Free Republic

there was never a question in my mind that his Nobel Prize for Literature was deserved, although I cringed when he received it because I knew he would seize the opportunity to make ugly and propagandistic statements. Of course, I was right about that - you didn’t have to be Nostradamus. Pinter attacked the US government as if it were the modern avatar of the Third Reich. He used his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in the words of the Washington Post, to denounce the U.S. invasion of Iraq and to call British prime minister Tony Blair “a deluded idiot.” What...

"No one now disputes that stopping Slobodan Milosevic was the right thing to do,” wrote the Wall Street Journal this week, several days after the deposed Serbian strongman expired in his cell in The Hague. It’s an appealing sentiment, suggesting as it does that the man who presided over the deaths of 250,000 people in Yugoslavia in the 1990s died unsung and unmourned. In reality, however, even Slobodan Milosevic had his defenders. What is more, they are the same voices--largely on the far Left but also on the isolationist Right--who have now taken up the cause of Saddam Hussein. Many...

(Long read ahead.) xxxx 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? Truth in drama is forever elusive. You...

'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." No, that wasn't Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, half-answering questions in Europe last week about the CIA's alleged prison camps in Poland and Romania and the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects to countries where they are likely to be tortured. It was actually Harold Pinter, explaining the difference between drama and politics in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature....

Monstrous inequality is precisely what inspired the Cuban revolution. The revolution set out to correct such grotesque polarisation and was determined to ensure that the Cuban people never have to endure such degradation again. It understood that recognition of and respect for human dignity were crucial obligations which devolved upon a civilised society. Its achievements are remarkable. It constructed a health ser- vice which can hardly be rivalled and established an extraordinary level of lit- eracy. All this the US found to be abom- inable Marxist-Leninist subversion and naturally set out to destroy it. It has failed. And it must...

The US claims to champion freedom. In fact, its long record of brutality has imperilled peace, says Harold Pinter. POLITICIANS are interested not in truth but in 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. 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...

In a fierce critique Wednesday ahead of the Nobel awards ceremony, literature laureate Harold Pinter branded the war on Iraq "an act of blatant state terrorism" and demanded the prosecutions of US President George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair. "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in a pre-recorded lecture broadcast by the Swedish Academy. The Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, aired the interview, recorded Sunday in London, because Pinter is too sick to travel to Sweden for the...

George W Bush and Tony Blair must be held to account for feeding the public "a vast tapestry of lies" about the Iraq war, writer Harold Pinter said. The playwright launched a scathing attack on US and UK politicians in his lecture as winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Most politicians "are interested not in truth but in power and the maintenance of that power", the 75-year-old said. His speech was pre-recorded as Pinter was admitted to hospital this week. 'Live in ignorance' Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced the winner of...

Harold Pinter's early writing for the stage was correctly described... as "the theater of the absurd." But it has been left to the selectors of the Nobel in literature to make that definition postmodern and thus to drain it of all irony. Their choice of Mr. Pinter is a selection of absurdity quite detached from drama: a straight and philistine preference for the grotesque. "I have no idea why they gave me the award," said the playwright when the news was brought to him. This justified incredulity showed a brief flash of his old form. ...Just as with the selection...

Harold Pinter, Britain's greatest living playwright, is unsure whether the Nobel committee gave him its esteemed prize for literature in part because of his fierce opposition to the US-led war in Iraq. The Times newspaper also speculated Friday on whether the Swedish Academy had seen Pinter, who wrote his signature works almost half a century ago, as the sharpest stick with which to "poke America in the eye" this year. Other newspapers merely celebrated the news that the 75-year-old master of the heavy pause had received the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Pinter, who is also well known as an...

<p>In selecting British playwright Harold Pinter for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy did something unusual — and also something true to form. What's unusual is that an internationally known writer whose body of work truly merits the world's most prestigious award actually won. Plays like "The Caretaker" and "The Birthday" not only revolutionized 20th-centuty theater, they spawned an adjective: Pinteresque.</p>

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - British playwright Harold Pinter, a master of sparse dialogue and menacing silences who has been an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, was the surprise winner of the Nobel literature prize on Thursday. The 75-year-old Londoner, son of a Jewish dressmaker, is one of Britain's best-known dramatists for plays like "The Birthday Party" and "The Caretaker," whose mundane dialogue with sinister undercurrents gave rise to the adjective "Pinteresque." An intimidating presence with bushy eyebrows and a rich voice, he was described by Swedish Academy head Horace Engdahl, who announced the prize, as "the towering figure"...

Here they go again, The Yanks in their armoured parade Chanting their ballads of joy As they gallop across the big world Praising America's God. The gutters are clogged with the dead The ones who couldn't join in The others refusing to sing The ones who are losing their voice The ones who've forgotten the tune. The riders have whips which cut. Your head rolls onto the sand Your head is a pool in the dirt Your head is a stain in the dust Your eyes have gone out and your nose Sniffs only the pong of the dead And...

The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal By Harold Pinter Earlier this year, I had a major operation for cancer. The operation and its after effects were something of a nightmare. I felt I was a man unable to swim bobbing about under water in a deep dark endless ocean. But I did not drown and I am very glad to be alive. However, I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the...

'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,' Pinter continued. 'You know why that is? Depleted uranium'Youngsters at a Christmas carol service were devastated this week after the vicar told them Santa Claus was dead and his reindeer had been vaporised shortly after take-off. Preaching at the church of St George of the Galloways, the Reverend Harold Pinter informed his young flock that the real Santa had been assassinated on Christmas Eve 1977 by the Shah's secret police, using Washington-supplied cruise missiles and that the present "Santa" was a CIA stooge with an obvious false beard. Children as young...