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The Justified State

© John Lovett

I have in the process of writing a series of articles on the movies and how our experience in the cold war effected them. My current article "Hollywood and the Nuclear Age" can be found here http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/6213... The article describes two topics of Hollywood nuclear war films; the "oh my God we're all going to die," and the "hero (avatar) shall arise". Future topics will include topics such as "we're all going to become mutants," and "secret agents and the Bond-ing of America."

However, I have just read an article so heinous, so insidious, so injurious that it cannot go unresponded.

The article "THE ROGUE STATE" was published in the British newspaper THE MIRROR on 4 July 2002 (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/pag... ) and is lengthy ad hominum attack on the U.S., President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, the Royal Marines, Israel, and perhaps even his mother - in - law.

John Pilger is a journalist of liberal standing. He seems to come from the Wilfred Burchett (Whinny Bullshit) school of journalism. Those of you who served or grew up in the Vietnam War period might remember Burchett's anti - American diatribes on the Vietnam War. Pilger grew up in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, author and filmmaker. He has won Britain's highest award, Journalist of the Year, for his work all over the world, notably in Vietnam and Cambodia. However, having read quite a bit of the accessible material on Pilger his raison d'etre for living seems to be "whatever the U.S. does is wrong."

The article's basic theme is that the U.S. has created the war in Afghanistan to further the oil companies' interests and use foreign countries; such as the U.K., as paid mercenaries. However, it is filled with such egregious statistical as well as judgmental errors that it hardly fits the qualification of being journalism.

One of the most apparent statistical errors is that Pilger quotes from a "University of New Hampshire" report that states that "at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10 . . . an average of 62 innocent deaths a day" He continues by stating, "This is now estimated to have passed 5,000 civilian deaths: almost double the number killed on September 11." In the mis - quote of the report, Pilger either mis - read or mis - interpreted the data. I have a copy of the EXCEL file. The actual number quoted in the report is 3,500 deaths.

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