Nation Topics - Religion | The Nation

The article reports that U.S. prison inmates employed by the electronics recycling division of Federal Prison Industries face hazardous conditions. Inmates smash electronics that contain lead, cadmium, barium and other hazardous substances. A former safety manager at the Atwater Federal Penitentiary, Leroy Smith, filed a formal complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration regarding the conditions at the prison.

Focuses on fundamentalism and a shift toward faith that insists on overlooking physical evidence. The example of literalism on a radio program and the ability to understand metaphor; The author's view of George Bush; Idea that literal readings make words holy and metaphor brings in relativism; The type of museum that evangelical minister Ken Ham is building in Kentucky.

Focuses on a blacklist of Israeli academics proposed by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) in support of Palestinian rights. Ban of any university faculty members in Israel, Haifa and Bar-Ilan from participating in any joint projects with British academics; Observation that the boycott holds faculty members responsible for Israel's politics, even though the universities have been active centers of opposition to the occupation, and is therefore a bad idea.

Mentions a "Newsweek" report about Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Details of "the Salvador option" and the use of paramilitary squads to assist the Pentagon and Iraqi militia units; Reference to US policy under the Reagan Administration in the 1980s which supported the El Salvador military that relied on death squads, which killed civilians including Archbishop Oscar Romero; Indication that Elliott Abrams who was a State Department official in the 1980s is now working in the White House.

The article focuses on the political activism of the Green Party in the United States. Many of us in the Green Party made a tremendous compromise by campaigning in swing states for such a miserable standard-bearer for the progressive movement as presidential candidate John Kerry. I plan to work with the Greens to get more Green candidates elected to local office. Regardless of our party preferences, Democrats and Greens must build strategic alliances on two key issues of our day: electoral reform and ending the occupation of Iraq. Let us jointly promote a Voters' Bill of Rights that includes standardized voting machines with paper trails, nonpartisan administration of elections, instant-runoff voting, a national election day holiday, an end to felon disenfranchisement and others changes outlined in our ten-point Voters' Bill of Rights. Strengthening the framework of our internal democracy (count every vote, every vote counts) and fighting against empire (money for jobs, not for war) are strategies that will resonate with the vast majority of Americans and set the stage for future electoral victories.

This article discusses workers rights of migrant guest-workers in the United States. Julio Cesar Guerrero came north from Mexico in the spring of 2001 as a temporary contract worker. Recruited by Manpower of the Americas, he was sent to North Carolina, where he began working on the tobacco farm of Anthony Smith. After a few weeks, his fingers started to hurt, and then, one by one, his fingernails began falling off. Although Smith told him he couldn't see a doctor, he went anyway. The doctor said his problem was possibly caused by working without gloves in fields sprayed with pesticides. So Guerrero, who was employed through the H2-A federal guest worker program, called Legal Aid of North Carolina. But Smith warned him not to talk with legal workers. Guerrero returned to Mexico at the end of the season. The next year, when he tried to get another job, he found his name on a blacklist maintained by MOA and the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA). Legal Aid protested, and as a result, Guerrero was sent to the United States again. That year, he worked for grower Rodney Jackson, who kept the workers' drinking water on a moving truck in the fields, forcing them to run after it with their mouths under the spigot. When Guerrero filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Jackson gave a warning notice and asked him to sign it. When Guerrero refused, Jackson fired him. A foreman took him to the bus station, telling him to go back to Mexico. Again Legal Aid intervened and got him assigned to another grower. Soon a growers' association representative gave Guerrero another warning notice, which he again refused to sign. Andrew McGuffin, staff attorney for Legal Aid of North Carolina, cautions, "the problem isn't that we don't have worker protection laws. It's that with guest workers they're not enforced, and when workers try to use these laws, they're blacklisted."

This article discusses U.S. involvement in Iraq. The price we are paying for George W. Bush's unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq keeps rising: The number of Americans killed in the war has now passed the 1,000 mark. And the price will keep rising until Washington accepts the fact that this is a war we cannot win--and that by trying to win it, we are only further radicalizing the Iraqi people and giving life to Islamic extremists by handing them the cause of Iraqi nationalism. Indeed, since the "handover of sovereignty" at the end of June the resistance has grown in intensity and sophistication--August was the bloodiest month of the occupation, with 2,700 attacks on US troops and 1,100 soldiers wounded--and has come from more sectors of Iraqi society, both Sunni and Shiite. Reconstruction in many parts of the country has ground to a halt, and the last fifty or so international aid agencies operating in Iraq are said to be likely to leave, following the abduction of two Italian aid workers. At the same time, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has told the Security Council that the violence in Iraq could make it more difficult to go ahead with the planned elections. Faced with this situation, the Allawi government and American military commanders have had no choice but to effectively cede more and more areas to various resistance groups, including the cities of Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra. We urge political and other leaders to join us in calling for Washington to begin to withdraw US forces and to renounce any interest in maintaining military bases or in exercising control over Iraq's economy and oil resources, instead leaving the future of Iraq to the Iraqi people.

The article looks at the sukkah of shalom, which is the shelter of peace, in Jewish culture. In 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Jewish community celebrated the harvest festival of Sukkot. In our evening prayers throughout the year, just as we prepare to lie down in vulnerable sleep, we plead with God, "Spread over us Your sukkah of shalom--of peace and safety." Why does the prayer plead for a sukkah of shalom, rather than a temple or fortress or palace of shalom, which would surely be safer and more secure? For much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness. But the sukkah reminds us: We are in truth all vulnerable. Even the widest oceans, the mightiest buildings, the wealthiest balance sheets, the most powerful weapons did not shield us. Only a world where all communities feel vulnerable, and therefore connected to all other communities, can prevent such acts of rage and mass murder. Not every demand of the poor and disempowered is legitimate simply because it is an expression of pain. But can we ask: Have we ourselves had a hand in creating the pain?

The article discusses the conflict in Najaf, Iraq, between the United States armed forces and the Iraqi insurgency as of September 2004. Every day, U.S. bombs and tanks move closer to the sacred Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, reportedly damaging outer walls and sending shrapnel flying into the courtyard; every day, children are killed in their homes as U.S. soldiers inflict collective punishment on the holy city. When a foreign army invades a country about which it knows virtually nothing, there is plenty of deliberate brutality, but there is also the unintended barbarism of blind ignorance. It starts with cultural and religious slights: soldiers storming into a home without giving women a chance to cover their heads; army boots traipsing through mosques that have never been touched by the soles of shoes; a misunderstood hand signal at a checkpoint with deadly consequences. Najaf is not just another Iraqi city; it is the city of the dead, where the cemeteries go on forever, a place so sacred that every devout Shiite dreams of being buried there. And Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are not just another group of generic terrorists out to kill Americans; their opposition to the occupation represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq. Before Sadr's supporters began their uprising, they made their demands for elections and an end to occupation through sermons, peaceful protests and newspaper articles. U.S. forces responded by shutting down their newspapers, firing on their demonstrations and bombing their neighborhoods.

Presents letters to the editor of the August 2, 2004 issue of "The Nation." Criticism of an advertisement placed on the back cover of the July 5 issue of the journal; Statement by "The Nation" editors that the journal will not censor advertisements or artwork; Response to a review of the film "The Day After Tomorrow"; Reference to the book "Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change"; Discussion of campaign finances in the United States; Response to the article "Kerry and Communion," by John Nichols, regarding the separation of church and state; Others.