Only Australia remains true to the uber-sheriff in Washington
Ten years ago, I filmed secretly in East Timor, a small country in south-east Asia whose brutal occupation was largely unknown to the outside world.
Ten years ago, I filmed secretly in East Timor, a small country in south-east Asia whose brutal occupation was largely unknown to the outside world.
No front pages in the west mourn victims of the enduring bloodbath in occupied Palestine, the equivalent of the Madrid horror week after week, month after month.
In an article for the Melbourne Age, John Pilger says that with the
the establishment of an International Criminal Court, the promise of
universal justice is no longer far-fetched.
Epidemics of disease ravage Aboriginal communities in Australia as they did the slums of 19th-century England. No wonder there are riots in Sydney.
The war correspondent James Cameron was smeared as a "dupe of communism". "When they call you a dupe," he told me, "they're really complaining that you are not their dupe".
Writing in the Daily Mirror, John Pilger asks whether the latest inquiry called by Tony Blair - into the "failure of intelligence" - will turn out, like the Hutton inquiry, as a whitewash.
Writing in the Guardian, John Pilger reviews what he describes as a
'spell-binding' new documentary, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine,
directed by the Cambodian film-maker, Rithy Panh.
John Pilger delivers the Summer School Lecture at the University of Western Australia in Perth on power, propaganda and conscience in the 'war on terror', with special reference to the part played by Australian government, media and scholarship.
Forget Hutton. He will not reveal what the US and UK authorities really don't want you to know: that radiation illnesses caused by uranium weapons are now common in Iraq.
When Greg Dyke attacked American television's cheerleading coverage of Iraq, how did he manage to keep a straight face? The BBC gave even less voice to opposition views.
Blair and Straw dare to suggest that the millions who have rumbled the Bush gang are simply being "fashionably anti-American" - another desperate act by desperate men.
For the great writers of the 20th century, art could not be separated from politics. Today, there is a disturbing silence on the dark matters that should command our attention.
Writing in the Daily Mirror, John Pilger reveals that both US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush's closest adviser Condaleeza Rice said, in 2001, that Saddam Hussein was effectively disarmed and no threat - putting the lie to their own propaganda.
In a major article in The Guardian magazine, John Pilger describes
Afghanistan since its liberation from the Taliban, which he filmed for
his latest documentary, 'Breaking the Silence'. Apart from notional
freedoms, little has changed.
While we are allowed to read internal e-mails in Whitehall, we can't see the traffic between Blair and Bush that would reveal the biggest lie of all.
Writing in the Independent on Sunday, John Pilger says that, while the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly has revealed more evidence of the deception behind the attack on Iraq, a full public inquiry into why Britain went to war is now needed.
Writing in the Daily Mirror, John Pilger identifies the root cause of the bloody bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad, which Washington and London have blamed this on 'extremists from outside'.
The White House sets the tone and the media echo a line that celebrates the victimhood of the invader and the evil of the Iraqis. And then London takes its cue.
Once more, we hear that America is being "sucked into a quagmire". The rapacious adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly wrong.
In his latest article for the Daily Mirror, John Pilger argues that the "high crime" of the invasion of Iraq that "will not melt away" and says the catalogue of Tony Blair's deceptions are now being revealed by the day, unravelling any credibility left.
The official version is that Britain's foreign policy is basically benevolent: that it promotes democracy, peace and human rights. The truth is that Britain supports terrorism.
Something deeply corrupt is consuming journalism. A war so one-sided it was hardly a war was reported like a Formula One race, as the teams sped to the chequered flag in Baghdad.
The unthinkable is becoming normal. The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war and we should not forget its true horror.
They have blown off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Their victims overwhelm the morgues and flood into hospitals that lack even aspirin.
A man cuddles the body of his infant daughter; her blood drenches them. A woman in black pursues a tank, her arms outstretched; all seven in her family are dead. An American Marine murders a woman because she happens to be standing next to a man in a uniform. "I'm sorry,'' he says, "but the chick got in the way.''
"We had a great day," said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines last Saturday. "We killed a lot of people."
Today is a day of shame for the British military as it declares the
Iraqi city of Basra, with a stricken population of 600,000, a "military
target".
When Bush and Blair begin their illegal and immoral attack on a country that offers us no threat, we all have a choice.
Civil disobedience is the sole path left for those who cannot support the Bush-Blair pact of aggression. Only then will politicians on both sides of the Atlantic be forced to recognise the folly of their ways.
The Blair Government has known, almost from the day it came to
office in 1997, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were almost
certainly destroyed following the Gulf War.
When Saddam hanged a British journalist in 1990, MI5 had the journalist smeared in the Sun, and the Mail agreed he was a spy. What did Blair say? John Pilger can find nothing.
"A painful decision," say the supporters of an invasion. But it is not they who will feel the pain: it will be the Iraqi infants writhing in the dust when the cluster bombs fall.
It is not possible to overstate the significance and urgency of the
march and demonstration against an unprovoked British and American
attack on Iraq, a nation with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us
no threat.
In its leaders supporting the war in Iraq, the Observer proves that it has truly buried its great liberal editor David Astor, and his principled, "freethinking" legacy.
William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of
imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands"
to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the
mass killing of ordinary people.
John Howard, Australia's PM, is the mouse that roars for America, whipping his country into war fever and paranoia about terrorism within.
The American and British attack on Iraq has already begun. While the Blair government continues to claim in Parliament that "no final decision has been taken", Royal Air Force and US fighter bombers have secretly changed tactics and escalated their "patrols" over Iraq to an all-out assault on both military and civilian targets.
On November 7, the day before the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution that made an American and British attack on Iraq more than likely, Downing Street began issuing warnings of imminent terrorist threats against the United Kingdom.
The Palestinians are no longer alone; Israel, despite the craven intimidation of some of its supporters, has ceased to be immune from truthful media criticism.
In the week that Parliament was manipulated by the Government and denied a proper vote on whether Britain should join the Bush gang in its assault on Iraq, many thousands of people will converge on London in what is expected to be the greatest demonstration against war for a generation.
Last October, in the early hours of the morning, a young expectant mother called Fatima Abed-Rabo awoke with intense labour pains; and she and her husband Nasser set out in a friend's car for the hospital in Bethlehem, in Israeli occupied Palestine.
The Blair government was told in January by the Americans that there was no justification for attacking Iraq in the "war on terrorism" and that their main aim was getting rid of Saddam Hussein who stood in the way of the West's control of Middle Eastern oil wealth.
As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John Pilger argues that
'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ...
America itself.
If you got your news only from the television, you would have no idea of the roots of the Middle East conflict, or that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation.
Ethnic cleansing attended the birth of Israel but, more than 50 years later, the country is still in denial about its bloody past. Those who speak out risk their jobs.
Last month, I wrote about Venezuela, pointing out that little had
been reported in this country about the achievements of Hugo Chavez and
the threat to his reforming government from the usual alliance of a
corrupt local elite and the United States.
George W Bush yesterday called on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian cities occupied by its forces during the last week.He excused Israel's violence, but lectured the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East on the need for restraint and a lasting peace. "The storms of violence cannot go on," said Bush. "Enough is enough."
A compliant press is preparing the ground for an all-out attack on Iraq. It never mentions the victims: the young, the old and the vulnerable.
Few asylum-seekers actually reach Australia's shores, and if they do, their treatment beggars belief.