The Nobel Prize and Anti-Americanism...

We've written on the Norwegians and their biases in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize...now, here's a look at the Swedes.

Who do you think chooses the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature? You might say: the Swedish Academy or, at least, a group of literary experts in Stockholm.

Well, although you are technically right, the truth is that the winner for the past two years has been chosen by the man whose trial opened in Baghdad last Wednesday. Surprised? Don't be. Saddam Hussein al-Takriti, the man who bullied and butchered the people of Iraq for three decades, is emerging as an undeclared hero of some self-styled liberals in the West who continue to oppose the liberation of Iraq because of their hatred of the United States.

Last year's winner, the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, was praised for her opposition to "illegal use of force in international affairs", a code word for the liberation of Iraq in 2004. A similar phrase is now used to justify the choice of this year's winner, the British playwright Harold Pinter.

Jelinek, a Stalinist on the payroll of the Austrian Communist Party for years, first distinguished herself by claiming that the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine had been the work of saboteurs sent by the US to undermine the Soviet Union. More recently she has added her voice to those who insist that it was "a crime" to drive the Taliban out of Kabul and dislodge Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

"I have no idea why they gave me the award," Pinter said with mock self-deprecation. But the literary Swedes knew why they had chosen him: his presence at virtually every demonstration opposed to the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Pinter had already won himself a special place in the history of "useful idiots" by describing the 9/11 attacks as "a justified retaliation" by Islamist militants. After the NATO intervention that stopped the Serbian genocide against Muslims in Kosovo, Pinter described US and Britain as Tony Bair as "terrorist powers" . He then proceeded to form a committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic, aka "the Butcher of Belgrade", now being tried at the International War Tribunal at The Hague for crimes against humanity.

People are, of course, free to think and do whatever they like as long as they respect the law in a democratic state. A writer's work should be judged independently of his other activities, including in the political field. Charles Baudelaire was at times on the borderline of criminality. Balzac was something of a rogue and Stendhal would fail the test of ethics in aspects of private life. In his politics, T.S Eliot was a reactionary while Ezra Pound was a member of the Italian Fascist Party. In the case of all those poets and writers, however, what mattered was the quality of their work.

The problem with the Nobel committee's recent choices, especially those of Jelinek and Pinter, is that their work is as mediocre as their political beliefs are weird.

Jelinek has tried every trick, including pornography, to make her work interesting, and failed. As for Pinter, he made his name by riding the wave of "the theatre of the absurd" when it was still fashionable four decades ago. Imitating Samuel Becket who had imitated the Dadaists, Pinter wrote a couple of plays distinguished by the use of banal prattle as pseudo- sophisticated dialogue. Since then he has been a fixture of the British art scene, directing pseudo-intellectual television plays, writing screenplays for forgettable arty-farty films, and, above all, taking part in "struggles for causes". In other words he has been a political activist on the fringes of champagne-and-caviar-socialism. But a writer of merit, he has not been.

Even as political activists Jelinek and Pinter are selective. For example, they supported Kurdish demands for freedom in Turkey but opposed the same when it came to Kurds in Iran and Iraq. The reason was simple: Turkey is an ally of the US in NATO and thus should be attacked on every opportunity. Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Iran under the mullahs, on the other hand, claimed to be enemies of the US and thus deserved to be treated with kid gloves. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, neither Jelinek nor Pinter protested. But when he was expelled from Kuwait both denounced" Imperialist intervention".