.NEW. As a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, John Pilger has long stood as an unapologetic and determined foe of governments, wars and propaganda throughout his career. He has been equally a passionate seeker of facts and truth whenever they were being covered up by those in positions of authority. He also passionately followed the most important ethic of working in the news media: Be the voice of the voiceless.

Twenty years ago today, a United States president declared war and launched an invasion against a sovereign Middle Eastern nation, Iraq, citing an imminent threat to the American Way of Life (AWOL) and all that it stands for. President George W. Bush, the American boy-king, proceeded to unleash a military offensive the Pentagon called “Operation Shock and Awe” on the capital city of Baghdad that threatened the lives and livelihood of millions of innocent Iraqi people, not to mention the stability and security of the entire region and international community.

But before he could conquer Iraq, Bush first had to get past a big barrier blocking his way: the public opinion of the rest of the planet.

A Native American brother weeps hot tears of rage as he recalls his time in “that mess” that was the American war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. “The Creator didn’t put us here for this,” he says, choking back tears. In the space of a couple minutes, he then recites the violent history of the USA better than any history book ever could.

It is August 2002, nearly a year after 11 September 2001, and the Native brother is participating in a sangha, or community, of Vietnam war veterans organized by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh at Stonehill College, a private Catholic school located in Easton, Massachusetts. Like me, Nhat Hanh was in the United States at the time of 9/11 and saw firsthand the dangerous wave of fear, ignorance and hate that quickly rose up throughout the land: A “war on terrorism” was officially declared, the nation of Afghanistan was soon invaded and now the U.S. government was preparing for a second invasion in Iraq.

News media worldwide are awash now with stories about the recent death of Colin Powell, a towering figure in the world of American military matters and diplomacy, at the age of 84 due to coronavirus-related causes. Past presidents of the United States, not to mention right-wing media and the corporate press in general, are showering the late Powell with praise as a “great American,” a patriot and a war hero in the grand tradition of warmongering in the USA.

But while being respectful toward those who have personally lost a loved one in Powell, let us also spare the niceties here for the controversial public icon: Colin Powell was no war hero. He was, more accurately, a war criminal. And he was in good company, standing alongside other war criminals at the highest levels of the American state. Powell, like the others, was never prosecuted for war crimes in his lifetime and never took responsibility for his role in carrying out those crimes.

A half-year after the greatest crime against the USA that the universe has never seen — to borrow a Trumpish superlative — it bears looking closely at what has been happening since the 6 January 2021 failed coup attempt sparked by the former president of the United States and the inauguration of the legitimately elected president, Joe Biden, not long afterward.

In short, a downsizing of democracy is now underway that does not bode well for the future.

That boy is going down, I predicted early on in the fake presidency of Donald J. Trump. And oftentimes since then, I have repeated it like a mantra: FPOTUS is going down one way or another, whether it be through legal removal or, God forbid, some other unsavory means like assassination. But whichever way you look at it, I maintained, Trump is going down and out of the White House in Washington DC.

The world of politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows indeed. The Right sleeps around with the Left, the Left sleeps around with the Right, and the Center sleeps around with just about anybody they can find across the spectrum. Nothing unusual about that, though, right? Politics, after all, is arguably the world’s oldest profession.

But among all the individuals that we can find whenever we explore the wondrous world of politics, none is more exotic, alien, peculiar and vexing than the most curious political creature of them all. I’m talking, of course, about the White American Liberal (WAL).

Japan as a nation is still mourning, as I write these words, the recent killing of two Japanese citizens — especially independent journalist Kenji Goto — in the Middle East.

It was with a heavy heart that I, too, watched the videos of Goto and heard his emotionally cracking voice reading his captors’ messages, and then saw his beheaded, blood-spattered body lying on the ground. It was such a cold, cruel, senseless killing. Goto’s family loses a beloved father and husband, and the ranks of journalists in Japan lose a valued colleague.

The American people do love their wars. Every few years there’s a new “war” declared on one thing or other that the news media pick up, run with and replay to death. “The War on ______________” (fill in the blank) is always on the socio-political menu somewhere, somehow in the United States, like a perpetual soup d’jour.

Scan the news and the Internet these days and you find no lack of such wars. A perennial favorite is The War on Drugs, which the U.S. government purports to be dutifully fighting (at the same time that U.S. government agencies are actively but covertly involved in the global drug trade). There’s also The War on Cancer, The War on the Common Cold, The War on Poverty, The War on Illiteracy, The War on Pornography — yes, even a “War on War” and a “War on Peace”. And of course, we all know by now about The War on Terror and the toll it has taken on the world.

People around the world are remembering today, September 11, 2013, as the 12th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks in New York City, in which more than 3,000 innocent people from the U.S. and other countries died.

People around the world today are also remembering a different 9-11 from 40 years ago, in which the United States was not the victim but the victimizer. This was September 11, 1973, the day when the U.S. government set in motion a military coup in the South American nation of Chile. At least 3,000 innocent people were killed there too, with hundreds or possibly thousands more “disappeared”; their bodies have never been found.

President Barack Obama is today basking in the glow of being the president who will end what he calls the U.S. “war of necessity” in Afghanistan, which was waged by U.S. president Bush from 2001. Two days ago, Obama, in his important “State of the Union” address, however, mentioned the word “Afghanistan” only four times:

“Tonight, we stand united in saluting the troops and civilians who sacrifice every day to protect us. Because of them, we can say with confidence that America will complete its mission in Afghanistan and achieve our objective of defeating the core of al Qaeda. [applause]