tagged w/ John Pilger
-
i am new to politics and this article gave me a great overview of American Foreign Policy without making me feel like a total dummy. in the article, John Pilger breaks it down, country by country, and illustrates how Obama COULD bring the Hope and Change he promised AND put an end to America's reputation as the World's Biggest PRICK, IF he wasn't owned and operated by the same old ruling elite, who brought us the catastroph_ck we once called the American Dream.
John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s.
He regards eye-witness as the essence of good journalism. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with the Vietnam war in 1967. He is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments.
Obama and the Empire:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-and-the-empire.html
Democracy Now! interview: John Pilger on the Obama Foreign Policy
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7br3j_john-pilger-on-the-obama-foreign-po_news
http://www.johnpilger.com/i am new to politics and this article gave me a great overview of American Foreign... more
-
-
John Pilger's 2007 documentary explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger claims that the film "...tells a universal story... analyzing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas in the U.S. state of Georgia, where General Pinochet’s torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death-squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.
******************************************
This is a film that should be shown in History classrooms throughout the states and the world. Pilger aptly displays the American government’s involvement in manipulating Latin America’s leadership over the past 60 years or so.
The focus on Venezuela for the first 40 minutes of the film is an interesting change from what we see in mainstream media. An unabashed socialist, Chavez has thrown out American control in Venezuela, and has gone a long way in convincing his neighbors to do the same. However, the beauty of this film is much more than its discussion of Venezuela. Pilger goes through the history of several countries other Latin American countries weaving them into the bigger picture, thoroughly explaining many of the important details. Its rare to find such a comprehensive history of US involvement in Latin America. Pilger tries establish how the system has evolved from physical control to financial control in today's era. Pilger has mastered obtaining great interviews. For example, in this film he the interviews the head former head of CIA involvement in Latin America as well as interviews an American nun who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989.
Add to the list Georgia and Ukraine. When will "we the people" wake up?
INITIATE CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS, CO-WORKERS AND FAMILY MEMBERS. PARTICIPATE IN EDUCATING THOSE THAT COME IN CONTACT WITH YOU.
John Pilger's 2007 documentary explores the historic and current relationship of... more
-
-
John Pilger describes the denigration of the of civilian casualties in colonial wars, and the anointing of Barack Obama, as he tours the battlefields, sounding more and more like George W. Bush.
On 12 July, The Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practised routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security". Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday".
Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people – his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while The Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at the wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated – at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.
The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided..." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.
The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" – journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.
* * * * *
More at link.John Pilger describes the denigration of the of civilian casualties in colonial wars,... more
-
