"Pinter remembered for work on Kurdish rights in Turkey

Pinter remembered for work on Kurdish rights in Turkey

By Grassroots

"Pinter remembered for work on Kurdish rights in Turkey
ISTANBUL – The Nobel Prize winner playwright Harold Pinter was a vocal opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, likening U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration to the Nazis and calling former British Prime Minister Tony Blair a ‘mass murderer.’ He also criticized a former ban on the Kurdish language in Turkey after the 1980 military coup and wrote a play on the issue"

Harold Pinter, Nobel-Winning Playwright, Dies at 78Harold Pinter, playwright who could find the ominous in the everyday, is dead at the age of 78… NYT … Telegraph … London Times … Guardian … Independent … AP … London Times … Guardian … a negative view. VIA Turcupundit.

Pinter and silence

In Columnists

An unjust king asked of a dervish which sort of worship was best, to which he received the reply, "In your case, the best thing would be to sleep until midday since that would give you less waking moments to oppress your people."

ISAIAH BERLINThe Counter-Enlightenment.

Leopold Bloom: son, father, lover, friend, warrior, man at arms – ordinary, yet a “complete human being.” Everyman for Modernism, says Peter Gay…

Harold Pinter – I salute you by Anthony Barnett

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I never knew Harold Pinter, but I met him. He was funny and disconcerting. The first meeting was at his and Antonia Fraser’s house in Campden Hill Square for a meeting of what was known as the June 20th group. This was a gathering of left literary intellectuals which began in 1988 as an attempt to put some backbone into the Labouyr Party as led by Neil Kinnock. It was hosted by Pinter and John Mortimer, the latter a true Labour man. I spoke to them about Charter 88 which Pinter had promptly signed but which John Mortimer refused to support. I became a regular attender of the group which was scorned by the media for its well-healed committment to socialism and the underdog. But it had a serious intent of providing a more self-confident hinterland for Kinnock to draw upon. He declined this, to the lasting weakness of Labour, in my view (but that’s another argument). There was a bite and irony in Pinter’s observations except when it came to politics. I recall sitting next to him when he assurred me with his characteristic intensity that Thatcher and her work was "fascist". I listened politely but couldn’t accept the description however odious her polices were. Later we invited him and Antonia over to our flat in Covent Garden. I mainly recall him sitting in the armchair and pronouncing, "this is a pad". It made me laugh then and still does.

This image of a threatening snowman is from a 1927 postcard. It was reproduced in a Smithsonian magazine feature about the history of the snowman in pop culture. found in Snowmen in popular culture