The Empire is alive and well, doing its best to try and suffocate the last vestiges of resistance, but hell we know that already. Investigative journalist and award winning documentary filmmaker, John Pilger, takes us into lives of these bold resistors of The Empire in his book Freedom Next Time: Resisting The Empire. Pilger takes us on a trip around the globe to directly expose the Imperial designs of the Western Imperialism. We first go on a trip to the little known British colonial outpost of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. The British with the help of its wayward child, The U.S., go on a brutal depopulation mission of the African inhabitants of the island. Next Pilger takes us up close and personal into occupied Palestine, where the streets are paved with the suffering of a people relegated to extermination, to make way for the U.S. military outpost white settler nation of Israel. And you thought neo-liberalism was bad in South America, wait until we go to India with John. If that examination of neo-colonialism isn’t enough for you in India, and you want to see a representation of a truly petty bourgeois government wait until you see post-apartheid South Africa; a place were the African majority suffer worse atrocities at the hands of the white settler minority than they did under apartheid. He paints the brutal picture of how a hand full of Uncle Toms (Mandela included) are balling out of control while their people suffer. Last, but defiantly not least, we go to Afghanistan, to experience The Great Game in full swing, where we see people being brutally colonized under the guise of liberation. Pilger points to the fact of how the U.S. had a relationship with the Taliban prior to the attacks on The World Trade Center, and how they planned to invade Afghanistan prior the attacks to install an oil pipeline because the Taliban had become unreliable puppets.
The reason I feel this book is a must read, is because Pilger takes you right into the heart of the struggle. We see the devastation first hand. Tears will flow; veins will pulsate with anger, as we journey into the lives of the oppressed masses around the world. For example; why does a genocidal settler (Hmmm…seems like “genocidal” and “settler” is a bit superfluous. Is it me, or does one automatically imply the other? Just a thought) policeman named Captain Dirk Coetzee, describe in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission sham, that he murdered an ANC activist, burned the body, and while the body was burning , his colleagues and his appetites were aroused by the smell burning of flesh! Coetzee’s deranged a$$, along with his homicidal colleagues, decided to barbeque meat and get drunk off liquor, the smell of the burning flesh engendering their cannibalistic avarice. I was like this sounds like some Silence of The Lambs sh**! All the while Mandela and Tutu insisted that there will be no prosecutions of murders like these, and this was the so-called “leadership for the people” calling for these murders immunity!
World-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, John Pilger.
It’s not the contradictions of The Empire that he exposes that really surprise me so to speak, but it’s how Pilger confronts those in power responsible for these contradictions! After all, he is a journalist, he goes straight to the source, and he makes those bastards stutter, stumble, and go into subjective idealistic tirades; when he confronts an American Colonel in Afghanistan about what right does America have to impose laws on the people of Afghanistan in determining who is legal and who is illegal, the American Colonel makes the ever popular statement made by the goon squads of Western Imperialism, “I am a Christian, sir.” To which Pilger replies back “Yes?” Both Pilger and I at that point were both asking ourselves “What the fu** is this idiot talking about!” The American Colonel then replies back “I will kill but I am a Christian.” Sometimes statements are so asinine that the degree insanity of the person who makes them speaks for themselves.
Freedom Next: Resisting The Empire, is a poignant read, which by the end leaves no room for interpretation if liberation from Imperialism isn’t achieved. FREEDOM NO TIME!
Checkout Pilger’s films; one on Latin America The War On Democracy, one on Palestine called Palestine Is Still The Issue, and his film on post-apartheid Azania (South Africa) Apartheid Didn’t Die below or click the hyperlinks in the titles. Enjoy!
