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.
John PilgerRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the exploitation of Aboriginal land and the disproportionate incarceration rates of Aboriginal people in Australia.
John Pilger's quote draws attention to the stark contrast between the wealth generated from the extraction of natural resources from Aboriginal lands in Western Australia and the ongoing social injustices faced by Aboriginal communities, particularly the high rates of incarceration. It emphasizes how, despite the economic prosperity of the region, marginalized populations suffer grave consequences, echoing historical injustices akin to those experienced during apartheid in South Africa.
Themes
AboriginalInjusticeIncarcerationExploitationWealth
In practice
Example use cases
During a social justice rally, this quote can be used to illustrate the ongoing impacts of colonialism.
More from John Pilger
All quotes →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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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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