(Youtube) – Read the rest of this entry »

(JP) – In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits. In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity, the product of a zeitgeist driven by the forces of consumerism and the media with the aim of diverting the struggle for social and economic justice. Read the rest of this entry »

(Pilger) – You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished.  Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely “al-Qaeda”, but “exercise”, “drill”, “wave”, “initiative” and “organisation”: all proscribed words. The British government’s announcement that it intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming western democracy. Read the rest of this entry »

(Pilger) – This week’s Supreme Court hearing in the Julian Assange case has profound meaning for the preservation of basic freedoms in western democracies. This is Assange’s final appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct that were originally dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and constitute no crime in Britain. Read the rest of this entry »

See Also: (PSLWeb) – Colonial Iraq: The Reality behind “the End of the Iraq War” – Read More Here

(GRTV) – Announcing the Iraq war was ended, Barack Obama told US troops on 14 December 2011, “The United States military is the finest fighting force in the history of the world.”

What he didn’t say is that since 1945 the US military has been directly responsible for the deaths of over 10 million people and that America has in that time overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, and intervened in at least 30 more.

John Pilger has something to say about that. Read the rest of this entry »

See Also: (Guardian) – Gaddafi killed as Sirte falls – live coverage – Read More Here

The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels

(JohnPilger.com) – On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way Read the rest of this entry »

(GlobalResearch) – Looking for a bookshop that was no longer there, I walked instead into a labyrinth designed as a trap. Leaving became an allusion, rather like Alice once she had stepped through the Looking Glass. Walls of glass curved into concentric circles as one “store” merged into another: Armani Exchange with Dinki Di Pies. Exits led to gauntlets of more “offers” and “exciting options”. Seeking a guide, I bought a lousy pair of sunglasses: anything to get out. It was a vision of hell. It was a Westfield mega mall. Read the rest of this entry »

(JohnPilger.com) – Britain’s elite monopoly control of the media rests not on Murdoch, but on the Mail, the Guardian and the BBC – Read the rest of this entry »

(ICH) – When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser “destroyed … murdered … I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt”. Those insolent Arabs, Winston Churchill had urged in 1951, should be driven “into the gutter from which they should never have emerged”.

The language of colonialism may have been modified; the spirit and the hypocrisy are unchanged. A new imperial phase is unfolding in direct response to the Arab uprising that began in January and has shocked Washington and Europe, causing an Eden-style panic. Read the rest of this entry »

(GlobalResearch) – The street where I grew up in Sydney was a war street. There were long silences, then the smashing of glass and screams. Pete and I played Aussies-and-Japs. Pete’s father was an object of awe. He weighed barely 100 pounds and shook with malaria and was frequently demented. He would sit in a cane chair, drunk, scything the air with the sword of a Japanese soldier he said he had killed. Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: Government is an Idea (a Fiction), Needs Compliance and Agreement of Public – Rich Psychopaths in Power – John Pilger, Plunder of Middle East, Invasion of Libya, Permanent US Military Bases Worldwide – Deception to Get Wars Going – Bogey Ben Laden. Radioactive Plume Overhead US and Canada – Compromised Immune Systems, GM Food and Inoculations – Daily Chemtrailing – Carbon Blamed for Allergies and Hay Fever – Genetically-Modified Food linked to Organ Disruption – Autism Following MMR Shots Read the rest of this entry »

Distinguished Australian journalist John Pilger offers a devastating critique of the news media’s slavish subservience to the military, starting — as all well-informed accounts must — with the original spinmeister of the military/industrial complex, Edward Bernays, the man who coined the phrase “public relations.” Read the rest of this entry »

(ICH) – When you fly over the earth’s oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking.

Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where once native vegetation grew. This is almost impossible to reverse. The first to die are the most vulnerable species. Read the rest of this entry »

(ICH) – The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders, in politics and journalism. The incitement to murder trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send Assange to a hell hole prison for the rest of his life, are the reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before. Read the rest of this entry »

(NewStatesman) – The “technological enemy” of WikiLeaks is not the United States, but China, according to Assange.

“China is the worst offender” when it comes to censorship, says the controversial whistleblower. “China has aggressive and sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China. We’ve been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through, and there are now all sorts of ways Chinese readers can get on to our site.” Read the rest of this entry »

“The attacks of September the 11th were appropriated by a clique within the United States establishment in order to further its aims around the world.” – John Pilger

REPOST – A powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of ‘embedded’ and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an ‘electronic battlefield’ in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy? Read the rest of this entry »

The public needs to know the truth about wars. So why have journalists colluded with governments to hoodwink us?

(GlobalResearch) – In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a “war of perception . . . conducted continuously using the news media”. What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where “the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences”. Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media.” Read the rest of this entry »

Award winning journalist John Pilger speaks on Australian radio about the absurdities put forward by members of the American government.
John Pilger has a new documentary coming out in Britain on Dec. 12th called “The War You Don’t See” which features an interview with Julian Assange. To see the trailer, go to Read the rest of this entry »

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew.
Which in sleep has fallen on you.
Ye are many – they are few.

(Uruknet) – These days, the stirring lines of Percy Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy may seem unattainable. I don’t think so. Shelley was both a Romantic and political truth-teller. His words resonate now because only one political course is left to those who are disenfranchised and whose ruin is announced on a government spread sheet. Read the rest of this entry »

(Truthout) – The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a facade. Read the rest of this entry »

(InfoClearingHouse) – Britain is said to be approaching its Berlusconi Moment. That is to say, if Rupert Murdoch wins control of Sky he will command half the television and newspaper market and threaten what is known as public service broadcasting. Although the alarm is ringing, it is unlikely that any government will stop him while his court is packed with politicians of all parties. Read the rest of this entry »

(InfoClearingHouse) – The year before England won the 1966 World Cup, I interviewed the team’s captain, Bobby Moore. Having not long arrived from the Antipodes, where “soccer” was a minority sport beloved by Italians and Croats, I did not have a clue about the game. Nevertheless, I had been assigned to write a “human-interest” piece by the same convivial assistant editor who had hired me, believing, because I was Australian, that I could play cricket and so assist the Daily Mirror team in its grudge match against the Express. I could swim and row and had done time in a rugby scrum, but cricket, no. (He forgave me.) Read the rest of this entry »

Cindy Sheehan hosts famous and prolific Austrailian journalist John Pilger. John has a highly relevant and informative blog at http://www.johnpilger.com. Cindy and John have a deep and particularly insightful conversation, touching on Barack Obama’s actual rightwing orientation (contrasted with his characterization by the corporate media as a “socialist”), to the suppression of “forbidden” un-authorized viewpoints.

Direct link to MP3 file:
SoapboxInternet02212010.mp3

Source:
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/archivesPage.html

Loud noises from Washington about a US pull-out from Iraq are a poor disguise for America’s determination to keep waging war. And the same sort of spin is at work here in Britain

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the “intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society”, and that the manipulators “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country”. Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism “public relations”. Read the rest of this entry »

(RussiaToday) – John Pilger: Wikileaks Should Teach Journalists to Question ‘Official Statements’, US Foreign Policy

Recent sanctions against Iran are an attempt by the US to return the country to its sphere of influence, claims veteran journalist John Pilger. “Iran was a pillar of the American empire in the Middle East. That was swept away in 1979 by the Islamic revolution, and it has been American foreign policy to get that back,” he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with so-called nuclear weapons.

The nuclear power in the Middle East is the fourth biggest military power in the world and that is Israel. It has something like 500 or more nuclear warheads. It is never discussed.” Pilger added that Barack Obama has failed to change the trajectory of US foreign policy and following George W. Bush’s line. “For the first time in US presidential history — it has not happened before — a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous discredited administration. We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind.” Read the rest of this entry »

(RussiaToday) – John Pilger: Wikileaks Should Teach Journalists to Question ‘Official Statements’, US Foreign Policy

Recent sanctions against Iran are an attempt by the US to return the country to its sphere of influence, claims veteran journalist John Pilger. “Iran was a pillar of the American empire in the Middle East. That was swept away in 1979 by the Islamic revolution, and it has been American foreign policy to get that back,” he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with so-called nuclear weapons.

The nuclear power in the Middle East is the fourth biggest military power in the world and that is Israel. It has something like 500 or more nuclear warheads. It is never discussed.” Pilger added that Barack Obama has failed to change the trajectory of US foreign policy and following George W. Bush’s line. “For the first time in US presidential history — it has not happened before — a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous discredited administration. We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind.” Read the rest of this entry »

(InfoClearingHouse) – The TV anchorwoman was conducting a split-screen interview with a journalist who had volunteered to be a witness at the execution of a man on death row in Utah for 25 years. “He had a choice,” said the journalist, “lethal injection or firing squad.” “Wow!” said the anchorwoman. Cue a blizzard of commercials for fast food, teeth whitener, stomach stapling, the new Cadillac. This was followed by the war in Afghanistan presented by a correspondent sweating in a flak jacket. “Hey, it’s hot,” he said on the split screen. “Take care,” said the anchorwoman. “Coming up” was a reality show in which the camera watched a man serving solitary confinement in a prison’s “hell hole.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is an excerpt from John Pilger’s bestseller ‘The New Rulers Of The World.’

Much was made of al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan, the target of American bombers. But these were kindergartens compared with the world’s leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it trained some 60,000 Latin American soldiers, policemen, paramilitaries and intelligence agents. Forty per cent of the Cabinet ministers who served in the genocidal regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores in Guatemala are graduates. Read the rest of this entry »

(DemocracyNow) – Democracy Now! Interview With John Pilger – Video Link Here

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(InformationClearingHouse) – How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

“The CIA,” he said, “loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons—the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam.” An invasion that took three million lives was under way.

The Israelis have played this murderous game since 1948. The massacre of peace activists in international waters on 31 May was “spun” to the Israeli public for most of last week, preparing them for yet more murder by their government, with the unarmed flotilla of humanitarians described as terrorists or dupes of terrorists. The BBC was so intimidated that it reported the atrocity primarily as a “potential public relations disaster for Israel”, the perspective of the killers, and a disgrace for journalism. Read the rest of this entry »

(Uruknet) – Is there any difference between Australia’s leaders and the three front-runners in Britain’s election when it comes to attitudes to war?

Staring at the vast military history section of the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war, please. Read the rest of this entry »

As Tiger Woods returns to golf, not all his affairs are salacious headlines. The Tiger Woods Golf Course in Dubai is costing $100million to build. Dubai relies on cheap third world labour, as do certain consumer brands that have helped make Woods a billionaire. Nike workers in Thailand wrote to Woods, expressing their “utmost respect for your skill and perseverance as an athlete” but pointing out that they would need to work 72,000 years “to receive what you will earn from [your Nike] contract”. Read the rest of this entry »

(InfoClearingHouse) – Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Read the rest of this entry »

Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 per cent of the capital city press and the only national newspaper, and Sky Television, and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy. Read the rest of this entry »

If youre interested in learning more, check out the websites below. They have excellent resources and news on the latest PR, front group, and think tank offensives. Front groups do not stay around for long. They pop up like mushrooms, do their job, and then disappear. They do this so the public and media dont catch on. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training. Read the rest of this entry »

You might like my videos if you like: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber, Matt Taibbi, Michael Albert, Bakunin, Proudhon, Amy Goodman, John Pilger, Mike Gravel, Naomi Klein. Read the rest of this entry »

This shocking full length movie will change the way you look at our leadership within America’s government and military today. Using primarily news casts and historical footage, B.A. Brooks engages the audience with a sometimes harsh reality that most people are not usually subjected to. This film covers many topics of interest during it’s 2-hour time span, which shows a bleak picture of what has been really going on within America and the world today. Read the rest of this entry »

The farce of the climate change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine. Read the rest of this entry »

(PakAlert) – Americans Must Ask; Who is Breeding Terrorism?
The above-captioned article was written by John Pilger in the daily The Yumiuri Shimbun, of Japan, dated 30th August, 1998. He says “In recent years Muslims have been the greatest sufferers from state terrorism.” The excerpts of his above-mentioned article are as below. Read the rest of this entry »

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.” Read the rest of this entry »

I tried to contact Mark Higson the other day only to learn he had died nine years ago. He was just 40, an honourable man. We met soon after he had resigned from the Foreign Office in 1991 and I asked him if the government knew that Hawk fighter-bombers sold to Indonesia were being used against civilians in East Timor. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember the boys dressed in army surplus, the girls in hessian, their silhouettes framed in beach shanties, staring across an abyss. You were not meant to talk about them. They were not counted in the census, unlike the sheep, and anyway were dirty and feckless and dying off. Read the rest of this entry »

When General Suharto, the west’s man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered “a gleam of light in Asia”, rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million “communists” was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in South-east Asia”. Read the rest of this entry »