False Reality: John Pilger is an incisive, insightful and fearless journalist, whose every word is an arrow in the heart of the evil manipulators who rule our lives and restrict our liberties.

Fact: Pilger is a superannuated old bore, whose best work is now twenty years in the past. He is kept alive by the burning, but mistaken self-image that he is still relevant, when he is little more than a whinging relic from the Cold War.

Sad as it is - and I have many of his earlier works on my bookshelf to remind me that he was once an effective writer and feared iconoclast - he should now spare us his grumpy-old-man routine, and put himself out to pasture.

We can then go and visit him in the corner of the pub, where he will no doubt continue to hold forth to anyone who will listen, for many, many years to come.

Pericles,
No argument against what Pilger wrote? Just a personal attack on the writer! Which one should be in the corner at the pub?

I don't really think that you should use the nom–de–guerre "Pericles". He was a better lad than you.

Pericles :
I think you just enjoy attracting attention to yourself .
Do you carry a hand mirror around in your pocket - to snatch a gratifying peep at yourself from time to time ?

Guilty as charged. It was a cheap shot, Foyle.

>>No argument against what Pilger wrote? Just a personal attack on the writer! Which one should be in the corner at the pub?<<

Motivated, mostly, by disappointment.

I had, for many years, great admiration for Pilger's journalistic talents, and his courage. I recall reading "The Last Day" in one sitting. It was to me, back then (cliché warning) life-changing. The sound of scales falling from eyes was deafening.

On my shelves are dog-eared copies of Aftermath, Heroes, A Secret Country and Distant Voices.

I also have a copy of Hidden Agendas, this last being my point of departure. It appeared to me that he had shifted gear, substantially, from reporting, to polemic.

The voice became shrill, rather than authoritative. The evidence he presented became increasingly speculative and circumstantial. The conclusions drawn started to appear flimsier, angrier and less reliable.

Little that I have read since has changed that view.

As it happens, I have little argument with Pilger's position in this piece on the topic of Iraq. The whole saga is a tragedy, and he nails the lies accurately and succinctly.

But to use that as a jumping-off point into a relatively vacuous commentary on UK politics, cheapened those observations to the point of irrelevance.

Such a waste.

There is little point in discussing most of Pilger's story. Its not clear how he knows that air strikes are continuing, but let it pass. The point I would take issue with his is the statistic of one million Iraqi deaths as a direct result of the US-led invasion. Bwwwwhahahahahahaha! The figure is inherently implausible - actually its impossible - and if Pilger himself was not a propogandist he would have selected sources that gave less than a tenth of that figure.
He is quite right to say that the John Hopkins study on which he relies is peer reviewed. The problem is that it just shows the nonsense that can appear in peer reviewed literature. For the John Hopkins study has been thoroughly and deservedly derided. The paper I looked at said 600,000 deaths over a three year period, from memory. A closer look at the figures show that it was extrapolated from just 60 deaths. Further it claimed that the bulk of the deaths were from gun shot wounds. What? (Around 40 per cent of coalition soldiers killed in Iraq were killed by bombs of what sort or another.) To put that figure into perspective total British ande Empire causalities in the Great War were around 800,000 give or take, and that included several full on infantry battles stretching over several months. Artillery fire was the main cause of death.
If Pilger wants his propoganda to be taken seriously he should quote figures that cannot be instantly dismissed.
the other question that arises from this is what on earth did the John Hopkins team think they were doing?