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.
Tony Blair's heroic peacemaking is not as it seems. Take the Middle East. When Blair welcomed Yasser Arafat to Downing Street following 11 September, it was widely reported that Britain was backing justice for the Palestinians.
There is no victory in Afghanistan's tribal war, only the exchange
of one group of killers for another. The difference is that President
Bush calls the latest occupiers of Kabul "our friends".
This week saw the end of an exhibition I
helped put on at the Barbican in London, devoted to photo-journalism
that makes sense of terrible events.
The prime minister's "we are at war" statements are irresponsible in
the extreme. It is said that some of his senior officials understand
this, as do many MPs: thus the messages of "restraint" now being
whispered to journalists.
In Indonesia 35 years ago, a military dictator took over, a million people were killed and a red carpet was rolled out for western capital. It was the start of globalisation in Asia, a model for the rest of the world, leaving a legacy of sweatshops and corruption.
There is a view fashionable in the media that the world is being taken over by huge multinational corporations, accountable to no one.
The young people who have had the courage to take to the streets on every continent, and were among the 20,000 protesters at Gothenburg, should take satisfaction from the panic of new right politicians like Blair and Berlusconi.
There has been a lot of political partying in Australia this year. First, there was the centenary of Federation, the coming together of the Australian states in 1901 as "a proud independent entity".
The other day, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism was awarded in honour of the great American reporter who lived in this country until she died three years ago. Gellhorn adhered to no consensus of the kind that shapes and distorts so much journalism. She regarded governments, indeed all authority, as her professional enemies, and their propaganda as "official drivel".
Britain and America's pilots are blowing the cover on our so-called 'humanitarian' no-fly zone.
On the eve of an election campaign, the Blair government is attempting,with mounting desperation, to suppress a scandal potentially greater than the arms-to-Iraq cover-up. This is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps many more, caused by decisions taken in Whitehall and Washington.
While his more senior colleagues in Whitehall and Washington understandably fall silent on the mounting deaths in Iraq, the Foreign Office minister Peter Hain has become a strangely aggressive voice in promoting the failed and lethal embargo.
The other day, an Indonesian friend took me to his primary school where,in October 1965, his teacher was beaten to death, suspected of being a communist.
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, recently described his government's actions over East Timor last year as "wholly honourable and decent".
In reporting Bill Clinton's visit to Vietnam, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent declared that what the Vietnamese needed was "more economic growth". The question begged: why send a reporter all the way to Hanoi when the British ambassador would have happily propagated this line?
Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Cornell, once wrote that western foreign policy was formulated "through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence".
Charlie Perkins was, in many ways, Australia's Mandela. Indeed, had the Australian racial composition, been reversed, as in South Africa, he would have surely fulfilled that role.
According to the folksy writer Matthew Engel, the glories of the Olympic Games have a cathartic effect on nations. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles 'helped the US regain the confidence it lost in Vietnam'.
"All governments are liars," wrote the great American muckraker I F Stone, "and nothing they say should be believed." He exaggerated, although not by much.
Last month Prime Minister Paul Keating launched a "trade and cultural promotion" with Indonesia. Surrounded by businessmen and representatives of the arts, Keating made an extraordinary speech that was praised in the Australian press for its "maturity".
A military junta and multinational corporations on one side, and Buddhist democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi on the other, are engaged in battle for Burma.
The great American reporter Seymour Hersh is at war with the American military over his j'accuse in the New Yorker that a much-lauded general, now a member of President Clinton's cabinet, ordered his troops to fire on retreating Iraqis on the eve of the Gulf war ceasefire in 1991.
This month, two extraordinary men came to London and spoke about a silent holocaust, and not a word of what they said was reported.
The Foreign Office continues to send out its standard dissembling letter on Iraq. Dozens of copies have been forwarded to me by members of the public bemused or angered by the contempt in which they are clearly held by the civil servants responsible.
The facts of Iraq's epic suffering are now unassailable. The latest report by Unicef says that half a million young children have died in eight years of economic sanctions. That represents almost 200 deaths every day.
The Foreign Office repeatedly hides the truth from the public: on Cambodia, on East Timor, on arms sales and now on sanctions.
Last August, the defence minister John Spellar described the no-fly zones over Iraq as "international zones, designed by the international community". This is false.
Half a million children have died in Iraq since UN sanctions were imposed - most enthusiastically by Britain and the US. Three UN officials have resigned in despair. Meanwhile, bombing of Iraq continues almost daily. John Pilger investigates for the Guardian.
It was the public, not politicians, who forced the Australian government to end the betrayal of East Timor.
The US is planning a massive intervention in Colombia under the pretext of fighting the 'narco-guerrilla'.
What is the "international community" really doing in East Timor? After their arrival almost two weeks ago, Australian troops have secured only the capital, Dili, and a few towns.
It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass. Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of dead, petrified trees that appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.
For the few of us who reported East Timor long before it was finally declared news, the "disclosures" last weekend that Washington had trained Indonesia's death squads are bizarre.
Following the "moral crusade" in the Balkans, there were calls for heretics to apologise. It was reminiscent of the hysteria surrounding the death of Diana Spencer and, like the froth on a cappuccino, blew away once reality was restored. The crusaders have now fallen silent, many realising they were gulled and lied to.
Last week, 14 members of the same Iraqi family were reportedly killed
when their house was hit by a missile. There were no military
installations nearby.
Australia is gearing up to host the 2000 Olympics, yet its own sporting history is far removed from the spirit of the Games. Some of its greatest sportspeople were denied the chance to make their mark. Why? Because of the colour of their skin. And even today, to be aborigine, is to be a second-class citizen.
Few care about their subjection to the Queen. But they're jumpy about the Asiatic hordes.
Whatever Nato says, the war was waged against innocent civilians and the tyrant is still in place.
