Thanks, we needed that.

Harold Pinter was just awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which entitles him to give an address that will be picked up in major media outlets around the world. What he said in his address yesterday was something we especially need to hear here in the United States.

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

Pinter makes clear that it's not just Bush. This has been going on for years, and Bush is absolutely the political and moral heir of Ronald Reagan, the so-called "Great Communicator". It is no coincidence that their second terms are marked by similar scandals: lies about foreign policy, violations of international law, and contempt for the democratic processes in this, the homeland of self-rule.

Read all of Pinter's speech here:
Art, truth and politics