when our people - be they soldiers, intelligence, FBI, CIA, or whatever - start torturing and humiliating Iraqis in the same building that Saddam Hussein used to do it, they are no better than him. And they deserve no protection.
Sy Hersh, the investigative reporter who broke the My Lai massacre story four decades ago (another ugly incident no one initially wanted to hear about), was asked what should be done about this latest apparent transgression.
“Exposure,” he said.
That may be a dirty word to the current administration. It isn’t to real Americans. It is the essence of who we are. We can face the truth. We believe in the truth. And the truth is our kids are dying in this war and so are a lot of other people. They have faces. They have families. And now, some have coffins.
Those are facts. No right or left. Facts. Do with them what you will. But until we stop thinking of war as “over there,” we will never take full ownership of who we are over there.
[Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, May 1, 2004.]
Who Am I?
God told me to overthrow the Constitution and steal the White House from the legally elected President, and I did it.
The Great Pumpkin told me to invade Afghanistan and overthrow its non-Christian theocracy, and I did it.
The Tooth Fairy told me to invade Iraq and start a civil war between Sunni heretics and Shia heretics so that they would exterminate each other, and I did it.
Saint Napoleon told me to gut and neutralize the United Nations and place America above international law, and I did it.
Saint Stalin told me to pass a Patriot Act that would give me the right to label anyone I chose a “terrorist” and deprive him of all constitutional rights, and I did it.
Saint Hitler told me to appoint a theofascist Gestapo that would turn America into a totalitarian theocracy that is a carbon copy of the Third Reich and the Soviet Empire, and I did it.
Saint Torquemada told me that I am his designated successor, and anyone I denounce on the land will be damned to the Christian hell for all eternity. He told me to sentence everyone who disagrees with me in any way to imprisonment at Guantanamo for as long as I can get away with it, and neverending posthumous torture in the crucible of evil I created out of what I see in the mirror, and I did it.
And the Easter Bunny told me to portray my Democratic opponent as a “liberal” who believes in such un-Republican concepts as human rights, equal rights for minorities, freedom of conscience, the separation of church and state, and a legally elected President, and I did it.
God doesn’t make a move without consulting me. You talk to God. But God talks to me. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.
[William Harwood]
May 2004 Page 2