Translation: "Everyone in the US made fun of me and my views, and no major network or media outlet would talk to me because they all know I'm a complete America-hating nutcase."
There is nothing stopping the ultra-left's views from getting out, NOTHING, besides the simple fact that 98% of Americans don't want to hear it, thus the media isn't going to waste time and space covering it, just to get a ton of harassing letters and emails in response asking them why they would print such trash. They seem to be doing just fine putting up their web sites. It's not our fault nobody wants to read any of them.
And there hasn't been a single example that I know of where an ultra-socialist lefty has been physically assaulted for spewing his/her venom in the US since 9/11. (In fact, the only loony lefty I know who's been assaulted was Robert Fisk, who was attacked BY AFGHANIS.) If they're paranoid about something that's never going to happen, that's their own problem, not Big Corporate Media's.
What Bilger Pilger and his ilk are truly afraid of is being called on their massive bluff, of being asked to back up their claims with evidence, instead of everyone just sitting meekly as they shriek and spew their hate.
John Pilger celebrates the Fouth of July...with another Marc Herold reference:Everyone should add Damian to their bookmarks list, IMHO.
Out of sight of the television cameras "at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10...an average of 62 innocent deaths a day", according to a study carried out at the University of New Hampshire in the US. This is now estimated to have passed 5,000 civilian deaths: almost double the number killed on September 11.
Pilger, the last man on earth who unquestionably accepts Marc Herold's "civilian death toll" figures, also thrashes the Yanks for "[ordering] the Palestinians to get rid of their elected leader in favour of an American stooge" - the leader, of course, having been "elected" in a rigged vote in 1994, and who ignored his own constitution's requirement that he call an election every four years.
He says the Americans "ignored the World Food Summit in Italy" (just like almost every other major Western democracy, none of whom were willing to have Robert Mugabe lecture them on food distribution) and that they "blocked genuine aid, such as clean water and electricity, to the most deprived people on earth" at the G8 summit in Canada. (The filthy Yanks had the nerve to suggest that African countries should reform their economies and stamp our rampant corruption as a condition of recieving aid, the bastards.) Kyoto, the ICC...it's all here.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and Pilger does hit on a few genuinely malevolent American policies, most notably the country's growing trade protectionism and agricultural subsidies. But it's mostly the usual Pilgerian ranting and paranoia...
...this may well be the last throw of the dice before the US economy goes into serious decline - as yesterday's dramatic fall in the stock markets indicated.
This means controlling the oil and fossil fuel riches in Central Asia. It means attacking Iraq, installing a replacement Saddam Hussein and taking over the world's second-largest source of oil. It means surrounding a new economic challenger, China, with bases, and intimidating the leaders of its principal economic rival, Europe, by undermining NATO, and setting off a trade war.
...and inflammatory allegations, such as the U.S. military allegedly killing Afghan children "in wheat fields and as they slept". (He attributes this to an unspecified "report in the American press," but he also accuses the American media of being "self-censored and controlled." Which is it, John?)
The Americans should not be free from criticism, even on Independence Day. And as the catastrophic, accidental bombing of a wedding party shows, the U.S. military may need to make some serious changes to its rules of engagement. (Although, would it be too much to ask Afghans not to fire their weapons in the air when they're celebrating?) But this is just a hyperbolic, barely-coherent screed, with no other purpose than to inflame anti-American sentiment of the most petty, destructive variety.
Next time the Queen's jubilee rolls around, I hope the New York Post responds with its own screed about all the atrocities the British committed when they still controlled half the globe. That'll show 'em.