In his many extraordinary films, books and articles, Pilger filled in what corporate media purposely left out: the industrial-scale human casualties of governments that dare call themselves democracies.
Pilger was simply doing his job as a reporter. What made him stand out exceptionally were herds of journalists not doing theirs.
(1 May 2023)
I am writing this on 30 April, the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the twentieth century, in Vietnam, which I reported. I was very young when I arrived in Saigon and I learned a great deal. I learned to recognise the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‚our‘ propaganda.
All through that war, the propaganda said a victorious Vietnam would spread its communist disease to the rest of Asia, allowing the Great Yellow Peril to its north to sweep down. Countries would fall like ‚dominoes‘.
Ho Chi Minh‘s Vietnam was victorious, and none of the above happened. Instead, Vietnamese civilisation blossomed, remarkably, in spite of the price they paid: three million dead. And the maimed, the deformed, the addicted, the poisoned, the lost.
If the current propagandists get their war with China, this will be a fraction of what is to come. Speak up.
The Coming War on China is John Pilger‘s most recent film – his 60th documentary and arguably his most prescient. Completed in the month Donald Trump was elected US President, the film investigates the manufacture of a ‘threat’ and the beckoning of a nuclear confrontation.
(2016)
From award winning journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn‘t – that the world‘s greatest military power, the United States, and the world‘s second economic power, China, both nuclear-armed, may well be on the road to war.
7. April 2021
(March 23 2020)
“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable,” Pilger says in his 2016 documentary The Coming War on China, which you can watch free on Youtube here or on Vimeo here.
“In a few years China has become the world’s second-biggest economic power,” Pilger’s introduction continues. “The United States is the world’s biggest military power, with bases and missiles and ships covering every continent and every ocean. China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington. But who is the threat? This film is about shifting power, and great danger.”
Watch our 25th Anniversary live celebration on Sunday beginning at 3 pm EST with guests Oliver Stone, Diane Duston, John Pilger, Nat Parry, Ray McGovern, Spencer Oliver and Gareth Porter right here. Watch it live here with your hosts Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria:
(02.10.2020)
Q: Having watched Julian Assange’s trial firsthand, can you describe the prevailing atmosphere in the court?
The prevailing atmosphere has been shocking. I say that without hesitation; I have sat in many courts and seldom known such a corruption of due process; this is due revenge. Putting aside the ritual associated with ‘British justice’, at times it has been evocative of a Stalinist show trial. One difference is that in the show trials, the defendant stood in the court proper. In the Assange trial, the defendant was caged behind thick glass, and had to crawl on his knees to a slit in the glass, overseen by his guard, to make contact with his lawyers. His message, whispered barely audibly through face masks, was then passed by post-it the length of the court to where his barristers were arguing the case against his extradition to an American hellhole.
Consider this daily routine of Julian Assange, an Australian on trial for truth-telling journalism…
Die Stimmung war erschütternd. Das sage ich, ohne zu zögern; ich habe bereits in vielen Gerichtssälen gesessen und selten so ein unfaires Verfahren erlebt; das hier ist schlicht ein Racheakt. Wenn man einmal von den Ritualen absieht, welche mit der „britischen Justiz“ verbunden sind, hat es einen bisweilen an einen stalinistischen Schauprozess erinnert.
Ein Unterschied dazu war, dass der Angeklagte in den Schauprozessen im Gerichtssaal stand. Im Assange-Prozess war er hinter dickes Glas gesperrt und musste, unter Aufsicht seines Wächters, auf Knien zu einem Schlitz im Glaskasten krabbeln, um Kontakt zu seinen Anwälten aufzunehmen. Seine Nachricht, die er kaum hörbar durch eine Maske flüsterte, wurde dann mittels kleiner Post-it-Zettelchen quer durch den ganzen Gerichtssaal getragen, dorthin, wo seine Anwälte ihn gegen die Auslieferung in ein amerikanisches Drecksloch verteidigten.
Führen Sie sich einmal folgende tägliche Routine von Julian Assange vor Auge …
I spoke with John Pilger in London on September 12, in response to the case of investigative reporter and Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, a close friend of Pilger’s, who was back in a British court last week. Assange is currently fighting extradition to the US, where he is facing a 175 year jail sentence for alleged espionage.
Having reported the long, epic ordeal of Julian Assange, John Pilger gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on September 7 as the WikiLeaks Editor’s extradition hearing entered its final stage.
On Saturday, there will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square, the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death.
Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations: Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London’s Belmarsh prison).
Each of these journalists made unique contributions to our understanding of the world. Although Australia is part of the Western world, each of these journalists exposed and criticized Western foreign policy.
“I think I’m going out of my mind,” Julian Assange told John Pilger at Belmarsh Prison. “No you’re not,” Pilger responded. “Look how you frighten them, how powerful you are.”
Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely. They are worried by the “Assange effect”.
21.10.2019
Pilger told demonstrators: “The whole thing is a grotesque absurdity. There is an extradition law between this country and the United States. It states specifically that someone cannot be extradited if the offences are political… It is not a bit of agitprop, it is not an opinion, they are political. All but one charge is based on the 1917 Espionage Act, which was used to jail conscientious objectors during the First World War in the United States.”
Pilger concluded: “The source of this is a rogue state—a state that ignores its own laws and international laws and the laws of this country.”
2.9.2019
At 6:00 p.m. in London today, a critical event has been called by bassist, singer and songwriter Roger Waters and journalist John Pilger to demand freedom for WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange. Waters will hold a concert in front of the office of British Home Secretary Priti Patel at 2 Marsham Street, and Pilger will deliver remarks.
Both Waters and Pilger are men of great principle who have fought—Waters as an artist and Pilger as a courageous journalist—to keep alive the struggle to free Assange. This fight, however, must be carried forward through the mobilization of workers and youth internationally to stop the extradition of Assange to the US, ensure his safe return to Australia and secure his freedom.
Medientrust wie die New York Times und die Washington Post, aber auch jede große Zeitung in Australien und Deutschland, hatten drei Jahre lang die Lüge verbreitet, dass Assange ein „russischer Agent“ sei. Jetzt unterdrücken sie jegliche Nachricht über das vernichtende Urteil. Diese Reaktion unterstreicht nur ihre Funktion als Sprachrohr der Geheimdienste und der Regierungen, die Assange verfolgen.
Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom, with Randy Credico and today’s guest, award winning filmmaker, John Pilger interviewed by Dennis J Bernstein and Randy Credico on KPFA Flashpoints
The UN Rapporteur on Torture has issued an unprecedented statement on the persecution of the journalist and publisher Julian Assange.
Full UN statement: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1039581
Der investigative Journalist, Fernsehreporter und Filmemacher John Pilger erklärte vor dem Amtsgericht von Westminster gegenüber den Medien: „Das Verbrechen von Julian Assange besteht darin, guten Journalismus gemacht zu haben. Jeder Journalist, der sein Handwerk gewissenhaft und wahrheitsgemäß erledigt, über die Macht recherchiert, die sich über die Menschen erhebt – egal ob es sich dabei um die Regierung oder ihre Interessengruppen handelt, sollte deswegen zutiefst beunruhigt sein. Denn heute geht es gegen Julian Assange, und morgen vielleicht gegen Sie.“
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.
That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for „democratic“ societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.
In the weeks preceding the rally, prominent independent journalists, artists and defenders of democratic rights issued endorsements of the event. Those who lent their support included filmmaker John Pilger, singer-songwriter Roger Waters, civil rights advocate Professor Stuart Rees, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Elizabeth Vos, editor-in-chief of Disobedient Media, Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, filmmaker Curtis Levy, Terry Hicks and Christine Assange, Julian’s mother.
Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.
This is Room 101.
John Pilger: Journalisten können den Menschen helfen, indem sie die Wahrheit erzählen — oder so viel von der Wahrheit, wie sie finden können — und indem sie nicht als Vertreter der Regierung, der Macht, sondern als Vertreter von Menschen handeln. Das ist echter Journalismus. Der Rest ist hohl und falsch.
John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Phyllis Bennis, Boots Riley, Vijay Prashad und viele weitere Stimmen der kritischen Öffentlichkeit haben sich zusammengeschlossen, um in einer gemeinsamen Erklärung den US-Interventionismus in Venezuela anzuprangern und sich für eine friedliche auf Dialog gründende Lösung der Krise im Land einzusetzen.
Im Folgenden der Wortlaut:
Guests on past vigils have included Dan Ellsberg, John Pilger, former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, John Kiriakou, Suzie Dawson, Cathy Vogan, Margaret Kimberely, Ann Garrison, Scott Horton, George Smazuely, Ray McGovern and many more. The broadcast will be hosted by CN Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria.
WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has vehemently denied that he ever met Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, according to journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who met with Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London last week.
Pilger said Assange told him the story published by The Guardian on Nov. 27 was a “total fabrication.” Pilger told Consortium News in an interview for the Unity4J vigil on Friday that “I personally can confirm that did not happen. He said it was a fabrication. It was not possible. The way internal security works at that embassy, it was not possible.”
Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship. This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new „groupthink“, as Parry called it, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.
The irony is that no one told these journalists what to do. I call them „Vichy journalists“ — after the Vichy Government that served and enabled the German occupation of wartime France.
Legendary Australian writer and film-maker, John Pilger, has returned to Australia to seek urgent help, both government and public, for the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Pilger‘s public speech at Sydney Town Hall yesterday was informative and painfully moving. Assange, he says, has not only been a victim of persecution from the US and other states, from which he was granted political asylum – or, a place to remain arbitrarily ‚holed-up‘ for 6 years, according to two UN rulings… What troubles Pilger more is the „Vichy journalism“, of which he gives numerous examples, that has served to aggregate lies and smear that would demolish public support for Wikileaks, and deflect us from reading the content of their publications. If we would only read them now, we might be skeptical about journalists describing a war hawk as „the icon of our generation“…
This is an abridged version of an address by John Pilger to a rally in Sydney, Australia, to mark Julian Assange‘s six years‘ confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
Die Rede von John Pilger stellte all jene Politiker, Zeitungsredakteure, Journalisten, Ex-Liberalen und „Ex-Linken“ bloß, die Julian Assange den Wölfen zum Fraß vorgeworfen haben. Sie war eine starke Verteidigung demokratischer Rechte.
„Ich kenne Julian Assange gut“, begann er. „Ich betrachte ihn als einen engen Freund, eine Person von außerordentlicher Belastbarkeit und Mut. Ich habe einen Tsunami von Lügen und Schmutz über ihn hinwegfegen sehen; endlos, rachsüchtig, heimtückisch; und ich weiß, warum sie ihn mit Dreck bewerfen.“
„Im Jahr 2008 wurde in einem streng geheimen Dokument vom 8. März 2008 ein Plan zur Zerstörung von WikiLeaks und Assange aufgestellt. Die Autoren saßen in der Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch des US-Verteidigungsministeriums. Sie beschrieben detailliert, wie wichtig es sei, das ‚Gefühl des Vertrauens‘, das den Kernpunkt von WikiLeaks ausmacht, zu zerstören.“
„Dies würde erreicht werden, schrieben sie, mit der Androhung von ‚Entblößung‘, ‚Strafverfolgung‘, und einen unerbittlichen Angriff auf den guten Ruf. Ziel war es, WikiLeaks und seinen Herausgeber zum Schweigen zu bringen und zu kriminalisieren. Es war, als ob sie einen Krieg gegen einen einzigen Menschen und das Prinzip der Redefreiheit planten.“