Pinter
In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter made no reference to his opposition to intervention in genocides in Bosnia and Kosovo, nor his sympathy for Milosevic. Jerk!
posted by Nathanael @ 1:22 PM
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Landscape, Region
and History.
I also post at Cliopatria
... it represented an excellent example of the uses historians can make of blogs both to explore their ideas and to increase understanding of the past and of the discipline of history.
To read The Geographical Turn, start here.
Starting with this Blog
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2 Comments:
Is there a term for ascribing (false) positions to other people in order to demolish their arguements or to demonise them?
I don't understand how you say Pinter has "sympathy for Milosevic". I read the interview in the Guardian that you link to. It is summed up in the opening paragraph: Playwright Harold Pinter does not believe Slobodan Milosevic is innocent. But neither are Nato's leaders, he tells Matthew Tempest.
Aren't you guilty of shoddy arguement (or thinking) here?
An analogy would be someone who feels that Saddam has been strung up in something of a kangaroo court under the American installed regime in Iraq, and who favours that Saddam be sent to the Hague for a full and proper trial being called a "Saddam sympathiser".
There is something of a leap in logic there. A Saddam sympathiser could possibly hold the above view (or more likely just want him released without charge), but someone who holds no truck with Saddam could also feel that justice needs to be properly done in a properly constituted court.
Perhaps sympathizer is not the mot juste. Something other description may be better. Pinter has, nevertheless, shown himself to be a constant critic of intervention and the trials against trying Milosevic on the basis of, what appears to me, a generic critique of the extension of state power and imperialism. He is "sympathetic" not in the sense that they hold the same beliefs, but that Pinter supports Milosevic's arguments (as evidenced by his signature of ICDSM) on the infringement of his sovereignty, ignoring the necessity of immediate intervention on the basis of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The article, amongst the many I could have chosen, put Pinter in the best light.
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