The war you don’t see hits Australian screens

A new documentary by acclaimed journalist and film maker John Pilger has been picked up by SBS to air on April 10.

The War You Don’t See is Pilger’s latest expose on the truths that are lost and distorted in war reporting. It investigates the complicity of media with political spin as far back as World War I.

The documentary includes an interview with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, a man whose own actions in making public a video that showed US soldiers shooting civilians in Iraq, earned him the wrath of the US administration.

Pilger describes the film as about the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, and how these war crimes are reported and justified when they are our crimes.

He believes if the public were better informed, we might be less willing to allow governments to go to war in our name under false premises.

John Pilger spoke last Sunday at a demonstration at the US embassy in Martin Place calling for an end to NATO airstrikes on Libya.

He said the Libyan people are right to rise up against Gaddafi’s regime, but the no-fly zone is about the US wanting to bring in line an independent country.

“If Libya grew carrots, there would be no no-fly zone,” Pilger said. “Libya has oil, it’s a strategic part of the world, and it’s independent. And that is intolerable and the reason why Libya is being attacked.”

Having reported on the no-fly zone over Iraq in the 1990s, Pilger said a no-fly zone is not going to help the Libyan people, but rather help the west take control.

“What it was about, as I saw on the ground, was marauding American jets blowing up shepherds and their families. That’s a no-fly zone. A no fly zone is a means of controlling a country. It allows the great power with the aircraft to drop in their wretched special forces to create mayhem,” Pilger said.

If reporting on the war is inadequate, reporting on the anti-war movement in Australia is equally so. A case in point is the Strewth column in The Australian that mentioned this rally but preferred to comment on Pilger’s tan rather than the substance of his speech.

The War You Don’t See screens on SBS on Sunday April 10 at 8.30pm.