Relatively cogent Pilger, for a change.

Not the nonsense about "...worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and World Bank..." of course. That's just Pilger channelling Arjay.

But the obvious relationship between street-level revolution and a country's massively unbalanced haves/have nots, should not be missed amongst the polemical spittle.

Most of the comments above show how totally ignorant most Australians are. They are second only to the Americans.

Most Australians have been fed the 'America is next to Godliness' crap for so long they actually believe it. They ignore the warmongering of America, its support of dictators, its profiting from endless wars, its invasions and occupations of oil-rich countries, its torture, its keeping people in cages, its imprisoning of people without trial, its rendition, its brutality against its own citizens, its rampant imperialism, its lying and duplicity, its culture of greed, its lamentable support of the brutal Israeli regime, its killing of millions of civilians, etc, etc.

Wake up Australia before America gobbles you up too!

http://www.dangerouscreation.com

David,

And its bombing of its own unarmed population ? Machine-gunning its own unarmed population ? Using mercenaries to go house to house killing its own unarmed population ?

I might have missed those :)

Can we move on from these childish 'tu quoque' arguments ? The issue here is not the US, but the people in Arab countries, mainly Libya at the moment. Can they win their own democracy, and build their own democratic societies, as free as practicable from outside interference (given the economic reliance on outside markets) on the one hand and Islamist medievalism on the other ?

Joe

Joe, you seem very reluctant to admit that both the US and the UK governments are resposible for the situation in Libya with their support of Qaddafi. Without that support he would have gone long ago as would quite a few other dictators (too numerous for either John Pilger or I to mention) around the world.

David

Sadly, VK3AUU, people do not analyse the words they read in the Murdoch publications and as you would be aware, it is getting harder and harder to find something that comes from another source.

In this country, as well you would know, Fairfax are the last remaining group with anything like an honest viewpoint, although receiving their news sometimes generated from the tainted news production sources as we used to see in Australia, such as CNN can change all that. Fortunately, such sources are now seen for what they are, the likes of Fox and the New York Times , having taken over the historical mantle of Joseph Goebbels of Third Reich fame.

A comment above mentions that Pilger does have a friendship with Hugo Chavez. I was not aware of that but can understand it. Venezuela is an oil provider, and we all know what that means. It has been proven so many times that the US are trying to destabilise that country providing as they do almost all of their output to the the US consumers. Important therefore for the US to have a compliant and controlled government in place.

As with the US-sponsored assassination of Allende in Chile in 1973, copper being the motivator there thanks to Nixon and Kissinger. What a pair they were. So it was with Cuba, daring to accept a benevolent socialist leader in 1960 who cleaned out the US mafia, the country's largest industry, US owned of course and not forgetting drugs and large scale prostitution and gambling providing staggering revenues to the US, so they receive a mafia-sponsored embargo for 51 years to date and still running. That was Kennedy of Laos and Cambodia fame, a criminal if ever there was one followed by even worse leaders such as Johnson, Nixon.
Yes, people may choose to call PIlger anti-American but he tells the real truth that so many people in this day and age, choose to ignore. Much more convenient to ignore rather than having to think too hard about it.

You cannot dispute the facts and you cannot ignore history.

Dear John, I just spent 3 months in ME and North Africa. Much time spent Tunisia, Maroc and Egypt. One of the most astonishing comments I heard, and more than once, was “what do we have to do to get the Americans to invade us?”

I think you are both passionate and compassionate. I also get the feeling that your hatred of the US has led you to conclude that some of the most complex socio/political problems associated with these failed States are now just a blame game and mostly directed at the US.

This over simplistic and myopic view of the world has robbed you of common sense and analytical ability. It also acts as a very convenient diversion from the fact that human rights and peace activists have been asleep at the wheel for the last 20 years.

The world is increasingly accepting the fact that all forms of dictatorship are “terrorist” by their very nature and that the primary victims of dictatorships are their own subjects.

They are the victims of the “great lies”.

These include: That someone else is responsible for your pain. It is not your leaders that are at fault, if it were not for foreign intervention, we, your leaders could remove your pain. If you focus the hatred and vilification we have created within you, upon the enemy we have also created for you, things will be better.

If you martyr yourself for the political cause that keeps your leaders in power, we promise you eternal happiness, when in fact all we promise you instant death and consign your loved ones to a life of anguish, misery and retribution.

We your leaders have not hijacked your religion, your freedoms, your country, your finances, your education or your next generation of offspring in order to prop up our political aims or to mask our evil incompetence.

By blaming the US you are indeed perpetrating one of the great lies, to which the peoples you seek to protect are falling victim.

What it is you seek to avoid, you create.