John Pilger - the sanctions, Iraq, Oil and more.

Please buy Paying the price killing the children of iraq and support John Pilgers work. He's what we call a true hero!

Western foreign policy
In all of his work, Pilger has been a prominent and fervent critic of Western foreign policy. He is particularly opposed to many aspects of American foreign policy, which he regards as being driven by a largely imperialist agenda.


[edit] Mainstream journalism
Pilger is a strong critic of the institutions and economic forces that structure 'mainstream' journalism. He said in an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006:

" During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?' [2] "

He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.

In addition to criticizing the policies of President George W. Bush, Pilger has also taken aim at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he believes to be just as culpable as President Bush for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his column published in New Statesman on 25 July 2005, Pilger ascribed blame for the 2005 London bombings that took place the same month to Blair, whose decision to follow President Bush generated the rage that he claims precipitated those bombings. [3]

In the same column a year later, Pilger described Blair as a war criminal for supporting Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He also asserted that Blair gave permission to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 to initiate what would ultimately become Operation Defensive Shield.[4]

Praise and criticism
Harold Pinter has said of his work: "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is . . . I salute him."[1]. He has also been subjected to criticism, with Auberon Waugh in Britain coining the verb 'to pilger' to denote 'to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion'.[citation needed] Noam Chomsky has claimed that the reason why journalists have invented the terms 'to pilger' and 'pilgerise' is because, when faced with the uncomfortable facts about the consequences of U.S foreign policy that Pilger presents, 'ridicule' is the only response they are capable of.[8]

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson has been one of Pilger's most vocal critics.[9]

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Iraq
• Pilger
• cancer
• crisis
• terror
• terrorism
• US
• state
• bagdad
• sanctions
• gulf
• war
• history
• chomsky

[greencatmusic]

Glad I came across this. Very grateful thanks for posting and yes, I'll try to buy a copy and also download this bit to remind myself to watch rest... Bitter and twisted isn't it? My heart is in pieces. The devil certainly does walk amongst us. And he is winning. Pilger is a hero. I agree. He might be wrong on some points but at least he acts on his conscience and does not stay silent - which may be deemed collusion and consent to the perpetration of wickedness across the globe.

[greencatmusic]

Well said

[hashemzene]

PIGS!

[basak983]

america is fuked mark my words i am off to my land Afghanistan to kill me some pigs. mark my words i swear we Afghans will destroy the coward WORLD ARMY. mark my words.

[gjphelps]

Mostly true what as expressed as above but Pilger does have a tendency to slant the "truth" for his own self-serving ideological "agenda" The point about dear old Bron he never pretended to be morally virtuous to expose high-level misdeeds.

[PeelTower]

Auberon Waugh was a well known elitist snob without a shred of compassion for his fellow human beings. To quote Waugh in contradiction is defacto evidence of the veracity and honour of John Pilger.

[badattitude77769]

Killing one million children by sanction is not funny, cheney is doing it to iran as I write this. I remember a time when it was a good thing to be a child, we looked up to baseball players, my dad took me out to the reno, nevada airport, the security was a three foot chain link fence, dad walked us through and ran the ramp up to the dc-2 or c-3, awesome sturdy airplanes, united air lines had the sexiest stewardess's, three men came down the ramp and signed our baseballs, joe dimaggio, lefty oud

[ofcoursehesthefarmer]

'After four weeks' hovering between life and death in hospital...I find myself back in Somerset...The crisis resulted from my foolish and intemperate laughter at one of Pilger's programmes on television...Something about the bottomless stupidity and deviousness of Pilger's face had me in stitches even before IBA's extraordinary announcement at the end, that the view's expressed had been Pilger's own.' AUBERON WAUGH, OCT 3 1976.