The winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, the brilliant playwright Harlod Pinter, has been scathing of Bush and Blair in a speech shown this evening on British TV.

"Pinter said that since World War II the US government "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world".

"I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile."

'Bleating lamb'

He added: "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."

Referring to Blair's support for the US-led war on Iraq, Pinter described the "pathetic and supine" Great Britain as "a bleating little lamb tagging behind (the US) on a lead".

He called for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to be "arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice".

"But Bush has been clever," Pinter said. "He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4505874.stm

Through his writing career Pinter has often exposed power's subversion and distortion of language, thereby corrupting meaning - its cultural-pollutant effects.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Who will be the first to argue that the Nobel Peace Prize is under the control of liberal elitists that hate America?

I'm putting my money on JP5. Or Barney-fife.

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It's the difference between suicide and slow capitulation... - Jim Morrison

A European Jew, conscientious objector, playwright, poet, screenwriter? nah, neither of those two will tread in that water...

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

You're probably right, I was hoping to hear some vague rant about the 'liberal media' and 'he is in no position to comment', 'he's clearly lying', 'he just hates the US' ect.ect.

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It's the difference between suicide and slow capitulation... - Jim Morrison

Pinter has a right to carry on, just as Pat Robertson can rant and rave over here in the states if he likes. I increasingly distrust both political wings. Wow! I'm as gloomy as my new avatar.

You might want to read Pinter's short play titled "Mountain Language." It deals w. the Turkish/Kurd tensions.

Force, you are not aging gracefully. I didn't even recognize you. You should get more rest.

Me! Me!

Actually, I wouldn't go that far. But I would remind you that last year's winner, Kenyan environmentalist, Dr. Wangari Maathai, said that

http://www.economist.com/opinion/dis...ory_id=3286572

and...

http://commonsensewonder.com/mtarchives/006540.shtml

Now I must admit I'm not clever enough to know how planting trees helps world peace, but I do suspect that maybe some of the screeners at the Nobel committee take a lot of interesting drugs.

If memory serves, Yasser Arafat also won a Nobel Peace Prize. And death-row inmate "Tookie" Williams (quadruple murderer and founder of the largest criminal gang in the U.S.) was nominated this year.

I think if I won a Nobel Prize, I would probably try to keep it quiet.

But Pinter is a literary genius...difficult to get around that one...unless one admits to being a card-carrying philistine...

Here's more, "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."

The full text here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/art...661516,00.html

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."