God & Country Back in Style
(A compilation of significant news items that
failed to appear in most of the nation’s press.)
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PATRIOTISM PEAKS. Patriotism, complete with references to God, is fashionable
again in public schools, gaining support from parents, educators, veterans and
Congress, The Washington Times reports. The New York City Board of
Education unanimously adopted a resolution requiring all public schools to lead
students in the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each school day and at
assemblies and special events. This revives a policy that had been virtually
dead for 30 years. Similar requirements have popped up in school districts
across the country. An American Legion post in a Minneapolis suburb withheld
its annual $100,000 contribution until a local school district agreed to make
reciting the pledge a requirement. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives
voted 100-1 to require students to say the pledge or sing the national anthem
in school each day and mandated the display of the flag in every classroom.
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FBI EYES TORTURE. American investigators are considering harsher
interrogation methods, including torture, to break the wall of silence among
the 100 people arrested in connection with the terrorist attacks Sept. 11,
according to Times Newspapers service. Options being weighed include “truth”
drugs, pressure tactics and extraditing suspects to countries that treat prisoners
less gently. Evidence extracted by torture is inadmissible in U.S. courts and
perpetrators can be charged with felonies.
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CENSORSHIP, BOUGHT-AND-PAID-FOR. The Pentagon has spent millions of U.S.-taxpayer dollars to
buy all of the civilian satellite images of the bombings of Afghanistan to keep
people from seeing the damage U.S. bombs have done to innocent villages,
reports The Guardian. The British newspaper says the images, taken by
the advanced civilian satellite called “Ikonos,” launched in 1998, show
high-resolution photographs of massive damage to houses and large numbers of
dead bodies. Under U.S. law, the Department of Defense can exercise what is
known as “shutter control” to prevent enemies from using satellite photos while
the country is at war. In this case, however, the military purchased the
exclusive rights to the photos so no one else could see them.
BUYING FRIENDS. A Russian news agency is reporting that the U.S. government
offered the tiny former Soviet state of Uzbekistan $8 billion in economic and
military aid in return for its support in the war on terror—a sum equal to
Russia’s entire annual military budget.
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ANTHRAX SCARE. The Center for Disease Control announced that the number of
people taking anti-anthrax medications in and around Washington at the
government’s prompting is fast approaching 10,000. Also, in response to anthrax
contaminations in Washington-area post offices, federal officials have offered
gas masks and protective clothing to 800,000 workers, though some scientists
note that the government’s actions may be too little too late.
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PILOTS GET GUN TRAINING. Without waiting for the law to take effect, at least one
commercial airline is putting its pilots through stun-gun training. Pending
anti-terrorism legislation in Congress would permit pilots to carry guns. Mesa
Air Group said it would train its 1,200 pilots to use stun guns, which can
immobilize a suspect without inflicting permanent injury.
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ANTI-TERRORIST WEAPON. A California gun owners group is urging citizens to respond
to terrorism by embracing firearms. The 70,000-member California Rifle and
Pistol Association has erected billboards across central and southern
California saying “Society is safe when criminals don’t know who is armed.” It
is not a campaign to get people to buy guns, said spokesman Chuck Michel, a
civil-rights lawyer in Los Angeles. “It’s a campaign to make people think about
the legitimate and proper role of firearms in society.”
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GUN DENIED CHURCH MEMBER. Membership in a controversial church disqualifies a
Clinton, Conn. man for gun ownership, the state has ruled. Michael Gibbs is a
member of the World Church of the Creator, designated a “recognized hate group”
for opposing integration of the races. Gibbs is appealing on constitutional
grounds of free speech, freedom of religion and his Second Amendment right to
bear arms. “The individuals who wrote this decision are worse than any
criminals,” said the leader of the church.
SAVING STEEL. One of the remaining industries in America, the steel
industry, has been significantly harmed by cheap imports, the International
Trade Commission ruled Oct. 22, a first step toward protective measures. The
panel found 12 of 33 domestic steel product lines—which account for 79 percent
of all steel produced in the United States—had suffered serious injury because
of the imports. The commission will hold hearings and submit recommendations to
the Bush administration by Dec. 19. Among the possibilities are import quotas,
tariffs or a combination of the two, which astute economic nationalists ascribe
to the price of free trade.
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ALIEN FLOW SLOWS. Tighter border security in response to the illegal aliens
who attacked D.C. and New York on Sept. 11 has greatly reduced the flow of
immigrants coming from Mexico. Inspectors are stopping every vehicle,
questioning drivers and examining wares before allowing passage, Reuters news
service reports. The new controls, creating five-hour waits, have discouraged
many from trying to cross.
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“HATE CRIMES” RARE. Even as broadly and vaguely defined as it is by the Thought
Police, so-called “hate crimes” are rare, based on a sampling of several
states. From 1997-1999, 2,976 hate crimes were reported—a tiny fraction of 1
percent of the total 5.4 million crimes reported over the three-year span.
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SPEECH STIFLERS. Home Secretary David Blunket wants to expand existing
British laws on incitement to racial hatred to include religious hatred. “It’s
hard to imagine laws coming into existence without people seeking to use them
to prohibit legitimate opinion,” said Andrew Puddephatt, head of Article 19, a
free-speech group.
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DEMAND DECENCY. Parents in Fairfax County, Va., object to schools requiring
students to read certain books without their knowledge. They called for
creating a parental notice form that would allow them to decline permission for
their child to read materials that include pornography and violence. Some of
the educated but ignorant are whimpering about the First Amendment. But the
issue is not book burning but taking back parental control from the state over
what children read and hear. Besides, shelf space in libraries is precious and
decisions about what to add and eliminate are constantly being made.
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LIDDY, SHARPTON VISIT ISRAEL. New York demagogue, Rev. Al Sharpton, and “conservative”
talk show host G. Gordon Liddy visited Israel this week, where the two
Americans met with leading Israeli officials, including Binyamin Netanyahu. While
Sharp ton was in Israel, ac cording to The Jerusalem Post, to “express
solidarity with Israeli terror victims” and “improve Black-Jewish relations in
the U.S.,” Liddy was there to kiss up. “The U.S. citizenry now understand to
some degree what every Israeli citizen has been going through for so many years
at the hands of the terrorists,” Liddy told the Post. The United States
“has no business forcing the representatives of the legitimate democratic
government of Israel to parley with a man who is a terrorist . . . The problem
is that there is a split in the administration between President Bush and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the one hand, who want a hard line against
not only the terrorists but also those who give them aid and succor, and his
unfortunate choice of Secretary of State—the dove Colin Powell. Powell
counseled Bush’s father against military action to eject Iraq from Ku wait, and
then stopped the war when he had it won, snapping defeat from the jaws of
victory. Now he is giving him [the younger Bush] the same advice.”
