Maybe the Best Speech I Ever Heard [View All]

[welshTerrier2]

i had trouble sleeping last night ... my mind was filled with a thousand thoughts (i probably stayed up too late posting on DU) ... and i had to be up earlier than usual to go hear Scott Ritter speak ... no way i could get back to sleep ... and it was only between 3 and 4 a.m. ... i decided to pop on my shortwave radio ...

in the dead calm of the night, i could hear a scratchy voice trying to find its way through the static ... apparently i had left my radio set on RFPI, Radio For Peace International, a progressive news and information station eminating from Costa Rica ...

if i heard the introduction correctly, a narrator was introducing a woman i think he said was 93 years old ... i had heard her name before but really didn't know anything about her ... her name was GrannyD ... when she began to speak, i knew my night's sleep was over ... her voice was like a strong, clarion call ... it seemed like the radio's static disappeared just as she started her speech ...

her speech was long ... i wish it never ended ... she painted a picture of the truths that many of us on DU know so well ... it was amazing to think that this old woman's ideas were being broadcast all over the world ... here are a few excerpts ... please take the time to read the entire speech ... you'll be glad you did ...

source: http://grannyd.com/speech20030816.htm



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What is happening now, of course, is that the neo's in the Bush Administration--you can call them neoliberals or neoconservatives, though they are neo nothing except perhaps neocolonial and neolithic -What's happening now is that the neo's in this Administration are starving government very much on purpose, and they tell us as much in their writing.

Huge military commitments, huge tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, and huge budget deficits leave no money for the old New Deal programs like Social Security or newer programs such as Medicare. No money for schools, hospitals, police, fire, veterans - no money for anything but the front lines of a corporatized military and a militarized corporatocracy. A starved government &endash;once our government--has no ability to restrain the liberated giant or to investigate his abuses or prosecute his crimes. And so, two years after Enron, but one person is behind bars. It is not for lack of villains, and, as all California cries, it is not for lack of victims.

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And now, loosed again, these giants have taken over our television networks and most of our newspapers, turning them against our interests and against the truth itself. These giants send our young people off to fight their commercial wars - great profitable ventures.

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