There are excellent reasons why the war of (nominally) 1939-45 has endured as a historical point of reference. It laid bare the moral issues which define the rights and wrongs of "joining up" and "going to war" and "supporting the troops". Before the gun barrels had cooled in 1945 the Axis was back to business as usual, located not in Germany but in the traitorous elites that had skulked under the radar for five years of war. That is what John Pilger's account is about.

Every Anzac Day we are treated to the drumbeat cult of the warrior - even the ridiculous inclusion of the soldiers of both sides as exemplars of "doing the right thing" at Gallipoli. The objective of this propaganda ritual is not so much to promote a fighting spirit as to promote a spirit of mindless obedience to authority.

Pacifists share some peculiar insensitivities with warriors.

Both proclaim that all use of armed force is morally the same. They are unconcerned whether the purpose is to impose rule on an unwilling population of a territory, colony, nation or collection of nations or to resist it. They are unconcerned about whether the combatants are liberators or overlords. Pacifists undiscriminatingly reject the combatants, warriors undiscriminatingly honour them (including honouring the combatants against whom they fight).

All these advocacies are a retreat from pursuit of justice. Justice and the right of peoples to self-determination are low on the totem pole both for pacifists (less important than peace) and for warriors (less important than winning).

Pacifists opposed resisting the Axis bid to conquer and plunder the world. Strutting warriors furthered it. Basically they were both on the side of Nazi tyranny.

If either pacifists or warriors had prevailed against reason-based morality in the last two millennia then there would be no such thing as democracy or human rights, only the obsequiousness of pacifists and the bullying of warriors. If our species still existed at all.

John Pilger is right about our total failure to remember more than the proverbial goldfish as predicted by George Orwell. We really do need to get some more historians of note.
Then Johno bangs on about Kim Il Sung an absolute dictator who enriched the elites more than any capitalist and crushed the ordinary man. His Grandson is now carrying on the work started by the vicious despot. Funny, if the oppression is communist, great! if its not communist big sad face.
JP has never changed and I have been reading him since the 1960's in the London Daily Mirror.

Written by John Pilger, what more can one say?

Other than boring.

From the title, I thought it might be a valuable study but when I saw who the author was I just went to read the comments.

I am very disappointed how Pilger does not seem to understand the concept of his own claims about equality and human freedoms.

Look to his mention of Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America (1971) who says that the people of a continent (South America) historical memory was colonised and mutated by the dominance of the United States. What? How could that be?

Does Pilger forget that not only is the North and South American continents European/colonial history a mere 500 years young, but the Spanish/Portuguese had the same start as the English in the North, even somewhat a stronger and wealthier start. It was only in the last century or so that the English colonies have clearly turned out better in all ways vital and the Spanish colonies are near third-world. However this is not isolated to the Americas, the trend is global.

Like all leftists, Pilger seems to be of the opinion that the South Americans are infantile and unable to make choices or act for themselves, but most South Americans are not natives some other underprivileged group. They are descended from Spanish (mostly) Europeans and for 300-400 years Spain was at least as strong and prosperous as England and France, they only went down relatively recently and why should the Anglo people get the blame?

Pilger again expresses this erroneous and very telling belief about Asians when he mentions the Korean war as if it was a terrible event of US criminality. Pilger’s description of the Korean War as a “slaughter” of the South Koreans is all revealing to me. First he conveniently forgets that like Vietnam and most other wars between WWII and the Soviet collapse, the war was never one-sided with the USA just invading and killing people. The wars were always an ideological battle between the two main forces, the Chinese/Russian and the West (USA). Korea like later Vietnam was going to be invaded and culturally genocide (like Tibet in modern day) by the Chinese and their allies of the North. Whilst USA are not Asian should not mean they are not welcome to prevent mass murder and the complete destruction of all of Asia’s future.

The US may have used force to shape historical events and shape national economies and cultures, but that was in counter to other even more hostile and more unfriendly to the natives, forces of China etc., but IF they did not there would be NO SUCH THING AS modern South Korea which enjoys a modern, western lifestyle. Instead of S. Korea the current North Korea would be the entire Korea area, and who can seriously tell me that this would have been a better outcome?
And just to get in first, in case (as Leftists often use) the argument that US is foreign to Asia and should have butted out, like in the middle east today, I would say that their stupidity is unfair and its persistence is inhuman and criminally negligent to humanity. Surely no-one is stupid enough not to know that like the US, both the Chinese and the Soviets were in this period and now even, engaged in all levels of espionage and takeovers, sometimes by direct military intervention.

STOP TREATING NON-WESTERNERS/NON-WHITES AS IF THEY WERE MENTALLY INCAPACITED OR FEEBLE! ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL! START TREATING THEM AS SUCH

It's probably redundant to note again the extreme selectivity of Pilger's peculiar view of history. It would seem that for him the hundreds of thousands of Chinese that the abominable megalomaniac Mao hurled into the Korean War did not exist. Possibly the idiot thinks that North Korea today is a good thing for its people.

I don't think that anyone at all well informed takes this journalistic charlatan seriously, but unfortunately he seems always to be able to find dupes ready to pay for his political snake oil.

Tony O'Brien
Kettering
Tasmania
Australia

Pilger's posts seem to reflect that he has gone off his meds. Trying to blame the Korean war on the west shows how far he has sunk into his delusion.

It's rather informative to open Google Earth and then navigate to the Korean Peninsular.

Start at the southern tip and follow the roads and rail lines north, lots to see; especially if one was there 60 years ago.

Then one reaches the boarder and development comes to a sudden halt.

Even better go to Night View, South Korea is a blaze of light whereas John Pilger would give North Korea the World Prize for 'energy conservation', it's brighter than the Antarctic but not much.

Must indicate something.