Don't forget Yugoslavia
John Pilger digs beneath the received wisdom for the break-up of Yugoslavia and points to a largely ignored memoir by the former chief prosecutor in The Hague - and an echo from current events in the Caucasus.
John Pilger digs beneath the received wisdom for the break-up of Yugoslavia and points to a largely ignored memoir by the former chief prosecutor in The Hague - and an echo from current events in the Caucasus.
In an article for the Guardian on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.
John Pilger describes the devaluing of civilian casualties in colonial wars, and the anointing of Barack Obama, as he tours the battlefields, sounding more and more like George W. Bush.
John Pilger describes the insidious militarisng of Britain as the effects of two colonial wars and the cover-up of atrocities come home.
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger describes presenting a top journalism award to a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, and how, on his return home to Gaza, he was seized by the Israelis, who demanded the prize money and tortured him.
John Pilger describes another Britain: "a vicious, sectarian and mostly unreported war" against Muslims. People snatched from the homes following 9/11 are consigned to a Kafkaesque oblivion, and worse.
John Pilger reaches back into the history of the Democratic Party and describes the tradition of war-making and expansionism that Barack Obama has now left little doubt he will honour.
Writing for the Guardian, John Pilger marks the Burmese junta's renewal of the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi with an examination of the intimidations of the 'war on terror' on those who help to free her and her people.
John Pilger refers back to his travels with Robert Kennedy to describe the false hopes offered by those, like Barack Obama, who exploit the appeal of liberalism then present a very different reality.
John Pilger describes how the New Labour government is destroying one of the the venerable features of "communal decency" in Britain - the local post office. Economies need to be made, though not in the pursuit of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
John Pilger argues that an unreported war is being waged by the United States, and Britain, to restore power to the privileged classes at the expense of the majority.
John Pilger describes how economic apartheid has become a model for much of the world and resistance to it has begun again in the country where apartheid was said to be in the past.
Almost fourteen years after South Africa's first democratic elections and the fall of racial apartheid, John Pilger describes, in an address at Rhodes University, the dream and reality of the new South Africa and the responsibility of its new elite.
John Pilger pays tribute to his friend, the great photo-journalist Philip Jones Griffiths, who has died. "No photographer," he writes, "produced such finely subversive work, knowing that truth in war is always subversive."
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger describes the extraordinary life of Moudud Ahmed, who in 1971 led him into liberated East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. Now a political prisoner of the military dictatorship in Dhaka, Moudud Ahmed is seriously ill in a country which, says his wife Hasna, "is itself a prison".
In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports from his homeland on Australia's hidden empire - a 'sphere of influence' that stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to East Timor and Afghanistan. The arrival of a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, offers important continuity.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger catches a ghostly tram to returns to where he grew up in Australia, the scene of his first encounter with the brutal, though enjoyable world of newspapers.
In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the Palestinian breakout of Gaza offers inspiration for people struggling to bring down the new Berlin Walls all over the world.
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger says the death of General Suharto, the former dictator of Indonesia, is an opportunity to review the role of this "model" for high crimes in the modern era - from Indonesia, to Chile, to Vietnam - and the powerful friends who ensured he would never suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein.
John Pilger looks back on the US presidential campaigns he has reported and draws parallels with the current 'ritual danse macabre' that covers for democracy and the veiled propaganda that accompanies it.
John Pilger describes how the invasion of Afghanistan, which was widely supported in the West as a 'good war' and justifiable response to 9/11, was actually planned months before 9/11 and is the latest instalment of 'a great game'.
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger writes that in Britain,
after more than a decade of the New Labour "project", once noble terms
such as democracy, reform, even freedom, have been emptied of their true
meaning and replaced by a murdochracy.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes
the origins and 'shared values' of the British-American Project for a
Successor Generation, founded in 1983 by Ronald Reagan with support from
Rupert Murdoch. Today's BAP meets every year alternately in the US and
Britain and includes scientists, economists, community leaders and
journalists, a number of them liberals or 'on the left'.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger pays tribute to the influence of an extraordinary British website Medialens.org whose creators David Edwards and David Cromwell have challenged the declared objectivity and other myths of the liberal media. On 2 December, they will receive the Gandhi International Peace Prize.
In the New Statesman, John Pilger looks back on Remembrance Day - Veterans Day in the US - and describes the presence of hypocrisy as the bowed heads of the establishment mourned none of the million dead of Iraq and the destruction of their society.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes
how the notorious US healthcare companies exposed by Michael Moore in
his film, Sicko, are now invading Britain and warms of the destruction
by stealth of the model for universal for health care, Britain's
acclaimed National Health Service.
Addressing a London meeting, 'Freedom Writ Large', organised by PEN and the Writers Network of Burma, John Pilger pays tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi and the writers of Burma, 'the bravest of the brave', and describes the hypocrisy of Western leaders who claim to back their struggle for freedom.
John Pilger marks the European release of Michael Moore's latest
film, Sicko, with an examination of why the documentary film-maker
exerts such influence, with fans and enemies alike. "In societies ruled
by an invisible government of media," he writes, "no one has broken
through like Moore, who breaks every rule by reporting from the ground
up, instead of from the top down."
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger recalls his last conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi, under premanent house arrest in Rangoon. Filmed secretly by Pilger and David Munro, the legitimate leader of the Burmese people provides a glimpse of her aloneness and courage.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes
the parallel worlds of the great 'unmentionable', class, in modern
Britain: in the streets and in the media.
In a column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes his first encounter with a Palestinian refugee camp and what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral issue of our age" - justice for the Palestinians. 'Something has changed', he writes, referring to the world view of sanctions and a boycott against Israel.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger looks
forward to the arrival of Bill Clinton in London where an "audience"
with him will cost up to £799 a head. In examining Clinton's liberal
credentials and comparing them to George W. Bush's record, Pilger
illuminates what Hillary Clinton might offer America and the world as
the first female president.
In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger applies to current events Orwell's description in '1984' of how the Ministry of Truth consigned embarrassing truth to a memory hole. He highlights the killing of a Palestinean cameraman by the Israelis as an example of how "we" are trained to look on the rest of the world as quite unlike ourselves: useful or expendable.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger breaks the taboo of the latest 'potential' bombs found in London. They are prime minister Gordon Brown's bomb, too, the 'inevitable consequence of the lawless invasion of Iraq' which Brown backed and whose death toll now equals that of the Rwanda genocide.
In a speech in Chicago, John Pilger describes how propaganda has
become such a potent force in our lives and, in the words of one of its
founders, represents 'an invisible government'.
Modern fictional cinema rarely seems to break political silences. The very fine Motorcycle Diaries was a generation too late. In this country, where Hollywood sets the liberal boundaries, the work of Ken Loach and a few others is an honourable exception. However, the cinema is changing as if by default. The documentary has returned to the big screen and is being embraced by the public.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger quotes from a letter received from a British army officer serving in Iraq and sent to the BBC. The officer calls the war unwinnable and wrong, and appeals to the media not to swallow "the office/White House line". For the first time, journalists are now being scrutinised by the soldiers whose war they report.
In an article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how Gaza in Palestine has come to symbolise the imposition of great power on the powerless, in the Middle East and all over the world, and how a vocabulary of double standard is employed to justify this epic tragedy.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger recalls the
night Robert Kennedy was shot in his presence and the myths that
followed his untimely death. Having elevated Kennedy to be one of his
heroes, Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown describes him as the
pinnacle of "morality" - when this myth really tells us about Brown
himself and his political twin, Tony Blair.
In a cover piece for the New Statesman, John Pilger evokes the
memory of Germans 'looking from the side' at Bergen-Belsen to describe
the challenge facing us in the West as the Bush/Blair 'long war' becomes
'perhaps the greatest crisis of modern times'.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger touches on the life behind his public face. "I am a swimmer," he writes. From his childhood on Australia's famous Bondi Beach to a career that has taken him to many places the opposite of benign, Pilger has swum through, as he puts it, "the difficulties".
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports on
new revelations that torturers in America's 'war on terror' were
directed personally by the US secretary of defence. He argues that the
historical antedote to such barbarity is the new exuberant democracy
movement in Latin America.
In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the remarkable servility of John Howard's government in Australia to the Bush administration - Howard is known as Bush's 'deputy sheriff' - and how this is eroding the country's freedoms.
In a column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes another 'day of mourning' for the first inhabitants of his homeland, Australia, which for many whites remains a secret country behind the neo-conservative bluster of John Howard's government.
In his latest piece for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes
American plans to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons. Although
the majority of Americans voted last November to end the war in Iraq,
the Bush cabal remains undeterred by inspid protests from Democrats and
is proceeding with another, even more dangerous adventure.
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger returns to his homeland, Australia, and described the social regression of a once proud liberal democracy and says that the flag-waving "values" of the neo-con prime minister may be coming unstuck in Guantanamo Bay.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the warnings of genocide in Gaza, and the suffering of 1.4 million Palestinians living a "life in a cage" as the world looks on. He quotes Israeli journalist Amira Hass on the experience of her mother in a Nazi concentration camp and the Germans who watched, "looking from the side".
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports an unprecedented study by three UK universities which found that, contrary to myth, 80 per cent of the media followed "the government line" on Iraq and only 12 per cent challenged it. He analyses the subtleties and insidious nature of censorship in free societies and asks why this is neglected by many media colleges.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger wonders why Saddam should be alone in the dock. Surely, those who aided and abetted his crimes, and were accomplices in other great crimes committed against the Iraqi people, should be prosecuted, too.
John Pilger describes how the distintegration of real and mythical
democracy in the United States influences British politics under Tony
Blair, such as the reduction of Parliament to a 'craven talking shop'
and the promotion of war and 'thoughtcrimes'.