Posted:Monday | July 4, 2022 | 12:35 pm
The fact that the United States has freedom of religion, speech, and the press enshrined in the First Amendment of its highly revered constitution has been a frequent topic during discussions with colleagues of various nationalities, religions, beliefs, and cultures throughout my long career. sailing on international cargo and oil tankers, many of which were owned and operated by American corporations.
Today, the US President is at the forefront of new plans to increase NATO’s military presence in Europe from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. Instead of focusing on achieving a negotiated peace, NATO decides to draw a new Iron Curtain on the European border with Russia. This seems like a step backwards, as does the recent US Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights. Suffice it to say that those six Supreme Court justices who voted to withdraw abortion rights are all Roman Catholics, who follow dogmas, dictates and decrees of biblical interpretations of family values delivered by celibate “holy men”. Just to confuse the issue for the rest of us mere mortals, President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi are devout Catholics who strongly support abortion rights. Pelosi received communion at the Vatican last week, but her local priest in San Francisco denied this sacrament because of her stance on abortion, so how are we supposed to square that circle?
Another fascinating and confusing development comes from London, where, after evading US courts, hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012, and then detained in the UK’s notorious Belmarsh Prison since 2019, Julian Assange is now facing his last chance to appeal against extradition to the US. His lawyers say the WikiLeaks founder faces a potential sentence of 175 years in prison if charges that he put lives at risk are proven in the infamous US Justice System – often called the Injustice System.
The charges stem from its publication of leaked documents relating to irregularities that were covered up by military and other government officials during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. To add another layer of confusion, the documents were leaked to Assange by US Army soldier Bradley Manning, who was court-martialed for violating the Espionage Act. As soon as he was sentenced, Manning began to transform into a woman and served seven years of her 35-year sentence as Chelsea Manning until she was released.
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All this makes me wonder if what is happening in the US has anything to do with the closing words of the “Star Spangled Banner”, which is sung with such vigor and conviction, especially on the 4th of July. The hymn was written by Francis Scott Key in 1814, when there was apparently meaning to the epic closing lines: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the bravo.”
