A Secret Country: Amazon.de: John Pilger: Englische Bücher

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Produktinformation

Taschenbuch: 409 Seiten
Verlag: Vintage Books; Auflage: New edition (27. Oktober 1992)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 0099152312
ISBN-13: 978-0099152316
Gr��e und/oder Gewicht: 12,9 x 3,2 x 20 cm
Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 298.509 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)

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From Kirkus Reviews

A desanitized view of Australia from a veteran Australian journalist, ranging from its founding as a penal colony in 1788 to the machinations of the ``Old Mates,'' the powerful ``dullards'' who threaten the nation's hard-won status as a working-class society of equals. More than 160,000 came to Australia in chains, a practice continuing into the 1880's. Later generations tried to suppress their heritage, so Pilger had to do considerable work to unearth his great-great-grandmother, a pregnant 16-year-old Irish girl when she came over on one of the female slave ships. Such women were passed out first to ``officers, then to non-commissioned officers, then privates, and lastly such ex-convict settlers as seemed `respectable.''' Yet the offspring of convicts were more brutal still to Aborigines, taking them as slaves quite as in the American South. Aborigines were seen as animals; even into the 1950's babies were taken away at birth and ``adopted''; full rights are still not accorded these people. Meanwhile, Australia, with its whites-only immigration policy, remained aloof from its Asian neighbors. When the UK's influence waned, the US stepped in, most notably with the use of Australian conscripts in the Vietnam War. According to Pilger, the CIA actually undertook a sort of coup by poisoning the chances for reelection of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam through its influences with powerful Governor General John Kerr. One of the most extraordinary portraits here is of Kerr, a boilermakers's son and rabid conservative whose weakness was booze; he lost his job when he made a drunken pass at the Queen. A brooding, often angry book. Pilger sees hope for this nation of battlers in the example of New Zealand, a superficially similar country that noisily rejected the US nuclear umbrella and has turned fully ten percent of its land into a national park. A startling look, then, at a country quite different from, and hauntingly similar to, the US. (Forty photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Library Journal

Pilger, an Australian journalist, argues that while Australia has developed a popular image as a nation of koalas and Crocodile Dundees, it is in fact a secret country with a dark past that includes the slaughter of entire Aboriginal tribes. He also believes that Australia continues to be dominated by British and American imperialism; the British via a governor-general who can sack the elected government at any time (which happened to the Whitlam government in 1975), and America via its military dominance of the South Pacific and its economic ties with Australia. Further, Pilger argues Australia has been betrayed by its own leaders who have created a transnational economy that compels it to sell off its resources and rely on tourism and international money markets. This has led to reduced wages, lower living standards, and poverty for many. Unless Australia casts off British and American influence and starts to manage its resources wisely, it will face a dismal future. Recommended for large academic and public library collections.
- Jeffrey R. Herold, Bucyrus P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Amazon.com: 14 Rezensionen

18 von 21 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

True Australia - beyond Bondi and kangaroos 27. Januar 2000

Von G Phillips - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard once dismissed alternative histories of Australia as a 'black armband view of history', preferring instead the version of passive natives, gentle colonisers and hard working convicts turning good. Pilger was amongst the first Australian authors to look beyond this whitewashed view of history and show that Australia is not the lucky country based on a sense of fair play, mateship and equality. Instead, he pulls away the curtain to show the racism, brutality and genocide that has characterised the Australian ccontinent since the white invasion of 1788. We need authors such as Pilger to show the truth of Australia and I can highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to know more about the dark underbelly of the so called 'lucky country'

7 von 7 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

Should be mandatory Australian high school reading 14. April 2004

Von Galen White - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

This is the history that is sadly missing from the corporate press and the Australian education system.

I spent 6 years learning about the folkloric mythology of the Aussie battler, without even 5 minutes covering the massacres that took place within a 30km radius of my school. Essential reading for issues from the First Fleet to the coup in 1976.

6 von 6 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

What's wrong with being shocked? 15. Februar 2006

Von P. Hines - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Yeah, Pilger does tend to shout, as reviewer G. Rogers ("Trouble in Paradise") correctly points out. But shouting isn't always just to "make up for the weakness of the argument". It can also signal exasperation. Or a desire to warn, alert, awaken.

As an Australian, I found this book a revelation when I read it twenty years ago. Particularly his well annotated discussion of the events that led to "The Dismissal" of 11 Nov 1975.

That was a deeply strange and troubling time in the Lucky Country (cf. Australian_constitutional_crisis_of_1975 at Wikipedia), and Pilger's chapter casts real light on it, without depending on "deep throat/cigarette man" anonymous informants for either his insights or his information.

Sidebar. I navigated to this page today because of a sentence I read this morning: "Israeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power, and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamour for the return of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ousted Fatah Party." (Amy Tiebel, Canadian Press, 14feb06).

It just rang a bell, that's all.

I give the book five stars because it blazed new territory when it was written, and has been ignored and insulted rather than discredited in the years since. Anyone interested in Australia (other than as a meaningless tourist destination) should at least consider reading this fine and passionate book. Highly recommended.

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