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A good if not worrying read, that. Pilger did an expose on BAE selling arms/planes to East Timor several years back, the regime was using them against civilians, and it brought about enough pressure to stop the arms sales. Lots of claims of the planes in particular that the planes were just for training purposes.
He doesn't always get it right but that calibre wont be with us forever, a very decent man who knows his onions. Putin also was sounding alarms re WW3 just before the Brexit vote which sound ominous. Nato seems to be kicking sand in his eyes. Some say the financiers are itching for war to sell arms to both sides. Whatever the reasons, poking a bear with a large nuclear arsenal could go very wrong indeed.
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John Pilger Article on 13:20 - Jul 25 with 4614 views
John asks where are the voices? They are there, but no one listens, like with the discussion about renewing the trident nuclear weapons system. Mhairi Black's speech is well worth a listen. The fact that practically no one heard it at the time is the biggest concern for Britain. Like all, it is just politics.
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John Pilger Article on 13:26 - Jul 25 with 4598 views
Generally found his stuff to be very left wing conspiracy theory and quite far fetched.
Comitted to his views undoubtedly, but very much uses anything he can find to reinforce his own views rather taking a more objective (or some might say more rational) view.
Never knowingly understood
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John Pilger Article on 15:19 - Jul 25 with 4482 views
I have read a couple of John Pilgers books and found them to be brilliant. Obviously if you don,t agree with his view of the way the world is run then you won,t like them but you will struggle to find a more lucid, well researched account of what is wrong with so much of the world. And how the powers that be like to put up smoke screens to stop the ordinary people seeing what they are up to.
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John Pilger Article on 15:54 - Jul 25 with 4441 views
Good shout Brian, I've always enjoyed a bit of Pilger.
He's made a few interesting documentaries too, some of them ended up being shown on the unlikely vehicle of ITV!
I met him a couple of times back in the day when I was more politically active and found him to be a wonderful combination of intelligence, integrity and real commitment.
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John Pilger Article on 16:04 - Jul 25 with 4420 views
Mr Pilger makes a mistake in the original post when declaring that most of Americas wars have been started by Democrats. That should read 'all', barring George W's incursion into Iraq.
Mr Pilger makes a mistake in the original post when declaring that most of Americas wars have been started by Democrats. That should read 'all', barring George W's incursion into Iraq.
America has been at war for 222 out of its 239 years, amazingly. Of course I googled it to get the exact figure but I first got wise to the amount of U.S. wars from reading 'Killing Hope' by William Blum.
On the Republican side, Eisenhower started Korea and Vietnam, George Bush Snr. started the first Gulf War and Reagan started numerous wars.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
John Pilger Article on 16:34 - Jul 25 by BrianMcCarthy
America has been at war for 222 out of its 239 years, amazingly. Of course I googled it to get the exact figure but I first got wise to the amount of U.S. wars from reading 'Killing Hope' by William Blum.
On the Republican side, Eisenhower started Korea and Vietnam, George Bush Snr. started the first Gulf War and Reagan started numerous wars.
Truman was the (Democrat) President when the Korean War started, Brian. I thinking you'll find it was started by Kim Il Sung, though. Lincoln was a Republican President too, though again, you might argue that the other side started it.
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John Pilger Article on 18:46 - Jul 25 with 4258 views
John Pilger Article on 15:54 - Jul 25 by 1BobbyHazell
Good shout Brian, I've always enjoyed a bit of Pilger.
He's made a few interesting documentaries too, some of them ended up being shown on the unlikely vehicle of ITV!
I met him a couple of times back in the day when I was more politically active and found him to be a wonderful combination of intelligence, integrity and real commitment.
Can you just confirm pleas 1Bobby that this isn't you, "Back in the day when I was more politically active".
Truman was the (Democrat) President when the Korean War started, Brian. I thinking you'll find it was started by Kim Il Sung, though. Lincoln was a Republican President too, though again, you might argue that the other side started it.
Yep, sorry. You're right, of course.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
I learned more of him in the early 90's, recognised him from old ITV World in Action type programmes in the 70's. He was involved with Campaign against the Arms Trade. They initiated the idea of buying a single share as individuals in BAE and other Arms Manufacturers so they could attend AGM's and confront the Execs with the disgusting results of their trade. Quite innocent times looking back compared to today.
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John Pilger Article on 09:16 - Jul 26 with 3943 views
That is a really interesting read....until the last bit about Putin. No mention of the fact that NATO is beefing up in Eastern Europe due to Russia's invasion of a sovereign state, Ukraine. So yes Blair turned out to be a wrong'un when many of us had hoped for so much from him but that doesn't mean Putin automatically becomes an angel does it? The man is a monster.
Scooters, Tunes, Trainers and QPR.
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John Pilger Article on 10:09 - Jul 26 with 3903 views
Arguably the world has been at war for as long as anyone can remember. Just different events, locations and 'flavours' of war - some stronger than others.
John Pilger Article on 09:16 - Jul 26 by Northolt_Rs
That is a really interesting read....until the last bit about Putin. No mention of the fact that NATO is beefing up in Eastern Europe due to Russia's invasion of a sovereign state, Ukraine. So yes Blair turned out to be a wrong'un when many of us had hoped for so much from him but that doesn't mean Putin automatically becomes an angel does it? The man is a monster.
In case you failed to read the article in the OP:
"In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two -- led by the United States -- is taking place along Russia's western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.
Ukraine - once part of the Soviet Union - has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority. This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.
In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- next door to Russia - the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world's second nuclear power is met with silence in the West."
Putin may be a monster but he pales into comparison to what the USA, and NATO by association, has been doing for the past 20 years. Invading sovereign states for breakfast.
[Post edited 26 Jul 2016 14:01]
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John Pilger Article on 23:00 - Jul 26 with 3608 views
As always I'll say that he provides a lot of food for thought and he's probably right a lot of the time. But having read and watched his stuff on Venezuela- and with a wife and inlaws from there amd having visited twice - he's clueless. Erudite and able to string together an argument, but not one that supports the facts for normal people like us living there.
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John Pilger Article on 10:19 - Jul 27 with 3494 views
First time I encountered JP, was when I watched his documentary on Cambodia/year zero in 1980 or 81.
Read some of his stuff and kept an eye on his articles ever since. He certainly does offer food for thought on many issues, most notably, press freedom or should that be, press gagging?
'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk
Nous sommes L’occitane Rs!
Pilger's undoubtedly a brilliant film-maker, and a necessary antidote to the idea that "we" are the good guys and "they" are the bad guys. However, his conviction that the US and its Western supporters/satellites/lackeys are the sole source of evil in the world makes him a mirror image of the people he ridicules. His insistence that anyone who fails to support his enemy's enemies is either an agent, Quisling or sell-out is , dare I say it, a bit Imperialist of him. He shares Russia's outrage that Nato forces are on the territory of the Soviet Union, but doesn't consider that places like Ukraine and the Baltic States might have been forced into it to begin with, delighted to leave it and reluctant to be dragged into a new version of it. Russian troops are occupying parts of three former satellites, Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Ukraine (Crimea and the Donbass) and Moldova (Transdniestria), so the threat is real, even if there are real grievances there with the post-Soviet settlement too.
Similarly, he implies that places like the Philippines and Vietnam have been paid to make trouble over the Chinese construction of artificial islands to host naval bases and support territorial claims in the South China Seas. If Filipino fishermen are chased out of their traditional fishing grounds by Chinese factory ships, that's fine by Pilger, who sees no evil if it doesn't happen under the Stars and Stripes. Remember that the last country to invade Vietnam was China not the US, but he thinks it's ungrateful of them not to welcome a Chinese military expansion close to their shores.
I'll never forget his electrifying films about the Khmer Rouge, and his rage that the West continued to support them as the legitimate government rather than Hun Sen's regime which was installed by an invading Vietnamese army (and rightly so). China invaded Vietnam to punish them, but that inconvenient fact was seemingly lost on Pilger.
He's quite good at ignoring other things when it suits him too. He claims there hasn't been such a threat to Russia from foreign troops since Hitler's time. China fought a border war with the Soviet Union in 1969, but as there weren't Americans involved, he seemingly didn't notice. He says that prominent figures in the Ukrainian parliament are notorious fascists. There are 7 Fascist MPs in the Ukrainian parliament, out of 423. The country has a dark, violent history, stoked and suppressed under the Soviet Union, but the number of fascist MPs is actually down in the "illegitimate" post-Maidan-coup parliament from the one that he presumably recognises as legitimate. Across the border, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDP has 56 seats in the Duma, out of 450, on policies of invasion, deportation, and even dropping a nuclear bomb on Istanbul. Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin's man in Chechnya, has admitted ordering the murder of the runner-up in the last Russian election, and has threatened other politicians and journalists with murder, with complete impunity from his boss. Which is the "fascist playground"? No doubts in Pilger's mind.
I didn't mean to go on so much about it. Pilger's a very necessary voice, but it doesn't make him infallible. Far from it.
[Post edited 27 Jul 2016 13:42]
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John Pilger Article on 15:26 - Jul 27 with 3353 views
Pilger's undoubtedly a brilliant film-maker, and a necessary antidote to the idea that "we" are the good guys and "they" are the bad guys. However, his conviction that the US and its Western supporters/satellites/lackeys are the sole source of evil in the world makes him a mirror image of the people he ridicules. His insistence that anyone who fails to support his enemy's enemies is either an agent, Quisling or sell-out is , dare I say it, a bit Imperialist of him. He shares Russia's outrage that Nato forces are on the territory of the Soviet Union, but doesn't consider that places like Ukraine and the Baltic States might have been forced into it to begin with, delighted to leave it and reluctant to be dragged into a new version of it. Russian troops are occupying parts of three former satellites, Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Ukraine (Crimea and the Donbass) and Moldova (Transdniestria), so the threat is real, even if there are real grievances there with the post-Soviet settlement too.
Similarly, he implies that places like the Philippines and Vietnam have been paid to make trouble over the Chinese construction of artificial islands to host naval bases and support territorial claims in the South China Seas. If Filipino fishermen are chased out of their traditional fishing grounds by Chinese factory ships, that's fine by Pilger, who sees no evil if it doesn't happen under the Stars and Stripes. Remember that the last country to invade Vietnam was China not the US, but he thinks it's ungrateful of them not to welcome a Chinese military expansion close to their shores.
I'll never forget his electrifying films about the Khmer Rouge, and his rage that the West continued to support them as the legitimate government rather than Hun Sen's regime which was installed by an invading Vietnamese army (and rightly so). China invaded Vietnam to punish them, but that inconvenient fact was seemingly lost on Pilger.
He's quite good at ignoring other things when it suits him too. He claims there hasn't been such a threat to Russia from foreign troops since Hitler's time. China fought a border war with the Soviet Union in 1969, but as there weren't Americans involved, he seemingly didn't notice. He says that prominent figures in the Ukrainian parliament are notorious fascists. There are 7 Fascist MPs in the Ukrainian parliament, out of 423. The country has a dark, violent history, stoked and suppressed under the Soviet Union, but the number of fascist MPs is actually down in the "illegitimate" post-Maidan-coup parliament from the one that he presumably recognises as legitimate. Across the border, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDP has 56 seats in the Duma, out of 450, on policies of invasion, deportation, and even dropping a nuclear bomb on Istanbul. Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin's man in Chechnya, has admitted ordering the murder of the runner-up in the last Russian election, and has threatened other politicians and journalists with murder, with complete impunity from his boss. Which is the "fascist playground"? No doubts in Pilger's mind.
I didn't mean to go on so much about it. Pilger's a very necessary voice, but it doesn't make him infallible. Far from it.
[Post edited 27 Jul 2016 13:42]
He did grow up in that end of Empire era that is a bit dated now.
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