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10 Dec 05 - 08:45 AM (#1624318) Subject: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: freda underhill Here is a link to Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture for 2005: Art, Truth and Politics |
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10 Dec 05 - 08:59 AM (#1624324) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST I've never been a Pinter fan, but I will say this. It is good to see he has finally come to his senses, and now distinguishes between artistic truth, the subjectiveness of truth in daily life, and the necessity as a citizen to always question "official" truth, whether it comes from government and it's agencies, the mainstream press, religious institituions, corporations, etc. Nice to see he has grown as an artist and a citizen over the years. The same can't be said for all Nobel winners, to be sure. |
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10 Dec 05 - 03:16 PM (#1624535) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser) Well, (pause)............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................yes. |
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10 Dec 05 - 08:09 PM (#1624693) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Peter K (Fionn) Thanks for posting this Freda. I don't know if you saw the film of Pinter delivering this address, but he did so from a wheelchair in the UK, being too ill for the journey to collect his prize in person. I found it heartening that even while engaged in the biggest fight of his life, which alas he looks like losing, he could mount such a searing denunciation of American foreign policy since WW2. Here are a couple of extracts, for those who might not have time to read the whole lecture. I would be interested if anyone could say whether the statistics at the end are more or less correct. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.... The Greatest Show on Earth. [.....] The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. [....] The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning [....] Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? |
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10 Dec 05 - 08:31 PM (#1624708) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: heric "It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good." Yeah, those were the good old days. |
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10 Dec 05 - 08:46 PM (#1624716) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: akenaton Christ Peter , you're beginning to show signs of Teribusitis, a disease which causes the victim to search for "incontravertible fact" Most common symptom.."A sudden rush of shite to the brain". Of course I agree with you about Pinter ,inspirational address. As I keep trying to tell these right wing pedants "facts" are unimportant , its perception and ideas that matter. When someone of Pinter's stature speaks on the immorality of our foreign policy, and the bankrupcy of our political philosophy, the world sits up and takes notice. What think you of the latest polls which show the new "improved" Tories ahead of "scumbag" New Labour. And why don't the bastards just amalgamate?...Ake |
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10 Dec 05 - 08:56 PM (#1624721) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: number 6 more views on this from a previous thread ... Pinter sIx |
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10 Dec 05 - 09:33 PM (#1624737) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Peter K (Fionn) LOL Ake! It was in fact Teribus I was fearful of when I pasted in figures without really knowing their validity. But I can't really fault T-bus for doing his homework, teven if I'm usually at odds with his take on the results. I'll let you know whatI think about the British parliamentary scene when a suitable thread crops up, but in the meantime I'm sure you can guess.... Getting back to Pinter's wonderful rant, I hope the bits I've pasted in will be provocative enough to tempt some mudcatters to follow Freda's link and see the extracts in perspective. To see, for instance, those "vicious and remorseless crimes" enumerated. By the way, Ake, thanks for saying "our foreign policy" and "our political philosophy," because British governments have been desperate to follow wherever USA foreign policy has led - as Pinter made clear. |
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10 Dec 05 - 10:48 PM (#1624764) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: freda underhill Peter K, thanks for your enticers - here are some more.. "..But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked. Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer. The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now. I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s. The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.' Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch. Innocent people, indeed, always suffer. Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?' Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said. As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply. I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.' The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution. The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated...." |
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11 Dec 05 - 08:00 PM (#1625272) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST,BanjoRay It's a shame the usual bunch of Americans discussing the US political scene don't seem to have cottoned on to this thread - I'd love to see what they'd think about the speech. It's a beautifully written totally honest opinion. Cheers Ray |
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11 Dec 05 - 08:12 PM (#1625281) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST Thanks for posting that Freda. Even in his physically weakened state he can write with such power. Truthful, honest and irrefutable. |
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11 Dec 05 - 08:50 PM (#1625330) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on the US,Truth and Politics From: freda underhill thanks for the thanks, guys. In my country (Australia) the government has a majority in the Senate and has just passed anti-sedition laws. I wonder how far Harold Pinter would get here? It is a relief to read such open frank information, and all the debate here on Mudcat. freda |
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12 Dec 05 - 01:36 AM (#1625405) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Teribus Do the sums, then compare US and Communist crimes from the Cold War By Niall Ferguson. (Filed: 11/12/2005) 'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false." No, that wasn't Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, half-answering questions in Europe last week about the CIA's alleged prison camps in Poland and Romania and the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects to countries where they are likely to be tortured. It was actually Harold Pinter, explaining the difference between drama and politics in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the lofty realm of dramatic art, Pinter asserted, there can be nothing so clear-cut as truth. It is, however, a very different matter when it comes to American foreign policy. There, the distinction between true and false is as clear as that between day and night. It's simple. Every- thing the United States says is false, and everything its critics say is true. Let me say right away that I am not about to mount a defence of the use of torture on suspected terrorists - though if anyone could provoke me into doing so, the insufferably vain Mr Pinter is the man. I do not care at all for Pinter's plays; if the Nobel committee wants to boost his bank balance and his ego, then that is their affair. God knows, the latter is big enough. Pinter's account of writing The Homecoming was surely worth a Nobel Prize for Pomposity: "It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence." Gee, almost like being God, Harold. He also seemed to be angling for a Nobel Prize for Pathos: "A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity," he declared. "You are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection." Aw, you're breaking my heart. But it's not Pinter's solipsism I really object to. It's the way he used his award to pour verbal kerosene on the crackling flames of anti-Americanism. First, a few truths about torture. Torture is bad. It's bad because it's wrong to inflict pain on defenceless captives. It's bad because it breaks international conventions. And, even if you don't give a damn about either of those, it's bad because the costs outweigh the benefits of any intelligence it may elicit. Reports that the CIA "waterboards" prisoners make a mockery of the Bush administration's repeated denunciations of Saddam Hussein as a torturer. They simultaneously increase the risk that any Americans or US allies who fall into the hands of al-Qaeda will themselves be tortured. And those reports are wrecking what little is left of the transatlantic alliance - witness Thursday's ruling by the Law Lords that evidence obtained from torture is inadmissible in British courts. The White House should shut up and back Senator John McCain's bill, which would unequivocally ban torture by American military or intelligence personnel. The simple truth is that even if torture worked really well, the United States would still have to renounce it, because the CIA is so bad at keeping its dirty work secret. And precisely that point brings me back to Harold Pinter's rant. Leave aside for today the invasion of Iraq, which he denounced in familiar terms. More intriguing was his extended critique of US policy - and secrecy - during the Cold War. Here are Pinter's five charges: 1. The United States engaged in "low intensity conflict… throughout the world", causing "hundreds of thousands" of deaths. Pinter cites the case of Nicaragua, where American aid helped overthrow the "intelligent, rational and civilised" government of the Sandinistas. 2. "The United States supported and in many cases engendered every Right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War", specifically those in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Greece, Haiti, Indonesia, Paraguay, the Philippines, Turkey and Uruguay. The deaths of all the people murdered by these regimes were "attributable to American foreign policy". 3. These "systematic, constant, vicious [and] remorseless" crimes bear comparison with those committed during the Cold War by the Soviet Union (no mention, be it noted, of China, Vietnam or North Korea). 4. But these crimes "have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". It is as if "it never happened", thanks to "a highly successful act of hypnosis". 5. This mass hypnosis has been achieved by repeated use of the phrase "the American people", which "suffocates [the] intelligence and… critical faculties" of all Americans - apart from "the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag [sic] of prisons, which extends across the US". Brings it all flooding back, doesn't it? The demand that the President and his allies be tried as "war criminals". The denunciation of the "infantile insanity" of nuclear weapons. No, don't worry, you haven't stepped into a time machine. It's not the 1970s, and that wasn't Henry Kissinger in drag, it was only Condi Rice. But yes, I am afraid that is still Harold Pinter, spouting the same old anti-American drivel he was spouting 30 years ago. Truth and falsehood are indeed hard to distinguish in Pinter's drama, and his Nobel soliloquy was no exception. First, the true part. Thousands were indeed killed by US-backed dictatorships, especially in Central and South America. What is demonstrably false is that this violence is comparable in scale with that perpetrated by Communist regimes at the same time. It is generally agreed that Guatemala was the worst of the US-backed regimes during the Cold War. When the civil war there was finally brought to an end in the 1990s, the total death toll may have been as high as 200,000. But not all these deaths can credibly be blamed on the United States. Most of the violence happened long after the 1954 coup, when the regime was far from being under the CIA's control. By comparison, the lowest estimate for the number of people who were killed on political grounds in the last seven years of Stalin's life is five million, and the camps of the gulag - which only a fraud or a fool would liken to American prisons today - kept on killing long after his death. In their new biography, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday reckon Mao was responsible for anything up to 70 million deaths in China. The number of people killed or starved by the North Korean regime may be in the region of 1.6 million. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed between 1.5 and 2 million people. For further details, I refer Pinter to The Black Book of Communism, published in 1997. As for the allegation of a conspiracy to hush up American complicity in Cold War human rights violations, he really has to be kidding. You no longer need to rely on articles by Seymour Hersh to know about this stuff. There are easily accessible websites where you can download any number of declassified documents about all the dreaded dictatorships the CIA backed. On the basis of these and other sources, there have been at least five detailed monographs published in the last 10 years on Guatemala alone. Some cover-up. Nobody pretends that the United States came through the Cold War with clean hands. But to pretend that its crimes were equivalent to those of its Communist opponents - and that they have been wilfully hushed up - is fatally to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood. That may be permissible on stage. I am afraid it is quite routine in diplomacy. But is unacceptable in serious historical discussion. So stick to plays, Harold, and stop torturing history. Even if there was a Nobel Prize for it, you wouldn't stand a chance. Because in my profession, unlike yours - and unlike Condi's, too - there really are "hard distinctions… between what is true and what is false". • Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University |
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13 Dec 05 - 12:28 PM (#1626443) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: M.Ted It is hardly proof of virtue that you have murdered fewer than someone else-- |
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13 Dec 05 - 12:44 PM (#1626457) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Teribus Couldn't agree with you more M.Ted, but I believe that Professor Niall Ferguson was introducing a bit of perspective and historical accuracy in relation to the third of the five charges levelled at the US by Harold Pinter. In doing so I believe he is correct. |
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13 Dec 05 - 06:28 PM (#1626747) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST,petr while we're posting articles.. heres another point of view.. the last anti-american |
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13 Dec 05 - 07:50 PM (#1626809) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: akenaton I think there's still a few left!! anti-american govt I mean. |
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15 Dec 05 - 10:26 PM (#1628469) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Peter K (Fionn) Just seen Teribus's spiel. I agree with much of what he says about the early part of Pinter's address - I put it down to misguided self-indulgence by someone who thinks he is not going to survive his present illness. But comparing the US with the USSR or any other Communist regime (much less with the Khmer Rouge which was neither capitalist nor communist, just criminal) is a straw-man argument. Sure it may be possible to search out a few monographs critical of US outrages, but only a fool would say that such episodes have attracted media coverage comparable with that meted out to the commie regimes. Unquestionably Stalin was a monster, but again I see little profit in blaming his excesses on any particular economic ideology. His ilk, like Hitler, Pol Pot, Amin, etc, are brutal tyrants and usually megalomanics. Yet how many countries did the USSR bomb, invade or attack after WW2? For the US I would guess the figure is 40 or thereabouts. Sorry I haven't time to look it up just now - Teribus may tell us. Britain would probably have done its best to ape US atrocities had its power not declined. Still, it did its best in Malaya, the Asian sub-continent etc. (In Kenya the British killed about 11,000 people - many of them supporters of Britain - in retaliation for the Mau Mau insurrection, in which fewer than 40 people were killed. Yet the western capitalists always had the moral high ground - backed to the hilt by the Vatican, of couse, because popes (especially the last one) have tended to outdo even McCarthy in their hysteria about communism. America, remember, forced through the disgraceful farce of the Nuremburg trials, and it's America that has called the shots at the ICTY. The same America that insists its own troops will never answer to any form of international court. The crimes of the US are bad enough (though comfortably eclipsed by others, as Pinter acknowledged). What stinks worse is the sheer hypocrisy. |
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15 Dec 05 - 10:52 PM (#1628479) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Bobert Looks as if the 100,000 dead Iragis has made a surprise visit to Mudville... Hmmmmmmm? We keep seeingthis number yer the Bushites sqeal in protest.... "Give us frim evidence" they shreak from the roof-tops... Like what good would it do you all???? You'd just turn to yer leaders and get yer next list of commands.... 100,000 is not unreasonable here.... Bobert |
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15 Dec 05 - 11:05 PM (#1628483) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Teribus Please, Peter K (Fionn) - 15 Dec 05 - 10:26 PM "Just seen Teribus's spiel." Give credit where credit is due the piece I pasted was written by Professor Niall Feguson. Take it up with him. Personally Harold Pinter is a completeand utter TWAT, who has enjoyed the life he has led protected by the very people he vilifies. It always has been a very cheap shot. Nobel Prize Winner my arse, populist monkey more like, and they are ten a penny. |
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16 Dec 05 - 03:22 PM (#1628972) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Peter K (Fionn) "Protected by the very people he vilifies," Teribus? So that's what those 700 US bases in 100-odd countries is all about. Let's hope Mr Pinter is duly grateful. But my guess is he'd be perfectly happy to take his chances in a world where the western democracies constrained themselves to behave with common decency. By the way, Teribus, here's an interesting sentence from news.bbc.co.uk today: Mikhail Kasyanov's biggest problem is not pressure from the Kremlin. It is public disillusionment with democracy. Former Russian PM Kasyanov is now trying to mount an electoral challenge against Putin's hardline tactics, complaining that democracy has been almost abandoned. But he can expect little popular support because for millions of Russians democracy has meant economic collapse in the wake of rampant capitalism; grinding poverty, and a handful of fatcat gangsters making themselves disgustingly rich in the style of Rumsfeld or Cheney. |
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16 Dec 05 - 04:09 PM (#1629005) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: GUEST,petr there are US bases in 190 countries. why? |
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16 Dec 05 - 06:14 PM (#1629064) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: akenaton Don't worry about Teribus Peter! Im sure when these elections are over He'll be off to take up residence in the new "democratic Iraq"..... And the sooner the better.....Ake |
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16 Dec 05 - 09:38 PM (#1629203) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Teribus "According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories." Which sort of puts it in perspective. As to the why, I would imagine that most are hang-overs from previous conflicts (WW II; Korea) and the "Cold War". |
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17 Dec 05 - 05:01 AM (#1629326) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Peter K (Fionn) Puts it in perspective against the number of bases China has around the world, Teribus? Or Russia? Or Sweden? What perspective, exactly? |
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17 Dec 05 - 05:58 AM (#1629350) Subject: RE: BS: Harold Pinter on Truth and Politics From: Teribus Maybe you can tell us how many bases China, Russia or Sweden has around the world Peter. I would very much doubt that China has many, if any at all. We know that a few years ago Russia withdrew from the thousands they did have in other countries, purely because Russia could no longer afford to keep them and their "host" countries were no longer governed by regimes that would condone the presence of the occupying power. Sweden I would think have none as they are neutral and have been, by and large, since the latter part of the 17th Century. Interesting selection of countries Peter, why leave out France (the number would surprise you). The perspective Peter is that the US is currently the foremost military power on earth. Apart from commitments to it's own defence it is the pivotal member of NATO and has numerous bilateral agreements and treaties with other nations with regard to defence of those nations. All of those require an established US presence. For every one base that the US has abroad, there are nine in the US. With 702 bases spread over 130 countries that would average out at six "bases" per country, of course that is not how it is, in some countries the "base" is no more than an office, in others (e.g. Germany) they are vast complexes and quite numerous. The bases in Germany are examples of bases that are a hang-over from the Second World War and from the ensuing "cold war", as are the US bases in the UK. In exchange for 50 destroyers during the early part of the Second World War the US was given leasehold for 99 years on bases on UK territories. The perpective Peter is that in the vast majority of places where there arte US bases these are there with the agreement of the governments of those countries. The USSR planted itself throughout eastern Europe not giving a fig for the wishes of the government or people of the country they were occupying, the likes of Mr. Pinter, and obviously yourself, conveniently forget that - if you have any doubts take a trip to Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania and ask the locals. While Pinter shouts from the roof tops about US/UK "crimes" against humanity - no a single bloody whisper with regard to the millions killed by the Soviets and the regimes that they supported. |