Pinter’s Smokin’ Nobel Prize Speech

Posted by Dean Pajevic | Dec 7, 2005 | 8 |

“Pinter promised he’d get a few things off his chest in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature this Saturday, and this preview provided by the Guardian shows him to be true to his word. He’s too frail to travel, but this is part of what he’ll say in his taped speech,” writes Dedalus at Blah3.com blog.

“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” he said.

“The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public … a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

“We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people, and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.”

[…]

“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought,” he said.

“Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the international criminal court of justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the international criminal court of justice …

“But Tony Blair has ratified the court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the court have his address if they’re interested: it is Number 10, Downing Street, London.”

“It’s sad,” adds Dedalus, “to see an old writer’s imagination failing like that. Let Bush off the hook as being ‘clever’? Hell, Harold, haven’t you heard of a little thing called rendition?”

Update [2005-12-7 21:7:34 by susanhu]: OMG! Screw Nobel prizes! RITA COSBY is REPORTING FROM THE WAR ZONE! She’s in Bagram, Afghanistan! She’s come to see the “brave men and women” with the World Wrestling Federation! WOW! MSNBC must be so proud!

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Dean Pajevic

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on December 8, 2005 at 12:22 am

A video of the speech is available here:
Psyche on December 8, 2005 at 12:56 am

OMG is right! You saw that too?

Had to flip it off after the grand entrance. Thought I was going to get sick.
- Dean Pajevic on December 8, 2005 at 12:12 pm
  
  It definitely had to be seen to be believed … that is, the sheer awfulness and tawdriness of it all.
  
  One day she’s in a bordello in Nevada, the next she’s at Bagram where they beat two men to death, one an innocent cab driver who, had he lived, would have had to have his legs amputated because of the beatings. Oh silly me … why mention such things in the midst of gaiety and professional wrestlers!?!
  - Other Lisa on December 8, 2005 at 12:59 pm
    
    WHY is there Rita Cosby? Why? WHY??!!
    
    She is a truly inexplicable phenomena (singular?).
on December 8, 2005 at 1:55 am

Well, blah3 should be a little more careful about criticizing “Bush” for being “clever”–in Pinter’s speech, being “clever” is attributed to Americans in general since WWII.

If my experience with the blogs is any index, these passages from Pinter’s speech are likely to be conveniently glossed over (cause Bush is the problem, “America” is not the problem, it’s just Bush, before Bush, we were a shining model of democracy for the world). Needless to say, I consider these some of the most significant statements he makes (my rough transcript from the video)–I’d put money on the speculation that these statements are largely ignored by the American public, especially the left:

They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved, they died because they dared to question the status quote, the endless platter of poverty…
the US finally brought down the Sandinista government, it took some years and constant resistance, economic persecution and thirty thousand dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people, they were exhausted and poverty-stricken once again. Casinos move back into the country, big business had returned with a vengeance, free health and free education were over — democracy had prevailed.

[And this is] by no means restricted to Central America… [these campaigns have been] conducted throughout the world; it is never ending and it is as if it never happened. The US supported and in many cases engendered every Right Wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the 2nd WW. It is as if it never happened. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uraguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Filippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and of course Chile–the horror the US inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place and are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened, even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter, it was of no interest. The crimes of the US have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless–but very few people have actually talked about them. 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. I put to you that the US is without doubt the greatest show on the road: brutal, indifferent, scornful, and ruthless it may be, but it’s also very clever–as a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love–it’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words “the American people,” as in the sentence “I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.”
- on December 8, 2005 at 2:15 am
  
  God, I love this man….
  
  “When we look into a mirror, we think the image that confronts us is accurate, but, move a millimeter, and the image changes–we are actually looking at a never ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror, for it is on the other side of the mirror that the truth stares at us. I believe that, despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination as citizens to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. 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.”
  
  Whatdya mean, Mr. Pinter, are you saying the personal is political after all? 😉
zesty grapher on December 8, 2005 at 11:39 am

Yesterday Harold Pinter (the 2005 Nobel Prize winner for Literature) gave an incredibly eloquent speech. He wove the history of American foreign policy since WWII into a comprehensive and frightening tapestry. Already the MSM is calling it an ‘anti-American’ lecture.

It is really the opposite. It is a compelling indictment of U. S. actions versus U. S. words. I believe that deep down most of us want to live up to the ideals this country was founded upon. His description of our actions versus our words will hopefully help us rip away the smoke and mirrors and start to become the country we thought we already were.

The complete text of the lecture can be found at Nobelprize.org. Here are some excerpts:

“…Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians…are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power.

To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true.

We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true.

We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War…

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all.

I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now.</u&gt

Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. </u&gt

Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop.

It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.

When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now…

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: ‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion.

In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things.

There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’.

This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala.

The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.</u&gt

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country.

Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.

But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.</u&gt

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

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.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. 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. It’s a winner.

Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

It’s a scintillating stratagem. 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. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious.</u&gt It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others?

Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what’s called the ‘international community’.

This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’.

…The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading…as liberation…

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.

…Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ said the American general Tommy Franks.

….The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way.</u&gt The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

…The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows?

What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it</u&gt…

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections.

But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

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.

© THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2005

General permission is granted for the publication in newspapers in any language after December 7, 2005, 5:30 p.m. (Swedish time). Publication in periodicals or books otherwise than in summary requires the consent of the Foundation. On all publications in full or in major parts the above underlined copyright notice must be applied.”

cross posted at: my blog
http://dialoguesandideologues.blogspot.com/atom.xml
and Political Cortext
- on December 8, 2005 at 2:26 pm
 
 Hmmm. I don’t know how anyone can take Pinter’s words seriously and still come to this conclusion:
 
 I believe that deep down most of us want to live up to the ideals this country was founded upon.
 
 If this is the case, where have we all been for the last 50-500 years?
 
 Better, what do we need to do if we have since changed our minds and now decided that we really, really do want to live up to these ideals? But maybe the bigger question is “what were those ideals” and do we need to revisit them?
 
 I have also blogged about this at Historical Footnotes

Pinter’s Smokin’ Nobel Prize Speech

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