Playwright Harold Pinter, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature, was prevented from travelling to Stockholm to collect the prize and make an acceptance speech in person, but his taped address still managed to make waves. The Guardian’s Michael Billington, whose article was re-published on Salon.com, decribes the scene: “It was Beckettian in that Pinter, 75, sat in a wheelchair, with a rug over his knees and framed by an image of his younger self, delivering his somber message: Memories of Hamm in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame came to mind,” he writes. “In fact, the speech was all the more powerful because it was delivered in a husky, throaty rasp. The facts are that Pinter, having recovered from cancer of the esophagus, was earlier this year stricken by a condition in the mouth that affected his vocal cords.”

Despite Pinter’s physical “frailty,” his words condemning the United States and the United Kingdom for the war in Iraq, came through loud and clear: “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.”

Related links:
Click here for the article on Salon.com
Click here for the full text of Pinter’s speech