I'm afraid Palimpsest that you'll have to back up your claims, because:

(a) There is no "Mutitjulu Womens Council"

(b) Nobody invited Lateline to Mutitjulu http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/news/2006/september/smh16sep06.html

(c) The women were furious and "expressed shock and bewilderment at the ABC's portrayal of Mutitjulu and distress at the damage to their community's reputation."

I can't say I'm much of a fan of Pilger, as I find him a biased polemicist. BUT in this case he has summed up the situation correctly.

Johnj, stand corrected on the detail, should have checked against a faltering memory. 21 June 2006 a senior law woman from NPY lands,Mantatjara Wilson and Jane Lloyd of the NPY Women's Council appeared on Lateline describing goings on at Mutitjulu, along with an anonymous Social worker and others. Mutitjulu is within and part of the NPY lands and part of the NPY women's council.

The anonymous youth worker Pilger refers to to support his claims of a smear campaign just happened to be an aboriginal who had worked at Mutitjulu, and had previously been threatened by thugs after giving testimony in another case, hence his desire for anonymity. And the following year a Mutitjulu man was charged with stalking him.

I did not suggest that Lateline was invited to the rock, but said that Mutitjulu women had gone to Lateline. Cultural sensitivities dictated that these women of the NPY had to pay reparations to the menfolk for their expose.

It is now on the record that paedophile activities in the region were known about by authorities for many years without action. There is an awful lot of arse covering going on.

Another great article from John Pilger.

As I have written elsewhere, the Australian empire is built on an alliance with the imperialism of a dominant power. At the moment that is the US, but its ongoing decline may see us possibly shift camps. While unlikely it is a possibility. Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is an insurance policy aimed at gaining US support for our own imperialist muscle flexing and/or adventures in the region,(Solomon Islands, East Timor, PNG, Vanuatu, Indonesia etc) and to impose our power on the weaker states, to warn possible competitors we are top dog, and to show China we have a very very strong military friend.

This is not the rantings of the mad left. Alan Stretton (the hero of Darwin and former head of our military) wrote recently in the Canberra Times that our [politicians were sacrificing young Australians for the false security and alliance with the US brings.

Our imperialism abroad mirrors our colonialism at home. The NT intervention was never about sexual abuse. It was about overturning land rights and other minor gains Aborigines have made in the last 30 years of struggle, using the same logic of paternalism that saw the stolen generation come about.

No wonder the Racial Discrimination Act had to be amended to exclude the intervention from its ambit becuase clearly the actions taken are discriminatory on the basis of race.

The US and Canada have reduced the gap between life expectancy for indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. Why can't we as a a nation do the same?

More Pilger please.

Ah yes Palimpsest, the "anonymous youth worker" (called Greg Andrews actually), who wasn't a youth worker at all and had never lived at Mutitjulu (though he had co-ordinated a program there), who just happened to be working in Mal Brough's office....

I was interested that you mentioned NPY Women's Council in your post as I have a friend who used to work with them. I visited Alice Springs a few months ago and asked her what she thought about the intervention. After she stopped swearing (which took a while) she said is was "just a bunch of bureaucrats flying up from Canberra and driving around in Landcruisers" and a colossal waste of money.

"It is now on the record that paedophile activities in the region were known about by authorities for many years without action. There is an awful lot of arse covering going on." I'm not aware of a single pedophile charge arising out of the intervention. Meanwhile there's been plenty of evidence of rampant STDs (and other preventable diseases), poor nutrition, inadequate housing, contaminated water supplies etc etc. But of course, these don't make good tabloid fodder do they?

Mr Pilger's comments, are obviously overboard, from any perspective of understanding what the Prescribed Area People's have been working towards acheiving over the past months building toward the convergence in Alice during the previous eight days. He seems to be almost goading the politicians into becoming quite as fully conscious of their devastating work as the fears we all try to combat, might push us into. Yet his way of influencing the rest of the media, has a different pattern in it, to the pattern of Aboriginal and Indigenous Australian culture. Perhaps his approach is realistic, in that among those white fellows of this modern world, how the media tends to condition most white Australian's brains, might need the sort of mockery of government which he is using, just so as to facilitate that he might find a way to get stronger media attention for the issues at stake. The media needs some sort of shock into realising that the entirity of white Australia can not longer afford to ignore the real lives of Indigenous minorities all over the world, but most particularly here in our own country. Perhaps Mr Pilger has hit the nail on the head with the kind of shock which white Australian readers needed. And if he has not, then I am quite sure that he is capable of being made to realise how his approach is being swallowed by all of us. I reckon we need to let him figure out for himself how to attract more media attention to the issues, even if none of us might like him for it in the end, at least he is a prominent media personality who won't shy from sticking his neck out to report Aboriginal matter. If he wants to do it in a way that promotes his own personality at the same time, that's his own problem to work out.

Please read the public statment made by the women who live in prescribed areas, from the prescribed area people's alliance, who met on Monday 29th. It is now available at http://rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com

For readers not familiar with what a prescribed area is, it is an area of residence, in which all Aboriginal families are required to comply with the conditions of the federal govt's emergency intervention legislation.

I want to ask all Australians the question: Whose emergency is this any way, because perhaps it always has been a white people's emergency of the realisation that this nation has to turn around and start to listen to indigenous land care knowledge.