[Marxism] Pinter furious, howling, and bristling says NYTimes; I saw tears

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

when I watched the BBC video, which shows only a segment. He spoke of a 
front page photo of Tony Blair kissing a 4-year-old Iraqi boy and 
claiming that democracy was being brought to Iraq. Then Pinter spoke of 
a later inside story of a 4-year-old boy who had lost both arms when 
his home was destroyed killing all the members of immediate family. The 
boy asked when would he get his arms back, as though they had been 
taken away temporarily.

Perhaps Pinter's howling is in some other portion of the tape.

Pinter speaks of the successful lying of the U.S. government. He could 
also have spoken of the fact that this video will be seen throughout 
the rest of the world, but only a few of us will see it here--perhaps 
on Democracy Now.

Here is the furious howling of Sarah Lyall [all lies] of the NYTimes on 
the speech of the Nobel Prize Winner for literature.

Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S.
By SARAH LYALL

LONDON, Dec. 7 - The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize 
acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious 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 
last 50 years.

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

Sitting in a wheelchair, his lap covered by a blanket, his voice hoarse 
but unwavering, Mr. Pinter, 75, delivered his speech via a video 
recording that was played on Wednesday at the Swedish Academy in 
Stockholm. Doctors told him several years ago that he had cancer of the 
esophagus and recently ordered him not to travel to Stockholm for the 
speech, his publisher said.

. . .

Dressed in black, bristling with controlled fury, Mr. Pinter began by 
explaining the almost unconscious process he uses to write his plays. 
They start with an image, a word, a phrase, he said; the characters 
soon become "people with will and an individual sensibility of their 
own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate 
or distort."

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

But while drama represents "the search for truth," Mr. Pinter said, 
politics works against truth, surrounding citizens with "a vast 
tapestry of lies" spun by politicians eager to cling to power.

Mr. Pinter 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," Mr. 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, Mr. Pinter called the invasion of Iraq - 
for which he said Britain was also responsible - "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 an international criminal court.

Mr. Pinter said it was the duty of the writer to hold an 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.

http://shorterlink.co.uk/4595






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