World Can't Wait wants to know what you think about the Torture Memos released April 16, 2009, and the controversy over prosecution of those in the Bush administration responsible for torture.
Los Angeles, CAI am fed up with this war economy which has sunk this country into the depths of depression. Out of Iraq! Out of Afghanistan! Learn from the past and let's have an era of peace! Shame on Obama! Shame on the Democrats! Shame on anyone who supports war!
San Antonio TexasIt is important that we are a voice to counter US imperialism. Our foreign policy has, for too long, been the cause of much of the world's misery. It's time to end the capitalist, expansionist exploitation of other countries.
San Francisco, CA Continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is just going to make more Middle Eastern people hate America. If we really want to stop terrorism, we should start by ending our own imperialistic acts of terror that we perpetrate around the world under the guise of "spreading democracy."
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.
Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize winning playwright, died in London recently. Pinter became known (and notorious) throughout the English speaking world for his ability to “create dramatic poetry out of everyday speech.” The Guardian called his work “provocative, powerful, and influential”, and plays such as The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Celebration have become part of the repertory of great theater.
Throughout his life, Pinter was engaged intensely in political life. His laureate speech when he won the Nobel Prize was a blistering condemnation of the Bush Regime, and that of Bush's partner in crime, British Prime Minster Tony Blair. Its words, reprinted below, remain as powerful, eloquent, and challenging as ever.
Harold Pinter signed the call for World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime. When he did so, he explained:
"The Bush Administration is the most dangerous force that has ever existed. It is more dangerous than Nazi Germany because of the range and depth of its activities and intentions worldwide. I give my full support to the Call to Drive out the Bush Regime."
First of all, we would like to thank everyone who has participated in our comments section over the past period, and we're really excited to be fostering serious discussions and struggle over resistance to the crimes of this government, the way forward in this new period, and ultimately what kind of future we want to bring into being. Most of the contributions here have been exciting and invigorating, and we want to encourage more people to join the discussion on this site, and to connect with the World Can't Wait in their cities or start a chapter of their own. We need a serious movement in this county to stop the crimes of this government!
In this context, we'd like to provide a brief outline of our standards for comments posted on the site.
We welcome people who do not agree with the view of World Can't Wait to join into the discussion, and be a part of this whole conversation. These people should feel welcome to post so long as their posts have actual content and are in line with the rest of the standards laid out in this article.
Reactionary attacks on people of oppressed nationalities, immigrants, women, or gay people will absolutely NOT be tolerated. This is completely against everything that the World Can't Wait stands for and has no place on this site.
We will not tolerate trolling of articles with repeated cheering for war, death, and torture without substantial political substance... repeated allusions to "putting some water on a terrorists face" like a broken record, intentional disrupting of the conversation on this site, etc.
Personal attacks, baiting of individual World Can't Wait members, name calling, etc. will also not be tolerated.
Impersonating other posters on this board, pretending to be multiple different people, “sock-puppeting,” etc. will result in an immediate ban.
We look forward to more serious political discussion on our site, and challenge people to join this discussion, and get with stopping the crimes of this government!
An important and successful national conference was held in Chicago the weekend of November 22 and 23. Over the conference's two days, big questions were dug into: how to sum up the political fight to drive out the Bush Regime, the impact of the Obama candidacy and election, independent mass political protest's importance and relevance as the Bush years come to an end, the urgent need to create a broad climate of resistance and defiance, and more. Reports from Steering Committee members and other material from the conference will soon be forthcoming. Below is a speech from National Director Debra Sweet (here), Steering Committee member Jill McGlaughlin (here), and two articles by Kevin Gosztola (here and here), which provide a sense of some of the conference's atmosphere and the challenges taken up by participants.
No Matter Who is President: STOP Endless Wars for Empire!
Tuesday November 11 (Veterans' Day), 7:00 pm
Judson Memorial Church,
55 Washington Square South
Speakers:
Scott Ritter, former US weapons inspector, author of Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement and Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change
Larry Everest, writer for Revolution newspaper, author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Agenda
Jeremy Scahill, correspondent for Democracy Now, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Elaine Brower, military family member and leader of The World Can't Wait
Whether it's McCain or Obama, the wars in Middle East continue, and in fact are expanding. The criminal war in Iraq continues, the war in Afghanistan is intensifying, and the bombing of Pakistan escalates, with no end in sight. U.S. aggression has inflicted a humanitarian catastrophe, with millions of people killed or turned into refugees.
Despite some subtle nuances regarding a timetable for the phased withdrawal of at least a portion of the combat troops from Iraq,(1) the positions of both John McCain and Barack Obama regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are quite similar. Under both their plans, American young men and women, despite their eventually being withdrawn from Iraq - "with honor" for McCain, "responsibly" for Obama - will not be returning home but, rather, redeployed to another battlefield upon which to continue to kill or be killed. Both candidates have promised a surge in Afghanistan, and a commitment to continue the "war on terrorism" until our enemies, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, perhaps Iran, are defeated and Osama Bin Laden is killed or captured. Consequently, while promising the American people real change from the politics of gunboat diplomacy and militarism of the last eight years, all we are truly being offered by either candidate is more of the same.
Your government, on the basis of outrageous
lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with
other countries in their sights.
Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.
Your government puts people in jail on the
merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them
indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
Your government suppresses the science that
doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing
present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
People look at all this and think of Hitler ( and
they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically
remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to
come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and
outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this
outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the
enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.
There is not going to be some magical "pendulum
swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission
from God" will not go without a fight.
There is not going to be some savior from the
Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies
into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and
religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually
serves to demobilize people.
But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable.
That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn (
or be forced ( to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous
course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the
responsibility to do it.
And there is a way. We are talking about something
on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in
the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time,
constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim
to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is
repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the
whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our
millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of
history.
Acting in this way, we join with and give support
and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want
this regime to be stopped.
This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they
will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we
speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this
going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly
fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.
The point is this: history is full of examples where
people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and
were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively
hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what
they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.
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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. 
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