|
Salim
Thanks for posting this piece I have been trying to
retype it for I failed to get it on line, it is a good reading for an open
minded
Em
The Mulindwas communication
group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 2:38
AM
Subject: [Mwananchi] I'M AN AMERICAN
TIRED OF AMERICAN LIES-Woody Harrelson
WOODY HARRELSON THE
ACTOR
ON THE USA HIS COUNTRY
"This
is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers
who stole the White House (you
call them "hawks",
but I would
never disparage such a fine bird) have
hijacked a nation's grief and
turned it into a perpetual
war
on any non-white country they choose to describe
as terrorist."
"I am a father, and
no amount of propaganda can
convince me that half a
million dead children is
acceptable 'collateral damage'. The fact is that
Saddam Hussein was our
boy. The CIA helped
him
to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and
Noriega and Marcos and
the Taliban and countless
other brutal
tyrants."
I'M AN AMERICAN TIRED OF AMERICAN
LIES
By Woody Harrelson*
[The Guardian - 17 October 2002]:
The man who drives me to and from work
is named Woody too. A relief to me,
as it minimises the chance of my
forgetting his name. I call him Woodman
and he calls me Wood. He has become
my best friend here, even though he's
upset that I have quit drinking beer.
He's smart, funny, and there's
nothing he hasn't seen in 33 years behind the
wheel of his black cab. He
drove me for a while before I felt confident he
liked me; he doesn't like
people easily, especially if they have a rap for
busting up black cabs.
Woodman and I agree about a lot of things, but one thing we can never
agree
about is Iraq. He thinks the only language Saddam understands is
brute
force. I don't believe we should be bombing cities in our quest for
one man.
We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war -
mostly by
blocking humanitarian aid. Let's stop now. Thankfully, most of
the Brits I
talk to about the war are closer to me than to Woodman. Only
your prime
minister doesn't seem to have noticed.
I have been here
three months doing a play in the West End. I am having the
time of my life.
I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre. The
play is great and
the audiences have been a dream. Probably I should just
relax, be happy and
talk about the weather, but this war is under my skin -
it affects my
sleep.
I remember playing basketball with an Iraqi in the late 80s
while Iran and
Iraq were at war. I didn't know at the time that the US and
Britain were
supplying weapons to both sides. I asked why they were always
at war with
each other and he said something that stayed with me: "If it
were up to the
people, there would be peace. It's the governments that
create war." And now
my government is creating its second war in less than
a year. No; war
requires two combatants, so I should say "its second
bombing campaign".
I went to the White House when Harvey Weinstein was
showing Clinton the
movie Welcome to Sarejevo, which I was in. I got a few
moments alone with
Clinton. Saddam throwing out the weapons inspectors was
all over the news
and I asked what he was going to do. His answer was very
revealing. He said:
"Everybody is telling me to bomb him. All the military
are saying, 'You
gotta bomb him.' But if even one innocent person died, I
couldn't bear it."
And I looked in his eyes and I believed him. Little did
I know he was
blocking humanitarian aid at the time, allowing the deaths of
thousands of
innocent people.
I am a father, and no amount of
propaganda can convince me that half a
million dead children is acceptable
"collateral damage". The fact is that
Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA
helped him to power, as they did the
Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos
and the Taliban and countless other
brutal tyrants. The fact is that George
Bush Sr continued to supply nerve
gas and technology to Saddam even after
he used it on Iran and then the
Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty
International report listing countless
Saddam atrocities, including gassing
and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his
desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn
"agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave
hundreds of millions in export credit
to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the
audacity to quote the Amnesty
reports to garner support for his oil war.
A decade later, Shrub
follows the same line: "We have no quarrel with the
Iraqi people." I'm sure
half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their
heads over that. I'm an
American tired of lies. And with our government,
it's mostly lies.
The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing
that
Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus
Day.
Columbus was after one thing only - gold. As the natives were
showering him
with gifts and kindness, he wrote in his diary, "They do not
bear arms ...
They have no iron ... With 50 men we could subjugate them all
and make them
do whatever we want." Columbus is the perfect symbol of US
foreign policy to
this day.
This is a racist and imperialist war.
The warmongers who stole the White
House (you call them "hawks", but I
would never disparage such a fine bird)
have hijacked a nation's grief and
turned it into a perpetual war on any
non-white country they choose to
describe as terrorist.
To the men in Washington, the world is just a
giant Monopoly board. Oddly
enough, Americans generally know how the
government works. The politicians
do everything they can for the people -
the people who put them in power.
The giant industries that are polluting
our planet as well as violating
human rights worldwide are the ones nearest
and dearest to the hearts of
American politicians.
But in wartime
people lose their senses. There are flags and yellow ribbons
and posters
and every media outlet is beating the war drum and even sensible
people can
hear nothing else. In the US, God forbid you should suggest the
war is
unjust or that dropping cluster bombs from 30,000ft on a city is a
cowardly
act. When TV satirist Bill Maher made some dissenting remarks about
the
bombing of Afghanistan, Disney pulled the plug on him. In a country
that
lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job.
I read in a paper here about a woman who held out the part of her
taxes that
would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that
idea, though in
the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider
money as a form of
energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US
government's energy
focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over
the past 30 years, this
amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine
that money going to
preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable
economy (as opposed
to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of
sucking dry).
I give in to Woodman, and we stop for a few beers. He
asks me what I'd do in
Bush's shoes. Easy: I'd honour Kyoto. Join the world
court. I'd stop
subsidising earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon.
I'd shut down the
nuclear power plants. So I already have $200bn saved from
corporate welfare.
I'd save another $100bn by stopping the war on
non-corporate drugs. And I'd
cut the defence budget in half so they'd have
to get by on a measly $200bn a
year. I've already saved half a trillion
bucks by saying no to polluters and
warmongers.
Then I'd give
$300bn back to the taxpayers. I'd take the rest and pay the
people teaching
our children what they deserve. I'd put $100bn into
alternative fuels and
renewable energy. I'd revive the Chemurgy movement,
which made the farmer
the root of the economy, and make paper and fuel from
wheat straw, rice
straw and hemp. Not only would I attend, I'd sponsor the
next Earth Summit.
And, of course, I'd give myself a fat raise.
Woodman drops me at home
and I ask if he likes my ideas. He offers a
reluctant "yes". As he pulls
away he yells out, "But I'd never vote for a
man who can't handle a few
pints at the end of the day!"
* Woody Harrelson appears in On an
Average Day at the Comedy Theatre, Panton
Street, London SW1 until November
3. Box office: 020-7369 1731.
| Yahoo! Groups
Sponsor |
ADVERTISEMENT
|
;) |
| |
|
Join
the Mwananchi group at http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/mwananchi
to discuss African issues
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is
subject to the Yahoo! Terms of
Service.
|
