Nobel Peace Prize winner, Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve 2008. A playwright of English-speaking theater classics, his political works also made a considerable impact on millions of people.
While American journalists continue to operate letters without a license, and as a result many Americans have no idea what is actually happening in the world or what has already been done “in our name”, the second half of Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Prize lecture is one of the most searing indictments of US foreign policy ever made:
“The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
“As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
“The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it….”
It’s par for the course for Obama and Biden, the men who promised “change” but in every step of their preparations for assuming office have pursued nothing but continuity, to acknowledge that they will protect criminals in the Bush administration from prosecution for authorizing torture, a complete violation of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
When asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos if top level Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for mandating prisoner abuse, Biden said that he and Obama would be “focusing on the future,” adding “I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”
december-08-frontpage1 December Print Edition 2008 Possibly Related Posts: Trust US: We CAN Kill You Bank Took House Ohio Court Says Hold On Nothing Is As Scary As Election Day Domestic Abuse No Jobs For Americans
I just read a study which says that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves. Specifically:
Solomon Asch, with experiments originally carried out in the 1950s and well-replicated since, highlighted a phenomenon now known as “conformity”. In the classic experiment, a subject sees a puzzle like the one in the nearby diagram: Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? Take a moment to determine your own answer…
The gotcha is that the subject is seated alongside a number of other people looking at the diagram – seemingly other subjects, actually confederates of the experimenter. The other “subjects” in the experiment, one after the other, say that line C seems to be the same size as X. The real subject is seated next-to-last. How many people, placed in this situation, would say “C” – giving an obviously incorrect answer that agrees with the unanimous answer of the other subjects? What do you think the percentage would be?
While common criminals use guns and masks to steal money, our leaders use the printing press–printing ever more dollars out of thin air.
It is interesting that more modern dictionaries only use half of the definition of inflation. The Oxford American Dictionary of 1986 defines inflation as:
“a general increase of prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.”
But that is only half the story of inflation. According to Websters New Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language of 1957, inflation is defined as:
“an increase in the amount of currency in circulation, resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and a rise in prices.”
Like other happenings–we must not look at just the symptoms, but rather the underlying cause. The result of inflation is always rising prices, but the cause is printing more money.`
Put simply, “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke is not just an inflationist, he is a thief.
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands without public support. It is self-sustained.”
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