In a message dated 3/7/2006 12:06:58 AM Eastern Standard Time, one person writes:

 I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

I was asked to send this on if I agree or delete if I don't. It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a problem in having "In God! We Trust" on our money and having "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Shut Up and BE QUIET!!!
 

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A union person should find this bumper sticker a problem.  Why is that?

 

Any serious union activist recognizes that we have to organize globally, that workers have to unite across nationality lines as we do along gender, religious or racial ones.  This bumper sticker expresses  a view that hinders solidarity.  Just like having a bumper sticker that says, if you don't like my rebel flag, piss off. It becomes obvious why that flag is abhorent with barely a scrap of research.

 

The question that should be asked if someone raises a less than enthusiastic response with regard to the American flag would be why so?  I am sure that the Vietnamese workers do not feel such love for this symbol.  A country that never threatened or attacked the US, they lost 3,000,000 people and are still giving birth to children deformed by the chemicals dropped on them by planes with this symbol on them.

 

In its illegal excursion in to Cambodia under the war criminal Kissinger, the US used carpet bombing, mathematically calculating how many living things would be killed within the reaches of the device, drawing up grids and saturating them. The code names for these excursions were, Breakfast" Lunch" "Snack" "Dinner" and "Desert". It is estimated that 350,000 civilians in Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia lost their lives not to mention the continued deaths from chemical/defoliant exposure.

 

The US Subcommittee on refugees estimated that between March 68 and March 72, more than 3,000,000 civilians in South East Asia were killed, injured or made homeless.The US dropped in that period almost 4,500,000 tons of high explosive on Indochina. (not including chemical defoliants and pesticides).  The Pentagon's estimated tonnage total for the entire second world war is 2,044,000 tons*.  These devices had little American flags on them. What God would bless this slaughter?  Does any serious union activist not have some understanding of why flags of the imperialist nations are not so adorned in the rest of the world? Should we not?

 

Naturally, as in any country, the capitalist controlled press, the employers who divide use here in order to weaken unionism and solidarity, constantly remind us of the 57,000 young Americans who died there.  And we should remember them.  In fact, more Vietnam vets have committed suicide than died there and the numbers probably quadruple if we consider the damage to young families.  Young working class men who were about to be or recently married left wives and children who would grow up never meeting them.  It was profitable for Bell Helicopter corp but had devastating effects on American workers and their families, and catastrophic ones on our brothers and sisters in Indochina. The perpetrators, the Kissingers, the others responsible, it is them we need to direct our anger at.

 

Patriotism and nationalism hurts unionism.  It pits worker against worker on a global scale. The rich don't give a shit about countries. Donald Trump would move to Pakistan and wave their flag as long as he could continue to rip workers off and get rich without working or contributing anything to society.

 

Naturally, we have to be sensitive to older workers who fought in wars or are economically drafted as cannon fodder for the corporations. My father was a prisoner of war for 3 years and nine months.  He was caught in Hong Kong. He worked for Mitsubishi in Yokahama.  He sees the union Jack as a symbol of freedom, he doesn't equate it as a symbol of repression and, as I said, we have to be sensitive when we approach this issue with working people who have not thought in more broader terms.  But I remember when I first met an Irishman I worked with on the building sites.  He was not particularly political but the Union jack was no symbol of liberty to him. It was a murderous symbol of centuries of oppression.  The Irish Republicans called it the Butchers Apron. He wasn't anti-English.  He hated the British ruling class and their symbol is the Union Jack.

 

As I became more politically aware and active in the unions etc. I realized that the Union jack didn't have the same meaning to the vast majority of the world's people. It was a hindrance to me building solidarity with workers of other nationalities if I made an issue out of it so I stay away from flags, particularly of the imperialist countries.

 

The bumper sticker here represents a thinking that will only weaken us in our struggle for what people on this list have called democracy and a decent life. it reflects a closed, narrow thinking. We should approach some with a bumper sticker like this at the right time and in a comradely way to suggest that their might be valid reasons why some workers might not feel the love for this symbol that he or she does. We don't have to make an issue of it at all times and in all instances obviously and it depends on the individuals involved.

 

Lastly, I am not religious but why would any religious person ask God to only bless America?  If I were actively religious I would be asking my God to bless humanity. Where in the Christian Bible does it talk about limiting God's blessings to the borders of the USA?

 

 

*Christopher Hitchens: The Trial of Henry Kissinger

 

 

 

At 11:05 PM -0600 3/6/06, another person wrote:

  I'm proud to send this one!

 I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

I was asked to send this on if I agree or delete if I don't. It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a problem in having "In God! We Trust" on our money and having "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Shut Up and BE QUIET!!!

If you agree, pass this on, if not delete.

I AGREE !!!!
"God Bless America"
 

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