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Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

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Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

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It is this mentality that easily angers a person, and angers you more when you know it's successful in persuading the ignorant masses in North America and Europe, leading to more hate.

Pinter and others have charged the Bush and Blair administrations with war crimes

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... a distinguished group of anti-war campaigners, who are calling for an investigation by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, into breaches of international law.

Harold Pinter, the playwright, Tony Benn, the former Labour MP, Michael Mansfield QC and Professor Richard Dawkins were among the signatories to 28 charges against the Blair and Bush administrations, covering ministers, officials and generals who were a party to the decisions that led to war on Iraq and the chaos in its aftermath.

The charges were sent to Mr Annan and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, last night, with a demand that the investigation should go beyond the Prime Minister and the US President to all those involved in setting the policy decisions that led to abuses including the ill-treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib...

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The Guardian's theatre critic talks about the speech:

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...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 oesophagus, was earlier this year stricken by a condition in the mouth which affected his vocal chords. Then 10 days ago he was re-admitted to hospital with severe leg pains. But he briefly emerged on Sunday to record his Nobel speech, and the good news is that he should be back home early next week.

Although the speech obviously was a physical strain to deliver, it was impressively structured...

...One columnist predicted, before the event, that we were due for a Pinter rant. But this was not a rant in the sense of a bombastic declaration. This was a man delivering an attack on American foreign policy, and Britain's subscription to it, with a controlled anger and a deadly irony. And, paradoxically, it reminded us why Pinter is such a formidable dramatist. He used every weapon in his theatrical technique to reinforce his message. And, by the end, it was as if Pinter himself had been physically recharged by the moral duty to express his innermost feelings.

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[ 08 December 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]

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...And he confronted the crimes of the U.S. empire since World War II, noting that “the United States supported and in many cases engendered every rightwing military dictatorship in the world,” all the while “masquerading as a force for universal good.”

Like Noam Chomsky with style, he ran down the crimes of the United States in Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Chile...

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Two American Nobel Prize winners said Thursday they are worried about U.S. President George W. Bush's attitude toward science and accused his administration of ignoring important research findings.

"There is a measure of denial of scientific evidence going on within our administration, and there are many scientists who are not happy about that," said Roy Glauber, who shared this year's physics prize with fellow American John Hall and Germany's Theodor Haensch...

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The Last Anti-American

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And why are rants like Pinter's about to go out of style? Because
what fuels them is the sense of helplessness in the face of great power,
and America's power has gone into irreversible decline. It is only
dwindling relative to the rapidly growing economies of the rising new Asian
great powers, China and India, but economic power is the foundation for all
other forms of power, and "relative" is the only word that counts in such
calculations.

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