Many from the ‘Left’, progressives, Cultural Marxists and activists keep trying to stymie democracy and the individual with their shrill, often illogical, Orwellian and ideological views and variations of mind control. Orwell’s 1984 Ministry of Truth is alive and well. The following articles provide evidence.
Links to more articles follow the four below
- Vice President JD Vance’s Munich Speech From Sarah Westall, 17 February 2025
- The era of the West is over From Herland Report, via CairnsNews.com, 9 February 2025
- PEACE Hero John Pilger. Afflicter of the Powerful From Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 2 January 2025
- Gold, Kamala, Trump, Control, Cash, Murder & Water – Catherine Austin Fitts By Greg Hunter On October 19, 2024 In Market Analysis, Political Analysis
- The current woke and evil world, as seen from Australia By Max Bolte, 7 October 2024
- How News Corp’s lies and deception By Shane Dowling, Kangaroo Court of Australia, 29 September 2024
- Covid^J 911 ^0 Forever War September 17
Vice President JD Vance’s Munich Speech
Vice President JD Vance’s Munich Speech reminds Western Leaders what it takes to uphold a Free and Just Democracy
Vice President JD Vance’s Munich Speech From Sarah Westall, 17 February 2025
Below is the entire speech delivered by Vice President JD Vance in Munich on Friday, February 14th. The below speech is posted from Youtube which ironically has banned and cancelled thousands of channels, including mine while posting a hypocritically mission: “Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.”
Perhaps leadership displayed below by Vice President Vance will awaken the dormant principles of freedom, liberty and basic civility in the leaders at Youtube, Google, CBS (which aired the video below on Youtube) and many others. Upholding traditional American values of freedom relies on people waking up from their slumber and realizing what it truly means to be a leader in a “free” and civilized country.
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Full Transcript:
One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. And, you know, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now. But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.
And I want to say that I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack. And, the first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife, actually, who’s here with me today, on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people.
I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.
Thank you. I hope that’s not the last bit of applause that I get.
We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many, many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine — and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense — the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.
We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.
And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold war’s winners.
I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest: the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content.” Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of “combating misogyny” on the internet.
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant — and I’m quoting — a “free pass” to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.
He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.
In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square. Now, we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours.
Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.
And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.
Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.
Now, this is a security conference, and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don’t think you hear this term “burden sharing,” but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.
But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we are defending in the first place? I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations, and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?
I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.
Have we learned nothing, that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things.
And of course, we know that very well. In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.
And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And of course, it’s gotten much higher since.
And we know the situation. It didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?
It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. Unity. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me.
I just think that people care about their homes, they care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.
And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy. And it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.
I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference. Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor — if American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.
But what no democracy — American, German or European — will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans, the people have a voice. Europeans, the people have a choice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.
Embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you. And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we built together as a shared society.
To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said: “Do not be afraid.”
We shouldn’t be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.
Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you.
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The era of the West is over
The era of the West is over From Herland Report, via CairnsNews.com, 9 February 2025
Globalists, who intend the destruction of sovereign nations, such as the US and Australia have labelled concerns with mass immigration to be racism as a way of discrediting the concerns and preventing discussion of the threat.
Total destruction of sovereign nations: Immigrant-invaders, or as the euphemisms “refugees” and “asylum seekers” label them, are used to overwhelm ethnic nationalities and turn them into towers of babel in which there are no common interests, values, morals, religion, or culture.
A tower of babel is not a nation. At best it is a geographical location, but it is not even that if it has no borders, which the US and Europe do not have, writes Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, author of many books and a regular contributor to The Herland Report.
Total destruction of sovereign nations: Advocates of open borders say that the US is a nation of immigrants. But they don’t say that it was controlled immigration consisting of immigrants from white European countries who as a condition of admittance had to learn English, pass an exam on the US Constitution, and integrate themselves into the existing society and culture.
They were not allowed to set up separate cultures, and businesses answered the phone only in English. Additionally, the immigration was periodically halted in order to allow time for assimilation before accepting more immigrants.
Today millions of non-white people from unrelated cultures walk across the border every year. Businesses answer telephones in Spanish and English.
Total destruction of sovereign nations: Federal agencies respond to 40 or more foreign languages. Separate cultures with non-Christian religions exist as independent entities, and a system of preferences that favors non-white people has been institutionalized.
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In other words the society, politics, and culture of the ethnic nationalities that created what formerly was a nation are being erased.
Recently two federal judges born in India ruled against President Trump, a ruling that violates both the Constitution and powers of the President.
In education, health care, business, and government power is passing out of the hands of the ethnic majority that created the nation. Great Britain has an Indian prime minister. The London mayor is a Muslim.
The CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna is an Indian. He pulled IBM ads from X, accusing Elon Musk of racism, and he announced that he will fire, demote, or strip bonuses from IBM managers who don’t hire enough blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims, or who hire too many Asians and whites.
The communications director of Red Hat, an IBM subsidiary, said that Red Hat had terminated employees because they weren’t willing to engage in racial discrimination through hiring and promotion quotas.
Hiring, promotion, and “inclusion” quotas are violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and they are unconstitutional under the US Constitution and its amendments, such as the 14th.
But notice that the Indian running IBM has no hesitancy about using his power to force IBM executives and managers to violate US law and Constitution in order to advance “preferred minorities” at the expense of members of the white ethnic majority and Asians.
This is what happens when a nation ceases to require assimilation. The CEO of IBM is an unassimilated immigrant who has no respect for US law or the US Constitution.
An article by Ian Henderson in Chronicles magazine in July, 2022, showed that, unlike Western governments, both Russia and China protect the ethnic culture from immigrants and prevent cultural destruction by Woke ideologues and moral destruction by sexual perverts.
Henderson points out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “strongly upholds traditional views on gender roles, race, sexuality, and family—more so than the Republican Party or mainstream conservatives in America.
Total destruction of sovereign nations: A major example of China’s conservatism is the CCP’s view on LGBTQ rights. Same-sex couples are unable to marry or adopt, and households headed by such couples are ineligible for the same legal protections available to heterosexual couples, and no anti-discrimination protections exist for LGBTQ people.
Contrast these policies with the views of mainstream American conservatism, which now seems deeply committed to gay marriage, an institution enthusiastically endorsed by the likes of National Review and the National Conservatism Conference.”
“In short, Chinese leaders seek to promote masculinity and strength, and to uphold and expand their inherited Han civilization.
They feel they cannot do that with homosexuals, transgenders, or feminists running government institutions and the military—or even exerting influence over forms of entertainment.”
“Another way that the CCP tries to protect its youth is by a recently mandated limit of three hours per week for online gaming and by prohibiting it altogether during school days. The CCP has further mandated that game developers must submit new titles for government approval before their release, and the developers are encouraged to include nationalistic themes.
“Instead of allowing their youth to descend into unlimited virtual gaming, the government has financially backed fitness and discipline camps (akin to Boy Scouts on steroids) for elementary, middle, and high school–aged boys. While this may seem drastic, the CCP leadership sees these moves as necessary to prevent China’s youth from becoming like the West’s increasingly feminized and entitled generation, who prioritize trans rights, political correctness, and diversity over the preservation of national identity and inherited social mores.”
Russia also “has strict laws limiting homosexual expression and supporting traditional gender roles, Christian morals, and national identity.” Russia’s strong immigration laws have widespread support.
In short, “Self-hatred in the form of questioning societal mores, gender roles, the concepts of parenthood and family, national identity, and so forth, seems to be a uniquely Western, postmodern phenomenon. After centuries of the glacial advance of liberalization, the West’s embrace of cultural Marxism, guilt, and self-hatred sprang into existence with the countercultural movement of the 1960s, snowballing into feminism, LGBTQ rights, and the rejection of the nuclear family. This upheaval, coupled with almost unrestricted immigration, degraded the religious and cultural components of the older Western order and brought forth a disjointed, multicultural America.”
In contrast to the enfeebled, feminized, deracinated culture that characterizes the entirety of the Western world, China and Russia uphold a strong, masculine, traditional culture and protect it from deracination.
It is completely obvious that the era of the West is over.
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PEACE Hero John Pilger: Afflicter of the Powerful
PEACE Hero John Pilger. Afflicter of the Powerful From Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 2 January 2025
Editor’s note: Click on link above to view the PDF file that includes graphics not shown in the text below. The article notes Julian Assange should be viewed in the same light as another of the best journalists in recent times.
John Pilger is one of the world’s greatest Peace Heroes, journalists, authors, and film makers, from way back, deserving of recognition and press!
https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/31/john-pilger-afflicter-of-the-powerful/
John Pilger: Afflicter of the Powerful
John Pilger in his film, Palestine Is Still the Issue (johnpilger.com)
By Joe Lauria / Consortium News
During a lifetime of extraordinary journalism on both paper and the screen, John Pilger, who died one year ago on Monday, showed the world the suffering caused by U.S.-led aggression in mostly poor nations that had the temerity to hinder Washington’s path to global dominance.
In his many extraordinary films, books and articles, Pilger filled in what corporate media purposely left out: the industrial-scale human casualties of governments that dare call themselves democracies.
Pilger was simply doing his job as a reporter. What made him stand out exceptionally were herds of journalists not doing theirs.
And what is their job? To reveal the depravations of the powerful that result in the deprivations of the weak. If there was an essence to Pilger’s work it was this: he connected Whitehall, White House and Wall Street decisions to the wasting of innocent lives a world away.
This is searingly portrayed in a scene from his film Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia (1979) about the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide. Pilger says:
“These children are the end of a process begun by impeccable politicians who took their decisions at great distance from the results of their savagery. Their style may have been different from Pol Pot, but the effect was the same. The bombs are like falling rain, wrote a child in 1973, a year in which the tonnage of bombs dropped on Cambodia exceeded by half the entire tonnage dropped on Japan in World War Two. …
William Shawcross, the British author, interviewed Prince Sihanouk last year. The two men, said Sihanouk, who are responsible for the tragedy in Cambodia today are Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger. By expanding the war into my country, they killed a lot of Americans and many other people, and they created the Khmer Rouge.”
Corporate media masterfully obscures the link between the decisions of the people’s elected and unelected leaders, and the human destruction that follows. Omission, as Pilger pointed out many times, is at the heart of successful propaganda, especially as it is practiced by mainstream journalists and historians.
In his 1989 book, A Secret Country, he wrote:
“With the Aborigines written out, the Australian story seems apolitical, a faintly heroic tale of white man against Nature, of ‘national achievement’ devoid of blacks, women and other complicating factors. With the Aborigines in it, the story is completely different. It is a story of theft, dispossession and warfare, of massacre and resistance. It is a story every bit as rapacious as that of the United States, Spanish America, and colonial Africa and Asia.”
Perhaps a majority of Australians, Britons and Americans don’t want to know what’s omitted about the suffering caused by the leaders they vote for. But Pilger made them know. He revealed the gory consequences for the “other side” of the glory of war.
He answered the question too often not asked: What are Western taxpayers paying for in their involuntary contributions to their nations’ war machines? Since Vietnam, where John broke the story of U.S. grunts rebelling against their officers, (Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny, 1970) until today, it has not been the triumph of aggression in winning wars.
Instead, citizens pay for massive deaths of peasants in dirt villages and workers in shanties in the interests of massively rich arms manufacturers, corporate predators and the politicians they buy off.
These are the victims Pilger gave voice to in his reporting: Vietnamese, Cambodians, Palestinians, Iraqis, First Nation Australians, Timorese, Chagossians and Marshall Islanders, the latter victims of U.S. experiments in radiation.
Add to the list Western workers after nearly half a century of the Thatcher-Reagan neoliberal revolution. From the start, Pilger saw the damage it would cause. In an op-ed for The New York Times as early as 1980, he wrote:
(Click on image to see the full article)
He had already brought a working man’s story into the drawing rooms of the British middle class and elite who typically shunned such men in his 1971 film Conversations With a Working Man, chronicling a day in the life of a proud trade unionist before Thatcher’s devastation.
He was still telling the story of neoliberalism’s assault on British society nearly 50 years later in his 2019 film The Dirty War on the NHS.
US Dominance of Australia
Pilger was also keenly aware of the servile relationship of his native Australia to the United States.
The subservience of the Anthony Albanese government to the United States in its continuation of the AUKUS project, in which Australia will fork out billions of dollars for submarines it does not need, in order to protect itself from an enemy it does not have, would come as no surprise to readers of Pilger’s 1989 A Secret Country:
“Australia still has not gained true independence, as the historical record shows. We Australians remain one of the most profoundly colonised of peoples and Australian sovereignty the goal of dreamers: a goal which other, usually poorer, countries have achieved, after struggle and bloodshed. It is a melancholy irony that Australians, proportionate to their numbers, have shed more battlefield blood than most, and that so much of this sacrifice has not been in the cause of independence, but in the service of an imperial master.
The Australian is to fight other people’s wars, against those with whom Australians have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion.”
First for Britain in the two world wars, and then for the U.S. in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and now apparently against China.
When a prime minister opposed Australia fighting in Vietnam and withdrew the troops, and for other sins of independence, he was overthrown by the C.I.A. and Buckingham Palace. Gough Whitlam was forced out in 1975, an event Pilger wrote about for years, including in Consortium News.
An Unfortunate Need for Courage
There would be no need to affix the adjective “courageous” before “journalist” if Western governments functioned the way they purport to. But they don’t and no one in the past half century save Julian Assange deserves the adjective more than Pilger.
His courage was saying the unsayable in Western journalism. That there are unsayable things in the West is itself an indictment of the West’s hypocrisy, which no one in the past half century exposed more thoroughly than Assange and Pilger.
Like Assange, Pilger was hated and feared by Western rulers because he dared rip the cover off their lie of a being a benign influence in the world spreading democracy, rather than the death and destruction they feel are needed to secure their dominance.
A Master
Of course Pilger’s work isn’t special only because his craven and lazy competitors made him stand out. He didn’t only do the job they refused to do. He did it in a way they couldn’t, even if they’d wanted to.
What separated Pilger from today’s citizen journalists and Assange, whose courage in publishing damning documents landed him in prison, was that Pilger was a master researcher, writer, on-camera reporter, interviewer and interviewee — all the skills of traditional journalism with none of the political baggage of a corporate reporter.
Writer
He was an exceptional writer and stylist. Consider this description of his hometown:
“Not long ago Sydney was an impoverished city, whose working conditions were at times worse than the worst in England. The sweatshops of east Sydney, with their low wages, long night shifts and unsafe practices–unguarded machinery and floors so hot the soles peeled from your boots–produced an hypnotic routine from working lives.
Smoke from industrial chimneys blotted blue skies and congealed winter afternoons into premature night; and the silhouettes that moved along ribbons of tenement houses in the inner city might have been painted by L.S. Lowry. The repossessors, the bailiffs, the Dickensian sharpies, the man who sold props for backyard wash lines, were from lives on the edge.
At Central Station the rural poor, white and black, spilled out of the overnight mail trains that come from “out west,” the northern rivers and the southern tablelands, and dragged their cardboard cases, tied with string, to the hostels and a cheap hotel known as the People’s Palace. Here there were army surplus stores and greasy-spoon Chinese restaurants with newspaper tablecloths and tiled pubs from which people staggered or were thrown. …
Bondi was men coughing up their innards in a rush-hour tram because an entire Australian division was mustard-gassed on the Western Front. … Bondi was domestic trench warfare, with bodies thudding against thin walls, and a woman in an apron led bleeding to an ambulance: street entertainment for the young.” (A Secret Country)
Interviewer
Pilger was the consummate outsider confronting the insider on behalf of a fearful, confused and largely muted public. Consider this extraordinary interview he conducted with former C.I.A. agent Duane Clarridge.
Pilger spoke with a moral authority on camera, laced with appropriate irony and sarcasm. His films have a distinct language derived from the dramatic pace in which his stories unfold.
Interviewee
He was no pushover when being interviewed by the mainstream, as seen in this clip from TV New Zealand.
The Closing Space
John Pilger never changed, but the mainstream media did. It seems almost unfathomable today that he was permitted anywhere near a mainstream newspaper or television studio.
He said over and over again that in the days in which he began in journalism — from the early 1960s through the 1990s — there was a space in the mainstream for journalists like him. But it began closing 30 years ago and is now completely closed off.
Journalist Mick Hall wrote on CN:
“We live in a time of state surveillance and creeping restrictions on freedom of speech, where whistleblowers are criminalised and journalists like Julian Assange face persecution and life imprisonment. Self-censorship is strictly adhered to by media outlets, as narratives are shaped by a technocratic elite. Gone are the days when John Pilger was able to have a story attacking George W Bush and Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq on the front page of the UK tabloid, the Daily Mirror.”
John Pilger & Consortium News
John recognized the greatness of Consortium News‘ founder, Robert Parry, and became a long-time friend of the publication. When I became editor in 2018 I invited him to join the newspaper’s board and was delighted when he accepted. Consortium News published many of his articles and he had very kind words for us.
Four months before he died, John tweeted:
“Having reported from across the world, I have rarely known anything approaching the dynamism and high standards of … Consortium [News]. If you yearn for an ‘old fashioned’ newspaper of the left, one with real news and authentic ethics, please support.”
Gary Webb Award
For his lifetime of extraordinary achievement Consortium News presented John with the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award. I was able to inform him of it just months before he died.
In presenting it to Jane Hill, a book editor and Pilger’s partner, on the stage of the British Film Institute on Oct. 28, I read the citation:
“Gary Webb, Freedom of the Press Award, 2023 winner John Richard Pilger, Journalist, Filmmaker, Author, For a lifetime of exposing injustice, afflicting the powerful and defending press freedom in his films, books and articles. Presented by the Consortium for Independent Journalism, publishers of Consortium News.”
Jane said:
“Thank you Joe. John’s son Sam, his granddaughter Matilda and I are really proud to receive this from you. It’s a great honor, and it’s something we’ll absolutely cherish. News that he had won this prize came, as you know, not long before his death. And at a time of very great personal struggle. So it was a dark time.
“And I can’t tell you how uplifting it was and how moved and proud he was to receive the news that he had won this prize. And it was both because it was in the name of Gary Webb, a journalist, a courageous journalist he really did admire, and also because it was coming from Consortium News. I think John said to me many a time that Consortium was one of the last outposts of independent journalism.
It was a place unafraid to publish information and viewpoints increasingly excluded from the mainstream. So thank you, Joe. And as John would say, all power to you.”
About the origin of the award, Robert Parry wrote: The award is named in honor of investigative reporter Gary Webb who in 1996 courageously revived interest in one of the darkest scandals of the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s tolerance of cocaine trafficking by the C.I.A.-organized Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
The Contra-Cocaine scandal was originally exposed by Associated Press reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger in 1985, but the major U.S. newspapers accepted the Reagan administration’s denials and treated the story as a “conspiracy theory.”
So, when Webb revived the story in 1996 for The San Jose Mercury News and described how some of the Contra cocaine fueled the spread of crack across urban America, the major newspapers again rallied to the defense of the Contras and the Reagan administration’s legacy.
The assault on Webb was led by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times – and was so ferocious that Webb’s editors at the Mercury News sacrificed him to protect their own careers. Webb found himself cast out from the profession that he loved.
It didn’t even matter that an internal C.I.A. investigation by Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed, in 1998, that the C.I.A. was aware of the Contra cocaine trafficking but had put its goal of ousting the Sandinistas ahead of any responsibility to expose the Contra criminality.
Because of the false impression that Webb had manufactured a fake story, he remained unemployable in mainstream journalism. In 2004, with his life in tatters and his financial resources spent, Webb took his own life, a tragic casualty in the difficult fight for a truly free press in America, a press that doesn’t just rubber stamp government propaganda and accept official lies as truth.
Watch the presentation of John Pilger’s Gary Webb Award:
Please share this story and help us grow our network!
Joe Lauria
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe
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John_Pilger – Cambodia (Year Zero)
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Gold, Kamala, Trump, Control, Cash, Murder & Water – Catherine Austin Fitts
Gold, Kamala, Trump, Control, Cash, Murder & Water – Catherine Austin Fitts By Greg Hunter On October 19, 2024 In Market Analysis, Political Analysis
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post)
Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), gives her take on gold, Kamala, Trump, control, cash, murder and water. On gold’s rocket rise, CAF says, “Gold is very important. We divide gold into two positions: Your ‘core’ position and your ‘investment’ position. . . . Right now, gold looks phenomenally attractive as a core position. It is also attractive as an investment position.”
Why the big move up now? CAF says, “Part of it is the incredible monetary policies and the monetary inflation coming from the central banks. The other is too many people are watching government implode in a variety of different ways, and people are saying I want a core position in gold. We are also seeing the BRICs . . . and seeing states in the US move to put gold and silver in a position to be used as a currency. So, we are watching people put monetary reserves in gold and monetary liquidity in gold. That is happening steadily, and more and more people are saying they need a percentage of their assets in gold. . . . We are in a long-term bull market in gold.”
On Kamala Harris, the operative word is “meltdown.” CAF says, “Kamala is in, what we call in a campaign, a ‘meltdown.’ If you look at the current meltdown, I am baffled because why would somebody with her characteristics be made the nominee? You are talking about major donors putting major money behind her. Why would they spend that much money if there were serious holes in her vetting and she is inclined to melt down this way? It’s kind of baffling.”
On Trump, what is the first thing he should do if re-elected? CAF says, “He should stop the poisoning of the American people. This is one of the reasons we did this issue on water. The American people are being poisoned. . . . I travel a lot by car. I see deterioration in the air, in the water, in the food–they are being poisoned. And, of course, the big one is the CV19 vaccines. Vaccines are poisoning Americans. There was just a big ruling against putting fluoride poison being added to municipal water supplies. One of the things you can do is to march down to your city or county and tell them to stop wasting money on putting poison in your water. If you reverse that, it is one important action you can take.”
The Deep State and central bankers want total control of your money and your life. Fitts says this is why she started pushing the use of cash instead of digital transactions. She calls it “Make Cash Great Again.” . . . If we don’t fix the finances from an actuarial standpoint, they are going to continue to delay benefits or lower life expectancy, and that is what they are doing. They are balancing the books by lowering life expectancy.”
One way to lower life expectancy is to inject people with a so-called vaccine that is really a bioweapon that murders and disables people. That is exactly what happened with the CV19 vax, and the deaths or murders are still piling up. CAF says, “You can cut back on the fraudulent rackets, or you can cut back on the people.” They are cutting back on the people by any measure.
There is much more in the 54-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts, for 10.19.24.
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The current woke and evil world, as seen from Australia
The current woke and evil world, as seen from Australia By Max Bolte, 7 October 2024
How much longer is the woke world going to put up with this nuclear madness direction that the axis of evil Zionist Jew-controlled New York/Washington/City of London/ Israel/Brussels/Switzerland/Paris/Canberra/Amsterdam war mongering evils are taking us? In Australia Albanese, Dutton, Simon Birmingham and their cohorts have sold their souls to the Zionist devil in supporting the 1917 Balfour Agreement sellout of the Palestinian Arabs and the 2014 Jew takeover of Ukraine. The 2023 October 7th ” invasion ” was a Netanyahu planned invasion – the Israeli Defence Force machine gunned their citizens – their soldiers were stood down. In Ukraine Zelenski, a Jew, was installed as President and since March 2022 has sent over 400,000 patriotic Ukrainian Orthodox Christian soldiers to their death as cannon fodder – the Kazarian (Zionist) Jews want Ukraine as their second homeland. The EVIL of these nonhumans running the World into a giant bloodbath calamity knows no bounds. These EVILS and their shills [Biden, Harris, Trump [possibly one of the fake ‘Trumps’?], Vance, Boris Johnson (a Jew), new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (also a Jew), Albanese, Dutton and Co are less than 0.1% of the world population]. This orchestrated evil hasn’t just started with the execution of JFK, the Oklahoma City Bombing, WACO, Port Arthur mass murder (the Queen gave John Howard a medal – he disarmed Australians), 9/11, dozens of political assassinations – it goes back centuries, run by the same culprits.
– Boer War for South African gold and diamond riches – thousands dead, soldiers and Boers so the Rothschilds (head of Zionist Jew Cabal) and the British Royal Family can get control of the bonanza.
– WW1 – another Rothschild (Zionist) orchestrated operation – over 100 million killed
– 1917 New York Jew funded Russian Revolution – between 1917 and 1957
66 million Russian Christians murdered by the Jew controllers in the most gruesome ways along with patriot leader the Tsar and his family.
– WW2 – yet another Rothschild operation – another 100 million plus killed in their world control agenda – 1.6 million surrendered German soldiers murdered on the orders of Swiss Jew General Eisenhower in American prison camps.
– in 1946 Jew shill Lyndon Baines Johnson (later became US President after the JFK assassination – how convenient) was sending loads of machine guns and weaponry to Palestine in advance of the Jewish invasion.
– in 1948 Australia let in boatloads of Jews, some with bags of cash as reward for murdering Palestinians and over the following 76 years they have taken control of Australia, using bribery, blackmail and whatever else. They control the Liberal National Party, the Labor Party and quite a few senior public servants who have sold their souls to the devil also – you don’t get any promotion unless you are all part of it. The Freemasons are right in at the top of the pyramid. The senior police of Australia’s forces and senior executive positions are all approved by the Freemasons and all part of the Cabal. Some of these idiots don’t realise the depths of evil they are part of. They use whatever resources they have to influence every sphere of importance.
These same vermin have moved into the Northern Rivers, in stealth, over the last 30 years and quietly asserting their influence.
I have just spent 3 weeks touring rural NSW. The peace and serenity of the countryside was intoxicating. These evil forces running the world are hellbent on turning the whole beautiful world into yet another World War apocalypse.
On several occasions I have invited a conversation, over a coffee, on these seriously pressing issues, but to no avail. Only a handful of aware patriots, such as the White Rabbit, seem to have any guts and commitment.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians are getting slaughtered in their hundreds every day – the Israelis are restraining themselves – they would like it to be thousands. You can thank Lord Balfour, England and the Jew Rothschilds for all the death and misery of Palestinians since the secret signing of the sellout Agreement in 1917. In Ukraine, Zelenski is sending hundreds of the cream of the Orthodox Christian patriot population to their slaughter everyday in a war that could have been stopped and never started in March 2022. The major powers of NATO, the USA, England, France, Germany and several backroom countries have pushed Russia into this conflict which should never have started, if they had just heeded Putin over the previous 8 years. Millions of dead doesn’t mean anything to these germs – as long as they achieve their goals. History repeats itself. I don’t see too many princes lining up on the frontline and going over the top. I guess you could say it (“WAR”) is just one more DEPOPULATION TOOL they have in their basket of many tools they are using on their trusting loyal citizens.
Max Bolte BScAgr, former Liberal Candidate for the seat of Redlands, Qld, Foundation President of Redlands Rugby Club. Disgusted that the Liberal Party can pick scoundrels like Howard, Morrison and Dutton as their leader. Disgusted that the Labor Party could give powerful positions to such incompetents (or worse) as Albanese, Bowan and Rowland.
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How News Corp’s lies and deception
How News Corp’s lies and deception By Shane Dowling, Kangaroo Court of Australia, 29 September 2024
Edotor’s note: Click on link above to view PDF download that shows graphics in this article.
Lachlan Murdoch explains how News Corp’s lies and deception works with help from Rick Morton and Anthony Klan
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch controlled News Corp and Fox News are well known for being propaganda businesses masquerading as news businesses but having that in effect said by Lachlan Murdoch and 2 of his former journalists has a lot more power than others saying it.
In the below article and videos you will see Lachlan Murdoch on video talking about how he controls “the positioning and the messaging” of the news at News Corp and Fox.
You will also read what former News Corp journalist at The Australian, Rick Morton, said about News Corp in 2019 which ended his career at the company within days.
There is also video of former News Corp journalist at The Australian, Anthony Klan talking about how News Corp manipulate the media and readers. What is interesting is that Anthony Klan is using the same News Corp strategy now in a financial fraud scam trying to control the narrative, and profit from, his reporting on the NACC / Robodebt scandal.
With the federal election coming up it is worth having a look at not only how News Corp operate but also how they influence new media, independent journalists and social media.
We often read and hear about News Corp infiltrating and influencing the ABC and other media. But the News Corp culture and tactics is also infiltrating independent media and will continue to do so given thousands of journalists were trained by Murdoch’s News Corp.
So, it is up to us to be aware of News Corp’s expanding influence and deal with it when need be.
Lachlan Murdoch – He is the executive chairman of Nova Entertainment, chairman of News Corp, executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation.
In 2023, he was listed 33rd on the list of Australia’s wealthiest people, with his wealth estimated at A$3.35 billion (US$2.1 billion).
As of September 2024, the Murdoch family is involved in a court case in the US in which Lachlan’s brother James, his sister Elisabeth and half-sister Prudence are challenging their father’s bid to amend the family trust to ensure that Lachlan retains control of News Corp and Fox Corp. (Click here to read more)
In January 2023 I published an article titled “Lachlan Murdoch’s big mouth set to cost Rupert Murdoch, Fox and himself $billion in the Dominion defamation case” which has a video of Lachlan Murdoch being interviewed at the New York Times Deal Book Conference in November 2018. I said in the article in relation to the video:
One of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s defences from any personal liability in the court cases is that in their management roles, they do not tell journalists what to say.
But in the below video, Lachlan Murdoch says that he “works closely with the managers of those newsrooms and it’s important they get the positioning and the messaging right”. Those “managers” would be the editors who work directly with the journalists overseeing what the journalists write.
So, Lachlan by his own admission is only one step away from directly telling the journalists what to write.
Lachlan also says he works closely with the managers of the Newspapers. So why doesn’t Lachlan leave it to the managers of the newspapers to work closely with the editors? Why does Lachlan override the managers of the newspapers and give direct instructions to the editors?
It’s because Lachlan and Rupert want to give direct instructions on what is and isn’t written or said because they are running a propaganda business masquerading as a news business.
That is proven by Lachlan’s line where he says, “and it’s important they get the positioning and the messaging right”. A news business reports the news, so they don’t need to worry about “positioning” and “getting the message right”.
Lachlan then says, “we don’t always get it right”. Well, they would get it right if they focused on reporting the news and not worrying about the “positioning” and “getting the message right” for Rupert and Lachlan’s propaganda.
In the video one person asking a question points out that Lachlan Murdoch told the audience he is left-leaning which is a blatant lie. Lachlan is not left or right, he is a criminal who says anything to make a dollar.
Lachlan says at the end of the video we have to get along and be more tolerant of others yet it’s Lachlan and his father Rupert who sell and promote hate and division via their media.
Like most criminals, Lachlan Murdoch is not overly bright, he just has a lot of money which gives him access to a lot of advisors and speech writers so in public he generally doesn’t seem as stupid as he really is. (Click here to read more)
The video below is Lachlan Murdoch being interviewed at the New York Times Deal Book Conference in November 2018. I published the video on the 28th of January 2023. (Click here to watch the below video on the Kangaroo Court of Australia YouTube channel)
Rick Morton – Former News Corp journalist at The Australian
Rick Morton’s career at News Corp ended after he gave a talk on the 8th of May 2019 to journalism students at the University of Technology, Sydney. The talk was published as a podcast by UTS. (Click here to listen to the podcast)
The Guardian reported on the 10th of May 2019:
News Corp journalist has gone on the record with critical remarks about his own paper, the Australian, saying “the craziness has been dialled up” in recent months.
The paper’s social affairs writer, Rick Morton, told journalism students at the University of Technology, Sydney, that senior writers know what the editorial line is and write stories to fit.
Asked whether the Murdoch paper’s journalists were uncomfortable with the Australian barracking for the Coalition in the election, Morton said they were “more uncomfortable certainly now than at any time I’ve been there in the past seven years”.
“There is a real mood that something has gone wrong,” “People will tell you going back a decade it used to be a very great paper, and in many ways it still is, but some of the craziness has been dialled up.
“We know what the empire is, we know what the papers do, but something has changed in the last six months. I don’t know what it is. Death rattles or loss of relevance? And journos pretty much spend all day talking about it.”
Morton said editors did not give explicit instructions, but senior writers wrote within accepted parameters or found stories that were so good the paper had to run them despite their slant.
“We kind of know what the editorial line is at the paper,” he said. “The people at the top know what it is and there are key staff … who are old enough and ugly enough to deal with the awful truth that occasionally there is a line that will come out of [news] conference.
“It’s not always a Murdoch line; it’s just that Murdoch hires editors who are very much like him.”
Morton said orders did not come from Murdoch directly except when he was in Australia, and then “he will tell you what interests him”.
“If you’re senior you will know what the line is roughly and you will file stuff that fits; everyone else is just left alone to their own devices.
Reporters were often confronted with their copy being changed and inaccurate headlines on their stories, he said.
“Often times the headline bears no resemblance to the story filed,” he said.
“I’ve seen it happen to other journos who wake up in the morning and their copy is changed. Or the headline is screaming with something they didn’t write.”
Morton said front page stories were spiked if they didn’t fit the “tone” of the paper’s election coverage.
“It’s a constant battle, it doesn’t happen as often as people think it does but it does happen.
“It is a moral quandary that I have wrestled with for the entire seven years I’ve been at the Oz.
“Am I lending credibility to a horrible machine? I don’t know? Does my journalism change things in people’s lives for the better? That I do know.” (Click here to read more)
The AFR reported the 18th of May 2019 was the last time The Australian published any articles by Rick Moreton which was a week after the UTS talk.
Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch obviously have glass jaws and can’t handle the truth.
Rick Morton now works at The Saturday Paper and I wrote about him having a fallout with another journalist, over ethics, in an article titled “Robodebt crook Renee Leon organises free promotion and defence from her friend Chris Wallace in The Saturday Paper” published on the 26th of September 2024. (Click here to read the article)
Anthony Klan – Former News Corp journalist at The Australian
I published an article about Klan on the 12th of September 2024 titled “Independent journalists Anthony Klan, Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter running a scam with their dodgy reporting on the NACC / Robodebt scandal”. (Click here to read the article)
In the article I accused Anthony Klan of suppressing key evidence of the NACC / Robodebt cover-up from his audience so he could try to control the narrative of the story to make it look like he was the hero journalist exposing the key evidence. I also accused Klan of reporting lies and stealing content from me and likely others.
As you will see in the below video Klan says News Corp uses “suppressing information from the public” as a strategy which Klan has also been doing recently.
The 12th of September article on Klan’s corruption and lies and my ongoing investigation into his handiwork led to this article.
Anthony Klan worked for News Corp for 14 years or 15 years (he uses both as per below) from 2005 to 2019 and tweeted on the 10th of June 2019 that he had resigned from News Corp’s The Australian the previous month which is about the same time Rick Morton left The Australian.
Klan said in the message regarding his resignation from News Corp, “Hi all, a month ago I resigned from The Australian after 15 years. I had, and have, serious misgivings about the direction that is now being taken. Australia faces unprecedented external threats. To do otherwise, I felt, would be treasonous.” (Click here to see on Twitter)
Klan also tweeted on the 24 May 2024 the below message: (Click here to see on Twitter)
Five years after leaving News Corp’s The Australian Anthony Klan said in the above message he “adored” his 14 years there.
What did he adore? The lying to the public? The deceiving the public? The undermining of democracy? Being in “the pocket of the lobbyists of the minerals, the mining, the gas and of the big banks”?
In 2019, when Anthony Klan left News Corp, he said it was because it “would be treasonous” to stay and he had “serious misgivings about the direction that is now being taken”. But now he is saying he “adored” being there.
Most liars don’t have good memories and forget what previous lies they told. Why Klan left News Corp is something we will probably never know, but it certainly wasn’t because of ethical reasons.
The below video is from an interview Anthony Klan did on Aljazeera TV in 2020.
Video Player
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01:49
Klan says in the above video:
“When I started at the organisation I believed it was 90% ideology at least, but now I’ve come to the opinion it’s 10% ideology and the rest of it is money and vested interests,”
Klan also says News Corp are “suppressing information from the public” and is “incredibly in the pocket of the lobbyists of the minerals, the mining, the gas and of the big banks”.
Anthony Klan’s lies an deception
Anthony Klan spent 15 years lying and deceiving the public and “suppressing information from the public” on behalf of News Corp yet he wants us to believe, “When I started at the organisation I believed it was 90% ideology at least, but now I’ve come to the opinion it’s 10% ideology and the rest of it is money and vested interests”
Klan also says News Corp is “incredibly in the pocket of the lobbyists of the minerals, the mining, the gas and of the big banks”. But it has been like that for decades and certainly for the whole 15 years Klan worked at News Corp.
News Corp was the same in the 1970s
The Guardian reported in May 2019
After the dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in 1975, the Australian’s journalists went on strike during the subsequent election campaign over what they saw as the newspaper’s biased coverage. (Click here to read more)
Kevin Rudd’s 2010 super profits mining tax cost him the Prime Ministership and the loudest critic was News Corp who were, and still are, getting paid $millions by the mining companies for adverting. But apparently Anthony Klan didn’t notice that.
Why didn’t Anthony Klan say in 2010 or 2011 that News Corp was “incredibly in the pocket of the lobbyists of the minerals, the mining, the gas and of the big banks”?
Because Anthony Klan was also “in the pocket of the lobbyists of the minerals, the mining, the gas and of the big banks” via his weekly paycheque from News Corp.
And Anthony Klan stayed in their pockets for another 8 years after the mining companies, with the help of News Corp, got rid of Rudd.
So no, Anthony Klan is not a whistleblower on News Corp corruption. Klan is a long-term crook, who left News Corp for an unknown reason, who is now trying to cleanse his reputation by ratting on his fellow crooks at News Corp.
But Anthony Klan has already been caught out recently trying to use the News Corp business tactics, he learnt and used at News Corp for 15 years, in his own small media business.
News Corp’s influence on independent media and journalists
Anthony Klan isn’t the first and won’t be the last journalist to leave News Corp and continue with a life of crime and corruption.
There are and will be many other ex News Corp journalists and journalists from other media companies who will claim to be independent journalists but will lie and deceive, just as much as the Murdochs do, as they try to build their profile and small media business. So keep an eye out.
I never came up with the phrase the Murdoch’s are running a “propaganda operation masquerading as a news service“. University of Melbourne academic Denis Muller used the phrase in an article for The Conversation which means even University students are now learning about what News Corp really is.
I could say a lot more but the Murdoch’s and News Corp’s influence on independent media and journalists will grow and needs to be reported on a regular basis to try to keep it in check. So, I will save further comment for another article in the future.
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Covid, 9/11 & Forever War
Covid^J 911 ^0 Forever War September 12, 2024
From the war on terror to the “pandemic”, the elite are constructing fake threats to start wars that never have to end.
by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
originally published September 13, 2021
“The war was not meant to be won. It was meant to be continuous.”
George Orwell, 1984
Our 9/11 coverage this year, the 20th anniversary, has been focused on viewing the attacks of 2001 through the lens of the Covid “pandemic” rollout.
The point is not that both Covid19 and 9/11 are necessarily part of the same grand plan, were carried out by the same people, or were in any way directly connected. Rather, they are thematically connected, on the meta-level.
They spring from the same collective urge all rulers and governments harbour, and are employed to the same end.
They are different tools designed to achieve the same end. Different approaches to the same problem. Different evolutionary stages of the same animal: The decades-long change in the core aims of warfare and even the very meaning of “war” itself.
War has always been vital to the preservation of the state. Wars make rulers rich, and people scared. They unite nations behind leaders, and distract from domestic political issues.
But, as nations become more powerful, weapon technology more advanced, and global power centralises in giant corporations rather than nations, war – in the traditional sense – becomes more expensive, more dangerous, and largely meaningless.
Essentially the old-fashioned motivations for warfare no longer apply, but the ancillary domestic benefits of war-like policy remain. While the state, and their corporate backers, no longer need to take part in pitched battles over the best farmland, they do still need their subjects to believe they are under attack.
In short, by necessity, “war” has gradually shifted from genuine inter-state conflicts over control of resources, into a top-down tool of psychological manipulation.
And the first stage of that evolution was 9/11.
9/11 and the war on terror
9/11 was an inside job. Any objective examination of the evidence can only lead to that conclusion. (I’m not going to lay that out here, we have dozens of articles detailing that. That’s not what I’m writing about today.)
The US government blew up their own buildings, killed their own civilians, terrified their own people. The ruling class engaging in what Orwell called “war against their subjects”, in a very literal sense.
Much like the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany, this staged “attack” was done to create a war-like mentality. To make people believe they were under threat, and serve as the basis for new “temporary emergency powers” for the government.
But 9/11 went further, serving as the casus belli for a war: “The war on terror”.
The War on Terror was a new kind of war, yes it was used as a starting point for more traditional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then proxy wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, but its main target was actually domestic. A nationwide psy-op war designed to keep 350 million people in a semi-permanent state of fear.
It was the natural next step in the Orwellian redefinition of “war” as a concept.
If the primary aims of your war are a) To maintain domestic control of your population, and b) To funnel tax-payer money into bloated contracts with the private sector, then do you really need to declare war on a foreign country?
In fact, do you need an actual physical “war” at all? Isn’t the idea of a war just as good?
And if all you need is the idea of a war, what better way than to declare war on an idea. Why not make your enemy an abstract concept?
Because the great thing about going to war on an abstract concept is you can’t ever lose, and you never have to win. The war can go on forever.
This idea was first trialled with “the war on drugs”. But that didn’t work because a) people actually quite like drugs and b) Drugs are a vital income stream for the deep state. So it fizzled.
The war on terror is better. Since “terror” is an abstract noun with no solid reality, it can mean anything you want it to mean. “The war on terror” can be domestic or foreign, political or military, overt or covert or both. It can’t be won, it can’t be lost, and it only ends when you say it does.
It’s perfect.
Well, almost perfect.
There are still a few issues.
For example, it’s actually quite difficult to keep people afraid of an abstract concept. You need real-world reminders. Essentially, for the war on terror to continue, you need to keep reminding people terror is out there. Which means terrorism needs to happen. Which means either letting it happen or making it happen (the vast majority of the time it’s the latter).
If you’re staging terror attacks they either have to be real, resulting in real victims and real grieving families asking real questions…or they’re fake, meaning paying actors. Either way is logistically complicated, difficult to control and potentially embarrassing.
There’s also the problem of the terrorists themselves. You’ve publicly declared war on them…but they’re also very useful. There’s a reason you’ve funded them for decades. The inevitable result is you end up with “good terrorists” in country A, and “bad terrorists” in Country B. And when they are revealed to be essentially exactly the same, well that looks bad.
But the biggest problem, really, is that it caps your ambition.
You may have chosen an abstract concept as the target of your war, but that concept needs to take human form somehow. And any human enemy can only be so scary, and can only do so much damage. There’s no way you can frighten everyone at once that way.
Plus, picking a human enemy – along racial, national, ethnic or ideological lines – is inescapably divisive. You can’t ever unite everyone behind that flag.
In short, a war on terror and terrorists is fine if you want to rule a country, but what if you want to rule a planet?
Well, what you need then is a new enemy. An enemy that can be anywhere and everywhere, and that definitely isn’t human.
The war on Covid
The Covid19 “pandemic” has been pitched to the public as a war from the beginning.
As early as March 2020, the UN Secretary General was urging countries to “declare war on the virus” and already calling Covid “the greatest threat since World War II”. A sentiment UN spokespeople have repeated. A lot.
National leaders were just as eager to equate Covid as a new grand cause, in line with the fight against fascism.
Italy’s Prime Minister referred to the nation’s “darkest hour”. New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian told the press “this is literally a war” just last month.
In the UK, the government made numerous transparent attempts to instil a Churchillian “spirit of the Blitz” atmosphere. Unashamedly working World War II parallels into all their Covid messaging, the Queen’s cloying public speech of shamelessly using the line We’ll Meet Again.
In America, ever the hub of military metaphors, Trump called himself a “wartime President” fighting an “invisible enemy”. Former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo referred to healthcare professionals as “soldiers” in the battle against Covid.
Worldwide, pundits frequently compare Covid to the war on terror, and Covid to terrorists. The war metaphor has been ubiquitous in speeches, headlines and TV spots.
The message is clear and simple: The virus is our enemy. We are at war.
And this war really is perfect.
It has all the benefits of a real war, and none of the drawbacks. All the ephemeral malleability of the “war on terror”, and none of its potential complications.
Think about it…
In the name of Covid we have seen taxation, censorship, surveillance, state expenditure to the private sector and state powers all increase. These are all the cliche “emergency powers” the state seeks out in wartime.
And they’ve achieved it with a simple three-stage trick.
First, take a virus, give it a name and attribute to it the exact same symptoms of every other cold and flu virus. You just created a new disease.
Second, take a test that can “find anything in anybody”, run it on everyone who goes into hospital (especially the terminally ill) and change the legal definition of “cause of death”. You just created “deaths” from your new disease.
Third, start running that same test on everyone, multiple times a week. You just created millions upon millions of “asymptomatic cases”.
Combine these three, and you have created a “pandemic”.
They created an enemy out of thin air, through a wave of propaganda and statistical manipulation. “Covid” is nothing but a filter, a lens placed in front of the public eye that distorts reality without actually changing anything at all.
Just as with the “war on terror”, the real threat is almost entirely imaginary, but this time the optics are so much better. Instead of worshipping the troops, we now pay homage to “healthcare heroes”, the “soldiers on the frontline against the virus”. No bombs, no violence, just dancing nurses.
And what can’t happen with Covid? Simple, anything they don’t want to happen. Because of the very nature of the manufactured pandemic, they have total control of the narrative.
They can control the “cases” through the tests. They can control the “deaths” through the definition of “cause of death”. They can just tweak the meaning of a word here and there, and start and stop the “pandemic” on a whim. They can slow down the “spread”, or speed it up. Introduce a new test or treatment or “cure” it, then create a new variant to bring it back.
This war doesn’t even really exist, so it never has to end and they definitely can’t lose.
Meanwhile, every new law that passes expands the power of the state over the citizen, and every step of the way there new bloated private sector contracts up for grabs. Testing and tracing and PPE. Vaccines and ventilators and quarantine hotels. Public money is pouring into private hands.
And the best part? It’s all being done in the name of “helping people”.
Following 9/11, the Patriot Act empowered mass surveillance, detention without charge and huge infringement of civil rights, because people might be terrorists.
Now, allegedly anti-Covid “public health measures” are allowing the exact same things…because people might be sick.
The state has transformed. What was once considered paranoid and aggressive, is now simply beneficent and paternalistic.
That’s the genius of the War on Covid.
The real forever war
So…how are Covid and 9/11 linked?
One flows directly into the other. They form a continuum of control narratives designed to frighten people into accepting draconian limitations on their freedom, whilst justifying a permanent society-wide warlike mentality.
“The war on terror” and the “war on Covid” are twin psy-ops that show the transformation of “war” from a foreign policy into a purely domestic one.
Orwell described it perfectly in 1984:
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
In just the last two years we have all seen the truth of this. Covid has shown us supposedly enemy nations suddenly come to an accord and demonstrate almost total unity of purpose to spread one big lie.
The global capitalist hegemony doesn’t need to conquer land or steal resources anymore. They already own everything worth owning, all they need now is to control their workers and preserve the inequality they have created.
That’s the real war being waged here. Not the ridiculous war on terror. And not the laughable war on Covid. No, the real “forever war” is what Niels Harrit calls the vertical war, waged by the very top against everyone below them.
Covid is the most recent and most overt expression of this, but for years now the corporate media has been the spokesperson of the authoritarian heart of the state.
I have written before that we are entering the era of “progressive” statism. Where tyranny is sold as a regrettable inevitability and our leaders are portrayed as a new breed of reluctant dictators, sculpting dystopian political landscapes out of necessity, and with only the purest intentions.
We’re told that our caring masters aren’t controlling or dictatorial because they want to be, but because they need to be, for our sake.
The “great reset” is not a malign “conspiracy theory”, it’s just our kindly overlords child-proofing the world to protect us from ourselves. Tearing our society down so they can build back better into a neo-feudal utopia, where nobody owns anything and everyone is happy and everyone does what they’re told…or else.
This “pandemic” is the thin end of a rapidly widening wedge. Next comes the flu and obesity and global warming. No more meat. No more sugar. No more vacations. They’re bad for you, and bad for the planet, and bad for the polar bears.
Ban homeschools and protests and misinformation. Ban the wrong kind of books and the wrong kind of speech and the wrong kind of thoughts.
Wear the mask and take the jab and live in the pod and eat the bugs.
Global hegemony isn’t going to come about via traditional warfare or Imperial conquest, instead it is being shaped by a conglomeration of restrictions on individual freedom.
That’s the war that links 9/11 and Covid. The real war, and it’s not against drugs, or terrorism or even Covid…it’s against us.
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A Brutal Russian Take on Zionism
A Brutal Russian Take on ZionismFrom Henry Makow, HenryMakow.com, 11 July 2024
The real issue is Jewish Power posing both as Right and Left, nationalist and globalist, Zionist and Communist.
In 1991, Vladimir Stepin wrote: “The Jews must have, and will have, undivided, absolute power over the whole world. The only point is that the money and the power, but particularly the power, will be achieved soundlessly, without attracting attention, and without occupying the leading roles until the very end.”
This is why resistance — “anti-Semitism” — is banned.
“We have already…possessed the minds of the goy communities…[they are] looking through the spectacles we are setting astride their noses.” (Protocols of Zion, 12)
from Feb 22, 2019
The Nature of Zionism (1991)
by Vladimir Stepin
(Excerpts by henrymakow.com)
The foundations of Zionism were formulated in ancient times, some three thousand years ago, and they are:
- The Jews are God’s chosen people.
- All other peoples are merely two-legged animals (goys).
- The Jews have both the right and the obligation to rule the world.
The second and third points of this three-in-one formula actually follow from the first. The formula, which was the brainchild of an undoubtedly talented politician, was among the foundations of the religion of Judaism (see the Book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament).
At that time people understood very well that if one is to lend force to one’s intentions, one must express them as religious ideas. And one must also strengthen not only the religion but also its influence on people. …
Another point is that the power of this formula lies in that it legitimizes and sanctifies the idea of robbing other nations. Why need we care about two-legged animals? If we are the chosen people and it is our inalienable right, and even our duty, to rule other peoples, then God himself ordered us to grow rich at their expense, as the saying goes.
In this way, nationalism is placed on a material basis. Rob and rule! Rule and rob! Money and power! From the time the above-mentioned formula begins to operate, this becomes both a means and an end, but it nevertheless also becomes a more important means, a means for attaining the main objective contained in the third item of the formula: the Jews must have, and will have, undivided, absolute power over the whole world. The only point is that the money and the power, but particularly the power, will be achieved soundlessly, without attracting attention, and without occupying the leading roles until the very end.
ZIONISTS SET UP CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR NON-JEWS ACCUSED OF ANTISEMITISM WHICH THEY ORGANIZED
During the civil war in Russia, the Zionists also performed another task. Using some units of the Red Army – Trotsky was the chairman of the country’s Revolutionary Military Council – they organized the Jewish pogrom in Seversk. The result of this was the “Law on Those Involved in Pogroms” of 27 July 1918.
In accordance with this law, a monstrous Zionist terror raged in Russia for ten years: a person accused of antisemitism was, without any argument being allowed, declared to be involved in pogroms and placed against the wall to be shot. Not only anti-Zionists, but the best representatives of the intelligentsia of Russia, could be accused of being antisemitic, and so too could anyone one felt like accusing of it. People saw who was exercising power in Russia and expressed their discontent with it. 90% of the members of the Cheka – the Soviet security organ, 1918-1922 – were Zionists.
Apart from the law on those involved in pogroms, the Zionists practised genocide against the ethnic groups inhabiting Russia, and they did so by accusing people of counter-revolutionary activities, sabotage, and so on, irrespective of whether or not the people in question really had conducted such activities. It was standard practice merely to put them against the wall to be shot.
The major operations conducted by the Zionists included setting up a system of prison camps. Skilfully using as a pretext the interests of discipline and orderliness, Trotsky and Dzershinzky organized the concentration camps in 1918. These were monstrous machinery for exterminating the people of Russia, machinery of oppression and intimidation, machinery of undivided power.
[MAKOW- If I were a betting man, I’d say Zionists put Hitler into power.]
MONEY IS POWER
The Zionists’ money is their most important tool. Money is power – that is a well- known truth. But does everyone know that in the USA, for example, over 70% of the capital belongs to Zionists, and that their capital prevails all over the world? They have been accumulating it for centuries. The gold of all times and nations is amassed in the vaults of their banks. Both in the past and today, the Zionists’ finances have not only served the basic function of finance, namely the principle that money brings more money, but have also been …used to finance one measure or another, to provide loans, to organize conquests, wars and coups, to bribe persons in office, to bribe and finance leaders, groups, parties, to hire armies and bands, to develop trade and industry, to raise matters up or to bring them to destruction – all depending on the tasks being pursued by the Zionists.
In this connection, the corrupting power of money is colossal. A person who has become keen on the idea of accumulating money in order to obtain some benefits or other is already to some extent in the clutches of Zion. By operating with benefits and money, the Zionists can easily make such a person do the things they require: making jobs available, carrying out measures necessary to the Zionists, exerting pressure on unwelcome persons, taking part in financial machinations, and the like. When such a person enters into financial contact with Zion, he quickly understands its strength and bases himself on it. It is not difficult to continue to work on such a person in the spirit required by Zion and turn him into a reliable and obedient tool of Zionism.
FREEMASONRY
Zion has many arms, and one of them is Freemasonry. Freemasonry practically came into being along with Zionism and is its fellow-traveller.
The Freemasons fulfill approximately the same role for Zionism as the Jesuits do for Roman Catholicism. The early Freemasons were the builders of the Temple of Solomon. Large numbers of secret Freemasonic lodges have at all times served as a means of fooling people by promising to build a better world, a world of goodness, charity, equality and justice, but in actual fact as a means of enticing people into the nets of Zion, of placing them under Zion’s command and, through those people, directing countries and events. There is a distinction between Jewish and Gentile Freemasonic lodges and organizations.
The Gentile ones are of course lower in rank, but it is precisely through them that Zion exercises direct control. Influential politicians, public figures, scholars, persons active in literature and art, military men, members of the administrative machinery, and the like, are drawn into the Gentile lodges and organizations, and it is through such people that Zion’s decisions are put into effect.
Freemasonry is strong. But it is still only one of the arms. The head is Zion. Freemasonry must be combated. But the main blow ought to be dealt against Zionism, which controls Freemasonry. At the same time, one should bear in mind that, even without Freemasonry, Zion, by using its own strength, has achieved, is achieving and will achieve its own objectives if it is not stopped.
Related– The Zionist Protection Racket
Global Zionism Exposed: Fourth Beast Rising – YouTube
Note — Leyba Davidovich Trotsky, whose real name was David Bronstein, said: “We must turn Russia into a desert populated by white negroes upon whom we shall impose a tyranny such as the most terrible Eastern despots never dreamt of. The only difference is that this will be a left-wing tyranny, not a right-wing tyranny. It will be a red tyranny and not a white one.”
“We mean the word ‘red’ literally because we shall shed such floods of blood as will make all the human losses suffered in the capitalist wars quake and pale by comparison. The biggest bankers across the ocean will work in the closest possible contact with us. If we win the revolution, we shall establish the power of Zionism upon the wreckage of the revolution’s funeral, and we shall become a power before which the whole world will sink to its knees. We shall show what real power is. By means of terror and bloodbaths, we shall reduce the Russian intelligentsia to a state of complete stupefaction and idiocy and to an animal existence… At the moment, our young men in their leather jackets, who are the sons of watchmakers from Odessa, Orsha, Gomel and Vinnitsa, know how to hate everything Russian! What pleasure they take in physically destroying the Russian intelligentsia – officers, academics and writers!…”
Taken from the “Memoirs” of Aron Simanovich, a jeweller at the court of the Tsar’s Imperial Majesty.
From the newspaper “Russkoye slovo”, No. 1.
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What Nobody Told You About Julian Assange
What Nobody Told You About Julian Assange David Sorensen, StopWorldControl.com. 26 June 2024
Editor’s note: this very important article is easier to read in the PDF document from the link above. This document includes several graphics.
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We Approach ‘State’ Singularity
We Approach ‘State’ Singularity From Zerohedge, 19 June 2024
Authored by Bruce Pardy via The Brownstone Institute,
Many citizens of the West believe that they live in free societies, or something close…
But as time goes on, public authorities increasingly insist on having a say in everything…
People cannot build things on their own land without permits. They cannot run businesses without approvals and inspections. They cannot give advice without professional designations. They cannot educate their children outside of state-mandated curricula. They cannot hire employees without triggering a myriad of workplace and tax requirements. They cannot produce and sell milk, cheese, or eggs without a license. They cannot earn money, spend money, or hold property without being taxed, and then taxed again.
Jeffrey Tucker recently described three layers of omnipotent managerial technocracy.
- The deep state, he suggested, consists of powerful and secretive central government agencies in the security, intelligence, law enforcement, and financial sectors.
- The middle state is a myriad of ubiquitous administrative bodies – agencies, regulators, commissions, departments, municipalities, and many more – run by a permanent bureaucracy.
- The shallow state is a plethora of consumer-facing private or semi-private corporations, including banks, Big Media, and huge commercial retail companies, which governments support, protect, subsidize, and pervert. The three layers work together.
For instance, in the financial sector, as Tucker illustrates, the deep state’s Federal Reserve pulls the powerful strings, the middle state’s financial and monetary regulators enforce myriad rules and policies, and the shallow state’s “private” titans like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs dominate commercial activity. It’s a system, Tucker writes, “designed to be impenetrable, permanent, and ever more invasive.”
We are approaching state singularity: the moment when state and society become indistinguishable.
In physics, a “singularity” is a single point in space-time. Inside black holes, gravity crushes volume to zero and mass density is infinite. In computer science, “technological singularity” is unitary artificial superintelligence. At the singularity, everything becomes one thing. Data points converge. Normal laws do not apply.
At state singularity, the state becomes society and society is a product of the state.
Legal norms and expectations become irrelevant. The state’s mandate is to do as it judges best – since everything and everyone are expressions of its vision. Powers are not separated between the state’s branches – the legislature, the executive, the bureaucracy, and the courts. Instead, they all do whatever they deem necessary. The bureaucracy legislates. Courts develop policy. Legislatures conduct hearings and prosecute cases. Government agencies change policies at will. The rule of law may be acknowledged as important in principle while it is rejected in practice.
State singularity is the ultimate collectivism. It resembles old-style fascism and communism, but it is neither. Fascist states enforce an idea, often nationalist in sentiment (“The motherland for the superior race”), and recruit private actors, especially corporations, to the cause. Communist regimes champion the working class and outlaw private property (“Workers of the world unite”). Singularity, in contrast, is not propelled by an idea other than singularity itself. To justify its own hegemony, the state champions a variety of other causes. In the modern era, social justice, climate change, transgender rights, feminism, economic reform, and many more have served to extend the state’s reach. Problems are rarely solved, but that is not the reason for taking them up.
State singularity develops gradually and insidiously. Whereas fascist, communist, and other centralized power regimes often result from deliberate political revolution, in the West omnipotent managerial technocracy has grown, spread, and infiltrated the nooks and crannies of social life without sudden political upheaval. Like a form of institutional Darwinism, public agencies, no matter their formal purpose, seek to persist, expand, and reproduce.
At the singularity, all solutions to all problems lie with government in its various forms. More, never less, programs, rules, initiatives, and structures are the answer. Like black holes, state singularities absorb and crush every other thing. Corporations serve state interests and participate in managing the economy. Singularities destroy voluntary community organizations by occupying the space and placing obstacles in the way. Both the left and the right seek to harness state power to craft society in their image.
In a singularity, one cannot propose to eliminate government. Doing so would be contrary to prevailing ideology and vested interests, but more fundamentally, the idea would be incomprehensible.
And not just to officials. Citizens dissatisfied with the services they receive want more service and better policy. When schools sexualize their children, they demand changes to the curriculum instead of the end of public schools. When monetary policy makes houses expensive, they demand government programs to make them cheap instead of the end of central banks. When government procurement is revealed to be corrupt, they demand accountability mechanisms instead of a smaller government. State singularity is found not just in the structures of government but in the minds of the people.
Modern states have capacities they have never had before. Technological advances are providing them with the ability to monitor spaces, supervise activities, collect information, and require compliance everywhere all the time. In the collectivist regimes of old, governments knew only what human eyes and ears could tell them. Soviet authorities were tyrannical, but they could not instantaneously monitor your cell phone, bank account, fridge, car, medications, and speech.
We are not at the singularity yet. But have we crossed the event horizon? At a black hole, the event horizon is the point of no return. Gravity becomes irresistible. No matter or energy, including light, can escape the pull to the singularity at the core of the abyss.
Our event horizon beckons. We cannot evade it by merely slowing down on the path that we are on. Liberation requires escape velocity in the other direction.
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Democracy won’t work whilst most media lean far left
Democracy won’t work whilst most media lean far left By Dr Muriel Newman, NZCPR Founding Director, 27 September 2023
As the election closes in, there appears to be an overwhelming mood for change.
New Zealanders have had enough. The chickens are coming home to roost for Labour as disgruntled voters, sick and tired of the incompetence, the lies and deceit, search for alternatives.
Election campaigns can be noisy affairs, and this one is no different. Given the unprecedented manner in which Labour has crushed democratic rights and imposed their destructive agenda onto the country, protesters are out in force, expressing their concerns directly to those who are seeking their vote.
But is it really any worse than it’s ever been?
In the nine years I was in Parliament and the four election campaigns I was involved in, shouting, yelling, heckling, pushing, and shoving, were all part of the rough and tumble of politics.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary to have to break through lines of protestors to get into an event, and I well remember giving one speech to an audience, where the barrage from opponents was so loud, even I couldn’t hear the address!
What seems to be different this time around, is that the media are also copping the wrath of a disgruntled public. And it’s not hard to see why.
When Jacinda Ardern was elected leader of Labour just before the 2017 election, the gushing media coverage was so extreme it was given a name: “Jacindamania”. From that point on, any semblance of media impartiality was swept aside, exposing the strong political bias of mainstream journalists.
That bias was revealed by journalists themselves in the “Worlds of Journalism Study 2.0. Journalists in Aotearoa/New Zealand” published last October by Massey University. In this third such survey undertaken by the Worlds of Journalism Study group – a collaboration of academics from more than 120 countries – a snapshot of the 1600 journalists who work in print, digital and broadcast media, is provided.
Almost 60 percent of the workforce are women, 10 percent are Maori, and as far as age is concerned, the profession is split between those in the younger 25 to 30 age group, and older 50 to 65 year-olds.
When it comes to political bias, the results are definitive – journalists overwhelmingly identify as left wing: “There are very few strongly right-wing journalists, but a substantial number of moderately or strongly left-wingers.”
The survey reveals 5 percent describe themselves as “extreme left” and 15 percent as “hard left”. Of the rest, 22 percent say they are “left”, 20 percent are “mild left”, and 23 percent are “middle left”, while 6 percent identify as “middle right”, 4 percent “mild right”, and only around 1 percent all up say they are “right”, “hard right” or “extreme right”.
In other words, nine out of ten New Zealand journalists are socialists, with one in three hard-core. Only one in ten journalists claim to have no socialist inclinations.
When it comes to ethics, the survey shows there’s been a significant shift in attitude, with journalist support for adhering to their professional code of ethics dropping 28 percent since the last survey in 2015.
And when it comes to the role of journalists, there is now a growing disconnect between what the public expects from the media and what journalists believe their role to be.
While the public wants journalists to report the news in an unbiased manner, presenting both sides of the argument on contentious issues so they can make up their own minds, that’s no longer how most journalists see it.
They regard ‘educating the audience’ as their most important role, followed by ‘countering disinformation’. But in some cases, this has led to a concerning development: hard-core left-wing journalists describing information they disagree with as “fake news” or “disinformation” in order to discredit those with alternative views.
Journalists still regard monitoring and scrutinising political leaders as important, but letting people express their views has declined significantly. Also dropping is the notion of ‘being a detached observer’ and ‘providing analysis of current affairs’.
The role that rose the most sharply, albeit from a low level, was ‘supporting government policy’.
In other words, the gulf that has opened up between what the public has traditionally expected from the media and what the media themselves believe their role to be, is no doubt responsible for the decline in public interest in the mainstream news.
Making things worse is the fact that journalists overwhelmingly believe the Treaty of Waitangi should be a key part of their reporting.
The survey, which was carried out just after Stuff announced its absurd apology to Maori for its historic news coverage – and other organisations such as Radio New Zealand and TVNZ had started to become more ‘inclusive’ – says this: “Asked to what extent did the Treaty apply to what they wrote, almost a third (31%) said it applied to everything. Another 43% said it applied to most things, such as any stories that involve legislation or politics, culture or society in which the treaty is referenced. A minority (16 percent) thought it only related to some things, such as stories for Maori about Maori issues, while 2% thought it had no relevance to journalism.”
It’s no wonder the media are seen to be increasingly out of step with society.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, freelance journalist and former newspaper editor Karl du Fresne, believes these developments are the consequence of the transfer of journalism training from the newsroom to the lecture room:
“Earlier generations of journalists learned on the job from other journalists. Many of my contemporaries came from working-class backgrounds. They didn’t go to university and were proud to regard journalism as a trade rather than profession. The importance of neutrality, fairness and balance was drummed into them. They had no delusions of grandeur.
“But from the 1970s on, journalism was subjected to academic capture. Budding journalists were inculcated with a highly politicised vision of journalism’s purpose. They were encouraged to acquire degrees that were often based on esoteric theories far removed from the simple, practical concerns of good journalism. Over time, that has had the fatal effect of creating a widening gap between journalists and the communities they claim to serve. Even more dangerously, it has led journalists to think they are wiser and smarter than the people who buy newspapers and watch the TV news, and even morally superior to them. As the Marxist American journalist Batyar Ungar-Sargon puts it, they climbed up the status ladder and became part of the elite.”
To make matters worse, most mainstream media organisations accepted handouts from Labour’s $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, and as a result, became echo chambers for government propaganda. This was especially the case with regards to promoting Labour’s fraudulent Treaty ‘partnership’ claim that underpinned their whole unmandated race-based He Puapua agenda.
With tens of millions of dollars of additional taxpayers’ money also poured into the media through Government advertising and sponsorship, it’s no wonder the public became worried the media had been ‘bought off’ and could no longer be trusted as a reliable source of information.
There have been stand-out pockets, of course – mainstream journalists who continued to speak the truth and hold the Government to account – but they are few and far between. As a result, alternative media channels have emerged to fill the vacuum.
As Karl says, people no longer look to our mainstream journalistic institutions to reflect the society they live in. “The crucial nexus between media institutions and the community they purport to serve has been strained to breaking point. In fact the media often seem implacably opposed to the society they live in and determined to re-shape it, whether people want it or not.”
With journalists now advocating politics rather than merely reporting it, it’s little wonder that they are now being berated with the same contempt the public has for politicians.
While thankfully the media lovefest with Jacinda Ardern began to wane before she actually left Parliament, the impact of her incompetent leadership on our society has been devastating.
More than anything, what Labour’s time in office has taught us is that for our democracy to function properly, we need balanced journalism.
And if anyone needs further explanation, look no further than Three Waters.
Three Waters was the brainchild of Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta, and her Maori Caucus colleagues. Their primary motivation was to pass control of fresh water to Maori, but to dress it up as necessary reform for the public good.
If journalists had been doing their job of holding the government to account, the policy would have never withstood their scrutiny.
Let me explain.
Water supplies in New Zealand have traditionally been regulated by the Ministry of Health. Their annual water quality audits showed excellent results – as did the regular surveillance reports from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR).
But to create an imperative for reform on the scale Labour needed, a water quality crisis had to be created.
Minister Mahuta did this by resurrecting a report that had been prepared for Helen Clark’s Labour Government in 2006. ESR scientist Andrew Ball had been contracted to provide information on the incidence of endemic waterborne gastro-intestinal disease in New Zealand. While he found no real problem with water quality – “the size of most outbreaks is small, averaging nine cases per outbreak in 2000-2004, and is smaller than any other countries for which data are available” – there was insufficient local data to calculate the incidence of endemic disease.
As a result, Dr Ball used UK statistics to estimate between 18,000 and 34,000 infections a year in New Zealand, but he qualified his findings with a disclaimer: “The reliability of this method is questioned by the author.”
In other words, even he knew these estimates were not accurate.
Unfazed, Minister Mahuta used that old report to claim – as a mantra – that the main reason for the Three Waters reforms was that “At least 34,000 New Zealanders become ill from drinking tap water every year.”
We exposed the Minister’s claims as rubbish, knowing that if 34,000 people each year got sick from drinking tap water, we would all know about it because the issue would never be out of the news headlines.
The recent water contamination problem in Queenstown, where 30 or more people are reported to have become ill from drinking tap water, which dominated the news for days, has demonstrated what a huge lie the Minister’s 34,000 claim has been.
And the point is this – if the media had questioned the Minister about her ridiculous claim instead of regurgitating her lies, the whole senseless Three Waters scheme would never have got off the ground – saving the country billions of dollars that will have been utterly and completely wasted once the scheme is cancelled by the new government.
The Ardern legacy is about to come to an end and a new government will need to set about correcting a multitude of wrongs. But the media should also reflect on the status of its industry and what it needs to do to restore public trust. The damage done is such that restoring their reputation will be no small task.
Predominantly journalists need to go back to their role as neutral observers and reporters of the news. And with regards to contentious issues, they need to return to providing a balance of perspectives so that their audience has reliable information on which to make up their own mind.
In particular, they need to recognise the dreadful division within our country that Labour has created – with their assistance – and they need to help rebuild our society and heal the harm.
In summary, we don’t need the media to advocate political agendas – we have politicians for that. But what we do need is balance and truth in the news. Is that too much to ask?
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