Thanks for posting this Freda. I don't know if you saw the film of Pinter delivering this address, but he did so from a wheelchair in the UK, being too ill for the journey to collect his prize in person. I found it heartening that even while engaged in the biggest fight of his life, which alas he looks like losing, he could mount such a searing denunciation of American foreign policy since WW2.

Here are a couple of extracts, for those who might not have time to read the whole lecture. I would be interested if anyone could say whether the statistics at the end are more or less correct.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. 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.... The Greatest Show on Earth.

[.....]

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course.

[....]

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning [....] Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me?