Half a glass of Pilger Lite, half a pint of weasel.
“Award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker”, John Pilger has given an interview to that Indymedia-with-a-budget site, Democracy Now. He claims that President Obama is a “a creation of this media world” who “delivered virtually the opposite” of what he “promised” and ”started his own war in Pakistan”.
So, the US, under Obama is responsible for the war in Pakistan? Nothing at all to do with the Taliban making a grab for a nuclear powered state!
But of course, Pilger also intimates that President Obama’s fingerprints are behind the coup in Honduras and the unrest in Iran.
“We see the events in Iran and Honduras in quiet subtlety, but very directly influenced in the time-honored way by the Obama administration. And yet the Obama administration is still given this extraordinary benefit of the doubt by people, who in my view are influenced by the mainstream media.”
Fortunately, below the video of the interview is a transcription. This saves one from having actually to listen to Pilger’s incredibly inarticulate mumbling and verbal stumbling as he struggles to marshall his thoughts into coherence. And, all this is delivered in a drone which I suspect must be calculated to be the precise frequency required to penetrate tinfoil hats. In print, at least, he appears fluent, and his poisonous tongue is more easily exposed.
Naturally, it doesn’t take long before the discussion takes a sharp left-turn and suddenly Israel is centre stage. Wow, we’re talking about Obama’s relation to events in Pakistan, Honduras and Iran and *wham!* suddenly we’re talking about Israel? How did we get onto that? Oh, of course, all that talk about “manipulation” in “the mainstream media” must have triggered neurons to fire like laser bolts at an Imperial Death Star: tchew… tchew… jew… jew…
Indeed, seemingly out of the blue, interviewer Amy Goodman declares:
I want to play for you a clip of David Gregory on NBC. He replaced Tim Russert as the moderator of Meet The Press. And he was interviewing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the midst of the crackdown on the protest in Iran.
Oh, I get it. She wants to contrast the way “the mainstream media” reports the treatment of protesters in Iran with the treatment of “protesters” in Israel. And Pilger doesn’t disappoint her in his response:
“But no one ever presses an Israeli leader. Netanyahu or Olmert or any of them. There are given, Israeli leaders were given a legitimacy during what was unconditionally a massacre in December-January of this year. And the sum of that was to suggest, number one, that there was a war between Israel and Gaza and there wasn’t.”
What interests me is that the far-Left keep insisting that Hamas is the “democratically elected government in Gaza” yet seem to think that Israel should treat Hamas’s aggressive acts as a domestic affair. Well you can’t have it both ways. If Hamas are the “democratically elected government” then it is their responsibility not to make trouble with a neighbour and to heed the warnings of consequences if they fire rockets. If Hamas were leading, as Pilger says a “defenseless country”, then why did they themselves refuse to support a ceasefire? Pilger then criticises Obama with a question that makes this baffling claim:
“Did he reach out to the government in Gaza, which in spite of the media distortion, has time and again called for a two-state agreement in the Middle East?”
Hamas has called for a two-State solution? Time and again? Wow. I’m tempted to say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ – except of course he has!
Anyway, let’s not get distracted by the inevitable anti-Israel sideshow that somehow always becomes central to any discussion about global politics in any region. We all know why this is.
Let’s return to the sickening moral relativism of this crank:
“[T]he demonizing of Iran goes on, the lecturing of Iran, which is extremely political complex society, goes on. And the policy is unchanged. The crime always is independence. Iran is an independent state and has almost miraculously maintained itself in forms that we might not approve of, certainly, but it has maintained itself as an independent, major state in the Middle East. That is absolutely intolerable to the U.S. State.
“And Obama has not shifted from that at all. He has made a number of patronizing appeals to the Iranians, but now, as he is in effect saying, the protesters should be allowed to control the streets of Tehran. Turn that around. What if it was suggested that protesters should be allowed to control the streets of Washington? But that of course is another side of double standards.”
Perhaps that is because the US is a democracy! People do periodically take to the streets to protest this or that in a democracy. They are not gunned down by agents of the state on motorcycles. Pilger can’t seem to appreciate that not only can free people protest, but they have a hell of a lot less to protest about! It didn’t take a “miracle” for Iran to “maintain itself in forms that we might not approve”, it took – and continues to take – brutal repression by a theocratic fascist state!
And speaking of theocratic fascists. The hostilities in Pakistan – that he began talking about before being diverted neatly into talking about Jews – appear in Pilger’s world to have nothing to do with the aggressive expansionist plans of the Taliban. Oh no, this is, according to Pilger, an American ”colonial” war. (Really, ships are leaving New York with settlers from Brooklyn on their way to new sunny climes in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan? Really?)
He says:
“Obama has begun a new war. There is in Obama war and that is Pakistan. The shaking of the hornets’ nest, if you like, in Pakistan, which this administration has done willfully, is a historic disaster. The creation of up to 2 million refugees in Northwestern Pakistan caused by the attacks by the Pakistanis government, egged on and paid for by the Obama administration, the use of electronic battlefield weapons such as drones and other unmanned vehicles. Drones have killed according to the Pakistanis authorities, American drones launched from I believe near Las Vegas have killed something like 700 civilians since the inauguration of president Obama. So there is a new war. It is a war in Pakistan.”
I’m not really sure what fools like Pilger want. Do they want groups like the Taliban, assorted Islamists and rogue states like the Jonestown II that is North Korea, to simply march unhindered so far that the only thing that will stop them is another world war?
One might mistake him for one of those ‘end of days’ lunatics.
Gene adds: The point which Hamas apologists like Pilger fail to grasp (or acknowledge) is that Hamas not only rejects a two-state solution. It rejects a one-state solution– that is, the far-Left fantasy of Arabs and Jews living peacefully together in a “democratic secular” Palestine.
As Hamas representative Azzam Tamimi made clear (when he told a Tel Aviv-born Israeli to “go back to Germany”), the only solution Hamas supports is a Jew-free solution.
Comments
| 8 July 2009, 11:29 am |
In MY view, the mans a prick, always has been, always will be.
| 8 July 2009, 11:29 am |
He and Amy just think it makes them sound superiour if they strike a pose of always disapproving of the west and always approving our enemies. They’re barely capable of thought but they do understand status.
| 8 July 2009, 11:41 am |
He is a loon.
| 8 July 2009, 11:51 am |
I’d like your blog a little more if you were a little less selective in the evidence you use to support your claims. You state that Hamas do not want a two-state solution and then provide a link to an article in Haaretz confirming your assertion. But a quick google search quickly uncovers instances in which Hamas have said they would be open to a two-state solution – for example this article from CNN: http://digg.com/u17YZk – there are numerous reported instances between 2006 and 2009 of Hamas doing this.
You’re also pushing the limits a bit when you describe Pilger as being ‘far-left’!
| 8 July 2009, 11:53 am |
One might mistake him for one of those ‘end of days’ lunatics.
Can’t say fairer (or more accurately) than that.
| 8 July 2009, 11:59 am |
What a joy it is as Pilger, Jeremy Hardy et al, discover Obama is a patriotic American who loves Western Values & is prepared to face up to Islamic terrorism.
I used to think Obama was a bit of a media construct. I think I was wrong & he will be a truly great president.
Apart from fans of the grotesque, who reads Pilger anyway
| 8 July 2009, 11:59 am |
Oliver, the article you link to says that a Hamas official “mentioned the possibility of a ‘two-state’ solution”. This is hardly even evidence of a policy shift let alone Hamas “calling for a two-state solution, time and time again” as Pilger asserts.
| 8 July 2009, 12:02 pm |
the US is a democracy! People do periodically take to the streets to protest this or that in a democracy. They are not gunned down by agents of the state on motorcycles.
Nope, never happened in recent US history that. certainly not in Kent State, or Jackson State. and certainly, protestors in Britain would never be killed by agents of the state. not Ian Tomlinson or Blair Peach. nor in the democracies of France, Israel, etc etc… the list goes on.
but since you’re intentionally misreading Pilger – he point is that people are allowed to take to the streets in the USA to protest, but they’re carefully controlled by the state in almost every instance in the last 5 or so years.
He’s saying that people are never allowed to take over the streets in protest in the US, and he’s right. see myriad examples in recent years.
| 8 July 2009, 12:03 pm |
It’s come to the point where it should be reasonable to ask if his previously good writings pointed to a good soul, or just a repellent creature who happened to be on the right side here and there.
| 8 July 2009, 12:09 pm |
An utter, utter cunt, Pilger. Always has been, always will be.
| 8 July 2009, 12:09 pm |
Brett – excellent post, thank you.
| 8 July 2009, 12:18 pm |
‘But the way our perception of those events in Iran has been manipulated is to suggest that this was a revolution that was said to overthrow the Islamic revolution of 1979. That is simply just not true.’
I don’t understand how he could know anything about the situation in Iran and say this, particularly as he doesn’t explain why it is ’simply just not true’.
| 8 July 2009, 12:21 pm |
Pilger plays fast and loose with facts. There are certainly a myriad of other examples in that text (e.g. drone launched from Las Vegas) but I think Brett has nailed the main ones.
| 8 July 2009, 12:22 pm |
I’m not really sure what fools like Pilger want.
Oh, please.
| 8 July 2009, 12:24 pm |
What Hamas has certainly promised, is a “hudna” of no more than ten years duration. That would be condition on Israel withdrawing from the West Bank entirely, opening its borders, and permitting the ‘return’ to Israel of all persons able to claim Palestinian descent.
This is the offer which is usually summarised as “accepting a two state solution”.
Against that offer, you need to place the multiple and vociferous denial that any such permanent settlement is – as a matter of theology – possible.
| 8 July 2009, 12:28 pm |
Wally, your name – did you yourself choose it – really suits you.
| 8 July 2009, 12:31 pm |
Mesquito, I certainly am not. What do nihilists like Pilger actually want?
| 8 July 2009, 12:32 pm |
Pilger has been a loon for a very long time. Its funny that he complains that no one “presses” Israeli leaders. When was the last time Pilger was pressed? The Hamas ‘two-state’ lie would have been an easy follow up question, but you won’t hear it at Democracy Now.
Where he really sinks lowest though is in talking about Cambodia. For decades he has talked about the Khmer Rouge as if America created them and supported them. No mention of his heroes in North Vietnam who actually trained, supplied, supported, and fought alongside them. No mention that his North Vietnamese heroes were the ones that brought the Vietnam war to Cambodia.
Its a shame so much of his reporting was in the pre-internet age and is inacessible. I’m sure he has a lot of commentary he’d like to remain forgotten.
| 8 July 2009, 12:36 pm |
Mesquito, I certainly am not. What do nihilists like Pilger actually want?
To restart history with themselves in control. To place bullets into the skulls of their tormenters.
| 8 July 2009, 12:43 pm |
Pilger has wanted armageddon for sometime.
Only then can there be a power shift back to communism.
Pilger’s views are roughly as offesnsive as that of Nick Griffin’s.
Its strange the MSM never describes his as a ‘Far Left’ racist or thug though.
He’s always a ‘journalist’, rather than a ‘neo-Nazi’ etc.
This blindness and stupidity of the ‘moderate Left’ is the real problem.
| 8 July 2009, 12:53 pm |
Oliver: “Hamas have said they would be open to a two-state solution”
You Oliver really are one of the most credulous dreamers I have ever had the misfortune to encounter on this site, have you ever bothered to read the hamas charter? Are you aware of the Islamic tenet of hudna? Whereby Muslims can make a deal when they are in a position of weakness, so as to rebuild their strength and forces, but a deal only lasting 10 years:
“if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud” (’Umdat as-salik, o9.16)”
It is all about the “Treaty Of Hudaybiyyah” you know, the trouble that muhammad had convincing the Quraysh he was the ‘chosen one’
No? Tell me have you ever read any ahadith or the Quran Oliver?
| 8 July 2009, 12:54 pm |
I’m with Paul. There’s something uniquely vile about Pilger. I’d go as far as calling him genuinely evil.
The only way to excuse or at least understand him, is to entertain the notion that he is mentally ill. Studying him closely, this might well appear to be the case. He certainly seems to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder.
| 8 July 2009, 12:55 pm |
Indymedia-with-a-budget site, Democracy Now.
A bit unfair, and rather obvious journalese. Please note: When Goodman and Gonzalez interviewed Ahmadinejad a while back, they were far tougher on him than much of the media, including Larry King, who conducted a very fawning interview (but when is he not fawning!?)
| 8 July 2009, 12:58 pm |
Of course why would someone who can’t even be bothered to vote in the UK care about an election stolen in Iran?
| 8 July 2009, 1:00 pm |
To add, briefly: Democracy Now clearly is terribly pinko (spit, hiss), but not monolithic or homogeneous in its ideological purview. Which, to translate into non-bollocks speak, just means you get a reasonable spread of chin-strokers on there.
| 8 July 2009, 1:01 pm |
Oliver’s quote about Hamas?
“Wednesday, April 5, 2006 Posted: 0013 GMT” is the date of the article – three years ago in a letter to the UN. They would say that – wouldn’t they?
| 8 July 2009, 1:06 pm |
Thanks Alec, but just the odd comment here and there. Relief all round I am sure!
| 8 July 2009, 1:09 pm |
I never understood his Khmer Rouge stuff. Did he say the US and UK supported them after the Vietnamese ousted them and that the US and UK supported the KR in exile with the use of SAS and stuff? Sounds a bit strong!
| 8 July 2009, 1:09 pm |
Nice post Brett, but I really should not only avoid reading Pilger, but avoid reading about him too. It’s very bad for my blood pressure.
| 8 July 2009, 1:13 pm |
He was right about the KR. Yes, the UK and US did support them to an extent, to get back at Vietnam.
| 8 July 2009, 1:16 pm |
@Anaximanders other sandal
Just a point, you’re quoting a 14th century text on islamic jurisprudence which comes from one of the four traditions of Sunni jurisprudence, rather than a cross tradition hadith.
| 8 July 2009, 1:28 pm |
In other news, arrogant cowboy President rubs it in the Russkies’ faces:
“Along the way, you gave us a pretty good deal on Alaska. Thank you.”
| 8 July 2009, 1:33 pm |
Iran, which is extremely political complex society
Can anyone name a society which is not politically complex? That has got to be the most overused and vapid cliche about Iran currently in circulation.
Also, drones are taking off from Las Vegas to attack targets in Pakistan? Really?
| 8 July 2009, 1:34 pm |
“controlled by the state”
Wonder how Wally escaped from such control?
No, of course, the US or any state would not allow mobs, protesters to control the streets. And, of course, Kent state happened as did the violence at the Democrat convention in the 60’s, not to mention Red Lion Square, the death/killing of the recent protester/attendee at the recent demo in London.
To use those facts to then make an equivalence between Iran and the US or China and the UK is absurd as saying that the British state’s breaking up of (left) demos in the UK is the same as the treatment meted out by the national socialist regime against TU members, leaders, SDP, etc. etc. means that nazi Germany and the UK (or for that matter fascist Italy) are the same.
That is the politics of morons – i.e. the politics of Pilger and his acolytes (well, it beats really thinking about things).
Whoops, sorry, when I say that all states would not allow mobs on the street, I exclude China yesterday, China a couple of years back, re: Japan, Iran re: the ZionistAmerican evil, etc. but, of course, they were all state sponsored!)
| 8 July 2009, 1:38 pm |
As an Iranian, I wish Obama had indeed — as Pilger alleges — supported the uprising in moral and materials ways. Alas, this did not come to be.
| 8 July 2009, 1:41 pm |
To offer an illustration, sorry I don’t have pictures for Wally.
A cat has four legs, a tail and a head,or, (not to confuse things, some cats) a cow has four legs, a head and a tail, a dog has four legs and a tail (or, not to confuse things, some dogs), a pig, a horse, a crocodile, a lion, a tiger, a lynx, etc, etc..
Now, on the level of complete and utter abstraction, all these are animals, and no difference exists between them. But, when you think more carefully about it, they are all different.
Now, apply that illustration, analogy, metaphor, etc. to the concept of “the state”…………
| 8 July 2009, 1:41 pm |
I sometimes wonder if what is wrong with people like him is that they just can’t deal with having won. I can understand that to a certain extent, because of the transition I went through after the inauguration. When you’ve made a career out of being a rebel, what do you do when you actually get your way? StWC and even to some extent the Green Party are all these days to some extent the victims of their own successes. What do you do with a StWC when the war you were campaigning against has already been stopped? What do you do with a Green Party when green is mainstream? You should be happy, but unfortunately some simply live to be on the fringe.
| 8 July 2009, 1:49 pm |
Benjamin
8 July 2009, 1:18 pm
“In other news. Brian Eno is beginning to look like Roald Dahl.”
Can we nip it in the bud and ban the idiot (again).
Thanks
MattG
| 8 July 2009, 1:50 pm |
StWC and even to some extent the Green Party are all these days to some extent the victims of their own successes.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
| 8 July 2009, 2:07 pm |
Let’s not forget that Pilger is the racist scumbag who called Obama an Uncle Tom, long before he won the election, as it happens.
| 8 July 2009, 2:08 pm |
Is this the famous Benji? Benji, nice to meet you. Apparently I AM you, according to those who brook no dissent from nuking Iran.
| 8 July 2009, 2:10 pm |
John Pilger is a superior-in-his-own-mind pompous blowhard who believes that only he and presumably a few other like-thinking elites can “decode” what the mainstream media is really saying, whereas the rest of us pratts just sit back and take it. I actually once heard him spout those precise words to a no-doubt stunned interviewer (who i’m thinking must have been rolling his/her eyes given his/her own media experience). He’s also mastered classic hard leftie “whataboutery” without the ability to discern how blinkered his analogies between how Iran and the USA treat their own citizens make him appear.
| 8 July 2009, 2:51 pm |
Pilger’s gone off the deep end.
I suspect that if someone farted near Pilger that he’d blame it on the CIA, Zionists or possibly both.
| 8 July 2009, 2:54 pm |
….. burble ….. splurk ….. this site can’t wait to nuke Iran …. gliit …. drone …. storm in a teacup …. you’re sick, you’d be murdering those protesters you claim to support …. gnurff …. old bean ….. vvvvzzzzzzzz ….
| 8 July 2009, 3:09 pm |
The man has lost his mind, no doubt somewhere in Caracas or Havana years ago.
| 8 July 2009, 3:11 pm |
It appears that Norm Chomsky also agrees with Pilger’s assessment of the US and UK’s support of the KR after their fall. That lends it some credibility. Apparently John Major admitted in Parliament that there had been SAS training/assistance of the KR and of course the Anglo-American insistence that the Vietnamese intervention not be recognizesd, the KR represemting Cambodia at the UN in exile. Is this true?
Now we can see how Pilger might think an escalation of bombing in Pakistan might result in radicalization like what happened with the KR.
| 8 July 2009, 3:16 pm |
Benjamin
8 July 2009, 1:18 pm
“In other news. Brian Eno is beginning to look like Roald Dahl.”
Can we nip it in the bud and ban the idiot (again).
Thanks
MattG
Amen to that. If you ignore a slug it will come back again and again. A pinch of salt works wonders.
| 8 July 2009, 3:22 pm |
“In other news. Brian Eno is beginning to look like Roald Dahl.”
There are other similarities with Roald Dahl too.
| 8 July 2009, 3:36 pm |
Here’s a small compendium of Pilger’s more outlandish ramblings. Including his belief that, “unless the United States is defeated [in Iraq], we’re likely to see an attack on Iran, we’re likely to see an attack on North Korea… it could be even an attack on China within a decade.”
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/01/the-voice-of-conscience-.html
| 8 July 2009, 3:38 pm |
Just did some Googling and it looks like the SAS story is a storm in a teacup. Or a blood libel, certainly a libel of some kind.
| 8 July 2009, 3:47 pm |
It appears that Norm Chomsky also agrees with Pilger’s assessment of the US and UK’s support of the KR after their fall.
You’re joking, right?
Pilger was successfully sued for libel re the SAS/KR claims.
| 8 July 2009, 4:03 pm |
Hang on! I remember he did an article where he said SAS had dressed as insurgents with bombs and were caught by local police in Basra. Was this discredited too?
| 8 July 2009, 4:11 pm |
storm in a teacup …. gnurk …. storm in a teacup ….
| 8 July 2009, 4:17 pm |
mullah – A couple of SAS guys in local dress moving in a civilian vehicle with a bunch of weapons were picked up by the Iraqi Police and then rescued.
If you are a conspiracy nut this is cast iron evidence that the Iraq insurgency is either:
a) Entirely run by the global elites to perpetuate the war in Iraq.
b) Being stirred up into violent sectarian conflict by British agent provocateurs for reasons unknown.
| 8 July 2009, 4:21 pm |
Of course that part of the remit of the SAS is to work in small teams in dangerous places to gain intelligence passes them by.
| 8 July 2009, 4:23 pm |
Anyway here is the BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4262336.stm
| 8 July 2009, 4:45 pm |
Pilger has been a marginal for some time now. He simply doesn’t have the following he once enjoyed.
| 8 July 2009, 5:35 pm |
“John Pilger is a superior-in-his-own-mind pompous blowhard who believes that only he and presumably a few other like-thinking elites can “decode” what the mainstream media is really saying, whereas the rest of us pratts just sit back and take it.”
Spot on. He’s got a bit of a Messiah complex. Only John Pilger can decode the messages and must relay their true meaning to the masses.
| 8 July 2009, 8:34 pm |
“Just a point, you’re quoting a 14th century text on islamic jurisprudence which comes from one of the four traditions of Sunni jurisprudence, rather than a cross tradition hadith.”
Point Taken.
Point Made. Hamas are a Sunni.org type “crew” backed by a Shi’a.com type “outfit” If they don’t mind mixing it up, what the Hell, I am game. When it comes to hating the Jews the Sunni and Shi’a leaderships are in complete agreement, In my view of course.
| 8 July 2009, 9:31 pm |
Pilger never disappoints. His brand of ‘journalism’ dishes out plenty of ‘empathy’ to struggling autocrats in Havana, Hanoi, Caracas, Gaza, Pyongyang and now Teheran – well, what else could the man do? I don’t remember any empathy being shown the Kosovars or Bosnians as they froze to death on mountains or camped in their tens of thousands in the mud and rain. Just plenty of lies and jeering.
| 8 July 2009, 9:55 pm |
It appears that Norm Chomsky also agrees with Pilger’s assessment of the US and UK’s support of the KR after their fall. That lends it some credibility.
Yeah it’s gotta be true if chomsky says so (snort!).
Has Pilger ever met a totalitarian state he didn’t like as long as it was opposed to u.s. “imperialism” and zionism?
| 8 July 2009, 10:32 pm |
‘Apparently John Major admitted in Parliament that there had been SAS training/assistance of the KR and of course the Anglo-American insistence that the Vietnamese intervention not be recognizesd, the KR represemting Cambodia at the UN in exile. Is this true?’
No it isn’t. Pilger got taken to court in 1991 for making claims that the SAS were training the KR, and Central Television (which broadcast his documentary) had to settle for damages. I’d say that was fairly convincing proof of the inaccuracy of his journalism:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/2009/02/pilger-and-camb.html
The British government did admit in 1991 that British special forces had trained anti-Vietnamese guerrillas from the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front and the Armee Nationale Sihanoukienne. This is where Pilger’s mendacity is evident. He falsely implies that the Khmer Rouge were part of a ‘coalition’ with these groups. In fact, as Derek Tonkin (the British Ambassador to Thailand, 1986-1989) noted in June 1991, ‘The three [anti-Vietnamese] resistance factions have spent most the past twelve years in mutual recrimination’, and aside from isolated instances tactical co-operation between some ANS and KR unis in 1990, there is nothing at all to justify Pilger’s claims that the UK supported a ‘coalition’ of Cambodian resistance groups that included the KR, let alone claims that British soldiers trained guerrillas aligned with the movement which caused ‘Year Zero’. The bottom line is that Pilger lied like a whore, and had to pay damages when he was found out.
‘I’m not really sure what fools like Pilger want.’
IMHO, they want a fucking good smack across the snout.
| 8 July 2009, 10:56 pm |
who “delivered virtually the opposite” of what he “promised” and ”started his own war in Pakistan
Pilger’s right for once! But he says it like it’s a bad thing!
| 8 July 2009, 10:58 pm |
Lucy Lips at 3.22pm, thanks for the pointer. I say it eponymously and I’ll say it straight. Dahl was a revolting antisemite. Among other viciously antisemitic utterances he “accused the Jews of cowardice during the Second World War.” – Wikipedia. His feckless fiction and obsession with human toilet function as children’s entertainment is a lesson to us in the massive disparity that can occur between popular success and greatness.
| 9 July 2009, 2:34 am |
in 1979, Pilger published his “Death of a Nation” front-page article in the Daily Mirror on the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge in “Democratic” Kampuchea. As a teenager, I remembered being intensely moved by his report. Pilger praised Vietnam for invading Kampuchea to remove the Khmer Rouge from power, putting pay to the Marxist monsters’ reign of terror. The Taliban/Islamists are every bit as terrorizing, vicious and potentially genocidal as the Khmer Rouge; especially if they get their hands on nuclear weapons. But according to Pilger, outside intervention is this time is not justified. Why? Well because it involves the Americans of course. And in the minds of the hard left and bleeding-heart liberals that fact trumps everything; it’s an extreme form of mental illness to which many of Pilger’s ilk finally succoumb. Gore Vidal is another example.
In a word, Pilger is now officially a fucking idiot.
| 9 July 2009, 10:10 am |
Nick, was that intended for the other thread, or was it just an, erm, involuntary ejaculation?
| 9 July 2009, 2:05 pm |
S&A, if Pilger has already been successfully sued for it once, why is he still repeating it?
| 9 July 2009, 3:43 pm |
‘S&A, if Pilger has already been successfully sued for it once, why is he still repeating it?’
My guess is that it’s either because he thinks no one will notice, or because he’s a psychopathic liar who has completely lost the ability to recognise the difference between fact and fabrication.
| 9 July 2009, 4:42 pm |
My guess was that if he tells the same lie about the UK rather than about individual UK citizens, nobody sues him for it.
It still shockingly flagrant contempt for the truth.
| 9 July 2009, 10:14 pm |
‘My guess was that if he tells the same lie about the UK rather than about individual UK citizens, nobody sues him for it.
It still shockingly flagrant contempt for the truth’.
The folks who took him to court in 1990 were ex-members of the SAS who ensured that his lawyers issued a statement stressing that the accusation that they had trained KR was untrue, and that had they been ordered to train members of the KR they would have refused to obey them.
As you say, it does go to show how deceitful Pilger is.
Pilger once did a fair amount of good work, but he has become a loon in recent times.
I remember somebody showed up Pilger for what he is during a discussion prior to the second Iraq war, which he opposed of course.
What, they asked him, *should* we do about Saddam?
“Who are ‘we’ to do anything?” he responded. The manifesto of the selfish racist if ever I heard it.