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In the sublime days before 11 September 2001, when the powerful were routinely attacking and terrorising the weak, and those dying were black or brown-skinned non-people living in faraway places such as Zaire and Guatemala, there was no terrorism. When the weak attacked the powerful, spectacularly on 9/11, there was terrorism.

John Pilger

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John Pilger
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: October 9
Director
Film Director
Journalist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Powerful
Sublime
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September
Spectacularly
Black
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Guatemala
Terrorism
Faraway
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Bill Clinton kept funding Star Wars. He took the biggest military budget to Congress in history. He routinely bombed Iraq, and he kept the barbaric sanctions in place. He's really played his part. The George W. Bush gang has taken it just a little further.
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The Mirror has become an important antidote to a media that is, most of it, supportive of the establishment, some of it quite rabidly rightwing. The Mirror is breaking ranks, and that's good news.
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Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war.
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Private Manning is the world's pre-eminent prisoner of conscience, having remained true to the Nuremberg principle that every soldier has the right to 'a moral choice.' His suffering mocks the notion of the land of the free.
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Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.
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Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.
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Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days. When you have someone like Cheney who talks about endless war or war that might last fifty years, he could be Big Brother. You have Bush incessantly going on about the evil ones.
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Israel is the American watchdog in the Middle East, and that's why the Palestinians remain victims of one of the longest military occupations. They don't have oil. If they were the Saudis, they wouldn't be in the position they are now. But they have the power of being able to upset the imperial order in the Middle East.
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Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified.
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I'm absolutely convinced of that. Israel is the representative of the United States in that part of the world. Its policies are so integrated with American policies that they use the same language.
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In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else.
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The censorship is such on television in the U.S. that films like mine don't stand a chance.
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