"An act of blatant state terrorism"

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

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edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/12/08/pinter.nobel.ap/index.html



Nobel laureate slams Bush, Blair



Thursday, December 8, 2005 Posted: 1102 GMT (1902 HKT)



STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter has slammed U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a harsh award lecture, saying they should be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq.



In a prerecorded lecture presented at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Wednesday, the British playwright said Bush and Blair should be arraigned before the International Criminal Court.



"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," said Pinter, known for his outspoken criticism of U.S. foreign policy.



In his lecture, which focused more on politics than literature, Pinter launched a ferocious tirade against Bush and Blair, saying they were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the Iraq war.



"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?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.



"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,"' Pinter said.

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[ans]

lol. That was pretty lame. Still in all, it wasn't nearly as tedious as reading his lousy poetry.

[droolymutt]

"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,"' Pinter said.







Yes.





And the majority of the World despises America for that rape.

[droolymutt]

Whenever I watch CNN, whenever I even see George Bush's face, I become physically sick to my stomach......



Seriously..



The guy has caused so much pain to so many Innocent people in his mindless grab for oil.....

[ans]

"the majority of the World despises America"



Now where did you get THAT information? Or did you intend it to simply be an homage to Pinter's hyperbole? Or were you trying for poetry but couldn't find anything to rhyme with "America"?

[droolymutt]

I think it's obvious...

[ans]

'jape' rhymes with 'rape'

[droolymutt]

Quote:

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How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?

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mass murderer/war criminal....->

[ans]

Wonderful. More ammo for shooting down the just liberal cause. Just what right wingers need to convince their friends and family that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are correct when they say the left is "out of touch with reality" and "just bunch of fringe lunatics". Irresponsible statements like "it's obvious" that " "the majority of the World despises America" do more harm than good to the cause of the MAINSTREAM left. Thanks a tankful

[droolymutt]

ok.







I apologize.





But someone has to rage against the machine...





No?

[ans]

I should be the one to apologize, Mr. Droolymutt. I didn't intend to single you out for a slam. But I just spent my sister's whole visit trying and failing to convince her that 'liberal' isn't a bad word, and that not all liberals are Un-American fringe lunatics and so forth. I happened to catch Burn's latest paste-job at a bad time. But it's all good. I would advise Burn that if he wants to continue undermining the efforts of the left he should bypass Pinter and go straight to Chomsky. I'll paste one now:



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Suprise, suprise!



The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to: A Bush-hating leftist!



by Stephen Schwartz







SWEDEN HAS A REPUTATION for a high suicide rate. But a psychological crackup striking an ordinary Scandinavian, brooding in the long, dark winter, is merely a personal tragedy. By contrast, the moral suicide of a whole institution, like the Swedish Academy--which has responsibility for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature--is messier and more disturbing.



Yet like a pack of lemmings drunk on home-made aquavit, the Stockholm snobs have continued their rush to fully discredit the literature Nobels, by selecting Harold Pinter as their 2005 laureate. Pinter is an exhausted English playwright whose sole and obvious current qualification for the prize is his strident participation in the America-baiting, Israel-hating protests against the liberation of Iraq.



Pinter himself admitted that his career no longer has anything to do with literary aspirations. Notified of his good fortune, since the prize includes a $1.3 million payout, he snarled today, "I have written 29 plays and I think that's really enough. I think the world has had enough of my plays." He then declared that he has given up playwriting altogether.



Given that Pinter has produced no significant work for the stage in 40 years, one should perhaps admire the candor of his self-criticism. But viewed from another perspective, the Swedes have written a new chapter in ignobility, presenting the world's top literary honor to an author who considers his own work irrelevant. That, at least, could not be said of some of the anti-democracy miscreants previously so recognized in Stockholm. They have included the 1999 choice, German



novelist Gunter Grass, a veteran of the @#%$ forces in the Second World War and unsparing foe of Western values; the 1998 laureate, the Portuguese Jose Saramago, a former Communist censor, and his immediate predecessor Dario Fo, a tireless enemy of religion. Some have never forgiven the ignominious past selection of Pablo Neruda, a fervent Stalinist and clandestine agent for the Soviet secret police. But, at the very least, none of those puffers and fakes would have disclaimed the importance of their writerly efforts.



Pinter, the George Galloway of literary London, has his eyes on bigger things than creative achievement. No longer a star in the world of theatre, he retains a theatrical personality. He is a pathological Bushophobe, whose hatred of our president is only exceeded by his disgust with Tony Blair. Pinter has called Blair a "deluded idiot." (With characteristic gentility, the prime minister's office commented, "Of course we congratulate Harold Pinter on the recognition that he has received.") Some in the media described Pinter's Nobel as "surprising," but the Swedes were actually reprising the scandal they perpetrated last year when they presented the award to an obscure Austrian pornographer, Elfriede Jelinek, whose only claim to fame was her production of a work attacking the U.S. intervention in Iraq.



That disgrace caused a rift within the Stockholm academy itself. This week Knut Ahnlund, a member of the once-august body, angrily announced his resignation, denouncing the Austrian termagant with the piquant argument that his fellow-academicians had not read any of her work at all.



But why should they have? She, like Harold Pinter, owes her Nobel to her posturing against American foreign policy. Jelinek herself has been quick to praise the Swedes for choosing another leftist as a recipient of the award.



Perhaps it is time to simply ignore, and forget, the Nobels.

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

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ans



novelist Gunter Grass, a veteran of the @#%$ forces in the Second World War and unsparing foe of Western values

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You better check your insane sources first, Günther Grass, a German, was 16 years old when he was mandatory ordered out of school to join the Deutsche Luftwaffe (Flak helper) end of 1944.



A few weeks later he went as an American POW to prison until 1946.



This your article writer calls a "N*** Veteran"?



Good joke.

[Galmin]

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SWEDEN HAS A REPUTATION for a high suicide rate.

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Yup. It's a common misconception. Tragic in itself.

Quote:

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By contrast, the moral suicide of a whole institution, like the Swedish Academy--which has responsibility for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature--is messier and more disturbing.

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Pinter got the noble prize because "his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms", not for any potential statement he was going to deliver in his award lecture.

In his lineup of "unworthy" recipiens (obviously not based on the Nobel Prize winners or nominates work that got them nominated in the first place), Mr Schwartz actually misses Hamsun!

[MIKE BURN]

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ans



Given that Pinter has produced no significant work for the stage in 40 years, one should perhaps admire the candor of his self-criticism.

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Ay, ay..... let me continue to prove your article writer an informed fool and twister of non-existant facts.



Pinter was honored not only because of one of his strongest works which is "Ashes to Ashes (1996)".



2005 minus 1996, thats roughly 9 years, not 40, and "Ashes To Ashes" was not his last work...

[ans]

Veteran (n): A person who has served in the armed forces.



* * *





SUICIDE RATES AMONG HIGHEST GNP NATIONS

Source Data:         World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland,

        World Health Statistics Annual

       

Country         Rate (per 100,000)

Finland         26.4

Denmark         20.4

Austria         20.4

France         19.8

Switzerland         19.6

Japan         15.1

Sweden         14.7

Germany         13.8

Norway         13

United States         11.8

Netherlands         9.6



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Significant(adj.): Important in effect or meaning. The key word is 'important'. Simply calling 'Ashes To Ashes' one of his 'strongest works' doesn't prove its significance to anyone except you maybe. And Galmin.