Today’s Reason(s) to drive out the Bush regime:
1) Today, during a UN conference on climate change, Dr. Harlan L.
Watson (senior climate negotiator for the U.S.
Department of State) told the Associated Press “With
regard to what the United States is doing on climate change, the
actions we have taken are next to none in the world.” This arrogant
doublespeak is coming from a regime that has refused to sign the Kyoto
Protocol (a global treaty that aims to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions), and continuing on a course of environmental destruction
without a concern for the future of the planet.
2) The very same day, the Bush administration won an exemption from
the Montreal Protocol (an international treay) to continue using methyl
bromide, a chemical that deplete the earth’s protective ozone layer,
and can cause neurological damage. The Bush regime is pushing for
an exemption until 2008, using a provision in the treaty to prevent
“market disruption”. Apparently agricultural profits are far more
important than the safety of the planet and its people as far as Bush
is concerned.
3) In Tennessee, administrators at Oak Ridge High School went into
teachers’ classrooms,
desks and mailboxes to retrieve all 1,800 copies of the student
newspaper
last Tuesday. Why? Because the newspaper contained an article on birth
control which informed students of the effectiveness of different birth
control methods and where to get different contraceptives, as well as a
picture of a student’s tattoo. This happens at the same time as a major
abortion rights case (concerning parental consent laws) is going to the
Supreme Court, and the court is being stacked with anti-abortion
Justices. As our Call puts is, “Your government
is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to
birth control and abortion.” Can we accept a situation where it is
deemed “inappropriate” for high school students to learn about birth
control?
4) While the school administrators in Tennessee are getting away
with this outrage, a high school teacher in Bennington, Vermont is
being questioned by the school administration for giving a vocabulary
quiz that pokes fun at Bush and the extreme Right for his “liberal
bias”. One question from the quiz was
“I wish Bush would be (coherent, eschewed) for once during a speech,
but there are theories that his everyday diction charms the
below-average mind, hence insuring him Republican votes.” “Coherent” is
the right answer.
The problem in schools today is by no means “liberal bias.” The problem
is examples like the above from Tennessee, the attacks on evolution
(and fundamentalist Christianity being taught in its place), the
encouragement of military recruiters signing up youth to fight in
unjust wars waged by this criminal regime, and that when students step
out and protest all this (as they did on Nov. 2nd) they face repression
and punishment from the authorities.
The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!