UTOPIA – A film by John Pilger
with his article on the Aboriginal People of Australia – Published on Axis of Logic, by John Pilger, Nov 7, 2013.
… Utopia, a new, epic film on Australia by John Pilger, will be released in cinemas in the UK in November and shown on ITV in December. Tickets are on sale at www.picturehouses.co.uk
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger describes the suppression of Australia’s bloodied history while veneration for its colonial wars and the rise of militarism excludes the true story of the ‘the greatest expropriation of land in world history’.
Utopia will be launched in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, with screenings from January 21-23 and on Australia Day, January 26. A cinema release and SBS broadcast will follow.
Video: Utopia – A film by John Pilger – Official trailer, 2.10 min … //
… In 2009, Professor James Anaya, the respected UN Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, described as racist a “state of emergency” that stripped indigenous communities of their tenuous rights and services on the pretext that pedophile gangs were present in “unthinkable” numbers – a claim dismissed as false by police and the Australian Crime Commission.
The then opposition spokesman on indigenous affairs, Tony Abbott, told Anaya to “get a life” and not “just listen to the old victim brigade.” Abbott is now the prime minister of Australia.
I drove into the red heart of central Australia and asked Dr. Janelle Trees about the “old victim brigade”. A GP whose indigenous patients live within a few miles of $1,000-a-night resorts serving Uluru (Ayers Rock), she said, “There is asbestos in Aboriginal homes, and when somebody gets a fibre of asbestos in their lungs and develops mesothelioma, [the government] doesn’t care. When the kids have chronic infections and end up adding to these incredible statistics of indigenous people dying of renal disease, and vulnerable to world record rates of rheumatic heart disease, nothing is done. I ask myself: why not? Malnutrition is common. I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class at the beginning of the industrial revolution.”
In Canberra, in ministerial offices displaying yet more first-nation art, I was told repeatedly how “proud” politicians were of what “we have done for indigenous Australians”. When I asked Warren Snowdon — the minister for indigenous health in the Labor government recently replaced by Abbott’s conservative coalition — why after almost a quarter of a century representing the poorest, sickest Australians, he had not come up with a solution, he said, “What a stupid question. What a puerile question” … //
… When I began filming this secret Australia 30 years ago, a global campaign was under way to end apartheid in South Africa. Having reported from South Africa, I was struck by the similarity of white supremacy and the compliance and defensiveness of liberals. Yet no international opprobrium, no boycotts, disturbed the surface of “lucky” Australia. Watch security guards expel Aboriginal people from shopping malls in Alice Springs; drive the short distance from the suburban barbies of Cromwell Terrace to Whitegate camp, where the tin shacks have no reliable power and water. This is apartheid, or what Reynolds calls, “the whispering in our hearts”.
John Pilger’s film, Utopia, about Australia, is released in cinemas on 15 November and broadcast on ITV in December. It is released in Australia in January.
(full text).
(BIO AND MORE ARTICLES BY JOHN PILGER ON AXIS OF LOGIC).
Links:
uploaded by DartmouthFilms, November 2013:
Media Critiques: We all have a responsibility to watch this film: The War You Don’t See, 1.15 min/Trailer. (Updated after being censored on YouTube), on Axis of Logic, by John Pilger, Oct 12, 2013;
John Pilger and Julian Assange on WikiLeaks, 1.34 min;
THE WAR THAT YOU DON’T SEE - JOHN PILGER’S INTERVIEW WITH JULIAN ASSANGE (29-XII-2010), 68.59 min, uploaded by AssangeCyberDefense, Dec 3, 2011;
Poppycock – or why remembrance rituals make me see red: The poppy helps us avoid a search for the meaning of war, on Independent.co.uk, by Robert Fisk, Nov 7, 2013;
Can Big Data authors end poverty? Phillip Parker at TEDxSeattle, 10.27 min, uploaded by TEDtalks, July 19, 2013: Philip Parker creates algorithms that generate textbooks, crossword puzzles, dictionaries, poetry and educational video games in any language and distributes them to underserved communities. At TEDxSeattle, he explains the basics behind how he does it and what the future holds …;
L’avenir du travail, 25.53 min, dans Inform’Action (déjà dans Notre-école.net), par Albert Jacquart(1999), publié le 24 octobre 2013; Inform’Action page d’Accueil;
RDC: une insoutenable barbarie… mais que fait la communauté internationale? dans les Etats d’Ame d’Anne, le 8 octobre 2013: Des membres de la communauté internationale viennent ici en visite, ils mangent des sandwiches en pleurant, mais ils ne reviennent pas pour aider … (très long texte).