PILGER, JOHN 'Heroes' rating: readability:

 

John Pilger is your archetypal bleeding-heart liberal. 'Heroes', which was written/compiled in the mid '80s, is a collection of reports from Pilger's illustrious career as one of the world's foremost investigative journalists. A strength of the book is to combine approaches: on the one hand, it gives us an understanding of historical trends, government motives and disinformation; on the other, we read heart-rending anecdotes which lend real emotional punch and urgency to this understanding. The chapters on the West are an eye-opening challenge to the complacency which so often makes us think of our countries as open, free, even generous. Within our countries, intellectual repression, racism and labour exploitation have been common, and continue to be so. In Australia, the 'White Australia Policy' was explicitly in force until quite recently; in the 1950s, the Minister of Immigration remarked that 'Two Wongs don't make a white'. In Britain, some of the victims of Thalidomide-induced deformities had still not been paid at the time the book was written; some Pakistanis in London and elsewhere were (and are) prisoners in their own homes, continually abused and at risk of beatings and death. Miners in England have been treated dreadfully: "I found dozens of striking miners who . . . had been taken by policement in boiler suits and beaten so efficiently they are unlikely to work again". Reporters knew about this; but it was not reported. This is another major theme of the book; the complicity of reporters in our 'free' countries in government repression and disinformation. Britain has most often only given appreciable aid when it suits 'strategic interests': in order not to upset Pakistan, it provided one relief plane of aid to Bangladesh during the catastrophic cyclone and floods of 1970; in 1969, the Labour (the 'left-wing' party in Britain) government "had not wanted to upset the Nigerian regime by sending emergency relief to the beleaguered Biafrans" (appalling numbers of whom were starving to death). In 1984, British policy was to withhold aid from Ethiopia - according to Pilger, they thought that "if there was a major catastrophe it would probably change the regime again", like the 1972-4 famine that had killed 200,000 and ousted Emperor Haile Selassie. America is not free of this criminal attitude. In 1982, writes Pilger, President Reagan's Secretary of Agriculture declared that "over the next twenty years food can be the greatest weapon we have". Pilger examines one of my favourite topics, right-wing religious fanatics. Jerry Falwell is quoted as follows: "From Genesis to Revelation . . . the message is clear . . . there will be a nuclear holy war over Jerusalem and the Russians will come out second best . . . if we are ready for it. The issue here is survival. Jesus was not a pacifist. He was not a cissy." A nuclear holy war! Great stuff. I'm sure our non-cissy Saviour would give it his full blessing. Pilger makes an excellent point about American Indians: "no other people have been more mythologised than they . . . and yet no other people are more forgotten . . . The average income of an Indian family is less than half that of even a black family". One of the most poignant anecdotes in 'Heroes' concerns "The remarkable Mr. Max H. Hanley, Snr. For years . . . he tape-recorded [his people's] songs and prayers and memories, in order to resurrect some of the tribe's fading history. He also raised money to send young people to 'college', a choice available to very few Navajo. Mr. Hanley was able to do this work by going regularly to California to dance, like a fool, before businessmen's luncheon clubs where he was advertised as 'The Dancing Warrior' although he was at least seventy years old. In return they gave him bundles of cast-off clothing and some cash. 'Yes, I am truly the white man's clown,' he said. 'But there is no other way' " Pilger casts light on Western complicity in - and perpetration of - some of the most dreadful atrocities of recent times. Perhaps most terribly of all, when "Hiroshima was bombed, Truman expressed satisfaction that 'the experiment' had been 'an overwhelming success.' " Experiment?! Success?! The New York Times "published a report with the headline 'NO RADIOACTIVITY IN HIROSHIMA RUIN' ". Incidentally, you can find some very powerful Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor testimonies on the Web; I attended a talk by one of the 'Hibakusha', and it had a very strong effect on me. The nefarious activities of American and American-backed groups are particularly alarming; the CIA seems to have been responsible for fomenting conflict and inciting murder across the world, in the name of 'strategic interests'. Foremost among their Machiavellian creations has been the Vietnam War, which was started by the CIA and its propaganda; in order to justify its intervention, they used a tactic closely analogous to that used by the Nazis (who dressed up their own soldiers in foreign uniforms and got them to 'invade' German territory). Efforts at conciliation by the popular Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's rightful leader, were rejected by the West. The US "pursued a military strategy deliberately designed to force millions of people to leave their homes, and used chemicals in a manner which profoundly changed the environmental and genetic order". It "dumped [on South Vietnam, its 'ally'] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population including women and children". He quotes Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert, the war's most decorated soldier, as follows: "They wanted me to take charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families and tried to look as though the [VietCong] themselves had done the killing". American butchery in My Lai was no isolated moment of madness. President Reagan showed a profound understanding of the situation when he said that "ours was, in truth, a noble cause". Luckily for the Vietnamese, these noble instincts were shared by the Chinese, who invaded the long-victimised country in 1978. Other marvellous American projects have been the training of death squads throughout much of Central America. Senior military officials of Latino military regimes "were trained at the 'School of the Americas' in the US-run Canal Zone in Panama (known throughout Latin America as 'la escuela de golpes', the school of coups)". The unbelievable genocide in Cambodia - which was perhaps as harrowing as the Nazi Holocaust - is catalogued unflinchingly. Human bodies were said to have been used as fertiliser. His Cambodian interpreter said to them " 'Can you imagine they take away friendship? . . . A young boy who used to be a student was taken away and beaten to death because he smiled at me while we husked the rice. He smiled at me, that's all.' " In the concentration camp of Tuol Seng, there was "a school blackboard, on which was written: 1. Speaking is absolutely forbidden 2. Before doing something, the authorisation of the warden must be obtained. 'Doing something' might mean only changing position in the cell, but without authorisation the prisoner would receive twenty or thirty strokes with a whip . . . For upsetting a box of excrement the punishment was licking the floor with your tongue, torture or death, or all three." The minds of children were shattered: "I spoke to one of the children lying still on a mat in the chapel and asked him his age. 'I remember,' said the child. 'I am twelve years old.' 'What is your name?' I asked. 'I forget,' he replied. 'Where are your parents?' 'I forget . . . I think they died.' " Pilger himself was instrumental in alerting the Western public to their governments' inaction in the face of the humanitarian tragedy; the outcry eventually forced them to help the victims of Pol Pot, who the West allowed keep his place at the UN even after his murderous regime was ousted. Most of the aid 'sent into Cambodia' actually never reached those for whom it was intended; much of it ended up helping the Khmer Rouge. Disgracefully, the US - principally the Carter government - gave $85 million to the Khmer Rouge between 1980 and 1986. In fact, it was the evil Gooks - Vietnam - who did most to help Cambodia. Pilger made a documentary on some of the inaccuracies of American reporting on Cambodia; it was prevented from being broadcast. The book is not all dirgeful; there are some very amusing parts, like when he goes to Jerusalem and sees "Pontius Pilate underarm deodorant ('Judge It For Yourself') and Holy Sepulchre Egg-Timers". Residents of Communist Czechoslovakia told each other 'We are the most non-aligned people in the world. Why, we don't even interfere in the internal affairs of our own country any more'. But look, if you just want to sail through life on wings of bliss, don't read this. 'Heroes' is a potent warning that the amount of freedom in the West is limited, and that we should always watch our governments carefully - especially with regard to foreign policy. To read first-hand accounts by survivors of the Khmer Rouge, click here. Click here to buy 'Heroes' in paperback (£7.19, about $11).

PILGER, JOHN 'A Secret Country' rating: readability: