Antony Loewenstein

We’re told that Israel is serious about peace. We’re informed that Palestinians must stop “terrorism” before serious negotiations can occur. We’re deluged with propaganda in our media that reassures us that there is a new hope for peace since the death of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. If you believe all this, you’re living in fairyland.

How to explain this in yesterday’s Haaretz?

“We can’t expect to receive explicit American agreement to build freely in the settlements,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. The large blocs of settlement in the West Bank “will remain in Israel’s hands and will fall within the (separation) fence, and we made this position clear to the Americans. This is our position, even if they express reservations,” he said.

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is known to despise the Greens under Senator Bob Brown. For these establishment media-types, a two-party system is all a democracy needs, thanks very much, and if anybody dares steal the limelight from the corporate-driven Labor or Liberal parties, watch out. Such was Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper during last year’s Federal Election campaign.

The Greens complained to the toothless Press Council and won. Murdoch’s minions refuse to accept the decision and today publish a scathing “examination” of the Council’s findings. Indignation runs high, as ever, and Greens are once again deemed dangerous to society. The party has responded though where is the Fairfax press? Neither The Sydney Morning Herald nor Age, the supposed quality broadsheets of Sydney and Melbourne respectively, have covered this story in depth. It’s a common theme. The Murdoch press regularly attacks the Fairfax press, and nothing more than a whimper is ever heard in reply.

If the powers that be at Fairfax reckon they’re above such petty squabbles, they should think again. The Australian media landscape is increasingly dominated by Murdoch and his agendas. Sometimes you’ve got to play dirty, especially when your already dwindling readership is diving even more. Issues of media accountability are important and people do care. Are the editors of Fairfax simply waiting for the cross-media laws to pass the Senate after July 1 and then calmly watch as any kind of investigatve journalism remaining is reduced to make way for more advertising dollars? It’s happening already.

I’m a freelance journalist based in Sydney, Australia, writing primarily on international affairs, the Israel/Palestine conflict and domestic politics. Few areas don’t interest me. Sadly, the Australian media is increasingly complicit in the actions of John Howard’s government. Rupert Murdoch owns 70% of my country’s print media, the highest percentage of any Western nation. The alternatives, The Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald, are frequently little better. Fear of seriously tackling governmental corruption and injustice as well as business interests pervades much of the mainstream media. Corporate news values permeate everything and information that slips through is the exception rather than the rule.

Alternative news sources are therefore essential. This blog is but one example. The fight back has begun. It’s time that media existed not solely for the advertising dollar, but for informing readers. Let’s get beyond the Right and Left divide. They exist of course, but increasingly partisan news agendas don’t serve the public interest. I love that the mainstream media is struggling to understand or accommodate the blogging revolution. It’s time they acknowledge that their agendas and angles are no longer the only truth. Far from it. The Iraq war proved once and for all that Iraqi and Western bloggers were the most fascinating source for conditions on the ground, not embedded journalists with the New York Times.

Let’s have a discussion about what media you want, what you dislike, what you think your media isn’t telling you and what perspectives they’re ignoring or highlighting. Blogging allows media to be owned by us, the reader and participant. And that’s the most democratic thing that’s happened to media for a generation.

“In an age where war has become a policy option rather than a last resort, where its legitimacy rather than its morality can be summed up on a sheet of A4 paper, we prefer to concentrate on the suffering caused by “them” rather than “us”, writes Robert Fisk in his latest article for The Independent.

“Australians are as just as concerned about United States foreign policy as Islamic extremism and regard the US as more dangerous than a rising China, according to a new poll.” It’s a sign that recent Bush administration adventurism and illegalities, from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, are causing uncertainty here. This is not about moral equivalence, but rather the welcome failure of the Howard government to convince us that America is our saviour and a sole force for good in the world along with the legitimate fear of a terrorist attack.

The poll was commissioned by the Lowy Institute for Public Policy. Its executive director, Alan Gyngell, said yesterday that he suspected the results would have been different during the presidency of Bill Clinton. He sounded somehow disappointed that the Howard government hadn’t convinced enough people of the Bush doctrine.

The now deceased Edward Said once said that the last great taboo in America is that country’s relationship with Israel. It’s rarely discussed in Australia, either, though I’ll be examining it throughout my upcoming book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, out with MUP in early 2006.

Gorilla in the Room is a new blog based in Washington, dedicated to “shattering the taboo on discussion of Israel’s “Agents of Influence”. It’s a fascinating read and deconstructs the incestuous alliances between pro-Israel lobbyists such as AIPAC, the Bush administration and the formulation of foreign policy.

David Marr, one of Australia’s finest journalists and co-writer of Dark Victory – the devastating examination of the 2001 election and the injection of racial prejudice into the public domain by the Howard government – has returned to The Sydney Morning Herald after three years hosting ABC TV’s Media Watch.

His latest article tells the rarely reported saga of Australia’s increasingly sullied name overseas, especially in relation to human rights breaches. The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination brought down a judgement on March 12 which should make any compassionate Australian react with horror. “Australia was rebuked for its treatment of migrants, Muslims, asylum seekers, refugees and Aborigines”, it stated.

Marr skilfully explains the dominant culture within the Australian government and its American masters to consistently slam the UN, any of its decision and operate outside the established international norms. Foreign Editor of Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, Greg Sheridan, articulated this position last weekend:

“Australia should be absolutely pragmatic about the UN. It is merely one form of international co-operation. It does some good things, which we should support, and some bad things, which we should oppose. But under no circumstances should any Australian government ever feel constrained by UN authority.”

So who, therefore, should make the key decisions leading to war, or an occupation or avoidance of conflict? When George W. Bush appoints an arch-enemy of multilateral institutions, John Bolton, as his UN ambassador, the new rules of the game are perfectly clear and the Howard government is more than willing to go along for the ride. This should be opposed by all people who believe in international law and accountability.

Just today we learn that David Hicks, the Australian captured by the Americans in Afghanistan and held for over three years without trial at Guantanamo Bay, is still facing an uncertain future. Publicly the Australian government expresses hope that there is enough evidence to try Hicks and little movement has occurred since his incarceration. Privately, ministers need to be shamed into more aggressively pursuing Hick’s release back to Australia.

All these cases are pieces of the same puzzle. We may see ourselves as a tolerant, easy-going and generous country, but in reality, the world community is becoming increasingly aware of Australia’s racist past and present. By all means imagine encourage much-needed reforms of the UN, but to imagine a world where American unilateralism is the sole arbiter of decision-making, we are heading for a divided world. Are you with or against US government policy? It’s not a decision that countries should have to make.

Easter Sunday. Sunny day in Sydney. And I’m cooking, a rare occurrence for a dinner party tonight with friends.

This story in today’s UK Independent peels back yet another layer in the Blair government’s rush to war. We await an equivalent dissection in Australia. Lies, deception and slave to American power:

“A former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee…said: “Any government that wants to manipulate the intelligence as shamelessly as this one did will find a way to bypass procedures. What went wrong was not an aberration of the system – the problem is Blair.”

Every Easter, refugee activists converge on Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia to protest the Howard government’s asylum seeker policy. Some violence has been reported, but this is a distraction from the main game. This photograph graphically displays the reality. Full information about the reasons, actions and motives of the activists is well worth reading. With media access banned from inside the detention centres, remember that the vast majority of Australians, as the government desires, does not see or humanise the refugees. Highlighting the outrage of incarcerating innocent people for often years on end is essential.

Ever thought your drink of Coke tastes a little sour? Perhaps it’s because charges of serious human rights abuses by the company are gaining in strength. The Nation reports. And who said soft drinks can’t kill you? Killer Coke responds.

Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for the UK Independent, also home to Robert Fisk. In an exclusive interview with Arab Media Watch, Cockburn discusses the realities of reporting from the “liberated” country. “I don’t go out of Baghdad”, he says.

Furthermore, the role of the insurgency is murkier than many in the anti-war left would like to acknowledge and with the Americans, “…you have some frightened American GI from Ohio, aged 20, who probably doesn’t want to be in Iraq. He believes that in any car there might be a suicide bomber and nothing happens to him if he gets it wrong. If he guns down a family of five, nothing happens to him. So there is no downside, from his point of view, in pulling the trigger. This happens, as I have said, all the time. Even if there’s a single shot in the distance, the Americans often open up in all directions. It seems to be part of their military training.”

Cockburn’s comments confirm that, despite the propaganda in the West proclaiming flowering democracy in Iraq, the security situation remains so treacherous that any kind of even barely functioning freedoms are undermined by the incompetence of the Americans. The great unspoken truth about Iraq is the desire of many in the country to be rid of the US occupation and embrace democracy.

In the current debate surrounding Terry Schiavo and issues of assisted suicide, shameless political point-scoring and faux moral outrage, Not Dead Yet is a perspective rarely heard. What are they about?

“Since 1983, many people with disabilities have opposed the assisted suicide and euthanasia movement. Though often described as compassionate, legalized medical killing is really about a deadly double standard for people with severe disabilities, including both conditions that are labelled terminal and those that are not.”

PS. I discovered this group thanks to historian, writer and military man, Clinton Fernandes, after sharing lunch with him today. He’s the author of Reluctant Saviour, an insightful look at Australia’s true role in East Timor’s “liberation.” My recent Sun Herald review is here.

PPS. Thanks to all who’ve added comments. We may only be one week old, but I want this blog to be, soon enough, an essential stop for news and views you won’t find anywhere else, a challenge to the mainstream media’s primary reliance on US sources and a community who believes that people of conscience need to be more active in disseminating dissenting viewpoints.

Michael Manning is an American deep-sea diver turned documentary filmmaker. He recently went to the Iraqi town of Fallujah. Why?

“For the past two years, Manning has been making a documentary, American Voices, crisscrossing the United States and asking hundreds of Americans if they could explain why, exactly, the U.S. is at war with Iraq”, wrote the Santa Barbara Independent on March 24.

“He was profoundly disheartened, he said, by the lack of facts and accurate information out there. Very few of the people he interviewed could back up their opinions with facts. Even worse, he realized, neither could he. That’s when he decided he had to see what life was like on the receiving end of Operation Enduring Freedom. “As an American citizen,” said Manning, “I felt personally responsible for what happened to the people of Fallujah. We live in a democracy. In our democracy, my government is conducting a military operation over there in my name. To me, it doesn’t get more direct than that.”

His eyewitness account gives credence to the claim that the US occupation is in fact fuelling the insurgency, due primarily to its heavy-handedness and indiscriminate killing.