Nobel laureate slams Bush, Blair.

[buttmunch]

By Sarah Lyall The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2005


LONDON The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq, but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War."

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," Pinter said.

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Pinter, 75, delivered his speech via a recorded video that was played on Wednesday at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Diagnosed with esophageal cancer several years ago, he was ordered by his doctors not to travel to Stockholm for the speech or for the formal presentation of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is to take place on Saturday.

The playwright, known in recent years as much for his fiery anti-Americanism as for his spare prose style and haunting, elliptical plays like "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming," was awarded the $1.3 million prize in October.

In its citation, the Swedish Academy made little mention of his political views or his outspokenness on foreign policy issues, saying only that he was known as a "fighter for human rights" whose stands are often "seen as controversial."

It mostly focused on his work, saying that Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."

Though the academy's deliberations are secret and though its members never explain their reasoning beyond the public statements that accompany the awards, the literature prize has in recent years often gone to writers with left-wing ideologies. These include the European writers José Saramago of Portugal, Günter Grass of Germany and Dario Fo of Italy.

When he won the award, Pinter said he did not know if the academy had taken his politics into account. But he also welcomed the platform the award gave him to bring his views, long expressed in Britain, to a worldwide audience.

In his speech, he eased into his thesis, beginning by trying to explain the almost unconscious process he uses to write his plays. They start with an image, a word, a phrase, he said; with characters he merely calls A, B or C, who take shape along with the action as he goes along and who in the end become "people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort."

"Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time," he continued.

But while drama represents "the search for truth," he said, politics works in the opposite way, surrounding citizens with "a vast tapestry of lies" spun by politicians eager to cling on power.

Pinter than attacked American foreign policy since World War II, saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well documented, those of the United States had not.

"I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love."

He returned to the theme of language as an obscurer of reality, saying that American leaders use it to anesthetize the public.

"It's a scintillating stratagem," Pinter said. "Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable."


Accusing the United States of torturing terrorist suspects in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Pinter called the invasion of Iraq - for which he said Britain was responsible, too - "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law."

He called for Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried before the International Criminal Court of Justice.

Pinter said it was the duty of the writer to hold self-image up to scrutiny, and the duty of citizens "to define the real truth of our lives and our societies."

"If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man," he said.

Did anyone see this? It was amazing. This article does not give a full picture, so I'll try to find a copy of the speech. It was incredible, strong, intelligent and full of food for thought. I guess if you're going to die soon and you have one last worldwide forum to say what you need to say, this is the way to do it.


****edit**** You can read and/or watch the speech here:

http://nobelprize.org/literature/lau...r-lecture.html

It's quite long so I thought I'd spare SVZ my posting the whole thing. But I recommend reading it, although it will not have the same power as seeing and hearing. They should have video up soon, though.

[Barbara]

Thank you buttmunch, I printed it and I'll read it later.

[buttmunch]

No worries. It was really amazing.

[Barbara]

I just read it. Its style is powerful, even if nothing said came as a surprise. It's the fact that is has been said that is news here. It's a pity it takes a Nobel prize winner, probably on his death bed, to speak out some truths.

[Grimmlok]

oh SNAP

Bush just got served.