- 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.
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- 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.
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- "If you are not with us, you are against us,"
President George W. 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.
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- America is at this moment developing advanced systems
of "weapons of mass destruction" and is 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.
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- America believes that the 3,000 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.
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- The 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to.
The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through American 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.
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- The 200,000 deaths in East Timor in 1975 brought about
by the Indonesian government but inspired and supported by America are
never referred to. The 500,000 deaths in Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised
by America, are never referred to.
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- 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 misjudgment 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 also strike
back.
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- 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 America 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
America. Apparently a terrorist poison gas attack on the London Underground
system was recently prevented.
-
- But such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of schoolchildren
travel on the 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.
-
- America and Britain are pursuing a course that can lead
only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe.
It is obvious, however, that America is bursting at the seams to attack
Iraq.
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- I believe that it will do this not only to take control
of Iraqi oil, but also because the American 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.
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- Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage
and will to challenge and resist American power, Europe itself will deserve
Alexander Herzen's declaration - "We are not the doctors. We are the
disease".
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- The article is taken from an address given by Harold
Pinter on receiving an honorary degree at the University of Turin ©
Harold Pinter 2002
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opini
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