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Remembering Pinter: Is Our Conscience Dead?
On the news today of the death of Harold Pinter, the winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, I remembered hearing his Nobel Laureate lecture/acceptable speech. I was in London in December, 2005 speaking at the annual Stop the War conference when Pinter delivered his speech-not in Oslo, as Pinter was very sick and could not travel, but in London via TV link.
I was amazed and thrilled that he chose to use the Noble Prize platform and devote a huge portion of his speech to shining an international spotlight onto the tragic effects of the past decades of U.S. foreign policy and particularly, on George Bush and Tony Blair's decisions to invade and occupy Iraq, on Guantanamo and on torture.
Pinter's Laureate speech question "Is Our Conscience Dead" is most relevant today when
three years after his acceptance speech "Art, Truth and Politics," Bush, Cheney, Rice and other administration officials are either trying to rewrite history or as in Cheney's case, purposefully revealing his role in specific criminal acts of torture and daring the American legal system and people to hold him accountable.
Following is the part of Pinter's lecture that speaks to invasion of Iraq, torture and Guantanamo-- and our collective and individual conscience:
"Art, Truth and Politics"
Noble Lecture by Harold Pinter
December 7, 2005:
... The United States 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.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?
Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture.
What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?
More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
I hope you will decide that yes, we do have a conscience and that you will join the millions of Americans who say we must hold accountable those who have committed criminal acts while in government-the policy makers as well as the implementers.
Write and call the new President and the new Congress and demand official investigations into war crimes and other criminal acts committed by members of the Bush administration and join us on Inauguration day to remind the new President of his responsibilities.
30 Comments so far
Show AllAnn Wright:your service is saluted by many who post comments here. It took courage to say you were going to resign if the US invaded Iraq, and then when the terrible happened, you did resign. I know Ann Wright organized the running of Camp Casey in TX. It seems so long ago. To answer the question:conscience didn't die with Harold Pinter. There are many, artists (I am one),artists of all kinds:poetry, playwriting, music, and dissenting people who do not make art. Everybody's contribution to making conscience and justice and peace is of value.
"Write and call..." ?
You keep "writing and calling", they keep killing and looting.
Sorry, I appreciated the words here, but your call to action is MIA.
serena, you will never find the kind of ppl that you speak of here. its a hopeless struggle in this format. the fight is elsewhere.
You delude yourself Serena. You castigate others for their lack of results yet produce none of your own. There's a word for that, dear Serena, it's hypocrite.
signed,
tar baby
serena
Since you are living in Mexico now, couldn't you do something to help the poor kids there? Try and stop the buying of teaching jobs? Make some kind of skill requirement to get a teaching job? Stop the willing of a teaching job to a family member?
Full Spectrum Violence by conscienceless men ... and women. That's psychopathic behavior. And anything goes.
Those who are responsible for the lawlessness and terrible violence must be brought to justice.
During the days of the founding of this nation of the United States, John Adams in a speech trying to persuade other colony delegates to vote for independence from Great Britain and the monarchy, described the independent nation of his vision as "A Republic of Laws not men."
When he became the second president of the United States, John Adams, as Harry S. Truman echoed so often nearly two centuries later, often said that the president is a citizen, a mere citizen no more, no less, who happens to have a title of President, with the president representing the people as best he/[she] can, but within The Law, viz., The Constitution of the United States. Violating The Law, whether president or not, the mere citizen who holds the office,is always subject to The Law of the Land just like any other citizen.
Interestingly the United States and Israel signed on to the Rome Statute [body of laws] of the International Criminal Court on December 21, 2000, but both renounced the signatures of their respective countries in 2002.
Gee, I wonder what the U.S.'s G.W. Bush Administration and Israel's Zionist government under that "man of peace," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had in mind when they gave the finger to the International Criminal Court at The Hague?
Seems to me a partnership made in hell is what now governs us and pulls our strings.
Seems to me also that Barack Obama, in roundly kissing the bloody butt of Israel's Zionist Government and not being willing to visit the Palestinians in Gaza where a slow genocide is taking place, is either a slick liar or has his own clever strategy for redressing this situation [but he best hurry up before 1.5 million SEMITIC Palestinian people are dead or permanently exiled]. We'll find out. [And I call it GENOCIDE because what is being perpetrated in the Gaza Strip by Israel is well within the legal description of the articles of the UN GENOCIDE CONVENTION, signed and ratified by both Israel [early 1950's] and the United States [embarassingly, not ratified until 1988].
Conscience??? Fascists or corporate oligarchs and empire-builders seem to be devoid of the higher morals and ethics that just a normal conscience prods us to adhere to.
As several have suggested on various comments, we all might learn to or if we know how, take up knitting as soon as possible, ... dear Monsieurs and Mesdames.
/cm
Moon Pie - you are wrong. Ann's call to action is absolutely the right course of action. The reason it hasn't worked thus far is because far too many are too timid or intimidated to actually do it. Also, by not taking action we are doing exactly what the opposition expects us to do - KEEP TAKING IT. Do you not believe that if even 10 million people all spoke with one voice that those in Congress would not hear us? Yes, there are those who would not be swayed by anything short of a revolution, but others are simply reflective of their constituents - fed up with the system but go along to get along. We must also stay energized because there are those (Kucinich, Lee, Moran, McDermott, Whitewater, et al) who have fought the good fight. They desperately need all the support they can get. And no - I am not naive. I know how the system operates, I am just not ready to lay down and die in hopes that the system will correct itself. I have no faith in that, and I love my child too much to leave him and his cohorts to the mercy of this horrendous system.
To Naysayers everywhere: Do you not think that if we all did what Ann has done, and Cindy, and Vets for Peace, and Iraq Vets Against the War, and CodePink, and United for Peace and Justice, and Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace - to name a few - that we could not make a difference? These are some of the folks that have literally laid their lives on the line - for years - while the rest of America either sleeps in apathy or sucks on the teat of corporate media. I am not apathetic; I am weaned; and I still believe that compassionate, honest, humane people, individually and collectively, can make a difference.
NYCARTIST: Good post! Ann Wright is as brave as they come and just as honest. The Movement for "progressive change" is spreading around the planet, but unfortunately, the US is the slowest in participation, but the momentum IS growing. Sad to see Pinter depart, but when he retired from writing plays, he dedicated the rest of his short but productive life writing and speaking about peace and justice. He will be missed by many.
ODOCO: Excellent postings!
SERENA: I think it is disingenuous and inappropriate for you to pass judgement on the other posters. Each person you denounce contributes accordingly in their own way. And some of us go back a long way with Pinter, as I've seen several of his plays and remember well what Ms Wright quoted above. He will be missed by more people than you can imagine.
ANN WRIGHT: I am honored to have met you and recommend to others to buy and read your book. Thanks for this article on Harold Pinter's speech!
Serena--
You are obviously more atuned to the winds and currents swirling about than many of your critics. Just as many Americans really do not understand the nuances of Latin and other world cultures to which you are atuned, neither do you always understand the most effective method of communicating your truth on some other level than brawling bellicosity.
Your utterances are quite truthful but poorly understood communications. As a director and (in all probability) an actor you need to connect with rather than anger and repel your audience. i'm just sayin'.
Poet
serena
I understand your rascist rants, but I'd suggest you clean up your new home before coming back here to tell us how to run our country.
Even under Bush the US has not even approached the level of corruption in your adopted country.
Over 4000 deaths on our border this year isn't it? Mexican citizens decapitated, tortured, killed. Just on the border. A society that far surpasses ours in the concentration of wealth. Far exceeds.
A resource rich country that is exploited for a very few elites while its citizens starve. Yes NAFTA was a terrible blow to the Mexican farmer, but two countries signed it, not just one. Mexicans bear the responsibility for Mexico's plight, not America.
Happy New Year To You.
"we" are the "good guys" but the bad guys keep kicking our ass around...what can be done, oh woe, what can be done? at what point do we "fight" back?
What do your words mean? "Fight" back against what? Explain yourself, as your words here suggest that you're seriously deluded, profoundly ignorant, or willfully antagonistic. If you're implying that the U. S. should respond to any and every political disagreement, every incident where its "interests" (another story there) are threatened, with violence, tell us, when this has not been the case? If you're instead implying that the U. S. practice a "pre-emptive" foreign policy, hasn't this also been the typical U. S. response to its hegemonistic ideology, dating back to colonists' subjugation and slaughter of indigenous cultures? If these hypotheses are even close to whatever you mean, are you indicating that violence is the only appropriate response to political differences? Are you even remotely suggesting that the U. S. has suffered anything close to the devastation its armed forces and political cowardice have inflicted on other people in other nations? Just who are the "bad guys" that keep kicking "our ass" around? They may be kicking your ass, but not mine, and I resent the implication that I share your ass! Or were you referring to the ass in the White House, or the other one in the State Dept., or perhaps one in Congress, or the one.....? Never mind, just come on, now, make yourself clear about what you do mean. Would you contend that the USA has never "fought back" against fabricated "enemies" on the most meager, unsubstantiated, provoked, and deliberately fraudulent grounds, with complete disregard for the suffering American corporate-sponsored greed causes? Would you be so ill-informed to compare any domestic tragedy inflicted on U. S. domestic soil (including the superhyped 9-11 incident and its likely roots in the CIA or NSA) with what our foreign policy has delivered time and again and yet again to places like Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, East Timor, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, the Philippines, the Congo, Vietnam, and Turtle Island? Are you even remotely suggesting that the U. S. restrains itself from "fighting back," whether or not any cause or reason exists to fight or manipulate or propagandize or defraud or murder innocent or guilty human beings just to make the point that its a bigger bully than any other nation?
You'd better write what you mean in a language most of us can understand, otherwise you run the risk of misinterpretation, let alone consideration as one of America's most common commodities: the stupid, misinformed, willfully ignorant, patriotic-without-a-cause, demonstratively vapid and vacuous, "exceptional" human born with a brain that it deliberately chooses not to use.
no way, you are way to wordy for me.
LaFajita
From "I Should Have Died", Philipe Gigantes, AKA Philip Deane:
"It is a power unto itself, this international caste that is called bureaucracy, private or public, and it is strangely similar wherever it may operate. It is a co-optive society where the elders choose successors in their own image and spend untold energy hiding past failures instead of planning new successes. And because things are getting bigger, more complex, each and all of these bureaucracies is a vast inbred conglomerate of inbred parts which become increasingly more concerned with themselves, spending increasingly more time keeping the people elect from knowing too much. Nowhere did I see this being more true than in Washington where I observed this phenonoman over ten years."
Here is the Daily Kos diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/26/173429/87/943/677414
Mordecahi Vanunu, another Conscience to the world has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize annually for the last 23 years.
I wonder where is the conscience of the media for failing to report on his ongoing trials?
Upon release from 18 years in Israeli jail on April 21, 2004, Vanunu said:
"All this bullshit, blah blah blah, about secrets, is dead. My case is dead. The article was published. There are no more secrets. All the secrets were published and is in the hand of the whole world. All the world, every state, 180 states received these secrets. I am now ready to start my life.
"I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel. I want to tell you something very important. I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian, because I was baptised into Christianity. If I was a Jew I wouldn't have all this suffering here in isolation for 18 years. Only because I was a Christian man."
In January 2006, an historic freedom of speech trial in the 'democracy' of Israel began.
On June 4, 2008 Vanunu wrote:
I was released in April 2004, but Israel denied me, my human rights of free speech and freedom movement. I am not allowed to leave since 1986 until now; 2008.
On July 8, 2008, I will return to court to appeal a new 6 months prison sentence for speaking to foreign Media, since my release 2004,
I am asking the Media to report on my case.
On July 8, 2008, Israel convicted Vanunu on 14 counts-from over a hundred interviews he gave foreign journalists in 2004.
His Supreme Court appeal has been put off until 2009.
In March 2006, just a few weeks after the beginning of his freedom of speech trial, Vanunu sent Senator Clinton and USA Christians the following message regarding The Wall-which is a grievous affront to anyone with a conscience:
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=47537156583&h=EtyE0&u=pPp4v
Eileen Fleming, Author, Founder WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
eileenfleming: Amy Goodman, of DemocracyNow had the interview with Vanunu right after he was released from prison that got him back in trouble, I recall. www.democracynow.org transcripts stay online. Thanks for your comment.
SERENA, My compliments for your choice of plays and playwrights. Waiting For Godot is one of my favorites, and I know the Irishman didn't pen it just for me. Where did I state in my comments that "Pinter was my personal possession?"
I am not in the habit of restricting anybody's rights, but you seem more in tune with attacking Common Dreamers than the criminal element running this country into the ground. Maybe it's intentional.
In spite of your attitude and vindictive nature, may you find inner peace and harmony. Happy New Year.
Waiting For Godot was written by Samuel Beckett.
Correct! That's why I said Irishman. Pinter was from England
Ann, your actions regarding the Iraq invasion and your resignation are an inspiration of conscience. Thank you.
There is always hope, but even more when this comes from a US Army Colonel. One so brave the Canadian government won't allow her in the country because Uncle Sam wouldn't like that.
My list of heroes grows longer with Colonel Wright and now I add Tim DeChristopher.
*
Very good reminder, Ann Wright provided, although not a reminder for me, given I didn't really know Harold Pinter before; but then a reminder nevertheless, for it's not pointless to remember that we must develop and live according to [real] and sane conscience.
Given that I wholly agree with what Harold Pinter said in what Ann Wright quoted of or from his Dec. 2005 lecture, I did some Web searches to try to find one or more complementary videos, and it was a productive search.
First, I wanted to check on whether, or not, Harold Pinter had said anything about the criminal U.S. and NATO war on Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, to try to find out if these would reveal any inconsistencies of serious kind on his part. Well, I found evidence of his words, alright, but certainly no trace of any inconsistency. He greatly spoke out against this war too.
The following video is with regards to what he had to say on the very latter topic, and the text for the video links to a WSWS article, the one linked following the video link just below, and for what seems to be the source of most of the text appearing alongside or with the video clip. The video itself seems to be mis-titled, but that's not a big deal, and I linked the WSWS article in this post only to bring the title forward.
"NOBEL laureate Harold Pinter proves KOSOVO is SERBIA!", posted by TruthSAYER17, Jul 10 2008
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=vKsuikz1HSs
(That title, again, seems off to me, for I think Kosovo was part of Serbia, but Serbia also consisted of more than Kosovo. If that's true, then Kosovo certainly wasn't Serbia, and Serbia wasn't Kosovo.)
"Playwright Harold Pinter presents a powerful case in opposition to NATO bombardment of Serbia",
by Ann Talbot, May 7 1999
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/pint-m07.shtml
That WSWS article page provides links to three related articles of 2008 and another of 1999, and while they're perhaps not related in terms of anything Harold Pinter specifically said on the criminal war on Kosovo and Serbia, they're nonetheless related. And based on who's mentioned for an immediate subject in the three articles from this year, these seem to be very important; and evidently incriminating, much, for the U.S. and NATO, while perhaps, if not certainly, also for the whole UN "mission" (of whatever kind, but evidently not good) there too.
Following is another piece on Harold Pinter's words about the war on Kosovo and Serbia.
"Harold Pinter takes on Nato
One of the UK's most important playwrights, Harold Pinter has challenged audiences around the world since his play The Birthday Party first hit London in 1958. He has become increasingly outspoken about the issues of the day and now talks to BBC HARDtalk about his current concerns over the Kosovo crisis.",
Jun 1 1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/357999.stm
That BBC article has links to three related Real media format videos with Harold Pinter.
Lastly, and specifically with regards to the above article by Ann Wright, I came across a (46:16) video of Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel laureate lecture in London and posted at Youtube, but seeing the url of chris-floyd.com in the upper left-hand corner of the first image shown in the video clip at youtube, I did a Web search to see if he still provides at his Web site, and he does. He provides the same video clip, embedded, as well as two alternative .WMV downloads, one for the .wmv file, while the other is a zipped, .zip, packaging of the .wmv, so I suppose the latter's smaller than downloading the .wmv directly.
ACTUALLY, both of those .wmv links are presently invalid, but the page still provides the Youtube video clip embedded, and I contacted the webmaster of Floyd's site about the invalid links.
Floyd also provides what apparently is a full copy of the text associated with Harold Pinter's lecture, "Art, Truth & Politics", while that part of the Pinter page at Floyd's Web site is followed by links to additional resource information on Pinter. It's a very serious resource page altogether, on Pinter. And, now, some minutes after writing the latter, I checked the very bottom of the page, the resource links there, and think most people will want to check these too.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/pinter
To view the video clip of the Dec. 7th, 2005, lecture in London but at Youtube, instead of embedded in Floyd's website, where it seems readers or viewers can't comment at all, while they can at youtube, well, the following is the link.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=GY2Z27Y-HJE
(To download that, people can go to www.splandoo.com, f.e., enter the above url as it appears immediately above, action the go or fetch download url button, and then download with the Web browser, or else using a downloader, copying and pasting the download url to the downloader; such as Orbit's Orbitdownloader or Giganology's Gigaget or Flashget or ..... Maybe it's a video of a lecture some people would like to archive for themselves; unless there are plenty of copies available on the www.)
No, my conscience isn't dead. Rather, it is most of the media that impedes our voices to be heard because the message we bring is not what they want to hear. Freedom of the press has turned into 'freedom to suppress'. Alas.