Customer Reviews

A Secret Country: The Hidden Australia

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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'

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.

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.

No serious reader of contemporary Australian history or politics should miss this book. It is a departure from cliched (and sometimes misleading) cuddly, wolly, and warm images of a sun-drenched land of cute marsupials, insouciant inhabitants, and otherwise seemingly featureless social history.

The author brings unique viewpoints and journalistic sources (for example, CIA insider Victor Marchetti, whom he quotes several times) to several major subjects of Australia's history in the 1970s and 1980s. Even the parts of this book which resemble conspiracy theory more than solidly researched history form food for thought. A clear example is the chapter entitled "The Coup" which discusses a still poorly understood subject -- the fall of the Whitlam government. This episode, in which the Governor-General (the representative of the British Queen) dismissed the elected Prime Minister of Australia in 1975, is perhaps one of the most monumental and disturbing events of Australian political history, and still stirs debate equivalent to those in the United States surrounding the assassination of JFK. Even if Pilger's account of the involvement of the CIA in this "coup d'etat" may seem far fetched, it does put a rare focus on the extent and nature of the US-Australian security and intelligence relationship, aspects of which are still unknown to Australians and Americans alike.

Other provocative subjects which Pilger covers include the plight of Aborigines and the role and influence of multinationals in Australia. Pilger clearly regards his native country with affection. He closes with a vision of Australia united with New Zealand and other Pacific nations which he suggests would enable "...Australians to break free from our imperial past;and for us, like everyone, breaking free is the only future."

Foreign readers - but possibly many Australian readers too - will undoubtedly find this book an eye opener.

An incredibly well reserched book. John Pilger presents the darker side of Australia that perhaps most Australians would prefer not to know. His account of the behaviour of politicians in the 70's and 80's raises the questions in the readers mind of what could be going on behind the scenes today. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to delve into the "behind the scenes" of Australian political history.

John Pilger delivers. Like his books on international affairs, this one, dealing with the oppression of the Australian aborigins is quite revealing. It is, as another reviewer remarked, an eye-opener. If more journalists would do the right research and were courageous enough to reveal what they have found rather than dance to the tunes of corporate media, the fight for justice for the minorities and the aborigins (to name a few) would be even stronger. This book by John Pilger is therefore an excellent work that contributes to this important struggle.

In order to gain a critial understanding of this book it is important to understand the genre of writing it typifies. Succinctly put, true to its journalistic origins, it is close to the thick description of an ethnographer, but lacking any of the associated methods or comparative data which would have helped to contextualise the claims. Along with other contemporary practitioners of this dubious art, such as Bill Bryson for example, once having read Pilger, one is simply left wondering about the clear (over) reliance on anecdotal evidence. How representative are the claims? Is Pilger any more insightful, or rather less glib and superficial, than the object of his critique i.e. those who have a vested interest in preserving/marketing the officially sanctioned national mythologies of Australia?

Judged by this criteria, Pilger is unsuccessful in his endeavours. A more useful starting point would be to question the extent to which Australian society is the product of an internal developmental process. Some data for contextualising the country in such global terms can, for example, be found in the excellent comparative study, "How Australia Compares". Complementary to this piece, a more sophisticated [than Pilger]theoretical attempt to flesh out the social forces shaping Australia can generally be found in the work of sociologist Peter Beilharz. For an informative attempt to weigh up the extent of any ideological manipulation of Australian history, it is worth checking out the writings of Stuart MacIntyre, including the co-edited volume, "The History Wars". Finally, a search for Elaine Thompson's research on Australian egalitarianism would assist in rounding out a critical understanding of this important topic.

My concern is that without the benefit of understanding causation, process etc, readily available in these aforementioned works, Pilger by extension leaves his readers with nothing other than the cliched inference that all countries attempt to suppress secrets/social divisions for the sake of the upkeep of their nationalism. But in the final analysis, how informative are these kinds of generality, really?

Or rather, to turn against Pilger the kind of simplistic analogy frequently deployed by journalists of his ilk, one might conclude that he has succeeded only in holding a magnifying glass up to his topic . What is clearly needed though is a more penetrating x-ray vision.

This is a must read for those interested in Australia. It was recommended to me by a friend that lives over there.

This book will remind you that politicians and businesses are crooked everywhere, that the indigenous always get screwed, and that little countries are often mistreated by their larger "friends." Pilger is ferocious and he is happily much more intellectually honest than say, Michael Moore. His socialist hopes for Australia seem dated considering the country's amazing financial success under Mr. Howard, but his fears of media concentration and the purchase of influence seem particularly timely. Pilger makes a strong argument that Australia's relationships with Britain and the USA are coercive and exploitative. The thoughtful reader will find themselves re-examining the nature of the Alliance and "special relationship" and what these ought to be like.

In A Secret Country expatriate journalist John Pilger tells the often untold, hard to swallow, stories which make up the Australian past and present. Some of the wide range of issues covered in this book include:

- The white invasion of Australia.
- Contemporary Indigenous Australian issues, including deaths in prison.
- The power plays between the wealthy in Australia and politicians and how politics in Australia is influenced for personal gain.
- The power plays between other nations (USA & UK) and Australia. Including how these nations have potentially changed politics in Australia for their gain.

My favourite is the section on how the CIA through their influences was able to oust a democratically elected government and replace it with a better behaved one. It should noted that this book often reads like other passionate, emotive rants. It is easy to find yourself being totally engrossed in the story and feeling like you need to take a step back, follow the books sources, or find other literature which supports the books premises.

For people looking for a darker alternate view on many still highly relevant issues in Australia I would thoroughly recommend this book.