Showing posts with label pilger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pilger. Show all posts

Thursday 30 August 2012

Impress Your Friends & Astound Your Enemies With Western Genocide Expertise





In my experience there are genocides and there are genocides. Everyone knows the typical ones from WWII and Rwanda or Cambodia even if they can't quote particular details like how Obama's foreign policy advisor (and founder of the Taliban) Zbigniew Brzezinski supported Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. So if you're going to quote a genocide the one documentary to watch is John Pilger's Death of a Nation - The Timor Conspiracy. It's the handiest one because nobody knew about it, the media didn't report it, journalists died reporting it and Australia, UK, US and Canada all had a hand in helping the Indonesians slaughter there way through Timor. It's just one of the more exotic genocides the imperial powers have assisted and turned a blind eye to. Nobody comes out of the East Timor episode looking good. It's like the Swiss Army knife of genocides at dinner parties or human rights discussions. You look good pulling it out and even more an expert as you extract the right tool for whatever country needs as a good clobbering.
 On December 7, 1975 Indonesia secretly – but with the complicity of the Western powers including the US, the UK, and Australia – invaded the small nation of East Timor. Two Australian television crews attempting to document the invasion were murdered.
In 1993, with the Indonesian army still occupying the country, John Pilger and his crew including director David Munro, slipped into East Timor and made this film. In the intervening 18 years, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese – 1/3 of the population – had been slaughtered by the Indonesian military. The C.I.A. has described it as one of the worst mass-murders of the 20th century.
Pilger tells the story using clandestine footage of the countryside, internment camps and even Fretlin guerillas, as well as interviews with Timorese exiles, including Jose Ramos Horta and Jose Gusmao, and Australian, British, and Indonesian diplomats.

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny (John Pilger)



There's still a few Vietnam vets running around Bangkok. They're usually shot to pieces emotionally and in need of a morning beer around Washington Square but I enjoy talking to them because of their visceral memories and proximity to massacre and carnage. There's something life affirming in talking to people who have seen senseless killing.

In all the time I've been talking to Vietnam vets online and offline local or somewhere around the world I've never heard anyone nail it more closely than John Pilger's documentary. It's extraordinary. Heart wrenching but extraordinary.

Update: Washington Square has been torn down. Here's a photo of it now.



The best thing about the documentary above, is Vietnam Vets shooting their commanding officers. This practice I completely approve of during imperial wars. It is probably the reason the US withdrew from the Vietnam War, not the protesters back home. 

The practise of shooting commanding officers is called Fragging and the real figures are kept top secret.

Remember that if you ever have to point a gun at someone for someone else's war.