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John Pilger grew up in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, author and documentary film-maker. He is one of only two to win British journalism's highest award twice, for his work all over the world. On 1 November, he was awarded Britain's highest honor for documentary film-making by the Grierson Trustees, in memory of the documentary pioneer John Grierson.
He has been International reporter of the Year and a recipient of the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal. In 2003, he received the prestigious Sophie Prize for "thirty years of exposing deception and improving human rights." In 2009, he was awarded Australia's international human rights award, the Sydney Peace Prize, "for his courage as a film-maker and journalist in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard "."
For his documentary films, he has won an American television academy award, an Emmy, and the Richard Dimbleby Award for a lifetime's work in factual broadcasting, awarded by BAFTA. His first film, The Quiet Mutiny, made in 1970 for Granada's World in Action, revealed the rebellion within the US Army in Vietnam that led to the American withdrawal. His 1979 documentary, the epic Cambodia Year Zero is credited with alerting the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime. Year Zero is ranked by the BFI as among the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century. His Death of a Nation, about East Timor, had a similar impact in 1994. He has made 58 documentary films.
He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Heroes and A Secret Country, The New Rulers of the World and Hidden Agendas. He is the editor of an anthology, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs. His latest book is Freedom Next Time.
"John Pilger unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth and tells it as it is" -- Harold Pinter.
"John Pilger's work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration." -- Noam Chomsky[
(20 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 26, 2012 You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going To Do About It?
The malignancy that Norman Mailer called "pre-fascist" has metastasized. The US attorney-general, Eric Holder, defends the "right" of his government to assassinate American citizens. Israel, the protege, is allowed to aim its nukes at nukeless Iran. In this looking glass world, the lying is panoramic.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 13, 2013 The New Propaganda Is Liberal -- The New Slavery Is Digital
Today's "message" of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behavior, this is extremism. Whereas a generation ago, dissent and biting satire were allowed in the "mainstream," today their counterfeits are acceptable and a fake moral zeitgeist rules.
(50 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 26, 2015 Why the rise of fascism is again the issue
We must identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilization to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 1, 2012 The Assange Case Means That We Are All Suspects Now
The connections between Manning and Assange have been concocted by a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, which allowed no defence counsel or witnesses, and by a system of plea-bargaining that ensures a 90 percent conviction. It is reminiscent of a Soviet show trial.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 10, 2013 From Hiroshima to Syria, the enemy whose name we dare not speak
Russia's peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with the contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy. With Al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran.
(41 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 20, 2017 Getting Assange: The Untold Story
For almost seven years, this epic miscarriage of justice has been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. There are few precedents. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 10, 2012 The Dirty War on WikiLeaks is Now Trial by Media in Sweden
Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world's most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extradition be allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 21, 2014 Another stolen generation: how Australia still wrecks Aboriginal families
It is happening across Australia in a scandalous and largely unrecognized abuse of human rights that evokes the infamous stolen generation of the last century. Up to the 1970s, thousands of mixed-race children were stolen from their mothers by welfare officials. The children were given to institutions as cheap or slave labor; many were abused.
(17 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 22, 2014 The Forgotten Coup -- How America and Britain Crushed the Government of Their "Ally," Australia
On 11 November -- the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia -- he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal "reserve powers," Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The "Whitlam problem" was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 22, 2016 A world war has begun. Break the silence
What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature? Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 15, 2012 Australia's Julia Gillard is no feminist hero
Promoted by glass-ceiling feminists with scant interest in the actual politics and actions of their hero, Gillard is the embodiment of the Australian Labor Party machine -- a numbers-crunching machine long bereft of principle that has betrayed Australia's most vulnerable people, especially women.
(23 comments) SHARE Friday, July 5, 2013 Forcing Down Evo Morales' Plane Was An Act Of Air Piracy
The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane -- denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden -- was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 20, 2012 Apartheid Never Died In South Africa. It Inspired a World Order Upheld by Force and Illusion
Economic apartheid is now replicated across the world as poor countries comply with the demands of western "interests" as opposed to their own. The arrival of China as a contender for the resources of Africa, though without the economic and military threats of America, has provided further excuse for American military expansion, and the possibility of world war.
(19 comments) SHARE Monday, January 16, 2017 The issue is not Trump. It is us.
The obsession with Trump is a cover for many of those calling themselves "left/liberal," as if to claim political decency. They are not "left," neither are they especially "liberal." when will a genuine movement of opposition arise? Angry, eloquent, all-for-one-and-one-for all. Until real politics return to people's lives, the enemy is not Trump, it is ourselves.
(20 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 16, 2014 The forgotten coup -- and how the godfather rules from Canberra to Kiev
The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US "ally." This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington's coups -- in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a "Ukraine" or a "Chile" could never happen to them.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 12, 2017 On Nuclear War and Targeting China and Russia
John Pilger in a public Q&A in Sydney Australia on the dangers of nuclear war and of continuing to provoke Russia and China.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2017 The killing of history
The cynical fabrication of "false flags" that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record -- the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" in 1964, which The Vietnam War director Ken Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.
(16 comments) SHARE Friday, August 4, 2017 On the Beach 2017
The threat is simultaneous. Russia is first, China is next. The US has just completed a huge military exercise with Australia known as Talisman Sabre. They rehearsed a blockade of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea, through which pass China's economic lifelines. The admiral commanding the US Pacific fleet said that, "if required," he would nuke China.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 24, 2019 The Lies About Assange Must Stop Now
Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely. They are worried by the "Assange effect."
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 25, 2016 Why the British said no to Europe
On 23 June, the British said no more. The most effective propagandists of the "European ideal" have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even "cool."
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 30, 2012 Rupert Murdoch May Be a Convenient Demon, But the Media is a Junta
Consider the junta's rise. In the US, at the end of the second world war, 80 percent of newspapers were independently owned. By 1987, most were controlled by 15 corporations, of which six dominate today. Their ideological message is a mantra. They promote global and domestic economic piracy and the cult of "perpetual war."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 30, 2015 The revolutionary act of telling the truth
an insidious modern fascism is now an accelerating danger. As in the 1930s, big lies are delivered with the regularity of a metronome. Muslims are bad. Saudi bigots are good. ISIS bigots are bad. Russia is always bad. China is getting bad. Bombing Syria is good. Corrupt banks are good. Corrupt debt is good. Poverty is good. War is normal.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 27, 2016 Inside The Invisible Government: War, Propaganda, Clinton & Trump
On November 8th. If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton's victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defense drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays' "torches of freedom."
(12 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 29, 2016 Trump and Clinton: Censoring the unpalatable
Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the "women's candidate" and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One. This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 23, 2016 Provoking nuclear war by media
The stirring of people of all ages around the spectacular rise of Jeremy Corbyn counters this to some extent. His life has been spent illuminating the horror of war. The problem for Corbyn and his supporters is the Labour Party. In America, the problem for the thousands of followers of Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party, not to mention their ultimate betrayal by their great white hope.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2015 The secret country again wages war on its own people
Extraordinary demonstrations of Indigenous women protesting the removal of their children and grandchildren by the state, some of them at gunpoint, are ignored by journalists and patronized by politicians. More Indigenous children are being wrenched from their homes and communities today than during the worst years of the Stolen Generation.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, December 5, 2014 War by media and the triumph of propaganda
The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an "invisible government." It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.
(12 comments) SHARE Friday, May 27, 2016 Silencing America as It Prepares for War
One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers -- truth-tellers -- than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 3, 2016 The Coming War on China
Nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well underway. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 27, 2013 Discovering The Power Of People's History -- And Why It Is Feared Today
England is two countries. One is dominated by London, the other remains in its shadow. When I first arrived from Australia, it seemed no one went north of Watford and those who had emigrated from the north worked hard to change their accents and obscure their origins and learn the mannerisms and codes of the southern comfortable classes.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 16, 2012 Never forget that Bradley Manning, not gay marriage, is the issue
One of America's true heroes is the gay soldier Bradley Manning, the whistleblower alleged to have provided WikiLeaks with the epic evidence of American carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the Obama administration that smeared his homosexuality as weird, and it was Obama himself who declared a man convicted of no crime to be guilty.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 16, 2014 The siege of Julian Assange is a farce
The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would "actively welcome" the Swedish prosecutor in London and "we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that." The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2019 West's news dominated by Hong Kong while Yellow Vests largely ignored
On this season finale special episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger on a round-up of all the latest issues. John describes the current state of global affairs as in a state of world war, warning that the 'coming war on China' he warned about"
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Mandela is gone, but apartheid is alive and well in Australia
A resistance is growing, yet again, in the Aboriginal heartland, especially among the young. Unlike the US, Canada and New Zealand, which have made treaties with their first people, Australia has offered gestures often wrapped in the law. However, in the 21st century the outside world is starting to pay attention. The specter of Mandela's South Africa is a warning.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 17, 2018 Bringing Julian Assange home
Assange does not ask for special treatment. The government has clear diplomatic and moral obligations to protect Australian citizens abroad from gross injustice: in Julian's case, from a gross miscarriage of justice and the extreme danger that await him should he walk out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London unprotected.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 13, 2014 In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia
For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia -- Ukraine -- is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 5, 2014 Is The Media Now Just Another Word For "Control"?
Today liberal democracy is being replaced by a system in which people are accountable to a corporate state and not the other way around as it should be. This denial of real democracy is an historic shift. It's why the courage of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is such a threat to the powerful and unaccountable.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, February 16, 2015 Venezuela's Struggle Against "A Common Enemy"
Washington is ruled by true extremists, once known inside the Beltway as "the crazies." This has been true since before 9/11. A few are outright fascists. Asserting US dominance is their undisguised game and, as the events in Ukraine demonstrate, they are prepared to risk a nuclear war with Russia.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 6, 2019 The Dirty War on the British National Health Service
...the NHS, the last bastion of a truly people's institution without which so many of us would stumble and fall and perhaps not survive...it's a warning...our National Health Service is being undermined and sold off: piece by precious piece...
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 4, 2012 The Liberal Way to Run the World -- "Improve" or We'll Kill You
"If we have to use force," said Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State in the liberal administration of Bill Clinton, "it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future." How succinctly she defines modern, violent liberalism.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 11, 2014 The return of George Orwell and Big Brother's war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth
In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the "mainstream" has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. Today's grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 19, 2013 Understanding The Latest Leaks Is Understanding the Rise Of A New Fascism
Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of what is going on today. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda in the public consciousness.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 7, 2019 New Fears for Julian Assange
Legendary journalist John Pilger has been to see Assange in Belmarsh Prison in London and his report is not encouraging.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 31, 2019 "Wish You Were Here" for Julian Assange
On Monday, 2 September, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd will perform his classic 'Wish You were Here' outside the Home Office (interior ministry) on Marsham Street in the heart of London. I will be be speaking. Join us at 6pm in solidarity with Britain's political prisoner.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, January 3, 2014 In India, A Spectre For Us All, And A Resistance Coming
The great popular resistance that gave India its independence is stirring. The gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 has brought vast numbers into the streets, reflecting disillusionment with the political elite and anger at its acceptance of injustice and a modernised feudalism.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 11, 2014 Breaking the last taboo -- Gaza and the threat of world war
Hamas has repeatedly offered a 10-year truce with Israel and has long settled for a two-state solution. When Medea Benjamin, the fearless Jewish American activist, was in Gaza, she carried a letter from Hamas leaders to President Obama that made clear the government of Gaza wanted peace with Israel. It was ignored.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 20, 2017 Clinton, Assange And The War On Truth
Wading through the Clinton book, What Happened, is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. "They" (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian "nihilist," Julian Assange.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 31, 2017 Terror in Britain: what did the Prime Minister know?
The unsayable in Britain's general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.
Critical questions -- such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist "assets" in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 29, 2019 Visiting Britain's political prisoner
Julian's intellect, resilience and wicked sense of humor all unknown to the low life who defame him are, I believe, protecting him. He is wounded badly, but he is not going out of his mind.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 5, 2016 Secrets Of The US Election -- Julian Assange talks to John Pilger
WikiLeaks does not publish from the jurisdiction of Ecuador, from this embassy or in the territory of Ecuador; we publish from France, we publish from, from Germany, we publish from The Netherlands and from a number of other countries, so that the attempted squeeze on WikiLeaks is through my refugee status; and this is, this is really intolerable.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 18, 2020 Julian Assange Must be Freed, Not Betrayed
On Saturday, there will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square, the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death.
(14 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 17, 2014 NATO's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove
The US air force general who runs NATO forces in Europe -- General Philip Breedlove -- claimed to have pictures of 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 26, 2019 Did This Happen in the Home of the Magna Carta?
In a special comment written for Consortium News, John Pilger, legendary filmmaker, journalist and friend of Assange, describes the troubling scene inside a London courtroom this week where the WikiLeaks publisher appeared in his U.S. extradition case.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 31, 2018 The Isolation Of Julian Assange Must Stop
If it was ever clear that the case of Julian Assange was never just a legal case, but a struggle for the protection of basic human rights, it is now. If there is no freedom of speech for Julian Assange, there is no freedom of speech for any of us -- regardless of the disparate opinions we hold.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 8, 2014 From Pol Pot to ISIS: "Anything that flies on everything that moves"
ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington and London who, in destroying Iraq as both a state and a society, conspired to commit an epic crime against humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, July 13, 2015 The Problem of Greece Is Not Only a Tragedy. It Is a Lie
For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and "the dung of the devil." The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 7, 2012 The Political Trial Of A Caring Man And The End Of Justice In America
During this year's US presidential campaign, both candidates agreed on sanctions against Iran which, they claimed, posed a nuclear threat to the Middle East. Repeated over and again, this assertion evoked the lies told about Iraq and the extreme suffering of that country. Sanctions are already devastating Iran's sick and disabled.
SHARE Friday, April 10, 2020 Freedom From Fear
T.J. Coles interviews the world-renowned journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, about the coronavirus crisis in the context of propaganda, imperialism, and human rights.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 12, 2014 South Africa: Twenty Years of Apartheid by Another Name
Liberation governments can point to real and enduring achievements since 1994. But the most basic freedom, to survive and to survive decently, has been withheld from the majority of South Africans, who are aware that had the ANC invested in them and in their "informal economy," it could have actually transformed the lives of millions.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 20, 2012 History Is The Enemy As "Brilliant" Psy-Ops Become The News
Last September, Obama killed a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, purely on the basis of hearsay that he was inciting terrorism. "This one is easy," he is quoted by aides as saying as he signed the man's death warrant. On 6 June, a drone killed 18 people in a village in Afghanistan, including women, children and the elderly who were celebrating a wedding.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 22, 2012 The Pursuit of Julian Assange is an Assault on Freedom and a Mockery of Journalism
Among Ecuador's reasons for granting asylum is Assange's abandonment "by the state of which he is a citizen." In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Assange and WikiLeaks had committed no crime. His persecution is an assault on us all and on freedom.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 5, 2013 In The Lucky Country Of Australia Apartheid Is Alive And Kicking
An entire people became prisoners of war in their own country, with settlers calling for their extinction. The cattle industry prospered using indigenous men virtually as slave labor. The mining industry today makes profits of a billion dollars a week on indigenous land.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 12, 2013 Mandela leaves behind a troubling legacy
Mandela fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation." Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people's enemy.
SHARE Monday, July 10, 2017 Why Palestine Is Still the Issue
What enrages those who colonize and occupy, steal and oppress, vandalize and defile is the victims' refusal to comply. And this is the tribute we all should pay the Palestinians. They refuse to comply. They go on. They wait -- until they fight again. And they do so even when those governing them collaborate with their oppressors.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 11, 2017 Why the documentary must not be allowed to die
Early British film-makers believed that the documentary should speak from below, not from above: it should be the medium of people, not authority. In other words, it was the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people that gave us the documentary. In survey after survey, when people are asked what they would like more of on television, they say documentaries.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 30, 2013 The Real Invasion Of Africa Is Not News, And A Licence To Lie Is Hollywood's Gift
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. Last year, Africom staged Operation African Endeavor, with the armed forces of 34 African nations taking part, commanded by the US military.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 15, 2013 The prison that is Bangladesh
It is fair to say that Bangladesh's short life has been blighted by almost perpetual conflict between feudalists and democrats and, more recently, fundamentalists. National elections have been called for 5 January. The poet Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud, once told me: "The country is a prison, and the world must know." Bangladesh deserves better.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 6, 2017 The Rising Of Britain's New Politics
As Jeremy Corbyn knows, dealing with the US is not about merely "disagreeing." The US is a rapacious, rogue power that ought not to be regarded as a natural ally of any state championing human rights, irrespective of whether Trump or anyone else is President.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 8, 2017 The universal lesson of East Timor
"To the capitalist governors of the world, Timor's petroleum smells better than Timorese blood and tears. Who will take this truth to the world? ... It is evident that Indonesia would never have committed such a crime if it had not received favourable guarantees from [Western] governments."
SHARE Wednesday, January 18, 2012 The World War on Democracy
Obama likes drones and has joked about them with journalists. One of his first actions as president was to order a wave of Predator drone attacks on Pakistan that killed 74 people. He has since killed thousands, mostly civilians; drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of the lungs of children and leave body parts festooned across scrubland.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 22, 2012 As Gaza is savaged again, understanding the BBC's role requires more than sentiment
The Israeli state has successfully intimidated the BBC into presenting the theft of Palestinian land and the caging, torturing and killing of its people as an intractable "conflict" between equals. Standing in the rubble from an Israeli attack, one BBC journalist went further and referred to "Gaza's strong culture of martyrdom."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 28, 2013 Australia's boom is anything but for its Aboriginal people
Last year, 40 Aboriginal youngsters killed themselves there, a 100-fold increase. When I first reported on indigenous Australia a generation ago, black suicide was rare. Today, the despair is so profound that the second cause of Aboriginal death is suicide. It is booming.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 31, 2015 Assange: The Untold Story Of An Epic Struggle For Justice
Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuador's protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police under orders to arrest him on sight. The changes in the UK law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his case and he would not have been forced to take refuge. Yet he does not benefit.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 9, 2016 The dirty secret of Utopia
The enduring existence of a people who have survived and resisted more than two colonial centuries of massacre and theft remains a spectre on white Australia: a reminder of whose land this really is. Indigenous people go to prison, are beaten up in custody and die in custody as a matter of routine. In despairing communities, children as young as 10 take their own lives.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 21, 2013 Conversations on Palestine: the role and failure of journalism
As part of an ongoing series of interviews for the radio show "Le Mur a Des Oreilles; conversations for Palestine," Frank Barat talks to John Pilger, one of the most influencial journalist of the last few decades, about the war in Syria, the colonization of Palestine, the relationship between the corporate media and government propaganda and the actions of a few very brave men, Snowden, Assange and Manning.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 3, 2019 The prisoner says no to Big Brother
The persecution of Julian Assange is the conquest of us all: of our independence, our self respect, our intellect, our compassion, our politics, our culture. So stop scrolling. Organize. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, April 18, 2016 A World War Has Begun. Break the Silence.
In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as "a world substantially made over in [America's] own image." The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 3, 2012 The Life And Death Of An Australian Hero, Whose Skin Was The Wrong Color
Australia, said Prime Minister Julia Gillard on September 26, deserves a seat at the top table of the United Nations because it ''embraces the high ideals'' of the UN. No country since apartheid South Africa has been more condemned by the UN for its racism than Australia.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 15, 2012 It's Time We Recognized the Blair Government's Criminality
Today, another Afghanistan and Iraq beckons in Syria and Iran, perhaps even a world war. Once again, voices such as Crooke's attempt to explain to a media salivating for "intervention" in Syria that the civil war in that country requires skilled, patient negotiation, not the provocations of the British SAS and the familiar, bought-and-paid-for exiles who ride in Anglo-America's Trojan Horse.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, July 29, 2013 Australia's "stop the boats" policy is cynical and lawless
Australia is a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention. Rudd's cowboy actions are not only lawless but weaken international refugee law and the human rights movements that buttress it. Governments have waged a propaganda war on refugees, in alliance with a media dominated by Rupert Murdoch. Vast, sparsely populated Australia demands "protection" from refugees and asylum seekers.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, November 16, 2015 From Pol Pot to ISIS: The Blood Never Dried
There is a vapid, almost sociopathic verboseness from Cameron, Hollande, Obama and their "coalition of the willing" as they prescribe more violence delivered from 30,000 feet on places where the blood of previous adventures never dried. They seem to relish their own violence and stupidity so much they want it to overthrow their one potentially valuable ally, the government in Syria.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 17, 2015 Time to celebrate real heroes, like the one just lost
If you want to meet the best Australians, meet Indigenous men and women who understand this extraordinary country and have fought for the rights of the world's oldest culture. Theirs is a struggle more selfless, heroic and enduring than any historical adventure non-Indigenous Australians are required incessantly to celebrate.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 8, 2012 How the Chosen Ones Ended Australia's Olympic Prowess and Revealed a Secret Past
In his 1995 book, Obstacle Race, Professor Colin Tatz, who has charted Australia's genocidal history, says that of the 1,200 Aboriginal sportsmen and women he studied, only six -- 0.5% -- had access to the same opportunities and sporting facilities as whites. "A few things are better." he wrote, "The figure now is about one per cent."
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 28, 2015 The message of Anzac: Put out more flags, or shut up
Politicians and journalists have turned this melancholy ANZAC event into a death cult that puzzles foreigners. Australia, a nation without enemies, is now spending $28 billion a year on the military and war and armaments in order to fulfill a tragic, entirely colonial and obsequious role, now as Washington's "deputy sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, February 7, 2014 The Accessories To War Crimes Are Those Paid To Keep The Record Straight
There is no question that the epic crime committed in Iraq has burrowed into public consciousness. Many recall that Shock and Awe was the extension of a murderous blockade imposed for 12 years by Britain and the US and suppressed by much of the "mainstream" media, including the BBC. Half a million Iraqi infants died as a result, according to Unicef. I watched children dying in hospitals denied basic pain-killers.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Why The Assange Case is Important
On 30 May, Britain's Supreme Court turned down the final appeal of Julian Assange against his extradition to Sweden. In an unprecedented move, the court gave the defense team of the WikiLeaks editor permission to "re-apply" to the court in two weeks' time.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 7, 2013 The Courage Of Bradley Manning Will Inspire Others To Seize Their Moment Of Truth
The inspiration of future truth-tellers belongs to Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and the remarkable young people of WikiLeaks, whose achievements are unparalleled. Snowden's rescue is largely a WikiLeaks triumph: a thriller too good for Hollywood because its heroes are real.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 28, 2017 Robert Parry Wins 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize For Journalism
For his journalism, Robert Parry is the winner of the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize. He joins the likes of Robert Fisk, Iona Craig, Patrick Cockburn, Mohammed Omer, Dahr Jamail, Marie Colvin, Julian Assange, Gareth Porter and other honorable exceptions.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 6, 2018 Justice and freedom for Julian Assange mean free speech for us all
Assange is denied basic communications; he is refused access to the phone and internet and visitors are forbidden. In forging a new, deferential relationship with the United States, President Lenin Moreno and the Ecuadorean government clearly aim to make life so difficult for Julian that he is silenced completely or he is forced to leave the embassy, into the waiting arms of the police.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 26, 2012 Making The World a More Dangerous Place: The Eager Role of Julia Gillard
Washington's other post-cold war obsessions demand the services of Australia. These include the intimidation of Iran and destruction of that country's independence, the undermining of the NPT and prevention of nuclear-free zones that threaten the nuclear-armed dominance of the US and Israel.
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, September 7, 2020 The Stalinist trial of Julian Assange; whose side are you on?
Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America's wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 19, 2018 The "Carefully Constructed Drama" Of The Latest Anti-Russia Campaign
Commentary on the British Government's accusations against Russia over the poisoning of the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, not far from the Porton Down facility where chemical weapons are developed.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, February 22, 2019 The war on Venezuela is built on lies
Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela's utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country's oil, as outlined by John Bolton.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 5, 2012 Leveson's Punch and Judy Show Masks Hacking on a Scale You Can Barely Imagine
For the past four years, working in silence and secrecy, the Obama administration has presided over a technological revolution ... moving the nation far beyond bayonets and battleships to cyber warfare, the weaponization of space [and] a breakthrough in what's called "information warfare."
SHARE Thursday, March 22, 2012 Up, Up and Away: How Money Power Works Down Under
As in Britain and America, the unions have long been tamed, co-opted and policed by their own leaderships. Gillard's workplace relations minister is Bill Shorten, a former union boss whose political ambitions and boasts of close ties to business elites are highlighted in US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 18, 2013 In An Age Of "Realists" And Vigilantes, There Is Cause For Optimism
Understanding Kissinger's criminality is vital when trying to fathom what the US calls its "foreign policy." Kissinger remains an influential voice in Washington, admired and consulted by Barack Obama. When Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain commit crimes with US collusion and weapons, their impunity and Obama's hypocrisy are pure Kissinger.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 25, 2013 How We Are Gentrified, Impoverished And Silenced -- And What To Do About It
The Edward Snowden revelations show the infrastructure of a police state emerging in Europe, especially Britain. Yet people are more aware than ever before; and governments fear popular resistance -- which is why truth-tellers are isolated, smeared and pursued. There is no other way now. Direct action. Civil disobedience. Unerring.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 18, 2015 After Three Years, The Injustice Handed Out To Julian Assange Must End
Julian Assange is a refugee under international law and he should be given right of passage by the British government out of the UK, to Ecuador. The nonsense about him "jumping bail" is just that -- nonsense. If his extradition case went through the British courts today, the European Arrest Warrant would be thrown out and he would be a free man.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, October 7, 2011 The "getting" of Assange and the smearing of a revolution
It is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a "grave danger" to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a Temporary Surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. Kafka-style justice awaits Assange whether or not Sweden decides to prosecute him.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 30, 2020 Britain's Covid Suffering is a Crime Against Humanity
A rational person would question why Britain has fared so badly in the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a rich country with the sixth largest economy in the world, a proud history of public health and a National Health Service (NHS) arising from the ashes of World War II. This forms the central pillar of the welfare state, providing universal, comprehensive care to all citizens irrespective of ability to pay.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 7, 2018 The hidden history of the women who rose up
Where are those of us prepared to "utter unlawful oaths" and stand up to the authoritarians and charlatans in government, who glorify war and invent foreign enemies and criminalize dissent and who abuse and mistreat vulnerable refugees to these shores and disgracefully call them "illegals."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 4, 2012 East Timor: a Lesson in Why the Poorest Threaten the Powerful
Visiting Australia last November, President Barack Obama issued another of his veiled threats to China and announced the establishment of a US Marines' base in Darwin, just across the water from East Timor. He understands that small, impoverished countries can often present the greatest threat to predatory power, because if they cannot be intimidated and controlled, who can?
SHARE Wednesday, February 12, 2014 "Good" And "Bad" War -- And The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting
George Orwell wrote: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The people of Korea understand this well. The slaughter on their peninsula following the second world war is known as the "forgotten war," whose significance for all humanity has long been suppressed in military histories of cold war good versus evil.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 19, 2012 Blair, War, Olympic Deals and a Glimpse of Another Britain
None of the health, environmental and economic problems caused by the world's most enduring chemical warfare has been addressed by the US. None of the money allocated by the US Congress has gone directly to the Vietnamese or has reached those most severely disabled from the cancers associated with Agent Orange.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, April 26, 2013 Dance On Thatcher's Grave, But Remember There Has Been A Coup In Britain
In 1997, Thatcher was the first former prime minister to visit Tony Blair after he entered Downing Street. There is a photo of them, joined in rictus: the budding war criminal with his mentor. When Ed Milliband, in his unctuous "tribute," caricatured Thatcher as a "brave" feminist hero whose achievements he personally "honored," you knew the old killer had not died at all.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 8, 2022 Silencing The Lambs - How Propaganda Works
Having soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official version of the last world war, isn't it time those who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency is greater than ever.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 2, 2020 John Pilger: Eyewitness To The Agony Of Julian Assange
John Pilger has watched Julian Assange's extradition trial from the public gallery at London's Old Bailey. He spoke with Timothy Erik Str öm of Arena magazine, Australia:
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 4, 2016 Freeing Julian Assange: the last chapter.
The decent world owes much to Julian Assange. He told us how indecent power behaves in secret, how it lies and manipulates and engages in great acts of violence, sustaining wars that kill and maim and turn millions into the refugees now in the news. Telling us this truth alone earns Assange his freedom, whereas justice is his right.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 29, 2014 It's the Other Oscars -- and yet again the winner slips away
Assange had written Cumberbatch a personal letter, pointing out that the "true story" on which the film claimed to be based was from two books discredited as hatchet jobs. "Most of the events depicted never happened, or the people shown were not involved in them," WikiLeaks posted. In his letter, Assange asked Cumberbatch to note that actors had moral responsibilities, too.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 12, 2019 The Assange arrest is a warning from history
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 5, 2013 There Is A War On Ordinary People And Feminists Are Needed At The Front
The imposition of this criminal debt on ordinary people is a breathtaking scandal. Why has it not been challenged with any seriousness? Where is the political opposition? Class is your answer. This unrepresentative managerial and professional class also exercises power right across the trade union bureaucracy; and it dominates the media.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 9, 2013 Hold The Front Page! We Need Free Media, Not An Order Of Mates
In the "information age," censorship by omission is a weapon of this power -- the silencing of whistleblowers without whom journalism can never be free, and of a compliant, privileged "left." Militarized policing, displayed recently in Boston, consumes an America waging "perpetual war" and now threatening China. It is no surprise that newspapers in thrall to this corrupt power are ailing.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 29, 2014 Palestine, War and the Lethal Role of Journalists
Stateless and humiliated for so long, Palestinians have risen up against Israel's huge military regime, although they themselves have no army, no tanks, no American planes, gunships or missiles. he over-riding, routine terror, day after day, has been the ruthless control of almost every aspect of their lives, as if they live in an open prison.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 15, 2020 The Most Lethal Virus is not Covid, it is War.
Some 400 American bases encircle China, "rather like a noose", a former Pentagon planner said to me. In South Korea, a missile system known as Terminal High Altitude Air Defense, or THAAD, is aimed point-blank at China across the narrow East China Sea.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 30, 2011 Once Again, War is Prime Time and Journalism's Role is Taboo
Having beckoned a criminal assault on Iran, the Guardian opined that this "would of course be madness." Similar arse-covering was deployed when Tony Blair, once a "mystical" hero in polite liberal circles, plotted with George W. Bush and caused a bloodbath in Iraq. With Libya recently dealt with ("It worked," said the Guardian), Iran is next, it seems.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 25, 2016 The Rape of East Timor: "Sounds Like Fun"
In the 17 years since East Timor won its independence, the Australian government has taken nearly $5 billion in oil and gas revenue -- money that belongs to its impoverished neighbor. Australia has been called America's "deputy sheriff" in the South Pacific.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 19, 2011 The Son of Africa Claims a Continent's Crown Jewels
The main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalized paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat."
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 14, 2013 WikiLeaks Is A Rare Truth-Teller ... Smearing Julian Assange Is Shameful
Assange has been declared an official "enemy" of a torturing, assassinating, rapacious state. This is clear in official files, obtained under Freedom of Information, that betray Washington's "unprecedented" pursuit of him, together with the Australian government's abandonment of its citizen: a legal basis for granting asylum.
SHARE Thursday, October 10, 2013 Old Game, New Obsession, New Enemy. Now It's China.
NATO's bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is now Washington's obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a "policy" known as the "pivot to Asia," whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 10, 2013 Mandela's Greatness May Be Assured -- But Not His Legacy
Mandela fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation." Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people's enemy.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 21, 2016 Australia's day for secrets, flags and cowards
On this Australia Day, the "pride of the services" will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for "offshore processing," often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 19, 2014 War, Circus and Injustice Down Under
That Australia has a prime minister who described this country as "unsettled" until the British came indicates the urgency of true reform -- the end of paternalism and the enactment of a treaty negotiated between equals. For until we, who came later, give back to the first Australians their nationhood, we can never claim our own.
SHARE Wednesday, November 9, 2011 In Mexico, a Universal Struggle Against Power and Forgetting
Within a year of embracing Bill Clinton's rapacious North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), a million jobs were destroyed south of the border, along with Emiliano Zapata's revolutionary triumph, the constitutional protection of indigenous land from sale or privatization. At a stroke, Mexico surrendered its economy to Wall Street.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 26, 2013 Iraqis Can't Turn Their Backs On This Deadly Legacy
The "mess" left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse "presidential library and museum" and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money. The catastrophe they ignited has brought violence and abuse into millions of homes.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 17, 2013 Why Bad Movies Keep Coming Out And What To Do About It
The hype of public relations -- Edward Bernays' euphemism for propaganda -- is now regarded as truth. The medium has become the message. Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction. Ironically, in the US, quality film-making has absconded to television.
SHARE Thursday, May 31, 2012 The Leveson Inquiry -- Oh, What a Lovely Game
the Leveson public inquiry in the British press set-up following the Murdoch phone-hacking revelations exemplifies the "matrix of official and social relations" within which power in Britain is exercised.
SHARE Wednesday, November 2, 2011 Britain's Highest Documentaries Award
Many young documentary-makers are convinced that, to be acceptable, they must produce a form of reality TV. That is not acceptable, and we need independent spirits as never before. Who else will make sense of a semi-permanent state of war, in which the most potent weapon is the drum beat of the mainstream media?
SHARE Wednesday, December 28, 2011 In a Land of Facades, Mark the First Signs of an Indian Spring
Hundreds of thousands of unarmed people have come out to reclaim their cities, their streets and mohallas. They have simply overwhelmed the heavily armed security forces by their sheer numbers, and with a remarkable display of raw courage." An Indian Spring may be next.
SHARE Sunday, November 29, 2020 Britain's Class War On Children
When I first reported on child poverty in Britain, I was struck by the faces of children I spoke to, especially the eyes. They were different: watchful, fearful.
SHARE Wednesday, January 16, 2013 Welcome To The Shammies, The Media Awards That Recognize Unsung Talent
The Shammies celebrate the finest sham media. The Shammies are not for the tabloid lower orders. Rupert Murdoch has been honored enough. Shammies distinguish respectable journalism that guards the limits of what the best and brightest like to call the "national conversation."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 7, 2012 Julia Gillard's Rise Marks the Triumph of Machine Politics Over Feminism
That Gillard has pledged to keep Australian soldiers in Afghanistan indefinitely and that the overwhelming majority of those killed or wounded has happened during her period as prime minister, is beside the point. Gillard's feminist distinction, perversely, is her removal of gender discrimination in combat roles in the Australian army.