Nicholas Mead

Great interview here with John Pilger on Russia Today (Pilger is not particularly welcome in the mainstream media nowadays because he’s a bit too honest about the crimes of the West). Pilger highlights the fact that since journalists are now “embedded” in warzones, have had their budgets cut or simply spout the same garbage that come out of the mouths of the Pentagon or Ministry of “Defence”, they are not investigating what’s really going on.

WikiLeaks has done the job that Pilger, and other crusading journalists did in years gone by such as his reports from Vietnam that made the West realize the full horror of the crimes that we’re being done in their name and helped turn public opinion against the tide of the war.

It’s inspiring to see that where the powerful try to suppress information in subtle ways in liberal democracies, technology and the internet is finding new ways to expose the truth.

An excerpt from the 12 minute interview:

Recent sanctions against Iran are an attempt by the US to return the country to its sphere of influence, claims veteran journalist John Pilger.

”Iran was a pillar of the American empire in the Middle East. That was swept away in 1979 when there was an Islamic revolution, and it has been American foreign policy to get that back,” he said.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with so-called nuclear weapons. The nuclear power in the Middle East is the fourth biggest military power in the world and that is Israel. It has something like 500 or more nuclear warheads. It is never discussed.”

Pilger added that Barack Obama has failed to change the trajectory of US foreign policy, which dates back to as early as 1945 and follows George W. Bush’s line.

“For the first time in US presidential history – it has not happened before – a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous administration, a discredited one,” he said. “We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind.”