My attention was drawn to one of the most anti-American
screeds I’ve seen since Kenny Anderson published Land of Hypocrisy and his list
of “America’s
Greatest Hits.” John Pilger apparently has his back up, and is not above
inventing facts, twisting and ignoring history, exaggerating, and generally
engaging in yellow journalism to make his case. Pilger claims to be on a
mission to expose hidden agendas and myths that surround them, but he seems to
have an agenda, and is not above inventing myths to further his cause, whatever
it is.
I’m going to take apart Pilger’s
rambling nonsense that he gave in an address at the University of Sydney, point
by point.
First claim made in paragraph two, that the Marshall Island
testing from 1946 to 1958 was the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day
for 12 years. What Pilger is trying to
do is stun you into shocked outrage at the amount of nuclear testing conducted
by summing up the total explosive power, and dividing it by time span. This is
disingenuous, given that a single thermonuclear detonation, Ivy Mike, was the
equivalent explosive power of 700 Hiroshima bombs by itself. Pilger would have you believe it was the
volume of all this irresponsible testing that left Bikini atoll an
uninhabitable wasteland. This is not the truth. It’s not the quantity of the
nuclear testing, but the nature of the testing that made Bikini too hot to live
in. Fission weapons, which formed the bulk of the testing in the Marshall
Islands, have relatively small long-term radiological effects. Witness the city of Hiroshima, today a bustling
metropolis, even right at ground zero of the blast. It’s the fusion weapons and their byproducts
with long half-lives that make Bikini uninhabitable. No, you’re not going to die of radiation
poisoning if you set foot on the island.
The concern is that long-term ingestion of radioactive traces that could
find their way into the food supply would pose a radiological health hazard to
people who ate food that grew there.
Pilger then paints a grim, post-apocalyptic picture of
Bikini, a land where, “Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing
moves. There are no birds.” Uh, John,
trees growing in a “strange grid formation” is called an “orchard.” Maybe you don’t have them in Australia. Look it up.
As far as the birds go, maybe John needs to stop moving around and
making so much noise and scaring the birds.
A 1986
study of the avifauna of Bikini Atoll recorded 23 species of birds present,
of which ten were observed nesting on the islands.
In paragraph four, Pilger notes the victims of the testing,
suffering from thyroid and other types of cancer. he effects of exposure to
radioactive fallout were poorly understood at the dawn of the atomic age. The
Micronesians were hardly the only victims of atomic testing, and by no means
was America the only country that conducted dangerous above-ground tests which
resulted in the irradiation of unintended victims. In the Soviet Union, the
victims weren’t even unintentional, as civilians
were encouraged to observe the weapons tests, as part of a study on the
long-term effects of fallout exposure. But it’s all the fault of the evil,
rapacious Superpower, as Pilger calls America in paragraph five, and the
Micronesians were the hapless victims and guinea pigs of the superpower that’s more
dangerous than ever today. This is
balderdash. The Micronesian people were
never the guinea pigs of any nuclear testing. The United States took every
reasonable precaution to protect the inhabitants of Micronesia, given the
limited understanding of nuclear fallout effects of the time.
Pilger’s outrage for the Bikini natives is based on the
relocation of 167 people. He insinuates
that they are impoverished because of this relocation. It doesn’t matter that there’s no industry on
Bikini, it’s subsistence living, and that the population had reached its
maximum sustainable level before the relocation. These people weren’t impoverished
as a result of atomic testing. They’re
impoverished because they’re barely clinging to a tiny scrap of poverty-stricken
coral in the middle of the ocean.
Pilger’s characterization of America as a superpower that’s
more dangerous than ever today is belied by the facts. If America was indeed a
dangerous superpower as claimed, it would be the only nuclear power in the
world, as it would have used its nuclear superiority to quash the nuclear
ambitions of upstarts around the world. Pilger’s political and historical
myopia ignores the fact that nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear
annihilation was the only thing that stood between the democracies of Western
Europe and a Soviet army that could have rolled west to the Atlantic ocean with
little or no resistance. Pilger forgets that America conquered more territory
since 1942 than has any other nations in the history of the world, and has returned
it all to its rightful owners. Pilger
forgets that this “rapacious superpower” was the only thing that prevented his
native Australia from being invaded and overrun by the Japanese in 1942, when
the Australian army was fighting in the deserts of North Africa against
Rommel. My guess is that Pilger slept
through his history studies.
Pilger then dons his tinfoil hat and declares that a world
war has already begun, instigated and promoted by an “invisible government.” As
proof he presents exhibit A., President Obama pledging to make the world free
of Nuclear weapons, then saying he was lying.
President Obama wasn’t lying, he’s just an ideological
idiot. Obama genuinely believes a
nuclear free world would be a good thing.
This would be a world in which unscrupulous superpowers like China and
Russia would force their will on their neighbors without having to worry about
consequences. Obama – and apparently
Pilger – seems to think that removing the ability of free countries to issue an
ultimatum, and having the means with which to back it up is a good thing. Sure, no country is impolite enough to do
anything like invade another country, so why do we need these evil weapons that
would be the only way to stop them? Tell
it to Kuwait. Tell it to Ukraine. Pilger
has grown up in a world where these sorts of land grabs are the exception and
not the norm, precisely because the presence of nuclear weapons means no one is
willing to get close to the brink.
Pilger claims that “The Obama administration has built more
nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more
nuclear factories.” Yes, to listen to Pilger, the US is rearming at a record
rate, preparing for the bad old days of the height of the cold war.
This is an idiotic claim. First, the US has not built more
“Nuclear factories.” The USA has eight nuclear production facilities, all of
which have been operational since WWII. There have been programmed
modernization projects. Most of these
facilities are engaged in research to fine-tune the capabilities of existing
weapons, studying the effectiveness of existing weapons with regard to their
shelf life, and repurposing decommissioned weapons to provide fuel for peaceful
power production.
Second, Pilger conveniently neglects to mention that the US
is limited by treaty to the number of weapons, warheads and delivery systems
that it can maintain. Nuclear weapons do
not store well. Their effectiveness
decays along with the fissile material that form the explosive component or the
trigger. Rockets also have a shelf-life, as the chemical boosters deteriorate
over time. Older systems become obsolete
and must be decommissioned, to be replaced with more modern weapons. The US
arsenal is not growing, nor is it the largest in the world. Modernization and replacement of aging
weapons has been put off for far too long. Nor does the US have the largest
nuclear stockpile. Russia has 330
more weapons than does the evil, rapacious USA.
The US has had nuclear weapons for 71 years. It has used
them twice in anger, to end a war that would have, by most calculations, cost 1
million American lives and upwards of 70 million Japanese lives if it were to
continue. Pilger seems to think that America
is too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons, in spite of the fact that America
has fought five relatively major wars and numerous minor ones since then and
never felt the need to resort to nukes. Is America the problem, or is America
the ongoing solution to such unpredictable rogue nations like Iran or North
Korea, both of which are feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons that they
can’t afford, and have little reason not to use them if they get them?
Pilger then gets his panties in a wad about the newest
design of the US standard B-61 fission weapon, which has a selectable yield ability
mated to a precision guidance system. Since
the Vietnam war, America has become so precise with placing its conventional
weapons that there’s virtually no need to use a nuclear weapon to ensure target
destruction. Some targets still require
more bang than a conventional warhead can provide, such as a deeply buried
target. So let me understand this:
first, Pilger is worked up about the fact that we produced bigger and more
destructive weapons (although the world record is held by Russia with its 50
Megaton Tsar Bomba device), but then he’s up in arms when we scale it back for
a more controlled, less damaging weapon.
Dude, make up your mind.
Pilger then spends a few paragraphs ranting about the US
buildup in Eastern Europe, and insinuates US involvement in Ukraine. Pilger invokes the CIA, that boogeyman of
conspiracy theorists with unlimited funds and dark arts of espionage, equipped
untold nefarious intelligence capabilities to work America’s will throughout
the world. What a laugh. As an American,
I only wish the CIA was as competent, well- funded and efficient as nuts like Pilger makes them
out to be, instead of being the bumbling keystone cops they truly are.
Pilger’s rabid anti-Americanism is on full display here, as
he makes it sound like the USA is the one threatening Russia and raising
tensions in the region. Pilger doesn’t
seem to know or care about Russia’s recent aggression in the Ukraine and
Crimea. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that the US has treaty obligations to
NATO, and the NATO forces were welcomed with relief by Eastern European
countries who had been steamrolled twice by Russia in the last century. He makes the preposterous insinuation that
the Ukrainian government is under US control, and characterizes Ukrainians as a
regime rotten with Nazis – as if the “Nazis” of the Ukraine were morally
inferior to the neo-Bolsheviks of Russia. Pilger is obviously a Russian
sympathizer, considering he didn’t use any virtual ink to discuss the
consolidation of political power by Putin, the many aggressive actions taken by
Russia, Russia’s rising imperialism or Russia’s many questionable actions in
the nuclear arms race.
Pilger then goes on a rant about The USA and its stance
against China. His ace in the hole in this spectacular display of idiocy is
that most people are ignorant of the geography or the geopolitics of the South
China Sea. He claims that the dispute over the Spratly islands is the result of
US pressure and bribery in Manila. He never mentions that there are no
international agreements settled about the Spratly islands. He ignores the
invasion of the Spratly Islands by the Chinese navy in 1988 that killed 64
Vietnamese sailors and sunk Vietnamese vessels, or the battle of the Paracel
Islands in 1974, which resulted in China taking control of this group of the
Spratlys.
Pilger makes the absurd case that this conflict is being
fomented by America as an excuse to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of
China. The problem is, that the Spratlys are nowhere near the coast of
China. They lie between 700 and 1000
miles from the Chinese mainland, and sit squarely astride the shipping lanes of
any maritime commerce traveling between East Asia and India, the Gulf States,
Europe and Africa. He hysterically points
out that US control of the Spratly Islands would allow the US to block shipping
between China and its oil supply and customers in Europe and elsewhere. Of
course, he neglects a couple of things, such as China’s control of the Spratlys
would have the exact same effect on maritime commerce for Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
Vietnam and the Philippines. The US,
Vietnam and the Philippines have done nothing to capitalize on the strategic
importance of the Spratly islands. China
on the other hand, has a history of aggression in the area, and has actively
developed military bases on the islands, from which it could easily close the
shipping lanes. But just listen to Pilger. It’s fault of the aggressive imperial
warmonger of America.
Pilger isn’t as stupid as he sounds, and he knows his
conspiracy theories are getting too thin for even the most credulous, so he
digresses to punch up his bona fides a little by playing off the Iraq war and
weapons of mass destruction. This is a
favorite stalking horse of the anti-American left: Invent a straw man in the
form of WMD’s, control the definition of the term, and then demonstrate that
Saddam didn’t have them. This is very
convenient, because the very definition of a WMD in their narrative is a weapon
that Saddam didn’t have. Never mind that
500
chemical weapons were found in Iraq, that the CIA
bought 400 rockets filled with Sarin gas, that ISIS gained control of a WMD
destruction facility that had thousands of Iraqi chemical weapons, or that Pulitzer
Prize winning Journalist Judith Miller pulled the curtain back on
the lie that Bush tricked the world into supporting the invasion of Iraq. The
firecracker in Timothy Reid’s shoe was a WMD, and the bulk of the chermical
weapons, the biological and nuclear research facilities in Iraq weren’t because
the media says so.
He tries to leverage the Iraq war, waged to unseat one of
the most brutal dictators of the last century, who was a sponsor of
international terror, an international criminal who had invaded his neighbors,
gassed and exterminated his own people, and who had a known record of seeking
advanced weaponry to consolidate his power in the Middle East, as evidence that
the USA is an imperialist warmonger who seeks war at every juncture. Pilger
also no doubt believes the nonsense that the US went to war in Iraq for
oil. Never mind that the US didn’t take
any oil from Iraq, except that which was paid for at market prices. It’s kind
of silly to wage a war for oil, and then not, you know, take the oil; but this is what fools like Pilger would have you
believe to justify their irrational anti-Americanism.
He makes the case then that the US is doing the same thing
to China, “encircling” it with missiles, bases, bomber and battle groups. Maybe Pilger should glance at a map before he
makes such absurd statements. China is
hardly in a position to be encircled by anybody. The Bomber leg of the nuclear
triad is mainly based in the USA. Nuclear capability on overseas bases in
neither confirmed nor denied, but there are no new bases anywhere near China
that haven’t been there since the ‘60’s.
I don’t understand how ballistic missiles can “encircle’ someone from
their silos in the American Midwest. Submarines and battle groups respond to
threats, and saber rattling by the Chinese is not something to be ignored or
taken lightly when they have a stated policy of reuniting Taiwan with mainland
China, one way or another.
Then Pilger announces that
“the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military
exercise in recent history,” in “high
Secrecy.” Secrecy so high, in fact, that
you actually had to Google search it to find out about it from the Australian Ministry of
Defense before it happened! It was hardly the biggest air-sea exercise of
any sort, and is the sixth such exercise by US and Australian forces in the
last 12 years. I don’t know what Pilger thinks the military does when it’s not
out raping children and burning villages, but as a veteran I tell you, they train.
They practice, they challenge themselves in potential real-world
scenarios, so that if the balloon ever does go up, they’ll be ready, with no
surprises in store. This doesn’t mean that
the military is going to do the thing that they train for, it means they’ll be
ready to do if it needs to be done. I
also notice that Pilger conveniently neglected to mention that in August 2015,
Russia and China conducted what they termed the
largest joint naval exercise in history.
Pilger, unable to stay focused on a theme except generally
hate on America, takes aim at the presidential elections process, by hating on
Trump. Ignorant of the American
political process and the nuances that allowed a self-aggrandizing narcissist
like Trump to get and keep center stage, Pilger makes the case that Trump is
the epitome of America. He goes on to
charge that, “This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the
police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that
has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies,
and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession
of millions of people. “
I’m afraid that Pilger has been watching too much Hollywood, and paying too much attention to biased news reporting. I doubt he’s ever been to America, or has ever honestly listened to what Americans think, feel and believe, without filtering it through his anti-American bias. He’s a victim of a race-baiting president Obama who has whipped up previously nonexistent racial tensions to divide the country for his own political advantage. Pilger has a classic liberal foreigners disdain for the “gun culture” of America, without even understanding what it is he’s talking about. It serves his liberal agenda to frame the discussion, never mind the facts and statistics that show his narrative to be a blatant lie. Pilger is a dupe, and seems to be proud of it.
I’m afraid that Pilger has been watching too much Hollywood, and paying too much attention to biased news reporting. I doubt he’s ever been to America, or has ever honestly listened to what Americans think, feel and believe, without filtering it through his anti-American bias. He’s a victim of a race-baiting president Obama who has whipped up previously nonexistent racial tensions to divide the country for his own political advantage. Pilger has a classic liberal foreigners disdain for the “gun culture” of America, without even understanding what it is he’s talking about. It serves his liberal agenda to frame the discussion, never mind the facts and statistics that show his narrative to be a blatant lie. Pilger is a dupe, and seems to be proud of it.
Pilger winds down his screed with a rambling, directionless indictment
against politicians in general. He
endorses socialist Jeremy Corbyn and voices tacit approval of Bernie
Sanders. This explains Pilger’s lack of
substantive criticism of the excesses of Russia and China, and his knee-jerk
hatred of America, as America is still the beacon of free enterprise and
capitalism in the world. It doesn’t matter to useful idiots and fellow
travelers like Pilger that America has de facto set the standard for quality of
life in the modern world, that America has shed the blood of its young men
around the world for the last 75 years so that others could live free of
tyranny and oppression. It doesn’t seem
to faze Pilger that Western Civilization is in an existential struggle for
survival against Islamic pan-Arabic imperialism. It doesn’t occur top Pilger that his
worldview is skewed by his knee-jerk socialist views, to the point where he
freely disregards any history that belies his nonsensical theories. His is a world shaped by his beliefs, instead
of allowing his beliefs be shaped by the world.
I have no beef with people like Pilger. Their peculiar breed of willful stupidity
will be subject to a Darwinian process and will be less than a footnote in
history. What bothers me about people
like him is his words influence others who know nothing about that which he
speaks, and so take his nonsense at face value. Pilger’s method of yellow
journalism, cherry picking news to fit his narrative, and pattern of absurdly
incorrect assumptions and conclusions should be held suspect and worthy of
critical scrutiny by anyone who bothers to read his nonsense.
Pilger would be well
advised that if he’s going to break the silence, that he pull his head out of
his backside and have some rudimentary knowledge of what he’s talking about. Right now he's just a nut with a blog.
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