Friday, December 09, 2005

harold pinter bashes us in his nobel speech: guardian

dec 8th

pinter's acceptance speech is a rumination on the craft of the playwright, but also a polemic against the us. a rant in parts, but hard-hitting and sharp on occasion, especially the pablo neruda poetry. leftists have never progressed beyond the spanish civil war and guernica and all that: they refuse to see their own gulags and cambodian death-camps and maoist hell-holes.

this is on the one hand a typical example of a leftist european taunting the us -- so it can be laughed away as part of the terminally decadent old continent's last hurrah against the americans they love to hate. but on the other hand, it is a useful compendium of the us's sins that could come in handy in the odd argument should you feel inclined to do a spot of america-bashing yourself -- an age-old spectator sport in many parts of india, especially west bengal and delhi and kerala. or even if you feel like defending america, here, conveniently, is the list of things z magazine, and the nation and all those guys love to throw at the us.

i feel a certain even-handedness and objectivity in being able to appreciate pinter's points without necessarily agreeing with him. this, i think in an epiphany, is the way indians need to deal with the us in general -- coolly and objectively analyzing the good and the bad without getting emotionally involved in either hating them or loving them. this is hard for most of us excitable indians to do, but still...

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rajeev,
This in relation to an earlier post on rock art paintings in India. I saw men riding horses in one of the paintings in the bhimbetka caves which as mentioned go back to 10,000 years. As per AIT advocates horses were brought from central asia to India and were not an integral aprt of India. Also as per them this occured around 1500 B.C. In that case the cave paintins disprove AIT conclusively. Any comments on this anyone?

Anonymous said...

American hating liberals have a tendency to got absorbed in the most trivial issues. Nicaragua. Uggghhhh... Central and South America are lucky (sans Cuba) that having the big boss America to the north of them saved them from the plague of communism/socialism. To this day, most of these countries are vastly better off than India.

Anonymous said...

Rajeev,there seems to be something wrong with ur blog.Everytime I visit it,my browser shows me a message asking for an application to be launched.(i think it may be malicious)
I suspected something to be wrong with my browser however this does not happen with any other website xcept yours.Pls look into it.Ur blog may be hacked.

doubtinggaurav said...

Dark Sotrm,

ROTFL :-),
Well, as I said before Left is dumb but cunning.

They can not contribute anything positive, but are shrewd enough to fill academics and decision making with their acolytes.

And since you asked I am not a secularist - liberal.
I think the reason why you despise Urdu so much is because of Islamic connection,
As much as I loather Muslim fanaticism, I apply what Chanakya said "Wise people take pearls even from trash".

Second I think hatred and fear are best used as tool, I do not approve of being overcome by hatred, it will distort our perspective as it has done to Islam.
As Nietzche said "Do not look into abyss for so long that you become one"

Regards