Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech: video and text

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

The first quarter is about his plays; after that Reagan and Bush get both barrels. Nicaragua, Iraq (including a call to send Blair to the International Criminal Court), and an offer to becoem a speechwriter for Bush:

now has the speech in its entirety as well:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html

A very impressive polemic, delivered by a master.

It was a very moving address and it made a big impression on me. I was hoping it would have some impact but the BBC didn't mention it on the Today prog nor did they see fit to report Lord Steyn's declaration that Blair is open to charges as a war criminal for allowing the 'rendition' kidnappings.

maybe that is why they didn't show it...:tinfoilhat:

on Wednesday but a British Nobel Prize winners acceptance speech is not really news for the intimidated BBC.

Channel 4 could have made one of its airings on the main terrestrial channel, I think.

A very apt letter to the Guardian this morning makes the same point about the gutless BBC. What did Newsnight think was more important on Wednesday evening? David Campbell, wasn't it?

Thank you for the link. :cry:

Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

<snip>

The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!


http://www.worldcantwait.net/

Other signatories include Alice Walker, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Leonard Weinglass,
Cornel West, Studs Terkel, Martin Sheen, Cindy Sheehan.... Ed Asner.

This outfit needs to raise $40,000 for an ad in the NY Times and another $160,000 to finance an office and massive demonstrations in DC in late January.

He may not have liked this term, but I hope the American People wake up and just as importantly, I hope the American People will and can redeem themselves.

Very astute! Look at the mind-numbing bromides "weapons of mass destruction", and "the insurgents", and "the terrorists". The mind shuts off. Rational debate becomes impossible.

It is, indeed, a scintillating stratagem.

Reality itself disappears...

As the senior White House official said to Ron Suskind, back in 2002:
Megalomania? Truth?

I have the video up (I converted the RealMedia file) into Flash 8 and downloadable as a WMV file from here

http://www.chris-floyd.com/pinter/

It's a tribute page of sorts. Please spread the word. It's important that people see this video or read the speech and they are both on this page.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/pinter/

Cheers

DD.