Belafonte Again Publicly Lashes Out at President Bush

Harry Belafonte, joining the ranks of celebrities who believe in visiting other countries to criticize the U.S. government, called the president a liar and compared the Homeland Security Department to the Nazi Gestapo, in a speech he gave Saturday to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference. "We’ve come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here," Belafonte said, "where citizens are having their rights suspended. You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel."

Belafonte’s 45-minute speech was supposed to concern the role of the arts in a politically changing world, and upon conclusion his remarks were met with a thunderous standing ovation by the assembled crowd, which included artists from several dozen countries around the world. The entertainer, who was born in Harlem but raised in Jamaica, said that he has taken up political activism because of the inspiration of his mother, who imbued in him that "we should never capitulate to oppression."

Just last week the 78-year old entertainer made headlines when he led a delegation of Americans to Venezuela to meet with president Hugo Chavez for more than six hours. During that meeting, Belafonte called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world," and said that millions of Americans support the socialist revolution engineered by Chavez. "No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people support your revolution," Belafonte said during a television and radio broadcast by Chavez.

Chavez said during the broadcast that he believes deeply in the struggle for equal rights for blacks, both in America and in his country. "Although we may not believe it," Chavez said, "there continues to be great discrimination here against black people." Belafonte said that contrary to the American media’s portrait of Chavez as a dictator, the country is actually a democracy and the Venezuelan citizens are "optimistic about their future."

During this weekend’s speech, Belafonte admitted that the 9/11 terrorist attacks necessitated a reaction by the Untied States, but he claimed that the response engineered by the Bush administration was not the right one. "Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression," he said. He added that Bush gained the presidency "somewhat dubiously and then lies to the people of this nation, misleads them, misinstructs, and then sends off hundreds of thousands of our own boys and girls to a foreign land that has not aggressed against us."

Belafonte, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, was a close friend of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and is a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. But does he think that he’s spreading goodwill by traveling to foreign countries and publicly trashing the leaders of his own country? Maybe he should stick to his Calypso singing.