Amy McQuire tears away the facade on the Commonwealth Games currently under way in Australia, on Queensland's Gold Coast. Australia has a long history of presenting a sunny, sporty picture of itself, complete with Indigenous icons and 'celebrating' native people. There is rarely a hint of the greatest theft of land in recorded history and the brutality that accompanied it, especially in Queensland, the bloodiest state, and which goes on today.

Watch John Pilger on RT's Going Underground discuss the claims of Theresa May, Syria, Iran, Korea and the silencing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.You can also listen to Pilger's interview about new attempts to push Assange out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

On 19 June 2018, it will be six years since Julian Assange was forced to take refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He had been warned that the US planned an extradition warrant for his arrest. His 'crime' was that of a scrupulous editor - WikiLeaks had revealed the war crimes of the US. Today, Julian has never been more isolated, and his health is failing.

On Sunday 17 June, the SEP will stage a rally for Julian in the heart of Sydney, Australia, his homeland. This is backed by John Pilger, Roger Waters, Julian Burnside QC and Terry Hicks, father of former Guantanamo prisoner, David Hicks. John Pilger will address the rally from the steps of Sydney Town Hall, which starts at 1pm.

On Tuesday 19 June, there will be a rally and vigil outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, beginning at 6pm. Other vigils will be held outside British embassies around the world on the same day. In Dublin, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mariead Maguire and members of the Irish parliament, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, will speak in support of Julian outside the British embassy.

A salute to Julian Assange by Rogers Waters at his concert in Berlin on 3 JuneIn this address to mark Julian Assange's six years of confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, John Pilger calls on the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to recognise the urgency of decisive diplomatic action and bringing Assange home.

Listen to John Pilger interviewed on KPFA by Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico. Also, listen to this interview on Sputnik Radio.

John Pilger describes a women's rebellion in which his own 'intractable' forebear took part and which leads us to ask: where is such a spirit of resistance today?

John Pilger invokes George Orwell in calling on his compatriots to stand up for the freedom of 'a distinguished Australian', the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and for 'real journalism of a kind now considered exotic'.  Image © George Burchett 2019

In his foreword to a powerful new book by David Edwards and David Cromwell, the founders and editors of Media Lens, Propaganda Blitz, John Pilger asks what happened to an age of eyewitness reporting and to journalism that relied on evidence.

In a keynote speech at the 'The Power of the Documentary' festival he curated, John Pilger described the 'noise' of the media, its integration into national security aims of western states and its silencing effect across journalism, film-making, the arts. Over ten days, 26 documentaries, many of them rare and prescient, such as 'Hearts and Minds' and 'The War Game', 'The Quiet Mutiny' and 'Stealing a Nation', were screened to audiences at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Riverside Theatres.READ THE KEYNOTE SPEECH

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has handed down a momentous judgement that says Britain's colonial authority over the Chagos Islands is no longer legal. John Pilger, whose 2004 film, Stealing a Nation, alerted much of the world to the plight of the islanders, tells their story here. 

In this analysis, John Pilger looks back over the Chavez years in Venezuela, including his own travels with Hugo Chavez, and the current US and European campaign to overthrow Nicolas Maduro in a 'coup by media' and to return Latin America to the 19th and 20th centuries.

In two separate major interviews - the first published in India's leading news magazine, Frontline, the second broadcast on RT - John Pilger describes the rise of a second cold war and the conversion of much of journalism to unconscious satire - 'beckoning a real, unreported danger'.Read the Frontline articleWatch RT's Going Underground

The new John Pilger film, The Dirty War on the NHS, will be released in cinemas in the UK on 1 December and broadcast on the ITV Network on 17 December.The film's launch will straddle an extraordinary period in Britain, especially an election campaign which, for the first time for years, offers voters a genuine choice. The film's theme, the privatisation and destruction of the NHS, is already a major election issue."The Dirty War," says Pilger at the beginning of the film, "is about democracy. Above all, it is a warning."For screenings and tickets, go to www.thedirtywaronnhs.com

In a special comment written for Consortium News, John Pilger describes the disturbing scene inside a London courtroom last week when the WikiLeaks publisher, Julian Assange, appeared at the start of a landmark extradition case that will define the future of free journalism.

John Pilger describes the meaning of Julian Assange's brutal arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London and says it is not only the extraordinary story of one man's struggle but an echo of a past that carries a lesson for us all.

Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely.  They are worried by the "Assange effect".  It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April may one day come for them.

In a wide-ranging interview with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA's Flashpoints, John Pilger talks about the wider meaning behind his new film, The Dirty War on the NHS; on America's violent attempt to restore its dominance over Iran; and on the spectral fires that ravage his homeland, Australia, and are a warning to all of humanity.

Phillip Adams interviews John Pilger on ABC Radio National on the plight and hope and courage of Julian Assange ahead of his courtroom struggle to prevent extradition to the the United States. CLICK HERE to listen. 

On Saturday, 22 February, in London, people will march to the centre of British democracy: Parliament Square. They will set out at the Australian High Commission, which represents Julian Assange's homeland. The silence on Assange and the meaning of his extradition hearing, starting 24 February, for justice and the freedom of all of us, must be broken.

Next week Curzon Home Cinema will be streaming John Pilger's film The Dirty War on the NHS, which was first released last December. This re-release could not be more timely. The government is telling us to stay at home and "protect the NHS". John's film spells out the reason why the NHS might be overwhelmed by the impact of the coronavirus: the lack of resources which are the direct result of the policies of the last ten years and the devastation caused by sustained privatisation. At the end of the film Professor Danny Dorling foresaw what we are now going through: "The NHS gave us freedom from fear .... now that fear has returned."  This is a film to enrage, but also to inspire: to make sure that when the pandemic is over, the NHS is rebuilt as a properly funded public health system.The film will start streaming on Curzon Home Cinema on 13th April. And on the 15th April the screening will be followed by discussion with two of its main contributors - Professor Allyson Pollock and Dr John Lister at 8.30 pm.WATCH THE TRAILER

I set out at dawn. Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.