He's really lost it now, hasn't he? John Pilger was part of the mood music of my youth - angry about Vietnam, Cambodia and East Timor, together with injustices wherever he saw them, all described in clear, accessible prose. But now?
Let's take the last two Guardian pieces. The first argued that the attack on Syria had been long planned because, "With al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran."
Engineered by "John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war record" (presumably not when Kerry was active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and testifying against the war before Congress), after reducing "Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare", "whether or not Bashar al-Assad or the 'rebels' used gas in the suburbs of Damascus", the "liberal fascists" in the US administration seized the opportunity to ... er ... do nothing. Oh.
Never mind. It is probably because they are planning something more dastardly instead. They are indeed. They are preparing to invade China. Yes, I had to read his response to the Kenya massacre several times, but that is what he is suggesting. And at that moment I realised that he had abandoned reason and become a theological thinker. Let me explain.
I don't say this because he is indulging in the fashionable embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood as a liberation movement, instead it is because he has ceased to look at cause and consequence and instead fits all events into a pre-determined faith system. In this case it is one that sees the source of all evil in the world as the result of the actions of a single diabolic entity, the United States.
What is curious is that this belittles the very people he claims to speak for. They bear no responsibility for their actions, they have no free will, no struggles of their own; they are merely pawns in a great game moulded by the consequences of a brutal imperialism. This is the condescension of an imperialist mindset, employed in reverse.
The old battles of the freethought movement to replace theology with reason still need to be fought. But in the meantime, how on earth does this stuff get published? Don't answer. I know why. It's in the Guardian.
Let's take the last two Guardian pieces. The first argued that the attack on Syria had been long planned because, "With al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran."
Engineered by "John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war record" (presumably not when Kerry was active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and testifying against the war before Congress), after reducing "Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare", "whether or not Bashar al-Assad or the 'rebels' used gas in the suburbs of Damascus", the "liberal fascists" in the US administration seized the opportunity to ... er ... do nothing. Oh.
Never mind. It is probably because they are planning something more dastardly instead. They are indeed. They are preparing to invade China. Yes, I had to read his response to the Kenya massacre several times, but that is what he is suggesting. And at that moment I realised that he had abandoned reason and become a theological thinker. Let me explain.
I don't say this because he is indulging in the fashionable embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood as a liberation movement, instead it is because he has ceased to look at cause and consequence and instead fits all events into a pre-determined faith system. In this case it is one that sees the source of all evil in the world as the result of the actions of a single diabolic entity, the United States.
What is curious is that this belittles the very people he claims to speak for. They bear no responsibility for their actions, they have no free will, no struggles of their own; they are merely pawns in a great game moulded by the consequences of a brutal imperialism. This is the condescension of an imperialist mindset, employed in reverse.
The old battles of the freethought movement to replace theology with reason still need to be fought. But in the meantime, how on earth does this stuff get published? Don't answer. I know why. It's in the Guardian.
4 comments:
Pilger has an interesting concept of an ‘independent state’. Essentially a state is independent if and only if it is hostile to the West. It follows that the states of Eastern Europe were independent states when they were Soviet satellites repeating Soviet propaganda about the West but ceased to be independent after the collapse of communism and the abandonment of anti-Western rhetoric. A bizarre position.
A US invasion of China? He really has lost it now...
Bob-B
Not quite Bob. Pilger wrote many articles critical of the Soviet Union and the repression in its satellite states, he was never an apologist for Stalinism. It is only since the collapse of communism that he began on the road to anti-American monomania.
I daresay. I was just commenting on his current use of the term 'independent state'. It appears to mean state hostile to the West, and if that is what it means it follows logically that the states of Eastern Europe were independent before 1989 and not independent afterwards. Of course Pilger may not like what follows logically from his beliefs. Lots of people are like that.
Post a Comment