‘Where’s the balance?’ I raged as I listened to ABC Radio National
this morning. In yet another example of a run-of-the-mill interview
that you might hear on any news media platform or channel across this
country, James Carleton was interviewing a business owner about the Carbon Tax.
This interview may as well have been produced and gift-wrapped by the
fishing industry’s PR firm, it so reeked of one-sided bias. But that’s
the thing about balance that the mainstream media just don’t get. Or
just don’t care about. Or both. Balance isn’t the ability to find
someone who wants to speak in favour of the Carbon Tax (if these people
have been interviewed in the mainstream media over the last few years, I
must have missed it) and then to balance the argument, interview
someone staunchly against the Carbon Tax, like Carleton’s guest this
morning. That’s kindergarten simple thinking on what balance might be,
and they can’t even get this right. No, an intelligent producer and
interviewer would aim to find balance in the very questions they ask, so
to provide an insight into the two sides of an argument within the one
segment of news that they’ve given over to a particular topic for a
limited amount of time.
So let’s look at how Carleton might learn from this sloppy,
unbalanced interview. First of all, it’s important that the audience
know who is being interviewed in order to properly frame their ‘well you
would say that wouldn’t you’ opinion. Carleton introduced his
interviewee Gary Heilmann as apparently a ‘small business’ owner, the
managing director of De Brett Seafood at Mooloolaba on Queensland’s
Sunshine Coast. Carleton explained that Heilmann’s business includes a
tuna fishing boat, a fish processing plant and a fish and chip shop.
Fine. But it’s often what is left out of such an introduction which is
so lazy on the part of the interviewer and also most telling. Because a
quick Google of Heilmann makes it very clear that he isn’t just some
random small business owner who the ABC happened to come across to
provide his views on the repeal of the Carbon Tax. Here he is quoted in the Sunshine Coast Daily, posted on Liberal Mal Brough’s website, bemoaning the Carbon Tax back in March 2013. Here he is on the ABC’s website in 2011,
apparently representing his own business and other fishing operators in
lobbying the government to provide $76 million in compensation because
of the proposed introduction of a marine park. In this article on the same topic
from 2011, the author writes that ‘Fishing operators such as Heilmann
say drastic measures are needed because Australia’s waters are
over-fished’ and makes the point that since many operators have gone out
of business, licenses have been cut back to 115 and Heilmann has
slashed his fleet from 10 boats to only 2. This time he’s talking about the Coles fish price-war (aren’t free markets fun?). Here he’s complaining about the Sunshine Coast Regional Council building a roundabout
that makes it hard for his fishing trucks to get away from the port of
Mooloolaba (how dare the council try to improve traffic conditions for
people visiting the beach when Heilmann’s trying to move stock!). And
finally, here is Heilmann defending against claims that fishers were raiding Gold Coast recreational fishing areas,
in, you guessed it, his role as Managing Director of his company, and a
member of a tuna fishing industry advisory committee. Wouldn’t this
background as a fishing industry media spokesman have been helpful to
the balance of Heilmann’s Carbon Tax interview?
So what questions might Carleton has asked so to at least challenge
Heilmann’s pre-prepared-press-release-like rant about why the Carbon Tax
is bad for his business and must-be repealed? What could Carleton have
done to provide some balance, rather than offering nothing more than the
perfect Dorothy-Dixer-like combination of questions which came off
sounding like they had been written by Heilmann himself to keep his flow
of ‘I’m
anti-Carbon-Tax-and-my-opinion-is-important-because-I’m-a-business-owner’
script perfectly intact? How could Carleton have avoided the
same-old-lame-overused-statement that was so perfectly rehearsed it
sounded like Abbott himself had planted it in Heilmann’s head, when he
said ‘governments… have simply managed to drive the cost up to the point
where it’s just not worth being in business anymore because you can’t
generate a return on the assets’. I know what you’re thinking. I know
you’re thinking it’s not Carleton’s fault that Heilmann so perfectly
slotted into the Abbott anti-Carbon-Tax narrative which brought us to
this point tonight where the Carbon Tax is, devastatingly for the
environment, about to be repealed. But it is Carleton’s fault and it’s
every journalist’s fault who has given exactly this sort of interview
all the airtime it ever wanted, without once asking a question that
challenged the very basis of the argument about pricing carbon. What if
he’d tried even one of these questions, just to throw an alternative
argument into the mix and to provide some balance for the audience:
‘Being a fisherman, and clearly concerned about over-fishing, you
must be concerned with the sustainability of not just your business, but
also your family’s safety in the environment you live and work in. Do
you worry that climate change will have a detrimental effect on the
sustainability of your livelihood and the sustainability of the planet
we live on?’
‘Do you think it’s appropriate for a government to put the concerns
about business profit for a handful of business owners ahead of their
concerns for the safety of our planet in an unstable climate?’
‘What policy would you prefer the government introduce to encourage
large polluters to cut down on their carbon emissions instead of the
Carbon Price, to change their business practices to ensure we limit the
catastrophic effects of climate change? Or do you not believe climate
change is real?’
‘Have you considered renewable solutions such as solar energy to cut
down on your high electricity costs, in order to improve your margins
and to make your business more sustainable as fossil fuels continue to
deplete and grow in cost?’
‘If you can’t make a profit running your business in a sustainable
way, is it time to think about doing something else and to stop blaming
the government for every challenge your business faces? If you can’t run
your business without producing unsustainable amounts of carbon
emissions, isn’t it better for the community if you do try something different?’
If people like Heilmann don’t want to answer such questions, they can
choose not to be interviewed on a national radio station. Someone else
can be interviewed instead. How about me? I would be happy to answer
balanced questions about a particular topic. But I would never be
invited because I’m not a business owner or an industry spokesperson. I
guess that’s the thing that’s most disappointing about Carleton’s
interview in the first place. Journalists like Carleton never interview a
nobody like me who has to actually live in the community where climate
change is happening. The Carbon Price was not just some economic burden
on large polluters. It was designed to try to save our planet. How about
interviewing a member of the community on this topic, rather than a
whinging-he-would-say-that-wouldn’t-he-self-interested-axe-the-tax-business-owner.
Just for a change.
The
whole of question time today was devoted to the government saying "If
you want to help Qantas then repeal the carbon tax." Has everybody
forgotten what happened to Qantas before we had a carbon tax? This is
from May 2011. "Qantas will have to raise international airfares to
Europe from January next year after…
An
Introduction to the ABC staff: Hello, My name is Faron Ballance, and
I've been appointed to ensure that the ABC remains true to its charter.
The first thing I'd like to say is: Don't think of me as an enemy, think
of me as a critical friend. Because it's going to be critical for…
"The
Prime Minister said cabinet had today signed off on the legislation to
rescind the carbon price, which would ideally occur at the end of the
financial year." So where are the howls of protest about Abbott's lie
that he would get rid of the Carbon Pollution Tax "as soon as possible",
and that it…
Before the time of Gough Whitlam, the public service were largely
responsible for the formulation and co-ordination of policy and senior
public servants made the important decisions. The Prime Minister had a
single press secretary and ministers of the Crown relied on a very small
staff to perform administrative and secretarial duties.
Whitlam created an office employing political staff to help
strengthen an executive administration to formulate and implement
policies. This continued under successive Prime Ministers with Howard
overseeing an expansion of political staff in the Australian government
to about 450 and the establishment of a government staff committee to
take a tight reign over staff appointments.
“TV programs such as The West Wing, In the Loop and The
Hollowmen reflect the shift that has occurred in the balance of power in
government from public servants to political staffers compared with the
days of Yes Minister.”
And amongst these staffers, Abbott’s Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin,
has arguably achieved more power than any of her predecessors. She and
her husband Brian Loughnane run the Star Chamber
with an iron fist, deciding who gets what job, who may speak to the
media and when, and dictating what people will be told, much to the
chagrine of Coalition backbenchers like Senator MacDonald.
Reece goes on to say
“Credlin holds the ultimate backroom role in Australian
politics. Despite her extraordinary power, she does not hold an elected
position. She is not appointed by the cabinet, nor is she directly
subject to the scrutiny of Parliament. And she does not do press
conferences that would allow open questioning by journalists.”
Unless of course, it’s to make the bizarre disclosure that Abbott “allowed” her to keep her IVF drugs in his office fridge. For a very private woman, that was a very private thing to share publicly.
Not only do we have unelected, unaccountable, often inexperienced,
staffers dicating policy, we also are paying a fortune to media spin
doctors for them to sell their wares.
“TAXPAYERS are spending about $150 million a year on an
army of spin doctors to sell the Gillard government’s policies to
voters.
Figures obtained by The Australian reveal there are about 1600 staff
employed by federal government departments and agencies in media,
communications, marketing and public affairs roles.
Opposition Senate leader Eric Abetz seized on the figures to accuse
Labor of focusing on spin over substance and vowed to cut the numbers if
in government.
Senator Abetz said he believed it would cost taxpayers an average of
about $100,000 a year to keep each staff member in their job, once
salary, entitlements and equipment were factored in. He said a Coalition
government would cut the numbers.
“This is literally a battalion, if not an army, of spin doctors.
What this highlights yet again is the government’s concentration on
spin. They do get the initial message out very well, but the policy
underpinning it and the administrative follow-up is always a shambles.
Most Australians would agree that spin doctors are not necessarily a
core business of a lot of these departments,” he said.”
Unfortunately, those heartening words from Senator Abetz as he decried the waste, turned out to be…spin.
“The federal government’s ”army” of spin doctors and
communications staff has grown to more than 1900, based on data supplied
by departments and agencies.
An analysis of answers to questions on notice supplied to a Senate
committee shows staffers in government media, communications and
marketing operations have increased by several hundred in two years and
could be costing taxpayers as much as $190 million a year.
Public Service Minister Eric Abetz said the government was conscious
of the growth of its spin machine and hinted action was being
considered. Responding to the latest figures, the minister said they
showed ”the approximate level of communications staffing that the
Coalition inherited from the former government after the election”.
Of course – it is an example of Labor’s waste that the Coalition have had to employ more spin doctors.
And chief amongst these spin doctors is Mark Textor.
For the 2004 federal election campaign for John Howard, Textor was
credited for the “who do you trust” campaign strategy refocusing key
trust questions back on the then Opposition Leader’s economic competence
– a line Tony Abbott recycled. In 2012 he was strategist and
pollster for Campbell Newman’s Liberal National Party election campaign.
We also have “Tex” to thank for the catch cry quote: “We will stop
the boats, stop the big new taxes, end the waste, and pay back the
debt.”
So confident is Textor of his position, in November last year he felt
it appropriate to tweet about Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Marty
Natalegawa, whom he likened to a 1970s Pilipino [sic] porn star, also
questioning his ethics.
Textor’s company profile says:
“Mark’s direct clients have included governments,
premiers and opposition leaders in six countries and the CEOs and Boards
of major Australian and multi-national companies in a broad range of
industries, including; mining, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG),
pharmaceutical, retail, financial services, banking (“Big Four”),
tobacco, renewable energies, oil, gas and farming sectors.”
It’s a bit rich for a man who will say anything for money to be lecturing on ethics.
Australia’s Power Index acknowledged his skill with the focus group.
“He’s a genius at transforming raw research into
compelling communication – someone who presses people’s emotional
buttons, identifies points of division, and boils complex issues down to
their core.”
This is the man who has sold the message of fear and division, and is praised for so doing.
“In Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia,
Crosby Textor declares it is paid to lobby on behalf of the Australian
Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.
APPEA is the peak industry group for the oil and gas industry and
among other things, speaks on behalf of Australia’s booming coal seam
gas industry.
Crosby Textor also carries out research for industry groups such as
the Queensland Resources Council – the peak body for mining in the
state.
Crosby Textor also lists on the lobby registers other clients
including Research In Motion (the makers of BlackBerry), property
developers, a plastics company, a recycling firm, a business making
biofuels and a charity that aims to better protect cyclists.”
How can we expect honesty and integrity from a government which is
run by a woman who craves personal power without accountability and a
man who has a vested interest in manipulating opinion and policy in
favour of his clients?
Alternative media are rapidly overtaking print media as the go to sources of news and opinion. Alan Austin provides 11 reasons why.
FEW CONSUMERS OF WRITTEN NEWS curious about the carbon tax repeal
debate in the Senate on Thursday waited for the Friday papers. News and
analysis were all online as events unfolded.
Instant access to important developments – such as the Bust the Budget rallies last weekend – is one reason online written media are gaining ascendancy over print.
1. Immediacy
This is the first reason the old paper empires are crumbling and online outlets growing – immediate news. There are at least ten others:
2. Independence
Most online outlets are small, independent and motivated by some sort of commitment to the community rather than shareholder profits.
Hence, they are almost completely free of the systematic manipulation
of the Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers in Australia, all of which
operate with an ingrained culture of supporting big business and
conservative politics.
The overwhelming coverage of domestic politics by News Corp in Australia is Coalition good, Labor bad, with distortions, omissions and blatant lies, as needed.
Tim Dunlop recently wrote in the ABC’s online publication The Drum:
‘The mainstream media ... either oversimplify everything to the
point of caricature, or they become – as is the case of the Murdoch
newspapers – openly and comically partisan.’
Most online media outlets not owned by Murdoch or Fairfax offer much
greater accuracy and a more complete analysis simply by virtue of their
independence.
Other features of the online media guarantee greater reliability as well.
3. Embedded hotlinks
A complex piece by Tess Lawrence here at Independent Australia last month on the jailing of Peter Greste contained over 50 links to support her story.
Having sources accessible at a click does three things: it shows the
research has been done, it allows dubious readers to find instant
validation, and it allows those provoked to further research to do so
immediately.
Independent Australia, for instance, has a policy of providing a link on the name and the claim.
4. Interaction
Last Thursday, The Guardian ran a technical piece on interest rates by Greg Jericho.
Conversation soon began with readers supportive, hostile and neutral.
Jericho responded promptly to eight of the first ten reader comments
with clarification and further data, as required.
In-depth dialogue between readers and author often greatly elucidates the topic. It is not unusual to have 300 or more comments following an online article.
5. Multimedia content
Most successful online print journals incorporate audio, music, TV
news clips, archived videos, fresh comedy videos, instant opinion polls,
photo galleries and more along with the static print.
Some analysts, including IA editor David Donovan, believe online media is more analogous to broadcasting than print.
6. Supplementary information
In last month’s tobacco wars between economist Stephen Koukoulas and various employees of Murdoch’s News Corp, two writers at The Australianattacked the ABC’s Media Watch for not revealing Koukoulas’s connection with the Labor Party.
Kerr, as Koukoulas revealed on his blog The Kouk, worked for Liberal ministers Amanda Vanstone and Robert Hill in the Howard years and with South Australian Liberal Premier John Olsen. Creighton was economics advisor to Tony Abbott.
Such hypocrisies are largely avoided by online publications, which usually have direct links to an author’s bio.
Other items of supplementary information, which are not necessary to
understand an article but handy to have available at a click, include
previous articles by the author and articles on the topic by other
writers.
Repositories created on the site for particular popular topics provide invaluable instant archiving.
Immediately an error is detected, an online editor can correct the error in the piece and add a clarifying note at the end.
With newspapers, this takes at least until the next edition 24 hours later. Or in the case of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph it takes several months — and even then only when forced kicking and screaming by the Press Council.
8. Democracy
Writing for the alternative media is not restricted to recognised professional journalists. Several online outlets, such as Independent Australia, On Line Opinion and The Australian Independent Media Network pride themselves on citizen journalism and offer editorial assistance to contributors.
Paper news sheets increasingly operate without direct competition. There is just the one local daily newspaper in most Australian states.
In contrast, there are about 25 significant online publications in
Australia dealing with political and social issues. Plus even more
excellent overseas outlets and innumerable accessible blogs. This, in
itself, puts pressure on all of them to be current, well-researched and
accurate, whatever their political slant.
Hence, those which do not meet reader expectations will soon be
weeded out. It is much easier for online publications to come and go
than print outlets.
New starters in Australia in the last year or so include The Guardian Australia, The New Daily and Red Flag.
In January, The Global Mailfolded,
so to speak. Despite a promising start with extravagant funding, a
star-studded editorial team and great publicity, it lasted barely two
years.
And New Matilda, which has always struggled to gain a wide audience, was closed in May by its founder until a buyer came suddenly to the rescue.
10. Mostly free
Articles in the majority of Murdoch and Fairfax websites are now behind paywalls, as they are at Crikey and, since April, The Hoopla.
Most other online journals are sustained by advertising, philanthropy or donations rather than reader subscription.
This is possible because production is obviously far less labour and
capital intensive than printing and distributing paper products.
To her surprise and delight, this was instantly shared by thousands
of readers keen to onpass this extraordinary database. Total social
media shares – via Twitter, facebook, Reddit, linkedin and others – for
just that one article eventually exceeded 21,000.
Eat your heart out Herald Sun!
So, there are eleven reasons. But are there more?
If so, please join the discussion below and interact – for free –
with the author who welcomes tweets and facebook shares and will post
corrections, if required, in this competitive but democratic and mostly
accurate alternative multimedia environment.
Coming soon: The alternative media part 2: Who are the players? Who are the winners and losers – so far?You can follow Alan Austin on Twitter @alantheamazing.
Image via spaceandpolitics.blogspot.com.au) As George Orwell forewarned, writes John Pilger, advanced societies are being gradually depoliticised and political language is being turned on its head.
THE OTHER NIGHT, I saw George Orwells’s Nineteen Eighty-Four performed on the London stage.
Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell’s
warning about the future was presented as a period piece — remote,
unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said:
'... to be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.'
Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our
cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were
already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other
distractions beckoned.
“What a mindfuck,” said a young woman, lighting up her phone.
As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular.
In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984.
'Democracy' is now a rhetorical device. Peace is 'perpetual war'.
'Global' is imperial. The once hopeful concept of 'reform' now means
regression, even destruction. 'Austerity' is the imposition of extreme
capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich — an
ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.
In the arts, hostility to political truth-telling is an article of bourgeois faith.
'Picasso’s red period,' says an Observer headline, 'and why politics don’t make good art'.
Consider this in a newspaper that promoted the bloodbath in Iraq as a
liberal crusade. Picasso’s lifelong opposition to fascism is a footnote,
just as Orwell’s radicalism has faded from the prize that appropriated
his name.
A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that
'... for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent
British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the
foundations of the western way of life.'
Among the insistent voices of consumer- feminism, none echoes Virginia Woolf, who described
'... the arts of dominating other people … of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital.'
At the National Theatre, a new play, Great Britain, satirises the phone hacking scandal that has seen journalists tried and convicted, including a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. Described as a 'farce with fangs [that] puts the whole incestuous [media] culture in the dock and subjects it to merciless ridicule', the play’s targets are the 'blessedly funny' characters in Britain’s tabloid press.
That is well and good, and so familiar.
What of the non-tabloid media that regards itself as reputable and
credible, yet serves a parallel role as an arm of state and corporate
power, as in the promotion of illegal war?
The Leveson Inquiry
into phone hacking glimpsed this unmentionable. Tony Blair was giving
evidence, complaining to His Lordship about the tabloids’ harassment of
his wife, when he was interrupted by a voice from the public gallery. David Lawley-Wakelin, a film-maker, demanded Blair’s arrest and prosecution for war crimes.
There was a long pause: the shock of truth.
Lord Leveson
leapt to his feet and ordered the truth-teller thrown out and apologised
to the war criminal. Lawley-Wakelin was prosecuted; Blair went free.
Blair’s enduring accomplices are more respectable than the phone hackers.
When the BBC arts presenter, Kirsty Wark, interviewed him on the tenth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, she gifted him a moment he could only dream of; she allowed him to agonise over his “difficult” decision on Iraq, rather than call him to account for his epic crime.
This evoked the procession of BBC journalists who in 2003 declared
that Blair could feel “vindicated” and the subsequent, “seminal” BBC
series, The Blair Years, for which David Aaronovitch
was chosen as the writer, presenter and interviewer. A Murdoch retainer
who campaigned for military attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria,
Aaronovitch fawned expertly.
Since the invasion of Iraq – the exemplar of an act of unprovoked aggression the Nuremberg prosecutor Robert H. Jacksoncalled“the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” – Blair and his mouthpiece and principal accomplice, Alastair Campbell, have been afforded generous space in the Guardian to rehabilitate their reputations.
Described as a Labour Party “star”, Campbell has sought the sympathy
of readers for his depression and displayed his interests, though not his current assignment as advisor, with Blair, to the Egyptian military tyranny.
As Iraq is dismembered as a consequence of the Blair/Bush invasion, a Guardian headline declares:
'Toppling Saddam was right, but we pulled out too soon'.
This ran across a prominent article on 13 June by a former Blair functionary, John McTernan, who also served Iraq’s CIA installed dictator Iyad Allawi. In calling for a repeat invasion of a country his former master helped destroy, he made no reference to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, the flight of four million refugees and sectarian turmoil in a nation once proud of its communal tolerance.
'Blair embodies corruption and war,' wrote the radical Guardian columnist Seumas Milne in a spirited piece on 3 July.
This is known in the trade as “balance”.
The following day, the paper published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber.
This other embodiment of “corruption and war” will cost British
taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered
people across the developing world.
In a village in Afghanistan, inhabited by the poorest of the poor, I
filmed Orifa, kneeling at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet
weaver, seven other members of her family, including six children, and
two children who were killed in the adjacent house. A “precision”
500-pound bomb fell directly on their small mud, stone and straw house,
leaving a crater 50 feet wide.
Lockheed Martin, the plane’s manufacturer, had pride of place in the Guardian’s advertisement.
The former U.S. secretary of state and aspiring president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was recently on the BBC’s Women’s Hour, the quintessence of media respectability.
The presenter, Jenni Murray,
presented Clinton as a beacon of female achievement. She did not remind
her listeners about Clinton’s profanity that Afghanistan was invaded to “liberate” women
like Orifa. She asked Clinton nothing about her administration’s
terror campaign using drones to kill women, men and children. There was
no mention of Clinton’s idle threat, while campaigning to be the first
female president, to “eliminate” Iran, and nothing about her support for illegal mass surveillance and the pursuit of whistle-blowers.
Murray did ask one finger-to-the-lips question.
Had Clinton forgiven Monica Lewinsky for having an affair with husband? “Forgiveness is a choice,” said Clinton, “for me, it was absolutely the right choice.”
This recalled the 1990s and the years consumed by the Lewinsky “scandal”. President Bill Clinton was then invading Haiti, and bombing the Balkans, Africa and Iraq. He was also destroying the lives of Iraqi children; UNICEF reported the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five as a result of an embargo led by the U.S. and Britain.
The children were media unpeople, just as Hillary Clinton’s victims in the invasions she supported and promoted – Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia – are media unpeople. Murray made no reference to them. A photograph of her and her distinguished guest, beaming, appears on the BBC website.
In politics, as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent
once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence — a
metaphoric underground.
When I began a career in Britain’s Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was
acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron’s celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam.
Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we
live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is
insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.
'Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end.'
The 'barbarians' were large sections of humanity of whom 'implicit obedience' was required.
'It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,' wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, 'but
the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its
open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of
life.'
He had in mind a speech by Blair in which the then prime minister promised to 'reorder the world around us' according to his 'moral values'.
Richard Falk, the respected authority on international law and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, once described a
'... a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with]
positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as
threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence.'
It is
'... so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable.'
Tenure and patronage reward the guardians.
On BBC Radio 4, Razia Iqbal interviewed Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate. Morrison wondered why people were “so angry” with Barack Obama, who was “cool” and wished to build a “strong economy and health care”.
Morrison was proud to have talked on the phone with her hero, who had
read one of her books and invited her to his inauguration.
Neither she nor her interviewer mentioned Obama’s seven wars, including his terror campaign by drone, in which whole families, their rescuers and mourners have been murdered. What seemed to matter was that a “finely spoken” man of colour had risen to the commanding heights of power.
In The Wretched of the Earth,Frantz Fanon wrote that the 'historic mission' of the colonised was to serve as a 'transmission line'
to those who ruled and oppressed. In the modern era, the employment of
ethnic difference in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as
essential. Obama epitomises this, though the cabinet of George W. Bush – his warmongering clique – was the most multiracial in presidential history.
As the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the jihadists of ISIS, Obama said:
“The American people made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better destiny.”
How “cool” is that lie?
How “finely spoken” was Obama’s speech at the West Point military academy on 28 May.
Delivering his “state of the world” address at the graduation ceremony of those who “will take American leadership” across the world, Obama said:
“The United States will use military force, unilaterally if
necessary, when our core interests demand it. International opinion
matters, but America will never ask permission …”
In repudiating international law and the rights of independent
nations, the American president claims a divinity based on the might of
his “indispensable nation”.
It is a familiar message of imperial impunity, though always bracing to hear.
Evoking the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Obama said:
“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being.”
In February, the U.S. mounted one of its “colour” coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama’s national security adviser Victoria Nuland personally selected the leader of an “interim government”. She nicknamed him “Yats”. Vice President Joe Biden Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.
For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital.
No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in
the borderland through which Hitler’s invading Nazis took millions of
Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called “vermin”.
The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum”, including gays, feminists and those on the political left.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed
Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of
its NATO Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east”,
NATO has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former
Soviet Caucasus, NATO’s expansion is the biggest military build-up since
the Second World War.
In August, 'Operation Rapid Trident' will put American and British troops on Ukraine’s Russian border and 'Sea Breeze'
will send U.S. warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the
response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out
on America’s borders.
In reclaiming Crimea – which Nikita Kruschev
illegally detached from Russia in 1954 – the Russians defended
themselves as they have done for almost a century. More than 90 per cent
of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia.
Crimea is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and its loss would mean life
or death for the Russian Navy and a prize for NATO. Confounding the war
parties in Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin withdrew troops from the
Ukrainian border and urged ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon
separatism.
In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the “Russian threat”.
Hillary Clinton likened Putin to Hitler.
Without irony, right-wing German commentators said as much. In the
media, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are sanitised as “nationalists” or “ultra
nationalists”. What they fear is that Putin is skilfully seeking a
diplomatic solution, and may succeed.
On 27 June, responding to Putin’s latest accommodation – his request
to the Russian Parliament to rescind legislation that gave him the power
to intervene on behalf of Ukraine’s ethnic Russians – Secretary of
State John Kerry issued another of his ultimatums. Russia must “act within the next few hours, literally” to end the revolt in eastern Ukraine.
Notwithstanding that Kerry is widely recognised as a buffoon, the
serious purpose of these “warnings” is to confer pariah status on Russia
and suppress news of the Kiev regime’s war on its own people.
A third of the population of Ukraine
are Russian-speaking and bilingual. They have long sought a democratic
federation that reflects Ukraine’s ethnic diversity and is both
autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor
“rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Separatism is a reaction to the Kiev junta’s attacks on them, causing as
many as 110,000 (UN estimate) to flee across the border into Russia. Typically, they are traumatised women and children.
Like Iraq’s embargoed infants, and Afghanistan’s “liberated” women
and girls, terrorised by the CIA’s warlords, these ethnic people of
Ukraine are media unpeople in the west, their suffering and the
atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. No sense of
the scale of the regime’s assault is reported in the mainstream western
media.
On 2 May, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. There is horrifying video evidence.
The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “... another bright day in our national history”.
In the American and British media, this was reported as a 'murky
tragedy' resulting from 'clashes' between 'nationalists' (neo-Nazis) and
'separatists' (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a
federal Ukraine).
The New York Times buried it, having dismissed as Russian
propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of
Washington’s new clients. The Wall Street Journaldamned the victims: 'Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says'. Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint”. On 28 June, the Guardian devoted most of a page to declarations by the Kiev regime’s “president”, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko.
Again, Orwell’s rule of inversion applied. There was no putsch; no
war against Ukraine’s minority; the Russians were to blame for
everything.
“We want to modernise my country,” said Poroshenko.
“We want to introduce freedom, democracy and European values. Somebody doesn’t like that. Somebody doesn’t like us for that.”
According to his report, the Guardian’s
reporter, Luke Harding, did not challenge these assertions, or mention
the Odessa atrocity, the regime’s air and artillery attacks on
residential areas, the killing and kidnapping of journalists, the
firebombing of an opposition newspaper and his threat to “free Ukraine from dirt and parasites”. The enemy are 'rebels', 'militants', 'insurgents', 'terrorists' and stooges of the Kremlin.
Summon from history the ghosts of Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, southern Africa, Iraq; note the same tags.
Palestine is the lodestone of this unchanging deceit. On 11 July,
following the latest Israeli, American equipped slaughter in Gaza – 80
people including six children in one family – an Israeli general writes
in the Guardianunder the headline, 'A necessary show of force'.
In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl
and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using
revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary
form that mesmerised Germans; it was her Triumph of the Will that reputedly cast Hitler’s spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior.
She replied that the “messages” in her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on a “submissive void” in the German population.
“Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked.
"Everyone,” she replied, “and of course the intelligentsia.”
Follow John Pilger on twitter@johnpilger. (This story is copyright John Pilger and is not covered by our usual Creative Commons policy.)
When Clive Palmer stood beside Al Gore (God only knows why Gore
did it) in the Great Hall at Parliament House to announce his party’s
voting intentions regarding the Carbon Tax, I like many others watched
with daunting anticipation. After all he had, in his own typically
flamboyant way, created an event (or an illusion) of world importance
worthy of a major speech at the UN.
The former Vice President gave the occasion celebrity value. For me it
was not just an announcement. It was about a decision vital to my
country’s future. What might this man of singular self-importance do?
Then Palmer announced the terms and conditions for his party’s
support for dropping the tax, one of which was that it be linked to the
implementation of an ETS, albeit without a price. Well that’s what I
thought I heard and I said to my wife:
“I think Clive has Tony by his Crown Jewels”.
What I thought I heard was not what I had heard at all after Palmer
later clarified his remarks. It was not linked at all. I was somewhat
devastated when, after doing some quick intellectual gymnastics, I
concluded that Clive had pulled a swifty. Then I angered to write but
prudence got the better of me and I decided to canvas some thoughts from
those like me who are concerned and opine on serious matters such as
this. It was as well I waited because the subject has taken more twists
and turns on a daily basis than the Albert Park Grand Prix circuit.
I can guarantee that a read of these articles might tip your sanity
over the edge, confuse you, make you more aware, disappoint you, or even
infuriate you. But hopefully they might convince you that we are being
led by a moron of unbelievable stupidity and myopia. Closely followed by
a businessman who only wants two things. Anything that will advance his
business interests and revenge against those who wouldn’t give him what
he wanted.
But hopefully the last article by the ever astute Peter Martin will put things in perspective for you.
First off the grid was former Gillard Minister, Craig Emerson.
”Lots of carbon-emitting smoke and sideshow alley mirrors
were on display yesterday when Clive Palmer and Al Gore announced a
major environmental breakthrough. Now that the smoke is cleared and a
light is shone on the mirrors, here’s what was actually announced. It
confirms what I wrote last night.”
PUP Senators will vote with the Government to repeal the existing
Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) law, including the present fixed price
and the future floating price. PUP will seek to introduce its own ETS
with a zero price. However, it will not insist on the Government voting
for its bill. Even if the new ETS bill were to make it through the
Senate, it must then go to the House of Representatives where the
Government has a majority (that’s how it became the Government). Unless
PM Abbott has a massive change of heart, the Government will defeat
PUP’s ETS Bill in the House. The bill therefore will not become law.
Palmer is insisting on the Government retaining the Renewable Energy
Target, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Change
Authority. He has also announced PUP will vote against the Government’s
Direct Action legislation.
As announced, the net result is that Australia’s existing ETS will be
scrapped and not replaced with any ETS. Direct Action will be defeated.
The Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and
the Climate Change Authority will be retained.
While this is better than nothing, it is hardly cause for celebration
for anyone who believes an ETS is vital to reducing carbon emissions.
Unless Clive Palmer or Tony Abbott change their minds, there will be no
ETS and therefore no effective action on climate change.
Mark Kenny in what I think is one of the best pieces on the subject said this:
The understanding here is that Abbott’s real priority is –
and only ever has been – the destruction of the carbon ‘‘tax’’.
Everything else, including the $2.5 billion direct action plan to pay
large polluters to cut emissions, was merely put forward because the
Coalition feared that offering nothing was electoral suicide.
Barry Tucker. Blogger for THE AIMN had this to say:
By voting for abolition of the carbon price (“tax”),
Palmer saves millions in future payments for pollution from his mines.
He still has to pay for overdue carbon price bills, plus fines and
penalties of about $63 million and growing almost exponentially.
He may do another deal to get some relief for that liability. Ultimately, he’s just in politics for his own benefit.
James Clancy a Facebook friend commented on the guaranteed reduction on his power bills:
Well today I received a letter from Energy Australia that
Electricity prices will increase from 1st July 2014. The weighted
average price increase to Qld customers will be $4.58 per week. So it
looks like they are going to charge first and give a little off if the
carbon tax is repealed. I seem to recall that Electrical suppliers had
written to the Federal Government saying that they will give consumers
the savings they make. So we Pay $294.00 extra a year, how much will we
get back when the carbon tax is repealed I bet it is not around $550 as
Tony Abbott has claimed.
Economist and carbon pricing expert Professor Ross
Garnaut says the Palmer United Party’s position to vote to retain the
RET and other key climate change bodies will have “important” and
positive effects.
Doug Evans another writer for this blog said.
Abbott and his band of hateful sidekicks are a disgrace.
Even if they become a one term blot on our political landscape we still
have three years of their carnage to endure. On the bright side they are
not getting it all their own way. Their first budget is in tatters
raising the question of whether or not there will be a second ‘horror’
budget next year, further cementing their unpopularity. The really
important elements of the Clean Energy legislation (CEFC, ARENA) look as
though they will endure as does the RET. No-one in government or the
MSM seems to be able to fully evaluate the meaning of the loss if the
price on carbon. Thanks to Labor’s insistence carbon price was always
set too low to drive meaningful change and when linked to the global
carbon market was going to come much lower (hence the Greens’ insistence
on the fixed price period). The carbon price hasn’t been and was never
going to be the major element of this legislation driving the clean
energy transformation. Axing the tax will have very little effect on the
rate of growth of our carbon emissions.
The media with their unshakeable fixation on THE CARBON TAX have taken
to repeating that without the (very small) stick of our ETS we are
without any mechanism for driving down emissions. Not sure why they
ignore the (somewhat larger) carrot that is the combination of RET and
CEFC.
For those of you who (like me) love to hate Greg Hunt, Mark Kenny
( a journalist for whom I normally have no respect at all) has written a
very interesting speculative piece for Fairfax on who wins and who
loses from Palmer’s carbon tax machinations The article bears strongly
on assessment of what matters and what doesn’t in the wash up of
Abbott’s shock and awe onslaught on our climate policy. It is worth
reading and reflecting on, not least because it reveals tensions within
the government around this issue.
Similarly I found Lenore Taylor’s
piece on the background leading to Palmer’s stunning appearance beside
Al Gore pretty interesting also. It also explains why Gore having agreed
to appear with Palmer still looked so very uncomfortable about being
there.
Lenore Taylor in an interview with Palmer last weekend.
“Our amendment makes it a requirement that people will
have to pass on the power cost savings … not a voluntary situation, it
doesn’t leave it up to the ACCC to decide at its discretion whether or
not it wants to enforce this”.
“But I’m not in business, I’m serving the Australian people, so knowing
that I am going to make sure this legislation goes through to protect to
protect our pensioners and everyone like that”.
“Palmer has given up several directorships but remains the owner of a
number of companies, including a nickel refinery, coal leases and an
iron ore holding”.
“Direct Action is about as popular within the Coalition as a peanut at a
preschool, and not having to make sense of it in practice is something
of a lucky break for the government”.
“Anyone building hypothetical future scenarios based on Clive Palmer
continuing serenely as the new face of emissions trading might want to
exercise caution”.
“Clive Palmer is being hailed in several quarters as a
jolly green giant saving Australia’s carbon emissions trading scheme,
not to mention lauded as a master political strategist. Hold the phone
at least on the first part of that”.
“One of the problems with Clive is working out what he’s saying, what he might think he’s saying and what he actually means”.
“They can all be quite different things. For businesses having to plan
and invest around carbon policy, that’s not very helpful”.
“Policymakers need to look beyond short-term economic
considerations in the interests of some of the big companies to
longer-term community interests. That’s what governments are supposed to
do, but unfortunately it’s not happening at the present time”.
“Palmer himself? It’s only a couple of months since he was proclaiming
disbelief in the whole idea that human activity contributes to global
warming. Scientists, he claimed, could be paid to say anything.
Now he adopts the stance of an environmental warrior, committed to
retention of the Climate Change Authority and opposed to any change in
the Renewable Energy Target designed to ensure 20 per cent of
Australia’s energy comes from sources such as wind and solar by 2020″.
“The Prime Minister has held every position there is on climate change,
from branding the science “absolute crap” to claiming before his recent
Washington visit he accepts it, and from supporting an ETS when John
Howard embraced it to asserting a price on carbon would destroy the
economy”.
Palmer has demonstrated today that he has a deft and populist
political touch, even though his political positions don’t withstand
close scrutiny. He has positioned himself to be seen to be sympathetic
to climate change policies, although nothing he has proposed will ever
come to pass. The carbon tax will be abolished, with a direct financial
benefit to Palmer’s companies.
“Just before the House adjourned on Thursday, there were jubilant scenes
on the floor of the House of Representatives as the Coalition passed
the carbon tax repeal bills for the second time”.
“Mr Abbott met Mr Palmer on Thursday morning and emerged happy that the
minor party’s four upper house votes would support the abolition of the
fixed price, subject to just one condition – a guarantee that the
package would contain legislated assurances of cheaper electricity for
households”.
Mike Carlton in his usual full on journalistic style got right to the point.
“His idiocy would not matter a toss but for the fact that
Newman is chairman of the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council
and, therefore, presumably in Tony Abbott’s shell-like ear. Publicly,
Abbott has held more positions on climate change than there are sexual
acrobatics in the Kama Sutra but you know that, deep down, he believes
it’s “crap”. His word.
Abbott is appalling and will no doubt do plenty of damage but he is
not getting all his own way. With any luck this will be the dominant
theme of his one term government.
Richard Dennis on the cost of power.
‘The main reason that electricity has been getting dearer is the over
investment in poles and wires, and the fundamental inefficiency in the
way that the national electricity market’s working,’ says Richard
Denniss, executive director of the Australia Institute”.
“For six glorious wild and wet days last week, South
Australia sourced 67 per cent of its electricity from wind. Needless to
say, it’s an Australian record. So fast were the turbines turning from
early Monday to early Sunday that the entire national grid sourced an
extraordinary 14.5 per cent of its electricity from wind”.
But the last word goes to the Prime Minister in this article from Philip Correy:
“Tony Abbott has sparked a war with the renewable energy
sector by claiming their product was driving up power prices “very
significantly” and fostering Australia’s reputation as “the unaffordable
energy capital of the world”.
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