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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.

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
Back
Journalism
Loathe
Push
Journalists
Rocks
Peers
Opprobrium
Behinds
Lift
Loathes
Behind
Honour
Badge
High
Lifts
Secretive
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Screens
Badges
Power
Journalist
Peer

More quotes by John Pilger

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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.
John Pilger
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More terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth.
John Pilger
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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.
John Pilger
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It's quite clear that Gore won most of the votes. I think the accurate description for them is a military plutocracy. Having lived and worked in the United States, I must add that I don't want to make too much of the distinction between the Bush regime and its predecessors. I don't see a great deal of difference.
John Pilger
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Whenever a journalist says to me, Oh, you don't understand, I'm impartial, I'm objective, I know what he's saying. I can decode it immediately. It means he channels the official truth. Almost always. That protestation means he speaks for a consensual view of the establishment. This is internalized.
John Pilger
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The Palestinians 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.
John Pilger
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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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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.
John Pilger
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Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.
John Pilger
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What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed.
John Pilger
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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.
John Pilger
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The British Labour Party has always had a very strong Atlanticist component, with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action. I've never known a situation like it.
John Pilger
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It is time we recognized that the real terrorism is poverty.
John Pilger
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When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.
John Pilger
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Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery
John Pilger
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Not all the Americans in Iraq are those who torture and murder, or course they're not, I don't know how many are doing it, I know it is systematic throughout the United States military I think that's been revealed.
John Pilger
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An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.
John Pilger
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The people who died in the Twin Towers in that terrible crime mattered. The people who were bombed to death in dusty villages in Afghanistan didn't matter, even though it now seems that their numbers were greater. The people who will die in Iraq don't matter.
John Pilger
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We have an extreme rightwing government in this country, although it's called the Labour government.
John Pilger
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I grew up in Sydney in a very political household, where we were all for the underdog.
John Pilger