[Reader-list] Jaromil: RIP Harold Pinter

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo Bricolabs list (http://www.bricolabs.net)


re all,

best wishes for your holydays, with some sad news

Harold Pinter died, yesterday.

last time  i listened  to him, we  were in  London's Hyde park  at the
Peace march in  2003 protesting against a war  that started anyway, in
the  name of  democracy.  millions in  the  streets of  all the  world
marching to shout NO MORE WAR!  WE'LL DO WITHOUT THE OIL!

but no.  our governments joined  the war anyway.  our soldiers are out
there  far from  their families,  and today  is Christmas,  and Harold
Pinter is dead.  and i remember  clearly now his cry for peace. i feel
how little  sense our present has  in Europe. in  the Netherlands they
don't even know why the state  joined the war in Afghanistan, they are
still trying to  understand under which pressure the  militars and the
government actually did join, who signed the papers...


Harold Pinter was a  great man. He had the guts to  say things as they
are, to face babylon with its  own crimes and hypocrisy, while his own
talent and  integrity are recognised  worldwide, by a Nobel  Prize and
much more than that.

as  of today,  after a  short time  this list  exists, there  are many
influential   people   subscribed,   reading   our   discussions   and
contributing.  again  my best wishes to  all of you,  my gratitude for
what we've shared so far and  finally now my request to take Pinter as
an example,  for an important man  that had lots of  courage and could
speak to be  understood by many.  he was not an  elitarist even if his
talent made  him part  of an  intellectual elite, and  he had  never a
doubt to say  things, even if horrible to be  said. he admitedly could
make mistakes, but i believe  most things he did were right, amazingly
enough he was right to the point on things people didn't dare to be.

let's  all  spend  a  few  hours  reading his  words  resting  in  our
biblioteques please.  lets meditate  how many compromises are we doing
in the  things we aren't saying,  in the moderated comfort  we are all
swimming  in,  with  the privilege  of  our  brains  and what  we  can
understand of  the world and  what we prefer  to not say, for  our own
interest. how  much is worth a  single life, the life  of many people,
the life of a man who dares like Harold Pinter did.

below some  original Pinter's  quotes that will  surely be  deleted by
revisionists:

  he has called the President of  the United States, George W. Bush, a
  "mass murderer" and the (then) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,
  Tony  Blair, both  "mass-murdering" and  a "deluded  idiot"  and has
  described them, along with  past U.S. officials, as "war criminals."
  He has also  compared the Bush administration ("a  bunch of criminal
  lunatics")  with Adolf  Hitler's  Nazi Germany,  saying that,  under
  Bush,  the United  States ("a  monster out  of control")  strives to
  attain "world domination"  through "Full spectrum dominance". Pinter
  characterized  Blair's Great  Britain  as "pathetic  and supine,"  a
  "bleating little lamb tagging behind [the United States] on a lead."
  According  to  Pinter,  Blair   was  participating  in  "an  act  of
  premeditated  mass murder"  instigated  on behalf  of "the  American
  people," who, Pinter notes, increasingly protest "their government's
  actions" (Public reading from War, as qtd. by Chrisafis and Tilden)

Pinter published  his remarks to the mass  peace protest demonstration
held  on 15  February 2003,  in London,  on his  website:

  "The United States is a monster out of control.  Unless we challenge
  it with  absolute determination American barbarism  will destroy the
  world.  The country is  run by  a bunch  of criminal  lunatics, with
  Blair as their hired Christian  thug.  The planned attack on Iraq is
  an act of premeditated mass  murder" ("Speech at Hyde Park").

Those  remarks  anticipate his  2005  Nobel  Lecture,  "Art, Truth,  &
Politics", in which he observes:

  "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".

where he had  foreseen Obama campaign, for a  government that now owes
to Pinter's  life all the  coherence that it  takes to finally  make a
real change. furthermore, speaking to Europe and Latin America:

  Pinter exhorted the mostly European audience "to resist the power of
  the  United States,"  stating,  "I'd  like to  see  Europe echo  the
  example of Latin America  in withstanding the economic and political
  intimidation of the United  States. This is a serious responsibility
  for  Europe  and  all  of   its  citizens"  (Qtd.  in  Anderson  and
  Billington, Harold Pinter 428).

and  i must  confess this  last quote  reads so  sad  considering what
Europe really is, probably that's  the bigger mistake he has ever made
in his discourse.

rest in peace, Harold Pinter.

during these holy days i'm spending  a big deal of time networking and
gathering info on the Coltan and Blood issue, a panel we'll be running
at next  Transmediale, coming  january.  I wish  to dedicate  all this
effort to Harold  Pinter today, we shall do all  our best to continue,
to continue  saying what cannot be  told, right here, in  the belly of
the  monster.  i'm reading  things  that  cannot  be said  so  easily,
thinking of him now gives all the strenght needed to continue.


rest in peace, Harold Pinter.



- --

jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org


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