Spare a thought for John Pilger, the platonic ideal of the left-wing journalist. Pilger has been relatively quiet during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tweeting only a handful of times. Perhaps that’s because Pilger has not once, not twice, not three times, not four times but five times mocked the idea that Russia would invade Ukraine in recent months — as well as spelling out in an article two weeks ago that claims of an imminent invasion were pure hysteria.
Indeed, a month ago Pilger claimed “the war mongering of Biden and his UK echoes is exposed, like Blair’s, as a crime”, and followed that up just a fortnight ago with the sneer “the absence of a Russian ‘invasion’ a bitter disappointment to its most avid promoters in London” and compared the Biden administration’s rhetoric to the Bush administration’s lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Pilger must be bitterly disappointed that the man he has valiantly defended, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has ended up invading another country and slaughtering civilians. “The invasion of a sovereign state is lawless and wrong,” Pilger generously allowed on the weekend, using uncharacteristically mild language. Quite a contrast with his usual rhetoric aimed at the West — filled as it is with “warmongers”, “lies and racism”, “pure propaganda”, “brainless smears”, “modern day fanaticism” and “holocaust”.
Ukraine itself has received plenty of such epithets from Pilger — it is “Europe’s only openly neo-Nazi infested country while Britain trains Ukraine’s neo-Nazi infested National Guard”.
In Pilger’s world, Russia is purely a victim.
“NATO, with a proven record of rapacious war, now completely surrounds Russia in the west,” he claimed on Monday, presumably having adjusted his map of Europe to remove Finland and Sweden, and handed the whole of Ukraine to Putin.
If Putin’s attack on Ukraine is “lawless and wrong”, it has only been provoked by a campaign of Western humiliation of Russia and constant military threats from NATO. After all, Pilger insists, “almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s ‘borderland’ that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.” Not to mention that the current Ukrainian government is a pack of Nazis installed by Barack Obama in 2014 (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is famously Jewish, but no matter).
In a genuinely weird, pop culture reference-laden piece promoted by Pilger yesterday, even Russian interference in Western elections was dismissed as propaganda; Putin (who “constantly displays an exceptional emotional and intellectual discipline”) was only insisting “the civil rights and culture of Russians stranded in the Near Abroad be respected”.
For Pilger, the West is always to blame. It is eternally engaging in genocide, war crimes, class war, mass slaughter and cover-ups involving compliant media, all related by Pilger with that famous mix of lugubriousness and sanctimony. His most recent obsession has been the National Health Service in the UK, which he insists is under relentless attack from the right (alas, funding has increased in real terms for the NHS every year for over a decade, but anyway).
Atrocities, slaughter and suppression of human rights outside the West are either ignored or dismissed as propaganda, like China’s horrific persecution of Uyghurs (which is just a “propaganda campaign” by the US) or the civil war in Syria (Pilger has been an ardent defender of the monstrous Assad regime and its Russian protector to the point of conspiracy theory).
Whose war is it, John?
Now, so what? It’s been the best part of 40 years since Pilger was important in journalistic terms. Who cares what his hot take on an invasion he insisted wouldn’t happen is? But Pilger still retains significant influence on the left; an eminence grise (or is that grease?) of activist journalism seen as a hero of truth-telling by a generation of left-wingers. It’s also hard to avoid Pilger if you share any of his views — for those of us who have long supported Julian Assange, Pilger’s full-throated backing for the persecuted journalist currently rotting in Belmarsh prison has been an embarrassment, but you take help where you can get it.
More to the point, Pilger’s embrace of conspiracy theories and polarised perspectives reflects the horseshoe effect by which the far left and the far right gradually merge and end up reinforcing each other. Alienation loves company, as it were.
As the Republicans in the US currently demonstrate, the emergence of a radical, anti-democratic narrative combining cherrypicked anti-institutional and anti-elite elements from all extreme worldviews can become a potent threat to democracy, flawed as it might be in the West.
“The restoration of imperial mythology demands, above all, a permanent enemy,” Pilger concluded in his essay dismissing the threat of Russian invasion.
Certainly, Ukrainians understand what it is to be an enemy of Putin’s imperial mythology.
“His most recent obsession has been the National Health Service in the UK, which he insists is under relentless attack from the right (alas, funding has increased in real terms for the NHS every year for over a decade, but anyway).”
That is a really naive and ignorant summation of the direction of the NHS, taken straight from Tory propaganda. The demands on the NHS due to UK demographics are increasing faster than the funding and the government knows it. If the funding had been maintained as it used to be it would be many, many billions ahead of where it is now. Much of the funding which would have gone to treating patients and paying staff in the past now goes to bureaucracy inflicted by crazy new internal competition rules, ideological reorganisations and ministerial brain-farts, outsourcing to grasping corporations that make generous political donations and employ many retired politicians, and the diabolically costly PFI scams which lock health authorities into decades-long inflexible contracts paying for buildings they might not even need.
The link in Keane’s article also shows the funding related to the Covid epidemic. The is a particularly egregious example of the gulf between money spent and any health outcomes. The government ran a fast-track scam for its mates which allowed anyone with a minister’s phone number to be handed contacts, no questions asked and no tenders required. Many billions disappeared into companies charging staggering mark-ups on goods that were often found to be shoddy or just unusable. The scam was recently found to be illegal, not that there’s been any consequences. (Except no doubt the Tories have added that to the list of reasons it must curb the independence of the judiciary.) The magazine Private Eye produced an excellent special report about it.
The real way to look at the NHS is its outcomes for patients and its medical staffing. These show it is coming apart at the seams after more than a decade of austerity, the consequences of Brexit and government mismanagement. Keane seems well able to see the real state of aged care in Australia, but he is apparently blind when it comes to the NHS in the UK.
you need to provide links also❗️
That would be a clever trick. Although others succeed in including links in their comments, my comments are blocked if I include a link or a web address. I guess the others are accessing this site by a different route such as social media that I do not use and they are therefore subject to different filters on thier posts. Even if I try to disguise the link by for example replacing the punctuation of the hyperlink with words like [my first attempt to reply was rather ironically blocked by the modbot because of a three letter word I used here which is a synonym for ‘full stop’] it is still blocked. I have several times over several years asked others here if they have a work-around I could use, but nobody has ever come up with one. So it does not matter how much I need to provide links, I cannot do it on this site. I wish I could. It is endlessly frustrating. But it cannot be done.
The relevant link in Keane’s article is the link included in the line I quoted at the head of my comment. Any other links you want me to provide you will have to do without.
Heres a random link. Try posting it yourself. https://ukrainianart.com/
You serious? I’ve been posting links at various times and getting blocked for over ten years. What on earth makes you imagine I need to test it again? Just after I’ve been blocked anyway?
Bernard
40 years since Pilger was relevant journalistically? I think you’ll find that, quite aside from his years of championing Wikileaks, his millions of readers in english and translation across the global South, and his films such as Utopia – millions of peoples main source of information about aboriginal oppression – add up to a degree of influence that you, I and this publication can only dream of. It is, in any case, irrelevant to an argument about the validity of someone’s opinion or ideas
Utopia was about the most one-sided film I ever saw, driven by a distinct lack of curiosity on the part of its creator. I caught it at UNSW, and Pilger was at the screening for a Q&A afterwards. When asked what should be done with Australia’s multi-billion-dollar annual Indigenous Affairs budget, Pilger replied “we should just give it to ‘them’ [Aboriginal people]!”. I think he expected applause, but you really got the sense this was a man who hadn’t thought deeply about anything in a while.
And Pilger’s opinion and ideas on Putin are wrong, which makes his continuing degree of influence a pity in this case. I have no quarrel with Marxist philosophy as such, and some of my best friends are etc, but I find some Marxists irritating for a couple of reasons. One is their tendency to wash everything with a broad ideological brush, ignoring facts in favour of the general position that the US is a warmongering capitalist power and therefore it must be to blame for whatever. Yes the US is a warmongering capitalist power and is to blame for many disasters, but not eg the civil war in Syria which was started by Assad 2 years before the US became involved even in a clandestine way. I’m also annoyed by their arrogance, where they are convinced they are right about everything even where they have zero expertise in the subject under discussion, such as Russia’s cyber attacks in relation to the US election.
Irony meter just exploded.
Why? I expect the right to be irrational. I used to believe better of the left.
Hey Zara, having exactly the same experience here, being disappointed by these spiteful responses to BK’s insightful critique.
Here’s a fun thought. Imagine George Orwell was still around today and that he’d just written “Animal Farm”. Can’t you just see the Left here attacking the USA and the UK and absolutely refusing to engage with Orwell’s critique of Stalinism?
Genuine question, how does a government of several ethnic, religious, secular & europhile parties, faced with a Daesh insurgency[cf], ”start a civil war”?
Perhaps the question should be ‘Why?’.
As I understand it, Bashar al Assad took over as President of Syria in 2000 from the previous president, his father Hafez al-Assad, who took power in 1971. By March 2011 after 40 years, many Syrians had had enough of the Assad regime and there were widespread protests as part of the Arab Spring movement. Instead of stepping down, as happened in Egypt, Assad’s immediate response was military. The Army fired on the protesters; the protests became even more widespread; the protesters organised, started firing back and the civil war began. The US did not become involved until 2013, the Daesh caliphate was declared in 2014.
As for Why? I can only surmise Bashar al-Assad was willing to declare war on his own people and destroy his own country rather than give up power.
That account is partly true but misses crucial points.”By March 2011 after 40 years, many Syrians had had enough of the Assad regime…” entirely misses the part played by several foreign powers hostile to the Assad regime. They worked hard to destabilise Assad and mount a coup under cover of a popular uprising, hoping they could pick up the pieces and profit from it.
There was, and is, nothing very nice or pleasant about the Assad dictatorship, but it was generally tolerant to its own population so long as not directly threatened. Education and healthcare were reasonable given the state of its economy and in some respects such as religious freedom and preservation of its historic sites it was an example to the whole region.
Exactly, Sinking SR. The US war planners had Syria in their sights for decades, the logic being the destruction on the majority of ME countries even slightly aligned with Russia. Conversely, the 9/11 attackers were primarily Saudis, the Saddam links to Al Quaeda a complete fabrication….soooo…..Bush attacks Iraq and Afghanistan ???. And they would have us believe. that OBL, a fugitive hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, had the wherewithall to disable the Pentagon missile shield and all the other fantasies for which he’s blamed. Vietnam was already in the planning phase when Korea was ongoing. The US happily support worse dictators than Assad.
Ask yourself why a majority Sunni army, commanded almost entirely by battle hardened Sunni generals (not desk jockeys), would fight so hard for so long for the regime, initially against all that the US proxies could throw atthem, using all those toys they found in Iraq.
Which, btw, used to have the largest (ethnically arab, ie Copt not Maronite) xtian community in the ME – guess where the largest community now is.
Millions of Americans follow crazy ideas in a Far Right bubble. That also a huge “degree of influence”..
Are such ideas relevant journalistically – relevant to serious journalism for engaged people?
Just like the Right the Left has its extremists and BK shows that Pilger is in that pantheon (especially while brave Ukrainians are getting shot at, mutilated for life and killed by Putin’s forces while Pilger goes on about the evil West).
Bernard, why the savagecattack on Pilger, especially with generalised and unjustified pejoration? People need alternative voices and his is legitimate as an expression to consider. People are generally quite capable of working out truth from falsehood, balance from imbalance
What’s not appreciated is being addressed with a touch of arrogance as though we were gathered around your feet like school kids for a lesson we otherwise wouldn’t understand.
“People are generally quite capable of working out truth from falsehood… ”
I wish that statement was more credible. Evidence to the contrary is piling up at a terrifying rate. Or perhaps it’s just that being only ‘quite capable’ is not enough when the techniques of deception have advanced so far and become ubiquitous.
We now have Morrison calling on Google and Facebook to ban all Russian media sources as “disinformation.” This is a move that should disturb all of us. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, China — all key conflict zones. That we should end up having to rely on sanitized “truth” drawn largely from Western intelligence sources to know what’s going on in the world then we are heading down a dark road indeed.
Yes but what would you expect from “the West”? Refusal to even accept their own utter hypocrisy of invading Sovereign nations (and associated war crimes) yet carrying on like a bunch of old chooks when another non-Western nation dares to do the same thing. God forbid the populace should hear the other sides views. China should not be on your list BTW.
One rule for the White West, another for everyone else.
Are you equally critical of, to take a random example, the governments of Allied countries not helping distribute German government-controlled news sources during the unpleasantness 1939-1945?
Britain did not jam Lord Haw-Haw broadcasts though they did execute the Irish-American William Joyce for treason.
Rather as the septics want to try Assange for treason.
Like you, I am flabbergasted at the “savage attack” by Bernard on John Pilger. I have been a follower of Pilger for almost as long as he has been a journalist, I have found his reports, books and documentaries credible. Pilger’s belief that Putin would not invade Ukraine was also held by me, should I along with others who thought similarly be ostracized? I guess, in Bernard’s view, we should. Is Bernard infallible? I don’t think so, because his expressed opinion, “People are generally quite capable of working out truth from falsehood, balance from imbalance” has been proven to be incorrect in many cases. There is no infallible human as far as I know.
…. Look how certain elements of our media lauded the likes of “Cormann” and “Shredderjiklian and the NSW Coalition government” for so long?
The Iron Sulphide Maiden, Ms FeS2, of, thankfully, distant memory.
How he vaunted her for so many years, always with the obligatory/muscle memory jab at ‘laborkorrupshun’, yet keened for her hardly at all.
‘Who?’
Well, certain elements of our media do seem to have an axe to grind …
I think it is fine to hold that belief – that the RF would not invade Ukraine. I did too, mainly because I guessed it would be so costly and so pointless, and be such an unoriginal pastiche of 1938 Czechoslovakia melded with 1939 Poland. Anyway border-bullying might do the trick at bargain-basement rates. But I did not dismiss the opposite view frequently in a mocking and humiliating way, because that view also fitted the known “facts”. It is embarrassing to be proved 180 degrees wrong from one day to the next – it usually takes much longer so you can gradually adjust until you can pretend that, “back in the day” you never held the wrong view. Nevertheless it is important to point out, as Keane does, when an “authority” gets it wrong, and here so massively wrong, because it warns us not to accept that authority straight off on any other matter.
I didn’t expect an invasion too – because our PM said Putin would invade. It’s all down to Crikey demonstrating our PM is a credible liar.
So what if John Pilger got it wrong – other voices are important.
Bernard does give a nod to Pilger’s past, in which he has written some brilliant exposes of US imperialism. I think it is a bit sad that Pilger has not been clear sighted enough today to recognise the emergence of a new Tsar like figure ruling Russia, who seems vain enough to aspire for a historical legacy, which is to restore some of the greatness of an imperial past for Russia. As soon as I had read Putin’s essay on the major errors of the Communist leaders-and victors-of the Civil War following the Russian revolution and of the subsequent USSR, I thought that Putin’s aim since 2014, when a Russian puppet President was overthrown, was to correct Kruschev’s administrative error in attaching the Crimea to the utterly subordinate Ukrainian SSR and then to correct the original error of Lenin and Trotsky of settling the Civil War by conceding to Ukrainian nationalists a Ukrainian SSR. After Catherine “the Great”, most of present day Ukraine was simply part of Russia, with a Ukrainian peasantry no longer working for Polish and Lithuanian lords, but e seeded and even less free serving Russian lords. According to a nostalgic, rather feudal conception of Russian greatness, it’s restoration required Ukraine to exist no more apart from Russia. Pilger could once see through the fig leaf of “weapons of mass destruction” -after being routed in his invasion of Iraq and militarily weakened, would Saddam be mad enough to provoke an invasion by an army equipped to deal with chemical and biological warefare?-and rightly condemning the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq. It is therefore rather sad that he can’t see through the fig leaf of alleged Ukrainian attacks on separatist regions of Ukraine and the “evacuation”of women and children to “safety” in Russia, to see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to destroy Ukraine and absorb its territory into the embrace of the “ancient Rus” people. Bernard makes good points about the absurd claims of “encirclement” in the West-a half circle is not a circle- and evoking memories of the Nazi invasion from the West, when there can be no rerun of battles fought seventy years ago between armies without nuclear weapons with any battle with a Russian army today, equipped with tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Putin has rather loudly rattled his nuclear sabres. NATO would be daft to risk a nuclear war. So, while there are a number of shortcomings in Bernard’s article-left and right don’t meet in a circle, although an authoritarian left has much in common with an authoritarian right-he is right overall to call out a seeming fixation on US imperialism on Pilgrr’s part.
Can we call it an invasion though? Putin says they’re Peace Keepers. So whenever any western country sends in Peacekeepers, we now have to report it as an invasion?
By and large, yes.
Yes to the first question. The answer to the second depends on context.
I don’t understand the statement “People are generally quite capable of working out truth from falsehood, balance from imbalance”. This suggests there’s no need for fact checking, critique or critical analysis of any kind. If Pilger has shown ill-judgement in his statements on Russia, isn’t it fair play for Bernard to point this out?
I must say that I find it very strange that your eminently sensible comment has been downvoted.
Crickey survives on group think. How long have you been a reader.
A rather small group, rigorously circumscribed by a callow, clueless claque.
Makes one wonder. There’s definitely an element of left/right tribalism going on.
Yes, but it’s fair for commentators to point out the defects in Bernard Keene’s arguments.
I never said otherwise, but the comment in question does no such thing.
Also, the comment starts with the question “why the savage attack on Pilger”? Answer: because Keane sees many poor arguments from Pilger that need to be exposed. By all means, debate those points, but don’t question the importance of raising them.
It’s good for Pilger to be busted for being wrong about something, and being aware of his slant on things is part of critical reading rather than just receiving ideas. Sometimes one journo has a problem with another because of a cutting comment at a party.
The major haters are the compromised, when not complicit, cheer leaders & camp followers of power who have resented his courage for the last half century.
Would anyone sentient disagree that “the West is…eternally engaging in genocide, war crimes, class war, mass slaughter and cover-ups involving compliant media…”?
Seems like a perfect description of the status quo for most of the last century & a half.
Could BK withstand a fraction of the abuse, vilification and censoring for a fraction of the time which has left Pilger unbowed he’d be doing well.
Little evidence thus far.
I don’t think it’s peculiar to ‘the West’, or to recent times either.
The West is just better at it and it occurs more frequently is all.
Not according to Steven Pinker.
Tea/silver/opium≠gunpowder/’cash’[cf]/ceramics?
Pity about that damned nitrogenous input – like that sublime, silk slicing Damascene steel.
Unintelligible gibberish again.
I’ll call bullsite on that statement.
From the moment the first living organism came into being, life has been a brutal fight of survival.
https://youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs
But if it suits your politics, go ahead and believe the western world is different to any other successful civilization throughout history.
I’m not saying its right…
https://www.rt.com/news/550990-us-nato-sanctions-wars/
Your comment is probably correct but do we, as “modern” human beings, claim to be civilized i.e. are we not told from an early age to respect others and their opinions, cultures and religion along with disregarding skin colour etc. It appears that goes out the window at the drop of a hat when it suits.
It’s not right which is precisely the point. The West has committed egregious acts on African, Middle Eastern, Asian and the America’s for centuries but also in the 21st Century but has the memory and moral compass of a flea. It’s always “look over there” while the amnesia sets in on the Wests abuses.
Well said – and well documented!
If we’re going to go back to the beginning of all life, we’re all going to be obscenely embarrassed by how the whole story since then is one of constantly increasing integration, co-operation and complexity, with permanently declining savagery and strife.
Every last one of us is the cutting edge of a billion years of hideously dangerous struggle that has left us with the ability to appreciate our short lives in more detail than anything else can. The fact that we’re all going to die should make us love each other.
It’s a standing indictment of our species that we put all that aside as “abstract emotional hippy crap” and switch to “being realistic”, which involves shooting children in the face with supersonic steel-jacketed projectiles more often than could possibly be necessary.
Agreed. I regard Pilger as our greatest journalist. HE has spent a lifetime exposing the evils in Australia, the occupation of Timor, the corruption of Suharto, exposed the Pol Pot regime, the illegal sanctions and attacks against Cuba and South American states by the US, the establishment of hundreds of bases to potentially attack China and so on and so on. Without Pilger, Zinn, Chomsky, Rashid, Fisk we would never have sources delivering the real truth – and reporting on location – not from an office at the arse-end of the world Bernard.
Too mild, John, too fair on Keane.
First read Fisk’s reports in the Gulf War. Excellent reporter. Passed away last year.
Robert Fisk was a truly great journalist, I loved his honesty, authenticity and moral commitment. Not to mention courage. I saw many similarities between he and Pilger. But Fisk was meticulous in the rigor of his facts and making arguments, Pilger sadly has not always been so meticulous.
Vale indeed, a huge loss.
Agree jb.
Don’t forget – “The Untold History Of The United States” by Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick – who examine the dark side of American history, from the beginning of the twentieth century right up to the Obama administration.
Apart from his books I have read, Two of Pilger’s films “The War You Don’t See” – investigating the media’s role in war and “Stealing a Nation” – exposing how the UK expelled the Chagossian’s from Diego Garcia so the US could build its largest offshore military base. Pilger consistently shows a passionate commitment to human rights abuses by the powerful.
I think it is fair to conclude that in light of Pilger’s admission that “the invasion of a sovereign state is lawless and wrong”, he has modified his stance on a complex and messy dispute?
On the basis that two wrongs don’t make a right, the US has its grubby hands all over it as well.
Their hegemonic behaviour on the world stage is well documented, as Stone & Kuznick lay bare.
Correction.
“to exposing human rights abuses”
Yes. I have followed Pilger’s writings for decades. The exposure of the dark side of Government murderous behaviour is essential. The US are master at hiding from view the most outrageous cases of ongoing genocide, assassinattions, and more, all the while manipulating he media narrative. Pilger and others like Jeremy Scahill, and Glen Greenwald, risk their lives to bring this stuff into the light. I admire their courage, in the face of very real death threats and worse. The journalist, Michael Hastings, who exposed General McCrystal’s antics in JSOC / Iraq, with his book “The Operators”, was sacked by Obama. Hastings was mysteriously killed in an LA “car accident” at extreme speed, apparently trying to outrun “something” . The family received back an urn supposedly containing his ashes. Conveniently, any evidence of ingested hallucogenic drugs administered to induce some form of panic, was long gone. This is but one example of the dangers these guys face. I doubt many would have the courage. They deserve admiration, whatever the political view.
The USA has done far more damage as evident in
Killing Hope: US and CIA Interventions since WWII/ William Blum/2004
Common Courage Press:MNE. USA: ISBN: 9781567512526 LC JK468.I6 B59
An A-Z of the countries that the USA has interfered with in the name of “freedom” by assassinations, coups, meddling in internal politics, supporting dictators, jihadis, terrorists or just plain straight out invasion…
Afghanistan 1979-1992: 2003-
Australia 1973-1975 and still meddling
Albania 1949-1953, 1991
Angola 1975 to 1980s
Bolivia 1964-1975
Brazil 1961-1964
British Guiana 1953-1964
Bulgaria 1990
Cambodia 1955-1973
Chile 1964-1973
China 1945 to 1960s
Congo 1960-1964
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Cuba 1959 to present
Dominican Republic 1960-1966
El Salvador 1980-1994
East Timor 1975
Ecuador 1960-1963:
France/Algeria 1960s
Germany 1950s
Ghana 1966:
Greece 1947-1950s:1964-1974
Grenada 1979-1984
Guatemala 1953-1954:1960-1980s
Haiti 1959-1963: 1986-1994
Indonesia 1957-1958: 1975
Iran 1953: 1979-
Iraq 1990-1991: 2003-2021
Italy 1947-1970s
Jamaica1976-1980
Korea 1945-1953
Laos 1957-1973
Libya 1981-1989 and still meddling
Morocco 1983
Nicaragua 1978-1990-
Panama 1969-1991
Peru 1960-1965
Philippines:1940s and 1950 but also early 20th century
Seychelles 1979-1981
Suriname 1982-1984
Syria 1956-1957: 2009-
Uruguay 1964-1970
Venezuala 1895.1908-1935, 1948-58, 2002-
Vietnam 1950-1975
Zaire 1975-1978
To which can be added…
Support of a range of SOBs across world;
Assad, Batista, Chiang Kai Shek, Duarte, Duvalier, Franco, Mobuto, Marcos, Ngo Din Diem et al., Noriega, Papadopoulos, Park, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, current Saudi monarchy, Shah of Persia, Pol Pot, Somozas plural, Soeharto, Trujillo..
which includes the world’s three greatest kleptocrats.
Just a 25 year time span 1953-1979
Iran Mossadegh removed despotic Shah installed
Guatemala.
Viet Nam destabilising the north
Laos
Haiti 1 Papa Doc
Cuba, Bay of Pigs
Iraq Qasim removes Ba’ath party/ Saddam start climb to power
Dominican Republic 1
Ecuador
The Congo 1 Lumumba assassinated
Dominican Republic 2
Brasil Castelo Branco death squads
Indonesia Soeharto CIA provides list of “communists” to be slaughtered
Dominican Republic 3
Greece 1
The Congo 2 Mobutu put into power
Greece The Colonels
Cambodia leads to the rise to power of their KR
Bolivia
Haiti 2 Baby Doc
Chile Pinochet put into power
Australia it was the Governor General, a CIA sleeper, who enable the dismissal of a Labor Government
Angola
Nicaragua start of the Contras , a bunch of narcocrims. Where later US was found guilty of supporting terrorism by the ICJ, a finding based on clear evidence showing support given to “Contras” financially, materially, militarily and morally.
Then there was CIA domestic intervention in the USA which its charter said was not supposed to occur. Under both Democrats and Republicans there was Operation Chaos, 1968-1973.
In that last year Richard Helms, then CIA chief, and incidentally the only CIA chief to be convicted of lying to Congress, had to disentangle the CIA from the machinations of the Nixon regime.
I wish that there were some way we could see how many commenters here were aware of any of that.
Age cohorts excepted – and even with those there would be a distressingly large ‘duhh’ response – I’d bet not 10% of those who gift us their scintillating … striving to be polite… opinions.
And yet, who would you prefer as the world’s superpower? And what does it tell us about Putin’s Ukraine invasion and the US response?
Here’s an idea – how about NONE?
Zero, zilch, nada – no single entity able to threaten the entire globe?
Wow, thanks Phryne. For all that waffling all you can give is a non-answer!
Is this why Keane launched his attack? Cant stand the broader truths articulated by John Pilger over many years? Or why?
I don’t want a pedantic point to distract from the seriousness of the matter under discussion, but “Who’s war” instead of “Whose”? Please, editor.
Even buried in the turgid text SpellCheck should have picked up that howler.
To have it as a sub heading would embarrass a student rag – small wonder that it sails through here.
How often does one see bad grammar being published by “journalists” these days? Far too frequently, in my opinion.
I suspect it’s because of cost-cutting, and spell-checker taking the place of subeditors. I’ve almost given up on ‘it’s’, which is a silly rule anyway.
I have also abandoned hope re “it’s”; I rarely post about it now. I am assuming that the journalists with the grammar and language problems compensate by being digitally brilliant.
Do let us know about any sign of that ‘brillig’ digistuff.
It tends to make my teeth ache when inadvertently encountered.
I saw Samantha Maiden, on Twitter, suggest that Morrison caught Covid from Facebook, due to her appaling sentence structure & lack of good grammar!
I cringe listening to RN in the mornings. So often repoerters and people who should know better use singular modifiers when referring to plural subjects – “there is so many people who do such and such”. The use of “they’re” is non- existent – it’s always “there’s 50 casulties etc etc” Sigh…..
Do the majority of Australians actually care about grammar? Like wine, classical music and ballet, It’s not the European status symbol it used to be.
A sad point to be made!
Crikey and Bernard Keane like to be taken seriously – and mostly should be – but this kind of sloppiness is irritating. I’m with you Curmudgeon.
I believe he was just having an emotional rant and it got away from him.
Yes I was put off by yesterdays rant. Could not believe the smugness of some commentators who were so pleased with themselves because of the invasion. Yes I am prejudiced as I was (hoping) saying that a conciliation was possible ie no invasion. There is certainly evil amoungst a readership that relishes an outcome resulting in the deaths of multiple innocent civilians.