2008

by Ann Wright
26 December 2008

On the news today of the death of Harold Pinter, the winner of the 2005 Nobel
Prize for Literature, I remembered hearing his Nobel Laureate lecture/acceptance
speech. I was in London in December 2005, speaking at the annual Stop the War
conference when Pinter delivered his speech – not in Oslo, as Pinter was very
sick and could not travel, but in London via TV link.
I was amazed and thrilled that he chose to use the Nobel Prize platform and
devote a huge portion of his speech to shining an international spotlight on
the tragic effects of the past decades of US foreign policy and particularly,
on George Bush and Tony Blair’s decisions to invade and occupy Iraq, on Guantanamo
and on torture.
Pinter’s Laureate speech question, “Is Our Conscience Dead?” is
most relevant today when three years after his acceptance speech, “Art,
Truth and Politics,” Bush, Cheney, Rice and other administration officials
are either trying to rewrite history or, as in Cheney’s case – purposefully
revealing his role in specific criminal acts of torture and daring the American
legal system and people to hold him accountable.

23 December 2008
by Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
With his choice of Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence,
President-elect Barack Obama has now named three recently retired four-star
military officers to serve in his cabinet. This unprecedented representation
of the senior officer corps within the incoming Democratic administration is
indicative of a growth in the political power of the US military that poses
a serious threat to basic democratic rights.
As head of the US military’s Pacific command in 1999-2000, Blair was
distinguished by his efforts to solidarize the Pentagon with the military of
Indonesia as it carried out butchery in East Timor, effectively vetoing the
half-hearted human rights concerns voiced by the Clinton administration.
Before tapping Blair, Obama named former Marine Gen. James Jones as his national
security adviser and former Army chief of staff Gen. Erik Shinseki as secretary
of veterans affairs. It is also reported that the incoming administration may
ask retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to stay on as director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.