Harte Angriffe von H.Belafonte gegen Bush

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Hier mal ein paar coole Äusserungen von H. Belafonte gegen Bush und die Elite.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBnOU...t/view/448/27/


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVHUibFexSw

Harte direkte Worte




Transscript eines Interviews Ausschnitt


HARRY BELAFONTE, ENTERTAINER, ACTIVIST: No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we are hear to tell you, not hundreds, not thousands but millions of the American people, millions, support your revolution.

BLITZER (voice over): Belafonte stunned many Americans with his attack on President Bush and his embrace of Venezuela's socialist leader, Hugo Chavez.

But it wasn't the first time Belafonte lashed out at the Bush administration. In 2002 he went after then Secretary of State Colin Powell, a fellow native of both Harlem and Jamaica, likening him to a plantation slave.

BELAFONTE: Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master.

BLITZER: And just this weekend, Belafonte accused the Department of Homeland Security of suspending citizen's rights like the, quote, "new Gestapo." Talk like that seems to be making some Democrats nervous, including Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: You know, I never use Nazi analogies because I think that those were unique. And I think, you know, we have to be careful in using historical analogies like this.

BLITZER: And Senator Hillary Clinton reportedly took pains to avoid being photographed with Belafonte at a children's defense fund event in New York this month.

But Belafonte is standing behind his no-holds-barred assault on the president.

BELAFONTE: In the dictionary anyone who brings terror to people is an act of terrorism and a terrorist.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: President Bush today defended his tactics in fighting the war on terror even as critics like Harry Belafonte keep trying to hold his feet to the fire.

Joining us now from New York is Harry Belafonte.

Mr. Belafonte, thanks very much. Welcome to THE SITUATION ROOM.

BELAFONTE: Thank you, Mr. Blitzer.

BLITZER: The new Gestapo. You know, those are powerful words, calling an agency of the U.S. government, the Department of Homeland Security with, what, about 300,000 federal employees, the new Gestapo. Do you want to take that back? BELAFONTE: No, not really. I stand by my remarks. I am very much aware of what this has provoked in our national community. And I welcome the opportunity for us to begin to have a dialogue that goes other than where we've been having one up until now. People feel that I talk in extremes. But if you look at what's happening to American citizens, a lot is going on in the extreme.

We've taken citizens from this country without the right to be charged, without being told what they're taken for, we've spirited them out of this country, taken them to far away places and reports come back with some consistency that they are being tortured, that they're not being told what they've done. And even some who have been released have come back and testified to this fact.

BLITZER: But let me interrupt for a second. Are you familiar -- and I'm sure you are, because you're an intelligent man -- what the Gestapo did to the Jews in World War II?

BELAFONTE: Absolutely.

BLITZER: And you think that what the Department of Homeland Security is doing to, you know, some U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jew?

BELAFONTE: Well, if you're taking people out of a country and spiriting them someplace else, and they're being tortured, and they're being charged without -- or not being charged, so they don't know what it is they've done.

It may not have been directly inside the Department of Homeland Security, but the pattern, the system, it's what the system does. It's what all these different divisions have begun to reveal in their collective.

My phones are tapped. OK? My mail can be opened. They don't even need a court warrant to come and do that as we once were required to do.

BLITZER: But no one has taken you or anyone else, as far as I can tell, to an extermination camp and by the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, even millions decided to kill them, which is what the Nazis did.

BELAFONTE: Well, Mr. Blitzer, let me say this to you, perhaps, just perhaps had the Jews of Germany and people spoken out much earlier and had resisted the tyranny that was on the horizon, perhaps we would never have had...

BLITZER: Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, are you blaming the Jews of Germany for what Hitler did to them?

BELAFONTE: No, no. What I'm saying is that if it an awakened citizenry, begins to oppose the first inkling of the subversion of government, of the subversion of our democracy, then perhaps an early warning would have saved the world a lot of what we all experienced. I'm not accusing the Jews at all. BLITZER: Well, I just heard you say perhaps if the Jews of Germany had done something earlier then that might not have happened. That's what I thought you were getting at.

BELAFONTE: Well, what I was getting at really is that if all citizens, the Jewish community, the Christian community and all else had taken a very early aggressive stand rather than somehow suggesting or thinking or feeling that this would have gone away, we might have found that Germany would have been in a far different place than it wound up in.

BLITZER: Let me get through some of these other points, because we don't have a whole lot of time.

BELAFONTE: OK.

BLITZER: When you were in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez, you said that Bush is the greatest terrorist, the greatest tyrant. Are you saying that President Bush is worse than Osama bin Laden?

BELAFONTE: I'm saying that he's no better. You know, it's hard to make a hyperbole stick. I obviously haven't had a chance to meet all the terrorists in the world, so I have no reason to throw around the words like the greatest or make some qualitative statement. I do believe he is a terrorist.

I do believe that what our government does has terror in the center of its agenda. When you lie to the American people, when you've misled them and you've taken our sons and daughters to foreign lands to be destroyed, and you look at tens of thousands of Arab women and children and innocent people being destroyed each day, under the title of collateral damage, I think there's something very wrong with the leadership.

BLITZER: What you did say in Venezuela was that President Bush was, and I'm quoting now, the greatest tyrant in the world and the greatest terrorist in the world.

BELAFONTE: Yes, I did say that.

BLITZER: So you did use the word, the greatest.

Here's what you were quoted as saying in "The Raleigh News and Observer" on January 16th. And I'll let you amend or clarify your remarks.

"When you have a president that has led us into a dishonorable war, who has killed tens of thousands, many of them our own sons and daughters, what is the difference between those who would fly airplanes into buildings killing 3,000 innocent Americans? What is the difference between that terror and other terrors?"

Now that raises the issue of moral equivalency. Are you saying what the Bush administration, what the president is doing is the moral equivalent of what al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden ordered on 9/11? BELAFONTE: I think President George W. Bush, I think Cheney, I think Rumsfeld, I think all of these people have lost any moral integrity. I find what we are doing is hugely immoral to the American people and to others in the world.

BLITZER: And the same, or if not worse than al Qaeda? Is that what you're saying?

BELAFONTE: Well, I don't want to make those kind of comparisons. I'm not too sure all of what al Qaeda has done. Al Qaeda tortures. We torture. Al Qaeda's killed innocent people. We kill innocent people. Where do the lines get blurred here?

BLITZER: Well, I think the argument is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that al Qaeda deliberately wanted to kill as many people as possible in the World Trade Center and those two buildings. They didn't care if they were executives or janitors or crooks or anybody else. They just wanted to kill as many Americans as possible.

The U.S., when it goes after terrorists, there may be what's called collateral damage, but they're trying to kill enemies of the United States, those who have engaged in terror or similar actions. Do you understand the difference?

BELAFONTE: I understand the difference. What I don't want to get stuck with, or be guided by, is what you call collateral damage. That does not cleanse us morally. All of a sudden, it's beyond our capacity or our means to have made a difference in what we've done to thousands and thousands of Arabs.

I'm quite sure if you went through each and every body, you would find that somebody was a baker, somebody was a store keeper, somebody was a cab driver, somebody was a student. I don't know, you know, murder is murder. And just because you may do it under different guises does not remove the moral imperative.

We are in this war immorally and illegally. And we have no business doing what we do.

BLITZER: What about -- and these were very, very damning words that you said a few years ago, and I wonder if you still stick by them. When you call Colin Powell, the secretary of state at that time, or Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser now the secretary of state, plantation slaves.

It's one thing to disagree with them, but when you get involved in name calling with all the history of our country, plantation slaves, isn't that crossing the line?

BELAFONTE: Not at all. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of plantations in America where people are slaving away their lives. You know, one of the big problems that we have in this country is the inability to be honest and to be straightforward.

We've never had a dialogue in this country on the real issues of slavery. I don't even want to get stuck there. But what I said about Colin Powell is that he serves his master well. And in that context, I was asked to describe what that meant. And I used the metaphor of slavery and the plantation. And I stand by it.

So Colin Powell was viewed to be this rather moderate, honest human being. He stood before the United Nations and lied and knew he was lying. I mean, where do we draw these lines here?

BLITZER: How do you know Colin Powell knew he was lying? He says, and he's said as many times, he says he thought he was giving accurate information, although he subsequently learned that it was not accurate. But there's a difference between misspeaking and lying.

BELAFONTE: Mr. Blitzer, you have access to a lot of information. More than once we've discussed the fact that Colin Powell went before his president, went before others and said, "I can't say this. It is not correct. There are things about it that touch me deeply and disturb me."

And all of a sudden there he was in front of the U.N., despite this disclaimer, doing what he did. The world's at war. People are dying every day. These are human lives. Where do you draw this line of distinction?

Is it because they're over there and we're here? Is it because we sit on some righteous place saying that we're the finest nation in the world and that all else is less than we are? That's unacceptable in 21st century society.

BLITZER: Harry Belafonte, unfortunately we have to leave it there, we're out of time. But it was kind of you to spend a few moments with us here in THE SITUATION ROOM. I see you're not backing away from one word of what you said.

BELAFONTE: No, I can't. Dr. King is my mentor and I believe in truth, and that's what I'm doing.

BLITZER: Harry Belafonte, joining us in THE SITUATION ROOM, thank you very much.

BELAFONTE: Thank you, Mr. Blitzer.

BLITZER: And coming up next, he's not Oprah, but President Bush is going unscripted, at least for a time being, loosening up his style, taking questions from an audience. We'll hear what he had to say when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: President Bush is getting new on-the-job training, it's something he's been avoiding, at least until recently. That would be unscripted Q&A with audiences. It's part of his campaign to try to reconnect with Americans amid controversies over domestic spying, Iraq, the war on terror, among other subjects. Let's go to the White House. Our correspondent Suzanne Malveaux is standing by. Suzanne? SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we understand the event at least was for ticketholders only, but White House aides insist that these questions were not prescreened and you'll see from some of the questions, you will actually believe that is the case. And while the president was not on script, he certainly stayed on message.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Oprah, he's not.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a question and answer period.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President.

BUSH: I hate to cut you off, you're on a roll, but, what's the question?

MALVEAUX: But President Bush is admittedly reaching out and getting personal.

BUSH: My knees are like tires, you know, and they're bald. I read a lot of history.

MALVEAUX: For nearly an hour and 40 minutes, Mr. Bush meandered from topic to topic.

BUSH: You know, sometimes I can be a little allergic for people overseas, if you know what I mean. When you make hard decisions, like Tony has made, and frankly I've made, it creates angst.

MALVEAUX: Taking questions from the audience...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was just wanting to get your opinion on "Brokeback Mountain," if you've seen it yet. You would love it, you should check it out.

BUSH: I hadn't seen it.

MALVEAUX: ... And offering personal and political nuggets rarely made public. Like the first lady's reaction to Mr. Bush's warning to Osama bin Laden.

BUSH: I said some things, wanted dead-or-alive and she said, "You might be able to explain that, express yourself a little bit better than that, George W."

MALVEAUX: Working without a script before 9,000 people, most of them students, the Kansas State University event, aides say, was designed to shake up the traditional lecture series by giving the president a format where he could be himself to plainly explain to Americans why they should support his Iraq policy, and his controversial domestic spying program, which he referred to as his terrorist surveillance program. BUSH: It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics.

MALVEAUX: The talk show format worked well for Mr. Bush on the campaign trail. Now aides hope these open sessions will undercut Mr. Bush's critics harshest accusations, that the president is not honest or trustworthy, and only listens to his own counsel.

BUSH: Laura is serving dinner for retiring Alan Greenspan, and I better not be late.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: So White House aides say that the president will continue in these kind of talk show formats in the future. We also, Wolf, expect on Wednesday he'll go before the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland. That, of course, to show in light of these upcoming congressional hearings over that controversial domestic spy program, that he is not backing down. Wolf?

BLITZER: Getting back to some of those controversial remarks that Harry Belafonte has been making, has there been any reaction from the White House, Suzanne?

MALVEAUX: Well, Wolf, as you know, we've put in several calls to the White House. What we do know is that they did watch those comments, they are aware of them. But they're holding off, they're holding back now and actually getting back to us on what they think about what Harry Belafonte had to say.

BLITZER: All right, Suzanne. I'm sure they're not happy with what he had to say. Thanks very much, Suzanne Malveaux over at the White House.

And we're also following a developing story in the mountains of southern California, where Santa Ana winds are fueling a wildfire that's already burned dozens of acres. CNN's Chris Lawrence is standing by in L.A., he's got the latest. What's going on, Chris?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, good news first. Right now, no evacuations have been ordered. And at this moment, the fire isn't immediately threatening any homes. But take a look here. We're monitoring this fire with live pictures.

It has already burned about 75 acres. And the fire continues to burn in a remote area. The winds are blowing at about 30 miles-per- hour right now. Fire crews, the U.S. Forest Service, got the call on it about four hours ago.

They've got about 500 personnel fighting this fire. But because of those high winds, only one chopper is in the air right now. The hot dry winds are going to keep burning through tomorrow. And we've got a warning through Tuesday, Wolf?

BLITZER: All right, Chris, thanks very much. Chris Lawrence on the scene for us in L.A.

Up next, rear-end crash fires. Ford modified them for police, but what about similar cars in your driveway? We're getting some answers. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to THE SITUATION ROOM.

Susan Candiotti is joining us now. She's been looking at one type of fire deaths in auto crashes that a number of safety critics say can and should be avoided.

What's going on, Susan?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, our story begins with the tragic deaths of three sisters in North Carolina a couple years ago.



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