Comments on John Pilger’s New Book, Freedom Next Time -
by Stephen Lendman

John Pilger is an award-winning journalist and
documentary filmmaker and one of the truly great ones
of our time.  For nearly 50 years, he’s courageously
and brilliantly done what too few others in his
profession, in fact, do - his job.  John has also been
a war correspondent, is the author of 10 books and is
best known in his adopted country Great Britain for
his investigative documentaries exposing the crimes of
US and Western imperialism.

Freedom Next Time is John’s newest book just published
and the fifth one of his I’ve read.  The others were
magnificent, and when I learned a new one was due out,
I couldn’t wait to read it knowing it would be vintage
Pilger and not to be missed.  I wasn’t disappointed
and am delighted to share with readers what it’s
about.  What else, as John himself says in his opening
paragraph: “This book is about empire, its facades and
the enduring struggle of people for their freedom.  It
offers an antidote to authorized versions of
contemporary history that censor by omission and
impose double standards.”  Indeed it does, and John
devotes his book to exposing the crimes of empire in
five countries.  I’ll cover each one in a separate
section.

The Introduction - An Explanation of the Imperial
Mindset

In his introduction, John explains how the imperial
notion of “colonial assumptions have not changed,” and
to sustain them the great majority of people
everywhere “remain invisible and expendable.”  He
poignantly recounts how while on September 11, 2001 a
few thousand people tragically died in New York and
Washington, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization
reported the daily mortality rate of 36,615 children
alone from the effects of extreme poverty.  Not a word
of it was in the news that day or any other.  Nor was
there any explanation of why these people were denied
the bare essentials to survive in a world able to
provide them.  These and the ones killed daily in Iraq
and elsewhere are what John calls the “unworthy
victims” as distinguished from the “worthy ones” in
the US on 9/11 and those in London on July 7, 2005 who
died in a “terrorist” bombing.  The only crimes we
recognize are the ones committed by others - those we
call “terrorists” or label as enemies, never any by
us.  Nobel laureate Harold Pinter refers to this as “a
vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.”  We only
know what our leaders and complicit corporate media
(BBC, NPR and PBS included) choose to tell us, and
it’s never the truth or full disclosure we’re entitled
to have.  What they suppress is far more important
than what they report.

Until the fall of the Soviet Union, the notion of
imperialism in the US was that it was a European, not
an American tradition.  It was untrue, of course, but
a proper education in the US, like the one I got,
never let on.  It hid the true history of my country
that from inception practiced a policy of imperial
expansion west and south and engaged in plunder and
genocide against the original inhabitants living there
to make it possible.  George Washington was its first
practitioner, referring to the new nation as a “rising
empire.” He helped build it by removing and
exterminating its native Indians so expansion could
proceed as the Founding Fathers and those who followed
them wished.  Washington believed the Indian peoples
were subhumans (no different from how we view Iraqis
today) and compared them to wolves and “beasts of
prey” who must be destroyed.  And our sacred
Declaration of Independence contained the language
“merciless Indian savages” which left no room for
their independence or any justice either. 

The tradition begun at the republic’s birth never
changed but until the end of the “cold war” was well
hidden behind a respectable democratic facade and
still mostly is.  Any notion of imperialism was never
something taught in school at any level, discussed in
polite society or acknowledged publicly.  But all that
changed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet
Union.  What never before could be admitted now began
to be seen as something respectable and even a matter
of national pride.  And with the advent of the Bush
administration, imperial dominance and expansion began
to be portrayed as something positive and contributing
to the advance of civilization.  How low we’ve sunk in
coming so far.

John explains how fraudulent and dangerous Bush’s
priorities are based on its policy papers and one
conceived a few years before it came to power.  It
began with a 1997 “messianic conspiracy theory” called
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
written by many of the far right neoconservative
ideologues now in power.  This document is an imperial
plan for US global dominance to extend well into the
future and be enforced with unchallengeable military
power.  It was a blueprint for the current “war on
terror” (which John calls a “war of terror’)  and
“preventive war” that began after 9/11 and is now
ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan with further conflicts
likely ahead.  The Pentagon goes even further in its
Vision 2020 that lays out a goal that calls for “full
spectrum dominance.”  By this is meant the total,
unchallengeable control of all land, sea, air and
space and the self-given right to enforce it with the
use of nuclear or any other kinds of weapons. 

The British government under Tony Blair is part of the
same scheme as a complicit junior partner.  It sees it
in its own interest to be allied with the US and Bush
administration and supports its imperial policies.  As
a result, John explains, it’s no surprise Mr. Blair
has taken his nation to war more often than any
British Prime Minister in modern times.  For him and
George Bush, international law, norms and any sense of
morality are irrelevant and aren’t allowed to stand in
the way of their unrestricted political violence
portrayed as having a democratic face and purpose.
Freedom Next Time exposes this hypocrisy to show that
“imperialism, in whatever guise, is the antithesis of
the ‘benevolent and moralistic.’ ”  It examines the
history and events in five countries John knows well
as a journalist and filmmaker. 

Before beginning, John first addresses the present in
his introduction.  He quotes those who see the seeds
of fascism and disturbing similarities in the US (and
UK) today to Nazi Germany and Hitler’s demonic appeal
to his divine mission as that country’s savior that he
sold to his people in Christian religious terms.  He
did it in a country that was the pride of Western
civilization and a very model of democracy.  If it can
happen there, it can anywhere and will unless enough
committed people work to prevent it.  But John
stresses he hasn’t written a pessimistic book. He
cites the alternate seeds of hope,  rebirth of
democracy, and social equity in Latin America -
especially in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and the poorest
of all the continent’s nations Evo Morales’ Bolivia.
He sees these forces as part of a “worldwide movement
against poverty, war and misinformation that has
arisen in less than a decade, and is more diverse,
enterprising, internationalist and tolerant of
difference than anything in my lifetime.”  John
concludes his message of hope saying that the
“wisest… know that just as the conquest of Iraq is
unraveling, so a whole system of domination and
impoverishment can unravel, too.”

John’s book is divided into five chapters for each
nation he covers.  Four are well-known, but few
readers may know about the first one discussed below
in the Chagos archipelago or even know where it is.

Chapter One: Stealing A Nation Called Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia is a small 84 square mile British
controlled island in the Chagos archipelago in the
Indian Ocean(officially known as British Indian Ocean
Territory) that lies strategically half way between
Asia and Africa.  It was once the home of 2,000
“gentle Creole” people who are British citizens, but
between 1967 - 1973 they were tricked and expelled by
the UK government so their island home could be given
to the US for a military base.  They were sent into
exile to a very inhospitable new home in Mauritius
where seven British governments watched their
displaced citizens suffer and perish in the shanties
they were forced to live in and the desperate poverty
they were forced to endure.

This “act of mass kidnapping” was so devious and
deceitful, it was carried out in secrecy, and for
almost a decade was concealed from the Parliament and
US Congress.  The Chagossians were treated with
contempt as they not only lost their homeland, they
were “deemed not to exist.”  It was the US that made
the demands and cut the deal.  Washington wanted the
entire population expelled and the whole dirty
business covered up.  Then as today, the British went
along with the ugly scheme.  The people had no say,
and those who refused were lied to and told they had
no choice because “their removal was ‘legal’ under the
rules of the colony.” 

In their new home, life became a living hell.  The
Chagossians found themselves in a society foreign to
their simple way of life, and they were unable to
adjust.  On Diego Garcia they had their own home, grew
their own food, fished and worked on a plantation.  In
Mauritius they had to find jobs to survive and most
couldn’t.  The result was by the mid-70s most of the
exiles were unemployed, impoverished and began to die.
The British Foreign Office and High Commission
contemptuously ignored their plight saying the
Chagossians should take up their problem with the
Mauritian government.  It hardly mattered that these
people were British citizens and entitled to the same
rights as all other Brits.  All they got in
compensation was 1,000 pounds (about $1,800) in
exchange for agreeing to renounce their right ever to
return to their homeland and do it on a document they
couldn’t read.

The history of this disgraceful episode was well
hidden until the 1990s when a “treasure trove of
declassified documents” was found in the National
Archives at Kew in London.  It proved there was a
conspiracy between two governments that Article 7 of
the statute of the International Criminal Court
referred to as a “deportation or forcible transfer of
a population (and) a crime against humanity.”  It also
violated Article 73 of the UN Charter that obliges a
colonial government like Britain to obey its “sacred
trust” to protect the human rights of its people.
Britain shamelessly did none of this and instead
dutifully bowed to the wishes of Washington and obeyed
its commands as it still does today.  The two
countries also engaged is a huge cover-up for a decade
that went to the highest level of both governments
hoping to hide the truth from ever coming out.  Those
involved included Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Queen
Elizabeth and Presidents Johnson and Nixon among
others.  Everything was hidden including a secret
financial kickback Washington made that was also
concealed from the US Congress and British Parliament.

But once the truth began to come out, things changed.
On November 3, 2000 the British High Court stunned the
government by citing the Magna Carta and annulled the
original deportation order.  It meant the people were
entitled to British passports and had the right to go
home.  But it was a short-lived pyrrhic victory as one
year later the Chagossians were back in the High Court
seeking compensation for their ordeal.  This time they
faced a hostile judge who described their case as
“unmeritorious” and denied their claim.  Then three
months later, the Foreign Office minister responsible
for the Chagos sent an “order-in-council” to the Queen
for her “rubber-stamped” approval which overturned the
High Court 2000 victory and banned the islanders from
ever returning home.  As John was writing, he reported
the Chagossians were back in London for a last chance
judicial review before the High Court to annul the
government’s denial of their right of return to their
homeland.  Even after all these years, these
courageous people were and still are fiercely
determined to achieve the justice they so rightfully
deserve.

It finally came on May 11, 2006 (after John’s book was
finished), in a damning High Court verdict that
condemned as “repugnant” the decision to remove the
Chagossians at the US insistence.  It overturned the
Blair government “order-in-council” discussed above.
The Foreign Office must now decide if it will appeal
the verdict and may be pressured to do so by the US.
But even if all litigation ends favorably for the
Chagossians, it’s by no means certain they’ll ever be
allowed to return as long as Diego Garcia remains an
important US military base.  The Bush administration
is contemptuous of the law, may likely ignore it and a
new US administration elected in 2008 may do the same.
It thus remains to be seen if justice will ever be
served in this long-running tragedy.  However, it’s
likely the Chagossians will never stop seeking it.

Chapter Two: The Last Taboo - The Five and A Half
Decade Cover-Up of Israel’s Oppression of the
Palestinians

John chose the title of this chapter from an essay
with that title written by the eminent and courageous
Palestinian-born writer, scholar and activist Edward
Said shortly before his death in September, 2003.
Said was a brilliant man and passionate fighter for
justice for his people.  In his essay he wrote: “The
extermination of the Native Americans can be admitted,
the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag
(of the United States) publicly committed to flames.
But the systematic continuity of Israel’s 52-year
oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is
virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no
permission to appear.”

It appears boldly and courageously in John’s chapter
as he recounts the unexplained and irrational hatred
most Israelis have for Palestinians, a people whose
country they stole and have relentlessly oppressed for
many decades.  He explains what life is like for these
defenseless people under a cruel occupying power in
the refugee camps or the world’s two largest open-air
prisons of Gaza and the West Bank.  He recounts how
ordinary people who only want to live in peace and
have normal lives are denied their most basic
personal, economic and political freedoms, dignity and
any sort of justice.  He shows how Israelis with full
financial and political backing from the US and the
West have terrorized the Palestinian people with
impunity, and when the victims dare defend themselves
or resist they’re called “terrorists.”

I, too, have written about Israeli crimes against the
Palestinian people in a recent article I called Life
in Occupied Palestine.  What John documented on the
ground from the people who endure this brutal daily
onslaught, I summarized in a few paragraphs I’d like
to share here.  I wrote as follows:

Try to imagine daily life under these conditions:

You live in limbo in a country occupied by an
oppressive foreign army and a system of
institutionalized and codified racism.  You have no
recognized nation, no right of citizenship and no
power over your daily life.  You live in a constant
state of fear. The occupier imposes economic
strangulation and collective punishment by restricting
free movement; enclosing population centers; closing
borders; barring most of your people from working
inside their border; imposing regular curfews,
roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences and
separation walls and continues to build new
settlements in your Occupied Territories (on your land
in your country) violating the Geneva Conventions
prohibiting an occupier from settling its population
on conquered land.

The occupier denies your people their basic human
rights including those under the Fourth Geneva
Convention which governs the treatment of civilians in
war and under occupation. There are 149 articles of
this Convention. The occupier’s government violates
almost all of them and in so doing is committing war
crimes according to international law.  The UN Human
Rights Commission determined it’s also committing
“crimes against humanity” against your people.  This
concept comes from the 1945 Nuremberg Charter drafted
by the U.S. to try Nazi war criminals.  The

international notion of a “crime against humanity” was
established to define what Hitler did to the Jews.
The UNHRC ruled this is what the occupier is doing to
your people, and that this act is the historical and
legal precursor to the international crime of genocide
as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

The occupier also sends its troops, tanks and heavy
armor into neighborhoods at will to maraud and
destroy.  It strikes at will from the air with
sophisticated missle-firing attack helicopters and
F-16s and deliberately inflicts eardrum shattering and
terrifying sonic booms.  And it gives its military the
right to freely harass, arrest or kill
extra-judicially any of your people - man, woman or
child on any pretext with impunity.  It bulldozes
homes and the people in them if they don’t escape in
time (usually in middle of the night and without
warning or notice) as punishment or for lacking a
permit to build on their own land, in their own
country or for any other reason.  It steals land
relentlessly hoping it will have it all one day or at
least all the parts it wants. It detains, imprisons
and tortures thousands of your people for the real or
perceived crime of fighting for their freedom against
an oppressive occupier.

To enact vengeance and to provide security for its
illegal settlers in the Occupied Territories, it
restricts or prevents access to essential and
emergency health care, education, employment, the
right to move goods and services from
producer/suppliers to end users, and even enough food
and water. It created a state of economic siege
forcing up to nearly two-thirds of your people
(according to the UN) below the poverty line of $2.20
a day (and half of those two-thirds on $1.60 or less)
and over half the work force to be unemployed (the
number varying with the intensity of the Israeli
lockdown).  It destroys your peoples’ crops and
orchards including more than 1 million olive trees. It
imposes punitive taxes and provides few services or
withholds them at will as collective punishment. You
have no power to stop any of these abuses or receive
any redress in the occupier’s courts.  How can you as
a Muslim in a racist Jewish state.

John explains that Britain was the architect of this
historic disaster and injustice.  In 1917, it wanted a
client state in the Middle East to watch over its
economic interests and got one with the Balfour
Declaration that promised a “national home for the
Jewish people” in Palestine.  The Declaration also
made a hollow promise to the Palestinians who’d been
living there for centuries that “nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of
the existing non-Jewish communities.” It was not to
be.  The Jewish state came into being in 1948 and was
born in the original sin of mass slaughter and
forcible expulsion of the people living there, and
nothing was ever the same thereafter.  Israel
systematically defies all international laws and
norms, has the full backing and financial support of
the US and the West, and the Palestinians are forced
to endure the most outrageous abuses without end and
with no help from the outside to stop them. 

Most people in the West have little knowledge of any
of this because the major media refuse to report it
and only portray Israel as a beacon of democracy in a
region that has precious little of it.  It’s a myth,
but one that’s widely believed.  Those who dare expose
it or Israeli crimes are called anti-semites or
self-hating Jews.  They also face extreme denunciation
and even ostracism.  There’s an unwritten binding rule
no one dare violate in the US especially: Israel can
do no wrong and must be fully supported whatever it
does.  As a result, the myth of a so-called “peace
process” that never was and never will be persists as
well as the false hope that the Palestinians will ever
have a state of their own beyond the bantustans the
Israeli’s have in mind for them after they’ve been
fully ethnically cleansed or murdered in the areas the
Israelis want for themselves.

John also exposes the fraud of the Oslo Accords and
later Camp David meetings hosted by Bill Clinton at
which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered
nothing to Yasar Arafat.  The public was fraudulently
told otherwise and Arafat was unfairly blamed for
turning down a proposal no sane and responsible leader
could ever accept.  We learned about the many
massacres from the hundreds of Palestinians killed at
Deir Yassin in 1948, the 18,000 slaughtered when
Israel illegally invaded Lebanon in 1982 including the
Ariel Sharon ordered massacre of up to 3,000
defenseless men, women and children at the Sabra and
Shatila camps, to the rape of Jenin in April, 2002
when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invaded this
city of 35,000 (including its refugee camp), cut it
off from any outside help, destroyed hundreds of
buildings (many with people buried alive under the
rubble), cut off power and availability of food and
water from the outside, prevented outside help from
entering the city and murdered an unknown number of
Palestinians.

John covers much more including the daily killings of
defenseless people, the mass Israeli inflicted
unemployment, poverty and deprivation, and the life of
unending desperation these people are forced to
endure.  Yet they do and continue to cling to the hope
that one day their stolen land will be returned and
their rights fully restored.  One of the many untold
stories is that many outraged Israeli Jews have the
same hope and are courageously defying their
government and supporting the Palestinians to achieve
it.

Chapter Three:  Shining India - The False Facade of A
Nation Where Over One Third of the People Live in
Desperate Poverty

John explains how India is a nation of stark
contrasts, and the country’s richest city, Bombay, may
show it best.  At one extreme is a thriving business
community of maritime trade, merchant banks and two
stock exchanges.  At the other is a city of one
million humans per square mile and typified by the
“rail roads” district foreigners and outsiders know
nothing about.  It teems with desperate people living
under conditions “barely describable - a packing case
for a home with sewage “ebbing and flowing in the
monsoon.”  John asks how can a nation with memories of
“great popular struggle” and democracy allow this.
The answer is its leaders chose to sell its
sovereignty to the neoliberal model of a global
economy dominated by giant transnational corporations,
especially those in the US. 

The rise of the Hindu nationalist (proto fascist)
BJP-led government in the 1990s accelerated the
process.  It removed the barriers in place to protect
Indian industry and opened the country to invasion by
foreign predatory corporations that took full
advantage. The result is a nation that could be a
poster child for how an adopted economic model got it
all wrong and caused mass human misery.  It’s seen in
an increase in “absolute poverty” to over one third of
the population or about 364 million people.  John
explains that although India’s growth rate is high,
“this is about capital, not labour, about liberated
profits, not people.” He also exposes the myth of
India being a high-tech juggernaut.  While the nation
has risen to “pre-eminence” in computer and other
technology, the new “technocratic class” is tiny.
Also, the so-called consumer boom has benefitted at
most about 15% of the population.

Over two thirds of the people live in rural villages
and depend on small scale agriculture for their
livelihood and survival.  These people have been
devastated by the nation’s embrace of the Western
economic model.  It’s caused a hidden epidemic of
suicides among them because they can’t compete with
agribusiness.  Those opting for a less severe solution
are forced off their land in a futile attempt to seek
refuge among the teeming masses in the cities.  The
result is growing poverty, deprivation and extreme
human misery on a massive scale.  Because of its huge
population of over one billion, India stands out as a
warning of the kind of future people everywhere will
face unless a way is found to reverse a failed
economic model that enriches the few, devastates the
many and is strangling the ability of the planet to
continue sustaining the abuse afflicted on it.

Chapter Four:  Apartheid Did Not Die - Predatory
Capitalism Made It Worse

The hated apartheid may have ended in South Africa
about 16 years ago, but the new neoliberal Washington
Consensus was even worse.  The obsession with race in
a white supremacist society was replaced by the
dominance and pursuit of wealth allowed only a
privileged minority at the expense of the great mostly
black majority.  The result is that while average
household income has risen for about 15% of the
population (including some blacks), the overall black
majority household income has fallen by about 20%
making conditions today far worse than under
apartheid.

The new South Africa under its heroic new president
Nelson Mandela chose to embrace the Western economic
model.  He agreed to an “unspoken deal” that allowed
the white elite to retain economic control in exchange
for black majority rule that would be subservient to
the former white government.  The current president
Thabo Mbeki cut the deal when he led a group of ANC
officials in secret meetings in London between 1987 -
1990.  They agreed to essentially betray their people
and their 40 year struggle for freedom now lost. In
came the World Bank and IMF dictating mass
privatizations and structural adjustments to cut
essential social services in return for financial aid.
It’s caused an oppressive level of debt, unemployment
of about 38%, an HIV infection rate of about 20%, 40%
of the schools with no electricity, 25% of the people
with no access to clean water and most of those with
access unable afford the cost, 60% with inadequate
sanitation and 40% with no telephones.  The result has
been an economic apartheid replacing a legal one with
the majority black population worse off today than
under the political oppression of the past.  It’s a
disturbing story of what’s occurred in all countries
that agreed to the Washington Consensus under which
they sold their sovereignty to the interests of
capital.  The difference in South Africa is that the
man oppressed blacks thought would win their freedom,
in fact, sold them out instead.

John returned to South Africa after a 30 year absence
following his expulsion by the apartheid government he
abhorred.  He interviewed Mandela in retirement and is
nearly alone explaining the first ANC president’s
“ambiguity.”  He posed tough questions asking how
could the ANC that struggled so long for freedom now
have embraced “Thatcherism.”  Why would he allow his
long-suffering people to suffer even greater harm
under a system where virtually everything, including
essential services, is privatized and deregulation
allows big business free reign to pursue profit at the
expense of the public interest.  Mandela responded
that “You can put any label on it you like; you can
call it Thatcherite but, for this country,
privatization is the fundamental policy.”  A sorrowful
answer from a man who knows better.  John also
confronted Mandela about why he supported and showed
deference to oppressive governments in Indonesia,
Burma, Algeria, Colombia and Peru and even ordered a
bloody invasion of neighboring tiny Lesotho.  Again
the answer he got was none too impressive and from a
man who once was and still is in important ways a
giant in the fight for social equity and justice.

Once again John shows how he discovered on his return
that the spirit of resistance had survived.  He found
it among numerous “social movement” and allied
organizations that he called the most “sophisticated
and dynamic in the world.”  They’ve forged links to
international human rights and anti-capitalist
movements along with independent trade unionists.  He
said what South Africa has in abundance is a force
called “ubuntu” - “a humanism that is never
still…..a subtle concept….that says a person’s
humanity is expressed through empathy and solidarity
with others; through community and standing together.”
It’s what Steve Biko called “authentic black
communalism.”  It’s in that spirit that John hopes the
future of South Africa lies.

Chapter Five: Liberating Afghanistan - the US
Inflicted Nightmare on Another Long-Suffering People

John begins describing Afghanistan like it’s more a
moonscape than a functioning country - Kabul streets
with “contours of rubble rather than streets, where
people live in collapsed buildings, like earthquake
victims waiting for rescue…...(with) no light or
heat.”  It’s an age-old story for these beleaguered
people who’ve had a long history of conflict and
suffering with little relief ever.  For almost a
century the country was victimized by the “Great Game”
of competition between the British empire vying with
Tsarist Russia for control of this part of the world.
In recent history, it paid dearly again in the 1980s
when a US recruited mujahedin guerrilla army battled
against a Soviet occupation.  It forced the occupiers
out but only at the expense of a ravaged country that
never recovered throughout the 1990s as a brutal civil
conflict followed the Soviet withdrawal.  Then came
9/11 and the US inflicted nightmare that continues to
this day with no end in sight.

John explains that Afghanistan today is what the CIA
called during the Vietnam war “the grand illusion of
the American cause.”  While Kabul has some freedoms
denied by the Taliban, the rest of the country has
virtually none.  In place of the Taliban, who’ve begun
a resurgence, are the brutal regional “warlords” that
human rights groups say have “essentially hijacked the
country.”  The nation is a war zone and failed
narco-state with regional “warlords” and drug kingpins
controlling everything outside the capitol.  The
country’s US selected and nominal president Hamid
Karzai (a former CIA asset) is a caricature of a man
and willing stooge who’s little more than the mayor of
Kabul.  He has no mandate or support and wouldn’t last
a day on his own without the heavy protection afforded
him round the clock by the US military. 

Life was no bed of roses under the Taliban.  But
despite their ultra-puritanical ways and harsh
treatment for the disobedient, at least they kept
order and wouldn’t tolerate banditry, rape or murder.
They also virtually ended opium production.  Now all
that’s changed.  The US-British invasion in 2001 ended
the ban on opium production, allowed the “warlords” to
replant and the result is that 87% of the world trade
in this drug is from these fields.  In addition,
unemployment is soaring at about 45%; there’s been
little reconstruction; the poverty is overwhelming;
there’s little electricity, clean water or most other
essential services; lawlessness is back; Sharia law
has been reinstated; the internal conflict has
resumed; and no one is safe either from the country’s
warring factions or from the hostile occupying force.
In addition, the Taliban have reclaimed parts of
southern Afghanistan and are gaining supporters among
the people fed up with the misery inflicted on them by
the US and multinational force invaders.  It may just
be a matter of time before the violence again explodes
into another catastrophic guerrilla war just like in
Iraq. Already it seems to be beginning.

So what was the invasion and occupation all about?  We
now know it was planned before 9/11 and had nothing to
do with a Muslim fundamentalist government that
treated its people harshly.  It had everything to do
with an Afghan leadership that wouldn’t surrender its
authority to US demands and its imperial quest to
dominate this strategically important region.  It was
explained earlier by former National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski under President Carter in his 1997
book The Grand Chessboard.  He referred to Eurasia as
the “center of world power extending from Germany and
Poland in the East through Russia and China to the
Pacific and including the Middle East and Indian
subcontinent.  By dominating this region, the US would
assure itself control of a vast supply of energy and
other essential resources.  Afghanistan was a key part
of the plan as it was across this country that the US
wanted to build the oil pipelines needed to transship
the Caspian basin oil to deep water ports where it
could easily be shipped to the parts of the world the
US would allow it to go. 

At first the US was very content to work with the
Taliban when they were in power.  As long as it was
felt a deal with them was possible, their religious
extremism and human rights abuses were of no concern.
It was only when agreement couldn’t be reached that
the decision was taken to remove them.  And that
brings us to the present.  The country is in ruins,
the conflict continues without end, and the people are
suffering more than ever with no visible hope on the
horizon for relief. 

John wrote his book to document the history of
imperial abuse he witnessed first-hand in five
countries.  But he also wants it to be a message of
the hope he found that may one day lead to the same
rebirth of democracy and social equity now growing in
parts of Latin America like Venezuela.  He finds
courageous and dedicated people everywhere, even in
Afghanistan where conditions are so bad it’s hard
finding any.  He said that “Through all the
humanitarian crises in living memory, no country has
been abused and suffered more, and none has been
helped less, than Afghanistan.”  It’s still that way
and seemingly getting worse.  Unless it changes, a
time of peace and an end to the violence and suffering
of the Afghan people is a long way off at best.  And
yet hope persists.  John finds it everywhere in the
hearts of people who’ll never give up the struggle for
the fair and just world they want and are fighting to
get.

A Summation

John has once again written a brilliant and
magnificent book.  Everyone should read it to learn
from this great man what was and is ongoing in the
five countries he chose to cover from among the many
he knows well from having witnessed events around the
world first-hand over his long career.  He explains
what few others do or would dare to help us understand
how peoples’ lives everywhere have been affected by
the US economic model that’s based on militarism and
imperial expansion to control the world’s markets,
essential resources and cheap labor with no
challengers to its dominance allowed.  That’s one
message the book imparts.  But it also breathes a
special hope that the human spirit is indomitable and
will find a way to overcome adversity and oppression
and be able to endure.  John believes a time of
deliverance is ahead because committed people
everywhere will never give up working for it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Also visit his blog
site at sjlendman.blogspot.com