: article

[edwschreiber at earthlink.net]

-- >
>  
>  Remember we were talking about Britain....and what the heck are they 
>saying in England 
>  well, this article came out in England and at least some Brits are 
>thinking.
>  
>  
> http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12453&sectionID=72
>ZNet
>Why George Bush is Insane
>By Harold Pinter (Nobel Prize Winning Author)
>
>Earlier this year I had a major operation for
>cancer. The operation and its after-effects
>were something of a nightmare. I felt I was a
>man unable to swim bobbing about under water in
>a deep dark endless ocean. But I did not drown
>and I am very glad to be alive.
>
>However, I found that to emerge from a personal
>nightmare was to enter an infinitely more
>pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of
>American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance,
>stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful
>nation the world has ever known effectively
>waging war against the rest of the world. "If
>you are not with us you are against us"
>President Bush has said. He has also said "We
>will not allow the world's worst weapons to
>remain in the hands of the world's worst
>leaders". Quite right. Look in the mirror chum.
>That's you.
>
>The US is at this moment developing advanced
>systems of "weapons of mass destruction" and it
>prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has
>more of them than the rest of the world put
>together. It has walked away from international
>agreements on biological and chemical weapons,
>refusing to allow inspection of its own
>factories. The hypocrisy behind its public
>declarations and its own actions is almost a
>joke.
>
>The United States believes that the three
>thousand deaths in New York are the only deaths
>that count, the only deaths that matter. They
>are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal,
>abstract, of no consequence.
>
>The three thousand deaths in Afghanistan are
>never referred to.
>
>The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children
>dead through US and British sanctions which
>have deprived them of essential medicines are
>never referred to.
>
>The effect of depleted uranium, used by America
>in the Gulf War, is never referred to.
>Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high.
>Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no
>genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or
>rectums, all that issues from these orifices is
>blood.
>
>The two hundred thousand deaths in East Timor
>in 1975 brought about by the Indonesian
>government but inspired and supported by the
>United States are never referred to.
>
>The half a million deaths in Guatemala, Chile,
>El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and
>Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised by
>the United States are never referred to.
>
>The millions of deaths in Vietnam, Laos and
>Cambodia are no longer referred to.
>
>The desperate plight of the Palestinian people,
>the central factor in world unrest, is hardly
>referred to.
>
>But what a misjudgement of the present and what
>a misreading of history this is.
>
>People do not forget. They do not forget the
>death of their fellows, they do not forget
>torture and mutilation, they do not forget
>injustice, they do not forget oppression, they
>do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers.
>They not only don't forget. They strike back.
>
>The atrocity in New York was predictable and
>inevitable. It was an act of retaliation
>against constant and systematic manifestations
>of state terrorism on the part of the United
>States over many years, in all parts of the
>world.
>
>In Britain the public is now being warned to be
>"vigilant" in preparation for potential
>terrorist acts. The language is in itself
>preposterous.
>
>How will - or can - public vigilance be
>embodied? Wearing a scarf over your mouth to
>keep out poison gas? However, terrorist attacks
>are quite likely, the inevitable result of our
>Prime Minister's contemptible and shameful
>subservience to the United States. Apparently,
>a terrorist poison gas attack on the London
>Underground system was recently prevented. But
>such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of
>school children travel on the London
>Underground every day. If there is a poison gas
>attack from which they die, the responsibility
>will rest entirely on the shoulders of our
>Prime Minister. Needless to say, the Prime
>Minister does not travel on the underground
>himself.
>
>The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan
>for premeditated murder of thousands of
>civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them
>from their dictator.
>
>The United States and Britain are pursuing a
>course which can lead only to an escalation of
>violence throughout the world and finally to
>catastrophe.
>
>It is obvious, however, that the United States
>is bursting at the seams to attack Iran. I
>believe that it will do this - not just to take
>control of Iraqi oil - but because the US
>administration is now a bloodthirsty wild
>animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many
>Americans, we know, are horrified by the
>posture of their government but seem to be
>helpless.
>
>Unless Europe finds the solidarity,
>intelligence, courage and will to challenge and
>resist US power Europe itself will deserve
>Alexander Herzen's definition (as quoted in the
>Guardian newspaper in London recently) "We are
>not the doctors. We are the disease".
>
>Harold Pinter
>
>The Assassinated Press
>
>
>
>
>  --------
> See what's free at AOL.com.
>
>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free 
>from AOL at AOL.com.
>=0