JOHN PILGER, activist, radical journalist, broadcaster and exposer of injustice and the crimes of the powerful, died over the weekend.

Tributes were paid to the principled investigator whose articles, films and books lifted the stones beneath which squirmed the institutionalised racism of the country of his birth, Australia, against indigenous Australians.

His work targeted the imperialism and corruption which drove wars including Vietnam and the two wars on Iraq, and in his adopted homeland, Britain, the forces at work in the continuing destruction of the National Health Service.