Excerpt from Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech

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Thu, 08 Dec 2005 05:53:40 -0800

Excerpt from Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech

 

 

 

(snip)

 

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this

territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence

available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the

maintenance of that 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.

 

As every single person here knows, 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 about appalling devastation. We were assured that

was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship

with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York

of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not

true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were

assured it was true. It was not true.

 

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how

the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses

to embody it.

 

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past,

by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World

War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some

kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow 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 my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have

only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone

acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be

addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands

now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet

Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had

concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

 

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's

favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low

intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die

but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that

you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and

watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to

death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great

corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that

democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the

years to which I refer.

 

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to

offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the

world, both then and now.

 

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

 

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more

money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a

member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the

most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader

of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the

ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am

in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school,

a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a

Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed

everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They

raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal

manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw

its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

 

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly

sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic

circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he

said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There

was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

 

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

 

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case " innocent people " were the

victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If

Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take

place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of

supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign

state?'

 

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented

support your assertions,' he said.

 

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my

plays. I did not reply.

 

I should 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 supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over

40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime

in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

 

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of

arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of

contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and

civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic

society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of

poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families

were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable

literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh.

Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was

reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

 

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist

subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was

being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social

and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care

and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring

countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of

course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

 

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan

commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken

generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and

fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the

Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of

systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in

Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a

Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El

Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically

elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000

people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

 

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously

murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a

battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA.

That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass.

It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed?

They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and

should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as

communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless

plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their

birthright.

 

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.

 

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

anaesthetic. 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.

 

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few

Things':

 

And one morning all that was burning,

one morning the bonfires

leapt out of the earth

devouring human beings

and from then on fire,

gunpowder from then on,

and from then on blood.

Bandits with planes and Moors,

bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,

bandits with black friars spattering blessings

came through the sky to kill children

and the blood of children ran through the streets

without fuss, like children's blood.

 

Jackals that the jackals would despise

stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,

vipers that the vipers would abominate.

 

Face to face with you I have seen the blood

of Spain tower like a tide

to drown you in one wave

of pride and knives.

 

Treacherous

generals:

see my dead house,

look at broken Spain:

from every house burning metal flows

instead of flowers

from every socket of Spain

Spain emerges

and from every dead child a rifle with eyes

and from every crime bullets are born

which will one day find

the bull's eye of your hearts.

 

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry

speak of dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land.

 

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

the blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood

in the streets! *

 

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way

comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because

nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description

of the bombing of civilians.

 

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.'

 

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to

weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is

true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are

out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you

lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it

could be argued, become a politician.

 

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now

quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

 

Where was the dead body found?

Who found the dead body?

Was the dead body dead when found?

How was the dead body found?

 

Who was the dead body?

 

Who was the father or daughter or brother

Or uncle or sister or mother or son

Of the dead and abandoned body?

 

Was the body dead when abandoned?

Was the body abandoned?

By whom had it been abandoned?

 

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

 

What made you declare the dead body dead?

Did you declare the dead body dead?

How well did you know the dead body?

How did you know the dead body was dead?

 

Did you wash the dead body

Did you close both its eyes

Did you bury the body

Did you leave it abandoned

Did you kiss the dead body

 

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.

 

* Extract from " I'm Explaining a Few Things " translated by Nathaniel

Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape,

London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

 

© The Nobel Foundation 2005

 

 

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