I can’t help feeling that, for a brief moment in time — say, the instant occupied by a blink in the indifferent flow of history, Harold Pinter restored our sense of dignity as humans, exactly as intended. By standing up for truth.
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"... neither reveals nor conceals" 
Well, let’s hope Chomsky also gets a Nobel Prize for something. That would be another super speech. Maybe we should put toghether a list of potential Laureates based on the merits of their acceptance speech.
Hopeless radical leftists (Chomsky, Pinter…) are having such a spin that they conceive the world as an abberation…
I commented Halorld’s historic speach here. Nothing came later on, not even an unreflected post. Maybe here?
uhh, dead linkage, sorry…
here a repost from BeeBee’s blog:
Harold P’s most writings are out of question, but this monologue is more than questionable. You should consider that Mr. Pinter (btw, this name sounds remarkably Slavic) is a badly ill man (he was actually brought to the hospital right after having this speach). Harold is also a member if ICDSM.org (together with Peter Handke & others) which is fighting to free Slobodan Milosevic. H.P. was actually used here to speak out for the radical leftists (yet not against his will), yet he’s not doing anybody a favour with that, though.
Besides, Pinter’s (theatre) work is today not as relevant as it was about 20 yrs. before – at least I can’t see real life relevance there. He’s a part of the establishment, already before taking the Nobel Prize. In Vienna, for example, his plays are even running (& badly flopping) at the (Theater in der) Josefstadt!
(9/12/05 12:07)
It’s not the world that is an aberration, I think. It is the densely knit facades placed in front of it, to show it different than it is (like Potemkin legendarily did), in order to serve the powerful few.
I am not a fan of Pinter’s drama, either. This, I think, is irrelevant to his consistent resistance against tyranny and lies. This is what I respectfully bow before, an intellectual consistently opposing lies, tyranny and gratuitous death for the masses (in lieu of justice for all).
This implies you forgive him for his activity to free Slobo? For me at least this is a definite break in HP’s consistence. Here he’s supporting a tyrann who’s responsible for the death of the masses. I cannot figure why he supports him. Must be blind or insane. Or simply spinning left side through & not able to see the worls as it is anymore.
Thanks for directing me to the awfully designed page in support of Milosević’s release. I did not find Peter Handke among the signatories.
Although I am in no position to speak of anyone else’s behalf, I would think that Pinter’s support of the “cause” is not the result of his sympathy for the tyrant. Rather, I would think that he, as well as at least some of the signatories, oppose the preferential persecution and prosecution of exactly those tyrants that bother the US. Why was Mobutu never arrested? What about Pinochet?
A similar thing is certainly true for many of those who opposed the Kosovo-related bombing campaign and oppose the Iraq invasion and occupation; their opposition is founded on the blatant (and preferential) violation of international law and a country’s sovereignty, rather than on support for the ethnic cleansing of Albanians or for Saddam Hussein.
Sorry about the ugly ICDSM.org page, at least the layout goes conform with the intentions. Peter Handke was the initiator of the whole thing, though he didn’t need to sign the petition.
I am not able to comprehend Pinter’s (& everybody else) decision for signing it (exept for Slobo’s wife perhaps). I guess you are ringt, signing petition will probably be an act of symbolic opposition against the US prosecution. I can only go guessing there.
Yet anyway, those people should be able to put things in relation. The things Slobo actually really did are in no relation to what the US did (or not did) on the Balcans.
Antiamericanism is fashionable an chic in certain circles. I can speak only for the Balcans – everything they did here, they did it right, only it came a little late.
And how about you dragra puting things in relation too. What has Pinter’s speech to do with Milosevic and/or Pinter’s alleged participation in the campaign to free him? Absolutely nothing. All he talked about besides some personal moments was USA’s crimes. Either you rebut what he actually talked about, by showing it was incorrect and those crimes were never commited, or you keep quiet and don’t play the link game ( = link the person whose arguments you don’t like, but which you are obviously unable to rebut using oposing facts, with something generally seen as bad and in this way falsely discredit the initial arguments – the right in the US does this all the time).
And what’s with the “spinning left side through” nonsense. Have we really come so far that denouncing state crimes has become a thing of the left?! Economical, social, health, education, environment policies and so on are the playing field where you can have a right and a left view, but when such atrocious crimes become a thing of political viewpoints, well at that point we’re very near the bottom. Don’t talk about others spinning or being spun when you yourself are unable to look at things without skewing them your way.
Usually I ignore anonymous coward posts, but let’s make an exception.
The relation thing: Pinter’s speech gets an damper when you are from Ex-Yu and you know about his affiliation of Slobo. Pinter is a radical leftist not only from my point of view, this is rather common sense. I think the Iraq war was wrong – and especially the post-war-time is going wrong terribly.
You should calmn down from your blind hatred against U.S. and be able to see what the’ve done on the Balcans, where the Europe BTW has remarkably failed.