‘Absolute And Arbitrary Power’: Killing Extinction Rebellion And Julian Assange – Scoop.co.nz

Thursday, 10 September 2020, 4:05 pmArticle: Media Lens

Theuse and misuse of George Orwells truth-telling is sowidespread that we can easily miss his intended meaning. Forexample, with perfect (Orwellian) irony, the BBC has astatue of Orwell outside Broadcasting House, bearing the inscription:

Ifliberty means anything at all, it means the right to tellpeople what they do not want tohear.

Fine words, but suitablyambiguous: the BBC might argue that it is merely exercisingits liberty in endlessly channelling the worldview ofpowerful interests crass propaganda that many peoplecertainly do not want to hear.

Orwells realintention is made clearer in this secondcomment:

Journalism is printing whatsomeone else does not want printed: everything else ispublic relations.

In this line attributedto him (although there is some debateabout where it originated), Orwell was talking about power real journalism challenges the powerful. And thisis the essential difference between the vital work ofWikiLeaks and the propaganda role performed bystate-corporate media like the BBC every day on virtuallyevery issue.

On September 6, the Mail on Sunday ran twoeditorials, side by side. The first was titled, Asinister, shameful attack on free speech. It decried theExtinction Rebellion action last Friday to blockadethree newspaper printing presses owned by Rupert MurdochsUK News. The second editorial, as we will see below, was afeeble call not to send Julian Assange to the US, on the eveof his crucial extradition hearing inLondon.

Extinction Rebellions protest, lasting justa few hours, temporarily prevented the distribution ofMurdoch newspapers, such as the Sun and The Times, as wellas other titles printed by Murdochs presses, includingthe Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the DailyTelegraph.

The Mail on Sunday editorial predictablycondemned the protesters supposed attempt atcensorship, declaring it:

athrowback to the very worst years of trade union militancy,which came close to strangling a free press and which wasonly defeated by the determined action of RupertMurdoch.

The paperfumed:

The newspaper blockade was ashameful and dangerous attempt to crush free speech, and itshould never be repeated.

This was thepropaganda message that was repeated across much of themainstream media, epitomised by the emptyrhetoric of Prime Minister Boris Johnson:

Afree press is vital in holding the government and otherpowerful institutions to account on issues critical for thefuture of our country, including the fight against climatechange. It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit thepublics access to news in this way.

Johnsonscomments could have been pure satire penned by Chris Morris,Mark Steel or the late Jeremy Hardy. Closer to the grubbytruth, a different Johnson Samuel describedthe free press as Scribbling on the backs ofadvertisements.

As Media Lens has repeatedlydemonstrated over the past 20 years, it is thestate-corporate media, including BBC News, that hasendlessly limited the publics access to news bydenying the public the full truth about climate breakdown,UK/US warmongering, including wars on Iraq, Afghanistan andLibya, the arming of Saudi Arabia and complicity in thatbrutal regimes destruction of Yemen, UK governmentsupport for the apartheid state of Israel even as it crushesthe Palestinian people, the insidious prising open of theNHS to private interests, and numerous other issues ofpublic importance.

When has the mythical freepress ever fully and properly held to account BorisJohnson or any of his predecessors in 10 Downing Street? Whocan forget that Tony Blair, steeped in the blood of so manyIraqis, is still held in esteem as an elder statesman whoseviews are sought out by mainstream news outlets,including BBC News and the Guardian? As John Pilger saidrecently:

Always contrast JulianAssange with Tony Blair. One will be fighting for his lifein court on 7 Sept for the crime of exposing warcrimes while the other evades justice for the paramountcrime of Iraq.

Health Secretary MattHancock, who has presided over a national public healthdisaster with soaring rates of mortality during thecoronavirus pandemic, had the affront to tweeta photograph of himself with a clutch of right-wing papersunder his arm, declaring:

Totallyoutrageous that Extinction Rebellion are trying to suppressfree speech by blockading newspapers. They must be dealtwith by the full force of the law.

Itis Hancock himself, together with government colleagues andadvisers not least Johnson and his protector, DominicCummings who should be dealt with by the full forceof the law. As Richard Horton, editor of The Lancetmedical journal, saidof Boris Johnson in May:

you droppedthe ball, Prime Minister. That was criminal. And you knowit.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) explainedsuccinctly via Twitter their reason for their totallyoutrageous action:

Dear Newsagents,we are sorry for disruption caused to your business thismorning. Dear Mr. Murdoch, we are absolutely not sorry forcontinuing to disrupt your agenda this morning. @rupertmurdoch#FreeTheTruth#ExtinctionRebellion#TellTheTruth

Anarticleon the XR website, simply titled, We do not have a freepress, said:

We are in an emergencyof unprecedented scale and the papers we have targeted arenot reflecting the scale and urgency of what is happening toour planet.

One of the XR protesterswas Steve, a former journalist for 25 years who hadworked for the Sun, Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The Times.He was filmed on location during the protest. He explainedthat he was participating, in part, because he is worriedabout the lack of a future for his children. And a majorreason for how we got to this point is that journalistsare:

stuck inside a toxic system wherethey dont have any choice but to tell the stories thatthese newspapers want to be told.

Hecontinued:

Every person who works onNews International or a Mail newspaper knows what story isor isnt acceptable for their bosses. And their bossesknow that because they know whats acceptable to Murdochor Rothermere or the other billionaires that run 70 per centof our media.

Steve said he left thatsystem because he couldnt bear the way itworked.

The most recent reportby the independent MediaReform Coalition on UK media ownership, published in2019, revealed the scale of the problem of extremelyconcentrated media ownership. Just three companies Rupert Murdochs News UK, Daily Mail Group and Reach(publisher of the Mirror titles) dominate 83 per centof the national newspaper market (up from 71 per cent in2015). When online readers are included, just five companies News UK, Daily Mail Group, Reach, Guardian and Telegraph dominate nearly 80 per cent of the market.

As wenotedof XRs worthy action:

Before anyonedenounces this as an attack on the free press there is no free press. There is a billionaire-owned,profit-maximising, ad-dependent corporate press that hasknowingly suppressed the truth of climate collapse and theneed for action to protect corporateprofits.

Zarah Sultana, Labour MP forCoventry South, indicatedher support too:

A tiny number ofbillionaires own vast swathes of our press. Their papersrelentlessly campaign for right-wing politics, promoting theinterests of the ruling class and scapegoating minorities. Afree press is vital to democracy, but too much of our pressisnt free at all.

By contrast,Labour leader Keir Starmer once again demonstrated hisestablishment credentials as a safe pair of hands bycondemning XRs protest. Craig Murray commented:

Ata time when the government is mooting designating ExtinctionRebellion as Serious Organised Crime, right wing bequiffedmuppet Keir Starmer was piously condemning the group,stating: The free press is the cornerstone of democracyand we must do all we can to protectit.

Starmer had also commented:

Denyingpeople the chance to read what they choose is wrong and doesnothing to tackle climate change.

Butdenying people the chance to read what they would choose the corporate-unfriendly truth on climate change isexactly what the corporate media, misleadingly termedmainstream media, is all about.

Media activistand lecturer Justin Schlosberg made a number of cogentobservations on press freedom in a Twitter thread(beginning here):

9times out of 10 when people in Britain talk about protectingpress freedom what they really mean is protecting presspower.

He pointed out the giantmyth promulgated by corporate media, forever trying toresist any attempt to curb their power; namelythat:

Britains mainstream [sic]press is a vital pillar of our democracy, covering adiversity of perspectives and upholding professionalstandards of journalismthe reality is closer to the exactinverse of such claims. More than 10 million people votedfor a socialist party at the last election (13 million in2017) and polls have consistently shown that majority ofBritish public opposeausterity.

Schlosbergcontinued:

The diversity of ournational press [ ] covers the political spectrum fromliberal/centre to hard right and has overwhelmingly backedausterity economics for the best part of the last 4decades [moreover] the UK press enjoys an unrivalledinternational reputation for producing a diatribe of fake,racist and misogynistic hate speech over anything that canbe called journalism.

He rightlyconcluded:

ironically one of thegreatest threats to democracy is a press that continues toweave myths in support of its vested interests, and a BBCthat continues to uncritically absorbthem.

Alongside the Mail on Sundaysbillionaire-owned, extremist right-wing attack on climateactivists highlighting a non-existent free press, thepaper had an editorialthat touched briefly on the danger to all journalists shouldWikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange be extradited from theUK to the US:

the charges against MrAssange, using the American Espionage Act, might be usedagainst legitimate journalists in thiscountry.

The implication was thatAssange is not to be regarded as a legitimatejournalist. Indeed, the billionaire Rothermere-ownedviewspaper a more accurate description thannewspaper made clear its antipathy towardshim:

Mr Assanges revelations ofleaked material caused grave embarrassment to Washington andare alleged to have done material damagetoo.

The term embarrassmentrefers to the exposure of US criminal actions threateningthe great rogue states ability to commit similar crimesin future: not embarrassing (Washington is without shame),but potentially limiting.

The Mail on Sundaycontinued:

Mr Assange has been aspectacular nuisance during his time in this country,lawlessly jumping bail and wasting police time by takingrefuge in embassy of Ecuador. The Mail on Sunday disapprovesof much of what he has done, but we must also ask if hiscurrent treatment is fair, right orjust.

The insinuations and subtlesmears embedded in these few lines have been repeatedlydemolished (see this extensive analysis,for example). And there was no mention that Nils Melzer, theUNSpecial Rapporteur on Torture, as well as numerous doctors, healthexperts and humanrights organisations, have strongly condemned the UKsappalling abuse of Assange and demanded his immediaterelease.

Melzer has accusedthe British government of torturingAssange:

the primary purpose of tortureis not necessarily interrogation, but very often torture isused to intimidate others, as a show to the public whathappens if you dont comply with the government. That isthe purpose of what has been done to Julian Assange. It isnot to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do soin broad daylight, making visible to the entire world thatthose who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longerenjoy the protection of the law, but essentially will beannihilated. It is a show of absolute and arbitrarypower.

Melzer also spoke about theprice he will pay for challenging thepowerful:

I am under no illusions thatmy UN career is probably over. Having openly confronted twoP5-States (UN security council members) the way I have, I amvery unlikely to be approved by them for another high-levelposition. I have been told, that my uncompromisingengagement in this case comes at a politicalprice.

This is the reality of theincreasingly authoritarian world we are living in.

Theweak defence of Assange now being seen in even right-wingmedia, such as the Mail on Sunday, indicates a real fearthat any journalist could in future be targeted bythe US government for publishing material that might angerWashington.

In an interviewthis week, Barry Pollack, Julian Assanges US lawyer,warned of the very dangerous precedent that could beset in motion with Assanges extradition to theUS:

The position that the U.S. istaking is a very dangerous one. The position the U.S. istaking is that they have jurisdiction all over the world andcan pursue criminal charges against any journalist anywhereon the planet, whether theyre a U.S. citizen or not. Butif theyre not a U.S. citizen, not only can the U.S.pursue charges against them but that person has no defenseunder the First Amendment.

In starkcontrast to the weak protestations of the Mail on Sunday andthe rest of the establishment media, Noam Chomsky pointedout the simple truth in a recent interviewon RT (note the dearth of Chomsky interviews on BBC News,and consider why his views are not soughtafter):

Julian Assange committed thecrime of letting the general population know things thatthey have a right to know and that powerful states dontwant them to know.

Likewise, JohnPilger issueda strong warning:

This week, one of themost important struggles for freedom in my lifetime nearsits end. Julian Assange who exposed the crimes of greatpower faces burial alive in Trumps America unless he winshis extradition case. Whose side are youon?

Pilger recommended an excellent in-depthpiece by Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian/Observerjournalist, in which Cook observed:

Foryears, journalists cheered Assanges abuse. Now theyvepaved his path to a US gulag.

PeterOborne is a rare example of a right-leaning journalist whohas spoken out strongly in defence of Assange. Oborne wrotelast week in Press Gazettethat:

Future generations of journalistswill not forgive us if we do not fightextradition.

He set out the followingscenario:

Lets imagine a foreigndissident was being held in Londons Belmarsh Prisoncharged with supposed espionage offences by the Chineseauthorities.

And that his real offence wasrevealing crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party including publishing video footage of atrocities carriedout by Chinese troops.

To put it another way, thathis real offence was committing the crime ofjournalism.

Let us further suppose the UN SpecialRapporteur on Torture said this dissident showed all thesymptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychologicaltorture and that the Chinese were putting pressure on theUK authorities to extradite this individual where he couldface up to 175 years in prison.

The outrage fromthe British press would bedeafening.

Obornecontinued:

There is one crucialdifference. It is the US trying to extradite the co-founderof Wikileaks.

Yet there has been scarcely a word inthe mainstream British media in hisdefence.

In fact, as we haverepeatedly highlighted,Assange has been the subject of a propagandablitz by the UK media, attackingand smearinghim, over and over again, often in the pages of theliberal Guardian.

At the time of writing,neither ITV political editor Robert Peston nor BBCNews political editor LauraKuenssberg appear to have reported the Assangeextradition case. They have not even tweeted about it once,even though they are both very active on Twitter. In fact,the last time Peston so much as mentioned Assange on hisTwitter feed was 2017.Kuenssbergs record is even worse; her Twitter silenceextends all the way back to 2014.These high-profile journalists are supposedly primeexemplars of the very best high-quality UK newsbroadcasters, maintaining the values of a free press,holding politicians to account and keeping the publicinformed.

On September 7, John Pilger gave an addressoutside the Old Bailey in London, just before JulianAssanges extradition hearing began there. His words werea powerful rebuke to those so-called journalists thathave maintained a cowardly silence, or worse. Theofficial truth-tellers of the media thestenographers who collaborate with those in power, helpingto sell their wars are, Pilger says, Vichyjournalists.

He continued:

Itis said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the nextthree weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of thepress in the West. But which press? The Guardian? TheBBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos WashingtonPost?

No, the journalists in theseorganizations can breathe freely. The Judases on theGuardian who flirted with Julian, exploited hislandmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, havenothing to fear. They are safe because they areneeded.

Freedom of the press now rests with thehonorable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on theinternet who belong to no club, who are neither rich norladen with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient,moral journalism those like JulianAssange.

DC &DE

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