This Is Total War. We Are Fighting A Variety Of Enemies. There Are Lots Of Them Out There. All This Talk About First We Are Going To Do Afghanistan, Then We Will Do Iraq... This Is Entirely The Wrong Way To Go About It. If We Just Let Our Vision Of The World Go Forth, And We Embrace It Entirely And We Dont Try To Piece Together Clever Diplomacy, But Just Wage A Total War... Our Children Will Sing Great Songs About Us Years From Now.

-John Pilger

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This Is Total War.

John Pilger

Topic

Song

Children

Clever

More From John Pilger

It's Quite Clear That Gore Won Most Of The Votes. I Think The Accurate Description For Them Is A Military Plutocracy. Having Lived And Worked In The United States, I Must Add That I Don't Want To Make Too Much Of The Distinction Between The Bush Regime And Its Predecessors. I Don't See A Great Deal Of Difference.

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We Have An Extreme Rightwing Government In Britain, Although It's Called The Labour Government. That's Confused A Lot Of People, But It's Confusing Them Less And Less.

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Whenever A Journalist Says To Me, "oh, You Don't Understand, I'm Impartial, I'm Objective," I Know What He's Saying. I Can Decode It Immediately. It Means He Channels The Official Truth. Almost Always. That Protestation Means He Speaks For A Consensual View Of The Establishment. This Is Internalized.

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The British Labour Party Has Always Had A Very Strong "atlanticist Component," With An Obsequiousness To American Policies, And Blair Represents This Wing. He's Clearly Obsessed With Iraq. He Has To Be Because The Overwhelming Majority Of The People Of Britain Oppose A Military Action.

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Who Are These Evil Ones? In 1984, The Evil One Was Called Goldstein. Orwell Was Writing A Grim Parody. But These People Running The United States Mean What They Say. If I Were A Teacher, I Would Recommend That All My Students Very Hurriedly Read Most Of Orwell's Books, Especially 1984 And Animal Farm, Because Then They'd Begin To Understand The World We Live In.

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There Isn't A War On Terror, There Is A War Of Terror.

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Orwell Is Almost Our Litmus Test. Some Of His Satirical Writing Looks Like Reality These Days.

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Many Journalists Become Very Defensive When You Suggest To Them That They Are Anything But Impartial And Objective. The Problem With Those Words "impartiality" And "objectivity" Is That They Have Lost Their Dictionary Meaning. They've Been Taken Over. "impartiality" And "objectivity" Now Mean The Establishment Point Of View.

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I Grew Up In Sydney In A Very Political Household, Where We Were All For The Underdog.

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The Major Western Democracies Are Moving Towards Corporatism. Democracy Has Become A Business Plan, With A Bottom Line For Every Human Activity, Every Dream, Every Decency, Every Hope. The Main Parliamentary Parties Are Now Devoted To The Same Economic Policies - Socialism For The Rich, Capitalism For The Poor - And The Same Foreign Policy Of Servility To Endless War. This Is Not Democracy. It Is To Politics What Mcdonalds Is To Food.

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The Censorship Is Such On Television In The U.s. That Films Like Mine Don't Stand A Chance.

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I Think The Accurate Description For The George W. Bush Administration Is A Military Plutocracy. Having Lived And Worked In The United States, I Must Add That I Don't Want To Make Too Much Of The Distinction Between The Bush Regime And Its Predecessors. I Don't See A Great Deal Of Difference.

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When The Invasion Began, The British Public Was Called Upon To 'support' Troops Sent Illegally And Undemocratically To Kill People With Whom We Had No Quarrel. 'the Ultimate Test Of Our Professionalism' Is How Commander Mckendrick Describes An Unprovoked Attack On A Nation With No Submarines, No Navy And No Air Force, And Now With No Clean Water And No Electricity And, In Many Hospitals, No Anaesthetic With Which To Amputate Small Limbs Shredded By Shrapnel. I Have Seen Elsewhere How This Is Done, With A Gag In The Patient's Mouth.

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Israel Is The American Watchdog In The Middle East, And That's Why The Palestinians Remain Victims Of One Of The Longest Military Occupations.

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Middle East

Al Journalism Should Be Investigative, From Football To Cookery

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Israel Is The American Watchdog In The Middle East, And That's Why The Palestinians Remain Victims Of One Of The Longest Military Occupations. They Don't Have Oil. If They Were The Saudis, They Wouldn't Be In The Position They Are Now. But They Have The Power Of Being Able To Upset The Imperial Order In The Middle East.

We Are Beckoned To See The World Through A One-way Mirror, As If We Are Threatened And Innocent And The Rest Of Humanity Is Threatening, Or Wretched, Or Expendable. Our Memory Is Struggling To Rescue The Truth That Human Rights Were Not Handed Down As Privileges From A Parliament, Or A Boardroom, Or An Institution, But That Peace Is Only Possible With Justice And With Information That Gives Us The Power To Act Justly.

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Struggle

In Western Australia, Minerals Are Being Dug Up From Aboriginal Land And Shipped To China For A Profit Of A Billion Dollars A Week. In This, The Richest, 'booming' State, The Prisons Bulge With Stricken Aboriginal People, Including Juveniles Whose Mothers Stand At The Prison Gates, Pleading For Their Release. The Incarceration Of Black Australians Here Is Eight Times That Of Black South Africans During The Last Decade Of Apartheid.

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It Is Not Enough For Journalists To See Themselves As Mere Messengers Without Understanding The Hidden Agendas Of The Message And The Myths That Surround It.

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It Is Time We Recognized That The Real Terrorism Is Poverty.

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Terrorism

Orwell Is Almost Our Litmus Test. Some Of His Satirical Writing Looks Like Reality These Days. When You Have Someone Like Cheney Who Talks About "endless War" Or War That Might Last Fifty Years, He Could Be Big Brother. You Have Bush Incessantly Going On About The Evil Ones.

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The Impact Of The Human Tragedies I've Reported On Is That, More Often Than Not, I'll Be Angry. I Want To Know Why Is This Child Dying? These Are Not Acts Of God; They're Results Of Respectable Politicians' Decisions.

Children

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Decision

Iraq Has Been Successfully Demonized As If Everybody Who Lives There Is Saddam Hussein. In The Build-up To This Attack On Iraq, Journalists Have Almost Universally Excluded The Prospect Of Civilian Deaths, The Numbers Of People Who Would Die, Because Those People Don't Matter.

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In The Sublime Days Before 11 September 2001, When The Powerful Were Routinely Attacking And Terrorising The Weak, And Those Dying Were Black Or Brown-skinned Non-people Living In Faraway Places Such As Zaire And Guatemala, There Was No Terrorism. When The Weak Attacked The Powerful, Spectacularly On 9/11, There Was Terrorism.

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Israel Is The Representative Of The United States In The Middle East. Its Policies Are So Integrated With American Policies That They Use The Same Language. If You Read Sharon's Statements And George W. Bush's Statements, They're Virtually Identical.

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Classic Nineteenth Century European Imperialists Believed They Were Literally On A Mission. I Don't Believe That The Imperialists These Days Have That Same Sense Of Public Service. They Are Simply Pirates. Yes, There Are Fundamentalists, Christian Fundamentalists, Who Appear To Be In Charge Of The White House At The Moment, But They Are Very Different From The Christian Gentlemen Who Ran The British Empire And Believed They Were Doing Good Works Around The World. These Days It's About Naked Power.

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If Development Was Measured Not By Gross National Product, But A Society's Success In Meeting The Basic Needs Of Its People, Vietnam Would Have Been A Model. That Was Its Real "threat." From The Defeat Of The French At Dien Bien Phu In 1954 To 1972, Primary And Secondary School Enrollment In The North Increased Sevenfold, From 700,000 To Almost Five Million. In 1980, Unesco Estimated A Literacy Rate Of 90 Percent And School Enrollment Among The Highest In Asia And Throughout The Third World.

Real

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Many Journalists Now Are No More Than Channelers And Echoers Of What Orwell Called The Official Truth. They Simply Cipher And Transmit Lies. It Really Grieves Me That So Many Of My Fellow Journalists Can Be So Manipulated That They Become Really What The French Describe As Functionaires, Functionaries, Not Journalists.

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Since September 11, The Mirror Has Reached Back To Its Roots, And Decided, It Seems, To Be Something Of Its Old Self Again. I Received A Call Asking If I Would Write For It Again, Which I've Done. It's A Pleasure To Be Able To Do That. It's Become An Important Antidote To A Media That Is, Most Of It, Supportive Of The Establishment, Some Of It Quite Rabidly Rightwing. The Mirror Is Breaking Ranks, And That's Good News.

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I'm Absolutely Convinced Of That. Israel Is The Representative Of The United States In That Part Of The World. Its Policies Are So Integrated With American Policies That They Use The Same Language.

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There Is No War On Terrorism; It Is The Great Game Speeded Up. The Difference Is The Rampant Nature Of The Superpower, Ensuring Infinite Dangers For Us All.

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British Establishment Uses "the Royal We," As In, "we Think This." You Hear A Lot Of That These Days. It Erroneously Suggests That Those Who Are Making The Decisions To Bomb Countries, To Devastate Economies, To Take Part In Acts Of International Piracy Involve All Of Us.

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The People Who Died In The Twin Towers In That Terrible Crime Mattered. The People Who Were Bombed To Death In Dusty Villages In Afghanistan Didn't Matter, Even Though It Now Seems That Their Numbers Were Greater. The People Who Will Die In Iraq Don't Matter.

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Secretive Power Loathes Journalists Who Do Their Job: Who Push Back Screens, Peer Behind Façades, Lift Rocks. Opprobrium From On High Is Their Badge Of Honour.

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Peers

It's Only When Journalists Understand The Role They Play In This Propaganda, It's Only When They Realize They Can't Be Both Independent, Honest Journalists And Agents Of Power, That Things Will Begin To Change.

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Roles

Bill Clinton Kept Funding Star Wars. He Took The Biggest Military Budget To Congress In History. He Routinely Bombed Iraq, And He Kept The Barbaric Sanctions In Place. He's Really Played His Part. The George W. Bush Gang Has Taken It Just A Little Further.

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During My Lifetime, America Has Been Constantly Waging War Against Much Of Humanity: Impoverished People Mostly, In Stricken Places.

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Official Truths Are Often Powerful Illusions.

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Internet

The U.s. Is A Cosmetic Democracy.

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The Palestinians Don't Have Oil. If They Were The Saudis, They Wouldn't Be In The Position They Are Now. But They Have The Power Of Being Able To Upset The Imperial Order In The Middle East.

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More Terrorists Are Given Training And Sanctuary In The United States Than Anywhere On Earth. They Include Mass Murderers, Torturers, Former And Future Tyrants And Assorted International Criminals. This Is Virtually Unknown To The American Public, Thanks To The Freest Media On Earth.

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Training

Two Increasing Themes Which Appear To Dominate Our Listening, Reading And Watching Lives Are Propaganda And 'national Security', Or Manufactured War.

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Watch How The Propaganda Unfolds Once The Bombing Is Over And The Americans Are Running Baghdad And Their Spin Machine. There Will Be The Discovery Of Saddam's Secret Arsenal, Probably In The Basement Of One His Palaces.

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Private Manning Is The World's Pre-eminent Prisoner Of Conscience, Having Remained True To The Nuremberg Principle That Every Soldier Has The Right To 'a Moral Choice.' His Suffering Mocks The Notion Of The Land Of The Free.

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The Attack On Iraq Has Been Long Planned. There Just Hasn't Been An Excuse For It. Since George H.w. Bush Didn't Unseat Saddam In 1991, There's Been A Longing Among The Extreme Right In The United States To Finish The Job. The War On Terrorism Has Given Them That Opportunity. Even Though The Logic Is Convoluted And Fraudulent, It Appears They Are Going To Go Ahead And Finish The Job.

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In These Surreal Days, There Is One Truth. Nothing Justified The Killing Of Innocent People In America Last Week And Nothing Justifies The Killing Of Innocent People Anywhere Else.

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Certainly, Until There Is Justice For The Palestinians, There Will Never Be Any Kind Of Stability In The Middle East.

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Journalists Don't Sit Down And Think, "i'm Now Going To Speak For The Establishment." Of Course Not. But They Internalize A Whole Set Of Assumptions, And One Of The Most Potent Assumptions Is That The World Should Be Seen In Terms Of Its Usefulness To The West, Not Humanity. This Leads Journalists To Make A Distinction Between People Who Matter And People Who Don't Matter.

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If I Were A Teacher, I Would Recommend That All My Students Very Hurriedly Read Most Of Orwell's Books, Especially 1984 And Animal Farm, Because Then They'd Begin To Understand The World We Live In.

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Not All The Americans In Iraq Are Those Who Torture And Murder, Or Course They're Not, I Don't Know How Many Are Doing It, I Know It Is Systematic Throughout The United States Military I Think That's Been Revealed.

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Vietnam Was As Much A Laboratory Experiment As A War.

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If Those Who Support Aggressive War Had Seen A Fraction Of What I've Seen, If They'd Watched Children Fry To Death From Napalm And Bleed To Death From A Cluster Bomb, They Might Not Utter The Claptrap They Do.

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Bill Clinton Persuaded Some People That He Was Really A Civilized Character And His Administration Had The Best Interests Of Humanity At Heart. These Days We Don't Have To Put Up With That Nonsense. It's Very Clear That The George W. Bush Administration Is Out Of Control. It Contains Some Truly Dangerous People.

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The Mirror Has Become An Important Antidote To A Media That Is, Most Of It, Supportive Of The Establishment, Some Of It Quite Rabidly Rightwing. The Mirror Is Breaking Ranks, And That's Good News.

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I Love Irony In Pictures. There's One Photograph From Vietnam By Philip Jones Griffiths That Shows A Very Large Gi Having His Pocket Picked By A Tiny Vietnamese Woman. It Told The Whole Story Of The Clash Of Two Cultures And How The Invader Could Never Win.

Rupert Murdoch Gave Up His Australian Citizenship In Order To Buy Television Stations In The United States, Which Is Symptomatic Of The Way Murdoch Operates. Everything Is For Sale, Including His Birthright. The Mirror Is Not Read By Soccer Hooligans. It's Read By Ordinary People Of This Country. That Comment Is Simply Patronizing. But To Be Criticized By The Moonies And Murdoch In One Breath Is Really Just A Fine Moment For Me.

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We Have An Extreme Rightwing Government In This Country, Although It's Called The Labour Government.

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An Elite Group Of Less Than A Billion People Now Take More Than 80 Per Cent Of The World's Wealth.

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What Nixon And Kissinger Began, Pol Pot Completed.

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Using The Passive Voice Is Always Very Helpful. Mind You, A Lot Of That Propaganda English Emanates From Here. The British Establishment Has Always Used The Passive Voice. It's Been A Weapon Of Discourse So Those Who Committed Terrible Acts In The Old Empire Could Not Be Identified.

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When Governments And Other Vested Interests Attack Me Personally I Usually Regard It As A Vindication, Otherwise They Would Use Facts. That's Why I Believe In The Wonderful Claud Cockburn Dictum, 'never Believe Anything Until It Is Officially Denied.' It Has Certainly Been My Experience.

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Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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