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On Tuesday, I attended a Q&A session hosted by Blackwell books at the School of Oriental and African Studies’ Brunei Gallery. The speaker for the evening was journalist, author, and documentary film-maker John Pilger (he has his own website at www.johnpilger.com and a blog at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website). The topic for discussion was his new book Freedom Next Time, where historian and author Mark Curtis, when reviewing the book for the Guardian, said “the voiceless” are “given a voice”. Johann Hari of the Independent was less flattering but still complimentary, trying to “stand between … admiring [Pilger's] great skills and exposes but weeping over his occassional follies”. “Freedom Next Time mostly showcases Pilger at his best,” he said, but “flaws can be spotted”, concluding that “when Pilger is good, he is great, but when Pilger is bad, he reeks.”

Not having read the book myself, I was interested to hear what Mr. Pilger had to say. I’ve read and seen some of his previous works (The New Rulers of The World being a particularly favourite of mine), and agreed with many of his observations from time to time, so I knew what to expect. I was also particularly interested in his thoughts on South Africa, where I come from, and his observations regarding Nelson Mandela. Twelve A5 pages of hand-scribbled notes later, here is a summary of his talk, and the Q&A session that followed, along with some of my own thoughts. I’ll split this into two parts, one for his outline, and the other for the Q&A session, to cut down on the overall length. [And, to clarify: all links used in the article are not meant to reflect sources that Pilger himself may or may not have used to substantiate his comments, I simply searched the Net to try find out more, and linked to relevant pieces.]

Mr. Pilger took to the stage shortly after seven to the appreciative applause of the modest audience. He jokingly thanked the crowd for not having left to attend the Brazil vs. Croatia match and proceeded to outline the aim and focus of his book. He said that the book itself had started when he had returned to South Africa in 1997, following a long absence of exactly thirty years when he was originally banned by the then-apartheid government. It was this visit that led to the chapter in the book called Apartheid Did Not Die , the same name as a documentary film he did (there is also an article he wrote in 1998 entitled A Revolution Betrayed that covers similar themes).

When he arrived, he was struck by the “raised expectations” of the black population, a population that had struggled so hard and now wanted their “promises fulfilled”. In particular, he was amazed at the difference between the reality of the New South Africa (as it was called), and the promises that were made. [For example, in an address by Nelson Mandela in 1993, he claimed that the ANC's Freedom Charter was "a document born of our struggle, rooted in South African conditions, and expressing the aspirations of the disenfranchised. Because of its content the Freedom Charter has met with international acclaim as an outstanding human rights document." The Freedom Charter itself claimed that the "national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people".] Apartheid, said Pilger, had been declared dead, which suggested that everthing was okay now, images of people queuing to vote proved that the struggle had been won, and that freedom and democracy would flourish.

The reality, he said, is that economic apartheid, which he described as being brought across by the British in the 20th Century as a cornerstone of their imperialist drive, is now being reinforced by the ANC themselves. [For example, in 1912, the chairman of the SA Chamber of Mines - primarily founded by British companies - said "that what is wanted is surely a policy that would establish once and for all that outside special reserves, the ownership of land must be in the hands of the White race and that the surplus of young men in stables squatting on the land in idleness and spreading out over unlimited areas, must end their living by working for a wage."]

Pilger commented that many of the black people he met actually looked back at the last decade of apartheid with a form of nostalgia. The South African apartheid government of the time could see the end was coming and had tried to effect some minor changes to help stave off the inevitable. Now, things were actually getting worse where SA was essentially being run through an alliance of predominantly white-owned capital and a newly empowered black elite. [In Mark Curtis' review, for example, he refers to Pilger saying that "average black household income has fallen by 19%" and that the ANC "has failed to reclaim sufficient land for the dispossessed and presides over a growing gap between rich and poor." Pilger also quotes Nelson Mandela as stating, matter-of-factly, "We do not want to challenge big business that can take fright and take away their money . . . You can call it Thatcherite but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy."] It wasn’t all bad of course, he said, and he noted that there had been some improvements, but for the majority, there was still nothing. These facts, he said, still go predominantly unreported, which says something about the mainstream media’s ability to frame the debate.

This led him to describe the second chapter of his book, entitled The Last Taboo, and looked at the distortion of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Pilger had named it this because of something Edward Said, the Palestinian author and activist, had once written in his essay entitled America’s Last Taboo before he died. Said had said that “any serious public discussion of the past or future of Israel” was “quite literally the last taboo in American public life”:

Abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty, even the sacrosanct military budget can be discussed with some freedom. The extermination of native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag publicly committed to the flames. But the systematic continuity of Israelâ??s 52-year-old oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear.

Overall, Pilger said, he had travelled to five different locations that he had a connection with, a history that had spanned over his time spent reporting as a journalist. Each one formed the basis of the five central chapters of his book. The first chapter, he said, was entitled Stealing a Nation (also the name of a film documentary he did, which you can watch here), and covered the crime of the British and the US regarding the Chagossian people and the Chagos Islands. In the 1960′s and 70′s, the Chagossians were expelled after the British had given the main island, Diego Garcia, to the United States to setup a communications base at first and then a harbour and airbase that is routinely used by B-52′s to do bombing runs in the Middle East (bombing in both Gulf Wars, for example, were conducted from here). He also mentioned that there is currently a rumor, but still unproved, that a Guantanamo-style prison has also been setup on Diego Garcia.

The Chagossians, he said, were then subsequently dumped in the slums of Mauritius where they suffered terribly. After years of legal battles, the Chagossians finally succeeded in winning a major court case in 2000, only to have the ruling overturned by an archaic law known as the Royal Prerogative, which decreed that “no person has the right of abode in the territory” and restored “full immigration control over all the islands of the British Indian Ocean Territory” “to ensure and maintain the availability and effective use of the territory for defence purposes”.

Since that judgement was overturned, Pilger said that a more recent court case had ruled that, to “exile a whole population from a British Overseas Territory and claim that” it is being done “for the ‘peace, order and good government’ of the territory is … repugnant.”

The British, Pilger said, still need to appeal, but the United States have essentially said, tough, it’s their territory now. This whole sordid episode, Pilger said, demonstrates the way the world is “ordered”.

The third chapter of the book is entitled Shining India, he said, and attempts to look behind the “facade” of what we’re told. In general, he pointed out that people talk about how India is rising, is a great meritocracy with booming business, call-centres and the like, but the reality is, again, that poverty has never been greater.

The final chapter of the book, Liberating Afghanistan, was about how great promises had been made to the Afghan people, but the reality once again was far different. He said that the US claimed they were going in to hunt for al-Qaeda but, said Pilger, they had already left and the US bombed anyway. Claims of liberating women, said Pilger, were “a mirage”, and the women there were now worse off, looking back with a “perverse nostalgia” at the rule of the Taliban where the raping of women was punished. Now, he said, such crimes go unpunished in a country that is essentially ruled by US-backed warlords, every bit as brutal as the Taliban. [A recent report from the UN that had been shelved for several months revealed that "leading Afghan politicians and officials" have been "accused of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and other war crimes."] Pilger also mentioned that, while the Taliban had successfully eradicated poppy growing (for opium and heroin), post-invasion Aghanistan was again the opium capital of the world. [For me, this is the one part of the speech that didn't sit comfortably, because, like Hari pointed out, the methods the Taliban used to outlaw the opium trade were less than examplary. At the same time, however, I recognise the long history of CIA and drugs in their operations, so one has to wonder if we're seeing a repeat of history here.] Lastly, although it isn’t mentioned this way that often in the media, Pilger said that the British/NATO troops being sent in are essentially doing so to cover for the withdrawl of the United States’ forces from Afghanistan.

In conclusion, he said that the major theme running through this work and his others was essentially about “pushing the screen back”, trying to see what lay behind the mass media-presented news. He believed this was especially important today, in particular in relation to Iraq, which he described as being the most “urgent issue of our time” (although Iraq does not form the basis of a chapter in the book, he did point out that the introduction does cover a fair amount of material regarding Iraq and media reporting). The media and journalism, he said, remains more powerful than ever, and this is recognised by the ruling governments og the world and the amount of resources they put in to managing it. Unfortunately, he said, the media continually echoed and amplified government lies and statements regarding Iraq (and elsewhere), so for him it was vital to try and look behind this screen.

Part two will be up in the next few days …