Thanks, Pilger. Meanwhile, back in the real world......

Tony O'Brien

Thank you, thank you, John Pilger.

I was once a young trendy lefty myself desperately accepting any anti authority and anti western propaganda in my need to think that I was a member of the intelligent class. But articles like your which are so obviously nothing but total lies and gross distortions forced me to reappraise my convictions and start thinking objectively.

The constant themes that you and your comrades advocated was that the capitalist western democracies were always wrong, the socialist world was always right, and everything that ever went wrong in the world was all the fault of white imperialists. The only people dumb enough to accept such nonsense would be people with Arjay and David G's low level of intelligence.

I began to see how people such as you lot could only see the world in terms of oppressors and victims. Nothing else made any sense to you. The white European people who have led the world forward into the modern world are the problem. The head hunters, cannibals, Muslims and savages are all just really nice people who were living Edenic lives like nice little Jeffersonian democrat Hobbits, before those dastardly white Europeans spoiled everything.

At the moment, the Somalis have practically become a one race crime wave in Melbourne, Victoria. I could just see John Pilger standing before the judge defending his Somali client by saying that the reason his client robbed, raped and murdered people on the streets of Melbourne was all because of Western imperialism.

Yeah, that would wash.

"I was once a young trendy lefty myself," says Lego.

What he forgot to add was, "And now I am an old, dithering fool!"

Ho hum. Another Pilger sloganfest.

Well, the poor chap is getting old, after all. As are we all, of course, but some accept the waning of our powers more gracefully than others.

With age comes a certain amount of laziness, of course. In our eagerness to demonstrate that we "still have it", we get careless. On which topic, does anyone care to track down this pivotal "quote" upon which Mr Pilger has built today's homily?

"Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. 'When they are made to hate each other,' wrote a British colonial official, 'good governance is assured.'"

Sounds good, doesn't it? I wonder who invented it first, Pilger or that easy object of Pilger's hatred, "a British colonial official"

The saddest aspect of it all is that by trying to pin Africa's problems on a single source, Pilger debases the entire tragic story, and requires any progress towards a solution to be subject to his personal approval. Given the intensely narrow focus he brings to bear, this would require a complete rewriting of history.

The very definition of pointlessness.

What nuclear war David G? What are you on about? How is Pilger's crass, inaccurate and highly eclectic rambling going to make the world a better place?

Pilger is right about Western Imperialism in Africa. If China gets too much power they will become like our oppressors.