NEWS: Pinter attacks America in Noble speech
Thursday, 8th December 2005
manchesteronline.co.uk
BRITISH playwright Harold Pinter has used his Nobel Prize lecture to launch a stinging attack on the US.
The 75-year-old lashed out at the superpower for its foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.
But he also called Britain "pathetic" and "supine" over its relationship with its ally.
Doctors had forbidden Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, from attending the prize ceremony in Sweden because of his health.
The poet and playwright's pre-recorded lecture was presented on a big screen at the Swedish Academy.
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," he said.
Manipulation
"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."
The creator of The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Caretaker said many in the US were "sickened, shamed and angered by their Government's actions."
He said that atrocities and brutality in post war Eastern Europe had been documented and verified, but US crimes ignored.
"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," he said.
"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."
War
Pinter attacked the US for supporting and "engendered" right wing military dictatorships after the end of the Second World War.
"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 United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."
He said: "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."
He added: "We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it".
Iraq
Pinter repeats his criticism of the invasion of Iraq, as a "bandit act"..."intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East".
He said politicians had surrounded people in a "vast tapestry of lies".
Asking whether our moral conscience is "dead", he attacks Tony Blair for turning a blind eye to Guantanamo Bay.
The US "has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain," he said.
Of Tony Blair, he added: "We can let the (International Criminal) Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London."
Pinter said that human beings have an obligation "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."
Pinter, who has been recovering from cancer of the oesophagus, is one of the most influential British playwrights of his generation.
But after hearing he was the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul in 2001, he promptly announced he would be writing no more plays. |
