2005 : Harold Pinter

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2005 : Harold Pinter

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“who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms”

Born

:

October 10, 1930

Place of birth

:

East London, UK

Occupation

:

Playwright, Screenwriter, Poet, Actor, Director

Nationality

:

British

Notable award(s)

:

Nobel Prize in Literature 2005

Biography:

Harold Pinter grew up in working class district of Hackney in London as the son of Hyman (Jack) Pinter, a jew DRESSMAKER, and Frances, who was a housewife. Ancestors came from Poland and Odessa, and had immigrated to England at the turn of the century. In Hackney, there were few other Jews, which Pinter says created a gap that characterizes his works. The Second World War and the anti-Semitic sentiment that existed were also contributory factors to this feeling. He went in Grocers’ Academy School and received a scholarship so he could study at the London Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, which he jumped from. In 1950 he published poems under the pseudonym Harold Pinter and was a part-time actor in a radio broadcast on the BBC. He graduated at the Central School of Speech and Drama.First wife, Vivien Merchant, was an actress and participated in several of his works. They married on Yom Kippur, September 14 1956, and his parents were dissatisfied with both the date and the fact that she was not Jewish. Later, she would be hard drinker. In 1977, he left her for Lady Antonia Fraser with whom he married on the 1980. Pinter has written about thirty pieces, some twenty film scripts and directed some thirty teateruppsattningar. Among the pieces seen The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and responsiblity. Pinter drama often deals with communication, or lack of it, in relationships. This has led to him during different periods have been condemned for not at all deal with drama, but with the status of exercises for actors. Criticism has come and gone, often in step with current trends in the theater world. The pieces deal with the relationship between men and women and very often between men and women. Pinter has also been the subject of feminist research with queer aspect, as in Pinter’s Female Portraits (Elizabeth Sakellaridou, 1988). He has also published a greater number of prose works and some poetry collections. Politically, he stands to the left of Labor. Pinter was a strong opponent of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq war. He has compared the Bush administration with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and called Tony Blair a “mass murderer”. He is also active in the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, a solidarity organization that supports Cuba’s right to independence and self-determination, and the International Committee Thursday defend Slobodan Milosevic, since he believes that even suspected war criminals Slobodan Milosevic deserves a fair trial. Of his works have been drawn up in Sweden and some in English. Return set up the 1966 Gothenburg City Theater, Janitor was set up at the Stockholm City Theater of Thommy Berggren with Peter Andersson, Ingvar Hird Wall and Johan Rabaeus. Responsiblity was set up in the English 2003 at Strindberg’s intimate Theater.

Works:

Works in English:

  • Plays (year of writing; year of publication; year of first performance)

  • The Room (1957) – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1960 – (Bristol, 1957)

  • The Birthday Party (1957) – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1960 – (Arts Theatre, Cambridge, 28 April 1958)

  • The Dumb Waiter (1957) – in The Birthday Party, and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1960 – (Kleines Haus, Frankfurt, February 1959)

  • A Slight Ache (1958) – in A Slight Ache and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1961 – (Broadcast 1959)

  • The Hothouse (1958) – in The Hothouse – London : Eyre Methuen, 1980 – (Hampstead Theatre, London, 24 April 1980)

  • The Caretaker (1959) – in The Caretaker. – London : Methuen, 1960 – (Arts Theatre, London, 27 April 1960)

  • A Night Out (1959) – in Slight Ache and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1961 – (Broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, 1 March 1960)

  • Night School (1960). – in Tea Party and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1967 – (Broadcast on Associated Rediffusion Television, 21 July 1960)

  • The Dwarfs (1960) – in Slight Ache and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1961 – (Broadcast 1960; New Arts Theatre, London, 18 September 1963)

  • The Collection (1961) – in The Collection – London : French, 1963 (1962?) ; in The Collection, and The Lover – London : Methuen, 1963 – (Televised 1961)

  • The Lover (1962) – in The Collection, and The Lover – London : Methuen, 1963 – (Televised 1961)

  • Tea Party (1964). – in Tea Party and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1967 – (Eastside Playhouse, New York, October 1968)

  • The Homecoming (1964) – in The Homecoming – London : Methuen, 1965 – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 3 June 1965)

  • The Basement (1966) – in Tea Party and Other Plays – London : Methuen, 1967 – (Televised 1967)

  • Landscape (1967) – in Landscape – London : Pendragon Press, 1968 ; in Landscape, and Silence – London : Methuen, 1969 – (Broadcast 1968)

  • Silence (1968) – in Landscape, and Silence. – London : Methuen, 1969 – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 2 July 1969)

  • Old Times (1970) – in Old Times – London : Methuen, 1971 – (Aldwych Theatre, London, 1 June 1971)

  • Monologue (1972) – in Monologue – London : Covent Garden Press, 1973 – (Televised on the BBC Television, 13 April 1973)

  • No Man’s Land (1974) – in No Man’s Land – London : Methuen, 1975 – (Old Vic, London 23 April, 1975)

  • Betrayal (1978) – in Betrayal – London : Eyre Methuen, 1978 – (National Theatre, London, November 1978)

  • Family Voices (1980) – in Family Voices – London : Next Editions, 1981 – (Broadcast on Radio 3, 22 January 1981)

  • Other Places (1982) – in Other Places : Three Plays – London : Methuen, 1982 – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982)

  • A Kind of Alaska (1982) – in A Kind of Alaska – London : French, 1982 ; in Other Places : Three Plays – London : Methuen, 1982 – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982)

  • Victoria Station (1982) – in Victoria Station – London : French, 1982 ; in Other Places : Three Plays – London : Methuen, 1982 – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, October 1982)

  • One for the Road (1984) – in One for the Road – London : Methuen, 1984. – (Lyric Theatre Studio, Hammersmith, March 1984)

  • Mountain Language (1988) – in Mountain Language – London : French, 1988 ; in Mountain Language – London : Faber, 1988 – (National Theatre, London, 20 October 1988)

  • The New World Order (1991) – in Granta (no 37), Autumn 1991 – (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 19 July 1991)

  • Party Time (1991) – in Party Time – London : Faber, 1991 – (Almeida Theatre, London, 31 October 1991)

  • Moonlight (1993) – in Moonlight – London : Faber, 1993 – (Almeida Theatre, London, 7 September 1993)

  • Ashes to Ashes (1996). – in Ashes to Ashes – London : Faber, 1996 – (Royal Court at the Ambassadors Theatre, London, 12 September 1996)

  • Celebration (1999). – in Celebration. – London : Faber, 2000. – (Almeida Theatre, London, 16 March 2000)

  • Remembrance of Things Past (2000). – in Remembrance of Things Past. – London : Faber, 2000. – (Cottesloe Theatre, London, 23 November, 2000)

Additional:

  • The Proust Screenplay : A la recherche du temps perdu / by Harold Pinter, with the collaboration of Joseph Losey and Barbara Bray. – New York : Grove Press, 1977

  • Poems and Prose 1949 –1977. – London : Methuen, 1978

  • The Dwarfs : a novel. – London : Faber, 1990

  • Various Voices : Poetry, Prose, Politics, 1948–1998. – London : Faber, 1998

  • Collected Screenplays. 1. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, The Accident, The Last Tycoon, Langrishe Go Down

  • Collected Screenplays. 2. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The Go-Between ; The Proust Screenplay ; Victory ; Turtle Diary ; Reunion

  • Collected Screenplays. 3. – London : Faber, 2000. – Content : The French Lieutenant’s Woman ; The Heat of the Day ; The Comfort of Strangers ; The Trial ; The Dreaming Child

  • The Disappeared and Other Poems. – London : Enitharmon, 2002

  • Press Conference. – London : Faber, 2002

  • War : [Eight Poems and One Speech]. – London : Faber, 2003

  • Death etc. – New York : Grove Press, 2005

  • The Essential Pinter . – New York : Grove Press, 2006

Literature (a selection):

  • Hayman, Ronald, Harold Pinter. – London : Heinemann, 1968

  • Esslin, Martin, The Peopled Wound : the Plays of Harold Pinter – London : Methuen, 1970

  • Hollis, James Russell, Harold Pinter : the Poetics of Silence. – Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Ill. U.P., 1970

  • Hinchliffe, Arnold P., Harold Pinter. – Boston : Twayne, 1981

  • Dukore, Bernard Frank, Harold Pinter. – London : Macmillan, 1982

  • Harold Pinter : You Never Heard Such Silence / edited by Alan Bold. – London : Vision, 1985

  • Harold Pinter : Critical Approaches / edited by Steven H. Gale. – Rutherford : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1986

  • Harold Pinter / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom. – New York : Chelsea House Publishers, 1987

  • The Pinter Review : Annual Essays / edited by Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. – Tampa, Fla : University of Tampa, 1987 –

  • Merritt, Susan Hollis, Pinter in Play : Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter. – Durham : Duke University Press, 1990

  • Esslin, Martin, Pinter the Playwright. – London : Methuen, 1992

  • Gussow, Mel, Conversations with Pinter. – New York : Limelight Editions, 1994

  • Knowles, Ronald, Understanding Harold Pinter. – Columbia, S.C. : University of South Carolina Press, 1995

  • Regal, Martin S., Harold Pinter : a Question of Timing. – London : Macmillan, 1995

  • Billington, Michael, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. – London : Faber, 1996

  • Jalote, Shri Ranjan, The Plays of Harold Pinter : a Study in Neurotic Anxiety. – New Delhi : Harman, 1996

  • Peacock, D. Keith, Harold Pinter and the New British Theatre. – Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1997

  • Harold Pinter : a Celebration / introduced by Richard Eyre. – London : Faber, 2000

  • Prentice, Penelope, The Pinter Ethic : the Erotic Aesthetic. – New York : Garland, 2000

  • Pinter at 70 : a Caseboook / edited by Lois Gordon. – New York : Routledge, 2001

  • Gale, Steven H., Sharp Cut : Harold Pinter’s Screenplays and the Artistic Process. – Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, cop. 2003

  • The Art of Crime : the Plays and Films of Harold Pinter and David Mamet / edited by Leslie Kane. – New York : Routledge, 2004

  • Smith, Ian, Pinter in the Theatre. – London : Nick Hern, 2005. – New York : Routledge, 2004

  • Baker, William, & Ross, John C., Harold Pinter : a Bibliographical History. – London : The British Library ; New Castle, DE : Oak Knoll Press, 2005

  • Batty, Mark, About Pinter : the Playwright and the Work. – London : Faber, 2005

  • Grimes, Charles, Harold Pinter’s Politics : a Silence Beyond Echo. – Madison : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005

Awards:

1996: Laurence Olivier Award.

2002: Companion of Honour.

2005: Nobel Prize in Literature.

2007: Legion d’honneur.

Presentation Speech:

Presentation Speech by Writer Per Wastberg, Member of the Swedish Academy, Chairman of its Nobel Committee, December 10, 2005.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Esteemed Nobel Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Harold Pinter is the English drama innovator during the 1900s. “Pinteresque” is an adjective in the Oxford Dictionary. Like Kafka, Proust and Graham Greene, he has mapped a territory, a Pinter Country with distinct topography. With twenty-nine pieces and a hundred that he himself directed or appeared in, he has made the theater room to their home country. His people entrench themselves in unpredictable dialogues. It boils and burns between the lines of unsolved threat. What we hear are signs for everything we did not hear. Abyss in small talk, the unwillingness to communicate other than apparent, the need to rule and mislead, the suffocating sensation of the accidents bolts in the living area, the slightly nervous about a terrible story is censorship – it is this that vibrates through Pinter drama. His characters are left to their own life on the outer edge. They are while trapped in class boundaries, the phrase, the fossilized vanornas limbo. Their identity, background, history is vague, there are different versions depending on who remember. They rarely hear each other, but it is just their mental deafness which make us listen. Because there is not a word that can pass through the door, not a minute during which we can relax. The atmospheric toggles while secrets bag deployment and changes the power distribution. The memories, they tweaked, manipulated or real, go to a hot during power plays by Pinter. We model the past to answer the present requirements and for shaping our future. When the sealed rooms opened to the international community, Pinter redefines the romantic love of a sustainable love and friendship that includes the requirement that the act work for justice. In Mountain Language takes love the form of an unconditional generosity that is lacking in his earlier works. To survive, we must perform good acts and commit ourselves to the enslaved by terror and violence ‘time. It is usually hot that Pinter’s political commitment came late. But he describes himself as the first period – The Dumb Waite, The Birthday Party, The Hothouse – as political. These “threat comedies”, the language is a weapon of aggression, subterfuge, torture. The early works can be seen as metaphors for authoritarian intervention on several levels: government, family, power, religious power, all of which undermine the individual’s critical issues. Pinter uncovered the reason for the desire to destroy others’ identity and the fear that camouflage themselves to violence against those outside the party, club, nation. In Pinter are no winners and losers. The political maneuvering between the characters we rarely know who has the upper hand, they change places and grows and falls with the replies that rarely seems thought-out in advance. The sides have not seen with the naked eye; ambiguous’s ultraviolet rays frilagger them. The nice up between invisible walls and layers of different reality stocks. When they are defending themselves against intrusion of others, the unchecked in themselves in rooms that are mined like an alien terrain. The conventional realistic drama has Pinter perforated with a silence the mystery, and its clear shapes, he has provided with so many reserve exits that we can stay among them and see them grow old and the weather break we ourselves. Public solid and impermeable people break down in the fatal SPUTTER. They send messages that never seem to arrive, and yet we leave the salon less justification than when we entered. For the scheme are world to be arranged. For Harold Pinter is made to be broken up. Then the good and humanity a chance to transpire through the old bureaucratic reflex of the grill. In a ruthless analysis of the totalitarian he lifts up the individual human pain. Asides Stinger, short words corrode, the half that is scathing, the ineffable herald a catastrophe. Skraddarsonen Pinter mows in the language and allow the document arise from the individuals voices and rhythms. Therefore there is no obvious plot. We ask not what will happen then? but what happens now? The words are power tools. We repeat words until they appear to be the truth. In a time of informed detachment Pinter words that depict the reality and makes them very real, sometimes poetic, often oppressive. In the end, it is only through language that we can iron out our destiny and create it again. Dear Harold Pinter, In its choice of a Nobel Laureate the Swedish Academy recognises only the creative power of a single individual regardless less of nation, sex and literary genre. This needs emphasising. However British you may appear in the eyes of many, your international and inter-human impact in the field of drama has been uniquely strong and inspiring for half a century. If someone thinks your prize is late in coming, we may reply that at any given moment somewhere in the world your plays are Reinterpreted by new generation of directors and actors. In your works, seductively accessible and frighteningly mysterious, the curtain rises Wednesday dense-life landscapes and harrowing confinement. In poetic images, you ILLUMINATOR an existence where fantasy and the nightmare of reality clash. In the absence of this year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, I request his publisher Mr. Stephen Page to come forward and receive Mr. Pinter’s Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.

Nobel Lecture:

7 December 2005

Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

“There are no distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, between what is true and what is false. One thing is not necessarily true or false, it can be both true and false. ” I believe that these assertions still make sense and still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as an author, I agree yet, but as a citizen I can not. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is wrong? The truth is the theater forever elusive. You will not find never quite, but his quest is something compulsif.Cette quest is precisely what command your effort. This search is your task. Most of the time you get the truth by chance in the dark, entering collided with it, or simply saw an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without you realize that you did. But the real truth is that never, drama, a single truth to be discovered. There are many. These truths challenge each other, steal each other, are reflected, unaware, is narguent, are blind to one another. You sometimes feel they have found in your hand the truth of a moment, then it slips between your fingers and is lost. I am often asked how my plays saw the day. I can not say. No more than I can not sum up my plays, except to say that’s what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did. Most pieces are born to a replica of a word or an image. The word offered the first, the image often following closely. I’ll give you two examples of aftershocks that I have come to mind so completely unexpected, followed by an image that I myself followed. The parts in question are the return and was yesterday. The first replica of Return is “What have you done scissors? The first replica was yesterday is “Brown”. In both cases the other I had no other information. In the first case, somebody, obviously, looking for a pair of scissors and asked where they were awarded to someone else he suspected he had probably stolen. But one way or another I knew that the person to whom it is addressed fichait madly scissors, as the one who posed the question, however. “Bruns” I presume that this was the description of someone hair, the hair of a woman, and that it responded to a question. In either case, I found myself compelled to pursue it. Everything was happening visually, a very slow fade from shadow to light. I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C. In the play that became The Return I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question to a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa, nose in a newspaper racing. I vaguely suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), “Daddy, I would you change about it? Let me ask you something. What we ate dinner while ago, how it called? You call it how? Why you do not buy a dog? You’re a dog cook. Frankly. You think that you’re cooking for a bunch of dogs. 1 “So, when B calling for” Papa “, it seemed reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A clearly was also the cook and his cooking did not seem to be well held in high esteem. That did he say that there was no mother? I did not know. But, as I am the repeated at the time, our beginnings never know our ends what will be done. “Bruns. A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. “Big or small? “Asked the man. Who are they talking about? It was then that I see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another quality of light, turning their back, brown hair. It is a strange time, when you create characters that had not previously existed. The following are capricious, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it may take the form of an avalanche that nothing can stop it. The position of the author is a weird position. In a sense, the characters does not welcome. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live, they are impossible to define. You can not give them orders. To some extent you deliver them to a game interminable, you play cat and mouse, Colin-Maillard, hide and seek. But eventually you discover that you have on the arms of the beings of flesh and blood human beings with a will and an individual sensibility of their own, made of components that you are not able to change, manipulate or distort. The language in art remains a highly ambiguous case, quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give in under your feet, you author, from one moment to another. But as I said, the quest for truth can never stop. It can not be postponed, it can not be deferred. We must face it there right away. The political theater presents a set of problems completely different. The sermons should be avoided at all costs. Objectivity is essential. It must be allowed characters to breathe an air that belongs to them. The author can not confine or interfere in order to satisfy the taste, inclination or prejudices that are his. It must be ready to deal from various angles in a variety of perspectives, not knowing or brake or limit, take them by surprise, perhaps, from time to time, while allowing them freedom to follow the path they like. It does not always work. And political satire, of course, does any of these precepts, the very fact just the opposite, which is also its primary function. In my play The Birthday it seems to me that I run tracks a variety of interpretations, leaving them operate in a thick forest before I can concentrate, ultimately, on an act of submission. Language of the mountain does not operate so open. Everything is brutal, short and ugly. The soldiers of the piece yet found a way to have fun of the situation. It is sometimes forgotten that torturers bored very easily. They need a little laugh to keep morale. As has been clearly confirmed the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only twenty minutes, but could go on for hours and hours, tirelessly repeating the same pattern over and over again for hours and hours. Ashes to Ashes, for its part, seems to take place under water. A woman who drowns his hand is leaning toward the surface through the waves, falling out of sight, is leaning toward other hands, but not finding the person or above or below the water, are only shadows, reflections, floating; women, a figure lost in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the tragic fate that seemed to belong only to others. But like the others died, she must die too. The political language, such as employing politicians, not venturing ever on this field since the majority of politicians, according to the evidence we have, not interested in the truth but power and the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, they live in ignorance of the truth until the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast web of lies, we infants. As here knows everyone, the argument to justify the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had a dangerous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be unloaded in 45 minutes, causing an appalling carnage . We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had maintained relations with Al Qaeda and had its share of responsabilitedans the atrocity of 11 September 2001 in New York. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened world security. We were assured that was true. It was not true. The truth is completely different. The truth is linked to how the United States understands its role in the world and how they choose to embody it. But before revenirau this time, I considered recent history, I mean the foreign policy of the United States since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is imperative for us to subject this period to scrutiny, albeit limited, of necessity, by the time we have here. Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified. But I argue that crimes committed by the United States during the same period have only been superficially reported, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone identified ades crimes at all. I think the question should be addressed and that the truth has an obvious connection with the current state of the world. Although limited, to some extent by the existence of the Soviet Union, actions around the world by the United States gave clear that they had declared to have carte blanche to do what they wanted . The direct invasion of a sovereign state has never been, in fact, the preferred method of America. On the whole, it has preferred what it described as “low intensity conflict”. “Low intensity conflict” means that thousands of people die but slower than if you drop a bomb on them d A single coup.Cela means you contaminate the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant tumor and you watch the gangrene spread. Once people have been submitted – or beaten to death – it is the same – and your friends, military and large corporations, are comfortably installed in power, you go before the cameras and say that democracy l ‘Prevailed. It was commonplace in U.S. foreign policy in the years to which I refer. The tragedy of Nicaragua was an extremely revealing. If I decide to mention here is that it convincingly demonstrates how America sees its role in the world, both at the time today. I attended a meeting held at the U.S. Embassy in London in the late 80s. The U.S. Congress was about to decide whether or not to give more money to the Contras in the campaign that they were running against the state of Nicaragua. I was there as a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the largest member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the American camp was Raymond Seitz (then right arm of the ambassador, himself appointed ambassador thereafter). Father Metcalf said: “Sir, I am in charge of a parish in northern Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a medical-social center, a cultural center. We lived in peace. A few months ago a force of Contra attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, health center social, cultural center. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal. They behaved like savages. I beg you, ask the U.S. government to withdraw its support for this heinous terrorist activity. ” Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a man rational, responsible and well informed. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened to a standstill, and then spoke with some gravity. “Father, he says, let me tell you one thing. In war, innocent people suffer. “There was a frozen silence. We watched from an eye fixed. He did not shy. The innocent certainly suffer. Finally somebody said: “But in this case, the” innocent “were victims of an unspeakable atrocite funded by your government, among others. If Congress gives more money to the Contras, other atrocities of this kind will occur. Is not this the case? Your government is not therefore guilty of supporting destructive and murderous acts committed on the citizens of a sovereign state? ” Seitz was imperturbable. “I do not agree that the facts, as we have been exposed, support what you say here,” he said. As we left the embassy, an American adviser told me he loved my plays. I did not respond. I must remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: ‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. ” The United States has for over forty years supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a popular revolution and poignant. The Sandinistas were not perfect. They had their share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. Their goal was to establish a stable, dignified and pluralistic. The death penalty has been abolished. Hundreds of thousands of farmers affected by poverty have been reduced from the dead. More than 100 000 families have been given a right to land. Two thousand schools were built. A literacy campaign quite remarkable has driven down the rate of illiteracy in the country below 15%. Free education was introduced as well as free health services. Infant mortality has fallen by a third. Polio has been eradicated.

The United States accused these successes to be free of the Marxist-Leninist subversion. In the eyes of the U.S. government, Nicaragua gave a dangerous example. If allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it is allowed to raise the level of medical care and education and access to social unity and national dignity, neighboring countries will pose the same questions and provide the same answers. There was of course at that time, El Salvador, fierce resistance to the status quo. I spoke earlier of “tissue of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua of “totalitarian dungeon.” What the media, and certainly the British government, keen observation usually for a fair and deserved. There was not evidence of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no trace of torture. There was no trace of military brutality, systematic or official. No priest has ever been murdered in Nicaragua. There were even three priests in the Sandinista government, two Jesuits and a missionary of the Maryknoll Society. The “totalitarian dungeon” were in fact very near to El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had in 1954 brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala and it is estimated that over 200 000 people had been victims of military dictatorships that had succeeded. In 1989, six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world have been violently killed at the Central University of San Salvador by a battalion of the regiment led Alcatl at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. Archbishop Romero, the man in courage, was murdered while celebrating mass. An estimated 75 000 people died. Why did we killed these people? They were killed because they were convinced that a better life was possible and should happen. This conviction has immediately branded as communists. They died because they dared challenge the status quo, the endless horizon of poverty, disease, humiliation and oppression, the only right they had acquired at birth. The United States eventually bring down the Sandinista government. They took several years and they had to show a considerable tenacity, but a fierce economic persecution and 30 000 deaths were eventually undermine the courage of Nicaraguans. They were exhausted and miserable again. The economy “Casino” was reinstalled in the country. This was done free health and free education. The business is back in force. The ‘Democracy’ had prevailed. But this “policy” is not limited to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was endless. And it is as if it never happened. The United States supported and in many cases engendered, all military dictatorships Right emerged in the world after 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 that the United States imposed in Chile in 1973 can never be atoned for and will never be forgotten. Hundreds of thousands of deaths have occurred in all these countries. Have they taken place? And are they in all cases attributable to the foreign policy of the United States? The answer is yes, they took place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you do not know anything. That has never happened. Nothing has ever happened. Even while it was happening, it does not go. It did not matter. It had no interest. The crimes committed by the United States have been systematic, constant, violent, ruthless, but very few people have actually talked about. Let justice to America: it has delivered anywhere in the world, handling quite clinical power while pretending to be a force acting in the interest of universal good. A case of hypnosis great, if not spiritual, and terribly effective. The United States, I say to you, offer without doubt the greatest show of the moment. Country brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless, perhaps, but also a very clever. Like a committed traveler, he works alone and article he sells best is love of self. Success guaranteed. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words “American people”, as in the phrase: “I say to the American people that it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to confidence in its president for actions he is preparing to conduct on behalf of the American people. ” The ploy is brilliant. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words “American people ‘provide a cushion frankly voluptuous intended to reassure you. You do not need to think. Just you on your pillow. It may be that this cushion suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. Which of course does not apply to the 40 million people living below the poverty line or 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends from one end to another the United States. The United States does care about more than low-intensity conflict. They no longer see the interest that there would be to exercise restraint, or even insidiousness. They play cards on the table, without distinction. It’s simple, do not madly United Nations, international law or dissenting voices, which they feel they have no power or no relevance. And then they have their little lamb who follows belant everywhere at the end of a leash, Britain, pathetic and submitted. Where is our moral sensitivity past? Have we ever had one? What do these words? They refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A consciousness that is not only linked to our own acts but is also related to the share of responsibility that is ours in the acts of others? Is it dead? Look at Guantanamo. Hundreds of people detained without charge for more than three years without legal representation or trial fair, held theoretically forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. Not only tolerates but only if it is the so-called “international community” is the lesser cases. This is outrageous crime committed at this very moment by a country that professes to be “the leader of the free world.” Are we to think of tenant Guantanamo? What the media say? They awaken from time to time for us lay a small article on page six. They were relegated in a no man’s land which they might never return. Now many of euxfont the hunger strike are force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding methods. No sedatives or anesthetics. Just a tube that pushes you in the nose and sent down to you in the throat. You vomit blood. It’s torture. That said British Foreign Secretary? Nothing. Said that British Prime Minister? Nothing. And why? Because the United States stated: criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. Either you are with us or you’re against us. Result, Blair is silent. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of state terrorism patented, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military engagement inspired by a series of endlessly repeated lies and gross manipulation of the media and, consequently, the public intervention aimed at strengthening the economic and military control of America on the Middle East and moving – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to prove their merits – for a release. A red outable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We brought the Iraqi people torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable massacres committed at random, misery, humiliation and death and we call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy in the Middle East “. How many people do you need to kill before being entitled under mass murderer and war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would be tempted to believe. It would be just that Bush and Blair be called to appear before the International Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. It has not ratified the International Court of Justice. So if an American soldier or, more importantly, an American politician, was to be found in the dock, Bush warned he would send the marines. But Tony Blair, he has ratified the Court and can therefore be poursuites.Nous can communicate his address to the Court if it interests him. He lives at 10 Downing Street, London. Death in this context becomes quite incidental. Bush and Blair both take care to put it aside. At least 100 000 Iraqis have perished under the bombs and missiles before the U.S. began its insurgency in Iraq. These people are negligible. Their death does not exist. A nil. They are not even recorded as being dead. “We do not corpses,” said U.S. General Tommy Franks. In the early days of the invasion was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers, we see Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. “A grateful child,” said the legend. A few days later could be found in inside pages, history and a picture of another small boy of four years who had no arms. His family had been sprayed by a missile. It was the only survivor. “When do I find my arms? “He asked. The story went by the wayside. Well yes, Tony Blair does not tighten against him, nor does it shook in her arms the body of another child maimed, or the body of a bloodied corpse. Blood is dirty. You dirty your shirt and your tie when you speak with sincerity before the television cameras. The 2,000 American dead are embarrassing. It transports them to their graves in the dark. The funeral is quietly in a safe place. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their days. So the dead and maimed they rot, in different categories of graves. Here is an excerpt from “I explain some things,” a poem by Pablo Neruda: One morning and everything was on fire, and one morning the bonfires out of the earth devouring human beings, and therefore it was fire, it was the powder, and it was blood. Bandits with planes, with Moors, bandits with rings and duchesses, bandits with black monks to bless fell from the sky to kill children, and through the streets the blood of children sank just as the blood of children. Jackals that the jackal rejected, stones that hard bite thisle in spitting, vipers that the vipers hated! Faced with you I saw blood of Spain stand to drown you in one wave pride and knives! General treason: watching my house dead look at broken Spain: but every house there is a dead metal ardent instead of flowers, but each breach of Spain arises Spain, but every dead child a rifle with rises eyes, but every crime bullets are born which will one day place your heart. You are going to ask why his poetry does she not dream, leaves, the great volcanoes of his native country? Come see the blood in the streets, come see the blood in the streets, come see the blood in the streets! 2 Let me clarify that quote this poem by Neruda I am not in any way in the process of comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. If I quote Neruda because I have never read elsewhere in contemporary poetry as powerful description of a visceral and bombing of civilians. I said earlier that the United States were now a total franchise and played cards on the table. This is indeed the case. Their declared policy is now defined as a “full spectrum dominance” (total domination on all fronts). The phrase is not mine, it is to them. “Full spectrum dominance ‘means control of land, sea, air and space and all the resources that come with it. The United States now occupy 702 military installations in 132 countries worldwide, with the honorable exception of Sweden, of course. It is not clear how they arrived there, but one thing is certain: they are. The United States has 8000 nuclear warheads active and operational. 2000 are in a state of high alert, ready to be launched with a warning time of 15 minutes. They develop new systems of nuclear force, known as “bunker busters” (breakers bunker). The British, always cooperative, intend to replace their nuclear missile, the Trident. Who, I wonder, do they seek? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Tartempion? China? Paris? Who knows? What we know is that this infantile insanity – possess nuclear weapons and threaten to use – is at the heart of the current American political philosophy. We must remember that the United States are permanently on a war footing and does not suggest in this area no sign of relaxation. Thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States are full of shame and anger, visibly disgusted by the actions of their government, but the current state of things, they are not a coherent political force – yet . However, anxiety, uncertainty and fear that we see grow day by day the United States are not nearly abating. I know that President Bush already uses to write his speeches many extremely competent, but I would like to volunteer for the job. I propose the following short speech, he could do on television and address to the nation. I imagine grave, hair carefully combed, serious rider, sincere, often enjoleur, even sometimes a little forced smile, curiously attractive, a man more comfortable with men. “God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. The God of Bin Laden is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad except that Saddam had not. It was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We do not tranchons people’s heads. We believe in freedom. God, too. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a society full of compassion. We administer electrical full of compassion and lethal injections full of compassion. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. Him, yes. I am not a barbarian. Him, yes. And too. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? That is my moral authority. Try not to forget. ” The life of a writer is an infinitely vulnerable, almost naked. Needless to cry about that. The writer made a choice, a choice that he sticks to the skin. But it is fair to say that you are exposed to all winds, some of which are icy course. You work alone, isolated from everything. You can not find shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have built and maintained your own protection, and you could argue, you became a politician. I talked about death a lot of times this soir.Je will now read one of my poems, entitled “Death”. Where did we found the corpse? Who found the corpse? The corpse was dead when he was found? How did you find the corpse? Who was the corpse? Who was the father or daughter or brother Or uncle or sister or mother or son Of the body abandoned? The body was dead when it was abandoned? The body was abandoned? By whom had it been abandoned? The corpse was he dressed or naked travel? What was that corpse, you’ve declared dead? The corpse, you’ve declared dead? You knew him well, the corpse? How did you know that the body was dead? Have you washed the corpse Have you closed both eyes Have you buried the body Have you abandoned Have you kissed the corpse When we look in a mirror we think the picture that we face is faithful. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are in fact looking at an infinite variety of reflets.Mais a writer sometimes smash the mirror – because the other side of that mirror the truth that we set eyes. I believe that despite the enormous obstacles that exist, intellectually be resolved with a fierce determination, stoic and steadfast, to identify as citizens, the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which we are all . It is also imperative. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what we are so close to lose – our human dignity.

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