John Pilger interview with Alan Clark on Indonesia/East Timor

A set of clips from John Pilger's "Death of Nation" documentary on the Indonesia/East Timor conflict interviewing ex-Defence Minister Alan Clark.

Apologiers for the shoddy sync, but the audio isthe key point.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• John
• Pilger
• Indonesia
• East
• Timor
• Alan
• Clark
• Vegetarianism

[Indul1]

Alan Clark is saying that war is war.....I'am a leftie myself but the reality of international affairs and wars is brutal.

[lizclegg]

I'm surprised he did an interview with Pilger. As Defence Minister his job was to facilitate sales of arms by British companies. Of course those arms are used to kill people. Of course he knew he was promoting an industry which kills people. Of course he didn't care or he wouldn't have done it.

His is a vile man, and his being vegetarian was always weird, although I hear Hitler was a vegetarian.

[kevinastraw]

@LietenantAwesome An outdated thought originating in the mind of the German top brass - Clark gives undeniable proof that tens of thousands of British lives were wasted by impossible tasks - one British officer, a schoolmaster, showed his superiors a map of the military situation proving that attack would be futile - he still had to lead his men to certain death. It is not enough to say that the British military were stuck in a situation and could do no other.

[AlanWattParrot]

@Vot63 yes absolutely spot on

[Vot63]

As with Enoch Powell the saying, "that we can always recognize a true genius by the mob of mediocrity that gathers to tear them down".

[AlanWattParrot]

@kevin The Donkeys is a masterpiece. I have Barbarossa too but haven't found time. The Tories was his long dreamed of /awaited magnum opus but it's a patch job, overall lacking in depth that needed atleast 3 vols to do it justice - cramming it into one proved too much even for AC's effortless mastery as a writer (too often concision blurs into superficiality). He studiously overlooks the archival account in Quigley's Anglo American Est., a Must Read First re. Tory history & a must read, period.

[AlanWattParrot]

@lizclegg the unfailingly courteous Tony Benn who i also admire greatly (like Clark another highly impressive & unique character whose passing the thinking public will come to mourn), gives a typically kind eulogy

Like all of us Clark was a product of his social class /genetics; a snob, callously aloof toward human suffering, yet when his other character & personality traits (incl. disarmingly brutal self-assessment) are taken into acc they somehow, miraculously, mitigate such obnoxious flaws

[lizclegg]

@AlanWattParrot Which would make him worth what, ten billion AlanWattParrots not fit to wipe his bum, although he would still be vile. I read his diaries many years ago, and thought he was pretty vile then.

[AlanWattParrot]

@lizclegg if you read his trilogy of diarioes you'll discover he wasn't really a vegetarian .. he was a complex man . worth a thousand ten-a-penny lizcleggs not fit to be his maid lol

[LietenantAwesome]

@kevinastraw Which of course is rapidly becoming an outdated thought.

[Eaglesfanmd]

thats a sick human being