NKSK version 2

...by John Pilger. Talks about the right-wing politics of John Howard...

Cruelty and xenophobia stir and shame the lucky country

....but I was surpised he missed off the Palm Island case - that would have made his argument even stronger.

Amazulu

John Pilger is a clever man and a great writer but he is extremely left-wing. It's a good article but I disagree with lots of it. 43% youth unemployment? I'd like to see where he gets those figures from. Also the Labor Party with this new dude in charge is a real threat to Howard and unfortunately could win the next election.

Lordhorrace

"Also the Labor Party with this new dude in charge is a real threat to Howard and unfortunately could win the next election."

Unfortunately????? Fantastic!! Its time for a change! get the Fascist out!!! Bring back the good old days of true Australia!

The OH

What do you mean by "Bring back the good old days of true Australia!"?

in layman's terms...

Amazulu

The new Australia is better. More capitalism, compliant unions, workplace reforms. All we need now is more of it. More privatisation, dismantling of the welfare state, lower taxes, draconian anti-crime measures, bigger military etc. It would be an even better place then.

Greed is good.

DrWho

Hardly going to be a sensible unbiased report is it...

chels

What's biased about:

Today, black Australians still have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world,

The impoverishment of black communities, which I have seen change little over the years, was described in 2006 by Save the Children as "some of the worst we have seen in our work all around the world".

he has sent troops and federal police to the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and East Timor.

This seems a pretty good assessment too:

Flag-waving and an unctuous hand-on-heart jingoism, about which sceptical Australians once felt a healthy ambivalence, are now standard features at sporting and other public events.

iPom

Don't think anyone claimed it was going to be, rodders. He does write well though.

Lord Pom Percy

43% youth unemployment where did he get those figures from, maybe some remote Aboriginal settlement, in most places in OZ employers can't find enough workers, its more like 4% unemployment

Lord Pom Percy

John Pilger would be popular with the Oz bashers on the "returning to Uk forum", his just as anti-oz biased as they are.

DrWho

I'm sure he does... I just remember some of the crap he used to come out with in the Mirror (I think it was that one...) back in the 80's...

DrWho

What's unbiased about this...

Australia is not often news, cricket and bushfires aside. That is a pity, because the regression of this social democracy into a state of fabricated fear and xenophobia is an object lesson for all societies claiming to be free. In power for more than a decade, the Liberal prime minister, John Howard, comes from the outer reaches of Australia's "neocons".

or...

Howard rejoices in his promotion of "Australian values" - a very Australian sycophancy to the sugared "values" of foreign power. The darling of a group of white supremacists who buzz around the Murdoch-dominated press and radio talk-back hosts, the prime minister has used acolytes to attack the "black armband view of history", as if the mass killing and resistance of indigenous Australians did not happen. The fine historian Henry Reynolds, author of The Other Side of the Frontier, has been thoroughly smeared, along with other revisionists. In 2005 Andrew Jaspan, a Briton newly appointed editor of the Melbourne Age, was subjected to a vicious neocon campaign that accused him of "reducing" the Age to "another Guardian".

You forgot to include the next two sentences...

These serve to prepare Australians for renewed militarism and war, as ordained by the Bush administration, and to cover attacks on Australia's Muslim community. Speak out and you may break a 2005 law of sedition meant to intimidate with the threat of imprisonment for up to seven years.

WTF...?!?

Just a typical Pilger rant...

Amazulu

Same as that mad bitch Germaine Greer

Hutch

Damn. Was going to post that link myself.

Great article by a great writer - if you're going to nay-say it just because he has a left-wing viewpoint then you ought to head out back of Bourke, dig a hole and bury your head in the sand. Better still, stick your fingers in your ears and go 'nah nah can't hear you' ...

Hutch

Youth unemployment is actually higher than that, right here in South Coast NSW.