The famous English playwright, Harold Pinter's, recent speech at the Turin
University (Nov 2002).:
I am deeply honoured to receive this degree from such a great university.
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 Iraq. 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

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First They Came for the Jews by Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no-one left to speak out
for me.

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