Jennifer Loewenstein Archive |
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Bravo to Harold Pinter. -J
"The invasion of Iraq
was a
bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in a
pre-recorded lecture broadcast by the Swedish Academy.
Iraq war was
'blatant state terrorism': Nobel laureate Pinter
Wed Dec 7, 2:03 PM ET
In a fierce critic ahead of the Nobel awards
ceremony, literature laureate Harold Pinter branded the war on Iraq "an
act of blatant state terrorism" and demanded the prosecutions of US
President George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair.
"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an
act of
blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the
concept of international law," Pinter said in a pre-recorded lecture
broadcast by the Swedish Academy.
The Academy, which awards the Nobel
Literature
Prize, aired the interview, recorded Sunday in London, because Pinter
is too sick to travel to Sweden for the lecture or pick up the award in
person at Saturday's ceremony.
"How many people do you have to kill before
you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?"
Pinter asked.
"One hundred thousand? More than enough, I
would
have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned
before the International Criminal Court of Justice," he added.
The 75-year-old British playwright was
diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2002.
In the recording made in London, he is
flanked by a
bright blue background knee, looking in better shape than in many
recent media photographs.
He used nearly all of his lecture of almost
an hour to criticise the United States.
"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," he said.
"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 of universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly
successful act of hypnosis."
Pinter's criticism of Washington is nothing
new.
Although he won the 2005 Nobel Prize for his
plays,
which according to the Nobel jury uncover "the precipice under everyday
prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," he has
recently focused on political activism.
In his lecture, he emphasized the difference
between the separate worlds of literature and political life.
In literature "a thing is not necessarily
either
true or false. It can be both true and false," he said, adding however
that "as a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false."
Politicians are not interested "in truth but
in power and in the maintenance of that power", according to Pinter.
"The justification for the invasion of Iraq
was
that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of
mass destruction ... 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 11, 2001 ... It was not true," he said.
Pinter, born the son of a Jewish dressmaker
in
Hackney, east London, began as an actor and made his playwriting debut
in 1957, with "The Room".
That play was followed by one of his
masterpieces
"The Birthday Party" and his conclusive breakthrough came with "The
Caretaker" in 1959, followed by "The Homecoming" in 1964.
The playwright's publisher, Stephen Page,
will
accept the 10 million kronor (1.1 million euros, 1.3 million dollars)
prize money, a diploma and a medal on Pinter's behalf at the ceremony.
Jennifer Loewenstein
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