Wow Polycarp - your last paragraph shows you've been pretty busy this weekend. Was it fun? I'm surprised you had time to post with all that debauchery, but I suppose you had to come up for air and tell someone about it. Perhaps it would be safer to pace yourself - say one a week?

Dear John.
Good to read you doing what OzIntellectuals do well.
What you don't mention is the fact that our system is utterly corrupted with the same games of hate being applied to everyone in this country or anyone else we deal with, who doesn't have a solid bank account and the means to employ a team of lawyers.
Let's make that plain - some of us peasants may use their last credits to employ lawyers.
Their sort always get fleeced and inevitably lose in court.

Litigant's money has to be big money - enough to buy 'counsel' off and keep them suppled with booze, mistresses, or whatever they fancy through the inevitable state funded appeals process.
Even then it helps if your desired outcome also suits your 'legal friend''s agenda.
The same old saw since well before 1788.

To continue addressing your reasoning -
ETimor, Timor Leste, civil fashion, could be run with a Qld Shire Council with a couple of years experience under the belt.
The infrastructure there isn't that far behind what we endure in regional Queensland.
Except most Aussies don't go about assassinating Shire Chairmen.

A bit of a phase shift might have Mr Pilger realising that Southern Australians are emigrating to Northern regions and existing under bridges or under canvas. The resources boom hasn't helped them any more than it has helped ordinary people in E Timor.

Hidden Empire?
No. Hidden hate - hidden, carefully disguised contempt for any form of decency.

Mr Pilger, what an unintelligent and paranoid rant full of innuendo and smear but with little fact. Looks like the article was cut and pasted from numerous collected newspaper articles with little logic to link the ideas. One paragraph begins with Ramos-Horta and ends up talking about underweight Aboriginal children.

Perhaps Pilger should ask his mate Hugo Chavez why the poverty rates in oil rich Venezuela have apparently not fallen rather than accuse Australia of resource misuse.

I usually enjoy Pilger's polemical rants, and this one is no exception. What I like particularly are the furious responses he elicits from his targets, who invariably resemble ants when a brick is dropped on their nest.

Of course, as in this case, it's because Pilger's analysis is usually pretty close to the mark. It's utterly unsurprising that many of his subjects aren't very happy with his depiction of them.

Who says that Pilger likes to slag Australia? What rubbish!

Some of his best and most positive writing is about his emotional ties to the land of his birth – especially Sydney’s eastern suburbs where he grew up.

As Jimmy560 says, ‘He is getting published all over the world and is one of the most important voices on international affairs.’ Yet he is still largely shunned by the mainstream Australian media. That is our loss.

And hardly surprising. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Pilger has refused to kowtow to the smug Australian narrative about a bunch of boys in the bush turning an empty but bountiful land into the jewel of the southern hemisphere.

If there were any justice, he would be a household name in Australia. But there isn’t, so HE isn’t.

I at least commend OLO for adding him to its stable of contributors.

I'd have thought that there was nothing HIDDEN about this at all. Howard was extremely overt in all the areas Pilger mentions. And the new sheriff, the Milky Bar Kid aint very different. I'd suggest that Pilger's examples with E Timor, Afghanistan, NG and The Solomans, and in the NT have the motive to help as well as 'our' self interest.

Pilger forgets (if he ever knew) that Lateline was approached by members of the Mutitjulu Womens Council who wanted to expose the activities of pedophiles in that community. Hardly an anonymous smear campaign.

BTW, doesn't Rudds use of "arsenal of freedom" have a horribly Orwellian ring to it?