John Pilger returns to the once silent issue of East Timor, a tiny country rich in resources and ravaged by its neighbour, Indonesia, with the help of the Indonesian dictators western sponsors. And yet East Timor broke free. President Obama’s threats to China once again highlight the undeclared power of small, impoverished countries.

John Pilger reports on an Australian icon, the the world’s oldest and safest international airline, and what happened when global finance took over.

In an article for the Guardian in London, John Pilger describes the attacks on WikiLeaks and the smearing of its editor Julian Assange that now permeate much of the Swedish media. A decision by the UK Supreme Court on Assange’s extradition to Sweden is now imminent, over which hangs the prospect of his transfer to the United States where a fabricated indictment awaits him.

John Pilger asks: What has happened to the politics of modern feminism? Has feminism forgotten its roots and been appropriated by its natural enemies? The rise of Australia’s first female prime minister helps us understand.

John Pilger reviews the paperback of Gareth Peirce’s ‘Dispatches from the Dark Side: on Torture and the Death of Justice’. Peirce, Britain’s pre-eminent human rights lawyer, argues that the Labour government of Tony Blair, in its pursuit of rapacious war and in support of policies of rendition and torture, was criminal.

As the Supreme Court in Britain hears the Julian Assange case, John Pilger examines the implications of an intensified US campaign to silence WikiLeaks and prosecute Assange for a crime that doesn’t exist, threatening the principle of free speech and all unfettered journalism.

John Pilger argues that, behind its democratic facade, the true nature of western political culture is that of American-led violence and ruthlessness in the cause of enduring dominance. He pays tribute to Lisette Talate, who has died. A Chagos islander forcibly expelled from her homeland by Britain in order to make way for a US military base, her resistance and that of people like her all over the world offer real hope, not the counterfeit slogans of those like Barack Obama.

John Pilger describes his return to India, now promoted as an “economic tiger” and a “global leader”, where the reality is very different for the lives of those beyond the advertisers’ hoardings.

John Pilger argues that the theatre of the inquiry in London into media phone hacking deflects from the role of journalism in promoting war and other crimes of state.

John Pilger reports from Mexico where the past often a vivid and surreal presence and the present sends a univeral message.