Time to let go of the Ring of Power!

From time to time on this blog I’ve covered the topic of the overseas polices of the Australian Greens – in an attempt to blow the whistle on polices I’ve seen as more and more at odds with Greens’ principles.

My efforts go back a few years now and I probably need to face reality: they’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Should I just shut up and forget about The Greens? Perhaps. Should I roll over and accept that Bob knows best? That at least is not an option. It might be nice to rejoin the fold, but I KNOW it would be based on a lie. Bob does not know best; he’s making a real hash of foreign policy.

Not ready yet to leave The Greens in peace to support war, this is my best attempt to portray graphically what’s most fundamentally wrong with decision-making in the Australian Greens on foreign policy issues. If it isn’t dominated to a most unhealthy degree by Bob Brown and a few close (and nameless) advisers, The Greens do a great job faking it.

Bob Brown’s expertise in foreign affairs doesn’t seem substantial to me. That’s a factual observation – not a judgment. The Senator has been an effective advocate in many other policy areas and his role in building The Greens in Australia already assures him a place in history. No-one can know everything.

Yet Bob Brown hogs the Foreign Affairs, Defense & National Security portfolios within the Greens and has done so for years, although (Burma, East Timor & West Papua have been spared Brown’s incompetence in the latest allocation of responsibilities – lucky for them!). It’s a real shame for most of the world, because these days whenever Bob says anything about somewhere overseas he’s rarely mentioned before (Libya and Syria spring to mind), it makes me feel like wincing. I can almost guarantee – even before I’ve heard his words – that he’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick and is poking it in the wrong direction.

Under his dismal mismanagement, the Party with an exemplary Charter that advocates non-violent conflict resolution, self-determination and grass roots democracy has morphed into a routine supporter of NATO military intervention and the crude imposition of forced ‘solutions’ on nations that were actually managing OK beforehand – and certainly gain nothing from bombing, infiltration by western spooks and all the rest of it. Oh – and I nearly forgot to mention, these weird neo-imperialist polices are issued like edicts by Bob and one or two other equally imperious Parliamentary “leaders”, without any regard to opposition from rank and file Greens members or (what remains of) Australia’s peace movement. So that’s “Grass Roots Democracy” Bob? Pull the other leg!

Under Bob Brown, the Australian Greens took almost a month, after the Israelis began savaging Gaza from air, sea and land back in 2008/9, before any of them said a word about it in public. When Bob’s statement came it was wishy-washy in the extreme.

It’s true the Greens now oppose Australia’s troops fighting in Afghanistan – but even there the record is blemished. As recently as 2007 Brown was criticising the USA for not putting more of its war offort into Afghanistan!

In the case of Libya last year, Bob Brown & co led the Greens into uncritical support for UN “intervention” – a euphemism for massive and sustained NATO aerial bombing over many months, funding and training of “rebels” with very dubious backgrounds and motivations, injecting special forces into the mix and actively formenting civil war that continues to this day.

After half a year of one-sided brutality, NATO’s bombing spree culminated in the destruction of both government and governance in a nation that prior to “humanitarian intervention” had achieved the highest UNDP Human Development Index rank in Africa and proudly boasted the continent’s highest life expectancy & lowest infant mortality.

Libya was a nation that,a year ago, had hundreds of billions of cash reserves, close to double digit economic growth, highly ambitious infrastructure projects and free public healthcare and education. It was noted for women’s rights. It had helped fund projects in Africa as a whole that had helped transform the life of hundreds of millions.

All this apparently didn’t impress Bob (if he was even aware of it – one can’t be sure because he never responded on these points to critics and needless to say the media never asked him to). Bob  knew best what was best for the Libyan people and rushed to join the pack of mainstream media and conformist politicians, as soon nas well-crafted zionist propaganda painted Ghadaffi as the devil incarnate and a gaggle of instant Libya experts, purportedly motivated by (one-off) concern for the well-being of Libyans appeared on the scense, shrieking in outrage about alleged Libyan Government atrocities that have since been exposed as falsifications.

After “humanitarian intervention” morphed into hell on earth, and a Libya “No Fly Zone” turned into 8,000+ bombing sorties entailing tens of thouands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of refugees and the ruination of a nation – I naively hoped Bob Brown & his advisers might at least realise they’d been fooled. Bob Brown’s lack of public contrition, I assumed, was the result of embarrassment.

But no, Senator Brown is now onto the Syria Crusade in much the same way – again backing the wrong horse, demanding the demise of one of the last remaining secular and pluralistic states in that region, on the say so (presumably) of the same knaves and charlatans who sold him the utterly disastrous Libya “intervention” a year ago. He made his first statement about Syria last July, hours after the zionist commentator Ted Lapkin goaded him in the media. Then a long silence… until last week, when Bob tried to upstage the Gillard Government in his passion for “regime change” in Syria by suggesting it’s time to close the Syrian Embassy in Canberra.

It’s even possible I played some small and inadvertant part in this latest debacle. Last week, I tweeted Brown regularly on the topic of Syria – mainly to beg him to raise questions in Parliament about the trashing of the Syrian Embassy in Canberra on February 4th, in which some 40 thugs invaded the Embassy, terrorised staff, vandalized the place then vanished. Australia’s burgeoning “Counter-Terrorism” forces (another charade?) have apparently been unable to find any of the culprits since. A day or so later, a Syrian man was shot three times in the legs by two armed assailants in Punchbowl, Sydney; he was shot on his doorstep and may be permanently crippled as a result. As he happened to be pro-Assad, the media showed little interest – and none at in recent days. I asked Bob Brown to take up both matters in the Senate. I received no reply to any of my requests, as usual – but perhaps Brown’s statement that the pesky Embassy should probably be closed was my answer.?

Under Bob Brown’s leadership, the zionist bias of the Greens has arguably become worse than that of the Australian Government itself – mirroring the disgusting pro-war, pro-Israel role played by Euro-Green zionists in countries like Germany. On the issue of whether or not to break diplomatic ties with Syria, Brown’s position approaches the one-sided mania of the fanatical zionist Labor MP for Melbourne, Michael Danby.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so very sad. But it’s worse than sad, it’s dangerous. Once Bob Brown issue a statement on foreign policy, the Greens’ loyalty syndrome kick. Once he passes judgment on who should be in power in Libya, Syria etc, few Greens are willing ro speak openly in favour of alternative approaches. Thus it is that a peace movement that’s already weak in this country is effectively throttled inside Parliament – silencing even the handful of politicans who were, in part, put there by activists who care passionately about peace and international justice.

It’s time Bob Brown hands on The Ring of Foreign Policy to safer hands within the Party.

The way things are heading now, The Greens should be challenged at the next Federal election by politicans and parties who WILL speak out loud and clear for PEACE and against this sordid revival of imperialism. Unless they change course fast, the Australian Greens need to be opposed by candidates who, not to put too fine a point on it, are sufficiently savvy about zionism to have graduated from wearing short pants. In the Senate contest there may well be a significant vote for outspoken peace candidates. At the very least, this would force the Greens to justify their own polices in open debate.

In this year, 2012, with the drums of war beating along the Road to Damascus and beyond – beating as loud as at any time over the last 50 years – we need articulate peace advocates in Australia like never before.

Sane, moral and courageous international policy is too precious to be one man’s personal possession.

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It takes about ten minutes to see through the lies and nonsense perpetrated during last year’s furore for “regime change” regarding Libya.

Have Bob Brown and his mysterious foreign policy advisers ever taken that time to understand the lies they helped to spread about a formerly prosperous nation that had done Australia no harm?

Who knows? They probably just rely on advice from a chosen few, such as “Amnesia International” (watch the vid!) and the creepy zionist Euro-Green Franziska Brantner whose named was sometimes mentioned in a reverential tone on the rare occasions critics were able to get anything resembling an answer from Greens HQ apologists for Bob Brown’s Libya policy.

More must-see videos at TheHumanitarianWar.com

On Monday evening (16th May), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch covered the story about Syria which I’d mentioned on this blog a few days ago: ABC uses bogus video to attack image of Syrian government

The MediaWatch transcript is here.

Thanks to MW Presenter Johnathon Holmes’ reporting (assuming the accuracy of his report), we now know much more about this story than I did last week.

It turns out the ‘misidentified’ video footage was initially sent out by Reuters. Presumably, therefore, the story went worldwide. Within Australia, in addition to the online news report that I’d seen, this phoney tale of atrocities by Syrian ‘security’ ran as a news report on both ABC and SBS television on 8th May.

Mr Holmes also informed viewers that Reuters sent out a blunt, capitalized retraction on the same day that it issued the misleadingly captioned video footage:

EDITORS PLEASE NOTE : REUTERS IS WITHDRAWING THIS VIDEO AS WE HAVE NOW ESTABLISHED THAT IT IS FILE FOOTAGE FROM LEBANON IN 2008, NOT SYRIA AS ORIGINALLY THOUGHT. PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES — Reuters, 8th May 2011.

MediaWatch noted this retraction was ‘missed’ by ABC staff .  Mr Homes made much of the fact that the ABC didn’t make early use of the services of its staffer Jess Hill, who also featured in my earlier article. But that seems to me rather beside the point. Jess did a fine job tweeting for an answer – that’s true. In other words, when someone at the ABC actually inquired “is this story bogus?”, the answer came back fast. Maybe she could have helped out earlier. But I think more significant issues arise:

1. The first is for Reuters. Which staff member/s issued the bogus story that cast such an unpleasant light on the Syrian Government? Why do they do it? They should be disciplined; should they be fired?  Mr Holmes waxed lyrical about how Reuters is a ‘trusted source’. Many of us don’t share his generous-hearted faith. It seems to me Reuters should be trusted as far as it’s seen to provide honest, balanced reporting – and follow due process when things go awry. No more, no less.
2. Other than the Media Watch report itself,  what steps have the ABC (and SBS) taken to inform their viewers that the shockingly biased story they ran on TV and the web was bogus?
3. Why did the Reuters retraction go unnoticed in the ABC. Why wasn’t it relayed promptly to staff managing the ABC website?

Mea culpa by Gaven Morris. So hard to know who to trust these days..

It’s certainly a positive that MediaWatch covered this story.

Congratulations to the observent anonymous tipster who initially spotted the suspicious footage – and to Johnathan Holmes for following up on the tip and ferreting around for the truth (it was presumably his inquiry that triggered the tweet by Jess Hill which I happened to stumble across via Twitter last week).

On the other hand, quite predictably, the MediaWatch story didn’t countenance the possibility of systemic, deeply-entrenched bias within the ABC organization as a whole (along with similar bias throughout the rest of the western mainstream media). In my view, that remains the big story. It’s the story that, in effect, MediaWatch tries to bury a little deeper..

In the case of Syria and Libya this year, this bias has led the western media to systematically misreport events in those countries, telling only one side of the story while ignoring or lampooning the other. The bias is egregious, blatant – and highly offensive to those of us seeking peaceful outcomes.  Yet MediaWatch gives the impression this particular incident was just a rare anomaly – an unusual chapter of accidents.

If  ’Accident Theory’ is to be believed, it strikes me as odd that that reports in the western mass media never ‘accidentally’ put a positive slant on the current governments of Syria and Libya. Media accidents all seem to come up heads, every single time. Funny that.

The ABC is so biased it appears not to bother to talk with people who don’t share its pre-spun version of events.

As far as I’m aware the ABC hasn’t interviewed a single pro-Gaddafi Libyan in all the time bombing has been underway (bombing that’s been carried out with Australian connivance, if not our direct involvement). I accept that such an interview may have occurred and gone to air.With luck, someone will dig an example out of the ABC archives. I hope so. But I haven’t noticed one – and I follow ABC news regularly. Nor did a quick Google search turn up an instance within the ABC website. By contrast, the same public news service has treated its audience to an incessant torrent of sound bites from Libyan ‘rebels’ and their spokespeople, always neatly packaged into one-sided stories that paint the ‘rebels’ as heroes’ and Gaddafi as the latest manifestation of Orwell’s Emanuel Goldstein.

Johnathan Holmes suggested that operatives like Jess Hill are a solution to making ABC news more reliable. I find that rather laughable. As far as I can see, Jess is very much part of the problem of the ABC’s entrenched cultural and political bias.

Because Jess Hill does at least some of her networking using the public social medium Twitter, it’s possible for outsiders like me to get an idea who she networks with and what they chat about. Reviewing several days of Jess Hill’ Twitter exchanges, I notice that when Syria is the topic of discussion, her networking seems to be almost exclusively with like-minded people in the media and anti-Government ‘tweeps’. It’s the same with Libya; Jess may do some networking with Gaddafi supporters – but I can see precious little evidence of it. Jess might respond that’s because there are no independent Gaddafi or Assad supporters – but I know that’s not the case.

Stop Bombing Libya! (plenty of info western media can't be bothered to cover)

Independent tweeters from Libya and Syria who oppose external intervention and are broadly supportive of their current governments may not match the numbers and have the abrasive English-language ‘social media skills’ of western-backed ‘tweeps’. However, I suspect they’re actually more representative of their societies as a whole than the twitaholics who chat with Jess.

The existence of that contrary opinion is the story the ABC prefers not to investigate – presumably because it doesn’t suit the war agenda it supports. Jess Hill, it seems to me, would be the last person to break that story. I doubt even the suave Mr Holmes would go near it. It’s not where the jam is.

Along with Reuters, the BBC and all the rest of the Zionist-dominated media in the ‘western world’, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation prefers to exclude from consideration the possibility that there’s another, very plausible narrative about current events in Libya and Syria – another side to the story. Instead it paints these conflicts as black and white – human rights v repression, democracy v tyranny – despite copious evidence to the contrary.

That’s not journalism. It’s propaganda.

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Australia’s ABC’s relationship with the British BBC is often akin to a diminutive sibling’s hero worship of big brother. The technical term for this is ‘cultural cringe’. CC has long been part of the Australian psyche and as far as I can see, it’s alive and well in our public broadcaster to this day.

Yet even where the BBC does shine an occasional light, the ABC seems reluctant to follow. In the case of Libya it would not go amiss if the ABC copied the BBC and actually interviewed a representative of the Libyan Government – at least once. I don’t mean quoting a few sentences – embedded in a report that’s generally hostile such as this Lateline story in late April. I mean a real interview.

The BBC did interview Moussa Ibrahim recently. HardTalk’s Stephen Sackur followed his usual practice of shouting down his guest (Sackur seems particularly rude to African interviewees, treating them with the practiced contempt of a senior Eton schoolboy for his fag). Even so, the articulate and spirited Mr Ibrahim managed to get a few good points across.

Watch the interview yourself and make up your own mind. It’s part of the story of what’s going on in the middle east and north Africa that ‘your’ ABC isn’t telling. Perhaps its management thinks the public is better off hearing only one side of the story – not only about 9-11, but also Libya and Syria?

Yet many Australians do prefer to make up our own minds. A growing number of us are also weary of paying the wages of disinformationalists, who make it harder – not easier – for the rest of us to find out what’s really happening regarding matters as significant as war and peace.

Moussa Ibrahim on HardTalk (Part 1)

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Moussa Ibrahim on HardTalk (Part 2)

On the subject of Syria, anyone wishing to broaden their view beyond the ABC’s blinkered horizons could do worse than read Professor Michel Chossudovsky’s recent article SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention

Professor Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization is an informed commentator on international affairs with very different views about the middle east than the standard fare served up by media-promoted neocons and ‘liberal interventionists’.  By ‘accident’, he also never seems to appear on Australian TV screens.

Today I happened to be on Twitter, approximately mid-day Australian time, when a tweet caught my eye.

Jess Hill

I’ve been following @jessradio for some weeks. Her full name is apparently Jess Hill, an ABC journalist who’s been tweeting prolifically about north Africa and the middle east.

This morning she tweeted an appeal for someone to check out video footage and provided a link to a page on the ABC wesbite entitled Syrian protesters beaten by security (the link is now dead)

She sent her message directed to ‘Syrian tweeps’.

I can’t show you the exact tweet, because Jess seems to have since deleted it for reasons best known to herself (but which may become more apparent).

Dialogue between @jessradio and TrellaB

She received a reply from someone in Lebanon called TrellaB, who seems to fit the bill of a ‘Syrian tweep’.

I clicked on the link in @jessradio’s tweet. It took me to the page on the ABC website displayed below.

The ‘story’ is mostly a video which the ABC says “cannot be independently verified”.

I’ve screen-captured one scene from the video displayed on the ABC web page .  The video itself was accompanied by the following, rather minimal text:

Headline: Syrian protesters beaten by security

Source: ABC News
Published: Sunday, May 8, 2011 9:44 AEST
Expires: Saturday, August 6, 2011 9:44 AEST

Caption: Amateur video, which cannot be independently verified, shows heavily-armed Syrian security beating anti-government protesters.

ABC's alleged Syrian atrocity story

The next thing I did was check the link kindly tweeted to Jess by her friend Imad Bazzi (@TrellaLB) in Lebanon.

This took me to a YouTube video entitled Hezbollah VS 14 azar : 7 ayar. It’s a few years old and is of Lebanese origins. Clearly this is the same footage shown in the horrifying story on  the ABC story.

I reproduce one screen-shot from the YouTube video to make the point. It’s clearly the same scene as above.

Video of atrocity in Lebanon a few years ago

To summarize, the ABC website – website of the publicly-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation which fondly cultivates a reputation for objectivity and accuracy in news reporting – has been running a video as a news item for several days purporting to depict recent brutality by Syrian Government forces, when in fact it’s old footage from a different country!

I tweeted Jess in some anger about this – as well as the Managing Director of the ABC. Jess at least had the decency to reply. Here’s what she said in reply:

“I’d say it’s not dishonesty as much as carelessness. Reminds everyone the importance of verifying”

Well, I’m sorry Jess, but I cannot see that. The story in question was a targeted hit-piece on Syria. It deceptively portrayed video images of Syrian “security”, using material that had nothing to do with Syria.

That’s no accident. It’s deliberate deception. ‘Accidents’ like that simply do not happen through ‘carelessness’. Please don’t insult the intelligence of ABC viewers.

Stop Bombing Libya!

Whoever was responsible for this psy-op should be subject to disciplinary action and show good reason why they shouldn’t be fired. If the order to run the story emanated from the top, heads should roll at the top of the ABC.

Secondly, as this video was running for days (before it was taken down within an hour of my Twitter exchanges) a prominent retraction should be posted on the ABC website front page explaining and apologizing for the mistake.

The public deserves better than a publicly-funded broadcaster that lies for a partisan agenda.

Will Media Watch run this story or has it become tamed and corrupted too?

Go ahead ABC… surprise me!

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UPDATE (7pm Thursday 12th May)

Since publishing the above article a few hours ago and promoting it via Twitter, I’ve had a bit of feedback.

Julie Possetti and Syd Walker Twitter exchange

Fellow independent activists have re-tweeted the story – many thanks!

Australian media analyst and academic Juli Posetti (of Twitdef fame) contacted me to say that she didn;t think I don’t think it was “a case of dishonest or propaganda but a consequence of new models of publication/verification“.

That led to a brief exchange of messages on Twitter (see right). To say the least, I’m not convinced by Julie’s suggestion.

Jonathan Holmes of Media Watch also sent me a private message on Twitter. It’s reproduced below.

Johnathan seems to imply journalism is best left to the pros who really know what they’re doing. Suits, like him, in other words.

If only he was right. I wish…

Anyhow, as Johnathan may have spare time on his hands this week (now his brilliant scoop has been tarnished by my clumsy meddling), perhaps he’ll be open to an idea from the great unwashed for a special Media Watch project?

I suggest he looks at this, this and this – and reports on Media Watch next week, for the first time in a  decade, how the story of the decade has been avoided by the ABC… for a decade.

Media Watch indeed!

How silly does the ABC think their viewers are?

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Syria atrocity map

UPDATE TWO (8pm Thursday 12th May)

In my earlier update I forgot to mention Jess Hill, the ‘journalist’ whose tweet started off this little tale of deception, cover-up, pomposity and general spookery.

Jess seems to have recovered from external irritants and is tweeting away still, networking with fellow ‘journalists’ and ‘independent bloggers’ in the middle east or thereabouts.

Here’s what she had to say an hour or so ago about a shocking map of absolutely horrific things that have been happening in Syria.

I tweeted an irreverent reply. So far I haven’t heard back

Twitter exchange with Jess Hill

“From a report in today’s Independent: Mossad boss heads for exit after Dubai murder fallout

Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, could step down in three months after the country’s Prime Minister refused to extend his term, a television channel has claimed.

The unconfirmed reports will prompt speculation that Mr Dagan, 65, is being ousted over a botched operation in January to kill a Hamas operative in Dubai that led to a diplomatic backlash from some of Israel’s closest allies.

Meir Dagan, Mossad boss. Employed to 'notch' murders, not to botch them

This is sad news indeed. One hates to hear of anyone losing their job, especially so close to retirement age.

Apparently the Israeli leadership”s concern was not that Dagan orchestrated murders. That was his job. The problem was he botched it.

The Dubai murder-debacle, which led to a souring of relations even with the usually supine Irish, British and Australian Governments, was ‘the final straw’.

Even so, the story reports that Dagan wasn’t a total failure:

Under his watch, Mossad is believed to have notched up a series of hits, including the assassinations of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus and Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman, a senior figure in Syrian intelligence.

“Notched up a series of hits”?!

The biggest problem illustrated by this story, to my mind, is cynicism itself. It’s bad enough that utter maniacs are at the helm of a nuclear-armed, psychopathic Apartheid-type State. But what has happened to western journalism, and indeed to the entire western Enlightenment tradition, when the murderous goings-on of these people are reported – and eventually come to be regarded – as normal?

To be fair, The Independent is by no means the worst offender here. It’s one of the more enlightened western mainstream newspapers.

For shameless, in-your-face pro-Zionist/terrorist bias, it’s hard to beat the New York Times, whose reporter Deborah Solomon recently interviewed Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

Tzipi Livni, daughter of romantic terrorists

Asked about her parents, Livni was frank: “Both of them were in the Irgun,” Livni said. “They were freedom fighters, and they met while boarding a British train. When the British Mandate was here, they robbed a train to get the money in order to buy weapons.”

To this interesting admission that her interviewee was the daughter of anti-British terrorists, Solomon responded “It was a more romantic era”.

At least two national leaders have a clue. Meeting in Caracas, Presidents Chavez of Venezuela and President Assad of Syria discussed Israel:

Someday the genocidal state of Israel will be put in its place, in the proper place and hopefully a real democratic state will be born,” Mr Chavez said…. Mr Assad called Israel a state “based on crime, slaughter.”