‘Improve world order, kill an American today’ – www.theage.com.au

Wow. Big news day today. This must be a record for posts in one day.

Kerry blames Bush for ‘world animosity’ – World – www.theage.com.au: “An anti-American slogan on a boat in Australia has caused a stir in the US election campaign.

Presidential candidate John Kerry, on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, said today the United States had not been such a target of world animosity since the Vietnam War era.

Kerry was responding to a questioner who asked how he would heal division around the world.

The woman said she had just flown back from Australia where she had seen a sign on a boat that said: ‘Improve world order, kill an American today’.

The comment generated a lengthy, heated discussion of US foreign policy.”

Control Room – FilmReviews – www.smh.com.au

Control Room – FilmReviews – www.smh.com.au: “CONTROL ROOM
Directed by Jehane Noujaim”

The US media could learn from al-Jazeera – www.theage.com.au

The US media could learn from al-Jazeera – www.theage.com.au: “Maybe President Bush should ask al-Jazeera for some advice on how to introduce some of its BBC-based journalistic values into the American popular media “

Why can’t Arabs understand it’s all part of the show?

The Australian: Why can’t Arabs understand it’s all part of the show? [June 30, 2004].

Emma Tom, who appears on Sunrise, the channel 7 breakfast show once a week, and who is a bit if a dag writes this cute satire, which is very unusual for an Aussie as satire normally whizzes over the head of the average aussie.

“DEAR Al-Jazeera,
We here in the Axis of America want to register our disgust at your continued broadcasting of gruesome casualties and kidnappings in the Middle East.

Now that we’ve handed the new and improved Iraq back to its people (don’t you just love a makeover?) we think it’s high time you learned to deal responsibly with images of ultra violence by following the lead of the civilised world and restricting it to blockbuster films and children’s cartoons.”……….

…Modern warfare is a precision operation and the terms used to describe it should reflect this fact. If cute little kiddies happen to be bombed into bloody stumps, they should not be filmed but referred to obliquely as collateral damage or, if absolutely necessary, pink mist. This is a clean war, remember?

The Australian: Where are the bodies of evidence? [ 27jul04 ]

FAILURE of intelligence? What failure? Washington’s spies, analysts and sundry apparatchiks were highly successful in giving their masters exactly what they wanted – an excuse to wage the war that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had been planning for years. Unsuccessful in persuading Bill Clinton to wage it, they knew they could enthuse George W. Bush.

The Australian: Where are the bodies of evidence? [ 27jul04 ]

BBC – Films – Michael Moore

Short but good interview with Michael Moore, director/ maker of the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

In Fahrenheit 9/11 I wanted to deal with the mass fear and the mass hysteria that those in power often try to create, in part to distract the population from the real issues that we need to be dealing with, and in part to see that their agenda is enacted. There is no way that the Bush administration could have had the Iraq war unless they first tried to scare the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein had something to do with September 11.

In this film I wanted to show Americans how they’re manipulated with all of this fear, with these Orange alerts, and this thinking that we could be killed and attacked at any time. This is the essence of what Orwell was saying in 1984: that the leaders needed to have the people in a constant state of fear. Because if you could convince them that the enemy was everywhere, anywhere, and could attack at any time, the people would willingly give up their freedoms in order to be protected. And that is what they have been attempting to do for the last two and a half years.

BBC – Films – Michael Moore: “Fahrenheit 9/11”

The corruption of democracy

Last week The Age published, under the Title “The corruption of democracy”, the edited version of Queen’s counsel Tony Fitzgerald’s written speech for the Sydney launch of journalist Margo Kingston’s book Not Happy, John – Defending our Democracy (Penguin, 2004).

It gives Australia, Australian politicians and the public a good rebuke.

However, in todays paper, Michael Scammell, a former media officer for the US consulate in Melbourne takes issue with this in The Age artcile The real corrupters of democracy? The media, trying to point the finger at the media as the source of the corruption of democracy.

My view: It’s only with a free and open media that we can have true democracy and “keep the bastards honest”.

That brings up my next (soon) blog entry. Channel 9 is owned by Kerry Packer, and the respected “Sunday’ show did a hatchet Job on Mark Latham on Sunday. There is a huge amount of muck raking at present. Most of it is coming from the non-indpendent media who have taken ‘sides’ and are out to influence our opinions.

“The Australian”, “Hearld Sun”, news.com.au. – News Corp (Rupert Murdoch)
Channel 9, ninemsn.com.au – Kerry Packer

Fairfax publish the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and seem to be free of their owner’s opinions.