The World Has Lost John Pilger

[MisterBeale]

One of the world's last Muckraking, independent, anti-authoritarian investigative journalists, and probably Julian Assange's greatest advocate has passed.

Whether you were on the left, or the right, a valuable source of information, that opposed the establishment, is now silent.

"John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.. . ."

The world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84

Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.

theconversation.com

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger​

January 1, 2024
From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard and Roger Waters.

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger

From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard, Roger Waters and more. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media is so far silent on Pilger's passing. The New York Times on Monday ran an obit

consortiumnews.com

 

[Godboy]

One of the world's last Muckraking, independent, anti-authoritarian investigative journalists, and probably Julian Assange's greatest advocate has passed.

Whether you were on the left, or the right, a valuable source of information, that opposed the establishment, is now silent.

"John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.. . ."

The world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84

Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.

theconversation.com

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger​

January 1, 2024
From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard and Roger Waters.

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger

From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard, Roger Waters and more. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media is so far silent on Pilger's passing. The New York Times on Monday ran an obit

consortiumnews.com

This just brightened my morning. Thanks for this WONDERFUL news!!! The fact that he lived this long tells you that karma isnt actually real.

Why anyone would celebrate this America hating fool is beyond my understanding. That dude was a fucking loser.

 

[rampart]

One of the world's last Muckraking, independent, anti-authoritarian investigative journalists, and probably Julian Assange's greatest advocate has passed.

Whether you were on the left, or the right, a valuable source of information, that opposed the establishment, is now silent.

"John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.. . ."

The world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84

Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.

theconversation.com

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger​

January 1, 2024
From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard and Roger Waters.

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger

From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard, Roger Waters and more. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media is so far silent on Pilger's passing. The New York Times on Monday ran an obit

consortiumnews.com

i don;t know abiut pilfer but assange can use all the help he can get.

can anyone describe in a line or 2 exactly what assange did wrong?
where is he now.

 

[Oddball]

F

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Hilarious... anyone who thinks this guy was an accurate journalist has to be deep in left field.
He has a looong history of twisting facts, lying by omission - any way he can to turn every human tragic story into "it's America's fault... and Britain too".

 

[sparky]

can anyone describe in a line or 2 exactly what assange did wrong?
where is he now.

He exposed America's empirical side.....~S~

 

[MisterBeale]

i don;t know abiut pilfer but assange can use all the help he can get.

can anyone describe in a line or 2 exactly what assange did wrong?
where is he now.

This is just the point, he didn't do anything wrong. He took documentation, that was electronic, a leak, and published it. In the old days, journalists could take government leaks, and publish them, w/o fear of prosecution.


Robert Earle Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018)[1] was an American investigative journalist. He was known for his role in covering the Iran–Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.

Robert Parry (journalist) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nailing the Assange Story Since 2010

The essential issues at the core of the Julian Assange case were laid out in exact detail by CN's late founder Robert Parry as early as December 2010. As a premier investigative reporter of his generation (having uncovered major stories on the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press), Bo

consortiumnews.com

<snip>

 

[Oddball]

Hilarious... anyone who thinks this guy was an accurate journalist has to be deep in left field.
He has a looong history of twisting facts, lying by omission - any way he can to turn every human tragic story into "it's America's fault... and Britain too".

Never saw him on XiNN, MSLSD, or Fakes Nooz.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

He exposed America's empirical side.....~S~

No
He took that dead horse and beat it and beat it and beat it and beat it and beat it and...

 

[rampart]

He exposed America's empirical side.....~S~

that is what i figure as well.

 

[Auld Phart]

One of the world's last Muckraking, independent, anti-authoritarian investigative journalists, and probably Julian Assange's greatest advocate has passed.

Whether you were on the left, or the right, a valuable source of information, that opposed the establishment, is now silent.

"John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.. . ."

The world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84

Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.

theconversation.com

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger​

January 1, 2024
From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard and Roger Waters.

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger

From Jeremy Corbyn, WikiLeaks, Afshin Rattansi, Max Blumenthal, Jonathan Cook, Scott Ritter, Vijay Prashad, Glenn Greenwald, Tariq Ali, Matt Kennard, Roger Waters and more. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media is so far silent on Pilger's passing. The New York Times on Monday ran an obit

consortiumnews.com

Will anyone but you notice?

 

[rampart]

This is just the point, he didn't do anything wrong. He took documentation, that was electronic, a leak, and published it. In the old days, journalists could take government leaks, and publish them, w/o fear of prosecution.


Robert Earle Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018)[1] was an American investigative journalist. He was known for his role in covering the Iran–Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.

Robert Parry (journalist) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nailing the Assange Story Since 2010

The essential issues at the core of the Julian Assange case were laid out in exact detail by CN's late founder Robert Parry as early as December 2010. As a premier investigative reporter of his generation (having uncovered major stories on the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press), Bo

consortiumnews.com

View attachment 881806

<snip>

View attachment 881809

that cocaine/contra was a big story that disappeared in the "mercury."

cia used to have , on their .gov site, an inspector general's report with a few of the details. mostly blaming rogue contras but who knows.

 

[sparky]

No
He took that dead horse and beat it and beat it and beat it and beat it and beat it and...

that is what i figure as well.

And was painted anti-American much like John Pilger via a government that purposely lacks clarity and transparency , lest it's true motives ferment publicly

~S~

 

[MisterBeale]

Will anyone but you notice?

Unfortunately, folks on this site tend to stick to their preferred media ecosystems for information. And yes, this does create echo-chambers and cognitive biases which prevent us all, from working on real solutions.

Isn't it important to seek all sources of possible information, and separate a source of the journalists information's politics, from their work? I believe this can be done, if they are not on the payroll of big corporations. I admit, I could be wrong on this. . . .

Take these two following videos.

One is Jimmy Dore having a conversation with James O'Keefe. I know that Jimmy tends to be a Social Democrat, VERY LIBERAL, and James, OTH, tends to be VERY conservative, on the libertarian side.

And the other, is Glen Beck, sitting down with Whitney Webb. Beck, again, is a conservative, where Webb tends to be on the liberal side.

. .. but this isn't about "politics," so much as it is about the journalism, and the freedom of information. It is about the folks trying to find out facts. What is the reality and the truth of what we are enduring?

As soon as I posted this thread, people wanted to make it about Pilger's politics. Yes, we all know Pilger is a socialist. Big whoop. I'll be the first to admit, it does color his world view a bit. But, OTH, it does prevent him from being a "useful idiot," or a house slave, which corporate toadies, of the establishment press, on both sides, tend to parrot for both government and corporations. Is that in any every-man's interest?

It really doesn't, IMO, detract from him reporting on verifiable crimes of the global elites, both of global corporations and the global ruling class. What you choose to do with, or how you think about that information? Is still, up to you, as in these conversations.

Sometimes? It is best to get out of one's comfort zone. . . to Stay Informed, IMHO.

Raided By The FBI! – James O’Keefe Speaks Out!​

How Elites Will Create a New Class of Slaves | Whitney Webb | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 162​

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Color his world view "a bit"??
It colored his world view a LOT.
While it is true, the man talked about things that the main stream "infotainment" channels ignore completely, and certainly don't want to talk about, he went too far in framing and blaming America as the context.
I have no doubt he talked about, and exposed things that otherwise would not have been talked about - and for that - he deserves recognition. But his deep anti-western politics tainted 80% of what he talked about.

 

[luiza]

This just brightened my morning. Thanks for this WONDERFUL news!!! The fact that he lived this long tells you that karma isnt actually real.

Why anyone would celebrate this America hating fool is beyond my understanding. That dude was a fucking loser.

Something seriously wrong with your mental balance .

Trust it is not the Scum or Filth virus .

But have you actually got a decent sentence in English which hints at the cause of your illness?

Are you the same silly boy whom kept interrupting Israel - Freedom Fighter threads with odd noises ?
There are other Forums in which you might fit better .
Nudge . Wink .

 

[MisterBeale]

But his deep anti-western politics tainted 80% of what he talked about.

What you label, "anti-western," some would simply see as. . . well, anti-imperialist, or, anti-corportist. I often disagree with Mr. Pilger, as I pointed out, he is a socialist, and one who would use the STATE, to impose solutions on others by force.

And yet? We in America, have had no meaningful enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act since the break-up of Ma-Bell.
And the oligarchs only did that, because new technologies promised new opportunities for profit & investment, they didn't do that out of any sense of justice or well being of the public good, as that act was intended.

Without oversight of those who use the commons? IMO? There will be abuses of the public trust.

Corporatism, is what the global ruling elites now use, to strip away everyone's civil rights and civil liberties, regardless of their political PoV. Luminaries such as George Orwell, (a socialist,) and Aldous Huxley foresaw a time when this would occur. Most Constitutions have no guarantees of people's civil rights and liberties against the abuses of corporatism.

I disagreed with his PoV on the Covid narrative.

OTH? He was spot on about the election of Trump, what caused it, (Obama was a fake,) the war with Russia, and the continued oppression of the Palestinians leading to trouble.

JohnPilger.com - the films and journalism of John Pilger

JohnPilger.com - the films and journalism of John Pilger

johnpilger.com

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.​

17 January 2017​

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.

johnpilger.com

". . . Take the catastrophe in Libya. In 2011, Obama said Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the known lie of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. It became the media story; and Nato - led by Obama and Hillary Clinton - launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

Under Obama, the US has extended secret "special forces" operations to 138 countries, or 70 per cent of the world's population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa. Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Africom's "soldier to soldier" doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.

It is as if Africa's proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master's black colonial elite whose "historic mission", warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the promotion of "a capitalism rampant though camouflaged".

It was Obama who, in 2011, announced what became known as the "pivot to Asia", in which almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to "confront China", in the words of his Defence Secretary. There was no threat from China; the entire enterprise was unnecessary. It was an extreme provocation to keep the Pentagon and its demented brass happy.

In 2014, Obama's administration oversaw and paid for a fascist-led coup in Ukraine against the democratically-elected government, threatening Russia in the western borderland through which Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, with a loss of 27 million lives. It was Obama who placed missiles in Eastern Europe aimed at Russia, and it was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who increased spending on nuclear warheads to a level higher than that of any administration since the cold war - having promised, in an emotional speech in Prague, to "help rid the world of nuclear weapons".

Obama, the constitutional lawyer, prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in history, even though the US constitution protects them. He declared Chelsea Manning guilty before the end of a trial that was a travesty. Although Manning is to be released in May, Obama has refused to quash the outrageous sentence under which he suffered seven years of inhumane treatment, which the UN said amounted to torture. He has pursued an entirely bogus case against Julian Assange. He promised to close the Guantanamo concentration camp and didn't.

Following the public relations disaster of George W. Bush, Obama, the smooth operator from Chicago via Harvard, was enlisted to restore what he calls "leadership" throughout the world. The Nobel Prize committee's decision was part of this: the kind of cloying reverse racism that beatified the man for no reason other than he was attractive to liberal sensibilities and, of course, American power, if not to the children he kills in impoverished, mostly Muslim countries.

This is the Call of Obama. It is not unlike a dog whistle: inaudible to most, irresistible to the besotted and boneheaded, especially "liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics," as Luciana Bohne put it. "When Obama walks into a room," gushed George Clooney, "you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere."

William I. Robinson, professor at the University of California, and one of an uncontaminated group of American strategic thinkers who have retained their independence during the years of intellectual dog-whistling since 9/11, wrote this last week:

"President Barack Obama... may have done more than anyone to assure [Donald] Trump's victory. While Trump's election has triggered a rapid expansion of fascist currents in US civil society, a fascist outcome for the political system is far from inevitable.... But that fight back requires clarity as to how we got to such a dangerous precipice. The seeds of 21st century fascism were planted, fertilized and watered by the Obama administration and the politically bankrupt liberal elite."

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA​

17 February 2022​

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

johnpilger.com

". . . Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America's leading authority on Russia, wrote, "The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during world war two. [Today] storm-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other 'impure' citizens are widespread throughout Kyiv-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s...

"The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kyiv has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorialising Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms, renaming streets in their honour, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more."

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard's Declassified report in Consortium 15 February). The return of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, "never happened ... even while it was happening".

On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for "combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism". The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine's "borderland" that Hitler's divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine's Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.

Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia's respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

• NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
• NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
• Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
• the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
• the landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The "massing" army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.

In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line, amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being "dictated to" by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army. . . "

Palestine is still the issue​

10 July 2017​

Palestine is still the issue

Palestine is still the issue

johnpilger.com

". . . Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose home stood in a village near Jerusalem designated "Zone A and B", meaning that the land was declared for Jews only. Their parents had lived there; their grandparents had lived there. Today, the bulldozers are laying roads for Jews only, protected by laws for Jews only.

It was past midnight when Fatima went into labour with their second child. The baby was premature; and when they arrived at a checkpoint with the hospital in view, the young Israeli soldier said they needed another document.

Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier laughed and imitated her moans and told them, "Go home". The baby was born there in a truck. It was blue with cold and soon, without care, died from exposure. The baby's name was Sultan.

For Palestinians, these will be familiar stories. The question is: why are they not familiar in London and Washington, Brussels and Sydney?

In Syria, a recent liberal cause - a George Clooney cause - is bankrolled handsomely in Britain and the United States, even though the beneficiaries, the so-called rebels, are dominated by jihadist fanatics, the product of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction of modern Libya.

And yet, the longest occupation and resistance in modern times is not recognised. When the United Nations suddenly stirs and defines Israel as an apartheid state, as it did this year, there is outrage - not against a state whose "core purpose" is racism but against a UN commission that dared break the silence.



"Palestine," said Nelson Mandela, "is the greatest moral issue of our time."

Why is this truth suppressed, day after day, month after month, year after year?


In Israel - the apartheid state, guilty of a crime against humanity and of more international law-breaking than any other - the silence persists among those who know and whose job it is to keep the record straight.

In Israel, so much journalism is intimidated and controlled by a groupthink that demands silence on Palestine while honourable journalism has become dissidence: a metaphoric underground.

A single word - "conflict" - enables this silence. "The Arab-Israeli conflict", intone the robots at their tele-prompters. When a veteran BBC reporter, a man who knows the truth, refers to "two narratives", the moral contortion is complete.


There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear-armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice.

The word "occupation" may be banned, deleted from the dictionary. But the memory of historical truth cannot be banned: of the systemic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. "Plan D" the Israelis called it in 1948.

The Israeli historian Benny Morris describes how David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by one of his generals: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" The prime minister, wrote Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand". "Expel them!" he said.

Seventy years later, this crime is suppressed in the intellectual and political culture of the West. Or it is debatable, or merely controversial. Highly-paid journalists and eagerly accept Israeli government trips, hospitality and flattery, then are truculent in their protestations of independence. The term, "useful idiots", was coined for them.

In 2011, I was struck by the ease with which one of Britain's most acclaimed novelists, Ian McEwan, a man bathed in the glow of bourgeois enlightenment, accepted the Jerusalem Prize for literature in the apartheid state. . . . "

 

[BackAgain]

And was painted anti-American much like John Pilger via a government that purposely lacks clarity and transparency , lest it's true motives ferment publicly

~S~

Is that like foment?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

What you label, "anti-western," some would simply see as. . . well, anti-imperialist, or, anti-corportist. I often disagree with Mr. Pilger, as I pointed out, he is a socialist, and one who would use the STATE, to impose solutions on others by force.

And yet? We in America, have had no meaningful enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act since the break-up of Ma-Bell.
And the oligarchs only did that, because new technologies promised new opportunities for profit & investment, they didn't do that out of any sense of justice or well being of the public good, as that act was intended.

Without oversight of those who use the commons? IMO? There will be abuses of the public trust.

Corporatism, is what the global ruling elites now use, to strip away everyone's civil rights and civil liberties, regardless of their political PoV. Luminaries such as George Orwell, (a socialist,) and Aldous Huxley foresaw a time when this would occur. Most Constitutions have no guarantees of people civil rights and liberties against the abuses of corporatism.

I disagreed with his PoV on the Covid narrative.

OTH? He was spot on about the election of Trump, what caused it, (Obama was a fake,) the war with Russia, and the continued oppression of the Palestinians leading to trouble.

JohnPilger.com - the films and journalism of John Pilger

JohnPilger.com - the films and journalism of John Pilger

johnpilger.com

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.​

17 January 2017​

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.

THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES.

johnpilger.com

". . . Take the catastrophe in Libya. In 2011, Obama said Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the known lie of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. It became the media story; and Nato - led by Obama and Hillary Clinton - launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

Under Obama, the US has extended secret "special forces" operations to 138 countries, or 70 per cent of the world's population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa. Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Africom's "soldier to soldier" doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.

It is as if Africa's proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master's black colonial elite whose "historic mission", warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the promotion of "a capitalism rampant though camouflaged".

It was Obama who, in 2011, announced what became known as the "pivot to Asia", in which almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to "confront China", in the words of his Defence Secretary. There was no threat from China; the entire enterprise was unnecessary. It was an extreme provocation to keep the Pentagon and its demented brass happy.

In 2014, Obama's administration oversaw and paid for a fascist-led coup in Ukraine against the democratically-elected government, threatening Russia in the western borderland through which Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, with a loss of 27 million lives. It was Obama who placed missiles in Eastern Europe aimed at Russia, and it was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who increased spending on nuclear warheads to a level higher than that of any administration since the cold war - having promised, in an emotional speech in Prague, to "help rid the world of nuclear weapons".

Obama, the constitutional lawyer, prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in history, even though the US constitution protects them. He declared Chelsea Manning guilty before the end of a trial that was a travesty. Although Manning is to be released in May, Obama has refused to quash the outrageous sentence under which he suffered seven years of inhumane treatment, which the UN said amounted to torture. He has pursued an entirely bogus case against Julian Assange. He promised to close the Guantanamo concentration camp and didn't.

Following the public relations disaster of George W. Bush, Obama, the smooth operator from Chicago via Harvard, was enlisted to restore what he calls "leadership" throughout the world. The Nobel Prize committee's decision was part of this: the kind of cloying reverse racism that beatified the man for no reason other than he was attractive to liberal sensibilities and, of course, American power, if not to the children he kills in impoverished, mostly Muslim countries.

This is the Call of Obama. It is not unlike a dog whistle: inaudible to most, irresistible to the besotted and boneheaded, especially "liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics," as Luciana Bohne put it. "When Obama walks into a room," gushed George Clooney, "you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere."

William I. Robinson, professor at the University of California, and one of an uncontaminated group of American strategic thinkers who have retained their independence during the years of intellectual dog-whistling since 9/11, wrote this last week:

"President Barack Obama... may have done more than anyone to assure [Donald] Trump's victory. While Trump's election has triggered a rapid expansion of fascist currents in US civil society, a fascist outcome for the political system is far from inevitable.... But that fight back requires clarity as to how we got to such a dangerous precipice. The seeds of 21st century fascism were planted, fertilized and watered by the Obama administration and the politically bankrupt liberal elite."

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA​

17 February 2022​

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

johnpilger.com

". . . Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America's leading authority on Russia, wrote, "The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during world war two. [Today] storm-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other 'impure' citizens are widespread throughout Kyiv-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s...

"The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kyiv has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorialising Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms, renaming streets in their honour, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more."

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard's Declassified report in Consortium 15 February). The return of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, "never happened ... even while it was happening".

On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for "combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism". The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine's "borderland" that Hitler's divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine's Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.

Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia's respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

• NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
• NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
• Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
• the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
• the landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The "massing" army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.

In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line, amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being "dictated to" by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army. . . "

Palestine is still the issue​

10 July 2017​

Palestine is still the issue

Palestine is still the issue

johnpilger.com

". . . Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose home stood in a village near Jerusalem designated "Zone A and B", meaning that the land was declared for Jews only. Their parents had lived there; their grandparents had lived there. Today, the bulldozers are laying roads for Jews only, protected by laws for Jews only.

It was past midnight when Fatima went into labour with their second child. The baby was premature; and when they arrived at a checkpoint with the hospital in view, the young Israeli soldier said they needed another document.

Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier laughed and imitated her moans and told them, "Go home". The baby was born there in a truck. It was blue with cold and soon, without care, died from exposure. The baby's name was Sultan.

For Palestinians, these will be familiar stories. The question is: why are they not familiar in London and Washington, Brussels and Sydney?

In Syria, a recent liberal cause - a George Clooney cause - is bankrolled handsomely in Britain and the United States, even though the beneficiaries, the so-called rebels, are dominated by jihadist fanatics, the product of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction of modern Libya.

And yet, the longest occupation and resistance in modern times is not recognised. When the United Nations suddenly stirs and defines Israel as an apartheid state, as it did this year, there is outrage - not against a state whose "core purpose" is racism but against a UN commission that dared break the silence.



"Palestine," said Nelson Mandela, "is the greatest moral issue of our time."

Why is this truth suppressed, day after day, month after month, year after year?


In Israel - the apartheid state, guilty of a crime against humanity and of more international law-breaking than any other - the silence persists among those who know and whose job it is to keep the record straight.

In Israel, so much journalism is intimidated and controlled by a groupthink that demands silence on Palestine while honourable journalism has become dissidence: a metaphoric underground.

A single word - "conflict" - enables this silence. "The Arab-Israeli conflict", intone the robots at their tele-prompters. When a veteran BBC reporter, a man who knows the truth, refers to "two narratives", the moral contortion is complete.


There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear-armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice.

The word "occupation" may be banned, deleted from the dictionary. But the memory of historical truth cannot be banned: of the systemic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. "Plan D" the Israelis called it in 1948.

The Israeli historian Benny Morris describes how David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by one of his generals: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" The prime minister, wrote Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand". "Expel them!" he said.

Seventy years later, this crime is suppressed in the intellectual and political culture of the West. Or it is debatable, or merely controversial. Highly-paid journalists and eagerly accept Israeli government trips, hospitality and flattery, then are truculent in their protestations of independence. The term, "useful idiots", was coined for them.

In 2011, I was struck by the ease with which one of Britain's most acclaimed novelists, Ian McEwan, a man bathed in the glow of bourgeois enlightenment, accepted the Jerusalem Prize for literature in the apartheid state. . . . "

I talk about the atrocities of modern corporatism/globalism/elitism/ all the time.
It is the enemy of the average American.
But that is another topic.
And as for American controls??? Shit... how do you think it would go if it was Russia in control? China? Japan?
America is not perfect, especially now. But America's global power grabbing is gravy compared to what the world would be without us.

 

[sparky]

Is that like foment?

lol! , quite the Freudian slip while i'm having a toddy BA! ~S~