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Happy Birthday, Harold Pinter
Today is the seventy-seventh birthday of playright, director, actor, political activist, and Nobel Prize laureate, Harold Pinter. In Mr. Pinter’s honor, I’d like to reprint an excerpt of his 2005 Nobel Prize lecture. Agree with his opinion of American foreign policy post WWII or not, but I encourage you to click on the link and read the entire lecture. Regardless of whether you find common ground with Mr. Pinter or not, his genius for articulation of the internal suffering and external brutality mankind visits upon one another.
Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture:
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.
But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. 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. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’
It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
[…]
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
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.
Mr. Pinter wrote and delivered this lecture two years ago, but it could have been yesterday. Nearly two thousand more are dead since he wrote this, and they are still being “transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way.”
Two years ago he called us to action with his stirring words. That call has not quieted over time. If anything, it grows louder each day. And each day begs us to continue to speak up and speak out against the inhumanity and atrocities at hand. I know many of you are part of the peace movement. I post this not only to honor Mr. Pinter on his birthday, also in hopes that Mr Pinter’s eloquent and presaged words serve to drive your passion and give your spirit what it needs to continue to be a voice reminding others of what humanity is.
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Happy Birthday, Mr. Pinter and thank you Casey for posting this.
As I read it I was quite amazed by the accuracy of us "spreading democracy" and how it was true back in the 80's in Central America. I remember that time period and those issues. My sister was very much involved and everyone thought of her as really extremest liberal and that includes me!
Now, however, I have learned so much more than I knew back then and I am every bit of the same mindset as she was and still is.
Either I have joined her in the extreme-liberalsville or the extreme-liberalsville is the norm once you know wtf is going on.
The second choice is what I suspect is where the truth remains and with that in mind, it's important to remember that we should be educating our students about World History and American history. I'd even include Labor Union history. Because frankly, it seems to me that those who learn it "Get it!"
I have seen some appalling documentaries that the US have been protected from. This hatred of America goes way, way back. And last night I saw a documentary about the Secret War that America engaged in during the Vietnam War. Laos. The deadly toxins and cocktails in bombs and landmines were dropped on Laos. Cambodia didn't fare much better.
There's a movie documentary on now - I urge you to see it and recommend that everyone you know sees it. It was reviewed on ABC tv last night.
"Bomb Harvest
Review by Margaret Pomeranz
During the ‘Secret War’ that the Americans conducted in South East Asia during the conflict in Vietnam, nearly 2 million tonnes of bombs were dropped on neighbouring Laos.
Many of those bombs failed to explode and are embedded in the landscape. A new documentary BOMB HARVEST follows Australian bomb disposal specialist Laith Stevens in his work for the humanitarian organization Mines Advisory Group.
The dropping of Agent Orange ruined farmlands, many people in rural Laos are short of food. As a result there’s big business in scrap metal. It’s hard to get the dangers across to the children.
Bomb Harvest shows how you live with the results of a war long after it’s over.
It’s a terrible problem for Laos and I imagine for much of the region.
The delight of the film is in getting to know the members of the Laotian team that Laith is training, a couple of whom were former monks, and one is now relishing a life of wine, women and song.
It’s a film that reflects the personality of Laith himself, a former army disposal expert who very much enjoys life in his adopted country.
But it’s actually images of the children grubbing around in the dirt for scrap metal, which may or may not be still live, that haunts."
Ring! Ring! It's 7:00 A.M.!
Move y'self to go again
Cold water in the face
Brings you back to this awful place
Knuckle merchants and you bankers, too
Must get up an' learn those rules
Weather man and the crazy chief
One says sun and one says sleet
A.M., the F.M. the P.M. too
Churning out that boogaloo
Gets you up and gets you out
But how long can you keep it up?
Gimme Honda, Gimme Sony
So cheap and real phony
Hong Kong dollars and Indian cents
English pounds and Eskimo pence
You lot! What?
Don't stop! Give it all you got!
You lot! What?
Don't stop! Yeah!
Working for a rise, better my station
Take my baby to sophistication
She's seen the ads, she thinks it's nice
Better work hard - I seen the price
Never mind that it's time for the bus
We got to work - an' you're one of us
Clocks go slow in a place of work
Minutes drag and the hours jerk
"When can I tell 'em wot I do?
In a second, maaan...oright Chuck!"
Wave bub-bub-bub-bye to the boss
It's our profit, it's his loss
But anyway lunch bells ring
Take one hour and do your thanng!
Cheeesboiger!
What do we have for entertainment?
Cops kickin' Gypsies on the pavement
Now the news - snap to attention!
The lunar landing of the dentist convention
Italian mobster shoots a lobster
Seafood restaurant gets out of hand
A car in the fridge
Or a fridge in the car?
Like cowboys do - in T.V. land
You lot! What? Don't stop. Huh?
So get back to work an' sweat some more
The sun will sink an' we'll get out the door
It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
You're frettin', you're sweatin'
But did you notice you ain't gettin'?
Don't you ever stop long enough to start?
To take your car outta that gear
Don't you ever stop long enough to start?
To get your car outta that gear
Karlo Marx and Fredrich Engels
Came to the checkout at the 7-11
Marx was skint - but he had sense
Engels lent him the necessary pence
What have we got? Yeh-o, magnificence!!
Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi
Went to the park to check on the game
But they was murdered by the other team
Who went on to win 50-nil
You can be true, you can be false
You be given the same reward
Socrates and Milhous Nixon
Both went the same way - through the kitchen
Plato the Greek or Rin Tin Tin
Who's more famous to the billion millions?
News Flash: Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie
Oooohh...bub-bye
Magnificence!!
The Clash, "Sandinista"
Reading Pinter's speech is like reading Orwell's 1984 all over again. So many people unaware of so many things, believing the propaganda.
The price of knowledge is loss of innocence. Having knowledge doesn't necessarily mean one must do something with that knowledge, but knowledge can save lives, so there is a duty above one's own little life to pass on that knowledge. Knowledge is power.
But what about those who choose lives of ignorance? Do they really believe ignorance (= unlearned or untaught) is bliss? Why would anyone deliberately choose not to acquire knowledge?
There is a mystery to the legend of the two trees in the Garden of Eden. Woman gave man knowledge of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and then when she acquired knowledge, gave it to man, and all he did was whine and blame woman for giving him knowledge. (She probably thought if she gave him knowledge she could at least have an intellectual equal with whom to share conversation if she only educated him. Wow. Was she ever wrong!)
Once man got done whining about no longer being ignorant and blaming women for freely giving him knowledge, he used the power he gained through knowledge for selfish gain. Bush and Cheney are the prime examples of how not to use power for evil and selfish motives, and since our Congress Critters are refusing to stop them through impeachment, they have to either be in on the rape of America and the rest of the world or they're being blackmailed into giving Georgie and Dickie more and more power to torture and/or kill more and more people....
Pinter's words highlight one thing: there are men who are exceptions to the rule and deplore what men like Georgie and Dickie are doing to our country and the rest of the world. Too bad we don't have more men like that in Congress....