No confirmation of this is currently available.
I shall add little more than hearty congratulations to the winner and wish him less exposure in the coming year. Kerry Packer will thank you, Mr Everywhere.
Take this 2003 survey conducted by British public relations company Weber Shandwick in relation to Iraq’s WMD. The results speak for themselves: “The public is two times more likely to trust the BBC over the Government on the issue of weapons of mass destruction. More than half (54%) of the respondents are much more likely (28%) or somewhat more likely (26%) to believe the BBC on the issue of WMDs. Only one in five (21%) are much more likely (9%) or somewhat more likely (12%) to believe the government.
The European Federation of Journalists reports that journalists across Europe are banding together to voice their concern over the crisis in public broadcasting. Arne König, the Chairman of the EFJ, says that aside from worker’s rights being questioned, political pressure is attempting to silence dissenting viewpoints. “More than ever, these values need to be defended,” says König.
The state of Australia’s public broadcasters, ABC and SBS, is worrying. Governmental pressure is resulting in increasingly reluctant staff tackling the hard issues or asking the tough questions. We now have to rely on comedy to provide the most incisive political comment:
INTERVIEWER: Mr Howard, I wondered if the meaning of Anzac Day has somehow changed?
JOHN HOWARD: Anzac Day is a day of great importance in the Australian calendar, Graham.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think that importance is?
JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think the essential lessons and characters of Anzac Day are as they have always been, Bryan.
INTERVIEWER: And what are they?
JOHN HOWARD: Well, it celebrates that very important time when the Australian Government made a very significant decision, Bryan to
INTERVIEWER: To do as it was told by an imperial power.
JOHN HOWARD: — to assemble a very, very impressive body of young men, very talented, very resourceful young men and to send them away to
INTERVIEWER: Invade another country.
JOHN HOWARD: — to defend Britain.
INTERVIEWER: By invading Turkey.
***
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) is holding the annual Orwell Awards - “the gong for the annual tongue-in-cheek anti-press freedom awards.” Aimed at those in power who actively discourage press freedom, including the majority of the ministers in the Howard government. One note of advice to the MEAA. Holding an Inaugural World Press Freedom Dinner tomorrow night is a noble idea, and speakers include shit-stirrers David Marr, Richard Neville and John Birmingham. But how the hell did the NSW Premier Bob Carr score an invitation? He has more press secretaries than John Howard and is the master of spin. His press secretary Walt Secord won an award in 2003 for best spinner in the state.
***
A final warning to those who believe in retaining the current state of affairs regarding Australian defamation laws. This report by the University of Melbourne proves that our freedom of speech, compared to the US, is being seriously eroded:
“This article reports on a comparative content analysis of more than 1,400 Australian and US newspaper articles. The study suggests that in the US - where defamation plaintiffs face much heavier burdens than under Australian law - defamatory allegations are made more frequently against both political and corporate actors than in Australia. The US articles contained apparently defamatory allegations at nearly three times the rate of the Australian sample. In particular, the Australian media appeared to be less comfortable making allegations in relation to corporate affairs than its US counterpart. In addition, some US articles included far more extreme commentary than the Australian sample, which suggests a less restrained style of public debate may be fostered under US law. Through introducing comparative content analysis to Australian media law research, the article supports the idea that Anglo-Australian defamation law has a chilling effect media speech.”
Reform is essential, as online magazine Crikey have been saying for years.
Fundamental to Australia is the legal advice offered to John Howard. On what basis did the Prime Minister commit this country to war? Legal eagle Richard Ackland today asks the key question:
“How did the legal smoke-and-mirrors game play out in this corner of the globe? The Prime Minister, John Howard, told the House of Representatives on March 18, 2003: “Our legal advice … is unequivocal … This legal advice is consistent with that provided to the British Government by its Attorney General.
“As we now realise, the legal advice to the British Government was highly equivocal. With which piece of legal advice was Howard’s legal advice consistent?”
Pressure must be placed on the government to release its own legal advice. Without it, serious doubts will remain over the true intentions of our elected officials.
Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfiwitz, told the U.S. House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003 that oil exports would pay for the reconstruction of post-invasion Iraq: “It’s got already, I believe, on the order of $15 billion to $20 billion a year in oil exports, which can finally - might finally be turned to a good use instead of building Saddam’s palaces. It has one of the most valuable undeveloped sources of natural resources in the world. And let me emphasize, if we liberate Iraq those resources will belong to the Iraqi people, that they will be able to develop them and borrow against them.”
One can safely interpret “borrow” to mean the rapid arrival of massive financial loans on the condition that privatisation of natural resources and essential services are undertaken by Western multinationals.
But I digress. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough reports today on the suffering of Iraqi children due to the effects of depleted uranium.
McGeough writes: “The rest of the world vowed to help Iraq after the ousting of Saddam Hussein. Billions ofdollars have been set aside and because Basra is Iraq’s only city by the sea, hundreds of military and civilian supply convoys thunder past its hospitals, heading to Baghdad and other centres as part of a huge military and reconstruction effort.
“But few trucks stop at these hospitals. A few did pull up outside the Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital a month ago and dumped donated second-hand hospital equipment from Japan in the forecourt. But no one knows how to install it all - so the delivery just gathers dust and its flat surfaces have become an extension of the waiting room for day patients.”
Chalabi’s reputation is so sullied that his appointment throws into question the agendas behind the endorsement of a government by the National Assembly. Already, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s connections to Iran remain unclear.
A startling revelation in today’s Guardian and a story that should receive widespread coverage in Australia, but has not, thus far. The BBC and Independent are leading with the story and yet neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor News Limited websites mention the yarn at all. The Age features the story from Reuters. Will any paper in Australia dare print the story on their front page tomorrow, giving it equal weight to the numerous page one articles before the war channelling government propaganda on WMDs?
Let’s take a look back. At the time of the Iraq invasion in early 2003, Bush, Blair and Howard all claimed that the “Coalition of the Unwilling” was engaged in lawful behaviour. John Howard said on March 14, 2003: “There is adequate legal authority in the existing [UN] resolutions for force to be used.” Dissenting views were expressed but had little practical effect.
Fast forward to 2005. The British election is days away. Tony Blair is likely to win (a report in today’s Australian explains this will be largely due to a “badly distorted electoral system”) but the leaking of the UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith’s pre-war advice reveals that serious doubts were expressed merely days before the invasion, not least because of dubious evidence of Iraq’s WMD capability. Ten days later, Blair claimed his country could enter the war legally. What happened during those ten days remains a mystery though governmental pressure on the Attorney General seems likely.
In October 2003, leading Pentagon hawk Richard Perle admitted that the Iraq war was illegal. “International law … would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone”, and this would have been morally unacceptable, Perle said. This caused barely a ripple. Indeed, in 2003 the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh uncovered numerous shady dealings involving Perle and arms dealing. Today, however, with an upsurge in violence across Iraq, an ever-increasing “Coalition” death toll and no clear exit strategy, the new leaks will hopefully re-focus attention on the nature of taking a country to war.
Families of some of the British soldiers killed in Iraq are preparing legal action against Blair based on the leaked information. Furthermore, the initial concerns expressed by Lord Goldsmith were never seen by the British Cabinet, “an apparent breach of the official code covering ministerial behaviour”, reports the Guardian.
Can you imagine a world where Western leaders could be brought before an international court and charged with war crimes? As John Pilger said in 2003: “To call them war criminals is not to take a cheap shot. It is to speak the truth. In 1946, the judges at the Nuremberg war crimes trials said that unprovoked aggression against another state was, and I quote, ‘the supreme international war crime because it contains all the evils of other war crimes.’”
Those who argue that the Iraq issue is dead misunderstand the direction our leaders are taking us. Just a few weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked George W. Bush to step up pressure on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapon’s facilities. Today we learn that the US is likely to sell bunker-buster bombs to Israel, weapons designed to destroy underground nuclear factories.
It has already been proven that the Iraq war was illegal. The next challenge is to bring accountability back to Western democracy and today’s news brings the public one small step closer to realising how far our governments have strayed.
I’m proud to join the club…
Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I’ll be speaking on Sunday morning on the topic: “Web Tactics: Blogging and New Technologies.” I’ll be joined by Trevor Cook, a director of PR firm Jackson Wells Morris. Expect heated debate over the impact of blogging on journalism and perhaps the odd joke about Rupert Murdoch’s recent realisation that money could be made on the internet.
Watch this exclusive report to prepare yourself for the onslaught of fake news coming soon to a TV near you.
“When George Bush visited John Paul II in June of last year, he asked the Pontiff for a political favour. Shortly thereafter, Cardinal Ratzinger issued a letter to American bishops that essentially threatened to excommunicate all Catholics who voted for John Kerry. Upon receipt of the letter, five prominent Roman Catholic bishops held an unprecedented press conference to proclaim their preference for George Bush over his rival, John Kerry. Bush received 6% more Roman Catholic votes last year than he did in 2000, even though his opponent was a lifelong Catholic who had served as an altar boy. Ratzinger’s political intervention had worked wonders for neoconservativism, and it is now being recognized as one of the most decisive factors in Bush’s electoral strategy.”
Ratzinger has a history of silencing critics who challenge the church’s behaviour over sexual abuse. Many critics, including some critical of this blog, argue that challenging the new Pope is somehow inappropriate, insensitive, intolerant, prejudicial. My point has never been to chastise Catholics for their faith. I take issue, however, with the history of Ratzinger, his associations and the likely future of an increasingly tight union between religious fundamentalism and the political realm. The flaunting of religious belief for the sake of political gain seen across the Western world is yet another sign of traditional democratic values being challenged.
Ratzinger deserves to be questioned and investigated like any other religious leader. Of course, not many other religions would appoint someone like Ratzinger to the throne.
This could be the best thing for the movement against American militarism in decades.
After 29 years of occupation, the last Syrian soldier has left Lebanon.
The Syrians consider Lebanon part of their “historic homeland”. They thought that their occupation is “irreversible”. Now, suddenly, they were forced to leave.
Many Israelis consider the occupied territories part of our historic homeland. They believe that the occupation is “irreversible”.
But in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, too, the occupation will come to an end. And perhaps much sooner than many people expect.
We still don’t know the true cost of American attacks. Casualty figures vary wildly, but thousands of civilians may have been murdered. This town, the “symbol of defiance”, is still under siege and atrocities are being reported by the few brave journalists entering the city.
“Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of the city’s compensation commission…reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed in the US onslaught, along with 8,400 shops. Sixty nurseries and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.
“Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city’s residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.”
Read the whole thing. This is Iraqi “liberation” in the trenches.
Juan Cole helpfully articulates the reasons bloggers are vitally important in this age of “consolidation”:
“If we were the mainstream media, we would be accountable to CEOs and editors and advertisers, all of whom have motives for suppressing some pieces of news and highlighting others. You might think to yourself that this is a diverse enough group that the story would still get through. But with media consolidation, fewer and fewer persons make the decisions.”
Media owned by Rupert Murdoch or newspapers published by Fairfax have both hidden and acknowledged agendas. So do many bloggers. But self-censorship is the only thing stopping bloggers highlighting a story or putting forward an opinion.
“We are not the mainstream media, and we are here. Get used to it.” Cole tells it like it is. Besides, are we going to simply rely on the Sydney Morning Herald or New York Times for information?
“A large part of the reason Saudi Arabia is so unstable right now is the U.S. presence in Iraq, which has made the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims feel that the U.S. has gone to war against the whole Islamic world. Halevy’s (and the neocons’, and AIPAC’s) preferred solution for all of this is additional U.S. wars against other Arab and Muslim (Iran) states, a resumption of the draft (where else would we get hundreds of thousands of additional Americans to serve as cannon fodder for this?), and a “generational” presence as occupiers in the region. (Of course, this would generate additional impetus for terrorism against the U.S. itself.)”
To this I would add the following. As an Australian, I question whether the government of John Howard is signing us up for adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and who knows where else, with a vested interest in allowing America’s role in the region to increase. When Australia sends more troops to Iraq, we are asked to believe that it’s to secure the Iraqi people and provide democracy. Alternative theories are essential. Historian Clinton Fernandes argues, instead: “Today, Australian military personnel are participating in the US-led attempt to create a stable investment climate, complete with a vast military presence, in Iraq.” This involvement mirrors, Fernandes posits, a repeat of similiar behaviour in relation to Asia, especially Indonesia under General Soeharto.
It’s time to dispense the myth that the Iraq invasion was about bringing democracy to the country. American, British and Australian financial and political interests are seen to align in the Middle East region. Never believe anyone who says otherwise.
I’m currently reading a fascinating book that expands on these matters. Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation reveals the private contractors profiting from the occupation. Writer Pratap Chatterjee (managing editor of CorpWatch) painfully details how going to war makes good business sense. Hear the storm clouds gathering over Iran?
“We should end the immunity of US soldiers here,” says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits, however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.”
Furthermore, the recent upsurge in insurgent violence can be explained in a variety of reasons, including:
“It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon’s claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.”
***
Robert Fisk reveals in the Independent on Sunday that the 2002 Tony Blair “dossier” on WMD, translated into Arabic, contained numerous changes and deletions and differences to the English version.
“Translation carried out for The Independent on Sunday reveals for the first time that several references to UN sanctions were cut from the Arabic text. On one page, the words “biological agents” were changed to read “nuclear agents”. Arab journalists who reported on the dossier culled their information from the Arabic version - unaware that it was not the same as the English one.
“While there is evidence of sloppiness in the translation - a 2001 Joint Intelligence Committee assessment of Iraqi nuclear ambitions is rendered as 2002 - many of the changes were clearly deliberate, apparently in an attempt to make the dossier more acceptable as well as more convincing to an Arab audience. At the time, the US and Britain were trying to convince Arab Gulf states that Saddam Hussein still represented a major threat to them - in the hope of seeking their support for the 2003 invasion - while the Arab world was enraged at the disastrous effects UN sanctions had on child mortality in Iraq.”
Take today. “They’re having a baby - and eight Tassie cousins eagerly await a playmate”, screamed the article at the top of the front page. The pregnancy of Denmark’s Princess Mary is undoubtedly news-worthy, but the ever-increasing elevation of celebrity gossip to prominence shows an editorship, under Robert Whitehead, losing focus on what constitutes serious news. If the paper wants to be a tabloid, let the broadsheet morph into a tabloid or place such “news” in the entertainment section.
During a recent media forum, head of UTS journalism school, Wendy Bacon, spoke about the increasing reluctance of Fairfax to tackle the corporate takeover of Australia. She co-wrote a piece for the SMH in early March on the Australian connections of Halliburton. She said that she had had great difficulty getting the piece in the paper, “and if I was a nobody it possibly would have been impossible.” The facts in the story were alarming and yet no follow-up has occurred.
I recently spent time with one of the Middle East’s prominent journalists. I asked if he knew Paul McGeough, Fairfax’s leading foreign correspondent. He looked at me blankly. “Never heard of him”, he replied. McGeough is indeed one of Australia’s finest reporters, but his newspaper’s impact on setting agendas outside of Australia remains minimal, despite the advent of the internet. A newspaper’s success should never be solely dictated by its effect on the world, though it’s one important factor. We’re a small fish in a big pond, and seem to be becoming more parochial as time goes on. Shouldn’t a local paper want to challenge established norms in Washington, London and Canberra?
Is the mainstream media capable of seriously examining the tightening relationship between government and corporate interests? Are senior editors concerned about upsetting the status quo (witnessed during last year’s Federal election, when the Fairfax press either supported John Howard’s re-election or gutlessly sat on the fence, despite spending the previous years criticising Liberal Party policy.) We all know the agendas of the Murdoch press. We should be more questioning of how the Fairfax press conducts itself in a democratic Australia. If the organisation fails to listen, circulation figures will continue to haemorrhage and they’ll only have themselves to blame.
The petition states that Israel’s plan for “development” of these two areas is actually a plan to destroy the Palestinian presence in these areas. The “development” plan will further the confiscation of Palestinian Arab land, the demolition of thousands of homes and the forced evacuation of the Arab unrecognised villages, encourages step-by-step ethnic cleansing and reinforces the State of Israel’s racially discriminatory policies.
As this is the case, Ittijah calls on the governments of the United States and the European Union, and on the United Nations, not to support the “development” plan. Every dollar and Euro in support of the “development” plan is support for the destruction of the Palestinian presence in the Galilee and Naqab (Negev), and for the continuing, extreme discrimination by the State of Israel against the Palestinians living in Israel.
Ruzicka: “The statistics demonstrate that the US military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognise they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimise mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy.”
***
CNN has a new President. Jonathan Klein is the man leading the once-mighty cable news network. Media moguls have long explained why progressive voices are so rarely heard on their stations or in their pages. In Australia, for example, there are no truly left commentators/talking heads on television during current affairs programs. We’re constantly told that a liberal agenda is running rampant and yet centrists are frequently featured in lieu of progressive guests.
Anyway, back to Klein. During a recent interview on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show, Klein explained why liberals are marginalised. Fox News was tapping into a largely “angry white man’s” conservatism and then the clanger: “a quote/unquote, ‘progressive’ or liberal network probably couldn’t reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don’t get too worked up about anything. And they’re pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff.”
Where to begin with this nonsense? Hundreds of thousands protested the Iraq war, voted against George W. Bush in 2004 (or indeed didn’t vote for either Bush or John Kerry) and viewed any number of documentaries critiquing the current administration. Hundreds of campaigns continue across a wide area of activity, including against the “WOT” (War on Terror), Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explains the hypocrisy: “As for progressives being “pretty morally relativistic,” Klein’s insult seems misapplied. One could argue that it’s the right and not the left that tends to see the killing of civilians as important only if the civilians are of the right nationality, for example, and thinks that torture may be acceptable if the right people are torturing.”
Klein’s diatribe is yet another reason why the mainstream media is no longer the place to regularly provide perspectives questioning the establishment. Following orthodox doctrine is what most mainstream commentators engage in. It’s not called journalism. It’s called channelling government propaganda.
***
I’m off to Melbourne again for this Anzac Day long weekend. If you still accept the views of status-quo enforcer Gerard Henderson, who argues that Gallipoli was a noble adventure - “in 1914-18 Australia did not fight another nation’s war - then facts will clearly never get in the way of a good yarn. Yet again, our colonial past is ignored or justified. Australia has a history of fighting the wars of the imperial powers. By all means remember the fallen soldiers, but ditch the romanticism. Until Australia forms an independent foreign policy and feels comfortable saying ‘NO’ to America or Britain, we will continue to be seen as a neo-colonial outpost.
Related to this, blogger Rex in the City explains the possible reason behind John Howard’s hesitation in signing ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation:
“By signing this treaty, we would be acceding to the rules of the South East Asian Nuclear Free Zone. The US does not like this zone, and to sign the treaty would put us in a difficult position with the US. We’re a major ally, relying on their nuclear umbrella and we’re not going to upset the applecart.”
As Rex rightly says, Australia’s embedded journalists are caught asleep at the wheel yet again.
ANYWAY, have a good break and feel free to leave in comments any thoughts related to the following:
1) The day we can expect to see the rise and rise of a Prime Minister with no financial ties to big business and favours to repay when elected;
2) The day we can expect journalists to collectively rebel against the Howard government’s increasing restrictions on press freedom (I know I’ll waiting a long time for this one!);
3) The day we can expect more than a handful of Arab voices to appear in our mainstream media. After all, we have just invaded and occupied one of them (Iraq) and contributed to the continued occupation of another (Israel). Editors reading this, here are a few suggestions; and
4) The life and times of your long-weekend.
See you Tuesday.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of al Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden. In a September 24, 2003 declassified “Secret” FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in “personnel and medical files and similar files” when the disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Large questions remain as to the activities of Bin Laden’s associates in the US in the days before and after 9/11, including access to flights out of the country.