The Bigger the LieI watched Oliver Stone's "JFK" again over the weekend. At one point, Kevin Costner, playing New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, says, "Adolph Hitler said that the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." George W. Bush saying that we invaded Iraq to "bring democracy" to the Iraqi people and 50 percent of the American people believing it bring truth to Hitler's words.
Author, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali's new book, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, details the longstanding imperial ambitions of key figures in the Bush administration and how war profiteers close to Bush are cashing in. Organizing against the occupation has taken on a new sense of urgency as millions of Iraqis still have no water or electricity, unemployment runs rampant, weapons of mass destruction have not been found, and more soldiers have died in the time since Bush declared “victory” than during the war itself.
Join Damu Smith of Black Voices for Peace, Ellen Barfield of Veterans for Peace and Voices in the Wilderness, Ahmed Shawki of the International Socialist Review and Mauri Salakhan of the Peace and Justice Foundation at an anti-war panel hosted by the University of Maryland Peace Forum, the Campus Antiwar Network and the Muslim Students Association. "Speaking Truth to Empire" takes place on Tuesday, Oct. 21, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the University of Maryland's Hoff Theater in the Stamp Student Union (Metro: College Park).
