Stockholm, Dec 08: Ailing British playwright Harold Pinter used his
Nobel prize lecture on Wednesday to deliver a
fierce attack on U.S. foreign policy and urge the
unflinching pursuit of truth to restore "the dignity of
man".
Forbidden by doctors from going to Stockholm to receive
the 10 million crown (USD 1.28 million) literature prize,
75-year-old Pinter, who has been battling cancer for years,
sent a video recording made in London showing him in a
wheelchair with his legs under a red blanket.
His frailty and hoarse voice added to the drama of a
speech peppered with the potent silences of his plays like
"The Birthday Party" and "The Caretaker", which gave rise
to the term "Pinteresque". Behind him in the studio was a
photo of the London-born playwright in more robust times.
Already a fierce critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Pinter
said post-World War Two history was full of examples of
Washington exercising "a clinical manipulation of power
worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal
good".
"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," Pinter said.
Citing examples from U.S.-backed Contra rebels in
Nicaragua to the occupation of Iraq and detention of
terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Pinter said
the United States and its ally Britain had traded in death
and "employed language to keep thought at bay".
"What has the British Prime Minister said about this?
Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said; `To
criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an
unfriendly act - you are either with us or against us`. So
Blair shuts up," said Blair.
Pinter, who will send his publisher to pick up the
prize at a ceremony on Saturday (December 10), gave insight
into the genesis of his plays.
But even discussing drama, humour and satire he made
digs at the United States, saying of one play that
"torturers become easily bored, they need a bit of a laugh
to keep their spirits up" and citing the abuse of prisoners
in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Relentless in his criticism of the United States,
President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, Pinter expanded the criticism to "the majority of
politicians" who weave "a vast tapestry of lies" to keep
themselves in power.
He concluded by calling for an "unflinching, unswerving
and fierce intellectual determination as 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."
Bureau Report
