Rosie Barnes
The new rulers of the world is a collection of four recent essays by John Pilger, an Australian investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, currently living in Britain. 'The new rulers' refers to 'the business state', a combination of western government and corporations, which have come to have an immense amount of power over the rest of the world. Pilger shows the recent trend towards 'globalisation' to occur at the expense of innocent human beings' lives for the benefit of a small powerful elite. Pilger asserts that the general population is largely unconcerned about the events depicted in this book because of a self-serving media, for whom 'ignorance is strength and omission standard practice' (p. 7). The idea that we are living in an age of freedom of speech, freedom of information and democracy is only an illusion, as a very small group have increasing power over the world.
The first of the four essays, 'The model pupil', is about the manner in which General Suharto was brought into power in Indonesia in 1965-6. The new 'global economy' that was enabled by what Pilger refers to as the 'greatest massacre of the second half of the twentieth century' (p. 4), was widely approved of by Western nations, despite the fact that 500 000 to a million communist sympathiser deaths were required in order to enhance the strength of the Western economy.
The second essay, 'Paying the price' discusses the environmental and medical effects of the 1991 war on Iraq, especially due to the US use of deleted uranium. The consequences of sanctions on Iraq are also discussed. The UN sanctions committee, dominated by the USA and Britain, vetoed a range of essential imports to Iraq, including medical equipment, chemotherapy drugs, children's vaccines, pain killers, educational and musical equipment, citing them as 'dual use', meaning that they could possibly be used in the construction of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Pilger points out the hypocrisy of the US retaliating to 3000 US civilian deaths on September 11 by killing many times that number of Iraqis each month. An American study found that US and British leaders have recently caused deaths in Iraq of 'more people that have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history' (p. 8). And all this happened before the US officially declared war on Iraq (again).
One of the main points that Pilger makes is that although US action was supposed to target Saddam Hussein and his regime, the ones paying the price were civilians, especially young children; the death rate of under fives in Iraq tripled in the 1990s (p. 63). Pilger also gives numerous examples of UN staff resigning in protest, report findings indicating that the sanctions violate Geneva conventions (p. 56), and meet the international definition of genocide, as well as presenting evidence from numerous sources that Iraq's weapons threat was determined to have been 'completely eliminated'.
Again it is interesting to note that Pilger wrote all this before the most recent US war. The book therefore provides further evidence that the non-existence of WMDs was widely known at the time, and war was declared all the same. These recent events add more justification to Pilger's claim that the United States' primary motivation is imperialism, and as far as it is concerned, human suffering does not outweigh the benefits of controlling vast quantities of oil.
The third essay is entitled 'The great game'. In it Pilger further discusses the immense and inappropriate power that 'the business state' has on the world. He describes how the US pick and choose what is moral, with reference to some fairly well-known US hypocrisies, for example that the CIA trained and armed 35 000 Taliban and al-Qa'ida members. Like much of the rest of the book, this chapter left me frustrated by the fact that the vast majority of this information has been widely available to the public, but mainstream media propaganda performs its 'familiar task of inciting public opinion' (p. 7), and the public remains either unaware or unmoved by the atrocities carried out in their name.
The final essay, 'The chosen ones' examines the lives of Indigenous Australians; it is concerned with both historical and present issues. Pilger contrasts the 'postcard image' of Aborigines presented by white Australians with the reality of widespread racism and inequality today as much as ever. He dispels the common white Australian myth that vast government funds are spent on extra services for aborigines and points out that the disparity between white and indigenous Australians' health is the biggest in the world. The way that Pilger shows the abuse of power by Australian government with regard to aborigines makes Australia appear no different from imperialist America. Perhaps the only reason that Australia is not responsible for worldwide atrocities on the scale of the US is not due to any moral superiority, but rather that we lack the power to do so.
A common thread throughout these four essays are allusions to George Orwell's 1984. The parallels that Pilger draws between the two are, unfortunately, not at all contrived. He points out the 'double think' expected of us in order to believe governments' inconsistent lies, which most people are only too willing to do, so as to not have to think about the reality of the global situation. He also notes the similarity between the West's current slogan 'war on terrorism' with Orwellian slogans: 'war is peace', 'ignorance is strength' and 'freedom is slavery'. People are expected to ignore the fact that war is terrorism. According to Pilger, the current popularity of nationalism requires us to believe that only actions by them are terrorism, whereas if an act is performed by us it is justified, necessary and moral. The most disturbing Orwellian feature of today's world for Pilger is the fact that 'we are to live with the threat and illusion of endless war ... in order to justify increased social control' (p. 1).
It seems to me that today's political climate is rapidly becoming even more Orwellian. John Howard, for instance, appears to have wholeheartedly adopted 'ignorance is strength' as his personal motto and campaign strategy, by denying knowledge of nearly every controversial political occurrence in recent history (children overboard, weapons of mass destruction, etc).
One aspect of Pilger's writing that has been criticised is the fact that he emotionalises political topics. This is very noticeable in The new rulers of the world, as Pilger frequently juxtaposes impersonal numbers with stories of some of the individuals who form part of those zeros at the end of death tolls. Pilger's emotionalisation of issues by using individual and very personal examples to demonstrate his point should not, I believe, be seen as a negative aspect of his work, but rather a much needed reminder that every single person who makes up the thousands and millions in statistics is a human being with a life, hopes and capacity to suffer. Too often are sterile statistics ignored because they can be treated unemotionally.
The only criticism that I had of this book was the lack of references for a few facts that were given, although it must be said that the overwhelming majority of facts were linked to reputable sources. There was also one small factual error that I noticed, he referred to Monument Valley as being in California (p. 76), whereas it is actually in Arizona. This is hardly a significant mistake, but it did make me a little more sceptical of other information presented.
Overall, I found The new rulers of the world to be an extremely informative,
though disturbing book. Reading it made me feel angry at the Bush administration,
also Blair, Howard et al, but also angry at myself and everyone else who believes
themselves to be innocent bystanders. It is not good enough to say 'I didn't
know' when then information is readily available to anyone who looks for it.