New World Notes - Power, Propaganda, and the Silence of Writers

The examples he cites are striking.  In Pilger's native Australia, the media have invented a child-prostitution scandal among Australia's indigenous people--thus furthering yet another land-grab by the government and the mining interests.

 

Then there's the press's "propaganda of silence": not reporting facts and stories that contradict the (often false) claims of the powerful. 

 

UN weapons inspectors and all the major U.S. spy agencies report that they have found no evidence that Iran has a program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has signed and is abiding by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Under the treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium to levels useful for power generation and medical research. Enriching it to the much-higher level needed to make bombs would require a huge increase in uranium imports and a huge increase in infrastructure--impossible to conceal.

 

Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons.

 

Don't look for any of these inconvenient facts on the front page of the New York Times--or from any other Establishment "news outlet."

 

Pilger gave this talk on August 23, 2008, at the Melbourne Writers Festival. I've condensed the talk for radio broadcast. A video of the entire presentation is here: http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/melbourne-writers-festival-john-pilger/ce8xBDNRwI04RdzibPvOjA.