John Pilger – RT Dec 15, 2020
Britain’s Armed Forces Memorial is a silent, haunting place.
Set in the rural beauty of Staffordshire, in an arboretum of some 30,000 trees and sweeping lawns, its Homeric figures celebrate determination and sacrifice.
The names of more than 16,000 British servicemen and women are listed. The literature says they “died in operational theatre or were targeted by terrorists”.
On the day I was there, a stonemason was adding new names to those who have died in some 50 operations across the world during what is known as “peacetime”. Malaya, Ireland, Kenya, Hong Kong, Libya, Iraq, Palestine and many more, including secret operations, such as Indochina.
Not a year has passed since peace was declared in 1945 that Britain has not sent military forces to fight the wars of empire.
Not a year has passed when countries, mostly poor and riven by conflict, have not bought or have been “soft loaned” British arms to further the wars, or “interests”, of empire.
Empire? What empire? The investigative journalist Phil Miller recently revealed in Declassified that Boris Johnson’s Britain maintained 145 military sites – call them bases – in 42 countries. Johnson has boasted that Britain is to be “the foremost naval power in Europe”.
In the midst of the greatest health emergency in modern times, with millions of medical procedures delayed by the National Health Service, Johnson has announced a record increase of £16.5 billion in so-called defence spending – a figure that would restore the under-resourced NHS many times over.
But these billions are not for defence. Britain has no enemies other than those within who betray the trust of its ordinary people, its nurses and doctors, its carers, elderly, homeless and youth, as successive neo-liberal governments have done, Conservative and Labour.
Exploring the serenity of the National War Memorial I soon realised there was not a single monument, or plinth, or plaque, or rosebush honouring the memory of Britain’s victims – the civilians in the “peacetime” operations commemorated here.
There is no remembrance of the Libyans killed when their country was wilfully destroyed by Prime Minister David Cameron and his collaborators in Paris and Washington.
There is no word of regret for the Serbian women and children killed by British bombs, dropped from a safe height on schools, factories, bridges, towns, on the orders of Tony Blair; or for the impoverished Yemeni children extinguished by Saudi pilots with their logistics and targets supplied by Britons in the air-conditioned safety of Riyadh; or for the Syrians starved by “sanctions”.
There is no monument to the Palestinian children murdered with the British elite’s enduring connivance, such as the recent campaign that destroyed a modest reform movement within the Labour Party with specious accusations of anti-Semitism.
Two weeks ago, Israel’s military chief of staff and Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff signed an agreement to “formalise and enhance” military co-operation. This was not news. More British arms and logistical support will now flow to the lawless regime in Tel Aviv, whose snipers target children and psychopaths interrogate children in extreme isolation. (See the recent shocking report by Defense for Children, Isolated and Alone).
Perhaps the most striking omission at the Staffordshire war memorial is an acknowledgement of the million Iraqis whose lives and country were destroyed by the illegal invasion of Blair and Bush in 2003.
ORB, a member of the British Polling Council, put the figure at 1.2 million. In 2013, the ComRes organisation asked a cross-section of the British public how many Iraqis had died in the invasion. A majority said fewer than 10,000.
How is such a lethal silence sustained in a sophisticated society? My answer is that propaganda is far more effective in societies that regard themselves as free than in dictatorships and autocracies. I include censorship by omission.
Our propaganda industries – both political and cultural, including most of the media – are the most powerful, ubiquitous and refined on earth. Big lies can be repeated incessantly in comforting, credible BBC voices. Omissions are no problem.
A similar question relates to nuclear war, whose threat is “of no interest”, to quote Harold Pinter. Russia, a nuclear power, is encircled by the war-making group known as Nato, with British troops regularly “maneuvering” right up to the border where Hitler invaded.
The defamation of all things Russian, not least the historical truth that the Red Army largely won the Second World War, is percolated into public consciousness. The Russians are of “no interest”, except as demons.
China, also a nuclear power, is the brunt of unrelenting provocation, with American strategic bombers and drones constantly probing its territorial space and – hooray – HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s £3billion aircraft carrier, soon to sail 6,500 miles to enforce “freedom of navigation” within sight of the Chinese mainland.
Some 400 American bases encircle China, “rather like a noose”, a former Pentagon planner said to me. They extend all the way from Australia, though the Pacific to southern and northern Asia and across Eurasia.
In South Korea, a missile system known as Terminal High Altitude Air Defense, or THAAD, is aimed point-blank at China across the narrow East China Sea. Imagine Chinese missiles in Mexico or Canada or off the coast of California.
A few years after the invasion of Iraq, I made a film called The War You Don’t See, in which I asked leading American and British journalists as well as TV news executives – people I knew as colleagues – why and how Bush and Blair were allowed to get away with the great crime in Iraq, considering that the lies were not very clever.
Their response surprised me. Had “we”, they said – that is journalists and broadcasters, especially in the US – challenged the claims of the White House and Downing Street, investigated and exposed the lies, instead of amplifying and echoing them, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 probably would not have happened. Countless people would be alive today. Four million refugees would not have fled. The grisly ISIS, a product of the Blair/Bush invasion, might not have been conceived.
David Rose, then with the London Observer, which supported the invasion, described “the pack of lies fed to me by a fairly sophisticated disinformation campaign”. Rageh Omah, then the BBC’s man in Iraq, told me, “We failed to press the most uncomfortable buttons hard enough”. Dan Rather, the CBS anchorman, agreed, as did many others.
I admired these journalists who broke the silence. But they are honourable exceptions. Today, the war drums have new and highly enthusiastic beaters in Britain, America and the “West”.
Take your pick among the legion of Russia and China bashers and promoters of fiction such as Russiagate. My personal Oscar goes to Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, whose unrelenting rousing drivel about the “existential threat” (of China/Russia, mostly China) was illustrated by a smiling Scott Morrison, the PR man who is Australia’s prime minister, dressed like Churchill, V for Victory sign and all. “Not since the 1930s…” the pair of them intoned. Ad nauseum.
Covid has provided cover for this pandemic of propaganda. In July, Morrison took his cue from Trump and announced that Australia, which has no enemies, would spend AU$270 billion (US$186.5 billion) on provoking one, including missiles that could reach China.
That China’s purchase of Australia’s minerals and agriculture effectively underwrote the Australian economy was “of no interest” to the government in Canberra.
The Australian media cheered almost as one, delivering a shower of abuse at China. Thousands of Chinese students, who had guaranteed the gross salaries of Australian vice-chancellors, were advised by their government to go elsewhere. Chinese-Australians were bad-mouthed and delivery men were assaulted. Colonial racism is never hard to revive.
Some years ago, I interviewed the former head of the CIA in Latin America, Duane Clarridge. In a few refreshingly honest words, he summed up “Western” foreign policy as it is ordained and directed by Washington.
The super-power, he said, could do what it wanted where it wanted whenever its “strategic interests” dictated. His words were: “Get used to it, world.”
I have reported a number of wars. I have seen the remains of children and women and the elderly bombed and burned to death: their villages laid to waste, their petrified trees festooned with human parts. And much else.
Perhaps that is why I reserve a specific contempt for those who promote the crime of rapacious war, who beckon it with bad faith and profanities, having never experienced it themselves. Their monopoly must be broken.
This is a version of an address John Pilger gave to a Stop the War fund-raiser, Artists Speak Out, in London.
He likes the fact that “the Red Army won the Second World War”, for the Jews, against Germans and for the British power he hates. If you did not fight for “the Red Army”, this organisation would kill you itself, as was also the case in Britain with our army. This is the well-known problem of hating Zionism while forgetting to hate the Commie half of the conspiracy. (Heads we get identity, tails you get anonymity).
I applaud you John Pilger. Blessed are the feet of those who come in the name of peace.
The immoral wars and murder are orchestrated by the same cabal who are printing money out of thin air to controll all people, the same tribe who are mandating the injection of mRNA/nanoHydrogel into 6.8 billion people, the same children of Satan who are via media propangda are locking down the world because of a false pandemic causing severe economic hardship and worldwide famine.
(((Central banking elites))) = “Those who call themselves jews but who are not, they are the span of Satan.” – Jesus
Pilger is outstanding & I was privileged to attend one of his talks at Clapham Library. This is why Pilger has been pushed to the fringes of Sargasso Sea of journalism where not much happens.
When I talk about stringing up the 0.1% for high crimes, Pilger makes a good start on why they need to hang from short ropes ‘after due process’. The UK rot is so bad that there is no one in the West capable of bringing the UK elite to justice. Those who would be lucky enough to carryout such a process would need to ask China if they could send over 10,000 of their best English-speaking experts. Look at how the regime is protecting its war criminal soldiers from prosecution?
Never has country been so rotten to its core as the UK is & I say that on the historical timeline.
We were leaving the EU to become more prosperous through greater trade opportunities. This is a big fat lie. The UK is about to send two CSGs (Carrier Strike Groups) to the South China Sea in early 2021. This is to intimidate the Chinese. I’ve no doubt one of these carriers will breakdown of spring a leak en route. This imperial expedition is all bluster at a cost of £1.4 trillion, money the bankrupt regime does not have. Two carriers carrying F35s that are not fit for combat.
Not a leaf falls, without the Knowledge of God. The Angels of Death rip out the Souls of the wicked. On the Day of Judgement,all that will be heared will be the tramp of feet, towards a Fire burning brightly.
Of course Pilger is largely correct BUT a good question to ask is IF China was in Americas position would it act any different?…..
Judging from the Chinese leaders recent gungho remarks….probably not… …
And guess what dissident is rotting in jail right now….the Australian Assange…..its a bit of a mystery that China does not have reports about human rights abuses in Britain concerning a well known political dissident ….What’s good for the goose etc…..
China COULD have articles about a Western War Criminal still at large who is hated by most people…none other than Tony Mega-millions Bliar …..
OR….How about the West and how it is controlled by Israel….unlikely since there is a Rothschilds central bank….
So all this rhetoric of late could be bullshit…..one thing is for sure Iran does NOT have a western controlled zio-bank calling the shots.
There is no such thing as “leaving the EU. That would be the same as leaving the planet… The people on this little planet are already working together for many thousands of years. So this whole theathre has another purpose…..
I was scrolling through teletext news the other day and it mentioned something about Africans being brought before the International Criminal Court. I thought this institution has no legitimacy until it brings Bush and Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Kissinger to trial. Then the rest of ’em. Until it arrests the world’s biggest war criminals in the west it shouldn’t be talking about anybody else. It should hide.
Nobody radicalised more Muslims than Bush and Blair.
Pilger talks about the sophisticated propaganda directed against people in the west.
What about providing an example….BEZOS THE JEW.
The Daily Mail reports on his increase in wealth along with a “human interest” piece on his ex wife…..telling the plebs all about her huge generosity to all and sundry…
It’s all a distortion of facts….because she too has experienced a huge increase in wealth thanks to the Covid scam.
ALSO IT IS ABSOLUTELY VERBOTEN TO MENTION THEIR ETHNICITY……that would be “racism” now wouldn’t it.
No mention either of the Jews treatment of his Amazon staff…..The Daily Mail makes out he is just basically an ordinary guy…when infact he is a completely GREEDY C**T.
All of this would be like the Daily Mail reporting on Louis 14th depicting him as an ok sort of a chap……it would be nonsense of course.
So Pilger is on the money when he talks about sophistication.
MI5 are depicted as human rights respecting good guys protecting people from harm….the TRUTH is they’re a pack of c**ts who have NO respect for democracy and who routinely disrupt and break down completely legitimate political parties……their sole function is to protect the elites position from threats like REAL democracy.
There will never,in a thousand years,ever be a mention of the ethnicity continually occupying the job of Director of MI5….THE BRITISH SECRET POLICE.
Ted: we may never know because the US elite is driven by the sure fact that they are God’s chosen people and that they will win any war and prevail in their new radioactive world. Trying to look at this objectively, I can’t see the Chinese with over 1000 foreign bases around the world even if they found themselves with the ability to it.
“Of course Pilger is largely correct BUT a good question to ask is IF China was in Americas position would it act any different?…..”
I rob banks and convenient stores, and perhaps I shouldn’t but rather than consider stopping this behavior (because it’s immoral and ultimately self-destructive), a good question to ask is: IF other people were in my shoes would they act any differently?
how do these bastard k*kes manage to sign a deal of closer co-operation with our military!!
EVERY F*CKING TIME!!
What a load of FAR left communist loving bollox!! I hope he is the first rounded up by the very people he adores when the takeover happens! a complete and utter waste of ait But I would personally contribute to the gas bill!
THE MOST LETHAL VIRUS IS IMMIGRATION
n the park here beside the cathedral is a huge 1000 year old tree
i cant wait for you to meet it.
the recent storms saw a younger tree beside it struck down by lightning
i though thank good ness it was not my tree
but polish lads gather in the park at night to get drunk and sing polish songs
they kick park benches to bits and pull branches down from the trees and recently did this to the 1000 year old tree.
These were planted as windbreaks by King Harold, this is the last one left.
Much anger was felt recently when one of these drunk lads threw a chair through a 600 year old stained glass window in the nearby cathedral.
I wish people coming to this country would respect it more.
Where are the brains of our politician ?
they send our stupid soldiers to go bomb and burn people in far off lands then import them all back to live here, of course they will be angry of course they hate us, then that recent book by that SAS guy who said in iraq were were setting bombs off to blame the sunnis, then bombing them and blaming the shias
we sat back laughing as they were then fighting each other
divide and conquer name of the game
Politicians ? shit for brains
John Pilger is Communist Filth. End of.
“The most evil family in the US”
Those were the comments of a US Congressman about The Sackler family.
They got America hooked on OxyContin the opioid….and became billionaires.
They’re Jews of course….”strangely” no mention of their ethnicity is ever made….wonder why that is?.
John Pilger and his wife are both crypto Jews surprise surprise.
Pilger supports the mass invasion of immigrants to Australia brought in by the Jewish elite …
But some his comments are noteworthy.
Take a look at the Premier of NSW….you could catch a big fish with that hooter that’s for sure.
Australias other premiers also appear to be crypto Jews including that sniveling little bastard in Victoria.
If you think Australia just happens to have all Jewish premiers just by chance…..you’re kidding yourself…
Morrison….it goes without saying,is most definitely a crypto jew….but word IS getting around.