“If [Albanese] fails to secure Julian's release, Australia will cease to be sovereign”..... perhaps the issue is the other way around: Australia is not a sovereign state, the PM has no say. The sad part is, rather, that he does not even try!
John Pilger along with Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange - and more recently Caitlin Johnstone - are the four Australian journalists of international repute whom I most admire and respect. I have just tried to contact the John Pilger www/site at the foot of the essay intro PL and each attempt was disallowed! In 1990 I was editing a couple of linked anthologies for OUP (Melbourne) designed for senior level secondary students in Australia. Exploring the cultural diversity of Australia with aspects of First Australians scattered throughout the thematically-based chapters. The text anthology (lots of short writing) was titled Made in Australia and John Pilger - along with other luminaries such as Tom Keneally (author of Schindler's Ark - later after Steven Spielberg's movie title change - Schindler's List) who was reflecting on all the Cool Hand Lukes who emerged in Australia as he went on author interviews - many indeed of Schindler's "factory" ended up in Australia - and polymath broadcaster Phillip Adams (an essay on bigotry and prejudice) made his essay: "Why I Love Australia" (written in the mid-1980s) available to me to include - free of charge. I never met John Pilger until at an art Exhibition at the Mori Gallery I attended in Sydney (2010 - recorded somewhere in one of my diaries) the work of one of Wilfred Burchett's sons, George Burchett - opened by John Pilger - at which he spoke of having just come from a meeting in the UK with Julian Assange. I was then not long returned from my many years in Japan - and endeavouring to make sense of a much changed political landscape in Australia. The images of the present Australian PM - Anthony Albanese - hob-nobbing with the ultra-Hindu nationalist PM Narendra Modi just two days ago (cricket diplomacy it was called - best buddies) then yesterday morning-walking with a US military minder in San Diego - no news of Julian Assange's release - says it all really - as much a quisling as the previous Australian LNP politicians and lapdogs of the US. So disappointing. John Pilger is totally correct on every point!
Thanks immensely for these thoughts and recollections. They add a very useful extra dimension to John's "Letter"--my designation as I edited and wrote the display language.
Wilfred, I ought to mention, was something of an ideal for me as I set out to make myself a journalist. This was the mid-1970s. I had the privilege of editing him for a time, all explained in a forthcoming book. Many years on and by the most unlikely of circumstances, I met George and we've become friends in the 21st century, not-yet-met-in-person manner. You Aus folk make a community of which I feel a tangential part.
Albest, and to other commenters,, too, of course, esp Professor Harrison, as just below.
Ah, Mr. Pilger, you have it exactly backwards. You said: "Australia is said to be an inspiration for the master across the Pacific." The US created the secret courts and secret evidence and secret miscarriages of justice in the 1950's when our Supreme Court carved out the National Security Exception which doesn't exist in our constitution when the state didn't want to prove their case. It got worse in the 2000s when the Ironically titled PATRIOT act came into being. The FISA court is just that – a secret kangaroo court that that reviews secret evidence, issues secret court orders and has perpetrated injustices. I think you learned from us not us from you.
I'll leave you with one final thought. The little country of Costa Rica, just south of Nicaragua, was the target of a US fomented coup in 1948. When they got their civil government back a few years later, they disbanded the military. The Ticos still don't have a military or a coup. Why does Australia need one?
Jeffrey - excellent detail - as PL acknowledges. In earlier times I used to feel a sense of upset at the carry-on at the Versailles Peace Treaty talks concerning the abysmally racist attitude/stance taken by Australia's pugnacious PM W.(Billy M. HUGHES) at those talks opposing a clause of racial equality wanted by the allied Japanese. Just a few years back I read a biographical book The Turning Point in US-Japan Relations: Hanihara's Cherry Blossom Diplomacy in 1920-1930 - Palgrave macmillan 2016 - by (Sydney's Macquarie U) Prof.Misuzu Hanihara Chow - of her grand-father HANIHARA Masanao (at one stage post-war the Ambassador from Japan to the US) and in it discovered that as per usual - Australia was the raucous anti-Japan at that conference but behind the scenes being privately encouraged by the British and Woodrow Wilson. Learning from or encouraged by - the US - Australia once again with this AUKUS submarine deal - encouraged by the US/UK... And Interesting term - "kangaroo court"!
I gotta say, Jim, that it wasn't until after I'd written that I suddenly realized that you were Australian. FYI &/or E "kangaroo court" is an Americanism that has nothing to do with Australia. It is any court where the result is predetermined irrespective of what you say or evidence you might present. You should think Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. BTW Woodrow Wilson was a raging racist as, for that matter, was Winston Churchill who was the minister of the Admiralty.
AUKUS is an abomination. A piece of flotsam created to try to prevent the sinking of the US and the UK.
Disagreeing with nothing you write, JH. Prof. CHOW (now deceased) I met only once - back in the early/mid 1990s at an Australia-Japan Conference at Newcastle U (NSW) but she was a close friend to my mother's youngest sister. The book was given to me by Paul GLYNN (SM) along with his SM (Society of Mary/Marist priest - and brother) Tony Glynn - both with decades in Japan post-war engagement in Reconciliation. Paul is still living - health not so good - mid-90s - and a saint (though he might demur)! I was raised in a fundamentalist sect - but "escaped" it - aged just 19 nearly 55 years ago. Friends and saints range across the spectrum of faiths/religious philosophies which I have encountered - though I remain unconvinced by those from any variety of fundamentalism - a case of once bitten - the ability to see through their controls. The book/novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews (pron. Taves I discovered) and made into a very recent film) "Women Talking" (about a remote Bolivian Mennonite Community) - quickly aroused my social justice shackles.
“If [Albanese] fails to secure Julian's release, Australia will cease to be sovereign”..... perhaps the issue is the other way around: Australia is not a sovereign state, the PM has no say. The sad part is, rather, that he does not even try!
John Pilger along with Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange - and more recently Caitlin Johnstone - are the four Australian journalists of international repute whom I most admire and respect. I have just tried to contact the John Pilger www/site at the foot of the essay intro PL and each attempt was disallowed! In 1990 I was editing a couple of linked anthologies for OUP (Melbourne) designed for senior level secondary students in Australia. Exploring the cultural diversity of Australia with aspects of First Australians scattered throughout the thematically-based chapters. The text anthology (lots of short writing) was titled Made in Australia and John Pilger - along with other luminaries such as Tom Keneally (author of Schindler's Ark - later after Steven Spielberg's movie title change - Schindler's List) who was reflecting on all the Cool Hand Lukes who emerged in Australia as he went on author interviews - many indeed of Schindler's "factory" ended up in Australia - and polymath broadcaster Phillip Adams (an essay on bigotry and prejudice) made his essay: "Why I Love Australia" (written in the mid-1980s) available to me to include - free of charge. I never met John Pilger until at an art Exhibition at the Mori Gallery I attended in Sydney (2010 - recorded somewhere in one of my diaries) the work of one of Wilfred Burchett's sons, George Burchett - opened by John Pilger - at which he spoke of having just come from a meeting in the UK with Julian Assange. I was then not long returned from my many years in Japan - and endeavouring to make sense of a much changed political landscape in Australia. The images of the present Australian PM - Anthony Albanese - hob-nobbing with the ultra-Hindu nationalist PM Narendra Modi just two days ago (cricket diplomacy it was called - best buddies) then yesterday morning-walking with a US military minder in San Diego - no news of Julian Assange's release - says it all really - as much a quisling as the previous Australian LNP politicians and lapdogs of the US. So disappointing. John Pilger is totally correct on every point!
Jim.
Thanks immensely for these thoughts and recollections. They add a very useful extra dimension to John's "Letter"--my designation as I edited and wrote the display language.
Wilfred, I ought to mention, was something of an ideal for me as I set out to make myself a journalist. This was the mid-1970s. I had the privilege of editing him for a time, all explained in a forthcoming book. Many years on and by the most unlikely of circumstances, I met George and we've become friends in the 21st century, not-yet-met-in-person manner. You Aus folk make a community of which I feel a tangential part.
Albest, and to other commenters,, too, of course, esp Professor Harrison, as just below.
P.L.
Ah, Mr. Pilger, you have it exactly backwards. You said: "Australia is said to be an inspiration for the master across the Pacific." The US created the secret courts and secret evidence and secret miscarriages of justice in the 1950's when our Supreme Court carved out the National Security Exception which doesn't exist in our constitution when the state didn't want to prove their case. It got worse in the 2000s when the Ironically titled PATRIOT act came into being. The FISA court is just that – a secret kangaroo court that that reviews secret evidence, issues secret court orders and has perpetrated injustices. I think you learned from us not us from you.
I'll leave you with one final thought. The little country of Costa Rica, just south of Nicaragua, was the target of a US fomented coup in 1948. When they got their civil government back a few years later, they disbanded the military. The Ticos still don't have a military or a coup. Why does Australia need one?
Jeffrey - excellent detail - as PL acknowledges. In earlier times I used to feel a sense of upset at the carry-on at the Versailles Peace Treaty talks concerning the abysmally racist attitude/stance taken by Australia's pugnacious PM W.(Billy M. HUGHES) at those talks opposing a clause of racial equality wanted by the allied Japanese. Just a few years back I read a biographical book The Turning Point in US-Japan Relations: Hanihara's Cherry Blossom Diplomacy in 1920-1930 - Palgrave macmillan 2016 - by (Sydney's Macquarie U) Prof.Misuzu Hanihara Chow - of her grand-father HANIHARA Masanao (at one stage post-war the Ambassador from Japan to the US) and in it discovered that as per usual - Australia was the raucous anti-Japan at that conference but behind the scenes being privately encouraged by the British and Woodrow Wilson. Learning from or encouraged by - the US - Australia once again with this AUKUS submarine deal - encouraged by the US/UK... And Interesting term - "kangaroo court"!
I gotta say, Jim, that it wasn't until after I'd written that I suddenly realized that you were Australian. FYI &/or E "kangaroo court" is an Americanism that has nothing to do with Australia. It is any court where the result is predetermined irrespective of what you say or evidence you might present. You should think Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. BTW Woodrow Wilson was a raging racist as, for that matter, was Winston Churchill who was the minister of the Admiralty.
AUKUS is an abomination. A piece of flotsam created to try to prevent the sinking of the US and the UK.
Disagreeing with nothing you write, JH. Prof. CHOW (now deceased) I met only once - back in the early/mid 1990s at an Australia-Japan Conference at Newcastle U (NSW) but she was a close friend to my mother's youngest sister. The book was given to me by Paul GLYNN (SM) along with his SM (Society of Mary/Marist priest - and brother) Tony Glynn - both with decades in Japan post-war engagement in Reconciliation. Paul is still living - health not so good - mid-90s - and a saint (though he might demur)! I was raised in a fundamentalist sect - but "escaped" it - aged just 19 nearly 55 years ago. Friends and saints range across the spectrum of faiths/religious philosophies which I have encountered - though I remain unconvinced by those from any variety of fundamentalism - a case of once bitten - the ability to see through their controls. The book/novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews (pron. Taves I discovered) and made into a very recent film) "Women Talking" (about a remote Bolivian Mennonite Community) - quickly aroused my social justice shackles.