British rock group Alabama 3, famed for the Sopranos theme, performs a concert dedicated to imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange at one minute to midnight GMT, 6:59 pm EST. Watch it here.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/31/watch-new-years-eve-concert-for-julian-assange/

John Pilger, the investigative anti-war journalist who spoke up for China and humiliated the western corporate media, has died—and every single report on this in the western media I have seen has carefully omitted this fact.

Here are ten things he said that the world needs to know about the legendary journalist who died in London on Saturday, at the age of 84.

1) The west demonizes China to punish it for being good at business, Pilger said in a documentary, The Coming War Against China. Standing in modern Shanghai, he says to the camera: “Today, China has matched America at its own great game of capitalism – and that is unforgivable.”

2) After his film was shown in 2016, he said: “The true story of China and America needs to be told, especially in Australia, where, fuelled by America, an anti-China propaganda campaign seems to be inviting a military reaction.”

However, the western corporate media refused to follow his lead, instead choosing to double down on their part in what he saw as a global scam in which the US stirs up conflicts in places such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Seas, while the western media makes sure China is blamed for everything.

3) The Sinophobia of journalists and politicians in the global west was rooted in racism, he said. “The elite salivates for a deeply racist war against China,” he tweeted on a visit to Australia in March, 2023.

LISTEN TO INDEPENDENT VOICES
4) His main message in recent years has been about the importance of people developing scepticism about the narrative that the world is fed, and instead, realise we are being taught to hate the people America wants us to hate.

“The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled,” he told a conference audience in Norway on 6 September, 2022.

Pilger regularly said that it was vital that the world’s public abandoned the western corporate media and turned to the new, small, independent voices rising up, using the internet to tell the truth about the world.

SPEAKING FOR ASSANGE
5) The Australia-born journalist was a major supporter of Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks organization in 2011 revealed a set of diplomatic cable messages which showed that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. While fighting occurred elsewhere in the city, the protesters left the square peacefully, diplomats on site reported to their masters.

Pilger regularly reminded the world how western leaders reacted when Assange revealed a series of important truths that punctured the “official” narrative.

“Vice President Biden called him a ‘hi-tech terrorist’,” Pilger noted. “Hillary Clinton asked, ‘Can’t we just drone this guy?’”

THE ‘BAD CHINA’ TROPE
6) In the 2022 speech, Pilger explained how the real China, an industrious community focused on itself, had been turned by the media into a fantasy-based monster trying to take over the world. “In less than a decade, a ‘good’ China has been airbrushed and a ‘bad’ China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.”

7) He warned that journalists were leaving the most important elements out of their reports about China.

“News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’,” Pilger said.

PERVERSE AND SQUALID
8) The independent Australian journalist railed against the fact that the astonishing story of China’s successful battle to lift its people from extreme poverty was almost never mentioned in the mainstream narrative, a fact that left him disgusted.

“Epic achievements, such as the eradication of abject poverty in China, are barely known. How perverse and squalid this is,” Pilger said in his 2022 speech in Norway.

He told a UK radio interviewer: “Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives.”

DARK NARRATIVE
9) The problem was not just that the media was pushing a false narrative about countries in the east, like China and Russia, but that it was doing so at the behest of the world’s most dangerous nation.

“In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies,” he told a conference audience. “It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.”

And yet the western corporate media still shoehorns every story to reinforce the “west is best” narrative.

RACISM AGAINST THE CHINESE
10) In one of his last major speeches, in Sydney in March 2023, Pilger railed against the ridiculous diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars of Australian public money to the US war machine to protect the country against a non-existing invader. “China as the Yellow Peril fits Australia’s history of racism like a glove,” he said.

True to form, the very western media groups he condemned for leaving out key facts, are this week printing obituaries about his death—and leaving out the very insights that made him respected by the public as a man not afraid to speak truth to power.

John Pilger will be missed. But his mission will be carried on by a thousand independent voices.

https://johnmenadue.com/10-vital-quotes-from-the-late-john-pilger/

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How News Corp used fear, manipulation and division to campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

HOLDING NEWS CORP ACCOUNTABLE TO BUILD A BETTER MEDIA LANDSCAPE

The defeat of the Voice to Parliament was a dark moment in Australian politics.

This loss cannot, of course, be attributed to the actions of News Corp alone. However, given the findings of this report, it also cannot be denied that Australia’s most powerful media company effectively functioned as part of the ‘No’ campaign, playing a significant and singular role.

Under the facade of journalism, News Corp published more opinion that it did factual reporting about the Voice to Parliament. This radical, ideologically-driven commentary amounted to a sustained scare campaign that catalysed and legitimised a range of mis- and disinformation.

Such overt political campaigning during a referendum would be concerning coming from any outlet masquerading as a legitimate news source. However, given News Corp’s unrivalled scale in the Australian media landscape, this behaviour amounts to a violation of our democracy.

No company, even one with an unimpeachable record of balance and adherence to journalistic standards, should own the majority of a country’s media. News Corp has demonstrated time and time again how deeply unfit it is to carry such a heavy responsibility.

The Australian people deserve a diverse, thriving media landscape. We deserve to hear from a plurality of outlets that are committed to and capable of holding our most powerful people and institutions to account.

Our media should celebrate and platform the stories and perspectives of marginalised communities – not vilify and bully those brave enough to advocate for progress.

For as long as News Corp is allowed to continue to dominate our media landscape and operate with political and regulatory impunity, this vision of a thriving media landscape can be little more than a pipedream.

Given the enormous extent of News Corp’s power and political influence, a Murdoch Royal Commission is the clearest path towards repairing Australian media.

A Murdoch Royal Commission would sit independent of government, establishing a crucial degree of protection from News Corp’s well documented bullying and intimidation tactics.

It would also have the power to hold public hearings, summon witnesses under oath, and compel the production of evidence, including corporate documents.

Only an inquiry with such powers and independence from government will be able to hold News Corp accountable and make the recommendations for media reform this country so desperately needs.

The findings of this particular report represent just thirteen weeks of evidence and analysis during this historic referendum. However, News Corp’s machinery operates 365 days a year.

This was not the first time News Corp behaved as a political campaigner and, until we see major media reform, it will not be the last.

It is time for a Murdoch Royal Commission.

You can read the full report here...

https://johnmenadue.com/under-the-facade-of-journalism/

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We have a major problem with the damage that Rupert Murdoch has done to newspapers in Australia, and any self-respecting government should take steps to correct that as soon as possible.

I met Rupert when I was working for Gough Whitlam in Canberra. I got to know the people in the Canberra press gallery well. In the old Parliament House, we were all a closely knit group and a friend of mine, Eric Walsh on the Daily Mirror introduced me to Rupert on a couple of occasions. So, I developed an occasional contact with Rupert at that stage. Later, I decided that I’d spent seven years with Gough, and it was time for a change. Eric asked me whether I was interested in a job in newspapers, and he got in touch with Rupert.

Rupert was always interested in politics from his Oxford days. I secured a job initially as personal secretary to him. It wasn’t really a job of any description. Within about six or eight weeks I became General Manager of The Australian and my career then continued working for Rupert. It was enjoyable. My personal relation with Rupert really ended with the Dismissal. And whilst I’d had that very close relationship with Rupert for about seven years, I haven’t had a relationship with Rupert for 50 years since then. The Dismissal was the breaking point in that relationship because Rupert was a very clear and important player in the dismissal of the government. He was part of the inner circle with Malcolm Fraser in the dismissal and I found that unacceptable. And so, the relationship hasn’t really developed since then. But Rupert, like in most situations and I suppose I’m a bit the same, when you have a break, you don’t go back over old ground. You don’t hold grudges unduly about it. You move on to other things. And that’s what Rupert did and that’s what I did.

I was very impressed with Rupert, as many people were. It was a pleasure working for him for seven years. He even cooked my breakfast and drove me to church.

He was open to new ideas. He moved away from the parochialism of the State broadsheets and tabloid newspapers in launching The Australian national newspaper. I found it quite exciting working for Rupert and of course the support he gave the Labour Party in 1972. That was the topping off point I guess for that relationship. I was very impressed.

But I think it’s tragic the path that Rupert has taken in recent years, having shown so much promise as I saw back then. Rupert has become a great danger to responsible media around the world. But at the time I worked for him, I must say I found it exciting and very encouraging and rewarding.

On 9 November 2023, John spoke with award-winning journalist and author of The Successor, Paddy Manning of Schwartz media for the 6-part podcast series, Rupert Murdoch, the Last Mogul.

We invite you to read the transcript of John’s considered comments on Murdoch, his earlier days, as an employer, his rise in media and his role in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975.

Transcript: John Menadue: Rupert the Last Mogul, the Kingmaker and his King 

Listen to the episode: Rupert the last Mogul: The Kingmaker and his King

https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-on-rupert-murdoch-the-last-mogul/

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If more people watched Pilger’s documentaries and followed his work, we would see more protests outside events like the Reagan library gala, and more shaming of the men and women inside who have so much blood on their hands.

READ MORE: 

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/01/12/in-one-of-last-interviews-john-pilger-calls-for-an-insurrection-of-banned-knowledge/

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