Flashermac Posted February 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 Maybe because no Hollywood stars have taken an interest in it? Burma is not one of the "flavours of the month". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bust Posted February 15, 2008 Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 It funny I read that Angelina & Brad are planning to adopt a child from Burma. They will get more media attention than the child and where it's family is or what happened to them. Hooray for Hollywood Did you ever see the John Pilger film Land of Fear Fidel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted February 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 Stars seem to regard third world children as pets these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torneyboy Posted February 15, 2008 Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 And they appear to obtain them with ease Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted February 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 << Did you ever see the John Pilger film Land of Fear Fidel? >> I remember his shocking expose of slavery in Thailand. It was after he bought a little girl at the Mo Chit Bus Station. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bust Posted February 15, 2008 Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 Tell me more.....I believe all his docos are available streaming. Had dinner with him once..very intense man. Don't think he took too kindly to my comment about the world being beige... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted February 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 He made himself decidedly unpopular with a "scoop" back in the 1980s. Seems he advertised to buy a slave in the local papers and eventually someone took him up on it. He went to the bus station and "bought" a young girl supposedly fresh from Isaan. Then he manumited her in a manner fitting crazy old John Brown and wrote up his story. Somebody at the Bangkok Post smelled a rat and started digging. They located the gal - a primary school student living with her parents in Bangkok. She said a couple of guys had asked to "borrow" her for an afternoon, and she went with them. Then she was returned home and her parents given some money. The Post ran the news, showing the girl in her school uniform, living happily at home. Pilger got furious and attacked not only the Post but the Thai government. He treatened legal action against any papers that reprinted the Post's story, creating a sort of censorship by threat. The Thai govmt got pissed off at him and cut all journalist's visit down to 6 months instead of 12. A lot of Bangkok based journalists were pissed off at him because of that. He now says he was conned, though he was ranting and raving about everyone picking on him at the time. << Harold Pinter saying of his work: "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is . . . I salute him.". He has also been subjected to criticism, with Auberon Waugh in Britain coining the verb 'to pilger' to denote 'to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion'. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger << John Pilger is a very controversial reporter. He holds political views which are strongly anti-American and anti big business, but he is also critical of both left-wing as well as right-wing regimes. He has a reputation of faking some of his television reports. Some examples are: 1) "Cambodia - Year Zero" shot in 1979 had footage shot in Thailand although he was saying he filmed it in Cambodia. He had directions and distances incorrect plus several of the people he interviewed spoke Vietnamese, not Cambodia although they were supposed to have been Cambodian. Also, the translations of some of the interviews were incorrect. 2) In Thailand he did a story on girls being kidnapped and sold into prostitution. The girl that he filmed that was supposed to have been kidnapped had actually been "rented" by Pilger to play-act the role. This was later confirmed by the Thai Ministry of Interior. The fact that children are kidnapped and/or sold by parents/relatives for prostitution is genuine, but he faked the story. 3) Pilger did a story on Arms and Ammunition from the US being stored in UNHCR and ICR warehouses in Thailand near the Thai/Cambodian border. Both the UN High Commision for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Red Cross (IRC) denied the reports and actually allowed other reporters into those and all other warehouses immediately afterwards. I like him for his opinions, but dislike his methods of getting the story across. >> Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bust Posted February 15, 2008 Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 These type of guys make enemies very easy. There is a reporter in Sydney who received the tapes of the assassination plot of Mugabe. Because they were given to him by Ari Ben-Menashe most people dismissed it without ever viewing them. Journos like Pilger make a lot of enemies in their own field. I take what one journo reports about another with a grain of salt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted February 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2008 I've heard stories about Sidney Shanberg in Cambodia that would be disturbing, if true. But as you say, I have no idea if they really are. (Heard them from another journalist and a UN PR officer.) There is always the element of jealousy to consider. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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