“I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road… Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love… 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.”

— Harold Pinter, accepting his Nobel Prize for literature last week. The playwright, 75, in a wheelchair and ailing from cancer of the esophagus, delivered his acceptance speech by video, during which he lambasted American foreign policy.  

Mimi Hanaoka