Free Republic

George W Bush and Tony Blair must be held to account for feeding the public "a vast tapestry of lies" about the Iraq war, writer Harold Pinter said. The playwright launched a scathing attack on US and UK politicians in his lecture as winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Most politicians "are interested not in truth but in power and the maintenance of that power", the 75-year-old said. His speech was pre-recorded as Pinter was admitted to hospital this week. 'Live in ignorance' Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced the winner of...

The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used his father's worldwide connections to wheel and deal with heads of state -- at U.N. gatherings -- on behalf of a controversial Swiss company that won a lucrative oil-for-food program contract......

One of the next big chapters in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal will involve the family of the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, whose son turns out to have been receiving payments as recently as early this year from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program. The secretary-general's son, Kojo Annan, was previously reported to have worked for a Swiss-based company called Cotecna Inspection Services SA, which from 1998-2003 held a lucrative contract with the U.N. to monitor goods arriving in Saddam Hussein's Iraq under the oil-for-food program. But investigators are now looking into new information suggesting that the younger Annan received...