John Pilger - Power, Propaganda and Conscience in The War On Terror

[45th Med]

UWA Extension Summer School Lecture by John Pilger

Winthrop Hall, The University of Western Australia,

12 January 2004: I would like to thank The University of Western Australia for inviting me here today, and especially Nigel Dolan for his warm welcome and smooth organisation.

I am a reporter, who values bearing witness. That is to say, I place paramount importance in the evidence of what I see, and hear, and sense to be the truth, or as close to the truth as possible. By comparing this evidence with the statements, and actions of those with power, I believe it's possible to assess fairly how our world is controlled and divided, and manipulated - and how language and debate are distorted and a false consciousness developed.

John Pilger Lecture

[dudeness]

1. kick

thanks for posting this..

[reprehensor]

2. Breaking the Silence

If you have broadband, you can watch Pilger's excellent documentary 'Breaking the Silence' here...
http://100777.com/node/view/567

[DrBB]

4. This documentary could NEVER have been shown on US television

Somehow that brings it home to me more than anything. That's a measure of where we are. There are programs that can be run on the open airways in British mainstream television that can't be shown here.

I mean, I CAN imagine Palast's stuff on US TV. Actually, didn't PBS air his thing on the 2000 election? Not popular, but imaginable.

And there are certainly things that are too conspiratorial and squirrely to run in Britain or here.

But this isn't the product of someone's hand-held camera and midnight ravings. He's interviewing Wm Kristol, top DOD officials, and has a budget to go to Iraq, Afghanistan and the US. Even if it is contentious, polemical stuff, it's mainstream TV.

And it could not possibly be shown here, I'm quite convinced. It would cause a shitstorm. Actually, it might do more damage than help to the cause of ousting the Chimp, simply because of the backlash.

At one point, Pilger asks Ray McGovern and one of the other experts about a Norman Mailer piece saying the US is in a "pre-fascist" state. McGovern answers that he hopes so, because his opinion is that there's nothing "pre-" about it.

Well, we're not quite there--at least not by the very useful and rigorous parameters David Neiwert lays out (click "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism).

But watching this thing and realizing how unthinkable it would be, now, to see it aired on US TV--and it really is NO more aggressive or contentious than things that we've seen here about American wars and foreign policy in the past--it just really came home to me how scary things are getting.

[reprehensor]

7. The one that freaks me out...

...is Feith. What an ultramaroon.

Here are some more vids...
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video.htm

[teryang]

3. Couldn't access the link

Wanted to read this.

[dudeness]

5. try this link..

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4847.htm

[teryang]

8. This video is damning

The prior inconsistent statements of Powell and Rice in Feb and July 2001 concerning Iraq not being a threat prove fraud and violation of the Nuremburg principles.

Ray McGovern flat out says we are a fascist state.

Thank you for the link. I hope everyone sees this. Bolton and Feith are scum.

[diamond14]

6. more snips.....powerful....

In the days before September 11, 2001, when America routinely attacked and terrorised weak states, and the victims were black and brown-skinned people in faraway places like Zaire and Guatemala, there were no headlines saying terrorism. But when the weak attacked the powerful, spectacularly on September 11, suddenly, there was terrorism.

This is not to say that the threat from al-Qaida is not real - It is very real now, thanks to American and British actions in Iraq, and the almost infantile support given by the Howard government. But the most pervasive, clear and present danger is that of which we are told nothing.

It is the danger posed by "our" governments - a danger suppressed by propaganda that casts "the West" as always benign: capable of misjudgment and blunder, yes, but never of high crime. The judgement at Nuremberg takes another view. This is what the judgement says; and remember, these words are the basis for almost 60 years of international law: "To initiate a war of aggression, it is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole"

In other words, there is no difference, in the principle of the law, between the action of the German regime in the late 1930s and the Americans in 2003. Fuelled by religious fanaticism, a corrupt Americanism and corporate greed, the Bush cabal is pursuing what the military historian Anatol Lieven calls "the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert discontent into nationalism". Bush's America, he warns, "has become a menace to itself and to mankind."

[Snappy]

9. The American People

There is little doubt in my mind that the American people would never believe that their leaders are Fascist Scum. The brainwashing that America stands for freedom and right in the world is so ingrained in their brain cells that no amount of evidence would convince them of it.

I believe it because I have done the research of history and it is obvious to me that America does not beleive in the ideals that it expounds. History shows otherwise. Americans mostly don't even now the diference between a democratic system and Capitalsim. Their ignorance is astounding and they will never believe that America is merely another country that is in a global struggle to maintain dominance.

Another term for the Neo Fascists seems to be what is forthcoming. Perhaps then the American people will realize what America is but it will be too late to change it.

[T Roosevelt]

10. Kick