Harold Pinter knocks it out of the ballpark!

Apolgies if this is a dupe. This is a long one but it's really
worth reading. Seriously, read it right now! :-)


Art, Truth and Politics
by Harold Pinter

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1208-28.htm

hardly anybody answered to the other posts.

Recommended.

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

''Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed. ''

extremely important for liberals to remember this -- even when liberals are in power.

but that quote in the context of millions of americas believing in george because he is a ''man of faith'' is especially disturbing.

and telling. how can back away a citizenry from such a dangerous place?

worth the read.

Mz Pip
:dem:

I always wondered that :-)

except that sometimes we use the donkey. :kick:

Mz Pip
:dem:

No American writer or politician has said it as clearly as Pinter has.

kick

unless - as Pinter points out - it's to glory in Brand America.

We have no shame, no morals, no ethics. We're a populace that lives a fantasy based existence, starting with our religious indoctrination and continuing through our "America, right or wrong (but we're NEVER wrong)" chimera.

Torture is evil if others do it. When we do it, it's sanctioned by Jesus.

Illegal invasions are evil. Unless we do it - we felt we "owed" that country democracy. Sorry about the deaths, but they weren't Americans or even whites. Let's move on.

Good work by Pinter.

being blown up here? If we had occupiers? If people were losing their children in bloody bomb blasts.

Americans feel so insulated, even with 911.

I sort of feel like we have some bad karma coming our way and we are creating the bad feelings ourselves (or CIA and govt is)

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

Politics aside, Pinter's Nobel speech is a beautiful piece of prose, his poem 'Death' is unforgettable. Questions of guilt, innocence, freedom, slavery, etc, are of no concern for Pinter. What really matters is abandonment, everything else is politics.

As for Hari's anti-Pinter rant, it is both noisy and ignorant. Pinter is a surrealist only in Mr.Hari's dull dreams.

1. Harold Pinter. Art, truth and politics: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

2. GU. Michael Billington. Passionate Pinter's devastating assault on US foreign policy: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661931,00.html

3. Johann Hari. Harold Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=741
Harold Pinter has one literary accomplishment: he imported the surrealism of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Luis Bunel into the staid English theatre.

I'm gonna bump (or kick if you prefer) this baby one more time :D

Read it! Read it! Read it! Seriously, I really mean it. Read it! ;-)

http://www.worldcantwait.net/

Sample:

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.


Take a look at the list of distinguished endorsers.

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.