Glenn Beck is a smug, smooth-talking, conformist lackey of the super-rich, posing as a ‘man of the people’, original thinker and populist philospher.

Championed in recent times by Rupert Murdoch’s odious Fox News US TV network, Glenn’s ego has now become a global phenomenon.

Last week-end, he strutted improbably at a August 28th Lincoln Memorial rally as a leader walking in the shoes of Martin Luther King – a false messiah preaching to the seriously deluded.

The bizarre story was reported as far away as wintry Australia.

Unfortunately, like most shock-jocks, Glenn has a past. People keep tapes.

This one is a beauty…

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Appearing on the ABC‘s popular TV political chat show Q&A on August 30th 2010, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser dropped a minor bombshell.

80-year old Fraser was head of the Liberal-National Coalition Government between 1975 and 1983. Deeply unpopular on the Australian left back in the 1970s – especially following the controversial sacking of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975 by Australia’s Governor General – Fraser has none the less emerged in later life as an elder statesman of quality.

Like Ted Heath in Britain before him, Fraser watched the centre-right party he once led moving much further to the right in the quarter century following his departure.  Like Heath, Fraser has been outspoken in his criticism. This independent stance has made the right-wing of Australian politics nervous, but his genuine liberalism strikes a deep popular chord.

Last night, 49 minutes into the show, Fraser was posed a hostile, partisan question by a young Liberal supporter in the audience.

Fraser gave a rather thoughtful response:

“There is certainly a great yearning amongst both parties for a different approach, a broader approach, one which has some vision for the future of Australia and one which really tackles difficult issues and and is prepared to explain those issues, and not respond to focus groups or today’s polls or to pressure from News Corporation.”

The elderly ex-politician paused. There was a momentary and rather embarrassed silence, followed by a few titters.

Imagine there’s no News Corp
It’s easy if you try
No Times to screw us
No lousy Sun or Sky
Imagine all the media
Caring for the truth

Imagine there’s no Fox News
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no Australian too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

_____

___

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Even in the ill-informed western world, we don’t have to get all our news through the distorting prism of Zionist bias.

But it does take a little effort to get a more complete and accurate view of the world.

Reviewing the western mass media’s reportage of the globally-publicized spike of ‘Islamophobia’ currently surging through the USA, one encounters various flavours of opinion.

They range from well-intentioned bleating about the need to protect the rights of innocent Moslems – to the most extraordinary, extremist vilification of Islam and its adherents. A wide range of views are given expression… in true democratic style.

Well, almost all views. Absent is the analysis of authentic anti-Zionist commentators.

You won’t, for instance, hear Mark Glenn interviewed by the mainstream western media anytime soon. His message jars.

Heretically, he suggests Islamophobia is a deliberately manufactured phenomenon.

Mark believes it’s the product of some very illiberal and sectarian forces, but not Christian or ‘western’ interests in any meaningful sense.

On the contrary, he sees Islmophobia as the handiwork of Zionists, working to advance the interests of an expansionist State of Israel.

It would be nice if the western media allowed such opinions free expression. On the other hand, one can understand why they don’t. A marketeer doesn’t promote alternative brands.

Fortunately, the Iranian media doesn’t suffer such strict censorship.

Even though Mr Glenn’s views irritate the western plutocracy, Iran’s English-language news service Press TV featured him quite recently.

It takes a lot to silence the Israel Lobby, but a well-chosen question can do the trick.

Al Jazeera should be complemented on assigning independently-minded journalist Clayton Swisher to cover the recent AIPAC Policy Conference. Nice work all round.

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The relationship between the journalistic profession and the elusive but still attractive ideal of ‘democracy’ is problematic.

As long as we live in societies with a vast disparity in wealth, journalists will tend to reflect the interests of the few who are wealthy rather than the many who are not. Someone has to pay their wages, after all.

Partly in recognition of this, public broadcasters were established in countries such as Australia, Britain and the USA. But they have been prone to infiltration, subvertion, intimidation and general complacent lethargy.

Then there’s the small but significant ‘independent’ media. In Australia, it has occasionally shown the gumption to cover stories that the corporate mainstream media and largely-tamed ABC and SBS won’t touch. But undoubtedly independent media cop pressure too from powerful vested interests – and it has to pay its own bills.

Al of which is a preamble to introducing a must-read article by Antony Lowenstein, published in the popular independent Australian blog Crikey.com two days ago… but seen so far by all too few, because it’s behind Crikey’s paywall (paid subscribers only).

In my view, this is the most significant article of the entire election campaign.

It should be headine news – and it would be headine news in a real democracy with a genuine free press. Instead of that, the most effective manipulators of the Australian body politic look like they’ll make it home again, with only a handful of grumblers wise to their shenannigans.

Today, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launches a 24 x 7 dedicated news channel six years after the ABC launched a 24-hour radio news channel.

I have mixed feelings about the new round-the-clock TV news service.

On the one hand, at least News Corp’s Sky News won’t have a complete monopoly over 24×7 Australian TV news from today. That’s a positive.

On the other hand, we shall presumably be delivered another flavour of round-the-clock Zionist-lite news coverage – in this case entirely at the public’s expense. That’s a negative.

It’s not as though we don’t know what that perspective is already. We already have it rammed down our throats on every other available radio and TV channel.

There’s a ratio I keep a eye on, which I call the Is:Ir ratio. That’s the number of times a news organisation interviews a representative of the Israeli Government, compared with the number of times a representative of the Iranian Government is interviewed.

In the case of ABC-1, I estimate the ratio to be in the order of 100:1. To be blunt, I can’t remember the last time an Iranian Government representative was interviewed by the ABC.

That, of course, is consistent with the Zionist push to demonize Iran and start YET ANOTHER war in the middle east against a country that stands up to the war-crazy Israeli regime.

More durable than Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch was always much more than a purveyor of smutty sensationalism as suggested in this 1970 Private Eye Front Cover.

For more than four decades, Murdoch has been the man at the helm (although perhaps not the ultimate controller?) of a mushrooming media and entertainment empire.

Over the years, The Empire has peddled war, paranoia, pro-Israel spin and lies about mass murder.

Way beyond a joke, when you think about it.

 

 

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Apparently British Prime Minister David Cameron thinks Afghanistan is the leading center for cutting-edge nanotechnologyR&D.

In the audio tape below, Cameron says: “on 9-11 when the twin towers were Blown up”

A slip of the tongue, no doubt.

Nothing to see here… move along.

Here’s the quote in full:

“This is not a war of choice, it is a war of necessity. This is not a war of occupation, it’s a war of obligation. On 9-11 when the twin towers were blown up and so many British people died as well as Americans, almost every single person that took part in that attack was trained here in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda. That’s why we came here. That’s why we cleared away those training camps. If we left tomorrow, those training camps could come back tomorrow, because the Afghans aren’t ready to look after their own security. As soon as they are ready, we can go home.”

Kipling put it succintly, nearly a century ago:

“If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied…”

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After last week, you may be thinking that the Israeli regime are a bunch of arrogant, murdering, maiming, lying shysters.

Sad to say, you’d be right.

But what you may have missed is their sense of humour. Netanyahu – and all the junior yahoos who steer the nuclear-armed Israeli Ship of Rogues – aren’t just surly war criminals. They like a laugh too.

I just spotted this mind-numbing tale, contributed by Ayman Mohyeldin, on the Al Jazeera website: Israeli government’s media madness

It’s short – and I trust acceptable to quote in entirety [emphasis added]:

For weeks the Israeli government has bombarded journalists with statements, press releases and videos - all professing that Gaza is not suffering a humanitarian crisis, there is no shortage of goods entering the Strip and even mocking the suffering of people in Gaza by recommending restaurants to visit in the coastal territory.

It also went so far as to claim those on board the Freedom Flotilla had links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. They showed us edited video clips of military footage supporting their version of events as to what happened onboard the Mavi Marmara – reports that are now widely discredited by eyewitness accounts.

That is the Israeli narrative of events and it is certainly within their rights to espouse it.