This author is one of the best contemporary journalists, a loyal friend of peace loving working people everywhere.
In this timely article he tells the truth that is hiding behind the celebrated mine rescue that Chile's ruling class hopes will distract the world. It will likely succeed unless the miners themselves are allowed to tell their side of the story. I doubt that this will be the case. What is likely to happen is that those miners who are willing to tell an "acceptable" story will be heard, otherwise they will be ignored. That is the way the world's corporate media works to "manage the consent" of working people in the world. Only from alternative media sources and journalists such as Pilger can we find out the true story behind this near tragic event. I've already found one such report.
Presently President Piñera of Chile is milking the event for all it is worth to conceal his administration's continuing attacks on working and indigenous people of Chile. He represents the same class of people that collaborated with the US Empire to eliminate a real friend of working people, former socialist President Allende, back in the 1970s in order to install a friend of the Empire, General Pinochet.
The Empire supports leaders like Piñera everywhere in the world so that the capitalist ruling classes can maintain their wealth, their power, and, above all, their system.
Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail industries. He made his fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup and during the free-market "experiments" of the zealots from the University of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labor minister under Pinochet, privatized mining and state pensions and all but destroyed the trade unions. This was applauded in Washington as an "economic miracle," a model of the new cult of neoliberalism that would sweep the continent and ensure control from the north.