Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter has sadly passed on this week. We should acknowledge his achievement as a voice of critical reason and unflinching political commentary. He raised a public outcry on the justification of the Iraq war, he questioned the West (America and Britain in particular) had the right to hold democratic ideals, while at the same time flouting them, firstly by going against the UN and showing complete contempt for international Law by setting up Guantanamo Bay. At the same time he saw the irony that, the two powers wanted people to be put on indictments, in the International criminal courts (ICC); for crimes against humanity, paradoxically, neither American nor British citizen could be put in this same court. Pinter saw these discrepancies and voiced them articulately in full flow at press conferences. He wasn’t an armchair critic, on the contrary, he demonstrated against injustices. He had paranoid mistrust for the State and all its institutions, questioned the validity of most politicians nut most of all he saw the many contradictions which lie us below the surface of human behavior, that we all share, whether from China or Kenyan or American. As a playwright, he explored reality, and the psychological state of memories, most remarkably he never saw the very contradictions that he himself exhibited. Harold

Pinter was truly remarkable man, a substantial man, who understood the delicate condition of human nature.
We will truly miss him.

~ by Gilbert on December 28, 2008.