Award-winning British journalist Pilger, author of A Secret
Country: The Hidden Australia (1992), looks again for the truth
behind Orwellian officialdom in Great Britain, the US, South
Africa, Indonesia, and, most notably, Burma. Pilger makes a clear
and disturbing case that US management of the media in the Gulf War
covered up one-quarter of a million deaths, most of them civilian.
And the reader may well follow his claims, US protests to the
contrary, that the subsequent embargo kept food out of the mouths
of children and medicine from the sick. But to go light on his
criticism of Saddam Hussein or to claim that Israel is nothing but
a US client state that has committed more acts of terrorism that
any other Middle East entity seems like old Soviet propaganda,
rather than truth. Pilger is, in fact, fervently anticapitalist in
the manner of an old-style Soviet apparatchik. Thus, one cannot
entirely trust his critique of big media such as CNN and the
various enterprises of Rupert Murdoch, though such criticism is
gratifying and long overdue. Pilger strikes home the most
convincingly when he takes on British arms merchants, and he does
so by sticking to numbers and actual quotations from officials.
He's at his most passionate in his two chapters on modern Burma,
writing about a railroad and an oil pipeline being built with slave
labor, even with child labor. One would hardly expect Pilger to say
kind things about Burma's generals, and he documents the collusion
of multinational companies in the exploitation of Burma, but even
here one senses that a fine reporter has veered into
pamphleteering. A brave and badly needed corrective that itself
seems untrustworthy at times but manages to point out the lies
behind slick official policy and criticize the media that sell
them, even so. (Kirkus Reviews)
The model for this volume is the enormously successful Vintage Original DISTANT VOICES (93,000 copies sold to date). It will gather together essays on a range of subjects including Burma,Fleet Street, East Timor,Vietnam today,the media and UK politics. 'Pilger is the closest we have to the great correspondents of the 1930s...The Truth in his hands is a weapon,to be picked up and brandished and used in the struggle against evil and injustice' GUARDIAN
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Review This Product
Thu, 16 Dec 2004 | Review
by: Fatimah J.
John Pilger, a man with a thousand plus tales to tell. One of the most fascinating factual journalist out there, John Pilger uncovers the truth where being honest can get you killed. This book hosts a variety of different stories from a wide range of subjects, with one common element: the need for the turth to be discovered.
In this compilation, John Pilger opens your eyes to astounding secrets and facts which should outrage you as a human being; from the war torn country of vietnam to the outback of Australia. John Pilger is an outstanding citizen of humanity, his courage and bravery are exceptional and I'm sure he would be honoured if we picked up his book to determine the truth for ourselves.
An exceptional man, a fascinating life, an astonishing but true read. Highly recommended
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